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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.

Coming up this week on the Baseball Continuum:

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Coming this week:

SUNDAY: A random video of the undetermined amount of time.

MONDAY: A review of Baseball Is Just Baseball: The Understated Ichiro by David Shields.

TUESDAY: Off-topic Tuesday and a WBC pool preview

WEDNESDAY: A WBC Qualifying pool preview

THURSDAY-SATURDAY: TBD

The More You Know: What is the Posting System?

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One of the big things in the baseball news today is that the Dodgers are the winning bidder for the rights to negotiate with Ryu Hyun-Jin, one of the best pitchers in Korea.

This is the result of the posting system between MLB and the baseball leagues of Asia, most notably the NPB but also the KBO, where Hyun-Jin is coming from. Essentially, it is a way to compensate Asian teams when their players head to America. It also benefits the player. You see, while a player in Asia can go wherever he wants if he is a free agent, it takes longer there to become a free agent, so the posting system allows them the chance to come to America while they are young and presumably in their prime.

It works like this: the team has to decide to post a player. Whether they do so is up to them, although the player can ask to be posted. There is then a period of blind bidding for the player: every MLB team can theoretically bid for the player, but they have no idea what the other teams are bidding.

When the bidding is over, the MLB team is then able to negotiate with the player. If they reach a deal before the deadline, the money they spent with the bid is sent to the Asian team, and the player comes over to the USA to play with the agreed upon salary. If there is no deal made, then the player goes back to Asia and nobody gets any money.

The posting system is controversial, as it puts a lot of risk to the teams (if they make a mistake, they’ve drained a ton of money into that mistake) and favors the big market teams in America (it’s highly unlikely you will ever see, say, the Kansas City Royals, get the services of a top play through the posting system). However, for now, it is essentially the only way for young Asian players to come to our shores.

And now you know!

Some presidential quotes about baseball for Election Day

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In the spirit of Election Day, a bipartisan collection of quotes about baseball, with a quote from every president since Taft, with the exception of Wilson, Harding and Lyndon Johnson, who didn’t have good baseball quotes. A big ups to the Baseball Almanac page on Presidents and baseball for being the source of most of these quotes:

“Saturday’s game was a fine one, but several times when a hit meant a run, the batter was ordered to bunt. I believe they should hit it out. I love the game when there is plenty of slugging.” – President William Howard Taft

“I do not suppose all the youth of America would care to be big league ballplayers, but I know they all would profit if the character of Walter Johnson was emulated by them.” – President Calvin Coolidge

“Next to religion, baseball has furnished a greater impact on American life than any other institution.” – President Herbert Hoover (who also was once notably serenaded with chants of “We Want Beer!” by Prohibition-era Philadelphia fans)

“I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going.” – President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (in the Green Light Letter)

“May the sun never set on American baseball.” – President Harry S. Truman

“When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we sat there in the warmth of the summer afternoon on a river bank, we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I told him that I wanted to be a real major league baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he’d like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish.” -President Dwight D. Eisenhower (who may have played in the minors under an assumed name.)

“They said that I was too young to be president and you were too old to be playing baseball. We fooled them!” – President John F. Kennedy (to Stan Musial before the 1962 All-Star Game)

“I never leave a game before the last pitch, because in baseball, as in life and especially politics, you never know what will happen.” – President Richard Nixon

“I had a life-long ambition to be a professional baseball player, but nobody would sign me.” – President Gerald Ford (who did have a chance to become a professional football player, but who didn’t sign)

“For at least five generations, our family members have been avid baseball fans. We were particularly proud of Ty Cobb, a fellow Georgian, and simply let the negative aspects of his character fade into relative unimportance when compared to his achievements on the diamond. It was with mixed emotions that we observed Pete Rose getting his 4,192nd hit on Sept. 11, 1985, breaking one of Cobb’s seemingly invulnerable records. But we recognized Rose’s extraordinary spirit and determination. Few players ever made greater use of their natural talents or brought more enthusiasm to the game.” – President Jimmy Carter, in a 1995 editorial calling for Pete Rose’s reinstatement

“There were several other stations broadcasting that game and I knew I’d lose my audience if I told them we’d lost our telegraph connections so I took a chance. I had (Billy) Jurges hit another foul. Then I had him foul one that only missed being a home run by a foot. I had him foul one back in the stands and took up some time describing the two lads that got in a fight over the ball. I kept on having him foul balls until I was setting a record for a ballplayer hitting successive foul balls and I was getting more than a little scared. Just then my operator started typing. When he passed me the paper I started to giggle – it said: ‘Jurges popped out on the first ball pitched.’” -President Ronald Reagan, reminiscing about his time as a announcer for the Chicago Cubs (working from telegraph reports to recreate the game)

“Once, after an especially strong day at bat in a game at Raleigh, North Carolina, I was 3 for 5 with a double and triple, and a scout approached me as I left the field. That the first and last nibble I ever got from the pros.”- President George H.W. Bush (who met Babe Ruth when he visited Yale at the time Bush was the baseball team’s captain)

“Clearly they are not capable of settling this strike without an umpire.” – President Bill Clinton (on the strike of 1994)

