Will MVP Baseball return?

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Baseball is paradoxically both one of the best sports for video games to be made on, yet also one of the worst. It is one of the best due to the general obsessiveness of baseball fans, the vast number of statistics, players and strategic decisions and varied playing fields. It is one of the worst because it is hard to make a good baseball video game these days, and expensive. It takes a lot of time and money to make all of the stadiums, uniforms (not just MLB but also MiLB and throwback unis), players (having basically everyone have the same face isn’t good enough), motion captures, play-by-play recordings and all of the other stuff. And, even then, there is a lot of intangible stuff that they can mess up. When done right, it is awesome, when done wrong, it makes you want to pull your hair out.

We are now entering what appears to be a dark age of baseball video games: The MLB 2K series, the crappy replacement that was forced upon everyone without a PlayStation when Take-Two Entertainment signed a third-party exclusivity deal with MLB in the mid-2000s, is near death. This would, usually, be a good thing. However, it also means that it is now likely that there will be no traditional baseball games outside of the PlayStation produced and exclusive The Show next year, and possibly the year after that. This is because, as I mentioned above, making a good MLB game is a time-consuming and expensive process, and now isn’t the time for a company to start from scratch.

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Jair Jurrjens has gone missing

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So, Monday night I went to a game between the Rochester Red Wings and Gwinnett Braves. The pitcher was somebody who they claimed was Jair Jurrjens. However, I don’t think it was actual him. Jair Jurrjens, after all, is a star pitcher from Curacao. I saw him during his rookie season, where he ended up third in RoY voting.  He was somebody who pitched in the All-Star Game last season who finished 2011 with a 2.96 ERA. Who had a HR/9 of 0.8 in his career. He had some injury problems, including last season, but definitely one of the better pitchers in baseball.

That man, I believe, was kidnapped over the winter and replaced by this guy:

It’s an identical twin of Jurrjens, who has a glorified BP fastball and who gives up 11 hits and 6 earned runs to a team that, while recently resurgent, is in last place in their division. And, the thing is, if not for him Houdini-ing his way out of a few innings (such as the first inning, where the Wings got a man to third with no outs but were unable to bring him home), it would have been an even bigger massacre.

So, if anybody out there knows where the real Jair Jurrjens went, please let the Braves organization know. It’s sad to see such talented pitchers lose their stuff, get sent down and then try to make their way back up to MLB as shadows of their old selves. We’ve seen it happen to Dontrelle Willis recently, and to other pitchers in the past. And it remains sad to see.

Great Mysteries in Other Sports

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Yesterday, I gave some of the great mysteries in baseball. But there are plenty of mysteries beyond the diamond as well. For example:

  • Was, as some conspiracy theorists claim, the 1985 NBA Draft lottery fixed so that Patrick Ewing would go to the New York Knicks? (I doubt it, but it’s one of the most talked about sports conspiracy theories of all time, so…)
  • The original trophy for Soccer’s World Cup was awarded permanently to Brazil in 1970 after they won the tournament for the third time. In 1983, that trophy was stolen. What happened to it?
  • Does the IOC really have the silver medals for the 1972 Basketball Tournament in a vault, waiting for the cold day in hell when the screwed-over USA team accepts them?
  • Was Michael Jordan’s baseball stint really a cover story for a gambling suspension? (Again, I doubt it, but since so many people often discuss the possibility…)
  • Why doesn’t the NFL give the 1925 Pottsville Maroons their due? It can’t just be because it would injure the pride of the Cardinals, right?
  • Jim Robinson was the fourth man to fight to Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) professionally. He has not been contacted or seen since 1979. What happened to him?
  • Speaking of Ali, did Sonny Liston throw either of his fights with him to pay off debts he had with organized crime?
  • Did Wilt Chamberlain really sleep with 20,000 women? (This has been mathematically debunked, but…)
  • Is Jimmy Hoffa buried underneath what was once Giants Stadium (it is now a parking lot for the new stadium)?

 

Know any other good ones?

