A year ago I had an idea of asking fans to pick their favorite retired obscure baseball figure (player, manager, coach, etc.) in MLB history. A nice way to get ready for spring training, I figured. This time around, I thought I'd revisit the topic here but narrow it down to just former A's. For my choice, I'm tempted to say Mike Gallego, for the cancer he had before getting to the majors, him being a big glue guy on the '88-'90 dynasty, and that nickname, "Gags," which would have been disastrous if he'd ever choked in the postseason. But is a current third base coach and key guy on a dynasty who also played for the Yankees really obscure?

If Gags isn't, I'll go with Gene Nelson, mostly because he stole second pinch running in a game in Toronto in '88, I think. Gene was the first A.L. pitcher to do that since sometime in the mid-'70s.

Yesterday I came by the news that Boros died on Dec. 29 in his Florida home, of complications from multiple myeloma. I guess Boros was basically a baseball lifer who bounced from team to team, but I've always thought of him mostly as one of the A's managers in the mid-'80s gap between Billy Martin and La Russa. I'd earlier looked up some things on him using computers and sabermeteric-type advanced stats as the A's manager. So, here's some of a 2005 article from Florida. It's mostly Boros talking about his career. Apparently he did not much regret getting fired by the A's in 1984:

"I can't say that I enjoyed managing. There is no team concept among modern players. I had to put out fires every day."

The closest he came to a World Series as a player or coach was as a Kansas City coach in 1976 when the Yankees eliminated the Royals in five games of the AL Championship Series.

"Because of that I received a $10,000 playoff check, and that was a down payment on our house," Boros said. "I didn't have any money. We'd been renting. I was making like $17,000 a year coaching first base with the Royals."

How has pro baseball changed in 47 years? When Boros was signed there were only 16 MLB teams.

"Today, they push the players more quickly," Boros said. "A lot of them don't have the preparation we had. It's the economics of the game because you're losing players to free agency. You can't afford to keep 'em, so you bring up younger players. Often before they're ready.

"So now everything happens very quickly. When I was playing at Cincy, Tony Perez went back to the minors two straight years after batting .300. That didn't happen to me because 1961 was the first year of expansion. And Eddie Yost, the Tiger third baseman, went to California so there was a spot for me there.

"Things changed so dramatically. Now a lot of players can't handle the money. A lot of them got complacent. I was fortunate to be around some good players like George Brett and Cal Ripken Jr.

"Brett and Ripken always gave you 100 percent. Many guys are like that. But it's the few bad apples . . ."

Boros met his wife, Sharla, in 1970 while managing the Royals' Class A farm in Waterloo, Iowa. "Her parents were our biggest fans and their daughter was a TWA flight attendant that I met on her layover," Boros said.   They were married in 1973.

In 1989, Brian Lamb spent the summer rambling around the U.S. in his RV, watching minor league baseball games as he traveled. A couple years later, he published a book, Stolen Season, about his journey.   Lamb caught up with Ron Washington in Tucson, where he was playing shortstop, mostly, for the Houston Astros' AAA farm team, the Tucson Toros. I thought I’d present that scene and Washington’s comments in ’89 to get a perspective on how he approached the game on the field, as a player. It also shows Ron's raw enthusiasm for the game.

 In his book, Lamb wrote of Washington:

At thirty-seven, he was four years older than the oldest starting shortstop in the major leagues, Ozzie Smith, and was earning approximately $2.2 million per season less. He looked younger in uniform than he had when I saw him in jeans and a T-shirt by the clubhouse bench press and noticed his receding hairline and worried face.

 

 Washington referred to each plate appearance not as an at bat but as an opportunity, and when he missed an opportunity, he would clench his left fist and give his head a quick shake on the way back to the dugout. Baseball was still fun to him, and each game pushed so much adrenaline through his system that, after taking the bus back to his apartment on Broadway [in Tucson], it was three or four hours before his body calmed down and he could sleep.  

