Monthly Archives: January 2003

DOWN TO THE WIRE

Baseball Primer has two new Keltner List evaluations this morning: one on Andre Dawson, another on Bert Blyleven and Jack Morris.

Check em out.

COUNTDOWN TO ECSTACY

Murray, Carter…and Ryno? The first two appear to be locks to make it to the Hall of Fame later today, and it wouldn’t come as a shock if Sandburg made it too. Here are the ballots from two more writers: Kevin Kernan of the New York Post, and Jayson Stark of ESPN. The Kernan piece is an especially good reason why baseball writers may not be the best choice to vote players into the Hall. Dale Murphy and Donnie Baseball get the nod over Bert Blyleven (?), who is profiled by Jim Caple . Kernan’s case for his picks doesn’t exactly leave the reader with confidence in the voting process.

BARTOLO CLOSER TO BEANTOWN?

The Red Sox have reached an agreement in principal with free agent third baseman Bill Mueller, according to the Boston Globe. “Muller’s deal, believed to be worth about $4.5 million over two years, is significant because the Sox would be unlikely to make such an investment on a backup infielder.” Which means the Hillenbrand-for-Colon talks are hot once again.

“‘I think today we’re finally making some progess,’ said a source close to the negotiations. ‘I think both sides want to get this done. But where it leads, who knows?'”

In another interesting comesmetic development, the Globe noted:

“…Preliminary work is under way for construction of seating atop the Green Monster at Fenway Park. The team’s request for a permit to built 312 seats of a deck above the storied Wall is pending with the city, which is expected to isse a ruling this month. Until then, the Sox said, they have been cleared to begin an early phase of the project. ‘We have been authorized to do further preliminary work, and that is all that is going on at this stage,’ team spokesman Kevin Shea said.”

HE ALMOST HAD IT MADE

A Look at Curt Flood

I.

Looking at the list of players up for election by the Veterans Committee, no one interests me more than Curt Flood. Minnie Minoso is appealing for reasons greater than his game as well. Minoso was the first dark-skinned Latino to play in the majors, the first black ballplayer to play for either Chicago team. Further, Minoso was 28 before he got regular time in the bigs. Think about if Vladimir Guerrero or Alex Rodriguez hadn’t even played a full season yet.

While Minoso had a warm and gregarious personality, Curt Flood was a more striking, sardonic figure. “Curt Flood, [is] the brooding Othello his sport,” wrote Tom Boswell. Flood’s baseball accomplishments may not merit his selection, but his act of defiance against the owners and the reserve clause, have put him in the running. If not the Hall of Fame, then at least, the Hall of Chutzpah.

“Very few guys have ever had an appreciation for who he was,” said Frank Robinson. “A guy with a whole load of guts.”

Flood may not be a Hall of Famer, but he may be one of the most fascinating characters it has seen in the last 50 years. His importance can’t be denied, yet it has also been misconstrued. Flood has been immortalized by some, but more often ignored, and officially unrecognized.
Rob Neyer addressed the Flood issue last week:

“Flood is on the Veterans Committee ballot this year … and as a player Flood doesn’t have much of a case.

“In his New Historical Baseball Abstract Bill James rates Flood the 36th-greatest center fielder of all time. And Bill is a big Curt Flood fan. Curt Flood was about as good as Andy Van Slyke, and Clyde Milan, and Kenny Lofton.

“Yes, I know that Flood challenged the reserve clause, and he certainly deserves credit, along with a large measure of fame, for taking that risk (a risk that essentially killed his career). But it seems to me that Flood has gotten the credit and the fame that he deserves. If you don’t know who Curt Flood was now, you’re not going to know who he was even if he’s in the Hall.

“Curt Flood was one hell of a ballplayer, and one hell of a courageous man. But I wouldn’t put him in the Hall of Fame.”

For another opinion on Flood, here is what Bill James wrote about him in the updated “Historical Abstract”:

“By the Win Shares method, Flood rates as the best defensive outfielder in baseball history, per innings played. This claim comes with several caveats. Andruw Jones rates as far better than Flood, but that’s just on a few years worth of data, and he’ll look different with time…

“Flood, of course, rates higher than he probably ought to because he skipped the decline phase of his career. There are other guys who rate even with him in his prime years, like [Greg] Maddox and [Paul] Blair and the DiMaggios, but as they aged, their per-inning productivity naturally dropped. Flood was a great defensive outfielder; I don’t know that I would especially want to argue that he was the best who ever played.

“Did Curt Flood sacrifice his career to enable today’s baseball players to make millions of dollars a season? Read literally, absolutely not. A lot of people seem to forget: Curt Flood’s case ended, for the players, in a solid defeat. Curt Flood carried the banner for baseball players as they marched down the hallway to a doorway that never opened. In a literal sense, all Flood gave to baseball players was the certain knowledge that that door wouldn’t open.

“Of course, all nations honor patriots whose death do not lead directly to victory, and it is traditional for unions to honor the sacrifices of those who fight the good fight, regardless of their won-lost record. I just always notice this, that a lot of people actually seem to think that the Curt Flood case led directly to free agency. It’s a confusion of history, vaguely equivalent to thinking that Frederick Douglass wrote the Emancipation Proclamation or that the Axis Sally bombed Pearl Harbor.”

I’m not exactly sure why James is such a hard-ass Reactionary here. It’s not exactly Flood he’s objecting to but the perception of The Flood legacy; still, I think James’ objections are over-stated. Literally speaking, Flood’s case against baseball did not lead to free agency. Marvin Miller wrote, “Curt Flood didn’t actually change the game, though he was a positive force and an example for others who did.” But James is pissed that there is a popular notion that Flood did initiate free agency. He’s angry at the public’s need for manufactured (Liberal) heroes, at the expense of the facts.

I can appreciate that, but isn’t it more compelling to look at Flood as one of the more complicated and fascinating cases of the modern era?

James says that Flood carried the banner for ball players down a hallway that never opened, but what does that mean? That literally speaking the reserve clause was not overturned on the grounds that Flood argued?

Marvin Miller, in his caustic, and often bitter autobiography, “A Whole Different Ballgame” describes the reaction of Flood v. Kuhn.

“I must also point out that Justice Thurgood Marshall, in a separate dissenting opinion, correctly pointed out that if the Supreme Court had decided to overrule the 1922 and Toolson decisions (and thus subject baseball to antitrust regulation), that wouldn’t automatically mean that Flood would win his case. Flood was suing on the basis that his treatment by baseball was a violation of antitrust laws, so first he had to establish that baseball was covered by antitrust laws, and only then would it become necessary to establish how baseball violated those laws. To show that what baseball did to Flood was in violation of the law would have been the easy part.”

Neyer contends that James is a big fan of Flood’s, so maybe he doth protest too much because Flood is one of his favorites; we always rip the ones we love. Ultimately of course, the reserve system was eradicated, though it had much more to do with Miller’s ability to win binding arbitration with Major League Baseball, than with Flood’s court case. The players achieved free agency, even if it didn’t co-inside with a victory for Curt Flood.

Flood’s defeat wasn’t as black and white as James suggests. The Supreme Court ruled against Flood 5-3 on June 6, 1972. But, according to Marvin Miller:

“Chief Justice Warren Burger recognized the error of baseball’s exemption, but wrote that the lives of too many people would be affected by a reversal of the error. I don’t think I’ve ever read such criticism of a majority decision of the court by the very justices who formed the majority. The majority described their decision as an ‘aberration’ and an ‘anomaly.’ Their criticism was correct, but their decision was, unfortunately wrong…The Washington Post described the decision aptly when it noted that ‘tradition had once more won out over logic.’

