Baseball: Past and Present

Editor’s note: Due to scheduling changes that will take effect next week, future link posts will be an occasional Monday feature.

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• I wouldn’t typically devote a bullet point to a past post from this blog, but something interesting happened in our back pages this week. A couple months ago, Joe Guzzardi wrote about his prep school friendship with Joe DiMaggio Jr. This caught the attention of a woman who said she was Joey D’s ex-wife. She left the most recent comment. It always interests me when we draw notice from friends and family members of the people we write about.
• Cyril Morong analyzes Albert Pujols’ slow start (a .750 OPS being slow for him, granted, which is still better than every starter on the Oakland Athletics.)
• Otis Anderson writes about the need for San Francisco Giants fans to have a talk with their inner Jeff Goldblum in the wake of Buster Posey’s disastrous injury.
• SB Nation pokes fun at the New York Daily News for suggesting Jose Bautista might have used steroids.
• Joe Posnanski wrote a guest piece for the Kansas City Star on Paul Splittorff who died of cancer Wednesday at 64. Posnanski wrote of Splittorff, “He did not talk about his declining health. He did not talk about the cancer that was ravaging his body. People will say that is because Splitt was an intensely private man, and that is so. But I think there was something else too. Paul did not want any favors, and he did not want special treatment, and he did not want to live anywhere but in the moment.” Good stuff. Would if I could do that more often.
• Forbes.com includes Jim Thome among a handful of locks for the Hall of Fame. Seriously? Steroid speculation aside (and expect it for any slugger from the past 15 years), Thome seems like a poor man’s version of the recently-departed Harmon Killebrew who needed five ballots to get into the Hall of Fame. My two cents: Expect Thome to need at least a few more go-rounds with the writers before he comes close to Cooperstown.

What he did: I first knew of Antonelli as the ace of the 1954 New York Giants. A 24-year-old hurler who arrived in a trade before the season with the Milwaukee Braves, Antonelli proceeded to go 21-7 with a 2.30 ERA and help lead the Giants to a World Series title. Antonelli won 20 games again two years later and 19 games in 1959, on his way to 126 wins lifetime, but in another time he might have done far more. A couple of things limited Antonelli’s career, namely that he lost two seasons serving in the Korean War and, prior to that, his designation with a term that’s been defunct in baseball for decades: Bonus Baby.

From 1947 to 1965, baseball had a bonus rule that any prospect signed to a contract of more than $4,000 had to spend his first two years in the majors. A few Hall of Famers emerged from this group, including Sandy Koufax, Al Kaline, and Harmon Killebrew, but far more bonus babies wound up marginal and obscure, stunted by their lack of time in the minors. Antonelli very nearly was one of these players. On a 1948 Boston Braves team that went to the World Series with the mantra for its staff of, “Spahn, Sain, and pray for rain,” 18-year-old rookie Antonelli pitched but four innings all season and got more work throwing batting practice.

It’s a wonder Antonelli wasn’t a victim of the baseball times, and it makes me wonder what he’d do in an era better suited for developing young hurlers: the current.

Era he might have thrived in: With his precocious talent in high school, “by far the best big-league prospect I’ve ever seen” as one Braves scout put it, Antonelli would be a high pick today in the amateur draft, something that didn’t exist in his time. Luck of the draft might relegate Antonelli to a team like the Washington Nationals, Kansas City Royals, or Pittsburgh Pirates, though he could still have a better start to his career than what he had.

Why: Times have changed a lot in baseball in 60 years. The bonus rule was abolished in 1965, and players need no longer go directly to the majors, though some like Jim Abbott have done it voluntarily. It’s also generally unprecedented that 18-year-old pitchers appear in the majors, ever since the 1973 Texas Rangers wrecked the career of high school phenom David Clyde. These days, it’s standard for any high school draft pick to spend his first two to three years in the minors, minimum. That’s assuming he doesn’t opt for college, which I’m assuming Antonelli wouldn’t, since his talent might assure him a seven-figure signing bonus.