One of ten children, he was raised in the projects of New Orleans. . . . In 1970, Washington paid his way to the Kansas City Royals Baseball Academy. If he had negotiated the contract offered him there, he could have gotten five thousand dollars. But talk didn't interest him; he signed immediately and headed for Sarasota with his modest bonus—a new glove and a pair of spikes.

I was so happy just to sign, they could have kept the glove and spikes,” he said.

 
Washington in '89: “If I get hit with the negative side of something, I turn it positive. I've never stuck my head behind my ass and run like a puppy in my life. Just so I go out onto the field every day a little more fired up than I was the day before, I'll be all right. I'll get back. . .

“Still, when you been to the top where everything's first class, you don’t like coming back down. You have to worry about nourishing yourself on the meal money they pay you here. You can hear the hecklers real good with the small crowds. You get worn down with those 4:30 a.m. wake-up calls to catch another plane. Up there, everything's done for you. Down here, you gotta do thing for yourself.

“I'll tell you this. The sun shines bright every day in Tucson, but it doesn't shine as bright as it does in Houston. It shines bright in Houston even when it's raining.”

When I put up my talk with Ray Ratto about the 1989 Giants here last month, the bit about Jose Uribe inspired me to look up a few things about Uribe.  I think the older Giants fans might like reading some of what turned up.

So, here's Jose in 1987, explaining why he changed his last name from Gonzalez: “There are a lot of Jose Gonzalez’s in the Dominican. The name Gonzalez down there, it’s like Smith in the United States.

“Two or three guys playing with me on the same team had the same name. All the time, someone would yell, ‘Hey, Gonzalez‘ and everybody’s turning around.

“The other three guys played outfield. I was the only one playing shortstop. After the games, the people, they’d be shouting at me, ‘Hey, Gonzalez, you play outfield great.’ Sometimes it was, ‘Gonzalez, you play outfield lousy.’ I was always yelling, ‘I don’t play outfield, I play shortstop.’”

“I talked to my daddy and my momma and they said I could pick whatever I want. If I wanted Uribe – that’s my father’s last name – that was fine.

“I said to them, ‘I’m going to go with Uribe. It’s shorter. People will understand it better.’ But it’s funny. For the American people, it’s hard to pronounce my last name. Some people call me ‘Yer-bee,’ some people call me ‘Oh, baby.’”

And, when Jose died in the Dominican Republic early in the morning of December 8, 2006, in a car crash, Giants president Peter Magowan said: “I was very saddened to hear the news of Jose’s passing this morning. He meant so much to the Giants during his playing days. He was such an important part of the team’s success in the late 1980s. When you saw Jose on the field, he exuded happiness and pure joy for the game and life.”

Will Clark said: “He was always happy and had a smile on his face — he found a way to make you laugh. That was a great ballclub and Jose was right in the middle of it. On a baseball team, you’re only as good as the middle, and he and Robby [Thompson] were the two rocks out there.

“He had some of the best hands you’ll ever see. He’d pick the ball and make hard plays look easy, which at Candlestick Park wasn’t easy to do. As a hitter, I think the whole time he was with the Giants, he always improved in some capacity.”

Last year I contacted Ray Ratto, the ex-Chronicle columnist/current Comcast commentator, to ask 10 questions about the Giants' '89 season, Loma Prieta, and the Bay Bridge Series for an interview on the 20th anniversary of the quake and the Giants winning that pennant. Ratto covered the Giants beat in 1989 for the Chronicle. I posted our exchange here last year, but since the Giants are in the Series again, and Jose Uribe's cousin played a big role in getting SF there, I'm marking the occasion by reposting it. Also, I've added a few quotes from Juan on his cousin at the end:

Q: What happened to Kevin Mitchell in '89? I guess he was always a very good hitter, but his '89 season was so much better than his other seasons. I know he did very well in spring training, but I don't think people anticipated that he and Clark would carry the offense so successfully.

