The Glory of Baseball

There's Rooting Interest in L.A. for Brewers' Homegrown Talent

2011-10-13T11:14:00.000-07:00

Ryan Braun and Kameron Loe played for Granada Hills High. Randy Wolf and Marco Estrada played for Woodland Hills El Camino Real and Sylmar. Not all of them enjoyed a fast track to the big leagues.

By Eric Sondheimer
From Los Angeles Times
October 12, 2011

At a time of teacher layoffs, budget cuts and constant uncertainty in the Los Angeles Unified School District, four members of the National League Central Division champion Milwaukee Brewers are creating excitement and pride at their old City Section high schools.

And maybe providing something resembling a local rooting interest in the Major League Baseball playoffs.

Outfielder Ryan Braun and pitcher Kameron Loe played for Granada Hills High. Pitchers Randy Wolf and Marco Estrada played for Woodland Hills El Camino Real and Sylmar. Each was an All-City selection in high school, though not all of them enjoyed a fast track to the big leagues.

However they made it, their example has given current players at those schools something to strive for. "They see it can happen for them," Sylmar Coach Ray Rivera said. "It's something to be proud of."

Braun has been an All-Star the last four seasons, and with a .332 batting average, 33 home runs, 111 runs batted in and 33 stolen bases this year, he is a leading candidate for most-valuable-player honors in the National League.

But even with a busy schedule before this season started, he found time to visit Granada Hills and talk to current Highlanders players.

"It was an awesome experience," Granada Hills pitcher Nathaniel Pyle said. "He's such a great guy. His message was, 'Always listen to your coaches and work hard.' "

Former El Camino Real coach Mike Maio, 72, watches Wolf pitch on television and the memories come rushing back from 1993 and 1994, when the left-handed pitcher and hitter led the Conquistadores to consecutive City championships at Dodger Stadium.

"I didn't teach him anything about baseball, but he made everyone around him better," Maio said. "He let his work speak for itself. He's a great kid. I still get excited about him and still get a tear in my eyes when I see him."

Hal Kurtzman, an area scout who has been watching high school players in the City Section for the Arizona Diamondbacks since 1995, said he remembers Braun, Loe and Estrada.

"I always look back when kids do well and ask, 'What did you think of them?' " he said. "I liked Braun, but not enough to buy him out of Miami," where he played college ball for three years. "I remember the moon shots he hit at Blair Field in Long Beach and Granada Hills. I was not sure what he'd do defensively. Now it's 'Oh, my gosh.'

"Estrada was a little guy. He competed and threw strikes like 100 other right-handers. I remember seeing Kameron as a ninth-grader and he was this tall kid who threw 79-80 mph. He developed."

Braun graduated from Granada Hills in 2002 and became an All-American at Miami. Loe graduated from Granada Hills in 1999 and went to Cal State Northridge. Wolf was a two-time City Section player of the year and went to Pepperdine. Estrada spent three years on junior varsity at Sylmar before going 9-1 his senior year in 2001, then attending Glendale College and Long Beach State.

Granada Hills Coach Steve Thompson coached Braun and Loe.

"Honestly, I knew he could play at the next level in college," Thompson said of Braun. "What he's done is beyond expectations. He's just a tremendous athlete. Kameron has matured as a pitcher. He's figured it out."

Thompson and Braun still communicate, and the coach sent his former player a congratulatory text message this year when Braun joined baseball's exclusive 30-30 club, with 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases in a season.

Sylmar players are following Estrada, a relief pitcher who was claimed off waivers from the Washington Nationals and soon could be pitching in the World Series. And Loe, a 20th-round draft pick from Northridge in 2002, has come back to the majors after playing in Japan in 2009.

El Camino Real retired Wolf's uniform number several years ago. He came out to the alumni game last year.

Thompson said his players are asking a trivia question: "Has there ever been a high school that produced an NFL MVP and a National League MVP?"

Granada Hills alumnus John Elway was the NFL's MVP as quarterback for the Denver Broncos. Now with Braun as a top candidate for baseball's award, Highlanders athletes are swelling with pride.

"It's great to see," Thompson said.

Bill Buckner Ball to Go Up For Auction

2011-10-06T14:18:00.000-07:00

Bill Buckner - 1986 World Series, Game 6 - With the Red Sox an out away from their first world championship since 1918, the Mets hit three straight singles to close to 5-4. Veteran Bob Stanley was called on in relief with the tying run on third and promptly uncorked a wild pitch that tied the game. He then got Mookie Wilson to hit a slow grounder to first base, but the ball dribbled through the legs of creaky-kneed first baseman Bill Buckner, forcing a Game 7, which the Mets won, extending the Boston drought.

From ESPN Boston & Associated Press
October 4, 2011

NEW YORK -- The Bill Buckner ball is back in play.

The prize souvenir from the 1986 World Series will go on eBay this month with a $1 million price tag, put up for auction by the Grammy-nominated songwriter who once bought it from actor Charlie Sheen.

Seth Swirsky owns the ball, along with a bevy of bats, gloves and other mementos tied to the likes of Shoeless Joe Jackson, Johnny Vander Meer and Eddie Gaedel. He celebrates the game's lore and has written three books based on his letters to and from ballplayers.

"I love my collection. I don't think I've ever sold anything from it," Swirsky told The Associated Press from his home in Los Angeles. "But that ball, it's time to pass it along, to let someone else enjoy it."

Swirsky plans to begin the online auction on Oct. 15, and it won't last long. He intends to close the bidding late on the night of Oct. 25 -- at the exact minute of the 25th anniversary of Buckner's famous error.

Swirsky said he decided to part with a favorite piece while driving around last week, a day after watching Boston collapse on the final night of the regular season.

"The myth of Buckner continues. There he was on 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' last month. Everybody knows where they were when that play happened," he said. "I wasn't in a gloating mood. This isn't about, 'ha, ha, the Red Sox lost.' I'm not a Red Sox hater, I'm a baseball history lover."

"If anything, I want people to know how good Buckner was. You really wanted Billy Buck on your team. He got 2,715 hits -- almost as many as Lou Gehrig," Swirsky said.

Buckner, however, is more noted for what happened in Game 6 of the '86 Series. Playing first base for Boston, he let Mookie Wilson's grounder roll through his legs, allowing the New York Mets to cap an incredible rally in the 10th inning. The Mets went on to win the title.

The ball was picked up by right field umpire Ed Montague, who put a tiny "x" near a seam to mark the real thing. Montague gave it to Mets executive Arthur Richman, who in turn presented it to Wilson. Then Wilson signed it to Richman -- "The ball won it for us," he wrote -- and the souvenir made its way around the clubhouse. Someone left a tobacco stain where he kissed it.

Sheen bought the ball for more than $93,000 in 1992 and Swirsky purchased it for nearly $64,000 in 2000. Auction houses handled those transactions, but Swirsky said he's going online because the anniversary date is fast approaching.

To Swirsky, the Buckner ball captures the heart of the sport.

"People ask, 'Why would you have a ball about sorrow?' To me, it's encompasses the two emotions of the game. The highs and lows, all encapsulated in one ball."

Raised in Long Island, the 51-year-old Swirsky gave the ball to the Mets Hall of Fame last year for display. He's also shown it to both Wilson and Buckner at different times. Buckner thought it was "cool" and Wilson's eyes "got real big," Swirsky said.

Swirsky's extensive collection is a combination of historical and hysterical.

He's got a ticket stub from Gehrig's last game, the ball Reggie Jackson hit for his third straight home run in the 1977 World Series and a letter commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis wrote to Shoeless Joe after the outfielder was banned in the Black Sox scandal.

Swirsky also owns the cap that Jose Canseco was wearing when a ball bounced off his head for a home run, a bottle of champagne the Red Sox had in their clubhouse in anticipation of winning the '86 Series and a rare autograph from Gaedel, the dwarf who batted in a 1951 publicity stunt.

Baseball memorabilia is only a part of Swirsky's life. He co-wrote the hit "Tell It To My Heart" by Taylor Dayne, and has multiple hits with Celine Dion, Olivia Newton-John and Al Green. Swirsky also performs with The Red Button, his Beatles-oriented retro band that recently released a new album.

Swirsky thinks $1 million is a good starting point, based on previous ball sales. Mark McGwire's 70th homer went for over $3 million and Babe Ruth's homer from the 1933 All-Star game went for $850,000, as did Hank Aaron's last home run.

Swirsky plans to donate part of the proceeds to the Baseball Assistance Team, which helps those in the baseball family having financial hardship. He previously donated from his book sales to B.A.T.

"We should share this with the people who created these memories for us," he said.

Swirsky would sell the Buckner ball to a certain person in an instant.

Outspoken political commentator Keith Olbermann -- an excellent baseball storyteller, too -- came in second to Sheen when the ball initially went to auction. Olbermann then was second to Swirsky.

"If I got a call from Keith and he wanted it for a million, I'd do it. He deserves it," Swirsky said. "I'd rather have someone who really wants it to have it, y'know?"

The Invisible Fan

2011-09-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

Steve Bartman, pictured in 2003, is one of the most recognized
Cubs fans of all time. (Scott Strazzante/Tribune photo)

Scapegoat Bartman has managed to remain undetected for 8 years

By K.C. Johnson, Chicago Tribune reporter

September 26, 2011

He isn't on Facebook, though his fake profile and a fan club for him are. He doesn't Tweet, at least under his name. He never did the talk show circuit, cashed in any of the lucrative financial offers thrown his way or accepted the official overtures to return as a VIP to his beloved Wrigley Field.

Instead, Steve Bartman disappeared.

Forget about 15 minutes of fame or, perhaps, infamy. Bartman is approaching eight years of silence.

Bartman's brother-in-law read a statement from Steve on Oct. 15, 2003, one day after Bartman unwillingly entered Cubs folklore by trying to catch a foul ball that left-fielder Moises Alou hoped to snare with the Cubs five outs away from their first pennant in 58 years.

Since then, Bartman's silence has spoken as loudly as the venom that spewed from a supercharged fan base. The emotion even led to death threats for the suburban youth baseball coach and consultant after security escorted him from the stadium where the Cubs lost Game 6 and, eventually, Game 7 of the National League Championship Series to the Florida Marlins.

Yet in this age of 24-hour news cycles, social media and Kardashian-tinged celebrity, Bartman is a ghost.

"Yes, he is happy," says Frank Murtha, a lawyer, agent and longtime family friend. "Because that's who he is."

Murtha talks to Bartman regularly. Sometimes, their conversations involve business, as when Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney sought Bartman's presence in his documentary on the subject that premieres Tuesday on ESPN. Bartman turned that down, just as he turned down, according to Murtha, a six-figure offer to appear in a Super Bowl commercial.

Mostly, though, their conversations are personal.

"The kind of person he was growing up and throughout the time I knew him at Notre Dame, I'm not surprised he chose not to commercially profit from this incident, which many others have and would've," Murtha says. "That was consistent with my advice. But it was his idea. And it wouldn't have been difficult for him to profit considerably."

Murtha is asked if Bartman's vanishing act is a permanent position.

"If he ever chooses to speak publicly, it will be in a time and place and medium of his choice, not one that has been imposed on him by others," Murtha says. "That's not to say he will do that. At this point, he has no immediate plans for discussion."

And so others are left to talk for Bartman. Perhaps equally amazing as Bartman's silent stand is that those who do analyze him don't know him. His friends don't talk about him. His employer, Aon Hewitt, has swallowed him in a protective cocoon. Save for a brief comment from his father the day after the incident, his family has stayed quiet as well.

"Those who know Steve saw this incident unfold and its ramifications," Murtha explains. "No one was holding a gun to their heads. But they respected Steve and his posture on it that with no real exceptions, they did whatever they could to respect his privacy. When it was all first going down and 14 satellite trucks were parked in front of their house, a neighbor went on the 'Today' show. But that's about it."

An ESPN.com reporter followed Bartman to his office parking complex and waited 10 hours for him to emerge for a 2005 feature. Even then, Bartman disarmed the reporter with his response, saying he'd consult with his legal team and politely scolding him for stalking.

And so, for some reason — following Bartman's lead or perhaps trying to assuage the initial torment he experienced — the media has become partners in the equation. Bartman can be found. It just seems clear he isn't talking.

"He must be fiercely private," says Erica Swerdlow, managing director for Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm specializing in crisis communications. "Even beyond disloyal friends or family members selling things, Kevin James wanted to do a movie about it. A lot of money may have been thrown his way. He could be on 'Dancing With the Stars' right now if he wanted to. Money often extends people's 15 minutes. He stepped away. And he did it early."

Swerdlow lives in the same suburb where Bartman's parents do and saw the satellite trucks parked outside their home. She admits to being "embarrassed" by the angry fans' reaction.

"The only thing he didn't include in his statement — and I remember screaming at the TV at that moment and still would today — is he should've put everybody in his shoes," Swerdlow says. "He was very apologetic. He said he was a big Cubs fan. But he should've said, 'I believe I did something every single fan would've done if they had been sitting in that seat.' It would've made all the haters stop and say, 'It's not his fault. It's just another bad luck thing for the Cubs.'

"That doesn't work in every case. Tiger Woods couldn't say, 'A lot of people cheat on their wives.' But in this case, it was a honest mistake."

Try telling that to Mike Lebowicz. Standing outside Wrigley Field on a recent rainy day, the lifelong Cubs fan, who had just toured the park for $25, said he's still "frustrated" by Bartman's decision.

"He was totally oblivious," Lebowicz says. "He had headphones on. He should've known the situation."

Lebowicz's son, Ari, who watched Game 6 live at 3 a.m. while in Israel, offers that most fans would've reacted how Bartman did. Any fan who carts a baseball glove to a stadium, pounding it in anticipation, can relate.

"Well, he does have a legacy for now like the goat and the black cat," counters Mike, referring to other infamous Cubs curses. "But maybe when the Cubs win it all, it will be forgotten."

That's what Grant DePorter says he aimed for when he purchased the ball — ultimately snared by a lawyer — in an online auction for $113,824.16 in December 2003. Two months later, in a surreal scene covered live by national news outlets, the president and managing partner of Harry Caray's Restaurant Group blew up the ball, which remains on display in his downtown restaurant.

"To be in the tent, you had to be pro-Steve Bartman," DePorter says of the event that Bartman declined to attend. "Harry would've got a hold of the ball, let the fans be a part of it and then move on. If people believe in the curse and this ball is cursed, blow it up. Then maybe the curse is gone and people can think of other things."

Bartman, apparently, moved on long ago. DePorter sent him a book he wrote in 2008 with autographs from Ernie Banks and Ryne Sandberg expressing their support. He got no response. Another time, DePorter said then-Cubs President John McDonough sat next to Bartman's boss at a dinner. Bartman turned down those entreaties as well.

"Most people would've gone the other way and tried to make a fortune," DePorter says. "He became invisible."

Not entirely.

Bartman, in part to honor Ron Santo's struggles, identified the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation early on in his nightmare to benefit from the random donations he would receive from sympathetic fans. DePorter, who followed Bartman's lead, says some of the most touching of the 20,000 emails he received about the ball blow-up were from young kids battling diabetes.

Amy Franze, then a senior executive at Illinois' chapter of JDRF, held a fundraiser.

"Steve Bartman came up to her," DePorter says. "He had a hat on. He just said, 'Do you know who I am?' She said, 'No.' He said, 'I'm Steve Bartman and I wanted to thank you.' She said it was a nice conversation."

And then Bartman was gone again.

Ted Williams's .406 Is More Than a Number

2011-09-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

[Look Collection/National Baseball
Hall of Fame Library]
Ted Williams, demonstrating his swing
in the clubhouse, made a science of
hitting, discussing its finer points with
players and umpires. He practiced his
famous swing for hours every day.

September 17, 2011
By Bill Pennington
New York Times

Inside his room at Philadelphia's Ben Franklin Hotel on Saturday, Sept. 27, 1941, Ted Williams was jumpy and impatient. That might have been an apt description of the mercurial Williams at most times, but on this evening he had good cause for his unease.

His batting average stood at .39955 with a season-finale doubleheader to be played the next day at Shibe Park, home of Connie Mack's Athletics. Since batting averages are rounded to the next decimal, Williams could have sat out the final two games and still officially crested baseball's imposing .400 barrier.

At the time, Williams said, "If I'm going to be a .400 hitter, I want more than my toenails on the line."

But waiting it out in the hotel was asking too much. Recruiting the clubhouse man Johnny Orlando for companionship, Williams marched into the streets of Philadelphia. They walked for more than three hours, with Orlando stopping at bars for occasional sustenance as Williams, who rarely drank alcohol, sipped a soft drink outside.

"I kept thinking about the thousands of swings I had taken to prepare myself," Williams said years later. "I had practiced and practiced. I kept saying to myself, 'You are ready.' I went to the ballpark the next day more eager to hit than I had ever been."

Williams, concluding his third season with the Boston Red Sox, went 6 for 8 in the two games to finish at .406, and no one has since hit .400 or better for a season. No one, in fact, has hit higher than .390, and that was 31 years ago.

As another regular season winds toward a close — with no batter above .350 — it may be time to more fully appreciate Williams's profound, singular achievement. For 70 years, Williams's .406 season has often been a baseball accomplishment positioned just to the edge of the brightest spotlight.

It was insufficiently acknowledged in 1941 largely because five players had hit better than 400 seven times in the previous 20 years. Only 10,268 fans attended the doubleheader in Philadelphia, and out-of-town newspapers like The New York Times published only brief wire-service accounts.

[Associated Press]
Ted Williams with Joe DiMaggio. During
DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, Williams's
average was 4 points higher.

Acclaim for Williams's feat increased each decade as no other hitter reached .400, but the attention rarely reached the awe and veneration attached to, say, Babe Ruth's home run records. Williams's season, and the number .406, may be known to all serious baseball fans, but does it carry the magic attraction of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in 1941? That summer is cast in the animated light of DiMaggio's dauntless pursuit, a beacon of stylish triumph for a dashing figure.

Overshadowed is Williams's conquest, completed on an overcast, raw day — a last-day-of-the-season footnote. Even in Boston, where it made front-page news, the celebration was abridged. A day later, the sports headlines focused on the coming Yankees-Brooklyn Dodgers World Series. The front-page headlines involved war in Europe. In a short time, DiMaggio won the Most Valuable Player award with nearly twice the number of first-place votes as the runner-up Williams, who had led the league in home runs and missed the triple crown by five runs batted in.

Over time, Williams's .406 season earned a different, almost backhanded distinction. It was used to illustrate the end of an era: before baseball was desegregated, before night games and before the advent of modern strategies like specialized relief pitchers. It was treated like a relic — amazing but artifact.

Seventy years, however, may finally be enough to view Williams's season differently. It may be the most thorough reflection of a player often called baseball's greatest hitter. Although Williams was just 23 at the end of the season, 1941 has become the calling card of his career, no small achievement considering he retired in 1960 standing third on the career home run list behind Ruth and Jimmie Foxx.

The 1941 season revealed in total the precision, the resolve and the potent mix of aptitude and ardor that exemplified Williams the hitter. It is a 20th-century baseball masterpiece unlike any other, carved not across one World Series, one month or even 56 games but from April 15 to Sept. 28. Every single at-bat figured in the outcome, unlike when a hitter chases home run records.

"It was something that required a kind of nonstop consistency," Williams said on the 50th anniversary in 1991. "I never thought of it as going 2 for 5 every day, but that's what it adds up to. I had to maintain my focus throughout. Although I never imagined that all these years later, no one else would do it again.

