Posts Tagged baseball

Believe it or not: Teams like Kansas City could once keep their great players

Baseball, once the acknowledged “National Pastime,” continues to decline in television ratings, attendance, and influence. As a baseball fan, I am told by sports commentators like Bob Costas that I should be angry at the players who “cheated” the game by using steroids. These self-styled “baseball traditionalist” say that steroids and human growth hormones hurt the integrity of the game, contributing ultimately to competitive imbalance and a decline of interest in the game.

Personally, I think the late George Steinbrenner and the Yankees have done more harm to the game of baseball and the integrity of the game than Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Rafael Palmiero ever could.

The game of baseball is worse in 2011 than in 1991 because the current rules of baseball financing allow teams like the Yankees to begin each year with a decidedly unfair advantage over teams like Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Oakland…. At best, the Yankees begin each year truly competing against only one other team, the Red Sox.

Each year in the NFL, all teams (with the exception of the Detroit Lions and Cleveland Browns) have an equal chance of being in the Super Bowl. That is one of the reasons that football has become the most popular sport in the United States. The basis for football’s balance and success is rooted in its revenue sharing.

It is time for baseball to take a few lessons from the NFL and fix itself before it is too late. Below is my four-step solution for fixing baseball and returning competitive balance and integrity to the game.

1. All local and national television and radio revenue for all baseball teams should go into one pot to be divided equally between all teams
2. All stadium revenue (tickets, suites, seat licenses, advertising…) for all baseball teams should go into one pot to be divided equally between all teams
3. All licensed apparel sales for all baseball teams should go into one pot to be divided equally between all teams
4. George Steinbrenner’s name should be stricken from all baseball reference books and baseball histories and all Yankee victories since 1991 shall have an asterisk placed next to them acknowledging their dubious nature

This simple plan would overnight restore competitive balance to baseball, integrity to the game, and once and for all get Yankee fans to sit down and shut-the-hell-up. What, I ask you, could make the world a better place than that?

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Marianne Moore throwing out the first pitch 1968

Marianne Moore  was a voracious reader. This encyclopedic nature of hers is at the heart of why she is a difficult poet. She brings more to a poem than any other poet and hence asks more of her readers than any other poet.

“Baseball and Writing” is one of my favorite Moore poems. When I wrote my own series of baseball poems called “Baseball Cards” I had this poem in the back of my mind… among some others.

In 1968, Moore threw out the first pitch of the year at Yankee Stadium. As any baseball fan knows, 1968 was Mantle’s last year in baseball. The Yankee roster she was looking at that day in 1968 is a far cry from the roster she features in her poem, “Baseball and Writing.”

Enjoy!

Baseball and Writing

Fanaticism? No. Writing is exciting
and baseball is like writing.
You can never tell with either
how it will go
or what you will do;
generating excitement–
a fever in the victim–
pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter.
Victim in what category?
Owlman watching from the press box?
To whom does it apply?
Who is excited?Might it be I?

It’s a pitcher’s battle all the way–a duel–
a catcher’s, as, with cruel
puma paw, Elston Howard lumbers lightly
back to plate.(His spring
de-winged a bat swing.)
They have that killer instinct;
yet Elston–whose catching
arm has hurt them all with the bat–
when questioned, says, unenviously,
“I’m very satisfied.We won.”
Shorn of the batting crown, says, “We”;
robbed by a technicality.

When three players on a side play three positions
and modify conditions,
the massive run need not be everything.
“Going, going . . . “Is
it?Roger Maris
has it, running fast.You will
never see a finer catch.Well . . .
“Mickey, leaping like the devil”–why
gild it, although deer sounds better–
snares what was speeding towards its treetop nest,
one-handing the souvenir-to-be
meant to be caught by you or me.

Assign Yogi Berra to Cape Canaveral;
he could handle any missile.
He is no feather.”Strike! . . . Strike two!”
Fouled back.A blur.
It’s gone.You would infer
that the bat had eyes.
He put the wood to that one.
Praised, Skowron says, “Thanks, Mel.
I think I helped a little bit.”
All business, each, and modesty.
Blanchard, Richardson, Kubek, Boyer.
In that galaxy of nine, say which
won the pennant?Each.It was he.

