Begging The Question (From Midair)

Posted: November 20th, 2009 | Filed under: Essays, New Words | 116 Comments »

I remember talking to a colleague of mine and, for some reason, Amelia Earhart came up. And he said: “Who is she?” I have to say at this at this point that this colleague is very smart and knowledgeable about any number of things, and has a million facts as his disposal on a million subjects. That’s why it was so startling to me. And it was. I was stunned. He did not know Amelia Earhart? How was this possible? I said she was the woman pilot from Kansas who disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to fly around the world.* His face registered some sort of vague look of recognition, though he might have wanted to move on to move comfortable ground.

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The Jeter Bunt

Posted: October 30th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball, New Words | 75 Comments »

There’s a wonderful new iPhone app — put together, as I understand it, by Derek over at U.S.S. Mariner — called 2nd Guesser. Basically, it’s like this: You can punch in any game situation and the app will give you various win and run expectancies. More, it will let you punch in any scenario and tell you if the managerial move on your mind is a good idea or bad.

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Forensic Narcissism

Posted: August 27th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball, Media, New Words | 83 Comments »

Arrived in Omaha. Heading to the ballgame now. More posts later. First, a quick new phrase.

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New Words

Posted: March 1st, 2009 | Filed under: New Words | 72 Comments »

It has been a little while since I have made my own pitiful attempt to add words to the English dictionary. Some say that Shakespeare invented 1,700 words — or at least used 1,700 words that cannot be previously found — and I am way, way behind, especially because it appears that “Diloneism” (noun, the misguided belief that your success is directly attributable to what is actually your biggest weakness) is not yet taking off.

So, here are three new and yet untested words.

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Diloneism

Posted: October 3rd, 2008 | Filed under: New Words | 57 Comments »

I included much of the following in the Red-Sox Angels lounge, but a couple of brilliant readers have already emailed to say it should be pulled out as a full item. And who am I to argue with my brilliant readers?

* * *

Well, here’s an interesting story about how the Angels do not plan on being any more selective today against Dice-K just because he walked 1.3 million people this year. The money quote from swinging coach Mickey Hatcher:

“You want them to step in the box and be able to do something,” Hatcher said. “You don’t want them to step in the box and say, ‘We’re going to take a pitch, and then we’re going to swing.’ “

You know, on the one hand, I don’t entirely disagree with Hatcher’s general point. I mean, it’s stupid to not take pitches against Dice K, but let’s be blunt: You also ain’t changing now. The Angels have played 163 real games, not to mention all the spring training games, not to mention all of last year’s stuff and the year before that and the year before that. I suspect that it might be a little bit late now to say, “Hey, you know what guys? Let’s start taking pitches.” The Angels hack. The Angels finished 12th in the league in walks this year, and that’s only because Seattle and Kansas City happened to be in the league*. Dice K or not, the Angels are the Angels.

*Holy cow, the Royals walked fewer than 400 times this year. That’s pretty hard to do. I had a long chat with Royals GM Dayton Moore this week — that column will run in The Kansas City Star on Sunday — and he must have used the words “on-base percentage” about 239 times. That was good to hear and also inevitable. This was the sort of year, I think, that can make an OBP believer out of anyone. There are no free-swinging atheists in a 392-walk foxhole.

So, no, I would not expect Mickey Hatcher or anyone on the Angels to say, “Yeah, we’re going to change our philosophy tonight because of the pitcher.” But I will say this: The Angels are really, really, really close — maybe even over the line — when it comes to what I would like to now call: “Diloneism.” Yes, another new word!

Diloneism (Dee-lo-NAY-izm) noun. The misguided belief that your success is directly attributable to what is actually your biggest weakness.

I’ve named this after the obscure (to most) Miguel Dilone, who slapped and ran his way to a .341 average in 1980 while a member of the Cleveland Indians. He stole 61 bases, scored 82 runs despite missing 30 games and playing for a pretty brutal offensive team in a low-run scoring time. He was useful then. He also hit zero home runs. That’s who he was. But from what I could gather as a fan, Miguel Dilone did not see himself that way. He viewed himself as a guy who could hit with some power. He seemed to change his swing to accentuate his power, which might have been a good move if he had ANY power, but he did not, and five teams and five years later he would out of baseball.

This can be used in all walks of life. It was Diloneism that forced the spinoff “Joannie Loves Chachi” on the masses. Do you remember when there were posters of Erin Moran/Joannie out there, like we were supposed to be in love with her, like she was Farrah or Valerie Bertinelli or something and we were supposed to hang her poster on our testosterone-infected walls? I mean, um, no. People liked Happy Days DESPITE Joannie (and to a lesser extent Chachi).

I think we saw some serious Diloneism in the Veep Debate. I’m not talking politics as much as political strategy — it seems the point was for Sarah Palin to embrace her lack of experience and talk like she just got out of the Harper Valley PTA meeting. But the thing is, I think that many people who like Palin don’t like her because she’s inexperienced and folksy. They like her DESPITE the fact that she’s inexperienced and folksy.

Which takes us back to the Angels. They are a very good baseball team. Why? They have good starting pitching. They have an often dominant bullpen. They play fair defense. And they have some offensive speed and two or three good (and high priced) middle of the lineup guys. All this made them good in close games (80-42 in games decided by four runs or less) and as such they deserve a lot of credit.

BUT there is a real danger of Diloneism now — this personal sense that the reason the Angels are good is because they don’t score runs, because they have an astonishingly bad offensive approach, because they don’t get on base and swing free and don’t get caught up in, you know, WALKING or whatever. I’m not saying the Angels are there yet, but I hear tones of Diloneism in many of the quotes. The Angels win IN SPITE of not scoring many runs. It is BAD to not score many runs. It is NOT HELPFUL IN ANY WAY to not get on base.

And yet you hear it here and elsewhere: “Heck no, we’re not going to change our approach.”

You know what? Your approach sucks.

Pixifoods: Candy Bar Edition

Posted: September 1st, 2008 | Filed under: New Words, Pop Culture | 138 Comments »

Well, you may have heard, the Pixifoods thing has kind of taken off. I’m not really sure what to say about that. USA Today wrote about it, the New York Times, countless culinary websites, and so on. We made tons of new friends for this blog, and I can only imagine what happened when Paris-trained chefs and foodies from around the country and the world popped on this site only to see a lot of ridiculous and oppressively long posts about Trey Hillman and Ben Folds (“Who is zis ‘MannyBManny?”).

I can only guess that no matter what I accomplish from here on out*, I will forever been known as the Pixifoods guy. I’m figuring I will get a huge book deal out of this, a couple of endorsements, an appearance or two on Good Morning America or or Oprah, maybe my own sitcom, and that will be the lead sentence in my obituary. “The man who gave a name to those childhood treats that seemed to lose their flavor and appeal in adulthood died peacefully in his home. He was 174 years old.”

*Not that there seems any threat that I will, you know, cure cancer or make American energy independent or anything really worthwhile. I mean, I’m not complaining, at this point I’m just glad that I could come up with something that might possibly, maybe, you-never-know, land me on Oprah at some point. I mean, did I mention, I am writing this book …

Coming soon, we will have Pixishows, Piximovies, Pixijokes, Pixitoys, oh yeah, we’re going to cash this thing in until I’ve got enough money to buy the Kansas City Royals, which I will do just so I can bring back the powder blue uniforms full time, just so I can hire Bill James, just so I can do a few crazy owner things (“Today, all my right-handed batters shall bat left-handed and vice versa, so it shall be written, so it shall be done), just so I can get them to sing a special version of Van Morrison’s ”Gloria“ when Joakim Soria comes to the mound (S-O-R-I-I-I-I-I, S-O-R-I-A), just so I can tell manager Trey Hillman to loosen the bleep up, just so I can rename the team (and since I will have made my fortune in Pixistuff, you can guess the name. That’s right: The Kansas City Spiders — I’m still on that name), just so I can walk into the clubhouse and eat some of their bazooka gum without asking, just so I can make the dumbest suggestions at meetings and watch everyone in the room squirm (”I was thinking that perhaps we should order the batting lineup alphabetically,“) just so I can sign some utterly overpriced free agent and then blame my general manager for it.

In the meantime, two things. One, my wife Margo (I believe) started a Facebook group called Pixifoods. So if you would like to join that and get all the yet-to-be-determined benefits, I guess it is now accepting members.

Second, it’s time for the candy bar edition of Pixifoods.

