"[Mays] was already revered by black Americans. When New York Yankee rookie pitcher Al Downing visited the Red Rooster in Harlem in 1963, the owner handed him a book to sign. It included autographs from Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Lionel Hampton, Earl Hines, Bill ("Bojangles") Robinson, and Sugar Ray Robinson. 'The pages were so crowded with such celebrated names,' wrote David Halberstam, 'that it took Downing a long while to find a page with only one name, and he prepared to sign his name there. "No! No! No!" said the owner. "That's Willie Mays's page! No one else signs that page!"'"

—from James S. Hirsch's Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, which I finished last week, and which is just a joy to read. One of the great takeaways is how much support Willie needed from coaches and managers to do what he did. One assumes he would've done it anyway but you never know. He needed people believing in him because he was so hard on himself. There's a Management 101 course in this book. Pinch the responsibilities and salaries and personalities of employees and you wind up with pinched employees. Nurture them, support them, compliment them, and you might wind up with Willie Mays.

There was an unfortunate (but humorous) juxtaposition between photo and headline on The New York Times site today:

I'm obviously not a fan of Steinbrenner but I admire him in this way: He didn't live a life of quiet desperation. Sometimes it was noisy desperation but at least he knew what he wanted and went out and tried to get it. Sometimes, oftentimes, his very grasping attempt got in the way of his goal, but there was an object lesson in that, too. One learned this, watching him screw up with his Yankees throughout the 1980s. Did he learn it himself by the 1990s? Or was his grasping irascibility merely tempered by Joe Torre's calm? That's certainly implied by Tom Verducci in Joe Torre's biography, "The Yankee Years."

I also admired this: He may have represented a corporation, his corporation, in a very public way, but there was nothing blandly corporate about him. You never wondered with Steinbrenner, "Well, what does he really mean? What is he trying to say?" The very thought is laughable. In comparison, what smooth, dull presences represent most baseball teams today. Steinbrenner was genuine. Often a genuine asshole, often a genuine bully, but genuine.

Harvey Araton has a nice, honest farewell here. But the greatest tribute may have been delivered 15 years ago via the voice of Larry David. "Seinfeld" made Steinbrenner almost likeable.

Will he be missed? Certainly. By me? I'm like Holden Caulfied. I wind up missing everybody.

Rest in peace, you old S.O.B.

"Wertz hits it. A solid sound. I learn a lot from the sound of the ball on the bat. Always did. I could tell from the sound whether to come in or go back. This time I'm going back, a long way back, but there is never any doubt in my mind. I am going to catch this ball. I turn and run for the bleachers. But I got it. Maybe you didn't know that but I knew it. Soon as it got hit, I knew I'd catch this ball.

"But that wasn't the problem. The probelm wsa Larry Doby on second base. On a deep fly to center field at the Polo Grounds, a runner could score all the way from second. I've done that myself and more than once. So if I make the catch, which I will, and Larry scores from second, they still get the run that puts them ahead.

"All the time I'm running back, I'm thinking, 'Willie, you've got to get this ball back to the infield.'

"I run 50 or 75 yards—right to the warning track—and I take the ball a little over my left shoulder. Suppose I stop and turn and throw. I will get nothing on the ball. No momentum going into my thow. What I have to do is this: after I make the catch, turn. Put all my momentum into that turn. To keep my momentum, to get it working for me, I have to turn very hard and short and throw the ball from exactly the point that I caught it. The momentum goes into my turn and up through my legs and into my throw.

"That's what I did. I got my momentum and my legs into that throw. Larry Doby ran to third but couldn't score. Al Rosen didn't even advance from first.

All the while I'm runnin' back, I was planning how to get off that throw.

"Then some of them wrote, 'He made that throw by instinct.'"

—Willie Mays, on his famous catch off Vic Wertz in the 8th inning of Game 1 of the 1954 World Series. From James S. Hirsch's Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, pages 200 and 201.

"What the fuck are you talking about? Willie makes fucking catches like that every day. Do you keep your fucking eyes closed in the press box?"

—Giants' Manager Leo Durocher, when asked by a reporter, after the game, if Willie Mays's catch off Vic Wertz in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series was the greatest catch he'd ever seen. From James S. Hirsch's Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, page. 199.

"I've been playing ball since I was a kid. I've been around the major leagues for 30 years. That was the greatest catch I've ever seen. Just the catch, mind you. Now put it all together. The catch. The throw. The pressure on the kid. I'd say that was the best play anybody ever made in baseball."

—Manager Al Lopez, Cleveland Indians, on Willie Mays's catch off Vic Wertz in the 8th inning of Game 1 of the 1954 World Series. From James S. Hirsch's Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, page. 199.

On June 2, 2010, Ken Griffey, Jr., "The Kid" when he came up, "The Natural" on his first Sports Illustrated cover, "Junior" very quickly and forever after that, retired from Major League Baseball. It wasn't exactly a Ted Williams-ish exit. Two days earlier, in the bottom of the 9th, with the Mariners down by a run and a man on first, Junior, pinching hitting for catcher Rob Johnson, one of the few players on the team with a worse batting average than his, grounded into a fielder's choice off of Twins' closer Jon Rauch. Then Michael Saunders, all of 2 years old when Junior broke into the bigs, pinch ran for him. And that was that.

I missed his beginnings. Junior signed with the Mariners about the time I graduated from college (June 1987), and he broke into the bigs when I was getting ready for grad school (April 1989), so I wasn't paying much attention. Plus I was in Minneapolis, or Taipei, or New Brunswick, and when I finally arrived in Seattle in May 1991 I maintained a Minnesota preference for Kirby Puckett. The first time I saw Junior at the Kingdome he went 0-4. "So much for that," I thought.

I think I fell in love about '93. He made spectacular catches routine and hit mooonshot homeruns into the upper deck. During the homerun derby in Baltimore, wearing his cap backwards, Junior became the first player to hit the B&O Warehouse beyond the right field stands on the fly; there's still a plaque there commemmorating the event. In July he tied a major league record by hitting 8 HRs in 8 straight games, and for the season he hit 45 homers and led the league in Total Bases with 359, but he finished fifth in the MVP vote behind no. 4 Juan Gonzalez (who led the league in HRs with 46), no. 3 John Olerud (who led the league in batting, OBP and OPS), no. 2 Paul Molitor (who led the league in hits), and the winner, Frank Thomas, who led the league in exactly nothing but whose team, the White Sox, won the West. Griffey was still stuck over in Seattle, which had great, budding players, and a famously irascible manager, Lou Piniella, and the team finished over .500 for the second time in its shabby history but still finished fourth in the AL West with a 82-80 record. You look at the '93 MVP numbers and it looks like a wash among the top 5, so why not give weight to the Gold Glove in center field rather tha the lump at first base? But the Baseball Writers Association of America preferred, as it always does, winning teams and semantics over "valuable" to defense. The writers probably figured: Junior's only 23. He'll get better.

He did. I was at the game June 24, 1994 when Junior hit  HR no. 32 and you couldn't help but add up the on-pace possibilities. 62? 70? Esquire magazine ran a short feature on him that summer called "Roger and Him," all about The Man Who Would Break Roger Maris' Home Run Record, but Junior stopped at 40 along with the rest of the baseball season in August. When Newsweek ran a cover story on the baseball strike they put Junior on the cover with a broken bat. MVP SchmemVP, Junior represented the sport.

The sport returned in late April 1995 and so did he: a 3-run homer on Opening Day as the M's beat the Tigers 5-zip before a sparse crowd at the Kingdome. A month later he was gone again: shattering his wrist making an impossible catch against the right-centerfield wall. For three months we held our breath. Could he come back? Would he be the same? The wrist is so important. Think Hank Aaron and his early cross-handed batting stance, and how that mistake strengthened his wrists, and how he wound up hitting 755 homeruns. 1995 turned out to be a magic season for the M's, the "Refuse to Lose" season, and, though Junior helped spark it with a walk-off homerun against John Wetteland and the New York Yankees on August 24, other players dominated. Edgar won the batting title with a .356 average, Randy won the Cy Young award, going 18-2 with 294 strikeouts, and Jay Buhner ruled the September to Remember. Yes, Junior dominated the Yankees in the ALDS, with five homeruns in five games, but it was Edgar who killed them: 7 RBIs in Game 4 and the double down the left-field line that scored Junior from first in Game 5 and finally put the stake into their cold, cold Yankee hearts.

Junior missed another month in '96 (hamate bone) and still hit 49 homers, but in the new era that was only good enough for third place. In '97 he was finally injury free and finally won that MVP award but it already felt different. He wasn't even the Kid anymore, A-Rod was, and though he finally hit 56 homeruns, everyone, even Brady Anderson, was suddenly hitting 50 homeruns. Moreover, his team, the lowly Mariners, who stormed ahead in '95, and seemed, in '96 and early '97, on the verge of a dynasty, was already being undone by awful relief pitching and awfuler moves. Omar Vizquel for Felix Fermin. Tino Martinez and Jeff Nelson for Sterling Hitchcock and Russ Davis. In July '97, with Norm Charlton and Bobby Ayala forever blowing ballgames, M's GM Woody Woodward went out and got three relief pitchers: Bad (Mike Timlin), Badder (Paul Spoljarec) and Baddest (Heathcliff Slocumb). To get them he gave up what felt like the future: another Jr. (Jose Cruz), catcher Jason Veritek and pitcher Derek Lowe. It didn't even work short-term. The M's got killed by Baltimore in the '97 ALDS, three games to one, and from the right-field stands I watched Junior flub a chance at a great play. The ball went off his glove. I'd never seen that before. I thought: "What is that? He normally gets that." The next season was worse. We lost Randy Johnson in July, and while Junior was blasting homeruns it wasn't at the pace of the two testeronic monstrosities, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, who ruled the summer. Junior was a diminished figure in the steroids era. The M's were a diminished team in the Yankees era.

In February 1999 I got to interview Woody Woodward for a local magazine. Afterwards the M's front office, who thought it would be a puff piece, called my editor to complain about "being ambushed," but under the circumstances I thought I'd been polite. I hadn't sworn at him, for example. I hadn't threatened him, or yelled at him, or told him what he could do with his Healthcliff Slocumb. One of the Qs and As:

Is there a plan to keep Ken Griffey, Jr. and Alex Rodriguez after the 2000 season? Is it even feasible given the huge contracts that are being signed today?
Right now I’m going after it like it is. But...we also need to be strong enough as a team that they will want to play in Seattle.

They didn't. It was rumored Griffey didn't much like the House that Griffey Built, which opened in July 1999, and after the season he demanded a trade to one of three teams, then one of one team, the Cincinnati Reds, and like that he was gone and the sourness lingered until early April 2000 when his replacement Mike Cameron scaled the wall in dead center field to take away a homerun from Derek "Effin'" Jeter, and Safeco Field went wild: giving Cameron a standing O as he trotted in, giving him a standing O as he batted the next inning, giving him a standing O as he walked back to the dugout after striking out on three pitches. We thought baseball wouldn't be fun without Junior but that night we realized it might. And it kinda was, in 2000 and 2001, but it still wasn't the same. That presence was gone. Those possibilities were gone. There was still too much What Might Have Been.

Junior in the NL was like the Beatles after the break-up: Not bad, but you wondered what happened to the magic. Junior dominated the 1990s. Every year he'd won a Gold Glove. Every year he'd been elected to the All-Star team—usually with the highest vote total. Nine of the 10 years he'd received MVP votes and five times he finished in the top 5. He was named Player of the Decade and named to the All-Century team and one wondered where he would stop. The answer? Right there. In the NL he never won a Gold Glove, played in only three All-Star games, received MVP votes just once, in 2005, his comeback year. He was always injured, limping, overweight. After a time, after the bitterness went away, you silently cheered him on. C'mon, Junior! Lose weight. get in shape, come back. Phillies great Richie Ashburn once said, of the strategies devised to keep playing ball, "I wish I learned early what I had to learn late," but you got the feeling Junior didn't even learn this late. When he returned to Seattle last year, a nostalgic afterthought, and put 18 more homers between him and the black mark of Sammy Sosa, he was an old man of 39. The same age as Mariano Rivera, who helped the Yankees win their first World Championship since 2000. Junior helped the Mariners think they had a chance—for the last time.

I wasn't there at the beginning but I was there at the end. Not Junior's last game on Memorial Day, but the first Major League Baseball game without Junior on a roster. As he drove home to Florida, M's management played the tribute video they'd probably had in the can for 14 months and the grounds crew created a "24" in the dirt out by second base, and me and my friend Jim watched this team, once mighty, once a potential dynasty, now as weak and characterless as the day he arrived to save them, eke out a win in extra innings. But there was nothing electric about it. There was no future in it. The M's are still a backwards-looking franchise that doesn't even have a definitive victory to look back on. In the 1990s they had three of the greatest players ever to play on the same team, Junior, A-Rod and Randy, and they couldn't get past the ALCS. Two of those players now have rings from other franchises. The last will go down as the greatest player in baseball history never to be in a World Series.

Godspeed, Junior. You deserved better.

Two nights ago I took my friend Robert to a baseball game. His first.

Robert was born and raised in Tripoli, Lebanon, moved to the U.S. in August 2001, and doesn't know from baseball. That needed rectifying. And wasn't I the guy to do it? I had once been the SME (Subject Matter Expert) for Microsoft's "Baseball 2K," a PC video game, and I'd taken a friend from Spain to a game several years ago and explained it to her. Promises had been made to Robert last year. Promises were finally kept two nights ago.

As Robert and I walked from our First Hill neighborhood through downtown Seattle and toward Safeco Field, I began the tutorial. There are two teams, I said: one on offense, one on defense. The team on defense is "in the field," and at various positions around the field, to better, um, field the ball. (The editor in me shuddered.) The team on offense sends up one player at a time to home plate.

"Home plate?" Robert asked.

Yes, there are four bases.

OK, there are nine innings, and in each inning, or half inning...

OK, wait. A team gets three "outs," which are, um...

Let me start over.

The team on defense has a "pitcher," who stands 60 feet, 6 inches away from home plate. The team on offense sends a "batter" to home plate with a...um...stick.

"A bat," Robert said.

Yes. The pitcher throws the ball toward the batter and tries to get the batter to swing and miss or hit the ball weakly. If the pitcher gets the batter to miss three times, that's an "out." A "strikeout." (The caveat is the foul ball, I thought, but first things first.)

There are different ways to make an out, I said. I explained the ground out, the fly out. the strikeout. Three outs and the two teams switch sides.

But the point of the game is to move the players around the bases, from first to second to third to home, and score.

"Points," Robert said.

In baseball, I said, they're called "runs." And after nine innings the team with the most runs wins. (The caveat is extra innings, I thought, but...)

We kept going. Balls and strikes. "Strike zone." A walk. A single. Moving from base to base. I didn't know it but I was doing a Bob Newhart routine. Was I making the game seem less bizarre to Robert? All I know is, the more I talked, and the more I explained the game at this elemental level, the more bizarre it seemed to me. Who could invent such a thing?

As we entered Safeco Field, I apologized to Robert for the weather, which was overcast and drizzly. I apologized for the Mariners, who were not that good. I apologized for the sparse crowd, eventually announced as 20,920, but probably half that. Eight years ago, I said, this place would've been packed.

We bought Ivar's fish and chips and beer, and grabbed our seats: 300 level behind home plate. I explained road-gray uniforms and home-white uniforms. The players were being announced, which necessitated further explanations: line-up; batting order. "And they can't deviate from this order?" Robert asked. "And after they switch sides and return to offense, do they start at the top again?" Robert asked.

The first Major League pitcher Robert saw in person was Doug Fister, who, the scoreboard proudly displayed, was leading the league in ERA. "What's ERA?" Robert asked. The first Major League batter Robert saw in person was Austin Jackson, the Tigers' rookie center fielder, with a .333 batting average. "What's batting average?" Robert asked. These were easy ones. "Earned runs," admittedly, was tough. It led to "unearned runs" and "errors" and "official scorers" and this question: "Does it change the outcome of the game or is it just for individual statistics?"

And in the first Major League at-bat Robert ever saw in person, Austin Jackson struck out looking.

"So what if the ball is outside the strike zone and the batter swings and misses?" Robert asked. That's a strike, too, I said. "What if the ball hits the batter?" That's a hit-by-pitch, I said, and the batter goes to first base. "So how come the batter gets out of the way?" he asked. "Doesn't he want to go to first?" Well, I said, if the umpire thinks he didn't try to get out of the way, then he might not let him go to first base. Besides, it would hurt. The ball is small and hard and thrown between 85 and 100 miles per hour. "Yes," Robert agreed. "That would hurt."

Things began to click for him when, with two outs and runners on first and second, Brennan Boesch hit a high, high pop fly to left field to end the inning. That's an out, I said.

"Ahhh!" Robert said. "So it doesn't matter how hard he hits the ball, if the fielder catches it before it hits the ground..." Yes, I said, the batter is out. You can hit the ball all the way to the wall, you can hit the ball over the wall, but if a fielder leaps up and catches it before it touches anything, it's an out. Just an out.

Robert nodded. At the same time, throughout the game, he seemed equally impressed by balls that were hit high as those that were hit far. Dull pop-ups to me were majestic things to him.

For the Mariners in the bottom of the first, Ichiro and Figgins went down quickly. When there are two outs, I said, a team is less likely to score any runs. Which is when Franklin Guttierez promptly slapped a single to left and Milton Bradley hit a line-shot homerun over the right-field wall. We stood and cheered. We bumped fists. 2-0!

The M's gave it right back with sloppy play in the top of the second. They couldn't get to ground balls. Double play balls were booted. "It seems the best plan is to hit the ball on the ground," Robert said. Well, I said, not really. Line drives are the best kinds of hits, but those, too, can be caught for outs. There's a lot of chance in the game. You can perform well and still make an out. You can perform poorly and still get a hit.

A Tiger slapped a single to left and took a wide turn. "He was thinking about going to second," Robert said, "but he did not want to take the risk." Exactly, I said.

In the top of the third, the Tigers threatened again: men on first and second with only one out. But Don Kelly lined the ball to Chone Figgins at second, who doubled off Brandon Inge at first. Doubled off. OK, when the ball is hit in the air, the baserunners can only advance when...

After that, things went quickly. We had several 1-2-3 innings. Three up, three down. I worried the game would seem long and boring to Robert but he thought it moved fine. He thought American football was long and boring in comparison. "So many timeouts," he said.

I filled his head with unnecessary minutia:

• The Tigers were one of the original 16 major league teams, dating back more than a century, while the Mariners existed only since 1977.
• Major League Baseball didn't start playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" before games until World War I and it didn't become codified, I believed, until the late 1930s (although it's apparently World War II).
• The 7th inning stretch supposedly began when William Howard Taft, president of the United States from 1909 to 1913, went to a game and stood up after the top of the 7th and everyone followed suit—but I told him this story was probably apocryphal.
• "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," which we sang during the 7th inning stretch, was over 100 years old.

After 9/11, I added, they also played "God Bless America" during the 7th inning stretch but that's mostly stopped. Then we talked about 9/11. He had the perspective of someone who grew up in the midst of a civil war and didn't expect life to run smoothly. "I thought, you know, this might be bad," he said about being Lebanese. "It might be like the Japanese with internment camps. But everyone treated me nicely. I didn't have any bad incidents."

In the end, for all of my apologies at the beginning, we watched a good game. In the 8th it was 3-3, and I was beginning to explain the concept of extra innings to Robert—who, instead of being appalled, rather liked the idea that no game could end in a tie—when, with runners on first and second and one out, Milton Bradley lined a two-strike pitch to right field. Here came Figgins from second! A play at the plate! Safe! I showed Robert the umpire calls for "safe" and "out." I talked about how it was good that Guttierez was now on third because he had speed and might score on a sacrifice fly, which I also explained, and which was promptly demonstrated when Jose Lopez lofted a shallow fly to center. Guttierez ran. Safe! "He took the risk," Robert said.

In the 9th, the M's closer, David Aardsma, was announced by the PA announcer with a pirate drawl ("Aarrrrr-dsma"), and to accompanying heavy metal music and heavy metal graphics on the scoreboard. "Quite a production," Robert said, looking around. Then, referring to Shawn Kelley, who had relieved Fister in the 8th, he added, "The other guy didn't get such a welcome."

The 9th went quickly. Avila fought off several pitches before popping out to short. Raburn smacked the ball to center but Guttierez drifted under it easily. Then Austin Jackson, who began the game with a strikeout, ended it with a strikeout. The sparse crowd stood and cheered. I looked over at Robert, who smiled.

"So we win," he said.

We win, I said.

He looked around the field. "You know," he said, "once you know the basics, this game isn't so difficult."

The New York Daily News called it "One of the best books about baseball ever written," while The New Yorker named it one of its BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR, but for the rest of us, "The Yankee Years," by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci, seems awfully schizophrenic.

