Blast from the past: The Gas House Gang

For no particular reason, I was thinking about the Gas House Gang the other day. Who?

The "Gas House Gang" was the nickname for the Cardinals teams in the 1930s, featuring such colorful characters as Frankie Frisch, Leo Durocher, Dizzy Dean, Pepper Martin, and Joe Medwick.

With Durocher as the ringleader and Martin as the clown, the Cardinals made themselves famous for scrappy play and childish pranks. Once, after a tough loss, player-manager Frisch called a team meeting during which he lambasted his players with insults and profanity. Then he asked if anyone had any questions. During the heavy silence that followed, only Martin was brave enough to raise his hand:

“I was just wondering,” he asked Frisch innocently, “whether I ought to paint my midget auto racer red with white wheels or white with red wheels.”

Even Frisch had to laugh.

The first Gas House Gang, according to author Paul Dickson, was a band of thugs who prowled the Lower East Side of Manhattan near a number of large gas tanks in the 19th century. The term came to be applied to the Cardinals because, according to one legend, they were a notoriously rough team that once played a game in against the Giants in soiled uniforms, reminding a New York writer of the famed thugs.

Greatest Ever: Oakland Athletics

In my last post, I chose Lefty Grove and Eddie Collins as the greatest Philadelphia Athletics of all time. Today I'll choose the greatest Oakland A's:

Hitter

I'm going to choose this one first because it's so easy. Here are the candidates: Reggie Jackson, Mark McGwire, Rickey Henderson.

It's pretty obvious who's number one, right? Henderson, of course. He played four separate stints with the A's, helping them to four postseason appearances. But what he's really known for his his title as The Greatest Leadoff Hitter Ever. He got on base over 40% of the time, and, during his prime, he hit for more power than many cleanup hitters. He hit 81 leadoff homers, easily the record, including 44 of them for the A's. Bill James once wrote that if you split Rickey Henderson in half, you'd have two Hall of Famers. He clearly stands as the greatest Oakland A hitter of all time.

Pitcher

This comes down to a starter vs. a reliever: Catfish Hunter or Dennis Eckersley. They're both in the Hall of Fame, they both won multiple pennants, they both won Cy Young Awards.

Let's break it down a little.

Hunter had four 20-win seasons for the A's, plus one more for the Yankees. Eckersley had four 40-save seasons for the A's, plus four more 30-save seasons (2 for the A's) and a 20-win season (for the Red Sox). (I know that statistically or sabermetrically, a 20-win season is not truly analogous to a 40-save season, but we're just having fun here.)

Eckersley is considered one of the 3 or 4 greatest relief pitchers of all time, but that's mainly because relief pitching is a relatively new phenomenon in baseball history. Hunter doesn't rank among the top 25 pitchers of all time, though he was one of the 5 or 6 greatest starting pitchers of the 1970s (behind at least Seaver, Carlton, and Palmer, just off the top of my head).

It's a close contest, and I went back and forth several times in my thinking. But I finally decided that a starting pitcher who logs 300 innings per season is simply much more valuable than a reliever who tosses 70 or 80, even if those 70 or 80 innings are the most important of a game.

I'm going to go with Catfish Hunter as the greatest pitcher in Oakland A's history.

New Regular Feature: Greatest Ever for Each Team

Fellow blogger Joe Posnanski has a long post today trying to identify the greatest position player ever for the Mets. You should check it out.

It's given me the idea to start another new regular feature on Baseball Mud to identify the greatest two players -- pitcher and position player -- for each franchise. Some will be easier than others.

To start, I'm going to pick my local favorite, the Oakland A's.

Now, the A's spent the first 50 years of their existence in Philadelphia before moving first to Kansas City, then to Oakland. So I'm going to cheat a little and select two sets of winners. Today I'm going to focus on the old Philadelphia A's.

Pitchers

The candidates: Eddie Plank (1901-1914), Chief Bender (1903-1914), Lefty Grove (1925-1933).

They're all Hall of Famers, and they all won championships. Plank is the franchise leader in wins with 284 as an Athletic, followed by Grove with 195 and Bender with 193.

But who are we kidding. Grove is clearly the greatest pitcher to wear a Philadelphia Athletics uniform. He was possibly the greatest pitcher of all time. He won 20+ games 7 times in his 9 seasons in Philly, and was only traded because owner Connie Mack needed the money.

Position Players

The candidates: Eddie Collins (1906-1914, 1927-1930), Mickey Cochrane (1925-1933), and Jimmie Foxx (1925-1935).

At first blush, Eddie Collins would be the obvious choice due to his length of service (13 years for Collins vs. 9 for Cochrane and 11 for Foxx). But Collins also won a couple of pennants with the White Sox (or Black Sox), so he might even qualify as the greatest White Sox ever, too. (We'll get to that later.)

Foxx did a lot of damage as a slugging first baseman and won two championships. Cochrane also won those same two championships before moving to Detroit to win another. Cochrane is one of the top 5 catchers of all time. Foxx is one of the top 5 first basemen.

But Collins is one of the top 2 or 3 second basemen, and he won three championships with the A's (four pennants total, plus two more pennants with the Sox).

It's a slightly difficult decision, but ultimately Collins is my choice for the greatest position player in Philadelphia A's history.