"If I had known hitting .400 was going to be such a big deal, I would have done it again."

'A Lesson to All'

The steadiness of Williams's season is best, and most appropriately, borne out in numbers.

¶ Begin with these: 185 hits, 147 walks, 27 strikeouts and a .553 on-base percentage in 606 plate appearances.

¶ After missing most of April with a broken bone in his right foot, Williams hit .436 in May.

¶ From May 17 to 30, he hit .536.

¶ During his 56-game hitting streak, DiMaggio batted .408. During the same stretch of games, Williams hit .412.

¶ Williams started a 23-game hitting streak, the longest of his career, on May 15, the same day DiMaggio began his streak. During his hitting streak, Williams batted .489.

¶ Williams hit .470 against the Yankees, who won the American League pennant by 17 games behind a pitching staff that yielded the fewest runs and hits.

¶ He was hitless in only 22 of the 143 games he played.

¶ His longest hitless stretch was seven at-bats.

¶ He had just three infield hits.

¶ His slugging percentage was .735. Until Mark McGwire in 1998, only five players in either league had recorded a higher single-season mark.

¶ Sacrifice flies were counted as at-bats. Under today's rules, Williams might have hit .411 to .419, based on accounts of games that season.

In an essay within the 1994 book "Ted Williams: A Portrait in Words and Pictures," the Harvard paleontologist and popular science writer Stephen Jay Gould called Williams's 1941 season "the greatest achievement in 20th-century hitting" and "a lesson to all who value the best in human possibility."

Williams's manager in 1941, the future Hall of Famer Joe Cronin, put it more succinctly: "Nobody could get him out."

Williams spent the rest of his life — he died in 2002 — explaining that the .406 season was a result of his tireless dedication to what he labeled the science of hitting, and refining it consumed him. He did not, for instance, usually talk about fielding, base running or bunt strategy, but he would make strangers show him their batting swings. Then he would correct their flaws.

Williams did not consider 1941 his best season. He was just as likely to mention 1957, when at 39, he led the league with a .388 average (with 33 intentional walks). But Williams recognized several distinctive circumstances about the 1941 season.

After an unsteady acclimation to the East Coast in 1939 — Williams had been raised in San Diego — and after a rocky welcome in the veteran-filled Boston clubhouse, 1941 was the year Williams finally settled into a routine that suited his active mind.

According to "Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero" by Leigh Montville, Williams would rise at 6 a.m. and, with his teammate Charlie Wagner, drive 20 minutes west of Boston to Sunset Lake, where they fished undisturbed for a couple of hours. With the games starting at 3 p.m., Williams arrived before noon and started swinging a bat or a broomstick in the clubhouse. Waving an object to mimic his baseball swing, even if it was a hair brush in front of a mirror, took up hours of Williams's days.

After many games, he took extra batting practice. A quick dinner followed — he was a famously fast eater — then he loved an evening watching a Western at the movies.

Adding to his comfort, he was familiar with most of the pitchers in the American League and had memorized their tendencies and pitching repertories. He mined the daily box scores for clues about each pitcher to update his mental databank. And because he was popular with umpires — he never argued balls and strikes — he could glean useful information about pitchers they had recently seen. Reaching base, Williams would converse with the nearest umpire, hoping to learn if someone had a new pitch or seemed overly reliant on his fastball. No insight was too small to Williams. (Such fraternization between umpires and players is now prohibited.)

The Missing At-Bats

Of all the advantages he might have had in 1941, the biggest was the spring training injury to his right ankle. It limited him to fewer than 20 at-bats in April, most of them as a pinch-hitter.

"That was big because I missed the cold weather, when most hitters can't hit anyway," said Williams, who could accurately recall details of his baseball career well into his 70s.

He reinjured his ankle just after the All-Star Game, which forced him out of the starting lineup for another 12 days. His average had dipped to .396. When he returned, he immediately went 12 for 22 and raised his average to .408 and never dropped below .400 again, at least by baseball's official mathematics.

Rod Carew, one of the few to make a serious run at .400 since Williams, has studied the .406 season and contends that Williams's absences were a blessing.

"The fewer at-bats any hitter has over the required number of plate appearances, the better his chance is of hitting over .400," Carew wrote in an e-mail responding to questions about 1941. "When I hit .388 in 1977, I had 694 plate appearances and 616 at-bats (239 hits). Ted had something like 450 at-bats in 1941 when he hit .406, and I think George Brett and Tony Gwynn had fewer then 450 at-bats when they made their runs at .400.

"All in all, the less at-bats, the better."

Williams had 456 at-bats in 1941. Brett, who hit .390 in 1980, had 449 at-bats that season. In 1994, Gwynn had 419 at-bats in 110 games and was hitting .394 on Aug. 11; then the players went on strike and the rest of the season was canceled.

John Olerud was hitting .400 on Aug. 2, 1993, the second latest that anyone has carried a .400 average in a season since Williams. (Brett was hitting .400 on Sept. 19, 1980.) Olerud raved about Williams's eye for the strike zone and his plate coverage but wondered whether he had benefited from playing when starters usually pitched complete games.

"If you're seeing a pitcher for the fourth time, it is easier," Olerud said.

Carew agreed.

"Even back when I played, more pitchers went nine innings," he wrote, "and I was more likely to get a hit when I faced a pitcher for the third or fourth time than I would be facing a fresh Lee Smith or Mariano Rivera in the eighth or ninth inning."

On this issue, Williams always conceded that some changes, like a bullpen full of specialists, might have made hitting harder since the 1940s, but that other changes might have made it easier, like the major league expansion to 30 teams from 16, which probably diluted the overall pitching talent.

An Emphatic Finish

Williams was convinced that another .400 hitter would come along. When Nomar Garciaparra was hitting .403 for Boston in late July 2000, he had frequent conversations with Williams.

"The phone would ring, and when I answered I'd hear a voice roar: 'You're going to do it, Nomar. This is the year,' " Garciaparra said. "He was really into it. He wanted somebody else to do it. He wanted somebody else to enjoy it as much as he did."

Williams did enjoy his .406 season, right down to the final hit on Sept. 28, 1941 — a rocket that crashed into a bulky loudspeaker atop a fence in right-center field. A piece of the loudspeaker broke off as the ball bounced back into the outfield for a double.

The second game of the doubleheader ended after eight innings because of darkness. Otherwise, Williams might have gotten another at-bat. And a chance to hit .407.

Afterward, teammates congratulated Williams with a gusto that would have been unfathomable two years earlier, when he was perceived as a cocky rookie. Williams kissed his bat for a photographer.

Then he went back into the streets of Philadelphia. How did Williams celebrate?

He walked from the ballpark until he found a shop that served chocolate milkshakes. That was Williams's best recollection. The baseball parts he knew for sure. The other stuff?

"I think it was chocolate," he said many years later. "I really can't remember."

Former Dodger Wally Moon Has More Shots to Deliver, at 81

2011-09-13T16:00:00.000-07:00

By Tom Hoffarth, Staff Writer
L.A. Daily News
09/11/2011

As long as the sun is shining, Dodger fans will be forever over the moon about Wally Moon.

The All-Star surprisingly traded to L.A. from St. Louis in 1959 created a Coliseum phenomenon that only Vin Scully could best describe at a point in history when the Soviets and United States were immersed in space race.

Moon's "moon shot" was launched by an inside-out swing from the left-handed batter's box, forcing the ball on a sky-high trajectory that often cleared the 40-foot left-field screen that started just 250 feet from home plate down the foul line.

The last one happened 50 years ago Monday, in the first inning off the Phillies' John Buzhardt.

The 81-year-old's new autobiography, "Moon Shots: Reflections on a Baseball Life" (Mill City Publishing, 340 pages, $24.95) sells on his official website (www.wallymoon.com) and will be available during a book signing tour through L.A. next week that includes a stop at Dodger Stadium before Tuesday's game.

"I'm a happy camper," he said the other day from his home in Bryan, Tex., just outside College Station and his alma mater, Texas A&M. "My old heart's pumping now, because I'm getting anxious to see all my friends in L.A. again."

He explains more in a Q-and-A:

QUESTION: What spurred you on to write the book? Were there some things you wanted to say about today's game?

MOON: I think initially I just wanted to kind of hand down the memories to my children and grandchildren, but in the last couple of years, since we've had this website, I've connected with a lot of fans, and gained a lot of encouragement there to put it all on paper. That's been some undertaking, I must say. Maybe I bit off more than I could chew. But it was a labor of love. I played in the Golden Era of the game. So now that I'm in my eighth decade, I thought, 'You're a pretty lucky fellow.' And it was fun to spark some memories. I think I benefitted from it as well as anyone else.

Q: Anyone who saw you play at the Coliseum had to enjoy that experience.

A: There won't be another Coliseum. That's sort of a special place to me. Where else could you play before 90,000 or 100,000? I don't think that'll ever happen again. And there was Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett, educating every one of them, because the depth perception in the Coliseum was so bad - the fans would cheer a pop up and not say a thing when someone was really hit well. I don't have the words to describe what it was like winning that first world championship in 1959, my first year. I tried . . .

Q: Do you think many know about how Stan Musial gave you the best advice on how to hit those shots to left field at the Coliseum?

A: He was a great mentor. He told me, 'You gotta learn how to play in that ballpark. Here's what I would do if I were you.' It was good advice. I worked at it, and I think I was able to accomplish something that many left-handers couldn't.

Q: You describe some great times living in Encino, taking your $11,000 World Series players share and buying a house on two acres, with an orange grove and grave vines, setting up your own Wiffleball field. Can you imagine what it would be worth to have that house today?

A: Oh, I don't even try to think about that. Maybe we should have stayed there, over on White Oak. Maybe if we didn't have five children we could have stayed. I fell in love with Los Angeles, and I think the fans did with me, too. That was a great little community we had there. We had the great singer, Billy Vaughn, living there, and we'd go to boxing matches. Tex and Dorothy Ritter were great people, and their son, John. Such a great kid. I miss them. My closest friends still live there down the hill, and we'll go visit them this trip. You know, people are the answer. The fans are the answer. They support this game and have so for years and years. I'm so appreciative of those who just want to say hello and remember me.
HIGHLIGHTS OF WALLY MOON:
-Born: April 3, 1930 in Bay, Arkansas
-Major League Service: 12 years: Five with St. Louis, seven with the Dodgers.
-Career highlights: A .289 batting average in 1,457 games, with 142 home runs and 661 RBIs; The 1954 NL Rookie of the Year once led the NL in at-bats (716 in 1954), triples (11 in 1959) and on-base percentage (.434 in 1961). Fourth in the NL MVP voting in 1959. Won a Gold Glove in 1960. Retired in 1965 as a member of three Dodgers World Series championships (1959, '63, '65).

On the Air, Vin Scully Reflects 10 years after 9/11

2011-09-12T19:57:00.000-07:00

Dodgers Blog L.A. Times

9/12/2011

by Steve Dilbeck

Here’s the treasure that is Vin Scully, on the air Sunday after a pregame 9/11 ceremony in San Francisco:

"We had a lead, gray morning, slowly burning off to a brilliant sunrise, making you think of that beautiful day in New York 10 years ago, Sept. 11, 2001. Certainly a day in which God must have wept, wept over man’s inhumanity to man. A day of heroes and a day of horror.

"And there are numbers we always talk about in baseball. We know of the total number of people who passed away that day. But I think of two particular numbers -- 405 and 343. Four-hundred and five were the total number of first responders who died that day trying to help others. And the 343, all of those brave firemen who as most of those people who did escape were going down the stairs, 343 firemen were going up the stairs on the way to meet their destiny.

"Yes, it was a day to remember. We all take a promise now, we will never forget. But you know in retrospect, we’ve kind of forgotten Pearl Harbor. We’ve kind of forgotten D-Day and World War II. I guess it’s a tendency to try and push aside something that brings us so much pain.

"But it should also bring some honor for as we watch rising from the ashes of New York, like the Phoenix itself, the high-rises that will once again be a testimony to the heart and soul of this great country.

"I remember Ronald Reagan once said, 'If we ever forgot that we were one nation under God, we will be one nation that goes under.' And you might notice today, above all days, you will hear God’s name mentioned, and we hope, not in vain.

"So that’s the scene here at AT&T Park. We will do as we did 10 years ago. We will try and turn the page, at least for a couple of hours and concentrate on a child’s game called baseball. But all the while, each and every one of us should carry a small ache in our heart for what happened. And please God, we will never forget what took place 10 years ago today. And with that, we’ll pause for this."

The camera then panned to a scene outside the stadium that had a banner that read: "We will never forget 9/11."

Spinners' Schwindenhammer Credits Thome with Career Breakthrough

2011-09-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

Seth Schwindenhammer, Red Sox Prospect

August 16, 2011
By Dave Willis

LOWELL — Following two difficult seasons to start his professional career, Lowell's Seth Schwindenhammer experienced the meeting of a lifetime with his hometown idol — longtime major leaguer Jim Thome.

"When he was in Florida this spring rehabbing we went out to eat," said Schwindenhammer. "He talked to me about the game and gave me advice about how to approach the game. It was great."

That wisdom from the potential future Hall of Famer, who on Monday became the eighth member of the Major League Baseball 600 home run club, seems to have had a major influence on the young slugger.

Last night, Schwindenhammer represented the Lowell Spinners in the New York-Penn League All-Star Game at LeLacheur Park and won the All-Star Skills Competition. He also ranks No. 2 in the league in homers this season.

"What (Thome) said has been working so far," said Schwindenhammer. "Just go out, have fun and don't dwell on the bad at-bats."

Expectations were high for Schwindenhammer when he was selected in the fifth round of the 2008 MLB draft, after he hit .434 with 15 home runs and 54 RBIs as a senior at Limestone Community High School (Ill.)

The massive 6-foot-2, 210-pounder, who had committed to play at the University of Illinois, immediately signed with the Red Sox $175,000 signing bonus.

But the transition to professional baseball proved to be a difficult one for the youngster. In his first two minor league seasons, he hit a combined .193 with only one home run and 19 RBIs in 69 games.

"It's tough, but you try to come back the next day and do the best you can," he said. "You try to forget the bad at-bats. You try not to dwell. But it's hard."

His fortunes began to turn this spring while playing extended spring training in Florida, when he made contact with Thome.

Thome, who had starred at Limestone Community High School (1987 graduate) just like Schwindenhammer, was in Florida rehabbing an oblique injury and offered to buy him dinner.

"He is a great guy and I am so glad it happened," said Schwindenhammer. "He talked to me about having fun. He said if I have any questions he is there for me."

True to his work, Thome — the five-time All-Star who is currently the designated hitter for the Minnesota Twins — has remained a sounding board for Schwindenhammer this season.

"We have kept in touch," said Schwindenhammer. "If I need to ask any questions, he's there to talk. I don't want to bug him, but it's amazing to know you have a guy that's done so many amazing things in baseball there for you.

"When he hit his 600th career home run (Monday against Detroit) I texted him and congratulated him."

With Thome as an influence, Schwindenhammer has taken off at the plate this year.

Through 42 games, Schwindenhammer ranks second in the New York-Penn League in home runs with nine, trailing just Tampa Bay's No. 9 prospect Jeff Malm (12). His 28 RBIs are good for second on the Spinners but just 11 off the league lead.

"He has been working so hard," said Spinners manager Carlos Febles. "It takes time. We have told him nothing happens overnight. He is getting better, and if he keeps working hard things will work out for him."

Schwindenhammer's issue has continued to be strikeouts. His New York-Penn League-high 89 strikeouts are a main reason he is hitting .215. Ironically, Thome ranks second in major league history in strikeouts (2,453).

"I have been working on it a lot with (Spinners hitting coach) Rich Gedman," said Schwindenhammer. "It's tough to get through, but I am to the point now where I realize everyone is going to strike out. It really is just another out."

The Spinners do not want their slugger to dwell on the strikeouts.

"It can be very hard to overcome," said Febles. "But he can't be afraid to strike out. That will put him in a hole. He has to stay aggressive. He isn't consistent yet, but he is getting a lot better."

But Schwindenhammer does plenty of damage when he puts the ball in play. When he makes contact, he is hitting .446 (37 for 83).

While he popped out in his only at-bat last night, he homered twice to win the skills competition, done instead of a traditional home run derby.

"When you really hit one you don't feel it in your hands," said Schwindenhammer, who also made a great play in right field. "You feel it mentally, but you don't feel it off the ball. That's how you know you got it."

All in the name

If Schwindenhammer makes the majors, he would break Red Sox catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia's record for the longest last name in MLB history.

"Everyone always says, 'If you get to the big leagues it's going to be history.'" he said. "It's going to be history by one letter, but I have to make it happen first. I haven't met Salty yet, but I'm sure he'll find me and give me crap about it."

RECORD-SETTING NAME

If Lowell's Seth Schwindenhammer were to make the majors, his 15-letter last name would be the longest in major league history. Here's a look at other epic MLB names:

Name – Letters – Time in Majors
*Jarrod Saltalamacchia – 14 – 2007-present
William Van Landingham – 13 – 1994-97
Jason Isringhausen – 12 – 1995-present
Mark Grudzielanek – 12 – 1995-2010
Nomar Garciaparra – 11 – 1996-2009
Carl Yastrzemski – 11 – 1961-83
* — Tops all-time

Wiffle Ball: Born and Still Made in the USA

2011-09-06T13:04:00.000-07:00

By Chris Arnold
NPR - September 5, 2011

The long Labor Day weekend is a time for backyard barbecues, catching up with friends and family, and for some, a game of Wiffle Ball.

Over the years, the Wiffle Ball has wound its way into the fabric of America. Those who don't even like baseball very much have taken a swing at that white plastic ball with the oval slots around one side.

There is something about the Wiffle Ball that's kind of irresistible — toy stores and even some hardware stores across the country sell them. And for consumers looking for a ways to spend more time outside, they're pretty cheap.

Many people might figure that a cheap plastic toy like a Wiffle Ball is made elsewhere, in someplace like China. After all, how can American companies compete on the cost of labor for little plastic toys?

But that assumption would be wrong — every Wiffle Ball ever made has come from Shelton, Conn.

And David Mullany, whose grandfather invented the Wiffle Ball, plans to keep it that way.

Wiffle Ball World Headquarters

The Wiffle Ball world headquarters is a small brick building by the side of the highway. David's brother, Stephen, says sometimes families driving by on vacation see the old Wiffle Ball sign on the building, will get excited and pull off the road.

[Chris Arnold/NPR] Stephen Mullany, who runs The Wiffle Ball Inc.
with his brother David, poses in front of the machine that presses
the two plastic ball halves together at a factory in Shelton, Conn.
Mullany's grandfather invented the Wiffle Ball in the 1950s.

"And the guy slams his brakes on and comes around and is like, 'This is it! You know, the Wiffle Ball factory,'" Stephen Mullany says. "And they expect the world headquarters, they expect to see this big building, and this is it."

Sometimes the brothers will show such visitors around the building.

[Chris Arnold/NPR] The Wiffle Ball headquarters in
Shelton, Conn. Every Wiffle Ball is made in the U.S.

At the heart of the small operation is a single machine that presses the two plastic halves together to make the finished Wiffle Balls. The machine resembles the glass-sided popcorn maker seen in movie theaters and pubs, but it popping out Wiffle Balls instead of popcorn.

"Once those two halves are made, you really need to get them put together, so this is where that happens," Mullany says.

