“Tub” Spencer, for a time a backstop with the Phillies after Dooin was injured last year…is now under bail for $1,000 to appear in court.
The charge against Spencer is that he tried to break into a restaurant at Eighth and Dauphin sts.
Spencer, when given his hearing, did not argue that it was unsatisfied hunger that drove him to dive through the window into the cafe. The rotund catcher, who weighs 200 pounds frankly admitted…even a plate glass barrier didn’t deter his efforts to get into the food shop.
...doctoring pitches helped extend the careers of countless fading arms throughout baseball history. More than a simple performance enhancer, it was damn fun. Anytime a suspected scuffer or greaser came to town, local media fired off breathless “Does He or Doesn’t He?,” “Will He or Won’t He?” columns. Students of the game watched the pitcher’s every move, looking for a fishy hand movement or sleeve swipe. A batter’s dirty look as he walked back to the dugout was itself worth the price of admission. The mere threat of a spitball drove hitters batty, to the point where they’d get pissed if it wasn’t thrown, given all the waiting and anguish they went through over the course of a game.
A brief visit through the end of the 19th century when men were men and baseball was serious business.
April 29, 1892:
“Cleveland Spiders SS Ed McKean accidentally shoots himself through the ‘fleshy portion’ of his finger with a revolver. He will recover within a week and go on to drive in 93 runs, albeit with the lowest batting average and HR total of his career to date.”
It was a First Baptist Church…but Pettitte has admitted to a Second.
The Waco-born Berkman, now age 36, will report in the coming days to training camp with the St. Louis Cardinals, a team that he signed with as a free agent following the 2010 season. Berkman played the last two months of that season with the New York Yankees following a trade that took him away from the only professional organization he had ever known.
“The hardest time in my professional life was when I was traded to New York. I had been in Houston a long time. I was very comfortable, played at Rice, a native Texan, so it was like a dream come true,” Berkman said. “For the first two weeks (following the trade) I literally wanted to cry. I felt so bad. I was having a bad season, and was in a completely new and alien environment. I just felt overwhelmed. Fortunately, I did have one friend in New York, and that was the main reason I waived my no-trade clause and went up there because Andy (Pettitte) was there.”
Berkman was joined on the stage Tuesday with the former Yankee and Astro pitcher Pettitte, as well as former Astros shortstop Craig Reynolds and Yankees shortstop Bobby Meacham. Reynolds is currently a pastor with Second Baptist and Meacham is the first-base coach for Houston.
Dennis “Oil Can’’ Boyd’s new tell-all book, “They Call Me Oil Can: My Life in Baseball,’’ which hits bookstores in June, should be a blockbuster if the stories are similar to what the former Red Sox pitcher told WBZ’s Jon Miller yesterday at JetBlue Park.
Boyd, who spent eight of his 10 major league seasons with the Red Sox, admitted he was under the influence of cocaine two-thirds of the time he was on the mound.
“Oh yeah, at every ballpark,’’ he said. “There wasn’t one ballpark that I probably didn’t stay up all night, until four or five in the morning, and the same thing is still in your system. It’s not like you have time to go do it while in the game, which I had done that.
...Boyd, who will paint a picture of support and disdain for some of his former Red Sox teammates in his book, said, “All of them didn’t rally around me. All of them knew and the ones that cared came to me. The Dwight Evanses and Bill Buckners . . . it was the veteran ballplayers. Some guys lived it; they knew what you were doing, and the only way they knew was they had to have tried it, too.’’
Boyd contends he was blackballed from baseball and his career cut short because he was different. “The reason I caught the deep end to it is because I’m black. The bottom line is the game carries a lot of bigotry, and that was an easy way for them to do it,’’ Boyd said. “If I wasn’t outspoken and a so-called ‘proud black man,’ maybe I would have gotten the empathy and sympathy like other ballplayers got that I didn’t get; like Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Steve Howe. I can name 50 people that got third and fourth chances all because they weren’t outspoken black individuals.’’
After signing his contract and promising to hit nothing but pitchers, Sherwood N. Magee, the Philadelphia outfielder, chirped as follows: “We’ll cop the gonfalon this year sure. The Phils would have won last year had it not been for Titus’s and Dooin’s broken legs. I have always tried to be a modest youth, but it might be asserted that my 33-day suspension was scarcely a boon to the club. We will never have tough luck like that another year.
Yes, Sherry, it was horrible luck that you decided to punch an umpire in the face and knock him unconscious.
