Baseball Mud: History, Stats, and Other Stuff

The Book of Baseball Literacy: 3rd Edition

2011-07-18T07:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks for visiting Baseball Mud. As you can see, I haven't been keeping this blog going. Instead I've been working on a major new update to my massive book on baseball history, stats, and lore — and it's now available as an ebook for Kindle and Nook. You can learn more about it by visiting the official website for The Book of Baseball Literacy: 3rd Edition.

Moving on over

2009-10-20T09:41:00.000-07:00

Been gone for a while, sorry about that. I'm going to be putting Baseball Mud on hiatus for a while to concentrate on my new blog, The Ghost of Babe Ruth. Check it out.

Yankees Top 10

2009-08-28T09:37:00.001-07:00

I'm a sucker for lists of top 10 greatest players, and here's a new one, provided by the great Jonah Keri of Baseball Prospectus fame: Top 10 Yankees. He has a rule that only time with the Yankees counts, so no Winfield, Reggie, A-Rod, Maris, etc.

The only real argument is near the bottom of the list. Jorge Posada, Bernie Williams, and Earl Combs finish at numbers 8, 9, and 10, but I could see replacing one of them with Don Mattingly or Tommy Henrich or Charlie Keller or Elston Howard (or Winfield or Reggie, for that matter).

Obviously, this is a formidable team, and, in spite of the fact that I hate the Yankees with every fiber of my being, I can't bring myself to hate any of the guys on the list. Strange.

Must-reading for fans of the blog

2009-08-19T10:11:00.001-07:00

A very, very important story for fans of the blog to read: Baseball Rubbing Mud: Road to the Hall Is Paved with Good Inventions.

Padres All-Time Team

2009-08-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the San Diego Padres, This Week in Baseball is set to name its all-time Padres team on its episode:

TWIB studied the rosters of every Padres team and came up with the top player at every position on the diamond as well as three pitchers.

Benito Santiago gets the nod at catcher, Nate Colbert is at first base, Mark Loretta is at second, former MVP Ken Caminiti starts at third, Garry Templeton mans shortstop while Hall of Famers Tony Gwynn and Dave Winfield join Steve Finley in the outfield.

The rotation includes former Cy Young Award winners Jake Peavy and Randy Jones while the all-time leader in saves, Trevor Hoffman, is set to be the club's closer.

This is a pretty good selection. I was surprised to see Mark Loretta, who played only three seasons with the Padres, but second base is kind of a weak spot for the franchise. Roberto Alomar was a better overall player, but he also played just three years in San Diego, and Loretta's three years were better than Alomar's. When San Diego won its first pennant in 1984, the second baseman was Alan Wiggins, a speedster who didn't hit much but stole a ton of bases (every team in the '80s seemed to have one of those guys: Vince Coleman, Omar Moreno, Otis Nixon, etc.). But Wiggins lasted only three years. So it's Loretta by default.

I like the choice of Nate Colbert,* who is mostly forgotten today. Adrian Gonzalez may one day stake his claim to the position, but for now Colbert is a great choice, even over Ryan Klesko. (Klesko has better stats but Colbert played in a less offensive-minded era.)

*I assume his name was pronounced "KOL-bert" but thanks to Stephen Colbert (KOL-behr), I can't pronounce it that way.

In the outfield, the only quibble I have is with Steve Finley. I think Brian Giles deserves it more, but reasonable minds can disagree.

In all, the Padres can boast two Hall of Famers (Gwynn and Winfield) and one sure Hall of Famer (Trevor Hoffman). Not bad for an expansion team.

The price of honesty

2009-08-13T16:41:00.000-07:00

Well that didn't take long:

CINCINNATI -- Major League Baseball has requested a meeting with Reds pitcher Bronson Arroyo about his admission of taking supplements not approved by the league, USA Today reported on Thursday.

I guess we won't be seeing any other players talk honestly about taking supplements for a while, not if Big Brother is going to have a sit-down with them.

At last: An honest ballplayer

2009-08-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

Kudos to Bronson Arroyo for speaking honestly about why he takes supplements and why he used to take andro and amphetamines. I'm not saying kudos for taking them or kudos for his f-you attitude, I'm saying kudos for being honest.

I wasn't an Arroyo fan before and I'm not now (especially after he admits to driving drunk at least once per year and claims "pretty much everybody" does it), but this article helps provide some clarity to the whole issue of drugs in baseball. You should read it.

No Olympics for you!

2009-08-13T09:25:00.001-07:00

To no one's surprise, baseball and software were rejected by the International Olympic Committee the other day:

Softball and baseball had been seeking a return after being voted off the program four years ago for the 2012 London Games. Attempted reinstatements were rejected by the IOC in 2006. International Softball Federation president Don Porter said he would continue his fight to get his sport back into the Olympics, though International Baseball Federation president Harvey Schiller said he saw no point of mounting another Olympic bid for his sport.

That's a good move for baseball. There's no point in having it as an Olympic sport because we (a) already see the greatest players in the world on a daily basis and (b) we already have the World Baseball Classic.

To me, the Olympics are about seeing athletes and sports that I never get to see otherwise. I care almost nothing about swimming, track and field, team handball, skiing, speed skating, etc. during off years. The Olympics are my one chance to care. I would like to see tennis and soccer and other familiar sports eliminated from the Olympics too, especially because many of those sports already have international competitions.

And don't get me started on sports that hinge on capricious judges (gymnastics, diving, etc.) rather than timers and scorekeepers.

HOF induction speeches

2009-07-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

I'm a couple of days late on this, but here are a couple of links for watching the induction speeches to the Hall of Fame:

Rickey Henderson

Jim Rice

Judy Gordon, daughter of Joe Gordon

Enjoy!

Mark Buehrle, Hall of Famer?

2009-07-24T09:43:00.001-07:00

No, I'm not advocating or even predicting that Mark Buehrle will one day make the Hall of Fame. But with yesterday's perfect game, it's the perfect time to point out that he is on a Hall of Fame track.

Yes, he is on a Hall of Fame track, even though he's never really been an ace and has never struck fear into the hearts of opposing batters and managers.

So how is it possible? Because there are two ways to get into the Hall as a pitcher:

1. Dominate in your 20s, like Sandy Koufax, Dizzy Dean, Don Drysdale, and many others.

2. Be a workhorse in your 30s and 40s, like Early Wynn, Don Sutton, Phil Niekro, and many others.

Rare pitchers do both: Roger Clemens, Tom Seaver, Greg Maddux, etc. Those are the true greats of the game, the inner-circle Hall of Famers. The other guys are mostly outer-circle Hall of Famers (not Koufax and Dean, but the other guys).

Buehrle clearly did not dominate in his 20s, but he did win 122 games before turning 30. And he did it without missing time due to a major injury. From age 22 on, he has started at least 30 games per season every year. He's solid, dependable, and good.

And because he has good command of his pitches, he's the kind of player who could continue as an effective pitcher for a very long time. If he does that--if he wins 12-17 games per year for the next decade, he'll probably end up with 300 victories, or close to it. And that will make him a strong Hall of Fame candidate.

Will he? I have no idea. An errant line drive could end things suddenly. Or he could blow up like Barry Zito. But if the Mark Buehrle of the next decade pitches anything like the Mark Buehrle of the last decade, he can start preparing his induction speech.

(I'm not the only person to think of this. After writing this, I Googled "Mark Buehrle Hall of Fame" and found these others making the argument here and here and probably elsewhere.)

Ballplayer showing class? True!

2009-07-17T09:47:00.000-07:00

Great to see a big star honor the game's past:

Ichiro, in St. Louis for his ninth All-Star Game, visited the grave of St. Louis Browns star George Sisler, whose single-season record of 257 hits was broken by the Mariners outfielder in October 2004.

...

"I wanted to do that for a grand upperclassman of the baseball world," Ichiro told MLB.com. "I think it's only natural for someone to want to do that, to express my feelings in that way."

I'm not sure if there's going to be a Hall of Fame debate about Ichiro due to the limited time he has spent in the U.S. major leagues, but he deserves induction in my book and this move just raises his stature in my eyes.

Voice of reason on steroids

2009-07-15T10:39:00.000-07:00

Craig Calcaterra flags a voice of reason on the steroid issue: Bob Gibson.

Guys have always been cheating. Period. It just takes a little different form today. I'm just glad they didn't have steroids when I was playing. I don't know what I would have done. It's very difficult to go out and perform when you know the guy next to you is taking steroids or some kind of drug to make you perform better and not do it yourself, to let this guy get an edge on you . . .

. . . I don't know that I really criticize the guys. Whoever the first guy is that started it, that's the guy I criticize. The rest of the guys just followed suit. I don't think its OK. I'm not sanctioning it, but I understand why it happens.

Gibson's statement pretty much crystallizes my thoughts on the steroid issue. It should have been the players who policed it, because they knew what was really going on. But nobody -- or almost nobody -- stepped up to the media or the union to get the others to stop it. So it became an arms race.

Yes, I'm glad the arms race is over, but I don't really blame or want to vilify the players who shot up. Either does Bob Gibson.

The Anonymous All-Star

2009-07-15T01:47:00.000-07:00

Great article in the New York Times about Andrew Bailey, the A's closer and sole representative to the A.L. All-Star team. You can forgive yourself for saying, Who? In fact, Bailey wasn't the only head-scratcher of an All-Star this year. I'm hard-pressed to name the teams represented by Freddy Sanchez, Hunter Pence, Josh Johnson, Ben Zobrist, and Brian Fuentes.

But that's what you get when you require that every team gets a representative. I'm happy for those guys, who may never get this chance again. But you can hardly call those guys "stars."

However, it's not as if past All-Star games featured only big stars and future Hall of Famers. Just taking a random gander at some past games, we find the following forgotten All-Stars:

1933 (the inaugural game): General Crowder, Oral Hildebrand, Sam West, Tony Cuccinello, Woody English, Jimmie Wilson
1941: Sid Hudson, Thornton Lee (immortalized in the great song "Van Lingle Mungo"), Marius Russo, Harry Danning, Lonny Frey, Hank Lieber, Eddie Miller, Al Benton
1965*: Max Alvis, Jimmie Hall, Bob Lee, John O'Donoghue, Turk Farrell, Sammy Ellis
1977: Wayne Gross, Jim Kern, Jim Slaton, Butch Wynegar, Willie Montanez, John Stearns
1989: Mark Gubicza, Greg Swindell, Tim Burke
1996 (the most recent NL victory): Roger Pavlik, Dan Wilson, Ricky Bottalico, Henry Rodriguez, Eric Young

One of the problems with the All-Star Game, in my opinion, is that the people picking the squad feel they have to reward every player who has put together a fine half-season, regardless of whether they're actual stars. I would prefer to see actual stars, even if they're having a bad season, rather than anonymous guys who put together a good few months. Sure, they'll feel snubbed, but if they really have what it takes to be a star, they'll earn their spot next year.

*Side note: Check out the firepower on the NL team that year: Aaron, Allen, Banks, Clemente, Mays, Robinson, Rose, Santo, Stargell, Williams; on the mound, Koufax, Drysdale, Marichal, Gibson. Wow. And it was a great game, too.

Old-Timer's Game Lives Again

2009-06-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

Check out this story on SI.com about 90-year-old Bob Feller pitching in an Old-Timer's Game at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

I wish I had been there.

(Showing my age here... the greatest moment in the history of Old-Timer's Games came in 1984 when the 77-year-old Hall of Fame shortstop Luke Appling actually smacked a home run against 63-year-old legend Warren Spahn. Can you imagine your father/grandfather/great-grandfather putting on a uniform, standing at the plate in a major league stadium, and hitting a pitch over the wall?

If anybody has that game recorded, may I beseech you to upload it to YouTube?)

So much for that idea

2009-06-22T16:07:00.000-07:00

Well, it was too good to be true, I guess: Moneyball the Movie has been put on hold. It never made sense to me how they could translate that great book onto the big screen, but I was eager to see them try. Alas, the power brokers with the money weren't so excited. Maybe it'll restart sometime in the future, but for now, Jeremy Brown and the gang will remain in obscurity.

Satchel Paige

2009-06-12T13:28:00.000-07:00

I just heard a great interview with Larry Tye, author of a new biography of the great Satchel Paige called Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend. Who was Satchel Paige?

The most famous player in Negro league history, Paige was its preeminent showman in addition to perhaps its best pitcher. Locked out of major league ball until he was well past his prime, he pitched against white players often enough during winter barnstorming trips that Dizzy Dean, Joe DiMaggio, and Charlie Gehringer, among others, called Paige the best pitcher they ever saw.

For much of his career, he was the biggest gate attraction in the league. Huge crowds would gather to watch whether he fulfilled his promise to strike out the side on nine pitches, and he usually came through. His income was good—probably as high as $40,000 per year—which was more than almost every major league, but Paige's income required him to work year-round.

When Cleveland owner Bill Veeck finally brought Paige to the majors in 1948, the pitcher was 42 years old, the oldest rookie in major league history. Still, he could fill the seats. His first three starts drew over 200,000 fans to set night-game attendance records in Cleveland and Chicago. His major league stats seem undistinguished—28–31, 3.29 ERA—until you remember his age, which Veeck tried to say was higher than it was. To generate publicity, Veeck claimed his “team of detectives” had determined Paige was born in 1899 when in fact Paige always knew he was born in 1906.

In another publicity stunt, the Kansas City Athletics hired Paige to pitch a game in 1965; the 59-year-old tossed three shutout innings, allowing only one hit.

By the time he was finished, Paige estimated that he and his overpowering fastball (known variously as his “bee ball,” “trouble ball,” and “Long Tom”) had seen action in more than 2,500 games, winning 2,000 of them, against Negro league and semipro teams; other estimates include 100 no-hitters, 22 strikeouts in one game, and as many as 153 games pitched in one calendar year. Take those estimates with an appropriately sized grain of salt.

Aside from his dominance on the mound, Paige’s unique brand of wit and charm has entered American folklore. In his much-quoted article titled “How to Stay Young,” Paige offered these suggestions: “Avoid fried meats, which angry up the blood. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move. Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”

But Paige was no clown. When the Hall of Fame decided to honor a number of stars with a special wing for Negro leaguers in 1972, Paige observed, “The only change is that baseball has turned Paige from a second-class citizen to a second-class immortal.” Paige’s criticism encouraged the Hall of Fame instead to put the Negro leaguers in the same wing as everybody else—a decision that, in retrospect, seems like a no-brainer.

Whether you buy Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legendor Paige's own autobiography, Maybe I'll Pitch Forever, you owe it to yourself as a baseball fan to learn more about Satchel Paige.

Conan visits 1860 baseball

2009-06-05T13:59:00.001-07:00

I'm very late to the game on this one, but it's very worth watching.

Video Recaps | Full Episodes | Webisodes

More Moneyball

2009-06-04T06:31:00.001-07:00

When you heard that the great Michael Lewis book "Moneyball" was going to be made into a movie, did you say to yourself, What the hell? I did. And luckily, so did Patrick Goldstein. And since he's a writer for the LA Times, he was actually in a position to find out more. His article in yesterday's paper is must-reading for baseball wonks.

Tom Glavine and the Hall

2009-06-04T05:59:00.001-07:00

The word "unceremoniously" seems to apply to this situation:

Tom Glavine's second go-round with Atlanta ended in abrupt, businesslike fashion, which is perhaps appropriate for a player who, as the Braves' player representative during the acrimonious negotiations that led to the 1994 strike, knows better than most the business side of the game.

Unless some other team takes a chance on him, it appears that Glavine's next stop is Cooperstown. With 305 career victories and two Cy Young Awards, he's a lock to get in on the first ballot.

Thinking back on it, I'm trying to recall other Hall of Fame players who received such apparently ignominious treatment by their longtime clubs. I mean, most great players get the opportunity to retire on their own terms, but not all. Here's what I've come up with off the top of my head (by no means an exhaustive list):

- Babe Ruth, who was released by the Yankees abruptly after he thought he'd get a chance to manage the team. (To the Yankees' credit, they obviously recognized that Ruth would not have been a good manager.)

- Steve Carlton, who was released by the Phillies in the middle of the 1986 season. He then signed with the Giants, who kept him for about a month then released him. Of course, Carlton had pitched horribly for both teams and should have retired on his own, so it's hard to blame the teams.

- Honus Wagner, who at the end of his career feuded with Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss so badly that Wagner had nothing to do with the Pirates club for two decades.

- Juan Marichal, who was sold by the Giants to the Red Sox after 14 seasons in San Francisco.

- Tom Seaver, who was accidentally placed on waivers by the Mets.

- Casey Stengel, whose departure from the Yankees after the 1959 season practically redefined "unceremonious." Stengel was basically fired for being too old.

Now, to be fair, in Glavine's case (and probably in the case of others on this list) what may have happened is that the team encouraged him to retire and he just didn't want to. (There is a complicating factor that Glavine would have earned a $1 million bonus if had made the club's active roster, so it looks like the Braves were just trying to save a buck, whether that's true or not.)

Whatever the circumstances, it's never fun when the business of baseball smacks a future Hall of Famer in the face so hard.

Rickey Henderson

2009-06-01T10:02:00.001-07:00

A lot of writers over the years -- myself included -- have written about Rickey Henderson's eccentricities and some of the silly things he has said and done over the years. FanIQ has a list of some of the most interesting, which is a fun read.

But Wayne Hagin, a veteran broadcaster now with the Mets, has a story about Henderson that nobody knows about. It involves the young Henderson standing up for a teammate in need against the most obnoxious manager of all time, Billy Martin.

I always respected Henderson's supreme talent. Now I have more respect for Henderson's character.

Death at the Ballpark

2009-05-27T11:57:00.000-07:00

A new book chronicles 850 deaths at ballparks over the past 150 years, and Slate.com has an excellent review of it.

I'm sure all of us have seen near-misses at games... a fan isn't paying attention as a foul ball screams past, a first base coach gets nearly decapitated by a line drive. This book seems to bring it all home. (It turns out that errant line drives and fastballs aren't the most frequent culprit in on-field deaths.)

Here's the most improbably tragic story:

During a 1949 amateur game in Florida, the third baseman, shortstop, and second baseman were all killed by a single lightning bolt, which struck the backstop, then shot around the infield as though completing a double play.

The book obviously wont appeal to everyone, but at least the Slate review is worth a look.

Death at the Ballpark: A Comprehensive Study of Game-Related Fatalities of Players, Other Personnel and Spectators in Amateur and Professional Baseball, 1862-2007 by Robert M. Gorman and David Weeks

Pedro and Maddux

2009-04-28T13:38:00.001-07:00

The amazing Joe Posnanski has a post today proposing that Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez have posted the two best seven-year stretches for pitchers in baseball history. I was dubious at first, but I'm convinced he's on to something. Good stuff and totally worth reading.

New iPhone App: MLB World Series 2009

2009-04-23T16:03:00.000-07:00

A new baseball game has hit the iPhone App Store: MLB World Series 2009. My colleagues at Slide to Play have done a great job reviewing it, so I encourage you to check it out. The key quote:

[W]hile MLB's World Series 2009 does the hitting, pitching and catching well, its lack of any substance beyond that leave it an incomplete game at best.

It looks like we're still waiting for the perfect baseball game for iPhone.

Billy Beane and Moneyball

2009-04-23T09:58:00.000-07:00

Somehow, it looks as if a movie is going to be made based on the seminal baseball book Moneyball, by Michael Lewis. I'm as dumbfounded as you about this development, but Steven Soderbergh is a pretty great director, so I'm sure he'll figure out something good.

The key protagonist of Moneyball is Billy Beane, the GM of the Oakland A's. So I thought it'd be worth a few moments to take a closer look at Beane.

Beane, the player, qualifies as one of the biggest busts in the history of the amateur draft. Beane, the general manager, qualifies as one of the most successful team-builders in the history of baseball.

