SBNation.com User Blog: bucdaddy

BUCS DUGOUT BOOK CLUB: "Touching Second," Johnny Evers with Hugh Fullerton

bucdaddy — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:00:55 -0000

Johnny Evers’ “Touching Second” is full of advice about playing “scientific baseball,” which was all the rage in Johnny’s day, and even some stuff that looks like primitive attempts at sabrmetrics. For instance, somebody (Fullerton, I've read) kept track of where balls were hit for something like 10,000 base hits and used it to show why fielders play where they play. This was about 1910, so at best maybe he had a slide rule and an adding machine and a pencil and paper to do his spreadsheets ....

Anyway, I hadn’t really thought much about why the deadball era was the deadball era. I guess I always figured it had something to do with one dirty gray baseball used for entire nine-inning games until the thing resembled something more like a mush ball (literally a “dead ball”), and that likely was a big part of it. But I had never much considered that the suppressed offense of the time was DELIBERATE. I mean, I’ve read stuff about how Babe Ruth came along and showed a different way to play—swinging for the fences—but I don’t think the full impact of what that meant sunk in until I read this remarkable passage in Evers’ book:

Frequently batters who slaughter the ball in the minor leagues, and hit any kind of pitching, fail utterly when drafted into the major leagues. Many followers of the sport imagine that the reason for this failure is to be found in the superiority of the major league pitchers, which is wrong. These men would hit in the major leagues, and hit hard, perhaps as hard as in the minors, if allowed to hit with the same freedom. There are, in the major leagues, many batters who could not hit in the minor leagues at all. The reason for both is found in team work, which is the chief cause of the decline in batting. Some batters are adapted to the system, others are not.

In the perfected team work of the major leagues batters must hit to advance runners and score runs rather than to get base hits. They are compelled to permit the kind of ball they can hit to cut the plate unmolested and then hit at one which, perhaps, they are lucky to touch. Besides many times they are ordered to wait, and not to hit at all, in order to allow the pitcher to weary himself.

A few years ago the Chicago club purchased a player late in the season who was one of the great batters of the American Association. His hitting helped the team win the pennant, yet Chance released him without even bringing him to Chicago to play the final games. The act surprised the followers of the Cubs and someone asked Chance why the man was released. “First ball hitter,” explained Chance loquaciously (for him).

Chance was right. The player was worthless as a team hitter, but if permitted to hit the first ball pitched to him he batted heavily and if he could have been the first man up in every inning he probably would have led the league in hitting.
——
This is remarkable for a couple reasons (to me). One is that Evers, a very smart man who probably knew no other way to play the game, doesn’t seem to consider that there might be anything wrong with this, doesn't seem to see the contradiction. He sounds a lot like Dusty Baker complaining about hitters who walk a lot clogging up the basepaths or something. "We don't want guys who can hit the ball messing up all our beautiful strateegery."

And, I guess, why would he? He lasted 15+ years in the majors (pretty much all in the deadball era) and played championship-caliber ball for guys like Frank Chance (he would later play for the Miracle Braves, too), so why would he question what worked?

Second, of course, is that even the best managers of the day were so caught up in the “scientific baseball” teamwork stuff of bunting and stealing and hitting and running and waiting for pitchers to get tired that they (literally) managed to suppress offense to a huge degree all by themselves. They must have thought 1-0 games where the a batter draws a walk, steals second, gets bunted to third and scores on a fly ball were the ideal. It’s not hard to understand why they would have despised a guy like Ruth, and the style of baseball that was soon to come along, why they weren’t just old men grousing about “Why, back in my day ...” It was the only baseball a guy like Johnny Evers had ever known.

Anyway, a few others things came to me while I was mowing the lawn.

One is that I don’t doubt that in the early part of the century, the best pitchers in the American Association probably were just as good as many of the major league pitchers. And many of those in the PCL and other top leagues were just as good too, since there wasn’t anything like the organized minor leagues that came into being later, and a really good ballplayer was just as likely to spend his career in a “minor” league.

Another possible reason for offensive suppression in this era is that it can’t have taken the pitchers long to figure out that if Frank Chance is going to get rid of a good hitter because he hits the first pitch, then grooving a first-pitch strike was likely a good idea. And we know generally that most hitters are worse hitters when they’re behind in the count.

Another is about the prevalence of group-think. It’s not hard to understand why the Cubs loved “scientific baseball”: They were great at it, one of the dominant teams of the 1900s. It’s hard to imagine, though, why the OTHER teams in the NL would go along with this and cooperate in their own demise. You’d think somebody would have thought, “To hell with this, this ain’t working, we can’t beat the Cubs at their own game, let’s try something different.”

(FWIW, the 1908 Cubs scored 3.96 runs a game and were second in the NL to the Giants, with 4.16.)

It took the better part of two decades before that happened, though.

This might be worth keeping in mind when we look at modern group-think among managers, such as bullpen use. Many of us now think it’s a silly idea to bring in your best reliever (and pay him tons of money) with nobody on base in the ninth to face the 6-7-8 hitters with a three-run lead. And maybe someday the managers will see it that way too. But it took nearly 20 years and one remarkable player to bust the “scientific baseball” mindset. We’ll see how long it takes for some of the modern mindsets to go away.

Anyway, I otherwise found the book to be remarkably dull and had to slog through it. I mean, I usually found myself looking for something else to read so I wouldn't have to finish it, and only picked it up again when there WAS nothing else. There are a number of anecdotes which strike me largely as of the "I guess you had to be there" kind, plus a fellow named Shane Tourtellotte put up a review of this book at "The Hardball Times" in August last year, in which he explored the veracity of some of the anecdotes and found several of them to be (to put it kindly) misremembered. Which is pretty odd, considering Fullerton (who mostly wrote the book) was a sportswriter who could presumably have spent a little time in his paper's morgue and gotten his facts straight.

Here's that review, and it's a good one:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/touching-on-touching-second/

Anyway, a few others things came to me while I was mowing the lawn.

(FWIW, the 1908 Cubs scored 3.96 runs a game and were second in the NL to the Giants, with 4.16.)

It took the better part of two decades before that happened, though.

Here's that review, and it's a good one:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/touching-on-touching-second/

Bucsdaddy's annual beer (mini)manifesto

bucdaddy — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:21:56 -0000

Most of you should be familiar with this, so ... here's the abbreviated version:

What names are on the ballparks in St. Louis, Milwaukee and Denver?

Do those teams need any of your financial assistance to kick Pirates ass?

Drink accordingly, my friends.

I find PNC's beer options perfectly adequate so that there's never a need to even consider such swill. There's Yuengling for the timid, Penn for the slightly adventurous and around the park you can find the likes of Dogfish Head 60, Hop Devil and Railbender Ale with which to fortify yourself during those April night games (and the playoffs in October).

