Baseball Nerd

Since You Asked

2010-02-07T20:09:07Z

Two updates, one coming with my thanks, one with a touch of silliness.

Several times in the comments I've been asked about my father's health. He's now been hospitalized for more than five months and he continues to struggle against a somewhat-compromised immune system, but he's been on the upswing for a couple of weeks, and given all he's conquered, the doctors are very optimistic and he remains in inspiringly good humor. Your interest in him - and that of my tv viewers - is a great source of comfort to him, and on his behalf, I thank you for it.

Now the silliness. A week ago I mentioned the Springapocalypse of 1995, when major league teams filled their camps with retreads, hasbeens, neverweres, wannabes, and UPS drivers (no offense to UPS drivers). I ran through the line-up the Dunedin-Toronto Blue Jays would've trotted out on the field on Opening Day in defense of their consecutive World Championships of 1992 and 1993 and a commenter giggled (appropriately, I guess) at the prospect of owning a card of the would've-been-Jays closer, Steve Sharts. Ask and ye shall receive.

Sharts, as we see at Baseball Reference, had a six-year career climbing up the ladder in the Phillies system, after being their 17th Round draft choice out of Cal State Northridge in 1985 (Tom Drees, who threw three no-hitters in the PCL in 1989 and had a cameo with the White Sox two years later, went earlier in the same round). There is a youth baseball program in Florida called, of all things, the The Tampa Terror, which identifies its top coach as Steve Sharts but there is no mention made at its website confirming it's the same one. The card is a 1990 CMC, there's apparently also a ProCards issue from the same year.

So there.

Doctor S chickendantz? Seriously? UPDATED

2010-02-06T02:28:40Z

The update on Dirk Hayhurst's surgery appears positive -- fraying labrum, repaired, out most of the season but possibly not all of it. All in all, probably couldn't have been better.

Now I'm not criticizing anybody's name (I have never completely mastered pronouncing mine, although I have not misspelled it since about 1963), but the surgeon was Dr. Mark Schickendantz? I mean, how could you not go into orthopedic surgery at least with a weak smile on your face contemplating the fact that your surgeon's last name includes the words "chicken dantz"?

The fella who took out my appendix two and a half years ago was named Kimmelstiel, complete with the "steel" pronounciation. A guy allowed to use scalpels, named Kimmelstiel. Heckuva surgeon, by the way.

Dr. Schickendantz.

UPDATE: The author-pitcher quickly regained typing ability (one-handed) and reports himself feeling pretty good, all things considered, but with control of the remote ceded to the Mrs., he says he did briefly consider trying to get a hold of the anesthesiologist for a booster.

FROM A RESEARCHER'S NOTEBOOK: Just stumbled across this in the Fall 2009 edition of The Society for American Research Journal: a law student at the University of North Carolina named Trent McCotter busted his research hump to analyze the official scoresheets from all of Ty Cobb's games, to generate his splits. It is startling to consider that Cobb, in 2,109 games in which he faced righthanded starters, batted .375 lifetime (.347 versus lefties). Perhaps more impressive, Cobb's numbers in games started by the pitching legends he faced:

Cobb Versus: Games Average
Walter Johnson 92 .380
Rube Waddell 21 .354
Cy Young 25 .354
Babe Ruth 21 .338
Eddie Plank 54 .333

Remember, Cobb hit .367 lifetime. He did better than that against Johnson, whom he always claimed he could hit because he knew Johnson wouldn't pitch him inside because he was mortified at the thought of hitting batters in the pre-helmet days - and killing one of them. He actually managed a .454 on base percentage against The Big Train.

The pitchers McCotter's research shows were most successful (and again it's rendered slightly imprecise because the scoresheets don't pinpoint when relievers might have faced him) were Addie Joss (.264), Red Faber (.277), Waite Hoyt (.299), and, remarkably, Red Ruffing (.229, albeit in ten games). Ruffing became an underrated Hall of Famer with the Yankees. But when Cobb faced him in the first four years of Ruffing's career (and the last five years of Cobb's), Ruffing was one of the majors' worst for the then-dead end Red Sox. His career record on the day of Cobb's retirement was 30 wins... and 71 losses!

Dirk Hayhurst's Surgery

2010-02-04T05:58:06Z

The game's next great author is - unfortunately for him - going to have more time for his first book tour.

As he tweets (and as his tweetage is neatly summarized by the Bluebirdbanter blog), Dirk Hayhurst of the Jays, the author of the upcoming The Bullpen Gospels, will undergo exploratory surgery on Friday after having experienced pain in his shoulder off-and-on for the last month.

He is holding up bravely and in good humor despite the compounded uncertainty (when was the last time you heard about exploratory surgery on a pitcher), and must certainly appreciate the literary structure his career continues to follow. He began to write the book only when he was convinced his big league dreams were over; in the span between start and publication he went from minor league also-ran to 2008 Padres starter, then back into the dumpster, then back to the big leagues as a very effective middle reliever in Toronto. Then, literally two months before the book was to come out, his arm began to hurt enough that it requires vague surgery. It's a little too O. Henry (as opposed to Dwayne Henry) for my tastes.

I promised a full review of Gospels closer to the publication date, but if you missed the earlier summary based on the proofs he was good enough to send me, I think Hayhurst is destined to join the ranks of Jim Bouton and Jim Brosnan as the top still-active chroniclers of the sport. The Bouton comparison is the best, though Dirk's criticisms are more directed at himself than were Bouton's.

There is one small on-the-field upside to the surgery. Whatever knee-jerk blowback he might have experienced from teammates for 'violating the code' will be postponed or perhaps averted. As they will get the chance to see, they have very little to complain of - the secrets Dirk Hayhurst reveals are nearly all about himself, and he does them in a manner evocative of the legendary character of Holden Caulfield in Catcher In The Rye.

Wrong

2010-01-30T21:49:00Z

A fascinating, well-researched, reasonably-argued article at a top video games site argues that it is time for the Major League Players' Association to forget if not forgive the last "replacement players" from the 1994-95 forced strike, and grant them participation in the union's merchandising plan, and allow them, finally, to be simulated in the top baseball video games.

I'm not a gamer, so I can't speak to how disturbing it has been to have tried to maintain the simulation experience without Brendan Donnelly, Matt Herges, Ron Mahay, Kevin Millar, and Jamie Walker. But having covered the nuclear labor winter of fifteen years ago, I can't agree with absolving the real-life guys of the responsibility they have for the choices they made in the spring of 1995.

