Baseball posts

One of the questions on today’s Immaculate Grid—or one of the squares, and yeah, I’m still doing these things every other day or so—was the intersection of a pitcher with 200+ career wins and a player born outside the U.S. I put down Bert Blyleven (Netherlands) without much thought. After I got dinged for 5%, I chastised myself for not going deeper.

Once I got the answer, I wondered if you could go deeper, since there are only 11 guys who fit that definition—and four of them are from the early years of baseball, so I don't know them. This is them chronologically:

1. Tommy Bond, Ireland
2. Jim McCormick, Scotland
3. Tony Mullane, Ireland
4. Jack Quinn, Slovakia
5. Juan Marichal, Dominican Republic
6. Luis Tiant, Cuba
7. Ferguson Jenkins, Canada
8. Bert Blyleven, Netherlands
9. Dennis Martinez, Nicaragua
10. Pedro Martinez, Dominican Republic
11. Bartolo Colon, Dominican Republic

So wait, no Fernando? No, he won just 173. How about Nomo? 123. My man King Felix? 169.

The Dominican Republic is only No. 1 on this list by a whisper—basically by the difference between Ireland and Scotland. But I assumed the DR and other Latin American countries would soon flood the list.

And then I realized: Nobody wins games anymore.

Only three active pitchers are 200+: Justin Verlander (262), Max Scherzer (216) and Clayton Kershaw (212), and a more All-American trio would be tough to find. Next guy on the list, another All-American, is Gerritt Cole, and he’s way back at 153. For foreign-born active pitchers? The DR’s Johnny Cueto is tops with 144, but he’s 38 years old and last season went 0-2 with a 7.15 ERA. I have trouble seeing him getting to 150+ let alone 200+. Then it’s two guys with 110, Carlos Carrasco from Venezuela and Yu Darvish from Japan, but they’re 37 and 38 respectively.

How about Ohtani? 38 wins. 38!

So right now I’m thinking that unless the game changes in unexpected ways, this is the list—forever and ever, amen.

Trivia question: Which foreign-born pitcher won the most games in MLB history? It’s the guy I chose, Blyleven at 287, and it’s a record that’s never going to be broken.

My grid, a Palmer away from an all-Twins sweep.

Here's a baseball trivia question with an obvious answer: Between Ted Williams hitting .388 in 1957 and Rod Carew hitting .388 in 1977, who had the highest single-season batting average in the Majors? Yes, that would be Rico Carty's .366 in 1970. Only a handful of players ever got into the .360s during that time. The others: Norm Cash in 1961 (.361), Joe Torre in '71 (.363), and Rod Carew in '74 (.364). Nice company.

I remember being impressed by that .366 number—and loving the name. Turns out he's the only “Carty” in MLB history. “Rico,” short for Ricardo, is less unique (cf., Petrocelli, among others). 

1970 was the only year he led the league in anything. Why? Injuries. Victor Mather in The New York Times has a nice obit on the man, letting us know “Carty's progress was impeded by broken bones, hamstring problems and even tuberculosis.” Mather also gives Carty's birthdate without underlining its historical significance: Sept. 1, 1939. What a world to be born into.

As a kid, he was a boxer but soon switched over to baseball. He signed with a bunch of teams, the Milwaukee Braves won him and switched him to the outfield, and in his rookie season he hit .330, second in the Majors, with 22 homeruns. Normally that's enough to win Rookie of the Year, but this was 1964 so Carty finished second to Dick Allen of the Phillies. But what a bumper crop that season: Those two plus AL Rookie of the Year Tony Oliva. 

Then injuries. He played in only 83 games in '65 (hitting .310), bounced back in '66 (hitting .326), suffered in '67 (.255), lost all of '68 and a third of '69 (.342). But in 1970, as if making up for lost time, he tore out of the gate and after two full months was hitting (wait for it) .436! He was so good, Mather lets us know, that he became the first write-in starter to the All-Star Game. It would be his only All-Star appearance.

After the 1970 season, this was Rico Carty's career split: .322/.389/.507. That's a Hall of Fame line. But then more injuries and more problems. He missed all of '71 with a broken leg, and when he returned he was diminished, hitting .277 without power for half of the '72 season. Plus he'd had an altercation with Atlanta cops in '71, and maybe with Henry Aaron sometime in there, and Atlanta wound up basically unloading him—to Texas for a pitcher named Jim Panther, who went 2-3 with a 7.63 ERA over one season and was done. Carty wasn't. He hung on throughout the 1970s, though he was basically a hot potato. Everybody wanted him but never for long.

• 08/73: Purchased by the Chicago Cubs
• 09/73: Purchased by the Oakland A's
• 12/73: Released by the Oakland A's
• 08/74: Purchased by the Cleveland Indians (from the Mexican League)
• 11/76: Drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays
• 12/76: Traded to the Cleveland Indians
• 03/78: Traded to the Toronto Blue Jays 
• 08/78: Traded to the Oakland A's
• 10/78: Purchased by the Toronto Blue Jays
• 11/78: Granted Free Agency
• 01/79: Signed as a Free Agent by the Toronto Blue Jays
• 03/80: Released by the Toronto Blue Jays

His final career line is pretty good: .299/.369/.464. He died November 23, age 85. Rest in peace.

What's that sound? That's the news being spread, Yankees fans.

Five. That seems to be the magic number. 

The Dodgers were down 5-0 in the fifth, then scored 5 to tie it, then took the World Series in five games. 

That top of the 5th deserves looking at. I'm sure the Yankees and their fans will be staring into its abyss for a long time to come. 

Remember, at that point, the Dodgers didn't have a hit. Two walks (Lux in the 3rd, Betts in the 4th) were their only baserunners. No one got to third. 

Then Kike Hernandez did the Kike Hernandez thing by starting the Dodgers off—with a single. NLCS MVP Tommy Edman followed with an easy fly ball to center that Aaron Judge somehow dropped, doink, Charlie Brown fashion, so now there were runners on 1st and 2nd with nobody out. Will Smith followed with a slow roller to the right of shortstop Anthony Volpe, who opted to go to third for the force. Not a bad move. But Kike was fast and Volpe hurried a low throw that newbie hot-corner man Jazz Chisholm Jr. couldn't dig out. Bases juiced. 

