Vacations

I'm figuring on travelling to Detroit and Cleveland this summer to take in ball games.  I know, why would somebody plan vacations to two of America's fastest dying cities.  I guess I just don't like crowds.  I figure I can go on the River Rouge factory tour while in Detroit, and maybe visit the Great Lakes Brewery in Cleveland.  Does anybody else have any recommendations for things to do in these fine Midwestern metropolii?  Here's a Cleveland tourism video.

Foreshadowing the Fall of Lenny Dykstra

Dead Spin reprints a profile of Lenny Dykstra from Philadelphia magazine in January 1993, it is a must-read (via Ritholtz):

"I love you, dude," he says to the bald gambler, who nods meekly in acknowledgment. Dykstra compulsively smooths out his slender spire of chips; he keeps adding to the stack like a child testing how high his building blocks will climb before gravity in­trudes.
"We're on a fucking roll, dude."
And so are we. Watching Lenny Dykstra gamble is like having an orchestra seat at a one-character David Mamet tragicomic psychodrama. You are appalled and delighted by the language and the largesse, the exposed and tortured soul. You enjoy the ride. You know it will end badly.
A dozen strangers are loitering at the entrance to the pit, watch­ing the littlest Phillie go through his off-season regimen: tossing cards to keep his arm in shape, honing hand-eye coordination by betting, smoking, stacking and drinking simultaneously. He never does nothing. After performing before tens of thousands of screaming-meemies, a handful of hushed spectators won't inhibit his hyper reverie; degenerate gamblers are in heaven when in ac­tion, and Dykstra has been known to wager on tennis and golf and dice and football and poker and the accuracy of his own expecto­rated tobacco juice.

It always struck me as odd that Lenny Dykstra was an investment advice columnist on TheStreet.com, who specialized in outside-the-money options.  It didn't seem like the right person for that strategy, especially because Lenny never came off as a brilliant guy to me.  It's sad to see a guy crash and burn, but I guess I'll take whatever lesson I can from it and try not to rubberneck too much at the smoking wreckage.

Update: I'll also excerpt the rules on baccarat, just because I didn't understand them:

The Banker is hot. The center fielder settles into a giddy super­stitious spree, talking to himself, taking short circular walks, con­tinually licking those luxurious lips like a nervous ingénue confronting a camera. Everyone knows the outcome of each hand the instant he does. No poker face, he is easier to read than a road­side billboard. In baccarat, it doesn't matter.
The rules of the game are simple. The gambler with the shoe deals two cards each to another participant (Player) and to himself (Banker). The closest to nine points wins. Tens and face cards count as zero, aces as one. A third card may be drawn, if needed. The gambler makes one decision: bet on Banker or Player. You win whatever you bet, dollar for dollar; the casino takes a five per­cent fee — vigorish — on Banker wins. In France, the game is called chemin de fer (railroad) because it moves at great speeds, money changing hands every minute, 60 or 70 times an hour. The game requires no talent at all. If you bat .400, you're a stone loser.

Harmon Killebrew, RIP

ESPN:

Harmon Killebrew, the affable, big-swinging Hall of Famer whose tape-measure home runs made him the cornerstone of the Minnesota Twins and perhaps the most popular player in the team's 51-year history, died Tuesday after battling esophageal cancer. He was 74. The Twins said Killebrew passed away peacefully at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., with his wife, Nita, and their family at his side. He announced his diagnosis just six months ago, and last week Killebrew said he was settling in for the final days of his life after doctors deemed the "awful disease" incurable.
Killebrew is 11th on baseball's all-time home run list after an exceptional 22-year career. His eight seasons with 40 or more homers still is tied for second in league history to Babe Ruth, and his uppercut swing formed the silhouette that inspired Major League Baseball's official logo.

Killebrew started his career with the Washington Senators in 1954, prior to their move to Minnesota in 1961.  He won the AL MVP in 1969.  He was ranked fifth all-time in home runs prior to the steroid era.

