The Infield Dirt with T.S. O'Connell - Wednesday, September 02, 2009

   As readers know, I am fascinated by the Hall of Fame voting process, in part because of the critical role election plays in our hobby, but more generally just because as a lifelong baseball fan I am heavily invested in understanding as much as I can about the arcane route to baseball immortality.

   Would it surprise anyone to learn that there are no National League shortstops from the decade of the 1960s enshrined in Cooperstown? Ernie Banks is a HOFer, obviously, but by 1962 he had moved to first base for the duration. The absence of any National League shortstops from that decade isn’t in and of itself a sufficient reason to install Maury Wills, but it is one of the secondary reasons to prompt someone to take a closer look at his candidacy.

(Wills is portrayed above right in one of those Topps cards that never actually rolled off the presses. Famously snubbed by the Topps guys as an unlikely prospect, Wills didn't get his first Topps card until 1967, so ersatz-card guru Keith Conforti produced a 1959 Topps rookie card of him.)

The best reason to elect Maury Wills to the Hall of Fame is that he was a revolutionary force in the game in the 1960s, one of the key players on four World Series ball clubs and arguably the top shortstop in the league for much of the decade.

   A late bloomer, he didn’t get up to the Bigs until he was nearly 27 years old, but the resulting numbers that he put up in a 14-year career are easily on par with his closest contemporary, Luis Aparicio, and right in line with shortstops across any number of eras that don’t include some guy named Wagner.

   But I wouldn’t have to wave statistics at anyone to make the case for Wills: I suspect any fan old enough to have watched him in those years remembers the kind of extraordinary impact he had on the game. Saying he led the league in stolen bases is informative but barely a fragment of the story. In a kind of dilapidated baseball decade that watched offensive numbers plummet to truly noxious levels, he transformed the game he played by putting on emphasis on speed and “small ball” many, many years before the term came into the baseball parlance.

   Remove Maury Wills from those great Dodger clubs from 1959-66 and it’s a pretty fair bet that the outcome of several pennant races would look a bit differently that they do. Geez, they won everything in 1965 with a total of 78 home runs on the season – the whole club! OK, having Koufax and Drysdale helped a bit, but you’ve still got to score a couple of runs every game, and Wills played a huge role in that department.

   I fear that Wills got such short shrift from the BBWAA over the years precisely because of those two pitchers contributing to the widely held view that pitching was what got them to the World Series back then. True as far as it goes, but ultimately obscenely unfair to somebody like Wills who was so important to that other pesky requirement of championship teams: the ability to score if not a huge amount of runs, at least enough of them nicely allocated to appropriate moments.

   The Veterans Committee looks at managers and executives this year – another chance to right another injustice by electing Marvin Miller – and so Wills won’t get another look until 2010. Here’s hoping he fares a good deal better than the last time in 2008 when he got around 25 percent of the vote.

   God knows we’re going to have trouble figuring out which modern ballplayers get plaques in Cooperstown so you’d think at least we get it right when talking about the guys from years gone by.

Wednesday, September 02, 2009 4:13:25 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Opening up the blog for comments ... with a catch ...
Posted by T.S.

   After a hiatus of several months, we are opening up the blog for commentary from the readers, largely as was provided previously, but with one modification that we are hopeful everyone will find a reasonable accommodation to the Wild West nature of online give and take.

   As a bit of background, we halted commentary on my blog several months ago because it had gotten away from its intended purpose of providing an arena for input from the readers about blog content and related questions.

   I am not so naive to believe that a mere intermission is going to make rainbows magically appear and sweetness prevail in future exchanges, but I still wanted to try to resume in some fashion to allow feedback from the readers.

   So under the heading of “If it was good enough for newspaper and magazine publishers for all these years, then we can maintain the system for a few more even in this Internet Age,” we’ll allow comments, but we’re going to insist that a real name and city of residence be included with each entry.