It's a mostly plodding hagiography of the 1996-2001 New York Yankees and their even-keeled manager, Joe Torre, but Verducci keeps pushing in directions that undercut the hagiography. He includes a chapter on steroid abuse, for example, that renders irrelevant the team's accomplishments. Clemens blew the Mariners away with one of the best performances in post-season history. (Yay!) But while he was on steroids. (Boo!) Oh, but don't worry, the steroids don't matter. (Huh?) He lists off the ways Michael Lewis' Moneyball changed the game—with teams like the Red Sox valuing previously undervalued stats, like On-Base-Percentage, and prospering as a result. But while Yankees' GM Brian Cashman became a quick if sloppy convert, Torre, the book's hero, never did, continuing to focus on less-measurable aspects of the game like personality and heart.

We're reminded, again and again, of the four titles Torre helped bring to New York, as if the book were written for the Steinbrenners and Cashman, who unceremoniously cut Torre loose after the 2007 season. We're reminded, again and again, of the grinding qualities those late '90s players, such as Paul O'Neill and Tino Martinez, brought to the team, and how newer players, such as Jason Giambi and Alex Rodriguez, didn't have that same heart, and didn't care enough about the team, which is why, according to Torre, the Yankees stopped winning World Series. But this construct, which is Torre's construct, is later refuted by, of all people, Derek Jeter, who mostly blames lack of pitching for the non-title years. Verducci then backs up Jeter with stats. So which is it? Or which is it mostly? No attempt to clarify this apparent discrepancy is made.

As a result, the book is a fascinating mess. It's also annoying for anyone who hates the Yankees. That's most of us.

Excerpts:

1. "The [1996] postseason became a 15-game version of their regular season. The Yankees capitalized on any opening..." (p. 15) ...particularly the opening of Jeffrey Maier's glove.
2. "After five games, the 1998 Yankees were 1-4, in last place, already 3 1/2 games out of first, outscored 36-15, at risk of losing their manager and letting teams like the Mariners kick sand in their faces." (p. 42) Teams like the Mariners? How awful. I'm reminded of that Charles Atlas ad. "That team is the worst nuissance on the beach!"
   
3. "Like Torre, [David] Cone was angered by what he saw the previous night. He watched Seattle designated hitter Edgar Martinez, batting in the 8th inning with a 4-0 lead, take a huge hack on a 3-and-0 pitch from reliever Mike Buddie—five innings after Moyer had dusted [Paul] O'Neill with a pitch." (p. 44) Wow, Moyer dusted someone? And apparently Edgar violated one of the unwritten rules of baseball: Swinging on a 3-0 pitch when up by four runs in a stadium where David Cone threw 148 pitches and walked in the tying run in the final game of the 1995 ALDS. Edgar should know better than that.
   
4. "'You have to find something to hate about your opponent,' [Cone said in a pre-game speech to his teammates.] 'Look aross the way. These guys are real comfortable against us. Edgar is swinging from his heels on 3-and-0 when they're up by about 10 runs!'" (p. 44) Give or take six runs.
   
5. "At some point over the 2000 and 2001 seasons, according to the Mitchell Report, Radomski provided drugs for [Yankees] Grimsley, Knoblauch, pitcher Denny Neagle, outfielders Glenallen Hill and David Justice, and later for pitcher Mike Stanton. In addition, the 2000 Yankees included three other players who later admitted their drug use (though not necessarily specific to that particular year): Jose Canseco, Jim Leyrtiz and Andy Pettitte. Most infamously, the 2000 Yankees had a tenth player who would be tied to reports of performance-enhacing drug use: Clemens." (p. 105) We're back to the Charles Atlas ad. Mariners kick sand, Yankees beef up. "The INSULT that made steroids users out of 'Yankees'!"
   
6. "'Andy [Pettitte] was great," Torre said. 'I think he taught Roger how to pitch in New York. And Roger taught Andy how to be stronger.'" (p. 77) "Stronger."
   
7. "Pettitte was a churchgoing, God-fearing Texan, known in the Yankees clubhouse for his integrity and earnestness. If Pettitte was going to cheat, who wouldn't?" (p. 111) Atheist bastards from Massachusetts?
8. "'It's like Bob Gibson said: "To win a game you'd take anything,"' Torre said. 'We'd all sell our souls. Winning is something that was first and foremost and that's what we wanted to do. Unfortunately, now what stimulates the need to do this is individual performance and not winning.'" (p. 113) Ah, for the days when players took illegal substances for the good of the team.
   
9. "There was so much going on, so much in his head, so much emotion coursing through his body, that Clemens could not process the inventory of what was happening at that moment [when Piazza's bat shattered during the 2000 World Series] quickly enough." (p. 134) "...so many steroids coursing through his body..."
10. "The Steroid Era was baseball's Watergate, a colossal breach of trust for which the institution is forever tainted. It floats untethered to the rest of baseball history, like some great piece of space junk, disconnected from the moorings of the game's statistics." (p. 117) Including championships in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000?
    
11. The [Fenway Park] crowd arrives with the meanness and edginess of a mob." (p. 80) Yankee crowds, bless them, arrive with smiles and pic-a-nic baskets.
12. "Intimidation, and the mere threat that he could go off at any time, was part of Steinbrenner's personal and leadership package." (p. 122) "Leadership."
13. "No 2000 World Series rings were forthcoming for the scouts, numbering about two dozen. Morale worsened when they were instructed not to bring up the subject of World Series rings at organizational meetings. It worsened still when they saw Steinbrenner cronies such as actor Billy Crystal or singer Ronan Tynan wearing World Series rings." (p. 143) "Leadership."
14. "[In Steinbrenner's office, there was] a picture of General George S. Patton, given to him by a member of Patton's staff. It was not your typical military portrait. Patton is seen pissing into the Rhine." (p. 467) Patton: Rhine;   Steinbrenner: Baseball.
15. "When Jeter was 24 years old and after the Yankees won the 1998 World Series, George Steinbrenner gave a book to him as a present: Patton on Leadership: Strategic Lessons for Corporate Warfare." (p. 159) No bastard ever got rich by going long on subprime CDOs. He got rich by making the other poor dumb bastard go long on subprime CDOs.
16. "Jeter requires fierce, unqualified loyalty from friends and teammates." (p. 245) Baby.
17. "The Yankees [after 9/11] had become not just New York's team, but also America's hometown team." (p. 148) Fuck you.
18. "So it came down to this: Mariano Rivera on the mound with a one-run lead against the bottom of the Arizona lineup [in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series]. Steinbrenner was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, combing his hair, preparing to soon accept the Commissioner's Trophy for a fourth straight year." (p. 157) Ha!
    
19. "The [2003 World] Series could have gone either way. A sacrifice fly here, a hit there, a little back and core maintenance there, and who knows?" (p. 237) A roided-up pitcher here, a Jeffrey Maier catch there...
20. "'They always play Yankeeography in New York on the videoboard. As a visiting player, you see that they get music to hit to and when we come up we get Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle all the time,' [said Kevin Millar]. Millar walked into the office of [manager Terry] Francona [before Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS]. 'We're not hitting [batting practice] on the field today, Skip,' Millar said. 'We're not falling for any of that Yankeeography crap.'" (p. 304) Ha!
21. "The Yankees were saddled not only with the worst collapse in baseball history [in the 2004 ALCS], but also the insult of having the hated Red Sox spill champagne in their stadium." (p. 311) Ha!
22. "Cashman didn't want [Ted] Lilly. He preferred [Kei] Igawa, though Igawa would cost the Yankees more money over four years ($46 million, including the $26 million posting fee)..." (p. 376) Wait for it....
23. "'I caught Kei Igawa,' [bullpen catcher Mike] Borzello said... 'He threw three strikes the whole time. His changeup goes about 40 feet. His slider is not a big league pitch. His command was terrible.'" (p. 377)  Ha!
24. "Just the memory of [the 2003 World Series] pained Pettitte...especially that last night when Beckettt beat Pettitte and the Yankees, 2-0, in what would be the last World Series game every played at Yankee Stadium." (p. 386)  "Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest [Yankees] thought" —Percy Shelley (with help from Erik Lundegaard)
    
25. "Damon's teammates grew so frustrated with him [in 2007] that several spoke to Torre out of concern that he was hurting the team. One of them visited Torre one day in the manager's office and was near tears talking about Damon. 'Let's get rid of him,' the player said. 'Guys can't stand him.'" (p. 395) Pssst...Jeter.
26. "[Joba] Chamberlain, glistening from the spray and his heavy sweat, was a midge magnet. ... Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, New York's $43 million left side of the infield, were constantly waving their gloves and throwing hands at the little midges. Fighting for their playoff lives, the most expensive team in baseball had developed into a vaudeville act." (p. 438) This game almost made me believe in God. Or at least plagues.
    
27. "It was 11:38 p.m. when the end came. Jorge Posada swung and missed at a pitch from Cleveland closer Joe Borowski for the final out of a 6-4 Yankees loss. It was the last pitch of the last postseason game ever played at Yankee Stadium." (p. 462) Jor-ge! Jor-ge! Jor-ge!
    
28. "'Guys, you're playing for the best manager you could possibly play for,' [coach Larry] Bowa told the players. 'He never rips you. He sticks up for you whether you're right or wrong. He gives you the benefit of the doubt on anything..." (p. 405) Until this book, in which Torre basically rips, among others, David Wells, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Johnny Damon, Kevin Brown, Chuck Knoblauch, Bobby Abreu and Alex Rodriguez.
    
29. "In another era, the Yankees might have cherry-picked elite pitchers in their prime from organizations that could not longer afford them, in the same way they had plucked David Cone from the Blue Jays in 1995 and Mussina from the Orioles after playing out his contract in 2000. Instead, the Blue Jays locked up Roy Halladay, the Indians locked up CC Sabathia, the Brewers locked up Ben Sheets, the Astros locked up Roy Oswalt and the Twins locked up Johan Santana—all small-market teams who suddenly had the cash to keep their ace pitchers off the trade and free agent markets. The kicker for the Yankees was that under the revenue-sharing system they were financing some of the newfound solvency of those teams." (p. 421) Has a more self-absorbed paragraph ever been written? The Yankees feel sorry for themselves because they can no longer treat the rest of the Major Leagues like its own farm system? Worse, it's all wrong. The true kicker, not Verducci's kicker, is that all of these pitchers, save one, are not only not "locked up" but now with other teams—including Sabathia with the Yankees. Only Oswalt is still with the Astros...and he wants out.
30. "Cashman and the Yankees [in the offseason leading up to the 2009 season] only had just begun to change the story. In 12 days they spent $423.5 million on Sabathia, pitcher A.J. Burnett, who was 31 years old at the time, and first baseman Mark Teixeira, who was 28. ... All told, the Yankees spent $441 million on free agents in that one winter. The rest of the league combined spent $176 million." (p. 486) The rigged game continues. Rooting for the New York Yankees is like rooting for Goldman Sachs.
    

Good times.

Earlier this month I visited friends and family in Minneapolis and took in a game at the new Target Field. It's a great park, surprisingly compact, with narrow foul lines and grandstands right on top of the action. We sat in the left-field bleachers, third-deck, with the Hale Elementary crowd (my nephews' school), which is about as far away as you can get from the action, and we didn't seem that far from the action. It's a vertical stadium, I heard Twins right fielder Michael Cuddyer say the other day, where the winds are trapped and swirl around on the field. It wasn't windy where we were, but man was it cold. It was the day after the first rain-out in Minnesota in 20 years, and temps stayed in the 40s throughout the game. We bundled up, I bought a Twins wool cap at the park, but we were still chilled. Occasionally, to warm up, we'd leave our seats and stand under the heaters outside the Town Ball Tavern. I know: Bud Grant wouldn't approve. But this is baseball.

Here's hoping for a World Series in Minnesota. With snow. To point out the absurdity of Bud Selilg's post-season schedule.

My nephew, Ryan, 6, en route to the game.

A VIP room on the second deck, where we weren't allowed (not VI enough), but which has the decency to plaster their outer walls with Minnesota heroes: Tony Oliva and Harmon Killebrew.

My father and I walked around the stadium for an hour before gametime—both to see the place and stay warm. Here he is on the second deck on the third-base side, enjoying a rare moment of sunshine. "Minnie" and "Paul," the original Twins, shaking hands over the Mississippi river, rightly lord over center field.

Outside the Town Ball Tavern, photos of Minnesota "town ball" teams from the turn of the last century are displayed—including this suprisingly integrated team, with three black ballplayers, from the 1910s.

Two Minnesotans exulting: Ryan, in the middle of a 2010 loss to the Orioles, and Kirby Puckett rounding the bases after his walk-off homerun in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series: "Jump on my back, I'll carry you," he said before the game.

The statue of Harmon Killebrew, who hit 573 homeruns and retired fifth on the all-time homerun list in 1975, behind only Aaron, Ruth, Mays and Frank Robinson. Ryan, emulating, hitting his first.

How odd that they encourage us to vote more than once for the All-Star Game. Is Bud playing the numbers game? Twenty-three million ballots cast! A new record! People care! Sure, but 10 million were cast by Joe Schlumpfo, unemployed, in Des Moines.

Here's the ballot cast by Erik Schlumpfo, writer/editor, in Seattle:

I'm Twins-heavy, I know, and Yankees-deficient, but that's the fun of it. Kubel gets in just for the grannie off Mo.

Go here to vote—under the "related coverage" box. Vote early and often. Let's keep the starting nine Yankee-free.

My friend Jim is a big fan of the double—it’s the working man’s extrabase hit—and the other day, in the stands at Safeco, he began to talk them up.

“Ever year,” he said, “someone seems to hit in the 50s and yet—“

“—and yet no one breaks Earl Webb’s record of 67,” I said. “I know.”

“Not even that. No one hits 60.”

“Really? Not Biggio or Nomar or someone like that?”

He shook his head. “Somebody’s always hitting in the 50s but I don’t think anyone’s hit 60 in decades.”

A few days later he e-mailed me the following:

no one has hit 60 since l936, when 2 did it, one in each league, Helton hit 59 back in 2000, the closest anyone has come.

I crunched the numbers and it’s more interesting than I realized. Only six players have hit 60 or more doubles in a season, and all of those instances occurred between 1926 and 1936. "60" is a pretty magic number. Tris Speaker, the career doubles leader, never reached it. (He hit 59 in 1923.) 50 or more, meanwhile, has been done 88 times, but 29 of those, or 33%, occurred in the 2000s.

Here are the 50+ seasons broken down by decade:

1880s: 1
1890s: 2
1900s: 0
1910s: 2
1920s: 13
1930s: 20
1940s: 5
1950s: 2
1960s: 1
1970s: 2
1980s: 2
1990s: 10
2000s: 29

These numbers don’t surprise me too much, bulging, as they do, into double digits in the power years of the 1920s/30s, and 1990s/2000s, but I didn’t think the difference with other decades would be this stark. Hitting doubles requires power but not that much power. That’s its point. Too much power and the ball is gone. Too little and it’s a single, or caught. Speed, you’d think, would help, by turning singles into doubles, but the speedster years of the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s are virtually empty of 50+ seasons. Rickey Henderson never hit even 40 doubles in a season, let alone 50, while Lou Brock only went over 40 once, in the pitcher’s year of 1968, when he led the Majors with 46.

I began to pay attention to doubles in 1994 when the Twins’ Chuck Knoblauch was, as they say, “on pace” to break Earl Webb’s record. (I’ve heard that phrase a lot since then.) That year, of course, the season ended August 11th, with the players’ strike, and with Knoblauch stuck at 45. He’d never hit 50. A year later, in another strike-shortened season, three players did hit more than 50—Edgar Martinez (52), Albert Belle (52) and Mark Grace (51)—and it's been gangbusters ever since.

The era of the 50-homeurn season seems to be on the wane as players are tested, fined, and embarrassed, by steroid use. There have only been five 50-homerun seasons since 2003, which is less than there were in 2000 and 2001 alone, and none in the last two years.

The doubles, though, keep coming. Just not 60. Whatever peculiar set of circumstances allowed that to happen between 1926 and 1936 don't seem to exist anymore.

Biggo retired with 668 career doubles, behind only Speaker, Rose, Musial and Cobb. His single-season high was 56.

My friend Jim and I are basically the Stadler and Waldorf of Seattle Mariners fans—we sit on the sidelines, disparage the proceedings, and crack each other up in the process. We're not exactly high on this year's team, either. Last year the M's scored the fewest runs in the American League and they didn't greatly improve their lineup in the off-season.

Even so, last week, when the M's were 2-6, Jim agreed to go to a game with me, and by the time we walked through the gates last night they were 6-7, a nice turnaround, although they were still near the bottom of the AL in runs scored with 45. Thankfully the team we were playing, the Orioles, were at the bottom of the league in runs scored with 43. Or as I heard M's broadcaster Rick Rizzs put it when I went to get some Ivars and beers during the third inning: "The Mariners have scored 45 runs this year; the Orioles only 42 (sic)."

When I got back to my seat the M's were in the middle of a rally. The bases were loaded with one out and Franklin Gutierrez, our best hitter, and the only reason Jim's girlfriend watches games (psst: he's good-looking), was at the plate.

"Jack Wilson started things off with a double," Jim said, as he took his beer.

"I heard on the TV out there," I said. "Rizzs made it sound like Babe Ruth's called shot."

Jim laughed and shook his head. "He should have been thrown out by 10 feet but the Orioles misplayed it.

"Really?" I said. "According to Rizzs, 'he had that double right out of the batter's box.'"

Jim shook his head again, inhaled a weary and unamused laugh, then looked over at the broadcast booth. "I should just go down there and punch him in the face right now."

In the first few innings we'd gone over our many complaints. Was Jose Lopez really a no. 4 hitter? Was Griffey a no. 5 hitter? Shouldn't they move up Casey Kotchman, who has some upside, but is currently batting seventh? We wondered why, in the history of Safeco, with its favorable right-field winds, the M's had never acquired a really solid, left-handed power hitter. We talked how good my Twins were doing and got back to lefty power hitters. "Thome was a good pick-up for them," Jim said. "He would've looked good here, too, but"—and his voice slowed accusingly—"the DH slot was filled." Filled, I should add, by Ken Griffey, Jr., Jim's bete noir. Given our history, I can forgive Junior a lot, but Jim is more hard-hearted and (possibly) common-sensical.

Meanwhile, that third-inning rally continued. Gutierrez slapped a single to left for one run. Jose Lopez grounded into what should've been an inning-ending double play, but the O's third baseman, Ty Wiggington, bobbled it, Ichiro scored, everyone was safe. "But now you've got Griffey up instead of Kochman," Jim said. But Griffey promptly singled to the right side for two more runs: 4-0, M's. Then Milton Bradley laced a double into the left field gap, and for some reason (memories of '95? memories of Wilson's double a few batters earlier?), the third-base coach waved the 40-year-old Griffey home from first. Out by 10 feet. 

"Do you think if we were given enough time during spring training we couldn't do that?" Jim asked.

"What?"

"Be a third base coach. I've often wondered. It looks like not much."

We were debating this when Kochman sent a shot screaming into the right-field bleachers. 7-0, M's.

"You think they're going to move him up in the lineup?" Jim asked, as we stood and applauded. "I don't think they have the balls."

"Helluva inning, though," I said. "Plus we got the no-hitter going."

Indeed. Doug Fister, the M's 6-foot-eight-inch right-hander, had hit a batter and then walked a batter in the first, but hadn't allowed a hit. He retired the side in order in the 4th.

"I refuse to talk about a no-hitter until after five," Jim said.

An inning later: "OK, now I'll talk about it."

Neither one of us had ever been at the park for a no-hitter. "I don't think I've even seen one on TV," Jim said.

"Me neither. No, wait. I did watch the last five innings of one once."

"That counts."

"Gooden's against the M's. That was impressive. Against that lineup?"

This led to a trivia question Jim had heard on talk radio: Mariano Rivera has saved games for five Cy Young Award winners (not necessrily in their Cy Young-awarding-winning seasons). Who are they? "Gooden was the one we couldn't get," he added.

After Fister retired the side in the sixth, Jim began to get pumped. "Hey," he sudddenly realized. "It's only nine outs."

I looked around at the empty seats. "And this is the kind of crowd that tends to see no hitters," I said.

"I don't know if I've ever seen Safeco this empty," Jim said.

Maybe we shouldn't have talked so much about the no hitter. Maybe we jinxed it. Because with nobody out in the top of 7th, Nick Markakis, who had 45 doubles last season, rocketed a sharp single past Fister and up the middle. We stood, applauded, acknowledged the effort. We talked one hitter until the next hit. We talked shutout and complete game and pitch counts until the O's scored a run. Then we knew that Fister, who'd thrown over 90 pitches, would probably be relieved in the 8th, as he was.

But we did see history last night. Jim called it: the attendance, 14,528, was the lowest ever at Safeco Field. Wucka wucka.

It's a bit late to make predictions about how the baseball season, now in its second week, will turn out. Rob Neyer made his predictions over a week and a half ago, for example.

