The opening of the season is a bucket of 162 stars that we hang up in the empty skies of our dreams. But for us Phillies fans that season only started yesterday at the Mets last home-game opener at Shea. Their previous games count but they do not matter! O negative blood donated for free by Mets players and fans bathed the cold air. Or as Billy Wagner said before the game: Are we supposed to lay down because they won 8 straight?”
Make that 9, Billy.
It was a strange game. The things we know the Phillies can do, they did; Moyer pitched 6 innings ever so slowly – and gave up but two runs. Chase Utley was hit 3 times at bat, once on the baseline by Delgado, and still hit a double. The team scored all their runs beginning in the 7th inning. There was a scary collision between Shane Victorino and Jayson Werth but each of them got up and continued. Jimmy quit in the 8th with a left ankle sprain. He’s not playing tonight. By the time relievers Chad Durbin and J.T. Romero finished their turns without giving up any runs, the Phillies had scored 5. Tom Gordon guarded the grail in the 9th, getting the side out in 3. It was a swell 5-2 win for us while both the Mets and the fans were unduly quiet. But hey! They’ve been infected with the idea that they should win, that they’re entitled. It oozes from them and from the fans who booed Jimmy when he was introduced. Now the Phillies - the 12-step kids who might have been addicted to losing - before last season -take one game at a time.
The Server Makes the Meal
It was Mitch Williams, an analyst and former Phillies pitcher on Comcast, who quoted Mr. Wagner before yesterday’s game. He is very handsome in a wholesome way, the kind of looks your mother would like. He appears to be tall. He dresses pretty well, despite a bit of shine I spy in some of his garments. Omigosh! Yes. But he does have the most amazing hair. His stylist has taken his natural wave and knocked it out with a punk finish. Inspiring! What he analyzes and how he does it is anything but wholesome. He is destructively funny. “I was a lousy pitcher”, he always says in his own defense. With his wonderful timing and expressive timbre he might be giving lessons to standup types and TV hosts.
Lo Duca Lookout
Brett Myers hit Mr. Lo Duca on his left arm in the Phillies opening home game against the Nats. The fans cheered, which must have made him feel lousy. The next day during an interview with Nats commentator Debbi Taylor he allowed as how it didn’t get him down at all. “It’s what makes the game so wonderful,” he added. “They’ve really been giving it to me in the bullpen, about the Mitchell Report and all that good stuff”. He showed lots of teeth.
It’s not exactly news that I think the Mets goofed bigtime when they traded him. Fortunately I get some Nats games here in Delaware. Some of my readers have suggested that I may have an obsession with Mr. Lo Duca. Dr. Cole Porter knew a lot more about it than I do. “ I’ve Gotchoo…” he said, “Under My Sink.”
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Baseball Lit 101
The New BILL JAMES Historical Baseball Abstract of 2001 revises his previous Abstract; it’s a 1012 page compendium of data through the 1999 season. He covers every aspect of the game except the history of hotdogs. A 27 page Index! A ton of stuff you want to know.
First there is the history of baseball from the beginning, as well as the history of the Negro Leagues. Mr. James does this by decades. Some his most interesting beliefs center on what is wrong with the game again, by decade. They game is too long, the stadiums are old and in horrible parts of a town with scary parking lots. Batters take too many times outs and the pitcher throws to first far too often. New York teams have dominated the game for years. Yuck! The worst problem is that there is no leadership and the economic disparity between teams can be solved – by dividing the monies gained from TV contracts equally – and still this has not been done.
He has many ways of ranking teams and players, and the ones I love most, and I believe I am not alone, are the 100 best players of all time by position. The regular stats – at bats, hits, slugging percentage, strikeouts, walks, ERA, et alia., however, don’t cut it for Mr. James. They do not tell the whole story. He has devised Win Shares, a score that deconstructs “THE BATTLE TO GET TO THE OBVIOUS” – who was the best? And who was the worst? He summarizes them by asking:
“What is missing from this picture?
What is distorted here, and what is accurately portrayed?
How can we show what has been left out?
How can we correct what has been distorted?”
We are on page 339 and have about 700 pages of answers to get through.
Checking out my statistical manuals – I have a BA in Psychology – I see that James uses the discipline of statistics for two purposes: describing sets of data in terms of graphs which demonstrate middleness (mean, median, mode), and of spread (range, variance, standard deviation). That a distribution can be symmetrical or skewed and how a skew changes the middleness. He also shows how two sets of data can be related, and how a score can be predicted by an individual’s score on a related variable, using something called the standard error of the estimate to indicate the amount of “play” in that prediction. He finds a correlation coefficient on data made up of ranks instead of measurements.
He also uses inferential statistics which means using a set of observable information to make inferences about larger groups that can’t be observed. Sound too boring? Mr. James explains his methods in a general way that is not threatening. And most of the book is the result of close observations that he has made in order to create his rankings. The results are not only enlight-ening, they entertain us. The Statistical abstract is a keeper. James has used statistics to interpret baseball’s collective dreams and they are ours, too, because we love the game.
Another Milestone
Karl Malden died last week at the age of 96. He was quite a tall Serbian with a huge nose who acted in at least 75 movies, usually with great hamminess. The man was a deli unto himself. He was a second banana in two great movies directed by Elia Kazan, On the Waterfront and Streetcar Named Desire. He appeared in it on Broadway, along with Marlon Brando – the one and only Stanley.
