I’m going to try to pull off a little magic trick here, and I have absolutely no reason to believe that I can pull it off. I’m going to try, in one post, to both celebrate Texas outfielder Josh Hamilton (one of my favorite players in the game) AND point out the absurdity of calling him baseball’s best player. I’m going to try, in one post, to strongly disagree with Tom Verducci’s contention while making it very clear that I think Tom is a great baseball writer.

No, I don’t expect to pull it off. We deal with this stuff a lot in today’s world and in today’s sports. There’s less and less room for gray. Take the Baseball Hall of Fame. I think that Andre Dawson, for instance, was a fabulous player and a class act and I have tremendous admiration for the man as a player and as a person. I also think his .323 lifetime on-base percentage leaves him just below my Hall of Fame bar. I didn’t think the two opinions are inconsistent. But somehow, in certain circles, I became known as the guy who hated Andre Dawson. I heard from quite a few people who thought I would be enraged or depressed somehow when he got elected and inducted. And when I said that, no, quite the opposite, I was thrilled for the guy … you could tell they didn’t believe me.

In this case, I am big Josh Hamilton fan. What is not to like? He came back from oblivion. He hits for power. He hits for average. He’s an excellent base runner. He plays all three outfield positions. He always seems willing to talk about what he’s been through so he can help inspire others who have hit lows. And he’s having a brilliant season.The season doesn’t end today, but if it did I would think off the top of my head that Hamilton would probably be my MVP pick, Hamilton or Robinson Cano*, but probably Hamilton.

*Though you may have noticed that defending MVP and my FAVORITE guy Joe Mauer, since the All-Star Break, has been hitting .430/.500/.670. No, I don’t think Mauer has any real shot at MVP but … he’s hitting pretty well.

In order to pull off this magic trick, I need you believe me when I tell you that I’m a very, very big Josh Hamilton fan.

OK, so, you probably know where this is going. Tuesday, I read my SI colleague Tom Verducci’s piece on how Josh Hamilton is now the best player in baseball.

It was classic Verducci — and I mean this in the very best way. He came out throwing fastballs up and in. The first 15 words of the piece about Hamilton were these: “Just another night in the life of the best player in baseball went something like this …” No, Tom wasn’t fooling around. A few paragraphs later, he went even bolder, if you can believe it: “There is nobody like him in baseball, and possibly nobody this good, this fast, and this unique — a 6-foot-4, 235 pound sledgehammer of a hitter who can run down fly balls in center field and fly around the bases and hit for such a high average — since Mickey Mantle in his prime.”

Um, Barry Bonds would like a word.*

*Actually, I have to admit I’m not entirely sure what Tom means here — there’s a lot in that one paragraph. For instance, if he’s looking for the last 6-foot-4, 235-pound sledgehammer … Mantle is not a good comparison. Mantle was 5-foot-11 and less than 200 pounds. Tom could be saying that no CENTERFIELDER has been as good as Hamilton since Mantle in his prime — that would eliminate Barry, who played very little center field after his second year — but that’s just wrong. To state the obvious: Willie Mays had a later prime than Mantle so you can’t skip over him. And this somehow skips over the young Ken Griffey, Jimmy Wynn, Carlos Beltran, the young Eric Davis (who was fabulous), the young Cesar Cedeno (who was fabulous), Dale Murphy, Andre Dawson, Kirby Puckett, even Dave Winfield played some centerfield for the Padres (a 6-foot-6, 220 pound sledgehammer) …

I’m going to chalk it up to one of Tom’s great attributes as a writer: Exuberance.

There is a lot more in Verducci’s piece along these lines. It is why I love reading the guy … his work is infused with passion and certainty and history. There was only one thing about this one. I didn’t agree with a single word.

No, that’s not right. I agreed with many of the words. I agreed that Hamilton is having a fabulous season. As of this moment, he leads the league in hitting, in hits, in total bases. When Tom wrote the piece, he was leading the league in slugging — he’s second to Miggy Cabrera now. He was hitting .361 when Tom wrote the piece (he’s down to .356 as I type these word).

He has a chance, as Tom wrote, to become only the third outfielder (after Barry Bonds and Larry Walker) in the last 50 years to hit .360 with 30-plus homers (though it probably should be noted that catcher Mike Piazza did it, as did first basemen Norm Cash, Todd Helton and Jeff Bagwell in the strike season). I agree that Hamilton is a wonderful player to watch play, a demon on the base paths, a force of nature as a defender, a larger than life kind of player.

But, yes, this is the point where our point turns.

I don’t think Josh Hamilton is the best player in baseball. I think it’s just kind of silly to say that anybody at this point is a better player than Albert Pujols — this reminds me of the NBA’s constant effort to give someone other than Michael Jordan the MVP award. But beyond that, I don’t really think Josh Hamilton is especially close to being the best player in baseball, not yet. I don’t really think he’s one of the five best players in baseball. I think his wonderful season is still incomplete and, at least in part, an illusion of context.

I would break this down into four parts:

1. Hamilton plays half his games in what is probably the best-hitting ballpark in the American League.

The Ballpark at Arlington opened in 1994. It has been a hitters park every single year, some years more dramatically than others. Put it this way: In the Ballpark in those years:

– Juan Gonzalez twice won MVP awards. In Gonzalez’s first year his home OPS was 200 points higher than road, in his second it was about 100 points higher. (Pudge Rodriguez also won an MVP and even though he hit for a much higher average at home, he hit the bulk of his homers on the road).

– Milton Bradley led the league in OPS (OPS was almost 300 points higher at home).

– Rafael Palmeiro put up his one 1,000 OPS season (OPS at home was 160 points higher), and had three of his four 40-homer seasons.

– A-Rod had two of his three 50-plus homer years, including his 57-homer year (34 of them at home).

– Mark Teixeira put up his one 40-plus homer year (43 homers total; 30 hit at home).

– Michael Young, in his Texas career, has an .867 OPS at the Ballpark, a .733 OPS on the road.

– Ian Kinsler, in his Texas career, has a .913 OPS at the Ballpark, a .730 OPS on the road.

– The entire Rangers team this year is hitting .293/.359/.463 at home (where they have a 39-23 record) and .255/.320/.379 on the road (where they have a 28-29 record).

And so on. I’m not saying that you knock down Hamilton’s great season because of the ballpark … I’m saying you have to look at the context? How much are Hamilton’s numbers inflated because he is playing half his games in a very good hitters park? We ought to at least look at the splits, right? And here’s what we find.

Hamilton at home: .396/.444/.752 with 24 doubles, 2 triples, 18 homers, 49 runs, 47 RBIs.

Hamilton on the road: .315/.371/.491 with 13 doubles, 1 triple, 8 homers, 33 runs, 34 RBIs.

Hamilton is still a very good player on the road — it’s important to remember that players, generally, tend to be better at home no matter the ballpark. But, that’s a huge split difference and, it is at least some context to keep in mind here.

2. How much credit should he get for his defense?

I went to the sage Tom Tango with a question that has been bothering me lately: If you want to use Wins Above Replacement, and I do, which version is better to use? You probably know that there are two major versions of WAR, one used by Fangraphs, the other by Baseball Reference.

Much of the time, the two WARs are not at war (see what I did there) but they are in the case of Josh Hamilton.

Fangraphs shows Hamilton as having (by a sizable amount) the highest WAR among position players in baseball at 6.7. Their list is as follows:

1. Hamilton, 6.7.
2. Ryan Zimmerman, 6.0.
3. Adrian Beltre, 5.7.
4. Carl Crawford, 5.6.
5. Robinson Cano, 5.5
(With Joey Votto, Andres Torres and Evan Longoria at 5.5 as well)

However, Baseball Reference does not show Hamilton in the Top 5 at all. Their list.

1. Robinson Cano, 6.0
2. Evan Longoria, 5.7
3. Miguel Cabrera, 5.5
4. Justin Morneau, 5.3
5. Adrian Gonzalez, 5.1

Wow. Josh Hamilton is just behind Gonzalez at 5.0, followed by Adrian Beltre, Aubrey Huff, Albert Pujols, Shin Soo Choo and the charging Joe Mauer.

So what gives? Tom Tango explains that the big difference is how the the competing WARS rate defense. Fangraphs’ WAR uses Ultimate Zone Rating to quantify defense. Baseball Reference’s WAR uses Total Zone to quantify defense. Tom thinks “UZR is better, but not markedly so.”

In Hamilton’s case, the competing systems judge him almost precisely the same on the offensive side. Fangraphs has him at +47 runs, Baseball Reference at +46 runs. The difference is defense. UZR has Hamilton as a very good defender — his UZR is +5.8.* Total Zone has Hamilton as a below average field, minus-7 runs.

Those 13 runs on defense make up the difference.

*I could be reading this wrong, but Fangraphs seems to put more emphasis on defense. For instance, Carl Crawford’s WAR at Baseball Reference is 3.7 — his defense is worth eight runs above average. But Fangraphs credits him for 22 runs above average, which thrusts his WAR up to 5.6 and into the No. 4 spot in baseball.

I’m not passing judgment here, just making the point.

Tom Tango does not have a strong feeling about which WAR is more accurate (“Split the difference,” he suggests). But the point is that Hamilton’s defense is debatable. He has only played 36 games in center field, according to Tom Verducci because the Rangers want to keep him healthy. Whatever the reason, he has spent most of his time in left field.

If you think he’s pretty great defensively, his value is quite stunning. If you think he’s only OK or less than OK on defense, his value is still great but considerably less so. I tend to lean a little more toward Fangraphs on this — I think Hamilton is a very good defender — but I do think he’s a much better MVP and “best player in baseball” candidate as a center fielder.

3. Hamilton doesn’t walk much.

You will notice that Hamilton leads the league in hitting by 16 points … but he does NOT lead the league in “on-base percentage.” This is because he doesn’t walk much. He has walked only 36 times all year, and so Miguel Cabrera, Justin Morneau and Kevin Youkilis all have better on-base percentages than Hamilton, and Joe Mauer is just a point behind.

People will disagree, of course. But to me it would be awfully, awfully, awfully hard to be the best player in baseball when you don’t walk more than Hamilton. Getting on base is so integral to being a successful offensive player. To be the best player without walking, I guess, you would need to have an extraordinary batting average on balls in play … which is exactly what Hamilton has this year. His BABIP is .395. Only Austin Jackson’s is higher.

And this is the larger point of not walking. The problem with a BABIP that high is that it probably involves quite a bit of luck. Take a player like Ichiro Suzuki, who should (and often does) have a high BABIP because he is fast, puts a lot of hard grounders and line drives in play and he gets out of the box quickly. In 2004, his BABIP was .399, the best in baseball. And he hit .372 that year.

The next year — same exact guy — his BABIP dropped to .316. And his batting average tumbled 69 points.

Three years later, his BABIP was back up to .389 … and he hit .351. The year after that, his BABIP dropped to .334 (still good) and his average dropped 41 points.

Derek Jeter is another guy whose final numbers fluctuate pretty wildly based on his BABIP. In 2006, his BABIP was a league leading .391 — and he hit .343 and finished second in the MVP voting. Two years later, his BABIP dropped to about 60 points, his batting average tumbled to .300 and and he had what was, up to this season, his toughest year (this year his BABIP is only .314).

How much control a hitter has over his Batting Average on Balls In Play is an argument for another day — people might argue that if you hit line drives consistently that your BABIP will be consistently great (though Tony Gwynn and Wade Boggs, two of the great line drive hitters ever, saw their BABIPs go up and down). But the larger point is that if Hamilton can maintain anything resembling .395 BABIP, he will be the first (his career BABIP before the year was closer to .325). it’s fair to believe that his extremely high batting average is at least somewhat lucky. And since he doesn’t walk much, if his batting average drops, well, I don’t think he viably can be in the discussion for best player in baseball.

4. The year ain’t over yet.

And this is the biggest point of all. In my opinion, you cannot — CANNOT — call Josh Hamilton the best player in baseball based on 106 games. Just last year, the guy was hurt much of the year and posted a 90 OPS+.

He has been on a preposterous two-and-a-half month tear — since June 1 he’s hitting .412/.462/.714 (his BABIP in these months is an otherworldly .443) — and it’s possible he will keep it up for the rest of the year, and next year, and for the year after that. I hope so. I really hope so. It would thrill me to no end to see a guy play this well over a period of years — especially someone who has gone through as much as Hamilton.

But, it’s also quite possible he won’t keep this up. It’s possible he will hit .360 this year, lead the league in slugging and all that. And it’s also possible that he won’t.