But I was more or less in Vietnam when the season started, and anyway my predictions have less to do with crunching players' batting and pitching numbers than, as per this post last autumn, looking at payrolls. And I needed to wait long enough to make sure the payroll numbers were set.

So, based on payroll, here are your winners in the American League, along with overall payroll ranking within the league:

East: New York Yankees (1)
Central: Detroit Tigers (3)
West: Los Angeles Angels (5)
Wild Card: Boston Red Sox (2)

Based on past performance since 1995, the AL team with the highest payroll has an 80% chance of making the post-season; no.s 2 and 3, a 60% chance.

And here's the National League:

East: Philadelphia Phillies (2)
Central: Chicago Cubs (1)
West: San Francisco Giants (4)
Wild Card: New York Mets (3)

I know: Cubs and Mets. But the correlation between payroll and playoffs isn't as strong in the NL. Based on past performance since 1995, the NL team with the highest payroll has a 46% chance of making the post-season; no.s 2 and 3, a 53% chance.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how close I get, without trying, compared to those who spent hours and days and weeks crunching the numbers.

"Detailed early maps of Newfoundland show a body of water called Dildo Pond, named for its shape by the British garrison stationed in North America more than 300 years ago. In the colonial period, the word dildo evolved into doodle, British barracks slang for male genitalia. And to yank something meant exactly what it means now. Thus, to the British, a Yankee Doodle was one who yanked his doodle. A Yankee Doodle was a first-rate greenhorn—too thick and dim to realize the joke was on him. The Americans didn't recognize the English slang, and, to the astonishment of the British, instead made 'Yankee Doodle' their anthem. Then the Americans began calling themselves Yankees generally, and eventually [that became the name] of their greatest baseball team."

—from "The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Sold U.S. Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad" by Robert Elias

Which means the New York Yankees should really be called the New York Jackoffs. As we suspected all along.

In honor of the opening of Target Field and the return of outdoor baseball to Minnesota yesterday, here are some of my earliest, slap-dash, Cesar Tovar-like memories of Minnesota's last Major League outdoor stadium, Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minn.

I remember...

• ...signs of all the Major League teams on poles in the voluminous parking lot as a means of finding your car again. "I believe we parked in the Orioles lot," etc. In the first game I went to, probably age 4 or 5, we parked in the Cleveland Indians lot. That image, for whatever reason, sticks with me, and still feels magical, no matter how politically incorrect. I was also disappointed that we never got to park in the Twins lot because it was on the other (south or east) side of the stadium. We always came from the north. Like good Scandinavians.
• ...going to a game with my grandfather, my father's father, a gentlemanly ship's architect from Denmark, and sitting about 30 rows back from homeplate. This was before they put up the netting to catch foul balls whizzing back and we got our share, including one that bounced off Bedstefar's armrest. My father, brother and I immediately complained that he hadn't caught the ball—he who may never have been to a baseball game in his life—and for much of the rest of the game I mimicked how I would've trapped it, with my lightning quick reflexes, against the armrest. Forgive us, Bedstefar. I wish I could say we knew not what we were doing.
• ...going to a game with my grandmother, my mother's mother, who for 30 years worked at Black & Decker in Finksburg, Maryland, and watching her team, the Baltimore Orioles, pummel my Twins. Don Buford led off the game with a homerun (off Jim Kaat?), and the Orioles won 8-0. Well, it made Grammie happy anyway.
• ...Tony Oliva hitting a ball out of Met Stadium. Records will show this never happened—records will show that the longest homerun hit at Met Stadium was by Harmon Killebrew, 500+ feet, into the upper deck in left field—but I remember it clearly. Watching that white ball rise and rise and finally leave the park altogether. Maybe I was watching a bird.
• ...sitting in the right field bleachers when Tony Oliva tossed a batting practice/fielding practice ball into the stands. For the rest of batting practice/fielding practice, all of the kids shouted "Tony! Tony! Tony!" when the ball came his way. It felt so greedy and declasse, yet resulted from an act of kindness. I couldn't wrap my mind around this seeming contradiction. Plus I wanted a ball myself.
• ... my father catching a foul ball off the A's Sal Bando along the third base/left field side. He was waiting for my brother to come out of the bathroom, the ball sailed over his head, and he played it on a hop off the wall, "like Roberto Clemente," he said, after returning triumphant to our seats.
• ...Bat Day. With real bats. And finding hundreds of them below the third base/left field bleachers.
• ...Camera Day. Hanging on the warning track and seeing the players up close. It's where this picture comes from. Do they do this anymore?
• ...arriving late to the first game of a doubleheader—and missing seeing Harmon Killebrew hit a grand slam in the 5th inning. Dad!
• ...leaving early during a tie game between the Twins and A's (my father was a classic "beat the traffic" guy), and, on the ride home, hearing George Mitterwald hit a homerun to win it. Dad!
• ...attending "Vida Blue Day" in 1971. I was for seeing the rookie phenomenon but against having a "day" for an opposing player. I was also critical of the buttons they gave you at the gate if you wore blue clothing. Or did you get in for half-price if you wore blue clothing? Either way, this is what was stamped on the buttons: "Roses are red/My clothes were blue/When I was there/To see Vida Blue." Even at the age of 8, I knew "blue/Blue" was a pretty lousy rhyme.
• ...getting a cold headache from a Frosty Malt on a hot summer day.
• ...Harmon Killebrew hitting two homeruns. Always. 

"Buck [O'Neil, age 94] was wearier than usual. He had been sucker-punched by the Star [radio] interview and then pounded relentlessly by so many interviews and requests. His head spun. He was hungry. He was surrounded by a Friday evening in New York—the construction sounds, the blaring horns, the fast walkers, the street hustlers, the Broadway lights, the hole in the sky. Buck loved New York. He was ready to get home.

"'I'm going to sleep,' he announced when the car pulled up to the Marriott. As we stepped out of the car, I notcied a woman standing outside, near a concrete bench. She was wearing a red dress. It's not quite right to say I noticed her, as if this took some doing. She was noticeable. Her dressed blazed candy-apple red. You could see it from Brooklyn. The woman who wore it looked nothing at all like Marilyn Monroe and yet that was the name that came to mind. Marilyn. It was that kind of dress. We walked into the hotel, and I turned back to mention something to Buck about the woman and her red dress. He was gone. I looked back to see if he had stayed in the car but the car was gone, too. I looked down the hall. Empty. Bathroom? Empty.

Then I looked outside. There was Buck talking to the woman in the red dress. Buck talked and she laughed. She talked and he laughed. They hugged. She kissed him. A young man walked over, and Buck talked to him, they hugged, they all laughed. The three of them stayed together for a long time, Buck and the woman and the young man. Finally Buck hugged both of them and walked in looking fresh as the morning. Star was a long way back in his memory. Buck said, 'Let's go get something to eat.'

"As we walked to the restaurant, he asked: 'Did you see the woman in the red dress?'

"'Yes.'

"Buck shook his head and looked me in the eyes. And very slowly, with a teacher's edge in his voice, Buck said this: 'Son, in this life, you don't ever walk by a red dress.'"

—from Joe Posnanski's "The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America," which I read in its entirety during our plane trip from Seattle to Seoul and then Seoul to Hanoi, enjoying every minute I spent with Buck and Joe. Much recommended. Rest in Peace, Buck. Keep going, Joe.

"After all, what keeps baseball going? It's the records. People are always talking about records, and if you elminate the records, the game loses a lot of its romance. Yet that's what they're doing. They are making records easier to erase."

—Mickey Mantle on the advent of the designated hitter in 1973, with obvious repurcussions for today; from the book, "Hammerin' Hank, George Almighty and the Say Hey Kid: The Year That Changed Baseball Forever," by John Rosengren

Rebuttal? Joe Posnanski argues that most baseball records are hardly as sacrosanct, or as pure, as we imagine them to be; that many factors—some as small as a strike zone, some as big as a ballpark—help create even the purer records:

Stuff usually isn’t black or white, up or down, left or right. It’s complicated. Carlton Fisk, of all people, should know that. If it makes people feel better to shout “fraud” in a crowded theater, hey, it’s a free country. But it seems to me there’s already enough noise out there.

"What was the worst thing that Michael Jordan could do to you? He can go dunk on you. He could embarrass you. What's the worst thing Randy Johnson can do to you? He can kill you."

—Jeff Huson on the fear of facing Randy Johnson, who retired yesterday with a 303-166 record, 3.29 ERA and 4875 strikeouts against only 1497 walks. First ballot Hall-of-Famer in five years, he'll go in, unfortunately, as an Arizona Diamondback. More wins as a Mariner but those Cy Youngs stacked high in Arizona. Some links:

• From the Seattle Mariners site. Includes audio and video of RJ announcing his retirement and talking about his career.
• A nice video retrospective from "Baseball Tonight" when he won no. 300 last summer.
• Here's RJ by the numbers, courtesy of ESPN.com.
• Bob Finnigan's Seattle Times' piece from Game 5, 1995
• Every Seattlite remembers this one from the "Almost Live" program: How much of a chance do you have of winning the Washngton State Lottery?

I'd include more but MLB.com makes it difficult to find video (no rebroadcast, kids, without express written consent), and then you have to sit through a 30-second commercial for a 12-second clip. But we know the highlights. The no-hitter in 1990. The Kruk at-bat in the '93 All-Star game. The one-game playoff with California in '95. Coming in from the bullpen ("Welcome to the Jungle") in Game 5 against NY. The Larry Walker All-Star at-bat. Striking out 19. Striking out 20. Coming in from the bullpen in Game 7 against NY. The perfect game. No. 300. 

Good-Bye, Mr. Snappy. We hardly saw ye.

• Last Lancelot Links ended with this Q&A from David Simon of "The Wire," and it's so good I decided to begin this Lancelot Links with it—in case you didn't get a chance to read it the first time around. Simon's view of the world is basically my view of the world—just, like, lots more articulate.
• Tired of reading? Feeling like Chance the Gardener and just want to watch? Here's a joyous end-of-the-year video from Matt Shapiro (who's 17? Really?) on our 2009 cinematic moments. Nicely done, kid. I saw it via Jeff Wells' site and he had the audacity to complain it was a week late. Jeff wants his end-of-the-year celebrations before the end of the year—even though some of the best movies aren't released until the end of the year. And in most cities not even then. Two words for Jeff Wells: Chill the fuck out.
• Via Sully's site, a nice 10 or 15-year-old video of Jon Stewart interviewing George Carlin.
• A New Year's message from Minneapolis' own Dan Wilson: "What a Year for a New Year"
• Opinionator subhed on The New York Times' site: "Is 'the system worked' this White House’s 'heckuva job, Brownie'?" Quick answers: 1) The former is about a disaster that didn't happen, the latter is about a disaster that did; 2) the former is something Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said, the latter is something Pres. Bush said; 3) the former defended a bureaucratic system put in place by the Bush administration; the latter defended an incompetent and party loyalist. So my opinionator answer to the Times, and to Tobin Harshaw, who hasn't impressed me thus far, is no. The subhed, though, is an early candidate for most fatuous of the year. Heckuva job, Tobin.
• In the Times', and Tobin's, favor, of course, the system didn't and doesn't work. I see old men made to take off their shoes and belts at airport security, and yet this guy, with all of the alarms he sets off, waltzes in with a bomb in his undies? But blaming Napolitano for one comment doesn't answer the question: What to do? How do we keep the system efficient and safe? I don't have answers. I just know fatuous when I hear it.
• Via Rob Neyer's "Sweet Spot" column on ESPN.com, I saw this bizofbaseball.com piece on the spendiest MLB teams of the 2000s. Some highlights (or lowlights): Six of the 30 spent over $1 billion. The second-spendiest was...wait for it... the Boston Red Sox, who spent $1.3 billion. And the team who spent the most? Yeah: Your (or their) New York Yankees, who spent $1.87 billion. Quite a gap between 1 and 2. The thriftiest, or cheapest, was the Florida Marlins, whose $0.4 billion still got them a World Series title, but they're the anomaly. Most of the time, if you don't spend, you don't dance in October. The two spendiest teams are the only teams to have two titles in the decade.
• Also via Neyer, who agrees with Jason Rosenberg's All About the Money (Stupid) piece blasting MLB Fanhouse writer Ed Price's headline: "No Rival to Red Sox in 2000s." I agree the headline's silly, since the Red Sox had nothing but rivals. But I disagree with everyone who's given the meaningless title of "team of the decade" to the Yankees. Sure, based on the stats, the Yankees eke out the Red Sox—and blast by every other team. But baseball's not just about stats. It's about who's expected to win and who isn't, who pays to win and who doesn't, who wins all the time and who doesn't. The Red Sox are the team of the decade to me because they overcame not just a nearly 80-year legacy of operatic futility but they did so in a fashion no team's ever done. Down 3 games to 0 to the New York Yankees in the 2004 ALCS, and behind in the ninth innng of Game 4, they managed to tie the game with a walk, a stolen base and a single, then win in extra innings on a David Ortiz homerun; then they won the next night in extra innings on a David Ortiz base hit; then they won behind the bloodied sock of Curt Schilling; then they tore the Yankees a new one in Game 7 for the greatest post-season comeback ever. Plus in their two World Series titles they never lost a game. They turned their franchise around entirely. The Yankees? Considering how they began the decade, considering how much money they spent, considering the history of their lofty franchise, they were actually kind of a disappointment. Besides, as everyone knows: Yankees suck.

Since the New York Yankees and their $208 million payroll won the 2009 World Series in six games over the Philadelphia Phillies and their $111 million payroll, there’s been renewed debate among fans and journalists about how much money matters in baseball.

One side reminds us that for all the money the Yankees spent this decade—and they spent a ton—they only have two titles to show for it. There was even one year, 2008, when they didn’t get to the post-season. So how can money matter so much? Just look at the Mets. They’ve been the biggest spenders in the National League every year since 2003 but made the post-season just once, in 2006, and didn’t even get to the World Series that year. Yankees smart, Mets not, and even money-plus-smart guarantees nothing, so everyone quit your bellyaching.

The other side, led by folks like Joe Posnanski at Sports Illustrated, reminds us that it’s less a matter that the Yankees are outspending other teams than by how much they’re outspending other teams. The Mets may have outspent the Cubs (no. 2 in the N.L.) by $15 million in 2009 but the Yankees outspent the Red Sox (no. 2 in the A.L.) by $80 million. They outspent them, in other words, by the entire Toronto Blue Jays payroll. That $80 million difference between the Yankees and the Red Sox is the difference between the Red Sox and, well, no other team in the American League, because no other team in the American League had a payroll $80 million less than the Red Sox. (The Athletics were $59 million behind.) In terms of payroll, in other words, 1st and 2nd are further apart than 2nd and 14th. That’s the new math in baseball.

Posnanski also reminds us that baseball is a game where dominance can be obscured. The best teams lose a third of their games, the worst teams win a third, so the real battle is for that final third. Add in the two tiers of playoffs, including a best-of-five division series, and almost anything can happen.

Unfortunately it usually doesn't. Yes, this decade the Yankees spent and spent and have only two World Series championships to show for it; but just one other team, the Red Sox, won as many. It’s “only” two championships if you’re the Yankees. It’s “only” four pennants if you’re the Yankees. It’s “only” eight division titles and a wild-card berth if you’re the Yankees. Eight division titles and a wild-card berth would look pretty good in Kansas City.

How much does money matter? Here’s a chart of how often American League teams, ranked by payroll, made the playoffs since 1995:

No. of A.L. Playoff Appearances By Payroll Rank, Since 1995*

*based on payroll numbers presented in USA Today

Teams that spent the most money went to the playoffs 12 of the 15 years, teams that spent the second-most went 9 times, and so on. Half of the 60 playoff slots have been filled by whatever three teams were the spendiest teams that year. The 11 remaining teams fought over the other half.

Sure, there are certain years, such as 2000, when only one team among the top seven spendiest teams made it (psst: the Yankees). Plus you have certain teams, like the “Moneyball” Athletics and the Gardenhire Twins, who, for a time, can consistently make the playoffs despite low, low payrolls. But that 2000 Yankees and their no. 1 payroll wound up winning the pennant against the upstarts, while the “Moneyball” Athletics and Gardenhire Twins, despite five post-season appearances each this decade, have yet to win even one pennant. So even here, “money” generally matters more than “ball.”

What’s particularly troublesome is how consistent—almost codified—things have gotten recently. In the last six years, the Yankees, Red Sox and Angels, have each been to the post-season five times. During those six years, they were 1-2-3 in league payroll four times (2004-2007), 1-3-5 once (2008, behind Detroit and the White Sox), and 1-2-4 once (in 2009, when the Tigers outspent the Angels by $1 million). The true wild card in the American League is thus whomever wins the Central. That other wild card? It’s ensconced in the East (11 out of 15 times), and, in recent years, it’s almost always the Boston Red Sox.

By the way, if you’re curious about how payrolls and post-season appearance correlate for National League teams, here you go:

No. of N.L. Playoff Appearances By Payroll Rank, Since 1995*

*based on payroll numbers presented in USA Today

The discrepancy between the haves and have-nots of the N.L. post-season isn’t as dramatic—because the discrepancy between N.L. payroll isn’t as dramatic. Yes, it helps that the wealthiest N.L. teams (Mets, Cubs, Dodgers) have sometimes mismanaged their wealth; but it helps more than there's not one team willing or able to outspend every other team by an embarrassing amount in order to cover these mistakes.

All in all, the National League looks like the kind of system that people could defend as “fair enough.” But that’s the system without the Yankees in it. The one with the Yankees is decidedly more skewed.

These are just stats, of course, but they confirm what most of us feel: that baseball, particularly as it’s played in the American League, is a rigged game. In his post-World Series column in The New York Times, William Rhoden wrote the following:

The Yankees are widely despised because they buy players, but as Jeter pointed out, their cornerstones are homegrown: Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and himself. “We’ve played together for 17 years, including the minor leagues coming up,” Jeter said... “You don’t see that too often, especially with free agency and then guys staying together.”

This argument is often used by supporters of the current system to refute the Yankees’ financial domination. It actually demonstrates it. Four All-Stars, two sure Hall-of-Famers, on the same team for all (or most) of this time? Jeter’s right: You don’t see that too often. And why don’t you see it too often? Because for most teams, there’s always another, bigger team hanging around, checking out its best, young players, and declaring, after a moment or two, and maybe with a nod of appreciation, “He’d look good in pinstripes.” The Yankees kept Jeter and Rivera and Posada, in other words, because it didn’t have to worry about the Yankees.

Every fan of every small- or medium-market team knows this. We develop even one good player—a Joe Mauer, a Zack Greinke, a Felix Hernandez—and the question is always: How long do we get to keep this guy? The answer is usually: Not long. In this way, 20-25 teams feel like farm systems for the other 5-10. For fans, it’s a feeling of increasing helplessness and hopelessness, and it’s destroying the game.

Rhoden ended his post-World Series column in The New York Times this way. It's kind of tongue-in-cheek but mostly cheek:

If Matsui or Johnny Damon do not return, the Yankees may go after St. Louis outfielder Matt Holliday. Need one more starting pitcher? Why not go after the Los Angeles Angels’ John Lackey? Posada has two years left on his contract. Who is to say that as Posada winds down, the Yankees won’t go after Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer? The franchise has its shopping cart out.

Beware. With checkbook in hand, the Yankees may be coming to a neighborhood near you.

That’s so New York. As if he had to tell us to beware. As if we didn’t already know.

• It feels like Richard Brody is a bit too kind to Wes Anderson in his Nov. 2nd, New Yorker profile on the director, "Wild, Wild Wes." Or maybe he's simply too kind to Anderson's 2003 film, "The Life Aquatic," which came on the heels of his biggest hit ("The Royal Tenenbaums"), which came on the heels of his most critically acclaimed film ("Rushmore"). After detailing several critic complaints about "Aquatic," Brody writes:

"In fact, 'The Life Aquatic" does tell a story, but it's one that sprawls with an epic ambition and a picaresqe wonder. Anderson's playfully unstrung storytelling was both purposeful and meaningful: life in the wild, the film suggests, doesn't follow the neat contours of dramatic suspense but is filled with surprises, accidents, and sudden lurches off course. ... 'The Life Aquatic' was proof of Anderson's maturation as an artist..."

• Come again? Here's my 2007 take on Anderson and his ouevre. I actually like Anderson, within limits, which I hope my article makes clear, but I'm not a fan of "Aquatic," for reasons stated, none of which has to do with its lack of storytelling. The short version of Brody's article is here, but you have to buy, or borrow from your local library, the Nov. 2nd New Yorker to read it in full.  Or subscribe. I recommend subscribing already.
• The Washington Post focuses on a quiet but powerful contingent that is being ignored in the same-sex marriage debate: the ex-spouses of now-out-of-the-closet gay men and women. This section in particular packs a whallop:

Many of these former spouses -- from those who still feel raw resentment toward their exes to those who have reached a mutual understanding -- see the legalization of same-sex marriage as a step toward protecting not only homosexuals but also heterosexuals. If homosexuality was more accepted, they say, they might have been spared doomed marriages followed by years of self-doubt.

