Baseball posts

Not so fast, Yankees Baseball Network

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the pine-tar incident, when KC Royals third baseman George Brett hit a two-out, two-run homerun off closer Goose Gossage at Yankee Stadium to give the Royals a one-run lead—until, that is, Yankees manager Billy Martin accused him of using a bat with excessive pine tar up the handle and asked the umpires to disqualify him and call him out. Which they did. Which led to Brett storming out of the dugout in insane, eyeball-popping fashion. Which has made for a fun video clip ever since. 

Asked by ESPN's William Weinbaum what it's like to be known as the pine-tar guy, Brett responds that everyone's known for something and before that he was known as the hemorrhoids guy (cf., 1980 World Series), so pine tar isn't so bad. Me, I'm like, “Isn't Brett just known as one of the best hitters in baseball history? And one of the last guys to challenge .400? And a great Yankee-killer in the postseason? Plus a handsome SOB?” Let's get our priorities straight, people.

There are two stand-out quotes in their interview for me. The first is Brett describing July 24, 1983:

We were playing the team that I despise the most, the New York Yankees, and they despise me.

Gotta love him for that. The other is when Weinbaum asks him whether he watches the clip much. He says he doesn't seek it out but he doesn't turn away, either. Then this:

Showed it to my kids a whole bunch of times when they were young. I wanted to see the look on their faces when I got mad. I told them, “You better never make me this mad.” And they never did.

Is Brett the greatest Yankee killer of all time? He's in the running—even if his exploits didn't always lead to the Yankees being killed. Royals won the AL West in 1976, '77, '78 and '80, and faced the Yankees in the ALCS each time, and they didn't finally get to the World Series until 1980. But at least that was a sweep. 

These are Brett's numbers during those Yankees series:

Not sure what number I like best: that 1.056 slugging percentage (slugging percentage!) during the '78 ALCS; or the fact that over these 17 games he struck out exactly twice.

For those who don't know: the AL president wound up overruling the umps on the pine-tar call, for not being in the spirit of the rule (pine tar doesn't help you hit homers); the rest of the game was played several weeks later from after the homer, with Brett tossed for rushing the field like a madman, and the Royals won, 5-4. Brett watched the end from an Italian restaurant in New Jersey—another detail from the interview I liked.

Final thought? Billy would've killed for a player like Brett. He was exactly the kind of guy he wanted on his team.

The view from 300 during BP.

The team with the uglier uniforms won. So it goes.

Yesterday I attended my second in-person All-Star Game, at what is now called T-Mobile Park and used to be called Safeco Field, south of downtown Seattle, about 1.5 miles from where I live in the First Hill neighborhood. The last (the only other) ASG I attended was at Safeco, and as I was walking to the game, I ran through all the All-Star Games that played in Minneapolis (where I grew up) and Seattle during my lifetime, and why I hadn't been to more of them.

MINNEAPOLIS

• 1965: Metropolitan Stadium
• 1985: The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome
• 2014: Target Field

SEATTLE

• 1979: The Kingdome
• 2001: Safeco Field
• 2023: T-Mobile Park

I missed the first one in Minnesota because I was 2 years old, missed the second because I was in college, studying, and had lost track of baseball for a time. I remember feeling sad that I'd lost track of baseball. Like: What had I become? But look at that list again, there's some interesting history there. Our stadiums once had generic names (“Metropolitan”); then in the 1960s and '70s multi-use stadiums were built and named for famous, powerful people (Humphrey, King, RFK, Shea); but then in the 1990s it was decided, no, retro ballparks subsidized by local governments, with high-priced seating and suites so rich people wouldn't have to intermingle with the rabble, that was the way to go, and while we're at it let's make even more money by selling naming rights to the highest-bidding corporation. And that's where we are. The world keeps turning, and turning bad.

But what sticks out for me is that each of the above ASGs was in a different stadium—except for the two I attended, at Safeco/T-Mobile. How often does an All-Star Game show up at the same stadium within a 25-year span? And that led me to this Wikipedia page on all the MLB All-Star venues, which led me to the realization that I have no idea how they choose the ASG venue. I'd always assumed they just took turns. And if a new stadium was built, well, you go to the head of the line. That first part isn't really true, though. The Tampa Bay Rays, for example, have been around since 1998 and have never hosted—I assume because they have a shitty ballpark. It's MLB going to Tampa, “No, you haven't tried hard enough. You're not helping the brand.”

But if a county builds a new stadium? Damn right we're going to showcase you. The first retro ballpark, Camden Yards in Baltimore, opened in 1992 and hosted the All-Star Game in 1993, and since then, with a few detours to stadiums that were established (Veterans, 1996) or iconic (Fenway, 1999) or iconic and soon-to-be-shuttered (Yankee, 2008), it's been all the retro ballparks, year after year. And then I guess they just ran out. In 2019, the ASG returned to Cleveland and Jacobs/Progressive. In 2021, Coors got a second go-round. In '22 it was iconic Dodger Stadium and now it was Seattle's turn to re-host. Re-hosting at the same stadium with a new corporate name is the new thing. It's what's happening. And I was there for the happening.

Seattle lucked out in showcasing our city, since yesterday was about as perfect a day as you could ask for: mid-70s, blue skies, and the mountains were out. My Philly cousin in LA sent me this email during the game: “Seattle sure looks good on TV. In fact the beauty shots are way more interesting than the game.” I have to admit, there were times, sitting in the 300 level behind homeplate, when a plane went overhead and I'd get lost just looking at its slow trajectory against that vast blueness.

