I've been no huge fan of the late-model Barry Bonds. I ceased wonder somewhere around the end of the 2001 season, my jaw agape from staring at too many Baseball Tonight reruns, my eyes aglaze from sifting through endless numbers crunched in demonstration of his prowess, proclamining his elevation to the pantheon. I've grown blasι about his continued success. Another jack out of the park? You don't say. On the only pitch he got to swing at the entire game? Yawn. Hitting .370 with 198 walks? Hmmmph. Comparisons to Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, and Willie Mays, the only men whose milestone home run totals now lay ahead of him? What else ya got?
I was the same way about Michael Jordan. Though I enjoyed his ascendance -- the Slam Dunk contest victories, the Spike Lee commercials, that first title run in which he laid waste to both the Pistons and the Lakers -- by the time of Jordan's second retirement I loathed the man. Sure, it had much to do with the fact that he'd beaten my Utah Jazz for the NBA championship two years in a row, capping it off with a shot that assumed mythical status. But my awe for him was long gone. Through that second threepeat, I was flat bored by his greatness, by the inevitablity of his team's victories, by the barrage of highlight films and by the slickness of his public persona. Not even the sight of Jordan wearing a strange uniform, failing to impose his will on a lackluster collection of playground yahoos as his own body broke down won him any sympathy in my book.
Bonds' performance in the face of his father's losing battle with cancer has changed my thinking on the man. It's not just the fireworks he's produced -- the game-winning homer upon returning to the team after a weekend spent visiting his ailing father, the home run in his first game back following his father's death (in a game he later left because of an accelerated heartbeat), the game-winning hit two nights later after being released from the hospital following treatment for exhaustion. It's that he's doing all of this with a heavy heart, able to shut out his grief only long enough to step into the one place he's in control, the batter's box, and perform at a level that may be unparalleled.
Dan Le Batard's article in the September 15 ESPN magazine offers a rare glimpse of a man who has gone to great lengths to protect himself from such intimacy. Penetrating the bubble which has surrounded the superstar for years, Le Batard captures the rawness of Bonds' emotions, the turmoil of his ordeal, and finds a man at the point of breaking down:
"I'm done," Bonds says. "The young players, it's their turn. I had my fun, and I keep screwing up and coming back. What for? Why bother? I can't do this anymore. I've already told the guys: a few more games, and I'm gone. I'm day-to-day, man. None of those records mean anything to me. My godfather and my father are the only reason I played, for their approval. I admired the rest of them -- Hank, Babe, Ted -- but I wasn't fighting for their approval. I've always played for the acceptance of my godfather and father. That's it. And now my father's gone."
His voice, cracking throughout, finally gives up here, done fighting. Barry Bonds, so impenetrable, so defiant, so very strong, is on the verge of tears. He is slumped in a chair in front of his locker, and he stays quiet for 10 ... 20 ... 30 seconds, the silence helping keep down what might bubble over with a nudge from but one more syllable.
Bonds stares straight ahead in the completely vacant visitors clubhouse in San Diego, suddenly avoiding eye contact. He doesn't like revealing himself because, as he explained politely but firmly at this conversation's start, "my career is an open book, but my life is not." Finally, after a full minute of silence, Bonds rubs a hand slowly over his weary face, sniffles and looks up at the clock through glassy, bloodshot eyes.
He hasn't stretched. He took fewer than five minutes' worth of swings during batting practice. He tried to take a nap on the trainer's table, with the aid of NyQuil, but failed miserably. That, and a giant cup of straight black coffee, is the extent of his pregame preparation. And now it is six minutes to game time.
Later, after tracing the arc of Barry's career in the shadow of father Bobby and godfather Willie Mays, Le Batard continues:
"The doctors didn't know how my father was still alive, with cancer in his kidney, lungs, two tumors in his brain and open-heart surgery, but he stayed around long enough to tell me everything at the end -- how much he loved me, how proud he was," Barry says. "Everything poured out. I wouldn't wish this on anybody, but the one thing that makes it better -- better, not easier -- is that I was there at the end. I didn't leave his side. I have my dad's approval. Now it's just Willie I'm after. It's time to get Willie's. And Willie won't let me rest, man. He doesn't want to give it to me. He's afraid of the same thing I am -- that I'll quit on the spot."
