Ralph Kiner's favorite RBI man!

</facetiousnees>

What an embarrassment of riches. Best class since 1934?

488 140.1 1961 Carl Yastrzemski-LF/1B
369 136.3 1963 Gaylord Perry-P
356 128.0 1968 Johnny Bench-C
323 121.4 1966 Fergie Jenkins-P
268 102.3 1960 Jim Kaat-P
280 91.4 1964 Bert Campaneris-SS
231 73.9 1970 Gene Tenace-C/1B

I put this here in the Tenace thread because he is one of the most underrated players in history. My take:

1. Bench
2. Yaz
3. Gay-lerd
4. Fergie
5. Tenace
6. Campy
7. Kaat

Campy also underrated BTW. Kaat depends entirely on your POV. He probably should be in the HoF, considering who else is there, though he will never be a PHoMer. Don't know how we will see him as a matter of HoM consensus, though I know Fergie was better.

The top 4 are clearly in, the bottom 2 clearly out (for me) with Tenace on the borderline with Munson, Bresnahan, Trouppe and E. Howard. I haven't yet figured out exactly where among the catchers Tenance goes, however. Right now I have:

1. E. Howard
2. Bresnahan
3. Trouppe
4. Munson

My inclination is he will be somewhere in the 2-3 range on this list--not the best, not the worst. But the difference between Ellie and Thurman is "this" close, too.

My Keltner-based system has Tenace as the 21st best MLB catcher. Given the presence of Gibson, Santop, Trouppe, and Mackey ahead of him, he's top-25 material for me, but no better. Still, that ain't bad, and it roughly corresponds to the current interval-based system.

"Gene Tenace at the plate...and whammy!"

Pretty good player, not good enough to make my ballot, but probably top 50.

I have him a little behind Munson and Porter among 1970s catchers. It's really a strong decade for the position. Also about even with Sal Bando among the A's stars.

He's not going to make the top 50 eligible, though.

possibly the only MLB player named Fury.

How do you say his name. I've always called him Gene Tennis, but I think I've heard Tenahchy recently. Any of you old cats who remember the 1970s know first hand?

You'd have to figure that as an Italo-american he'd pronounce the final e. Either Ten-ah-chay or Ten-ah-say. But you never know what comes out when announcers get hold of names, especially twenty to thirty years ago when we didn't always worry as much about pronunciations (and frequently anglicized all kinds of names).

Tennis. Never heard anything but tennis.

you never know what comes out when announcers get hold of names, especially twenty to thirty years ago when we didn't always worry as much about pronunciations (and frequently anglicized all kinds of names).

Its not just the announcers. Sometimes its the people themselves. I grew up with a few guys with names that had very French or German spellings and they pronounced their own names in a very anglicized manner -- often tripping up people who knew the 'correct' non-anglicized way to say it.

"Tenace" is Italian for "tenacious" or "undaunted" and I believe is pronounced "Tay-nah-chay" (don't know which syllable has the accent). But... bb-ref lists his birth name as "Fiore Gino Tennaci" which would be pronounced "Tayn-nah-chee" (again don't know the accent). Fiore means "flower" which is a far cry from Fury. Anyhow, both his first and second name were anglicized and he's not from Italy, he's from Russellton, PA, so I'd guess we'd have to ask him how to pronounce his name. Anglicization might have been his or his parents idea (or it might not :-)).

I'm going with Tennis unless I read something from him specifically that says he uses the Italian way.

But I still call the goalie Patrick Roy and not Patrick Whah, so what do I know . . .

Well, like I say, us old-timers never ever heard anybody say anything other than Tennis.

My mother used to correct the announcers every time they said Havelcheck, though. When she was growing up it was Hav-LI'-check. I can hear it now, "Hav-LI-check stole the ball, Hav-LI-check stole the ball."

Right, announcers always called him "tennis"

Calling Patrick Roy "Roy" is lazy, Joe. There is no dispute there -- it's "wa". It is also Patreek, but I'll let you off there. When Tenace was coaching/managing in Toronto he pronounced his name Tennis.

