Well, folks, I’m off for the trip which is the centerpiece of my summer. Six days in the San Francisco area visiting several old friends and capped by my pal Joel’s wedding, followed by six more in Alaska, with my newly-retired father on a guided fishing trip in the Katmai National Park. I may get a chance or two to post here, but most likely, things will be pretty quiet until I get back on July 13.

In the meantime, there are plenty of other great blogs to read, of course. My usual suspects include Alex Belth’s Bronx Banter, which has an interview with Jim Bouton on tap, Mike’s Baseball Rants, for all of your Joe Morgan-bashing needs, The Cub Reporter, just back from a European vacation, Elephants in Oakland, Dodger Thoughts, Twins Geek, Replacement Level Yankees Weblog, and a whole lot more. You’ll still feel the immense void left by my absence, but I’m sure you can survive on this thin gruel of sites. If you need more, check out Baseball Primer, The Baseball News Blog, or BaseballBlogs.org.

I’d like to call your attention to a new blog, Filed under Uncategorized | Comment

Jim Bouton, the only knuckleballer on the New York Public Library’s Books of the Century List, has a new book out. Called Foul Ball: My Life and Hard Times Trying to Save an Old Ballpark, the book is a diary of Bouton’s efforts to save the oldest minor-league park in America (Waconah Park) and the often absurd resistance he encounters in the process from a small-town Massachusetts community.

As the story goes, Bouton (who lives in the Berkshires near Pittsfield, where the ballpark is) was involved in a partnership which attempted to bring an independent league team (from either the Atlantic League or the Northern League) to Waconah Park and keep it there as they renovated the stadium. The city of Pittsfield ultimately accepted a competing proposal to field a Northern League team there, with an eye towards building a new ballpark. The battle was clearly an acrimonious one which gave Bouton some new insights into what he calls “America’s new hostage crisis,” the practice of team owners extorting publicly-funded stadiums out of taxpayers under the threat of moving their franchises.

Even Bouton’s efforts to get the book published were a challenge. He terminated his contract with the book’s original publisher, PublicAffairs, after a top General Electric lawyer invested in the company and subsequently demanded removal of certain passages critical of GE. The book is now published by his own company, Bulldog Publishing, and is available (with a personalized inscription) via Bouton’s website as well as through the usual outlets.

On a different note, Bouton’s got a piece in the Sunday New York Times about a new exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum in Manhattan. Called “The Perfect Game: America Looks at Baseball,” the exhibit is devoted to the variety of ways fans have channeled their love of the game into artistic expression. Writes Bouton of attending the exhibit:

For a few hours I was a kid again, reliving memories sparked by the dozens of puppets and paintings, quilts and carvings, weather vanes and whirligigs that combined my two earliest passions — baseball and art. From age 5, I’ve been told, I was either throwing a ball or drawing a picture. I began with cowboys and graduated to baseball players. I would take my colored pencils and draw faces of players on the New York Giants, my favorite team. Little did I know I was creating something that might one day be characterized as art — folk art, that is, untutored and not intended for sale.

An illustration by the ten-year-old Bouton of Monte Irvin accompanies the piece, which is as much a vehicle for a few more amusing Bouton anecdotes as it is a plug for the show.

Hopefully, I’ll have more to say on both Bouton’s book — which I’ve grabbed for some road reading (I’m headed to San Francisco and then Alaska starting on Tuesday, for about two weeks in all) — and the museum exhibit when I return from my vacation.

• • •

Another photo accompanying Bouton’s piece in the Times is of a baseball intricately decorated by George Sosnak, a now-deceased minor league umpire. Coincidentally enough, Jim Kaat made mention of Sosnak’s talents for decorating balls on Saturday evening’s broadcast of the Yankees-Mets nightcap. Rookie pitcher Brandon Claussen, making his major-league debut, had just added to his stellar pitching performance by driving in an run with an infield single. The ball was retrieved and handed to Yankee trainer Gene Monahan, who regularly inscribes such milestone balls for the team. Kaat recounted some of his own notably inscribed balls, then mentioned Sosnak and his technique of applying India ink to illustrate the balls, even going so far as to add the game’s box score.

At the bookstore today I was perusing the “The Perfect Game” exhibit catalog and saw several beautiful examples of Sosnak’s work from the exhibit. My first thought was, “I want one of these.” But I’m not even going to bother lifting the couch cushions in search of loose change. A lot of 15 Sosnak-illustrated baseballs recently went for around $10,000 on the Lelands auction site. Donations, anyone?

• • •

Back on the subject of baseball writers, one of the great ones, Leonard Koppett, passed away last week. I referenced Koppett, in my work not too long ago, and I’ve read several of his columns in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer over the past couple of years. But I’m not familiar with a book that’s considered his masterwork, The Thinking Fan’s Guide to Baseball. First published in 1967 as The Thinking Man’s Guide to Baseball, the book was revised a couple of times, most recently by the now-defunct Total Sports Publishing. The book has been widely praised as one of the best baseball books ever, so I’m aiming to remedy my ignorance of it by hunting down a copy (somewhere my girlfriend is rolling her eyes).

As I don’t feel qualified to speak authoritatively on Koppett’s career, I’ll leave it to the eminently qualified Bruce Markusen, author and Manager of Program Presentations at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown. Writes Bruce in his most recent “Cooperstown Confidential” column at Baseball Primer:

In addition to owning a sense of decency and modesty, Leonard Koppett was also that rare breed of old-time sportswriter who was willing to follow and appreciate the contemporary game. Unlike many writers who started their careers in the 1940s and fifties, Leonard didn’t believe that the players of yesteryear were any better than their counterparts today. Leonard often said that the baseball players of today were just as good, if not better, than the athletes that he covered in the 1950s. He also made a point of saying that we should all enjoy the baseball of today because these are baseball’s glory days.

