On Sunday, Wade Boggs and Ryne Sandberg will be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, and it seems like a good time to point a few things out as I drink my morning coffee.

First of all, if you don’t understand why Wade Boggs belongs in the Hall of Fame — and there appear to be some who don’t, though most of them have been shamed into moving to other countries by now — I’ll have to question your fundamental grasp on the concept of baseball, which is this: you get 27 outs, three at a time, in which to do your damage before heading for the showers. Of the 16,000+ players ever to play major-league baseball, Wade Boggs is 26th all-time in not making outs, with a career on-base percentage of .415. Combine that with the fact that he ranks 18th all-time in the number of times on base (at bats plus walks plus hits-by-pitch), and you’ve got an excellent building block for an offense, one that lasted 18 years in the bigs and racked up 3,000 hits along with numerous other honors.

One single Boggs at-bat stands out to me, and if you’re a Yankee fan, you know which one I’m talking about: Game Four of the 1996 World Series, the one in which the Yanks clawed back from a 6-0 deficit thanks in part to Jim Leyritz’s eighth-inning three-run homer. The game remained tied into the 10th inning, when the Yanks loaded the bases with two outs against Steve Avery. Joe Torre brought Boggs — the last player on the bench on this night — in to pinch-hit for Andy Fox. The perfect man for the job — you need exactly one base? How about a guy with a 40+ percent chance of getting it for you? — Boggs worked the count and drew a walk to force in the go-ahead run. The Yanks added one more, and never looked back on their way to a World Championship, one replete with the admittedly bizarre sight of Boggs on horseback.

I looked at Boggs’ candidacy back in December, when I reviewed the Hall ballot for Baseball Prospectus using the Jaffe WARP Score (JAWS) system. Here’s what I wrote:

Third basemen are the Hall’s redheaded stepchildren. Not only are they criminally underrepresented in the ranks of Cooperstown, with only ten enshrinees, but it’s quite apparent that the Hall doesn’t even have the right ten. Ron Santo (84.2), Darrell Evans (76.4), and Graig Nettles (71.4) all have JAWS scores above the position average, while the likes of George Kell (51.9) and Fred Lindstrom (41.8) rank among the Veterans Committee’s more egregious mistakes.

The impending election of Boggs will do more than that. At 103.0 JAWS, Boggs will take over the top score among Hall third basemen from Mike Schmidt (102.8). While this shouldn’t be taken as the definitive say on who’s the better player–any slight change in either Davenport’s methodology or mine might put the other in the lead–that’s still a hell of an accomplishment for a guy with 430 fewer career homers. Boggs topped 200 hits eight times and 100 runs seven times; he won five batting titles in a six-year span from 1983-88. He wasn’t a slugger, breaking into double-digits in homers just twice, with a high of 24 in 1987, when homers cost a dollar if you wore an onion on your belt (which was the style at the time). But he was a doubles-hitting machine, topping 40 eight times, with a high of 51.

Hits weren’t the only things that made Boggs great; there’s also the small matter of the walks. To his .328 career average, Boggs added a plate discipline that was almost otherworldly. In 1988, he walked 125 times and struck out 34, and he piled that on top of a .366 batting average and a .490 slugging percentage. In that same 1983-1988 span, he led the league in OBP five times; the one time he didn’t, he finished second with a .407 mark. How about this: Boggs led the league in times on base every single year from 1983 through 1990. Yeah, that’ll play.

Boggs never won an MVP award, but he should have won a raft of them. Consider:

      AL Winner  WARP3  Boggs
1984  Hernandez   8.7   10.1
1985  Mattingly  10.6   12.3
1986  Clemens    11.6   11.9
1987  Bell        9.0   13.1
1988  Canseco    12.0   12.6
1989  Yount      10.1   11.7

Over a six-year span, Boggs not only outperformed the AL MVP every time, he did so by an average of 1.6 wins a year. Yet at a time when he had a solid claim on being the best player in the league, he never finished higher than fourth in the voting, even on a team that went to the playoffs twice in that span. That’s Rodney Dangerfield territory, but no matter; Boggs should get his due in January. He’s not just a Hall of Famer, he’s another one of those inner-circle types. And he threw a pretty good knuckleball, too.

Sandberg isn’t quite the slam-dunk Boggs is, but JAWS puts him in the upper half of all Hall second basemen, and that includes both Roberto Alomar (who retired this spring) and Craig Biggio, who should eventually join him in bronze. Yes, Sandberg was helped by his park, and since that article was written, Retrosheet has filled out his splits to completeness (their box scores and splits now go back to 1960, rather than 1972, a huge boon to researchers). At Wrigley, Sandberg hit .300/.361/.491 with 164 homers, away he hit a more pedestrian .269/.326/.412 with 118 homers. It’s never been a crime to take advantage of one’s environs when it comes to hitting; even Hank Aaron‘s homer total was helped by his park.

As I link to this handful of Baseball Prospectus articles, it’s a good time to point out that all of BP’s premium content is free through August 3, meaning that those of you misers who aren’t subscribed can catch up on what you’ve missed behind the green curtain, including the JAWS companion piece on the pitchers and the one on the Veterans Committee ballot. BP is working extra hard to bring readers trade deadline coverage, and if you haven’t checked Will Carroll’s rumor mill pieces, you should.

I’m off to the ballpark to witness Shawn Chacon’s debut in pinstripes. Chacon was acquired from the Colorado Rockies on Thursday for a pair of live arms (Ramon Ramirez and Edwardo Sierra) from deep within the Yankee system, a considerably cheaper price than what they were asking for before, which was reportedly Scott Proctor and Sean Henn. Chacon’s in his fifth major-league season and he’s probably best remembered for his disastrous year as the Rox closer last year, when he posed an undgodly 7.11 EA and blew nine saves. Not counted in that total was a key September 28 game against the Dodgers, when, after being called upon to protect a 4-0 lead in the ninth, he issued four straight walks before yielding to another reliever who let them all in along with the winning run.

Chacon’s been more successful as a starter; though he’s only 1-7, he’s put together a 4.09 ERA, which is impressive for a Rockie even if it’s a rickety number which masks a low strikeout rate (4.83) and 1.08 K/BB ratio. In other words, he’s another Granny Gooden for the Yanks. Oh joy.

