Category: MLB

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Possible spin-off?

One of the guys who oversees the network of sites my blog belongs to emailed me today, wanting to get my thoughts on creating a San Francisco Giants blog.

He wrote, in part:

I know its your favorite team and you would have no problem writing about them…  I also think you would get more traffic as well since I think its easier to get a fan of a team to come back once he has read your blog.  Since baseball past and present can be so general it can be hard getting people to come back.  Also, it is much easier to get links from sites that index team blogs as well.

I replied that I was definitely interested, but that I would want to write in tandem with other writers, to maintain my primary focus here.  Creating a good blog is actually a lot of work, I’m finding.  I generally need to write for an hour or two every day, minimum, to allow enough time to craft content that will attract and keep the niche of readers that find my site, the older, educated, affluent crowd hungry to devour baseball history.  If I could afford it, I would reserve three to four hours for writing here. In fact, if I were so situated, I would do little else but write.

I’m also starting to realize that I really should take 30 minutes or an hour a day, in addition, to comment on other blogs, syndicate my content and try to build links to my site.  I’ve taken a minimalist approach with SEO and advertising since I started writing here, with hopes of building a grassroots following simply by writing well, though I’m starting to view my promotional inertia as missed opportunity.  Baseball, past and present, can be a harsh mistress.  I’d hate to be lagging on two blogs instead of just one.  But that’s where others can help.

Thus, I told my friend here that I would contact a few fellow sports journalists I knew at Cal Poly.  I am waiting to hear back from two of them and got a polite no from my former editor Jacob Jackson, who is busy with family life.  I also sent queries to a guy I clerked with a few year ago on the sports desk of the Sacramento Bee and one of my best friends’ wives, who likes baseball, is a great writer and served as sports editor of her college paper.  My friend’s wife also has a co-worker, Brian Milne, who is one of the best writers I personally have known and someone I definitely want to talk to about this.  I would welcome any other solid writers to contact me as well.

Because of my education and writing experience, I actually know a number of good writers, people I’d look to if I ever had my own publication.  I’ve spent much of today excited about the possibilities that may exist with this new venture.

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10 baseball players who didn’t do steroids

1. Ken Griffey Jr: The best clean player of the Steroid Era, Griffey’s only performance enhancer was playing in the Kingdome.

2. Derek Jeter: Jose Canseco, of all people, said he was sure Jeter never used steroids.  That’s good enough in my book. In an era of gaudy numbers, Jeter was, like Griffey, a throwback.

3-4. Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine: If it ever emerges these guys took steroids, I think I’m done with baseball.  That means, basically, everybody used, even groundskeepers.  Then again, that seems unlikely, especially with Maddux and Glavine, two finesse pitchers with excellent longevity.

5. Albert Belle: A Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter recently asked Belle if he’d ever used steroids, as ‘roid rage could have explained his frequent emotional outbursts during his career.  Belle replied, “I was just an angry black man.”  Milton Bradley is going to get the chance to say the same thing in about ten years.

6. Ichiro Suzuki: Suzuki seems like another guy who belongs to another era, say 1910 (imagine how many more triples Suzuki would have got in the Deadball Era, when massive ballparks were standard.)  At it stands, he’s perhaps the best hitter of this era, steroids or not.  If I could have anyone from the last twenty years in my lineup, I might take Suzuki.

7. Omar Vizquel: I did a Google search on “Omar Vizquel steroids” to see if anything would come up.  There were of course a few blogs speculating he had used, including one in Cleveland that said Vizquel “needs to go back on his 2002 steroid regimen,” a possible explanation for why he hit a career-high 14 home runs that year.  That kind of sounds like sour grapes to me regarding Vizquel, an ex-Indian.  But the top search result, a 2006 Yahoo! Sports article said Vizquel “quietly embodies everything the Steroid Era does not.”  That sounds more apt.

8. Ben Grieve: I wish there were more stories out there like what follows about Grieve.  A book I recently read, Bash Brothers: A Legacy Subpoenaed, finds the former American League Rookie of the Year retired and angry at all the players who used and prospered, while he stayed clean, struggled with injuries and retired early.  “I compare it to stealing money,” Grieve said via email in the book. “You are breaking the rules of baseball (as well as the law) in order to make money for yourself… I’m happy every time a player is accused because it demeans their accomplishments.”

9. Fred McGriff: There are a lot of recent baseball players who put up artificially inflated home run totals.  McGriff is one of the few who probably did it naturally. He is tied with Lou Gehrig with 493 career home runs and never had the surreptitious spike in power numbers that typically accompanied steroid use, I.E. he didn’t bust out with 56 home runs in 1999.  McGriff was a model of consistency in his 19-year career, and I’m a little surprised he hasn’t done better in the Hall of Fame vote (consider him a Veterans Committee pick waiting to happen, if nothing else.)

