Everyone knows I'm not a Boston resident!
From the Onion today: "Red Sox Attempt To Break Fabled 'Curse Of Relief Pitcher Curtis Leskanic'"
"Ending the curse against the Rockies will just make it that much sweeter," said Boston resident Terry McMahon. "Not even Curtis Leskanic can stop this team!"
In order of who I want to win the most:
This means in the Division Series I'm rooting for the Red Sox, Indians, Phillies and Cubs. Playoff baseball!
Thanks to Aaron Block for resending it. The whole thing is astute and well-reasoned, but here's my favorite part:
It started, Mr. Clemens, when you left the Sox in 1996. You were in a steady decline and seemed on the cusp of retirement. Then you signed with the Blue Jays and put up two Cy Young campaigns in a row, completely owning the league. Putz.And here you go again. After a few good-not-great years with the Yankees, you actually did retire. ... And then suddenly unretired and re-emerged as a much better pitcher. Wow! A dominating half-season, out of nowhere, after everyone counted you out. Like we haven't seen that one before, "Rocket." Anyway, you're still fat.
Johnny Damon, 5/1/05:
"There's no way I can go play for the Yankees, but I know they are going to come after me hard," Damon said. "It's definitely not the most important thing to go out there for the top dollar, which the Yankees are going to offer me. It's not what I need."
"I respect the players and I respect the organization, but we've had so much happen between us. I don't think I could do it," Rivera told The Times.Rivera said the rivalry between the two teams is too fierce for him to think about switching sides.
"There's too much between the teams," Rivera told The Times. "I like some of their players. They're my friends. I just don't think it would be possible."
Whenever the Red Sox are out of it, I always enjoy picking favorites for each MLB playoff series, just for fun. This year I realized I'd actually be happy with anyone winning the World Series, with one exception you might be able to guess. Nonetheless, here are my prepostseason rankings:
This means I'm rooting for Detroit over the Yankees (really), Oakland over Minnesota, the Mets over LA, and San Diego over St. Louis. Ortiz for MVP!
Headline #1, from ... a while back:
Red Sox, Snow agree to one-year, $2 million deal
But no worries, we had another signing today:
Red Sox, Graffanino agree to one-year, $2.05M deal
See, I thought we already had a second baseman (Loretta) when we need a shortstop and center fielder.
Fortunately, we've got another signing down the pike:
Red Sox Get More Relief Help, Sign Julian Tavarez
"I have a theory that you never give up on superstars," Lucchino said.
Back to the Bernanke/baseball article:
[Bernanke] also mentioned that the Washington Nationals, his new favorite team, had lost 13 one-run games in a row. The odds of that happening, Bernanke wrote, were roughly 8,000 to 1.
I know what you're thinking: no, the easiest probability problem is the coin flip. Fortunately, that's exactly what we have. I first read the quote above as the Nationals having lost 13 consecutive games by one run each time, but if a streak that long and that heartbreaking had happened, I would know about it. It didn't happen. What Bernanke notes, I assume, is that in the subset of Nationals games that were decided by one run, at one point they lost 13 of them in a row. So what are the odds of that?
There are reasons for a team losing a bunch of one-run games that extend beyond mere chance - like a mediocre bullpen, or a team of rookies choking when it counts - but I figured I'd start by looking at your typical coin flip. In other words, what are the odds that a coin would turn up heads 13 times in a row? The answer is 2^13, which can be easily calculated by remembering 2^10 is 1024 (it's a kilo in computer terms, and the first two digits in the result are the same as the exponent, and ten's not a complicated number). So we continue:
2^11 = 2048
2^12 = 4096
2^13 = 8192
If you didn't spend your childhood memorizing these numbers, I can forgive you, but there's your "roughly 8000 to 1." So unfortunately Ben Bernanke's baseball probability-making is not as exciting as his proposed changes to ERA. He's right, I guess, about the chances of the Nationals losing 13 one-run games in a row, but those are the same odds of the Red Sox winning 13 games in a row, the Yankees losing 13 two-run games in a row, heads coming up 13 times in a row or a judge making the same ruling off the same precedent 13 times in a row. It's just multiplying by two a lot.
