Say this for Jim Bouton: he knows a good story when he stumbles upon one. More than thirty years after Ball Four, Bouton returned to bookshelves last year with the acclaimed Foul Ball: My Life and Hard Times Trying to Save an Old Ballpark, a diary of his battle to spruce up Pittsfield, Massachussetts’ Wahconah Park and lure a minor-league ballclub to play there. I covered the much-acclaimed book in depth last July.

Bouton’s ownership group was unsuccessful in securing a team, but his intrepid work did uncover a huge scandal: the land which town paper (and Bouton detractor) The Berkshire Eagle was trying to donate to build Wahconah’s replacement was contaminated by carcinogenic PCBs. Meanwhile, rival owner Jonathan Fleisig, who beat out the Bouton group, did to Pittsfield exactly what the old knuckleballer predicted: he left the town high and dry. After his two-year lease of Waconah expired, Fleisig pulled up stakes and moved his Northeast League franchise, the Berkshire Black Bears, to New Haven, once again leaving the Massachusetts town without a team.

Like clockwork, Bouton has re-emerged on behalf of Pittsfield. ESPN’s Jim Caple reports that the Bulldog plans to restore the ballpark and purchase a team by raising $4 million through a limited public stock offering. According to the article, $2.5 million is for renovation, $1.5 million for the franchise and operating costs, and the offering is limited to 400 investors (more information is available at Wahconahpark@aol.com). This short article from Capital News 9 says that the offering amounts to 55 percent of the group’s stock, with Bouton and his partners, Chip Elitzer and Eric Margenau, holding the other 45 percent.

Caple’s article notes the impact Bouton’s well-chronicled plight had on the town:

After its publication, the city elected a new mayor, James Ruberto, who asked Bouton and Elitzer if they would be interested in reviving their ballpark plan.

In other words, they beat city hall.

“I never imagined this. It was the furthest thing from our minds,” Bouton says. “It’s being called the book that changed the city. But it’s all about Wahconah Park. It was clear the park was the emotional center of the town. The citizens may not have been able to understand the budget problems with the hospital and the police, but they could understand the park. They voted down three plans to replace the ballpark.

“We came up with the idea to turn the whole system upside down. Instead of being at the mercy of an itinerate team and its owner, we said we’ll make an investment in the park and get our own team. Usually, it’s the team that holds the city hostage, but we’ve turned that around. This is going to be a privately-restored ballpark with a publicly-owned team.”

Despite Caple’s piece, it’s tough to tell how seriously to take all of this. The Bulldog’s own website has several links and excerpts of articles concerning the Bouton group and Wahconah, most of them coming from the Eagle and none more recent than March 17. The newspaper clearly still carries a grudge:

The bottom of the barrel baseball played by the Berkshire Black Bears was rejected by knowledgeable fans, who stayed away in droves the past two summers, and more of the same will be a tough sell, regardless of how nice the food court is. To make his team a success, Mr. Bouton is going to need the support of the business community he unfairly trashed, most notably Berkshire Bank and GE Plastics, as corrupt and dishonest in “Foul Ball.” Mr. Bouton had better hope the business community is more charitable to him than he was to them.

Claws out… But Bouton seems to have come upon a stroke of good luck in recent weeks with a connection to some Pittsfield-related headlines. In mid-May, baseball historian John Thorn (author of Total Baseball) revealed his discovery of a 1791 Pittsfield ordinance mentioning baseball. Thorn shared his finding with Bouton, who told city officials. It’s a nice bit of synergy for the Bulldog’s bid, not to mention a fascinating discovery in and of itself. According to Thorn, “It’s clear that not only was baseball played here in 1791, but it was rampant. It was rampant enough to have an ordinance against it.”

No ball in the house? Try no ball within 80 yards of the house. Passed on September 5, 1791, the ordinance (as excerpted in the San Jose Mercury News) reads:

… for the Preservation of the Windows in the New Meeting House … no Person or Inhabitant of said Town, shall be permitted to play at any game Called Wicket, Cricket, Base ball, Bat ball, Foot ball, Cat, Fives or any other Game or Games with Balls, within the Distance of Eighty Yards from said Meeting House.

I’d wager some kids must have hit a few through the glass of enough dudes in powdered wigs to piss them off so badly that they passed a law. But “New Meeting House” makes me hope that the kids reduced the old one to rubble with their projectiles, as if to say, “We don’t need no stinking wigs. It’s a whole new ballgame, Jack.” In any event, the discovery led Thorn to proclaim, “Pittsfield is baseball’s birthplace until further notice. We know that baseball was like a field of dandelions in the late 1700s and early 1800s_it was growing up everywhere”

Prior to his discovery, the earliest baseball reference was thought to be a pair of 1823 newspaper articles. So screw Abner Doubleday and that cheesy Cooperstown 1839 myth. And bully for the Bulldog if the discovery helps Pittsfield get a new club in an old park and what is now the game’s oldest town.

My travels have delayed these two pieces, each long enough to be one of my normal blog entries. Since they share something in common — writer pals of mine working on their first books — and since I’m not sure when I’ll next be online (I’m currently in Austin, Texas for a wedding), I’ve combined them into one longer piece.

Part I: The Fruits of My Labrum

OK, I’ll admit it. My shoulder injury — a torn labrum suffered last June in a swimming pool mishap and arthroscopic surgery in November — was little more than an excuse to milk sympathy and gain fodder and publicity for this column while taking a walk on the wild side of the health care system. A dabble in shoulder injury chic, if you will. Check out this Cherry Runtz Weed Strain Review if you’re looking for products that can help reduce stress and improve symptoms related to common mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression.

That’s not really true, of course, but if I’ve learned anything over the past year, it’s that a labrum tear is baseball’s most devastating injury, a virtual death sentence for pitchers in an age where rotator cuff (shoulder) and ulnar collateral ligament (elbow) surgeries are routine, their recoveries predictable. As Baseball Prospectus injury expert Will Carroll summarizes in a recent Slate article (amusingly titled “Labrum, It Nearly Killed Him”):

The leading minds in baseball medicine are flummoxed by the labrum. Doctors can’t agree on how to detect a tear, don’t know the best way to fix one, and aren’t sure why, almost without fail, a torn labrum will destroy a pitcher’s career.

The numbers don’t lie. Carroll contrasts leading orthopedic surgeon Dr. James Andrews’ estimate that 85 percent of pitchers fully recover from ulnar collateral ligament replacment, a/k/a Tommy John surgery, with this bleak assessment:

[I]f pitchers with torn labrums were horses, they’d be destroyed. Of the 36 major-league hurlers diagnosed with labrum tears in the last five years, only midlevel reliever Rocky Biddle has returned to his previous level. Think about that when your favorite pitcher comes down with labrum trouble: He has a 3 percent chance of becoming Rocky Biddle.

Ouch. For those unfamiliar with shoulder anatomy — and if you’re a baseball fan, you might as well learn your way around this crucial joint — Carroll explains that the labrum, located between the head of the humerus (upper arm bone) and the glenoid fossa (the socket where it attaches) functions as both a shock absorber and as part of the joint’s connective structure. The most common labrum injury is a SLAP tear (superior lesion, anterior to posterior), which is what I suffered — a tear in the tissue from front to back, disrupting normal overhand motion with a slight click or pop. It’s a relatively subtle injury in that it’s not terribly painful or debilitating unless you’re exerting at a moderate level. My own experience felt like my shoulder had somehow had the wind knocked out of it, and I was unable to summon much force when it came to exercise.