There is no dispute there -- it's "wa"

Shouldn't it be "rwah"? (Roi is the french word for King). I suppose that's the french 'r' which likely gets slurred over pretty quickly.

I suppose that's the french 'r' which likely gets slurred over pretty quickly.

I went to University in Montreal at the time, and the sounds I heard were Patreek wa and wa de freets (King of Fries, the local late night eatery).

My daughter is now in French immersion and she says wa for roi too. Maybe I just don't hear the rwa. I'm technically bilingual -- I can read and write French -- I just can't pronounce it (and, perhpas, hear it).

Of course Anglcization happens in the U.S., of both personal names and place names. And, of course, Anglicization is an inconsistent process. Do the same pronunciation rules apply to Des Moines, Iowa, and Des Plaines, Illinois? Well, no. And the town of San Felipe Texas, is not pronounced the same way as Felipe Alou by a 1960's radio announcer, and that's not the same as Felipe Alou by a 2000's announcer. (In the 60's, I'd swear I heard a lot of "fi-LEEP" Alou; and the town in Texas is San "FILL uh pee.") If you're not from Central Texas, would you feel on safe ground trying to pronounce the the town named Boerne?

Last names in baseball get Anglicized: Kowalewski becomes Coveleski, McGillicuddy becomes Mack, Jablonowski becomes Appleton.

One interesting contrast is between Fiore Gino Tennaci, born 1946, always known as "Gene," possibly even by his own family, and John Peter Wagner, born 1874, always known as Hans or Honus. I do recall once looking up all of the players named "Heinie" and deciding that far more of them had "Henry" as their official birth name than "Heinrich."

My daughter is now in French immersion and she says wa for roi too. Maybe I just don't hear the rwa. I'm technically bilingual -- I can read and write French -- I just can't pronounce it (and, perhpas, hear it).

Wow, I just took french in high school (e.g. "Où est la Tour Eiffel?") so it sounds like you know better than I do. :-)

Yeah, the french r is this strange (to english) almost gutteral sound. How does she say 'rouge'? It could very well be that in High School French they taught us to overpronounce everything and in real life a lot of sounds go by so quickly. (or that gutteral R gets lost before the w anyways. A mea culpa from me on this one. ;-)

All of this talk about high school french is making me think of that classic Tick episode now.

How does she say 'rouge'?

That's a funny question -- because it was when I first heard her say rouge that I knew that she was really learning to speak like a francophone. She says rrooj-ah (hardly any empasis at all on the "ah", but it is there). A lot of French r words start with that rolling r sound. r only becomes W-ish in front of certain vowel combinations.

r only becomes W-ish in front of certain vowel combinations

Well, in Roy's case, the 'w' comes from the Oy/Oi combination itself which is usually 'wah' (unless its nasal). (François, oiseau, etc).

Anyhow, thanks for the french lesson.

OK, who was a better player, Tenace or Al Oliver?

I got a lot of grief pronouncing the Religious Freedom case Boerne v. Flores.
But since my father has a Boerne zip code, I won out:
Bernie.

>OK, who was a better player, Tenace or Al Oliver?

Bernie.

>OK, who was a better player, Tenace or Al Oliver?

Bernie.

Not till 2012.

I knew it was Bernie, of course, or I wouldn't have posted that. I've got in-laws in New Braunfels. Another inconsistent Anglicized pronunciation: in the state of Texas (you know how that's pronounced), San Antonio is in Bexar County - and most often, "Bexar" sounds pretty much like "Bear." Of course, we're talking about words that migrated from some American Indian language to Spanish to English; of course they got a little mangled along the way. Put French as the intermediate language and the results can be as varied as Kansas and Arkansas (and the town of Arkansas City, Kansas.)

You'd have to figure that as an Italo-american he'd pronounce the final e.

You never know, Dr C. I'm sure you've run into some French-Canadian-American's (;-) that have thoroughly anglicized their names, and some who get very upset if you do so. Rather than guess whether it's Gilbert (rhymes with Dilbert, G as in ghost) or "zhiel-bear", I just introduce myself and listen to them pronounce their name.

You never know, Dr C.

