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A note on baseball movies

I finally got around today to watching Major League: Back to the Minors, a movie I put off for years.  The original Major League, from 1989 is one of my all-time favorites, and its 1994 follow-up stunk something fierce.  Major League II, along with Speed 2: Cruise Control taught me never to trust sequels to films I love.

Good baseball movies are usually corny, funny and moving, all at once.  Some of my favorites include Bull Durham, 61* and Field of Dreams, and I might like Major League the most.  I still watch it almost every year.  About a Cleveland Indians team designed by its owner to finish last, the film is built around oddball characters.  Ex-con Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn  (played by Charlie Sheen) informs teammates he last played in the California Penal League.  Another rookie Willie Mays Hayes (played by Wesley Snipes) shows up to spring training uninvited and is then kicked out in the middle of the night.  Security carries him out in his cot, sleeping, and he wakes up outside the next morning.  “I’ve been cut already?” a confused Hayes surmises, practice going on behind him.  He then charges into a sprinting drill, barefoot and in his nightgown, and blows past two other players.  He gets a uniform and the scene pretty much sums up the entire movie.  It builds to a climatic final game and I always feel elated after Hayes scores the winning run with a hook slide and the Indians celebrate.  I’m a man of simple pleasures.

Omar Epps replaced Snipes for the sequel and little else about that movie seems right.  The PG rating robs the sequel of the blue humor of its predecessor and the script isn’t nearly as sharp or biting.  The net result feels overly orchestrated, commercial and, moreover, cynical.  We learn in the sequel that after the Indians won their division in the first film, the Chicago White Sox swept them in the playoffs.  Accordingly, the sequel leaves off with the Indians topping the White Sox in the playoffs, leading one to surmise that the third installment would say the Indians lost the subsequent World Series and now needed redemption.  Had the sequel not flopped at the box office, we might have gotten this.  Instead, we have Major League: Back to the Minors.

When it arrived in 1998, it looked rank from a distance.  The team depicted had changed from the Indians to the Minnesota Twins, for no discernible reason.  Most of the original cast had departed, save for Dennis Haysbert, Corbin Bernsen, Bob Uecker and Steve Yeager.  And the movie was set in the minors.  A girl in my high school went to see the movie with some friends as a joke and she said that save for one family, they were the only people in the theater.  I stayed away.  However, I’ve had Netflix for a couple months now, and a man can only go so long waiting for The Hangover to become available until running out of picks for his queue.  Which brings me to today.

I watched the third entry in the Major League series and it wasn’t terrible.  The story of a struggling minor league team that takes on its parent, the Twins, the film moves at a smooth clip.  Granted, there is plenty to criticize.  It isn’t cheerfully vulgar, hilarious, or inspiring like the original.  In fact, it feels nothing like that movie, connected in name only.  I also didn’t feel any suspense in the story buildup and its plot points could be spotted coming from a neighboring county.  Additionally, it made no reference whatsoever to the Indians, no explanation as to why Bernsen’s character Roger Dorn left that organization to own the Twins, which seemed odd.  A little exposition never hurt anyone, particularly in a film series.  Still, I found the film pleasant, certainly easier to watch than the overblown sequel.  It wasn’t anything remarkable, but I’ve found worse ways to kill an hour and a half.

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The Oakland Athletics: A team of firsts

I have been reading Bash Brothers, a book about Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco and came upon an interesting passage today.  It seems the A’s were the first baseball team to have a comprehensive weightlifting program.  A trainer for the team, Ted Polakowski is quoted on page 92, describing the reaction from the baseball world:

“We were very criticized.  In those years, that was our forte; no other teams were doing it.  While a lot of those practices are accepted now, weight training wasn’t accepted back then.  It was almost a taboo.”

The Athletics’ organization has long been a forerunner for innovative ideas.  Most every sports fan has heard of Moneyball, which A’s general manager Billy Beane popularized, as ubiquitous for a time as the West Coast Offense in football or the Pyramid of Success in basketball.  Long before that, the organization pioneered a few other concepts.  The A’s may not have been the first team to dismantle a contender with a fire sale, but they’ve done it at least five notable times in their history: Twice under Connie Mack, again with Charlie Finley in the 1970s, then after the Canseco-McGwire years in the ’90s and to a lesser extent, in the last decade.  Under Finley, they were also among the first teams to use promotional gimmicks to attract fans, though in fairness, Finley was probably no greater a showman than Bill Veeck.