“I think it is worth taking a look at the dissenters on that Supreme Court. Two of the justices, William O. Douglas and William Brennan, felt that baseball’s judicial exemption from antitrust laws was wrong. In perhaps the most strongly worded statement connected with the case, they wrote, ‘Were we considering the question of baseball for the first time on a “clean slate,” we would hold it to be subject to federal antitrust regulations….’ They added that the ‘unbroken silence of Congress should not prevent us from correcting our own mistakes.’

“The efforts of Curt Flood and the Players Association were not wholly lost. First of all, we presented a good case in the trial court. The arguments against the reserve clause had never before been made so lucidly or so forcefully. Much more important—what Flood v. Kuhn really accomplished—was, in the much-used phrase of the 1960’s, raising the consciousness of everyone involved with baseball: the writers, the fans, the players—and perhaps even some of the owners…

“Many outside of the immediate power structure of baseball did begin to understand that the reserve system was wrong and that baseball as we know it might not vanish if it were abolished or drastically reformed…

“What did we do wrong? For one thing, the players themselves could have taken a more visible and active part in the trail…It was foolish to overlook the media appeal of big-name athletes. They could have been seen attending the trail, going in and out of the courthouse. That, I think, would have given the Players Association more of a human look to the public and shown that ballplayers were capable of demonstrating courage and solidarity off the field as well as on.”

“If I had 600 players behind me there would be no reserve clause,” Flood told the Associated Press in 1973.

Miller continued, “Why didn’t I encourage it? Well, for one thing the trail was held during the season, and I was reluctant to urge players to do anything that would distract them their jobs. For another, it was in the back of my mind that a great many marginal players might be the targets of owner revenge if Flood lost: A utility infielder who was active in the union and made a public show of support for Flood might find himself losing a job to a utility infielder who wasn’t active in the union. Union reps had a tough time as it was; they tended to be traded more often than players who were less active in the union.

“But there was little element of risk to the major stars, and they were the ones we needed most. To my knowledge, not one of them attended a single session of the trail. This was as much my fault as the players’…To be honest, I wasn’t as certain of the unity and solidarity of the Association then as I became a few years later. By the time Flood v. Kuhn came to trail in 1970 I had been executive director only four years, and we had not been tested by our first strike. We had been unified to an extent by the players’ refusal to sign contracts in the winter of 1968-69, and the players had remained firm through successful negotiations on both the pension plan and the first collective bargaining agreement. But we were still feeling our way as an organization; for instance, I think it would have been different in 1973, after the players had stuck together during the 1972 strike.

“That was undoubtedly a failure of leadership—my leadership. And it was yet another example demonstrating that players, like other people without leadership, always seem to fail to act in their own best interests. Fear aside, it must be remembered that players are profoundly affected by the press, and one can’t minimize the impact of the media working in conjunction with the owners, hammering away on the theme that without the reserve clause, baseball will fall. Flood’s suit was painted as an attempt to undermine the entire sport.

“It was also true that many players simply didn’t care. They may have wanted Flood to win, but they felt that they had their careers to be concerned with, and that was that.”

II.

Tom Boswell offered a poignant look at Flood in an article he wrote about the 1971 Washington Senators (from “How Life Imitates the World Series”):

“For Curt Flood, nothing is more painful than thinking back to April 1971. It is like asking the survivor of a shipwreck to recount his weeks adrift in a lifeboat.

‘Pressure,’ he said softly. ‘Pressure and tension…that’s what I remember. It was tough. I had been out of the game for over a year because of my lawsuit against baseball and the reserve clause. That spring was a big year for me, the first chance I’d had to play.

‘I knew all along that those few weeks were the time that was going to decide whatever was going to happen to me right down to this moment, actually,’ said Flood.

“Flood, dressed in black that spring, was a solitary Hamlet-like figure–one slender, rusty, center fielder standing against a century of baseball tradition. Not one other player in baseball took his side. Like a leper, he was not vilified, simply avoided.

“Flood only returned to baseball from Denmark because owner Robert Short’s contract offer of $110,000—half of it in advance–offered some hope of keeping his head above water financially.

“But, two weeks after that Opening Day, Flood had given up hope. His court case had suffered another defeat and would have to be appealed to the Supreme Court–more expense. His wife was seeking support for their five children—an expense he could no longer meet. And his batting average had sunk below .200. His spirits were far lower.

“Flood fled to Madrid, later tended bar for more than a year on the island of Majorca.

‘After I went back to Europe, I had plenty of time over the years to think about whether I gave up on my comeback too soon, ‘ Flood says now. ‘I’m sure I was right. Those young kids were running all over me.’

“Now, Flood, born in 1938, looks older than his years. He is frequently on the defensive, as though questioners were trying to catch him in some innocent mistake to make him look like a fool.

“During the 1979 season, he returned to the baseball scene briefly as a radio color announcer for the Oakland A’s—a bizarre connection since Charlie Finely is the No. 1 victim of the free-agent system that Flood helped create.

‘You seldom see a man’s basic character change, especially a strong character like Flood, a genuinely thoughtful rebel,’ said [Mike] Epstein. ‘But when you see Curt Flood today, you see a man who has been tied to the mast and has taken one lash too many.’

“That is as close to a candid comment on Flood as anyone on the baseball scene is likely to make. His continued financial precariousness, in an age of free-agent millionaires, is a bitter irony that cuts several ways.

“Despite all his suffering for his convictions, Flood at least has the solace of seeing that his ideal of justice triumphed–although he speaks very softly on that subject, too.

‘I believe that free agents have helped the game,’ he said. ‘It was the only equitable thing, that everyone get a fair share. Someplace along the line in baseball history, the people on the field, the actual entertainers, had to be included in the picture on a fair basis.'”

III.

The lawsuit against the baseball is the pinnacle of Flood’s career and his life, but it isn’t the only thing that contributed to Flood being a tortured soul. To view him as a mere victim would be shallow, and belittling. He had a dark, messy complicated life. Flood was a husband with 5 children, but a playboy, jock too. In his autobiography, “The Way It Is” (written with Dick Carter) Flood gives much more lip service to the playboy lifestyle than his wife or his experience as a father. I can only imagine he paid a price for that. He was a ladies man, smoked, drank and lived life hard; he eventually lost his marriage and family.

But he was also thoughtful, intelligent, creative, and willful. The youngest of six kids, Flood was raised in the tough section of Oakland during the post war years. “We were not poor, but we had nothing,” Flood wrote. “That is, we ate at regular intervals, but not much. We were not ragged. Both parents lived at home. In the conventially squalid West Oakland ghetto where I grew up, most other households seemed worse off.

“To achieve these triumphs of stability, my parents held no fewer than four underpaid jobs at a time,” continued Flood. “By day, my father was a hospital menial. At night, he moonlighted at the same employment. My mother was also a full-time hospital worker. In the evenings she attended to her own cooking and sewing and cleaning and frugal shopping, and tried to make sense of her children’s conflicting reports about the accomplishments, accidents, broken promises, arguments and threats of the day.”

