Despite an unprepossessing matchup, last fall’s baseball World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Texas Rangers was a honey, a seven-game struggle of the sort we haven’t seen for years. Game Six was a classic, featuring do-or-die comebacks from each team in an 11-inninger that ended with the Cardinals winning, 10-9, and, eventually, taking the championship.
Just as remarkable, though, was the quote given to espn.com after the sixth game by the Rangers’ Josh Hamilton, whose two-run home run in the 10th inning gave his team a 9-7 lead and, at the time, looked to be a game-winner. It concerned a conversation Hamilton says he had with God just before his memorable swing.
“He told me, ‘You haven’t hit one [a homer] in a while and this is the time you’re going to,” said Hamilton .
I still was digesting that revelation when I came across a story in the New York Times of November 2 about the horse trainer Larry Jones, whose filly Havre de Grace was favored in the Breeders Cup Classic a few days hence. Jones had been out of the sport the previous year because of burnout and physical ills, but had returned fit and, again, successful. He described what led him out of retirement thusly: “The Good Lord had a conversation with me. He told me that He had given me a talent, a blessing, and it was time for me to get my butt off the couch and start training horses.”
The quotes and their treatment caused me pause on a couple of grounds. The first was that they were buried in the body of the stories that contained them, not even rating a headline, and spurred no later discussion. You’d think the news that “God speaks to man” would cause a stir, but it didn’t.
Second, Hamilton’s assertion indicated that God not only was helping him but also was up on his stats, particularly the one showing that he’d gone homerless in his 65 previous post-season at-bats. With seven billion people on the planet and the usual array of wars, natural disasters and personal tragedies playing out, you’d think God would have plenty to occupy Him (or Her) besides our fun and games, but apparently that’s not the case.
Fact is, of course, that sports and religion are connected so closely in this land that the spectacle of athletes, etc., claiming intimacy with the deity doesn’t cause us to blink. If someone we actually know would tell us that he acted in such and such a way because of specific direction from Above we’d probably think he was daffy, but when an athlete (or a Republican presidential candidate) says that we smile benignly and continue the conversation. Decades of watching batters cross themselves before facing a pitcher, or jocks of all stripes pointing skyward after a signal achievement, have made the connection seem both natural and inevitable.
It’s not difficult to figure out why this should be so. If it’s true that there are no atheists in foxholes it’s also true that there are few in locker rooms, and for pretty much the same reason. Like war, all sports are games of inches, with barely measurable differences regularly separating success from failure. Even the most talented athlete knows full well that his day often will hinge on, say, the smidge by whether a line drive off his bat is caught or falls safely, and there’s enough randomness in the process to make it wise to propitiate the Almighty to help the breaks go his way. And—hey!—when the snoopy media drop by to talk, a shoutout to the Big Guy Upstairs might not hurt, either.
The rub comes when ostentatiously religious athletes like Tim Tebow take the field. Tebow, the Denver Broncos’ Lil’ Abnerish quarterback, has been in the playin’- and-prayin’ spotlight since his college days, punctuating his considerable gridiron feats with scriptural citations and prayerful poses that have come to be called “Tebowing.” In the process he’s become at once a celebrity with the extracurricular income to prove it, and a lightning rod for those on both sides of the religion-in-public issue that plays out in many American venues.
People who wince at Tebow’s doings often are hard pressed to explain why, but they shouldn’t be. Even granting his sincerity and good intentions (as I do), it’s enough to point out that his occupation consists of zero- sum games in which someone’s success always comes at someone else’s expense. Thus, for an athlete to imply that he enjoys God’s favor demeans his foe, who may believe himself to be equally worthy. That, I think, is what those Detroit Lions players were saying a few weeks back when they “Tebowed” after sacking or intercepting the Denver QB, although they might have expressed themselves better.
Indeed, the fact that failure and defeat are recurring themes in just about every athlete’s life probably goes farthest in explaining the group’s bent toward pietism. While most of us labor in obscurity, and rarely know if we’re winning or losing (or, even, how to keep score), the athlete’s failings are public and, thus, impossible to conceal. Every day in every sport half the teams lose, and even the best baseball hitters bat around .300, which means they fail about 70% of the time. Under those circumstances it’s tough to keep one’s chin up.
I read the other day that Plaxico Burress, the New York Jets’ pass receiver, has the motto “Everything Happens For A Reason” tattooed on his back. That’s a theological statement if there ever was one. Failure, defeat and even disgrace can be acceptable if they are seen as having the divine purpose of preparing one for greater tests to come. If Burress can believe that shooting himself in the leg in a nightclub with an illegally concealed weapon can have redeeming value, the rest of us can take heart from our own trials.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
SOUR GRAPES
One of the cinema’s best lines came in the toga comedy “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” when the slave Pseudolus, played by the great Zero Mostel, picked up a bottle of wine and asked , “Was 1 a good year?”
I can’t recall the answer but I can tell you that when it comes to baseball’s version of immortality the coming year 2012 won’t be vintage. The crop of first timers on the game’s Hall of Fame ballot, just out, is among the weakest in memory. Chances are that few of them will garner the 5% of the sportswriters’ vote needed to appear on next year’s ballot, much less set sculptors to work chiseling reliefs.
It works that way sometimes. Like in other things, there are good years and bad in baseball, and since ballplayers retire more or less randomly there’s no assurance that H of F spots will be filled in a steady manner. Election to Cooperstown in a player’s first year of eligibility isn’t the norm, and we present or former baseball writers who make up the 575-member electorate usually can rally around someone (1996 was the last year no one received the required 75% vote), but I can’t recall a less apt group of new eligibles than this one.
The 13, all of whom retired after the 2006 season, are as follows: Jeromy Burnitz, Vinny Castilla, Brian Jordan, Javy Lopez, Bill Mueller, Terry Mulholland, Phil Nevin, Brad Radke, Tim Salmon, Ruben Sierra, Bernie Williams, Tony Womack and Eric Young. All played the in the Major Leagues for at least 10 years, have been retired for five and were nominated by at least two of the Baseball Writers Association of America’s six-member committee formed for the purpose, the sole requirements for appearance on the ballot.
All had careers that ranged from good to very good and many were (are) nice fellas as well. Still, I’ll vote for none of them and can see only two—Lopez and Williams—even passing muster for a continued ballot presence. If you ever mentioned in the same breath the Hall of Fame and Burnitz, Jordan, Mueller, Mulholland, Nevin, Womack or Young, I’d be astonished. I never did.
It’s true, of course, that the line between good and great in a complex sport like baseball can be thin, and subject to interpretation. That the Hall doesn’t lack for members whose qualifications can be questioned is one of the things that enlivens the voting process and the commentary that always follows it. On every ballot are players whose accomplishments aren’t much different from those of, say, Bill Mazeroski or George Kell, whose plaques hang in Cooperstown, and there always are people who’ll say that if those guys are in there so should good old so and so, naming their choice of the moment.