You're right of course. I just like to get myself hot and bothered about silly stuff like anglicization.... Or FRAA.... Or Beckley. ; )

I got a lot of grief pronouncing the Religious Freedom case Boerne v. Flores.
But since my father has a Boerne zip code, I won out:
Bernie.

Texas seems to have two major ethnic groups: tejanos and germans. If a town isn't spanish sounding, it's probably german. The oe dipthong is usually not really a dipthong but an attempt to represent the umlauted o in German. Curiously, in the U.S. we'd rather have some clumsy dipthong than use an umlatued letter. But I digress. The umlatued o sounds like something between oo and ee, and so Bernie makes sense as the compromise. It's like how Joseph Goebels is pronounced Gerbels here. We just don't have a sound in American English that corresponds exactly to the umlauted o. Interestingly, we do have a sound (oo) that corresponds more closely with the umlauted u and one (the long a) that corresponds almost exactly with the umlauted a. No o, though.

I was saying Boo - erne....

Texas seems to have two major ethnic groups: tejanos and germans.

Weimar is pronounced, more or less, as WYE-mer. But Refugio is a good one - re-FYEER-i-o is about as good an approximation as I can make of how I've heard it. An Shiner is a town with a fairly German-sounding name (although not the German spelling - not "Sch") where they brew beer, but I think a decent chunk of the town's population is Czech.

I was saying Boo - erne....

You're not from Central Texas, are you?

As an observer, I'm curious if there will be as much support in 5-6 "years" for guys like Sundberg and Boone.

Random question: Why do some people, notably news anchormen and PBS types, make such a fetish of pronouncing certain countries ("Kooba," "Chee-lay," "Cote d'Ivoire") in the native manner, while not others ("Frantz," "Germany"). If "Kooba" and "Chee-lay," why not "Frahhnce"? And if "Cote d'Ivoire" rather than "Ivory Coast," why not "Deutscheland" instead of "Germany"? Was there a special request put in by the Embajada Chilena, but not by the French Embassy? And what makes the Ivory Coast so special? Maybe E-X and Tom Wolfe can weigh in on this.

As an observer, I'm curious if there will be as much support in 5-6 "years" for guys like Sundberg and Boone.

Aaron Boone, absolutely.

And Ryne Sundberg may get in on the first ballot.
;)

And what makes the Ivory Coast so special?

The government of Côte d'Ivoire issued a request that everyone call the place by this name, although properly it should be Côte-d'Ivoire. So if one calls it the Ivory Coast, it's being rude like calling somebody "Ed" when they want to be called "Edward".

I can't answer for the rest. I know the BBC has a pronunciation department that imposes ukases to pronounce foreign names like the PBS people, although you get Old Style pronunciations on local BBC radio sometimes, where they are further from The Centre

And what makes the Ivory Coast so special?

The government of Côte d'Ivoire issued a request that everyone call the place by this name, although properly it should be Côte-d'Ivoire. So if one calls it the Ivory Coast, it's being rude like calling somebody "Ed" when they want to be called "Edward".

It's a good thing that all countries don't do this, isn't it? Every news broadcast would sound like Saturday Night Live.

I know the BBC has a pronunciation department that imposes ukases to pronounce foreign names like the PBS people, although you get Old Style pronunciations on local BBC radio sometimes, where they are further from The Centre

Does this mean that they always refer to "Deutscheland," then? And if not, I wonder why not? And what about the total tongue-twisters? Does linguistic deference have its limits?

although properly it should be Côte-d'Ivoire.

No hyphen. I just looked it up and they are breaking french rules with no hyphen, but that's how they want it. They made this request back in 1985. Wikipedia lists all the other languages which had translated "Ivory Coast" into their native languages. In many other languages, you can see a form of the word 'elephant' in the name of the country.

Cool story.

why not "Frahhnce"?

Because they call us Les États-Unis d'Amérique? :-)

This reminds me of a story. I took Spanish in high school. I missed a couple of classes before a test one time, but I studied from the book. We were studying countries and the US was called Los Estados Unidos. The test had several true false questions on it and about 3 or 4 of them were questions that included the acronym EEUU. I had no idea what it was. I thought it might be some European Economic association. I just guessed on the questions. It turns out that in Spanish, EEUU is/was a common abbreviation for Estados Unidos.

