Monthly Archives: June 2010

Baseball

The Pros of Strasburg-Mania, and One Tiny Con

strasburg.jpgStephen Strasburg’s major league debut was everything (almost) everyone hoped it would be. I’ll admit there was a part of me that wanted Strasburg to, if not fail, then perform in a middling fashion. There was no way (I thought) the hype could possibly match the reality. But it did, and then some. After seeing how lights out he was, and ignoring the fact that the Mets will have to face this guy a couple of times a season for at least the next few years, I had to admit he was something awesome to behold.

Of course, some people pointed out that Strasburg’s start came against the lowly Pirates (like this jerk did). But with some time to think about my dumb tweet, I’ve changed my mind and would like to echo the sentiments expressed by Walkoff Walk. The Pirates are still a major league team. They have some decent hitters, like Andrew McCutchen, Delwyn Young, and, okay, why not, Lastings Milledge. Even the worst teams in baseball do not strike out 14 times in one game very often. Any time a pitcher racks up that many Ks, no matter who the opponent is, it’s amazing. Especially when he fans the last seven batters to face him and is still throwing 99 mph as he does it.

Almost as impressive as the 14 strikeouts: Strasburg did not walk a single batter. I bet you’d have to look long and hard to find the last time a pitcher made his first major league start and didn’t issue a single free pass. And if you did find such a start, it was probably because that rookie gave up seven straight hits and was yanked before recording an out.

I also heard/read some people mocking Nats fans for never showing up to games before now, and leaving when Strasburg left the game. That last act is, admittedly, a little shabby. But up to this point, you can’t say the Nationals had much to cheer for, save Ryan Zimmerman and the occasional anomalous hot streak. I don’t blame people from staying away from the ballpark. Going to games is expensive. If you’re going to invest that amount of money and time, the on-field product better be worth it, and up to this point, it hasn’t been.

It reminds me of 2008, when the Rays made the playoffs and lots of fans (particularly of the Red Sox stripe) mocked the folkways of a fanbase that had no experience with packed stadiums and postseason baseball. Such criticism is totally unfair, because all fandom starts somewhere. Just because the Sox had almost a century’s head start to build its mythos doesn’t make their fandom any more evolved or righteous.

In 1905, some handlebar-mustachioed gentleman decided to take in the Boston nine and see what all the fuss was about; now 100 years later, his descendents are Sox fans. If this person had grown up in Tampa Bay, he wouldn’t have had an opportunity to see a major league baseball team in his hometown for 90 years. Whose fault would that be? Nobody’s.

I’m sure there’s kids in Florida who got hooked on baseball for the first time because of the excitement of that first postseason in Tampa. Now they’re fans for life, and they’ll pass that passion along to their kids. Likewise, people from DC who had only a middling interest in the Nationals could get caught along the tide of Strasburg-mania, and in the process, become real fans. And the people who’ve been “real fans” all along get to look down their noses at the newcomers and boast that they liked the Nats before it was cool. Win-win!

My only objection, and it has little to do with the second coming of Koufax himself: I’ve heard more than one person say that Strasburg’s debut was a great tonic for “long suffering” Nats fans. Here I must raise a hand and object. The Nationals have only been around for six seasons. They have not existed for a sufficient amount of time to have a long suffering fanbase. For that, look at the team from Pittsburgh they just defeated. Or Indians fans. Or Royals fans.

Better yet, look to the dispossessed Expos fans, who were left without a team when the now-Nationals left Montreal. There’s no better definition of a long-suffering fanbase than one whose team split town and ain’t never coming back. Particularly since Expos fans must have seen the execution coming from miles away, as MLB did everything in its power to drain the Expos of what little life they had. They moved “home” games to Puerto Rico. They let Jeff Loria run the team into the ground. And they took over the franchise but didn’t allow it to improve in any way.

Just consider that, Nats fans. Your team may have been a doormat up until this point, but least it still exists.

Baseball

The Non-Persistence of Memory, George Steinbrenner Edition

bigstein.jpgI have now almost totally weaned myself off of listening to WFAN (apart from Mets games). It was hard at first, because I grew up in a house where this station was on all the time. The sounds of sports radio, however dumb, are like audio comfort food to me. But I’ve come to realize it’s more like audio Cheetos–it provides no nutrition and leaves behind a sticky, powdery mess.

However, I will occasionally tune in after a good series for the Mets. I like to soak up some good vibes and listen to those sad sacks who bitch and moan no matter what the team does. I did this yesterday and also heard the late morning/early afternoon hosts Joe Benigno and Evan Roberts interview Bill Madden, Latino-phobic Daily News scribe and George Steinbrenner biographer.