The labrum’s position between the shoulder bones makes injury to it difficult to detect even with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and multiple orthopedists might disagree on the same MRI. The current state of the art in repairing the damage is an arthroscopic procedure to reattach the labrum to the scapula by inserting plastic anchors for the sutures; in my case two were required, each leaving a scar about 1 cm in diameter.

Carroll runs down a few recent high-profile pitchers whose careers have been derailed by labral tears:

• Giants closer Robb Nen, one of the game’s hardest throwers, has undergone three surgeries in 18 months and hasn’t pitched since 2002.

• White Sox starter Mike Sirotka was traded to Toronto for David Wells in 2000 before his torn labrum was discovered. He hasn’t thrown a pitch in the majors since.

• 6-foot-10 Seattle Mariners prospect Ryan Anderson, known as “The Space Needle,” has missed all of 2001, 2002, 2003 and this year. Fellow Mariner pitcher Gil Meche missed 2001 due to labrum ailments and couldn’t pitch well enough to make the big club in ’02. His 15 wins in ’03 made for a minor success story, but the attached 4.59 ERA isn’t worth all that much in the Safeco environs. And it gets worse: thus far he’s 1-5 with a 6.96 ERA this year and showing some ominous signs. Wrote Carroll recently:

The labrum curse may be biting Gil Meche. His continued ineffectiveness in the Mariners rotation is pushing him to the bullpen, but there are open questions about his shoulder’s health. Not only is his stamina down, there have been reports of him wincing after pitches and altering his mechanics in ways that indicate some shoulder pain or weakness. I’m unsure how Meche will adjust to the pen as well, making him risky in multiple ways.

Not good. Position players, of course, aren’t exempt from the dreaded injury. Troy Glaus, the Angels fine third baseman, missed much of last season with a tear but elected not to have surgery. After a hot start in which he was leading the league in homers with 11, Glaus reinjured the shoulder and finally went under the knife in the past week. He’s almost certainly done for the year. Dodger outfielder Shawn Green’s power outage last season was due to a severely torn labrum; his offseason surgery was more drastic, requiring the removal rather than repair of the cartilage, resulting in an unappetizing bone-on-bone scenario which Carroll covered last fall.

As Carroll explained to me last fall, another problem besides detecting the injury is the lack of an established rehabilitation protocol. Whereas Tommy John surgery timetables have become quite predictable (one year, with new-wave techniques pioneered by Yankee secret weapon Mark Littlefield cutting that time down to ten months), and rotator cuff surgery is, if not nearly as successful, at least somewhat moreso than its shoulder counterpart, there’s no model of success for a baseball player to emulate. My own rehab consisted of a month wearing a sling and then four months of arduous physical therapy; only recently have I taken up my mitt again to chuck the ol’ horsehide around, and though my comfort zone is increasing with each game of catch, I’m not sure I could break glass with my tosses yet.

If there’s been a silver lining to my torn shoulder lining, it’s that the work I put into writing about it impressed Carroll so much that he included it in his excellent new book, Saving the Pitcher. The recently-published volume combines vital, well-researched information about the anatomy and mechanics of throwing a ball with cutting-edge expert advice on how to treat — and more importantly prevent — injuries to the most fragile segment of the baseball population. The fruits of my labrum (sorry, I’ve been waiting six months to use that line), an adaptation of my November 11 entry, take up pages 49-51 of STP. Carroll also told me that Dr. Andrews — the leading surgeon in sports medicine — was quite impressed with my writing on the topic. All of this somewhat dampens the blow that my injury caused, but I still wouldn’t recommend it as anything more than a painful learning experience.

• • •

Part II: Chasing Casey

Carroll isn’t the only author I’ve had the opportunity to assist recently. This past weekend I headed up to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in the company of Steven Goldman, who writes both for Baseball Prospectus and YES (the oft-referenced “Pinstriped Bible“) to assist with some photo research he was doing for his forthcoming book about Casey Stengel, Forging Genius (due this fall). I’d already taken a trip to the Brooklyn Public Library in the service of the project with Goldman, and while the returns on that investment weren’t so high, the chance to bond with a writer whose work I greatly admire was unsurpassed, and so I willingly volunteered for the whirlwind roadtrip to Cooperstown.

We departed on Sunday evening, cruising to upstate New York in about four-and-a-half hours. Our baseball chatter in the car was virtually nonstop, alternating a discussion of current affairs (centering around the Yankees) with Goldman’s narration of an annotated Cliff Notes version of his book. Tough to beat that.

Forging Genius focuses on Stengel’s “wilderness years” managing the Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Braves, with minor-league stints at the helm of the Toledo Mud Hens, Milwaukee Brewers, and Oakland Oaks before he assumed the Yankee job in 1949. Winning seven World Championships and ten pennants in 12 years gave Stengel a reputation for genius, but Goldman’s thesis is that the traits and tactics which brought him success in pinstripes were present during his earlier stops. His preference for platooning, for example, dated all the way back to his playing career, when Giants manager John McGraw (who pioneered the strategy) limited outfielder Stengel’s role to hitting against righties, resulting in two excellent seasons near the end of his playing career. In his first two major-league managerial stops, Stengel’s teams finished in the second division for eight years in a row, as he was primarily hampered by skinflint ownership which couldn’t provide the quality and depth of his later Yankee teams.

Which isn’t to say that those teams weren’t interesting; on the contrary, Goldman has done exhaustive research into the stories of the clubs and their players and other attached personalities. As I’ve gotten to know Steve, I’ve been impressed to find that he’s as good recounting decades-old tales of both obscure and famous incidents with as much wit and verve in person as he does in print via his weekly “Bibles” and epic BP “You Could Look It Up” columns. My favorite yarn about Casey (if I’m recalling it correctly) involved his dual role as the Mud Hens’ manager and president; when he needed to get out of his contract to take the Braves’ job, manager Stengel wrote a letter to president Stengel, asking to be freed from his contract, and president Stengel wrote back, granting him release. Baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis wasn’t happy about this stunt, but then happiness and the judge didn’t belong in the same sentence anyway, and he was apparently powerless to stop the wily Stengel.

Having finished the book’s writing, Goldman is now looking for photos to augment it, and for this he desired a second pair of hands and eyes to help him root through the Hall of Fame’s archives. We nestled into the Hall’s library shortly after the building opened on Monday morning and donned white cotton gloves to leaf through five bins — office-box-sized crates — full of photos. I pre-screened folders devoted some of the book’s characters, magically named obscurities (to our generation, at least) such as Van Lingle Mungo and Frenchy Bordagary, along with legends such as McGraw, Wilbert Robinson, and Billy Martin. Steve would make the final selections for one or two photos of each one, usually a head shot and an action shot, or perhaps a group shot of a couple of the book’s more central characters. Often he’d regale me with an anecdote about the player. One of the more memorable ones was outfielder Len Koenecke, who attacked a pilot (or made improper advances towards him) mid-flight and was killed when the co-pilot struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher. Creepy… For each photo, I’d dutifully record the information and reference number, then photocopy it, absorbing the mundane tasks so as to allow Goldman to focus on the bigger picture(s).