Martinez retirement talk premature

First Mike Piazza retired. Then Pedro Martinez said he might retire after this season to be with his ailing father. Now he says he'll pitch another two years:

"I feel great physically and for the record I haven't considered retirement. Retirement would only take place if my arm is badly hurt and if I have to face surgery or something near that nature," Martinez told ESPNdeportes.com while visiting his father, Pablo Jaime, who has a form of brain cancer.

I hope Pedro sticks around as long as possible. Here's what I wrote about him in the 2000 edition of my book:

“I am a pitcher because I like the challenge of being responsible for the game, of being in charge of the action. If the shortstop makes an error, I am responsible. I let the batter hit the ball,” Pedro Martinez once said, explaining the attitude that propelled him to the top of baseball.

Winner of three Cy Young Awards, Martinez had possibly the best combination of power (a 97-mph fastball) and control of any pitcher ever, and he ranks first all-time among modern pitchers in his ratio of strikeouts to walks.*

During his historic 1999 season, Martinez rarely allowed hitters to touch anything. While leading his Red Sox to the wild card title, he won 23 games (vs. just 4 losses), posted a 2.07 ERA (in Fenway Park, no less), and struck out 313 hitters to set a major league record with 13.2 Ks per nine innings (since surpassed by Randy Johnson). He followed that up with another Cy Young Award in 2000. In all, he has finished in the top five in Cy Young balloting seven times.

Over the past few years, age and injuries limited him to just six or seven innings per start, or around 100 pitches. But for those 100 pitches, he’s about as good as there ever was.

That was before he went on to finish in the top 3 in Cy Young Award balloting two more times, and help pitch the Red Sox to a World Series. His career post-season record is now 6-2, 3.40 ERA, with 80Ks in 79.1 innings.

Fans in the 1960s had their Sandy Koufax, the brilliant lefty. As fans in the 90s and early 2000s, we have our Pedro. He won't win as many games as Clemens or Maddux, but if you ask most modern fans who they would want in their prime for a single must-win game, I think Pedro would be their choice.

*Curt Schilling has passed Martinez in that category now.

Mike Piazza Retires

Mike Piazza retired today after 16 seasons in the bigs. He last played with the A's last year, an injury-hampered season in which he contributed only 8 HRs and 44 RBIs.

It's not too soon to assess his career to see where he stands among the greatest catchers of all time. Baseball-Reference.com has a cool, subscription-only feature that lets me compare Piazza to all other catchers in a variety of categories.

Home Runs
1. Piazza: 427 (396 as catcher)
2. Johnny Bench: 389 (326 as catcher)
3. Carlton Fisk: 376 (351 as catcher)

RBIs
1. Yogi Berra: 1,430
2. Ted Simmons: 1,389
3. Johnny Bench: 1,376
4. Mike Piazza: 1,335

Batting Average (min: 1,000 GP)
1. Mickey Cochrane: .320
2. Bill Dickey: .313
3. Mike Piazza: .308

On-base Percentage (min: 1,000 GP)
1. Mickey Cochrane: .419
2. Wally Schang: .393
3. Gene Tenace: .388
8. Mike Piazza: .377

Slugging Percentage (min: 1,000 GP)
1. MIke Piazza: .545
2. Roy Campanella: .500
3. Javy Lopez: .491

OPS+ (On-base + Slugging adjusted for all baseball eras; click here for explanation)
1. Mike Piazza: 142
2. Gene Tenace: 136
3. Mickey Cochrane: 128

Fielding

Piazza is generally regarded as having one of the worst throwing arms in modern baseball history. Lucky for him, he played during an era in which stolen bases weren't very important to a team's offense, so it didn't matter so much. And anyway, his hitting more than made up for his defensive deficiencies.

Bottom Line
Piazza was never tainted by steroid allegations, so in five years, when he becomes eligible for the Hall of Fame, he will go in on the first ballot.

Instant replay?

There was a little controversy over the weekend that awakened the calls for instant replay in baseball. In the Mets/Yankees game, Carlos Delgado had a home run called foul by the home plate umpire, a mistake the umpire owned up to after the game.

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.

What I like about baseball is that the umpires do have a chance to review and change their calls after the play is over. This rarely happens in other sports, but in baseball it happens all the time. In fact, the mistake in the Mets/Yankees game came only when the home plate umpire overruled his counterpart.

I think that the four umpires on the field, who are the best-trained in their profession, make the correct call 99% of the time on close plays like that (ball/strike calls not included). I don't think instant replay is needed to fix the miniscule number of mistakes that happen in baseball.

Sure, Oriole fans would have liked instant replay when Yankee fan Jeffrey Maier robbed them of a home run in the playoffs. And Cardinal fans would have liked instant replay when Don Denkinger blew the call at first base in the 1985 World Series.

Baseball history is littered with bad calls that instant replay might have rectified. But I say so what? Good teams overcome errors--whether theirs or the umpires'--to win games. If the Cardinals couldn't get the final out on their own in that fateful Game 6, that's their problem, not Don Denkinger's.

Umpires should continue to be trained well, and they should continue to ask for help from their cohorts when they need it. That should be good enough.

No blogging update

For my regular readers: I'm on a short vacation this week, but I'll be back blogging on Monday. Enjoy the weekend!