   As noted in the previous paragraph, that’s essentially how letters to the editor have been handled for 100 years or more and I see no reason why the new rules of cyber mayhem should scuttle that basic requirement.

   It should be relatively simple: no name and city address, no inclusion in the commentary section. Obviously, someone could simply utilize a pseudonym, but that strikes us as particularly damning because it suggests a near-total absence of willingness to take responsibility for what you write.

   So to the best of our ability we’ll monitor the commentary with that in mind, and also simply to ensure that the observations are appropriate and suitable for inclusion under the umbrella of our website. If that sounds like a lot of subjectivity from our end, I would assert that it’s unavoidable. We want the commentary section to be a useful addition to the many other services offered in our media universe, and we won’t allow it to be hijacked for some other agenda.

   That doesn’t mean that the only thing a reader can do is comment in some fashion in reaction to something I’ve blogged about; indeed, we welcome the new ideas and suggestions that this kind of venue can provide. It truly is – just as letters to the editor are in print publications – an important and well-read addition and complement to conventional online media offerings.

– T.S. O’Connell
Iola, Wis.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009 3:21:26 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

Monday, August 31, 2009

Schmidt longs for kinder, gentler hobby ...
Posted by T.S.

   Mike Schmidt, the ultimate brainy (former) ballplayer, wrote a story recently for the Associated Press bemoaning the fact that money had so debased the once-unsullied world of autograph collecting that the resulting arena is now nothing short of “ugly.”

   I’ve been at a couple of group press interviews with the Hall of Famer, and it’s hardly an overstatement to say that he’s one of the brightest and most thoughtful former players around, but it may be that those very same qualities leave him just a tad naive.

   While recounting his own charming tales of signing his first autograph 40 years ago and also proudly displaying autographs of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player that his grandparents had secured for him in the early 1960s, Schmidt went on to lament that current state of affairs.

   I don’t even disagree with his less-than-unique assessment that our society has become “callous, rude and motivated by money.” True dat. But it seems to me it’s a more sophisticated response to try to figure out a way to foster those elements that are so laudable – preserving memories, lighting up a kid’s face with a signature from his hero, etc. – while minimizing the ugly aspects that leave him so dismayed.

   Schmidt is adroit enough to concede that – in his own words – “Old Mike has made a couple of million bucks he had never counted upon" through the various inserted autograph cards so stridently marketed by the card companies. He can see the contradiction of grousing about all the money in the memorabilia business while accepting a sizable chunk of it for his own coffers.
   But he doesn’t then take it to the next logical step, which is to concede that whining about the sordidness of the hobby seems disingenuous at best in light of the fact that Major League Baseball itself is such an enormous business behemoth with literally billions of dollars on the table. I think the world was a much more agreeable place when $6.50 could snag you a handsome box seat at once resplendent Shea Stadium, and another buck could get you a reasonably chilled Rheingold beer to go with it. But it just ain't that way anymore.

   Sigh! I don’t even collect autographs and have given away signatures from the likes of Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and others, but I certainly understand that when things have value – even a misty-eyed sentimental value – a monetary figure gets attached. And yes, Mike, even though lots of people tell you they will never sell it, you’re absolutely correct to note that everything gets sold sooner or later. That’s why Upper Deck or Topps agreed to show you the money for those insert cards.

   As I mentioned above, I suspect Mike is just a wee bit too sensitive for the rough-and-tumble world or autograph collecting. And I gotta admit, I thought the most interesting quote in the AP story was the one where he said that his dislike of the cat-and-mouse game with autograph collectors on the street was one of the reasons he retired early.

   I wonder if he’s ever had the opportunity to chat with Brett Favre about his views?

Monday, August 31, 2009 5:22:27 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Government overreached in BALCO; Galileo applauds ruling ...
Posted by T.S.