A: Mitchell didn't really do anything except bat in the middle of a good order and let his talent go. He saw a lot of fastballs and was an extraordinarily strong fastball hitter in the middle of a lineup with few outs or guys you could pitch around. Between him, Clark, Butler, Williams and Thompson, the lineup was simply loaded.

Q: Reading through the old news articles, you get an impression of Rick Reuschel being a grouch, or at least certainly someone who didn't like the media. He also talked from time to time about baseball not being important. But in order to pitch well into his 40s, he must have been very determined about his craft. What was your sense of his personality?

A: Reuschel didn't like writers from his time in Chicago when his weight was a constant issue, and was a contrarian so that writers here couldn't find him a go-to guy for quotes. I found him rather easy to deal with because one of the first things I wrote was about his exemplary fielding (and didn't reference his weight) but most guys never got around it.

Q: Scott Garrelts is similar in some ways to Reuschel: from Illinois, low-key, not exactly a Giant legend; but the two of them led the Giant pitchers in '89. What were Garrelts' key assets as a pitcher?

A: His real asset was good stuff when he could command it. He was never a terribly confident pitcher, though, so that even when he was going good you could never be sure how long that would last.

Q: Jose Uribe had lost his wife in 1988, and he had that tag of being a good fielding, poor hitting middle infielder. My basic memory of him is the Uuuu-reee-bay chant. I guess between being from the Caribbean and having the dead wife, maybe he wasn't one to open up to the media in '88 or '89. I believe he's the only '89 Giant to have died. Could you talk about some recollections of him?

A: He and Thompson were very close, both on and off the field, and he was one of the players who didn't need to be noticed. He was an efficient shortstop and a better than average eight-hitter, and was open enough with the media if you could speak Spanish or had an interpreter handy. He was not an effusive story-teller, though, in a room that had a lot of them, so he didn't get as much attention as he might have.

Q: I was at the Dave Dravecky comeback game vs. the Reds, and my clearest memory of the season is the intense waves of emotion running through the crowd each time he took the field. I didn't much notice at the time, but there was an obvious contrast between his miracle, as many were calling it, and the presence of Pete Rose, the fallen legend about to be banned from the game. It had already been a rough season for MLB, with the ongoing Rose saga, Donnie Moore's suicide, the Steve Garvey and Wade Boggs sex scandals, etc. Did Dravecky's comeback provide people with an inspiring refuge from all the bad stories that were circling around baseball?

A: Momentary, perhaps, but the Giants weren't really a big national story until September. He was a one- or two-day story nationally at best, so most of his inspiration was more local than national, and more among the Christian community (he was and is a devout Christian) than outside it.

Q: How do you remember the scene of Dravecky's arm snapping in Montreal? I've heard it was something you could hear all around the stadium. Also, how did the Giants respond to the injury in the following days and weeks? I mean, was Dravecky still an inspiration, or did it became a distraction, an annoyance, for the team to answer the questions and have the uncertainty about his situation?

A: It was a small crowd, but I don't believe you could hear the arm snap as much as you could hear his scream. I saw it as it happened and it looked as though his arm had simply detached itself from his shoulder. The Giants did not view it as a distraction or an annoyance, and to the best of my knowledge never tired of discussing it, or really anything else.

Q: Roger Craig had a pretty overwhelming image of being an upbeat guy, always optimistic, with that Humm Baby attitude, and a lot of Southern charm. Was that all a front, a deliberate strategy he used to handle his team and the media, or was that simply the way he was?

A: Both. He knew it won him good publicity, and he had inherited a bad team in 1985, so anyone who had a good attitude about a Giant in 1986 or thereafter was considered a blessing. By 1990, his schtick had tired with the players a bit, but in 1989 he was golden.

Q: How did the press at Candlestick handle the earthquake? What was the difference between how local media and the national/international press reacted?

