Baseball: Past and Present

What he did: I’ll preface this by saying today’s piece isn’t about Billy Martin the player. Had he not played the majority of his career on the New York Yankees of the 1950s or been Mickey Mantle’s running partner those glory years, I doubt Martin would be much remembered for anything he did prior to becoming a manager. But his 16 years as a skipper more than made up for it, and Martin might be the best manager not in the Hall of Fame. He’s also one who could have done more, had he not died at 61 in a drunk driving accident on Christmas Day 1989.

Era he might have thrived in: Today’s piece isn’t about transplanting Martin to a different era. It’s about considering what he might have done if instead of dying at the end of the ’80s, one of baseball’s most notorious drinkers had gone to rehab or found another way to quit drinking. Sober, Martin might have done good things in baseball in the 1990s and beyond. With 80-year-old Jack McKeon just agreeing to manage the Florida Marlins, there’s a chance even that Martin would still be in the majors today at 83.

Why: Martin was good, underrated even. He was feisty, known for disputing calls on obscure technicalities, and notorious for getting fired by Yankee owner George Steinbrenner five times. Bottom line, Martin won wherever he went. In 16 years as a manager with five teams, he had just three losing seasons, going 2,267-1,253 overall with a World Series title and two pennants. And he did all this barely working past his 60th birthday.

Baseball’s an interesting sport in that good managers sometimes retire relatively early. Earl Weaver was 56 when he quit the Baltimore Orioles for good. Dick Williams managed the Oakland A’s to consecutive World Series championships in the early 1970s, got the San Diego Padres a pennant a decade later, and was out of baseball at 59. Joe McCarthy, who never had a losing season, quit managing at 63 and lived another 28 years. So perhaps Martin wasn’t long for the game, regardless of his fate in life.

But plenty of managers have lasted in baseball into their senior years, from Connie Mack to Casey Stengel to Felipe Alou. Sober, Martin would have been an interesting addition to their ranks, perhaps more sedate, less defiant, more secure. Imagine Martin sitting calmly in a dugout, less likely to brawl with one of his players or a marshmallow salesman after hours. It boggles the mind. Martin probably would have stood a better chance of sticking longer with one team, less likely to burn bridges and self-destruct.

What teams might Martin have benefited? My guess is that any number of clubs might have welcomed him. Here’s one that would have been interesting: the Moneyball A’s. Granted, Martin would have been pushing 70 by the time Billy Beane ushered in Oakland’s strategy of searching for any new competitive advantage as a small market club. But I’d like to think a scrappy man who spent a lifetime fighting would have been ideal to lead those A’s. And Martin had a couple winning seasons in Oakland in the early ’80s with Rickey Henderson and, essentially, some spare parts.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that there are no second acts in American lives, and while I doubt that statement holds true for everyone, it’s apt for Martin. It’s a shame he didn’t live longer or conquer his demons. With his wealth of baseball knowledge and experience, he could have had an interesting final chapter as something of a sage. It goes without saying he’d also probably have his spot in Cooperstown today.

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, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson, Carl Mays, Charles Victory Faust, 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, 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, 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 Thompson, Sandy Koufax, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Wally Bunker, Willie Mays

If I were to given my choice of any sporting event I could watch in person, without hesitation I would opt for the College World Series.

The young amateur players are more fundamentally sound than major leaguers and Omaha’s ambiance offers up a slice of Americana that has all but faded away. Absent are the whining multimillionaires who can’t field, pitch or hit—at least not at a level consistent with their incomes.

This week and next, the CWS holds its championship games with the University of California Bears making a surprise appearance in the final eight. Cal beat Texas A&M 7-3 on Wednesday to improve to 1-1 in the final, double-elimination portion of the tournament.

Only a few months ago, the chances of Cal even fielding a team were slim. Last September, the university announced that baseball would be one of four varsity sports dropped from the 2011-2012 season because of budget constraints. Other sports eliminated were men’s and women’s gymnastics, men’s rugby and women’s lacrosse. The university projected that the cuts would save $4 million including the salaries of 13 full time coaches.

But within a week of the announcement, parents, alumni and former players held a meeting at Berkeley’s Evans Diamond to develop a reinstatement strategy. What evolved was a $10 million fund raising effort, much of it through an Internet website foundation, that kept the Bears on the field.