Steve insisted on seeing each and every photo in the Stengel file — a bin unto itself — and I viewed most of those as well. Having seen several hundred examples, I can safely conclude that in addition to being a sportswriter’s best friend due to his quotabilty, Stengel was also a photographer’s favorite as well, his rubbery face full of expression in virtually every shot.

After about five or so hours of this — in which we tabbed over 50 photos for a book which will likely contain about 20 — Goldman then paged through the Hall’s clipping file on Stengel, photocopies of newspaper and magazine articles, jotting down notes to augment some of the book’s tales. While I wandered throughout the rest of the building, he put only a minor dent in the bin before the library closed at 5 PM, but he said he’d gleaned enough choice quotes to include in his tale to make the exercise worthwhile.

A word about the Hall of Fame: if you’re planning on visiting this summer, I strongly advise you to think again. Those looking for the complete picture of the game’s history are in for bitter disappointment if they’re trekking to upstate New York for this sole purpose. With the exception of the bronze plaques and the writers and broadcasters’ wing, the entirety of the Hall’s first floor, containing the game’s most ancient relics, is closed due to construction, as is much of the rest of the museum, which won’t reopen until June 2005.

But a great selection of those artifacts can currently be found in the Hall’s traveling road show, the “Baseball as America” exhibit which is now in Washington, DC (here’s my review of the show from when it was in New York in 2002). While the Hall’s current state is a bit unfortunate, the construction should give the museum a much-needed facelift. I found the Hall I visited in 2000 still somewhat mired in the Doubleday myth — the reason for the Cooperstown site, after all — which has been thoroughly debunked by the game’s historians. “Baseball as America” reflects a more critical, historically accurate take on the national pastime, and if you’re looking for an alternative to the Cooperstown parade I’ve just rained on, hit DC for your baseball fix.

Back to my trip, though a lot of what I did was mundane, it was a pleasure to accompany Goldman through this tour of the Hall’s archives, to come off the bench and provide a small amount of assistance for what I expect will be a great book. If that isn’t in a Futility Infielder’s job description, then I don’t know what is.

But my motives weren’t entirely selfless. Someday I hope to be in the enviable position Goldman is in, looking to put the finishing touches on a baseball book I can call my own. That day is likely at least a couple of years away, but having learned a few of the ropes from one of my peers, I’ll be that much better equipped when my moment arrives.

Not that I wish to keep the mood around here so melancholy, but having spent most of the last couple days away from my computer, I wanted to pass along a few more links on Doug Pappas — both from people who knew him personally and those who only knew his work — before I get back to the business of whatever the heck it I that I do…

• A letter from Evelyn Begley, president of my local SABR chapter had, among other things, some grateful words from Doug’s mother Carolyn and the report that there’s a movement afoot to compile his work into a book which would be one of the next SABR publications. For his work to reach beyond the Internet — and as great as the medium is, we have hundreds of years of human history which tell us that the book is an enduring format — would be a fitting triumph.

• ESPN.com reported Pappas’ passing both as a news story and via a unique tribute from Rob Neyer, who ran down a sample of the stories which Pappas brought to light in his blog — doctors paying teams for the right to treat them, a Minnesota columnist blaming the state legislature for the loss of some expensive but ultimately replaceable players, some bullSelig about advertising on uniforms, more bullSelig about the length of his term as commissioner, etc. — and then wrote:

Doug Pappas might be the best thing that ever happened to the Internet. If you’re not familiar with Pappas’ work, you probably think I’m exaggerating. I’m not.

Without Doug Pappas, neither I nor many thousands of other interested parties would know anything about those stories listed above, because it was Doug who brought them to us in his blog, where he posted new entries almost every day.

…With his intelligence, his energy, his talent, and especially his b.s. detector (always set on HIGH), Doug established a standard that few among us can hope to even approach.

• Salon’s King Kaufman took Pappas’ story into the mainstream as well:

You may not have heard of Pappas, but if you’re a thinking baseball fan you’ve no doubt felt his influence. He was a Manhattan lawyer by trade, but his passion was writing about the business of baseball. No one I’ve ever read has a more thorough understanding of how baseball economics work, and no one, anywhere, was a more fierce enemy of commissioner Bud Selig.

…Pappas was an ace at showing how Selig & Co.’s various arguments about competitive balance, revenue sharing, contraction, the need for a salary cap and new publicly financed stadiums, and other issues were either a pack of lies or the result of a complete misunderstanding of economics. (Draw your own conclusions.)

…I would argue that if you haven’t read Pappas’ eight-part series “The Numbers,” written from December 2001 through April 2002 as the last labor negotiation began to heat up, then you have no business discussing the business of baseball. You’re simply uninformed.

Those of us who love baseball had a watchdog in Pappas, someone to let us know about the damage being done to the game by those running it. I hope someone with anything like his smarts, insight and writing ability can take over that role, but that’s asking a lot. He’ll be sorely missed.

• Baseball Prospectus’ Joe Sheehan hit home with his eloquent tribute:

[O]f all the people I have worked with, I am most proud to have been able to work with Doug Pappas. His efforts to get at the truth of baseball’s economic, labor and public policy issues were ceaseless, their impact lasting. That we were able to get Doug to write for Baseball Prospectus, that I was able to call him a colleague, is one of the most rewarding elements of my career.

It wasn’t just the caliber of his work, which of course was high. It was that he had the courage to stand up and say, “They’re lying. This is the truth,” and back it up with so much evidence that he could not be ignored. Doug had a permanent effect on the way baseball’s off-field issues are covered. He made it right — no, he made it mandatory — to question the claims of baseball’s authorities, and he did it in the face of opposition from some powerful people. When called on the carpet by Bud Selig, Doug calmly presented the facts and refused to be intimidated.

Those who knew Doug remain in mourning, stunned at the loss of a friend at such a young age. A glance around the baseball community on the Web reveals the breadth of his impact, and the loss felt by so many people who perhaps only knew Doug through his writing.

We’re going to have to get past that, and when we do, we have to do the only thing we can do for Doug: carry on his work. Instead of one strong voice braying the truth about the business of baseball, let there be dozens. Instead of one Web site, let there be hundreds. Let’s let the high example Doug Pappas set be the minimum standard we set for our work, so that skepticism about the game’s business side isn’t just warranted, but expected. Let’s make it so that Doug’s legacy isn’t just the work he did, but the work yet to be done by the people who read him and learned from him.

• BP’s Steven Goldman, with whom just I spent an enjoyable 24-hour roadtrip to Cooperstown (more on that next time) in which his name came up many a time:

Baseball, by which I mean baseball, lowercase b, has lost a penetrating mind of great discernment, a gadfly who would not be dissuaded from his job as he saw it even when the Commissioner himself phoned to tell him to cut it out. His muckraking will be missed. He will be missed. Peace be with him.

• Steve Treder’s posting on Baseball Primer summed up why Pappas was so necessary:

I fault the press for being willfully blind and/or silent on the subject. They have no excuse. If the sportswriters get a pass — they don’t have the training or background to knowledgably cover economic issues, or that isn’t what sports section readers want to read about — then business page editors, and/or straight news editors get no pass at all. When taxpayers foot the bill for a pro sports stadium, it’s business news and it’s straight news. When MLB testifies to Congress about their supposed need for an anti-trust exemption, it’s business news and it’s straight news.

