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2020/2021 Tokyo Olympics Baseball Preview: Team USA

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Flag of the United States of America

Managed by Mike Scioscia, Team USA comes to the Tokyo Games with an eclectic team that features former big leaguers looking for jobs and/or one last ride before retirement, prospects looking to make their name, and players who have gone overseas to ply their trade. Although among the tournament favorites, how Team USA does ultimately is anyone’s guess. You can see their roster here.

About the Country: …Seriously? Do I have to do an “about the country” for the USA? Look at your history books or something. Okay, fine: Declaring independence from Great Britain in 1776, the United States of America has grown from a 13-state experiment in Republican Democracy to a 50-state union that is a global power (in some cases the global power) in economics, politics, science, technology, military, sports and entertainment, amongst other areas.

Baseball History: The history of American baseball is, more or less, the history of baseball. While it is no longer the most popular sport as far as TV ratings or public-opinion polls go, its cultural impact in American history and its yearly attendance (more people attend MLB games than the other three major sports leagues combined, although admittedly MLB seasons are longer) remain unchallenged.

Olympic History: Team USA has played in every single Olympic baseball tournament save one (a meltdown during 2004 qualifiers prevented them from playing in Athens). After some sort of demonstration event at the 1904 Olympics that has been shrouded in mystery (and may not have even happened), America took part in every single demonstration game/tournament and won all of them save for 1984 (won by Japan). It proved harder once baseball officially joined the games, with Team USA winning only one gold (2000, when Ben Sheets threw a three-hit shutout against the Cubans in the final) and two bronze (1996 and 2008).

Outside of baseball, of course, Team USA is a giant of the Olympics, leading the all-time summer and overall (summer+winter) medal count in both golds and total medals overall even if you combine USSR and Russia. Of particular fame are Team USA’s track and swimming teams, whose dominance alone would probably be high up in the medal count most Olympiad.

Road to Tokyo: The road to the Olympics was a bit rougher than hoped for Team USA. Their initial shot came at the 2019 Premier12 tournament in Japan, which is sort of a World Cup-style contest between the top 12 teams in the WBSC’s world rankings. The top-finishing team from the Americas would be guaranteed a spot in the Olympics, but ultimately that would be Mexico after America’s bullpen blew the lead in the ninth and then fell in the 10th during the bronze-medal game. So, after a COVID delay of a year, Team USA played in the Americas Qualifier tournament. That went better, as Team USA went undefeated while outscoring their opponents 29-10 to clinch a spot in the games.

Notable Names: Like during the qualifiers, the roster contains some players who are MLB veterans who either have found themselves elsewhere (such as the minors or overseas) or out of a job (whether by choice or by simply being unable to get on a roster).

In all, 14 members of the team have MLB experience, including former all-stars in Scott Kazmir, Todd Frazier (who was impressive in qualifying), David Robertson (the lone player who was on the USA’s 2017 WBC title team), and Edwin Jackson. Other former MLB players who you might recognize on the roster include Anthony Gose, Tim Federowicz, and Bubba Starling. Eddy Alvarez, a primarily-defensive infielder who had a cup-of-coffee with Miami last season, already has an Olympic medal since he was part of a silver-winning relay speed-skating team in Sochi. Patrick Kivlehan can play both outfield and infield and has 137 career MLB games, mostly with Cincinnati in 2017.

There are also some players with MLB experience who now work internationally. Although he has now returned to the USA and is part of the Cardinals system, Brandon Dickson went to Japan after two cups of coffee in the bigs and became a regular with the Orix Buffaloes. Tyler Austin played parts of four seasons in the big leagues before going to Japan, where he is hitting .348 with 17 home runs this season for Yokohama. RHPs Nick Martinez and Scott McGough similarly had time in MLB but have found better luck in Japan.

Somewhat surprisingly, Adam Jones was not picked for the team despite the fact that he had expressed interest and would be by far one of the best historical resumes, possibly because he has been having a rough year in Japan where he’s only batting .233. It’ll be interesting to see if he is potentially added if there are any late injuries or pull-outs, since presumably he wouldn’t need to go through nearly as much COVID-related protocols going into or out-of Japan.

