Moments like this are why, until the last few days, the Padres had been slump-proof. Do you know their long losing streak up to this one? Three games. That’s all. And it only happened once … they have not lost more than two in a row since mid-May. And this is the reason, because of situations like this, because all year long they have wrenched and jerked 1-0 and 2-1 and 3-2 victories away from the other guys. They have won 24 games when scoring three runs or fewer — no other team in baseball has won more than 18. This is their den. This is their show. How do you lead the National League West by four games when you are 12th — TWELFTH — in the league in runs. Right. You win these games you are leading 2-1 in the seventh inning.

“I think we have the best bullpen in the National League,” Padres manager Bud Black will say at the end of this one. That was his response to why he pulled his pitcher, Mat Latos, after only six innings and 99 pitches. Latos, as has become his custom this year, was electrifying. He won’t even turn 23 until December, and he has a 2.29 ERA, he leads the league in WHIP, he’s allowing barely more than six hits per nine innings. Whew. And in this game, he was ON — he struck out a career high 10*, he allowed only four hits, he made only one real mistake, and it wasn’t exactly a mistake. In the seventh, with the count 3-1, he decided not to give in, he decided to challenge Chris Young with a 95-mph fastball up. Young accepted the challenge and blasted the ball off the left-field foul pole for the Diamondbacks only run so far.

*Though striking out 10 Diamondbacks isn’t exactly breaking news … this was the 56th time it has happened this year. That ties the D-Backs for the all-time record, held by the 2001 Milwaukee Brewers. A lot more on this to come in a post soon.

In any case, it was 1-1 in the seventh, and there were two outs, and there was a man on first, and Latos’ spot came up in the order. Black pinch-hit Matt Stairs. Why? Well, hey, his team is 12th in the league in runs scored. His guys have lost six in a row … and have not scored more than five runs in any of those games. For this team, a man on first with two outs is a potential RALLY, and you never turn your nose up at a potential rally. Black put Stairs in and Stairs obliged with a single a hard single to right. Will Venable singled up the middle, and that scored the run, and now the Padres were exactly where the love being, up 2-1 in the seventh.

In comes Luke Gregerson, who has been ridiculously great — the league is hitting .160 against him. The plan is in place and everybody who follows the Padres knows it by heart. Gregerson will throw his scoreless inning, Mike Adams will shut down the eighth inning, Heath Bell will ring ‘em up in the ninth, and it will be another 2-1 victory, sixth of the year, looking good …

… only Gregerson walks Mark Reynolds. There’s a conference on the mound.

… only Miguel Montero hits a double-play ground ball to second, which Everth Cabrera throws a bit to hard to shortstop, and Miguel Tejada drops the ball. Everybody’s save.

… only Gerardo Parra hits a hard ground ball to second — another potential double play — and Cabrera cannot quite glove it. And the bases are loaded, nobody out.

Uh oh.

* * *

In 2003, the Kansas City Royals were in first place until the end of August. The thing that made it wonderful and baffling all at once is that nobody was quite sure how they were doing it. It was like a magic trick. I was watching them every single day, and I had no idea how it was done. Only, it really wasn’t like a magic trick. At a Vegas magic show, when you don’t know how something is done you think, “This guy’s is a great magician.” In baseball, when you don’t know how something is done you think, “Oh boy, this ain’t gonna last.”

The Royals were winning because Jose Lima, plucked off an Independent League team (the Royals didn’t even go see him pitch before signing him and putting him in the game), had a 2.17 ERA in his first eight starts, and the Royals won all eight of those starts. The Royals were winning because a shortstop named Angel Berroa played with so much energy and gusto, he won the Rookie of the Year award (pitchers did not fully understand, yet, that they never had to throw him a strike). They were winning because Carlos Beltran was a truly great player that year — he got on base (.389 on base percentage), he hit for power (26 homers, .522 slugging), he might have been the best base runner in the game (41 stolen bases, four caught, brilliant going first to third and second to home on singles), and he was breathtaking defensively in center field (or the opposite of breathtaking — he made it look too easy, like he wasn’t trying hard enough even as he caught everything). They were winning because a pitcher named Darrell May — who would draw some fame later in Kansas City for complaining that he did not get enough no-decisions — pitched well. They were winning because the A.L. Central was a lousy division. They were winning because they got off to a ridiculous start — 16 wins in their first 19 games — and they rode it out. They were winning because … just because. And there was no way it could last. And it didn’t last. They lost 10 of 14 and finished out the year in third place, seven back.

Now, I don’t bring this up entirely as an excuse to write about the one halfway interesting Royals team of the last 15 years — though those opportunities are rare — but also because when it comes down to it, I have no real idea how this Padres team is doing it either. I mean, yes, I know the basics. The Padres have allowed 40 fewer runs this year than any team in baseball. Their bullpen has a 2.79 ERA — the whole bullpen — and an absurd 439-to-120 strikeout-to-walk ratio and the league hits .215 against them. The Padres defense, by the naked eye and by advanced statistics like John Dewan’s Defensive Runs Saved, is excellent. And, offensively, Adrian Gonzalez is having another great year (.299/.388/.517) that does not look as great as it really is because he spends half his games hitting balloons in the canyon that is Petco Park.*

*Gonzalez has hit 17 of his 27 homers on the road and is slugging 114 points higher away from home. That’s not surprising. Opponents have had trouble against Padres pitching all year, but in San Diego they are almost pointless. Opponents are hitting .220/.291/.338 all year at Petco.

I understand why the Padres are winning … they have a terrific run differential, and it doesn’t matter if you win 5-3 or 3-1. The Padres pitching and defense has been so good, that they have only been blown out by five runs or more 11 times, fewest in the NL. They are more or less in every game.

The part that is baffling is HOW they are pitching so well.

– Jon Garland has been on five different teams the last four years, and he has not had a sub-4.00 ERA since 2005. This year, he’s 13-9 with a 3.29 ERA.

– Clayton Richard is a 26-year-old lefty who was a backup quarterback at Michigan. He came over from Chicago in the Jake Peavy deal last year. He’s 12-6 with a 3.50 ERA.

– Mat Latos was an 11th round pick out of high school in 2006, he was pushed fast up the system, and was called up last year as a 21-year-old. He’s 13-5 with a 2.29 ERA.

– Mike Adams was an amateur free agent, and he has kicked around pro baseball for 10 years. He has been traded twice, and released twice — including by the Padres. He has a 1.94 ERA in 51 innings — 48 of those being eighth innings.

– Joe Thatcher is a 28-year-old lefty, also undrafted, who comes from Kokomo and, as such, is called the Throwin’ Kokomoan by those so inclined. He has appeared in 28 games this year where he has thrown 1/3 of an inning or less, most in National League. He seems the purest of specialists — lefties hit .185 against him. But, at least this year, righties only hit .152 against him.

With closer Heath Bell having perhaps his best year — he is not a surprise, he has pitched well ever since arriving from the Mets in what seemed like a minor deal — and others pitching in and Petco Park weighing on opposing hitters, well, yeah, that’s the story. And it’s a story nobody really seemed to see coming.

And it’s a wonderful story. When people talk about heartbreak cities, they tend to forget about San Diego — maybe because it’s hard to imagine anyone who gets to live in San Diego being too heartbroken. But San Diego has not had a major championship since their 1963 AFL Championship victory over the Boston Patriots, and even that was in the fledgling days of the AFL. The Chargers have brought more pain than joy through the years. The Padres have appeared in two World Series — and have managed one measly World Series game victory. It would be great if this Padres team that nobody expected to win could take the city on a magic carpet ride.

Only, it comes back to the basics. I still have no idea how they’re doing it.

And though 30 days hath September — it is still a long baseball month.

* * *

Sometimes when something dramatic is about to happen in baseball game, you can feel it coming. That’s one of the charms of baseball. Maybe it’s real, maybe it isn’t — it probably isn’t too real — but every now and again you will be watching a game, and a situation will come up, and you will feel what’s about to happen.

Bases loaded, nobody out, Arizona’s Brandon Allen stepped to the plate. Allen had just been recalled — he’s 24, and this was his first big league game of the year. He had never hit a grand slam before. And yet, as he stepped in there, the air was charged with that feeling: Grand slam. And, yes, he hit it.

This is just how it’s going for the Padres. “Nothing is really going our way right now — that’s how it goes in a long season,” Bud Black said, and he’s right. Allen hit the grand slam, and the Padres blew their 2-1 lead, and they lost their seventh game in a row. The Giants won their games, so they are now within three games of San Diego.

It’s hard to tell how their first free-fall of the season is affecting the Padres. There’s a great story about the golfer and optometrist Gil Morgan, who in 1992 somehow managed to get his score to 12-under par at the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. It was ludicrous, and he knew it. And then he found himself on the wrong side of the hole, facing an impossible chip heading downhill — it was a double bogey for sure. And he said to himself: “OK, this is where the U.S. Open begins.” He was eight over par for the rest of the day. He shot 81 the next day.

And so maybe this is where the Padres pennant race begins. The manager, Bud Black, seems calm. “They’re all important games,” he says, which is the right thing to say. He’s the only former big league pitcher managing today, and it seems that helps his perspective. All managers offer this one-day-at-a-time stuff, but Black as a former pitcher seems to have an especially deep understanding that it’s a long season (pitchers spend 125 or so games of it watching), and you can’t control much beyond what you can control (guys have to score runs for you, other pitchers have to pitch well for you), and you just gotta go get ‘em tomorrow. When someone asked Black about the fateful inning and the two double plays that were not turned, he did not seem quite sure how to answer. Was he supposed to give his feelings about them? Was he supposed to say he wished the double plays had been turned? He didn’t know. So he just recounted them. He said the first ground ball, the throw was probably too hard. He said the second ground ball was a tough play.

“Does that answer your question?” he asked, not unkindly.

Make no mistake, seven losses in a row is a bad sign. Good teams don’t lose seven games in a row often. The Atlanta Braves did not lose seven in a row from 1991-2005. The Boston Red Sox have not lost seven in a row since 2001. To lose seven in a row, especially in late August-early September, especially in a pennant race, especially when nobody really expected you to be here … it’s not a great sign.

It’s not devastating either. The Padres are still in first place. They are about to start a 10-game homestand — they play 17 of their last 30 at home — where they have pitched lights out. They have seven games left with the second-place Giants, and so far anyway they have owned the Giants, winning nine of 11. They still have that bullpen, and they still have Adrian Gonzalez in the middle of the lineup, and they still have the best record in the division. So, they are still the team to beat in the West.

But Wednesday’s loss hurt, no question. The Padres have to win when they are leading 2-1 late in the game. That’s who they are. Or, as the saying goes, that’s who they are not.

On the other hand, there’s the statistic WAR — which last year rated Rivera anywhere from 2.0 (Fangraphs) to 3.1 (Baseball Reference) wins above replacement. To give you an idea of where this places Rivera, Fangraphs had his somewhat less-celebrated teammate Melky Cabrera with a higher WAR. Baseball Reference had light-hitting Randy Winn and reliever George Sherrill as two of the 102 players with a higher WAR than Rivera.

That’s a a pretty big difference in value — all time legend or almost as valuable as Melky.

*Nobody even comes close to Honus Wagner as a shortstop … even though he played 100 years ago I don’t think there is no viable argument for anyone else as the greatest shortstop of all time. After him, though, it’s a wide open race:

Now, by setting the standard at 80% of shortstops … I do realize that cut out Cal Ripken who played 2,302 of his 3,001 games at shortstop — about 77%. I don’t think Jeter will get to Ripken’s 89.9 WAR or the 83 WAR while being a shortstop (more on that in a blog post coming in next day). I think Ripken is second-best. But I think Jeter fans will have an argument.

Back to the closer question. Bill James’ Win Shares is slightly kinder to closers. People go on and on still about Eric Gagne’s 2003 season when he had 55 saves and a 1.20 ERA — he earned a more than respectable 25 Win Shares. But that still only placed him an 11-way tie for 25th most valuable player in baseball that year, tied with among others Eric Chavez, Edgar Renteria and Richie Sexson.

The thing about the two viewpoints is that there doesn’t seem to be much middle ground. From what I can gather, each side thinks the other is nutso. The people who believe in the extreme value of relievers tend to think there is something about the pressure of the moment and the long-term importance of not blowing leads that can never be quantified by stats.* I’ve talked to many players and many managers and many general managers and many baseball observers who will insist that a good closer is priceless when it comes to team chemistry (everyone’s obviously happier and more together after victories) and determining a season’s narrative. “Nothing — and I mean nothing — destroys a team more than blowing a game in the ninth inning,” one of those players told me just the other day.

*This anti-stats view, of course, would change if a statistic came out that showed that closers are massively valuable to the success of a team. That’s how it usually works with stats. Stats that dispute your point are worthless. Stats that prove your point are genius. I fall for it too.

The people who believe that closers are wildly overvalued tend to think that there is only so much value a pitcher can bring when he throws 75 innings or so. Take Rivera’s exquisite 2004 season. He threw 78 2/3 innings that year. He faced 316 batters — remember 316 plate appearances would not even be enough to qualify for a batting title. By my quick estimation, about 60% of those plate batters came up with the the Yankees up by two runs or less. The rest of them happened with the Yankees up three runs (easy save), with the Yankees up more than three, or with the Yankees down — the last two of those mostly to get Rivera work. So he really faced fewer than 200 batters all year with the game on the line. That’s the funny thing about what has become the true closer role. Even the Yankees, the best team in baseball the last 15 years, don’t have quite enough work for a “true closer” who only pitches when his team’s up three runs or less in the ninth inning.

Anyway, to people who tend to downplay the importance of closers the argument is there is simply no way a player could be THAT valuable pitching THAT little, intangibles be damned.