Leonard possessed an unusual combination of writing—and thinking—skills. Like many of the old-time scribes, he had a flair for writing smoothly and a passion for the game. At the same time, he was one of the few establishment writers who showed a willingness to think about new ideas and philosophies. He was scientific and analytical in his approach, one who was eager to consider new interpretations of statistics. Leonard showed that it was possible to be both a traditionalist and a Sabermetrician, even those two titles might seem contradictory on the surface. If anything, he showed that it was absolutely logical and reasonable to be both traditional and Sabermetric, since that was preferable to being married to one singular, confining philosophy.

Markusen points out that when he met Koppett, he congratulated him on being elected to the writers’ wing of the Hall of Fame. Koppett pointed out that his honor, receiving the J.G. Taylor Spink for writing, was not the same as being elected or inducted. That humility and willingness to educate those around him characterized Koppett for Markusen: “To this day, Leonard remains the only award-winning writer I’ve talked to who was willing to diminish his own accomplishments by emphasizing that he had not been elected to the Hall of Fame.” A true thinker.

• • •

While we’re on the subject of continued learning about the game, Retrosheet has unearthed and published a box score and detailed play-by-play (courtesy of Bob Tiemann) of The First Major League Game Ever. On May 4, 1871, the National Association’s Cleveland Forest Cities team visited the Fort Wayne (Indiana) Kekiongas. Bobby Mathews of Fort Wayne shut down Cleveland 2-0, the first of 297 wins he posted in the majors (the most of any pitcher not in the Hall of Fame). The two runs scored on a double by Bill Lennon and a single by Frank Sellman. Each team got four hits, but the Kekiongas were aided by three Deacon White passed balls, two of which led to their second run.

According to Mike Carminati, who’s done his homework, the 5’4″ Mathews is one of only four players to have held the all-time record for career wins: Al Spalding (253), Mathews, Pud Galvin (364), and Cy Young (511), who ain’t giving it up anytime soon. Baseball-Reference.com actually shows the year-by-year progression of such all-time records, which is pretty cool.

It’s common for baseball fans to say that they would be able to recognize the game 100 years from now; this box score is proof in the pudding from 132 years ago, even though baseball in those days was played under some different rules. Home plate was a square made of wrought iron, the home team could choose whether to bat first or second, the batter could call for his pitch, three balls consisted of a walk, and a balk required forfeiture of the ballgame. A researcher named Andy Singer who specializes in 19th century baseball compiled a detailed list of the 1871 rules under which this game was played.

Ancient box scores are fascinating, but this one gives no insight as to just what the hell a Kekionga is. But a little resarch on the web has set me straight. Kekionga was a Native American village over which a bloody battle related to white encroachment was fought. Troops headed by Major General Arthur St. Clair were attacked by the Miami Confederacy, an alliance of Ohio Indians led by one Little Turtle. The conflict has been called “The bloodiest battle of pioneer American history,” and “The worst defeat in the history of the U.S. Army,” among other things. Some 700 of St. Clair’s people lost their lives, compared to only about 40 Indians.

It’s probably for the best that no box scores remain from that one.

The Yankee brass has added a new wrinkle to this coming Saturday’s crosstown doubleheader with the Mets. Their top pitching prospect, Brandon Claussen, will be summoned from AAA Columbus to start in the second (Shea) game, making his major-league debut in the process.

Claussen is a 24-year-old lefthander who is only a year removed from Tommy John surgery. Prior to his injury, he’d been pitching well in his first taste of AAA, posting a 3.28 ERA in 93 innings and striking out 7.0 per 9 IP. In 2001, he’d led the minors in strikeouts, striking out 220 in 187 innings between Tampa (A) and Norwich (AA). Top Prospect Alert rated him as their #47 prospect for 2002 and had this to say going into the season:

Relatively unheralded, primarily due to his being a 34th round “draft and follow” in 1998, Claussen arrived in 2001, leading the minor leagues in strikeouts. The lefthander uses a low-90’s fastball with a plus curve and adequate change. He spots his pitches well despite not having pinpoint control. While his success at AA was unquestionable, he was a little older than you’d like for “true” stud pitching prospects at that level. That makes 2002 huge for Claussen. If he is able to dominate at AAA in the same fashion, he will be up with the Yankees by mid-seasons as one of the games best pitching prospects. If, as I suspect, he will find the going a little rougher he still may see New York before season’s end, but his ceiling would really only be that of a decent mid-rotation starter.

Since returning, Claussen’s been downright dominant:

          W-L  ERA  GS  IP   H  ER  BB  SO  HR  BABIP   

Tampa     2-0 1.64  4  22.0 16   4   3  26  0   .281

Columbus  1-0 1.34  6  40.1 23   6   5  27  3   .180

Overall, that’s a 1.44 ERA, with 7.7 strikeouts per 9 IP, a 6.6 K/W ratio, and only 0.4 HR allowed per 9 innings. Opposing hitters are batting only .171 against him, but there has to be a lot of luck in play there. His batting average allowed on balls in play an extremely low .214. Beyond the small sample size, it’s tough to make heads or tails of that. I’s hard to believe that pitching in front of the error-prone Drew Henson (15 errors) and David Post (10) is giving him special help defensively, but on the other hand, he’s only allowed one unearned run.