The Flood children all showed an aptitude for drawing. Flood explained that his father “spent more on sketchpads than on Christmas trees. All the kids could draw. Carl and I even seemed to have the makings of artists. It rewarded the parents in their comings and goings, their interminable labors, to see three or four of us sprawled on the living room floor, engrossed in a pastime so remote from the meanness of the streets.”

If Curt’s talent set him apart, his age worked against him. Sometimes the baby of the family is pampered and gets all the love, and other times they are ignored and have to fight extra hard to get noticed at all.

“Because we were without direct parental supervision most of the time, our affairs were governed by a pecking order in which size and seniority ruled. As undisputed occupant of the lowest position on the totem pole, I amassed a huge inventory of grievances at an early age.
Everybody else came first. Not only that, but they seemed to get more. Fury availed me nothing. I was les than convinced that anyone loved me…I am a young thirty-two,” wrote Flood in 1971, “but I was an old, old eight.”

The young Flood also proved to be a gifted athlete. “When I was nine, I became the catcher for Junior’s Sweet Shop, in a police-sponsored midget league. Carl was the pitcher. The coach was George Powles, a white man who later became famous for having developed a phenomenal number of outstanding athletes, most of them black. Among the major-league baseball players coached and encouraged by George at McCylymonds High School or on his various sandlot and semiprofessional teams were Frank Robinson, Vada Pinson, Billy Martin, Joe Morgan…He also helped the basketball super star Bill Russell…

“If I now see whites as human beings of variable worth rather than as stereotypes, it is because of a process than began with George Powles…The beauty of George was that you did not have to adulterate your blackness to win his confidence and approval. He neither preached nor patronized. He emitted none of the smog of the do-gooder embarked on a salvage operation. After the games, he would bring the whole gang of ragamuffins to his pleasant home (a palace!) to plunder his wife’s refrigerator. He recently expressed astonishment when somebody told him that I remembered those visits as high points of my childhood. He protested that I had just been one of a crowd of kids and that there had been nothing extraordinary about the doings and that no fuss had been made over me because of my special talents. On reflection, he allowed that ice cream, cookies and comfortable furniture might have made an impression of me. But this had not been noticeable at the time. I was a cool cat.”

But nothing Flood experienced growing up in the relatively benign racial climate of Northern California* prepared him for the humiliation and degradation he was to experience playing in the South. Flood’s minor league experience in the mid 1950’s was atypical: brutal, unforgiving, and lonely.

Frank Robinson told Mark Kram last summer, “You really had to endure and overcome. What I remember is that it was a hard, hard grind, and you had to have the strength to handle it or you would not survive. I know it was prepared Flood to stand up for himself because I know how it prepared me.”

Flood wrote, “What had started as a chance to test my baseball ability in a professional setting had become an obligation to measure myself as a man. As such, it was a matter of life and death. These brutes were trying to destroy me. If they could make me collapse and quit, it would verify their preconceptions. And it would wreck my life.

During the early weeks of the season, I used to break into tears as soon as I reached the safety of my room. I felt too young for the ordeal. I wanted to be home. I wanted to talk to someone. I wanted to be free of these animals whose fifty-cent bleacher ticket was a license to curse my color and deny my humanity. I wanted to be free of the imbeciles on the ball team…

My teammates despised and rejected me as subhuman. I gladly would have sent them all to hell. More than once during that horrible season (1956, North Carolina), I was tempted to strike out so that our cracker pitcher would lose another game. More than once, I almost threw the ball away or dropped a fly ball for the same vengeful purpose.

If I did not sabotage the team (and I never did), it was only because I had been playing baseball too long and too well to discredit myself. And I was too black. Pride was my resource. I solved my problem by playing my guts out. I ran myself down to less than 135 pounds in the blistering heat. I completely wiped out that peckerwood league. I led it in everything but home runs—although I hit 29…The better I did, the tougher I got. I no longer wept in my room.

Toward midseason, when I had established myself as a star, I attended to another matter of importance. During the pregame practice one evening, a little black kid jumped onto the field, grabbed a loose ball, and climbed back into the stands. One of our lint-head pitchers screamed, ‘Hey you black nigger, come back with that ball!’ Then he jumped into the stands, took the ball from the child and returned to the field, flushed with triumph. I was waiting for him

‘Don’t use that word around me,’ I said. ‘You owe me more respect than that. White kids steal baseballs all the time without interference, you wool-hat son-of-a-bitch. If you ever come near me again you’ll be sorry.’

IV.

Flood was sharp and cool. He embodied the sense of cool that is associated with Miles Davis, and the jazz musicians of an earlier generation. Expressing his rage and contempt through a detached, calculated cool. Flood was part of the 60’s generation, and as his success grew, so did his willingness to speak his mind. He was not alone of course, playing alongside Bill White, and Bob Gibson and Lou Brock on the great Cardinal teams of that era. I don’t think he was especially political until the decade drew to a close, and well, it would have been tough for an introspective and aware guy like Flood to resist becoming politicized.

Flood was greatly influenced by an older white couple he was introduced to by his high school art teacher in 1962. Jim and Marian Jorgensen were warmly disposed, dusty-old radicals who took had an instant rapport with the young ballplayer.

Flood wrote, “I was a cool customer of twenty-four, mentally quick, passably articulate, culturally and politically underdeveloped, veneered with a brittle gloss of big-league savvy. My attitudes inclined to the gutter-tough and the dugout-cynical. An inner confidence had propelled me over many obstacles to a highly perishable success. I had no idea where this confidence might take me next, or even whether it would remain serviceable. I had begun to realize that it derived from a delicately balanced, ruthlessly controlled arrangement of raw nerves, the vulnerability of which was becoming more evident under the stress of a discordant marriage. That the Jorgensen’s found me likable moved me, as it should have. I needed them more than I knew. I needed new dimensions more than I knew. On that evening, these needs may have expressed themselves as an open-minded, open-hearted eagerness. Marian remembers eagerness as part of it.

“John Jorgensen was thirty-five years older than I,” and had the “directness of a man who had discovered years earlier that he could face the world without fear and, therefore, without guile,” wrote Flood. “Johnny Jorgensen was a master craftsman, owner of an industrial engraving plant. He was an indifferent businessman, unwilling to waste energy on the techniques of management. And acknowledged genius in the painstaking art of designing and engraving industrial stamping dies, he made an ample living that way and then rushed home to Marian, where the meaning was.”

Flood would eventually go into business with Jorgensen; he learned how to make engravings himself. “Johnny and Marian and I were closer than friends, freer and easier than family…My mother and father and sisters and brothers often joined us there and so did numerous ballplayers. The place was a sanctuary of warm fellowship, a joy and comfort beyond description.”

In late 1966, Jorgensen was horrifically murdered in his plant one night. Flood, in Los Angeles at the time, was briefly considered a suspect. “After bugging our phones and following us around for two weeks, the police finally caught the murderer. He was a black adolescent who had gone on a psychotic rampage after being dismissed from a job. He had never seen Johnny until the moment he stumbled into the plant and lashed out in mindless fury. Then sent him to an institution for the criminally insane.”

Flood, who had lived with the Jorgensen’s when he left his marriage fell apart, persuaded Marion to move to St. Louis with him, and she became his defacto secretary, business manager, care-taker.

