Category Archives: All-Encompassing

Number 12s for 12/12/12

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It’s 12/12/12! So in honor of 12/12/12, perhaps it’s a good idea to note that two number 12s have seen their numbers retired in Major League Baseball.

The more notable of them is Roberto Alomar, who’s number 12 has been retired by the Toronto Blue Jays. Interestingly, Alomar is getting married today, so he must really like that number.

The other player to have number 12 retired is Wade Boggs. The reason this isn’t as notable as Alomar is because, well, Boggs had the number retired by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (now Rays). Boggs was from the Tampa area, and he had his 3000th hit in a Tampa uniform, so his hometown team honored him by retiring his number. Boggs wore 26 during his time with the Boston Red Sox, and switched to 12 when he went to New York.

Number 12, it should be noted, has far more retirees in the NFL: Jim Kelly, Joe Namath, John Brodie, Bob Griese and Seattle’s “Twelfth Man” have had it retired. Just a random thing I found that I thought to note.

Sunday Trivia

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Here’s a new one: Below are 10 trivia questions. After the jump, you will find the answers. The answers, by the way, will be in white text, so you may need to highlight them to see.

So here we go:

1. What pitcher has the best winning percentage against the Yankees, with a minimum of 20 decisions?

2. Besides the fact that it was his first game, what was so notable about Boog Powell’s first game in the big leagues?

3. What player in the All-Star Game era (1933+) has the most career home runs without ever playing in an All-Star Game?

4. Rick Monday was the first pick in the first ever MLB amateur draft. Who was the earliest player drafted to become a Hall of Famer? (As in, who was the earliest player picked in the first draft to become a Hall of Famer, not necessarily the first to actually join the Hall of Fame)

5. Similarly, who was the first number one pick to become a Hall of Famer?

6. As of the end of the 2012 season, who was the last person to play at least one game in Major League Baseball and at least one game in the NFL (albeit not in the same year)?

7. Kevin Millar was never featured on official MLBPA-approved merchandise or video games. Why?

8. Who are the only two players to win the Rookie of the Year, Cy Young Award and MVP during their career?

9. What HoF manager tried to use African-American 2B Charlie Grant in a ballgame in the early 1900s by saying he was a Native American?

10. Who are the only two HoF players to have spent a part of their career in Japan?

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Winter Meetings Action and Reaction: Part 2

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Part of a feature in which I react to the news coming from the Winter Meetings.

Action:

Reaction: An umpire, an owner and a player. The biggest surprise though is that more than one person was elected by the Veterans Committee- previously they haven’t put in this many.

Action:

Reaction: Well, I guess the Red Sox are back to their old ways. The large amounts of salary they dumped on the Dodgers earlier this year means that they they once again will be able to spend. Mike Napoli has long been a good hitter, and although he likely is now on the downward part of his career, he should be a good fit in Fenway.

 

More actions and reactions will come semi-regularly throughout the Winter Meetings.

Action and Reaction, Winter Meetings, Part 1

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Throughout the Winter Meetings, I’ll react to the acts that are going on in Baseball.

Action:

Reaction: I saw Lidge pitch once when he was with Houston. It was the year after he’d had his soul eaten by Albert Pujols, who sent a go-ahead home run in the NLCS so far into the night that I believe one of the Mars rovers recently discovered it. He got the save, if memory serves, but it was during one of the down points of his career. You see, Lidge was a player who was either lights-out or a heart attack waiting to happen, great one year but not-so-great the next, and injury-prone often (he mentioned on MLB Network this morning that he’s had 9 surgeries over his career). Overall, however, he had a good career, and as he retires he goes out with 225 saves, two All-Star Games, he played a role in a combined no-hitter against the Yankees,  a World Series ring and appearances in two other World Series.

Action:

Reaction: Oh, Alex Rodriguez. It never seems to end for him. With every successive year, his contract with the Yankees becomes even more of a albatross, and as his body breaks down and production decreases, it’s also becoming clear that the one saving grace the Yankees might have had- the attention that would come when Rodriguez could break Bonds’ HR record- is highly unlikely.

