Pal o' mine, Enrique Wilson
Manny, the best of George Washington High School, come back! Check out the New York Times. Enrique Wilson misses you!
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The Savers
Ron Perranoski provided top-of-the-line relief for the light-hitting Los Angeles Dodgers of his time.
Having explained to cricket aficionados the concept of the pitcher winning or losing a game, let me give an explanation of the save and say something about those who are successful at it.
Once upon a time, there were no statistics kept on “saves,” and relief pitchers, the pitchers who replace the original starting pitcher or one another in succession, though valued, were not the super-specialists that they are in Major League Baseball today.
Basically, a save is granted to the pitcher that closes out a win for his team. These closers work under great stress in tight games. Without question, the king of the closers is Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees. He has redefined the role since 1997, when he was moved from set-up man to closer. The present owner of the most saves over a career is not Rivera, however. It is Trevor Hoffman.
Closers are typically right-handed and throw hard since tricky pitches, like knuckleballs or “splitters” from southpaws, can often confuse catchers; and there is no room for confusion with the game on the line. There is a little more to a save than closing out a game. After all, where’s the stress in pitching the final inning of a 12-to-2 blowout? The closer must pitch three innings or, more typically, be summoned with men on base and his team up by three runs or fewer in the eighth or the ninth inning. The calculation of the save possibly includes other situations. But this is it in a nutshell.
Some of the great relief pitchers, once called “firemen” after Joe Page and for obvious reasons, whose careers preceded the ultra-specialized era of the closer, also include: Hoyt Wilhelm, lefty Luis Arroyo, Ron Perranoski, “The Monster” Dick Radatz, Tug McGraw, Sparky Lyle, Dan Quisenberry, Rollie Ringers, “The Goose” Rich Gossage, Bruce Sutter, and Dennis Eckersley. Lee Smith, like Gosssage, is something of a transitional figure between the old-time firemen and the modern closers.
Posted in Baseball, Right Off the Bat Website, Yankees
Tagged Bruce Sutter, Dan Quisenberry, Dennis Eckersley, Dick Radatz, Joe Page, Lee Smith, Los Angeles Dodgers, Luis Arroyo, Mariano Rivera, New York Yankees, Rich Gossage, Rollie Finters, Ron Perranoski, Sparky Lyle, Trevor Hoffman, Tug McGraw
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Bobby Abreu: The Human Rolling Blackout
Bobby Abreu, meet Pistol Pete Reiser....
“News: Abreu went 5-for-5 with two walks in Sunday’s extra-innings loss to the Royals. (Sun Apr 3)
“Spin: Despite the monster day at the plate, Abreu came away scoring just one run, on his own homer in the seventh inning, thanks to Torii [two points for spelling] Hunter going 1-for-7 on the day behind him in the lineup.
“ESPN Fantasy Projection: Abreu, who will turn 37 during spring training, [sic] has been a model of consistency in his career, with nine 20/20 seasons and 20-plus steals in each of the past 12 seasons. That said, he’s coming off a season in which he posted his worst batting average (.255) since becoming a regular in 1998. Although a BABIP of .296 (47 points lower than his career mark) played a part in that, don’t expect a huge bounce back; he has opened up his swing more, and there’s some clear skill decline here. Also, this is likely the season that his string of 20-theft seasons gets snapped. He still possesses a good batting eye, and getting more DH time this season might help him stave off the aging process after playing in 151 or more games for 11 straight years, but Abreu is best used as a potential value play if the price is right, not as a key component of your mixed-league roster.”
Let me admit right off the bat (Where have I heard that expression?) that on closer inspection I find Bobby Abreu, formerly with the Phillies, the Yankees, and today with the Angels, possibly the most overrated player in Major League Baseball, even as his career WAR “sits” (the operative word) at 60; which might give him some consideration among a future National Baseball Hall of Fame Eras Committees (formerly known as “Veterans Committee”).