We all like playing the “if the season ended today” game … but the season isn’t ending today. Josh Hamilton is having a sensational season, and I’m thrilled for him, and I’m rooting for him, and I would love if he keeps this up so I can write some big stories about him. I love writing and reading about greatness — and Hamilton has been showing serious signs of greatness. I am glad Tom Verducci wrote the piece so that people could talk about Hamilton, who deserves good things.

But with all due respect … it seems to me that the best thing to do now is wait a bit before crowning the guy MVP and the best player in baseball and the most unique talent since Mantle. In my mind, boring as it seems, Albert Pujols is still the best player in baseball.

Meche had been rumored to be involved in potentially the most tragic baseball trade in the history of the world, a trade that might have involved Ollie Perez, Jeff Francoeur, Jose Guillen and Kyle Farnsworth. You should have to get a special dispensation from the Pope before making a trade involving all those guys.

Now, obviously, that won’t happen. Meche is gone for the year and while approaching 32 with another year at $12 million left on his $55 million contract … well, there’s no telling where this will go. He has not been himself since the middle of last year. You usually cannot pinpoint disasters to one specific moment in time, but in this case you can pretty much pinpoint Meche’s moment to the time he threw 132 pitches in a shutout against Arizona. Right after that game, Meche’s arm began to feel dead. He insisted — INSISTED — that the 132 pitches had nothing to do with the deadness of his arm. But, he had two dreadful starts, then took a couple of extra days off to deal with it. Tendinitis? Muscle fatigue? He then returned to pitch against Minnesota in a game where everyone said he would be watched closely and kept on a conservative pitch count.

What followed was epic. Well, here’s the material stuff from the blog post I wrote on July 2nd, one day after that start. The post was called “Stupid Is …”

* * *

All of which takes us back to Wednesday. Gil Meche was pitching, and you may or may not know that Meche has been battling with a balky back and a dead arm this year. Even so, he has made 17 starts — he leads the American League in starts — because he has become what baseball people like to call a warrior.

Unfortunately, the warrior had been terrible his previous two outings — terrible, in fact, ever since (then Royals manager) Trey Hillman left him in to throw 132 pitches in a shutout against Arizona. I want to make clear here that this is NOT about pitch counts. Bill James and I wrote some about pitch counts already, and we both said that we are skeptical about the way teams use pitch counts now and we’re open to Nolan Ryan’s plan to extend pitchers. You could argue — pretty persuasively, I imagine — that having a pitcher who has been dealing with a stiff back throw 132 pitch might not be the wisest move ever. But hey, Meche is a grown-up, he insisted on staying in there, he finished the job, I would not second guess it.

BUT then that familiar pattern emerged one more time. Meche struggled badly his next start. And he struggled badly again his next time out. His velocity was down. He felt lousy on the mound. The Royals said he had a bit of “dead arm,” which I’m pretty sure is not a modern medical term. To be blunt, that sounds like something John McGraw would have said. You had to wonder if the Royals planned to treat the “dead arm” with leeches and by drowning a witch.

But OK, hey, dead arm, and Meche (who also downplayed things — guy’s a WARRIOR) said that maybe there was a little “built up tendinitis” and some “fatigue.” He decided to take a couple of days off — not even pick up a baseball. Sounded like a wise thing to do. At first, there was some doubt if he would even make his Wednesday start, and frankly I have NO IDEA why the Royals would even let him make his Wednesday start. Skip a start, make sure he’s OK, I mean it’s not like the Royals are in the heat of a pennant race here.

But OK, Meche said he felt good after his two days off. And as Hillman said: “He’ll know with his experience.” Meche said he wanted to go Wednesday … OK, let him go. “No reservations,” Trey Hillman said. Pitching coach Bob McClure, a sensible soul, was a bit more cautious.

“I would say we’ll probably monitor how many pitches we’re going to let him throw,” McClure said.

Well, sure. Of course. I mean, you wouldn’t let a guy with a dead arm and bad back throw a lot of pitches. That’s OBVIOUS, no? Meche went out and, good to see, his stuff looked pretty good. He was throwing in the low-to-mid 90s again. His curveball looked pretty sharp. He did walk five guys in five innings, and he did labor, and he did throw 99 pitches in those five innings which I think is probably a few more than you would want him to throw. But hey, he only allowed one earned run and the Royals were in the game and Meche seemed to be back on track … Mission accomplished.

Only then … Gil Meche walked out the mound to start the sixth inning.

I wanted to rub my eyes, you know, the way they do in the movies when they see a ghost or really beautiful woman. I looked back at my computer — yep, he’d thrown 99 pitches. I retraced my steps: Yes, Meche did say he had a dead arm, yes there was some stiff back issues, yes everyone said the Royals were going to be cautious, yes, check … and then I looked back on the screen and there was Meche, or at least some guy with Meche’s name on his jersey, on the mound. What? Gil Meche has two-and-a-half years left on his $55 million contract. Gil Meche was the Royals opening day starter. Gil Meche is absolutely one of the critical players if the Royals are EVER going to dig out of this hole …

It couldn’t be. Nobody would send Gil Meche out there. Nobody would do that. Nobody would do that. Nobody would do …

On the second pitch of the inning (101st pitch overall) Carlos Gomez cracked a vicious double down the left-field line. Well, in a way, that was good. Carlos Gomez does not hit many vicious doubles … surely now Hillman would come and take Meche out and end this preposterous …

No. Meche stayed out there. He struck out Nick Punto. He got Denard Span to fly out on the first pitch of an at-bat (yay Denard!). So Meche had 105 pitches and might get out of this without it being a total disaster.

No sir. Matt Tolbert then worked Meche for an eight-pitch at-bat which led to a walk. Meche was now up to 113 pitches with two of the best lefty hitters in the American League — Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau — coming up. Well, yes, that was a disaster, but at least now Meche would get taken out of the game and …

No. Meche stayed in to face Joe Mauer. It leads to one of the great questions of philosophy: At what point does idiotic become criminal? Jamie Quirk, who was color commentator on television, talked about how Meche wanted to stay out there. Well OF COURSE Meche wanted to stay out there, but that’s why you have a MANAGER, someone who MANAGES to walk out to the mound and say, “Great effort Gil, but you know, I had to be insane to let you pitch the sixth inning in the first place, I have to get you out of here now.”

But Meche stayed out there. He got ahead of Mauer 0-2, then threw a ball, then Mauer singled, scoring a run. Meche was up to 117 pitches now. Hillman finally went to the mound. We had driven past the lunacy exit about four miles back … we were now in lawsuit territory. Could there be any explanation — ANY explanation — for pitching your wounded Opening Day starter 117 pitches?

Wait for it.

No, wait for it.

Hillman walked back to the dugout and left Meche in the game to face Morneau.

I don’t know. Maybe at some point, when you’re SO FAR down the wrong road, you just go: “What the hell, might as well keep going and hope we run into something good.” Maybe it would have been more damaging to have Meche throw 117 pitches and then pull him before the inning was done. I don’t know. I really don’t know. We are in such la-la land here, there can be no logical questions … these are like “How would you wash a unicorn?” questions. I do know that Meche threw four more pitches and did get Morneau to fly out to right.

And the final tally: Gil Meche, who four days earlier was not sure he was going to start, who three days earlier was going to be watched closely, who one day earlier was talking about how he hoped he had his velocity back … threw 121 pitches. The explanation afterward seemed to be that Meche wanted to … and his stuff was good. Or something.

* * *

Postscript: Since that day, Gil Meche is 2-6, 7.18 ERA, 51 walks, 49 strikeouts, 17 home runs and one season-ending shoulder surgery. Trey Hillman has been fired. And the Royals … well, there’s just not a whole lot to add, is there?

*If I could have have any the superpowers, I think I would want, in order:

And so on. You would have to go way, way, way down to the list to find, “The ability to communicate with fish.”

But Tuesday night, here in Cape Town, I found that I know more Portuguese than I suspected. I figured this out by looking through the raging Twitter wave after Spain beat Portugal 1-0, and after Portugal’s great Cristiano Ronaldo played 90 quiet minutes among the buzzing vuvuzelas.

For instance, there was this: “Cristiano Ronaldo e a maior fraude.” See, I know what that means!

And this: “Irritante egoist Ronaldo …” hey maybe I already have that language super power.

How about this one from someone named jonattandeon: “Adeus Cristiano Ronaldo muito nome pra pouco futebol.” Using my language super power (and the Internet), I came up with this translation: “Goodbye Cristiano Ronaldo, a name meaning very little soccer.” That may not be exact. But it’s probably close enough.

Tuesday’s game against Spain was always going to be a referendum on Ronaldo. There were numerous obvious reasons for this. Ronaldo is the highest paid soccer player in the world (at about $16.5 million dollars per year). He scored seven goals at the 2006 World Cup and carried Portugal to the semi-finals. He is one of the few players prominent in the conversation as the best in the world. He was the FIFA World Player of the Year in 2008, and he was second in the voting to Argentina’s Lionel Messi in 2009. More on this in a minute.

Ronaldo also was probably the Q-Rating star of the tournament — Ronaldo has the good looks, the good hair, he was the man at the end of that now infamous “Write The Future” commercial by Nike*, the one who kicked the ball through Homer Simpson’s legs (“Ronal-DOH!”), the one who stood over a free kick while an enormous statue of him was being unveiled in Portugal.

*The commercial in full is actually quite brilliant, I think, but it has doomed every major player involved. The first star in the full-length commercial, the Ivory Coast’s Didier Drogba, fractured his arm just before the World Cup began and was not much of a factor.

And finally … there was Cristiano Ronaldo.

Perhaps the biggest factor, though, is that Portugal was trying to beat Spain, and Spain is a spectacularly loaded team. Remember when I mentioned that Ronaldo finished second in the FIFA World Player of the Year voting? Well, it turns out there were 17 players who received first place votes. OK, you got that? Seventeen players were so good in 2009, that at least one voter (and the voters are coaches and captains of the international teams) thought he was the very best in the entire world.

Of those 17 — FIVE were in Spain’s starting lineup Tuesday.

Think how staggering that is. Let’s say the five best players in baseball are … Albert Pujols, Joe Mauer, Chase Utley, Hanley Ramirez and Evan Longoria. Those aren’t necessarily my five — that list will come out in a bit — but you could do worse. Now, imagine all five of those players on the same field at the same time. That’s Spain — with Xavi roaming the midfield, with strikers David Villa and Fernando Torres, with defender Carles Puyol and goalkeeper Iker Casillas, Spain has some of the world’s best players all over the field.

This was what Portugal was facing. This was what Ronaldo was facing. He was the captain of this team, the face of this team, the soul of this team. The pressure on him to lift his nation was enormous — soccer fans are not known for their sense of realism. If Portugal was going to upset Spain, the thinking went, Ronaldo was going to have to be supernatural.

This wasn’t actually so. Spain, for its embarrassment of talent, has not played all that well in this tournament. They lost to Switzerland and went into their third match needing a win against Chile or risk elimination. Spain did win, and at times looked good. But this Spain team has generally had the look of the 1977 Philadelphia 76ers, probably the most loaded NBA team to not win a championship. The line on that 76ers team was there were not enough basketballs for Julius Erving, George McGinnis, Doug Collins, World B. Free, Darryl Dawkins and others to share. The line on this Spain team seems to be that they cannot quite lift each other to the next level. Not yet, anyway.

And for the first hour or so of Tuesday’s match, Spain played its increasingly familiar brand of uninspired soccer. Portugal was probably better and had chances to strike first. The thing is, though, this had almost nothing to do with Ronaldo. He did offer a couple of his now-famous dives … but the referee was not buying. Beyond that, he just could not make much happen. Ronaldo at his best is perpetual motion — dangerous passes, brilliant shots into the corner. None of that was happening for him Tuesday. Spain did appear to be concentrating its defense on stopping him. But that’s what happens to all the best players. And the best players find ways to beat the defense.

About 15 minutes into the second half, Spain’s players suddenly and dramatically came to life. Fernando Llorente had just come in and he almost immediately had a wide open header in front that demanded a dramatic safe from Portugal’s goalkeeper Eduardo. Almost immediately afterward, David Villa hit a great shot that only barely went wide right. Portugal was staggering.

Villa threw the finishing punch — taking a pass, driving a left-footed shot low that Eduardo was only able to block back, and then punching the rebound into the top of the net with his right foot. For a long time, this game had a “first goal wins” feel. It was the first goal Portugal had allowed at the World Cup. And Villa’s goal felt decisive.

