Shortly after I started working at the Hall of Fame library, I discovered a wonderful book published in the 1990s by Peter Filichia, titled Professional Baseball Franchises. It lists every minor-league team from the 1880s forward, including nicknames, league affiliations, classifications, renamings, and years of existence. It is indispensable for locating where people played, which we are often asked to do in the library.
It’s also a very entertaining book because of those nicknames, many of which are dandies. Today a big issue is “naming rights,” the policy of major-league franchises selling out to corporations who put their names on ballparks whose identities used to be linked with important people. For instance, Mets fans, instead of taking their kids to a stadium named for the man (William Shea) who brought the majors back to the National League, they can all go to a stadium named after a company that took $200 million in federal bailout money and used a good chunk of it to put a sign on a building.
I’m here to talk about something else, which I call “naming wrongs”. I have scoured Filichia’s book and some more recent sources to find the most ridiculous nicknames for minor-league teams. Most raise the question “what the hell were they thinking?” Ideally, a team’s nickname presents an image of stalwart, formidable competitors, or at least trumpets some aspect of the city’s civic pride. The name should be positive, strong, and somehow resonant with the players’ (presumed) desire to take on any opposition and fight for victory with all their energy.
However, Filichia’s book is replete with examples of teams that couldn’t conceive of the notion of trying to intimidate the opposition, and cities whose civic identity involved the self-absorbed myopia of modest aspirations. What am I saying? Their nicknames sucked. Many of them existed in the period from 1890-1920, when lots of leagues and teams came and went and were seemingly named by their owner’s whim, but there are plenty of recent examples. Sometimes a whole league was apparently populated by teams trying to outdo each other in strangeness. A recent example is the 1997 South Atlantic League and its odd menagerie of teams, including the Shorebirds, Sand Gnats, Boll Weevils, Alley Cats, Bats, Crocs, River Dogs, and Crawdads. Going way back, how would like to go on a road trip in the 1902 Missouri Valley League and face these teams: the Nevada Lunatics, the Jefferson City Convicts, and the Iola Gasbags?
In making my list of favorite nicknames, I chose only unique names. If more than one team used a nickname, it was disqualified, which eliminated a team that used to exist not far from Cooperstown, the Johnstown-Amsterdam-Gloversville Hyphens. Other dandies that had to be discarded included the Goobers, Gassers, Infants, Smoke Eaters, and Cannibals. I’ve divided my finds into groups, presented here in no particular order. As you read them, ask yourself “If this team came to my town, would I be scared of them or laugh at them?”
WEIRD MENAGERIE
Lafayette Brahman Bulls
Pocomoke City Salamanders
Poughkeepsie Honey Bugs
Denison Katydids
Winston-Salem Warthogs
Batavia Muckdogs
Portland Sea Dogs
Piedmont Dry Bugs
Omaha Omahogs
Erie Sea Wolves
BAD HABITS
Sterling Rag Chewers
Akron Rubbernecks
Green Bay Duck Wallopers
Fort Dodge Gypsumeaters
Corsicana Gumbo Busters
Regina Bonepilers
St. Joseph Clay Eaters
DON’T INVITE THEM TO DINNER
LaCross Outcasts
Bridgeport Misfits
Jacksonville Lunatics
Iola Gasbags
Paterson Intruders
Rockford Indignants
Waycross Blowhards
York Yahoos
INTIMIDATORS—NOT!
Troy Washerwomen
Bloomington Suckers
Bluffton Dregs
Hopewell Powder Puffs
Centralia Zeros
McAlester Sighs
Oakland Monday Models
Norwich Bonbons
Muncie Fruit Jars
AGAINST THE LAW
Omaha Kidnappers
North Wilkesboro Flashers
Salina Insurgents
Asheville Moonshiners
Adrian Yeggs
Graham Hijackers
POLITICALLY INCORRECT
Canton Chinks
Tarboro Tarbabies
Lawton Medicine Men
Canon City Swastikas
GET A BETTER JOB!
Americus Pallbearers
Beatrice Milkskimmers
Nazareth Cement Dusters
Vancouver Horse Doctors
Kirksville Osteopaths
NOT-SO-GREAT BUFFET
Kalamazoo Celery Eaters
Lebanon Pretzel Eaters
Bay City Rice Eaters
Sanford Celeryfeds
JUST PLAIN STRANGE (how did they even think of these as baseball teams?)
Hartford Wooden Nutmegs
Memphis Fever Germs
Lowell Bingling Pans
Waterloo Microbes
Albuquerque Isotopes
Freeport Comeons
Saginaw Wa-Was
Ottumwa Standpatters
Sacramento Gilt Edges
Worcester Riddles
I’ve saved my Top 10 favorites for last. Some of these names have specific stories behind them, like the 1891 outbreak of violence at a Pittsburgh steel mill owned by Andrew Carnegie (#3). Some are backed up by logic; you say “sure” but still wonder why someone tagged a ballclub with them (#7). Some just make you scratch your head (#4). Put yourself in the players’ places. Did they write home to their families and declare “I’m so proud to be a _______”? Here they are, counting down from #10 to my all-time favorite:
#10: Rancho Cucamonga Quakes (located on California’s earthquake fault-line, they do play in the park with the coolest name, the Epicenter)
#9: Lansing Lugnuts (oooh, scary!)
#8: Bonham Boogers (would you even want to tag them out?)
#7: Zanesville Flood Sufferers (an odd source of civic pride)
#6: Schenectady Frog Alley Bunch (enter at your own risk)
#5: Hoquiam Perfect Gentlemen (except for all that tobacco spit)
#4: Taylorville Taylored Commies (played in 1910, before The Revolution)
#3: Shenandoah Hungarian Rioters (some claim to fame!)
#2: Lincoln Missing Links (the opposition made monkeys out of them)
#1: Minot Why-Nots (why not indeed? North Dakota’s finest)
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
The Game That Brought Me Home
Last night, I watched the first inning of the greatest baseball game I never saw. That's all, just the first inning. The rest of the game can wait, because it was the baseball equivalent of the proverbial 40-pound bag of Oreos. You wouldn't want to devour it as soon as you open it, and you couldn't handle the whole thing all at once anyway. It's on the TiVo, recorded from the MLB Network, and I'll savor it a little bit at a time over the next week. I've waited more than 30 years to see it, not even knowing the video still existed, and I'm going to take my time with it.
Two weeks into 1979, I escaped snow-covered Pennsylvania and headed for Europe, where I'd spent a semester in college eight years earlier. This time I planned to take as long as I could to explore it. I began with five weeks in Rome (on $10 a day, just like the book said), then spent more than two months criss-crossing the continent on a Eurailpass (about $300 for unlimited first-class train travel). I saw everything and gathered a lifetime's worth of memories. In mid-April, I landed in London, where I planned to stay as far into the summer as I could. I was in no hurry to leave; when I got back, I'd be helping my parents run their store in a little resort town in the Poconos that hadn't offered me much in the last half of 1978. There was no lure for me there when I could linger in London and bask in Culture.
When the baseball season began, I found the daily scores in the International Herald Tribune, though not much more. The Tribune carried the line scores, listing pitchers and home runs, plus a short paragraph on each game. It was just enough to keep me contented that I wasn't neglecting my game, that I was keeping up with the essential events despite spending my afternoons in Hyde Park rather than a ballpark.
I knew my Reds were off to a slow start and that my favorite player, Pete Rose, was getting his share of hits--making his share of the newsy snippets of the Tribune--with his new team, the Phillies. In early May, while I was still filling in my schedule with plays to be named at a later date, Rose had a succession of multi-hit games which enabled me to follow his daily progress the way I had during his sixteen seasons with the Reds. I started thinking that maybe I should start thinking about perhaps getting my ass back to the Poconos where I could watch and listen to Rose and the first-place Phillies continuing their early-season run.
It was tempting, but I put the thought on hold as a couple of friends from Colorado joined me for a week of theater-filled fun. By the time they left, it was mid-May and I'd been in London for a month. I thought maybe another month or two would satisfy my wanderlust, unless I decided to change plans and indulge that daydream of spending the whole summer in Scandinavia with its cooler climate and hot blondes.
Then I picked up the Tribune on May 18 and saw the line score of The Game. The Phillies played at Wrigley Field the day before, and clearly the wind had been blowing out. I couldn't believe what I saw: the score was 7-6 after one inning, 15-6 Phillies by the third, 21-9 halfway through the game--and it went extra innings! I gawked at the score, 23-22, counted up the eleven home runs, and tried to imagine what the game looked like, found myself wishing I could at least have listened to it unfold. Not just wishing. Soon it grew into regret. What was I missing? Everything! The baseball season was unfolding in my absence, and I couldn't bear to miss any more of it. Well, that was the end of Europe for me. I was on a plane home three days later.
About a dozen years down the road, I bought a radio broadcast of the game, on three cassettes. I was living in Las Vegas by then, and the four-hour broadcast was exactly the same length as the drive between Vegas and Los Angeles. I listened to it enough to know all the hits and runs by heart. It was the Phillies broadcast, featuring future Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn, who was absolutely beside himself as the onslaught went on and on and on. In the first inning, he predicted a 19-13 final score and probably thought he was being outlandish, though he underestimate the final carnage by 40%. His reactions were hilarious.
Many things about the game were amazing, most of all the Phillies' inability to hold a 12-run lead. It evaporated quickly after they went ahead 21-9 in the top of the fifth inning. Tug McGraw came in and gave up seven runs in the blink of an eye. Somehow the Phillies offense faltered, scoring only one run in four innings, while the Cubs kept pounding away and tied the game 22-22 with a three-run eighth. Leading the way were Bill Buckner, who drove in seven runs, and Dave Kingman, who blasted three mammoth home runs, each one longer than the previous one. I think the third one came on the first pitch, and Ashburn was still gushing about the previous two when this one was launched. "Ooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" was all Ashburn could gasp after Kingman made contact, like a little kid at the circus witnessing some unimaginable aerial feat.
In the first inning, Kingman batted with the Cubs trailing 7-1 and two men on base. The MBL Network video is from the Cubs broadcast, with Jack Brickhouse at the microphone. He went nuts when Kingman took a waist-high fastball over the outside corner and yanked it way over the left field fence and across the street, where it bounced off the building which has since become the home of makeshift bleachers on the roof. That day, there were two men standing there, and the astonished Brickhouse reported that "that guy was ready to catch it!" I can't wait to hear what he says for Kingman's other two blasts, which needed no help from the 17mph wind to sail onto Waveland Avenue.
Yes, it's going to be fun listening the Brickhouse, one of the most unabashed "homers" in broadcasting history, as the Cubs fight back from that 12-run defecit. "The game is four days old and the Cubs haven't even batted yet," he moaned as the Phillies went ahead 7-0 in the top of the first. The mayhem had begun already. After three-run homers by Mike Schmidt and Bob Boone, Phillies started Randy Lerch hit a line drive to left-center that just cleared the wall. "Oh come on!" Brickhouse yelped, like a little kid whose older brother keeps pounding the Wiffle ball and not letting him get his turn to hit. Lerch didn't make it through the bottom of the first (the two starters--Dennis Lamp took his lumps for the Cubs--combined to record two outs while surrendering eleven runs), which was punctuated by reliever Donnie Moore's triple which made the score 7-6.
That's the kind of game it was. The eleven combined home runs still shares a piece of the National League record. The teams smashed 50 hits, only two shy of the record for an extra-inning game, and the 45 runs was the most in a game since the Cubs edged the Phillies 26-23 in 1922. I'm really sorry I missed out on that one!
Eleven pitchers marched to the mound that day at Wrigley Field (oh, and by the way, the folks at the MLB Network began the telecast with a graphic stating that the ballpark was originally built for the Chicago Whales of the Federal League, but managed to bungle the name, calling it "Weegham" instead of "Weeghman"), no doubt feeling like Christians being led to the lions. Two of them survived without giving up a run. Ironically, it was the only Hall of Fame pitcher in the game, Bruce Sutter, who gave up the game-winning hit, a 10th-inning home run by the game's other Hall of Famer, Mike Schmidt.
I think the first-place Phillies must have been worn out--or perhaps spoiled--by all that scoring, since they lost 16 of their next 21 games en route to a fourth-place finish. Then there was home plate umpire Dick Cavenaugh. The 1979 season began with the umpires on strike, and local sandlot umps were recruited for the first six weeks of the season. This game was the next-to-last of Cavenaugh's major league "career," and his third behind the plate. Watching the first inning, I noticed that he squeezed the plate on several pitches that looked like clear strikes. That no doubt contributed to the mayhem. In his previous game behind the plate, also at Wrigley Field, the score was 14-13 (the Cubs won that one). So he had a front-row seat for a parade of 72 runs across the plate in two games. One more game after this one, and off to the rocking chair for him.
It might be the rocking chair for me, too, as I settle down this evening with my sack of Oreos. I know I'll get through at least the top of the third inning, in which the Phillies will score eight runs off Donnie Moore and Willie Hernandez to go ahead 15-6. I wonder whether Brickhouse will plummet into despair or whether he'll sense that his Cubbies still have marvelous circus feats of their own to perform. Like him, I know I'll be amazed to see what happens next, even though I've been seeing it in my mind ever since I saw that line score in the Tribune nearly 31 years ago.
Two weeks into 1979, I escaped snow-covered Pennsylvania and headed for Europe, where I'd spent a semester in college eight years earlier. This time I planned to take as long as I could to explore it. I began with five weeks in Rome (on $10 a day, just like the book said), then spent more than two months criss-crossing the continent on a Eurailpass (about $300 for unlimited first-class train travel). I saw everything and gathered a lifetime's worth of memories. In mid-April, I landed in London, where I planned to stay as far into the summer as I could. I was in no hurry to leave; when I got back, I'd be helping my parents run their store in a little resort town in the Poconos that hadn't offered me much in the last half of 1978. There was no lure for me there when I could linger in London and bask in Culture.
When the baseball season began, I found the daily scores in the International Herald Tribune, though not much more. The Tribune carried the line scores, listing pitchers and home runs, plus a short paragraph on each game. It was just enough to keep me contented that I wasn't neglecting my game, that I was keeping up with the essential events despite spending my afternoons in Hyde Park rather than a ballpark.
I knew my Reds were off to a slow start and that my favorite player, Pete Rose, was getting his share of hits--making his share of the newsy snippets of the Tribune--with his new team, the Phillies. In early May, while I was still filling in my schedule with plays to be named at a later date, Rose had a succession of multi-hit games which enabled me to follow his daily progress the way I had during his sixteen seasons with the Reds. I started thinking that maybe I should start thinking about perhaps getting my ass back to the Poconos where I could watch and listen to Rose and the first-place Phillies continuing their early-season run.
It was tempting, but I put the thought on hold as a couple of friends from Colorado joined me for a week of theater-filled fun. By the time they left, it was mid-May and I'd been in London for a month. I thought maybe another month or two would satisfy my wanderlust, unless I decided to change plans and indulge that daydream of spending the whole summer in Scandinavia with its cooler climate and hot blondes.