On the ground, not everything was so peachy. Walking there, via the International District and Seahawks parking lot, I ran into crowds on Occidental, as well as one of those miked-up doomsaying preachers. I thought: “Well, at least they pushed him way back here instead of in front of the stadium where he usually is.” Except, nope. He was one of four such preachers I ran into on Occidental. Is there a permit involved when using a microphone for soap-box sermonizing in a public space? I'm curious how it works. I'd be way more interested in these guys if they'd lose the mic. (OK, not too interested.)

And the hawking that I wanted to hear but didn't? Scorecard guys. “Programs, get yer programs!” That was about as staple as baseball use to be, and I would've bought one. But apparently they don't sell them that way anymore. Now it's via the souvenir shops and stands, which may be why the lines there were superlong before the game, and not long at all for the foodstuffs. Me, I bought a brat from my usual guys, ate it in my seat while watching BP, then returned to the 100-level and walked around the park a bit. My favorite thing was checking out all the jerseys everyone was wearing. It wasn't just M's and whatever team we were playing. Everyone was represented, all 30 MLB teams, and then some. My seatmate Andy W. saw an Expos jersey; both of us saw a good 1969 Seattle Pilots number. Hell, Rays fans even showed up, poor bastards. (“Poor” in that they have a smart, winning organization with a shitty ballpark and fanbase.) I saw a Bench 5, and a De La Cruz 44, and a Mets de Grom, and a Jeter 2—along with the usual Griffey 24s, Martinez 11s and Rodriguez 44s. Oh right, I even saw a Yankees 13 for the other Rodriguez, A-Rod. That was intriguing. The most obscure jersey? A Kenji Johjima number. Been a while. If ever. 

Two chants got going during the game: “Come-to-Seattle! [clap clap clapclapclap]” whenever Shohei Ohtani batted; and “Sell the team!” whenever the Oakland A's lone rep did anything. That message was for the A's current owner, who is in the midst of shipping the team to Las Vegas, a horrible idea, so I was behind both chants. What I wasn't behind? The continued booing of Astros ballplayers because of the 2017 garbage-can scandal. One, most of the current Astros weren't on that team, so you're booing innocent bystanders. Two, the Mariners weren't going anywhere that year, so it's not like Houston robbed us of anything. And three, who knows, but the cheating might've prevented the New York Yankees from winning the pennant in 2017, which was their best shot at a pennant in the 2010s, so instead they suffered their first pennant-less decade since Babe Ruth was purchased for $100k back in the winter of 1919. C'mon. Anything that prevents the Yankees winning more is a positive. “By any means necessary,” as a great man once said. So stop with the booing already. 

(I know, the booing won't stop. Mob rule. Once booing becomes a thing, you can't put it back in the bottle. See: A-Rod.) 

We had three Mariners reps this go-round and were lucky to get those. The first one chosen, Luis Castillo, didn't play, but George Kirby pitched an inning (and gave up a run), and Julio Rodriguez, whose jersey I was wearing, played the second half in center field and struck out in the 7th. In the 9th, with the AL down by one, he was the fourth man due up, and the first two guys made outs. The third guy, Kyle Tucker, is an Astro who wasn't around in 2017 but was lustily booed nevertheless. He worked a walk to let us see Julio bat again. (See? Astros can do good things.) Last year, it seemed Julio kept making the magical happen, but this season not so much. He flails too much after the outside sliders and then takes the fastballs in the zone. But here he worked a walk, to get us to Cleveland third baseman Jose Ramirez, who struck out to send us home, a little disappointed but not much.

I was excited to see the youth on the field, all these up-and-comers, so it was interesting that the big blow for the NL was struck by Colorado catcher Elias Diaz, age 32+, a career .249/.302/.391 hitter, playing in his first All-Star Game. Good for him! The scoring began with a Diaz homerun (Yandy, AL, 2nd inning) and ended with a Diaz homerun (Elias, NL, 8th inning), which is a nice bookend. We try to stay neat in Seattle. But I would've preferred it ending with a Rodriguez homerun.

Is that my last All-Star Game in my home park? Probably, unless I move. The year 2001 doesn't seem so long ago in some contexts, but I was 38 then and I'm 60 now. And 60+22 isn't my favorite math.

After the game, fans file past an image of a Diaz who was neither of the Diazes that went yard during the game. (I wish I'd taken more photos of all the jerseys. I like the brave Bonds fan. And the Kyle Lewis wearer has nothing on Kenji.)

Charlie Finley was an all-world huckster who had some fun ideas about shaking up the staid old game: those garish, glorious, green-and-gold A's unis; paying his players to grow long hair and facial hair during the hippy-ish early 1970s; manufacturing Old Timey nicknames. All of that was fun. He had shitty ideas, too: orange baseballs, the DH, but I think the worst of them relates to that third fun idea. He'd done well enough with Jim “Catfish” Hunter and John “Blue Moon” Odom, both great, both pure grift, but then he tried to impose the nickname “True” on one of his other young pitchers, and that pitcher balked at the idea. As he should have. Because he already had one of the most perfect names in baseball history. To be honest, I worry a little about Charlie Finley—that when presented with this almost perfect baseball name, nearly a double unique, he didn't see it. He wanted to fuck it up with a false, punny “True.” He didn't see the perfection that was already there in Vida Blue.