Schilling already knows what the theme of the 2013 ballot, results of which will be announced in January, will be.
“The guys who cheated and the guys who didn’t,” Schilling said.
...Though he vows to have never taken any type of PED, Schilling doesn’t absolve himself from blame for what happened during his years as a player.
“A lot of that is on us,” Schilling said. “It’s on us as players. It absolutely falls on guys like myself and other guys who didn’t cheat to not doing anything about it. We’re a players’ union. We could have done something about it. We chose not to. That falls squarely on us.”
...While anyone would be thrilled to receive the Hall of Fame honor, Schilling says he accomplished everything he wanted to in baseball.
“I’m proud to have done what I did,” Schilling said. “In ‘92, my wife and I were talking about what I want, and for some reason we had a conversation then about aspirations in baseball. I said, ‘When I retire, I want the 24 guys who suited up with me to say, “Life or death game, who do you want to have the ball?”’ I wanted that to be me.
BASE (Be a Superior Example) (Bonds and Steroids Election).
This summer, the Hall of Fame will ask kids to pledge to stay away from steroids.
Next winter, the Hall of Fame will send out a ballot that includes Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro.
A contradiction? A message to voters?
Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson insists that it’s neither one. Idelson said Wednesday that the Hall has always been an education center, in addition to being a baseball museum and a Hall of Fame, and that the new BASE (Be a Superior Example) program fits in with that.
He also said that the Hall isn’t—and won’t—tell anyone how to vote, and that the new education program should not be read as a directive to eliminate steroid users.
“We believe in allowing voters to use their own value judgment,” he said. “We’re very comfortable with the rules for election as they stand.”
In other words, it’s my problem. Mine, and the other 500-some Hall of Fame voters.
BP’s projection system, at its core, follows the same basic principles as it has before. We begin with our baseline projections, which start with a weighted average of past performance, with decreasing emphasis placed on seasons further removed from the season being projected. Then that performance is regressed to the mean. After that, we use the baseline forecast to find comparable players (while also taking into account things like position and body type) and use those to account for the effects of aging on performance.
Every season we put PECOTA under the knife, looking for things we can improve to make sure we’re coming up with the best forecasts possible. Sometimes what we come up with is a minor tweak. At other times, though, what we unearth is not only more significant, but an interesting baseball insight in its own right, even aside from its inclusion in PECOTA.
This season, we’ve made some rather radical changes to how we handle the weighted averages for the PECOTA baselines—we still deemphasize past seasons, but nowhere near as much as we used to. With such a dramatic and counterintuitive change, we thought it best to give our users an explanation of what was changed and why so that they could correctly use and interpret the PECOTA forecasts.
Countup with Keith Olbermann ~ win #28…win #29…win #30.
It remains, in short, the most amazing season a pitcher has put together since at least Sandy Koufax, and very probably since long before him. And now, Steve Carlton’s 1972 campaign, when he won 27 of his rotten team’s 59 games, dates to 40 years ago.
So much has been written about Lefty’s work that it is amazing to consider that an extraordinarily relevant detail is usually omitted from the recounting – one that makes winning 46 percent of one team’s entire supply of victories all the more remarkable.
Steve Carlton did it in a strike-shortened season.
The first sport-wide in-season strike in American history would in later contexts seem so brief as to be almost quaint. But when Opening Day was pushed back by a week forty years ago, and each team lost between six and nine games, it was traumatic – and it contributed to the distinct possibility that Carlton missed an opportunity to win 30 games.
Vean Gregg of the Naps says that Eugene Krapp is also a holdout. He said that he hoped his former teammate would make a go of it. “Without Krapp and myself, the Senators will finish higher than the Naps. With us, there will be a new world’s champion baseball team next year,” said Gregg.
Gregg may have been boasting, but he was right. He and Krapp both signed, Cleveland finished 16.5 games behind Washington, and the Red Sox won it all.
Straight from the riveting pages of The Beane Eaters comes…
The jig is up for Major League Baseball, just ask the cities of New York, New York, Los Angeles, and Oakland, California.
The con game is over and the cover is being lifted. MLB wants fans to attend games with minor league players on the field. MLB wants fans to buy their team’s products, and to watch inferior baseball.
The question should be asked, why do fans of the New York Metropolitans, the Oakland Athletics or the Los Angeles Dodgers support their teams?
It seems odd or a coincidence that these teams have a competitor across town to compete for the same fans. Teams that have owned or will own the city. The New York Yankees dominate the Big Apple, the San Francisco Giants own the Bay Area. With the new star first baseman and National League all star Albert Pujols joining the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. You can bet Southern California fans will be flocking to Orange County and leaving Chavez Ravine.
