things I learned about in baseball this week/how i learned to stop worrying and love baseball

xp on Kerry Wood & Pedro Martinez but I appreciate specific recommendations, tysm!

Also commit this to memory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn28Dz4RUxc

gyac, I assume you've seen this classic moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbEHAsZxRYo

Fun fact you might enjoy:

Left-handed relief pitcher Billy Wagner (known for his absurd strikeout rate) is actually a natural right hander but after breaking his right arm twice as a kid he learned to throw with his left arm. And now he’s probably going to wind up in the hall of fame for being such a dominant pitcher.

Game 7 of the 2016 series is also my pick. Classic Cleveland clutch comeback to tie it coupled with a classic Aroldis Chapman meltdown, finished off with a determined Cubs team scraping out two runs (and Cleveland making it tense at the end too.)

Ten cent beer night is an event that encapsulates baseball in Cleveland in the 70's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daWdOwqQhCs

I will respond to all these posts in time but I’m watching this alds game atm. However I am nearly finished A Band of Misfits, about the 2010 Giants, and I’ve seriously watched this clip about ten times & also Clark’s homer against Nolan Ryan in his first big league at bat (!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUkTfbOEKTs

Lmao both at the guy going “you’re overmodulating” and Clark going “HUH??? NO WAY!” And also the guy stepping in from the side to clearly try to calm him down, and Clark shakes his hand instead.

Supposedly he used The Thrill is Gone as his answering machine message as well. Legendary.

smoothest swing of all time

there's also a whole thread about BASEBALL MOVIES that i haven't really paid attention to

would recommend:

BULL DURHAM - it's long since passed into cliche (and tim robbins very obviously cannot pitch) but it presents the cliches in a nice manner, and also i used to live in durham and know where that house is

SUGAR - pretty honest look at what it's like to be a (dominican/puerto rican/venezuelan) kid left to fend for himself in the minor leagues. needless to say, there are a lot of non-success stories

NO NO: A DOCKUMENTARY - the story of 1970s pitcher dock ellis, who once threw a no-hitter (for the pirates, no less) while tripping on LSD. among other crazy shit like plunking four straight cincinnati reds to start a game. he was a troubled and interesting man

This, along with Aaron's 715th, is my favorite baseball memory ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4nwMDZYXTI

I remember that 2015 game (how did I not think of that first?)

These days Toronto vs Texas G5 is the first thing I think of when it comes to games/moments that I want to rewatch. But I didn't want to be accused of homerism by recommending it first ...

Game 7 of the 2016 series is also my pick. Classic Cleveland clutch comeback to tie it coupled with a classic Aroldis Chapman meltdown, finished off with a determined Cubs team scraping out two runs (and Cleveland making it tense at the end too.)

And that's only the last three innings!

This week has been rough and I’ve barely watched any baseball.

More things I learned specifically about “Surfin” Barry Zito from reading excerpts from
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61frVWPOc1L.jpg

- Barry Zito did meth in his teens
- the first chapter opens with a quote from someone saying “if San Fran wins the World Series, does Barry Zito get a ring?” (Ouch - though I am a fan of brutally honest sports autobios).
- Barry Zito’s grandfather started a newspaper with Mussolini (!)

I need to read this book, there’s nothing more boring than reading stories of endless success from people who go to bed early and never do anything bad.

watch game 5 2012 NLCS giants vs cardinals if you want some more zito lore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8S-PI7HZ8o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Meay49NgGXI
giants down 1-3 in the series and he gets the start despite a very poor showing in the series before. giants win the next three then zito wins game 1 of the world series vs verlander which you mentioned.

I was thinking about which game I would recommend watching and actually realised the games I got the biggest kick out of weren't necessarily epic important ones. Like any Greg Maddux 85 pitch complete game shutout with like 2 strikeouts and upward of a dozen groundouts + handful of weak pop flys is amazing viewing imo. Especially with how different baseball is now.

Or Tom Glavine locating his fast ball consistently just outside the outside edge the strikezone with such monotone regularity that the umpire starts calling it a strike.

(xpost) You've almost perfectly described Maddux's G2 win against the Yankees in the '96 Series:

86 pitches, 6 H, 2 K, 0 BB, 0 runs. He didn't pitch a shutout, though--Bobby Cox brought in Wohlers for the 9th. He didn't let Maddux finish his Maddux.

yeah those 90s braves pitchers were clinical, hated them of course.

For what it's worth, Maddux was more of a strikeout pitcher than he's generally remembered as (with some help from the umps): 6.1/per 9 for his career, 6.9/per 9 during his '92-'98 peak. My favourite pitcher then--travelled to Montreal to see him somewhere in the middle there.

