baseball Archives - Page 13 of 25

Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017

CHICAGO - 1987: Lee Smith of the Chicago Cubs pitches during an MLB game at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois. Smith pitched for the Cubs from 1980-1987. — 1987: Lee Smith of the Chicago Cubs pitches during an MLB game at Wrigley Field. Smith pitched for the Cubs from 1980-1987.

No, I don’t have a vote for who gets into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017. Those who do must vote by Saturday, December 31, with the results announced Wednesday, January 18, 2017. Here’s the background about each player eligible.

Last year of eligibility:

1) Lee Smith, 15th year of eligibility (received 34.1% of the votes last year; 75% is the threshold)
A guy in USA Today wrote: “I happened to be a huge Lee Smith fan as a kid, and now the longtime closer’s in his 15th and final year of eligibility (though various Eras Committees will give him more shots).

“Smith seems an unfortunate victim of timing: If [Mariano] Rivera hadn’t come up just as his career was winding down, he might be long enshrined by now. But Rivera, especially, set inhuman standards for closing baseball games, and it doesn’t look like Smith will get elected on BBWAA voting.” And he DIDN’T put Smith on HIS ballot!

2) Tim Raines, 10th year (69.8%)
Probably the second-best leadoff hitter, after Rickey Henderson, with speed and power. I have hope he’ll get in this time.

Someone from the freshman class:

3) Ivan Rodriguez, 1st year
Not only a good hitter in his prime but a fine catcher. I picked him over Manny Ramirez, because of the latter’s 2009 suspension for prohibited Performance Enhancing Drugs, which hurt his team. I also considered Vladimir Guerrero, and he’d probably be on my ballot some other year.

The PED guys

The rules regarding performance-enhancing drugs were not clear before 2004. Moreover, as someone noted, this year they inducted former Brewers owner Bud Selig. “‘Under Selig’s ownership, the Brewers grew into a powerhouse, winning the AL pennant in 1982.'” If Selig was selected for his tenure as Commissioner, then so should every PED player that played while he was Commissioner.”

I won’t go that far – I’m not picking the single-dimension hitter Sammy Sosa – but I would put in the two best players in the past 30 years.

4) Barry Bonds, 5th year (44.3%)
Even by 1998, he had near HoF stats

5) Roger Clemens, 5th year (45.2%)
Seven ERA leading seasons

They were close last time:

6) Trevor Hoffman, 2nd year (67.3%)
One of the greatest save pitchers ever

7) Jeff Bagwell, 7th year (71.6%)
Should have gotten in a couple of years ago.

This category also includes Raines

Other worth candidates:

8) Curt Schilling, 5th year (52.3%)
I find him personally offensive for all sorts of reasons. But he was a fine pitcher, bloody sock and all.

9) Edgar Martinez, 8th year (43.4%)
I guess I’m getting over the fact that he was a designated hitter for most of his career, and I HATE the DH.

10) Mike Mussina, 4th year (43.0%)
He was seldom the best pitcher on his team, just a solid pitcher for a lot of years

If I had an 11th vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017, it’d be for Jeff Kent (4th year, 16.6%) who doesn’t get enough love

W is for baseball’s Herb Washington

I was leafing through the book The SABR Baseball List & Record Book. It lists “Baseball’s Most Fascinating Records and Unusual Statistics.” I purchased it from Amazon the year it came out, 2007, Amazon tells me, but does not appear to have been updated. Truth is that most of the career records have not changed.

One item early in the book is “More Career Games Played than Plate Appearances by Non-pitchers since 1900 (minimum 100 games).” This is usually a function of a defensive substitution entering the game, replacing a good hitter who is not the best fielder with a good glove man. A guy named Allen Lewis, who I had never heard of, played in 156 games between 1967 and 1973 and had only 31 chances at the plate.

Herb Washington, though, was even more specialized. He played in 105 games in 1974 and 1975, and NEVER had one appearance at the plate. Nor did he ever play on the field. Washington, a track star at Michigan State, was hired by Charles O. Finley, the owner of the Oakland Athletics, to be solely used as a pinch runner.

From the website of SABR, the Society for American Baseball Statistics.