As described in Moneyball, Beane was one of the most coveted amateur players in the nation when he was taken in the first round by the New York Mets in the 1980 draft. Everything came easy to Beane—until he got to the minors and he wasn’t able to adapt to the higher-quality pitching. Scouts loved him; he was built like the star ballplayer they all thought he would become. But Beane never succeeded at the plate, and he finished his major league career with a .219 average and 3 homers over parts of six seasons.

Before the 1990 season began, at the age of 28, Beane abruptly walked into general manager Sandy Alderson’s office and asked for a job as a scout. Imagine turning down a chance to play on a major league team in order to drive around small towns scouting amateurs. It shocked Alderson so much that he gave Beane the job and kept a close eye on him.

It didn’t take long for Beane to work his way up to assistant general manager, and when Alderson left the A’s in 1997, Beane took charge. During his tenure, the A’s either made the playoffs or at least contended more often than not, despite one of the league’s lowest payrolls. He did it the way a good investor operates: by buying low and selling high. For example, Beane believed that ace closers are overvalued. So he would sign an unknown or out-of-favor hard-thrower to be his closer, watch him succeed, then trade or let him go when he became too expensive. This tactic worked with, in order, Billy Taylor, Jason Isringhausen, Billy Koch, and Keith Foulke.

Beane’s most glaring failure as GM has been his team’s inability to win in the post-season. Pundits claim it’s because his teams rely too much on walks and home runs and can’t play “smallball”—bunt, steal bases, hit and run, and so on. In fact, I think the reason his teams haden’t won in the post-season (until 2006, when they won a first-round series) simply comes down to bad luck. In a short series, almost anything can happen, and blaming Billy Beane because Jeremy Giambi failed to slide or Miguel Tejada didn’t take an extra base is just wrong. Still, despite the A’s victory in the 2006 ALDS, the lack of significant post-season success is a stain on Beane’s record and will remain so until his A’s win at least a pennant or two.

And now he's going to be played in a movie by Brad Pitt. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Sabermetrics and baseball

2009-04-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

Another "traditionalist" has decided to flaunt his ignorance by writing a blog post bashing sabermetrics and the people who love it.

I don't know who this guy is or why he hates me (and people like me who like numbers). But his attitude tracks the attitude of many old school sportswriters -- Murray Chass among them -- who thing modern statistical analysis has no place in baseball and is practiced only by guys living in their mothers' basements.

The original blogger, "Alex," says a lot of stupid things and they're not worth refuting. But one point I want to make regards math:

These traditionalists revel in basic baseball stats: batting average, ERA, slugging percentage, and maybe on-base percentage. But they seem to have forgotten that those stats all involve math!

What's the difference between batting average and VORP or WARP or Win Shares... other than the lengths of the formulas?

So I guess the traditionalists are OK with math until it gets complicated. Which means they're not traditionalists at all but rather anti-intellectuals.

It's one thing to be ignorant. It's another entirely to hate knowledge. But that's what people like Alex do. Bravo, Alex.

iPhone App: MLB At Bat

2009-04-17T15:12:00.000-07:00

MLB At Bat is the big daddy of iPhone apps. It comes in two versions:

Lite - Free

The lite version is nothing more than a real-time scoreboard. It's barely worth the price (free).

Full - $9.99

The full version gives you so much more. In a word, it's awesome. Here's what you get:

- Real-time scores, including box scores and scoring summaries, of every game
- Video highlights of key plays minutes after they happen. Not just scoring plays, but key defensive grabs and other important moments.
- Live play-by-play using the GameDay engine. You get pitch-by-pitch updates and more.
- Best of all, radio broadcasts of every game. You can even choose home or away broadcasters.

How well does it work? Not perfect. I've experienced quite a few kinks in the system. Last night, for example, I wanted to listen to Vin Scully's play-by-play of the Dodgers-Giants game, but I kept getting an inexplicable error message. The Giants broadcast worked fine (and Jon Miller is the best in the business anyway, so it wasn't much of a problem), but I was disappointed in not hearing Scully.*

*In fact, listening to Vin Scully is the main reason I bought the At Bat application. He's been with the Dodgers for 59 years, but I've never lived in L.A. so I never really got to hear him except occasional TV broadcasts. This is my chance to hear him before he retires, whenever that will be.

I've used the audio over both Wi-Fi and 3G, and both generally worked. There are occasional hiccups and you'll lose the feed periodically, but in my experience, the feed comes back pretty quick (except the Scully example above).

The GameDay play-by-play is spotty at times. It doesn't always keep up with the action, but it usually catches up after a while.

Bottom Line

In spite of the hiccups, which I'm sure MLB Advanced Media is working on, getting the At Bat app is a no-brainer. The audio is rekindling my love for play-by-play broadcasting (which I used to do myself, though not very well), and I'm finding myself listening to games I don't have much interest in. The live box scores are great for tracking my fantasy players. And the GameDay updates are great for following games at lunch or on the couch.

If you're an iPhone-owning baseball fan, what are you waiting for?

iPhone App: Baseball Statistics 2009 Edition

2009-04-14T15:48:00.000-07:00

The first app up for review is Baseball Statistics 2009 Edition, by Bulbous Ventures LLC.* Price: $1.99

This is version 2 of a formerly free application previously called "Baseball." It's pretty simple, really: it uses data from Sean Lahman's Baseball Archive to deliver up-to-date statistics for everybody who's ever played baseball. You can view stats by team and year, or you can search and view by player.

If you have the free edition from last year, the only things you're missing are 2008 statistics, plus salary data and a few other pieces of information.

Bottom Line

This is a very functional and utilitarian application, and it doesn't blow your socks off. If you're at the ballpark and you want to know the career stats for a particular player, you can do it with this app. If you don't want to pay $1.99 for a dedicated iPhone interface, you can do the same thing for free by visiting Baseball-Reference.com in the Safari browser. The no-cost method is harder on the eyes, but you can always apply the $1.99 you save toward the price of a hot dog at the park.

*Note: Link opens in the iTunes Store.

Baseball Apps for iPhone

2009-04-14T15:24:00.000-07:00

Now that the season has started, iPhone-owning baseball fans have numerous ways to track the sport using their miracle phones. The iTunes App Store has a helpful page linking to some of the latest baseball apps and videos. In the next few days, I'm going to test out several of them and provide reviews. Check back tomorrow and later in the week.

Back to blogging: Joe Carter

2009-04-03T10:21:00.000-07:00

OK, no more blogging vacations. I'm going to get back into it starting today.

Today brings us news that Joe Carter believes his Game 6 home run against the Phillies that ended the 1993 World Series gets overlooked:

"Mine, it will make the top 10 but it's never No. 1, it's never been No. 2, it's always been in the middle of the pack," Carter said Thursday. "Had it been for the Yankees or the Dodgers, then I think it would have been No. 1. But because it was in Toronto, it has not gotten the respect that I think it really should deserve."

For some book projects, I've done a lot of research into clutch baseball moments, and I can tell you exactly why Carter's home run isn't the greatest clutch performance in the history of the World Series:

1. Stakes

2. Drama

First, in Carter's favor, I should point out that his home run came in the bottom of the ninth with the Jays trailing by one. If Carter had struck out, the Jays might have lost and the series would have headed to game 7. There was a lot at stake.

But there was more at stake when Bill Mazeroski hit his famous home run in game 7 of the 1960 World Series, with the Pirates and the Yankees deadlocked. There literally was no tomorrow. (On the other hand, the game was tied and a Mazeroski came to bat with no outs.)

As for Kirk Gibson and his home run in game 1 of the 1988 World Series, there was much less at stake when he hit it than during either Carter's or Maz's moments. But what he has going for him is drama. He limped to the plate. He had two strikes against him. He grounded a foul ball up the line and could barely run it out. It looked like The Natural come to life.

Also working against Carter is that the Blue Jays simply aren't a high-visibility team in the U.S. Carter is right about why people don't remember his shot. But he shouldn't whine about it.

Greatest Ever: Chicago White Sox

2009-03-05T10:26:00.000-08:00

Last season, I wrote a bunch of posts about the greatest-ever pitchers and position players for each franchise. Check the archives to find the posts. Needless to say, I didn't get through all the teams, so now that spring training has begun, I'm starting up again. Today, we'll take on the Chicago White Sox.

The White Sox are interesting. They've been around over 100 years, all in the same city, yet they haven't had a ton of great players. Not like the Giants or Yankees or Dodgers or Cardinals. So it makes choosing their best players a fun exercise. Let's begin.

Pitchers

Contenders: Ted Lyons, Red Faber, Ed Walsh

Identifying the top three pitchers in White Sox history turned out to be pretty simple: Lyons, Faber, and Walsh are the three leaders in wins for the Sox, and they're all in the Hall of Fame. They're all old-timers, though, and I hate to focus exclusively on old-timers for these rankings because it implies that modern players aren't as good as the old folks. But in the case of the White Sox, there simply aren't other options.

Walsh was the best pitcher in baseball for a couple of years, and he has the lowest career ERA of any pitcher in baseball history (with long careers) at 1.81. Of course, he pitched in the dead-ball era, when nobody hit home runs, and he pitched in the comparatively weaker league at the time. He won 40 games once and 24+ three other times, but that's about the extent of his contributions to the Sox. He only pitched seven effective years and was basically finished at 31.

Faber pitched 20 years, all with the Sox, and finished with 254 victories and a 3.15 ERA. More than half his career occurred during the lively ball era, so he had a tougher time than Walsh. He won 20+ games four times, and at least 12 in eleven seasons. He was a solid but unspectacular pitcher, and his Hall of Fame induction is a little generous. There are a lot of pitchers not in the Hall who were much better (including Bert Blyleven).

Lyons was another solid but unspectacular pitcher whose career is filled with seasons like 15-8, 14-7, 12-10, but he pitched until he was 45, so his career numbers look great. He never struck out more than 100 batters in a season (!), and his ERAs were barely above average. Again, his HOF induction is strange.

The winner: I'm going to go with Walsh for this one. His career was much shorter than the other guys, but his peak was much higher, and he was clearly one of the 2 or 3 best pitchers in baseball for several seasons.

Player: Eddie Collins, Nellie Fox, Frank Thomas*

I really want to pick Frank Thomas for this one. He was the most devastating offensive force in baseball (except for Barry Bonds) throughout the 1990s. He hit home runs, got on base, drove in buckets of runs, won two MVP awards, and won a few division titles. He finished his White Sox career with franchise records in both doubles (447) and home runs (448), the latter more than 200 more than the number 2 guy (Paul Konerko).

Yet I have to pick Eddie Collins for this honor. Whereas Thomas is one of the top 10 first basemen of all time, Collins is one of the top 2 or 3 second basemen, and possibly one of the top 15 players of all time. Collins's weapons were speed and slap hitting, and he, Ty Cobb, and Tris Speaker were the three top offensive players of the 1910s; Collins was still pretty damn good in the 1920s when the lively ball hit.

Nellie Fox is a distant third to Thomas and Collins, but that's no knock on Fox. He was a great second baseman for a long time, and, as Bill James has pointed out, he's the only player who won an MVP award during Mickey Mantle's peak years who actually deserved it over Mantle.

The winner: Collins

*Why not Joe Jackson? His career is too short and he played only five years with the White Sox. He also played for the Indians and, briefly, the A's.

Public Enemy #1 (apparently)

2009-02-19T13:04:00.001-08:00

Alex Rodriguez took steroids, got caught, and now is apparently continuing to cover up the truth.

So what?

It seems to me like journalists are spending more time analyzing his statements and investigating his cousin and getting his teammates reactions than they did investigating the Iraq war or Watergate or any other recent scandal that actually has an impact on this country.

Hey, I'm against steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs that wreck your body and cause other people to wreck their bodies just to keep up. I get it.

But is it really worth all the outrage to focus on one guy who did it six years ago? He's going to pay the price for his behavior when he gets older and suffers from all the steroid-related maladies that have afflicted others.

Enough is enough. Just make sure your kids don't do steroids, keep drug testing baseball players as we're doing now, and be done with it.

Give me a break

2009-02-09T14:03:00.000-08:00

The headline says it all: "A-Rod controversy spoils entire 2009 campaign before it begins."

Are you telling me that in September -- when there are great pennant races -- and October -- when there are great playoff games and World Series -- are you telling me that because one player (or 104) tested positive for steroids 6 YEARS AGO, the whole season is ruined?

Why not claim that baseball is ruined forever now? That nobody's going to come to games anymore?

Need we remind them that baseball attendance has never been higher than the last few seasons?

A-Rod. Uh oh.

2009-02-09T13:34:00.000-08:00

Of course the big news over the past few days is about Alex Rodriguez and his positive steroids test from 2003. I guess the only thing worse would be if Albert Pujols got caught. Pujols is about the last clean big superstar left.

I think we can all agree that almost every ballplayer, past or present, does whatever he has to do to succeed. In previous generations, it meant taking "greenies," or methamphetamines. Or OD'ing on caffeine to stay alert. Or corking the bat. Or stealing signs. Or spiking opposing players. Or grabbing a baserunner by the belt to slow him down. Or throwing a spitball. Or whatever.

It's called cheating, and it's wrong, and it happens all the time. A-Rod didn't invent it. He won't be the last. The only thing A-Rod has going for him is that when he cheated, he wasn't breaking any of baseball's rules, and he never lied about it to a grand jury (though he did lie to reporters and the public).

A lot of people -- like this guy -- are saying now A-Rod won't make it to the Hall of Fame. That's nonsense. I think that there will be an amnesty for the guys of this era who juiced up, and that superstars like A-Rod, Clemens, Bonds, even McGwire, will eventually get in. Cheaters like Palmeiro, who are on the bubble, may have a harder time, but he was on the bubble as a HOFer even before the steroids taint.

My feeling is that we either need to have an amnesty like that, in which everyone gets a pass and players are judged on their merits compared to other players of that era. Or else we shouldn't induct anyone who starred from 1990 to 2004. Those seem like the two best options. And I favor the former.

More Updike

2009-01-31T19:22:00.000-08:00

If you've read and enjoyed John Updike's fantastic essay "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," you have to read this analysis by David Margolick at Huffington Post. It's almost as worth savoring as Updike's essay.

RIP: John Updike

2009-01-27T10:37:00.000-08:00

John Updike, the great American writer, died today at age 76.

Why mention this on a baseball blog? If you've ever bought an anthology of baseball writing, you probably know why: “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” the marvelous essay Updike wrote in 1960 originally for The New Yorker magazine.

The essay describes the last game in Ted Williams's career, a day that was “overcast, chill, and uninspirational” but that nevertheless produced one of baseball’s most remarkable moments: the home run hit by Williams, aka “The Kid,” in his last major league at bat. Updike viewed the action from a box seat with the eyes of a loving fan, not as a cynical sportswriter sitting in press row. The result is a much-recommended piece full of beautiful prose and surprising turns.

You can read the article in its entirety here at Baseball-Almanac.

Goodbye, John Updike.

Farewell, Jeff Kent

2009-01-21T11:39:00.000-08:00

Jeff Kent is announcing his retirement tomorrow after 17 years in the big leagues. Last June, I assessed his Hall of Fame credentials. I predicted that eventually he'd get in to the Hall in the class of 2024, but that was just a guess without knowing when he'd retire. Now that he's retiring and will be eligible for the Hall in 2015, I'm going to change my prediction to say that he'll be enshrined in 2020.

Don Larsen's perfect game re-broadcast

2009-01-14T11:45:00.000-08:00

I haven't written anything about the MLB Network's broadcast of Don Larsen's perfect game on New Year's Day because, unfortunately, I have Dish Network and it doesn't carry the network. Hopefully they'll work that out soon enough. But in the meantime, I wanted to direct you to an LA Times story about Vin Scully's memories of that game. Scully, only 28 at the time, called the second half of the game. Check it out.

Congrats to Rice and Henderson

2009-01-12T14:36:00.001-08:00

Jim Rice and Rickey Henderson were just elected to the Hall of Fame, so they deserve congratulations. Here are some random thoughts:

- It's a travesty that Henderson received not quite 95% of the vote. If he's not a guaranteed unanimous selection, then no one is. Those 5% of voters who didn't include Henderson should be ashamed of themselves.

- Rice was a very good player, even great for a couple of seasons. But his induction opens the floodgates for outfielders/DHs with solid but flawed credentials. I mean, how can you say yes to Rice (.298 BA, .352 OBP, .502 SLG, 128 OPS+, 382 HR) but no to these guys:

* Dale Murphy (121 OPS+, 398 HR)
* Andre Dawson (119 OPS+, 438 HR)
* Dave Parker (121 OPS+, 339 HR)
* Fred Lynn (129 OPS+, 306 HR)
* Albert Belle (143 OPS+, 381 HR)
* Dick Allen (156 OPS+, 351 HR)
* Reggie Smith (137 OPS+, 314 HR)

And when these guys come up for the honor, how can you say no:

* Andres Galarraga (118 OPS+, 399 HR)
* Ellis Burks (126 OPS+, 352 HR)
* Fred McGriff (134 OPS+, 493 HR)
* Juan Gonzalez (132 OPS+, 434 HR)

Will they all make it? No, but they all have a solid case now that that Rice is in. Of course, Hall voting is totally inconsistent and unpredictable. For borderline cases like these, it usually requires some passionate advocates in the media to beat the drums for them. Rice has the powerful Boston media behind him, so that really helped. These other guys don't seem to have the advocacy. Check out Joe Posnanski's post about Dale Murphy for his take.

- Bert Blyleven and Tommy John got screwed again this year. Blyleven still has a few years left on the writers' ballot, but now it's up to the Veterans Committee to take up John's cause. Talk about inconsistent voting patterns. If they follow their usual brilliant timing, they'll wait until after John is dead before realizing he should be inducted.

- Mark McGwire. When he retired, he was talked about as a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Now he struggles to get 25% of the vote. I wonder what he has to do to rehabilitate his image. Maybe if he admits taking steroids, explains why, and starts campaigning against steroid use, that might do it. But so far, he seems content to keep quiet and let the cloud hang above him. Maybe the Hall of Fame just doesn't mean much to him, which is fine by me. But it is interesting to watch.

- Tim Raines. I loved watching him play and I hope he makes the Hall someday. He was a great player and deserves it.

Hall of Fame, Part 2: Blyleven

2009-01-08T11:43:00.000-08:00

Reader Steven makes some good points about the Hall of Fame in his comment about my last post on Rickey Henderson, which is totally worth reading.

Choosing to make the case for Henderson in the Hall of Fame wasn't exactly a controversial stand. Steven is right that Henderson should be a unanimous selection, but I'm sure some sportswriters -- who (a) stupidly don't believe a player should be inducted on his first try, and/or (b) were slighted or offended by Henderson sometime during his career -- will conspire to keep Henderson from achieving the magical 100% mark. Bill James once said that you could split Henderson in half and each half would be worthy of induction to the Hall of Fame.

I want to tackle a more controversial subject: Bert Blyleven. The hard-core baseball historian community really wants him to finally get the recognition he deserves. Joe Posnanski has a very good explanation of why Blyleven belongs, and I can't argue with any of it. Based on the numbers, Blyleven certainly belongs. The guy was excellent. I will add that his curveball is routinely named as one of the best of all time.

Here's the opposite argument. Blyleven played when I was growing up a baseball fan, and I can't recall anyone ever touting him as a future Hall of Famer when he was toiling for the Indians and Twins. Was he ever truly great? And do non-greats belong?

Lots of people say no. And I might have said no, too, at least before I really took a look at the people in the Hall of Fame. When lots of people think of the Hall of Fame, they think of the inner circle: Mays, Mantle, Ruth, DiMaggio, and so on. But that's not the standard for the Hall. The standard is more like Gabby Hartnett and Dazzy Vance, Duke Snider and Al Kaline. Players who excelled at their positions for many years. To believe in the first standard would mean the Hall would have about 30 members. It actually has over 280.