Four balls at a time fall out of the bottom of the machine every eight seconds. And that's eventually enough to fill big crates full of Wiffle Balls that are then shipped out to thousands of toy stores around the country.

Not Made In China

So why isn't this being done, cheaper, in China? David Mullany says he's not interested in that.

"We're very happy producing our products here," he says. "No reason we can't make a top-quality product here at an affordable price and stay in business."

Part of the answer also seems to be that making Wiffle Balls has become pretty automated. Melting down the raw plastic involves two computer-controlled machines, and the factory only employs about 15 people, which keep costs down.

"Our defect rate and scrap rates are ridiculously low," Stephen Mullany says.

The Mullanys' grandfather, David N. Mullany, invented the Wiffle Ball. The story goes that in the early 1950s, he was an out of work semi-pro baseball pitcher, so he set about to make a ball that kids could throw curveballs with. And then he started selling the balls at a local diner.

"[The owner] put 'em on the counter to see what happens, and he went back a few days later, and they were gone," David Mullany says.

And the rest is Wiffle Ball history.

[Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]

Humility by the Pack

2011-09-01T22:01:00.000-07:00

Joe Giza/Reuters

Rookie relief pitchers are being forced to wear schoolgirl

backpacks to transport gear and snacks to the bullpen

By Andrew Keh

New York Times

August 31, 2011

Snarling relief pitchers see themselves as baseball's meanest breed. Asked to take the mound at the most pivotal, pressure-packed moments — in the late innings, with the game on the line — they often develop a steely shell to hide any rattled nerves.

But decades of hard work could be coming undone thanks to the smiling faces of Hannah Montana, Dora the Explorer and Hello Kitty.

In this tradition-bound sport, in which managers wear the same uniforms as the players and Cracker Jack can still be bought at concession stands, a hazing ritual that has gone on for years seems to have reached a new level of absurdity at major league ballparks: rookie relievers are being forced to wear schoolgirl backpacks — gaudy in color, utterly unmanly — to transport gear.

Evan Vucci/Associated Press

The burden for Mets reliever Pedro Beato is a

Dora the Explorer backpack. He accepts the

not-so-macho assignment, saying, “It's my duty.”

"Everybody laughs at me," said Bryan Shaw, a 23-year-old rookie reliever for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Before each game, he makes the long, painful walk to the bullpen toting a pink bag adorned with an image of a white unicorn. "They all yell, 'Cute bag!' " he said.

The most junior reliever on each major league team is in charge of carrying the stash of snacks, drinks and pain medications from the clubhouse to the bullpen. For decades, an extra equipment sack or plastic shopping bag sufficed. But leave it to big leaguers to find new ways to torment their tenderfoots.

"It's just one more way to get at your rookie," said Mets pitcher Tim Byrdak, 37. "You have to walk all the way across the field to get to the bullpen, so you make the rookie carry this pink bag, and you can kind of humiliate him."

Before a recent home game, Pedro Beato, 24, the Mets' youngest reliever, was diligently stuffing a fuchsia Dora the Explorer backpack with chips, cookies and candy bars. When Jason Isringhausen, one of the team's veterans, had gone shopping online to find a suitable bag for Beato, he knew exactly what he was looking for. "Something pink," Isringhausen said.

Barton Silverman/The New York Times

San Diego reliever Erik Hamren shouldering

a backpack featuring R2-D2 of “Star Wars.”

The flamboyance of a floral pattern running down either side of the bag forms a striking juxtaposition with its wearer. "The first day I showed up, and it was just in my locker, I knew what I had to do," said Beato, a 6-foot-4 right-hander with a vicious fastball. "It's my duty."

That duty, and that color scheme, extend across the league.

For much of this season, Michael Stutes of the Philadelphia Phillies was forced to wear a Hello Kitty backpack and a pink feather boa purchased by Brad Lidge, a 10-year veteran, during a road trip to San Francisco. "I thought it wasn't right for Stutes to be carrying a plain black bag," Lidge said. "I was in Macy's shopping for my kids. I just knew we wanted something pink."

Barton Silverman/The New York Times

The Padres' Anthony Bass, left, and

Josh Spence evoked “Star Wars.”

Jonny Venters of the Atlanta Braves, meanwhile, toted an assortment of bags last season that recalled the TiVo recordings of an 8-year-old. First there was Hannah Montana. Then iCarly. By September, the team's veterans added SpongeBob SquarePants and Cinderella.

"I heard stuff from fans on the road, you know, 'Nice backpack, man!' " Venters said, laughing. "But, whatever. It's a fun time."

No one quite knows when the playful practice began. Trevor Hoffman, baseball's career leader in saves, said that this type of rookie hazing did not occur when he reached the majors in 1993 and that he never noticed the bags in the proceeding decade.

"But now it seems like we're seeing a ton of them everywhere," Hoffman said. "I think it's amusing for the fans to see. It's kind of a way of pointing out who's the low man on the totem pole."

Major League Baseball for now has no issue with the bags, as long as they maintain a spirit of innocence, a league spokesman said.

Al Behrman/Associated Press

The Phillies' Michael Schwimer

carries a bright pink backpack.

Baseball's famously nitpicky attention to dress was exposed last year when it briefly barred Joe Maddon, the manager of the Tampa Bay Rays, from wearing a team-branded hooded sweatshirt over his uniform top in the dugout.

For a sport that has seemed to resist any diversion from the sacraments of its rich history, then, this colorful rite is an unlikely trend.

Hoffman, who retired before the start of this season, said the bags were harmless. But other shenanigans, he said, could overstep the boundaries of baseball's accepted manners. In 2007, for example, Hoffman and the other San Diego Padres relievers bought a motorized cooler for the rookie to ride to the bullpen. But it was stopped after one outing.

"We just thought it was too over the top," Hoffman said. "We didn't need to bring that much attention to ourselves."

When Hoffman left the Padres before the 2009 season, the bullpen was left under the stewardship of Heath Bell. A long and fraught process to find the perfect bag soon followed.

"We did, like, a school bus driver, a crossing guard, a fisherman, a construction worker, and it just wasn't good," Bell said of the search in his first year as the team's closer. "And then I came across Yoda."

Bell encountered the backpack with the "Star Wars" theme while taking his children to Legoland in Carlsbad, Calif., and felt it was perfect for the team. The ensuing winning streak sealed the matter. Two other bags, one featuring R2-D2 and one a stormtrooper, have since made their debut with the Padres, and Bell said he had Chewbacca and C-3PO at home in reserve.

These days, before every game, Yoda is slung over the shoulders of Erik Hamren.

"It's part of the gig," Hamren, 25, said. "I've grown to love it."

The nature of the game, meanwhile, means that this fluorescent pink wave will most likely endure for years.

"Guys are starting to move up that had it first done to them, so it seems like it's starting to get passed on," Hoffman said. "Guys that are carrying them now are going to want to make sure they get the chance to make someone else do it."

Last month, for instance, Stutes was able to rid himself of the Hello Kitty and boa ensemble when the Phillies called up Michael Schwimer, 25, a 6-foot-8 right-hander.

"He was very happy to hand it over to me," Schwimer said. "I'll just wear it with pride."

Sight Unseen -- Blind Woman Throws First Pitch at Dodger Stadium

2011-08-30T19:50:00.000-07:00

Lorri Bernson delivers the first pitch as her guide dog, Carter looks

on prior to the Dodgers-Padres game at Dodgers Stadium on Monday,

Aug. 29, 2011. Many local guide dogs in training were on hand to

watch the event. (Andy Holzman/Daily News Staff Photographer)

by Dennis McCarthy

L.A. Daily News

August 30, 2011

Lorri Bernson was having a bad case of game day jitters on Monday.

In a few hours, the 48-year-old Encino woman would be walking out to the mound at Dodger Stadium - accompanied by her guide dog, Carter - to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.

She's been practicing with friends at Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks Park - listening for the catcher's voice and the sound of the ball hitting leather to judge the distance and arc of her throw.

It's tough enough for sighted people to make the throw from the front of the mound to home plate. Imagine not being able to see home plate at all.

But Bernson knew she'd have some help out there. Carter would be at her side to nudge her in the right direction if she got turned around.

Guide dogs in training line up along the first base line as Lorri

Bernson delivers the first pitch with her guide dog, Carter prior

to the Dodgers-Padres game at Dodgers Stadium on Monday,

Aug. 29, 2011. (Andy Holzman/Daily News Staff Photographer)

Monday was a big night for Guide Dogs of America, the Sylmar-based nonprofit organization that teams up 50 dogs a year with people who have lost their sight.

Bernson lost her sight to diabetes in 1995, and came here in 2002 to train with her first guide dog, Nigel, a golden retriever she retired last year at age 10.

"It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, but it was time," Bernson says. "He was slowing down, losing his reflexes and quickness to respond.

"He did his job for eight years. He protected and loved me."

She often gets asked if Nigel - now back living with the couple who trained him as a puppy - ever saved her life?

"Every day I walked out of my apartment," Bernson answers. That's how important guide dogs are to the blind.

When Ned Colletti, the Dodger's general manager, visited the Sylmar facility late in 2009, Bernson asked him if the Dodgers might be interested in sponsoring her and her new guide dog as they went through training together.

It wasn't cheap - about $40,000 for a dog bred to be trained as a guide dog, along with room and board for a month together at the facility and miscellaneous training costs.

"I was looking to donate to a group that makes an impact on lives and that's what Guide Dogs of America does," Colletti says.

"I have it written in my contract that I get to donate to the charity of my choice every year and the Dodgers will match it.

"Carter was our first and we had our second dog graduate in April. My goal is a third one by the end of the year."

So, officially, Carter is the first, real-life Dodger dog, says Bernson, trying to find a laugh to cure her game day jitters.

"At first I thought I'd have Carter take the ball in his mouth and bring it to the catcher," she say. "But that's not what guide dogs do. It would have sent the wrong message."

So, she would throw out the first pitch. It was in the dirt, a little wide. But it was close.

Lorri Bernson pets her guide dog Carter prior to throwing out the

first pitch at the Dodgers-Padres game at Dodgers Stadium on Monday,

Aug. 29, 2011. (Andy Holzman/Daily News Staff Photographer)

Mike Flanagan Brought Unique Perspective to the Top of the Mound

2011-08-28T20:02:00.000-07:00

Mike Flanagan, a former Cy Young winner and

part of the Baltimore Orioles’ 1983 World Series

championship team, has died. He was 59.

By Thomas Boswell

Washington Post,

August 25, 2011

Mike Flanagan was the best student of people, the toughest pitch-hurt competitor, the most unselfish teammate and the best world-leery wit of any Oriole of his time. Nobody was like him — at all.

A few years ago, the O's honored former manager Earl Weaver with a plaque that's on the wall, waist-high, in their dugout. "Oh, life size," Flanagan quipped.

When he was a kid pitcher who allowed too many steals, Flanny threw a sideline session as Weaver watched. Suddenly Earl began running, yelling, "I just stole second on you."

"How'd you ever get on base?" Flanagan replied.

That is the best-known version of Flanagan: the droll New Hampshire stoic, watching bemused, waiting with a needle that he never dug too deep. But there were several other Flannys, all worth valuing now in the wake of his death Wednesday at age 59.

Once, when no Oriole would say a good word for smart, angry, drug-plagued teammate Alan Wiggins, Flanagan analyzed, rather than judged.

"I always tend to give people two or three more chances than they deserve. That might help you in the long run because they give you more chances, too," he said. "Maybe Alan gave everybody two or three less chances than they deserved. So they gave him no chances at all."

That was Flanagan, too.

In 1983, Flanny pitched with a four-pound brace on his knee. The league knew he was, once again, sacrificing another notch off the power arm that won him the 1979 Cy Young Award. But as he had in several seasons, he wanted to help the O's while other, slower-healing pitchers waited until they could stand the pain. Flanagan's tough-it-out code, the product of being a third-generation pro pitcher, probably turned a potentially stellar career into a merely very good one: 167-143. But it brought vast dividends of respect.

That year on the O's beat, I waited for somebody to bunt for a hit against Flanagan while he was wearing that brace. Nobody did, not even with a pennant at stake. It was beneath the dignity of the game to exploit him — because he wouldn't throw at hitters, because he never took his spitball out of the bullpen and because, in his prime, he loved the challenge of attacking the strengths of the greatest hitters, such as Jim Rice.

That, also, was Flanagan.

During the bleakest years of Peter Angelos's tenure as Orioles owner, few respected baseball executives would come to Baltimore. But Flanagan was always an Oriole first, all else a distant second. He befriended Angelos, tried to understand him, influence him for the best and explain him to others. As executive vice president of baseball operations from 2005 to '08, he was the public face of the franchise.

It didn't work. Just as he abused his arm for Weaver and the team, Flanagan sacrificed some of his reputation as an exec by being identified with Angelos. After Andy MacPhail became general manager, there was no logical place for Flanagan. He called friends throughout baseball to pick brains about jobs in other front offices. None apparently materialized.

After serving in more Orioles roles than any Baltimore player, including two stints as pitching coach, Flanagan went back to the TV broadcast booth to explain the latest 95-loss year — insightfully, generously and sardonically.

Flanagan was respected, beloved and seen as an exemplar of the best in the word "pro," because he was so completely guided by his own internal compass of values. Ballplayers have just as much difficulty figuring out who they are as everybody else — maybe more, at times, because their stardom lets them delay maturation. Wise beyond years, Flanagan knew himself.

For example, when he was the reigning Cy Young winner, he showed me how to cheat. He scuffed one side of a ball, just two marks with a coat hanger in his locker. He played catch with Dennis Martinez to show how, effortlessly, he suddenly had four new pitches.

"It's the same principle as a flat-sided Wiffle ball," he said. "You hold the ball with the scuffed side opposite to the direction you want it to break. It takes no talent whatsoever."

Why don't you do it?

"My real stuff's still too good," said Flanagan, who won 23 games with the best left-handed curveball in the American League and a fastball in the 90s.

Then, seriously, he said: "I can understand why they do it and I can't swear that I won't ever do it, but I still hate it. [Once] when I was hurt, I got to the point where I actually took the mound thinking I'd cheat that day. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I thought, 'If you'll do this now, just to have a little better chance to win, what won't you do eventually?'

"I guess I just felt too conspicuous out there."

Conspicuous to whom?

"Myself, I guess."

Flanagan always called his job description "fool on the hill" and wore a T-shirt under his uniform that said "Dead Goat Saloon." Even as a player, you'd see him reading serious novels. Once, asked what he would have done if he were not a baseball player, he referred back to the old John Belushi skit on "Saturday Night Live" and said, "I think I'd have made an excellent Killer Bee."

Flanagan was a first port of call for Orioles with problems because he had had his share. "They cannot scare me with their empty spaces/Between stars — on stars where no human race is," New Hampshire's Robert Frost wrote. "I have it in me so much nearer home/To scare myself with my own desert places."

Sometimes, Flanagan wore a black suit in summer, and his humor bore the etymology of the root word that described it: "mordant." But what those who knew him best will recall — first and erasing all else — were his eyes crinkling to a slit with laughter and, behind those eyes, a bone-deep desire to give, even for things not asked, while taking little.

After years of frustration, when the O's won the '83 World Series, Flanagan said, "Now we got what we all wanted: a highlight film with a happy ending."

This week, we don't get the happy ending, but we can keep our highlights, our memories, of the life and the man, which still shine brighter than any trophy.

A’s Await Film, But Without the Ending They Wanted

2011-08-24T21:18:00.000-07:00

[Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press]

The Oakland teams Billy Beane built a

decade ago went toe to toe with the Yankees

and the Red Sox in the postseason.

By Tyler Kepner, New York Times

August 23, 2011

The Oakland Athletics close their home schedule Sept. 22, and the next day they open their run in theaters everywhere. The movie version of “Moneyball,” about the rise of the A’s under Billy Beane, will depict a moment in time that is much different from today. Its inspiration will watch in that context.

“I’ve seen a couple of cuts, and there is a bit of nostalgia about it,” Beane said on the phone this week. “I forgot some of the guys on that team. It’s been a while.”

[Melinda Sue Gordon/Columbia Pictures]

Brad Pitt, left, with the actor Jonah Hill, plays

Athletics General Manager Billy Beane in “Moneyball,”

the new film based on Michael Lewis's book.

Beane is still the Athletics’ general manager, and he speaks somewhat reluctantly about the movie, other than to acknowledge there are worse things in life than having Brad Pitt play you on film. He says he does not want to distract from his job, which has become far more challenging than it was from 2000 through 2003, when the A’s made the playoffs each season.

The version that held on for a 6-5 win arrived at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night is still 15 games out of first place in the American League West. Competitive for two months, the A’s collapsed under the weight of injuries to their rotation. This will almost surely be their fifth season in a row without reaching the postseason.

“Billy was on to something, and it worked pretty well, so much so that other teams caught onto it,” said Craig Breslow, the Yale-educated Oakland reliever who has read the Michael Lewis book that inspired the movie.

“For a while, it was a market inefficiency. Certain players were undervalued, and Billy could identify them, the guys who projected well. Now, we’re obviously not going to be able to outbid some of the other teams that are using those same metrics. Now guys that hit home runs and get on base a lot cost $20 million a year. Where’s the next place to look?”

That is the question Beane struggles to solve. The subtitle of Lewis’s masterpiece was “The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” and in Oakland’s case, the game is even less fair than it was before.

Since the 2002 season depicted in the book, every team that has wanted a new stadium has gotten or is getting one, except the Athletics and the Tampa Bay Rays. The A’s are blocked from moving to San Jose because of the San Francisco Giants’ territorial rights; the planned Cisco Field in Fremont, Calif., fell through; and there seems to be no viable option for staying in Oakland.

It makes one wonder if Beane, signed through 2014, would be intrigued by another general manager’s job, like the one now open with the Chicago Cubs.

“You’re never going to have equilibrium in terms of revenues everywhere,” Beane said. “But, listen, we’re all competitive, so it certainly gets frustrating. Just being able to carve out a future for the franchise has been most frustrating. Because of the venue situation, it’s hard to put together a business plan beyond the next fiscal year.”

Of course, the A’s have faced a cash-flow problem for years. In the first scene depicted in a “Moneyball” trailer, Pitt-as-Beane revels in it. “There are rich teams, there are poor teams,” he says, before admonishing his staff. “We’ve got to think different.”

By challenging traditional scouting methods and recognizing the value of digging deeper into statistics, the 2002 A’s found useful players to surround a nucleus of Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, Miguel Tejada and Barry Zito. They won 103 games and the A.L. West.

Beane was sharp enough to apply some of the premises percolating for years in the minds of analysts like Bill James — and Lewis was perceptive enough to notice. Beane has been criticized for cooperating with Lewis, for spilling his secrets. But there was probably no stopping the information revolution in baseball. Executives were bound to get wiser.

“There are a lot of smart guys running teams now, and a lot of the guys who are smart also have a lot of money,” Beane said. “That’s a pretty tough combination to go against. We’ve all started valuing the same things.

“Clubs like us and Minnesota used to place really high value on young, inexperienced players. Now teams at the top of the food chain are doing the same thing, and it’s really hard to find trade partners. So it usually comes down to money. The gap between the haves and the have-nots is actually greater today. The window for small-market clubs is shorter and shorter.”

The A’s finished .500 last season, anchored by their rotation. But free-agent hitters like Adrian Beltre and Lance Berkman declined Beane’s offers, and through Monday, Oakland’s offense had outscored only one other A.L. team, Seattle. Injuries claimed starters Brett Anderson and Dallas Braden months ago.