The irony of Claussen’s injury is that it may well have prevented him from being traded last summer. Now, he’s reached the point of “untouchable,” according to reports, and so this start is less a showcase for interested teams than it is an audition for the Yanks, the 2004 model if not the 2003. With Roger Clemens due to retire, Andy Pettitte headed towards free-agency, and the club holding an option on David Wells, the Yanks have only Mike Mussina, Jose Contreras, Jeff Weaver and Jon Leiber (currently rehabbing from Tommy John surgery) under contract for their ’04 rotation. That’s four righties, though at this stage it’s obviously not the final word, especially as Weaver may be headed elsewhere as part of a big trade this season. Claussen may well be the heir apparent to Pettitte, whose struggles this season and hefty price tag ($11.5 million this year) may make him expendable. It’s only one start for the rookie, but this one bears watching.

• • •

On the other side of the coin, the Yanks made a minor trade on Wednesday, acquiring outfielder Karim Garcia and reliever Dan Miceli from the Yanks for a player to be named later or cash considerations. If it’s anything more than Don Zimmer’s laundry or Juan Acevedo’s lost luggage, the Yanks probably gave up too much, and this deal reeks of paper-pushing, the appearance that “we’re doing something about our problems.”

Garcia is a 27-year-old lefty bat who’s been breaking hearts ever since he put up 20 HRs and hit .319/.36/.542 at Albuquerque (AAA) as a 19-year-old in 1995. Since then he’s passed through the hands of the Dodgers, Diamondbacks, Tigers, Orioles, Indians, Yankees (two games last year) and back to the Indians, racking up some eye-popping AAA stats, but failing to stick in the bigs. Joining the Indians on August 6 last year, he finally put it together for the first time, hitting 16 HRs, driving in 52 runs and hitting .299/.317/.584 for the season. What’s less than impressive is his control of the strike zone — 6 BB to 41 K in that same span. For his career, he’s a .234/.273/.428 hitter in about 1100 major-league plate appearances. He’s struggled this year due to a wrist injury, hitting .194/.238/.366 with 5 HR and 14 RBI, and getting lost in a sea of young outfielders. And though he’s replacing failed pinch-runner Charles Gipson on the roster, speed isn’t exactly Garcia’s game; he’s 7-for-18 in steals in his MLB career.

At least nobody’s every accused Garcia of a bad attitude. The same can’t be said for Miceli, a well-traveled 32-year-old righty with a career 4.72 ERA whose career highlight was as Trevor Hoffman’s setup man for the 1998 San Diego Padres, who faced the Yanks in the World Series. Miceli’s got a reputation as a clubhouse lawyer, most notably for his role in getting Florida Marlins manager John Boles fired in 2001 due to his lack of experience as a professional ballplayer. Not that Miceli’s 6.93 ERA for the Marlins had anything to do with the issue. In the words of one Florida reporter, “Almost two years ago to the day, the words of a pitcher who had as much trouble telling the truth as he did getting outs toppled John Boles as manager of the Florida Marlins. Dan Miceli’s public criticism of Boles — his chief complaint was his manager’s lack of big-league playing experience — supposedly showed Boles had lost the team, which led to his firing. ”

Here’s what Baseball Prospectus 2002 had to say about Miceli:

One of the season’s more bizarre story lines was Miceli’s rant against John Boles, in which he claimed the Marlins’ manager couldn’t garner respect because he hadn’t played in the major leagues. The evidence that managers don’t need MLB experience to succeed is overwhelming, so Miceli looked pretty silly. The fallout wasn’t as amusing: Boles was fired, Miceli was exiled to Colorado, and both teams fell apart. Miceli is a free agent as we go to press; he can help a team, but so can a lot of guys who come without his baggage.

Greeeeaaaat. This will be Miceli’s third team of 2003, having gotten bombed out of Colorado (5.66 ERA in 20.2 innings) and torn it up in Cleveland (1.20 ERA and 19 Ks in 15 innings). His success with the Indians was reportedly due to his dropping down to a three-quarter arm angle and adding movement to his 90 MPH fastball. He’ll have a chance to aid the Yanks as their top righty setup man until Antonio Osuna returns from his groin injury; Joe Torre clearly doesn’t trust Al Reyes or rookie Jason Anderson, even though the two arguably have more upside, if not more experience, than the well-travelled mouth. At least that mouth won’t be tolerated here; Miceli’s fastball better move, or his butt surely will.

Sometimes, when I do design work, it’s necessary to use chunks of filler text in place of actual live copy. The idea is that a designer can make decisions about the form an layout will take before the final content is determined. In QuarkXPress, the primary page-layout software I use, there exists a tool called Jabberwocky which spews random text (or “jabber”) for this very purpose. An even simpler method is to use a block of scrambled Latin text called lorem ipsum. Both produce the same effect, text that typographically stands in for English, but won’t be mis-identified as live copy and accidentally get published. There’s history in this; apparently this lorem ipsum text dates all the way back to the metal typesetting of the 1500s.

Sometimes, after working on this site late at night, I spend a few minutes suspended in that zone a few inches above sleep, dreaming that I’m reading some fascinating words about baseball. Inevitably, I either fall asleep and forget those words entirely, or I wake up, only to realize that my brain has been poring over complete nonsense, lorem ipsum as if written by Bill James, perhaps.

And sometimes I just sit down and watch ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, listening to the incessant inanities spouted by Joe Morgan. It’s the same difference.