Prosit!

Most of you should be familiar with this, so ... here's the abbreviated version:

What names are on the ballparks in St. Louis, Milwaukee and Denver?

Do those teams need any of your financial assistance to kick Pirates ass?

Drink accordingly, my friends.

Prosit!

Bucs Dugout Book Club: "You Know Me Al," by Ring Lardner

bucdaddy — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:33:35 -0000

This novel began life

as serialized "Letters From a Busher" in the Saturday Evening Post from 1914-1919 (according to the one-source Wiki entry). The "busher" of the title is Jack Keefe, a pitcher who lands with the White Sox in the middle part of the decade. Apparently, he's pretty good, at least to hear him tell it in letters to his friend Al, back in Bumpkin, Indiana. I say "to hear him tell it" because the novel is told entirely from Jack's POV -- we never see Al's replies -- and he is the type of guy who never gave up a run that wasn't somebody else's fault. (Though, in the context of 1914 baseball, and the small gloves and the poorly groomed fields of the day, that's not entirely unlikely.) Still, the fact that he sticks with a team building itself into a power in the real world is perhaps de facto evidence of his ability.

(Just for the fun of it, I plugged "Jack Keefe" into bb-ref and, oddly perhaps, no one of that name ever played major-league ball; there was a Jackson Keefer in the minors, but he didn't come along for another decade).

Jack is, to be kind, a punk and a hothead who (true to "busher" form) also seems hopelessly naive. This is a one-joke novel, and that's the joke: Jack never does what he says he's going to do, and always does what he says he won't do. Jack has, as Jim Bouton put it in "Ball Four," "the alligator mouth and the hummingbird ass." He is forever mouthing off to his manager and his teammates and the women who pursue him and basically everyone, and threatening to sock someone in the jaw ... but he never does. He always takes the easier way out, and bends. In fact, for all the tough front Jack puts up, everyone around him quickly learns how to play the rube, to manipulate him for their designs. For instance, after his first season with the Sox, Jack swears to Al that he will not sign a contract for a dime less than $4,000 and in the next letter brags that he got $2,800 a year for three years out of Comiskey. (On a historical note, Jack tries to use the Federal League as leverage, which was a viable though brief option at the time.)

That's the setup, and the letters and the storylines they convey are simply variations on the theme. It's like a sitcom, "The Honeymooners," for instance. A particularly funny sequence involves Jack's first two hours alone with his baby, during which he feels compelled to call a doctor three times.

The joke wears thin eventually, but the novel has several things going for it that still make it worth a read.

One, it's reasonably short.

Two is the historical context. I have little doubt that Lardner is accurately portraying MLB as it was run and played in the 1910s. Few people today would, for instance, have any memory of the fact that owners would grub any dollar they could get by playing non-World Series series after the season (the White Sox and Cubs for awhile played a city series -- Jack calls it a "serious," one of the many glorious misspellings Lardner puts in Jack's pen) for which the players would get a cut to supplement their often penurious wages but which were doubtless lucrative for the owners, or taking all-star teams on tours around the world during the winter.

Three is, of course, that this is Ring freaking Lardner, writing rings (pun intended) around many sportswriters of the day, and the use of the language is glorious. (Though he must have had a difficult time of it reminding himself to misspell and misuse many words the way a bumpkin would.)

This novel was available free (it's in public domain) on Nook through the Barnes & Noble site.

Where baseball teams go to die

bucdaddy — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 15:06:47 -0000

The evening of Gathering III.1,

after a handful of us guys (hat tip, lfhlaw) took in the Pirates' 3-0 win against the Cubs, Zadoras and I stopped in Washington, Pa., on the way back to Morgantown to see the Wild Things' game with the London (Ontario) Rippers. There were some strange doings of the kind you might associate with minor-league ball, and this is probably the lowest of the minors, the independent Frontier League.

For one thing, we walked up to the game five minutes before first pitch and got seats behind the plate, just to the right, and practically in a section by ourselves. I mean this literally. While there might have been 400 or 500 people in the stands, in our section there were maybe five or seven, counting us. The Wild Things used to pack the park every night for years, but now they're one of the worst drawing teams in the league. Apparently the Rippers are even worse, but we'll get to that.

Then ... I swear I saw this, but I still can't believe it happened. I still think I must be wrong, but ... at one point, one of the teams (think it was the Things) had a runner on second and the batter took a pitch right on his hands. I mean RIGHT on. The ball fell in the batters box and he dropped his bat and started shaking his hands, and various team officials came out to check on him, and also on the call, which apparently was that the ball also got part of the bat and was therefore a foul ball. While everybody was considering all this, I looked out to second base, and the runner was trotting over to third, where he began conferring with the third-base coach. And then ... he just stayed there. (The base ump seemed to be concentrating on what was happening at the plate.) Now if he was at third base to begin with, what did he go back to second for? He must have been at second. And the batter stayed in the game and eventually made an out.

I pointed all this out to Zadoras. He said, "How would you report that?" I said, "Umpire's indifference?"

The Wild Things won on a walk-off hit by a guy named Gus Benusa, and the players did the pigpile thing on him, which made for a fun ending.

But the REAL weirdness came a couple days later, when we weren't watching:

http://espn.go.com/blog/playbook/fandom/post/_/id/7535/london-rippers-join-graveyard-of-sports

Another story I read said the Rippers and Things pulled off an eight-player trade right before midnight, (presumably) four of the better Rippers for four Things, who almost immediately became free agents. And now the league has cobbled together a barnstorming team for the rest of the season.

Can you imagine? I doubt life in the Frontier League is all that thrilling to start with, except for the hours you're at the ballpark, and how much money can they be paying you to play? Any life in baseball is probably better than the life I'm living, but still ... what a life, eh?

Speaking of Ron Santo ...

bucdaddy — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 15:51:52 -0000

I put this up on the mothership, but haven't gotten any feedback, which I take to mean I'm absolutely right.

But just for confirmation purposes, I thought I'd toss it up here as well and let y'all poke sticks at it, as y'all do so very well. And yes, for someone who doesn't care a whit about the HoF, I spend way too much time writing about the HoF. But I do it because I WANT to care and, as a baseball fan, I SHOULD care about the HoF. But I find it hard to believe in the legitimacy of the HoF when the voting system seems to have been devised by some totalitarian madman, a Kim Jong Il, not to elect the best candidate possible but to remind everyone who still wields the power. I find it hard to believe in a system that can't get itself together and make a decision in time for a 70-year-old man to see himself go into the Hall before he's freaking DEAD. And that pisses me off.