But the film I remember best for Malden’s work is Fear Strikes Out, from Jimmy Pearsall’s own biography, directed by Robert Mulligan, and also starring Tony Perkins. Piersall played baseball well as a boy in Waterbury, CT. But he never satisfied the demands of his father, portrayed by Malden. He’d practice in the mornings and the afternoons every day. No matter how many hits he got, how many good catches and throws he made, he was never good enough for Dad.
Piersall made the Red Sox and he seems happy. But Dad keeps the criticism going, attending games and conducting post mortems as if Jimmy has died. His father never cuts him any slack and never praises him. He erodes Jimmy’s psyche to a terrible breaking point. During one of the games he became uncontrollably psychotic. This scene is wonderful. Remember, this is the Tony Perkins who made Psycho such a great movie. He was practicing bigtime in Fear Strikes Out. But his suffering appears realistic – you’ve known from the get-go that Dad is a certified sadist. That kind of character was Malden’s forte anyway. You know, the guy who appears to be a really good person but does such horrible things at home. In a long period of psychiatric care Piersall finds that he has striven more to please his father than himself. He decides he can no longer see him, which his Dad cannot understand.
Piersall was talented; he played in the outfield from 1950 to 1967 in Boston and Cleveland. Looking him up in Bill James’ Abstract I find that he rates Piersall the 92nd best center fielder ever. He has also the tenth lowest rate of errors as a left fielder. And he had an ongoing friendship with Jack Kennedy. Where else can you find these facts? Don’t you want to own the Abstract? I do.
At Last…My Love Has Come Along
Phew! The season starts on March 31st for us when the Phillies welcome the Nats to Citizens Bank Park. I’ll be able to check Paul Lo Duca out again, and he’ll probably need attention. Since it’s a home game I won’t have to look at the Phillies’ new road uniforms with that dark green top. Omigod! Dark green? That was always the color of Dad’s leather club chairs, my mother’s sofa, prep school hockey jumpers and the mattes on duck prints all over America. A Forties color actually, that I haven’t seen since then. But Retro is in, as we know.
The real reason I can’t wait for the season to start is that I won’t have to mute all the drug commercials. The new Bud Lites are coming; the new Bud Lites are coming! I’ll be there.
First there is the history of baseball from the beginning, as well as the history of the Negro Leagues. Mr. James does this by decades. Some his most interesting beliefs center on what is wrong with the game again, by decade. They game is too long, the stadiums are old and in horrible parts of a town with scary parking lots. Batters take too many times outs and the pitcher throws to first far too often. New York teams have dominated the game for years. Yuck! The worst problem is that there is no leadership and the economic disparity between teams can be solved – by dividing the monies gained from TV contracts equally – and still this has not been done.
He has many ways of ranking teams and players, and the ones I love most, and I believe I am not alone, are the 100 best players of all time by position. The regular stats – at bats, hits, slugging percentage, strikeouts, walks, ERA, et alia., however, don’t cut it for Mr. James. They do not tell the whole story. He has devised Win Shares, a score that deconstructs “THE BATTLE TO GET TO THE OBVIOUS” – who was the best? And who was the worst? He summarizes them by asking:
“What is missing from this picture?
What is distorted here, and what is accurately portrayed?
How can we show what has been left out?
How can we correct what has been distorted?”
We are on page 339 and have about 700 pages of answers to get through.
Checking out my statistical manuals – I have a BA in Psychology – I see that James uses the discipline of statistics for two purposes: describing sets of data in terms of graphs which demonstrate middleness (mean, median, mode), and of spread (range, variance, standard deviation). That a distribution can be symmetrical or skewed and how a skew changes the middleness. He also shows how two sets of data can be related, and how a score can be predicted by an individual’s score on a related variable, using something called the standard error of the estimate to indicate the amount of “play” in that prediction. He finds a correlation coefficient on data made up of ranks instead of measurements.
He also uses inferential statistics which means using a set of observable information to make inferences about larger groups that can’t be observed. Sound too boring? Mr. James explains his methods in a general way that is not threatening. And most of the book is the result of close observations that he has made in order to create his rankings. The results are not only enlight-ening, they entertain us. The Statistical abstract is a keeper. James has used statistics to interpret baseball’s collective dreams and they are ours, too, because we love the game.
Another Milestone
Karl Malden died last week at the age of 96. He was quite a tall Serbian with a huge nose who acted in at least 75 movies, usually with great hamminess. The man was a deli unto himself. He was a second banana in two great movies directed by Elia Kazan, On the Waterfront and Streetcar Named Desire. He appeared in it on Broadway, along with Marlon Brando – the one and only Stanley.
But the film I remember best for Malden’s work is Fear Strikes Out, from Jimmy Pearsall’s own biography, directed by Robert Mulligan, and also starring Tony Perkins. Piersall played baseball well as a boy in Waterbury, CT. But he never satisfied the demands of his father, portrayed by Malden. He’d practice in the mornings and the afternoons every day. No matter how many hits he got, how many good catches and throws he made, he was never good enough for Dad.