Then I picked up the Tribune on May 18 and saw the line score of The Game. The Phillies played at Wrigley Field the day before, and clearly the wind had been blowing out. I couldn't believe what I saw: the score was 7-6 after one inning, 15-6 Phillies by the third, 21-9 halfway through the game--and it went extra innings! I gawked at the score, 23-22, counted up the eleven home runs, and tried to imagine what the game looked like, found myself wishing I could at least have listened to it unfold. Not just wishing. Soon it grew into regret. What was I missing? Everything! The baseball season was unfolding in my absence, and I couldn't bear to miss any more of it. Well, that was the end of Europe for me. I was on a plane home three days later.
About a dozen years down the road, I bought a radio broadcast of the game, on three cassettes. I was living in Las Vegas by then, and the four-hour broadcast was exactly the same length as the drive between Vegas and Los Angeles. I listened to it enough to know all the hits and runs by heart. It was the Phillies broadcast, featuring future Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn, who was absolutely beside himself as the onslaught went on and on and on. In the first inning, he predicted a 19-13 final score and probably thought he was being outlandish, though he underestimate the final carnage by 40%. His reactions were hilarious.
Many things about the game were amazing, most of all the Phillies' inability to hold a 12-run lead. It evaporated quickly after they went ahead 21-9 in the top of the fifth inning. Tug McGraw came in and gave up seven runs in the blink of an eye. Somehow the Phillies offense faltered, scoring only one run in four innings, while the Cubs kept pounding away and tied the game 22-22 with a three-run eighth. Leading the way were Bill Buckner, who drove in seven runs, and Dave Kingman, who blasted three mammoth home runs, each one longer than the previous one. I think the third one came on the first pitch, and Ashburn was still gushing about the previous two when this one was launched. "Ooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" was all Ashburn could gasp after Kingman made contact, like a little kid at the circus witnessing some unimaginable aerial feat.
In the first inning, Kingman batted with the Cubs trailing 7-1 and two men on base. The MBL Network video is from the Cubs broadcast, with Jack Brickhouse at the microphone. He went nuts when Kingman took a waist-high fastball over the outside corner and yanked it way over the left field fence and across the street, where it bounced off the building which has since become the home of makeshift bleachers on the roof. That day, there were two men standing there, and the astonished Brickhouse reported that "that guy was ready to catch it!" I can't wait to hear what he says for Kingman's other two blasts, which needed no help from the 17mph wind to sail onto Waveland Avenue.
Yes, it's going to be fun listening the Brickhouse, one of the most unabashed "homers" in broadcasting history, as the Cubs fight back from that 12-run defecit. "The game is four days old and the Cubs haven't even batted yet," he moaned as the Phillies went ahead 7-0 in the top of the first. The mayhem had begun already. After three-run homers by Mike Schmidt and Bob Boone, Phillies started Randy Lerch hit a line drive to left-center that just cleared the wall. "Oh come on!" Brickhouse yelped, like a little kid whose older brother keeps pounding the Wiffle ball and not letting him get his turn to hit. Lerch didn't make it through the bottom of the first (the two starters--Dennis Lamp took his lumps for the Cubs--combined to record two outs while surrendering eleven runs), which was punctuated by reliever Donnie Moore's triple which made the score 7-6.
That's the kind of game it was. The eleven combined home runs still shares a piece of the National League record. The teams smashed 50 hits, only two shy of the record for an extra-inning game, and the 45 runs was the most in a game since the Cubs edged the Phillies 26-23 in 1922. I'm really sorry I missed out on that one!
Eleven pitchers marched to the mound that day at Wrigley Field (oh, and by the way, the folks at the MLB Network began the telecast with a graphic stating that the ballpark was originally built for the Chicago Whales of the Federal League, but managed to bungle the name, calling it "Weegham" instead of "Weeghman"), no doubt feeling like Christians being led to the lions. Two of them survived without giving up a run. Ironically, it was the only Hall of Fame pitcher in the game, Bruce Sutter, who gave up the game-winning hit, a 10th-inning home run by the game's other Hall of Famer, Mike Schmidt.
I think the first-place Phillies must have been worn out--or perhaps spoiled--by all that scoring, since they lost 16 of their next 21 games en route to a fourth-place finish. Then there was home plate umpire Dick Cavenaugh. The 1979 season began with the umpires on strike, and local sandlot umps were recruited for the first six weeks of the season. This game was the next-to-last of Cavenaugh's major league "career," and his third behind the plate. Watching the first inning, I noticed that he squeezed the plate on several pitches that looked like clear strikes. That no doubt contributed to the mayhem. In his previous game behind the plate, also at Wrigley Field, the score was 14-13 (the Cubs won that one). So he had a front-row seat for a parade of 72 runs across the plate in two games. One more game after this one, and off to the rocking chair for him.
It might be the rocking chair for me, too, as I settle down this evening with my sack of Oreos. I know I'll get through at least the top of the third inning, in which the Phillies will score eight runs off Donnie Moore and Willie Hernandez to go ahead 15-6. I wonder whether Brickhouse will plummet into despair or whether he'll sense that his Cubbies still have marvelous circus feats of their own to perform. Like him, I know I'll be amazed to see what happens next, even though I've been seeing it in my mind ever since I saw that line score in the Tribune nearly 31 years ago.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Another Great Story Bites The Dust
At the 2008 SABR convention, baseball historian Norman Macht gave a fascinating one-hour presentation on the pitfalls of accepting great stories as true simply because they sound great. He discussed several classics, including one involving Lefty Grove that was attested to by several eyewitnesses, all of whom happened to be mistaken because the events detailed could not have happened when they were said to have happened. It was a cautionary presentation, reminding the aspiring historians in the audience that we shouldn't take anybody's word for anything, especially if they're telling the tale years after it (supposedly) occurred. The historian's task--his or her obligation--is to determine first of all whether a particular story could be true as told by its participants or witnesses, and if it isn't, to piece together the evidence that might be the source of the story.
As I know all too well, my own memories of ballgames and events from decades ago are imprecise, often pieced together from bits and pieces of several games and congealed into a single sequence in my mind. That's how the human mind works. It happens to all of us. So it is with the story I'll detail here, a wonderful tale told by Doug Harvey to reporters in 1992 at the end of his 31-year umpiring career. I'm not debunking this story to embarrass Harvey or to suggest that he invented the story out of thin air. I think the world of Doug Harvey. During his career, I thought he was the best umpire I'd ever seen, and I still feel that way. His election to the Hall of Fame this year was long overdue. I'm writing this because, if historians have the means to determine whether events did or did not occur as claimed, we are obligated to set the record straight.
Harvey's file at the Hall of Fame library contains two versions of the tale, one in an article written by Jerome Holtzman in July of 1992, the other by Wayne Coffey that October. I'll quote the Holtzman version here in full:
It's a beautiful story, told to illustrate how Harvey learned what he called "timing," that is the importance of that little "one-Mississippi" in an umpire's head before he makes the call. The problem is that it didn't happen. There are a lot of "facts" in there, details that pinpoint precisely when Harvey--in 1992, three decades later--felt it did happen. It turns out that almost none of those details are correct. Thanks to the whizzes at http://www.retrosheet.org/, who have posted the box scores for every game Harvey (and other umpires of the past fifty years) umpired in the major leagues, it is easy to verify--or refute--those details.
Let's start at the start. Was Harvey's third game behind the plate in St. Louis? No, it was in Houston, where Roman Mejias (a right-handed batter, as opposed to the lefty Musial) struck out swinging to end the game. Harvey's fourth game behind the plate was in St. Louis on April 27. However, the visiting team was Cincinnati, the Cardinals won the game 14-3, and Musial didn't strike out. He grounded out twice, lined out, and singled.
The Coffey version of the story includes this statement from Harvey: "I'd never seen Drysdale pitch. I didn't know what he could do with the ball." As a matter of fact, Harvey did see Drysdale pitch--in his second game behind the plate, in San Francisco on April 17. Drysdale started but got drilled by the Giants, surrendering seven runs before exiting in the seventh inning. Drysdale struck out four Giants, one of them on a called third strike: Felipe Alou, leading off the fourth inning. There isn't much there that could contribute to Harvey's tale, and it tells us that he did see Drysdale pitch before ever umpiring a Cardinals game.
On May 11, 1962, Harvey umpired his seventh game behind the plate and his second one in St. Louis. The Dodgers were in town, but Drysdale didn't pitch that day. Stan Williams was their starter, and Musial did strike out looking against him--leading off the second inning. A second-inning strikeout with a 1-0 score hardly seems like the stuff of vivid memories, but that's as close as we get to a helpful fact from this game. Apart from that strikeout, Musial walked once and put the ball into play his other two trips to the plate. He did not bat in the bottom of the ninth as the Dodgers recorded an 8-5 victory.
Once I got that far in checking Harvey's experiences behind the plate in 1962, his tale was clearly on thin ice. Since it centers around Musial's reaction to Harvey's call, I looked closely at
all games where he was in Harvey's vicinity at the plate. The next one wasn't until July 25, Harvey's 25th game behind the plate, also in St. Louis. This time Drysdale did pitch, at least until the eighth inning. But Musial didn't strike out. Facing Double-D three times, he popped out twice and, in his last trip, belted a two-run home run. Nothing there to contribute to Harvey's memories.
He didn't call another Cardinals game until August 23, in Milwaukee. Musial didn't start, but he did pinch-hit in the ninth inning with his team trailing 3-2--and singled. Again, no help in figuring out where the details of the tale came from. Three days later, Harvey was behind the plate again in St. Louis, and Musial did play against the visiting Pirates. He had a big day with a single, a double, and a walk in four trips. In that fourth trip, Harvey called him out on strikes. But it was leading off the sixth inning against reliever Diomedes Olivo, a 43-year-old left-hander. It's hard to imagine Harvey confusing Olivo with Don Drysdale. Musial didn't bat in the ninth inning as the Cardinals lost 7-6.
Harvey worked the plate in two more Musial starts in 1962. Stan the Man went a combined 3-for-8 in those games, including a home run, but he neither struck out nor batted in the ninth inning. So where does that leave us? Nowhere, really. We have a second-inning strikeout in May against Stan Williams, and no strikeouts against Drysdale. What about spring training? Maybe that's what Harvey remembered. I went through the March box scores in "The Sporting News" and found no Cardinals game where Harvey called balls and strikes.
Next I looked at the other clues. There had to be some events that his memory patched together. It had to be an extra-inning game, with someone else's strikeout ending the ninth inning and the bat boy handing him his glove for the top of the tenth. Well, Harvey worked the plate in exactly three extra-inning games in 1962. The first was on May 16 at the Polo Grounds, where the Mets beat the Cubs 6-5 in eleven innings. But the final outs for the Mets in the ninth and tenth innings were not strikeouts. Next up was May 26 in San Francisco, when there were no strikeouts in the ninth inning as the Giants won 7-6 in ten. Finally, on June 29 he worked another extra-inning game at Candlestick Park. Again, there were no strikeouts in the ninth inning, though Tony Taylor of the visiting Phillies was called out on strikes to end the top of the twelfth inning before Ed Bailey's leadoff home run won the game for the Giants.
So I came up empty on that potential evidence, too. Maybe it happened in 1963, Musial's final season in the majors, though it would be a stretch to think that Harvey was one year off on the timing of his "timing" epiphany. I found four games in 1963 where Harvey was behind the plate and Musial played. On April 14, Musial, pinch-hitting, did make the final out of the game as the Cardinals lost, but it was on a foul pop-up to the catcher. On June 1 and June 24, Musial started and went a combined 4-for-7, but didn't strike out in either game, nor did he appear in the ninth inning. Finally, on July 18, we have a close call. Musial (pinch-hitting) was called out on strikes by Harvey in the ninth inning. That's as close as we can get. Of course, it was in Cincinnati, not St. Louis; the pitcher was Jim Owens, not Drysdale; the Cardinals were losing, not tied; and it was Harvey's 65th game behind the plate, not his third.
Other clues I examined were even less promising. Harvey did call two other games started by Drysdale in 1962. Both were complete games, one in Los Angeles, the other in Cincinnati, neither involving the Cardinals. In both games, the last out was a strikeout--but both times it was a swinging strike, one by Lou Brock (of the Cubs), the other by Marty Keough of the Reds. Exactly one time in 1962, Harvey called a batter out on strikes to end the game. That was at Dodger Stadium on September 4; the pitcher was lefty Ron Perranoski, and the batter was Orlando Cepeda.
Finally, there was the game of June 29, 1963, also at Dodger Stadium. It was the bottom of the ninth, score tied, when Willie Davis struck out to send the game into extra innings. The pitcher was Bob Shaw of the Braves. The Los Angeles Times account of the game simply says that Shaw "whiffed" Davis, which suggests a swinging strike. That's the only time during the two seasons that Harvey and Musial were active together that a batter fanned to extend a game into extra innings with Harvey at the plate. Not much to go on.
So we're left with an excellent story, the point of which was that it persuaded Harvey--virtually at the start of his major-league career--to change his ways. "Introducing timing to umpiring" is his legacy, the pioneering technique he passed on to the succeeding generation of umpires (a technique overdone by some of them, including Tim McClelland and Joe Brinkman). The inspiration for it came from somewhere. Harvey umpired more than 4,700 games in the majors, and it's reasonable to think that he jumbled a few memories into one sequence. His encounter with Musial seems too vivid to have been totally without basis. It's just that, after looking at the games Harvey umpired in 1962-63, I can't find that basis.
Can you?
As I know all too well, my own memories of ballgames and events from decades ago are imprecise, often pieced together from bits and pieces of several games and congealed into a single sequence in my mind. That's how the human mind works. It happens to all of us. So it is with the story I'll detail here, a wonderful tale told by Doug Harvey to reporters in 1992 at the end of his 31-year umpiring career. I'm not debunking this story to embarrass Harvey or to suggest that he invented the story out of thin air. I think the world of Doug Harvey. During his career, I thought he was the best umpire I'd ever seen, and I still feel that way. His election to the Hall of Fame this year was long overdue. I'm writing this because, if historians have the means to determine whether events did or did not occur as claimed, we are obligated to set the record straight.
Harvey's file at the Hall of Fame library contains two versions of the tale, one in an article written by Jerome Holtzman in July of 1992, the other by Wayne Coffey that October. I'll quote the Holtzman version here in full:
He was a rookie, his first time in St. Louis, working his third plate game, Dodgers against the Cardinals. Ninth inning, two outs, score tied, full count, Don Drysdale pitching and Stan Musial coiled, ready to swing. Drysdale delivered. Doug Harvey, seeing the ball in midflight, raised his right arm, signaling strike three. It was 30 years ago, in 1962, but Harvey has not forgotten. The pitch broke to the outside and missed the plate by six inches."And there I am standing with egg on my face, the crowd booing," Harvey recalled. "Musial never looked at me. He told the bat boy to bring him his glove. Then, without turning, he said, 'Young fellow, I don't know what league you came from, but we use the same plate. It's 17 inches wide.'"Immediately, Harvey learned two lessons: "That's when I realized why they called him 'Stan the Man.' And I learned not to anticipate the call."