   The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 9-2 vote Wednesday that federal agents violated the players’ protections against unreasonable searches and seizures when it confiscated a list of players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

   This from the Associated Press. In a tangentially related story, scientists confirmed that the Earth does indeed orbit around the Sun, and not the other way around. Galileo, still smarting from his waterboarding at the hands of his inquisitors, was unavailable for comment, but thought to be at least marginally self satisfied.

   Duh! I suspect it’s not much consolation to the players who have been torpedoed by this business. And to think it only took five years for the legal system to determine what we all knew, uh, five years ago.

   The court pointed out that the investigators only had a warrant for 10 drug test results as part of the BALCO investigation into Barry Bonds and others, the court said -- not the 104 results it seized.

   “This was an obvious case of deliberate overreaching by the government in an effort to seize data as to which it lacked probable cause,” Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote, adding that the players’ union had good reason to want to keep the list secret. “Some players appear to have already suffered this very harm as a result of the government’s seizure.”

   The list of the already leaked includes David Ortiz, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez and Sammy Sosa. The AP report noted that Major League Baseball players agreed in 2003 to survey drug testing without penalties to determine the extent of steroid use in the sport. There were 104 positive tests, though the players’ association has said some could be multiple failures from the same player and others might not have held up on appeal.

   I sorta wonder if this overdue ruling of the obvious will have any impact on that odd group of folks who never got the message from their mothers about two wrongs not making a right. Or even 104 wrongs.

   Apparently not, since both Chipper Jones and Ozzie Guillen, two of the game’s intellectual giants, are still plugging away for more reputations to be sullied.

   “A lot of people’s credibility and a lot of people’s dignity have been damaged in this,” Atlanta Braves third baseman Chipper Jones told the AP. “It’s not fair to the clean players. It’s not fair to the players who have been leaked. Get ‘em all out there so we can start the healing process. It’s not going to stop until they’re all out there.”

   And this pearl from Ozzie: “Whoever’s got the list, get them out of there, make us suffer for couple days and move on,” he said. “Just get the thing out. Clear the thing and move on. Move on and this game is going to be better.”

   Thankfully, that kind of knee-jerk muddle-headed reaction isn’t unanimous. The AP also quoted Adam Wainwright, the Cardinals’ player representative, who has a better idea, one rooted in questions of fairness and justice rather than expedience. “Leak the names that leaked the names,” he said. “People are obviously breaking the law acquiring those names, and it’s not the agreement the federal government had with Major League Baseball. Those names were court-sealed. For crying out loud, you can’t release them, period.”

   For a sport that likes to pride itself in playing by the rules, that would seem a good place to start.

Thursday, August 27, 2009 3:54:52 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

The best card Willie McCovey ever had ...
Posted by T.S.

   I wrote something the other day in a feature story about 1965 Topps Baseball saying – I paraphrase now – that one good measurement of a baseball card issue is deciding how many cards within the issue constitute the best card that individual player ever had in his career.

   While conceding that there’s a good deal of subjectivity involved in such a discussion, I still like it as a measurement tool because it involves aesthetics rather than simply calculating dollars and cents.

   Making such pronouncements about the Hall of Fame’s upper crust, meaning Mantle, Aaron, Mays and Clemente, for example, gets even trickier, since people are so familiar with most of their cards, but it should be more feasible to offer the view about many other Hall inductees and certainly a vast array of All-Stars and the like.

   So with that preamble, I contend that the 1965 Topps issue provides the best cards ever produced of the following, listed in numerical order:
No. 19 Gates Brown, No. 36 Bobby Wine, No. 144 Ed Kranepool, No. 145 Luis Tiant, No. 157 Zoilo Versalles, No. 176 Willie McCovey, No. 190 Bill White, No. 210 Jim Fregosi, No. 255 Camilo Pascual, No. 285 Ron Hunt, No. 294 Tim McCarver, No. 305 Rico Carty, No. 318 Matty Alou, No. 340 Tony Oliva, No. 419 Ruben Amaro, No. 435 Willie Davis, No. 519 Bob Uecker, No. 528 George Altman and No. 540 Lou Brock.