The team rewarded the alumni with one of its most memorable seasons in the program’s 118-year history. Cal qualified for its first trip to the CWS in 19 years after the Bears scored four runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to win the final of the Houston Regional.  Then, Cal swept Dallas Baptist University in the Super Regional during a series in Santa Clara played in front of sellout crowds made up of hundreds of the original donors.

Cal’s players made sure the organizers know how appreciative they are. Although many had tentative plans to transfer to another university, once the money came rolling in they concentrated on baseball.

Pac-10 Player of the Year and sophomore second baseman Tony Renda said: “They are the reason we are still here. I’m forever grateful for them pledging all their money to save us. They’re on my mind. We have our team on the field, but they’re on our team, too. They’re Cal baseball like we are.”

The alumni may have unwittingly created a template for other college baseball teams to liberate themselves from the clutches of their university athletic departments. Before launching its fund raising efforts, the alumni consulted with the San Francisco Giants and other successful NCAA teams to learn what would lure more paying fans to Bears’ games.

Some of the solutions like installing lights for night games and operating in a mode of constantly cold calling for donations were obvious. Cal also copied Texas A&M, another CWS finalist, and allowed local restaurants to sell food before games in exchange for a fee.

The Bears talked the Giants into hosting a three-day baseball classic at AT & T Park that included games against Rice University, Long Beach State and Louisiana-Lafayette.

The CWS has blossomed into a prime-time ESPN event that makes it slightly less appealing to me. The old Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium has been razed in favor of the TD Ameritrade Park.

If the CWS grows much bigger, I’ll have to set my sights on a Cape Cod League game where they’re still using wooden bats.

In last week’s column I discussed the problems with the rumoured Major League baseball alignment plans and how I thought realignment for money or to increase competitiveness and give struggling teams a better (I believe the words being used by baseball are fairness and increased attendance) shouldn’t be THE motivating factor.

But equal opportunity usually runs in cycles. One division can be strong for many years potentially leaving a team with a record better than a rival division winner out of the playoffs and sitting on the sidelines watching on television. Baseball’s luxury tax and the wild card were introduced in an attempt to rectify the perceived large market vs. small market problem. Certainly to some extent that has worked.

But if interleague play is here to stay and realignment and more playoffs are inevitable, I suggest Major League Baseball end piecemeal solutions and go all the way. Of course there are problems with any suggestion and mine is probably far from perfect but let’s have some fun with this shall we?

Let’s combine both leagues and have four divisions based on geographical locations as much as possible.

East: Yankees, Mets, Blue Jays, RedSox, Orioles, Nationals, Phillies

North: Tigers, Indians, Twins, Whitesox, Cubs, Brewers, Reds, Pirates

South: Marlins, Astros, Rangers, Royals, Cardinals, Rays, Braves

West: Mariners, Giants, A’s, Padres, Angels, Dodgers, Rockies, Diamondbacks

There are some built in rivalries in this proposal which address the most popular interleague games (Cubs-Whitesox, Yankees-Mets, Indians-Reds, Astros-Rangers) and maybe some new and potentially popular ones. Some divisions would be stronger than others but again, that is an ebb and flow situation over the course of many seasons.

I haven’t decided how the scheduling would go (I don’t like balanced as it defeats the purpose of divisions while others would argue that the only fair scheduling is each team playing each other the same amount of games). An unbalanced schedule would greatly cut down on travel but limit exposure from a fans point of view. I’m no mathematician either.

In this scenario, the playoffs would have the top two teams in each division meeting in the playoffs, East No. 1 vs. West No. 2 and East No. 2 vs. West No. 1 and so on or something similar. The first place team would have home field advantage during round one. Each series would be best of seven. Trim the regular season to 154 games.

Of course, a realignment this radical could see the World Series being played between two teams previously in the same league but chances are these teams met in the regular season anyway.

It might play havoc with the traditional league records but interleague play sort of does that now anyway to a lesser degree.

The All-Star game could be something like East and West vs. North and South.

Such a realignment would also necessitate the awarding of only one MVP and one CY Young, one Rookie of the Year and one Manager of the Year. In the old days, that’s how it was done. Might be the only solution.

A decision would have to be made concerning the DH. Here’s what I would do. I read this idea somewhere a few years ago and I still think it’s an interesting one. Keep the DH but change its usage in the following manner. The pitchers would bat as in the NL but once a game, a pitcher could be pinch hit for without having to leave the game. This would mean that the DH became strategically important and would allow a manager to leave his ace starter in late during a tight game.