Action:

Reaction: And so it begins for the Tampa Rays, who many- including me- think will be a big mover-and-shaker at the Winter Meetings.They have an excess amount of good pitchers. Everybody wants good pitchers. And the Rays aren’t the market where they are able to sign lots of guys to long-term deals once they get expensive (with the exception of Evan Longoria, of course). To flip a pitcher could be a prudent move, for the right prospects. James Shields is the most likely to be dealt, but there have been on-and-off rumblings about David Price for about a year and a half. James Loney, meanwhile, seems like the type of guy who could turn out to be a shrewd move for the Rays. He had an off-year in 2012, but a rebound could give a good new cog to the Rays’ lineup.

Non-Baseball Action:

Reaction: Others might have been more deserving, but it is hard to argue with a MVP, a league title and an Olympic Gold medal.

Keep an eye open for more Action and Reaction throughout the Winter Meetings.

Q and A: The Winter Meetings

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Baseball’s “Winter Meetings” are about to get going in Nashville. You may be wondering why this is happening, and what it is. So, here’s a little question and answer for those of you wondering about it.

What are baseball’s Winter Meetings?

Meetings by baseball people. In the winter.

Very funny, mind going a bit more in-depth?

Okay, technically, the Winter Meetings is a trade-show and convention. Baseball people- from the highest owners, GMs, agents and superstars to the lowest of job-seekers, salesmen and tourists confused as to why their hotel is so full- come to the meetings to discuss business, network, sell their wares, buy stuff, and honor some people over dinners. It’s usually held in a tourist mecca with big nice hotels, like San Diego, Orlando, or, this year, Nashville’s Opryland resort. Technically, the Winter Meetings are run by Minor League Baseball and it’s where many people try to get jobs with minor league front offices, but it’s the MLB parts of the meetings that get all the attention.

That’s it?

More or less. But, guess what? When people in Major League Baseball “discuss business, network, sell their wares, buy stuff and honor some people over dinners”, it’s far different than if, say, paper salesmen were doing that. No offense to paper salesmen. You see, the fact that almost every major baseball mover-and-shaker is in such a small place means that it’s a place where deals and negotiations can happen quickly. Instead of playing phone-tag or flying around in private jets to do negotiations, agents and GMs only have to go between hotel rooms.

Because of this, a ton of deals get made during the winter meetings, far more than the average day of the off-season.

Anything else?

Several announcements will be made during the Winter Meetings.

The Veterans Committee, for example, will be voting for the Hall of Famers on their ballot during the Meetings. Notable names include Bill Dahlen, Jacob Ruppert, Marty Marion and Wes Ferrell. Well, they are notable to seamheads like me, at least.

There will also be announcements about the World Baseball Classic, including a schedule and probably provisional rosters.

And maybe, just maybe, somebody will fall into a fountain and get caught doing it by a MLB Network camera.

How can I follow these… winter meetings?

Well, I’m going to be there, of course, so I’ll… I’m sorry, that’s not true. I’m not going to be there. I’d entered a contest to try and win a trip there, but I lost. Which is a bummer.

So instead, I suggest you follow baseball people on Twitter and watch MLB Network, and perhaps ESPN as well.

Okay, thanks.

You’re welcome.

Cheat Sheet: (Almost) All of the Most Recent Champions (as of Nov. 29, 2012)

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(Note: Not included are leagues still in session)

So, who’s the defending champion in the….

The Top Leagues:

…MLB? San Francisco Giants

…NPB? Yomiuri Giants

…KBO? Samsung Lions

…CPBL? Lamigo Monkeys

…Mexican League? Rojos del Aguila de Veracruz

The Affiliated Minors:

…International League? Pawtucket Red Sox

…Pacific Coast League? Reno Aces

…Eastern League? Akron Aeros

…Southern League? Mobile BayBears

…Texas League? San Antonio Missions

…California League? Lancaster JetHawks

…Carolina League? Lynchburg Hillcats

…Florida State League? Lakeland Flying Tigers

…Midwest League? Wisconsin Timber Rattlers

…South Atlantic League? Asheville Tourists

…NY-Penn League? Hudson Valley Renegades

…Northwest League? Vancouver Canadians

…Appalachian League? Elizabethton Twins

…Pioneer League? Missoula Osprey

…Gulf Coast League? Gulf Coast Pirates

…Arizona League? Arizona Rangers

…Dominican Summer League? DSL Pirates Team 1

…Venezuelan Summer League? VSL Pirates

(Want more? Go below the jump!)

