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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Friday, January 30, 2009
(creeeeeek)...I guess Dooley’s Week started early.
But it would be impossible for Rodriguez to be so good without his flaws. It’s those flaws, most likely, that have allowed him to reach such heights. Would he have the same work ethic and strive so hard to reach for greatness if he wasn’t so clearly laden with fears of inferiority? While no one can say, it’s just as true that no one else in Major League Baseball’s pantheon is any less screwed up. Ty Cobb biographer Al Stump speculated that the reason Cobb towered above his contemporaries was because he was literally psychotic, able to draw on reserves of fire and energy alien to the normal human. Ted Williams was notoriously prickly, and was as disdained during his playing days as Rodriguez is now. Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Barry Bonds — the story’s the same regardless of whose name you pull out of the Hall of Fame.
All we can do is appreciate Rodriguez while he’s still playing and at such a high level, despite how uncomfortable his flaws might make us. At the very least, he keeps us consistently amused and shows no signs of committing any truly harmful wrongs. Decades from now, when Rodriguez’s playing career is a distant memory, what is it that we’ll want to remember and tell the young’uns about: That we cursed his every home run and speculated about his effeminacy in the ESPN.com comments section, or that we got to watch the sport’s most hallowed marks go down at an age when we could fully enjoy it?
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1. Vegas WatchMy school's paper on BTF. Who knew?
Great baseball player, seems like a decent enough fellow, but not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Personally, I kind of like that aspect of A-Rod... it humanizes him. He's a big, strong guy, handsome, rich and accomplished, but he still seems to struggle with feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. Desperately wanting to be liked and almost palpably uncomfortable in his own skin, I sometimes think a big reason why people dislike A-Rod is that he shows too much. His self-consciousness embarrasses people, both for his sake and in how it reminds them of the insecurities in themselves.
I think the problem in terms of image is more that AROD is seen as lacking self-esteem to begin with. When Kent Hrbek lifted Ron Gant off first base to tag him, people were upset, but since Hrbek didn't seem to have an apologetic cell in his body, most fans have kind of fond memories of a heads-up play. (Maybe not Braves fans ...)
I don't like AROD much at all and I hope his Yankees lose (because I'm a Texas fan) , but I must say that he worked his rear end off in every game he played for the Rangers. I have never been able to argue with the effort he gives on the field, whatever his personality quirks.
Regardless of whose name you pull out? Everyone in the Hall of Fame either was a lowlife, was hated by fellow players, or had serious psychological problems?
"Ladies, please. All of our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine."
Surely you can't deny that Stan Musial was a world-class jackass.
Oh, wait.
Word. And Walter Johnson, Ernie Banks, and Luis Aparicio as well. Freakazoids, all of them, I tell ya.
C Yogi Berra
1B Willie Stargell
2B Charlie Gehringer
3B Brooks Robinson
SS Ernie Banks
LF Stan Musial
CF Willie Mays
RF Tony Gwynn
P Robin Roberts
No Lou Gehrig?
Are you kidding? The dude was dying of a terrible disease, and considered himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Cuckoo!
That lasted until the Giants moved to San Francisco, and the fans adopted Orlando Cepeda as "their" Willie Mays. Mays's relationship to the fans and media were never the same after that.
Ted Williams was notoriously prickly, and was as disdained during his playing days as Rodriguez is now. Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Barry Bonds — the story’s the same regardless of whose name you pull out of the Hall of Fame.
Except that Ruth pissed off some people but was idolized by fans and tolerated with amusement by most of his teammates; Williams was never hated by fans outside of a few in Boston who were influenced by the press; and Mantle was practically worshipped by his teammates. Other than that.....
And A-Rod and Bonds have almost nothing in common except talent, and the ability to inspire snark for entirely unrelated reasons.
Are you sure that this shouldn't be Ozzie Smith?
Definitely not Braves fans. #### Kent Hrbek, he is a cheating son of a #####.
This overstates it. Mays was always, and remains to this day, beloved by Bay Area fans.
Gehrig never had a bad word to say, but seems from the biographies I've read to have been painfully repressed. His relationship with his mother was peculiarly intense. Though for Oedipal nightmare nobody beats Amanda Cobb.
And Ozzie Smith never seemed to have a major worry, I agree. But did he want to play two? :)
He was too busy doing backflips to notice how many they were playing.
Wasn't there a bit of a kerfuffle when he went bankrupt despite making a gazillion dollars a year?
