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.

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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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

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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

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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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There’s been much hoo-hah (that is a technical term, you know) in the media these days about the tipping of pitches.

In particular, of course, it’s in response to Selena Roberts’ book on A-Rod, in which she posits a league-wide conspiracy among A-Rod and his sycophants and cronies on other teams, who would tip pitches to each other to help pump up their personal stats, but only in meaningless games or already-a-blowout situations.

This is a brilliant accusation by Roberts because 1) it seems like a plausible explanation for why A-Rod “always” seems to homer in meaningless situations, 2) it supports her psychological profile of A-Rod as a selfish and immature glory-seeker, and 3) as a conspiracy, the LESS people in the game come forward to talk about it, the MORE believable its existence seems to be!

There have been serious questions about Roberts’ integrity and about whether she she is pushing a personal agenda in the book. I expected she’d be attacked some, because anyone daring to criticize A-Rod will be reacted to by some as if they are attacking baseball itself, and therefore staunch defenders will rise up to counter-attack. But Jason Whitlock’s points in the Kansas City Star struck home for me.
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So I was poking around on my Facebook account today, and an ad along the righthand side of the page caught my eye, as the graphic accompanying it was, shall we say, GRAPHIC!

In fact, it really looked like Roger Clemens and Derek Jeter in a really compromising, or at least suggestive, position.

This was suspicious for a couple of reasons, including the fact that it looks a lot like a Photoshop manipulation job, and not the least of which being that the ad is supposed to be attracting those that “LOVE THE YANKEES?”
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We were really looking forward to a tight pitching duel at Fenway today, as AJ Burnett and Josh Beckett faced off.

As I write this, Jonathan Papelbon just walked Derek Jeter in the top of the ninth, in which Boston has a 16-11 lead.

There have been 28 hits in the game so far, and Papelbon is the 12th pitcher to appear. the lead has changed hands four (?) times, I think?

And this is on top of last night’s extra innings contest, which also used 12 pitchers, and featured 27 hits, even though the end score was only 5-4. Between the two games there have been seven home runs hit… I think? I keep losing track, that’s how many there have been.

And even though Pap is probably about to shut the door… the way things have gone this series so far… I better not count the totals until all is final and in the books! He just walked another one! (more…)

A friend forwarded me the link to this YouTube video from 1958. Comedians Wayne & Shuster combine references to the great baseball figures of the time (Leo Durocher, Pee Wee Reese, Yogi Berra, etc…) with all the recognizable Shakespeare references they could possibly pack in to one ten minute skit.

I’m sharing it with you right now, because the Yankees are getting beaten so badly today that I can’t watch. They are getting beaten so badly that a new record was just set for the most runs ever scored in a second inning, with the Indians scoring 14 runs in the second. It turns out that today is the anniversary of the Yankees setting the previous record of 13 against the Tampa Bay (then-Devil) Rays. It’s like a Home Run Derby there today no matter which Yankees’ pitcher is on the mound. At the moment they are up to 20 runs total… so you can see why I needed something to make me laugh!
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So today was the day that MLB honored Jackie Robinson, an annual event on April 15th that has been growing bigger every year since the retirement of Robinson’s #42 throughout all of baseball (except for those players who were still wearing it, like Mariano Rivera). Today every player in the majors (and even the umpires) wore #42, “making every scorecard useless,” joked Dave Niehaus on the Mariners radio broadcast.

I heard the M’s game while driving from Boston to New York to be here in time for the inauguration of the new Yankee Stadium. While deciding which game to listen to on our XM radio, corwin opted for the chance to hear Niehaus have one of his trademark near-aneurysms.

It felt fitting to me that on a broadcast where Jackie Robinson was mentioned frequently, I would learn of baseball’s first Asian-American manager. Don Wakamatsu is, right now, in his first season as manager to the Mariners. Is it hard to believe that it’s taken this long to have an Asian-American manager?
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Dale Tafoya is the author of “Bash Brothers: A Legacy Subpoenaed” — which I reviewed here on “Why I Like Baseball” back on December 14th, 2008. The book reminds readers of a lot of very significant facts about the early days of the Steroid Era which are being quickly forgotten in the onrush of debate as the controversy rages on. I interviewed Dale in the wake of this spring’s revelations about A-Rod in the belief that the Performance Enhancing Drug news is far from finished and that we will still be figuring out the full impact of this chapter of baseball history for decades to come.

Cecilia Tan, WILBB: I think a lot of fans, and certainly the owners, are still in denial about the whole steroids issue. They just want it to go away and pretend it either never happened or that at least it’s “over” now. Do you see it going away any time soon?