The kotaku.com writer calmly explains what happened to the last five active (of 38 in total) strike-breakers, who eventually reached the majors:

Although replacement players receive pension benefits, are subject to the same rules of free agency and are given representation during salary arbitration, disciplinary hearings or other matters, they are barred from joining the union, cannot vote on its matters and, of course, can't collect any licensing money.

In other words, despite taking the most serious action a potential member could take against his striking/frozen would-be teammates, the players who went to the awful "Replacement Spring" of 1995 get the full benefits of the union they were willing to undermine. They just don't get some of the ancillary perks, like the simulated doppelgangers and the real money they create (one will note there is no shortage of baseball cards of replacement guys - and not just the Millars, but also the Donnellys and Herges... Hergeses... Hergeseses... guys named Herges).

No matter what you think of unions, and particularly of the irresponsibility of this union in the steroid era (to say nothing of its short-sightedness in that mid-free agent era in which a little fiscal responsibility might have led to more teams with more jobs for more union members), the punishment seems limited and symbolic enough. It is hard now to remember what February and March of 1995 looked like. In short, the owners were one good court ruling away from getting the right to impose whatever rules they wanted despite their own shared culpability in the end of the '94 season. They could have broken the union and buried any players who didn't cooperate. They didn't get the court ruling, and had to settle with the players and to instantly sweep away the post-apocalyptic scene that was unfolding in Florida and Arizona.

A few highlights: the Baltimore Orioles had simply suspended operations (Peter Angelos was having nothing to do with replacements). There was some question as to whether or not Cal Ripken's streak would end if a team called the Baltimore Orioles actually played a game without him because he was on strike. The two-time still-defending World Champion Toronto Blue Jays could not have legally played a game in Canada and were thus to shift to their spring training home in Dunedin, Florida (capacity 5,509). Per the lone surviving, harrowing source document of the time, Stats' Inc's Replacement Player Handbook 1995, the Jays' starting line-up was likely to be:

C: Brad Gay (Class A ball, 1994)
1B: Wes Clements (out of baseball since 1987)
2B: Emmett Robinson (out of baseball since 1986)
SS: Robert Montalvo (utilityman in AAA in 1994)

3B: Warren Sawkiw (in an independent league, 1994)

LF: Trevor Penn (out of baseball since 1990)
CF: Darryl Brinkley (independent leagues, 1994)
RF: Rick Hirtensteiner (AA, 1994)
DH: Brian Brooks (out of baseball since 1990)
SP: Pat Tilman, Brian Ahern, Mike Arner, Pat Blohm
Closer: Steve Sharts (out of baseball since 1990)

The Replacement Jays were particularly pathetic. Other clubs might have been looked a little more professional, but that was sad in its own way. Pedro Borbon, Sr., was pitching for the Reds - at the age of 48. Oil Can Boyd, just 35, was thought to be the ace of the White Sox staff. Rick Reed, later to succeed for the Twins and Mets, was considered the likeliest Cy Young candidate. There were the human interest stories: the Yankees had at least one guy in camp who was, literally, a UPS driver.

And these were just the guys we knew of: washed up ex-big leaguers looking for one last taste of glory, career minor leaguers seeing this as the big break they'd been denied, and the kids like Millar, 23 years old and having shown very little promise in A-ball the year before, who were probably just too scared to say "no" when somebody in management said that his decision would be remembered even when all of this replacement stuff had been forgotten.

The problem is, hundreds of Millars still said "no." They may indeed have been punished later for refusing to fill out a uniform during those dark weeks of Replacement Ball. There is nobody to argue for some recognition for their less obvious sacrifices. Millar, Donnelly, and the rest, were - for whatever reason - willing to accept this nightmarish farce, to provide backbone in that parallel universe where 1995 saw the World Champion Dunedin Jays, and NL MVP Jeff Stone of the Phillies, and fireman of the year, 40-year old, five years removed from his last big league pitch, Willie Hernandez of the Yankees.

They made a choice. The punishment was more symbolic than vengeful. Besides, if you feel your video game is incomplete without Brendan Donnelly, you may be a little too into video games.

FROM A RESEARCHER'S NOTEBOOK: On Opening Day of the 1967 season, there were 17 pitchers named "Jim" on major league rosters. Six of them: Jim Grant, Jim Kaat, Jim Merritt, Jim Ollom, Jim Perry, and Jim Roland, were with the Minnesota Twins. Remarkably, the Twins had six pitchers named Jim, and only five pitchers not named Jim.

Photo Quiz

2010-01-27T07:10:32Z

Something to do as we contemplate the irony of Aroldis Chapman escaping from Cuba to sign with a team that in the 1950's had to change its name to the "Cincinnati Redlegs" to avoid somebody mistaking them for communist sympathizers.

Some of you will get this instantly. Others will say, "can't be!" The rest, should just get a kick out of it...

Who is this, captured in the endless sweep of photographing anybody in a big league uniform by Topps Chewing Gum in the 1956-1996 era?

Your hints:

1) I've been looking for this one for a long time. Never did locate it within the since-dismantled archives at Topps here in New York.

2) Yes, he's in the uniform of the one-season franchise, the 1969 Seattle Pilots (although there are 1970 Pilots photos too - the franchise moved to Milwaukee just before opening day, as part of a bankruptcy collapse).

3) No, he never played for the Pilots, but yes, he did play in the majors briefly, but even most of his many admirers probably don't know that.

4) Lefthanded hitting outfielder-first baseman who quickly gave it up after his brief big league stint six years later, and then moved into coaching and managing.

5) Got a big league managing job, in fact, when the man his team had hired in full anticipation that he would make the leap from wonderful pitching coach to wonderful manager, turned out to be not quite that much of a skipper.

6) Managed in two World Series but never won a single World Series game on the road.

7) Yet won both Series... okay, you've got it now.

Fresh from a .317 season in the New York/Penn League in 1968, he was actually in the Pilots' first big league camp as a non-roster invitee - and was just 18 years old when that photo was taken in Arizona in March, 1969. Yes... it's legendary Twins' manager Tom Kelly.