Bonds isn't quitting the game. What he's doing is taking a bat to it, one historic whack at a time. Retirement? That's just the frailty and fatigue talking after a terribly long season. He likes the money too much, and the challenges. Bonds admits as much now. He says he plans to play out the final two years of his contract (and collect $36M), at least. But throw the retirement talk into the maw of the multiheaded beast he's fighting now -- his father's death, the feds busting down the door at his strength coach's house in search of who knows what, the perpetual tension with the media, the chasing of his first championship at 39 -- and what you've unleashed is a gladiator who would make Maximus wet his pants.
An incredible peek behind the curtain, indeed.
But that isn't the only reason I've come around on Barry. The death of Bobby Bonds continues to resonate in my mind. In the days leading up to his demise, I'd been off the grid, backpacking with my father and brother, and fervently reading Roger Kahn's amazing The Boys of Summer, a book that for all of my Dodger fandom had somehow escaped my reading list. Disguised as a baseball book, Kahn's masterful tome is a medititation on mortality and a brilliant, poignant study of the flawed beauty of the human organism.
In part, The Boys of Summer serves as a memoir of Kahn's two seasons working the Brooklyn Dodger beat as a writer for the New York Herald Tribune, covering Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and the rest as they battle the New York Yankees in search of their first World Championship. In part, it's a nostalgia piece detailing Kahn's journeys to revisit those players twenty years later, reflect on their careers, and explore the ways their lives after baseball unfolded. And in part, it's a poignant tale of a father-son bond cemented by baseball. Former college second baseman and father of the author Gordon Kahn taught his son the game, its fundamentals and its lore, just as countless other fathers taught their sons baseball -- Bobby Bonds and Richard Jaffe included.
Whether we grow up to be ballplayers or writers or brain surgeons, as children we come to the game via our fathers (and sometimes our mothers) -- somebody who throws us fat whiffle-ball pitches in the backyard, who explains why the glove goes on the opposite hand from the one we throw with, who takes us to the ballpark for the first time and patiently endures our barrage of questions as we struggled to reconcile the stadium game with our own narrow backyard experience, who teaches us how to read a box score and how to fill out a scorecard. Ideally baseball isn't the only vehicle for our bonding, but it's a sure one, with a built-in mechanism for measuring the passage of years and our own growth.
In addition to the fundamentals and the lore, Gordon Kahn bestowed a love of the Brooklyn Dodgers on his son Roger, and the two of them endured Dem Bums' fruitless attempts to beat the imperial Yankees in the Fall Classic. Shortly after Kahn's second season covering the Dodgers, in which they lost the 1953 World Series to the Yanks (just as they had in 1952, not to mention 1949, 1947, and 1941), his father dropped dead of a heart attack. The "next year" for which the Dodges and their fans waited lay a mere two years after Gordon Kahn's death, but the father could no longer wait.
I didn't turn out to be a beat reporter like Roger Kahn or a big-league ballplayer (a shoulder injury this past June killed any chances I had of being summoned by Brian Cashman as a solution to the Yankee middle relief woes). But I'm lucky enough to have my sixty-two year old father still coaching me, advising me on the finer points of work, money, travel, fishing, wine, women, and song. I can only imagine the devastation, the void I would feel if I lost that at a time, like Kahn and Bonds, when I feel my best days -- marriage, children, maybe a book, whatever -- are still to come. My heart goes out to Barry Bonds, who's finally showed me that he has one.