Let's start at the start. Was Harvey's third game behind the plate in St. Louis? No, it was in Houston, where Roman Mejias (a right-handed batter, as opposed to the lefty Musial) struck out swinging to end the game. Harvey's fourth game behind the plate was in St. Louis on April 27. However, the visiting team was Cincinnati, the Cardinals won the game 14-3, and Musial didn't strike out. He grounded out twice, lined out, and singled.
The Coffey version of the story includes this statement from Harvey: "I'd never seen Drysdale pitch. I didn't know what he could do with the ball." As a matter of fact, Harvey did see Drysdale pitch--in his second game behind the plate, in San Francisco on April 17. Drysdale started but got drilled by the Giants, surrendering seven runs before exiting in the seventh inning. Drysdale struck out four Giants, one of them on a called third strike: Felipe Alou, leading off the fourth inning. There isn't much there that could contribute to Harvey's tale, and it tells us that he did see Drysdale pitch before ever umpiring a Cardinals game.
On May 11, 1962, Harvey umpired his seventh game behind the plate and his second one in St. Louis. The Dodgers were in town, but Drysdale didn't pitch that day. Stan Williams was their starter, and Musial did strike out looking against him--leading off the second inning. A second-inning strikeout with a 1-0 score hardly seems like the stuff of vivid memories, but that's as close as we get to a helpful fact from this game. Apart from that strikeout, Musial walked once and put the ball into play his other two trips to the plate. He did not bat in the bottom of the ninth as the Dodgers recorded an 8-5 victory.
Once I got that far in checking Harvey's experiences behind the plate in 1962, his tale was clearly on thin ice. Since it centers around Musial's reaction to Harvey's call, I looked closely at
all games where he was in Harvey's vicinity at the plate. The next one wasn't until July 25, Harvey's 25th game behind the plate, also in St. Louis. This time Drysdale did pitch, at least until the eighth inning. But Musial didn't strike out. Facing Double-D three times, he popped out twice and, in his last trip, belted a two-run home run. Nothing there to contribute to Harvey's memories.
He didn't call another Cardinals game until August 23, in Milwaukee. Musial didn't start, but he did pinch-hit in the ninth inning with his team trailing 3-2--and singled. Again, no help in figuring out where the details of the tale came from. Three days later, Harvey was behind the plate again in St. Louis, and Musial did play against the visiting Pirates. He had a big day with a single, a double, and a walk in four trips. In that fourth trip, Harvey called him out on strikes. But it was leading off the sixth inning against reliever Diomedes Olivo, a 43-year-old left-hander. It's hard to imagine Harvey confusing Olivo with Don Drysdale. Musial didn't bat in the ninth inning as the Cardinals lost 7-6.
Harvey worked the plate in two more Musial starts in 1962. Stan the Man went a combined 3-for-8 in those games, including a home run, but he neither struck out nor batted in the ninth inning. So where does that leave us? Nowhere, really. We have a second-inning strikeout in May against Stan Williams, and no strikeouts against Drysdale. What about spring training? Maybe that's what Harvey remembered. I went through the March box scores in "The Sporting News" and found no Cardinals game where Harvey called balls and strikes.
Next I looked at the other clues. There had to be some events that his memory patched together. It had to be an extra-inning game, with someone else's strikeout ending the ninth inning and the bat boy handing him his glove for the top of the tenth. Well, Harvey worked the plate in exactly three extra-inning games in 1962. The first was on May 16 at the Polo Grounds, where the Mets beat the Cubs 6-5 in eleven innings. But the final outs for the Mets in the ninth and tenth innings were not strikeouts. Next up was May 26 in San Francisco, when there were no strikeouts in the ninth inning as the Giants won 7-6 in ten. Finally, on June 29 he worked another extra-inning game at Candlestick Park. Again, there were no strikeouts in the ninth inning, though Tony Taylor of the visiting Phillies was called out on strikes to end the top of the twelfth inning before Ed Bailey's leadoff home run won the game for the Giants.
So I came up empty on that potential evidence, too. Maybe it happened in 1963, Musial's final season in the majors, though it would be a stretch to think that Harvey was one year off on the timing of his "timing" epiphany. I found four games in 1963 where Harvey was behind the plate and Musial played. On April 14, Musial, pinch-hitting, did make the final out of the game as the Cardinals lost, but it was on a foul pop-up to the catcher. On June 1 and June 24, Musial started and went a combined 4-for-7, but didn't strike out in either game, nor did he appear in the ninth inning. Finally, on July 18, we have a close call. Musial (pinch-hitting) was called out on strikes by Harvey in the ninth inning. That's as close as we can get. Of course, it was in Cincinnati, not St. Louis; the pitcher was Jim Owens, not Drysdale; the Cardinals were losing, not tied; and it was Harvey's 65th game behind the plate, not his third.
Other clues I examined were even less promising. Harvey did call two other games started by Drysdale in 1962. Both were complete games, one in Los Angeles, the other in Cincinnati, neither involving the Cardinals. In both games, the last out was a strikeout--but both times it was a swinging strike, one by Lou Brock (of the Cubs), the other by Marty Keough of the Reds. Exactly one time in 1962, Harvey called a batter out on strikes to end the game. That was at Dodger Stadium on September 4; the pitcher was lefty Ron Perranoski, and the batter was Orlando Cepeda.
Finally, there was the game of June 29, 1963, also at Dodger Stadium. It was the bottom of the ninth, score tied, when Willie Davis struck out to send the game into extra innings. The pitcher was Bob Shaw of the Braves. The Los Angeles Times account of the game simply says that Shaw "whiffed" Davis, which suggests a swinging strike. That's the only time during the two seasons that Harvey and Musial were active together that a batter fanned to extend a game into extra innings with Harvey at the plate. Not much to go on.
So we're left with an excellent story, the point of which was that it persuaded Harvey--virtually at the start of his major-league career--to change his ways. "Introducing timing to umpiring" is his legacy, the pioneering technique he passed on to the succeeding generation of umpires (a technique overdone by some of them, including Tim McClelland and Joe Brinkman). The inspiration for it came from somewhere. Harvey umpired more than 4,700 games in the majors, and it's reasonable to think that he jumbled a few memories into one sequence. His encounter with Musial seems too vivid to have been totally without basis. It's just that, after looking at the games Harvey umpired in 1962-63, I can't find that basis.
Can you?
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
And Another Thing. . .
I've gotten a lot of favorable response to the "re-invention" of baseball in my last blog. One other subject I wanted to cover but didn't manage to fit in was the fan experience at the ballpark. Living in Cooperstown, I don't get to many major league games any more, but I used to go to a lot, and have visited nearly 30 major league parks in my lifetime. I think I have a pretty good feel for the way it used to be and the way it is now, and I have a few suggestions on how to make a day at the ballpark more enjoyable.
First, stop pandering to the increasingly short attention span of the human species: cut out most or all of the between-innings crap. Is the game on the field so barren that spectators need marauding mascots or a shell game on the scoreboard to keep them interested? The time between innings used to be filled by talking with your neighbors (or companions), discussing the game, pondering the game, looking around and savoring the action and the fresh-air ambience. Now the game almost seems incidental to the mindless assault of frills between the innings, all blasted your way at volumes just below jackhammer level. My version of baseball would prohibit any stadium-generated noise at a decibel level more than one-half of the current norm. Fans shouldn't have to shout at each other to be heard unless it's because the action on the field has stirred them into a frenzy.
Second, give people a chance to get closer to the action by allowing them to move down into the good seats after the seventh inning. In a half-full ballpark, is there any reason for ushers to be hall monitors for the whole game? With even bleacher seats costing more than box seats did just twenty years ago, fans would be more likely to come to the park if they knew that they'd have a chance to get close to the action later. I can't emphasize this enough: there is nothing like sitting close to home plate for educating the fan about the difficulty of the game, the tremendous skill necessary to play it well, and the sheer excitement of sensing the tension on the field. You'll make better, more knowledgeable fans if you give them a little bit of that excitement. You just don't see what's happening well enough from the "cheap" seats. You can't see the break on a curve or the battle of nerves between a pitcher and a base-stealing threat. It might just be that some fans will be so enamored of getting close to the field that they'll spring for the more expensive tickets once in awhile. It might even be good for business in the long run.
This idea should be implemented in the major leagues today. It wouldn't work everywhere, of course. In parks that are usually full to near capacity, not many open seats will be available late in the game. You can't just have a stampede storming the box seats. Reasonable rules would have to be followed. For instance, you'd have to get to your seats before the start of an inning. It wouldn't be fair to the plutocrats who paid for the expensive seats to have a parade of peasants blocking their view of the game. Let them line up before the seventh inning ends--and this is much more feasible in the new ballparks which have excellent views from the concourses behind the stands. Alternate aisles, one for people exiting, the next one for people moving into empty seats, and so on. Get to your seat before the action resumes, or wait behind the stands as fans do now in the late innings.
The ushers will know what's available. Maybe the first five rows would be off-limits, though we've all seen people usurp those empty seats late in the game. My proposal would simply change the practice of generations of fans from a violation of policy to an invitation. Instead of people bribing the ushers to upgrade them, it would be a right, as long as the seats are available. Of course some people will stay where they are even if they're in the upper deck. If their area thins out, they'll have a better chance of getting a foul ball. If they're with children, they might not want to organize two expeditions--one to move downstairs and another to exit the park. They can still move down to the box seats in their section. To repeat, letting people learn that better seats are indeed better might persuade them to shell out the extra money next time.
In these tough economic times, major league teams are charging hefty prices to people visiting their venues. They should appreciate that people don't have to come to the park to follow their team or any other team. The focus should be on the game. Let them watch the game in peace, and let them sit--whenever it's feasible--where they can fully appreciate the difficulty and the beauty of the game. Once you've been within a hundred feet of a 95mph fastball or a fast-breaking 90mph slider, once the loudest sound you hear is the crack of the bat hitting the ball, once you get a close look at the clothesline trajectory of a catcher nailing a runner trying to steal second base, the game will never look the same on television either.
First, stop pandering to the increasingly short attention span of the human species: cut out most or all of the between-innings crap. Is the game on the field so barren that spectators need marauding mascots or a shell game on the scoreboard to keep them interested? The time between innings used to be filled by talking with your neighbors (or companions), discussing the game, pondering the game, looking around and savoring the action and the fresh-air ambience. Now the game almost seems incidental to the mindless assault of frills between the innings, all blasted your way at volumes just below jackhammer level. My version of baseball would prohibit any stadium-generated noise at a decibel level more than one-half of the current norm. Fans shouldn't have to shout at each other to be heard unless it's because the action on the field has stirred them into a frenzy.
Second, give people a chance to get closer to the action by allowing them to move down into the good seats after the seventh inning. In a half-full ballpark, is there any reason for ushers to be hall monitors for the whole game? With even bleacher seats costing more than box seats did just twenty years ago, fans would be more likely to come to the park if they knew that they'd have a chance to get close to the action later. I can't emphasize this enough: there is nothing like sitting close to home plate for educating the fan about the difficulty of the game, the tremendous skill necessary to play it well, and the sheer excitement of sensing the tension on the field. You'll make better, more knowledgeable fans if you give them a little bit of that excitement. You just don't see what's happening well enough from the "cheap" seats. You can't see the break on a curve or the battle of nerves between a pitcher and a base-stealing threat. It might just be that some fans will be so enamored of getting close to the field that they'll spring for the more expensive tickets once in awhile. It might even be good for business in the long run.
This idea should be implemented in the major leagues today. It wouldn't work everywhere, of course. In parks that are usually full to near capacity, not many open seats will be available late in the game. You can't just have a stampede storming the box seats. Reasonable rules would have to be followed. For instance, you'd have to get to your seats before the start of an inning. It wouldn't be fair to the plutocrats who paid for the expensive seats to have a parade of peasants blocking their view of the game. Let them line up before the seventh inning ends--and this is much more feasible in the new ballparks which have excellent views from the concourses behind the stands. Alternate aisles, one for people exiting, the next one for people moving into empty seats, and so on. Get to your seat before the action resumes, or wait behind the stands as fans do now in the late innings.
The ushers will know what's available. Maybe the first five rows would be off-limits, though we've all seen people usurp those empty seats late in the game. My proposal would simply change the practice of generations of fans from a violation of policy to an invitation. Instead of people bribing the ushers to upgrade them, it would be a right, as long as the seats are available. Of course some people will stay where they are even if they're in the upper deck. If their area thins out, they'll have a better chance of getting a foul ball. If they're with children, they might not want to organize two expeditions--one to move downstairs and another to exit the park. They can still move down to the box seats in their section. To repeat, letting people learn that better seats are indeed better might persuade them to shell out the extra money next time.
In these tough economic times, major league teams are charging hefty prices to people visiting their venues. They should appreciate that people don't have to come to the park to follow their team or any other team. The focus should be on the game. Let them watch the game in peace, and let them sit--whenever it's feasible--where they can fully appreciate the difficulty and the beauty of the game. Once you've been within a hundred feet of a 95mph fastball or a fast-breaking 90mph slider, once the loudest sound you hear is the crack of the bat hitting the ball, once you get a close look at the clothesline trajectory of a catcher nailing a runner trying to steal second base, the game will never look the same on television either.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Selig, Owners Announce Re-Invention Of Sport
In a surprise announcement following the winter meetings attended by owners and generals managers, "Commissioner" Bud Selig declared his intention of re-inventing the sport known as baseball. "Let's face it," Selig told the press. "We've screwed this game up so thoroughly that it has almost no meaning for anyone any more. Fans don't know what to think about statistics, about the character of players, about the validity of pennants, about records, about anything. It's time to stop pretending that the remedies we've come up with have straightened things out. So our only course is to start over from scratch."
With his tenure as the game's czar expected to end after the 2012 season, Selig stated that the new version of baseball will begin with the 2013 season, giving franchises and players time to prepare for the drastic changes ahead. "We're going to change the way the game is played on the field," Selig declared. "The rules will be different, and so will the way they are enforced. We can freeze everything that has happened in baseball history up to that time, and let people spend the rest of their lives sorting it out if they wish. Meanwhile, the rest of us--owners, players, and fans--can move on to the new version which will create its own history and records."
At the winter meetings, Selig and company hashed out sweeping changes in the game, starting with its organization. The current two-league, six-division system will be replaced by four eight-team leagues, arranged along geographical lines. The four league winners will participate in the playoffs; in the first round, the team with the best record will face the team with the worst record.
The new season will consist of 160 games. Each team will play 16 games against each league rival. The remaining 48 games games will be played against the eight teams from another league, with the pairings rotating from year to year. Doubleheaders will be scheduled for nine Sundays plus the three national holidays, cutting the regular season by two weeks. The first two weeks of the season will be played in the warm-climate cities, even if it means starting the season with some inter-league series.
"The new streamlined schedule, plus limiting the post-season to two best-of-seven series, should please the fans," Selig said. "Starting in warmer climates will mean fewer April postponements, and ending the World Series by mid-October should make it more likely that the most meaningful games of the season will be played in what we think of as baseball weather, not hockey weather."