The Hall, And The Meaning Of Stats

2010-01-24T17:24:17Z

Don't look it up. Try (at least first) to figure it out. I'll answer it at the end of this first part of the post - and I'm doing it this way to underscore why a malleable attitude towards statistics and Cooperstown is mandatory.

Here goes: Who led the American League in home runs in the 1980's?

Somewhere else on the web, somebody dismissed my support (and that of the 400 BBWAA electors who voted for him) of Bert Blyleven by claiming you can't put a pitcher in the Hall of Fame who averaged only 13 wins a season.

A-hem...

Pitcher Wins Per Season

Bob Gibson 14.76

Gaylord Perry 14.27

Allie Reynolds* 14.00

Tom Glavine* 13.86

Sandy Koufax 13.75

Steve Carlton 13.70

Chief Bender 13.25

Early Wynn 13.04

Bert Blyleven* 13.00

Dizzy Dean 12.50

Dazzy Vance 12.30

NOLAN RYAN 12.00

* not in Hall of Fame

You can make a million different arguments about what this statistic means - and then move on to whether or not it really means anything in terms of the Hall. But the Blyleven (exactly 13 wins a year) versus Ryan (exactly 12 wins a year) comparison certainly is startling.

A much fairer, and slightly more subjective, view of the issue is provided by what we might call "Adjusted Wins Per Season." It's not a complicated formula. You just assess a pitcher's "incomplete seasons" - only half a year in the majors, or less, or the last year when they were released on May 15th, or, particular to Koufax, the first two seasons of his career in which he was forced to stay on the major league roster (but was seldom used) because of a then-extant rule requiring such treatment for any free agent signed to a ******** bonus. You then throw out these "rump years" (and any scattered wins gathered in them) and re-divide.

Let's do this for the same mix of a dozen pitchers, HOF and NON-HOF, as above:

Pitcher Adjusted Wins Per Season "Rump" Seasons

Dizzy Dean 16.50 Three

Sandy Koufax 15.9 Two

Steve Carlton 15.52 Three

Bob Gibson 15.50 One

Allie Reynolds* 15.17 One

Tom Glavine* 15.05 Two

Dazzy Vance 14.92 Three

Gaylord Perry 14.27 One

Early Wynn 14.19 Two

Chief Bender 14.13 One

Bert Blyleven* 13.00 None

NOLAN RYAN 12.76 Two

*not in Hall of Fame

As usual when you research something - however trivial it might be - unsought data turns up. In this case it would include the suggestion that the voters need to reexamine the candidacy of Allie Reynolds. Somebody else interesting turns up in that "adjusted" category - Ron Guidry, at 15.27.

But the most fascinating is the comparison it provides for Blyleven and Ryan. Their ERA's are similar, their 20-win seasons are similar (and unimpressive: Ryan, 2; Blyleven, 1), their average seasonal win totals are similar (adjusted or not). The differences are the no-hitters and strikeouts, and while I would agree they are enough to have made Ryan the first-ballot Hall of Famer he was, I don't see how their absence has left Blyleven to decades of also-ran status.

By the way, the answer to the trivia question at the top: Mike Schmidt led baseball (and obviously, the National League) in homers in the '80s with 313. Dale Murphy was second with 308. Eddie Murray was third overall with 274 and thus led those who played in each league during that decade. But your American League top homer man of the '80s, and fourth overall in the game, was Dwight Evans with 256. I happen to think Evans deserves serious consideration for Cooperstown - but surely not for that stat.

CAVEAT EMPTOR

Fell victim to myself - and was contacted by a bunch of other suckers - to an eBay scam that, while clearly focused to rip off specialists in a very small branch of baseball memorabilia collecting - serves as a reminder to think carefully about the ingenuity people can muster while pursuing the proverbial ill-gotten gains.

To eBay's credit, in my case at least, it and PayPal refunded my money, even as the seller claimed he was the victim, and smeared, and all the like. The ID was "tarheels17032" and the man, a Randy Howard operating out of a post office box in suburban Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, put up for bid a "box" of vintage 1971 O-Pee-Chee baseball cards (the Canadian version of Topps). The illustration showed the retail box, and in it, 36 seemingly unopened packs in good shape. Upon arrival, I couldn't resist opening a pack.

I was surprised, initially, as to how easy that was. The packages were barely sealed. As a kid, I actually opened packages of these cards when they originally came out, and they were stuck together for the long haul. But the biggest surprise awaited inside. The cards had clearly not spent the last 39 years in those packages. Some had creases and seriously stubbed corners, others didn't. At least two cards that were not directly facing the gum in the packs, nevertheless had damage from having had gum stuck to them. The packages were in better condition than the cards - a physical impossibility if the packs had been unopened.

Unless we were dealing with cards granted the ability of locomotion, which had escaped their packs and managed to somehow injure themselves, then return home like salmon swimming back to spawn, there was something seriously amiss here.

Mr. Howard at first agreed to "take a look" at the cards if I wanted to return them to him. He then refused delivery at the post office in Dauphin, Pa. When I filed a complaint with eBay, he wrote: "First of all, please re-read my description. No where do I EVER describe in any of my auctions that something is 'unopened.' I'm not the original owner nor do I profess to be. I specifically state in my auctions to ask any questions prior to end of auction. I also state that all items are sold as is..."

As the complaint moved through eBay, he later posted that I had tampered with the packages. Needless to say, the eBay folks did not exactly buy that (since I had a registered mail receipt marked "refused" - he could not have seen the packages). Nor did they buy the 'I never explicitly said these were unopened packs' defense.

My travails with memorabilia sellers are not your concern. But when several other collectors advised me that there were several instances of this exact kind of rip-off involving supposedly unopened packs, I thought it merited mention here. The story as I understand it is that either two people working in cahoots, or one using two different eBay ID's, buy up old empty card boxes, and empty wrappers that match the boxes. Lord knows where they get the gum, but they fill the "packs" with off-condition common cards, seal them just closed enough, then stick them in the empty box, and make big money selling not vintage unopened packs or boxes, but garbage.

