Category Archives: Baseball

Exit, Magglio

Posted on by
Reply

Magglio Ordonez will retire this weekend. He’ll go down as one of the better right-handed hitters of his generation and should receive at least some consideration for the Hall of Fame. I don’t think he’ll make it, but he should at least be in the conversation.

Look over his statistics: In 1848 games and 7745 plate appearances, he hit .309, with a .871 OPS (on-base plus slugging), and a respectable 294 home runs and 1236 RBIs. He made it to six All-Star Games, won three Silver Sluggers and came in second to Alex Rodriguez in the 2007 MVP voting, the year he won the AL batting title. Had it not been for injuries, he could have accomplished even more.

There certainly have been people who have gotten into the HoF with less.

I, personally, don’t think he should make the HoF, but he is a better candidate than many of the other “Hall of the Very Good” candidates that get thrown out there every now and then.

There are only three games tonight

Posted on by
Reply

Presented for you, the games tonight:

Three games. That’s all. Seriously, I understand that sometimes the travel days just all line up, but the idea that MLB’s schedulers would have only three games is ridiculous. Seriously, try to space out the off days, MLB.

That is all.

Well, that was weird.

Posted on by
Reply

Okay, so yesterday:

  • The Texas Rangers lost to Seattle 21-8. Normally weird stuff like that happens when the Rangers play the Orioles.
  • Matt Kemp is hurt again. I blame the SI Cover Jinx.
  • Hawk Harrelson lost his mind.
  • The Orioles and Rays have done their best to make the AL East even more insane, going 2-8 and 4-6 respectively in the last 10 games. The AL East now has first and last separated by 2.5 games, with all teams above .500. Oh, and the Blue Jays are being accused of stealing signs. Again. I could have sworn this has happened before.
  • All the teams in the NL East are above .500 as well.
  • Pittsburgh’s win brought them back to .500. Which is always notable because, well, they are the Pirates.
  • The Marlins have now won 21 games in May. Well, I’d say April showers bring May flowers, but they have a retractable roof now, so…
  • Carlos Gonzalez had three home runs. Josh Hamilton is unimpressed, I’m sure.
  • Oh, and Justin Verlander hit a home run in batting practice.

Somebody sign Jamie Moyer, please

Posted on by
Reply

Jamie Moyer was designated for assignment on Wednesday. Only time will tell whether he will get picked up by somebody else. But I hope he will. He is, by all accounts, one of the best people in the game. And, what’s more, I think he probably could still do pretty well in a park that is more of a pitcher’s park.

You see, although the humidor has done wonders for changing Coors Field from a pinball machine into something more like a normal ballpark, it still is, in many ways, more of a place for hitters. Last season, for example, the Rockies hit .277 at home but .244 on the road, and hit over 50 more HRs at home than they did on the road.

A team like San Francisco, Anaheim, St. Louis, the Marlins or the Dodgers could use a guy like him near the back of the rotation, as their more pitcher-friendly parks would be better suited for Moyer’s style.

Bizarre Baseball Culture: Amazing Mystery Funnies #22 has exploding baseballs

Posted on by
7

There is a story that, during one of their several hundred attempts to assassinate or overthrow Fidel Castro during the 1960s, the CIA considered sending him baseballs that would, after a time, explode in his face.

With that in mind, perhaps the story featuring the “Fantom of the Fair” in Amazing Mystery Funnies #22 has more truth to it than it appears.

(more after the jump)

Continue reading →

May 30: Helluva day in history for shortstops

Posted on by
Reply

May 30 is notable as a day for shortstops: It was the day of a unassisted triple play, and the day where some of the most notable achievements by shortstops started. Take a look:

May 30, 1927: Jimmy Cooney, Cubs’ shortstop, catches a Paul Waner liner, steps on second to get Lloyd Waner (Paul’s brother) out and then tags Clyde Barnhart for a unassisted triple play.

May 30, 1982: Cal Ripken, playing third, goes 0-2 with a walk and a strikeout. He doesn’t take a day off after that until Sept. 20, 1998.

May 30, 1995: Derek Jeter, batting ninth, gets a single off Mariners’ pitcher Tim Belcher, the first of 3,158 and counting.

Baseball Players who are within Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

Posted on by
1

We all probably know about the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. It posits that Kevin Bacon is the center of the Hollywood universe, and that basically any actor is within seven movies of him. Technically, this isn’t true: Dennis Hopper is the “center” of the IMDB database, at least when you only count movies. However, you get the idea, and it gives us a good example of how the Degrees of Bacon works:

Dennis Hopper was in Cannes Man with Lloyd Kaufman, who was in Super with Kevin Bacon, thus Dennis Hopper’s Bacon Number is 2.

But what does this have to do with baseball? Well, you see, throughout history, baseball players have had some roles in movies. So let’s see how many degrees of Kevin Bacon baseball players are after the jump. As you’ll see they usually don’t need to travel far, although I’m sure I’ll be able to find something that is relatively far away from Bacon, right? Right?

Continue reading →

Addendum to today’s earlier post: The Green Light Letter

Posted on by
1

As I noted earlier today, many ballplayers have answered the call of duty, especially during the World Wars. What I didn’t note was that, especially in WWII, there were so many players that either volunteered or were drafted into the service that there was some discussion of whether baseball could even continue, especially as those who would be left to play would generally be old or unfit physically for military service (and thus probably not fit physically for Major League Baseball either). Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis wrote President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asking his opinion. He received back what has been called the “Green Light Letter”.

