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Looks like my weekend plans are set

I was just looking at my Google Analytics stats and saw I had a spike yesterday in the number of people who read my obituary on former Sacramento Solons owner Fred David, who died in October at 100.  I wondered if the Sacramento Bee had finally written anything about him.  They declined to do a standard obituary, because their obit writer learned of David’s death more than two weeks after the fact.  I talked with one of their columnists after my post ran, and he said he was interested in writing something, though I’ve yet to see anything.

After seeing the statistical spike, however, I wondered if the column had finally run.  Instead, I did a Google search on David and found this Craigslist ad from January 30:

We will be liquidating the Estate of longtime Sacramento Businessman and owner of the Sacramento Baseball Solons of the Old PCL Thursday – Sunday Feb. 4th – 7th. Many items from the old stadium on Broadway will be for sale. Also, the remaining contents of David Candy, including Signs, displays, office, racks, memoribilia. Get on our email list www.schiffestateservices.com to get more information and photos on Monday.

David had a warehouse at 10th and R Street in Sacramento, where he stored many items that he salvaged from the Solons ballpark after it was torn down in 1964.  I had wondered what would become of the memorabilia and had first heard through David’s niece last fall that there would be a sale.  The Craigslist ad doesn’t make the location of the sale clear, but the estate service company Web site said it will be held at the warehouse.

Anyhow, it looks like I now have my weekend plans set.  I was already kicking around the idea of going to Sacramento to see my folks, do laundry and return some library books.  This pretty much seals it.  I have some stuff in the Bay Area I need to do today, but will probably get on the road for Sacramento tomorrow morning and maybe stay through Saturday.  Expect pictures and a full description by Sunday.

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A footnote: While I was writing this post, I received a phone call.  As I have noted here in the past, I am interested in writing a book on a former Sacramento baseball player named Joe Marty.  Marty played in the 1930s and ’40s with the Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies and was once thought to be a better prospect than Joe DiMaggio.  That never happened and he wound up running a bar in Sacramento, where he became “his own best customer,” as one old-timer told me.

On a whim last month, I checked the biographies of every one of Marty’s major league teammates (it was a Saturday, I wasn’t doing much, and this totally beats Netflix.)  I found that four of Marty’s teammates were still alive, all in their 90s.  I tried calling all four and didn’t have any luck in getting through and one of the men subsequently died, so I was kind of bummed.  The longer it goes, the greater the likelihood has seemed I won’t get to talk to any of the remaining teammates.

However, I just got a call from the daughter of one of the players.  We talked and I am going to send some written questions which she will review with her dad, who is 96.  She said we could do a follow-up call from there, when her dad is near the phone.  I had called this player’s son a few weeks ago and hadn’t been real encouraged this would lead anywhere, after he gave me the indication his dad is private.  My spirits are lifted now, though.  The daughter asked her dad some questions while we were on the phone, and I could hear him in the background, correctly remembering that Marty was an outfielder.  He sounds lucid.

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Technology to the rescue

I interviewed this morning for a sales position with a start-up in Mountain View and got to talking about the upcoming opportunity I have to interview Will Clark upon his induction into the Hitters Hall of Fame at the Ted Williams Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida on February 13.  At this point, I still can’t afford a plane ticket, and I can’t justify taking out a loan or asking my parents for cash.  Thus, my assumption has been that I will probably do a phone interview with Clark, if he’s willing, as well as interviews with the other honorees for the museum this year: Darryl Strawberry, Bert Blyleven and Dave Dravecky.  It would be a major coup for this site, and Clark’s my childhood hero, though I know not to bank on anything.

I got to talking today with my interviewer, though, and she suggested I do a WebEx video conference or Skype video conversation with Clark.  I hadn’t considered those possibilities, and I have to admit it sure beats an interview over my Metro phone.  I also have a friend who works for WebEx and might be able to get me set up technically.  The catch would be getting Clark in front of a web camera, though that might not be impossible.  At the very least, he would have a way to see me during our talk.

Best case scenario, of course, is that I come up with the necessary funds, board a plane to Florida, get six or ten posts for this site out of the event and maybe even cover it for the San Francisco Chronicle.  At least to me, in a perfect world, this is how things would play out.  But I’m open to talking to Clark in any way possible.

Anyone who has ideas I haven’t mentioned is welcome to contact me, asap.

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Noah Lowry, and if his comeback has a chance

I read on ESPN this morning that former San Francisco Giants pitcher Noah Lowry has postponed a workout with several prospective teams in his bid to return to the majors after a two-year absence.