EEUU is/was a common abbreviation for Estados Unidos.

I'm taking a local-yokel freebie conversational Spanish course right now through a community center type thing*. This very question came up a couple weeks ago, and someone in class had looked up the matter online. Their conclusion was that the doubling of the letters was analogous to the English abbreviation of pp for pages. Since Estados y Unidos are plural, this makes some sense. I figured, as Daryn had, that perhaps it was to avoid confusion with the EU, but I'm sure that the EEUU abbreviation would outdate the EU.

Circling back to the Deutschland/Germany question, it's interesting to note that the Spanish-speaking people refer to Germany as Aleman or something like that. So this is not something unique to the U.S. I wonder if this is similar to how the English have at least two names for their country, including Albion. Similarly we're not only Estados Unitos but also America, and we're referred to by both by ourselves and others.

I kind of like that newsreaders would choose to use the most correct pronunciation. It's respectful at the very least and it may raise the level of discourse and encourage people to inquire (if not explore) the language and linguistic habits of another people. Nothing bad can likely come of it, just as nothing bad can likely come from calling a certain pitcher Guillermo. Furthermore, with so many more Spanish speakers in the country or able to receive American language broadcasts, it seems like good policy for news outlets to be especially diligent in pronouncing Spanish-speaking countries in their native tones. I mean if I'm a recent migrant Latino who watches English-language news, and ABC pronounces my country Meh-HEE-co or on-DUR-as or Neek-ah-RAH-gwah, I'm going to be impressed. And if NBC doesn't, then maybe I'll go back to the channel that seems more interested in working with my language.

*in large part spurred by my inability to correctly pronounce baseball-related words and names! Now i won't have to ask the group about them any more as I have in the past.

Apparently, calling ourselves "Americans" is regarded by the French to be evidence of our extreme arrogance, so some of them have taken to calling us "United Statians (nevermind that there are other United States)."

I kind of like that newsreaders would choose to use the most correct pronunciation.

One of the million things I like about Bob Sheppard is that he before every game, he asks any player coming to Yankee Stadium for the first time just how he would like his name pronounced. And he didn't just start this a few years ago; he's been doing it from the beginning of his broadcasting career in the 1940's. Those Polish names can be tough....

I kind of like that newsreaders would choose to use the most correct pronunciation.

Reminds me of a classic SNL skit from around 1990. All the actors overpronounced all the spanish words like newscasters do and greatly embarrassed their latino guest host (Antonio Banderas?). At first it was exaggerated pronunciation of food (burritos, huevos rancheros) and then Bob Coe-stahs appeared too and talked about the football games between tah-mpa bay and the Broe-ncoes and Sahn DYAY-go and Sahn Frahn-SEE-scoe. It was quite amusing. I can't seem to find it on Youtube though.

It was Jimmy Smits (his character's name was Antonio Mendoza). It was the November 10th, 1990 episode. I can't find video but a decent recap is (from a linguistics mailing list no less) is here.

Thanks, David, and yeah, "Mendoza's" take on NPRspeak pretty much is my reaction, too. Why the hyper-attention to the "proper" pronunciation of some "foreign" names and words (and it's not just Spanish, but often Chinese as well), but not to others? You hear this on NPR all the time, and it always sets my eyes to rolling. This is a separate issue from asking an individual how he would like his own name pronounced, but maybe NPR's point is that some countries have "asked" them to pronounce their country's names a la native, while other countries haven't. Or something like that. Otherwise the distinction makes absolutely no logical sense, but perhaps I'm missing some greater social truth.

You'd have to figure that as an Italo-american he'd pronounce the final e.

My mother's maiden name is Sansone, but her family don't pronounce the final "e." However, my great-grandfather changed the pronunciation when he immigrated to the US so as to make it sound more French than Italian, since the latter weren't received very well at the time.