It was decisive. The last 30 or so minutes, Portugal only managed moderate pressure — that’s not really the Portugal game. But it was in those final 30 minutes that the concentration on Ronaldo really emerged. When was he going to do something remarkable? Then: When he was he going to do something good? Then: When he was going to do SOMETHING? The minutes ticked away, and the only particularly memorable moment came when Ronaldo was pushed in the box by a defender and fell to the ground as if kicked by a mule. The referee, as he had the entire game, said play on.

It is not fair to judge a player as great as Ronaldo based on one game. Then, World Cup soccer is not fair. The tournament creates a few heroes, but it creates many goats. Ronaldo’s remarkable skills and beautiful goals are there for anybody who wants to punch his name into the YouTube search engine. Some people will. There were some people even on Twitter Tuesday night defending his honor such as one from the young woman who, if I have my Portuguese powers intact, wrote: “Good bye Cristiano Ronaldo. You may return to my home now!”

But most people, at least on this night, preferred to judge the man by his frail-looking performance in the biggest game, on the biggest stage, against the biggest team. Twitter isn’t necessarily the best place to find calm and rational analysis after a game, but it was thumping with Ronaldo insults and jokes and slanders in at least four different languages, probably more. And that was probably the common reaction. No, it’s not easy to be one of the world’s best players on a bad night at the World Cup.

As one Tweeter wrote in Spanish: “Al único al que Cristiano Ronaldo se pudo galletear fue a Homero Simpson.”

And while my language superpowers have an issue with the verb “galletear,” I figure this sentence probably translates to: “The only one that Ronaldo could beat is Homer Simpson.” Maybe it’s more subtle than that. Either way, fair or unfair, Ronaldo’s performance Tuesday transcends language, just like that perfect three-letter word originated by Homer Simpson himself: “Doh!”

Awesome little poll in SI this week … the magazine interviewed 347 players and asked: Who is the nicest player in the game?

I’ll show you the Top 5 and you tell me what stands out:

1. Mike Sweeney, 20%
2. Jim Thome, 17%
3. Johnny Damon, 5%
4. Derek Jeter, 5%
5. Raul Ibanez, 5%

So what stands out? You betcha: Three of the five players are former Royals. We grow ‘em nice in Kansas City.

What’s weird for me is I have personal experiences, many of them, with the players on that list. Seems to me that you usually see these sorts of lists — Top 5 fastballs in the game, Top 5 managers in the game, Top 5 ballparks to play in — and you can’t help but think: Eh, that doesn’t really seem right to me.

But here’s a Top 5 that absolutely seems right based on my own experiences. Sweeney — well, I’ve known him for 15 years, and he’s absolutely for real. He called my home and left me a personal message when I got the SI job — and what made that cool is that he remembered the names of my wife and kids though I probably had not talked to him for a couple of years. Jim Thome and his wife once invited my wife to come to a ballgame in Cleveland. Johnny Damon called me at home once to thank me for a story I had written and he referred to me in a World Series press conference answer last year. Raul and I keep asking each other when we’re going to get together to play some Internet chess.

And Derek … yes, he’s nice too. I have said this about other people: Derek Jeter is about as nice as someone can be who is as famous as Derek Jeter. I think you have to judge people that famous, with that many demands, on a curve.

I will say that if that was Brian Bannister in his place, that would be my exact list for the five nicest guys in baseball too.

If I was expanding it, I’d also try to find a place in there for Curtis Granderson, Denard Span, Jamie Moyer, Torii Hunter, Joe Mauer and so on. How about that for a big story: The Search for the Nicest Guy In Baseball? That sounds like a fun trip, no?

It seems that what we crave in our saturated sports world — with all the dunks and home runs and touchdown dances and back-spinning eagles and breakaway goals deadening our senses — is more Christmas morning. Is it any wonder that more and more college sports fans concentrate their attention on recruiting, the wooing of talented 16- and 17-year old kids who might someday be the next big thing? Is it any wonder that more and more fans scout news of baseball’s minor leagues to know the names of the biggest prospects, to imagine the promise of that slugger hitting home runs for the Beloit Snappers or that pitcher striking out two an inning for the Modesto Nuts.

The NFL Draft is three months of Christmas morning. The Draft has become the second-biggest event on the NFL calendar, barely behind the Super Bowl, gaining fast, and why? Maybe, surely, it’s because the NFL Draft is about possibility. It’s about college football players you come to know as data — a 4.5 40-yard dash and 20 reps on the bench and 6.8 seconds on the cones, etc. It’s about unrealistic expectation — hey this guy could be the next Drew Brees … Warren Sapp … James Lofton. The NFL Draft is about the hope that under the tree this year will be something so absurdly wonderful that you cannot even imagine it, a player so absurdly wonderful that he probably cannot even exist. But, well, we don’t have to worry about that until training camp.

Stephen Strasburg is about to make his first big-league start for the Washington Nationals. There has never in the long history of Major League Baseball been a more anticipated debut. Why? Yes, Strasburg’s talent is dazzling. Yes, he throws a 100-mph fastball and two absurd secondary pitches — and all for strikes. Yes, we live in an era of heightened media exposure. Yes, Strasburg has passed every test, dominated on every level below the big leagues. Yes to all of it. But it still doesn’t quite add up to the insane hype that surrounds him … until you consider the obvious.

Stephen Strasburg is Christmas morning.

* * *

Before we get into Strasburg, maybe it’s best to consider another phenom in order to appreciate the sports time we live in. Let’s consider a 17-year-old catcher. You know who I am talking about. He has insane home run power; everyone talks about the long home runs he hit in high school. And he has this arm, this incredible arm, perhaps the greatest catcher arm scouts have ever ever seen. He was raised to play baseball … and maybe because of this he has this cockiness about him — something that sails beyond certainty. He has known his destiny for a long time. His dream is not to play in the Major Leagues, he KNOWS he will do that. No, his dream, before he even plays in his first big league game, is to go into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

You have this player pictured in your mind, right? You can see him. No, maybe you don’t see him. Imagine this: The player will get taken in the second round of the amateur draft. The SECOND ROUND. The player will be the eighth catcher selected in the draft — behind, among others, names like Ken Plesha and Ken Rudolph and Richard Horton and Randy Kohn. He will never quite get over the slight, never quite understand how even the team that finally selected him could believe that someone else was better. He will go to his first minor league team and announce to his stunned teammates, “Forget Babe Ruth! Remember me!” He will be so dazzling his first full year in the minor leagues, the team actually will retire his number at the end of the season. He will come to the big leagues at 19 and tell the veterans that they had better enjoy backup duty. Before the end of that season, Ted Williams will sign a baseball for him with the inscription: “A Hall of Famer for sure.” And at 22, he will put up the greatest season a catcher had ever had.

In other words, he will go on to become the great Johnny Bench.

There are so many similarities between Bryce Harper now and Bench then … obvious similarities. The power. The arm. The arrogance. But there are also those big differences. Harper at 16 had his own cover of Sports Illustrated — something that Bench did not achieve until he was a three-time All-Star and in the middle of his legendary 1970 season. Harper was the first pick in the draft. Harper will sign for a preposterous amount of money — more, perhaps, than Bench made in his big league career. Harper will be watched closely, studied intently, he will not need to say “Forget Babe Ruth, remember me,” because everyone is saying it for him. Some scouts call Harper the best 17-year-old prospect ever, which is silly, Harper is not a better big league prospect than Johnny Bench was in 1965. Nobody expects him to be the best defensive catcher in the big leagues in two years* — maybe the best defensive catcher ever — like Bench. Even though Harper has tremendous hitting potential, nobody should really expect him to lead the league in home runs and RBI when he’s 22 the way Bench did.

*Heck, Harper’s own agent Scott Boras is already encouraging the Nationals to move him from catcher to another position to speed up his process to the big leagues.

But, we live in a different time, our Christmas morning time, when expectation is more fun than realization, when potential costs as much or more than performance, when we happily get carried away, when it isn’t so much about that tired cliche of “what have you done for me lately?” but, instead, “what can you do for me tomorrow?” When Johnny Bench was drafted in the second round, the Cincinnati Reds sent a scout to negotiate price. The scout didn’t offer much money but he did offer some advice. “The real money,” the scout said, “is in the big leagues. You just show everyone what you can do and you will make more money than you ever dreamed.”

Bench and his father believed those words in 1965, and Bench signed with the determination to become good enough to make that money. These days, for better and worse, the scout would be laughed out of the house.

* * *

All this is not to say that we, in modern days, invented hype. No, hype has been around as long as sports, going back at least to the ancient Olympics when the talk of a bold new boxer or sprinter would spread quickly throughout Greece. And there has long been hype around promising pitchers. It’s hard to imagine a baseball pitcher creating more hype than Bob Feller, who at 17 walked off his father’s farm in Iowa and, in an exhibition game one day before the 1936 All-Star Game, struck out eight Gas House Gang Cardinals in three innings. It was during that exhibition, according to legend and Feller himself, that Cardinals shortstop Leo Durocher threw down his bat, raced back to the dugout and hid when he still had just two strikes. Before the year was out, Feller would be involved in a contract controversy that may have cost him a $100,000 deal.

David Clyde was preposterously hyped in 1973 — he was the first pick in the June draft out of Westchester High in Texas, he signed with the Rangers for $65,000, he made his big league debut before the end of the month. It was quite the thing: Almost 36,000 people showed up, the largest crowd of the season. Clyde walked seven … but he gave up just one hit and struck out eight in five innings — the players on the Minnesota Twins that day remembered that Clyde had good stuff, sure, but also that it was almost impossible to see the ball against the blur of white T-shirts in the background. Clyde’s next start drew 33,000 — the second biggest crowd of the year. Clyde gave up one earned run in six innings and struck out six. The third-biggest crowd of the Rangers’ season came when David Clyde started, also the fourth biggest crowd and the fifth biggest crowd.

Dwight Gooden was both hyped and brilliant when he came to the Mets as a 19-year-old in 1984. His minor league numbers were ludicrous — he had struck out 300 batters in only 191 innings in Lynchburg in 1983. He threw a fastball the seemed to jump over bats* and a curveball that hit its peak and then rushed down like a plane in an air show. He was being called Doctor K before the year was out — and in his last four starts he allowed 0, 0, 1 and 1 runs, and struck out 11, 16, 16 and 9. He was the talk of baseball and sports.

*Yes, scientists will tell you that fastballs cannot rise and I buy that — being a staunch believer in gravity and all — but I would only make two points. (1) Scientists for years also said that curveballs didn’t really curve meaning many scientists are no fun when it comes to baseball and (2) Whether fastballs REALLY rise or only APPEAR to rise seems a somewhat negligible point to a batter trying to hit it.

Oh there were plenty of other young pitchers who were hyped, who made grand entrances, who captured the imagination of the nation just when they started pitching. Herb Score was hyped. Fernando Valenzuela was hyped. Ben McDonald was the first pick in the 1989 Draft, and he made his big league debut just a few days after he signed, and in the first start of his big league career — July 21, 1990 — he threw a four-hit shutout in front of 39,000 or so in Baltimore. In 2001, Mark Prior was the second overall pick (and, man, did the Twins take a beating for NOT taking Prior with the first pick and instead going with a local high school catcher named Joe Mauer), and Prior overpowered hitters in his nine minor league starts (79 strikeouts in 51 innings) and struck out 10 in his first big league start in front of more than 40,000 at Wrigley Field. In his second year, he finished third in the Cy Young — he was probably the best pitcher in the league that year.

There are other stories. So, you will ask, what makes Stephen Strasburg so different? And the answer, I think, is this: He’s not different. We’re the ones who are different.

We’re different not because we hype Strasburg — you see the long history of hype in baseball — but maybe because we so desperately want to believe the hype. We want something new. We want something exciting. We want something fresh. The sports world is inescapable now — 24-hour news, 24-hour talk, 24-hour message boards, 24-hour blogs, 24-hour highlights, 24-hour updates, 24-hour golf channels and tennis channels and baseball channels and football channels and NBA channels and classic sports channels — and so we find ourselves lost in endless and meaningless discussions in June about whether Brett Favre will play another season and who will be the preseason No. 1 team in college football and where LeBron James will sign. They are meaningless because we don’t know, but we have to fill the air, have to punch at the uncertainty, have to excite the senses. Our sports world, in so many ways, feels like Christmas afternoon — the toys are unwrapped, and they are exactly what we wanted and they are great fun … but there are also too many of them, and many are not what as good as we hoped, and a couple broke right away and even the best ones, after a while, can feel ordinary.

And, again, we long for the next Christmas morning and the endless possibilities of a box wrapped in paper.