A: Much of the national media fled the stadium because it thought the place would collapse or because they needed a place with power to file their stories about the event. The locals stayed longer because they knew the terrain, who to talk to, how long it would take to get reaction and information, and because more work was required of them even with the smaller papers the next day.

Q: What's your memory of the atmosphere for games 3 and 4 at Candlestick? Watching on tv, I remember the emotion before game 3, but otherwise, as a young fan, I focused on the action. I wasn't in mourning for the Loma Prieta victims, I just wanted to see some baseball again.

A: We all pretty much knew the series would be over quickly because the A's were better and because they handled the post-earthquake trauma better. A number of Giants clearly had lost the will to keep playing because they weren't used to earthquakes, because their families were freaked out, or because they all stayed in the Bay Area while the A's went to Phoenix to get away from all the earthquake news. The series had become unimportant, and we knew it would not be competitive.

Q: What was the dynamic of personalities on that Giants team? Was there any sense of the team being divided between, say, the devout Christian clique of Dravecky, Hammaker, Butler, Knepper, and the more fun-loving, outsized personalities, like Mitchell, Clark, Gossage, Brenly, Krukow, and the tighter-lipped veterans, like Reuschel, Kennedy, Speier, Garrelts? Or was '89 an example of winning being the ideal cohesive force in sports?

A: Everyone got to be who they were, because the central tenet was winning. Whatever judgments each group might have made about those not in the group were subsumed by the fact that the team was good and challenging for a postseason. Winning, after all, cures nearly everything.

Continue reading this post »

When Lou Piniella put one of his pitchers, Sean Marshall, into left field for a batter in a game last year so he could keep him in the game and let him face the next couple batters, the announcer noted that he’d pulled a similar double switch on July 15, 1993, with Jeff Nelson, the former Mariners and Yankees reliever. I put together a long post about it at the time.

But now, with Lou having just managed his last MLB game, and facing what seems to be the imminent death of his mother, it's a good time to present the story again, to remember his unique style of managing. This, from the Tacoma News Tribune of July 16, 1993:

Lou Piniella manages one way – to win – though on Thursday he managed to confuse four umpires, the Boston Red Sox and more than a few of his own Seattle Mariners.

In the eighth inning of a one-run game, trying to nurse home a lead without closer Norm Charlton, Piniella brought in left-hander Dennis Powell to face one batter.

Instead of sending right-hander Jeff Nelson to the clubhouse when Powell entered the game, however, Piniella sent him to left field – enabling him to bring Nelson back to the mound.

All that worked, though the last out of the game was recorded by rookie Mike Hampton, whose first career save preserved Seattle’s 3-2 victory over Boston and continued a Mariners winning streak that has now reached six games.

“I’ve seen that move in the National League, but never in the American League,” Piniella said of his unorthodox plays. “In the National League, it’s just a one-for-one switch, but I knew over here it involved the designated hitter somewhere.”

When Piniella told home-plate umpire Durwood Merrill what he had in mind in the eighth inning, Merrill huddled for nearly two minutes with his crew – long enough to bring Sox manager Butch Hobson out of his dugout to see just what was happening.

“There was a little confusion, but they figured it out,” Piniella said.

“In 17 years in the big leagues, I’ve never seen that,” Merrill admitted afterward.

“I had no idea what he was doing – none,” Ken Griffey Jr. said. “But when I saw Jeff Nelson going to left field I just started smiling.”

When Butch Hobson opened the eighth by sending out right-handed pinch hitter Carlos Quintana, Piniella countered with Nelson, who got the first two batters he faced and should have gotten the third. But Tino Martinez dropped Billy Hatcher’s foul pop-up near the Red Sox dugout, and Hatcher followed with a single.
Up came left-handed hitting Mike Greenwell. Out of the Seattle dugout came Piniella. And the fun began.

By sending Nelson into left field and letting Dennis Powell pitch to Greenwell, Piniella lost his starting left fielder – Greg Litton – and the use of his DH for the night. But after Powell retired Greenwell, Piniella was able to use Nelson again in the ninth inning.