Adult candy bars
(Bars that are better for adults than they are for children)

1. Snickers. You have admire the effective persistence of the long running “Snickers satisfies” campaign (which has now gone beyond the ”Hungry? Grab a Snickers“ phase and has moved right into the “Snickers handles your hunger” guarantee). Apparently, years ago, there were some Snickers people who realized that, frankly, they had a pretty run-of-the-mill candy bar. I mean, seriously, nougat? What is nougat? The Snickers folks wisely decided they needed something, something that would help them break away from the candy bar crush, something that would allow them to move beyond 3 Musketeers and Milky Way and Mounds and the rest.

So they decided to convince people that Snickers is not just a peanuts, caramel and nougat wrapped in milk chocolate, no ma’am, Snickers is a meal all unto itself. At first, this seemed like a pretty specious claim because, you might note, Snickers is, well, a bleeping SNICKERS, you know, with the 280 calories, 14 grams of fat, 35 grams of carbs, 30 grams of sugar, 140 mg of sodium and so on. These commercials showing that man could survive in the desert for six weeks with a canteen of water and a couple of Snickers bars might have been somewhat exaggerated.

Still, if there’s one thing that you can say about advertising and America;if you can just find a way to stay on message, you can convince people of just about anything. You can convince people that Kevin Costner can act, that Tom Cruise is the quintessence of handsome, that Pepsi tastes better than Coke (what a sham), that Derek Jeter is a brilliant defensive shortstop, that 107 degrees is not that hot if it’s a dry heat. And so, they convinced us that Snickers really does satisfy, that it has some sort of substance and density that is missing in garden variety candy bars, that it is the only choice when you are famished, that it provides the nourishment that can sustain you through the long march of life.

And I say this knowing full well that I have fallen for it too, that if I’m at a vending machine making a choice, I will consciously consider the question: ”How hungry am I?“ And if I’m really hungry, then I will think: ”Hmm, I better get a Snickers.“ This stuff works. I never liked Snickers bars when I was a kid — it’s really not an especially good kid bar (though a friend says, ”It has peanuts, caramel, nougat, chocolate, it’s like a candy bar buffet). To me, Snicker are like the anti-Pixifood — or what I think we should call ”HersheyDark-food.“

2. Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolates. We try not to make many gender-ilizations on this site, but I do recall that the the only kids I ever knew who liked Hershey’s Dark Chocolates were also girls. I admit up front that this may have been a very specific trend, based only in the greater Cleveland Heights area. And it should be noted further that I didn’t know many girls even there who liked dark chocolate even there. But were it not for the three or four girls who I heard say, ”Oh, I LOVE dark chocolate,“ I can honestly say that dark chocolate would have a 0.0 percent kids approval rating.

There was no greater candy disaster than opening up that Halloween bag and seeing a whole bunch of Hershey’s Dark Chocolates in there — it was like opening up a baseball card pack only to find 12 Fred Kendalls. It happened every year, though. Apparently all the other kids got the good assorted miniatures, the good little chocolates, the Nestle Crunches, the Krackels (more on the Crunch/Krackel phenomenon in a minute), the Hershey’s Milk Chocolate. The worst part is that every Halloween you HAD to try one Special Dark, I mean it’s wrapped chocolate,right? I would try one and it would still taste like bitter tree bark, and I would think: ”Oh yeah, I forgot, I hate that stuff.“

The reason: Dark chocolate, I’m convinced, is an adult taste, and that’s why we call those foods that tasted sour/bitter/lousy as a kid but good as an adult the HersheyDark-food. Coffee is an obvious one. Maybe pickles. We’ll work on this later.

3. Butterfingers. I admit this is only a personal choice, but I cannot stand Butterfingers. I never liked the texture, I never liked the taste, I never liked the wrappers, I never liked the way they tried to hide that it was really just peanut brittle (”Break out of the ordinary,“ was one of the big slogans. Really? Is there ANYTHING more ordinary than peanut brittle?). But I cannot deny that Butterfingers have turned Pixifood inside out, though, and now you go to fine restaurants and they talk about their award-winning Butterfinger ice cream or special Butterfinger dessert concoctions. It ain’t for me, but I concede the larger point — Butterfingers outlive childhood.

4. Anything Ghiradelli. It’s the name. Kids don’t need high end chocolate … pretty much anything will do. Adults, though, seem to think that because the name is Ghiradelli that it has a little more standing than, say, a Mr. Goodbar.

5. York Peppermint Patty. As a kid, I recall these being absolutely disgusting, and most of the time I still feel the same way. HOWEVER, there is one exception. I remember going to Skyline Chili for the first time in Cincinnati, and then starting to walk out. My buddy Chardon Jimmy, a Cincinnati native, then said: “Uh, you need to have a York Peppermint Patty.” And I said, “Um, no, actually, I don’t, those are gross.” And he said, “No, you NEED to have a York Peppermint Patty.”

So I had one — and, unbelievably, he was right. I don’t know what it is about chili (any kind will do), but the spices somehow unleash the flavors of the YPP. I’m telling you, if you have one after eating chili it tastes pretty much like someone aiming a chocolate and mint hose and spraying you down. It really did feel like it was taking me away … those commercials were right. But only after chili. I had one on another occasion, when I did not have chili, and it tasted like a mint-flavored coin purse. So go figure.

6. Almond Joy/Mounds. I’ve always wondered why the commercial needed to tell us that Almond Joy’s got nuts while Mounds, conversely, don’t. — OK, let’s see if I can do it all: ”Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don’t. Almond Joy’s got nuts. Mounds don’t. Almond Joy’s got real milk chocolate, coconuts and munchy nuts too. Mounds got real dark chocolate and chewy coconut, ooooh. Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don’t.“

OK, that’s fine. But my question stands: Was there any reason we should have been confused about the nut vs. no nut breakdown. The name of the candy bar is ”ALMOND Joy.“ That seems like a pretty good giveaway that it has nuts in it.

Crossover Candy Bars
(Candy bars that are delicious as children and maintain their glory into adulthood).

1. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Truer words were never spoken: Two great tastes that taste great together. You have to think the person who wrote those words will occasionally wake up in the middle of the night with a big smile on his/her face and say, ”Damn, I’m good.“ And he/she is good, because chocolate and peanut butter is undoubtedly the connection of our lifetime, much more than Jack and Jackie, Brad and Jennifer, Ernie and Bert, Peyton and Marvin, Barack and Hillary, what have you. And it’s not like those two great tastes can go great with anything … I will not soon forget my trip to Sedalia, Mo., and my first ever Goober burger, which is like any other burger only it has peanut butter on it. You may ask, ”How did it taste?“ The best answer I can offer is the one provided by Royals television announcer Ryan Lefebvre who said: ”OK, you’ve had a hamburger. And you’ve had peanut butter. Now imagine having that peanut butter on your hamburger. That’s how it tastes.“

2. Hershey’s Kisses. Chocolate drops are, of course, perfect for kids. What kid can resist a Kiss? But they are also just the right size to put into the glass jar on your office desk, which gives them adult cachet.

3. Kit Kat. Let’s be honest, this is a good candy bar. But the lifelong appeal has to be the shape of the bar and the infinite number of eating possibilities. My philosophy — and I have thought about this considerably more than, say, my feelings about , say, an afterlife — is that you must break off the wafers, you must then eat around the chocolate on each wafer, and then you must try to separate the different layers off each waver so you can eat them individually. It is a lifelong quest to perfect the technique, though after all the work I feel like I am sort of the Michael Phelps of Kit Kat eating.

4. Hershey’s (with Almonds). Plain. Simple. Elegant.

Pixifood Candy Bars
(Candy bars that taste like heaven when you are a child and like chocolate-drizzled roof shingles when you get older).

1. Krackel/Nestle Crunch. OK, these are exactly the same candy bar, am I right? I mean, sure, I realize that companies are constantly trying to foist similar things on us — remember that period of time when every single movie featured an adult who turned into a kid? There was ”18 Again“ and ”Big“ and ”Vice Versa“ and that many variants of ”Freaky Friday.“ So, yeah, I think you come to expect similar products in the marketplace. There is still something a bit off-putting about two companies going after the milked chocolate with crisped rice market .. I mean, really, is crisped rice demand really that high?

In any case, had one of these recently — not sure which one it was — and it was a terribly disappointing experience. I just think we’ve come far enough in society where now, if you want to come to the candy bar table, you need to be packing a little bit more than little Rice Krispies in the chocolate.

