Why I Like Baseball

As a member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, I am putting in votes for season awards. You’ve already seen my vote for AL Cy Young Award (Zack Greinke), but for me the end votes are sometimes not as important to me as people’s reasons for voting, or not voting, for various candidates.

When it comes to manager of the year, there are several potential candidates in my book:

• Honorable mention: Joe Girardi, NY Yankees
• Third Don Wakatmatsu, Seattle
• Second: Ron Washington, Texas
• First: Ron Gardenhire, Minnesota

I’m discounting Mike Scioscia and Terry Francona, who are both just plain terrific. Props to Scioscia for leading his team through the Nick Adenhart tragedy (and overcoming their inability to beat the Sox when it counts… but this award is only for what happens in the regular season). And Francona has become a master at handling the rabid Boston media, weathering Big Papi’s woes and drug test upset, but it is old hat at this point.

When it comes to Joe Girardi, I give him credit for drawing together a club that could have been in rough waters all season, beginning with the February steroid news about A-Rod, the always tricky integration into the clubhouse of the “new guys”–both big money guys in Teixeira/Sabathia/Burnett and the fill-in guys like Nick Swisher. Girardi changed the feel of the club, allowing Swisher to crank up the boom box in the clubhouse (Joe Torre had mandated headphones), standing up to the veterans (allowing Molina to be Burnett’s personal catcher), and taking the whole team out for some fun in the spring with a pool tournament outing that set the tone for a year of energetic fun. This is a huge step and a great thing for the team and their fans, but ultimately hasn’t made him Manager of the Year for me, though I gave him serious consideration. If Alex had been hurt for longer, or if the loss of Wang had hurt them more, but they had still won, perhaps. I still wish there hadn’t been so much mystery around Joba Chamberlain, too.

The next two, Ron Washington and Don Wakamatsu, get major points for having done so much with so little. Wakamatsu’s team wasn’t expected to do anything, and they managed to put up a nice showing. And Washington’s Rangers hung in there for a long time, despite injuries and scandals and the usual problems that it’s so difficult to pitch in Arlington, TX.

But the award has to go to Ron Gardenhire of the Twins. He managed to lead his club to the postseason despite losing half the major power in his lineup when Justin Morneau was shut down for the season with a stress fracture in his back. His starting rotation was gutted by injury as well, but he turned Brian Duensing into a decent starter, and kept all his many fill-in parts clicking as they overtook the Tigers in the final month of the season. Gardenhire definitely squeezed every ounce out of every player to get them to October. Regardless what happens in the postseason, win or lose, Gardenhire gets my vote for AL Manager of the Year.

Well, so much for my postseason prediction that the Red Sox would manhandle the Angels. The Red Sox strengths and Angels weaknesses should have matched up entirely in Boston’s favor. But ultimately it was necessary for several key Sox to perform up to expectations for it to work.

David Ortiz’s oh-fer and Papelbon’s blown save combined to sink the Sox.

Ortiz had a terrific last two months of the season, but without Manny in the lineup hitting behind him, there was no reason for the Angels to give him anything good to hit. For a while it looked like it might be a wash, given that Vlad Guerrero was also coming up empty in the ALDS, as when he struck out with the bases loaded in game 2. But Guerrero came through with the big hit when LAA-la-land needed it most, after the intentional walk to Torii Hunter in the top of the ninth, bringing in the tying and go-ahead runs.

There were so many times this year that Papelbon seemed to walk a tightrope rather than just dominating in the ninth. Sometimes he needed 35 pitches to nail down that save. His walks were up. Early in the season the Sox put up a smokescreen, claiming Pap was working on new pitches, but as the season wore on, he continued to pitch in that style. The words “heart attack closer” were bandied about quite a lot here in Boston. Ultimately, the margin for error in the ninth inning of this game was too thin. He was one strike away from putting this game in the books as a W for the Sox, 0-2 on Erick Aybar, when Aybar singled.

Was he deflated when he then went 3-0 on Chone Figgins? He came back with two called strikes, then Figgins fouled one off, again one strike away from the win. And then came ball four.