Ones to Watch: The Olympics have a long history of featuring prospects on Team USA, including players like Barry Larkin, Mark McGwire, Will Clark, Stephen Strasburg (the lone amateur on the 2008 team), Nomar Garciaparra, Roy Oswalt, and Jason Varitek. This year is no different. While the team’s inability to use any players on 40-man rosters keeps them from using much of the cream-of-the-cream, it’s likely that at least some of the prospects on this roster will end up big league regulars.

The three “ranked” prospects on the roster are 1B Triston Casas (Red Sox organization), RHP Simeon Woods Richardson (Blue Jays organization), and RHP Shane Baz (Rays organization). The other prospects on the squad, although not as well-regarded by scouts, are still hardly pushovers and will likely make it to the bigs. Middle-infielder Nick Allen is hitting .333 with an .882 OPS in AA for Oakland and was part of the qualifying team. OF/1B Eric Filia (Mariners organization) hit .313 with a HR and 5 RBIs during qualifiers. C Mark Kolozsary (Reds organization) showed good pop in the qualifiers with two home runs. Jamie Westbrook (Brewers organization) and Jack Lopez (Red Sox organization) will provide some defensive flexibility, which is important since these rosters only have 24 men on them.

There will also be a minor league “lifer” on the team in Anthony Carter. The 35-year-old RHP has been in pro ball since 2006 but has never appeared in an MLB game. He’s currently playing in the Mexican League.

Somewhat surprising omissions from the roster are Boston’s Jarren Duran and the Cardinals’ Matthew Liberatore, both well-regarded prospects who impressed in the qualifiers. It’s likely that they may now be on the verge of being called up to the big leagues, which of course would have meant that they would no longer be available. Luke Williams, who was so impressive during qualifiers that he was dubbed “Captain America” by some teammates and observers, is similarly ineligible since he has now been called up to the show (where he’s doing quite well!).

Outlook: While the prohibition on players on 40-man rosters means it doesn’t have the uniform excellence and up-down depth of Japan’s all-NPB team, Team USA needs to be considered one of the favorites for a gold thanks to its mix of experienced veterans and talented prospects. They are also aided by the fact that they are in a slightly-easier initial bracket (with Israel and South Korea instead of the other bracket, where Japan is with Dominican and Mexico). However, the randomness of baseball and the unforgiving format of the tournament leaves little room for error. One bad pitching performance or a ill-timed slump by some of the team’s players could be the difference between going for gold and not being on the medal stand at all.

You can find all the current Olympic Baseball previews here.

2020/2021 Tokyo Olympics Baseball Preview: Japan

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Flag of Japan

We begin our look at the baseball teams of the 2020/21 Tokyo Olympics with the host country, Japan. Managed by eight-time NPB All-Star Atsunori Inaba, the Japanese have already named their roster.

About the Country: Japan is an ancient nation, traditionally said to have been founded in 660 BC. For most of that time, it existed with relatively little change and contact with the outside world, save for the occasional war with Korea or internal feudalistic battles. That all changed in 1853, when a small force of the United States Navy, led by Admiral Matthew Perry, arrived in Japan to demand that it be opened to traffic. The arrival of Western influence shocked the Japanese, leading to reforms and programs that led the nation to grow from hermit kingdom to one of the world’s leading empires within a century, a period that ended only with Japan’s defeat in WWII. Scarred by the war and with a new constitution that prevented it from actually having a military, Japan became an economic power, a hub of global trade and technological innovation, and remains the world’s third-largest economy despite slow growth since the late 1980s. Fun fact: It would have been entirely possible for a Japanese person to have been born under the rule of feudal leaders and died in an atomic bombing. This would be roughly the equivalent of somebody in the West being born in the middle ages and dying in the 20th century.

Baseball History: Japan was introduced to baseball by a teacher named Horace Wilson, who introduced it to some of his students there. And in the decades after that, its popularity skyrocketed as Japan became more industrialized, although it remained strictly amateur until the 1930s. The beginnings of Japan’s professional baseball came about because of Major League Baseball in general and Babe Ruth in particular, as a barnstorming tour by the Great Bambino caused baseball to become even more popular than before. In 1936, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper conglomerate founded the first professional team in Japan, the Yomiuri Giants, primarily out of players who had distinguished themselves against the Americans. After WWII, the Japanese again turned to baseball, founding Nippon Pro Baseball in 1950. Baseball remains the most popular sport in Japan, and the National High School Baseball Championship is a cultural phenomenon in the country perhaps even greater than America’s “March Madness” for college basketball. In international play, the Japanese won the first two World Baseball Classics before coming in third in 2013 and 2017.

