My first glimpse of the 2004 season’s stateside edition was a memorable one. Flipping back and forth between ESPN2’s coverage of Monday night’s Giants-Astros matchup and the pregame for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Game, I caught Houston manager Jimy Williams waddling to the mound to confer with starter Roy Oswalt. The ‘Stros held a 4-1 lead, but with one out in the eighth and runners on first and second, that three-run lead looked all too precarious as Barry Bonds stepped into the box.

Williams conversed with Oswalt at length, drawing a complaint from ESPN’s Rick Sutcliffe, who suggested that the pitcher would stiffen up the longer the manager deliberated. In the end, Williams stuck with his starter, and the move backfired. Bonds lined Oswalt’s first pitch over the rightfield wall for a three-run homer, tying the game and moving him within one dinger of godfather Willie Mays’ 660 homers. I was hardly joyful — I’d rather see the Giants lose than just about any other team, and I’m no Bonds fan — but I had to admire the emphatic point which the slugger had made.

As for the Astros, I’ve drastically overestimated them during the Jimy Williams era. My preseason predictions have had them winning the NL Central in both 2002 and 2003, even taking the pennant in ’02. I’d always held that Williams got a raw deal in Boston, and that Larry Dierker, who won four NL Central titles in five seasons but never won a postseason matchup, got jobbed even worse. Perhaps my prognostications represented too much wishcasting, but after seeing Williams last night and reviewing my performance, I’ve decided that I won’t get fooled again. Houston underperformed their Pythagorean projection by seven games last season and by three the year before, and while the front office bears a good amount of responsibility for saddling the team with the likes of Brad Ausmus and Jose Vizcaino, it was Williams’ Geoff Blum fetish (449 PA to a .262/.295/.379 hitter) as much as anything else that cost them the NL Central — lost by one game to the Cubs — last year. Eugh. So regardless of the presence of Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens, you won’t catch me predicting the Astros to win anything this season.

Having pondered my Williams fetish, in the interest of fair disclosure I decided that before I offer my obligatory set of predictions for the 2004 season, I would reexamine my track record to see how well I’ve done. I’ve compared my predictions to the final standings for 2002 and 2003 using a formula based on an old Bill James method of calculating how well two lists agree. In a five-team division, the top team gets five points for my predicted finish, the second-place team four, the third place three, and so on. The actual finishers are awarded points in the same manner. The two numbers for each team are multiplied, yielding five products, which are added together and divided by a possible (5 x 5) + (4 x 4) + (3 x 3) + (2 x 2) + (1 x 1) = 55 points. For six-team divisions you’ve got a 6 x 6 factor, for a four-team division the maximum is 4 x 4. The idea is that predicting the team at the top is worth significantly more than predicting the team at the bottom.

Since this crude method tends to yield figures in the 90% percent range, I decided to add bonus points for my naming the correct playoff teams, or rather to penalize myself for NOT naming the correct ones. I went with 15 points for each correct division winner and Wild Card winner, and awarded 10 points if one of my division picks ended up with the Wild Card or vice versa. I then compared my performance with one derived as if last year’s standings and Wild Card were the prediction for the following year. I’m not trying to trumpet my expertise, just establish a baseline for my own performance so that I can review it in the future, though I invite any other bloggers who’ve been publishing in a similar manner to add up their own scores.

My 2002 Predictions

AL East: Yanks, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Devil Rays, Orioles = 54/55 points

AL Central: Twins, White Sox, Indians, Tigers, Royals = 54/55

AL West: Mariners, A’s, Angels, Rangers = 27/31

Wild Card: A’s

AL subtotal: 135/141 Playoff teams: 40/60

AL total: 175/201 = 87.1% AL baseline: 158/201 = 78.6%

NL East: Braves, Mets, Marlins, Phillies, Expos = 45/55

NL Central: Astros, Cardinals, Cubs, Reds, Brewers, Pirates = 85/91

NL West: Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Padres, Giants, Rockies = 50/55

Wild Card: Mets

NL subtotal: 180/201 Playoff teams: 30/60

NL total: 210/261 = 80.5% NL baseline: 230/261 = 88.1%

ML total = 385/462 = 83.3% ML baseline = 388/462 = 84.0%

2003

AL East: Yanks, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Orioles, Devil Rays = 55/55

AL Central: Twins, White Sox, Indians, Royals, Tigers = 54/55

AL West: A’s, Angels, Mariners, Rangers = 29/31

Wild Card: Red Sox

AL subtotal: 138/141 Playoff Teams: 60/60

AL total score: 198/201 = 98.5% AL baseline 183/201 = 91.0%

NL East: Phillies, Braves, Expos, Mets, Marlins = 47/55

NL Central: Astros, Cardinals, Cubs, Reds, Pirates, Brewers = 87/91

NL West: Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Giants, Rockies, Padres = 51/55

Wild Cards: Dodgers

NL subtotal: 185/201 Playoff teams: 0/60

NL total score: 185/261 = 70.9% NL baseline score = 207/261 = 79.3%

ML total: 383/462 = 82.9% ML baseline: 390/462 = 84.4%

Two-year totals

AL: 92.8% (baseline 84.8%)

NL: 75.7% (baseline 83.7%)

ML: 83.1% (baseline 84.1%)

Clearly I’m far better at predicting the AL than the NL, which is what you might expect given that 80-90 percent of the games I watch are in the Junior Circuit. Overall, I’m just a hair below the baseline, thanks to that lousy NL performance and the fact that there’s far more room to get in trouble in the with the six-team Central Division. From the looks of things, at times my NL projections are just that — me projecting my desired outcomes onto the teams, rather than predicting what will happen.

With all of that baggage in mind, I offer you my 2004 predictions:

AL East: Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Orioles, Devil Rays.

The more things change, the more they stay the same; I see this division finishing in the same order for the seventh straight year. Both the Red Sox and the Yanks have made a lot of offseason noise, and both start the regular season with injury-related question marks here and there. I see the Sox problems — Nomar, Pedro — as potentially more devastating than the Yanks’. And while the 3-4-5 of A-Rod, Giambi, and Sheffield is going to cause pitchers a lot of pain this year, don’t be too shocked when many of last year’s surprising Boston hitters return to earth. The Jays and O’s will both be tougher than in past years, but not enough so to topple what at this point feels like the natural order of things. Still, this will turn out to be one mother of a division. Oh, and you can take this to the bank: Lou Piniella will get mad at a pitcher at some point.

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

I’m quite tempted to pick last year’s surprising Royals to win this division over the Twins, who haven’t been so constructive in their moves. That glut of young outfielders and corner hitters turned into… resigning Shannon Stewart while letting Latroy Hawkins and Eddie Guardado walk? Eeek. In the end I still think the talent that Minnesota has on hand is better than that of KC, and the pitching, particularly with Johan Santana in the rotation for a full season, will separate the teams. This division sure won’t fall to the White Sox, with Ozzie Guillen’s head set to explode by Memorial Day when those first-inning sac bunts stop paying off. Cleveland is still a couple of years away from having an impact in this division, while Detroit will bear some resemblance to a major-league club by losing only 100-110 games instead of pushing the 120 envelope.

