Tag Archives: baseball

John Philip Sousa once wrote a Baseball March

Posted on by
Reply

John Philip Sousa, the man who wrote such patriotic standards as The Stars and Stripes Forever, also wrote a march for baseball, entitled The National Game. I’ve heard it performed at Orchestra Nights at the ballpark (yeah, Rochester has orchestra night every year), but I just found it on YouTube, so, well, here it is.

Feel free to imagine 19th century baseballers taking the field to this, dressed in uniforms for the Providence Grays or the Boston Beaneats, perhaps while also getting into drunken saloon brawls and going into second base with sharpened spikes. It’s what Old Hoss Radbourn (or at least @OldHossRadbourn) would do.

MVP of Yesterday (Sept. 14, 2013): Wladimir Balentien (actually Brandon Belt)

Posted on by
Reply

Wladimir Balentien broke the NPB single-season HR mark early this morning, hitting his 56th home run of the year, breaking a record held by the great Sadaharu Oh since 1964. Check out this video, it’s awesome:

And, later in the game, he hit number 57.

However, the MVP of Yesterday is technically meant just for MLB, and thankfully, there is a very good candidate: Brandon Belt, who went 5-6 with a HR and 6 RBI in the Giants’ runaway 19-3 victory over the Dodgers. He JUST edges out Hunter Pence, who had 7 RBI, but only 3 hits.

Standings, as usual, under the jump:

Continue reading →

In honor of Friday the 13th: My Greatest Baseball Fears (mostly humor)

Posted on by
Reply

It’s Friday the 13th, so here are my greatest baseball fears (these are mostly meant to be humorous):

  • I go to a ballgame, have to leave early due to some external circumstance, miss a no-hitter, and get ticked off at whoever it was that caused the external circumstance.
  • Some family member or friend schedules a wedding, Bar Mitzvah, funeral, or other major event during an elimination game of the World Series. Had the 2008 World Series gone to Game 7, this would have happened and I would have probably ruined the Bat Mitzvah of a family friend.
  • Even worse than that: the power goes out during the playoffs. The horror…. the horror.
  • Or even worse than THAT: a blackout brought about by a dispute between the TV station and the cable provider. A torch and/or pitchfork would probably be involved.
  • Another work stoppage. I was four when the last one happened so I had no clue. I have a hard enough time getting through the off-season. A work stoppage would probably cause me to enter a grief-coma or something. Is a grief-coma a thing? I don’t know.
  • I miss a walk-off play in deep extra innings because of my bladder.
  • Line drive to the face.
  • Line drive to the groin.
  • Really, line drives in general are terrifying.
  • Hard enough grounders, too, especially if they are bouncing.
  • Somebody other than Andrelton Simmons wins Gold Glove for SS in the NL this season, causing the baseball-related internet to enter a conflagration that would make the Trout-Cabrera WAR debate of last year look like a campfire.
  • No, seriously, he’s had one of the best defensive seasons in history. If he doesn’t win, the baseball-related internet will probably cease to exist. The center will not hold, the falcon will not be able to hear the falconer…
  • Finally: I’m somehow managing a major league team, my team is down in the ninth, and Mariano Rivera is coming in.

Random Thing: Former Major League Stadiums That Are Still Standing

Posted on by
Reply

The (exhibition) return of Olympic Stadium got me to thinking for no real reason: What are other former MLB stadiums that are still standing? I don’t mean cases where they knocked down almost the whole thing but kept the diamond there (as has happened at Tiger Stadium), or cases where they demolished most but not all of the stadium and then it was made into something totally different (as with what used to be Braves Field).  I’m talking about actual former stadiums that are still standing and could, in theory, still be used for baseball.

I came up with this list:

I can’t think of any others… can you?

Wladimir Balentien ties Sadaharu Oh’s single-season record

Posted on by
Reply

Wladimir Balentien has tied Sadaharu Oh’s record for single-season HR in Japan with his 55th HR. Others have tied it in the past, but none have been able to break it, partly due to Japanese pitchers avoiding him in order to preserve Oh’s record from being broken by a Gaijin. That attitude may now be a thing of the past though, and even if it isn’t, Balentien still has 22 games left, and it seems doubtful that they’d be able to avoid him for all of it.