Olympic History: Japan, not surprisingly, has a long history with baseball at the Olympics, although it would take awhile before they actually took part. Japan was to have played an American team at the 1936 Olympics when baseball was a demonstration sport, but withdrew. Baseball was to have again been a demonstration at the 1940 Olympics Tokyo, which was cancelled due to the war. It wouldn’t be until the last time Tokyo hosted the Olympics, 1964, that Japan would make its Olympic baseball debut in a demonstration sport game against a team of American college all-stars who beat a team of Japanese amateur all-stars 6-2. Japan would later take part in demonstration baseball tournaments in 1984 (winning gold) and 1988 (taking silver) before taking part in every official Olympic baseball tournament from 1992 to 2008, with their best showing being silver in 1996.

Outside of baseball, Japan ranks 11th in all-time Summer Olympic medals and 13th in gold. Their most success have come in judo, gymnastics, wrestling, and swimming. The most successful summer athletes historically for Japan have generally been gymnasts, such as Sawao Katō and Takashi Ono. The Japanese have also had success in the Winter Games, which they have hosted twice (Sapporo ’72 and Nagano ’98), primarily in speed skating.

Road to Tokyo: Japan being the host country is the major reason why baseball is in these Olympics at all. Tokyo beat out Istanbul and Madrid for the 2020 games in a vote in 2013.

Notable Names: Undoubtedly the player on the Japanese roster most familiar to MLB fans is Masahiro Tanaka. The former Yankees star has returned to Japan, where as of this writing he is 3-5 with a 3.00 ERA, a 1.028 WHIP, and 62 strikeouts in 72 innings pitched.

Ones to Watch: Not surprisingly, the cream of the NPB crop makes up Samurai Japan’s roster.

Yūdai Ōno, last year’s Sawamura Award-winner (equivalent to the Cy Young), is on the team, as is Tomoyuki Sugano, a pitcher who has won the Sawamura twice as well as two Central League MVP trophies. In the bullpen, expect to see pitchers like Ryoji Kuribayashi and Kaima Taira, among the leaders in NPB in saves.

At the plate, Japan will be led by players like Yuki Yanagita. The 32-year-old outfielder has been named an All-Star six times and the Pacific League MVP twice, including last season. He currently is tied for the HR lead in the Pacific League with 18. The Central League’s HR leader, Munetaka Murakami (with 24), is a 21-year-old wunderkind corner infielder who MLB teams no doubt are hoping will cross the Pacific Ocean in the future. Outfielder Seiya Suzuki was the MVP of the 2019 Premier12 tournament and also played for Japan in the 2017 WBC. 2020 Japan Series MVP Ryoya Kurihara is also on the team as an outfielder but may also be asked to catch in case of emergency.

Outlook: It is hard to really determine the favorite in such a tournament as this Olympics, but Japan must be regarded as one of them. Outside of a lack of MLB stars like Shohei Ohtani and Yu Darvish, Japan has basically their best roster possible and one can easily imagine them having roughly this roster (with the addition of some MLB players) next WBC. In addition, they’ll have the home crowd behind them (although it will be smaller than they no doubt hoped, given COVID protocols). At the very least, Japan should medal, and they need to be considered one of the favorites to win gold.

Check back at the Baseball Continuum as we near the 2020/21 Olympics for more previews of the teams that will be competing in Tokyo.

2020/2021 Tokyo Olympics Baseball Preview: Opening Ceremony

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We are just weeks away from baseball’s return to the Olympic Games, at the COVID-delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics (now 2021, but they already had printed the t-shirts). Baseball, of course, was kicked out of the Olympic program after the 2008 games, partly because MLB won’t let its stars play but also because the IOC is a European-dominated institution that probably doesn’t know a fastball from a change-up.

However, now it has returned thanks to changes in how Olympic sports can be chosen, where hosts can decide to add sports that are popular in their country. So, of course, baseball (and softball) have returned to the Olympics for 2020/21. They will be gone again in 2024 in Paris, but then are likely to return in Los Angeles in 2028. After that? Apparently Brisbane is the current front-runner for the 2032 games. Baseball isn’t exactly popular in Australia but it isn’t totally unknown either, so who knows?