By now it should be apparent to anyone paying attention that the man identified as one of the smartest ever to play the game has developed a not-so-slow leak in his brain. Either that, or everything we’ve learned in the past twenty Bill James-enlightened years about baseball is a complete crock of shit, and only Joe Morgan, keeper of the flame, knows this.

Morgan’s a Hall of Famer who could do it all — hit, hit for power, run, field and throw. He played on one of the all-time great teams, he won World Series rings, he now works alongside one of the game’s great announcers in Jon Miller, he’s got a pleasant voice with a bit of Texas twang, and at first listen, he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. But listen more closely and you’re liable to hear a man who steps all over everything we thought we — and he — knew about baseball.

No one has kept a closer eye on Morgan’s profound disenlightenment than Mike Carminati of Mike’s Baseball Rants, and no one sums up the Morgan paradox better than he does:

Morgan, as a player, was the epitome of everything sabermetric: a power-hitting middle-infielder who got on base and stole bases at a high percentage. As an analyst, however, he’s a sabermetrician’s nightmare, foregoing everything but batting average, RBI, and pitching wins to evaluate a player. Worse yet, his spurious logic and inability to answer a direct question make him the Reverend Spooner of baseball analysts.

Like a vulture who’s been circling a desert highway in search of fresh carrion, Mike tears into every Friday’s ESPN Chat with Joe Morgan for fresh insight into the good, the bad, and the just plain ugly of what Morgan’s foisted on unsuspecting chatters. Here’s a sample exchange from the most recent one:

Sam (Ypsilanti, MI): Joe, I’m a big fan! In your column about the AL West, you note that the A’s “Big 3″ have been more vunerable than in the past. But look at their ERAs – Hudson 3.08, Mulder 3.26, and Zito 2.92. Struggling? These three are what is holding this team to a good record! Zito’s 7-5 record overshadows that he is 1st in the AL in BAA (.197). What gives?

Joe: I don’t think I said struggle.. I said they were more vulnerable. ERA’s are just a personal thing. Wins and losses are what the game is all about. BA and BAA are personal stats. Those guys don’t walk out and win three games in a row anymore.

[Mike: Ypsilanti from the old Border League? Yes, ERA’s a personal thing. Personally Joe dislikes ERAs. Wins are what matter to Joe. Don’t explain to Joe that the A’s have won one more game than last year to this point. Don’t tell Joe that Mulder is having the best year of his young career and has three more wins than he did at this time last year. Don’t tell Joe that Tim Hudson was 5-6 at this point last year. Don’t even tell Joe that as he was writing this the A’s were preparing to win their seventh—not third—straight.

Look, the Big Three and still the Big Three. Their strikeout ratios are all down but besides that there are no possible complaints.]

I wish I could say that’s the only thing in the chat session for which Joe deserved to be raked over the coals, but then that would mean there’s nothing else to read on Mike’s site, and the evidence there has proven quite the contrary.

Not that Mike is the only one taking Joe to task. Travis Nelson of the Boy of Summer blog did his own entertainingly snarky take on a Morgan chat a few weeks ago. An angry mob of Baseball Primer posters recently compiled an extensive laundry list of Morgan’s more glaring flip-flops and flubs. Now Aaron Gleeman of Aaron’s Baseball Blog has his own axe to grind. A couple of weeks back, Aaron took Joe to task for failing to realize that Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane did not write the bestseller Moneyball and yet foisting that disinformation on the public. Joe liked the mistake so much he made it twice: “I wouldn’t be Billy Beane first of all!! I wouldn’t write the book Moneyball!”

Jumpin’ Jeebus Cripes! As Aaron wrote, “He not only had his facts wrong and he not only was upset with someone as a result of something they didn’t do, but he was making a big deal of the situation, on a national stage(s), over and over again, based on his incorrect facts.”

Morgan wages a disinformation campaign that would do a Propaganda Minister proud. Everything Joe believes now, he always believed, despite whatever he’s on record as having said last week, and woe to you if you point that out to him. Take this exchange from another recent chat:

Stevie Ridzik (D.C.): Dig your work Joe…But one bone to pick, how can you say “the Blue Jays rely mainly on home runs.” when they lead the league in BA-SLG-OBP-OPS-RUNS-RBI and are only 3rd in taters?

Joe Morgan: Listen to what I say and do not put somebody else’s words in my mouth. I said they have a chance of winning because they have a great offense. I’m not sure where you got that. It seems that people want to put words in my mouth.

It should be noted that in the previous week, Morgan had this to say:

On offense, the Mariners are getting hits in clutch situations while featuring the hit-and-run, the sacrifice bunt and the sacrifice fly. This is in contrast to the Toronto Blue Jays, who rely mainly on home runs.[emphasis added]

Joe Morgan, History’s Greatest Monster, Q.E.D.

Okay, he’s not History’s Greatest Monster. But with every passing week, Morgan continues to carve himself a reputation as a baseball reactionary, a boor and a bore. For those of us who grew up admiring his brand of heads-up baseball, it’s sad to watch. But when a man’s got the ear of a baseball-watching nation and he continues to shovel such a high volume of bullshit, he deserves to be called on it. Intelligent baseball fans are doing just that.

After doing his thorough job taking apart some of Morgan’s recent gaffes, Gleeman notes that Morgan’s actually written a book himself. On the ghost of Wally Post, I swear I am not making this up: Baseball for Dummies.

Say it ain’t so, Joe.

Thanks to a late-night breakthrough in my understanding of HTML, I’ve added a feature: a new sidebar called “The Catch” which will feature brief notes and links, including some to products I’m recommending. This blog-within-a-blog feature is something I’ve wanted to construct for quite some time, and I’m elated to finally have figured it out. It opens up a whole new set of possibilites for this page.