For the first half of 1971, when he was just 21 years old, Vida Blue was nearly perfection. He may have been the first superstar to emerge once I became a fan. Everyone else was already there when I showed up: Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Frank and Brooks Robinson, Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, even the fairly youthful Johnny Bench. But Vida Blue was not there and then, in the spring and summer of 1971, he was everywhere. He was an event. He was such an event they held a Vida Blue Day for him ... in Minnesota. Twins owner Calvin Griffith was a sad, slow huckster compared to Charlie Finley, but he knew what people wanted, and he knew in the summer of 1971 they wanted Vida Blue. And so for a twi-night doubleheader, the Twins honored the opposing pitcher. In my memory, if you wore a piece of blue clothing you got in for half price, but that doesn't make much sense. Calvin wouldn't take money from Calvin's coffers. No, what you got, if you wore anything blue—and the Twins' promo ad mentioned any apparel, including “suits, dresses, hot pants...” which gives you a sense of the divide in America at the time, when men still wore suits to ballgames while women wore hot pants—what you got, from Calvin on Vida Blue Day at Met Stadium, was a commemorative button, “an attractive blue button,” the ad said, with the following verse:

Rose are red
My clothes were blue
When I was there
To see Vida Blue

Even at age 8, I was like “That's not a rhyme. Blue and blue? That's just the same word.” But we went, wore blue (without trying), got one of those buttons, and saw the Twins win both games against the eventual division winners. Actually, no, we didn't see the victories. I don't know why I still remember this but I do. We arrived late to the first game, missing out on Harmon Killebrew's pinch-hit grand slam in the Twins 9-4 victory, then we left before the end of the second game (“We gotta beat the traffic!” --Frank Costanza and my father), so missed out on George Mitterwald's walk-off homerun against Vida Blue with two outs in the bottom of the 9th as the Twins won 2-1. Two amazing games and we missed out on both big blows. This is why, for the longest time after I became an adult, I never left a game early.

In that second game, Twins pitcher Hal Haydel got the W for his 9th-inning relief work (one of six Ws in his career), while Vida got the L for the game and went a mere 23-7 on the season. He would wind up 24-8 with a 1.82 ERA, 301 strikeouts to 88 walks in 312 innings pitched, and he would win the Cy Young and the MVP as a 21/22 year old. But the real story was his first half when he went 17-3 with a 1.42 ERA, 17 complete games and six shutouts. Again, that's the first half of the season. He seemed on pace to win 30. He seemed perfection. I'm looking at his game logs for the season and he actually started out poorly, on April 5, giving up 4 runs, 1 earned, in 1 2/3 innings against the lowly Washington Senators. Then he pitched a six-inning rain-shortened shutout against the Royals, striking out 13(!); pitched a complete game shutout of the Brewers; pitched a complete game victory against the ChiSox, and kept going. By the end of May he'd won 10 games (10!), and was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. By the end of August, he was on the cover of Time magazine under the heading “New Zip in the Old Game.”

In the second half, sure, not quite perfection. His ERA rose by a run, to 2.40, and he went 7-5, but there were games that should've been wins. On July 9 against the Angels, he pitched 11 shutout innings, struck out 17 and walked nobody but got the ND. (The A's won it 1-0 in the bottom of the 20th.) Two weeks later, he again went 11, striking out 11 and walking zilch as the A's won it in the bottom of the 12th. But yes, he must've been tiring. His last shutout was August 7 against the ChiSox, his 20th win. In the second half, he was very, very good, but not the Vida Blue of the first half. He was not a comet. But he was beautiful to watch.

Same for the rest of his career. After a season for the ages, he wanted a raise, Finley was penurious, Vida held out. A deal was finally struck ($14.7k —> $63k), but late, so Vida didn't make his first start until the end of May, and though he had a not-bad 2.80 ERA he went 6-10. The next year he won 20, then 17, then 22, as the A's became the only non-Yankees team to win three World Series in a row. In '76 Vida had an ERA of 2.35 and finished sixth in the Cy Young balloting, and was traded midseason to the New York Yankees. Except, whoops, no, another white man, Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, in perpetual battle with Finley, nullified the deal “in the best interests of baseball.” Back you go. He finally got away from Finley in '78, across the Bay to San Francisco, and became the first pitcher to start for both leagues in the All-Star Game. He lasted until the mid-1980s. Along the way there were drug problems. His career numbers are similar to Catfish Hunter's, but Catfish's rep was different, and Catfish came on the Hall of Fame ballot at the right time, so he got in. Blue, not. His rep was of not quite living up to the promise of that first half of 1971. But how could he? Comets streak across the sky, then disappear from view.

How much does Vida Blue mean to me? A kid who grew up rooting for another team in another state? One evening last November, after I'd returned home from New York City sick with COVID, I was involved in the usual late-night web searching, checking out this and that, and I wound up buying a comfort item for myself, something that just made me feel good. It was that August 1971 Time magazine with Vida Blue on the cover. It's been on my bookshelf ever since. It never doesn't make me smile.

I think I came across this particular IMDb absurdity when I was doing research for my review of the Willie Mays doc a few months back. Mays was one of several baseball stars—usually Dodgers or Giants—who made appearances on family-friendly sitcoms in the 1950s and 1960s, and, on IMDb, I was checking exactly who was on what.