10. Rico Brogna: I racked my brain trying to come up with a tenth player, and got Brogna, who once told ESPN the Magazine that he considered using steroids late in his career when he was struggling with injuries but chose not to and quit playing shortly thereafter.  In this era, that’s more believable than, “I only took it once.”

A lot of guys didn’t make the list, including Tony Gwynn.  That might sound insane, but Gwynn put up some of his best slugging numbers late in his career, including in 1997 when he hit .372 with 17 home runs and 119 RBI at age 37.  Granted, at 38, Ted Williams had the second-highest slugging percentage, of his career, .731, nearly 100 points above his lifetime rate, and I would bet he didn’t use steroids.  Still, Williams had the luxury of not accomplishing his feat of ageless wonder at the zenith of the Steroid Era.  These days, everyone’s a suspect.

Related posts:

Got $1,000? Jose Canseco will spend a day with you

Seeing McGwire through Rose-colored glasses

Alternate history: If Barry Bonds hadn’t used steroids

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On recent hot stove developments

I could have titled this post, A Winn win for New York or The Yankees are getting Randy!, but it struck me that nobody wants to read about an aging castoff from the San Francisco Giants who signed a bargain basement free agent deal to, essentially, sit on a bench in New York.  How Randy Winn is considered an upgrade over Johnny Damon is beyond me, though at $2 million, he couldn’t have come much cheaper if his agent had offered prospective teams coupons.  Then again, Winn isn’t overly terrible and it’s a minimal risk for the Yankees; therein lies the rub.

As I said, I can’t justify a full-length post on the Winn signing, though there have been enough interesting developments in the free agent world of late to allow me to cobble something together.  The Oakland A’s signed Ben Sheets to a one-year $10 million contract yesterday, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Billy Beane lands Damon.  Both of those moves could go a long way toward propelling the Athletics back into the playoffs, or at least above .500.  Additionally, the Minnesota Twins landed 39-year-old designated hitter Jim Thome, who has 564 career home runs, for $1.5 million.

If Thome is healthy in 2010, this could wind up being the deal of the off-season– think Frank Thomas in 2006.  Even Thome’s numbers for 2009 weren’t too terrible, with 23 home runs split between the White Sox and the Dodgers, who essentially benched him for the last month of the season after acquiring him at the end of August.  I would definitely sooner sign a guy like Thome than Rick Ankiel, who got twice as much from the Kansas City Royals.  I also think Thome is a safer bet among aging sluggers than fellow 39-year-old Jason Giambi, who just resigned with the Colorado Rockies for $1.75 million.

I continue to be amazed at the number of veterans going for $2 million or less per season this winter.  There are the occasional larger deals, like the $6 million the Baltimore Orioles probably didn’t need to give Miguel Tejada to secure his services.  For the most part, though, this recession is the gift that keeps on giving for baseball front offices.

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A priest couldn’t help the A’s right now

When I was in high school, my friends and I used to enjoy making movies, ones that probably wouldn’t have gotten us into any film schools if we’d applied. Our best effort was a 10-minute film with a simple premise: I cannot find a woman to save my life.  The film basically revolved around my character getting rejected and beat up a lot, and my friends, who conceived the idea all thought it was very funny and realistic, despite my objections.

Anyhow, when my character finally locates a willing woman, the house we are about to enter blows up. Just prior to the explosion, I remark on the front steps, “When all this is over, I’m gonna become a priest.”

Seems like the Oakland A’s had this happen to them in real life.

Grant Desme, a 23-year-old outfield prospect and second-round draft pick in 2007 announced he’s retiring to enter the priesthood. Rob Neyer wrote a blog for ESPN on the story, noting, “Well, this wins the prize for the odd baseball news of the week.” I couldn’t agree more, and the best part of this, at least for me, is that Desme and I went to the same college, Cal Poly.  He was a few years after me, which is why I don’t have much to offer here besides my opinion, though it’s worth noting that Desme is a past Big West Player of the Year.

This is all a bummer for the A’s, as Desme put up some decent hitting numbers in the low minors and they need bats.  Still, more power to Desme, I suppose.

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Great injustices: Babe Ruth was not MVP in 1927

I have been telling people that I think Babe Ruth is the greatest baseball player of all-time.  Others may choose Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Ty Cobb or someone else.  For me, it’s Ruth, who hit 714 home runs, won 94 games as a pitcher, and even stole 123 bases. More than 60 years after his death, there’s a reason Ruth’s name remains hallowed, like Michael Jordan in basketball or Joe Montana in football.