So the A’s forge on, desperate for direction. With more money to spend on collecting and analyzing data, Beane said, perhaps the A’s could spot and exploit the next undervalued commodity. Instead, they are reduced to taking fliers. They spent $10 million last season for Ben Sheets, hoping he could find his inner ace. He blew out his elbow. In 2008, they spent $4.25 million on Michael Ynoa, a 16-year-old pitcher from the Dominican Republic. He pitched nine innings in rookie ball before having reconstructive elbow surgery.

“Sometimes, you’re relegated to buying that lottery ticket,” Beane said. “Anybody will tell you that the lottery is not a great way to invest your money. But sometimes, you don’t have a lot of options.”

Frustrating View of Game Day

2011-08-21T12:07:00.000-07:00

(Tadej Znidarcic for The New York Times)

Members of the Uganda team were among those

who went to a video hall in the Nsambya section of

Kampala to watch the Saudi Arabia-Canada game.

By Bandele Adeyemi

New York Times

August 19, 2011

KAMPALA, Uganda — Forty people — coaches, well-wishers and players past, present and future — gathered Friday in a dark video hall in Nsambya, a poor working-class neighborhood here to watch the Little League World Series game between Canada and Saudi Arabia.

It was a game that, three weeks earlier, appeared to be the likely destination of the city's Rev. John Foundation Little League team. But there were problems with visa applications, and the State Department denied the players travel documents to the United States. Saudi Arabia, the team they had beaten to advance to the World Series, took their place in the tournament at South Williamsport, Pa.

(Tom E. Puskar/Associated Press)

Uganda had visa problems and

was replaced in the Little League

World Series by Saudi Arabia,

which lost to Canada.

I want the Saudi Arabia team to win," said Felix Barugahare, 11, a member of the Ugandan team. "They are in our league, and they represent us."

Felix and his teammates Augustus Owinyi, 12, and David Arago, 13, were among those who jammed into the hall — a small structure reinforced by wooden poles, sheet metal and cardboard boxes on an unpaved street lined by open gutters.

It is one of the few places in Nsambya with electricity, and its 17-inch television provides the only sports entertainment. The players sat without a trace of tension, occasionally smiling and cheering as the Saudis rallied to take the lead in a game they went on to lose, 6-5.

(Tadej Znidarcic for The New York Times)

Uganda Coach George Mukhobe,

stands in front of the video hall

where players watched the

Little League World Series.

"It hurts knowing that should have been us," Kirya Arone Jacob, a coach with the team, said as he watched. "But I know we'll have another chance."

Coach George Mukhobe took it harder.

"I keep wondering why things are happening to us this way," he said. "Is it because we are black? Is it because we are poor?"

He added: "You know, some people told me: 'Let's take the gloves, the bats, and burn them. The Americans brought the game to us and now they're stopping us.' "

But Mukhobe let cooler heads prevail. He said he went on a mission to motivate his players.

In the days after they were denied visas, some of the children were too distraught to practice. Augustus, a first baseman, was among them.

"I felt very bad," he said. "Some of us cried. I cried. I wanted to go and represent Uganda."

Augustus returned after a week, motivated by soothing words from his coaches.

David said he returned to practice immediately, at the urging of his family.

"They said to keep playing, that there would be another chance," he said.

Richard Stanley of Staten Island, a part-owner of the Yankee's Class AAA Trenton Thunder, introduced Little League to Uganda eight years ago and has continued to lend financial support to the growth of baseball. He said success by Saudi Arabia would reflect well on Uganda.

"I would wish that they do put on a good performance, because it will also give Uganda credibility regarding its talent level," Stanley said in an e-mail.

Jacob, meanwhile, predicted before the game that the Ugandan team would yet reach the World Series.

"Right now we are practicing and preparing kids for next year," he said. "We won't give up."

Paul Post contributed reporting from Glens Falls, N.Y.

Bill Bergen’s Awesome Record of Baseball Futility

2011-08-18T00:01:00.000-07:00

National Baseball Hall of Fame

The Brooklyn Superbas playing the Chicago Cubs at

Washington Park in Brooklyn in 1912. Bill Bergen, a poor hitter,

was an excellent defensive catcher for Brooklyn from 1904 to 1911.

By Lynn Zinser, New York Times

August 3, 2011

Today’s lesson, gleaned from baseball history, is that if you are going to be bad at something, be spectacularly bad. And if you are spectacularly bad enough, people might be talking about you 100 years after you retire.

Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Craig Counsell has gone hitless

in his last 45 at-bats, threatening

Bill Bergen's major league

record for futility.

This lesson comes courtesy of Bill Bergen, a catcher for the Brooklyn Superbas in the early 1900s. The record books will tell you that Bergen is the worst hitter in Major League Baseball history, holding records for the lowest season batting average for a regular position player (.139, a mark making news as Adam Dunn of the Chicago White Sox threatens it) and lowest career batting average (.170), as well as the longest streak of at-bats without a hit (46, a mark making news because Milwaukee’s Craig Counsell is threatening it at 0 for 45).

Bergen’s career lasted 11 seasons, from 1901-11, although he couldn’t hit the side of a barn. He did not have one slump year surrounded by many productive ones (like Dunn) or one epic bad streak (like Counsell). He was consistently and dependably, well, subpar.

In 3,028 career at-bats, he hit two home runs. In only one season did his average top .200. His career .194 on-base percentage means he didn’t walk much. His career .201 slugging percentage means he rarely hit for extra bases. Perhaps his quirkiest statistic: he was never hit by a pitch.

“He is about as bad a hitter as you can possibly imagine,” said David Jones, a baseball historian who edited two books on baseball’s dead-ball era. “But if he’d been a little bit better hitter, no one would ever talk about him.”

Instead, his name crops up whenever a baseline of offensive futility is needed. He does not have a line named after him like Mario Mendoza, whose paltry batting average made him synonymous with hitting .200. But Bergen is firmly installed in the history of futility.

Library of Congress

Bill Bergen, a poor hitter, was an

excellent defensive catcher for

Brooklyn from 1904 to 1911.

Bergen’s secret was playing at a time — that dreaded dead-ball era — when good defensive catchers were worth their weight in Teddy Roosevelt autographs. Bergen was a great defensive catcher. By some statistical measures, he is considered among the top five defensive catchers in National League history.

“It was an era when catchers were even more important than they are today because bunting and stealing bases were the main way teams would score runs,” said Tom Simon, who along with Jones edited the books on the stars of the dead-ball era. “So teams would carry a guy hitting .139 if he could keep the other team from scoring.”

Bergen caught a relatively modest 941 games but ranks in the top 20 in career assists by a catcher with 1,444. He threw out 47.3 percent of runners attempting to steal. He once threw out six in one game, against St. Louis in 1909.

An article in The Sporting News in 1908 described Bergen: “He is one of the few backstops who can throw on a line to second while standing flat-footed and he gets a ball away from him so quickly and with so little apparent exertion that the runner on first, second or third does not dare to take liberties when Billie is on the job.”

An article in The Bridgeport Evening Post in 1904 read: “His long suit is his wonderful throwing. While playing in the interstate league with Fort Wayne, Ind., Bergen saved the game for his team one day when the bases were full and no one out by catching three men napping, one after the other, allowing his team to win.”

Bergen began his career on a rather ignominious note with the Cincinnati Reds in 1901. A year earlier, his older brother Marty, a talented catcher for the Boston Beaneaters from 1896-99, had murdered his wife and two children with an ax and killed himself with a razor blade. Marty Bergen was considered far more talented than Bill, but his mental instability had been apparent his entire career. He often walked out on his team, berated his teammates and described paranoid visions of plots to kill him.

“We don’t know enough about Bill Bergen’s life to know how he dealt with that,” Jones said. “But it must have been something.”

Bill Bergen, by all accounts, had none of his brother’s demons and was a pleasant teammate. His ignominy was strictly of the baseball variety.

Boston Public Library Print Department

Marty Bergen, who killed his

wife, children and himself.

He entered the league just as the American League became a major league, so teams were scrambling for players to fill rosters. Offensive numbers were down across the board. All of that worked to Bergen’s advantage.

After he played three seasons with the Reds, Bergen’s contract was sold to Brooklyn, one of the National League’s truly dreadful teams. Team nicknames back then were coined by sportswriters, who dubbed the team the Superbas because Manager Ned Hanlon shared a moniker with a popular circus troupe at the time, the Hanlon Superba. (They didn’t officially become the Dodgers until 1932.) Despite the high-flying name, the team never finished above fifth in the league during Bergen’s career. Perhaps that led to even decreased expectations for Bergen, who, as Bill James wrote in his “New Historical Baseball Abstract,” was the only catcher in history whose value came 100 percent on defense.

In that era, catcher was not considered an offensive position at all. The job was grueling, with little in the way of today’s protective equipment. According to Jones, catchers did not wear shin guards, and their mitts were small, requiring two hands to catch most pitches. They were injured often and installed deep in a team’s batting order. But they were called on to field a lot of bunts and to prevent stolen bases.

“With Bill Bergen, you had someone who could shut down the other team’s running game,” Jones said. “He had a cannon for an arm. The way to think of him was as a second pitcher.”

Simon wonders whether Bergen was ever put ninth in the batting order, “because pitchers were probably better hitters than him.”

Joe Dittmar, who was vice chairman of the records committee for the Society for American Baseball Research for 18 years, researched Bergen’s career in the 1990s and wrote an article for the society’s Web site. During that research, he stumbled on Bergen’s 46-at-bat hitless streak. Until then, Luis Aparicio and Tony Bernazard were considered to have the record at 44. Dittmar thoroughly scoured the dead-ball era records and determined that Bergen’s was the longest.

That streak came to an end in 1909 during the second game of a doubleheader against the Cubs, when Bergen beat out an infield hit ahead of a throw by Johnny Evers of Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance fame.

Bergen’s career ended in 1911 when Brooklyn found its young catcher of the future in Otto Miller. Bergen was released. He died in 1943 of heart disease at age 65, according to his death certificate.

But Bergen’s career was just bad enough that, in a way, he lives forever.

Baseball's Masked Men Show Their Inner Hams on Strike Three

2011-08-15T07:52:00.000-07:00

Gyrating Umpires Get Chance to Show Off When Batter Looks His Worst

By Jared Diamond, Wall Street Journal,
August 11, 2011

The manual for professional baseball umpires explains how to handle just about every on-field situation. From the backwoods of rookie ball to the grandeur of the big leagues, there is little room for creativity from these men in blue, who are largely invisible.

But a few times during each game, when the third strike whizzes past the hitter and pops the catcher's glove, the spotlight shines on the umpire standing behind home plate. For that brief moment, an ump can take center stage and, in some cases, exhibit true artistry.

An analysis of all 68 full-time Major League umpires' strike-three calls reveals 68 unique styles, running the gamut from Gary Darling's subtle fist pump to Tom Hallion's violent, Mike Tyson-esque punchout. Though nothing in the guidebook requires umpires to devise elaborate gestures, the called strike three injects a splash of color into the sport.

"It's kind of like a pitcher's signature pitch," said New York Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey. "The strike-three call has always been the one thing the umpire can make his own."

As time goes by, umpires refine their strike-three calls, adapting and tweaking their signals even after they reach the majors. Wally Bell, a big-league ump since 1993, seems to change his strike-three call from game to game, and sometimes from inning to inning. Larry Barnett, who umped in the American League for three decades, said he went through "10 or 15 different ones" before settling on "a mechanic," as they call the move, that he felt comfortable with toward the end of his career.

Among the 68 current umpires, 59 (86.8%) typically employ one of two straightforward approaches for calling strike three, punching either straight ahead toward the pitcher or out toward the side. But within that framework, each ump adds his own touches. As a result, perceptive fans can identify the umpire working the plate by his strike-three call. (Umpires usually let swinging strikeouts speak for themselves.)

Striiiiiiike 3!

How major-league umpires signal a called strike three.

View Interactive

For instance, Dan Iassogna (a middle-puncher) shifts his weight far into the left-hand batter's box when making his call—a move that would probably go over well on "Dancing with the Stars." Fellow middle-puncher Tim Tschida kicks his left leg into the air on strike three like Jackie Chan in the movies, while side-puncher Brian Runge swings his right arm high over his head before punching across his body.

Even those calls look mundane compared with the remaining nine umpires' mechanics. They defy any attempt at categorization. Bob Davidson's signal resembles a disco move, as he starts his call by pointing his finger toward the sky like John Travolta did in "Saturday Night Fever." Mr. Hallion became a YouTube sensation last October, when his emphatic called strike three for the final out of the 2010 National League championship series went viral. (Mr. Hallion makes an explosive 135-degree twist, turning his back to the right-handed batter's box on his punchout.)

"Every time I see Tom I tell him, 'I will not have you go 'Hiii-Yahhhhhh' on me tonight, that's my goal," said San Diego Padres infielder Orlando Hudson, imitating the motion as he spoke. "He's got the best strike-three call in the game."

Before any of that, prospective umps must learn the fundamentals, prompting umpiring schools to ban students from performing complex strike-three calls. Jim Evans, a former big-league ump who now runs one of the two MLB-sanctioned umpiring academies, said he teaches a "simple, robotic mechanic," resembling knocking on the door.

By the time umps reach the midlevel minor leagues, though, their supervisors and trainers take the reins off and encourage them to start developing more intricate calls. Justin Klemm, the executive director of the Professional Baseball Umpire Corp., the entity responsible for training and evaluating umps for pro baseball, said he rehearsed his motion before a mirror to see what looked right. Triple-A umpire Shaun Francis said young umps, after the games, ask their colleagues on the bases to critique their mechanics, hoping to earn a coveted promotion to the big leagues. Umpires can earn between about $90,000 and $300,000 a year.

"If at Triple-A you still have a rudimentary strike-three mechanic, you're not going to stand out," Mr. Francis said.

On the other hand, umpires with dramatic strike-three calls constantly tread the murky water between showmanship and ridicule. Or, as big-league umpire Jeff Nelson put it, "There's a fine line between good taste and Leslie Nielsen," a reference to the late movie actor's turn as an overly exuberant umpire in "The Naked Gun."

Players don't take too kindly to umpires showing them up and don't always need an excuse to berate the man responsible for lowering their batting averages.

"The thing about it is as a player you're emotionally invested in the game, but as an umpire you shouldn't be," Mr. Dickey said. "I can certainly see how outlandish strike-three calls could be misconstrued."

Nevertheless, Mr. Evans, the teacher, said players usually enjoy the strike-three calls, recognizing their place in the fabric of the game. Though players may not appreciate the histrionics as they trudge back to the dugout after striking out, they know it serves a purpose.

"You can't feel bad because when we make diving plays we do a little flash, when we hit a home run we do a little flash," Mr. Hudson said. "The umpires, they're in the game, too. They have to do a little something, too. That's their one moment."

Of course, that moment quickly turns sour if the players don't trust the umpire's judgment to call balls and strikes. That's why Mr. Evans has one crucial piece of advice for all young umps before acting too crazy: If you plan to use a wild strike-three mechanic, you better make sure you get the call right—at least most of the time.

"If a player thinks you missed a strike three, and you're putting on a big strike-three mechanic," he said, "then you're just a clown."

When Baseball Imitates Congress, and Not in a Good Way

2011-08-14T17:23:00.000-07:00

Jeff Kowalsky/European Pressphoto Agency

In the third inning, Jered Weaver shouted at Magglio

Ordonez as he circled the bases slowly after a home run.

By Jonathan Mahler, New York Times

Aug. 5, 2011

What a spectacle of undignified behavior, of hypocrisy, of extremism, of civility abandoned, of epic brattiness. Could a disgraced city possibly have proved itself more worthy of its reputation?

I'm talking, of course, about last Sunday's Tigers-Angels game at Comerica Park in Detroit.

Maybe you were tuned in to a different channel, watching a different group of people in a different place violate a different code of conduct that has long held together another one of our nation's most cherished institutions. I'll recap.

First, the setup. The stakes were high. This was the final game of a four-game series between two American League playoff contenders, teams that might collide again in the postseason. It also happened to bring together the league's two Cy Young front-runners, a pair of lanky former first-round draft picks with starkly different pitching styles: Jered Weaver, with his magician's deception and surgeon's control, and Justin Verlander, with his three-digit fastball and paralyzing changeup.

The game certainly lived up to its billing. Verlander took a no-hitter into the eighth inning, and the Tigers managed to hold off a late Angels rally to win, 3-2. As a baseball game, it had everything you could possibly want: Some dominant pitching, flashes of power, a lot of hard-fought at-bats and a couple of dramatically manufactured runs complete with a botched rundown.

But what was most memorable about the game — and the reason why I'm still thinking about it almost a week later — was what you couldn't necessarily see, or at least conclusively decipher. Like maybe no other single game in history, this one was packed with violations, both real and imagined, of baseball's unwritten rules.

Jeff Kowalsky/European Pressphoto Agency

The Angels’ Erick Aybar tried to bunt his way on

in the eighth inning, a move Justin Verlander, who was pitching

a no-hitter at the time, later described as “bush league.”

Along the way, it produced roughly the same gob-smacking effect among baseball fans that most of the nation was experiencing as it watched the parallel debt-ceiling theatrics in Washington. Baseball imitates Congress.

The purpose of the baseball codebook, passed down in the clubhouse from generation to generation like an ever-evolving collection of tribal rites, was probably most succinctly described by Bob Brenly, who led the Arizona Diamondbacks to their 2001 World Series championship.

"I can break it down into three simple things," Brenly told the authors of "The Baseball Codes." (Yes, there are enough of these rules to warrant their own book.) "Respect your teammates, respect your opponents, respect the game."

If only it were as simple as Brenly makes it sound. As with the unwritten rules that govern any institution, baseball's are subject to endless interpretation: You can't steal on an opponent when you have a big lead late in the game, but what constitutes a big lead? And when, exactly, is it late in the game?

No bunting to break up a no-hitter, but what if it's a tight game in the heat of a pennant race and the batter has been known to successfully bunt for base hits? (This last scenario isn't hypothetical: The Angels' Erick Aybar tried to bunt his way on in the eighth inning of the game in question, a move Verlander later described as "bush league.")

The elaborate, if ill-defined, system of self-policing that is supposed to encourage players to play the game the right way can ultimately have the opposite effect.

With their midgame adrenaline flowing, their sense of baseball righteousness rising up in them like, well, an ideological crusade taking root inside the mind of a zealous young politician, players can wind up following their principles right off a cliff.

The process quickly becomes circular: Retaliation begets retaliation. Individual reputations are compromised. Teams' prospects are damaged. Not to get too Bart Giamatti on you, but the strength of the game's social fabric is tested. Did I say that baseball imitates Congress?

It was pretty easy for even the most partisan among us, which is to say Tigers and Angels fans, to see who went over the edge in Detroit.

If opinion research firms conducted approval-ratings polls for baseball players, the Tigers' Carlos Guillen would have suffered the steepest decline after Sunday's game. In the seventh inning, when Guillen smashed a ball into the right-field seats, he lingered in the batter's box to admire his handiwork and pointedly flipped his bat, a strictly prohibited form of grandstanding known as home-run pimping. He compounded the infraction by trotting slowly down to first, angled toward the mound, taunting Weaver all the way.

Bear with me, because this is where the narrative gets a little convoluted. In Guillen's mind, he was actually taking the moral high ground by paying Weaver back for disrespecting one of his teammates, Magglio Ordonez, earlier in the game. (In the third inning, Weaver had shouted at Ordonez as he circled the bases slowly after a home run, another variation of home-run pimping.)