Next week: Imagine the infinite decimal 0.999999.... Is it equal to 1 or not?
Unlike Patrick Fitzgerald, I don't have just one trick up my sleeve: I've got yet another baseball-related compliment for a prominent Republican today. The New York Times shows that our next Fed chairman has his values in the right place:
The man nominated to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve knows of one policy he would like to change. Earned run average, he says, needs to be calculated in a way that is fairer to pitchers who leave runners on base.
...
[Ben] Bernanke, a Southerner by birth who stands well shy of 6 feet, became a Red Sox fan in the mid-1970's while he was a student at Harvard. After moving to Princeton as a professor, he kept his allegiance to the Red Sox. He also became fascinated by the way that statistics can capture the game or distort it, much as they can for the economy.
...
Pitchers unlucky enough to be followed by ineffective relievers, as the Yankees' Randy Johnson was in 2005, have unfairly high E.R.A.'s. Pitchers who are bailed out by their bullpen, as Roy Oswalt of the Astros often was this season, end up with artificially low E.R.A.'s.A better system would divide blame, depending on the base the runners were on when a pitcher departed and the number of outs, Bernanke argued.
From my earlier posting (last April!):
Fans of the Michael Lewis baseball book "Moneyball" will know that taking a hard look at statistics can offer insights that the human eye cannot. According to Lewis and his subject, Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, baseball teams with limited payrolls can compete - and win - against overfunded franchises like the Yankees and Red Sox, if they have the creativity and determination to find inefficiencies in the game. On-base percentage, formerly a comparatively unheralded statistic, turned out to be just that kind of ineffiency. So the A's loaded up on undervalued players with major flaws but who walked a ton, and sure enough, Oakland was able to end up near the top of the league in runs scored - and in wins. That's Moneyball.Here's what I've been wondering: could any of the lessons of Moneyball apply to the world of politics?
Could a secret of Republican electoral success be ... baseball? Actually, it's Moneyball, Michael Lewis' best-seller about how Oakland A's manager Billy Beane built a top team by picking players on the basis of their stats, not their reputations. Republican National Committee chairman and Baltimore Orioles fan Ken Mehlman is applying Moneyball's stats-centric strategy to his own game. "Politics, like baseball, for years was less effective than it could be because you didn't try to quantify things," he told TIME. Mehlman managed Bush-Cheney '04, which set "metrics" for making phone calls and knocking on doors, and tracked ads on spreadsheets. He obsesses over detailed data like turnout in Florida among newly registered Republicans who call themselves fiscal conservatives (91.2% last year), all new G.O.P.ers (75.7%) and overall (65.3%)--numbers that he says show the power of tax cuts. Mehlman sets goals for volunteer recruiting by state, county and precinct, and uses stats to pick his team: "The performance-based approach says that whoever produces the best results is the person you put in charge." One problem: figures don't always reflect rapid change or account for the element of surprise. But Mehlman is a believer. He's already crunching numbers for the next big game: the 2006 midterm elections.
I like Tony Graffanino. Don't start.
The Red Sox and Yankees tied for the AL East championship this year with identical 95-67 records, and don't let anyone tell you different. (Incidentally, the Angels had the same record too.)
Also, thank goodness, the Red Sox are playing a team that nearly blew a 15-game division lead, and the Yankees are playing a team who are 14-2 in their past 16 games.
Personally, I'm just thrilled that we're not playing the A's, Angels, Yankees or Indians in the first round; believe it or not those are the only four teams we've ever played in the playoffs. Seriously - the League Championship Series didn't start until 1969, and this is the list of Boston playoff opponents (in the AL) since:
1948: Cleveland (one-game playoff)
1975: Oakland
1978: New York (one-game playoff)
1986: California (i.e. the Angels)
1988: Oakland
1990: Oakland
1995: Cleveland
1998: Cleveland
1999: Cleveland, New York
2003: Oakland, New York
2004: Anaheim (i.e. the Angels), New York
2005: Chicago, ???
