19 to 21
No, that’s not the number of games the Rockies have won on their hot streak, it’s,
Baseball... Then and Now
Volume 5, #40, October 17, 2007
News Item: October 17, 1976 – The Cincinnati Reds score a run in the bottom of the ninth inning to defeat the New York Yankees 4-3 in the second game of the World Series.
Oh come on people. Get a grip. It’s time for a reality check. The Colorado Rockies are not, I repeat, are not, the 1927 Yankees. Here, I’ll prove it…
POS – NAME (100+ AB) OPS+
C - Pat Collins 117
1B - Lou Gehrig 221
2B - Tony Lazzeri 126
3B – Joe Dugan 79
SS - Mark Koenig 84
OF – Earle Combs 142
OF – Babe Ruth 226
OF – Bob Meusel 136
C – Johnny Grabowski 79
2B - Ray Morehart 80
OF – Cedric Durst 59
3B – Make Gazella 116
PITCHERS (50+ IP) ERA+
Waite Hoyt 146
Urban Shocker 136
Herb Pennock 128
Dutch Reuther 114
George Pipgras 93
Wilcy Moore 168
Myles Thomas 79
POS – NAME (100+ AB) OPS+
C – Yorvit Torrealba 76
1B – Todd Helton 133
2B – Kaz Matsui 87
3B – Garrett Atkins 113
SS – Troy Tulowitzki 109
OF – Matt Holliday 151
OF – Willy Taveras 89
OF – Brad Hawpe 130
OF – Ryan Spillborghs 111
2B/SS – Jamey Carroll 57
C - Chris Iannetta 72
1B - Jeff Baker 61
OF – Cory Sullivan 81
PITCHERS (50+ IP) ERA+
Jeff Francis 112
Josh Fogg 96
Aaron Cook 115
Jason Hirsh 99
Ubaldo Jimenez 111
Rodrigo Lopez 107
Brian Fuentes 154
Manny Corpas 229
Jeremy Affeldt 135
LaTroy Hawkins 139
Jorge Julio 121
Taylor Buchholz 112
And you know what? They’re not the 1935 Cubs that won 21 straight from September 4 to September 27 (and then lost the Series in six games to the Tigers), either. That team had Gabby Harnett, Billy Herman, Stan Hack, Chuck Klein, Fred Lindstrom, Kiki Cuyler (although these last three were past their primes), Lon Warneke, Bill Lee, Larry French and Charlie Root.
Maybe of more significance, they’re not the 1976 Reds, either. That version of the Big Red Machine has been brought forth time and again over the past week, since that juggernaut ran the table, winning seven straight postseason games without a loss.
POS – NAME (100+ AB) OPS+
C – Johnny Bench 109
1B – Tony Perez 118
2B – Joe Morgan 187
3B – Pete Rose 141
SS – Dave Concepcion 107
OF – Cesar Geronimo 125
OF – Ken Griffey 140
OF – George Foster 150
1B – Dan Driessen 116
2B – Doug Flynn 83
C – Bill Plummer 94
OF – Mike Lum 91
OF – Bob Bailey 116
PITCHERS (50+ IP) ERA+
Gary Nolan 101
Jack Billingham 81
Pat Zachry 128
Fred Norman 113
Santo Alcala 75
Don Gullett 117
Rawly Eastwick 168
Pedro Borbon 105
Will McEnaney 72
In point of fact, the 2007 Rockies may have more in common with the 1969 Phillies team that went 63-99. Say what?
POS – NAME (100+ AB) OPS+
C – Mike Ryan 66
1B – Dick Allen 166
2B – Cookie Rojas 59
3B – Tony Taylor 87
SS – Don Money 77
OF – Larry Hisle 125
OF – Johnny Callison 118
OF – Johnny Briggs 116
1B – Deron Johnson 113
OF – Rick Joseph 106
OF – Ron Stone 79
2B – Terry Harmon 75
C – Dave Watkins 64
PITCHERS (50+ IP) ERA+
Woodie Fryman 81
Grant Jackson 107
Rick Wise 110
Jerry Johnson 83
Billy Champion 71
John Boozer 83
Dick Farrell 89
Al Raffo 87
Billy Wilson 107
Lowell Palmer 69
Now, before you loyal Rockies fans start sending nastygrams, let’s take a closer look, more so at player types than the actual numbers. Both teams’ catchers couldn’t hit a lick. Both had second basemen who couldn’t hit either, and had been passed off by other teams. Their shortstops were both 22 year-old rookies who were thought of at the time as hot prospects. Both teams had one genuine superstar respectively, Dick Allen and Matt Holliday, while the Phillies’ Johnny Callison was a fading star who had previously had a few really good years. Playing that role in Colorado is Todd (Whatever Happened to Your Power?) Helton. Both teams had a hot young rookie having a good year – Larry Hisle for the ’69 Phillies, Troy Tulowitzki (whose OPS+ wasn’t as good as Hisle’s) for the Rockies. And both had pretty good outfields and lousy (especially the back-up catchers) benches.
And the pitching? Ah, the pitching. Both teams had starting staffs of journeymen. Period. The Phillies’ Fryman (141-155), Jackson (86-75 over 18 years, mostly in relief) and Wise (188-181, also over 18 years) would all go on to decent careers, and Turk Farrell’s career would see him bounce back and forth between starting and relieving, winning 106 games and saving 83. The Rockies’ ace, Jeff Francis, has a 102 career ERA+ and a 47-34 record. Josh Fogg? 60-60 with a 90 ERA+. Aaron Cook is up at 108, but he’s just 36-35 and has pitched just one complete season in the majors (and it wasn’t 2007). Jason Hirsh is 8-11 (90 ERA+) in 28 career starts. Rodrigo Lopez had a couple of big years with the Orioles, but overall he’s just 65-65 with a 93 ERA+. The only real difference is in the bullpen, where Fuentes and Corpas are better than anyone the ’69 Phillies had, although that’s balanced by the presence of Orioles reject Julio, Royals reject Affeldt, Astros reject Buchholz and LaTroy Hawkins, who has bombed (and been bombed) in four previous stops. They may have pitched well this year, but, they’re not the quality of, say the 1976 Reds ‘pen.
Why make a comparison with the 1969 Phillies? A couple of reasons, brought to light by Phillies fan, deep thinker, and “Baseball in Reading, PA” expert Brian Engelhardt. An impressionable 18 year-old at the time, Engelhardt recalls that this unremarkable Phillies team ripped off a nine game winning streak in late June 1969. Engelhardt points out that the nine wins all came on the road, against the Mets (who you will recall went on to win the World Series that year), Expos and Pirates, and featured wins by Lowell Palmer, Jerry Johnson, Billy Wilson, Al Raffo (his only major league win, for that matter, and it came at the expense of future Hall of Famer Jim Bunning) and Billy Champion – a crew as unremarkable as Josh Fogg, Jason Hirsh, Jeremy Affeldt and Taylor Buchholz. Also highlighting the streak was the hitting of Rick Joseph (a career .243 hitter) and Dave Watkins, a truly awful backup catcher in his only major league season, playing the outfield and his only game at third base, where he went two for three with a home run.
