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What ballot he’s on: 2025 Classic Baseball Era Committee ballot, to be considered Dec. 8 at the winter meetings

Previous known times he’s been a Veterans Committee or Era Committee candidate: 2 (1982 and 2022) 

Highest showing as a veteran candidate: 62.5% from the Early Baseball Era Committee for the 2022 election

Number of times he appeared on a Baseball Writers Association of America ballot for the Hall of Fame: 0

Thoughts on his candidacy this year: Vic Harris is one of the reasons I wish the Hall of Fame had its veteran voters consider all candidates in its purview each year. Harris, who is at left in the photo above and managed the Homestead Grays, fell two votes shy of induction in the Early Baseball Era Committee’s 2022 election. Had he been up for consideration again the following year, Harris might have been able to build momentum toward enshrinement. This is how it used to go, at least, in Cooperstown’s history.

Take William Hulbert, the first president of the National League in 1876. Since 2015, I’ve researched known Veterans or Era Committee candidates. Hulbert’s case is among those that have struck me. He was a Veterans Committee candidate as early as 1976, which I would suspect had something to do with the National League’s centennial that year. Hulbert’s candidacy slowly gathered steam before he began to approach enshrinement in the 1990s. He missed by a vote in 1993, came in a close second to Leo Durocher in the non-players category in 1994 and finally got in in 1995.

I’ve learned through my research that the Veterans Committee kept a permanent list of candidates. Sometimes, these types of candidates have made it in, be it Vic Willis or Joe Gordon. I’m guessing this practice is still in place with the Era committees, since all eight candidates on this year’s ballot have been up for consideration before. All the same, a lot’s changed since Harris had his near-miss with the Early Baseball Era Committee three years ago. The committee name is different, as are its years of consideration, covering all players who made their greatest contribution prior to 1980 instead of before 1950.

There are a lot of unknowns still, such as the names of who will be voting in this election. Still, I can’t say I like Harris’s odds that much, which is unfortunate. Negro League managers seem badly underrepresented in the Hall of Fame. Charles Fouche also does a good job in Harris’s SABR bio of explaining just how stellar of a candidate he is, noting that he went 754-352, won eight titles and was a solid player to boot.

“Harris was not only the greatest Negro League manager of all times, it can be argued that he may well have been the greatest manager in the history of baseball,” Fouche writes. “If Cooperstown cannot use him in its outfield, surely it can use him as a dugout strategist.”

Harris seems like he should be automatic to me in getting into the Hall of Fame. The fact that it might not happen this year says more to me about the current veterans voting practices than anything to do with his case.

Do I think Harris belongs on this ballot? Absolutely.

Do I think Harris gets into the Hall of Fame this year? Without knowing the makeup of the Era Committee this year, it’s hard to gauge what sort of odds Harris will have. That said, I’m not optimistic.

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As regular readers might recall, I spent an hour on the phone in April 2020 with Maury Wills for Sports Illustrated. As often happens with long interviews and subsequent 1,500-word articles, a lot of good stuff wound up on the cutting room floor when I went to write. Among this: Much of what Wills told me about barnstorming with a team, Jackie Robinson’s All Stars in the fall of 1953.

I was reminded of this again this week in finding an autographed baseball at an antique fair from another barnstorming team, Roy Campanella’s All Stars of 1955. In researching the origins of this ball, I learned that Black barnstorming teams were much more common than I thought and it’s motivating me to share a little more of what Wills told me.

In my piece for SI, I talked about how Wills idolized Robinson growing up in Washington D.C., how he was written of as a pitcher (which he’d done a little in the minors) on the barnstorming tour, and how he’d gotten $300 a month for the tour. “I would have barnstormed with him for nothing, but they didn’t know that,” Wills said of Robinson, as I noted for SI.

There’s definitely more to the barnstorming trip than what could fit at the time in my SI article, which went through Wills’ entire career in the majors and minors.

Wills joined the barnstorming club a few years into his professional career with the Dodgers, having played only in the low minors to this point. While Wills would eventually go on to become a star shortstop in Los Angeles, leading the National League in steals six consecutive seasons from 1960 through 1965, he was still years off of even making the majors when he joined Robinson’s team.

Turning 21 in October 1953, Wills was part of an integrated barnstorming team with white players of note like Gil Hodges, Al Rosen, and Ralph Branca and legends of Black baseball such as Luke Easter. “That was the thrill of my life at the time,” Wills said.