And since the AL playoff breakdowns are Red Sox-White Sox and Yankees-Angels, here's hoping we face Los Angeles in the ALCS, to make three playoff series against the Angels, with the Angels claiming to be from a different place - but actually being from the same place - each time.
All in all, things are looking good.
I don't care that this post has no content. I don't care that my throat is shot. I don't care that I won't do jack shit for my classes tomorrow, and even if called on I won't have a voice.
That was so worth it. Sports bars are awesome.
"Actually, I've found that falling behind the Yankees doesn't necessarily mean anything."
The Red Sox lost again today, putting them three games up on the Yankees with a little under a month of baseball and three more Sox-Yankees games to go. As we've been telling each other all year, though, no matter what happens, we won last year. We won last year. We can die in peace.
Hence the title of Bill Simmons' upcoming book, Now I Can Die in Peace : How ESPN's Sports Guy Found Salvation, with a Little Help from Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank, and the 2004 Red Sox. Astute cultural observers will know Bill Simmons already, partially through his frequent and trenchant observations of the sports world and life in general, but chiefly through the one time I mentioned him on my blog. (Really, I checked, it was only once.) Since I seem not to have given him proper credit, real quick, Bill Simmons realized early on that while we have a million sports columns written about being an athlete, we didn't have any about being a fan. Plus, he's fascinating and insightful; his recent column on the WNBA sets a standard for honest sports commentary.
But the title of his book reminds me of the weird connection between the Red Sox, secular northeasterners and religion. I've already discussed how people in the northeast tend not to think of religion as a go-out-and-convert-your-neighbors kind of thing. Honestly, though, I think group faith isn't absent from New England; it's just been transferred. When the Sox finally won in 2004, I remember thinking the perfect way to describe the experience was using religious terms: the past 86 seasons, specifically the playoffs in 1946, 1967, 1975, 1978, 1986, both series in 1999, and both series in 2003, had been too much of a coincidence, too many times, to pretend any more that there's not a higher power controlling baseball. So we already knew that God exists, and in 2004 we learned that he loves us too. That's what we were waiting for.
So, as crackpot as that sounds, I don't think it's that far off. Again, Now I Can Die in Peace : How ESPN's Sports Guy Found Salvation, with a Little Help from Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank, and the 2004 Red Sox. What do we have here? A reference to salvation, a reference to shoving off this mortal coil with inner peace, and a one-word reference to a two-word movie whose other word is "redemption." And you're telling me this isn't religious? I'm not going to imply that Johnny Damon is actually Jesus here (remember, it was Schilling who fell in the playoffs, only to rise again), but I hope this helps clarify for the jerks out there (i.e. non-New Englanders) why we're so nuts about the Red Sox. Besides the fact that we're still three games up.
Also, song of the day is "Soulful Strut." No separate column needed.
If not agree with him. From Peter Gammons' Hall of Fame column:
The players know that their Hall of Fame fraternity, or family, is unique. One cannot buy one's way in, like the New York Yacht Club. One cannot be born into it. One cannot politic in, like the Council of Foreign Affairs. One can only gain acceptance by performance, and then it is far more exclusive -- as well as traditional -- than the Hall of Fames in other sports."Players are awed by this, and they respect everything about it," says Dennis Eckersley. Reggie Jackson, who has been known to be Reggie, is as humble as Jack Cressend. "I'm in a club with Willie Mays. I'm just fortunate, period," says Jackson. "There is a pervasive spirit here that the game is greater than any of us, and when you're around Willie and Sandy Koufax and Stan Musial, we are always around men who are far greater than I am."
Note: the A's are 88-0 over their last fifty games. I'm with Moneyball, and Joe Morgan's still an idiot. I'm just starting to understand how he got that mindset. Are any other HoFers broadcasting these days?
