The Book of Baseball Literacy: 3rd Edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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?

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Video Recaps | Full Episodes | Webisodes

More Moneyball

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

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

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.