On the mound.

“I didn’t have a clue what Lou was doing when he started talking to the umpires,” Nelson said. “Then he told me to go out to left field. I haven’t played the outfield since Legion ball in ’84.”

"He shags real well during batting practice,” Piniella said, then grinned. “But the first thing I told Powell was `Don’t let ‘em hit it to left.’"

Powell didn’t, getting Greenwell to pop to second base.

Came the ninth inning, and Nelson got Andre Dawson and Bob Melvin before Martinez booted a Nelson Riles grounder for an error to bring up the go-ahead run in left-handed hitting Scott Cooper.

Out came Piniella again, and this time Nelson was pulled entirely for Hampton.

To mark the 100th anniversary of Comiskey Park opening up, here's some of an interview I did with '80s second baseman Jack Perconte, talking about Comiskey, and comparing it to Cleveland's Municipal Stadium. Perconte played part of the '86 season with the Sox, and grew up in Joliet:

Jack: The infield was always in good shape in Comiskey. But, like Cleveland, the area around the park didn’t seem to have a lot of excitement so it was hard to feel the usual area enthusiasm associated with other parks.

Arne: I know Comiskey was called the “baseball palace of the world”: Did you think that sort of grandiose title fit the place?

Jack: Maybe in its day it deserved that title but by the time I played there, there were many nicer palaces built.

Arne: In terms of the weather, what was the difference between Cleveland and Chicago in, say, April and September? Was Municipal Stadium windier and colder than Comiskey?

Jack: Don’t recall much difference between the two – seemed like you could get a cold, nasty night any time of year but not unlike any northern outdoor parks.

Arne: How do you compare the personality of the Cleveland fans and the White Sox fans?

Jack: Both were very similar because of the frustration of not having won very much. I was only with the White Sox when we were way out of the running in 1986 so I didn’t experience the whole “get excited for the season only to be let down again” phenomenon that usually occurred with both teams.

Arne: It sounds like the area around both Comiskey and Municipal Stadium was pretty rough in the ’80s. Was it a dicey proposition to get into and out of the parks, especially at night?

Jack: I don’t ever recall being fearful but we did not hang around long after games, especially after losing, so maybe that was why.

Over the past couple years I gathered up some Seattle Times material on Griffey’s early pro years, and this is certainly the occasion to present some of it here. A description of Junior’s first pro game in June 1987:

While the rest of his Bellingham Mariner teammates received a smattering of applause during pregame introductions last night, Griffey’s welcome was much different.

The standing-room-only crowd of 2,516 treated the Seattle Mariner No. 1 draft choice to a rousing ovation as he trotted out of the home dugout and into his much-anticipated debut.

“I wasn’t expecting all of that,” Griffey said with a smile afterward. “I was expecting maybe a few people (would cheer), but not that many. That helps knowing you have the fans behind you.”

The warm welcome proved to be one of the few highlights for the son of Atlanta Brave outfielder Ken Griffey as Bellingham fell to the Everett Giants 5-4 in the Northwest League opener for both teams.

Though he drew a walk in his first at-bat, Griffey failed to get the ball out of the infield after that – going 0 for 4 with a strikeout and three ground outs.

In each of his first four plate appearances, Bellingham had at least one runner in scoring position.

“I’m a little bit disappointed,” Griffey admitted.

“I was forcing my swing. I wish I would have gotten a hit, but those days will come.”

And a description of the Griffey-Griffey back-to-back homers vs. the Angels on September 14, 1990:

The home run was the 40-year-old Griffey’s third in his 32nd Mariner at-bat and the 151st of his 18-year career. The two-run shot came on an 0-2 pitch from Angel starter Kirk McCaskill. The ball cleared the center-field wall by more than 20 feet, 402 feet away.

His son followed with a 388-foot left-field blast, his 20th this season and 36th overall. He was given the green light on a 3-0 pitch.