Those two magnificent saves from the knee-throws
by Boyer, finesses in twos–
like Whitey’s three kinds of pitch and pre-
diagnosis
with pick-off psychosis.
Pitching is a large subject.
Your arm, too true at first, can learn to
catch your corners–even trouble
Mickey Mantle.(“Grazed a Yankee!
My baby pitcher, Montejo!”
With some pedagogy,
you’ll be tough, premature prodigy.)

They crowd him and curve him and aim for the knees.Trying
indeed!The secret implying:
“I can stand here, bat held steady.”
One may suit him;
none has hit him.
Imponderables smite him.
Muscle kinks, infections, spike wounds
require food, rest, respite from ruffians.(Drat it!
Celebrity costs privacy!)
Cow’s milk, “tiger’s milk,” soy milk, carrot juice,
brewer’s yeast (high-potency–
concentrates presage victory

sped by Luis Arroyo, Hector Lopez–
deadly in a pinch.And “Yes,
it’s work; I want you to bear down,
but enjoy it
while you’re doing it.”
Mr. Houk and Mr. Sain,
if you have a rummage sale,
don’t sell Roland Sheldon or Tom Tresh.
Studded with stars in belt and crown,
the Stadium is an adastrium.
O flashing Orion,
your stars are muscled like the lion.

_____

The long dark night is ending

For baseball fans, can there be any words sweeter than these: “pitchers and catcher report”?

Spring training means hope and the end of darkness. It means that long afternoons and warm nights will come again. It means that even this, the longest and coldest  winters in memory, will soon pass. Baseball is about to begin!

In honor of the unofficial end of winter and the beginning of spring– in Florida and Arizona at least–  MontanaWriter is pleased to feature a number of baseball haiku.

Baseball and haiku are a perfect match. Both are deceptively simple… yet for anyone who has tried their hand at baseball or writing haiku it is quickly clear that they are both difficult undertakings. Both are games of numbers. Both require patience, attention, and a mindfulness. And both are rooted in the pastoral. And most of all, both are enjoyable.

Today’s baseball haikus were written by baseball aficionado, Jared Linsly. Jerry is a regular reader and commenter to MontanaWriter and our  “go-to guy” for all things baseball.

Enjoy!

Selected Baseball Haiku, by Jared Linsly

Mid-February
Pitchers, catchers report now
Life reverts to youth

Rejuvenation!
Winter’s melancholy gone
Spring Training is here!

Ball strikes bat and glove
Grills and grass release their scents
Pastime lures faithful

Crowd noise from bleachers
Swells as hurler makes his stretch
Lingering suspense

Ball hurtling home
Batter coils expectantly
Explosion unleashed

Enough of Winter!
Beisbol numero uno!
Hot Stove burns brightly

Two-Thousand-Ten gone
Twins need to bolster mound corps
Spring Training impends

New season is nigh
White Sox have tossed the gauntlet
Twins need clutch offense

____

In the cold dark of winter, a middle-aged man’s fancy turns to thoughts of summer, baseball, beer, and the best books about baseball. On the last hump day in January, the Top Ten Baseball books of all time, and a brief description:

1. The Glory of Their Times, Lawrence S. Ritter
2. Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James
3. Total Baseball
4. My Turn at Bat, Ted Williams
5. Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn
6. A Day in the Bleachers, Arnold Hano
7. Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever, LeRoy “Satchel” Paige
8. Ball Four, Jim Bouton
9. Cobb: A Biography, Al Stump
10. Playing for Keeps: A History of Early Baseball, Warren Goldstein

1. The Glory of Their Times, Lawrence S. Ritter
In 1961 after Ty Cobb died, Lawrence Ritter got the idea of sitting down and talking to other great, old-time baseball players before it was too late. In pursuit of that goal, he traveled over 75,000 miles recording his conversations with some of the best players to have ever played the game.The result of these conversations is the single best book about baseball ever written. Ritter helped to invent a genre of sports book, the recorded-conversation, that has been often copied but never with the same success. His conversations with the likes of Hank Greenberg, Sam Crawford, Goose Goslin, and Stan Coveleski are engaging, humorous, revealing, and always magical. As the players look back at their youth and the game that they played from the vantage point of old age their memories take on a lyrical quality that is at once a tribute to the game they loved and to a time in America long gone. (For a more complete review, click here.)

