SEAT LICENSE RENEWALS It's almost spring
when a young man's thoughts turn to... those expensive
seat licenses. An online cash advance can help relieve the anxiety.
The Baseball Prospectus/ESPN Insider soup du jour is a roundtable devoted to dissecting the performances of a few unlikely first-half heroes. ESPN editor Matt Meyers, columnist Buster Olney, BP colleagues Kevin Goldstein and John Perrotto and I discussed whether the work of Red Sox shotstop Nick Green, Mets pitcher Fernando Nieve, and Rays utilityman Ben Zobrist are sustainable. My job was to throw around the big numbers, and I wound up in the middle of the fray in this exchange regarding Green:
Buster Olney: Green may not be a .290 kind of hitter, but guys, I'd say he's not a fluke: he's a decent player who is taking advantage of his surroundings. He is playing as part of a deep lineup, in Fenway Park, and hitting .310 at home. One scout mentioned this week that Fenway has a knack for making average hitters into above-average hitters. He has always been able to hit a high fastball, and he's playing in a park where there's some payoff for that (12 extra-base hits in 87 at-bats).
John Perrotto: Green has always been a guy with some tools, decent pop, and a strong arm, so I don't think it's totally unexpected that he has put together a pretty good stretch for the Red Sox. He was always the kind of guy who was awfully hard on himself, and perhaps now that he is getting older he has learned to relax. Like Buster said, he is in the right ballpark with the right lineup to succeed. He is a one-year wonder? Perhaps. At the very least, he is a viable major league player.
Jay Jaffe: Coming into the year, Green had done nothing to distinguish himself from among dozens of Quadruple-A futility infielder types. He was a 30-year-old who owned a career line of .240/.309/.347 in nearly 800 PA, he'd gotten just seven at-bats in the majors since 2006, and his 2008 minor league numbers at Scranton were horrible, with a .191 EqA. On that basis alone, for him to be where he is right now is a total fluke.
Which isn't to say he hasn't learned a trick or two (the Chipper Jones tap) or gotten some breaks in his favor (a starting job in a great hitters' park? Yes, please!), but I'm not terribly optimistic it can continue. Would you be, if you were Theo Epstein or Terry Francona?
Green's numbers look to be the product of Fenway, where he's hitting .310/.348/.517 in 92 PA, compared to .256/.326/.354 in 92 PA on the road, which is the Nick Green we know and love. His overall line is being driven by a .344 batting average on balls in play, and his batted-ball types say he should be around .290. That 5-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio doesn't suggest he's got the control of the strike zone for all of this to continue, and that pitchers will figure out how to exploit him.
Matt Meyers: Some dissension, I like it! But even conceding some "realness" to Green's performance, wouldn't it be foolish for the Red Sox to have any faith in him beyond this year? Didn't we just see this last year with Mike Aviles? I am not sure Jed Lowrie is any sort of long-term answer, so the Sox might actually have a hole at short. Is there a world in which Green is more than just a stopgap for them?
Jay Jaffe: In the context of Lowrie's slated return in July, Green's a perfectly suitable stopgap. I just don't think the Sox should let themselves get overly attached to the guy based on a park-driven 92 PA sample that's well out of context of the other ~900 PA for his career.
Green kind of reminds me of Miguel Cairo circa 2004, the year he hit .292/.346/.417 for the Yankees. You knew it couldn't last, but you had to appreciate a guy like that coming out of nowhere to give the team a major boost.
There are futility infielders, and there are Futility Infielders. Today's New York Times features a Tyler Kepner article on Yankee first base and infield coach Mick Kelleher, an exemplar of the good-field/no-hit players whose baseball cards clogged my collection in the late '70s. Joe Posnanski has his Duane Kuiper, owner of one major league home run in 3,754 plate appearances. Kelleher, who plied his trade for five teams over 11 years, never homered in 1,202 PA. "Since he retired in 1982," notes the article, "no position player with that many plate appearances has failed to hit a homer."