Small-market clubs need every trick available to remain relevant.  Now that Moneyball has faded in significance, one has to wonder what Oakland will demo next.

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Oakland sports fans and their websites

There are many sports websites campaigning for causes these days. Some are fine, a lot are forgettable and occasionally, they’re brilliant. Former pitcher Jim Deshaies got a Hall of Fame vote in 2001 after launching a website campaigning for it (Reason #7 on the Top 10 reasons he deserved a vote? Inspiration everywhere to slow-footed lefthanders with minimal bat speed.) More recently, three former Harvard Lampoon staffers, including a writer for “The Office” critiqued sports media with www.firejoemorgan.com. It’s been dormant for a year but is still online, for posterity, acerbically criticizing (lampooning?) Bill Plaschke, several ESPN faces and, yes, Morgan. Not everyone can be Vin Scully or Bob Costas, I guess.

In Oakland, www.MessageToAl.com made national news this week after its backers paid $5,500 for a billboard alongside Interstate 880, not far from the Oakland Coliseum, imploring Raiders owner Al Davis to hire a general manager.  Not a bad move and their website looks professionally done.  It claims over 30,000 people have signed a petition on it and according to Alexa, a web information site, its number of pageviews is up 140% this week.  That being said, I wish the site had a section offering Davis advice for the NFL Draft.

Then, while checking my email today, I saw an ad for www.letsgooakland.com.  After going to that website, I learned it is a not for profit 501(c)(4) organization in downtown Oakland, formed by fans and business executives devoted to keeping the A’s in town.  Its home page is geared around a petition visitors can sign addressing Major League Baseball.  The site suggests a waterfront ballpark which makes me wonder if something could feasibly get built in Jack London Square with the recent news that Barnes & Noble will be pulling out of there.  There still seems a strong possibility the A’s will wind up in Fremont or elsewhere

The site itself is a bit less detailed than its Raider counterpart and hasn’t been connected with any billboards yet, that I know of.  Nonetheless, I support organizations of this sort and even sent an email offering to do some volunteer work, since I’m unemployed and pursuing as many different avenues as I can.  I have to wonder if the Dodgers would have stayed in Brooklyn had the Internet existed in the ’50s.  (I’d volunteer for that non-profit in a heartbeat.)  Then again, one need not look far to find pages and pages devoted to bringing the team back there.

Only in America.

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Coming attractions

I have wanted to make book reviews a more frequent part of this site and to that end, I have a few logs in the fire.

First, I received a review copy today of Chief Bender’s Burden, a book about the Philadelphia Athletics Hall of Fame pitcher written by Tom Swift, a freelance writer and member of the Society of American Baseball Research. I requested the copy a few weeks ago after seeing it as the sponsor for Bender’s page on www.baseball-reference.com. If I ever write a book, there’s probably a good chance it will be in a similar vein (I went to a S.A.B.R. meeting a few years ago and felt like I was home.)

Also, I have been reading Bash Brothers, a book about Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire by a Bay Area writer named Dale Tafoya. I interviewed Tafoya and obtained a copy of his book leading up to my interview with Canseco in April 2008. I did not use my interview with Tafoya since it didn’t seem relevant to my story for the East Bay Express, and the San Francisco Chronicle passed on a book review (I know someone there, which is enough for periodic rejections.) I never read the book and always felt a little guilty. However, I picked it up again recently after finishing The Boys of Summer, and it’s not bad. Tafoya did commendable research in his four years compiling the book including dozens of interviews with former teammates and coaches of McGwire and Canseco.

I’ll be interested to read how both books come out. Expect reviews soon.

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Tim Lincecum: Will he stay or will he go?

I had my second job interview of the day this afternoon and sure enough, for the second time today, baseball came up in conversation with a prospective employer.  As my interview was wrapping up with the general manager and human resources representative for an organic food company in San Mateo, our talk reached the stage for final questions.  I had exhausted all of my queries, but the HR rep had one, based on me talking about this site: She wanted to know if I thought the San Francisco Giants would be able to keep Tim Lincecum.  I’ll repeat now what, in essence, I told my interviewers.

I think Tim Lincecum will stay.  I think it will cost the Giants a small fortune (my guess is $22 million a season) but I think he’ll stay.  The thought of him in Yankee pinstripes a few years from now seems compelling, maybe even plausible, but something about it doesn’t feel right.  Lincecum is the Giants’ biggest draw since Barry Bonds and their best homegrown talent since Will Clark, arguably even Willie Mays.  They’d be foolish not to do what it takes to keep him around, even if a slight risk exists of Lincecum getting injured with his unorthodox and hard-throwing delivery.  (For his part, Lincecum would be foolish, as well, to go to the Yankees.  The Bronx is the place where pitchers go to die, and Lincecum’s quirkiness probably wouldn’t go over too well with the organization either.  Consider the case of Jason Giambi.)