   I’d be interested in readers observations about specific players or sets where that “best card” designation applies.

   Subjective or not, all baseball cards are not created equal and it’s fun deciding which are more equal than others.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009 3:32:56 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

Monday, August 24, 2009

What Rice really meant is that he does not like baggy pants ...
Posted by T.S.

   New HOFer Jim Rice probably realizes now that being a new member of one of the most exclusive clubs on the planet means your words are going to be reported and scrutinized to a degree that might not have been the case before.

   Rice is taking a bit of heat about a comment he made to some Little Leaguers at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa. Gee, it seemed to me to be little more than the traditional old geezer commentary about how my generation was better than the current ones, though in Rice’s case I suspect he just got careless in tossing out a trio of modern names for the comparison.

(Rice is shown in Dick Perez original artwork at left; www.dickperez.com)

Herewith his quote: “You see a Manny Ramirez, you see an A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez), you see Jeter ... Guys that I played against and with, these guys you’re talking about cannot compare.”

   Once the uproar ensued, he was described as flabbergasted that anyone would think he was talking about the two Yankee stars. “Anybody who reads that story knows I wasn’t talking about Jeter or Rodriguez,” he said. “Look at them. Do you see any baggy pants? Do you see any dreadlocks?”

   See? He wasn’t really saying our guys were better than yours, but merely that he doesn’t like baggy pants ... and he accidentally included the two Bronx Bombers in the sentence. And I’m with him on that one, hating the baggy pants part, that is.

   Christy Mathewson looked like a baseball player. Lou Gehrig looked like a baseball player. Joe DiMaggio looked like a baseball player. Henry Aaron looked like a baseball player. George Brett looked like a baseball player. Don Mattingly looked like a baseball player. Derek Jeter looks like a baseball player. C.C. Sabathia looks like a retired postal worker wading sleepily across the front lawn to pick up the morning newspaper in his pajamas.

   That’s like five or six generations that all managed to still sorta look like baseball players despite the passage of 100 years or so and all of the changes that go with it. My suspicion is that’s what Rice was talking about.

   I don’t give a hoot about dreadlocks, since baseball history offers a fascinating range of hirsute shenanigans from the House of David to the crew cuts of the 1950s and 1960s and the uh, more complicated stylings a decade later. I suspect dreadlocks aren’t aerodynamically useful, but I concede that may not be much of a concern for the Yankees’ ace moundsman.

   When I ventured online to investigate this stuff, I saw quote attributed to Jeter seeming to express some agitation that Rice would say such a thing. Phooey.

   Jeter should know better than any of us what happens when you spend your waking moments with virtually all of your comments – in almost any setting – being duly recorded, reported and analyzed. I wouldn’t even charge Rice with an error on this one; I’d regard it more like missing the cutoff man.

Monday, August 24, 2009 3:35:00 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Lemke Charley Pride card is my new favorite ...
Posted by T.S.

Charley Pride.jpg

   God bless Bob Lemke, he makes the coolest baseball cards, including his latest, which is more accurately a country and western singer card. I was and remain today a big Charley Pride fan going back precisely 40 years, and so seeing Lemke’s spectacular creation gave me a real kick. It also sent me to Charley Pride’s website, which I feel a little embarrassed about not visiting sooner.

