Elect A New System

I got asked a lot about the contrasts between sports and politics. Here's one hard-to-believe truth: the elections are far more screwed up in sports.

Just when I thought a baseball vote could no longer surprise me, The Writers' Association manages to confer the Cy Young Award on the guy who got the second most first-place votes. Now, I've seen a lot of screwy elections in politics, but a system which is designed to permit this to happen would never last in a democracy (or anything close to it).

I say this as a supporter of Tim Lincecum for the award: look, this is simple. Why is this archaic "top three vote getters" method still in use? Is there a particular reason each voter is not asked for a selection, and then the winner - you know - wins? Where if there is a tie, either you leave it as such and give out two awards, or perhaps you hold a run-off among the electors?

The "top three" is a variation of the older long-sheet ballots the writers began using in the '30s when they took over the MVP voting, and a cousin to the ludicrous Hall of Fame ballots. They date to a time of inferior communications where the practicality of a run-off vote was far lower. They are anachronisms, and they produce shoddy results like this one.

The Hall of Fame, obviously, should just be an up-or-down vote on each nominee, not another top ten list and percentage thresholds. The NFL has this system down: its voters convene and argue their votes, and then reach consensus.

Even that kind of system is not fool-proof. There is the story of Rick Ferrell, the long-time executive of the Detroit Tigers and, before that, long-time slightly-above-average Hall of Famer. For years, the voters on the Veterans' Committee would sit around and talk through - and even choreograph - their voting. They'd pay tribute to this beloved figure by throwing him "courtesy votes," so when the balloting was completed they could truthfully say "You got three, you needed six, maybe next year, Old Sport." One year signals were supposedly crossed and twice as many guys thought they were supposed to give Rick his courtesy votes  and instead of three, he got six - and a man who hit .281, caught for eighteen years without ever backstopping a pennant-winner, and was out-homered by his pitcher/brother - got elected. Or so the story goes (those vote numbers are pulled out of thin air, incidentally).

Still, any method that permits the runner-up to win because of how few runner-up votes the leader got (Lincecum 2009), while not precluding a tie (Hernandez and Stargell, 1979), and still permits personal pique to decide (1947: one voter leaves Williams off the ballot and three leave off DiMaggio), has got to be improved upon.

Maybe the writers could leave a phone number at which they could be reached to cast a run-off ballot in the event of a tie. If that's not too much trouble.

Recommended Reading: Nellie King

People will little note nor long remember what Steven Jackson did pitching in relief last season for the Pittsburgh Pirates. For that matter, not until now, were they likely to remember what Nellie King did pitching in relief for the Bucs in 1956.

Without both of these men, and all others like them, baseball would cease to exist.

2009 was an encouraging year for Jackson. Up from Indianapolis, he pitched 40 times for a total of 43 innings, 21 strikeouts, 22 walks, two wins, three losses, and a 3.14 ERA. This was the culmination of nearly six years along a heavily-guided, clearly-lit, little-left-to-chance route that began when Howard McCullough of the Diamondbacks started scouting him at Clemson in 2003. The next year, Arizona drafted him in the tenth round, and, despite the fact he was already 22, they started him in the instruction-focused Pioneer and Northwest Leagues. The Yankees were following him, too, and when they worked out a deal to return Randy Johnson to Arizona, Jackson was one of the pitchers they demanded. New York began to work Jackson in relief in '07 and their instructors helped him find a new arm slot that turned a mediocre sinker into an out pitch. He was the third arm the Yankees called up from the minors last April, but they wasted his last option by letting him sit in the bullpen for a week without an appearance. When they tried to sneak him off the major league roster, the Pirates pounced and picked him up on waivers. Within weeks, he was a regular in the Pittsburgh bullpen.