(A full transcription is available here)

And thus, baseball continued through WWII. It led to some strange things. For example, in 1943 rubber rations led to a brief time where balls were used that had balata (a substance more similar to the golf balls of the time) in them, which wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that it created one of the deadest baseballs in history. There was the rise of the All-American Girls Professional League in areas of the Midwest that had had their minor league teams fold due to lack of players (although, unlike in League Of Their Own, it was, during the war years, more of a modified form of softball). And, in perhaps the biggest indication of how strange baseball had become while the players were in the service, the St. Louis Browns made the World Series. I seem to recall reading somewhere that a joke at the time was that it was because the Army didn’t want them. By the next season, the Browns then, in 1945, had Pete Gray play the outfield. Who was Pete Gray? Well, he’s the only ballplayer in history who only had one arm.

But, as FDR wrote would happen, baseball continued to provide much-needed recreation to a war-weary nation. Even if it was a bit less Major League than usual.

Ballplayers who gave everything

Posted on by
2

On this Memorial Day, it is as good a time as any to mention some of the ballplayers who gave their lives serving in America’s armed forces. The DeadBallEra site has a list of those who died while serving America, and there is also a good site entirely about Baseball in Wartime (primarily focused on WWII), but here are some notables (although, in the end, everyone who gives the ultimate sacrifice is notable). Not all of them died in combat, but all of them died while in military service or (in the case of people like Christy Mathewson) as a result of those actions:

  • Eddie Grant was a Harvard-educated infielder who spent time with Cleveland, Philly, Cincinnati and the Giants. On October 15, 1918, he died after being wounded by a artillery shell in the Argonne Forest of France. His unit had been fighting to rescue the “Lost Battalion” that had been pinned down by German forces. He was 35. A memorial to him was placed in the Polo Grounds (it is one of the plaques that can be seen in the expanded version of the Willie Mays catch photo), and a replica of it is now apparently in San Francisco.
  • Larry Chappell was a light-hitting outfielder in the 1910s who was at one point part of a trade for Shoeless Joe Jackson. In 1918, he died while in Army service only a few days before the armistice from the Spanish Flu pandemic that killed tens of millions of people. He was 28.
  • Ralph Sharman was a young outfielder who did well in a September stint with the Phillies in 1917. After the ’17 season, however, he was inducted into the army. He died in May, 1918 when he drowned while in Alabama, where he was undergoing training. He was only 23.
  • Christy Mathewson had retired from pitching by the beginning of America’s involvement in WWI, and was manager of the Cincinnati Reds. He left the club in the middle of the 1918 season, going to France, where he served in the Army’s chemical division. While there, he suffered the effects of poison gas, which left him with various respiratory ailments, including the tuberculosis that took his life in 1925.
  • Elmer Gedeon, who had had a cup of coffee with Washington in 1939, died while piloting a B-26 Marauder over France on April 20, 1944. He was 27.  He was one of only two people with Major League experience who died in WWII. The other being…
  • Harry O’Neill, who was a catcher in one game (with no plate appearances) for the Athletics in 1939. He was killed by a sniper on Iwo Jima on March 6, 1945.
  • Bob Neighbors, who had a cup of coffee with the Browns in 1939. In 1941, his baseball career came to an end when he had a poor season and, perhaps more importantly, lost his wife of only six months in a car accident while he was away on a road trip. He signed up for the United States Army Air Force after Pearl Harbor, and became a career military man from that point on. He went Missing In Action (and presumed dead) in 1952 when his B-26 went down over North Korea. He was both the only MLB-experienced man to die during the Korean War, and the last to have died in active service, period.

Of course, there were plenty of players who never made it to the big leagues who died in the line of duty, some of whom may have one day become Major Leaguers if not for the cruelty of war:

 

To them and all who have given the ultimate sacrifice, and to those who made it home, we salute you.

Who is Dylan Bundy?

Posted on by
1

This is a baseball public service announcement.

You may have been hearing about somebody named Dylan Bundy on ESPN. And perhaps you are wondering: “Who is this Dylan Bundy?”

The answer: Only one of the best pitchers in the minors. Maybe even in all of baseball. He’s 19, in the Orioles organization, and yesterday, in his first start in High-A Frederick and ninth start overall, he gave up his first professional earned runs. Ever. This brought his total ERA to date to… 0.51 in 35 innings. The six hits he gave up yesterday doubled his career minor league total to an astounding… 11. And his opponents’ batting average for his career has skyrocketed to… .097.

Oh, and he’s walked a grand total of two people. That means that, given how many hits he has given up, his WHIP (Walks/Hits Innings Pitched) is 0.371. In other words, he allows less than half a man to reach base per innings.

Oh, and he’s struck out 46.

It is too early to think about how Bundy will do as he makes his way up the ranks, and, of course, every pitcher is a ticking injury time bomb, but should he be able to move up the ranks, it won’t surprise me if he ends up in Baltimore near the end of the year if they are still in the race. And he could be a regular starter in just a year or two.

This has been a baseball public service announcement.