Anyhoo, have at it:

HOW BUCDADDY FIXES THE HOF VOTE:

1. Institute some kind of national voting system that allows players and coaches, ex-players and coaches, broadcasters and (what an idea!) fans to be involved in formulating a list of 12 finalists eligible for a vote. There’s really no reason for the likes of Duane Kuiper to appear on an HoF ballot. Cut that shit out.

2. Since the BBWAA will certainly be loath to give up the power it wields, no matter how ethically unsound it may be for the members to vote on lucrative awards such as the HoF, MVP and Cy Young, let the BBWAA retain the final say.

3. Announce the list of 12 eligible players in December, in a TV extravangaza in the dead of winter when there’s no other baseball talk, so it can interrupt the nonstop onslaught of football and basketball.

4. Line up the eligible players, one per month: January, Barry Bonds. February, Mike Piazza. March, Roger Clemens …

5. Spark a nationwide monthlong discussion of Barry Bonds’ merits and demerits as a candidate. On the fourth Sunday of the month, stage a two-hour TV show (can’t imagine ESPN wouldn’t jump on this), the first hour a career retrospective, the next half hour a debate or an interview with the candidate or something.

6. In the last half hour, tally the votes live, with the candidate watching and commenting while the names of the voters and their votes are displayed. That's my favorite part.

7. One vote: In or out. If you’re in, you go in the Hall. If you’re out, you stay out for a minimum of five years, at which time you can be considered again only if you survive the original process to get on the list of 12 finalists.

8. Next month: Mike Piazza. Repeat.

Because it’s also beyond stupid that because the pool of possible votes is finite, players who have little or nothing to do with each others’ candidacies for the Hall are forced to compete with each other for votes. Why should a vote for Barry Bonds take away a vote for someone else? Why can’t Someone Else be judged on his own merits? What does Piazza's candidacy have to do with Schilling's, or Schilling's with Bonds'? As an alternative to the terrific system I've advocated here, how about letting the voters vote for as many players as they feel are Hall worthy, and then tote up the votes INDIVIDUALLY? Then every player who gets 75 percent of his own vote, rather than 75 percent of the pool for the total overall vote, gets in?

Discuss.

Gathering III.1 update

bucdaddy — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 17:53:07 -0000

Seats secured.

We will be in Section 321, Row N. I understand it will be sunny there, so mind your SPF.

I was unable to get the 2-for-1 deal on the $24 seats (they were sold out of them), which are down the lines and in the back sections on the first level. They weren't going to be great, but I thought, $12, what the hell. Instead, these are in the top deck, but close to being right behind the plate. They were $16. If you can afford to kick that back, cool, but I sold you guys on this on the premise that they would be $12, so if you hold me to that, that's cool too.

One of the mystery guests already had better seats than these, and he's going to use them, though he will meet us around noon at Rivertown, in the DelMonte Building. So the six of us in 321 are as follows:

Zadoras

Goldneck

ifhlaw

IAPiratesFan

Mystery Guest

FYI

The Bucs Dugout Book Club" "Commy: The Life Story of Charles A. Comiskey, the 'Old Roman,'" by Gustaf W. Axelson

bucdaddy — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 03:49:41 -0000

"Formerly sport was not regarded as a proper calling for young men.

It is beginning to assume its rightful place in society. To me baseball is as honorable as any other business. It is the most honest pastime in the world. It has to be or it could not last a season out. Crookedness and baseball do not mix. It has become immeasurably more popular as the years have gone by. It will be greater yet. This year, 1919, is the greatest season of them all."

-- Charles A. Comiskey, quoted in "Commy"

"The game was saved by two men. One was Comiskey's ally, now his bitterest enemy, Ban Johnson. The other was a man Comiskey could never have comprehended, a man with a great lust for everything except money. Put Joe Jackson in the Hall of Fame? How about if we kick Comiskey out? Bury them all in a common grave, and put up a marker with an eleven-word epitaph. They all wanted the money, and they all wanted it all."

-- Bill James, essay, "A Decade Wrapped in Greed," "The [Original] Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract"

***

Jeebus, where to start with this thing?

Obviously, knowing what's coming, it's impossible not to pick out the ironies in quotes such as the first one here while reading this book, a too-glowing portrait of one of the game's pioneer players, managers and owners.

But it's also tough to come away from it reviling Comiskey as much as James did 60 years after the Black Sox.

Comiskey's story, at least as the author tells it, was one of those now-cliched deals where a boy stops in the middle of his work day to initiate himself in the joys of baseball, much to his father's dismay ... You know how this goes. However, this boy eventually made good. Comiskey was a key player in many events in the early days of organized baseball. He was a so-so offensive first baseman (though somewhat innovative; he may have been the first first baseman to play off the bag, covering more ground) for St. Louis in the American Association, starting in 1882. He had a season in 1887 where he drove in 103 runs and stole 117 bases, but mostly he was a submediocre hitter..

However, he had the smarts and the drive to become a player-manager in 1883, at age 23 (!), and guided the Brown Stockings to four straight pennants and a World Series championship. Oh, you didn't know there was a World Series before 1903? That's one of the things this book is very good for, providing some history of the game before the so-called "modern era" line was drawn at 1900. What was it like to play ball in the 19th century? Comiskey is a particularly good subject to place at the center of that story, because he was in the middle of much of the more colorful history of that era. He played and managed for the often blustery and clueless Chris Von der Ahe, jumped to the Players League in 1890, and eventually wound up his playing days in the National League, with the original pro team, the Cincinnati Reds.

His road to owning the White Sox is detailed here too, of course, and I don't know that I've ever seen a more detailed description of what it was like for two teams of Major League all-stars to take a lengthy barnstorming trip around the world one off-season, a trip, it appears, largely financed by Comiskey.

That's where the portrait painted by Axelson, apparently a longtime sportswriter of the day who claims some objectivity but clearly adores Comiskey, gets muddled. Comiskey seems to have no problem tossing his money around (his generosity is cited several times here) for everything, one supposes, EXCEPT his players. As evidence of the players' supposed financial contentment, Axelson notes that no one on the White Sox jumped to the Federal League (I assume this is true, without researching further). But James wrote that Comiskey's teams "drew the largest crowds in baseball during this period ... yet the White Sox were one of the lowest-paying teams." His view is that this eventually soured some of the players to the point they sold the World Series.

That's not necessarily a contradiction in his personality, since Comiskey could well have been extravagant about everything except for paying the help well. But there's no explanation for the dichotomy in this book, because, of course, the fix and the rationale behind it hadn't been exposed yet (and whether Axelson, given his clear bias, would have been the right reporter to explain it is questionable anyway).

Unless ... you read that quote from Comiskey as a pre-emptive statement about what he somehow knows is coming. The book was published in 1919, and therefore touches only briefly on that World Series. Was Comiskey aware at the time that something was fishy? Or was he just trying to oversell the game's virtues to the ticket-buying public? He must have heard rumors. After the series, he offered a reward of $20,000 to anyone who could provide information about the rumored fix.