“That’s history,” Mariner Manger Jim Lefebvre said. “You’ll never see that again. I mean I hope we will see it again. What an exciting moment. The job that man has done since he came here (from Cincinnati). It’s like they should be written up for a Hollywood movie.”

“I kept looking at (third-base coach Bill) Plummer for a sign, just to make sure the `take’ wasn’t on,” Junior said. “It’s something I didn’t think we’d ever do.”

After Senior’s home run he was greeted at the plate by his purposeful son. “I felt for him then,” Senior said. ” I knew he would be thinking home run. I could see it in his eyes when I crossed the plate.

“He tried to do it after I hit the other two against Oakland and in Boston. I knew he would be trying awfully hard. So I just sat quietly and hoped he relaxed and got a pitch he could hit. Then boom.”

“Now that’s something we have talked about,” Junior said. “We did it once before, in spring training. He did his off (Boston’s Roger) Clemens, and I don’t remember who I hit mine off of.”

John Marzano died two years ago today at his home in Philadelphia. He’d spent his last three years as a player, 1996 through 1998, with the Mariners. To help remember him, here are some quotes and anecdotes from those years (excerpted from a longer article I did at Seamheads).

In 1998, when Marzano came in for an injured Dan Wilson for his last stretch of extended playing time in the majors, Lou Piniella said: "Put it this way. Marzie was well-rested." More gently, he added: "He has done a nice job. He calls a good game, handles the pitching staff and is getting sharper each game he plays. What we get offensively is a bonus."

At the time, Marzano said: "I know this isn’t going to last and we’re all looking forward to getting Danny back. I mean, he’s an All-Star catcher. I told him I’m just keeping the plate warm."

Earlier, in May 1998, Marzano hit one of his two big-league triples and a double (he was thrown out trying for a second triple on that hit) against Roger Clemens in Toronto, driving in four runs to lead the Mariners to a win. Marzano, who was in the midst of his last and possibly greatest season, said of Clemens: "I caught him for six years and those are some of my favorite memories. But this—to have a big game against him, to help us beat him—is as good as it gets for me."

In late May, 2005, Marzano came down from South Philly, where he did postgame shows for the Phillies and hosted a weekly radio show, "View From Marz," to help broadcast some Mariners’ games in Baltimore. He remembered a game on July 20, 1996: it was the last time Edgar played third base until his final game in 2004. Pat Borders, playing for the Angels, hit a pop-up and, as Marzano explained: "I looked up, then looked at Edgar and he was looking straight at me. I thought Edgar had been indicating I should take it. So I looked back up and then went after the ball, and bang."

Marzano and Martinez both went for the ball and collided: Edgar suffered bruised ribs and was out for about three weeks. Meanwhile, Marzano said, laughing: "I was lying there bleeding, I needed 40 stitches, and everyone ran to Edgar. Only one guy came to me. Junior. He leaned over me as I lay on the ground, my eyelid hanging off, and told me, ‘Edgar’s hurt. You’re screwed.’”

Marzano concluded: "And you know what, those injuries, Edgar missing a month in his great years, it was all for nothing. They had called the infield-fly rule."

I thought I finished up my mini-series on sabermetrics in the '80s a couple weeks ago with my post on Bill James and Glenn Dickey of the San Francisco Chronicle. But then Bryan Johnson left comments on a few posts I'd done gathering excerpts from his baseball columns for the Toronto Globe and Mail in the early '80s.

Johnson is credited by James with discovering the Johnson Effect: the tendency of a team to revert back to the wins-losses total one would expect from its ratio of runs scored to runs allowed. Here's James's explanation of it from 1985: "The Johnson effect states that when a team wins more games than it could be expected to win in view of the number of runs scored and runs allowed . . . that team will tend to decline in the following season. When a team wins significantly fewer games than could be expected in view of its runs scored and runs allowed . . . that team will tend to improve in the following season."