Keeping in mind that I am a staunch traditionalist, (no DH, interleague, wild card etc.), I am starting to think that there is a time to put tradition to bed. After all, I own an mp3 player, I download cds and I sold my turntable. The heck with what few traditions remain?

Perhaps this solution will make baseball too similar to other sports. Perhaps it would cause more problems than it would solve. But it’s just an ideal.
 

As a major league ballplayer, Gene Mauch was a reserve middle infielder in the 1940s and ’50s with a career .239 batting average. Following his forgettable playing career, he found his niche in baseball as a manager. Beginning with the Phillies in 1960, Mauch was employed as a major league field general almost continuously until the late 1980s, including 22 full seasons and parts of four others. A no-nonsense leader, he was respected equally by his players and opponents, and he was an unapologetic proponent of small-ball.

The sacrifice bunt is a tool that has its place. Advancing a runner with a bunt is a productive out, and whether by the bunt, the sac fly, or hitting behind the runner, productive outs have traditionally been viewed as an important part of a winning baseball strategy. However, the indiscriminate use of any tool (a scalpel, for example, or even a peppermill) can have disastrous consequences.

Mauch had an inordinate affection for the sacrifice. In the “get ‘em on, get ‘em over, get ‘em in” world of baseball, he was the king of get ‘em over. In his 14 full seasons as an NL manager, Mauch’s Philadelphia and Montreal teams led the league in sacrifice bunts seven times (including one tie). Only one Mauch-led team failed to finish fourth or better in sacrifice hits, and that team was the 1969 Expos. The expansion Expos finished 11th in the NL in OBP, so they can be excused for not bunting more. You have to get ‘em on to get ‘em over.

If you think that Mauch’s NL teams bunted a lot, check out his AL teams. In eight full seasons as an AL manager, his teams led the league seven times. Some years they didn’t just lead the league, they blew it away. During the DH era, NL teams generally produce about twice as many sacrifice bunts as AL teams, with pitchers accounting for slightly less than half of NL sacrifices. In the 38 years of the DH era, an AL team has led the majors in sacrifices only four times, and Mauch was responsible for two of those. His 1979 Twins produced 142 sacrifice hits, well ahead of AL second-leading California with 79 and NL-leading San Diego with 113. In 1982 Mauch’s Angels led the majors with 114. Cleveland was second in the AL with 74, and the Dodgers led the NL with 106.

Mauch last managed in 1987, just about the time that major league baseball embarked on an extended period of hitter domination. During the 1990s, bunting became less frequent, probably driven by two forces, the rise in scoring and the rise of sabermetrics. Bunting becomes a less critical strategy in high-scoring games (why scratch for one run when your team might have to score six or seven to win the game?). Meanwhile, sabermetric analysis has indicated that the benefit of so-called productive outs is limited. It’s better to take your chances trying to advance a runner with a base hit, rather than hand your opponent one of the 27 outs it will need to win the game, or so we are told by sabermetricians. To be fair, the decline in sacrifice bunting since 1990 has not been dramatic (about 20%), indicating that bunting remains an important strategic element of the major league game. Nonetheless, there are some recent extreme examples of non-use of the bunt. The 2003 Toronto Blue Jays had 11 sacrifice hits, and the 2005 Texas Rangers had only nine.

Gene Mauch had a long managerial career, but most of it was with less than stellar clubs. He is the winningest manager never to have taken a team to the World Series, coming close only a few times. His 1964 Phillies collapsed late in the season and finished one game behind St. Louis, and two of his 1980s Angels teams won their division but lost the ALCS. Otherwise, his Philadelphia, Montreal and Minnesota teams mostly struggled. While there is little team success to show for Mauch’s strict adherence to small-ball, in my view, it would be an unfair criticism 24 years after his retirement and six years after his death to say that he flashed the bunt sign too often. However, if Mauch were alive today and managing in the major leagues, it would be worth noting whether he would be as devoted to the bunt as he was during the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. And if so, it would be interesting to see the extent of criticism he would endure from sports media and sabermetric-savvy bloggers for pursuing his small-ball strategy.

