Baseball: Past and Present

Editor’s note: “Any player/Any era” will be up by this evening.
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The 1961 Los Angeles Dodgers’ pennant hopes came to a crashing end on August 16 when they lost both ends of a rare Wednesday evening double dip to the Cincinnati Reds, 6-0 and 8-0.

The defeats were bitter for the Dodgers who had entered the season as favorites based on their roster that included Frank Howard, Maury Wills, Junior Gilliam, the Davis brothers Tommy and Will and Gil Hodges. The mound core included Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale.

But in 1961, the future Hall of Famer hurlers weren’t as effective as one of the great (Brooklyn) Dodgers heroes of all time—Johnny Podres. Koufax and Drysdale had average seasons (for them) of 18-13, 3.52 ERA and 13-10, 3.69. Podres, although he absorbed the second game loss, racked up a 18-5, 3.74 ERA and led the league in winning percentage.

The problem, anticipated by some analysts in their preseason evaluations, was that except for Podres the Dodgers’ stars were past their prime. The Dodgers ended the season 4 games behind the Reds. Coincidentally, the Dodgers dropped both ends of two doubleheaders against Cincinnati—there are the four games.

Podres, who most casual fans associate with his dramatic seventh game 2-0 shutout of the New York Yankees in the 1955 World Series, in reality had a long and productive mound career. Only 23 when he bested the Yankees in the third and seventh games, Podres was the first winner of the Sport Magazine World Series MVP Award which was a red, two-seater Corvette. Sports Illustrated also named Podres its Sportsman of the Year.

During his 15-year career, Podres won 148 games, struck out 1,435, had an 3.64 ERA and threw 24 shutouts in 440 games. Podres saved his best for the World Series. After losing his first decision to the Yankees in 1953, Podres won four straight over the Yankees and Chicago White Sox during the next decade while allowing only 29 hits in 38-1/3 innings with a 2.11 ERA.

After retiring, Podres served as the pitching coach for 13 years for the Boston Red Sox, Minnesota Twins and Philadelphia Phillies. Frank Viola and Curt Schilling credit Podres with their success.

Mercifully, the Pirates 2011 baseball seasons have only a handful of games remaining. I wrote “seasons” because the Pirates have had two distinct halves. For the first 100 games, the Pirates went 53-47 and for a couple of weeks were either in or flirting with first place. Pittsburgh was in a state of baseball induced euphoria. Pirates’ games were sold out; Pirates’ tee shirts and caps were the wardrobe of choice for town locals.

At the All Star Game, the Pirates sent three players, triple its obligatory single representative. Center fielder Andrew McCutchen, starting pitcher Kevin Correia who had notched a league leading 11 wins and lights out closer Joel Hanrahan.

Since the midseason classic, McCutchen is hitting about .200 while Correia, after winning one more game, went on the 60 day disabled list and was lost for the season. As for Hanrahan, there simply weren’t many more save opportunities. Since July 20, the Pirates are 17-46.

The post-All Star Game Pirates are as awful as last year’s 105 game losing Bucco squad. What started out so hopefully in April and May has crashed and burned beyond recognition. Even the most devoted fans can’t bear to watch.

As of Tuesday, the last two games the Pirates played were a dismal Sunday affair in Los Angeles that the team lost 15-1 and a 1-0 defeat in Arizona when Diamondbacks’ ace Ian Kennedy limited the Pirates to two hits while striking out 13.

Speaking of strike outs (which I wish I wasn’t), if watching batters whiff with frightening frequency is your thing, you should become a Pirates fan. Since the ASG, the Pirates have struck out more than any team in baseball; before the break they ranked seventh.

I’ve saved the worst for last. Nothing is more deflating than to see Pedro Alvarez come to the plate. In 2008, Alvarez was the second player chosen in the Major League Baseball Draft and signed a $6.3 million bonus. Last September Alvarez seemed to be on his way when he finished the season by winning the NL Rookie of the Month Award, hitting .311 and leading all Major League rookies with 26 RBIs in his final 27 games.

This year Alvarez, who bounced back and forth between the Pirates and AAA Indianapolis has been, to be kind, a complete bust. As of September 20 Alvarez, in 214 at bats is hitting .189 with 3 home runs and 15 RBIs. Alvarez strikes out about once per every 3 times at the plate. Of the five essential baseball tools—hit for average, hit for power, run, field and throw—Alvarez can only throw, assuming he fields the ball cleanly.