So … where are we then? Well, I know less than most, but from my own observations and reporting and studying, I really do think there’s some truth to both sides, I have seen the corrosive effects on a team of late inning blowing leads. It may not be easily found in the statistics — it may not be found AT ALL in the statistics — but when a team blows a game in the late innings, it grinds on the players. When it happens repeatedly, it grinds on them even more. Sometimes, it can be overcome — take the Phillies last year. When a team has a great closer, there does seem to be an ease about the team in the late innings. The cause-and-effect isn’t always easy to follow, but it does seem to be true that good teams generally have good closers.*

*Last 20 World Series champs:
2009: Yankees — Mariano Rivera, best of all time.
2008: Phillies — Brad Lidge saves all 41 of his chances.
2007: Red Sox — Jon Papelbon had 37 saves and 1.85 ERA.
2006: Cardinals — Jason Isringhausen has shaky year, but remember Cardinals had shaky year and only won 83 games. Adam Wainwright was postseason closer, and he did not allow a run in 9 2/3 innings.
2005 White Sox — Dustin Hermanson dominant most of year; Bobby Jenks pretty darned good in the playoffs.
2004: Red Sox — Keith Foulke had terrific year.
2003: Marlins — Braden Looper was not especially good, but they got Ugueth Urbina in July and he was strong down stretch.
2002: Angels — Troy Percival was generally unhittable.
2001: Diamondbacks — One of the few World Series winners with an unsettled closer role — Byung-Hyun Kim was difficult to hit until Series … Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling were just that good.
2000: Yankees — Mariano Rivera, best of all time.
1999: Yankees — Mariano Rivera, best of all time.
1998: Yankees — Mariano Rivera, best of all time.
1997: Marlins — Robb Nen was shaky, no question about it.
1996: Yankees — John Wetteland was good, Mariano Rivera to set up was even better.
1995: Braves — Mark Wohlers was quite good that year — 25 saves, 2.09 ERA, 90 Ks in 64 2/3 innings — but what’s really interesting to me is that the Braves in their long run as division champs never really settles on a closer. Their closers included: Juan Berenguer, Alejandro Pena, Mike Stanton, Greg McMichael, Wohlers, Kerry Lightenberg, John Rocker, the aging John Smoltz and Chris Reitsma. I know there are those who suggest that the reason the Braves did not have more postseason success was their lack of a settled and dominant closer … I don’t know if that’s true. But it is interesting that Cox and the Braves had so much success with basically a new closer every year. Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Smoltz were just that good.
1994: Nobody. Brilliant Reader Devin asks the interesting question: The Baseball Hall of Fame says that one of the required qualifications is that a player play in 10 “Championship seasons.” With that in mind, does 1994 count? No championship.
1993: Blue Jays — Duane Ward was terrific.
1992: Blue Jays — Tom Henke and Duane Ward were terrific.
1991: Twins — Rick Aguilera saved 45 with a 2.35 ERA.
1990: Reds — In some ways, the Nasty Boys started the trend. Randy Myers was the main closer, and he was excellent. Rob Dibble sucked it up and was almost absurdly untouchable. Norm Charlton was pretty darned good himself.

On the other hand, the closer role seems to me hard to measure because it’s kind of artificial and made for commercial reasons … not unlike Valentine’s Day. I’ve long been fascinated by how the save stat changed baseball. We like to think of statistics as measurements of the game and not influences of the game, but I would suggest that Jerome Holtzman, inventor of the save, is one of the most influential people in recent baseball history. I’d say it’s no coincidence that the baseline of a save is to pitch one inning with team up by no more than three runs … and this is PRECISELY how teams generally use their closers. As Bill James and others have written, if the save rule demanded TWO innings for a save, then closers would be used differently. If the save rule demanded that the tying run be on base, then closers would be used differently. If the save rule demanded that the save is given to the reliever who got the highest leverage out, then closers would be used differently.

But the save stat is what it is, and so we have come to see closers as the pitchers who start the ninth inning with a team leading by three runs or less. And, perhaps because of this, there’s something that stands out for me: There have been a LOT of great closer seasons. I mean, seriously, a lot. For instance, let’s find out how many pitchers have had, oh, 30 saves in a season with a sub 2.00 ERA. That’s a rare and dominant season, right? A sub-2.00 ERA? OK, take a guess how many different pitchers in last, oh, 50 years have done it. I’m guessing 17 because I want to guess high. Go ahead and make your guess … now I’m going to look it up.

Correct answer: 45.

Yup. FORTY FIVE. Now, remember, these are DIFFERENT closers. There have been 45 different closers who have had 30 saves a 1.99 ERA or better. This includes Michael Jackson, Chad Cordero, Takahasi Saito … and my old college classmate Bryan Harvey who did it TWICE.

There are seven closers this year who have an excellent shot at doing it.

OK, so, how many different starters over the last 50 years have won 20 games with a sub-2.00 ERA? Fifteen.

How many different hitters have hit .350 with 30 home runs? Fourteen.

How many different hitters have stolen 50 bases with a .400 on-base percentage? Nine.

My point is that what appears to be a historic closer season — because there are so few innings involved — is not an especially rare thing. I think this is because the small sample size effect is in effect. Put it this way: You know how pitchers often get off to a great start and then fade away? In 1990, Jack Armstrong had one of the most famous of those — he even started the All-Star Game. He was 9-3 with a 1.99 ERA in mid-June. He faded pretty much for the rest of his career, but the point here is that at that point in mid-June, he had thrown 90 1/3 good innings.

Well, that’s a whole season for a closer. That’s MORE than a whole season for a closer. Think about all the starters you have seen who have absurdly low ERAs at the end of May … well, those guys have already thrown just about as many innings as a closer throws all year.

That leads to flukes. Yes, someone like Mariano Rivera (and Trevor Hoffman), who is good year after year after year after year for decades, is EXTREMELY rare. Closers, with only those few exceptions, have expiration dates. But to have a sensational year just once, twice … well, that happens all the time. With the expectations of a closer in today’s game, they can come from anywhere. You can take a once-good aging starter like Dennis Eckersley and turn him into an all-time closer*. You can take a failed starter like Eric Gagne or Jose Mesa and turn him into an All Star closer. You can take a no-hit minor league infielder like Trevor Hoffman and turn him into one of the greatest closers of all time. Think about it: There’s really no story about a failed closer who became an All-Star starter.

*To give you another idea about WAR’s feelings about closers: Eckersley’s MVP season of 1992 was 3.0 wins above replacement — and that ranked tied for ninth in HIS OWN CAREER. WAR suggests he was more than twice as valuable in 1978 and 1979 when he was a starter for Boston. What’s more, WAR suggests that he was more valuable as a starter in 1986 — when the was bad enough that he Cubs gave up on him as a starter — than he was in 1991, when he was named to the All-Star Game as a closer.

I keep waiting for some team — especially a hopeless team — to buck the trend, to try and create a whole new closer model, to build a whole different kind of bullpen. It hasn’t happened yet, and it might not happen for a while — you often hear managers talk about how players need “roles,” I think when that does happen, then we will have a much better feel for what closers really mean, how much they really matter. In the meantime, I guess I have two views about it. One, if I was a GM, I feel quite sure that I would value good starters (position players and pitchers) well over good closers. The difference in playing time and also the odd places where you can find a dominant closer — the Royals found Joakim Soria (36 saves, 1.77 ERA) in the Rule 5 Draft, the Padres found saves leader Heath Bell in a minor deal (he was an undrafted free agent), the Giants drafted saves leader Brian Wilson in the 24th round, etc. — would be conclusive to me. As a GM, finding a closer would be a low priority.

Two, if I was a manager, I’ll bet I’d yell at my GM every day to get me a good one.

Two things didn’t come through at all:

1. I don’t believe the answer is “yes.” I just think it can be an interesting question.

2. I don’t think the nuance of the question (if there IS any nuance in the question) was captured at all in the shorthand way of Twitter.

The question is simply this: If a player, even for one season, plays at the very highest level in the history of the game — I mean at the Ruth level, the Mays level, the Williams level, the Walter Johnson level, the Sandy Koufax level — does that make the person a Hall of Famer? The example that comes to mind is — if for some reason Ted Williams did not play again after World War II (meaning he only had his four seasons, including hit .406 season) should he still go to the Hall of Fame?*

*When I brought up this example, several people wrote in to say that by rule Williams would not be eligible for the Hall because he had not played 10 seasons — like I was asking for a rules clarification. Twitter can be so frustrating.

One reason that this didn’t come through all that well, I think, is that we tend to lose sight over what really makes for an all-time great season really looks like. We tend to forget just how great great really is. For instance, people kept saying: “Oh, what, now we’re going to put Brady Anderson in the Hall of Fame?” Anderson hit 50 home runs in 1996. But Anderson’s season wasn’t an all-time great season.* It wasn’t CLOSE to an all-time great season. It probably wasn’t one of the ten best seasons of 1996. His .396 on-base percentage was not in the Top 25 in baseball that year, his Wins Above Replacement of 6.6 was certainly good but not even in the Greatness Metropolitan Area, his 156 OPS+ was seventh in his own league.

*On Twitter, just for shorthand, I called an all-time great season a “Top 100 season.” Unfortunately, this added even more confusion — “But the Top 100 is an ever changing scale!” — so I’ll just keep it as an all-time great season here.

People were saying, “As sad as it is to say, I don’t think Roger Maris belongs in the Hall of Fame for his one all-time season.” But again, Maris hit a lot of home runs in 1961. It was an extraordinary achievement to break Babe Ruth’s record — and some people will argue that Maris belongs in the Hall for that achievement alone — but the season does not fit in what we’re talking about here. By almost any advanced measurement, Maris in 1961 did not have even close to as good a season in 1961 as even his teammate Mantle did. Mantle’s on-base percentage was 75 points higher, his on-base percentage was 67 points higher, he stole 12 out of 13 bases (Maris did not steal a base), his 11.9 WAR dwarfs Maris’ 7.2. By WAR and Win Shares, Norm Cash had a better season too.

People were saying, “If you go by one great season, then you have to put Luis Gonzalez in the Hall of Fame.” But I didn’t say “great.” I said “all-time great.” I said “Top 100 season.” Gonzalez hit 57 home runs and walked 100 times in 2001 … a pretty special season. His 7.6 WAR that year was terrific — third in the league. But again … it ain’t historic. The home runs are historic, sure, but he was sixth in the league in on-base percentage, 3rd in slugging, his defense was eh at best, he couldn’t run very well …

And after seeing this sort of thing over and over — the mentioning of Greg Vaughn and George Foster and Albert Belle and Jose Bautista — I realized something that I probably should have already known — my obviopiphany. People, in large part, think of big home run seasons as great seasons. In many minds, they are one in the same. Lots of home runs = A historic season. I know, this realization is hardly groundbreaking, I told you that.

But, you know, people often ask certain questions — I often ask those questions:

– Why do some people care so much about steroids in baseball when they care so little about it in football?
– Why do some people care so much about steroids in baseball and so little about the equally illegal and dangerous and (you could argue) unethical amphetamines?
– Why do some people have such outrage for “cheaters” like Bonds and McGwire and Sosa and the like, and so little outrage for “cheaters” of other makes and models?

The questions have been answered many times in many vague and contradictory ways — usually the answers build around theories like, “Baseball relies more on its history than football,” and “Steroids have a more dramatic effect on the body than amphetamines, which don’t fundamentally change the game,” and “These cheaters destroyed the record book and the continuity of the game.” And so on.

But in my obviopiphany, I wondered if it isn’t much simpler than this: Maybe the steroid rage is ALL about home runs. I mean, maybe it isn’t about anything else at all — with a little collateral damage thrown in.* Wouldn’t that explain some of these contradictions? My obviopiphany is that home runs alone define how many people look at the game. Home runs alone create the image of a great season. Home runs stay with people long after everything else. Steroids meant more home runs — fake home runs to so many — and maybe this above all is what created the stir, the Congressional hearings, the lying and cover-ups and all the other stuff. Maybe it’s no more complicated than that.

*And this might also offer some logic to the question often asked: Why did some people** so readily forgive and forget when Andy Pettitte confessed to steroid use (there he is doing a Dove commercial!). One theory I’ve heard is that it’s because he was up front about it, though that’s debatable. Another is that he’s likable. But maybe it’s simply this: He didn’t hit home runs so people don’t care. I have never sensed anything close to the same outrage from the media and some fans about pitchers using steroids. I know that this idea might fall with Roger Clemens, but I don’t think so. I don’t think there was much interest or outrage over Clemens using steroids. I think some people care because of the remarkable arrogance he has demonstrated on his “I’m not guilty” tour across America. He might be not guilty, but that press conference where he and his lawyers played the tape was a low point in a crusade of low points.

**You will notice, I hope, that I keep putting “some people” and “many people” qualifiers on these — I do realize that some people and many people don’t care at all about steroids, don’t care about Roger Clemens, don’t even care about home runs. I also realize that I’m making a lot of generalizations here … I definitively could be misreading things.

In other words, I have started to think that this whole steroids thing is not mostly about home runs … it’s pretty much ALL about home runs. What finally drove this point home for me is when people started saying that if you put in players for one all-time season, you would have to put in Kevin Mitchell for his 1989 MVP year. I wrote back that I didn’t even think that Mitchell has the best year ON THAT GIANTS TEAM. And this led a few people to write in with confusion and shock. What? You think that Will Clark had a better year than Kevin Mitchell in 1989? Have you lost your mind?

Mitchell led the league in home runs in 1989 with 47. And hey, I’m not trying to downplay the value of home runs here, believe me. Mitchell also led the league in RBIs, total bases and intentional walks … all these in large part because of the home runs. His 192 OPS+ is indeed on the all-time great list.

But … Will Clark hit 40 points higher. His on-base percentage was about 20 points higher. He hit four more doubles, three more triples, scored four more runs, unintentionally walked five more times, stole five more bases (while being caught one less), and played in five more games. He played outstanding defense at first base (while Mitchell — barehanded catch aside — was below average in left field). He was basically better than Mitchell in every way except one — Mitchell hit 24 more home runs.

Are those home runs enough to give Mitchell the superior season?

WAR says no: Clark’s WAR was 9.4, Mitchell’s 7.7.

Bill James’ Win Shares say no: Clark had 44 Win Shares; Mitchell 38.

I know there are arguments to be made that, yes, the home runs are more than enough and Mitchell’s season was better. But I think the obviopiphany remains: Home runs may define baseball for many people — more than I ever really thought before.