When Fred Haney took over the Milwaukee Braves’ reins from Charlie Grimm on June 17, 1956, the former Pittsburgh Pirates skipper must have thought he had died and gone to heaven. What a starting rotation Haney had to chose from: Warren Spahn (20-11), Lew Burdette (19-10) and Bob Buhl (18-8). The fourth and fifth starters, Ray Crone and Gene Conley were not as outstanding but could be counted on to turn in solid outings.

Haney’s starting lineup included Henry Aaron, Eddie Mathews, Bill Bruton and one of the most feared batters of his era, Joe Adcock. The first games Haney managed were a doubleheader in Ebbets Field against the Brooklyn Dodgers. Although Grimm started the Braves off with a lackluster 22-24 record, when Haney took over Milwaukee was locked in a season long, fierce first place battle with the Dodgers.

Haney immediately ended Grimm’s practice of platooning the right handed Adcock and inserted his name in both ends of the double dip against Carl Erskine and Don Newcombe.

In the first game, Adcock blasted two homers, one off Erskine and a second game winning, ninth inning smash off relief pitcher Ed Roebuck that landed after clearing the 83-foot left field wall. Adcock was the only slugger to accomplish this feat. In the nightcap, Adcock touched up Newcombe for this third home run of the afternoon.

Adcock’s line for the day: AB: 7; R: 3; H: 4, RBIs: 4.

Brooklyn fans remember, with dismay, how Adcock feasted on Dodger pitching. On July 31, 1954, Adcock accomplished the rare feat of homering four times in a single game, against the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field, and set a new record for most total bases in a game (18) that stood until broken by Shawn Green in 2002.

Although he ended his career with more than respectable stats, (.277 batting average, 336 home runs and 1,122 RBIs, Adcock’s more famous teammates and other slugging National League slugging first basemen like Ted Kluszewski and Gil Hodges overshadowed him.

In addition to the Braves, Adcock played for the Cincinnati Reds, the Cleveland Indians and the Los Angeles Angels. A two-time All Star selection, Adcock was a part of the 1957 World Series winning Braves.

After an unsuccessful one year stint managing the Indians and two more years managing in the minor leagues, Adcock retired to his 288-acre ranch in Coushatta, LA. to raise horses. Adcock died in 1999 at age 71.

“Double the fun” is a Friday feature here that looks at one famous doubleheader each week.

What he did: Ankiel’s is a story in three parts. He started as a phenom pitching prospect for the St. Louis Cardinals (“here was Sandy Koufax,” Buzz Bissinger wrote of an 18-year-old Ankiel in 3 Nights in August.) Then came an inexplicable collapse in the 2000 playoffs, as Ankiel suddenly and permanently lost his ability to throw strikes. He bounced between the majors and the minors for the next several years before resurrecting himself as an outfielder in 2007.  He’s had some ups and downs and is on his fourth team in three years, though Ankiel at least has a spot with the Washington Nationals.

Another left hander made the transition from the pitching mound to the outfield in the Cardinal organization decades prior, albeit with much greater success. I wonder if Ankiel had followed Stan Musial’s career path, he might be something more than a 31-year-old journeyman today.

Era he might have thrived in: Musial could do everything except throw because of a shoulder injury that ended his pitching career before it ever really began. Ankiel would come with a cannon arm and power hitting good enough to net him 25 home runs in 2008. He doesn’t offer much speed, which the St. Louis farm system placed a premium on at the beginning of Musial’s career, though the team made exceptions occasionally for men like Johnny Mize and Joe Medwick. Perhaps Ankiel could join their ranks.

Why: I don’t mean to slight Musial, who might be the most underrated player in baseball history. Stan the Man put together a Hall of Fame career in the relative obscurity of St. Louis, and prior to this, he worked hard transforming himself in the minors into a position player. He went 18-5 as a pitcher in the Florida State League in 1940 and played the outfield between starts, hitting .311 in 405 at-bats. By the time of his shoulder injury that August, it was already apparent to Musial’s bush manager Dickie Kerr and Cardinal general manager Branch Rickey that his future was in the outfield.

Thing is, I question how much of Musial’s success was due to natural talent, how much was due to hard work, and how much can be attributed to playing in Rickey’s farm system, one of baseball’s greatest. Would Stan Musial have been Stan Musial had he come up as a Pittsburgh Pirate or New York Yankee, two teams he wanted to sign with? Would he have become a lifetime .331 hitter had he not hurt his arm? Retired scout Ronnie King said Musial’s hitting abilities wouldn’t have shown without the injury. “If you get a left hander and a 20-game winner, you’re going to make him pitch,” King told me.