I did get the chance to see Smoltz's 3,000th career strikeout in person, that was epic. Still much love for him in the ATL.

I was thinking about which game I would recommend watching and actually realised the games I got the biggest kick out of weren't necessarily epic important ones. Like any Greg Maddux 85 pitch complete game shutout with like 2 strikeouts and upward of a dozen groundouts + handful of weak pop flys is amazing viewing imo. Especially with how different baseball is now.

ALCS game 3 2003

One that I forgot to recommend, on YouTube in its entirety: Mark Fidrych vs. the Yankees, June 28, 1976, 48,000 people in Yankee Stadium (on a Monday), ABC's Monday Night game, Fidrych 7-1 with a 2.18 ERA going in, the biggest story in baseball.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwGj4VfCreg

For style, Luis Tiant.

https://phildellio.tripod.com/tiant.jpg

Yes! I have been meaning to check out Fidrych as well!

xps
I'm glad!! He was my favourite player back when I first started watching baseball. used to love andruw jones as well. and in the non atlanta baseball players division it was tony gwynn and his incredibly flat no uppercut swing. then later i was all about ichiro.

(xp) I think you'll fall in love. I was so lucky to have watched that game (14 years old). It's just hard to convey today how one baseball player could so thoroughly capture the public's attention and imagination. It happened again a few years later with Fernando, although I don't know that there's one single game of his where it all coalesced so perfectly.

xp Parker looking cool af.

(Oops--the Fidrych game was in Tiger Stadium, which makes the 48,000 people even more remarkable. The mid-'70s Tigers were not good.)

I love they have the commercials too in that broadcast!

I’ll be honest, a thing I found - and find, tbh - really difficult about watching baseball both live and classic is the number of ad breaks! How does that not drive people mad?

“At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.”

— Albert Camus

Fidrych throwing 250 innings and striking out 97(!) that season is always really amazing to me. 9.6 bWAR!

xp lmao

xp baseball as a tv spectator sport simply isn't designed to hold your attention 100% of the time, you gotta pair it with something else that can be done in fits and starts such as browsing the internet or chopping vegetables or playing a turn-based video game

Parachuting in to say that I am a 51-year-old American male human with exactly one sports allegiance. And that allegiance is to the 1982 St. Louis Cardinals. Not the Cardinals in general, not St. Louis teams in general. Pretty much just that one spectacular season.

I was exactly the right age to be excited by a baseball team. Especially, a locally beloved and long-storied team that suddenly caught on fire in a particular way. Was it slugfesty? No it was not. Was it Sabermetric? No it was not. Was it especially steroidal? No it was not. It was a style of play based on baserunning, stealing, speed, fielding, contact. It was called "Whiteyball" after the (in retrospect) rather unfortunately nicknamed manager Whitey Herzog.

Ozzie Smith. Lonnie Smith. Willie McGee. Keith Hernandez. Bruce Sutter. Joaquin Andujar. It's been 40 years and no sporting persons have dislodged those names from my memory. Nor will they.

Since then, I have watched a few other sporting contests, with varying amounts of interest. But none has matched the passionate intensity of being eleven years old in a red hat in terrible seats in that cranky old Busch stadium with a scorecard on my lap and a fire in my heart. Personally I am fine leaving it there: a whole life of fandom in a few humid evenings in 1982, eating ice cream from a novelty batting helmet.

xp baseball as a tv spectator sport simply isn't designed to hold your attention 100% of the time, you gotta pair it with something else that can be done in fits and starts such as browsing the internet or chopping vegetables or playing a turn-based video game

That's beautiful, YMP.

^

eating ice cream from a novelty batting helmet

i have one from every stadium i've been to in the last 8 years (4 total) and my kids love these. they were bath toys until my youngest recently decided to elevate the jays and yankees ones to the "display"shelf in her room that was normally reserved for her fancy in-the-box dolls.

ymp are you . . . me?

that would be a plot twist!

1982 cards ftw of course. the '85 version of the team is fun too. they didn't win the WS but they were even better and even faster and more exciting, a team tailor made to play on artificial turf. willie mcgee having his best season, the wizard ozzie smith doing his usual defensive stuff but also putting together his first above-average offensive season after being seen as a liability earlier in his career, jack clark looking like a bag of big league chew and the only power threat on a speedy team. mcgee stole 56, tommy herr and ozzie both stole 31, andy van slyke had an incredible name and stole 34, and vince coleman stole 110 bases (!) and hit one home run.

this is a fun thread, gyac, thank you for starting it

Very nice, YMP.

Truly amazing: the '82 Series matched up the Cardinals (67 HR, fewest in the majors) against the Brewers (216 HR, most in the majors). Surely that's the only time that ever happened. George Hendricks led the Cardinals with 19 HR, Darrell Porter had 12, and no one else had more than 8.