The only catch is that my blog will have a slightly changed URL, adding a .shtml suffix instead of the .html one. The new address of my blog is thus http://www.futilityinfielder.com/blog/blog.shtml and all further entries will be published at that address. If you’re coming to this site via the top-level domain (www.futilityinfielder.com), you shouldn’t notice any difference, because all of the navigation tools will reflect this change. But if you’ve bookmarked this page, you’ll want to update the address. If you are a site administrator or fellow blogger who links to this site, I’d greatly appreciate it if you would update your links on behalf of your readers.

As for what’s going on over to the right (on the new version of this page), it’s pretty self-explanatory, a catch-all of some stuff I wanted to share as an aside. The book and music links are through the Amazon Associates program, which I’ve joined in the hopes of generating a wee bit of revenue to cover the costs of this site. The way it works is that — at no cost to you — I get a small percentage of any product I promote that you click through to purchase, and an even smaller percentage of other stuff you purchase if you enter Amazon via my link. Apologies to any of you who feel that this is a crass sell-out. Your refund check is in the… oh, wait. For the rest of you, I’m not asking you to spend more money on my behalf, just to tell Amazon who sent you if you’re shopping there.

So, without further ado, I welcome you to the new version of this blog.

Thursday afternoon’s Yankee-Devil Ray ballgame was rained out. Or rather, “rained out,” for anybody within range of the Bronx could tell you that while the skies had emptied in the morning and remained overcast throughout the afternoon, very little additional rain fell. Presumably, the ballgame could have and should have been played.

The fact that it didn’t is quite curious. First off, Thursday’s game marked Lou Gehrig’s 100th birthday, and a celebration took place prior to gametime (or so I’m told, as I wasn’t there). Second, the day’s giveaway honored another Yankee first baseman — a Jason Giambi bobblehead. Third, the Yanks were playing the D-Rays, the next best thing to scheduling their own AAA farm team. Fourth, the Yanks claimed to have sold 36,000 tickets, not horribly off the previous week’s draw for an interleague matinee with a division leader (39,888). By all rights, the Yanks should have been itching to get this game in.

That they didn’t has set off the alarm bells of conspiracy theorists heavily vested in “Yankees Suck!” regalia. According to the predominant theory, the Yanks preferred to bump Andy Pettitte back to Friday’s Subway Series opener and knock struggling starter Jeff Weaver (0-4, 6.56 ERA in his last five starts) into next week, where he would face a less heated rival than the Mets — the Devil Rays.

Lost in all of this is the fact that until the game starts, the decision to start the game rests with the home team, unless it’s the final series of the season between the two clubs. In that case, the league may override the decision and force the start of the game. Once a game begins, it’s in the hands of the umps.

Yankee GM Brian Cashman refuted the conspiracy talk, telling one newspaper, “I think it’s irresponsible. If anybody wants to rip me for the decision based on the weather, that’s fine, because it cleared up. But it was based on the forecasts saying we’d have rain all day and that it would get worse.” He also pointed out that by opening the gates, the “game” cost the Yanks about $40,000 in salaries, not to mention the inconvenience of a day-night doubleheader in September.

Major League Baseball VP Katy Feeney, who is in charge of scheduling (a fact that didn’t escape George Steinbrenner’s notice a few weeks ago), backed Cashman’s story: “It was no conspiracy. With weather, you don’t know 100 percent. Both the umpiring crew and the Yankees were looking at the radar and in contact with local meteorologists and they were told it would get heavy and not stop. Obviously, it turned out wrong, but that’s what they had to go on.”

The irony of the situation is that Saturday’s Yankee-Met game succumbed to rain after three innings, washing away a 3-for-3 Alfonso Soriano performance and an unspectacular start by Mike Mussina. On the other hand, it enabled Robin Ventura to make a Caddyshack reference: “I don’t think the hard stuff’s coming down for a while.” The game will be made up as part of a crosstown day-night doubleheader, similar to the one three years ago. Meanwhile, Sunday night’s game is equally endangered, with a forecast showing a 60% chance of showers (by the way, I’ll put in a plug for weather.com as the best source for event-related forecasting. They may not necessarily be correct all the time, but the information is at least easy to find, unlike going through a particular team’s sources).

The Yanks have already had four rainouts this year, so don’t be surprised if some Yankee hater starts yammering about the Great Flood and jeering that the team should board a wooden ship by twosies. After all, wasn’t that the last time the Red Sox won anything?

In what will surely make him the butt of jokes for the next, oh, 15 years, former major league pain in the ass Jose Canseco was arrested at home on Friday for testing positive for steroids, a violation of his parole.

For those of you needing a refresher course Jose’s recent rap sheet, Canseco and his twin brother Ozzie were arrested on aggravated battery charges stemming from a Halloween 2001 nightclub brawl. He plead guilty and was sentenced to three years probation, plus some community service and anger management classes. He then violated that probation by failing to begin his community service. For that, he received a month in jail and two years of house arrest, plus the threat of a 15-year sentence for any further violation from Judge Leonard Glick.

Not only did the house arrest effectively end his major-league career, it sent Jose even further over the edge. He turned himself into a pariah by alleging that 85 percent of major leaguers used steroids, and worse, threatened to publish a book “naming names.”

Confined to his house, the human trainwreck kept making waves. In one of the more bizarre news items of the year, Canseco offered himself up for auction — a day of with the slugger at his home. Somebody apparently paid for the privelege, but the public was mercifully spared the follow-up story. Hey, we’ve got American Idol contestants to ridicule.