Milwaukee and the Braves

From the SI archive in 1998, after the Brewers switched to the National League, a look back at the Braves run in the city:

Playing in the second smallest city in the majors (pop. 725,000), they became the first National League team to draw two million fans in a season. They did it annually from '54 to '57 and came up just 29,000 short in '58. And while the Braves relied on the rest of Wisconsin, as well as Iowa, Minnesota and northern Illinois, to accomplish that, there should be no doubt as to where the wellspring of love for them lay. Back then you could walk into the best restaurants in Milwaukee—Karl Ratzsch's, Alioto's, Ray Jackson's—and always find the Braves game on the radio. In the city's multitudinous taverns there were never cries of dismay when Earl Gillespie, the voice of the Braves, reported that a fan had leaped onto County Stadium's diamond; the drinkers simply started betting on how many bases he would touch before the grounds crew hauled him down.
If you ask why the drinkers weren't at the game themselves, it was probably because they couldn't get tickets. Most of the time their best shot was to hop on a tavern's chartered bus and follow the Braves to Wrigley Field, where in those days there were always plenty of empty seats. Selig paid his most memorable visit to Chicago in 1954 when the Cubs were honoring their lumbering slugger, Hank Sauer, who concluded the festivities by dropping a fly ball to give Milwaukee the win. "The Cubs had printed up these signs that said THANKS, HANK," Selig says, "and all the Braves fans started waving them."
Nobody who took those bus trips south ever got shortchanged, but Ruthie Patzke was starting to think she might be an exception when her group dragged her to a restaurant to listen to a Milwaukee Journal sportswriter. What, Ruthie wondered, could be so interesting about some joker who'd just seen the same Braves-Cubs game they had? When the sportswriter started talking, though, Ruthie noticed that his blue suit complemented his hazel eyes. So she took the trouble to learn his name—Bob Wolf—and then she wangled an introduction, and before you knew it she and a girlfriend were at a cozy little bar having a drink with him. No night of lust followed for Bob and Ruthie; this was 1953, and they were delighted just to see each other at Wrigley the next afternoon. Thirteen months later, just before the start of the World Series, Bob and Ruthie said "I do" to a marriage that is still going strong.
The love affair between Milwaukee and the Braves looked as if it would be equally enduring. No suitor courted Elizabeth Taylor, always a league leader in marriages, as ardently as this city did its baseball heroes. It wasn't just the good-time guys such as Mathews, Bob Buhl and Lew Burdette who never had to pay for a meal and always got a free car to drive. It was all the Braves. And the bounty didn't end with T-bones and Dodges, which were no small consideration during an era in which the minimum player's salary was $7,500, and raises for journeymen were measured in pennies. The players got free gas from Wisco, free dry cleaning from Spic 'n' Span, free beer from every brewery in town. "Soap powder and produce were just about the only things that weren't delivered to our door," Burdette says. It turned out to be too good to last.
There is no single explanation why. Bad news simply begot more bad news. In the early '60s Braves management barred fans from bringing their own beer into County Stadium, hardly a valentine to a populace historically as thrifty as it is thirsty. And then the first wave of crowd pleasers started getting old and getting traded. Suddenly attendance couldn't climb above 775,000, even though the Braves continued to make every season a winning one. When the first notes of Atlanta's siren song drifted through the air, the team's owners started checking flight schedules.

My favorite part of the whole article is where it says the Braves management banned the fans from bringing in their own beer in the early '60's.  So from 1953 until the early '60's, fans could carry their own beer in the game.  No wonder they got great crowds.  There is no doubt in my mind that Milwaukee is by far the most fun city in the country.  If you want any kind of festival during the summer, they have it.  If you need an excuse to drink a beer, thy've got it.  It is also extremely friendly, and has some great cheese and sausage to go along with that beer.  If you get the chance, spend a little time there.

Ring of Thieves

What do you get when the New York Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys and Goldman Sachs work together?  You get screwed, that's what:

In the more desirable seats at Yankee Stadium, an already pricey $10.50 draft beer will run you an eye-popping $12.60 thanks to an involuntary 20 percent "service fee" tacked on to the original price. If the sticker shock doesn’t make that brew bitter enough, consider this: Despite what you might expect, that extra $2 and change isn't going to the hustling server who sold it to you, according to a new lawsuit.
Legends Hospitality, the concessionaire co-owned by the New York Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys, and Goldman Sachs, allegedly pockets the 20 percent service fee attached to food and drink in violation of New York law, according to a class-action lawsuit filed against the company by three Yankee Stadium servers this week. If certified as class action, the suit could involve more than a hundred servers and hundreds of thousands of dollars in claims.
At the center of the dispute is how hot dogs, sodas and other ballpark fare are served in the stadium's field-level seats, which typically cost between $100 and $350 a game. At field level, fans don't have to fetch their food and drink; they instead can place orders with servers carrying credit-card machines and get the orders ferried to their seats by food-and-drink runners.
Under this arrangement, the servers act a lot like salespeople. "They schmooze the customers, and they're trained to upsell, just like any other waitress," says the plaintiffs' lawyer, Brian Schaffer. "If somebody says, 'I want a hot dog,' they say, 'But wouldn’t you like a cold beer with that?'"
According to the suit, the menus field-level spectators find in their cupholders include this disclaimer: "A 20% service charge will be added to the listed prices. Additional gratuity is at your discretion." That phrase "additional gratuity" would seem to imply that the 20 percent is, in fact, a gratuity, but Schaffer says his clients don’t get that money. Instead, they receive a far more modest commission, between four and six percent, of their total sales for the game.

Stay classy, assholes.  It is way too appropriate that these three entities are working together in this deal.  All of them are pretentious jerkass operations used to making money hand over fist, and yet they can't get enough.  Not that I can feel too bad for the people in the expensive seats, but jeez, why jack it up 20% more?

Update: I think these three make up the sports and finance Axis of Evil.

A Season Before War

From the SI archive, Steve Rushin remembers baseball in 1941, the season before major league ballplayers joined the war effort:

In 1941, Joe DiMaggio traveled across the country by coal-fired locomotives and signed autographs with a fountain pen and stuck his arm out the window of his automobile (even in the dead of winter) before hanging a left, because his was an age before turbojet engines and ballpoints and turn signals. He played baseball in flannel pajamas, in stifling heat, and was cooled in clubhouses by an oscillating fan or a bottle of Ballantine's, kept cold in an icebox that was literally that—a block of ice in a wooden box. Co-incidentally, on the night 60 years ago that DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak ended in Cleveland, fans presented Indians manager Roger Peckinpaugh with a marvelous modern convenience: It was described, in the next day's New York Times, as an "electric refrigerator."
Ted Williams hit .406 in '41 without benefit of Palm Pilot, PlayStation or Nokia 8260. Nor did he enjoy homogenized milk, fluoridated water, central air, credit cards, fast food, TV or peace of mind. Consider: On May 15 of that year, when DiMaggio's streak began, Vichy France announced its collaboration with Nazi Germany. On July 17, the day the streak ended, the Nazis' second assault on Russia climaxed with nine million men engaged in fighting on that front. ARMY SELECTEE STARTS DRAFT OF 21-YEAR-OLDS, announced Page One of that day's edition of the Times. The Streak, meanwhile, was eulogized in Sports with but a single story.
All of which is to say—without going too Tom Brokaw on you—that '41 witnessed our greatest generation of ballplayers. True, baseball was not yet integrated, but DiMaggio and Williams alone engineered twin towers of achievement that no player has since scaled. They did so before expansion, chartered flights or steroids, when neither the ball nor the batters were juiced. In essence, these men were slapping matzoh balls off the centerfield wall with arms they developed the old-fashioned way: by signaling turns, in the dead of winter, out the window of a '39 Packard.

In this age of the all-volunteer army, it is hard for me to imagine a time when major league athletes, let alone everyday middle-class citizens, were drafted into the armed forces.  I carry around a 1943 steel penny to remind myself of a time when fighting a war meant that the general public made sacrifices.  I guess that is a time long-gone.

The Best Outfield of All-Time?