Random Goofballey: Denny McLain on the Organ

Posted on by
Reply

After his 31-6 1968 season, Tigers pitcher Denny McLain was offered- and accepted- an offer to play the organ in an album for Capitol Records. This is a sampling of that work:

The last time the Pirates won 81 games…

Posted on by
Reply

September 9th, 1992. At the end of the day, after a 13-8 victory over the Cubs, the record of the Pittsburgh Pirates showed that they had 81 wins.

It never happened again. Until yesterday.

How long ago was 9-9-92? Well…

  • Bryce Harper hadn’t been born yet.
  • The United States still was doing nuclear bomb testing.
  • The Colorado Rockies, Florida/Miami Marlins, Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays and Arizona Diamondbacks did not exist.
  • Two players from the September 9, 1992 game- Joe Girardi and Ryne Sandberg– are now MLB managers (although Sandberg is an interim manager).
  • Three participants in the game (Sandberg, Andre Dawson, and umpire Doug Harvey) are now in the Hall of Fame. A fourth, Barry Bonds, would be if not for, well… you know.
  • Speaking of Bonds, at the end of the 1992 season, he had 176 HR and in 1992 he hit a then career-high 34 HR.
  • The top movie at the box-office the weekend before was Honeymoon in Vegas. The top movie in the weekend after was Sneakers.
  • Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road” was the Number One single.
  • George H.W. Bush was president and was facing both Bill Clinton and Ross Perot in the presidential race.
  • Nickelodeon was only a few weeks old, the Sci-Fi (Syfy) Channel and Cartoon Network were a few weeks away from premiering.
  • The first Mario Kart game had only been out for about two weeks.
  • Gerald’s Game by Stephen King was the number one best-selling book at the time.
  • The Russian Federation had not yet taken part in the Olympic Games- the 1992 Olympics had the “Unified Team” of Russia and former USSR countries because they hadn’t formed Olympic Committees in time.
  • A Canadian Team had not yet won the World Series.
  • Only Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Dodger Stadium, Anaheim (Angel) Stadium, Kauffman Stadium, Skydome/Rogers Centre, New Comiskey Park/US Cellular Field, the Oakland Coliseum and Camden Yards remain in MLB use from that season. Tropicana Field had been built, but had not yet hosted a Major League team.

In other words: It was a long time ago.

Great Stuff from the B-Ref Japanese Data

Posted on by
Reply

With Baseball Reference adding Japanese stats, it’s time to look at some of the coolest stuff from it.

First off, of course, there is arguably the greatest Japanese player ever and one of the greatest hitters on any continent: Sadaharu Oh. You probably know about his 868 HRs, but you probably didn’t know about his impressive 2786 hits. Going on a tangent here, I remember reading somewhere that, after statistical conversions between the leagues, it’s thought that Oh would have had a career in MLB similar to Mel Ott.

Much like how Babe Ruth had Lou Gehrig behind him, Oh had Shigeo Nagashima, who formed the N in what was called the Yomiuri Giants’ “O-N Cannon”. Together, they helped the “Yankees of Japan” win nine straight titles.

However, had you looked hard enough, you probably could have found their statistics elsewhere, and the same probably goes for Americans and other westerners who spent time in Japan since the 1970s, like Charlie Manuel and Randy Bass and recent Japanese imports like Yu Darvish. What makes the Baseball Reference data awesome is that it goes beyond that to Japanese baseball’s earliest professional seasons.

For example, I can’t ever remember seeing the stats of Wally Yonamine, the first American to play in Japan post-WWII. Nor do I ever remember seeing statistics for Eiji Sawamura, the ace pitcher (Japan’s Cy Young Award equivalent is named for him) who once struck out Charlie Gehringer, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx in succession during one of Ruth’s famous tours of Japan, but whose career ended premature when he died during WWII.

As a third example of a early-years Japanese player who has interesting stats to look at: Victor Starfin (sometimes spelled Starffin). The first pitcher to win 300 games in Japan, Starfin was able to (mostly) avoid WWII’s effects on Japanese baseball. Well, until he was released in 1944 due to “security concerns” and thrown into a detention camp for being a foreign national. That, by the way, is like the fourth most interesting thing in his SABR biography. Seriously, it starts with his family fleeing the Russian Revolution and ends with him tragically dying in a drunk-driving accident in January, 1957- not long after his final season (1955).

Those just scratch the surface of the treasures in Baseball Reference’s new Japanese pages… go check them out.

Link

This is going to be good.

(The above link is to Japanese statistics just added to Baseball Reference.)