"It's like you hit a brick wall when they come out," Brooks said. "You think everything is fine and then, boom!"

Carolyn Sega Lowengart calls it "retroactive humiliation." It's that embarrassment that washes over her when she looks back at photographs or is struck by a memory and wonders what, if anything, from that time was real. Did he ever love her?

"I'm 61 years old," said Lowengart, who lives in Chevy Chase. "Will I ever know what it's like to be loved passionately? Probably not."

• I'm going to have to permanently link to Joe Posnanski below but in the meantime here's his early Hall of Fame arguments and they warm the cockles of my cold, cold Seattle heart. Actually his argument is: Who is the best eligible hitter not in the Hall of Fame? He then goes through the usual suspects. Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe and Barry Bonds are not eligible so he eliminates them. Mark McGwire? Impressive, certainly. A homer ever 8 at-bats, "but we knew how he did it," and anyway there's that lifetime .263 batting average. Dick Allen? Don Mattingly? Minnie Monoso? Babe Herman? I'll cut to the chase—particularly since the photo at right is a giveaway. Posnanski suggests Edgar Martinez. He talks about why he's a great hitter, all of which should be familiar to Seattle fans (lifetime: .300/.400/.500), and why he won't make it anyway, which will also be familiar to Seattle fans. Edgar's got the percentage numbers, but he played the majority of his career as a DH and he didn't play long enough to accumulate the gross numbers: the 3,000 hits, etc., because the Mariners (idiots!) didn't bring him up until he was 27. If he'd played his entire career at third, I think he would've made it. If he'd been a DH but had the cumulative numbers, I think he would've made it. It's the two together that put the kibosh on him. Of course I'd vote for him in a second but I'm obviously biased. At the same time, here's my non-bias: How many career .300/.400.500 guys, with as many at-bats as Edgar, aren't in the Hall of Fame? Extra credit. We've just been talking lately about what a great pitcher Mariano Rivera is. So how did Edgar do against Rivera? 16 at-bats, 10 hits, 3 doubles, 2 homeruns, 6 RBIs. A .625 batting average and a 1.888 OPS. Don't know if anyone with double-digit at-bats against Rivera has ever done better. Obviously that's not an argument in favor of the Hall but it is fun.

• Let's start out with Joe Posnanski's Sports Illustrated piece, "The Best Team Money Could Buy," since it's the best piece I've read on the Yankees and their $208 million payroll, and what this means year after year for fans of Major League Baseball. Posnanski writes about why we need to talk about this. (Because it's been so-talked-about we've stopped listening.) He writes about why the payroll issue gets masked. (Because baseball is a sport where even the best teams lose a third of their games.) And he talks about why it's the Yankees in particular that are the problem:
  
  • "The Yankees are not a big-market team. They DWARF big-market teams. They are quantitatively different from every other team in baseball and every other team in American sports. They don't just spend more money than every other team. They spend A LOT more money than every other team. The Boston Red Sox spend $50 million more than the Kansas City Royals? Who cares? The Yankees spend $80 million more than the Boston Red Sox."

• Keith Olbermann isn't just for stentorian and (let's face it) often pompous putdowns of (let's also face it) wackjob Republicans; he's also a baseball fan. And in this piece, in honor of Johnny Damon's double-steal-without-an-error in Game 4, he counts down the nine smartest plays in World Series history. Couple things I like. He doesn't number them, or bold-face them, so he forces you to, you know, actually read them. Plus, most such pieces tend to focus on recent years, but Olbermann, like a great centerfielder, ranges wide, going from '55 to '46 to '07 (1907) to '69 to '72 to '60 to '88 to '91 to, finally, last Sunday. When he first raised the subject I immediately thought of '91. But I haven't really thought about what might be missing. Anyone? Anyone?
• Last Monday after Game 5, on the Facebook page of friend, a Yankees fan, I wrote the following: "What's interesting is that the Series is playing out like I feared it might: two even teams with uneven closers. Switch closers and the Series might already be over. In other words, no matter who they give it to, Mariano Rivera is always the Yankees' post-season MVP." Here's dramatic evidence just how true that is. Rob Neyer even adds: "Purely in terms of increasing his teams' chances of winning, [Rivera] must be the most valuable pitcher in postseason history." 
• Here's even better evidence: The New York Times offers this cool, interactive chart on every batter Mariano Rivera has faced in the post-season: from Jay Buhner's swinging strikeout in the 12th inning of Game 2 of the 1995 ALDS (so that's why we lost that one) to Shane Victorino's ground-out to second base Wednesday night. I already knew one of the two post-season homers Rivera's given up—to Sandy Alomar in '97, which changed that ALDS around—but didn't know the other: to Jay Payton, with two men on, in Game 2 of the 2000 World Series. Overall: 397 outs, 82 hits, 14 runs allowed. Marquis Grissom scored the first run in Game 3 of the 1996 World Series (triple, single by Mark Lemke), and Chone Figgins scored the last in Game 6 of the 2009 ALCS (single, moved to second on ground-out, single by Vladimir Guerrero). Rivera's worst post-season for runs allowed? A tie: between 2000 and 2001 (4 each). Every other post-season, the most runs he's ever given up is 1. The good news? He turns 40 this month. The bad news? He wants to play five more seasons.
• After all that, I figure you might need a laugh. The Onion gives it to you. Their headline says it all: "95-Year-Old Yankees Fan Afraid He'll Never Get to See Team Win 27 More World Series."
• Not good enough? How about some good, old-fashioned anti-Yankees moments? Here you go, courtesy of MLB (sorry for all the ads for the U.S. Marines. They may be few and proud but they're hardly brief):
  • October 17, 2004: David Ortiz's walk-off homer in the 14th inning beats the Yankees in Game 4 of the ALCS. The Yankees still lead 3 games to 1.
  • October 18, 2004: David Ortiz's walk-off single in the 14th inning beats the Yankees in Game Five of the ALCS. The Yankees still lead 3 games to 2.
  • October 19, 2004: Curt Schilling and his bloody sock mow down the Yanks in Game 6 of the ALCS. The Series is now tied.
  • They don't have Game 7 up? Damon's grand slam? For shame! But here's a "Baseball Tonight" rundown of the greatest ALDS moments.  Ignore #s 8, 6, and particularly 2. Pay attention to #7 (Joba Chamberlain and the midges in Cleveland in 2007), #4 (Sandy Alomar homers off Rivera in 1997), and particularly, yes, #1, baby, a game I was at (Swung on and lined down the left field line for a base hit! Here comes Joey! Here's Junior to third! They're going to wave him in! The throw to the plate will be...LATE! The Mariners are going to play for the American League Championship! I don't believe it! It just continues! My oh my!).
• Before the Series ended, Tyler Kepner wrote a nice piece on why the final moments in baseball are more memorable than in other sports. Yes, it has something to do with baseball's timelessness. More importantly, he doesn't even mention Bill Mazeroski, Gene Larkin, Joe Carter or Luis Gonzalez. Instead he writes about your Eric Hinskes and Sal Yvarses, your Jackie Robinsons and Joe Jacksons. And your Jorge Posadas. That one was sweet. But not as sweet as Gonzalez's.
• Finally, if you're looking for a good, hot-stove-league song, I'd recommend "Cooperstown" by the Felice Brothers, about Georgia in 1905, and Ty Cobb and baseball. It gets better every listen. Something about the last line below in particular gets to me: "And tomorrow you'll surely know who's won." I keep coming back to it. I don't know what it means but it feels so right. Maybe because it suspends the action. It lays open all possibilities in the present and leaves true knowledge to tomorrow. And even then it doubts it. "Surely" implies that it's not sure at all:

I'm on first
And you're on third
And there are wolves all in-between
And everyone's sure that the game is over

The catcher's hard
He's mean and hard
And he nips at the batter's heels
And everyone's sure that the game is over

And the ball soars
And the crowd roars
And the scoreboard sweetly hums
And tomorrow you'll surely know who's won

• It's already over but here's a great piece from Dan Savage who defends the sexification of Halloween as a kind of straight people's gay-pride parade: a day when straight people are allowed to dress up and bust loose:

We don't resent you for taking Halloween as your own. We know what it's like to keep your sexuality under wraps, to keep it concealed, to be on your guard and under control at all times. While you don't suffer anywhere near the kind of repression we did (and in many times and places still do), straight people are sexually repressed, too. You move through life thinking about sex, constantly but keenly aware that social convention requires you to act as if sex were the last thing on your mind. Exhausting, isn't it?

• Martin Scorsese on the 11 scariest movies of all time. I've seen 1, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 11. I keep missing the Brits.
• It's not just me. Even members of the Academy question havng 10-best-picture nominees.
• Hilarious piece from The Onion on the long, sad, World Series drought for the Philadelphia Phillies. Sample: "To put into perspective just how long the Phillies have gone without a championship, the earth has almost made one full orbit of the sun since the franchise last paraded through downtown Philadelphia holding the famed Commissioner's Trophy."
• Floyd Norris, in his column in The New York Times last Friday, says people who ask why financial-industry CEOs are so well-compensated are asking the wrong question. The real question is: Why is there so much more money in the financial industry than there used to be? From 1929 to 1988, the financial sector averaged 1.2 percent of GDP. Then it shot up in the 1990s, peaking at 3.3 percent in 2005. Why? He tosses out some possibilities, including higher charges (for managing hedge funds) , concentration (the big guys are bigger), the derivatives debaccle, evading taxes and rules, and excessive risk-taking. Worth reading the whole thing.

From Rob Neyer's Wednesday Wangdoodles:

OK, so Scioscia doesn't like the postseason schedule. Calls it "ridiculous," and I'm basically on his side. I would like the postseason to perfectly reflect the regular season, where you need four starters and sometimes even five. I have to mention, though, that since the modern World Series was invented in 1903, many managers have gotten by with three starters. In 1905, Christy Mathewson or Joe McGinnity started all five games for the Giants. Sixty years later, Mudcat Grant and Jim Kaat combined for six starts in the Twins' seven-game Series loss against the Dodgers. Scioscia's right: there are too many off days. But managers have always been able to lean heavily on their best starters in October.

OK, so Neyer thinks this one point doesn't apply to the whole of baseball history. Says "I have to mention, though." Brings up 1905 and 1965. Brings up Big Six and Kitty Kaat. And he's right: managers have leaned on their best starters in October. It doesn't change the fact that SCIOSCIA'S RIGHT and HE'S THE ONLY GUY IN BASEBALL SAYING THIS STUFF about THE GREAT TRAVESTY THAT IS BASEBALL'S POST-SEASON SCHEDULE. Save your nitpicking, Neyer, for who's the tenth-best second baseman of the 1930s. This is time to get on board, use what power you have, and fix what needs fixing.

"Basically on his side"? Damn, Neyer.

Oh, and happy first game of the World Series! We're finally here. October 28th. Predicted game-time temps? Below 50. Probability of precipitation? 100 percent.

Fun.

My man Tyler Kepner! Here's an excerpt from his column in today's New York Times about all those freakin' days off in October:

Partly because they each swept their division series, the Yankees and the Angels have played just eight games in 20 days since the end of the regular season. In a session with Los Angeles-area writers on Saturday, Angels Manager Mike Scioscia made his feelings clear.

“Ridiculous,” Scioscia said. “I don’t know. Can I say it any clearer than that? We should have never had a day off last Wednesday. We should never have three days off after the season. You shouldn’t even have two days off after the season.

“It just takes an advantage away for a deep team, which everybody feels very strongly is an asset. It takes that advantage away and I think that’s something that Major League Baseball hopefully will consider looking at.”

Mark Teixeira has played so little he says he has newfound respect for utility players. And why so many days off?

The reason for the elongated schedule is the recent change in the start of the World Series. From 1985 through 2006, the World Series was scheduled to start on a Saturday. Then baseball and the networks concluded that Saturday was a dead night for ratings. They built a few extra days into the schedule, which pushed Game 1 to a Wednesday.

I wrote about this back then. I've been bitching about it all month. Here and here and here, too. It's time for Major League Baseball to get smart. It's time to stop being ridiculous. Bud Selig and the networks are ruining the most important baseball games of the year, and for what? It's not even helping ratings. They're ruining baseball for nothing. Does Bud want that to be his legacy?

Baseball is supposed to be played every day in fair weather. Its most important games are now played every other day in horrendous weather. And that's not baseball.

5:12: The Yankees begin the game with two hits and Joe Buck begins the game by saying, ominously, "And here comes New York!" And then there went New York. Out out out. Question: Is Mark Teixeira going to be the new Alex Rodriguez? The guy the press says folds in the clutch on a small sample size? A-Rod was the new Randy Johnson (remember before 2001?) who was the new... Willie Mays? Ted Williams? Take your pick. It's a tired storyline. I'm actually glad A-Rod's doing well this post-season so I don't have to hear that crap anymore. By the way: Nice to see sun. But what's with the empty seats down the right-field line before gametime? C'mon southern Cal: Represent!

5:17:  Walk and double and now my man Torii Hunter comes through for two! Off his bat I thought Jeter had it, but I guess Jeter had him played wrong. Wow, and now Vlad with a double in the gap! 3-0. Was Torii limping around the bases? Did I see that? Hope not. This is fun! Yanks get the first two guys on and 10 minutes later, it's 3-0, Angels.

5:18:  4-0, Angels. One wonders when New York is going to warm somebody up.

5:25: The Spanish for "liner" is ligne? Thanks, Tim McCarver. And the Angels have been waiting for an inning like this, Joe Buck? I've been waiting for an inning like this. Doesn't matter, though. The Angels could be up 10-0 and I'd still be worried. The Yankees are Freddy Kreuger to me. They're Michael Myers. Just when you think they're dead, they rise up. They're their own horror movie.

5: 35: Cano not doing well in the post-season. Swisher. Teixeira. One wonders how the Yankees have won anything. And now they're giving us the John Hancock question of the day: Who are the only three LCS MVPs to come from losing teams? Wasn't one of them George Brett back in the '70s? And doesn't this go against the usual nomenclatural argument against the regular-season MVP? That you can't be "valuable" on a team that doesn't win? Surprised McCarver doesn't mention that. I never buy that argument, by the way. You can be valuable, even most valuable, on a team that doesn't go to the post-season. Three definitions of valuable: 1) Having considerable monetary or material value for use or exchange; 2) Of great importance, use, or service; 3) Having admirable or esteemed qualities or characteristics. Nothing in there about winning.

5:47: Uck, that tomato alfredo in the Olive Garden commercial looks awful. And what's with the Chris Farley Direct-TV ad? Isn't that a little creepy? He's been dead for 12 years now and they're trotting him out to... What? Are they saying you should get Direct TV so you don't have to watch Chris Farley? That would be pretty gross. On the other hand, at least it's not that damn Viagra ad with the guy talking to himself or the Black Eyed Peas commercial where the girl is remaking "A Midsummer Night's Dream" while the dude is walking on the moon with a camel.

6:00: Torii Hunter's stolen base in the bottom of the third was pretty funny. Don't know if I've ever seen that before—where a baserunner was halfway down to second before the pitcher even threw the ball to homeplate. And now he's at third with only one down. Ah, but then nabbed in a rundown. McCarver: "That's why you bring the infield in." No shit, Sherlock. You could almost see Torii calculating, to see how long he could run back-and-forth before Vlad got to second base. And he almost got back to third anyway. But the Angels gotta get some more runs here. Freddy Krueger ain't gonna play dead forever. Those eyes are gonna pop open.

6:19: Here's the answer to that John Hancock question: Fred Lynn in '83, Mike Scott in '86 (of course!) and Jeff Leonard n '87. All within a five-year period. Wonder why? Also: John Hancock signs his name big and over 230 years later we're asking trivia questions in his name. Cue Yakov Smirnoff.

6:27: Melky Cabrera gets on base with one out in the top of the 5th. There goes Molina back in the dugout and here comes Posada out of the dugout...and he goes down on strikes. Does this mean A.J. Burnett is gone, too, since Molina catches Burnett? Angels need runs. They haven't scored since the 1st. BTW: I like how Mathis, the Angels catcher, pounces after that ball when he's behind the plate. He really moves. C'mon, Lackey, strike Jeter out already. Yes! Made him look ba-yad, too.

6:37:  "That's outside!" Gotta love an ump you can hear. I also like this guy's strike zone so far. Seems on. A solid base-knock from Torii. Let's see if he tries to steal again. And yet another throw over to first base. You embarass me and I will bore everyone to make sure you don't embarass me again. Joe Buck: "Hunter's getting worn out over there." CUT TO: Hunter, smiling.

6:48: Two-out double from A-Rod. Did he think it was a homerun? It took him awhile to get to second, but then Torii played it well off the wall, too. Again, I'm happy for A-Rod as long as it doesn't lead to any runs here. And...? A walk. Joe Buck: "And with Cano coming up, with one swing of the bat he could change the complexion of the game." Oh, shut up! Nope, force at second. Yanks have 9 outs left.

7:00: Some doofus dunks himelf in the fake pond in centerfield and for some reason FOX shows it. For a long while, too. I thought the networks weren't supposed to show this crap, so they don't encourage the doofuses of the world. Then again, FOX is used to broadcasting, and encouraging, the doofuses of the world.

7:17: It's a good feeling when a ball, that might be trouble, is hit to a guy, and you're not even worried. That's how I feel when a ball is hit to Torii Hunter. But overall I still don't like this. It's top of the 7th and the Angels are just sitting on this lead. And now a third strike to Posada is called a ball? Joe Buck: "What will that lead to?" Oh, shut up. And now Jeter walks to load the bases. The tying run, Johnny Damon, comes to the plate for the Yankees. Joe Buck: "Damon has homered in two straight games... One memorable Damon grand slam in LCS play..." Oh, shut up! But Damon flies out. So... two outs. But the tying run is still at the plate: Mark Teixeira. And there goes Lackey with 7 outs still to go. And here comes Darren Oliver. And there goes the mothercreepingfreakingflugging ball! CRAP! One pitch from Oliver, three runs score. How big is that missed called third strike by the ump? The Yankees always seem to capitalize on bad calls. Now a Matsui basehit. Tie game. This is not a good feeling.

7:20: Is there a more obnoxious commercial than that Dos Equis "Most Interesting Man in the World" ad? It's the Yankees of ads. It also feels slightly racist. "Don't worry, Punjab, I'm here."

7:25: 6-4, Yankees. I hate life. But the inning finally ends, thanks to Nick Swisher. The Angels still have nine outs, but if this is the end of their season, if we're done with the LCS, the Yankees and Phillies have to wait a whole freakin' week while the earth moves further and further away from the warmth of the sun. Nice schedule, Bud. Of course, if there's one team that deserves to play in the cold and awful of November, it's the Yankees.

7:32: McCarver's talking as if the pitching change (Oliver for Lackey) happened when there was one out. There were two outs. There, he corrects himself.

Seventh inning, Angels! This is your inning! The eighth means the only pitcher with VETO power in the Majors, Mariano Rivera, can come in, and we don't want that. Jesus, I just realized the Yankees got their half-dozen runs without a homerun. In fact, no one's hit a homerun in this game. 10 runs, no homeruns. A walk to Eybar, the man with cheekbones you can cut yourself on, and there goes Burnett. And here comes the top of the Angels order. Time for a homerun, Angels! But Chone Figgins...drops a bunt? I don't know. I'm not a fan of the sacrifice. You just gave up one of the nine outs you have left in the season.

McCarver calls Yankees reliever Damaso Marte the most "volatile" of the Yankee relievers. In terms of temperament? In terms of performance? What does he mean? Ground-out from Abreu scores a run. 6-5, Yankees. And here comes a new reliever. Phil Hughes vs. Torii Hunter. 1-0 count. Tying run at third. 2-0. Hitter's pitch. 3-0. Do you greenlight him? Why not? See if he can send it deep and put the Angels ahead. He walks anyway, so it's time for Big Bad Vlad.

Wow, after that second strike I was ready to give up on Vlad, but thankfully Jeter can't go to his left, and it's a basehit and a tie game! Now 12 runs without a homerun. Time for a homer, Kendry! 3-1 count. And the ball's ripped into right field! "And here comes Torii Hunter! And the Angels are back on top!" Izturis is up but McCarver's still questioning the 1-2 fastball to Vlad.

7:58: Top of the 8th, 7-6, Angels, and Jared Weaver's knocking 'em down. If he keeps doing it, they should let him stay in. Love the Angels' fans booing Jeter every time he comes up. Yanks got four outs left. Yes! Fastball down the pike and Jeter coudn't catch up! Three outs left. LEAVE WEAVER IN!

8:09: So nice to see Joba the Hutt. And it's a lead-off double! Hope the Yanks don't bring in VETO power. Might not matter since the Angels continue to bunt away outs. If they can get the bunts down. And now Eric Eybar sends one up the middle but Cano gets to it. Can't get Eybar at first but it prevents a run from scoring. And, uh-oh, VETO power is up and throwing. So the Yankees stall...and stall... and stall... and then bring him in. The last no. 42 in Major League Baseball. Let's see if the Angels can at least get that one big run in.