So up came Bobby Abreu, a notoriously patient hitter, who took a ball, but then fouled off three straight fastballs, giving Pap his third opportunity to go one strike away… before doubling and bringing in a run. Then came the intentional walk to Hunter, and the Vladdy two-run single.

Not only did Papelbon blow the save and lose the game, his scoreless inning streak in the postseason is snapped as well. It’s going to be a long winter in the Papelbon household, I think.

It’s always sad when a great team has to go home early. The Sox and the Cardinals deserved to go deeper, but their opponents had other ideas.

The season is over, but it wasn’t without some great moments. Jacoby Ellsbury getting the franchise steals record, and stealing home against the Yankees, some great walk offs, but thinking about those bright moments right now is bittersweet now that they didn’t add up to more.

This did put a smile on my face, though. A tribute song to Joe Castiglione that they played for him on the broadcast:

http://weei.radiotown.com/soxbooth/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/joe-castiglione-song.mp3

See you next year, Red Sox.

There were so many twists and turns in this game that the only reasonable way for me to recap it is to tell it chronologically.

Let us begin with the weather, which was balmy and humid for October. With possible rain showers forecast, the fans had jackets but most were carrying them. The intense wind of game one had gone, and if anything the wind was blowing in just a bit, the big American flag beyond left field hanging limp much of the night.

The warmth added to the party atmosphere at the ballpark, where the beer was flowing freely if the people in our section of the upper deck were any indication. No one was feeling tense, except maybe the Twins.

The first seven pitches of the game were all strikes (or hit into play) before A.J. Burnett threw his first ball. He looked sharp and aggressive (except to Joe Mauer, but I get the feeling the Yankees corporate policy on Mauer is to never give him anything good to hit, so walking him sometimes is inevitable) but so did Nick Blackburn when he took the hill for Minnesota, retiring the Yankees quickly in the first. Jeter’s average was no longer a majestic 1.000. (more…)

Everything went according to the Yankees’ script tonight at The Stadium. Derek Jeter added to his postseason resume, CC Sabathia was dominant, the Twins were a plucky but not overly troublesome opponent, the bullpen was a well-oiled machine, and Alex Rodriguez got off the schneid.

I drove to New York today from Boston to make it in time for the game. I met up with my friend Lori, leaving my bags at her apartment, and then we headed to the Stadium. Found parking and walked, and just made it to our seats in time to see the first batter, Denard Span.

Who doubled. And even moved to third on a passed ball. But CC struck out the next two men (more…)

Going into the final week of the season, I began to think about the major season awards. I’m a member of the recently formed Baseball Bloggers Alliance, and each member blog will be opining our picks for awards like MVP and so on, so I’ve been thinking about this more than usual.

As of a week ago, my finalists for the AL Cy Young Award were CC Sabathia, Zack Greinke, and Felix “The King” Hernandez.

In CC’s case, there was one thing which would have clinched my Yankee-centric vision of the world, which is if he won 20 games. There is a longstanding tradition regarding the specialness of the 20-game win season. I’m not one who believes that wins are a great measure of how good a pitcher is, since wins (and losses) depend so highly on the performance of other members of the team. However, I do believe that a certain amount of good fortune is always necessary to set one player’s season apart from his rivals. Call it the Mandate of Heaven, if you want… (more…)

Oh, this time of year is fun. I’ve been getting vicarious thrills by rooting for the Rockies to win the NL Wild Card, and all of a sudden they are in Los Angeles playing the Dodgers with a chance to actually grab the NL West crown. Cool, eh?

I like the Rockies for a number of “dumb” reasons, but you should know by now that liking/loving/rooting is not really a rational thought process. I love the Rockies for being the only team with purple in their uniform colors. And for Troy Tulowitzki, whom I love because he carries a Derek Jeter baseball card in his wallet. Tonight Charley Steiner repeatedly described Tulo’s “jump pass” move to the point of redundancy, yet never mentioned that Jeter holds the patent on that one. I get the feeling Steiner only mentions the Y-word when forced to (he being a former employee of the Yankees).