Once eBay returned my money I thought it would be fascinating to open up Mr. Howard's packs to see what was inside. Not one of the packs didn't include something impossible. Several packs included not 1971 O-Pee-Chee cards (yellow backs), but ordinary 1971 Topps (green backs). The O-Pee-Chee cards were issued in series that year, so all the cards in each pack should have been restricted to Series One, Series Two, or Series Three, etc. But many were intermixed between the series. Topps and O-Pee-Chee made their money on making sure kids had to keep buying to get a full set, so they had state-of-the-art "randomizing" processes to be certain there were lots of doubles in a box and never anything like a run of cards in numerical sequence in a given pack. Nevertheless, nearly all the packs came out that way (one produced numbers 234, 235, 238, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244). And virtually every card in the box was a "common" - no stars, no rare cards.

But the piece de resistance was the fact that the battered cards in that first tentatively-opened pack proved to be just the start, in terms of damage and bad condition. You do not have to be a collector nor a detective to doubt that this card had always be in that pack:

Seriously?

McGwire 4: The Koufax Confusion

2010-01-13T07:42:15Z

Mark McGwire's excuse has indeed resonated in some quarters, and I've already seen some claims that "Sandy Koufax took steroids - and for the same reason - for his health!"

Different stuff, known now by a different term, and administered under a doctor's prescription and supervision. Stuff you yourself may have been given.

The origin points are a) an interview Koufax gave upon his retirement in which he references being "high" during games from all the drugs, and b) a passing reference inside Jane Leavy's fabulous book Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy.

Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus explained it more than two years ago in a post (subscription required):

I was able to get in touch with Jane Leavy to clarify. I asked Ms. Leavy if she meant corticosteroids or if Koufax, a player of the same era that we know steroids and HGH made some small inroads into the game, now had to be lumped in with the "juicers." Leavy states she meant corticosteroids, the same type of "cortisone injection" that we see performed so often in baseball to this day.

So, no, Sandy Koufax did not take the "steroids" Mark McGwire took, for the same reason McGwire claims he took them. He took cortisone injections (cortico-steroids; they used the back half of the word as shorthand in the '60s; we now use its front half) for the same reason probably a quarter of major league pitchers have taken them, the same reason I took one in each of the last two years - a specialist physician determined it was safe, it would alleviate pain, and do less damage than surgery. And it broke no rule nor law.

Parenthetically, I received steroid drops for my eyes the other day. I had no idea they existed. This also provided the only laugh of the entire McGwire MLB Net interview - when he talked about how no steroid could immediately effect one's hand-to-eye coordination. He's literally correct (though all honing of physical strength can lead to improved coordination, too), but if he'd only known about "Eyeball Steroids" he might have dropped the subject just to avoid the confusion.

McGwire 3: The Advisor

2010-01-12T13:29:48Z

In The New York Times, my friend Rich Sandomir has an extraordinary piece on the arranging of the Costas/McGwire interview, and the rest of yesterday's 'limited hang-out,' as a component of the Mark McGwire Contrition Tour.

Sandomir doesn't address if this was McGwire's batcrap crazy idea, or it was designed by somebody else: that everybody will believe he took steroids, often by injection ("I preferred the orals"), solely for the purpose of healing his tortured body, just so he wouldn't waste the gift "from the man upstairs" and to avoid the shame of hearing "teammates walking by saying, 'he's injured again."

But he does reveal that there was somebody involved in this strange dance, conveniently transcripted here. McGwire has a damage control advisor, and he's Ari Fleischer, the former Press Secretary to President Bush. I vowed long ago not to mix baseball and politics here, and I'm confident that I'd be saying the same thing if this were Robert Gibbs from the current White House: if this was Fleischer's plan, he owes McGwire a refund. If it wasn't, he needs to tell Mac never to suggest it again.

It will to some degree fly with a small percentage of the public, and l point to the irony of a comment yesterday by somebody posting under the name "Mantlewasarockstar." Let's accept McGwire's premise - even though this took place long after the heartbreaking death of Lyle Alzado, and the sudden retirement of Florence Griffith-Joyner, and the other horror health stories of steroids abused. Last night he told Costas he had started his heaviest use of steroids in the winrer of 1993-94, to try to regain his health.

But by McGwire's admission, he "broke down in '94. Missed three quarters of the year. I go into '95 and I broke down again. I could have been - but for some reason I kept doing it."

He did it to get healthy, got less healthy, but kept doing it? From 1993 through at least 1998? This has now sunk to the level of the Rafael Palmeiro, Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds denials: 'I, as a top athlete dependent on my body for my multi-million-dollar income, had no idea what I was putting in my body. Coulda been dangerous pharmaceuticals. Or flaxseed oil. Or something Miguel Tejada got at a sample sale at a Dominican drug store.'

More over, if you're buying this, Mr/Ms Mantlewasarockstar, and it really still was some kind of firm conviction this was about body repair and not artificially-increased home run power - body repair is by itself artificially-increased home run power! Consider the name under which you comment: Mickey Mantle.

What would Mantle have been like with a miracle elixir that let him come back from injuries? What would Maris have been like (it wasn't just the bad taste of public reaction that led him to retire seven years later - he only played two full seasons after he broke Ruth's record)? Or Albert Belle? Or every sore-armed pitcher whom McGwire faced, or faced at less than full strength, or would never face at all?

If something improper, immoral, illegal, or unethical was used by Mark McGwire to get himself back on the field, and if it really did nothing whatsoever to add enough power to get transform just thirty of what had been his fly ball outs, into the stands each year - it, by itself, was a performance-enhancing drug. In some ways it becomes even more of a performance-enhancing drug: it didn't just improve what he did from, say, 40 to 70.

It increased it from 0 to 70.

Plug: we'll deconstruct parts of the MLB Network interview with McGwire, tonight on Countdown.

UPDATE: You'll notice a comment comparing the euphoria effects of amphetamines to the hypothetical effects of steroids as McGwire misunderstands them. Clearly I wasn't explicit enough, so consider that the sentence I wrote above, "What would Mantle have been like with a miracle elixir that let him come back from injuries?" as actually reading, "What would Mantle have been like with a miracle elixir that let him come back healthy from injuries, as opposed to a drug that temporarily left him too stoned and/or strung out to care."

Also, "FAIL"? When did the condescending use of this word as an argument-ender jump the shark, 2006 or 2005?

McGwire 2: Apology As Rationalization

2010-01-12T00:06:24Z

The question from Bob Costas, paraphrased: Could you have had those homer-to-at bats ratios, and could you have hit 70 homers in 1998, without steroids:

"I truly believe so. I was given this gift by the man upstairs."

Which gift was this, Mark? The gift of steroids?