   Anyway, as you can see, Bob’s ersatz 1954 Bowman of Pride is nothing short of sensational. If I were one of Charley Pride’s people – and you know he has people – I’d put that image up on the website. Negro leaguers got the short end of the stick in so many ways; among the most aggravating decades after the “leagues” folded is the fact that darn few decent photographs exist even of the more prominent Negro leaguers. Pride was hardly that, but the stories of him playing guitar on the Memphis Red Sox team bus (or getting traded to another team in exchange for a used bus) make for great fodder in conjunction with a pretty decent second career that he picked up once he hung up the spikes.


http://www.boblemke.blogspot.com/

   Having grown up in New York, embracing a country and western singer was hardly a natural evolution for me. Technically, I got onto Charley Pride from a Filipino band that performed his music. I listened to Louis DeCastro and his Countrymen perform Pride’s top hits in Olongapo City in the Philippines in 1969. I came home on leave after almost two years in the Philippines as a full-fledged Charley Pride fan (and Johnny Cash, too), to the complete bewilderment of my father, whose only familiarity with country and western music revolved around some hideously sequined yahoos that played on an Albany, N.Y., local television station on Saturday afternoons.

   I am sure it will startle younger folks, but Charley Pride was arguably the brightest light in country music in the 1970s. In the fall of 1970 I went to a concert of his at the Oakland Coliseum, and it was sold out. Charley was the headliner and Anne Murray was his warm-up. When I visited his website, I saw that he’ll be performing on Sept. 12 in Wisconsin Dells. Gotta admit I’m tempted.

   I also got a kick out of the biography page on his website that noted Pride’s biggest thrill in baseball was getting a double off Warren Spahn. I got to be friends with Spahn a bit for a couple of years before he died in 2003, and I would have loved to have asked him about that one.

Thursday, August 20, 2009 2:58:46 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Who thinks Tiger choked? Raise your hand ...
Posted by T.S.

   I got a little overwhelmed by SCD projects the earlier part of this week and didn’t get to read all the PGA Tournament coverage that I wanted to, but I did get a chuckle out of items relayed to me by colleagues to the effect that Tiger had somehow choked in losing to Y.E. Yang last Sunday.

   Supposedly some of the online commentariat had offered the choking observation, proving once again the egalitarian nature of cyberspace in providing virtually unlimited access has the drawback of giving parking space to a lot of clunkers better left in the junkyard.

   It’s not that Tiger’s necessarily incapable of choking, but rather an observation that this wasn’t the occasion. I am not sure we’ll ever bear witness to that particular spectacle in his case, but just as in the case of pornography, we may have difficulty describing what the definition entails, but we generally will know it when we see it. This wasn’t it.

   Tiger missed a half-dozen putts by a whisper, which happens to even the non-mortals on the pro tour. It’s one of the big reasons why in the prehistoric days of the PGA, say 1996 BT or so (Before Tiger), someone different seemed to win on tour just about every week. It was a profound indication of the parity that existed at the time that the champion would typically be determined by the guy who parlayed a great four rounds with the needed good fortune (i.e. putts dropping in) to push him into the winner’s circle.

   It is symptomatic of how great Tiger is that we hold him to such ridiculous standards that would scare the bejesus out of lesser men, which is to say the rest of the touring pros.

   As you may suspect, I am a Tiger fan and I regard the chance to watch all this as something truly historic. I was only briefly dismayed by this loss, then quickly got on board the happy train with most everybody else when I realized what a boost the Yang win would provide for the tour, both here and abroad.

   I came to this Zen-like understanding when I reminded myself that for me at least, the anointing of Tiger as the greatest golfer who ever lived is already a done deal. I suppose it’s even possible he might not win that 19th major to push past Jack, though it’s a little grim to ponder the circumstances that would usher in that story line.

   So I figure the unexpected, non-choking upset loss to Yang only delays the inevitable by a few months or even a year or so. Upon arriving at this enlightened plateau, I promptly started to cheer Mr. Yang’s accomplishment.

   And I stand at the ready to perform the Heimlich maneuver on Tiger’s behalf should it ever become necessary. But no one will be more surprised than me if that day ever comes.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 8:47:40 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

Monday, August 17, 2009

Will we see players in their pajamas? ...
Posted by T.S.

When I closed out my last blog, I said that I had two theories remaining of what Upper Deck would do in response to archrival Topps getting an exclusive license from Major League Baseball to produce cards next year. I suppose that’s technically accurate, but I don’t really believe there’s any chance of the final solution, which would be Upper Deck simply giving up and quietly walking away from the arena, so to speak.