Robert Creamer made the case for the 1890's Philadelphia Phillies:

The best outfield ever to play in the big leagues was a remarkable trio that spent five seasons together, a long time as outfields go, on the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1890s, way back in baseball's Dark Ages. Before you dismiss that best-outfield claim as the raving of a hidebound antiquarian, consider the exploits of Del. Big Sam and Sliding Billy.
Del was Ed Delahanty, the leftfielder, who was named to the Hall of Fame in 1945. Delahanty, 6'1", 170 pounds, was an accomplished outfielder graceful enough to play the infield when he was needed there. He was a remarkable hitter whose lifetime average of .346 is the fourth highest of all time; only Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby and Shoeless Joe Jackson have surpassed it. Delahanty was a righthanded power hitter, a crowd pleaser. In 1893 he excited the Philadelphia fans one day by hitting two long "foul home runs" to left in the ninth before clouting a bases-clearing triple off the centerfield fence. "The tumult was kept up for such a length of time as to make it absolutely necessary for Umpire Gaffney to stop the game for a while," reported the Philadelphia Public Ledger. "The spectators acted like maniacs; they jumped and danced around, threw straw hats, coats, canes and umbrellas in the air and yelled at the top of their voices..."
One day in Chicago in 1896 Delahanty hit a home run in the first inning, singled in the third, hit another homer in the fifth and another in the seventh. When he came to bat in the ninth, the Chicago fans were shouting, "Line it out. Del! Make it four!" He responded by hitting one onto the clubhouse roof in left for his fourth home run of the game.
Big Sam was Sam Thompson, the rightfielder, who was named to the Hall of Fame in 1974. He was 6'2" and weighed 207 pounds, huge for his day. Thompson, a lefthanded hitter (lifetime average: .331), was a slugger who in the 12 seasons from 1885 through 1896 finished first, second or third in the National League 37 times in such batting categories as average, hits, doubles, triples, homers, slugging percentage, total bases and RBIs. His career total of 129 home runs was a league record that stood for 25 years. In 1887, he led Detroit to its only National League pennant, batting in 166 runs; the second man in the league had 104. Thompson had more RBIs per game in his career than any other player in big league history, including Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron—.92 per game for Big Sam, compared to .88 for the Babe and .70 for Hank. Thompson led the league's outfielders in assists one year and is credited with popularizing the one-bounce throw to home plate. Previously, outfielders had depended on infielders to relay the ball. Thompson didn't play big league baseball until he was 25 and was 31 when the great outfield came together.
Sliding Billy was Billy Hamilton, the centerfielder, who was named to the Hall of Fame in 1961. He was built like a tree stump: 5'6", 165 pounds, with thick legs. He was a lefthanded singles hitter, and his lifetime average of .344 is seventh on the alltime list. Hamilton was the fastest man in baseball in the 1890s, an outfielder with great range and a base runner who earned his nickname by making headfirst slides 70 years before Pete Rose came on the scene. He led the National League in bases on balls five times, in stolen bases seven times and seemed always to be racing across home plate. He scored 1.06 runs per game during his career, still the major league record. In 1894 he had 192 runs, another enduring record.

Unfortunately for Delahanty, he is often times remembered for dying by falling into the Niagara River while drunk, and drowning.  As Creamer notes, the 1894 Phillies had 4 outfielders hit over .400.

Jimmie Wilson, Unlikely Hero of 1940 World Series



Jimmie Wilson, coach and 1940 World Series Hero


In a post script to last week's featured article recounting the death of Willard Hershberger, I wanted to highlight what little good came followed Hershberger's passing:

In his suite that night, McKechnie gathered his players together. He told them what Hershberger had said to him the night before—how his father had killed himself, how Hershberger had wanted to kill himself, too, and how he felt he had let down the team. McKechnie also said Hershberger had talked about other personal problems that the manager felt honor-bound not to reveal. McKechnie mentioned that Hershberger had several un-cashed paychecks in his pocket. Lombardi, Riggs and a few others were weeping. "I thought I had talked him completely out of it," McKechnie said. "I thought everything was put back together again. I couldn't keep a bodyguard on him."
The meeting lasted about half an hour. McKechnie made one plea. "The thing for us to do now is win the pennant and vote Hershie's mother a full share of the World Series money," he said. "And I know we'll win it." They did indeed win the Series, beating Detroit four games to three, and Maude Hershberger got a full share, $5,803.62.
Ironically, Hershberger's death led to the best of all 1940 World Series stories. In mid-September, Lombardi sprained his ankle, and without Hershberger, McKechnie turned to the only man in the organization he thought could handle the job—coach Jimmy Wilson, 40, a former catcher who had caught but two games in nearly three seasons. Wilson caught in six of the seven Series games, and Thompson can still see him hobbling in pain, his thigh muscles knotted up from so much squatting. Between innings, Wilson would teeter to the runway behind the dugout, drop his pants and sit down so that Rohde could massage a scalding salve into his thighs. "Oh, mercy, it was hot," Thompson says. "And his catching hand was so swollen from catching fastballs that he could barely get it in and out of the glove. He was great."
Wilson also hit .353—six singles in 17 trips. It was a rare farewell, a final performance by an old man who rose one more time to honor himself and the game.