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If Indiana Jones looked for baseball things…

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If Indiana Jones looked for baseball things, what would he be looking for? I have a few ideas. This is similar to my post in May about the great mysteries of baseball, but is a bit more in-depth.

The Bobby Thomson Ball

Possibly the Holy Grail of Baseball Artifacts, the ball from the 1951 “Shot Heard Round the World” would be potentially worth millions of dollars. However, back then very few people would have thought of that, unlike today, where the ball would have likely been immediately been authenticated and then be handed to either Thomson, the Hall of Fame, or sold at auction.

However, there’s no way of knowing what could have happened to it now. Right? Well, some people have tried. There is a book out there about one man’s search for it, which I should really get out of the library one of these days. But given the fact that there were no big news items about how the ball had been found, I’m guessing the search turned out without the ball in hand.

The Source of Lena Blackburne’s Mud

The mud that is put on baseballs to remove the weird new-ball sheen all comes from a single source somewhere in New Jersey. The source of the mud is a closely guarded secret, hidden through the years.

I, for one, once tried to figure out where it was located, at which point I would reveal the location here on this blog, solving the mystery and bringing me miniscule amounts of fame and even less amount of fortune.

I decided against it, however, for three reasons:

A) I felt that revealing a trade secret held by a single family for generations would be in poor taste.

B) If I somehow was right I might’ve gotten sued, or led to some type of strange tourism that would have messed with the ecology of New Jersey’s creeks and rivers, or something.

C) I wasn’t able to narrow it down very much anyway. Seriously, here’s what I was able to extrapolate from the various news articles and other writings about the source of the Rubbing Mud:

That’s a big area, and I wasn’t able to narrow it down any more than that (although I will admit I drew that circle too big). I quit trying when I realized points A and B.

Babe Ruth’s Piano

Tommy Holmes, a sportswriter in New York from the 1920s to 1950s, once said that he had to stop telling Babe Ruth stories because eventually nobody believed him. Such a man was Babe Ruth.

One of the legends around him is that, during a drunken 1918 party, Ruth somehow had a piano fall into a pond in Sudbury, Massachusetts. For years, some people wondered if perhaps this was the true cause of the Curse of the Bambino (it wasn’t). Still, the piano has never been found, and most doubted it even existed in the first place… but then a piece of piano veneer was found in 2010. So could Babe Ruth’s piano still be in Willis Pond? Maybe.

The Earliest TV Recordings

In the earliest days of television, things usually weren’t saved, instead being taped over. As a result, some of the earliest treasures in television either don’t exist anymore or only exist in incomplete forms. While occasionally a recording is found in a private collection (Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, for example, was found in Bing Crosby’s old wine cellar), most of them are probably lost forever. Early episodes of The Honeymooners and The Tonight Show? Gone. Super Bowl II (and, for a long time, Super Bowl I)? Gone. Art Fleming’s time on Jeopardy? Gone.

But, most importantly for this blog, this includes most of the early World Series that were on television. As mentioned before, some do exist, such as Game 7 of the ’60 series and Don Larsen’s perfect game, but the vast majority of World Series games from the late 40s to the mid-60s are probably gone forever.

 

Things to be thankful for this year in Baseball

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Happy Thanksgiving! Here are some things to be thankful for this year:

  • Be thankful for Bryce Harper and Mike Trout, extraordinarily talented young players who we should be seeing for years to come.
  • Be thankful for Justin Verlander’s ability to throw a fastball into triple digits in the 9th inning. I mean, wow.
  • Be thankful that baseball is in a golden age of labor peace.
  • Be thankful that teams like the Orioles and Athletics have returned to contention, and that the Blue Jays may be well on their way to it.
  • Be thankful that we live in an age where we can watch almost any game through the internet or through Extra Innings packages, so long as you don’t live in Vegas, Charlotte, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Iowa, or parts of New Mexico.
  • Be thankful for MLB Network, which is awesome.
  • Be thankful you aren’t a Marlins fan. If you are a Marlins fan, I suggest you binge on eggnog tonight. And then some.
  • Above all else, be thankful that there’s only about 82 days until pitchers and catchers report!