2. The Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James
I used to play a game with a friend of mine who is one of the biggest baseball fans I have ever met. The question was: what one book would you want with you if you were stranded on a desert island? It always came down to a choice between MacMillan’s Baseball Encyclopedia or this one, James’s Historical Abstract. When stats guru Bill James examines the history of baseball he creates a work that is much more than a stat book. Decade by decade he examines the players, the developments, and the growth of the game he knows so well. In 2001, James published an updated and revised version. I prefer the original.

3. Total Baseball
Once MacMillian’s Baseball Encyclopedia deservedly had the moniker of “the bible of baseball.” Total Baseball rightfully holds that title today. Utilizing advances in baseball research and statistical analysis, TB gives you 10 times more information than MacMillan’s, and dozen’s of great essays, something MacMillan’s never had at all. TB lets you compare players within their eras and within the history of the game. There is no better way to watch a game of baseball on TV than with a copy sitting on a table next to you. How does Randy Johnson stack up against Lefty Grove and Sandy Koufax? How does Alex Rodriquez compare to Honus Wagner?

4. My Turn at Bat, Ted Williams and John Underwood
In his career Ted Williams often felt victimized by members of the press, and, if truth be told he was. While DiMaggio in New York was afforded a free pass by an adoring press, Williams in Boston who actually saw combat in two wars was savaged at every turn. This is William’s chance to tell his side of the story. The last man to hit .400 discusses his neglected childhood in San Diego, being a fighter pilot in World War II and Korea, Boston and the Red Sox, fishing and, of course, hitting. 100 years from now, when the personal baggage between William’s and the media is long forgotten, Williams will be remembered with Jackie Robinson, Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Babe Ruth as one of the seven greatest players of the 20th century. When you factor in the seasons lost to not just one, but two wars, number 9 certainly deserves the title of “the greatest hitter to have ever lived.”

5. Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn
The definitive book about Brooklyn and the Dodgers, Kahn’s sentimental work weaves together his own autobiography into stories about and conversations with the men who once made Brooklyn the emotional center of the capital of baseball: Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, and especially Jackie Robinson. There are scores of other books about the Dodgers and Jackie Robinson but this is by far the best. It is also one of the best books about the game of baseball. (For a more complete review, click here.)

6. A Day in the Bleachers, Arnold Hano
Other writers have attempted to analyze the game of baseball by analyzing the action, strategy, and play of a single game. The fact that Hano did it first, with so much sentimentality and grace, and that the game in question is Game 1 of the 1954 World Series has meant that every other attempt to follow Hano’s formula has been destined to failure. From to Willie May’s catch, to Dusty Rhodes’s home run, this is the best insider’s look at the game of baseball ever written. (For a more complete review, click here.)

7. Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever, Satchel Paige and David Lipton
Paige was somewhere between age 50 and 90 when he broke into the Major Leagues in 1948. Perhaps the greatest pitcher of all time, Paige never got a shot at the all-white Major Leagues until it was almost too late. Considering how well he fared as a senior citizen, we can only assume that in his prime he was as unhittable as the many legends about him claim. Paige discusses his considerable legend and adds to it, describing life in the Negro Leagues, the Jim Crow South, and barnstorming baseball before Jackie Robinson.

8. Ball Four, Jim Bouton
Bouton’s book was a controversial bestseller in 19. Profiling the drinking, womanizing, and shenanigans on and off the field of his teammates and fellow players in the early and mid-1960s, Bouton’s expose seems tame by today’s standards. In its time, though, it caused a great deal of embarrassment for Mickey Mantle, the Yankees, and Major League Baseball, so much so that Bouton, a pitcher, found himself blackballed and out of work. Still one of the top-ten books about baseball.

9. Cobb: A Biography, Al Stump
Ty Cobb has been called the greatest baseball player who ever lived, a racist, a killer, and the meanest man alive. Stump, who spent more harrowing days with the lonely and driven Cobb than seems possible, or even advisable, presents us with a complex portrait of a man who was indeed everything he has been called and more. On and off the field, Cobb has driven by demons of racism, hatred, personal tragedy and mental illness to be the best, at all costs. Stump profiles the life of the man who built a staggering baseball legacy and personal fortune, but in the end, died friendless and un-mourned. The best baseball biography ever written, period.