“He’s close to where he wants to be,” his agent told The Associated Press on Monday. “We’re confident once Noah throws for teams questions will be answered. Noah’s missed a lot of time and understands the importance of this audition. If he’s at 90 percent now, we’re going to allow him the time to get to 100 percent because we know clubs have questions based on the time he’s missed.”

The skeptic in me thinks: Bullshit.  I’m guessing Lowry is worried his time away from the game has hurt his velocity and is desperate to postpone the inevitable.  It seems akin to asking for more time on a big assignment in college.  Granted, baseball seems like an easier sport to resume playing after a long delay than football, which requires meticulous precision and conditioning that can erode with even a short absence.  Just look what’s happened to Mike Williams or Michael Vick.  Still, it seems like it would be tougher to return to baseball as a pitcher than in another position.

Looking over the annals of baseball history, there aren’t too many pitchers who come to mind who’ve had successful comebacks.  Here are the results of a few:

Jim Palmer: Colossal fail.  Palmer aborted his attempt to return in 1991, after giving up five hits and two runs in two innings of a spring training game.  According to his Wikipedia page, his trainer remarked, “You’ll never get into the Hall of Fame with those mechanics,” to which Palmer replied, “I’m already in the Hall of Fame.”

David Cone: He fared slightly better than Palmer, making it to the regular season after sitting out a year, but quit again with a 1-3 record and 6.50 ERA.

Jim Bouton: He first retired midway through the 1970 season, following the publication of his bestseller Ball Four, but returned to the majors eight years later at the age of 39.  Bouton went 1-3 in five starts with the Atlanta Braves, later saying his motivation was to do something that had never been done before.

Roger Clemens: This return started nicely with Cy Young-caliber pitching, but ended horrifically with Clemens implicating his wife in front of Congress for using Human Growth Hormone.  Short of Barry Bonds, Pete Rose or the Black Sox, Clemens has perhaps the most inglorious exit in baseball history, as well as the all-time greatest excuse for not using performance enhancing drugs: I didn’t, my wife did.

Dazzy Vance: This might not technically be termed a comeback since Vance bounced in and out of the minor leagues after briefly making his major league debut in 1915.  Still, he had to persevere before settling into a Hall of Fame career.

Bob Feller: Another comeback that might not be termed as such, as Feller successfully resumed his Hall of Fame career after seeing combat in the Pacific theater in World War II.  There are a number of other pitchers like him from this era, along with guys like Warren Spahn who got a late start due to military service.

Lowry might be better served to come back as an outfielder.  Lots of former pitchers have transitioned to that successfully, from Smoky Joe Wood to Lefty O’Doul to Rick Ankiel.

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Garko, rhymes with Darko

I was a little surprised that Ryan Garko took a $550,000, incentive-laden deal with the Seattle Mariners today, officially ending the chances the San Francisco Giants would bring him back.  Granted, Garko struggled with the Giants last season, collecting only 12 RBI in 40 games after arriving in a trade with the Cleveland Indians.  Still, he hardly fared worse than any first baseman San Francisco has used in recent memory, and his contract seems insanely cheap, even if he hits the additional half million in incentives. I’d also have loved if the Giants had taken full advantage of the marketing purposes with Garko’s name.

I’m referring, with this, to the film Garko’s name correlates with, Donnie Darko (to say nothing of Darko Milicic.)  Every time I’ve read Garko’s name, from the time the Giants picked him up last summer to now, that odd, though well-done film has flashed in my mind.  To anyone who hasn’t seen it, I won’t bother explaining besides to say it involves a six-foot bunny and a troubled, teen title character (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) who has premonitions of apocalypse.  The soundtrack introduced me to Joy Division, which would have made for wonderfully depressing walk-up music for Garko’s at-bats.  And any number of different clips from the film could have been played on the Jumbotron at AT&T Park, like when Donnie stumbles onto a golf course and meets the rabbit, who tells him the world will end in about 28 days.

I’ll admit this all probably would have been rather confusing to fans, though I personally might have had to purchase season tickets for the Giants.  I’ll extend the same possibility now to the Mariners.

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Possible spin-off?