(Photo: Third-party friends. Do you have any friends who are too cool to read your blog?)
As you may have heard, the Sox just came up with the best out-of-the-box baseball idea this year: make Curt Schilling their new closer. Keith Foulke has been mediocre at best at closer all year, all five Sox starters have shown that they can have great performances, and Schilling may still not be 100% rehabbed for a while yet. So while Schilling hasn't been a closer since the Democrats ran Congress, the philosophy is that he's such a good pitcher and such a badass that if anyone can handle a little closing, it's Curt Schilling. Plus, it's a great story: returning ace discovers that team's current starting pitching is so good that he volunteers for opening in the highest-pressure role in baseball? Awesome.
But all is not well for this decision in Red Sox Nation. Good-looking centerfielder Johnny Damon said last night to reporters both that Mike Timlin would be the best closer instead of Foulke and that Schilling wouldn't be the best. I hear (i.e. 12eight) that Timlin's ERA is awesome this year but non-ERA stats are not, but either way, Damon leads me to a pretty good question: why does Schilling have to close? What if we have Timlin close (or at least give him the chance) and put Schilling in regular relief? Heaven knows we could stand to have two successful relievers, and heaven also knows that Schilling's had pretty much the apex of Red Sox glory. Why not give Timlin the chance?
All right, now this is funny. You guys all know I'm no Yankees fan, but I love politics and baseball and making fun of those I oppose in each. Look:
Karl Ravech: So what do you attribute to Randy Johnson's ballooning ERA?Harold Reynolds: Oh, the lack of support from the spectators, definitely.
Karl Ravech: Really... you don't think there's a problem with his delivery?
Harold Reynolds: Now you're trying to divert the issue. This isn't about mechanics. When Yankees fans fail to cheer loudly enough, the opponents start to feel like they can win. That's what this is about.
Karl Ravech: But you don't think his age might be a factor?
Harold Reynolds: Shut up, Karl. Out of respect for the men who go out there on the field every day, just shut the hell up. I'm cutting your mike. Just shut up.
A friend of mine recently told me she's thinking of making her move on a young man who happens to be a transplanted Boston native. Like any good New Englander, I informed/reminded her that young ladies wearing Red Sox hats are 20% hotter, perhaps even more so if they know Tim Wakefield's signature pitch, which player best personifies "clutch," and who won the 2003 batting title. She seems to be on board, so if the guy continues to be worth it I think she'll be all set.
That's what I thought of when I heard about a new statistic: chicks who like the Red Sox are hot. I know it's unfair and vaguely sexist for me to draw that conclusion when a young lady from Connecticut comes up with a simple and effective pitching stat called Bases per Batter (BpB). On the flipside though, it's rare to find chicks who are into baseball statistics, and rarer still when someone of either gender creates an interesting new one. As 12eight suggests, new stats come up all the time, but useful new stats are pretty rare.
In any case, BpB is pretty easy to understand: bases given up, divided by number of batters, and it comes out as a three-digit decimal that looks like batting average or OBP. (Here's a good post that uses some real examples.) I get the impression this is a recent formulation, i.e. it'll need a lot more fleshing out to see if it's a reliable indicator of anything. Still, Red Sox-loving ladies, hot new statistics, the Sox in first place and beautiful summer days. How lucky can you get?
Can somebody look at this box score and tell me why David Wells got the win Monday night? (P.S. Not that I'm complaining.)
As part of my continuing quest to bring you the best examples of humanity triumphing over disaffection in journalism, here's a column by a Dodgers reporter on ace closer Eric Gagne's season-ending injury:
After Eric Gagne's first appearance in late March, in the quiet of the Vero Beach clubhouse, I approached him with the intention of writing a column.He was altering his mechanics to compensate for an injured knee. He should stop pitching immediately or risk damaging his arm.
I had seen it a dozen times before. It was Baseball 101. The story was clear.
But Gagne talked me out of it.
He talked the Dodger organization out of it.