10. Playing for Keeps: A History of Early Baseball, Warren Goldstein
The origin of baseball in America, like the origin of all important things, is shrouded in myth. The very location of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, was predicated on the myth of Abner Doubleday inventing the game there. Mr. Goldstein delves beneath the myth into baseball’s very pre-history, to discover the historical origins of the game that has defined America more than any other. The result is a remarkable work that is beautifully written, entertaining, and difficult to put down. Goldstein’s achievement gives us a better understanding of the game, and reminds us of why we love it so much.

____

This is third and final part of a multi-part look at baseball history and baseball statistics. It has been adapted from an earlier article I wrote in the 1990s for a defunct sports website. It has been updated to include the Steroid Era. For Part 1 click here. For Part 2 click here.

Since there are four distinct eras in Major League Baseball the statistics from those eras cannot fairly be compared. Barry Bonds benefited from steroids and human growth hormones. Babe Ruth benefited from watered down competition and a juiced ball. The Pumpsie Green Factor (PGF) statistical adjustment attempts to rectify the unfair disadvantages that Bonds and Ruth had over Golden Era players by looking at them separately.

Two assumption underline my system. The first is that players need to be considered first of all within the context of their era. Second, only players who played the bulk of their careers in the Golden Era (1947-93) can truly be said to have played both fairly and against the best possible competition. Because of that fact, the Pumpsie Green Factor weights their achievement higher. A Golden Era great is by definition better than a great from any other era.

The Numbers
For demonstration purposes lets look first at the adjusted stats for career home runs. Home runs have been divided into three groups. Dead Ball Era home run totals are not listed. A separate list could, and should, be made for each era for each stat. Players can thereby be fairly compared to other players within their era.

Career Home Run Leaders
On the three lists below are all the players with 500 or more career home runs. Though I am most interested in Golden Era players, I will say this about the Steroid Era players: they all belong in the Hall of Fame or none of them do. Since there is no way to know who used steroids and human growth hormones once, twice, often, or never it is best to assume that they all did. And since they all did, every 500 home run hitter from the steroid era belongs because they were all the best in the context of the era. You cannot let some in and leave others out since they are all tainted.

Looking at career home run totals with the Pumpsie Green Factor (PGF) and dividing players into eras does not create anything unusual. That changes will be more obvious with the next category we will look at.

Live-Ball Era Home Run Leaders (500 or more)
Babe Ruth        714
Jimmy Foxx        534
Mel Ott        511

Golden Era Home Run Leaders (500 or more)
Hank Aaron         755
Willie Mays        660
Frank Robinson    586
Harmon Killebrew    573
Reggie Jackson    563
Mike Schmidt    548
Mickey Mantle    536
Willie McCovey    521
Ted Williams        521
Ernie Banks        512
Eddie Matthews    512
Eddie Murray        504

Steroid Era Home Run Leaders (500 or more)
Barry Bonds        762
Ken Griffey        630
Alex Rodriquez    613 (Active)
Sammy Sosa        609 (Active)
Jim Thome        589 (Active)
Mark McGwire    573
Rafael Palmeiro    569
Manny Ramirez    555 (Active)
Frank Thomas    521 (Active)
Gary Sheffield    509

Career Pitching Victories
In the category of career pitching victories, the system I am advocating immediately sheds new light and new appreciation on a number of pitchers who pitched in the Golden Era (again against the best and fairest competition, and so by definition the best pitchers in the best era).

Looking at the list of Winningest pitchers of the Golden Era several things jump out to you starting with the fact that every pitcher on this list can truly be called, under-appreciated. Look at how great Warren Spahn really was. Why did it take so long for Blyleven to get to the Hall of Fame? Why are Tommy John and Jim Kaat not in the Hall of Fame?

Golden Era Career Victory Leaders
Warren Spahn    363
Steve Carlton    329
Nolan Ryan        324
Don Sutton        324
Phil Niekro        318
Gaylord Perry    314
Tom Seaver        311
Early Wynn        300
Tommy John        288
Bert Blyleven        287
Robin Roberts    286
Fergie Jenkins    284
Jim Kaat        283

What PGF adjusted stats and looking at the baseball eras does it sheds light on players that are currently overlooked and under valued. It provides a commonsense approach to contextualizing the numbers. Mostly it encourages us to truly appreciate and value the players who played in the Golden Age of baseball. Who knows… with time this or something much like it might become the accepted way to look at baseball stats.