...What is troubling, other teams are now following the Money Ball method of running a baseball team. With Commissioner Bud Selig’s wishes. Baseball continues to slide down the American popularity poll.
...Baseball fans have to take it into their own hands and not attend games of the New York Mets, Oakland A’s, and Los Angeles Dodgers to make their message clear. Put a product on the field that can compete for a division title.
NOTHING LIKE THIS HAS EVER HAPPENED BEFORE! He Came From Outer Space!
Well, I am very pleased to announce that through my personal lobbying efforts - and I do not exaggerate - I have gotten Bill “Spaceman” Lee on the College Baseball Hall of Fame ballot and have voted for him (previously I had to write him in). They previously said that he was not eligible because he supposedly not a First Team All-American, an oddity considering he was 12-3 with a 1.67 ERA on the ‘68 national champs; what does it take to be an All-American? Was Bob Gibson pitching at Creighton that year instead of the Cardinals? Or Denny McLain at Michigan State . . . Prison?
Bugs Raymond, the once great pitcher of the New York Giants, appears to be down and out as a major leaguer. This time last year he was taking the Keeley cure. It didn’t touch him…He still stands—or falls—suspended by the New York club and is ineligible to play with any club in organized baseball. He will not be traded.
...
Bugs was a great starter but a poor finisher. He seldom finished anything but a drink. He began three seasons with the Giants full of hope, promises and temperance vows and ended them full of dope, remorse and bad booze.
“Bugs” Raymond is still on the map. A day or two ago he rescued a man from three thugs who tried to hold up their victim in one of the suburbs of Chicago. Raymond responded to the call to arms and put all three to flight…“Bugs” found the victim of the assault slightly injured and took him to a police station, where he received medical assistance.
As you might imagine, the Bugs Raymond saga ended very badly. Washed up, he spent the 1912 season in the outlaw United States League until it folded. Raymond’s five-year-old daughter died of influenza, he separated from his wife, and he died September 7 of complications from a fractured skull he suffered in a brawl.
or…The Year They Couldn’t Get a Speedball Past Tito Francona
Terry Francona, the man who managed the Red Sox to two World Series championships, is often called Tito. That’s because it was his dad’s nickname.
And his dad was quite a hitter. So good that in 1959, he had the highest batting average in the major leagues. But he did not win the American League batting title.
...Francona was batting .402 as late as Aug. 10, clouted a pair of home runs in a game five days later and a week after that, hit another ninth-inning game-winning homer. On Sept. 7, he was at .391 before going 11 for 56 to close the season while hampered by a sore hamstring.
Francona got at least one hit in 75 of the 96 games he started and had 43 multi-hit games. He hit 20 home runs and had 79 RBI, a .414 on-base percentage and a .566 slugging percentage. He struck out just 42 times in 443 plate appearances.
A player required 477 plate appearances to qualify for a batting title. That left Francona 34 short, which is why his final 1959 batting average of .363 did not crown him the AL champ. Detroit’s Harvey Kuenn won the title with a .353 mark.
Somebody told Hans Wagner that it required lots of nerve to play football, but that almost any chap could play baseball. This roused Honus to oratory. He is a football fan himself…[and] likes to watch a football game more than he does a baseball game. But he refused to admit that football requires more nerve than baseball.
...
“Doesn’t it take a little nerve to stand up to the plate and have the terrible speed of a hard ball whizzing past your forehead? Doesn’t it take nerve to step in when you don’t know what’s coming? Doesn’t it require nerve to slide into a bag when the ball is coming at you like a bullet and you don’t know but that it’s going to bound off your head?”
The Braves will unveil a new crème-colored home uniform on Monday that will probably seem familiar to fans of a certain age.
The design closely resembles the home uniform worn by the Hank Aaron-led Braves during their first two seasons in Atlanta in 1966-1967, right down to the player number instead of a tomahawk beneath the “Braves” script on front of the jersey.
...(Derek) Schiller said the new uniform was “ultimately a John Schuerholz decision” stemming from the team president and longtime former general manager’s desire to “re-connect with the team’s history.”
There is no tomahawk on the chest, but two crossed tomahawks are incorporated in a sleeve-patch logo along with “Atlanta Braves” and “1876,” the year when the National League franchise debuted as the Boston Red Caps. The Braves often cite their status as “the longest continuously operating franchise in Major League Baseball.”
