It's official: the dog days of August are here. I have no idea whether Sirius, the Dog Star is visible in the night sky (the proper origin of the term "dog days") but I do know that I've reached a level of ennui that characterizes late summer in New York City. I can't find it in myself to get worked up about the Yanks' latest drubbings (shut down by the Ape? Isn't this the Angels steamroller they ran into last October?), or excited about the Red Sox failure to pick up any ground. And I'm certainly not getting my blood pressure up over this Pete Rose thing.
But I did weed through enough stuff in the aftermath of yesterday's hubbub to cull a few worthwhile links, and in these lazy dog days I'd rather revisit that than dwell on the dog-ass ugly play of a certain pinstriped nine. Jon Weisman of Dodger Thoughts has a thoughtful take. Bringing his background as a professional journalist and sportswriter into the equation, Jon discusses the nature of scoops:
The pressure for a scoop is absolutely intense - intense enough that one local sportswriter you've come to know simply did not want to put up with it and quit doing the work full-time. Eleven years later, I'm still not really sure why scoops are so prized. Sure, a reputation for being first in the business will drive readers to you, the way starving supermarket shoppers flock to the woman serving the sample wieners. But imagine trying to live your life off pigs-in-a-blanket. Scoops don't come every day, and so ultimately, it's clear that what keeps readers coming back is sustained quality coverage...
I can understand the desire for Baseball Prospectus to go with its Pete Rose story. Nailing this story splashes them across the map in a way that daily, nose-to-the-grindstone intelligent baseball coverage (unfortunately) does not...
ESPN responded the way most competitors respond to a scoop (putting aside that ESPN and Baseball Prospectus have an affiliation). ESPN put out its own take on the BP story - namely, that the story was wrong. Furthermore, ESPN got a source to go on the record saying that the story was wrong - MLB president and COO Bob DuPuy. All the credibility in the world, right?
Well, it just goes to show you how little value unnamed sources have when MLB can come out looking as stand-up as Walter Cronkite.
Now that's a scary thought. As for those sources, Larry Mahnken of the Replacement Level Yankees Blog did yeoman's work in transcribing Will Carroll's appearance on ESPNews and posting it to Baseball Primer yesterday evening. Here is an exchange between Carroll and ESPNews's Brian Kenney about the genesis of the story:
BK: Well, what did bring the report on?
WC: Actually, I was following a story about a trade rumor, and one of my sources mentioned to me, ‘hey, have you heard anything about this Pete Rose thing?’, and I was like, ‘really? What Pete Rose thing?’ And it went from there. We followed it, that was Saturday evening, and we’ve been following it ever since then, and had all the evidence in order, and my editors and co-authors at Baseball Prospectus decided we had enough information, and we published it last night.
BK: What is the process for deciding that ‘we have enough information’? Double confirmation, what does it entail, or is it just sources that you believe to be impeccable?
WC: Both. I believe my sources are accurate, and it’s not just my sources, we also have other authors that have spoken with people both inside and outside baseball, and the information corroborated each other. The multiple sources had nearly identical information and nearly identical conditions. Obviously, something is lost in a phone conversation, but we believed it to be accurate enough to run with.
Another Primer reader named Sam M weighed in with an insigntful reading of the situation that's worth passing on (unless you'd prefer to wade through 600+ posts, that is):
I think the BP people made a big assumption that Rose wouldn't have to make any admissions because such a condition wasn't in the agreement read to them by their sources. That assumption, based on what Stark and others are saying, is probably wrong -- he *will* have to make an admission of some kind, which may or may not have yet been negotiated. Second, if the agreement was initialed by a "high major league official," it may not be an actual agreement, but simply reflects what MLB is willing to agree to. Happens all the time in contract negotiations; a draft of a deal is prepared, goes to the decisionmaker, who initials it as something he or she can live with, and that forms the basis for the next, and often final, round of negotiations. BP's sources may have misunderstood to some degree the finality of the deal or the significance of the initials on the document. That's not to say the sources were wrong about what will emerge (to the contrary, even those like Stark who are saying BP got this wrong are agreeing Rose *will* be reinstated after the season), but perhaps they were about where they are in the process.