Willie McCovey would certainly be among the most universally-liked-and-respected of HOFers.
Yes. Also, I have trouble believing Rickey! is capable of neurosis. That dude was obviously comfortable in his own skin.
Huh? I must have missed that one, although I do remember Jack Clark declaring bankruptcy.
True dat.
Some other HOFers with nary a blemish on their personal reps:
- Lou Brock
- Cy Young
- Christy Mathewson
- Pee Wee Reese
- Red Schoendienst
- Nellie Fox
- Mike Schmidt
- Hank Aaron
- Warren Spahn
- Harmon Killebrew
Hell, there are scads of them.
Once he hit the big time and started making millions, I don't think Ozzie had any further financial troubles.
Ok, that was it. Thanks.
McCovey (and Duke Snider) ran into some serious IRS troubles over unreported income from card shows. Press reports from that time also revealed that McCovey wore a particularly heinous toupee.
Does not compute.
:-)
McCovey's esteem among his teammates was something resembling sainthood. When he retired, the Giants instituted an annual "Willie Mac Award," voted by the players to honor the player most closely attaining McCovey's model of dedication and positive attitude. To this day, the player receiving the warmest and loudest ovation when introduced at AT&T Park is McCovey, even more than Mays or Cepeda.
I would say Willie Mac is the Bay's most revered baseball player.
I lol'd.
One unfortunate drawback of head shaving becoming socially acceptable for everybody is the alarming decline of the combover. When I was just getting started in the business world in the 90s, there was no shortage of middle aged men deploying this majestic hairstyle. Now they're positively endangered, which makes me sad. Because combovers are totally hilarious.
Pretty clearly. In his day, apparently Lefty O'Doul held that status.
I'm actually quite pleased with this decline, because most workplaces consider pointing and laughing non-stop at a fellow employee's haircut to be unacceptable behavior.
My dad's still rocking it for you.
I get buzz cuts now partly in preparation for going the shaved-head route.
Curse you Canadians, what with your respect for the feelings of others.
I don't use the word "Hero" lightly, but your Dad...
I don't care about the feelings of those who have combovers (You choose to live with a combover, and you get what you deserve). I just don't want to have to explain to a future employer how I once got fired for taunting someone who had one.
It's hard to put my finger on, but I'd say there's something of a Baby Huey aura around the guy. He doesn't seem to put much thought behind his decisions - he just sort of goes along with whatever someone else tells him to do. Whenever something is left totally up to him, he dithers a lot. Which probably helps him as a baseball player (what did Yogi Berra say about thinking and hitting) but it leads him down some strange paths in his personal life.
Not to say it hasn't worked for him - he pretty much gets to write his own ticket - but "shrewd" isn't the word that comes to mind when I think of Alex Rodriguez.
Not to worry. Taunting, pointing, and laughing at fellow employees is, you're correct, generally frowned upon. But US Labor Law (and perhaps Canadian as well, I'm not sure) does provide the Combover Exception. Taunt away.
This overstates it. Mays was always, and remains to this day, beloved by Bay Area fans.
It wasn't that they didn't like him, only that it took quite a while for them to build up the same affection for Mays that they had from the jump for Cepeda and then McCovey. Many writers noted this at the time. The consensus was that SF fans resented the New York writers trying to tell them who their heroes should be; we'll pick our own, thank you very much. This hyper-nitpicking attitude did irritate Mays, and rightfully so.
Mays has pretty much always had a series of competing reputations, ranging from his "Say Hey" period from 1951 through 1954 where he played stickball in Harlem with neighborhood kids, to his reputation as Pure Poison among card show promoters for the way he routinely blows off fans who ask for the slightest bit of personal attention in exchange for their autograph fees. But even as far back as 1955, he got the Mantle treatment in the Polo Grounds when he didn't chase down a ball that got through his legs.
Right now Mays is loved in the Bay Area (hell, they love Bonds, and why not, from their perspective?), and by the great majority of fans who never have seen his less cuddly side. They remember him in his early 20's, and from loops of The Catch, and that's fine, since IMO personality in ballplayers is kind of overrated anyway. But he's an odd duck to be placed on a team alongside the others that Bob named in # 9, and that you name in # 24. I've talked to way too many people who've had bad encounters with him to believe otherwise.
Besides post #17, his frugality was considered cheapness by some. Of course, none of this affects my ranking of him as my favorite player.
If the narrowing of my hairline in the front isn't just Nixon-like middle-age hairline restructuring but a portent of things to come, I will go the buzzcut route, too. I think I would look bad with a shaved head because of my paleness, however.