I wrote here recently about how I believe so much of baseball success comes down to being in the right place at the right time, and for Musial, it was getting optioned to Daytona in 1940 after a couple fruitless years in the minors, making a deep Cardinal team at the onset of World War II, and managing to play through most of the conflict because of his large number of dependents. The second world war benefited no baseball player like it benefited Musial, and I question if Ankiel could have had similar success in his circumstances.

There’s another possibility here, too, the chance that Ankiel never loses his equilibrium on the mound, pitching for a better club in a talent-depleted majors. Maybe Ankiel does big things as a young hurler for the ’42 Cardinals who won 106 games and the World Series without, get this, any Hall of Fame pitchers. He’d just need something to get out of military duty.

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, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson, Carl Mays, Charles Victory Faust, 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, 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, Matty Alou, Michael Jordan, Monte Irvin, Nate Colbert, Paul Derringer, Pete Rose, Prince Fielder, Ralph Kiner, Rickey Henderson, Roberto Clemente, Rogers Hornsby, Sam Thompson, Sandy Koufax, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Wally Bunker, Willie Mays

The Brooklyn Robins’ Babe Herman was an outstanding hitter but his fielding was, to put it mildly, suspect. Try as he might, Robins’ manager Wilber Robinson could not hide Herman’s defensive liabilities. In 1927, as a first baseman, Herman led the league in errors. Then in 1928 and 1929, he topped the league in errors committed by a right fielder.

Herman’s ineptitude lead teammate Fresco Thompson to comment: “He wore a glove for one reason: because it was a league custom.”

A base running gaffe Herman committed in his rookie year has put him down in history as the only man who doubled into a double play. During an Ebbets Field game on August 15, 1926, with none out and the bases loaded Herman tried to stretch a double off the right field wall into a triple. Chick Fewster, who had been on first, tried to advance to third but that base was already occupied by Dazzy Vance who had started from second base. Vance, caught in a rundown, tried to dash back to third. Since Herman had not watched the play in front of him, the three runners ended up at third base. Third baseman Eddie Taylor tagged all of them to be sure of getting as many outs as possible.

Recounting the incident to the Glory of Their Times author Lawrence Ritter, pitcher Rube Bressler said: “The third baseman didn’t know what to do so he tagged all three of them. And the umpire hesitated trying to decide which of these two guys are out and which one is safe. Rather an unusual situation, doesn’t exactly come up every day and they started arguing about who’s what.”

According to the rules, the slow footed Vance was entitled to the base, so umpire Beans Reardon called Herman and Fewster out.

Scribes pounced on Herman and wrote that for the first time in baseball history, a batter had doubled into a double play. In his own defense, Herman complained that no one congratulated him for driving in the winning run. When Babe got his hit Hank DeBerry was on third, Vance on second and Fewster on first. DeBerry scored.

Long suffering Dodgers fans created a running joke: First fan: “The Dodgers have 3 men on base!” Second fan: “Oh, yeh? Which base?”

Throughout his career, Herman was prone to the most egregious errors on the base paths. On two occasions in 1930— May 30 against the Philadelphia Phillies and September 15 versus the Cincinnati Reds—Herman stopped to watch a home run while running the bases and was passed by the hitter, thereby changing the homer to a single.

Not only was Herman a defensive liability, he was one of baseball’s slowest runners. On September 20, 1931 Herman  was thrown out attempting to steal second base steal a base against the St. Louis Cardinals, even though opposing catcher was 48-year-old Cardinals manager Gabby Street, appearing in his first game (as an emergency substitute) since 1912.

For his various mistakes, pitcher Vance dubbed Herman “the Headless Horseman of Ebbets Field”.

Herman ended his major league career with a .324 batting average, 1818 hits, 181 home runs, 997 RBI, 882 runs, 399 doubles, 110 triples and 94 stolen bases in 1552 games.

Okay let’s get this straight.  I’m not against realignment per say.  I just don’t like any Bud Selig inspired or sanctioned plan because I know from past experience that those who run major league baseball have only one motive in mind, money. They also seem to have a desire to make baseball the same as other sports, ignoring the beauty and originality of it.

Playoffs generate lots and lots of money regardless of which sport and the excuses of seeking a competitive balance with as many teams as possible only serve to bring up a National Hockey League type scenario.  The NHL system basically renders the regular season meaningless and sets up a two or three month playoff round(s) which at the final conclusion, render said playoffs meaningless as well.