This tortuous recital of the provenance of Steven Jackson - scouted, trained, guided, instructed, groomed (and paid around $275,000 in his first big league season) is provided to underscore a point about ex-Pirate reliever Nellie King's wonderful new book Happiness Is Like A Cur Dog. In King's first full season in the bigs, in 1956, he appeared 38 times in Pittsburgh, pitched 60 innings, won four and lost one, and finished with a 3.15 ERA (and earned about $6,000 - still just $47,000 in 2009 dollars). This was the culmination of eleven years of fighting to get anybody to notice him long enough to invite him to a mass tryout camp, then possibly to spring training, then possibly onto the roster of a minor league team like the New Iberia Cardinals of the Class-D Evangeline League.

Class D.

As he vividly recounts in this warm, understated memoir, Nellie King's career began in a time when a ballplayer had at least three jobs: what he did during the actual season, what he did delivering packages or bailing hay during the off-season, and what he had to do 24 hours a day to make sure he didn't get released with no more than ten days' notice and not even a bus ticket home. It is almost unfathomable to consider the pioneer-like hacking through the woods of hidden opportunity that King so fondly recalls. A part-time Cardinals' scout liked what he saw of him in a glorified summer high school league and invited him to a tryout. He got a uniform with a three digit number on it. Hooking on with a team in Louisiana he arrived there by bus in the middle of the night, clueless of who to contact or where to go. He was released twice before his 19th birthday, and made it back into organized ball only because that first scout had gone to work filling out the rosters of some independent clubs. And that only got him into the Pittsburgh system because the owner sold those obscure franchises to the Pirates. 

And that's when he got to begin his climb up the ladder in a Pirates' farm system that was a little smaller than most - it only had about a dozen clubs. Having won 15 or more three separate times for Pirates' farms (a feat which today would put him on the cover of The Baseball America Prospect Handbook) and having survived, unfazed, two years at Fort Dix during the Korean War, Nelson Joseph King finally got to the big leagues in 1954.

"It had taken me eight years, including two outright releases in 1946, plus two years in the Army, to get to this moment at Ebbets Field. I thought of all those innings and games I spent pitching in small, minor league towns such as Geneva, Ozark, Brewton, Troy, Dorhan, Greenville, Andalusia, and Enterprise, in the Class "D" Alabama State League during my first season in professional baseball. The contrast between Ebbets Field and those minor league towns and fields magnified the contrasts and the satisfaction I was feeling. Having viewed Ebbets Field only in black and white photos and on television in World Series games, I was now seeing it up close, in full color and from the center of the picture. In my eighth decade of life, the memory of that moment is so vivid I can still visualize Ebbets Field..."

Injuries would end King's pitching career in 1957, and he went into radio - following the same steep staircase that described his playing days - through local markets in Western Pennsylvania. Finally, a decade after he stopped pitching for them, he rejoined the Pirates a decade later as an announcer, and the primary partner of the legendary Bob "The Gunner" Prince. Once again the reality of the business of today and that of an earlier time is underscored. As the third announcer of a major league team just 42 years ago, Nellie King was paid $13,000 - and even that only translates to $83,000 in today's money.

The remarkable part of King's story is that the struggle and the finances seem to have made every step, and every misstep, all the more satisfying. Nellie King's story is a triumph of perseverance and contentment. Even the title comes from one of the odder of the aphorisms of the legendary Branch Rickey, for whom King worked in the Pittsburgh organization. Figures like Rickey, and Bill Mazeroski, and Roberto Clemente, and Willie Stargell, populate its pages, but Happiness Is Like A Cur Dog should not be mistaken for the kind of dramatic but sometimes self-important recent biographies of, say, Satchel Paige or George Steinbrenner. And though King goes into depth about the two epic Pirates' World Championship years he covered, he does not seek to elevate either to world-changing status, such as a recent book on the 1912 Series does.

Nellie King has simply written a book about the backbone of baseball, a tale like that of 75 percent of the players in the game's history. And in its own matter-of-fact style, it's terrific. It's available from the usual suspects like Amazon, but more directly (and economically) from the publisher, and Nellie and his family have also launched a blog for Cur.