Incidentally, if you are interested in the original topic: Here are five non Hall of Famers who I think truly had all-time seasons.

Norm Cash, 1961: If you are going to make an argument that one year isn’t enough to make a Hall of Famer, you probably begin with Cash’s 1961 season. He hit .361/.487/.622 with 41 homers and 132 RBIs and 119 runs … that was the expansion year of Mantle and Maris, and Jim Gentile had a remarkable season as well. Cash was a good player in a bad hitting environment the rest of his career — he still had a 133 OPS+ over the next 12 season, which is better than several Hall of Famers had for their careers. But, of course, he was never as good as he was in ’61. And the season was sullied in the eyes of many when Cash admitted later he had used a corked bat (even though, as far as I know, science has never shown that a corked bat actually helps a hitter beyond a placebo effect).

Al Rosen, 1953: He did not get a full-time job in the big leagues until he was 26, and he was finished at 32. But for three years — from 1952-54 — he played third base about as well as it had ever been played. His crowning season was 1953, when he fell one point short of winning the Triple Crown. He hit .336/.422/.613 with 43 homers, 115 runs, 145 RBIs, a 9.7 WAR and 42 Win Shares. He has his Hall of Fame supporters, but most feel like seven full seasons in the big leagues just isn’t enough.

Dick Allen, 1972 and 1964: Allen is the one non Hall of Famer who I think had TWO all-time great seasons — both so great it’s hard to choose which was better. WAR says 1972 was better — he hit .308/.420/.603 with a league-leading 37 homers and 113 RBIs. Win Shares says 1964 was better — that was his rookie season and he hit .318/.382/.557 with a league leading 13 triples and 125 runs scored. He also played 162 games at third base that year, and even though he made 41 errors, he still offered some positional value. Allen had three other 30-plus Win Shares seasons … many people believe he belongs in the Hall.

Dwight Gooden, 1985: You could make a persuasive argument that Gooden in 1985 — 24-4, 1.53 ERA, 268-69 strikeout to walk, 11.7 WAR, 33 Win Shares — was as good as Koufax in his best years. It is certainly a higher height than most Hall of Fame pitchers ever reached. In many ways, I think he is the perfect test case — is one preposterously awesome year good enough to make someone a Hall of Famer? I did not vote for Gooden so clearly my answer is “No.”

Ron Guidry, 1978: He didn’t make 30-plus starts in a season until he was 27 years old* … and it just so happens that was 1978, when he went 25-3 with nine shutouts, a 1.73 ERA and 248 Ks. The Guidry Hall of Fame case is built around a short period of high quality. People know about his amazing won-loss record — he went 170-91 — and his career 119 ERA+ is better than, among other Hall of Fame contemporaries, Steve Carlton, Ferguson Jenkins and Nolan Ryan. But it was such a short career. He was also very good in 1977 and 1979, and he won 20 games twice in the 1980s, though he was not nearly as good in those seasons.

*This has nothing to do with anything … but one unrelated Twitter point I made is that by the end of the season, Albert Pujols will have more homers than Babe Ruth, more RBIs than Henry Aaron, more runs than Rickey Henderson and more hits than Pete Rose at age 30. This, of course, led several people to make the point that Pujols is not REALLY 30 years old.

And so I have to say the Pujols age discussion is pretty uninteresting to me. People have been saying Pujols was older than his age since his high school days (when it actually might have mattered). He says he’s not older. So there you go in a he-said, she-said world. But for the sake of argument, let’s say he’s not 30. Maybe he’s 32. Maybe he’s 34. Who cares? He’s done all this in 10 years — NOBODY could argue that point. He played only one year at Maple Woods community college, and only one year in the minor leagues which means he made one of the fastest approaches to the big leagues ever — NOBODY could argue that point either. The argument can be made that he’s had the best first decade of any player in baseball history, and it doesn’t matter if he’s A HUNDRED years old. And, by the way, his consistent performance is making a case. His numbers certainly don’t seem to be aging too quickly.

The takeaway from this, I think, is that big league managers, with very few exceptions, were not good players. No, wait, let me take that back. Everyone on this list — all the way down to No. 32 — was a GOOD player, in the normal way we would use that word. Twenty-four of the thirty-two got to the Major Leagues, which is a remarkable athletic achievement. The other eight all played in the minor leagues, which means they were star players in their own communities. They were all GOOD players.

But very few of them were good big league players. There is conventional wisdom out there that great players cannot manage or coach because they do not have the empathy, patience or perspective necessary to deal with the mere mortals among us. Ted Williams is often used as an example.

The point here, though, is not about whether great players could be great managers, but more that great players ARE NOT managers. Maybe they do not want to be managers. Maybe they are not well suited. Maybe teams buy into the conventional wisdom. Whatever the case, as you will see, there is probably only one great player managing these days, two or three very good players, two or three more good big league players, and then a whole lot of …

1. Joe Torre, Los Angeles Dodgers
He’s the only manager going who has a legitimate Hall of Fame case a player. Torre was on the ballot for the full 15 years, though he never got more than 22% of the vote. His 1971 season is an all-timer — he’s one of only six right-handed hitters the last 60 years to hit .360 or better in a season (502 plate appearances minimum).

1. Nomar Garciaparra, 2000, .372
2. Andres Galarraga, 1993, .370
4. Rico Carty, 1970, .366
4. Magglio Ordonez, 2007, .363
5. Joe Torre, 1971, .363
6. Mike Piazza, 1997, .362

And Torre’s 171 OPS+ that year is second on the list, behind only Piazza.

The question is this: Has Joe Torre been the best player to manage the last 15 years?

I think mostly yes … there are two possible exceptions. (Insert: I totally forgot about Frank Robinson. I tend not to think of Robinson’s tenure with Expos and Nationals. Obviously, he’s the head and shoulders above Torre and everyone else).

The first is Tony Perez, who managed parts of two separate seasons — the first 44 games for Cincinnati in 1993, and the last 114 games as interim manager in Florida in 2001. There is an argument to be made that Torre was as good as or a better player than Perez (his career OPS+ was 128 to Perez’s 122) but some of that, I think, is, an illusion of Perez’s decline phase as a player. Both had 128 OPS+ through their 36th year … Perez just kept on playing for another 2,500 very average plate appearances. Anyway, it’s an argument for another day, but Perez could certainly be viewed as a better player.

The other is Alan Trammell, who managed the Tigers from 2003-2005, and who I think was a better player (largely because of his defensive value) and has an even better Hall of Fame player case than Torre.

2. Kirk Gibson, Arizona Diamondbacks
I remember there being a lot of argument about whether or not Kirk Gibson deserved the MVP award in in 1988. The argument was usually for Darryl Strawberry, who had an OPS that was 50 points higher (though in those days the talk was more about how he drove in 101 RBIs while Gibson drove in 79), and was in many camps considered a more deserving choice.

What I find compelling is that, according to the much maligned Wins Above Replacement stat — at least the Baseball Reference version — the sportswriters got it right. Gibson had a 7.3 WAR — best in the league — while Strawberry’s WAR was 5.9. See, if WAR would just agree with what sportswriters already think MORE OFTEN, it might become the stat of choice.

3. Dusty Baker, Cincinnati Reds
How did Dusty Baker win the Gold Glove in 1981? I don’t ask this in a smart-aleck way — I’m sincerely curious. As far as I remember, nobody ever thought of Dusty Baker as a fabulous fielder. Solid? Sure. But he had never won a Gold Glove as a young player, when he was playing quite a bit of center field, and some right field. Then he moved to left field in 1977 and, in memory, he was perfectly adequate and nondescript out there … he wasn’t especially fast by that point (though in 1984, he did have a game against Cincinnati where he stole second, third and home in succession … he stole one other base the rest of the year), and he didn’t have a memorable arm.

So what happened in 1981? It’ s not like he had some crazy errorless streak going (he had two errors) or had an amazing run of throwing out runners at the plate (he had eight assists — two years earlier he threw out 14). I know there are a lot of terrible Gold Glove picks, but I don’t know that Dusty Baker WAS a terrible pick … I just think he was a very strange pick. He never won one before 1981, and he never won another one.

Anyway, Dusty was a good player — and he was very good in 1980 when he hit .294/.339/.503 for a good Dodgers team.

4. Mike Scioscia, Angels
Scioscia was a generally good player who had one excellent year. In 1985, he posted a .407 on-base percentage and a 135 OPS+. He was never really close to that good again …

This really has nothing to do with Scioscia, but have you ever looked at Darrell Porter’s 1979 season with Kansas City. He hit .291/.421/.484 with 20 homers, 112 RBIs, 101 runs scored and a 142 OPS+. He had a very real argument for league MVP — his 8.4 WAR was quite a lot better than MVP Don Baylor’s 4.4 and was second only to his teammate George Brett. He was never really close to that good again.

5. Ozzie Guillen, Chicago White Sox
Ozzie — counterintuitively — is one of Bill James favorite players BECAUSE Bill cannot quite quantify him. His offensive statistics were usually horrifying — he had a 68 career OPS+ — and Bill knew this better than anyone, but Bill could not help but believe that Ozzie was better than the stats. Bill was so mesmerized by Ozzie, that in the New Historical Abstract he invented what he called the “Ozzie Guillen Award,” which went to the player in any given decade who walked the least. And still, in the Guillen comment, Bill wrote:

“A gregarious, friendly player whose abilities escape the statistics, perhaps more than any other player I ever saw … He would play so well, when the game was on the line, that I could never understand how he could look so mediocre in the end-of-season stats.”

Ozzie, as you might expect, is more blunt about himself as a player. “I was a horse(bleep) hitter,” he says. (see Gardenhire, Ron).

6. Bud Black, San Diego Padres
I’m not sure why Baseball Reference insists on calling Bud Black “Buddy.” I don’t think I EVER heard him called Buddy Black. Maybe it’s to avoid confusion with the other Bud Black, a right-handed pitcher who pitched 10 games in the 1950s.

Black won 121 games in his 15-year career — and he was quite good in 1984, when he went 17-12 with a 3.12 ERA and led the league in WHIP. I do wonder why, as his career was winding down, he did not pitch out of the bullpen. He only made one relief appearance in his last five seasons … seems to me a lefty like him could have extended his career had he tried a little situational lefty work.

7. Juan Samuel, formerly Baltimore Orioles
Here’s one of our two ex-managers on the list — do you remember what a phenomenon Juan Samuel was when he was a rookie in 1984? He led the league with 19 triples, he stole 72 bases, he hit 15 home runs … I very clearly remember some people saying that he was actually having a better year than the other rookie, who happened to be Dwight Gooden.

Samuel’s season wasn’t as good as the gaudy statistics suggested. He was a brutal second baseman, he walked only 28 times (while striking out 168), his .339 Batting Average on Balls in play turned out to be unsustainable. His best year was actually 1987, when for some reason he walked more, posted a better-than-league average .335 on-base percentage, led the league in triples again, slugged 28 homers, stole 35 bases. Samuel had certain brilliant talents, and in some ways was an amazing player. There are not many players in baseball history who, over the course of a career, displayed the power to hit 28 home runs and the speed to steal 72 bases and twice lead the league in triples.

8. Lou Piniella, formerly Chicago Cubs
OK, I’m going to probably tick off some people here … but I guess I should probably just say this. I kind of think Lou Piniella is overrated in every baseball way a man can be overrated. I mean, he’s a perfectly fine manager … but you would think the guy was Joe McCarthy by the way some people talk about him. He’s like 100 games over .500 in his career — and that 2001 Mariners team was 70 of those games. He won that awesome World Series in Cincinnati — fabulous there — and he managed Seattle to that cool 116 win season and playoff heartbreak, he managed Chicago to a couple of playoff heartbreaks … and that’s really about it. The Yankee years weren’t much, the Tampa Bay years were pretty disastrous, he leaves the Cubs a mess and before the season’s even out. I’m not saying he’s a bad manager — he’s good — but he doesn’t seem to me to be THAT good.

And the same goes as a player. He was a perfectly fine player … but come on. When I told a friend that I was doing this, he was like: “So, it’s Torre one and then, what, Piniella two?” That’s the impression Piniella leaves with some — like he was a special player. He was fine. He hit for high averages. He seemed to play the game hard. But he had no power, no speed, no arm, and he didn’t walk. He was kind of like Bernard Gilkey minus-some speed and some walks. You don’t hear too many people going on and on about Bernard Gilkey.

9. Joe Girardi, New York Yankees
As a catcher, he could throw well and was widely viewed as a leader and a good handler of pitchers. As a hitter, well, he could not hit. He’s one of 49 big league players to get 4,000-plus at-bats and post a sub-75 OPS+ (his was 72). He never got his OPS+ into the 90s, not once. And his 1995 season is an all-timer — a 58 OPS+ in Coors field. He hit .228/.278/.293 on the road that year.

10. Cito Gaston, Toronto Blue Jays
The amazing thing about Cito Gaston’s career is that he kept getting at-bats for a long, long time after his one good season. His one good season was legitimately terrific, that was 1970, he hit hit 29 homers and had a 144 OPS+.

The rest of his career, his OPS+ was 88, and his WAR was minus-7. He is one of 67 players in baseball history to get at least 3,000 plate appearances in the big leagues and post a negative career WAR.

11. Bruce Bochy, San Francisco Giants
A lifelong backup catcher — a good resume builder if you want to be a big league manager. He did offer a little something with the bat.

12. John Russell, Pittsburgh Pirates
A lifelong backup catcher — a good resume builder if you want to be a big league manager. He showed a little power in 1985, when he got a career high 347 plate appearances. Russell played other positions beside catcher as well.

13. Ron Washington, Texas Rangers
He was one of the players to come out of Kansas City’s innovative Baseball Academy — it’s probably no coincidence that he played every position in the big leagues except right field and catcher.

The thing about Ron Washington I didn’t know was that he didn’t steal many bases in the big leagues. I guess I assumed he did from his little cameo in Moneyball when he told Michael Lewis “You know what a base stealer is? … A base stealer is a guy who when everyone in the goddam yard know he gonna get the bag, he gets the bag.” Washington then says he stole 57 bases one year — Baseball Cube shows him stealing 51 bases in 1974 in Class A, so it’s probably that year.