* * *

Glen Perkins sits behind home plate and charts Stephen Strasburg. This is Rochester, N.Y., and Glen would rather be somewhere else — namely Minnesota where he grew up, where his wife and daughters live, and where he pitched for the Twins in 2008 and 2009. He won 12 games for the Twins in 2008, though he’s baseball savvy enough not to put too much stock in pitcher victories. He felt hurt in 2009 and had a rough season. Now he’s in Rochester trying to get healthy and get back.

When you’re pitching in the minor leagues trying to get back to the big leagues, you are happy to find distractions whenever you can. Charting a brilliant young pitcher is a good distraction. Perkins charted the Reds brilliant prospect Aroldis Chapman and found himself a bit dissatisfied … he had heard so much about Chapman but what he saw was an inconsistent fastball and slider and shaky command. Chapman is only 22, (“Obviously he has time to figure things out,” Perkins says) but the point is that for Perkins the hype did not match the reality, the talk did not match what he saw. It’s usually like that.

“I got to hit against Greg Maddux once,” Perkins says. “And he threw me one of those inside fastballs that looked like it was going to hit me. I’m not going to say I closed my eyes, but I definitely flinched and pulled back and looked away. And then the umpire called it strike three. It was really pretty unbelievable.”

He smiled. That’s what he wants to see in baseball. Something beyond belief. And on this day in Rochester, with a sellout crowd around him and hawkers selling Stephen Strasburg T-shirts, he settles in to watch baseball’s biggest pitching prospect.

“Wow,” he texts me after Strasburg gets a strikeout in the first inning. “98, 99, 100 on the first strikeout. Wow.”

Strasburg then throws an absurd change-up that makes a young player named Brian Dinkelman swing about a half hour early.

“I’m seeing Lincecum with that change,” Perkins texts. “Absolutely filthy.”

And he texts this after another change-up: “Guy next to me thought it was a curveball … Just saying, when it looks like a curveball and it’s not = nasty.”

And this after a sick curveball that make Jacque Jones look silly: “That appeared to be belt high for about 59 feet.”

And it goes on — the Glen Perkins texts, the brilliant pitches, the loud cheers, the general awe. Strasburg, by merely being here, has turned an ordinary Triple-A baseball game into an event. Strasburg, by merely throwing a baseball just like another pitcher, has made the day feel brighter. Strasburg, by his brilliance, has made this a day that a few thousand people may never forget.

“It’s fun to pitch in front of a big crowd,” Strasburg will say after the game when asked about the energy. He does not like to think too much about the expectations that build around him … and this is undoubtedly good because expectations can swallow you whole if you allow them. It all happened so fast for him. He was not a phenom who had to understand at a young age that his talent was special — he famously was not even drafted out of high school. He just as famously considered quitting college and going to work for Lowe’s or Home Depot.

His pitching skills emerged right about then, when he became serious about baseball, when he dedicated himself to it. One year, he was topping out lower 90s, the next he was throwing 100 mph with life. One month, he was just flipping his curveball up at the plate, the next he was throwing it with ferocity and the ball would appear to skid against air like a car making a hard turn in a Hollywood chase. At one point, he was a pretty good reliever on the San Diego State staff (making second-team all Mountain West), at another point he was a dominant pitcher for the U.S. Olympic team, and at another point he was signing for more than $15 million and being called by many the greatest pitching prospect in the history of the game. Yes, it’s probably best not to think too much about it.

And what strikes Perkins, what strikes many of the Rochester players and coaches, what strikes many of Strasburg’s Syracuse teammates, what strikes people in the crowd, what strikes the media types who travel to see him … Strasburg is as good as the hype. No, he’s BETTER than the hype. He’s throwing 100 mph fastballs over the black. He’s throwing change-ups that bend like curveballs and curveballs that come out of his hand looking like fastballs. He throws them all with a sense of control — he doesn’t look like he’s working too hard. He throws them all with great command — he isn’t trying to throw strikes but instead to throw exactly where the catcher asks. Nobody can remember a 21-year-old pitcher who could do all these things. Yes, he’s better than the hype …

… which, of course, just raises the bar on the hype.

“That was really fun,” Perkins says after the game, after he has considered what he saw. And then he shrugs because now it’s back to real life and his own comeback and all the hard parts of day-to-day life.

* * *

Stephen Strasburg makes his big league debut Tuesday in Washington, and it will be televised (of course) and there will be a sellout crowd (of course) and there will a million Tweets going at once (of course). The price of his baseball cards will rise and fall on each pitch. The scouting reports, undoubtedly, will be instant and bold. Someone, surely, will predict the Hall of Fame. Someone, surely, will predict disappointment.

What can we realistically expect from Stephen Strasburg? Well, that’s just thing: There are no realistic expectations. He’s 21 with a 100 mph fastball, good command, what appears to be a sound delivery and, seemingly, a sensible approach to the game and to life. Anything is possible. That’s what is so exciting about it. That’s what’s so mysterious about it too.

When Strasburg pitched in Rochester, one of the great people in baseball — Joe Altobelli — was in the press box holding court. Altobelli has been around the game as a player, coach and manager for 50-plus years. In the minors he managed, among others, Eddie Murray, Mike Flanagan, Scott McGregor, Bobby Grich, Dennis Martinez, Al Bumbry, Doug Decinces and so on. He later managed the 1983 Orioles to a World Series championship.*

*Creating one of the oddest facts in baseball history: Joe Altobelli actually won as many World Series as manager of the Baltimore Orioles as Earl Weaver.

And Strasburg’s appearance brought him out to the ballpark and put him in the mood to reminisce. The promise of Strasburg made Altobelli think back to those days when Herb Score was young and probably threw 100 mph and could barely be hit. The promise of Strasburg made Altobelli think back to some of the great pitchers he saw — Koufax and Drysdale, Seaver and Palmer, Feller in his later years, Nolan Ryan, of course.

This is not to say that Altobelli is comparing Strasburg to any of those guys (that would be disrespectful of the greats). And it’s also not to say that he’s predicting greatness for Stephen Strasburg. No, when you’re around baseball for a long time you learn that crazy things happen in this crazy game. “Let’s just see what the kid can do,” Altobelli says, sensible words. But there’s unmistakably a little excitement in the voice of a 78-year-old man who has spent his life around baseball.

Let’s just see what the kid can do. After Tuesday, we’ll know something. After his next start, we’ll know a little more. And after a year, two years, three years, we’ll know all about Stephen Strasburg the pitcher. Yes, let’s just see what the kid can do.

For now, though, this could be the very best Christmas ever.

This will eventually be about Bryce Harper. Eventually.

Five years ago, the Kansas City Royals found themselves in an odd position. They had the second pick in the amateur draft — this, in and of itself, is not that odd for the Royals. What was odd: The choice was basically made for them before the draft came along. There was a player who was gift-wrapped, a player they simply could not pass up. That player was Alex Gordon.

It’s easy to forget this now that Gordon’s career has stalled — he’s down in Triple A crushing the ball, trying to learn a new position and get his team to believe in him again — but Gordon was clearly the No. 1 college hitting prospect in America that year. He was Baseball America’s amateur player of the year. He was called all those things: Can’t miss, certain star, the no-brainer choice with the second pick*.

*The only reason he was not the first pick is that there was a “once-in-a-generation” high school player named Justin Upton who would go No. 1. If you follow the draft, you will hear surprisingly often about once-in-a-generation talents.

Gordon would have been a tough player for any team to pass up with the second pick. But what made him especially compelling for the Kansas City Royals: He was a Midwestern kid from Royals country (grew up in Nebraska, played his college baseball at Nebraska). At the plate, he looked eerily like a young version of the Royals patron saint, George Brett. And if that’s not enough he even had a brother, Brett, who, yes, actually was NAMED for the Royals patron saint George Brett. Stars were aligned. The flush was royal. Kansas City had to take Alex Gordon, and they did.

Here’s the interesting thing, though: Not everyone in the Royals organization thought Gordon was unquestionably the best pick. Two Royals decision makers told me privately going into that draft that they had this gnawing feeling that the better pick was actually ANOTHER college third baseman. Now, I don’t want to make this sound too dramatic, like these men were baseball Jor-Els shouting about how Planet Alex was going to explode. No, they both liked Gordon a lot as a player. But they also thought this other third baseman was a much better fielder — good enough to play defense on the big league level on Day 1 — and they loved his work ethic, thought he would work hard enough to become a good hitter.

That other third baseman? You bet: It was Ryan Zimmerman.

Now, sure, it’s easy to second guess now. But my point is not second-guessing or even first-guessing. My point is not that Zimmerman has become a star while Gordon is still trying to find himself — heck, depending on what you believe about nature vs. nurture, you might believe that had the Royals taken Zimmerman HE might be the one struggling now.

No, my point is to say that no matter how they may have felt about Zimmerman, they felt like they had to take Gordon. He was the obvious choice. He was the popular choice. He was the karma choice. He was the only choice. We all know that baseball’s amateur draft is a crapshoot, and the Royals up to that point had never had much experience — or any success — with really high draft picks. Before Gordon, the Royals only had four Top 5 picks. And none of them panned out.

1971: Roy Branch (5th … ahead of Frank Tanana and Jim Rice).
1993: Jeff Granger (5th … ahead of Billy Wagner, Chris Carpenter and Torii Hunter).
1998: Jeff Austin (4th … ahead of J.D. Drew, Brad Lidge and C.C. Sabathia).
2000: Mike Stodolka (4th … ahead of Chase Utley and Adam Wainwright).

There are many, many more misses in the baseball draft than hits, but when you have not had even one successful draft choice in the Top 5 in franchise history, sure, you might find it hard to go against convention. In the end, the world made that choice for the Kansas City Royals. They took Gordon, accepted the kudos from everyone around (“What a great pick!”), celebrated the next year when Gordon was named the minor league player of the year, and generally hoped for the best. They still do.

i’ve been thinking about that Gordon story because, well, everyone knows that the Washington Nationals have to take Bryce Harper with the first overall pick in next year’s amateur draft. The Nationals have tried to be coy about that No. 1 pick, but it’s pretty silly: They have really been put in a place where they have no choice. Bryce Harper is 17 years old, scouts adore him, he’s been on the cover of Sports Illustrated with the headline “Baseball’s Chosen One.” The legendary stories of his Mickey Mantle-length home runs and Johnny Bench arm have made the rounds. The Nationals, even with Stephen Strasburg making his debut on June 8, one day before the draft, must take Bryce Harper or risk half of Washington storming the stadium.

Here’s the thing: I have a baseball scout friend who has been wondering lately about Bryce Harper. And my friend sounds oddly similar to the two Royals people who were wondering about Alex Gordon. Again: It isn’t that my friend is down on Harper, not exactly. He has seen Harper more than once and loves the power, loves the arm, thinks he has a chance to become a star.

But, he says, Harper also has a chance to NOT become a star. And it’s like people are forgetting that. “With Strasburg, he was Major League ready the day the Nationals drafted him,” he says. “The only risk was injury. There was never any question that he could step right off campus into the big leagues and, with his stuff, get big league hitters out. That’s not the story with Harper. He’s a great prospect. But, for me, he’s a long way off.”

Here’s what drives my friends general doubts: He doesn’t think Harper will stay at catcher despite the great arm. For one, he thinks Harper is stiff behind the plate and he will keep growing, making it tough for him to be a good defensive catcher. But, even more, he thinks that Harper’s huge signing bonus will force Washington (or, theoretically, another team) to put him on the fast track and try to get his bat to the big leagues as quickly as realistically possible. That could mean moving him off catcher.

Then, even as a hitter, my friend thinks Harper is not close to a finished product. His swing is awfully long (“He’s going to swing and miss a lot, especially when facing advanced breaking stuff”). He’s not the only scout who sees Harper as guy who will strike out 125 or 150 time per year. Of course if he actually makes enough contact to hit with power, that won’t be be a problem. But that’s no guarantee.

“Do I think he can make the adjustments?” he asks. “I do. He’s a good athlete. But do I KNOW he will make those adjustments? No. For me, he’s going to need three full minor league seasons and part of a fourth, even if everything goes right.”

He did not finish that sentence though he could have finished it this way: “And everything doesn’t always go right in baseball.” The bottom line is this: He thinks Harper is one of the best 17-year-old hitting prospects he’s seen. But, he’s just that: A terrific 17-year-old prospect. And there have been a lot of those.

I often think about the 1989 draft — that was the draft that, at the time, was being hyped for the best crop of high school power hitters scouts had ever seen. There were three in particular: A big time-power speed outfielder in Chicago, a slugger in Texas, and a slugger in South Carolina. I know quite a bit about that draft because I had just started my very first writing job in newspapers — I was a high school writer covering York, Lancaster and Chester Counties (the YLC as we liked to call it) in South Carolina for a Charlotte Observer supplement that we wittily called “The York Observer.” The York Observer, incidentally, also provided the first full-time writing job for my longtime Kansas City colleague Jason Whitlock, though we we just missed working together there.