In my editing days at the Wall Street Journal I’d occasionally find it necessary to tell a writer his piece wasn’t fit for publication. When he’d reply that we’d published worse, I’d tell him that I found that argument unpersuasive. So, too, do most of the Hall’s voters, which is why the Veterans Committee was formed to reconsider players we’d passed over in their permitted 15 years on our ballot. If you have a bone to pick regarding Maz or Kell, or quite a few others, take it up with the Vets, former players, managers and execs whose standards are less stringent than those of us scribes.
Withal, though, what’s bad news for some is good news for others. I’ll be voting for five players this year, all of whom I’ve supported before, and it’s likely that the absence of compelling new names will ease some paths to Cooperstown.
I’m hoping that one of those will be Jack Morris, who’s been knocking on the Hall’s door for 13 years now without being admitted. Why this is so is a mystery to me; he has a sterling won-lost record (254-186) and a mantle full of trophies including a World Series MVP (for 1991), and was a big-game pitcher without peer. His 10-inning shutout for the Minnesota Twins against the Atlanta Braves and John Smoltz in game seven of the ’91 Series was the best such performance I’ve seen.
I have a soft spot in my heart for shortstops, who are the best athletes on most teams, and I’ll be voting for two of them—Barry Larkin and Alan Trammell. The marvelous Larkin, a career Cincinnati Red, came up third in the voting in his first year on the ballot last year—at 62% behind selectees Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven-- and is a good bet to make it this time. Trammell’s election would be a surprise because he was mentioned on just 24% of last year’s ballots, but he was at or near the top of his position in most of his 20 big-league campaigns with the Detroit Tigers, and I find him no less worthy than Larkin.
I’ll vote for Lee Smith, a dominant relief pitcher with several teams, and Edgar Martinez, the Seattle Mariners’ peerless designated hitter. I’m not crazy about the DH in general, but it’s here to stay and I see no reason why its best practitioners shouldn’t be honored. On the same ground I’ll be backing Jim Thome when he comes up for a vote several years down the road.
I’m hoping my aforementioned five do well this year because the going is due to get tougher. As dim as this year’s new eligibles were, next year’s will be brilliant, including Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Curt Schilling and Craig Biggio. Room on that bus is going to be scarce.
I can’t recall the answer but I can tell you that when it comes to baseball’s version of immortality the coming year 2012 won’t be vintage. The crop of first timers on the game’s Hall of Fame ballot, just out, is among the weakest in memory. Chances are that few of them will garner the 5% of the sportswriters’ vote needed to appear on next year’s ballot, much less set sculptors to work chiseling reliefs.
It works that way sometimes. Like in other things, there are good years and bad in baseball, and since ballplayers retire more or less randomly there’s no assurance that H of F spots will be filled in a steady manner. Election to Cooperstown in a player’s first year of eligibility isn’t the norm, and we present or former baseball writers who make up the 575-member electorate usually can rally around someone (1996 was the last year no one received the required 75% vote), but I can’t recall a less apt group of new eligibles than this one.
The 13, all of whom retired after the 2006 season, are as follows: Jeromy Burnitz, Vinny Castilla, Brian Jordan, Javy Lopez, Bill Mueller, Terry Mulholland, Phil Nevin, Brad Radke, Tim Salmon, Ruben Sierra, Bernie Williams, Tony Womack and Eric Young. All played the in the Major Leagues for at least 10 years, have been retired for five and were nominated by at least two of the Baseball Writers Association of America’s six-member committee formed for the purpose, the sole requirements for appearance on the ballot.
All had careers that ranged from good to very good and many were (are) nice fellas as well. Still, I’ll vote for none of them and can see only two—Lopez and Williams—even passing muster for a continued ballot presence. If you ever mentioned in the same breath the Hall of Fame and Burnitz, Jordan, Mueller, Mulholland, Nevin, Womack or Young, I’d be astonished. I never did.
It’s true, of course, that the line between good and great in a complex sport like baseball can be thin, and subject to interpretation. That the Hall doesn’t lack for members whose qualifications can be questioned is one of the things that enlivens the voting process and the commentary that always follows it. On every ballot are players whose accomplishments aren’t much different from those of, say, Bill Mazeroski or George Kell, whose plaques hang in Cooperstown, and there always are people who’ll say that if those guys are in there so should good old so and so, naming their choice of the moment.
In my editing days at the Wall Street Journal I’d occasionally find it necessary to tell a writer his piece wasn’t fit for publication. When he’d reply that we’d published worse, I’d tell him that I found that argument unpersuasive. So, too, do most of the Hall’s voters, which is why the Veterans Committee was formed to reconsider players we’d passed over in their permitted 15 years on our ballot. If you have a bone to pick regarding Maz or Kell, or quite a few others, take it up with the Vets, former players, managers and execs whose standards are less stringent than those of us scribes.
Withal, though, what’s bad news for some is good news for others. I’ll be voting for five players this year, all of whom I’ve supported before, and it’s likely that the absence of compelling new names will ease some paths to Cooperstown.
I’m hoping that one of those will be Jack Morris, who’s been knocking on the Hall’s door for 13 years now without being admitted. Why this is so is a mystery to me; he has a sterling won-lost record (254-186) and a mantle full of trophies including a World Series MVP (for 1991), and was a big-game pitcher without peer. His 10-inning shutout for the Minnesota Twins against the Atlanta Braves and John Smoltz in game seven of the ’91 Series was the best such performance I’ve seen.
I have a soft spot in my heart for shortstops, who are the best athletes on most teams, and I’ll be voting for two of them—Barry Larkin and Alan Trammell. The marvelous Larkin, a career Cincinnati Red, came up third in the voting in his first year on the ballot last year—at 62% behind selectees Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven-- and is a good bet to make it this time. Trammell’s election would be a surprise because he was mentioned on just 24% of last year’s ballots, but he was at or near the top of his position in most of his 20 big-league campaigns with the Detroit Tigers, and I find him no less worthy than Larkin.
I’ll vote for Lee Smith, a dominant relief pitcher with several teams, and Edgar Martinez, the Seattle Mariners’ peerless designated hitter. I’m not crazy about the DH in general, but it’s here to stay and I see no reason why its best practitioners shouldn’t be honored. On the same ground I’ll be backing Jim Thome when he comes up for a vote several years down the road.
I’m hoping my aforementioned five do well this year because the going is due to get tougher. As dim as this year’s new eligibles were, next year’s will be brilliant, including Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, Curt Schilling and Craig Biggio. Room on that bus is going to be scarce.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
BASKETBALL JONES
The National Basketball Association lockout has been settled and the league says it will resume play on Christmas Day. Good. I enjoy basketball in all its forms and that includes the professional one. No doubt about it, those giraffes can play, and it’s a treat to watch them.
Nonetheless, the delay of the NBA season didn’t much distress me. Our sports calendar is so crowded that entertainment aplenty always is near at hand, and the last several weeks have been no exception. I’ve even tuned in to a few of the international soccer matches that a couple of Fox cable channels regularly offer. I can’t say I watched them whistle-to-whistle, but I liked what I saw. We Yanks stick up our noses at The Game the Rest of the World Loves Best, but we shouldn’t. Those guys can play, too.