No one really knows what to make of Alvarez. According to some, he’s a tireless worker determined to forge a Hall of Fame career. To others, he’s a surly underachiever. The best thing about Alvarez is that he’s 24 and may yet have a future, although I wouldn’t bet on it.

The 2011 Pirates—so magnificent in the spring and so ugly in late summer– remind me of Alfred Lord Tennyson:

Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

But what does Tennyson know? After all, he was never a Pirates fan.

It all began with David vs. Goliath.  It continued this weekend in Fenway Park, Boston.  David came into town to face the might Goliath in a mismatch of the poor farm boy and bemouth, the haves and have nots, of a team which spends hundreds of millions and can attract almost any free agent they desire, opposed by a team which doesn’t make as much as Boston’s’ infield, has little to no fan interest, and doesn’t have a chance.  Everyone knows this, everyone except it would seem, the Tampa Bay Rays.

Tampa Bay wins with no margin for error.  Their pitching must be solid every game and their defense has to make all the plays.  They don’t win games as a rule out homering the opposition.  They have to be as perfect as possible to have even a chance.

Tampa Bay lost their entire bullpen and All Star left fielder Carl Crawford over the past offseason.  They have Evan Longoria and no other star position players.  They shouldn’t have any hope of making the playoffs given their low budget and the fact that they play in the nastiest division in baseball.  Not only do they have to contend with the Boston Red Sox machine, but also those true beasts of baseball, season after season, the New York Yankees.

The Boston Red Sox, like the New York Yankees, can address any need they might have or that might come up during the season, simply by opening their check book.  They have made some signings in the past which didn’t work out but can shrug them off and sign another star.  With such a large margin for error, life is much easier.

But teams such as Tampa Bay should have no business contending, especially in the AL East.  That they have done so for the past three seasons is all the more remarkable.

One factor which, ironically, has helped Tampa Bay, is their season after season of mediocrity.  This enabled them to have high draft choices and many of them.  There is no other means of survival for Tampa Bay as their indifferent fan base and lack of salary at the big league level.

Boston, though, because of their recent success, has not had this “luxury”.  Although their farm system has been productive, the opportunity to draft future stars has not often been there.  They must draft with an eye to filling holes in their minor league system and/or using their young players as trade material for any holes needing filling at the big league level.

As has been proven over the years, draft picks, more often than not, do not make an impact at the major league level.  Tampa Bay in past seasons had to draft and sign as many players as possible, hoping that through sheer numbers, a star will emerge.  Their scouting must be perfect.  There is no room for error.

Both teams have excellent managers.  Both have different styles, possible based on their personnel.  I’m certain John Madden would love to sit back and wait for the big homerun.  I’m certain Terry Francona would be perfectly capable of playing little ball.

Joe Maddon has a team which isn’t expected to compete, even with their success over the past three seasons.  He makes them believe that they will win.  He doesn’t believe he is David.  He believes he is Goliath.  If Maddon loses a star player, he replaces him with three average players.  He knows how to take advantage of what a player can give him and doesn’t use him in a situation he will likely fail.

Terry Francona must juggle veterans with their egos.  He must know when to sooth and when to scold.  He must make his team dig a little harder when a star is injured. He must let his players work out a slump and stick with them despite the cries from the press.

Two completely different teams who are, on paper, far apart in ability and potential.  A series like this weekend’s makes baseball watching in September worthwhile.  After all, who would have bet on David but those who had lost all hope or the eternal optimist throwing his last gold coin down on the table?

As anyone who’s been waiting on content for a day may have surmised, my interview that was scheduled for Thursday got pushed back. I just did it now, and it went well. I have a few things I need to do, but I anticipate the interview should be up sometime this afternoon or evening.

What he did: Abbott might be the best player without four full limbs ever to play in the majors. Others have accomplished this feat, including Pete Gray, the St. Louis Browns’ one-armed outfielder in 1945 and Bert Shepard, a one-legged POW who pitched 5.1 innings for the Washington Senators in August that year. Abbott’s interesting, though, for having a 10-season career in peacetime, going 18-11 with a 2.89 ERA for the California Angels in 1991 at his best and hurling a no-hitter two years later. I suspect if Abbott had played during World War II, when the talent-depleted majors welcomed those who couldn’t serve, the one-armed man would have fared ever greater.