In the spirit of hoarding other organizations’ pitching detritus (Hideo Nomo, Darrell May, Wayne Franklin, Tim Redding, AL Leiter– see Derek Jacques’ hilarious telethon-style rundown at BP)the Yanks signed former Sox lefty reliever Alan Embree, who’s put up a 7.65 ERA this year in 37.2 innings. Embree’s strikeout and walk peripherals aren’t bad – 7.17 K/9 and 2.73 K/BB ratio — but he’s allowed 8 homers (1.91 per 9) and a .306 BABIP, suggesting he’s left a lot of pitches in people’s happy zones. It’d be nice if the Yanks could rehabilitate him into a useful reliever, but given their track records, I’m not optimistic. Paging the Big Dingo…

It took me twice as long as usual to make it to Yankee Stadium on Wednesday night, an hour and a half as opposed to 45 minutes. The Lexington line subway was all fakakta, with a new excuse at every stop — signal malfunction, sick passenger, incident at 161st St. — but while I was underground, the 97-degree heat broke, taking the edge off of a sweltering day. Nonetheless, my pal Issa and I didn’t make first pitch, and I was jotting down the events in the top of the first as I bobbed and weaved through the tier-level concourse, listening to the play-by-play and catching glimpses of the internal video feed at each concessions stand.

From the get-go, Yankee starter Al Leiter was in trouble, yielding singles to the first two Twins, and escaping only due to some nifty fielding by Derek Jeter, who got the first out by forcing Shannon Stewart at third base. But before the Gold Gloves could be handed out, Jeter flopped on a Torii Hunter ground ball up the middle, stopping it and perhaps saving a run but loading the bases. It was going to be that kind of night.

Leiter wriggled out of that jam, and another bases-loaded situation in the second. But he persisted — always, with the base runners, oy — putting two men on in the third. Joe Mauer singled, stole second and advanced to third on a wild pitch. Bret Boone drew a two-out walk, and then Justin Morneau drove one into leftfield, a sure double. Mauer scored, but Hideki Matsui, who’d brutally butchered his first carom, played this one perfectly, and the relay throw cut down Boone at the plate to preserve the 1-0 score.

Meanwhile the Yanks could do little against Twins ace Johan Santana. The defending Cy Young winner hasn’t been as sharp this year; he came in sporting a 3.89 ERA. But he looked like the guy in the catalog to the Yankees, at least based on the zeroes he kept posting on the scoreboard. Their best chance against him came in the bottom of the third, when Jeter and Robinson Cano put together back-to-back one-out singles. Gary Sheffield scorched a hard shot up the middle. Too hard, in fact, as Hunter quickly got the ball and gunned down Jeter at the plate. The Yanks would put a runner on against Santana in each of the next four innings, all to to no avail. That kind of night.

Leiter kept up the Houdini act through five innings, escaping the last one with a double play on pitch #115. “Room service, room service,” I shouted as Justin Morneau’s ball reached Cano to start the double play. “Room service?” asked the couple next to me once the play finished. “Just what we ordered,” I explained. They nodded with the satisfaction of understanding, “Room service indeed.”

Leiter departed having yielded seven hits, five walks and a hit-by pitch but just one run, an outing he referred to as full of “MacGyver” moments. Fourteen of the 26 batters he faced started with “ball one.” Had the beer not been so cold and the company so good, watching him would have been maddening. Given the shellshocked state of the Yankee rotation (which went ahead and signed Hideo Nomo yesterday, sending him to Columbus to get his shit together), it was admirable instead.

The score stayed 1-0 until Tanyon Sturtze came on in the seventh, taking the baton from Felix Rodriguez. Then all hell broke loose. Mauer greeted Sturtze with a double, and Hunter drove him in, advancing to second on the late throw home. Hunter stole third, but couldn’t score on a Boone grounder. Sturtze intentionally walked Morneau to face Michael Cuddyer, another Twin having a subpar season. He walked to laod the bases, then Shannon Stewart doubled two runs home, 4-0 Twins. “Nerts to Sturtze,” groaned the couple next to me.

From there, Yankee manager Joe Torre broke out the bullpen’s junior varsity, with unimpressive results. Scott Proctor got two outs before yielding a Hunter single, then Jacque Jones drilled a two-run homer to left-center, 6-0.

The Yanks saw a glimpse of hope once Santana departed for Juan Rincon in the eighth. They finally broke through on a bases-loaded walk by Jason Giambi, then added two more on a throwing error by Boone. With two out and two on, closer Joe Nathan came on in relief, and Bernie Williams just missed tying the game with a ball down the rightfield line that landed foul. Williams struck out.

Alex Graman, another JV reliever who will likely have a different address in a week, yielded a solo shot to Morneau, his second big hit on the night. In this week’s Hit List, I noted that Morneau had hit only .184/.282/.321 since May 14, but he’s had four extra-base hits over his last three games and looks to be back in the swing of things. That homer wrapped up the scoring at 7-3. As a gentle rain fell, the Yanks went quietly in the ninth, with Alex Rodriguez, celebrating his 30th birthday, striking out looking to end the game. Nerts.

• • •

A-Rod had an undistinguished night, going 0-for-3 with two walks and a near-miss of a home run, but as ESPN points out, he’s accomplished plenty in his career thus far. Rodriguez has hit 409 homers by Age 30, more than any other player and the only one to top 400 by that point. The leaderboard:

Alex Rodriguez   409
Ken Griffey Jr   398
Jimmie Foxx      379
Mickey Mantle    374
Eddie Mathews    370
Hank Aaron       342
Frank Robinson   314
Willie Mays      285
Babe Ruth        284
Ernie Banks      269
Barry Bonds      254

That’s great company. Even better, Rodriguez is in the midst of a great year, Wednesday night be damned. His 28 homers are tied for the league lead, and while his 1.013 OPS wouldn’t be a career high (he’s topped the firgure four times, going as high as 1.045), its been accomplished while playing in a park much less favorable to hitters than his previous addresses, the Kingdome and the Ballpark at Arlington. Baseball Prospectus’ Equivalent Average stat, which takes that into account, places him at .341, five points off of his previoius best, done in 2000 in Seattle. So long as the Yankees remain in the playoff hunt, he’s got an excellent shot at his second MVP award.

What I’d really like to see, over the next several years, is for A-Rod to make a run at the all-time home run record. Barry Bonds’ tainted pursuit of Hank Aaron’s 755 homers has left a sour taste, and anyone with half a shot to diminish his memory (I will establish a trust fund so that my great-grandchildren may piss on his grave) is worthy of the adulation of baseball fans everywhere.

Another week, another epic: the latest version of the Prospectus Hit List went up yesterday, chock full of trade deadline tidbits that had me updating into the wee hours. A day later I’m so busy and brain-fried that I’ve got little to add to that particular novella, except to say that once again the Yankee rotation looks to be about two avocados short of a guacamole dip. Kevin Brown has been scratched and Carl Pavano pushed back a day, putting the Yankees in a similar situation to where they were a couple weeks ago.