The new logo is on the left sleeve, replacing a screaming Indian chief patch featured on Braves uniforms in 1966-1967. Besides that political-correctness change, the other big difference in the new uniform is player names on back. The old ones didn’t have those.
The book ‘Scars and Strikes’ is Rocker’s attempt to set the record straight a dozen years later. He says he wrote 98 percent of the self published book himself and in it he puts forth his views on many things, including Sports Illustrated reporter Jeff Pearlman, who Rocker says has a history of ‘vilifying every subject he encounters.’
Jaye Watson asked, “Do you blame him completely for the article for you looking like a racist and a homophobe?”
“Absolutely,” said Rocker.
Watson replied, “So none of it was your fault? Nothing that you said?”
Rocker answered, “If the article was 20 pages long and my long winded commentary had been included in its entirety, the opinion of me today would be drastically different.”
...Rocker says steroids helped him recover more quickly between games and that he wasn’t the only Brave using them.
“Probably just off the top of my head, probably eight to ten guys in that Braves house I know factually and one or two more that I’m not sure of. It’s the kind of thing if you weren’t doing it, it’s like bringing a knife to a gun fight. I’m not going to climb on top of the mound, look 60 feet away at Mark Maguire knowing good and well what he’s doing. I’m not going to climb up there short handed. I’m going to have all six bullets in my gun because I know he does. When the game is over and the three run homer is in the seats you can’t make excuses.”
I knew Steve Sisco’s only career HR smelled fishy.
Jeff Allison got up Friday morning to get ready to go to work at a local baseball facility and coach kids. Then he read the headline about Josh Hamilton.
“It tore me apart,” said Allison. “I know. I’ve been there.”
...“I’m happy,” he says, “and I’m proud of where I am. Do I wish I were in the big leagues? Of course, but once I hurt my elbow and didn’t say anything, my stuff was never the same.”
Allison is the best high school pitcher I’ve ever seen in New England. The night I saw him, he sat 95-97 mph with a hammer curveball. In seven innings, he faced 22 batters and threw 21 first-pitch strikes.
...And now, at 27, he is 62 months clean, trying to find his balance and help kids stay away from his demons. Today, he cares about Hamilton, “Because if you haven’t gone through this, you have no idea how it tears at you. Josh will make it through. He will succeed. He will be great. I say it from a different vantage point than many other people. I’ve been there. I know. And I know that in the end, Josh will win and continue to be a superstar. If I could help him as he helped me, I would, but he may not need anyone else, because he will make it.”
One of the big knocks against Brock was that he didn’t walk very much. This really hurt his on-base percentage and makes his career .293 batting average fairly soft. Over his career, he averaged 14.76 plate appearances for every walk. Of the 34 Hall of Famers who had at least 2000 plate appearances from 1960-1979, only a handful walked less frequently than Brock. For the record, those were Ernie Banks (14.77), Luis Aparicio (15.51), Nellie Fox (16.11), Bill Mazeroski (18.36), Robin Yount (19.10), and Andre Dawson (20.85), and these numbers are all limited to the portions of careers in just the period 1960-1979. Most of those guys, however, also struck out a lot less often than Brock, who had a 2.27 K/BB ratio in his career. Banks (1.84), Aparicio (0.97), Fox (0.35), Mazeroski (1.46), and Yount (1.96) had more balanced attacks, while Dawson (3.64) was just getting going with his own (HOF-questionable) career.
Brock also took over the lead in career caught stealings in 1974 and kept that lead until 1999, when Rickey Henderson passed Brock, 8 years after he passed him in stolen bases. In fact, looking at the top 10 guys in all-time stolen bases, Brock has the worst success rate of all (ignoring Hamilton and Arlie Latham, for whom caught stealing data doesn’t exist.) Brock’s rate was 75.3%. By comparison, Henderson was at 80.8%, Ty Cobb at 80.9%, and Tim Raines at 84.7%.
For his career, Brock ranks 35th in games played and 19th in at bats, but only 45th in runs scored, 63rd in total bases, 67th in doubles, 63rd in triples, and 58th in times on base, while 21st in strikeouts and 17th in outs made.
So what’s all the fuss? Brock was a really good player, but should he really be in the Hall of Fame?
Ian Rotten vs The Great White! (batting cage match)
Actor/ comedian/ cultural icon Cheech Marin and I were talking baseball and I just had to get the camera out, as he really knows and loves the sport. Here is part one of our conversation at his pad in Malibu.