A while back I did a post here gathering excerpts from columns in October 1982 and April 1983 in which Johnson set out this principle. Since Johnson was apparently the first journalist to write regularly about advanced statistics, Bill James's ideas, sabermetrics, and all that, I figured people would want to read the story of how he came to write his column and why he stopped. So I asked him to tell it, and here he is with the explanation:

I had been a drama critic prior to those columns. From there, I became a foreign correspondent, sent to our Beijing bureau. Along with me, I took an early copy Bill James' abstract -- in its then-primitive form -- and began a correspondence with Mr. James.

When I returned to Toronto, I became a feature-writer, but convinced the paper to let me write a once-a-week "alternative" column on baseball. That's basically what you ran across in your search. The truth is, I always loved baseball, but was a bit of a "snob" when it came to my career. I considered myself a "serious" journalist, who dabbled a bit in the baseball world as a hobby. I did NOT want to be a sportswriter. And I was really desperate to get back to Asia, and resume my career as a foreign correspondent.

In 1985, I cut what must be one of oddest deals in journalism history: I agreed with the Globe's editor to write about baseball full-time, but only for the six-month baseball season. Every winter, I'd be sent to Asia as a foreign correspondent. A strange compromise, obviously, but one in which we both got exactly what we wanted.

As it turned out, the deal lasted only briefly, because Ferdinand Marcos called a "snap election" in the Philippines, my favorite country. I raced to Manila after the 1985 season, covered the hotly-disputed election...and the People Power aftermath, in which Cory Aquino became president.

I was offered a book contract, took a leave of absence from the Globe to write "Four Days of Courage", which was published in 1987. The Globe then asked me to open a new India bureau, and I never wrote about baseball again.

Johnson adds: "I took a lot of flak for advocating sabermetrics: not only from some readers, but especially from the hard-boiled denizens of the Globe and Mail sports department." He's been living in the Phillipines since 1990, and says he is now "teaching English, mostly writing, to Korean and Japanese students."

I noticed today that Pagliaroni died on Saturday in Grass Valley, over in gold rush country, and didn't see a note about it here yet, so I thought I'd make note of it. I guess his salad days were mainly with the Pirates and Red Sox, in the first half of the '60s, but he was one of the original Oakland A's. I mentioned a while ago that he was the catcher for Catfish's perfect game.

Pagliaroni said of the final at-bat: “Rich Reese was the last hitter up and he must have fouled off about seven or eight pitches and finally went to a 3-2 count before Catfish struck him out. So it was kind of a tense situation. I don’t think Catfish knew it was a perfect game until the last pitch when Sal Bando came running into the mound saying it was a perfect game.”

Here's a link to his stats. The L.A. Times notice of his death said, "Pagliaroni later became an executive with a food distribution company in the Western United States. He also raised funds for the ALS Foundation to help honor Hunter, who died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, in 1999."

A while ago I looked up some old news articles on sabermetrics in the first half of the '80s because I wanted to see how it emerged into the mainstream and how journalists received it at first. Here's a couple final scraps from that effort. I thought people might find them interesting. First Glenn Dickey of the San Francisco Chronicle, talking about Bill James in 1985:

IF YOU want to make a traditional baseball man angry - nay, furious - just mention the name Bill James to him. . . .

James will make his first speaking appearance in this area next month, at a Sabremetrics convention at the Hyatt Regency July 12-14. A's president Roy Eisenhardt, an engaging mix of traditionalist and innovator, will be the keynote speaker on Saturday night of the convention. . . .

James' throwaway comments are provocative. This year, for instance, he observed that a good-hitting shortstop is a stronger offensive factor than a player at another position, because a first baseman, for instance, is expected to be a good hitter, but a shortstop is not.

James was the first, to my knowledge, to come up with the "Billy Burnout'' theory on Billy Martin's handling of pitchers, which we became all too familiar with when Martin managed the A's.