The point is… this is largely luck, people. Any so-so team can get hot for a week, two weeks or even a month. That same 1969 Phillies team had begun the month of June with a nine game losing streak. The 1991 Phillies, another unmemorable team, won 13 straight, and didn’t even make it to .500 during that streak. (The same was true for the 1969 Phillies in their streak.) The 1916 Giants, a team at best in transition after cutting loose its heart and soul, Christy Mathewson, won 17 in a row and then won 26 in a row. And still finished fourth. Compare those teams, and the 2007 Rockies, to the Big Red Machine that finished first six times in the 70s, won two World Series (and was upset in two others) and had three Hall of Famers in the infield (yes, I’m counting Rose… so sue me), one of the great catchers of all time, and one of the great managers of all time. Or compare them to the 1935 Cubs. Even if you disagree with Harnett, Herman, Klein, Lindstrom and Cuyler being in the Hall (and many will), this is still a team that won four pennants in 10 years. (Obviously, the comparison to the 1927 Yankees was meant to be facetious from the start.)
This unremarkable Rockies team is just hot, and lucky. Maybe it’ll carry over into the Series but, unless they bring in a bunch of new players (especially starting pitchers), it’s not going to carry over into 2008, unless the weather in Denver is so bad that the Series gets postponed until next spring. Enjoy it while you can, Rockies fans.
19 to 21
No, that’s not the number of years Phillies fans have waited for this, it’s,
Baseball... Then and Now
Volume 5, #38, October 1, 2007
News Item: September 30, 1964 – The Phillies lose to the Cardinals, 8-5, their 10th straight loss.
News Item: May 29, 1969 -- “Long Time Gone” is released on the Crosby, Stills & Nash album.
“It's been a long time comin'
It's goin' to be a Long Time Gone.
And it appears to be a long,
Appears to be a long,
Appears to be a long
Time, yes, a long, long, long, long time before the dawn.” – Crosby, Stills & Nash
Chico Ruiz was out by a mile. Morrie Steevens threw Willie Davis out at home. Fred Merkle went all the way to second base and Fred Snodgrass caught Clyde Engle’s fly ball. Bobby Thompson and Bucky Dent hit popups. Dennis Eckersley struck Kirk Gibson out looking. Hack Wilson caught Mule Haas’ line drive. The Athletics swept the Braves and the Orioles swept the Mets. Billy Martin couldn’t get to that infield fly of Jackie Robinson’s. Mickey Owen held on to Hugh Casey’s little wet slider. Stan Lopata (not Andy Seminick) dropped Richie Ashburn’s throw. Mitch Williams struck out Joe Carter. For that matter, Gabby Hartnett couldn’t see Mace Brown’s pitch in the dark of Wrigley Field and struck out as well. The Dodgers carved up Don Larsen’s unremarkable stuff and the Cubs did the same to Howard Ehmke’s pitches. Willie Mays didn’t catch up to Vic Wertz’ fly ball and Sandy Amoros couldn’t get to Yogi Berra’s slicing fly down the left field line.
That’s right. All of the wild and improbable things that have happened in pennant races, playoffs and the World Series never happened. They couldn’t have… at least not any more than the best team in the National League in 2007 could blow a seven game lead with 17 games to go. And that wasn’t the half of it. Although it can’t be said that the Mets handed the Phillies the National League East on a silver platter, it can be said that the team that benefited from the worst choke job in the history of baseball was owed one. Owed one from 43 years ago. It has indeed been a long time comin’. Every true blue Philadelphian, from Phillies PR man Larry “The Baron” Shenk, who along with senior advisor Dallas Green (who pitched for the ’64 Phils) is the only current Phillies employee who was there in 1964, to assistant GM Ruben Amaro, Jr., whose dad won a Gold Glove for the 1964 Phillies, to a little Dutchman from Pottstown, to another Dutchman – the only current Phillie player alive in 1964, to a distinguished senator from Kentucky, to one of the great natural talents to ever hit tape measure home runs, to every one of the screaming hordes who jammed Citizens Park Sunday, found redemption after 43 years of waiting. Even if you weren’t a 12 year-old Phillies fan in 1964, you’d heard the stories… from your father, your grandfather, an uncle, maybe a cousin or an older brother. (Because following the Fightin’ Phils runs in family bloodlines as clearly as any other genetic trait.) About how the Phillies blew a six-and-a-half game lead with 12 games to go. But now, justice has finally been served. Redemption has happened. A worse collapse has taken place, and, most fittingly of all, it was the Phillies who were there to pick up the pieces.
Some will tell you that losing a six-and-a-half game lead in 12 games is worse than losing a seven game lead in 17 games. Not true, because they don’t know history. First, only the 1934 Giants and the 1938 Pirates had previously managed to blow a seven game lead in September, and both of those teams had more than 17 games to work with. More importantly, David Wright isn’t the only person who thinks the Mets had the best team in the National League this year. The Best Team Money Could Buy (Flushing Meadow Division). A four-headed monster rotation with two old aces (300 game winner Tom Glavine and Orlando Hernandez) and two young aces (John Maine and Oliver Perez), plus the late-season addition of arguably the best pitcher in the league, and another future Hall of Famer, Pedro Martinez. A lights-out closer. A dynamic offense lead by three stars in the infield and two stars in the outfield. That’s a pretty good team to go 5-12 down the stretch. An historic collapse. By way of contrast, the 1964 Phillies were, in reality, about a fourth place team (which is where they finished in 1963), with a good defense, two offensive stars (Dick Allen and Johnny Callison), two aces (Jim Bunning and Chris Short) and two top relievers (Jack Baldschun and Ed Roebuck), a team that had played over its head all year long, thanks mainly to the additions of Rookie of the Year Allen and Bunning, and the inspired genius of one of the great managers in history – Gene Mauch.
So what happened in 1964 and 2007? Is there any simple explanation, and how do they compare? Well, as noted previously, an historic moment like this doesn’t happen without at least two teams being involved. In 1964, the Phillies, their rotation in tatters, lost 10 straight while at virtually the same time the Cardinals were winning nine straight and the Reds were winning eight straight. From the Phillies’ point of view, Mauch was excoriated for starting his two aces repeatedly on short rest. In fact, that “fact” alone is typically cited as the reason the Phillies lost the 1964 pennant. However, that “fact” isn’t a fact, and there was far more to 1964 than Short and Bunning, and then go hunting. Here are the facts…
Mauch had pretty much used a four-man rotation all year – Bunning, Short, Dennis Bennett and Art Mahaffey, with Ray Culp making 19 starts as a fill-in when needed and 18 year-old Rick Wise starting a few second games of doubleheaders (including the game after Bunning’s perfect game). Together, they made 158 starts. However, by mid-September, before the Sept. 21 start of the losing streak, Mauch was basically down to Bunning and Short. Culp hadn’t started since August 15, and both Bennett and Mahaffey were hurting (although Art later denied that, claiming that Mauch had something personal against him). In fact, Bunning pitched once on short rest before the losing streak started. In all, Short and Bunning pitched on two days rest a total of five times, as Mauch went with a three-man rotation – Bunning, Short and either Bennett or Mahaffey, who started on six and five days rest to save their arms.
No, it didn’t work. Neither Short or Bunning pitched well down the stretch, but, maybe more significantly, it would have taken some really fine pitching to break the losing streak. Leave out the 14-8 loss to the Braves (the game where Callison hit three home runs), and the Phillies scored just 2.9 runs per game during the streak. Even in the low-scoring 60s, that wasn’t going to get it done.