Does Bert Blyleven belong among those 250+ players? Of course he does.

Hall of Fame ballot: Rickey Henderson

2009-01-05T13:19:00.000-08:00

The Hall of Fame will announce its new inductees, if any, on Jan. 12. One of the best evaluations of the players on the ballot comes from superblogger Joe Posnanski, and I suggest you check out his HOF post.

As for me, I'm going to take a few moments to talk about the top players on the ballot. Today we'll focus on the sure-thing lock for the Hall, Rickey Henderson.

Henderson combined power, speed, strike zone judgment, and high-average hitting like no player in history, easily earning him the title of greatest leadoff hitter in baseball history. In his prime during the 1980s, he could steal 80 to 100 bases, smack 10 to 20 homers, score 100+ runs, and draw enough walks to give him an on-base percentage over .400. He’s one of the few lead-off hitters to win an MVP Award, and he holds career records for both runs and steals.

He was a great player, a first-ballot Hall of Famer who probably deserves even more accolades than he gets. But he was almost equally famous for me-first escapades such as playing cards in the clubhouse while his Mets teammates lost in extra innings during the playoffs, or holding out in spring training for a bigger salary with the A's.

So how do we factor in that extra stuff in our evaluation of him as a player? In the case of an unparalleled talent like Henderson, we don’t. Sure, he made good copy for sportswriters, and he created a few headaches for management. But his antics never seemed to distract his teams from winning. And win they did. He played in the post-season eight times and won two World Series. Even with the baggage, you’d be crazy not to want Henderson on your team.

I'm very eager to hear his Hall of Fame induction speech.

HOF gets Gordon, snubs Santo

2008-12-09T11:16:00.000-08:00

The Veterans Committee of the Hall of Fame has reviewed the qualifications of a couple dozen candidates and decided to elect Joe Gordon, while snubbing the likes of Joe Torre and, most significantly, Ron Santo.

A couple of months ago, when the lists first came out, I reviewed the qualifications of the candidates. You can read my old posts here: Joe Gordon, Vern Stephens, Wes Ferrell, Sherry Magee, Bucky Walters, Carl Mays, Deacon White, and others.

I would have voted for Joe Gordon from the old-timers ballot and Torre, Santo, and Kaat from the new ballot.

I'm very surprised Torre didn't make it, but I suspect Torre will get in once he's retired completely. They waited to induct Tommy Lasorda until after he retired, too.

It's a shame about Kaat and Santo. They were truly great players and they really belong in there.

But anyway, congratulations to Joe Gordon's family.

Book Review: Remembering Yankee Stadium

2008-12-02T09:51:00.001-08:00

You may have heard that old Yankee Stadium is no more, to be replaced next year by new Yankee Stadium. 2008 being the last year of old Yankee Stadium, a bevy of books was published commemorating the House that Ruth Built.

One of the best is Harvey Frommer's tome, Remembering Yankee Stadium (published by Stewart, Tabori, and Chang). In a nutshell, this book is beautifully illustrated with vintage photographs and contains hundreds of stories and remembrances from dozens of baseball personalities.

If you're searching for a book for that Yankee fan in your life, you really can't go wrong with this book.

I received a review copy of this over the summer, and I've been waiting to read it until the season ended and I had more time. I've been perusing it over the past few days and it really is a fun stroll down Yankee Stadium lane. It's organized by decade, beginning with the opening of the stadium in the 1920s all the way through this year.

The standard text, written by Frommer, covers all the significant historic moments in a no-frills, just-the-facts style, which uncovers lots of fun little details but doesn't break much new ground. In fact, I would have liked to read more in-depth information about some of the decisions and developments. For example, Frommer points out that the stadium was designed to favor left-handed hitters, but he doesn't explain why. Was it just for Babe Ruth? Was it to take advantage of the physical location and the setting sun...? Over the years, I've read conflicting statements about it, and I was hoping Frommer would settle the matter, but no.

Anyway, you're not really buying the book for the basic history anyway. You're buying it for the personal memories of players, fans, reporters, and stadium employees that make up a huge part of this book. It's amazing that Frommer was able to assemble such a wonderful collection of personalities, and they're going to carry you through the book. Whitey Ford, Sparky Lyle, Reggie Jackson, they're all here.

Really, you can't go wrong with this book as a holiday gift.

Where to buy:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble

Farewell, Mike Mussina

2008-11-21T14:13:00.001-08:00

Yankees pitcher Mike Mussina has announced his retirement. I was going to write a long piece examining his Hall of Fame chances, but Salon's King Kaufman beat me to it. Read that one.

I saw Mussina pitch when he was at Stanford and I was at Cal, about 19 or 20 years ago. Actually, even before that, I remember hearing his name come up during a pre-season discussion of college baseball with Cal's baseball coach at the time, Bob Milano. I'm not sure if Milano had actively recruited Mussina, who was from Pennsylvania, but either way, Mussina chose Stanford, our hated rival. I remember spelling his name "Masina" in my notes of that discussion.

Anyway, I remember watching Mussina pitch against Cal, both at Berkeley's Evans Field and Stanford's Sunken Diamond, and it was like a man pitching to boys. Mussina was so much better than anyone on the field at that time, it was scary. His fastballs just zipped in, and the catcher's glove seemed to pop louder than for the other pitchers. It's never a good idea to predict major league success for college stars--too many of them falter in the pro leagues--but Mussina was an exception. Everybody knew he'd be good in the big leagues.

I don't know what Mussina's like personally, but he always struck me as a mature, soft-spoken guy who never made trouble. Boring. Even his retirement reflects that idea. He didn't have a big in-season sendoff, or toy with his teams into luring him back to the diamond. He won 20 games in his final season, then he retired.

They don't make 'em like that much anymore.

History of the MVP Award

2008-11-21T11:27:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, Albert Pujols and Dustin Pedroia won their respective MVP Awards. I thought I'd take a moment to talk about the history of the MVP Award.

Record books often list Frankie Frisch and Lefty Grove as the first official MVP winners, both in 1931. But that’s just the first award sanctioned by the Baseball Writer's Association of America; MVP awards as voted on by sportswriters actually date back to the Chalmers Award. What's that?

Baseball’s earliest official most valuable player award, the Chalmers Award was originally instituted in 1910 to reward the major leagues’ batting champion. But after the controversial 1910 batting race, in which the St. Louis Browns conspired to hand the batting championship to Nap Lajoie instead of Ty Cobb, Chalmers changed its policy and awarded the prize—a Chalmers automobile—to the player in each league selected most valuable by a vote of sportswriters. The winners were: 1911, Wildfire Schulte (NL) and Ty Cobb (AL); 1912, Larry Doyle and Tris Speaker; 1913, Jake Daubert and Walter Johnson; 1914, Johnny Evers and Eddie Collins. After those awards, the Chalmers Company had fulfilled its five-year commitment to the award, and the honor was discontinued. Within a few years, the Chalmers company itself was discontinued.

A few years after Chalmers stopped awarding its autos as prizes, the leagues picked up the idea. American League president Ban Johnson wanted his league’s winners, selected by a poll of sportswriters, to have their names engraved on a monument to be built in the nation’s capital. The National League, by contrast, offered $1,000 cash for its winners. These League Awards, as they were called, were handed out from 1922 until 1928 for the AL and 1925 until 1929 for the NL.

They fell out of favor for a number of reasons: the AL’s monument was never built; MVP winners started demanding more money from their teams; and the AL disallowed repeat winners, which made a sham of the award because it shut out the league’s best players—Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

In the absence of League Awards, The Sporting News began selecting MVPs. The BBWAA started up in 1931, which is the award we recognize today. TSN continued to hand out its awards in direct competition with the BBWAA, and in the early years, the TSN award may have been more prestigious. For several years in the late 1930s and 1940s, the BBWAA and TSN unified their awards, but then they split again, and today, the honors compete with each other—although now it’s the BBWAA trophy that means more.

With a few minor changes, the voting structure in the 1930s is basically what we have today: two writers in each city rank 10 players on their ballots, the first place winner receiving 14 points, second place getting nine, third place eight, and so on.

For a long time, the record for MVP victories was three, held by Jimmie Foxx, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Mickey Mantle, and Mike Schmidt. But Barry Bonds put that record out of reach earlier this century and owns 7 MVP Awards.

There has long been controversy about what constitutes an MVP winner. Is he the league’s overall best performer? Or is he the player who was most valuable to his team? Does his team’s position in the standings have any effect? How can a player be valuable to a last-place team when they could have finished last without him? MVP voters have never addressed these questions meaningfully. For example, in 1958 and 1959, they selected Ernie Banks, even though his team never contended for the pennant, because he was the best player in the league. But in 1947, Bob Elliot of the second-place Braves captured the award over Ralph Kiner and Johnny Mize, who dominated the league’s offensive categories but didn’t play on pennant contenders. Ted Williams lost out on about three awards because his teams didn’t win the pennant (and because many writers hated him). And Joe DiMaggio won at least one award when he didn’t deserve it simply because his name was Joe DiMaggio. More recently, the strange voting criteria robbed Mark McGwire of the 1998 award, when he smacked a record 70 home runs, because his team didn’t compete for the pennant while the MVP winner, Sammy Sosa, played on a wild card team.

So what does it take to be the MVP? Let’s look at the statistics. Generally speaking, of course, you have to play on a pennant contender. In the history of the modern MVP award, only a handful of players won despite playing on losing teams. It helps to play a key defensive position like catcher or shortstop because you can win even if you don’t have the best batting totals. The most important offensive statistic is RBIs: over 40 percent of all MVP winners also led their league in RBIs; in fact, 11 MVPs led their league only in RBIs. The next most important statistic is slugging percentage (over 30 percent of winners led their league in that category), then home runs (about 30 percent). The least important offensive statistic? Stolen bases; only three stolen base leaders have won the MVP. Finally, it helps to be a nice guy: The media’s dislike of Ted Williams probably cost him a couple of awards. More recently, Mo Vaughn won the 1995 award over Albert Belle in no small part because Vaughn is a likable guy while Belle is not.

I'm sure somebody has done a true study of the MVP Award. I'm going to try to track one down and post a link.

Girl drafted by Japanese league team

2008-11-17T12:31:00.000-08:00

In what is most likely a publicity stunt for a burgeoning new Japanese baseball league, a 16-year-old girl was drafted by a pro baseball team, making her the first girl ever to achieve that distinction. Money quote:

High school student Eri Yoshida was drafted by the Kobe 9 Cruise, a professional team in a new independent Japanese league that will start its first season in April.

I call it a publicity stunt because the chances of a 16-year-old anything succeeding in a professional league are slim to begin with, let alone a 5-foot tall sidearming knuckleballer. But I wish her the best of luck.

Cy Young Award history

2008-11-14T10:59:00.000-08:00

Now that Cliff Lee and Tim Lincecum have been named the latest Cy Young Award winners, it's worth a moment to look at the history of the award.

The idea for the Cy Young Award came out of the belief that pitchers should be honored separately from position players. In one of his few positive accomplishments, commissioner Ford Frick helped orchestrate the new award, which initially honored one pitcher in both leagues, as selected by the Baseball Writers Association of America.

Frick instituted the award partly because pitchers received little representation in the MVP voting. So it’s ironic that the first Cy Young winner was the man who also won that year’s MVP award: Brooklyn’s Don Newcombe in 1956.

(In fact, pitchers’ eligibility for both awards has never been addressed by the BBWAA, and every time a guy wins both, griping can be heard all over the land. The gripers do have a point: Why should one group of players have the chance to win two awards, while everybody else can only win one? The flip side is just as frequent: When a pitcher has a dominant season, some writers refuse to vote for a pitcher; that’s what happened to Pedro Martinez in 1999, when two writers left him off their MVP ballots entirely. The BBWAA can resolve the issue pretty easily—by rendering pitchers ineligible for the MVP Award—but for some reason, they haven’t.)

After Newcombe won, his career pretty much fell apart, making him the first victim of the so-called Cy Young Jinx. Supposedly, the Jinx strikes pitchers the year after they win, and a cursory look at the record gives that theory some credence. Some infamous Jinx victims include Bob Turley, Mike Marshall, Steve Stone, Pete Vuckovich, LaMarr Hoyt, and John Denny. However, superstitions aside, it’s pretty easy to figure out why the Jinx struck these guys: they were above-average pitchers who had one great season that was good enough to win them the award. It’s hard enough to have a good season, let alone a great season, and it’s unfair to expect these pitchers to have consecutive great seasons.

Pitchers like Sandy Koufax, Steve Carlton, Jim Palmer, Tom Seaver, Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson—all multiple award winners—were (or are) legitimately great pitchers from whom great seasons are expected. The Cy Young Jinx is, in fact, simply a matter of a pitcher returning to his old self.

Back to the award history: At commissioner Frick’s insistence, the first 11 awards were given to the best pitcher in both leagues. When he retired, the award was changed to honor one pitcher in each league, which is how we have it today; it never did make sense to have Koufax compete with Whitey Ford, but most of what Frick did made no sense, so we shouldn’t be surprised.

At first, the voting structure was kind of screwed up: one writer in each major league city placed a single name on the ballot, and the pitcher who got the most votes won. MVP Award voting, on the other hand, features a weighted ballot on which writers place 10 names in descending order. In 1969, the screwed-up voting system victimized the BBWAA when Mike Cuellar and Denny McLain tied for the award with 10 votes apiece. After that, the voting changed to an MVP-like weighted system—voters placing three names on their ballots with five points going to the first-place pitcher, three to second place, and one to third place. That’s how it is today, and it’s a good system.

Here's a list of multiple award winners (H/T Baseball-Reference.com:

7 - Roger Clemens
5 - Randy Johnson
4 - Steve Carlton
4 - Greg Maddux
3 - Sandy Koufax
3 - Pedro Martinez
3 - Jim Palmer
3 - Tom Seaver
2 - Bob Gibson
2 - Tom Glavine
2 - Denny McLain
2 - Gaylord Perry
2 - Bret Saberhagen
2 - Johan Santana

Young Cy Young

2008-11-12T12:45:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, Tim Lincecum of the Giants won the NL Cy Young Award. Lincecum is just a baby, only 24 years old. I thought it would be good to take a look at other Cy Young winners who were age 24 and younger, to try and get a sense for what's in store for Lincecum. It's a mixed bag, but things do look bright:

1964 - Dean Chance (age 24): Chance beat out Sandy Koufax, having an "off" season (only 19 wins). Chance had four more good seasons before ineffectiveness (and possibly injury due to overwork?) ended his career at 30. Final record: 128-115

1968 (AL) - Denny McLain (24): The poster child for talent wasted. McLain won 31 games in 1968 and 24 more in 1969 before he pissed away his career. He had some arm problems (not his fault), but got caught up in gambling and bookmaking scandals, was suspended, and never recovered his form. He ended up in jail for a while. I don't think Tim Lincecum has to worry about becoming another Denny McLain.

1969 (NL) - Tom Seaver (24): There's nothing about Seaver I can say that you probably don't already know. He's one of the 10 best pitchers of all time.

1971 (AL) - Vida Blue (21): Blue dominated the league in 1971, suffered an injury the next season, and continued to pitch well up until the age of 30. Then he got caught up in drugs and spent time in jail. He was on a Hall of Fame track until age 30. Sad.

1981 (NL) - Fernando Valenzuela (20): Fernandomania! The Dodgers overworked his arm and he was basically finished at age 26 (though he hung on as best he could for another decade). With some babying, he might have won 250 games. Instead, he won 173.

1985 (NL) - Dwight Gooden (20): Boy he was fun to watch that season. Most curveballs are nicknamed "Uncle Charlie." Gooden's was called "Lord Charles." And his fastball was a sight to behold. You know the story about Gooden: he didn't take care of his arm, and he got caught up in drugs. A near-deadly combination.

1985 (AL) - Bret Saberhagen (21): Overuse killed his arm. He pitched 1,329 innings before the age of 26. And that's pretty much all she wrote. But he did lead the Royals to their only World Series victory, so at least Kansas City got that out of him.

1986, 1987 (AL) - Roger Clemens (23, 24): No problems here. The greatest pitcher of his generation. Somehow he survived early arm trouble (surgery at age 22) and tons of innings of work and still managed to win over 350 games.

2002 (AL) - Barry Zito (24): A cautionary tale. He just lost his stuff. Not due to arm trouble or overwork or anything. It just seems to have disappeared.

Summing it all up, this is a very distinguished list of pitchers. Chance and Zito never quite matched their early promise, and Saberhagen and Gooden suffered from serious injuries. But most of the rest of the pitchers had excellent careers.

A lot depends on Lincecum's arm and whether it can withstand the heavy use. We may find out next year, because that's often when injuries manifest themselves. But the examples of Seaver, Clemens, and even Vida Blue show that early success doesn't have to lead to injury or ineffectiveness. Considering the Giants have little to no chance of winning anytime soon, they'll have even less incentive to push Lincecum too far. Let's hope they're smart about it.

Congratulations, Tim Lincecum

2008-11-11T16:15:00.000-08:00

As you probably heard, Tim Lincecum won the Cy Young Award today. Good for him, the only bright spot on a really poor Giants team.

Lincecum is only 24, making him one of the youngest winners of the award. Tomorrow I'm going to do a piece examining what happened to the other winners who were his age and younger. On preliminary analysis, a mixed bag. More tomorrow.

RIP Herb Score

2008-11-11T10:03:00.000-08:00

Sad news out of Cleveland today:

Herb Score, the Cleveland Indians pitcher and former broadcaster whose promise on the mound was shattered by a line drive, died Tuesday. He was 75.

For two seasons in mid-1950s, Score was among the top pitchers in baseball, a left-handed fireballer who led the American League in strikeouts his first two years while winning 16 and 20 games with the Indians.

But in early 1957, a line drive off the bat of the Yankees’ Gil McDougald changed everything. It struck Score in the face and ended his season after only five games. He tried pitching again the following year, but lasted only 12 ineffective games. And though he hung on until 1962, the promising talent of his first two seasons appeared only in brief flashes.

After retirement, he remained in the game by working as Cleveland’s play-by-play broadcaster from 1964 - 1997.*

Goodbye, Herb.

*Updated: The original post indicated that Score worked as play-by-play announcer until this year. I discovered that he actually retired from p-b-p duties in 1997. I regret the error.

Thoughts on the Series

2008-10-30T09:40:00.000-07:00

- Congratulations, Phillies and Philly fans. It's been 28 years since your last championship, so you're right on schedule.

The history books will list this as a 4-1 victory, which looks like a blowout, but the series was anything but. Four of the games were decided by 2 runs or less, three by only one run. These were two evenly matched teams, and it could have gone seven games with just a few breaks.

- My Phillies phan phriend Kevin was very upset that umpires and the commissioner waited until after the Rays tied the score in game 4 before suspending it. If it had been a regular season game, they would have suspended it after the 5th inning, when the game became official, which would have given the game and the series to the Phillies. But I think it would have been a travesty to end the World Series with a rain-shortened game, so I think they ultimately made the right choice. It would have been really interesting to know what Selig would have done had the Rays not tied it. Lucky for him, they did, and also lucky for him, the Phils went on to win the game anyway. It was the best possible outcome for Selig in terms of saving face. (Whether his face deserves saving is another matter. I would prefer never to see his face again.)

- That wild pitch/error play in the ninth inning of game three (which led to the famous five-man infield) was clearly the turning point of the series. With the Phils at home, they still would have had the edge in winning the game, but the Rays basically giftwrapped it for them. If the Rays had won game 3, they would have had a 2-1 series lead and who knows what would have happened.