8:14: "10 earned runs in 125 1/3 innings pitched in the post-season." If Rivera isn't the real reason for the Yankees' success these past 13 years... OK, Rivera and $$$$$$$$. Hey, good move by Eybar, stealing second with the infield in. And McCarver just mentioned what I just thought: Luis Gonzalez in '01 hitting that bloop single off Rivera to win the World Series with the infield in. McCarver called it correctly then, hope he's called it correctly here. Nope, fly ball...and the guy on third doesn't even score! Crap. That was about as solid a hit as you can get off of Rivera. Pop fly ends the inning. So now it's 10 earned runs in 126 innings pitched in the post-season. And here comes Fuentes. He's going to have to face A-Rod again, isn't he?

8:34: "Johnny Damon...how I hate him.. now that he's with New York..." A rocket to first but out. And an easy fly out from Teixeira. Two gone. And now... A-Rod. Do you walk him? No. Pitch to him! But they don't. They intentionally walk him. I know it worked before but that's a little too much respect for a guy who makes an out 2 every 3 times. Poor A-Rod. First they walk him, now they pinch-run for him. Won't anyone let him play?

And now it's 3-1 to Matsui. And now it's 3-2 to Matsui. And now Matsui walks. Runners at first and second, and two out, and Robinson Cano at the plate. And Fuentes hits him. Bases juiced. Joe Buck: "And Nick Swisher, who does not have an RBI this entire series, will be the hitter." Shut up! But a quick 0-2 to Swisher. Now 1-2. Now foul. Now 2-2. Joe Buck: "It's a situation like this that makes this game great." Sure, but only if the Angels win. Otherwise it's like Goliath beating David and that's hardly news. Now it's 3-2. With the bases juiced and a one-run lead. But Swisher swings and it's a high popup!...And Eybar's got it!... And we're going to New York for Game Six.

Whew.

Interesting experiment but doubt I'll repeat it anytime soon. Too difficult to say anything interesting in the time-span allowed. It's vaguely interesting, because you get to see what you thought an inning or two or three earlier, but overall... It's typing, not writing, as Truman Capote once said of Kerouac.

Look Bronxward, Angels.

ADDENDUM: Turns out that after his 3-RBI double in the seventh, Mark Teixeira isn't the next A-Rod; Nick Swisher is. Rob Neyer sensibly asks everyone to shut up already about this crap.

We're still 11 days away from the start of the 2009 World Series—and y'all know how I feel about that—but today, Oct. 17, is particularly significant as a demarcation point between how we did things then and how we do things now. Except for the anomalous years of 1910 and '11, every World Series from 1903 to 1971 was finished by this date. Every one. Since the advent of the division series in 1995? Only one World Series had even begun by this date, and that one, in 1998, began on this date. Here's your chart. The gray vertical lines are the first and last days of October; the light-green vertical line is October 17:

How's the weather where you are? It turned pretty crappy here in Seattle a couple of days ago. Yesterday it dumped. Today it's damp, drizzly, gray. But at least it's not as cold as it is in New York.

The solution to this problem, as I've said, is to play through, play through, play through. No dayoffs during the playoffs. Maybe no days off during the World Series, either. This is hardly unprecedented. For your reading pleasure, a list of the 22 World Series that were played through without even one stinkin' day off or postponed game:

• 1906: Chicago White Sox 4, Chicago Cubs 2 (Oct. 9-14)
• 1907: Chicago Cubs 4, Detroit Tigers 0, Tie 1 (Oct. 8-12)
• 1908: Chicago Cubs 4, Detroit Tigers 1 (Oct. 10-14)
• 1913: Philadelphia Athletics 4, New York Giants 1 (Oct. 7-11)
• 1922: New York Giants 4, New York Yankees 0, tie 1 (Oct. 4-8)
• 1923: New York Yankees 4, New York Giants 2 (Oct. 10-15)
• 1924: Washington Senators 4, New York Giants 3 (Oct. 4-10)
• 1927: New York Yankees 4, Pittsburgh Pirates 9 (Oct. 5-8)
• 1933: New York Giants 4, Washington Senators 1 (Oct. 3-7)
• 1934: St. Louis Cardinals 4, Detroit Tigers 3 (Oct. 3-9)
• 1935: Detroit Tigers 4, Chicago Cubs 2 (Oct.  2-7)
• 1937: New York Yankees 4, New York Giants 1 (Oct. 6-10)
• 1940: Cincinnati Reds 4, Detroit Tigers 3 (Oct. 2-8)
• 1944: St. Louis Cardinals 4, St. Louis Browns 2 (Oct. 4-9)
• 1947: New York Yankees 4, Brooklyn Dodgers 3 (Sept. 30-Oct. 6)
• 1948: Cleveland Indians 4, Boston Braves 2 (Oct 6-11)
• 1949: New York Yankees 4, Brooklyn Dodgers 1 (Oct. 5-9)
• 1950: New York Yankees 4, Philadelphia Phillies 0 (Oct. 4-7)
• 1952: New York Yankees 4, Brooklyn Dodgers 3 (Oct. 1-7)
• 1953: New York Yankees 4, Brooklyn Dodgers 2 (Sept. 30-Oct.5)
• 1954: New York Giants 4, Cleveland Indians 0 (Sept. 29-Oct. 2)
• 1955: Brooklyn Dodgers 4, New York Yankees 3 (Sept. 18-Oct. 4)

I figure if they didn't have off-days for travel between Chicago and Detroit in 1907, players don't need them now, a century later.

Playing every day, as baseball was meant to be played, is the only way we're going to get back to some semblance of good, World Series weather. Jimmy Rollins will thank you, Robinson Cano will thank you, and I'll thank you.

The graph below charts on which days (and nights) in October (and September and November) the World Series played—from 1903 to 2009. Orange represents game days, yellow represents off-days. The gray vertical lines represent the first and last days of October:

I was surprised that many of the first World Series games were played in mid-October. In two years, in fact—1910 and 1911, those orange lines sticking out at the top of the chart—they didn't begin until mid-October, and, because of a weeklong rain delay in Philadelphia, the 1911 Series didn't end until October 27th. But they learned their lesson. Not that one shouldn't play the World Series in Philadelphia (although...), but you need to start earlier to hopefully hit the good October weather. So they started earlier. After 1911, October 10th (1923) was the latest Series start until 1969. That's a good time to play the most important games of the year. Indian summer, we used to call it. World Series weather, Billy Crystal used to call it.

Four events have pushed the most important games of the year deeper into the darkest, coldest part of October: the introduction of the 162-game schedule in 1961; the introduction of the best-of-five playoffs in 1969; the shift to a best-of-seven playoffs in 1985; and the introduction of the best-of-five division series in 1995.

Overall, as many as 20 games (162-154+5+7), and at least 15 games (162-154+3+4), have been added to the post-season schedule.

For a while, MLB accommodated these extra games by pushing up the start of the baseball season into early April and sometimes into late March. But eventually MLB began running out of room here, too, and the long push into late October began. Al Qaeda prompted the first November Series in 2001; and now Commissioner Bud Selig, with a nod to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) in March and a yes-man attitude toward the networks, has adopted al Qaeda's schedule for 2009. Game Four is set for Nov. 1st. Game Seven, if we get there, is scheduled for Nov. 5th.

Can anything—short of reverting back to the 154-game schedule or eliminating a tier of playoffs—be done to reverse this trend?

Of course. Eliminate most of the off-days in October. I've written about this before.

This year the regular season ended on Sunday, October 4th. Assuming each playoff series goes the maximum, there are, for each team, 11 off-days before the World Series even begins. In other words, half the days in October are off-days.

So why not have the players play through? That's what they do during the regular season. With this method, we could've had the following 2009 post-season schedule:

• Division series: Begin Tuesday, Oct. 6 (game 1) and play through, if necessary, to Saturday, Oct. 10 (game 5). Day off Sunday, or for postponed games.
• Championship series: Begin Monday, Oct. 12 (game 1) and play through, if necessary, to Sunday, Oct. 18 (game 7). Day off Monday, or for postponed games.
• World Series: Begin Tuesday, October 20.

We save a week, we don't go into November, and teams have to play the kind of games they played to get to the post-season: notably, using fifth starters and more of their bullpen. Teams dance with those that brung them. Hell, with this method, in a non-WBC year, we could start the World Series as early as mid-October. Maybe as early as Oct. 12. And we haven't done that since 1984.

Arguments against?

• Wait! That means four games per day are played during the division series! How can I watch them all? Don't you have TiVo? Or DVR? Or the Internet? I might also suggest not watching them all and, you know, getting a semblance of a life.
• Who wants to watch fifth starters when you could watch C.C. Sabathia? Nothing would please most baseball fans more than watching the Yankees fumble with their fifth starter.
• Is the weather really that important, Uncle Erik? Not sure if anyone would actually raise this objection but here's the evidence: the average monthly temperatures for the following cities, according to weatherbase.com, which suggests it makes sense to lean toward September rather than play into November:

• Dude! The networks won't allow it. And the networks rule! I admit I have no idea what kind of negotiations go on with your FOXes and ESPNs and TBSs, or why the networks would want off-days in the first place, since off-days cause fans and casual observers to lose the thread of the storyline. "What day is it on again?"  Etc. But it feels like MLB could push this if they wanted. They could push this because they have their own network now. Hell, if they got the MLB network on basic cable—and, again, I'm not sure what you'd have to do to get a network on basic cable—they could elminate your FOXes and ESPNs and TBSs completely. Maybe that's their strategy. I hope it is.
• Why mess with a good thing? Because it's not a good thing. And not just aesthetically or historically; it doesn't make market sense, either. The trend in television ratings, and thus ad revenue, has been down since the early '80s. Look here. Or here. The ratings for the first game of the 1986 World Series? 24.2. The ratings for the first game of the 2008 World Series? 9.2. In fact, last year, for the first time ever, every game of the World Series had a rating below 10—while the third game had a rating of 6.1. Ouch. I don't know if what I suggest would reverse the ratings trend; I just know that what they're doing now isn't turning people, and television sets, on.

Baseball has a problem but it has an easy solution. Eliminate off-days. Maintain the thread of the storyline. Dance with the guys that brung ya. It's win-win-win-win. 

Baseball is supposed to be played every day in fair weather. We're now playing the most important games every other day in horrendous weather. And that's not baseball.

Must be tough being a columnist, coming up with an angle everyday, but can't say much for William C. Rhoden's angle in The New York Times two days ago:

Still, what Major League Baseball needs is a great World Series, a Series for the ages. And with all due respect to those two other potential matchups, it’s a Yankees-Dodgers World Series that could take the game back to its roots at a time when baseball desperately needs to recover a portion of the trust, if not the innocence, that it has lost in the steroid era.

First, I think there are three other potential matchups: Yankees vs. Phillies; Angels vs. Phillies; Angels vs. Dodgers.

Second, I don't think this is what Major League Basebal needs.

I understand the impulse. It's a classic match-up: the two teams that have met the most—11 times—in the fall (now almost-winter) classic. You have the Torre angle, the Manny angle, east coast and west coast. You have coast-to-coast and in living color.

But this is what the World Series needs more than that match-up:

• 7 games
• World Series weather
• Day games
• Games that end before midnight on the east coast
• No games in November
• No games on Halloween
• No games, really, the last week in October

What the Series doesn't need is another appearance by the Yankees, who have been 39 times, more than twice as often as the second-most successful team (the Dodgers: 18 times), and who have a payroll twice as high as most other teams in the Majors, including the Dodgers ($208 million to $100 million), to ensure that they keep on coming.

There have been a lot of problems with the World Series in recent years but the Yankees not being there has always been a pleasure. Hell, it should be the Series' official motto:

The World Series
Yankee-Free Since 2003

I have a piece up on MSNBC today on the top 5 baseball scenes in non-baseball movies. The idea came to me after reading that Koufax biography over Labor Day weekend and thinking about how thoroughly dominated the Yankees were during the ’63 World Series. Yet in my no. 1 scene, the “Cuckoo’s Nest” scene, the Yankees dominate Koufax. Amusing. And that’s not in Ken Kesey’s book. That scene isn’t even in Kesey’s book. So who came up with the pro-Yankees play-by-play? My guess is Jack. Jack, the Yankees fan, recreating the ’63 Series to the Yankees’ advantage. You gotta love the jutzpah, but let’s face it: Anyone who thinks that Koufax in '63 could be hit that easily deserves to be in the cuckoo’s nest.

Here are a few other scenes that didn’t make the cut.

Seeing about a girl in “Good Will Hunting” (1997)
This was the second scene—after “Cuckoo’s Nest”—I thought of: a South Boston genius with issues, Will Hunting (Matt Damon), is seeing a South Boston therapist with issues, Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), who breaks through when he hits Will in his vulnerable spot: Will lacks experience in everything that matters—particularly love. Maguire has been there and back, and eventually Will begins asking questions. When did he meet his (now dead) wife? Turns out: Oct. 21 1975. The day of Game Six of the ’75 World Series, the Carlton Fisk homerun, “biggest game in Red Sox history,” says Maguire in those post-Babe Ruth, pre-David Ortiz days. Then he begins to explain the game. But who’s he explaining it to? Will knows. So he’s explaining it to us. That feels false right there. Then we find out Maguire wasn’t even at the game. He had tickets but told his friends “I gotta see about a girl”—his future wife—whom he saw in a bar beforehand. I.e., rather than get her number, go to the game, and call her afterwards, he gives up the ticket immediately. Immediately. It’s supposed to be romantic, and maybe it is, but it’s Hollywood romantic. It rings false. Hell, rather than the grand romantic gesture it’s supposed to be, it could be a negative symbol of domesticity: "You can get the girl you want; but no more Game Sixes for you, chief."

A bush-league pitcher comes close to creating a third (Fascist) party in “Meet John Doe” (1941)
Has any movie been so schitzophrenic about populism? The people are good, although easily manipulated, and watch out or they’ll turn into a mob quickly. Hell, they’ll go from loving you to hating you in 30 seconds. The mob follows the mob. The overall story is about a media creation, John Doe (Gary Cooper), who, even as a creation is a bit schitzophrenic. First he’s angry. I Protest! Then he offers hope, and small-towners, aw-shucks folks, flock to him. They love him, because he’s an aw-shucks kind of guy himself. But he’s really a ballplayer with a bad wing who just needs money to survive, and who acts a bit cutesy for a guy who doesn’t know where his next meal is coming from. The main baseball scene is a pantomime in a hotel suite, and it, too, is overly cutesy. It adds nothing, detracts a lot. Parts of “John Doe” feel amazingly contemporary—a placard reading “The Bulletin: a free press means a free people” is chiseled off its building and old experienced reporters are subsequently fired—and oil man and media baron D.B. Norton (Edward Arnold) is genuinely, powerfully scary. But the movie can’t overcome its schitzophrenia.

No lucky hats or bats for “Max Dugan Returns” (1983)
One of my favorite childhood books was Leonard Kessler's Here Comes the Strikeout, and it contains the following lesson, much repeated in the book and much repeated by both my father and I ever since: “Lucky hats won’t do it. Lucky bats won’t do it. Only hard work and practice will do it.” When it comes to little league, Hollywood generally relies on lucky hats and bats. One time the kid strike outs, the next time he gets a game-winning hit. “Max Dugan” is one of the few films that prescribes hard work and practice. OK, it’s a mostly forgettable movie. Marsha Mason plays Nora, an early ‘80s widow whose refrigerator is breaking down, whose car is stolen, whose life is breaking down and feels stolen. Then her absentee father, Max Dugan (Jason Robards), returns, on the lam and loaded for bear ($680,000), and ready to solve all her problems. New fridge, new car, and, for her son (Matthew Broderick, adorable in his first role), who can’t buy a hit in little league, batting lessons from former Royals batting coach Charlie Lau. We get free lessons, too. Where’s the weight on your feet? Relax the grip. Head down. Wiggle the butt. Basically: concentrate but stay loose. It leads to another Hollywood ending but this time it’s not lucky hats or bats that do it. That one was for you, Wittgenstein!

Dads and baseball in “City Slickers” (1991)
Billy Crystal, the little Yankee-loving schmuck, knows his baseball: in the Ken Burns doc, in “61*,” which he directed, and in the baseball dialogue in “City Slickers,” which I’m sure he helped write. Mets cap aside, we know his loyalties, and they’re present in the “best day” discussion. For Mitch Robbins (Crystal), the best day of his life was when he was 7 and his father took him to Yankee Stadium: “Sat the whole game next to my dad. Taught me how to keep score. Mickey hit one out. I still have the program.” Earlier (or is it later?), there’s the Clemente vs. Aaron argument, which, I have to side with Ed Furillo (Bruno Kirby), is no argument. 755 homeruns, end of discussion. But the best line is this explanation to Helen Slater about the deeper meaning of baseball: “When I was about 18 and my dad and I couldn't communicate about anything at all, we could still talk about baseball. Now that—that was real.” And that’s such a good line it almost elevates “City Slickers” into the top 5.

What about you? Favorite baseball scenes in non-baseball movies?

Fun fact! By this day, October 10, every World Series in the 1930s had ended:

• 1930: Oct 1-Oct 8 (six games)
• 1931: Oct 1-Oct 10 (seven games)
• 1932: Sept 28-Oct 2 (four games)
• 1933: Oct 3-Oct 7 (five games) *
• 1934: Oct 3-Oct 9 (seven games) *
• 1935: Oct 2-Oct 7 (six games) *
• 1936: Sept 30-Oct 6 (six games)
• 1937: Oct 6-Oct 10 (five games) *
• 1938: Oct 5-Oct 9 (four games)
• 1939: Oct 4-Oct 8 (four games)

What are the asterisks for? Mathematicians? Anybody?

Those are the years when there were no off-days (or even rain-outs) during the World Series. That's right. Despite traveling between New York and D.C. (in '33), St. Louis and Detroit (in '34), Detroit and Chicago (in '35) and, well, the Bronx and Coogan's Bluff (in '37), and travel being limited to 1930s-type travel, they played straight through. I don't know why we can't do this 70-80 years later. It's pretty awful scheduling the brunt of the World Series in November when the LCS's are allowing three days off per series—including in the middle of homestands. I mean, WTF? The fewer days off, the more teams will have to dance with those that brung them, including especially fourth and fifth starters. The more it'll be like the rest of the season. The better weather it'll be played in.

Countdown to the start of the 2009 World Series: 18 days. Every team has, at most, 10 games to play to get there. 10 games in 18 days.

Is baseball being run or run into the ground?

Welcome to October 9, the day they played the final game of the World Series in the following years: 1966 (Orioles 4, Dodgers 0), 1961 (Yankees 4, Reds 1), 1958 (Yankees 4, Braves 3), 1949 (Yankees 4, Dodgers 1), 1944 (Cardinals 4, Browns 2), 1938 (Yankees 4, Cubs 0), 1934 (Cardinals 4, Tigers 3), 1929 (Athletics 4, Cubs 1), and, most infamously, 1919 (Reds 5, White Sox 3).

By this day, 29 World Series had already ended. Some quick facts:

• Earliest final game of the World Series: Sept. 11, 1918, to accommodate World War I (Red Sox 4, Cubs 2).
• Earliest final game of the World Series in a non-war year: October 2, in 1932 (Babe Ruth's called shot) and 1954 (Willie Mays' catch).
• Earliest final game of the World Series after the 162-game schedule was instituted in 1961: October 6, 1963, when the Dodgers swept the Yankees in four games: Koufax, Podres, Drysdale, Koufax.
• Earliest final game fo the World Series after the best-of-five playoffs were instituted in 1969: October 14, 1984: Tigers 4, Padres 1.
• Earliest final game of the World Series after the best-of-seven playoffs were instituted in 1985: October 20, in 1988 (Dodgers 4, Athletics 1) and 1990 (Reds 4, Athletics 0).
• Earliest final game of the World Series after the wild-card round was added in 1995: October 21, 1998 (Yankees 4, Padres 0).
• Earliest final game of the World Series this decade: October 25, 2003 (Marlins 4, Yankees 2)

Countdown to the first game of the 2009 World Series? 19 days. The Series starts October 28, 2009. Only two World Series have lasted longer than this year's start date: Last year's, which ended on October 29, and the Sept. 11, 2001-interrupted season, which didn't end until November 4.

Nice planning.

The Metrodome knows how to go out with a bang, doesn't it? No meaningless final game there.

Almost 30 years ago, on September 30, 1981, I was at the Twins final game at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minn., and it was about as meaningless as they come. A cold drizzly day, a loss to Kansas City, a speech by Calvin Griffith. It was the last home game of that godawful season they split in two because of a June/July work stoppage. The Twins were abyssmal in the first half (17-39) and merely lousy in the second (24-29), and overall finished in last place in the seven-team A.L. West. Yes, behind even Seattle. Attendance in that final game reflected that record, and the gametime temperatures (in the 50s), and the day of the week (Wed. afternoon). Only 15,900 bothered to show up to say good-bye.