Bonds is now five homers away from topping his godfather for third on the all-time home run list. He's 59 away from topping the Babe, and an even 100 away from topping Hank Aaron's mark at the summit of Mount Homer. Barring injury and assuming he can add a few more homers before the end of this season, that gives Bonds a very good shot of challenging Aaron's mark by the end of 2005. If he gets the mark, he will have earned it, playing in a hitters' era but a difficult pitchers' park, and through a strategy in which challenging him to hit is the last thing any pitcher wants to do.
We can pile the superlatives on Barry Bonds, and marvel at his eye-popping numbers. But whatever words we ascribe to him, "immortality" is one we can skip. This sad summer has shown us all just how mortal Barry Bonds is, and how mighty his accomplishments are in the face of that.
The only hope for the A's seemed to be highly touted rookie hurler Rich Harden. If Harden, who debuted in late July, could live up to his billing as a worthy addition to the Mulder-Tim Hudson-Barry Zito triumverate, the A's might stand a chance in the fall. That prospect looked good; at the time of Mulder's injury, Harden was 3-2 with a 3.00 ERA in six starts, five of which had been excellent.
One of the great things about baseball is that things never unfold the way we expect them to, and the A's are now the case in point. Including that one less-than-excellent start just prior to Mulder's injury, Harden had allowed 26 runs in his past 27.2 innings leading up to Tuesday night's start. But the A's have nevertheless mustered one of their patented late-season runs. Since Mulder went down, they've won 19 out of 26 while the Mariners have lost 14 of 24 -- an 8.5 game swing in the AL West standings.
Five times through the rotation since that fateful August 19, the pitcher who's risen to the occasion in Mulder's absence is a suprising one: Ted Lilly, the former Yankee who left in the Jeff Weaver trade. Here's the comparison:
W-L IP ER ERA
Zito 2-2 33.2 17 4.54
Hudson 3-2 30.2 13 3.82
Harden 2-2 23.2 20 7.61
Lilly 5-0 29.1 4 1.23
Looking a bit more closely at Lilly's numbers, he's allowed 20 hits in this span, including 1 homer, walked only 7 and struck out 30. That comes out to a tidy 0.92 WHIP, a 4.3 K/W ratio, and a healthy 9.2 Ks per 9 innings. Granted, four of these five starts came against Anaheim and Tampa Bay (Toronto was the other), but talk to the Royals about the need to beat up on the dogs -- whether it's Hudson, Zito, or Lilly, somebody's gotta get the job done.
Lilly hasn't been pitching especially deep into ballgames, averaging just under six innings per start in this span. But neither has he been wearing himself out; his pitch counts in the five starts are 100, 98, 83, 83, and 67. On Monday night, suffering from a cold, he tossed five innings of one-hit ball before yielding to the bullpen.
Overall, Lilly's season's been servicable but hardly spectacular: 11-9 with a 4.33 ERA in a pitchers' ballpark, 1.31 WHIP, 7.4 K/9, 2.6 K/W, 1.2 HR/9. Then again, those numbers would look pretty good at the back end of the Yankee rotation in place of Jeff Weaver and his 5.91 ERA, wouldn't they? Lilly's picked the right time to click, and it's looking as though the pitcher the A's once envisioned has finally arrived.
Wild afros, oversized gloves, and snakes -- oh my! These two pages of Funny and Strange Trading Cards are too good not to share. From the hat-busting hairdos of Oscar Gamble and Bake McBride to the huge mitt of Mikey Hatcher to the boa constrictor draped over Glenn Hubbard's shoulders, some hilarious and notorious cards are here, compiled by collector Bob Torba.
Here's Billy Martin giving a photographer the finger, Billy Ripken displaying his obscene nickname, and Claude Raymond caught with his zipper down -- twice! There's Bip Roberts wearing a sombrero. Why? Who cares! At least it looks more stylish than that furry hat Doug Drabek's wearing.
Jose Canseco with an oversize snow shovel, looking for a place to bury his career. An unidentified Pittsburgh Pirate milking a cow. Jose Rijo on three different cards holding three different squirt guns. Andy Ashby trying out a new fishing rod. Tim Flannery holding a surfboard. Brian Jordan swinging at a football. Rex Hudler glaring psychotically. Kurt Bevacqua and Ken Griffey, Jr. blowing bubbles. The world of baseball cards doesn't get any more surreal than this.