Bravo to Forbes magazine for putting the lie to MLB’s financial claims. Boo to just about everyone else in the media for blatantly ignoring the issue.

• Tim Marchman at the New Partisan:

He wasn’t the first to point out that the owners were liars, but he was the first writer to expose their falsehoods in clinical detail and in real time. Using their own numbers, he showed lies about specific details, like the percentage of the game’s revenue going to players,and about large ideas, like the supposed inability of small-market teams to compete.

Pappas detailed the reasons why stadiums are foolish investments for cities, and showed how teams use such tricks as paper tax losses and the sale of their broadcasting rights to parent media companies to systematically understate profits in their attempts to get on the public dole. Parsing the language of the last collective bargaining agreement,he made clear how its luxury tax and revenue-sharing schemes were meant not to help struggling teams but to restrain the Yankees and drive down the high end of player salaries.

…Pappas provided a moral context for journalists to follow, and was not shy about holding them to it. What he understood was that if baseball is really the American game, the way in which it is run and the way in which it is covered tell us a great deal about our national character.

Amen to all of the above.

I watched most of the two Yankees-Angels series over the past couple ofweeks, and though the Yanks took four out of six, Anaheim certainly played them tough. Most memorably ,the two teams split a pair of series-opening extra-inning thrillers, and both Angel wins have come on the nights when the Yanks’ personal rent-a-bitch, Aaron Sele (something like 5-15 lifetime against them coming in), faced Javier Vazquez.

On a team that’s been missing Garrett Anderson (who was finally diagnosed with a form of arthritis that certainly doesn’t bode well for that huge contract he recently signed), Darin Erstad (in an Office Space sense), Tim Salmon, and now Troy Glaus, one of the guys who’s really stood out for the Halos is outfielder Jeff DaVanon. On the season, DaVanon’s hitting .299/.398/.448, but he’s been an even tougher out against the Yanks, .348/.444/.435 with 5 runs scored in 27 plate appearances. He killed them last year as well (.364/.417/.636 with a homer in 12 PA) on his way to a .282/.360/.445 season with 12 homers and 17 steals in 382 PA. This guy is a pest. He’s listed as 6′, but on a team with David Eckstein and Chone Figgins, he too looks like a member of the junior varsity thanks to his crouched batting stance. But with those kind of numbers, he’s certainly earned his wings.

When he burst on the scene last year, I instantly recognized the DaVanon name; his father, Jerry DaVanon, was a card-carrying futility infielder in the 1970s. Digging into both players’ pasts, I found an interesting parallel: neither of them had a decent big-league season until around age 30, but both seemed to turn a corner at that point.

Jerry DaVanon was a first round draft pick of the St. Louis Cardinals in 1966 out of Westmount College in Santa Barbara, California. Chosen by the San Diego Padres in the ’68 expansion draft, he got his first taste of action early in 1969, playing second base for the Pads. In his short time in San Diego, he didn’t hit, and I mean REALLY didn’t hit: .136/.177/.163 in 62 plate appearances, with only one double among his 8 hits, and 0-for-3 in stealing bases. The Padres had seen enough, and shipped him back to St. Louis for two guys you’ve never heard of, including the most excellently named Sonny Ruberto. Finally getting a shot with the Cards, he didn’t do too badly — .300/.391/.450. But he saw only 11 games with the big club in St. Louis the next season, and at the end of the year was shipped off to the Baltimore Orioles for the legendary Moe Drabowski.

The 1971 Orioles were Earl Weaver’s third straight pennant-winner, notching 101 victories but losing a seven-game World Series to Roberto Clemente and the Pittsburgh Pirates. DaVanon was the team’s top infield reserve, but with Davey Johnson, Brooks Robinson and Mark Belanger (who put up a respectable .365 OBP that year) all playing 140-150 games, he only saw action in 38 contests, hitting .235/.340/296 in 94 PA, and didn’t appear in the postseason. He didn’t make the big-league squad the next year, was shipped to the Angels in June for Roger Repoz, and apparently spent the entire year in the minors (for which I don’t have stats). He did see time with the Angels in ’73, appearing in 41 games but getting only 52 trips to the plate, hitting .245/.288/.306. The Cardinals reacquired him at the end of the season and he saw action with them in 1974 but went only 6-for-40 in 30 games.

The winter of 1975 was an active one in the transaction column for DaVanon, as he passed through the hands of four teams in three months, from the Cardinals to the Tigers and then to the Indians before being finally being purchased by the Houston Astros in early April. Again seeing limited time (mired behind another futilityman, Larry Milbourne), DaVanon actually hit pretty well in a relatively inhospitable environment: .278 /.386/.392 in 114 PA and an impressive 16-to-7 walk-to-strikeout ratio. At this point, Davanon had played in parts of six major-league seasons for five different teams without ever reaching 100 at-bats, which has to be a record of sorts, and maxed out at 41 games played. In 1976, the Astros finally increased DaVanon’s playing time; he appeared in 61 games, crossed the magic 100 at-bat threshold, and was a sparkplug, hitting .290/.408 /.402 on a team in which no regular posted an OBP higher than .375.

And then just like that, he was gone. DaVanon was traded to the Cardinals (his third re-acquisition by them) in the same deal which exiled Houston’s former ace and future manager, Larry Dierker. He went 0-for-8 in nine games, was released in May, and never again played in the big leagues, done at 31. In parts of eight seasons he only got 574 plate appearances — about one year’s worth – hitting .234/.331/.315 with 3 homers but drawing 68 walks.

How far over his head had DaVanon played in Houston? Here’s a quick look at his OPS+ numbers, which compare his combined OBP and SLG to the park-adjusted league average:

       PA   OPS+

1969  108    54

1970   20    -1

1971   94    83

1973   52    74

1974   47    23

1975  114   124

1976  130   141

1977    9   -67

TOT   574    86

Basically, he was a solidly below-average hitter except for those two years in Houston, when he turned into a rainbow-covered on-base machine. Why did he do so well? Why did he disappear so suddenly? I really don’t know. Such are the random mysteries of the futility infielder — usually he’s got “retirement” thrust upon him in the form of a pink slip, a departure without ceremony. In DaVanon’s case, the Cardinals’ depth may have had something to do with it; at various times in the 1977 season they had Don Kessinger, Ken Oberkfel, Mike Phillips and Joel Youngblood off the bench and Mike Tyson (no, not that one), Ken Reitz and a 21-year-old Garry Templeton in the starting lineup.

That’s about all I can find out on DaVanon the elder. DaVanon the younger appears to have a lot more natural ability than his father. Interestingly, he’s a switch hitter, as are the sons of other former major leaguers such as Scott Spiezio and Jose Cruz, Jr. After playing for three years at San Diego State University, DaVanon was drafted by the Oakland A’s in the 26th round. He languished in the A’s system despite hitting well: .272/.387/.376 for four different A-ball teams over four seasons, and then .342/.425/.567 at AA Midland, where he made the league’s All-Star Team (as he had in the California League the year before). Even though he was already 25, you’d think Billy Beane might have noticed this bargain basement batter, but apparently not.