Mark McGwire, who in his statement this afternoon seemed to understand something at least of the damage he had done to the game, has undone this tonight in the Costas interview on MLB Network.

He insisted he used steroids only to restore his health after his physical trials of the early '90s: "My track record as far as hitting home runs, the first at bat I had in Little League was a home run. They still talk about the home runs I hit in high school, they still talk about the home runs I hit in Legion - I led the nation in home runs - they still talk about the home runs I hit in the minors. I was given the gift to hit home runs."

Seriously?

"All I've wanted to do was come clean. I've been wanting to come clean since 2005."

Then do so. Saying you used steroids, but denying the steroids had anything to do with your ability to hit more and longer homers - and to not even connect the idea that even if it was merely for purposes of restoring physical health, that still means the steroids contributed to your ability to hit these homers - does not constitute an apology, an acknowledgment, or the truth.

THREE UPDATES (8:15 EST): Why did McGwire repeatedly insist he'd been looking for the opportunity to come clean since 2005? Why not earlier?

Secondly, is the connection not clear in McGwire's mind? That steroids permit the user to work out more frequently, to rebound more quickly from the wear and tear of exercise and weight-lifting? That as dedicated to the hard work in the weight room as one might be, it is the steroids that physically enable the user to increase the frequency of that hard work?

Thirdly, props to the MLB Network group: Matt Vasgersian, Tom Verducci, Ken Rosenthal, and my friends Joe Magrane, Harold Reynolds, and of course Bob Costas, for not simply rubber-stamping McGwire's ridiculous disconnect between the steroids and the productivity.

This apology is about one percent more substantial than Jason Giambi's. And it came five years later.

"I Used Steroids During My Playing Career"

2010-01-11T20:19:47Z

You've seen Mark McGwire's statement by now, his admission, apology, and regret, for having used steroids (and inferring from the tone of that statement, having used them pretty constantly for nearly the entirety of his career).

I have been open-and-shut critical of McGwire here and I will have to consider whether this admission, so late in the game, makes any significant difference to me in terms of my approval of his return to the game, or in any assessment of his Hall of Fame credentials. But clearly, these kinds of remorseful words have a far more important impact:

"I wish I had never touched steroids. It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize...I never knew when, but I always knew this day would come. It's time for me to talk about the past and to confirm what people have suspected."

I don't know if I can look Mark McGwire in the eye again. But much more importantly, obviously he now can again look himself in the mirror. And for taking a step he has so long and so strenuously avoided, he deserves great credit. Such a burden, carried with such effort, and to the benefit of so few, must have been extraordinary and it must have sucked the life out of him.

For McGwire to make this even a slight positive, however, he should go further. He cannot now be punished in any material way for what he did - technically he was in violation of no explicit baseball rule, nor law (though in a general sense he violated all of the game's conduct rules). He should now renounce his ranking in the all-time list of single season home runs. He should say, rather than a Commissioner or a group of writers or a Hall of Fame or a bunch of historians, "what I did in 1998 should not count."

There should be other apologies, though I doubt we'll see them. Other users of the era could do much to clarify baseball history by admissions, and it would be of use if those who enabled and defended them and McGwire to apologize for their actions, even if they were unknowing.

I'll begin in the mirror, again. After the 1986 season, I was told by a prominent major leaguer that Jose Canseco used "that stuff the East German swimmers were on," and never could get a second source with sufficient knowledge or credibility, to be able to go on the air with any kind of story even suggesting such a thing. In 1988, I was told by two prominent track athletes that one of the stars of their sport "couldn't possibly have improved so much without steroids or something like them," as one put it. Throughout the rest of the '80s and '90s I heard throughout baseball rumor after rumor, and I was never able to get sourcing satisfactory to get the story on the air, in local television, or at ESPN, or at NBC. In all candor, I don't know what more I could have done to enable somebody to play Martin Luther and nail the charges to the Commissioner's door (yes, several of us tried to pool our information - most of it was overlapping and the longer it went on, the higher the sourcing bar seemed to get). Nonetheless, I apologize for never getting that second source, or third, or fourth.

There is only one sour note in the McGwire story:

"I wish I had never touched steroids. It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era.

"After all this time, I want to come clean. I was not in a position to do that five years ago in my congressional testimony, but now I feel an obligation to discuss this and to answer questions about it."

The only problem with that part of the statement is that McGwire seems to ignore the saddest truth. It was in large part the "steroid era" because he used steroids. That he may have felt peer or competitive pressure to use them is a chicken-and-egg proposition. And the attempt to clean it up, for once and for all, stalled in large part because before a Congressional Committee, he and others stonewalled.

Certainly, both during and after his playing careers, he did no better than pass that pressure to use on to others, and extend the vicious cycle. The same player who told me about Canseco pointed at McGwire one spring and said "him, too."

Is This Any Way To Run A Hall Of Fame?

2010-01-07T05:42:35Z

Bill Skowron is a delightful and generous man, and Gil McDougald was a versatile player and is an inspiring person, and Hank Bauer was an underrated star and a gifted manager. And they're also on one of baseball's seemingly most glamorous Top 10 stat lists, while really serving only to prove how misleading stat lists can be.

Skowron, McDougald, and Bauer are among baseball's all-time Top 10 World Series Home Run Hitters.

I am the first guy to say a reliance on numbers, especially in the Hall of Fame voting, is erroneous and even contemptible. Nevertheless, several statistical comparisons are so overwhelming as to be jaw-dropping, and reinforce the notion that all those who have yet tried their hands at selecting the immortals - Baseball Writers, Special Committees, Veterans' Committees, Veterans/Members Committees, Negro League Research Committees - have all botched the job.

Ignoring the rest of the 2009/2010 ballot results (ok, not totally ignoring them: I told you Roberto Alomar's last three seasons would cost him election), I remain absolutely fascinated by where Bert Blyleven fits into the history of the game and the minds of the electors.

Look at this. Which one of these is the only Hall of Famer in the group?