I was first struck by this bio:

So IMDb thinks Duke Snider was an actor? Known for that one episode of “The Rifleman”?

But of course not. IMDb doesn't think. The above is just a template IMDb/Amazon uses for lesser bios since apparently it's too cheap to hire anyone to write or police any of this. The template goes:

• [Name] was born on [date] in [place].
• He [is/was] an actor, known for [top 3 known fors].
• He is/was married to [wife/former wife].
• If applicable: He died [date] in [place].

That's how IMDb does the bios for Don Drysdale and Willie Mays, too. It's not how they do the bios for other sports stars like Joe Namath (“The son of a steel worker from...”) or Jim Brown (“Often mentioned as the greatest player in NFL history...”), but then both men actually starred in movies. They didn't just make a guest appearance on “The Donna Reed Show.”

Wait, I just checked a couple more. It's also not how they do the bios for Reggie Jackson (“Reggie Jackson is a baseball Hall of Famer nicknamed 'Mr. October'...”) or Ken Griffey Jr.  (“Ken Griffey Jr. is considered by many experts to be the best player in baseball...”). And why is Junior's in the present tense, as if he were still playing? As if it were written in 1998 and no one's bothered to update it in IMDb's Amazon era? 

Sigh.

Anyway, that's not the part I wanted to bitch about. This is. It's in Duke Snider's trivia section:

Besides being an actor, Duke Snider somehow played baseball, too? Wow. And apparently at a pretty high level!

Seriously, no one's minding the store. 

As soon as I heard about the concept of a “pitch clock” I was against it. Baseball doesn't do clocks. Baseball doesn't do time. Didn't Roger Angell say that? But better?

He did:

“Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young.”

He also said this:

“Baseball's clock ticks inwardly and silently, and a man absorbed in a ball game is caught in a slow, green place of removal and concentration and in a tension that is screwed up slowly and ever more tightly with each pitcher's windup and with the almost imperceptible forward lean and little half-step with which the fielders accompany each pitch. Whatever the pace of the particular baseball game we are watching, whatever its outcome, it holds us in its own continuum and mercifully releases us from our own.”

That's beautiful. And now the current lords of Baseball are messing with that beauty. They want to make sure batters step into the box within a certain number of seconds (or get an automatic strike) and pitchers pitch within a certain number of seconds (or get an automatic ball). They tried it out in the minors and this year they're trying it out in the Majors. They're ruining the game!

That's what I thought.

And then I read Joe Posnanski's piece, “Baseball and Time,” in which he was very much in favor of the pitch-clock change. And he won me over. I'm looking forward to the change now.

No. 1, it's increasingly kinda necessary. In my lifetime, games have gotten longer and longer, and players aren't going to police themselves—they'll take what they can get—and so they have to be policed. Apparently spring training games are a half-hour quicker this season: 2.5 hours vs. 3 hours. That's about what it was when I was a kid.

As for Roger Angell's great quote about baseball and time? Poz says it still applies:

But there's a bigger reason I believe both in a pitch clock in baseball and no clock in baseball — it's because I think we're talking about two entirely different things. I don't think the concepts clash at all.

See, by “no clock in baseball,” what I'm really thinking about is not time between pitches. It's all about how outs, not minutes, are the currency of time in the game. That's the magic. ...

If anyone tried to mess with that part of baseball, sure, I'd roar angrily. Three outs in an inning ... nine innings in a game ... this is the most elegant way ever created to time a sport in my view. There is no clock limiting your possibilities. You could be down six runs with two outs in the ninth inning and nobody on base, the way Pittsburgh was against Houston in 2001. If this were an NFL game or NBA game or NHL game or soccer game, there would have been no hope.

But baseball has no clock. And there was hope. And the Pirates came back and won. I'll have more on that game as we get closer to a certain book I've written.

Point is, there's still no clock in baseball. There's now a timer to make sure that guys don't just stand around and halt the forward momentum of the game. But you're still alive until the last out is recorded.

I like that distinction. Here's that Pirates game, btw, when they defeated time and remained forever young. 

You know the fun thing about that game? Besides the obvious? After Pat Meares' HR makes it 8-4, the color announcer—is it Bob Walk?—says, “A lot of hoopin' and hollerin', but the horse is already out of the barn.” I probably would've thought the same. No chance for a comeback. But when they do come back, when Brian Giles goes deep to win it, the same color announcer offers a really nice, really smooth mea culpa. “Seven runs in the bottom of the 9th inning, he hits a grand slam homerun off possibly the best closer in baseball ... That is just phenomenal. Well, they went out and found that horse, put a rope around his neck, and let him back in the barn.”

Opening Day is March 30.

A few weeks ago, in his Pitchers and Catchers report, Joe Posnanski lamented the dearth of 140-RBI seasons by counting out their number per decade since the 1920s, and ending with this:

2011-present: ZERO.

Yeah, that's right: zero. The most RBIs in a season was Miguel Cabrera's 139 in 2012, followed by Chris Davis' 138 in 2013. I love that Chris Davis and Khris Davis have two of the top RBI seasons of the last decade. But the point is that the big RBI seasons have mostly gone away. This is surely because fewer and fewer hitters are getting on base, batting averages have gone way down, Mike Trout and some of the other great hitters in the game can't stay healthy for a full season. But it's a little bit sad. I'm not a fan of using RBIs to judge a player's production, but I admit to getting a little thrill when I see a player with a BIG RBI total.