CORRECTIONS AND NOTES:
In advocating for Danny Murtaugh's Hall of Fame qualifications I gave him credit for one more NL East title than he deserved. I'd forgotten Murtaugh retired four times as Pittsburgh skipper, not three, and the 1972 crown belonged to Bill Virdon... And having composed this as MLB Network rolled out its World Series highlight films, these trivial observations about Yankee Stadium. The boxes remained in the "opera style" - no permanent seats, just as many hard wooden chairs as you needed or could fit in - through at least 1943. And the dirt stripe from the mound to the plate, most recently resurrected in Detroit and Phoenix, was in place in the Bronx through at least 1947 - but gone by 1949.


No Replay, No Problem - And The Vet Vote

Two things to consider about the General Managers' decision not to make a decision on expanding videotape replay: A) whatever it is, baseball has almost always done it, and B) once it's been done, baseball has almost always done more of it, later.

This is just a brief list of the things the game's protectors and magnates have guaranteed would never, ever, happen to the great traditions and sanctity of our private world:

1. Overhand pitching
2. Integration
3. Videotape replay
4. Night games
5. Batting helmets
6. A players' union
7. The American League
8. The banning of the spitball
9. Farming out players to the minors
10. Universal radio broadcasts. Well, okay, radio, but no television. All right, television, but never cable.

Video replay did not celebrate its first anniversary late this season; it celebrated its tenth. In October 13, 1998, third base ump John Shulock threatened to eject me and my six-inch NBC monitor from the reporter's well next to the visitors' dugout at Yankee Stadium for Game Six of the ALCS, because he thought some of the Indians players might have been able to see a replay of a call Ted Hendry didn't do a very good job on at second. Seven months later, on May 31, 1999, the venerable ump Frank Pulli decided he couldn't decide whether Cliff Floyd's blast in Florida was a home run or not. So he went over to a tv cameraman and asked if they'd show him some replays. Pulli decided that per the grounds rules, Floyd's blast had been incorrectly called a homer and was in fact a double, and he so ruled. The National League got mad at him. 

Replay was fully and suddenly introduced in 2008 - by this year it played a vital role in the regular season and the World Series. Now the GM's have demurred. Within eighteen months there will be a video replay rulebook issued to every ump and manager and included in every media guide. You watch.

FOR YOUR HALL OF FAME CONSIDERATION:

Everybody except me seems to have a vote in one of the 87 committees that may elect some managers, umpires, and executives, to Cooperstown next month. I'm in favor of putting in all deserving candidates and I really don't care if we put it to voice vote at Dodger Stadium one night, just so long as we honor the deserving.

So here is a yes/no on each of the candidates, without getting into the woods of who's doing the voting or how:

Manager - Charlie Grimm: No. Longevity, not results.
Manager - Whitey Herzog: Yes. 
Manager - Davey Johnson: No, but close.
Manager - Tom Kelly: Yes. Rebuilt that franchise.
Manager - Billy Martin: a controversial Yes. There's an amazing stat on him: he only had nine full seasons of managing. Eight of those nine teams finished first or second. 
Manager - Gene Mauch: I'm sorry, no. Presided over two of the worst collapses in history.
Manager - Danny Murtaugh: You know what? Yes. Two World's Championships, and in his last stint (1970-75) he won the second of them, and a division in four of the other five years.
Manager - Steve O'Neill: No. See Grimm.

Umpire - Doug Harvey: Yes. 
Umpire - Hank O'Day: No. There are about a dozen deserving umps. Not him. Whoever you think was right in the Merkle game, his ruling was wrong. It was either a New York win or a forfeit, not a tie.

Executive - Gene Autry: No. Bringing the A.L. to Southern California would've been done 20 years before he did it, had it not been for Pearl Harbor.
Executive - Sam Breadon: Yes. Saved the Cardinals from bankruptcy or moving in the '20s, built a dynasty with Branch Rickey.
Executive - John Fetzer: No.
Executive - Bob Howsam: No. The Frank Robinson trade gets you into Cooperstown?
Executive - Ewing Kauffman: No. An elegant, dedicated man.
Executive - John McHale: No.
Executive - Marvin Miller: Yes. For good or for ill, his impact for changing the game was comparable to Babe Ruth.
Executive - Jacob Ruppert: Yes. The Yankees were a joke before him.
Executive - Bill White: Yes. Could qualify in this role, or as a player, or as an announcer. Get him in there!

