Rocket Science

Last night my friend and co-worker Lillie (and her husband) treated me (and my girlfriend) to Field Box seats at Shea Stadium for a Mets-Giants game. Thus I finally got to see Barry Bonds play in person. Bonds had a pretty quiet night, walking unintentionally on four straight pitches in the first, popping out to lead off the third, walking intentionally with men on second and third in the fourth. If he could have taken the Fifth in the sixth, we might all have been on a roll, but as it was, he flew out to leftfield instead. Reliever Kane Davis struck him out to end the eighth, one of four consecutive strikeouts Davis recorded (David Bell, Rich Aurilia, Bonds, and Jeff Kent, a pretty decent bunch) as the brightest spot for the Mets this night as they lost 5-1. Once again, I seem to be jinxing the home team.

Mo Vaughn had the other big Mets highlight, making a diving stop of a Tsuyoshi Shinjo smash in the fifth inning. I didn’t know the big fella could move like that. But either Vaughn’s in better shape than I thought or Barry Bonds is bigger than advertised; seeing the two of them standing side-by-side at relatively close range (as when Bonds walked) they looked alarmingly similar despite a listed difference of 40-50 lbs (Bonds is listed at 190 lbs on baseball-reference.com, 228 on ESPN.com; Vaughn is 230 on baseball-reference.com, 275 on ESPN).

Speaking of Vaughn, Nick and I spent the last couple of days laughing at his expense. The New York Times beat writer for the Mets, Rafael Hermoso, made a big issue of how Vaughn has discovered his new bats were heavier than their usual 36 ounces; apparently he switched from ash bats to maple, a denser wood. Hermoso, every bit the rocket scientist as the rusty slugger, broke the same startling revelation in three… diffferent… articles… spread out over three days. What follows is our email exchange:

Jay: Man, it took Mo Vaughn a month to figure out his bats were too heavy, and since changing back he’s gone an astounding 1-for-6? That guy’s some kind of genius. When the Over/Under on his HR output gets down to 17, put me down for 2 Large on the Over, and throw in another dime for Sideshow Mel…

Nick: Funnier still is the fact that…

“Vaughn said he planned to weigh each of his bats this week to determine which ones were 36 ounces.”

Which doesn’t make much sense, considering….

“It included two dozen 36-ounce bats and four batting practice bats, which weighed 38 to 40 ounces and which Moyer said were labeled MV42BP.”

..and this…

“Vaughn’s model, named the MV42 for his initials and uniform number, is a 36-inch, 36-ounce bat. Old Hickory gave it a special ebony finish.”

Jay: Clearly he’s got the whole department working on this one.

Nick: You’d think that at his age, he’s want to avoid pulling a George Scott, and move to something lighter than a 36 oz bat.

Jay: I don’t think he’s gotten around to reading The Big Book of Big-Assed Sluggers, specifically the George Scott chapter about bat speed. Probably left it at the Foxy Lady a few years ago…

Now, I’m not a professional athlete. But I am a professional graphic designer, and I’m on an intimate basis with the tools of my trade: computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer, etc. Having done this for more or less ten years, I’m fairly attuned to even the most minute variations in my equipment’s performance. I can tell you which keys stick on which keyboard of the four computers I spend significant time at each day, when my mouse has a coat of gunk on the rollers, when two graphic items on a page are misaligned by one half a point (1/144th of an inch), and when our Fiery color printer is printing 5% too much magenta. Granted, I don’t do all of this in front of 50,000 screaming fans a night, but it seems astounding to me that Mo Vaughn isn’t as in tune with his instruments as I am with mine. Isn’t that why they pay him the big bucks?

• • • • •

Caught a bit of the Yanks-Devil Rays game tonight. For the fourth time this season, Alfonso Soriano led off the game with a home run, putting him only 76 behind Rickey Henderson for his career. Right now Soriano is not only the Yanks most exciting player, but also their leader in batting average, home runs, runs, RBI, hits, doubles, total bases (about 50% more than his next closest teammate, Jason Giambi), slugging percentage, and OPS. He’s at .349 AVG / 8 HR / 24 RBI and .377 OBP / .630 SLG / 1007 OPS. This just in: he’s good. Yes, he’s walked only 6 times, and that’s up against 36 strikeouts, but if he’s on pace to walk only 29 times, that also means he’s on pace to hit 19 leadoff homers and 38 overall. You can go complain to the sabermetric police, but I’ll take that ratio.

Taking a closer look at Soriano’s splits reveals some pretty amazing stuff (yes, these are only 20 AB samples in most cases, but so what):

             AVG    OBP     SLG    OPS

0-0 count:  .600 / .600 / 1.100 / 1700  (connecting on the first pitch)

0-1 count:  .400 / .400 /  .750 / 1250  (wow!)

After 0-1:  .256 / .274 /  .476 /  750  (this is still pretty good)

1-0 count:  .500 / .462 / 1.083 / 1545  (pow!)

After 1-0:  .409 / .460 /  .705 / 1165

Adding them up, if he’s connecting on 0-0, 0-1, or 1-0, he’s 26-for-52 with 6 doubles and 6 homers, giving him a line of .500/.491/.962 (higher AVG than OBP due to one sac). Anybody still thinking of messing with his approach right now is nuts, because whatever he’s doing is clearly working. Wow.

• • • • •

As the Yanks were beating the hapless Rays (handing them their 13th straight loss), Roger Clemens earned his 285th win, passing Ferguson Jenkins on the all-time list and moving into a tie with the original switch-pitcher, Tony Mullane (see below). When Ken Singleton was talking about Mullane, I felt like he could have been reading off of this page; he mentioned that Mullane didn’t wear a glove and talked about the American Association as a major league, and he also referred to Greg Harris and Cal McLish. Seems like I anticiapted a timely topic.

By the way, I cited Mullane with 284 wins via baseball-reference, but my MacMillan Baseball Encyclopedia lists him at 285, as did the YES broadcast, and CNN/SI pegs him at 287. Weird. Regardless of how long the late Mullane is able to hang with Clemens, the Rocket will be passing a few more pretty good names over the next three wins: Robin Roberts (286), Bert Blyleven (287), and Tommy John (288). WIth his six Cy Youngs, Clemens has the hardware on those three, but I wouldn’t object to any of them in my rotation.

A Rough Week at the Ballpark

You know something’s been a long time a-coming when you have to summon up the glory days of Mike Jerzembeck (lifetime ERA: 12.79) to date it. But this past week was the first since the dog days of the 1998 season–after the Yanks had already clinched the AL East–that I’ve been to Yankee Stadium twice in one week and watched the Yanks lose both games.

