This weekend on the Continuum:
- A Book Review!
- Predictions (which will probably be wrong) on the NFL Playoffs
- And perhaps more!
$30.7 Million Dollars a year….
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For $30.7 million dollars, you make enough money (before tax) each year to….
- Stockpile 1697 pounds of gold a year
- Stockpile over 52 tons of silver (short tons)
- Make a little over three times the annual nominal GDP of the island country of Niue.
- Finance 7.719 Gone With The Winds a year (note: not adjusted for inflation)
- Finance 2.791 Star Wars: A New Hopes a year (again, not adjusted for inflation)
- Actually, it would be enough to finance at least one equivalent production of any single movie ever made before 1963 before inflation. (Cleopatra was the first film that you couldn’t finance at least once with $30.7 million dollars)
- (Also, while we’re at it, can I just say as an aside it’s amazing that the first Star Wars only cost $11 million dollars or so in the 1970s?)
- Pay Babe Ruth‘s entire career salary (ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION) nearly twice.
- Pay the total opening-day salary of the 2013 Houston Astros with over six-million dollars left over to spare.
- Make about 76.75 times the average salary of the President of the United States (probably much more, given that they usually donate it to charity).
- Be able to afford to pay one year of the contract of Clayton Kershaw under his new deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
In short: Clayton Kershaw now is making a bunch of dough.
BIZARRE BASEBALL CULTURE: 25th installment!
In this, the 25th official installment of “Bizarre Baseball Culture” (“Rockets Rigby” was something of a prologue), I don’t really look at anything new, so much as look at some things that keep popping up in the series. So far, we’ve had 19 comics-related posts (although some of them have been really short, and in other cases have been two-in-one deals), one movie clip, three animated pieces and one prose novel (plus the short story prologue). So, in all of those, what are some things I’ve noticed a lot of? Well… (GO BELOW THE JUMP)
Because Nobody Asked For It: Baseball Stuff From My Disney Vacation
When most people are at Walt Disney World, they take pictures of castles, characters, rides and palm trees. And I did do that. But, as a person with a new camera and a burning urge to use it and a baseball blog in the dead of winter, I also took pictures of basically every single thing baseball-related I saw while at Disney World in the week before Christmas.
Under the jump, you can see those things:
The Alex Rodriguez Suspension/NFL Prediction Awkward Combination Post
Okay, so, I was going to make my picks for the NFL playoffs this weekend, but then Alex Rodriguez finally received his steroid suspension from the arbitrator, a one-year ban, which is lower than the 211-game ban MLB had originally given him but still the longest suspension in the history of MLB’s drug program.
So, here are my thoughts on that:
- Not many people win in this. MLB and Bud Selig have now been shown to have overreached with the 211-game suspension, and also will get bad publicity even as the Hall of Fame vote stuff just starts to settle (on the bright side, Alex Rodriguez won’t see a MLB field in 2014). Rodriguez, of course, misses the entire next season. The MLBPA, although many of it’s members would probably be fine with letting A-Rod burn, has been dealt a defeat, with one of their members being suspended despite a lack of a positive test.
- Interestingly, the only people who really benefit (besides lawyers) are the New York Yankees themselves. Without having to pay A-Rod next year, they have more money to possibly use in the Masahiro Tanaka sweepstakes.
- This isn’t over. It’s unlikely the federal courts are going to side with Rodriguez, but it still will keep this story in the public eye. And even after the suspension, Rodriguez will likely try to make a comeback in 2015… wherever he plays. It’s hard to see the Yankees wanting him back.
- Oh, and guess what? Due to a loophole, Alex Rodriguez will be able to come to spring training. Yankees’ position players must be in camp by February 19! Boy, oh boy!
And now, my thoughts on this weekend’s NFL playoff games:
- I’m not going to go against the Seahawks at home, where the stadium has, in the past, caused small earthquakes and gotten to dangerously high levels of noise.
- I will, however, go against the Patriots and go with the Colts. Maybe it’s the team of destiny the Colts gave last week, or maybe that’s just me.
- I’m going with the 49ers over the Panthers. After going through Lambeau, Charlotte is probably a cakewalk.
- I’m going with the Broncos over the Chargers. They just are the better team.
Okay, so, let’s see how well it all turns out to be!
Greg Maddux as a Minor Leaguer… VIDEOS
Thanks Youtube! While looking up “Greg Maddux“, I found video of him as a 19-year-old in 1985 with the Peoria Chiefs. THREE VIDEOS OF IT, to be exact.
So, while I haven’t watched these yet, here are all three, for your viewing pleasure:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
My hypothetical HoF ballot: The Justifications
So, yesterday I had my hypothetical Hall of Fame ballot. So, here are my justifications for them:
Greg Maddux is the greatest control pitcher of the expansion era, if not any era. He was the best fielding pitcher of his time, if not all time. During the 1996 World Series, after the Braves had won game one, George Steinbrenner more or less demanded to know how Joe Torre was going to get out of this. Torre more or less told him that there was no way they were beating Maddux in Game 2 but after that things would turn around. Steinbrenner, apparently, took this as a legitimate excuse for going down 2-0 in the series. Let that sink in: losing to Greg Maddux was excusable to George Steinbrenner. Maybe I’m botching the retelling of that story a little bit, but not that much. A top-tier Hall of Famer.