For his career, Kelleher hit .213/.266/.253, which if you'll pardon my French is spectacularly craptatstic. Though not as bad as the late, legendary John Vukovich, Kelleher ranked in the top 15 in the Futility Infielder Foulness Index. None of which is to heap abuse on his lack of ability or love for the game. Men like Kelleher, Vukovich and Mario Mendoza are the glue that holds baseball together, lifers who despite their limited playing skills find ways to pass on their love and knowledge of the game, often with half a century of service.
In Kelleher's case, he's consistently worked as a coach, instructor and scout following his 15 years as a player (including the minors). According to the article, he's spent most of the past 13 years in the Yankee organization, and has worked extensively with Robinson Cano and Derek Jeter. While neither has a sterling defensive reputation by any stretch, a bit of sun is shining on the Mick these days as the man behind the scenes of the team who went a record 18 games without making an error, a streak that ended last night when Jorge Posada threw one into center field on a stolen base. A lack of errors or high fielding percentage isn't the defining stat of a good defense, but it's worth noting that the Yankees rank fifth in the league in Defensive Efficiency, the frequency with which they turn batted balls into outs, and third in Park Adjusted Defensive Efficiency. Last year they were 12th and 11th, respectively. And that's in a 14-team league. So if Kelleher's a part of the improvement, he deserves a tip of the cap.
I was at the park last night, as it stands, in the company of one of the usual reprobates, Nick Stone, as well as Matador Records/Can't Stop the Bleeding domo Gerard Cosloy, the first time we'd met after years of occasional link swapping. As we watched the Rangers get their asses handed to them -- seriously, the ghost of Johnny Oates was shaking his head as he watched their more well supported than actually improved pitching staff get the shit knocked out of them -- we spent plenty of time discussing the finer points of Wilco and Fall personnel changes as well as the relative career arcs of AL Rookie of the Years gone sour Angel Berroa, Bob Hamelin and Joe Charboneau. Meanwhile, spurred by a pair of plunkings by Vicente "Shitty Pitcher" Padilla, Mark Teixeira had a big takeout slide which uncorked a seven-run inning for the Yanks (the two don't like each other much at all, going waaaay back. Good times.
And maybe it was a couple of those big $11 beers talking, but our seats in section 423, in the fourth row of the upper grandstand between third base and home plate, felt a little like home. Observe the following triptych from my iPhone's crappy little camera:
Last night
Our current plan seats
My final game at the old park
OK, I'm not exactly sure why the last one is so messed up -- it appears I shot while the camera was scrolling from pic to pic -- but it's the sense of scale that's the take-home. We were still further back and up than our old seats; about halfway into the old Tier Reserved, if I had to hazard a guess. But a definite improvement on our current lot.