That’s three full seasons (and change) of 10-15 games a year without having to endure a double dose of frustration. I know, I know, you’re weeping for me, just like you did after Game Seven; it’s so hard being a Yankee fan sometimes. But let’s face it: none of us who pays hard-earned cash to go to a ballgame want to see our team lose in our presence; twice in one week is enough to start asking some hard questions. Hey, for $80 bucks in New York City, you can probably find torture that’s a lot more fun.

On Wednesday, May 1, in the company of a co-worker, my pal Nick, and my girlfriend Andra, I watched the Yanks lose to the A’s, 4-1. Listless Mike Mussina gave up three early runs to the A’s, including Jermaine Dye’s first homer of the year. Meanwhile, Erik Hiljus and–yaaaaaawn–five other A’s pitchers confounded the Yankee hitters, limiting them to five hits and one run while striking out eleven Yanks. Drag.

The following Saturday, May 4, out with my brother for our sixth annual Mariners-Yanks epic slugfest (17 runs per game, averaging 3:52), I suffered through a much more torturous afternoon. The Yanks staked themselves to an early 5-0 lead on the strength of a three-run jack by Jorge Posada and a two-run shot by Alfonso Soriano. The Mariners chipped away one run at a time, launching four solo homers off of Orlando Hernandez during his sevn-inning stint. But it was the Yankee bullpen which really let things get out of hand.

Mike Stanton and Steve “Belly-Itcher” Karsay joined forces to allow the tying run in the eighth inning, thanks to Karsay’s wild pitch during a long at bat by Jeff Cirillo. Mariano Rivera delivered the coup de grâce. In a performance eerily reminiscent of Game Seven of last year’s World Series, Rivera made two glaring mental mistakes which left him no margin for error, and a bloop single into centerfield destroyed an otherwise pleasant day.

With the game tied 5-5, Joe Torre elected not to open the ninth inning with Rivera on the mound. But when Karsay allowed a single to Desi Relaford, Torre changed his mind and summoned his closer. Mariner catcher Ben Davis then went right at Rivera’s Achilles heel; he bunted. Mariano fielded the ball cleanly, but instead of throwing to first to get the easy out, he dubiously elected to try nabbing the speedy Relaford. His throw pulled Derek Jeter off the bag, and all runners were safe. I started to get a sick feeling in my stomach that had nothing to do with the hot dog and beer I’d consumed. Hadn’t we seen this before?

Luis Ugueto followed Davis by bunting as well, down the third base line. Robin Ventura barehanded the ball and boldly fired to second to force Davis, with Relaford advancing to third and Ugueto safe at first. With one out now, the Yanks elected to intenionally walk Ichiro Suzuki, loading the bases for the hot Cirillo, who had homered earlier in the day as well as the night before. Cirillo broke the tie with a bloop single, keeping the bases loaded. Bad enough, but then came Ruben Sierra, the M’s hottest hitter.

Swinging mightily but coming up nearly empty, Sierra topped a ball which sputtered down the third base line, when Rivera was hit with yet another brain cramp. The Yankee pitcher, who with every fielding attempt looks less like a star athlete and more like a deer caught in the headlights, pointed to Posada to field the bunt. Posada, dutifully covering home because the force play was on, pointed right back at Rivera. By the time this ugly exchange ended, Ugueto had slid past the befuddled battery and the bases were still loaded.

John Olerud then ended all suspense by singling in two more runs to make the score 9-5. At that point, I dropped my scorebook and threw my hands in the air in disgust. If I hadn’t considered the five-year-old boy dressed head-to-toe in Yankee garb sitting next to me, I’d have made Redd Foxx blush with the blue streak I ached to curse (I’m not exactly kid-friendly in these moments). Instead I slammed my cap to the ground, picked it up, and beat a hasty retreat out of the Stadium.

These Yanks have disappointed me on occasion before, but they’ve never disgusted me the way they did on Saturday. Somebody better start drilling Rivera’s fielding responsibilities into his thick head, or the whispers that the Yankee closer is still reeling from the World Series will become a roar.

As for Mike Jerzembeck, there’s a story worth telling, and not just because he was Saturday’s spelling bee question (“G-E-R…”) on the Jumbotron. The 1998 season was the first in which my little group of friends got together on a partial season ticket package–15 games, two seats, split between five people. Lacking the foresight to see that the Yanks would tear up the AL, we spread our tickets out rather evenly, reserving some for late-season games with division rivals. When the Yanks clinched at an absurdly early date (September 9), we took it as one more mark of a great team, but some of the starch was taken out of the rest of our scheduled games. With no recourse to trade in the tickets, we soldiered onward.

September 13, 1998, like most weekend games at Yankee Stadium, came with a giveaway, in this case a useful one–a Yankees backpack, courstesy of Modell’s Sporting Goods. Reasonable compensation for Nick and I having to watch a rather lackadaisical team lose to the Toronto Blue Jays on this afternoon, at least. Our seats were next to a pair of bearded gentlemen wearing yarmulkes–Orthodox Jews, by my measure. Sometime after the seventh-inning stretch, the two men took leave of their seats, gathering all of their belongings except for their backpacks and disappearing, seemingly for the afternoon. About a half-hour later, a sunburned, middle-aged man with a moustache inquired about the ownership of said backpacks.

“They’re not ours,” I told the guy, eying my own. “I think they’re up for grabs.”

The man was delighted. “Great! I got two little nephews who’re gonna be real happy. Thanks, guy!” I waved my hand and told him not to mention it.

Of course a short while later, our neighbors returned. Instantly noticing the backpacks were missing, they queried us. As I started to open my mouth, Nick gave me a sharp elbow jab. “We didn’t see anything,” he said, and I authenticated Nick’s explanation with my own shake of the head. “Didn’t see,” I echoed dutifully. The shorter of the two men turned to the other and said, “Aw man, I had my phone book in there and everything…”

I bit my lip and concealed my complicity in the matter for the rest of the afternoon, saving a guilty laugh for the subway home. Hey, if they’d asked us to watch their stuff, this never would have happened. Besides, who disappears for a half-hour AFTER the seventh-inning stretch?

On Tuesday, September 15, Nick and I returned to the ballpark for a game against the Red Sox. I was proudly sporting my brand-new Yankee backpack. Ironically enough, we spotted the two Orthodox Jews a few rows away (sans backpack, of course); they did us the favor of not noticing our presence. But we were all party to another lousy performance by the Yanks. On this day, Jerzembeck, a 26-year-old righty who’d spent most of the season at Columbus, made his first major-league start and was rocked by the Red Sox, giving up five runs in 2.1 innings; they ended up losing 9-4. Searching for an explanation for even the most inconsequential defeat, Nick and I determined that as a result of or our misdeeds, my backpack was full of bad mojo and would bring misfortune to the Yanks if I ever brought it to the Stadium again.