Unfortunately, perhaps, this story ends before that one begins. It would have been interesting to see how Axelson spun this episode in his hero's life.

The Bucs Dugout Book Club: "Pitching in a Pinch," by Christy Mathewson

bucdaddy — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 17:01:36 -0000

Some of you (such as Charlie) know that I'm something of a technophobe.

I don't have a cellphone or an iPod. Hell, I don't even like to answer my home landline when it rings. It's not necessarily that I'm afraid of new technology, or I guess I wouldn't be on these here Interwebs. It's more 1) my idea of hell is never being out of touch, anywhere, and 2) I'm kinda cheap, bordering on penurious, and the idea of buying some new gadget every few weeks to keep up with the advances ... well, I still have components of a stereo system I bought in college 35 years ago. That should give you an idea.

So when I got a Nook for my birthday, I was somewhat less than thrilled. "Um ... gee .... yeah, this is .... well, great. Thanks!" It was free, so that eliminated one concern, but I'd still have to learn to use the damn thing so I'd be able to answer the gift-givers' (my dad and stepmom) inevitable "How do you like it?" with "It's pretty cool."

As it turns out, it's pretty cool.

I had a service issue trying to get the thing set up, which led me to an excellent customer care guy at Barnes & Noble. "Did anyone tell you about the free books?" he asked. This got my attention. Free? "Yeah, there's like 1.8 million free books you can download." I assumed this would be in the user's guide. "Heh. They don't tell you this stuff because they want to SELL you books."

Now we're talking.

So he showed me how to search the B&N inventory of public domain and other free titles, and I guess it was inevitable that soon I would type in "$0.00 baseball." Up came 142 titles. Most of them were reference works, guides and such, but there, too, was "Pitching in a Pinch," which I had heard was pretty good but which I'd never seen anywhere. Your library is unlikely to be stocking a 100-year-old baseball book (published in 1912), so I was liking this Nook thing.

"Pitching" is a delight, start to finish. Mathewson was an educated man (Bucknell) in a still fairly rough-and-tumble game, so I have no problem believing he actually wrote his own book. (There were, of course, no tape recorders for him to tell stories into so someone else could transcribe the book in 1912.)

It's a treasure trove of inside strategy and tactics, for pitching and general game play, as they were understood in the dead-ball era (so, lots of bunting, of course). Mathewson seems to love talking about and using the inside game, and as a New York Giant in the 1900s he was incredibly lucky in that regard. The central relationship in a book that doesn't deal much with relationships, except the player to the game, is between Mathewson and John McGraw. Besides being an educated man, Mathewson was also a true gentleman. In fact, I found a listing for him for the nickname "The Christian Gentleman." McGraw, of course, ate players for breakfast and then breathed fire. But the two loved winning (or, at least in McGraw's case, HATED losing) and, as I noted, the strategies of the game, so they were made for each other. Mathewson even seems to have a sort of man-crush on McGraw, and perhaps the feeling was mutual. Their respect for each other, at least, is obvious, plus they needed each other in a winning effort.

True to his nickname, Mathewson manages to keep even the mildest of curses out of the text, though he alludes to some incidents where the language gets salty, so I'm guessing the McGraw quotes are highly edited. Still, the manager's intensity comes through. McGraw must have spent virtually every waking moment thinking about winning, and how to win, and who to use to win, and ... And some of his insights would do Sabrmetricians proud. In always looking for an edge, and often finding one, he was ahead of his time.

Mathewson's book is also unexpectedly funny:

---

The Boston club lost eighteen straight games in the season of 1910, and as the team was leaving the Polo Grounds after having dropped four in a row, making the eighteen, I asked Tenney: "How does it seem, Fred, to be on a club that has lost eighteen straight?"

"It's what General Sherman said war is," replied Tenney, who seldom swears. "But for all-around entertainment I would like to see John McGraw on a team which had dropped fifteen or sixteen in a row."

As if Tenney had put a curse on us, the Giants hit a losing streak the next day ...McGraw was slowly going crazy. ... After the sixth bad one had gone against us and McGraw had not spoken a friendly word to any one for a week, he called the players around him in the clubhouse.

"I ought to let you all out and get a gang of high school boys in here to defend the civic honor of this great and growing city whose municipal pride rests on your shoulders," he said. "But I'm not going to do it. Hereafter we will cut out all 'inside' stuff and play straight baseball. Every man will go up there and hit the ball just as you see it done on the lots."

Into this oration was mixed a judicious amount of sulphur.

---

Anyway, the next day the Giants won, 17-1. Spell broken, and McGraw a genius again.

The book is full of delightful tales like this, and of characters like the seemingly perpetually drunk Bugs Raymond:

---

When we got to Dallas cocktails were served with dinner and all the ball-players left them untouched, McGraw enforcing the old rule that lips that touch "licker" shall never moisten a spitball for him. "Bugs" was missed after supper and some one found him out in the kitchen licking up all the discarded Martinis. That was the occasion of his first fine of the season, and after that, as "Bugs" himself admitted, "life for him was just one fine after another."

---

Plus, how could you resist reading a lengthy first-hand account of the 1908 pennant race from a player's perspective, of the "Merkle's Boner" game (and the way McGraw handled Merkle afterward) and the Giants-Cubs playoff for the NL pennant that followed? (Mathewson noted that several of the Giants had decided they were robbed in the Merkle game and were going to refuse to participate in a playoff, but they talked themselves out of it when they went to see the Giants' owner, John T. Brush, about their concerns. (Brush left it up to them.)

This is just terrific stuff not just for people interested in baseball history but in the game itself. Much of the discussion and many of the people could occupy major-league dugouts today.

Highly recommended.

No, no, it's not THAT guy

bucdaddy — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:13:51 -0000

Double-take time at the PG today: Obituary: Derrick Bell / Law professor and racial advocate

Doumit's injuries

bucdaddy — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 15:21:05 -0000

(reposted from the comments of the Doumit thread, cause I think it's an interesting question and didn't want it to get buried)

Are guys who are injury prone "unlucky"?Or is there something in their technique or skill set or genetic disposition that makes them susceptible to injury?

I don’t like dismissing stuff as “bad luck.” It implies there’s nothing you can do about it, it’s just a random roll of the dice, and so you don’t even bother to look for ways a player might keep himself from getting hurt. If your best hitter was, say, your center fielder, but he had a habit of running into walls when chasing fly balls, so that he was constantly hurt and out of the lineup, you’d try persuading him that having his bat in the lineup all the time was more important than the three or four balls he has an outside chance of turning into outs rather than doubles, right?