Anyway … Lancaster* High, in my time as a young writer, was a mecca for baseball prospects. In just a couple of years, I saw five players who were taken in the Top 7 rounds of the draft — and the guy taken in the seventh round, pitcher Pep Harris, would go on to a short career in the big leagues. The others really did not pan out. Danny Clyburn was a second-round pick and a gifted athlete. Jon Barnes was a terrific young right-handed pitcher who went in the second round. The elegantly named Mark Anthony — who was also one heck of a running back if memory serves — was a fifth round pick. My first real experience covering high school baseball — I was out there all the time — and it seemed like I was always surrounded by a dozen scouts.

*I should say here — out of respect for that fine little place — that the correct pronunciation if LAN-cus-tur, emphasis on the first syllable, unlike, say, Burt Lancaster, where the emphasis would be on the second. In fact, if you are to pronounce it South Carolina style you would barely even HAVE a second syllable, it’s closer to Lankster than anything Burt.

There was one Lancaster star who towered above. When I read Tom Verducci’s excellent piece on Harper last year — especially the part about the 500-foot home runs — I was struck by the feeling: Wait, I’ve seen that before. The hitter was named Earl Cunningham. He was 6-foot-2, 225 or so pounds (then) and hit some of the longest home runs I have ever seen, even as a high school hitter. The one homer I remember most is one that sailed over the street, across a parking lot and into a shopping center across. What I remember about it was that the ball was hit so ridiculously high … it was like a nine-iron shot that never seemed like it would come down. Scouts were duly awed. It was one of many times Cunningham awed them.

This is not to say that Cunningham was as polished a prospect as Harper — he was not a catcher, certainly, and though he was fast then most people figured (reasonably enough, as it turned out) that his body would change and he would end up being a semi-plodding left fielder. But pure power, yes, he was awe inspiring. As one scout told me: “He could hit 50 home runs in a season someday.” And this was 1989, when 50 home runs in a season was more or less impossible.

Like I say, Cunningham was really one of three remarkably promising hitters. Another was in Chicago, Jeff Jackson. He hit .500 his senior year, stole 46 bases and hit 16 home runs in barely over 100 at-bats. Paul Coleman crushed ridiculously long home runs through the Texas humidity.* And Cunningham was wowing them with the 500-foot homers.

*Coleman, interestingly enough, would become a superstar in OFNA radio control car racing. I suspect that is the first time THAT has happened to a big-time baseball prospect.

The fourth, sixth, seventh, and eighth picks of the 1989 Draft to me represents the perfect miniature essence of the draft and the vagaries of baseball scouting. With the fourth pick, the Phillies Jeff Jackson. With the sixth pick, the Cardinals took Paul Coleman. With the seventh pick, the White Sox took Auburn football/baseball star Frank Thomas. And with the eighth pick, the Cubs took Earl Cunningham.

Oh, the difference in sports between being right and being wrong.

None of the mega-hyped high school outfielders panned out, of course. There were injuries. There were failed adjustments. There were lots and lots of strikeouts and few walks. I followed Cunningham most closely: Some say he ate himself out of the game — he ballooned — some say he could never adjust to advanced pitching (his strikeout-to-walk numbers in the minors are outrageous), some say he got some money and lost his edge, some say he was never that good a prospect in the first place. Nobody knows for sure, of course. Nobody ever knows for sure why it doesn’t go right.

But this is the point: Sometimes, often, it doesn’t go right. The Bryce Harper hype has grown to such extremes now that it feels like he’s a certain future star. The Nationals will have to take him. They will have to give him an obscene signing bonus to get him. They will have to then expect that he develops according to his potential, that he doesn’t get hurt, that he doesn’t lose focus, that he maintains his tools, that he can stay at catcher (he’s a MUCH better prospect at catcher) and, frankly, that he is as good as everyone believes. And there is nothing certain about any of that.

Bryce Harper may be the best prospect in this year’s draft — scouts almost unanimously agree, and I don’t want to underplay that — but despite the overwhelming attention he’s gotten it seems to me that Harper is not so different from any of the other “best prospects” in previous drafts. Matt Wieters may have pages and pages of Internet “Matt Wieters facts” — “Matt Wieters can have his cake and eat it too,” “Matt Wieters once threw himself out stealing,” etc. — but he also has an 84 OPS+. Alex Gordon is trying to get back to the big leagues. Josh Hamilton went through a lot of hell before making it through. Al Chambers, who was called a Dave Parker clone as the high school star in Harrisburg was was the first pick in the 1979 draft, is back in Harrisburg. I don’t know what happened to Earl Cunningham.

Point is: You still have to hope a lot.

* * *

Quick update: I’ve already heard from a couple of people who wonder if I’m suggesting here that the Nationals should take someone besides Bryce Harper with the No. 1 pick. Let me say it as clearly as I can: Absolutely not. I don’t know a lot about this draft, but from what I do know it seems that Harper is pretty clearly the best prospect in it. He’s a 17-year-old catcher with light-tower power. He’s worth getting excited about it; even the scout with doubts thinks so. I do not have an alternative for Harper; from an outsiders view he seems the choice.

No, my point is only that Harper is not a sure thing, not even close to a sure thing … and it’s easy to lose sight of that. My sense is that this is not an especially exciting draft after Harper and there is no real challenger to him in it. But I don’t know that. All I’m saying is that if good Nationals scouts somehow were locked in on another player they believe will be a better choice than Harper, they should not allow the hype to overwhelm their judgment. Sometimes — Griffey, A-Rod, Mauer, etc. — the high school phenom does indeed end up being the best player in the draft. Sometimes he does not. You have a good chance being right or wrong whatever way you go. It’s better in life, I think, to trust your instincts than to trust the overpowering pressures that surround you.

Most of all, he wrote that he hated it — and this is what separated this letter from some of the others — because he knew in his heart that his hate was going to fade quickly and he was going to become a huge Baltimore Ravens fan anyway. He felt guilty about it, but such is life. The Ravens were in his town. He didn’t put them there — but it was a fact. He loved pro football. He knew that sooner, rather than later, this stolen team was going to be in his heart, and he was going to forget all about how they came to Baltimore, and he was going to lose all concern for Cleveland, and he was going to go on with his life. I loved that letter. It was one of the most honest I have ever received about anything. The guy knew his heart.

I bring that up today because, as you have probably heard, President Obama has decided that he wants to just keep on weighing in on LeBron James. He and his senior advisor David Axelrod decided that one day was plenty of time to wait after the Cavaliers lost in the playoffs to the suddenly invincible Boston Celtics. “(President Obama) doesn’t want to tamper,” David Axelrod told ESPN. “But as a Chicago fan, the president thinks LeBron would look great in a Bulls uniform.”

Well, at least he didn’t want to tamper. Don’t be surprised if a giant Chicago tax-break for multimillionaire basketball players is coming soon.

This apparently was not enough for the Hoopster in Chief. The President has now given an interview to TNT — to run in full on Tuesday — and in it he explained that while he doesn’t want to meddle*, well, the Chicago Bulls have an awfully good young core of players, don’t they?

*Isn’t it amazing how hard the President is working to not meddle in the affairs of an NBA basketball player.

He said: “I will say this: (Derrick) Rose, Joakim Noah, it’s a pretty good core. You know, you could see LeBron fitting in pretty well there.”

Yeah, ha ha, you sure could see it! And we all know it would be awfully tough to find a basketball team where LeBron James could fit in …

Now, look, I don’t want this to be at all about politics. At all. I try — perhaps not always successfully — to keep my own thoughts about politics away from this blog because I know even less about politics than I do about sports and because there’s enough political mayhem going on everywhere else.

No, this is about sports — an expansion on the Pozterisk I included in my column about Lebron in the magazine this week. On the one hand, it’s kind of nice to have a president who is such a big sports fan. It was always kind of nice — at least I always thought so — to hear President Bush talking about baseball and President Clinton talking about college basketball and so on. President Nixon probably should not have declared the Texas-Arkansas winner national champs when Penn State was undefeated … but, hey, he got excited.

Point is, President Obama clearly loves quite a few sports, knows a lot about them, can talk about them without resorting to those rather embarrassing “Sports is a lot like politics,” statements that politicians often say. It’s even kind of nice to have a president who is unafraid to be a partisan fan, refusing to allow politics and strategy to temper his Chicago fanhood. I wrote in the magazine that his LeBron statements probably lost him Ohio in 2012. I was joking. Maybe.

On the other hand, I would say the President’s occasional appearances in the sports world generally have not come across well. The Chicago Olympics thing was, um, not too good. He picked the NCAA men’s field without picking the women’s field one year, creating a stir, and sparking him to fill out both brackets the next year. And, perhaps most emotionally, he upstaged Stan Musial at the All-Star Game last year by become the first president in more than 30 years to throw out the first pitch. That’s not to say it was the President’s fault or he did anything wrong … he was invited to go and he went. My point is it just didn’t come off well, at least in my mind. That should have been Musial’s night, his Ted Williams moment, and instead the Man’s appearance felt like a sideshow.

All of which leads to the LeBron stuff. Yes, I’m sure these statements were said said in the spirit of fun. And I’m sure the President, as a heart-strong Bulls fan, would indeed love for LeBron to come play for the Bulls where he could join Derrick Rose and bring back a little bit of the Michael Jordan madness back to Chicago. And I’m also sure that he also would not mind for LeBron James himself to know that the President of the Untied States is watching. Hey, there have to be SOME perks for becoming President.

But, you know what? It really bothers me that he has now twice made public his hopes that LeBron James go to Chicago. It bothers me not because of politics, not because I think he should shut down his fanhood when he’s president. It bothers me not because I blame him — hey, he’s the President of the United States AND a Chicago Bulls fan, this is the chance of a lifetime!

It bothers me because I think these statements are lacking in a basic fan emotion. A few months ago, you will remember, it looked like Joe Mauer would become a free agent at the end of this year. Now, wouldn’t EVERY TEAM love to have Joe Mauer as their catcher? I mean, what’s not to love? He’s a preposterously great hitter, a good enough catcher to have won multiple Gold Gloves and by all accounts one of the most modest and decent guys you could find in the game. Sure, if you were a Red Sox fan or a Yankees fan or a Phillies fan or a Dodgers fan or a Cubs fan or any fan of a team with money, you might drool thinking about Joe Mauer catching for your team.

But … it sure seemed to me most people hoped Mauer would stay in Minnesota anyway. I would hear from fans of all kinds including Yankees fans — not always the most self-aware of fans — who hoped he would stay in Minnesota. Why? Because it SEEMED RIGHT. He grew up in Minnesota, the Twins drafted him No. 1 overall to a chorus of jeers, he became a part of the Minnesota landscape. He has come to represent his team and his city. Sure, any fan would love to have him. But there’s a part of us as fans, I think, that roots for the right thing to happen. And when Mauer stayed, it felt right. It was a nice moment in sports.

It was a lot like that with Ryan Howard too. He’s not from Philadelphia, and I thought the Phillies spent too much money — but that larger point remains. Ryan Howard will be in Philadelphia for years to come. Athletes help define their cities. Howard’s home run power is something those hard Philadelphia fans can admire and love.

So it goes with Albert Pujols. He should follow his heart, of course, but as a sports fan I hope he stays in St. Louis. I think he fits that town, even if he has occasional spats with Tony La Russa. I hope Peyton Manning finishes his career in Indianapolis. I wouldn’t want to see Derek Jeter at shortstop for anyone but the Yankees. Obviously, people move around, and we have come to accept that as sports fans, we even get a thrill out of it when it’s our team reeling in the prize. You want to win. You don’t care too much about the team that loses.

But there’s still something about what feels right … and I think the thing I find most grotesque about the LeBron madness that is swirling around is that nobody seems willing to stop and at least concede what feels right. Look, LeBron might leave Cleveland and he has every right to leave, every right to chase whatever dreams he has inside him. Fans want their teams to win, and fans have every right to hope LeBron chooses our team.

But can we at least concede that the guy grew up in Cleveland, he helped turn around a basketball franchise, he brought new levels of hope to a city that has not won a sports championship in 46 years. He brought a certain pride with him — great athletes do that for their city. I know people like to make fun of how Cleveland’s fortunes rest on LeBron — and it’s not true, Cleveland will go on with or without him. But there is something here: Cleveland fans have so much invested in LeBron James. Sports is not so much like real life; losses are nothing at all like real tragedy. But if LeBron James leaves Cleveland, yes, some other city will celebrate. But it will be heartache for a city that has had plenty of those.