But in the big leagues, he stole 28 bases in 564 big league games.

14. Terry Francona, Boston Red Sox
For reasons I cannot begin to explain, I ALWAYS confused Terry Francona the player with Casey Candaele. I mean, there are a few surface similarities. They both played in Montreal in the early-to-mid 1980s, neither had power, neither ran especially well, Francona had a lifetime 81 OPS+, Candaele a 78 OPS+, I was never sure why either one kept getting at-bats. But they’re pretty different.

Maybe the reason I confused them is that they are both sons of semi-famous baseball players. Francona is the son of Tito Francona who was an outstanding hitter in Cleveland from 1959-1961 (.314/.380/.487 over 1,734 plate appearances — a 136 OPS+). I still take great pride in my 1960 “Power Plus” baseball card which features Francona and Rocky Colavito holding their bats and smiling. “Last season,” it said on the card, “Cleveland boasted two of the best hitting outfielders in the business.” Colavito was traded before the 1960 season began.

And Casey Candaele was the son of Helen Callahan St. Aubin, who was one of the stars of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, and probably the main inspiration behind the movie “A League of Their Own.”

15. Bobby Cox, Atlanta Braves
Cox wasn’t an especially good player, as his lifetime 87 OPS+ suggests, but he is probably where the line is drawn between “fairly useful major league players” and “the rest.” Cox was a pretty decent minor league hitter who just couldn’t get a chance in the Dodgers system. He finally got the call to play for the fading Yankees. He played a lot of third base for the Yankees in 1968, Mickey Mantle’s last year.

16. Bob Geren, Oakland Athletics
A lifelong backup catcher — a good resume builder if you want to be a big league manager. He actually was quite good in that role in 1989 — hitting .288 with some power in 225 plate appearances. Got decent playing time the next three years because of that, but never came close to repeating the offensive production. He did get to play for three of the worst Yankees teams ever, so he’s got that.

17. Ron Gardenhire, Minnesota Twins
Decent and versatile fielder but as a hitter, well, leave it to Ozzie Guillen. “And if you think I as a horse(bleep) hitter, you should have seen Ron Gardenhire.”

18. Jim Tracy, Colorado Rockies
He was a fourth round pick, so he had some talent, and he flashed it in the minor leagues at times, especially 1979 when he hit .328/.434/.519 in Class AA and Class AAA with 29 homers and 84 walks. In the big leagues, he got in 87 games and had 213 plate appearances as outfielder and pinch-hitter for Cubs. Had a four-for-four game once with double and triple.

19. Charlie Manuel, Philadelphia Philles
Hit .198 in 438 big league plate appearances. Those who can’t do teach.

20. Ned Yost, Kansas City Royals
A lifelong backup catcher — a good resume builder if you want to be a big league manager. He had a bit of power — banged 16 home runs — but had an astonishing 21 walks in 640 PAs. … I’m not saying that someone who never walked as a player does not value walks because I do believe that in many ways the ability to walk is innate, like the ability to run.

That said, the Royals with their long-held inability to walk — they had to find a manager who NEVER walked?

Well, that’s not quite true. One irony of Ned Yost’s playing career: he got one World Series plate appearance (with his Brewers trailing 13-1 in the ninth inning). He walked.

21. Ken Macha, Milwaukee Brewers
Hit his one career homer and the last of his three career triples in the same game, the second game of a doubleheader against the Giants. What’s interesting, at least to me, is that Johnnie LeMaster — who bless his soul is one of the worst hitters in baseball history to get 3,500 plate appearances (lifetime 60 OPS+) — ALSO hit a triple and homer in that game.

If all that happened in Stratomatic, and Macha and LeMaster both homered and tripled in the same game, you would throw away the game and scream that it wasn’t realistic.

22. Brad Mills, Houston Astros
It’s kind of amazing how many of these managers were bit players on the Montreal Expos in the 1980s. OK, maybe not amazing, but there are four of them — Francona, J. Manuel, Mills, Macha.

If I understand this right, Brad Mills, the Toronto pitcher, is not related to Brad Mills the Houston manager, but Beau Mills, the Cleveland prospect, is the son of Brad Mills, the Houston manager.

23. Tony La Russa, St. Louis Cardinals
Since World War II there have one been 15 non-pitchers to get more than 200 PAs in the big leagues and not either hit a homer OR steal a base. La Russa is one of those 15. He did, however, hit a triple and, I love this, he did get an intentional walk.

24. Jerry Manuel, New York Mets
If you can’t be a backup catcher, being a light-hitting but versatile middle infielder is another good route to big league management. Manuel REALLY couldn’t hit big league pitching — he hit .150 in his 142 big league plate appearances — and yet for reasons that are not entirely clear he started all five games in the 1981 playoff for Montreal against Dodgers. Rodney Scott was the Expos semi-regular second baseman, and he couldn’t really hit big league pitching either … but he seemed to be moderately better than Manuel.

Manuel, predictably, hit .071 in the series.

25. Edwin Rodriguez. Florida Marlins
He actually was a very good prospect as a middle infielder — heck he played for the New York Yankees when he was 21. But it didn’t quite pan out for him, and he got 25 big league plate appearances. He is the last of our managers to play in the big leagues.

26. Jim Riggleman, Washington Nationals
He was a pretty good minor league player for more than 750 games — twice reaching Class AAA. He was good enough in the minors as a third baseman that he probably deserved a cup of coffee call up at some point … but he never got one.

27. Buck Showalter, Baltimore Orioles
You know, when I started this, I kind of assumed Showalter would be No. 32. I think that comes from hearing people who do not like Showalter talk about how he was a terrible player. But you know what? He really wasn’t a terrible player. He hit .294 in almost 800 minor league games, and in 1980 he hit .324 for Class AA Nashville and struck out just 21 times in 615 plate appearances.

He is below Riggleman because he never really had a big league shot — there’s no place in the big leagues for slow, no power outfielders with only moderate hitting talents. But he made Class AAA twice and definitely had some ability.

28. Mike Quade, Chicago Cubs
A 22nd round pick who made it to Class AA for Pittsburgh after starring at University of New Orleans. He was an outfielder with a bit of speed and startling lack of power.

29. Manny Acta, Cleveland Indians
He signed as a 17-year-old out of the legendary den of shortstops San Pedro de Macoris. He wasn’t a shortstop. He mostly played third, and did reach Class AA but was just not a good enough hitter to make it. He quickly became a scout.

30. Daren Brown, Seattle Mariners
He pitched 99 games in the Blue Jays chain in early 1990s and played some independent ball. He was pretty nondescript as a player.

He was taken in the 29th round … and I’m always looking for excuses to explore the late rounds of the draft, so I looked to see what Major Leaguers were chosen after him (the best seems to be Eric Young). And I also noticed that the Houston Astros were the last team to draft — they took someone in the 76th round and everyone else passed. What was interesting, I think, is that they also took someone in the 77th round, the 78th, the 79th … all the way to the 87th round.

31. Jim Leyland, Detroit Tigers
He it .222 in seven minor league seasons with four home runs in 446 games. He couldn’t really run either. He tried hard.

32. Joe Maddon, Tampa Bay Rays
He played four minor league seasons as a catcher and never got higher than A Ball. He was, however, a good player at Lafayette College.

* * *

Every scout has a story — every single scout. Stories come with the job. If you travel around for baseball, dusty town to dusty town, big city to small, and you watch young talents pitch baseballs for long enough, you are going to see a kid with the winning arsenal, a kid with the huge fastball, the devastating curve, the nasty slider, a kid who with the right breaks just might become the greatest pitcher in the history of baseball. And, if you’re an honest scout, you know they probably won’t get the right breaks. That’s the thing about pitching. The hard part is not the stuff. There are many, many, many pitchers with the stuff. The hard part is enduring.

This isn’t new. It feels new because of the expectation and because of the money and because of pitch counts and because of Tommy John surgery. It feels new because Stephen Strasburg got paid $15 million, and because Washington has done everything shy of putting him in a Brink’s truck to protect him, and because more than any other prospect in baseball history we have all had the chance to see his brilliance and dream a little bit.

But it isn’t new. This is as old as brushback pitches. Mostly … brilliant young pitchers get hurt. It has been like this for more than a century. Cy Young … Walter Johnson … Roger Clemens … Nolan Ryan … Randy Johnson … Warren Spahn … Tom Seaver … Pete Alexander … these guys weren’t the greatest simply because of their amazing pitches or their makeup or their competitive nature. These guys were the greatest because, somehow, against the odds, they kept going. The human elbow, the shoulder, the back muscles … these were not built to last. But in the case of the few great ones, they did last. The breaks went their way.

Let me throw a name at you: Jim Pittsley. Heard of him? Probably not. They still talk about him in certain circles in Kansas City. The Royals drafted him with the 17th overall pick in 1992, when he was 18 years old. And if you buy a scout a steak he will tell you that Pittsley had everything. Absolutely everything. Great fastball. Great breaking pitches. Great command. But more than any of that, he had something scouts treasure — he had presence, authority, an aura. He struck out 171 in 161 innings in High A ball the year he turned 20, and his first three years of minor leagues his strikeout-to-walk was 306-to-90. There was no doubt about him. “I’m telling you,” one of those scouts says, “he was like another Tom Seaver.”

Of course, you know Jim Pittsley did not become another Tom Seaver. He hurt his arm. He won seven big league games.

How about Jay Franklin? Heard of him? Nobody in Virginia knows for sure how fast Franklin threw — probably 100 mph. He once struck out 29 batters in an extra-inning game in high school. San Diego took him No. 2 in the 1971 draft — that was the draft of Mike Schmidt and George Brett and Jim Rice and Frank Tanana and Rick Rhoden and Ron Guidry — but Franklin was a hotter prospect than any of them. He was so good at 18, that after winning eight of nine games in the minors, he was promoted to the big leagues, where he got one start. In those years when Nolan Ryan was trying to find himself, Jay Franklin looked like he could beat Ryan to the punch as the world’s premier power pitcher.

Of course you know Jay Franklin did not beat Nolan Ryan to the punch. That start was the only one he would ever make in the big leagues. He got hurt.

There is an endless list of names … players who could have been in Cooperstown with the great stuff they had … Roger Salkeld … Dean Burke … Les Rohr … Brien Taylor … David Clyde … Bill Pulsipher … Todd Van Poppel … these are not cautionary tales. These are not exceptions to the rule. They are the rule. These are the reality pitchers, the ones who had their great careers ended before they began. Every scout has a story.

Then again, you don’t have to be a scout to have a story. Some of these prodigies make it to the big leagues. Some of them show their brilliance, if only for a moment. Maybe you saw the young Mark Prior pitch in 2003. He was just 22 years old, and struck out 245 in 211 innings, finished third in the league with a 2.43 ERA (third-lowest ERA for a Cubs’ pitcher since World War II). He certainly had a case to win the Cy Young Award (he finished third). There have not been many 22-year-old pitchers in recent memory who were better.

Maybe you saw the young Gary Nolan pitch. He was just 18 when he made his first start for the Cincinnati Reds in 1967 … he struck out 206 that year, finished fourth in the league in ERA, (2.58) threw five shutouts including a 10-inning one — Bob Feller, who isn’t easily impressed by the talents of young pitchers, called Nolan to tell him “You remind me of myself.”

Maybe you saw the young Mark Fydrich pitch in 1976 — maybe you saw the way he smoothed out the mounds and seemed to talk to the ball, the way his pitches would dive to the ground and hitters would ground the ball to second base, hit into double plays, bounce the ball back to the Bird himself.

Maybe you saw Steve Avery pitch as a young man for the Atlanta Braves — people forget that it was Avery who started the Braves on their amazing journey in the 1990s, Avery who at age 21 threw 16 shutout innings at Pittsburgh in the Braves first playoff victory since they moved to Atlanta, Avery who was left-handed and overpowering until he started to feel a pain under his arm every time he threw.

Maybe you saw the young Ben McDonald come up — he was the Strasburg of his time, the first pick in the draft, a hyped super-pitcher, he threw a shutout in his first big-league start, he won his five first big league starts and had a 1.72 ERA in those games, he seemed to have everything. Then he started to struggle. Then he started to feel pain. Or … perhaps it was the other way around.

Maybe you saw the young Jim Bouton pitch. He was so terrific in back-to-back years in 1963 and 1964, won 39 games with a 2.78 ERA, made three outstanding starts in the World Series — only you know that his destiny was to write one of the best baseball books ever written about trying to come back.

Maybe you saw the young Herb Score pitch in 1955 and ’56 — led the league in strikeouts both years, had the arm of Sandy Koufax before anyone knew who Sandy Koufax even was, he might have been the best pitcher in the league in ’56, he had unlimited talent. People tend to remember Score’s career ending when he got hit in the face by a Gil McDougald’s line drive, but it wasn’t that simple. He did come back. He had a couple of brilliant moments. But there was arm trouble.

Yes. There’s often arm trouble. A complete list would be impossible to put together — Rich Harden … Kerry Wood … Tom Hall … Balor Moore … Howie Pollet … Ewell Blackwell … Slim Jones … all of them might have been legends. Some just barely managed to become legends before the end came. Bret Saberhagen won two Cy Young Awards before he turned 26. J.R. Richard suffered a stroke after he had struck out 300 in back-to-back seasons. Sandy Koufax retired at 30.

All of which is to say that Stephen Strasburg fights the odds. But he was fighting the odds anyway, long before this latest injury. Pitchers get hurt in a thousand different ways. And it isn’t the ability to endure pain that gets them through even if a lughead like Rob Dibble* thinks Strasburg should just “suck it up” and “stop crying.” No, it’s preparation, and it’s luck, and it’s taking care of yourself, and it’s luck, and it’s maintaining form, and it’s luck, and in many cases it’s surgery. The arm isn’t built to throw a baseball as hard as Strasburg throws it. The arm isn’t built to make a baseball do the things Strasburg can make it do.