And even then the Yankees nearly escaped unscathed. Gerritt Cole, probably the best starter on either team in this Series, apparently decided he couldn't trust his fielders anymore and did it on his own, striking out No. 9 hitter Gavin Lux and leadoff hitter Shohei Ohtani—who hasn't been himself since he dislocated his shoulder in Game 2. Then he got Mookie Betts, all-world Mookie, to hit a slow roller to first ... and Cole didn't cover the bag. Replays show he began to jog over but stopped. Did he think Anthony Rizzo had it? Well, he didn't. Betts beat him to the bag and it wasn't a contest. If Cole had made the play, it would still be 5-0 heading into the bottom of the fifth. Instead, it was 5-1, and all-world Freddie Freeman followed with a single to center to plate two; and then Teoscar Hernandez, the former Mariner who hit .350 for the Series, followed with a double in the left-center gap that a speedier centerfielder might've nabbed. And suddenly the game was tied.

A triptych of a tripup: Yankees pointing fingers.

Confession: I didn't watch any of this. I was doing work-work. I could've watched it—in fact, my wife was watching it in the next room—but I was suddenly stricken with too much anxiety. Why? Because the Yankees might win their 28th World Series? Nah. If the Yankees had won the Series I wouldn't have been happy but I would've just shrugged. Oh well, 28, what are you gonna do? No, it was the pathway they were taking, and it was a pathway through something that meant more to me than I realized: the 2004 Boston Red Sox, the only major sports team to ever come back from a three games to none deficit in a best-of-7 series to win it all. The Red Sox, of course, did it against the Yankees—the team that bought their best player, Babe Ruth, in 1919 and then became the Yankees. Back then, the Red Sox were the best team in baseball, winners of five World Series titles when the Yankees hadn't even been. How about them apples? After the trade, the Yankees would become the most successful franchise in sports history while the Red Sox wouldn't win another World Series for the rest of the century. Indeed, the next time the one-time super-successful BoSox won the pennant, 1946, the Yankees already had 14 pennants to their name and 10 championships. By the time the BoSox next won a pennant, 1967, the Yankees had 29 pennants and 20 championships. Excruciating. That's the Curse of the Bambino right there. 

That's what was so brilliant, so beautiful, about the 2004 ALCS. It was kismet. It was payback. It was history closing the loop in the most exquisite fashion possible. And it began with the smallest of things: a stolen base in the bottom of the 9th by a bench player they'd traded for midseason: Dave Roberts. Who was now the Dodgers manager. 

That was what was causing the anxiety. I'd seen a stat flashed on the screen during Game 4, with the Yankees down three games to none: All the other twentysomething times the World Series began with one team taking the first three games, it was usually a sweep, a handful of times it went to five games, but no team had ever taken it to six. The Yankees would be doing this if they won Game 5. And could they go further? Could they reopen the loop, and the wound, that history had so beautifully and exquisitely closed? By beating the team managed by the guy who had stolen that base? God, no. Please, no. So I couldn't even bear to watch it. I did sneak peeks at the score via ESPN.com and it wasn't good: 2-0, 3-0, 5-0. And then that fifth. But I couldn't even watch it then because I didn't want to screw it up. Baseball fans will understand. If something is working, you need to stick with it, even if it has nothing to do with you, even if you're the most peripheral thing within its universe. So I stayed away. I got a lot of work done. Until my wife opened the door to my office and told me, “You can come out now.” Ya putz.

I would've loved a sweep. The Yankees haven't been swept in the Series since the Reds did it in '76. Before then, Koufax in '63, the year of my birth. Losing in five, though, is actually rarer for them. The Yankees are now 27-14 in World Serieses and this is how they lost the 14:

• In eight games: 1921 (when it was best of nine)
• In seven games: 1926, 1955, 1957, 1960, 1964, 2001
• In six games: 1981, 2003
• In five games: 1942, 2024
• In four games: 1922*, 1963, 1976

* That one in 1922 was actually five games, but one ended in a tie and I don't even know how to count that. Because as the man said, “There's no tying in baseball.”** 

** The man in question is my friend Mike Busick, Mr. B, channeling Tom Hanks after that All-Star Game that ended in a tie.

I shouldn't overlook that 8th inning. The Dodgers came back in the 5th, fell back again in the 6th, and went ahead in the 8th on solid baseball. Again, Kike started them off with a sharp single. Then Edman with the seeing-eye kind that Volpe smothered but couldn't make a play on. Then a walk. Pitching change. Luke Weaver on no day's rest. Bottom of the order. But Gavin Lux hit one to center, and not only did Kike score from third but Edman advanced to third—a key play. Ohtani, with the chance again, wound up on first because of catcher's interference. So it was Mookie who hit the deep sac fly to center to put the Dodgers on top. And that's where they stayed. And that's where it ended. 

Interesting that the Dodgers won Game 5 without a homer. Before then, they'd lived and died (mostly lived) on the homer. Of the 18 runs they'd scored in the first four games, 13 had come on the long ball. This game, none. Just a lot of two-out thunder.

Freddie Freeman was the much-deserved, no-brainer MVP of the Series. He hit .300 and slugged 1.000. He hit homers in each of the first four games, including that walkoff Grand Slam to end Game 1, which set the tone for what followed. He drove in 12 runs, which ties the Series record setting by Bobby Richardson in 1960. Except Richardson did it in seven games. I love what Freddie said when they brought all those ribbies during the postgame ceremonies: Well, these guys kept getting on base.

Both Teoscar and Tommy Edman had .900+ OPSes. Shohei, no: 2-19, a single and a double. Over on the Yankees ledger, I'm glad Aaron Judge finally broke through with a 2-run homer. In the end, despite his struggles, he had the second-best OPS on the team, .832, just ahead of Giancarlo Stanton's .832. Eight of the nine Yankee regulars hit World Series homers (Stanton hit 2). The one missing? Rizzo.

The Dodgers still needed great relief work from Blake Treinen, who came in during the 6th and stuck around until the end of the 8th. Dodgers starter Jack Flaherty lasted 1.3 innings, threw 35 pitches and gave up 4 runs. Treinen lasted 2.3 innings, threw a Jackie Robinsonesque 42 pitches, and gave up zero runs. Joe Posnanski mentions that the last time Treinen threw more than 2 innings? 2018. Then, in the 9th, he handed off to starter Walker Buehler, who had never closed a game during his MLB career, and who was facing the bottom of the Yankees order: five pitches to Volpe, who grounded to third; seven pitches to Austin Wells, who struck out; and four pitches to Alex Verdugo, who struck out to end the ninth, the game, the Series and the season. And Walker Buehler spread his arms wide, “Gladiator”-like, as if to say, “Are you not amused?” 