Tom Glavine was the Robin to Greg Maddux’s Batman, a 10-time All-Star, 305 game winner, and two-time Cy Young winner who is underrated due to how great Maddux was.
Frank Thomas hit 521 home runs while also hitting .301. He is 14th in career OPS. He’s the Big Hurt, and he’s a Hall of Famer.
Craig Biggio played catcher, he played second, and he played in the outfield. And he was a great hitter who could get on base any way he could- he holds the record for HBP among modern players. Probably could have been a star in any era he played. Should have gone in last year.
Tim Raines may not get in on the “gut feeling” test, but he is, nonetheless, a Hall of Famer in my book. While certainly being a seven-time All-Star help, the big reason is because of how great he was as a leadoff hitter. Not only could he get on base- he was a respectable .294 hitter (and that was lower than it probably should have been because he stuck around a few years too long)- he also was a great base-stealer, 8th all-time.
Mike Piazza was the greatest power-hitting catcher of all time, and yet steroid rumors (none of which have been proven and most of which seem to be innuendo like saying he had an acne problem at one point) have kept him out. He should be in or whatever real evidence there is should be revealed.
Barry Bonds is in because, well, he was a Hall of Famer before he started using steroids in the late 1990s. The steroids merely turned him from a great player to arguably the greatest hitter of all time. Roger Clemens would also be on this list, for similar reasons, if there were more than 10 spots.
Edgar Martinez was the greatest DH-only player of his era. He won two batting titles, had a career .312 average, is 21st in career OBP and 34th in career OPS, and hit probably the most memorable hit in the history of the Seattle Mariners- the double that won the 1995 ALDS against the Yankees and arguably saved the franchise’s future in Seattle.
Should be in the Hall.
Jeff Kent was the 2000 MVP, a five-time all-star, and holds the record for HR by a 2B. Although famously prickly and a subpar fielder, he should definitely have gotten more votes than he did this year, and should one day be in the Hall.
Fred McGriff would be in the Hall of Fame right now if not for the 1994 strike. In the 113 games he had played in that year, he had 34 HRs. Had the season gone on, he would have been able to end his career with 500+ HRs, a steady hitter who never hit more than 40 HRs but constantly was hitting 30 or more. With basically no steroid cloud around him, he should be in the Hall of Fame.
Finally, I’d like to note that Jeff Bagwell would also be on the hypothetical ballot, but, again, 10 player limit. And Jack Morris, as great of a performer as he was at his peak, had a career ERA of 3.90, and I don’t believe in “pitching to the score”.
My Hall of Fame Ballot (if I had one)
If I had a Hall of Fame ballot, this is who I’d vote for:
Come back tomorrow for my justifications!
Catching up on what happened to some players after some previous posts…
What happened to some of the people in previous posts? Well….
- Daniel Missaki, the then-16-year-old who impressed me so much in the WBC qualifiers when he closed out Brazil’s upset of Colombia, signed with the Mariners and played with their rookie-level team this year.
- Also in November 2012, I made a humorous prediction on the future of the Marlins, forecasting them out until the city of Miami is reclaimed by the sea and becomes inhabited by genetically-engineered merpeople. Well, that hasn’t happened yet, but since that post, some predictions have come at least partially true (I got the teams and timing wrong). Since the post went up, Ricky Nolasco was traded (and then also signed with another team through free agency), Justin Ruggiano has been traded and Tino Martinez is no longer the hitting coach (although for a completely different reason than my joking quip that he’d be traded to the Yankees). Meanwhile, poor Giancarlo Stanton is still a Marlin.
- Jeff Clement, of miracle-comeback fame, is currently a free agent.
- Jeremy Bonderman, who had made a comeback this season after a long absence from big league rosters, is also a free agent.
- Donald Lutz, the first German-raised player in MLB history, finished the season with 58 ABs, a .241 BA, .585 OPS and a home run, and remains in the Reds’ organization.
- Roy Halladay is still retired.
…And now you know!
Coming Up This Week on The Baseball Continuum:
So, what’s coming up in the next week?
It’s like this:
- Pictures from my vacation last month- at least, the baseball-related things I saw on it.
- An installment of Bizarre Baseball Culture
- Some follow-up on previous articles.
- A book review!
- And analysis on any major moves that might happen.
Also, I’d like to note that I am currently working on a rather large project, a tongue-in-cheek “research paper” that extrapolates the true events of a certain fictional baseball game that we all are familiar with. I did some brief work on it last summer, but only restarted it recently. I don’t know when it’ll come out and it’s entirely possible I might try to get it published somewhere other than here (if you are one of those who run Baseball Prospectus, Fangraphs, Sports On Earth or some other esteemed place, or know people who do, and are interested, feel free to contact me).
Oh, and I’ll be contributing something to the Old Time Family Baseball Blogathon again this year, and that’ll be coming up sooner than you think.
The Baseball Continuum 