If you're asking me what I think based on all of this, aw shit... well, my best guess -- and it wouldn't fetch 2¢ if auctioned on eBay -- is this:
• The basics of an agreement for an eventual Rose reinstatement were hammered out last fall/winter, with some back-and-forth happening behind the scenes since then.
• The deal is contingent on Rose's continued good behavior, say a full year dating from last year's offseason to this one, before MLB will come forward with an announcement.
• It will most definitely require some kind of admission by Rose. To reinstate him without this would be PR suicide for Bud Selig and MLB. I wouldn't be surprised if this remains the sticking point -- enough to quash the deal entirely.
• It will immediately take him off of the permanently ineligible list, allowing him to be considered for the Hall of Fame. If this happens before early January, there's a good chance Pete's Red ass will be in Cooperstown late next July.
• It will entail some kind of further probationary period before Rose can assume any position of responsibility within baseball. Say, a year.
• After that, Rose may be hired anywhere within the game -- including as manager.
The only one of these I'd have any beef with is the last one. I'm fine with restoring Rose so that he can finally get elected to the Hall, and I'm fine with keeping a further eye on him once he's been removed from the ineligible list. And while I wouldn't have any problem if somebody wants to make him a spring instructor or something half-assed like that, I think it would be utter madness to let him manage a ballclub -- namely, the Reds, which is what skinflint owner Carl Lindner reportedly wants so he can put fannies in the seats in his new ballpark. That seems like a recipe for disaster, a supposedly rehabilitated fox guarding the henhouse while making plans for a dish of Chicken à la Hit King. And while I loathe the Reds organization enough to wish them little more than continued disaster, I'm not sure they deserve the stink of this Rose.
The agreement includes removal of Rose from baseball's permanently ineligible list. This would allow Rose to appear on ballots for baseball's Hall of Fame, which bars such banned players from consideration. The agreement allows Rose to be employed by a team in the 2004 season, as long as that position does not involve the day to day operations. That employment restriction would be removed after a year, allowing Rose to return to managing a team as early as the 2005 season if a position is offered to him.
B-Pro went forward with this scoop, but no news organization stepped forward to corroborate the story. Early in the afternoon, ESPN published a report in which Bob DuPuy, MLB's chief operating officer, refuted Zumsteg and Carroll's assertion. DuPuy told ESPN's Jayson Stark that there has been ""no decision, no agreement, no nothing" regarding the Rose reinstatement. In a press release, DuPuy called the Prospectus report "unsubstantiated and totally unfounded," and for good measure, threw in the terms "wholly inaccurate" and "journalistically irresponsible."
The Prospectus folks are sticking by their story. They told ESPN that the report "was compiled using reliable sources. We believe that, in the end, our report will be found to be accurate." In an interview with Salon.com's King Kaufman, Carroll said that the report was based on three sources: "I've got a source in Cincinnati, in the Reds organization, a source in the MLB offices and an independent outside-baseball source." Elaborating on the agreement, Carroll told Kaufman that a deal had been signed last November but wouldn't be announced until after this year's World Series.
Let us consider all of this for a moment. In the near corner, we have the 98-pound challenger, a stellar website when it comes to baseball analysis, with an in-house expert on the Rose case in Zumsteg and an injury guru who's well-connected with baseball insiders in Carroll. Neither, to the best of my knowledge, has any experience in hard news reporting. Baseball Prospectus is a lot of great things, but CNN they are not.
In the far corner, we have the 800-pound gorilla, an organization that has spent the past ten years trying to convince baseball fans that up is down, that the competitive balance of the game is out of whack thanks to the Yankees, that nearly every team in the game is hemorrhaging money at an alarming rate, and that the sky will fall unless the Players Association agrees to a salary cap. Nobody in that house has any credibility when it comes to the truth.