The changes also addressed one of baseball's perennial problems, namely the owners' inability to avoid overspending. "There will be no salary cap," Selig announced, "but we will limit all contracts to two years. That's right. Teams will no longer be saddled with ridiculous long-term contracts for players who can't play any more. We are also doing away with the practice of one team paying the contract for a player who has been traded to another team. How that conflict of interest has existed for so long is a travesty. Players can be signed for one year or two years, that's it. If every season, or every other season, is a 'contract year,' players won't be able to loaf."
Marvin Miller, who runs the players' union, endorsed the new system on several counts. Yearly bidding wars will keep salaries relatively high, and players--especially younger players who are currently tied to their team for several years with no resource besides salary arbitration--will have more flexibility in playing where they want to play. In addition to new jobs being created by expansion, rosters will be increased to 26 players, another boost to the work force and a trade-off for the long-overdue elimination of the designated hitter.
All of these organizational changes, however, pale in comparison to the new look for the game on the field envisioned by Selig and the owners. "We're making major changes in the basic game of baseball," Selig beamed, "trying to maintain a reasonable balance between offense and defense while making sure nobody confuses this game with the old one. Some things won't change--nine men on a side, nine innings--but we're going to build even more on the game's sacred number: nine."
Indeed, "9" will impact the basic dimensions of the game. "Budball" will now feature a distance of 89 feet between bases and 59 feet from the pitcher's rubber to home plate. In addition, each team will get 29 outs in a nine-inning game. The "extra" two outs will be at the discretion of the manager of the team at bat. Do you use an extra batter in the early innings with the bases loaded, or do you wait until the late innings if the game is on the line? Those extra two outs aren't sacred. If the defensive team turns a double play with two outs, it can take away one of the extra outs. Losing an out will also be also a penalty for a manager getting ejected. More on that later.
"We'll be making a lot of changes, some of which favor the defense and some the offense. Obviously the key change is shortening the pitching distance," Selig conceded. "This is going to give the pitcher an advantage, especially with his fastball, though it will cut down a little on the room for a curveball to break. They'll need a faster pitch with a break, which means the spitball. Ford Frick tried to bring back the spitball fifty years ago, and we're going to do it. The truth is that pitchers have been throwing spitballs all along, and we've been allowing it, so it's time to rid ourselves of the charade that we're stopping it."
Selig pinpointed the current rule prohibiting pitchers from "going to their mouths" while standing on the pitching mound as the silliest farce in the game. "All it means is that they have to walk onto the infield grass to moisten their fingers. It's just a waste of time. Not only that, a pitcher can stand on the mound and wipe the sweat off his forehead or his neck to achieve the same effect without breaking the rule. So why pretend? Let 'em throw a wet ball. Of course, they'd better be able to control it."
That brought Selig to the next rule change: batters hit by a pitch get two bases. Hit a batter with a runner on second, and now you have runners on second and third. Hit him above the shoulders and it's three bases. Break a bone and it will bring a two-week suspension. However, a batter who leans into a pitch and "allows" himself to get hit by it will be out, and no padding on elbows and arms will be allowed except for a limited number of games when a player is returning from a specific injury.
With his tenure as the game's czar expected to end after the 2012 season, Selig stated that the new version of baseball will begin with the 2013 season, giving franchises and players time to prepare for the drastic changes ahead. "We're going to change the way the game is played on the field," Selig declared. "The rules will be different, and so will the way they are enforced. We can freeze everything that has happened in baseball history up to that time, and let people spend the rest of their lives sorting it out if they wish. Meanwhile, the rest of us--owners, players, and fans--can move on to the new version which will create its own history and records."
At the winter meetings, Selig and company hashed out sweeping changes in the game, starting with its organization. The current two-league, six-division system will be replaced by four eight-team leagues, arranged along geographical lines. The four league winners will participate in the playoffs; in the first round, the team with the best record will face the team with the worst record.
The new season will consist of 160 games. Each team will play 16 games against each league rival. The remaining 48 games games will be played against the eight teams from another league, with the pairings rotating from year to year. Doubleheaders will be scheduled for nine Sundays plus the three national holidays, cutting the regular season by two weeks. The first two weeks of the season will be played in the warm-climate cities, even if it means starting the season with some inter-league series.
"The new streamlined schedule, plus limiting the post-season to two best-of-seven series, should please the fans," Selig said. "Starting in warmer climates will mean fewer April postponements, and ending the World Series by mid-October should make it more likely that the most meaningful games of the season will be played in what we think of as baseball weather, not hockey weather."
The changes also addressed one of baseball's perennial problems, namely the owners' inability to avoid overspending. "There will be no salary cap," Selig announced, "but we will limit all contracts to two years. That's right. Teams will no longer be saddled with ridiculous long-term contracts for players who can't play any more. We are also doing away with the practice of one team paying the contract for a player who has been traded to another team. How that conflict of interest has existed for so long is a travesty. Players can be signed for one year or two years, that's it. If every season, or every other season, is a 'contract year,' players won't be able to loaf."
Marvin Miller, who runs the players' union, endorsed the new system on several counts. Yearly bidding wars will keep salaries relatively high, and players--especially younger players who are currently tied to their team for several years with no resource besides salary arbitration--will have more flexibility in playing where they want to play. In addition to new jobs being created by expansion, rosters will be increased to 26 players, another boost to the work force and a trade-off for the long-overdue elimination of the designated hitter.
All of these organizational changes, however, pale in comparison to the new look for the game on the field envisioned by Selig and the owners. "We're making major changes in the basic game of baseball," Selig beamed, "trying to maintain a reasonable balance between offense and defense while making sure nobody confuses this game with the old one. Some things won't change--nine men on a side, nine innings--but we're going to build even more on the game's sacred number: nine."
Indeed, "9" will impact the basic dimensions of the game. "Budball" will now feature a distance of 89 feet between bases and 59 feet from the pitcher's rubber to home plate. In addition, each team will get 29 outs in a nine-inning game. The "extra" two outs will be at the discretion of the manager of the team at bat. Do you use an extra batter in the early innings with the bases loaded, or do you wait until the late innings if the game is on the line? Those extra two outs aren't sacred. If the defensive team turns a double play with two outs, it can take away one of the extra outs. Losing an out will also be also a penalty for a manager getting ejected. More on that later.
"We'll be making a lot of changes, some of which favor the defense and some the offense. Obviously the key change is shortening the pitching distance," Selig conceded. "This is going to give the pitcher an advantage, especially with his fastball, though it will cut down a little on the room for a curveball to break. They'll need a faster pitch with a break, which means the spitball. Ford Frick tried to bring back the spitball fifty years ago, and we're going to do it. The truth is that pitchers have been throwing spitballs all along, and we've been allowing it, so it's time to rid ourselves of the charade that we're stopping it."
Selig pinpointed the current rule prohibiting pitchers from "going to their mouths" while standing on the pitching mound as the silliest farce in the game. "All it means is that they have to walk onto the infield grass to moisten their fingers. It's just a waste of time. Not only that, a pitcher can stand on the mound and wipe the sweat off his forehead or his neck to achieve the same effect without breaking the rule. So why pretend? Let 'em throw a wet ball. Of course, they'd better be able to control it."
That brought Selig to the next rule change: batters hit by a pitch get two bases. Hit a batter with a runner on second, and now you have runners on second and third. Hit him above the shoulders and it's three bases. Break a bone and it will bring a two-week suspension. However, a batter who leans into a pitch and "allows" himself to get hit by it will be out, and no padding on elbows and arms will be allowed except for a limited number of games when a player is returning from a specific injury.
Other new rules relating to pitchers are:
- No more intentional walks. Pitchers must pitch to all batters.
- Relief pitchers have to face at least two batters, unless they record two outs during the first batter's at-bat. This will reduce the parade of relievers which slows so many games down, and will encourage managers to encourage their pitchers to retire both right- and left-handed batters.
- No more fake pickoffs. If a pitcher steps off the rubber, he has to throw to a base. This policy alone should speed up games by several minutes.
- Only three warmup pitches between innings. This will move the game along faster and hel pitchers save their arms for pitches that count. Currently, a starting pitcher who throws 80 pitches in six innings has also thrown 48 warmup tosses. Cut out 30 warmups, and more starters will be able to pitch into the 7th and 8th innings.
- Only the catcher will be able to visit the pitcher on the mound, and only once per inning.
Only a couple of things will be different regarding baserunners. Strategies for stealing bases should remain stable, with the shorter distance the runner has to cover compensated for by the reduced distances of the pitch to home and the catcher's throw to a base. "We'll see how that goes," Selig said. "If the balance shifts dramatically one way or the other, we'll do something. We can put limits on the number of pickoff attempts, or we can limit the size of a runner's lead. Stealing should remain an important part of this game."
The biggest change for runners will involve double-play attempts. "We have to close up the loopholes at second base," Selig declared, "if only because the shorter distance is going to mean that the runner from first will arrive there sooner." The "phantom play" will be eliminated, with the rule requiring the fielder to have his foot on the base when catching the ball strictly enforced. The runner trying to break up the double play, however, will have to slide with at least one foot crossing the bag. "In other words," Selig explained, "no more flinging yourself four feet wide of the base to take out the fielder while stretching a finger out to graze the bag. If you can get yourself to second base in time to take out the fielder with a good, hard slide across the bag, good for you. We don't want to discourage hustling. But if the fielder receives the throw in time to move away from the bag, he deserves to make that throw without a runner who's already out exposing him to injury. It's going to be tougher to turn two anyway. Give 'em a chance."
Some of the biggest changes in the game will involve officiating. Balls and strikes will be called automatically by Questec or whatever the state-of-the-art machine is at the time. This will eliminate the need for pitchers and batters to adjust every day to each umpire's version of the strike zone. A pitch in a certain spot will be called the same way in the first inning and the ninth inning. "Consistency and fairness are the goals," said Selig, adding that "relieving the umpire of the burden of making a split-second decision on whether a 96mph fastball is on the black or three inches outside will allow him to focus more on his other duties, like judging check swings and whether batters are trying to avoid getting hit by the pitch."
More importantly, all calls will be subject to instant replay. However, managers will not be allowed to argue. In fact, they won't be allowed to leave the dugout at all. To make a pitching change, a manager will simply call time and wave his pitcher off the mound. To challenge a call, he will call time before the next pitch and throw a red flag out of the dugout. "Most of the time," said Selig, "it will be obvious what the issue is. If not, the home plate umpire will go over and ask. There won't be any arguments. Players on the field won't have to argue. If they disagree with a call, they merely have to indicate it to the manager in the dugout, who will already have someone watching replays somewhere who will let him know whether he has a legitimate beef."
There will be no limit on the number of challenges a manager can make. However, if he loses two challenges, he is automatically ejected from the game, and his team loses one of its extra outs. If a coach is subsequently put in charge, he doesn't get a free ride. One lost challenge and he's gone too. "The idea is to get the calls right," Selig insisted. "If the umps make five mistakes that go against the same team, they shouldn't be penalized for having to make five challenges. But they can't abuse it or they're gone."
Another wrinkle in the instant replay rule will counter critics who insist that the process slows the game down, especially for fans at the ballpark who are forced to sit around while someone in a booth somewhere figures out what just happened. To make up for that, for each minute taken up in reviewing plays, the protesting team's entire roster must remain on the field after the game signing autographs for the same period of time.
"All in all," Selig beamed, "we think it will be a faster, more streamlined game if we can stop all the time-wasting and get more action on the field." He admitted that the key unknown is how the 59-foot pitching distance might affect the game's balance. "We think that the pitcher's advantage will be balanced first of all by the shorter distance for the batter to run to first base, and by the infielders being stationed closer to the plate, making it easier to hit the ball past them. But we'll see. The important thing is that we're trying."
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Minaya Relents, Gives Beltran Permission To Scratch Himself
After lengthy negotiations with Carlos Beltran and his agent, Mets GM Omar Minaya has reluctantly granted the outfielder official permission to scratch himself on the field during the 2010 season.
"The key thing was that we followed protocol and did not veer away from the established process for handling such matters," maintained Minaya, fearing a repeat of the recent awkwardness following Beltran's knee surgery. In that instance, Minaya became so distracted by his winter-meetings quest for a #2 starter, a #3 starter, a #4 starter, a #5 starter, and three set-up relievers that he allowed assistants and doctors to handle the matter, thereby achieving the near-impossible feat of making Beltran's agent, Scott Boras, look like the good guy.
"The thing is," Minaya explained, "that Mets team policy for at least 15-20 years has been to prohibit our players from scratching themselves while in view of the fans. It's okay for them to adjust their cups, but scratching has been off-limits. So we had to be careful in this case to look after the interests of the fans and of Beltran, without establishing a precedent that other people can take advantage of."
Speaking through his agent, Beltran--who suffers from a chronic case of tinea cruris--said, "The Mets have known about this since I came here in 2005. And it really hasn't been a problem because, frankly, with all the other crap going on around here, it isn't that big a deal. But after that little misunderstanding about my knee surgery, we all felt it would be best to go through the process carefully to get it right." That process involved examinations by the Mets team physician in New York as well as Beltran's personal dermatologist in Blue Ball, Pennsylvania, meetings with public relations personnel and marketing firms, and surveys of Mets fans, of whom 62.4% declared that if Beltran hits 25 home runs and drives in 100 runs they won't mind if he moons them as he circles the bases.
Under terms of the agreement, Minaya said that Beltran will be permitted to scratch himself in center field any time the ball is hit to the first baseman or third baseman, or while at bat any time there is a two-ball count.
*******************************
New baseball term, defined as "acting in the style of Mets management". The term: "minayacal."
"The key thing was that we followed protocol and did not veer away from the established process for handling such matters," maintained Minaya, fearing a repeat of the recent awkwardness following Beltran's knee surgery. In that instance, Minaya became so distracted by his winter-meetings quest for a #2 starter, a #3 starter, a #4 starter, a #5 starter, and three set-up relievers that he allowed assistants and doctors to handle the matter, thereby achieving the near-impossible feat of making Beltran's agent, Scott Boras, look like the good guy.
"The thing is," Minaya explained, "that Mets team policy for at least 15-20 years has been to prohibit our players from scratching themselves while in view of the fans. It's okay for them to adjust their cups, but scratching has been off-limits. So we had to be careful in this case to look after the interests of the fans and of Beltran, without establishing a precedent that other people can take advantage of."
Speaking through his agent, Beltran--who suffers from a chronic case of tinea cruris--said, "The Mets have known about this since I came here in 2005. And it really hasn't been a problem because, frankly, with all the other crap going on around here, it isn't that big a deal. But after that little misunderstanding about my knee surgery, we all felt it would be best to go through the process carefully to get it right." That process involved examinations by the Mets team physician in New York as well as Beltran's personal dermatologist in Blue Ball, Pennsylvania, meetings with public relations personnel and marketing firms, and surveys of Mets fans, of whom 62.4% declared that if Beltran hits 25 home runs and drives in 100 runs they won't mind if he moons them as he circles the bases.