*If anyone should know this it’s Dibble … the guy threw 105 mph, as hard as I’ve ever seen anyone throw, and he struck out 500 faster than any pitcher in baseball history (only 368 innings — absurd) and he was pretty much unhittable (the league hit .195 against him from 1988-92) and then, yeah, his arm blew up.

One of the main goals of baseball teams these days is to try and keep pitchers healthy. There’s just so much money and promise at stake. In recent history, we’ve seen teams go to five-man rotations. We’ve seen teams adhere to strict pitch counts. We’ve seen teams baby their pitchers on the way up. With Strasburg, we’ve seen as careful a plan as has ever been devised.

And now he’s going on the disabled list again. Why? Because pitchers get hurt. You don’t want to make too big a deal out of it. This could be a minor blip. There’s no reason for him to pitch the rest of this season anyway. Let him rest, let him get stronger, let him come back next year refreshed and healthy. Maybe he will stay healthy and become one of the great ones. Everybody hopes so. But, sure, it’s scary to see one of the great prospects in baseball history go to the DL for the second time in his first 68 innings of big league baseball. It’s scary BECAUSE he has that chance to be a great one. It’s scary because we’ve seen this before.

1. Bob Feller is a Hall of Famer.

2. Bob Feller is 91 years old.

3. Someone points out Bob Feller is NOT the oldest Hall of Famer.

4. Jolly Old St. Neck Wound offers up one of the great unfair trivia questions of all time: Who is the oldest living Hall of Famer? The hint: He homered in his first at-bat.

5. Someone else asks which player who homered in his first at-bat hit the most big league homers?

6. And so on.

First, to answer the trivia questions. There are only two baseball Hall of Famers who homered in their first at-bat. One is Earl Averill, who died in 1983. The other is a great trivia question in his own right — it’s pitcher Hoyt Wilhelm who hit a home run in his first at-bat and never again homered. But Wilhelm passed away in 2002.

So what gives? The oldest baseball Hall of Famer still living is Bobby Doerr, who did not homer in his first at-bat. But you will notice the trivia question didn’t say anything about the oldest “baseball” Hall of Famer. It just said the oldest Hall of Famer.

And it just so happens that Ace Parker, Pro Football Hall of Famer, 98 years old this past May, also played baseball. And he homered in his first plate appearance for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1937. Parker played quarterback, tailback and defensive back for five years for the old Brooklyn Dodgers football team. He then went to war, came back to play for a team that (impossibly) was called the Boston Yanks (it was also known as the Brooklyn Tigers). He then played his final year as the New York Yankees football team.

It’s a great, great trivia question, if not entirely fair (which is at least part of what makes for a great, great trivia question).

And the all-time home leader among players who homered in their first at-bat? Well, this is where it gets pretty interesting, at least to me. We often hear about those players who hit home runs in their first at-bats — it feels like there’s something limitless about those players. When Jason Heyward homered in his first plate appearance this year against Carlos Zambrano, it just felt like the launching of a brilliant career.

And I hope it is … but how often do these home runs first time up foreshadow brilliant careers? How often to these players actually go on to hit lots and lots of home runs. As you have already seen, the only two Hall of Famers who hit home runs in their first at-bats — Averill and Wilhelm — were not famous for home runs. Averill did have three 30-homer seasons, but it was his all-around play, including a tremendous walk-to-strikeout (774 walks to 518 Ks) and superior defense, that made him a terrific player. And, of course, Wilhelm was a pitcher who could not hit at all.

Before I give you the answer for who has the most home runs among players who hit a home run in their first at-bat, I will give you the Top 10 players in baseball history who hit their first homer in the first plate appearance. I was going to do the Top 32 players but … there really aren’t 32 outstanding players who hit a homer in their first at-bat. Basically, once we got into the late 20s and early 30s we were going to have to choose between people like Ernie Koy, Junior Felix and Brad Fullmer. There’s not a lot of fun with that. So we will stick with 10.

1. Will Clark.
Clark did not just homer in his first at-bat … he homered in the first inning of Opening Day 1986 in the Astrodome off of Nolan Ryan. Hard to make a more impressive debut than that.

There are quite a few players in recent years who may or may not deserve to be Hall of Famers — opinions will differ — but who, I feel quite sure, deserved more consideration than they received. I’d say Lou Whitaker is usually the first guy I think of — he got just 15 votes in 2001 and then fell off the ballot though he has materially the same case as Hall of Fame contemporary Ryne Sandberg. Dan Quisenberry was only on the ballot for one year and fell off. Bobby Grich fell off after a year. Darrell Evans fell off after a year (just EIGHT votes for a third baseman with 400 home runs and a 119 OPS+). Ted Simmons, a catcher with 50.4 Wins Above Replacement fell off after a year. And so on. I’m not saying these players and others should be in the Hall of Fame — I’m not even saying I would vote for them (I would Whitaker for sure). But I probably should put together a list of 32 players who should at least have their Hall of Fame case reopened so we can talk about it.

Will Clark might be as obvious a case as Whitaker because you could make a persuasive argument that from 1987-1989 or so, Clark was the best player in the National League, perhaps the best player in the baseball. Anyone who is even in the argument for best player in baseball over a stretch of time should at least be CONSIDERED for the Hall. Clark was a slick fielding first baseman who got on base, hit with power, scored runs and so on.*

*Though I love that in 1987, he attempted 22 stolen bases … and was caught 17 times. The rest of his career, he stole bases successfully about 70% of the time … but there must have been a bunch of busted hit-and-runs in ’87.

I don’t know that Clark is a Hall of Famer … he had so many injuries that shortened his career. You may or may not remember this, but his last year — when he was 36 — he hit .319/.418/.546. His 144 OPS+ is the tied for second best ever by a player in his last season (this would be full seasons, players who qualified for the batting title). The best season by a player in his last season? Black Sox outfielder Shoeless Joe Jackson. The man Will Clark is tied with? Black Sox Happy Felsch. In other words, no player in baseball history voluntarily retired after as good a season as Clark’s final season. Injuries definitely wrecked the Thrill, and maybe that means he’s not quite a Hall of Famer. But he was only on the ballot for one year … I think he deserves much more than that.

2. Earl Averill
He hit his home run off of Earl Whitehill at League Park in Cleveland. Whitehill was a bit of celebrity at the time because of his marriage to Violet Geissinger, who was — I don’t need to tell you this — a Sun Maid Raisin model. Because you know, you can’t sell raisins without models.

I can’t quite get it clear from research, but it appears that Violet WAS NOT the model for the old Sun Maid Raisin box. She was, instead, just one of the Raisin Girls.

Treasure Ho, indeed! Apparently that painting is of Lorraine Collette, who posed for the box in 1915. She would stay the image until 1970, when Delia von Mayer who worked for a packaging company that was involved with Sun Maid, posed for the new box. You can learn all about it here if you’re interested. We offer all sorts of fascinating information here, don’t we?

3. Hoyt Wilhelm

Wilhelm’s first at-bat came in the fourth inning in front of 4,611 people at the Polo Grounds. He homered off Dick Hoover, a solo shot, and it helped him earn his first big-league win. At the time, he was already 29 years old.

Wilhelm could not possibly have imagined then that he would get 493 plate appearances over the next 21 years, his last when he was two months shy of his 50th birthday. In that last at-bat, he struck out against Larry Dierker. And, of course, over those 21 years he would never hit another home run. Wilhelm was a famously terrible hitter even for a pitcher — he hit .088 in his career. After his first two seasons (when he hit his only home, his only triple, and two of his three lifetime doubles) he slugged .075 for the last 19 seasons.

4. Bert Campaneris

Another very good player who was knocked off the Hall of Fame ballot after one year. Campaneris had quite a few quirks in his career — starting with his first game. He homered off JIm Kaat in his first at-bat in 1966. Then he singled off Kaat. Then he reached on a fielder’s choice and stole a base. And then he hit a SECOND home run off of Jim Kaat. When you consider that 19 of the 104 players who hit one home run coming into this season did not hit a second, you would have to say three hits, two homers and a stolen base is a pretty good debut.

Campaneris was the first player to play all nine positions in one game. He led the league in hits once, in triples once, in steals six times and in sacrifice hits three times including 1977 when he had 40 sacrifice hits for Texas. Forty. That’s most for any player in a season over the last 80 years. Fascinating that the man who hit two homers in his first game is best known for sacrifice bunts.*

*This is actually not that fascinating … see No. 8.

Bill James remembers this odd but awesome game in 1966 — it was an August game against Chicago — when Campaneris went four-for-four, stole two bases and scored all four runs in a 4-2 win. But here’s what made it awesome: He scored all four runs without the help of an RBI.

– The first run, he singled, was bunted to second, stole third, and scored on an error by Chicago third baseman Don Buford.

– The second run, he tripled and scored on Tommy John’s wild pitch.

– The third run, he singled to left and somehow came all the way around on Tommy John’s error … I’m not even sure how this happened.

– The fourth run, he singled, stole second, went to third on a passed ball and scored on a passed ball. Back-to-back passed balls? That’s right: Hoyt Wilhelm was throwing knuckleballs on the mound. Hoyt Wilhelm who is No. 3 on the list. See, it all fits together.

5. Gary Gaetti*

And we finally have the answer to our trivia question (though you probably looked it up already). Gaetti had a late September call-up in 1981, and hit his home run off of Charlie Hough at old Arlington Stadium. It was the first of 360 home runs, by far the most for anyone who hit a home first time up. (Carlos Lee is the only other player on the list to have more than 300 home runs — as a couple of Brilliant Readers point out, he will probably pass Gaetti).

You probably think of Gaetti when he was playing in Minnesota — that’s how I think of him — but he actually had his biggest home run year for Kansas City in 1995. He hit 35 home runs in just 137 games … had it not been for the late start of the season, Gaetti (and not Steve Balboni) might have the Royals home run record, which is still only 36.

*The freakishly similar Tim Wallach (Gaetti hit .255, Wallach .257; Gaetti had four Gold Gloves, Wallach 3; Gaetti hit 360 homers, Wallach 260 but led the league in doubles twice) is also listed in several places as having hit a home run in his first time up … but this does not seem to be true. Well, it’s TECHNICALLY true. According to Retrosheet, Wallach did homer in his first official at-bat in 1980. But he walked in his first plate appearance three innings earlier.

6. Bill White

He was 22 years old and playing for the Giants when he hit his home run off Ben Flowers. It was a nice coincidence that he was facing the Cardinals, the team where he would build his own reputation of dignity and consistency three years later (the Cardinals traded Don Choate and Sam Jones for White).

From 1959-1965, White hit .298, averaged 20 homers, 90 or so runs, 90 or so RBIs, made the All-Star team five times and won Gold Gloves every year but one.

7. Jermaine Dye

He came in as a defensive replacement for the Braves in 1996 and hit his home run off a Cincinnati pitcher named Marcus Moore.

I was lucky enough, by coincidence mostly, to be around Ozzie Guillen the last couple of weeks, so I got to hear him go off on a few classic rants, one about Michael Jackson, one about old hitting coaches, and one about how people in Chicago gripe a whole lot about losing Jim Thome but, hmm, isn’t it interesting, nobody ever seems to complain about losing Jermaine Dye. Ozzie shrugs. “I wonder why?” he asks.

Ozzie isn’t exactly subtle — he doesn’t really wonder why — but putting aside the race question … it does seem like Jermaine Dye has been an under-appreciated player in his time. He was the last Royals players to be voted as an All-Star starter in 2000 — and it’s hard to even imagine a Royals player getting voted into the All-Star game any time soon — and he was traded the very next year (for Neifi Perez, no less). He was a viable MVP candidate for Chicago in 2006 (.315/.385/.622) — this a few months after being the World Series MVP in 2005 — and yet he did not seem to pierce the Chicago galaxy of stars. He’s one of the really great people I’ve had the chance to know in the game, and yet people hardly ever seem to talk about him. He was decent offensively in 2009 after a fine offensive 2008 season and yet he didn’t find a job this year.

8. Jay Bell

Jay Bell’s first home run was something special … it was late 1986, another September call-up. What made it special was that it came off of Bert Blyleven.* You might put two and two together on this — Blyleven in 1986 set the record for most home runs allowed in a season. He gave up 50. The record, even though the steroid era, still stands.

And Bell’s home run (he was playing for Cleveland then) was No. 47, which gave Blyleven that record (he had been tied with Hall of Famer Robin Roberts, who gave up 46 in 1956). Later in the game, Joe Carter hit No. 48. Then Brett Butler hit No. 49. And finally, in the last game of the year, Chicago’s Daryl Boston would hit No. 50.

Jay Bell is often brought up to me because in one of those columns that people NEVER seem to forget, I wrote on Opening Day in 1997 that Kansas City would fall in love with Jay Bell. The Royals had picked up Bell and Jeff King from Pittsburgh, and Bell just seemed to me like the perfect, business-like kind of guy that Kansas City would appreciate. It turned out not to be like that. Bell actually had a strong offensive year — almost certainly the best offensive season a Kansas City shortstop has ever had. He hit .291/.368/.461, hit 21 homers, scored 89 runs, drove in 92. No other everyday Royals shortstop to this day has ever posted an OPS+ of better than 101. Bell had a 115 OPS+.

But no … there wasn’t much love for Bell. It seemed much of the time that he was just going through the motions. He would not run out a ground ball one day, he would give a Roger Dorn effort on a looping fly ball the next, he just seemed utterly miserable in Kansas City. Maybe he wasn’t miserable … but he sure seemed that way (and with that Royals team, you couldn’t really blame him) When the year ended, he signed a big money deal to go to Arizona and probably did not give Kansas City a second thought after that.

Incidentally, I mentioned above that Campaneris’ 40 sacrifice hits in 1977 are the most in the last 80 years. Well, Jay Bell had 39 sacrifice bunts in 1990 for Pittsburgh, second most over that time period. And he too homered in his first plate appearance. I just think that’s kind of interesting — there are no all-time great home run hitters who hit homers in their first plate appearances, but there are two all-time great sacrifice bunters.