2. Rolo. Rolo Rolo, Rolo Rolo. You can roll a Rolo to your pal. It’s chocolate covered caramel. You can roll a rolo to your chum. It’s chewy, and it’s chocolate, and it’s lots of fun! You can roll a rolo to your friend. It’s chocolate covered caramel from end to end! … I really have no more comment on that other than to say how utterly sad it is that I still have that song pinging around in my little brain. There are so many things I don’t know, so many things I will never know. If I was cryogenically sealed for 1,000 years, sort of like the awful ending of A.I., and future beings wanted to question me about the wonders of our time — how does an iPod hold digital music and how does our society built a bridge over water or even something much simpler like how does a digital watch work — I’d have to say: ”You can roll a rolo to your pal …“

3. The chocolate/peanut/caramel/fudge and perhaps some nougat bars. A couple of these (100 Thousand Dollar Bar among them) might have the inescapable crisped rice too.

Pay Day.
Oh Henry.
Mr. Goodbar.
Milky Way.
Mars
3 Musketeers
Caramello
100 Grand (100 Thousand Dollar Bar)
5th Avenue

I tend to think of all of these bars the same way I think of music today — it’s probably all fine, and I’m sure I’d like the songs if I was a kid, but at my age it all sounds the same and I can’t remember which song is which. There was a time when I could not only tell you the difference between a Milky Way and a Mars bar, I could tell you the difference between a Milky Way purchased at the Lawson’s around the corner from house and one bought at the Revco three blocks away.

Now, it’s all a blur. The only thing I really remember about the 100 Thousand Dollar Bar (now called the 100 Grand for so reason or another) is, of course, the commercial: “Chewy, chewy caramel … extra-richened caramel.” … I do remember that eating a 3 Musketeers bar was a bit like eating whipped air. There was nothing in that thing. … How about the Oh Henry bar? Not a bad chocolate bar, though let’s be honest: If it had been named the ”Oh Mickey Rivers“ bar, it probably would not have have moved much product.*

*How about those days when it was just about the ultimate athlete accomplishment to have a candy bar named after him? I don’t know, there was something innocent about that, something wonderfully childlike about it all. And of course it leads to one of the great quotes of all time, about Reggie Jackson’s Reggie! Bar (you HAVE to have the exclamation point in there). Teammate Catfish Hunter famously said, ”When you open a Reggie! Bar, it tells you how good it is.“ Then, that’s not even my favorite Catfish Hunter quote about Reggie. That one goes like this: “He’d give you the shirt off his back. Of course, he’d call a press conference to announce it.”

4. Chunky Bar. As a kid, the Chunky bar, had overwhelming potential because it was so doggone chunky (“Thicker-er,” the commercial promised). And no matter how many times you finished one off in about 1.8 seconds, you still felt like you were getting more chocolate for your money. As an adult, though, you realized that the whole thing was a scam — sure, it was the same amount of chocolate, but so what? Imagine taking a delicious corned beef or turkey or tuna fish sandwich and smushing it until it is a about the size of a ring box. Yeah, you’re probably getting the same food value, but there’s simply NO fun in it.

The rest
Candy bars that have always been lousy or have an obscurity that makes them difficult to categorize.

Bit-O-Honey. Not a candy bar, but worth mentioning here because Big-O-Honey people kept trying to pass it off on us as a candy bar. You had to like the red and yellow wrapper, but the only good use for the Bit-O-Honey — as my friend Tilt-a-Whirl likes to say — is as the stuff to fill in cracks and potholes on highways.*

*These also appear to be a straight rip-off of Necco ”Mary Janes.“

Clark Bar. I have never had a Clark Bar in my entire life, and I have never known anyone who did. Well, that’s not true: One time, years ago, we were in Arizona to cover a Cincinnati Bengals-Arizona Cardinals game. Yes, you can only imagine the excitement in the air. Anyway, we were walking through Tempe, looking for a certain restaurant, and we could not find it because the person who was leading us, a person who actually attended Arizona State, a person I would prefer not to name because it might embarrass him (it was John Donovan of SI.com) got us lost. In any case, we walked for a long time, long enough that finally one guy blurted out in frustration: ”Man, I’m starving. Can’t we just stop and get a Clark bar or something?“ For whatever reason, this cracked us all up and I still remember if 15 years later.

Goobers and Raisinets. Not really candy bars, but wanted to mention them both to point out the odd but haunting version of the jingle recorded by Merv Spiegel and the Penguins.

Charleston Chew. I admired the chain-like shape of the old Charleston Chew because it made the candy seem so much bigger than it really was, sort of the opposite effect of the Chunky Bar. Shame was it didn’t taste very good. Bad name too.*

*Brilliant reader Dan points out that this was not the Charleston Chew — which is actually horrendous taffy — but instead it was the Marathon bar. The author regrets the error.

Junior Mints: Not a candy bar, but worth mentioning for the two brilliant lines in Seinfeld. First, the conversation after the Junior Mint was dropped into the patient.

Jerry: .Over the balcony, bounced off some respirator thing into the patient!
George: What do you mean into the patient?
Jerry: Into the patient, literally!
George: Into the hole?
Jerry: Yes, the hole.
George: Didn’t they notice it?
Jerry: No.
George: How could they not notice it?
Jerry: Because it’s a little mint. It’s a Junior Mint.

And Jerry’s regret …

Jerry: Why did you force that mint on me? I didn’t want the mint.
Kramer: Well, I didn’t believe you.
Jerry: How could you not believe me?
Kramer: Who’s gonna turn down a Junior Mint? It’s chocolate, it’s peppermint — it’s delicious!
Jerry: That’s true.
Kramer: It’s very refreshing!

Mallo Cups: Obscure, they’re chocolate and marshmallow cups. I’m not particularly a fan of using marshmallow in candy but you have to love a good Mallo Cup.

Skittles: Not a candy bar.

Swoops: Not around when I was a kid … these are like peanut butter and chocolate Pringles or something like that. I got Swoops one time … all of them stuck together, and they tasted awful. Boo for Swoops.

Tootsie Rolls: I believe that Tootsie Rolls serve only one purpose in society — if you forgot to go and buy Halloween candy you can always give out Tootsie Rolls. That’s because somewhere in your house right now, like it or not, there are a whole bunch of Tootsie Rolls. And here’s the thing: You can’t even get rid of them, no matter how hard you try. That’s why they give Tootsie Rolls away at banks and boring office buildings — they’re TRYING to exhaust their supply. Trouble is, no matter how many they give away, in the morning the Tootsie Roll Fairy will have come and dump a whole new supply.

Twix: Fake Kit Kats, with caramel added.

Twirl (by Cadbury): More of a British thing, but a couple of years ago Margo and I went to the Cadbury plant in Birmingham where they have kind of a Willie Wonka tour you can go on. Yeah, you bet we went across the ocean for that. I’m committed to the candy bar thing. Anyway, we got a bunch of free Twirls, and they were very tasty, much better than Twix, which is sort of the American counterpart. I guess they’re available in America now, and I highly recommend.

Whatchamacallit: It’s sort of like the Charlize Theron of candy bars — every time you see it, the thing has a whole new look. One minute it’s chocolate, then, bam, it has caramel, then peanuts, then some sort of crisp, I don’t know. Unlike Charlize Theron, the Whatchamacallit was never much good.

Zagnut: Never had one in my life. Seen them around all my life but was never even tempted. I guess it has coconut and peanut butter or whatever.

Zero: Never had one in my life. I guess it has some kind of white chocolate, which is disgusting and should have been outlawed by the U.S. Government a long time ago. This is a big issue for me as the election comes around. People seem to know who I am voting for, but I’m telling you right now that I’m undecided until someone makes a strong statement on the white chocolate issue. We are a very small but committed voting bloc.

Baseball Talk From China

Posted: August 11th, 2008 | Filed under: Baseball, International, New Words | 93 Comments »

News from America comes in slowly and hazily, in part because of the time difference, but also because of the irritable and ever-changing nature of the Chinese Internet. It’s funny now, you will click on a Web site. Say Fire Joe Morgan. Well, at first, when we first arrived, the Fire Joe Morgan Internet page would immediately crash because, of course, the Chinese government famously loves Joe Morgan. Big Red Machine indeed.

Well, now it’s different. Now, you will type in the Web address, and the browser will indicate that it is “Loading.” And it will be loading for about 90 seconds. If I was the paranoid type, I would say that all Internet requests immediately transmit to the Chinese Office To Clear Internet Requests, where a bureaucrat of some kind types in the requested Web site on his browser to check whether or not it’s OK for viewing. I base this theory on the fact that SOMETIMES if you click on Fire Joe Morgan, you will get the page. And sometimes, you won’t. I suspect this is based on the particular bureaucrat who is on duty back at headquarters and whether or not he is a Bill Plaschke fan, whether or not he likes the sacrifice bunt.