Brown has been godawful in his two starts since returning from the DL, allowing 13 runs in just 7.2 innings, raising his already lousy ERA up to 6.50. Today’s New York Times speculates that the cranky old bird may be cooked:

Nobody could say for sure that Brown, 40, would pitch again this season. Brown has been awful in two starts since missing a month with a lower-back strain, and though he said surgery was not an option for now, there may be no point in trying to pitch.

If the doctors determine that Brown would be so limited that he could no longer pitch effectively, the Yankees could simply release him.

Since Brown’s likely never to earn any redemption for last fall’s transgressions or justify his $15 million salary, that would be just as well, no matter which “Your Name Here” candidate washes up on the shores of the Harlem River to replace him. Meanwhile Pavano’s rehab, which had him slated to return to the pinstripes on Saturday, was simply juggled to push him back at least a day. If, y’know, you believe what the Yankee brass is selling.

Meanwhile the Yanks appear to be mulling putting Jaret Wright, injured since late April, into the bullpen once he returns. According to the New York Post‘s Joel Sherman:

The Yankees are rehabbing Jaret Wright’s injured shoulder with designs on putting a power arm in the bullpen, not the rotation, by mid-August.

This decision is much like the one that motivated the Red Sox to have Curt Schilling close. It is a marriage of need and necessity. The Yanks need help in the pen, and are not sure there is enough time to build Wright back up to throwing 100 pitches every five days.

“That (the bullpen) is what (Wright) is pitching toward,” Brian Cashman confirmed yesterday. “He’s doing very well (in his rehab). I’m not telling you we can count on it, but he can slot into bullpen for us.”

Hmmmm…. for what it’s worth, Wright did spend 2003 in the bullpen, with drastically mixed results: an 8.37 ERA in 47.1 innings with the Padres before they released him, and then a late-season salvage job with the Braves, where he put up a 2.00 ERA in nine innings under Leo Mazzone’s wing, then made the playoff roster and pitched another four scoreless frames. It could work, but that still leaves the Yanks with a rotation of Randy Johnson (who was vintage last night in blanking the Twins on two hits over eight innings), Mike Mussina, Al Leiter (not so good in his second start), Aaron Small (career 5.46 ERA and all), and ______ for the foreseeable future. The Times article speculates that Hideo Nomo, recently released by the Devil Rays for having an ERA that offended the community standards of Florida’s elderly population (7.24 overall, 10.32 on the road), might be next. Nomo’s agent is playing hard to get, however:

Don Nomura… said he was talking to the Yankees and to West Coast teams about Nomo. “All the clubs have a lot of interest,” Nomura said. “It’s us that are going to do the choosing.”

Good Lord, the Yanks have been reduced to hoping that another team’s detritus deems them worthy of his services. As much as I liked Nomo when he was on, he’s awful when he isn’t (Granny Gooden plus a herky-jerky motion), and I have to think the team can find better results in the trade market even at the cost of a B-grade prospect like Sean Henn or Alex Graman. I’d love it if the Yanks could land a mid-rotation inning-eater like the Pirates’ Mark Redman, but I fear they’re more likely to end up with some Mariner whose prospect status may be ancient even if his arm is not (Gil Meche, Joel Piniero).

Enough about the Yankees, who rank sixth on the Hit List, and over to the Dodgers, who are 23rd. Though I forgot to deploy my Monty Python Black Knight joke, they’re clearly not dead yet. The Padres have lost eight straight and though they still lead the division, they’re only 50-50, and they now have a negative run differential just like every other NL West team. The Dodgers are now eight games under .500, but they got Milton Bradley back this past weekend, and with Odalis Perez having returned, the rotation is finally as close to full strength as it’s been all year. There’s a rumor floating around that they’re working on a deal for Adam Dunn, with Antonio Perez and Edwin Jackson headed to Cincinnati, a deal I’d make in a second given that Jackson was posting an ERA of 8.62 in Las Vegas before he was sent down to Double-A Jacksonville, where he hasn’t impressed anyone. Répétez avec moi: there’s no such thing as a pitching prospect. The Dodgers have a real need for some bullpen help, with rookie closer Yhency Brazoban having allowed 14 runs in his last 13 innings, taking the loss four times and ballooning his ERA to 5.58; turn those games around and the team is right at .500, dead even with the Padres. A little help?

It’s a busy week here; I’m hard at work on a top-secret project that’s pretty exciting if it pans out, and headed to see the Yanks tonight and again on Saturday. Toodle-oo…

Shows you what I know. Al Leiter was not party to a double-digit shellacking at the hands of the Red Sox in his Yankee debut. Salvaged off the junk heap, the 39-year-old lefty with the 6.64 ERA reached back and found a part of himself that had gone missing — namely, the part that knew how to throw first-pitch strikes — and befuddled the Sox for 6.1 innings, striking out eight and allowing only one run. Behind a pair of two-run homers off of Yankee nemesis Tim Wakefield by Jorge Posada and Gary Sheffield and a solo shot by Alex Rodriguez, the Yanks survived a wild ninth inning to win 5-3, take the series in Boston 3-1, and close to within a half-game of the Sox in the AL East. They won again on Monday night, beating the Texas Rangers in a wild, ugly affair 11-10, while the Sox lost to the othewise hapless Devil Rays, thus moving into first place in the AL East for the first time this season. In the words of the late Mel Allen, “How ’bout that?”

Leiter’s effort seemed torn from the pages of a storybook. Drafted by the Yankees 21 years ago and making his first appearance in a Yankee uniform in 16 years, the Grizzled Southpaw Had Come Full Circle, perhaps merely to end his career with a modicum of pinstriped dignity. With the Yanks desperate for able-bodied starters, he seemed worth the gamble even against the patient Sox, especially in a situation in which they had nothing to lose after guaranteeing themselves a split in the series.

Leiter had struggled with his command as a Marlin, walking more batters than he struck out and throwing first-pitch strikes only 49.1 percent of the time, the worst in the majors. On this night, he was much more precise, consistently getting ahead of the hitters with his cut fastball, then forcing them to chase pitches out of the zone. Through four innings, he had thrown first-pitch strikes to 12 out of 16 hitters, whiffing Johnny Damon (twice), David Ortiz, Doug Mirabelli (twice), Mark Bellhorn, and Kevin Millar before the Sox knew what had hit them.

It helped, of course, that that the big Yankee bats came to life early to give Leiter some breathing room. In the second inning, Hideki Matsui slapped a double off the Green Monster, and then Posada, who’s struggled mightily of late, drilled a home run into the rightfield corner for a 2-0 lead. In the third, Robinson Cano poked a one-out double down the righfield line and then Sheffield, who had already homered once and doubled four times in the series, launched one over the Monster to extend the lead to 4-0. How do you like them apples?