Speaking of Kelleher, his former Cubs teammate Steve Swisher, father of current Yankee Nick Swisher, also came up for discussion as a thoroughly crappy hitter (.216/.279/.303 in 1,577 PA). In fact, both rank among the Seventies' 30 worst in terms of OPS+ with an 850 PA minimum (stats 1970-1979 only):
Player PA HR BA OBP SLG OPS+ Mario Mendoza 879 2 .201 .237 .247 31 Luis Gomez 1043 0 .216 .265 .248 44 Mick Kelleher 943 0 .223 .272 .265 46 Rob Picciolo 907 6 .224 .238 .291 46 Luis Alvarado 1177 5 .218 .251 .276 48 Jack Heidemann 1210 9 .212 .264 .269 49 Dal Maxvill 1593 1 .210 .289 .241 49 Hal Lanier 887 6 .227 .263 .273 49 Rich Morales 998 6 .195 .270 .249 50 Terry Humphrey 1170 6 .211 .265 .267 52 Bobby Wine 951 4 .219 .272 .276 52 Pepe Frias 1153 1 .239 .269 .294 53 Paul Casanova 1173 20 .213 .243 .307 53 Jim Mason 1756 12 .203 .259 .275 54 Bill Plummer 1005 14 .189 .267 .280 54 Tim Johnson 1408 0 .223 .274 .265 55 Dave McKay 1289 12 .224 .259 .307 57 Paul Popovich 1036 11 .226 .279 .303 57 Randy Hundley 1403 24 .222 .273 .311 58 Hector Torres 1321 16 .216 .267 .294 58 Doug Flynn 1863 6 .240 .271 .298 59 Tom Veryzer 2243 11 .237 .281 .295 60 Bob Heise 1129 1 .243 .274 .288 60 Steve Swisher 1458 18 .219 .282 .307 61 Enzo Hernandez 2612 2 .224 .283 .266 61 Tim Cullen 893 3 .211 .274 .278 61 Johnnie LeMaster 1016 6 .223 .275 .304 62 Pete Mackanin 1107 22 .212 .255 .335 62 Darrel Chaney 2164 14 .220 .298 .294 63 Ted Martinez 1574 7 .240 .270 .309 63
Ah, so many memories of worthless baseball cards and automatic outs, from Papa Mario on down to the Dodgers' resident futilityman, Teddy Martinez. Somebody ought to start a web site.
One more loss to add to the list of those who have passed in the last week: Marie Olbermann, mother of former ESPN anchor and current MSNBC Countdown Keith Olbermann. In an episode whose roots connect directly with the genesis of my web site, Mrs. Olbermann was struck in the face by an errant Chuck Knoblauch throw back in the summer of 2000, exemplifying the Little Bastard's descent into fielding hell while turning her into an overnight celebrity. She was no stranger to the ballpark, either, according to her son:
My mother was one of the best-known baseball fans in this country. She attended Yankees [games] from 1934 through 2004, and she watched or listened to every one she didn't go to, up until last month. My guess is, she went to at least 1500 of them, most in Box 47E in the suddenly "old" Yankee Stadium.
...[T]rust me: Mom loved being famous in the ballparks.
Even if that fame had to be achieved in the way it was, on June 17th, 2000, when the sudden, and growing, inability of the ill-fortuned second baseman Chuck Knoblauch to make any kind of throw, easy or hard, to first base, culminated in him picking up a squib off the bat of Greg Norton of the White Sox and throwing it not back towards first, but, instead, off the roof of the Yankees' dugout where it picked up a little reverse english and smacked my mother right in the bridge of her glasses.
Chuck was in the middle of losing his beloved father at that time and though I thought I "got" what that meant to him, I didn't really understand it until today as I wrote this, and struggled to find the right keys, let alone the right words.
In any event, for three days in 2000, Mom was on one or both of the covers, of The New York Post and The New York Daily News and Newsday. She was somewhere in every newspaper in America.
And all this happened, while I was the host of the Game of the Week, for Fox. Literally sitting in a studio in Los Angeles, watching a bank of monitors with a different game on every monitor and recognizing instantly what must have happened (based on a lifetime of knowing the camera angles in the ballpark in which I grew up). I said, maybe too matter-of-factly, "that probably hit my mother." The crew laughed and I repeated it. More laughs. Then the next shot was of an older woman being led up the aisle towards an aid station - my mother.
I actually got to do a highlight cut-in for the broadcast by Joe Buck and Tim McCarver of a game at Dodger Stadium, and said, as I remember it: "Chuck Knoblauch's throwing problem is getting personal. He picks up Greg Norton's grounder, bounces it off the dugout roof and hits... my mother. I've talked to Mom, she's fine, she'll be back out there tomorrow. Joe? Tim?"
Silence.
Olbermann credits his mom with being the one who stimulated his passion for baseball, not to mention providing the ham for his media persona. It's a funny and touching piece, well worth reading. My condolences to the Olbermann family, and to the reclusive Knoblauch, who'd probably just as soon not be reminded of the whole episode one more time.