The Blight of the TV Blackout

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The greatest bane of the Major League Baseball fan in existence is not high ticket prices, competitive imbalance or rainy days. It is the dreadfully antiquated blackout policies of Major League Baseball on television. Drawn up long before the internet, national cable networks and Extra Innings packages, they, as they are currently drawn up, do little to benefit the teams they are meant to and do everything to annoy, enrage and inconvenience fans. It’s so bad, in fact, that some people are suing MLB over it.

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Great Mysteries in Baseball

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Baseball is a sport where there are a lot of thing that are unexplained or unknown. For example…

  • Where, exactly, does Lena Blackburne’s Rubbing Mud come from?
  • How and why did Big Ed Delahanty fall over Niagara Falls in 1903? Was it suicide? An accident? Murder?
  • What happened to the ball Bobby Thomson hit in the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World”? I seem to remember reading somewhere that a nun caught it, and I think there might be a book out there about the quest for it, but I don’t think anybody really knows for sure.
  • Did John Smoltz really get injured while trying to iron his shirt while still wearing it?
  • Did Babe Ruth really have a piano of his fall into a pond in Massachusetts? And if so, is it still down there? (It’s a long story.)
  • Did Wade Boggs really drink over 50 (possibly as many as 64) cans of Miller Light during one cross-country flight?
  • Does, as the result of an agreement in the early 1880s, the National League (and, as the result of the merging of the AL and NL into one legal entity in the late 1990s, MLB) owe the cities of Troy, NY and Worcester, MA hundreds of exhibition games? (Essentially, the agreement was that Troy and Worcester would lose their NL teams, but as compensation would get at least two exhibition games against NL teams each year… I don’t think that’s happened anytime in at least a hundred years, and I have to figure it’s a lawsuit or publicity stunt waiting to happen.)
  • Was William White, and not Fleetwood Walker or Jackie Robinson, the first African-American ballplayer in the bigs?
  • Who put the obscenity on the bat in Bill Ripken’s infamous baseball card? Was it him trying to pull one on the card company? Was it a bat-boy? His brother Cal? Someone else?
  • Did Babe Ruth call his shot? It’s obvious from video and stills from that day that he was pointing at something, but we probably will never know what, exactly, he was pointing at.

And there are no doubt many more as well….

Wherever they end up, the Athletics better keep their name

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For seemingly the last decade or so, the Athletics have tried to escape from Oakland (home of the infamous Oakland Coliseum, where the crowds are small and the foul territory is the size of the Titanic) and find their way to San Jose (BTW, the way is available on Google Maps). The Giants, who own the territorial rights to there, have basically told the Athletics to take a hike. And so, some have begun to wonder if the Athletics will move out of the Bay Area entirely… Selig has said that MLB would approve the move, depending on where it was (i.e. so long as it didn’t annoy any of the other 29 teams, like San Jose would the Giants).

Wherever the A’s end up though (Las Vegas? San Antonio? Charlotte? Mexico or Puerto Rico?), there is one thing that should happen: They should remain the Athletics. It is too old a name with too rich a history to be abandoned. The A’s nickname has been with that franchise since 1901, and dates back to previous clubs that go back all the way to 1860! Philadelphia, Kansas City or Oakland, they have remained the Athletics. Very few other names in sports have survived so two or more moves: the Boston-Milwaukee-Atlanta Braves (which, contrary to popular belief, was not derived directly from Native Americans, but rather on the notorious Tammany Hall political machine, which had used chiefs as a symbol. Not like that matters) are the only ones from the MLB.  The NFL has had the Oakland-LA Raiders (who don’t really count, since the second move was back to Oakland), the Chicago-St. Louis-Arizona Cardinals and the Cleveland-Los Angeles-St. Louis Rams. The NBA has had the New York-New Jersey-Brooklyn Nets, the Milwaukee-St. Louis-Atlanta Hawks and the Philadelphia-San Francisco-Golden State (i.e. Oakland) Warriors. The NHL hasn’t had one.

And, in honor of the long tradition, the Athletics should keep that name. No matter where they end up.Same for most of the other above teams.