Dale Tafoya: Well, I think steroid use in baseball has been significantly curbed, especially since MLB began dishing out these 50-game suspensions to busted players. But it would be naive for us to think that the game is completely clean, especially since there is still no HGH testing in MLB. From a historical perspective, it’s clear that a majority of premiere players, including pitchers, who played during the late-1990s and the early part of the millennium were using some sort of performance-enhancing drug. How many careers have mysteriously tumbled since MLB started its testing program? (more…)

(Originally posted on February 25, 2000 and a fascinating look at the news of the day… Reposted on new URL on December 21, 2008.)

The news is fairly well-plastered these days with two types of negative articles about baseball. Those about Darryl Strawberry’s relapse into cocaine use, and those on John Rocker’s December Sports Illustrated interview, where he offended just about everyone with his racist, homophobic, and generally ass-headed comments.

It has been interesting to see how few people have come out in support of Rocker, at least in the mainstream press (I don’t read the KKK’s newspaper so I wouldn’t know…) — Ted Turner, media giant and owner of the Braves, who has been in controversies over his own foot-in-mouth statements, basically said, well you have to give the guy another chance. Several ballplayers have also come out saying that we can give Rocker at least a little benefit of the doubt for being dumb enough to act like a tough guy the only way he knew how, even if he doesn’t really feel that way “in his heart”–as Rocker said in his statement of apology. Hank Aaron didn’t exactly embrace Rocker, but cited his youth and inexperience with the spotlight of fame. So, if you want to give the guy the widest possible leeway, he appears redeemable. If you want to take his comments at face value, though, you have to pretty much believe that white militias everywhere will soon be carrying flags with his face on them. Where will John Rocker be in ten years, mentally, and ethically? Will anything change?

I’m asking myself those same questions about Strawberry. Talk about widest possible leeway… Straw has lots of people on his side. His teammates, coaches, former teammates, they’ve all come out in support, saying they know he has a problem and they hope he beats it. But they’re sad. Strawberry doesn’t have the benefit of the doubt, because nobody doubts what is going on. He is still fighting his cocaine addiction, and losing. Everyone wishes him well, but no one knows how to help him. Strawberry is not the young superstar blinded by the lights of fame, unaware of how to act and of the consequences. In this case when we ask “will anything change?” we’re asking for a miracle, perhaps.

And what does this all have to do with baseball? Everything. Because who the players are has as much to do with the story of the game as the actual plays that happen on the field. Otherwise we could just sit around and watch video-game baseball year-round. We don’t go to see robots hit, run, catch, and throw. We’re watching people, personalities, in action, as much as plays.

On the one hand, a team is something more than its players. Players come and go, but the team is still loved (or reviled) by its fans (or enemies). But that doesn’t mean that who the players are and what their personalities are doesn’t matter to us. On the contrary, they matter more, sometimes, because they may not be around for that long, because their impact on the story, the soap opera, that is a baseball season, can be great even with only a short contribution.

Last year, one of the great stories was Strawberry’s comeback from cancer and then his drug suspension. He came back not broken and bedraggled, but with a bat that was on fire. It was inspiring to watch. As season-long hero Chili Davis began to tire and feel the end of his career approaching, Darryl was the hero that came from the wings to keep the Yankee championship drive going.

But now it’s a new season, and I feel almost a little like I do when, on the X-Files, something seems all resolved and finally going right for Fox Mulder, and then in the next season it all turns out to have been a hoax. Strawberry’s recovery wasn’t a hoax, so to speak, but it was short-lived.

And what about Rocker? Will he get on the comeback trail? Will the Braves trade him away? What will he say when he finally meets with his teammates and they vent their feelings at him?

I think he should come to play in New York. Here’s why. Ultimately, for all I’ve said about how we love personalities and people here, we do still love the plays they make as well. I think this may be especially true of Yankee fans. Would we be so sympathetic to Straw if he hadn’t made a terrific comeback last year? I think we are much more willing to like him and to give him a place in our hearts because he did so well. A lot of my friends here in Boston hate Roger Clemens, but they hated him when he was here, too. “He’s a jerk,” they say. But you know what? I think if he can pitch the way he pitched in Game Four of the World Series, New York will keep loving him. (If he doesn’t, it’s “ya bum!” “Get rid of da bum!”)

(It’s a little like Bill Clinton, in some ways. OK, maybe he’s an adulterous boob, but as long as he keeps going to bat for the things I believe in when it comes to governing the country, I give him a thumbs up. Of course, he hasn’t batted a thousand for me, so I do have my gripes, but that’s for another essay…)

If Rocker came to New York, made nice with his teammates and the community (starting a foundation to help minority kids get
baseball scholarships or something along those lines would be a really nice gesture, don’t you think?), and pitched like an unbeatable bat out of hell, I think he’d do okay. I think people would warm to him and give him another chance. He might even become a can-you-believe-it comeback story of his own.

Stay tuned…