Piersall made the Red Sox and he seems happy. But Dad keeps the criticism going, attending games and conducting post mortems as if Jimmy has died. His father never cuts him any slack and never praises him. He erodes Jimmy’s psyche to a terrible breaking point. During one of the games he became uncontrollably psychotic. This scene is wonderful. Remember, this is the Tony Perkins who made Psycho such a great movie. He was practicing bigtime in Fear Strikes Out. But his suffering appears realistic – you’ve known from the get-go that Dad is a certified sadist. That kind of character was Malden’s forte anyway. You know, the guy who appears to be a really good person but does such horrible things at home. In a long period of psychiatric care Piersall finds that he has striven more to please his father than himself. He decides he can no longer see him, which his Dad cannot understand.
Piersall was talented; he played in the outfield from 1950 to 1967 in Boston and Cleveland. Looking him up in Bill James’ Abstract I find that he rates Piersall the 92nd best center fielder ever. He has also the tenth lowest rate of errors as a left fielder. And he had an ongoing friendship with Jack Kennedy. Where else can you find these facts? Don’t you want to own the Abstract? I do.
At Last…My Love Has Come Along
Phew! The season starts on March 31st for us when the Phillies welcome the Nats to Citizens Bank Park. I’ll be able to check Paul Lo Duca out again, and he’ll probably need attention. Since it’s a home game I won’t have to look at the Phillies’ new road uniforms with that dark green top. Omigod! Dark green? That was always the color of Dad’s leather club chairs, my mother’s sofa, prep school hockey jumpers and the mattes on duck prints all over America. A Forties color actually, that I haven’t seen since then. But Retro is in, as we know.
The real reason I can’t wait for the season to start is that I won’t have to mute all the drug commercials. The new Bud Lites are coming; the new Bud Lites are coming! I’ll be there.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Milestone Department, March 8th, 2008
It’s Jim Bouton’s 69th birthday today. How do I know? Like every other American I read it in the paper. But of course! He published Ball Four in 1970 when I was docking my dream of moving to Manhattan. So I missed it then. Hey I missed the San Francisco earthquake too. Phew! Ball Four made a much bigger fire. A fire that forty years have not quenched.
Mr. Bouton saw glory days pitching for the Yankees. In his first season – 1962 – he got a World Series ring. In 1968 the Yankees traded him to the Seattle Angels, who would become the Pilots in 1969. In Ball Four he recalls his Yankee time com saudade - with longing - and tells us what happened with the Seattle Pilots and in the same season, the Houston Astros. He takes notes. He keeps his tablet in his uniform pants on the mound and his pen in the dugout. The Pilots’ general manager, the manager and the coaches - so like that great bunch from Lord of the Flies - treat Jim and his teammates as Piggy phalanx, a body of troops they’ve gotta mow down. Without the thrill of murder, but of course.
Pitching coach Sal Maglie, an old hero of Jim’s from the Giants, runs spring training in a way that Jim hopes is not like the way it went with the Yankees: “He told me I’d be pitching five minutes of batting practice today and that I’d be the last pitcher. That might mean something. It’s one of the tiny things you look for during spring training. You watch who you follow in batting practice, try to find out how many minutes you’ve pitched compared with other pitchers, decide whether you’re with the good squad or the bad squad, whether the morning workout is more important than the afternoon workout. The Yankees would divide the squad into morning and afternoon groups and they’d always say it didn’t mean a thing, just two groups for convenience. Except that the morning group always had Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Elston Howard, Whitey Ford and guys like that. The afternoon group would have a bunch of guys named Dick Beradino. I never saw a guy hit or pitch himself off the afternoon list.” This is on page 14, a harbinger.
Not having to negotiate his contract makes Mr. Bouton nervous. Then in Spring Training he has to run “fifteen or twenty windsprints” a day in 100 degree Tempe, Arizona sun. This does not light his fire. He concludes that “anyone who can’t sweat in Arizona hasn’t tried”.
GM Marvin Milkes sends a guy to the minors, right? But without any notice! A guy’s on the roster one day then yikes! It’s a heads up for Tony La Paglia. Mr. Bouton pitches two games after the season opens and then: “I died tonight. I got sent to Vancouver. My first reaction: outrage. Second reaction: Omigod! How am I going to tell Bobbie? …The $650 deposit on the place we’d already signed for. Moving again. Again. And we just got here.”
Joe Schultz tells Jim he had to send him to Vancouver because he didn’t think “your knuckle ball did that much in Arizona and we wanted to see what it looked like when it got out of the light air…” From Vancouver he segues to Hawaii – girls work topless at the nightclub in their hotel. Everyone likes this. He pitches well there. On April 29th, back to Seattle.
He concentrates on his knuckleball again. It’s pitch that most pitchers have. But he still wants to be a knuckleball pitcher. Joe Schultz does not believe in Mr. Bouton. When he gets to pitch Schultz demands fast balls and sliders. He obeys; he pitches walks, gives up hits and this makes him sad. If he could pitch more innings he’d be able to count on that knuckleball. It’s no go.
Mr. Bouton cannot tell coaches from babysitters; Eddie O’Brien sees guys eating sunflower seeds in the bullpen. “Hey, no eating in the bullpen. Not even sunflower seeds, Eddie? Nothing, not even sunflower seeds.” There are curfews. There are fines for acts of commission and omission. Guys get depressed and Omigod! It’s like, 20 years before Prozac! The solution? Greenies: dextroamphetamine sulfate! To not take the pipe, to get up, to have energy, to perform. That’s just one of the amazing secret of the book: Players take speed. Yes, they take speed - not injections but pills. And yes, they are not sorry about it.