So what are we to think of the agreement that ended the NBA unpleasantness? Nothing much that hasn’t occurred already. Conclusion No. 1 is that it’s their game (the owners’ and players’), not ours, and no matter how much we might love our favorite teams we shouldn’t believe otherwise. No. 2 is to remind ourselves that in big-time pro sports the real economic warfare isn’t between the owners and the players but between the owners and the owners, and that their so-called labor agreements are aimed mainly at restraining their own competitive urges. “Stop me before I spend again!” the owners plead, and at some point the players always say “okay.”
That said, though, we must resist the cliché that no one wins in a strike or lockout. Make no mistake, the owners won this one. Raising their cut of their league’s revenues (reportedly about $4.3 billion last season) to about 50% from 43% puts at least $300 million more into their pockets annually over the agreement’s 10-year term, or about what they say they’ve lost collectively in each of the past few seasons. Considering that those losses probably were overstated for bargaining purposes (they always are), the suits will be well ahead of the game.
But the longer the lockout continued the worse it would have been for the players. That’s because youth is fleeting while wealth endures, giving the owners a large and intrinsic edge in all such contests.
The real-world proof of that came from the lockout that cost the National Hockey League its entire 2004-05 season. The year before that showdown players’ salaries accounted for a reported 76% of NHL revenues. The settlement knocked that down to 54% and resulted in pay cuts averaging about 25% for every player then under contract. Team salary caps were instituted with fewer exceptions than the ones that survived the latest NBA settlement. Rookie salaries were severely capped. Add in the loss of an entire year’s salary, or about 20% of the average pro athlete’s career take, and you had a very cold winter in Hockeyland.
We fans know this, of course, but sympathy for the NBA players was scant during the recent bargaining. With an average annual salary of $5.1 million, and a median of about $2.3 million, they’re by far our best-paid team jocks, typically earning more in a year than most of us do in a lifetime. Comments made during the talks by a few players—and their union’s general counsel, for heaven’s sake—comparing the league to a plantation and its employees to slaves drew guffaws all around, undermining their cause and causing many to wonder what planet they were living on..
The talk these days about the 99% versus the 1% doesn’t do justice to the basketball pros’ singularity. In terms of physical attributes as well as income they’re in the top .001%, genetic geniuses whose height and agility set them apart in the most obvious of ways. Yeah, they must “work” to hone their skills and conditioning, but most of that consists of doing things regular people do for fun.
Today’s professional athletes like to compare themselves to entertainers whose unique talents entitle them to lush compensation, but that’s misleading all around. Movie stars can’t shine without the expensive accoutrements of their productions and even a song-and-dance man like Michael Jackson needed a vast array of musicians, other dancers, sound and lighting technicians and special-effects experts to put on a show worth big bucks at the box office.
The athlete’s context is more elaborate still, requiring not only a stage for its proper exhibition but also strong teammates, worthy opponents and contests with historical meaning. This the league provides. I suppose LeBron James could barnstorm with his version of the Washington Generals, but I think the public quickly would tire of that, as would he.
And so the basketballers will be back on court soon, and should be glad of it. The pro-football owners and players signed a new accord a few months ago amid much sturm und drang, and the baseballers are in the process of inking one without it, meaning that an era of labor peace lies ahead. That’ll free up the sports pages for more-interesting stuff, like box scores. Who says there’s no good news?
Nonetheless, the delay of the NBA season didn’t much distress me. Our sports calendar is so crowded that entertainment aplenty always is near at hand, and the last several weeks have been no exception. I’ve even tuned in to a few of the international soccer matches that a couple of Fox cable channels regularly offer. I can’t say I watched them whistle-to-whistle, but I liked what I saw. We Yanks stick up our noses at The Game the Rest of the World Loves Best, but we shouldn’t. Those guys can play, too.
So what are we to think of the agreement that ended the NBA unpleasantness? Nothing much that hasn’t occurred already. Conclusion No. 1 is that it’s their game (the owners’ and players’), not ours, and no matter how much we might love our favorite teams we shouldn’t believe otherwise. No. 2 is to remind ourselves that in big-time pro sports the real economic warfare isn’t between the owners and the players but between the owners and the owners, and that their so-called labor agreements are aimed mainly at restraining their own competitive urges. “Stop me before I spend again!” the owners plead, and at some point the players always say “okay.”
That said, though, we must resist the cliché that no one wins in a strike or lockout. Make no mistake, the owners won this one. Raising their cut of their league’s revenues (reportedly about $4.3 billion last season) to about 50% from 43% puts at least $300 million more into their pockets annually over the agreement’s 10-year term, or about what they say they’ve lost collectively in each of the past few seasons. Considering that those losses probably were overstated for bargaining purposes (they always are), the suits will be well ahead of the game.
But the longer the lockout continued the worse it would have been for the players. That’s because youth is fleeting while wealth endures, giving the owners a large and intrinsic edge in all such contests.
The real-world proof of that came from the lockout that cost the National Hockey League its entire 2004-05 season. The year before that showdown players’ salaries accounted for a reported 76% of NHL revenues. The settlement knocked that down to 54% and resulted in pay cuts averaging about 25% for every player then under contract. Team salary caps were instituted with fewer exceptions than the ones that survived the latest NBA settlement. Rookie salaries were severely capped. Add in the loss of an entire year’s salary, or about 20% of the average pro athlete’s career take, and you had a very cold winter in Hockeyland.
We fans know this, of course, but sympathy for the NBA players was scant during the recent bargaining. With an average annual salary of $5.1 million, and a median of about $2.3 million, they’re by far our best-paid team jocks, typically earning more in a year than most of us do in a lifetime. Comments made during the talks by a few players—and their union’s general counsel, for heaven’s sake—comparing the league to a plantation and its employees to slaves drew guffaws all around, undermining their cause and causing many to wonder what planet they were living on..
The talk these days about the 99% versus the 1% doesn’t do justice to the basketball pros’ singularity. In terms of physical attributes as well as income they’re in the top .001%, genetic geniuses whose height and agility set them apart in the most obvious of ways. Yeah, they must “work” to hone their skills and conditioning, but most of that consists of doing things regular people do for fun.
Today’s professional athletes like to compare themselves to entertainers whose unique talents entitle them to lush compensation, but that’s misleading all around. Movie stars can’t shine without the expensive accoutrements of their productions and even a song-and-dance man like Michael Jackson needed a vast array of musicians, other dancers, sound and lighting technicians and special-effects experts to put on a show worth big bucks at the box office.
The athlete’s context is more elaborate still, requiring not only a stage for its proper exhibition but also strong teammates, worthy opponents and contests with historical meaning. This the league provides. I suppose LeBron James could barnstorm with his version of the Washington Generals, but I think the public quickly would tire of that, as would he.
And so the basketballers will be back on court soon, and should be glad of it. The pro-football owners and players signed a new accord a few months ago amid much sturm und drang, and the baseballers are in the process of inking one without it, meaning that an era of labor peace lies ahead. That’ll free up the sports pages for more-interesting stuff, like box scores. Who says there’s no good news?