Not having a roster in front of me at the time I interviewed Wills, I didn’t ask what it was like for him to play on the barnstorming team with Hodges, Rosen, or Branca. I did ask Wills what Robinson was like in person, with Wills telling me, “He was very aloof. But a nice man. Aloof. He didn’t get involved with any controversy or anything like that.”

My favorite thing that I left on the cutting room floor concerned Wills’ interactions with Easter, something of a tragic figure from baseball history for multiple reasons. First, Easter was barred from the majors until well past his 30th birthday due to the game’s color barrier. Easter would die tragically as well, fatally shot in a payroll robbery in 1979 according to his SABR bio.

By the time Wills got to know him on the barnstorming tour, Easter was a 38-year-old first baseman on the downslope of his brief big-league career after a few years of stardom with Cleveland Indians. “Luke had his own chauffeur with a big Cadillac,” Wills said. “I was a minor leaguer from the Dodgers. We rode on the bus with the opposing team, the Indianapolis Clowns from the old Negro Leagues.”

Stories of Negro League accommodations can be notorious. It was no different with this bus. “The bus was like, oh man, it was bad. But everything was in that bus,” Wills said. “It was like a gymnasium.”

So Wills decided he would ride in Easter’s Cadillac, befriending him and becoming his driver. “That was quite an experience, driving all through the South… and here I was driving Luke Easter around,” Wills told me. “He’s sleeping in the back seat and I’m on that freeway or highway, going through the South at night. Big curves and everything and big trucks on the road, headlights hitting you right in the face, going around curves. But it turned out alright.”

For Wills, it was a small taste of the big life, with several more seasons beckoning in the minors before he could find it for himself.

With infection numbers from the COVID-19 pandemic finally beginning to wane in America, life is starting to get back to normal. One facet of this has been the resumption of the monthly Antique Faire in the city I live, Sacramento. The latest one happened yesterday and led me to a piece of baseball history I’ve spent the last 24 hours swept up in.

For those unacquainted, which is likely most people reading, this fair happens on the second Sunday of each month. Until recent times, it was held under a freeway at the south end of Sacramento’s central city, though construction recently forced it to relocate to the former home of the Sacramento Kings, Sleep Train Arena. At each site, the same thing happens: Vendors set up informal, outdoor booths and members of the public pay a $3 fee at the main entrance to browse.

Initially, my wife Kate and I had gone to the fair yesterday to maybe find a few items for our house. We bought our first place about nine months ago and it still feels like a work in progress. But after a short time at the fair, Kate and I got separated and I found myself at a booth with a few items of sports memorabilia.

I suppose some people collect sports memorabilia voraciously, either to resell or keep in private collections. I’m not this kind of person. But as someone who loves researching and writing about baseball history, I was intrigued the second I saw a dirty autographed baseball in a case at this booth. I asked if I could hold the ball and saw Minnie Minoso’s birth name, Orestes. Turning the ball over, I was stunned to quickly recognize Monte Irvin, Larry Doby, Don Newcombe, Joe Black, and Hank Thompson as well.

The seller mentioned that he wanted $300 for the ball, which was more than I wanted to pay. He lowered the price to $200, which seemed very reasonable to me, but still a lot. As I mentioned, I don’t buy a lot of memorabilia. As a full-time freelance writer, I’d rather interview an old ballplayer free of charge (and maybe sell an article out of it) than plunk down hard-fought earnings for something that’ll sit on one of my shelves. I just don’t see the point.

But I also had the feeling that this was an item of special historical significance, something I shouldn’t pass up. I tweeted out the photo above of the seller holding the ball and the immediate response from Twitter was enough that I found an ATM on-site, withdrew $200, and bought myself a ball.

In just over 24 hours since, my task has morphed into trying to figure out where this ball came from. Aside from the six players I listed above, I have identified five others: Jim Gilliam, Bob Trice, Charlie White, Jim Pendleton, and Al Smith. I’m reasonably certain Gene Baker is on the ball as well. One more signature, at bottom below, is too hard to read, though there’s a chance it’s Roy Campanella, Dave Hoskins, or Brooks Lawrence.

The reason I say this is that the 11 players I’ve identified so far and the additional one I’m reasonably certain on all played for Roy Campanella’s All Stars, a 15-player barnstorming team from 1955. (I found a full roster here.) Like Campanella, each man had played in both the Negro Leagues and either the National League or American League. In the time before free agency and television revenue helped increase baseball salaries exponentially, every one of these players could have used an offseason side hustle. Barnstorming was a common way it happened through the 1950s.