“The most exciting way for a World Series game to end would be with a great throw from the outfield to nail a runner at home. The play would require three players (the outfielder, an infielder and the catcher) to make a good play.” – President George W. Bush (former owner of the Texas Rangers)

“Now, it’s been nine years since your last title, which must have felt like an eternity for Yankees fans, I think other teams would be just fine with a spell like that.The Cubs, for example.” -President Barack Obama, noted White Sox fan, to the New York Yankees during their visit to the White House after the 2009 season

Off-Topic Tuesday: One Last Thing on Star Wars…

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There was one last piece of advice I wanted to give Disney about their purchase of LucasFilm and Star Wars, which I didn’t really think about until after I had hit the “submit” button of the previous post on the subject. That piece of advice has to do with Episode VII, and it is simple:
Don’t make it about Luke, Leia, Han, Etc. At least, not directly.

For one thing, there’s the practical matter that the actors from the original trilogy are, well, old now. It’d be one thing if this was 20 years ago, or if this was a cartoon instead of live-action, but it’d probably be next to impossible to do any immediate follow-up to the original films. To actually recast the films would be to court disaster (although, then again, James Bond does it all the time). There have been countless video games, books, etc. that have been made that serve as de-facto sequels to the movies, so it’s not like there isn’t stuff out there already, I guess. And, finally, George Lucas has long said that, as soon as he started doing the prequels, that Star Wars was ultimately about Anakin Skywalker, his fall, and how his son went on to defeat and redeem him. Everything else was basically window dressing. So, basically, the story is done.

But what if the story became the story? Yes, the story of Anakin Skywalker and son may be done, but then again, things are never truly done. WWI and WWII have long been over, but the ramifications from them are still felt today. Great religious figures and philosophers may have been gone for centuries, but they remain important due to their teachings or deeds.

So, I think Disney should do this: it’s a “long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”, but it’s not quite as long ago. Instead, it’s been centuries since Return of the Jedi. Luke, Leia, Darth Vader, Han Solo, R2-D2, etcetra have faded into myth and legend, the Force has been all but forgotten, and the galaxy is no longer ruled by an empire or republic, but instead split between a half-dozen nations (none of them particularly nice), nations which are caught in seemingly endless cycles of war over resources, trade routes or simple hatred. Our protagonist would live under the rule of a draconian space-country, an heir to the Empire of the original trilogy, with a dash of North Korea in for good measure. He (or she) would be a teenager who hoped to have a better life but who was drafted into the Empire’s military. Growing up, he and his friends turned to tales of “The Skywalkers” (a family of heroes and villains who ultimately brought on a new hope and unified the galaxy). However, there is no room in the empire for such stories of rebellion and freedom, and so everyone, even our hero, have it drilled into them that they are just that: silly stories, with no place in reality. But the hero, deep down, still believed in them, and as a child had even said to have seen the Skywalkers and their allies as “ghosts” in his dreams. That, however, was years ago…

But then, one day, after being forced to lead an attack on a innocent civilization, our hero comes across an interesting spoil of war: a small android with a faded white and blue paint-job. Thinking it would make a nice mechanic for his I-Wing fighter, he takes it. But then, as he fiddles with it, the ancient droid sends out holograms at him of grand battles in space, of princesses and smugglers and light-saber fights, and then, finally, the droid shows him a hologram of an aged Jedi Master who says: “My name is Luke Skywalker, and I am a Jedi, like my father before me.”

The hero realizing that the tales are true, and that perhaps he can make a difference. He practically begs the droid to show him more, and show him how, even calling the droid “Threepio” (the legends of the Skywalkers had gotten a bit confused over the centuries). The droid, after correcting him by showing a hologram of the real C-3PO identifying him as R2-D2, then displays a map (presumably to some sort of location from the Skywalker legends) and dispenses a “gift” to the hero: a light-saber.

And so the adventure begins…
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I’d totally watch a movie like that.

WBC 2013 Projections: Dominican Republic Version 2.0

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My previous projections for the Dominican Republic are now rather out-of-date due to injuries, etc. So, here are new projections, taking into account new developments as well as injuries that might take out certain players. Like the USA projections, this is a ground-up rebuild, and not simply a cut-and-paste with changes.

The usual rules:

  • Any player coming off a major injury or who has a history of injuries is unlikely to participate. This is especially true for the pitchers.
  • Players that will be on new teams are less likely to participate, but shouldn’t be completely ignored, with the exception of pitchers.
  • Teams are made up of 28 players, of which 13 of them must be pitchers and two of them catchers.
  • The pitch count rules make relievers extremely important.

So, after the jump, my projections for the Dominican Republic WBC team:

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When small cities had MLB teams, Post-1876 Edition

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Yesterday, I talked about how some of the teams in the National Association, the first Major League (according to some), were from very small cities, cities which were in some cases smaller even than modern-day stadium capacities. Well, once the National League started in 1876, there never again would be super-small cities (like Keokuk- apologies to Keokuk) hosting MLB teams. Sure, there were cities that today would seem unlikely to host MLB teams- Troy, New York, for example. But they were big cities for their time: Troy was the 29th largest city in America in 1880, and it was very close to Albany, which was the 21st largest city. That there were teams at one point or another in Louisville, Rochester, Providence and other such cities are similar cases: back then, they were amongst the larger cities in America.