Thus the Phillies’ offense, after relying on just Callison and Allen all year, collapsed. Even so, there were a few other pretty strange happenings that left Phillies fans talking to themselves. The first was on September 19, when they lost a 4-3 game in Los Angeles, when Willie Davis stole home on the immortal Morrie Steevens in the bottom of the 16th. Morrrie Steevens? His entire major league career consisted of 20 innings spread over 22 games in three years, and his presence in the September 19 points out another weakness, in the Phillies’ bullpen. Outside of Baldschun, Roebuck and late season pickup Bitsy Bobby Shantz, Mauch didn’t have a lot of relievers he could put much trust in.Still, it wasn’t a reliever, but Mahaffey, who was on the mound two days later, when Ruiz stole home with Frank Robinson at bat in the sixth for the only run in a 1-0 loss that started the losing streak. Then, on September 26, they blew a 4-3 lead in the top of the ninth when Shantz threw about his only bad pitch as a Phillie, which was turned into a three-run triple by Rico Carty. (Is it not fitting that another Dutchman, Jamie Moyer, won the 2007 pennant clincher?) The very next day Bunning, the future Hall of Famer (although he didn’t win 303 games) was torched early by the Braves (seven runs in three innings, as opposed to seven runs in a third of an inning), and even Callison’s three home runs couldn’t bring them back. In other words, in the one game in 10 where they could have outscored a loss, their ace was blitzed in a rout. Overall, during the losing streak, only the 1-0 game was a one-run game, and only the first game of the Braves series went extra innings. They just lost and lost, usually by a couple of runs (five of the 10 were two-run losses.)
So, maybe 1964 was, as catcher Gus Triandos put it, the Year of Blue Snow. At the very least, 2007 should be known as the Year of Blue and Orange Snow. Explaining the Mets’ collapse may even be harder, although the leading candidates under consideration are the Mets’ gloves, their bullpen, youngsters Jose Reyes and Lastings Milledge, manager Willie Randolph, and a mystery guest. Although a lot of people seem to be coming to the popular Randolph’s defense, and, like Gene Mauch, he probably shouldn’t be blamed for starting rookies Phil Humber and Mike Pelfrey down the stretch of a pennant race, there’s no denying that his public persona, at least on ESPN, looked very much like a man overwhelmed by his circumstances. Gene Mauch would have, at least, overturned a table of spare ribs if he saw a Milledge or a Reyes dogging it. Of more substance is the subject of the Met bullpen. While closer Billy Wagner having back problems was the headline-maker (maybe due to managerial overuse… he has had similar problems before) the rest of the Met pen was horrid. Except for Aaron Heilman (a 1.50 ERA) the Met pen posted the following numbers from September 14 to the season’s close.
Scott Schoenweis 4.70
Pedro Feliciano 4.70
Billy Wagner 5.40 (in only five games)
Guillermo Mota 5.63
Joe Smith 6.35
Jorge Sosa 8.31
Add it up, and that’s a cumulative 5.27 ERA for the Mets’ pen after September 14. Combine that with 22 errors over the same period (including four in one game), and that spells 5-12.
The Mets may not have lost any games by steals of home, but they sure did blow a lot of games by a more prosaic method… bad pitching. They started off, and this is significant, by losing three straight to the Phillies. (Six of the Phillies 10 straight were against their two closest pursuers, the Cards and Reds.) After two more losses to the Nationals, they seemed to have pulled back together, winning four of five from the Nats and the Marlins. Then came the real crash – five consecutive losses to those same Washingtonians, the Cardinals and the Fish, the last of which dropped them out of first place on Friday night. Although three of these were one-run losses, they also gave up 13, 12, 10, 10, 9, 9, and 8 runs during this 4-11 stretch. That might not have been so bad if they were facing the highest-scoring team in the National League, but the Phillies only accounted for one of the 10-run games. The Nationals, generally a weak-hitting team, dropped the 13, the 12, the other 10 and both 9s on New York’s pitchers. In the 12 losses, the Mets gave up 97 runs… more than eight a game.
That’s a lot of bad pitching and although the Mets’ bullpen has taken a lot of grief for blown leads, the fact is the starters didn’t exactly scintillate, either. Of the 12 losses, nine of them came in games when Mets’ starters, as Lee Sinins would say, took a pounding (even if they didn’t get the loss.)
Starter Opponent Score
Perez Phillies 10-6
Lawrence Nats 12-4
Maine Nats 9-8
Glavine Marlins 8-7
Pelfrey Nats 13-4
Glavine Nats 10-9
Humber Nats 9-6
Perez Marlins 7-4
Glavine Marlins 8-1
And there you have your mystery candidate for a full share of the blame. 303-game winner, sure Hall of Famer, Tom Glavine, who was wretched down the stretch. In his four starts during the final 17 games Glavine pitched 18 innings, gave up 30 hits, walked six and was torched for 19 runs – a 9.50 ERA. And that’s without even mentioning hitting Dontrelle Wills with a pitch with the bases loaded.
Still, after all that, the Mets would have finished first if the Phillies had just gone 11-6 instead of 13-4. How did they go 13-4? The most surprising reason was their much-maligned (and often rightly so) pitching. After almost an entire season of dread whenever the gate opened to the bullpen, Charlie Manuel finally discovered, in the last month of the season, three relief pitchers he could trust… closer Brett Myers, former closer Tom Gordon, and Red Sox castoff J.C. Romero. With a little help from Geoff Geary and Clay Condrey, these three workhorses salvaged the Phillies’ season. Myers appeared 10 times in their final 14 games, running from September 16 to September 30, going 1-1 with four saves and giving up three runs. Gordon’s last 10 outings came from September 18 on (appearing in 10 out of 12 games), and accounted for five holds and two runs allowed. And Romero was a revelation… his last 10 games, also from September 18 on, saw him pick up a win and three holds while giving up two hits and no runs in nine innings.
And yet, they still might have fallen short, if not for the Most Valuable Player in the National League, little 5-8, 168 pound James Calvin Rollins. Having from the very beginning of the season pronounced the Phillies as the team to beat in the NL East, JRoll made good on his word under a ton of pressure. In the Phillies’ final 10 games he scored 10 runs, usually early on, sparking the best offense in the National League. He saved the best for last, singling and stealing second and third in the first inning of the pennant clincher, and scoring the run that put the Phillies ahead to stay, before later driving in a run with his 20th triple of the year. Even the late Johnny Callison, the real National League MVP of the 1964 season, couldn’t have conceived of such a year under such circumstances.
AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB BA OBP SLG
716 139 212 38 20 30 94 41 .296 .344 .531
They were chanting “MVP” at Citizen’s Park yesterday. They were chanting it for JRoll, for the Year of Blue and Orange Snow, for the demons that have finally been exorcized. It’s been a long time comin’.
19 to 21
No, that’s not how many players have hit 500 home runs, it’s,
Baseball... Then and Now
Volume 5, #35, September 19, 2007
News Item: September 4, 1991 – Jim Thome makes his major league debut with the Cleveland Indians.
A total of 23 players in the history of major league baseball have now hit 500 or more home runs. That number may well come as a shock to those fans who grew up in the early Sixties, having memorizing the foursome who first accomplished that feat – Babe Ruth (714), Jimmie Foxx (534), Ted Williams (521) and Mel Ott (511). Some might even remember the fuss made when Teddy Ballgame made it a foursome in 1960, since, after the Babe cleared the mark in 1929, only Foxx (1940) and Ott (1945) had even gotten to 500. And, although another quartet of sluggers – Willie Mays (1965), Mickey Mantle and Eddie Matthews (both in 1967) and Hank Aaron (1968) joined the first four in the latter part of the Sixties, 500 home runs was still a remarkable rarity.