But what I love most, actually is an exciting race, and the Rockies and Dodgers are certainly giving us that.

Among the dramatic highlights of tonight’s game, which I listened to via MLB.com, Manny Ramirez, the 2004 World Series MVP, idiot savant of the batters box, supposedly immune to pressure and possessed of a “natural” swing and hitting ability that is matched only by guys enshrined in the Hall of Fame, at the plate with men on and the Dodgers having climbed to within 4-3 of the Rockies…

Strike out.

Not just strike out, but strike out for the 6th time in a row. The last time he put a ball in play was last Tuesday. And before tonight’s three-run outburst, the Dodgers had not scored more than a single run in any game. Their magic number has been stuck at one for five days.

All I can do is laugh hysterically when Charley Steiner announces that the pinch runner is named Who. (Hoo? I believe he’s Korean. The whole National League is like a foreign nation to us.) “Does he play first base?” corwin asked. “Oh, please tell me he does.”

As I write this, the Dodgers are batting in the bottom of the ninth, facing Huston Street. One out. They need a walk-off, come-from-behind win to clinch. For once it sounds like no one has left the park. Now two out, Furcal at the plate, and Andre Ethier on deck. There will surely be some pun about ether and floating to be made if he gets up and hits the game-winner.

“The Dodgers have not lost five games in a row all year,” Charley Steiner reminds us. Yes, Charley, but previous performance is no indication of future results.

Full count on Furcal. Of course. It’s like a law or something. Big dramatic moments have to go to full counts…

Game Over! Furcal lines right into an infielder’s glove, like so many infamous games of the past. Some even in California. Think Bobby Richardson.

Two games left in the season, and if the Rockies win tomorrow, the two teams will be tied with one game left. This is what great baseball is all about.

As any regular reader of this blog knows, I have found my tribe in SABR. Did you know that it takes no special credentials or secret handshakes to be in SABR? Just a love of baseball. Whether you love the history, or the numbers, or the history of the numbers, or anything that helps you know, understand, or appreciate this great game of ours even more than you already do, then SABR has a place for you.

You don’t have to be an academic, you don’t have to be into fantasy baseball, you don’t have to like teams other than your own. You can be into baseball songs and poetry, the evolution of baseball’s rules, and just about any other thing you can think of relating to the game. If you want to, you can join a committee like the BioProject, and help research and write biographies of every player, manager, owner, umpire, or other personage involved with the game at any level. Or you can just sit back and enjoy the newsletters, local meetings, book publications, free perks on the Internet, and so on.

It was because of SABR I met Tommy Byrne, who passed recently, and who was a lefty pitcher for the Yankees in the 1950s. It was because of SABR I got to sit right behind the dugout in the Braves stadium on Easter Sunday (yes, they were playing at the time). It was because of SABR I found the site of Babe Ruth’s first home run as a professional player, in an intrasquad spring training game in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Need I go on?

As with most non-profit organizations, SABR’s membership rolls have shrunk during the recession. A new membership drive is on. So if, like me, you once thought you couldn’t join SABR because you had to be special, let me tell you right now that it ain’t so. And if you are thinking of joining? Well, now is the time. (Click here.)

Tell them Cecilia at Why I Like Baseball sent you, and I’ll teach you the secret handshake when I see you at the annual convention.

It’s always tricky trying to follow one’s team while traveling. In recent years I have found myself tempted to miss airplanes while watching in airport bars, watching broadcasts while ON planes (thank you, JetBlue), watching just the ESPN TICKER on planes when the local broadcast wasn’t on, carrying a portable XM radio with me, cartuning (trying to pull in any station with the broadcast on a car radio), streaming audio and/or video from MLB.com, watching pitch by pitch on MLB.com or one of the other sites, etc. etc.