Among the guys it’s not a secret: greenies are something they do, like having girlfriends in many ports. And there are other earthly pleasures. Egg-walking becomes egg-laying with utterly inspiring practical jokes. The kind that really hurt a person. Get your own notepads out! These are some of the rewards of being kids.
There’s so much that is rotten, horrible and funny if you’re not the perpee. Mr. Bouton reveals some old Yankee habits also. Too Much Information Department? Turn to page 163 of the 20th Anniversary edition.
Then Mr. Bouton goes to the Astros. They’ve been winning games. They’re pennant contenders. But first, there’s manager Harry the Hat Walker. I remember he played third base for the Phillies in my time. He was really ugly. He’s older now, still ugly and a screamer. But Jim gets to pitch, even as a starter. He wins games. And, there’re a hundred more pages of this great stuff!
Baseball Inc. really hated Ball Four. Yes. Everybody else loved it. It’s still fresh, and riveting. That was then, before free agency, million dollar contracts and a few other things. But Dido still sings, When I am laid, am laid to rest, remember me! Not to worry.
Lo Duca Lookout
Despite being ‘social and chatty’, he had a lousy 2007.
He was traded from the Mets to the Nats for their catcher Brian Schneider. He signed a contract for $5 million December 11th, two days before the Mitchell Report was released. It mentioned him 37 times: for receiving shipments of HGH, for putting other players in touch with Kirk Radomski, for writing $3200 cheques. To Radomski, who had given copies to Mitchell investigators.
In a February interview, Mr. Lo Duca admitted “a mistake, mistakes in judgment”. “You do something wrong in your life and you get away with it, you still have something inside you that burns.” ”...It’s a big relief for me to know that I’ve come to grips with it.” A mistake is an error, blunder or misunderstanding. A mistake is wrong, something wrongly judged. I don’t see how ‘mistake’ can describe writing cheques for $3200 a pop except those costly errors of ‘judgment.’
The Times analyzed named the Mitchell players’ performance while allegedly ‘using’, in bar graphs.
Mr. Lo Duca’s graphs show that before he was linked to performance-enhancing substances he only hit well above his career average in 2001. His great 2006 Mets season was so not better than that. Those big cheques were for naught!
Mr. Bouton saw glory days pitching for the Yankees. In his first season – 1962 – he got a World Series ring. In 1968 the Yankees traded him to the Seattle Angels, who would become the Pilots in 1969. In Ball Four he recalls his Yankee time com saudade - with longing - and tells us what happened with the Seattle Pilots and in the same season, the Houston Astros. He takes notes. He keeps his tablet in his uniform pants on the mound and his pen in the dugout. The Pilots’ general manager, the manager and the coaches - so like that great bunch from Lord of the Flies - treat Jim and his teammates as Piggy phalanx, a body of troops they’ve gotta mow down. Without the thrill of murder, but of course.
Pitching coach Sal Maglie, an old hero of Jim’s from the Giants, runs spring training in a way that Jim hopes is not like the way it went with the Yankees: “He told me I’d be pitching five minutes of batting practice today and that I’d be the last pitcher. That might mean something. It’s one of the tiny things you look for during spring training. You watch who you follow in batting practice, try to find out how many minutes you’ve pitched compared with other pitchers, decide whether you’re with the good squad or the bad squad, whether the morning workout is more important than the afternoon workout. The Yankees would divide the squad into morning and afternoon groups and they’d always say it didn’t mean a thing, just two groups for convenience. Except that the morning group always had Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Elston Howard, Whitey Ford and guys like that. The afternoon group would have a bunch of guys named Dick Beradino. I never saw a guy hit or pitch himself off the afternoon list.” This is on page 14, a harbinger.
Not having to negotiate his contract makes Mr. Bouton nervous. Then in Spring Training he has to run “fifteen or twenty windsprints” a day in 100 degree Tempe, Arizona sun. This does not light his fire. He concludes that “anyone who can’t sweat in Arizona hasn’t tried”.
GM Marvin Milkes sends a guy to the minors, right? But without any notice! A guy’s on the roster one day then yikes! It’s a heads up for Tony La Paglia. Mr. Bouton pitches two games after the season opens and then: “I died tonight. I got sent to Vancouver. My first reaction: outrage. Second reaction: Omigod! How am I going to tell Bobbie? …The $650 deposit on the place we’d already signed for. Moving again. Again. And we just got here.”
Joe Schultz tells Jim he had to send him to Vancouver because he didn’t think “your knuckle ball did that much in Arizona and we wanted to see what it looked like when it got out of the light air…” From Vancouver he segues to Hawaii – girls work topless at the nightclub in their hotel. Everyone likes this. He pitches well there. On April 29th, back to Seattle.
He concentrates on his knuckleball again. It’s pitch that most pitchers have. But he still wants to be a knuckleball pitcher. Joe Schultz does not believe in Mr. Bouton. When he gets to pitch Schultz demands fast balls and sliders. He obeys; he pitches walks, gives up hits and this makes him sad. If he could pitch more innings he’d be able to count on that knuckleball. It’s no go.