- The biggest disappointment of the series was the play of Scott Kazmir. He was the AL's strikeout leader last year, but this year he started the season on the DL and I don't think he ever fully recovered from his injury. He was inconsistent throughout the season, and in the playoffs, he just didn't have his best stuff. He was wild and threw a lot of pitches in his two short outings. I'm sure he's wishing for a mulligan.

- Cole Hamels is only 24 years old and already a World Series MVP. He played the role of Josh Beckett this year. He pitched a lot of innings this season, so the question remains whether he can avoid the injuries that seem to affect every young pitcher these days.

- The 2002 draft, which produced both Hamels and Kazmir, is looking pretty amazing right now. Among the other players drafted in the first round were B.J. Upton, Prince Fielder, Zack Greinke, Nick Swisher, Joe Blanton, and Matt Cain. (This was the famous Moneyball draft, but all the A's got out of it really were Swisher and Blanton; none of their other picks really amounted to much.*)
*They also drafted Jonathan Papelbon in the 40th round but didn't sign him.

- The Phillies will have a much easier time repeating in the NL East than the Rays will in the AL East.
That's about all I have for now about the 2008 season. Upcoming posts in the blog will include book reviews and history lessons to help us pass the time until pitchers and catchers report in early February.

Update on 5-man infield

2008-10-28T21:05:00.000-07:00

My most loyal reader (Dad) alerted me to an article in the New York Times about Rays' manager Joe Maddon's use of the five-man infield. Money quote:

The Rays have already tried it twice this season, Zobrist said, against the Seattle Mariners on Aug. 9 and the Chicago White Sox on Aug. 24. Zobrist was the fifth infielder in Seattle, posted behind second base. The strategy paid off, and the Rays used a double play to end the 10th before winning in the 11th.

That's the kind of info it would have been nice for Tim McCarver to mention during the broadcast. Sure, you can't expect him to know everything about every strategy used by the Rays during the season. But he's been in baseball for 50 years--50 years! Did he ever see the strategy employed in any game he's ever seen? He didn't say a thing about that.

Anyway, I have to say that I've never seen the strategy in action, and I love watching something I've never seen before. It reminds me of the famous moment about 10 years ago when the Diamondbacks, nursing a 2-run lead, walked Barry Bonds with the bases loaded to bring home a run. I was watching that live and I remember shouting at the TV, "Wow! WOW!" In that particular case, it was an event that hadn't happened since the 1940s, and though I didn't know that history, I really felt I was witnessing history in the making.

Same with Saturday night's event. I hope something similar happens at least one more time this World Series.

Walk-off hits in the World Series

2008-10-25T22:48:00.000-07:00

I just finished watching the Phils beat the Rays in Game 3 of the Series. Lucky, for me I live on the west coast, where it was only 10:48 when the game ended. Gotta hand it to the Phils fans for sticking it out. I didn't see an empty seat in the house. (Insert cheap Los Angeles Dodgers fans joke here.)

A couple of observations:

- I've never seen a five-man infield, and I got the sense that Tim McCarver hadn't either. He's such a useless analyst that he never even bothered to analyze the tactic. The most he could muster was that he had never seen the maneuver in the World Series before. Well what about a regular-season game, Tim? Could you maybe talk about the pros and cons? No? Well then what good are you?

- That had to be the cheapest walk-off hit in the history of the World Series. Carlos Ruiz barely got his bat on that ball.

The final play got me wondering about how often World Series games end on walk-off plays. I actually did some research into this a few months ago for a book project I was working on, but walk-off plays are more common than you think in the post-season. We all remember Kirk Gibson, Bill Mazeroski, Joe Carter, Luis Gonzalez...

But do you remember Jose Vizcaino of the Yankees singling off Turk Wendell to win Game One of the 2000 World Series? Or Alex Gonzales homering off Jeff Weaver to win Game Four for Florida over New York in 2003?

I didn't, until I checked out Baseball-Reference.com's amazing Play Index. You can do a search for a bunch of different criteria, but they have a handy link that displays all 103 Walk-Off Hits in Post-Season Play (now 104).

In case you're too lazy to click the link, the all-time leader in career walk-off plays in the post-season is... David Ortiz, with 3. And the greatest post-season in history (based on the number of walk-off plays) was 2004.

Welcome to the club, Carlos Ruiz.

Is Game 1 a must-win game?

2008-10-22T13:00:00.000-07:00

Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus blogged today about the relative importance of Game 1 toward winning a World Series. He writes:

Winning the first game of a World Series is a strong indicator of future success. The last five World Series have been won by the Game One victor, and all-time, the winner of the first game is 63-40 in the Series.

But is it more important to win Game 2 than Game 1? Let's take a look at the World Series since 1980:

1980: Game 1 winner-Phillies; Game 2 winner-Phillies; World Series winner-Phillies
1981: Game 1 winner-Yankees; Game 2 winner-Yankees; World Series winner-Dodgers
1982: Game 1 winner-Brewers; Game 2 winner-Cardinals; World Series winner-Cardinals
1983: Game 1 winner-Phillies; Game 2 winner-Orioles; World Series winner-Orioles
1984: Game 1 winner-Tigers; Game 2 winner-Padres; World Series winner-Tigers
1985: Game 1 winner-Cardinals; Game 2 winner-Cardinals; World Series winner-Royals
1986: Game 1 winner-Red Sox; Game 2 winner-Red Sox; World Series winner-Mets
1987: Game 1 winner-Twins; Game 2 winner-Twins; World Series winner-Twins
1988: Game 1 winner-Dodgers; Game 2 winner-Dodgers; World Series winner-Dodgers
1989: Game 1 winner-A's; Game 2 winner-A's; World Series winner-A's
1990: Game 1 winner-Reds; Game 2 winner-Reds; World Series winner-Reds
1991: Game 1 winner-Twins; Game 2 winner-Twins; World Series winner-Twins
1992: Game 1 winner-Braves; Game 2 winner-Blue Jays; World Series winner-Blue Jays
1993: Game 1 winner-Blue Jays; Game 2 winner-Phillies; World Series winner-Blue Jays
1995: Game 1 winner-Braves; Game 2 winner-Braves; World Series winner-Braves
1996: Game 1 winner-Braves; Game 2 winner-Braves; World Series winner-Yankees
1997: Game 1 winner-Marlins; Game 2 winner-Indians; World Series winner-Marlins
1998: Game 1 winner-Yankees; Game 2 winner-Yankees; World Series winner-Yankees
1999: Game 1 winner-Yankees; Game 2 winner-Yankees; World Series winner-Yankees
2000: Game 1 winner-Yankees; Game 2 winner-Yankees; World Series winner-Yankees
2001: Game 1 winner-DBacks; Game 2 winner-DBacks; World Series winner-DBacks
2002: Game 1 winner-Giants; Game 2 winner-Angels; World Series winner-Angels
2003: Game 1 winner-Marlins; Game 2 winner-Yankees; World Series winner-Marlins
2004: Game 1 winner-Red Sox; Game 2 winner-Red Sox; World Series winner-Red Sox
2005: Game 1 winner-White Sox; Game 2 winner-White Sox; World Series winner-White Sox
2006: Game 1 winner-Cardinals; Game 2 winner-Tigers; World Series winner-Cardinals
2007: Game 1 winner-Red Sox; Game 2 winner-Red Sox; World Series winner-Red Sox

OK, we have a lot of data here. Here are the World Series records of each winner:

Winner of Game 1: 19 wins, 8 losses
Winner of Game 2: 18 wins, 9 losses

That tells me that it's just about as important to win Game 2 as it is to win Game 1.

Let's delve a little deeper.

How often does the team that loses Game 1 but wins Game 2 win the Series?

Not very often. Those teams have a record of 3 wins, 6 losses (the winners being the '82 Cardinals, '83 Orioles, and '02 Angels)

How often does the team that wins Game 1 but loses Game 2 go on to win the Series?

About even. Those teams have a record of 5 wins, 4 losses (the winners being the '84 Tigers, '93 Blue Jays, '97 Marlins, '03 Marlins, and '06 Cardinals).

I could go on, analyzing home field advantage, quality of starting pitchers, and so on. But unfortunately, all we're going to discover is that, in a seven-game series, EVERY game is important. It's better to win than to lose.

Sorry the conclusion isn't more enlightening than that.

Did the Rays buck destiny by winning Game 7?

2008-10-20T10:46:00.000-07:00

Did the Tampa Bay Rays' victory over the Red Sox last night in Game 7 buck history and destiny? As King Kaufman pointed out in his column today, teams that come back after a 3-1 deficit to force a Game 7 usually win the deciding game of the series:

Such teams were 11-3 in seventh games before Sunday and they'd won five straight. The last team that failed to complete the three-game comeback had been the 1992 Pittsburgh Pirates, who lost the N.L. Championship Series to Atlanta on Sid Bream's dash. Before that you have to go back to Cincinnati in the 1972 World Series to find a team that won Games 5 and 6 only to lose Game 7.

However, if you look at the bigger picture, it's not so clear cut. Here's the bigger picture: Do teams that win Game 6 (to force a Game 7) usually also win Game 7? Another way of putting it is, is there momentum in baseball?

Let's first take a look at the World Series.

Number of seven-game World Series: 36
Number of times the Game 6 winner also won Game 7: 18

Now let's take a look at 7-game League Championship Series (since 1985):

Number of seven-game LCS: 14
Number of times the Game 6 winner also won Game 7: 8

To summarize, out of fifty post-season series that went seven full games, the winner of Game 6 basically split its record in Game 7. (I could also go back and look at the Division Series and the LCS before it expanded to seven games, but I suspect the results will be similar.)

Bottom line: Acknowledging that the small sample size may be an issue, there is NO EVIDENCE of momentum when it comes to post-season baseball. What there is evidence of is this: post-season series that go the distance usually feature evenly matched teams, and when two evenly matched teams split the first six games, then the seventh game usually is decided by luck or home field advantage or some element other than "momentum."

Best Ever: Los Angeles Dodgers

2008-10-14T16:20:00.000-07:00

Continuing my long running series on the greatest ever position player and pitcher for every franchise, today I'd like to take a look at one of the remaining playoff teams, the Los Angeles Dodgers. (Truly dedicated readers--that means you, Dad--will remember that I've already profiled other playoff teams, including the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs.)

I'm going to split the Dodgers into the Los Angeles period and the Brooklyn period. Today we'll take on the L.A. Dodgers.

Pitcher

Contenders: Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Don Sutton. (Apologies to Fernando Valenzuela and Orel Hershiser.)

This one isn't as obvious as it seems. The obvious choice is Sandy Koufax, who dominated baseball from 1962 to 1966 and led the Dodgers to three pennants and two World Series. The thing about Koufax is, he was tough. He pitched in immense pain, he often would pitch on short rest, he pitched tons of innings, his team almost never scored runs for him, yet he still pitched brilliantly and won more games than anyone during his heyday. He finished his career with 165 Dodger wins.

Don Sutton and Don Drysdale, by contrast, weren't as dominant as Koufax, but they had much longer careers. Sutton won 233 games with the Dodgers (324 total), while Drysdale won 209. Those differences compared to Koufax aren't trivial. 68 victories (vs. Sutton) and 44 (vs. Drysdale) are very meaningful indicators of greatness, and a case could be made that, because of his longer career and greater durability, Sutton, not Koufax, was the greatest pitcher in Dodger history.

However, I'm not prepared to make that case. I'm going to stick with the obvious choice, Koufax, because of his peak value, his clutch performances (especially in the 1963 and 1965 World Series and in the 1965 and 1966 pennant races), and his absolute dominance for five+ years.

Player

Contenders: Steve Garvey, Mike Piazza, Maury Wills

If Piazza had played with the Dodgers more than six years, he would be the clear choice as the greatest position player in L.A. Dodgers history. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons that, even 10 years later, don't make much sense, the Dodgers shipped him to Florida and thus traded away the greatest hitting catcher of all time. He spent more time as a Met than as a Dodger, and I think when I do this for the Mets, I'll probably pick Mike Piazza as the greatest Met ever. I don't want to choose him for two teams, so I'm going to leave him with the Mets.

That leaves Garvey and Wills. (Full disclosure: Garvey was my favorite player when I was a kid. In Little League, I chose number 6, and I imitated his batting stance. As an adult, I saw him in the Salt Lake City airport and was too nervous to approach him.) Garvey was a hitting machine. From 1974 to 1980, he averaged over 200 hits per year and slugged 20-30 home runs to boot. He almost never got hurt, putting together a consecutive games streak that reached 1,207. He didn't walk much, so his sabermetric numbers don't look so hot today, but during his prime, he was pretty much feared and respected by everybody. In fact, I would guess that most contemporary observers would have expected him to make the Hall of Fame by now. He's not, of course, and I don't think he deserves induction. He just misses the cut.

Maury Wills is another player who has missed the cut for the Hall of Fame. He's an interesting player. He helped reintroduce stolen bases to baseball when he nabbed 104 in the 1962 season, an unheard-of number at the time. Though he didn't play full time until the age of 27, he still amassed 2,134 hits (1,732 for L.A.). The negatives: his on-base percentages were atrocious. In spite of all the steals and hits, he only scored 100 runs in a season twice... partly because his Dodger teammates weren't very good at driving him in, mostly because his best on-base percentage was .355, not good for a lead-off hitter. He was pretty good defensively, winning two Gold Gloves, but nobody ever hailed his defense.

The winner: Since it comes down to Garvey and Wills in my book, it's an easy choice to select Steve Garvey as the greatest position player in L.A. Dodgers history.

Blog vacation is over

2008-10-07T11:00:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the blog vacation last week. I took the family to Disneyland and Legoland, which means I missed most of the baseball games last week. However, I did watch the last two Sox-Angels games. Those were tense, hard-fought games, and I hope the Rays-Red Sox series at least matches the tension.

It is unimaginably great for the baseball fan in me to see the Rays in the post-season and the Yankees watching from home -- though New York fans and many casual fans would disagree. I mentioned to my wife that there was a possibility that the World Series would feature the Rays and Brewers, and she wondered why anybody would even bother.

Even though TV ratings would stink if the Rays beat the Sox, it's still great for the game when a team can come back from last place in the toughest division in baseball to win at least a share of the pennant. It (temporarily) shuts up all the whiners who claim that their teams "can't compete against the big-money franchises" because they don't have a huge TV deal or they don't have a new stadium.

Not that people will ever stop whining. And guess what? It's going to get worse. With the new Yankee Stadium, the Bombers are going to rake in even more revenue and buy up even more free agents. It's going to make them competitive for at least a generation. But as we saw this year, it doesn't guarantee anything. The Yanks haven't won the World Series since 2000.

As a fan, I lean toward the Red Sox and Dodgers, mainly because of the history and tradition of the two franchises. (They met in the 1916 World Series, when Babe Ruth helped pitch the Sox to its second consecutive championship.) Yet if it's the Rays-Phillies, it could help usher in a new era of parity -- or, at least, perceived parity -- in which more teams, as long as they have smart decision-makers, can compete. That's good for the game.

100 Years Ago Today: Merkle's Boner

2008-09-23T11:53:00.000-07:00

The headline says it all: On Sept. 23, 1908, New York Giants first baseman Fred Merkle committed the most celebrated gaffe in the history of baseball affecting one of the greatest pennant races of all time.

The Pirates, Cubs, and Giants were neck-and-neck-and-neck throughout most of the season, leading up to the September 23 game between New York and Chicago at the Polo Grounds. With the score tied 1–1 and darkness falling in the bottom of the ninth, the Giants had runners on first and third with two out. Shortstop Al Bridwell singled to center to score what everybody thought was the winning run. Believing the game was over and trying to avoid the onslaught of screaming fans onto the field, the runner on first—poor Fred Merkle—ran straight to the dugout without touching second base, a common practice in those days.

Alert Cubs second baseman Johnny Evers, who knew the rule book, retrieved a ball (though it probably wasn’t the actual game ball, which was lost in the melee of swarming fans), got the attention of umpire Hank O’Day, and tagged second base. O’Day ruled Merkle out on the force play, but because it was dark and the field was overrun with fans, the game was called a tie.

The Giants protested the decision, and NL president Harry Pulliam ruled that the game would be replayed at the end of the season if it affected the pennant race.

It did. The two teams met again in the final game of the season in an epic battle between Christy Mathewson of the Giants and Chicago’s “Three-Finger” Brown, won by the Cubs 4–2.

For the rest of his playing days, Merkle would be reminded of his bonehead play and accused by ignorant fans of blowing the pennant for the Giants. In fact, Merkle was simply following baseball tradition, and Giants manager John McGraw never blamed Merkle. What most fans didn’t (and don’t) know was that Evers had tried to capitalize on the same kind of blunder in an earlier game, but umpire O’Day had disallowed his protest; when it came up again, O’Day was ready to rule on the technicality.

Goodbye Yankee Stadium

2008-09-22T13:06:00.001-07:00

As you may have heard (assuming you read ESPN, SI, TSN, or just about any other sports-related magazine, website, or blog), old Yankee Stadium hosted its last game yesterday. The Yanks beat the Orioles 7-3 in an apparently emotional farewell. Everybody's doing their tributes to Yankee Stadium, and if I don't, I'll be kicked out of the baseball bloggers union. So here goes.

Some random (negative) thoughts about Yankee Stadium:

- The fact that there will be no post-season baseball this year in The Bronx is further proof that there are no "baseball gods." If there were, and if They were Yankee fans (why wouldn't They be, after all those championships?), then the last game at Yankee Stadium this year would have featured Mariano Rivera shutting down some hapless NL opponent in game four or game seven of the World Series. But alas, the Tampa Bay Rays ruined everything by actually being good this season. Sorry, Steinbrenner family.

- In fact, the last World Series game in Yankee Stadium history came in game six of the 2003 series, when Josh Beckett shut out the Yanks on five hits to clinch Florida's unexpected championship.

- The last playoff game in Yankee Stadium was an equally ignominious loss for New York in 2007 against the Cleveland Indians in the Division Series.

- The last important game against the archrival Red Sox in Yankee Stadium was game 7 of the 2004 ALCS, when New York completed the greatest collapse in American sports history by losing 10-3. (Of course, you remember that the New Yorkers became the first club to lose a series after leading 3 games to 0.)

Yes, yes, I'm focusing on the bad stuff. Sorry about that. My anti-Yankee sentiment is rising to the surface. For about the first 80 years of its history, pretty much only good stuff (for the Yankees) happened at the Stadium. All those championships, all the times they demolished Boston or the Dodgers or any other club that tried to knock the club off its throne. All the great players who patrolled its environs: Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, Jackson, and so on.

It's sad to see such a vital piece of baseball history tossed aside. On the other hand, the place was old, and the march of progress requires replacing old with new.

Goodbye, old Yankee Stadium.

Hello, new Yankee Stadium.

New Veterans Committee Ballot

2008-09-17T20:43:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, the Baseball Hall of Fame announced finalists for consideration by the Veterans Committee. I covered each finalist ad nauseam here, here, here, here, and here.

That ballot covers players and managers of the pre-1942 period. This week, they announced a similar list for the post-1942 era.

Here's who made the cut: Dick Allen, Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Tony Oliva, Al Oliver, Vada Pinson, Ron Santo, Luis Tiant, Joe Torre and Maury Wills.

I could milk this news for about 2 weeks worth of blog posts, but Joe Posnanski today did a great evaluation of each candidate, and honestly I don't have much to add.

My bottom-line take on each candidate is this:

Dick Allen: Great player, too short a career. No.
Gil Hodges: Borderline case, but no.
Jim Kaat: Yes, I would vote for him.
Tony Oliva: No.
Al Oliver: Definitely not.
Vada Pinson: No.
Ron Santo: Yes. He's probably the best eligible player not currently in the Hall.
Luis Tiant: No.
Joe Torre: Pretty much a lock to get in. I would probably vote for him.
Maury Wills: No.