As with me and hitting .350. So I thought I'd do the same. To be honest, I thought I'd already done it, in the post “It's 2018: Do You Know Where Your .350 Hitters Are?” but I'd just counted up dearths, not decades. So here they are by decades:

• 1900-09: 25, led by Nap Lajoie's .426 in 1901
• 1910-19: 30, led by Ty Cobb's .420 in 1911
• 1920-29: 95!!!!!, led by Rogers Hornsby's .423 in 1924
• 1930-39: 50, led by Bill Terry's .401 in 1930
• 1940-49: 16, led by Ted Williams' .406 in 1941
• 1950-59: 8, led by Ted Williams' .388 in 1957
• 1960-69: 3, led by Norm Cash's .361 in 1961
• 1970-79: 8, led by Rod Carew's .388 in 1977
• 1980-89: 13, led by George Brett's .390 in 1980
• 1990-99: 18, led by Tony Gwynn's .394 in 1994
• 2000-09: 17, led by three players with .372
• 2010-19: 1, Josh Hamilton, .359 in 2010
• 2020-22: 2*, led by D.J. LeMahieu's .364 in 2020

First, how cool is it that Ted Williams had the highest batting average of the 1940s and 1950s? And it wasn't like it was 1949 an 1951. It was 1941 and 1957—a 16-year gap!

Second is that asterisked “2” for the 2020-22 years. Both occurred during the pandemic-shortened year when MLB teams played, at most, 61 games rather than 162. So do we count those? Not really. If you go by a full season, which is kinda what I do, no one's done it since Josh Hamilton in 2010.

But I'm thinking the new rules—particularly the banning of the shift—could swing the pendulum back again. Fingers crossed.

Here's a cool thing Joe Posnanski is doing. He's got a book out in September, “Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments,” which, yes, I'm already there. The cool thing is that while it's available from the usual online locales, if you buy it through his favorite local bookstore in Kansas City, Rainy Day Books, he'll not only sign the book for you but inscribe whatever you want:

I will write “Derek Jeter is awesome.” I will write “I agree with Mike Schur on hot fruit.” I will write, “I learned everything I know about baseball from Steve” — assuming your name is Steve.

For those not in the know: 1) He hates Derek Jeter, or just finds him massively overrated (but also underrated at times—no MVPs); 2) He likes hot fruit, as in pies, though his podcast partner is agin with a vengeance; and 3) He knows a lot about baseball. Apparently Poz made this offer with his previous book, too, “The Baseball 100,” and the lesson he learned there is to put a character limit on the inscription: no more than 150 characters. “We had to do it,” he writes; “some of the inscriptions for The Baseball 100 were Russian novels.”

So it's fun + a good cause. So of course I preordered my copy via Rainy Day Books. And this is the inscription I requested:

How Harmon Killebrew went from #67 on my first top 100 list to not making the cut at all I'll never know. What was I thinking?

Nice mea culpa. I'm glad he finally came around on the matter.

After counting down the top 100 players in baseball history and writing about the 50 greatest moments in baseball history (to be published in Sept.), Joe Posnanski is now in the midst of creating his very own Hall of Fame, the JoeBlogs Hall of Fame, where the goal is to honor the best and most legendary.

On the latter quality, he spills a few words. Legendary, he says, is...

...something that transcends the field, something that goes beyond the stats, something that isn't always easy to put into words or analysis. Our first class of 13 does not necessarily feature the players who are highest in WAR, though they are certainly all great players. Instead, I'm trying to choose people who in my view best represent that word, “legendary.” These are the players we still tell stories about, the players we will always tell stories about, the players who not only played the game at an exalted level but left us as fans feeling lucky to have seen them play the game. 

As for his first class?

* Beyond the starting eight and three pitchers, Poz chooses two wild cards. Doesn't have to be a player, either. Could be a nonplayer who had a big impact on the game—like Branch Rickey. Oddly, though, if a player, Joe isn't letting us know who the starter is and who the WC is. This first class has four outfielders, including two right fielders. So is Aaron the wild card? Or Ruth? Or Teddy Ballgame, and you move Ruth to left? Feels like a cheat.

It's a good list, but his most recent player (Schmidt) also feels the least legendary. And it made me wonder if you need time and distance to create a legend. I mean, does “legend” work for contemporaries? Well, Ichiro a bit. Or Griffey. Or Pujols. Then I thought of a guy you could really tell a tall tale around and wrote the following in the comments section:

“You askin' about Randy Johnson? [Spit] Well, he was as tall as Paul Bunyan, with hair like a waterfall and a fastball that could kill birds in flight. One moment there would be a creature of God, and poof! Just a puff of feathers. His arms was so long he once tagged out a feller on first without leaving the pitching mound. Entire left-handed lineups sat on the bench when he pitched, and half of them retired from baseball rather than face him. Those that did trembled at the plate when they came across his fearsome visage.” 

I added: “I mean, only half that stuff is untrue.”

Another reader, piggybacking on that comment, did the same with Nolan Ryan. His recitation was more stats-conscious, less tall tale. I didn't disagree with him, but I responded with the line about Randy I should've used in the first place: Did birds explode when he pitched?

He really does seem out of an American fable: Pecos Bill, John Henry and Randy Johnson.