Mr. Bouton cannot tell coaches from babysitters; Eddie O’Brien sees guys eating sunflower seeds in the bullpen. “Hey, no eating in the bullpen. Not even sunflower seeds, Eddie? Nothing, not even sunflower seeds.” There are curfews. There are fines for acts of commission and omission. Guys get depressed and Omigod! It’s like, 20 years before Prozac! The solution? Greenies: dextroamphetamine sulfate! To not take the pipe, to get up, to have energy, to perform. That’s just one of the amazing secret of the book: Players take speed. Yes, they take speed - not injections but pills. And yes, they are not sorry about it.
Among the guys it’s not a secret: greenies are something they do, like having girlfriends in many ports. And there are other earthly pleasures. Egg-walking becomes egg-laying with utterly inspiring practical jokes. The kind that really hurt a person. Get your own notepads out! These are some of the rewards of being kids.
There’s so much that is rotten, horrible and funny if you’re not the perpee. Mr. Bouton reveals some old Yankee habits also. Too Much Information Department? Turn to page 163 of the 20th Anniversary edition.
Then Mr. Bouton goes to the Astros. They’ve been winning games. They’re pennant contenders. But first, there’s manager Harry the Hat Walker. I remember he played third base for the Phillies in my time. He was really ugly. He’s older now, still ugly and a screamer. But Jim gets to pitch, even as a starter. He wins games. And, there’re a hundred more pages of this great stuff!
Baseball Inc. really hated Ball Four. Yes. Everybody else loved it. It’s still fresh, and riveting. That was then, before free agency, million dollar contracts and a few other things. But Dido still sings, When I am laid, am laid to rest, remember me! Not to worry.
Lo Duca Lookout
Despite being ‘social and chatty’, he had a lousy 2007.
He was traded from the Mets to the Nats for their catcher Brian Schneider. He signed a contract for $5 million December 11th, two days before the Mitchell Report was released. It mentioned him 37 times: for receiving shipments of HGH, for putting other players in touch with Kirk Radomski, for writing $3200 cheques. To Radomski, who had given copies to Mitchell investigators.
In a February interview, Mr. Lo Duca admitted “a mistake, mistakes in judgment”. “You do something wrong in your life and you get away with it, you still have something inside you that burns.” ”...It’s a big relief for me to know that I’ve come to grips with it.” A mistake is an error, blunder or misunderstanding. A mistake is wrong, something wrongly judged. I don’t see how ‘mistake’ can describe writing cheques for $3200 a pop except those costly errors of ‘judgment.’
The Times analyzed named the Mitchell players’ performance while allegedly ‘using’, in bar graphs.
Mr. Lo Duca’s graphs show that before he was linked to performance-enhancing substances he only hit well above his career average in 2001. His great 2006 Mets season was so not better than that. Those big cheques were for naught!
Friday, February 29, 2008
The Time of Our Time - February 26th, 2008
“My body is my temple”, Roger Clemens said before the House Committee this past February 13th, having sworn he would tell the truth. Clemens did not say, my body is my pyramid, my cathedral or my Trojan horse. Why ‘temple’? Where does it come from? Why does it matter?
Clemens’ phrase is a cliché for anyone who knows about 5th century Greece as well as for those who do not, but get the drift. Pericles, who was running Athens as the time, planned the buildings on the hill above it and called them the Acropolis. He got the choice from the first democracy in the West.
Architects Iktinos and Kallicrates designed the Parthenon, a large Doric temple that dominated the Acropolis. It stands there yet, damaged but serene, against the Attic sky. The magnificent columns have slight differences of pitch and thickness that looked equidistant and straight. The frieze portrayed a myriad of people - some in chariots - some on horses – many on foot. They bore gifts and sacrifices to the goddess Athena, the golden beacon who stood inside the temple. The suffering of living animals that frieze reveals cries out to us still. How do I know? Lord Elgin, an English marauder and thief, stole it in the 19th century. I saw it at the British Museum in London, along with other heroic sculptures he took from the pediments.
Praxiteles, Pheidias, Socrates, Plato, Sophocles, Euripides Pericles, those 5th century Athenian guys, believed that the spirit’s highest aspirations could be expressed in reality. The Parthenon proves that they had it then and they have it now.
Did Roger Clemens think of the Parthenon on February 13th? Maybe. And maybe February 13th shall have been one of his last evenings on earth.
That Was in Another Country and Besides the Wench is Dead Department
Mets Pitcher Pedro Martinez (and Juan Marichal) made a stunning debut last week on You Tube - our own Interpol. They were spotted at a cockfight in the Dominican Republic, Martinez’ birthplace. Now I saw part of a cockfight on Guam. Nobody had to sing Viva Viagra there. But there was the acrid ooze of betting men’s sweat, and that was just one of the rewards. Large and beautiful cocks had been trained to be aggressive toward each other. Metal spurs on their legs curved upward like a scimitar drew blood. However long the fight may have lasted, the dead cock would have lost it - on Guam, anyway.
The Humane Society correctly had a fit over the Martinez clip. “Cockfighting is a part of my Dominican culture,” he explained. “It’s legal there.” And the Mets added, “We do not condone animal cruelty but we understand that many other countries’ activities such as bullfighting and cockfighting are both legal and part of the culture.”
Clemens’ phrase is a cliché for anyone who knows about 5th century Greece as well as for those who do not, but get the drift. Pericles, who was running Athens as the time, planned the buildings on the hill above it and called them the Acropolis. He got the choice from the first democracy in the West.