Nowadays, some will tell you it’s no longer a mark of distinction… that 600 home runs is the new 500 home runs. There may be some logic to that, since 15 more players have joined in in the 39 years since Aaron reached 500. But, let’s look at it another way. You have four players hitting 500 home runs in the 31 years between Ruth and Williams, and then four more in just three years. So why didn’t 600 home runs become the new 500 home runs in 1968? No, 500 home runs is still a true mark of distinction. If you have any doubts, ask the 13 players who hit between 426 (Billy Williams) and 493 (Fred McGriff, who’s tied with Lou Gehrig) home runs. Or ask Manny Ramirez or Gary Sheffield, both of whom are close enough to start marking their 2008 calendars.
Or better yet, ask Jim Thome. As noted on MLB.Com, Thome is only one of the 23 whose 500th (a 426 footer yet) also produced a walk-off victory for his team. (It also took place on Jim Thome Bobblehead Day.) The closest anyone else has ever come to such an historic 500th was Mike Schmidt, whose top of the ninth inning 500th off of Don Robinson in Pittsburgh in 1986 gave the Phillies a come from behind win after the Pirates went out in the bottom of the inning.
Still, the dramatics of Thome’s historic blow are ultimately just a footnote to history. The lead story in this drama is really the man who hit the home run. A classier individual has never played baseball, let along hit 500 home runs. A lot has been said and written – all of it for the good -- over the years as to Thome’s character and professionalism on and off the field. Scott Merkin, writing for MLB.com, put it this way…
“It was classic Jim Thome, a man with humble Midwestern charm and values, whose ability with the bat plays pretty well across the entire country… `He takes a lot of pride in that fact that he represents this game that has been so good to him and he's passing it down the line,’ [White Sox hitting coach Greg] Walker said. `The generation that has got to see him play, big league players idolize this guy, and not just for his talent and his achievements, but how he goes about his business. Jim is revered by other players for being a competitor but also for being a great guy. He's passed this game down the line and done it the right way.’"
Maybe the most telling point about Thome’s character is his plan for the historic ball. Having retrieved same (in exchange for a big package of gifts) from fan Will Stewart after the game, Thome and his dad Chuck will be driving the ball to Cooperstown during the off-season to personally present it to the National Baseball Museum in the ultimate father/son experience. Now that’s class.
Given Thome’s sterling character and 149 career OPS+, it might seem strange to future baseball fans who note that Thome was traded to the White Sox at a point in his career when he was just 35 years old and had already hit 430 home runs. Given that there is still a certain cachet about having someone in your uniform hit a 500th home run – another sign that it continues to be a significant milestone – it might indeed seem odd that the Phillies shipped Thome off to the White Sox for a rather average centerfielder and two minor league pitchers after the 2005 season. Among Thome’s 22 compatriots in this accomplishment, only four had switched teams closer to hitting number 500, namely Eddie Murray, Willie McCovey, Frank Thomas and Eddie Matthews. However, of those four, McCovey and Thomas were free agents when the changed teams, and Murray was a special case. Very near the end of the line, he was sent “home” to Baltimore by the Indians so that he could hit his 500th home run in the uniform where he found fame. That’s the exact opposite of what happened to Matthews. Having turned 35 at the end of the 1966 season, and having still posted a 109 OPS+, the only person to play for the Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves was summarily sent packing to Houston on the last day of 1966, despite the fact that he had at that point hit 493 home runs. What did the Braves get for the player who was, at that time, the greatest third baseman in the history of the game (having been passed only by Schmidt in the interim)? Dave Nicholson and Bob Bruce. So, it wasn’t as though they were offered a deal they couldn’t refuse.
The Phillies after the 2005 season faced a somewhat different dilemma, and it was one they couldn’t refuse, or ignore. They had a big problem. At 6-3, 250 pounds, Thome really couldn’t play anywhere on the field but first base. Likewise, the equally large (6-4, 230 pounds) Ryan Howard, who was only the top power-hitting prospect in the minors, couldn’t really play anywhere else either. And, since you can’t very well have two first basemen on the field at the same time, somebody had to go. It turned out to be Thome, who would hit 42 home runs for the 2006 Sox while Howard would hit 58 for the 2006 Phillies and become the NL MVP. A pretty good deal for both teams.
Maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on the Braves. After all, 18 of the 23 500 home run hitters did change teams at least once during their careers. In fact, these 23 superstars played for 69 teams during their careers, an average of 2.9 teams per player. Only Schmidt (who still holds the record for most home runs by a single-team player), the Mick, Teddy Ballgame, Mr. Cub (who was probably untradeable anyway) and Ott hit 500 home runs and played for one team during their entire major league careers.
Contrast that with the travels of Sammy Sosa, Frank Robinson, Raffy Palmeiro, Reggie Jackson, and especially Murray. Although there was some aspect of “coming home” in four of their five careers (with Robinson the exception), they all played for five teams (meaning they changed teams four times, not that they played for five different teams), except for Murray, who bounced around from the Orioles to the Dodgers to the Mets to the Indians to the Orioles to the Angels to the Dodgers. In fact, the Orioles seem to be addicted to dealing for big home run hitters. Note the travelogues of the other four players in question…
Sosa: Rangers, White Sox, Cubs, Orioles, Rangers
Robinson: Reds, Orioles, Dodgers, Angels, Indians
Palmeiro: Cubs, Rangers, Orioles, Rangers, Orioles
Jackson: A’s, Orioles, Yankees, Angels, A’s
Thanks largely to Palmeiro and Murray, the O’s have, over the course of their 50+ history, had seven visits from 500 home run hitters (or future 500 home run hitters), one more than the Athletics, who in addition to Reggie Jackson’s two trips in green and gold, also at one time or another had Foxx, McGwire, McCovey and Thomas. Still, the team most identified with 500 home runs is… not the Yankees, but their one-time landlords at the Polo Grounds, the Giants. The Bronx Bombers have had four, 500 home run hitters on their roster, three of whom (Ruth, Mantle and Rodriguez) actually hit their 500th home runs wearing pinstripes. (Jackson hit his 500th with the Angels.) The Giants though, have had five, 500 home run hitters on their roster, and no team has topped their four actual 500th hitters. Bonds, Mays, McCovey (who played for the Giants twice) and Ott all hit 500th home runs with the Giants.
True, Lou Gehrig would have hit his 500th with the Yankees, had not illness forced him out of the lineup seven home runs short. But, that’s the point. Baseball may have a fascination with round numbers, but there’s no denying that Gehrig did not hit 500 home runs, any more than Fred McGriff did. So the roster of 500 home run hitters is up to 23… well, 23 pitchers have also gotten 300 wins. And 15 pitchers (soon to be 16) have 3000 strikeouts. Twenty-seven hitters have 3000 hits. No less than 36 thieves have passed 500 steals. This is history we’re talking about. Time, if you will. Even if you don’t count the National Association as a major league, MLB has been around for 132 seasons, so naturally career counting numbers are going to pile up. It’s inevitable, and in no way cheapening or demeaning of the feats of those who have come before. So, viva Jim Thome! You’ve hit 500 home runs, and, even if you’re not going to Disney World, you are going to Cooperstown.
19 to 21
No, that’s not how many 10-RBI games there have been in the majors, it’s,
Baseball... Then and Now
Volume 5, #31, August 22, 2007
News Item: September 7, 1993 – Mark Whiten has a game for the ages.