In all, the ball has 13 signatures, meaning that two players from the team more than likely didn’t sign it. My gut is that Campy passed on it and that the final signature might be from Hoskins or Lawrence. But it also could have been a random clubhouse person or coach, I’m really not sure. I’m sharing the signature in hopes that someone might know better than me.

I’m curious where the ball came from. The seller told me he found it in a box. The ball doesn’t have a certificate of authenticity and it’s possible some sick soul sat down and devised a very convincing forgery. Still, it seems far too specific to be made up for me and I think a forgery would have a clearly legible signature from Campanella and all 14 other players from the team. The fact that all 13 signatures on the ball are in the same ink color tells me that someone more than likely took a pen and the ball and got signatures from as many players as possible.

After I’ve had a little more time with the ball, I intend to donate it to the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City. It’s the kind of item that belongs in a museum and if spending $200 on an impulse purchase at an antique fair helps me do my part, it will have been well worth it.

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It’s been awhile since I posted here about landing a big interview, though I scored one recently, getting to spend almost an hour on the phone with 87-year-old Los Angeles Dodgers great Maury Wills. It’s my pleasure to share the write-up, which dropped at Sports Illustrated’s website on Monday.

In the lead-up to the interview, I did a bit of research around Wills’ impact on the game, which has been a source of some debate in the baseball community. The conventional wisdom in baseball has been that Wills brought the steal back into the game in the early 1960s, when he led the league one season after another and broke Ty Cobb’s single-season record in 1962 when he swiped 104 bags.

Some researchers have questioned this, though, bringing up that Hall of Famer and Chicago White Sox shortstop Luis Aparicio might deserve the real credit, having begun to swipe more bases in the late 1950s. I’ve seen Willie Mays get some of the credit, too.

Honestly, either crediting Wills entirely or dismissing his impact has seemed an oversimplification to me. So I found another way to look at it.

Searching the ever-reliable Baseball-Reference.com, I found that stolen base opportunities are tracked for players from about 1920 on. (For anyone who wants to check it out, it’s in the Advanced Stats section for batting, listed as “Baserunning & Misc. Stats.” Here’s Wills’ section for this.) The importance of analyzing opportunities: I figured if there was a true stolen base revolution, players would be stealing at a higher percentage of their total opportunities.

I wasn’t sure how to get total opportunity numbers for every season, so I found a compromise to create two control groups. I made lists of everyone who stole at least 30 bases from 1947-61 and 1963-77. This way, I figured I’d get the 15 seasons before and the 15 seasons after Wills’ iconic 1962 season, to see how much of a shift occurred.

As a preface to what follows, I’ll note that when Wills stole 104 bases in 1962, he made 117 attempts out of a total of 348 opportunities, giving him an attempt percentage of 33.6 percentage. This might sound inconsequential or wonkish, but it was a markedly higher rate than anyone had done the 15 preceding seasons.

Here are the 20 30-stolen base seasons from 1947 through 1961, organized by attempt percentage:

Player	Year	SB	CS	Attempts	Opportunities	Attempt %
Willie Mays	1956	40	10	50	174	28.7
Luis Aparicio	1959	56	13	69	244	28.3
Willie Mays	1957	38	19	57	208	27.4
Luis Aparicio	1961	53	13	66	246	26.8
Luis Aparicio	1960	51	8	59	238	24.8
Jackie Robinson	1949	37	16	53	245	21.6
Maury Wills	1960	50	12	62	297	20.9
Sam Jethroe	1950	35	9	44	213	20.7
Bob Dillinger	1947	34	13	47	238	19.7
Richie Ashburn	1948	32	10	42	223	18.8
Sam Jethroe	1951	35	5	40	221	18.1
Bill Bruton	1954	34	13	47	264	17.8
Minnie Minoso	1951	31	10	41	233	17.6
Vada Pinson	1960	32	12	44	257	17.1
Willie Mays	1958	31	6	37	229	16.2
Jake Wood	1961	30	9	39	263	14.8
Maury Wills	1961	35	15	50	349	14.3
Dick Howser	1961	37	9	46	338	13.6
Pee Wee Reese	1952	30	5	35	290	12.1
Richie Ashburn	1958	30	12	42	435	9.7
	Totals	751	219	970	5205	18.64%

I’m struck by how rarely players stole in the ’40s and ’50s. Richie Ashburn, for instance, had by far the most opportunities of any player in this group in 1958, but wound up with just 30 steals that year because he attempted steals so infrequently. Even Wills stole at a far lower rate earlier in his career, with his 1960 and ’61 seasons in the middle of the pack here.