The Sox finally broke through against Leiter in the bottom of the third. Edgar Renteria — a former teammate of Leiter’s on the 1997 World Champion Marlins and just about the only hitter who seemed to have a gameplan at the plate — drew a two-out walk and then Ortiz doubled him home before Manny Ramirez popped out to end the threat. But even when he couldn’t get strike one, Leiter was successful. All three hitters took ball one to start the fifth; Bill Mueller popped out on the next pitch, and Bellhorn grounded out on the third pitch of the at-bat. Only Damon went deep into the count, and Leiter was out of the inning in 11 pitches. He worked harder in the sixth, going to three-ball counts on Ortiz, Ramirez (who singled), and Millar but escaping intact.

Leiter began the seventh having thrown an even 100 pitches, and after inducing Trot Nixon to fly out, he was done for the night, a hero in his return just for preserving the Yankee bullpen in the face of uncertainty. Tanyon Sturtze and Tom Gordon took the game into the ninth with the Yanks leading 5-1. Gordon came in having not allowed a hit in his previous 9.1 innings dating back to June 28 (the Mike Stanton farewell), completing a hidden no-hitter the day before (he walked four in that span). He got the final two outs of the eighth, then yielded a homer to Ramirez to start the ninth to cut the lead to 5-2 and rouse Mariano Rivera in the bullpen. After walking Millar, Gordon yielded to Mo, who had a rockier outing than usual. On a potential double-play grounder, Cano threw the ball into leftfield, and then Jason Varitek poked an RBI single to bring the tying run to the plate in the form of Mueller, who singled to load the bases with nobody out. Gulp.

Fortunately, the next batter was Alex Cora, recently acquired from the Indians and hitting exactly .200. Rivera fell behind 2-0 before Cora slapped a tough grounder to Rodriguez at third. A-Rod made a perfect peg home for the forceout, and Posada threw a bullet to first to complete a beautifully-executed 5-2-3 double play. Damon, who had salvaged his 29-game hitting streak with a double off of Sturtze in the eighth, tapped Mo’s first pitch to Cano, who fielded it cleanly, and that was the end of that. The Yanks had stolen a series they had little business winning. When you’re hot — this was their 10th victory in 12 games — you’re hot and when you’re not — the Sox lost for the 11th time in 17 games — you’re not. Amusingly enough, ESPN’s headline after the game turned my previous column title on its ear. “Leiter fluid: Yankees’ new starter subdues Red Sox.”

• • •

I missed most of Monday night’s game against the Rangers. Plugging away on this week’s Prospectus Hit List, I surrendered the TV to Andra, then couldn’t get my MLB GameDay Audio to work, so I settled for updates via ESPN’s GameCast. It looked to be a nerve-wracking ballgame. Fresh off the DL, Kevin Brown gave up three runs in the first, but the Yanks dropped a six-pack on Texas starter Rich Rodriguez, with a three-run jack by Posada the big blow. By the fourth inning, four more homers had been hit and the score was 9-6.

The Rangers came back with four runs in the sixth, thanks to a two-out rally that included a dropped fly ball by Bernie Williams; apparently the wind had something to do with it, but it looked ugly on the replays nonetheless. With the score 10-9 Texas in the top of the eighth and the Hit List put to bed, I finally tuned in — just in time to catch another Yankee rally, in fact.

Cano led off the inning with a single off of Doug Brocail. The rookie second baseman’s performance has been beyond the wildest dreams of even the Yankee management, to say nothing of the analytical crowd who dismissed him over the winter (myself included). His plate discipline is lacking — seven unintentional walks in 258 plate appearances is downright Soriano-esque — but his surprising power (26 extra-base hits) has more than made up for it. In fact, he’s far beyond Alfonso Soriano (who had four hits on the night) at this stage. Compare their rookie campaigns:

         AGE   PA   AVG   OBP   SLG   ISO   UIBB   K   K/UIBB  P/PA
Cano     22   258  .302  .324  .465  .163  .027  .124   4.57   2.91
Soriano  25   614  .268  .304  .432  .164  .047  .203   4.31   3.84

ISO is Isolated Power, simply slugging percentage minus batting average, a good indicator of a player’s power potential. UIBB is unintentional walks per plate appearance, K is strikeouts per plate appearance, K/UIBB is the ratio between the two, and P/PA is the number of pitches per plate appearance. Cano has matched Sori’s power potential while hitting for a much higher average, and while he’s walking only about half as often, he’s also striking out considerably less. Based on that last column, it’s fair to say he’s a different kind of hitter than Sori, one who does his business early in the count rather than waiting the pitcher out. That 2.91 pitches would be the lowest in the majors if he had enough plate appearances to qualify, and not by a little. Here are the bottom 10 (Bobby Abreu leads the majors with 4.50):

PLAYER             TEAM  TPA   P/PA
Cristian Guzman    WAS   290   3.03
Vladimir Guerrero  LAA   315   3.23
Garret Anderson    LAA   368   3.25
Jimmy Rollins      PHI   406   3.28
Shea Hillenbrand   TOR   383   3.32
Orlando Cabrera    LAA   289   3.33
Carl Crawford      TB    424   3.33
Pedro Feliz        SF    358   3.34
Jose Guillen       WAS   382   3.35

That’s a motley assortment. Guzman is perhaps the worst hitter in the majors right now, the only one who gives Tony Womack — the man Cano replaced at second base — a run for his money. Hitting just .185/.224/.269, he’s actually got a lower VORP than Womack, the lowest in the majors (-16.4; Womack is third-worst at -9.3). But Guerrero is an excellent hitter (.317/.371/.551), and while you wouldn’t take the rest of them to the bank as exemplars of plate discipline, Anderson, Rollins and Hillenbrand made the All-Star Game, and neither Guillen nor Crawford would have been out of place on their respective squads. With enough power, it’s possible to succeed as an early-count hitter (for an excellent piece on early-count hitting, the predictive value of strikeouts and how they relate to a hitter’s development, see this Nate Silver article at Basebal Prospectus).

Getting back to Cano and Soriano (who’s currently averaging 3.60 P/PA, FYI), the key difference is the first column. Recall that Sori’s true age wasn’t publicly known at the time; the trade to the Rangers for Alex Rodriguez added two years. Developmentally speaking, that’s a huge difference, one which may herald a higher ceiling for the young Yankee. But enough of that digression; the Yanks still had a ballgame to win.