Granted, surmounting the minors and eventually starring in the majors is no sure thing. Last year, I studied several years of top ten draft picks in football, basketball and baseball, and I found that while more than 90 percent of the picks in the NFL and NBA went on to play at least five years, only 70 percent of the picks in baseball did so. The difference seems to do with the fact that football and basketball teams look to draft pro-ready players generally, while baseball clubs opt for talented but young prospects.

It’s an inexact science, but it’s worked before even for lousy clubs like the Florida Marlins who staked their resurgence in the late 1990s on a high school pitcher they drafted second overall named Josh Beckett. Perhaps Antonelli could follow suit.

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, 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 Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., 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

This is a story about my mother, Ted Williams and a fishing trip they took together more than 50 years ago.

My tale is also about a wonderful kindness Williams did for Mom years after their chance meeting

In 1956, my family moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico, from Los Angeles. Puerto Rico was encouraging American businesses to open on the island and the old Sears, Roebuck and Co. had just broken ground for its first store outside the continental U.S.

In the mid-1950s, Williams glad-handed for Sears. The company sent Williams to Puerto Rico to celebrate its grand opening with government officials and other U.S. investors. Williams’ visit would be highlighted by a deep-sea fishing trip with Sears’ friends and clients that included my father’s company.

One afternoon, when my mother picked me up from school, she announced, “I’m going fishing with Ted Williams.” You can only imagine the impact this had on a young teen-age avid baseball fan.

Ted Williams! The Kid! The Splendid Splinter! Teddy Ballgame!
Williams had just come off a great year, having hit .345. He narrowly lost the batting title to Triple Crown winning Mickey Mantle.

I tried every angle to con an invitation but kids flat-out weren’t allowed. And adding to my angst was the cruel fact that I had never seen a major league baseball game. My professional baseball experiences were limited to my former hometown Hollywood Stars and the Puerto Rican Winter League Santurce Cangrejeros.

The fateful day of the fishing trip came and went. My mother reported that everyone had a great time and that Williams could not have been more fun to be with.

In a futile attempt to appease me, Mom brought me a Sears sporting goods catalog with Williams picture on the cover. I threw it away.

I kept up with baseball as well as I could from Puerto Rico. There wasn’t much – incomplete line scores from the early editions of the New York Times, box scores from El Mundo and an infrequent Armed Forces Radio game of the week.

By 1959, I still hadn’t seen a major league game but by then I was going to school on the East Coast so I was getting closer. And in May, when Mom visited the school, she sprung me for the day to see the Yankees play the Red Sox in a mid-afternoon match up.

To Mom’s great disappointment, Williams didn’t start that day. Why is anyone’s guess since the Sox were having a typical lackluster season.
But in the eighth inning, the public address system blared out, “NOW BATTING FOR RED SOX PITCHER IKE DELOCK, NUMBER 9, TED WILLIAMS.”

While Williams gathered a handful of bats, Mom jumped to her feet and yelled, “Let’s go, Ted!”

I’ll never forget the sight of Williams striding toward the plate, swinging four bats over his head to limber up. Williams was the strongest good hitter baseball ever knew. No one has ever hit so many home runs (521) with such a high career batting average (.344).

Williams took his stance in the batter’s box. His gray, traveling flannels were baggy. As was the custom in those days, Williams wore no batting gloves or helmet.

I wish I could tell you that Williams hit the ball into the upper deck. But he grounded out weakly to first baseman Bill Skowron who made the out unassisted.

Since that early summer afternoon more than 50 years ago, my passion for baseball has waxed and waned. But I’ve told the tale about Williams and his fishing trip with my mother to anyone who would listen.

And the story had a heartwarming footnote. Years after our visit to Yankee Stadium, I wrote to Williams to tell him that Mom had been hospitalized. I reminded Williams of his Puerto Rico visit, the fishing trip and recounted for him the joy Mom had watching him at the plate that late spring afternoon.

I told Williams that Mom was recuperating from a hospital stay and suggested that her spirits would be lifted if he dropped her a note.

I never had a doubt that Williams would write. And sure enough, two weeks later, a pen and ink sketch of Williams taking his long, level swing arrived in the mail bearing the inscription: “To Betty, with every best wish, your friend, Ted.”