Things began to shift in 1962, though. I think one of the big reasons for it is that the Dodgers began to play home games that season in pitcher-friendly Dodger Stadium. Wills might have had to start stealing much more out of necessity, with runs far more difficult to come by. The following year, baseball also widened its strike zone, and runs became more scarce throughout the game. I think the tighter run environment coupled with Wills’ success in 1962 might have spurred players or teams to follow his lead.

Here are the 161 30-stolen-base seasons from 1963 through 1977, organized again by attempt percentage:

Player	Year	SB	CS	Attempts	Opportunities	Attempt %
Frank Taveras	1977	70	18	88	142	62
Larry Lintz	1976	31	11	42	70	60
Maury Wills	1965	94	31	125	238	52.5
Lou Brock	1974	118	33	151	299	50.5
Cesar Cedeno	1973	56	15	71	150	47.3
Omar Moreno	1977	53	16	69	154	44.8
Lou Brock	1966	74	18	92	207	44.4
Lou Brock	1965	63	27	90	205	43.9
Cesar Cedeno	1974	57	17	74	172	43
Freddie Patek	1976	51	15	66	161	41
Lou Brock	1976	56	19	75	186	40.3
Dave Nelson	1972	51	17	68	169	40.2
Cesar Cedeno	1975	50	17	67	167	40.1
Tommy Harper	1969	73	18	91	230	39.6
Bill North	1976	75	29	104	264	39.4
Mickey Rivers	1975	70	14	84	225	37.3
Cesar Cedeno	1977	61	14	75	201	37.3
Joe Morgan	1973	67	15	82	222	36.9
Claudell Washington	1976	37	20	57	155	36.8
Bobby Bonds	1976	30	15	45	123	36.6
Bobby Bonds	1977	41	18	59	162	36.4
Luis Aparicio	1964	57	17	74	204	36.3
Cesar Cedeno	1976	58	15	73	202	36.1
Rodney Scott	1977	33	18	51	142	35.9
Davey Lopes	1976	63	10	73	205	35.6
Bert Campaneris	1965	51	19	70	198	35.4
Freddie Patek	1977	53	13	66	188	35.1
Larry Lintz	1974	50	7	57	163	35
Bill North	1974	54	26	80	230	34.8
Davey Lopes	1974	59	18	77	221	34.8
Amos Otis	1971	52	8	60	173	34.7
Bert Campaneris	1968	62	22	84	243	34.6
Lou Brock	1977	35	24	59	173	34.1
Don Buford	1966	51	22	73	215	34
Bobby Tolan	1970	57	20	77	229	33.6
Frank Taveras	1976	58	11	69	209	33
Lou Brock	1975	56	16	72	219	32.9
Lou Brock	1973	70	20	90	274	32.8
Bert Campaneris	1972	52	14	66	203	32.5
Don Baylor	1976	52	12	64	197	32.5
Enos Cabell	1977	42	22	64	198	32.3
Jose Cardenal	1965	37	15	52	163	31.9
Dave Collins	1976	32	19	51	160	31.9
Cesar Cedeno	1972	55	21	76	240	31.7
Davey Lopes	1975	77	12	89	281	31.7
Bert Campaneris	1966	52	10	62	199	31.2
Lou Brock	1972	63	18	81	260	31.2
Bert Campaneris	1967	55	16	71	228	31.1
Phil Garner	1976	35	13	48	155	31
Gene Richards	1977	56	12	68	221	30.8
Adolfo Phillips	1966	32	15	47	153	30.7
Joe Morgan	1976	60	9	69	226	30.5
Rod Carew	1976	49	22	71	234	30.3
Tommie Agee	1966	44	18	62	206	30.1
Joe Morgan	1972	58	17	75	250	30
Pat Kelly	1969	40	13	53	178	29.8
Bert Campaneris	1976	54	12	66	224	29.5
Bert Campaneris	1969	62	8	70	239	29.3
Joe Morgan	1974	58	12	70	240	29.2
Lou Brock	1967	52	18	70	243	28.8
Freddie Patek	1971	49	14	63	219	28.8
Lou Brock	1968	62	12	74	258	28.7
Bill North	1973	53	20	73	254	28.7
Jose Cruz	1977	44	23	67	237	28.3
Al Bumbry	1976	42	10	52	185	28.1
Don Baylor	1975	32	17	49	176	27.8
Ron LeFlore	1976	58	20	78	281	27.8
John Lowenstein	1974	36	17	53	192	27.6
Dave Nelson	1973	43	16	59	215	27.4
Jose Cardenal	1968	40	18	58	214	27.1
Jerry Remy	1975	34	21	55	203	27.1