Doumit’s had a ton of injuries, as implied1 so helpfully shows by his research, and certainly foul tips off the hand and stuff like that are occupational hazards for catchers. But then, why don’t ALL catchers spend hundreds of days on the DL? What are catchers who catch 130 games a year doing differently than Doumit? What was Jason Kendall doing different? What did Pudge do different? Were that just extraordinarily “lucky” or was it something they were doing, or not doing, that Doumit might learn?

An anniversary you might not hear much about

bucdaddy — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 05:26:52 -0000

Today is the 40th anniversary of the game Dock Ellis no-hit San Diego, supposedly under the influence of LSD.
Some people, including Bill James, have questioned whether this actually happened, but to me the amazing thing is there have been several songs written about the supposed feat, including this one:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg9DXRP4Ywo

And this one:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG2SPjcKM4M

And this one:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYtRZGMpdt0

And probably some more.

It even inspired a Robin Williams routine:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO281JqXQdc&feature=related

It should not go unnoted, is what I'm saying.

Dock Ellis, RIP.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg9DXRP4Ywo

And this one:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG2SPjcKM4M

And this one:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYtRZGMpdt0

And probably some more.

It even inspired a Robin Williams routine:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO281JqXQdc&feature=related

It should not go unnoted, is what I'm saying.

Dock Ellis, RIP.

Back from the bushes

bucdaddy — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 17:41:41 -0000

You haven't heard much from me for a week.

That's because I was visiting Bucdaughter in Connecticut and I made a deliberate decision to avoid the Internet while I was there, which I managed to do for all of about a half hour (I checked in here Saturday). I still managed to follow the Bucs old-school (TV, newspapers) and was glad to see y'all have been doing an excellent job at getting us into an actual (I can't believe I'm typing this in July) pennant race.

I did manage to fit in a ballgame on our trip. I saw the New Britain Rock Cats and the Harrisburg Senators play on Friday, at nifty New Britain Stadium, where nearly 6,000 people turned out for baseball and fireworks on Friday.

First off, minor league games apparently don't mean minor-league prices anymore, or maybe it's just that everything is more expensive in New England. Decent beers (Long Trail Ale, Sam Adams and the like) were IIRC $5.75 and that old pricing standby, the hot dog, was $2.75 for a short one. But hey, parking was free and tickets were $5, so there's that. On to the baseball.

The most notable thing, I suppose, in hindsight was that I probably missed seeing Bryce Harper by about three days. During the game itself, I didn't see much of anybody who looked like an actual prospect except for a Rock Cats guy named Parmalee, who looks like he can hit a little.

I did see (for sheer amusement value) 1, a first baseman lose a throw in the sun; 2, perhaps the shortest pro player since Eddie Gaedel (New Britain infielder Chris Cates, who is [generously, I think; even with a helmet on, he barely came up to the third base coach's armpit] listed as 5-foot-3 and 145 and played third base for an inning; Harrisburg had a short middle infield too); 3, both teams load the bases with nobody out and fail to score, and 4, the ever-popular walkoff wild pitch.

Also in attendance was Pirates alum Jimmy Barthmaier, who started an inning for the Senators that turned into a disaster and then didn't. I don't recall how the leadoff man got on, but the second batter hit a DP grounder that the second baseman booted. The next batter bunted, and Barthmaier did that thing I hate, he tried to throw out the lead runner and didn't. When the next batter grounded a single through the hole at short, Barthmaier was done. Fortunately for him, that was one of the innings where a team had the bases loaded and nobody out and didn't score (at least, didn't score any more).

The weather was great, even a little chilly around 10 p.m., and there was a fireworks show after.

Good times.

Prospect watch (not ours)

bucdaddy — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 16:44:38 -0000

Next Friday I'll be going to see

the New Britain Rock Cats play host to Harrisburg. Was wondering if those of you who follow the Eastern League might inform as to who the legitimate players to watch on either team will be.

The back story to this, as I understand it: New Britain annually put on a gigantic Fourth of July Fireworks display (I saw some of this show last year, and it was a thing to behold) that the city says it can no longer afford, so the Rock Cats are picking up the slack with fireworks Friday and Saturday. In a neat twist, New Britain residents get in for $1 and everyone else (like us) pays $5.

Note to Red Sox: You're in OUR house, suckahs!

bucdaddy — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 05:03:33 -0000

I'm sensing some defeatism around these parts for this weekend's titanic series, and I ... WON'T ... HAVE IT!

Sure, we just recently rejoined the majors leagues. But we are playing good ball. We have a fine pitching staff. And it's about damn time we started showing some attitude about it.

So the Red Sox are good. Big fat hairy deal. So are the Phillies, and we took them for two in Our House. Bring it on, Bosox, and we'll show you the same kick-in-the-ass courtesy or die trying.

We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

I'm sensing some defeatism around these parts for this weekend's titanic series, and I ... WON'T ... HAVE IT!

Sure, we just recently rejoined the majors leagues. But we are playing good ball. We have a fine pitching staff. And it's about damn time we started showing some attitude about it.

So the Red Sox are good. Big fat hairy deal. So are the Phillies, and we took them for two in Our House. Bring it on, Bosox, and we'll show you the same kick-in-the-ass courtesy or die trying.

The DH and strategy

bucdaddy — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:53:23 -0000

Vlad and I got into a debate the other day about the DH.

I said I could live with the DH in the National League in returning for balancing the number of teams in each division. Vlad takes the "death before DH" stance, and I admit I once held that attitude myself. His argument is that the DH reduces the strat-ee-gery involved in the game. When do you bunt? When do you pinch hit? When do you change pitchers?

I contended that much of what we think of as strategy is really not strategy at all. If your pitcher comes up in the fifth inning of a 2-1 game and there's one out and a runner on first, the pitcher bunts, or tries to. This is pretty much automatic 99.9 percent of the time, and to me there's no strategy involved in automatic decisions. To me, strategy is an argument. If you and a friend are at a game and you say, "I'd hit for this guy with player X," and your friend says, "You're crazy, let him stay in and bat," well, NOW you're talking strategy.

Anyway, I decided to see what the numbers say to determine if there's more strategy in the NL than the AL. What would we consider to be strategic points quantifiable by numbers?

One might be the sacrifice bunt, for which information is available in bb-ref.

Another might be the intentional walk, ditto.

(A third might be the number of pinch hitters used, but oddly I didn't see a breakdown for that on bb-ref. If anyone knows of a location for the information -- number of pinch hitters used by league, especially if it has the numbers broken down by batting order position -- please steer me there. Similarly, there may well be a breakdown there somewhere for sac hits by batting position for each league, but I couldn't find that either.)

So let's say that strategy is a form of argument between opposing managers. One would bunt in situation X, the other wouldn't. Now obviously, there's a big difference in the raw number of sac hits between the leagues. In 2010 NL batters recorded 1006 and AL batters recorded 538. So on the surface it looks like there's twice as much bunt strat-ee-gery going on in the NL, and that Vlad is right.