It’s been difficult for me to follow the Yankees the past few days since I am in Charlotte, North Carolina running a small convention here. And Friday night we could not get the Internet working, so I thought my only choice was to stare at my iPhone watching the pitch by pitch from MLB.com’s mobile site (which is quite snazzy). This was difficult because I was continually having to talk to people, do things, help people, et cetera.

But instead I found a whole new way to follow a long distance ballgame. As it turned out, I did stare at my iPhone, because corwin went off to watch the game at the Forest Cafe, our neighborhood baseball-loving watering hole, and he texted me the game play by play. Yes, this is the story of two people who love the Yankees, and are in love with each other.

It went like this:
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Today I plunked down about $3,000 for the full run of postseason tickets at Yankee Stadium. Four seats, eleven games, including game seven of the World Series, should they get that far. I have yet to attend a World Series game in my lifetime, and my fingers, toes, and imaginary appendages are all crossed that this is the year I finally get to one!

And today I know at the very least they will be making the postseason. They won a thriller in Anaheim, a stadium where they have the worst record of any spot in the majors, 0-5 this year until tonight, and 5-19 since 2005. For the past few days, all they needed was either a Rangers’ loss or to win one game for themselves, and it just hasn’t happened, until tonight.

Little things meant a lot in this game, as they always do in postseason play. For example, when Alex Rodriguez sent a 3-0 pitch (one of only 20 homers hit in the 2009 season on a 3-0 count, and that’s out of 4703 total homers hit in the big leagues this season) into the rock garden next to the batter’s eye, there was a man on base. The man was Hideki Matsui, who reached on catcher’s interference. He had grounded to shortstop, and he almost never grounds the ball that direction, so the moment it happened corwin and I turned to each other and said “what happened there?” But then the umpire ruled that Mathis’ glove had touched the bat, and replays confirmed it. In a game where one run was the difference, that’s huge.

So was A-Rod’s sac fly in the top of the ninth, the game-winner, which came on the first pitch he saw. No waiting around. He golfed a low strike on a line into center, which had it sliced or hooked might have gone in the gap. Instead Torii Hunter charged it and put a good throw to the plate, but Gardner was fast enough to beat it. Gardner is the only guy on the roster who would have been fast enough to beat it. How about the fact that Gardner swiped second on a pitch out? Good times.

Jeter probably had the funniest line off the night when after the game he said “We got the monkey off our back. No pun intended.” (Yes, the Rally Monkey did make an appearance, and the Angels did rally to tie the game, but the Yankees won it anyway.)

October, here we come.

I got an email this morning with an amusing lead in:

“The Yankees had an interesting game last night, but to highlight the ’softer side’ of Jorge Posada, I wanted to send over some information that may be of interest to some of your readers around Charitybuzz auctions that are ending tomorrow, September 17, 2009 benefiting The Jorge Posada Foundation.”

Last night, of course, was the night Jorge got into a fistfight with a relief pitcher from the Toronto Blue Jays. Jeter is the quiet one. Jorge is the fiery one. And I’m sure he was chapped that the Yankees were losing a game they should have been winning and not playing the way the Yankees should, even if they are close to having a postseason slot wrapped up. How can you put 12 men on base in 6 innings against Roy Halladay and only plate two of them?

But anyway, yes, Jorge has another side, whether one calls it ’softer’ or not, like his wife Laura and he just wrote a book on family health and fitness, and of course his charity foundation which supports families of children with the condition that has afflicted Jorge Jr., craniosynostosis.

Anyway, check out the items being auctioned until tomorrow at http://charitybuzz.com/auctions/posada2009, including a Wilson Catcher’s Glove signed by Jorge Posada, Yogi Berra, Joe Girardi & Other Legendary Yankee Catchers or Two Tickets to the 2009 World Series.

Apparently, Derek Jeter got the memo about my dad’s birthday, he just got the details wrong.

You see, my father and I (along with my brother and his son Owen–three generations of Tans at one ballgame!) went to the game on Monday at 1pm, Labor Day, to celebrate my dad’s 74th birthday, and also in hopes of seeing Jeter climb another rung or two on the ladder toward Lou Gehrig’s all time Yankee hits record.