The story of Jimmie (or Jimmy) Wilson has always amazed me.  How a 40 year-old could catch 6 out of 7 games in the World Series and hit .353, after catching in 2 games over 3 seasons, is stupefying.  He also appeared in 16 games during the regular season.  He'll always have a place in my personal Little-known Accomplishment Hall of Fame.

Sunk Costs-For Reds, It's Griffey

LA Times (via Ritholtz):

Standing at his locker shortly before the Angels' home opener against the Toronto Blue Jays, outfielder Vernon Wells had mixed emotions about facing the team that traded him away last winter.

It would be good to see old friends, but he also wanted to defeat them. And there was an added twist.

Wells was playing against a Toronto ballclub that was still covering part of his salary.

"It's obviously strange," he said.

Not in baseball, it isn't.

Call it "sunk costs" or "dead money" — teams' still paying for athletes no longer on their rosters.

Juan Pierre, Andruw Jones and Manny Ramirez remain on this season's payroll for the Dodgers, though Ramirez is retired, Pierre is with the Chicago White Sox and Jones is with the New York Yankees.

The Angels took Wells only after Toronto agreed to contribute $5 million toward the remainder of his hefty contract. At the same time, the Angels have Gary Matthews Jr., who is out of the game, on their books for more than $11 million this season.

I'm not sure how many years the Reds continue to pay Griffey, but it is a bunch.  Of course, they already set that money aside, so I guess it doesn't matter much.

Glory Days

It is damn fine outside, the Reds are on the radio and I'm getting some work done out there.  They probably won't read this, but I'd like to get out on the quad today and throw the ball around with McGillicuddy and Regan.  Guys, this song is for you.

Tragedy in a Season of Triumph

1940 World Series Champion Cincinnati Reds

This story, of Willard Hershberger and his suicide in the middle of the Reds pursuit of their second World Series championship, is from the SI archives:

A lone at last in his room at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston, far from his worried manager and teammates on the Cincinnati Reds, Willard Hershberger locked the door and turned on his black portable radio to listen to the game. It was nearly time to go; he had made his irreducible choice. For Hershberger, 29 the years of anger and torment were almost over.
It was 1:10 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 3, 1940, a wilting afternoon on which the Reds, leading the second-place Brooklyn Dodgers by six games in the race for the National League pennant, were about to begin a doubleheader at National League Field against the last-place Boston Bees. Hershberger was the Reds' second-string catcher, behind future Hall of Famer Ernie Lombardi, but he was far more than a backup player. In pursuit of their second straight pennant, and their first World Series championship since their tainted victory over the Chicago Black Sox in 1919 the Reds were counting on Hershberger not only to spell Lom in the second game of doubleheaders—Hershberger was mongoose-quick behind the plate and a far rangier fielder than the ponderous Lombardi—but also to hit, particularly in the pinch with men on base.
"As good a hitter as I ever saw at getting a man in from third with less than two outs," says Gabe Paul, then the Reds' publicist and traveling secretary and later the general manager of various teams. "[Hershberger] would find a way to get a man home. A hell of a ballplayer."
In 1939, in 174 at bats over 63 games, Hershberger had hit .345. It was only his second year in the majors. He struck out only four times, for a remarkable ratio of once every 43.5 times at bat. "A real good contact hitter," recalls Gene Thompson, a pitcher for the '40 Reds and now a San Francisco Giants scout. "In my business, that's the kindest thing we can say about a hitter: He gets the bat on the ball."
At 5'10½" and only 167 pounds, Hershberger was, next to Lombardi, a runt who never hit for power. But before the Reds-Bees series started in Boston that August, Casey Stengel, the manager of the Bees, had wailed to reporters about the damage that Hershberger had done to the Boston team in its last set-to at Cincinnati's Crosley Field. "It might seem good to play the Reds in the second game of a doubleheader knowing that Lombardi wouldn't be trudging up to the dish with that big bat of his, but that's an illusion," said Stengel. "Actually, that Hershberger is about as hard to get out as Big Lom."