In the middle of Calvin's speech, one of those 15,000, a lanky fan with long hair, jumped onto the field and loped from first base to home, where he did a bellyflop onto the plate; then he stood, arms raised, like he'd accomplished something. Since no security guard stopped him, others jumped onto the field, too. They ran the bases, gathered infield dirt, tore up the grass. They tore up seats and signs. My friend Brian McCann and I dropped onto the field, too, ran the bases, gathered nothing. Former cross-country runners, we'd brought socks to keep our hands warm, and we walked out to left-center field and took turns tossing the balled-up socks to one another, as if the balled-up socks were a ball, as if were making a great catch against the wall. It was fun but melancholy. We were 18 and nostalgic. We were all moving indoors.

The final game at the Metrodome was supposed to be Sunday but the Twins went on a tear, winning 16 of their last 20, and caught first-place Detroit on Saturday, stayed even with them Sunday—both teams won—and they'll play a one-game playoff this afternoon at the Dome. Sunday's attendance? The same numbers as the Met's swan song except reversed: 51,000. No hippies rushed the field. No seats were torn up. It was a party, not a wake, and the party's moving outdoors.

Everyone and their brother is now counting down their favorite Metrodome Memories—Hrbek's grand slam in '87; Puckett's catch and game-winning homerun in '91; Gaetti and Brunansky and Morris and Knoblauch and Hunter and Santana and Mauer and Morneau. Here's mine. It's limited to the games I went to, which wasn't many. I was living in Taiwan during the '87 Series, Seattle during the '91 Series. The only post-season game I attended at the Metrodome was Game 1 of the 2006 ALDS, Oakland vs. Minnesota. My boss had a luxury suite and me and my friend Dave P. got in on the action. Except there wasn't much action. We had Johan Santana going, the surest thing in baseball, but freakin' Frank Thomas hit two homeruns, and the Twins lost, 3-2, on their way to being swept by the freakin' A's, who would then lose to the freakin' Tigers in the ALCS, who would then lose to the freakin' St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series, in what was, give or take a Yankee trouncing, a pretty lame post-season.

Here are my moments. I'd love to hear yours:

• 5. Murderball at the Dome! In May 2006 I invited family and friends to the company suite for a Twins/Mariners matchup. Around the seventh inning, the son of my friend Jim Walsh, leaning out of the box, pointed out someone on the walkway below and Jim began to chat him up. I assumed an old friend. But it was Mark Zupan, the poster boy for the 2005 documentary "Murderball," a scene from which, starring Zupan, had topped my MSNBC list of the top 10 scenes of 2005. A bunch of us went down, talked to the dude. Nice. Earlier (or later?) Jim wasn't so nice. He was making my nephew Ryan, 3, who hovered by him while he ate potato chips, beg for the potato chips. I watched this wondering whether I shouldn't intervene. Ryan's mom, my sister Karen, didn't wonder. She asked Jim what the hell he was doing and then, not waiting for a response, swatted him on the head. There's your Murderball for you.

• 4. Caffeinating Jordy. It amused Karen that I was nervous about being solely responsible for my nephew, Jordy, 5, for an August 2006 weekday afternoon game, but I was. I imagined, in the huge crowds, taking my eye off him for a second, turning around, not seeing him. Jordy? Jordy? That panic. Nothing like it happened, of course. We had box seats along the first-base side for Francisco Liriano's comeback game, but Liriano, injured worse than they thought, lasted, I believe, three innings. Jordy lasted five. At first I tried to get his attention away from the puzzles in his program and onto the field by talking up numbers: on the players' backs, and on the radar gun that measured the speed of each pitch. He liked this last part—even if it was the fact of the number, rather than what the number represented, that impressed. "Wow: 93 miles per hour!" he said. "Wow: 72 miles per hour!" he said. Then I made a rookie mistake. Buying him a slice of pizza, I asked what he'd liked to drink with it. Lemonade? Coke? Really, Coke? I think I bought the medium, 20 ounces, for a kid who'd never had caffeine before. By the time I gave him back to his mother at the nearby Star-Tribune, he was climbing the walls. Literally. The two rode the elevator to the third floor and Jordy tried to scale those walls. No need to thank me. It's what uncles are for.
• 3. Precursor to the '87 magic. In September 1987, a month before I left for Taipei, Taiwan, I went to a game—my first game at the Dome in a long while—with my friends Dave P. and Terri, who had recently moved (for Terri), or moved back (for Dave), to Minneapolis. The Twins were in the thick of a division race but attendance was slim. We got bleacher seats and kept moving about: Now in left, now in center, now in right. Which is where we were sitting when Kirby Puckett won the game in extra innings with a homerun. Exciting! People cheered a bit, then went home. They expected little because Minnesota never won the big one. At best Minnesota comes in second: the '65 Series loss, four Super Bowl losses, the presidential elections in 1968 and 1984. That's how we roll. So imagine my suprise, a month later in Taipei, hearing about the huge roar of the crowds at the Dome, and the frenzied fans waving...what? Homer whatsis? When did that start? I got the final skinny listening to the radio in the Chens' living room in the middle of a flood: "The Minnesota Twins, behind the pitching of Frank Viola and the decibels of the Dome, beat..." Half a world away, I made my own noise.
• 2. Kent Hrbek is trying to kill me! In April/May 1991, a month before I moved to Seattle, Dave P. and I bought some scalped tickets, then moved closer and closer and closer. This was the year after the year the Twins finished in last place, so it was a sparse crowd and easy to move down. By the middle of the game we were maybe 10 rows back on the homeplate/third-base side of the field, but closer to homeplate. Kent Hrbek, a lefty, was up. Here's what Dave remembers: ducking, as the foul ball rocketed towards his head but curved towards mine. Here's what I remember: my hand stinging, and the ball about 10 rows behind me. "If you had worse reflexes, you could've wound up in the hospital!" friends told me. "If I'd had a glove, I could've caught it," I responded. Next time, Herbie.
• 1. A one-hop strike to third. In August 2006, our publisher got an invite for a post-afternoon-game fundraiser at the Dome. You'd go on the field, meet Tony Oliva, play a softball game. Sounded fun. The publisher couldn't make it but asked me if I wanted to go, and I brought along my sis and her family, and the old man, who, even in his 70s, plays softball three times a week. Meeting Tony-O again was fun. He was one of my favorite players growing up, and the recipient, on a long-ago Camera Day at Met Stadium, of the butt-hug visible on the bio page. Everyone else gave him fundraiser-provided baseballs to sign but I brought along that picture. "Who's this handsome fellow?" he said, looking at it. One of the organizers took a Polaroid of me and him, along with the picture, 35 years after the original. Fun. The greater fun that evening, though, was shagging flies in left field. I'd been playing softball in a tavern league for about 10 years, and was a serviceable fielder with a pretty accurate arm. With someone hitting fungoes from third base—baseballs not softball—I tracked them against that teflon roof and caught them in that Major League stadium. One ball I caught near the warning track, and a bit of the kid got ahold of me. I threw the ball hard against the wall, speared it on a hop, turned and threw a one-hop strike to third base. Just like the big boys. OK, just like the young kids.

R.I.P., ya big marshmallow. You were the only Major League stadium I played in.

It's the last day of the regular season, and possibly the last day we'll see Ken Griffey, Jr. playing Major League baseball, but just check out this photo, taken, I believe, Tuesday night, when Junior, who's 39, and an old 39, hit his 17th homerun of the season and 628th of his career:

It would be hard to draw a straighter line than the one you get following the angle of his head to his arms to his bat. It's beautiful.

Junior's put up amazing stats in his career—particularly if, as seems likely, he's one of the few guys who didn't take steroids all this time. Steroids help you heal faster and Junior's been nothing but injured this decade. Even so, he has 630 career homeruns, fifth all-time, after Mays, Ruth, Aaron and Bonds*, so really fourth all-time. He's 16th in RBIs (14th). He's got 10 Gold Gloves—all with Seattle. But it's more than the numbers. Junior is just beautiful to watch. As an old man I'm gonna be the guy going, "Yeah yeah yeah. But you should've seen him play."

EXTRA: Via MLB's site, here's the 630th, and possibly last, homerun of his career.

Sober political pieces:

• Hendrik Hertzberg has been writing too many obituaries lately, as we all have, but here's a good one on former Carter press secretary Jody Powell.
• A smart take on the "is it racism or isn't it?" question regarding the vociferousness of the response to Pres. Obama's policies, via an unnamed reader on Andrew Sullivan's site. Money quote: "Of course they are screaming 'socialism.' They've been doing that since the 1950s at least. They're not talking about economic redistribution of wealth—they never have been. They've been talking about redistribution of privilege this whole time."
• "Turkeys of the Year" from Minnesota Law & Politics, which is the first, parent magazine of the company that employs me. The difficulty isn't finding the turkeys anymore, it's choosing among them. There's a section here, "Quick! Cancel My Membership to the ACLU," that is so full of the idiocies being spouted in public and political life that it might make the founding fathers rethink the First Amendment. Michele Bachmann rightly (no pun intended) gets her own section—including her frequent attacks on and insinuations about the U.S. Census Bureau. Glad that worked out. Then there's last year's gem from John McCain on why his pick, Sarah Palin, is qualified to be VP: "She knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America," he said. How awful that reads today. What a sad thing they were trying to sell. What a sad thing they're still trying to sell.

Drunk movie pieces:

• What does it mean to be a back-up critic at a daily? It means you don't get first dibs. And it means that in looking over Rotten Tomatoes list of the worst-reviewed movies of the last 10 years, I discovered I reviewed no. 91 ("Surviving Christmas"), no. 36 ("The Whole Ten Yards"), no. 5 ("National Lampoon's Gold Diggers") and...wait for it...no 1! ("Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever") Not to nitpick...OK, to nitpick. "Gold Diggers" should've been no. 1. It was the worst thing I've ever seen—and I've seen garbage stewing for weeks by the side of a Taipei road in 100-degree heat. The big surprise for me is that "Elektra" didn't even make the cut. Now that's an impressive decade of film.

Partying baseball pieces:

• Ichiro is ejected from a game for the first time in his Major League career. Must've learned how to finally say "c***sucker."
• Finally, here's an upper: In the pregame show before a late-September game between two teams going nowhere (Seattle at Toronto), color commenator and former third baseman Mike Blowers, known for the way he didn't crowd the plate during his playing days, made an insane prediction. He said Mariners rookie third baseman and Bellevue native Matt Tuiasosopo, who had all of 59 career at-bats going into the game, would hit his first career homerun that day. Not only that day but in his second at-bat. Not only in his second at-bat but on a 3-1 fastball and into the second deck in left field. Make sure you listen to what happens. I swear, Dave Niehaus has gotten such joy out of such lousy material—the short sad history of the Seattle Mariners—that he qualifies as the Patron Saint of the Pacific Northwest. And here, with great material, he's downright giddy. "I see the light! I believe you, Mike!" Way to go, Mike. Way to go, Dave. Touch 'em all, Tui. (UPDATE: Damn, even Rachel Maddow is on this story. Here she is, via Patrick Goldstein, who is also on this story. Hopefully more get on the story. It's a story worth telling.) (UPDATE: Here's the full play-by-play of the Tui homerun. It's worth listening to the entire thing.)

Peter Gammons isn't serious. Ten baseball playoff teams? Because the pennant races aren't exciting this year he suggests adding two more teams and beginning the season earlier and lengthening the post-season further. Even the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) isn't this stupid. At least they waited five years through a disconnect between popular pictures and nominated pictures before deciding to ruin 60 years of tradition by expanding the nominated pictures to 10—with the hope of somehow capturing a popular picture along the way. Gammons and others are suffering through one September without a legit pennant race (c'mon Twins!) and they want to mess with the whole works.

Or do they? Gammons writes:

I agree with Brewers general manager Doug Melvin, who says, "Most general managers don't want it watered down like the NHL or NBA. Not many are wild about the idea."

Oh. So what's the column about then? The answer comes a short paragraph later:

But why not think about having two wild-card teams per league? For instance, in what might be an aberrational season, the Giants, Marlins, Braves and Cubs would be within 2½ games of that NL spot right now.

"I agree with those who aren't wild about the idea...but why not think about the idea?" Nice.

The AMPAS analogy is apt. The Academy is fixing something that isn't broken (the five slots) because of something that is (disconnect between nominated and popular pictures). Gammons wants to exacerbate an exisiting problem (too many playoff teams for a 162-game season), because of, and while ignoring, its biggest problem: the disparity between the "have" teams (the Yankees), the "have some" teams (BoSox, Mets, Dodgers, Cubs) and all of those "have not" teams (most everyone else, especially the Pirates, A's, Twins, Marlins).

You want to fix baseball, you need to fix this.

You can't fix this? Here's a suggestion to make September easier to remember: Move the trade deadline up to Opening Day. The disparity between teams deepens as the season progresses because contending teams trade for while non-contending teams trade away. The good (and rich) get better; the bad (and poor) get worse. And there go the pennant races.

But would the downside for this be too much of a downside? Sometimes I like that late-July interplay between short-term gain (for the haves) and long-term gain (for the have-nots). Except, of course, the haves keep on having while the Pirates and Royals keep on notting. I'd give it a shot.

In the meantime, to honor Major League Baseball, would you please rise for the playing of our Leonard Cohen anthem:

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight is fixed
The poor stay poor while the rich get rich
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

Play ball.

As of last night, here's where the Seattle Mariners rank in the following batting categories among the 14 teams of the American League:

• Hits: 11th
• Doubles: 11th
• Triples: 12th-T
• Homeruns: 11th
• Total Bases: 13th
• Runs: Last
• RBIs: Last
• Batting Average: Last
• OBP: Last
• Slugging: 13th
• OPS: Last

It's been a fun summer. But we are first in the league in Sacrifice Hits with 53. Nothing like sacrificing.

I always thought I was at the game, back in May 1995 at the Kingdome (R.I.P.), when Derek Jeter made his major league debut. I thought I remembered some announcement or talk or such. The Yankees have this kid they just brought up... But then I read Jack Curry's piece on Jeter's debut—published on the day Jeter tied Lou Gehrig for most career hits by a Yankee—and this morning I checked the shoebox full of old ticket stubs I have from the '90s, that, for whatever perverse reason, I've never been able to throw away, and discovered I wasn't there for Jeter's first game.

I was there for Jeter's first hit. Tuesday, May 30, 1995. Aisle 313, row 1, seat 8. 7:05 PM. $8.00.

I used to write highlights on the back of these ticket stubs—that's part of why I kept them, I guess—and Jeter obviously wasn't on my mind in that May 30th game. The previous ticket stub, from May 27, simply says: "Balt 11, Seattle 4: First Griffey-less game." The stub before that, May 26, reads: "Seattle 8, Balt 3; RJ 13 Ks; KGJr solo HR; Junior injures wrist, out for 3 months." Yeah it was that game. That's what Mariners fans were thinking about when Jeter first showed up.

The May 30th ticket stub simply says: "Seattle 7, NY 3: 5-run 8th inning—all runs with two outs." The beginning of that "Refuse to Lose" stuff, I guess. Not to wax Rizzs here. Not to get all Rizzsy on you.

There might have been talk about it when Jeter singled to lead off the top of the fifth—particularly when they retrieved the ball. "Hey, it's that kid's first hit." Maybe that's why I remembered it. Or misremembered it.

Or maybe I remembered reading about it in The Seattle Times the next day (warning: clunky writing ahead):

The Mariners had jumped to a 2-0 first-inning lead off Yankee starter Melido Perez. But the Yankees led off five innings of starter Tim Belcher's seven innings with a hit.

They scored single runs in the fifth and seventh. Both rallies were started by rookie Derek Jeter.

Jeter opened the fifth with his first major-league hit, a single to left. He scored on Jim Leyritz's two-out double into the left-center gap. The Mariners nearly escaped without damage but second baseman Joey Cora mishandled a potential double-play ball.

Jeter started the seventh with a single to center. That would be Belcher's 92nd and final pitch.

The other night, the night Jeter tied Gehrig's mark with hit no. 2,721, there was a discussion among the talking heads on the MLB network about Jeter's placement among the all-time Yankees greats. In the background they showed the five players with the most hits in Yankees uniforms—Jeter, Gehrig, Ruth, Mantle and Bernie Williams—and Matt Vasgersian asked the others, Al Leiter and Dave Valle, if Jeter was as great, or greater, than these other guys. I expected laughter. But Al Leiter took the question seriously and said that, yes, Jeter was as great as these other guys. Or maybe Leiter was arguing that Jeter was perceived by today's fans as being as great. I'm not sure, because I began to argue back at the TV. Later I saw Dave Valle, bless him, looking at Leiter, and talking to him, as if he were insane. Good for Dave! Because outside of FOX-News I can't imagine a more absurd conversation on television. Ruth and Gehrig are almost always ranked among the top 5 players in baseball history. Ruth is generally regarded as the greatest player in baseball history—and I wouldn't argue it. He was a great pitcher who became, not just a great hitter, but one who completely changed the game. When he retired with 714 homeruns, the only guy close to him was Gehrig—who had half that number. Put it this way: one of the best measures of a player's overall hitting performance is OPS (On-Base Plus Slugging), and Ruth and Gehrig are first and third on this list, respectively, with only Ted Williams coming between them. Jeter? He's 181st and dropping. That's damn good for a shortstop—Honus Wagner is 138th on this list, after all (although he played in the dead ball era), and Cal Ripken is 503rd—but still...

Look, Jeter's fine. He's a good hitter with a little bit of pop. He seems clean in a dirty era. But he led the league in runs once, and hits once, and that's it. He's overrated as a defensive shortstop. Bill James talks about .300/.400/.500 guys and Jeter's not that. He's a .300/.300/.400 guy. Both Gehrig and Ruth are .300/.400/.600 guys. It's not even a discussion.

If you're insulted by this, if you're a huge Derek Jeter fan who thinks I'm dissing the man by saying he's not as good as the best players in baseball history, let me say one thing: I have a ticket stub from the game when Jeter got his first hit. Bidding starts at $1,000.

About six years ago a friend gave me an uncorrected proof of Jane Leavy's "Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy," which was getting a lot of attention at the time, and I finally got around to it this past weekend. Something about September makes me want to read baseball books, I guess. Temperatures are cooling down and pennant races are heating up. Post-season is just around the corner. Or maybe it's the fact that baseball is dying (for the year) and everyone appreciates things more when they're dying. Baseball books are almost always pubished in spring, which is the one time of year I get to take baseball for granted. It's also the season I'm least likely to be inside, reading.

I like the structure of Leavy's book—every other chapter is an inning in his perfect game against the Chicago Cubs on Sept. 9, 1965—while the subsequent chapters give us his life and career: How a wild, afterthought lefty, with an ERA hovering near 4.00, became, for five years, the best pitcher in baseball. Levy would say "the best pitcher in basebal history" and that's part of the problem. She's a little hagiographic. She's a little too close to her subject. So was Aviva Kempner in that "Hank Greenberg" doc, but for some reason I found Kempner's love letter charming, Leavy's less so. Maybe it's the medium. Maybe it's the messenger.

Some of the best stuff is in the intro, when Leavy interviewed the players, many of them Hall of Famers, who faced Koufax. It's been said that his fastball rose when it got to the plate, which, according to science, is impossible. Of course 19th century scientists claimed no ball could curve, either; that the so-called "curve ball" was merely an optical illusion. The players here collectively give science a Bronx cheer:

Stan Musial: "Rose up just before it got to the plate."
Willie Mays: "I don't know how much it rose, it just rose. Ain't got time to try and sit there and count how high it goes. You just know it went up—very quickly."
Hank Aaron: "It did something, you know?"
Carl Erskine: "It re-accelerated. It came again."
Dave Wallace: "Fifteen feet from home plate, where the grass ends and the dirt begins, it got an afterburner on its ass."

Love Hank Aaron's line.

Ken Burns' "Baseball" doc argued, in passing, that Koufax went from mediocre mop-up man (with great stuff) to the best pitcher in baseball when someone told him he didn't have to throw so hard, but Leavy argues that the Dodgers in general, and manager Walter Alston in particular, just didn't give him the chance to find his rhythm during the 1950s. Koufax was a "bonus baby." Because he signed for over $10,000 in 1954, MLB rules stipulated that he had to stay on the 25-man roster. So not only did his signing piss off the other, veteran players, most of whom weren't even earning what this kid had just been given, but it pissed off the manager, who was suddenly saddled with a player he couldn't get rid of. If the kid wasn't any good he couldn't send him down to the minors; he had to keep him in the bigs. Alston, Leavy implies, dealt with this fait accompli by not taking advantage of Koufax's god-given talent.