Oh yeah put these names directly in my veins please: Lou Brock, Gene Tenace, Tommy Herr, Andy Van Slyke, Vince Coleman.

I gave exactly zero fucks about baseball (or any sport) before that. And I pretty much haven't since!

When my St. Louisan nephews cared about the Cardinals, it was the Mark McGwire to Albert Pujols era and I just couldn't get into it. Huge guys hitting long balls is not a Cardinal virtue. Base-stealing and relief pitching are Cardinal virtues. (That is, if you were an eleven-year-old St. Louisan in 1982. Plenty of other ways to be, but I cannot change my nature.)

Here in DC there was a brief flash of potential excitement around the Ryan Zimmerman, Jayson Werth, and Bryce Harper Nationals teams, but that has dissipated and I am back to not giving a shit.

We’re you a fan of the 2015/16 era Royals?

Or the 2022 Guardians?

I have no opinion on those, so I will punt to my apparent doppelganger. Take it away, mookieproof!

i'm in the willie mcgee k-hole again, but this sabr.org profile on him has so many lovable moments: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/willie-mcgee/

Willie loved sports as a child and played baseball, basketball, and football, depending on what was in season. However, it was baseball for which Willie developed a true passion. Around the age of 10, he found out that one could make a living playing baseball, and for a while he slept with his glove and bat while wearing his ball cap and cleats. The most sensitive of the McGee children, he was shy and lacked self-confidence. His little league coach described his posture on the baseball field as that of a child who “spilled the milk.” He attended Henry Ells High School where his reserved nature initially kept him from trying out for the baseball team. He eventually joined the team in the 10th grade at the urging of coach Bill Erkkila. “I was his P.E. teacher when he was a sophomore, and he was tiny, scrawny, and very quiet. His outstanding athletic attribute was speed,” Erkkila later remembered.

The rookie was needled and teased by teammates, including Hendrick. This initially bothered him until he understood they did so because they liked him. Hendrick, along with coach Dave Ricketts and teammates Bruce Sutter, Bob Forsch, and Ozzie Smith, served as mentors. Smith took McGee under his wing more literally, allowing him to live in his home. It was months before the always respectful McGee called Mrs. Smith by her first name.

'85 Cards had five players finish in the top 11 of MVP voting (McGee, Herr, Tudor, Clark, Coleman) with Ozzie Smith down at #18. Andy Van Slyke was good that year too.

I didn't know STL had the revitalizing juice back then, an aging Cesar Cedeno (a mere 34 but he'd been around since 1970) came over during the season and hit .434/.463/.750 w/6 HR, 19 RBI, 5 SB in 28 games.

Andujar won 21 games (didn't have a *great* season but a pretty good one which was enough to get those wins.) Tudor didn't luck into his 21 wins though, i always forget he threw 10(!) shutouts that season.

2003 ALCS game 3 brawl DELIVERS. The commentary on this is killing me.

DON ZIMMER, A 72 YEAR OLD MAN WENT INTO PEDRO MARTINEZ’S FACE AND PEDRO MARTINEZ THREW HIM DOWN

I see Martinez mentions this as his only career regret but I’m sorry, it’s seriously funny. You’re an old guy involved in baseball and you go charging into a brawl, what did you think was going to happen?!

actually both knees have been replaced

Zimmer gets bundled over like a pile of rags

Commentator 1: THAT IS TERRIBLE
Commentator 2: I’d like to see that again
Me: ME TOO

He’s the mighty Casey! Judge and Ohtani and Ruth rolled into one!

The entire poem is about how even the greatest can strike out on three pitches!!!

Cause they’re the bottom of the order? Cause their good guys have been on the IL for two weeks? Who knows

It was the first pitch! Guys like Wade Boggs pretty much never swung at the first pitch

I haven't read the poem in 35+ years, but isn't Casey the cleanup hitter?

I understand the logic of looking at the first pitch but bro’s like “I’m so good I can watch two strikes and then I’ll lock in”. Except he isn’t!

If Casey is batting cleanup, then that shifts everyone on my lineup up one place and then you’re looking back at the same problem (why is he batting behind these losers)

The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day:
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play,
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
A pall-like silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

4-2 in the 9th isn’t a brilliant outlook no matter who’s on deck

Anyway why do you think those are their two best hitters?

at that point you’ve got nobody on, down 2, 2 out, and a hoodoo (I always remember this as “a lulu”) and a cake before it even gets to mighty Casey. A pall-like silence sounds about right

But shouldn’t the guys hitting in front of cleanup be good enough to get on base? The crowd should be cheering for them, but they don’t, cos they know they’re bad!