A couple of years ago, there was a rumor that the Pittsburgh Penguins might move to Kansas City. It was more than a rumor — Mario Lemieux among others was actively pursuing the possibility. I suspect it was more of a ploy than anything, but it was serious enough that there was some real dread in Pittsburgh … and a bit of excitement in Kansas City. Nobody knows if Kansas City could support an NHL team — but having Sidney Crosby in town might have tipped the balance, might have made Kansas City Hockey Town U.S.A II at least for a little while.

Anyway, I wrote a column saying I hope that it didn’t happen — I hoped that the Penguins stayed in Pittsburgh where they had been for a long time, and where they belonged. I got a few angry emails from Kansas Citians who really wanted to the Penguins. But most people generally agreed. It’s like that letter I got about the Ravens. There is something beyond our sports fans greed, a feeling of right and wrong.

LeBron staying or going is not like a team staying or going … but it has many of the same emotions. And maybe it’s not too much to ask the President of the United States to sense the emotions, to feel what’s right. I think of that letter: I don’t blame the guy in Baltimore for becoming a huge Ravens fan. And hey, if LeBron James goes to Chicago … celebrate all you want. Throw an all-night party in Lincoln’s Bedroom. Have them shoot fireworks over the Washington Monument. Party like it’s 1776.

But in the meantime, maybe you can think for a moment about how many emotions his hometown has invested in him, how much he means to a Great American City that has had to endure a lot, how great a story it would be if LeBron James could stay in town and bring a championship to a hometown after all these years.

In other words:

Dear Mr. President,

Boo!

I was reading Hal Bodley’s paean to Andre Dawson, and while agreeing with the main point (Headline: “Dawson Did It His Way, With Class”) I could not help but be struck by this paragraph.

“In this era, when steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs have tainted some of the records and achievements, Dawson never wavered from his moral values and respect for the game.”

And I was thinking about what people might have written when Cal Ripken went into the Hall of Fame in 2007.

“In this era, when players rest with seemingly going down with even the slightest injuries despite the huge salaries they receive, Cal Ripken never wavered from his moral values and respect for the game.”

And in 1996 …

“In this era, when pitchers rarely finish what they start and concede the inner half of the plate to the hitters, Jim Bunning never wavered from his moral values and respect for the game.”

And in 1989 …

“In this era when players jump from one team to the next, chasing the next dollar, and shrink from the responsibility of the big moment, Carl Yastrzemski never wavered from his moral values and respect for the game.”

And in 1983 …

“In this era, when fielding has grown sloppy and and the concept of being a hero is lost on so many, Brooks Robinson never wavered from his moral values and respect for the game.”

And in 1972 …

“In this era when nobody really remembers what it means to be a New York Yankee, Yogi Berra never waved from his moral values and respect for the game.”

And in 1955 …

“In this era when players have lost the class and dignity that once represented the game of baseball, Joe DiMaggio went into the Hall of Fame.”

And in 1936 …

“In this era when players have grown soft and have forgotten that baseball, at its heart, is a game of fury and will, Ty Cobb never waved from his moral values and respect for the game.”

And so on … going back many, many years before that. I loved to hear Willie Mays talk about how when he first came up to the Negro Leagues, he had to listen to old men tell him he would NEVER be as good as Oscar Charleston. It’s irresistible because … who has inspired more “why aren’t there more players like” conversations than Willie Mays?

I’ve been thinking about this a bit the last couple of days because two of my favorite writers — and two SI colleagues — Tom Verducci and Frank Deford wrote stories saying that baseball has lost some of its charm. Tom wrote that he misses the crack of the bat … hitters don’t put the ball in play as much as they used to and the game has turned into something of a walk and strikeout festival. Frank wrote something similar … his beef is that it’s excessively boring to watch hitters work the count, stretching out games. That has become the primary strategy of teams in the new era, and he longs for the days of quicker at-bats.

Now, first off, I feel their overall points. Baseball games DO seem more sluggish to me. There does seem to be quite a bit more down time in a baseball game than there was 20 or 30 years ago. And, frankly, this is because there just IS more down time now in a baseball game than 20 or 30 years ago. Here, for instance, are the average length of games for the Milwaukee Brewers in the first year of the last five decades:

1970: 2:35
1980: 2:38
1990: 2:56
2000: 3:04
2010: 3:10

Obviously, 2010 has only just begun … and that 3:10 will probably come down some. The Brewers averaged three hour games in 2009 and 2 hour 55 games in 2008, to give you an idea.

Still, the game indisputably has slowed — games are a solid half hour slower than they were 30 or 40 years ago. When you grow up with two and a half hour games, you tend to believe that is the proper time frame for baseball. I think it’s the time difference that proves most exasperating in baseball. The games seem to be getting slower by the day. Pro football games are, by design, played at an insanely slow pace — is there ANYTHING more frustrating when watching a football game than going to commercial, coming back for a kickoff, and then going to a commercial again? But for the most part pro football games are about three hours long just like they were 30 and 40 years ago — or anyway, it seems that way. Games started at 1 and 4 Eastern back then, and they start at 1 and 4 Eastern now (sometimes 4:15). Baseball games, though, are demonstrably longer. And a baseball game being timeless — as George Carlin used to say — we don’t know when it’s going to end, we could have EXTRA INNINGS!

People constantly speculate why baseball has slowed — longer commercial breaks, smaller strike zones, more foul balls, more time between pitches, more strikeouts, more pitching changes and so on. The Verducci and Deford pieces are not directly about length of game, but I suspect that’s at least a part of their issue. The games just don’t feel as crisp as they once did. I think this is probably true.

But, I would make a counter claim, one that people might not agree with because the baseball mind is geared to look backward: I think baseball games are just SO much better played now than they have ever been before. It’s remarkable to me how good baseball is right now. Not to spend a lot of time quoting Bud Selig, but I think as far as quality of play goes we absolutely are in a golden age.

With Albert Pujols, we are probably seeing the best hitter since Ted Williams. With Tim Lincecum, we are getting our very own Sandy Koufax (plus stocking cap!). There has not been a shortstop like Hanley Ramirez since …. Alex Rodriguez, who is about to hit his 600th home run. Ichiro is one of a kind. We are seeing the twilight of some incredible players — Manny, Thome, Griffey, Vlady, Chipper. We are seeing what looks to be a remarkable new generation — Longoria, Jiminez, Price, Rasmus, Braun.

Joe Mauer, a catcher, has won three batting titles — never happened before. Zack Greinke provides endless entertainment. Chase Utley does everything. Dustin Pedroia gets under your skin. Carl Crawford is just cool. Derek Jeter, in aura, is today’s DiMaggio. Ubaldo Jimenez, Neftali Feliz, Jonathan Broxton, Joel Zumaya, Daniel Bard, Mark Lowe, Matt Lindstrom and many others have thrown a pitch 100 mph this year. Ryan Howard has hit 198 home runs the last four years. And so on and so on and so on.

Tom alludes to this in his piece — he talks about the game being played on the edges now — but I would pump up the point. Just look at pitching. You will hear all the time about pitchers today — how they don’t throw strikes, how they walk batters. how this has taken so much joy out of the game. Maybe it feels that way — but it’s just not true. There were 3.5 walks per game in 2009. There were 3.5 walks per game in 1980. There were 3.5 walks per game in 1953. There were 3.5 walks per game in 1939. There were 3.6 walks per game in 1903.

Yes, over the years, the number of walks has been lower than 3.5 (and also higher than 3.5), but realistically hitters are not walking noticeably more than they ever did. What hitters ARE doing noticeably more than ever is strike out more.

1960: 5.2 strikeouts per game.
1970: 5.8 strikeouts per game.
1980: 4.8 strikeouts per game.*
1990: 5.7 strikeouts per game.
2000: 6.5 strikeouts per game.
2010: 7.1 strikeouts per game.

*I blame the temporary decline entirely on George Brett.

That’s a huge difference, no question. The common theme is to blame this on the new hitting style — homer or nothing (home runs hit per game has also gone up dramatically). And I do think the acceptance of strikeouts in today’s baseball has played a role. Few choke up on the bat. Few just try to put it in play, even with two strikes. And all that stuff.

But I think much of it, most of it, can be credited to significantly better pitching. If you ever look at the pitch FX data — or even the not especially convincing Fox Track strike zone — you will see that pitchers are constantly hitting the corners, painting the black, working the edges. It’s amazing. Pitchers are throwing harder than ever. They are mixing in cutting-edge pitches like splitters and cutters and various kinds of change-ups with ridiculous movement. And they are pitching on the margins with those pitches.

If you ever have a moment, it’s instructive to look back at Nadia Comeneci’s perfect 10 balance beam from the 1976 Olympics. If you have that moment now, here it is:

So what strikes you about that? She’s very graceful. She’s extremely confident. And … she doesn’t DO ANYTHING. I mean, compare it with Shawn Johnson’s gold-medal winning performance in 2008 when she does not get 10s.

No comparison, right? Shawn Johnson does about 5,000 jumps and flips and twists. Nadia waves her arms a lot. That’s not to knock Nadia Comaneci — her performance was beautiful and stunning and the cutting edge of athleticism at the time. But times change. It’s not to say Shawn Johnson’s performance is BETTER. It’s just different. The degree of difficulty is much higher.

That, to me — that difference in degree of difficulty — is the difference between pitching in 2010 and, say, 1979. You just can’t hit the middle of the plate anymore. You can’t throw 87 mph without great movement anymore. You probably won’t be successful without a third pitch … unless you’re Mariano Rivera or something. The difference between success and failure is thinner now than ever … take a look at Kansas City’s Kyle Davies on Thursday. He was facing a Texas team that has not scored many runs this year.

1st inning:
– Walked Michael Young on four pitches — two which looked to be right about at the knees.
– Gave up a run-scoring double to Josh Hamilton with an 89-mph fastball that was about two inches outside.
– Gave up a run scoring single to Ian Kinsler on change-up on the inside corner.

2nd inning:
– Gave up single to Elvis Andrus on 90-mph fastball on the high inside corner.
– Walked Young on full count.
– Gave up run-scoring single to Hamilton on curveball low and outside corner.
– Gave up sac fly to Vlad Guerrero on 89-mph fastball an inch inside.
– Gave up run-scoring single to Kinsler on fastball on inner third of plate — “caught too much of the plate,” the announcers said.
– Got David Murphy to pop-up on outstanding low-and-outside change-up, but runners were moving and shortstop was out of position and it dropped.
– Works nine pitch at-bat with rookie Justin Smoak before finally throwing a slider up that Smoak tattoos for a home run.

And so on. In all, Davies gave up nine runs in four innings … and it wasn’t because he was throwing meatballs over the middle of the plate. He was hitting corners, moving the ball up and down. But he was just a little off, his fastball was a couple of miles per hour slow, his location was not perfect. And he was taken to the woodshed.

Hitters are better now. They just are. They work out more. There’s better instruction. There’s better scouting. They study video. They are more dangerous. They are more particular. Pitchers are in constant need of new weapons to deal with hitters today. Seems to me the strikeout is their weapon. And they are constantly figure out more and better ways to strike out hitters.

Of course, the counter to this is that hitters aren’t trying to put the ball in place as much. Maybe not. But again, I would argue that they CANNOT just put the ball in play in today’s baseball. The fielders are too good. The pitches are too nasty. And so, yes, they strike out more but the QUALITY of the balls they are putting in play is much higher than it used to be. They are hitting more home runs. They are also hitting more line drives, more hard-hit balls. Batters are hitting more doubles than they have since the 1930s. The batting average on balls in play (this does NOT include home runs) is about 20 points higher than it was in 1970 and more than 10 points higher than in 1990.

So, you total it all up — and we’re seeing the same number of hits we’ve ever seen — about nine per game on each side. We’re seeing the same number of walks we’ve ever seen. We’re seeing the same number of double plays we’ve ever seen. We’re seeing a few more doubles and a few less triples. We’re seeing more strikeouts and fewer outs to shortstop and second. We’re seeing more home runs. In my mind, we’re seeing the best battles between pitcher and catcher in the game’s history. We’re seeing a bit of a rebirth of the stolen base and a defensive something of a defensive Renaissance — every game seems to have dazzling defensive plays.

And … it’s great baseball. Sure, I wouldn’t mind if they sped it up a bit between pitches. I wouldn’t mind if hitters were not allowed to step out of the box after ever pitch for equipment shifting. I wouldn’t mind if managers didn’t make quite so many pitching changes. There are baseball games that drag and make me think, “Man, I wish baseball would be more like it was when I was a kid.” Baseball inspires us to look backward like that — and there’s nothing wrong with looking backward. There’s also nothing wrong with staying in the moment. Baseball is better than ever.