• • •
Speaking of the new Yankee Stadium and its crosstown counterpart, I've got briefbits on bothballparks — admittedly little of which may be new for those following my recent coverage of them — for BP and ESPN Insider.
Dodger Dog: Orlando Hudson hits for the cycle, becoming the first Dodger to do so since Wes Parker in 1970, and helping the team beat Randy Johnson in LA for the first time in the Big Unit's 22-year career. The O-Dog is hitting .366/.435/.659. Meanwhile, Clayton Kershaw (7 1 1 1 1 13) one-ups Chad Billingsley (7 5 1 1 0 11) against the hapless Giants' lineup as the rotation holds opposing hitters to a .195 batting average through the first 10 games.
I missed Billingsley's performance but Kershaw's was dazzling; effortlessly and consistently, he kept dropping that big curveball — "Public Enemy Number One," as Vin Scully calls it — in there for a strike against the Giants. More on that game — tangentially at least — in an upcoming post.
Every morning, I look out my bedroom window at two Yankee Stadiums: the old one to my right, the new one to my left. What an awesome sight: looking across the river at the Yankees’ past, present and future. The new stadium is like that freshly purchased baseball glove that requires years of line drives and ground balls to be sufficiently broken in. The old stadium bursts at the seams with collective experiences.
I love that comparison of a glove, perhaps the ballplayer's most personal item, with a stadium. Both end up showing their wear over time, and become cherished less for what they are, for their ability to still do the job, than for what they've represented in the life of a user. Having retired my ancient ball glove last year, one I've had since about 1980 in favor of a new one that I'm still getting comfortable in, I can relate. And it's not only with Yankee Stadium, a ballpark I've visited well over 100 times and have come to love, warts and all. Last weekend, showing my brother-in-law around the dump that is Shea Stadium for the first time, I was reminded of the fact that even the lousiest ballparks have a certain soul to them. Seriously, who even among the most ardent Mets fans doesn't loathe certain facets of that stadium, the sound of La Guardia's air traffic overhead, the appallingly poorly considered vista of parking lot (now thankfully blocked by the new stadium), the upper-level seats so removed from the field, hell and gone from any shot at snagging a foul ball and askew at angles ridiculous for watching a game? Fan of the Mets or not, if you've ever been to Shea, you're allowed to commiserate with the millions of others who've shared that experience.
Ballparks, even da woist of dem, bring people from all walks of life together to create communities, vast civic and regional networks of like-mined fans, with satellites spread all over the country and even the world. Particularly in an age when we're becoming more and more fragmented, less able to connect on a mass scale, ballparks are the practically the last arenas to help us to form shared memories, and in doing so, even the diviest of dives manage to transcend their own crapulence. Forget the mystique and aura of Yankee Stadium for a moment and think of the miracles that happened at Shea in 1969 and 1986, the unlikelihood of their occurrence and the way they shocked the baseball world, and tell me there won't be something lost when that park is gone, memories that people pine for in the same manner they pine for the bygone days of Ebbetts Field and the Polo Grounds.
Somehow or other, my other enduring memory is an empty Yankee Stadium on the day of Martin Luther King’s funeral in 1968, not a soul in the house. My friend Jim Bouton felt the need to throw that day, so he pitched off the mound, and I squatted where Berra and Dickey had squatted, using a mitt borrowed from Coach Jim Hegan’s locker. (Hegan used a falsie to protect his hand, but I told Bouton I didn’t need the extra armor.) We dressed in the main clubhouse and used the players’ sauna. The Stadium was stone silent.
After decades of working at the Stadium, the original or the instantly antiquated rebuilt version, I try to see the awe through other people’s eyes — Tony Gwynn taking videos before the 1998 Series, rookies’ eyes widening, fans on a pilgrimage. I think of it as a hard place, with Steinbrenner meanness squashing the humanity in guards, ushers, executives. But I remember “Good friends we had/good friends we lost/Along the way,” as Bob Marley put it — Steve Hamilton, Bill Robinson, Bob Fishel, Michael Burke, some of the finest people I’ve ever known. I think about Mantle’s shot off Barney Schultz in the 1964 Series. And Bob Sheppard’s dignity. In the last generation, an old Brooklyn fan could feel immense respect for Joe Torre’s team.