*I asterisked Blyleven to tell this little story … I was in Minnesota this past week and a group of us sportswriters were coming off the elevator. And waiting there was Bert Blyleven who, of course, could not let the moment go by without a wisecrack “Wow,” he said as he saw us all walk off the elevator. “Looks like a good place for a grenade.”

9. Wally Moon

Is there a more 1950s name than Wally Moon? I don’t think it’s possible. Moon hit his home run off Paul Minner in the first inning of his first game in 1954 at old Busch Stadium.

Moon was a very good player — an outstanding defender, a good and aggressive base runner (he led the league in triples in 1959), a tough out (he walked more than he struck out in his career and led the league in on-base percentage in 1961).

He also got his masters degree in administrative education while still in the minor leagues.

10. Adam Wainwright

There are others who probably deserve to be higher on the list considering their entire careers — Terry Steinbach, Carlos Lee, John Montefusco to name just three — but I’ll go with Wainwright here because he’s SO good and he shows every sign of being this good for years to come.

I have written here often about how so many people overrate pitcher victories, which have become a badly outdated statistic that every year (as starters throw fewer and fewer innings) shows less and less about a pitcher’s true value. That said, I do think Adam Wainwright would have the right to feel a bit cheated by the new era. He led the league in victories last year and finished third in the Cy Young voting. And this year, he is again leading the league in victories (and ERA) and the general feeling among the stats community seems to be that Roy Halladay is having an even better year (well, you know, Halladay’s xFIP is better, and according to Fangraphs Halladay’s 6.4 WAR is markedly better than Wainwright’s 5.0).

From my experience. Wainwright is a terrific guy and quite advanced in his understanding of the game. But, let’s face it, if he leads the league in victories again and loses the Cy Young again, well, you couldn’t blame the guy if he went all Jack Morris on us.

The Wainwright home run, incidentally, came in his 17th appearance — he came in to relieve Tyler Johnson, and he homered off Noah Lowry in San Francisco. He has hit five home runs in his career now — that’s already tied for eighth among active players. The most home runs for an active pitcher? You should know: Carlos Zambrano, and it’s not even close. He has 20. Livan Hernandez is second with nine.

You can see it, blazing red in the lower right-hand corner, written in some sort of goofy cursive font: “Mr. Clutch.” I love this for so many reasons, not the least of which being that, as far as I remember, no other baseball card in the entire set got this sort of consideration. They didn’t scribble “Mr. Defense” on Ozzie Smith’s card, or “Dr. K” on Dwight Gooden’s card (he was still Dwight then) or “Mr. Stolen Base” on Vince Coleman’s card or “Mr. Mister” on Kyrie’s card. Tabler, alone, got the special “Let’s just put a nickname on his card” treatment.

It did not occur to me, as an Indians fan, that there might be some irony in the “Mr. Clutch” nickname that the Donruss folks so joyfully stamped on Pat Tabler’s card. The Indians had lost 102 games in 1985. They had started the year by losing their first five games, and except for a glorious week or so in early May, they were in last place all year long. The only thrill of any kind happened in late September: The Indians lost their 99th game with nine left to play, and they won three in a row. They would not go gently into 100 losses. Then they lost their 100th, but won three more in a row, another refusal, this time to lose MORE than 100. Finally, they lost steam and dropped their last two behind the watery pitching of Jamie Easterly and Don Schultze.

People disagree about every element of “clutch hitting” including the very existence of it, but most would probably concede that it’s hard to find too many clutch situations in a 102-loss season. So how did Tabler get those words on his baseball card? Well, for a while in the mid-1980s, Pat Tabler was a sensation with the bases loaded.

It really began in 1983, when Tabler was traded to Cleveland for the Dybber — Jerry Dybzinski — one of my all time favorite players because, well, because he was a Cleveland guy through and through and his name was Dybzinski. I wasn’t crazy about this Tabler character who was, after all, a CIncinnati guy, and someone who could play every position but none of them especially well.

But in 1983, Tabler hit .291 — the best average on the Indians that year. I don’t remember if people were already talking about his bases-loaded numbers, but that year he came up 22 times with them bases filled with Indians, and he hit .579 with with 25 RBIs.

The 1984 season was more of the same. Tabler hit .290 this time around. And by now people were definitely jabbering away about his knack with the bases juiced. He hit .556 with them loaded (we would call this “5-for-9″ in today’s world) and hit his first career grand slam.

Then came 1985 — the year he would inspire somebody at Donruss to dub him Mr. Clutch. He actually took a pretty significant step back offensively — his batting average dropped to .275 (and, in more real terms that I was entirely unaware of in 1985, his on-base percentage dropped 30 points, his slugging percentage dropped 40 points). But with the bases loaded, well, he came up seven times. And he got six hits, including his second grand slam. That’s an .857 batting average if you’re scoring at home. And at this point, people were writing stories quite often about the Clark Kent in Cleveland who turned into Superman when the bases were filled.

Of course, it was absurd. The next year — the year of the Mr. Clutch baseball card — Tabler had what was his best year. He hit .326 (fourth in the league) and posted a 120 OPS+. With the bases loaded? You bet: He hit only .200 (two for 10). And Superman was dead*.

*Though it should be said that in 1987, the year Joe Carter and Cory Snyder were on the cover of Sports Illustrated, Pat Tabler was the Indians’ lone All-Star representative. And in that spirit, with the Indians again losing 100 games, he hit .556 with the bases loaded to regain a bit of his reputation. The Indians traded him to Kansas City the next year for Bud Black, but during that year, for two teams, Tabler went eight-for-nine with the bases loaded. Mr. Clutch was back! The following year, for the Royals, Mr. Clutch went one-for-11 with the bases loaded.

In all, Pat Tabler came to the plate 109 times with the bases loaded in his career and he hit .489 with a couple of grand slams. Looking back on it, this seems, as much as anything, to be the verdict of chance — Tabler was a good batting average hitter (he hit .296 between 1983-88), a guy who often hit the ball hard, and he undoubtedly enjoyed coming up with the bases loaded, and it often worked out well. As an Indians fan with very little to enjoy about the mid-1980s, Pat Tabler’s happy results with the bases loaded was something to treasure. I had a nine-card page of Pat Tabler “Mr. Clutch” cards in my collection.

All of which brings us to … yep … Yuniesky Betancourt. On this blog, all roads lead to Yuni. The Royals actually traded for Betancourt in the middle of last season, at a time when Seattle was undoubtedly thinking about just releasing him and absorbing the few million left on his contract. Betancourt was in the midst of a savagely bad season — and it got no better when he actually got to Kansas City. As a hitter, he finished with a 65 OPS+*. As a fielder, he scored a rather remarkable minus-27 on the Dewan plus/minus, and an equally remarkable minus-16.7 Ultimate Zone Rating. As a base runner, Bill James’ numbers showed him to be a staggering 28 bases below average, making him, pound for pound, as bad a base runner as there was in the game.

*His actual performance was even worse than his OPS+ indicates because OPS, by most mathematical estimations, undervalues on-base percentage. And Betancourt’s .274 on-base percentage was the worst in baseball since 2006.

There was simply nothing that Betancourt did well in 2009, nothing at all. But the Royals stuck with him for two reasons. One, they had no other option. Their regular shortstop had been 2008 player of the year Mike Aviles, but he was dreadful and he was hurt, in whatever order you want to put those in. This left the Royals in the rather ludicrous position of putting Tony Pena Jr. into the lineup, and Pena was hitting less than .100 in limited at-bats — repeat, less than .100. So, reason No. 1: When you are giving Tony Pena at-bats ANYONE looks good.

Reason No. 2 was a bit harder to understand — the Royals liked Betancourt as a player. They had liked him for some time. For a little while, a couple of years earlier, there was a stubborn rumor that the Royals might trade Billy Butler for Betancourt. By the Royals’ analysis, Betancourt was an above average defensive shortstop who, should he iron a few wrinkles, might win a Gold Glove or two. By the Royals analysis, Betancourt was a more-than-useful offensive player who stung the ball enough to hit .289 in back-to-back seasons, 2006 and 2007. Sure, the Royals’ analysis seemed to clash with more or less everything that was available to the public. But this is part of the charm of being a Kansas City Royals fan. You find yourself saying these words a lot: “Well, it could work, I guess.”

Betancourt dropped a pop-up early this season — burped it, is more accurate — which led then manager Trey Hillman to fine him for lack of effort or something. For a little while, it looked like the Royals might cut his playing time. So it goes. For the most part, Betancourt seemed noticeably better than he was in 2009, though I would generally compare this to “Princess Diaries” being noticeably better than “Princess Diaries II.” Betancourt still didn’t get on base (even now, his .291 on-base percentage is sixth worst among qualifiers), and he still didn’t get to much of anything going to his left (his minus-7.1 UZR, and minus-12 Dewan plus/minus are only better than last year by degree). But when he hit the ball, he hit with a bit more pop. And he seemed much more alert on the bases (confirmed by his plus-8 bases according to Bill James).

And, frankly, he just played a bit more like he cared. I was in the ballpark with my family when he hit his second grand slam of the season — this one against Oakland’s Trevor Cahill — and I felt my feelings about Yuni softening. My feelings about him as a baseball player were more or less unchanged. But I started to see him as a guy who really was trying to get better. Yes, he is still in love with the slider that broke a foot outside. Yes, he almost never walks (two walks in last 47 games). Yes, he still cannot get his body started and going toward balls hit up the middle. Yes, he is still stunningly slow for a middle infielder (he has a chance this year to become the first shortstop since Jhonny Peralta in 2006 to steal zero bases this year). Yes to all of it.

But he has taught himself some things too. He taught himself to turn on a mistake pitch, hit it off the wall our out of the park (his 13 homers are a career high). He taught himself to concentrate harder on a day-to-day basis — the brain fog moments seemed to be happening less often (though maybe not … this just might have been my new Yuni perspective). Instead of seeing him as a player with talent who was wildly underachieving, I revised my thinking and saw him instead as a player WITHOUT great talent who nevertheless was playing every day in the big leagues. The Royals, I remain convinced, are not going to win with Yuniesky Betancourt as their every day shortstop. But, at the moment, they’re not going to win with the young Honus Wagner as their every day shortstop either.

Point is: The guy, I think, is playing as well as he can play. If that still makes him a below average every day player, well, on this team that hardly makes him unique. After all, catcher Jason Kendall has a 71 OPS+ and still does not have a triple or home run this season. And he not only plays every day, but the Royals hit him in the No. 2 spot in the lineup (since moving to that No. 2 spot 61 games ago, he’s hitting .238/.297/.264 — yes, he’s slugging .264). Yuni has been surpassed as face of the franchise. And I have found myself kind of rooting for him.

Which brings us to Saturday night, when the Royals did one of the odder things in team history — after a Friday rainout they played a doubleheader against Chicago that STARTED at 6:10 Central time. I’m really not sure of all the reasons — television, extremely hot weather, etc. — but there was something delightfully goofy about it, sort like when you’re little and your parents let you stay up to midnight for the first time. I decided that I would watch both games in their entirety as some sort of endurance test (not to give away the ending but … I didn’t make it).

Anyway, in the first game, the Royals were marching blandly into a 5-1 loss when Betancourt came up with the bases loaded in the seventh inning. In one of the odder quirks, Betancourt has already hit two grand slams this season … which, you may know, is one more than either Derek Jeter or Pete Rose hit in THEIR CAREERS.*

*My first thought about this is that Jeter and Rose, being leadoff hitters, have not had many chances with the bases loaded … but it isn’t true. Jeter has come up 247 times in his career with the bases loaded*; Rose came up 238 times. This year, Jeter has come up with the bases loaded 15 times — as many times as Yuni — and he has one hit. I’m not saying this says anything at all … just saying that the “He doesn’t come up as often with the bases loaded” argument is not valid.

On television, as foreshadowing, they replayed Yuni’s first two grand slams, and I know I wasn’t the only one among those watching the game on television to think that he was going to hit another one. Baseball does sometimes reward the persistent. You know who was the only player in the last 50 years to have two eight-RBI games in one season? It was Jim Spencer in 1977 — he had a two-homer, eight RBI game against Cleveland and a two-homer, eight RBI game against Minnesota. The only other player in the exhaustive Baseball Reference system to have done it since 1920 was … Lou Gehrig. So for a couple of days, anyway, Jim Spencer was Lou Gehrig. That’s one of the beautiful things about baseball. Mark Whiten hit four home runs one day. Rafael Ramirez hit four doubles one day. Sterling Hitchcock struck out 15 and walked nobody one day. Sometimes the music plays.

And Yuniesky Betancourt launched a home run to left-center — his third grand slam of the season.

The cheers were as immense as 25,000 late-August Kansas City fans can make them. There was a curtain call. His three grand slams in a season ties him for the Royals record with Danny Tartabull. He has more RBIs with the bases loaded than any other player in baseball except A-Rod. Yes, A-Rod.

And there was more. In the ninth inning, with the score still tied, with two outs, Betancourt doubled, but alas the Royals could not drive him home. In the 11th, with this night-night double header threatening to become farce, with two outs and and a runner on third, it was Betancourt who ended things, who drilled a single up the middle against Bobby Jenks to win it. “I just want to give 100% every day,” he told the crowd through his interpreter, and they appreciated him with even more cheers.

“He’s hot as a firecracker,” Royals manager Ned Yost said between games.

I tried to watch the second game … and made it until about the fifth inning thanks in large part to the new utterly not-safe-for-work classic by Cee-Lo Green, which I listed to about 30 times in a row. I think Cee-Lo Green might be the reigning genius in music. Anyway that song got me to about the fifth inning, at which point I realized that I had clearly lost my mind, and I turned off the television and went to finish up some work. So I missed the bottom of the ninth inning when Yuni came up with the tying run on third based. He hit a line drive single to center that sent the game into extra innings. I’m sure those who were left in the stands celebrated him again, and rightfully so.

Betancourt’s bases-loaded timeliness is the big reason he is now tied with Billy Butler for the team lead in RBIs (61). His 13 homers lead the team now that Jose Guillen is gone. If he can keep up his 95 OPS+ despite his low-low-low on-base percentage, well, that will be the best OPS+ of his career. And — brace yourself for this one — according to Baseball Reference, his 1.3 WAR at the moment is better than Derek Jeter’s 1.2 WAR (Fangraphs WAR has Jeter at 2.2 WAR, Yuni at 0.8).