Toupee? Combover? Never!
In which case your dad's response should have been "Then I'm going to call the police, because you're stealing his luggage."
I know Mathewson punched out a heckler, just not the details as to why. No biggie. Both have enough positives to make them candidates for the all nice guy.
Ozzie had real problems with Tony LaRussa. Not really anything more than a star not growing old gracefully, but those can be unpleasant.
I've always liked Bill James' take in "Will the McMeeting Come to Order". The Padres are offered their choice of any players in history. They reject all of the greats for various character flaws (Mays was reported to have skipped church) and end up selecting Danny Thompson.
Heartily concur.
But he's an odd duck to be placed on a team alongside the others that Bob named in # 9, and that you name in # 24. I've talked to way too many people who've had bad encounters with him to believe otherwise.
Well, hell, he's a human being like the rest of us, only one who encounters vastly more scrutiny and publicity. I suspect that many of those I named in #24 in actuality may have/had their less than cuddly sides too, but we just don't know about it.
But on the spectrum between Musial-like spotlessness and Cobb-like grunge, all told it seems pretty clear that Mays falls much closer to Musial, in terms of the respect and good relations he garnered from teammates, management, and the media throughout his long career, and in terms of the image (however valid) he built and maintained with fans as a cheerful hard worker.
Can you blame him? Ozzie was 41, and was still outhitting the guy they were trying to replace him with (Royce Clayton, age 26).
James has also written stuff to the effect that good defenders/players at key defensive positions tend to be nicer, but I found the lists of players he made to be a lot less convincing. I think he's stated this more than once, but the worst had to be in the New Historical Abstract when he first completely ripped everything about Maury Wills' personality to shreds, and then used him as an example of a nice guy who played shortstop.
James has also written stuff to the effect that good defenders/players at key defensive positions tend to be nicer, but I found the lists of players he made to be a lot less convincing.
One of the many reasons I love reading James is that he's willing, even eager, to dive into stuff far beyond the realm of numbers and formulae. Often his writing in these quirky veins is his most insightful and funny.
Yet just as often he'll make claims that, while they might sound good, don't really hold up to scrutiny. It's obviously unscientific, but I suspect the case might be that one of the things that separates the superstars from the other jocks might often be exactly an overactive ego.
Teammates and management, yes, no question. The media, more like halfway between Musial and Cobb. (Don't forget that Cobb had his Rices and Salsingers, too.) And the fans---well, it depends on which fans, which city, and what time frame. It's not as if he's like the stereotype of Cobb, but to the casual fan who might approach him in the street he's a lot closer to Bonds than he is to Stan Musial.
But [Mays is] an odd duck to be placed on a team alongside the others that Bob named in # 9, and that you name in # 24. I've talked to way too many people who've had bad encounters with him to believe otherwise.
Well, hell, he's a human being like the rest of us, only one who encounters vastly more scrutiny and publicity. I suspect that many of those I named in #24 in actuality may have/had their less than cuddly sides too, but we just don't know about it.
Maybe so, but I've never heard anything remotely negative ever said by any fan, teammate, or media member about Brooks, Banks or Musial. The rest of them may be another story, but I've never heard of any of them acting towards paying fans the way that Mays has on many occasions. And trust me, you would have heard about it if they had. Nobody covers up this kind of stuff, and the word gets around.
John Roseboro thought Banks was a phony, FWIW.
Picasso was also somewhat stupid, I suppose.
Could well be. And I suppose this might be just me, but I've always felt that a fan approaching a celebrity in public, unbidden, is by definition being rude in the first place. People deserve to go about their business without being bothered. Unless one is introduced to a celebrity or is otherwise authorized to engage with them, if the celebrity chooses to blow them off I don't have any problem with it.
Alexi Yashin has a generally ugly rep. Particularly around here (Ottawa). But my mother had nothing but nice words to say about him from her own personal experience. Nice, polite young man.
Could well be. And I suppose this might be just me, but I've always felt that a fan approaching a celebrity in public, unbidden, is by definition being rude in the first place. People deserve to go about their business without being bothered. Unless one is introduced to a celebrity or is otherwise authorized to engage with them, if the celebrity chooses to blow them off I don't have any problem with it.