I still have that backpack, and I use it regularly. But I wouldn’t be caught dead at the ballpark with it. I know a curse when I see one.

•••

Speaking of ballparks and backpacks, the current security policy at Yankee Stadium leaves something to be desired, particularly with regards to umbrellas. On Tuesday, Nick and his stepfather, Dr. Stuart Rose, attended a wet game at Yankee Stadium. Dr. Rose asked me to pass this along to publicize the Stadium’s idiocy:

We went to the Yanks-Oakland game last night, with our umbrellas in case of rain. We were told no umbrellas allowed inside the stadium because of “security.” I am all for increasing the public’s safety, but this policy is absurd. There is no terrorist, or other threat from an umbrella. Of course, I could have been carrying a gun or a knife, but nobody checked for those, just took away our death-dealing brollies. Of course it did rain, giving the Yankee concessions a great market for their ponchos, and inconvenience and discomfort for us. When we left the stadium, it only got worse. In an incredible display of arrogance and disdain for the fans, we had to search for our umbrellas among piles of them left in heaps on the floor. This is intolerable. No business, except perhaps a monopoly, would treat its customers this way! The Yankee organization should be ashamed!

I agree with Dr. Rose; this is pretty ridiculous. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any link on the Yanks’ website to register a complaint or even to find a written explanation of their security policy. I do know, based on my experience, that coolers, backpacks, and large bags aren’t permitted in Yankee Stadium–your best bet is a purse or an easily-searched (or ditched) plastic bag. On the positive side, I did read that ticketholders for that rain-delayed game are entitled to redeem their tickets for those to any game with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays from May 14-16. Now that I think of it, that’s not very nice either…

Switch-Pitching?

My father, who has long deferred to me on matters of baseball history, asked a question the other night. Namely, if there are switch-hitters, are there (or have there been) any switch-pitchers? Since my recall of the facts was a bit fuzzy (uh, Greg Harris a few years back and.. um… Double-Duty Radcliffe?), I promised him I would do a bit of research and report back.

According to the various sources I checked, four major-league pitchers have pitched both left- and right-handed in a single game. The first and most famous was Tony Mullane. Mullane, a natural righty born in Cork, Ireland, played without a glove and would face the batter with both hands on the ball, then throw it with either one. Though he gained some renown for doing this, accounts differ as to how often it actually occurred. In the New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, James wrote this about Mullane (who he ranked 82nd in his Top 100 Pitchers):

“Thirty years ago, when historical research about baseball was in a sorry state, there were widely differing accounts about how much Mullane pitched left-handed, with some sources sayhing that he did so regularly, and others questioning whether he ever did so at all. There is now a consensus that Mullane did pitch to a few batters left-handed on July 18, 1882, and did so in some exhibition games, and may have done so on other occasions, but never more than a few times.”

The Baseball Online Library lists two dates in which Mullane did pitch ambidextrously, the aforementioned 1882 date (for the Louisville Eclipse of the American Association) and again in 1893 (for the Baltimore Orioles of the National League). Here are the two accounts:

• July 18, 1882: “Louisville hurler Tony Mullane pitches both right- and lefthanded in an AA game against Baltimore, the first time the feat is performed in the major leagues. Starting in the 4th inning he pitches lefthanded whenever Baltimore’s lefty hitters are at bat. In addition to continuing to pitch righthanded to righthanded hitters. It works until the 9th when, with 2 outs, Charlie Householder hits his only HR of the year to beat Mullane 9-8.”

• July 14, 1893: “Right-handed P Tony Mullane, losing to Chicago, pitches the 9th inning lefthanded. Chicago adds 3 more runs to their total and whips Baltimore 10-2.”

Novelty aside, Mullane was a pretty good pitcher who won 30 games or more in five consecutive seasons. Of course, pitching in those days wasn’t pitching in the way that we think of it. The pitching box was located only 45 or 50 feet away from home plate; it wasn’t moved to 60-foot-6 until 1893. A pitcher could take a short run before throwing. And a batter could call for a high pitch or a low pitch up until 1887. The number of strikes for a strikeout or balls for a walk varied from year to year; it was seven balls to a walk in 1882. Pitchers didn’t throw nearly so hard and they racked up a lot more innings; Mullane pitched as many as 567 innings but never led the league, though he did finish in the top 10 eight times. His lifetime total of 284 wins is the fourth-highest of any non-Hall of Fame pitcher. He was also a decent enough hitter and fielder to play every position except catcher, and he appeared in over 200 games in the field, mostly as an outfielder. And yes, he was a switch-hitter.

The next pitcher to perform the ol’ righty-lefty in a game was Larry Corcoran of the Chicago White Stockings, who did so against Buffalo in 1884, pitching four innings of middle relief (apparently the longest stint of switch-pitching). Corcoran was a very good pitcher from 1880 through 1884 for Chicago, pitching his team to three consecutive first-place finishes in his first three years, winning 163 games and tossing three no-hitters. But he fell victim to a kidney disease and his health deteriorated; he won only 14 more games in the bigs after that five year stretch, was done by age 27, and dead at 32. Still, his spot in baseball history is secure; he’s credited with being the first pitcher to work out a set of signals with his catcher–Corcoran would shift his tobacoo chaw when he wanted to throw a curve.

After Corcoran came yet another 1880s hurler. On May 9, 1888, Louisville Colonels righty Elton “Icebox” Chamberlain (don’t you love that name?) threw the last two innings of an 18-6 rout lefthanded, holding Kansas City scoreless. Chamberlain was a solid pitcher for several teams in the AA and NL from 1886 to 1896, winning 157 games, but the best thing about him seems to have been his nickname. Bill James wrote that he was called “Icebox” because he was because he was “cool and collected on the mound.” But a writer named Gene “Two-Finger” Carney, who writes a web log called Notes From the Shadows of Cooperstown, has another explanation: Chamberlain discovered in 1890 that baseballs frozen overnight worked to a pitcher’s advantage. Either way, you’d have to say, he was pretty cool.

After Mullane’s second stint in 1893, no major-leaguer performed the ambidextrous feat in a game for over 100 years. But according to Jerome Holtzman, the official historian of Major League Baseball, several warmed up on the sidelines, including Cal McLish (whose real name is Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma McLish; I dare you to look it up); Brooklyn’s Ed Head, Boston Red Sox pitcher Dave (Boo) Ferris, Tug McGraw of the Mets, and Jeff Schwarz of the White Sox.