Under terms of the agreement, Minaya said that Beltran will be permitted to scratch himself in center field any time the ball is hit to the first baseman or third baseman, or while at bat any time there is a two-ball count.
*******************************
New baseball term, defined as "acting in the style of Mets management". The term: "minayacal."
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
McGwire Admits Using Weapons Of Mass Destruction
Yes, Mark McGwire admitted yesterday that he used steroids. Sort of. His version of events was the equivalent of Saddam Hussein conceding that he had weapons of mass destruction--but used them only to excavate a swimming pool in the backyard. Or like O.J. Simpson saying that yeah, he did hide behind the bushes to ambush Nicole and Ron, but all he did was yell "booga-booga!" and watch them somehow impale themselves on a knife.
In his interview last night with Bob Costas, McGwire talked a lot about "God-given talent," but the only God-given ability he displayed was a gift for telling convenient half-truths. He said he experimented a little bit with them in 1989-1990, when they were readily available in the gym where he worked out. Skip ahead, he said, to 1993-1994, dark seasons during which a series of heel injuries limited him to 74 games and 18 home runs. In an effort to break the cycle of injury and semi-recovery, he turned to steroids for their recuperative power. He did recover and spent the next few seasons launching home runs at an unprecendented rate, until time caught up with his knees and forced him into retirement at age 38.
McGwire insisted that he used steroids purely for health and recovery purposes, not to enhance his performance. In fact, when asked more than once by Costas whether steroids could have contributed to his record-setting home run feats, he denied any connection between the two. "Could you have hit 70 home runs in 1998 without steroids?" Costas asked, and the answer was a firm yes. The home runs came from studying the science of hitting while he was sidelined, retooling his swing, and his "God-given" talent for eye-hand coordination and strength. It was that simple, he declared more than once. I wish Costas had asked him about home run #62, the one that broke Roger Maris' record. That line drive cleared the wall by about three feet. Would McGwire concede that steroids might have made the difference of an extra few feet?
Actually I'm sure he would have disagreed. He spent the whole interview laboring to convince us that there were two things going on in his life throughout the late 1990s that were totally unrelated: he was using steroids and he was hitting lots of tape-measure home runs. When Costas asked him about the ridiculous proliferation in home runs in all of major league baseball during this period, McGwire refused to speculate, citing only his own ability to hit a baseball long distances ever since childhood. It was as if he has never heard the phrase "performance-enhancing drug". He doesn't know why everyone else used the stuff. He only used it to recover from injuries.
But that scenario doesn't add up. In his earlier statement to the press, he admitted using steroids during the 70-homer season of 1998. Okay, let's say he did get into steroid use in 1993-1994 to overcome those injuries. By 1997, he was back to playing full-time--156 games in 1997, 155 games in 1998, and 153 games in 1999, three seasons during which he averaged 64 home runs a season. Three years during which he was not injured. So why was he using steroids during those seasons? He told Costas they made his body feel better coming off injuries. But he wasn't injured during his three big seasons. Why didn't Costas ask him why he continued to use the stuff even after he had recovered from his heel problems?
When asked which steroids he used, McGwire said he couldn't remember. In explaining his refusal to "talk about the past" in front of Congress five years ago, he insisted that his reluctance was the result of a failure to be granted immunity. That was an admission that the substances he used were illegal. Whatever they were called, using them could have put him in jail. However, during his career, they were not outlawed by the rules of major league baseball. He said he wished that drug testing had existed during his career. I wish Costas had asked him exactly what he meant by that. Did he mean that he would never have dared to use a substance that was banned by baseball in the first place? Or that he would have been caught, punished, and sufficiently sobered up to the reality of the situation to give them up in 1995 so he could proceed to break the Maris record using only his God-given talents?
In any case, he said he couldn't admit anything to Congress in 2005 because it might have resulted in prosecution, and his family and teammates would have been dragged into the situation to testify. Of course, his family couldn't have testified to anything, because last night McGwire declared that nobody in his family knew anything about his steroid use until he told them yesterday. His parents didn't know. His son didn't know. Tony LaRussa and his teammates didn't know. The Maris family didn't know. All the people he called yesterday didn't suspect a thing, and somehow, he told Costas, not one of them ever asked him point-blank if he did steroids. Does that sound plausible? All these people who were so close to him, who cared about him--not one of them cared enough to ask if he was doing something that could threaten his long-term health?
The gist of McGwire's pitch to Costas was that he profoundly regretted using steroids, but not because they made him hit more home runs. Because they didn't make him hit more home runs. They merely made him healthy enough to display that God-given talent. Yet he said that after talking to Roger Maris' widow, he understood why she was disappointed and why she (and others) will maintain that Maris was the true home run champion, not him (well, for three years). Let's add that up, from his point of view. He told us, in effect, "I hit 70 home runs because I'm naturally strong and have good eye-hand coordination, and because I was smart enough to study pitchers and figure out how to be a better hitter. It's a shame that I was also doing low doses steroids at the same time, because people are going to misunderstand the situation and deduce, incorrectly, that the steroids were the reason I hit the home runs. So I can see why Mrs. Maris is skeptical about my record. The coincidence of the steroid use is going to confuse people into forgetting that it was really my God-given talent."
If you watched the Costas interview, that's exactly how things played out in McGwire's mind. I have one question: if Barry Bonds had said the same things, would anybody believe him?
I moved to the Bay Area in time for the 1996 season, during which I saw Bonds and McGwire play about 20 games each in person. After McGwire headed to St. Louis in 1997, I continued to watch Bonds until I moved away in 2002. One thing I've been saying to people ever since is that "I don't care what you put in your body, you still have to hit the damn ball." That was part of McGwire's pitch last night, and I agree. I've also talked about ten or twelve separate factors that increased home run production in general since the mid-1990s. It was not as simple as juicing up and smacking home runs. I've always said that the proof that steroids alone do not produce home runs is that Ozzie Canseco, Jose's identical twin, was a mediocre hitter. Same genes, same physique, same access as Jose, but 462 fewer home runs in the majors. Bonds didn't become merely a long-ball maestro the way McGwire did. Bonds hit everything hard, winning two batting titles along the way. He figured out how to control the strike zone--something McGwire didn't do, striking out way more often during his most productive seasons than he had before--and how to make solid contact most of the time. It isn't that simple.
The popular consensus is that steroids are "performance-enhancing" not by making it easier to hit the ball, but by adding distance when a batter connects solidly. There is one McGwire statistic which reflects this phenomenon. Take his pre-injury seasons (1986-1992), and he hit 220 home runs compared to 128 doubles. Now look at his post-injury season (1995-2001), and you find 385 home runs compared to 115 doubles. One reason why a player hits fewer doubles later in his career is that he doesn't run as fast, and sometimes has to stop at first base instead of legging out a two-bagger. Does that apply to McGwire? I don't think so. He was never a fast runner, and never legged out a lot of doubles (or triples--only 6 in his career). All along, his doubles came on long hits which didn't make it over the fence. Starting in 1995, those long hits starting the clearing the fence for home runs instead of banging off them for doubles. After joining the Cardinals, his HR:2B ratio was nearly 4:1. That ball in St. Louis which became #62 should have been no more than a double, but for McGwire, his biceps flabby from steroid use, the ball sailed just over the fence. Not to worry--he hit eight more after that. Come to think of it, he should have called Barry Bonds and apologized to him as well; after all, if McGwire hadn't set the bar so high with those 70 home runs, Bonds wouldn't have been tempted to follow his steroid-laden path in his quest for the record.
Perhaps McGwire had another role model in mind--Andy Pettitte, who admitted taking steroids exactly twice, also in an attempt to rebound more quickly from an injury. Pettitte's neat little spin-control silenced the world, and nobody has heard a peep since then disparaging whatever Pettitte achieved through his God-given talent. Maybe that's why, when Costas asked him about HGH (human growth hormone), McGwire said he tried them, "once, maybe twice." Well, which was it? I'll confess right here that I used LSD once in my life, more than 30 years ago. I guarantee that if I used it twice, I'd remember it. I wouldn't be confused about whether I used it once or twice. But McGwire, giving a rough estimate of once or twice and insisting that his use of steroids was "occasional" and involved "low doses," wants us to think it was just incidental and for health purposes only. Tell a small truth, and the world won't clamor for the big truth. Shed some tears, apologize, act contrite, and it will go away. Put it in the past. I don't think it's that easy.
Just as self-serving was Commissioner Bud Selig's response. "I am pleased that Mark McGwire has confronted his use of performance-enhancing substances," Selig said in a statement before McGwire explained to Costas that they didn't actually enhance his performance. Selig added that usage of steroids and amphetamines "is virtually non-existent as our testing results have shown," citing the fact that out of 8,995 tests conducted on minor leaguers last year, "less than eight-tenths of one percent was positive." Let me do the math for you. That means that roughly 70 minor leaguers tested positive last year. I don't know how you interpret that, but to me it means that lots of minor leaguers still believe that steroids enhance performance enough to risk their major league careers even before they reach the majors. Don't forget that since the people who create steroids are at least one steps ahead of the people who create tests to detect steroids, there were far more than 70 minor leaguers using PEDs last year. To claim that such usage is "virtually non-existent" tells me that Selig's head is planted just as firmly in the sand as it has been for the past dozen years.
In a separate news conference held early this morning, God declared that "I sincerely apologize for giving Mark McGwire so much talent that it blinds him to the fact that he really needed a lot of help to hit all those home runs."
In his interview last night with Bob Costas, McGwire talked a lot about "God-given talent," but the only God-given ability he displayed was a gift for telling convenient half-truths. He said he experimented a little bit with them in 1989-1990, when they were readily available in the gym where he worked out. Skip ahead, he said, to 1993-1994, dark seasons during which a series of heel injuries limited him to 74 games and 18 home runs. In an effort to break the cycle of injury and semi-recovery, he turned to steroids for their recuperative power. He did recover and spent the next few seasons launching home runs at an unprecendented rate, until time caught up with his knees and forced him into retirement at age 38.
McGwire insisted that he used steroids purely for health and recovery purposes, not to enhance his performance. In fact, when asked more than once by Costas whether steroids could have contributed to his record-setting home run feats, he denied any connection between the two. "Could you have hit 70 home runs in 1998 without steroids?" Costas asked, and the answer was a firm yes. The home runs came from studying the science of hitting while he was sidelined, retooling his swing, and his "God-given" talent for eye-hand coordination and strength. It was that simple, he declared more than once. I wish Costas had asked him about home run #62, the one that broke Roger Maris' record. That line drive cleared the wall by about three feet. Would McGwire concede that steroids might have made the difference of an extra few feet?
Actually I'm sure he would have disagreed. He spent the whole interview laboring to convince us that there were two things going on in his life throughout the late 1990s that were totally unrelated: he was using steroids and he was hitting lots of tape-measure home runs. When Costas asked him about the ridiculous proliferation in home runs in all of major league baseball during this period, McGwire refused to speculate, citing only his own ability to hit a baseball long distances ever since childhood. It was as if he has never heard the phrase "performance-enhancing drug". He doesn't know why everyone else used the stuff. He only used it to recover from injuries.
But that scenario doesn't add up. In his earlier statement to the press, he admitted using steroids during the 70-homer season of 1998. Okay, let's say he did get into steroid use in 1993-1994 to overcome those injuries. By 1997, he was back to playing full-time--156 games in 1997, 155 games in 1998, and 153 games in 1999, three seasons during which he averaged 64 home runs a season. Three years during which he was not injured. So why was he using steroids during those seasons? He told Costas they made his body feel better coming off injuries. But he wasn't injured during his three big seasons. Why didn't Costas ask him why he continued to use the stuff even after he had recovered from his heel problems?
When asked which steroids he used, McGwire said he couldn't remember. In explaining his refusal to "talk about the past" in front of Congress five years ago, he insisted that his reluctance was the result of a failure to be granted immunity. That was an admission that the substances he used were illegal. Whatever they were called, using them could have put him in jail. However, during his career, they were not outlawed by the rules of major league baseball. He said he wished that drug testing had existed during his career. I wish Costas had asked him exactly what he meant by that. Did he mean that he would never have dared to use a substance that was banned by baseball in the first place? Or that he would have been caught, punished, and sufficiently sobered up to the reality of the situation to give them up in 1995 so he could proceed to break the Maris record using only his God-given talents?
In any case, he said he couldn't admit anything to Congress in 2005 because it might have resulted in prosecution, and his family and teammates would have been dragged into the situation to testify. Of course, his family couldn't have testified to anything, because last night McGwire declared that nobody in his family knew anything about his steroid use until he told them yesterday. His parents didn't know. His son didn't know. Tony LaRussa and his teammates didn't know. The Maris family didn't know. All the people he called yesterday didn't suspect a thing, and somehow, he told Costas, not one of them ever asked him point-blank if he did steroids. Does that sound plausible? All these people who were so close to him, who cared about him--not one of them cared enough to ask if he was doing something that could threaten his long-term health?
The gist of McGwire's pitch to Costas was that he profoundly regretted using steroids, but not because they made him hit more home runs. Because they didn't make him hit more home runs. They merely made him healthy enough to display that God-given talent. Yet he said that after talking to Roger Maris' widow, he understood why she was disappointed and why she (and others) will maintain that Maris was the true home run champion, not him (well, for three years). Let's add that up, from his point of view. He told us, in effect, "I hit 70 home runs because I'm naturally strong and have good eye-hand coordination, and because I was smart enough to study pitchers and figure out how to be a better hitter. It's a shame that I was also doing low doses steroids at the same time, because people are going to misunderstand the situation and deduce, incorrectly, that the steroids were the reason I hit the home runs. So I can see why Mrs. Maris is skeptical about my record. The coincidence of the steroid use is going to confuse people into forgetting that it was really my God-given talent."
If you watched the Costas interview, that's exactly how things played out in McGwire's mind. I have one question: if Barry Bonds had said the same things, would anybody believe him?
I moved to the Bay Area in time for the 1996 season, during which I saw Bonds and McGwire play about 20 games each in person. After McGwire headed to St. Louis in 1997, I continued to watch Bonds until I moved away in 2002. One thing I've been saying to people ever since is that "I don't care what you put in your body, you still have to hit the damn ball." That was part of McGwire's pitch last night, and I agree. I've also talked about ten or twelve separate factors that increased home run production in general since the mid-1990s. It was not as simple as juicing up and smacking home runs. I've always said that the proof that steroids alone do not produce home runs is that Ozzie Canseco, Jose's identical twin, was a mediocre hitter. Same genes, same physique, same access as Jose, but 462 fewer home runs in the majors. Bonds didn't become merely a long-ball maestro the way McGwire did. Bonds hit everything hard, winning two batting titles along the way. He figured out how to control the strike zone--something McGwire didn't do, striking out way more often during his most productive seasons than he had before--and how to make solid contact most of the time. It isn't that simple.