DaVanon finally caught a break when the A’s included him in the ’99 trading-deadline deal which sent Randy Velarde to Oakland, and after tearing up AAA pitching at Edmonton (.326/.416/.568), he got his first cup of coffee with the Angels, going 4-for-20 with a triple and a homer. He missed all of 2000 with an injury (what kind I don’t know), but returned to the Pacific Coast League in 2001, tearing up pitching at Salt Lake City (.313/.390/.566) and earning another stint with the Angels. Unfortunately, he hit only .193/.280/.409 in 100 PA, though he did stroke 5 homers. He got a shorter stay in the bigs during the Angels’ World Championship season in ’02, getting only 5 hits, four of which were for extra bases.

Going into the 2003 season, DaVanon looked like a classic AAAA player, a Ken Phelps All-Star type who was 29 years old, sporting a sub-Mendoza .188/.265/.406 career line in about 150 big-league plate appearances, and trying to earn a roster spot on the defending World Champions. But Darin Erstad’s hamstring injury and Tim Salmon’s infirmity opened up playing time in the Angel outfield, and as mentioned before, he had an impressive season on a lackluster team. He had an incredible three days in early June, back-to-back-to-back two-homer games (two of those in the Expos Puerto Rico bandbox) and a total of 10 hits and 10 RBI, and had about a two-month string where his batting average never fell below .329.

Still, Baseball Prospectus was relatively unimpressed by his performance. Here’s what they had to say in BP 2004:

DaVanon is a useful fourth outfielder who had to play a bit too much last year. His performance did validate the decision to non-tender Orlando Palmeiro, who’d played a similar role with the angels from 1999-2002. The power numbers he displayed in ’03 were out of line, and mostly reflect three days in June in which he turned into Jim Thome in the bandbox of San Juan’s Hiram Bithorn Stadium. given his age, even projecting a Stan Javier future is optimistic.

BP’s weighted mean PECOTA projection for him this year is a measly .247/.328/.410 line and a .253 EQA in about 370 PA — this after an excellent .293 EQA last year, pretty decent for a guy who supposedly got too much exposure. I gather that the main reason for the pessimistic projection is his age; relatively unproven fourth outfielder types rarely show so much improvement after 30. But thus far, he’s picked up where he left off, and with Erstad down again, it looks as though our man DaVanon will continue to be a part of the Angels’ lineup. I, for one, am pulling for him. Except when he plays the Yanks, of course.

Satan, check your thermostat. At a time when my regard for ESPN’s empire couldn’t be any lower, Baseball Prospectus‘ Will Carroll called my attention to the fact that that ESPN’s Sortable Stats now include pitchers’ DIPS ERA (or dERA as it’s sometimes called), as well as a stat called DIP% which expresses the ratio of DIPS ERA to actual ERA. Here’s the DIPS ERA entry in their Stats Glossary:

A pitcher’s ERA, independent of the defense behind him. This formula, based on essays by Voros McCracken, assumes that all pitchers have consistent BIPA (See Above), and adjusts accordingly. The DIPS ratios on ESPN use the DIPS 2.0 formula, are not park-adjusted, and do not adjust for knuckleball pitchers.

No link to the 2.0 formula is provided, but nonetheless, this is verrrrry interesting and useful. Among the other sabermetric stats listed are BIPA (Balls in Play Average, or what I’ve been calling Batting Average on Balls In Play — BABIP) and Component ERA (ERC) which is an estimated ERA based on hits and walks allowed rather than runs but as Voros showed, wasn’t as useful from a predictive standpoint.

Current leaders in DIPS ERA among qualifiers:

Pitcher         dERA

Randy Johnson   2.53

Ben Sheets      2.75

Roger Clemens   2.83

Curt Schiling   2.84

Carlos Zambrano 2.89

Jake Peavy      2.91

Matt Clement    3.05

Oliver Perez    3.09

Josh Beckett    3.20

Roy Oswalt      3.27

Dark thought: ESPN is stealing the stats from Larry Mahnken’s Daily DIPS Report like they were (allegedly) pirating minor-league scores and statistics from The Sports Network. I might believe it if they were actually park-adjusted — or if Larry’s report were still up, which it appears not to be at the moment (I know he recently found an error and was planning to iron it out).

Anyway, this is very cool. One small step for sabermetrics, one giant leap for Jay’s time spent doing other things in the offseason…

Thanks to Studes of the great Baseball Graphs site, The Hardball Times has its first Win Shares reports of the seasons. I decided to take a quick breeze through the Yankees, foregoing the rounding which Bill James mandates in the Win Shares book, because at this early stage in the season the difference between, say, 1.5 and 2.4 shares is pretty substantial. Rank refers to same position in the AL, with all outfielders lumped together, and the total win shares unrounded:

HITTERS    POS  OFF  DEF  TOT  RANK

Posada      C   5.8  0.2  6.0    2

Giambi     1B   5.9  0.0  5.9    1

Clark      1B   1.6  0.0  1.6   12T

Cairo      2B   1.4  0.5  1.9   10

Wilson     2B   0.0  0.6  0.6   16

Jeter      SS   0.0  1.8  1.8   10T

Rodriguez  3B   3.2  2.6  5.8    3

Matsui     OF   4.1  0.9  5.0   13

Williams   OF   1.0  0.6  1.6   39 

Lofton     OF   1.1  0.6  1.7   37T 

Sheffield  OF   3.3  1.0  4.3   18T

Crosby     OF   1.5  0.3  1.8   36

Sierra     OF   2.6  0.0  2.6   29

The most glaring thing to note about the numbers above is the big zero in Derek Jeter’s offensive contribution, but then his .195/.251/.277 line is easy to confuse with another offensive cipher, second baseman Enfeebled Wilson. Miguel Cairo, who thankfully seems to have stolen the second base job from Wilson, has been more valuable than Jeter, Bernie Williams, or Kenny Lofton, with the latter two outproduced by the exiled Bubba Crosby thus far. On the positive side, Jorge Posada, Jason Giambi, and Alex Rodriguez have all been near the top of their respective positions. Rodriguez leads AL third basemen in defensive win shares by a wide margin, over a full win share ahead of Texas’ Hank Blalock, lending further credence to the early Gold Glove hype. In fact A-Rod leads all AL players in defensive win shares. Hideki Matsui, who thus far has put up a .277/.387/.454 line with 23 walks in 155 plate appearances, has been more than solid. The rest of the Yankee lineup has been in the nether regions of their respective positions thus far, though if you lump the centerfielders and DH candidates together you get 9.3 win shares over two positions, or somewhere between the values of Matsui and Sheffield at each one — credible contributions thanks to Ruben Sierra and Tony Clark.

Over to the pitching… but before I do it’s important to note, as the THT article does, “Ace relievers will receive credit for more Win Shares per inning pitched than a starting pitcher will. That’s because the innings an ace reliever pitches (late and close) are more important than most of those pitched by a starter.”

PITCHERS  POS  WS

Brown     SP  4.3

Vazquez   SP  2.8

Mussina   SP  2.0

Lieber    SP  1.0

Contreras SP  0.0

Rivera    RP  4.1

Gordon    RP  3.2

Quantrill RP  2.5

White     RP  1.3

Prinz     RP  0.6

Osborne   RP  0.3

DePaula   RP  0.2

Kevin Brown has been the most valuable starter on the staff by far, and the bullpen, led by Mariano Rivera, Tom Gordon and Paul Quantrill, has produced more win shares than the rotation. Fifth starter Jose Contreras has been baking donuts, though he’s apparently ready to rejoin the rotation, which is okay when the alternative is Tanyon Sturtze (Donovan Osborne having been mercifully designated for assignment). Also putting up zero shares have been Felix Heredia, Scott Proctor, and Alex Graman, while backup catcher John Flaherty is the only zero-producing position player with any significant time.