As a right fielder, Abreu has never met a warning track he liked. I’ve seen him play routine fly balls on a bounce off the wall. He’s really not a terrible outfielder. But he’ll never be confused with Pete Reiser. (Younger readers can look him up. I myself only know Reiser by reputation and his many “on-the-stretcher photos.”) The other side of this: it’s one reason Abreu is so durable, and I have to credit him with this, though one wonders what right-handed pitchers, particularly with average stuff and given to the gofer ball (Cricket fans, a little on the lingo: “gofer” is not a furry animal in this case but the “go for” the home-run-pitched ball; by contrast, the “atom ball” means the “at-’em” ball smoked right at a fielder for a relatively easy out.) thought of having BA to their left (when facing the plate) and back.
Regarding playing the wall, there is an oft-told story of Mickey Mantle as a twenty-year-old being instructed by his often-loopy manager Casey Stengel on how to play an unfamiliar National League stadium outfield: presumably Ebbets Field or the equally quirky but very different Polo Grounds (which, cricket fans, was built for polo!). “You played here?” the astonished young Mantle asked. “Son, do you think I was born at the age of sixty?!” Stengel was reported to have retorted.
Posted in Baseball, Cricket, Right Off the Bat Book, Yankees
Tagged baseball rules, Bobby Abreu, Casey Stengel, Ebbets Field, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Mickey Mantle, National Baseball Hall of Fame, National Baseball Hall of Fame Eras Committees, New York Yankees, Pete Rieser, Philadelphia Phillies, Polo Grounds, Veterans Committee, wins above replacement
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Whoever Said April Is the Cruelest Month
OK literary mavens, you all know it was Possum himself who contradicted Jeff Chaucer by declaring April the cruelest month. So far, for the Boston Red Sox, it has been. But as anticipated in my previous blog, the Swawx didn’t disappoint Red Sox Nation by losing their seventh straight, at home no less, to the Big Bully Bums from duh Bronx, otherwise known as Yankees Universe. One-and-six looks a lot better than oh-and-seven, even though it was “only yesterday” (in the depression-era phrase) that the balance of major league teams had their home openers. (By the way, a loss possibly would have been the worst for the Red Sox since the depression. Depressing? What, me worry?)
Baseball fans are flexible. Bats, too, are bendable. Check out this photograph (AP Photo/Lenny Igneizi) of San Diego Padres catcher Nick Hundley in the process of mashing the ball with his ash bat from San Francisco Giants star hurler, everyone’s favorite pitcher Tim Lincecum. Stephen Dedalus carries an ashplant through Dublin. As a high-schooler, I misunderstood this as the carrying of a potted plant. Who would walk the streets, talking about Saint Thomas Aquinas (a different sort of padre for sure) and Pico della Mirandola, lugging a potted polypody? Or a dead-ash baseball bat? Only a real writer I concluded, that’s who!…Now, how did I get from Eliot to Fenway to bending bats to Pico-like? Lift me back to baseball please!
See Dick run. See Jane run. See bat bend on contact with ball.
An Ordinary Evening in Boston
Concerning the t-storms of Yucatan and the squeeze play....
Cricket fans ought to realize the greatest rivalry outside England versus Australia is the Boston Red Sox versus the New York Yankees. The Sox have their home opener tomorrow, Friday, April 8. They are hoping for sunny skies in New England. Shall we put the Sox 0-6 start into perspective? There are 156 more games for them. A National Basketball Association team plays 82 in a full season. A Major League Baseball team could lose 75 games and still win the World Series. (The 2000 New York Yankees did it.) To me, the unique element that makes baseball baseball is that it is played every day. For the fan, baseball is an addiction. It is a soap opera. It is the “Guiding Light”. We fans become involved, virtually interacting daily with, let’s face it, complete strangers (viz., the ballplayers) on an intimate level: day in and day out. As Wallace Stevens says in “Study of Images I”: “The blood refreshes with its stale demands.”
Posted in Australia, Baseball, Cricket, England, Yankees
Tagged Boston Red Sox, Literature, New York Yankees
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Baseball Stadium Addiction
Crosley Field on a day for "Rainout Theater."