The popular consensus is that steroids are "performance-enhancing" not by making it easier to hit the ball, but by adding distance when a batter connects solidly. There is one McGwire statistic which reflects this phenomenon. Take his pre-injury seasons (1986-1992), and he hit 220 home runs compared to 128 doubles. Now look at his post-injury season (1995-2001), and you find 385 home runs compared to 115 doubles. One reason why a player hits fewer doubles later in his career is that he doesn't run as fast, and sometimes has to stop at first base instead of legging out a two-bagger. Does that apply to McGwire? I don't think so. He was never a fast runner, and never legged out a lot of doubles (or triples--only 6 in his career). All along, his doubles came on long hits which didn't make it over the fence. Starting in 1995, those long hits starting the clearing the fence for home runs instead of banging off them for doubles. After joining the Cardinals, his HR:2B ratio was nearly 4:1. That ball in St. Louis which became #62 should have been no more than a double, but for McGwire, his biceps flabby from steroid use, the ball sailed just over the fence. Not to worry--he hit eight more after that. Come to think of it, he should have called Barry Bonds and apologized to him as well; after all, if McGwire hadn't set the bar so high with those 70 home runs, Bonds wouldn't have been tempted to follow his steroid-laden path in his quest for the record.
Perhaps McGwire had another role model in mind--Andy Pettitte, who admitted taking steroids exactly twice, also in an attempt to rebound more quickly from an injury. Pettitte's neat little spin-control silenced the world, and nobody has heard a peep since then disparaging whatever Pettitte achieved through his God-given talent. Maybe that's why, when Costas asked him about HGH (human growth hormone), McGwire said he tried them, "once, maybe twice." Well, which was it? I'll confess right here that I used LSD once in my life, more than 30 years ago. I guarantee that if I used it twice, I'd remember it. I wouldn't be confused about whether I used it once or twice. But McGwire, giving a rough estimate of once or twice and insisting that his use of steroids was "occasional" and involved "low doses," wants us to think it was just incidental and for health purposes only. Tell a small truth, and the world won't clamor for the big truth. Shed some tears, apologize, act contrite, and it will go away. Put it in the past. I don't think it's that easy.
Just as self-serving was Commissioner Bud Selig's response. "I am pleased that Mark McGwire has confronted his use of performance-enhancing substances," Selig said in a statement before McGwire explained to Costas that they didn't actually enhance his performance. Selig added that usage of steroids and amphetamines "is virtually non-existent as our testing results have shown," citing the fact that out of 8,995 tests conducted on minor leaguers last year, "less than eight-tenths of one percent was positive." Let me do the math for you. That means that roughly 70 minor leaguers tested positive last year. I don't know how you interpret that, but to me it means that lots of minor leaguers still believe that steroids enhance performance enough to risk their major league careers even before they reach the majors. Don't forget that since the people who create steroids are at least one steps ahead of the people who create tests to detect steroids, there were far more than 70 minor leaguers using PEDs last year. To claim that such usage is "virtually non-existent" tells me that Selig's head is planted just as firmly in the sand as it has been for the past dozen years.
In a separate news conference held early this morning, God declared that "I sincerely apologize for giving Mark McGwire so much talent that it blinds him to the fact that he really needed a lot of help to hit all those home runs."
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Hang In There, Bert
Yesterday's announcement of the BBWAA's Hall of Fame election brought a few surprises in a field full of "borderline" candidates. There were probably eight or nine very fine players on this year's ballot who will eventually be enshrined in Cooperstown, but only one made it past the daunting 75% mark to win election.
One tricky thing about the BBWAA balloting is that some writers focus on negative stats, as if seeking reasons not to vote for a particular player. So the critics of Andre Dawson point to his not-so-special .279 career batting average and his mediocre on-base percentage as indications of how short he fell of immortality. In the long run, the positive stats won out, and Dawson won recognition as an all-around player. Look at it this way: Dawson had over 400 career home runs and over 300 stolen bases, something only Willie Mays and Barry Bonds also accomplished, and he won eight Gold Gloves. What more do you want from the guy? Put him in the Hall of Fame!
The voting was significant for the two players who just missed election. One was first-year candidate Roberto Alomar, whose stats place him in the top handful of second basemen in baseball history. However, just enough writers decided to punish him for one ugly incident--spitting in the face of umpire Mark Hirschbeck--to keep him from first-ballot election with just 73.7% of the votes. That must be a relief to Doug Harvey, elected to the Hall of Fame this year by the Veterans Committee. Harvey, the consummate umpire who demanded respect from everyone on the field, is going to share the podium at the July induction ceremony with Whitey Herzog, a manager who disliked him so much that he once requested the league office not to assign Harvey's crew to any more of his team's games. To be sandwiched between Herzog and the player who spat in an umpire's face would have been a severe test of Harvey's dignity. Alomar, who has long since made peace with Hirschbeck, will get elected, but Harvey will be able to witness his induction from a safer distance.
Then there is Bert Blyleven, who should have been elected years ago but fell agonizingly short this time with 74.2%, five votes shy of election. His comments yesterday were very gracious, and his time will also come. Nobody has received that high a percentage of votes without subsequently getting elected, and Blyleven has two more years on the BBWAA ballot. There has been growing support for Blyleven in recent years; as recently as 2007, he was named on fewer than half of the ballots, but he jumped from around 62% last year to near-election this year.
The skeptics still point to Blyleven's negative stats as reasons for keeping him out of the Hall of Fame, and perhaps the most telling of these is that he only made the All-Star team twice (Dawson was an eight-time All-Star). He received Cy Young Award votes in only four seasons, and was never higher than third (Dawson won the Rookie of the Year Award and later a Most Valuable Player Award). So how could a pitcher who was rarely recognized as one of the top pitchers in his own league be immortalized as one of the all-time greats? He lost 250 games, only 16 fewer than Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez combined. How can that qualify you for the Hall of Fame?
Here's how. For one thing, Blyleven's positive stats are far more impressive than his negative stats are damning. He currently stands fifth on the all-time strikeout list. When he retired in 1992, he was third, trailing only Nolan Ryan and Steve Carlton. Since 1992, strikeouts have proliferated as more hitters swing for the fences and increasingly accept strikeouts as a reasonable price to pay for the occasional home run. Despite this, only Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens have passed Blyleven's 3,701 total. As starting pitchers continue to work fewer innings, it becomes more likely that Blyleven will remain in the top five.
Even more remarkable is Blyleven's 60 career shutouts, ninth all-time. He is one shutout behind Ryan and Tom Seaver and three behind Warren Spahn; the top five all pitched before 1930. That's very exclusive company, and he won't be losing his standing any time soon. Take the top four starting pitchers likely to be active in 2010--Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, Roy Halladay, and Chris Carpenter--and their aggregate shutout total is 61. Twenty years from now, maybe even a hundred years from now, Blyleven will still be in the top ten in two marquee pitching categories--strikeouts and shutouts. Is there a player eligible for the Hall of Fame with that much going for him who hasn't been elected? Nope.
The positive stats don't stop there. Blyleven is 14th in career innings pitched--more than Seaver, Clemens, and Christy Mathewson, to name a few. He is 11th in games starter, and though his 242 complete games is only 91st all-time, it is still more than all but four of the post-1960 Hall of Fame pitchers (Gaylord Perry, Ferguson Jenkins, Steve Carlton, Phil Niekro). He was a workhorse who topped 275 innings in seven seasons while finishing in the top five in ERA seven times.
I did a study of the 20 winningest pitchers since 1960, and Blyleven had the most complete-game losses--72. What does this mean? It means his team could count on him to pitch well even if he didn't get a lot of support. In those 72 losses, his team was shut out 21 times and gave him only one run 19 times. He lost 1-0 nine times when going the distance, 2-1 nine times, and 3-2 fourteen times. Throw in non-complete games, and his teams scored one or no runs in 87 of his 250 losses. Blyleven's boosters often point to the fact that he pitched for a lot of mediocre teams, much like Ryan, whose career winning percentage is slightly lower than Blyleven's.
Another measure of weak support is the main reason why Blyleven wasn't elected years ago. There were 47 times when he was leading when he was removed from the game, only to see his bullpen blow the victory. If his relievers had saved even one-third of those blown wins, Blyleven would have over 300 wins instead of his actual 287, and the voters would not have denied him this long. Critics note that he won 20 games only once, 19 games once, and never more than 17 in any other season. But look at it this way. In 1984, when he went 19-7 for the Indians after a four-season mid-career lull, the bullpen blew two wins. One of those would've made a big difference in his career profile. In 1986, at age 35, he led the AL in innings and went 17-14 for the Twins, whose bullpen blew three leads that would've gotten to 20 wins again. Same thing in 1989, when the 38-year-old had his last great season, a 17-5 record for the Angels with a 2.73 ERA and a league-leading five shutouts, but lost three potential wins when his bullpen failed.
The 1974 season is a good illlustration of why Blyleven's career record isn't gaudy. He was second in the AL in strikeouts and fourth in ERA (with a career-low 2.66), completed more than half his starts, but put together a so-so 17-17 record for a Twins team that finished 82-80. The bullpen blew two potential wins; moreover, in both cases Blyleven left runners on base who subsequently scored, pinning the loss on him. Reverse those two outcomes and he'd go 19-15, much more respectable. Among his other losses were a pair of 1-0 games, three 2-1 ordeals, and three other complete-game losses. You get the idea. A mediocre 17-17 season should have been more like 21-13.
So it was for a number of Bert Blyleven's seasons. Sure he got lit up plenty of times and is also in the top dozen all-time in losses, earned runs, and home runs allowed. But he was a horse who threw hard and long and featured the most wicked curveball of his generation. I sat behind the plate in Anaheim when he pitched there late in his career (1987), and the curve was marvelous to behold at close range, starting out above the batter's head and plummeting below his knees. There was no doubt I was in the presence of greatness. He went the distance that day--and lost 2-1.
When he was on--remember, 60 shutouts!--nobody was tougher. It has taken the members of the BBWAA more than a dozen elections to bring him to the precipice of election. Soon he'll have his deserved place on the plaque-gallery wall about fifty yards from where I sit.
Hang in there, Bert! See you next year.
One tricky thing about the BBWAA balloting is that some writers focus on negative stats, as if seeking reasons not to vote for a particular player. So the critics of Andre Dawson point to his not-so-special .279 career batting average and his mediocre on-base percentage as indications of how short he fell of immortality. In the long run, the positive stats won out, and Dawson won recognition as an all-around player. Look at it this way: Dawson had over 400 career home runs and over 300 stolen bases, something only Willie Mays and Barry Bonds also accomplished, and he won eight Gold Gloves. What more do you want from the guy? Put him in the Hall of Fame!
The voting was significant for the two players who just missed election. One was first-year candidate Roberto Alomar, whose stats place him in the top handful of second basemen in baseball history. However, just enough writers decided to punish him for one ugly incident--spitting in the face of umpire Mark Hirschbeck--to keep him from first-ballot election with just 73.7% of the votes. That must be a relief to Doug Harvey, elected to the Hall of Fame this year by the Veterans Committee. Harvey, the consummate umpire who demanded respect from everyone on the field, is going to share the podium at the July induction ceremony with Whitey Herzog, a manager who disliked him so much that he once requested the league office not to assign Harvey's crew to any more of his team's games. To be sandwiched between Herzog and the player who spat in an umpire's face would have been a severe test of Harvey's dignity. Alomar, who has long since made peace with Hirschbeck, will get elected, but Harvey will be able to witness his induction from a safer distance.
Then there is Bert Blyleven, who should have been elected years ago but fell agonizingly short this time with 74.2%, five votes shy of election. His comments yesterday were very gracious, and his time will also come. Nobody has received that high a percentage of votes without subsequently getting elected, and Blyleven has two more years on the BBWAA ballot. There has been growing support for Blyleven in recent years; as recently as 2007, he was named on fewer than half of the ballots, but he jumped from around 62% last year to near-election this year.
The skeptics still point to Blyleven's negative stats as reasons for keeping him out of the Hall of Fame, and perhaps the most telling of these is that he only made the All-Star team twice (Dawson was an eight-time All-Star). He received Cy Young Award votes in only four seasons, and was never higher than third (Dawson won the Rookie of the Year Award and later a Most Valuable Player Award). So how could a pitcher who was rarely recognized as one of the top pitchers in his own league be immortalized as one of the all-time greats? He lost 250 games, only 16 fewer than Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez combined. How can that qualify you for the Hall of Fame?
Here's how. For one thing, Blyleven's positive stats are far more impressive than his negative stats are damning. He currently stands fifth on the all-time strikeout list. When he retired in 1992, he was third, trailing only Nolan Ryan and Steve Carlton. Since 1992, strikeouts have proliferated as more hitters swing for the fences and increasingly accept strikeouts as a reasonable price to pay for the occasional home run. Despite this, only Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens have passed Blyleven's 3,701 total. As starting pitchers continue to work fewer innings, it becomes more likely that Blyleven will remain in the top five.
Even more remarkable is Blyleven's 60 career shutouts, ninth all-time. He is one shutout behind Ryan and Tom Seaver and three behind Warren Spahn; the top five all pitched before 1930. That's very exclusive company, and he won't be losing his standing any time soon. Take the top four starting pitchers likely to be active in 2010--Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, Roy Halladay, and Chris Carpenter--and their aggregate shutout total is 61. Twenty years from now, maybe even a hundred years from now, Blyleven will still be in the top ten in two marquee pitching categories--strikeouts and shutouts. Is there a player eligible for the Hall of Fame with that much going for him who hasn't been elected? Nope.
The positive stats don't stop there. Blyleven is 14th in career innings pitched--more than Seaver, Clemens, and Christy Mathewson, to name a few. He is 11th in games starter, and though his 242 complete games is only 91st all-time, it is still more than all but four of the post-1960 Hall of Fame pitchers (Gaylord Perry, Ferguson Jenkins, Steve Carlton, Phil Niekro). He was a workhorse who topped 275 innings in seven seasons while finishing in the top five in ERA seven times.
I did a study of the 20 winningest pitchers since 1960, and Blyleven had the most complete-game losses--72. What does this mean? It means his team could count on him to pitch well even if he didn't get a lot of support. In those 72 losses, his team was shut out 21 times and gave him only one run 19 times. He lost 1-0 nine times when going the distance, 2-1 nine times, and 3-2 fourteen times. Throw in non-complete games, and his teams scored one or no runs in 87 of his 250 losses. Blyleven's boosters often point to the fact that he pitched for a lot of mediocre teams, much like Ryan, whose career winning percentage is slightly lower than Blyleven's.
Another measure of weak support is the main reason why Blyleven wasn't elected years ago. There were 47 times when he was leading when he was removed from the game, only to see his bullpen blow the victory. If his relievers had saved even one-third of those blown wins, Blyleven would have over 300 wins instead of his actual 287, and the voters would not have denied him this long. Critics note that he won 20 games only once, 19 games once, and never more than 17 in any other season. But look at it this way. In 1984, when he went 19-7 for the Indians after a four-season mid-career lull, the bullpen blew two wins. One of those would've made a big difference in his career profile. In 1986, at age 35, he led the AL in innings and went 17-14 for the Twins, whose bullpen blew three leads that would've gotten to 20 wins again. Same thing in 1989, when the 38-year-old had his last great season, a 17-5 record for the Angels with a 2.73 ERA and a league-leading five shutouts, but lost three potential wins when his bullpen failed.