At stake is a story which, even if it's true, won't be corroborated until after the season. No one has stepped forward to back up B-Pro's version of the story, they're not backing down or revealing their sources, and MLB is about as likely to shoot straight on this one as they are to open a restaurant called Joe Stalin's House of Pancakes, Propaganda and Pop Flies. The unlikelihood that MLB will just let Rose off scot-free is topped only by the unlikelihood that somebody with a shred of credibility in the matter will step forward between now and then to offer a definitive statement on the topic.
My advice? Without considering for even a moment whether or not Rose's reinstatement to the game -- particularly into an active role, such as managing the Cincinnati Reds -- is a good thing, let us all take a deep breath and step away from the story before we start arguing -- again -- until we're blue in the face. We've been here before. We've got better things to talk about, pennant races, challenge trades, whiny ballplayers and the violated corpse of the [Second] Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived, for starters. Let's change the subject.
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New blog on the block: Clifford's Big Red Blog, which according to the banner, "is neither big, red nor a blog." He might have added that it's not about the Big Red Machine, either. Cliff's a Yankees fan who's been suffering through their latest bullpen meltdowns. Check him out.
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I've got a new outlet for my writing. I've become a contributing writer at a new website called Baseball Interactive, which has been signing up my blogging brethren left and right. BI is a slick-looking commercial site with scoreboards, standings, and a fair amount of content centered around team pages and commentary, and it now features such luminaries as Mike Carminati of Mike's Baseball Rants and Travis Nelson of Boy of Summer in featured roles. Basically, BI will be syndicating some of our pieces, providing us opportunity to reach more readers.
For those of you looking to break into the lucrative field of Internet baseball writing (average annual salary: $0.16), BI is offering opportunities for team beat reporters (including a Yankees correspondant) and other writers. Get a writing sample together and you're halfway there.
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The New York Times has a sweet piece (written by Alan Schwarz of Baseball America) on the Milwaukee Brewers' two-way wonder, Brook Kieschnick, who I wrote about last month. Schwarz sees Kieschnick as a throwback and notes that the player's determination to find a spot for himself in the big leagues has inspired fans:
Kieschnick hasn't played the field yet but probably will before the year is out. Meanwhile, he has attracted a legion of fans who delight in his becoming baseball's Renaissance man. He is the host of a show on Major League Baseball's Internet radio station, mlb.com. Letter writers relate how they have been inspired to expand their horizons or accept more responsibility at work. "They don't even send me cards to sign," Kieschnick laughs. "They just want to tell me about their lives."
He has yet to play the infield in the bis, but this guy has to be the early favorite for the coveted Futility Infielder of the Year Award: as a pitcher, Kieschnick's lowered his ERA to 4.77, and he's now hit 5 homers to go with his 998 OPS. If there's a fan club, count me in.
Folk art, to use curator Elizabeth V. Warren's definition, generally refers to "objects made by artists who were either self-taught... or were trained in a continuing cultural artistic tradition by other practitioners of the art." The pieces in The Perfect Game run the gamut from drawings, paintings, and photos to quilts, embroideries, castings, sculptures, carvings, even grass rollings (no, not that kind of grass; we're talking photos of the patterns rolled in the Fenway Park outfield). They've been chosen not for their value as masterpieces -- indeed, some of these are fairly crude -- or as memorabilia -- though some of them would fetch a pretty penny -- but for the way they express their connection to a shared heritage. Signage, arcade and carnival games, scorecards, weathervanes, and even a frieze from the original Yankee Stadium, not to mention plenty of bats and balls, are on hand to represent the vernacular culture from which such expressions drew.