But, there have been some example, mainly because of one organization: the Union Association. Formed in 1884, the Union Association was, briefly, the third major league, to go alongside the National League and American Association. It was unique in that it didn’t have a reserve clause… and because it probably wasn’t a major league, even though it usually is counted as such. You see, the league’s founder, one Henry Lucas, showed much favoritism to his hometown St. Louis team, leading it to essentially be a Major League team in a Minor League. It went 94-19 during the 1884 season. Four teams folded and were replaced by minor league clubs. For example… (jump)

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When very small cities had MLB teams…

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Major League Baseball’s history is long and often full of twists and turns. And in the earliest days of professional baseball, it wasn’t organized very well. As a result, some cities, so small that they make the current small markets look like Metropolises, had teams.

The first Major League, according to some, was not the National League (formed in 1876) but rather the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (notice how it says “players” and not teams or leagues- this was before owners had lots of leverage). It was a haphazard enterprise formed in 1871. Teams could buy their way in, schedules weren’t set in stone, gambling was rampant, and the level of play fluctuated greatly. For that reason, some organizations such as the Hall of Fame and MLB’s official record books don’t consider it a major league. Others, such as SABR and Baseball-Reference, do. As a result, there are some very small cities that show up on baseball-reference.com. And I don’t mean “small” as in “Hartford, Connecticut”… I mean “small” as in “they were smaller than the capacity of modern-day ballparks”.

Take a look (after the jump):

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The 2012 Baseball Continuum Awards

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No prestige! No fancy trophy! No publicity! It’s time for the 2012 Baseball Continuum Awards, where I honor the best of the 2012 baseball season! Of note is that I’m not going to split it by leagues, instead focusing on the league at large.

So let’s get going (after the jump):

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(Off-Topic) Some suggestions for Disney about LucasFilm

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Amazingly, the Walt Disney Company has bought LucasFilm, George Lucas’ long privately-held company. In short, this means that Disney now owns Star Wars (they’ve already said we can expect Episode VII in 2015) and Indiana Jones. As we are in a down time of baseball, here’s some suggestions I have for Disney on how they can use their new toy:

A) Respect the Fans

Star Wars fans are infamously creative and rabid. They make fan-films, write fan fiction and make costumes and props based on the series. And George Lucas and LucasFilm has generally always been supportive of this, in fact, they’ve held contests over them!

Disney, however, has been notoriously protective of it’s intellectual property, which now includes Star Wars. In fact, they’ve in the past been the driving force for increasing the length of copyright– usually lobbying for the longer copyright limits whenever Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain. And they, in the past, have been willing to go to court to protect their characters, even if it’s something innocent like cartoon characters decorating a daycare mural.

This, needless to say, would not be a good way to handle LucasFilm and it’s properties. In fact, if they were to try and mess with the status quo that Star Wars fans have been operating with for decades, they would be shooting themselves in the foot.

B) Make sure these new movies are in good hands

Episode VII, VIII and IX will probably be the most scrutinized movies ever made. The prequels were, of course, also scrutinized extremely heavily, and as a result all three of them, with the possible exception of Revenge of the Sith, were at best considered somewhat entertaining and at worst (in the case of Episode I) just plain bad. And these were movies that George Lucas was heavily involved with, fleshing out the little jottings of backstory he had had for decades.

So now, presumably, Episode VII will be done without Lucas involved in anything beyond an advisory role (perhaps in helping them flesh out whatever little jottings he had about the future of Star Wars in the same way that the prequels were the fleshing out of the little jottings he had about the history of the Star Wars universe). They need somebody good and focused to do it, somebody who has experience dealing with big universes and devoted fan bases. The first name that comes to mind is J.J. Abrams, however, he’s probably taken. The same probably goes for Joss Whedon (although maybe he could be involved in some sort of other capacity, or coordinate a TV series, or something). So perhaps it could be either Brad Bird or Jon Favreau, both of whom are already getting some talk on Twitter about possibilities.

C) Have Indiana Jones and Captain America team up to fight Nazis

Disney owns Marvel, famed home of noted Nazi-fighter Captain America. Disney now owns LucasFilm, home of noted Nazi-fighter Henry “Indiana” Jones Jr.

If they do not have a comic book or video game or something made that features them teaming up to stop a fiendish Nazi plot, I am going to be disappointed.

D) Make a whole Star Wars amusement park

Disney already has a Star Wars ride in some of their park, as well as Indiana Jones rides. Go bigger. Make a whole amusement park down in Florida that is focused entirely upon George Lucas’ grand creation. Let us dogfight in X-Wing simulators, let us eat lunch at the Mos Eisley Cantina, race landspeeders and have lightsaber fights with family members we are annoyed at.

Do it.

E) Give Yoda a part in the next Muppets movie

Because, c’mon.
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Tomorrow: I return to baseball as I give out the Baseball Continuum awards, which are like real awards, only they are decided only by me and have no prestige whatsoever.