Anyway, this year’s baseball tournament has a bit of an odd look to it since it has six teams, not the eight you’d usually expect. This apparently is the result of efforts by the IOC to limit the number of athletes taking part in the games as a cost-cutting move. The six teams that have qualified are (in order of the time they qualified):

  • Japan
  • Israel
  • Mexico
  • South Korea
  • The USA
  • Dominican Republic

They’ll be set up in two groups: Japan, Mexico, and the Dominican in one, and Israel, South Korea, and Team USA in the other. Each team will have two games in their group. There is then a double-elimination tournament until finally the medal games happen. The whole deal is pretty complicated so I just suggest you look at this PDF to get an idea of how this modified double-elimination works. Basically the major incentive for winning the group is that you have a chance of jumping straight to the quarterfinals, while the reason you really want to avoid being in third in the bracket is that you’ll have to play against the other third-place team in an elimination game before entering the double-elimination. You can see more of the schedule here.

Most games will take place not in Tokyo proper, but rather in Yokohama at Yokohama Stadium, home of the Yokohama Bay Stars. It seats over 34,000 people, although due to COVID-19 restrictions as of now it is believed that it will only have about 10,000 for the games. In addition to Yokohama, one game (the opener between Japan and the Dominican) will take place at Fukushima Azuma Stadium in Fukushima. This is meant as a primarily symbolic gesture towards that region, which bore the worst of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami as well as the resulting nuclear crisis. While Azuma Stadium doesn’t have a permanent NPB team, it is still a large, world-class stadium holding around 30,000 fans during normal times (although, again, COVID restrictions will likely keep it to 10K).

Each of the coming team previews will be formatted in a way similar to some of my previous World Baseball Classic coverage. Here’s a bit of a key:

About the Country: Self-explanatory.

Baseball History: Self-explanatory.

Olympic History: A look at the country’s history at the Olympics, both in baseball and other sports.

Road to Tokyo: How the team qualified.

Notable Names: The Olympic baseball tournament doesn’t have Major Leaguers, but it still will have notable names, such as former big leaguers who have since gone to play overseas or found themselves in the minors or looking for a job. They’ll be showcased here.

Ones to Watch: The Olympics are also filled with prospects and overseas players that we may one day see in the big leagues. This is where they’ll feature.

Outlook: Self-explanatory.

So, stick around in the coming days as I begin the previews for this year’s Olympic Baseball tournament.

Neat Site: Digital Ballparks

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Today’s neat site to check out is Digital Ballparks. It’s a site filled with slideshows of images of baseball stadiums past and present from around the country and even in some cases the world. It isn’t just limited to the pros, either: the Pastores (who run the site) also have plenty of amateur and semi-pro fields, as well as ballparks that once hosted professional baseball decades ago. In some cases where ballfields no longer have their traditional form (for example, abandoned fields or fields that may have been converted to another sport), they’ll even sometimes include Photoshop work to give an idea of what it may have looked like back in the day.

While it looks like they haven’t updated the site yet for the 2021 season, it remains a fascinating way to spend time for anyone interested in baseball stadiums.

Check it out.

Famous for Something Else: Charlie Powell, the minor-leaguer with 83 NFL games and a fight against Ali

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Today’s “Famous for Something Else” is one who I honestly am surprised I hadn’t heard of until recently: Charlie Powell. After all, I doubt that there were any other former minor leaguers who had the honor of getting knocked out by Muhammad Ali. And even if there were (and if there were I will find out), I doubt any of them also played several seasons in the NFL.

Charlie (sometimes spelled Charley) Powell, however, did all of these things. Born in Dallas in 1932, he would grow up in San Diego. His was in an athletic family, and his brother Art would go on to be one of the lead receivers in the American Football League of the 1960s. According to the Los Angeles Times, Charlie’s time at San Diego High School was to that point perhaps the most decorated student-athlete career in the history of the city, as he lettered 12 times in four different sports (football, baseball, basketball, and track). The Harlem Globetrotters and major college football programs wanted to him to join up, but instead he decided to go into professional baseball.