A Sheffield grounder forced Cano, but then Rodriguez walked to put two men on. Matsui flied out to bring up red-hot Ruben Sierra, who in his previous nine games had gone 13-for-27 with three doubles, a homer and eight RBI, and who was already 1-for-4 with a double on the night. With both baserunners in motion on a 3-2 pitch, Sierra blooped one into the left-centerfield gap for two runs and the lead, another huge hit for the big Rube. Alas, he pulled a hamstring rounding first base and is likely headed for the DL.

Sturtze, who had come on with two outs in the messy sixth inning, worked through the eighth before handing the ball over to Rivera. At this point the YES video feed cut out, so I was reduced to listening to Michael Kay’s call. Mo struck out the dangerous Mark Teixera on three pitches, got Hank Blalock to ground out back to him, and then got Sori to ground to A-Rod to end the game and put the Yankees in first place.

As if that weren’t happy enough news, the Yanks even got some encouraging words on Chien-Ming Wang after his visit to a place where no pitcher wants to go:

Wang… was examined Monday in Alabama by Dr. James Andrews. The diagnosis was inflammation and a strain in his right shoulder.

Yankees team physician Dr. Stuart Hershon said Wang will go through an exercise program for two weeks, followed by a throwing program. Hershon said surgery may be necessary if the right-hander doesn’t respond to the therapy.

“That’s great news right now for him and us, the fact they’re going to do rest and exercise. We’ll all keep our fingers crossed that it will be effective,” manager Joe Torre said. “I think it’s a little early to be optimistic, but I think that’s a good first step.”

The Daily News added:

Although the statement didn’t specify, sources said that Wang has a partial tear of his rotator cuff, but it is considered slight. Several other pitchers currently active, including Mets ace Pedro Martinez and Mariners closer Eddie Guardado, are pitching with partial tears and did not require surgery.

If Wang can return this year, that’s a huge break for the Yankees, one that might be “the difference between baseball and golf come October,” to use Will Carroll‘s words. All in all, another excellent day for the Yanks.

• • •

The other day, I made note of the fact that the Yankees hired former Expo, Red Sox and Phillies pitching coach Joe Kerrigan to be an advance scout. As Newsday reported:

“This has nothing to do with uniform issues,” he said. “Obviously, he’s quite capable, but the purpose of my engaging him was to be an in-house advance scout.”

Kerrigan told the Philadelphia Daily News this week: “I’d like to be back on the field as a bench coach or pitching coach, or as an advance scout, breaking down teams. I love doing that. This opportunity with the Yankees is very exciting, so we’ll see.”

Cashman took responsibility for the hire, saying it’s something he’s thought about for “about a month.” He said he has no plans to send Kerrigan on the road to scout.

“He’s a baseball guy I’ve respected from afar, and now we get a chance to know him upfront,” Cashman said.

Reader Adam B. asked me for some insight into this, and since my response is buried much further down the page, I’ll repeat it here. The Kerrigan move is intriguing as a low-risk get-to-know-you opportunity that automatically puts him in the running (along with current bullpen coach Neil Allen) to replace Mel Stottlemyre next year. Additionally, he might wind up replacing Billy Connors (who will be 64 in November and is hardly the picture of health) as the Yanks’ man in Tampa, though that scenario is less likely.

The interesting thing is that he’s Cashman’s hire, a man the Yankee GM can turn to for fresh input as the trade deadline approaches and give himself more leverage within the organization’s complicated hierarchy, at the very least mitigating the sway which Connors holds over Steinbrenner. As evidenced by the fact that it took them this long to reach first place this season thanks to some questionable offseason additions to the rotation, the team has struggled to identify pitchers than can help them. In tapping Kerrigan, they’ve hopefully found somebody who can correct that shortcoming as well as those of Stottlemyre, who’s not known for his ability to tinker with mechanics. All in all, a very good move.

Friday evening found me at a wedding in New Jersey, one where I knew hardly anybody (including the bride and groom) and which featured several questionable aesthetic decisions (a 45-minute shuttle bus ride to the reception through rush hour traffic?). As I grumbled my way through a thoroughly lackluster salad, I turned to my wife and shouted (because the 10-piece band was already blaring), “The Yankees are probably getting pounded 11-2 right now, and you know what? I’d rather be watching that than sitting here.”

The wedding soon improved into a fun time (even if we did spend the night in Mahwah), but I wasn’t too far off of that prediction, as the Yanks, forced to start Tim Redding and his 9+ ERA, fell behind 12-1 by the fourth inning and ended up losing 17-1. Still, it was impossible to be upset by the loss, coming as it did on the heels of a rousing victory the night before, and with 16 of the 17 runs allowed by a trio of pitchers — Redding, Darrell May, and Jason Anderson — whose pinstripes are being worn on borrowed time.

But the Yanks still needed a win on Saturday to insure themselves of a split in the series, and behind their only other able-bodied starter, Randy Johnson, they got it. Looking more and more like the pinstriped model of Roger Clemens, Johnson gutted his way through another ugly outing, allowing four runs in 6.1 innings while striking out 10. The Big Unit nearly squandered a 6-0 lead to which the Yankee offense had staked him, but the Yanks held on.

Those six runs came at the expense of Sox starter Matt Clement, an All-Star last week despite his unsightly beard. Clement, who was a free agent in the offseason, pitched more like Carl Pavano crossed with Jaret Wright (ouch), walking five and throwing 83 pitches just to get eight outs. Most memorable was a two-out, 2-1 pitch that got away from Clement, sailing behind the back of Gary Sheffield. It didn’t look like a purpose pitch (and Sheffield later discounted any malicious intent) but Sheff scowled and broke out his can of Whoop Ass just the same, lashing the next pitch off the Green Monster for a double. Alex Rodriguez then crushed Clement’s very next pitch over the Monster for a two-run blast, echoing Thursday night’s homer. Choke on that, A-Rod haters.

The fun didn’t end there. Consecutive walks to Hideki Matsui and Jason Giambi were followed by an RBI single off the bat of Bernie Williams. Tino Martinez walked to load the bases, and then John Flaherty, a man with all of 11 hits and three RBI on the year, banged a double off the Monster for another pair of runs to spell the end for Clement. Derek Jeter, batting for the second time in the inning, greeted reliever Jeremi Gonzalez with an RBI single before Gonzalez could put out the fire.

But six early runs aren’t enough to keep the Sox offensive machine down, and they patiently clawed their way back into the game. Solo homers by Mark Bellhorn in the third and Manny Ramirez in the fourth got them on the board, and a Ramirez double keyed a two-run inning in the fifth as Johnson huffed, puffed and offered mediocre stuff. The Big Unit’s fastball has lost some of its bite; that .317 batting average he’s yielded on balls in play is a commentary on just how vulnerable he’s become in front of a still-shoddy Yankee defense. But Johnson at 80 percent is still a better (and healthier) pitcher than the Yanks can otherwise offer, and he hung tough until the bullpen could arrive. The Yanks added an insurance run in the seventh thanks to an A-Rod walk, a balk, and an error by David Ortiz, not known for his glovework and in fact playing the field against an AL team for only the second time this year.