Maybe you don’t realize that driving in 10 runs in a single game is an extremely rare accomplishment. Or maybe you do. Maybe you scratched your head and said, “Garret Anderson?” when you found out just who had picked up 10 RBIs in an 18-9 drubbing of the Yankees last night. Maybe you even recall Mark Whiten’s 15 minutes (OK, it was more like two hours) of glory for the Cardinals back in 1993, when he put together what really must be considered the greatest single offensive game since at least the founding of the National League back in 1876. Mark Whiten?
A 10 RBI or better game in the major leagues is incredibly rare. Rarer than perfect games. (There have been 17 of them.) Rarer than four home runs in a game. (That’s been done 15 times.) Even rarer than unassisted triple plays. (Hard to believe, but there have been 13 of those.) On August 21, 2007, the Angels’ Garret Anderson became just the 12th player to have 10 or more RBIs in a single game. Now that’s rare. And, as typically is the case with rarities, there have been some remarkable moments worth remembering. However, just because a player does something remarkable in one game does not mean that he is fated for fame and fortune, or the Hall of Fame. If that were the case, Don Larsen and his 81-91 career record would be in Cooperstown. And that’s the case with a 10-RBI dozen. Norm Zauchin, Phil Weintraub, Garret Anderson and Mark Whiten have all had 10 or more RBIs in a game, and the only way any of them are getting to the Hall is the same way you or I get there, take I-88 past Oneonta and then hang a left at state route 28 and follow that north into Cooperstown. (You can also get there from the north via U.S. 20, but that’s another story.) Mark Whiten?
Yes, Mark Whiten. On Tuesday, September 7, 1993, in the second game of a doubleheader at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati (The House that Pete Built), Whiten had himself a pretty fair month of baseball in just two hours and 17 minutes. During the course of a 15-2 embarrassment of the Reds (who had won the first game 14-13), Whiten, hitting sixth in the Cardinals lineup behind the immortal Gerald Perry, went four for five with four home runs and 12 RBIs, in the process tying two of the most notable marks in the annals of baseball – home runs in a game (4) and RBIs in a game (12). Whiten was a fabled prospect when he first came up with the Blue Jays – a switch-hitting centerfielder with a rifle arm who was also a line drive machine. Somehow, like a lot of fabled prospects, Whiten hadn’t exactly panned out. At 26, he was already on his third team in four years, and would end up playing for eight teams in an 11-year major league career that produced a .259/.341/.415 line for a 102 Adjusted OPS and 712 strikeouts in just 3104 at bats. But, in game two on September 7, 1993, he was better than Babe Ruth (who never had 10 RBIs or four home runs in a game.)
In the top of the first, Whiten started the game off right with a grand slam against Larry Luebbers. After popping up while leading off the Cardinals’ fourth, he next came up in the sixth, this time with two on and facing pitcher Mike Anderson, who was making his major league debut. Another home run, and Whiten had seven RBIs on the night. In the seventh, the Cardinal onslaught continued against poor Anderson, as Perry and Todd Zeile were once again both on base ahead of Whiten (Perry would score four times in the game on Whiten homers, Zeile three times). Another three run homer, and Whiten now had 10 RBIs, and Anderson went off to write his memoirs, having given up seven runs in one-and-two-thirds innings in his first game. (He would get in two more games in September and end his career with an 18.56 ERA.)
Having disposed of Anderson, the Cardinals next turned their attention to Rob “Double” Dibble. The future ESPN analyst faced Whiten in the ninth with, fortunately for Dibble, only Perry on base ahead of him. The results were the same – a fourth home run, two more RBIs and a fleeting form of immortality… tying Jim Bottomley’s long-standing (since 1924) record of 12 ribbies in a game AND also joining the ranks of the four-home-runs-in-a-game platoon. In one game in what was also his best single season in terms of counting numbers (25 home runs, 99 RBIs) Mark Whiten had accounted for 16 percent of his year’s total home runs and just over 10 percent of his RBIs. Maybe even more incredibly, he had also accounted for almost four percent of his 11-year career home run total and more than two percent of his career RBI total – in just one night in Cincinnati.
Anderson’s outburst against Mike Mussina, et al, may not have been as dramatic, but it still wasn’t a bad night’s work. Anderson “only” hit two home runs, a three-run homer in the third and a grand slam in the sixth, but, on the other hand, he had his 10 RBIs by the end of the sixth, having hit run-scoring doubles in the first and second innings and also accounting for six RBIs by the end of the third. He actually had a shot at Whiten’s and Bottomley’s record when he came up in the eighth with two on, but he grounded out to shortstop. Oh well, a 6 3 4 10 line for a single game isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Anderson also just missed the American League mark of 11 RBIs in a game, which dates back to Tony Lazzeri in 1936 in a game in which the future Hall of Famer had two grand slams. Other American Leaguers with 10 RBIs in a game include Rudy York (1946), the aforementioned Norm Zauchin (1955), Reggie Jackson (1969), Fred Lynn (1975), Nomar Garciaparra (1999) and one of the Yankees who took the field against Anderson on August 21, and had two home runs of his own, Alex Rodriguez, who did it for the Yankees in 2005. In another of those statistical oddities that baseball seems to generate, six of the eight American Leaguers to drive in double digits in a game were members of the Yankees or Red Sox. (Just like the two National League and Major League record holders were both Cardinals.)
In the National League, only Weintraub, who had 11 RBIs in a 1944 wartime game for the New York Giants, and Walker Cooper (10), when he was playing for the Reds in 1949, also made it to double figures in a single contest. And, as noted previously, not everyone who has driven in 10 or more runs in a game was a star – Weintraub being a good example. Although he was a pretty good hitter (132 OPS+), he only played seven years and, in fact, had been out of the majors for six years when the Giants called him back to duty in 1944. Zauchin was actually a below-average hitter, with a career OPS+ of just 94 in six seasons with the Red Sox and the Senators in the 1950s. Somewhat in the fashion of Mark Whiten, Zauchin’s big year came in tandem with his big game – he hit 27 home runs and drove in 93 runs in 1955.
Garret Anderson is certainly a better player than Norm Zauchin, or Mark Whiten, for that matter. Although last night’s home runs were just his seventh and eighth on the year, he’s in his 14th season in the majors and has 249 home runs and 1178 RBIs, having hit as many as 35 home runs and driven in as many as 123 runs in a season, despite a terrible strikeout/walk ratio (about 3:1). His career Adjusted OPS at the moment is 105 (101 for 2007), although that is in a longer career than Whiten. Although he’s had some notable accomplishments, and deserves to be remembered as a good player, he moreso deserves to be remembered for what happened on the night of August 21, 2007 – an occasion that called for Anderson to take the first curtain call of his career. Go ahead, Garret, you earned it.
19 to 21
No, that’s not how many 300 game winners there have been in baseball, it’s,
Baseball... Then and Now
Volume 5, #29, August 7, 2007
News Item: August 6, 1917 – Eddie Plank makes his final major league appearance.