One of the most prominent pieces of the exhibit is a 7' x7' quilt called "My Favorite Baseball Stars," created by Clara Schmitt Rothmeier, the daughter of a minor league ballplayer. (This photo of the quilt and the other photos I link to for this article were generously provided by Susan Flamm of the AFAM for the purposes of this review). Over a ten-year period from the mid-Fifties to the mid-Sixties, Rothmeier drew pictures of her favorite players, traced them onto fabric, appliquéd and embroidered each one, then sent them to the players for their autographs. Once a panel was returned, she would add it to her quilt, embroidering the signature as well. Midway into the project, she added a border of cloth baseballs, each featuring another signature that she'd collected. The finished quilt contains forty-four panels and about three hundred autographed balls. There are some heavy hitters among those portrayed: Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Casey Stengel, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Robin Roberts, Al Kaline, and a sleeveless Ted Kluszewski. Among the signed and embroidered balls are even more legends: Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Jimmie Foxx, Frankie Frisch, Dizzy Dean, Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige, "Cool Papa" Bell, Bob Gibson, and Sandy Koufax. Yeah, some of those guys could play ball.
Another favorite of mine is a series of nine embroidered portraits commemorating the 1963 World Champion New York Yankees. These portraits were done in 1993 by a prisoner named Ray Materson who was serving time for armed robbery. What's amazing is that the material Materson used to create these intricate full-color illustrations was unraveled sock and shoelace thread. Each portrait is 2.25" x 2.75", contains about 1,200 stitches per square inch, and took about 50 hours to complete. Shown here is the Mickey Mantle one.
The item which originally drew my attention to this exhibition was a baseball from a batch painted by a minor league umpire named George Sosnak. To commemorate occasions such as an All-Star Game, a no-hitter, a Hall of Fame induction, or another historical occasion, Sosnak painted balls with India ink, covering every inch of their surface. A Sosnak ball generally features a colorful illustration of a player or scene on one face, a box score or career stats on another face, and a text summary or even a Hall of Fame plaque on another face. These detailed balls -- occasionally game-used, but more likely painted on the cheapest balls available -- are unique little collectors items, and Sosnak is estimated to have done 800 of them. Among the ones in The Perfect Game are balls commemorating Hall of Fame slugger Mel Ott, the inaugural season of the New York Mets, the 100th anniversary of the Brooklyn/L.A. Dodgers, the 500th and 501st home runs of Harmon Killebrew, Orlando Cepeda's 1967 MVP season, Dean Chance's short no-hitter, and the 1980 All-Star Game.
Not every item lives up to the lofty standards of these pieces, of course. A few seemed scarcely more skilled than my aforementioned drawing. But even the most primitive ones can evoke an emotional response. Among the numerous items paying homage to Jackie Robinson, a pair of paintings feature a misspelled "D-o-g-e-r-s" across the front of his jersey. Seeing this, I giggled momentarily, until I realized that these paintings were done by a septuagenarian named Sam Doyle who lived his entire life on a small South Carolina island that was once a refuge for freed slaves. In the face of Robinson's significance to a life like that, such trivial inaccuracies hardly matter.
The Doyle paintings weren't the only time I scolded myself for such a literal-minded response. Viewing a vivid painting by Ralph Fasanella called "Night Game—Yankee Stadium," I got hung up upon the incorrect, cookie-cutter-like outfield dimensions shown. Since when is the House That Ruth Built 350 feet down the rightfield line and 410 to center? Again, that's hardly the point of the painting, which contrasts the urban decay surrounding Yankee Stadium with the rich metropolis in the distance.
The determination of these artists to deliver their message by any means necesary is what carries the day here, not the precision of their details. If you're a fan living in New York City or planning to visit between now and February, you owe it to yourself to check out this exhibit.
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Ugh, the less said about Sunday afternoon's Yankees-Mariners game, which I suffered through, the better. I'm well-versed on the epic nature of the slugfests between these two teams, but this four-hour, nine inning affair -- which featured an hour-long seventh inning and a four-man bullpen implosion on the part of the Yanks -- is too grisly to recount at length. Go read somebody else if you insist upon knowing more.