Weaver responded to Guillen's taunts by throwing at the Tigers' next hitter, Alex Avila. The beanball has been an accepted part of baseball's code pretty much since the game's inception. But it's one thing for a pitcher to make a rhetorical point with a knockdown or brush-back pitch. It's another to throw near a hitter's head, which is what Weaver did.

He was instantly kicked out of the game, and on his way to the locker room was so worked up that he had to be physically restrained from the umpire by his teammates. He was later suspended for six games. Considering the tightness of the pennant race — the Angels and the Rangers are running neck and neck — it's entirely possible that the start he'll miss will make the difference for his team's season. Not that Weaver had any regrets. "I wouldn't do anything different," he said when he learned of his suspension.

So there you go. That's what happens when dogma and misguided principle win the day.

In no time at all, our combatants could very well be at it again when the playoffs start — I am already envisioning the Fox pregame lead-in of a showboating Guillen and a fury-filled Weaver — and Congress returns to the debt drawing board.

It will certainly make for some more compelling theater. Whether it will make for good legislation is a different question. It's hard to believe we're in a good place when our elected representatives and our professional baseball players start to look so much alike.

Baseball's Pastime: Pranking

2011-08-10T06:00:00.000-07:00

How Ballplayers Use Practical Jokes to Police the Clubhouse; Mr. Laird, You're Under Arrest

By Scott Cacciola

Wall Street Journal, 8/9/2011

(Getty Images) Philadelphia Phillies outfielder John Mayberry Jr.

after getting hit with a pie following a game-winning hit in April.

Late in Thursday's game against the Toronto Blue Jays, Tampa Bay Rays second baseman Elliot Johnson sought to put his spin on one of baseball's time-honored traditions. It had nothing to do with throwing around the horn or stretching in the seventh inning.

Instead, he rimmed the bottom of a paper cup with a big wad of bubble gum and set about affixing it to the top of third-base coach Tom Foley's helmet—which happened to be sitting on Foley's head.

Unfortunately, the cup came tumbling off, ruining the gag. But Foley understood the value of a good clubhouse prank, dating to his own playing days, and thus felt obligated to do his part. So he reattached the cup to his helmet, voluntarily becoming the butt of the joke. The scene was broadcast on television, and Foley said he got a text from his daughter: "You look like an idiot."

Baseball pranks are a tradition nearly as old as the game itself. They run the gamut from innocent to extreme, a usually unseen facet of baseball that remains an essential thread in the sport's fabric. "Listen, the game's predicated on failure," Milwaukee Brewers third baseman Casey McGehee said. "If you can't laugh at yourself and enjoy yourself with teammates, it can be a long season."

Pranks come packaged with their own set of guidelines—prank etiquette, so to speak. For example, McGehee emphasized an important rule of thumb: Never mess with someone who has considerably more resources than you do. By resources, McGehee meant time and money. Starting pitchers are notorious pranksters because they often have both. "If you're making the league minimum and go after someone with a huge contract, it's really not a tree that you want to go barking up," McGehee said.

(Associated Press) Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Wade Davis's
shoe burns after then-teammate Matt Garza lit it in 2009.

Will Ohman, a reliever for the Chicago White Sox, paid a steep price for violating that rule when he was playing for the Chicago Cubs in 2005. After Ryan Dempster, a veteran starter, left Ohman's shoes in a freezer, Ohman made the ill-advised decision to retaliate. He got into Dempster's locker and went to town, supergluing the fly of Dempster's pants, removing the laces from all his shoes and putting eyeblack on the inside of his baseball cap. "Standard stuff," Ohman said. "And I thought it was over."

Three days later, Ohman was walking to the bullpen before a spring-training game when he noticed a camera crew was trailing him. He found this curious, but teammate Mike Remlinger assured him that it was for a piece on journeyman pitchers. Ohman bought it—for about 20 seconds. When he reached the bullpen, an opposing pitcher shouted at him through the fence: "Hey, is this your wheel?" Sure enough, Ohman spotted one of the wheels to his pickup truck. "My heart sank," he said.

Everyone was in on the joke—teammates, coaches, players from the other team—and it was all orchestrated by Dempster, who had removed the truck's wheels and scattered them around the ballpark. There was one in the clubhouse shower, one of the coaches' bathroom, one in the dugout.

"The sad thing is, I was scheduled to pitch that day and I'm going around the stadium collecting my wheels," said Ohman, who found that his truck kept veering to the right when he finally got the wheels back on. "I had to get the alignment fixed. I left the bill in Dempster's locker. He still hasn't paid me."

(Associated Press) Chicago White Sox third-base coach
Jeff Cox with a cup stuck to his helmet before a game in 2010.

Relief pitchers also have a reputation for irreverence, though they tend to pick on their own kind. These kerfuffles takes various forms. Pittsburgh Pirates reliever Evan Meek said one prank with staying power is loading up an orange with shots of Anbesol—an oral numbing ointment—and waiting for an unsuspecting teammate to consume it. Hilarity ensues. How much Anbesol, exactly? "Not a lot," Meek said. "Just a few squirts here and there. Enough to numb your whole mouth."

Steve McCatty, the pitching coach for the Washington Nationals, said pranks are an important part of clubhouse camaraderie—always have been. (He once pulled an all-timer on Billy Martin, lighting his shoes on fire during a game against the White Sox in Chicago.) Now, he said, he worries that "political correctness" has diluted the fun.

"These days, a lot of this stuff would be considered 'hazing,' " he said. As a result, he said, pranks have gotten watered down. It's almost cliché now that a shaving-cream pie in the face will follow a game-winning hit.

Then again, some of what the old-timers did was downright dangerous.

Former New York Yankees pitcher Goose Gossage said he once made the mistake of falling asleep on a team charter. He awoke to a burning sensation. His shoes were on fire—mid-flight. "That's the last time I ever fell asleep on a plane," said Gossage. Another time, Ryne Sandberg reached under a bathroom stall with a match and set Gossage's newspaper ablaze. "Gosh, that was a good one," Gossage said.

Certain teammates got it worse, Gossage said. How about the day someone nailed another reliever's $500 cowboy boots to the clubhouse floor? "Ruined 'em," Gossage said. Is there an etiquette to stuff like that? Gossage, clearing his throat: "He probably deserved it."

Which leads us to another point of etiquette: If you disfigure or destroy someone's personal property, compensate them. But it can still get tricky. "I saw someone shred a suit that turned out to be a gift from a late relative," Pirates outfielder Matt Diaz said. "Yeah, not good."

(Associated Press) A tape outline of then-Rays

outfielder Joey Gathright (right in photo) in 2005

after he crashed into the wall making a catch.

Above all, veterans have long used pranks as a way to police the clubhouse. Jerry Hairston Jr., a Brewers utility player and a third-generation major leaguer, said that was the case in 2007, when a younger teammate with the Texas Rangers was "popping off" at spring training. (Hairston declined to identify the player, but Gerald Laird, now a backup catcher with the St. Louis Cardinals, confirmed through a team spokesman that he was Hairston's target.)

Hairston arranged for two friends with the Surprise, Ariz., police department to show up in the clubhouse—with manager Ron Washington's blessing—and issue a warrant for Laird's arrest on charges of unpaid child support. It was a total fabrication, of course. No matter. Laird practically went into a catatonic state when the cops handcuffed him at his locker and led him outside. It was essentially a perp walk in front of his teammates.

"He was newly married at the time, and he's saying, 'What am I going to tell my wife?'" Hairston said. "Oh, man—he was in tears in the back of the squad car. I'm telling him, 'Listen, I've got buddies in L.A. who are lawyers. Give them a call; they'll help you out.' And he's thanking me, thinking I'm a good guy for giving him these numbers."

Hairston finally caved and delivered the truth, along with a lesson: Don't tick off the wrong people. "He was a good soldier after that," Hairston said.

Brought Ballgames to Life on Radio

2011-08-09T21:22:00.000-07:00

Nat Allbright, announcer who relied on imagination

to re-create ballgames, dies at 87

by Matt Schudel

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Washington Post

The Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s were one of the greatest teams in baseball history, with Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella and other stars. They had two storied broadcasters, Red Barber and Vin Scully, covering their games, but most people who listened to the Dodgers on the radio heard another voice.

For hundreds of thousands of fans throughout the eastern half of the country, listening on more than 100 radio stations, the voice of the Dodgers was Nat Allbright. He announced more than 1,500 games for the Dodgers, and all that time, he never saw a game he was broadcasting.

Mr. Allbright, who died July 18 of pneumonia at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington County, was one of baseball's finest practitioners — and perhaps its last — of the forgotten art of game re-creation. He was 87.

During the 12 years that he broadcast Dodger games, he visited Brooklyn only once. Listeners to the far-flung Dodger radio network thought Mr. Allbright was sitting in the press box at Ebbets Field and other big league stadiums, but he was actually at a studio in Washington.

He received sketchy summaries of the game — whether a pitch was a ball or strike, where a batted ball landed — from telegrams or wire service reports. But everything else that brought baseball to life — from crowd noises to vendors hawking their wares to the crack of the bat — was improvised by Mr. Allbright.

He had recordings of crowds in various states of excitement and used a click of his tongue to mimic the sound of the bat striking a ball. Each time a player tugged at his cap or a manager shouted at an umpire, the drama was supplied by Mr. Allbright.

He was, in the words of former Washington Post sports columnist Bob Addie, "king of the baseball re-creators."

The practice of re-creating baseball games dated to the earliest days of radio. Before he went into acting and politics, Ronald Reagan re-created Chicago Cubs games for a station in Des Moines.

Mr. Allbright had broadcast minor league games in Columbus, Ga. — often through re-creation — in the late 1940s. When the Dodgers hired him in 1950, he was working for WEAM in Arlington County.

It was too expensive in those years for the live play-by-play broadcast to be carried on many stations. Mr. Allbright, simulating the action in a studio, became the ideal solution.

By 1953, Mr. Allbright's broadcasts were carried on 117 radio outlets from Cleveland to Miami Beach, according to "Voices of the Game," Curt Smith's authoritative history of baseball announcers. In the Washington area, Mr. Allbright was heard on WEAM, WINX and WOOK, often drawing larger audiences than the games of the hometown Senators.

Mr. Allbright spent a month each year at the Dodgers' spring training camp in Vero Beach, Fla., where he interviewed players and learned their mannerisms on the field, from Robinson's daring base running to Gil Hodges's bulging biceps and Clem Labine's sweeping curveball.

Mr. Allbright had a photograph of each National League stadium on his studio wall and recordings of the national anthem to correspond with the practices in each city. For color, he'd lean away from the microphone and shout, "Getcher cold beer here, cold beer!"

The games were so realistic that few people realized they were inventions.

"I'll say this – it was more fun than being there," Mr. Allbright said in "Voices of the Game." "You could make baseball more entertaining, you could build up, not just report, the excitement."

In 1955, when the Brooklyn Dodgers won the World Series for the first and only time, Mr. Allbright received a team ring. He continued his re-created broadcasts after the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, but things weren't quite the same.

Many of Brooklyn's favorite players – later immortalized by author Roger Kahn as "The Boys of Summer" – had retired or were no longer with the team. Games on the West Coast didn't start until 11 p.m., and by 1962 Mr. Allbright's radio audience had withered away.

Nathan Matthew Allbright was born Nov. 26, 1923, in Dallas, and he moved with his family to the southwest Virginia town of Ridgeway when he was 5. As a boy, he recalled in 1985, "I'd rip the lineups out of the Roanoke Times every morning and walk down the street doing the games to myself. By the time I was 12, I was doing nine innings a day."

He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II, attended a broadcasting school in Washington and did all kinds of radio work in addition to his re-creation of ballgames. He was a disc jockey ("Nat the Cat") and the host of a teen dance show. He covered live sports — football, baseball, basketball and horse racing – and had sports highlight shows on various local stations.

He and his wife operated an advertising company for many years, and Mr. Allbright also worked as a car salesman.

Survivors include his wife of 58 years, the former Angela Lombardi, of Arlington; and two children, Amy Allbright of Arlington and Dr. Robert Allbright of Jackson, Miss.

In the 1980s, Mr. Allbright started a business, Fantasy Personalized Sports Tapes, in which he recorded realistic-sounding sporting events, with the names of ordinary folks – and not a few celebrities – interpolated into the action.

"People can say they played in the same outfield as Mickey Mantle, or won a game on a hit off of Bob Gibson, or Jim Palmer," he told The Post in 1983. "Or they can get in the ring with Muhammad Ali. I had one guy wanted to get knocked out by Sugar Ray Leonard."

In 1982, when the NFL players went on strike, Mr. Allbright re-created eight imaginary Redskins games on WEAM and had the team on the way to the Super Bowl before the strike ended and the real season began.

A year earlier, when major league baseball players went on strike, Mr. Allbright put his old skills back to use when he re-created an imaginary All Star Game.

"Nat Allbright's voice had listeners sensing a breezy, summer Ohio night perfect for baseball, hearing the low roar of a crowd of 75,000 and even the crack of the bat in old Cleveland Stadium," a Post editorial noted.

For one glorious night, "in the fantasy created by Mr. Allbright, [the] texture of the great game was alive again."

Rays 3B Evan Longoria's spectacular, barehanded catch has become a must-see on YouTube

2011-07-29T13:22:00.000-07:00

Did Tampa Bay Rays third baseman

Evan Longoria really make this catch?

From Politifact.com, May 24, 2011

The video, if you haven't seen it, is amazing.

Tampa Bay Rays third baseman Evan Longoria is talking to a television reporter along the first-base line. Their backs are facing the baseball diamond, and the two are standing about 125 feet from home plate -- where a fellow Ray is taking batting practice.

The teammate sprays a line drive directly at them. Instinctively, Longoria wheels around his head and torso, extends his right arm and catches the ball barehanded.

The television reporter gasps, Longoria shakes off the pain in his hand and tosses the ball back toward the pitcher's mound. "Keep it on the field," he says, nonchalantly.

The :24-second clip was first posted on YouTube May 6, 2011 by MrSprts12 and has since been viewed more than 3.8 million times.

The biggest question: Is the video real? Or is it fake?

PolitiFact Florida decided to take a break from politics to put the now viral video -- and the Rays superstar third baseman -- to the Truth-O-Meter.

At first glance, the catch seems improbable. And to baseball fans, maybe even impossible. But baseball players have made amazing barehanded grabs before. In 1989, then San Francisco Giants outfielder Kevin Mitchell snared a fly ball off the bat of St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith with his bare right hand. And in 2005, New York Mets third baseman David Wright dove over his shoulder to catch a pop fly barehanded. Mitchell and Wright were in the middle of games, we should note, and saw the ball coming. Longoria had almost no time to react.

We know several details about the video's origins, as explained by Longoria himself to the St. Petersburg Times' Marc Topkin and the Tampa Tribune's Roger Mooney.

Longoria said the clip was filmed near the end of spring training, after Longoria spent nearly six hours filming a commercial for Gillette. Longoria said the video was shot at McKechnie Field in Bradenton, the spring home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. He claims it's authentic.

The video -- "It's still real, by the way," he said -- was shot with a handheld camera in one take in about five minutes, after the Gillette commercial wrapped.

"Unbelievable, huh?" Longoria, a spokesman for Gillette who has filmed other ads, said. "It's funny when you talk about things going viral; it really does once it gets on things like Twitter and YouTube. It goes from a small snowball to an avalanche quickly."

Let's go back to the tape.

Because there are several things that don't add up.

In the video there are four Gillette logos visible -- two behind home plate and two on a roof facade over the third-base bleachers. But those logos aren't part of McKechnie Field in real life, Trevor Gooby, the Pirates' director of Florida operations, told a reporter for Patch.com. The logos were added digitally and included in the final video that was posted on YouTube.

Next, there is the user who posted the video, MrSprts12. The user created his YouTube account May 4 and has only uploaded the Longoria video. The user lists his company as Gillette.

Then there's the reporter and the video graphic identifying Longoria. There is no television station symbols or letters on the video, and the reporter is holding a microphone without a "flag" that identifies the station where the reporter works. Perhaps even stranger, we could not find the video posted on any news site. (Surely, a TV station would love to claim the video as theirs.)

A strong circumstantial case that the video is doctored.

But we wanted to keep looking. We asked Topkin -- who has covered baseball for the Times since 1987 -- what he thought of the video. From Detroit, where the Rays were playing the Detroit Tigers, Topkin said he believes it to be a well-crafted fake.

Topkin noted several things that aren't typical during a batting practice session. There is no cage surrounding the batter to catch foul balls or stop pitches that aren't hit. There's also no screen protecting the batting practice pitcher. There are no coaches in the video hitting ground balls and no other fielders on the baseball diamond to track down any hits.

And there's more. The batter, after hitting a ball right at Longoria and the reporter, isn't heard yelling for them to get out of the way. And though Longoria makes a miraculous catch, the batter returns immediately to his batting stance like nothing even happened.

The cameraman doesn't warn the reporter or Longoria either.

And there's the frame-by-frame analysis of the video. If you watch closely enough, the ball is falling toward the ground as it approaches Longoria and the reporter. But in the last frame -- right before Longoria catches the ball -- it appears to move upward again.

"Simply put, once the ball has started into a downward trajectory, it cannot then again head upwards without an external force," wrote YouTube user meltingsmoke, one of several thousand people to comment or question on the video's authenticity. "That clearly happens just before the ball is 'caught.' (It's) not the same ball and (its) trajectory is all wrong."

The Times has been asking readers online if they thought the catch was real or fake. The vast majority, though not all, say it's a hoax.

With the evidence overwhelmingly suggesting the video is a fake, we asked Gillette spokesman Michael Norton if the company would put the mystery to rest. "The video was filmed while on location for a Gillette Fusion ProGlide commercial," Norton told us. "We'll leave the 'is it real?' debate up to the viewers."

At PolitiFact, we're ready to make the judgment call for you. From computer-added Gillette signage, to the reaction of the cameraman and the batter, from the way major league teams conduct batting practice, to the video evidence, this viral YouTube video is a clever piece of advertising. And fiction. Longoria is a good sport -- and spokesman for Gillette -- for saying the catch is real. But we're not buying it. We say Pants on Fire!

Chicken and gags situation at this baseball induction ceremony

2011-07-22T00:30:00.000-07:00

An irreverent nonprofit group that celebrates the game holds its annual awards, honoring the likes of the San Diego mascot and Dodgers great Maury Wills among others.

Chris Erskine, Los Angeles Times

July 20, 2011

I was listening to the San Diego Chicken give a speech the other day, and he raised some excellent points about sports and the state of the nation, such that it is.

The chicken sounded good, especially considering that he had just flown in that morning. Describing himself as the "Minnie Minoso of mascots," he talked about his five decades in the game, and how he thought baseball has the greatest sense of humor of any sport.

"Baseball is the only sport where you can still hear the squeal of children in the stands," he went on to say, drawing more knowing nods.

After all these years, I still get a charge when I first spot the San Diego Chicken — that same visceral reaction you get when you see a very pregnant woman walking down the sidewalk — her innie now an outtie. You poke whoever's next to you — "Hey, look!" — as if you're about to witness a miracle, pay attention.

I don't know that this overstuffed bird quite qualifies as a miracle, but he is a blessing, a gift and — when turned slowly over a spit — one of the tastiest summer meals you could ever hope for.