Tom Glavine’s 300th win this past weekend has been celebrated baseball-wide for two reasons other than the obvious. One – he is the fifth left-hander to reach the 300 win mark. Two – he may be the last 300 game winner (with the possible exception of Randy Johnson). Those have been the two primary add-ons that every commentator has added on to Glavine’s feat. However, only one is a legitimate cause to further celebrate the former Massachusetts ice hockey star’s 300 wins… not that a 300th win really needs any added celebration. After all, within the context of baseball since 1876 – a total of almost 132 seasons – only 23 individuals (close to one every six years) have reached that rightfully-exalted mark. Even if you go back to the dawn of organized baseball, the formation of the National Association of Base Ball Players in 1858 – thus adding in 18 years, and including the five years of the first professional league, the National Association of Professional Baseball Players – you still only pick up maybe three more 300 game winners, those being (in chronological order) Dick McBride, Al Spalding and Bobby Mathews. In other words, another three over 18 years, or one every six years. This may well be just a statistical fluke, but it is interesting to note that, despite the vast changes pitching a baseball has undergone since 1858, the proportion of 300 winners over time has remained essentially constant over that time. Yes, there have been some long gaps without a 300 game winner being crowned – when Warren Spahn hit 300 in 1961, it had been 20 years since Lefty Grove just barely made it to 300 – still, in almost 150 years, the average has been pretty much one every six years.
You then have to wonder about the musings that Glavine (and maybe Johnson) are the last of a dying breed of 300 game winners. Let’s return to 1963 when, memory seems to serve, that there might have been some speculation that 300 game winners were about to become extinct. At the very least, there should have been speculation. Early Wynn had just staggered across the line, much in the same fashion that Grove, pitching at the advanced age of 41 with nothing much but guile and a hard-hitting Red Sox team behind him, had done 22 years earlier. It looked at the time like Wynn had accomplished a well-nigh impossible task, even though Spahn had blown through the 300 game barrier back in 1961, and looked like he might be on his way to 400 wins. (Spahnie went 23-7 in 1963 and ended the year with 350 wins.) But, when the 1964 season opened, Wynn had retired, and there were exactly two, 200-game winners still plying their trade in the majors, and they were both 37 years old.
The only good prospect for 300 wins as 1964 dawned was Robin Roberts, who turned 37 at the end of the 1963 season, and who had just won 14 games for the Orioles in his second year in the American League. At the start of 1964, Robbie had won 258 games and was, in his own mind, aiming for 350 wins, not 300. However, arm problems limited Roberts to a 5-8 record and a 4.82 ERA in 1966, and Bob Carpenter wouldn’t give him a chance in 1967, even though the Phillies needed pitching and he spent the first half of the year dominating the Eastern League at Reading. Thus did the career of the great right-hander end with 286 wins. The other 200 game winner active in 1964 was Billy Pierce. He had 208 wins at the end of 1963, but only three more ahead of him, despite the fact that he went 3-0 with a 2.20 ERA pitching in relief for the Giants in 1964. And that was it. In fact, there were only four other pitchers active in 1964 who even had 150 career wins…
Name (Age) Wins
Whitey Ford (35) 199
Lou Burdette (37) 182
Bob Friend (33) 170
Curt Simmons (34) 156
There were also another 13 pitchers (e.g., Bob Buhl, Jim Bunning, Larry Jackson, Johnny Podres, Jack Sanford) with between 100 and 150 Ws. We won’t show the whole list, but suffice it to say that none of them reached 300 wins, either. None of the pitchers active in 1964 with between 100 and 258 wins ever made it to 300 wins. Not even Whitey Ford, who was one short of 200, still just 35, and pitching for the best team in baseball. Ford didn’t even get close, since the Yankees, and Whitey, stopped winning after 1964 in what was partly a cause-and-effect relationship based on the health of Whitey’s left arm.
Does that mean that we should indeed speculate in 2007 that 300 game winners are dying out? (Assuming the Big Unit doesn’t come back from his latest back surgery.) Not by a long shot. Although Dayn Perry has written an informative Internet article using Bill James’ Favorite Toy metric to support his speculation that Glavine might be the last 300 game winner (or at least it will be a long, long time before there’s another), you have to remember that the Favorite Toy is a predictive model that is only as good as the numbers that are fed into it. Thus, Perry – quite accurately – notes that using the Favorite Toy with current pitchers, Carlos Zambrano has the best chance of reaching 300 wins – a 19.8 percent chance. C.C. Sabathia is next with a 14 percent chance, followed by Johan Santana at 9.8 percent, and no one else over 8 percent (Josh Beckett). Those aren’t especially good odds for more 300 game winners, at least not among current pitchers.
However, history may well tell us otherwise. Going back to the 1964 season again, despite the fact that none of the top pitchers that year reached 300, there were two active major league pitchers who did – two pitchers who were just starting their careers. When the 1964 season ended, 26 year-old Gaylord Perry was 16-18 for his career (which had started in 1962). And 25 year-old Phil Niekro had pitched in 10 games without a decision for the Milwaukee Braves. While anyone who might have predicted at the end of 1964 that either hurler would win 300 games would have been locked up for his own safety, the fact is that Niekro pitched until he was 48 and won 318 games and Perry pitched until he was 45 and won 314 games. For that matter, there were two other pitchers active in 1964 who would come very close to 300 wins. Twenty-one year-old Tommy John had two wins on his way to 288 and 25 year old Jim Kaat had 55 on his way to 283. As you may also recall, they both pitched forever as well – Kaat until he was 44 and John until he was 46.
The conclusion should be clear – you can’t always tell a 300 game winner in the early stages of his career. In fact, if you were to judge just Perry, Niekro, John and Kaat based on their accomplishments through the end of the 1964 season, Kaat would be voted by far the best bet to make 300 wins… and he ended up winning fewer games than the other three. Although the Favorite Toy is a great toy for estimating a player’s chances of reaching a specific goal, in the case of predicting 300 game winners, you might do better looking at the characteristics of those 23 pitchers who have made it that far, the most obvious being that they pitched forever and they were generally right-handed. Recognizing that conditions were hugely different in the 19th Century, here’s the list of 20th Century 300 game winners with their age upon completion of their major league careers, and their total innings pitched…
Name (Age) IP
Walter Johnson (39+) 5915
Grover Alexander (43) 5190
Christy Mathewson (36) 4781
Warren Spahn (44) 5244
Roger Clemens (45) 4884
Greg Maddux (41) 4753
Steve Carlton (43) 5217
Eddie Plank (41+) 4496
Nolan Ryan (46) 5386
Don Sutton (43) 5282
Phil Niekro (48) 5404
Gaylord Perry (45) 5350
Tom Seaver (41+) 4783
Tom Glavine (41) 4294
Lefty Grove (41) 3941
Early Wynn (43) 4564
Note: Johnson was just short of his 40th birthday in his last major league appearance. Plank and Seaver were just short of their respective 42nd birthdays. Spahn, Carlton, Plank, Grove and now Glavine are the lefties.
Only Grove, who picked up a lot of wins in relief for Connie Mack, and Glavine, who benefited from a lot of relief, are outside of the top 30 in career innings pitched. And all except Mathewson – who deserves more credit for his 373 wins before his 37th birthday than he is sometimes given -- were considered ancient when they retired. Which leads to the question, should we not redefine “ancient” for pitchers? After all, three of the guys on this list are still pitching, and they only make up about a quarter of the 40-something hurlers still taking regular turns on the mound. While the Favorite Toy, the five-man rotation, the multi-headed bullpen and various other factors may seem to predicate against 300 game winners in the future, it might be wise to hold up before predicting the demise of that legendary beast. Good pitchers are able to extend their productive careers well into their 40s in the 2000s. And there are always a lot of talented, strong, young right-handed pitchers coming up who, with the training regimens first popularized a generation ago by Carlton and Ryan, might be durable enough to pitch productively well into their 40s, and thus go where Tom Glavine (one of only five lefties – the real exclamation to his 300 wins) has gone.