Thursday, November 10, 2011
SEX, LIES AND JOE PA
Back in 1984 I was still clearing my throat as a sports columnist but had already made a recurring topic of the crimes and deceptions of big-time college sports. My November 9 column of that year was about schools that hoked up their jock-graduation rates for public consumption.
Exhibit A was Penn State. In interviews and in university publications Nittany Lions’ head coach Joe Paterno and his aides, and other university officials, noised it about that the school graduated more than 90% of its varsity football players, a very high figure. As was (is) their wont, most sporting news mediums repeated those claims without verifying them, which amounted to endorsements.
To see what was doing I phoned the Penn State athletics department. I was shuffled around until I wound up with one Dave Baker, its information director. He told me the 90% figure was “pretty accurate,” but only if one counted players who’d reached their senior years at the school. “Actually,” he hedged further, “the figure used to be 90%. We think it’s dropped a shade the past few years but we don’t know. We haven’t calculated it lately.”
I asked about players who flunked out, transferred or otherwise dropped out before their four years of athletic eligibility expired. Baker said Penn State had never kept track of those, yet in the next breath he contested as too low one published report that had put the school’s overall football graduation rate at 67% because he said it miscounted dropouts. He took issue with an NFL Players Association finding that 61% (24 of 39) of the Penn State products who were in the NFL the previous year (1983) were degree holders, on grounds it was based on self reporting. Why he thought anyone with a degree would claim not to have one, he didn’t say.
In the piece I nailed a few other schools for similar fibs, including Alabama and Nebraska, but I’ve since regarded Penn State athletics with special skepticism. That’s because outfits that lie about small things will lie about larger ones. Also, under Paterno’s “Success With Honor” banner, it was one of a handful of universities that make, or have made, special claims to sanctity, a “We Do Things Right” Club that sets itself above the common scrum.
Michigan was part of this group until it was revealed that Ed Martin, a Detroit racketeer, was the sugar daddy of its Fab Five-era basketball teams. Notre Dame’s long membership has been punctured many times, most lately by episodes involving a young woman who committed suicide after the university didn’t promptly pursue her claim to have been raped by a Notre Dame football player (no charges have been brought against the player, partly because the woman isn’t alive to testify against him) and another in which a student died after coaches sent him up in a cherry-picker during a wind storm to videotape football practice, and the thing blew over. It doesn’t get worse than that, and it’s beyond me why no Domer heads have rolled as a result.
Strictly speaking, the current Penn State scandal, involving a long-time top assistant of Paterno’s who is accused of sexually molesting (so far) eight boys over a 15-year period, isn’t about sports. Rather, it’s another example of the corporate “damage control” mentality at work in institutions that, supposedly, are devoted to higher things than profit and hierarchal protection. The Roman Catholic Church’s leaders in many countries have fit that mold during the seemingly endless revelations about sexual-predator priests. So has the Boys Scouts of America in its handling of similar matters.
The involvement of Penn State coaches and officials in the alleged predations of former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky pivots on a night in March, 2002, when a graduate-assistant coach, visiting the football locker room to complete some chores, reportedly witnessed Sandusky raping a boy in a shower room. Rather than go to police immediately (or punch out Sandusky), the young man reportedly went home to mull his options. The next day he told his boss, Paterno, who told his boss, the school’s athletics director, who told his boss, a university vice-president, who told his boss, President Graham Spanier.
Apparently, none of them told the cops, meaning that, for at least the last nine years, they engaged in a coverup, allowing Sandusky to pursue his pleasures at the expense of boys involved in the youth charity he’d organized. For that entity’s events he was given the use of Penn State facilities, and he was spotted in the football complex as recently as the week before the allegations surfaced.
Knowing what they did, the thought that the Penn State honchos allowed ol’ Jer to go on doing what he was doing—maybe even under their noses-- boggles the mind. Paterno was rightly fired, along with the AD, VP and prez. Along with Sandusky, the AD and VP face criminal charges for not reporting his violations. Based on available evidence one must wonder why Paterno and Spanier haven’t been charged, too.
Among the many appalling things in this appalling episode was the reaction of some Penn State students. They chanted in Paterno’s support before he was fired on Wednesday night, and rioted in protest after the move was announced. The college-sports Establishment, including its governing body the NCAA, is ruled by the principle that the show must go on, no matter what offenses surround it. Now it seems that some of our young believe this, too.
Exhibit A was Penn State. In interviews and in university publications Nittany Lions’ head coach Joe Paterno and his aides, and other university officials, noised it about that the school graduated more than 90% of its varsity football players, a very high figure. As was (is) their wont, most sporting news mediums repeated those claims without verifying them, which amounted to endorsements.
To see what was doing I phoned the Penn State athletics department. I was shuffled around until I wound up with one Dave Baker, its information director. He told me the 90% figure was “pretty accurate,” but only if one counted players who’d reached their senior years at the school. “Actually,” he hedged further, “the figure used to be 90%. We think it’s dropped a shade the past few years but we don’t know. We haven’t calculated it lately.”
I asked about players who flunked out, transferred or otherwise dropped out before their four years of athletic eligibility expired. Baker said Penn State had never kept track of those, yet in the next breath he contested as too low one published report that had put the school’s overall football graduation rate at 67% because he said it miscounted dropouts. He took issue with an NFL Players Association finding that 61% (24 of 39) of the Penn State products who were in the NFL the previous year (1983) were degree holders, on grounds it was based on self reporting. Why he thought anyone with a degree would claim not to have one, he didn’t say.
In the piece I nailed a few other schools for similar fibs, including Alabama and Nebraska, but I’ve since regarded Penn State athletics with special skepticism. That’s because outfits that lie about small things will lie about larger ones. Also, under Paterno’s “Success With Honor” banner, it was one of a handful of universities that make, or have made, special claims to sanctity, a “We Do Things Right” Club that sets itself above the common scrum.
Michigan was part of this group until it was revealed that Ed Martin, a Detroit racketeer, was the sugar daddy of its Fab Five-era basketball teams. Notre Dame’s long membership has been punctured many times, most lately by episodes involving a young woman who committed suicide after the university didn’t promptly pursue her claim to have been raped by a Notre Dame football player (no charges have been brought against the player, partly because the woman isn’t alive to testify against him) and another in which a student died after coaches sent him up in a cherry-picker during a wind storm to videotape football practice, and the thing blew over. It doesn’t get worse than that, and it’s beyond me why no Domer heads have rolled as a result.
Strictly speaking, the current Penn State scandal, involving a long-time top assistant of Paterno’s who is accused of sexually molesting (so far) eight boys over a 15-year period, isn’t about sports. Rather, it’s another example of the corporate “damage control” mentality at work in institutions that, supposedly, are devoted to higher things than profit and hierarchal protection. The Roman Catholic Church’s leaders in many countries have fit that mold during the seemingly endless revelations about sexual-predator priests. So has the Boys Scouts of America in its handling of similar matters.
The involvement of Penn State coaches and officials in the alleged predations of former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky pivots on a night in March, 2002, when a graduate-assistant coach, visiting the football locker room to complete some chores, reportedly witnessed Sandusky raping a boy in a shower room. Rather than go to police immediately (or punch out Sandusky), the young man reportedly went home to mull his options. The next day he told his boss, Paterno, who told his boss, the school’s athletics director, who told his boss, a university vice-president, who told his boss, President Graham Spanier.