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

I’ve scratched my head several times wondering whether the A’s have improved enough to withstand the much-improved Angels. While I’m tempted to just trust that Billy Beane knows what he’s doing, I see question marks from Mark Mulder and Rich Harden that could really hamper the team, and I’m less than certain Arthur Rhodes can keep the closer job to which he’s been annointed. On the other hand, I’m interested to see if the much-heralded Bobby Crosby was worth letting Miguel Tejada walk, and whether Bobby Kielty, long a favorite, can overcome a rough season and hit like the one in the catalog. And the world will be a better place if we can hear the name Scutaro over and over again. In the end, I’m more impressed by the Angels’ addition of Vlad Guerrero, Bartolo Colon and to a lesser extent Jose Guillen and Kelvim Escobar, the latter of whom dearly needed a change of scenery. I don’t like the decision to move their best defensive outfielder, Darin Erstad, to first base and watch Garrett “The Gazelle” Anderson roam center, but I’m not convinced it will hold up for very long either, so I’m picking the Angels. In Seattle the Bavasi regime already has fans pining for the heady days of Stand Pat Gillick, and the likes of Raul Ibanez and Rich Aurilia will remind the rest of us that signing mediocre free agents on the dark side of 30 is a losing game. Pitching will keep the M’s respectable, but not enough so to win out. Texas finished last with A-Rod, it will finish last without him even less impressively than before.

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

With Greg Maddux gone, the Braves’ pitching staff enters a whole new era; Mike Hampton, Russ Ortiz, and John Thomson will hardly be confused with Maddux-Glavine-Smoltz in their prime. Thse Braves will give up runs, and with the losses of big bats such as Javy Lopez and Gary Sheffield, they’ll have a tougher time scoring them as well. Among the regulars, only Chipper Jones, J.D. Drew and Marcus Giles even project OBPs above .350, and if Drew gets 400 at-bats Atlanta should consider themselves lucky. It still won’t be enough; the amazing run of success ends here. The single biggest obstacle the Phils face besides injuries is manager Larry Bowa; they’re solid at just about every position and have a strong bench which can make the questions of whether Pat Burrell and David Bell bounce back easier to stomach. I’d put my nickel on Philly and double it when they ax the red-ass. Despite the full-season presences of Dontrelle Willis, Josh Beckett, and Miguel Cabrera, Marlins will remind us that last year’s championship was the kind of thing that comes to southern Florida only once every six or seven years. Ivan Rodriguez and Derek Lee represent a lot of high-grade offense to replace, and they simply haven’t done so. Despite the loss of Vladimir Guerrero, the Expos have enough talent to put up a lot of runs, with a strong foundation of Nick Johnson, Jose Vidro, Brad Wilkerson, and Carl Everett, and Tony Batista and Orlando Cabrera are plus hitters for their positons as well. Where they’ll have trouble is in the rotation, where Livan Hernandez and Tomo Okha can no longer hide behind departed ace Javier Vazquez. Expect lots of gopher balls, especially in Puerto Rico, and don’t look for any love from the cartel when in-season upgrades might actually help. The Mets will make people pine for the days when there were two major league teams in New York.

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

While I’m a bit less emphatic with Mark Prior sidelined, I still see the Cubs’ improved pitching — upgrading Maddux over Shawn Estes and adding LaTroy Hawkins — as separating them from the pack, Dusty Baker be damned. Aside from what I’ve already said about the Astros, Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio have, like most of us, gotten older. Pettitte and Clemens may improve the already-strong rotation, but Jimy will find a way to give those gains back by wasting more at-bats on offensive ciphers to be named later. The Cardinals will be competitive with Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen, Jim Edmonds, and Edgar Renteria in the lineup, but they don’t have the pitching to run with the big boys here, especially if Woody Williams’ arm falls off. Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee will continue to play their too-poor-to-compete cards until the fans build them new ballparks, which… wait, they already did that. Well, they’re really screwed now.

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

Somebody has to win this division, right? Tempted though I am to wishcast the Dodgers into first place, I’ve restrained myself from doing so, with the caveat that since it will only take about 85-88 games to win this division, this one will probably go down to the wire. The Padres have done some interesting upgrading since late last year, adding Brian Giles, Ramon Hernandez, and David Wells, so what the hell, I’ll put my nickel on them. The Dodgers have improved slightly since Paul DePodesta took over the helm; the Milton Bradley deal, while it may bite them in the ass down the road, give the team a needed shot of offense. But unless Cesar Izturis and Alex Cora morph into productive hitters (hold on, I haven’t stopped laughing) or Adrian Beltre lives up to that long-lost promise (no, really), these guys ain’t going nowhere. On the other hand, the right late-season deal could give any team in the division the edge, and the Dodgers have a lot of minor-league talent to offer. Besides Barry Bonds, the Giants don’t scare anybody, except their own medical staff. Even if Jason Schmidt is healthy they won’t have enough pitching. And that outfield… Michael Tucker? Marquis Grissom? Jeffrey Hammonds? Dustan Mohr? Elsewhere, the Diamondback will continue to age less than gracefully, and the Rockies will score some runs while allowing even more.

Wild Cards: Boston, Houston (yeah, I know… old habits die hard)

AL MVP: Alex Rodriguez

AL Cy Young: Javier Vazquez

Al Rookie of the Year: Bobby Crosby

NL MVP: Albert Pujols

NL Cy Young: Kerry Wood (unless Mark Prior gets healthy quickly)

NL Rookie of the Year: Edwin Jackson

First manager fired: Larry Bowa

In the annals of Dodger history, few trades have turned out more disastrously than the one made on November 19, 1993, when L.A. shipped Pedro Martinez to the Montreal Expos for second baseman Delino DeShields. At the time, the 22-year-old Martinez was coming off of his first full season as a Dodger, having gone 10-5 out of the bullpen with a 2.61 ERA and 119 strikeouts in 107 innings in 65 appearances. But the Dodgers had concerns about the diminutive (5’11”, 170 lbs) pitcher’s durability. His brother Ramon, three and a half years older and five inches taller, had already shown signs of wear and tear as one of the Dodgers’ top starters — though a whopping 455 innings in his age 22-23 seasons might have had something to do with that, eh, Tommy?

Packed with pitching depth, the Dodgers were in need of a second baseman after incumbent Jody Reed, 30 years old and coming off of a .276/.333/.346 season balked at a generous three year, $7.8 million offer. As Jon Weisman has recounted in great, painful detail, the Dodgers needed to look elsewhere to fill the spot, and after coming up short in the free-agent market, they were forced to make a trade. Dealing from the club’s perceived pitching depth, Dodger GM Fred Claire sent Martinez to the Expos for DeShields, a 24-year-old second baseman who’d hit .295/.389/.372 with 43 steals.