HOF: Deacon White

2008-09-11T10:51:00.001-07:00

Who?

That's what most baseball fans are probably saying when the name Deacon White is brought up in relation to possible Hall of Fame induction. Here's what I wrote about Deacon White in the first edition of "The Book of Baseball Literacy":

A remarkable player and man, White was one of professional baseball’s first great stars. He could play anywhere in the field, and he could hit—twice leading his league in batting and three times in RBIs. Respected and admired by just about everybody, White earned his nickname because he reputedly never smoked, drank, caroused, or cursed, and he carried his Bible on road trips.

A visionary, he was among the first players to complain about their shoddy treatment by owners; he threatened to test the reserve clause in the courts, and he helped in the Players League revolt of 1890.

When White was sold from Buffalo to Pittsburgh, he refused to report unless he received some payment; Pittsburgh ownership relented and handed over about $1,500. In explaining his bold action, White spoke for all ballplayers who have ever been treated like property: “No man can sell my carcass,” he declared, “unless I get at least half.”

He was clearly a very interesting person and player. I had a lot of admiration for him until I read this quote on White's Wikipedia page:

According to Lee Allen in The National League Story (1961), White was one of the last people to believe that the earth is flat. He tried and failed to convince his teammates that they were living on a flat plane and not a globe; they ridiculed him. Then one asked to be convinced, and the Deacon gave him an argument suited to the hypothesis that the earth is not really turning. He convinced the teammate but the argument would not prove that the earth is not a sphere.

Yikes.

Anyway, the question is, does he belong in the Hall of Fame alongside the other great players of his era: John Montgomery Ward, Cap Anson (I know, I know, Anson was a despicable human being who helped solidify the color line, but, first, he wasn't the only person responsible, and second, he was a great baseball player), Harry and George Wright, and so on?

I say no. He's an interesting player, a very good player, but he wasn't necessarily the best player of his era, and he's not the best eligible player not currently in the Hall. Back in the 1940s, when men who saw baseball during White's era were still alive, White wasn't selected for the Hall. Why is he more worthy now, in 2008, when he wasn't worthy in 1948 or 1939?

HOF: Carl Mays?

2008-09-08T09:52:00.001-07:00

Carl Mays is another of the short-list candidates for the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee. They're going to decide this fall whether he should be inducted posthumously for baseball's ultimate honor.

A lot of people, including the pitcher himself, have said that if it were not for a fateful afternoon in 1920, Mays would be in the Hall of Fame. He was an outstanding pitcher, a five-time 20-game winner who ranked among the league’s best pitchers for much of his career, mostly with the Red Sox and Yankees. However, he will always be remembered for one thing: throwing the underhand fastball—not a spitball, as some have suggested—that killed Indians shortstop Ray Chapman.

But that’s not the only reason he’s not in the Hall of Fame. Fred Lieb, a former member of the Hall of Fame’s Veterans Committee, said that during discussions of Mays, the Chapman incident never came up. What actually kept him out were the allegations—never proven but convincing to many—that Mays threw a game in the 1921 World Series.

In all, the picture of Mays is not a pretty one. He was a bitter, resentful man who was already one of the least-liked players in the league before the Chapman incident, who angered managers and teammates with a troublemaker attitude that probably curtailed his career, and who, sadly, wished he could make the world forget that one of his pitches accidentally killed a fellow major leaguer.

The fact that the Veterans Committee is re-evaluating Mays after previously rejecting him is curious. Even though he had a number of very good years, he finished with only 207 career victories, very low on the HOF spectrum. Bert Blyleven won 287 games during a time of 5-man rotations, yet he has fallen short. There's no way that Mays belongs in while Blyleven (and others) are shut out.

More HOF evaluations

2008-09-05T10:54:00.000-07:00

Continuing the discussion of Hall of Fame candidates currently being considered by the Veterans Committee... I've talked at length about Joe Gordon and Vern Stephens. Those are two borderline candidates: I support Gordon's inclusion and reject Stephens. Today I'll quickly cover some of the other guys:

Wes Ferrell: A six-time 20-game winner with the Indians and Red Sox. If selected, Wes would join his brother Rick in the Hall, the only brother combination that I can think of. However, there's no way that Wes belongs (it's questionable that Rick belongs, but that's another matter). Wes was a great pitcher in his 20s, winning 190 games from age 21 to 30 with a .600 winning percentage. In 1938, however, according to Wikipedia, he suffered an arm injury that required surgery, and he never pitched effectively again. Like a lot of players from the era before modern medicine, a Wes Ferrell of today would probably have taken a year off to rehab his arm and pitched another 8 years, ensuring his selection to the Hall. But unfortunately for him, he didn't. Based on his actual career (not his hypothetical career), he does not belong in the Hall of Fame.

Sherry Magee: A very good dead-ball era hitter, Magee posted big numbers from 1905 through 1918. He didn't hit a lot of homers because no one did in that era, but he had excellent power for his time. His OPS+ is 136, meaning he was 36% better than the league average even after adjusting for park effects (which, in Magee's case, is important since he played in the Baker Bowl). The only problem with Magee is longevity. He finished his career with 2,169 hits, which would be on the very low end of the HOF spectrum. Three or four more good years -- especially with the lively ball era just around the corner -- would have given him a key to the Hall, but the reality is that he just doesn't belong.

Mickey Vernon: A good hitter for a long time with the lowly Washington Senators. He never posted huge numbers, partly because of his home ballpark, which was terrible for hitters. His career stats are good, but not great: 2495 hits, 116 OPS+. The problem with letting in Mickey Vernon is that it sets the bar for Hall of Fame entry so low that you'll have to let in a bunch of other good but not great first basemen: Steve Garvey, Norm Cash, Mark Grace, Al Oliver, Bill Buckner... The line has to be drawn somewhere, and I draw it at Mickey Vernon. No to him.

Bucky Walters: A pretty good pitcher in the 1930s and 1940s. Much less qualified than Wes Ferrell, in my opinion. If you think Dave Stieb belongs in the Hall of Fame, then you might think Walters does, too. I don't think either belong, unfortunately.

In a future post (probably next week), I'll take on the case of Carl Mays, which is fascinating in its own right, and Deacon White.

Vern Stephens

2008-09-03T10:30:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I talked about Joe Gordon, who is on the short list for Hall of Fame induction by the Veterans Committee. Today I'll take on the case of Vern Stephens.

Vern Stephens

When I first became aware of Vern Stephens, I was shocked that I hadn't heard of him before. He doesn't appear in many history books, but his statistics are eye-popping. I invite you to visit his page on Baseball-Reference.com for a taste. If you thought Ernie Banks was the first slugging shortstop, you've completely missed out on Vern "Junior" Stephens. From age 21 through 29, he was about as good as it gets: a middle infielder who hits for power, has a pretty good batting eye, and drives in runs. He took his talents to an entirely new level after being traded in November 1947 to the Red Sox, where he drove in 137, 159, and 144 runs his first three years in Boston.

Of course, there's a reason he could drive in that many runs: he had baseball's greatest on-base machine, Ted Williams, batting in front of him. In fact, in 1949, both Stephens and Williams drove in 159 runs (teammate Bobby Doerr picked up the scraps with 109 RBIs himself).

At that point, Stephens had built himself a Hall of Fame-caliber career. Then it all fell apart. According to a biographical article about Stephens by Mark Armour published in the SABR Bio Project, Stephens injured his knee in 1951 and never got healthy again. He was only 30 years old, and perhaps today with modern medicine, Stephens could have rehabbed his knee and gotten back to baseball. But alas, he didn't, and his career basically ended, though he hung on for a few futile years.

His life ended the same, sad way: In 1968, he suffered a heart attack while working a construction job and died. He was only 48.

The case for Stephens: He was a powerful hitter who played a key defensive position. He racked up big numbers in his 20s.

The case against Stephens: Injuries curtailed his production before he could post big career numbers. He finished with 247 home runs and 1,147 RBIs, not Hall of Fame-caliber.

My opinion: Not really a close call. Stephens is an interesting player, and if he had continued posting big numbers until age 35 or so, he might belong in the Hall. But he didn't, and he doesn't.

Joe Gordon

2008-09-02T10:45:00.000-07:00

I've been a little slow to update the blog lately, but I'm back now.

Last week came news that the Baseball Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee was evaluating several potential members from the pre-war era: Allie Reynolds, Joe Gordon, Vern Stephens, Bill Dahlen, Wes Ferrell, Sherry Magee, Carl Mays, Mickey Vernon, Bucky Walters and Deacon White. There's a case to be made for and against each of them, and today I want to talk about Gordon. Does he belong?

Joe Gordon

Gordon played second base for the Yankees and Indians from 1938 through 1950, with a couple of years off while in the army during World War II. In his early years, he was a very good offensive player, good for 20-30 home runs and 100 RBIs per year with above average OBPs. Think Miguel Tejada. Like Tejada, Gordon even won an MVP award, though in all honesty, Gordon was not the best player on his team that year (Charlie Keller or Joe DiMaggio), let alone the league (Ted Williams).

Even after he returned from the war, Gordon continued as an excellent player. The Yankees didn't have any use for him, trading him to Cleveland, where he starred on the 1948 World Series champion team. For that one year at least, the middle infield tandem of Lou Boudreau and Joe Gordon ranks as possibly the greatest ever.

Gordon retired at age 35, even though he was still a good hitter; with the DH today, he probably would have played until 40. The final numbers don't seem all that great: 11 seasons, 1,530 hits, 253 home runs, 975 RBIs, .268/.357/.466. His career OPS+ is 120, which means he was about 20% better than average during his career. By comparison, Joe DiMaggio's career OPS+ is 155 and Ted Williams's is an eye-popping 191. (Tejada's is only 112.)

The case for Gordon: He was a very good hitter playing a tough defensive position. His career numbers are hurt by having to miss two prime years to military service. Give him back those years, and he finishes with about 300 home runs, close to 1,200 RBIs, and about 1,900 hits. He's better than some other second basemen in the Hall, such as Red Schoendienst and Bobby Doerr.

The case against Gordon: Even with that credit, his numbers still aren't worthy of the top-tier of the Hall of Fame. He's no Rogers Hornsby or Nap Lajoie, or even Roberto Alomar. He was a very good player on a lot of great teams. Just because he's better than a couple of other players already in the Hall doesn't necessarily make him worthy on his own.

My opinion: I'm coming around on Joe Gordon. I started out skeptical, but after doing the research, I do think he belongs in the Hall of Fame. If he were still alive to enjoy the honor, I would be rooting for him to make it. The fact that he died 30 years ago, however, dampens my enthusiasm quite a bit. At this stage, I don't really understand the necessity to induct people who can't appreciate the honor, but that's the way it works, I guess.

Ultimately, yes, I would vote for him if I could.

PS. Gordon has a claim to fame that will probably never be equaled: In 1960, while managing the Indians, he was involved the only trade of major-league managers ever when the Indians traded him to the Tigers for their manager, Jimmy Dykes

Next up for Hall of Fame

2008-08-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

Sports Illustrated reports on the next steps for the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee:

Allie Reynolds, Joe Gordon and Vern Stephens are among 10 players whose careers began before 1943 who will be considered by the Hall of Fame's constituted Veterans Committee when it meets on Dec. 7.

Bill Dahlen, Wes Ferrell, Sherry Magee, Carl Mays, Mickey Vernon, Bucky Walters and Deacon White also will be on the ballot, the Hall said Monday. The 10 finalists were selected by a committee of the Baseball Writers' Association of America that considered pre-1943 players. A 12-member committee of Hall of Famers, media and historians will vote.

In the coming days, I'll address the relative credentials of each of these candidates. My initial take is that none of them are worthy of the Hall, but I need to consider them more closely before rendering the final decision. In particular, I want to look closer at Joe Gordon and Deacon White.

Stay tuned for my analysis this week.

On this date... Marichal vs. Roseboro

2008-08-22T20:06:00.000-07:00

I almost let this day go by without talking about the infamous incident between Giants pitcher Juan Marichal and Dodgers catcher Johnny Roseboro, which happened on August 22, 1965.

The Dodgers and Giants began the day separated by just 1-1/2 games in the standings. The Giants were hosting the Dodgers in Candlestick Park, and the game promised to be a tense pitchers duel: Marichal (19-9) vs. Sandy Koufax (21-4). As the old cliche goes, these two teams just didn't like each other. In the bottom of the third, with the Dodgers leading 2-1, Marichal came to the plate to face Koufax. Earlier in the game, Marichal had knocked down two Dodger players. I'm going to let ESPN's page 2 tell the next part of the story:

"When Marichal came up to bat, I tried a knockdown from behind the plate, throwing the ball close to his nose when I returned it to the pitcher," recalled Roseboro. "I expected Marichal to attack me in some way. If he had said anything to me, I had studied karate, and I was ready to annihilate him."

The karate didn't help. When another of Roseboro's throws came too close to Marichal's ear, Marichal clubbed Roseboro on the head with his bat, opening up a two-inch gash that would require 14 stitches and starting a bench-clearing brawl that lasted 14 minutes. Marichal was handed an eight-game suspension and fined $1,750, a huge sum in those days.

Did the eight-game suspension hurt the Giants? The Giants went on to win that game to pull within a 1/2 game of the dodgers, but then they lost their next four games, including the August 26 game that would have been Marichal's next start. His next one after that would have been on August 31, which the Giants won. Marichal came back on September 2 and lost, 4-3. In the month of September overall, he went 4-4 with a 3.55 ERA, his second worst month of the season.

The Giants went on to lose the pennant to the Dodgers by 2 games, but that included a 14-game winning streak in September. Every loss they did suffer ended up very important to the Giants, so it's hard to blame the games Marichal missed for the loss of the pennant. The Dodgers pitching was just too strong to overcome.

Happy Birthday Roberto Clemente

2008-08-18T11:22:00.001-07:00

Roberto Clemente, the great Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder, would have been 74 today. I was too young to see him play, but he was Puerto Rican and I am Puerto Rican, so I always felt a connection to him. I recently read David Maraniss's book Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero and came away with more admiration for the man.

Clemente possessed perhaps the best outfield arm of all time, but he also excelled at the plate, lashing line drives in droves on the way to four batting titles, 13 seasons over .300, and exactly 3,000 career hits. He won an MVP Award and helped his Pittsburgh Pirates to two World Series victories.

Most long-time fans can tell stories about the amazing things Clemente could do in the outfield, like throw out a runner at home from the warning track on one bounce, or gun a runner at third on the fly from the right-field corner. He was that good and that memorable.

During his career, he fought to help Latin ballplayers gain acceptance into the major league fraternity, but his dedication and valor didn’t end on the field: His death on New Year’s Eve 1972 occurred while he was aboard a mercy mission carrying supplies to earthquake-ravaged Nicaragua.

One story from 1971 illustrates the way Clemente played the game—and lived his life. He was 37 years old and worn down by 17 seasons of bold and sometimes reckless outfield play. But on that day, he proved to 14,933 baseball fans at the Houston Astrodome what his teammates and his family already knew: that he was the kind of player who would run into a brick wall to help his team. It happened on August 27, as his Pittsburgh Pirates were coasting to their second straight division title. They played the first game of a three-game series in Houston and led 7-3 in the eighth inning. A right-handed hitter caught a pitch off the end of the bat and sent the ball high into the air, curling toward the right-field foul line, where a brick wall separated the field from the fans. Clemente was playing the hitter to pull the ball, in right-center, giving him a long run to make the out. He began to sprint madly. When the ball reached its peak and began its descent, Clemente seemed too far from it to make the catch.

A regular human being would have slowed down at that point, let the ball drop; no use risking a nasty confrontation with that brick wall. The ball would have been foul anyway—no harm done. But such was not Clemente’s style. He kept running after it, and the ball kept twisting toward the stands. Fans in the first dozen or so rows stood up to catch the souvenir, assuming that it would bounce on the hard turf and into the seats. Then they saw Clemente sprinting toward them, and they must have thought about that brick wall, and they must have realized that he wasn’t going to stop in time. Clemente himself certainly didn’t. He just kept running and running, his eyes fixed on the ball, his mind focused on one single effort: making the catch for out number three. He reached out and, two steps in front of the wall, made the catch. Then he braced himself for the impact. Smack! The wall didn’t give an inch. Clemente did. The force knocked him to the ground, but he never let go of the ball. He got up slowly and tossed the ball back toward the infield. The game went on.

Later in the clubhouse, a reporter asked him why he had taken the risk; why did he go after such a meaningless out? Clemente looked confused. He didn’t understand the question. The reporter explained: He could have hurt himself—was the catch really worth it? Why didn’t Clemente let the ball drop? Clemente paused. Then he answered simply, “I wanted to catch the ball.” And the reporters understood. Anybody who knew Clemente knew that there was only one way for him to do anything—the right way. The score of the game, the position of brick walls, the risk of injury—none of that made a difference. You dedicate yourself to something, you accept the responsibility, and you go all out. Always.

He once said, “I want to be remembered as a ballplayer who gave all he had to give.” He is.

Remembering Skip Caray

2008-08-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

Longtime Braves announcer Skip Caray died suddenly last week, and yesterday, the team held a memorial service.

I thought I'd join the action with my own memories of Caray. I came of age as a baseball fan in the 1980s when the only games you could watch regularly were Braves games on WTBS. I was always a Dodger fan, but I liked the Braves and, like millions of others, I was a big Dale Murphy fan. Skip Caray was the voice of the Braves at the time, and his distinctive voice carried me through countless summers.

I'm pretty sure Caray called the infamous July 4, 1985, game that lasted 19 innings and finally ended at 3:53AM. I remember watching that game early in the evening, turning it off, and then turning on the TV at about 11pm California time to discover that the game was still going. It was a wild one. In the 18th, with the Mets leading by a run and two outs, light-hitting Braves pitcher Rick Camp hit the most improbable home run of any career to tie it up and send it to the 19th, when the Braves finally lost. Amazingly, even though it was 4 in the morning, the Braves followed through with their promised fireworks show for the remaining 8,000 fans.

I don't remember Skip Caray's reactions to that game, but I do have a favorite Skip Caray moment. It came later, must have been in the 1990s. The visiting team was trailing with one out in the top of the ninth and a runner on first. After the game, WTBS would show an episode of The Andy Griffith Show or Roseanne or some other sitcom, and Caray was doing a promo for the show when the next batter came to the plate.

I swear on my life that Caray said something along the lines of, "And we'll be showing 'Roseanne' just as soon as [the batter] hits into a 6-4-3 double play."

The VERY NEXT PITCH, the batter hit a grounder to the shortstop.

Caray, ever the professional, simply said, "6-"

The shortstop flipped the ball to the second baseman....

Caray said, "4-"

...who threw it to first.

"3."

As I and millions of other fans sat giggling or shouting at home, Caray and his broadcasting partners remained absolutely quiet for a good 15 seconds until finally he announced the final score and totals. He made no mention of his lucky prediction at all.

It was a great moment, one I'll never forget.

Non-baseball post: Olympic swimming

2008-08-11T10:15:00.000-07:00

Here's the question I have every four years during the Olympics: Why are there so many swimming medals? Michael Phelps is going for 8 gold medals, which is great for him, but why does he get that opportunity when a sprinter or cyclist or boxer or beach volleyball player only gets one or two shots?

I understand the distances. 50M, 100M, 200M, 400M, 1500M that all makes sense. I understand the relays. But why all the different strokes? Why the medleys?

In track, you have sprints and hurdles. But you don't have the gunny sack race. You don't have the crab walk. You don't have a relay when one person hops on his left leg, and the next guy hops on his right leg, and the last guy hops on two legs.

Yet in swimming you have freestyle (which makes perfect sense... it's the fastest stroke), and you have breaststroke, and butterfly, and backstroke. And then just for fun, you have the medley, when one person does each stroke. That makes no sense to me.