Volume 5, #28, July 27, 2007
19 to 21
No, that’s not how many players were shot on July 27, 1959, it’s,
Baseball... Then and Now
News Item: July 27, 1959: The Triple A game between the Havana Sugar Kings and the Rochester Red Wings is called a 4-4 tie after 11 innings.
What do Bronson Arroyo, Danys Baez, Yuniesky Betancourt, Vinnie Chulk, Jose Contreras, Yunel Escobar, Ryan Freel (though not Farney), Luis Gonzalez, Livan and Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, Raul Ibanez, Mike Lowell, Henry Owens, Orlando Palmeiro and Jorge Posada have in common? They’re all major league players of Cuban heritage. Dating back to Esteban Enrique “Steve” Bellan, baseball has been as much the national game of Cuba as it has been of the U.S. Born into a Cuban family in Havana in 1850, Bellan came to America, apparently to further his education at Fordham University, though maybe to get away from first Cuban war of independence. By 1868, proving he had learned more than the three R’s at Fordham, he was playing for one of the top NABBP teams, the Unions of Morrisania. The first Latin American to play at the highest level of American baseball, Bellan was only fair player by the day’s standards. Nonetheless, he lasted for six years at the top level of the sport before returning to Havana and, in effect, taking the game with him. And from there, it took off.
Not surprisingly, Cuba eventually returned the favor, and started exporting professional players to the U.S., starting with Armando Marsans and Rafael Almeida of the 1911 Cincinnati Reds. Through Adolfo Luque, Minnie Minoso, Camilo Pascual, Pedro Ramos, Mike Cuellar, Tony Taylor, Luis Tiant and many others, Cuba had a significant presence in the major leagues for decades. Then came December 31, 1958, when a frustrated former pitcher named Fidel Castro took over the Cuban government, and the pipeline from Havana to the majors slowly dried up. After the Tony Oliva/Tony Perez generation of players, very few native-born Cubans broke into the majors in the decade of the 70s. There were just four between 1970 and 1978, and then a fifth in 1980. And you probably don’t remember any of them – Rigoberto Mendoza, Oscar Zamora, Orlando Gonzalez, Bobby Ramos and Leonardo Sutherland. You see, Fidel wanted to keep all the good Cuban players at home, the better with which to dominate Caribbean professional and amateur baseball. That’s why it was such a big story when Barbaro Garbey landed on U.S. shores in 1984 – it had been four years since a Cuban had broken into the majors, and 20 years since a good Cuban (in this case, Tiant, Perez and Bert Campaneris) had “come up.” Of course, Garbey turned out to be both overrated and a bad egg as well, but that didn’t stop baseball executives from coveting Cuban stars.
A.G. (After Garbey) things loosened up a little, as Jose Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro (don’t draw any unwarranted conclusions from the convergence of these three) and a few others made the majors, although the next big wave of Cuban players, led by the Hernandez brothers and Rey Ordonez of The Ordonez Line fame, really didn’t hit for another 10 years A.G. By 2007 though, you could make up a pretty good active All-Cuban team, led by Posada, Ibanez, Lowell (Cuban heritage, as opposed to born in Cuba) and the Hernandez’. Still, the high point of Cuban participation in Organized Baseball was really in the late 1950s. No less than 17 Cuban-born major leaguers broke in between 1958 and 1960. And, in fact, Havana had its own Triple A minor league team, affiliated, or at least largely stocked with, players from those same pioneering Cincinnati Reds. (In fairness, it should be noted that the Washington Senators also led the way in bringing Cuban players to the majors.) A team that eventually, through no fault of its own, basically ended up being located behind the Iron Curtain. And in a Latin country still ablaze with revolutionary fervor. And thereby hangs a tale. The story of the only baseball game ever called on account of gunfire. Here’s what happened, 48 years ago today, courtesy of one of SABR’s finest, Brian Engelhardt.
Writing in the current edition of “The National Pastime,” Engelhardt (who is also the foremost expert on baseball in Reading, PA) tells the story of the July 26, 1959 game between the Cardinals’ Rochester farm club and Havana. The Red Birds started former White Sox pitcher Bob Keegan along with a lineup that included at least two other former major leaguers, Luke Easter and Bill Harrell. For a Triple A team, the Sugar Kings were loaded… no fewer than seven Havana players who appeared in the game would have (or had) major league careers… Jesse Gonder, Elio Chacon, Chico Cardenas, YoYo Davalillo, Luis Arroyo, Tony Gonzalez and Carlos Paula. And that doesn’t even include Mike Cuellar, Lou Skizas, Cookie Rojas and Raul Sanchez, none of whom got in this particular game. Although the Sugar Kings scored a run in the bottom of the first, the Red Birds scored two in the second and one in the third to take a 3-1 lead that they carried into the bottom of the ninth inning, when the home team scored twice to tie it.
The hometown fans were already excited enough, partly because Fidel himself was present at the game – in fact he’d even pitched in an exhibition before the regular game started -- and partly because it was the sixth anniversary of the storming of the Moncada Barracks by Castro and his supporters. It was an act that got the Cuban revolutionary thrown in jail, but then again, Hitler and Lenin also spent time in the hoosegow for failed uprisings, and this particular unsuccessful putsch led to the formation of the 26th of July Movement, Castro’s organization that eventually took over Cuba at the end of 1958. Despite Castro’s somewhat, from a U.S. point of view, checkered resume, OB decided to keep the Sugar Kings in the International League and in Havana after the communist leader took over. Maybe they didn’t know how Cubans (and Latins in general) celebrate big occasions… they have a tendency to fire guns in the air.
So, that’s where things stood in the top of the 11th when Harrell hit an unexpected home run (he was a middle infielder, not a power hitter) to give Rochester a 4-3 lead. The Sugar Kings came back to tie it up again in the bottom of the inning, on a disputed play, the dispute centering around whether or not Gonder missed a base. In the ensuing brouhaha, Red Wing manager Cot Deal was tossed from the game, possibly the only time in the history of the sport that an ejection saved someone’s life. That’s because midnight struck shortly after Deal’s departure and, along with it, gunfire erupted both outside and inside the stadium as soldiers and civilians started celebrating the anniversary of July 26. At this point, now in the top of the 12th, Red Wing coach Frank Verdi was coaching third base in place of Deal. In the ensuing gunfire, he was struck on his helmet liner by a bullet… a bullet that, as Jim Brosnan later noted in “The Long Season,” might well have gone in Deal’s ear if he’d still been on the coaching lines… Deal was several inches taller than Verdi. Sugar King shortstop Cardenas was also grazed by a bullet, after which the umpires – no fools they – pulled both teams off the field and called the game.
A major flap erupted after the game, with name calling by both the Cardinal and Sugar King management, since the next day’s doubleheader was also cancelled with the permission of International League President Frank Shaughnessy. Paul Miller, GM of the Sugar Kings, had the incredible gall to be quoted as saying there was “no justifiable reason” for cancelling the next day’s DH. Maybe he should have talked to his shortstop first. Eventually, the baseball incident became an international incident, and Red Wings President Frank Horton had to call the U.S. Ambassador to Cuba to get the Red Wings out of the country ASAP by something other than a rowboat. Maybe even more incredibly, the Sugar Kings continued to play out their season in Havana (possibly because July 26th only comes once a year), winning the 1959 Junior World Series (talk about a home field advantage…), and then even started the 1960 season in Cuba, before the franchise was moved, hopefully not under fire, to Jersey City in July 1960, never to return. Thus did Organized Baseball leave Cuba, never to return… at least, not on July 26 or July 27.