I am. Very. Thank you, Dodgers.

Buehler, amused.

I paused before celebrating, before shouting with joy, because last night for some reason I was misjudging a lot of fly balls. I'm usually better at that. I usually know, before anyone else at Mariners Park, for example, when it's gone, and, more importantly, when it's not. Crack of the bat, people around me are all “Ooohhh!” and I'm like, “Nah, can of corn.” And it's a can of corn. Tougher when I'm sitting in a different seat than my usual, and last night I wasn't sitting in my usual TV-watching seat, so maybe it was that. I was mostly misjudging Dodgers' batters so maybe it was pure wish fulfillment, too. Dodgers also hit more to the warning track than the Yankees did. Except ... Was it Kike Hernandez's fly out to left in the ninth? Again, it seemed a mighty wallop off the bat but it barely went anywhere. A pop out. Mid-range. Maybe he broke his bat. Maybe I'm just getting to that age.

So that's why I paused even though all signs pointed to YES. But I wanted to see it go out first. And then I wanted to see it go out again. And then I wanted to watch it a billion-zillion times.

In a game in which no one could break through—the Yankees kept stranding runners while the Dodgers kept hitting it to the warning track—the Yankees, the bad guys, took a lead in the top of the tenth on a line single by Jazz Chisholm Jr. (who, if he's not taunted as “Jism” in enemy ballparks, someone's missing a beat), and Jazz promptly stole second, and then third, and then scored when Dodgers shortstop and suprise NLCS MVP Tommy Edman dove for a grounder but couldn't get it out of his glove in time to start the double play to nullify the run. 3-2, Yanks.

Bottom 10, and it was 7-8-9 hitters up, and I'm sure everyone was thinking what I was thinking: Someone has to get on so Shohei can come up. And someone did get on: With one out, Gavin Lux walked. Which brought up Edman. And I'm sure everyone was thinking what I was thinking: Don't ground into a double play, don't ground into a double play, don't ground into a double play. And he nearly did! Except defense replacement at 2B Oswaldo Cabrera overdove for the ball and everyone was safe. Now it was one out, two men on, and the top of the Dodgers lineup due up, Ohtani, Mookie, Freddie, maybe the three best players at the top of any lineup in baseball history. First and third were lefties. And Yankees manager Aaron Boone had two lefties in the bullpen: Tim Hill, a superskinny sidewinder with a wisp of a moustache, who looks more accountant than baseball player—he looks less like a Yankee than any Yankee I've ever seen—and Nestor Cortes, a starter who went 9-10 this season with a 3.77 ERA and a solid 162-39 strikeout-walk ratio, but who hadn't pitched, a TV graphic told us, since Sept. 18 (against Seattle!) because of a flexor strain in his elbow. But postgame Boone said he thought Cortes was looking good. He liked that matchup better, he said. And that's the matchup he got. 

Cortes threw only two pitches.

The first, Shohei popped up into foul territory in left field, and Alex Verdugo made a great catch, tumbling into the seats, and recalling that Jeter catch from 20 years ago. Apparently it wasn't a great pitch. Apparently it's the type of pitch Shohei usually eats for breakfast. Not this time. And a collective groan was heard throughout this great land.

Then the Yanks did the automatic-walk thing to Mookie Betts to get to the other lefty, Freddie Freeman, who'd injured his ankle in late September, but kept playing postseason baseball on it, limping around the bases. He'd hit a triple earlier in the game but he obviously wasn't 100%. And Mookie had been smashing the ball.

Even so, we were questioning that intentional walk. “Isn't he putting the winning run in scoring position?” I said to Jeff and Patricia. Jeff agreed. He didn't think much of the strategy. At this point, I was hoping for a single.

Earlier in the game, RE: Freddie, my friend Tim texted, “It just occurred to me how appropriate it is that Freeman has a bum leg,” and then included a link to Freddy Freeman, the “crippled newsboy,” as they used to say, who with one magic word could turn himself into one of the mightiest of mortal beings: Captain Marvel Jr.!

Fifteen seconds after Cortes threw his second pitch, Tim texted me that magic word: SHAZAM!

Fifteen seconds after that, I thought of the obvious precedent: hobbled Dodger comes to the plate in the final inning of Game 1 of the World Series, two outs, one run behind, and hits the walkoff homerun. It's Kirk Gibson all over again. Not quite, of course. Gibson was so hobbled he couldn't play, he was pinch-hitting, and Freeman wasn't facing the best closer in the game, and Gibson had only one man on. The bases were juiced for Freddie; Cortes couldn't walk him. But I doubt he wanted that first pitch to be a midrange fastball middle in. In his stroll toward first, Freddie raised his bat high in the air, as if saluting the game, as if offering a benediction, and then let it roll off his hand and drop to the ground, its mighty work done.

The Dodgers mighty work isn't done yet. They have three games to get to their eighth title and prevent the Yankees from getting to their 28th. But this was a helluva opening act.

Bottom of the 9th, 2 runs down, 2 outs, nobody on, 0-2 count. In a best-of-7 series where you're already down two games to none. Against a team you never beat. That was Cleveland last night.

Not enough has been made of the pain the New York Yankees have caused the Cleveland Naps/Indians/Guardians through the years. Cleveland was the first American League team to integrate, second only to the Brooklyn Dodgers, promoting Larry Doby in July 1947 and continuing with others throughout the late '40s and early '50s. The Dodgers, buoyed by such Negro League greats, became perennial pennant winners in the NL during this time but that didn't happen with the Indians. Why? The Yankees. Yes, the Indians won the World Series in 1948, only their second ever, and a third pennant in 1954, winning 111 games during the regular season but losing to the Willie Mays-led New York Giants in the World Series. Otherwise? They kept finishing second. They finished second in 1951, 1952, 1953, 1955 and 1956—all to the Yankees. They could've been a dynasty. But for the Yankees. The racist Yankees.

So instead they became a symbol for such ineptitude that Hollywood had to make a movie, “Major League” in 1989, about how they beat the Yankees and won the pennant. (Shades of Douglass Wallop!) Because after '54? They didn't win the pennant for another 40 years. And in the division era they didn't come close, never finishing higher than fourth in their division between 1969 and 1993.

Ah, but then the mid-90s! Great team! They had talent everywhere: Belle, Lofton, Thome, MannyBManny, Hershiser, Omar, Baerga. They looked to be a dynasty. Instead, the Jeter-led Yankees became the dynasty. The Indians went to the Series twice and lost both times. The Yankees went to the Series four times (1996, 1998-2000) and won every time.