The 1974 season is a good illlustration of why Blyleven's career record isn't gaudy. He was second in the AL in strikeouts and fourth in ERA (with a career-low 2.66), completed more than half his starts, but put together a so-so 17-17 record for a Twins team that finished 82-80. The bullpen blew two potential wins; moreover, in both cases Blyleven left runners on base who subsequently scored, pinning the loss on him. Reverse those two outcomes and he'd go 19-15, much more respectable. Among his other losses were a pair of 1-0 games, three 2-1 ordeals, and three other complete-game losses. You get the idea. A mediocre 17-17 season should have been more like 21-13.
So it was for a number of Bert Blyleven's seasons. Sure he got lit up plenty of times and is also in the top dozen all-time in losses, earned runs, and home runs allowed. But he was a horse who threw hard and long and featured the most wicked curveball of his generation. I sat behind the plate in Anaheim when he pitched there late in his career (1987), and the curve was marvelous to behold at close range, starting out above the batter's head and plummeting below his knees. There was no doubt I was in the presence of greatness. He went the distance that day--and lost 2-1.
When he was on--remember, 60 shutouts!--nobody was tougher. It has taken the members of the BBWAA more than a dozen elections to bring him to the precipice of election. Soon he'll have his deserved place on the plaque-gallery wall about fifty yards from where I sit.
Hang in there, Bert! See you next year.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
My Favorite Box Score Of The Month
It has been a few weeks since I wrote a blog, and I hope you've enjoyed my absence. I've been doing research lately on pitching, my favorite subject, and doing the research in my favorite way, which is to look at box scores on Retrosheet. This site, http://www.retrosheet.org/, has every box score and (for 99% of the games) batter-by-batter results from the present to 1953 (with more seasons added every year) invites long visits. It's like a chocolate factory without the demented proprietor, since David Smith, who created the site, has the altruistic motive of making the result of every batter in baseball history available free of charge.
Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? In the case of Retrosheet, no. I've spent more hours than I can count perusing the box scores (and other copious material) there, and it never ceases to fascinate me. There's a pattern to game scores, line scores, and box scores [that is, the final score, the inning-by-inning scoring of runs (or not scoring), and the details of which batters were responsible for the scoring (and the non-scoring). Even though I'm focusing mostly on pitching, I also notice and marvel at the offensive feats, the big scores and big comebacks.
Last week I found a box score which seems to be Exhibit A in the case against modern managers for overusing their bullpens. One of the truisms of baseball is that substitutions are risky. Even though there may be a perfectly logical reason for making a substitution, it does not follow that every supportable substitution should be made. Unless the player being replaced has been injured or performed so horribly that his continued presence on the field could produce only disaster, the new player is an unknown quantity. The best historical example is the 1951 National League playoff, where the Giants were rallying in the bottom of the ninth inning of the decisive game. Dodgers manager Chuck Dressen called down to the bullpen to ask which of two pitchers looked better warming up. Just then, the bullpen coach saw Carl Erskine bounce a curve to the bullpen catcher. He advised Dressen to put in the other guy, Ralph Branca. In came Branca, and two pitches later out went the rocket off Bobby Thomson's bat which made both himself and Branca famous. Who knows if Erskine would have done better. Maybe Thomson would've hit his first pitch into immortality.
A few years ago, I did a presentation at the SABR convention on some changes in recent decades in how bullpens are used. Here's one important thing my research uncovered: from the 1950s all the way through the mid-1980s, if a reliever entered the game in the eighth inning and got out of the inning without allowing any runs to score, he came back to start the ninth inning more than 90% of the time. That's just how it was done, and it explains why Hall of Fame relievers Rollie Fingers, Bruce Sutter, and Goose Gossage got all those two-inning saves. The two-inning save is a rare event today, because managers choose to divide the duty, using one pitcher for the eighth inning and, no matter how great he pitches, bringing in another guy to pitch the ninth. This strategy has become so widespread that the roles have coined new terms: "set-up man" for the eighth-inning specialist and "closer" for the ninth-inning finisher.
Let me repeat that main point. As recently as 25 years ago, if you got through the eighth inning looking strong, you stayed out there for the ninth inning. Period. If you got in trouble then, someone else would come in. But the manager saw enough of your stuff in the eighth inning to like your chance in the ninth. Did this strategy work better than today's specialization? No, not better. But the same. The percentage of saves and blown saves has remained roughly the same. It doesn't matter whether you use one or two pitchers to hold a lead in those last two innings. So why take up a roster spot for a pitcher whose role is redundant and unnecessary?
To put it another way: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
It's time to present Exhibit A, a game played on May 25, 2001. The Tigers took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first and expanded the lead to 4-0 after four innings. Their pitcher, a 29-year-old righty named Chris Holt, had a no-hitter going. He took the no-no to the top of the sixth, when he allowed a pair of runs on a triple, walk, single, and sacrifice fly. Through six innings, he had a two-hitter with seven strikeouts, and a 4-2 lead.
His manager, Phil Garner, took him out. Of course, since we weren't there, we don't know whether there were special circumstances which compelled Garner to remove him. Maybe he was developing a blister or had twisted his knee or had a touch of the flu. Perhaps Garner looked at Holt's track record, a decidedly losing record in four seasons with Houston before joining the Tigers in 2001, gaudy ERAs, and only two starting efforts longer than six innings so far this season. The interesting thing is that Holt was in exactly the same position a month earlier, on April 26. Also at home, he took a 4-0 lead to the sixth inning and promptly gave up two runs on a single, a triple, and a passed ball followed by a single. What did Garner do that time? He let Holt start the seventh inning. No runs. He pitched the eighth inning, too. Three up, three down. By this time, the lead was 8-2, and out he went for the ninth inning as well. A pair of one-out might have alarmed Garner, but he left Holt in and was rewarded with two outs to finish off the complete game, the last of Holt's four complete games in 112 career starts.
With that performance fresh in Garner's mind, there might well have been some extenuating circumstance which made him not even think twice before removing Holt on May 25. He brought in lefty Heath Murray to face lefty Jeff Liefer--and struck him out. Despite that auspicious beginning, Garner lifted Murray from the game. Does this mean that Murray had precisely enough stuff to retire a seldom-used outfielder with a forgettable career, but the strikeout didn't suggest that he had enough stuff to retire the next batter just because he was a decent platoon player who happened to bat righty?
In came Matt Anderson, a righty, who quickly fanned Herbert Perry and disposed of Sandy Alomar, Jr. on a ground out. That was impressive, getting those two hitters with little effort. You'd think that would qualify him to start the eighth inning--remember this is the American League, where a manager can use his pitchers exactly how he wishes because he doesn't face the dilemma National League managers when they might have to take out a hot pitcher for a pinch hitter. Can you think of any reason why Anderson didn't deserve to continue after getting a strikeout and a little ground ball? I can't.
Phil Garner could. Two of the next three White Sox due up were switch-hitters, but the middle batter was a lefty, and that was all the excuse Garner needed to bring in a fresh lefty, C. J. Nitkowski. Never mind seeing if Anderson could continue his good work. There's one lefty in the next three hitters, so let's bring in the lefty. Well, Garner's move worked, sort of. The first switch-hitter, Jose Valentin, batted right-handed and struck out. The lefty, Chris Singleton, worked Nitkowski for a walk, but he came back to whiff the other switch-hitter, Ray Durham. That brought up Magglio Ordonez, the cleanup hitter, a righty. Here we've got Nitkowski, a lefty who just struck out the two right-handed hitters he faced. And here we've got Phil Garner making another walk to the mound and wave to the bullpen.
He brought in a righty, Danny Patterson, to face Ordonez. I don't understand it. Nitkowski just fanned two righties--oh, but they weren't real righties, they were switch-hitters, while Ordonez was a real righty. That's much, much different. In came Patterson, and he got Ordonez to ground out.
Let's review the situation heading to the ninth inning, with the Tigers still ahead 4-2. In the past two innings, they have used four pitchers who collectively faced seven batters, striking out four, walking one, and getting two ground outs. Garner had to feel pretty proud of himself, navigating his staff through those two tricky innings which formed the bridge from his starter to his closer. Eight innings worked by five pitchers who allowed two hits. All had pitched well, and he had dodged those bullets of uncertainty, found four relievers who came right in and did the job without any fuss.
Now it was the ninth inning and time for his closer, Todd Jones, who had blown a save in the ninth inning two days earlier, but was now--to use a favorite announcers' phrase--being asked to get right back up on the horse. Sure enough, Jones started like his teammates had, striking out the first batter he faced, the toughest out in the lineup, Harold Baines. The next two hitters singled, but Jones got Perry to fly to center and get the White Sox down to their final out.
Jones never got that out. Carlos Lee pinch-hit for Alomar and singled in a run to make it 4-3. Valentin singled in the tying run, landing Garner in a true predicament. After squandering four relievers who showed that they had the stuff to get people out, now his presumably best reliever, his closer, was proving that he couldn't get anybody out. But there was nobody to replace him except the two pitchers at the bottom of the barrel. So Jones stayed in.
The next batter was safe on an error--by Jones. I wasn't there, but I'm sure it was a hideous miscue, one so inexplicable that it rocked Jones off what was left of his moorings. With the bases loaded, two outs, and the score still tied, Jones served up a fat pitch to Ray Durham, who drilled a double to score all three runners. What more did Garner need to see? Well, he needed to see one more double, by Ordonez, before he got Jones out of there in favor of Kevin Tolar, whose major league career consisted of 20 games and a 6.62 ERA. Tolar got Baines to foul out, and the nightmare inning was over. So were the Tigers' chances. They went meekly in the bottom of the ninth and lost 8-4.
There you have it. Phil Garner found five pitchers who pitched well, and found reasons to take them out before they got in trouble. He kept taking pitchers out until he found one who got in trouble, stayed in trouble, and made things worse. That's the guy he left in. His first four relievers faced seven batters and got six out. Jones faced nine batters and gave up six hits. But he was the "closer" so there he remained to take his drubbing. If it's any consolation, he kept giving up runs over the next few weeks until Garner saw the light and replaced him in the "closer" role--with Anderson, the pitcher who retired the only two batters he faced in this game before being sent to the sidelines to watch his good work undone.
That, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with the way managers use their bullpens today. They do not trust their own eyes when they see a reliever pitch effectively. They place their trust in the "splits" which show the statistical tendencies of hitters against certain types of pitchers. As long as they have a good statistical reason to use this guy instead of that guy, they feel justified. My point is that if Garner had gotten another inning out of Holt, or had used just two relievers on the bridge to his closer, he would have had the other two (effective-on-this-night) relievers available to bail out Jones when he got in trouble and save the game instead of throwing it away.
Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? In the case of Retrosheet, no. I've spent more hours than I can count perusing the box scores (and other copious material) there, and it never ceases to fascinate me. There's a pattern to game scores, line scores, and box scores [that is, the final score, the inning-by-inning scoring of runs (or not scoring), and the details of which batters were responsible for the scoring (and the non-scoring). Even though I'm focusing mostly on pitching, I also notice and marvel at the offensive feats, the big scores and big comebacks.
Last week I found a box score which seems to be Exhibit A in the case against modern managers for overusing their bullpens. One of the truisms of baseball is that substitutions are risky. Even though there may be a perfectly logical reason for making a substitution, it does not follow that every supportable substitution should be made. Unless the player being replaced has been injured or performed so horribly that his continued presence on the field could produce only disaster, the new player is an unknown quantity. The best historical example is the 1951 National League playoff, where the Giants were rallying in the bottom of the ninth inning of the decisive game. Dodgers manager Chuck Dressen called down to the bullpen to ask which of two pitchers looked better warming up. Just then, the bullpen coach saw Carl Erskine bounce a curve to the bullpen catcher. He advised Dressen to put in the other guy, Ralph Branca. In came Branca, and two pitches later out went the rocket off Bobby Thomson's bat which made both himself and Branca famous. Who knows if Erskine would have done better. Maybe Thomson would've hit his first pitch into immortality.
A few years ago, I did a presentation at the SABR convention on some changes in recent decades in how bullpens are used. Here's one important thing my research uncovered: from the 1950s all the way through the mid-1980s, if a reliever entered the game in the eighth inning and got out of the inning without allowing any runs to score, he came back to start the ninth inning more than 90% of the time. That's just how it was done, and it explains why Hall of Fame relievers Rollie Fingers, Bruce Sutter, and Goose Gossage got all those two-inning saves. The two-inning save is a rare event today, because managers choose to divide the duty, using one pitcher for the eighth inning and, no matter how great he pitches, bringing in another guy to pitch the ninth. This strategy has become so widespread that the roles have coined new terms: "set-up man" for the eighth-inning specialist and "closer" for the ninth-inning finisher.
Let me repeat that main point. As recently as 25 years ago, if you got through the eighth inning looking strong, you stayed out there for the ninth inning. Period. If you got in trouble then, someone else would come in. But the manager saw enough of your stuff in the eighth inning to like your chance in the ninth. Did this strategy work better than today's specialization? No, not better. But the same. The percentage of saves and blown saves has remained roughly the same. It doesn't matter whether you use one or two pitchers to hold a lead in those last two innings. So why take up a roster spot for a pitcher whose role is redundant and unnecessary?
To put it another way: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
It's time to present Exhibit A, a game played on May 25, 2001. The Tigers took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first and expanded the lead to 4-0 after four innings. Their pitcher, a 29-year-old righty named Chris Holt, had a no-hitter going. He took the no-no to the top of the sixth, when he allowed a pair of runs on a triple, walk, single, and sacrifice fly. Through six innings, he had a two-hitter with seven strikeouts, and a 4-2 lead.
His manager, Phil Garner, took him out. Of course, since we weren't there, we don't know whether there were special circumstances which compelled Garner to remove him. Maybe he was developing a blister or had twisted his knee or had a touch of the flu. Perhaps Garner looked at Holt's track record, a decidedly losing record in four seasons with Houston before joining the Tigers in 2001, gaudy ERAs, and only two starting efforts longer than six innings so far this season. The interesting thing is that Holt was in exactly the same position a month earlier, on April 26. Also at home, he took a 4-0 lead to the sixth inning and promptly gave up two runs on a single, a triple, and a passed ball followed by a single. What did Garner do that time? He let Holt start the seventh inning. No runs. He pitched the eighth inning, too. Three up, three down. By this time, the lead was 8-2, and out he went for the ninth inning as well. A pair of one-out might have alarmed Garner, but he left Holt in and was rewarded with two outs to finish off the complete game, the last of Holt's four complete games in 112 career starts.
With that performance fresh in Garner's mind, there might well have been some extenuating circumstance which made him not even think twice before removing Holt on May 25. He brought in lefty Heath Murray to face lefty Jeff Liefer--and struck him out. Despite that auspicious beginning, Garner lifted Murray from the game. Does this mean that Murray had precisely enough stuff to retire a seldom-used outfielder with a forgettable career, but the strikeout didn't suggest that he had enough stuff to retire the next batter just because he was a decent platoon player who happened to bat righty?