Tommy Harper	1973	54	14	68	254	26.8
Joe Morgan	1975	67	10	77	287	26.8
Joe Morgan	1977	49	10	59	222	26.6
Maury Wills	1968	52	21	73	276	26.4
Maury Wills	1964	53	17	70	266	26.3
Joe Foy	1969	37	15	52	198	26.3
Don Baylor	1973	32	9	41	156	26.3
Freddie Patek	1973	36	14	50	191	26.2
Lou Brock	1964	43	18	61	236	25.8
Maury Wills	1966	38	24	62	244	25.4
Bobby Bonds	1973	43	17	60	239	25.1
Davey Lopes	1977	47	12	59	235	25.1
Jerry Remy	1977	41	17	58	232	25
Bert Campaneris	1970	42	10	52	211	24.6
Amos Otis	1975	39	11	50	203	24.6
Lou Brock	1971	64	19	83	340	24.4
Willie Randolph	1976	37	12	49	201	24.4
Willie Davis	1964	42	13	55	226	24.3
Pat Kelly	1970	34	16	50	207	24.2
Lenny Randle	1976	30	15	45	186	24.2
Lou Brock	1969	53	14	67	278	24.1
Maury Wills	1969	40	21	61	254	24
Pat Kelly	1972	32	9	41	172	23.8
Bert Campaneris	1974	34	15	49	206	23.8
Lou Brock	1970	51	15	66	278	23.7
Jerry Remy	1976	35	16	51	216	23.6
Enzo Hernandez	1974	37	10	47	202	23.3
Maury Wills	1963	40	19	59	254	23.2
Bake McBride	1977	36	7	43	186	23.1
Lenny Randle	1977	33	21	54	234	23.1
Sonny Jackson	1966	49	14	63	274	23
Joe Morgan	1969	49	14	63	274	23
Bobby Bonds	1975	30	17	47	207	22.7
Joe Morgan	1970	42	13	55	244	22.5
Claudell Washington	1975	40	15	55	245	22.4
Davey Lopes	1973	36	16	52	233	22.3
Willie Davis	1970	38	14	52	236	22
Bobby Tolan	1972	42	15	57	259	22
Freddie Patek	1975	32	7	39	179	21.8
Don Buford	1967	34	21	55	253	21.7
Cesar Tovar	1969	45	12	57	263	21.7
Bobby Bonds	1972	44	6	50	230	21.7
Mickey Rivers	1976	43	7	50	232	21.6
Mickey Rivers	1974	30	13	43	201	21.4
Freddie Patek	1972	33	7	40	188	21.3
Wilbur Howard	1975	32	11	43	203	21.2
Bobby Bonds	1974	41	11	52	246	21.1
Dave Concepcion	1975	33	6	39	185	21.1
Freddie Patek	1974	33	15	48	229	21
Willie Davis	1968	36	10	46	222	20.7
Ron LeFlore	1977	39	19	58	283	20.5
Luis Aparicio	1963	40	6	46	225	20.4
Bobby Bonds	1970	48	10	58	284	20.4
Jim Wynn	1965	43	4	47	233	20.2
Tommy Harper	1970	38	16	54	267	20.2
Dave Concepcion	1974	41	6	47	236	19.9
Bert Campaneris	1973	34	10	44	222	19.8
Bert Campaneris	1971	34	7	41	209	19.6
Larry Bowa	1974	39	11	50	256	19.5
Enos Cabell	1976	35	8	43	222	19.4
Mitchell Page	1977	42	5	47	243	19.3
Bill Buckner	1974	31	13	44	229	19.2
Dan Driessen	1977	31	13	44	230	19.1
Bobby Bonds	1969	45	4	49	258	19
Rod Carew	1973	41	16	57	301	18.9
Tommie Agee	1970	31	15	46	247	18.6
Jose Cardenal	1969	36	6	42	228	18.4
Joe Morgan	1971	40	8	48	264	18.2
Cesar Tovar	1968	35	13	48	268	17.9
Larry Hisle	1976	31	18	49	274	17.9
Phil Garner	1977	32	9	41	233	17.6
Bake McBride	1974	30	11	41	236	17.4
Jose Cardenal	1975	34	12	46	273	16.8
Ralph Garr	1973	35	11	46	276	16.7
Pepe Mangual	1975	33	11	44	268	16.4
Larry Bowa	1976	30	8	38	236	16.1
Rod Carew	1974	38	16	54	338	16
Rod Carew	1975	35	9	44	279	15.8
Sandy Alomar	1971	39	10	49	317	15.5
Roy White	1976	31	13	44	290	15.2
Horace Clarke	1969	33	13	46	306	15
Larry Bowa	1977	32	3	35	243	14.4
Sandy Alomar	1970	35	12	47	329	14.3
Ken Griffey	1976	34	11	45	314	14.3
Bill North	1975	30	12	42	296	14.2
Hank Aaron	1963	31	5	36	256	14.1
Cesar Tovar	1970	30	15	45	319	14.1
Ralph Garr	1971	30	14	44	312	14.1
Tommy Harper	1965	35	6	41	304	13.5
Amos Otis	1970	33	2	35	291	12
	Totals:	7254	2295	9549	36710	26.01%