I could go on. George Steinbrenner came to embody the Yankees but where was he from? Cleveland. Superman came to embody a New York-like Metropolis but where was he created? Cleveland. The only player killed in a Major League baseball game was Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman, who was hit in the head by a fastball in the helmet-less days of 1920. Who threw the pitch? Joe Mays. A pitcher for the New York Yankees.

In 2017, the year after losing to the Cubs in the World Series, Cleveland got knocked out in the Division Series, 3 games to 2, by the Yankees. In the 2020 Wild Card Series? Lost 2-0 to the Yankees. In the 2022 Division Series? 3-2 to the Yankees.

Last night seemed more of the same. They were finally taking a lead into the late innings, and had the best closer in the world, Emmanuel Clase, at the ready. And with two outs in the top of the eighth, Hunter Gaddis walked Juan Soto on four pitches and so Clase was called for and got two quick strikes on Aaron Judge, but who, on the fourth pitch, hit a line shot to the opposite field. Anyone else hits that, it's an out, or a double at best. Judge is so strong it went over the wall. Tie game. And while Cleveland fans were probing this new bruise, Giancarlo Stanton gave them another one, hitting a homer to center to take the lead.

The Yanks added another in the top of the 9th, and had their new all-world closer, onetime Mariner Luke Weaver, at the ready. Jose Ramirez got on via an error but was erased in a double play. Which brought up Lane Thomas, the epitome of a journeyman. He'd been drafted in the fifth round of the 2014 draft by the Toronto Blue Jays, who, after several years in the minors, traded him to the St. Louis Cardinals for (get this) “international bonus slot money.” I didn't even know that was a thing. In three years barely playing with the Cards, he was a .100/.200/.300 player before being traded to the Washington Nationals, where, for four years playing more regularly, he was a .200/.300/.400 guy. Mid-season he wound up in Cleveland, where he was so-so. He's also the guy who hit the grand slam off of Tarik Skubal to send Cleveland here, to the ALCS, to face the Yankees yet again. But he worked the count. Down 0-2, he didn't bite, and got it back to 3-2. And then he hit a double off the top of the wall in left-center. Life!

Jhonkensky Noel? Called Big Christmas by his teammates. Another midseason player, this one a call-up. DR, 23 years old, apparently signed by Cleveland in .... 2017? When he was ... 16??? Is that legal? Big strong kid, built like a tank, but with a tendency to strike out. Not even 200 plate appearances for the season and 63 Ks. But 13 homers. Against Detroit in the ALDS he got some playing time but went 0-15. He started Game 1 of the ALCS in right field, went 1-2, but was replaced by a pinch-hitter in the seventh. He didn't play in Game 2. This time, he was the pinch-hitter, and on the second pitch sent one screaming into the chilly Cleveland night 404 feet away. And Cleveland erupted. And his bat flip! It wasn't the showy kind. He didn't hold onto it, linger over it. The opposite. He swung ferociously, and then, as if on a rubber band, snapped it back to dismiss it. He's saying This is over. It's a thing of beauty.

So now it's a tie game. Setting up the bottom of the 10th. I was almost hoping for a bloop single, to be honest. One of the Naylor brothers, Bo, led off and singled, was sacrificed to second, and would've been thrown out after a come-backer to one-time Yankees closer Clay Holmes, but Holmes opted for the certain out at first. If David Fry had singled, all of New York would've wanted Holmes' head. I could imagine the hand-wringing, the Daily News and Post headlines calling for Holmes' head. Instead, Fry sent it into the Cleveland night as well. Who is he? Not even a journeyman. He's 29 next month and this is just his second MLB season, both with Cleveland. He did well, .800 OPS, and even became an All-Star. And now this. He'll always have this. We'll always have this.

I'm not holding my breath. Momentum, as Earl Weaver famously said, is the next day's starting pitcher, and Cleveland is throwing out Gavin Williams, a 25-year-old who went 3-10 this season with an ERA near 5.00. He's another midseason guy who strikes out nearly one an inning. We'll see. Either way, it's fun now. There's life. All we want is life. And for Yankee fans to suffer crushing defeats for 100 years. 

The 2024 MLB season is down to four teams, and many are hoping for a reprise of the 2000 Subway Series (NY vs. NY), but longtime readers, or short-time readers, or people who barely glance at this blog, will know that that's not me. I want the other matchup (LA vs. CLE), for many, many reasons, and start with the obvious: Yankees Suck.

Here are the familiar numbers again, 40 and 27, the pennants and titles the Yankees hold, which is way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, WAY ahead of any other team. Second place for titles is the St. Louis Cardinals with 11, and no other team is in double digits. And, again, the Yankees have *27*. Comparatively, the Dodgers, who have had their successes, have only seven, while Guards and Mets are at just two apiece. Plus if we keep the World Series Yankee-free another season, I think we'll set a post-Babe Ruth record for pennant futility: 15 straight seasons. C'mon, people, we can do this! We're so close!

But there are other reasons I want LA-CLE. Those teams have the lowest payrolls. I mean, the Dodgers are fifth overall, and I guess Ohtani's contract is mostly deferred and so uncounted, but the two New York teams are 1 and 2. It's easy to forget, too, since they're such underdogs, but the Mets are No. 1 in payroll. The Mets. I guess they're still paying Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer? Yes and yes. They're also still paying Bobby Bonilla, who retired in 2001 and who's getting paid through 2035. Lesson there, kids: get a good financial planner.

But I also want the Dodgers because of Shohei and I want Cleveland because they haven't won it all since 1948—the longest title drought in the sport. Second place is a tie between the Padres and Brewers: est. 1969, never won. Then it's my Mariners: est. 1977, never been. Just think of the distance we've come since 1948. Rock 'n' roll didn't exist. Elvis Presley was 13 and in junior high, Martin Luther King was 19 and graduating from Morehouse College. Donald Trump was just 2! Temperamentally the same, of course.

Maybe best of all, an LA vs. CLE World Series would not only reprise the 1920 World Series (Brooklyn Robins vs. Cleveland Indians), it would be a matchup of the first two teams to break the color barrier. That'd be cool. I'm not saying the Yankees and Mets would be racist if they beat them, and denied us this, but it'd be close.

EXTRA READING:

• At the start of the season, Joe Posnanski counted down from the worst team in baseball (the Rockies) to the best, and this is where the remaining teams ranked per Joe: Dodgers (1), Yankees (10), Guardians (17), and Mets (18). This is the Poz who predicted great things for the Mariners, remember, to which Michael Schur deadpanned “Really,” speaking for everyone in Seattle. 