Hideki Matsui looked smooooov in a matching leopard skin hat and blazer, with an open-collared shirt embellished by two large gold medallions draped over his chest. With a white full-length fake-fur coat and matching hat, Jose Conteras looked as though he'd won an all-expense paid trip to raid Sly Stone's closet. Pitcher Jorge DePaula's ensemble featured lime green, purple, and a zebra print, while catcher Michael Hernandez was decked out in red velour and another zebra print.
The opposition got in on the act as well. The Devil Ray rookies, including pitcher Doug Waechter, dressed in drag, wearing a variety of garish skirts. Drag seems to be the order of the day for this affair. The New York Daily News noted that last year, Drew Henson wore a wedding dress for the occasion and that two years ago, Nick Johnson "sported the tiny orange shorts of a Hooters waitress."
Elsewhere around the league on Sunday, it was a similar story, but with fewer pictures. Across town, Mike Glavine, handed a gift promotion to the bigs as a thank-you to his brother, was dressed like an Arabian princess. In Cincinnati, all the rookies dressed either as Hooters waitresses or Budweiser girls. In Cleveland, outfielder Jody Gerut dressed as Marilyn Monroe. In San Francisco, the rookies donned rock star wigs to go with their Hooters getups.
Hey, it's a long season. You gotta have some fun...
Jordan writes about pitchers often, and he's got a new article called "The Hardest Stuff" this week about triple-digit fastballs and the men who throw them. I haven't read it yet, but I'll happily refund your money should you check it out on this blind recommendation and not dig it.
Just as I suspected, the Jordan article good stuff, though perhaps a bit more slight than the author's usual fare. The pitcher takes brief looks at hard throwers such as the Cubs' Kerry Wood, the Astros' Billy Wagner, and Angels' minor-leaguer Bobby Jenks, examining both the physical and psychological sides to what they do. I gleaned two interesting facts from all of this:
According to physicist Robert Adair, a 100 MPH fastball reaches the catcher four-tenths of a second after it's thown, and the batter has about .15 seconds to react.
Early pitchers whose fastballs were recorded as crossing the triple-digit barrier were Bob Feller, whose heater was timed against a speeding motorcycle, and early '60s minor-league legend Steve Dalkowski. Given that Dalkowski was measured with a Juggs gun, which tracks the speed of the ball as it leaves the pitchers hand, and the fact that the ball loses up to 5 MPH on its way to the plate, it's estimated that the hard-throwing Orioles farmhand could throw 103 MPH.
103 miles an hour. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
As I've written before, Dalkowski's statistics are absolutely eye-popping. During his first year of pro ball, in 62 innings, he allowed only 22 hits and struck out 121 -- but walked 129, and went 1-8 with an 8.13 ERA. One year he struck out and walked 262 men in 170 innings. Former O's minor-leaguer-turned-screenwriter Ron Shelton used Dalkowski as the basis for the character Nuke LaLoosh in his movie Bull Durham.
Dalkowski never appeared in a major-league game, undone by alcoholism and an arm injury on the day he was issued a big league uniform. But last week the Orioles honored the pitcher, now 64, by having him throw out the first pitch of their September 8 game at Camden Yards. It's nice to see the man finally get some recognition.
What a difference a week makes. Last Sunday morning the Yanks awoke with a collective hangover from two consecutive poundings by the Boston Red Sox and a lead in the AL East that had dwindled to 2.5 games. In the past seven days, they've taken a huge game from the Sox, won a makeup game from the Blue Jays, and cut through a pair of the league's worst teams like a hot knife through butter. With eight straight wins under their belt, they woke up this Sunday having opened a 5.5 game lead on the Sox, and their magic number for winning the AL East is down to 10.