Architects Iktinos and Kallicrates designed the Parthenon, a large Doric temple that dominated the Acropolis. It stands there yet, damaged but serene, against the Attic sky. The magnificent columns have slight differences of pitch and thickness that looked equidistant and straight. The frieze portrayed a myriad of people - some in chariots - some on horses – many on foot. They bore gifts and sacrifices to the goddess Athena, the golden beacon who stood inside the temple. The suffering of living animals that frieze reveals cries out to us still. How do I know? Lord Elgin, an English marauder and thief, stole it in the 19th century. I saw it at the British Museum in London, along with other heroic sculptures he took from the pediments.
Praxiteles, Pheidias, Socrates, Plato, Sophocles, Euripides Pericles, those 5th century Athenian guys, believed that the spirit’s highest aspirations could be expressed in reality. The Parthenon proves that they had it then and they have it now.
Did Roger Clemens think of the Parthenon on February 13th? Maybe. And maybe February 13th shall have been one of his last evenings on earth.
That Was in Another Country and Besides the Wench is Dead Department
Mets Pitcher Pedro Martinez (and Juan Marichal) made a stunning debut last week on You Tube - our own Interpol. They were spotted at a cockfight in the Dominican Republic, Martinez’ birthplace. Now I saw part of a cockfight on Guam. Nobody had to sing Viva Viagra there. But there was the acrid ooze of betting men’s sweat, and that was just one of the rewards. Large and beautiful cocks had been trained to be aggressive toward each other. Metal spurs on their legs curved upward like a scimitar drew blood. However long the fight may have lasted, the dead cock would have lost it - on Guam, anyway.
The Humane Society correctly had a fit over the Martinez clip. “Cockfighting is a part of my Dominican culture,” he explained. “It’s legal there.” And the Mets added, “We do not condone animal cruelty but we understand that many other countries’ activities such as bullfighting and cockfighting are both legal and part of the culture.”
Thursday, February 21, 2008
On Roger Clemens
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough best, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Chapter Nine: Zenith and Nadir - That was Then, This is Now
Zenith
My most precious possessions are my memories of growing up in the Main Line outside of Philadelphia in the Forties and Fifties. Baseball was integral to my family’s life. My paternal grandfather - Chief Engineer and President of Belmont Iron Works - Joe Shryock, had designed and produced the lights for Shibe Park (which became Connie Mack Stadium), where the Phillies played. My father Dick Shryock had a music store at 1615 Walnut Street. He also had a weekly running poker game with Ben Chapman, then Phillies Manger, and number of pitchers including the very swell Bobo Newsom. My brother and I were allowed to peek.
I cannot emphasize too greatly that as a girl I had to be as good a baseball player as the boys, although of course I didn’t ever expect to join the Major Leagues. All of our families played all of the time until we went away for the summers, us to Beach Haven on Long Beach Island in New Jersey, and most of our friends to other waterfront spots in New Jersey. The question always was, “Where ‘ya goin, this weekend? Down the Shore”. Evenings we played Movies Up (all players stayed in the field and moved up to bat) in our front yard in Penn Valley with our neighbors. We had softball leagues for the girls (hardball for the boys) in our Lower Merion Township schools, and intramural leagues at various playgrounds after school. I pitched softball and played center field with the ‘almost’ hardball of the girls’ game in high school. Teamwork was everything in our lives. The payoff was big in baseball because making errors, striking out, getting caught stealing or off base were things that our peers ridiculed us for, but that we learned to avoid. Practice didn’t get us to Carnegie Hall, but we did get accepted locally.
My generation watched baseball grow to its zenith in the Fifties when I grew up. We were the benefactors of the generation that fought and won World War II. 400,000 men and women died fighting to end Fascism in Germany as well as defeating a Japan with hegemonic intentions already revealed in the cruel invasion and occupation of Nanking, China in 1939. The high cost of those deaths can never be offset. But the productivity that began during that War was shown, for example, by the design and manufacture of the B-29 Super-fortress airplane. This behemoth, 99 ft. long with a 141 ft. wingspan could fly at a height of 40,000 ft., had the first pressurized cabin that guaranteed comfort for pilots and passengers. There were problems of heaviness of the engines that caused heating up and crashes. US Air Corp. Chief Major General “Hap” Arnold intervened in the development of a new prototype when the latest one crashed. He made sure it was ready by 1944. Until the Americans captured Guam, Saipan and Tinian, the B-29 had taken off from secret bases in India and China. The Soviet Union, Britain, Australian also used them, and together demolished the Japanese military machine. When the Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 followed by another dropped on Nagasaki the Japanese surrendered unconditionally (while the B-29 was used in the Korean War and into the Sixties).
A nation hungry for consumer goods, whose GI’s longed for nothing more than to be with their families again or create new families, prospered during the most productive decades in US history. Although my Father had wanted to enlist, the nerve in his right ear died in 1940, and he was labeled 4F. This did not stop him from volunteering for the Coast Guard, and joining many other people all over Long Beach Island in watching for German U-Boats. The camaraderie was fine but a little like the two older Italian guys: “See there’s a U-boat”, one of them declared. “That’s a no my boat!” the other one answered. Many parties cemented friendships between all of the island’s residents who might never have known each other except as racing competitors at different Yacht Clubs.