With Joe Torre trying to preserve Tanyon Sturtze for an emergency start in case Kevin Brown can’t go on Monday, Tom Gordon went 1.2 innings, throwing more balls than strikes, including an eephus curveball on his first pitch that had Manny ducking. Flash got the job done, and then Mariano Rivera came on for another 1-2-3 save, using just 12 pitches in the process. Schweeeeeet.

During the game, the Yanks acquired Al Leiter from the Florida Marlins to start on Sunday, and the price tag shows just how far Leiter’s stock has fallen. Florida gave up this rotting Fish for no more than a $400,000 discount on what they owed off of his $8 million contract for the rest of the year — not even a player to be named later in return. Then again, with Leiter’s 3-7 record, 6.64 ERA and 52/60 K/BB ratio, the lefty gave Florida only slightly more leverage than Brian Cashman had. I can’t blame Cashman for grasping at this straw, as he costs nothing but pocket change. But I’m not terribly optimistic it’ll turn out well. A lefty flyball pitcher in Fenway sounds like a ticket to another double-digit shellacking; it’s good thing they’re playing with house money after Saturday’s win.

Leiter is possibly the best baseball analyst I’ve heard in recent memory; his postseason discussions of the finer points of pitching are a must-hear. But the flip side of Leiter’s ease in front of the mic is that he’s something of a poor man’s Curt Schilling, a clubhouse lawyer who’s very calculating when it comes to media relations (recall the very public drama of the Mets declining his option seven months ago). Red Light Al is tough to like.

Suffice it to say that if Leiter keeps his ERA around 5.00 long enough for the rest of the staff to get healthy and put him out of a job, I’ll be damn impressed, and so, I’ll wager, will the Yanks. They’ve used 11 starters, the most in the AL, and their #5s (Wright, Sean Henn, Redding, May and Sturtze) have been even worse than Leiter:

            GS  IP   K/9  K/BB  HR/9    ERA
Yankee #5s  10  40  4.95  0.81  2.92  11.48
Leiter      16  80  5.85  0.87  1.01   6.64

Avert your eyes, children. Leiter started his career with the Yankees, and this is likely the end of the line for him. If he can’t better that shoddy performance, he’s got no place in the big leagues. The bar isn’t exactly high, but that’s a minor matter at the moment. The Yanks deserve a hand for holding serve under these adverse circumstances.

• • •

Speaking of the Red Sox, many of you from both sides of this rivalry are aware that I contributed two chapters, one on David Ortiz’s career and the other on Pedro Martinez’s lack of success against the Yankees, to a forthcoming book for Baseball Prospectus. I’m pleased to announce that Mind Game: How the Red Sox Got Smart and Finally Won a World Series, which will be published at the end of August, is now on sale via Amazon.com for a mere $11.16 plus shipping. On Friday, Steve Goldman, who edited the book, provided a chapter-by-chapter rundown of its contents as well as this overview:

Mind Game is a book about the Boston Red Sox and how intelligent team design helped them to surpass the Yankees, sustain the winning effort despite all the obstacles and setbacks typically encountered by every team during the championship season, and lay to rest nearly a century of self-defeating mismanagement. Mind Game is a deconstruction of the Theo Epstein-era Sox–where they came from, where they’re going, and how they got where they are, to the title of World Champions.

Before visions of the 6,782 Red Sox championship-exploitations that came out back in April blow your mind, be assured that Mind Game is not another onanistic knock-off along the lines of “Cursebreaker: How My Shamanistic Rituals Won the World Series for Red Sox Nation”, by Johnny Damon’s cousin’s ex-boyfriend. Mind Game is something new. We’ve brought the full roster of Baseball Prospectus authors to bear on the Red Sox and the 2004 season, using it as a prism through which we can throw light on the real lessons of the championship.

…Because we’re Baseball Prospectus and we can’t stop writing when we’re this excited, we’ve added “extra innings,” supplementary discussions of everything from the non-curse of Tris Speaker, the strange case of Dan Duquette, Calvin Schiraldi, and much more. We’ve also included appendices with multiple leader boards for every BP statistic and for the first time anywhere, a comprehensive list of bench-clearing brawls in baseball history, thanks in large part to the work of the late, great Doug Pappas, who had “BP author” as one of his many titles. All of this is served up with BP’s customary insouciance and humor.

If I weren’t already receiving a complimentary copy, I’d buy that, especially for less than the cost of two beers at Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park. I’m proud to be associated with it and really looking forward to seeing its reception.

The outcome of Thursday night’s Yankees-Red Sox game was pure Christmas in July for Yankee fans, and in Fenway Park no less. It won’t erase the sting of last October, but in the face of increasing adversity for the Yanks, it may not get any better all year. Whether or not they win the division or the World Series in 2005, this victory was special.

Spotting the Red Sox four runs in the first inning, four runs off of one of their two remaining healthy starting pitchers, the Yanks slugged their way back against the Sox, tying the game at 5-5 in the sixth and 6-6 in the eighth. Then Curt Schilling made his debut in his new role as a reliever — a role not unanimously accepted in the Red Sox clubhouse — and immediately yielded a double to Gary Sheffield, who scuffled with a Fenway fan his last time in Boston, and then a two-run shot to Alex Rodriguez, the man The Big Shill spent the winter taunting. Mariano Rivera, with his own Red Sox demons to chase, came on to blow away all three Sox hitters to nail down an emotional 8-6 win. Boo-yah!

I missed the first five innings of the ballgame due to TiVo incompetence, though I’ll treasure that episode of That Seventies Show I recorded in its place, as it will certainly make for more entertaining viewing than the four runs the Sox plated on Mike Mussina in the first. Moose started the game on the heels of the news that the Yanks had sent rookie Chien-Ming Wang, the surprise of their rotation, to the 15-day disabled list with “shoulder inflammation,” an appointment with Dr. James Andrews, and ominous whispers that he is done for the season with a torn rotator cuff.

With Kevin Brown, Carl Pavano, and Jaret Wright already on the DL, this was not exactly a welcome development. The team recalled Tim Redding, acquired along with Darrell May in the Paul Quantrill trade, to start tonight, but they’ll be scrambling to find enough able bodies to fill out the schedule. Unit and Moose and pray a hyena gets loose and devours the opposition before the Yanks have to send Redding, newly hired advance scout Joe Kerrigan, or yours truly to the mound.