But lots and lots of cash is generated, especially in those cities where attendance is mediocre at best.   It gives the illusion that all is well and of course allows owners to spend less and less on trying to field a quality team.   There is little reason to strive for a team which plays above the .500 mark.  While having poor quality teams matched up in the playoffs can make for “exciting” games, it only weakens the sport in the long run.

First we had the proposal over the past offseason of floating teams from division to division depending on their won lost record of the previous season.  It was difficult to tell if this was serious or not but surely no one here would want to see the World Series featuring the present day Houston Astros and the Kansas City Royals.  Teams with barely above .500 records have advanced through the playoffs but that is more of a fluke and should not be something which is strived for. Another proposal saw an expansion of the wild card, again watering down the overall quality.

The National Football League does something similar although it achieves this with its’ scheduling. The worst teams from the season past play almost exclusively other less successful teams, allowing for inflated and deceiving records the following season.   Once again, most incentive to produce a quality on field product is removed, further watering down the sport.

Baseball has of late been proposing a system of two 15 team divisions, (one for each league), with the top four or five teams qualifying for the playoffs.  This seems to be a basic extension of the present wild card format, a format which while generating fan interest longer into the season, has the effect of inter division games late in the season being basically meaningless.  One is forced to instead focus on the wild card standings and closely following those teams with a sub or barely .500 record.  As there is no real incentive to finish first, (except for home field advantage for the team with the best overall record), when it is much easier to finish fourth, mediocrity is once more encouraged under the guise of competitiveness.

Ironically, the latest proposal would leave more teams out of the playoff picture earlier than since the introduction of the wild card and would return us to a pre 1969 situation.  It would also set up the season for a battle between the fourth and fifth place teams, leaving little incentive to finish in the top three.   It would bring baseball to a European soccer like situation which no one really understands.

Here is my proposal if we are going to throw traditions out the window.  As we seem to be stuck with interleague play which I admit does work well in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Baltimore, let’s go one step further.

Let’s have one league, (similar to the NFL), and have four divisions.  We could call it North, South, East and West.  Inter divsion play would be the majority and the first two teams in each division would be playoff bound. With the first place team having home field advantage until the World Series.  Next week I’ll get into a detailed discussion of this plan but I think there are distinct advantages to it.

C- Love Me Do: The Fab Four’s early hit has the slow, easy consistency characteristic of a veteran backstop, even if the song’s relative brevity at just over two minutes raises some questions of durability. But then, the life of a catcher is riddled with questions and uncertainty. It’s the cost of doing business.

P- Eleanor Rigby: A great pitcher has something that sets him apart, Christy Matthewson with his screwball, Bob Feller with his speed, Greg Maddux with his pinpoint control. When the Beatles released this single off “Revolver” in 1966, they’d done little, if anything, like it. An existential song about loneliness, none of the four members played on it, relying instead on an octet of violin, viola, and cello musicians. The resulting track went to #1 on the UK Singles Chart and signaled John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s shift to more serious work.

1B- Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: Paul’s hit from 1967 was strong enough to anchor an album and reach #1 in four countries. It is my power hitter here, the big bat for a group that was otherwise light for the most part on heavier tracks and produced happy and optimistic-sounding works even in the brooding, creative intensity of later years.

2B- Strawberry Fields Forever, SS- Penny Lane: Countless car trips when I was growing up featured The Beatles 1967-1970 greatest hits anthology so whenever I hear “Strawberry Fields Forever,” I’m reminded of “Penny Lane.” The songs follow each other on the album and forever feed into one another in my mind. For that reason, they are my double play combo.

3B- Revolution: Nike used the Beatles’ anthem for social unrest to controversially create a commercial in 1987, filling it with highlights of the ’60s. For some reason, replaying the song in my head, I’m reminded of different highlights, Baltimore Orioles legend Brooks Robinson making diving catches at third base, in slow motion, in black and white. Don’t ask me why my mind works the way it does.

RF- A Day in the Life: A listener can get lost in the long transition in the middle of this song where the orchestra plays and John Lennon wails. The depths of the outfield were made for this sort of thing.