The trade didn’t work out so well. DeShields dropped to .250/.357/.322 and spent his three seasons in LA struggling to reach the level he’d shown in Montreal. Meanwhile Martinez entered the Expos rotation and went 11-5 with a 3.42 ERA in the strike-torn year, which found the Expos holding the majors’ best record when play stopped. It took two more seasons before Pedro became Pedro, the best pitcher of his generation, by which point the Dodgers were watching DeShields make up for lost time with a good season in St. Louis. Grrrr.

(For what it’s worth, Reed got what he richly deserved, spending the remaining four years of his career bouncing from Milwaukee to San Diego to Detroit, earning in only slightly more in total than what one year of that contract would have netted. If there’s any justice, not a day goes by where he doesn’t want to kick himself for passing up that deal.)

Claire, to his credit, always took the blame for the Pedro deal, though manager Lasorda had signed off on it. He reportedly says as much in his new book, Fred Claire: My 30 Years in Dodger Blue. In a recent interview with Baseball Prospectus’ Jonah Keri, Claire shed even more light on the reasoning behind the trade:

Claire: …SportsCentury is putting together a show on Pedro Martinez, and a guy from that show called me the other day. He said he had a chance to talk to [Dodger team physician Dr. Frank] Jobe at Dodgertown. He said when he asked Jobe for his report at the time on Pedro, Frank replied: ‘I was wrong.’ When the trade was made — and I say this now, now that Frank has spoken — he asked me: ‘Fred, why don’t you ever mention my report to you on Pedro?’ I said not only have I not done that, I will never do that. Because the job of a GM is to make a decision based on the information he has. Your job is to give me the information you have, and no one is better than you at doing it. You’re not always going to be right, just like anyone. But I firmly believe that’s the best approach, whether it was input from scouts, major league staff, or anyone else; ultimately only one person can make the decision. It’s important to have that structure, not as much to protect as to respect everyone involved.

BP: What was in Pedro’s medical report that was so negative?

Claire: From what Frank had seen related to Pedro, he had concerns with the body build and structure, what he had seen in his shoulder, what his endurance factor was going to be. Fortunately for Pedro, he has obviously handled all of that with a performance that speaks for itself.

BP: At the time the Pedro trade for Delino Deshields was viewed by many people as good for the Dodgers, given Deshields was a young, talented player with a good track record and potential to improve even more. Your book [discusses some of the events that led to the trade, but take me through some of your thought process here.

Claire: When the trade was made, I can recall how upset the other Montreal players and media were, because Delino was seen as not only an outstanding young player, but also as a leader of a good, young Montreal team. At that time we were looking for a second baseman. History will recall very well that we went above and beyond the call of duty to sign Jody Reed then…

In all honesty the last thing I wanted to do was trade Pedro away. The thing about Pedro is that he is and always has been a very special player. A lot of it has to do with his heart and with his spirit. We were familiar with the family too, because his brother Ramon had become our best pitcher. Ultimately the trade was done, and despite the promise of Delino and other factors, proved to be a poor trade for the Dodgers.

So the leading doctor in sports medicine (Jobe invented Tommy John Surgery) was the one who underestimated Pedro’s long-term viability, coloring the views of Claire and setting off the trade. That doesn’t make the deal’s outcome any better for the Dodgers or their fans, but it does add a bit of legitimacy to what has often been presented as Lasorda’s doubt about Pedro’s endurance and Claire’s singular responsibility for the deal.

But in thinking about it even further in the context of Dodger history, I’m left with the suspicion that had Pedro remained with the team, he likely would have suffered a career-threatening injury sooner or later. The Dodgers had a well-earnedr eputation for riding their best young arms into the ground; consider this short list of pitchers developed by the Dodgers during the Lasorda era who ended up suffering major arm injuries:

Rick Rhoden — missed all but one start in 1979 due to shoulder surgery after being traded from the Dodgers over the winter

Doug Rau — missed much of 1979 and all of 1980 due to rotator cuff injury and never successfully came back

Alejandro Pena — missed all but two games in 1985 due to shoulder surgery which necessitated a shift to the bullpen

Fernando Valenzuela — missed much of 1988 with a shoulder injury and was never the same pitcher

Orel Hershiser — missed most of 1990 and much of 1991 with a torn rotator cuff

Ramon Martinez — after years of missing time here and there with arm troubles, missed half of 1998 and most of 1999 with a torn rotator cuff and was never the same pitcher

It’s not hard to imagine Pedro joining that list. The rest of the baseball world, particularly the Red Sox, should be thankful for the Dodgers’ misjudgment; it’s entirely possible he would never have flourished as he did if the trade hadn’t happened.

Speaking of Pedro’s health, it’s been in the news lately. ESPN’s Jayson Stark reports that Martinez raised some eyebrows when he got shellacked in his final spring start, yielding six runs to the Toronto Blue Jays, including a grand slam by Eric Hinske, without retiring a single batter. According to Stark, the Boston ace’s pitches for the most part were only in the 86-88 MPH range with the occasional 90-91 “lightning bolt”. Martinez settled down without yielding any more runs after that six-pack, but needed 84 pitches to get nine outs. Speculation may abound that Martinez is holding something back until his contract situation — he’s a free-agent at the end of the season — is resolved, but he may have something wrong as well. Writes Stark:

Behind the plate, a section full of scouts scratched their heads. Martinez had touched 90 mph on just a couple of fastballs. He delivered them from an arm slot noticeably lower than the Pedro of old.

I could never give that guy a three-year contract,” said one scout. “He’s got two years left in him. Tops.”

Though catcher Jason Varitek and manager Terry Francona were upbeat about the rest of Pedro’s outing after his early struggle, his body language left something to be desired. At one point, Martinez, after not getting a strike call, caught Varitek’s return barehanded.

Suffice it to say that when the Sox open the regular season on Sunday night against the Baltimore Orioles, it will be interesting to see whether Martinez puts his rough spring (27 baserunners in 16 innings and a 6.75 ERA) behind him. If he hasn’t, expect the Red Sox Nation’s handwringing and the contract-related tantrums to start in earnest.

Apologies for the slow load times today… it appears I’m having some trouble with Blogrolling, the service which generates “The Roster” of links at left.

On an unrelated note, if any of you reading this is a web designer who understands the workings of RSS and is familiar with Dreamweaver, I’m looking for a bit of guidance in adding some functionality to this site (which is already RSS-enabled). Please email me with the subject line “RSS help.”

Still on the subject of RSS, if you’re a user of the My Yahoo service, you should be able to syndicate this blog (not to mention many other baseball related ones) by clicking here. Syndication means you’ll be able to see whether I’ve updated this blog, what the entry title is, and depending on your settings, the first sentence or so of what I’ve written. It’s a handy little feature, and if you don’t understand what I mean, check it out here.