The Yanks clubbed their way back into the game on the strength of second-inning homers off of Bronson Arroyo by Jason Giambi and Bernie Williams, two Yankees who spent most of the season’s early days as offensive ciphers. Giambi bashed five homers last week, and since May 24 (an admittedly selective date) is hitting .347/.488/.614 over a span of 129 plate appearances, bringing his season numbers to .279/.427/.476. Williams has hit .328/.400/.531 over his last four weeks, a span of 75 plate appearances, bringing his overall line to a still-meager .257 /.347/.386.

The Yanks added another in the third on an RBI double by Sheffield. While the Sox got the run back off of Moose in the bottom of the inning, Shef pounded a solo homer in the fifth to trim the lead to 5-4, the score when I tuned in. They pulled even by capitalizing on a passed ball and a throwing error by third baseman Bill Mueller, chasing Arroyo in the process.

The Sox came right back, putting the first two runners on base in the bottom of the sixth. A grounder sent Kevin Millar to third base with one out, but Mussina reached back and found the stuff to strike out not only Mark Bellhorn but also Johnny Damon. After the Bellhorn strikeout, the YES camera cut to a shot of Joe Torre pumping his fist in the dugout, a rare display of emotion from the stolid Yankee manager. Alas, Boston retook the lead on a homer by David Ortiz into the Sox bullpen off of Tanyon Sturtze, who’s likely slated for the rotation in his next appearance. But the Yanks countered on a pair of doubles by Jorge Posada, who yielded to pinch-runner Tony Womack, and pinch-hitter Ruben Sierra.

The stage was thus set for Schilling. With Keith Foulke having gone to the DL for long-overdue arthroscopic knee surgery after a nightmarish first half (6.23 ERA and murmurs about his off-field problems) and Schilling lacking the stamina to return to the Sox rotation, the Boston brass has slated their pompous, messianic ace for the closer role. The decision appeared to divide the Red Sox clubhouse, which sounded more like 2001’s epic collapse than 2005’s championship afterglow when Johnny Damon second-guessed the move:

“[Schilling has] never done it,” center fielder Johnny Damon told the paper Wednesday night. “He throws 60 pitches to get loose for a game. He needs to get loose. Two outs in the eighth, a home run is hit. Get ready, 10 pitches. He can’t do it. Timlin could, Bronson could. I don’t think it’s a good move for us. We’ve always talked about all year he’d come back and be a starter, and be a good starter. He can’t just walk in and be a good closer. He’s not ready yet. He’s not ready.”

Elsewhere, Damon, who’s in the midst of a 26-game hitting streak and thus qualified to comment on matters of national importance, accused the team of “panicking” in routing Schilling to the closer role. Ah, the fragile equilibrium of unhappiness.

After his extended warmup in the Boston bullpen, Schilling took a long, slow journey to the mound, jogging out of the bullpen gate then slowing to a meander as he milked the Fenway crowd’s adulation in a manner befitting “Red Light Curt.” His honeymoon was short-lived, as Sheffield, already with two big hits to his credit, doubled off of the left-centerfield wall on Schilling’s fifth pitch.

Next came Rodriguez, who’s spent the last year and a half as Public Enemy Number One in Boston ever since the Sox failed attempt to acquire him from the Rangers. Last season’s early clutch failures, the fight with Jason Varitek, the slap of Bronson Arroyo in Game Six of the LCS, the sore winner gripes from Trot Nixon (who?) and Schilling that A-Rod wasn’t a “true Yankee”… you couldn’t write a better script leading up to this point.

Schilling, Public Enemy Number One to Yankee fans, looked back at Sheffield then fired his first pitch to A-Rod, a splitter that split the field of play in a big hurry. Rodriguez lofted a long fly ball as Damon could only look up for a cursory farewell. A beautiful sight, a burden lifted, a cold plate of revenge served to a pompous douchebag in front of his adoring throngs. Eat it, fatso.

Rivera, who blew two saves in the season’s first series in New York (his only such failures on the year), came on to close out the ballgame, and he did it like a man with a vendetta himself. Thirteen pitches, only four of them outside the strike zone, and Mo had whiffed Damon, Edgar Renteria, and finally Ortiz to nail down a crucial win for the Yanks, bringing them to a game and a half behind Boston.

Whether they can close that gap is another story. Redding comes into his pinstriped debut sporting a 9.10 ERA on the year and a 5.04 mark for his career. Randy Johnson will go on Saturday, but it’s anybody’s guess who will fill the next two starts; interested parties may apply by emailing Brian Cashman with a resume. Neither Al Leiter, who was designated for assignment by the Florida Marlins thanks to his 6.64 ERA nor Shawn Chacon, a failed closer who’s back in the Rockies starting rotation and sporting a reasonable 4.30 ERA though a 29/33 K/BB ratio, are appealing trade options, but they’ve both surfaced in the news. It’s more likely that the Yanks buy themselves time until Brown and then Pavano return by filling from within via May, who was bombed last Saturday, and Sturtze, a move that would significantly compromise the Yankee bullpen even as Felix Rodriguez, hardly the cavalry, returns to the active roster.

Those are problems for another day, however. Even in the face of the bad moon rising, this win is worth savoring.

On Tuesday evening, my pal Nick and I finally broke down and saw Star Wars Episode III: Just Give Us Your Money, the anticlimactic final installment of a groundbreaking, once-great series we had grown up on. Neither of us would dare subject our significant others to the movie — my wife fell asleep halfway through Star Wars Episode II: Send in the Boring Clones and quite frankly I envied her — so when the new one opened seven weeks ago, we vagueley agreed weeks ago to attend together once the hype died down. Obviously, it wasn’t a high priority.

I’m old enough to remember the excitement and wonder I felt at seeing the original Star Wars trilogy on a big screen, and so felt some inevitable sense of allegiance towards the new trilogy despite the realization halfway through the first bit of Jar Jar Binks dialogue in Star Wars Episode I: Bait and Switch that we’ve been had. As I pried $10.75 (the cost of a first-run movie in New York City) out of my pocket, I was secure in the knowledge that George Lucas will never see another cent of my money. I was being duped — by him and his franchise, at least — for the last time.

As such, I missed most of the All-Star Game, at least in its live broadcast format. Nick and I caught about an inning and a half at our local English pub, where we washed away the sour taste of our inevitable capitulation to the dark side by marveling at Andruw Jones’ towering home run off of Kenny Rogers. Later I wizzed through a TiVo’d version of the game, mainly to see how the runs were scored. I was quite satisfied to see that Miguel Tejada’s monster shot came at the expense of John Smoltz, a man who spends an inordinate amount of time obsessing about bestiality.