Included in the contract was a clause that required him to grow a mustache before Opening Day. Washington, however, couldn’t grow one little hair. To get the $2,500 bonus that came with growing it, he used an eyebrow pencil to draw a believable mustache and got the bonus. He also got a base-running tutor in former base-stealing champ, Maury Wills…

Washington’s career as “designated runner” got off to a shaky start… he [was] unsuccessful in four of his first five attempts [to steal a base]… For the rest of the season, both Washington and Oakland rolled. He ended up playing in 92 games, stole 29 bases, and scored 29 runs.

But he got too big a lead off first base and was picked off in Game 2 of the World Series by Dodgers pitcher Mike Marshall, tagged by Steve Garvey. All three were MSU graduates.

“The next season …the A’s were rolling when Finley cut the struggling Herb Washington on May 5, 1975. He had played in 13 games with only two steals that season. Said A’s team captain Sal Bando, “I’d feel sorry for him if he were a player.”

Deadspin dubbed him one of the 100 worst baseball players of all time, which seems harsh.

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

Cubs, Cronkite, and Halloween

Wet leaves on wooden inclined plane = nearly horizontal person, somewhat in pain.

I swear I read a number of people who treated the baseball World Series win by the Chicago Cubs as, “Oh, that’s nice,” rather than the astonishing event that it was. Heck, even Arthur wrote about it, not once, but twice. He noted that “Some things transcend all of that, and sport can, for some, be one of those things.”

And the stories I read about fans remembering parents, or grandparents, who loved the Cubs, but never had the joy of seeing them win the National League pennant (last time, 1945), let alone the whole enchilada (1908, 108 years ago; 108, like the number of stitches on a baseball). This was touching, for example.

I was rooting for them, once the New York Mets were quickly eliminated. General Theo Epstein, who got the long-suffering Boston Red Sox fans a pennant in 2004 and 2007, may be a miracle worker.

Apparently, there were a number of people who predicted the Chicago Cubs would win the Series this year.
***
Today would have been the 100th birthday of Walter Cronkite of CBS News. I’ve remembered his natal day since about 1980 when I realized it coincided with the date the hostages in Iran were taken a year before.

So much in the news has changed since his heyday, the 24-hour news cycle, and competing with the TMZs of the world, not to mention Facebook and Twitter as news sources.

I read his autobiography and reviewed it here.
***
Monday, I decided to ride my bike to work. But the front tire was light and failed to inflate, so I stuck it back into the shed, locked the door, turned around, and, as I wrote in Facebook about 45 minutes later:
Wet leaves on wooden inclined plane = nearly horizontal person, somewhat in pain. I’m hobbling to work now…

Managed to hit my head to the right of my left ear, and my left shoulder, and my back (wearing the backpack), and turned my left ankle. It happened so fast, I didn’t have a chance to put out my hand to try to save myself, which, I suppose was a good thing. No lasting damage, but I was sore for a couple of days, especially my back.

Got a very angry IM on Facebook that evening about something I wrote which a person believed was a mischaracterization of their feelings, and was quite possibly friendship ending, which made me both sad and exhausted, as I tried to explain my POV. I had a nice IM exchange from an old friend about something else I had written.

The highlight of the day had to be, when I was handing out Halloween candy, a half dozen College of Saint Rose students Halloween caroling of this Thomas Tallis piece. I even sang along on the repeated section.

That’s when I could still sing because subsequently, I’ve lost my voice; hope I can shake whatever bug is irritating my vocal chords, or my vocal cords.

September rambling #2: R.I.P. Herschell Gordon Lewis

Why Marvel movie music is so forgettable

Climate change illo is so perfect, it’s undeniable

Dying to be me! Anita Moorjani at TEDx BayArea

It’s Time To Call Out ‘Nice Racists’ And Their White Fragility

Self Care For People of Color After Psychological Trauma

No touching. No human contact. The hidden toll on jail inmates who spend months or years alone in a 7×9 foot cell

The Smithsonian’s African American museum – a monument to respectability politics; hmm, I am a charter member

Forehead Tittaes / Marion Cotillard and Pinksourcing With Kristen Bell

Homeless, Looking for Work

Childhood lost: Schooling a workforce and Naviance not so transparent- and cooking up data starting in kindergarten?