Volume 5, #27, July 24, 2007
19 to 21
No, that’s not how many times Bobo Holloman appeared in a major league game (it was actually 22), it’s, Baseball... Then and Now
News Item: July 23, 1953: The St. Louis Browns sell pitcher Bobo Holloman to Toronto for $7500 and a used rosin bag.
The 1953 season was the Year from Hell for Bill Veeck. Having quickly realized that his St. Louis Browns couldn’t possibly compete with Gussie Busch’s well-foamed bankroll on the other side of Sportsman’s Park (the Budweiser King had just bought the Cardinals from the indicted Fred Saigh), he sought baseball’s permission to move his team to Baltimore for the 1953 season. However, the maverick future Hall of Famer had annoyed too many of his compatriots (notably the New York Yankees) with his maverick ways, and he was summarily double-crossed and sent back to St. Louis to suffer through an awful season without operating funds and with a citizenship that knew the Browns would be vacating the city as soon as the season was over – thanks to that carpetbagger, Veeck.
A worse situation would be harder to imagine, and Veeck was forced, in the fashion of earlier Brownie owners, to sell off his assets (i.e., his players) to keep out of the poorhouse, all the while watching what few fans he had hang him in effigy on a regular basis. The Browns eventually finished the season dead last with a 54-100 record, having also run out of new baseballs during the last game of the season, a 2-1, 11 inning loss to the White Sox.
But how bad really was it? It was so bad that even when something good happened, it was bad. Take the night of May 6, 1953. Veeck and manager Marty Marion had already figured out that one of their pre-season acquisitions, pitcher Alva Lee “Bobo” Hollman (the Pride of Thomaston, GA), was NOT a major league pitcher, despite (or maybe because of ) the fact he had pitched in the minors since 1946. For reasons unknown, since he was usually a very skillful horse trader, Veeck had agreed to give the Syracuse Chiefs $10,000 and Duke Markell for Big Bobo, assuming the Browns kept Bobo’s southern presence on their roster. If they didn’t want Bobo, they could send him back to Syracuse and not have to make an additional $25,000 payment for his services. Well, the June 15 cut-down day deadline for a decision on Bobo was coming up, and it didn’t look like it was going to be a difficult choice. He’d made four relief appearances with an 0-1 record and an ERA somewhere around 9. Nonetheless, Holloman had unlimited confidence in himself, pestering Marion and Veeck ad nauseum with the refrain that he was a starting pitcher, not a reliever. Maybe just to shut him up, they relented and started Holloman against the Athletics on a rainy night in St. Louis. Now, the 1953 Athletics weren’t much better than the 1953 Browns. Still, it was a gutsy (silly?) move because, as Veeck himself noted, while Holloman could out-talk Veeck (a major accomplishment), he couldn’t outpitch him (not a major accomplishment). Recall that Veeck had an artificial leg, thanks to his stint in the Marines in WW2.
So what happened? Bobo Holloman became the third pitcher to throw a no-hitter in his first major league start. (Although some sources will say he was the first to do this, 19th Century pitchers Ted Breitenstein and Charlie Jones beat him to it by more than a half-century.) And what a no-hitter it was. The weather was so bad that Veeck gave rain checks to the 2,473 die-hards who showed up. Every time Holloman started to flag, a rain storm would come through to give him a rest. On their part, the Athletics hit line drives all over the park… and every single one was right at a Brownie. Allie Clark hit a home run… that just went foul. The best play was probably shortstop Billy Hunter going into centerfield to throw out Joe Astroth on a grounder up the middle to end the eighth inning. With a 6-0 lead, thanks in part to his own three RBIs (the only ones of his major league career), Holloman began the ninth by walking Elmer Valo and Eddie Joost, two of the Athletics plate discipline specialists. However, he got Dave Philley to hit into a double play (why he would be swinging down six runs after two walks is a matter of question) so that Holloman could then walk Loren Babe (his third walk of the inning and fifth of the game – he only struck out three) and put two men on again for Eddie Robinson… who flew out to end the game.
Veeck's explanation of what happened… "he's getting by because the hitters are giving him credit for having more stuff then he has." And that wasn’t Shirtsleeve Willie’s best line. The one you see quoted more often was, “I don’t think it’s really wise to send a man back to the minor leagues right after he’s become immortal… It looks as if you’re punishing him for throwing a no-hitter.”
So Veeck was stuck with Bobo, at least past the June 15 deadline, thus costing the Browns’ owner $25,000 he couldn’t afford. Plus a television he bought Bobo as a reward for his no-hitter. Although Holloman actually did win two more games (5-1 against the Indians on May 27 and 2-0 against the Red Sox on June 21) as a starter, he was sent back to the bullpen in early July and his final major league appearance was on July 19, 1953, after which Veeck managed to sell him to Toronto for $7500, despite the fact (or maybe because) that, after a formula derived by Bill James, he had pitched the second least-likely no-hitter in baseball history. (Jones being number one on the list.) Thus, Holloman’s no-hitter, the only complete game he threw in the majors, ended up costing Veeck $17,500 and a TV. Now that’s bad.
Holloman’s feat, though not duplicated, at least was echoed on July 22, 2007 by J.D. Durbin of the Phillies. Or maybe it was the Ghost of Bobo Holloman (he died on May 1, 1987 in Athens… Georgia that is) channeling in San Diego. Making his second major league start, Durbin threw a five-hit, three walk, three strikeout shutout at the Padres, winning 9-0, a result almost as improbable as Holloman’s no-hitter, since it lowered Durbin’s career ERA from 8.48 to 6.12. (His 2007 ERA went from 9.00 to 5.76.) So who would you rather have on your starting staff? Since Holloman’s major league career was almost exactly twice what Durbin’s is to date, it’s an easy comparison…
W-L G IP H BB SO ERA ERA+
Holloman 3-7 22 65 69 50 25 5.23 80
Durbin 2-3 11 32 41 20 21 6.12 73
That’s not much to choose from. They’re really pretty similar, except Bobo’s control was even worse than Durbin’s, and he gave up fewer hits and got fewer strikeouts per inning. Nonetheless, as desperate as the Phillies and their fans are for starting pitchers, Durbin may well be hailed as the team’s answer. Not so fast… for three reasons.
First – Petco Park is the best pitcher’s park in the National League.
Second – The Padres are something less than an offensive juggernaut. Although they have a few nice hitters who would be good complimentary pieces on a team with an offense like Phillies… notably the G Men; Giles (B.), Gonzalez, Greene and Gameboy (Milton Bradley), plus Mike Cameron and Jose Cruz… they don’t have anyone that scares you. If the Padres win the west, it will be on the strength of their starting pitching (which is, of course, very good) and Trevor Hoffman.
Third – Although J.D. Durbin was supposed to be a hot prospect when the Twins drafted him in the second round in 2000, he has been something less than that in the intervening years. After all, he was released by four different organizations – including the Phillies who re-signed him after he went through waivers -- earlier this year
In the great tradition of Bill Veeck’s 1953 campaign, it could well be that what looks good may be bad for the Phillies, who may now decide they don’t need another starter, and will go back in their hole to await wondrous things from a rotation consisting of two rookies, a second-year ace, a 44 year old marvel and Adam Eaton. That’s about as likely as Bobo Holloman’s no-hitter.