In came Matt Anderson, a righty, who quickly fanned Herbert Perry and disposed of Sandy Alomar, Jr. on a ground out. That was impressive, getting those two hitters with little effort. You'd think that would qualify him to start the eighth inning--remember this is the American League, where a manager can use his pitchers exactly how he wishes because he doesn't face the dilemma National League managers when they might have to take out a hot pitcher for a pinch hitter. Can you think of any reason why Anderson didn't deserve to continue after getting a strikeout and a little ground ball? I can't.
Phil Garner could. Two of the next three White Sox due up were switch-hitters, but the middle batter was a lefty, and that was all the excuse Garner needed to bring in a fresh lefty, C. J. Nitkowski. Never mind seeing if Anderson could continue his good work. There's one lefty in the next three hitters, so let's bring in the lefty. Well, Garner's move worked, sort of. The first switch-hitter, Jose Valentin, batted right-handed and struck out. The lefty, Chris Singleton, worked Nitkowski for a walk, but he came back to whiff the other switch-hitter, Ray Durham. That brought up Magglio Ordonez, the cleanup hitter, a righty. Here we've got Nitkowski, a lefty who just struck out the two right-handed hitters he faced. And here we've got Phil Garner making another walk to the mound and wave to the bullpen.
He brought in a righty, Danny Patterson, to face Ordonez. I don't understand it. Nitkowski just fanned two righties--oh, but they weren't real righties, they were switch-hitters, while Ordonez was a real righty. That's much, much different. In came Patterson, and he got Ordonez to ground out.
Let's review the situation heading to the ninth inning, with the Tigers still ahead 4-2. In the past two innings, they have used four pitchers who collectively faced seven batters, striking out four, walking one, and getting two ground outs. Garner had to feel pretty proud of himself, navigating his staff through those two tricky innings which formed the bridge from his starter to his closer. Eight innings worked by five pitchers who allowed two hits. All had pitched well, and he had dodged those bullets of uncertainty, found four relievers who came right in and did the job without any fuss.
Now it was the ninth inning and time for his closer, Todd Jones, who had blown a save in the ninth inning two days earlier, but was now--to use a favorite announcers' phrase--being asked to get right back up on the horse. Sure enough, Jones started like his teammates had, striking out the first batter he faced, the toughest out in the lineup, Harold Baines. The next two hitters singled, but Jones got Perry to fly to center and get the White Sox down to their final out.
Jones never got that out. Carlos Lee pinch-hit for Alomar and singled in a run to make it 4-3. Valentin singled in the tying run, landing Garner in a true predicament. After squandering four relievers who showed that they had the stuff to get people out, now his presumably best reliever, his closer, was proving that he couldn't get anybody out. But there was nobody to replace him except the two pitchers at the bottom of the barrel. So Jones stayed in.
The next batter was safe on an error--by Jones. I wasn't there, but I'm sure it was a hideous miscue, one so inexplicable that it rocked Jones off what was left of his moorings. With the bases loaded, two outs, and the score still tied, Jones served up a fat pitch to Ray Durham, who drilled a double to score all three runners. What more did Garner need to see? Well, he needed to see one more double, by Ordonez, before he got Jones out of there in favor of Kevin Tolar, whose major league career consisted of 20 games and a 6.62 ERA. Tolar got Baines to foul out, and the nightmare inning was over. So were the Tigers' chances. They went meekly in the bottom of the ninth and lost 8-4.
There you have it. Phil Garner found five pitchers who pitched well, and found reasons to take them out before they got in trouble. He kept taking pitchers out until he found one who got in trouble, stayed in trouble, and made things worse. That's the guy he left in. His first four relievers faced seven batters and got six out. Jones faced nine batters and gave up six hits. But he was the "closer" so there he remained to take his drubbing. If it's any consolation, he kept giving up runs over the next few weeks until Garner saw the light and replaced him in the "closer" role--with Anderson, the pitcher who retired the only two batters he faced in this game before being sent to the sidelines to watch his good work undone.
That, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with the way managers use their bullpens today. They do not trust their own eyes when they see a reliever pitch effectively. They place their trust in the "splits" which show the statistical tendencies of hitters against certain types of pitchers. As long as they have a good statistical reason to use this guy instead of that guy, they feel justified. My point is that if Garner had gotten another inning out of Holt, or had used just two relievers on the bridge to his closer, he would have had the other two (effective-on-this-night) relievers available to bail out Jones when he got in trouble and save the game instead of throwing it away.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Review of COWBOYS FULL
My review of the new James McManus book, Cowboys Full, was published this past week in the Washington Times. Here is the text of the review:
COWBOYS FULL: THE STORY OF POKER, By James McManus: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30, 528 pages, REVIEWED BY GABRIEL SCHECHTER
Poker is our national pastime. Baseball, football and racing have at various times been the dominant spectator sport, but more people have always played poker than any other form of competition, and their numbers are growing exponentially. The boom in televised poker this decade has elevated its status as a spectator sport, and Internet poker sites have enabled the game to spread globally, making it the international pastime as well.
How and why did this become so? In "Cowboys Full," a comprehensive account of humanity's fascination with games of chance, James McManus aims "to show how the story of poker helps to explain who we are." He succeeds by using a born storyteller's gifts to trace the qualities needed to win at poker from prehistoric origins through endless societal and psychological permutations.
Risk has always been part of life, a delicate balance of courage and caution, and the spoils go to those — Mr. McManus parades before us an array of generals, politicians, entrepreneurs and gamblers — who combine ambitious aggression with a cool-headed ability to read and outmaneuver the opposition.
Mr. McManus rose to poker prominence in 2000 as an amateur player who somehow finished fifth in the main event of the World Series of Poker, an improbable adventure detailed in the best-selling "Positively Fifth Street" (2003). That blow-by-blow treatment had the immediacy of confession and the roller-coaster urgency of the tournament's maelstrom of strategy buffeted by fortune. "Cowboys Full" is no less fascinating, though its impersonal tone and scholarly approach may make some readers yearn for the riveting suspense of his earlier classic.
"Nothing is more natural," Mr. McManus writes, "or more essential to human achievement, than gambling." Prehistoric man sought portents to optimize hunting prospects. Rolling bones gave way to dice, which were mentioned in "The Iliad." The first "cards" were produced in Korea and China roughly 1,500 years ago, and card games have evolved steadily since then. The ancestors of poker were "bluffing games" played in Europe in Renaissance times. Each country had its own variant, some using 20-card decks, others 36 or 52, with cards of assorted rank, number and likelihood. The common features were deception, bluffing, odds, judgment, and, above all, luck. Anybody could play, and anybody could win, as we've seen again in this year's World Series of Poker, when a raw 21-year-old became the youngest champion in the event's 40-year history, breaking the record set last year by another 21-year-old.
It seems inevitable that a specific place and time would allow these second-cousin games to congeal into one form that would capture everyone's devotion. That place was New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase, when a polyglot swarm of immigrants brought their games with them. The new American amalgam — draw poker — moved up the Mississippi River on steamboats and into the American West. Mr. McManus excels in showing how the daring and resourcefulness that sent settlers westward into a wilderness fraught with danger and opportunity also brought an affinity for this new game.
A poker player could not only assert his manhood but also accumulate the wealth that would measure his social prominence. As the 19th century progressed, the game grew with the nation; like baseball, it got a big boost during the Civil War from the interchange of games between soldiers of both sides. New forms of poker evolved. Stud replaced draw as the game of choice, just as hold 'em has become the game of the past half-century.
Mr. McManus demonstrates how each chain in poker's evolution served the needs and penchants of the people who popularized them. His cast of characters is plentiful and engaging, and all get their due: Girolamo Cardano, the 16th-century Milanese pioneer of probabilities; Jonathan Harrington Green, the riverboat cardsharp; the legendary Wild Bill Hickok; Herbert O. Yardley, the cryptographer whose book "The Education of a Poker Player" remains a classic; and many more.
Diligently researched (enough for 40 pages of notes), this is the most entertaining collection of poker tales ever published, stories that illustrate Mr. McManus' main thesis, namely that poker principles are applied every day in vital areas of life, notably warfare and politics. There is a lengthy section on the Civil War, during which the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest repeatedly bluffed and deceived his Union counterparts until the Union prevailed due to the superior skills of Ulysses S. Grant.
"Like any good poker player," Mr. McManus writes, "Grant had a knack for capitalizing on the overly passive or aggressive tendencies of rebel generals," many of whom he knew from West Point. "He could tell bluff and bluster from real courage." A more recent parallel was the Cuban missile crisis, where President Kennedy called Premier Khrushchev's world-risking bluff.
Kennedy was one of the few presidents who wasn't an avid poker player. Richard Nixon financed his first congressional campaign with poker winnings. Dwight Eisenhower was an even better player. Franklin Roosevelt hosted late-night low-stakes games at the White House to relieve the stress of guiding the nation through the Depression and war.
Many future presidents have used poker as a networking tool, self-perceived outsiders joining backroom games to gain acceptance as one of the boys. They include Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and, yes, Barack Obama, who used the game to become a player in Illinois politics and in 2007 answered a campaign reporter's question about his hidden talents by admitting that "I'm a pretty good poker player."
Mr. McManus also emphasizes poker's long history as "the cheating game." Stacked decks and crooked schemes have always existed, and he details the current investigation of a former World Series of Poker champion whose Internet cheating netted him more than a million dollars. In that light, it is surprising that Mr. McManus doesn't discuss the role of professional dealers in making poker a legitimate, thriving industry in Las Vegas and elsewhere. He also betrays his player's bias by failing to mention dealer abuse in his discussion of objectionable poker behavior. Aside from that glaring omission, "Cowboys Full" should remain the definitive study of poker history long after the next 21-year-old wins the game's biggest prize.
COWBOYS FULL: THE STORY OF POKER, By James McManus: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30, 528 pages, REVIEWED BY GABRIEL SCHECHTER
Poker is our national pastime. Baseball, football and racing have at various times been the dominant spectator sport, but more people have always played poker than any other form of competition, and their numbers are growing exponentially. The boom in televised poker this decade has elevated its status as a spectator sport, and Internet poker sites have enabled the game to spread globally, making it the international pastime as well.
How and why did this become so? In "Cowboys Full," a comprehensive account of humanity's fascination with games of chance, James McManus aims "to show how the story of poker helps to explain who we are." He succeeds by using a born storyteller's gifts to trace the qualities needed to win at poker from prehistoric origins through endless societal and psychological permutations.
Risk has always been part of life, a delicate balance of courage and caution, and the spoils go to those — Mr. McManus parades before us an array of generals, politicians, entrepreneurs and gamblers — who combine ambitious aggression with a cool-headed ability to read and outmaneuver the opposition.
Mr. McManus rose to poker prominence in 2000 as an amateur player who somehow finished fifth in the main event of the World Series of Poker, an improbable adventure detailed in the best-selling "Positively Fifth Street" (2003). That blow-by-blow treatment had the immediacy of confession and the roller-coaster urgency of the tournament's maelstrom of strategy buffeted by fortune. "Cowboys Full" is no less fascinating, though its impersonal tone and scholarly approach may make some readers yearn for the riveting suspense of his earlier classic.
"Nothing is more natural," Mr. McManus writes, "or more essential to human achievement, than gambling." Prehistoric man sought portents to optimize hunting prospects. Rolling bones gave way to dice, which were mentioned in "The Iliad." The first "cards" were produced in Korea and China roughly 1,500 years ago, and card games have evolved steadily since then. The ancestors of poker were "bluffing games" played in Europe in Renaissance times. Each country had its own variant, some using 20-card decks, others 36 or 52, with cards of assorted rank, number and likelihood. The common features were deception, bluffing, odds, judgment, and, above all, luck. Anybody could play, and anybody could win, as we've seen again in this year's World Series of Poker, when a raw 21-year-old became the youngest champion in the event's 40-year history, breaking the record set last year by another 21-year-old.
It seems inevitable that a specific place and time would allow these second-cousin games to congeal into one form that would capture everyone's devotion. That place was New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase, when a polyglot swarm of immigrants brought their games with them. The new American amalgam — draw poker — moved up the Mississippi River on steamboats and into the American West. Mr. McManus excels in showing how the daring and resourcefulness that sent settlers westward into a wilderness fraught with danger and opportunity also brought an affinity for this new game.
A poker player could not only assert his manhood but also accumulate the wealth that would measure his social prominence. As the 19th century progressed, the game grew with the nation; like baseball, it got a big boost during the Civil War from the interchange of games between soldiers of both sides. New forms of poker evolved. Stud replaced draw as the game of choice, just as hold 'em has become the game of the past half-century.
Mr. McManus demonstrates how each chain in poker's evolution served the needs and penchants of the people who popularized them. His cast of characters is plentiful and engaging, and all get their due: Girolamo Cardano, the 16th-century Milanese pioneer of probabilities; Jonathan Harrington Green, the riverboat cardsharp; the legendary Wild Bill Hickok; Herbert O. Yardley, the cryptographer whose book "The Education of a Poker Player" remains a classic; and many more.
Diligently researched (enough for 40 pages of notes), this is the most entertaining collection of poker tales ever published, stories that illustrate Mr. McManus' main thesis, namely that poker principles are applied every day in vital areas of life, notably warfare and politics. There is a lengthy section on the Civil War, during which the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest repeatedly bluffed and deceived his Union counterparts until the Union prevailed due to the superior skills of Ulysses S. Grant.
"Like any good poker player," Mr. McManus writes, "Grant had a knack for capitalizing on the overly passive or aggressive tendencies of rebel generals," many of whom he knew from West Point. "He could tell bluff and bluster from real courage." A more recent parallel was the Cuban missile crisis, where President Kennedy called Premier Khrushchev's world-risking bluff.
Kennedy was one of the few presidents who wasn't an avid poker player. Richard Nixon financed his first congressional campaign with poker winnings. Dwight Eisenhower was an even better player. Franklin Roosevelt hosted late-night low-stakes games at the White House to relieve the stress of guiding the nation through the Depression and war.
Many future presidents have used poker as a networking tool, self-perceived outsiders joining backroom games to gain acceptance as one of the boys. They include Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and, yes, Barack Obama, who used the game to become a player in Illinois politics and in 2007 answered a campaign reporter's question about his hidden talents by admitting that "I'm a pretty good poker player."
Mr. McManus also emphasizes poker's long history as "the cheating game." Stacked decks and crooked schemes have always existed, and he details the current investigation of a former World Series of Poker champion whose Internet cheating netted him more than a million dollars. In that light, it is surprising that Mr. McManus doesn't discuss the role of professional dealers in making poker a legitimate, thriving industry in Las Vegas and elsewhere. He also betrays his player's bias by failing to mention dealer abuse in his discussion of objectionable poker behavior. Aside from that glaring omission, "Cowboys Full" should remain the definitive study of poker history long after the next 21-year-old wins the game's biggest prize.
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