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Two stars from the Golden Era of the game

This is second part of a multi-part look at baseball history and baseball statistics. It has been adapted from an earlier article I wrote in the 1990s for a defunct sports website. It has been updated to include the Steroid Era. For Part 1 click here.

The idea behind the stat adjustment I am calling the Pumpsie Green Factor (PGF) is derived from the basic assumption I am making that you can divide baseball history into four distinct eras:
Dead Ball Era (1900 – 1919)
Live Ball Era (1920 – 1946)
Golden Era (1947 – 1993)
Steroid Era (1994 – present)

The eras are distinct but the dates are not set in stone. The Ted Williams Exemption (TWE) is obviously based on the fact that it took from 1947 to 1959 for the last major league team to become integrated (the Red Sox). And just as obviously the Steroid Era began before the lockout of 1994 (Jose Canseco among many others). So while there is a sliding quality to the dates for each era, each era does display a certain essential quality/character of the game that defines that era.

Dead Ball Era (1900 – 1919) featured segregated teams playing station-to-station “small ball” with a dead ball that was dirty, spit upon, and increasingly more and more beat-up during the course of the game. Dead Ball Era greats include: Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Cy Young, Tris Speaker, among others.

Live Ball Era (1920 – 1946) featured a cleaner, livelier ball, smaller parks, and more power played by all white players. Live Ball Era greats include: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, among others.

The Golden Era (1947 – 1993) featured integrated teams, power, athleticism, and noticeable increases in athletic training. Golden Era greats include: Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Sandy Koufax among others.

The Steroid Era (1994 – present) featured artificially strong and quick-to-heal athletes who took their bodies and the game to artificially new heights. Steroid Era greats include: Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens among others. I believe that the game played in 2010 and 2011 is still part of that Steroid Era.

Historically speaking baseball writers and the Baseball Hall of Fame have recognized the Dead Ball Era and contextualized stats to compensate for the differences. Honus Wagner is not penalized substantially because his power numbers do not compare to those of players in the 1930s. But that remains the only era they currently recognize positively. Negatively, everyone recognizes the Steroid Era and currently penalize players they suspect of using steroids and human growth hormones. But there is no way of legitimately know who really used/uses and who does not.

By failing to recognize that there are four distinct eras, players in the Live Ball Era get too much credit for their accomplishments while players in the Golden Era get too little. This is what the Pumpsie Green Factor (PGF) statistical adjustment tries to remedy.

Next: Part 3 – The numbers, some sample adjusted stats

____

The conversation around Bert Blyleven reminded me of an article I wrote a number of years ago advocating looking at baseball statistics in a new light. The article was quite long and written before the steroid era in baseball. The points it makes about stats I think are still valid. Here is part one.

Part I: Pumpsie Green, Babe Ruth, and the Truth about Baseball Stats

When Pumpsie Green joined the Red Sox in 1959, 13 years after Jackie Robinson first stepped onto the field for the then Brooklyn Dodgers, Boston’s American League franchise became the last team in the Major Leagues to have an African American on its roster.

In the early 1950s Boston could have had a number of great African-American players including Willie Mays. Racism, however, convinced owner Peter Yawkey to pass on Mays who went to the Giants, preventing the Red Sox from fielding what would have been the two best 3-4 hitting combinations in baseball since Ruth and Gehrig: Willie Mays and Ted Williams followed by Willie Mays and Carl Yazstremski.

Baseball Stats and the Color Barrier
There is an old saw that goes like this, “There are three kinds of liars: liars, damnable liars, and statisticians.” If it was my old saw I would also include politicians, but what the heck, the point is still well taken.

It has been said about baseball that it is both a game of inches and a game of numbers. As inches is merely one of many possible values invented to quantify (read that: “assign a number to”) a relatively minute distance, it really amounts to saying the same thing. Baseball is a game of numbers and statistics. And since it is a game of statistics, presented to us by statisticians, only a fool would take the numbers and the statistics at face value.

A case can easily be made that every single statistic up to the point that Pumpsie Green joined the Major Leagues was skewed to some extent by the fact that many of  the best players were not even playing in the so-called “Major Leagues.” Baseball statisticians regularly make allowances for baseball played in the so called “dead-ball era” versus the “modern” or “live ball era.” Because of such allowances, we think of Ed Delhanty’s life-time batting average in a much different way than we do Ted William’s. And we consider Cy Young’s life-time wins in a different light than we do Tom Seaver’s.