These bizarre Internet quirks emerge in the craziest ways. For instance, there’s no problem going on SI.com. But the Internet people sometimes will not let you go on the baseball scores page. At first I found all of this kind of annoying, but now I see my Internet surfing in China sort of the way I saw opening birthday presents when I was nine. Hey, you never know what’s in the box. Might be a Gnip Gnop. Might be legos. Might be clothes (ugh). Might be another game of Yahtzee since I probably got Yahtzee 23 different times when I was a boy.*

*More hints about the bloggy big news in this paragraph! Something’s coming … I don’t know … what it is … but it is … gonna be great!

Anyway sometimes, the portal opens to this Web site. Sometimes it does not. I’m guessing this posting will not be easily accessible. Anyway, to get to the point, this page opened up for a brief time over the weekend, which allowed me to view a few of your comments. This included the comments from someone — I wish I could name the brilliant reader but I can’t get on the site now — who was saying basically that Pujols’ numbers don’t look all that special this year.

I had to read that comment a couple of times to make sure that I wasn’t just reading something that had been planted there by the Chinese government. Pujols’ numbers aren’t special? What? Unless my Baseball Reference page is not loading properly, the guy is hitting .350/.462/.617 this year. His slugging percentage is the HIGHEST IN THE NATIONAL LEAGUE. His OPS+ is a ridiculous 183. He’s walking twice as often as he is striking out. The guy is a beast — better than ever.

But the thing that really stuck out about the comment is the suggestion the Pujols, in fact, padded his statistics by driving in runs when the game was out of hand. This is something I would like to explore — the concept of “Pribbies.” A pribbie is a fun word I just made up based on the three hours and 42 minutes of sleep I have gotten the last two nights. It stands for “Padded RBIs.” Or “Pointless RBIs,” if you prefer. And it’s one of the concepts that drive me absolutely nuts as a baseball fan.

It seems like every time a fan doesn’t like a player, they will say, “Yeah, he only drives in runs when it doesn’t count.” The charge is that certain players pad their statistics with an overwhelming number of cheap hits and homers and RBIs, doing it when games are out of reach and lousy pitchers are on the mound and so on. I believe the first player to be smacked around for being a pribbie hound was Ted Williams — many members of the Boston media seemed to think that the Kid’s sick statistics were, in fact, mirages, and that you could always count on him to choke when nothing mattered but to hit a three-run homer when the Sox were up five or crack a two-out double into the gap in the late innings of an 8-3 loss.

I thought John Updike, in his seminal “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” slammed this concept pretty well and with a lot of fancy words when he wrote: “ The correspondence columns of the Boston papers now and then suffer a sharp flurry of arithmetic on this score; indeed, for Williams to have distributed all his hits so they did nobody else any good would constitute a feat of placement unparalleled in the annals of selfishness.”

But the slamming did not end with Williams, not hardly. Countless players through the years have had their eye-popping statistics marginalized by haters who said they only cared about numbers and only came through when it did not help the team. I remember hearing this a lot about Wade Boggs when he was getting busy hitting .365 every year with 45 doubles and 100 walks. How can you knock those numbers? Well, people did — he was not driving in enough runs, he was too selective, he was the master of the meaningless, average-cushioning, base hit. Not too much later, it was Danny Tartabull padding his stats. Then it was Albert Belle padding his stats. And of course, king of them all, y’all, nobody has taken more abuse for supposedly padding stats than A-Rod. You can retire the trophy.

And those are just the big guys. I think, on a local level, every team has at least one player the fans are convinced drive in only meaningless runs. In Kansas City, for instance, people would say that CONSTANTLY about Mike Sweeney. They would say, “Oh, he only comes through when it doesn’t matter.” And I used to think, “They’re the freaking Kansas City Royals. When DOES it matter?”

There are two reasons this whole thing bugs the heck out of me. First, the big one: To me, there are no meaningless moments for a hitter in a baseball game. This is at the very core of my baseball love. I have read many wonderful essays about how soccer is like life because it is about disappointment more than triumph, because it is about the vagaries of luck and bad bounces, because, like life, there are many rainy nil-nil draws. I love reading that stuff. And I think that’s true.

But I tend to think baseball is more like the American life I grew up with. I’m not talking about the money the players make or the smell of the freshly cut grass poetry or any of that. I’m talking about the game. Baseball to me is about the daily grind, about getting up every morning and slogging to work in a rusted car and knowing that, yes, you went 0-for-4 yesterday but today you’re going to crack three hits, work a walk, maybe drive in a couple of runs. Baseball is understanding that sometimes you will smack the seams off the baseball and the third baseman will drive and steal your double, but it’s also appreciating that sometimes you will check swing and the ball will dribble down the first base line and it will somehow die in fair territory, a cheap single. Baseball to me is about never giving up an at-bat, never passing on your moment, because even Babe Ruth made outs most of the time, and the next time you come up the pitcher might throw you three unhittable sliders or the umpire might ring you up on a fastball at the ankles.

For me, baseball and life is about playing with joy on those days you can manage it, and giving a professional effort when your girlfriend dumped you or you walked out to a flat tire or you can’t get the song “Sussudio” out of your mind*.

*You’re welcome. Su-Su-Sudio!

Because that’s what I believe, I’m just not drawn to the player who comes through only when it matters. First of all, I don’t believe that person even exists. But, let’s say he does: What’s admirable about that? I admire the people who brings it every day, people who still answer their phone at 4:59, people who call you back two days after they finished the job to be sure, home builders who put in added touches because they’re proud of their work, waiters and waitresses who make heartfelt recommendations, doctors who really care about how you’re feeling, mechanics who work a little late so that it is fixed in the morning. I don’t have great admiration for a guy who, to stick with batting average for simplicity, hits .232 in non-pressure situations and .368 with runners in scoring position … I admire the guy who hits .300 in both.

And so, no, I don’t have much use for a guy who gives up at-bats when his team’s up or down eight runs. I appreciate that others disagree. I know that there are those in society who think those guys who give everything when it matters most but dial it down the rest of the time should be worshipped for their unselfishness or competitive spirit or something. But I look at it this way: Let’s say I walk into a Jaguar dealership. Now, I can’t afford a Jaguar. I would imagine that the salesman there — let’s say it’s a man — would realize this pretty quickly. So what will he do? Will he ignore me because the score is 11-1? Will he give me a cursory sales routine while looking at the door every two seconds to see if anyone else is walking in? Or will he give me some passion, will he express how much he loves Jaguars, will he try to SELL me that car because while he knows that I can’t buy it today and I can’t buy it tomorrow, I might someday make millions off this blog (not likely but … something’s coming), I might sell 10 million copies off this book (did I mention that I’m writing …), I might someday be viable, and anyway, you should play hard every moment and every day because, I think, that’s at the heart of what matters.

OK, that’s first — that’s my opinion. Here’s the second thing, and this is not just my opinion: Pretty much every time someone tells you, “Oh, all that guy does is rack up meaningless RBIs,” they are 100 percent wrong. Take Albert Pujols. Someone throws out there that he only gets hits and drives in runs when the score is out of hand, and in the old days when you got your box scores from the weekly Sporting News it would be hard to argue with that. But these days we have, you know, “facts,” and “statistics,” and those can paint a pretty clear picture.

Albert Pujols’ numbers in a tie game: .317/.418/.607.
Albert Pujols’ numbers within one run: .335/.430/.639
Albert Pujols’ numbers within two runs: .335/.432/.630
Albert Pujols’ numbers within three runs: .333/.427/.624
Albert Pujols’ numbers without four runs: .333/.426/.622

And finally …

Albert Pujols numbers when either team has a four run lead or more: .332/.408/.607.

OK, do you see that? The guy is precisely the same player in every single situation. Precisely. Frighteningly so. Of course, you can say the same thing about a lot of other guys, including this guy, the Godfather of Pribbies:

Alex Rodriguez
Score within 1 run: .304/.398/.584
Margin greater than 4: .310/.384/.573.

You see that? He’s not better in blowouts. He’s just not. It’s right there, plain to see, he’s NOT BETTER, so you can STOP saying it (though there is a little more to the story … I’ll get to that in a second). So here’s what I’m thinking here in China on no sleep: We need a statistic — I nominate my new word “pribbie” — that measures padded RBIs so that we can get people to stop indiscriminately and inappropriately ripping players for padding their statistics.

Now, to start with, I’m not suggesting anything too fancy. ;I think it’ easy enough to just count the RBIs players get when the margin is greater than four runs. Of course, it’s is true that a grand slam with when you’re trailing by five runs is hardly pointless, it’s hardly padding the numbers, but you know what? I’m in China. I don’t really have the access to more detailed statistics. If you would like to improve upon the Pribbie, go right ahead.