Trouble with the blog

2008-08-07T11:12:00.000-07:00

I'm having some trouble with the blog, so some RSS newsfeed readers may have received my Cubs post twice.

Greatest Ever: Chicago Cubs

2008-08-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been away from the blog for a few days.

But I'm back now and it's time to renew my ongoing feature about the greatest position player and pitcher for each franchise. In the past, I've covered the Pirates, Cardinals, Phillies, Atlanta Braves, Boston Braves, Philadelphia A's, and Oakland A's.

Today, I'll take on everybody's favorite cursed team, the Chicago Cubs. The Cubs are one of the oldest teams in baseball, having operated continuously since the National League's founding in 1876. In my feature, I'm focusing on post 1900 players because that's generally considered the dividing line between old baseball and the modern game. (It would take a whole separate post to explain that further.)

Anyway, here goes.

Pitcher

Contenders: Mordecai Brown, Ferguson Jenkins, Charley Root.

I was surprised to discover that Root is the Cubs' all-time leader in victories. He's most famous for giving up Babe Ruth's called shot home run in the 1932 World Series, but his career goes way beyond that moment. He was a solid pitcher for the Cubs from 1926 to 1937, usually good for about 15-20 victories per year during an era when the best pitchers were winning 20-25 per year. With modern relief pitching and 5-man rotation, I'd say it's the equivalent of winning 10-15 games today. Good but not great.

Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown* was one of the Cubs' pitching aces who led the team during their dynasty period of 1906 through 1908. He won 20+ games six years in a row (1906-1911), usually with excellent ERAs. His best year was 1908, when he won 29 games for the pennant-winning Cubs, including, by my calculations, four in the last nine days of the season. He finished his career with 188 victories as a Cub, 239 overall.

*Why "Three-Finger"? Glad you asked. Seems he lost his forefinger in a corn-grinder accident at the age of 7. He attributed his wicked curveball to the unnatural break caused by the mangled hand.

Ferguson Jenkins pitched 10 seasons with the Cubs (19 overall) and ranks fifth on the Cubs' all-time list with 163 wins. He won 20+ games six years in a row (sound familiar?) for teams that were good but not great. His ERA+ stat (which compares his ERAs to the league-average ERAs) are in the mid-100s, which means he was substantially better than the league. Jenkins was a great pitcher in a tough era.

The winner: It is a very close call between Brown and Jenkins, but I'm going to go with Brown for two reasons. First, he played on pennant-winners -- three of them -- and he was a key performer in each victory. Second, he was much better relative to his league than Jenkins was (based on the ERA+ scores; check out their pages at baseball-reference.com). If Jenkins had played with the Cubs a few more years and compiled better counting stats, then maybe he would claim the title, but I'm going to stick with Brown.

Hitters

Contenders: Ernie Banks, Ryne Sandberg, Sammy Sosa (apologies to Cap Anson, who played in the 1800s)

Known for his sunny demeanor, Banks won two MVP awards as a shortstop, becoming the first MVP winner to play for a second-division team. He was a devastating offensive force in his younger days, but after injuring his knees, he became a slow, immobile first baseman. In fact, he logged more time at first base than at shortstop over the course of his career. From 1962 on, he was just an average first baseman with good but not great power.

Ryne Sandberg inherited the title of baseball's best second baseman from Joe Morgan in 1984 and kept it for almost a decade, when Roberto Alomar took over. Sandberg won the '84 MVP award and later became the first second baseman since Rogers Hornsby to lead the league in home runs. He also won nine Gold Glove awards. I have to acknowledge, however, that Sandberg's offensive totals were much helped by his home park, Wrigley Field. His OPS+ scores aren't that great.

Sammy Sosa is the only player to have three 60-home run seasons, yet in none of those years did he lead the league in that category. Amazing. (He did lead the league with 50 in 2000 and 49 in 2002.) At his peak from 1998 to 2002, he was practically unstoppable. He seems to be under a cloud of suspicion for using performance-enhancing drugs, but he never failed a drug test and he was not mentioned in the Mitchell Report. His career with the Cubs ended badly, but it shouldn't overshadow his contributions to the club.

The Winner: This is a tough one. Each player has his pros and cons, and each of them was helped to some degree by playing in Wrigley. If Banks had played shortstop his whole career, he would easily be number one. If Sosa's best years hadn't come at the height of the steroid era, then he would easily be number one.

I'm going to go with Banks, though. It comes down to this: If I were starting a team and could choose one of these players at their peak, I would choose the young Banks at shortstop hitting 47 home runs instead of the young Sosa in right field hitting 66.

The big baseball news

2008-08-01T10:05:00.000-07:00

Have two future Hall of Famers ever been traded on the same day, the way Manny Ramirez and Ken Griffey Jr. were traded yesterday? I doubt it. There's a lot of great analysis of the trades out there, including from Salon's King Kaufman, Baseball-Intellect.com, Dodger Thoughts, and others.

I thought I'd look at the historical aspect. What truly great players--future Hall of Famers--were shipped off to new teams in mid-season? Here's what I've come up with (probably not a complete list, but a pretty big one):

Steve Carlton: Traded at the end of his career several times, mostly to non-contenders. He'd lost his effectiveness and was just barely hanging on.

Jimmie Foxx: Only 34 years old, Foxx's skills were shot. At 32, he'd hit 36 home runs. Two years later, he would hit 8 for two teams, the Red Sox and Cubs. The Sox were a second-place team when they released Foxx, and the Cubs picked him up off the waiver wire, probably in an attempt to boost attendance.

Rickey Henderson: He started the 1989 season as a Yankee, but that team was going nowhere while the A's were in the middle of a run of three straight pennants. The A's traded three non-stars for Henderson and went on to dominate the A.L. Henderson even won the 1990 A.L. MVP award. In 1993, the A's were descending, so they sent Henderson to the Blue Jays in a deadline deal. The Jays went on to win their second straight World Series with Henderson. He was traded again in mid-season in 1997 from the Padres to the Angels, but that deal had no impact on the pennant races.

Randy Johnson: In one of the great deadline day pickups, the Astros traded Freddy Garcia, Carlos Guillen, and a player to be named later for Johnson on July 31, 1998. Johnson, who had been unhappy in Seattle and pitched poorly for them, went on to post a 10-1 record for division-winning Houston.

Mark McGwire: In 1997, the A's weren't going anywhere and were looking to get something in return for McGwire, who was going to be a free agent after the season. They didn't get much from the Cardinals (Eric Ludwick, T.J. Mathews, and Blake Stein), and McGwire went on the following season to write his name in the history books.

Greg Maddux: On deadline day 2006, Maddux agreed to a trade from the going-nowhere Cubs to the contending Dodgers in exchange for slick-fielding shortstop Cesar Izturis. Izturis was a bust, and Maddux went on to post a 6-3 record for the Dodgers in the last two months of the season before departing as a free agent.

Willie Mays: According to Wikipedia, "In May 1972, the 41-year-old Mays was traded to the New York Mets for Charlie Williams and $50,000.[19] At the time, the Giants franchise was losing money. Owner Horace Stoneham could not guarantee Mays an income after retirement and the Mets offered Mays a position as a coach upon his retirement." Mays was pretty much finished as a player, and he popped just 14 home runs as a Met during his two seasons there. But he did get back to the World Series in 1973, so it worked out for him.

Willie McCovey: In 1976, the 38-year-old McCovey was coming off a decent season in which he slammed 23 home runs in 413 at bats for the Padres. But that season, he hit just 7 homers through August, and the Padres sold him to the A's, who didn't really need him to contend for the division championship. McCovey flopped in Oakland, going just 5 for 24, all singles, and the A's finished in 2nd place. After '76, McCovey signed as a free agent with the Giants, where he finished his Hall of Fame career.

Joe Medwick: Medwick was never a great player and doesn't really deserve his Hall of Fame plaque. He posted several good seasons in his 20s, but was washed up by 29. In June 1940, at 28, he was traded from the Cardinals to the Dodgers for a bunch of nobodies. When the Dodgers won the pennant the next season, Medwick was a solid contributor but not the star of the team, and after that he pretty much fell apart as a player.

Eddie Murray: In 1996, the 40-year-old Murray still had some gas left in the tank when, in mid-July, he was traded by the Indians to the Orioles for Kent Mercker. It was a homecoming for Murray, and the Orioles eventually won a Wild Card berth. As DH, though, Murray didn't contribute more than an average player would have: .257/.327/.439 with 10 home runs.

Mike Piazza: You probably remember this one: One day in 1998, the Dodgers traded Piazza to the Marlins, who sent him to the Mets a week later. Why the Dodgers did it remains a mystery to me. They were afraid of losing him to free agency because they couldn't afford to pay him what he was worth? The Dodgers? Are you kidding me? As I recall, this was the first big deal of the post-Peter O'Malley era, when they were owned by News Corp (Fox). And it proved a harbinger of the mismanagement that would ensue over the next five or six years of Fox's ownership.

Curt Schilling: In July 2000, the Diamondbacks picked up Schilling for Omar Daal, Nelson Figueroa, Travis Lee, and Vicente Padilla. Schilling went just 5-6 for the D-backs, who finished a distant third. But the following season, Schilling pitched Arizona to a thrilling World Series victory over the Yankees. The other guys didn't amount to much.

Tom Seaver: On June 15, 1977, the Mets traded Tom Terrific, the greatest player in club history, to the Cincinnati Reds for Pat Zachry, Doug Flynn, Steve Henderson, and Dan Norman. The Mets were a franchise in total decline, while the Reds were trying to catch the Dodgers. It didn't really work out for either team. The Mets continued declining and the Reds never caught the Dodgers. Lose/lose for everybody, especially Mets fans.

Dave Winfield: The moribund Yankees dealt Winfield to the Angels in May 1990 for pitcher Mike Witt. Witt didn't do much for the Yankees, who themselves didn't do much in the pennant race. Winfield played well enough that season and several more to make the Yankees regret their treatment of him.

Conclusion
Clearly, the best deadline-day pickup in history is Randy Johnson, but I think Manny Ramirez has the ability to make a run at that title.

Hall of Fame: Walter O'Malley

2008-07-31T12:03:00.001-07:00

Walter O'Mally was inducted into the Hall of Fame last weekend, so I thought it would be worthwhile to profile him for those who may not know his contribution to baseball.

A bankruptcy attorney by trade, he ran the trust that controlled the Dodgers in the 1940s, then purchased a stake in the club with co-owner Branch Rickey. O'Malley took over completely by 1952 after a power struggle forced out Rickey.

He soon became the most hated man in the history of Brooklyn when he airlifted the Dodgers from the New York borough to Los Angeles, a maneuver the Brooklyn faithful have never forgiven.

O’Malley was one of the first owners to recognize the potential of television, making the Dodgers perhaps the most watched team in America in the 1950s. He saw the untapped potential of the West Coast and convinced Giants owner Horace Stoneham to move their clubs to California with him. And he wielded tremendous influence over league officials during a time of a weakened commissioner’s office.

When he came to L. A., he demanded and received a sweet deal that included 300 acres of choice land just a few miles from downtown. There, he built Dodger Stadium using his own money—the better to make a profit from concessions and parking.

The biggest difference between O’Malley and most of the other owners was always the fact that O’Malley made his living from baseball while his brethren treated baseball as a hobby. This put O’Malley a step ahead at all times and helped him cement a huge legacy that included the once-profitable team that plays ball in front of three million paying fans every year.

After O’Malley’s death in 1979, control of the club shifted to his son Peter O’Malley, who continued at the helm until the sale of the club to News Corp. in 1997.

Hall of Fame conspiracy?

2008-07-29T09:57:00.001-07:00

The Nation published article you have to read about the snubbing of Marvin Miller from the Hall of Fame. It recounts Miller's rise and accomplishments as the leader of the players union, and it describes the outrageous machinations that not only kept him out of the Hall, but also led to the selections of two of Miller's most frequent adversaries: Bowie Kuhn and Walter O'Malley:

In 2007, the veterans committee failed to pick Miller again. This time, however, he received 63 percent, 12 percent short of the magic number. He was the only candidate to earn a majority of the votes. That year, former commissioner Bowie Kuhn received only fourteen votes.

That tally for Miller was obviously too close for comfort for baseball's establishment, concerned that he would probably reach the three-quarters threshold in the next vote. Later that year, the Hall of Fame board carried out a coup. They changed the rules and transformed a democratic voting process into a conspiracy of cronies. They created a twelve-member committee, responsible solely for considering baseball executives, with nine votes required for selection. The much smaller group included seven former executives, two Hall of Fame players, and three writers. When that group met last December, the ballot they considered included ten people, eight of them former team owners or executives as well as Kuhn and Miller. Miller only got three votes. Three people received enough votes to gain entry into the exclusive club. Walter O'Malley, who owned the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers from 1950 to 1979, received nine votes. Barney Dreyfuss, who owned the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1900 to 1932, earned ten votes. Kuhn, baseball commissioner from 1969 to 1984, also received ten votes.

Now Miller says he doesn't want to be inducted to the Hall of Fame. I don't blame him.

Hall of Fame Induction: Bowie Kuhn

2008-07-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

Continuing my series of posts on the latest Hall of Fame inductees, today I'll talk about Bowie Kuhn, the one-time commissioner of baseball.

Inducted posthumously over the weekend, Kuhn presided during perhaps baseball’s most dramatic and controversial period: the free agency era. At his election to the post in 1968, Kuhn was working at the New York law firm that served the National League. As commissioner, his legal training would be called upon often.

The dismantling of the reserve clause, coming soon after the landmark Supreme Court case Flood v. Kuhn, defined his tenure—as did the 1981 players’ strike that canceled 52 games.

Kuhn made lots of enemies: He suspended Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle from participating in any baseball-related functions because of their associations with Atlantic City casinos; he made several shortsighted decisions that helped facilitate the downfall of the reserve clause; he handed down suspensions to powerful owners George Steinbrenner and Ted Turner; he allowed the TV networks to schedule all World Series games at night; and he created a controversial playoff system for the 1981 strike-torn season that angered fans and owners.

His tenure was, in fact, marked by more losses than victories, and owners ousted him in 1984 when they decided they wanted a businessman-CEO to lead a restructured baseball “corporation” into the future—which led to the selection of Peter Ueberroth as commissioner.

One of his frequent adversaries, Charlie Finley, had this to say when Kuhn resigned: “If Bowie Kuhn had a brain in his head, he’d be an idiot."

Kuhn was the ultimate stuffed shirt, and all you have to do is read Marvin Miller's great memoir, "A Whole New Ballgame," to see that Finley's assessment is close to the mark. In fact, the Veterans Committee needs to be reconstituted again if it thinks it did a good job with this selection. First of all, Kuhn himself is hardly worthy of induction. He pretty much pissed off everyone in baseball, and lost every battle he fought with the players union. He could have reached out to Miller and formed a partnership with the players, but he didn't.

Second, Kuhn died in March 2007. The Veterans Committee waited until months later to announce his selection. If they really felt he belonged, they would have inducted him years earlier. I think it's a joke when the VC waits until AFTER people die to select them. They snubbed Buck O'Neil so often that, now that he's dead, he's almost sure to receive the honor.

And third, the VC chose Kuhn and snubbed the person who really did a lot for baseball from that era: Marvin Miller. I'll blog about Miller at a later date, but suffice it to say that he changed baseball and all of sport -- which to me is the definition of Hall of Famer.

Hall of Fame Induction: Goose Gossage

2008-07-25T15:01:00.000-07:00

This weekend, the Baseball Hall of Fame will induct four new members: pitcher Goose Gossage, manager Dick Williams, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, manager Billy Southworth and team executives Barney Dreyfuss of the Pirates and Walter O'Malley of the Dodgers.

Today I'm going to start a series of posts evaluating their qualifications for the Hall of Fame. First up, Gossage.

A devastatingly effective relief pitcher, Gossage helped redefine the role of closer in the 1970s and early 1980s with his menacing stare, goofy mustache, and 100-mph fastball. He saved games through pure intimidation, daring hitters to stand in the box against him. Few ever felt comfortable.

With relief specialization a recent phenomenon in baseball, it has been interesting to watch how Gossage was treated by Hall of Fame voters. He totaled 310 saves with nine teams, and at his peak, he was the best in the game; his 1981 strike-shortened season—0.77 ERA, 20 saves in 32 games—is one of the top 10 seasons ever posted by a reliever. But until this year, it wasn't enough to get him into the Hall. In 2005, the Hall select Bruce Sutter, while many historians and analysts believed they should have selected Gossage instead.

This year, I think Gossage was helped by two factors: (1) Sutter's election paving the way and reminding voters that they may have picked the wrong relief ace. And (2) the lack of any super-qualified candidate. Next year, the greatest player on the ballot will be Rickey Henderson, a sure-fire Hall of Famer. If Henderson had been on the ballot this year, he might have taken the spotlight away from Gossage.

In my opinion, Gossage belongs. I think anybody who followed baseball during his career thought of Gossage as one of the greatest ever at his craft, which is the kind of thing that should qualify you for the Hall.

You can read an exhaustive Wikipedia entry about this year's balloting here.

On this date...

2008-07-24T16:39:00.000-07:00

On July 24, 1983, George Brett went insane after his home run was disallowed in what became known as the Pine Tar Incident. I had a long post about this last month.

More on Hall of Famers

2008-07-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

A post-script to yesterday's post about the low number of Hall of Famers in last week's All-Star Game...

There are several HOF-bound or HOF-track players in baseball today who simply didn't get selected to this year's game:

HOF-bound
1. Greg Maddux
2. Ken Griffey Jr.
3. Frank Thomas
4. Sammy Sosa (retired?)
5. Mike Piazza (retired this year)
6. Pedro Martinez
7. Tom Glavine
8. Randy Johnson

HOF-Track or HOF-bubble
9. Jim Thome
10. Ivan Rodriguez
11. Jeff Kent
12. Todd Helton
13. Vladimir Guerrero
14. Gary Sheffield
15. John Smoltz
16. Curt Schilling
17. Mike Mussina
18. Omar Vizquel

In past years, maybe these players would have been selected. There are more teams (30) in baseball now than ever, so more teams who have to send a player. On the other hand, there are more roster spots on the All-Star teams than ever, so they might cancel each other out.

In any case, rest assured that the current baseball era will be well-represented in the Hall of Fame come the next decade or two.

All-Star Research

2008-07-21T12:06:00.001-07:00

When I was doing the All-Star Game research, I started counting Hall of Famers. The 1970 game featured 18 Hall of Famers, which I thought was a lot, but then I discovered another one with 18 HOFers. So it got me wondering, how many HOFers play in a typical All-Star Game? And was last week's game "typical" in that we probably watched X number of HOFers?

Time to bring out the spreadsheet and Baseball-Reference.com.

I'm not going to research every single game. Rather, I'll take them at 5-year intervals, starting in 1935, and count the HOFers on each roster. A couple of notes:

- I'm not including players who were elected mainly as managers (e.g. Leo Durocher)
- Instead of 1945, when players were at War, I counted 1946
- For some more recent games, I included players who are retired or close to retirement and have already punched a ticket for the Hall of Fame (e.g. Rickey Henderson, Ken Griffey Jr., Maddux, Bonds, etc.)
- I didn't count Pete Rose, but if you want to, go ahead.