He did give up two unearned runs, thanks to a satisfying double-error by Royals third baseman Alex Gordon — error on the scoop, then error on the throw to allow the advance — and then Greinke was knocked out of the game after another error, this one by the shortstop and defensive replacement Tony Pena Jr.

Anyway … something clicked for Greinke that day in New York. Well, I don’t know if things in life really “click” or if people slowly blossom and mature and the clicking is just for the observers. Whatever, since that day — August 16, 2008 — Zack has been a great pitcher. Truly great. He finished off the season allowing just nine earned runs in his final 44 innings — a 1.84 ERA, if you’re curious — and he had a 41-9 strikeout-to-walk, and the league hit just .214 against him, and if you watched him pitch in those final weeks, really watched him, you could not help but notice that Zack had become something really special. It wasn’t any great bit of genius that inspired me to pick Greinke to win the Cy Young Award before the season started last year.* If you were watching, you could not miss it.

*It took no great genius to pick Ubaldo Jiminez to win the Cy Young Award this year either — if you watched him pitch last year, you could not miss it. But it’s still gratifying to see my Cy pick at 5-0 with an 0.79 ERA, a no-hitter, and 0.0 home runs allowed so far.

Greinke lived up to everything in 2009, as you know. His 2.16 ERA not only led all of baseball, it was the best mark by an American League pitcher since Pedro Martinez in 2000. We don’t need to go over again Greinke’s many achievements in 2009 — lowest WHIP, fewest home runs allowed per nine, 4.75-to-1 strikeout to walk ratio — you already know how good a year had.

Move into 2010, and it hasn’t been quite as smooth for Zack. Nobody really thought it would be. He got smacked around a little bit against Boston. He was uncharacteristically wild against Minnesota. Still, he has allowed 1, 4, 2, 2, 0 earned runs in his five starts, so it’s not like he fell apart either. He has a 2.56 ERA through his first five starts, a more-than-respectable 27-7 strikeout to walk, and just about the same WHIP that he had last year.

So what’s the point? Well, here’s the point: Since August 16, 2008, Zack Greinke has made 46 starts and he has a 2.11 ERA.

The Royals record in those 46 starts? You betcha: 22-24.

A losing record with the dominant Zack Greinke pitching? The Royals have pulled off a lot of crazy stunts in the last 10 or 15 years. But this just might top them all. How do you have a losing record when the starting pitcher is allowing 2 earned runs every 9 innings?

Well, it hasn’t been easy, that’s for sure. Here is a quick recap of those 24 losses.

August 16, 2008: Greinke left the game with the score 2-2 in 7th. Yankees won in 13th inning.

August 21, 2008: Greinke pitched five innings against Cleveland and only gave up one earned run. Unfortunately Tony Pena dropped a pop-up, Billy Butler threw the ball away, the Indians scored four unearned runs and were leading 5-3 when Greinke came out. The bullpen turned that into a 10-3 loss.

August 26, 2008: Greinke gave up no earned runs to Texas in six innings. But an error by Mike Aviles led to one unearned run. The score was tied 1-1 when Greinke left — the Rangers scored the game-winner in the eighth.

Sept. 7, 2008: Greinke was not at his best — a classic 6-inning, 3-run quality start — and against Cliff Lee that was not nearly good enough. Indians won 3-1.

May 9, 2009: Greinke, with a 6-0 record, allowed one run in a complete game against the Angels. Unfortunately, that was an eight-inning complete game because Joe Saunders threw the only complete game of his career (at least so far).

May 21, 2009: Greinke allowed two runs in six innings and the Royals were actually leading Cleveland 3-2. Then, as a joke, the Royals thought they might use Horacio Ramirez as a reliever. No, wait, they weren’t joking. Cleveland won 8-3.

May 31, 2009: Sloppy start for Greinke — 3 earned runs in 7 innings against Chicago. Yes, others might win when they pitch like that … but that’s for others others. It was 4-4 going into ninth when the deadly combination of John Bale and Juan Cruz finished off the Royals chances. White Sox won 7-4.

June 5, 2009: One of Greinke’s worst starts of the year — 5 earned runs in five innings. Royals defense chipped in with three errors. Blue Jays blew out Royals 9-3.

June 11, 2009: Again, a bland, good start for Greinke — 7 1/3 innings, 3 runs. The Royals were ahead 3-1 when he left, though he did leave two men on. Then the Royals botched a double play grounder, Joakim Soria could not get Jhonny Peralta out (for shame) and the Cleveland won it 4-3 in the 10th inning*.

*Pretty typical Royals finish — Kyle Farnsworth enters, Mark DeRosa singles, Victor Martinez singles, Shin-Soo Choo singles, ball hits seagull, Royals lose, cue Three Stooges music.

June 17, 2009: Greinke wasn’t sharp against Arizona and he allowed four earned runs in 6 2/3 innings. Toss in three more Royals errors, an outstanding 0-inning, three-hit, three-run performance by reliever Roman Colon, and, voila, Royals lost 12-5.

July 3, 2009: The beginning of six consecutive Royals losses when Greinke pitched. Admittedly, he was not especially great in these six games, as exhibited by his worse-than-normal 3.65 ERA, but you know, you can make seven digit salaries in this game with a 3.65 ERA. Six innings, two earned runs in this game. There were two more unearned runs thanks to an Alberto Callaspo error, but it didn’t matter. Royals got shut out by White Sox and lost 5-0.

July 8, 2009: Six innings, three runs against Detroit — not nearly good enough as someone named Luke French and and three relievers held the Royals to one run.

July 18, 2009: How about 7 innings one run against Tampa Bay? Is that good enough, Sam I Am? No. Rays score three in the eighth off the Lethargic Duo of Bale and Cruz. Royals lost 4-2.

July 24, 2009: What about holding Texas to one run in 7 innings? Shouldn’t that be enough? No. Scott Feldman and C.J. Wilson combine on the shutout. Royals lost 2-0.

July 29, 2009: OK, so now he gives up two runs in six innings against Baltimore. BALTIMORE. There’s no way … oh wait, there’s a way. Twenty-one year old Chris Tillman made the start, Matt Albers and Jim Johnson finished the job, Bale and Cruz did what they do best, and Royals lost 7-3.

August 3, 2009: Well, this one’s on Greinke — five innings, six runs against Tampa and, heck, the Royals only made one error. Royals get stomped 10-4.

August 14, 2009: After Greinke finally breaks the losing streak, he goes out and throws seven shutout innings against Detroit. Unfortunately for the Royals, they happened to pick the wrong night to face Jarrod Washburn, who threw eight shutout innings. The right night to face Washburn would have been pretty much any day as the league hit .323 against him the rest of the year.

August 19, 2009: Four runs in seven innings? That’s a no-chancer. White Sox beat Royals 4-2.

Sept. 5, 2009: Eight innings, zero earned runs against the Angels. How did the Royals mess up this one? A Willie Bloomquist error led to the unearned run that sent the game into extra innings. Once there, Yasuhiko Yabuta, the Royals big-time recruit from Japan, ably gave up the game-winner in the 11th.

Oct. 3, 2009: Greinke got beat fair and square on the last Saturday of the season. Scoreless game in the sixth, Greinke and the Royals decided to pitch to Joe Mauer with a runner on third and two outs in the sixth inning. The Tigers, watching from afar, did not like the decision, but I did, it was gutsy, and it gave the fans a thrill. Mauer singled in the run. A slightly rattled Greinke gave up three more runs. Twins eventually won 5-4.

April 5, 2010: Greinke picked up right where he left off … six innings, one earned run on Opening Day. A Willie Bloomquist error allowed an unearned run, but the Royals still led 4-2 when Greinke left. The bullpen collapsed. Royals lost 8-4.

April 10, 2010: Greinke was not sharp but kind of held it together and gave up four runs in 6 2/3 innings against Boston. The bullpen collapsed. Royals lost 8-3.

April 16, 2010: Again, Greinke not sharp — walks five guys. Only gives up two earned runs in five innings. Two more unearned come thanks to an error by, yes, Willie Bloomquist. The bullpen collapsed. Twins won 10-3.

April 27, 2010: Greinke threw seven shutout innings, and Royals led 2-0 when he left the game. No way the Royals could mess up this one. And … the bullpen collapsed. A double play grounder was deflected into right field by reliever Robinson Tejeda. Royals lost to Seattle 3-2. Zack Greinke remains winless for 2010 season.

And that is how a team manages a losing record with a 2.11 ERA.

Players of the Day:

Stephen Strasburg, Washington Nationals
Jason Heyward, Atlanta Braves
Michael Stanton, Florida Marlins

Of course I’m cheating. Did you REALLY think I was going to be able to do a player every single day of spring training? Apparently, some of you did because I have received a quite a few complaints about how the Player of the Day pace had slowed. Sigh. All I can say here is that I have a friend who begins every poker night with the same caution: The House frowns upon wild cards. That is to say, hey, if you want to play some goofy game where the wild cards are 7s and 2s and the one-eyed Jack, well, consider yourself forewarned that the house frowns upon such foolishness.

In that spirit, I think it’s fair to add this here: The Blog frowns upon complaints.

In any case, it’s time now for a blog post on the top prospects in the game and we can knock off three teams with one post. What I have done is put various Top 50 prospects list — Keith Law, Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, Jim Callis, John Manuel, Will Lingo, Frankie Piliere and the Scouting Book — and worked up a formula based on the players AND on how many Top 50 lists they appeared. And then, I talked with a couple of my friends in scouting to get a bit more of an up close and personal on the players.

And with that, here’s our list

The Five Can’t Miss Prospects

1. Stephen Strasburg, Washington, rhp

The Nationals have decided to start Strasburg in the minor leagues, which I suppose is a good move. The Nationals have spent a whole lot of money on Strasburg, and they need to make sure that he doesn’t come up until he’s ready. You don’t want that David Clyde thing happening to him …

On the other hand — well, I haven’t thought out the following too deeply. But I do sometimes wonder if “not rushing top prospects” is kind of safe, conventional thinking, the same sort of safe, conventional thinking that causes football coaches to punt on fourth down and short. In other words, I sometimes wonder if people don’t rush great prospects like Strasburg because it SOUNDS safer rather than because it IS safer.

Here’s an example: I can’t imagine a team handling any pitcher more poorly than the Cleveland Indians handled Bob Feller. Right? I mean, here’s a 17-year-old kid, throws impossibly hard, has no idea where the ball’s going. You HAVE to send that kid the minor leagues, right? You have to teach him how to pitch. Only the Indians don’t, they pitch him in relief, then they give him a start (a 17-year-old kid? Starting?) and he throws a complete game and strikes out 15. Before the year’s out, he strikes out 17 in a game (and walks nine). A year later, he makes 19 big league starts. The next year, they throw him a preposterous 277 innings. And for the next three years, he goes 76-33 with a 145 ERA+ and leads the league in strikeouts all three seasons, and is one of the best pitchers ever.

By our way of thinking … everything the Indians did there was wrong. And Bob Feller, you know, worked out OK. From what I can tell, 83 players have bypassed the minor leagues — not counting the Negro Leagues players and Japanese players — and eight of them are in the Hall of fame, which seems like a pretty good percentage, and then another two dozen of them were very good players. And a lot of the busts were Bonus Babies who were clearly not ready for big league play.

What is there for Strasburg to learn in the minor leagues? Is there really something he will pick up in a few Class AA starts that will make the difference for him? I mean, sure, if the Nationals don’t want to start his service-time/arbitration clock, especially with little hope for this year, I can see that. But as far as pushing … the guy throws 100 mph, and he has power curveball that drops jaws and freezes bats and he’s a great athlete. Is he ready to pitch in the big leagues? I’m not especially close to the situation by my guess would be: Hell, yes.

I do sometimes wonder if one way to think out of the box is to really push prospects, especially advanced prospects, much faster than teams are doing it now. Sure, every GM and scout around can tell you horror story after horror story about players who came up too soon and were ruined because of it. But we don’t really know if those players would have succeeded had they been treated more carefully … maybe they were just lacking the talent or the work ethic or whatever. We can’t really know. I suspect there probably were some prospects who drowned in the minor leagues out of frustration or disappointment or the harshness of the life … prospects that could have helped a big league club if they had been moved up quickly. Scouts love to talk about the AAAA players — the players who are too good for AAA and not quite good enough for the big leagues. Well, I wonder if there are Major/Minor players who need to be in the big leagues to show their true talent.

I don’t have a strong opinion about any of it … just something I think about. Anyway, Strasburg will be in the big leagues soon enough.