Era he might have thrived in: In real life, Abbott parlayed college heroics at the University of Michigan and a gold medal turn for the US baseball team in the 1988 Summer Olympics into a 1989 debut at 21 for the Angels. This might suggest a Bob Feller-like entrance into the majors of the late 1930s, assuming teams of that era wouldn’t be scared off by Abbott’s stump right forearm. Given that the big leagues were pretty hard-up for pitching in those days, it might not be an issue. Regardless, Abbott’s services would be needed after Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Why: Admittedly, World War II wasn’t like World I for baseball, when the sport was ruled a non-essential industry and a number of stars saw combat, Grover Cleveland Alexander returning shell-shocked and former New York Giants captain Eddie Grant dying in France. All the same, a significant number of ballplayers served in the Second World War from Ted Williams to Joe DiMaggio to Hank Greenberg. Feller even completed a decorated tour of duty on a battleship in the South Pacific, running laps on-deck in between Japanese air attacks to stay in shape.

What remained in the majors was a motley sight, and teams did the best they could to remain competitive. The Cincinnati Reds started 15-year-old Joe Nuxhall in 1944, the St. Louis Cardinals held open tryouts with their farm system decimated, and Bill Veeck supposedly talked of buying the Philadelphia Phillies and filling the roster with Negro League stars before his plans were scuttled by Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Approaching the 1945 World Series, Chicago sportswriter Warren Brown was asked if he thought the Cubs or the Detroit Tigers would win, to which he replied, “I don’t think either of them can.”

The stage would have been primed for someone like Abbott, whose arm would almost certainly have made him 4-F for draft registration status and exempt from military service (men with this classification as well as a cadre of aging stars like Jimmie Foxx, Paul Waner, and Carl Hubbell kept baseball going during World War II.) In a wartime majors that boasted plenty of starting pitchers with names virtually unrecognizable today, I’m guessing Abbott would have outshined the likes of Ted Wilks, Monk Dubiel, and Nels Potter. On a good club, Abbott would likely have more wins than he managed during his career, and regardless, I imagine he’d put up gaudier non-team-dependent statistics.

Would Abbott have a better legacy? I don’t know. Gray and Shepard seem to mostly exist in baseball history as oddities, men who made their mark in unusual circumstances. But strong stats trump all, and assuming Abbott had them, I doubt he’d just be some punchline.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Others in this series: Albert Pujols, Babe Ruth, Bad News Rockies,Barry Bonds, Billy Martin, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson,Bobby Veach, Carl Mays, Charles Victory Faust, Chris von der Ahe,Denny McLain, Dom DiMaggio, Eddie Lopat, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, Gavvy Cravath, George Case, George Weiss, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Honus Wagner, Hugh Casey, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jackie Robinson, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Posnanski, Johnny Antonelli, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Lefty Grove, Lefty O’Doul, Major League (1989 film),Matty Alou, Michael Jordan, Monte Irvin, Nate Colbert, Paul Derringer, Pete Rose, Prince Fielder, Ralph Kiner, Rick Ankiel, Rickey Henderson,Roberto Clemente, Rogers Hornsby, Sam Crawford, Sam Thompson,Sandy Koufax, Satchel Paige, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Vada Pinson, Wally Bunker, Will Clark, Willie Mays

Almost exactly 50 years ago, Sandy Koufax pitched the last Dodgers game played in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. On September 20, 1961 Koufax bested the Chicago Cubs, with its lineup that included three future Hall of Famers (Richie Ashburn, Billy Williams and Ernie Banks), 3-2. The three Cubs went a collective two for 15.

During the 13 inning game Koufax, who didn’t allow a hit after the eighth inning, struck out 15 batters. According to pioneer baseball statistician Alan Roth, Koufax, threw 205 pitches.

The pitch count debate has been covered exhaustively both here, on other baseball sites, and by experts far more knowledgeable than me. Still, every time I read examples like the Koufax game and compare it to today, I scratch my head.

The mystery is compounded if your favorite team is, like my Pittsburgh Pirates, pitching-challenged.

When the season began, the Pirates announced its five man starting rotation: Paul Maholm, Kevin Correia, Craig Morton, Jeff Karstens and James McDonald.

About a month ago, Maholm and Correia’s seasons ended. They went on the disabled list with arm ailments. Morton and Karstens avoided the DL but skipped starts to preserve their tired arms. Only McDonald has survived the year. In 29 starts, however, he averages a mere 5 plus innings per outing.

Ross Ohlendorf, who went on the DL in April with shoulder problems, was called up from the minors to fill in for Maholm. In three starts, his ERA is 8.03. The line from Ohlendorf’s last outing: 2 IP, 10 H, 6 ER.