"I know my body, my arm is fine, my mechanics are the same, I would never do anything to hurt myself, it was a normal first day," he said at the time.
Today, far too late to make a difference, the Dodgers finally know different.
So it's an interesting question: should a reporter speculate about a player's on-field recklessness? I say yes: if a guy can stay out until 7am and still throw a shutout the next day, that's his own business, but if he's playing the wrong way (in this case, playing at all), the reporters are just interested in team play and whether they're going to do well. So, I say it's fair game. But the article, to me, raises an even more interesting question: what other important column ideas are getting dropped? What topics have reporters dropped after pressure from players or team management? And what other injuries did reporters see coming?
The Boston Herald reports today that Theo's going to shake things up with the Red Sox. Sure, we've all had our laughs at the Yankees' recent foibles, most recently Joe Torre's "vote of confidence" from George Steinbrenner (which probably means he'll be fired). But while the Sox are still within striking distance of the Orioles, they haven't exactly torn up the AL East either.
So get out your tea leaves. Here are Epstein's quotes:
This is difficult to fix, to be honest with you... So many people are performing below our expectations and below our projections that this isn't easy to fix. If this is the best that this pitching staff can pitch, then I really miscalculated and it's time for changes.This is my fault. The guys have to play better or we've got to make some changes. I think we've allowed something like (77) runs in our last 10 losses. We're out of games. It's time for changes. Soon.
...
We take [trades] very, very seriously... But what we have right now isn't working. It's clear. It's my fault and we have to fix it. The status quo is not really acceptable.
...
[Schilling]'s making some progress, but we can't count on him as a savior... If he comes back and has a dominating second half, great. But we can't count on that. He can't fix everything.
...
I think we're reluctant to give up on some guys who've performed for us and who have a track record... But it reaches a point where what you have isn't working and you've got to make some changes. It's a pain tolerance.
I'll tell you, though, I keep looking at "give up on some guys who've performed for us and who have a track record" and I think Tim Wakefield. He's 38 and he's got an ERA of 5.13. Releasing Wakefield would be worse than Dumbledore dying in Half-Blood Prince, but as we learned in Moneyball, sentimentality is one of the big impediments to efficiency. Let's hope getting rid of Wakefield isn't an option, because if it is, we might be forced to consider just how badly we want to win.
Seriously, you gotta respect someone willing to stand up and declare how many intangibles Jeter brings to baseball. Also, don't forget, fist-pumps win you ballgames. I love fake webpages!
To follow up on the previous post, here's a photo you like to see: Terry Francona taking David Wells out in the ninth inning, a return to form for a pitcher who'd been going a lot less than nine innings these days. Great stuff.
Avid Terry fans have known for some time that I can usually convince someone that Yankees shortstop, captain, and intangibles leader Derek Jeter is a shithead in the span of one randomly selected at-bat. Recently, I've taken to noticing that Jeter overreacts to pitches to try to sway the ump's call: if the ball's on the outside corner, Jeter leans forward, as if the ball were so outside he's just about to fall right over. Similarly, if the ball's on the inside corner of the plate, Jeter stumbles back as if the damn thing almost hit him.
Turns out I'm not the only one who feels this way. ESPN's story on the Sox' 7-2 win over the Yankees last night carries this gem:
Derek Jeter is still serving as live target practice.The shortstop was hit by Matt Clement on Saturday, making it three times he's been beaned by Red Sox pitchers this year. Jeter isn't alone, though: the Yankees have been hit by the Sox 32 times since 2004 and 14 times since the start of the American League Championship Series.
Conversely, the Yankees have retaliated on just five occasions since last October.
Jeter doesn't think he's been deliberately thrown at, but refutes the notion that he invites trouble by leaning over the plate.
"I don't dive, I don't lean over the plate. I just get hit a lot," Jeter said. "It's nothing that I'm doing wrong. If I get hit, it's on the pitcher, not me."
The Yankees don't entirely agree.
"Derek puts himself in a position where he can't get out of the way," said Bernie Williams. "He commits himself too much, and he can't get out."