I generally agree with this, but it depends on the circumstances. I give a lot more leeway to a kid who shyly asks for one autograph than to an adult (or a kid) who asks to have an entire box of baseballs signed, and "on the Sweet Spot," please. It also depends on how the fan approaches the player, and whether he's approaching him during a meal or if he's sitting in a lobby doing nothing in particular. And if a fan comes up to a player and demands an autograph, then of course the player has a perfect right to tell him to buzz off.
But when it's a case of a fan who patiently waits in line, pays the going rate for an autograph, and then gets a signature that's scribbled upside down on a photo or a book page, then it's not the fan who's being a prlck, it's the player. And that sort of crap has been routine for Mays for many years, and witnessed by far too many people to be dismissed as just a bad day. I bought and sold proably a dozen signed Mays books over the years when I had a shop, and about 9 or 10 of them were signed like that---in a perverse sort of way, the upside down signature served as a kind of de facto Certificate of Authenticity. The only exceptions were the ones that he'd signed during his playing career.
Obviously it does to some extent. But the bottom line is that (a) celebrities have very good reason to be wary of anyone, kid or adult, approaching them without authorization, and (b) no one in the public, kid or adult, holds the right to a celebrity's time or attention.
But when it's a case of a fan who patiently waits in line, pays the going rate for an autograph, and then gets a signature that's scribbled upside down on a photo or a book page, then it's not the fan who's being a prlck, it's the player. And that sort of crap has been routine for Mays for many years, and witnessed by far too many people to be dismissed as just a bad day.
Fully agreed. In this venue Mays may be a complete a$$hole; those are paying customers.
Not that it excuses Mays' behavior, but as an aside (and again this may just be me) I've always found the entire phenomenon of autograph-seeking to be kind of stupid. So you have a piece of paper (or baseball or whatever) with a jock's (or a movie star's or whatever) signature scrawled on it. Whoop-de-dee. It points in the direction of a sort of idolatry that's always seemed a little goofy to me.
May you die a thousand deaths for dredging up this memory.
#### Kent Hrbek.
I agree with that, but OTOH I tend to admire the Brooks or Musial approach to such encounters than I do some of the others. And they seem to have survived their ordeals in pretty good shape.
Not that it excuses Mays' behavior, but as an aside (and again this may just be me) I've always found the entire phenomenon of autograph-seeking to be kind of stupid. So you have a piece of paper (or baseball or whatever) with a jock's (or a movie star's or whatever) signature scrawled on it. Whoop-de-dee. It points in the direction of a sort of idolatry that's always seemed a little goofy to me.
I agree to an extent, but (for instance) if I've read a book or admire an author, having his signature on the title page is a nice touch. Not that I'd pay a premium for it outside of a bookselling context, but I don't see anything particularly perverse in (for example) waiting in line to get my first eds. of The Grass Is Singing or The Golden Notebook signed by Doris Lessing. I wouldn't sell those books for anything.
And if I'd gone to the Bucky Dent game it'd be nice to get his signature on the program cover, right there on Don Zimmer's face. I don't see that as idolatry, just as a nice touch to a nice memory.
The scrap of paper with a signature? Yeah, I don't see the point of that, either. But when I was ten, it was another story. I don't think that ten year old kids should necessarily have to be blown off if they approach a player with proper respect, especially if it's a case of an isolated request and not a swarm of 50 requests at once.
Agreed. Being pleasant and civil is always better than not. But as a stranger in the general public I'm not owed it by a celebrity.
if I've read a book or admire an author, having his signature on the title page is a nice touch
It is. I have a few of those, signed by authors I've met and known, and it adds some genuine sentimental value to the book. But I have no desire to stand in line and have some bestseller author sign his book for me, especially not for a premium price.
I don't even know or care who you're talking about, I just wanted to recognize your shout-out to Baby Huey.
He was no Casper or Herman and Catnip.
I've met a fair number of people famous within my own area of study, and a few more generally famous, and I really don't care that much for autographs (though if I happened to have a guy's book on me when I met him, I'd have him sign it, I suppose); I just like having met the person and chatted a bit. I am flattered, though, when people ask me to sign my presentation scores.
Guy quit on his team in midseason. Unforgivable.
Don't you dare talk that way about Rusty Kuntz!
Do I have the only good Willie Mays autograph story? When I was a baby, my mom ran into Willie outside her office. She asked Willie if he could wait while she bought a baseball and a sharpie from the five and dime store, which he did and that's how I have a baseball signed by Willie Mays to me. Maybe this is because this was over 20 years ago when Willie was younger and presumably happier. Or because Willie fancied my mom.
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