Both Williams and Mom are gone now. But when people ask me for my favorite baseball memory, I tell them the story about Williams, my mother and fishing that took place miles away from a baseball field.

Just a quick note to alert about some changes going on around these parts.

Since last fall, this blog has regularly featured new content seven days a week, and I’ve typically contributed four posts. However, I’ve been reassessing my priorities recently, and I’ve realized I’ve overloaded myself. While I’m in my twenties and relatively unencumbered, certain professional and personal obligations make it difficult to continue devoting the amount of time I have here over the last year.

I kicked around the idea of walking away from this site altogether, but after further consideration, I’ve opted to simply scale back my involvement here. Starting next Monday, May 30, this blog will go from seven entries a week to five. We’re doing away with weekend posts and will be on a Monday through Friday format for the remainder of the baseball season. I’ll write two posts a week and will retain editorial duties. Beyond that, I’m opting for a less is more approach.

The new schedule will look like this:

Monday: General post that I’ll write, with an occasional link post
Tuesday: Doug Bird’s column
Wednesday: Joe Guzzardi’s column
Thursday: Any player/Any era which I will continue to write
Friday: Joe Guzzardi’s column on doubleheaders

To that end, tomorrow will be the last edition of Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? I may pick it up again in the future, as it doesn’t seem like a bad offseason project, but I’m fine with putting it on hiatus for now. The column simply doesn’t hold much creative possibility for me at the moment.

Given the choice between quantity and quality, I generally prefer the latter, and I’m confident our new schedule is in keeping with that. I’m also glad to remain part of things here. It’s a great part of my life, and I welcome the opportunity to keep working to make the site better.

Thanks to everyone who reads and supports what goes on here.

For we non professional athletes working nine to five or whatever the hours may be, aging gracefully is putting in 30 plus years and hoping to have the house paid off, the kids finished college, and having a bit of leftover cash to travel to exotic or not so exotic destinations with maybe some fishing or golf thrown in. Our job skills have probably improved over the years and being over the hill is often just a state of mind. We look forward to no traffic jams, no alarm clocks and t-shirts and shorts. We retire and soon after, we are usually forgotten in the collective office minds, replaced by a younger generation full of vim and eager to work hard and prove their worth. Yuh know-like most of us were way back then.

For the professional baseball elite, the story and result can be much different. Most of us would trade places in a minute being able to retire for life at 40, wealth beyond our imagination and many moments in the seemingly glorious spotlight. We would have a big home, a fancy car, money enough to take care of our grandchildren’s children’s children.

But for many baseball stars, those rewards can fall far short of why they sought out such a career in the first place. Baseball at the major league level is an extremely difficult game, mentally and physically.

When you possess every toy and necessity you could possibly use, why continue?

As the recent Jorge Posada blow-up illustrated, being successfully competitive and maintaining a personal pride in your ability to continue to be one of the elite players is the common drive. The belief that, despite your obvious to everyone else eroding of skills, you maintain the firm belief that father time catches up with all players, but not you. It’s only bad luck and bad breaks or a temporary mechanical problem which is the cause of you sub .200 with no power batting average. Those balls which you reached easily in the beginning of your career are simply being hit harder than you remember back then or the wind is more of a factor than ever before.

One of my more painful memories was watching the decline and stumble of the great Willie Mays in the 1973 season, the last of his Hall of Fame career. There have been many others who went on too long but his decline was particularly heart breaking. Routine fly balls and mediocre pitching made him look old and foolish. Players and fans who had been witness to his astonishing feats of years before could now only look away. Fortunately, Mays is far and away remembered for his brilliant play before his downfall and continues to be rightly revered but it could have been the opposite.

Many over the hill stars continue to demand salaries which might have been commiserate with their performance of the past and angrily declare that their team does not appreciate their talents and what they mean to the organization. Many of these same players move on to a lesser role with another team, ending a long and successful career with their original teams.