Here's what I found:
1935: 19
1940: 14
1946: 12
1950: 18
1955: 17
1960: 17
1965: 16
1970: 18
1975: 16
1980: 14
1985: 13
1990: 12
1995: 13
2000: 7
2005: 2

The numbers show that, historically, the typical All-Star game features around 15 to 18 Hall of Famers. So how does that translate to last Tuesday's game? Let's take a close look at the rosters and project out about 20 years. Here's my take:

HOF Lock: If they retired today, they'd be selected...
1. Alex Rodriguez
2. Mariano Rivera
3. Manny Ramirez
4. Ichiro Suzuki

HOF Track: If they keep doing what they're doing, they'll be selected...
5. Derek Jeter
6. David Ortiz
7. Chipper Jones
8. Albert Pujols

HOF Possibility: They're still a long way, but they're heading in the right direction...
9. Francisco Rodriguez
10. David Wright
11. Hanley Ramirez

(That last group is really hard to identify. Basically, I chose players who have already had several great seasons and are still young enough to post big career numbers.)

So I count 11 potential Hall of Famers in last week's group, which is on the very low end of the historical spectrum. Does that mean today's players aren't as good? Or that the Hall of Fame has selected a number of players who don't deserve induction?

I lean toward the latter explanation. There are some players (Red Schoendienst, Bobby Doerr, Joe Medwick) who basically got elected because of close friendships with members of the Veterans Committee. (But that's for a separate post.)

Anyway, it's an interesting exercise, at least to me.

Does anyone still care about the All-Star game?

2008-07-21T11:58:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's taken me a week to finally finish this post about the All-Star Game, but here goes.

Last Tuesday's game ranks up there with the greatest All-Star Games of all time, but for my money, I'd choose the first All-Star game of 1961 as the greatest ever. You can read my blurb about the game here. (Remember, back then they played two All-Star Games per season, in a pathetic attempt to generate more revenue for baseball.)

If you're interested in reading more about the All-Star spectacle, I'd suggest The Midsummer Classic by David W. Vincent, Lyle Spatz, and David W. Smith, SABR members all. You can get it used for $1.01 from Amazon.com.

More All-Star Game stuff

2008-07-17T12:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I started a long comment about the All-Star Game, wondering if this year's was the greatest ever. In surveying the field, I didn't actually answer the question, but I'll get to that soon.

First, I want to finish my survey of All-Star Games to focus on the greatest games before 1950. In my next post, I'll compare them and let you know which one I think was the greatest.

1941: AL 7, NL 5
In the midst of one of the greatest baseball seasons of all time came a great All-Star Game. The NL held a 5-2 lead with two outs in the eighth inning, but then Dom DiMaggio drove in his brother Joe with a single to make it 5-3. In the ninth, Joe D. drove in a run on a groundout to bring the Americans within one. Then Ted Williams came up with two on and two outs and slammed a three-run jack against Claude Passeau for the game-winner.

1936: NL 4, AL 3
Rookie Joe DiMaggio came to the plate with the tying run on second base, but Lon Warneke got him to fly out to end the game.

1934: AL 9, NL 7
It ended up a wild slugfest, but it started out with one of the greatest pitching performances of all time: in the first inning, NL hurler Carl Hubbell struck out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Jimmie Foxx in succession, then followed that up by striking out two more future Hall of Famers, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin, the next inning. After Hubbell was replaced, the AL batters teed off and scored all nine of their runs in the 4th, 5th, and 6th innings.

1933: AL 4, NL 2
The highlight of the first All-Star Game came when the aging Babe Ruth smacked a two-run home run to give the AL a 3-0 lead in the third.

Was that the greatest All-Star Game ever played?

2008-07-16T09:38:00.000-07:00

Last night's game featured key home runs and dramatic strikeouts, top-notch defensive plays and ugly errors, great pitching and great hitting, and extra, extra innings. You probably already know how it ended. If right field had been manned by a strong-armed outfielder, they might still be playing. Instead, Corey Hart's rainbow-like throw arrived a split-second late to nail Justin Morneau at the plate and the American League had its 11th straight victory (not including the infamous tie of 2002).

How does it stack up against other great All-Star Games? Well there's a lot to choose from, but here are some other great games going back to 1950 and their highlights:

1994: NL 8, AL 7 (10)
Fred McGriff smacked a one-out, two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth against closer Lee Smith to tie the game, then the Nationals won it in the 10th on a run-scoring double by Moises Alou.

1987: NL 2, AL 0 (13)
A classic pitchers duel with no runs scoring until Tim Raines hit a triple to drive in both NL runs.

1979: NL 7, AL 6
A bases-loaded walk in the top of the ninth to Lee Mazzilli drove in the winning run, but Dave Parker was the star with two outfield assists -- one at home in the 8th, the other at third in the 7th.

1972: NL 4, AL 3 (10)
Joe Morgan drove in the winning run on a single in the bottom of the tenth after the Nationals tied it in the 9th.

1970: NL 5, AL 4 (12)
The AL entered the ninth with a 4-1 lead, but a homer, three singles, and a sacrifice fly by the NL tied the score and sent the game to extra innings. The game stretched to the 12th, when three consecutive 2-out singles gave the NL another victory.

1967: NL 2, AL 1 (15)
The longest game in All-Star history, a tense pitchers duel in the midst of a great pitchers era. Tony Perez slammed the game-winning homer in the top of the 15th and 22-year-old rookie Tom Seaver shut down the AL in the bottom of the inning.

1961 (1st): NL 5, AL 4 (10)
A wild one at Candlestick Park. The famous moment came when Stu Miller committed a wind-aided balk in the 9th.* The AL trailed 3-1 in the 9th, but tied it up thanks to Miller's balk and an error by 3B Ken Boyer. The AL took the lead in the top of the 10th on Boyer's second error, but in the bottom of the tenth, the NL struck back with two runs courtesy of the four best outfielders of their generation: Hank Aaron singled, Willie Mays doubled him home, Frank Robinson was hit by a pitch, and Roberto Clemente singled in Mays for the winning run. How awesome would it have been to be there!

*He was not "blown off the mound," as you read in some accounts. A gust of wind came up and caused Miller to move a bit, and the umpire called the balk. Here's what Miller said years later: "Before I threw a pitch, I went into a stretch position and then there was an extra gust of wind and I just wavered a bit." Read this story for more details.

1957: AL 6, NL 5
The AL scored three in the top of the 9th to make it 6-2, but the NL charged back to score three runs in the bottom of the inning. Gus Bell was thrown out at third base by Minnie Minoso for the second out of the inning, and Gil Hodges lined out to end the game with the winning run on second base.

1955: NL 6, AL 5 (12)
The Americans blew a 5-0 lead by allowing two in the 7th and three in the 8th. Stan Musial slammed a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 12th.

1950: NL 4, AL 3 (14)
Ralph Kiner tied the score in the top of the ninth with a home run, and Red Schoendienst homered in the 12th to win it.

(I'll tackle the greatest pre-1950 games later.)

The All-Star Game

2008-07-15T09:47:00.001-07:00

Today is the All-Star Game, so it's time for a little history lesson:

Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward came up with the idea for the All-Star Game in 1933, just in time for an aging Babe Ruth to hit the first All-Star home run in a 4-2 AL victory played at Comiskey Park.

Baseball’s version is, I think, the best of all major sports’ all-star games, but it has had its share of controversy, most of which has involved the selection of players. For the first 14 years, all players were chosen in a poll of major league managers. In 1947, league officials decided to let the fans select the eight-man starting lineup (excluding pitchers) in league-wide balloting. But in 1957, a Cincinnati newspaper printed an all-star ballot with Reds players marked at every position and encouraged fans to mail it in, which resulted in the selection of seven Reds to the lineup (the other player was Stan Musial). The commissioner’s office became incensed at the abuse of its system, an abuse that was practically inevitable because the league had failed to put any controls on the voting. Two of those Reds were replaced with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, and thereafter the league decided to hand over the selection of all-stars to a poll of players, managers, and coaches.

In 1970, the league decided to return the vote to the group for whom the game is supposedly dedicated: the fans. Even so, every year complaints arise that “deserving” players have been left off the team while popular stars who have been injured, slumping, or otherwise “unworthy” are annually selected. But the point of the All-Star game is to select not the player who is having the best half of a season but rather the player who is a “star,” and part of being a star is being popular among fans. Sure, the voting could be modified a little bit to be more fair to great players who toil for bad teams with low attendance. But there’s no reason to get upset about these things.

This year, as King Kaufman pointed out, however, there is very little argument about the players. Maybe we're finally getting it right.

One fact that gets trumpeted every year around July is that the NL once had a stranglehold on All-Star Games, winning the Midsummer Classic 21 out of 23 tries from 1963 through 1985. The reason for the dominance can almost certainly be traced to the fact that the NL was the first league to really embrace black and Latin players. Think of the stars from the 1950s through the 1970s: from Robinson (both Jackie and Frank) to Mays to Aaron to Gibson to Morgan to Bench, with a little Mantle and Koufax thrown in there. Most of those players are black or Latin, and most played in the National League.

Over the last two decades, however, the AL has gotten more than even. In fact, beginning in 1986, the AL has won 17 All-Star games, the NL just four (with one tie).

This year, the AL is favored again, but it's impossible to make a prediction, so I won't.

MLB for iPhone: A Review

2008-07-11T10:44:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I blogged about the new MLB At Bat application for iPhone. I promised a review when it came out.

It came out, and it's very cool.

I upgraded my existing iPhone with the new 2.0 software (which is free for all iPhone users), and immediately shopped the iTunes App Store to find MLB At Bat. It costs $4.99, which covers the service at least through the 2008 season and post-season.

What does it do? It gives you near-real-time scores of every baseball game, every day. But that's no big deal. The cool thing is that it gives you video highlights of every game, DURING the game -- usually a few minutes after the plays happen.

So in yesterday's Oakland-Seattle game, I was able to watch Jack Cust's and Kurt Suzuki's 9th-inning home runs within a few minutes of the events occurring. It was really awesome.

Now it's not perfect. I waited and waited for the program to pick up the highlights of Emil Brown's game-WINNING home run and they never did it. Also, the performance of the video left a lot to be desired. I thought I was in a pretty good Wi-Fi hotspot, but the videos kept starting and stopping. I don't know who's responsible -- MLB or the WiFi provider -- but it can get a little frustrating.

Also, I wish the program provided more than just scores -- ball/strikes, runners on, etc. -- would be helpful. And if you want to see a box score, you have to tap a little link that opens the box score in the Safari web browser.

I would imagine that those features will be added in a version 2 of the application. Even without those features, $4.99 is a bargain.

What about next year? Continuing major league baseball's proud tradition of screwing over its most loyal fans, I would imagine that the price will go up considerably next year. My prediction is that it'll cost $4.99 per month, or $19.99 per season, with the post-season costing extra.

Until then, it's my belief that MLB At Bat is a great deal and a great reason to buy yourself an iPhone 3G. Good luck getting one.

Link: Buy MLB At Bat in iTunes

Back to the Hall of Fame

2008-07-08T11:00:00.000-07:00

Continuing my discussion of the Hall of Fame, which inducts Goose Gossage and a bunch of old-timers later this month, I want to talk about Cooperstown, the small town in New York in which the Hall of Fame sits.

Cooperstown is supposedly the place where Abner Doubleday invented the game in 1839. We know now that the Doubleday Myth is a lie, but that shouldn’t detract from a fan’s appreciation of Cooperstown as a tourist attraction.

The place is named after its most famous resident, James Fenimore Cooper, author of The Last of the Mohicans. The story of how Cooperstown got the Hall of Fame is interesting because it illustrates once again (as if such illustration is necessary anymore) how the simple desire for money can affect history.

The idea belonged to a man named Alexander Cleland, who worked for a nonprofit foundation established by the heirs to the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Cooperstown had long been a resort community, but it, like the rest of the world, was hit hard by the Great Depression. Cleland suggested to the Clark Foundation, whose namesake lived in the town, that a museum based on baseball history would be a great way to attract tourists and spice up the local economy.

As author Bill James points out in his book Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?, Cleland projected that such an establishment could draw “hundreds of visitors a year.”

He was only off by a factor of a thousand.

With the backing of major league baseball and some money from the Clark Foundation, the Hall of Fame opened in 1939, steadily gaining in popularity so that today, 350,000 fans (well, about 300,000 fans and 50,000 bored spouses and children) pass through its gates. Which is no easy task, by the way, because the town is in a remote part of New York—at least four hours from New York City.

The Baseball Hall of Fame website makes it easy to plan your trip. Do it.

More on Honus Wagner

2008-07-03T09:37:00.001-07:00

In my last post, I rated Honus Wagner as the greatest Pirate in team history, and called him one of the top five ballplayers of all time.

Other than Babe Ruth, I don't know for sure who I would list among the other top ballplayers. Probably Willie Mays, Walter Johnson, and Barry Bonds. Or maybe Roger Clemens instead of Johnson. I don't know. There are dozens of ways to crunch the numbers and each would come up with a different result.

What I want to talk about here is, why Honus Wagner? He played so long ago, when the game was so different, that it seems odd to believe that a bow-legged shortstop from 100 years ago remains one of the greatest players of all time.

The way I look at it is, how much did he help his teams win and how much better was he than his contemporaries? And by that measure, Wagner is near the top of the list.

Let's take Wagner's best year, 1908, as an example. You can check out his stats at Baseball-Reference.com, but here are the highlights:

BA: .354 (1st)
OBP: .415 (1st)
SLG: .542 (1st)
OPS: .957 (1st, obviously)
Runs: 100 (2nd)
Hits: 201 (1st)
Total Bases: 308 (1st)
Doubles: 39 (1st)
Triples: 19 (1st)
HR: 10 (2nd)
RBI: 109 (1st)
Runs Created: 126

And so on, and so on.

You can see that, other than batting average and triples, none of the raw totals Wagner produced in 1908 would lead the league in 2008. But let's see what the league as a whole did in 1908:

BA: .239
OBP: .299
SLG: .306
OPS: .605

How much better than those averages was Wagner?

BA: 48% better
OBP: 39% better
SLG: 77% better
OPS: 58% better

Now let's see what a 2008 player would have to hit in order to match what Wagner did in 1908?

BA: To hit 48% better than the league average, a batter would have to hit .381
OBP: .457
SLG: .724
OPS: 1.181

I'm not saying that Wagner would reach those numbers if he were playing today (we can't know). I'm saying that his 1908 season is roughly equivalent to a batter today reaching those numbers. By comparison, those numbers are better than anything Albert Pujols has done, better than Alex Rodriguez, better than David Ortiz.

In fact, only a few players in history have achieved those numbers, people like Ruth, Gehrig, Hornsby, Williams, Mantle, and Bonds.

(And I haven't even factored in Wagner's stolen bases.)

Now, I cherry-picked Wagner's best season for this comparison, but his entire career is filled with seasons almost as good.

But regardless, what we have is one of the greatest offensive performers of all time, playing the best shortstop, on one of the best teams of his era.

It would take a lot of convincing before I would stop revering Honus Wagner.

Best Ever: Pittsburgh Pirates

2008-07-01T11:32:00.001-07:00

I was going to continue my discussion of the Hall of Fame, but a loyal reader asked me to take on the Pittsburgh Pirates, his favorite team. So here we go with my continuing feature on the best ever position players and pitchers for each franchise.

Player

The Contenders: Honus Wagner, Paul Waner, Roberto Clemente (with apologies to Arky Vaughan, Willie Stargell, Barry Bonds)

Though they haven't been any good for over 15 years, this is a franchise that has won nine pennants and five World Series, so the Pirates' all-time team is pretty loaded. In fact, let me present to you my picks for the all-time Pirates positional lineup:

C: Jason Kendall
1B: Stargell
2B: Bill Mazeroski
3B: Pie Traynor
SS: Wagner
OF: Clemente, Waner, Bonds or Ralph Kiner (depending on whether you consider Bonds a Pirate or a Giant)

Bench: Vaughan (he played some 3B and OF, but was mainly a SS and can't beat out Wagner), Brian Giles, Tommy Leach, Fred Clarke, Lloyd Waner, Max Carey, Dave Parker

But who's the greatest? It really is no contest. Honus Wagner is not only the greatest Pirate of all time, he's one of the top five players of all time. Don't know much about Wagner? As a fielder, Wagner was the greatest of his time. As a hitter and baserunner, only Ty Cobb was better. As a positive clubhouse influence, he was unmatched. He was more beloved by fans than anybody until Babe Ruth. He was friendly with rookies and veterans alike, and he maintained his humility despite his fame.

“If I had a choice of all players who have played baseball,” long-time Yankee boss Ed Barrow, who guided Babe Ruth’s career, once said, “the first man I would select would be Honus Wagner.” And legendary manager John McGraw said: “I consider Wagner not only as the number one shortstop, but had he played in any position other than pitcher, he would have been equally great at the other seven positions. He was the nearest thing to a perfect player no matter where his manager chose to play him.”

The selection of Wagner in no way denigrates the achievements of Paul Waner and Roberto Clemente, both among the greatest right fielders of their time. Waner, for those unfamiliar, was a hitting machine in the 1920s and 1930s. He didn't have much home run pop, but only because Forbes Field during his era was positively unfriendly to home runs. Not only was Waner a terror at the plate and in the outfield, he could also attack the bottle. There is a famous story that he quit drinking one year at the request of his manager. By midseason, however, he was batting just .240, so the skipper brought him some liquor, and Waner’s batting stroke returned.

Clemente, you probably already know about. He also was a hitting machine, and his fielding skills and throwing arm are legendary. Most long-time fans can tell stories about the amazing things Clemente could do in the outfield, like throw out a runner at home from the warning track on one bounce, or gun a runner at third on the fly from the right-field corner. He was that good and that memorable.

The Winner: Wagner

Note: In terms of talent, Barry Bonds might surpass both Waner and Clemente, but he played only six years with Pittsburgh and for these purposes, I consider him a Giant.

Pitcher

The Contenders: Deacon Phillippe, Wilbur Cooper, Bob Friend

This is a much more difficult selection to make, which probably explains why the Pirates haven't won more pennants during their history. None of the three contenders is in the Hall of Fame. Cooper is Pittsburgh's all-time leader in wins with 202, while Friend has 191 and Phillippe has 168.

Phillippe was one of the pitching aces of the Honus Wagner-era great teams during the first decade of the 1900s, winning four pennants.

Cooper never played with a winner, joining the Pirates three years after their 1909 pennant and being traded the year before they won the 1925 World Series.

Friend, meanwhile, joined the club in 1951 during the club's absolute nadir and led the club's resurgence in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He won 20 games only once, but he was consistently better than the league average for over a decade.

The Winner: I'm going to go with Bob Friend. On the surface, Cooper's stats are better, but I think that, when you adjust for the playing conditions (4-man rotation, air travel, etc.) and the quality of competition (the NL in the 1950s was a much tougher place to pitch than the NL of the 1910s and 1920s), Friend comes out on top.

About the Baseball Hall of Fame

2008-06-30T09:47:00.000-07:00

The Hall of Fame induction ceremony is about a month away. This year, Goose Gossage is getting inducted along with a few old-timers: Barney Dreyfuss, Walter O'Malley, Dick Williams, Bowie Kuhn, and Billy Southworth. In future posts, I'll talk about each one of those guys. Today, I'm going to talk about the Hall of Fame itself.

In the 1930s, baseball was in trouble. The Depression was cutting sharply into attendance, and the Babe Ruth juggernaut, which saved baseball in the 1920s, was winding down. Baseball needed something else. In 1931, the Baseball Writers Association institutionalized the MVP award, and two years later, sportswriter Arch Ward created the All-Star Game.

Then some people from Cooperstown, New York, the alleged birthplace of baseball, approached the commissioner with an idea: a museum honoring baseball’s great players and innovators. The commissioner liked it, and so did the rest of baseball. When it opened in 1939, it was a single-room exhibit with plaques and pictures. Thanks to curator Lee Allen, who presided over the shrine from 1948 until his death in 1969, the Hall added an extensive library and expanded the museum, so that today the Hall features three stories and 50,000 square feet of exhibits to entertain and enthrall.