Baseball has come to officially recognize the paradigm shift that occurred in game in the 1920s. It is my contention that they should also officially recognize the second great paradigm shift that occurred in the game – that being, of course, the gradual opening of the game that began in 1946 but was not completed until 1959.

PGF- The Pumpsie Green Factor
With that fact in mind, I am advocating a new pre-steroid statistical interpretation of Major League Baseball statistics that I call the Pumpsie Green Factor, or PGF.

PGF works this way. If a player played all or most of his career before 1946, his statistics and records are dealt with in the same way that we currently deal with minor league statistics from the same period of time. Since the player in question played most or all of his career at a time when he did not have to face the best hitters and pitchers from the Negro Leagues, we cannot possibly take his records as seriously as we do those who played most of their careers after 1959 when all the best players in the world were playing in one league.

We can never know what Satchel Paige, for an example, and a host of other great African American pitchers might have done to Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak in 1941. Because of that, PGF relegates his Yankee streak to the same status as the streaks he had for the Seals in the Pacific Coast League. The record is not erased, it is merely given a context that is more appropriate to the what it actually means. His two great streaks while in the minor leagues are remembered, they have not, however, been given the emphasis that his 1941 streak has, because the Pacific Coast League streaks were seen as having been achieved against less-than-the-best competition. PGF merely points out the fact that in 1941 he was also not hitting against the best possible competition.

TWE – The Ted Williams Exemption
If a player played all or most of his career between 1946 and 1959 that player’s statistics are taken on a case by case basis. This is known as the Ted Williams Exemption or TWE. While Williams did play on the very team that waited until 1959 to integrate, there has never been any credible evidence, statistically or historically, to dispute the claim that he was the “Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived.”

TWE recognizes the fact that if a player was outstanding against an increasingly more integrated league of competitors, chances are that he would have been just as competitive, or a the very least only slightly less so in 1959. Pumpsie, after all, may have been the first African American to play for Boston, but he certainly was no Willie Mays, not by the longest of shots.

Obviously for any player who played all or most of their career after 1959 nothing is changed at all.

To Asterisk or Not to Asterisk
Objections will be made that some of the greatest names of the game are suddenly going to find their names removed from the record book: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb. And while one could certainly counter argue that many of the greatest names in baseball never even had a chance to put their names into the record book before 1946 because of racism, and hence name removal may simply be tit-for-tat, PGE proposes two middle ground remedies.

The first remedy would be to simply include three lists of records. One PGF (Pumpsie Green Factor) list, one Steroid Era List, and the other the unadjusted list currently used. While the PGF list will in many cases look substantially different from the un-adjusted list, in some key categories the changes are not particularly great, at least in the number of changes.

In the category of home runs for example, the PGF adjusted leader remains the same, Hank Aaron with 755. Babe Ruth’s 714 are dropped out and so Willie Mays’s 660 become number 2. In fact, out all the players who have hit more than 400 home runs only Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, Mel Ott, and Lou Gehrig drop off the list. The names are admittedly big ones, but the actual number of changes remains fairly small.

The second remedy would be an asterisk. The names and lists remain the same but there is an asterisk placed next to the record denoting that while it still remains a significant achievement, it was accomplished under dubious circumstances. Baseball fans with a sense of irony could not help but be amused by the thought of an asterisk being placed next to Ruth’s single season home run totals.

Next: Part 2 – Factoring in the Steroid Era and some sample adjusted stats

____

According to the good sabermetricians at baseball-reference.com the pitchers who had the most similar careers to Bert Blyleven are:

1. Don Sutton
2. Gaylord Perry
3. Fergie Jenkins
4. Tommy John
5. Robin Roberts
6. Tom Seaver
7. Jim Kaat
8. Early Wynn
9. Phil Niekro
10. Steve Carlton

All but two on the list are Hall of Famers. One of those two, Jim Kaat, like Blyleven pitched the bulk of his career for the Minnesota Twins.