Given three possibilities I'd rank them this way:
1) Prounounce all foreign names and phrases as close as is practical to their prefered or indigenous sounds
2) Prounounce some foreign names and phrases as close as is practical to their prefered or indigenous sounds
3) Prounounce no foreign names and phrases as close as is practical to their prefered or indigenous sounds.

I generally think there's not much negative that can come of it. Like what's the harm in someone hearing the a country's name pronunced either correctly or at least in it native sounds. One of the great fears of learning foreign languages is of sounding wrong or stupid, so modeling the behavior might help ameliorate some people's inhibitions to foreign language. And god knows that we need more people to take an interest in foreign language, especially spanish and arabic.

And, yes, there's a reasonable limit to this in as much as some countries, for instance the Asiatic ones, use radically different sound, letter, and intonation systems than the Latinate and Germanic speaking countries. It is important to be able to understand what country is being talked about. Chee-lay, Ar-hayn-teen-ya, Frahntz would certainly not impair anyone's ability to know what country is in question. Deutschland might.

Just never use the word "wallet" in the same sentence with one of those foreign sounding ones.

And, yes, there's a reasonable limit to this in as much as some countries, for instance the Asiatic ones, use radically different sound, letter, and intonation systems than the Latinate and Germanic speaking countries. It is important to be able to understand what country is being talked about. Chee-lay, Ar-hayn-teen-ya, Frahntz would certainly not impair anyone's ability to know what country is in question. Deutschland might.

But why is that? I doubt it would really take much time for everyone to get used to "Deutschland" (or even "Deutschlahhnd") once they realized what it meant, and after that, it certainly doesn't sound any more strained or pretentious than "Ar-hayn-teen-ya" or "Chee-lay." On an English language station, both of them sound forced and unnatural, and if you want to make bowing to foreign sensibilities an overriding priority (and there's a case which can be made for that), it still seems rather peculiar to (jargon alert) "privilege" one country's true pronunciation over another's.

There's no getting around the point that no native English speaker would ever say "Koo-ba" or "Ar-hayn-teen-ya," any more than he would say "Deutschlahhnd" for "Germany." It really boils down to the plain fact that some foreign sensibilites are much more tender than others, doesn't it? Which is fine and all that, but it would be nice to have this acknowledged rather than pretending that it isn't so. As it stands now, these pronunication "priorities" of PBS and related stations seem to be little more than giant exercises in Suckup 101. Bob Sheppard asks all foreign players how to pronounce their names, not just certain ones.

both of them sound forced and unnatural

Of course they sound forced and unnatural, we anglicize everything!

Call me a globalist, but anything that moves we the people toward a point of view that helps us understand the people of another country is very likely a good idea not only as some idealistic pie-in-the-sky lefty thing where I'm dreaming about a nationless world, but for economic, global security, and military activities in which an enhanced understand of the countries or ethnic behaviors in question is not merely useful but imperative (see various military and socio-political-economic quagmires c. WW2-present, where more language speakers and more cultural awareness of the place we're invading/occupying would have better aided our goals, especially the present one). Anything, even as silly as correctly pronouncing a nation(-state)'s name that might get people thinking outside the borders can be a helpful first step toward a more informed citizenry and to encouraging members of the society to look at foreign language and cultural study as a run-up to an international relations or, heck, to international espionage/reconassance.

A stretch? Maybe. But I'm not saying that pronouncig Coo-ba is the end all. I'm only saying that language is extremely powerful, and that as we move out of the non-thinking-anglicization period, you gotta start somewhere, and all these little things can add up. This is but one little thing that might help, inconsistencies or not.

Doc has a point. For instance since I have started my Master's I have found myself saying eer-rock instaed of eye-rack and eer-Rahn in stead of eye-ran. There are others as well.

Israel = Yis-ra-el

Let's be honest, people like to say Eye-Rack as a sign of disrespect for the Eye-Rack-EEze.

