Thursday, July 11, 2002
King Solomon's Land Mines - The All-Star Farce Wasn't Quite Bud's Fault
Bud Selig as King Solomon compares to Edward Norton (the actor and Ralph Kramden's dimbulb sidekick on The Honeymooners) as Attila the Hun, but Bob Brenly and Joe Torre as casting agents should not give up their day jobs.
And Selig's reputation has devolved enough without his augmenting it by earning nothing higher than hell, when two All-Star managers who normally know better presented him a baby in questionable health.
The commissioner was preordained to draw bloody murder's scream when the baby began to bleed beneath his shaky enough sword. But Torre and Brenly had proven unfit mothers both, for the first time. And Selig would surely have incurred wrath far more venomous, had he exercised what might have been his actual right in telling Brenly and Torre to cure their own illness.
The managers had already chosen to govern the All-Star Game with the political corrective of inclusiveness as mandated in children's tee ball games. Brenly worked with a handicap going in thanks to three National League starters (Tom Glavine, hand blister; Randy Johnson, back spasms; and, Matt Morris, still shaky over his teammate Darryl Kile's death) having withdrawn from play consideration. Torre had only one missing American League starter (Pedro Martinez, saving it - he said - for the heat of the pennant race), but with five starters yet available he would handicap himself in due course.
They yet lacked few options and those required intelligence which neither man was heretofore renowned for lacking. But for one night when baseball needed it least did Brenly and Torre fail to gaze upon the full field spread. On this night were King Solomon's land mines.
Arizona Diamondback Curt Schilling and Derek Lowe of the Boston Red Sox, the outstanding starting pitchers of the season's first half, deserved to start the All-Star contest and did precisely that. They pitched two innings each, with the National League finishing them with a 1-0 lead: Vladimir Guerrero of the Montreal Expos singled to left, took second as Sammy Sosa (who had singled ahead of him) was thrown out trying to reach third, took third himself on Lowe's balk, and scored when Mike Piazza grounded out.
Start making sense: Schilling and Lowe came out after their second innings' work, particularly with Schilling's next season's start due three nights later against the Los Angeles Dodgers, whom Schilling's Snakes most need to beat to keep it close and make it tighter in the National League West.
Stop making sense: Brenly going to Mike Williams, the Pittsburgh Pirates' closer, who averaged barely beyond an inning per gig, to pitch the third inning here, when Brenly yet had options beyond. He had two more starting pitchers, the upstart Dodger Odalis Perez and Vicente Padilla of the Philadelphia Phillies; he had a longtime starter converted to a closer, John Smoltz of the Atlanta Braves, who can give a second inning when needed or asked; he had his own Arizona closer, the engaging Byung-Hyun Kim, who has pitched an average inning and a third this season, has recovered brightly from his World Series abuse, and behaves as though he is the bullpen's answer to Ernie Banks, his infectious grin seeming to say it's a beautiful night - let me pitch two!
But Williams it was, and he pitched a clean top of the third, striking out a pair of Yankees (Alfonso Soriano and, pinch hitting in Lowe's lineup spot, Derek Jeter) and getting precision batsman Ichiro Suzuki to ground out to deep second, requiring a snappy stab and throw by Montreal second baseman Jose Vidro to punch out the speeding Mariner.
Brenly for the fourth went to Perez, who surrendered a lone American League run on a two-out single (Jason Giambi, who took second on Piazza's passed ball) and an RBI single (Manny Ramirez) before fanning Yankee catcher Jorge Posada.
Torre, meanwhile, had sent out Roy Halladay to succeed Lowe for the National League third. His inning went single (Jimmy Rollins, Phillies), ground out to first (Luis Gonzalez, Diamondbacks, pinch hitting in Williams's slot), flyout to left (Vidro), single to center (Todd Helton, Rockies), two-run homer (Barry Bonds), and strikeout (Sosa).
Halliday could have delivered another inning's work; starting pitchers do recover after losing runs in their first inning's work. But Torre was yet in fettle fair going to the fourth, sending up Mark Buehrle, the Chicago White Sox starter. Buerhle worked the fourth and fifth, surrendering only Damian Miller's double to drive home Rollins. For the top of the fifth, Perez yielded to his teammate Eric Gagne, who yielded nothing but Soriano's solo homer.