What The Heck Is This?

Parked on 6th Avenue - for what purpose I have no idea - as bad a touch of sportsmanship (no matter how often it might've been used) as I've ever seen. 

And worse, what's with the Hot Wheels paint job?IMG_1405.JPG

So How Is George Steinbrenner?

It was the (only sometimes) unspoken question always in the background for the first season of the new Yankee Stadium, and it increasingly became the undertone as the post-season accelerated.

Even this afternoon, as the minions of the nation's media capital tried to out-do each other with more and more speculative coverage of the victory parade, a reporter who has been on the radio here for nearly half a century insisted that the highlight of the day would be the "emotional moment" when Steinbrenner accepted his key to the city. A less-senior and far more skeptical colleague asked if this was actually going to happen. The veteran's answer: "It's right here in the program for the ceremony!"

This is, of course, the impression the Yankees continue to give: that all is not necessarily well with their venerable owner, but that he's still frequently involved. There was even a very sad effort just last Saturday by The New York Post to palm off a series of e-mailed answers from infamous mega-flak Howard Rubinstein as an "exclusive interview" with George Steinbrenner. To paraphrase Churchill, the answers contained every cliche except "prepare to meet thy maker," and "employees must wash hands."

I have seen The Boss, with whom I have had a surprisingly warm and even conspiratorial relationship since I was a teenager, only twice this year, and the information gleaned from each encounter was directly self-contradictory. In March, David Cone and I were leaving the press box at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa when the place was frozen by security - it was George on his way out and they cleared the route for him. He was in a wheelchair and looked just this side of robust - twinkly-eyed and neither gaunt nor puffy. Cone whispered that he just had to say hello, and hoped he'd get a hello back.

This is what I heard:

Cone: (mumbled greeting)

Steinbrenner: Of course I know it's you, David. Jesus! We could've used you pitching out there today. Who were those kids? Are any of them ready?

So much for Cone's fear (and mine - to this day I think of George less for the chaos of the '70s and '80s and more for the letter he wrote to ESPN management praising my work on the 1992 Expansion Draft, in which I roundly criticized how his team handled the non-protection of its younger prospects, or the day he spent twenty minutes recounting to Bill Clinton, of all people, virtually every encounter he and I had had since 1973, right down to the story of my mother getting hit by the Knoblauch ball and refusing to ever go back to Shea Stadium even though the Yanks were playing World Series games there).

But just weeks later, during another lockdown, I saw Steinbrenner carted through the bowels of the new ballpark in the Bronx and lifted - not helped, but moved by a guy at each end - into a wheelchair.

Over the last few years, as his health has gotten intermittent, the volume of even rumors and whispers around the Bronx about how he is has declined. When the Yankees traded for Jeff Weaver, Steinbrenner poked his head in to the press conference and asked me "What do you think? How clear-headed does he sound? Is he going to be able to handle this?" - prescient questions, as it proved. A year later I was told that everybody knew there were "awareness problems" but that to my source's knowledge, nobody in the Yankee organization had ever heard a diagnosis, a prognosis, or even a vaguely medical-sounding term. A year after that, when he recited our history to Clinton, his memory was so sharp as to include some stories that I had forgotten - but each time he tried to say my name, all he could come up with was "uhh... this young man." After the 2007 season, there is no question that, to some degree great or small, he was behind the nightmarish, take-it-or-leave-it dethroning of Joe Torre as manager.

There are fewer such reports these days, and not even that level of source information. There's a lot to be said against George Steinbrenner and lord knows I've said much of it. But something made me feel very sad today at that Yankee ceremony: contrary to what it said "right here on the program for the ceremony!," The Boss was indeed not there to accept the keys to the city.