It was a season that, as the Times obituary put it, left him “realizing his sporting riches would be elsewhere.” Looking at the admittedly bare-bones stats of that lone short season in Stockton that Baseball Reference has, it isn’t hard to see why:

Register Batting
Year Age AgeDif Tm Lg Lev Aff G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB
1952 20 -2.6 Stockton CALL C SLB 10   30   5 0 0 0           .167   .167   5          
All Levels (1 Season)       10 30 30   5 0 0 0           .167   .167   5          
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 6/24/2021.

And so, Powell instead went into football, joining the 49ers in time for the 1952 season at the age of 20, making him the youngest NFL player at that time. In 1953, he had his first boxing match, drawing with a fighter named Fred Taylor in Hollywood.

As evidenced by the fact he’s the subject of an installment of this series, it should be obvious he had far more luck on the gridiron and in the ring than he ever did on the diamond. Although his statistics from his time in the NFL are a bit hazy due to some less-than-stellar record-keeping during that era as well as the fact that some statistics (such as sacks) weren’t even officially recognized yet, anecdotally it is said that Powell once sacked Bobby Layne (himself someone you may see in a future installment of this series) ten times in one game. To put that into perspective, the most sacks in a single game from an era where NFL record-keeping existed well enough where we can be sure is seven.

Here are the NFL statistics for Powell that we do know:

Defense & Fumbles Table
          Game Game Def Def Def Def Fumb Fumb Fumb Fumb  
Year Age Tm Pos No. G GS Int Yds TD Lng Fmb FR Yds TD Sfty
1952 20 SFO RDE 87 7 7                 1
1953 21 SFO LDE 87 12 10         1 1 0 0  
1955 23 SFO RDE 87 12 7 0 7 0 7 0 1 0 0  
1956 24 SFO RDE 87 12 11                  
1957 25 SFO RLB 87 12 8         0 1 3 0  
1960 28 OAK RDE 87 14 14                  
1961 29 OAK RDE 87 14 14                  
Care Care       83 71 0 7 0 7 1 3 3 0 1
5 yr 5 yr SFO     55 43 0 7 0 7 1 3 3 0 1
2 yr 2 yr OAK     28 28                  
Provided by Pro-Football-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 6/24/2021.

Perhaps Charlie Powell’s most interesting athletic career, however, came in the ring. In 39 career bouts, Powell went 25-11-3, with 17 of his victories coming by knockout.

He was, according to my research, a legitimate heavyweight fighter, not some sideshow coasting on his achievement in football. According to his obituary, he once was rated the fourth-best in the world by The Ring magazine. His brother Art and a promoter named Don Chagrin both say that he could have been even more successful if he had had better management and had focused entirely on boxing. In fact, he himself admitted it later in life.

Still, he had some great success. In 1959, he defeated the Cuban Nino Valdes, who at the time looked like a possible challenger to then-champion Floyd Patterson. A few years later, he would step into the ring against a young hotshot with a big mouth but the talent to back it up, a man then called Cassius Clay but later known as Muhammad Ali.

The Jan. 24, 1963 match-up in Pittsburgh was over quick. Clay declared before the fight that he’d beat Powell in three rounds, and, of course, he did just that, winning by KO. According to a newspaper account from the time, Clay declared himself the “greatest” and then went to badmouthing future opponents, including then-champion Sonny Liston, who he said he hoped to unseat by the next November and who he categorized as being neither as fast or as rough as Powell, who he complimented in his own Ali-like way:

“Powell was rough. They couldn’t call him a push-over. I was concentrating on three. The man was strong for two. He’s the roughest fighter I’ve met yet for three rounds.”

That wouldn’t be the end of Charlie Powell’s boxing career, however, as he would fight six more times after that, perhaps most notably a six-round loss against Floyd Patterson in 1964 at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in Puerto Rico. Hiram Bithorn, of course, is most notably used for the sport that Powell began his professional sports career in: baseball.

Powell died on Sept. 1, 2014 after a years-long battle with dementia. He was 82. Although his brother believed that his dementia was the result of his years on the gridiron and in the ring, he had never joined any of the major lawsuits against the NFL.

Neat site to check out: “Threads of Our Game”

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Some of you may be familiar with the Dressed to the Nines uniform database run by the Hall of Fame. On it, you can look up what each team wore uniform-wise from 1900 to today.