Apparently, none of them told the cops, meaning that, for at least the last nine years, they engaged in a coverup, allowing Sandusky to pursue his pleasures at the expense of boys involved in the youth charity he’d organized. For that entity’s events he was given the use of Penn State facilities, and he was spotted in the football complex as recently as the week before the allegations surfaced.
Knowing what they did, the thought that the Penn State honchos allowed ol’ Jer to go on doing what he was doing—maybe even under their noses-- boggles the mind. Paterno was rightly fired, along with the AD, VP and prez. Along with Sandusky, the AD and VP face criminal charges for not reporting his violations. Based on available evidence one must wonder why Paterno and Spanier haven’t been charged, too.
Among the many appalling things in this appalling episode was the reaction of some Penn State students. They chanted in Paterno’s support before he was fired on Wednesday night, and rioted in protest after the move was announced. The college-sports Establishment, including its governing body the NCAA, is ruled by the principle that the show must go on, no matter what offenses surround it. Now it seems that some of our young believe this, too.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
EXPERTS SHMEXPERTS
What’s up with this National Football League season, now firmly underway? If I knew I’d tell you, but I don’t. What I do know is that the “experts” (note the quote marks) have been wrong, as usual. If I said I knew that would make me an expert, and I’d be wrong, too.
One needn’t look past the standings to make that point. The team that went into the campaign as a Super Bowl favorite as a result of last season’s performance and between-seasons maneuverings was the Philadelphia Eagles. They seemed so well put together someone labeled them the “Dream Team.” Now they are 3-4 in the lost-won column and tied for last in their division.
Ditto, almost, for the New York Jets. Widely picked to finally recapture Namath-era glory, they are having trouble on both sides of the ball and trail both New England and Buffalo in the AFC East. The Atlanta Falcons, tabbed as the up-and-comer on the NFC side, are having similar difficulties gaining traction
Wronger yet have been the experts’ assessments of the likely affects of the owners’ lockout that suspended team activities from last March through July. The talking heads on ESPN and elsewhere unanimously decreed that that period of enforced idleness would weigh heaviest on rookie players and teams with new coaches seeking to install their “systems.” The mavens further intimated that without the endless string of rookie camps, mini-camps and “voluntary” workouts teams use to keep their charges busy during the off-season, the oh-so-sophisticated game would fall into a general state of disorganization.
Regarding the latter, the football still looks like football to me. Regarding the former, the best “stories” of the current season have been the revival of the San Francisco 49ers under first-year-head-coach Jim Harbaugh and the excellent play of Cam Newton, the rookie quarterback of the Carolina Panthers.
It’s noteworthy that Harbaugh, who’d spent the big majority of his previous coaching career in the collegiate ranks, easily is the least experienced of the league’s eight new head coaches, and that Newton, with only two full college seasons as a starter under his belt (one of them at a junior college!) is the rookiest of the rookie QBs. Obviously, some guys just know how to coach or play football.
A couple of other things about the NFL have caught my eye this year. To wit:
PLEADING FOR PENALTIES-- Every year for the past several I’ve been dismayed by the blizzard of penalty flags NFL officials generate, and this season’s storm seems to be the worst so far. For this I blame the league’s growing instant-replay culture. With every play subject to microscopic video scrutiny and analysis, field officials are pushed to err on the side of caution, escaping possible criticism by calling penalties when only the hint of them exists. That raises the unhealthy suspicion that they, not the combatants, most determine scoreboard outcomes.
Last April I wrote about the book “Scorecasting,” by Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim. Its key thesis, backed by research, is that the home-field advantage that’s universal in team sports results mostly from official bias caused by the human desire of refs, umps, etc., to be agreeable to the people closest at hand; i.e., the home fans.
It seems that many NFL players and fans also have read the book. Instant uproars over adverse calls, or the lack of favorable ones, have become the norm around the league, especially regarding the most-odious call of pass interference. Moreover, such demonstrations seem to be working.
I refer especially to a play in the Pittsburgh Steelers-Arizona Cardinals game on October 23 in suburban Phoenix. When a contested pass to Cardinals’ receiver Larry Fitzgerald fell incomplete, Fitzgerald raised his arms in protest as the current script dictates, and the home crowd howled in agreement. After a good 30 seconds, and an officials’ huddle, a yellow flag against the Steeler defender fluttered to earth.
When do officials confer over a pass-interference call? When the home crowd wants them to, I guess.
HOW MUCH IS ONE PLAYER WORTH? Plenty when the player is Peyton Manning. After a 3-13 rookie break-in season in 1998, the nonpareil quarterback led the Indianapolis Colts to victory in 72% of their regular-season games over the next 12 years (138-54) and into two Super Bowls. This year, with him out with a neck injury, they’re 0-8 and, seemingly, headed toward 0-16.
True, these Colts have defects elsewhere than at quarterback. Their offensive line, long a bulwark, has sprung leaks and there must be something wrong with a defense that allows 62 points in a game, as it did against New Orleans a couple of Sundays ago. Still, Manning’s absence has been the main cause of the abrupt 360 in their fortunes.
There’s a nice touch of irony to the Colts’ situation. If they do go 0-16 (or, even, 1-15) they’ll probably have a crack at the clear No. 1 pick in next April’s draft-- Stanford QB Andrew Luck. The only thing that might bother them about taking Luck is that the experts agree he’s a future star, a Manning in the making. That should give anyone pause.
One needn’t look past the standings to make that point. The team that went into the campaign as a Super Bowl favorite as a result of last season’s performance and between-seasons maneuverings was the Philadelphia Eagles. They seemed so well put together someone labeled them the “Dream Team.” Now they are 3-4 in the lost-won column and tied for last in their division.
Ditto, almost, for the New York Jets. Widely picked to finally recapture Namath-era glory, they are having trouble on both sides of the ball and trail both New England and Buffalo in the AFC East. The Atlanta Falcons, tabbed as the up-and-comer on the NFC side, are having similar difficulties gaining traction
Wronger yet have been the experts’ assessments of the likely affects of the owners’ lockout that suspended team activities from last March through July. The talking heads on ESPN and elsewhere unanimously decreed that that period of enforced idleness would weigh heaviest on rookie players and teams with new coaches seeking to install their “systems.” The mavens further intimated that without the endless string of rookie camps, mini-camps and “voluntary” workouts teams use to keep their charges busy during the off-season, the oh-so-sophisticated game would fall into a general state of disorganization.
Regarding the latter, the football still looks like football to me. Regarding the former, the best “stories” of the current season have been the revival of the San Francisco 49ers under first-year-head-coach Jim Harbaugh and the excellent play of Cam Newton, the rookie quarterback of the Carolina Panthers.
It’s noteworthy that Harbaugh, who’d spent the big majority of his previous coaching career in the collegiate ranks, easily is the least experienced of the league’s eight new head coaches, and that Newton, with only two full college seasons as a starter under his belt (one of them at a junior college!) is the rookiest of the rookie QBs. Obviously, some guys just know how to coach or play football.