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

He wrote, in part:

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

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

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

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

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

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10 baseball players who didn’t do steroids

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related posts:

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

Seeing McGwire through Rose-colored glasses

Alternate history: If Barry Bonds hadn’t used steroids

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Let’s get a credential

A couple months ago, I decided one of my goals for 2010 would be to get a press pass for a San Francisco Giants or Oakland Athletics game.  I used to get media access all the time as a journalist and have had passes to Arco Arena for a Sacramento Kings game, AT&T Park for a college football All-Star contest and Raley Field in Sacramento for maybe two dozen Triple-A baseball games.  There’s a certain feeling that having a press pass around one’s neck grants, that special knowledge of getting to hold up the plastic shield and go somewhere others aren’t allowed.  It’s been a couple years since I last had a press pass.  Call it ego, but I miss that feeling.

So I decided in December to try for a pass this year, for this Web site.  My thought was that I would get a credential for an A’s game, when they play the Yankees so that I could interview Nick Johnson, who went to my high school in Sacramento, McClatchy and is married to the sister of a woman I grew up with.  Then I got to thinking I may as well request a pass from the Giants too, as they also have a former McClatchy player in their organization, Steve Holm.  I figured I would see about a Cubs-Giants series, when a great baseball player from Sacramento, Derek Lee, would be in town.

Thing is, my search engine ranking wasn’t great at the time I had this idea.  There is a Web site, Alexa, which ranks every site on the Internet according to total number of visitors and page views.  Google is ranked #1, Facebook #2 and Yahoo #3 and so on.  I have an acquaintance that founded a popular guitar Web site that’s ranked 20,000th roughly and that’s awesome– he’s able to make a living with that sort of ranking.  Personally, I’ve been ranked as high as 1.3-millionth (which probably wasn’t accurate, since it came early in the life of this site) but in December, my ranking was maybe 3-millionth.  Now, it’s 7-millionth.

I don’t know what’s going on, because I’ve tripled my number of monthly unique visitors since I quit my job in November and am starting to approach a thousand, but my fear has been that any Giants or A’s employee looking to grant me access would see my ranking and think, “Okay, who the hell is this guy?  Next!”  And I don’t know if I have an especially compelling reason for needing a pass.

Nevertheless, I impulsively picked up the phone a couple of weeks ago and touched base with members of both teams’ credential departments.  Each representative gave me instructions on what to do next.  The Giants employee emailed me some paperwork to fax in and said he hoped to see me at the ballpark.  The A’s rep told me a specific person to contact with the Yankees and gave me his email address, saying the decision would be up to them and that it might be hard to get a pass for the first game of the series.  I haven’t taken any action since then and don’t know where this will lead, but for some reason, I’m feeling slightly hopeful at the moment.

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On recent hot stove developments

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

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

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

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

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Port-mortem on McGwire: Five more questions with Dale Tafoya

Faithful readers of this site will know that in December I reviewed a book about Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, Bash Brothers: A Legacy Subpoenaed. The book’s author, Dale Tafoya subsequently contacted me, and I interviewed him.  A few weeks after that, McGwire finally admitted to using steroids during his career.  Thereafter, his former trainer, Curt Wenzlaff made his own disclosures about the slugger.

Tafoya had interviewed Wenzlaff for his book, and I was curious about his take on everything that’s happened this month.  Thus, I followed up with Tafoya.

Baseball Past and Present: In writing Bash Brothers, did you foresee these last few weeks?  Was this what you were expecting?

Dale Tafoya: I wasn’t sure if McGwire was ever going to talk about the past and admit his steroid use, so I didn’t think his confession was inevitable. But I did know he wanted to return to the game and that his younger brother, Jay, is releasing a book, Mark AND Me, next month. Like Canseco, Jay is also supposedly going to describe how he injected steroids into Mark. So McGwire had many reasons to confess when he did. Personally, I was disappointed.  He may have been sincere, but it was a watered down confession that insulted our intelligence.

Firstly, he wants us to believe he turned to steroids to be healthy enough to play and that he could’ve hit 70 bomb in 1998 without them. Secondly, he wants us to believe that when players talked about steroids around the batting cage, he innocently walked away. So even though he confessed his steroids use, he never admitted they helped him perform better on the field.  He would have come across much better if he would have just exposed himself and stated the obvious: That they not only helped him recover from injury, but also helped him hit the ball further and break records. We, as fans, would’ve had more closure. Instead, his lukewarm confession left many of us disgusted.

BP&P: Will you be writing a postscript to your book?

DT: My publisher is talking about releasing a paperback version of Bash Brothers, and that’s when I’ll write a postscript. Stay tuned.