Here are a few interesting players’ pribbies from 2008. This is not a complete list, by any means. For instance, Tony Pena Jr.* is not on it.

Pribbies
Bobby Abreu, 23
Ryan Howard, 22
Josh Hamilton, 22
Matt Holliday, 18
Xavier Nady, 15
A-Rod, 15
Miggy Cabrera, 14
Raul Ibanez, 13
Ryan Ludwick, 12
Carlos Quentin, 12
Chase Utley, 12
Kevin Youkilis, 12
Ryan Braun, 11
Jermaine Dye, 9
Derek Jeter, 9
Milton Bradley, 9
David Wright, 9
Albert Pujos, 9
Oh-wee-oh Magglio, 8
Justin Morneau, 8
Troy Glaus, 7
Pat Burrell, 6
Chipper Jones, 6
Carlos Lee, 6
Jose Guillen, 5
Adrian Gonzalez, 5
Lance Berkman, 5
Ryan Theriot, 2
MannyBManny, 2

There are a couple of things worth noting on this list. One, this year, A-Rod is actually living up to his previously unfair reputation — he’s hitting .404/.466/.904 in pribbie situations. I don’t blame him one bit. All these years people are ripping him for turning into King Kong after the game is decided, he might as well go ahead and do it. At least that way he can post even better numbers.

Two, MannyBManny has been terrible in pribbie situations this year — that can’t surprise you.

Three, I know this is a promising statistic because if someone had said to me — “Who do you think has had the most pribbiies this year,” my absolute first guess would have been Bobby Abreu.

*OK, so obviously I did not see this because I’m in China with a stuttering Internet connection … but if I’m reading this right, it seems that Tony Pena — serving as the designated hitter, no less — got TWO hits in extra innings Sunday in a Royals victory over Minnesota. I’m really not sure what to say about that. I just watched synchronized diving, and I was under the assumption that would be the strangest thing I’d see today.

Here’s the weirder part: He got two hits which means he is now hitting 1.000 as a designated hitter in his career. So, I would suggest that Tony Pena is the worst designated hitter in baseball history and the best all at the same time.

The Gloaden Rule

Posted: July 31st, 2008 | Filed under: Baseball, New Words | 57 Comments »

There are so many things you can learn playing Strat-o-Matic baseball (or some other table top baseball game). I used to play a lot when I was in my young 20s, back when I lived in Augusta, Ga., and was not married and got dumped and could not afford to do anything else. We would have intense, marathon Strat-o-Matic sessions, long into the night — there would be hard feelings and yelling and thrown pencils and busted friendships and all sorts of other signs that suggested we were taking that game a tad bit too seriously.*

*This reminds me of Mike and the Mad Dog — who I would say make up the most successful sports talk radio team ever, right? They’re the 800 pound gorilla of New York sports, right? Well, they recently had a rift that apparently intensified to the breaking point over this question: Is Don Nelson a basketball Hall of Famer? I mean, seriously. Nellie? That’s the fight? I don’t know — I just find that be very funny. Here are two guys making millions of dollars, they are absolutely at the very top of their thing, they can’t go any higher, life is good, and they almost break up over Nellie? We really do lose our minds sometimes, don’t we? It makes me wonder if this gets to the heart of human nature, if it’s always something that stupid, if Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin broke up over the Bing vs. Frank question., if Simon and Garfunkel split over Ginger and Mary Ann, if Brad likes his Cheetos crunchy and Jen much prefers them Flamin’.

I would say the four biggest lessons I learned playing a lot of Strat-o-Matic were these:

1. A terrible defensive shortstop will absolutely kill you.

2. Sacrifice bunts often do not work. This is the X-factor in bunting that few seem to talk about. People like to argue whether or not it philosophically makes sense to give up an out to advance a base. Some say yes, some say no, most say it depends on the situation, but the missing piece of the argument is this: Pretty often you give up the out and DO NOT get the base. Sometimes the runner is forced at second base. Sometimes the batter pops-up his bunt. Or the batters bunts into a double play — seen that a couple of times this year. Managing a lot of games, even pretend games, reminds you that it’s important to calculate those worthless outs into the equation.

3. It sucks to face teams that walk a lot. All the stuff we know to be true as fans — that walks wear down pitchers, that they extend innings, that walks will beat you — is magnified by 100 when you’re actually managing games. I HATED facing guys that walked in 1992 — I especially recall facing Frank Thomas and Danny Tartabull.* Those guys drove me mad.

*Only two Kansas City Royals players have ever had a 170 OPS+ or better in a single season. George Brett, of course, did it twice — in his extraordinary 1980 season, and in his should-have-been-MVP year of 1985. The other was Danny Tartabull in 1991. The funny part is that, from what I gather, nobody liked Tartabull in town, everyone felt like he was the master of the meaningless RBI, the king of empty numbers. I don’t know. The guy went .316/.391/.593 with 31 homers back in 1991, when those numbers were beyond monstrous. It would be awfully tough to put up those sorts of numbers and not help the ballclub.

4. You do not play Ross Gload every day.

Of course, it wasn’t Ross Gload when I was playing Strat-O … it was Jody Reed back then. But Gload fits the rule much better. This is certainly nothing personal against Gload, who can be a valuable player. In fact, it is his value that makes the rule go. I’ve already introduced the Ross Gload rule in an earlier post, but let me reiterate it here:

The Gloaden Rule
1. Use Ross Gload correctly, he will help your team win games.
2. Use Ross Gload incorrectly, he will get you fired.

The Gloaden Rule is pretty simply understood. In 2004, when Ross Gload was a 28-year-old rookie, he hit .321/.375/.479 with the White Sox in 234 at-bats. He played four different positions and DH. In 2006, he hit about the same in 156 at-bats, played three positions and even stole six bases without getting caught. In both cases, Gload was used sparingly, and he was a valuable player. That’s how you win with him.

In 2008, the Kansas City Royals play Ross Gload at first base every day. Every day. He’s 32 years old now, he’s hitting .262./.313/.333 with a 71 OPS+. Playing him every day, yeah, that’s how you get fired with him.

The Gloaden Rule seems basic enough — so you may ask: Why would a manager as hardworking and pointedly unafraid of innovation as Trey Hillman play Ross Gload at first base every day? Well, I’ve touched on this before: I believe this is because at some point baseball managers, especially when they are managing losing teams, start to overvalue that dreaded word, “Consistency.”

They can’t help it, really. Baseball is such a mysterious game, if you think about. It’s the only game where really good teams lose 40 to 45 percent of the time. It’s the only game, i think, where if the worst team plays the best team six times, it will almost certainly win once or twice, and maybe more. In baseball, the smart move often fails, the ridiculous on occasion works, a lineup picked out of a hat sometimes scores 10 runs, a terrible team can be in first place after a month, it’s a raging sea of randomness, and I sense that many managers need to have SOMETHING they can count on.

So, no Ross Gload doesn’t hit for any power, and he doesn’t walk, and he can’t run, and his swing has developed to the point where he has no chance against lefties, and he’s at that age where his batting average is heading South for the winter, and the fielding numbers indicate that he’s certainly nothing special as a defensive first baseman. And more than anything he has absolutely no long-term future with the Royals — he’s not part of the plan.

So why is he out there? Well, with Ross Gload, you KNOW what you’re going to get. Consistency. You’re gonna get a guy that’s gonna get you five or six hits every 20 at-bats, maybe seven sometimes. You’re gonna get a guy who catches the ball and looks good scooping balls out of the dirt (lefties have that great look). Consistency. He’s not a good every day player. But he’s CONSISTENTLY not good every day.

He also brings veteran leadership. I know that those words “veteran leadership,” make many laugh, and they should, but I understand the reason why some managers cherish it. Veteran leader do give managers one less thing to worry about. With Ross Gload out there, Trey Hillman must feel with certainty, “OK, if nothing else, my first baseman isn’t going to do anything STUPID.” True, he isn’t likely to do anything that will help you win the game either. But I think that it’s a sport truism that most managers and coaches try harder not to lose than they try to win. It is a part of our sports fabric. Eliminate mistakes. Cut down on penalties. Punt the ball away on fourth and short. Play fundamentally sound. The team that makes the fewest mistakes wins. And so on.