But now, Jose has delivered what may be the coup de grâce. With no earthly reason to use performance-enhancing drugs, he nonetheless got caught doing just that. Who was he trying to impress, the Broward County Department of Sanitation workers who haul his trash away?

Trashman Number One: “Wow, that Canseco’s really ripped.”

Trashman Number Two (yawns, checking watch): “I got the other can, but you’re pickin’ up those goddamn apple cores. My back hurts.”

Or maybe it’s the future Hall of Fame voters Jose was hoping to woo:

Voter Number One: “462 home runs, 1986 Rookie of the Year, 1988 MVP award, six All-Star appearances, two World Series rings…. it’s tough not to vote for this guy.”

Voter Number Two: “Plus, he’s still really ripped. I’m sold.”

Of course, stupidity just runs in the Canseco family. Ozzie already beat Jose to the steroids-as-parole-violation bit, but Ozzie’s not looking at a hard 15 in the big house yet. But Jose is, and when he gets sentenced, we can all finally chuckle, smug in the satisfaction of that we have found the Dumbest Man in America. And those ripped pecs will be the envy of Cellblock D.

Larry Doby passed away on Wednesday. If you don’t know who he was, then your history lesson is LONG overdue. Doby broke the American League color barrier a mere three months after Jackie Robinson first played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, debuting for the Cleveland Indians on July 5, 1947. Yet he spent his career in Robinson’s shadow despite having to endure the same virulent racism — segregation, bench-jockeying, cool receptions from certain teammates — and despite his own outstanding career. “The only difference was that Jackie Robinson got all the publicity,” Doby later recounted. “You didn’t hear much about what I was going through because the media didn’t want to repeat the same story.”

A second-baseman for the Negro League Newark Eagles (where he’d been starring since age 18), Doby was signed by visionary Indians owner Bill Veeck. He did poorly in his first taste of major-league action (5-for-32), and with an All-Star (Joe Gordon) manning second, he had nowhere to play. But with the help of the legendary Tris Speaker, he converted to centerfield and became the starter the next season, helping to key the Indians’ only World Championship of the past 83 years. Doby hit .301/.384/.490 that season, and had an excellent World Series as well, hitting .318 with one homer. In 1949, he began a string of seven straight All-Star appearances, developing into one of the league’s best sluggers. He drove in over 100 runs five times, and led the league in homers twice, including 1954, when he was a major reason the Indians ran up a 111-43 record (alas, the New York Giants swept them in the Series).

Like Robinson, Doby’s career ended fairly early. He bounced between the Indians, the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers over his last few seasons, suffering from back and rotator cuff injuries. He was released early in 1959, at age 35. For his career he hit .283/.386/.490 with 253 homers, but those statistics are only a small part of the story. Veeck later recalled in his autobiography (Veeck as in Wreck, as entertainingly brilliant as any baseball book ever penned) that “[H]is inner turmoil was such a constant drain on him that he was never able to realize his full potential. Not to my mind, at any rate. If Lary had come up just a little later, when things were just a little better, he migh very well have become one of the greatest players of all time.”

Doby went to play in Japan, and later coached with the Montreal Expos, the Indians, and the White Sox. In 1978, Veeck, then the owner of the White Sox, gave Doby another “second,” naming him the game’s second black manager (after Frank Robinson) to replace the fired Bob Lemon. He finished the season 37-50 (Lemon did a bit better with his next venture). He later went on to work for Major League Baseball in a variety of front-office positions, and was honored several times, albeit belatedly. The Indians retired his number 14 in 1994, and he was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1998.

The New York Times obituary of Doby is here. In Cleveland, Doby’s passing is front-page news. Two articles from the Plain Dealer are worth your time, a lengthy historical account and a column by Bill Livingston, who writes:

Larry Doby, who died yesterday, was a 90-day wonder.

The wonder, you see, was that anyone thought much had changed in the three months be tween the start of the 1947 Major League Baseball season, when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the National League with the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Doby’s arrival at old Municipal Stadium on July 3 of that year as the first black player in the American League.

The same racial poison that greeted Robinson was steeping in the hearts and minds of many players and fans in the American League, too. Unlike Robinson, Doby had not gone to UCLA. He had not been the gem of the farm system, carefully nurtured before his big-league debut in Montreal, where the Dodgers’ top farm team was located. Race was not the same explosive issue in Quebec that it was in such Southern towns as Washington and St. Louis (home then to the AL’s Browns), where Doby would play.

Robinson was the first, and would be remembered through out baseball, with his number (42) retired at every ballpark in the majors on the 50th anniver sary of his rookie season. Doby was the pioneer who did not get primacy of place, but who en dured the same privations of race. Outside Cleveland, he is probably not a household name. More is the shame.

Doby’s passing is also front-page news in New Jersey, where he grew up and where he resided up until his death. Jerry Izenberg of the Newark Star-Ledger has a conversation with former Newark Eagles teammate (and fellow Hall of Famer) Monte Irvin, as well as his own loving recollections:

I began to figure it out the night before he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998. I arranged for the two us to walk through the empty building alone after closing.

It was so quiet we could hear our footsteps. I had been in that building so many times, but now I saw it through the eyes of Larry Doby. We were, I later thought, on a walk-through of his private church on the eve of the day a dream so long denied him would finally become justice affirmed.