I wish I knew more about this photo. It was taken by my father on Camera Day, August 1970, at Met Stadium in Bloomington, Minn. Tiant was one of a dozen players with whom we got our picture taken that day, and he seems very chummy, not aloof at all, but I don't remember the moment. I do remember liking him. I do remember wondering why he only stayed with the Twins for a little while. Why did he come? Why did he go? 

He came because on Dec. 10, 1969, the Twins traded Dean Chance, Bob Miller, Ted Uhlander, and Graig Nettles*, four players in all, to the Cleveland Indians for pitchers Stan Williams and Luis Tiant. It's an odd trade. We seem interested in pitching but gave up two pitchers in the process, while the pitchers we got were coming off of off-years, Tiant particularly. In 1968, he had a season for the ages, going 21-9 and leading the American League with a miniscule 1.60 ERA. But he didn't even get one Cy Young vote because the Tigers' Denny McLain went 31-6 with a 1.96 ERA and won the Cy unanimously. Tiant's miniscule ERA wasn't even much talked up because Bob Gibson's was minisculer: 1.12 ERA, the modern record. Gibson and McLain not only won Cys but MVPs, while Tiant was all but forgotten. And the next season, after they lowered the mound, Tiant led the league in a bunch of stuff you don't want to lead the league in: walks (129) homeruns allowed (37), and losses (20).

* Yes, this was a bad trade or the Twins. Over the next 20 years, Nettles would accumulate 65 bWAR and become a legendary hot-corner defender in the World Series. He should be in the Hall of Fame—or at least have his number retired by the New York Yankees.**

** Yes, his number (No. 9) IS retired by the New York Yankees, except not in his honor. It's for an earlier wearer, Roger Maris, and I guess you can't retire it twice.***

*** Actually, you can, and the Yankees have. No. 8 is retired for both Yogi Berra and his mentor Bill Dickey. Anyway, onward.

I'm curious if Tiant was considered the big get for the Twins in that trade. Stan Williams wound up having the better season, going 10-1 from the bullpen with a 1.99 ERA. Tiant started well, going 6-0 through the first two months of the season with a 3.12 ERA, including a shutout of Detroit in April in which he gave up as many hits (3, all singles) as he got himself (3-4, including a double); but in his last start in May, he heard something pop in his right shoulder and x-rays revealed a fractured scapular. Out for two months. (Who did the Twins call up to replace him? A 19-year-old curveball pitcher named Bert Blyleven. Welcome to the Show, kid.)

So did the Twins lose confidence in Tiant after all that? They outright released him in March 1971, he was picked up by the Atlanta Braves, they released him in May, at which point the Boston Red Sox picked him up, and, into his 30s, Tiant showed everyone what they'd missed. Eventually. That year, 1971, he went 1-7 with a 4.85 ERA, but the next year he again led the Majors in ERA, 1.91, and for the next four years won 20, 22, 18 and 21 games for a Red Sox team that kept challenging for the pennant. He also went 1-0 in the '75 ALCS and 2-0 against the vaunted Big Red Machine in the magical 1975 World Series. That's when Tiant, with his twisting, second-base-facing windup, truly became a legend. He won Games 1 (five-hit shutout) and 4 (CG), and, after several days rain delay, started Game 6. But in the 5th inning, the Reds scored 3, the big blow a triple by Ken Griffey (not yet “Sr.”), and they got 2 more in the 7th. All of which set the stage for blasts by Bernie Carbo and Carlton Fisk. In other words, the only games the BoSox won that Series were games Tiant started. Wait, it's better: the only games the Cincinnati Reds lost in both the 1975 an '76 postseasons were those three Tiant starts. Otherwise they swept the table.

Should he be in the Hall? He lasted with the Sox until 1978, went over to the Yankees for two years, Pirates for one and Angels for one, and retired with a 229-172 record, a 3.30 ERA, an 2416 Ks, at a time when just Walter Johnson and Bob Gibson were north of 3,000. His bWAR is right on the cusp, 65.6, and Joe Posnanski, for one, thinks he should get extra points for character—as in being one: the windup, the cigars, the jovial nature, selling sausages outside Fenway. Part of Pos' argument is that guys get dinged for bad behavior (cf., Curt Schilling) so why not the opposite for good guys? Just look at that photo. If that's not an ambassador of the game, I don't know one.

FURTHER READING:

• “Despedida, El Tiante” by Joe Posnanski
• “It's October!”: The Poscast, Joe Posnanski and Michael Schur
• “Luis Tiant, Crowd-Pleasing Pitcher Who Baffled Hitters, Dies at 83,” The New York Times

He's the National Gallery, he's his own salary, he's fireworks

I went to the Mariners getaway game against the Yankees on Thursday afternoon with my friend Andy, who grew up a Mariners fan but doesn't know from baseball these days (case in point: He hasn't heard of Aaron Judge), and the game wasn't awful. We didn't get swept. We won 3-2, via first-inning ineptitude by Yankees fielders, and by keeping Aaron Judge, if not Jazz Chisolm Jr., in the park. Judge hit a towering shot to dead centerfield that drews oohs and aahs from the crowd, like fireworks, but Julio Rodriguez caught it near the wall. Jazz, meanwhile, hit a liner that barely snuck over the rightfield wall for their 2.

We got our 3 in the bottom of the first: single, foul out, BB, and then a bunt by Luke Raley that the Yankees pitcher Clarke Schmidt pounced on, dropped, picked up, too late. Bases juiced. Justin Turner followed with a liner to left that was a sure sacrifice fly ... until Yankees call-up phenom Jasson [no sic] Dominguez dropped it for a run. Bases still juiced. Then we got a legit sac fly to right for our second run. The third came on a J.P. Crawford single. Three runs, one earned, I'll take it. Yankees looked bad. We'd blown the game the night before (Julio thinking Randy's bat flying at him at third meant dead ball, and it didn't, and he was picked off), which clinched another playoff berth for the Evil Empire, so maybe there was some letdown on their part this afternoon. Maybe they didn't like the blue skies in Seattle. This was my first Mariners game since Dan Wilson took over as manager and Edgar as hitting coach, and, yes, it wasn't as dispiriting as it's been. My friend Tim has crunched the numbers and they suggest we've made one small step in the standings and one giant leap at the plate. Go, Edgar!