(Humor) Things Cubs players would still be able to do

Posted on by
Reply

Jeff Passan has an article on how the Union is worried that the contracts being offered by teams like the Cubs could be a slow march to non-guaranteed contracts on par with the NFL. You can read the article for the full details, but in essence, they are worried that the expansion of the “conversion clause” that allows a team to turn it into a non-guaranteed contract if a player does something. It’s a call-back to the eighties, when everybody was worried about all the cocaine going around, but now-a-days the MLBPA is worried about the implications that teams could not only use the clause to extend it to PEDs, but to, well, anything.

Like, take this snippet apparently from a Cubs contract, meant to list out restricted activities that could allow the Cubs to turn the contact into non-guaranteed if there was an injury. Passan notes that due to the way some parts of the contract were originally written, they could have in theory been able to convert the contract for even the most mild of injuries doing these activities:

“(A)uto racing, motorcycling, piloting, co-piloting, learning to operate, or serving as a crew member of, an aircraft, being a passenger in a single engine airplane or private plane, hot air ballooning, parachuting, skydiving, hang gliding, bungee jumping, horseback riding, horse racing, harness racing, fencing, boxing, wrestling, karate, judo, jujitsu, any other form of martial arts activity, use of an All Terrain Vehicle (‘ATV’), skiing (water or snow), snowmobiling, bobsledding, luging, ice hockey, ice boating, field hockey, squash, spelunking, basketball, football, softball, white water canoeing or rafting, kayaking, jai-alai, lacrosse, soccer, tennis, rodeo, bicycle racing, motor boat racing, polo, rugby, rodeo, handball, volleyball, in-line or other roller skating, surfing, hunting, paddleball, racquetball, archery, wood chopping, mountain climbing, boating, any weightlifting not prescribed by or approved in advance by Club (said approval not to be unreasonably withheld), participation in the ‘Superteams’ or ‘Superstars’ activities (or any like activity) or other made-for-television or made-for-motion picture athletic competitions…”

That’s a big list, and the union was- if I’m reading this right- worried that such a big list and the vague writing of the contract could have allowed the Cubs to NFL-ize the contracts of anybody who, say, had a slight sprain during a pick-up basketball game or had a soccer ball hit them in the nuts. Thankfully, that vague language has been changed, so now the they probably have to actually get shot by a bow-and-arrow or falling down a cliff while mountain climbing for their deal to become non-guaranteed.

Still, even if they WERE in danger of seeing their guaranteed contracts going poof if they got hurt doing those above activities, they still have many activities they still could have done:

  • Golf
  • Bowling
  • Bocce
  • Ballroom dancing
  • Water Polo (regular polo is prohibited, however)
  • Paragliding (hang-gliding is prohibited, however)
  • Badminton
  • Australian-Rules Football
  • Sepaw Takraw (AKA Malaysian Foot-Volleyball)
  • Korfball (AKA Dutch Basketball)
  • Kickball
  • Pesapallo (AKA Finnish Baseball)
  • Snowboarding (Surfing, Skating and Skiing are prohibited, however)
  • Shuffleboard
  • Dodgeball
  • Ultimate Frisbee
  • Unicycling (bicycling and motorcycling are prohibited)
  • Tug of War
  • Trading Card Games
  • Paintball
  • Laser Tag
  • Billiards
  • Fishing
  • Playing “Go Fish”
  • Darts
  • Gymnastics
  • Flying a kite
  • Table Tennis
  • Most Track and Field events
  • Hurling (AKA Irish Field Hockey, sort of)
  • Bandy (Russian Ice Hockey but with a ball instead of a puck)
  • Hide and Seek
  • Tag
  • Team Handball (regular Handball is prohibited)
  • Chess
  • Checkers
  • Battle of the Nations
  • Connect Four
  • Quidditch
  • Thumb-War
  • Horseshoes
  • Blernsball
  • Rollerball
  • Calvinball
  • Podracing
  • Video Games
  • Jeopardy!
  • Staring Contests
  • Scootering
  • Segway Racing
  • Uno
  • Monopoly
  • Baseball itself!

…Oh, wait, there is this at the very end:

“…or any other sport, activity, or negligent act involving a reasonably foreseeable substantial risk of personal injury or death.”

Well, there goes those. Good thing the Union was able to get a change in the language of the Cubs contracts, otherwise, they could have ended up with people getting their contracts non-guaranteed after paper-cuts while playing Uno.