Oh there were serious problems for those who waited at home. There was gasoline and food rationing. We had stamps and these did not provide enough sugar, meat or butter for any of us, particularly my Grandmother Folwell. In restaurants she would open her pocketbook and carefully secrete some butter upon her butter plate, for the rolls. Omigod, we kids (including my two cousins Billy and Little Miriam Adam), were horribly embarrassed by this. Not patriotic! That was a terrible thing.
My mother’s 1st cousin Warren Neff had come home from the Army, having fought as a dog soldier with General George Patton. He adored him and never tired of telling us wonderful stories. He brought home a lot of souvenirs, stamps from countries like Switzerland over marked Osterreich, medals from German uniforms and a Luger pistol. He gave all the small stuff to me, which I kept until I got home from Guam, whereupon my Mother said she had cleaned the basement and got rid of my collections. Warren’s wife had died just after he got back in ’45, of cancer. She left him Linda, then about 5 years old. One day Linda and I were swimming at the Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club, catty-corner behind our summer Sears Cape that Dad had built from a pre-fab kit. Staying at the swim ladder in a life-preserver I told her, “Hey Linda, you’re protected by that life preserver, how about swimming away from the dock. I was 9, a fearless swimmer by then. I pulled Linda away and she got terrified and grabbed me around the neck. The next thing I knew I was on the dock with a boy sitting on me while I vomited up bay water. I never was able to like Linda after that.
But Cousin Warren did throw himself into the postwar life of tremendous fun. More importantly he coupled his own life with the excitement of the authentic destiny of the country that had freed so many in the name of democracy. He was very handsome and could jitterbug well. He taught me how at a small restaurant and bar just around the corner from our house in Penn Valley.
“You’re beautiful”, he wrote in my autograph book.
“And you are beautiful”, he continued.
“God made you beautiful.”
“I wish I could make you, beautiful.” “Oh, Warren!” my Mother exclaimed. But I of course had no idea what he was talking about then. He two-timed, maybe six-timed a number of beautiful girls, something my brother and I could observe at my parents’ parties when the girls met each other and knew nothing about their separate connections to him. At those parties I would wear a hula skirt my grandfather Joe gave me and sing songs by the Andrews Sisters:
“Drinkin’ rum and Co cah-Co-lah.
Sold by mo-thah and daugh-tah,
Both moth-ah and daugh-tah
Workin’ for the Yankee dol-lah, ah, ah, ah”.
And Dorothy Shay, the “Park Avenue hillbilly”:
“You’ve heard of Rosie the Riveter,
Well she’s got nothin’ on me...
'Cause way before her time...
I had a job in Tenn-uh-ssee.
I turned a knob with just one hand...
And ah was satisfied,
Until one day I looked up,
And the boss was at mah side”.
Of course I didn’t get their risqué lyrics, but my family and their friends loved these naïve performances, not least because my mother stuffed my little halter top with socks, and it always slipped down. But also because even then I had a true singing voice and could imitate any melodies I heard right off.
When Goddard Lieberson invented the Long Playing Record he transformed music. No more 78 and 45 rpm formats and poor reproduction! Albums became a source of national delight and graphic excellence. Nat Cole and Frank Sinatra recorded for Johnny Mercer’s new company, Capitol Records. Nat was a great singer as well as a fine jazz pianist. I played Red Sails in the Sunset and They Tried to Tell Us We’re Too Young so often that my mother and new stepfather forbade me to continue. Frank sang the outstanding arrangements of Gordon Jenkins and Nelson Riddle which sold well also. All of our best singers shone during the postwar period, particularly Peggy Lee, June Christy and Chris Connor, phew! They were wonderful. But my favorite singer was Bobby Darin, whose first LP knocked everybody out. He had a jazzy timbre that transformed ballads we thought we knew like Beyond the Sea (I still have my gold record charm of it) and Mack the Knife with sparkling arrangements. He could play the piano and dance. Yes Elvis was King but Bobby was The Prince whose way with songs was so classy. And he could act and produce tool. He died of a heart attack at 39, in 1973. There has not been anyone as terrific since!
And in keeping with the confidence Americans had in their bones then, the first great event that took place in baseball happened after the War. It was the entrance of Jackie Robinson into the Major Leagues as a shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, the first black player. He paved the way for many outstanding guys such as OF Hank Aaron, P Bob Gibson, C Roy Campanella, SS Ernie Banks and not least, CF Willie Mays. When their teams traveled, did these men have a different level of hotel rooms, did they still have problems with southern Jim Crow laws and practices? Yes they did. But Americans became very aware of the inequalities Black people endured in Jackie Robinson’s struggle. Congress followed suit in the Sixties.