Anyway, I was telling my father all of this when I returned home. Dad, who's been recovering from a stroke at a hospital in Minneapolis, was trotting out his usual complaints about the sinking Minnesota Twins and the managerial ineptitude of Rocco Baldelli, and between us it was a bit dispiriting; so, as I made myself a drink in the kitchen, to liven things up, to accentuate the positive as the man sang, I passed along to my father an ESPN headline I'd seen earlier: Shohei Ohtani, whom we'd been tracking all summer like all true baseball fans, had hit three homeruns and stolen two bases against the Marlins in Miami, and now sat at 51-51 in each category.

For those who don't know, there are many members of the 30-30 club (30 HRs, 30 SBs, indicative of power and speed), and there are six members of the 40-40 club, Shohei included, and now there is one member of the 50-50 Club: him. He's the only member of the 45-45 Club, too. Put it this way: between the 43-43 Club and wherever he winds up, it'll be just him. In all of baseball history. He's that much of an outlier. He's that good. 

When I told Dad the good news, he laughed, and then asked the appropriate question I hadn't considered: “How do you steal two bases when you hit three homeruns? He must've gotten some other hits.”

He did. He went 6-6. He had a day. He had a career in a day. He hit three homers, two doubles, a single, and stole two bases. He drove in 10. He had 17 total bases.

Some perspective: Only three players in baseball history have ever had more total bases in a single game. Only five have ever driven in more runs in a single game. And he did it while also becoming the first man to reach 50-50 and while also helping clinch a playoff berth for the LA Dodgers. Crazy. And one of his doubles he tried to stretch into a triple but was tossed out by a step. If he'd made it, he would've hit for the cycle. Some are wondering if it isn't the greatest game anyone's ever played. Some are wondering if he isn't the greatest player who's ever played. One thing is certain: He brings joy and amazement wherever he goes.

Oh, and next year he goes back to pitching. Since this year he's recovering from Tommy John surgery. This is his recovery year.

I remember when he first came up—or over from the Japanese leagues, in 2018, this guy who thought he could both hit and pitch at the Major League level, and was that even allowed? Wasn't that just asking for trouble? And then I saw a replay of him hitting his first triple and was just dumbfounded. Wait, the guy's FAST, too? He was tall and broadshouldered and he moved with some combo of grace and speed I'd never seen before. I remember jumping on social to extol his virtues. Are people SEEING this? And then he got injured and I guess that showed him. No. He kept going. From 2021-23, with the moribund Angels, he won two MVPs, finished second the other year, and finished fourth in Cy Young voting that same season. As a pitcher, he's gone 38-19 with a 3.01 ERA and 608 strikeouts in only 481 innings pitched. As a hitter, he keeps improving. As a baserunner, he keeps improving. In 2021, his first MVP season, he had 10 caught stealings, leading the league, against only 26 stolen bases. This season? 52 SBs against four CSs. He's leading the league in HRs, RBIs, runs scored, SLG, OPS and total bases. He's 17 TBs from 400, which would make him the first player to 400 since 2001. If you eliminate the PED years, no one's done it since Jim Rice in 1978. He belongs in a higher league. He's joy and amazement. He's fireworks. 

This season, no doubt, he'll make it three MVPs, so he'll become only the second man in baseball history, after Frank Robinson, to win MVPs in both leagues. That's nice. He'll finally get to join a club that has another member.

I heard about the death of Willie Mays when I was beginning my third week in Minneapolis helping look after and advocate for my father, who’d had a stroke at the end of May. The next morning, visiting Dad in his small room at R. Hospital in Golden Valley, I read him the long obit in The New York Times, and we reminisced about all Dad used to say about The Say-Hey Kid as a tour guide at Target Field in the 2010s. 

In one of the rooms at Target Field, I think the “Legends” room, there was a giant photo of Willie playing for the Minneapolis Millers in the spring of 1951, and most of Dad’s stories related to that time period: how Mays was hitting .477 over 35 games when he got the call to join the NY Giants; how Mays was so beloved in Minneapolis that Giants owner Horace Stoneham had to take out an advertisement apologizing to Millers’ fans for “stealing” their star; how, when Mays told Giants’ manager Leo Durocher that he didn’t think he could hit big league pitching, and then owned that he was hitting .477 for Minneapolis, Durocher supposedly replied “Do you think you could hit .2-fucking-77 for me?”; and how, after he began his career hitless in his first three games, and he again felt he couldn’t hit Major League pitching, Durocher assured him that he was his center fielder for life. “You’re the best player I ever saw,” Durocher told him, or some reasonable facsimile of that, and at R. Hospital Dad repeated it with tears in his eyes.

Dad must’ve choked up five times during our Willie Mays conversation. That’s how much he meant to people.

To Charles Schulz, Mays was the symbol of perfection:

To Joe Henry, he was a sign of a better time for America: 

But that was him
I'm almost sure
The greatest centerfielder of all time
Stooped by the burden of endless dreams
His and yours and mine

He was the subject of songs, and biographies, and Saturday morning cartoons, and he was so omnipresent when I was young, so much the sky, that in 2012, when I was telling a story about him to friends, and one of those friends, Myriam, asked, “Who’s Willie Mays?” I didn’t even know how to respond. I just stared at her. Who’s Willie Mays? I should’ve said: One of two geniuses in the world, according to Tallulah Bankhead. The other was William Shakespeare.

Do we go into the numbers? I know most of them off the top of my head. 

660 is, of course, the homerun total, which would’ve been higher had he not played at Candlestick Park, but it was still the third highest-total in MLB history when he retired. He was only the second player to hit 600, nearly 40 years after Ruth, Sept. 22, 1969. There are now nine on the list. Half are suspect.

.301 is the career batting average. Some of his contemporaries, like Mickey Mantle, wound up dipping below .300. Not Willie.

24? Number on his back, number of All-Star appearances. The latter will never be broken, the former is worn all the time in homage.

Interestingly, the true greatness of Willie Mays—in numbers—didn’t reveal itself until decades after he retired, when WAR (Wins About Replacement) was created. It’s supposed to take in all aspects of a player’s game. Mays won two MVPs, in 1954 and 1965, but by bWAR he was the best position player in the National League for 10 seasons, and the best in the entire Majors for eight seasons. In the integrated era of baseball, no one’s close.

