Earlier today, for reasons known only to the gremlins that run amok inside the Internet and the faceless automatons who supposedly man the tech support lines for addr.com, this site was down. Despite a great day at work (the boss really liked the new book I'm designing) and good news on other fronts (which I'll get to shortly), the service outage filled my heart with murderous rage. Lose Game Seven of the World Series--that's life. Drop two of three to the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium--big deal, it's June. But let the 50 people looking for this site come up with "unable to find domain www.futilityinfielder.com" and deny me a live-bodied customer service rep to vent my frustration to, and that's when I reach for my revolver. Anyway, apologies if you had trouble getting onto the site, and thanks for trying again.
I was a real piece of work for anybody who crossed my path today, particularly for the art director for one of my company's clients. The reason was an ongoing argument regarding a photo of a
catcher's mitt. Because the cost of an archival photo was out of the question, this generic mitt was serving to illustrate a short bio of Yogi Berra in the "Notable People" section of a book (I don't want to get too specific and embarrass my client). Back when I'd art-directed the project (prior to shifting my attentions to
the other entity I protect with the ferocity of a mother rhinoceros), I'd chosen the glove photo, but absent my attention, it had been repositioned, flipped, and ultimately replaced in response to several queries form the client. Queries specifically relating to whether it was for the proper sport or the correct hand.
Well.
There are plenty of people in the universe to whom my own general baseball knowledge clearly takes a back seat. Roger Angell. Bill James. Joe Torre. Derek Jeter. Rob Neyer. Vin Scully. If they're not on the field or in the dugout, you can find most of their names on the bookshelves of a well-stocked baseball library, or on some of the more popular baseball-related websites online. But none of those people--as I have found over the past five years--are the good folks I work with, which doesn't lower my opinions of my co-workers one iota or detract from the work we do.
And very few of them are my clients. So I've made a duty out of fact-checking anything involving baseball which crosses my path at work.
A mission. I even chose the two Yogi Berra quotes for the bio in question ("It ain't over till it's over," and "Ninety percent of baseball is half mental"). A mission, damn it.
So after patiently answering queries through intermediaries ("yes, it's a BASEball mitt..." "yes, it's a left-handed glove, for a right-handed thrower..." "yes, while Berra batted lefty, he threw righthanded, as have all catchers in major league baseball for the last hundred years except for
Dale Long for two games in 1958..."), I reached the final straw today. The mitt was being questioned once again, as I found out via a note taped to my monitor. This after the art director was faxed a printout of the mitt along with a
photo of Berra taken from the National Baseball Hall of Fame website, with Berra's mitt and ball in a position identical to the original glove (good work to our photo researcher on that one).
So, with the full force of three cups of coffee (and the aforementioned frustration regarding this site's outage), my fingers pounded the telephone keypad as I called the art director. I proceeded to carry on one half of the most absurd and surreal conversation ever in my professional career as I explained my view of the issue and tried to orient this guy (and his left hand) to the faxed photos:
"Now, where it's labelled 'top,' you've got that at the top of the page, right? Then the webbing of the glove is at 10 o'clock. And the thumb of the glove runs from six o'clock to nine... Okay, turn your LEFT hand over so that your palm faces you. Which way is your thumb pointing?"
I was slightly embarrassed at the condescending tone I heard coming out of my own mouth, but I knew I was right, so I camouflaged my outrage in the way that tactful adults do, by using phrases like "excuse me," and "with all due respect," and "I beg to differ." Despite the visual aids and the verbal restraint, things still weren't working, and so I handed the phone over to the job's manager before I lost my temper. Safely out of range of the phone (I hoped), I proceeded to tell everybody within earshot that I was going to buy the goddamn Yogi Berra picture out of my own pocket and send it to this poor guy, along with a picture of my...
Yes, it was that kind of day. I think my point ultimately prevailed, and a humble, generic catcher's mitt will illuminate children's understanding of the wit and wisdom of Yogi Berra like a beacon in the fog. But it ain't over till it's over.