A couple of other things about the NFL have caught my eye this year. To wit:
PLEADING FOR PENALTIES-- Every year for the past several I’ve been dismayed by the blizzard of penalty flags NFL officials generate, and this season’s storm seems to be the worst so far. For this I blame the league’s growing instant-replay culture. With every play subject to microscopic video scrutiny and analysis, field officials are pushed to err on the side of caution, escaping possible criticism by calling penalties when only the hint of them exists. That raises the unhealthy suspicion that they, not the combatants, most determine scoreboard outcomes.
Last April I wrote about the book “Scorecasting,” by Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim. Its key thesis, backed by research, is that the home-field advantage that’s universal in team sports results mostly from official bias caused by the human desire of refs, umps, etc., to be agreeable to the people closest at hand; i.e., the home fans.
It seems that many NFL players and fans also have read the book. Instant uproars over adverse calls, or the lack of favorable ones, have become the norm around the league, especially regarding the most-odious call of pass interference. Moreover, such demonstrations seem to be working.
I refer especially to a play in the Pittsburgh Steelers-Arizona Cardinals game on October 23 in suburban Phoenix. When a contested pass to Cardinals’ receiver Larry Fitzgerald fell incomplete, Fitzgerald raised his arms in protest as the current script dictates, and the home crowd howled in agreement. After a good 30 seconds, and an officials’ huddle, a yellow flag against the Steeler defender fluttered to earth.
When do officials confer over a pass-interference call? When the home crowd wants them to, I guess.
HOW MUCH IS ONE PLAYER WORTH? Plenty when the player is Peyton Manning. After a 3-13 rookie break-in season in 1998, the nonpareil quarterback led the Indianapolis Colts to victory in 72% of their regular-season games over the next 12 years (138-54) and into two Super Bowls. This year, with him out with a neck injury, they’re 0-8 and, seemingly, headed toward 0-16.
True, these Colts have defects elsewhere than at quarterback. Their offensive line, long a bulwark, has sprung leaks and there must be something wrong with a defense that allows 62 points in a game, as it did against New Orleans a couple of Sundays ago. Still, Manning’s absence has been the main cause of the abrupt 360 in their fortunes.
There’s a nice touch of irony to the Colts’ situation. If they do go 0-16 (or, even, 1-15) they’ll probably have a crack at the clear No. 1 pick in next April’s draft-- Stanford QB Andrew Luck. The only thing that might bother them about taking Luck is that the experts agree he’s a future star, a Manning in the making. That should give anyone pause.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
BEANE BALL
Wife Susie and I saw the baseball movie “Moneyball” last week. It starred Brad Pitt, normally not my favorite actor, but I thought he was good in the role of Billy Beane, the Oakland A’s general manager whose adoption of Bill James’s statistical slants on the game helped turn his low-payroll team into a winner in the first years of the present century. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s script excellently captured the content and rhythms of baseball speech, no small feat for an outsider.
We saw the movie in the company of a couple of non-fan friends, and afterward they asked me if I knew which parts of the movie were true and which weren’t. A few discrepancies occurred immediately, but I later did a bit of research and discovered several more. I pass them on here in the interest of sports education.
Let me say first that I understand the difference between life and art and the urge to sometimes improve on the former in the interest of the latter. The movie’s producers wanted to tell a compelling story and, for the most part, did. That’s the business they’re in, and good for them. Still, one shouldn’t confuse “based on truth” for the real thing. It’s not good for one’s mental health.
A main invention of the film was the character of assistant general manager Peter Brand, whom baseball-guy Beane hired to install Jamesian technology into the A’s field operations. Brand’s real-life counterpart is Paul DePodesta, who after his A’s stint became the general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers and now works in the New York Mets’ front office.
Character Brand, played by the actor Jonah Hill, held an economics degree from Yale. DePodesta has an economics degree from Harvard. Hill is plump and nerdy. DePodesta may be nerdy but his photos reveal him to be quite fit looking, and his Wikipedia biography says he played baseball and football at Harvard. Obviously, making Brand a schlub helped the filmmakers cast the movie A’s into a “Bad News Bears” mold, a tried-and-true movie device.
A more-basic and related divergence between film and truth had to do with the makeup of the 2002 A’s team that was the film’s focus. In the movie the A’s had been devastated by the loss to free agency of stars Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon and had to scour the castoff lists to replace them. It portrayed as the new stars of the team the weak-winged first-baseman Scott Hatteberg, the over-the-hill outfielder David Justice and the funny-throwing relief pitcher Cory Bradford, none of whose true value was apparent to anyone but the Beane braintrust.
While Hatteberg, Justice and Bradford were useful role players, the real ’02 A’s had a heckuva lineup otherwise. It included shortstop Miguel Tejada, whose .308 batting average, 34 home runs and 131 runs batted in won him election as the American League’s Most Valuable Player that season, and third-baseman Eric Chavez, another young power hitter (34 homers, 109 RBIs) of All-Star caliber.
Oakland’s starting-pitching rotation that year featured the young stars Barry Zito, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder, whose combined won-lost record was 57-21. Zito (23-5) was the AL’s Cy Young Award winner, giving the team the league’s best pitcher as well as its best overall player. The Bad News Bears they weren’t.
It’s noteworthy that Tejada, Chavez, Zito, Hudson and Mulder (none of whose names I recall hearing in the movie) all were products of the Oakland farm system, signed as draftees or free agents by the team’s scouts, some before the Beane regime began in 1998. The scouts were portrayed in the movie as Neanderthals, sitting around spitting tobacco juice into paper cups and spouting baseball saws. I guess they weren’t so dumb after all.
Equally misleading, I thought, was the relationship between the statistical underpinnings of the “Moneyball” slant on baseball and the feats of the ’02 A’s, especially the 20-game winning streak that propelled them into that season’s playoffs. The streak was a great achievement, all right, but it was a fluke and not the result of sort of calculations on which Beane’s roster was built.
Much of what James contributed to baseball back then (he’s moved on since) stemmed from his fresh focus on on-base percentage (OPB; hits plus walks divided by times at bat) rather than straight batting average as the prime measure of offensive efficiency and defensive emphasis. As Beane succinctly put it in an interview I did with him for a 2003 piece in Sports Business Journal, “we look for batters who take balls and pitchers who throw strikes.” Often, that kind of player was undervalued on the baseball market, giving an edge to teams in the know.
Baseball is the game of the long haul and the small difference, and the difference between a hitter with an ordinary OBP of .330 and one with a quite-good .380 is five hits or walks in 100 plate appearances. That works out to one more scoring opportunity every four or five games, producing, maybe, an extra run or two over that span. A lineup of walk-taking hitters and walk-stingy pitchers might add a half-dozen or so wins for a team over a 162-game campaign. That’s a nice addition but alone is hardly the stuff of epic winning streaks.
The Beane-led A’s had a great run from 2000 through 2006, winning almost 59% of their games and several divisional titles. Alas for them, everyone else now knows what they do, and they haven’t had a winning season since. Now that his daughter is older, divorced-father Beane no longer is tied to the Oakland area, and no one would be surprised if he bails for a larger-market club.