That’s the mindset that makes managers break The Gloaden Rule.*

*While I have invented The Gloaden Rule, I must admit that I do not see any obvious way that I can make any money off of it. Fortunately, I do have a new, get-rich-quick scheme. I was talking to good friend Tommy Tomlinson — who is recovering well from recent open-heart surgery – and I came up with it. You ready for this? I should get a patent before mentioning it here, but what the heck, you people won’t backstab me. You ready? “Airplane Study Centers.” No, listen, it’s brilliant. Let’s say you are studying for a big test — the Bar, the SAT, the CPA Exam, whatever. Normally you buy books or go to overpriced classes or whatever. Well, here’s my idea: You pay a certain amount of money, and then, at the right time, you go to the airport. And once there, you board an Airplane Study Center. This is based on my not-quite-proven theory that people ALWAYS study better on planes, because there’s nothing else to do, and the seats are just uncomfortable enough to keep you awake, and the movies suck. I will get on a plane Monday for Beijing knowing nothing whatsoever about these Olympics, and by the time I land will be able to tell you what color Dara Torres paints her toenails.

So, now I offer youThe Gloaden Rule All-Stars of 2008. To make this team you have to be:

1. Older than 30 — and the older the better (or worse, depending on your perspective)
2. Having a representatively bad year — in other words you don’t qualify for the team if you are actually a good every day player simply having a bad year.
3. A player who, if used more sparingly, would be valuable. But in their current role, they will sooner or later get the manager fired.
4. In the negative VORP.*

*Baseball Prospectus’ VORP is probably the most picked-on advanced stat going. I suspect it is because the acronym sounds like a burp. It’s an easy target for those professionals not living in their mothers’ basements. But it’s a great statistic and one of the most useful going because it attempts to give you something real. As the “Value Over Replacement Player” title would suggest, VORP tries to estimate how much more valuable your player is than the guy stuck in Class AAA. VORP suggests that Matt Holliday, for instance, is 48.4 runs better than the left fielder Colorado could find in Colorado Springs or could get in an easy trade. That’s a lot. Meanwhile, Ross Gload has a -7.4 VORP, which means that the Royals could find a more valuable offensive first baseman in most mid-sized cities throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. A negative VORP is REALLY REALLY BAD. For the record.

Here are your All-Stars.

– Ross Gload, Royals, -7.4 VORP. Of course.

– Freddy Sanchez, Pittsburgh, -13.4 VORP. I don’t think Sanchez precisely fits here … he was very good in 2006 as a 28-year-old. But even then you could see something troubling — he didn’t walk, didn’t hit for power, couldn’t run. He had a high batting average that one good year (.344), and guys like that can regress very quickly. Sanchez might still have a few hits left in his bad, but he also might be the worst every day player in the big leagues this year.

– Jason Kendall, Milwaukee, -0.7 VORP. Last year, I rather uncharitably called Kendall the worst player in baseball. He has improved. He has a 74 OPS+, which is significantly BETTER than last year. He also matched last year’s total with one home run. He has done a much better job throwing out base runners this year — he has caught 28 out of 65 this year which is a whole lot different from catching 5 out of 57 like last season. Plus you do hear pitchers say they like to throw to him. Still, it’s hard to believe he is on pace for another 500 plate appearance season. Catchers really must be hard to find.

– Jose Vidro, Seattle, -9.1 VORP. I’ve written about VIdro already here, so I’ll add just one word. Inexplicable. That’s all.

– Emil Brown, Oakland -3.7 VORP. OK, I think most of you may recall that before the year began I made a few predictions. One of those predictions was that Tampa Bay would contend for a playoff spot into late August, early September while I was not crazy at all about the Blue Jays. OK, it’s a bit early, but a few of your readers really bashed me on that one, and I want my pound of flesh, people. Stand up, be heard.

I also predicted that Johan Santana would win the Cy Young and pitch the Mets first no-hitter. Well, Santana does have a 2.93 ERA, he’s Top 10 in strikeouts, but he’s not pitching nearly as well as I thought he would. I expected him to to to New York and utterly DOMINATE, Pedro Lite, and that hasn’t happened. And the no-hitter thing almost certainly won’t happen because Santana is averaging fewer than seven innings per start — though he did finally complete his first game the other day. So I’m fully prepared to take my beating on that one.

The third prediction is the one I’ve been following most closely through the year — I predicted that, given the same number of at-bats, Emil Brown would post roughly the same numbers at Jose Guillen. I realized it was borderline ridiculous when I made the prediction, but I wanted to exaggerate just to emphasize the point: The Royals RELEASED Brown. The Royals made Guillen their highest paid player ever. And I didn’t see THAT big a difference between them.

Then, Brown got off to a pretty good start while Guillen was awful at the beginning of the year. So I was beginning to feel pretty good about my Nostradamus-like powers. Then Guillen went on a freaking super-tear — I rarely remember seeing someone hit the ball so hard for so many consecutive days. And I bowed down to the obvious and admitted defeat.

Well, as ESPN’s Lee Corso likes to say … “Did you know my record at Indiana was 41-68-2?” No, wait, that’s not what he says. He says, “Not so fast, my friend.” Yes, Jose Guillen is hitting .153 with one home run his last 27 games. And let’s check the new totals on the tote-board, shall we? Timpani, please!

Jose Guillen: .259/.286/.442 with 14 homers, 71 RBIs, 43 runs in 398 at-bats. His OPS+: 90.
Emil Brown: .244/.288/.384 with 9 homers, 50 RBIs, 41 runs in 318 at-bats. His OPS+: 84.

Whoa, whoa, whoa … suddenly those numbers are not so different, are they? It’s funny, based on my emails I sense that a lot of people in Kansas City are under the misguided perception that Guillen is having a good year on the field. He is not. He had a really good six weeks in the middle of the year. But he’s been so bad the rest of the time that, despite the RBI numbers, his season totals are pretty miserable. A 90 OPS+ for an outfielder signed for $12 million per year is either comedy or tragedy, depending on your perspective.

Take a look at the neutralized numbers:

Jose Guillen: .250/.277/.426 with 20 homers, 103 RBIs, 63 runs in 584 at-bats.
Emil Brown: .252/.293/.390 with 14 homers, 83 RBIs, 68 runs in 484 at-bats.

True, Guillen has a big lead in RBIs, but a large part of that is obviously a function of his place in the batting order and getting 25% more at-bats than Brown. Yes, let me be clear, Guillen IS having a better year than Brown because he’s hitting with a little bit more power, but it ain’t by much, and there are still two months left in the season. The race is back on … Guillen might want to get hot again.

Gary Matthews Jr., -5.5 VORP. OK, so f you’re a baseball general manager just checking out the site, hi, welcome, thanks for stopping by, and I’d like to just offer a quick bit of free advice. If you come across an outfielder who doesn’t walk much but strikes out a lot, a player who hits with moderate power in a really good hitters’ park, a player who out of nowhere hits .313 when nothing in his past predicted that he could, a player whose defensive numbers don’t look very special but who has made a catch or two that got him air time SportsCenter, a player who is about to turn 32 … yeah, don’t sign that player to a five year, $50 million deal. That guy might help you, no doubt about it, but don’t just go crazy to get him.

Historic Stadium Ramble (AL Edition)

Posted: July 16th, 2008 | Filed under: Baseball, Cleveland, New Words | 85 Comments »

So, while semi-watching Yankee Stadium refuse to die late last night, I did a quick calculation: It seems I have seen Major League Baseball games in 16 dead ballparks in my life. I, um, you know that’s a really depressing statistic. That should be one of the questions they ask on those medical forms they have you fill out before you see the doctor. Are you allergic to any medications? Is there a history of high blood pressure in your family? How many dead ballparks have you been to you old fart?

Wow, sixteen dead ballparks. And the number is about to go up by two when Yankee Stadium and Shea bite the dust at the end of the year. I can’t decide if the old Kauffman Stadium will count as a dead park when they finish the $800 billion renovations* and the Metrodome will mercifully be pushing daisies soon (I suspect there may not be quite the same love affair in the final days of the Homerdome … probably not quite as much teary sportswriter prose about the hanky). We’re going to get to the point where every single team in baseball will be playing in a different park from the one I first saw them in. Sigh.

*I do count the old pre-renovation Anaheim Stadium as a dead park because I want to believe it’s dead. I saw a game there as a fan back in the 1980s, and it was awful. I got a seat way up in the first deck where, I’m not kidding, two thirds of the stadium was blocked off. You couldn’t see up, you couldn’t see centerfield or left field, it was like watching baseball through a periscope. And the beautiful thing is that day Devon White (or Gary Pettis, I always get them confused**) made what was supposedly the greatest catch in the history of baseball; I think White (or Pettis) turned to catch the ball, slipped in the grass, did a full cartwheel, pulled his left cleat off his foot, threw it in the air, knocked down the ball, got it, caught it in his teeth. Anyway, that’s the way it sounded. I of course never saw it, and I never saw a replay, and when I left the stadium people were STILL buzzing over the catch, and I have never felt worse leaving a ballpark, not even after the Indians blew Game 7 in ‘97.