Mark Shapiro, a producer on the ESPN Sports Century project a decade ago that measured the top athletes of the 20th Century told Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke he considered Ruth the best of the century.

“Had he not moved to the outfield, he would have been the best pitcher ever,” Shapiro told Plaschke, for a December 31, 1999 column.  “If he had played football, he would have been one of the best football players ever.”

“Everything he did, he did bigger and better than anyone else.”

Imagine Ruth’s numbers if he had been a hitter his entire career– at least 800 home runs, no tainted record for Barry Bonds.  Imagine if Ruth had maintained solid conditioning throughout.  Imagine Babe Ruth on steroids.

Anyhow, I was on Baseball Reference a little while ago, as I am most days and noted with surprise that Ruth did not win Most Valuable Player in the American League in 1927, when he hit 60 home runs.  That award went to his teammate, Lou Gehrig.  It can be argued that Gehrig had a better all-around season, just as it could be said Sammy Sosa did better than Mark McGwire in 1998. But let’s look further at that.

Gehrig hit .373 in 1927, with 47 home runs and 175 runs batted in, along with 218 hits, 52 doubles and 18 triples.  Meanwhile, Ruth coupled his 60 long bombs with a .356 batting average, 192 hits, 158 runs and 164 runs batted in.  Both had on-base percentages approaching .500 and were the two best members of a Yankee team that won 109 games and swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. (Those Yankees may be the best team ever, but that’s cause for another debate)

What it comes down to for me is that if I had to choose between Ruth or Gehrig that year for my team, I’d take Ruth.  No question.  I could sleep knowing I’d passed on Gehrig, as there are a select number of players in baseball history on par with him.  I think a number of players could have put up gargantuan numbers hitting next to the Sultan of Swat (Mel Ott, Bill Terry and Al Simmons come to mind.) But there was only one Babe Ruth.

Surprisingly, Ruth won a single MVP award during his career, in 1923 when he led the league in home runs and runs batted in but missed out on the Triple Crown, despite hitting .393.  The MVP award debuted in 1922, a year after the best season that Ruth– or any player– ever had, his 1921 campaign where he hit .378 with 59 home runs and 171 runs batted in.  Ruth had more home runs that year than eight entire teams, half the clubs in the majors that year.

They just don’t make them like Ruth anymore.

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As good a reason to have a blog as any

I just wanted a chance to write regularly.

When I was out with that group of people at Denny’s on that Friday early last year, I had no idea that the man sitting across from me had a son connected with this site, no idea that it would lead me to where I am now.

I had my second job interview in as many days today, my second straight interview where somebody had seen my resume posted online, clicked on the link for here and then sent me a nice email to see about meeting.  This time, it was for a sales position with a local State Farm office, another solid opportunity, not one of those “Do our payroll from home!” or “Free your mind with multi-level marketing!” scams that clutter my Inbox after every time I post a resume online.  Kids, this blogging business can lead to good things.

The State Farm agent was running late to our meeting today, so I had some time to talk with the office manager.  We got to chatting about my blog, and I mentioned that if you do a Google search on “best players not in hall of fame,” a post I wrote last May comes up on the first page of search results (as the second item from the top, better than offerings from NFL.com or ESPN— don’t ask me how this works.)  He then turned to a computer next to him, executed this search and saw for himself.

It was a pretty cool moment in my job interview history, right up there with the time I quoted a scene from Office Space to a potential employer, that clip where the sad-sack middle manager about to be laid off tells the consultants ruthlessly interviewing him, “God damnit, I have people skills!  Can’t you understand?” Surprisingly, I got hired that time.  No word yet on today, though I’m hopeful.

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A note on walk-up music

I have been blasting an old Pearl Jam tape while driving around in my car lately.  My IPod broke a few months ago, I don’t have a CD player, and I get tired of listening to the radio after so long, as good as the selection generally is in the Bay Area.  Thus, I wind up listening to old tapes, like the Pearl Jam album, Vs., which I got when I was about 10.  For some reason, it has had phenomenal replay value for me, and if I were a baseball player, I think my walk-up music might be the album’s song, “Dissident.”

Walk-up music is the song that’s played during the six or eight seconds a player is striding to the plate, stepping in, and taking a few practice hacks.  I’ll listen to a song and find myself wondering if it would make good walk-up music.  The trick is to find something that starts right away, no “Funeral for a Friend” by Elton John, with its meandering, three-and-a-half-minute intro (though one of the stations around here likes to play that song in all its 11-minute glory.)