Though Flood doesn’t discuss his wife and children much at all, he does write about his older brother, Carl. Carl, a more talented artist, and a better jock, than his younger brother, had taken the wrong path in life. He couldn’t resist the street life, hanging with thugs, or falling prey to the clutches of heroin. Carl ended up in prison for armed robbery.

Carl Flood is the ideal coulda-been-a-contender character. In prison he taught himself 4 languages, won chess tournaments, and awards for his abstract painting. Marion Jorgensen didn’t have enough of challenge taking care of Curt Flood, so she became Carl Flood’s guardian angel too, devoting tireless energy to reducing his sentence, trying to save him too.

V.

What makes Flood appealing to Romantics and Liberals alike is the simple fact that he fought the Law and the Law won. Sometimes, we can look back over the events of a man’s life and project or fantasize that everything led to one crucial event. This is easy with Flood, and his fight against the reserve clause, regardless of whether he did it consciously or not.

Flood was the right man at the right time. Or the right man at the wrong time, whichever you’d prefer. In Ken Burns’ “Baseball”, Flood said, “I am a child of the sixties.” Flood was aware that by taking on MLB his career was all but over. I also think he understood that he was the most prominent baseball player to ever challenge the reserve system, and that it was his duty to act accordingly.

The themes of anger and isolation are conveyed so powerfully with Flood. Having to live with consequences of his righteous stand, and dealing with the anger the results must have stoked is ripe with dramatic potential. No wonder he evokes allusions to Shakespeare.

In an excellent profile in the Philadelphia Daily News last August, Mark Kram interviewed Flood’s second-wife, Judy Pace-Flood, who said he did not die a bitter man.

“‘This is not Greek tragedy,’ she says. ‘Although some people would like to portray it as such. He had a giving heart.’

“Europe was a place where Flood always found a certain degree of tranquility. He had gone to Denmark instead of playing for the Phillies in 1970. When he was done with the Senators, he settled down on the Spanish island of Majorca in the sunny Mediterranean. There, Flood worked at his easel, played classical guitar and began writing a second part of his autobiography. [He apparently never finished it, either.]

According to Pace-Flood, ‘He loved it in Europe because it was so far removed from the problems that existed for a black man then in America. He was at peace there.”

I don’t know that Curt Flood truly belongs in the Hall of Fame, even though his decision to sacrifice an all-star career for a collective good is one of the Hall of Fame acts in baseball history. It is a true shame that Flood is virtually ignored by the Players Union, and too-often misconstrued, or flat-out ignored by the general public.

I do feel strongly about this: Curt Flood is one of the few ballplayers who is more compelling off the field than on it. His life would make a great movie.

*
“We saw few whites. None was a bearer of joy. The landlord, storekeeper, cop, teacher, meter reader and the various bill collectors were all enforcers. We accepted their presence, much as a Seminole accepts alligators. They were hazards too familiar for urgent comment. We were so accustomed to things as they were that we seldom speculated about how things out to have been. When a teacher announced from his remote eminence that the United States was the champion of liberty and the benefactor world mankind, we scarcely reacted. Such prattle was simply part of the usual distant done.

“Politically sophisticated blacks were trying during the late forties and early fifties to organize the ghetto’s paralyzed indignation, but their activities did not penetrate to our level. That sort of thing came much later. I recall little discussion and no excitement in 1954, when the Supreme Court supposedly outlawed the segregation of schools. By then I was sixteen. I think that I would have been aware of local reaction, had there been much. Just as the ghetto warps its victims, it also insulates and lulls them.”

Curt Flood, from “The Way It Is”

STILL STANDING

Murray Chass wrote about how George Steinbrenner almost bought the Cleveland Indians from the Stouffer family in early 1972, in his Sunday column in the New York Times, “The Best Deal Never Made”:

“No one knows what the outcome of a Steinbrenner ownership of the Inidans would have been. What we do know is that a year later Steinbrenner and partners bought the Yankees, and 30 years later, 30 years from last Friday, to be exact [which was also the anniversary of the Yankees signing Babe Ruth in 1920], Steinbrenner holds a unique place in Major League Baseball.

“Respect him of detest him, the 72 year-old Steinbrenner is the only owner from 1973 still on the job. The other teams have had a total of 71 owners or ownership groups, and the Yankees have had none. Put another way, in 30 years the other 29 teams, including six post-1973 expansion teams, have had a combined 94 ownership groups, and the Yankees have had one…

“Steinbrenner has enjoyed…rewards in two different periods of his ownership, when he initially restored the Yankees to championship status in the 70’s and in the current period of World Series success, four championships in seven years.

“However smart the decisions and judgements of the owner and his baseball people have been in those periods, they have been fueled by the revenue that was available to the Yankees but would not have been to the Indians. No cable-television outlet in Cleveland has ever given the Indians $493.5 million over 12 years, as the Yankees have earned. That money was especially critical in the 90’s.”

Gordon Edes wasn’t as kind to Boss George, and took Steinbrenner to task in his Sunday column in the Boston Globe, while painting a sympathetic portrait of Larry Lucchino. Will McDonough , in turn, wasn’t nearly as generous with the Red Sox president.

Peter Gammons jumped in the mix with a relatively scathing take on the Boss:

“OK. OK. OK. They Yankees have a great team. They are going to win. George has bought the championship and they’d better damn well win. He assumes it, and so does everyone in New York.

“All of which brings it down to this: what happens if their pitchers pitch in October as they did last October, when the Angels hit the New York pitching so brutally that if you took Anaheim’s series OPS, it meant that every batter they sent up in that series was turned into the statistical equivalent of Jason Giambi by the Yankees pitchers? Every win is something that will be assumed, expected…

“This Yankee team should be very good, but we don’t know how private people like Jeter and Bernie Williams will take to the 50 member media entourage that will be following Hideki Matsui. We don’t know that Mariano Rivera, Steve Karsay(coming off back surgery) and Chris Hammond are what Rivera/Mike Stanton/Ramiro Mendoza were two years ago. We don’t know what kind of cross-culturalization support Contreras will have in what will be a very difficult lifestyle change.

“As good as they’ve been, the Yankees could easily have been knocked out in the first round of the postseason three straight years. In fact, in the first round over the last three years the Yanks are 7-7 against the A’s (2000 and 2001) and Angels (2002).

“Oakland could win it all this fall with their Big Three, or if Boston ever got in, they could as well if Pedro Martinez and Derek Lowe are at full throttle … and that’s without thinking about Bartolo Colon, whom Expos GM Omar Minaya says “would make the Red Sox better than the Yankees on paper right now” because Boston arguably would have three of the AL East’s four best starters, with Toronto’s Roy Halladay being the fourth.

“If Torre and Yankees GM Brian Cashman and senior vice president of baseball operations Mark Newman are allowed to do their work, the Yankees will be fine; they won four world championships on talent, character, logic and good management, not a madcap spending pattern that puts them 50 percent above the next highest spender. But now this is the ’80s George, sending representatives to Nicaragua and suggesting their jobs were on the line if they didn’t bring back Contreras, firing scouts and office staff to save money, cutting back on health benefits … then throwing around $166 million (they’re over $100 million in salary commitments in 2004 and 2005) so someone will write that he’s a great man because he wants to win at any cost, in this case for the little people.

“What Steinbrenner has bought is no room for error. If the Yankees win, fine. George Steinbrenner will have bought New York a championship. That was expected and demanded.