I have yet to read his Steinbrenner book, though I would like to. But if a subtitle like “The Last Lion of Baseball” didn’t clue you into the book’s tone, then this interview would have (you can hear the whole thing here). Like most folks who speak of Big Stein these days, Madden was effusive in his praise of the Yankees owner. He credits Steinbrenner with “making the Yankees a billion-dollar enterprise”. Asked if he should be in the Hall of Fame, Madden responded, “if you tried to write a definitive history of baseball, I defy you to be able to do it without mentioning George Steinbrenner prominently throughout it.”

You also can’t write a history of the 2000’s without mentioning George W. Bush prominently throughout it. That doesn’t make him a great president. He had a lot of impact on the world, and most of it was negative. Prominence doesn’t necessarily equal greatness, and it certainly doesn’t necessarily equal goodness.

I know I’ve written about this before, but whenever confronted with this take on Steinbrenner, I feel like I have to raise my hand and provide a counter-argument. Because with each passing year, the idea of George Steinbrenner as a terrible owner seems to trickle down the memory hole.

And I know I’ve told this story before, too, but it also bears repeating because no one seems to remember this era anymore. The day Steinbrenner received his second “lifetime” suspension in 1990, I was at my grandparents house. I remember it distinctly because my uncle–an out-of-his-skull fanatical Yankees fan–was also there, and when the news came down, he literally leaped in the air, clapped his hand, and yelled with joy.

Because by that point, Yankee fans were in open revolt. The 1980s were an anxious, fallow period for the franchise. Despite spending top dollar on the best available free agents (surprise, surprise), the Yankees missed out on the playoffs for 13 straight seasons–a long drought for any team, let alone them.
Continue reading The Non-Persistence of Memory, George Steinbrenner Edition →

"Classic" Scratchbomb, Skitch Hanson

“Classic” Scratchbomb: Skitch Hanson on Instant Replay

Thumbnail image for galaragga_joyce.jpgYes, I took a cheap shot at umpire Jim Joyce, whose blown call turned Amrando Galarraga’s perfect game into a one-hitter. But that’s because I’m a jerk who has no pity or shame. The real ire should be directed not at Joyce, but Bud Selig, which has idiotically resisted replay against all technological advances and common sense.

Jim Joyce is considered one of the better umpires in Major League Baseball. We have no reason to believe Joyce would have sabotaged a perfect game to drive an agenda or for personal gain. There was absolutely no incentive for him to blow the call, unless he is secretly the world’s biggest masochist. After the game, he addressed the press (a pretty rare thing for any umpire to do under any circumstances) and sounded completely heartbroken about what had happened.

In other words, a top professional acting at in good faith and with the best of his abilities can still mess up very badly in a very big spot. And technology has advanced to the point where every single person watching the game immediately knows how badly he blew it. Which is why it makes less than zero sense to not have replay available in baseball.

In the absence of replay, everyone wonders how this injustice can be overturned while somehow retaining the game’s “purity”. Because going into a booth for one minute (which is how long it would have taken to overturn Joyce’s call) ruins the game’s magical mystical sepiatone Field of Dreams Wonderboy bullshit aura. By Bud Selig’s logic, a seatbelt ruins the mystique of driving, even if you’ll fly through the windshield without it.

What is truly “impure”: Having instant replay to correct officiating mistakes, like every other sport does, or asking the commissioner to wave a magic wand and declare that Galarraga pitched a perfect game, as if the blown call never happened?

Here’s how you institute replay:

  1. Issue one challenge per team per game. When used, the challenge is expended regardless of whether the team “wins” the challenge or not.
  2. Umpires have the right to refuse a challenge if it appears to be total BS. Otherwise, you’d have managers wasting them to allow a pitcher to warm up or just to be dicks.
  3. Challenges can only be used for fair/foul and safe/out calls. No strike calling.

You can argue on the particulars, of course. But after last night, can you tell me that replay would be any worse than what we have now? Because what we have now is essentially crossing our fingers and hoping everything works out okay. Why not just ask Santa Claus for no umpiring mistakes next year? It makes about as much sense.

However, in the interest of fairness, I felt I should have an opinion from the other side of the fence. So I point you to this op-ed longtime contributor Skitch Hanson wrote during last year’s playoffs, entitled “Making the Right Call on Wrong Calls”. Enjoy!