Category: MLB

I have been meaning to write something about those baseball records that I think might never be broken. It’s an always-interesting question because I think most records are ultimately breakable in baseball. There are perhaps a select few, like Cy Young’s 511 wins, Ty Cobb’s .367 career batting average and Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak in 1941 which are well beyond reach and should stand eternally. Other than that, from Babe Ruth’s home run records to Cobb’s career hits total, most every mark that seemed insurmountable in baseball has toppled. But if there’s one feat that could stand as long as any, it’s this one, set by a midget named Eddie Gaedel: Shortest man to ever come to bat in a big league game.

This story has been widely reprinted elsewhere, though I’ll briefly summarize it here for anyone who hasn’t heard it.  In 1951, Bill Veeck, owner of the last place St. Louis Browns, secretly signed the 3’7″ Gaedel and, as a publicity stunt, sent him to bat wearing the uniform number 1/8 in a doubleheader with the Detroit Tigers. With orders not to swing, due to his impossibly small strike zone, Gaedel walked on four straight pitches; in fact, Veeck told him there would be a man in the stands with a rifle, in case he got bold at the plate. The Browns went on to lose 102 games that year, and Gaedel never played again in the majors, of course, dying in 1961 at age 36 as the result of a bar fight.

So why do I think the mark Gaedel set with his appearance will stand as long as any other? First and foremost, there was only one Veeck, a one-of-a-kind showman who constantly came up with ways to promote his small market teams, from signing 42-year-old Satchel Paige in 1948 to introducing the exploding scoreboard in Chicago (he was also owner at the time of the ill-fated Disco Demolition Night in 1979, though his son Mike masterminded that promotion, which caused a riot.) Beyond the absence of a Veeck among today’s sedate breed of owners, I believe we also have a more vociferous sports media, who would not let the signing of a Gaedel go unnoticed. And I also think most current teams would worry about embarrassing themselves.

That’s all a shame, because I think a team like the Nationals could do worse than to have a pinch hitter like Gaedel, a sure bet to get on-base pretty much every time up. A Gaedel could also help any team in playoff contention some September, when rosters expand from 25 men to 40. Signing a midget would seem akin to hiring an Olympic sprinter as a designated runner (which Charlie Finley did with the A’s in the ’70s) but I’ll be surprised if either of those things happens again.

I miss the early Nineties.

I miss the Sundays and the breathless SportsCenter reports when Deion Sanders would play in an Atlanta Falcons game, get on a plane and make it to Pittsburgh in time for a Braves playoff game that evening. I still wonder how he did it. I miss Bo Jackson and the “Bo Knows” Nike commercials about how the Kansas City Royals and Los Angeles Raiders star could seemingly do everything. I even miss the images of Michael Jordan struggling at Double-A baseball, and with all this in mind, I have to ask:

Whatever happened to the two-sport athlete?

Fifteen or twenty years ago, this kind of thing seemed fairly common, particularly in baseball, but somewhere in the interim, the idea of playing more than one sport at a time professionally has all but vanished. While we occasionally hear stories of star athletes excelling at different sports as amateurs, whether it’s LeBron James tearing it up in high school football or Kobe Bryant playing soccer in Italy as a boy or Donovan McNabb coming off the bench for Syracuse in the 1996 Final Four, multimillionaire dual threats like Deion and Bo seem to be a thing of the past. And that’s unfortunate.

I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if other athletes got scared watching Bo break his hip in a 1991 Raiders playoff game, which ended his football career and crippled his baseball abilities. Less than a year after Bo’s injury, Sanders’ backfield mate with the Falcons, Brian Jordan, walked away from football promise to focus on baseball. “I think about football,” Jordan told Ebony magazine in 1999, in the midst of what became a 15-year baseball career, “And then I think about the pain you feel on Mondays and thoughts about [playing] football quickly go away.”

I wonder if there was something written discretely into one of the recent Collective Bargaining Agreements that I missed, or some tacit understanding in the sports world that went unpublicized. Or maybe athletes started thinking differently after watching Michael Jordan leave basketball at the top of his game, hit .202 in place of a deserving prospect in Double-A baseball, and inspire a Sports Illustrated cover, “Bag it Michael.” Nobody wants to be that guy, even if Michael got the last laugh by returning to basketball, winning a few more championships and refusing to talk to SI for years thereafter

Whatever the case, there don’t seem to be many success stories about two-sport athletes anymore, just cautionary tales, such as Drew Henson: excellent as a quarterback at Michigan, not so good playing third base for the Yankees thereafter and then, surprisingly, no longer good at football either.

It’s all over the Internet that Jose Canseco got subpoenaed on Tuesday to testify before a grand jury on April 8 about Roger Clemens. Canseco played on three different teams with the embattled former pitcher, currently under federal investigation for lying to Congress in 2008 when he said he never used performance enhancing drugs. For all the news stories on what went down this week, there’s been scant mention of excerpts from Canseco’s book, Vindicated, that lend perspective.

I’ll backtrack for a moment.  Sometime in the last few months, I wanted some quick, easy reading, so I picked up what had heretofore been occasional bathroom fare. Surprisingly, Vindicated hasn’t been too bad. Just as Canseco’s previous book, Juiced might be this generation’s equivalent of Ball Four for revealing unflattering secrets about baseball and actually helping the game in the process, Vindicated reads a little like the follow-up to that bestseller, I’m Glad You Didn’t Take it Seriously: self-congratulatory and a little redundant, but also entertaining and occasionally thought-provoking.