With Sturtze, Cairo, and Flaherty on the roster, these Yanks are starting to wear the Tampa connection on their sleeves. I mean, don’t their scouts ever leave the state of Florida? Just once I’d like to see them turn some west coast team’s trash into role-player treasure instead of either exhuming washed-up Devil Rays or else dredging the banks of Mississippi River for undecomposed ex-Cardinals from Torre’s time there (see Osborne as well as such past luminaries as Todd Zeile, Allen Watson, and Tony Fossas). Alas, that’s a rant for another day.

But Sturtze is worth a rant all by himself. This is a 34-year-old righty pitcher whose stat line shows a 5.20 ERA and an 88 ERA+ in over 600 major-league innings. He doesn’t strike out batters (5.3 per 9 innings), his control is lousy (1.4 K/W ratio), and he gives up plenty of homers (1.3 per 9). Last year he went 7-6 with a 5.94 ERA in Toronto, which must have felt like heaven after his 4-18, 5.18 ERA death march in Tampa in 2002. This guy, quite frankly, can’t pitch for shit, and it’s baffling that Brian Cashman even wasted his long-distance minutes prying him loose from the Dodgers for “future considerations,” which is a nice way of saying, “Assuming he pitches up to his true talent level, you owe me nothing but the first round at the bar, big Bri.”

For the first six weeks of the baseball season, I was living in Dodger denial. But Alex Cora got my attention on Wednesday night. If you haven’t watched the Dodger shortstop’s epic at-bat from May 12, head over to MLB.com to do so. Cora battled Chicago Cubs pitcher Matt “Pubic Beard” Clement for 18 pitches, fouling off 14 straight before launching a home run over rightfielder Sammy Sosa. It was only the light-hitting (.241/.301/.344 career) Dodger shortstop’s second home run of the season, but as Jon Weisman reminds us, it really was something to get excited about, with the Chavez Ravine crowd roaring after every foul ball.

Cora hasn’t been quite the cipher he usually is thus far this season; he’s now hitting .284/.370/.421 in 109 plate appearances, which is pretty damn useful coming from a middle infielder, particularly one playing half the time in Dodger Stadium for an offensively challenged team. At 22-13 and atop the NL West, the Dodgers have been one of the season’s biggest surprises thus far, and the only reasons I haven’t written about them are that I neither wanted to jinx what was happening out in Chavez Ravine nor get my expectations up too early. But now that we’re in the middle of May, and even though they’re riding a three-game losing streak entering Sunday, I officially have Hope for them. To paraphrase a line from the most tired rock song since the dawn of time, we haven’t had that sprit here since nineteen ninety-…seven.

Superficially, it’s no mystery as to how the Dodgers are doing it; they’re actually hitting the ball and scoring runs, even while their pitching hasn’t been nearly as stingy (last year’s team had the fewest combined runs scored and runs allowed compared to the league average of any major league team ever): Here’s a comparison between the two teams, including their Pythagorean and actual winning percentages:

       AVG   OBP   SLG  RS/G  RA/G   PYWP   WP

2003  .243  .303  .368  3.54  3.43  .515  .525

2004  .271  .329  .427	4.66  4.11  .556  .629

The offense has added about 30 points of batting average and about 30 points of isolated power (SLG – AVG), increasing their slugging percentage by about 60 points and adding over a run per game to the scoreboard. As a team, the Dodgers are scoring 32% more runs than last year, even while allowing 20% more. But they’re far outstripping their expected (Pythagorean) winning percentage, adding to manager Jim Tracy’s smoke-and-mirrors legend. The biggest reason for that magic is that the team won its first ten one-run games (they lost to the Reds 2-1 on Friday to end that string), one short of the 1972 New York Mets’ record for consecutive one-run wins at the start of the season.

Viewed from afar, an offhand assumption would be that the addition of centerfielder Milton Bradley and the return to form of a healthy Shawn Green are what’s powering the O. But neither of those two is exactly tearing the cover off of the ball. Bradley’s at .254/.324/.444, while Green is at .236/.345/.465. Instead, the Dodgers’ most valuable hitter has been Adrian Beltre, who’s finally delivering on some of that much-heralded promise by hitting .357/.366/.629 with 10 homers. Even though he’s a free-agent of his contract, you can’t call this his walk year, as he’s gotten just TWO bases on balls thus far, a curious anomaly even for such a notorious free swinger (one walk for every 13.6 plate appearances in his major-league career). On the other side of the free-swinging coin, catcher Paul Lo Duca has accompanied an eye-popping line (.369/.410/.467) by only striking out three times in 134 plate appearances. In keeping with the up-the middle strength, perennial HACKING MASS All-Star Cesar Izturis has joined Cora by doing a remarkable imitation of a semi-useful hitter — .281/.319/.363, which is positively Ruthian by his career .246/.270/.319 standards.

To examine the Dodger hitters’ performance a bit more closely, I decided to compare they’ve done over the course of the season with Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA weighted mean projections for all Dodgers with over 100 plate appearances. Just for kicks, I’ve tacked on each player’s 90th percentile (pipe dream) and 10th percentile (pulse-free undead) projections for EQA, which normalizes the player’s park- and league-adjusted OBP and SLG into a batting average scale number where .260 is average and .300 is outstanding.

             ----- ACTUAL -----    --- PECOTA WM ----

             AVG  OBP  SLG  EQA    AVG  OBP  SLG  EQA  90th  10th

Beltre      .357 .366 .629 .332   .259 .312 .447 .265  .291  .234 

Lo Duca     .369 .410 .467 .309   .271 .331 .400 .262  .286  .223

Roberts     .265 .382 .386 .309   .257 .326 .334 .248  .281  .196

Green       .236 .345 .465 .284   .286 .369 .529 .309  .337  .276

Cora        .284 .370 .429 .285   .252 .311 .361 .242  .266  .202

Bradley     .254 .324 .444 .265   .265 .350 .418 .284  .310  .251

Izturis     .281 .319 .363 .248   .247 .281 .328 .219  .244  .189

Encarnacion .231 .265 .408 .233   .263 .318 .447 .269  .294  .238

Five of the players (Beltre, Lo Duca, Roberts, Cora, and Izturis) are outstripping even the rosiest projections thus far, while two of them (Green and Encarnacion) are very close to their worst nightmares, and a third (Bradley) is well below expectations. Green and Bradley represent the only two players of the above bunch who projected as significantly above average (that is, with an EQA better than .260) coming into the season. Overall the team has put up a .269 EQA, compared to 2003’s dead stinking last in the NL mark of .244.