I admit to a slightly morbid, or at least useless but let me add harmless, fascination with baseball stadiums. I plan to be sharing my obsession with stadiums past, present, and future on this website as the season unfolds. Most of the great ones are gone. By any objective measure, they might not have been perfect venues. But they were perfectly great: Forbes Field. Briggs Stadium. Comisky Park. Ebbets Field. Busch Stadium (League Park). Griffith Stadium. Sick’s Stadium. Jarry Park. Exhibition Stadium. Each (to name but a few) reflected their respective eras and cities. They tended to be working-class cathedrals. One that stuck in my imagination since the 1961 World Series is Crosley Field, home of the Cincinnati Reds. Cincinnati, once upon a time, held the distinction of being the National League city that hosted the very first game of the season, a date I believe shared with Washington till the Senators (the various Senators teams, left for good). Of especial interest at Crosley was the “slight incline” in left field, upward, to the wall.
Joe Girardi’s Unfortunate Move
Joe Girardi, Yankees Manager, Mastermind
The season’s underway and I (Evander) already get to vent because the Yankees lost their first game that they should have won, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory as it were. Sure, we’re only five games into the campaign. If the season were a single day, to compare the long season to the Joycean epic Ulysses, we’d be on the copyright page. But a loss is a loss, even in the beginning of April (or Ulysses), when the veterans are still rubbing the winter’s sleep out of their eyes. To set the scene, the Yanks were beating up on the Twins. Again. They beat this team like a drum, for reasons unknown. And the Twins don’t come back to New York till…2012. That’s right. This is their only regular-season visit to the unfriendly confines of Yankee Stadium. The Yankees’s best pitcher, CC Sabathia, looked great. I turned on the game somewhere in the middle as CC retired his eleventh consecutive Twinkee.
What does “thinking” manager Joe Girardi do? He takes CC out of the game after seven innings. This bear of a man, six-foot-seven and 300 pounds, couldn’t come out for the eighth round? It’s the pitch count stoopid! (To be slightly less unfair, Girardi is not alone in his obsession with pitch counts and loose-leaf binders of arcane match-up stats, and printouts, and and and…, especially early in the season.) In comes Rafael Soriano. Now he has been used a lot. Soriano couldn’t find the plate. Next guy comes in, three runners on, Ron Gardenhire starts the merry-go-round, and a pop hit (not the kind The Beatles made) on a full count means everyone scores. The dispirited Yankees went on to lose in the tenth inning. Derek Jeter made the final out, I can’t even remember how, that’s how disgusted I was: I could barely listen to John Sterling on the radio at this point. My friend, photographer-mediator-turned-Honda-salesman Andy, went nuts (via e-mail). By the way, the so-called sorry Mets have a better record than their storied Big Brothers here in New York, doing it the hard way: on the road in Miami and Philadelphia.
The Florida Marlins Will Take the National League Wild Card
- Mike Stanton: huge upside
I conclude my predictions with possibly the most challenging of all: NL Wild Card. It could be the Reds, the Braves, the Cardinals, the Padres, the Giants, or any of the clubs I have forecast as division winners. I’ll go way out and stick with the Fish of Florida. I always like the team that plays in the most visiting-team challenging stadium. It rains just about every day in Miami, and this plays havoc with visiting squads. The place is hot and too wide open for baseball. (It was constructed for American football.) I really like merry Mike Stanton, not the old Yankees left-handed bullpen specialist, but the six-foot-five twenty-one-year-old (!) outfielder. Omar Infante is one of the best-hitting second basemen. A couple of Yankees castoffs are in the rotation and pen, respectively: Javy Vazquez (who never caught on in New York despite the glittering stats compiled elsewhere, reminding me of “El” Sid Fernandez’s career to a degree. In case anyone in New York or Boston has forgotten, Javy surrendered the grandest home run in Yankees history in 2004) and lefty Randy Choate. Vazquez is more of a National League guy and should anchor a youngish but solid staff. John Buck, formerly of the Toronto Blue Jays, ought to do well and help the defense, which can be shaky….Now that I have completed my predictions, I will not choose the winner of the 2011 World Series, though I think it will be the Phillies. Let me now hear from all those who picked the Giants this time last season.
Right Off the Bat Book One Step Closer
Beginnings of modern book publishing: The Gutenberg Bible
Today, April 4, 2011, Martin and Evander completed work on and added all final corrections to third-pass proof Right Off the Bat. We are grateful to team Paul Dry Books for its heroic efforts in saving us from greater humiliations, and stress that any and all errors (not to mention hits and runs) that may be found in our work are solely the authors’.
Right Off the Bat 