   I’ve only met Richard McWilliam (Upper Deck CEO) a couple of times, so I can hardly claim to have an inside track on what he might do, but from everything I’ve heard or read, it’s hard to imagine that happening.

   So here’s the angle I really like the best, assuming that for whatever reason Upper Deck isn’t able to get an injunction to put the Topps exclusive arrangement on hold while it wades its way through the courts. Why wouldn’t Upper Deck simply go about business as usual, putting out its planned February 2010 First Series precisely as it's drawn up?

   That has a lot of appeal, most cogently because it would be the least disruptive (i.e. expensive) from a production standpoint. It would presumably lead to a monumental legal challenge – perhaps the more protracted the better – in which the underpinnings of the licensing reach and scope would be tested.

   I’m not so sure that the parameters of what is permissible with licensing from a major professional sports league is all that crystal clear. What a license provides a manufacturer from a players association seems a little more clear cut, what with court decisions for 100 years or so delineating rights of publicity, etc., but the business of logos and uniform indicia is a lot murkier.

   I concede that legal questions don’t necessarily get hung up on fairness issues, but if I were paying a whole bunch of money to the MLBPA for the use of the players’ likenesses, I don’t think I’d be too thrilled to be told I had to picture them in their jammies.

   But that’s just me.

Monday, August 17, 2009 2:08:09 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

Thursday, August 13, 2009

The question is: What will Upper Deck do now?
Posted by T.S.

   Dang, it’s the most intriguing story line our hobby had dealt with in years, and there’s precious little hard information about what it’s going to mean. I am speaking, of course, about the decision by Major League Baseball to grant Topps an exclusive license to produce baseball cards next year, leaving Upper Deck in an odd, precarious position of having the rights to make cards from the players themselves (MLBPA) but unable to portray them with the logos and MLB insignias that would seem to be so vital to the presentation.

   When the New York Times broke the story late last week, it came virtually without comment from Upper Deck, other than to note that the Carlsbad, Calif.-based card maker had signed a licensing agreement with the MLBPA only weeks before. That reference was presumably intended to make it clear that Upper Deck would be producing baseball cards next year, but it didn’t shed any light on what they might look like.

   So, in the absence of clear indications from the Upper Deck folks, I’ve taken it upon myself to offer the next best thing: wild speculation. I see four possibilities of wildly varying attractiveness, though I am hardly so naive to think there can’t be others.

   I know it must aggravate the heck out of lawyers when the great unwashed weigh in on their area of expertise, which only impels me to go ahead with even more fervor. My favored theory is that Upper Deck, which boasts a battalion of legal hounds nearly as ferocious as, say, Walt Disney’s, will get an injunction that at least stalls the question of Topps exclusivity, asking that Upper Deck be allowed to continue producing baseball cards with all the various logos and indicia as it had previously until the matter is resolved.

   While I am well aware that there’s often a huge difference between what is morally right and what the law would engineer, I would suppose Upper Deck could make a fairly impressive pitch that they had proffered tens of millions of dollars to MLB over the last 20 years, you know, kind of showing a good-fatith commitment to the category, as it were.

   It may not be good, solid legalese, but I’ll betcha I could make a pretty good case that telling somebody they have the rights to picture MLB players but just not in the uniforms that they wear to work every day is not unlike Ashley Judd’s publicity agent being confined to picturing her only in that outfit worn by the Phillie Phanatic or maybe the colorful costuming of the various sausages at Milwaukee’s Miller Park.

   The final phase of this particular theory is that Upper Deck ties up the whole thing in court long enough to eventually wear everybody out and then wrangle some kind of a settlement out of MLB.
   My remaining three theories will follow in future blogs.

Thursday, August 13, 2009 4:29:51 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

Comments [0]

Free Updates

Navigation

Search

Archives

More Links