The Lowest Payroll in Baseball

Joe Posnanski on the Kansas City Royals:

And then there's the most startling one of all -- the folks are Royals Authority did a post with the rather frank headline: "Kyle Davies Is Historically Awful." It seems a harsh judgment for a nice guy like Kyle. but it's also pretty much indisputable. I like their numbers, but I'll try to do it even more simply:

Highest ERAs in baseball history with 125-plus starts:
1. Kyle Davies, 5.59
2. Jimmy Haynes, 5.37
3. Kevin Ritz, 5.35
4. Scott Elarton, 5.29
5. Jose Lima, 5.26

Three Royals on that list. Hmm. Anyway ...

At 125 starts, Davies has the fifth-highest WHIP ever -- and he comes by it honestly. His 4.29 walks per nine innings is absurdly high. His 10.21 hits per nine is, historically, even worse. His 78 ERA+ -- which adjusts ERA by era -- is the third worst ever behind Phil Ortega and Wade Blassingame. He has the sixth-lowest WAR. He is one of only 19 pitchers to start at least 125 games without throwing a single shutout. Over his entire career, major league hitters are hitting .286/.364/.461 which means he basically turns every hitter in the game into Ron Santo.

Here's my favorite one: Davies has a 32.8% quality start percentage -- meaning he throws a quality start fewer than one out of three times. That is the lowest percentage since 1950, which is how far back Baseball Reference figures the stat. No starter in the last 60 years has been LESS likely to throw you at least six innings and give up three or fewer runs.

That is just brutal.

Ernie Harwell Play Debuts Tonight

Mitch Albom's play opens in Detroit:

Ernie Harwell's life and legacy is about to take the stage. Mitch Albom wrote "Ernie" as a love letter he hopes does justice to the late Detroit Tigers broadcaster.
"I just hope people like it," said the Detroit Free Press columnist, best-selling author, WJR radio host and playwright.
The 90-minute play will make its premiere Thursday night at the City Theatre, a block from the home of the Tigers. Albom said the production he is funding is employing about a dozen people from Michigan.
Will Young, a 71-year-old Milford resident, stars as Harwell in the two-person play with 24-year-old St. Clair Shores native TJ Corbett.

I always liked tuning in to listen to Ernie Harwell on WJR when the Reds weren't playing.  Being involved in firing Ernie Harwell was the dumbest thing Bo Schembechler ever did.

Obama Releases Certificate of Live Birth

Maybe that will satisfy Luke Scott.  Anybody want to bet?  I love how these Republican morons say that a Certificate of Live Birth isn't an official Birth Certificate.  I'm not sure, but I think that's what mine says too.  I'll have to check, and I know I can't trust that my mother didn't actually give birth to me in Africa, so I'm possibly ineligible for the Presidency.  I'm sure all the people who have come across this blog are sorely disappointed with that news.

Update: I would probably be nearly as entertaining as Joe Biden, if I was eligible.

Further update: I too "only" have a certificate of live birth, so either there is no reliable proof that I or Barack Obama were born in this country, or it is further proof that there are some stupid people serving in state legislatures (I'm looking at you, Texas, at least on this issue).  I'll go with the latter.

Luke Scott

There's been a lot of discussion about ESPN's profile of Luke Scott, the Orioles outfielder who is a confirmed birther.  This portion made me shake my head a bit:

Scott's eyes are big, and he's smiling wide while standing in the kitchen. Scott, who has legally carried a concealed weapon since he's been 21 years old, tells Pie and Florimon in Spanish that he has 114 guns at his offseason home, which he shares with his parents, brother, sister, brother-in-law and their two kids.


Both players shake their heads and laugh. Scott, wearing a black baseball cap backward that reads "In God We Trust," walks back into the kitchen and tells us he keeps guns all over his house, even in the kitchen cabinets, and always within reach -- you never know when a criminal could strike, he says.