However, I'm going to go way out on a limb and in the absence of stats suppose the difference is almost entirely attributable to pitchers sacrificing, which to me is not a strategic move at all, not if everyone would bunt in the same situation.

And it's not like there's NO strategy at all in the AL. It's not like the sac bunt has disappeared entirely. And you could make the case (and I'll try) that in the AL there's a wider range of argument over when to bunt.

In the NL in 2010, the team that sacrificed the fewest number of times had 35 and the team with the most had 85. That's a ratio of about 2.5:1. In the AL, the range was 16 to 53, closer to 3.5:1. I know there are some other factors in all this, but for the most part, in 2010, the argument about whether the bunt is a good strategy was more pronounced in the AL.

In 2009, there were 1,138 sacs in the NL, 497 in the AL. The NL range was 54-100, less than 2:1. The AL range was 13-53, or better than 4:1.

In 2008, there were 1,049 sacs in the NL (49-90, again less than 2:1). In the AL there were 477 (23-52, or better than 2:1).

There appears to be more of an argument going on in the AL about sac bunting philosophies, hence more strategy. And don't forget, there are much less quantifiable strategic decisions that go on when your ninth batter is a real hitter versus a pitcher. You have hit and run options you don't have with a pitcher. You have stolen base options.

Yeah, you have pinch hitting options too, and I'd guess if I found the numbers I'd see that the NL uses a lot more pinch hitters than the AL. This only makes sense, but again, is it really strat-ee-gery to hit for your pitcher in the sixth inning when you're behind 3-1? I'd argue no, because 99 percent of managers would. In the AL, if you're behind 3-1 in the sixth and your No. 9 hitter comes up, you really have a decision to make, not least because you'd also have to replace the guy in the field. (You also have a tougher decision to make there about when to remove your starter, since the decision is not forced on you by the starter coming up to bat. It's up to you to decide when he's finished.) Anyway, I'm just supposing here without any numbers to look at.

One other stat I thought I'd look at was intentional walks. Now you might suppose there would be more IBBs in the NL than the AL, and you would be right (part of that is because there are more teams in the NL, of course, but never mind that for now). Without the batting order position IBB numbers to crunch, I'd suppose that's partly because you might be most inclined to walk the No. 8 hitter to GET to the pitcher and thus force the type of move we discussed above. But that's often a no-brainer too. In the AL, if you choose to walk a batter, it's to get to another real hitter, and then you open your strategic decision to the possibility of greater criticism. Almost nobody is going to be upset with you if you walk a guy to pitch to a pitcher.

Anyway, in 2010 NL pitchers issued 759 IBBs (27-78, just under 3:1) and AL pitchers issued 457 (16-50, just over 3:1).

In 2009, NL pitchers issued 770 IBBs (37-76, just over 2:1) and AL pitchers 409 (16-39, about 2.5:1).

In 2008, NL pitchers issued 780 IBBs -- that number is remarkably consistent, isn't it? -- (21-71, or about 3.5:1), and AL pitchers issued 530 (23-49, or just over 2:1).

So we have kind of a split decision here. Managers in the two leagues seem to come down to about the same range on the IBB. The argument is a narrower one.

One other point I'll try to make though, and let's be honest: Unless you're watching a clown car infield defense where every bunt is an adventure, I'd argue that the sac bunt and the IBB are among the dullest plays in the sport, just from an aesthetic standpoint.

Also, with the former you're giving up an out to move a runner 90 feet, and I believe the tables say that in general this DECREASES your chances of scoring (though the fact that out is a pitcher who likely would have been an out anyway kind of mitigates that a little). So there's twice as much bunting going on in the NL, and it's probably decreasing the likelihood of scoring, and this is a point in FAVOR of strategy?

There's more intentional walking going on in the NL, adding a baserunner for the opponent, generally increasing the possibility of your opponent scoring, and this is a point in FAVOR of strategy?

FWIW, I have a hardback copy of the original Bill James Historical Abstract, and on page 260 is an article titled "1973: DH rule increases strategy," in which he made pretty much the same arguments I just did. Disagree with me all you want, but it likely means you're disagreeing with James too.

Bucdaddy's annual beer (mini) manifesto

bucdaddy — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:57:41 -0000

Most of you should be familiar with this, so ...

here's the abbreviated version:

What name is on the ballpark in St. Louis, Milwaukee and Denver?

Do those teams need any of your financial assistance to kick Pirates ass?

Drink accordingly, my friends.

Prosit!

It never gets old

bucdaddy — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 18:21:22 -0000

Watching Maz run the bases on 10/13/60.

Went to the Waterfront last night to see Game 7 on the big screen, and you know what? That's a hell of a
ballgame, especially the last two innings, when everything weird happens.

The DVD goes on sale today and MLB Network shows it tomorrow, and I can't
recommend highly enough that you see it one way or another (especially with
someone you care about; I took my dad, and he told me about being in the
Navy at the time and rigging up a way to pull in the signal to the ship --
he was the guy up high adjusting the makeshift "attenna" and he arrived in
front of the screen just in time to see the ball hit Kubek in the throat.
I'm 53 and dad's 72 and I'd never heard that story before.).

Stuff happened that I don't think I knew about or thought much about before. For example, on the pitch before he homered, Hal Smith almost certainly struck out on a checked swing (a sort of rueful chuckle went through the crowd in the theater: "Ooooo -- hahaha!"). But in 1960 the catcher couldn't point to first base and ask that ump for a second opinion. My memory is that few if any checked swings in the game got called strikes, which maybe helps explain something else I don't think I knew: There wasn't one strikeout in the game.

One thing you notice almost immediately is how fast they played the game.
The hitter gets in the batter's box and he STAYS there, no stepping out and
pissing around with the straps on his gloves and checking his cup and all
that stuff everybody does for 30 seconds between every damn pitch now. For
one thing, nobody was wearing gloves (I assume they were all wearing cups).
Face was delivering pitches every 9-10 seconds, and that really, really
served to ratchet up the drama because things keep moving.

The drama ... it's amazing how you can feel the tension build even when
you're certain of the outcome. There are short segments every three innings
or so where Bob Costas talks with several of the players from the game while
they're watching it, and at one point in the eighth or ninth inning they
inset a close-up of Bobby Richardson turning to Dick Groat and, with a big
smile, saying, "This really IS exciting, isn't it?" It sure is.

And if you still need a deal-sealer: 4 1/2 innings of Bob Prince (plus his
postgame interviews, which are priceless) and 4 1/2 innings of Mel Allen
doing play by play, and lots of views of Forbes Field.

Props, Giants, and the 30-year cycle

bucdaddy — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 14:12:47 -0000

I would have been OK with whoever won.