How appropriate to mention Burke, the man who got the city to pay for Yankee Stadium II's refurbishments in exchange for the team not bolting for the Meadowlands à la the football Giants. Every time I see Michael Burke's name, I think of Baseball Think Factory's tireless linkmeister, Darren Viola, a/k/a Repoz, who always seems to work anecdotes about the iconoclastic pre-Steinbrenner Yankees president into his introductions at BTF. And that in turn sends me to Repoz's blotto account of an early-70s doubleheader at Yankee Stadium, published at The Baseball Analysts a few years back. Repoz's amalgam of bad booze, obscure musical references and futility infielders is an unforgettable one, to say the least.
• • •
On the subject of futility infielders, you'd be hard-pressed to come up one more futile than Duane Kuiper, a man who hit just one homer in 3754 plate appearances between 1974 and 1985. Kuiper was futile enough to merit mention in this site's original statement of purpose, but I never in my wildest dreams would have claimed him as a favorite. Joe Posnanski, on the other hand...:
People always seem to think that I love Kuiper ironically, or that I’m somehow being a wise guy about this whole thing, but in the words of that noted philosopher Mike Gundy, that ain’t true. I loved Duane Kuiper when I was 10. And I love him now. He has always represented something important to me, something I did not really understand when I was young. Duane Kuiper was the player who brought the game closer. He was the one who said that you don’t have to be supremely gifted and impossibly strong and touched by God in order to get where you want to go. You can also dive for every ground ball. If there’s one lesson I could pass on to my daughters, it would be that lesson. And also that you should not throw your ice cream cone just because you decided today that you don’t like vanilla.
My first memory of Duane Kuiper is not a memory of him at all; it’s a memory of a Little League game where the coach put me at second base for the first time. I was 9 then, I guess, and up that that point I had always played third base, always. I couldn’t really tell you why I always played third — maybe it was my father’s appreciation of Brooks Robinson — but I had gotten used to the position, and my entire view of the field was a third base view. I WAS a third baseman. I was not prepared to move to second base. It confused me. Then my coach said, “You can be just like Duane Kuiper.” In my memory, this appeased me. Duane Kuiper. I had about 28 of his baseball cards.
...When I got older and found that there was a whole other world outside of Cleveland, I started to appreciate that perhaps Duane wasn’t a good ballplayer. It’s funny … I had never really thought about it. I guess I felt about Duane the way I felt about nearsightedness, male pattern baldness and my Uncle Lonka who played the accordion at weddings and bar mitzvahs — I inherited him. I had never really thought to evaluate him. That almost seemed beside the point. He was the second baseman I wanted to be. He was the player who represented what life could become if you wanted it enough. He was the guy who every game made one diving play to send a little kid home with a memory.
Now, of course, I’m well aware that Duane Kuiper — because he hit only one home run in his career, because he was such an unsuccessful baserunner, because he is a funny, gifted and self-effacing announcer — has become a symbol, sort of a Joe Shlabotnik of the disco era, I appreciate that. But that’s not why I love the guy. Read that quote above one more time. When I was a little kid playing baseball in the backyard with my old friend Michael Fainer, we used to pretend to play World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Cincinnati Reds. We both wanted to the be the Indians, of course, being true Cleveland kids, but someone had to be the other team, someone had to be Pete Rose and Johnny Bench and Tony Perez and Don Gullett and, especially, Joe Morgan.
Now that I can relate to. Great stuff.
I've got another note on the futilitymen of yore, but as it involved an archaeological dig through some storage boxes stacked five deep, it's going to have to wait until later this week...