There are other factors to consider of course, such as teams beginning to build cavernous ballparks with artificial playing surfaces in the mid-1960s and ’70s that supported a quick style of baseball.

Bottom line, though, it’s clear that a significant shift in baseball occurred following the 1962 season. To not credit Wills at least somewhat with this shift seems absurd.

As some of you may have noticed, my website crashed this week and several posts are now missing including my post from Monday that kicked off voting for my annual project on the 50 best baseball players not in the Hall of Fame. I apologize for any inconvenience.

To those of you who’ve voted thus far:

1) Thank you!

2) Your votes are safe and have been automatically inputted into a Google document independent of this site.

To anyone who hasn’t voted, you can vote here and check out the reference ballot here.

As a reminder, all votes for my project are due December 23 by 9 p.m. PST. I’m debating extending voting by a week because of the crash.

More to come.

It’s a short post for Monday, just long enough for me to tell of some new developments around here. This site has existed for almost two years now, and happily, it seems to continue to evolve. This past year has seen a number of new developments, from posts written by people besides myself to regular features to daily postings. Now, a few more things are going to be happening around here.

I’ll list the coming attractions in bullet points, as follows:

• First, I’m going to debut a Friday link post this week where I’ll link to some of my favorite content from other baseball blogs. A lot of blogs do similar-type posts, and I’ve been meaning to have one here for awhile. I’d encourage anyone to send me stuff they’ve read that they consider worthy. I also welcome anyone to email me their own material.
• Also on Fridays, Bill Miller and I will be collaborating on a series for his blog, The On Deck Circle. Bill and I are going to alternate weeks writing about good players on bad teams. I will be writing about players prior to 1961, while Bill will cover 1961 to current day. Bill is going to post the first column this Friday, and we will do it until Opening Day. The articles will be strictly on Bill’s blog, though I’ll have a link to the latest installment of the series each Friday. Of course, Bill and I welcome suggestions on who to write about.
• Starting next Sunday, I will send out a weekly mass email with links to every post on this blog from the past week. I have a few hundred email addresses accrued from comments and emails I’ve received, and I’d like to offer something that serves up the content of this site directly to readers.

Comments and suggestions are welcome and appreciated, as always.

I quit playing Little League when I was 11. I never excelled at baseball as a child, and fifteen years after my final season, some of the things I remember most are that I struck out fairly often, I was a decent outfielder, and maybe once a season, I could hit a fluke triple. I do not trace my favorite childhood experiences to Little League. I treasure memories of going to Candlestick Park, playing epic Wiffle Ball games with my dad in our driveway, and accumulating tons of baseball cards before I understood their value. It’s harder to get nostalgic about mediocrity.

A lot of ballplayers aren’t very good starting out, like Dale Murphy who once said in a book for children, “I’m glad my appetite for trying wasn’t quenched after my first season in Little League when I struck out most of the time. I loved the game and I had fun playing it. I didn’t really realize that I had had a bad season.”

In sixth grade, I had a bad season. My teacher assigned an average of two hours of homework a night to prepare my class for middle school, and while I later aced seventh grade, my passion for playing baseball died. Twice a week in the spring of sixth grade, I sat three out of every six innings on the bench for my team, and it began to seem like a waste of time I needed for homework. I never played another season.

So it was with some excitement and trepidation that I greeted an invitation to join an adult softball team this year. I wondered if I’d be a different player with the strength of a grown man, or if this would merely be a continuance of my crappy childhood career. It turned out to be a little of both.