As a disclaimer, I say all this as someone who argued passionately two years ago that the Giants should trade Lincecum to the Toronto Blue Jays for Alex Rios. San Francisco still needs just short of an airlift to fix its moribund offense, even with the additions of Ryan Garko and Freddy Sanchez this past season.  Nevertheless, I think any deal from 2007 involving Lincecum would probably have come out worse than Andrew Bynum for Jason Kidd.

I didn’t get the job, but it’s always a pleasure to talk baseball, especially in an interview.  As an aside, this blog is helping tremendously in my job search.  I’ve been unemployed for a few weeks now, hitting Craig’s List and putting my name out there.  This site is the first thing that comes up in a Google search of my name, and I’ve even added the URL to my resume.  I feel fortunate to get to write here and thank everyone who reads, as well as everyone else who makes this possible.

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Do you mention Frank Viola on your job interviews?

I had a job interview this morning, and my interviewer saw on my resume that I had gone to Cal Poly. She smiled and mentioned that she wished her children had gone there. She listed their colleges, saying her youngest had just made the baseball team for St. John’s University. I said I believed that Ron Artest went there, she said Chris Mullin was an alumni, and though I didn’t mention it, I know there’s a scene in Coming to America where Eddie Murphy goes to a St. John’s basketball game. Then I remembered Frank Viola.

Before winning 176 games in the majors, including 24 in his Cy Young award-winning season with the Minnesota Twins in 1988, Viola pitched at St. John’s with another future All Star, John Franco. They even helped the school make the College World Series in 1980. I didn’t bring all this up in the interview, of course, though I mentioned Viola’s name. I’m not sure if my interviewer knew who he was, but then again, St. John’s is really more of a basketball school.

I also brought up in the interview that I can name World Series winners from pretty much any year. I say this to a lot of people I meet, the kind of declaration that screams, Come on, I dare you to stump me. Some take the bait, some don’t. I should probably stop bringing it up with prospective employers, but with that said, it did help get me a job one time. It even used to be on my resume, under a “Fun Facts” section that has since been abandoned. That being said, my interviewer this morning didn’t take the challenge.

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Making the Hall of Fame: One need only hit as well as Orlando Cabrera

I was just watching an ESPN video about the retirement of New York Yankees public address announcer Bob Sheppard, when I noticed something interesting.  Included in the feature was the lineup card from Sheppard’s first game, between the Yankees and Boston Red Sox in 1951.  Among the Sox was Lou Boudreau, who I never realized played for Boston.  I checked out Boudreau’s stats on Baseball-Reference.com and learned something else about the Hall of Fame shortstop: The batter most similar to him, according to his career numbers, is Orlando Cabrera.

To offer a Beatles metaphor, in the baseball world, Cabrera is kind of like Ringo Starr: He has surprising longevity despite questionable talent.  A veritable journeyman, on his sixth team at 35, Cabrera boasts a .275 career batting average and has never made an All Star game.  If he’s a Hall of Famer, then so are half the active players today.

Scanning the rest of the Top 10 list of similar batters to Boudreau, there are two Hall of Fame members, Travis Jackson and Phil Rizzuto. A lifetime .273 hitter, Rizzuto was little more than Orlando Cabrera in the same lineup as Joe DiMaggio.  Had he played for the Washington Senators, Rizzuto would be an afterthought today.  Other peer hitters to Boudreau include Mark Loretta, Mark Grudzielanek and Dick Groat, more guys who probably shouldn’t lose sleep writing induction speeches.

Granted, Boudreau arrived at Cooperstown with some impressive credentials when he made it on his ninth try on the writer’s ballot in 1970.  He was a seven-time All Star, Most Valuable Player in 1948 and led American League shortstops in fielding eight times (by comparison, Cabrera has won two Gold Gloves.)  As player-manager, Boudreau also helped the Cleveland Indians capture the ’48 World Series, and he devised a fielding shift to contain Ted Williams.  There are worse things in the world beside the fact that Boudreau has a plaque hanging in Cooperstown.