I was under the impression that manager Jim Tracy was making an effort to limit Lo Duca’s time behind the plate so that the catcher doesn’t suffer the same kind of late-season burnout as he has in the past — .323/.380/.489 before the All-Star break over the past three seasons, .252/.306/.374 after the break. But Lo Duca has started 27 out of the team’s first 35 games (77%), a pace which would put him at 125 games on the season, right around last year’s level. It hasn’t helped that capable backup Dave Ross is off to a slow start at .152/.171/.364. A couple of other situations that bear watchign are Dave Roberts’ injury and Shawn Green’s position. Roberts went on the DL with a hamstring problem on May 8; his presence in the lineup would allow the team to forego their most disappointing hitter, Juan Encarnacion in favor of a Roberts-Bradley-Green trio… if only they could find a suitably warm body to fill in for Green at first base. Robin Ventura with a .653 OPS in 34 at bats, has apparently passed his sell date, and it’s doubtful 20-year-old hot prospect James Loney will be ready for The Show this eason. If I’m Jim Tracy, I’d give hot-hitting utilityman Jose Hernandez (.356/.420/.667 in 50 PA) a shot until his bat grows cold, spot Lo Duca there instead of in the outfield on days when he’s not catching, and hope that DePodesta can pry somebody useful loose from another team (paging Justin Morneau…).

Turning to the pitching, as mentioned before, it hasn’t been up to the high standards the Dodgers set last season, but it’s been an interesting mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Overall, the starters have put up a very unspectacular 4.59 ERA, while the bullpen has posted a stellar 2.62 mark:

          IP   ERA  WMERA    90     10

Nomo      40  7.14   4.13   2.99   5.53

Weaver    45  4.84   4.10   3.09   5.31

Perez     53  3.59   3.60   2.59   4.98

Ishii     42  3.83   5.17   3.11   7.30

Alvarez   31  1.15   3.83   2.40   5.46 

Lima      25  6.12   6.77   4.17  10.12



Gagne     16  1.69   2.32   0.34   3.88

Mota      20  1.37   3.30   2.15   6.16

Dreifort  17  3.71   3.79   2.36   5.37

Sanchez   17  2.70   5.64   3.22   9.55

Coming into the season, the Dodgers projected to have three solid starters based on their weighted mean ERA projections, four if they’d actually put last year’s injury comeback surprise, Wilson Alvarez, in the loop from the get-go. But the contributions they’ve gotten thus far have been all over the map. Putative ace Nomo has been Hideous, particularly in his last start, when the Cubs bombed him for six runs in 1.1 innings. He’s lost three straight decisions after being an improbable 3-1 despite a 6.55 ERA in his first four starts. Nomo’s always been an extreme hit-or-miss type of pitcher in that when he’s good, he’s great and when he’s bad, he’s awful. Coming off of October shoulder surgery, his velocity is down and his ERA is in airplane territory, which should cause some concern. Odalis Perez has been dead-on with his projected performance. Alvarez hasn’t allowed an earned run in two starts since returning to the rotation nine days ago, when he replaced Jose Lima, whose PECOTA projections are as certifiably insane as the pitcher himself (at least he found a new way to contribute). Jeff Weaver hasn’t been very good, but the move out of pinstripes has at least stopped the hemorrhaging. Kaz Ishii has a tidy ERA, but he’s walked 27 men in 42.1 innings, compared to only 18 strikeouts, a recipe for disaster if there ever was one. Take away his shutout of the anemic Giants , and he’s got a 4.86 ERA. In his most recent start, he lasted only four innings, allowing one hit but walking SEVEN.

In the bullpen, Eric Gagne has continued the dominance which earned him lst year’s NL Cy Young award and has now converted 73 consecutive save opportunities. Setup man Guillermo Mota has been extremely good as well. Alvarez was extremely good (2.16 ERA in 16.2 innings) out of the pen, and Lima (4.50 in 12 innings) has been useful. Rookie Duaner Sanchez, who had only 18 innings of major-league experience over three cup-of-coffee seasons, has been very good, striking out nearly a man per inning. But the most pleasant surprise has been the contribution of Darren Dreifort, earning $11.4 million in the fourth year of a massive 5-year, $55 million contract. After making only 26 starts and pitching 155 below-average innings in the first three years of that albatross of a contract, the Dodgers have sensibly shifted the fragile Dreifort to the pen, making him the most expensive setup man in history but a reliable contributor thus far. Looking at Baseball Prospectus’ Reliever Run Expectation charts, the Dodger relievers are tied for second in the majors, having allowed 21.3 runs less than expected based on the base-out situations they’ve inherited. With the exception of Brad Falkenborg, who’s pitched only 6.2 innings, every member of the pen is on the positive side of the ledger, headed by Gagne (6.0), Mota (5.0), Alvarez (4.5) and Sanchez (3.6).

The Dodgers’ outperformance of their Pythagorean projection, success in one-run games, and off-the-charts boost from some of the hitters all suggest that they may return to earth before too long, and indeed, the current losing streak may represent the beginning of the elevator ride down. But in a weak division, with last year’s champs reeling, the Dodgers actually have a fighting chance, particularly if a pair of highly touted rookies deliver on their promise. Twenty-year-old starter Edwin Jackson, who went 2-1 with a 2.45 ERA in 22 late-season innings last year, has needed some seasoning at Las Vegas, but even his his 10th percentile PECOTA projection of a 4.17 ERA looks mighty tasty next to the likes of Nomo and Weaver, and he may be back in the majors by mid-summer. If new GM Paul DePodesta can provide the kind of in-season upgrades that helped make his mentor in Oakland famous, this team has a real shot at going to the postseason for the first time since 1996. With my MLB.tv package, I’ll be keeping an eye on them.

I haven’t had much luck on my trips to the ballpark the past two weeks. My trek to last Wendesday’s Mets-Giants game was cut short by a rain delay-induced exodus, though I did get to see an historic Mike Piazza home run before departing in the fifth. Tuesday night’s trip to Yankee Stadium was even shorter and more rain-soaked, and I wasn’t around to see the Yanks rally back from a 3-0 defecit to beat the Angels in ten innings.

Originally, I’d planned to go to the game with Alex Belth, who joined my ticket group this past winter. Alex had been single-minded in his pursuit of a ticket to an early-season Angels game, primarily because he wanted to see Vladimir Guerrero in his new halo, or something. But the day before the game Alex had to bail; it seems I’m not the only one who’s been burning the candle at both ends. So I substituted my old college friend Ben, who took my girlfriend to Game Seven last year (it’s at the point where Yankee fans don’t even need to detail which Game Seven they’re tallking about anymore).

When I left work from Brooklyn, I figured that the edge would come off of the muggy mid-80s temperatures which had kept my brow damp all day long. The A/C at the place I’m currently freelancing has been decidedly below the Mendoza Line, and all day long I’d stolen glances at the cement floor, yearning for a cool nap underneath my desk. I imagined the warm day would make for a pleasant night at the ballpark. But I was a little unnerved when a pair of guys in obviously rain-drenched t-shirts got on the 4 train at Grand Central, hoping it was just a brief cloudburst. By the time I got to Yankee Stadium, things appeared to have righted themselves, though Ben confirmed the shower, which struck just before he boarded the same 4 train in midtown.

We settled into our seats in the tier box section of the upper deck, just to the third-base side of home plate, buzzing about the night’s Yankee starter, Kevin Brown. We found our seats next to a father with two kids, an eight-year-old on the aisle and a six-year-old immediately on my left. This stressed me out a bit, as I’m not the most kid-friendly gentleman with whom to watch a ballgame. “What’s the over/under on which inning I piss this kid’s dad off by shouting ‘fuck’?” I asked Ben. “No shit, he said, shaking his head. “I’ve got the mouth of a fuckin’ sailor.” We had a good laugh over that one as he spotted the Beck’s beer man and procured us a round.