I know I’m not alone in the baseball blogosphere or the writing world in general, but I have a nasty habit of leaving unfinished business with this site. But I can check one more task off the list: I’ve finally completed my page for Melvin Mora, the 2003 Futility Infielder of the Year. Here’s the intro to his page:

In the annals of futility infielders — of which somewhere there’s a big book waiting to be written under my byline — perhaps no player has risen from such humble spare-part origins to attain the lofty heights of Melvin Mora. From his native Venezuela through a lengthy spell in the Houston Astros chain to Taiwan and then the New York Mets, Mora endured a globe-trotting odyssey just to reach the major leagues. Though his 2003 season, his third in a Baltimore Orioles uniform, was cut short due to a litany of injuries, Mora spent time leading the AL in batting average and on-base percentage, made his first All-Star team at age 31, and finished with a stellar .317/.418/.503 line and 15 homers. For these accomplishments, Mora has won the coveted (if belated) 2003 Futility Infielder of the Year award.

Mora joins past winners Ron Gardenhire (2002) and Luis Sojo (2001), and if you’re wondering why there’s no Sojo page, please reread the first sentence of this entry again. I’m hoping to have one up in time for this site’s three-year anniversary next week.

The award itself — which goes to “The current or former player who best embodies the ideals of the Futility Infielder, which include versatility, scrappiness, humility, flirtation with the Mendoza Line, and the ability for Jay Jaffe to write a few hundred compelling words on his behalf” — isn’t limited to infielders, however. Along those lines, it’s only fitting to that I honorably mention Brooks Kieschnick, the Milwaukee Brewers’ pitcher-outfielder who threw 53 innings of 5.26 ERA ball in 42 relief appearances and posted a 1-1 record while hitting .300/.355/.614 with 7 homers, thus reviving a major-league career which had long since stalled. Kieschnick should take heart that continued success in his dual role will someday earn him a spot in my Wall of Fame. But he’ll have to wait his turn…

Okay, so that didn’t go quite as planned. Mere hours after bragging about my TiVo in this space I was mildly cursing it. In a situation that seems to be related to YES sharing its Time Warner Cable slot with wee-hours paid programming, my recorder had a little braincramp and botched taping the 5 AM live feed of the Yanks’ opening game from Japan. No matter, since an encore presentation was slated to air again at 9, slightly edited (they disappeared the fifth) to fit into a shorter time window. But that wasn’t all that went awry.

In their much-hyped opener, the Yanks — despite the smart deicsion to wear the traditional pinstripes for a road game, a first in their storied history — looked flat and got knocked around, losing 8-3 to a team whose lunch money they’ve been stealing for five straight seasons. They got out to an early 2-0 lead as Jason Giambi homered on his first swing of the regular season. But starter Mike Mussina, one of the more vocal critics of this road trip apparently forgot to bring his A-game to Japan, and the Goddamn Drinking Bird — Mussina’s unsightly stretch move — made its first appearance of the season in the second inning. As Will Carroll observed elsewhere, his mechanics were definitely off, and his attitude towards the trip turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the fourth, he walked two batters and gave up a game-tying single to Toby Hall.

The Yanks retook the lead on doubles by A-Rod and Gary Sheffield, the latter a check-swing job that reminded me the guy might have the quickest wrists in the majors, departed Alfonso Soriano be damned — put some duct-tape over his mouth and he’s going to be great in pinstripes. But they couldn’t take better advantage of Rays starter Victor Zambrano’s inability to throw strikes (only 56 out of 117 pitches), drawing only one walk of him and three overall.

Not that Mussina (54/108) was much better. Moose really got roughed up in the sixth, allowing a homer to Jose Cruz, Jr. (his 19th career shot against the Yanks) and then three straight doubles to Tino Martinez, Julio Lugo, and Hall. Paul Quantrill came on and got out of the inning with a mere three pitches, but in the next inning he apparently got a bruise from a mild collision with Alex Rodgriuez as he tried to field a bunt and departed. Felix Heredia came on in relief and was disastrous, making a two-base throwing error on a pickoff attempt before he’d thrown a pitch and then allowing an RBI single to Aubrey Huff and a two-run, stick-it-where-the-sun-don’t-shine homer from Tino to cap the scoring at 8-3 Rays. Ony 16 of Heredia’s 38 pitches went for strikes. Feh.

Good: the Yanks 3-4-5 hitters, Rodriguez-Giambi-Sheffied, were 5-for-10 with three doubles, a homer, 11 total bases and two walks — that’ll work. The bagels, from David’s on 1st Avenue and 13th St. were awesome.

Bad: The Devil Rays were 13-for-29 on balls in play, a neat .448 average, meaning the Yanks’ Defensive (in)Efficiency Ratio was .552, which won’t cut it above tee-ball. The left side of the infield looked no less porous with A-Rod on the hot corner. Yankee fans should thank their local diety they don’t play on turf 81 times a year.

Ugly: My gut reaction to Quantrill’s injury was that “it’s minor” will become a “precautionary” 15-day vacation. Hellooooo Scott Proctor. If Heredia keeps this up the Yanks will be looking for another lefty reliever before Memorial Day.

It’s only one game, but one wonders whether Steinbrenner’s thought about firing a coach yet, just to stir things up. Don Mattingly better mind those sideburns.

I’ll be up early to watch tomorrow’s ballgame, hoping things go better on the second day than they did on the first…

For somebody who generally doesn’t watch a lot of television, my Sunday in front of the tube was epic. I caught both thrilling NCAA Tournament games (though the Kansas result shredded my bracket), then turned to this week’s offerings of The Simpsons, Arrested Development, The Sopranos, and South Park, many of those thanks to the magic of my personal digital video recorder (“Any television that doesn’t have TiVo is broken.” — Jay Jaffe, product shill). Mind you I wasn’t sedentary the entire time, managing to help with a handful of projects around the house, some of which even involved power tools, and enough of which involved hauling out bags of trash to keep the illusion of a productive Sunday around the apartment. Just before I settled into my weekly meal of mobsters, I realized that the Yanks final Japanese exhibition game was on TV as well. As easily as 1-2-3, I had one more TiVoed program to consume before bedtime. Ain’t technology grand?

I’d missed the Yanks’ first game in Japan, Saturday night’s marquee affair against Hideki Matsui’s former team, the Yomiuri Giants. This considerably more anticlimactic game featured the Yanks squaring off against the Hanshin Tigers. Joe Torre’s lineup made reference to the Opening Day one he has already announced, yet kept the fact that this was an exhibition in mind. Derek Jeter was the leadoff hitter, as he will be when the season opens, while Kenny Lofton, who’s had a cold spring (.174 BA) batted ninth. Matsui, who’d batted cleanup and homered the night before, was in the #2 slot, ahead of what may be the most devastating trio in baseball, Alex Rodriguez-Jason Giambi-Gary Sheffield. Jorge Posada served as the DH, while John Flaherty caught, Miguel Cairo started at second base, and Donovan Osborne, fighting for a temporary spot as the fifth starter while Jon Lieber’s groin heals, took the mound.

The results were ugly. Osborne was rocked for seven runs in the second inning, mostly on singles, while his main competition for the auxiliary starter role, Jorge De Paula (magnificent in his one start last fall), pitched well, allowing one run in three innings. Down 7-1, the Yanks clawed their way back into the game, as Flaherty clubbed a two-run homer and Tony Clark bashed a 492-foot shot off of the Mitsubishi Humongovision (or whatever), which made the score 7-5 and reportedly caused $5,000 worth of damage. But former San Diego Padre George Arias slugged a three-run homer for the Tigers in the sixth inning to put the game out of reach.