Now I Know: Charles Bernard’s Unexpected Vacation and Avast, Ye Groceries! and The Secret, Broken Language of Fire Hydrants and The Dangerous-Sounding Threat of DHMO and A Fishy Story

Is Inbreeding Really That Bad?

It occurs to me that I ALWAYS knew who Arnold Palmer was. From watching him and his army of fans on TV in my grandfather’s apartment, just upstairs from mine, to the epic golf battles between him and Jack Nicklaus, to an iced tea with lemonade drink named for him, to ads for prescription drugs. Arnold Palmer was 87. Here’s Olin and Palmer Team Remembered in Silver; Spencer Olin is a distant cousin of my wife’s

R.I.P. Herschell Gordon Lewis, the “Godfather of Gore”, Has Passed Away at 87; Our business library had a business book of his, called Big Profits from Small Budget Advertising, from 1992, and when we deaccessioned the tome, I scooped it up. So it’s now in the same office at home as my copy of FantaCo Enterprises’ The Amazing Herschell Gordon Lewis and His World of Exploitation Films, autographed by HGL “to my friend Roger,” also signed by coauthors Daniel Krogh and John McCarty at FantaCon 1983

The Miami Marlins’ Jose Fernandez, one of Major League Baseball’s top pitchers, was killed in a boating accident; he was 24 and had a great backstory

Bill Nunn, Who Played Radio Raheem in ‘Do the Right Thing,’ Dies at 63, which is my age; Love – Hate: Do the Right Thing

Edward Albee, three-time Pulitzer-winning playwright and ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ author, dies at 88

The three “tireds”

‘Rock star’ Baltimore librarian makes history at Library of Congress

See Amazing Images of American Sikhs

5 Rules for Hosting a Crappy Dinner Party (and Seeing Your Friends More Often)

There’s a movement afoot to name an intersection in Los Angeles for the late Forrest J Ackerman

Tom Hanks Has Made a Fortune Bringing Your Travel Nightmares to Life

Vin Scully is a voice for the ages and The national pastime continues to endure and Ken Levine’s tribute; we’re talkin’ baseball.

History of the Volkswagen and especially its groundbreaking advertising

48 Hour Film Project 2016 – SUPr, featuring Rebecca Jade (niece #1)

THE TRUST BOOK ONE: SILENT SCREAM Kickstarter. Goal met, stretch goal sought. Dennis Webster, Bill Anderson, Gabriel Rearte and Laurie E. Smith bring you the Roaring Twenties like you’ve never seen them before

Essay on lettering in comic books

Dominoes, and I don’t mean the bad pizza

Music!

Jolene by Dolly Parton and PTX

Gilbert, Sullivan, Spinners

The surprising reason music for Marvel movies is so forgettable; the tyranny of the temp track

Memorable tracks that never got above #58 on the Billboard charts

Fred Armisen & Bill Hader’s Test Pattern Parody Talking Heads On Seth Meyers

Stanley Dural a/k/a Buckwheat Zydeco died at the age of 68. Here’s Beast of Burden.

Alan Vega, artist and punk musician – obituary (HT to Shooting Parrots)

September rambling #1: unfinished art

Busker lends a helping hand to people with cancer

Instead of Dumbing Down

Meet the People Who Believe the Earth Is Flat

Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun; Scientists’ warnings that the rise of the sea would eventually imperil the US coastline are no longer theoretical

How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet

The Falling Man

The FBI Accused Him of Terrorism; He Couldn’t Tie His Shoes

The Aurora shooting survivors’ $700,000 legal bill shows the difficult reality of one Colorado law

Risky alone, deadly together Overdosing on prescription drug combinations plays a part in the growing rates of premature death among white women

White people think racism is getting worse, against white people

White privilege has enormous implications for policy — but whites don’t think it exists

‘He paid a dear price for it’: The 19th-century ordeal of one of America’s first transgender men

JEWEL OF THE NILE and why Ken Levine will be forever haunted by it

Who is Funding the Backlash against John Oliver’s Charter School Critique?

‘Playing Joan Crawford ruined my career’: Faye Dunaway says Mommie Dearest changed the way Hollywood thought of her

Now I Know: The Pool Party That Wasn’t a Gas and A Token Effort