Regardless of who's at fault, Jeter's teammates wonder how many more beanings he can endure before he's seriously injured.
"I worry about his hands. I worry about broken bones," said catcher John Flaherty.
Seriously, though, misleading officials and sulking are intangibles that win you ballgames.
It appears that Marlins ace Josh Beckett is a bit of a powderkeg, according to a report in today's New York Times. When things don't go his way on the mound, he gets angry at himself, others and inanimate objects. Even though the only person he's ever thrown anything at is Marlins president David Samson, organizations like the New York Times still act as if Josh Beckett's behavior is weird, disruptive, or even anything to be ashamed of.
Look, Josh Beckett is a winner. I don't know if everyone's forgetting the 2003 World Series or not, but Josh Beckett has the intangibles that win ballgames. This New York Times report does nothing but show example after example in which Josh Beckett has proven his iron will to win. That's dedication. You've got to bring the killer instinct into every game you play, and if that attitude doesn't simply turn off the second you hand the ball to your manager in disgust, then maybe someone should think twice about leaving baseball equipment all around a baseball field.
So here's the conclusion from the twerps at the New York Times: if Josh Beckett gets rolled, Josh Beckett gets upset. Would that everyone had such grace under big shell.
From today's New York Times on the Mets:
Mike Piazza started this trip by getting an autograph from Rush Limbaugh, his main political influence, then compared the experience to meeting George Washington, Abraham Lincoln or the pope. From that point on, Piazza went 0 for 9 with six strikeouts and hit into a double play.
The AP's reporting that Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who I'm pretty sure is the highest-paid player in sports, is now stating proudly that he goes to two therapists. Now, this is a pretty good story: here's a kid whose dad left the family at age 9, and with no one really to talk to, he turned to baseball. Now he's arguably the best ballplayer on earth, and he's leveraging his fame to make the very, very underrated point that if you're in therapy, it's for something that probably ain't your fault. That's a really classy thing to do: we need more role models who will stand up in public and say that psychological help is effective and that it has nothing to do with who you are as a person. Add that he's willing to take the private jokes that come with being out in front of the issue, and really, what he's doing is sincerely admirable.
That said, he's a Yankee. Here are some things he might be in therapy for:
Thank you McSweeney's:
You're rarer than a five-tool catcher. What? That's not gay slang for anything. I'm talking about my fantasy baseball rotisserie league. No. That's not a gay slang term, either.- - - -
That sure was quite the make-out session. I've seen windows fog up in movies, but never in real life. Goodness! We really went at it, didn't we? I forget the last time I felt so revved up. Want to head inside? You do? Splendid! Oh, wait. Now I remember the last time I felt so turned on: When I was able to snag Mark Prior with a sixth-round draft pick. Yes, I'll take you home.
- - - -
If my heart were made of bases, you'd be Scott Podsednik.
Follow this link here, read the headline, then read comment #13.
(The other comments are pretty funny too.)
So it turns out former Rangers and Mets manager Bobby Valentine is managing in Japan these days, claiming unparalleled wisdom as to the future of the game. Namely, he thinks it's time to move on the long-proposed true World Series. Congrats to the New York Post for tracking him down:
"There are going to be bigger and better things in baseball and I am going to be involved in it," Valentine said by phone. "We have to open eyes and minds and have vision. No one on this side of the pond or on that side of the pond has the vision or the desire to do what should be done. They are too lost in today."There should be a division of major league baseball in Asia with major league franchises and with world players, not just Asian players. This way you would have a common world draft. The infrastructure is already here. The stadiums, the TVs, the fans."
So there are logistical hurdles to bringing Asia into the major-league fold, but that hasn't stopped anyone from tossing out solutions. My personal favorite is to include Asian teams in player contracts (i.e. include them in drafts, allow them to trade with North American teams, let them sign free agents, etc.), and have the North American champion play the Asian champ in some form of World Series. Other suggestions include an Asian division in each league to go along with East, Central and West, and give each team one long intercontinental road trip (air trip?) per year.