Blyleven was an anchor with Frank Viola of the 1987 Twins pitching staff that won Minnesota’s first World Series. He is generally regarded as having one of the best curveballs in the history of the game and was renowned for pitching a lot of innings and a lot of complete games, something that has become as rare at the ballpark today as a cheap beer.

Yesterday after 14 years of eligibility Blyleven was finally voted into the Hall of Fame with second baseman great Roberto Alomar. For Minnesota Twins fans it was good news on yet another bleak winter day.

My friend Jared Linsly, a baseball aficionado, sums up the day for Minnesota Twins fans this way:

Cold, dark Jan. in MN,
But good news from Cooperstown.
Bert gets call from Hall!

Congratulations Bert… it was a long wait (14 years?!)… but you made it.

____

Today we received word that yet another baseball immortal has passed, Bob Feller. His list of accomplishments is huge. When you factor in that he missed close to four years at the prime of his career when he became the first major league player to enlist in the military after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, his numbers become even more impressive:

• Led league in wins six times (1939–41, 1946–47, 1951)
• Pitched three no-hitters, including the only Opening Day no-hitter
• Led league in strikeouts seven times (1938–41, 1946–48)
• 266 career victories (whil still missing most of 4 seasons in his prime)

I met Bob Feller in April of 1993, at a sportscard show in Crystal, Minnesota (or maybe Hopkins) in a hockey arena. I had brought a baseball with me to have him sign but when I got there I saw that he was also selling and autographing his autobiography, Now Pitching Bob Feller. Needless to say, I bought the book.

I may have been the first person of the day to buy the book or the first person for awhile. But for whatever reason, when it was my turn to meet him and have him autograph my items he quickly signed the ball as you would expect but then he opened the book to the middle pages of pictures and started going through them picture by picture with me. “Here I am with Satchel Paige, he could throw it as hard as they say…” “Here is me against DiMaggio…” “This is me against Ted Williams…”

As he talked the line behind me grew restless. One of the show organizers, who was seated at the table next to Feller taking tickets, whispered something to him. He looked up at the man and then at the line behind me, “Let them be patient,” he said turning back to the book.

The picture he was most proud of was one of Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium in 1948. It was Babe’s last appearance there. The picture is taken from behind. Ruth looks old and feeble and is leaning on a bat. “That is my bat,” Bob Feller said. “He was in the dugout and needed something to use to walk out…” I remember thinking how proud and touched he was as he told me that. Here was a man who was a true great of the game, who pitched no-hitters, pitched against Williams and DiMaggio, but the thing he seemed most proud of was that he was there that day at Yankee Stadium and somehow was able to help Babe Ruth on his last appearance at Yankee Stadium

When he was done showing me pictures, he asked for my name and signed the book:

To Mark,
Best Always,
Bob Feller
4.3.’93

requiescat in pace Bob Feller, a true hero in every way.

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“That ball has a hit in it, so I want to get it back in the ball bag and goof around with the other balls in there. Maybe it’ll learn some sense and come out as a pop-up next time.” – Mark Fidrych (1976)

In 1976, Mark “The Bird” Fidrych led the major leagues with a 2.34 ERA and was the AL Rookie of the Year. He had a 19-9 record. He was a phenom and a character in every sense of those words. He was gangly and everyone said he looked like a bird, hence the nickname. He talked to the ball, congratulated hitters on the field who were able to hit a tough pitch of his, and he was awe inspiring as a pitcher. His Sports Illustrated cover featured him with Big Bird from Sesame Street.

He tore a ligament in his arm in 1977 spring training, the year this card came out. He tried a few comebacks but was never the same. He had the one great and magical year, 1976, and was done.

About the card: 1972 and 1977 are the two best designs of the 1970s. In 1977, I was 17. It was the last year that I bought or traded cards. This card is pure 1970s: the graphic design, Fidrych’s hair, the hat. It remains one of my favorites, and one of the few I have kept over the years.

The poem I wrote about this card is part a longer poem of mine called “Baseball Cards.” The poems are all “meditations” on baseball cards, players, and the game. It is included in Montana Poems, which is, of course, available in Kindle format at Amazon.com. Just follow this link:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00480P44A

Remember you do not need a Kindle to purchase Montana Poems. Kindle apps are available for just about every electronic device you can imagine.:

• iPad
• iPhone
• iPod touch
• PC
• Mac
• Blackberry
• Android-based devices

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