The bats look like toothpicks

Like most red-blooded (Is there any other color?) American males from New York City, and between the ages of fifty and eighty, I (Evander) have a fascination with Yankees star Mickey Mantle—virtually to the point of (strictly baseball) fantasy.

Mantle always felt a certain unease with his final lifetime batting average of .298.

So, let’s fantasize.

I decided to replay the career stats by ending after the 1964 season, the last great one. Lifetime batting average: .309. Home runs: 454. Home-run percentage (one of the truest marks of the slugger) rises from 6.6 to 6.9, and slugging average comes in around .570. Runs scored: 1,473, a staggering number that speaks to Mantle’s unprecedented speed and early career batting closer to the top of the lineup. (As far as I know, Mantle is still the fastest runner from home plate to first base, sixty years later.)

In fact, such a fourteen-year offensive career starts to look a little more like Joe DiMaggio’s. Of course since the Yankees would not be in a World Series again for a dozen seasons, Mantle’s unbelievable total of 18 World Series round-trippers would not change.

Schoolboy Rowe: Relative Merit?

My (Martin’s) friend and fellow publisher Bob Kalechovsky of the estimable and pioneering Micah Publications asked me yesterday whether I might be related to the pitcher Lynwood “Schoolboy” Rowe, who was the star pitcher for the Detroit Tigers in the 1930s. I’m sad to say—given his golden arm and good looks that drove the ladies wild—that I’m not. On the other hand, the fact that he died of a heart attack aged 50 gives one pause. I wish I could return the favor, but as of yet I have not found a Lomke who played cricket—at least at a high enough level to appear on the Internet’s search engines.

The top baseball (and cricket) story of 2011….

Fie to thee, New York Times; avaunt ye, Washington Post; get behind me, O Guardian: Right Off the Bat has finally been reviewed where it counts: the Old Bradfieldian, Martin’s alumni magazine. Well, “reviewed” might be too strong a word, since the words on the page that accompany a photograph of book’s cover are more than reminiscent of those sent with a copy of the book to the editor. Now Martin’s fellow students will have to think of an excuse other than “I didn’t see it in Old Bradfieldian” to ignore the book. So, what’s your excuse?!

“Time past and time present”: Baseball’s most feared competitor, Ty Cobb

More appropriate for this solemn holiday of Memorial Day (once known as Decoration Day), the unofficial start of summer with all this implies for the Boys of Summer, is an exhibit of rare, old-time baseball cards, the Benjamin K. Edwards Collection, at the U.S. Library of Congress. Check it out.

Sir Dude

Today’s the 60th birthday of the great West Indian batsman Sir Vivian Richards. Fiercely proud of his heritage, swaggering and nonchalant at the crease, and impossible to stop when in full flow, Richards was probably the most exciting and charismatic batsman of his era (1976 to 1992). Even today—perhaps especially today, he exerts a fascination: the coolest dude in the room. Why especially? Because he evokes an era when the West Indies were simply the best team in the world, as imperious and devastating as Richards was as an individual batsman. These days, the West Indies is a shadow of its former self. Below you can see him in his prime.

Both cricket and baseball have long histories of men with money and position exploiting talent for their own ends and not paying players their fair dues. Both sports’ establishments have played on notions of patriotism, loyalty, and the cultus of the amateur to make their case to keep their players under their thumb; and both sports in their histories have seen periods where the players have revolted, sometimes successfully, and got more of their fair share. We may be in a similar moment in cricket today.  It’s also true that both sport tend to cultivate the idea that the game was purer, better—the men tougher, the standards higher, the games more epochal—in days gone by. This is nonsense, of course—a function of seeing one’s heroes when you were young and the dispiriting facets of growing old. But it makes for great arguments for fans of different generations in either sport!

Chris Gayle: Boxoffice Boffo

You may have read my (Martin’s) post about the relative merits of West Indian batsmen Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Chris Gayle. Well, their contrasting skills and chosen cricketing pathways were brought into the sharpest of reliefs a couple of days ago. Gayle slammed an astonishing 128 off only 62 balls for the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the slugfest that is the Indian Premier League. Meanwhile, in a much colder climate and in more challenging conditions, Shiv carved out a typically nuggety 87 not out to prevent the West Indies team from total humiliation on the first day of the first Test match against England at Lord’s. Gayle was all imperious brute strength and clean hitting; Shiv was all impervious chivvying and poking.

The crazy situation is that, as far as I’m concerned, Chris Gayle should be representing the West Indies in England and not playing in the IPL. Sure, Gayle likes playing the short boom-boom form of the game more than Test cricket. He prefers being paid a lot of money to entertain tens of millions of adoring fans in a warm climate more than being paid peanuts to stand around in front of thousands of murmuring spectators in the cold of an English spring. But, boy, the West Indies could use his style and skill right now.

Gayle isn’t wholly to blame. The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) have been in a power struggle with Gayle and a number of West Indies players for a good while now. Several of them are playing in the IPL instead of representing their region in England. Once the IPL is over, Gayle may arrive for the one-day tournament that follows these Test matches and wow the crowds in England as he did in India. But I won’t be the only one that questions his priorities; just as I’m not the only one who recognizes that professional sportsmen are entertainers who are going to make decisions about where their market strengths lie.

On the anniversary of the start of baseball’s greatest hitting feat, a weird batting maneuver….

Today is 70 years and 366 days since Joe DiMaggio’s mind-bending 56-game hitting streak began: with a meager (though RBI) single against the Chicago White Sox. Right Off the Bat celebrated the seventieth anniversary with a podcast a year ago. For those with a morbid curiosity, click here.

Something odd happened on the actual anniversary last night, at Citi Field, in Flushing. Ryan Braun, about whom I (Evander) have also opined in this blog, was plunked. In a preemptive move that I do not ever recall having seen, Mets manager Terry Collins, fearing retaliation, removed his sore-pinkie, .400-hitting third baseman, David Wright—lest the Milwaukee brain-trust retaliate with a little chin music of their own.

The game had got out of hand just in terms of the score. But does anyone remember seeing such a late-inning benching before?