Gagne like Smoltz is a converted starter and had knocked the National League bolt upright with a first half season of Hall of Fame-caliber relief pitching; he, too, could have pitched a second inning had Brenly seen fit. With the National League holding by then a 5-2 lead, Brenly went instead to Trevor Hoffman for the sixth; the bullish Padre gave up a leadoff double to Paul Konerko, the White Sox first baseman, before getting the next three outs.
Then Torre made the move which might have sealed his game's fate, bringing in the starting pitcher he had blanched over including on the team at all for having pitched Sunday. But he let Barry Zito of the Oakland Athletics pitch - to one hitter. He got Dodger bombardier Shawn Green to ground out to short. With Seattle starter Freddy Garcia yet pending, with the game still early enough to let Garcia work two without prospective crisis, Torre still could not bear to let Zito stay beyond a third of an inning, bringing in Eddie Guardado, the veteran Twin who emerged as their semi-surprise closer this season. Guardado struck out Atlanta's Andruw Jones and Colorado's Jose Hernandez to finish the sixth.
Here did Brenly reap his second advantage against Torre in eight months, the first having been Torre's pulling the infield in with the winning runs on in the bottom of the Game Seven ninth. Torre was now down to his only two more-than-one-inning pitchers, Garcia and Yankee closer Mariano Rivera. Brenly had four more-than-an-inning-capable men available: Padilla, Kim, and a pair of Braves, Smoltz and Mike Remlinger.
But Brenly may have been bitten out of the blue by playing The Book rather than getting the real skinny. For the American League seventh were due three hitters who feast upon lefthanded pitching: Boston's Johnny Damon, a righthanded hitter, and switch hitters Omar Vizquel (Indians) and Randy Winn (Devil Ray), none of whom hit equally well against righthanded pitchers. Brenly sent in Remlinger to start the seventh. Single, stolen base, bullet line drive out pushing the runner to third, RBI groundout, and walk.
Exit Remlinger, enter Kim, who normally keeps hitters on both sides of the plate below the Miranda Line, to face a righthanded hitter who hits better by twelve against righthanders than against lefthanders, Baltimore's Tony Batista. Long single to left, home came Winn. Up came Miguel Tejada (Athletics), a righthanded hitter who hits .300 against righthanded pitchers - even those who normally hold all hitters to a .197 batting average and righties to only slightly above. Single, pushing Batista to second. Up comes Konerko, another righthanded hitter, who hits like Ted Williams against righthanded pitchers. Double to left center, two runs home, 6-5 American League lead, before Kim got A.J. Pierzynski (Twins) to ground the third out.
Then the National League took the lead back off Seattle closer Kazuhiro Sasaki in the bottom of the inning, and again Brenly suffered a momentary lapse of reason. He had Kim off the hook and the pitcher of record now on the winning side, and the sidewinding Diamondback has the pleasant habit of hanging in to turn a rare blown save into a win (he had done it twice in season, before the break) with another inning pitched where he nails the side shut. And with three hitters due in the top of the eighth who are comparative meat for righthanded pitchers - Robert Fick (Tigers, batting for Sasaki), Damon, and Vizquel - this should have been as easy for Kim as it is said to be for him to sleep through even the most violent racket.
Brenly must have thought of either the favouritism factor (with which he and Torre were blistered prior to the game, for choosing so many of their own men to fill out this dance) or the factor that has made Kim such a sentimental favourite watch this season - not letting the youngster get himself killed again, even though Kim (who flashed a severe enough version of his now-famous, boyishly toothy grin to send the message firmly enough) would tell you he'll pick himself up, dust off, and get 'em tomorrow. Still, Brenly chose protectiveness (he needs Kim, after all, for the heat of the pennant race) over even Kim's considerable heart, and went instead to Robb Nen of the Giants.
Then, it was a single from Fick, who stole second on Nen's curious forward step. (He kicks, then brings his foot down in front of him to tap the mound dirt before stepping further forward to throw; the move is inviting enough for baserunners to get good stealing jumps.) Fick scored on a triple by Vizquel, who usually hits righthanders seventy points below how he hits lefthanders unless the righthander's stuff tends toward sinking. 7-7.
Game and manager's hands tied. For the bottom of the eighth, Torre brought in Red Sox closer Ugueth Urbina. Three up, three down, eleven pitches, out after one inning of work. Top of the ninth, Smoltz finally in. Three up, three down, eight pitches...out after one inning of work. Bottom of the ninth, Rivera in to pitch. Two outs, pinch hit single, popout to second, side retired, fourteen pitches.
