The Infield Dirt with T.S. O'Connell - Monday, September 14, 2009

Technophobes last acceptable group for vilification ...
Posted by T.S.

   I’ll concede this is technically a bit off topic in terms of sports cards and memorabilia, but the onerous nature of technological advances over the last 25 years touches virtually every aspect of our daily lives ... and it ain’t always pretty.

   People who are resistant to all the technology – or more mildly, slow to embrace it – are vilified as either ignorant, dim-witted or just plain prehistoric. Nowhere is there even the slightest suggestion that reluctance to jump headlong onto the bandwagon could conceivably have roots in legitimate arguments about the need, utility or even usefulness of whatever the latest innovation might be.

   There are literally millions of people who avoid the Internet or even use of a home computer like the plague, and it says here that part of their abstention stems from the fact that computers themselves are designed for the glee and absorption of the most-computer literate rather than allow for some tentative accommodation to the people who just can’t seem to get the hang of it all.

   We – if it weren’t obvious, I am a suitably enraged technophobe – get treated like petulant children because we don’t “get” all the little symbols and arcane directions associated with computer use. Almost everything that gets lumped under the new technology banner winds up being infinitely more complex than it has to be, the directions are agonizingly complicated and confusing and the array of options and features goes way beyond what the casual user might regard as necessary.

   Someday, there’s going to be a backlash – and the marginally older crowd is going to at the forefront, loudly proclaiming that the next cellphone doesn’t need to be the size of a postage stamp, or the instructions for a computer program to allow the organization of treasured family photos doesn’t need to be the size of the Manhattan phone book.

   I suppose this all started many eons ago, but some of the innovations in recent decades have been equal parts annoying and superfluous. We probably let it all get away from us when we allowed businesses to send us into computer hell with recorded answering systems that let you talk for interminable periods to a synthesized computer “voice” that effectively keeps you at bay from ever talking to a human being.

   Press “2” on your computer if you think I’m just another lollygagging neo-Luddite old dog unwilling to learn new tricks.

Monday, September 14, 2009 4:50:28 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Thursday, September 10, 2009

Cool autographed cards from Athletics Society ...
Posted by T.S.

   The other day I blogged about Pittsburgh, so this time we'll head to the other end of the Keystone State to the Philadelphia environs and drop in on the crew from the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society.

   There is no more dedicated group of fans of the game of baseball in general or the long-since-departed Philadelphia Athletics in particular, so when the Society puts together a memorabilia project, you know it’s a first-class affair.

   Under the able administration of my good friend Ernie Montella, who coordinated the project, the second series of the Diamond Signatures Autographed Card Set is now available, with a miniscule 100 sets available to the public out of the total 125 produced.

   There are 52 autographed cards featured in the set, with names ranging from the obscure to Hall of Famers, bedeviled to the beloved, All-Stars, journeymen and even managers and executives. There are also bonus cards of Dom DiMaggio and famed Phillies announcer Harry Kalas, both of whom died before the opportunity was there to sign their cards.

   The first series was limited to 200 sets and was completely sold out, so this second effort figures to be a popular item. I took a good look at the cards: sepia-toned photos on an elegant blue background with orange spot color and a gold-foil Diamond Signatures stamp on the fronts (I apologize that the image shown here is in black and white). Virtually all the signatures are clear and precise and done in Blue Sharpie, with the retired players obviously taking great care with each signature.

   A sampling of the lineup: Ralph Kiner, Bob Feller, Bobby Doerr, Carl Erskine, Frank Howard, Bobby Richardson, Bob Cerv, Johnny Pesky, Jim Lonborg, Bobby Shantz, Dalas Green, Dick Allen and a host of others.

   The set is available for $299 to A’s Society members who order and pay for the set by Oct. 1 (includes insurance and postage); any left after that date will be $499, so a certain amount of urgency would seem to be in order.

   Call the Gift Shoppe at (800) 318-0483 to order.

Thursday, September 10, 2009 1:46:20 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Pirates fans deserve better than this ...
Posted by T.S.

Neuman Wagner color.jpg

   I don’t know how Pittsburgh Pirates fans do it. Seventeen seasons without topping the .500 mark, 17 years since they lost the greatest player of his generation and ultimately became the poster child for a baseball system that’s demoralizing to fans old enough to remember when this was one of the coolest franchises in the game.

   The proud franchise that brought you Honus Wagner, Pie Traynor, a couple of Waners, Ralph Kiner, Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, et. al, has spent nearly two decades wandering in baseball’s wilderness, fielding clubs just good enough to be interesting but not very threatening to The Haves.

(The Alfred E. Neuman T206 card is provided courtesy of the Michael Gidwitz Collection.)

   Personally, I think the whole situation sucks. They have a great baseball town, a cool ballpark smack dab in the middle of downtown and the aforementioned sterling MLB tradition that goes back 100 years ... and yet every year it would seem to require self-delusion on a grand scale to hold out much hope for a postseason berth.