 

America's Biggest Small Town

I don't know anybody in baseball who hates Mariano Rivera. When the Red Sox fans derisively cheered him on Ring Day in 2005 in an attempt to remind him of his part in making that day possible, he tipped his cap - and instantly, if anybody in Boston truly despised him, that evaporated.

If there's a fan left who saw him, after he got the last out in his fifth championship, after his thirteenth year as the greatest reliever the game has ever known, giddily high-fiving fans in the outfield, and that fan still doesn't at least give him a golf clap tonight, he's not really much of a fan.

I keep thinking about that story about the Yankees having to talk The Boss out of trading Rivera to the Mariners in 1996 for Felix Fermin because he wasn't convinced Derek Jeter was ready to play shortstop every day in the major leagues.

Three notes before the slide show. No arguments with Matsui as the MVP, nor would there have been had it been Damon. The point that Matsui only started three of the six games is startling, but consider 1954. Series MVP Dusty Rhodes of the Giants started none of them. Secondly, if they gave out an Unsung MVP, it would've been Damaso Marte, who was flawless after a nightmare of a regular season. And thirdly, thanks for those who said such nice things about the tv version of "The Nine Smartest Plays In World Series History" - and there were indeed some audio problems that apparently affected you only if you had a really good TV with Dolby sound.

Fewer words, more pictures, one of them kind of surprising at the bottom, as ever - forgive the quality, or lack thereof:

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The final out - the throw has just left Robinson Cano's hand. Neither Shane Victorino nor Rivera will beat it there.

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The Yankees break for the celebration at the mound - notice #18 Johnny Damon struggling out of the dugout, dragging his aching calf - and the fans erupt; the gentleman in the cap just to the left of the World Series logo on the field is a former Mayor.

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Joba Chamberlain waving one of the two conveniently-provided World Championship Banners with which he and Nick Swisher led their teammates around the field.

And lastly, a reminder that baseball does erase boundaries. The guy I'm taking a photo of, who's taking a photo of me - we get along perfectly at the ballpark - less so during our day jobs. 

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One last photo. Nerd in Action (Contemplating Burger or Cheesesteak):

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Game Six: Godzilla Versus Mega-Damon

Fascinating subtext to Hideki Matsui's five-RBI night and Johnny Damon's MVP-caliber performance over the first five games. They are in essence competing for the sane job on the 2010 Yankees. It is unlikely New York wants to trust either in leftfield next year, certainly not at these prices. But either would make - as Matsui already has proven - a top-of-the-line DH.

Who's Your Relief Pitcher?

Pedro Martinez, out after just 77 pitches, for the overworked Chad Durbin in the fifth? Two hits, a walk, and a run later, exit Durban, enter the ubderappreciated J.A. Happ. Not Shown In Your Picture: Andy Pettitte, after some close pitches and two walks in the fourth, animatedly discussing it with home plate umpire Joe West as the teams changed sides. Joe Girardi came out to protect him, but whatever he said, Pettitte left West laughing.

Who's Your Relief Pitcher?

Pedro Martinez, out after just 77 pitches, for the overworked Chad Durbin in the fifth? Two hits, a walk, and a run later, exit Durban, enter the ubderappreciated J.A. Happ. Not Shown In Your Picture: Andy Pettitte, after some close pitches and two walks in the fourth, animatedly discussing it with home plate umpire Joe West as the teams changed sides. Joe Girardi came out to protect him, but whatever he said, Pettitte left West laughing.

Who's Your Relief Pitcher?

Pedro Martinez, out after just 77 pitches, for the overworked Chad Durbin in the fifth? Two hits, a walk, and a run later, exit Durban, enter the ubderappreciated J.A. Happ. Not Shown In Your Picture: Andy Pettitte, after some close pitches and two walks in the fourth, animatedly discussing it with home plate umpire Joe West as the teams changed sides. Joe Girardi came out to protect him, but whatever he said, Pettitte left West laughing.
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