He paused repeatedly and conducted his own nonstop soliloquy about the exhibits and the game he loved. His heart smiled at some of those memories. His silence spoke volumes at some of the other ones. I finally understood that night just how much he loved this game and why, with all the heartache, it remained forever a part of his life.

He had paused before a picture of Steve Gromek, a pitcher on Doby’s 1948 world championship Indians, leaping into Doby’s arms. Larry had hit a home run in that World Series game and Gromek had been the winning pitcher.

“It made most of the front pages,” he told me. “It was the first picture of a black and a white man embracing at home plate. America needed that picture and I will always be proud that I could help give it to them.”

Larry Doby, second to none at last.

When it comes to baseball phenomena I’ve observed in my lifetime, the line starts with Fernandomania. Nothing I’ve ever seen compared with the initial dominance of Fernando Valenzuela and the swirl of excitement surrounding the portly, unflappable 20-year-old southpaw from Mexico every time he took the hill for the Dodgers.

I’d been introduced to Valenzuela when he began making waves during his cup of coffee in 1980. Thrust into the middle of a tight NL West race, Fernando hurled 17.2 innings without allowing an earned run (he gave up two unearned runs in his debut), and garnered two wins in relief. Such was the rookie’s impact that he even drew consideration from manager Tommy Lasorda to start the one-game tiebreaker with the Houston Astros. Alas, Lasorda picked Dave Goltz instead, and the Dodgers lost 7-1.

But Valenzuela immediately made his presence felt the next season. Pressed into duty as the team’s Opening Day starter, he shut out the Astros, and just kept going. On the strength of his mysterious screwball and his mid-motion skyward gaze, he reeled off eight straight complete game wins, allowing only four runs in the process and capturing the imagination of two countries every time he pitched. Though the 1981 season was marred by the seven-week players’ strike, Valenzuela’s highlights and accomplishments that year (eight shutouts, Rookie of the Year, the Cy Young and a World Championship) remain some of my fondest baseball memories. Of course, the heavy usage later took a toll on his arm, but that’s a story for another day.

Valenzuela’s been in the news lately. Having finally hung up his spikes (he was still pitching in the Mexican Winter Leagues in January), El Toro recently launched a new career as a Spanish-language radio commentator for the Dodgers. The move has been treated by the Dodgers as the return of the prodigal son, complete with a ceremonial first-pitch celebration. With this new job, Valenzuela’s come full circle, patching up relations with the team which sadly let him go in 1991 and now working alongside Jaime Jarrin, the Hall of Fame broadcaster who served as Fernando’s interpreter early in his career. If I knew any Spanish beyond “mas cerveza, por favor,” I’d be tempted to tune into their broadcasts via MLB.com.

Valenzuela’s son is making news as well. Fernando Jr. was recently drafted in the 10th round by the San Diego Padres. While he shares his father’s looks, physique, and left-handedness, the younger Valenzuela is a first baseman. In his first season at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas (he transferred from Glendale Community College), El Toro Jr. hit .337 AVG/.456 OBP/.593 SLG in 63 games. He led the team in homers (14), RBI (75) and walks (45), tied in extra-base hits (34) and was within two of the team lead in total bases (144). He struck out only 24 times to go with those 45 walks (by far the best ratio on the team), so it’s clear that he’s got a good handle on controlling the strike zone. And he didn’t make a single error at first base all season.

Of course, those stats should be taken in their proper perspective; the Rebels team hit .324/.417/.522, scoring 9.2 runs per game, while their opponents hit .292/.381/.430 and scored 6.5 per game. The entire Mountain West Conference hit .322/.397/.510 and scored 8.0 runs per game. Needless to say, the MWC has some extreme park effects at work, but then most of the teams play at altitudes higher than Coors Field. Still, Valenzuela was so highly regarded that he was named the MWC’s MVP.

It’s clear the kid’s got some talent to go along with his good bloodlines. I look forward to watching his progress. Can another wave of Fernandomania be around the corner?

Once again I’ve retreated to my pal Nick’s folks’ place in Northampton, Massachusetts. Nick’s stepfather is the great-grandson of Harry M. Stevens, the famed sports concessionaire. In honor of the occasion I’m repubilishing a piece I wrote two years ago after rooting through the Stevens-related memorabilia up here. I’ve revised it to include the further research I’ve done.

Harry M. Stevens occupies a prominent place in the creation of the baseball experience. He is credited with introducing both hot dogs and scorecards to the sporting public, and built an empire around these staples.

There are a few pieces of Stevens-related memorabilia hanging in a hallway here at his great-grandson’s home. There’s a bio of “Score Card Harry” from the New York Clipper, dated June 27, 1896. It details the growth of Stevens’ operation, beginning in Columbus of the Ohio State League, in 1887, and continuing through his gaining the right to sell scorecards at the Polo Grounds in 1895. Also on the wall is the cover of one of those 1895 scorecards for the New York Base Ball Club (the Giants), featuring a full-color illustration of a ballfield from the first base side. A spectator with top hat, moustache, and cigar is in the foreground.