On Septmeber 28, 1995, ambidexterity returned to the major league mound in the form of Montreal Expo reliever Greg Harris. In the 9th inning of a 9-7 loss, Harris retired the first batter (Reggie Sanders) right-handed, then switched over to lefty and walked Hal Morris. Still lefty, he got Eddie Taubensee to ground out, then switched back to righty, to retire Brett Boone. Harris, who had wanted to do this for 10 years, was well-prepared for the occasion, and used a special six-fingered glove which has been sent to the Hall of Fame. At 39, his career was at its tail end; he pitched only once more in the majors before retiring.

A couple of other major leaguers did the swtcheroo earlier in their careers. Bert Campaneris, a star shortstop for the Kansas City and Oakland A’s who once played all nine positions in the same game, pitched with both hands in a Florida State League game in 1962. And Paul Richards, a big-league catcher and manager, was said to have pitched both ends of a double-header ambidextrously during his high-school days in Waxahachie, Texas and been featured in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not for doing so. Waxahachie?

Oh, and as for Double Duty Radcliffe, I was waaaay off. Ted Radcliffe was a very popular Negro-League star who earned his nickname from Damon Runyon by pitching a shutout in the second game of a Negro League World Series doubleheader after catching Satchel Paige in the first. But that’s an entirely different story…

More Clubhouse Lawyer

Nick Stone is back with a short piece on Ken Griffey, Jr. and is working on a writeup for his first game of the season, so I’ve built a separate spot for him over here and have added his link to the man navigation system. Check it out!

The Strange Tale of Buzz Arlett

A few days ago, in a solid effort to avoid getting any real work done, I came across the statistics of a player I’d never heard of, one whose name seemed ripped from the pages of some long-lost Ring Lardner novel: Buzz Arlett. What caught my eye about him was his sole line in the annals of major league baseball (stats from baseball-reference.com):

Year Ag Tm  Lg  G   AB    R    H   2B 3B  HR  RBI  SB  BB  SO    BA   OBP   SLG  

1931 32 PHI NL 121  418   65  131  26  7  18   72   3  45  39  .313  .387  .538

That’s all she wrote–it’s Arlett’s only season in the bigs. Clearly the guy could HIT, but it took him forever to reach the majors, and after tearing the cover off the ball for one lousy (66-88) ballclub he was gone just as quickly. So that line of stats just hangs there in space, desperate for some company or an explanation. What is this, The Natural?

Scrolling down Arlett’s baseball-reference page (see Sliced Bread, Greatest Invention Since), we find a clue to his mysteriously short big-league career: fielding. Arlett made 10 errors in 94 games as a rightfielder (though he did have 14 assists) and three more in 13 games at first base. Combined with his below-average range, it appears what we have here is a born DH who’s come unstuck in time.

With that plausible theory in hand, I decided to do a bit of resarch on Arlett. Judging from what I found, I’m clearly not the first person whose curiosity about ol’ Buzz was piqued. It turns out the man was a minor-league legend, a sort of Babe Ruth of the Pacific Coast League. In 1984, he was voted the most outstanding player in minor-league history by the Society for American Baseball Research.

His story certainly reads like a legend. The 19-year old Arlett started as a spitballing pitcher (righty) with the Oakland Oaks of the PCL in 1918. He won 99 games for them over 5 years (a high of 29) before arm trouble set in. By then his bat had proven too valuable to keep out of the lineup and he became a full-time, switch-hitting outfielder and a hell of a slugger. During his 13 years in the PCL, he set league records with 251 HRs and 1135 RBIs. In his best season, 1929, he hit .374 with 39 homers and 189 RBI, and he averaged .360/30/140 during his hitting years in Oakland.

The Pacific Coast League, in those days, was the predominant baseball league in the western U.S. Between World War II and the Dodgers and Giants arrival in 1958 (which expanded the majors geographically well beyond their furthest western outpost, St. Louis), the PCL even made a bid for major-league status. The league was full of high-quality talent that was just a step below major league level; big league teams often looked to the PCL for seasoned replacements when injuries arose, and players often preferred to play in PCL cities because of their cooler climates. It wasn’t a bad gig, all things considered.

Arlett had drawn the attention of major league scouts during his time in Oakland, but not all of it was favorable. “Good hit, no field” was the tag a Cardinals scout stuck on him early in his career, and it dogged him. During his sole big-league season, a pitcher on Arlett’s team suggested Buzz take a rocking chair to rightfield since it wouldn’t affect the amount of ground he covered and he might as well be comfortable. He became something of an archetype; the representative of one big-league team, in scouting Ted Williams, dismissed the young Splinter as merely “another Buzz Arlett”–“[A] standard of comparison,” wrote the great sportswriter Red Smith, “that still causes strong men to turn pale.”

But Arlett also had his share of bad timing. In 1930, the Brooklyn Dodgers (or the Robins, as they were known during manager Wilbert Robinson’s tenure) were looking for an extra outfielder. They sent a scout to the West Coast to look at two of the PCL’s best hitters, Arlett and Ike Boone of the San Francisco Missions. Boone was hitting .448 at the time, and the previous season had not only hit .407 with 55 HRs but also set the all-time total-base record for organized baseball with 553 (of course, it helped that the PCL season was 200 games long). The day the Robins scout was in the stands, the 6’4″, 235 lb Arlett got in a heated argument with the home plate umpire, who hit him in the face with his mask, injuring Arlett’s eye and ending the Robins’ pursuit of him; they signed Boone instead.

Arlett finally got his shot in the bigs the next season and fared well from a hitting standpoint; he was 4th in the NL in homers (teammate Chuck Klein led with 31), fifth in slugging, and seventh in OPS. Philly’s Baker Bowl was a hitter’s park and it was a high-offense era, though levels were somewhat down from the record-setting explosion of 1930 (4.48 runs per game in the 1931 NL, down from 5.68 in 1930). The Phils were then mired in a nearly 30-year tenancy down in the NL’s second division, and they apparently decided they were just as well off without Arlett.

He caught on with the Baltimore Orioles of the International League, leading the circuit with 54 homers and 144 RBI, and hitting four home runs in a game twice in a five-week span. He led the league again the next year with 39 homers before moving onto the Minneapolis Millers of the American Association. Again, Arlett put up more monster seasons: .319/41/132 in 1934, .360/25/101 in 1935.

Arlett stopped playing after 1937, finishing his minor-leauge career with a .341 average, 432 homers (2nd all-time), 1786 RBI (2nd again), and .604 slugging percentage, as well as a 108-93 record with a 3.42 ERA as a pitcher. Like several other colorfully named PCL stars of the day (Jigger Statz, Smead Jolley, Lefty O’Doul), he put up decent numbers in the bigs when given a shot and probably should have done more (the ability to play some defense would have helped). Instead, his story is one of what might have been, one minor league sluggers from Ken Phelps to Erubiel Durazo could certainly identify with. Still, he’s got a pretty interesting story, one I found fascinating. You learn something new every day…

The Rally of A Thousand Runs Must Begin With a Single Baserunner

Today is the one-year anniversary of the death of Willie Stargell, and it marks an anniversary of sorts for me as well–or for this site, more accurately.