That's certainly the case during his first two years: Koufax pitched 41 innings in 1955, 58 in 1956. In 1957, though, he seemed to find his rhythm, or at least a rhythm: 5-4, 3.88 ERA, with, most importantly, a 122-51 strikeout-walk ratio in only 104 innings. You'd think a manager would take notice. Maybe Alston did. Because the next year Koufax started twice as many games. But he got wild again: a 131-105 strikeout-walk ratio in 158 innings. His WHIP soared. The following year, too. So maybe he just wasn't good enough yet. Or maybe, as Leavy implies, Alston never let him settle into a rhythm. Who knows? Koufax probably doesn't even know.

Leavy also gives us the Ken Burns scene. Scenes. "Stop throwing so hard." Everyone told him this. Don Newcombe told him this. In a bar the night before a spring training game in 1961, Kenny Myers, an old scout, supposedly told him to keep his head level, don't rear it back. And in that spring training game, Norm Sherry, his catcher, came to the mound after Koufax walked the first three batters and told him, according to Koufax's autobiography, to "take the grunt out of the ball." According to Sherry, via Leavy, what he actually said was "Let 'em hit it." Take something off and let them hit it. Koufax, pissed off, did just that, in part to show Sherry how wrong he was.

And he struck out the side.

Back in the dugout, Sherry told him: "Sandy, I'm not blowing smoke up your rear end. But you just now threw harder trying not to than you did when you were trying to."

Something zen in that. Something zen about Koufax. The book attempts to probe his inscrutability. It lauds both his quest for perfection and his dislike of fame and celebrity—positing both against our sorry times—but, to me, the key to his success, and thus his meaning, is in this spring training game. The key is in finding the balance. Between force and not-force, pressure and not-pressure. Between wanting it too much and not wanting it at all. Maybe that's true of all things.

Chapter 12 is my favorite. The '63 World Series. When Koufax entered the national stage and ushered the Yankees off it. By '63 the Yankees were as common an autumnal sight as yellow leaves. From 1949 to 1964, they were in the World Series every year but two—1954 (Indians) and 1959 (White Sox)—and they won most of them, including the two most-recent Series. And there they were again. And what does Koufax do? He strikes out the first five guys he faces: Kubek, Richardson, Tresh, Mantle and Maris. He sets a Series record (that lasted all of five years) by striking out 15, and the Yankees went down in four games. How often had this happened before? Never. Not to the Yankees. John McGraw's New York Giants had beaten them once 4-0-1 way back in 1922, and the Yankees themselves had swept their Series' opponents six times (1927, 1928, 1932, 1938, 1939 and 1950), but they themselves had never been swept. Until the '63 Dodgers. In that first, 15-strikeout game, the Yanks lost 5-2 and the remarkable thing is they never scored that much again, losing the next games: 4-1 (vs. Podres), 1-0 (vs. Drysdale) and 2-1 (vs. Koufax). Koufax's 1.50 ERA for the Series was actually the worst on the Dodgers' pitching staff. That's from me, not Leavy.

"Sandy Koufax" is a good book but not a great book. It's the Johnny Podres of books. You could say Leavy never finds the balance Koufax found. Between force and not-force, pressure and not-pressure. She commits the most forgivable of writerly sins: She wants it too much.

Quick baseball trivia question for you. Derek Jeter's name has been bandied about for the American League MVP award. But where does he place among qualifying Yankees in terms of OPS—On-Base Plus Slugging—which is generally regarded as one of the best indicators of a player's hitting prowess?

Seventh. As of this morning, he has the seventh-best OPS on the Yankees.

M.V.My ass.

What's more remarkable? Jeter is still 24th among the 74 American League players who have the requisite number of plate appearances to qualify for the batting title. Meaning seven of the Yankees' nine hitters are among the top 24 hitters in the league. Ouch! Here they are:

No other team is close. Among the top 24 players in OPS, the Rays have four (Ben Zobrist, Jason Bartlett, Evan Longoria and Carlos Pena), Boston has three (Kevin Youkilis, Jason Bay, J.D. Drew), the Twins have three (Joe Mauer, Jason Kubel, Justin Morneau), Texas has two (Nelson Cruz, Michael Young), and the Tigers, Angels, Blue Jays, Mariners and Indians all settle for one a piece (Miguel Cabrera, Kendry Morales, Adam Lind, Russell Branyan and Shin-Soo Choo). White Sox, Royals, Orioles and A's get zilch. Especially the A's.

The Yankees, again, have seven. That's gotta be worrisome for anyone playing them in the post-season.

New Yankee Stadium—so nice you get to homer twice—has, I'm sure, helped the Yankees accrue the best team OPS in the Majors, .842, 40 points higher than second-place Boston (.802). At the same time, didn't it destroy their pitching staff? Their pitching OPS must suck.

Not really. Here's how the 30 teams in the Majors stand when you add their batting OPS ranking and their pitching OPS ranking. Current division and wild-card leaders in bold:

What is this measurement worth? Not much. For one, teams have reconfigured for the season. The good and the rich are better, the mediocre and middle-class are worse. No way, for example, that the Marlins and White Sox are equal to the Phillies, who are my gut pick for NL champs. No way the Angels are that bad. Even so, I was surprised that the only other team in slngle digits in both categories—besides the Yankees—is the Colorado Rockies. Ninth in the majors in opposition OPS? Wow.

Yes, as an avowed Yankees hater, none of this is exactly good news, but stats are stats. Put it this way: the Yankees are overbudget, filled with lousy actors, get too much attention...but they're good. "Transformers 2" is all of those things and it sucked. That's how bad that movie was. It makes the Yankees look good.

From ESPN.com...

The Boston Red Sox got the big bat they were looking for, acquiring All-Star slugger Victor Martinez from the Cleveland Indians on Friday...

Martinez, who had spent his whole career with Cleveland, fought back tears after being told he'd been traded. He sat in front of his locker, hugging son Victor Jr. -- earlier in the day, the young boy asked his dad, "Are we still an Indian?"

"It's tough," Martinez said. "This is my house. This is my home."

Martinez leaves Cleveland a day before the Indians were to hold Victor Martinez Bobblehead Night at Progressive Field in their game against Detroit.

Seriously, if you haven’t seen DeWayne Wise’s catch with nobody out in the top of the ninth inning to preserve Mark Buehrle’s perfect game yesterday—only the 18th perfect game (including the postseason) in Major League Baseball history—you’ve gotta see it. Right here.

As I said before, I may have seen better homerun-robbing catches but never in that kind of situation, never to preserve that kind of baseball history. Not even close. It’s the catch of the year.

Watch it.

Watch where he starts from. I mean he’s dead centerfield and not particularly deep. He has to run a long way to get to that thing. He has to run at a sprint to be exactly where the ball is heading.

He runs so fast, in fact, that it allows him to slow down at the warning track. That’s key. If he’d been running faster when he made his leap, the ball probably would’ve jarred loose from his glove when he hit the wall. Or he might’ve injured himself. Instead, because of his earlier speed, he’s able to slow down and go into the wall relatively softly.

OK, over the wall. Because it’s obviously a homerun. Kapler hit a homerun. Until Wise brought it back.

But even going over the wall relatively softly, the ball is still jarred loose from his glove. So, coming off the wall, falling down, he is able to re-glove and bare-hand the ball (both hands, kids), roll over on his back, and stand and raise the ball in his bare hand. I mean...goddamn.

Then he does a very baseball thing. With his gloved hand he points at Buehrle. I love that. I’ve written articles about “the point” in baseball and how it compares favorably to the antics in other sports, particularly the solipsistic celebrations of football, which are all me me me. Pointing in baseball means: “Good job, you. Good work. We’re a good team.” But why does Wise point at Buehrle here? Because Buehrle kept Kapler from hitting it deeper? Because Buehrle’s pitch, and Kapler’s hit, have just made DeWayne Wise a household name? Of course not. He’s just on automatic. I’m sure he’s pumped. But in baseball, particularly in the field, you maintain cool while the game is going on. You maintain nonchalance. Wise does. You can see his adrenaline almost overwhelming his nonchalance but he keeps it tamped down. After all, there are two outs to go.

Then he taps gloves with the left fielder and goes back and retrieves his sunglasses. Unsmiling. He’s serious. After all, there are two outs to go.

It’s beautiful. Everything I love about baseball is in this moment. Watch it.

I arrived in Seattle in May 1991 after spending most of the 1980s pursuing a degree and a girl—I got the degree and lost the girl—and after having spent a significant amount of time abroad in baseball-less Taiwan. Hell, even in Minneapolis, where I lived most of the 1980s, baseball didn't feel the same as when I was growing up. My childhood stadium, Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minn. (now the Mall of America), saw its last professional baseball game played on September 30, 1981 (I was there), and it was replaced, the spring of my freshman year of college, with a domed stadium downtown. Grass became turf, the sky became roof, the distinctive “TC” on the caps of the players became a fat, generic “M” (because, literalists proclaimed, it was the Minnesota Twins, not the Twin Cities’ Twins), and I drifted elsewhere. Yes, this kid Hrbek was better than most in a long line of “next Harmon Killebrews,” and, yes, this kid Puckett coming up in ’84 was fun to watch, but overall I stopped going. I lost track. Hell, when the Twins finally won it all in 1987 I was on the other side of the world. I still considered myself a fan but I was, at best, fair-weather.

In Seattle in ’91 and ’92 I went to a few games in the Kingdome—which was, impossibly, even uglier than the Metrodome—and things improved in ’92 when I  got glasses and could finally follow the ball again, but I didn’t become a true fan until ’93, when two friends from University Book Store, Tim and Mike, and I, would often, spur of the moment, take in a game. “Who’s pitching? Randy? Let’s go.”

Here’s an entry in my diary, from when I wrote a diary, from April 21, 1993:

I got rained on three times today: biking to work in the morning; as Parker and I were waiting for the bus to take us to the Mariners game; and finally returning from the Mariners game. The game, by the way, went well: Mariners: 5  Red Sox: 0. Randy Johnson with a 4-hit complete game shutout; Ken Griffey Jr. with two homeruns. This is his second two-homerun game in the last three days.

The next night Chris Bosio pitched a no-hitter and I wasn’t there, and I always lamented the fact that I went to the first two games in that series with Boston and it was the third game that was a no-hitter. But this second game wasn’t bad, either. It was career victory no. 51 for Randy (no. 51). That’s 249 victories ago. And counting.

God, he was fun to watch. He’s fun to watch now, but then? In his prime? For your team? Unbelievable. That year I saw him strike out 15 Kansas City Royals—twice. I watched him give John Kruk a heart attack at the All-Star game. Jerry Crasnick has a list of the top 9 Randy Johnson moments and I was only at the park for one of them—no. 9, the McGwire homerun—but, possibly because it’s too similar to his no. 4, Crasnick left out the most indelible moment for most Mariners’ fans, and I was there for that.

In 1998, along with Edgar Martinez, Jay Buhner and Jamie Moyer, the M’s had three superstars on the team—RJ, Junior and A-Rod—and thus three huge contracts to fill in the near future, and in attempting to juggle this dilemma they wound up losing all three. RJ went first, mid-season 1998, and I covered his return to Seattle, and to new Safeco Field, on July 20, 1999 for The Grand Salami, an alternative program sold at the stadium. His return, by the way, wasn't the most indelible RJ moment for most Mariners' fans. That came three years earlier. Here's the piece. I called it "Unitless in Seattle":

M’s fans have grown bitter these past few seasons, witnessing, at they have, so many late-inning losses, so many bewildering trades, so much opportunity and talent gone for naught. Worse, RJ’s departure was acrimonious. He pitched poorly with the M’s in the first half of ’98, and then cut a swath through the National League in the second half, so some feel he tanked it here.

“I listen to sport radio quite a bit,” Artie Kelly, 41, of Seattle, said outside Safeco, “and (fan reaction) is pretty mixed.”

Kelly, known as “Ironworker Artie,” bears a slight resemblance to the Unit—tall, lanky, and long-haired. He wore a t-shirt with Johnson’s name and number on the back, and stuck posters on the outside of Safeco, which he helped build. “Gone But Not Forgotten,” read one. “The House That Randy Built,” read another. “I’m out here to enlighten fans who are being brainwashed by M’s management,” he said. “You don’t lead the league in strikeouts by tanking it.”

Indeed, Johnson’s 329 strikeouts last year, a number lost in the hubbub over the McGwire-Sosa homerun parade, were the seventh-most in modern major league history.

“The question back then was whether Randy deserved Maddux money,” Kelly continued. “Well, now the question is whether Maddux deserves Johnson money."

Inside Safeco it became apparent that the anti-Randy talk on sports radio was mostly a vocal minority.

“I like Randy, he didn’t do nothing wrong,” said Ed Claxton, 34, of Bothell.

“Cheer?” asked Brian Conrad, 31, of Kenmore, who basked in the sun along the first base line. “Hell yeah. He’s responsible for us having this stadium.”

When asked about favorite RJ moments, the response was surprisingly widespread. Some mentioned the no-hitter against Detroit in 1990, and the one-game playoff against California that gave Seattle its first division title in 1995. What came to Darren Arends’ mind was the 1993 All-Star game when Randy sailed a pitch over the head of the Phillies’ John Kruk. Kruk stepped out, an amazed, dazed smile on his face, fluttered a hand near his heart, then promptly struck out on three pitches—his last swing hardly catching homeplate he was so far back in the bucket.

But by far the favorite Randy moment—in this admittedly unscientific survey—was Randy striding in from the bullpen to the strains of “Welcome to the Jungle,” in Game 5 of the 1995 Division Series against the Yankees.

“The best sports moment of my life,” said Brian Conrad.

“That was a pretty imposing sight,” remembered Sean Linville, 28, of Bellingham.

And I was there. Six years later—during which the national sports press, forgetting '95, kept implying that Randy "choked" in the postseason—I watched on TV as Randy, now with the Diamondbacks, did the same against the Yankees in the 7th game of the 2001 World Series. He was the true Yankees killer—though both games required comebacks from his teammates.

Getting that comeback, getting that team support, was kind of a rarity for Randy—at least in his Seattle days. That’s what I kept thinking during this long, drawn-out pursuit for 300. If it wasn’t for that lousy, mid-1990s M’s bullpen, how much sooner would he have gotten there? I recall tons of blown ballgames—the worst, the most laughable, coming in April 1998, when RJ dominated the Red Sox (again) through 8 innings at Fenway, and left with a five-run lead. The M’s bullpen—horrible in ’97, disastrous in ‘98—promptly gave it all back, and more, as Mo Vaughn ended the game with a walk-off grand slam. The four or five pitchers Lou trotted out that inning didn’t even record an out.

So make no mistake. Randy deserves that 300. He’s the best, most dominating pitcher I’ve ever seen. And—with Junior, Edgar, Omar and Jay, as well as Mike and Tim—he helped bring me back to baseball.

A gentle reminder to Yankees fans everywhere that, as of this moment, their team is the losingest team in the history of New Yankee Stadium. Yesterday afternoon, in their $1.6 billion stadium debut, they got drubbed by the Cleveland Indians, 10-2. Some firsts at the new park:

• First pitch: by C.C. Sabathia, a ball, at 1:09 PM eastern time
• First batter:  Grady Sizemore, groundout to first
• First strikeout: Victor Martinez, by Sabathia, in the top of the 1st
• First Yankees batter: Derek Jeter, fly out to center
• First basehit: Johnny Damon, single, bottom of the 1st
• First extra-base hit: Ben Francisco,Cle., double in the top of the 2nd
• First run: Ben Francisco,Cle., who scored from first on a two-out double by Kelly Shoppach in the top of the 4th
• First homerun: Jorge Posada, NY, nobody on, bottom of the 5th
• First grand slam: Grady Sizemore in the top of the 7th

Not exactly names that might ring through the ages, right? Francisco is 27 and his double was the 38th of his career. Shoppach is 28 and the RBI was the 103rd of his career.

I hate the Yankees, of course, but you gotta love some of their fans in times like these. From the NY Times article on the Indians' nine-run 7th:

The inning was so bad that by the end of it, some fans shouted, “We want Swisher!” — as in Nick Swisher, the outfielder who tossed a scoreless inning in a blowout at Tampa Bay on Monday. 

May the streak continue.

Welcome to my favorite day of the year. Here are your active career leaders, with all-time rankings in parentheses:

Batting:

• Games: Omar Vizquel, Tex.: 2680 (30th)
• At-Bats: Omar Vizquel, Tex.: 9745 (30th)
• Runs: Ken Griffey, Jr., Sea.: 1612 (39th)
• Hits: Ken Griffey, Jr. Sea.: 2680 (58th)
• Doubles: Ivan Rodriguez, Hou.: 524 (34th)
• Triples: Johnny Damon, NYY: 92 (193th) — second place, only two behind, is Jimmy Rollins, Phi., who was 29 years old last season.
• Home Runs: Ken Griffey, Jr., Sea.: 611 (5th)
• RBIs: Ken Griffey, Jr., Sea.: 1772 (18th)
• Walks: Jim Thome, CWS: 1550 (15th)
• Strikeouts: Jim Thome, CWS: 2190 (3rd)
• Stolen Bases: Juan Pierre, LA: 429 (56th)
• Caught Stealing: Omar Vizquel, Tex.: 156 (19th)
• Batting Average: Albert Pujols, Stl: .334 (20th)
• On-Base Percentage: Todd Helton, Col.: .428 (10th)
• Slugging Percentage: Albert Pujols, Stl: .623 (4th)

Pitching:

• Games: Trevor Hoffman, Mil: 930 (18th)
• Games Started: Tom Glavine, Atl.: 682 (11th)
• Complete Games: Randy Johnson, SF: 100 (395th)
• Shutouts: Randy Johnson, SF: 37 (58th)
• Innings Pitched: Tom Glavine, Atl.: 4413 (29th)
• Hits: Tom Glavine, Atl.: 4298 (24th)
• Walks: Tom Glavine, Atl.: 1500 (12th)
• Strikeouts: Randy Johnson, SF: 4789 (2nd)
• Wins: Tom Glavine, Atl.: 305 (21st)
• Losses: Tom Glavine, Atl.: 203 (43rd)
• Saves: Trevor Hoffman, Mil.: 554 (1st) — Mariano Rivera is second, 72 behind.
• ERA (5 yrs. minimum): Mariano Rivera, NYY: .228 (17th)

Some quick observations:

1) A lot of 1990s Mariners on the list. Would that they’d stayed together to win something. Or one thing.

2) A quarter of the traditional pitching categories are negative (hits, walks, losses), while only 2/15 of the traditional batting categories are (strikeouts, caught stealing). Seems like a raw deal for pitchers. But I guess the options for positive results from a batter (single, double, triple, homer) are so much more varied than for a pitcher (out, strikeout). Still, seems odd to tabulate the number of hits a pitcher gives up and a batter gets, but not the number of outs for both. I’ve been a fan of the game most of my life and I never realized this?

3) Jim Thome leads all active players in both strikeouts and walks, and has 541 career homeruns. Meaning in only about half (52%) of his 9029 plate appearances did the ball land in an area where a fielder had a shot at it. Wonder where he ranks in this non-category?

4) Whenever anyone talks about unbreakable career records in baseball and doesn’t mention triples (for batters) and complete games (for pitchers)? They don’t know what they’re talking about.

5) Play ball!

So while I was gabbing about the Oscars this week, the Seattle Mariners, a team that has no shot at any kind of post-season, and barely a shot at a season, went and signed favorite son Ken Griffey, Jr. Good. There are sound arguments against the signing, that it's a move made with the heart and not the head, but baseball's always been a game of the heart. You lose that, you lose something fundamental about the game. Sure, I probably wouldn't say this if the M's had a chance in hell this year but they don't. They're not even in a quote-unquote "rebuiliding year" since they don't have much to rebuild with. This is the year, if anything, to test whether Jeff Clement can be a major league catcher, and if he can't whether he can be a major league first baseman, and if he can't whether he can be a major league left fielder, and the Griffey signing, if everyone understands their role, doesn't get in the way of this. My favorite argument in favor of the signing comes from ESPN's Jim Caple, who writes:

I don't understand the criticism that signing Griffey is primarily a move to boost attendance. Yeah, gee, we sure wouldn't want to give loyal fans who have sat through so many miserable seasons something actually worth watching in exchange for their $40 tickets and $8 beers.

Right on. Here's another trip down memory lane. The following was published on the Op-Ed page of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer in May 1995 after Ken Griffey, Jr. fractured his wrist catching a fly ball at the Kingdome. We never got to that magical 700 number I hoped for, but 600+ ain't bad.

Two Hoots for Junior

Feel free to tell me to get a life.

I returned to baseball four years ago with what I thought was an adult attitude about the game. No matter if my team won or lost I kept things in perspective. Randy Johnson strikes out fifteen guys, I'm still working the same job. Edgar Martinez injures his ankle, I've still got the same problems, the same goals, the same friends, the same enemies. Nothing about my life has changed except this or that vicarious victory or defeat. 