Extra innings, managers' hands still tied by their own doing, and by now they had left themselves truly with no relief in sight. Brenly removed Smoltz, who could have gone one or even two more, and went at last to Padilla, who should have been in earlier, to pitch the tenth. Torre, perhaps facing a comparable favouritism factor, removed Rivera and brought in a Garcia who was even more overdue and should have been in even earlier if the aim was indeed to get everyone in the game. Garcia, who had not pitched since July 4, was said at the time to be due for his next scheduled regular game start Thursday.
Padilla and Garcia pitched two shutout innings each. In the middle of the eleventh did mothers Brenly and Torre bring the baby they had maltreated to King Solomon Selig. Shortly came the stunning ballpark announcement that, unless the National League scored in the bottom of the inning, the game would end in a tie.
The fans in Miller Park fumed, but they chose the wrong target. Torre and Brenly had left egg on Selig's face while holding omelettes on their own. Torre's Barry Zito mistake now haunted badly enough. But Brenly did not know, and none troubled to inquire, that he could have used Vicente Padilla not only earlier but long: if the Phillies had had a scheduled game Tuesday, it would have been Padilla's turn to start anyway.
"He could have pitched eight innings if they needed," said the man whose wrath was so much feared in the event of damaging Padilla (who did complain of some stiffness throwing in the later hour) - Phillies manager Larry Bowa, a man who matches the ancient gag about the even tempered man who stays mad.
Two days later, Bud Selig awakened Baseball Nation by proclaiming that two teams, unnamed, stood in danger of not being able to meet their payrolls come Monday next. Thus ignited a day's worth of Chicken Littleball, the airwaves and enough print press bristling. Given the owners' refusal to let those who have seen the real numbers speak aloud about them, the media bristling prodded the question of whether Selig had found a way to deflect from an All-Star calamity that wasn't really his fault in the first place.
©2002 Jeff Kallman
posted by Jeff Kallman 8:07 PM
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
The Other Competitive Balance
Everybody, it seems at times, loves to rant the night away about "competitive balance". You know: the kind involving disparities, real and alleged, between the Have and the Have Not teams, real and alleged. It seems a foreign enough concept to this moboisie that a club could have even Yankee-approximate fat dollars, relative to their actual and prospective markets, and still deploy such dollars with Devil Ray-approximate thin brains.
But I really came here to talk about baseball's other competitive balance. The one that matters just as greatly toward baseball's health, about which the moboisie says little enough now that it appears to be reviving. It should be a bristling point of contention with anyone who wants to segregate the fact from the flatulence, especially because baseball's baronage and its designated publicists seem to think if they ignore it, it will go away.
A newspaper ad for Fox Sports's All-Star Game telecast was a huge improvement over the insult that was the Home Run Derby's animated television spots. (Those showed Derby participant as animated beings just hit by gamma rays and turning into the Incredible Hulks. That's the way to promote a game soiled by steroid charges, folks.) That about exhausted the All-Star ad's brilliance, beyond its handsomely arrayed, handsomely pencil brush-toned imagery of six marquee men.
The centerpiece is Barry Bonds, following through in his familiar power swing, splendidly turned out in a Giants uniform, right down to his too-familiar pajama bottom pant cuff, over those white-topped shoes that make him appear to be hitting in spats. (Call me a churl if you must. But if I were a manager, one rule I would enforce across the board would be: show the stirrups, whether you cut them low as Casey Stengel or high as Frank Robinson - this, gentlemen, is baseball, not Lord of the Dance.)
Back to business. To the upper left of the ad, behind Bonds's backswinging bat, there encircle five more marquee mugs (counterclockwise from top center): Alex Rodriguez, squint-staring, as if toward a pitcher winding up or a batter about to chunk a grounder toward his territory; Sammy Sosa, face pushing down from the familiar warmth into the taut gaze he shows bearing down on a pitch; Mike Piazza, like a Talmudic student struggling to assimilate a fresh rabbi he might face later in the game; Jason Giambi, eyes wide frozen, crazed, murder in his heart for a fast ball; Ichiro Suzuki, beatifically gazing over the full field spread, as though the wisdom of his ancestors shaped his soft facial shell.