Maybe Casey has Tyler O’Neill disease, where it ain’t his style to drive in runners on base. Solo homers only!

Lol. Yeah that’s the part that doesn’t quite click into place - “mighty” Casey feels like an archetypal cleanup guy.

^^^
though, yeah, it doesn't make much sense that the two weak hitters are ahead of Casey

maybe 1888 analytics said bat your worst hitters early so they can rest and don't get rubella or something

Hahahaomg surely "Mudville nine" means the team. Baseball used to be a game played with 9 players!!

xp PBKR 💀💀💀

Yeah felicity that’s what I think I means as well - but they aren’t the best up for the team in that inning, like they aren’t meant to be guys that would give a good shot at getting on base. But it turns out they’re clutch and Casey isn’t!

I admit, haven't done my podcast homework assignment yet.

in my mind there are two possibilities - casey is leadoff or casey is cleanup. i like tracer's interpretation for casey as leadoff but casey as cleanup is how i remember it too.

i agree with gyac that mudville probably had the lead first. i do think that they lost the lead relatively late in the game, which is why the crowd is so volatile and calling for the umpire to be killed.

CASEY AS LEADOFF
-cooney and barrows are the sixth and seventh batters. not great but not spectacular. can be thought to reliably put the ball in play at least, maybe get some singles. and they both did put the ball in play. but they both 'died at first'.
-flynn the hodooo and jimmy the cake are eight and ninth. understandably there's a pall when they're due up. jimmy is also the pitcher and is despisèd for not only being a terrible hitter but also allowing 4 runs in the seventh and eighth, turning a surefire win into a probable loss. however, the fact that he "tore the cover off the ball" and legged out a double was totally unexpected. it adds to the crowd's excitement after "the dust had lifted" and the "men saw what had occurred" - the crowd needed a second to process - who would have thought the 8 and 9 guys would get on base, much less both be in scoring position?
-casey in this scenario is a nineteenth century kyle schwarber. guy who starts the game off with a solo home run. maybe both runs in the game are due to casey solo shots. mighty casey! but also bats under 200 and is on the verge of setting the single season strikeout record, so the end of the poem is VMIC.

CASEY AS CLEANUP
-cooney the pitcher bats ninth and barrows is leadoff. the poem isn't negative towards cooney because when he bats there are no outs, anything can happen, even if he gets out that's only one out, still plenty of life in the inning.
-but when barrows the leadoff hitter can't get on base - that's bad. two outs!
-biggest question here as has been pointed out is why flynn and jimmy are so bad and hated but still batting two and three. i think it's because they're both 0-4 in the game, four strikeouts each, 10 RISP left on between them (bottom of the order has been hitting well), and not only that but have been slumping in their previous games - and the manager won't shuffle the lineup yet because he doesn't want to mess with their heads (the other reason the manager won't change the lineup is because the manager also either flynn or jimmy). jimmy is also probably in year 2 of a 10 year/$3000 contract that he's drastically underperforming. so he's much depisèd. that said, he can still smack the ball occasionally - this is supported by blake "[tearing] the cover off the ball" and legging out a double.
-casey bats cleanup as most people assume and you know what happens next.

i don't like casey as cleanup because even if the two and three hitters are underperforming, they're still good and the crowd should still have some hope. i think casey as schwarber is the better read, even if it goes against how most people remember the poem.

Jesus Christ this is an absolutely superb analysis. I’m in awe here.

I prefer your favourite interpretation too! Plus it’s funnier.

Cooney and Barrows both grounded out and not just grounded out but died. Suggests they are both ultra slow and baserunning liabilities. Also I really like the idea of Jimmy Blake being the pitcher. I know he includes the first name to make it scan better but I like the idea of there being several Blakes on the team hence the need to specify.

“Blake, as in our best hitter?”
“No Blake as in the pitcher who gave up a grand slam to the nine hole hitter last series.”

Both very well argued positions. I can't choose between them!

Page 4 of the June 3, 1888 Sunday (morning) edition of the San Francisco Daily Examiner:

https://i.imgur.com/RWMJWDZ.jpeg

(if you are of advanced-age, you may need to open that jpg in another tab and zoom: 4th column, middle-bottom)

So many fun and random things on this page. I want to try Joy's vegetable sarsaparilla. That lynching in St. Helena seems super fishy "Wright, I understand hanged himself". Apparently the crowd threw the rope around his neck, argued whether he deserved to die, then Wright says "I'll be damned if I stay in this crowd another minute!" and jumps.

Also "Mr. Hogg, who recently died at Okton, Maryland, is said to have been the oldest railroad man in the world. He was certainly the most appropriately named". OUCH