* * * * *
And in the Other Than That Mrs. Lincoln How Did You Like the Play Department... I got some great news yesterday: I have a ticket to the
All-Star Game. My girlfriend Andra's parents live in Milwaukee (where I
paid a visit last summer). They entered their names in the All-Star ticket lottery several times on our behalf by sending in countless postcards; lo and behold, our card came up, and we were offered the chance to buy. The tickets are not just for the game but for all of the official festivities that weekend, including the Home Run Derby and the Old-Timer's Game. They're not great seats, but I've had worse for World Series games, and I survived just fine.
Now, I've got mixed emotions about this year's All-Star Game, love it as I would to see Bud Selig publicly embarrassed by a players' walkout in his own backyard. And I've got mixed emotions about the Home Run Derby mentality which seems to prevail among baseball fans as it becomes baseball's version of the slam dunk. But I do feel for the good people of Milwaukee who ponied up the dough for their new ballpark, only to be subjected to a lousy team fielded by one of the worst-run organizations in the game. And I'm not so damn foolish that I'd pass up this opportunity (or overlook the thougthful intervention on our behalf by Andra's parents)--it gives me something to write about.
Besides, as you probably can tell, I could use a vacation.
Oakland general manager Billy Beane has tried to shake up the A's in the last couple of weeks, making some very questionable roster decisions in the process--most notably, sending down highly-touted rookie first basemen Carlos Pena and trading outfielder Jeremy Giambi. Beane's track record in creating a viable contender out of the small-market A's has bought him some slack (and some wishy-washy defense) regarding these puzzling moves from some of his most ardent proponents--ESPN's Rob Neyer and
several writers on
Baseball Prospectus, most notably. He's caught a bit more grief over at the discussion boards of
Baseball Primer, and yours truly has spent his share of time
yapping along as well.
Though the details are murky, the Giambi trade and probably the farm-outs seem to be assertions of authority related to non-baseball issues; how else to explain for getting abolutely nothing of value for Little G in the stuffed uniform of John Mabry? I've already hashed this deal over, so I'll move on.
Just in case I'd started thinking about cutting Beane some slack, a quote of his in
Sunday's New York Times had me recoiling in horror. In discussing pitcher Mark Mulder's injury troubles (a strained forearm), Beane said:
"That cost him a month of pitching. On a bigger market club, you'd send him down for some rehab starts, make sure he's in shape and ready to go. We're not in that position, so Mark sort of had rehab on the fly."
I couldn't believe my eyes. Here's a GM talking about a pitcher who won 21 games last year, one of his three aces (along with Tim Hudson and Barry Zito), a guy he's got locked up under contract for the next four years--in short, a pillar of the franchise's future. And Beane is playing the "small market" card to justify rushing back Mulder from an injury (to a rocky 3-4, 6.10 ERA record) in a season that's looking with every passing day as a harsh lesson in reality.
Look, despite my previous burial, the A's aren't completely dead, not even with a 27-28 record, eight games back of Seattle and a view of the Anaheim Angels' taillights. And though they're not the team I ultimately root for, I do have more than a passing interest in them, as a fan, an analyst, and a roto-head (with Hudson, Mecir, Hernandez, Chavez, Justice, Piatt and pre-trade Little G, my fantasy team looks like a dotcom-busted portfolio full of tech stocks). Mulder
did win on Sunday, throwing 5 2/3 innings at the mighty Tampa Bay Devil Rays. But if Beane continues to follow that rationale in handling his important players, his priorities for the organization are seriously out of whack, and something will come back to bite him on the ass eventually. Riding the whip to assert his
authoritah, Beane could either turn the A's into your worst Dan Duquette I'm-in-charge-here nightmare or into a self-fulfilling (and sefl-immolating) prophecy straight out of Bud Selig's wildest dreams.
Either one will be a sorry-ass sight.