**There’s no logical reason for me to continuously get Devon White an Gary Pettis confused. True, they were both brilliant defensive centerfielders for the Angels at roughly the same time. True they were both sixth round picks. True they were both switch-hitters who stole a lot of bases. But … OK, yeah, it’s easy to understand the confusion. I need to remember that Devon was the one from Jamaica who hit with a little power and struck out a bajillion times and got 189 postseason at-bats and changed the spelling of his last name to Whyte. And Pettis was the defensive dynamo with no power who walked a surprising amount (his .336 on-base percentage is surprisingly decent for a guy who hit 100 points lower) and grew up in Oakland.

Anyway, with every living human being and several recently deceased frogs offering their own obituary for grand old Yankee Stadium, I think it’s a good time to remember a few of the ballparks of yesteryear. Yep. I’m old enough to remember yesteryear. It’s a sad time.

Dead: Cleveland Municipal Stadium

– Of course, I have to begin with my heart, my personal field of dreams, the ballpark where I grew up. Sure, I remember asbestos dripping from the rooftops and concrete floors that were always sticky, no matter the time of day. I remember bumping heads with the person in the next seat over and as we both tried to look around the same post. I remember an infield that had more bad hops than Schlitz. I remember that no matter what you ordered — lemonade, Coke, cotton candy* — it all tasted like beer, and you could get drunk just standing there I remember the turnstiles there (at least for a kid) were tougher to get through than the 1976 Pittsburgh Steelers … those things were rusted and old and they seemed determined not to let you in. I remember that a guy there taught me how to make an obscene gesture, and it wasn’t even the middle finger. I knew about the middle finger; but I was limited in my physical ability to be obscene until this guy showed me the correct way to salute Jeff Torborg. I remember the gigantic Chief Wahoo outside the ballpark, a proud symbol of insensitivity and 50-plus years of baseball heartbreak. I remember how cold it would get, how uncomfortable those seats felt, how the few cheers echoed, how the outfield grass always looked like it had just been the site of a rodeo or a rocket launching 12 minutes before gametime, how they served drinks in wax paper cups, how real it all was.

Here’s why I loved Municipal: It was Cleveland. It was gritty. It was brown. It was cold. It was my Cleveland, the place where I grew up. Jacobs Field, which I love too but in a different way, is not Cleveland. That’s like a night out. A trip to the Opera. It’s still shiny and new and green and clean and grit-free. It’s like this: I remember for years and years we as a family used to have this old blue Chevy Nova, and it was rusted out, it stopped and started, it had no air conditioning, it was about a 50-50 bet that we could make it to our destination without stalling out. Many years later, we got a new car, a Pontiac T-1000, and comparatively, it was like a Rolls, it had air conditioning, it did not feature a fasten seat belt buzzer that would not shut off, it was as reliable as a new car should be. But, in a weird way, I had withdrawal. I missed the Nova, not out of nostalgia exactly, certainly not because I had any feelings for that junky car, but more because I just viewed us a rusted-out, blue Nova family. And I viewed Cleveland as a Municipal Stadium kind of town. And I still do.

*OK folks, we’re about to start our very own pixipedia. You will recall the new word pixifood, loosely translated to mean, “Food that you loved as a kid but find tastes horrendous — like liver and crayon jello — as an adult.” Thats where we’re starting — with pixifood. From there will can go on to pixishows and piximovies and piximusic and all that. So you can send your own pixifood and description here, and we’ll get this thing started.

And so on. You can make your entries as long or as short as you want, but please include how it tasted as a child, how it tastes as an adult and any tidbits you like. Thank you. I promise to mention you prominently and with much affection in the PixiStuff book I plan to sell for a million dollars.

Dead: Memorial Stadium, Baltimore

– My most vivid recollection of Memorial Stadium is parking in someone’s front yard. I recall this because we were driving around a neighborhood looking for a parking spot — you remember how Memorial was just plopped right in the middle of this neighborhood — and there were none to be found. Then a guy waved us over and he said, “Park here for 10 bucks.” It might have been five bucks, now that I think of it. In any case, he said, “park here,” and we said, “Where? The driveway is full.” And he said, “No, it’s OK, park in the yard.” So we did. It was a tiny front yard too, you could not have parked another car in there. But hey it was really close to the stadium.

Well, then we started walking to the stadium and it all of a sudden occurred to us … we had NO idea if that guy owned the house and lawn where we parked the car. We had just sort of assumed that. And as we kept walking, we started to realize that, yeah, there was no possible way that guy owned the house and lawn where we parked the car. He did not exactly look like the home-owner type. Plus, it did not really seem economically viable to basically give up your front lawn for five bucks a day. So, yep, you know what we did. We walked back to our car and, sure enough, the guy was gone, and there was nobody home, and so we carefully moved our car to a faraway spot (for another five bucks, but this time not on somebody’s lawn).

The best part: After the game ended and we went back to our car … yep, there was a car parked on that front lawn. After that we were trying to decide if that guy was legit or if he was running the greatest scam in the history of the world — the get five bucks, then guilt relatively honest people into leaving, then get five more bucks, all night long scam.

Dead: Old Comiskey, Chicago.

– Loved it, of course, because I love Chicago, and the old park was dumpy and dirty and tough and the people watching seemed tough; it was a lot like home. Mostly, though, I remember the smell … it was different from other ballparks, more pungent, I couldn’t put my finger on it. And then it hit me. Years ago, for a summer, I worked in a sweater factory, and for part of the summer I worked where they mixed the chemicals that made the dye. Yeah. Smelled like that.

Funny, when they built the New Comiskey, at first I hated it because, honestly, from my view, it wasn’t a whole lot different from Old Comiskey — so what was the point? That was in the era when charming and precious new ballparks were the thing. Now I love New Comiskey precisely because it’s not charming and precious. That’s progress.

Dead: Tiger Stadium, Detroit

– My lasting memory of Tiger Stadium is something I did not do … I did not go into the right field upper deck. It was something I still regret. I loved that upper deck, I can just recall how bloody close it seemed to home plate. As a kid, I recall being MUCH more in awe of that upper deck than I was of the Green Monster. That Detroit Upper Deck just seemed to be sticking its chin out at a left-handed batter, “Hey, punk, hit me, if you have the guts.” Yeah, I kind of saw old Tiger Stadium as the Robert Conrad of baseball ballparks, you know, battery on its shoulder, daring you to knock it off.

So, when I went there the last time I said to myself, “OK, before you leave, you have to go out to the right field and sit in the upper deck.” But I never did.

Dead: Kingdome, Seattle.

– It was my favorite dome, in large part because you never knew what construction materials might start falling from the roof. Maybe it’s just me, but I like a dome that will keep you hopping. Of course, it was dreary and dreadful for baseball — like all domes. The thing I will remember the most about the Kingdome, though, was the wave. The wave was always great in Seattle, where it began (or at least where it was popularized). I know that it’s unAmerican to say this but … I don’t really have a problem with the wave. Yeah, I know, it’s generally stupid, and it means people aren’t paying attention to the game like they should, and fans often do the wave at the most inopportune times like when their own team is in the red zone or their pitcher is trying to get out of a bases loaded jam. I’m not saying I approve of the wave without restriction because I don’t.

Still, in a quiet moment of a boring game, when a wave really gets going and all those people are standing and sitting in unison, yeah, I think it’s a pretty cool thing. I know it’s wrong. But I don’t wanna be right.

Mostly Dead: Yankee Stadium, Bronx.

– Well, everyone else has a story about Yankee Stadium, so I might as well tell mine just at the time when everyone has grown sick of them. My very first assignment as columnist of The Kansas City Star was the 1996 World Series, New York vs. Atlanta. And the very first game I covered for the Star, Game 1, was rained out. That probably should have given me a hint how my Kansas City sports experience would be*.

*I have noticed a couple of comments from brilliant readers on the “Barry Bonds people never contacted Kansas City” post that I figure probably should be answered.

Well, of course I did. But, come on, you know it doesn’t matter what he said … signing Barry Bonds is not his decision. It is the decision of David Glass and David Glass alone. And I didn’t talk to him. But I feel quite sure that I know what he would say.

OK, back to Yankee Stadium, 1996, World Series, in the rain. While sitting in the dungeon/work area, I started thinking, “I wonder what it’s like to stand in centerfield at Yankee Stadium.” This is the sort of thing a desperate columnist thinks when a game is getting rained out, and he needs something to write. Unfortunately, I didn’t really know who I could ask — there was no, “New York Yankees Vice President of determining whether media can stand in centerfield during a rainstorm,” although I understand they are creating the position for the new Yankee Stadium.