I still sat the bench about half the time, partly because we were a co-ed team who needed to keep a certain amount of female players on-field, and we had more male players than we knew what to do with. I also still wasn’t a very good hitter, at least early in the season when I struck out swinging a few times, which is embarrassing in a slow-pitch league. For a time this year, it was like I was 11 all over again, and I sometimes resented giving half my Sundays to games or practices. Even as I’m in my 20s and relatively unencumbered, my life is busy.

I’m glad I didn’t quit the softball team. I improved as the season progressed, up to my final at-bat. We were in our tournament elimination game on Sunday, and I came to the plate in the last inning with two outs, our team down 12-9, and the bases loaded. I smacked a two-run single and represented the winning run, though I got stranded at second base, and we lost.

Regardless, it’s the kind of experience that will keep a player coming out. I look forward to next year.

I occasionally write personal entries. Here are a few similar posts:

Baseball cards

Thoughts on George Brett and the glove he inspired

My first baseball game

I grew up in Sacramento, not far from the Old City Cemetery and a parking lot across the street where a Pacific Coast League ballpark once stood. Both places have long since stoked my imagination, so I was excited to hear the local chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research would be sponsoring a baseball-themed cemetery tour on July 24. In fact, I looked forward to it for much of the summer. I expected tons of anecdotes and the chance for me to wax poetic about a graveyard with headstones dating to 1850. But the most interesting things I heard Saturday were among the living.

While we stood under the glaring sun that turns Sacramento into a microwave every summer, listening to a couple of our own talk about 19th century ballplayers buried nearby, a well-dressed woman approached. It was Susan Fornoff, our scheduled speaker for a luncheon to follow the tour. Fornoff covered the Oakland A’s for the Sacramento Bee and is most known for being the first female reporter admitted into locker rooms after games. She wrote a book some years ago, Lady in the Locker Room and said Saturday that a Hollywood producer and screenwriter are developing it and are interested in Katherine Heigl for the lead role. They’re thinking a baseball version of The Devil Wears Prada.

Before Fornoff spoke of this and more, we had the tour. The highlight for me was seeing a new headstone that Sacramento chapter member Alan O’Connor purchased for Billy Newbert, a former California League ballplayer. Newbert played for the Sacramento Altas in the 1880s, later ran a hardware store at 17th and J Street (where a record store stands today) and died in 1944. In researching his 2008 book on Sacramento baseball history, Gold on the Diamond, O’Connor discovered that Newbert lay in an unmarked Old City Cemetery grave. He paid $280 for a flat marble headstone and was later reimbursed by SABR.

Beyond that, I didn’t get much into the tour, which proved short because of our 1 p.m. deadline to be at the restaurant. I’ve been in the cemetery many times, and between the historic section and an adjoining modern half, it can be easy to lose one’s self there. We barely scratched the surface. No one mentioned the most interesting baseball anecdote I know regarding the cemetery: The old ballpark across the street, Edmonds Field was so close that children used to gather amidst the headstones to catch foul balls.

Thereafter, we adjourned to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet walking distance from the cemetery, and Fornoff spoke. She fielded the obligatory questions about being a woman in the locker room, recounting how a man once asked her which player was most-endowed (for contrast, imagine that question being asked to a male beat reporter.) Fornoff said she refused to answer besides to say Reggie Jackson thought he was.

I noticed Fornoff seemed uneasy talking about the locker room in general, so I went in a different direction. In April 2008, I interviewed Jose Canseco, and the former A’s slugger told me his oft-repeated assertion that he was blackballed from baseball. It sounded a little improbable, so I asked Fornoff what she thought. She agreed with Canseco and said Dave Kingman was blackballed, too. Kingman was with Oakland in 1986 when he sent Fornoff a rat in the press box. The A’s let him go thereafter, no team picked him up, and he later won money in a suit against Major League Baseball. Fornoff’s take: “I think baseball can collude pretty easily.”

I asked Fornoff if she’d do an interview here if I read her book. She said she would. I have a stack of baseball books to conquer but will add this one to the queue. In a perfect world, it leads to an interview with Heigl.

Related: More posts about SABR and other clubs that I’m in

I went camping this past weekend near Coloma, California, and on my way back to the Bay Area on Sunday morning, I stopped by my parents’ house in Sacramento and had breakfast with them. I’ve been living near Oakland for a few years, and I don’t see my folks nearly enough. It was great eating my mom’s waffles and drinking out of the Batman mug that I got when I was six. I’ll be 27 in a few weeks but I still insist on using that mug every time I’m at the house.