That being said, Boudreau appears to be one of the more overrated Hall of Famers, and I’m a little surprised the writers selected him, as opposed to the Veteran’s Committee. It’s also interesting to consider that Boudreau only has 99 more career hits than another celebrated fielder, Dom DiMaggio who can’t make it into Cooperstown, despite the fact that Boudreau got to play through World War II, while DiMaggio lost three prime seasons to military service.

Then again, maybe I’m just not giving Orlando Cabrera his due.

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Halladay, would he be so nice?

Toronto Blue Jays ace Roy Halladay is poised to collect a substantial payday. Preliminary indications are that Toronto will not attempt to resign the 32-year-old free agent to-be, whose contract is up after 2010. While a big team like the Red Sox, Yankees or Mets (or maybe the Dodgers or Angels) will gladly overpay Halladay, other clubs would be wise to steer clear. Here are a few good reasons:

  1. Halladay has spent his career, thus far, in the pitcher-friendly Skydome. Signing pitchers of this sort can be risky. Exhibit A? Mike Hampton. Exhibit B? Darryl Kile. The list goes on, and not all are just guys who went to pitch for the Rockies.
  2. Although Halladay will be 33 in May, he’s still likely to command $15-20 million a season for at least five years. The successful result of signing Halladay is that he collects another Cy Young award or two, pitches his new team to the playoffs year in, year out, and strengthens his future bid for the Hall of Fame. That being said, there’s also a chance that Halladay winds up at 37 as a No. 4 starter, with an 8-12 record and 4.40 ERA on a club that’s south of .500 (this mainly could happen if he goes to the Mets.) No matter what, he’s going to be expensive.
  3. Not only will Halladay cost a lot of money, he will also cost several good players. Since Toronto still holds Halladay’s contract, the best way to get him now would be through a trade, and I can’t imagine what that will take. I was in Geneva a few years ago and saw a Ferrari dealership that required prospective buyers to already own two Ferraris and be contacted in order to purchase the new one. I have to think Toronto’s negotiating strategy for trading Halladay will be somewhat akin.
  4. The track record is uneven for older pitchers who change clubs after playing most of their career with one or two teams. For every Randy Johnson or Roger Clemens, who kicks ass and wins multiple Cy Young awards, there’s a Catfish Hunter or Jason Schmidt or Kevin Brown, who has a couple good seasons, if that, and then is done. While I’m not sure if this a trend or an isolated case-by-case thing, I would think it wiser to commit more money to scouting and drafting quality players than chasing after big ticket items like Halladay.

That being said, someone will be paying hand over fist for Halladay before the winter is out, probably even within the next few weeks, mark my words.

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Ranking the 2010 Hall of Fame candidates

I read on ESPN.com today that the latest Hall of Fame ballot is out, with first-time candidates like Barry Larkin and Roberto Alomar joining holdovers like Andre Dawson and Mark McGwire. It’s always interesting to look at who has a good chance of making it to Cooperstown each year. I also enjoy reading the names of all the veterans who automatically make the list one time, despite having as much chance of getting in as MC Hammer does of winning a Nobel Peace Prize (not that I’m trying to take anything away from Ray Lankford’s campaign.)

The Associated Press story I read included the names of all the players from this year’s ballot.  I will now list them, according to how I think they will fare:

Surefire first ballot inductees (90% or more chance of being voted in this year)

(1) Barry Larkin

Larkin is the one sure thing this year.  In an era of steroids and bloated contracts, the Cincinnati Reds shortstop seemed like a throwback.  Expect more players of his pedigree to be quickly ushered into Cooperstown over the next 15-20 years, while the likes of Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro and McGwire, among others, struggle to win support.

Maybe next year (70%)

(2) Roberto Alomar, Andre Dawson

The AP story said Dawson was 44 votes of the 75 percent needed last year.  Thanks to Jim Rice, he’ll make it in at some point soon.  As for Alomar, his bid is strong but hurt by three key things: 1) He quit playing at 36, less than 300 hits shy of 3,000; 2) He notoriously spit at an umpire while with the Baltimore Orioles; 3) An ex-girlfriend accused him of giving her AIDS, which was most likely a baseless accusation, but never a good thing unless we’re talking Magic Johnson or Arthur Ashe.

Future Veteran’s Committee inductees (50-70%)

(3) Edgar Martinez, Dave Parker, Alan Trammell

All three of these players are Hall of Fame members in my book, though I wouldn’t vote them in this year.  Funny how this works.