The bat-twirling Pirates slugger with the infectious smile and the ridiculous train-conductor cap had been of my boyhood heroes. His death–at age 61, on the day the Pirates were to move into a new ballpark adorned by his statue–moved me more than most, as memories of watching “Pops” one storybook summer came flooding back. He was 39 and on his last good legs as a ballplayer, radiating joy every moment he played the game. Baseball, Willie’s smile told me, was all about having fun. I was 9 and learning the game from my father and grandfather; I pinwheeled my bat in imitation, and exuded joy every time I picked up my mitt.

A few months before Stargerll died, my own grandfather, Bernard Jaffe, had passed away, and his death was still weighing on me when the news about Willie came. “Pop” spent endless hours with me and my brother during our summer stays in Walla Walla, playing catch, pitching to us, taking us to games, and regaling us with tales of Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson as we watched ballgames on cable. The 1979 “We Are Family” Pirates, led by Stargell to a World Championship, were a mainstay of one summer’s programming (we were a Dodger family, but the Dodgers were well on their way to a season in sub-.500 oblivion). Moved by Stargell’s passing and, in the tradition of my grandfather, struck with a yearning to pass on a generation of baseball wisdom to those whose appreciations didn’t go back as far, I wrote an obituary of sorts, and emailed it around to friends.

In doing so, I tapped into a urge I’d had for a few years to combine my writing and my design into a single project, a labor I could love. I began plotting a web site as an outlet for my increasingly frequent writing about baseball, and my Stargell obit was the cornerstone (though in retrospect it’s a bit clumsy and half-finished). In two weeks time, I’d registered a domain name, opened a Blogger account, bought a book on web site design, and started construction of the empire which would make me rich and fam… oh, wait. It hasn’t (and won’t) make me rich and famous, but I’ve built something over the past year which I’m very proud of–not every single word or every opinion offered, but not too bad either. A peek inside the head of one fan and a look at the ways we fans enjoy the game–whether following our favorite stars or teams, taking in a night at the ballpark, or poring over the box scores. I hope you’ve enjoyed it; I know I have.

So happy birthday to me and to this site, and thank you to those who’ve supported it. As the Mayor of this here domain, let me declare this and all future April 9ths to be Wille Stargell Day. May we all take as much joy and offer as much inspiration as Willie did in our endeavors.

You Can’t Have Too Much Pitching

Since I’ve spent the past week or so attempting to burn a hole in my computer screen by staring very intensely, I haven’t had the will or the time to play much with this website. But I did manage to catch some ballgames in the season’s first week, including parts of every Yankee game. Thanks to reruns on YES, I can catch an inning or two of the previous night’s ballgame with my morning coffee. Not a bad way to start the day.

Stuck inside the office on Opening Day, I couldn’t even successfully purchase that screwed-up MLB Gameday package as I’d intended. So I had to wait until Wednesday to get a live fix on the Yankees. I watched David Wells face the Orioles in his return from pinstriped exile and back surgery, and was treated to a performance that felt almost preordained. The Not Quite So Fat Man, who obviously read the script, picked up on his strong spring and was in total command, beating the O’s 1-0 on the strength of Robin Ventura’s solo homer. Consistent with reports, about 25 pounds of Wells has gone missing, and he showed no sign of back trouble even in the chilly weather. The cold air helped Wells’ pitching, keeping hard hit balls in the park and allowing him to concentrate on inducing lazy fly balls.

Wells and the other members of the starting rotation have been the story of the Yanks since the season opened. Six games in, Roger Clemens is the only starter to yield any runs, and the starters have now allowed 1 run in their last 35.2 innings. Wells’ 7.1 shutout innings preceded 7 blank frames by Mike Mussina against his former team, 6 zeroes by Andy Pettitte against the Devil Rays, and an emphatic 8-inning 1-hitter by Orlando Hernandez. Granted, all of this happened against two AL East doormats who lost 198 games last year and who comprise nearly 1/4 of the Yankee schedule. But anybody who saw those games had to come away feeling that the Yanks have the strongest starting rotation in baseball.

Recall that Boomer’s burger-induced surprise signing this winter left him in a three-way competition with Sterling Hitchcock and El Duque for two spots in the rotation. It also created all kinds of intrigue regarding El Duque’s next destination. But GM Brian Cashman, who isn’t stupid, fended off uninteresting offers from the Angels, Pirates, Giants and others. The message was clear: you can never have too much pitching. With three pitchers coming off of injury-marred seasons, it’s hardly surprising that another ailment–Hitchcock’s back, this time–deferred any decision Joe Torre has to make about the rotation. Sterling has his work cut out for him if he’s going to crack it. A lousy spring saw him struggling to breathe life into his mid-80s fastball before back troubles slowed him. Then the other day he felt a twinge in his groin, shutting him down for another week. In other words, he’s in midseason form.

Torre’s old standbys may make the point moot by the time Hitchcock finishes his Tampa cure (and that’s not even considering the admittedly remote posssiblity David Cone will my old pal Jay Tessmer, who surprisingly made the squad as a non-roster invitee but who figures to go down once Ramiro Mendoza is activated).

When it’s all said and done, the Yanks have one hell of an experienced and talented pool to draw from come October, and yes, they’ll be there. Look at these career postseason stats:

           W-L   ERA    IP    ER

Pettitte  10-7  4.34  149.1   72

Hernandez  9-2  2.48   90.2   25

Wells      8-1  2.74   85.1   26

Clemens    6-6  3.33  127.0   47

Mussina    4-2  2.56   66.2   19

Hitchcock  4-0  1.76   30.2    6

--------------------------------

TOTALS   41-18  3.19  549.2  195

That, friends, is stiff competition.

As for the rest of the Yankee team, the players who have made the strongest impressions on me in this young season are Robin Ventura and Nick Johnson. Ventura followed his solo game-winning homer with a 3-run shot the next day. He’s made several sterling plays in the field, including some barehanded pickups which evoked memories of the departed Scott Brosius. Of course, Ventura’s got six Gold Gloves on his mantle to Brosius’s one, so this shouldn’t be too surprising. Right now he looks anything but the broken-down shell of his former All-Star self. Johnson, though he’s been miscast in the #9 spot in the order, seems to be adapting well to the DH role. He socked his first homer of the season against the O’s, and has shown his advertised ability to get on base, thanks to being hit by three pitches. Torre has gotten him into two games at first base, a pace which should save some wear and tear on Jason Giambi over the course of the season without offending him.