Today’s pitcher has conditioning coaches, skilled trainers, better facilities, video breakdown of each pitch and dieticians to monitor their calorie intake. But, despite it all, too many pitchers can’t get out of the fifth inning. Sure there are exceptions like the Phillies Roy Halladay and the Yankees CC Sabathia. But the majority of them fall into the same underperforming category as the Pirates pitchers. They struggle to get to the elusive, six inning “quality start” level.

On Tuesday night, Karstens made his first start since August 27. One of his broadcast booth buddies asked Pirates pitching great and color commentator Steve Blass if he was ever worn out by September. Blass said he always looked forward to ending strong. To Blass, September represented a chance to “pick up two or three more wins.” As far as he could remember, Blass said, he “never had arm fatigue.”

Anatomy hasn’t changed since Koufax, Robin Roberts, Warren Spahn and numerous other Hall of Fame pitchers routinely ranked up 300 innings a year. So what’s the explanation?

Beats me. I’ve posed a question without offering an answer or even suggesting a solution—unfair for a journalist to do. The easiest may be just to realize that baseball today is an altogether different game than it was decades ago—and, much less of one.

Roger Kahn: I’ve had good luck interviewing baseball writers for this site, with me getting to talk to Joe Posnanski, Rob Neyer, and Josh Wilker among others. Kahn’s another big name, most known perhaps for The Boys of Summer, but interesting in other respects as well. Besides embarking on an ill-fated autobiography project with Pete Rose years ago and being present when former Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis said on national television that blacks lacked the capabilities to manage, Kahn wrote beautifully about the 1987 suicide of his son.

Michael Lewis: I met the “Moneyball” author once or twice when I was covering Triple-A baseball in 2004, and more recently, one of my friends was a nanny for his family. I asked my friend awhile back to put me in contact with Lewis, and I may ask again at some point.

Will Clark: My all-time favorite player.

Jim Bouton: After the latest update to Ball Four was released last year, I contemplated making a trip from Northern California to see Bouton speak near Los Angeles. My car died shortly thereafter so it’s probably good I abandoned my plans.

Murray Chass: Sure he’s the Lord Voldemort of the baseball blogosphere, his Web site an emphatic “Fuck you” to the rest of us, though that’s part of the reason I’m interested in talking to Chass and listening to what he has to say. I’d like to understand where the former New York Times baseball columnist comes from, if he’s operating from resentment and entitlement, or if something else is fueling his fires.

Bill James: If Chass is Voldemort, I suppose James is Aldus Dumbledore, a beloved figure of the baseball research world. While I admit I haven’t read James’ Abstracts, and I consider myself more of a historian than a researcher or sabrmetrician, I’d still love a chance to pick James’ brain. I’m waiting on my owl.

Sean Forman: Forman runs Baseball-Reference.com, and I wanted to get him to vote in my project last year on the 50 greatest players not in the Hall of Fame. Forman didn’t get to my email in time to take part, though he wrote back after, wishing me well in writing career.

Bob Uecker: Honestly, I don’t know if I’d rather interview Uecker or the character he played in the Major League films, announcer Harry Doyle, though I’m guessing it would be entertaining either way. And as I learned from talking to former San Francisco Giants announcer Hank Greenwald, broadcasters can be awesome interviews, able to talk at length and speak without the “umms” and “ahs” that plague us ordinary folk.

Rickey Henderson: Gotta love a player who might do his interview in the third person.

Roger Angell: Angell has provided beautiful baseball essays to The New Yorker for years, and at a week shy of his 91st birthday as of this writing, he’s the oldest man on this list. Still, he wouldn’t be the oldest person I’ve interviewed, and some of the 90-plus-year-olds I’ve talked to like Sacramento Solons owner Fred David and Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Art Mahan have been awesome experiences.

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All this being said, I have an interview scheduled for Thursday afternoon with someone not on this list. He’s a well-known baseball name in his own right and has been a supporter of this site. The interview should also be somewhat timely. Stay tuned….

We, as human beings, are always trying, at least subconsciously, to avoid thinking about the end of our days. Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, a grim and terrible reminder of just how fragile and fleeting our existence here on earth really is. More times than not, it’s simply a matter of good luck or bad and any second could be our last. That’s why we all need distractions. If we thought about our collective fates, suicide might become a viable option. We all need something to hang onto.