The Yankee regulars had departed by that point, replaced by several scrubs still fighting for roster spots. Darren Bragg may have sealed his fate by misplaying a deep fly ball into an inside-the-park homer, though he later threw a runner out at the plate. Joe Girardi, who will move upstairs to the YES broadcast booth, made what is likely his final professional appearance as a player, catching the last few innings. Fittingly, he popped out in his final at-bat. Later I went back to watch the Bragg-to-Girardi play at the plate; the slow-motion revealed an absolutely letter-perfect block of the plate by Girardi, his left leg totally preventing any chance the Hanshin runner had of scoring as the ball arrived. I’ll let that stand as my final memory of a fine defense-first catcher.

After the game, the roster moves were announced: Bragg and Homer Bush were farmed out to Columbus after the game, meaning that Bubba Crosby, acquired from the Dodgers in the Robin Ventura trade, has made the team after an impressive spring in which he hit .385. The other player acquired in the Ventura trade, promising triple-digit throwing reliever Scott Proctor, had a decent spring but will begin the season in AAA, while both De Paula and Osborne will remain with the Yanks. This won’t last long — if Osborne, who’s pitched in 45.1 major league innings since 1998, is a true starter, I’m a Siberian yak herder.

Michael Kay and Ken Singleton pointed out early in the game that the Yankee pitchers threw a regulation AL baseball made of cowhide, while the Japanese hurlers threw a regulation Japanese ball, made of horsehide and thus tackier and easier to throw breaking pitches with. I did not know that…

The Yanks are in a strange spot now, and I don’t just mean Tokyo. They play two games there against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, including Tuesday’s opener, which starts at 5 AM Eastern time, then return to the states to play a pair of exhibition games against the Detroit Tigers before the season resumes. Tuesday’s early morning start time is a topic of much discussion among writers and fans, of course. Many hearty souls will brag about getting up early to watch; Baseball Prospectus/YES columnist Steven Goldman’s even hosting a chat at that ungodly hour [oops, that would be 5 AM Wednesday].

Me, I’ve got my TiVo, which means the game will be waiting when I arise fully rested at 8 AM. The coffee will be brewed before I get out of bed, my trusty manservent will have fetched me the freshest bagels to be found in all of Manhattan, and I’ll be none the wiser as to the results of my time-shifted of the ballgame, save the ability to zap through commercials at lightning speed. Ah, what a magical age we live in…

Almost exactly a year ago, Michael Lewis set the baseball world on its ear with a New York Times Magazine article excerpting his forthcoming book, Moneyball. This weekend, Lewis returns to the mag with a different kind of article, one having absolutely nothing to do with Billy Beane or sabermetrics (though the Oakland A’s play a small part). It’s the story of Lewis’ legendary New Orleans high school baseball coach, Billy Fitzgerald, a man the author describes as “born to drill holes into thick skulls and shout through them.”

Lewis paints a nuanced portrait of an intense man at a strange crossroads in his career. So revered by his former players that they’ve raised enough money to name Isidore Newman School’s gym in his honor, Fitz is nevertheless under siege from the parents of his contemporary charges. The private Newman School has been full of affluent kids since Lewis’ days — ” I’m not sure how many of us thought we’d hit a triple, but quite a few had been born on third base,” he writes — but the current ones find themselves increasingly protected by their tuition-paying parents, who feel that the crusty coach’s methods are too harsh for their priveleged tykes.

Drawing upon his own adolecent experience, Lewis goes back to relive his rite-of-passage moment with the coach, which came when he, as a doughy adolescent who “resembled a scoop of vanilla ice cream with four pickup sticks jutting out” was summoned to emergency relief duty in a Babe Ruth League championship ballgame. I won’t spoil the payoff, but suffice it to say that emboldened by Coach Fitz’s confidence, Lewis becomes a varsity athlete and comes to view his mentor with respect and awe.

The author catches up with other Newman alums who hold the coach in similarly high esteem, including Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning. He delves further into the coach’s methods, finding a sophisticated, literate, adaptable man beneath the bluster, one with a method to his seeming madness:

Not how to win, though winning was wonderful. Not even how to sacrifice. He was teaching us something far more important: how to cope with the two greatest enemies of a well-lived life, fear and failure. To make the lesson stick, he made sure we encountered enough of both.

Against this Lewis draws a contrast between Fitz’s old-school ways — which have placed his job in jeopardy — and the school’s current culture, including a crop of players with whom the coach is increasingly out of step. A week after the writer visits, Fitzgerald has so many players under suspension for an alcohol-related incident that he can’t even field a team. But despite the obstacles, the coach keeps attempting to instill hard lessons in his players.

While it might sound a bit like Fitzgerald was pulled from central casting, rest assured that Lewis considerably fleshes out this would-be stock character. If those of you who already knew much of the stat-heady history detailed in Moneyball learned anything from the book, it’s that Lewis is one hell of a storyteller. This one is well worth your time.

For most of us in the baseball website racket, keeping at fantasy team or two is as much obligation as hobby — you’ve got to have one to wear the corporate colors, after all. But using one’s fantasy team as fodder for a column is just too damn easy; it makes those occasional bullet-point extravaganzas seem downright scholarly by comparison. Would that I could properly attribute the Baseball Prospectus author who offered the blogging world sage advice a couple years back when he said words to the effect of, “No one wants to hear about your fantasy team.” He was absolutely correct, and I’ve tried to follow that wisdom.

Still, there are times when it’s necessary to write something on the topic, and so today, that’s what I’m selling, mainly to marvel at my own… luck? skill? I’m not sure which. You see, on Thursday night, the bloggers/writers league I’m in drafted, but I had other plans — attending a Baseball Prospectus Bookstore Pizza Feed in Brooklyn which featured an all-star cast of writers: Steven Goldman, Doug Pappas, Dayn Perry, Joe Sheehan, and Nate Silver. At their request, through my Big Apple Baseballists group I had organized an afterparty of sorts at a local watering hole. As with most pastimes, I’ll take the real-world elbow-bending with my cohorts over the computerized interaction any day. The afterparty was a big hit; in addition to all aforementioned BPers save Pappas, bloggers Alex Belth, Alex Ciepley (who is joining Christian Ruzich’s Cub Reporter), Cliff Corcoran, Tom Gorman, and Derek Jacques turned out, as did Josh Orenstein of the New York Mets ticket office and a few other folks. Good times, heady chatter, and strong drink were had by all.

Back to the fantasy stuff… with no shortage of bitching and moaning, I resigned myself to autodrafting, which in a live draft league placed me at what I expected was a disadvantage comparable to the pasty new punk in his first prison shower. I wouldn’t have kvetched so loudly except that I’m in this league to smack-talk with two old college pals who stick out like sore thumbs — there’s really no politeness involved as we taunt each other publicly and privately. One of them is even calling his team “Jaffe’s Big Stinky.” With friends like that one best not bring a knife to the gunfight, hence my disgruntlement.