To get back to Tenace, I am often dismayed by revisionist pronunciations. In baseball, I think of Johnny Evers. When I was growing up in Chicago in the 1960s he was always pronounced to resemble "every" or "Evert"; but then somehow the notion that he was more properly to be called EE-vers, as in "Beaver" or "Cleaver," gained ground. Kind of like Halley's comet, which went from Hailey to Hallie in the 1980s when we were waiting for it to return, making Bill Haley and the Comets look like idiots in retrospect. (Around the same time, newsreaders started to say "Uranus" as "Urinous," which to my mind was worse than the old way.) I have a friend who visited Concord, Mass. awhile back and came away with the revelation that "Thoreau" should be pronounced to rhyme with "furrow," which may be the true Concord dialect but which has the result of nobody knowing who she's talking about. So Tennis he will remain ...

Doc has a point. For instance since I have started my Master's I have found myself saying eer-rock instaed of eye-rack and eer-Rahn in stead of eye-ran. There are others as well.

Not to belabor the issue (Heaven forbid), but then do you also say "Deutschlahhnd", "Frahhnce," or "Nor-GEH"? And if not, why not? These are just three of many examples where linguistic deference seems to fall a bit short in NPRWorld.

My own rule of thumb is to meet it halfway, to "Anglicize" the pronunication of countries where it would feel forced not to, like most of the Latin American ones (and of course Germany, France, and Norway), but OTOH not to force it the other way, like "Eye-RACK" or "Eye-RANN," when the true pronunciation seems just as "natural" in itself. The latter two seem to me to be just as forced in their own "anti-PC" way as "Koo-ba" does when I hear it on NPR. But I realize that all of this is purely subjective on all our parts. There is no "correct" resolution to all this---though I still like what Bob Sheppard does, as it's done on a personal scale and not to make some grand political point.

Let's be honest, people like to say Eye-Rack as a sign of disrespect for the Eye-Rack-EEze.

Precisely. It's the PC of the right wing.

we anglicize everything!

One amusing sidebar to that is that Nazi era books, which were almost always printed in that dreadful fractur type and whose content was as Anglophobic as any books the world has ever known, still nearly always had one small line on the copyright page that read, in perfectly clear, non-fractur type: "Printed in Germany". I still gaze in wonder at this line every time I run across it.

(for a longer version of this, see the 1989 Ballot Discussion thread expanded posting from this morning):

Tenace's underrated peak (worth looking at) is 1973-79, and in none of those years did he play 70 pct of his games at C. His comps should be Torre and Bresnahan:

JOE TORRE Career - 129 OPS, 8801 PA: 903 games C, 787 games 1B, 515 games 3B

GENE TENACE Career - 135 OPS, 5525 PA: 892 games C, 625 games 1B

ROGER BRESNAHAN Career - 126 OPS, 5374 PA: 974 games C, 281 games OF

Conclusion: Tenace is no Torre, but he compares somewhat favorably to Bresnahan - before, perhaps, a bonus for timeline and a demerit for easier conditions and schedule length?
Which adjustments rule?

My catcher adjustments lead me to the conclusion that Bresnahan ranks a few slots ahead of Geno in a tightly bunched pack between 15 and 25 all-time at catcher.

This is in large part because my catcher-bonus system only bonuses guys based on the portion of their total season's worth of games that they played at catcher. Compare Tenace to Bresnahan year by year, and you'll why Bresnahan might, therefore, make out better in my adjustments:



That's pretty much the crux right there. I adjust upward for all seasons 'neath 575 schedule-adjusted PAs. Which means five of Tenace's seasons are not adjusted, while only one of Raj's are. The net effect is increasing Bresnahan from 231 to 285 and Tenace from 231 to 255.

But that's in the old system. In the new system, the Keltner-based system, the context is a little more even since it doesn't compare WS totals to all players. Bresnahan scores a 23 in my Keltner scores (out of a possible 90). At most positions, that's also-ran territory, but not at catcher. The best catcher is Bench at 62. At the other positions, the lowest positional leader is Schmidt at 80. Bresnahan is tied with Thurman as the 17th best catcher in this system. Tenace scores 18, which places him at #21 all-time, or right around the in/out line. That's with no NgLers. Both of my systems see the same thing: both guys are near the in/out line, and Tenace is a little behind.