Much of the early going in Vindicated centers around Clemens. Canseco writes that Clemens was “effectively excised from my book” but that when they played together, “Roger might say, ‘I think I need a B-twelve shot right about now,'” code for steroids.  Canseco adds that though he gave his opinions on Clemens to Pedro Gomez of ESPN and Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes, they weren’t aired, and he even speculates that George W. Bush or his father, both friends of Clemens, “made some calls and took care of things for good ole Roger.” That sounds a little ego-manic and hair-brained.

Later on, we get to something more sober and compelling that could be a preview of what’s to come on April 8.  I am bookmarked at page 108, but I scanned the remainder of the book this evening and came across a passage about Canseco’s trip to Houston in 2008 to sign an affidavit that stated he had “no reason to believe” Clemens ever used performance enhancing drugs. Canseco signed, but not before some diffidence, recounting on pages 154-155:

Technically, I didn’t have a single specific reason to believe that Roger had used steroids, but based on his behavior, and based especially on his performance, I had always felt he was using. But now, Jesus– I was very confused. I was sitting there with Roger and a bunch of lawyers, and I didn’t know what to think. I kept asking myself, Do I have one compelling reason to believe he used steroids? One single specific reason that convinces me, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Roger was juicing? The answer was no. No, I did not.  And the more time I spent in that room, with the lawyers and with Roger, the more I came to believe that I’d been wrong about him.

So I signed the affidavit.

If it sounds confusing, that’s because it was confusing. I had an abrupt change of heart, yes, and I wish I could explain it better. I felt bad for Roger, sure, and I let myself get sucked into his drama. And maybe that’s exactly what Roger and his lawyers wanted. I honestly can’t say. All I can say is that suddenly Roger had me believing he had never juiced.

The sad part is that on February 13 (of 2008) I watched him go head to head with Brian McNamee, during the congressional hearings, and old Roger didn’t come off too good. Maybe I’d been right the first time. Maybe he had been juicing. And maybe I’d been wrong to change my mind. But in my heart, during my visit to Houston, I came to believe the guy. If I hadn’t believed him, I never would have signed that affidavit. And if I’m wrong about Roger, and he was juicing, I’m pretty sure we’ll know before this book even hits the stands.

I played around with Google, performing searches on some of the most sensational snippets of that excerpt.  Short of a book review on Vindicated from two years ago and some promotional material, nothing comes up. Amongst all the news stories I’ve read so far, only a couple outlets even reference Canseco’s conclusion in Vindicated about Clemens not using.

Most people will probably screw up in one way or another at some point in their lives. It’s only human to wreck a car or a marriage, to fail a class, to get fired from a job, maybe even to have problems with drugs, alcohol or the law.  When most folks fall short, they do so quietly, hopefully learning from their mistakes and moving on.  If they suffer setbacks, it isn’t plastered across the news, unless it’s something particularly egregious or bizarre.  This is all to their benefit, as anonymity is generally thought to be indispensable to recovery.

Celebrities rarely get this consideration. For all the privileges famous people receive, they don’t enjoy the essential right most people might take for granted of getting to deal privately with personal issues. Every day, there’s some unfortunate (and yes, entertaining) gossip in the news about an entertainer or athlete.  The more lurid the tale, the farther it spreads.  I admit I read every last story sometimes, but when I stop and think about it, I must say it’s a little amazing the standards celebrities and other well-known figures are often held to.

ESPN and other outlets trumpeted news Wednesday that the manager of the Texas Rangers, Ron Washington, tested positive for cocaine last year, and after some reflection, I have to say: So what?  Granted, I don’t condone the use of cocaine or other illegal drugs, but assuming Washington truthfully claimed he used only once, it seems he could have committed far worse transgressions.  His use didn’t keep him from fulfilling the duties of his job, as the Rangers finished 87-75.  Far as I know, Washington didn’t become addicted or get behind the wheel of a car or commit any crimes when he used cocaine, short of breaking some drug laws.

I admit I have fairly radical views regarding America’s policies on drugs.  Basically, I’m against drug use for me and anyone I care about.  I think if somebody has a problem with drugs or alcohol, they should stop.  That being said, I think we as a country waste tremendous amounts of time, money and resources that could be better put to use elsewhere when we condemn and prosecute recreational drug use.  I don’t really buy into the idea that purchasing drugs supports things like terrorism, but I do believe that criminalizing use drives up prices exponentially, thus increasing drug-related thefts and violence.  Were it up to me, all drugs would be legal, and we’d quit pointing fingers about who was using and who wasn’t, unless the use started affecting other lives.

By all accounts it sounds like Washington will emerge relatively unscathed from all this. He entered a drug program, kept his job and received support Wednesday from his players. Now, he can hopefully put this weird, little story behind him and focus on what looks to be a competitive race in the American League West.  This of course doesn’t resolve questions of how a 57-year-old man even gets offered cocaine, and I imagine this will probably be the wildest story we hear about a manager for some time.  All the same, Washington faces an easier road ahead than any player who really has a problem with drugs or alcohol.  How any of them has a chance of staying sober in this current media environment, I don’t know.