Present management are often reluctant to agree to such demands and hope that their aging former star will come to realize on his own that his skills are no longer among the elite and that he should retire gracefully and afford his team to accord him richly deserved accolades his final season. Players who realize that their productive playing days are over are rewarded and celebrated in parks throughout baseball for their stellar careers. They continue to be celebrated for years afterward.

Say what you want about those evil New York Yankees but this past winter, they agreed to salaries for Jorge Posada and Derek Jeter which did not reflect their current playing abilities but rather rewarded them for outstanding careers. Jeter has rebounded somewhat in the month of May but Posada is clearly finished. He has threatened to leave the Yankees and seek employment elsewhere but that would ruin his place among Yankee legends. Clearly, New York had no option when it came to Jeter. Clearly they are hoping that Posada realizes the inevitable and calls it a career. I don’t want to remember Posada as the player who was released by New York with a final season of hitting .145 with no power and unable to catch.

Players such as Posada have nothing to apologize for and everything to be proud of. Maybe I should send them a copy of the book written by the greatest National Football League running back ever, Jim Brown, Out of Bounds. Brown got out at the top of his profession. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned there.

During a recent Cincinnati Reds-Pittsburgh Pirates game, announcer Bob Walk waxed poetically about a former Reds great and one time Pirates bit player, Ted Kluszewski.

As Walk ticked off Big Klu’s achievements, seemingly in awe of them, I recalled what an imposing sight Kluszewski was at the plate.

For the first half of the 1950s, Big Klu hit for average and power as well as anyone. Toward the end of the decade, reduced to a bench role because of his bad back, Klu nonetheless turned in productive seasons for the Pirates and the Chicago White Sox.

Kluszewski came onto the Reds’ radar when he was an Indiana University standout tight end. During the war years, the Reds’ trained at IU. During a pick-up game, one of the scouts saw Klu blast balls beyond the reach of any Reds’ outfielder and tried to sign him on the spot. But Klu, more interested in his football career, resisted.

Eventually, the Reds prevailed. Sent to the minor leagues, Klu immediately rewarded his employers. While working his way up to the majors, Klu had a stint with the minor league Memphis Chicks. One afternoon double header against the New Orleans Pelicans, in ten times at bat Klu hit a home run, three triples, two doubles and two singles. His day’s work put him far out in front as the league’s best batter, boosted his average to .412 which was 55 points ahead of his nearest rival.

Kluszewski was selected as an All Star in four seasons and in 1718 games was a career.298 hitter with 279 homers and 1028 RBIs. Perhaps most amazingly for a power hitter, in ten of his fifteen seasons, Kluszewski walked more often than he struck out ending with a career ratio of 492:365. In 1955, he hit 47 homers while striking out only 40 times. No player since Klu has hit 40 homers and struck out 40 or fewer times in the same season.

“Big Klu” enjoyed his most productive years from 1953 through 1956, with home run totals of 40, 49, 47 and 35 while driving in over 100 base runners in each, including a league-leading 141 RBIs in 1954. He also hit .300 or better eight times. Kluszewski led National League first basemen in fielding percentage five straight years, a major league record.

In 1954, Klu enjoyed his best year came when he lead the National League in home runs (49), RBIs and narrowly lost out to Willie Mays in the MVP voting. Kluszewski batted .326, drew 78 walks, had a slugging percentage of .642 and scored 104 runs. He ranked third in the NL in total bases (368), fourth in extra base hits (80) and hit a home run every 11.7 at bats which made him the NL leader in that category.
Klu’s highlight game came on September 12, 1954. In the first game of a doubleheader, Klu hit two home runs and drove in six men in an 11-5 victory. It was one of his six 1954 multi-homer games with his first home run coming as one of his 33 go-ahead hits.

In the nightcap, also won by the Reds 13-2, Klu continued his batting rampage, going 3 for five with another 3 RBIs. His line for the day: AB: 10; R: 5; H: 6, RBI: 9

Kluszewski died in 1988 at age 63. The Reds’ honored Klu by retiring his number 18 and erecting a statue of the sleeveless giant in front of the Great American Ballpark.

“Double the fun” is a Saturday feature here that looks at one notable doubleheader in baseball history each week.