BP&P: One of your interview sources, Mark McGwire’s former trainer Curt Wenzlaff detailed the slugger’s steroid use for Outside the Lines.  In your book, he stopped short of saying he supplied McGwire with steroids.  What were the circumstances surrounding your interview with Wenzlaff a few years ago?  Do you regret not getting full disclosure at that time?

DT: I had two or three hour-long sessions with Wenzlaff. From the start, he always made it clear he wasn’t going confirm that he provided steroids to Canseco and McGwire unless they came clean.  So when Canseco described his own steroid use in his first book, Juiced, Wenzlaff went on record to confirm it. But when I contacted him in 2007, McGwire still hadn’t admitted it, so all he could tell me was he trained with him at a Southern California gym. But I respected his stance and was grateful he agreed to participate in my book. 

Interestingly, it was Reggie Jackson, when he played for the A’s in 1987, who introduced Wenzlaff to the Bash Brothers.  So I probed him about Jackson, but Wenzlaff  insisted Jackson never knew about his connection with steroids, claiming he only trained him at a gym in Walnut Creek, Calif.

I spent a lot of time trying to locate Wenzlaff, who was no stranger to media exposure. He had already been featured on ESPN and in the New York Times about his associations with Canseco and McGwire, so I realized he wasn’t going to give me any new, earth-shattering revelations into the Bash Brothers. But he did provide some interesting stuff on McGwire.  He described how much McGwire changed and how steroids could affect someone’s behavior and personality.  Based on my time with him, Wenzlaff was by no means an attention whore seeking to capitalize on this ongoing saga. In fact, I found him very private, humble and intelligent. If he were infatuated with the limelight, he would have wrote a tell-all book about the Bash Brothers years ago. He stuck to his guns and didn’t come out until each of them admitted it.

BP&P: Do you think McGwire told the whole truth?

DT: Well, I give him credit for disclosing his use, but I also believe Canseco injected him with the stuff; a claim he denies.  If there’s one thing clear about McGwire’s confession, it’s that he still refuses to dignify Canseco’s claims or make him look credible at all. He’s definitely not going to paint Canseco as a savior in this mess. But my question for McGwire is, “If Jose didn’t inject you with steroids, how did he know you used them?”

BP&P: Does McGwire have a better or worse case for the Hall of Fame now?

DT: I don’t think his admission swayed voters one way or the other. Personally, I don’t think he’ll garner of enough votes to enter the Hall of Fame and I don’t think he cares. The Veterans Committee, however, could end up getting him in.

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What to do: When your interviewer says they like the Yankees

I had a phone interview this morning for a possible position with a business consulting office in Pleasanton.  I have a link to this site on my resume, and as a result, baseball comes up fairly often in interviews, which is great.  Baseball is more fun to talk about with potential employers than, say, speed skating, and I never have to feign interest.  In fact, I think half the time, I have to force myself to stop talking.

The man I spoke with this morning, a fellow named Ed, mentioned that he was originally from northern New Jersey and grew up a Yankees fan.  Ed said he came of age at an interesting time, in that nexus after the Giants and Dodgers left for California, the dreadful Mets arrived and the Yankees still ruled.  Halfway through his childhood, though, things changed.

The Yankees are one of those sports franchises that people either love or hate, like the Dallas Cowboys, Detroit Red Wings or the Los Angeles Lakers.  Traditionally, they spend the most money, have the most obnoxious fans and beat only the most sympathetic, lovable teams.  But I don’t reserve the same animosity in my heart for the Yankees that I do for the Lakers.  Partly, this could have something to do with me being from Sacramento and a longtime Kings fan (and to say that is to know heartache.)  But the Yankees also have an interesting history.

Essentially, the Yankees have traditionally been one of two teams throughout their history:

  1. Perennial World Series contenders
  2. Second division clubs with some awful luck

Granted, they’ve probably fallen into the first category a solid 85 percent of the time.  But the remaining 15 percent is heart wrenching.  It is comprised of times like the deaths of Thurman Munson and Billy Martin, and the injury-filled declines of Don Mattingly and Mickey Mantle (the retirements of Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio were sad too, but that didn’t stop the Yankees from the World Series in those days.)

Ed hit high school right around the time Mantle retired and, as he said, the Yankees couldn’t beat a Triple-A club.  The highlight I remember about them from the early ’70s is that two of their pitchers swapped wives.

That’s never good.

(Postscript: They had me in for a four-hour interview at their offices the following day.  I sat in on a webinar, interviewed with three separate employees and had lunch at the office.  It was the most intense interview I’ve been on in a long time, though they definitely have a cool company.)