Still, there are a lot of questions as to whether Asian baseball would sustain a long-term business model. There's a flourishing Japanese major league that's increasingly sending over MLB stars. (Note that Japanese import Ichiro Suzuki last year broke the 80-year record for hits in a season.) Now let's see, Korea's also producing its share of ballplayers too, but it's unclear that any other Asian country would really want a major-league team. While that's not a huge problem (what do we care if all the teams are in Japan or Seoul, especially just to start), it raises the other big issue of Asian baseball viability. These Japanese teams may be able to compete with each other, but how many of them are going to be able to afford the mega-contracts that the Yankees, Angels and Red Sox can offer? And let's not forget the cultural issue: a lot of these guys, especially the American ballplayers, will demand extra money to sign with the Yomiuri Giants. Existing Asian teams may be able to afford this kind of talent, but with Bobby Valentine's top players being fellow Mets castoffs, frankly I doubt it.
I hope international baseball works: it's my favorite sport by a longshot and I want to see it flourish, especially if my suspicions are correct that its long-term American viability is in question too. So while I don't see a path yet for making this work, I hope there is one. It's good to see baseball guys like Bobby Valentine actively looking for a way to make it work.
I was thinking of using the blog as an opportunity to review the books I read when I finish them. Since the blog is mostly an excuse to practice my writing anyway, I figure I can also review books I've finished before this line of demarcation. which I guess would be right now.
Anyway, I just wrapped up Richard Ben Cramer's Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life. (By the way, does anyone else ever try linking to Amazon without any idea how much of that book-long URL is necessary? I feel like I'm giving you my credit card number.) Now, I know it's heresy as a Sox fan to be reading this stuff, but I have several good reasons. First, as you may have heard, the Boston Red Sox are the current world champions, after the Red Sox won the World Series last year. So now that my favorite team just won the World Series, we can afford a little grace and dignity and not revile the Yankees at every turn. (No feeling bad for Giambi when he gets shunted down to Columbus though.) Second, the author, Richard Ben Cramer, wrote one of my favorite books, What It Takes, his saga of the 1988 presidential primaries, and six of the men who put themselves up on the stage. One of the great things about Cramer's writing is that he can seamlessly mix in the vernacular of his topic, from the 1920s San Francisco playground to the Rat Pack of the 50s. Usually this means using a lot of the word "pal," but the effect is nice. You could argue that maybe I should have noticed this when it was Dick Gephardt in an Iowa campaign office or Mike Dukakis going door-to-door in Brookline, but then again it's my blog. Final note on Cramer: He also wrote a book on Ted Williams, cut him some slack.
The first thing that struck me about DiMaggio was the hero worship that took over this guy's life. If you look at his stats, they're just not as good as someone like Ruth, or Williams, or even his successor Mickey Mantle. But he's apparently one of the most revered players in baseball history; if Cramer is correct then DiMaggio won several "Greatest Living Player" votes, decades after he retired. There seem to be a lot of reasons for this; he was clearly intended as Ruth's successor on the Yankees, he was apparently the first player to be fantastic at all five tools (running, throwing, fielding, hitting, and hitting for power), and he was one of the country's first Italian stars when there weren't a lot of minority role models. Throw in his Depression-era playing years, his apparent "grace" on the field (mentioned by Cramer all the time, I have no idea what that is) and, of course, following up his major-league career by marrying Marilyn Monroe, and this is a successful guy. (Incidentally, he won nine World Series in his thirteen major-league seasons, a record I don't see being broken for a while.) But with all that success came with some stringent requirements: he was, whether he liked it or not, a hero. (I'm pretty sure he did; read on.) Joe DiMaggio built up a public persona of a man who played ball the way he lived life: with quiet, strong grace. I mean, his autobiography was called Lucky to Be a Yankee. And it's funny - I'd point out how cringe-worthy that title sounds today, but I saw ESPN's coverage of last year's Home Run Derby last week, and who should be sitting in the stands, enthralled by the proceedings, but certified superstar and legend Curt Schilling. Now, I'm sure Schilling had at least a mild interest in who won the Home Run Derby, but sitting with the fans and watching every pitch fits in nicely with Schilling's clear desire to promote the sport, himself, and his own legend. Maybe the hero persona isn't gone from baseball entirely. (And, lest you complain: these guys won!)