In any case, I just decided to go. There were a few people out there under umbrellas, but obviously no one on the field. I started to walk out there and I saw a couple of New York City police officers. They were staring right at me. I wouldn’t say it was a threatening look*, but hey, it’s hard to tell with New York City police.

*Once I was staying at the Millennium Hotel in Times Square and the cab driver had never heard of it. Times Square, I mean. He dropped me off somewhere or other, and I was lugging a heavy bag, my computer bag, the whole works, and I was looking for the Millennium, couldn’t find it, and then I saw a New York City cop. He was glaring at me too. I said, “Excuse me, do you know where the Millennium Hotel is.” And he glared at me for about 10 seconds, and then — without saying a word — he lifted his right arm and pointed upward. I looked up and there was about 483,847 foot sign that read: MILLENNIUM HOTEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!“ Yeah, with all the exclamation points. I’ve never quite lived that one down.

Anyway, the officers were looking at me, and so I had to make that decision that they don’t teach you about in journalism school. Should I ASK them if I could go stand out in centerfield in the rain or should I just GO and hope for the best? I tried to use my best poker skills to read their faces, and finally I decided that they were not glaring at me in the ”Hey buddy, where do you think you’re going“ sort of way. Instead, they were glaring at me in the, ”Hey buddy, are you stupid it’s raining out here, didn’t you’re mother teach you better?“ sort of way. Which was fine.

So I walked out to center field, and I was right, they just watched me go with that great New York look of bemusement on their faces, and I stood out in the rain for a while, pretended I was DiMaggio (though, of course, that was a different Yankee Stadium), and it really was pretty cool. Then I came in, wrote a column. This is my life.

Gardy is a Genius, Take 394

Posted: July 10th, 2008 | Filed under: Baseball, New Words, Pop Culture | 78 Comments »

Bill James wrote an essay in his Gold Mine that I particularly love … it talks about how he sort of lost his passion for Craig Biggio at the end of his career. Bill, you probably know, absolutely loved Biggio, perhaps more than he loved any player since Amos Otis. And I think he felt that way because Bill saw greatness in Biggio that other people refused to see.

See, Biggio in his prime was the king of beating you with little things. For instance, Bill liked to talk about two things that Biggio could do: He got hit by pitches and he did not hit into double plays.

Take 1997. Biggio was obviously sensational that year — it wasn’t just the little things, the guy hit .309/.415/.501 with a league leading 146 runs and a Gold Glove at second base. But beyond that he:

1. Led the league with 34 hit-by-pitches.
2. Hit into zero double plays in 744 plate appearances.

The second of those is mind-boggling … nobody in 70 years has even comes close to that kind of feat. Dick McAuliffe hit into zero double plays in 658 at-bats in ‘68, and he’s the closest to Biggio’s record. Anyway, Bill saw all this and determined that Biggio was the best player in the game — better than Griffey, who was sort of acknowledged as the best player in the game at the time (though we all know he wasn’t — Barry Bonds was). Bill (rather cruelly, I thought — I’m sticking up for our guy Paul White here) compared Biggio’s 1997 season to Jim Rice’s 1984 season, and pointed out that just getting hit 33 more times than Rice and grounding into 36 fewer double plays — just those two things — was roughly the equivalent of 100 points of batting average.

Anyway, Bill loved Biggio, I think in part because nobody else did, at least not in the same way. He ranked Biggio as the 35th best player in baseball history, a jolting thing in the year 2000, and he loved that everybody thought he was crazy.

I think we have all had out Biggios. As long as we are inventing new words, you know, “beejo” is not a bad verb representing that feeling and deep connection you might have about a new band or a hidden restaurant or an edgy comedian that you feel like nobody else knows about or appreciates quite the same way. I used to beejo a band in the South called “Donkey” that played a combination of swing and rock. I beejo a folk singer named David Wilcox and comedian Gary Gullman, who does an awesome bit on cookies, and the actress/singer/designer Zooey Deschanel (who reminds me a lot of a longtime beejo Parker Posey). I remember I used to beejo an obscure golfer named David Toms, who was born four days before me and was really nice to me in an interview when were were 25, and I was a columnist in Augusta. Of course, then Toms went ahead and got good and won a Major Championship and kind of ruined it all.

That’s what happens to so many of our beejos (yes, it can be a noun too). They get big and we lose them. I think, that’s exactly what happened to Bill with Biggio … suddenly, Biggio started getting close to some big career numbers, like 3,000 hits, and everybody loved the guy. And, of course, like it usually happens when your band or actor gets discovered, Biggio wasn’t much good when everybody started to love him. And they loved him for all the wrong reasons. And so on. It’s more or less how a lot of us felt about REM.

ANYWAY, my feeling is Bill broke with Biggio because it wasn’t any fun anymore … he wasn’t a lone voice anymore, and he wasn’t being called crazy anymore, and what’s the use in loving Biggio when EVERYONE does anyway?

OK, so that brings us to Ron Gardenhire. He’s my current baseball beejo. As regulars know, I think he’s the best manager in the game. More than that, I think he’s a freaking miracle worker. I not only realize that a lot of people disagree with him — I LOVE that a lot of people disagree with me. I fully love that more than a handful of people think I’m insane and a lot of those people live in Minnesota and watch the Twins on a daily basis and know a lot more about the situation than I do and can give me about 250 sensible reasons why Gardy deserves to be FIRED — forget the craziness about him being the best in the business.

It only makes me like Gardy MORE. I do beejo Gardy. I want to show you something I’ve been keeping tabs of lately …

Let’s take a team that is tied for last in the league in home runs … about half of the league leader.

Let’s take a team that is seventh in the league in on-base percentage.

Let’s take a team that is eighth in the league in slugging percentage.

Let’s take a team that is eighth in the league in stolen bases, seventh in the league in doubles, 11th in the league in walks, and 10th in the league in strikeouts.

OK? Now, you tell me: How in the heck is THAT team third in the American League in runs scored — just behind the super-lineups in Boston and Texas. OK? How is that team nine games over .500 and fighting for a playoff spot with a pitching staff that is ninth in the league in ERA and 13th in hits allowed?

You already know those are the Minnesota Twins numbers, and I defy you to tell me how that team is third in the league in runs scored, how that team is scoring 4.90 runs per game, which is more runs per game than the White Sox (who have a better on-base percentage and slugging percentage and 61 more home runs), how that team is scoring more runs per game than the Tigers (who some fools believed might score 1,000 runs this year), how that team is scoring more runs per game than the Yankees (who are paying A-Rod about as much as the entire Twins lineup).

There are some reasons … reasons that, I suppose, that indicate the trend can’t last. The Twins are hitting a ridiculous .315 with runners in scoring position. As a team. Yeah, that’s more than 50 points higher than the league average, and, yeah, it might be tough to keep that pace going. They also are hitting an obscene .547 on bunts … and while the high average on bunts is connected to the simple fact that successful sacrifice bunts don’t count as at-bats (it’s like they never happened!) that’s still 150 points higher than league average.

And perhaps most telling, the Twins are hitting much better in key situations than most other teams. The Twins are hitting .284 as a team with runners in scoring position and two outs. The league is hitting .238.

The Twins are hitting .287 in that famed Late and Close category.* The league is hitting .248.

*I’ve always wondered PRECISELY what Late and Close means, so here you go: It’s the seventh inning or later. The situation: (A) The game is tied; (B): The teams are separated by one run; (C) The tying run is on base, on deck or at the plate.

Now, a lot of people, including my buddy Rob Neyer, think that the Twins are about to take a tumble, and that’s logical. But I have to say: That’s the beautiful thing to me about Gardy’s Twins. Logic ain’t got nothing to do with it. I understand that on a day-to-day basis lots people watch Gardy and scratch their heads, question the lineups he throws out there, wonder what he’s doing with the bullpen, shake their heads at the moves he makes. I don’t do that: Too busy wondering why the Kansas City skipper brings in lefties to face righties, has Billy Butler bunt, refuses to take Alex Gordon’s 99 OPS+ out of the No. 3 slot and pitches Joakim Soria in the ninth inning of a tie game when he had pitched two innings the night before. And that’s just one game.

So I really do appreciate that my Gardy beejo is from afar, without deep critical thought, without the intimate knowledge of his quirks, flaws and daily oddities … it’s the same way I beejo Zooey Deschanel. Still, the bottom line for me and Gardy always comes back to what I’ve written before: Here it is July again, and I’m looking at the standings again, and I’m thinking again, “How in the heck are the Twins doing it?”