“If the Yankees don’t win, he will fire a lot more little people and plant stories about Torre and Jeter and Cashman and Mike Mussina. But in the end, if the Yankees don’t win, it will be Steinbrenner who will be the laughingstock of the baseball world. What a shame. What a way to live. Or win…

“Few teams ever enjoyed winning more than the 2002 Angels. Even if the Yankees sweep the 2003 World Series in four games, they or their fans will never experience what the Angels experienced.”

John Perricone, from Only Baseball Matters, took exception with Gammons’ conclusion, though he claimed the article was [fairly] well-written and accurate:

“Let me tell you something. The Yankees went 16 years between championships as I was growing up. Their last title prior to this run was in 1981. Now, I know if you are my dad’s age you’ve seen enough championships to last a lifetime, but I came to baseball late. For the most part, all I knew as a Yankee fan was Don Mattingly watching the playoffs on TV just like me. Then in 1996, Jeter and O’Neill and Williams and Cone and Leyritz and the rest of these guys put together a season of magic, a postseason of miracles, and a World Series for the ages. So don’t tell me that Yankee fans can’t feel what the Angels just felt. That’s horseshit.

Now Steinbrenner is wrong for trying to hang on to it for as long as he can? He knows it won’t last forever. Spend now, because when his core of championship players, with drive and character and heart is gone, he’ll be starting over just like everyone else, and money can’t buy character. You can use it to surround character with talent, and that’s what he’s doing.”

SIMPLY A MATTER OF TIME…

Reports circulated this weekend regarding a possible 3-way deal between the Mets, Red Sox and Expos, that would bring either Bartolo Colon or Javier Vazquez to the Sox and ship third-baseman Shea Hillenbrand to New York. The Times first reported the story on Saturday, but The Boston Herald indicated it still has a way to go.

Regardless, I fully expect Theo Epstein and his bosses to work out a deal for one of Montreal’s two stud pitchers some time in the near future. (My guess is that they’ll snag the less expensive Vazquez.) There is talk that the White Sox have what it takes to land a Colon—their owner has been known to make big moves in the past, but the Red Sox are clearly a team one a mission. If you pay attention to Larry Lucchino, it is a Holy, Righteous and Just, mission, but a mission all the same.

David Pinto (Baseball Musings) had this to add about the proposed deal:

“Hillenbrand is exactly the kind of player the Mets are looking for at third: he hits right-handed, is only 27 years old, makes less than $500,000 and is coming off an All-Star season. To get him, though, the Mets would have to satisfy Montreal General Manager Omar Minaya’s asking price for ColZn or Vazquez.

I think there are a lot of questions as to whether Hillenbrand is really an all-star. He does have some interesting characteristics:

He’s a right-handed batter who doesn’t hit lefties very well (career OPS: .640 vs. LHP, .775 vs. RHP).

He’s a Fenway player who hits better on the road (career OPS .650 home, .838 away).

He’s shown very litte selectivity at the plate. Among players with at least 1000 AB over the last two years, Hillenbrand is tied with Christian Guzman for the fewest walks in the majors, 38.

He’s an okay third baseman. He ranks tied for 10th in defensive win shares at third base among players with 100 games at the position last year, but more than once I’ve seen him make poor plays at the position.

So the Mets would get a cheap third baseman who may or may not be very good. If the Red Sox can pull off this trade and get Vazquez, they’ll have a 1-2-3 punch in their rotation equal to or better than Oakland. It’s not clear what the Expos will get, but it looks to me like a big win for the Red Sox and not such a great deal for the Mets.”

MORE HALL OF FAME CHATTER

The latest Hall of Fame profile from Baseball Primer is on the hotly-debated career of Jim Rice.

Bill Madden detailed his Hall of Fame ballot in his Sunday column in the Daily News.

Madden wrote that there are six active players he would vote for induction if their careers ended today: Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, Sammy Sosa and Tom Glavine. He added that Mike Piazza, Rafael Palmeiro and Robbie Alomar are not far behind.

I’m not sure if Madden assumes that Rickey Henderson and Tim Raines are practically retired, but it’s curious he didn’t mention either player. As for Pudge, Junior and the Big Hurt:

“A few weeks ago in this space it was discussed how Ken Griffey Jr. and Frank Thomas have had their routes to Cooperstown detoured by injuries and decline. This is why the Baseball Writers Association and the Hall of Fame have made 10 years the minimum requirement for election consideration. That brings us to Mariano Rivera, who is still nearly three years away from being eligible. Incredibly if something should happen to end his career prematurely, Rivera would not be eligible for the Hall of Fame despite all of his postseason brilliance. By the way, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez have a few years to go, as well.”

Gil Hodges

David Pinto, had an interesting posting regarding local favorite, Gil Hodges:

“Hodges for Hall? Jed Roberts pointed out this article on OpinionJournal.com, touting the late Gil Hodges for the Hall of Fame:

‘They’re looking at the wrong man.

‘The Hall of Fame, that is. While the entire baseball world fixates on the ban on Pete Rose, a true injustice goes almost unheralded: the exclusion of Gil Hodges from baseball’s Hall of Fame. The good news is that when members of the newly revamped Veterans Committee cast their ballots this month, they will have the perfect moment to right this wrong.

‘Over 18 seasons, the Dodger first baseman hit 370 home runs, had seven straight seasons where he drove in more than 100 RBIs, won the National League’s first three Golden Gloves for his position and was an eight-time All-Star. He played in seven World Series, where he twice hit game-winning home runs. As a manager, moreover, Hodges led the 1969 Miracle Mets to their first World Championship.

But the Hall of Fame isn’t supposed to be just about numbers. Rule No. 5 states that voting should be based not only on the player’s stats but on “integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.’

“Yes, that’s what rule 5 says, but I believe it’s a moderating condition. So if you have someone on the bubble, maybe his character pushes him over the edge. Of maybe you have someone like Rose, who would otherwise get in, but his poor character keeps him out (as a warning to others).

“So it seems to me, the question should be, ‘Is Hodges on the bubble?’ Gil was a regular for the Dodgers from 1948 through 1961. Let’s look at the most win shares over that time:

1948-1961 Win Shares

Mickey Mantle 401
Stan Musial 398
Yogi Berra 347
Duke Snider 327
Eddie Mathews 319
Warren Spahn 318
Richie Ashburn 317
Ted Williams 312
Willie Mays 309
Minnie Minoso 277
Robin Roberts 277
Larry Doby 268
Nellie Fox 262
Gil Hodges 260
Eddie Yost 256
Hank Aaron 247
Jackie Robinson 236

“Given this list, it’s hard to believe that Hodges was on the bubble. Look at Snider. They were teammates all during this time, and Snider put up 60 more win shares. Robinson was out of baseball by 1957, and Hodges barely beats him out. Mantle, Mathews, Mays and Williams beat him handily with fewer seasons played during the time period.

“Gil Hodges was a good ballplayer and a great man. If he had lived and was able to establish a dynasty with the Mets, I think he’d have a better chance of getting in as a manager. But I just don’t see him as qualifying as a Hall of Famer based on his playing days. It’s a nice sentiment, and it’s good that someone remembers him well. The veterans committee has certainly made worse picks. But I just don’t think he belongs.”

Closers Getting Closer?