DiMaggio's reaction to the hero lifestyle is itself a fascinating topic. You ever hear of a professional athlete signing an autograph for a kid, or hanging out with a regular guy just because he was a good friend, and you think, "wow, he could have charged anything for it?" Joe charged for it. I have been trying to understand his mindset, and here's the best I can come up with: he hated the idea of anyone making a buck off his life, his winning-is-everything mentality made him want to earn as much money as he possibly could (certainly more than any other retired ballplayer), and he thought everyone was out to take advantage of him. Here are a few exciting tales from the book:
- Guy who owns the NYC restaurant he used to go to listens to Joe lament Marilyn leaving him. Guy says, "ahh, what are you gonna do with any whore," by which time Joe is already out the door, desperate apologies or no. Never mind that this guy knew Joe for 20 years, listened to Joe, closed the restaurant for Joe, drove Joe around the city, kept his secrets, started a fund for Joe that went into the millions, and yet never asked for anything, or even gave Joe a bill. DiMaggio never spoke to him again.
- Small memorabilia company sets up a deal with a long-retired DiMaggio to sell autographed balls and pictures. They buy too many, they flood the market, and soon the money stops coming in. They go to Joe and ask if he'd let them backload some of the money coming to him, so they can keep the company afloat and get it to him later. Joe says no, and while looking through the contract to prove his case, he realizes that the contract gives these guys the rights to DiMaggio-signed balls and pictures - but it doesn't say anything about anyone else! So with this company about to go under from flooding the market with product, out comes Joe DiMaggio-signed baseball bats, yours for only $3,995.
- After the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, firefighters went into every house to make sure the gas and stove were off. Joe returned to his house, the only one on the block not damaged, and flew into a rage upon discovering the firefighters had broken a window to unlock the back door. He also swore they had taken half a dozen balls from his garage (he only had a few hundred dozen!), so his friend accompanying him asked him about the stack of shirts he had in the garage, even asking for one. This is thin ice for a DiMaggio friend: you call yourself your friend, and you drive him around, get him stuff, and never ask for anything. DiMaggio got all those shirts from golf tournaments; they gave you a package, with a shirt, some golf clubs and other assorted stuff that went straight to Joe's garage. That didn't stop him, of course, from telling upcoming tournaments that he was bringing a friend who needed a package too, in the same size. So, the shirts piled up in garage. And when the friend asked for one, Joe said no.
I've certainly never seen someone leverage everything in their life so effectively as Joe DiMaggio. It's certainly his right. Still, what an asshole.
Automatic draft, I was out singing karaoke. ("When Doves Cry" and Matchbox 20's "Long Day".) This is the order in which they were picked:
Vladimir Guerrero
Adrian Beltre
Juan Pierre
Aubrey Huff
Hank Blalock
Bret Boone
Jake Peavy
World Champion Orlando Cabrera
Jason Isringhausen
Mike Mussina
Paul Konerko
Troy Percival
Danny Graves
Jose Mesa
Tony Fucking Womack
Lew Ford (the first guy I had to look up)
Brandon Webb (the next)
Future Senator Al Leiter (R-NJ - watch out, Frank Lautenberg!)
Luis Gonzalez (the good one)
A.J. Pierzynski
John Thomson
Ryan Freel
Rafael Palmeiro
Kenny Rogers
What the hell, I'll take 'em.
Update: Isringhausen, Percival, Graves and Mesa are all closers, so I traded Graves to Harrison's team for Pittsburgh outfielder Jason Bay. Smooth move? Only time and the commenting section will tell.