BOOK REVIEW: “Baseball Is Just Baseball: The Understated Ichiro” by David Shields

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The most famous baseball player since 2001 is almost certainly Derek Jeter. But perhaps the most interesting player of the time period is Ichiro Suzuki. Or, rather, Ichiro… no last name needed. The first and greatest Asian everyday-player in MLB, Ichiro has dazzled with his quick baserunning, excellent defense, and the hitting that will lead him to be the first Japanese player to make it to Cooperstown.

And along the way, he’s amused and inspired baseball fans with his wit and wisdom. Perhaps it is because of his unique perspective on our culture, perhaps it is because of the way his translator interprets what he says in his native tongue, or maybe he just has a good way with words. But no matter what, through the years, Ichiro has been giving the world some great quotes. They have ranged from profound life-mottoes like “Failure is the mother of success,” to insults, such as “If I ever saw myself saying I’m excited going to Cleveland, I’d punch myself in the face, because I’m lying.” {sic}

(Ouch!)

For that reason, Baseball Is Just Baseball: The Understated Ichiro, by David Shields, is a book that, had it not existed, somebody would have had to create it. Originally published in 2001- Ichiro’s debut year on our shores- this new edition from Blue Rider Press (part of the Penguin Group) adds more quotes (bringing it up to his arrival with the Yankees) and a introduction by the author.

And, overall, it is a great read, providing the reader with bite-sized amounts of Ichiro wisdom. Starting with Shields’ introduction, which talks about how he first came to love watching Ichiro play, Baseball Is Just Baseball is a non-stop love letter to the outfielder, almost entirely made out of quotes by him, with some anecdotes here and there to provide context.

If the quotes had been simply placed in a random order, or even in some type of chronological order, the book may have seemed disjointed. Thankfully, however, Shields instead collects the quotations in a somewhat flowing style, where each quote is connected to those around them. The quote about Cleveland, for example, comes immediately after a quote about a time he missed a fly ball in Cleveland. This gives it something of a “plot” to follow, watching many of the quotes merge into each other and connect, showing how Ichiro’s opinions have shifted or have remained the same and also providing some humor to the proceedings (such as the aforementioned Cleveland quote).

However, it isn’t perfect. For one thing, it is heavily weighted towards quotes from Ichiro’s early years, likely a result of how this book was originally written in 2001. In addition, those who expect it to be a biography would end up being greatly disappointed- although Baseball Is Just Baseball makes no claim to being such a book.

However, all-and-all, I would recommend this book, especially for fans of Ichiro or of good baseball quotes.

FULL DISCLOSURE: THE COPY OF THIS BOOK USED FOR THIS REVIEW WAS PROVIDED TO ME BY THE PUBLISHER.

HUMOR: Who, exactly, are the baseball gods? (Part 1 of an undetermined series)

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We often hear about the “baseball gods”, unseen deities who influence the fortunes of ballclubs and their players. It is this pantheon that brings about late-game rallies, fielding misfortunes and playoff runs. Last night, for example, it could be said that the baseball gods abandoned the Oakland Athletics.

However, little has ever been said about who the baseball gods are, beyond the fact that there there are many of them, making baseball a polytheistic religion. This puts the worship/prayer to the baseball gods, interestingly enough, in direct conflict with the vast majority of baseball fans, especially in North America, as well as the the vast majority of baseball players. This, perhaps, explains why none before have dared to give names to the baseball gods, as it would be like making them real, as opposed to an intangible force like luck or clutch-hitting.

They also lack any type of holy scripture about them, presumably because their names are written not in script but rather in THE UNWRITTEN RULES, the invisible text that all baseball players, fans, announcers and managers must follow, by punishment of being accused of breaking THE UNWRITTEN RULES. This has also helped obscure the names of the baseball gods.

Until now, because it is time to give the baseball gods names, and to write them. After the jump, of course:

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