Posted: January 31st, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 169 Comments »
Several people have written in to say that they cannot find the blog post I wrote a couple of years ago about Stan Musial. So I am reposting that story here — this year Musial turns 90 — and, yes, I immodestly include a “Print This Post” link if you want to do such things. It’s certainly one of the favorite things I’ve ever written on this blog, especially because I had to rewrite it after spending hours and hours chasing down the authentic version of the story that appears at the top. Anyway, hope you enjoy.
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Posted: January 30th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 76 Comments »
I’ll have a lengthier comment on this later in the week — for reasons that I think will become clear — but for now I would ask you to take a minute or two and read this Doug Tucker Associated Press story about the struggles of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City.
I have avoided writing about the museum for more than a year now for very personal reasons. It has been heartbreaking watching the museum I loved — the museum, I should point out for ethical purposes, to which I dedicated many hours and many thousands of dollars — shift away from what I thought was its essence and focus and purpose. Reasonable minds can disagree about how a museum can tell its story. Reasonable minds will disagree about how a museum can stay viable and sustainable in this economic reality.
But the museum’s shift left away from Buck O’Neil and away from many of the people who had made it a magical place in the first place left me with the unshakeable belief that the people in charge had lost their way. The museum had lost it compass. And the place was doomed. I hoped I was wrong. I still do hope I’m wrong. Maybe this story will inspire change. Maybe it will rally people around the museum in the hopes of saving it. I hope so. But more than hope, I feel heartbreak. Like I say, I will write more on this in a few days.
Posted: January 23rd, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 63 Comments »
I thought I had gone through all the stages of Royals grief. Denial? Well, of course. I LOVE denial. That has been my default stage as a sports fan most of my life. Hey, maybe Denny Bautista WILL become a star. Hey, maybe this is the year for Dee Brown. Hey, maybe Jose Guillen’s performance will not fall off a cliff. Hey, maybe Mike Jacobs will not play every day against lefties. And so on.
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Posted: January 19th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 201 Comments »
“But this is the point I want to make: When you talk about steroids and you talk about what it means to the game, the three greatest home run hitters of all time—Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays, right? When they were 39 years old, how many home runs do you think they averaged? The three greatest home run hitters of all time averaged 18 home runs at age 39. Now, how many home runs did Barry Bonds hit when he was 39? He hit 73!”
– Carlton Fisk from this story
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Posted: January 19th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 101 Comments »
ST. LOUIS — Don Denkinger is a nice man. Only a nice man would come to the St. Louis Baseball Writers dinner to be the resident villain at a night that honors the 1985 St. Louis Cardinals. You will note the 1985 Cardinals did not win the World Series. Many people in St. Louis will tell you that Don Denkinger is the reason they did not.
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Posted: January 13th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball, Pop Culture | 43 Comments »
1. “It’s easy to overestimate the influence of drugs on us. Just about everyone was doing drugs in one form or another and we were no different, but the writing was too important for us to mess it up by getting off our heads all the time.”
– Paul McCartney on “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
2. I have said again and again that I appreciate that I am in the minority opinion (at least in the media) on this Mark McGwire thing. I have talked with one friend who agreed with me, and a couple of others who partly agreed, and several others who really did not agree at all. There are some columns out there that I were along the lines of my own, including this from my buddy Bernie Miklasz in St. Louis. Most, though, seem to feel like Brother Vac who believes it was a non-apology apology and deserves the disdain of one.
There’s room for many opinions here, I hope. But I will say that one thing that drives me crazy is the “If he only did it for health reasons, then why is he apologizing?” line. People say it like it’s some sort of dagger line from the prosecution.
Man, I’ve heard that bit of nonsense WAY too many times. Maybe:
– He is apologizing because he broke the law.
– He is apologizing because he knew taking steroids was cheating.
– He is apologizing because he knew taking steroids was wrong.
– He is apologizing because he knew he was taking shortcuts.
– He is apologizing because without steroids, he might not have been able to get healthy.
– He is apologizing because without steroids, he might not have gotten the at-bats to break the record.
– He is apologizing because he feels that he let down his family.
– He is apologizing because he is sad about the direction baseball went and that he was a part of it.
– He is apologizing because he feels that he let down his friends.
– He is apologizing because he knows the Maris family thought he was clean and he was not.
– He is apologizing because he felt like dishonestly kept this from people.
– He is apologizing because he feels like he let down kids who looked up to him.
– He is apologizing because he is truly sorry that he took steroids and tarnished his career.
I don’t know. Pick any two of those reasons. Or any eight. Or all of them. Or come up with a baker’s dozen of your own. I couldn’t tell you what is going on inside Mark McGwire. But man, it doesn’t seem like it takes too much imagination to come up with a scenario in which McGwire believes that when healthy he was one hell of a historic home run hitter AND ALSO that he’s really sorry he took steroids.
Posted: January 13th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball, Media, Other Sports | 42 Comments »
Well, it has been an odd 48 hours or so. To tell you the truth, it’s just an odd time in general. In the last few days I’ve been in Dallas, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Kansas City … and tomorrow I take the family down to Florida where I am the keynote speaker at the Sports Turf Management Association Annual Conference.* I am very excited about this, though I should note that I was looking at the Sports Turf Management Website and did not actually see my name on the schedule. It’s not like I need to see my name on the STMA Web site for ego reasons … I’m more concerned that I will go down there and they will be like, “Uh, and you are?”
*Like you didn’t already know that.
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Posted: January 9th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 100 Comments »
A couple of days ago, you might recall, I wrote a blog post about how, with a little sleight of hand, you can make the Hall of Fame numbers say more or less what you want them to say. Well, I’ve got an example I have to point out — one made by my colleague Tom Verducci, who I think is the best baseball writer in the business. The best. But, hey, several people emailed it to me or mentioned it in the comments, and I think it is pretty egregious.
Here is Tom’s argument about Edgar Martinez, in a nutshell:
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Posted: January 7th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball, Media, Pop Culture | 70 Comments »
I have downloaded this cool iPhone app — anyway, I think it’s pretty cool — called MailMe Text. It is a simple premise: You press the button, type in a message, and then hit send and it send the message to your email. You may say: Big deal, you could just mail it to yourself. Well … yeah, you could, you’re right. But this saves you a few seconds every time, and because of the way it does it you can easily organize where the emails go in your inbox. I think it’s pretty cool anyway.
So, I’ve been sending myself a few messages: Here are some of the things I’ve been sending myself:
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Posted: January 4th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 220 Comments »
Well, my Hall of Fame ballot is up at Sports Illustrated, and I suspect that for people who love playing with the Hall numbers, it’s pretty conventional. I picked the SABR Seven — Alomar, Blyleven, Larkin, Martinez, McGwire, Raines, Trammell — and went off the board by picking Dale Murphy. I don’t expect a lot of people to agree with me on Murph. I very clearly see the case that he wasn’t good enough for long enough. But he got my vote.
In the meantime, I have a few leftover thoughts about the Hall … sparked by a paragraph in Dan Shaugnessy’s recent SI.com column.
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