Compounding all of this was the fact that I really didn’t put much research into my pre-rankings, going with the always-shaky IGWT (In Gut We Trust) method of ordering some 250 players rather than consulting a spreadsheet or a guide or paying one red cent in pursuit of such advice. I’ve found that too many folks tend to overthink this stuff, and that if you just go with basic guiding sabermetric principles — power, good OBP, high K rate — you get about 90 percent of the work done in about 5 percent of the time, leaving plenty of hours to pound the Old Speckled Hen.

Prepared for the worst — “seventh place here I come,” I told a friend — I awoke to find myself with a team that surpassed my expectations. And then some:

C: Jorge Posada

1B: Jason Giambi

2B: D’Angelo Jiminez

3B: Mike Lowell

SS: Angel Berroa

CI: Eric Hinske

MI: Jose Valentin

OF: Barry Bonds

OF: Manny Ramirez

OF: Magglio Ordonez

Util/Bench: Andruw Jones, Carl Everett, Ryan Klesko, John Olerud, Ramon Hernandez

SP: Kevin Brown, Kevin Millwood, Johan Santana, Tim Wakefield, C.C. Sabathia

RP: Billy Wagner, Tom Gordon, LaTroy Hawkins

Okay, I’m a little short on speed (a perpetual problem of my teams), and unless Hawkins supplants Joe Borowski I’ll be thin on saves, and both Olerud and Klesko have seen better days. But that’s one motherscratcher of an outfield even if I trade a big gun for a pitching upgrade. Last year this crew hit 401 homers and drove in 1309 runs — roughly 27/82 a man. Cowabunga! Though none of the pitchers won more than 14 games, none had an ERA higher than 4.09 or a WHIP higher than 1.30 either. This is a pretty fair crew, and there’s no blaming it on the autodraft. The idiot who brushes my teeth is in charge of this team from here onward.

The big news in New York today is that the Yankees have signed Mariano Rivera to a two-year, $21-million contract extension, with a vesting option for the third year based on games finished. It’s sick money to be sure, especially for a reliever who has averaged only 68 regular-season innings a year over the past seven seasons. But don’t forget that those have been some pretty incredible innings — Rivera’s ERA is 86 percent better than the park-adjusted league average for his career, 2.49 vs. 4.63, and if you throw out his rookie season, when he started 10 games, it’s an eye-popping 2.15, 116% better than the park-adjusted league average (in other words, an ERA+ of 216).

None of that is even counting the postseason, where Rivera has been even better: a 0.75 ERA in 96 innings to go with his 7-1 record and 30 saves. Yes, you can point to the gopher ball he yielded to Sandy Alomar in 1997 or the broken-bat bloop Luis Gonzalez eked out in 2001 as evidence that he’s fallible, but there isn’t a single Yankee or Yankee fan from here to Sedna who would hold those two mishaps against him or who wouldn’t tell you that he’s worth every single penny of that contract. The confidence that the Yanks have when Rivera is on the mound is worth its weight in golden World Series rings, and collectively, they’ve got a pile of them to show for the brilliant work that he’s done.

Is Rivera a Hall of Famer? The New York Times article linked above, along with most talking heads, would seem to think sot. But we know that the Hall is especially stingy when it comes to relievers, with the newly-elected Dennis Eckersley just the third to go in behind Hoyt Wilhelm (a great choice) and Rollie Fingers (a mediocre one). With stalwart firemen such as Goose Gossage, Bruce Sutter, and Lee Smith stymied, it’s certainly a fair question to ask whether Rivera is more deserving than these men.

Back in January, I attempted to answer the question of whether the aforementioned trio, all of whom are still on the Hall of Fame ballot, are deserving of enshrinement. As with the hitters, I used Baseball Prospectus’s Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP3) to create a system which attempted to define the Hall’s standards for pitchers by looking at a weighting of their career WARP3 totals, and their five-consecutive-season peak. Here are the aforementioned pitchers and Rivera, along with the stats for the average Hall starting pitcher:

           PRAA   PRAR   WARP3   PEAK   WPWT

Eckersley   277   1128   115.3   36.3   75.8

Wilhelm     269    888    91.2   30.7   61.0

Gossage     238    757    80.8   34.1   57.5

Fingers     165    692    74.2   31.1   52.7

Smith       229    664    71.9   29.8   50.9

Rivera      224    469    54.4   35.2   44.8

Sutter      148    471    50.6   28.0   39.3

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

AVG HOF SP  239   1002    97.0   44.9   70.9

PRAA and PRAR are pitching runs Above Average and Above Replacement. WARP3 is the career total, PEAK is the five-season total, and WPWT is my god-awful acronym for WARP3 Weighted Total (JAffe WARP Score — JAWS? In my weaker moments, I’ve thought about it). From the looks of the chart, the relievers totals for PRAA are in line with their starting brethren, but their totals for PRAR are well short. The problem, as you should be able to guess, is that even the best relievers don’t have nearly the innings to measure up to the starters.

But does that mean we should ignore them entirely when it comes to the Hall? I’m uncomfortable with that conclusion. There’s a body of research done by a man named Tangotiger which has shown, using play-by-play data and something called a Win Expectancy Matrix, that good relievers have a quantifiably greater effect on the outcome of a ballgame. Tangotiger’s research suggests that the results of the plate appearances against relievers are magnified by some factor, which he called the Leverage Index. A starting pitcher will have a Leverage Index very near 1.0, but an ace reliever might have one approaching 2.0, meaning that the batters he faced were twice as important to the outcome of a ballgame.

Tangotiger examined the implications of multiplying the components of a reliever’s stat line by his Leverage Index and then comparing him to a starting pitcher in an attempt to determine Hallworthiness. In my BP article, I suggested doing something similar but not quite as drastic, applying a Leverage Index of 1.43 to the reliever’s WARP3 line (for what it’s worth, the top relievers on the ballot had LI’s between 1.7 and 1.9, but we don’t have PBP data prior to the Retrosheet Era). That’s the equivalent of drawing a baseline at 70% of a Hall of Fame starter’s value — a reasonable assumption. Keeping things in the realm of my WARP3 system, here’s what the reliever’s standard would look like:

           WARP3   PEAK   WPWT

AVG HOF SP  97.0   44.9   70.9

70% STD RP  67.9   31.4   49.7

Looking back at the chart above with this in mind, Rivera has the highest peak of any pitcher except Eckersley, who compiled those numbers as a starter early in his career. He’s well short on career value both among those pitchers and using that 70% standard. Of course, he’s not done pitching yet. In a best-case scenario, Rivera can add about 7 Wins Above Replacement per year to his total — his high is 7.8 and his average from 1996 on is 6.6. Add 20 WARP3 to that career total over the life of his contract (assuming vesting) and he’s a hair ahead of Fingers on career total and about 4 wins on peak, coming in at about 5.0 WPWT over the 70% standard.