It’s good to find something intense, something incendiary, something that could play during that scene in Braveheart where Mel Gibson rides up in blue face paint and rallies the Scottish to kick the shit out of the British.  The song is all about helping a player get pumped up.  If it sounds like something that could be played in a biker bar or during an arm wrestling competition, or both, it’s probably good.

Some players find something funny, like former Giants catcher Steve Decker who I once heard use the “Winkie Chant” from The Wizard of Oz at a Sacramento River Cats game (that’s the one that sounds like “Oh e oh, e oh oh.”)  There’s also the unintentionally funny, like former major league outfielder Tony Tarasco who once had an explicit song by Jay-Z played.

Closers probably have it best.  Their songs get played while they walk in from the bullpen and warm up.  All the best closers have songs that define them: “Hell’s Bells” by AC/DC for Eric Gagne, when he was in his prime with the Dodgers; “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” by the Dropkick Murphys for Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon; “Wild Thing” by The Troggs for Mitch Williams (though that sadly became all too true when his lack of control derailed his big league career.)

I can picture “Dissident” booming over some stadium’s loudspeakers while I warm up.  “Womack’s really bringing it tonight,” the coaches would tell each other while my fast balls sizzled in, smoke rising from the catcher’s glove, Eddie Vedder’s crooning and the pounding bass notes in the background (it goes without saying, I quit Little League when I was 11 and my fastball topped out at 40 miles per hour.)

What’s your walk-up song?

Three other posts worth reading:

10 baseball players who didn’t do steroids

Got $1000? Jose Canseco will spend a day with you

A former baseball owner dies at 100 and leaves a warehouse of old memorabilia

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Baseball history and social media, together at last

I took the plunge today and finally signed up for a Twitter account.  I first heard of Twitter a couple years ago and was cool to the idea for a long time.  I heard it’s basically a site comprised solely of Facebook status reports, and I just can’t see the attraction of that.  I don’t know if a lot of people can; I heard several months ago, at least, that Twitter loses something like 60% of its users after the first month.

Still, social media is a great way to promote a blog, and since Twitter is free, I figured it couldn’t hurt to try.  Thus, I spent five minutes setting up my account a little while ago and made a debut tweet:

Just joined Twitter to promote my web site, https://baseballpastandpresent.com/ Check me out!

Appropriately, the tweet right before my own on my homepage was from Jose Canseco.  He wrote:

“How would i go about getting more followers? I see a lot of my peers have tons! Let’s try and get to 500,000.”

Suffice it to say, I’m one of those following Canseco.

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A purchase at the dollar store

About a year ago, my mom gave me a nice, scented candle inside of a glass jar, and it seemed a shame to waste the excess wax after the wick burned out the first time.  As a result, every month or two, I buy a cheap candle at the dollar store and put it inside the jar.  Then, I melt down the leftover wax from before on my stove and pour it inside the jar to seal in the new candle.  Yeah, I know, I’m probably the only sportswriter who recycles wax from scented candles.

Anyhow, with some time to kill today, I made a trip over to the dollar store that’s walking distance from my apartment.  Initially, I just planned to buy the candle, but when I was at the checkout stand, I saw amidst the display of sports trading cards, a brand that read “Historic Vintage Collection” with the subhead, “40 Years of Baseball Trading Cards.”  The front of each pack had a star, with text over it that read, “Historic Star Card in Every Pack.” This caught my interest.

As a child, I used to collect baseball cards voraciously, and I started collecting older ones after my aunt bought me cards for Bob Gibson and Tony Oliva when I was about eight.  In time, I had cards as far back as the 1940s and even had a dog-eared Willie Mays from 1969 that I got for $10.  I also had cards for Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks and Juan Marichal, among others.  At one point, I had as many as 5,000 sports cards.  Most have long since been gotten rid of, though I still have the old cards, in a binder at my parent’s house in Sacramento.

For whatever reason,  I’ve always had a passion for history and love any type of primary source material.  I also used to collect old Sports Illustrated issues as a kid.  In more recent years, I’ve branched into finding old books.  I have a decent library for both baseball and sports writing, and a lot of the stuff I like is no longer in print.  Thus, I find cool books every now and again, like a 1944 sports writing collection I located in a used bookstore in Sacramento a few years ago.  My copy includes a handwritten note, dated December 10, 1944:

To Eddie:

The Page 55 Contributor would have you (and all others who might glance here) that without your aid, early and late, I would never have come this far– might even have been left at the post, or have been thrown out at  first.

Anyhow, you’re one brother in a whole country.

Warren

I checked after reading this and determined the message was written by Warren Brown, a longtime Chicago sportswriter whose contribution in the book is a story about boxer Jack Dempsey from 1923.