The item which has caught my fascination for the better part of this afternoon is an even older scorecard. This one is a 2-color card from 1892, the offical score card of the Washington Base Ball Club (the Senators). It features a photo of Boston catcher and future Hall of Famer Mike “King” Kelly on the cover, and the scorecard is unfolded into four panels. On the front side are ads for sporting goods, alcohol, and tobacco. The back is also visible thorugh a cutout on the other side of the frame. The lineups for a game between the Senators and the Cleveland Spiders are printed. Here they are (I used Baseball-reference.com to fill in the first names):

Senators:

Paul Radford, 3B

Tommy Dowd, 2B

Dummy Hoy, CF

Henry Larkin, 1B

Jocko Milligan, C

Charlie Duffee, LF

Danny Richardson, SS

Frank Killen, P

Patsy Donovan, RF

Spiders:

Cupid Childs, 2B

Jake Virtue, 1B

George Davis, 3B

Ed McKean, SS

Jimmy McAleer, CF

Jesse Burkett, LF

Jack O’Connor, RF

Chief Zimmer, C

George Rettger, P and Cy Young, P (both listed)

The Washington lineup isn’t much, befitting a team which went 58-93 and finished 10th out of 12 teams. The most recognizable name is that of Dummy Hoy, a 5’4″, 148 lb deaf-mute outfielder who, according to the Baseball Online Library, was the reason umpires adopted hand signals for safe, out, and strike calls. Hoy went on to rack up over 2000 hits, played in four major leagues (NL, AL, Players League, and the American Association), and lived to the ripe old age of 99. He even got to throw out the first pitch of a World Series game in 1961, the year of his death. The only other Senator I recognize, but who wasn’t in the lineup that day, is Deacon McGuire, a catcher who played in 26 seasons. McGuire’s last appearance in the bigs is one for the annals; in 1912, when he was 48 years old, he was part of a one-game makeshift team fielded by the Detroit Tigers. The regular Tigers were on strike in support of a suspended Ty Cobb, and the replacements were pounded 24-2 by the Philadelphia A’s.

The Cleveland lineup is much better; they went 93-56, and finished second in the NL. Cy Young you know about (511 wins, and an award named after him, for you rookies out there). George Davis was in the second year of a Hall of Fame career which included over 2600 hits. Jesse Burkett was even better than Davis, hitting over .400 three times (the only other man to do that besides that Cobb fella). Burkett, known as “the Crab” for his cheerful disposition, ran off a seven-year span in which his hit totals ranged from 198 to 240, and he finished with 2850 for his Hall of Fame career.

Another Spider of note is shortstop Ed McKean, who had apparently recovered from an early-season mishap in which he shot himself “through the ‘fleshy portion’ of his finger with a revolver,” according to the Baseball Online Library.

The Spiders’ lineup was incredibly stable. Only two bench players saw any action, and of the seven pitchers, two appeared in only one game and another (the aforementioned Rettger) in five. Young pitched in 53 games, completing 48 out of 49, going 36-12 with a 1.93 ERA. They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

Returning to the scorecard, the back has several alcohol ads, including one for Faust Beer, “the Healthiest and Finest Drink you can offer your friend,” brewed by Anheuser Busch, and Pabst Milwaukee Beer, which “leads them all, and everybody uses it.” For those who use too much of it, there are ads for the Silver Ash Institue for the Cures of Alcohol and Opium Habits, and the Blackstone Gold Cure Institute for the Cure of Liquor, Opium, and Morphine Habits. I don’t know about you, but I’m picturing an opium den under the bleachers of Boundary Field, where the Nats played. Today’s Tigers fans should be so lucky.

The scorecard itself is only partially filled out, listing what appears to be a line score for each team; if this is to be believed, the Senators scored 11 runs in the first inning, added two in the sixth, and five in the seventh (I’m a bit skeptical). The Spiders apparently managed only one in the sixth and three in the seventh, making the final score 18-4. Another possiblity is that the scores are cumulative, and that the 11 in the first is actually a tally of two, in which case the final would have been 5-3. The inning-by-inning boxes aren’t filled in, but there are some dots in totals columns (AB, R, 1B, TB, SH, PO, A, E) which reveal that whoever was scoring lost interest fairly early (two players have three at bats, the rest one or two). Combing through the Senators’ and Spiders’ game logs on Retrosheet, the two teams played 14 times during that 1892 season, but none of their games ended with either an 18-4 or 5-3 score. Their seven games played at Boundary Field were as follows:

June 1: WAS 8, CLE 7

June 2: CLE 7, WAS 6

June 3: WAS 9, CLE 4

July 15: WAS 3, CLE 1

July 16: CLE 6, WAS 4

Sept. 7 (1): CLE 3, WAS 2

Sept. 7 (2): WAS 6, CLE 2

Patsy Donovan is listed in the Senators’ lineup, but he was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates fairly early within the season; he played 40 games for the Senators and 90 for the Pirates. This leads me to believe that the game was from the first series of the three. Furthermore, another way of reading the Washington score is of the first inning as a two-run tally, then two more in the two in the sixth and five in the seventh, for a total of nine runs. Add the four for the Spiders and it’s a reasonable conclusion that the June 3, 1892 game is the one in question. Wow.

Anyway… Stuart Rose, Stevens’ great-grandson, obtained the scorecards and other items at an auction after the business (which was passed down to Stevens’ sons upon Harry Stevens’ death in 1934) was sold. Stuart was kind enough to break out the auction catalog, which includes some amazing reproductions of the types of memorabilia more likely to wind up in a Sotheby’s auction than an eBay one:

• the cover of the program from Opening Day at Yankee Stadium (April 18, 1923)

• an autographed photo of Babe Ruth hitting his 60th home run (!!!), inscribed “To my second Dad, Harry M. Stevens, from Babe Ruth, Dec. 25th, 1927″

• a photo of a giant hot dog which reads:

50 Years Old

Look How He's Grown

Golden Jubilee Testimonial Dinner to the Stevens Boys 

on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Hot Dog 

by the New York Baseball Writers. 

Hotel Commodore, Jan. 14, 1941.