Category Blyleven John Kaat Roberts

WINS 287 288 283 286

LOSSES 250 231 237 245

ERA 3.31 3.34 3.45 3.41

K 3701 2245 2461 2357

WALKS 1322 1259 1083 902

20 WINS 1 3 3 6

LCS 3-0 4-1 0-1 N/A

WORLD SERIES 2-1 2-1 1-2 0-1

FULL YEARS 22 23 24 19

Do you see any rhyme or reason to this? In Wins, Losses, and ERA, Blyleven and Robin Roberts are virtual matches. Roberts has 420 fewer walks, but Blyleven has 1344 more strikeouts. At the peripherals, Blyleven acquitted himself well on the post-season stages, but Roberts reeled off six 20-win seasons (and consecutively, no less) to the Dutchman's one.

And save for those 20-win seasons and the issue of longevity, John and Kaat are near statistical matches to Roberts.

Roberts is in the Hall. The others are not.

Below is another amazing comparison. We'll keep the players names out of it (except to note that they debuted in consecutive seasons; this is not some 19th Century guy versus Bob Gibson) until after you compare their numbers. One pitcher is in; the other has never garnered significant support:

Category HOF Pitcher Forgotten Pitcher

WINS 224 229

LOSSES 166 172

ERA 3.26 3.30

K 2012 2416

WALKS 954 1104

20 WINS 5 4

LCS 4-3 1-0

WORLD SERIES 5-3 2-0

FULL SEASONS 15 17

Well this is crazier than Bert Blyleven/Tommy John/Jim Kaat/Robin Roberts. These men are identical. One of them was about 20% more a strikeout/walks guy. The other was on far more playoff and World Series teams (and yet, significantly, only won 9 of 15 decisions).

The Hall of Famer is Catfish Hunter, and the "other guy" is Luis Tiant.

One more, which has some remarkable comps in the Won/Lost numbers and then fades off as the other statistics roll out. But it again illustrates how the theoretical gulfs between Hall of Famers and obscure, never-supported candidates, can be (and again, these men broke in within a little under two years of each other):

Category HOF Pitcher Forgotten Pitcher

WINS 209 209

LOSSES 166 164

ERA 2.95 3.40

K 2486 1728

WALKS 855 858

20 WINS 2 0

LCS N/A 0-0

WORLD SERIES 3-3 N/A

FULL SEASONS 14 16

If I didn't tell you this (or you didn't read it where I did, in The Bill James Historical Abstract, you'd have no way of guessing.

The Hall of Famer, remarkably, is Don Drysdale. The other is Milt Pappas, who, if remembered at all, is remembered for being traded for Frank Robinson.

I think this inundation of stats suggests a couple of things. Foremost, it says that Bert Blyleven isn't just a Hall of Famer - he's an obvious one, and that Tommy John and Jim Kaat are, too - and Tiant almost certainly is (I'm not sure about Milt Pappas, but it sure is impressive that he duplicated Don Drysdale's won-lost record with less of a fastball and on inferior teams). You can say the paucity of post-season work for Luis Tiant compared to Catfish Hunter is to some degree Tiant's fault - but the same measure is not applied to Robin Roberts. You can point out that Drysdale is doubtless given some credit for the sudden, dramatic end to his career due to injury at the age of 33 - and yet it seems as if John and Tiant are not being credited with similar injuries (Tiant was 17-30 and traded or released three times between '69 and '71; John didn't pitch once between July 17, 1974, and Opening Day, 1976). More over, John and Tiant came back from their injuries and certainly aren't getting credit for that.

Ultimately for all the voters' talk about longevity and consistency, the Hall of Fame is about building a reputation and doing it quickly. Robin Roberts is in the Hall of Fame because by the time of his 29th birthday he had produced six straight 20-win seasons (never mind that he would pitch eleven more seasons without another one). Catfish Hunter pitched in six of the seven World Series between 1972 and 1978. And Blyleven and John and Kaat all face the same bizarre slur that dogged Don Sutton for years - they just "hung around." Isn't "hung around" a less pleasant way of describing longevity and consistency?

It is a shame that we don't have something akin to the system in Japan. They have a two-tiered Hall. One is based on simple statistical thresholds. The other is more subjective. Theirs is an odd two-headed beast, but it underscores the fact that as important and as far outside the bounds of mortality Cooperstown is - these endlessly bizarre vote outcomes prove that all we have is the subjective.

Rory Markas, 1955-2010

2010-01-05T18:30:48Z

I met Rory Markas at KNX Radio in Los Angeles in 1989 and by the next year was fortunate enough to have him working for me as my weekend sports anchor and reporter at KCBS-TV downstairs in the same building.

Today, as an old colleague of mine from that time and I wept to each other over the phone about a man we knew well and long but not truly intimately, we tried to figure out exactly why his passing struck us so deeply. It was not just his youth, not just his having finally achieved after years of struggle his dream job.

There was something more. Separately, sports, and broadcasting, are industries full of prima donnas and the thin-skinned and I'll confess to having been each, often at the same time, often for months on end. And Rory was never thus. Whether he was being sent out by one of us on some dippy sports feature in LA twenty years ago, or he was doing play-by-play in some less-than-heavenly minor league town, Rory just never was that way. His loudest complaint was a knowing smile and an accepting shake of the head.

People like him have not only a great gift, but are themselves a gift to the rest of us.

Rory had been the Angels' play-by-play man since 2002, and it was always an honor to sit in with him for an inning whenever the team was here in New York or I was in Anaheim. Those who knew his work need not be told about its quality. Those who were not privileged enough to know him personally need to be told about his quality.

One quick update: I am remiss in not emphasizing Rory's remarkable quick wit. I would often sit with him and Terry Smith for long stretches of games, and usually he'd put me on for a half inning or so, even letting me dabble in play-by-play. I just recounted for a friend something from 2006 or 2007, on the occasion of my first trip to the Angels Stadium booth:

Me: Ball two to Damon, low, outside.

RM: And Molina's going to the mound.

Me: I notice, my friend, that your booth here is the size of a small Olympic village.

RM: Roomy, yes.

Me: Looks like the Yale Bowl, with microphones.

RM: We call it home.

Me: In fact, this second deck of the press box, this radio-tv gallery of yours - it's bigger than the entire press box at Yankee Stadium.

RM: The umpires are going out to break up the conference.

Me: You know you could easily convert half this area to private seating and you'd never miss an inch of it.

RM: Thank you, Keith Olbermann, always a pleasure and thank you for never, ever, making any reference to such a thing ever again. Lackey's ready, Molina crouches and we're ready for action...