Sorry, I can be serious for only so long, one of the life tricks you learn from guys like Ted Giannoulas and Bob Uecker, Nuke LaLoosh and Tommy Lasorda.

In sort of a Lasorda moment, halfway through Giannoulas' speech I start hallucinating about chicken wings, which happens to me at almost every speech, not just those given by poultry. Food fantasies are my go-to place, my mental B-roll. It would be the same fantasy if Nelson Mandela were speaking, or Michelle Bachmann. Maybe even more so.

Suddenly, the chicken is gone and there's another speaker.

"Essentially, the United States is the greatest poem," says writer Jean Hastings Ardell, quoting Walt Whitman as she expands on the rich language of sports.

Baseball is also a poem, of course. But, mercifully, it's also full of laughs and one-liners.

They honored all this Sunday — the poetry and the punch lines — at the Baseball Reliquary's "Induction Day" ceremony. Basically, it's a salute to baseball put together by fans who at one point started ringing cowbells, a tradition we'll get to in a moment.

I don't even know what a reliquary is — sounds like a place priests stash their cigarettes. But if you're starting to get the idea that this organization is for you, let me warn you that its members are almost hopelessly irreverent, literate and sanguine.

I know, right? Who'd expect all that from a bunch of die-hard baseball fans? And who'd expect me to use a word like sanguine?

But that's this group, full of mirth and a love for the game.

They start their meeting with the national anthem, played on a lone electric guitar. After an amp malfunction, filmmaker/guitarist Jon Leonoudakis apologizes and starts over.

"Let's play two," some wise guy woofs.

That done, they break into a rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," which should begin every meeting in America, not just Seussian extravaganzas like this one.

Here's the bio on the under-the-radar Baseball Reliquary: It's a nonprofit group that celebrates the game with exhibitions and programs throughout the year. Almost everything is free and open to the public.

Atmospherically, the Pasadena-based group is what you'd get if you crossed a meeting of hard-core preservationists with the Royal Order of Raccoons. Ralph Kramden should preside.

Their annual Academy Awards is this "Shrine of the Eternals" induction, held last Sunday, drawing 200 mixed-up souls to the Pasadena Central Library.

In addition to the Chicken, they are honoring Dodgers great Maury Wills, one-armed former outfielder Pete Gray (Nelson Gary Jr. accepting) and Paul Dickson, author of many things, including his wonderful baseball dictionary.

In some sort of apparent screwup, they also give me a small award, something called "The Hilda," named for renowned Brooklyn nutcase Hilda Chester.

Chester is probably the most famous Dodgers fan of all time, best known for the racket she raised with frying pans and cowbells at Ebbets Field, but also for allegedly lying in court in defense of her hero, fellow nutcase Leo Durocher, after the manager went on trial for pummeling a fan with brass knuckles.

And you thought baseball was purer back then?

In any (nut)case, the shrine ceremony is a hoot, not just for its appreciation for baseball's funny bone, but for its recognition of people like Wills, who at almost 80 still looks lean and cat-like enough to swipe 100 bases — an ageless cheetah.

The former shortstop brought down the house with his stories of how he spent eight years in the minors and overcame a debilitating fear of the curveball — switch-hitting saved his career.

"This [ceremony] spanned the gamut of the baseball experience, from the humorous and irreverent to the scholarly and sublime," says the group's founder, Terry Cannon, when it is over. "I like to think that the annual ceremony, in some ways, represents the most special and enduring qualities of baseball."

Right. Now where'd you stash that chicken?

Cal's baseball team faced elimination even before the season started

2011-06-30T14:43:00.000-07:00

Golden Bears' program was going to be a victim of budget cuts, but boosters came through with millions and team is in the College World Series for the first time since 1992.

California's Marcus Semien (15) is greeted by teammate Chadd Krist… (George Nikitin / Associated Press)

June 17, 2011
By David Wharton, L.A. Times

Reporting from Berkeley

On that bleak day in September, the day when university officials handed the California baseball team a death sentence, it just so happened the players were scheduled to practice.

They arrived at the ballpark to learn their storied program — more than a century old — had fallen victim to state budget cuts and would be disbanded at season's end.

"I was really angry," sophomore pitcher Justin Jones said. "I was upset, disappointed in the university and kind of ashamed, all at the same time."

Coach David Esquer told his guys that he would help them transfer to other schools. He made it clear they could take the day off to deal with the news.

To his surprise, they laced up their cleats, put on their mitts and began tossing the ball around. Pretty soon, these young men — many of them still teenagers, their futures abruptly scattered to the breeze — were joking and laughing.

"Once we got on the field, we put everything else aside," Jones said. "That was one of the best practices we've ever had."

Esquer recalled glancing at his assistants and saying: "We have a special team here."

A team that could turn calamity into a Cinderella story.

'Roller coaster ride'

Eight teams begin play in the 2011 College World Series this weekend and the Golden Bears will be among them. Their quest for an improbable national championship begins with a game against top-seeded Virginia on Sunday.

So much has changed in the last nine months.

Not only has Cal returned to Omaha for the first time in nearly two decades, it has won an even bigger victory, earning reinstatement with help from rabid supporters who raised millions of dollars.

"Unbelievable," said Austin Booker, a senior outfielder. "It's been a huge roller coaster ride."

As soon as the university announced its athletic department cuts last September, the alumni sprang into action. They understood the administration would not accept a short-term fix — their campaign needed to raise $25 million, enough to support baseball and four other endangered sports for the next seven to 10 years.

"I don't know if it was naivete or passion, or both, but I knew we were going to succeed," said Doug Nickle, a former pitcher who helped lead the effort. "It didn't matter what the numbers were."

In those early days, only three players decided to transfer immediately. As star infielder Tony Renda put it: "It weeded out the people who did not want to be here."

The remaining players contacted teams throughout the country — Renda and Jones committed to Oregon — but vowed to remain with Cal for what looked to be its final season.

That left the Golden Bears with a veteran roster and strong pitching, enough talent to rank in the preseason top 25. The ballpark became a sanctuary, Renda said, "a place where you can forget about things, a place to be yourself and have fun and play a game."

Not that everything went perfectly.

Cal suffered early losses to opponents such as Oklahoma and Connecticut and hit losing streaks during the Pacific 10 Conference schedule, getting swept by Arizona State and Stanford.

Still, Esquer marveled at a team that could ignore the ax hanging over its head. The same could be said for his staff.

Facing imminent unemployment, the coaches vowed to put the players' welfare first. Assistant Dan Hubbs took a wish list of schools from each athlete and began making calls, telling coaches, "I've got someone you should look at." Esquer dealt with upperclassmen who faced a trickier decision — they could transfer for one or two seasons of baseball elsewhere or quit the game to finish their studies at Cal.

"People ask me what it was like," the coach said. "If you can imagine running your program, saving your program and dismantling your program, all at the same time, it was all day, every day."

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, Esquer adds, this effort wasn't entirely noble. If he and his staff could hold the program together for six more months, it might look good on their resumes.

Away from campus, the team's supporters worked just as hard. A relatively small number of big donors — including alum and former Dodgers star Jeff Kent — contributed millions of dollars, but there were hundreds of others giving $5 or $10. Even Stanford alumni, those enemies from across the bay, sent money.

"Think about it," Nickle said. "There's no more rivalry if there's no more Cal."

Wherever the Golden Bears played, opposing fans leaned over the railing to wish them well. After a three-game series at Oregon State, a couple with season tickets near the visiting dugout handed Esquer a check.

"I like what you're doing," the man said. "Good luck."

By February, the campaign had secured more than $12 million in pledges. Then came a setback — university officials decided to reinstate rugby, women's lacrosse and women's gymnastics, but not baseball.

"We were shocked, to say the least," Nickle recalled.

A number of baseball supporters threatened to withdraw their pledges. The fundraisers had to push their anger aside and get back to work.

Finally, on April 8, university Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau announced that the total raised specifically for baseball had reached $9 million, saving the program. The players got the news in a Tucson hotel before a game against Arizona.

"I didn't believe it at first," Jones said. "This sense of joy overwhelmed me."

Just reward

How do you save a baseball team?

Take equal parts optimism and grit, add the kindness of strangers. And maybe one more thing, an unexpected ingredient that pretty much every Cal player mentions.

Fun.

"You can see on the field that we play looser because we're closer to each other," Booker said. "We have a great time out there."

This attitude translated into a 37-21 record and a dugout where teammates whooped, hollered, and cheered with a sheer volume that occasionally annoyed opponents. Catcher Chadd Krist said: "That's why we have so much success. We have so much energy."

The postseason began with a loss to Baylor in the Houston regional, but Cal bulled its way through the loser's bracket to earn a rematch and won the deciding game with four runs in the bottom of the ninth.

Next came a best-of-three super regional in nearby Santa Clara against upstart Dallas Baptist. Esquer admits that he did not sleep much that weekend, wanting so badly to win as a way of repaying all the donors in the stands. The Golden Bears swept two games to advance.

Now, on the eve of the College World Series opener, it is too early to put this wild ride into perspective, Jones saying: "I don't know if it went by really fast or really long … it's been weird."

But Renda figures if there is any justice in the world, the good feelings won't end yet. He wants a few more victories in Omaha.

"We all deserve it," he said, "for everything we've been through."

Shawn Green Says He'd Play for Israel

2011-06-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

Ken Belson, New York Times

June 8, 2011

When Major League Baseball announced last week that Israel would be included in the next World Baseball Classic, it triggered speculation about which current professional players might join the team.

Many of the best Jewish players in the United States, including Ryan Braun and Kevin Youkilis, could play for Israel. Under the rules, a player can join a team if he is a citizen of a country, can qualify for citizenship, holds a passport of that country, or has a parent that is or was a citizen of that nation.

But retired Jewish players in theory could join, too. Shawn Green, 38, who played outfield and first base for the Blue Jays, Dodgers, Diamondbacks and Mets, said he would be willing to come out of retirement to play for Israel.

"It would be an honor," Green said in a phone interview from New York, where he is promoting his new book, "The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 MPH." "If it fit into my life situation, I'd love to do it."

Green said he has kept in shape since retiring in 2007, but has not been playing much baseball. But if he got his stroke back, he could provide a punch. He hit 328 home runs and batted .283 in his 15-year career.

Despite Green's Jewish roots, his book describes how he relied on Eastern philosophies in the big leagues. He was influenced by "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," and he meditated to help block out distracting thoughts. Hitting off the tee to practice, he said, was also a form of mediation.

"I followed the idea of being in the present moment," Green said. "It's more common than not for players to find some routine to enable them to get their thoughts."

Israel to Participate in 2013 World Baseball Classic

2011-06-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

By Ken Belson,
New York Times

June 1, 2011

Too bad Sandy Koufax is not pitching anymore.

Major League Baseball said Wednesday that a team from Israel would participate in the World Baseball Classic in 2013. The event will be expanded to 28 teams from 16. In a new format, 16 teams, including those from Brazil, Britain, Israel and Thailand, will play in a double-elimination qualifying round in late 2012.

The top four teams will then join 12 other countries, from Australia to Venezuela, in the final round.

Israel's entry in the tournament raises some interesting possibilities. According to the rules, a player is eligible to join a team if a player is a citizen of the nation, qualified for citizenship or can hold a passport of that country. A player who has one parent who is, or was, a citizen of that nation, can also join that team.

Under these rules, several players in Major League Baseball could qualify to play on the Israeli team. Imagine this team:

The infield might include Ike Davis, whose mother is Jewish, at first base; Ian Kinsler of the Rangers at second base; and Kevin Youkilis of the Red Sox at third base. Ryan Braun, the slugger for the Brewers, could bat clean up and play left field. Pitchers Scott Feldman of the Texas Rangers and Jason Marquis of the Washington Nationals could start; John Grabow of the Chicago Cubs could pitch in relief.

The Israeli team could use a few major leaguers. According to the Israel Association of Baseball, more than 1,000 children and adults play baseball in Israel. The six-team Israel Baseball League started in 2007.

The former major leaguers Art Shamsky, Ken Holtzman and Ron Blomberg have managed, and Dan Duquette, a former general manager of the Red Sox and the Expos, was the league's director of player development.

Players Begin Long Journey to Majors with Draft

2011-06-13T13:17:00.000-07:00

Corey Dickerson of the Casper (Wyo.) Ghosts steals second against Ogden (Utah)
Raptors shortstop Jake Lemmerman. Leagues like theirs are often the first stop
for recently drafted players. (Kerry Huller / Associated Press)

Baseball's apprenticeship often takes years, so don't expect to see even the first-round picks from this year's Major League Baseball draft in the big leagues anytime soon.

By Kevin Baxter
L.A. Times, June 4, 2011

Jake Lemmerman remembers the day he was taken in the Major League Baseball draft like it was yesterday — in fact, it's been nearly a year.

"It's kind of surreal, basically. This is what I always wanted, with the team I always wanted to play for," says the Dodgers minor leaguer who was taken in the fifth round last June.

Teammate Blake Smith, a second-round selection in 2009, won't soon forget his selection, either.

"I think about it all the time," he says. "It definitely changed my life."

Stories like that bring a smile to Logan White, the Dodgers' assistant general manager for scouting and the man who selected Lemmerman and Smith — as well as every other Dodgers draft pick over the last nine years.

"Actually, that's part of why I do this job," he says. "I love watching players get drafted and helping them and making their dreams come true."

White's own dream also started in the draft, 27 years ago when a scout named Jeff Malinoff — now with the Angels — persuaded the Seattle Mariners to take a chance on a scatter-armed right-hander from western New Mexico.

"I remember what it meant for me," says White, a 23rd-round pick who went 5-12 in three seasons in the low minors. "And I remember the guy that signed me. And if he didn't draft me and I didn't get signed, would I be where I'm at today in baseball?

"Probably not."

A lot of journeys will get started Monday, the first day of baseball's annual amateur draft. White won't tip his team's hand, but the Dodgers, picking 16th in the first round, are once again interested in pitching. Oregon left-hander Tyler Anderson and South Carolina high schooler Taylor Guerrieri are said to top their list.

Expect the team to put a premium on a prospect's willingness to sign. With the Dodgers struggling to make payroll at the major league level, the team might not be able to offer much more than the below-slot bonus of $1.06 million that last year's 16th pick, pitcher Hayden Simpson, got from the Chicago Cubs. ("Slot" is the suggested bonus MLB assigns to each pick.)

The Angels pick 17th in the first round, but then don't select again until Round 3 — 87 picks later. They are also interested in high school pitchers, though in their first draft under new scouting director Ric Wilson they might also go for high school position players such as Florida infielder Francisco Lindor or power-hitting Texas outfielder Josh Bell.

Whoever the Dodgers and Angels select, don't expect to see them in the major leagues any time soon. While top picks in the NFL and NBA drafts are often starting for their teams the next season, there is typically an extended apprenticeship in baseball.

Of the 50 players the Angels and Dodgers have drafted in the first five rounds since 2007, just one — Angels right-hander Tyler Chatwood — is in the major leagues.

"I don't like to call it an exact science. I like to call it an art," White says. "There's a long list of guys that don't make it. My role is to be realistic, preach patience and know I'm not right 100% of the time."

Three years ago, White took high school pitcher Ethan Martin with his first pick, giving him a $1.73 million bonus. Martin missed his first pro season with a knee injury and has gone 19-25 with a 5.57 earned-run average in Class A in the 21/2 seasons since.

For Martin, being a first-round pick guaranteed nothing beyond that big, one-time bonus.

"Yeah, you're a first-round pick but … you can't expect to be treated any differently," Martin says. "I'm just another person, just another player trying to get to the big leagues, trying to fulfill their dream."

There's that word again. Dream. It's what keeps Martin and others pushing through the tedium and frustration of minor league baseball. And it's what gets people like White out of bed each morning — especially around draft day.

"More than anything in the world, I like being a part of the dreams of these kids," says White, who gives every draft pick his cellphone number and continues to speak with many of them, even those who were released long ago.

"Helping them along the way and watching them fulfill their dreams, being able to help them in their lives and their career is just awesome."

kevin.baxter@latimes.com

How to Visit 30 Ballparks in 35 Days This Summer

2011-06-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

June 3, 2011

From the Wall Street Journal

Still looking for vacation plans this summer? We may be able to help—all you need is an unhealthy obsession with baseball, a functioning automobile and five weeks to spare.

Ben Blatt of the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective recently built a computer program that devised the best way to visit all 30 baseball stadiums in the shortest possible time. The results are not for the faint of heart—it's a grueling, convoluted journey sending courageous souls on a 35-day road trip covering more than 18,000 miles of American (and briefly Canadian) highway.

To make his conclusions, Blatt used a mathematical method known as linear programming, which takes loads of data and crunches it into an optimal outcome. In this case, Blatt plugged the schedule for each team into his model, while setting one key parameter: For every 12 hours of estimated driving between ballparks, the system must allow for eight hours of rest, ensuring that the road trip is, at least in theory, humanly possible.

But possible doesn't mean desirable. Completing this challenge requires considerable backtracking and crisscrossing (one segment has travelers going from Boston to Washington to New York to Philadelphia in four days). It also calls for a couple brutally long drives, like leaving an afternoon game at Coors Field in Denver and heading straight to Miller Park in Milwaukee for another game the next night. (That one, Blatt admitted, "just barely made it.")

So if you're brave enough to give it a try, the trip starts at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., on Monday night and ends at Busch Stadium in St. Louis on Sunday, July 10. "I wouldn't say it would be a fun road trip." Blatt said, "Well, maybe if you wanted to get into the Guinness book of world records."

by Jared Diamond

The Wall Street Journal

The Perfect Baseball Odyssey

The itinerary for the optimal way to see all 30 baseball stadiums

this season (all times local):

GAME DATE MILES TRAVELED	GAME DATE MILES TRAVELED	GAME DATE MILES TRAVELED
TOR@KC 6/6, 7pm (0)	DET@COL 6/19, 1pm (6,620)	NYM@DET 6/30, 1pm (12,248)
DET@TEX 6/7, 7pm (563)	TB@MIL 6/20, 7pm (7,667)	NYY@NYM 7/1, 7pm (12,863)
STL@ HOU 6/8, 7pm (821)	BAL@PIT 6/21, 7pm (8,219)	CLE@CIN 7/2, 7pm (13,502)
KC@LAA 6/10, 7pm (2,351)	SD@BOS 6/22, 1:30pm (8,808)	CWS@CHC 7/3, 1:20pm (13,798)
WSH@SD 6/11, 5:30pm (2,448)	SEA@WSH 6/23, 1pm (9,257)	TB@MIN 7/4, 1pm (14,206)
CIN@SF 6/12, 5pm (2,950)	COL@NYY 6/24, 7pm (9,483)	PHI@FLA 7/6, 7pm (15,981)
SF@ARI 6/14, 6:40pm (3,705)	OAK@PHI 6/25, 7pm (9,580)	COL@ATL 7/7, 1pm (16,642)
CIN@LAD 6/15, Noon (4,078)	CIN@BAL 6/26, 1:30pm (9,678)	MIN@CWS 7/8, 7pm (17,360)
KC@OAK 6/16, 12:35pm (4,448)	CIN@TB 6/27, 7pm (10,647)	TOR@CLE 7/9, 7pm (17,705)
PHI@SEA 6/17, 7pm (5,250)	PIT@TOR 6/29, 7pm (12,004)	ARI@STL 7/10, 1pm (18,267)

Moneyball - The Movie with Brad Pitt

2011-06-02T23:31:00.000-07:00

Moneyball
The book by Michael Lewis

MOVIE REVIEW
June 2, 2011

Moneyball is a new movie to be released in September starring Brad Pitt, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jonah Hill. It is based on the true story of how a successful baseball team was put together while on a tight budget, by employing computer-generated analysis to select their players.