The second thing I thought about when I heard that Tim McCarver died was the way he predicted the Luis Gonzalez bloop single that ended the 2001 World Series. If you hate the Yankees like I hate the Yankees—or the opposite, if you love them—you remember it well. 

Yanks had won three World Series in a row, crushed my 116-win pennantless Mariners in the ALCS, and crushed the soul of D-Backs closer Byung-hyun Kim with some late-inning homers in NYC to force a Game 7: Curt Schilling vs. a roided-up Roger Clemens. D-Backs scored first in the 6th (1-0), Yanks answered in the 7th (1-1), then Alfonso Soriano led off the top of the 8th with a solo shot (2-1, Yanks). Which is how it was in the bottom of the 9th when Mariano Rivera came out for his second inning of relief work. For much of the postseason, Joe Torre had gone to him often, and for longer than normal, and maybe it was finally having an effect. We got a leadoff single from Mark Grace, E-1 on an attempted sac bunt, but 1-3 on another attempted sac bunt. (C'mon, Brenley!). But then Tony Womack delivered the killer blow: a ripping double down the right field line to tie the game and put the winning run on third. After Craig Counsell was hit by a pitch to load the bases, Luis Gonzalez came up, and Torre moved the infield in for a play at the plate. And this is what color announcer Tim McCarver said: 

“The one problem is Rivera throws inside to lefthanders, so lefthanders get a lot of broken bat hits into shallow outfield ... the shallow part of the outfield. That's the danger of bringing the infield in with a guy like Rivera on the mound.”

And that's exactly what happened. Exactly. And there was joy in Mudville.

McCarver did this kind of thing often. He was smart baseball analyst, who, like all good catchers, kept all of the game in his head, and he was able to articulate that to us. Sure, he sometimes took the air out of the room. Roger Angell began his great 1999 profile of McCarver, “The Bard of the Booth,” by listing off all the complaints he'd heard about McCarver from friends, which amounted to: he talks too much, he laughs and enjoys himself too much, he makes puns, he thinks he's too smart, he is too smart. The complaints were baffling to Angell. Me, too. Give me smart any day of the week. I'm so, so tired of the other. 

Joe Posnanski has a nice tribute over on his Substack where he reminds us that, for a time, McCarver looked like a Hall of Famer—particularly after his exemplary 1967 season: .295/.369/.452, while catching a great World Series-winning pitching staff led by Bob Gibson, and finishing second in N.L. MVP voting to teammate Orlando Cepeda. He also caught Gibson's great 1968 Game 1, in which Gibson set a World Series record by striking out 17 Tigers. Overall, in three World Series for the Cards, McCarver hit .311/.384/.500, with two doubles, three triples, two homers and 11 RBIs. In '66, he led the league in triples with 13. That's gotta be a rarity for a catcher.

But the second half of his career, with numerous teams, wasn't like the first, and he was a one-and-done HOF candidate: just 3.8% of the vote.   

And here's the first thing I thought about when I heard that Tim McCarver died. In 1995, The New York Times asked him about the most boring part of baseball—I guess because people think it's boring—and he answered not as a broadcaster but as a player. He said it was the small talk first basemen engage in with the base runner:

They'll ask: “How ya hittin' 'em? How's the family?” And they could care less. It's the “Have a nice day” syndrome. I hated it, and Bob Gibson really hated it. One time, against the Expos, Bob got on and Ron Fairly told him, “Hey, you're throwing well.” Fairly came up to bat a couple innings later and Gibson hit him square in the ribs. I think more players ought to retaliate like that.

God, that's perfect. First, it's so Bob Gibson, to shut up a guy by hitting him, but it's also so Ron Fairly, who, in 1995 when I first read this, was the Mariners color announcer, and tended to take the air out of the room. But it's also so Tim McCarver. It's egoless. It's a great baseball story where he's not in it at all. He just wanted to tell a great baseball story.

Rest in peace. Thanks for the call.

My sister and I at the Baseball Hall of Fame  in 1973—my one trip there! It was the year they inducted Warren Spahn and (by special ballot) Roberto Clemente, while ignoring Whitey Ford, Johnny Mize, Robin Roberts, Duke Snider and Ralph Kiner, among others. 

Joe Posnanski has a good piece on the social-media backlash against Jeff Kent falling off the ballot after 10 years. Here are the arguments he's seen in favor of the former Giants second baseman. Kent was...

• ...the greatest power-hitting second baseman ever
• ...the greatest offensive second baseman of all time
• ...only dissed because he was not nice to the press
• ...being unfairly compared to players of previous generations (Kent's own argument)

To which Poz basically goes: 1) sorry, 2) not at all, 3) nope, and 4) isn't that the point? In fact, isn't the main argument Kent supporters make—that he hit more homers than any second baseman—comparing him to previous generations? All of those homers, though, do not mean Kent was the greatest power-hitting second baseman ever, Poz adds, and certainly not the greatest offensive force at second ever. In that, Kent takes a bit of a backseat to guys like Hornsby, Joe Morgan, Eddie Collins, Jackie Robinson.

If you're going to make Jeff Kent's Hall of Fame case, just make it honestly. I could give you an honest Jeff Kent case, one that points to the fact that he hit 377 home runs, most for a second baseman (different from saying he was the greatest power-hitting second baseman) and he was incredibly consistent, and he was a key part of some fine teams, and he won an MVP award and had a few other seasons where he got MVP consideration, and in his prime with San Francisco, he probably was an average defensive second baseman, and he was a very good run producer for almost a full decade for three different teams.