Below is the Angels' press release:

BROADCASTER RORY MARKAS PASSES AWAY

ANAHEIM, CA: Angels Baseball Tuesday announced that veteran broadcaster Rory Markas passed away yesterday at his home in Palmdale, CA. No other details are available, and funeral service information is pending.

Markas, 54, spent eight seasons calling play-by-play with the Angels, both on television and radio. In addition to his responsibilities with the Angels, Markas also served as the play-by-play voice for the University of Southern California men's basketball team, and as a reporter for FOX 11 KTTV in Los Angeles.

Prior to joining the Angels, Markas handled the play-by-play duties for the USC baseball team on the Trojan Radio Network, as well as pre-game reporting for Trojan football. During that time, he also served as a sports reporter on KNX Newsradio 1070 in Los Angeles, and a sports anchor on FOX 11. From 1994-97, he was the lead announcer for the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers on the Clippers radio network.

Markas had extensive baseball broadcasting experience prior to joining the Angels, as he worked as a play-by-play announcer for the Milwaukee Brewers television network (1992-94) and as a substitute radio play-by-play announcer with the Brewers radio network from 1984-1994. He spent six seasons calling Pacific Coast League baseball, including three years with the Salt Lake City Gulls and three years with the Vancouver Canadians.

Markas' career included stints as an on-air sports talent for KCBS 2 (1990-97) and Prime Ticket (1987-90). He was honored with several broadcasting awards, including four Golden Mike Awards for radio reporting, and two Associated Press Sportscasting Awards. He also received the 2008 Radio Play-by-Play Award from the Southern California Sports Broadcasters Association.

A native of San Fernando Valley, CA, Markas attended Chatsworth High School. He later attended Los Angeles Valley College and Cal State Northridge. He is survived by his mother, Billie and brothers, Gary and Troy.

--ANGELS--

George Michael - Baseball Historian - RIP

2009-12-24T19:32:27Z

The prominent television sportscaster, perhaps the last "up-and-coming" Top 40 disc jockey at the height of the genre, and onetime NHL announcer, George Michael, passed away this morning in Washington after a two-year fight with leukemia. He was 70 years old.

Less known about George was that he, like so many people I've discussed here in the last few months, had a remarkably specific and utterly satisfying contribution to the game we love. Nellie King has been a fixture of Pittsburgh player, reporter, game announcer, and now author. With only 25 major league games under his belt, Dirk Hayhurst has probably written the best baseball book of the young century. Lester Rodney, who I memorialized here on Tuesday, was perhaps the only white journalist of the 1930's and 1940's who not only pointed out the unstated ban on black players but tirelessly advocated for its repudiation.

And now there's George, who for all the eccentric devotion of his program "The Sports Machine" to rodeo, or (when it was hardly known to exist north of the Carolinas, NASCAR), was an ardent baseball researcher and historian. He had a general interest in vintage baseball game photography, but, like all of us, you could cut to the chase with him and quickly discover his exact, precise fascination with... slides into the plate or the bases.

It was George's self-appointed duty to identify every participant in every such photograph, and the game depicted. He focused on the days before uniform numbers, when often you couldn't see the runner's face, the catcher's back was turned to you, the uniforms were barely identifiable (if that), and even the stadiums were hard to pin down. He was published on the subject in a Society for American Baseball Research Journal a few years back, and his walk-through of his step-by-step process for finding clues was not only fascinating, but terrifically instructional to anybody trying to figure out the identities in any vintage baseball photography (when logos are not visible, you can most easily narrow down years and teams, even in black-and-white photos, by whether the caps and socks were dark, light, or striped; also don't forget to judge where the throw originated - was it from an outfielder, or was it from the catcher? In the latter case you're most likely dealing with a stolen base attempt - and probably a guy with a few steals under his belt).

I remember once getting a large package from George containing a series of photocopies of the top ten or twenty photos that were giving him the hardest time. Inevitably he had already found the era, at least one of the teams, possibly the ballpark. One, I believe, he had found to be from a 1911 A's-Red Sox game, in Philadelphia, in the sixth inning. The third baseman was Home Run Baker but the runner tearing into third was problematic because the face was partially obscured and, incredibly, there had been two different plays made at third during the inning.

So if you think of George's untimely passing this holiday season, remember that for all his larger-than-life tv persona, and the seemingly endless rodeo highlights -- he was truly one of us, and his hobby underscored how otherwise diverse a crowd "we" are.

Lester Rodney Has Died

2009-12-22T18:09:17Z

Lester Rodney, the onetime sportswriter who in the 1930's and 1940's was one of the fiercest and most insistent white advocates of the integration of major league baseball, died on Sunday, his family has announced. He was 98 years old.

Rodney's advocacy found its forum in the pages of The Daily Worker, the house organ of the American Communist Party, from which he resigned in 1958. In 1936, he talked the paper into changing its paucity of sports coverage into a full-fledged section, of which he was hired as editor, even though he was not yet a member of the party. His writings consistently underscored a parallel few were willing to recognize, especially in sports: that the growing marginalization of the Jews and other religious and social groups by the Nazis in Germany and later Europe, had a too-close-for-comfort parallel in this country's marginalization of African-Americans.

In a less violent but no less prejudiced aspect, Rodney noted that most Americans were appalled - or at least discomfited - at the thought that deference to Hitler led to our American team leaving Marty Glickman off the Jesse Owens-led relay squad at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. But few seemed disturbed that America was denying its greatest black baseball players an opportunity to reach whatever success they could achieve here.

Given how the color line was ultimately broken, it was particularly ironic that Rodney aimed much of his criticism at his favorite team, the Brooklyn Dodgers. As early as 1938 Rodney was advocating a baseball opportunity for a young multi-sport athlete from Southern California named Jackie Robinson. The writer would be completing his honorable military service in the South Pacific when Branch Rickey signed Robinson to a minor league contract for the 1946 season, nearly a decade after Rodney had begun to champion the cause most other white writers - and even fans - ignored.

Moving to California about the same time the Dodgers did, Rodney became, of all things, the religion editor of The Long Beach Press-Telegram. Ever the athlete, he was still playing competitive tennis at the age of 87. His children report that he passed away on the morning of the 20th, at home, and in what may be no surprise to anyone who knew him or knew of him, "he was with it until just before the end and thanks to hospice he had a pain free week."