Rollie Fingers and Hoyt Wilhelm are the only two relievers currently in the Hall of Fame. I don’t know how much better you need to be than Goose Gossage; perhaps things will begin to change next year when Dennis Eckeresly enters the equation. I’ve always felt that Sutter and the Goose deserve the nod. But it brings up the ambiguity that surrounds evaluating closers.

My cousin Gabe, for one, has always felt that closers are over-rated. Not that they aren’t important, but that the notion of a star closer is often hyped way out of proportion. (Look at the bullpen by committee that the Red Sox have assembled this winter: Mendoza, Fox, Timlin, Rupe, Howry, Banks and Embree. When asked this weekend if he was comfortable with the absence of a traditional closer, Larry Lucchino said, “Bill James has been one who has argued there are other ways of using a bullpen, and I’m pleased with the guys we’ve taken.”)

Here is yet another thought-provoking letter from Gabe:
“I wasn’t planning on devoting time this morning to
baseball thoughts, but there’s an article on espn.com
by Tracy Ringolsby asking why more closers aren’t
elected to the Hall of Fame. How can I not respond?

Yet all I really want to say is ‘thpptttt’.

The article speculates about the impermanency of the
position, how closers tend to change teams, play long
beyond their prime, and how the role has only really
existed for thirty years. These strike me as minor
factors, ones that might affect a borderline case at
any position but would not keep anyone out who truly
deserved to be in.

Lee Smith, the all-time save leader who is on the
ballot for the first time, is quoted: ‘I don’t
understand that. In the last 15, 20 years, no team has
won anything without a good closer. If they don’t have
one, they don’t win.’

I’m not sure what defines a good closer,
statistically, but upon reflection, I’m inclined to
agree with Big Lee on one count: namely, that teams
that have won the Series (with the exception of the
Diamondbacks) have had good closers. It is true that
Troy Percival, Mariano Rivera, Robb Nenn, Duane Ward
(underrated), Rick Aguilera (overrated), Dennis
Eckersley, and Randy Myers–the closers on
championship teams since 1990–were all good (or in
some cases great) relievers. But teams that win the
Series tend to be solid all around. Sure, they have
good closers, but they probably also have good set-up
men, good long relievers, good pinch hitters, good
defensive replacements, and good coaches–or, at
least, are strong in a number of these categories.

As always, to me the question is not why good closers
are not in the Hall of Fame, but how impressive is it
to be a good closer. In the mid-1980s, Davey Johnson
(who, incidentally, used two closers) played Kevin
Mitchell or Howard Johnson at shortstop, routinely
pulling them for Rafael Santana or Kevin Elster once
the Mets had a lead in the late innings.
Santana/Elster rarely, if ever, entered the game when
the Mets were traliing. Their purpose was to help
hold a lead and, as strong defensive players, I can
only assume they did that very well. How many times
they made plays HoJo or Mitchell wouldn’t have or
would have flubbed, I don’t know, but it could have
been a couple. Or look at Rusty Staub or John
Vanderwal or Lenny Harris, pinch hitters who are
typically saved until late in the game, when they have
a chance to tie a game or give their team a win. It’s
more exciting than the defensive replacements, but I
think we generally agree that it’s a similar,
complimentary role. What would a pinch hitter have to
do to be considered for all-star consideration, let
alone an mvp, let alone the Hall of Fame? A defensive
sub? Forget it.

Sometimes I wish I were a more mathematical person,
because I am sure that with the right tools I could
show that the position of closer is, for the most
part, closer to these secondary roles than it is to
anything resembling a Hall of Famer.

The smaller your sample, the less impressive it is to
stand out from the reset of the pack. If, as a
reserve player, you go 15 for 60, that’s .250; but if
you go 18 for 60, that’s .300; and 20 for 60 is
.333–a great batting average, if you translate it
into a full season of at bats. This is simple stuff.
We see it every April, when players start off hot or
cold. But the season doesn’t end in April. It goes
five more whole months. We wouldn’t let a regular
player go into the Hall of Fame with such a small
sampling, and I don’t see why we would let a pitcher
in, either. Sure it’s tense to pitch the ninth
inning. But is it tenser than pinch hitting in a key
spot? Is it tenser than pitching seven or eight
innings? Is it tenser than holding a lead in the
eighth, or entering tie game in the sixth with the
bases loaded? Or pitching the top of the ninth of an
important game, down by a run?

How the role of closer has assumed such mythic
proportions, I’m not sure, but I think agents probably
have something to do with it. If I’m Lee Smith, I
might be bummed that I missed huge salaries for
closers by five years. But the Hall of Fame argument,
as always, is a weak one, in my opinion.”

Jack O’Connell, contributes to the conversation in his Hall of Fame piece for the Hartford Courant:

“I continue to support Gossage, one of the most intimidating relievers in the game’s history, and Sutter, who perfected and popularized the split-finger fastball to the degree that he was the first reliever who shortened the game for opposing managers. One look at Sutter warming up in the bullpen, and the manager in the other dugout felt he was headed for the ninth inning, even though the game might still have been in the sixth.

Smith has the glaring statistic of 478 career saves, most in history, and is the career leader in saves for two franchises, the Cubs and the Cardinals. Just as Gossage, intimidation was part of Smith’s game while, again like Gossage, underneath he was a teddy bear. Smith’s 71-92 record is a blemish, but he spent many years on mediocre teams. He also holds the bogus record of most consecutive errorless games by a pitcher (546), which is ludicrous because for many of those “games” he was around for only an inning or two.

That alone might be why relievers get short shrift from the writers. There are really no stats that accurately measure a reliever’s value. Won-lost record and ERA are unsatisfactory gauges because inherited runners who score are not charged to a reliever’s record, and the closer is most often faced with a save-or-lose scenario. While I admit that Smith was exceptional at what he did, I cannot vote for him in front of Gossage or Sutter. If they have to wait, so should he.”

Hall of Fame selections will be announed at 2 pm tomorrow.

I hope Kid Carter’s wife hasn’t planned too big of a “suprise party” for him this year, because it might be too much for him to have to cancel it again. All kidding aside, I think he should finally make it in this time round.

TRAIN CHAT

Last night, I was taking the 1 train home to the Bronx, passing the time engrossed in Dick Lally’s “Pinstriped Summers”. I couldn’t resist picking the book up the day before when I saw it at the Strand, because Lally covers the CBS, and Steinbrenner years (though 1982). Knowing precious little about the Mike Burke, Horace Clarke Era, I thought it was about time to do some investigating.

At 59th street, a heavy-set man in his 50’s sat next to me, and pulled out the Daily News. The Yankees first-round playoff loss was voted by the News as the most disappointing sports story of the year. Putting my book down, and looking over this guy’s shoulder at the story, I couldn’t help adding my two-cents.

“103 wins, and that’s a disappointing season?” I said. “Even the damn papers are spoiled around here.”

Turns out the guy is a Yankee fan, and lives in the Bronx as well. So we spent the next half an hour talking shop. I peppered him with questions about the CBS Yankee team. It was my good fortune that I was able to get a seasoned fan’s perspective, to help add balance and shape to my impressions of players like Fritz Peterson, Joe Pepitone, Danny Cater and Tommy Tresh.

Eventually, we got around to talking about the Hall of Fame. I asked him who he thought should make it via the Veterans Committee: Santo, Dick Allen, Gil Hodges, Tony Oliva, Joe Torre, or Minnie Minoso.