What he did: As regulars to this site may know, I had the opportunity last September to interview Posnanski, the baseball blogosphere’s favorite son and Sports Illustrated writer. Gracious as he’s been with many other bloggers, Posnanski spoke with me for almost an hour. I got much more material than I used here, and among the outtakes, I asked Posnanski what other era he’d have liked to have been a sportswriter in. It’s an odd question, granted, but bear with me a minute.

I’ve long had an interest in the history of sports journalism, which dates back formally in America to the late 19th century. I like Fred Lieb’s stories of beginning as a young baseball writer in New York in the early 1910s. I like longtime Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich talking of traveling with ball clubs by train, when maybe three road trips occurred per season, each a multi-week long jag. “There you were with the ballplayers,” Povich remembered years later. “You got to know them. You got to be friendly with those you wanted to be friendly with, and you learned which ballplayers didn’t like baseball writers. A great many!”

So the question is what other era might have best suited Posnanski.

Era he might have thrived in: With the literary flourishes evident in his work, Posnanski might have done well in the 1920s when sportswriters like Grantland Rice published books of poetry in down time. But as a married man with two school age daughters, it seems Posnanski might have a hard time enduring the long train trips. He told me he’d have opted for the 1960s.

Why: I’ll start by relaying what Posnanski told me. He said:

I really like the ’60s. I just think there was so much going on, and there was so much crossover between sports and culture. It was a very trying time, and it was a difficult time, and I just think there were a lot of great stories right then.

There are other reasons Posnanski might have excelled. The ’60s were a time when the arts thrived and took on new life, when the studio system of film production gave way to more independent works, when rock music and Motown came into its own, and when there was perhaps no better time to be a magazine writer. Long before the Internet slammed print revenues, more magazines existed and offered good opportunities. The ’60s also saw the development of New Journalism, and seeing as Posnanski has diverged from many of his contemporaries and embraced blogging and used it to reach more readers, I think he’d have been an innovator.

It’s worth noting that if Posnanski were covering baseball in the 1960s, he’d be doing it ahead of the 1970 publication of Ball Four, the landmark success of which significantly changed the reporting style of the sport, making it acceptable to print risque locker room tales. But considering how gentle Posnanski comes across, I doubt he’d mind milder subject matter. And seeing as he writes often about the likes of Hall of Fame standard bearer Willie Mays and his SI cover subject last August, Stan Musial, I can only imagine Posnanski’s thrill at the chance to cover them in action.

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, George Case, George Weiss, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Honus Wagner, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jackie Robinson, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., 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

Baseball’s first “Babe” wasn’t Ruth but rather Charles Benjamin Adams, a Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher who won three 1909 World Series games as a 27-year-old rookie.

According to baseball historians, Adams acquired his nickname because of his popularity with female fans. During a 1907 minor league stint in Louisville, more than five years before Ruth debuted with the Boston Red Sox, women cried out “Oh you babe” whenever Adams took the mound.

Adams was one of the best control pitchers ever. His record low of 1.29 walks per nine innings during his 19 major league years ranks second on the modern day list behind only teammate Deacon Phillippe’s 1.25 mark. On his stingiest day, July 17, 1914, against the New York Giants and its ace Rube Marquard, Adams pitched 21 innings, walked none but still lost a 3-1 decision.

In his first season, Adams pitched mostly in relief and led the Pirates to the National League pennant by tossing 130 innings and compiling a 12-3 record with a microscopic 1.11 ERA, a rookie record that still stands.

Adams followed up his 1909 brilliance with an 18-9 season in 1910 and back-to-back 20-win seasons in 1911 and 1912 to establish himself as one of the baseballs best pitchers.

In the 1909 World Series, Adams fired three consecutive, complete game 6-hitters to shut down the Detroit Tigers in games one, five and seven. As evidence of his dominance Adams held Ty Cobb, a .366 lifetime hitter, to lone single in his eleven plate appearances.

Adams stuck around baseball long enough to throw a single shut out inning in the 1925 World Series at age 43 against the Washington Senators.

During his career, all but a single game of it with the Pirates, Adams logged a 194-140 record with a 2.76 ERA.