During breakfast, we talked baseball a bit, and my parents mentioned the Giants’ new policy of charging varying rates on tickets depending on who’s playing. It’s called dynamic pricing, and it basically dictates that the same seats that might cost $6 for a Giants-Marlins game could go for $30 when the Dodgers are in town. I’ve been a Giants fan since about the same time that I got the Batman mug, and I understand people upset about the new pricing structure, though it seems reasonable from a business perspective. Also, remembering my own experience, if I was bringing a kid to a game, I’d rather take them to see the Marlins than shell out extra for the Dodgers. It doesn’t make much difference to a kid.

For all I know about baseball now, I was pretty much clueless the first time I went to a game in August of 1987. My parents and I were visiting family in Seattle, and my Uncle Brett, my dad and I took in a Yankees-Mariners contest at the Kingdome. I had recently turned four, and every half inning, I asked if the game was over and we could go home yet. I mentioned about this in the discussion on dynamic pricing Sunday morning, and my dad said Dave Righetti got the save that game, which led me to find something more.

I’ve recently learned of a Web site called Retrosheet.org, which is considered an essential tool, like Baseball-Reference, for researchers of America’s pastime. Where Baseball-Reference offers season statistics for pretty much any professional ballplayer, Retrosheet is built around providing game info. It has box scores dating back to 1871 and can provide split breakdowns for how any hitter fared versus any pitcher, telling me for instance that Ken Henderson hit .304 lifetime against Bob Gibson (even if Henderson recently told me Gibson was one of the toughest pitchers he faced.)

Using what my dad said about Righetti, I visited Retrosheet on Sunday afternoon, looking for a day in August of 1987 where the Yankee closer got a save at the Kingdome. The only game that fit this description occurred August 18, a 4-3 win for the Yankees. Though I don’t remember, it appears I got a great first game. If I had a time machine, I know I’d enjoy watching Don Mattingly go 3-for-5 and seeing the Mariners almost tie the score in the bottom of the ninth, getting to Righetti for a run. I may not have understood it then, but I value it now.

I occasionally write posts related to my childhood. To read some of them, go here.

As regular readers may know, I joined the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America a few months ago. Duties for club members are fairly light, though one of the things we do is cast token votes on mid-season awards and All Star selections. I’m proud to offer my first ballots:

American League

POSITION/ AWARD	NAME (Last, First)
First Base	Morneau, Justin
Second Base	Cano, Robinson
Third Base	Beltre, Adrian
Shortstop	Jeter, Derek
OF (vote for 3)	Hamilton, Josh; Suzuki, Ichiro; Crawford, Carl
Catcher	Mauer, Joe
DH	Guerrero, Vladimir
Cy Young	Lee, Cliff
MVP	Morneau, Justin
Rookie	Boesch, Brennan
Manager	Maddon, Joe

National League

POSITION/ AWARD	NAME (Last, First)
First Base	Gonzalez, Adrian
Second Base	Prado, Martin
Third Base	Wright, David
Shortstop	Ramirez, Hanley
OF (vote for 3)	Ethier, Andre; Pujols, Albert; Holliday, Matt
Catcher	Olivo, Miguel
DH	Jones, Chipper
Cy Young	Jiminez, Ubaldo
MVP	Jiminez, Ubaldo
Rookie	Heyward, Jason
Manager	Black, Bud

Jones is a sentimental pick at National League DH, and with no third baseman doing anything especially noteworthy in that league, I was almost tempted to give the possibly-retiring Atlanta Brave the start. Beltre gets the nod for resurrecting himself, as does Guerrero, and I was tempted to tab Barry Zito for the same reason, but Jiminez has been simply too amazing, in this, the Year of the Pitcher. Lee may be a consensus choice as AL Cy Young, though if I was simply picking who’d make the All Star start, I’d tab Armando Galarraga to make a statement.

Mostly though, I went off of Wins Above Replacement (WAR) data to determine my picks. I used a Web site I recently learned of called TheBaseballGauge.com, which allows any number of different WAR comparisons, including by position and league. I encourage any fellow baseball geeks to make use of it. It could be the new Baseball-Reference or Retrosheet for fanatical baseball researchers.

IBWAA All Star voting ends Wednesday, June 30, 2010, at 9:00 p.m. PST. Anyone who writes about baseball in any capacity on the Internet is eligible to join (yearly dues are $20) and cast a vote for this, as well as Hall of Fame selections at the end of the year. Email Howard Cole, baseballsavvy@aol.com for more information.