It's an attitude I later found summed up in the film, "A Bronx Tale." A boy is depressed because Mickey Mantle and the New York Yankees lost the 1960 World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates. A local mob boss — who has befriended the kid — tells him, Hey, you think Mickey Mantle gives two hoots about you? He doesn't care about you. He doesn't even know you exist!

That's the way I felt. I wanted the Mariners to win, but I knew Lou Pinella didn't give two hoots about me. I knew he didn't know I existed. I was properly, emotionally distant

Until this Griffey thing happened.

I was at the game. My friend Mike and I were sitting in the box seats in right field, past the visitors' bullpen. We had a perfect view. I saw him go for the ball. I saw him crash into the wall. And, contrary to Steve Kelley's subsequent reporting, the stadium did not hush; there was no "sickened silence" from the Kingdome crowd. The people around me were cheering like maniacs. I know because a sickened silence came upon me. I thought, "Nobody  — not even Junior — slams into a wall with such speed, at such an awkward angle, without doing damage to himself." 

Still, the people around me were going nuts. Of course these were the same kind of people who make the "whup! whooo!" noise when the opposition relievers warm up — the kind of people, in other words, who don't even pay attention to the game — so I didn't pay any attention to them.

Then right fielder Alex Diaz started making a circular motion with his hand as if some big deal was going on. At first I thought he was encouraging the fans in their cheering, and, reluctantly, I went along. Then I realized, no, he was calling for the trainer.

Earlier in the game, Griffey hit a homer off the right field foul pole above our heads. It was his 998th career hit. Since I already had tickets for the next night's game — and since Junior was in a groove — I felt assured of seeing him hit no. 1,000. 

In the eighth inning we got the news. Fractured wrist. Out for three months. It was like a blow to the solar plexus.  A pall was cast over the game. I didn't even want to go to the Kingdome the next evening. It would be like returning to the scene of a crime.

I tried to keep my emotional distance. I repeated my mantra.  My life is the same. Same job, same troubles, same goals. Ken Griffey Jr. doesn't give two hoots about me. He doesn't know I exist. He is a multi-millionaire seven years my junior. We have nothing in common.

Still I cared.

And I think I cared for three reasons.

The first is the way he injured himself. If he had fractured his wrist, say, playing basketball, or slipping in the shower, I would've rolled my eyes. But no. He injured it trying to fly. He injured it for the team. He injured it right in front of me.

The second reason is the effect it will have not so much on the Mariners but on the perception of the Mariners. I know we still have a good line-up. I know we'll still win. But Junior gave us something else. He actually made the Mariners scary. He was the constant roadblock in our lineup. You have to get by this guy in order to beat us.

More, he made us glamorous. Last year, when Mike was at Wrigley Field, two kids in Cubs hats found out he was from Seattle. "You mean you get to watch Ken Griffey Jr. play?" they asked enviously. Mike said it was the first time anyone actually envied him for going to the Kingdome.

Finally, the third reason. A couple of seasons ago I began keeping my ticket stubs and writing on the back not just the final score but any significant events that occurred. Randy Johnson strikes out fifteen Royals. Jay Buhner hits for the cycle. Things like that. The impetus for this  — I can now admit — was to keep track of how many Ken Griffey Jr. homeruns I had seen (14, so far). And the reason this statistic was important was, well, these were historic homeruns. Because he was going to hit a lot of them. 500. 600. 700? The sky seemed the limit.

Now?

Now the sky has fallen. Tiles one year and the sky the next.

Now there's a metal plate and six screws holding together his valuable left wrist.

Now I find myself caring a little too much about a guy who hit homeruns too much and caught fly balls too well.

And now if you'll excuse me I'll go get a life.

"For me, [Ted] Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday, before a small crowd, when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill. Baseball is a game of the long season, of relentless and gradual averaging-out. Irrelevance—since the reference point of most individual games is remote and statistical—always threatens its interest, which can be maintained not by the occasional heroics that sportswriters feed upon but by players who always care; who care, that is to say, about themselves and their art. Insofar as the clutch hitter is not a sportswriter’s myth, he is a vulgarity, like a writer who writes only for money. It may be that, compared to managers’ dreams such as Joe DiMaggio and the always helpful Stan Musial, Williams is an icy star. But of all team sports, baseball, with its graceful intermittences of action, its immense and tranquil field sparsely settled with poised men in white, its dispassionate mathematics, seems to me best suited to accommodate, and be ornamented by, a loner. It is an essentially lonely game. No other player visible to my generation has concentrated within himself so much of the sport’s poignance, has so assiduously refined his natural skills, has so constantly brought to the plate that intensity of competence that crowds the throat with joy."

— John Updike on Ted Williams in "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," and a reminder of what baseball used to be. 

A batch of fun articles on ESPN.com yesterday about Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice being elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by (lest we forget) the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA). How great that the most prestigious awards in our national pastime — Hall of Fame, MVP, Cy Young — are doled out by observers rather than participants? Image, for example, the most prestigious film award being that scroll from the National Society of Film Critics.

How good was Rickey? He was, according to Tim Kurkjian’s article, “too good.” Kurkjian gives us the stats but this is the one I like: The career stolen-base gap between Henderson in first place (1,406) and Lou Brock in second (938) is 468 — which is more than the entire total for the active leader, Juan Pierre (429).

Great quotes from pitchers, too. Here’s Mike Flanagan:

“He was, by far, the most dynamic leadoff hitter I've ever seen. If you got 2-0 on him, you were fearful of throwing it down the middle because he could hit a home run. But if you threw ball three, he was going to walk, and then he's on second base. We had many, many long discussions on our pitching staff about how we could control this guy. He was irritating, infuriating and great.”

“I hated Rickey. Really, I couldn't stand him. He never swung at my knuckleball, he never swung at my curveball. He never swung until he got two strikes. He had the strike zone the size of a coffee can.”

Badly.

DiMaggio’s hitting streak is the finest of legitimate legends because it embodies the essence of the battle that truly defines our lives. DiMaggio activated the greatest and most unattainable dream of all of humanity, the hope and chimera of all sages and shamans: he cheated death, at least for a while.

So Albert Pujols of the fourth-place St. Louis Cardinals was voted the National League MVP today by the BBWAA. I'm a fan of not limiting the MVP to players whose teams made, or nearly made, the post-season, so I was a fan of the decision in that regard. Pujols' main competition, Ryan Howard of the eventual World Series-champion Phillies, came in second with 308 points. Pujols had 369. Close but not that close.

Rob Neyer has a piece suggesting other worthy candidates, including Lance Berkman, and I went to the stats to see what I could see.

First. The main argument for Howard is the gross numbers. He led the majors in HRs (48) and RBIs (146) but struck out a lot (199 times). The main argument for Pujols is the percentage numbers: .357 BA, .462 OBP, .653 SLG for a 1.114 OPS. Best in the majors. He also hit 37 HRs and drove in 116. Howard's percentages aren't lousy (.251, .339, .543 for a .881 OBP) but not MVP-calibre. Put it this way: Pujols' BA was higher than Howards' OBP. By nearly 20 points.

That's one thing I saw. Here's another thing, and this wowed me. I sorted by HRs, with Howard on top, and I was glancing to see what other homerun hitters struck out a lot: Howard (199), then Adam Dunn (164), then Carlos Delgado (124)... The next number stopped me cold: 54. Only 54 strikeouts for a homerun hitter? I looked over. Pujols. I looked down. None of the top 15 NL homerun hitters struck out fewer than 100 times. None. And Pujols struck out only 54. Plus he walked 104 times. 

Pujols is 2nd in the NL in walks and tied for 116th in strikeouts. 

Howard is tied for 13th in walks but 2nd in strikeouts.

Berkman? Fourth in walks (99) and 38th in strikeouts (108).

I know. Walks/strikeouts. Who cares? But it is indicative of who's the dangerous hitter, and Pujols' ratios are like Ted Williams' ratios. It's rare to find anyone in the majors these days, let alone a slugger, who strikes out fewer times than they walk. And a ratio of almost 2-to-1? For a slugger? Wow. 

This isn't the argument why Pujols deserved the MVP. Just interesting.

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” ... “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.

Other factors will come into play. “The Dark Knight” is better than “Pirates 2,” so it should have longer legs. Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker, singled out for high praise and Oscar buzz, may draw into theaters moviegoers who might not otherwise check out a superhero pic. And if Ledger, or the film itself, is nominated for an Oscar next January, that could boost its box office as well. Assuming it’s still in theaters. Even so, it would take a lot to make up $85 million.

One of the nice things about my day job is that I get to have contact — phonically, internetally — with some good writers around the country, and one of the better ones, out of Chicago, is Will Wagner. Poor bastard's a Cubs fan. Wrote a book about them a few years back, and, following their ignominious trashing in this year's NLDS, he's got a good piece on Sports Illustrated's Web site.

All sports fans play games with themselves, and they, and I, go from being the most superstitious lot this side of Salem ("The Vikings scored a touchdown when I held my breath; I'll have to hold my breath from now on") to the most logical thinkers this side of Mr. Spock ("Really, how does this team's victory or loss affect me? My life's still the same. I've still got the same job, the same friends, the same problems. Really, it doesn't affect me at all.").

Will's piece is an example of why the latter almost never works.

People who know me also know I hate me some Derek Jeter, or at least wish him season-ending injury ("hate" is such a strong word), which is why my friend Adam forwarded this article about a Sports Illustrated survey of 495 Major League Baseball players who basically agree with me. In the survey, Jeter got 10% of the votes for "Most Overrated." He wins again. Cue FOX Sports shot of Jeter jumping up and down as he runs for the hogpile on the pitcher's mound — but this time alone.

But then I read the rest of the survey and just shook my head. Barry Zito was second at 9%. Overrated? The dude's barely rated. He might have gotten a lot of press and money in the past, but these days he's hanging onto the game by his fingernails. Worse was one of the players tied for third: Alex Rodriguez. Now I don't agree with Jason Giambi who thinks that when Alex retires he'll be known as the greatest player ever to play the game, but he'll certainly be ONE of the greatest players ever to play the game. The guy's about to turn 33. He already has:  532 homeruns, 411 doubles, 2316 hits. He's got 1540 runs scored, 1544 runs driven in. Lifetime AVG/OBP/SLG: .307/.390/.580. Not quite part of Bill James' exclusive .300/.400/.500 club, but nearly. Overrated? I've had my nasty run-ins with A-Rod in the past, but that doesn't make the dude overrated.

BTW: My irrational hatred of Derek Jeter, and my daily prayer that he suffers a season-ending injury, or better, strikes out with the bases loaded (again and again and again... and again and again and again), doesn't mean I don't recognize his value. He's a good, possibly great ballplayer: .316/.387/.460. A candidate for 3,000 hits. He's just not as good/great as everyone thinks. Don't even get me started on his defense.

So he’s finally done it.

“Finally,” I suppose, is a measure of exasperation that a feat like hitting 600 homeruns doesn’t deserve. Only five players in baseball history have ever done it (Bonds, Aaron, Ruth, Mays, Sosa) — and only three if you remove the players tainted by steroids (leaving Aaron, Ruth and Mays) — so the fact that it was done at all should be applauded rather than recounted with an impatient sigh. And I am applauding it. As a Ken Griffey, Jr., fan, who saw him hit his eighth homerun in eight consecutive games in ’93, who saw him break his wrist in ’95 and bounce back to homer five times in the ’95 ALDS against the New York Yankees, who saw him homer 25-30 times in person at the Kingdome, I’m excited. I’m also a little bummed.

When he left Seattle he had 398 homeruns. At the time, he was hitting 50+ per year (in his previous four years, actually averaging 52+ per year), and he’d only just turned 30. Even with the usual slowdown of age, one assumed he might reach 600 in five years. Six at the top. Which would leave him a few more years to go after Mays and Ruth and Aaron. He’d pissed us off, certainly, the way he left, but he’d given us too many good memories for us to wish him anything but the best.

Instead, over 8 seasons, he’s averaged 24 homeruns. Injuries upon injuries. Too much weight. Not enough training. In the beginning of his career he might have been too much of a natural to take seriously the training necessary to prosper at the end of his career.

He won a Gold Glove every year in the American League; not once in the National. He was an All-Star every year in the American League; only three times in the National. He was good, or good enough, in the National League, but he’d once been the best: the only active player to make the All-Century Team in 1999.

And yet, please, another round of applause for Junior as he rounds the bases. It’s too late for him to catch Ruth and Aaron, and probably Mays, but Sammy Sosa’s only 8 homeruns away. Let’s get him out of the way this year, Junior. Then, of the top five career homerun hitters, only one will be tainted.

Time flies. Seems like only yesterday I was saying it was a great day to hate the New York Yankees and now it's five days later and they've won five in a row. They won close games and blow outs. They came from behind. Their record is now even (.500) and their run differential is now even (222-223). They're only five games back of the leader of the AL East, which is Tampa Bay, the feel-good story in baseball this year.

But I wouldn't feel too smug if I were a Yankees fan because most of this was accomplished on the backs of the Seattle Mariners, tthe worst team in the American League. By far. The Yankees have faced the M's six times this year and are 6-0 against them. They've scored 50 runs and given up 17. What success they appear to have is partially due to these six games. Without them, the Yankees would look pretty crappy. And, sure, you have to beat the bad teams with the good ones but if I were a Yankees fan here's what I'd worry about: The Yanks only have three  more games against the M's this year. After that, they're on their own.

And if I were a Mariners fan — which I kind of am — what would I be worried about? That the firings will stop in the dugout and won't reach the front office: specifically Billy Bavasi and/or Howard Lincoln.

When Jamie Moyer wins his 10th game this season he'll pass Mark Langston for second on the all-time Mariner win list with 75. If there's one thing Jamie Moyer knows how to do, it's win games. Since he arrived in our evergreen state in the middle of the 1996 season he's gone 6-2, 17-5, 15-9, 14-8, and 13-10. Even this season, with his strikeout-walk ratio a not-so-hot 23-14, and his ERA an unhealthy 5.28, and the ball flying out of the yard at an alarming rate (11 dingers in 44+ innings pitched), he's still standing tall at 6-1. Which is fine, but we fear some of the other numbers might catch up to him. Has he healed completely from his shoulder injury last April? Is it age? He still worries us. As for becoming the winningest pitcher in Mariner history, well, that'll take some work yet: Randy Johnson holds the mark with 130.

One of my favorite people I don't know personally, Dave Niehaus, the voice of the Seattle Mariners since 1977, was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame earlier this week. About effin' time, I say. He's real baseball. He's given me more moments of pure joy than most people I do know personally. Fans in the Pacific Northwest know what I'm talking about. Below is an article I wrote about him in 1996. It's partly nostalgic — Kingdome, Junior's 199th career homerun — but most of it is still true:

THE VOICE OF THE M'S

Between the second and third decks of the Kingdome, up a flight of stairs from the press box and surrounded on all sides by luxury suites, sits a narrow, blue-carpeted, three-tiered room. Because each tier holds a thin table equipped with headphones and swivel chairs, the room is reminiscent of a tiny lecture hall. Except no students are present, while the would-be professor sits at the bottom tier with his back to the room, looking out over the artificial green of the Kingdome's vast interior. He wears headphones and talks into a microphone held in place by duct tape.

"It's been a wild, woolly, Pier 6 brawl, and the bullies so far have been the Kansas City Royals," he bellows.

It is from this enclave, in these unassuming surroundings, that Dave Niehaus makes Mariners baseball come alive for 400,000 radio listeners.

"He's the best broadcaster in baseball," Rick Rizzs, Niehaus' broadcast partner for 10 of the last 13 years, mentions before gametime. "He can set the scene, he can bring you in, he can make you feel it, smell it, touch it, and be a part of it."

Tony Ventrella of KIRO-TV concurs. "He's got such great knowledge and — the thing is — stories. He's got a story attached to everything. And he's a great storyteller. Some people know the stories, but they don't tell them as well."

In conversation it doesn't take long for Niehaus to reveal these talents, whether he's talking about Gaylord Perry's 300th win or his preference for outdoor baseball.

"You go to Fenway Park in Boston — which is my favorite park by far and it was built in 1912 — and you can smell it, you can smell the baseball. You look at the ladder that comes down The Monster, you look at the Yawkey's names written in Morse Code right by the ladder, you look at that seat 502 feet away in right field where Ted Williams hit the homerun off Freddie Hutchinson. There's so many things there for a baseball nut like I am."

On the air Niehaus often recounts his childhood in Princeton, Indiana: sitting on the porch, sipping lemonade, catching fireflies and listening to Harry Caray broadcast St. Louis Cardinals games. Yet as a child he never thought of becoming an announcer. "Subliminally maybe," he says, "[but] I was going to go to dental school. And then I woke up one morning in college and said 'I can't stare down somebody's throat at nine o'clock in the morning the rest of my life,' and I wandered by the radio and television school there and changed my major."

He worked for the Armed Forces radio network, broadcasting baseball and basketball and hockey. From 1969 to 1976, along with Dick Enberg and Don Drysdale, he was the voice of the California Angels. Then came an offer from a nascent Seattle organization, and Niehaus was on hand to help launch The Good Ship Mariner on April 6, 1977; it almost sank off the dock.

"Frank Tanana shut us out," he recalls, "and Nolan Ryan shut us out the next night. I was beginning to wonder a) whether we would ever score a run, and b) whether we'd ever win a ballgame."

It wasn't until 1991 that the Mariners even finished above .500 for the season. Meanwhile, Niehaus, his reputation growing, was getting offers from bigger markets with outdoor stadiums, but he didn't budge. He liked the Pacific Northwest. And he wanted to be here when Seattle baseball turned around.

Last year he got his wish.

The story is familiar by now. Thirteen games back in August. One exciting come-from-behind victory after another in September. The one-game playoff with California to clinch the A.L. West title. Losing two games in New York and then coming back to the Kingdome to win three in a row. It was some of the most exciting baseball people had ever seen, and much of it was imprinted with Niehaus' voice: the smooth, low tones that tend toward capital letters when the action heats up:

"And Junior right down on the knob of the bat, waving that black beauty right out toward Pavlik; has it cocked and Pavlik is set. The pitch on the way to Ken Griffey Jr. and it's SWUNG ON AND BELTED! DEEP TO RIGHT FIELD! GET OUT THE RYE BREAD GRANDMA, IT’S GRAND SALAMI TIME! I DON'T BELIEVE IT! ONE SWING OF THE BAT, THE FIRST PITCH, AND KEN GRIFFEY JR. HAS GIVEN THE MARINERS A 6-2 LEAD OVER THE TEXAS RANGERS. MY OH MY!"

This mixture of adult professionalism and youthful enthusiasm has helped turn Niehaus into a local icon. He is so popular that in Seattle's first ever post-season game, he — not the Mayor, not the Governor — but he threw out the first pitch. He is so identified with the Mariners that in the book A Magic Season: The Year the Mariners Made Seattle a Baseball Town, his profile is included among the players. Fans leaving exciting games wonder how excited Niehaus must have been during this or that homerun, or this or that astounding catch. Some don't have to wonder; they bring their radios with them."He's a fan of the game," says Mark Bitton of Aberdene. "He's not just being a broadcaster. You can hear it in his voice. He's excited about it, too."

"I brought the radio because I came with my son and his four friends," Peter Maier of Seattle mentions, gesturing to several boys roaming the third deck aisles while the Mariners fritter away another lead. "So Niehaus is my adult friend."

Almost directly below Maier, in the broadcast booth, Niehaus holds nothing back. "This is an ugly, sloppy ballgame," he tells his listeners. He confers with producer Kevin Cremin. Both keep score. Cremin hands him notes, advertisements, and Niehaus smoothly segues into them between pitches. His observations are quick, his word choices evocative. Speedy Tom Goodwin hits a "soft, little dunker" that he turns into a two-base hit when Buhner merely "lopes in on the ball." He finds humor in the Kansas City catcher involved in a hit-and-run: "Big Sal Fasano was just lumbering down the line toward second." Between innings he shows off the sealed envelope in which Ken Griffey Jr. has predicted the day he will hit his 200th homerun. "Knowing Junior's sense of humor I'll probably open it up and it'll say 'Today'," Niehaus laughs.

An inning later, Junior hits number 199; but the game is lost, part of a disappointing homestand for the M's. Niehaus, however, is as philosophic about such losses any veteran player.

"I've done well over three thousand games — and that's just for Seattle — and I've never seen two games alike. Of course you want the club that you work for to win. But I just enjoy the aesthetics of the game, the artistry of baseball. I look at one game like it is: 1/162 of a season.

"There are times when you get in an eight or nine game losing streak and you think 'Will this ever end?' It will. Sometimes it doesn't seem like it, but it will."

Sure enough, the next night the M's pitching settles down, the big bats come out, and Dave Niehaus' voice rises as quickly as the trajectory of Paul Sorrento's latest homerun:

"The pitch to Sorrento BELTED! DEEP TO RIGHT FIELD! UPPER DECK TIIIIIME, YES! A two-run homerun by Paul Sorrento and the Mariners are up 7-0! Fly Away!"