   I know, I know, there have plenty enough examples of small-market miracles or even successful repeaters of teams that find ways to win against payrolls far in excess of their own, but I don’t think that negates the underlying flaws in the system. Ultimately it means that such clubs will need to precisely align all of their roster-building efforts to coincide with a couple of peak years they might get from a top player or two before free agency beckons. Not impossible, certainly, but apparently a tall order for any number of teams that have languished in what we laughingly described as the “second division” so many years ago.

   I was in Pittsburgh in the fall of 1992 when they last took part in the postseason fun. I think I must have been set up at the J. Paul Promotions show at Robert Morris College; I wasn’t able to get to the playoff game, but I remember all the enthusiasm that fans at that classic show always have for their Pirates down through the years.

   At least with my Mets I don’t have to abandon all hope until a wee bit later in the year (and sometimes there’s even a surprise or two). With that kind of pedigree, it’s clear I have a lot of empathy for long-suffering fans from virtually any generation.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009 7:35:55 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Chicago Lawyer Mag hints that perhaps it aint so ...
Posted by T.S.

   I’ve been stumping for more than 25 years to get Shoeless Joe Jackson into the Baseball Hall of Fame, including a vigorous stretch of several years in the mid-1980s when my then-wife and I circulated petitions for just that purpose. Now the fight has been joined by an unlikely ally: lawyers.

   From the September issue of Chicago Lawyer Magazine comes “Black Sox: It just ain’t so, kid, it just ain’t so,” a tidy little indictment of much of the conventional wisdom that simply assumes the guilt of the “Chicago Eight” in fixing the 1919 World Series.

http://www.chicagolawyermagazine.com/

   Gee, I’d been more than willing to commit considerable time and resources to try to help out Shoeless Joe even in the face of the widespread belief of his guilt, though I had never been convinced of it myself. I always figured it was simply too ambitious to ask people re-evaluate the whole question of his guilt or innocence; better to try to get him a plaque on the basis of “reasonable doubt.”

   Though the article doesn’t explicitly use that term, that would seem to be what it establishes not just for Joe but for virtually the entire crew. It’s also a pretty strong indictment about the quality of Eliot Asinof’s journalistic efforts in his iconic 1963 book 8 Men Out.

   Along with pushing forth several good arguments of reasonable doubt for the players, Chicago Lawyer also offers that even more revolutionary theory that perhaps Charlie Comiskey wasn’t quite the reprehensible skinflint that history has recorded him as personifying. I can’t quite drum up quite as much enthusiasm for that non-traditional view, but I certainly understand how a gaggle of Windy City legal types might embrace that particular bit of revisionist thinking.

   I don’t typically find myself aligned with those in the legal community, but it’s a really good article that quite fairly raises questions about Asinof’s scholarship in general and the author’s reliance on second- and third-hand accounts of the infamous 1920 grand jury testimony in particular. And so I pass it along as something worth reading.

   It also gave me an opportunity to show off Darryl Vlasak’s nifty artwork portraying the disgraced White Sox Eight and the commish who sacked them.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009 2:57:13 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Thursday, September 03, 2009

Upper Deck still figuring out Plan B for 2010 ...
Posted by T.S.

   I interviewed Upper Deck’s marketing director the other day about the company’s plans in light of the recent decision by Major League Baseball to grant Topps an exclusive license for next year, and two rather important points were abundantly clear.

   Those would be – in order of importance – 1. Upper Deck will be making baseball cards next year; and 2. The way in which those cards will be presented either hasn’t been decided yet or isn’t yet ready to be rolled out to the public.

   Kerri Kauffman made No. 1 perfectly clear; No. 2, I was left for me to infer from her comments, which understandably couldn’t be all that specific at the moment.

   There was another question I asked her which I understood she certainly couldn’t answer, but still one I think bears a good deal of public airing. How much money do you suppose Upper Deck ponied up to Major League Baseball over the 20 years that the Carlsbad, Calif., behemoth has been producing baseball cards?

   I know, I know, in business it’s more about what have you done for me lately, but even in that department, Kauffman insists Upper Deck could make a pretty good case for itself. I still think the 20 years and what must have been way past $100 million ought to count for something as well.

   While the prevailing business mantra would seemingly dismiss the relative importance of monies proffered many years earlier, it’s worth remembering that the executives who make the decisions (both licensors and licensees) thankfully see their own remuneration handsomely aligned to all of their earlier efforts. It’s kind of a handy double standard, you could say.

   I don’t know about you, but I’d be mad as the dickens if I had paid big bucks for two decades to an ostensible business partner, only to be tossed over the side when the seas got rough (I love nautical analogies). And what makes it tougher for Upper Deck in this instance is that it can’t really express all that outrage because ultimately it needs/wants to get back in the boat.

   The interview with Kauffman will be in my column in the Sept. 25 issue of SCD and will likely be posted online at some point as well.

Thursday, September 03, 2009 3:23:12 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Maury Wills: Overlooked HOF candidate ...
Posted by T.S.

   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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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