But the majority of voters think that case falls short.

Good piece.

A few days ago, Poz ran down his HOF ballot, with no Kent on it, and his 1-10 choices. What struck me was how his 7-8-9 picks (Manny Ramirez, A-Rod and Gary Sheffield) were way more interesting, and fun, than his 1-2-3 choices (Scott Rolen, Todd Helton, Carlos Beltran). I mean, sure, vote those guys. But they don't exactly loom large like the others, do they? I'm missing looming. 

In case you missed it, only Rolen made the cut. “It'll either be nobody or Rolen” I wrote back in November, and that's what we got. There seems to be a more fun path somewhere, just not sure how we get on it. 

Coming your way, Bob.

The only foul ball caught during my childhood by someone I know was hit by Sal Bando, the captain of the world champion Oakland A's, in the early to mid-1970s.

Our family and family friends were sitting in the wood-bench section along the third-base/right-field side of Metropolitan Stadium, as was our wont, and my father and older brother left to go to the bathroom. For some reason not many foul balls came our way, at least not in my memory, but I do remember Sal's. I think my stomach dropped a bit. Yeah, I was more afraid than excited. But it fell short of us, dropping into the concourse area between the box seats and the bench seats. A few minutes later, my father was walking back up to our row, grinning wide, holding the ball triumphantly aloft. He'd been waiting for Chris outside the men's room, which was in the concourse area, when Bando's foul ball caromed off a wall and back toward him. I think he had to fight a teenaged kid for it. “I played it off the wall like Clemente,” Dad said later.

I wonder if baseball players realize that almost every foul ball they hit is a piece of immortality. You catch one, you don't forget. For me, it's Tino Martinez and Chili Davis; for Tim, it's Felix Fermin and Ken Griffey Jr.; for Mike, it's ... OK, someday, Mr. B.

That A's team was glorious: long-haired and moustachioed by design—owner Charlie Finley gave them bonuses to grow them out—they were kelly green-wearing bad asses, stomping all over both leagues. They had the most exciting pitcher in the game, Vida Blue, and maybe the most exciting player—Reggie Jackson, baseball's first superduperstar, per a 1974 Sports Illustrated cover story—plus great role players all around. I remember the talk at the time was how left fielder Joe Rudi might be the most underrated player in baseball, but if you look at advanced metrics like bWAR it's gotta be Bando. He got MVP votes from 1969 to 1974 but never won—he came in second in '71 when it went to Vida Blue—but during that period, per a recent SABR quiz, he had the highest bWAR is baseball. Yep, higher than Johnny Bench, Dick Allen, Rod Carew, or Joe Morgan. His career slash line isn't superdupery (.254/.352/.408), but he did everything well enough that his career bWAR (61.5) is near Hall of Fame level.

Which means, of course, that during his first year of eligibility, 1987, he got exactly three votes, 0.7%, and fell off the ballot. Meanwhile, that same year, his former teammate, Jim “Catfish” Hunter, marched in with 315 votes and a 40.9 bWAR.

And yet ... you gotta wonder about bWAR. Other measures, like leading the league in various important stats, or appearing in the top 10, Hunter is through the roof and Bando is nowhere. Even so, Bando's case is much better than it appeared in the '80s—certainly worth more than a one-and-done. Plus he was captain of the only team besides the Yankees to win three straight World Series championships. Plus my family will never forget him.

He was 78. Five-year battle with cancer.

Not a bad game. Phillies took an early 3-0 lead, Braves came back to tie it 4-4, then went ahead 5-4 in the 6th and 6-4 in the 7th. But the Phillies ended any suspense by scoring 7 runs in the botom of the 8th to put it away.

That said, it wasn't exactly important in the standings. It's the first game of a late May 1935 doubleheader between two historically bad teams who were even worse this particular year. The Phillies would finish the season 64-89, .418, the second-worst team in the National League. But they were miles ahead of the Braves, who finished 38-115, .248, and are contenders for the worst team in baseball history.

So why am I writing about it? It's the last game ever played by Babe Ruth. He started in left field, went 0-1, and was removed, or more likely took himself out, for Hal Lee, who went 3-4 in a losing effort. Here's Lee's Baseball Reference page. He played seven seasons (1930-36) for perennial losers: the Braves, Phillies and Brooklyn Dodgers/Robins. His career slash line was .275/.326/.392. He led the league in nothing except, in his final season, grounding into double plays. He wound up playing in the Texas League after all that, and became a manager. He died in 1989.

So what did Ruth do with his at-bat? How did he make an out? All I know is he didn't strike out but I'm having trouble finding more info. This is from the Philadelphia Inquirer's story on the game:

Babe Ruth's failure to play more than one inning was the only disappointment that the crowd was forced to bear. The big Bambino limped out into left field to start the first game, batted once and played one inning and then retired to the clubhouse to pet his creaking joints.

Could you do a SABR trivia week on this? Players who replaced legends in their final games? I know there's also Michael Saunders for Ken Griffey Jr., for example. And I just looked up Jim Gantner pinch-running for Henry Aaron. Don't know if it's a quiz, though. 