Truth is, “Moneyball” is fine but being rich is better.
We saw the movie in the company of a couple of non-fan friends, and afterward they asked me if I knew which parts of the movie were true and which weren’t. A few discrepancies occurred immediately, but I later did a bit of research and discovered several more. I pass them on here in the interest of sports education.
Let me say first that I understand the difference between life and art and the urge to sometimes improve on the former in the interest of the latter. The movie’s producers wanted to tell a compelling story and, for the most part, did. That’s the business they’re in, and good for them. Still, one shouldn’t confuse “based on truth” for the real thing. It’s not good for one’s mental health.
A main invention of the film was the character of assistant general manager Peter Brand, whom baseball-guy Beane hired to install Jamesian technology into the A’s field operations. Brand’s real-life counterpart is Paul DePodesta, who after his A’s stint became the general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers and now works in the New York Mets’ front office.
Character Brand, played by the actor Jonah Hill, held an economics degree from Yale. DePodesta has an economics degree from Harvard. Hill is plump and nerdy. DePodesta may be nerdy but his photos reveal him to be quite fit looking, and his Wikipedia biography says he played baseball and football at Harvard. Obviously, making Brand a schlub helped the filmmakers cast the movie A’s into a “Bad News Bears” mold, a tried-and-true movie device.
A more-basic and related divergence between film and truth had to do with the makeup of the 2002 A’s team that was the film’s focus. In the movie the A’s had been devastated by the loss to free agency of stars Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon and had to scour the castoff lists to replace them. It portrayed as the new stars of the team the weak-winged first-baseman Scott Hatteberg, the over-the-hill outfielder David Justice and the funny-throwing relief pitcher Cory Bradford, none of whose true value was apparent to anyone but the Beane braintrust.
While Hatteberg, Justice and Bradford were useful role players, the real ’02 A’s had a heckuva lineup otherwise. It included shortstop Miguel Tejada, whose .308 batting average, 34 home runs and 131 runs batted in won him election as the American League’s Most Valuable Player that season, and third-baseman Eric Chavez, another young power hitter (34 homers, 109 RBIs) of All-Star caliber.
Oakland’s starting-pitching rotation that year featured the young stars Barry Zito, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder, whose combined won-lost record was 57-21. Zito (23-5) was the AL’s Cy Young Award winner, giving the team the league’s best pitcher as well as its best overall player. The Bad News Bears they weren’t.
It’s noteworthy that Tejada, Chavez, Zito, Hudson and Mulder (none of whose names I recall hearing in the movie) all were products of the Oakland farm system, signed as draftees or free agents by the team’s scouts, some before the Beane regime began in 1998. The scouts were portrayed in the movie as Neanderthals, sitting around spitting tobacco juice into paper cups and spouting baseball saws. I guess they weren’t so dumb after all.
Equally misleading, I thought, was the relationship between the statistical underpinnings of the “Moneyball” slant on baseball and the feats of the ’02 A’s, especially the 20-game winning streak that propelled them into that season’s playoffs. The streak was a great achievement, all right, but it was a fluke and not the result of sort of calculations on which Beane’s roster was built.
Much of what James contributed to baseball back then (he’s moved on since) stemmed from his fresh focus on on-base percentage (OPB; hits plus walks divided by times at bat) rather than straight batting average as the prime measure of offensive efficiency and defensive emphasis. As Beane succinctly put it in an interview I did with him for a 2003 piece in Sports Business Journal, “we look for batters who take balls and pitchers who throw strikes.” Often, that kind of player was undervalued on the baseball market, giving an edge to teams in the know.
Baseball is the game of the long haul and the small difference, and the difference between a hitter with an ordinary OBP of .330 and one with a quite-good .380 is five hits or walks in 100 plate appearances. That works out to one more scoring opportunity every four or five games, producing, maybe, an extra run or two over that span. A lineup of walk-taking hitters and walk-stingy pitchers might add a half-dozen or so wins for a team over a 162-game campaign. That’s a nice addition but alone is hardly the stuff of epic winning streaks.
The Beane-led A’s had a great run from 2000 through 2006, winning almost 59% of their games and several divisional titles. Alas for them, everyone else now knows what they do, and they haven’t had a winning season since. Now that his daughter is older, divorced-father Beane no longer is tied to the Oakland area, and no one would be surprised if he bails for a larger-market club.
Truth is, “Moneyball” is fine but being rich is better.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
511, 309, 36
When the New York Yankees’ Mariano Rivera broke Trevor Hoffman’s baseball regular-season career saves record of 601 a few weeks ago, a considerable fuss was made, and appropriately. Rivera is a great relief pitcher and we might not see his like again for quite a while.
But the suggestions that his mark (which still is abuilding) might never be broken seemed way off the mark. Yes, he has almost 300 more saves than any other active pitcher (Francisco Cordero is next with 326), but never is a long time, which is why the adage “never say never” is, well, an adage. Rivera isn’t Superman, so some day someone will beat it. Of that you can be sure.
The same can be said of just about every other baseball record. Ty Cobb’s career hits mark of 4,189 stood for 57 years but Pete Rose took it down in 1985; eventually, someone will take down Rose’s 4,256. Joe DiMaggio’s consecutive-games hitting streak of 56, set in 1941, is widely seen as eternal, but heck, it’s already been topped in the minor leagues and the colleges, and it, too, will fall.
However (my favorite word), a few diamond records are highly unlikely to be surpassed, because of the way the sport has changed over the decades. Foremost among these is the 511 wins that Denton “Cy” Young posted in a 22-season Major League career that began in 1890 and ended in 1911. Less noticed, but no less noteworthy, I think, are the marks for the most three-base hits, or triples. For multiple reasons, none of them reversible, the three-bagger has become an endangered species. That’s a sad fate for this most-exciting of baseball’s recurring plays.
First, let’s look at Young’s mark. His towering win total spanned some fundamental changes in baseball’s rules, such as the 1893 movement of the pitcher’s rubber (actually, it was a “box” before then) from 55 feet 6 inches from home plate to its present 60 feet, 6 inches. It came at a time when starting pitchers performed at least every fourth game instead of every fifth or sixth as at present, and were expected to finish what they started. The game’s so-called “dead-ball era”—before the introduction of cork-centered baseballs in 1911 (Young’s last competitive year) — boosted pitchers’ egos by keeping scores low.
Still, no pitcher even then came close to Young’s achievements, making them a unique product of the man and his time. A big right hander, officially listed at 6-foot-2 and 210 pounds although he grew heavier as he aged, the young Cy had such a blazing fastball that his nickname was short for “cyclone,” for the reputed force of his deliveries. His velocity slowed with time, as all pitchers’ do, but he compensated with a rubber arm and the always-superior control that gave him a 1.5 walks-per-game average that few others have matched. “I aim to make the batter hit the ball, and throw as few pitches as possible,” Young noted as his career wound down.