But what if you wanted to know what teams looked like before 1900? Enter Threads of Our Game, a website run by SABR member Craig Brown that focuses on the first few decades of baseball. To make up for the fact that photography of those days was not as common and essentially never in color, the site uses research of newspaper accounts, contemporary drawings, and other sources to get an idea of what the uniforms of the era looked like.

What’s more, the site doesn’t just have the Major Leagues. In fact, it doesn’t just stop at professional teams in general. They also have semi-pro and amateur teams of the era. No team, seemingly, is too small for inclusion. Nor is no team too vile: among the teams with a uniform on digital display is that of the 1874 baseball team run by the Klu Klux Klan chapter of Oneida, N.Y. Somewhat surprisingly, the uniforms does not contain any white.

Among the interesting highlights of the page are polka-dotted ballcaps, the first ballcap with a graphic on it (an Oriole wing), the year that some teams had a different-colored uniform for each position on the field, and also some of examples of 19th-century teams from the proto-Negro Leagues.

Check it out.

With Negro Leagues now officially major, it’s time for Rochester to honor its major leaguers

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Late last year, Major League Baseball made it official: the Negro Leagues between 1920 and 1948 were and always have been major league level. Their exclusion from records before now had been the result of the very same racism that had forced their existence in the first place. The issue of incomplete statistics and other forms of record-keeping (for example, which games were official league games and which were one of the countless exhibitions that Negro League teams held) have been largely (although not completely) corrected through an extreme amount of research and fact-finding. MLB and most major baseball historians agree: there is no major reason to continue to exclude the Negro Leagues and the statistics of their players from the official history books of MLB.

For many baseball fans in the internet age, though, it can be argued that nothing is official until Baseball Reference says it is. Although not the official decision-maker of what baseball statistics are and are not valid, it might as well be, so when the folks there announced that the Negro League statistics would be integrated (for lack of a better word) with the site’s pre-existing statistics, it was a big deal.

Which brings me to my hometown of Rochester, N.Y. A good place to grow up depending on where you live in the area. Doesn’t deserve the reputation it has. For the purposes of this blog, what’s important though is that Rochester has one of the longest and most successful baseball histories in the country, outstripping even many major league cities. However, due to size and the proximity to other large cities it hadn’t had a Major League Baseball team since 1890’s American Association Broncos. The city had gone the entire 20th century without a MLB team.

Until now. Because, you see, in the waning days of the Negro Leagues, a member of the Negro National League played in Rochester. The New York Black Yankees were, of course, originally based in the New York City area. Founded in the early 30s and joining the NNL in 1936, they played in Paterson, N.J. or on Randalls Island when they weren’t barnstorming or playing away games. By 1948, with integration underway and finances taking a downward turn for many Negro League teams (especially in the New York City area), the Black Yankees headed upstate to Rochester, where they played the last year of their existence in Red Wing Stadium.

With MLB’s recent recognition of the Negro Leagues as major leagues, those 1948 New York Black Yankees are Rochester’s most recent Major League Baseball team. And it is time that Rochester also recognize them as such.

They were, admittedly, not very successful on the field, finishing 9-35 and coming in dead last in that year’s Negro National League standings. However, they still had some players who were considered good enough to represent the east in the Negro Leagues’ famed East-West All-Star Game. As the best players of Rochester’s last major league team, they deserve spots of honor at Frontier Field, perhaps on its Wall of Fame.

Those players are:

  • George Crowe, who hit .345 and led the team in HR and RBI. After integration, he would go on to spend time with three different franchises, playing over 700 games before finishing as a career .270 hitter. He was named to the 1958 All-Star Game when he was with the Cincinnati Reds. For a time, he held the MLB record for career pinch-hit home runs.
  • Robert Griffith was a two-way player. In his younger days, he’d often found himself in the top 10 of the pitching leaderboard for the NNL, but by 1948. he was 35-years-old and his best days were behind him. He was still the Black Yankees’ best pitcher, though, finishing with a 3-1 record and 4.33 ERA while throwing the team’s only shutout on the year. At the plate, he was less successful, although he still had a HR in his limited action.
  • Finally, there was Marvin Barker, an infielder who was also the team’s manager who occasionally would also fill in on the pitcher’s mound. Like Griffith, Barker’s best days were behind him, although he still hit a respectable .293 (third-best on the team) and had an OPS of .734 (second only to Crowe).