At his offseason home, Scott has a safe room that holds most of his weapons, ammunition, memorabilia and even ready-to-eat meals. When we're there a few weeks later, his adviser won't allow me to see it. Scott listens to him.


"It's a privilege," he says. "You can see my guns at my apartment. The safe room is a special place. … It's good to have a safe room in your house. It's storm-proof; we've got food, store supplies, all kinds of stuff."


As we leave for the gun range, Scott stuffs a pistol into the side of the sofa cushion.

If you have a concealed carry permit, and actually carry, why hide guns in the kitchen cabinets?  I don't quite follow that logic.  I am glad that I live where the likelihood of criminals showing up in your kitchen is pretty small. 

It's probably a good thing that Marge Schott isn't alive and in control of the Reds, or she'd probably want him on the team.

Forgotten Records

Earl Webb holds the major league single season record for doubles, with 67

'Chief' Wilson holds the major league single season record for triples, with 36.

From the Sports Illustrated archive:

As ever when anyone bats close to .400 after the All-Star break, baseball analysts have been dwelling on John Olerud's flirtation with Ted Williams in '41. Well, they've been missing the story. O.K., as of Sunday the Toronto Blue Jay was hitting .402. But what's amazing is that he is flirting with Webb in 31.
Meanwhile, in Atlanta there is a man who, if he ever becomes a regular as well as a superstar (who else but Neon Deion Sanders?), stands the best chance in this century of surpassing an even more astonishing single-season performance: Wilson's in '12.
What are we talking about here? Two major statistical categories about which too little has been said—until now. Categories into which fall many if not most of baseball's sweetest drives, headiest cornerings and rousingest clouds of dust. We are talking about doubles and triples.
And who is this Webb? And this Wilson, who? Obscure men who hold obscure records that have outlasted several Hall of Famer-held standards in more glamorous categories, such as strikeouts and home runs.
In 1931 Earl Webb of the Boston Red Sox hit 67 doubles. No one else in major league history has ever hit more than 64. In this century only five players besides Webb, all of them dead, have hit as many as 60 doubles. Only four players in the last 30 years have hit as many as 50. The closest anyone has come to threatening Webb's record since 1950 was when Hal McRae (now the manager of the Kansas City Royals) hit 54 doubles with the Royals in 1977. As of Sunday, Olerud had 42 and was still on a pace to catch Webb.
In 1912 Owen (Chief) Wilson of the Pittsburgh Pirates hit 36 triples. With regard to this record Bill James, the eminent Sabermetrician (from SABR, the acronym for Society of American Baseball Research), has made the following judicious statement: "That's just impossible." The next-highest single-season total is 26 triples, and the closest to that since 1949 has been Willie Wilson's 21 with the Royals in 1985. Last year, however, Sanders led the big leagues with 14 triples in only 303 at bats, which projects to 28 over a full season. And he's still learning the game.

Olerud ended the 1993 season with 54 doubles and a .363 average.  Deion's highest total for a season was 14 triples in 1992.  Since then, Todd Helton hit 59 doubles in 2000, and Curtis Granderson hit 23 triples in 2007.  The article has a nice paean to doubles and triples, which are way more fun to watch than home runs.

KKK Day at the Ballpark?

Deadspin (h/t Cubs dad):

These four letters procured by Deadspin's house MLB archivist, Pete Nash, show that the Ku Klux Klan wrote polite letters and were extremely generous about their flower boquets. At least that was the case in 1924.

I like that they point out that the Knights of Columbus didn't provide as many bouquets as the Klan would provide.  I can hear the Klansman saying that it was because those foreigners were too poor and were always drunk.  I can't imagine that would have gone well in a town as Catholic as Cincinnati.