...In the video here he talks about playing shortstop in little league, growing up near L.A.‘s Wrigley Field (home of the PCL Angels) and why the Dodgers had a national presence on early television broadcasts even before they moved to the West Coast. A unique and informed perspective by a funny, intelligent and hospitable guy.
On to baseball. I asked the most successful manager in Astros history (four division titles in five years), are you OK with the Astros’ move to the American League?
“I know a lot of people don’t like it, but it’s going to be fine. I’m a National League guy, obviously, but the last couple of years I’ve been rooting for the American League because of Nolan (Texas Rangers owner Nolan Ryan). I like the National League because of the strategic implications. Decisions are easier for managers in the American League. The leagues used to be a lot more different, with different umpires and even different baseballs. But the boundaries have been blurred by interleague play.
“Now the American League has almost the same appeal as the National League. The move doesn’t bother me,” he said.
“Plus, having the Yankees and Red Sox and other American League teams here every year will offer something we haven’t had before. Those big crowds will mean more money to buy more free agents.”
Vean Gregg, Nap twirler, who is holding out for a $5,000 salary, declared Saturday he was about ready to close negotiations to play with an eastern outlaw league.
It is easy to see that Vean Gregg has been in the majors only one season. Now his argument to force the Cleveland club into paying him more money, has taken the form of a threat to sign an outlaw contract. O, peanut butter.
Speaking for the first time this offseason publicly, Red Sox pitcher Josh Beckett touched on his view of the team’s September collapse, as well as his New Year’s Day meeting with new manager Bobby Valentine, while appearing on the MLB Network’s “Intentional Talk” show.
Regarding the controversy that surrounded the Red Sox’ demise in September, during which the team’s starters went 4-13 with a 7.08 ERA, Beckett explained that the bottom line was that the Sox didn’t perform and everything else should have been kept in-house.
“I think the biggest key is what [Jon] Lester said to the end that, we stunk on the field and that was the bottom line,” he told the show. “If we would have pitched better, none of that stuff would have even been an issue. And it shouldn’t be an issue anyway because what goes on in the clubhouse should stay in the clubhouse. I don’t care who says that or whatever, I’m not saying we don’t make mistakes in the clubhouse [show host and former Red Sox player Kevin Millar] will definitely respond to that because, hell, they were drinking Jack Daniels and they won the World Series [in 2004]. It’s just what goes on in the clubhouse, it’s supposed to stay in the clubhouse.”
...As for the pitcher’s well-publicized meeting with Valentine—who had insinuated that Beckett was “pissed” regarding comments the former ESPN analyst made regarding the righty’s deliberate pace—Beckett said the get-together went off without a hitch.
Hop on your Lambretta and get the #### out of town! (dirty jobs)
Mike Quade, fired with a year left on his contract after his first full year on the job with the Cubs in 2011, has some words of advice for Robin Ventura, who walks into a similar situation as a rookie manager in Chicago in 2012. It’s the same thing Lou Piniella told him when he replaced Piniella.
“When Lou left, he came into the office, and said, ‘The media, Mike.” Chicago isn’t known as a cut-throat media town, but its media muscle comes in numbers.
...“It’s a grind and it consumes you,’’ Quade said. “ As prepared as I was, it still surprised me how much time [the job] consumed, not just time with people but stuff you mull over — whether it’s criticism or obligations with this beat writer or that beat writer or TV station, charity events … it’s on your mind a lot.”
...Ventura is smart enough and baseball savvy enough to know when to hit-and-run, but there will learning on the job.
“They say baseball is a slow game,’’ Quade said. “It sure doesn’t seem that way when you’re in the dugout. You think you have it figured out, but things come up quick. But he knows the game cold. That said, his bench coach becomes huge, and his staff in general.’’
Woo-hoo! Next stop, the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame!
Tino Martinez only met Ted Williams once, a chance passing at Fenway Park in the early 1990s when Martinez was first establishing himself as a major-leaguer. Martinez, the quiet kid from Tampa, stumbled through a forgettable version of hello; Williams, the game’s pre-eminent expert on hitting, replied with words as memorable now as that afternoon:
‘‘You’ve got a great swing.”
Martinez swung that way for most of 16 seasons, piling up strong numbers (a .271 average, 339 homers, 1,271 RBIs) and, most impressively, four World Series championships. And Friday, in a ceremony at Tropicana Field, Martinez will be inducted into the Ted Williams Hitters Hall of Fame.