What does any of it mean? Well, that’s just not for me to decide. When I was young and a passionate fan of a team, I loved Pat Tabler for being Mr. Clutch for my Cleveland Indians. I didn’t know about the role of chance or the quirks of small sample size and the absurdity of clutch situations in 100-loss seasons would have been lost on me. I believed that when the bases were loaded, the best man to have the plate would not have been Babe Ruth or Willie Mays or Josh Gibson or George Brett or anyone else but Pat Tabler, who played for my team. He was Mr. Clutch. It said so on his baseball card.

This year, Yuniesky Betancourt has come up with the bases loaded 15 times. Seven of those times, he got hits. Five of those times, he got an extra-base hit. Three of those times, he hit the grand slam. Would you begrudge a Kansas City Royals fan, lost in another lost season, the joy of the Yuni Yuniverse? Of course you wouldn’t. Put Mr. Slam on his baseball card.

* * *

The image that keeps coming back is one of Roger Clemens throwing that broken bat in the general direction of Mike Piazza. That was the 2000 World Series, of course. Clemens threw a hard inside fastball that busted Mike Piazza’s bat. The fat part of the bat skipped out to the mound. Clemens fielded the bat cleanly and, without even a second hesitation, he fired the bat into the path of Piazza, who was slowing up about three or four steps up the first-base line. Had Piazza kept running, I do believe the bat could have hit him. Had the bat taken a wicked hop, I do believe it could have hit him. As it was, the bat bounded past Piazza and had enough force to bounce for another 40 or 50 feet.

The image that keeps coming back, though, is not of the insanity of the moment — which, after all, has been played hundreds of times since. No. It’s the image of Clemens in the moment after. Piazza, a bit disoriented by the absurdity of a pitcher throwing a bat his way, started walking toward the mound, and he apparently yelled: “What’s your problem?” Umpire Charlie Reliford got in between the two of them. The benches cleared in that slow, “let’s everybody calm down,” kind of way.

And Clemens? Well, you can see it for yourself on this home video (Go to about 2:25).

Clemens is trying to plead his case to the umpire.

Look at it again. Again. It’s fascinating. Piazza is looking right at Clemens and yelling at him. But Clemens is not looking at Piazza. He’s trying to get Reliford’s attention. He’s trying to explain that he didn’t REALLY throw a bat at Mike Piazza. No. Even as the players gather around and Piazza is getting angrier, Clemens is STILL trying to get to Reliford, even tapping him on the shoulder just as everyone gathered close. When other umpires gently pushed Clemens away from the pile, he then talked to THOSE umpires, no doubt telling them he was innocent too.

Clemens readily admitted this after the game. “I told Charlie the umpire that there was no intent,” Clemens said. “Fired up and emotional, yeah. But I had no idea Mike was running. There was no intent.”

“I had no idea Mike was running,” was only one plank of the three-pronged Clemens defense. The second was that Clemens instinctively thought the bat was the baseball (why he would wing the baseball directly into the path of Piazza was one of the lesser developed themes of this defense). The third was that he was in such an emotionally charged state that he needed to go to the dugout after the inning ended, go off by himself, bring himself back to life, back to reality. And, of course, it could all be wrapped up with those Perry Mason-sounding buzzwords “There was no intent.”

That Roger Clemens could throw a bat directly into the path of Mike Piazza on television, during a World Series game, for tens of millions of people to see, and, instantly and vehemently believe that he could convince the umpire and everyone else that he didn’t mean it might give us just a small peek into the inner workings of the man. The fact he got away with it (no ejection, no fine, unqualified support from his manager Joe Torre who happily parroted the ludicrous “he thought it was the ball” story) might give us a slightly larger peek.

But perhaps the most revealing thing of all is just seconds after he threw the bat, seconds later, with things getting hot all around him, Clemens did not want to fight, and he did not want to argue. All the Rocket wanted was his day in court.

* * *

“This should show you that he believes strongly that he’s telling the truth. Everybody’s said we’re insane lawyers for allowing this. No sane man would subject himself to that unless he deeply believed he was telling the truth.”
– Clemens’ attorney Rusty Hardin, February 13, 2008

Nothing about the second Congressional hearing ever made much sense to me. The first hearing — the famed “Restoring Faith In America’s Pastime” hearing in 2005 — made sense in its own way. Here was a glorious opportunity for members of Congress to grandstand and offer a few “tsk tsks” and stand together against something that 99.8648% of Americans abhor: Steroids in baseball. It was a political opportunity.

But by 2008, steroids and baseball really wasn’t much of a political opportunity anymore. The steroid thing was mostly played out. Everybody understood that quite a few players had used PEDs. There was certainly some anger for the big names — Mark McGwire had received less than 24% of the Hall of Fame vote; Barry Bonds could not find a job — but things seemed to be stabilizing. The 409-page Mitchell Report had come out in December, and yes, there was a little buzz about it because it named Clemens as a PED user …

… but the only person who seemed to REALLY care about that was Roger Clemens himself. He was everywhere. He held a press conference to proclaim his innocence. He appeared on 60 Minutes to proclaim his innocence. He and his lawyer held a bizarre press conference where they played a recording of a conversation Clemens had with his main accuser, Brian McNamee, which (in ways nobody really understood) was supposed to proclaim his innocence. Clemens announced that he was suing McNamee, which was another way to proclaim his innocence. Clemens’ agency, led by Randy Hendricks, released an 18,000 word report they called “An Analysis Of A Career” that purported to, yes, proclaim his innocence.

And somewhere in there, Clemens announced that he was going to Washington to testify for another Congressional Hearing, this one with the considerably less jaunty title: “The Mitchell Report: The Illegal Use of Steroids in Baseball.” This hearing opened with Chairman Henry Waxman announcing that there would be an investigation into whether Miguel Tejada (by telling the committee he had never used PEDs) perjured himself in the first go around.

There just seemed something dark and troubling and unnecessary about this second hearing, and it seems pretty obvious (as Hardin plainly said) that any sane person would have known to stay as far away from it as possible.

Clemens did not stay away. Clemens chased after it.

This from the 19-page indictment of Roger Clemens for obstruction, perjury and making false statements: “The Committee did not issue CLEMENS a subpoena, and CLEMENS was under no legal obligation to testify. CLEMENS retained his right under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution to refuse to answer any questions that might tend to incriminate him.”

In other words: Congress did not force Clemens to speak at the hearing. There was no legal reason he had to be there. And even once there, he did not have to answer the questions.

But Clemens went. He spoke. He pleaded. He denied. And the government believes it has compelling evidence that he knowingly and blatantly lied — they think the evidence is compelling enough to indict him.

But read again what Rusty Hardin said on the day that Clemens spoke. Notice, he does not say: “No sane man would subject himself to that unless he was telling the truth.”

No. He says: “No sane man would subject himself to that unless he DEEPLY BELIEVED he was telling the truth.”

Ump, there was no intent.

* * *

“No matter what we discuss here today, I am never going to have my name restored. I know a lot of people want me to say I took steroids and be done with it. But I cannot in good conscience admit to doing something I did not do, even if it would be easier to do so.”
– Roger Clemens, February 13, 2008

An indictment is not a conviction — not even close — and my understanding (based on watching lots of courtroom dramas) is that the law views Clemens innocent until proven guilty. Anyway, innocence or guilt, there are a million complications and delays and hypotheticals. … Barry Bonds was indicted on perjury charges and obstruction of justice almost three years ago. His trial might start in March, and, of course, it might not.

In Clemens case, you have an unreliable accuser in McNamee, various unanswered questions, a famous defendant, what is certain to be an expensive legal defense team …

… but the question now is really not about innocence or guilt or potential jail time or even about how this seems a ludicrous waste of government time and money. The question is why? If Roger Clemens did use performance enhancing drugs — as several people say he did and like so many players of his era did — then he could have come clean. People would have forgiven him, many people WANTED to forgive him. Does anybody care that his teammate and friend (and witness for the prosecution) Andy Pettitte used?

And if Roger Clemens DID NOT use PEDs, he could have quietly denied, lived his life, the people who were inclined to believe him would have believed him and the others, well, he wasn’t going to convince them anyway. He KNEW it. “No matter what we discuss here today, I am never going to have my name restored.”

Instead, he went to Congress. He said dubious things. He raised suspicion. He found his personal life unveiled for the tabloids. He inspired a government investigation. He got indicted. Now he will have to fight for his reputation and his freedom. Why? People say it’s because of his ego. People say it’s because he has to win. People say it’s because he believes in his innocence and he’s not just going to stand there and let people lie about him. People say it’s because pushing the envelope is just what he does — it is what made him a great and dominant pitcher. People say. But people don’t know. Nobody really knows.

Thursday, Roger Clemens Tweeted this:

“I never took HGH or Steroids. And I did not lie to Congress. I look forward to challenging the Governments accusations, and hope people will keep an open mind until trial. I appreciate all the support I have been getting. I am happy to finally have my day in court.”

He signed the note “Rocket.”

Even now, the Rocket wants another day in court.

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.

Bobby Thomson, of course, is not especially well remembered for being a very good baseball player. There have been a lot of very good players. He is — like Don Larsen, like Roger Maris, like Joe Carter, like Kirk Gibson and even like Vic Wertz and Mitch Williams and Ralph Branca — remembered for a moment. A feeling. A memory that has launched books and movies and songs and the most passionate radio call that ever was: “The Giants win the pennant!”

A couple of years ago, I put together a list of the 20 greatest home runs ever hit in baseball history. In honor of Bobby Thomson, who died Tuesday at the age of 86, I’m going to rework the Top 10 a little bit — we’re going to go with the 10 most memorable home runs ever. I don’t know if that’s notably different than “greatest” home runs ever, but I see it a bit differently, so the lists are different. These are the home runs that stand against time.

Here are the 10 home runs that I think will never be forgotten:

10. The Pine Tar Homer
Date: July 24, 1983

So, George Brett homered off of Goose Gossage in the top of the ninth inning to give Kansas City a 5-4 lead over New York. That’s when Yankees manager Billy Martin — who, like Mr. Potter from “It’s a Wonderful Life” never missed a trick — came out and demanded that Brett’s bat be looked at because the pine tar was smeared too high (the rule then stated that pine tar could not be “more than 18 inches from the tip of the handle”). Umpire Tim McClelland stretched the bat across the plate, saw that the pine tar was definitely across more than 18 inches and …

“I sat there in the dugout,” George Brett says, “and I said, ‘If this guy calls me out I’m going to go absolutely crazy.”

… and McClelland called Brett out. And Brett went absolutely crazy.

The great part is that the rule never said that if somebody uses an illegally smeared bat that they are automatically out. The rule said that if such a bat is found, it should be removed from the game. This was because (as Martin and everyone knew knew) pine tar doesn’t help someone hit a ball. It’s that just pine tar makes a mess of the ball. The rule was more of a “let’s keep the baseballs clean” kind of rule. So while McClelland had the power to call Brett out because he was the umpire, he did not really have the rulebook to fall back on.

The Royals protested and … that’s right, they were charged with a two-stroke penalty that cost them a right to be in the PGA Championship playoff. No, wait, that’s Dustin Johnson … don’t get me started on that.

No, the home run was restored, the game was picked up on August 18 in the ninth inning (which Billy Martin protested by putting Ron Guidry in center field and Don Mattingly at second base) and the Royals ended up winning the game.

9. We’ll See You Tomorrow Night
October 26, 1991

Just about everything about the 1991 World Series was awesome. Minnesota won Game 1 in a fairly routine fashion, then won by a run in Game 2 when Scott Leius hit a solo home run off Tom Glavine in the eighth inning.

The Braves won Game 3 in the bottom of the 12th inning when Mark Lemke — Atlanta’s answer to Scott Leius — singled in David Justice. And what can be better than a walk-off hit by Mark Lemke? How about a walk-off run by a Mark Lemke — the very next day. Lemke tripled in the bottom of the ninth with the score tied 2-2 and scored on Jerry Willard’s sacrifice fly. That tied the series.

The only bad game of the series happened in Game 5, a 14-5 Atlanta blowout that left more or less everyone convinced that the Braves would wrap this thing up back in Minnesota.

Of course, that’s not how baseball works — games don’t carry over to the next day, and momentum, as the line goes, is the next day’s pitcher. Game 6 was Steve Avery vs. Scott Erickson. The Twins got two off Avery in the first — the key hit being Kirby Puckett’s triple. That held up to the fifth when Terry Pendleton homered.* Puckett’s sacrifice fly gave the Twins the lead, Ron Gant’s run-scoring grounder (run scored by … Lemke, of course) tied it back up.

*Pendleton, you might remember, had probably had the greatest single year turnaround in baseball history. I don’t know for certain that this is true, but I cannot imagine there has been another player in baseball history who one year had a negative-WAR (Pendleton was -0.6 in 1990) and the following year won an MVP award.

And it stayed tied until the bottom of the 11th, when Puckett hit the home run off Charlie Leibrandt that won the game. “We’ll see you tomorrow night,” Jack Buck told us across the country on television. And, of course, that led to the classic Game 7 duel between Jack Morris and John Smoltz.

8. Mark McGwire’s 62nd.
September 8, 1998

I was having an interesting conversation with a friend, a huge Cardinals fan, who was wondering if you can undo emotion. She was talking about a friend of hers who had just broken up after many seemingly happy years. “It was all meaningless!” the friend had said in pain … but as my friend asked: Was it really meaningless? The emotion happened. It was very real. The good times were good times. The happy moments were the happy moments. Yes, perhaps memories are strained later … but that doesn’t make what happened disappear.

That’s how she and I both feel about Mark McGwire’s 62nd home run. It’s one of the most exciting and wonderful moments of my baseball-watching life (it was so emotional for her that she cried). Was the moment stained by McGwire’s admission of steroid use? Sure. Was the moment obscured by Barry Bonds’ joyless home run chase just three years later? Probably. Will we look back on that summer of the 1998, when stadiums would pack just to watch Mark McGwire take batting practice, with the sort of joy and surprise that we might have expected? No.