This year, James expounded on his theory that you can predict how minor leaguers will do in the majors, but only if you take into consideration the league, city and park in which they play.

That explains the unexpected decline of the Dodgers. The Dodgers' Triple-A club is in Albuquerque, where balls fly out of the park. For years, they were able to trade prospects on the basis of their inflated Albuquerque statistics. When they had to use these players themselves, they were in trouble.

AS A counterpart to James' work, Seymour Siwoff, Steve Hirdt and Peter Hirdt came out this year with "The Elias Baseball Analyst.'' . . .

The book has drawn extravagant raves, more than it deserves, because of the Bill James backlash. It is traditional statistics, the kind that bring comfort to most old baseball fans, and the authors themselves are traditionalists. They specifically note, ``You will find in this book no arcane formulas with strange-sounding acronymic names. You will not find what somebody thinks George Brett would have hit in 1914.''

THIS BYPLAY is amusing. Personally, I'm thankful that James and his Sabremetricians have sparked this kind of controversy, because we have more information and more lively opinion than we've ever had in baseball.

And finally, Dickey talking about James in 1987:

He has used his statistics to measure true fielding ability. He uses them to measure speed, concluding that Vince Coleman is now the fastest man in baseball. He has shown how a good-hitting shortstop, such as Cal Ripken now or Robin Yount before his injuries, is far more valuable than a good-hitting first baseman.

James ' success has rankled many in the baseball establishment. (But not all - the Giants' Al Rosen and the A's Roy Eisenhardt and Sandy Alderson enjoy James' stuff.)

Employees in league offices are told not to give James any statistics, a meaningless directive because James doesn't ask for any. He works with statistics printed in newspapers and follows games both in person (usually in Kansas City, near his home) and on television.

The Elias Bureau, which does the official statistics for baseball, publishes its own "Statistical Analyst," and the Elias writers continually snipe at James, which is silly. Both books are invaluable, with the Elias people more conservative in their approach and James more unorthodox. Taken together, they give fans, and writers, more information than ever before.

In person, James seems an unlikely man to cause such strong reactions. He dresses and talks like an English Lit professor at a small private school. No sparks fly; you get the essence of Bill James from his books, not from his presence.

I have a blog called Misc. Baseball, and there are a couple items about Jim Abbott on it, including one on his debut in 1989. And I remember going to a USA Baseball workout for the '88 Olympics, sometime probably in the spring of '88, and Abbott signing a slip of paper for me. He was more than just a good one-handed pitcher: I thought I'd pass on this story from the USA Today of March 19, 1991, about his triple off Rick Reuschel of the Giants:

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I picked up the guide about a week ago, and thought I'd share some items that caught my eye as I paged through it:

Reggie Jackson stole home on April 18, 1987 (his final season) vs. Seattle.

The A’s stole home seven times in 1980: Wayne Gross and Dwayne Murphy did it on the same day on May 3 and again on May 28.

Tony La Russa was the A’s first pinch-hitter at the Coliseum: he singled off Dave McNally on April 17, 1968.

As of 2001, Mike Aldrete (a Carmel native and Stanford grad) was tied for the career lead in A’s pinch-hit homers, with 5, hit from 1993 to 1995.

The A’s stole 341 bases in 1976.

Harold Baines was walked intentionally 22 times in 1991: he also set the A’s single-game record for total bases that year with 14 vs. the Orioles on May 7.

Reggie Jackson has the most inside the park homers of any Oakland A: four, including two in 1968.

Jason Giambi hit the 4000th and 5000th homers in Oakland A’s history: Reggie Jackson hit the first, on April 10, 1968.

Rickey’s .474 BA in ’89 is the highest in an A’s World Series.

The A’s 306,763 home attendance in 1979 came in at less than a quarter of their 1,393,196 road attendance that year. Peak season attendance up to 1981 was 1,075,518, who came to the Coliseum not during the ’72 to ’74 run, but in 1975.