All of this is without considering the man’s postseason accomplishments, of course. Just eyeballing it, we could say that those 96 innings constitute about 1.4 seasons given Rivera’s post-’95 68-inning average. If his ERA were the same, we could perhaps justify adding 6.6 (WARP3/year) * 1.4 (years) = 9.2 WARP3 to his total. But his ERA in that span is roughly 1/3 of his already-microscopic 2.15 ERA since ’96. Though BP’s system is something of a black box, it’s not so much of one for me to know that we shouldn’t just triple his WARP3 total for that span — there’s the impact of fielding to consider, among other things. So instead I’m going to feel around in the dark for an answer that seems reasonable.

Turning our attention to Eric Gagne for a moment, the Dodgers’ similarly unhittable closer posted a 1.20 ERA last year in 82 innings, for a WARP3 of 8.2, a neat ratio of 0.1 WARP3 per inning pitched at that extreme level of performance. Giving Rivera the same credit would yield 9.6 WARP3 if his ERA were the same. Upping the ante by multiplying that figure by 1.6 (Gagne’s 1.20 ERA divided by Rivera’s 0.75 ERA) we get 15.4 WARP3 — the equivalent of two typically brilliant Rivera seasons right there, a number that feels pretty solid given my initial estimate above. That would give Rivera a line of 69.8/35.2/52.5 — just about even with Fingers on the weighted score, and over the 70% standard shown above.

Note that if we go back and use Rivera’s post-’95 numbers to do a similar calculation we get 0.09 WARP3 per inning pitched, and a multiplication factor (ERA ratio) of 2.87 — a calculation that would yield 24.8 WARP3, the equivalent of three Gagne ’03 seasons. If we simply use all of Rivera’s career in WARP3 and innings we get 0.084 WARP3/IP and an ERA ratio of 3.3, which gives us 26.8 WARP3, a number even more inflated. In terms of a reasonable answer, the truck is rolling backwards down the hill, away from the two previous estimates. I can’t justify that much postseason credit, so I’m going to stick with the second estimate above, the Gagne one, as his level of performance more closely resemble’s Mo’s.

Of course we’d have to go back and dish out postseason points for ALL of the pitchers in the Hall based on this, a project I don’t think is merited based on how quick and dirty my method is. Fingers himself has a 2.35 ERA in 57.1 postseason innings including three World Championships, Eckersley a 3.00 ERA in 36 innings, Gossage 2.87 in 31.1, Sutter a 3.00 in 12 innings, Smith an 8.44 in 5.1 innings, and Wilhelm 2.1 scoreless frames. Choosing Rivera’s closest competitor, if I apply Fingers’ career rate of WARP3/IP and then multiply it by his ERA ratio, I get about 3.1 WARP3, a number which is probably way too low since I’m not tossing out his inferior innings split between starting and relieving the way I did for Rivera in my initial calculations.

Suffice it to say, however, that the run impact of Mo’s postseason work is probably already enough to put him in the Hall of Fame picture, and with a couple more seasons of good pitching he’s going to look even better — even without considering the “intangible” value of the jewelry which has helped borderline candidates into the Hall. For all of that, Rivera is 34 and has been vulnerable to injuries the past couple years, making four trips to the DL in that time. Three more seasons at this level of excellence is anything but a given. But if the Yanks continue to baby him during the regular season in order both to protect their considerable investment and to make sure he’s ready for the fall, Rivera may well reach the numbers I’ve set out above and find his place in Cooperstown. It would be only fitting if Gossage — the best non-Hall of Fame reliever there is — were there as well, but that’s a story for another day.

I’ve had interviews on the brain for the past few months — verbal ones, written ones, for business and for pleasure. Earlier this winter, I had the opportunity to appear twice on Baseball Prospectus Radio — the first to discuss my BP articles on the Hall of Fame, the second as part of a Yankee roundtable — answering questions by phone from host Will Carroll for recorded segments which would air later that week. Later in February, I was queried twice in connection with this website, both times in written form — once for Rich Lederer’s Weekend Baseball Beat site, and once for a Westchester Journal News feature — enjoyable experiences in which I had the opportunity to craft thoughtful responses to questions about this site, its history, and my passion for writing about baseball.

Earlier this month, I went on a pair of job interviews, selling my skills to a potential employer and discussing my design portfolio and related experience at length. Unlike the written interviews, when I was entirely in control of my responses and their pace, in the job interview, like the BPR segments, I was Johnny on the spot, answering complex questions in real time. The BPR segments, of course, were discussions among friends, with a safety net present if need be, whereas the job interviews found me at the mercy of a panel scrutinizing my record, my responses, and my body language. In both types of live interviews, I was subject to nervousness, adrenaline flows, and the need to process the questions rapidly while subtly gauging the intent of the interviewer.

Interviews, of course, are a building block for writing, whether it’s for an article in a newspaper informed by a few relevant quotes or an in-depth grilling like the ones Alex Belth so masterfully does with his subjects on Bronx Banter. In both cases what you usually end up reading is only the tip of the iceberg. It’s fraction of what the interviewee said, often ironed a bit to remove the um’s and uh’s, the false starts which can invade impromptu speech, especially when one is conscious that they’re “on the record.” And it’s a fraction of both the preperatory work the interviewer has done, reading the subject’s book or doing other background research, and of the grunt work transcribing what was said and editing it down to a succinct and compelling representation of the conversation.

For all of these interviews swirling around me, until Sunday, I had yet to perform one in the service of my baseball writing. Not that I hadn’t done any before — back in my long-haired, early ’90s career as a so-called rock journalist (an oxymoron about as accurate as “military intelligence” or “virgin whore”), I did loads of them with a variety of bands ranging from Providence locals like Six Finger Satellite and Dungbeetle to members of nationally prominent indie-rock bands such as Soul Asylum, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, King Missile, and the Jesus Lizard. Hours of work at the front and back end go into something which ultimately might take five or fifteen minutes to read, and the physical and emotional rollercoaster of doing them while trying to balance earnest enthusiasm with professional cool can be taxing.

So last night I had a great hour-long phone conversation with a minor-league pitcher who’s got a unique back story, one you’ll soon get to read about, whether it’s here or at another baseball site (I’m trying to avoid jinxing anything). Getting to the point of doing the interview was something of a fiasco, however. Because I started with neither a phone number nor an email address, it took over three weeks from the time I floated a thought balloon on a public website to actually taping a conversation. I spent a good portion of this past weekend preparing, rereading a relevant chapter in a book, chasing down statistics, quotations, and other facts on the web, and hammering it all into a series of questions which in the end only served as a general outline for our discussion.

Along the way, I had solve what I thought was a big problem when it came to recording. I spent hours running around Manhattan’s Union Square trying to cobble together a low-cost, low-fi solution rather than shelling out over $100 for professional-grade equipment. Already the owner of two microcassette recorders (one bought frantically last summer while visiting Salt Lake City when my 91-year-old grandmother decided she was ready to talk about her family’s history and their capture by the Nazis), I discovered that neither had a microphone jack, and on top of that, I didn’t have a way to get a line feed out of either my fancy digital phone or my cheapo handset. Fifty dollars and two hours later, I had resignedly purchased a third microcassette recorder, this one with a mic jack but otherwise identical to my last-purchased one, and a funny-looking doodad which I was told would solve all of my line problems. I got home and opened both packages, only to discover that the two items were incompatible with each other and ultimately with either phone. Pigeons fled their stoops in terror, mothers covered their babies’ ears, and plants wilted at the sound of my curse words.