But there's still plenty of suspense to be had around both leagues. The three-team race in the AL Central finds the Chicago White Sox and the Minnesota Twins tied at the top, meaning that the outcome of the Great Sushi Bet of 2003 (I have the Twins vs. the rest of the Central) is still in doubt. The Kansas City Royals, who topped last season's win total over a month ago, have dropped an axle over the past two weeks or so, going 5-10 against some mediocre competition and falling to 3.5 out. The Oakland A's are perched atop the AL West with a 2.5 game lead over Seattle, and the Mariners are a mere half-game behind the Red Sox for the Wild Card. All told, that's 7 out of 14 teams in the AL who remain alive.
The NL is, if anything, even more contentious. While both the Atlanta Braves and the San Francisco Giants have wide leads in the NL East and West, respectively, the NL Central and the Wild Card remain up for grabs. In the Central, the Houston Astros hold a slim half-game lead over the Chicago Cubs, with the St. Louis Cardinals, like their I-70 rivals, fading at 3.5 games out. The Cards, who've dropped 9 of 13, are becoming unhinged, with manager Tony LaRussa accusing ump Jerry Crawford of being out to get them. The Florida Marlins, led by their 72-year-old manager Jack McKeon, have overcome the medieval torture methods of predecessor Jeff Torborg to take the Wild Card lead over the streaky Philadelphia Phillies by 2.5 games. At 3.5 games back, the Los Angeles Dodgers find themselves hanging on in the Wild Card race by their fingernails -- despite getting exactly eleven base hits over the past month, or something like that. The Cubs are four back in the Wild Card While a week ago one could have counted the Arizona Diamondbacks and Montreal Expos at long odds in the WC race, both can be safely counted out at 7.5 and 8.5 games back, respectively. All told, that's 8 out of 16 teams still alive in the NL, meaning that with two weeks to go, half of the majors' teams still have postseason hopes. I'm not a huge fan of the Wild Card, but I'll concede that's pretty incredible, and it should be a very interesting couple of weeks for game and scoreboard watching.
Speaking of less favored innovations, after seven seasons of interleague play, MLB has finally gotten around to scheduling what may be The Unsurpassable Marquee Matchup. I'll give you a hint: it's the one featuring my two favorite teams.
The initial goal of interleague play was to rotate the matchups between divisions from year to year, but for the first five years, MLB stuck itself in a rut by matching each division in the AL with its geographic counterpart in the NL. In 2002, the divisions rotated for the first time, and they spun again this year.
But despite the fact that the Barry Bonds-led San Francisco Giants and the then-champion Arizona Diamondbacks visited Yankee Stadium last season, and that the Yanks visited such distant western outposts as Colorado and San Diego, one NL West opponent was conspicuously absent from the Yankees' schedule: the L.A. Dodgers.
You'd think that above all else, MLB -- not to mention the two teams -- would have wanted to cash in on an historic rivalry that has produced no fewer than eleven World Series matchups (1941, '47, '49, '52, '53, '55, '56, '63, '77, '78, and '81), the most of any two teams and the subject of untold numbers of books. But far be it for Bud Selig to show that much imagination in the face of all of those Pittsburgh-Minnesota matchups. But now, according to the Los Angeles Times, the soon-to-be-released 2004 schedule has the Yanks paying a visit to Dodger Stadium for a three-day series during the weekend of June 18-20.
Is it too early to buy tickets? My little head might just explode.
Belated congratulations to Mike Carminati of Mike's Baseball Rants and his wife on the birth of a baby boy. Alas, there's absolutely no truth to the rumor that the little one is named Joe Morgan Chat Day Carminati.
The world of baseball blogging is largely a male one, so it's a breath of fresh air to see a woman join the ranks. Irina Paley, a Washington Heights native, Columbia University student and computer programmer with whom I've been corresponding lately, has started West 116th Street, which she describes as "a mostly baseball blog, by way of the Upper West Side." Following up on my King Kaufman-related post, Irina has a good piece relating to a Thomas Boswell quote: "Baseball is religion without the mischief." Check it out.