This Bennett Miller directed movie was previewed tonight for audience feedback. The reviewer felt it was true to the real story as well as entertaining, amusing, and even heartwarming.

THE GOOD:
• The acting seemed realistic, the clubhouse and ballpark scenes worked well.
• Very good, key moments involving specific players, Scott Hatteberg, David Justice, and Jeremy Giambi.
• The script captured Billy’s idiosyncrasies, such as his inability to watch his team play, being too uncomfortable.
• The baseball seemed authentic.
• Touching moment when Billy’s 12 year old daughter sings him a song

THE BAD:
• The movie dragged a bit after telling the story of Oakland’s 20 successive wins in September 2002. (Movie people, this is where you apply the tweak)
• Another viewer with me had trouble following some of the trade talk, too confusing for the non-baseball crowd.
• Too many flashbacks to Billy’s days as a ballplayer. We got the point that he never got over being unsuccessful as a first round draft choice.

THE UGLY:
• Didn’t use enough of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s talent, his part was too shallow and one dimensional.
• Would have liked to see more conflict between Art and Billy.
• A needless moment when Billy goes to pick up his daughter from his ex wife’s home and has to kill a few minutes. Waste of time.

THE STORY:
Billy Beane, the general manager of the A’s played by Brad Pitt, fought his scouts, his players and his manager, to learn a new way to evaluate player talent. Before sabermetrics, players were often evaluated by how good they looked on the field, how great guys they were, or in one case even how ugly a player’s spouse was (a player with low self-esteem).

The A’s could not compete with the big budget teams, they had to learn a new way, and Peter Brand, played by Jonah Hill, showed Billy the statistics that became better predictors to success on the field.

Billy wanted his manager Art Howe, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman to use his players, not the ones Art favored, because Billy's analysis showed it would lead to more wins. When Art refused, Billy traded Art’s favored players forcing him to play Billy’s guys; amusing scene.

It would be fun to re-read the book now, to see how some of those players identified as diamonds in the rough actually fared. Let’s see, there was Kevin Youkilis, the greek god of the walk, Nick Swisher, and Jeremy Brown. Two out of three is pretty good.

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL: Family Cherishes Debut

2011-05-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

NICE WORK: Detroit Tigers pitcher
Charlie Furbush of South Portland [Maine]
pitched3 2⁄3 scoreless innings in his major league
debut Monday against the Tampa Bay Rays.
Furbush earned the win in relief of Phil Coke.
AP photo

BY JENN MENENDEZ

The Portland Press Herald

Appearing in Kennebec Journal

May 25, 2011

His older brother imagined the scene in the bullpen at Comerica Park Monday night: "Hey Furbush, you're in."

Charlie Furbush, wearing No. 49, ran to the mound to make his Major League debut with the Detroit Tigers, setting off a long awaited celebration in South Portland, where the once gangly kid first picked up a baseball.

His outing was the stuff of rookie legend: Furbush, relieving injured starter Phil Coke, earned the win with 32/3 innings of scoreless relief in a 6-3 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays.

II called him (Monday) night. They were spraying champagne all over him in the locker room," said Jon Furbush, Charlie's older brother and head basketball coach at Bates College. "It means a lot. When he was a kid, and I was the older brother, we never used to let him play with us. He wasn't good enough. We kind of picked on him and he was so motivated to get better. He's never been complacent at any level. To see how much he's matured? He's come such a long way."

Furbush came in with runners on the corners, and just one out. He walked his first batter, loading the bases.

Furbush struck out the next two batters to get out of the inning, and went on to give up two hits, in 32/3 scoreless innings of relief.

Jon Furbush, who was returning from a recruiting trip, watched on his cell phone in the car on the Major League Baseball television application he just purchased after his brother was recalled to Detroit from Triple-A Toledo on Saturday morning.

"It was probably the best thing that could've happened to not have 10 minutes to warm up," said Jon Furbush. "The guy went down, they say, 'Hey Furbush, you're in.' He just went in there and did what he does. I thought it was great. It immediately tested his character and maturity."

His dad, Craig Furbush, watched on TV with his youngest son, Will Furbush. Jon Furbush joined them for the end of the game.

"It was quite a moment to sort of live through," said Craig Furbush, a schoolteacher in South Portland. "The injury to Coke didn't look like the sort of thing he'd have to leave the ballgame for. The TV camera flashed to the bullpen and you could see Charlie's head bobbing. When the door opened and he stepped out into centerfield, I turned to Will and said 'Oh no.' I thought it would've been one of the hardest things for Charlie to do. His major league debut in these circumstances? No warm-up. Runners on first and third, one out?"

The first batter Furbush walked on a 3-2 pitch, his family thought was a strikeout.

"Will and I just about fell off the couch when the umpire said it was ball four," said Craig Furbush. "But he struck out the next two guys ... It was a very memorable night. A very memorable debut. That's all we wanted, to see his debut."

Furbush, a 6-foot-5 lefty, was no magnet for Division I college recruiters after his career at South Portland High School.

St. Joseph's College coach Will Sanborn recruited him to play for his Division III program on Sebago Lake in Standish.

There, Furbush developed his slider and change-up to add to his fastball, and pitched a summer in the Cape Cod League where he garnered enough attention to transfer to Louisiana State University for his junior season.

Following his junior year of college, and only year at LSU, Furbush was drafted by the Tigers in the fourth round in 2007.

"Who the heck goes to St. Joe's and thinks they're going to come out and be a major league baseball player?" said Andrew Wood, Furbush's longtime friend, roommate and catcher at St. Joe's. "It was just unbelievable sitting there and seeing your best friend come across the screen. You're trying to feel how he feels, that stuff doesn't get to him."

Wood, who has caught for Furbush since the pair was 8-years-old, spoke to his friend Tuesday afternoon to relive the moment.

"He said he had no time to warm up, ran out on the field," Wood said. "He said he didn't want to hold up the game so he took about seven warm-up pitches and was like 'All right, let's go.' "

Furbush made SportsCenter this morning.

The headline in the Detroit News read: "Rookie Charlie Furbush stellar in relief, Tigers beat Rays."

Kevin Rand, the Tigers' head athletic trainer who is from Cape Elizabeth, said he was inside the clubhouse with Coke when Furbush first took the mound.

The two had talked considerably at spring training, but didn't get to talk Monday night.

"I'm sure his heart was pounding pretty good. After all, it's his major league debut," said Rand, who is in his 19th major league season. "Sometimes that's not a bad way ... he was in the bullpen relaxing and all of a sudden he's getting called into the game because of an injury.

"He did a great job. He got out of a bases-loaded situation, pitched well and did a nice job. I was very pleased for him."

Furbush has spent the last four summers in the Tigers farm system, taking a year off to recover from Tommy John surgery in 2008.

He was originally projected to be recalled when the Tigers were in need of a left-handed starter. He had gone 4-3 with a 2.91 ERA and 55 strikeouts in 461/3 innings for Triple-A Toledo, when he was recalled to replace reliever Brad Thomas on the 15-day disabled list.

Tuesday, his first Tigers box score read: Win-Furbush, 1-0.

The Case Against Roger Maris*

2011-05-25T18:01:00.000-07:00

Associated Press
From left, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle in 1961.

By ALLEN BARRA,

Wall Street Journal

May 25, 2011

Fifty years ago this spring, American sports fans were fixated on two Yankee outfielders, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, as they pursued what seemed to be the most unassailable record in baseball, Babe Ruth's 60 home runs in 1927.

No achievement in sports since then has captured the public's imagination like Mantle's and Maris's assaults on Ruth. Only Henry Aaron's surpassing the Babe's career record of 714 home runs in 1974 approached the frenzy that surrounded Mantle and Maris in 1961. But it was not quite the same thing, since it was merely a matter of time before Hammerin' Hank set the new record. In 1961, there were two questions: "Can they both do it?" and, if not, "Which one is more likely to do it?"

Mantle, a three-time American League home-run champion who had hit 52 home runs in 1956, was regarded as the more likely. Maris was a comparative upstart, having come to the Yankees in a trade with the Kansas City Athletics two years earlier. For 10 years, Yankee fans booed Mantle for not being Joe DiMaggio; in 1961, they booed Roger Maris for not being Mickey Mantle.

Mantle, who finished with 54 home runs, spent the end of the season in the hospital with an abscessed hip; Maris broke the record on the last day of the 162-game season, eight games more than Ruth had in 1927.

Since then, a mountain of myth has grown up around Maris, beginning with the notion that it was "watered down pitching" from expansion that helped him break the record. (In fact, the AL batting average for 1961 was .256, exactly the same as the previous year.) Or that it was Yankee Stadium's "friendly"—that is, short—right field porch that gave Maris an unfair advantage. In fact, he only hit 30 of his 61 home runs that year out of Yankee Stadium.

The biggest myth of all regarding Maris is "The Asterisk." As Maris closed in on Ruth, the Commissioner of Baseball, Ford Frick, who had been a close friend of the late Bambino, suggested that some kind of qualifier would be needed if Maris didn't break the record in 154 games. Dick Young, the controversial columnist for the New York Daily News, argued that an asterisk would be appropriate next to Maris's name in the record book should he surpass Ruth in the last eight games, which is exactly what he did. As every baseball fans knows, Maris got an asterisk in the record books.

Except he didn't. In his 1973 autobiography, "Games, Asterisks, and People," Frick confirmed that "No asterisk has appeared in the official record in connection with that accomplishment." In a bizarre postscript to the asterisk story, in 1991 a committee put together by Commissioner Fay Vincent voted to remove the asterisk, thus solidifying in the minds of many the idea that it had indeed once existed.

Every decade or so since Maris broke the record, his supporters have raised a clamor that he should be voted into the Hall of Fame. The movement gained momentum in 2001 with "61*," Billy Crystal's hugely popular TV movie about the home-run race starring Thomas Jane as Mantle and Barry Pepper as Maris. (The film will be released on Blu-ray in June.)

Maris's name appeared on the ballot for 15 years, but he didn't receive the required votes needed to be inducted. Mr. Crystal's film, though, sparked new interest, and in 2003 Maris's name resurfaced on the Veteran's Committee ballet. Since then, Maris, who died in 1985 of Hodgkin's lymphoma, has failed to be elected by the Veteran's Committee.

According to Phil Pepe, author of the new book "1961*: The Inside Story of the Maris-Mantle Home Run Chase," it's likely "that Maris' chances of being elected to the Hall of Fame have come and gone." And yet, as Maris's achievement hits the half-century mark, the chorus has begun again.

Recently on BleacherReport.com, veteran sportswriter Robert Lipsyte expressed anger over "the press box hacks who vote on the Hall of Fame [and] have never handed him the golden ticket in." Bob Costas, a longtime supporter, feels that "while his overall career stats are short of the general standard, he was a two-time MVP, played on seven pennant winners, and is a much more significant part of the game's history than dozens of Hall of Famers."

Mr. Pepe, a past president of the Baseball Writers Association of America, says that, "I've never voted for Roger for the Hall of Fame. What he did in 1961 was spectacular, but his overall career was not great. Still, the only players to surpass his record"—meaning Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa—"have well-known connections to steroids, so Maris's achievement looks better every year."

He's right, but the argument against Maris is also persuasive. He hit just 275 career home runs over 12 seasons, only two of which were remarkable—1960, when he hit 39 home runs, and 1961. It's true that Maris was awarded the MVPs for those years, but former Atlanta Braves outfielder Dale Murphy, who hit 398 home runs and also won two MVP awards over the span of an 18-year career, isn't in the Hall of Fame either.

It's also true that baseball analysts believe that Mantle, not Maris, should have been the American League's MVP in both 1960 and 1961.

But give Mr. Costas the last word: "I understand the argument against putting Roger into the Hall of Fame. But I think there are rare special cases, and Roger Maris is at the top of the list."

Mr. Barra writes about sports for the Wall Street Journal.

Who is that Silhouetted Man?

2011-05-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

By Paul Lukas, ESPN Page 2
November 21, 2008

You'd think something that happened only 40 years ago wouldn't be too difficult to document and verify, especially in the world of Major League Baseball, which tracks statistics back to the 1800s. But that appears to be the situation regarding baseball's silhouetted batter logo, whose background continues to confound.

A quick recap: Two weeks ago I ran a column about Jerry Dior, who appears to be the man who designed the logo in 1968 (MLB officials have declined to confirm this, but all signs point to Dior). In an interview that appeared in that column, Dior debunked the persistent myth that the logo was based on a photo of Harmon Killebrew -- a claim I've seen repeated everywhere from message boards to MLB game broadcasts. "It's not any specific person," Dior said. "I did a couple of variations based on [magazine] photographs I had. It was sort of composite of what I had in front of me."

After that column ran, several readers sent me notes insisting the logo was based on Killebrew. None of them provided any supporting evidence, so I didn't pay them much mind. But then I got a communiqué from baseball historian Maxwell Kates, who checked in with the following:

"I spoke to Harmon Killebrew at an old-timers' dinner in Toronto a few years ago. I asked him about the logo controversy and he claimed that he was indeed the inspiration for the logo. He signed a 1963 Twins yearbook for me, and his image on the cover bears an uncanny resemblance to the MLB logo."

Hmmmm. The yearbook in question is this one. That's Killebrew on the cover, and sure enough, if you reverse the image, you get something that looks a lot like the logo.

The problem is that the yearbook image is hardly unique in this regard. Take this photo of Joe Torre, for example -- reverse it and bingo, there's the source for your logo, arguably even a closer match than the Killebrew image.

And once you start looking, it turns out the logo could be based on almost any hitter with a fairly traditional batting stance, including Tony Gonzalez, Ron Blomberg, Tony Conigliaro, Rusty Staub, Johnny Bench, Dick Allen, Reggie Smith, Hank Aaron, Rick Monday, Orlando Cepeda, Jose Cruz, Reggie Jackson, Rich Rollins, Von Joshua, and countless more. Yes, many of those photos should be disqualified because they were taken after 1968, but that just reinforces the point that the logo could be based on any player from any era.

So how did the Killebrew connection become such an enduring part of the logo's lore? I tracked down Killebrew, who now runs a charitable foundation in Arizona, and asked him that myself. Here's what he told me:

"I was in the commissioner's office one day in the late 1960s. I can't remember the specifics, but I think it had something to do with a litho they were doing for the National Kidney Foundation. Anyway, I walked through the back part of the office, and there was a man sitting at a table. He had a photograph of me in a hitting position, and he had one of those grease pencils that you see at a newspaper, and he was marking that thing up. I said, 'What are you doing with that?' and he said they were going to make a new Major League Baseball logo. I never thought any more about it. And then the logo came out and it did look like me. The only change was the angle of the bat -- they changed that to kind of make it fit more into the design."

Killebrew (who stresses that he's never requested or expected any monetary compensation regarding the logo) didn't get the name of the guy marking up his photo, and he never asked for or received any confirmation that the logo was based on him. The closest he came was in a conversation with former commish Bowie Kuhn shortly before Kuhn's death in 2007. Kuhn wasn't yet commissioner in 1968 (his term started in February 1969, after the logo had already been created), but he was working in the commissioner's office at the time and was actually on the selection committee that chose Dior's design.

"Bowie and I were always close," says Killebrew. "So just before he died, I asked him about that time I was up in the commissioner's office, because I'd like it to be on the record for my children and for posterity. But he was fading pretty badly, and he said, 'As much as I like you, Harmon, your recollections are a lot better than mine right now. I'd like to confirm that for you, but I can't remember.'"

So who was the guy with the grease pencil -- could it have been Jerry Dior?

Nope. "I've never been in the commissioner's office," he says. "I wish I had -- that would be nice. But all the work I did on the logo was at the offices of Sandgren & Murtha [the marketing company where Dior worked at the time]." And is it possible that one of the photos he used to create the silhouetted batter could have been a shot of Killebrew? "It could have been, but it would have been bastardized, because there were several photographs that I kept altering. I wish I could say to Harmon that it's him, but I can't."

Dior and Killebrew have now spoken. Each man agrees that the other sounds like a gracious, honorable person who's telling the truth. Each one is also sticking to his story: Dior knows how he designed the logo, and Killebrew knows what he saw that day in the commissioner's office. Of course, these two positions aren't mutually exclusive -- the guy marking up the Killebrew photo could simply have been working on a logo project that never came to fruition, and the logo looks as much like Killebrew as it looks like any other player, so he simply put two and two together and assumed the logo was created by the guy he'd seen marking up his photo.

But wait, it gets better: In a bizarre coincidence, it turns out there is a logo that's definitely based on Killebrew -- this one. It's the logo of the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association, which was founded in 1982 by a group of former Washington- and Baltimore-area players, including Jim Hannan, who's now the group's chairman.

"Back when we were getting started, Major League Baseball tried to help us with creating a logo," Hannan recalls. "But we didn't really like what they came up with, so we asked a local graphic artist named James Walczy to work on it. He came back with the sequence of the three silhouettes showing the progression of a swing and said they were based on photos of Harmon. That was perfect for us, because Harmon was very involved in the Alumni Association at the time. So I said to Harmon, 'By the way, we've got our logo, and it's you.' He said that was great, and he mentioned that he was also the source of the Major League Baseball logo."

The Alumni Association logo certainly matches up with photos of Killebrew's swing. But again, couldn't we swap in photos of many other players and come up with similar results? James Walczy, the designer who created the Alumni logo, thinks so. "We were looking through several baseball books that we could use for visual reference, and one of them had the sequence showing Harmon's swing, which is what we ended up using," he confirms. "But really, it could have been anybody. In fact, we actually trimmed down his silhouette, because Harmon was a little stocky. If you look at the logo, it's more of a Hank Aaron-type body than a Harmon Killebrew body."

And did anyone tell him Killebrew might also be the basis of the MLB logo? "I guess someone may have mentioned that to me," says Walczy, who runs a Maryland-based ad agency these days. "But you're talking about silhouettes here -- there's no definition of facial features or anything, and the MLB design just shows the batter from the chest up, so I'd think it could be anyone. Even my design for the Alumni Association, I bet you could put that in front of 100 baseball fans and nobody would know it was Harmon Killebrew. And it wasn't supposed to look like him -- it was supposed to represent any player and all players."

So the notion of Harmon Killebrew being the inspiration for the MLB logo appears to have originated with Killebrew himself, who sincerely believes his photo was the basis of the design. He's repeated this claim over the years to numerous parties, including Jim Hannan and Maxwell Kates (although he's never gone on the record with a reporter until now), and those people have in turn passed it on other people. Along the way the story has become part of the logo's lore, its unofficial oral history, even though Jerry Dior says it isn't true.

And what does Killebrew say now that he's spoken to the logo's designer? "I don't know. All I know is what I saw. I don't want to say I don't believe Jerry, but it was a long time ago -- maybe his memory isn't good either."

As for Dior, he's philosophical about the whole thing. "The Harmon Killebrew myth has been around a long time now, so I think it will live on," he says. "And I don't mind. Actually, I think it's kind of nice."

(Special thanks to Steve Dewing's incredible collection of 1960s and '70s baseball photos, which was the source of the images for the photo/logo comparisons.)