Fortunately my pal Nick talked me through my mini(plug) crisis. “You can do speakerphone, right?” he asked, “So why not just put the recorder [which has a built-in condenser mic] right up to the speaker?” Um, because that would be too easy? We tried it; lo and behold, problem solved. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most elusive.

I still spent a good portion of the interview carefully eying the recorder as we chatted, hoping that the moment of flipping the tape wouldn’t cut off an answer or interrupt our momentum. When the conversation finally ended, I immediately checked the tape, praying that I’d gotten it all down at a usable sound level. Hearing both voices coming through loud and clear, I did a celebration reminicsent of Jorge Posada’s Game Seven-tying bloop double off of Pedro Martinez, bouncing around the exact spot in my tiny living room where I had viewed that memorable hit.

My point in relating this entire story is that my appreciation for interviews has been renewed. I pointed out Alex Ciepley’s well-done interview with Michael Muska on Friday, so keeping it within my city brethren, I’ll turn your attention to Alex Belth’s debut on The Hardball Times, an interview with Howard Bryant, author of Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston. I haven’t read Bryant’s book, though I’m aware of its implications. The Red Sox, owned for 44 years by Tom Yawkey, have had a decidedly dubious history in matters of race. They were the last team to integrate, twelve years after Jackie Robinson arrived (the immortal Pumpsie Green debuted on July 21, 1959), and not until 1993 when the signed Andre Dawson did the Sox ink a black free agent. In the meantime, bright black stars from Reggie Smith to Jim Rice to Ellis Burks to Mo Vaughan departed either via trade or free agency, and with no shortage of controversy. Placed against such backdrops as the hometown Celtics’ trailblazing status as the first NBA team to integrate and to hire a black head coach, and the city’s busing crisis in the 1970s, this is one hell of a ripe subject. (Speaking of the Celtics, my dad once related a memorable quote, perhaps apocryphal, regarding Celtics coach Red Auerbach and his integrated lineup strategy: “Two at home, three on the road, and five when we’re behind.”)

Belth has kept me abreast of the back story of the interview for quite some time. He read the book well over a year ago, placing it on his 2002 year-end list as “poorly written but informative” (it turns out this was an uncorrected advance proof), quoting from it at length and referring to it several times since then.

Belth actually met Bryant at the Winter Meetings in New Orleans, an awkward encounter of which he wrote:

On Saturday afternoon, I spotted Howard Bryant of The Boston Herald. After I introduced myself, he said something to the effect of, “Oh yeah, I’ve been by your site. You were pretty tough on my book.” Gulp. Indeed I had been. Talk about being put on the spot. But that didn’t stop us from having an interesting conversation about the book’s subject — racism in the Boston sports world. Bryant is an engaging, bright guy, and I enjoyed getting a chance to rap with him for a minute. We talked about the stigma of being black and playing in Boston, and it wasn’t until later in the afternoon that I wondered to myself if Howard is in fact the only black reporter on the Red Sox beat.

There was a lesson in our encounter for me as well. If you write something and put it out there, you have to be accountable for it. When he brought up that I had been critical of his book, I didn’t exactly recall what I had written about “Shut Out” — I remember thinking that book was in need of a better editor than it had, because the subject was fascinating — but I’m glad that he didn’t seem to take my criticism personally, and that I didn’t let it trip me up enough to feel humiliated or uncomfortable.

Now Alex has repaid Bryant’s lack of a grudge with the lengthy THT interview discussing the book. An African American Massachusetts native who served as a beat reporter for the Oakland A’s at the time of the book’s writing, Bryant has since moved back to Boston to write for the Herald. Of his own personal stake in the book, he says:

[T]he book was probably 85-95% personal because there is no way you can be African American and a baseball fan and then a journalist as well and not be cognizant of the history [of race in Boston] and not be moved by it. And not only be cognizant of the history, but also be cognizant of what hasn’t been written.

When you grow up in the African American community in Boston, everybody knows the story; everybody knows what’s happening. And to your side of society, it’s one of the most important, if not the most important pieces of Red Sox history. But to the mainstream society it wasn’t. And that makes you wonder about your values and it makes you question the value of your point-of-view. That’s why the book was so important to me. Because it wasn’t just about what had been written but about what hadn’t been written.

Bryant goes on to discuss the city’s history, the Yawkey regime, the team’s spotty relationship with black employees — not just players, though by 1979 Jim Rice was the only black on the team — the media’s complicity, and the Sox’ perfunctory tryouts of Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays. Here’s the exchange regarding the latter:

THT: Could you talk about the Jackie Robinson tryout, and the fact that the Red Sox passed over Willie Mays as landmark moments in Red Sox history?

Bryant: They weren’t at first. The reason why the refusal to treat Robinson with any dignity, or the reason why failing to sign Willie Mays was a problem for the Red Sox was because of what they did later. Because not only were they the last team to integrate, but they had horrible problems with black players as the ’60s and ’70s continued. And of course, the ’80s.

That gave the past much more weight. Had the Red Sox integrated in ’52, ’53 along with same lines as every other team, the Jackie Robinson tryout wouldn’t have meant anything. Because no team was going to integrate in 1945. The Red Sox weren’t any different from the Yankees or the Giants or the Dodgers. What gave that tryout weight was what came after, because the Red Sox were in constant conflict with not just African American journalists and white Journalists alike who wanted equality, but also the city statutes and state law.

You had the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination suing the Red Sox on two occasions for not hiring, not only black players, but secretaries, janitors and grounds crew people as well. Because of those histories, you have this paper trail that began to grow and grow and grow. That’s where it all comes from.

The conversation turns to the the team’s contrast with the Celtics, then Bryant points to GM Dick O’Connell as the beacon of change and the architect of both the 1967 “Impossible Dream” team (which featured George Scott, Reggie Smith, and John Wyatt in prominent roles) and ’75 pennant winners (who had Rice, Cecil Cooper, Luis Tiant and others), and later mentions Burks, who returned to Boston as a free agent this offseason, as his favorite intervewee.

Suffice it to say that Belth does his usual fantastic job with the interview. Not that I didn’t already have a great respect for his work, but after the weekend, my appreciation has been heightened. Even moreso, I more fully undertand the hard work done by anybody who relies on interviews as their bread and butter and who can make such conversations appear to come off seamlessly. In some ways it’s not all that different from a batter who steps into the box in a key situation and coolly delivers the clutch RBI. The “on the record” nature makes an inteview a response to a pressure situation, and you don’t see all of the preparation that went into making the resolution of that intense moment appear routine. Think about that next time you read a well-done Q & A.