We soon needed it. Brown struck out Eckstein, a difficult thing to do, to lead off. Chone Figgins then hit a blooper which must have landed about six inches in front of centerfielder Kenny Lofton, who refused to dive. I was about to yell at Lofton to take up his oft-threatened career as a valet, but thinking of my surroundings, ended up muttering “Go park some fucking cars, man,” into my beer. Vlad the Impaler then roped Brown’s first pitch into the left-center gap, which not only scored the speedy Figgins but could probably have sent him around home and back to first on the play. Two pitches later, Troy Glaus golfed a shot into the rightfield bleachers, his league-leading 11th of the year, and suddenly the Yanks were down 3-0.

The father to my left had sent his elder son on a mission to buy a program with a scorecard for the younger one. “He’ll help us catch up,” he told the younger one, nodding to me. “You’ll help me catch up,” lisped the six-year-old through missing front teeth s he looked up at me. I gazed down at my beer, puzzled, imagingn the kid drinking one as well — until I remembered that it was my scorekeeping he was talking about. “Sure, sure, kid.”

As the dad reminded the kid of the nuances of of a relatively simple scoring method, I though back to the first time I tried to score a game — Game One of the 1978 World Series between the Dodgers and the Yanks. I was eight years old, and my parents left my brother and me alone for the evening, parking us in front of the TV. “Do you know how to keep a box score?” my dad had asked. “It’s a way of writing down what happened in the game.” Rushed for time, he didn’t get to explain further, so I dutifully wrote down event by event for a few innings (“Dusty Baker homered!”) before my attention span got the better of me. When he got home later, he looked over my work, then showed me a system of lines, dots, shading and numbered fielders that I still take to the ballpark every time.

The Anaheim third had a couple of adventurous plays for novice scorers. Figgins squirted a double down the leftfield line and then took third on Vlad’s fly to centerfield (8, but no SF, kid). Glaus grounded to second, but Miguel Cairo threw home, nailing Figgins at the plate (FC 4-2). On what might have been a busted hit-and-run, Glaus then tried to steal and Posada gunned him down (CS 2-6). Just as he had for every other half-inning, the kid turned to me and asked, “How many hits in that inning? How many runs?” I tried to explain that he could just look at the scoreboard, but after about the third time I realized that concept still eluded the tyke.

The Yanks got two back in the third. With one out, Anaheim starter Kelvim Escobar walked Cairo. “Walking the number nine hitter is a bad idea in this lineup,” I declared to everyone within earshot, and soon enough I was proven right. Lofton drew a walk and then Derek Jeter doubled to the base of the centerfield wall, scoring Cairo. Alex Rodriguez slapped a sharp single through the left side, and Lofton came home, cutting the score to 3-2.

In the top of the fourth, the rain began pelting us. Ben was in shorts and a t-shirt and didn’t seem to mind, while I had a jacket — the wrong jacket, a custom-made corduroy and leather badass jacket that I didn’t want to see soaked. Neither did I wish to douse my iPod or my scorebook, so we trekked down and around to take cover in the Loge level. At that point Ben went on a tirade about the covered environment. “If I had to watch games from the loge, I don’t even think I’d come to the ballpark,” he said, “Upper deck is where it’s at.” I nodded in agreement. We settled near the rightfield foul pole and talked NBA playoffs during the delay; with my Utah Jazz having missed the postseason for the first time in nearly 20 years, I haven’t even seen a whole game, but the local angle with Pistons coach Larry Brown’s feeble attempts to browbeat the New Jersey Nets young coach, Lawrence Frank, had piqued my interest.

Within a half-hour, play had resumed. The Angels had put a man on third as the rain had started via a Jeff DaVanon double and a fly ball. Bengie Molina lofted a long fly to right-center which Lofton ran down, but the ball was deep enough to score DaVanon, 4-2. Shane Halter struck out to end the inning, and before the next frame could start, the rain retuned. Ben and I wandered out to the concourse and stood around for about 20 minutes as I explained that if the game went less than five innings, none of it counted. “None of it? Wow. The homers?” Washed away. The idea seemed to blow his mind. “I did not know that.” Finally, we pulled the plug and piled onto a crowded 4 train full of wet fans.

As it turned out, play resumed after a 1 hour, 48 minute delay and the game, the remainder of which I caught on TV, turned into a classic. The Yanks tied the score 4-4 in the fifth on a Cairo single, a Lofton triple, and an A-Rod single. The Angels retook the lead in the next half-inning when Vlad crushed a pitch to right-center off of Brown, who had strangely waited out both rain delays to stay on the mound. The Bombers took a 6-5 lead in the eighth off of their nemesis from the 2002 postseason, Francisco “K-Rod” Rodriguez, as Derek Jeter stroked an RBI single and then A-Rod reached on a two-out error, scoring Lofton.

Mariano Rivera came on in the ninth for the Yanks and you could just see it all wrapped up in a neat little package, another great comeback topped off by Mo dropping the hammer. But not on this night. With one out, Rivera yielded a hit to rookie Angel first baseman Casey Kotchman, his first in the bigs. Kotchman went off for a pinch-runner as the Yanks retrieved the ball, Jorge Posada flipping it to him as he crossed the foul line. Molina, the light-hitting catcher, was the next hitter, and he shocked everybody by slamming a two-run homer over the rightfield wall. Rivera could be seen mouthing, “Oh my God!” as he watched the ball and the Yankee lead disappear — his first blown save since last August, a 27-save streak.

But the Yanks would not die. With one out, Jorge Posada singled off of Troy Percival and then yielded to pinch-runner Homer Bush, who promptly stole second. Hideki Matsui walked and then Ruben Sierra, a man with more than his share of clutch hits in this young season, drove Bush home by lining a single up the middle. The Yanks won it in the tenth as Gary Sheffield doubled home A-Rod, topping off a wet, wild, and wacky night of baseball which ended nearly six-and-a-half hours after it began.

Am I sorry I left in the face of this classic? Hell no. Call me jaded, but after being hot and sweaty all day long and then soaked at the park, curling up on the couch wearing dry clothes, beer in hand and A/C on full blast in front of this epic was exactly where I wanted to be last night. Since the Yankees are going to let us exchange our tickets for another (lesser) game, it’s a really a no-lose situation. Just like the Yanks themselves these days.

As you may have noticed from the comments or the home page, things are a little different around here today. Blogger rolled out a new system as I was trying to post my Productive Outs follow-up late last night, and in a case of late-night early-adoption blues, I tried to see what would happen.

The good things: many of Blogger’s features now behave in a similar fashion to Movable Type blogs; individual pages are built for each post and include comments built in instead of as a third-party extension. The permalink system is now based on the article title instead of a long string of numbers, which might be easier to remember if…

The bad things: .. there wasn’t some glitch which had elminated a directory level in some of my posts. So if you see a link that goes:

http://futilityinfielder.com/2004/05/productive-outs-revisited.shtml

as on the home page‘s blog box and you get a “not found,” the proper structure is:

http://futilityinfielder.com/blog/2004/05/productive-outs-revisited.shtml

Another bad thing is that unlike the third-party comment systems, or MT’s built-in one, this one has no field for either an email address or a home page link. I encourage those of you commenting (and I wish there were more of you) to include either one or the other, because I always take comments from those who stand behind them with their “identity” much more seriously than semi-anonymous ones.

Anyway, enough for now. Please feel free to email me if you’re having trouble with any part of the new system, and otherwise, enjoy!