The season’s only a week old and the competition’s been less than stellar, but this Yankee team looks as strong as any since 1998. I predicted 103 wins and another World Championship for them and I haven’t seen anything yet that leads me to back off that. I’m more nervous about my Barry Bonds HR prediction–he’s only 59 off of my prediction and counting.

• • • • •

Continuing the predictions that I will put on file so I can laugh at them later: I entered Baseball Prospectus’s HACKING MASS contest, in which one attempts to pick the worst hitters at five positions (C, 1B, 3B, 2B/SS, and OF) and gets points based on the formula (.800-OPS)*PA. My team, unimaginatively named The Futilitymen, are as follows: Catcher: Brad Ausmus, First Baseman: Eric Karros, Third Baseman: Shea Hillenbrand, Middle Infielder: Pokey Reese, and Outfielder: Marquis Grissom. If they suck as much as I think they will, it’s definitely going to be a long year for the Dodgers.

And once more on the subject of predictions, I’m apparently the winner of Baseball Primer’s Free Agent Fiesta, in which I picked the correct destinations of 9 out of 23 major free agents (Barry Bonds, Juan Gonzalez, Brett Boone, Jason Giambi, Tino Martinez, Chan Ho Park, Jason Schmidt, John Smoltz, and David Wells). I haven’t decided where I’m going to park the new car I’ve won; I’m still waiting for them to ask me what color I want. Guys, just let me know what my options are…

Play Ball!

Opening Day at last! Spring has sprung, and I can now congratulate myself on surviving an entire winter on only a thin gruel of bowl games, NFL playoffs, March Madness, a trip to the Olympics, King George’s shopping spree and Bad Rug Bud’s odious delusions. But thanks to the events of the past several days, I’ve worked myself back to game shape.

• Last Thursday brought news of my Yankee tickets in our partial season ticket package. I’ve got eleven games thus far, with another two from last September (10th and the 12th, eerily enough) still to be redeemed for future games. My first trip to Yankee Stadium comes April 21 against Toronto, and other opponents include Seattle, San Francisco, Arizona, the Mets, Cleveland, Oakland, Texas, Boston, and Baltimore. I haven’t scheduled everything yet, but when it’s all said and done, my itinerary will likely include visits to the other boroughs to see the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Staten Island Yankees, and that blue-and-orange team in Queens, as well as trips to Fenway and Miller Park.

• Friday, thanks to a day off from work, brought an opportunity for a late-afternoon game of catch in the park. Breaking out the mitt and tossing the ball around remains a very visceral pleasure for me. Unbelievably enough, my mitt is the same one I played Little League with 20 years ago–a Greg Luzinski model Rawlings from around the time that Luzinksi (“The worst outfielder I everf saw, bar none.”–Bill James, NBJHA) gravitated to his natural position, DH. Does that go far enough in explaining my lack of major-league success?

• Saturday brought an all-afternoon cram session to finish my fantasy league draft orders. I don’t have the patience, the organizational skill, or the investment in it all to deal with a live draft, so this all-out ranking the players 20-, 40- or even 60-deep at their positions is as familiar (and painful) as a trip to the dentist. Time will tell, of course, but after seeing my team, I feel reasonably optimistic. At the most basic level, my draft strategy worked. I ended up with a lot of guys with high on base percentages–Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Edgar Martinez, Jeremy Giambi, Ellis Burks, and David Eckstein–and the ones who don’t fit that bill will at least rack up the steals (I just keep telling myself that about punk-ass Jerry Hairston Jr. ). I’ve got two bona fide closers, even if one of them is named Roberto Hernandez. Now that I think about it, my pitching staff is pretty tubby: Hernandez, David Wells, Bob Wickman, Kevin Appier, and Rich “El Guapo” Garces have all the makings of a tag-team WWF match. What’s the over/under on guys with gout?

Now that I’ve got my game face on… in accordance with the bylaws which accompany my prestigious position as a Writer of Sorts, I am required to put forth my predictions for the coming season so that you and I both may chuckle at their folly come October–or even May. So, here is each division in order of finish, along with my picks for awards (of course, this presupposes a complete season uninterrupted by labor strife):

AL East: Yanks, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Devil Rays, Orioles

AL Central: Twins, White Sox, Indians, Tigers, Royals

AL West: Mariners, A’s, Angels, Rangers

NL East: Braves, Mets, Marlins, Phillies, Expos

NL Central: Astros, Cardinals, Cubs, Reds, Brewers, Pirates

NL West: Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Padres, Giants, Rockies

Wildcards: A’s, Mets

World Series: Yanks over Astros

AL MVP: Jason Giambi

NL MVP: Sammy Sosa

AL Cy Young: Tim Hudson. Or Mark Mulder. Or maybe Barry Zito.

NL Cy Young: Roy Oswalt

AL Rookie of the Year: Hank Blalock

NL Rookie of the Year: Sean Burroughs

First Manager Fired: Tony Muser

First Superstar Traded: Scott Rolen

Number of HRs Barry Bonds will hit: 64 (he’ll lose out to Sosa’s 66)

Number of games Rondell White will play: 112

Getting Off Base

While Pirates manager Lloyd McClendenon provided a highly entertaining exception last year, the old adage “you can’t steal first base” is as true as it ever was. If not even truer–for if sabermetrics has taught us anything, it’s the importance of getting on base to make an offense go. It doesn’t take a propellerhead to figure out that baseball is at its heart a very simple game: score more runs than your opponent, and make your allotted 27 outs last as long as possible in order to do so. A disciplined hitter drawing a walk beats a slap-hitter showing off his speed as he grounds out to short–every time.

As sabermetrics has brought the fruits of its labor to the public attention, the past few years have seen an emphasis on On Base Percentage in baseball management circles, most notably with the Yankees (prior to last year’s model, at least) and the Oakland A’s. And while evidence that those inside and outside the game are catching on abounds (though if it’s “a fad,” as this article states, then so is gravity), the talk coming out of the mouths of some managers and players in recent days is surprisingly unenlightened.

Exhibit A Dodger manager Jim Tracy named Cesar Itzuris his new shortstop, a reasonable choice given his options (Alex Cora, the poor manager’s Rey Ordoñez?). Itzuris is four years younger than Cora, and a better hitter, though not by that much (his minor league OBP is a lousy .294). Whatever englightenment Tracy showed in choosing Itzuris, he threatened to undo it in one fell swoop in telling the LA Times that his new shortstop will “bring some energy, some speed, and the potential to create more run-scoring opportunities to the top of the lineup.” Tracy is apparently “tinkering with” the idea of batting Itzuris leadoff, though a more likely scenario has him hitting second–with one of the Dodgers appalling centerfield options, Dave Roberts (30 years old, career OBP .292 in 165 major league at-bats) leading off.