As has now been chronicled in minute detail in the mass media, Jeter got three hits the day before in Toronto, and had been on a torrid pace for several weeks, hitting something like .425 in the previous 10 days and so on. That day they started a home stand at Yankee Stadium, though, and the hype was so heavy I thought the ginormous video screen in center was going to fall down.
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I like to pretend that I can see into the future, but really I just have to wait until I get there like everyone else.

Today I’m wondering if someday people will talk about Derek Jeter the way men of a certain era now talk about Mickey Mantle.

You know the ones I mean, guys like John Giambi, Jason’s father, who grew up idolizing Mantle and for whom that love was a defining thing. There are a lot of guys that age who say it. They weren’t New Yorkers, sometimes they weren’t even Yankees fans, but they loved/idolized Mantle.

I am sure there is something similar going on with Michael Jordan that transcends basketball and transcends sport, and goes beyond race, as well. I was struck by hearing the other day that when asked if he could invite anyone at all to dinner, Melky Cabrera replied that he would like to have Joe Girardi, Derek Jeter… and Michael Jordan at his table. Young athletes regardless of race or what sport they play truly idolize him.

But what about Jeter? We have reached that stage of his career where he is knocking guys like Lou Gehrig out of the top slots in Yankee franchise career lists. Every year critics say he is going to get old and tired and start slowing down… and he’s having one of his best seasons ever. But even if he does start slowing down next season, the numbers are staring us in the face.

This guy is good.

But I’m not talking here about his Hall of Fame eligibility, I’m talking about a more nebulous legacy. Thirty or forty years from now, will there be a generation or a demographic who talk about Jeter being the one? My guess is that if there is, it’ll be among a population of young fans and especially female fans who all got into the game because of him, and who will be baseball fans forever after. I remember one time standing behind the dugout at Fenway Park during batting practice. A man was there holding his son, who was probably two and a half to three years old. Every five minutes or so, the child would ask him. “Where’s Jeter?” And his father would dutifully point out where Derek was at the time. Taking ground balls. Talking with Jorge Posada.

Those of us who have seen him grow up as a Yankee, who have gotten used to how good he is, how much he does, can we even gauge just how big he is? Or where his fame and icon-status may go after he retires? We can’t. But we can guess.

I am already picturing the not-so-distant future when Jeter’s Hall of Fame induction comes around. And how the crowd that swells the ranks of spectators will make the group that saw Cal Ripken inducted look like nothin’.

It has become fun to watch the standings lately. The Yankees have the best record in baseball at 82 wins, and it’s not lost on me that the last time the won the World Series, in 2000, they managed only 87 wins on the season. That was back when the Red Sox front office was still in its era of historical incompetence, Peter Angelos was still undermining all efforts of his own GM(s) in Baltimore, and the Tampa Bay team still had the word “devil” in its name.

For some reason, won-loss records in particular have been catching my eye. It makes it obvious that dear old Tampa, who were AL champs last year and in the World Series (even if it looked like they never really woke up enough to play the actual World Series… I guess it just seemed so much like a dream…), would be in first place if they were in the AL Central right now with their .543 winning percentage. Instead, they are in third place in the AL East, 11.5 games back.

That’s how far Cleveland is behind Detroit in the Central, and they are at 58-72, 14 games below .500.

Heck, even Seattle would be in the running in the Central, where right now only Detrit has a winning record. Minnesota is even at 65 and 65. Seattle is at 68-63, and every team in the AL West is above .500 except Oakland.
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Day Four of the SABR Convention

First up: Starbucks. Tea and coffee cake are necessary to get through the morning.
Second: Baseball’s Global Trend in Emergence of China
(Dominican) Player (Non-)Promotion in the Global Baseball Labor Market
Alexander Cartwright — mythologized much?
Awards Banquet Talk by an MLB Lawyer
Negro League Players Panel
The Rise & Fall of Greenlee Field
Grover Cleveland Alexander

(more…)

Day Three of the SABR convention in Washington, DC.