“Obviously I’m not going to the major-league baseball Hall of Fame, but to be considered and have the criteria to get into the Ted Williams Hall is quite an honor,” Martinez said. “I can’t think of anything better, (other) than the major-league baseball Hall of Fame, than the Ted Williams Hall.”
...And there was talk of catching on somewhere to get to 2,000 hits — he finished with 1,925, plus 83 in the postseason — but decided, “You don’t stick around for the numbers.”
One day when I was young and stupid, my brother and I walked down the road together. It was a summer day. I wore a green cap with a white felt M on it, the cap from our little league team. We walked toward the general store, as usual, but that day we walked past it, over a short bridge above the river. Just past the bridge, a road split off from our road and climbed up out of the valley. The house at the intersection of the two roads had spilled things onto the lawn, and they were for sale. We found a box with some baseball cards. The cards were all beaten up and featured players we’d never heard of. This 1970 Luke Walker card was among them. I didn’t recognize the name. He was gone from the major leagues by then, and his brief moment in the national spotlight had occurred years earlier, when I’d been too young to notice. The obscurity of his name and of his worn-away face made the card seem strange and ancient, as if it had traveled through centuries to reach me. All the cards were like this. My brother and I thought we had found mysterious, valuable relics selling for pennies a piece. We thought we’d struck it rich.
That was over 30 years ago. Now I wake up early every day while it’s still dark so I can write a little before everything resumes its unstoppable forgettable forward lurch. I usually have about an hour. Sometimes I waste most or all of it. Sometimes I cast around the internet for pieces of the past. Two mornings ago instead of writing I found a newspaper article on Luke Walker from 1971. He’d won 15 games in 1970, and in spring training before the 1971 season he brushed aside a reporter’s suggestion that he was primed to win 20 in the coming year by rhetorically wondering why the reporter was limiting him to that benchmark. Why not 25? This is how you feel when you’re young and stupid. You hold cardboard in your hands and it feels like great riches. You hold a ball in your hands and it feels alive. Luke Walker didn’t remotely approach 25 wins in 1971. He didn’t even reach double figures in wins after 1971, and by 1974 he had thrown his last pitch in the big leagues.
I guess even Bill Rasmussen is turned off by the constant flow of live Super Bowl tailgating food injury updates.
Bill Rasmussen is a baseball fan.
So naturally, when he met USC President Harris Pastides, there was one main topic he wanted to discuss.
“Baseball,” Rasmussen said. “He, as all of you are, is incredibly proud of the back-to-back national championships. What I mentioned to him was, because of my interest in baseball, prior to ESPN, the College World Series had no coverage. I wanted to include it, and that was part of our contract with the NCAA — that we get to do the College World Series.”
Rasmussen, the founder of ESPN, is not only a baseball fan, but a sports fan in general, which pointed him towards a 24-hour network devoted only to sports.
Thirty-two years later, Rasmussen doesn’t even watch his brainchild every day.
“I’m not a big television fan,” Rasmussen said. “I’d rather be doing things.”
...His favorite part of ESPN is the “Baseball Tonight” program, mostly because of his love of the sport. Though he doesn’t watch the channel every day, he still takes immense pride in how it has grown.
Oliva isn’t the only former Twin feeling a bit frustrated these days about Hall of Fame voting.
There’s Jack Morris, baseball’s winningest pitcher of the 1980s and author of arguably the greatest Game 7 pitching performance in World Series history… “He go next year,” Oliva predicted. “They give him a big push this year.”
There’s Jim Kaat, a 283-game winner who fell two votes short in the most recent balloting by the Golden Era Committee. “There’s a lot of guys — Jim Kaat, Luis Tiant,” Oliva said. “I don’t know what the Veteran’s Committee wants.”
And, there’s Oliva. He’ll have to wait until 2014 for another chance with the Golden Era Committee, which meets every three years.
He’s 73 now. With any luck, he’ll be 76 the next time he comes up for election — but nobody has that guarantee.
“We no have too much time, you know?” Oliva said of himself, Kaat and others. “We don’t live forever. We only have one life. “I mention to them, the guy who no make it now, he have to wait three years. A lot of those guys (being considered) will be 90 — why they have to wait three more years? “Why it not like the young players? They (are eligible for election) every year. I no care what group they consider.”
Big league magnates almost universally cry out against the idea of having their players numbered with numerals on their shirt sleeves. This is considered good form in some minor leagues but the better players resent being placarded like a bunch of horses.
Yeah, I don’t see how this whole “numbers on the uniforms” thing will ever fly.