When you go there, you can start in the Hall of Fame Gallery, where bronze plaques of the game’s immortals stand in tribute to their accomplishments. The Great Moments Room features artifacts and photographs from the game’s top events. There’s a screening room that shows baseball movies continuously. And other parts give detailed histories about the game’s origins, ballparks, and innovations. Ultimately, you can visit the Hall of Fame Library for the greatest collection of baseball books and papers in existence.

The place is open year-round except on Christmas and Thanksgiving. It gets really crowded during the summertime, especially during the induction ceremonies every July. It’s a must-see for any baseball fan.

Best Ever: St. Louis Cardinals

2008-06-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

Continuing in the series of the best ever position players and pitchers for each franchise, today I'll tackle the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals have won 10 world championships and 17 N.L. pennants, and they've made 22 playoff appearances. That's more than any N.L. club and second only to the Yankees among all major league baseball franchises. So, there's lots to choose from. Here's my take:

Pitcher

Contenders: Dizzy Dean, Bob Gibson, Jesse Haines.

This one really isn't close. Haines is in the Hall of Fame, but that's a joke. He got in because he was a teammate of Frankie Frisch, who dominated the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee during the early 1970s and got them to induct a bunch of unworthy teammates. Haines was a good pitcher, won 20 games three times and pitched in 4 World Series. But he's no better than Bob Welch. Welch is not a Hall of Famer.

Dizzy Dean is one of baseball's greatest characters, and during his peak, he was one of the greats. From 1932 to 1937, he averaged over 22 victories per season. But then he was struck by a line drive and never fully recovered. He hung on and pitched somewhat effectively, but he washed out at age 30 with 150 career victories (134 for the Cardinals). Without the injury, he might have finished with 300 victories, but we'll never know.

Bob Gibson, meanwhile, achieved both a very high peak of performance and also lasted long enough to post 251 career victories, all with St. Louis. He led his club to the World Series three times; in fact, in 1964, as the Cardinals came from behind to win an unexpected pennant, Gibson went 7-2 with a 1.95 ERA during the months of September and October.

The Winner: Gibson, of course.

Position Player

The Contenders: A lot to choose from, but I think it comes down to Rogers Hornsby, Stan Musial, and Albert Pujols (with apologies to Ozzie Smith and Lou Brock).

Hornsby was clearly a great second baseman, a batsman extraordinaire but an average fielder. He played 11 full seasons with the Cardinals and was the league's most devastating hitter during the early 1920s. As has been written about before, Hornsby pretty much pissed off teammates and management wherever he went. He was traded by the Cardinals after the 1926 season, even though he had just player-managed them to a World Series title. Then he was traded four more times and was pretty much washed up at 35, though he player-managed until age 41.

Musial is one of the greatest outfielders of all time. He could do everything, and he did it with a smile. His teams won four pennants and three World Series, and he finished his career with more hits than anyone except Ty Cobb (since surpassed by Pete Rose). He was as close to a perfect ballplayer as ever played.

If any modern day ballplayer could stand up to a comparison with Stan Musial, it's probably Albert Pujols. Pujols does everything except steal bases, and he's been so good, for so long, that you forget he's not even 30 years old (born in 1980).

The Winner: I believe that one day we'll be talking about Pujols in the same breath as players like Mantle, Mays, and Musial. But for now and at least the next ten years, the title of greatest Cardinal player ever still belongs to Stan Musial. Let's see what happens in 10 years before handing the title to Pujols. I'll rooting for him.

Greatest Ever: Philadelphia Phillies

2008-06-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

Continuing my series about the greatest pitchers and position players in the history of each franchise, today I'll tackle the Philadelphia Phillies.

Position Player

Contenders: Richie Ashburn, Ed Delahanty, Mike Schmidt.

The Winner: Ashburn was a great centerfielder in the 1950s, and a very good leadoff man. His fielding statistics are better than anyone who ever played the position, but Bill James studied the issue and attributes those stats to the fact that the Philadelphia pitching staffs of that era were filled with flyball pitchers. That's not to denigrate Ashburn, only to stop people from claiming he was better than Mays or Speaker or Andruw Jones simply because of fielding stats.

The real battle for supremacy among Phillies position players comes down to Schmidt vs. Delahanty. Delahanty was a devastating hitter who played from 1888 to 1903. In fact, he was probably the best hitter of his era. His OPS+ is off the charts. He didn't hit many homers because few did during that era, but he hit so many doubles and triples that if he'd played in the Schmidt era, he would almost certainly have hit many home runs.

Schmidt, you probably know about. He's the greatest third baseman of all time, period. At the plate, he had power and patience. In the field, he was practically flawless.

It's not close: the greatest ever at his position vs. maybe the 20th or 30th greatest outfielder. I'll take Schmidt.

Pitcher

Contenders: Grover Cleveland "Pete" Alexander, Robin Roberts, Steve Carlton.

The Winner: Both Alexander and Carlton are among the 10 greatest pitchers of all time, while Roberts in the top 20 or 30. Alexander is usually rated higher than Carlton, so starts with an advantage. But what hurts Alexander's candidacy is that only 190 of his 373 wins came as a Phillie, whereas 241 of Carlton's 329 victories came with Philadelphia. (Roberts won 234 of his 286 games as a Phillie.)

I'm going to pick Carlton for this particular honor because of his longer tenure with the club, not necessarily because he was a better overall pitcher but rather because he was a better Phillie.

Retire Ruth's #3?

2008-06-24T09:42:00.000-07:00

Via King Kaufman and Rick Maese, I discovered that Babe Ruth's granddaughter wants major league baseball to permanently retire Ruth's jersey #3 throughout baseball. Linda Ruth Tosetti wants people to sign an online petition to encourage the commissioner to get on board with the idea:

Babe Ruth is the man who saved baseball and launched a major league revolution in hitting! Join our effort to honor the Babe by having his famous number 3 retired throughout Major League Baseball.

Give me a break.

Tosetti is referring to the fact that baseball was reeling from the 1919 Black Sox scandal at the same time that Ruth was electrifying crowds with his home runs.

But Tosetti has the timeline wrong. The public didn't hear about the World Series fix until midway through the 1920 season. By that point, Ruth was already a phenomenon. He had already been traded to the Yankees, his home runs were already being tracked in daily papers across the country, and crowds were already flocking to his games.

He didn't "save" baseball in the sense that he came on the scene when baseball needed saving and then singlehandedly revived interest in the game. He came along at just the right moment -- WWI had just ended, the Roaring 20s were just beginning -- and helped fuel a mini-boom in popularity for the game.

If baseball needed saving in the wake of the scandal, it was more likely that the new commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis,
is the one who provided it by dealing sternly with the accused.

And we're not going to retire Landis's jersey number.

So while I understand Ruth's granddaughter wanting to honor the greatest player in the history of baseball by retiring his jersey number in perpetuity, I think it's overkill. He changed baseball, but he didn't change society the way Jackie Robinson did.

And come on: isn't Ruth honored enough? Aren't the countless biographies and movies and everything else enough for Ruth's granddaughter?

MLB for iPhone: No-brainer

2008-06-19T16:16:00.001-07:00

If you're thinking about getting an iPhone, Major League Baseball is giving you one seriously compelling reason to take the plunge in July when the new model becomes available: MLB At Bat for iPhone.

It's a $5 application that you'll be able to buy from the iPhone App Store beginning in mid-July. It will get you live scores and in-game highlights for every game on the MLB schedule. Let me repeat that: video highlights delivered wirelessly to your iPhone during games! Baseball nirvana.

Here's a further explanation of the application from MacWorld.

At just $5, it's really a no-brainer for baseball fans who own iPhones. If you're a current iPhone owner, as I am, you don't have to buy the new version. You'll just have to download a new free software update around mid-July.

I am marking my calendar.

Speaking of the designated hitter...

2008-06-18T15:45:00.001-07:00

...Is there still a controversy about it anymore?

Twenty years ago, when the DH was only about 15 years old, articles and columns were frequently written that disparaged or defended it. As a high school student, even I wrote an article bashing the DH and submitted it to a sportswriting competition.

If asked, I usually tell people that I'm opposed to the DH, but that's usually just a reflexive statement, said without any coherent thought. When I first became a fan, I loved the Dodgers and the National League, so I automatically hated everything about the American League, including the DH. But now, I just can't seem to care about it anymore.

I guess that means the DH has won, and I'm surprised that I don't care more than I do, which is to say, at all.

(The only thing I really still hate about the DH is that if you draft a DH onto your fantasy team, he can only play in the UTIL position -- in ESPN leagues, anyway -- and not in the 1B or OF position, where many DHs occasionally play.)

If I were starting up a new baseball league, I don't even know whether I would have pitchers bat or not.

I think I can trace my resignation about the DH to the fact that it is simply not ever going to go away. It's everywhere, even in high school leagues and below.

Several years ago, during bargaining with the players association, MLB offered to expand the rosters by one player and simultaneously eliminate the DH. I don't know whether they were serious about it, but that's what they offered, anyway. I believe the stated reason was to purify the game, but really they just wanted to eliminate a high-salaried position. The players association saw right through that and nixed the idea, and MLB never made a deal about it.

Now, a decade later, you never hear anything about it anymore, at least not until a pitcher gets hurt running the bases during interleague play.

Am I missing something? Is there still an anti-DH crowd that thinks things will change sometime?

NL and the Designated Hitter

2008-06-17T15:42:00.001-07:00

Yankees boss Hank Steinbrenner had some choice words for the National League and its fans today after his ace Chien-Ming Wang injured himself running the bases during non-DH interleague play:

"My only message is simple. The National League needs to join the 21st century. They need to grow up and join the 21st century... I've got my pitchers running the bases, and one of them gets hurt. He's going to be out. I don't like that, and it's about time they address it. That was a rule from the 1800s."

My only reaction is: If a guy can't even run the bases without injuring himself, he has no business as a professional athlete.

Update on Instant Replay

2008-06-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

It looks like instant replay will happen in baseball, possibly later this season. Here's what I: wrote about it last month:

I'm in favor of instant replay in baseball ONLY if the system can be completely seamless and not interrupt the flow of the game. Since it's doubtful those two criteria can be met, you could call me anti-replay.

I still believe that, but I'm starting to soften my "anti-replay" sentiment because I'm starting to believe that baseball might actually get it right and NOT interrupt the flow of the game. Also, it looks like they're going to focus on home run calls and other boundary plays, which umpires should try to get right.

However, if after a month of trying it out and working out the kinks, it's taking more than several minutes to decide these calls, then all bets are off.

The Pine Tar Incident

2008-06-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

Chipper Jones is threatening the .400 mark. Baseball Prospectus has a good rundown on what his chances are. (No, I don't think he will do it but I hope I'm wrong.)

This chase reminds me of the run at .400 by George Brett in 1980. And whenever I think of Brett, I think of the most notorious incident involving Billy Martin that ever happened: The Pine Tar Incident.

I'm sure Brett doesn't like that people like me associate him most prominently with the Pine Tar Incident, but... facts are facts.

The Pine Tar Incident is probably the weirdest mini-scandal in recent major league history, replete with late-inning heroics, allegations of cheating, a near brawl, and Billy Martin. What would a minor scandal be without Billy Martin?

It was July 24, 1983, New York vs. Kansas City in Yankee Stadium. Relief ace Goose Gossage was on the mound for the Yankees, protecting a 4–3 lead in the top of the ninth. With two outs and a runner on, Brett smashed a fastball over the fence to give the Royals an apparent 5–4 lead.

To everyone’s surprise, Yankee manager Billy Martin ran out his dugout carrying a rule book, trying to contain his glee. He had known for weeks that Brett was putting pine tar—a sticky black substance that helps a batter’s grip—higher on his bat than the 18 inches the rules allowed. He was waiting for the right moment to spring the news on an umpiring crew, and this was it.

After measuring the pine tar on Brett’s bat using the width of home plate, umpire Tim McClelland ruled the home run illegal and called Brett out, the apparent third out of the inning, giving the Yankees an apparent victory.

Now here comes Brett, storming out of the dugout! In a wild rage, restrained by players and coaches, Brett embodied pure, unadulterated anger.

Even though the game was supposedly over, the umpires ejected Brett, manager Dick Howser, coach Rocky Colavito, and pitcher Gaylord Perry, who tried to hide the bat. The umpires were able to confiscate the bat only because, as it was getting passed from Royals player to player, the last man in the line didn’t have anybody to give it to.

The Royals, of course, protested to the league office: “Broadway wouldn’t buy that script . . . it’s so unbelievable,” huffed Howser. Four days later, AL President Lee MacPhail agreed with Howser. He overruled his umpiring crew, a rare occurrence, and allowed the home run. He declared that even though the pine tar was technically illegal, it didn’t violate the “spirit of the rules.”

The Yankees were outraged. “It sure tests our faith in leadership,” moaned Yankee czar George Steinbrenner (of all people). Martin howled that the rule book was “only good for when you go deer hunting and run out of toilet paper.”But MacPhail had the power, and his decision stood.

Now there was the matter of completing the game, which was still in the ninth inning. The completion was scheduled for August 18, and the Yankees decided they would charge regular admission, even for fans who had tickets to the first game! Enraged fans protested, and two lawsuits were filed declaring the team’s policy illegal. In response, the club changed its policy but failed to announce it, so only 1,200 fans showed up to watch nine minutes and 41 seconds of baseball. Hal McRae struck out to end the ninth, and the Yankees went down in order in the bottom of the inning, giving the Royals a hard-fought 5–4 victory.

There is no YouTube video of the Pine Tar Incident (probably because of copyright concerns), but you can listen to the radio broadcast at MLB.com.

Congrats to Ken Griffey

2008-06-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

Ken Griffey Jr. just hit his 600th home run, a truly monumental achievement. Here's my take on Junior from the last edition of my book, The Book of Baseball Literacy:

Griffey joined the American League with much fanfare in 1989: a 19-year-old kid with loads of talent, called the second coming of Willie Mays and other hyperbole. For his first four seasons, “Junior” dazzled fans with spectacular catches, deep home runs, and youthful exuberance. But his stats—25 home runs per year and a .515 slugging percentage—didn’t seem to show his true potential. Then, in 1993, he notched a 45-home run campaign that quieted any skeptics. In strike-shortened 1994, he cemented his reputation as one of the today’s greats by smacking 40 home runs in just 433 at bats—and he followed that up with even better years, including a couple of 56-homer campaigns.

In 2000, the year before he was to become a free agent, he forced the Seattle Mariners to trade him to Cincinnati for basically a few journeyman ballplayers, a trade that threatened to go down as the most lopsided in history. Yet when the Mariners went on to win 116 games in 2001 while Griffey struggled through several injury-plagued seasons, it was the Mariners who had the last laugh.

Griffey is unquestionably headed for the Hall of Fame, and until the injuries, he was even on a pace to break the career home run record (now owned by Barry Bonds, of course). Unless Griffey has a Bonds-ian resurgence in his late 30s, he has no chance at that record anymore. But by the time he’s finished, he will rank among the top 10 center fielders of all time, probably just behind Mays, Cobb, Mantle, DiMaggio, and Speaker.

History Lesson: The First World Series

2008-06-09T15:18:00.000-07:00

In 1884, the National League and its major league rival, the American Association, met for the first time in a post-season championship series that they called the "World Series," or, more commonly, the "World's Series." In earlier seasons, pennant winners had met informally to play exhibition games, but the 1884 Series was the first to be officially approved and scheduled by league offices.

In the series, the NL’s Providence Grays, behind the pitching of Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn, swept all three games from the AA’s New York Metropolitans -- the ultimate anti-climax.

Postseason championships continued until the AA folded in 1891, then reappeared as the Temple Cup Series that pitted the top two National League finishers against each other. Lack of fan interest killed the Temple Cup after four years of lopsided series.

Then, two years after the American League’s formation in 1901, baseball’s czars reestablished interleague championships with what most fans consider the first “modern” World Series in 1903. In that series, the AL’s Boston Pilgrims (now Red Sox) upset the haughty Pittsburgh Pirates five games to three in a best-of-nine set.

The idea of a postseason series was proposed by Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss, who challenged Pilgrims owner Henry Killilea near the end of the season; all it took to seal the deal was a handshake. The victory by the American League upset the peace that had ended the American League War. And the following season, manager John McGraw of the pennant-winning New York Giants, whose ownership did not recognize the “treaty” between the two leagues and was angry at the AL for having placed a rival franchise in New York, refused to entertain any notions of staging another postseason contest.

By 1905, tempers had subsided and the Series was allowed to continue—which it did uninterrupted until 1994, when a bonfire of greed and power conspired to take the Series away from the public. (But that's a story for another day.)

Best Ever: Boston Braves

2008-06-04T09:43:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I selected the greatest Atlanta/Milwaukee Braves players ever, and today I'm going to focus on the Boston Braves. (Surely you know that the Braves played in Boston from 1876 to 1952).

Let's start with the easiest choice:

Pitcher

Contenders: Warren Spahn and... Johnny Sain maybe?

The winner: This is really no contest. Sain had a good run for a few years as the Braves' number two starter, but Spahn was an all-time great. He won 363 games in the majors, all but seven with the Braves. Most of his best years occurred in Milwaukee, but he came up with Boston and so I consider him a Boston Brave for this feature.

Batter

Contenders: Rabbit Maranville, Tommy Holmes, Wally Berger

The winner: If I really wanted to cheat, I'd choose Babe Ruth, who played his final season as a Boston Brave. But I'm going to stick with players who legitimately played many years with the Braves.

The three contenders are the top three players in terms of career hits as a Brave. Maranville is in the Hall of Fame, mainly for his shortstop defense, and he played a key role on Boston's surprise World Series championship in 1914. But his hitting was mostly woeful, even when you adjust for the Dead Ball Era.

Tommy Holmes played from 1942 to 1952, but he really had only one good season, and that came in 1945 when most of the best players were serving in the military. Holmes got an exemption from service.

Wally Berger is a forgotten star who put together one of the best rookie seasons ever: .310, 38 homers, 119 RBIs as a 24-year-old. The slugging outfielder smacked 30 homers two more times, and finished his career with 242. However, he played in the peak years of the Lively Ball Era, so the numbers aren't as impressive as they seem. Still, he was an All-Star four times and finished in the to 10 in MVP voting twice even though his Braves never seriously contended for any pennants.

The choice comes down to Maranville vs. Berger. I'm inclined to select Berger because I think sluggers are more valuable than defensive specialists. But Maranville won a championship, is in the Hall of Fame, and leads the franchise in a number of categories (including Games, Hits, Runs, and more). It's close, but I think those criteria push Maranville over the top.

Rabbit Maranville is the greatest position player in Boston Braves history.

Best Ever: Braves

2008-06-03T15:19:00.000-07:00

OK, so this one's an easy one. I'm going to continue my series by choosing the best players (batter, pitcher) for the Braves. Just as I did with the Athletics, I'm going to break up the Braves into two approximately equal groups: Boston and Milwaukee/Atlanta. First up, the easy ones: Milwaukee/Atlanta.

Batter

Contenders: Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, Chipper Jones.

The winner: Aaron, of course. They're all in or headed for the Hall of Fame, but there's simply no question that Hank Aaron is the greatest player in Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves history.

Pitcher

Contenders: Warren Spahn, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine.

The winner: OK, I'm going to cheat a little bit here and move Spahn to the Boston Braves group, which clears the path for Maddux to be identified as the greatest Atlanta Braves pitcher of all time.

Maddux over Glavine? It's actually closer than it seems, but Maddux wins. Glavine won two Cy Young Awards as a Brave and finished in the top 5 four other times. Maddux won 3 Cy Youngs as a Brave and finished in the top 5 four other times (not to mention the two other top-5 finishes as a Cub).

Glavine was great. Maddux was greater.

I'll tackle the Boston Braves tomorrow.