For many of us, sports, and more specifically baseball, is that distraction. How else could one explain our passion? It is, after all, only a game which makes a lucky few millionaires and set for life. Sure we all complain about salaries and rightly proclaim that no one is worth that much money. We often complain about ticket prices, concession prices and paying $12 for parking. But we still go to the games.

We often live and die with our team and if they win it all, we feel as if we have won something as well. When our team plays poorly we vow to stay at home instead and watch something else, anything else. But we still go to the games and each spring brings new hope however ridiculous.

We argue over statistics and which player is better and many of us read the disgusting details of the sport’s cheaters. We argue over who should or should not be in the Hall of Fame and who should be the MVP and CY Young winners each season.

The season seems to zip by and the offseason seems to last forever. Then suddenly that first pitch of spring training has arrived life begins to make sense once again. There is nothing to compare to opening day and the World Series is often more like the world serious.

Each of us remember where we were on that terrible day ten years ago and even for those of us who did not lose a loved one or a dear friend, the terror we felt changed our lives forever. The horrors of parts of the world beyond our borders knocked loudly and suddenly on our door, a door which before we could leave unlocked and still feel safe in our beds at night. Life seemed to stop and nothing made any sense. Nowhere felt safe.

Even baseball stopped. It had to. We couldn’t at that moment live with our distraction. Baseball seemed pointless and useless and it seemed disrespectful to care about a game when so many had lost their lives. Discussing who was better or how we had lost a game had lost all meaning. It seemed more trivial than at any other time in our lives.

I thought back to what our fathers and mothers and their fathers and mothers might have been thinking during the Second World War when death could come at any moment and often did. Yet the president at the time insisted that baseball continue. He realized that people needed something to cheer about, something to distract them. They needed something else to think about and talk about.

But baseball did come back after a brief respite. It didn’t seem as important as it once had but it gave us all something to hold onto, something which gradually let us believe that despite the 9/11 attacks, those responsible couldn’t take away our way of life and our feeling of well being. Life would indeed continue even with the changes we were forced to make. The sun would come up the next day and the enormous sacrifices made by those who perished that day would never be forgotten. We just wouldn’t think about them each and every day. But we wouldn’t forget them either amidst our distractions and passions. They were and are, after all, part of who we are.

By the time Herb Score took the mound on September 24, 1955 to face the Tigers in the night cap of a doubleheader in Detroit, the Cleveland Indians season was over. The defending American League champions finished second, 3 games behind the hated New York Yankees. But Rookie of the Year Score, who along with the Yankees “Bullet” Bob Turley was one of the eras great power pitchers, dominated the Tigers. That afternoon, Score notched his 16th victory with a masterful 8-2 victory. Score’s pitching line: 9 IP, 7H, 0 ER, 2 BB and 9Ks.  The Indians swept the doubleheader by taking the night cap, 7-0 Score finished his year with a 16-10 record, a 2.85 ERA and 245 strike outs. The following year Score was even better: 20-9, 2.53 with 263 strike outs. To the delight of manager and former catcher Al Lopez, Score reduced his walks from 154 to 129 and his hits per nine-inning ratio to 5.85.

When Score was at the peak of his too brief career, Boston Red Sox  owner Tom Yawkey offered the Indians $1 million cash for the fire balling lefty. At the time, that was an unheard of sum to be paid to a baseball player—or for that matter, anyone else. The Indians turned Yawkey down cold.

After Score’s sensational 1955 season his career took a bad turn. In an infamous incident, a line drive off the Yankees’ Gil McDougald’s bat struck Score’s eye. Then during Score’s comeback effort, he injured his arm. During the next five seasons with the Indians and the Chicago White Sox, Score won only 19 games.

In an interview years after he retired, Score said:

The last couple of years I pitched, I was terrible. I just couldn’t put it all together anymore. I went back to the minor leagues for a while and tried it there. Some people asked me why I went back to the minor leagues; they felt I was humiliating myself. But I never felt humiliated. There was no disgrace in what I was doing. The disgrace would have been in not trying.

After retiring Score became an Indians’ broadcaster and announced Cleveland’s radio and television games for nearly 30 years. In 1998, while driving to Florida after being inducted into the Broadcasters Hall of Fame, Score was severely injured in a head on collision with a tractor trailer and spent more than a month in intensive care. But Score recovered in time to throw out the Indians’ Opening Day pitch in 1999.

In 2008 Score, after a long illness, died at his home in Rocky River, Ohio.This Sports Illustrated cover is how I remember him.
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“Double the fun” is a Friday feature here that looks at one notable doubleheader in baseball history each week.