Sunday, September 30, 2007

Wait Till Next Year...

Watched the final game of a very disappointing season. Vin Scully, always seeking the silver lining, mentioned something at the top of the game that surprised me. In the fifty years since the Dodgers left Brooklyn, they've had 38 winning seasons. The only team with more in that time is the Yankees with 40. Not particularly comforting after a season that held such promise not all that long ago, and in a final game when they played like they couldn't wait to get on the bus. The Dodgers were absolutely shellacked today, but still finished a game over .500. Juan Pierre? Still sucks, and looked particularly hapless out in the field today. Next year!

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That choking sound you may have heard was the Mets' season ending. The Mets had a seven game lead in the division with fourteen games to go, and didn't make the playoffs. I've followed the Mets since their first season, but this season I'm really enjoying the schadenfreude. I've spent most of the season listening to the noontime hosts on WFAN basically dismiss the rest of the National League, and the NL West in particular, as not being at the same level as the Amazin's. Yeah. Right. Have fun on the golf course, guys.

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Jimmy Rollins took a lot of heat for his spring training comments that he thought the Phillies were going to win the division. The New York fans and media took his comments as a personal affront, and roasted him for it. Rollins backed it up, though, hitting .296/.344/.531 on the year. Meanwhile, the man the NY media proclaimed as the best shortstop in the division, if not the league, turned into the East Coast version of Slappy McPopup down the stretch, hitting a pathetic .205/.279/.333 in September.

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Dear Bud Black,

What in god's name were you thinking about? The Padres need to win one game to win the NL wild card, and you have Jake Peavy, the best pitcher in the league, available to pitch it. Instead, you decided to trot out Bret Tomko. Bret Tomko? Is it any wonder that the Brewers cleaned your clock today? Of course you will have Peavy on the mound tomorrow for your play-in game with the Rox, but you could've avoided the whole thing. Weird things can happen in a single game. Ever hear of Bucky Dent?

Best regards...

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Meanwhile, Colorado went ahead in the bottom of the eighth today, and held on to force the play-in. The game will be at Coors, and Josh Fogg will oppose Peavy. It's an odd choice, and it surprised the heck out of Vin Scully, who put it as delicately as he could, "Josh Fogg, who is, uh, an ordinary pitcher..., but he's going to pitch the big game."

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Friday, September 28, 2007

A Day at the Ballpark...

Just Play Ball — by Joe Garagiola

Marcie: Babe Ruth had a cap. Willie Mays had a cap. Ted Williams had a cap. Maury Wills had a cap. Willie McCovey had a cap. Mickey Mantle had cap.
Peppermint Patty: Marcie will you shut up!
Marcie: Even Joe Garagiola had a cap.

When I was in grad school, we once held a department golf tournament and called it the Lite Beer West Kingston Klassic, in honor of a recently graduated friend's inexplicable love for crappy beer. First prize was a six-pack of Lite beer. Second prize was two six-packs. In a similar vein, I won this book in a contest over at the Griddle. The winner could choose between this book or tickets to a Dodger game at Dodger Stadium. Second place would get the other prize. I came in third, yet the book was still available. It's even autographed. Poor Joe.

Garagiola generally deprecates his own skills, but the truth is that he wasn't all that bad a ballplayer. His OPS was about average for catchers in his era. He didn't hit for much power, but he had excellent plate discipline. His career on base percentage is a hundred points higher than his career batting average. That's terrific. He didn't strike out much, either. His career was short, just nine seasons. I'm kind of surprised it wasn't longer. He was only 28 during his final season, when he hit .280/.397/.415 as a backup catcher for the Cubs and the eventual world champion Giants.

He likens the book to a conversation at the ball park, just a fan in the stands telling stories to anyone who'll listen, and he's right. It's a collection of anecdotes, occasionally interspersed with some commentary about the state of the game, roughly grouped together by subject into chapters. Some of the stories are his own, and some are retellings of stories he's heard over the years. They're a mixed bag. A few are hilarious (to me anyway), such as the one about a call former umpire Bill Haller once made on a close play at second base. The second baseman argued, then asked Haller, "Would he have been out if I'd tagged him?" To which Haller replied "I really think you would've had a better chance."

Some brought back memories. At one point Garagiola mentions that ballplayers used to be able to sort of roll up their fielding gloves and stick them in the back pockets of their uniforms, and it brought back a memory of me doing the exact same thing when I got my first little league uniform. Those back pockets were pretty roomy. Of course, all that weight made your pants droop. Quite the fashion look.

One problem the book had for me is that if you've listened to Garagiola broadcast as many games as I have, a lot of the stories sound vaguely familiar. Maybe you don't recognize the details, but you can almost hear him telling the story to Kubek or Scully. Plus, a lot of the stories from his playing days feature players I'd never heard of, partly because his career ended when before I turned two years old, and also because he played on some really bad teams along side a lot of never-weres. It sort of like listening to stories about somebody else's friends and relatives whom you've never met. It's hard to keep your interest piqued.

That said, the book is worthwhile for the stories Garagiola tells about the two men who appear to have been his biggest baseball heroes. The first is Branch Rickey, or Mr. Rickey, as Joe (and a lot of other people who knew him) always calls him. He devotes a good number of pages to things that Rickey said, all of which Garagiola wrote down for later use. The quotes give the impression that Mr. Rickey was a bit like Kasper Gutman in The Maltese Falcon, calmly rational but a tad long-winded. Rickey's reputation as a forward thinker is well known. He integrated baseball, and created the farm system for developing players. Mr. Rickey was also almost fifty years ahead of his time on evaluating hitters, as this quote from 1954 indicates:
"If the baseball world is to accept this new system of analyzing the game—and eventually it will—it must first give up preconceived ideas. Two measureable factors—on-base percentage and power— gauge the overall offensive worth of an individual."

That, in a very wordy nutshell, is the definition of OPS. Joe also mentions Rickey's definition of an "anesthetic player," a player who gives you some good games, but not enough to help you win a pennant. "He's killing you, but you don't feel it." I have half a mind to send a copy of the chapter to Ned Colletti.

The other hero Garagiola spends some time on is the kid who grew up directly across the street from him, Yogi Berra. There's a remarkable photograph in the book. It's a picture of Joe's father at a construction job site, having lunch with Yogi's dad. I mean what are the odds that the kids of two random guys with their lunch pails sitting next to a pile of bricks would both end up in the Hall of Fame. It's a great story, as are most of his other reminiscences about the kid they used to call "Lawdy."

Overall I enjoyed it. It may drag in spots, but there's enough good stuff here to make up for it. I can think of a lot of worse ways to spend time than listening to Joe Garagiola talk about baseball. And if nothing else, I learned an important life lesson, not that I'm ever likely to need it—never shake hands with Moises Alou.

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Thursday, September 13, 2007

The Loneliest Team in Town...

I haven't been writing much about baseball lately. It's not for lack of stuff to write about, but rather that I just keep putting off writing about it, and then it's too late. It's not for lack of interest. Despite the fact that they are unlikely to make the playoffs, the Dodgers have been exciting because of all the young talent they've brought up. And for whatever reason, MLB is still giving me the archived game video for free, so I get to watch all the weekend games in full. Can't beat it.

But I couldn't pass up a chance to post a link to this picture of the, er, crowd at yesterday's Nats-Marlins game in Florida. I mean, even the Expos drew more than that. For that matter, I think I've even played before bigger crowds at softball games. (Thanks to the Griddle for the original link.)

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