I am so not used to getting up this early every day. I got in from dinner last night and could barely keep my eyes open while blogging. I conked out earlier than I have in years, two nights in a row. But I’m still sleepy.

Despite this, I was up for the first presentation of the day. Today’s schedule:

Branch Rickey’s Wilberforce Speech
George Michael interviewing Frank Howard and Rick Dempsey
A Framework to Evaluate Managers
Do Pitchers Try Harder to Get Their 20th Win?
Baseball and Early Electro-Acoustic Technology
A Tale of Two Umpires (who were fired for union organizing)
Bus caravan to Camden Yards to see Orioles/Sox

(more…)

Second day of the annual SABR convention! My day started very bright and early.

Today’s items included:
Women in Baseball Committee Meeting
Annual Business Meeting
Library of Congress Presentation
21* — on Tom Cheney, the pitcher who struck out 21 in one 16 inning game
Walter Johnson vs. Babe Ruth
On-Base Improvement by Veterans
Christina Kahrl of Baseball Prospectus
Bullpen Evolution, 1960-2008
Does Running Bases Harm Pitching Performance?
Effect of Defensive Positioning on Offensive Performance (more…)

First day of the SABR Convention! We are in Washington, DC this time. For those who want a micro-blog experience of the convention, check out http://twitter.com/ceciliatan (and search on twitter.com for #sabr for even more!) I will try to write up decent posts here as I did last year, too.

You may recall that last year I was forced to post via the horrible WebTV interface in my hotel room because my laptop died on the way to the convention. Let’s hope not to repeat that performance.

On today’s slate we had:
Tour of Nationals Park
History of DC Baseball Talk by Phil Wood
Baseball-ese Talk by Paul Dickson at Smithsonian

My friend Eric, who has worked for the last four years as a stat consultant for the Red Sox (but not this year–economic cutbacks all around…), has come along with me on the trip. We got up at the literal crack of dawn to catch the 5:55 am train from Boston so we could make it here in time for the 3pm ballpark tour.
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The queue of books awaiting my attention just got a little longer, so I thought before they get too old, I would at least run down the list of books on my desk I am really looking forward to reading. I picked up several Red Sox related titles at the BookExpoAmerica convention, which was held in New York City last weekend. And yet no book on the Yankees! It felt like there was very little in the way of baseball books, in fact, but maybe that’s just because the GLUT of Yankees and Red Sox books is easing? Or Yankees books anyway, now that all the stadium books are out? (I suppose you could count the Selena Roberts tell-all about A-Rod to be a Yankee book… or would that be an anti-Yankee book? It is NOT on my to-read list.)
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You never know what you’re going to see when you go out to the ballpark.

Tonight I went out to the snazzy new Stadium in the Bronx to see the Yankees take on the Minnesota Twins.

I did not expect to see Phil Hughes pitch a no-hitter. And he didn’t.

I did not expect to see the Yankees score three runs off Twins closer Joe Nathan in the bottom of the ninth. But they did.

I did not expect to see an inside the park home run. But I did.

Here’s how it happened. (more…)

Given that Boston has just laid to rest one of its icons in Dominic DiMaggio, I thought I’d share with everyone some excerpts from an interview I did with him back in 2003, back when the Sox story was always one of heartbreak.

We talked about a lot of heartbreakers in the interview, by necessity. So many of the great games at the “Little Professor” played in were the tough ones. There was of course the big Game Seven in the 1946 World Series, the game where Enos Slaughter dashed home. But also the one game playoff against Cleveland in 1948. And in 1949, going into Yankee Stadium needing to win only one of the final two games of the season to clinch the pennant, and losing both. That same year, little Dom had a 34 game hitting streak going (still a Red Sox record), snapped at–guess where?–Yankee Stadium, on a line drive that almost took the pitcher’s head off but was caught by–who else?–big brother Joe.

CT: What was Fenway Park like in those days?

DD: Oh, I enjoyed Fenway Park. I enjoyed it very much. (more…)