Possible Veteran’s Committee picks (30-50%)

(7) Harold Baines, Bert Blyleven, Fred McGriff, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Tim Raines, Lee Smith

Each of these players could probably have an impassioned campaign mounted by fans, though strictly based on statistical merit, none of them seem to have good enough career numbers.  Raines and Smith probably come closest to being Cooperstown-worthy.  And I would take Morris over Blyleven– the latter had more career wins, but with a playoff game on the line, I’d want Morris pitching for me.

Long shots (under 30%)

(5) Ellis Burks, Andres Galarraga, Mark McGwire, Don Mattingly, Robin Ventura

In the eyes of the public, McGwire did steroids.  Meanwhile, Burks and Galarraga had their best seasons with the free-swinging Colorado Rockies, Mattingly had his career cut short by injuries, and Ventura, while a good bat and great third baseman, is probably best remembered for being put in a headlock by a 46-year-old Nolan Ryan.

No chance in Hell (5% or less)

(8) Pat Hentgen, Mike Jackson, Ray Lankford, Eric Karros, Shane Reynolds, Todd Zeile, David Segui, Kevin Appier

If any of these men make it in, I’m dusting off my glove and mounting a comeback (I quit playing Little League when I was 11.)  Then, Disney can produce an inspiring film about how a 26-year-old writer makes the Tampa Bay Rays with a 37 MPH fastball.

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Tug Hulett and 10 other great baseball names

The news concerning the trade of Tug Hulett the other day prompted two reactions for me:

1) Who the hell is Tug Hulett?

2) Why haven’t I ever heard of a player with such a cool name?

Tug Hulett sounds like the name of a boat in an old Disney cartoon, a small, happy little vessel earnestly moving through choppy seas. Even if he doesn’t amount to much as a player — and at this point, he has 13 career hits — he could have a long career ahead of him in children’s programming, if he so chooses.

But I digress.

Tug Hulett is just the latest great name in baseball, a sport that over the years has seen some colorful monikers (like Tug McGraw.) Today, I offer 10 of those best names:

1. Van Lingle Mungo: My all-time favorite baseball name belongs to the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants hurler of the 1930s and ’40s. Sports columnist Jim Murray wrote that Mungo’s name seemed like something that could be sung by a sailor in the rigging of a banana boat. It also sounds like a dance step from the ’40s or a physical ailment or a new wave band from the ’80s.

2. Oil Can Boyd: A close second, Boyd got his nickname, according to Wikipedia, from his beer-drinking days in his hometown of Meridian, Mississippi, where beer is referred to as “oil.” He wins points for also having been bat-shit crazy, not that I’d expect anyone named Oil Can to be sane. I definitely wouldn’t want to come up against him in a street fight. The best man at his wedding was probably named Buckshot.

3. Kent Hrbek: The highest-ranking position player on this list, the stout Minnesota Twins first baseman had a name better-suited for WrestleMania or a children’s fairytale: “We tried to storm the castle but couldn’t overcome the Kent Hrbek.” Fifty years ago, he would have had a washing machine named after him.

4. Aloysius Travers: The hapless one-time Detroit Tigers pitcher makes this list as much because of his history as his name. A seminary student signed to pitch one game in the midst of a strike in 1912, Travers gave up 24 runs, the most in major league history and never played again. His name connotes the image of a school boy being pummeled by street toughs. You just don’t meet too many people named Aloysius anymore.

5. Yogi Berra: The only player to have a cartoon character named after him. I think.

6. Boog Powell: The Baltimore Orioles slugger comes from the Kent Hrbek school of having a name better suited for a 1930s strike breaker or “Flintstones” character.

7. Grover Cleveland Alexander: With probably the most regal name ever for a player, Alexander was dubbed for the president at his time of birth, Grover Cleveland. Baseball fan that I am, I get confused sometimes and think we had a president named Grover Cleveland Alexander.

8. Fernando Valenzuela: Like Van Lingle Mungo, this is another name that rolls off the tongue and echoes to be repeated. Just hearing the name makes me think of the Los Angeles Dodgers hurler twisted into a corkscrew position, a wild look in his eyes.

9. Rabbit Maranville: This sounds more like the name of a slick sports car than a baseball Hall of Famer.

10. Dummy Taylor: What makes this name so great is that Taylor, a New York Giants pitcher around the turn of the century, was actually deaf. Back in the day, there used to be all kinds of names like this: Frenchy, Whitey, Nippy. In our politically correct era, we just don’t see names like this anymore.