Besides his wins record, 94 greater than anyone else’s, the Ohio farmer holds the career marks for innings pitched (7,356), starts (815), complete games (749) and (uh-huh) loses (316), all also invulnerable. He had 15 seasons with 20 or more victories and five with 30 or more. He threw the first pitch in World Series history, in the 1903 matchup of his Boston Americans and the Pittsburgh Pirates (Boston won it, five games to three), and in 1904 recorded the first perfect game in the new century. Wrote the poet Ogden Nash:
“Y is for Young
The magnificent Cy;
People batted against him
But I never knew why.”
The decline of the triple has so long been part of baseball life that few fans today know the records for the feat, or their holders; they are 309 for a career, by Sam Crawford (1899-1917), and 36 for a season, by the Pirates’ John Wilson, in 1912. The unlikelihood of their being surpassed is seen by the facts that only three currently active Major Leaguers—veterans Carl Crawford, Jimmy Rollins and Johnny Damon— have hit as many as 100, and that no player who performed after 1928 has hit as many as 200. A dozen by one player in a season these days can lead a league.
Lots of triples were the result of an era in which batted balls didn’t carry well, outfielders played shallow and wore little, flat gloves quite unlike the baskets their present-day counterparts tote, and ballparks were huge and, often, oddly shaped. The centerfield fence in the Polo Grounds in New York was a distant 483 feet from home plate; at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field and Cleveland’s League Park they were 460-plus feet away. Balls that got past outfielders there rolled and rolled, and allowed batters to run and run. Inside-the-park home runs were about as common as one’s hit over a fence.
Most baseball statistical records are just that—statistics. Aside from its historical significance Barry Bonds’ 73rd home run in 2001 wasn’t much different from his first that season, or his 22nd, or 46th. The triple, though, is the kind of play-- beginning with a sharply hit ball between the outfielders and, usually, ending in a cloud of dust and an umpire’s close call—that engenders intrinsic and unique excitement. Its eclipse by modern trends is to be mourned.
To appreciate what we’re missing we must turn to the arts, specifically to Philip Roth’s 1973 baseball-themed book “The Great American Novel.” In it Luke Gofannon, Roth’s fictional superstar, had just completed a strenuous bout of lovemaking with a famous beauty. Under her questioning, he professed that she thrilled him more than a stolen base, a shoestring catch or a home run. (“Smack a homer and that’s it, it’s over,” he said.).
But when the woman asked him if she’d been better than a triple, his evaluation changed. “I can’t tell a lie,” he said. “There just ain’t nothing like a triple.”
But the suggestions that his mark (which still is abuilding) might never be broken seemed way off the mark. Yes, he has almost 300 more saves than any other active pitcher (Francisco Cordero is next with 326), but never is a long time, which is why the adage “never say never” is, well, an adage. Rivera isn’t Superman, so some day someone will beat it. Of that you can be sure.
The same can be said of just about every other baseball record. Ty Cobb’s career hits mark of 4,189 stood for 57 years but Pete Rose took it down in 1985; eventually, someone will take down Rose’s 4,256. Joe DiMaggio’s consecutive-games hitting streak of 56, set in 1941, is widely seen as eternal, but heck, it’s already been topped in the minor leagues and the colleges, and it, too, will fall.
However (my favorite word), a few diamond records are highly unlikely to be surpassed, because of the way the sport has changed over the decades. Foremost among these is the 511 wins that Denton “Cy” Young posted in a 22-season Major League career that began in 1890 and ended in 1911. Less noticed, but no less noteworthy, I think, are the marks for the most three-base hits, or triples. For multiple reasons, none of them reversible, the three-bagger has become an endangered species. That’s a sad fate for this most-exciting of baseball’s recurring plays.
First, let’s look at Young’s mark. His towering win total spanned some fundamental changes in baseball’s rules, such as the 1893 movement of the pitcher’s rubber (actually, it was a “box” before then) from 55 feet 6 inches from home plate to its present 60 feet, 6 inches. It came at a time when starting pitchers performed at least every fourth game instead of every fifth or sixth as at present, and were expected to finish what they started. The game’s so-called “dead-ball era”—before the introduction of cork-centered baseballs in 1911 (Young’s last competitive year) — boosted pitchers’ egos by keeping scores low.
Still, no pitcher even then came close to Young’s achievements, making them a unique product of the man and his time. A big right hander, officially listed at 6-foot-2 and 210 pounds although he grew heavier as he aged, the young Cy had such a blazing fastball that his nickname was short for “cyclone,” for the reputed force of his deliveries. His velocity slowed with time, as all pitchers’ do, but he compensated with a rubber arm and the always-superior control that gave him a 1.5 walks-per-game average that few others have matched. “I aim to make the batter hit the ball, and throw as few pitches as possible,” Young noted as his career wound down.
Besides his wins record, 94 greater than anyone else’s, the Ohio farmer holds the career marks for innings pitched (7,356), starts (815), complete games (749) and (uh-huh) loses (316), all also invulnerable. He had 15 seasons with 20 or more victories and five with 30 or more. He threw the first pitch in World Series history, in the 1903 matchup of his Boston Americans and the Pittsburgh Pirates (Boston won it, five games to three), and in 1904 recorded the first perfect game in the new century. Wrote the poet Ogden Nash:
“Y is for Young
The magnificent Cy;
People batted against him
But I never knew why.”
The decline of the triple has so long been part of baseball life that few fans today know the records for the feat, or their holders; they are 309 for a career, by Sam Crawford (1899-1917), and 36 for a season, by the Pirates’ John Wilson, in 1912. The unlikelihood of their being surpassed is seen by the facts that only three currently active Major Leaguers—veterans Carl Crawford, Jimmy Rollins and Johnny Damon— have hit as many as 100, and that no player who performed after 1928 has hit as many as 200. A dozen by one player in a season these days can lead a league.
Lots of triples were the result of an era in which batted balls didn’t carry well, outfielders played shallow and wore little, flat gloves quite unlike the baskets their present-day counterparts tote, and ballparks were huge and, often, oddly shaped. The centerfield fence in the Polo Grounds in New York was a distant 483 feet from home plate; at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field and Cleveland’s League Park they were 460-plus feet away. Balls that got past outfielders there rolled and rolled, and allowed batters to run and run. Inside-the-park home runs were about as common as one’s hit over a fence.
Most baseball statistical records are just that—statistics. Aside from its historical significance Barry Bonds’ 73rd home run in 2001 wasn’t much different from his first that season, or his 22nd, or 46th. The triple, though, is the kind of play-- beginning with a sharply hit ball between the outfielders and, usually, ending in a cloud of dust and an umpire’s close call—that engenders intrinsic and unique excitement. Its eclipse by modern trends is to be mourned.
To appreciate what we’re missing we must turn to the arts, specifically to Philip Roth’s 1973 baseball-themed book “The Great American Novel.” In it Luke Gofannon, Roth’s fictional superstar, had just completed a strenuous bout of lovemaking with a famous beauty. Under her questioning, he professed that she thrilled him more than a stolen base, a shoestring catch or a home run. (“Smack a homer and that’s it, it’s over,” he said.).
But when the woman asked him if she’d been better than a triple, his evaluation changed. “I can’t tell a lie,” he said. “There just ain’t nothing like a triple.”
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