Headlines from the past: Black Sox acquitted… but still banned.

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Often forgotten is that the “Eight Men Out” actually were acquitted of their role in the scandal by the jury (it is a bit complicated as to why- it includes confessions going missing, amongst other things). Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis didn’t care though, and let everyone know it, as this headline from the Owosso (Michigan) Argus-Press from August 3, 1921 says. And Landis kept his word: Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Lefty Williams, Chick Gandil (the ringleader of the player side of the fix, who had already mysteriously retired to play semi-pro instead), Fred McMullin (who was a scrub who only was a part of the fix because he’d heard about it and wanted in), Swede Risberg, Happy Felsch and Buck Weaver (who didn’t take part in it, but had known about it and didn’t tell anybody) never played professional baseball again.

Justin Verlander will get his third no-hitter… and probably a fourth. And maybe a fifth and sixth.

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I wasn’t at a TV last night as Justin Verlander, the best pitcher in baseball, was throwing a no-hitter. I was at a ballgame. I heard about it after he’d finished seven, but by the time I got to the ballpark’s bar and got them to switch it to MLB Network, he was just finishing off the eighth. It was then that a Red Sox fan, wondering why that game wasn’t on anymore, asked why:

“Verlander is throwing a no-no,” I said.

“Again? Wow,” the man replied (I’m paraphrasing here).

So then it was just waiting. MLB Network kept showing the Red Sox game, but promising they would head back to Detroit once Verlander took the mound again. It felt like an eternity, waiting for them to get back to Detroit. It felt like it was going to be inevitable that he was going to throw it, so it was something of both a shock and a disappointment when Josh Harrison got a soft hit to center with one out. No-hitters always seem to end with the littlest hits, as that is all it takes.

For most pitchers, to lose a no-hitter in the ninth would be a great missed opportunity, one they likely would never have the chance to have again. With Verlander, however, that isn’t the case, as we are now to the point where every time he steps to the mound, there is a real chance he could throw a no-hitter. It doesn’t matter where he is or who he is facing. Barring injury, I have no doubt that he will throw another no-hitter. Heck, he could have several more. He is the first threat to Nolan Ryan‘s record since… ever.

Only Ryan, Sandy Koufax, Cy Young, Bob Feller and Larry Corcoran (a ace of the 19th century who died at the age of 32 from Bright’s Disease) have three or more no-hitters. It is probably only a matter of time before Verlander joins them, and, perhaps, one day surpasses them.

The time I (sort of) saw Jesse Orosco break a baseball record

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In the annals of baseball record-holders, you can find some of the greatest names in the game: Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Pete Rose, Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker, Rickey Henderson, Cal Ripken…

By comparison, Jesse Orosco doesn’t really stand out. But he has the record for most games appeared in. And it doesn’t look like anybody is going to be passing him anytime soon. He broke the previous record, held by Dennis Eckersley, on August 17, 1999.

I was at that game at the ripe old age of nine. But I didn’t actually see him break it. Because, you see, I was busy… looking at the record-breaking home run balls of 1998. Cartoonist and former college baseball player Todd McFarlane had bought most of the McGwire and Sosa home run balls, and was touring them around the country. We’d decided that a good time to go and see it would be once Mike Mussina had left the game.

So, what do you know, he left the game as the 7th began. We went to see the McGwire and Sosa home run balls.

As we looked at the great artifacts of the year before, hardly suspecting that A) the home runs were probably hit with the help of modern pharmaceuticals and B) that Jesse Orosco was making history.

You all remember how it happened. There were fireworks, a message on the video board from Dennis Eckersley, a special appearance by several members of the 1986 Mets, and, finally, a tearful moment on the mound as Orosco embraced his family as both teams surrounded and cheered his grand accomplishment. And then, he got Todd Walker to fly out to center.

At least, I think that’s what happened, I was too busy looking at Todd MacFarlane’s personal museum to see it. So maybe all that happened was that the PA announcer mentioned at the end of the game that Orosco had broken Eckersley’s record. Again, I was nine, so the memory is a bit hazy. I think one of those things happened though.