Tracy had a mixed track record in his first season at the Dodger helm. He kept a team with a decimated pitching staff in the pennant race until the final week of the season, but he bore a fair share of responsibility for a wheezing offense. He worked through leadoff options both unconventionally great (Paul Lo Duca, .374 OPB) and unimaginably awful (the $8.4 million, two-headed, sub-.300 OBP vortex of suck that is Tom Goodwin and Marquis Grissom), and shot himself in the foot more often than not. If he refuses to learn from his mistakes, it’s going to be a long season in Chavez Ravine. [Late breaking news: Rob Neyer writes about the Dodgers’ on-base problems in his column today.]

Exhibit B Phillies manager Larry Bowa has come under fire in this space for attempting to tinker with the approach of his nephew, Yankees DH/1B prospect Nick Johnson. In four minor league seasons, Johnson’s OBP has ranged between a spended .398 and a jaw-dropping .525. The idea of the impatient slap hitter Bowa advising Johnson got this writer’s eyes rolling.

On his own team, Bowa jettisoned Doug Glanville and his appalling .285 OBP from the leadofff spot late last season in favor of Jimmy Rollins’s .323 OBP (though to be fair, Rollins was at .346 in the #1 spot, compared to .303 at #2). Still, Glanville remains undeterred by his lack of success. “I know it’s important to get on base,” says Glanville. “But there’s also what you do when you get on. There are a lot of intangibles. It’s not about walking; I know that. You have to be disciplined within the strike zone. It’ s not about knowing the strike zone, it’s about knowing your strike zone. Why take a pitch you can handle because you’re trying to walk?” For an Ivy League graduate, Glanville could use refresher course.

Exhibit C None other than Joe Torre seems to have caught this here fever goin’ ’round. Early this spring, Derek Jeter and his .392 career OBP seemed slated–and perfectly so–for the leadoff spot to replace the departed Chuck Knoblauch. But Torre told reporters the other day that Alfonso Soriano might get the nod instead. “The way Soriano’s swinging the bat right now, don’t be surprised if he leads off,” said Torre, admitting that he wasn’t completely married to the idea: “That could change. I haven’t totally made up my mind, but right now, it sure looks good with those two guys getting on base at the top of the order, with the guys we have in the middle.”

As a rookie, Soriano showed flashes of brilliance from spring training through Game 7 of the World Series. Nonetheless, he demonstrated plate discipline which left much to be desired: he didn’t draw his first walk until April 29, and finished with a .304 OBP and a strikeout to walk ratio of over 5 to 1. Compared to Jeter, Soriano gets on base roughly one fewer time per ten at bats–that’s once every other game! While he’s smoking the ball this spring to the tune of .310, he has a grand total of 2 walks in 84 at bats, for an OBP of .326. That simply won’t cut it at the top of the Yankee lineup, not when Jeter, Bernie Williams, and Nick Johnson (if he lives up to his reputation) can provide OBPs in the neigborhood of .380-400.

Just what in the hell is going on here? I don’t even pretend to know. Certainly, in the case of the Yankees, they are attempting to get more at bats for a hitter who may or may not be the next Vladimir Guerrero. But the lesson of the way the Yank offense’s struggles mirrored Chuck Knoblauch’s declining OBP should be fresh in Joe Torre’s mind, and no amount of base stealing will make up for that. Soriano set a Yankee rookie record with 43 steals; unfortunately, he was thown out 14 times, nettting the Yanks 3.26 according to the Extrapolated Runs formula; Jeter’s 27/30 running resulted in a net gain of 3.9 runs by comparison.

At least one team has it right. The Oakland A’s, retooling their offense with their stud Jason Giambi’s departure to the Yanks, have apparently settled on Jason’s brother Jeremy as their leadoff hitter. Though Little G doesn’t fit the classic profile of the speedy base-stealer we imagine when we think “leadoff hitter,” he shares his brother’s plate discipline–a .391 OBP, miles better than last year’s leadoff, Johnny Damon (.324) or his most obvious replacement, Terrence Long (.335).

Oh well, the spring folly that this obviously is will make itself abundantly clear to Joe Torre in due time–I give it a few weeks, tops. I’m less optimistic about some of Torre’s peers. Speed is a wonderful thing in a ballplayer, because it comes into play both offensively and defensively, but in this high-offense era, a stolen base simply isn’t worth as much as it is when runs are scarce, and any manager with visions of stealing runs with an undisciplined hitter in the 1 spot is likely to be sorely disappointed.

A great deal of what any manager says to the press during spring training can be tossed out the window as soon as it hits the papers (most of the rest of it can be tossed by Opening Day). Lord knows, watching the skippers get their cliches in shape (“We’re going to run more this year,” “We’re going to concentrate on the fundamentals,” etc.) is half the fun of springtime. But sooner, rather than later, these theories will get played out on the ballfield, where the physics of baseball will take their hold. And the truth will be abundantly clear once again.

Exhibition Season Among the Dinosaurs

Last weekend, I paid a visit to the Baseball As America exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History here in NYC. The just-opened exhibit is a traveling show featuring over 500 artifacts from the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s collection. It’s organized around seven themes which examine the game’s symbolism and its connection to the broader American culture. Baseball as American history–if not quite as natural as the dinosaur bones elsewhere in the museum, then not quite as creepy as the ancient people dioramas, either.

This is the first time the Hall of Fame has sent its treasures on such a barnstorming tour, an effort designed to bring these relics to a wider audience. According to one report, 12 million people have visited the Hall of Fame in its 63 years, but this exhibit, which will travel the country for the next three years, is expected to bring in 4 or 5 million people. As such, I went to the museum expecting Portable Hall of Fame Lite, a breezy but obvious parade of some famous gloves, bats, balls, and photos celebrating the Babe, the Mick, Connie Mack, and Big Mac. But I found a much different exhibit than I expected, and came away impressed on several counts.

Baseball As America offers as much a confrontation with baseball’s myths and legends as it does a celebration of them. In displaying the Doubleday baseball (a crumbling four-piece ball whose stitching has long since given up the ghost), for example, the curators accurately locate General Doubleday’s place in the game’s creation myth rather than its actual origins. Evidence of the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of the game’s history is all here in artifacts which run the gamut from the famous (FDR’s Green Light Letter) to the infamous (midget pinch-hitter Eddie Gaedel’s 1/8 uniform), from the sublime (the Honus Wagner T-206 card) to the mundane (a shoebox full of cards “not thrown away by someone’s mother,” as the display notes), from the shockingly racist (a cast-iron 19th century toy called “Darktown Battery”) to the completely silly (the Reggie Bar).