Then there’s the catch off Vic Wertz in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, now just known as “The Catch,” and the stories surrounding it. It was the top of the 8th, tie score, 2-2, and Cleveland got the first two guys on: walk, single. So Durocher called for reliever Don Liddle to face Wertz, who hit a shot into deep, deep center field. Mays runs back, his number 24 visible to all, and makes a catch “that must’ve looked like an optical illusion to some people,” according to  Giants’ announcer Russ Hodges. So Durocher makes another pitching change, and as Liddle hands the ball to reliever Marv Grissom, he shrugs and says, “Well, I got my guy.”

I also like the exchange between left fielder Monte Irvin and Mays as they trotted in after the Giants held the line.

Irvin: Nice going, roomie. Didn’t think you’d get that.
Mays: You kidding? Had that one all the way.

Sidenote: Wertz went 4-5 that day, with a double, a triple and two singles. He should’ve gone 5-5 in a Cleveland romp. He should’ve been the star player of the game and the series. Instead, he’s the sidenote: the guy who hit the ball that Mays caught.

In Donald Honig’s oral history “Between the Lines,” Irvin recalls another Mays catch, in Pittsburgh, that some say is greater:

He was playing in close and Rocky [Nelson] got hold of one and drove it way out into that big center field they had in old Forbes Field. Willie whirled around and took off after it. At the last second he saw he couldn't get his glove across his body in time to make the catch, so he caught it in his bare hand.

That one made the Times obit, too, for the practical joke Durocher played on Mays afterward. Leo told everyone in the dugout to not say anything, to ignore him, and so instead of back claps Mays was greeted with silence. “Leo,” Mays wound up saying, “didn’t you see what I did?” “No,” Durocher replied. “You’ll have to go out and do it again.”

The stories could go on forever. One hopes they will.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

Today's post is brought to you by Immaculate Grid, about which, yes, Tim and I used to do a SubStack, and may again in the future. In the meantime ...

The grid today included a column on players who got 200+ hits in a season crossed with three original-16 teams: Reds, Cards and A's. I went with Frank McCormick, Lou Brock and Al Simmons. McCormick was a guess. Well, all three were, but Brock got 3,000 hits and didn't walk much, and Al Simmons had those amazing early 1930s years, so those weren't fingers-crossed guesses as much as McCormick. I just didn't want to do Pete Rose ... which, yes, turned out to be the No. 1 answer for that square: Something like 85% chose him.

With reason. This is how many guys hit 200+ in a season for each of those franchises:

• Cards: 21
• A's 8
• Reds: 6

SIX?? And get this: no one since Pete Rose in 1977. That's shocking for two reasons. It means Rose didn't get to 200+ hits the year he hit in 44 straight games AND no Cincinnati Red has gotten 200+ hits in a season since 1977! I.e., since “Star Wars” came out! Since Jimmy Carter's first year in office! Since The New York Times first began to let Donald Trump lie all over its pages! That far back. 

It made me wonder if that's the longest 200+ hit drought for any team. Yep, and it's not even close.

LAST PLAYER TO GET 200+ HITS FOR EACH FRANCHISE

The Tampa Bay Rays are the only franchise that's never had a 200+ hit guy. They topped out with—believe it or not—Aubrey Huff, about to embarrass himself yet again a social platform near you, who got 198 in 2003. He and Carl Crawford (194 in 2005) are the only Rays/D-Rays to top 190. 

But the Rays have an excuse. They've only been around since 1998. The Reds have been swinging bats since basically the Civil War—the 19th century one. In case you're curious, here are the Cincy Six:

1. Cy Seymour (1905)
2. Jake Daubert (1922)
3. Frank McCormick (1938, 1939)
4. Vada Pinson (1959, 1961, 1963, 1965)
5. Frank Robinson (1962)
6. Pete Rose (1965, 1966, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1977)

So is Cincy being punished for all the 200+ seasons it got with Pete Rose? Or because of what Pete Rose became? Or is? Is it the Curse of Charlie Hustle? 

What stunned me about the Twins, meanwhile, is that their last guy to do it, Paul Molitor, did it in his age-40 season, just three seasons from retirement, and he managed *225*. Wow. Even Luis Arraez, when he won the batting title as a Twin in 2022, managed just 173. That's how hard it is to do this thing. 

It helps to be a free-swinger, of course. There's a reason Miguel Tejada and Vlad Guerrero are on the above chart twice. There's a reason, too, that Ted Williams, Barry Bonds and Frank Thomas never got 200+: too many walks. That's probably why, in the Moneyball age, the 200+ stat doesn't seem to have the cachet it used to.

But that's no excuse, Cincinnati. 

In his Friday column, Joe Posnanski takes questions from “brilliant readers” as he calls them, mostly about the start of the season. Are the Astros really this bad? Are the Royals really this good? I was going to say something snide about Pos staying away from any mention of the Seattle Mariners, his dark horse to win the AL West, even as they started the season 4-8 (and looked worse); but then he included a takedown of Oakland A's owner John Fisher that just made me smile:

Will the A's ever play in Las Vegas?

I'm putting the percentage chance at 50. And falling.

It is stupefying—utterly stupefying—just how badly A's owner John Fisher has bungled things every single step of the way. I mean, you would think he would get something right by mistake. The latest fiasco involves the A's decision to play the next two years or three years or four years or 100 years in Sacramento, in a 14,000-seat, minor league ballpark that they will share with the Giants' Class AAA River Cats.

Sure, it takes quite the mastermind to cut a deal to play Major League Baseball in a shared minor league stadium in Sacramento. But, beyond that, Fisher had to share his excitement about how everyone in Sacramento (a few thousand at a time) would soon be able “to watch some of the greatest players in baseball, whether they be Athletics players or Aaron Judge and others launch home runs out of this very intimate, most intimate park in all of Major League Baseball.”

There are so many incredibly dumb statements in those few words that, honestly, I'm kind of in awe.

Pos adds that MLB should have forced Fisher to sell the team long ago but sadly that shipped has sailed. Joe's gut tells him the A's won't wind up in Vegas, but adds, “John Fisher does seem to have fully developed his failing upward act, and I'd say there's probably a 50-50 shot that by simply being super-rich and owning one of 30 big-league clubs, and being part of a sport that seemingly wants to go all in on gambling, he will somehow stumble his way into Vegas.”

Stumbling Toward Vegas would make a good title for a book on Fisher's ineptitude. Maybe wrap in some Yeats while you're at it.