You're right. Only one of the five does not represent intercontinental ballistics. (Ichiro at the All-Star break had - count 'em - two home runs.) And none of them resembles a pitcher, who with precision marksmen get barely legible block-letter background mention. You see no such countenance as genial Curt Schilling or cerebral Tom Glavine; neither bullish Eric Gagne nor sweet-smiling Byung-Hyun Kim; not passively intense Mariano Rivera or boyishly determined Odalis Perez.
Baseball's lordship and Fox Sports aren't just off the page. They are out of the library. The big bombers are not baseball's only story having nothing to do with labour issues. (And, while I'm at it, a little reality check about the All-Star Game itself: Bud Selig is not without his faults, but if Joe Torre and Bob Brenly - managers who usually know better - had managed their pitching with a little more foresight, the All-Star Game might not have been halted at an extra-inning tie.)
Gaze like Ichiro upon the full field spread. Seven out of the nine starting pitchers on the All-Star teams are on paper pace to win 20 games this season, assuming an unabbreviated finish. So are three All-Star wingmen (Glavine, Pedro Martinez, and Randy Johnson) who elected to sit the game out. Two pitchers not named All-Stars (Kazuhisa Ishii, Mike Mussina) also arrived at the break with a paper chance to win 20. It's been how long since twelve 20-game winners turned up in one season?
It gets better. Curt Schilling on paper still has an outside shot at winning 30. The last three National League pitchers to win 27 or better? Steve Carlton (27), 1972; Sandy Koufax (27), 1966, Robin Roberts (28), 1952.
The earned run average story is just as much fun. The top five in the National League at the All-Star break showed ERAs under three, from 2.90 (Al Leiter) to 2.27 (Glavine, who continues making his a case as the actual greatest pitcher in Braves history who isn't named Warren Spahn), with the top 20 in the league all under 3.55 . The top five in the American League show four under three, including Bartolo Colon before the trade heard 'round the world, with the top 20 in the league all under 4.00.
Among the starting pitchers on the All-Star teams, four of the American League five are over three but no higher than 3.57 (Mark Buerhle), with the league ERA through the break at 4.16; only one National League All-Star starter (Vicente Padilla) is over three - with a piddling 3.05,compared to the league ERA of 3.87. (Dump the DH, anyone?)
The All-Star relievers? They are all under three, unless the name is John Smoltz. (4.44 - he may still be unhorsing himself from that ninth-inning, nine-run can of whoop you-know-what the Mets opened on him in April.) Six of the All-Star relievers are under 2.50; only one of those (Trevor Hoffman) registers 2.40 or higher.
Well. Since baseball's legislators have given them maybe two generations worth of a kind of taxation without tax loopholes (skewing toward offence, and the longer-range the better), and since umpire strike zone fluctuations enhance their image as judicial activists, the pitchers have been engaging a healthy sort of civil disobedience: taking back the whole of the strike zone (as best they can, given the umpire fluctuations), reclaiming nuance, craftsmanship, and the inside half of the plate.
Are the hitters hurting? Not by, er, a long shot. Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Lance Berkman, Alex Rodriguez, Jason Giambi, and Shawn Green are still sending baseballs into the next county. Ichiro is still threatening to hit .350 or better for the second of his first two major league seasons; only Mike Sweeney (at .361) is ahead of him. Lots of hitters are hitting. The National League average: .277. The American League: .274. The top fifteen National Leaguers bat from .307 (Chipper Jones, Alex Sanchez, Sammy Sosa) to .350 (Larry Walker); the top fifteen American Leaguers, from .305 (Magglio Ordonez, A-Rod) to .361 (Sweeney).
This should all taste like overdue refreshment. But baseball's shadow government behaves, so it seems, as though it is castor oil. And they continue cultivating the fly-by-night, oooh-and-aaah fans they have hunted since the 1980s, those who care for spectacle and not sport, explosive thrill and not enveloping balance.
Out of the library? Baseball's shadow government isn't even near the closest comic book stand, the Home Run Derby promos notwithstanding. That was a giant yawn you heard, on that night in June when there were more home runs hit in baseball games over one night than one Roger Maris hit in 1961. The Yankees and the Rockies played an interleague game (ok - it was in Coors Field) to a final score of 20-10, and the best it got was a clever joke that George Steinbrenner fired the kicker the morning after for blowing the third extra point.
Meanwhile, back in the jungle, there came last December a banana peel the moboisie has yet to notice but which should have tripped baseball officialdom: Major League Baseball's own "Updated Supplement to the Report of the Independent Members of the Commissioner's Blue Ribbon Panel on Baseball Economics." Yes, it has come to that: baseball documentations with that make Congressional legislation read like "Casey At The Bat." But then you read the thing. There is no joy in Budville - the mighty owners have crapped out.