But that doesn’t make the moment go away. The playful interchange with Sammy Sosa. The touching moment with the Maris family. An ecstatic McGwire missing first base. It happened — proposed asterisks don’t just make the moment disappear. It all happened. And it’s one of the most memorable home runs in baseball history.

7. Joe Carter vs. Mitch Williams
Date: Oct. 23, 1993

In some ways, it’s amazing that this home run is not better remembered. There have only been two walk-off home runs to end the World Series. One of them will be much higher on the list.

And this one had all sorts of great characters. Mitch Williams? Joe Carter? Rickey Henderson? Paul Molitor? Come on. This was Game 6, bottom of the ninth, and Philadelphia led the game 6-5. Philadelphia’s Wild Thing — Mitch Williams — came in and started doing what Wild Things do. He led off the inning by walking Rickey Henderson. Perfect. The man who walked a lot vs. the man who walked a lot. Rickey Henderson faced Mitch Williams nine times and he never once got a hit. But he walked four times.

Devon White then hit a long fly ball that looked, for a moment, like it might be the game-winning home run. But Pete Incaviglia ran it down. Paul Molitor singled to center — so you had two Hall of Famers on the bases, one out, bottom of the ninth inning. Joe Carter came up.

Maybe the reason this homer isn’t as well remembers is that it has never gotten a nickname that stuck. Joe’s Jolt. Mitch’s Mistake. Maybe it’s because it happened in Canada. In many ways, this was the most spectacular home run in World Series history, more spectacular than Fisk’s because it clinched the series, more spectacular home run than Mazeroski’s homer because Maz hit his with the score TIED in the bottom of the ninth rather than with his team behind.

Anyway, Carter golfed the ball over the fence, the Blue Jays won the World Series, and everybody remembers it, though few seem to REMEMBER it with the same love of similar great moments.

6. And She Is Gone!
Date: Oct. 15, 1988

“And look who’s coming up … All year long, they looked to (Kirk Gibson) to light the fire, and all year long, he answered the demands, until he was physically unable to start tonight, with two bad legs, the bad left hamstring, and the swollen right knee. And, with two out, you talk about a roll of the dice … this is it. If he hits the ball on the ground, I would imagine he would be running 50 percent to first base. So, the Dodgers trying to catch lightning right now.

“(Gibson) was, you know, complaining about the fact that, with the left knee bothering him, he can’t push off. Well, now, he can’t push off and he can’t land. … 4-3 A’s, two out, ninth inning … Gibson, shaking his left leg, making it quiver, like a horse trying to get rid of a troublesome fly.

“Sax waiting on deck, but the game right now is at the plate. … The 3-2 pitch … High fly ball into right field … and she is gone!”

“In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened. … And, now, the only question was, could he make it around the base paths unassisted? You know, I said it once before, a few days ago, that Kirk Gibson was not the Most Valuable Player. The Most Valuable Player for the Dodgers was Tinkerbell. But, tonight, I think Tinkerbell backed off for Kirk Gibson.”

– Vin Scully on Kirk Gibson’s home run. I have always loved Jack Buck’s famous “I don’t believe what I just saw!” call. That’s how I caught the home run while driving home through South Carolina that night. But Scully’s call, as usual, was poetry.

5. Mr. November
Nov. 1, 2001

It’s the most memorable home run I’ll ever see — Derek Jeter’s home run in the 10th inning of Game 4. It’s a funny thing about memory … there is little doubt that if you ranked the importance and drama of the home runs hit by the Yankees in Games 4 and 5 of the 2001 World Series, that Jeter’s home run was third. Certainly, Tino Martinez’s two-out, two-run homer off of Byung-Hyun Kim to tie Game 4 in the bottom of the ninth, and Scott Brosius’ two-out two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth to tie the game the very next night were more dramatic.

But there were something about Jeter’s homer — maybe there’s just something about Jeter that makes him a good hero. After he hit the home run, Yankee Stadium was louder than I ever heard it before or since. There was something spiritual about that night — with 9/11 still powerful in memory, with smoke still pouring out of Ground Zero, with Jeter rounding the bases with his arm in the air, with the crowd singing “New York, New York” with Sinatra time after time. It wasn’t an unfamiliar scene — they ALWAYS play Sinatra after a Yankees victory — but something about that night will always stay with me.

4. Babe’s Called Shot

I love the fact that John Paul Stevens — the Supreme Court Justice for almost 35 years — was at the World Series game where Babe Ruth may or may not have called his shot. Stevens grew up in Chicago, and his father took him to the 1932 World Series game between the Yankees and the Cubs (he was 12).

He told the New Yorker: “We were sitting behind third base, not too far back. … Ruth did point to the centerfield scoreboard. And he did hit the ball out of the park after he pointed with his bat.”

A timeline on Babe’s Called Shot makes everything seem … questionable. The score was tied 4-4, nobody was on base, and there is little doubt that Ruth was agitated. The Cubs players were on him. The fans were on him. According to Leigh Montville’s excellent “The Big Bam,” after a strike was called, Ruth clearly did hold up one finger as if to say “That’s only one strike.” Two more balls followed, then another strike. And as everyone got on Ruth, he held up two fingers for two strikes.

Gabby Hartnett — who would always insist that Ruth did not point — would say that Ruth at that moment said “It only takes one to hit.” Home movies taken at the game suggest Ruth pointed at the Cubs bench. Then, he crushed the home run off Charlie Root, a long blast that sailed somewhere in the vicinity of centerfield or, more likely, right-center field (even WHERE the home run went has been debated). Ruth, as he rounded the bases, very clearly held up four fingers at the point. Four bases.

The newspaper writer Westbook Pegler, according to Montville, the next day wrote: “Many a hitter may make two home runs or possibly three in World Series play yet to come but not the way Babe Ruth hit these two. Nor will you ever see an artist call his shot before hitting one of the longest drives ever made on the grounds …”

Beyond Pegler, though, very little was written about “the called shot” the next day. It was the the following days that everyone would write about it. And though Ruth did not say much in the immediate aftermath, in later years, Ruth himself would latch on to the legend. “Well, the good lord was with me …” he was say as he remembered.

“Did he call the shot? Montville’s line makes sense to me: “He called shots all the time.”

John Paul Stevens’ line also makes sense: “It really happened.”

If you can’t trust a 35-year- member of the Supreme Court …

3. There’s a new home run champion of all time
Date: April 8, 1974

Nobody will care about this but me, but still: One of my earliest baseball memories — I was 6 or 7 years old at the time — was going to a paint shop with my Dad, and there was a giant cardboard cutout of Henry Aaron. And I asked my Dad about it, and he said that Aaron was about to pass Babe Ruth and hit the most home runs of all time. He said that Aaron was a great player.

I’d seen baseball at that point — I had been to at least a couple of Cleveland Indians games, and I remember the yellow uniforms of the A’s on television — but that was the first time I remember actually thinking something about the game. And my thought was that Henry Aaron must be the greatest player who ever lived if he hit more home runs than anyone ever.

Years later, I hosted an event at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum featuring Aaron. I interviewed him for an audience and it’s one of my favorite days in sportswriting. I also wrote a column about him for the paper that day. And later that day, he called my friend and former NLBM marketing director Bob Kendrick and said: “I just read the column the guy at the paper wrote about me.”

Bob said: “Yes, what did you think?”

And Henry Aaron laughed and said: “He must really like me.”

Yes I do. Ever since I was 6 years old.

2. The Game Six Homer
Date: Oct. 21, 1975

One of the nicest people I interviewed for my book The Machine (New York Times bestseller! Huge discount price! Coming out in paperback!) was Pat Darcy, who like many of the players at the top of this column, is mostly remembered for a moment. Darcy was the man who gave up Carlton Fisk’s famous Game Six homer.

Darcy was a rookie in 1975 … and he was fairly effective when you consider that he didn’t strike out anybody. That’s only a slight exaggeration — Darcy pitched 130 innings. He struck out 46 and walked 59. But he somehow scrambled for 11 victories and a 3.58 ERA. He also threw the complete game that ended the 45-game streak of non complete games that, at the time, was the Major League record.

In Game 6, Darcy actually pitched about as well as he would ever pitch in the big leagues. He came into the game in the bottom of the 10th with the score tied, got Dwight Evans to bounce back to the pitcher, forced Rick Burleson to pop up to short and struck out Bernie Carbo, who was the hero up to that point since his three-run homer in the eighth had tied the game in the first place.

In the 11th, Darcy got pinch-hitter Rick Miller to fly out and then got easy grounders to short from Denny Doyle and Carl Yastrzemski. So, six up, six down, just one ball hit out of the infield. The Reds really did not have anybody else to use at that point — Darcy was the eighth pitcher the Reds had used in the game. And though Johnny Bench would later say that he knew Darcy was done (“He had nothing left,” Bench said), Darcy came out for the 11th. Fisk hit his second pitch off the foul pole that now bears Fisk’s name.

Years later, in the movie “Good Will Hunting,” the Fisk home run was featured, and the footage made Darcy look like a nervous pitcher. This really bothered him. “I wasn’t nervous,” he said. “I had been in for a couple of innings. I was pitching well.”

“I wasn’t nervous,” he repeated. “He just hit a home run off me.”

Darcy would throw just 39 innings for the Reds in 1976 and would never again appear in the Major Leagues. He went back home to Tucson, where he still works in real estate and gets occasional calls from people who want to know what it was like to give up Carlton Fisk’s home run.

1. Beer
Date: Oct. 13, 1960

Bill Mazeroski led off the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. The score was 9-9. The Pirates had won their three games by a combined six runs. The Yankees had won their three games 16-3, 10-0 and 12-0. There seemed little doubt that the Yankees were the better team. But the Pirates were in position to win.

The Yankees had led 7-4 going into the bottom of the eighth … but the Pirates had staged a furious comeback. The first three hitters of the inning had singled, to score one run. Roberto Clemente’s single had scored a second run. And then backup catcher Hal Smith had hit a startling three-run home run off JIm Coates to give the Pirates a 9-7 lead. Hal Smith was was about to go down in baseball history.

Only … he wasn’t. The Yankees scored two in the top of the ninth inning to tie the game. Mickey Mantle’s single off Harvey Haddix scored the first run. Yogi Berra’s groundout scored the second.

Mazeroski led off the bottom of the ninth against Ralph Terry … and on the second pitch hit what I think is the most famous World Series home run of all time. It was a fastball, though when Terry was asked later what he threw he said: “I don’t know what pitch it was, I just know it was the wrong one.”

All of which leads to an oft-repeated story that is almost certainly not true. The story goes that a 13-year-old boy named Ted Szafranski caught the ball and that he traded it to Mazeroski for two cases of beer, presumably for his father. The story has been repeated many times but best I can tell never substantiated … and it really wouldn’t be that hard to substantiate that story. I suspect the reason it just keeps getting told is because people don’t want to know that the story isn’t true. It should be true — a Pittsburgh kid SHOULD have caught the ball and he SHOULD have traded it back to Maz for a couple of cases of beer for the old man.

That’s nostalgia. And this is the most nostalgic home run in World Series history.

Higher than No. 1: The Shot Heard Round The World
Date: Oct. 3, 1951

I’ve written this before: Someone once asked Buck O’Neil how fast Cool Papa Bell was. Buck’s answer: “Faster than that.”

That’s where Bobby Thomson’s home run stands in baseball history. It isn’t No. 1 on the most memorable list … it’s one notch higher. It will ALWAYS be the most memorable home run in baseball history. It cannot be surpassed. It is faster than that.

Why? Well, it comes from the very essence of American nostalgia — 1951 New York. It comes at the end of the most famous pennant race in baseball history, a race the Brooklyn Dodgers were leading by 13 games on August 11th and were leading by six games with 16 to play. The Giants came all the way back to force a three-game playoff.* The Giants won the first game 3-1. The Dodgers won the second 10-0. And that led to the third game, which the Dodgers led 4-1 going into the ninth inning.

*The brilliantly investigated book “The Echoing Green” leaves little doubt that the Giants, in their effort to come back, rigged up an elaborate sign-stealing system for the games down the stretch — one of the great, and most unappreciated, bits of cheating in the history of baseball.

The Giants made it 4-2 on Whitey Lockman’s double. The Dodgers brought Ralph Branco in relief. Bobby Thomson came to the plate. Willie Mays stood on deck. The time was 3:58 p.m. Bobby Thomson hit a fly ball down the left field line. Ernie Harwell shouted “It’s gone!” for the television audience and then held his breath because he called it too soon. The ball sailed over Andy Pafko’s head for a home run. Russ Hodges went into his “Giants win the pennant” soliloquy.

No, it can’t ever be topped.

Deadspin reprinted Red Smith’s column from that day, which was a great decision. I have been reading a lot of Red Smith lately … I found a few old Red Smith collections in used book stores, and in reading column after column I have come to appreciate how good he was on a day-to-day-to-day basis. But it is true that Red Smith was at his best in the biggest moments … he instinctively knew when he was seeing something great, and also when he was something beyond great. His lead off the Bobby Thomson homer is one of the most famous in newspaper history. It’s also one of the best.

Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.

Red Smith’s ending, though, I think is even better.

The second pitch — well, when Thomson reached first base he turned and looked toward the left-field stands. Then he started jumping straight up in the air, again and again. Then he trotted around the bases, taking his time.

Ralph Branca turned and started for the clubhouse. The number on his uniform looked huge. Thirteen.

Branca took the loss hard, of course, and for years he would not talk about it. But in later years, as he said, he mellowed. Branca and Thomson would travel together sometimes, sign their autographs on photos of their famous scene, relive the best and worst moment of their sporting lives. “I’ll miss him,” Branca told the Associated Press Tuesday when contacted to talk about Thomson’s death.

In many ways, they both have long understood, they’ll always be there, in that frozen moment, when they were young, Thomson jumping around the bases, the New York crowd going mad, Branca’s number 13 overpowering the scene. And as long as they’re playing baseball, that scene will stay fresh and very much alive.