Anyhow, while at the dollar store today, I wondered if the packs of old cards just contained reprints, which is lame, but for a dollar, I figured it couldn’t hurt to see what was inside.  I made the purchase, walked home and opened the pack.  Among the 15 cards were a 1984 Willie McGee and 1994 cards of Sammy Sosa and Juan Gonzalez.  They all appear to be originals, from the Eighties and Nineties.  I probably had the majority of them as a kid and for all I know, may have been holding the same cards from 15 to 20 years before.  Still, it was nice to get a little nostalgia.

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Who to trust, Canseco or McGwire?

Amid the hoopla surrounding Mark McGwire admitting he used steroids, an exchange he had with Bob Costas got my attention.  In an interview on MLB Network on Monday, Costas read excerpts from Jose Canseco’s autobiography, Juiced, which claimed he personally injected McGwire.

“‘Right before a game, we would load up our syringes and inject ourselves’,” Costas read, quoting the book.

“There’s absolutely no truth to that whatsoever,” McGwire responded immediately, not breaking eye contact besides to blink once.

“That’s not true?” Costas said.

“Absolutely not,” McGwire said.

“Why do you think Jose would say that?” Costas said.

“He had to sell a book,” McGwire said.

“So that didn’t happen, in the clubhouse?” Costas said

“Absolutely not,” McGwire said.  “I couldn’t be more adamant about that.”

Canseco, for his part, went on sports talk radio today, insisting he told the truth.  He had defended his former teammate one day prior.  As reprinted in the Oakland Tribune, where I read it, Canseco told Sirius XM Radio on Monday, “Mark, steroids or not, was one of the greatest nicest guys you could possibly meet.  People make a mistake and say, ‘Well, he used steroids.  He’s a bad guy.  He’s evil.  He’s not worthy.’  I extremely regret telling the truth.  I extremely regret writing that book.  This thing has taken on a life of it’s own, and it’s far from over, guys.”

But on Tuesday, following the interview with Costas, Canseco called McGwire a liar.

“I’m tired of justifying what I’ve said,” Canseco said. “I’ve polygraphed, I’ve proven that I’m 100 percent accurate. I never exaggerated. I told it the way it actually happened. I’m the only one who has told it the way it actually happened. Major League Baseball is still trying to defend itself. It’s strange. All I have is the truth, and I’ve proven that.”

What’s apparent here is one of these men is lying.  I’m not sure who I believe.  Both players lied or gave misleading statements during their careers.  McGwire vigorously denied using steroids in a Sports Illustrated cover story in 1998, while Canseco released a tutorial while playing for the A’s that said steroid use would be unwise because it would hinder quick twitch muscles.  He also claimed the following, in Juiced:

I remember one day during 2001 spring training, when I was with the Anaheim Angels in a game against the Seattle Mariners, Bret Boone’s new team. I hit a double, and when I got out there to second base I got a good look at Boone. I couldn’t believe my eyes. He was enormous. “Oh my God,” I said to him. “What have you been doing?”

“Shhh,” he said. “Don’t tell anybody.”

As reported by ESPN in 2005, the Mariners and Angels played five games that spring, and Canseco and Boone never encountered one another on the basepaths.

There’s also a part of me that feels Canseco knew, leading up to Juiced, that guys like McGwire, Boone and Jason Giambi were using steroids.  It had to be apparent.  I also think Canseco knew baseball would be unwilling to talk about steroids, providing him a great money-making opportunity.  So a part of me thinks he wrote about the obvious users and took creative liberties about their personal interactions where he had to.

I doubt Canseco called out anyone who wasn’t using, but it seems unlikely he and McGwire injected together at the ballpark.  McGwire and Canseco ran in different circles and had vastly different personalities, McGwire shy and reserved, Canseco charming and outgoing.  The Bash Brothers image about them was largely a marketing creation, just like the M&M image was for Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.  It seems more likely to me McGwire did steroids with his brother, a professional bodybuilder who lived with him.

This doesn’t mean Canseco has to fear a libel suit from McGwire.  Proving libel is not simply a matter of believing a person is lying.  There are two different thresholds for proof, depending on whether a private or public individual is claiming libel.  If a publication makes an error about a private individual, that individual need only prove negligence for a civil judgment.  McGwire is a public individual, though, so he would have to prove malice, that Canseco knew he was lying when he made his claims.  Proving that is typically difficult, if not impossible.  It’s why Barry Bonds may never do a day in jail.

What McGwire could prove, if he wanted to, is that Canseco’s book was devastating to his image.  But I doubt McGwire would go to those lengths, private as he is.