From 1995 through 2001 (remember - this is baseball's baronage talking, the ones who have been crying pending poverty for over a decade), baseball's revenues rose 156 percent, from $1.39 billion (1995) to $3.55 billion. Now, listen further up. In the same seven seasons, player salaries rose 113 percent - but "other expenses," non-player related expenses, went up 134 percent.
Baseball got $2.1 billion extra per season over those seven years to play with, and the players got less than half of it. Neither, says Society for American Baseball Research economist Doug Pappas, did the teams spend it on more farm teams, higher scouting, ticketing, and clerical salaries, stadium rent hikes, or the like.
"With inflation running only 17 percent since 1995 to 2001," Pappas asks, "clubs aren't paying twice as much for supplies and equipment. If, as the owners claim, MLB is hemorrhaging money, why haven't they tried to stop the bleeding? Why are non-player expenses continuing to increase far faster than inflation? Why won't (commissioner Bud Selig) let anyone who knows the facts talk about these costs? Unless and until the owners provide credible answers to these questions, their claimed losses are about as believable as Enron's September 2001 financial statements."
But so far as the moboisie is concerned, baseball's problems, real and alleged, come down to two sides of a funny money coin. It's either those greedhead players refusing to stop the owners before they overspend, misspend, or malspend again; or, it's all the Yankees' fault. (God forbid an intelligently operated and marketed baseball team - which is what the Yankees have actually become - should serve as a model rather than a whipping boy.) And shut the hell up about nuance and balance and all that rot.
That is the audience baseball's baronage has courted. And that spinning you hear emmanates from the grave of A. Bartlett Giamatti.
Just One More Note Before I Go
"I Played For Casey Before And After He Was A Genius" - If you watched the pre-game hoopla at the All-Star Game, did you notice the little old man wearing an ancient Braves jersey with number 21 over his loose gray slacks, among the four men throwing out ceremonial first balls?
Baseball preluded the All-Star Game with "30 Most Memorable Moments," rich in history and wanting in production coordination. (Poor Ray Liotta - he who played Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams - he couldn't quite coordinate his fine narration to the arrangement.) The little old man in the ancient Braves jersey had actually produced one that wasn't but should have been among the moments - unless you know anyone else who posted his thirteenth 20-win season at age 42.
Warren Spahn epresented power as but one element in a spread of craftsmanship. ("Spahn and Sain and pray for rain," went the saying around Boston while the Braves were en route the 1948 pennant.) Pretty good for a guy Casey Stengel dumped as a quickly abused rookie.
Stengel managed the rookie Spahn in 1943 on yet another hapless Boston Braves outfit. "Young man," Stengel ordered, after a rather rough outing, "go pick up your railroad ticket to go back to the minors - you've got no guts!" One world war, one stellar tenure with the Braves, three World Series, and thirteen 20-win seasons later, Spahnie began winding down the hard way, as a pitcher-coach for the 1965 New York Mets.
His manager there: Casey Stengel.
"I played for Casey," Spahnie still likes to say, "before and after he was a genius."
"Oh, Thank You, Spahnie!" - The one pitch Warren Spahn probably remembers above all the others he threw was thrown long after he retired - in Washington, at RFK Stadium.
It was the Crackerjack Old-Timer's Game, debuting in 1982 in the former home of the former Washington Senators. To give the old guys a break, they cut the fences in very far. Spahn started the game for the retired National Leaguers. His first batter: longtime Chicago White Sox shortstop Luke (Old Aches and Pains) Appling.
Spahn tossed up what could have passed for an eephus pitch wanting to be the once-famed Spahnie scroogie when it grew up. Appling - all seventy-five years old worth of him - swung, and he ripped a rising liner that flew past not only the cut-in fence but into the left field seats for a major league-length home run.
The videotape of Appling's blast and his exuberant jog around the bases, with Spahn chasing him all the way, whacking Appling on the can with his glove, was probably the most popular exhibition game highlight in baseball that year. And several years afterward.
"I was trying," Spahn said later, explaining his chase, "to get him to mug a little with me, but he just kept saying 'Oh, thank you, Spahnie. Thank you, Spahnie'."
posted by Jeff Kallman 10:40 PM