He smiled warmly and the first thing he says is, “Hodges.” Having read Rob Neyer’s recent response to the Hodges debate, I’m fairly convinced that Hodges is a sentimental favorite more than the most deserving candidate (though Tom Verducci noted that Hodges’ slugging and on-base percentages were better than Eddie Murray’s). Neyer compared Hodges career with that of Joe Carter, and Rocky Colavito: very good, but not truly great. (Another friend who is just shy of 50 told me yesterday that Colavito was much more of a star, a feared-slugger, than Hodges ever was.)

My fantasy is that if he can put together another couple of solid seasons, Tino Martinez may find similar sympathy twenty-five years down the line.

I asked my friend, “Why Hodges?” And before he recited Gil’s accomplishments, his smile grew warmer. “Cause he’s a Brooklyn boy.”

Which is as good an explaination as any as to why New Yorkers of a certain vintage would like Hodges to be in the Hall, it’s just not enough, in and of itself to merit the selection.

RUMINATIONS

Last night, for no reason at all, I sat down and wrote out a list of current players who would be Hall of Famers if their career ended today. I came up with it off the top of my head, and I’m sure that there are a few other players who are close (Biggio, Larkin, Sheffield to name a few), or too young (Chipper Jones, Alex Rodriguez) that I didn’t mention. Still, I was amazed by just how many future Hall of Famers we have in our midst.

Locks:
Rocket Clemens
Greg Maddux
Barry Bonds
Rickey Henderson
Randy Johnson
Sammy Sosa
Mike Piazza
Ken Griffey Jr.
Pudge Rodriguez
Tom Glavine
Pedro Martinez
Robbie Alomar
Fred McGriff
Rafiel Palmerio

Just About There:
Jeff Bagwell
Mariano Rivera
Trevor Hoffman
Frank Thomas
Rock Raines

I’m sure I’ve ommitted some deserving names, but the point is, we’re watching some great players. If this isn’t a Golden Age, it is at least a great age for Stars. When was the last time so many future Hall of Famers were active at the same time?

Most of the players mentioned above are in the declining years of their career, even those who are still productive like Palmerio, McGriff, Maddux and Clemens. Piazza, Alomar, Frank Thomas and Bagwell had sub-par years last season, by their own lofty standards (Alomar was mediocre by anyone’s standards), but still may have a few terrific years left in them.

Junior Griffey and Pudge Rodriguez may be the most intriguing names on this list because they are still comparitavely young. For the past few seasons, baseball fans have been waiting for these two to regain their status amongst the game’s elite. Injuries have tortured them. Barry Bonds and Randy Johnson are great examples of modern ball players who have improved with age, so the carrot is on the stick. If they can do it, why can’t Junior and Pudge?

Eric Neel wrote an interesting piece on Griffey a few weeks back called “Hoping for the return of the spectacular”. Neel neatly described the young Junior, and what he’s become:

“He wasn’t solid or profesional, he was spectacular. [I couldn’t help but think of this description watching Michael Vick play this season.] He was arguably the best player in the game. It was more than that: The game, the whole sweet spirit of it, seemed wrapped up in his brilliant, easy style. (Yeah, that’s a bit much, but that’s the way his game was; it made you want to say too much, made you wish you could find the words—make up new words if you had to—to say too much and then some.)…

All of a sudden, you’re thinking about him in the past tense, and the poetry of his swing seems forever lost. It’s a strange, vertiginous feeling. The shift from something effortless and great to something labored and common, even when it’s played out in small acts over a few years, is steep. There are two pictures of Griffey in your mind now, one laid over the other, with almost no overlap…

Hitting a baseball is different than hitting a punching bag, or George Foreman’s chin, and you’re enough of a student of Bill James to know that 33 isn’t exactly the peak age of offensive performance, and declines are usually just what they look like: declines.

So, romance aside, you know there is a chance it won’t get better from here, and it might get worse. Maybe greatness is just that: burning hot, withering fast…you know, fleeting…Maybe we’re drawn to it because we have an unspoken sense of how rare it is. Maybe the pangs you feel watching him swinging and missing these last couple of years, or thinking that he might be done now or soon, are the true measurement of how great he was.”

Neel is on to something when he says, “Maybe greatness is just that: burning hot, withering fast.” Perhaps “Brilliance” is a better word, because there is something to said about longevity being the mark of greatness as well. Though Griffey’s style may have been more lucid, couldn’t the same be said for Dick Allen, Bobby Bonds or even Darryl Strawberry?

I’ve never been a Junior Griffey fan, and his inability to mature personally has made him difficult to pull for. There is a lingering sense of entitlement with Griffey, as if he’s still carrying around an adolescent chip on his shoulder. Maybe the game got harder when his body started to age some, and suddenly the game wasn’t “effortless” any longer. Maybe we are judging Griffey too harshly, because as we all know, baseball is anything but easy.

Since I have it handy, here is another bit from Dick Lally:

“It is baseball’s great illusion that is it not a difficult game to play. When a player repeatedly fails to perform well, it destroys that facade of ease. It makes it painfully clear that the game of our youth, like normal life, is a hard and difficult business. Ther are too many daily reminders of that sort of thing. Booing implies many things, including: ‘Don’t screw around with my dreams; don’t take away my escape.'”

I don’t know if Griffey’s body has broken down due to poor work habits. I can only speculate. I do know that if he adopts the kind of single-minded focus, and dedication Barry Bonds has displayed throughout his 30’s, we just may be talking about him catching Aaron again sometime soon. Bond has achieved a level of superiority that is virtually unrivalled in the history of the game, but I never get the sense that it comes easy to him. If anything, his genius is combining tremendous natural talent with an obsessive work ethic.

Personality aside, I find it increasingly difficult to root against greatness (though I’m still having issues with Frank Thomas). I think I’d appreciate Junior even more if the game was more of a grind for him. It’s been nothing short of depressing to see one of the game’s bright stars fall so far, so fast.

For more on the Hall, peep Don Malcom’s site Big Bad Baseball for a lengthy article on Mattingly and Mex Hernandez, “Donnie, Keith, Steve and a Mystery Guest (the R rated version)”.

Also, check out the return of Tom Verducci, with his piece on the Hall of Fame ballot (Eddie Murray: yes, Ryno: no go.)

MUSEUM PIECE

My friend Mindy is an avid Yankee nutjob has been gorging herself on Yankee history this winter. She especially loves Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle. We’ve been swaping stories for weeks now, and I recently suggested that she may want to check out the Museum of Television and Radio as a place to do some more learnin’.

I recieved an e-mail this morning:

“Hello Alejio,

Here is my report on the Museum:

Okay, first let me say that it is a good thing I didn’t go to this museum before because between watching the films and all of the baseball reading, I would have never gotten any work done and would have been out on the street weeks ago.

So, I started light and looked up an old interview that Whitey and Mickey did on the Ed Sullivan show. There, of course, is a story behind the interview. It was during the 1955 World Series against the Dodgers, and the Yankees were down 2 games to 3. It was the night of the 5th game and Whitey was scheduled to pitch the next day. So Sullivan asks him who is pitching tomorrow and Whitey replies, “I am, and then Tommy Byrne will be pitching the next day.” This reply sparked such an outcry because of Whitey’s arrogance in assuming he would win the game and that there would even be a game 7. Of course, Whitey did win the next day’s game, and as we know, the Dodgers went on to win game 7.