Because neither team had pulled down a championship in 56 years (Giants) or ever (Rangers), and that brings me to one of my pet theories. Bear with me, I even complicate myself with this one.

Every expansion (as baseball went through in the 1990s) adds to the potential misery of teams at the bottom and, by extension, their fans. Consider: Back when there were 16 major-league teams, if world championships were randomly distributed without regard to things like financial resources or talent, then teams on average could expect to win a world championship every 16 years or so. With championships in 1909, 1925, 1960, 1971 and 1979, the Pirates were right on schedule: 80 years divided by five titles = one every 16 years (for purposes of this exercise, we're ignoring the expansions of the early and late 1960s).

Meanwhile, some teams (Yankees) won more than their share of titles while other teams (Browns) won fewer. And every time the Yankees won an extra title or three or 10 in the same 16-year cycle, they deprived the Browns, the Cubs, the Red Sox of one, to the point where some of these franchises were going 80 or 100 years (and counting) between world championships.

Follow? OK.

Now the Cubs and Red Sox used to be outliers as franchises that would go that long without a championship, even back in the days when there were just 16 teams. A drought like the Pirates endured between 1925 and 1960 was almost unimaginable.

Today, we have 30 teams. If championships were randomly distributed without regard to resources, all things being equal, everyone would get a championship more or less every 30 YEARS. Think about that a second. If you could devise the fairererist system possible in MLB (and, for that matter, the NFL, NBA and NHL), the levelest playing field, it would mean every team's fans would have to wait 30 years between titles, almost as long as the drought the Pirates endured in what was considered to be a really, really long stretch between championships.

Now, consider that even with the levelest possible playing field, it's entirely possible and probable that one team (at least) will win a second championship in the 30-year window, through random luck. That means some other team will not get a championship in the current 30-year window, will be pushed out and will have to wait until the next 30-year window to get lucky. Same goes for every second or third extra championship one team earns -- or if more than one team lucks into more than one championship in that window. Now you're talking five, six, seven teams or more getting shoved back into the next 30-year cycle. And, inevitably, in that next 30-year cycle, through random good luck, one or more franchises will win more than one championship, and as many more teams will get pushed back to the NEXT 30-year cycle. And if that number happens to include one or more of the teams that didn't get a championship in the FIRST 30-year cycle ...

Well, you can see where this is headed. Pretty soon going 80 years (Red Sox) or 100 years and counting (Cubs) between championships will not be unusual. It will be the norm. And, of course, all thing are not equal in baseball. So when you have a team like the Yankees winning something like 26 championships in 100 years, or even the Cardinals copping nine, that means a lot of other teams are going to wait a very very VERY long time to win one.

At least as long as 56 years.

This is why (I believe, and this all kind of comes back to the "fairerer" fanpost of yesterday) we've been given wild cards and six (or eight NFL) divisions, why sports have had to create so many pseudo championships (think of the phrase "winning the wild card" -- it's not really winning anything, it's a consolation prize), because do you think a team that goes 90 or 120 or 150 years without a championship in its sport is going to have many followers left by then? How patient would Pirates fans be if the team didn't win another championship until 2079? Would there even BE a franchise in Pittsburgh under those circumstances?

So we're expected to content ourselves with "winning" wild cards and "winning" divisions which are nice and all but really have little relevance to the effing purpose of the sport, which is to win the WORLD SERIES (Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, what have you). And we buy into it. I mean, I suppose I'd party like it's 2099 if the Pirates won a division. But really, if you tried to wrap your head around how extremely hard it is anymore, how much the odds are stacked against you, to win an actual championship in any sport, logically you'd spend your money someplace else.

So props to the Giants, who cracked through the cycles against enormous odds to win a championship for the first time since they (and the Dodgers) were still in freaking New York. It could easily be another 56 years before they see another one. Tim Lincecum will be 82 and I'll be dead.

You know what would be even more fairerer?

bucdaddy — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:13:49 -0000

Bud Selig, to the AP:

"Is eight out of 30 [teams in the playoffs] enough? Is that fair? And that's the basic question here, at least for me."

Asked his opinion of 10 playoff teams, Selig responded, "It's more fair than eight."

"Two more would give us 10, and 10 out of 30 I still think is a rational mix."

Dear Bud: You know what would be MOST fair? 30 teams in the playoffs, and Game 7 of the World Series on New Year's Day! Why should football have all the fun?

Another stupid save

bucdaddy — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:33:03 -0000

The Mad Capper

did everything in his power to blow one for the Twins today:

1/3 inning, three hits, a walk and a run.

He got the out because a Rangers runner rounded third and went back to the base, but not before appearing to touch hands with his third base coach. The umpires ruled interference and called him out, ending the game.

For this stellar performance, Matt Capps got a save.

(Extra words)

Won't see a "save" like this every day

bucdaddy — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 02:05:02 -0000

Carlos Marmol

of the Cubs was credited with a save tonight for pitching 1.1 innings, giving up two hits, two walks and three earned runs in a 5-4 win. Apparently he got the last out of the eighth with the potential tying or winning run on deck (one of the prerequisites for a save), then crapped the bed in the ninth but still finished the game (another prerequisite).

Somehow, I don't think the rule was intended to reward an outing this bad, but there you go.

I probably need some more words to get this to go up, so here they are: words words words words words ...

Of all people

bucdaddy — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:52:47 -0000

Joggin' Ronny Paulino

gets 50 games off for using PEDs.

I'll pause here while you all finish laughing.

*waits waits waits waits waits waits waits waits waits*

Done yet? No? OK ...

*waits waits waits waits waits waits waits waits waits*

How about now? No?

*waits waits waits waits wwaits waits waits waits waitzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ...*

*yawn*

*checks clock, sees 3:37 a.m.*

Still at it, boys? It's OK, I have another nine words to use.

Ladies and gentlemen, how DOES he do it?

bucdaddy — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 05:31:22 -0000

My last five games at PNC Park:

Pirates 6, Cardinals 5 (win with two runs in the bottom of the ninth)

Pirates 11, Dodgers 1 (Andy LaRoche 5-5, 13 total bases; the Duke 8 2/3 game)

Pirates 11, Dodgers 5 (opening day 2010)

Pirates 12, Astros 6 (The Gathering)

Pirates 7, Marlins 1

*--This is where a 4-0 loss to the Reds would have gone if I hadn't had to attend my father-in-law's funeral. Thanks, Pap!

Note to Vlad

bucdaddy — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:33:02 -0000

Paul Popovich was the 2B I was trying to think of. Born Flemington, W.Va.

Homeboy

bucdaddy — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:01:05 -0000

It's possible

that a player from Morgantown/WVU will go is the first round today. Jedd Gyorko is WVU's all-time leader in a number of offensive categories (he's been in the program three years). This season he turned up his power and cranked 19 homers in 57 games. He's a shortstop but projects more as a second baseman or third baseman.