This coming Saturday, the Red Wings will hold their annual Negro Leagues tribute. They will be wearing the uniforms of the Rochester American Giants, a team that played in the minor leagues of the Negro Leagues. Perhaps, though, they should be playing in the uniforms of the 1948 Black Yankees. And perhaps, in years ahead, the best players of Rochester’s last Major League Baseball team can have a place of honor somewhere in the stadium.

Welcome to MLB’s freak-show season! Now buckle up.

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Against all odds and perhaps much common sense, the Major League Baseball season starts tonight. There have been odd MLB seasons before, but this one will take the cake.

After all, while there have been times where it wasn’t clear in spring training where a team would be playing, never in modern times has a team been homeless on opening day, as the Toronto Blue Jays (the “RefuJays”) are now. Plans to play in Pittsburgh went bust. The next plan, in Baltimore, is still in flux and would have to pass inspection from local and state authorities.

If it doesn’t, it is likely that that the Blue Jays are playing in a AAA stadium Buffalo. Sahlen Field in Buffalo is likely the most MLB-ready minor league stadium, certainly on the East Coast. It was built as an effort to lure an expansion team in the late 80s and early 90s. However, that team never came, so the facilities have never been upgraded to modern MLB standards. Modifications would have to be made.

If that doesn’t work… who knows? Perhaps they’ll go to Dunedin in COVID-infested Florida. Or maybe, in an unthinkable situation, they’ll have to be a travel team, playing all games on the road. While there have been teams like the Road Warriors and Samurai Bears in independent leagues, there hasn’t been a true travel team in MLB since the 1899 Cleveland Spiders became a road team later in the season simply because they sucked so much and drew flies (which, of course, makes it hard for a spider to eat).

Even putting aside the Jays, though, this is still going to be a strange season. After all, it turns out that we still might see enlarged playoffs. Yes, we are just hours from starting and we don’t even know how the playoffs will work yet.

And then, well, there’s everything else.

So, in closing, the 2020 MLB season is about to finally beginning. It’s going to be freaky. Buckle up.

 

There’s no way this freak-show works, but might as well enjoy it

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Baseball is back, with lots of special rules for the age of pandemic. A whole manual of them, in fact.

Alas, there’s no way it is going to work, if it even starts at all. Based on recent trends with the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in the Southern and Southwestern parts of the United States, it seems entirely likely that the already-delayed 2020 season will be delayed again or just outright cancelled.

Just look at the numbers and where things are headed. Trends in Houston are said to be pointing towards numbers that could be among the worst in the world. Twenty-six states, according to Johns Hopkins, have seen a rise in cases since last week, and 11 of those states have Major League Baseball teams. One open-source projection site that utilizes machine learning in making predictions estimates that by July 24 (which will be the opening day for most teams) over 1.9 million Americans could have active infections at that time. In places like Florida and Georgia, that site estimates that around 1% of the population could be actively infected by the coronavirus. While that doesn’t seem that big, keep in mind that even with the super stripped-down operations that MLB will have in place there will still presumably be more than 100 people in a ballpark at any given time, and so statistically with those rates of infection at least one of them could be expected to have the virus.

Oh, and it’s still not clear if the Blue Jays will even be allowed to play in Canada.

And, of course, even if they do play, it’s going to be, to put it mildly, a freak-show. There will be few if any fans. The (stupid) man-on-second-to-start-extras rule will be around. The NL will have a DH. Games will only be played in-division and in the cross-league equivalent. And, of course, there will be all the little things in place to keep human contact to a minimum, like not having players being allowed to bring other players their sunglasses or gloves at the end of an inning.

But, hey, it’ll be baseball. So if we do get it, enjoy it… because who the hell knows what’s going to happen once the CBA finishes up.

 

On this whole mess, and why it makes expansion inevitable

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It has not been a good year for Major League Baseball. To be fair, it has not been a good year for human civilization in general, but even before the coronavirus crisis and the fallout from the George Floyd incident, baseball was having a rough year. Now it seems trivial, but earlier this year the biggest issue facing baseball was arguably that they’d let a team that was running the biggest sign-stealing operation in decades off with a relative slap on the wrist.