Before I saw that, however, I made the mistake taking in a smattering of the pregame festivities, mainly because I was multitasking by reading my email. But between Jeanie Zelasko shoddily cutting off the legendary Tiger broadcaster Ernie Harwell (a travesty remarked upon by Salon’s King Kaufman) in favor of the “Taco Bell Throw The Ball At The Damn Target,” (to borrow Bat Girl‘s phrase) and the appearance of Scooter, the talking goddamn baseball whose face I want to smash, I soon wished I hadn’t. Fox Sports: It’s All About Everything But the Game.

My dander already raised, I sped through the game in vaguely disinterested fashion. I’m pretty good at watching on fast-forward; I generally get into an at-bat after the first two pitches, saving myself time without spoiling the outcome. But with so many first- and second-pitch hacks, I was too heavy on the button, so I missed at least one half-inning. Big deal.

But I did see the travesty that took place in the bottom of the third, when Joe Buck and Tim McCarver — without a trace of guile in their voices — gave airtime to a large Corvette advertisement hanging in the outfield as if it were the handmade work of some fan. “Welcome back to Detroit,” remarked Buck. “A lot of banners and signs around the ballpark. No surprise there. Somebody just unfurled a big banner behind left field.”

Uh-huh. Of course, this was a premeditated advertising opportunity of which Buck and McCarver were fully aware. “Buck might have been saying that tongue in cheek,” Fox Sports spokesman Dan Bell told The Register, a UK tech publication which carries syndicated news feeds. “For sure, it was planned. It’s not like we didn’t know about it. Both parties knew about it.” As the Register‘s Ashlee Vance reported:

Buck certainly did not sound “tongue in cheek” to us at all. Both he and McCarver sat there debating the sign like marketing automatons, wondering if it was real and how much time some true fan of baseball spent hammering it out. They most certainly wanted all the saps watching to believe in the sign’s authenticity and go hunting for this mysterious website. “Yet another Chevy ad” probably would not have worked as well.

Blech. If you listened carefully enough, you could hear Jack Buck, Joe’s Hall of Fame-honored father, spinning in his grave. His son has long since barreled through any line between reportage and corporate prostitution via the Budweiser “Leon” commercials. Now he’s added to that distasteful legacy.

Look, I realize this isn’t first-degree murder, or even all that surprising; I expect no better from Fox with all of its tacky lasers and sound effects and the entire network’s complete abdication of journalistic integrity. Baseball and advertising have gone hand in hand since the early days of radio. But it’s one thing for a radio announcer to read promos between innings, quite another for a pair of TV announcers to pass themselves off as innocents as they shill. So it’s with more than a little glee that I note that Fox’s broadcast set a new ratings low for the second year in a row. The people have spoken, and no sir, they don’t like what Fox does to the game. As Kaufman put it, baseball fans “get slapped every time they try to tune in to Fox, the network with a contract to broadcast the biggest events of a sport it hates…”

Enough is enough, so I’ve decided to give the All-Star Game the Star Wars treatment, at least for one year: I wash my hands of the entire franchise. I won’t watch next year’s game, I won’t write about it, I won’t vote, and I won’t give a shit who makes the team. To Fox Sports, Buck and McCarver and anyone else involved in this charade, I say, “This time it’s FUCK YOU.”

• • •

Not that Fox’s A-team of broadcasters are the only ones on my shitlist, or that they weren’t already there before the ASG. I can barely watch ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball because of the continuing ignorance foisted upon listeners by Joe Morgan, who in his anti-Moneyball crusade couldn’t be bothered to figure out that Michael Lewis, not A’s general manager Billy Beane, wrote the book.

That’s old news, of course. Many folks, including Mike Carminati, have been lampooning Morgan’s crusade for years. Carminati, who routinely deconstructed the man’s ESPN chats, even waxed poetic a couple years back:

These are the gladdest of possible words:
“Joe Morgan Chat Day tomorrow.”
Reductio ad absurdum, his facts fleetly blurred,
Joe Morgan Chat Day tomorrow
Ruthlessly promulgating gonfalon babble,
Making a giant hit with the ole rabble–
His words numb your brain like a bad game of Scrabble:
“Joe Morgan Chat Day tomorrow!”

Good stuff. But there’s even better stuff to be found in a piece for SF Weekly by Tommy Craggs which was published last week. Craggs caught up with Morgan, who didn’t cotton to the writer’s line of inquiry.

“Both of you are jokes,” he is saying, and what I will learn is that there are many jokes in Joe’s world. We are jokes, those of us who dare have a thought or a theory about The Game though we have never worn the flannels of a baseball team; we are jokes, those of us who think a catcher has an effect on base stealing; we are jokes, those of us who believe in science and reason. The Oakland A’s, if I may extrapolate, are a joke. Their general manager is a joke (though he played The Game). The front office of the world-champion Boston Red Sox is a joke. The guy in the ESPN.com chat room who had the temerity to question Joe Morgan’s wisdom is definitely a joke. The author of Moneyball? Joe’s not sure who that is, but he’s sure he’s a joke. The writer Bill James is a joke, and so for that matter is the entire masthead of Baseball Prospectus. I’m a joke. You’re a joke. We’re jokes, if not all of us, very, very many of us.

So I wonder: Why isn’t Joe Morgan laughing?

Socratic exchange with Joe Morgan No. 1, on the subject of Moneyball, base running in the 2002 American League Division Series, and the use of statistics in baseball:

Me: It seems that you almost take [the book] personally.

Joe: I took it personally because they had a personal thing about me saying Durham should’ve stolen second base in the game that they lost — he stayed at first base, and they hit three fly balls, and the A’s lose another fifth game.

Me: And that’s the chief reason you don’t even wanna read the book?

Joe: I don’t read books like that. I didn’t read Bill James’ book, and you said he was complimenting me. Why would I wanna read a book about a computer, that gives computer numbers?

Me: It’s not about a computer.

Joe: Well, I’m not reading the book, so I wouldn’t know.

Me: I’m not –

Joe: Why would I wanna read the book? All I’m saying is, I see a game every day. I watch baseball every day. I have a better understanding about why things happen than the computer, because the computer only tells you what you put in it. I could make that computer say what I wanted it to say, if I put the right things in there. … The computer is only as good as what you put in it. How do you think we got Enron?

Yikes. Enron? Craggs goes to great lengths to explore Morgan’s Flat Earth Society viewpoint, providing the most thorough glimpse to date of the Hall of Famer’s deep-seated insecurity about the stathead movement and the reactionary viewpoints he counters with. He even interviews Carminati, along with Will Carroll, Bill James, and Rob Neyer.

This is essential reading, easily one of the best pieces of baseball writing this year. Read it and weep profusely at one man’s disconnection with reality.