The Infield Dirt with T.S. O'Connell

   I read the other day that Omar Vizquel intends to take up bullfighting in the offseason. I guess that’s cool; certainly the “sport” has a different cultural significance in Venezuela than it does in Vermont.

   Of more interest to me is the ultimate fate of Vizquel’s Hall of Fame chances, and those of his fellow countryman, Dave Concepcion. The former seems like he ought be a surefire Hall of Famer once he actually deigns to retire, maybe not first ballot, but eventually, but then you would think the same thing about the latter.

   Concepcion was the best shortstop in the National League in the 1970s, and yet he got very little love from the baseball writers, ending up with about 16 percent in his final year under the scrutiny of the BBWAA in 2008.

   My Concepcion theory would be similar to my explanation of why Gil Hodges is still on the outside looking in: too many teammates from one of the great all-time ball clubs are installed in Cooperstown, so the last guy has to struggle to get voters to remember the depth of his contribution.

   With Hodges, it’s trailing Pee Wee, Duke and Jackie; with Concepcion, it’s even more complicated. Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and Joe Morgan are Hall of Famers, and Pete Rose is a de facto Hall of Famer. The result is that a wonderful shortstop ends up denied for the moment at least, and that’s too bad.

   It’s also ominous in the long term, because the new voting arrangements for Veterans have really raised the bar in terms of any individual player’s prospects for getting a nod significantly in defiance of the results of 15 years of voting by the BBWAA. That was the goal when the system was revised several years ago and it seems to have been achieved. It’s one of those things in life that is laudable in theory but problematic in practice for the individuals affected.

   I have a sneaky suspicion that Vizquel is not going to have smooth sailing to Cooperstown despite having career numbers either indistinguishable from or in many instances better than his most suitable comparison player: Ozzie Smith.

   He’s 42 now and still playing in a part-time role, so it’s almost a certainty he can’t hang around long enough to snag the 300 or so hits he would need to get to 3,000. He shouldn’t have to reach that particular milestone number to get elected, but it certainly wouldn’t have hurt.

   As it stands, I figure it will hurt him having played substantial chunks of his career for four different teams. That ain’t fair, but I am convinced it’s a factor in how a player is preceived by the voters.

   It also doesn’t help that the Hall of Fame roster for shortstops is kind of an odd listing mostly made up of guys with a decided turn-of-the-century or Depression era look to them.

   It’s ironic that one of the most important positions on the field should get short shrift in Hall of Fame balloting, especially when you consider that from Little League all the way to the high school level, the best athlete on the squad often ends up at shortstop. But in the near six decades of Major League Baseball since the end of World War II, only a half dozen or so shortstops have been inducted, and one of those: Ernie Banks, wasn’t really a shortstop for more than half of his career.

   Since Pee Wee and Rizzuto, there have only been Luis Aparicio, Ozzie Smith and Cal Ripken. It’s true enough that there are plaques awaitin’ for Derek Jeter and A-Rod (spare me the chest thumping about steroids), but in the meantime it would be nice to see Concepcion get his due.

   Hell, the way Vizquel is hanging around, it’s not clear his first vote will come before Jeter’s anyway.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 5:41:30 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Lotsa golf, with apologies to Rogers Hornsby ...
Posted by T.S.

“I don’t like golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to chase it.”
   – Rogers Hornsby

   I promised a report on five days of golf in northwestern Wisconsin, and just in case there are any avid golfers in my readership, I feel obligated to deliver. I understand that this kind of entry is more in the spirt of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Fark or the like, but in the current climate that’s not a criticism, merely an observation.

   After getting back from Milwaukee early Saturday morning (Sept. 19), we drove to Rhinelander, Wis., for 18 holes, then on to our lodging at the Lac Courte Oreilles Casino in Hayward, Wis. We then went on to play 36 holes each day for the next four days, 10 rounds of golf on seven different courses. All of the courses were swell, a couple were so nice we played them twice. Not so much as a drop of rain in four days.

   While Tiger & Co. were readying for the Tour Championship and the wrapup of the better configured but still confusing Fed Ex Cup $10-million bonanza, I was launching drives deep into the spectacular North Country woods, playing often narrow, hilly courses with a reckless abandon worthy of a hacker with more than two-dozen brand-new golf balls safely ensconced in the bag. When we returned on Wednesday evening, I had lost every last one of them.

   I also lost $200 at the casino, though not in the typical fashion (and, hopefully, not permanently). Clever rube that I am, I got snookered by a rougue ATM machine, not by a slot machine or a black jack dealer. Took my ATM card and then defiantly refused to render me any cash whatsoever.

   It wasn’t until a day after I got back home that I confirmed with my bank that indeed I had been momentarily hosed by – gulp! – yet another computer, those modern marvels that everybody swears by but I seem to routinely want to whack with a sledgehammer. I have been undertaking to get the error fixed and am reasonably confident of a happy ending.