CF- Something: Perhaps no ballplayer was ever as graceful as Joe DiMaggio. “Something” is the Beatles’ version of the Yankee Clipper, one of two classic songs written about George Harrison’s wife at the time Pattie Boyd (who would inspire “Layla” two years later.) More than 150 artists have covered “Something,” including Frank Sinatra who called it “the greatest love song ever written.”

LF- Rocky Racoon: Someone told me anything by George belongs in left field. I’d have thought that’d be more the domain of Ringo, but I’ll make the leap of faith here.

Other starting lineups: ex-presidents, writers

Baseball can be a paradoxical sport. The pitchers with the greatest longevity sometimes hit their strides late, seemingly every generation having its Dazzy Vance or Nolan Ryan or Randy Johnson. And often, the brightest young phenoms flame out early. Here are 10 hurlers who threw their last pitch before age 30, ranked in order of magnitude of collapse:

1. Denny McLain: In 1968, a 24-year-old McLain became the most-recent pitcher to win 30 games, and he followed that in 1969 with another Cy Young season. Within three years, he’d be out of the majors.”How could this have happened?” his SABR biography notes. “McLain claims to have suddenly lost his fastball in 1970, but one couldn’t help but notice that he was putting on ten pounds of fat a year. At the time of his release, he was 29 and looked 45.”

2. Mark Fidrych: At his height, Fidrych was a 21-year-old rookie who talked to the ball on the mound and was nicknamed Big Bird for his awkward, goofy mannerisms, on his way to a 19-9 season with a 2.34 ERA. But throwing 250.1 innings in a debut campaign can take its toll, and Fidrych didn’t manage that the rest of his career combined, retiring four injury-plagued years later.

3. Mark Prior: Of all the men on this list, Prior may be the one who could still pitch, just 30 at this writing. But he hasn’t played in the majors since going 1-6 in 2006, possible overuse by his manager on the Chicago Cubs, Dusty Baker to blame. Certainly, Prior was never the same after Baker’s first year in town, 2003, when the 22-year-old ace went 18-6 with a 2.43 ERA and the Cubs came within one game of the World Series.

4. Herb Score: Early in his career, Score looked like the next Bob Feller, going 36-19 with a 2.68 ERA and 508 strikeouts over his first two seasons with the Cleveland Indians. Score’s fortunes shifted a few months into his third year in the majors when he took a Gil McDougald line drive to the face. Though Score pitched another five seasons, he won just 17 more games after his injury and retired in 1962 at 28.

5. Bugs Raymond: Raymond had seemingly ideal circumstances for his career, joining a dynasty at the height of the Deadball Era. He went 18-12 with a 2.49 ERA in 1909 but drank his way off a World Series-bound New York Giants club two years later and was dead barely a year after that.

6. Gary Nolan: For someone who was done at 29, Nolan offered surprising longevity, his 110 wins lifetime second among these men to McLain’s 131. Five times, Nolan won at least 14 games, and he finished fifth in Cy Young voting in 1972 when he went 15-5 with a 1.99 ERA for a Reds team that went to the World Series. One can only wonder how much longer Nolan would’ve lasted without a debut as a young flamethrower or later, a manager, Sparky Anderson who urged him to pitch through arm pain.

7. Wally Bunker: Bunker was enough of a hit with the Baltimore Orioles early on that the pitching mound in Memorial Stadium was renamed Bunker Hill. He went 19-5 as a 19-year-old rookie in 1964 but developed a sore arm late in the season and was never again as effective, even if he stuck around the majors seven more seasons.

8. Tony Saunders: The Tampa Bay Devil Rays made Saunders the first pick in the 1997 expansion draft, though he pitched just two years for them before his injury-related retirement at 25. Jose Canseco wrote in one of his books that Saunders wore out his arm through excessive steroid use.

9. Dave Nied: The second of three men here selected in expansion drafts (the next guy was as well), Nied came to the Colorado Rockies as their first overall pick in November 1992. But expansion duty in the light air of Denver may have been too much for even a once-heralded Atlanta Braves prospect. Nied lasted parts of four seasons before bowing out in 1996 at 27 with a 17-18 lifetime record and 5.06 ERA.

10. Jay Hook: Hook went 29-62 with a 5.23 ERA in eight mostly-forgettable seasons between 1957 and 1964. He’s notable for winning the first game in New York Mets history, entering the majors as a Bonus Baby years before, and earning the nickname of “Professor” from Mets manager Casey Stengel for attending Northwestern in the offseason.