Most impressive was the solid critical examination the exhibit gave to issues of race and gender. The “Ideals and Injustices” segment takes up the color line issue in a variety of ways beyond the expected Negro League photographs and memorabilia. An arrangement of baseball cards juxtaposes those of Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, and Minnie Minoso with those of Elston Howard, the first black Yankee (1956, nine years after the Dodgers brought up Robinson), and Pumpsie Green, the first black on the last team to integrate, the Red Sox (1959). An installation features Robinson’s uniform alongside the transcript of a speech he gave at the 1972 World Series, exclaiming that he’ll be “more pleased and more proud when I look at that third base coaching line one day and see a black face managing in baseball.” The issue of blacks in management comes up again nearby, in a photo of Frank Robinson holding a newspaper announcing his hiring as manager of the Cleveland Indians.

As if to illustrate that even that event heralded only minor progress in the country’s views on race, another installation contrasts two letters to Hank Aaron during his all-time home run record chase. One is from an admiring fan who had named his child Aaron Henry, the other is a crudely-written anonymous piece of hate mail calling him Aaron a “dirty OLD Niggerman”. Not exactly the kind of memorabilia one can just vapidly cruise past.

And speaking of the Cleveland Indians, Native American issues get their space here as well. There’s an installation highlighting the old practice of nicknaming “Chief” any player with Native American blood, such as Charles A. Bender and John T. Myers (not to mention Indian Bob Johnson), and a cartoon lampooning the use of Native American mascots. There’s also a series of displays devoted to the female presence in the game, from shots of turn-of-the-century pitcher Alta Weiss to uniforms from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (the basis of the movie A League of Their Own), to photos of and artifacts from women players, umpires, broadcasters, and owners.

One of the recurring themes across several installations was the way that war-time baseball binds a community together in the face of adversity and uncertainty. There’s a striking photo of a GI ballfield in Morocco, circa 1943, bearing a sign that says “Yankee Stadium”. Another photo shows soldiers playing ball on a field in Europe, their rifles propped up in foul territory while explosions from military engineers detonating land mines blacken the sky overhead. As the exhibition recognizes, the war-time bond also extended to those in captivity. There’s a Civil War-era lithograph showing Union POWs playing ball in a Confederate prison, an irregularly-shaped bat carved from a tree limb used by Americans confined in World War II Germany, and a wooden home plate from a Japanese internment camp in the U.S.–yet another illumnination of a darker corner of this country’s history.

Not everything was quite so confrontational. The “Invention and Ingenuity” section was fascinating as well as interactive. Alongside an explication of the Navier-Stokes Equation (which explains, mathematically, why a curveball curves) are several baseballs mounted so as to allow visitors to try the grips for various pitches and see the way the ball rotates as it leaves their hands. The lumber also gets its fair shake–visitors can pick up various bats and feel for themselves the trend towards smaller, lighter sticks. Some of the game’s more ingenious inventions (the first padded catcher’s mitt, Steve Yeager’s throat protector) are here, alongside the sillier ones (Charlie O. Finley’s orange baseball and a drawing for a device that looks like a multiple-rodent trap affixed to a catcher’s chest).

The “Enterprise and Opportunity” section is chock-full of colorful products endorsed by or depticting players–the ubiquitous Wheaties boxes, the aforementioned Reggie Bar, a can of BroccaPop (a soda endorsed by Lou Brock), Ted Williams fishing tackle, Babe Ruth underwear (ewww), and old-school bobblehead dolls. This portion of the exhibit also deals with the business side of baseball, showing old player contracts, a photo of early luxury boxes in Cincinnati’s Palace of the Fans ballpark, Curt Flood’s letter to Commissioner Bowie Kuhn (cc’ed to Marvin Miller) challenging the Reserve Clause, and a hardbound portfolio for the marketing of free-agent Alex Rodriguez.

Some of my other favorite pieces from around the exhibit:

• a parlor baseball game with a spinner (c.1878) in which four different-colored rings, divided into 48 sections each, describe the outcomes for the batter and runners at each base.

• a photo of barnstorming ballplayers, including Albert Spalding, climbing all over the Sphinx in Egypt (c. 1889).

• the hand-written manuscript for “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” by Jack Norworth (c. 1908).

• an elaborate scrapbook put together by two fans named Alan and David Jackman, containing newspaper cutouts and drawings of players, dozens to a page (c. 1912).

• a ball signed by 10 U.S. Presidents (Taft, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, F. Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, L. Johnson, and Nixon).

• the Presidential Box Seat from Washington, D.C.’s Griffith Stadium–though how it contained the enormous derriere of President Taft is left unexplained.

• a giant scoreboard from a Pennsylvania hotel used to recreate the action–lineups, the count, runners on base, location of a hit ball–of a World Series game for the benefit of a gathered public (c. 1927).

• a 1951 photo of rookie Willie Mays playing stickball with Harlem youth Dressed in street clothes, his forearm muscles taut as he strides into his swing, the young Mays already looks like a specimen to be carved into baseball’s equivalent of Mount Rushmore.

• a hot-dog basket from the Harry M. Stevens company (c. 1940s).

• Harry Caray’s enormous eyeglasses.

• an Andy Warhol painting of Tom Seaver (1985)–it’s tough to imagine the hip, enigmatic pop artist taking an interest in sports, let alone a player as square as Seaver (though I’ll allow that New Yorkers in 1969 probably felt differently about Tom Terrific).

• For all that I took in, I discovered later that there was one portion of the exhibit that I missed. The downstairs food court at the AMNH is serving a lineup of hot dogs from ballparks and cities around the country, from Dodger Dogs to Chicago Red Hots to Fenway Franks to Milwaukee Brats to a half-dozen other regional variations. Roll over, Harry Stevens, and tell Oscar Mayer the news.

Having paid a visit to the Hall of Fame about 18 months ago, I couldn’t help but compare Baseball as America with its older stay-at-home sibling. To someone who’s already seen the Hall, this offered a fresh perspective, one less rooted in the nuts and bolts of the game’s development or its heroes (though they are here) than in the larger trends which shaped the game and were shaped by it. And while nothing can quite duplicate the sense of history one gets from being in the hallowed Hall–there are no plaques here, for one thing, and the sensory overload isn’t nearly as great–this certainly will suffice for a large group of people who may never get to Cooperstown. More hopefully, it will entice them to make the effort to visit upstate New York. Any baseball fan in the New York City area owes him or herself a visit to this exhibit, and anyone lucky enough to find themselves in one of the tour’s future cities should do so as well when it passes through.