Remember that? Those were, amazingly, now the good old days. Now? Well, because of the usual toxic mix that comes with billionaires and millionaires fighting over money, there’s a chance that no season will take place, or will be replaced by some sort of 48-game glorified miniseason.

(An aside: Why is it that inevitably the players get blamed? The owners have way more money and usually are far more ruthless and cruel in these negotiations than the players.)

While we cannot guess whether a 48-game season would be considered a “better than nothing” hunger-crop meal enough to satisfy the public, a full-on cancellation would be the biggest blow to baseball’s intangible stature since at least the 1994 strike and possibly even the 1919 Black Sox scandal. Given that baseball’s current intangible stature in much of the country outside of the die-hard fans can best be described as “Present-day episodes of The Simpsons where plenty of people still watch and even more are glad they are on but not as many people tune in unless if something big or unusual happens,” that would be… bad.

Oh, and unlike those previous apocalypses (apocalypsii?), there is no Babe Ruth, Cal Ripken or 1998 HR race walking through that door to save the day.

Now, there is an argument still to be made that it is not as bleak as it looks. As labor lawyer and Baseball Prospectus contributor Eugene Freedman notes on his Twitter feed, labor negotiations are an entirely different beast from the negotiations (player contracts, trades, etc.) that sportswriters have to usually cover, and so the framing often is prone to hyperbolic statements and leaked comments that make it seem far more hopeless than it actually is. There is some truth to this: I can vaguely remember 2002, where it looked like a work-stoppage was all-but-guaranteed. Similar to now, there were comments about how poorly baseball would look by stopping play in a national crisis (in that case the early years of the War on Terror), and yet it seemed both sides seemed headed towards a cliff.  Yet, at the last minute, a deal was struck, peace was ensured, and the games went on. It is entirely possible such an occurrence will repeat in 2020.

Except, of course, there is another lingering issue: the current collective bargaining agreement expires after 2021, so even if everything comes out of this current crisis hunky-dory, we get to do this all over again at the end of next season.

So, what does this all mean? It means, oddly enough, that we’re going to see more Major League Baseball, because it makes expansion inevitable. It may be in a previous MLB city like Montreal, or a new one like Portland or Charlotte. It could even be in a new country entirely like Monterrey, Mexico. Regardless of where the new teams go or what form the divisions move to as a result of it, though, it will happen. Here’s why:

  1. Immediate money. Of course! History has shown in the past that one of the easiest ways for baseball owners to get some quick cash is to expand. It’s also one of the quickest way for the union to make money, as more teams means more roster spots and thus more union members. It’s not a new phenomena. The 1993 expansion that brought in the Marlins and Rockies was partly a way for the owners to raise money to pay collusion debt. Although the 1997 expansion wasn’t directly a result of trying to recoup money from the ’94 strike and the after-effects (the expansion committee had been formed before the ’94 season even began), it certainly didn’t hurt. Even most of the earlier expansions had roots that weren’t so much benevolence as business interest: the first expansions that brought in teams like the Angels, Senators (now Rangers), Mets and Colt .45s (now Astros) were done as a way to head-off threats to create a third major league.
  2. Minor Leagues. The other big pre-coronavirus crisis that baseball was facing was the plan to contract the minor leagues. The coronavirus essentially knocked out the political and financial leverage that MiLB had to effectively fight it, and it is now all-but-inevitable. Major League Baseball expansion, however, would also mean minor league expansion, which MLB could use as a public relations olive-branch to ensure that some of the places that lose their MiLB teams will only be without affiliated baseball for a few years.
  3. Increased attendance/revenue. More teams means more games which means more fans means more revenue. Duh. Given that MLB will definitely see a drop in attendance in the coming years both because of the uncertainty of when/if a coronavirus vaccine will be available as well as disgust from this whole mess, the increase that would come from expansion would be in the owners and players interest.
  4. Public relations in general. Oh, there was less baseball? Now there’s more baseball, and in more cities that MLB had previously.

Now, perhaps everything ends up alright. Even then, though, the fact is that MLB has lost a lot of revenue this year, and the owners will want to make it all up.

In other words: expansion is coming. Expect it.