MLB Takes Over The Dodgers



SI May 20, 1996  Photographed by: Bill Frakes


Since Selig and the boys have taken control of the Dodgers from the McCourts, I am reminded of when they forced Marge Schott out of control of the Reds, and then forced her to sell them in a fire sale to Carl Lindner.  This Sports Illustrated article is one of the final straws that broke the camel's back, but it really highlights what a sad, crazy old woman she was:

Alone in her bedroom, alone in a 40-room mansion, alone on a 70-acre estate, Marge Schott finishes off a vodka-and-water (no lime, no lemon), stubs out another Carlton 120, takes to her two aching knees and prays to the Men. To Charlie, the husband who made her life and then ruined it. He taught her never to trust. To Daddy, the unsmiling father who turned her into his only son. He taught her never to be soft. To Dad Schott, the calculating father-in-law, whom she may have loved most of all. He taught her never to let herself be cheated.
"I pray to them every night, honey," she says. "How many owners do that, huh? Hit their knees every night?"
Hard to say. For that matter, how many baseball owners keep in their kitchen drawer plastic bags containing hair from a dog that died five years ago? Or are worth millions but haven't shopped for clothes in nine years? Schott just wears the stuff people send her. "If it fits, honey," she says in her No. 4 sandpaper voice. "I wear it."
Honey is what Schott calls everybody, unless you're baby or sweetheart. It's what she does instead of remembering your name. "This guy is from SportsChannel, honey. He's here doing a big story on me."
"Sports Illustrated, Mrs. Schott."
"Right, honey."
Schott does not really have to remember anyone's name, because she's 67 years old, as rich as Oman, and she answers to nobody. She owns 43% of the Cincinnati Reds, but she hasn't had time to actually learn the game yet. After all, it has only been 12 years since that Christmas when she "saved the team for Cincinnati," as she has said over the years. (Why ruin the story by mentioning that the previous owners insisted that they never would have sold the Reds to anyone but a Cincinnatian, and there were no offers on the table from any other city. None of the men in Cincinnati were stepping up to buy the team, she says now.)

It is unfortunate that her inability to keep racist opinions to herself, or her inability to learn that such opinions were completely inaccurate cost her one of the few joys of her life.  But for the Reds it was good, because Marge had destroyed the farm system, and she wasn't going to be able to compete with George Steinbrenner at buying the veterans to win in the 21st century.  But her frugality in the rest of her life was pure Cincinnati German, and she was truly generous to a number of organizations.

The Reds Struggle Against the Pirates

Last night the Reds were soundly whipped by the surprising Pirates, and went 1-3 in the four-game series.  Based on the post-game discussion, you would think that the season was over.  I don't think that Mike Leake's arrest for shoplifting helped that mood, though.

This may surprise frequent readers of this blog, but I'm going to stake out an optimistic position at this time.  This would seem out of character, as I'm generally pessimistic, but technically, I believe I am really a contrarian, and most other people are generally optimistic.  So here's the case:

Ironically, last year on April 18, the Pirates completed a three-game sweep of the Reds, albeit in Pittsburgh.  That left the Reds with a 5-game losing streak, in the midst of a 2-8 run which would conclude with a loss to the Padres on April 24, leaving them with a 7-11 record.  That point when they were four games under .500 was the low point of the season.  Hopefully, this season turns around in a similar manner.  We'll see, but the six-game road trip which goes to St. Louis and Milwaukee starting Friday will be interesting.

Lenny Dykstra Arrested

LA Times:

Former Major League Baseball star and self-styled financial guru Lenny Dykstra has been charged with selling pieces of his former life as he struggled to battle numerous creditors in Bankruptcy Court.

Dykstra helped the New York Mets win the 1986 World Series and later became a celebrity stock picker and entrepreneur before his finances dissolved in the summer of 2009. Dykstra was charged with one count of embezzling from a bankruptcy estate, the Justice Department said Friday.

The former Mets and Phillies outfielder had been arrested on separate charges Thursday by the Los Angeles Police Department's commercial crimes division. Dykstra was picked up at a home in Encino at 8 p.m. Thursday on suspicion of buying vehicles through fraudulent means, police said. Dykstra, 48, was being held in lieu of $500,000 bail and could not be reached for comment.

According to federal prosecutors, Dykstra sold sports memorabilia and items from his Ventura County mansion, including a $50,000 sink, that were frozen as part of the bankruptcy case. Typically, a person in bankruptcy can't touch assets that are part of the case so that they are available to repay creditors.

A $50,000 sink? WTF?  I loved watch Nails play ball, especially when he was on the 1993 Phillies with John Kruk and Mitch Williams and all those other oddballs.