   It’s a pretty good marker of how much fun we had on the vacation that I didn’t let that minor incident even remotely bother me at the time. We ate like hedonists, including several big, fat steaks and world-class ribs at the original Famous Dave’s not far outside of Hayward.

   Anybody wants more detail than that feel free to contact me through the comments section or e-mail me directly. Great fun, and assuming I get my $200 back, I wouldn’t even hesitate to recommend the casino for lodging and gaming.

Just to be on the safe side, though, I would avoid the ATM machine at the front entrance.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009 3:37:53 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Thursday, September 24, 2009

Miller Park is great, but weenies need a nudge ...
Posted by T.S.

   At the risk of creating something that sounds like a fourth-grader’s report on what he did over the summer vacation, I herewith offer a few observations from my recent Milwaukee Brewers/Northern Wisconsin Golf Outing. This at least explains why I haven’t blogged in nearly a week, since my computer literacy extends to this office and doesn’t travel with me on actual vacations.

   I’ve been to a handful of Brewer games over the years since Miller Park opened, most notably that icky All-Star Game that never reached an acceptable conclusion in 2002, but it wasn’t till this last one that I realized that the unique nature of a roofed facility actually makes it look small. That’s not a criticism, just an observation.

   Having walls that go all the way around a stadium cuts off that wonderful expansive view from beyond the outfield wall; either that or as I age things that used to seem massive to me now appear much smaller. I visited my old ship, the U.S.S. Midway four or five years ago at the harbor in San Diego where it’s now a museum, and it seemed small to me now. Maybe it was because it was docked next to one of those cruise ships, which weren’t nearly as large in 1970 as they are today, or in any event weren’t docked next to us 40 years ago.

   Back to Milwaukee. The Brewers have cheerleaders, which I didn’t know. SCD’s managing editor Tom Bartsch tells me that they are only there on certain days. Again, not complaining, since I haven’t reached the point yet of bemoaning the inclusion of scantily-clad hot young babes at almost any venue short of funerals and bar mitzvahs, but I wasn’t expecting it.

   It’s hardly insightful to point out that modern-day baseball clubs labor frantically to provide countless “entertainment experiences” along with the rudimentary baseball game on the field, but I still find it overwhelming. I contend it's a reflection of the grand corporate belief that in order to attract fans it has to somehow augment its product to the point of silliness. Considering the corner that MLB has painted itself into requiring so many millions of dollars in revenue – much of it from corporate “fans” whose interest and understanding of the game is fairly questionable – it’s understandable that they feel they must gussy up their package, but ....

   The formula for a great ball game is still stunningly simple at its core: the game itself, the players, the stadium, and, drum roll, please ... the food. I will probably get in trouble for this, but the food at Miller Park was lackluster at best, and I am being gentle here. Ballpark food doesn’t have to suck; I have had great ballpark fare at Jacobs Field, for example (do they still call it that?).

   Sigh. I guess I really am an old geezer. Forty-five years ago when I started going to Mets games at Shea, the weenies were probably just as pathetic, but I was in such a state of elevated consciousness that I didn’t even notice.

   Still, I’ll never get to the point of crabbing about going to a baseball game. But the quality of the food would improve dramatically as we headed north into the wilds of the Wisconsin wilderness for five days of golf.

Thursday, September 24, 2009 5:15:47 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Thursday, September 17, 2009

I must remember to check in on tennis more often ...
Posted by T.S.

   Clearly, my failure to keep track of the modern tennis game has left me extraordinarily out of touch with a sport that used to grab my attention from time to time many years ago.

   As I suspect it was for millions of others, the US Open provided the opportunity to visit an old friend, so to speak, but by golly virtually all of the names have changed when I wasn’t looking. Most of the folks I remember are sitting in the broadcast booth. I am not proud of any of this deplorable ignorance, just reporting.

   I’d always been tickled by the female section, remembering the incredible battles between Chris Everett and Martina; it sounds silly to say it, but I’d always kind of thrilled to the audio portion, the grunts of exertion for the gals, and the occasional verbal tirade at the various officials by some of the guys.

   Lots of things have changed – most importantly the names – but the audio traditions remain largely intact to provide a kind of comfort for visitors like myself who have been away too long.

   Here I was just getting accustomed to the idea that Roger Federer was/is perhaps the greatest ever, and then I tune into a Finals match where some young fella (Juan Martin del Potro) I had never heard of whups him big time. And this coming a couple of days after I had seen a SportsCenter clip of him coolly returning a difficult volley by swiping at the tennis ball between his legs with his back to the net.