Just wondered if there are any other homebodys with as good a shot at going high up.

Oh, and it's a freaking shame that Duquesne is cutting its program after, what, something like 118 years?

What a week for pitchers

bucdaddy — Fri, 14 May 2010 14:45:29 -0000

This isn't me offering any opinion,

Just pointing out that this week there's been a perfect game and two other one-hit no-walk games (Cueto, Latos) where the pitcher faced just 28 batters. And it's only Friday.

75 words long ... 75 words long ... 75 words long ... 75 words long ... 75 words long... 75 words long ... 75 words long ... 75 words long ... 75 words long ... 75 words long ... 75 words long ... beer is good.

April 11, 2010

bucdaddy — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:31:55 -0000

PHOENIX, Ariz. (AP)

Distracted by reports in January that Pittsburgh Penguins owners Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle tried to buy their team, the Pittsburgh Pirates stretched their record-setting season-opening losing streak to nine games Sunday with an 87-0 no-hit loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

It was the sixth time the Pirates have been no-hit this season, but represented some improvement in that it was the first time they held an opponent to double digits in runs.

"I just haven't been able to focus on my job for two months," said center fielder Andrew McCutchen, whose batting average fell to .011 with another 0-for-4 day. "Every time I go up to the plate, I start thinking about how cool it would be if Mario were signing my paychecks. I mean, the man was a superstar! One of the greats! His autograph on the check would be worth more than the check itself, so I wouldn't cash a single one. How cool would that be? It's just been tough to think of anything else. That's what happened on those eight fly balls I dropped too."

Starting pitcher Ross Ohlendorf gave up 36 runs in 1 2/3 innings but actually saw his ERA come down.

"It's tough," Ohlendorf said. "Ever since the Brangelina breakup I just feel my mind wandering out there on the mound. I keep worrying about all their children. Whose nanny is watching them tonight? Are their material needs being met? And what about Jen? Will she make a move on Brad again? How am I supposed to work ..."

"Hey!" right fielder Garrett Jones (.014) shouted from across the clubhouse. "Anybody see what Tiger shot in the last round of the Masters today? Huh? 61!?! Man, I don't know how that dude does it with all the, y'know, distracions he's got going on. He's like the ... the Yankees of golf or something."

Asked about his team's state of mind and when it might score a run this year, manager John Russell said, "Hmmmm? What? Oh, sorry, I SQUIRREL! ... was a little distracted there. What was the question?"

Ah, hell, here we go

bucdaddy — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 14:57:39 -0000

The season just went into the toilet before it started

Dejan writes in today's PG:

"For the Pirates, the internal focus will remain on preparing for the season that opens April 5. But, should this ownership story play out further -- and even if it does not -- it could make for quite the distraction." So expect batting averages to plummet and ERAs to soar while our players spend more time in little clubhouse klatches, bitching and fretting and worrying about who signs their massive paychecks, and less time in the batting cage and the practice mound, trying to win and keep a major-league job. Yes, this will be a huge distraction -- as long as media types keep pounding them and hounding them with questions about a possible ownership change. They'll lose focus, they'll lose concentration, they'll want to shove media types into lockers and shut the doors. And if that isn't bad enough, they'll be out there at the plate or on the mound, not thinking about whether to throw or swing at a curve or fastball or change but about how much harder they could throw or how much farther they could hit a ball if only Ron Burkle were signing the checks. I see another 17 years of darkness settling over the franchise, friends. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." All because somebody made an offer to buy the team and was ignored.* * Please note that it doesn't matter whether the story plays out further, or not! Conveniently for the sportswriter, he can beat this story to death and write about "distractions" either way. And it doesn't matter how the team performs either. If the team goes 30-130, blame it on the "distractions." If the team goes 130-30, Wow! Look how they overcame all the "distractions"! *sigh* It was gonna be a long season anyway ...

Turn away from Jesus, Pedro Alvarez

bucdaddy — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:24:52 -0000

The Associated Press reports:

Oakland Athletics prospect Grant Desme is retiring from baseball to enter the
priesthood. Desme was recently selected the 2009 Arizona Fall League MVP and was
considered one of the top prospects in Oakland's system. The 23-year-old outfielder
batted .288 with 31 homers, 89 RBIs and 40 stolen bases in 131 games at Class-A
Kane County and Stockton in 2009. He then hit .315 with a league-leading 11 home
runs and 27 RBIs in 27 games in the fall league.

It won't be long

bucdaddy — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:09:55 -0000

The HoF ballot came out recently, which means it won't be long before Dave Parker starts his annual campaign to get himself elected.

I've ranted at some length about Dave's self interest before, and I'm not going to do it again. But a book I just finished reading raised an interesting notion.

Here are three lists with the career numbers of the same five Pirates, three of them HoFers and one wannabe

HITS

Roberto Clemente 3,000

Mystery Man 2,743

Dave Parker 2,712

Willie Stargell 2,232

Ralph Kiner 1,451

RBIs

Willie Stargell 1,540

Dave Parker 1,493

Mystery Man 1,326

Roberto Clemente 1,305

Ralph Kiner 1,015

BATTING AVERAGE

Roberto Clemente .317

Mystery Man .303

Dave Parker .290

Willie Stargell .282

Ralph Kiner .279

The author admits, "Yes, I've carefully chosen to omit home runs from this analysis ... [because] home run totals do not favor [Mystery Man] in any way .. " But for the record, Mystery Man hit 219.

The author isn't making a case for MM being as GOOD as Clemente or Stargell or Parker, just trying to make the case that MM was a pretty damn good hitter that nobody talks about much anymore. MM was on the HoF ballot for one year, drew <5% and was gone.

Which brings me back to Parker. What would make me more of a fan of Dave's case (and I'm a fan of Dave, but not his HoF case, and this is totally arbitrary, I know, but ...) is if he ever tried to make a case for someone other than himself, such as this former teammate of his, and for whom bb-ref lists, of all people, Dave Parker as the No. 5 most similar hitter. "Hey," Dave never says, "ignore me if you like, but I played with a real good hitter who never got much consideration. I wish the Vets would take a look at [MM]."

But of course Dave never does that, because, just as it's always been, it's all about Dave.

Mystery Man wasn't especially fast (his stolen base rate is pretty pedestrian, one year he was 13/29). He didn't walk much. He had good OBPs but they were largely BA driven. I see no evidence that he was an exceptional defensive player. He never led the league in anything (except games played, once) until he was 35, when he had his career year. It wasn't for the Pirates.

But Lord, that man could hit a baseball, and damn if he wasn't in the top 10 a lot. A LOT.

Al Oliver, people.