In my research for the HBO Willie Mays doc—particularly the stuff the doc missed, the Minneapolis reaction to losing Willie when he was called up to the New York Giants after two months with the Millers—I came across sports columnist Dick Cullum writing about Mays' departure. Researching anything like this, you brace yourself for all kinds of bad. It's a white man writing about a black man more than 70 years ago, at a time when Major League Baseball had been integrated for all of four seasons. Martin Luther King was still getting his Bachleor of Divinity degree from Crozer and Emmett Till was still alive. 

But what I got was a pretty good description of what playing center field in the Polo Grounds was like, and how great players either rose or fell with the challenge, and how would Mays do?

Sure, Cullum couches what he writes: either/or; worst or best. But he seems to be leaning toward the positive: “...it will make him a hero faster than any other area could do the job...”

He wasn't wrong.

Last Sunday the Baseball Hall of Fame had a vote to determine which players from the contemporary era (1980 on), who weren't already in the Hall, might deserve the honor. There were 16 voters, and you needed 12 of them, 75%, to get in. I think each voter got three votes. This is how it went:

• Fred McGriff, 16 votes, 100%
• Don Mattingly, 8 votes, 50%
• Curt Schilling, 7 votes, 44%
• Dale Murphy, 6 votes, 38%
• Albert Belle, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro, fewer than 4 votes.*

* I guess they do this not to embarrass anybody? Because I can't find any news sources with the actual vote totals for these guys

And these were the voters:

PLAYERS

1. Chipper Jones**
2. Greg Maddux
3. Jack Morris
4. Ryne Sandberg
5. Lee Smith
6. Frank Thomas
7. Alan Trammell

** He called in sick and was replaced by Darryl Hall, CEO Diamondbacks

EXECS

1. Paul Beeston (Blue Jays, MLB)
2. Theo Epstein (Red Sox, Cubs, MLB)
3. Arte Moreno (Angels—owner)
4. Kim Ng (Marlins)
5. Dave St. Peter (Twins)
6. Ken Williams (White Sox)

MEDIA/HISTORIANS

1. Steve Hirdt (Elias Sports Bureau)
2. LaVelle Neal (Mpls. Star-Tribune)
3. Susan Slusser (SF Chronicle)

As others have stated, this ballot, and this committee, could not have aided Fred McGriff's chances more. Braves and Blue Jays were well-repped, and all the other nominees didn't have the careers McGriff had, or they were PED-suspect. Or they were Curt Schilling.

Could there have been other candidates from this era? Of course. Dwight Evans or Lou Whitaker barely got a chance from the Baseball Writers Association of America (Dewey lasted three years, Lou one), and modern stats, particularly bWAR (67.2, 75.1 respectively), indicate they're worthy. Basically they were good at a lot of little stuff that was difficult to measure; and now we can measure it. Or believe we can measure it. It's right there in that number.

But let's talk about the ballot as constituted.

The bottom four (Belle, Bonds, Clemens and Palmeiro) are all PED suspects, and the committee was full of players who have long denounced players who used PEDs, and apparently they haven't changed their minds. Goom-bye.

Murphy and Mattingly are interesting, similar cases. At different times, both were considered the best player of the '80s (Murphy was NL MVP in '82 and '83, Mattingly AL MVP in '85), but both got injured early in their careers. Neither made the World Series—and heartbreakingly so. Murphy was an Atlanta Brave until August 1990 when he was traded to the Phillies, and then the Braves went on a World Series run, appearing in '91, '92, '95, '96 and '99. His new team, the Phillies let him go in April '93 and then they went to the World Series. Meanwhile, Mattingly was Mr. Yankee during the Yankees longest Series drought since buying Babe Ruth. His first year was '82 and the Yanks went in '81. His last season was '95, and the Yankees went in '96, then '98 through '01. So it goes, as the man said. 

Both had better primes than McGriff, but he hung on longer.

If you look at these numbers you wonder how Mattingly could be preferred to Murphy, but he's probably getting points for his managerial career, which—now that I look at it—is similarly heartbreaking. He managed the Dodgers to three straight postseason appearances, but after losing the 2015 NLDS to the eventual pennant-winning Mets, he was let go with a year left on his contract. The Dodgers went to the World Series two years later. Mattingly was immediately swooped up by the Marlins, and in 2020, as a wild card, they made the postseason for the first time since 2003. They parted ways after this season, and Mattingly was recently hired as a bench coach for the Blue Jays. One assumes Paul Beeston voted for him.

As for Schilling, he's got an 80.5 bWAR, the best strikeout-to-walk ratio for any pitcher with more than 3,000 Ks (3116/711), postseason performances that mere mortals only dream of, and a big fucking mouth. I still would've voted for him. But Joe Posnanski highlights the irony:

Schilling's seven votes is a rebuke, no question about it. Schilling had been yammering for a couple of years now that he didn't even WANT to get elected by the writers, that he would prefer to be judged by players and executives, you know, people who KNOW THE GAME.

So the irony must sting that he got WAY closer to being elected on the BBWAA ballot than he got on this veterans ballot. In fact, if he would have not spent his spare time joking about journalists getting murdered and asking people not to vote for him, he certainly WOULD have been elected by the writers.

Now, if this ballot is any indication, the players and executives and such seem to think he's a lot more trouble than he's worth.

Anyway, I'm glad McGriff is in. I always liked him. He was cool, had a cool nickname (The Crime Dog), and as a lean, mean, baseball machine he hit 493 career homers. Seven more and he would've made the Hall 10 years ago.