The postwar appetite for the game was great: we doted on our stars, collected and traded the cards that told of their careers and achievements. My father took my brother and me to many Phillies games; each of us slept with our own mitts rubbed with neatsfoot oil under our pillow The chance of catching a ball existed, even ‘though we were so young. And in 1950 our own Phillies won the pennant! We not only loved these guys, all of us wrote love letters to them; CF Richie Ashburn, LF Del Ennis (he had the League’s highest batting average that year), our great pitcher Robin Roberts, P Bob Sisler, P Curt Simmons, P Jim Konstanty,3B Willie Jones, 1B Eddie Waitkus, C Andy Seminick. In the marvelous prizewinning book that my daughter Nicole gave me this Christmas called The Real Book About Baseball author Lyman Hopkins describes the last day of that season: “The Phils were playing the Dodgers at Ebbets Field. If the Phils won, it meant the pennant. If the Dodgers won, it meant a tie finish and a play-off series of two out of three more games to decide the winner of the pennant. The thrilling battle came right down to the last of the ninth inning with the score tied. With one out, the Dodgers had runners on first and second. Duke Snider belted a hit on a line into center field and the crowd cape up with a roar as the runner on second, Cal Abrams, took off. It was surely the winning run! The third base coach waved Abrams around third and on to home. He knew Abrams could run fast, and he knew that the Philly center fielder, Richie Ashburn, while a brilliant player, did not have a particularly strong throwing arm. He also knew that with a combination like that, a runner will score from second nine times out of ten on a clean single through to the outfield.
But this was the tenth time! With the entire season and Philadelphia’s first pennant in thirty-five years at stake, young Ashburn threw caution to the winds. He raced in toward the ball at top speed, usually a dangerous gamble. He snared the ball cleanly with one hand and without a moment’s hesitation fired it home. It came in strong and true and the amazed Abrams was easily tagged out. The Dodgers lost and game, and the pennant, in the next inning. In the Philadelphia dressing room later the grinning Ashburn admitted: “It was the best throw I ever made in my whole live. I surprised myself with it.”
Pitchers pitched whole games then, but no one made the million dollar salaries players fetch now. They often had jobs in the off-season. What happened was television, but of course. Advertisers paid ever increasing fees to pitch their products and services. Teams made money and players wanted a piece of the action and free agency! (As we know they struck in 1994 and there was no World Series.) Why did baseball reach its zenith in the Fifties? has a simple answer: because Americans were great people in the Fifties and baseball reflected us.
Nadir
I received a communication from a young woman named Angela recently in regard to Paul Lo Duca. She dated him a number of times during the 2006 season when he led the Mets to a thrilling playoff with the Cardinals that they lost. Mr. Lo Duca had a fabulous year then. He batted .315 while poking many hits over second base that scored at least one runner.
Angela lives in one of the five towns of southern Long Island. She is 20 years old and is in her third year toward a BS in Nursing at a local university. She wants to get a graduate degree also. She read the Mitchell Report as excerpted in the New York Times on Friday, December 14th. He was no. 22 in the list of players who are said to have taken either steroids or human growth hormones by injection from Mets trainer Brian McNamee. Notes on Mr. Lo Duca were quoted from an internal discussion among Dodgers officials in October 2003, “steroids aren’t being used anymore on him. Big part of this. Might have some value to trade…Florida might have some interest. Got off the steroids…Took away a lot of hard line drives…Can get comparable value back would consider trading…If you do trade him, will get back on the stuff and try to show you he can have a good year. That’s his makeup. Comes to play. Last year of contract, playing for ‘05”.
Angela was able to interpret the graph of Mr. Lo Duca’s performance, she believes, which showed that he had a higher home run average in 2002 on the LA Dodgers while his average was more or less the same after he was linked to steroids, particularly in 2006.
Angela wants to know whether – knowing that Mr. Lo Duca is playing now with the Nats, having secured a 5 million dollar contract from Manager Manny Acta - she might contact him. Her mother and father are against it, she says, but he was a swell person to be with, very witty, funny and generous. She has missed him, she admits. Now, having admired his 2006 season greatly myself, I think that he probably is as you describes him in person, Angela. Since he will be summering rather far from Shea Stadium if you did want to see him you might contemplate spending a few weekends at some of our Delaware beach towns, Lewes, Dewey Beach, Rehoboth, Cape Henlopen. These towns are lovely and have good beaches, although not all of them compare to Jones Beach and some of New Jersey’s great beaches.
I have a picture from theTimes of Tuesday December 11th, before the Mitchell Report. It shows Mr. Lo Duca cleaning out his locker at Shea Stadium in October. Dressed in an outfit as far as can be imagined from his cream linen Armani slacks and black polo shirts, he looks dejected and dreamy at the same time – a guy who knows how much he’ll miss the Mets. Indeed he has subsequently said that one of the great things about playing for the Nats is that he will see the Mets 18 times. Since the Mitchell Report he has not either been interviewed and certainly has not been quoted at all on what that Report has said about him. Perhaps he believes that having stopped taking steroids five years ago, he need not concern himself with the hoopla over more important players like Roger Clemens.
Here is what you have to ask yourself, Angela. If Paul Lo Duca stopped taking steroids, or was taking steroids through the
2002 season, why did he not do the right thing, the smart thing, and admit that he did? Like Andy Pettitte, whose admission may have cleared his own psychic playing field, if not the fans’. None of us who have broken laws are exempt from their consequences, even if no one finds out what we’ve done. So the question remains, do you want to date a man who may have done something that not only injured himself and his family but betrayed baseball? In betraying baseball, those men who have been named and the probability of there being many more such players who were not, betrayed America. That is what I think, Angela. But I am a 71-year old lady who has already made most of my important choices – and some of them were truly rotten. You, however, are a thoughtful 20 year old woman whose life is just beginning to offer choices which will shape your character forever. I know you can make a good decision about Mr. Lo Duca.
Lyman Hopkins, The Real Book about Baseball. Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, Copyright 1951, 1958, 1962, Pp.26, 27.
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