2. Jason Heyward, Atlanta, of.

So riddle me this, Batman: In the 2007 Draft, which was only about 2 1/2 years ago, Jason Heyward was a senior in high school. He was 6-foot-4, 220 pounds. He had preposterous power and good speed and a terrific arm and remarkable feel for the game. All the scouts said so. He had great plate discipline — so great that he hardly got to swing the bat at all his senior year.

So, the riddle is: How in the heck did teams take 13 players in front of him?

There were some big-time guys in front — David Price and Matt Wieters among the college players. But how does a player that talented fall to No. 14 in the draft? Here we are, less than three years later, and Heyward is the talk of baseball, the Mickey Mantle of spring training, the one guy out there some scouts like more than Strasburg and … how did scouts miss it? The Baseball America explanation is that because Heyward was pitched around basically his entire senior year, scouts didn’t really get a chance to see him play.

But … I don’t know. It seems to me that if owned a team, and I was spending millions of dollars to scout the country, and millions of dollars in signing bonuses, and I hired people whose only job was to identify talent, and my team passed on Jason Heyward, I think I’d like to have a meeting. And I’m not sure the old “Well, scouting is a tricky business” line would satisfy me.

Update: This great update from BP’s Kevin Goldstein on how Heyward dropped: “So here’s the story there.  Heyward was playing at a small school against crappy competition — even for high school.  To his credit, he never shied away from his plate discipline, but at the same time, guys would fly in to see him and be lucky to see him swing the bat twice.  So many just didn’t feel that they had enough information on him.  Meanwhile, he’s in Georgia, so Braves people saw him every game and had for years.  They had more than enough information to be thrilled when he was still on the board.”

3. Michael Stanton, Florida, of

And how about Mike Stanton? This guy was the 76th pick in that same draft? Scouts say he really does have the five tools and an off-the-chart work ethic. It’s a bit of a fall from those top two prospects to everyone else, but Stanton’s overwhelming power makes him the sort of prospect who will be an awful lot of fun to watch.

4. Desmond Jennings, Tampa Bay, of

Apparently, he’s another Carl Crawford. Speed. Power. Defense. The whole kit. Tampa Bay has three of the Top 26 prospects … that organization really knows what it is doing.

5. Buster Posey, San Francisco, c

Baseball America compares him to a right-handed hitting Joe Mauer. That about covers it.

The Next 10 Prospects — these are players who show signs of stardom.

6. Neftali Feliz, Texas, rhp

This spring, he has struggled more than a pitcher than a guy with an easy 98-mph fastball has any right to struggle. Some, including Keith Law, think his future could be in the pen.

7. Brian Matusz, Baltimore, lhp

He has been breathtaking in camp; a scouting friend who saw him this spring says that what amazes you about him is that he already looks like a finished product, a four-pitch guy with control and command.

8. Jesus Montero, New York Yankees, c/?

Montero’s bat is so good that he he is basically in everybody’s Top 10 list even though NOBODY seems to believe he can catch in the big leagues. He was a big money signee out of Venezuela and he made it up to Class AA as a 19-year-old. He will hit a ton in the big leagues — hell he CRUSHED spring training pitching — but nobody is quite sure where or how it will happen. The Yankees have a first baseman, and they won’t call him up to DH. In the meantime, Montero will go to Class AAA to catch.

9. Carlos Santana, Cleveland, c

He won back-to-back MVPs in the minors. The Indians sent him to Class AAA for seasoning but everyone knows Santana will hit … maybe not to the level of Montero, but he will hit. Unlike Montero, though, Santana does look like an everyday catcher with soft hands and a good release.

10. Pedro Alvarez, Pittsburgh, 3b

I did this for the Kansas City Royals once … what if the Pirates had the perfect draft in, say in 2002 when they had the overall No. 1 pick:

1st round: Zack Greinke, p.
2nd round: Jon Lester, p.
3rd round: Curtis Granderson, cf.
4th round: Josh Johnson, p.
5th round: Ben Francisco, of
6th round: John Maine, p
7th round: Howie Kendrick, 2b
8th round: Joel Zumaya, p
9th round: Dusty Nippert, p
10th round: Brandon McCarthy, p
11th round: Russell Martin, c
12th round: Chuck James, p
13th round: Kyle McClellan, p
14th round: Phil Coke, p
15th round: Brad Ziegler, p
16th round: Nyjer Morgan, of (they took him in the 33rd round)

Is that enough to build a whole team? No. (Though it is enough to build one heck of a rotation). If a team ever had even a half-perfect draft, it would be set to dominate the division for years to come.

11. Dustin Ackley, Seattle, of/2b

The second pick out of the 2009 draft, and — so far anyway — the second-best prospect. Scouts talk about his super speed and great sense for hitting. Nobody seems exactly sure what position he will play, but the expectation seems to be a .400 on-base percentage and 50 stolen bases — can you name the last player to pull of that combination?

It was Luis Castillo in 2000. Rickey Henderson and Ty Cobb each pulled it off eight times.

12. Justin Smoak, Texas, 1b

Baseball Prospectus’ Kevin Goldstein compares him to Mark Teixeira, or anyway calls such comparisons “inevitable and appropriate.”

13. Martin Perez, Texas, lhp

He’s 18 years old, and our buddy Keith Law calls him the best left-handed pitching prospect in baseball — better even than Matusz. He apparently has a low-to-mid 90s fastball, a good curveball and the making of a great change-up. How about the Rangers? Three of the top 13 prospects in the game. They’re doing something right there.

14. Madison Bumgarner, San Francisco, lhp

After a spectacular 2008 minor league season — 15-3, 1.46 ERA, 164 Ks to 21 walks — he followed it up with what, on paper, looks like another spectacular year. He went 12-2 with a 1.85 ERA and a not unimpressive 92-34 K-to-BB. But all the talk about Bumgarner seemed to build around his rather inexplicable loss of mph on his fastball. Scouts are mixed on him — basically everyone waits to see if he regains his mid-90s fastball.

Next 11 prospects — these the last 11 to appear on all nine Top 50 lists.

15. Domonic Brown, Philadelphia, rf

Names to come up in scouting reports of the Phillies young RF: Darryl Strawberry, Dave Winfield, Darryl Strawberry, David Justice and Darryl Strawberry.

16. Jeremy Hellickson, Tampa Bay, rhp

There are, apparently, all sorts of fun arguments inside the Tampa Bay front office about which pitcher will turn out better, Hellickson is the command guy — average fastball, good secondary pitches, great feel for the game … more in five players.

17. Starlin Castro, Chicago Cubs, ss

Still hasn’t turned 20 — will in two days — and he has already succeeded at high Class A. Good enough speed, promising power, great arm … scouts are mixed on whether he will be a regular, an above average regular or a big star. Castro says he’s ready to play in the big leagues right now.

18. Casey Kelly, Boston, rhp

Boston was willing to let him try to succeed as both a hitter and a pitcher. He hit .219 and punched up a 2.08 ERA so it’s pretty clear which way he’s going now. He’s obviously a great athlete, and he has great command. Now that he’s concentrating on pitching alone, the feeling is he will move very fast through.

19. Aaron Hicks, Minnesota, of

Toolsy — love that word — with speed, a phenomenal arm (fastball was clocked at 97 mph in high school) and big-time power. Scouts and instructors have different feelings about the word “toolsy.” To some, tools represent the possibilities. To others, tools represent the skills not yet achieved. Hicks is 20 and will be given all the support he needs in one of the best development systems in baseball.

20. Kyle Drabek, Toronto, rhp

Drabek became one of the most talked about prospects in baseball last year when the Phillies quite openly refused to give him up in a Roy Halladay. Of course, as these things go, they eventually gave him up in a Roy Halladay deal. The Blue Jays sent him down for more seasoning — injuries have prevented him for pitching a lot of innings in the minors. One thing everyone agrees on — kid’s got a killer curveball. Like father, like son.

21. Wade Davis, Tampa Bay, rhp

… while Davis has an overpowering and heavy mid-90s fastball that sinks hard, but has fought his command. So you have a classic battle between Davis and Hellickson, though most scouts see them both being good big league starters.

22. Chris Carter, Oakland, 1b

Home runs. Strikeouts. Walks. And lots of ‘em.

23. Brett Wallace, Toronto, 3b/1b

Wallace was part of one of those classic prospect for prospect trades — he came to Toronto and No. 25 Michael Taylor went to Oakland. Wallace has great bat control — Baseball America says he could win a batting title someday. He doesn’t show great power, which is an issue because it looks like he probably will move from third to first base at some point. With Chris Carter, the A’s already feel like they have their first baseman.

24. Ryan Westmoreland, Boston, of

A New England kid — Portsmouth, RI — with speed, power and plate discipline. I was unaware of this when I did the list, but I have been alerted by brilliant readers that he recently had a cavernous malformation removed from his brain, and he will begin the recovery process.

25. Michael Taylor, Oakland, lf

For Wallace, Oakland got Taylor – a powerful 6-foot-6 left-fielder with terrific hitting instincts. He and Wallace actually have similar offensive skills, though Taylor is clearly the more valuable defender. Interesting note: Taylor was a high school teammate of Zack Greinke.

The next 26 — none of these players appeared on all nine Top 50 lists. So there is obviously some mixed feelings about all of them.

Missed one analysts’ Top 50 list

26. Aroldis Chapman, Cincinnati, lhp

This is way too low for a lefty who throws 100 mph and has a nasty slider — but he was not around to evaluate when Baseball America put out its list. Anyway, nobody is quite sure what to make of Chapman, and he apparently already had a back twinge on Monday.

27. Alicides Escobar, Milwaukee, ss

Our analysts of choice rank him anywhere from third (Will Lingo) to out of the top 50 (Keith Law). It all depends what you want. He is, by all accounts, a dazzling defensive shortstop. But the knock is that even hitting close to .300 — if he can somehow maintain that — he is not an especially useful offensive player.

28. Logan Morrison, Florida, 1b

Analysts all over the board on Morrison. Some see 35 homer power. Some don’t. One scouting friend I talked to said he thinks Morrison’s swing makes him vulnerable to good breaking stuff.

29. Jarrod Parker, Arizona, rhp

More or less out for the year after Tommy John surgery … before he got hurt he hit 98 mph on the gun and mixed in a nasty slider.

30. Christian Friedrich, Colorado, lhp

Lefty with mid-90s fastball who has already shown the ability to miss bats.

Missed two analysts’ Top 50 lists

31. Tyler Matzek, Colorado, lhp

Signed for Rockies record $3.9 million last year — he’s a high school prospect with a mid-to-upper 90s fastball and the makings of excellent slider and curveball. It’s way too early to tell on guys like that.

32. Mike Montgomery, Kansas City, lhp

Everybody seems impressed with what the Royals have coming into Class AA — they could dominate this list next year if things work out well. Montgomery is a 6-foot-5 lefty with a good fastball, and some scouts tell me that when he perfects that curveball, he has a chance to be a No. 1 starter in the big leagues. Other scouts say he’s more of a No. 2-4 starter. He’s only 20, but his is a pivotal year for him as it is for several Royals prospects. People are waiting for the Dayton Moore prospect machine to start kicking in.

33. Dee Gordon, Los Angeles, ss

The son of Tom “Flash” Gordon — in case you weren’t feeling old enough today — Keith Law hears from scouts that his projection is Jimmy Rollins with less power.

Missed three analysts’ Top 50 lists

34. Lonnie Chisenhall, Cleveland, 3b

35. Michael Saunders, Seattle, of

39. Josh Bell, Baltimore, 3b

Missed four analysts’ Top 50 lists

40. Jacob Turner, Detroit, rhp

Probably the least agreed about talent on the board. Another high school pitcher out of the 2009 draft with a great arm … Many in Detroit system see him as Justin Verlander Lite. But others know that, to borrow from Peter Jacobsen, the slums of Chicago are filled with power-throwing high school righties who went high in the draft.

41. Donovan Tate, San Diego, cf

Got a huge signing bonus from San Diego … he does not rank in Keith Law’s TOP HUNDRED.

42. Todd Frazier, Cincinnati, 2b

47. Shelby Miller, St. Louis, rhp

Missed five analysts Top 50 lists

48. Austin Jackson, Detroit, cf

Another wildly disagreed upon prospect. He figures to be hitting leadoff and playing center field for the Tigers on Opening Day, so we should find out soon enough.

49. Matt Moore, Tampa Bay, lhp

50. Brett Lawrie, Milwaukee, 2b

I know this will sound weird but — if you heard the name “Brett Lawrie” wouldn’t you IMMEDIATELY thing “Oh, second baseman.” The name just fits the position.