The interview was kind of disappointing, though, because it lasted all of 45 seconds. Whitey said maybe two sentences and Mickey said, at most, one sentence. That’s alright.

The next two clips I got were the 50s and 60s from the Ken Burn’s Baseball Series. Very exciting. It was great to see the interviews and clips on Mickey and Ted Williams. Stuff on Joe D. and Yogi. Jackie Robinson had a nice portion and so did Willie Mays. The home run race of 61, obviously, and then all of the crazy changes in the 60s. You know the shtick since you already saw it. I liked it very much.

The final clip I saw was game 7 of the 1952 World Series against the Dodgers. I got to see a Mickey Mantle home run, a Jackie Robinson triple, and all three starting pitchers, Lopat, Reynolds, and Raschi. It was so cool to see all of these guys that I have been reading about-ittle Scooter and Yogi and Billy the Kid (who hit a couple of singles). I’ll have to find another game where Whitey’s playing (he was in the Korean War in ’51 and ’52).

The game I wanted to see most, though, was the 1961 All Star game. I couldn’t find it. Aside from all of the amazing players in this game, there is just one moment that occurred that I know would give me a giggle. The day before the game was to be played in San Francisco, Mickey and Whitey flew out a day early to get in a day of golf. They didn’t have anything with them so the Giant’s owner, Horace Stoneham let them go to his club and buy whatever they needed to play and put it on his tab. They each ran up a $200 bill. So later that night, Whitey went over to Stoneham to give him the money and he decided to have some fun and make a bet with Whitey. Wrong move. He told Whitey that if he got out Willie Mays in tomorrow’s game then the bill would be cleared. However, if Willie got a run off of him, they would owe double (making it $800). Of course Whitey could never pass up a challenge, which scared Mantle to death because Mays used to KILL Whitey. So, the next day Whitey starts the game, Willie steps up, Mantle is in center field. First pitch, foul, second pitch, just barely foul, third pitch-Strike. Mantle’s response: he started leaping up and down, yelling and yahooing, and twirling all over the field like he had just won the world series. The writers became suspicious because this was around the time of the big competition “who is better-Mantle, Mays or Snider.” Mantle and Mays were actually good friends, so when Willie looked at Whitey, like “what the fuck is that crazy ass doing?” they finally told him the story and Willie started laughing hysterically.

Anyway, I just wanted to see the clip for Mantle’s reaction to Whitey striking out Willie Mays.

I just have to add that the two moments where I smiled the most and that really touched me during the Ken Burns clips, were: 1) Bobby Thompson’s home run and the reaction of the Giants (players and fans) and 2) Seeing clips of Ted Williams play his last game with his infamous home run. Isn’t that funny? Neither included the Yankees. Huh.

I may go back tomorrow. I have a feeling I am going to be very wild.

Later,
Milejio”

IT WAS 30 YEARS AGO TODAY…

Today marks the 30th anniversary of George Steinbrenner buying the Yankees. To think that he did it for less than he’s currently paying Raul Mondesi, Ro White and Sterling Hitchcock is staggering. The Post has an article commemorating the sale today. At the end of the piece, George, now 72, said he wouldn’t be running the team forever. “This year has taken a toll. Ive been very tired, but I still get the steam up when I have to.”

Yeah, just ask Jeter.

BILL JAMES WATCH

I have to admit that I’m fascinated that Bill James is working for the Yankees arch-rival. I will be keeping tabs on him throughout the year. The first interview I’ve encountered since he’s been in Boston was posted on mlb.com this week.

Enjoy.

ROCKY REDUX: DON’T KNOCK THE ROCK

In the footnote for a review I recently posted on Terry Pluto’s “Curse of Rocky Colavito”, I wondered whether or not Pluto would need to revise his view of the Indians as lovable losers in light of the organization’s recent success. If I had done just a little bit of fact-checking I would have discovered that since the publication of “The Curse of Rocky Colavito”, Pluto has written two more volumes on the Indians: “Burying the Curse: How the Indians Became the Best Team in Baseball” (1995), and “Our Tribe: A Baseball Memoir” (1999).

Speaking of Rocky Colavito, the former Tribe slugger is one of 26 players up for HoF consideration by the newly revamped Veterans Committee. I doubt whether he will be elected, still I did run across another story involving Rocky, which may be of interest.

Colavito, in the final year of his career (1968), was released early in the season by the L.A. Dodgers, and picked up by the Yankees on June 15th. This was the CBS Yankees, in the midst of their decline. But the Yankees in 1968 weren’t so awful, and they played above their heads, grasping for respectability. In late August, they hosted a 5-game series against the Detriot Tigers. The Yankees won the first three games, but had to face Pat Dobson and Mickey Lolich in a double-header to end the series on Sunday. Due to an unfortunate quirk in the schedule, it would be the first of three straight double-headers. Three days, six games. Oy.

According to Dick Lally’s book, “Pinstriped Summers: Memories of Yankee Seasons Past” (1985),

“The team was about to suffer a severe case of the pitching shorts…Colavito was gifted with one of the great right arms in baseball history, a rally cippler. On balls hit to him in right field, enemy base runners realized that any thoughts of taking an extra base put them in a no-man’s land. Invariably they either stayed put or were thrown out. It was this majestic cannon that Houk turned to that Sunday afternoon, and its pitching performance provided the team with a lift that would last the season.

The Tigers took three and one-third innings to dispose of left-hander Steve Barber in the first game, scoring five runs on seven hits and three walks. When Houk strode in from the dugout to lift his battered starter, the stage had been set for Rocky’s Moment: runners on first and second, one man out, and the Yankees on the wrong end of a 5-0 score. Not another Tiger crossed the plate. Throwing nothing but overhand heat, Colavito pitched two and two-thirds innings of scoreless relief, giving up only one hit: a double by Al Kaline. He walked two and struck out one. The Yankees, meanwhile, obvioulsy inspired by the sheer audacity and success of the gamble, cut and slashed their way to six runs and the ball game, Rocky getting the win. It was only the beginnning. In the second game, with his team trailing 3-2, Colavito, now safely positioned back in right field, hit a game-tying home run off Mickey Lolich. Pandemonium. The shot left New York with no other options but to win that game, too, and sweep the doubleheader.

They finished that day at .500, but that was unimportant. What was important was the way they reached that mark: using a storybook performance to beat a powerful Tiger team. It was the sort of day what would rekindle the self-confidence that this club had once taken for granted. It gave them the motor to make their late-season charge, a run that would at one point have them as high as third place. Finally, as if the very effort of this push had exhausted all their reserves, they faded in the final two weeks of the season. They finished in fifth place with a record of 83-79. No one of the team could remember when so little had meant so much.”

Here is a good idol-worship page on Rocky, for anyone who is interested. It gives those of us who are too young to have seen Colavito play, a good visual sense of what he meant to all those kids like Pluto.

The good people at Baseball Primer have been running a series of engaging articles on the Hall of Fame. Using a series of questions devised by Bill James (“The Keltner List”), Eddie Murray, Dale Murphy, Dave Paker, and Tommy John and Kim Kaat, are all given the once-over by Baseball Primer’s competent staff of contributors.

Rob Neyer has two very good columns that focus on the candidates for the Hall as well.

The Hall of Fame will announce it’s newest members next Tuesday; the Veterans Committee make their choice known on February 26th.