Joe Posnanski is in the midst of counting down all the MLB teams from worst (Rockies, right? Right) to best (Braves, probably), and today he landed on No. 14, the Arizona Diamondbacks. With each team, he starts out with an anything topic that's usually fun and fun to read before getting to the nitty-gritty: who's good, who might be good, what's working and what isn't. The anything topic is just where his mind goes with that particular team, and today it went to: Were the D-Backs the most suprising team this century to win the pennant? No other pennant winner this century has had a negative run differential, for example, so they're certainly in the running. Last season, they eked into the post, had a good run—through Brewers, Dodgers and Phillies—and made it to the Series. Pos then goes into our two baseball seasons: the long, 162-game one, where the best teams rise, and the short sprints of October, where teams like the D-Backs can surprise.

And he asks: Is this good for baseball? 

He asks because he doesn't think it is. Those two types of seasons are fine for other sports, but other sports always get to play their best players (unless injured), and that's not baseball, certainly not with pitchers. He writes:

If you're going to make baseball a playoff sport, then do it—140-game season, eight playoff teams in each league, 15 seven-game series filling September and October, just go all in. This will allow more teams to try and have Diamondback-like runs to glory.

And if you want to keep the 162-game season at the center of the sport, and better reward the teams that play well throughout, then scale back the playoffs to four teams in each league and have them play a seven-game series in October.

I'm with Joe on this, but I think the current Lords won't cut back on either revenue stream (reg. season or playoffs), and so won't fix the problem. 

Clinching the pennant, age 19.

When I was a kid I'm pretty sure I kept getting Don Gullett and Don Sutton mixed up. I was in an American League city, they were both National League pitchers, and their names weren't dissimilar: Don and then two syllables: Uht-en or Uhl-et.

Talk about opposites, though. Sutton is the quintessential longevity Hall of Famer. He led the league in Game Starts once, ERA once, and never finished higher than third in Cy Young voting; but he kept plugging away: 15-13, 14-12, 11-11. He debuted in 1966, bade farewell in 1988, and in every full season until the last he appeared in 30+ games.

Gullett was more nova. He debuted in 1970 at age 19 and was done by age 27. Twenty-seven! What a rip. But in his nine seasons he pitched six times in the postseason, and in five of those the World Series: Reds in 1970, '72, '75 and '76, and, after signing a $2 million dollar deal, with the Yankees in '77. He last pitched July 9, 1978 vs. Milwaukee. He didn't get out of the first inning. It went: flyout, single, single, walk, walk (run), flyout, double (two runs), walk, walk (run), and that was it. He last faced Buck Martinez and he was replaced by Bob Kammeyer. And that was it. There would be fingers-crossed press reports about him in the NY papers for a few years but the fingers never uncrossed.

He retired with a 109-50 mark and a 3.11 ERA. In his Gullett obit, Joe Posnanski trots out this list of the best winning percentages for pitchers who won 100 games by age 27:

1. Roger Clemens, 116-51, .695
2. Don Gullett, 109-60, .686
3. Dwight Gooden, 142-66, .683
4. Jim Palmer, 122-57, .682
5. Pedro Martinez, 107-50, .682

Poz also mentions this:

Don Gullett was a private person. He was a farmer after he finished playing, he and Cathy had three children. He was the only major Big Red Machine player who declined to talk with me for my book The Machine. He was kind about it. He just said that he didn't really want to look back and didn't think he could add anything. “Other people remember better than I do,” he said.

When he debuted at age 19, players were agog. Willie Stargell said “He could throw a ball through a carwash without it ever getting wet.” Pete Rose said the same thing. He was on the mound, age 19, when the Reds clinched the pennant against the Pirates in 1970. He was the pitcher who set up the incredible Game 6 of the 1975 World Series by shutting down the Red Sox in Game 5—going 8 2/3 while giving up 2 in a 6-2 victory. He was the Game 7 starter, too, before Merv Rettenmund pinch-hit for him in the top of the 5th. He left, down 3-0, but—and you may have heard this—the Reds came back to win it, 4-3, for their first championship since 1940. They won again the following year. He didn't pitch well for the Yankees in the '77 postseason but he got another ring with them. Then the injuries piled up and he couldn't come back from them.

Apparently, growing up in Kentucky, he was some kind of all-around athlete. Posnanski mentions a high school football game where Gullett rushed for 410(!) yards and scored 11(!) touchdowns. In high school basketball, he averaged 22 points a game. “As a pitcher in his senior year,” Poz writes, “he struck out 120 batters in 52 innings and threw a perfect game where he struck out 20 of the 21 batters he faced.”

He died earlier this month, age 73. No cause mentioned. Private to the end.

I remember his card more than him. He came to the Minnesota Twins in my first baseball heyday, 1970-71, and had a good first season and a great first month, but he didn't break through the Killebrew-Oliva-Carew-Tovar-Cardenas collective for me. But I was happy to get his card. He was a Twin. 

Alyea, it turns out, was a big bopper in the minors who first played in the Majors for the Washington Senators (II). On Sept. 12, 1965, in his Major League hitting debut, he pinchhit for Don Blasingame with one out and two on in the 7th and the Senators ahead of the Angels 3-0. And he went deep off Rudy May. On the first Major League pitch he saw. How do you like them apples? 

Apparently the Senators didn't. Or they saw a weakness in his game. Or they were just dumb. Because after that not-bad cup of coffee (.231/.286/.692 in eight games), he didn't make the squad again until July 1968. And in late March 1970 he was traded to the AL West champion Minnesota Twins for Joe Grzenda and Charlie Walters—two other Twins I don't recall much about.

Alyea must've felt freed from Senatorial shackles because with the Twins he had an April for the ages: .415/.483/.774, including 5 homeruns and 23 RBIs in 17 games. He became the talk of the Twin Cities and made the cover of Sporting News in early May. And then, well, a little regression to the mean. But a nice 1970 season: .291/.366/.531. He drove in 61 and hit 16 homers in 94 games. I guess he and Jim Holt platooned in left. But by then he was already 30, and he either aged fast, got injured, or the league figured him out, because the next year his line was not good: .177/.282/.241. His power was gone: 28 hits and just six for extra bases. 

That November he was a Rule 5 acquisition by the Oakland A's, who traded him to the Cardinals in May 1972, and then this line on Baseball Reference: “Brant Alyea returned to original team on July 23, 1972.” What does that mean? “Here, have him back”? Less than two years after he made the cover of Sporting News, he was out of baseball. Apparently he went on to run crap tables at the Tropicana Casino in Atlantic City. Shame he didn't last a little longer. With all those vowels in his name, he could've become a New York Times crossword staple. He died at home on Feb. 4.