   Back when I lived on the East Coast and used to occasionally go to some of the big pool tournaments, I was always struck by the realization that a lot of times you watch a couple of opponents play for a half hour or so, and I would come away with the feeling that Player A had Player B’s number.

   I think that kind of calculation works a bit more in a game like pool where the psychological aspect is so extraordinarily exaggerated relative to other sports. In tennis, where I understand that there’s a good deal of physical exertion involved and stamina is much more of a factor, probably not so much.

   Still, when I tuned in to that Men’s Final, I felt like the Argentinian had Federer’s number. I guess the only way I can check out my admittedly tenuous theory is to keep track of tennis a bit more assiduously than I have over the last 20 years.

   I promise.

Thursday, September 17, 2009 4:32:03 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Halper even had Mordecai Brown missing digits ...
Posted by T.S.

   Just about everything surrounding the 1999 sale of the Halper Collection at Sotheby’s in New York City was exciting, from the week-long museum-like preview of the material at Sotheby’s elegant digs on 72nd Street to the frenzied media coverage and ultimately the sale itself.

   But all the way through it, Halper himself was perhaps the calmest guy on site. I had talked with him for many years about his desire to see his collection preserved largely intact in a museum, but here he was selling the bulk of it piecemeal through an admittedly spectacular auction.

   It wasn’t technically the way he had envisioned the final curtain for his epic accumulation, but he seemed at peace with it all by the time the gavel fell on Lot No. 1, an 1868 Mueller & Deacon bronze baseball figurine ($12,650). It must have helped a bit that only months earlier he had sold a $5-million chunk of his stuff to Major League Baseball, which had promptly turned it all over to the Baseball Hall of Fame. That, in turn, gave rise to the Barry Halper wing at the Hall, which offers a nice glimpse of the Herculean efforts of the most prolific baseball memorabilia collector who ever lived.

   Here’s a story I always liked about Halper, in part because – like so many of the best Halper stories – it didn’t center around a stratospheric dollar figure for this or that piece of memorabilia. Halper sold his stuff for $30 million-plus, but if you talked to him, the tales always centered around the stuff, not how much he paid for the stuff or what he might sell it for.

   “A collector once sent me two porcelain fingers, with a note saying that they came from the family of Mordecai “Three-Finger” Brown,” Halper said with a smile during one of the brief moments of calm at the auction. “The note said, ‘I know this is the missing link to your collection.’ ”

   The same guy also sent Halper a pebble that allegedly was the one that a certain ground ball struck en route to crashing into Tony Kubek’s Adam’s apple and thus altering the outcome of the 1960 World Series.

   The merry prankster who mailed those ersatz treasures to an amused Halper? None other than our own Marty Appel, the former Yankees PR director, acclaimed author and SCD columnist.

   Nice touch.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009 5:05:17 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The Halper Collection Auction 10 years later ...
Posted by T.S.

Next week (Wednesday) marks the 10th anniversary of one

of the greatest events in hobby history: the September 1999 sale of the Barry Halper Collection by Sotheby’s in New York City.

   While it’s fun to ponder what 10 years of inflation would do to the final sales total of roughly $22 million for the seven-day extravaganza, it’s even more instructive to ponder the impact of the historic sale with the benefit of a decade’s hindsight.

   Probably nothing approached its importance in propelling the memorabilia end of the hobby further into the big time. Our hobby had been moving toward high-end equipment, autographs and memorabilia for several years by 1999, but the Halper sale took it – forgive me for this usage – to a whole new level.

   The amount of mainstream media coverage in the months leading up to the Halper sale was nothing short of staggering. After the first day’s sessions on Sept. 23, David Letterman took note of the festivities by announcing that he was wearing Babe Ruth’s underwear during his monologue. Under the circumstances, that kind of odd occurrence would have technically been quite possible: a pair of Ruthian underpants sold the next day for $1,840, making it a veritable bargain in the giddy atmosphere in Sotheby’s elegant auction setting.

   As you might expect, being able to be on hand for a good chunk of the week-long proceedings was one of the high points of my time at ; one of the others was a visit to Halper’s home three years earlier to view his famed collection in its natural habitat.

   Given the extraordinary nature of all that took place, I’ll need a couple of days of blogging to offer a suitable reminiscence. I’ll offer this recollection from Day Two as a warmup: From his luxury box high above the auction floor, Halper remarked about the sale of his 1927 Lou Gehrig jersey for $305,000, bought by Mastro Auctions’ Dave Bushing on behalf of a client, Upper Deck.

   “I hope they don’t cut it up,” the icon remarked, “because I had heard those rumors.” Halper, though clearly prescient in anticipating the card companies’ willingness to eventually undertake such wrenching endeavors, didn’t have to worry about this particular jersey. Upper Deck officials quickly made it clear that the artifact would be kept intact.

   I’ll resume these musings on the morrow.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 4:18:13 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)

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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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