Robinson's role in the integration of the game is obvious and Rickey's has been lauded. Pressure from the great black sportswriters of the '30s and '40s, like Sam Lacy of The Baltimore Afro-American, is even acknowledged. Lester Rodney - writing in the most unlikely setting and advocating what was then the most unlikely of societal changes - was as important as any of them to the eventual righting of this extraordinary wrong.

LESTER RODNEY, 1911-2009

Milton Bradley Makes The Worst Teams In The World

2009-12-19T00:14:22Z

Jack Zduriencik was one move away from completely rebuilding a shaken franchise in a little over thirteen months.

And then he made the move.

How much easier could this be to understand? You do not trade for Milton Bradley. You do not trade for Milton Bradley. You do not trade for Milton Bradley.

He's a "good teammate and a nice guy," said the Mariners' GM, hours after guaranteeing that all the startlingly good work he and his manager Don Wakamatsu had done in the last year would be washed away by some cataclysm (or "event," as the nuclear plant engineers pleasantly call them) involving Bradley next season. Since April 1978, when his Dad filled out the name on his birth certificate without his Mom's consent, there's always been something. Tearing an ACL while having to be restrained from hitting an umpire. Bumping an umpire. Charging a third umpire. Suspended for the season by the Cubs. Trying to get to the press box during the game to confront the visiting announcer. Fighting with Eric Wedge. Fighting with Lou Piniella. Throwing the baseball bag on the field. Throwing a bottle back into the stands. Throwing the game ball into the stands - after the second out.

And by the way, we are talking about a player whose career highs are 34 doubles, 22 homers, 77 RBI, 17 steals, and a .321 average. This is not Albert Belle. This is not even Carl Everett. Statistically, this is a poor man's Ben Grieve (my apologies to Ben Grieve).

And after signing Chone Figgins and Russell Branyan (and maybe even re-signing him), and dealing for Franklin Gutierrez, Jack Wilson, Cliff Lee, Ian Snell, and David Aardsma, all the good work by Zduriencik is undone by adding a player who is being described as looking for a "fresh start." This'd be his seventh.

FROM A RESEARCHER'S NOTEBOOK:

This was my favorite part of the annual SABR Journal - the curious things the late Al Kermisch found, presumably in pursuit of grander truths (an example from his last "From," published after his passing in 2002: as a professional, Phil Rizzuto never played on a team that finished worst than third, and in 17 years, he was on 14 pennant-winners). I can't hope to emulate the quality of Mr. Kermisch's work but I do hope to touch the curiosity factor, both with nuts-and-bolts research and, in the case of my first effort, whimsy.

Meet the greatest name in baseball history: Phifer Fullenwider.

Don't go looking him up in the Baseball Encyclopedia; he never actually pitched in the big leagues (though he did make it to Spring Training one year, at a time when less than 30 men per team did so).

Fullenwider graduated with a degree in pharmacy from the University of North Carolina in 1908, but instead of to a drug store, he headed to the Carolina Association, where, as Baseball Reference's superb minor league database indicates, he opened a fourteen-year minor league career with a 13-4 record for Charlotte. But it would be 1911 before he really broke through with a 26-9 mark for Columbia of the South Atlantic (SALLY) League.

And that impressive season leads us to this rather remarkable public domain image from the Polo Grounds in New York:

That is none other than our Mr. Fullenwider, in the uniform of the Columbia Commies (had a different meaning then), standing in New York's Polo Grounds, most likely late in the season of 1911, or possibly early in 1912. In those days before extensive farm systems, major league teams not only drafted players from minor league teams, but did so wholesale - and usually days after the minor league season ended. Thus it was not unusual for "bushers" to report to the big leagues - and apparently to bring their uniforms with them.

The Giants thought enough of Fullenwider to bring him to spring training in 1912. The camp was in Marlin, Texas, and the team picture indicates just how few prospects were included among the veterans:

NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME

The bottom row is, left to right, Giants aces Red Ames and Hall of Famer Rube Marquard, an otherwise unidentified "trainer," Fullenwider, and outfielder Josh Devore. The legendary John McGraw is second from right in the middle row (almost right behind his prized pitching prospect), and in the back are the only two guys not wearing the goofy hats: catcher Chief Meyers (fourth from the right) who is capless, and next to him, wearing his cap backwards, Christy Mathewson. For this team photo is nothing less than a 1912 manifestation of that which we purists fear may some day happen in the future - players wearing advertisements on their uniforms! Those caps are ads for "ANGER'S Ice Cream Cones." And evidently Mathewson and Meyers are having none of it (and yes, that's my boy Merkle, back row, far right).

But back to Phifer Fullenwider, and something even stranger than an ad for ice cream cones on his uniform.

The one-time UNC pitching hero is still wearing his Carolina cold-weather baseball sweater. The thing is four years old at least, he's the property of the defending National League Champion New York Giants, they took him to spring training in hopes that he might pitch alongside Christy Mathewson - and nobody gave him his own Giants' sweater!

As it proved, Fullenwider never would pitch alongside Matty, nor any other big leaguer. The records of 1912 are a lot less precise than today, but while nearly everybody else in that photo went on to win the N.L. crown again in 1912 and 1913, Fullenwider shows up pitching for Buffalo of the International League (where the Giants often sent their extra players, in an informal arrangement), where he would win 20, 19, and 17 games in the next three seasons and yet never get a call to the big time. After a 19-victory season at Atlanta in 1917, he apparently quit. A 1919 entry in the University of North Carolina alumni review notes that Fullenwider ("Phar. '08") "is a druggist, with the Rose Drug Co., of Rocky Mount. He will be remembered as a star pitcher on the varsity baseball team. He has a one-year old child."

The game was not gone from his system, however. Phifer Fullenwider, at the age of 34, reappears in the minor league record in that same city - Rocky Mount, pitching for the Tarheels of the Virginia League for two seasons, then Columbia in 1922 and Greenville in '23. He'd finish up with a record of 194 and 146, with memories of a trip to Marlin, Texas with McGraw and the boys, and at least one winter of the greatest kind of hope and optimism. One wonders if he got to keep the Ice Cream Cone hat.

There's one other note before we let Mr. Fullenwider out of the clutches of the researcher. He may not have gotten a big league game under his belt, but he did make it onto a baseball card. From the Contentnea Cigarettes series called T209, dating from the 1909 season -- and a dandy it is, I might add.