Remembering Killer Killebrew: A Fan’s View

2011-05-21T08:10:00.000-07:00

By Glenn Vallach, Yahoo! Contributor Network
May 17, 2011
This article was produced by a Yahoo! Sports user.

Everyone has romantic reminiscences of their childhoods, and if you were a baseball fan growing up in the 1960s, you had your choice of icons and legends to follow.

Principally, my hero was Mickey Mantle, which I understand is a fairly crowded bandwagon. He was everything all kids who loved baseball wanted to be—powerful like Hercules, fast like a rocket, as graceful as a dancer in the field until injuries lopped off some brilliance in his later years. I, and many, many others from that era, learned how to switch hit because Mick was a switch hitter.

As a studious observer of baseball, even at that early age, I became a fairly sophisticated connoisseur of every facet of the game and all the teams that engaged in them. And, for a reason I cannot trace, one of those teams and one of those players was the Minnesota Twins and Harmon Killebrew. I followed his exploits in the newspaper daily. In an age when these stars were on display infrequently on television, I watched for Killebrew fervently.

I can recall many a summertime wiffle ball game at my family's lake house in which the pretend participants were the Detroit Tigers and those Twins. As such, I learned, and can easily repeat today, the batting stances and styles of Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, Bob Allison (another personal favorite), Zoilo Versailles, and Rod Carew from the Twins and Norm Cash, Al Kaline, Bill Freehan and many others on the Tigers.

Perhaps the attraction emerged because of Killebrew's sheer power. I remember considering him a kind of clone of Mickey Mantle, maybe a Mickey-lite even though Killebrew actually hit more career home runs than Mantle. I guess it's one of the elusive vagaries of life, such a curiosity about a ballplayer more than half way across the country.

Now he's gone, along with so many others from era. Each time, a little of me dies with them.

I have been a New York Mets fan since foolishly abandoning the might Yankees in my youth after Mickey Mantle retired. Since the fond, fleeting memories of the Tom Seaver, Cleon Jones, Tommie Agee years, I sit quietly yearning for a fraction of the success enjoyed annually by the team that inhabits the borough in which I was born—waiting and hoping—waiting and hoping.

Killebrew Announcement Elicits Memories of '68

2011-05-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

The Number 3 jersey of former Minnesota Twins Hall

of Fame baseball player Harmon Killebrew hangs in the

Twins' dugout Friday. (Photo by Jim Moore/AP)

By Paul Kennedy
May 14, 2011
Fox Sports Florida

Harmon Killebrew announced his Long Goodbye yesterday, a stout slugger and baseball hero to a generation, now taken down by esophageal cancer. The fight nearly done, bidding my boyhood farewell from hospice.

The year was 1968, one unlike any other Washington, D.C., or this teenager at the time, had ever seen. Marshall Law had been declared in our capital that April morning, mere days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the spilling anger of the streets.

The response was troop carriers, choppers overhead, and armed soldiers on foot patrol. It looked like Viet Nam and Tet, mere months earlier.

My Dad and I were just going to see a baseball game. The Presidential Opener at D.C. Stadium. Killebrew and the Minnesota Twins. Frank Howard and the Washington Senators.

President Lyndon Johnson was determined — in a show of force and demonstrated security — the game would be played.

My career military father took me out of school and off we drove, through the green clad soldiers to the green fresh grass of a brand new Major League season.

Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a Minnesotan, would throw out the ceremonial first pitch. And there he was, surrounded by more than 32,000 fans, including a kid and his Dad with centerfield seats who saw it all.

Babe Ruth once wore number 3. Killebrew, too, had number 3 across his strapping back that day and throughout his Hall of Fame career. A bull of a man, sledge-hammering batting practice pitches. And 500 feet away in upper deck awe, a 14 year old discerned greatness.

Before steroids and a rabble of impostors shattered the purity of statistics, the pantheon of slugging greats were America's sporting heroes. Ruth, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, and Killebrew. Harmon belted, launched, blasted, crushed, jacked, and slammed 573 home runs, the last of which came 40 years ago this August.

If you don't think four decades can go by in the blink of an eye, wait. Just wait.

Long before cable networks and joined-in-progress cut ins, there were few nightly highlights on the news from coast-to-coast. You either saw the Saturday Game of the Week, scored a ticket and witnessed the immortals walk the diamond in person, or you grabbed the morning newspaper at the breakfast table and delved into the box scores.

I found the one for this day on-line. Reading the names and scanning through the lyrical innings of five decades past, this was a Shakespearean play returning to life.

The hurlers were among the Glory of Their Times. Two 20-game aces in their prime, Dean Chance and Camilio Pascual drew the start. In the 6th, Harmon crushed his first home run of the season deep to left off Pascual, a regal Cuban and longtime Killebrew teammate with the old Senators and in the Twin Cities before returning to D.C.

That blast would be the only one Killebrew's club needed. Chance went the distance with a four hit shutout, fanning eight without issuing a walk. Brilliant, yes, but all I remembered was Killebrew. His power and presence.

There was Tony O and Hondo, Tony Oliva and Howard. Bob Allison and Mike Epstein. A 2-0 finish. A game that took but 2:02 to play. A season to come. Many years ahead for all.

Except for my Dad, now in Arlington National Cemetery. That would be our last Presidential Opener together, for he died in August. Every spring, when the Boys of Summer return, I think of him, of Harmon Killebrew, of 1968. And now Harmon is leaving, too.

Killebrew had blasted 44 home runs in the Summer of Love in '67. He would reign as the American League MVP a year later in baseball's centennial of '69. Ironically, as it was for all of this nation, 1968 was filled with problems.

Named to an eighth All-Star game, this the first to be played indoors in the Astrodome, Harmon ruptured a hamstring on the carpet. He'd need seven months of rehabilitation and would finish the season with only 17 home runs.

When I saw him again in D.C., again from afar at the '69 All-Star game, it was in the re-christened Robert F. Kennedy Stadium. For you see, America had lost another leader. Those were the times.

Killebrew and Twins would later move into a domed home in the chill of the upper Midwest, named for their senior senator who threw out the pitch that day and would lose that autumn's presidential election.

And for the coming generation, the Twin Cities team would continue to hold spring training in Orlando. At Tinker Field, build in honor of the Cubs immortal shortstop, Joe, who adopted Central Florida after leaving Evers and Chance.

The kid in the centerfield seats, by the way, loved stadiums and the roar of crowds so much he became a broadcaster. Orlando is now his home, not far from that ballpark.

Many of the sunny snapshots of Harmon and talented Minnesota teams were taken at Tinker. You can pick 'em out instantly. The Twins have long since moved on, and grandstand and diamond now are mostly quiet and sun drenched.

Occasionally a high school contest or adult league fun-in-the-sun game requiring chalk lines to be drawn and the infield attended. There, too, with the birds and the sky is a granite bust of legendary Twins owner Clark Griffith still on display, just inside the unlocked gates.

It is a good place to say goodbye, to the promise of spring, the heroes of our youth, and a boyhood that once crossed paths with a slugger named honest Harmon Killebrew.

MLB to Honor Heroes in Civil Rights Game

2011-05-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

05/09/11
By Alden Gonzalez / MLB.com

After months of painstaking planning by Major League Baseball, the 2011 Civil Rights Game is finally just around the corner.

"I'm ecstatic," said MLB executive vice president of baseball development Jimmie Lee Solomon, the man hoping to ensure the city of Atlanta feels the same way.

Henry Aaron

The fifth annual Delta Civil Rights Game will take place on Sunday at Turner Field, pairing the Phillies and Braves, two teams with superstar African-American players at a time when there aren't many, in a city once regarded as the cradle of the civil rights movement.

But Sunday's celebratory game is merely the culmination. Much more will take place before then.

As part of its yearly effort to pay tribute to those who fought for equal rights, both on the field and off, MLB will stage a roundtable discussion that will touch on key social issues, an interactive youth summit, a Beacon Awards banquet, a Saturday game paying tribute to the Negro Leagues and a concert put on by one of the most famous rappers to come out of Atlanta.

Then, finally, for the first time on a Sunday, baseball will host the ever-evolving Civil Rights Game.

"We've done a lot," Solomon said. "And I think this is just growing and growing and growing."

But Solomon wanted even more growth. He wanted to initially stage two new events in the days leading up to the game: a two-day Bud Selig Business Conference that would promote workforce diversity and a red-carpet screening of the documentary "Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream" at the Fox Theatre.

In the end, Solomon felt perhaps they were being a little "overambitious," and decided to limit the schedule to make sure they got the most out of each event.

"We were being very ambitious this year," Solomon said. "And I think that, in the end, maybe we wanted to make sure we were successful, instead of kind of sure that the whole thing would be successful."

But there will still be plenty to keep the city of Atlanta busy this week.

Ernie Banks

Events will kick off with the Baseball and the Civil Rights Movement Roundtable Discussion at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Friday, May 13. The forum, moderated by Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree, will kick off at 3 p.m. ET and is open to the public.

On the panel will be singer Gloria Gaynor, activist Dolores Huerta, Angels owner Arte Moreno and National Urban League executive director Marc Morial.

Also taking part will be United Farms Worker co-founder Dolores Huerta, MLB vice president of youth and facility development Darrell Miller and U.S. Army Brigadier Gen. Bryan Roberts.

The discussion will air live on MLB.com at noon ET, and fans who want to ask the panel questions can do so by e-mailing them to civilrightsgame@mlb.com.

Morgan Freeman

At 9 a.m. on Saturday at Centennial Olympic Park, kids can attend a free event that will give them the opportunity to take part in baseball and softball clinics with Major League players, followed by a Q&A discussion and a parade to Turner Field.

To Solomon, that Youth Summit, presented by Army/"Wanna Play?", "brings the most joy to my heart."

"When you have all those kids running around," Solomon said, "and baseball is the catalyst, baseball is the lynchpin of their fun, and many kids receive free gloves, free caps [and] T-shirts [and] they interact with baseball players [and] local celebrities, it's just a real fun event."

That afternoon's 1:10 p.m. ET game between the Phillies and Braves will celebrate the Negro Leagues, which folded shortly after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Commemorative videos will be played, former Negro League players will be on the field and the Phillies and Braves will play in replicas of their respective cities' Negro League uniforms.

Carlos Santana

Ludacris, one of Atlanta's proudest sons, will then perform a free postgame concert with a still-unannounced guest. Later that night, at 7 p.m. at the Omni Hotel Grand Ballroom, the MLB Beacon Awards Banquet, presented by Belk, will take place.

There, Hall of Famer and Cubs legend Ernie Banks (Beacon of Life), Academy Award-winning Actor Morgan Freeman (Beacon of Hope) and Grammy Award-winning artist Carlos Santana (Beacon of Change) will be honored.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, former Cy Young Award winner Don Newcombe and entertainer Harry Belafonte will serve as presenters. And Braves legend Hank Aaron along with five "Freedom Riders" -- civil rights activists who rode buses into segregated southern cities to test the U.S. Supreme Court

decision Boynton v. Virginia -- will be honored.

Then, on Sunday, the Civil Rights Game will take place at 1:35 p.m. ET, airing on TBS.

The contest will honor the Beacon Award winners on-field, will have teams sporting replica 1974 uniforms and will carry the torch of honoring baseball's impact in civil rights, a concept that began as an exhibition in Memphis from 2007-08, then worked its way into the regular-season schedule in Cincinnati from 2009-10 and is now in Atlanta for the next couple of seasons.

That Ryan Howard, Jason Heyward and Jimmy Rollins will be there to celebrate it is just icing on the cake.

"There are a lot of things that are good that are going on to curb the decline of African-American players," Solomon said. "I think that bringing in these two teams that happen to have superstars of African-American heritage on either side of the field -- I think it's a great way to show African-American kids there is a place for them in Major League Baseball."

Tickets for the Civil Rights Game and preceding events can be purchased at mlb.com/civilrightsgame, with proceeds being donated to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, which is building a memorial near the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials in Washington, D.C.

Alden Gonzalez is a reporter for MLB.com.

Wounded Troops Return to the Ballfield

2011-05-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

Members of the Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team and a team of personnel from Walter Reed Army Medical Center listen to the national anthem before a game May 7 at the Forest Glen Annex in Silver Springs, Maryland. [Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post]

By David Nakamura,

Washington Post

May 7, 2011

The soldiers and Marines on the Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team display a sense of humor that helps put at ease fans who might otherwise feel awkward watching them.

The 20 men, most of whom have lost limbs on missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, nicknamed themselves the “Body Parts.” Three players with prosthetic legs volunteer to “take a knee” during a team photo. When a player missing his left arm reaches second base, an assistant coach yells that there is “a runner with legs in scoring position.”

“You won’t hear that on any other team,” says outfielder Brian Taylor, who lost his right leg below the knee.

This weekend, the Body Parts opened a national tour of exhibition games by routing a team from the FBI 35-10 on Friday night at George Mason University. On Saturday afternoon, they came back to earth a bit, losing to staffers from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 18-5, at the Forest Glen Annex. On Sunday, they will be in Annapolis to face a team of players from the U.S. Naval Academy’s sailing team.

Although the amputee squad is not looking for sympathy, Saturday’s final score was greeted with a shrug by the players and the crowd. The playing is the thing — the soldiers were all gifted high school athletes who thought they might never have a chance to compete again.

Soldiers and Marines who lost limbs on missions in
Iraq and Afghanistan prove that their athletic talent has
survived their injuries. [Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post]

Now, wearing prosthetic devices strapped to the stumps on their arms and legs, they are fielding, throwing and hitting once more.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” said Army Sgt. Matthew Kinsey, who stepped on a land mine while on night patrol in Afghanistan 11 months ago, blowing off his right foot. He is still going through rehabilitation at Walter Reed, but the rangy shortstop dived for a line drive up the middle Saturday, only to have the ball tick off his glove and dribble into center field for a single.

“It all settled back in pretty quickly,” Kinsey, a star high school player in Rockville, Ind., said of the old athletic rhythms. “I’ve played thousands of games so when I got back on the field, it felt natural.”

The team is the brainchild of David Van Sleet, a prosthetics manager for the U.S. Veterans Affairs Southwest Health Care Network who doubles as the team’s manager. Marrying his professional skills with his lifelong love of softball, Van Sleet put out a nationwide call for amputees to try out for the squad. He didn’t want a bunch of weekend warriors, but rather seasoned players who would be able to compete against fully able-bodied teams.

After culling the couple of hundred applicants, Van Sleet held tryouts in Arizona in March. The competition was intense. One player, who was wearing a prosthetic leg, broke his other leg while swinging hard at a pitch and landing awkwardly.

But Van Sleet pared the squad to the 20 best, including Greg Reynolds, who lost his left arm to the shoulder in a car accident after returning from Iraq, and Josh Wege, who lost both legs below the knee after the Humvee he was riding in struck a makeshift bomb in Iraq.

The pair embody the can-do spirit of the Body Parts. Wege, the only bilateral amputee, is such a good athlete that the Marines have recruited him for the Wounded Warrior Games in Colorado Springs. He will compete in the 100- and 200-yard dashes, basketball and volleyball.

“I didn’t want to be the anchor that holds this team down,” said Wege, who along with Kinsey recently completed a challenging obstacle course at West Point.

Forgoing the curved prosthetic running legs favored by some teammates for a standard walking pair, Wege pitched against the Walter Reed team Saturday and singled to center. He said he chose not to use the running legs because “I want to look as normal as possible.”

Reynolds did, too. With just one arm, he swings the bat across his chest as if he is back-handing a tennis ball. He went 3-for-4 in Friday’s game and doubled to right field on Saturday.

Reynolds and fellow outfielder Nate Lindsey, who lost his right arm below the elbow, compared their fielding techniques during practice. Reynolds caught the ball and then used an underhand scoop to throw it from the webbing to a teammate. Lindsey caught the ball and then flipped it in the air while dropping his glove, catching it again with his bare hand to make the relay throw.

“We’re all soldiers, and we’re all athletes, so when we step on the field we already have that common bond,” said Reynolds, who enlisted in the Army on Sept. 10, 2001, when he was 17.

Although the players profess to be thinking only about the competition while on the field, their relatives can’t help but consider the bigger picture. Watching his son Matthew take the field Friday night, Mark Kinsey said he was overcome with emotion.

“I shed a few tears,” he confessed. “I’m just happy to have him here.”

Carl Erskine's Treasure Chest of Dodgers Lore

2011-05-13T10:32:00.000-07:00

The pitcher, one of the Boys of Summer, witnessed plenty of baseball
history and is still living the good life in his Indiana hometown.

Carl Erskine, center, with Duke Snider, left, and Brooklyn Manager Charley… (Associated Press)

By Chris Erskine, Los Angeles Times
May 7, 2011

Along the way, Carl Erskine (no relation) has seen some things. A curveball artisan and one of the famed Boys of Summer, he was in the Dodgers' dugout during Don Larsen's perfect game and shared the bullpen when Ralph Branca was summoned to pitch to Bobby Thomson in what is probably still the most famous bomb of all time.

"People always ask me, 'What's your best pitch?'" Erskine says, a twinkle in his eye. "I tell 'em that's easy. 'It's the curveball I buried in the bullpen that day. Otherwise that could've been me.'"

Yep, along the way, Carl Erskine has seen some things, all right, played along Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider on those beloved Brooklyn teams of the '50s. Pitched a record 14 strikeouts against the Yankees in the 1953 World Series with a four-seam curveball that dropped — bam — like a Bible off a bookshelf.

Came back to his hometown of Anderson to raise four kids and wound up running a local bank. If you detect a bit of Forrest Gump or George Bailey to the old pitcher's life — hey, we're just getting started here.

"My whole life is a story," he says over pancakes and bacon, crisp. "Everything that happens has more to it."

Somebody summon Spielberg, or get Ken Burns on the phone. Because this is an American life full of folk heroes and normal everyday guys who do extraordinary things, against a backdrop of race relations, the early days of television and Walter O'Malley's march west. Erskine's stories are also a touchstone to a simpler era, a time machine to Dodgers glory days that seem pretty far away right now.

But first things first. At 84, Erskine is still living the good life in Anderson: looks fit, nice coloring, shock of white hair — like Lasorda if he lost 300 pounds.

He goes fishing when he can, plays harmonica in a local band called Old Stuff and sounds like a 25-year-old when he tells stories from his treasure chest of Dodgers lore — how the franchise could've fielded Larry Doby and Roberto Clemente but O'Malley and the league thought it was better to diversify, how he collected two bonuses from the notoriously stingy Branch Rickey, after the team signed Erskine illegally and the commissioner ruled that he should go back on the open market.

"Dizzy Dean told his TV audience, 'Hey, I want you to meet someone who deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, because he got Branch Rickey to cough up two bonuses."

Here's the trophy shelf from a 12-year career:

• A 122-78 lifetime record (10 in Brooklyn, two in L.A.).
• A 20-win season in '53, with 16 complete games.
• 11 World Series appearances.
• Two no-hitters.

As usual, the personal stuff trumps the stats. He talks about his friendship with Robinson.

"I told him that not all white people are your enemy," Erskine says. "He said that bigots come in all colors."

"I remember Branch Rickey once told Jackie, 'Look at you. You could whip anybody on this field ... anybody. But are you strong enough not to fight?'"

He talks about playing in pain his entire career after injuring his arm in his first start. "Struck out the batter on a high fastball" — not the famously torquey curve — "and I felt a shot in my arm, like a knife."

Talks about watching Larsen on that incredible afternoon in 1956.

"Same pitcher that day as he was before, routine stuff," he remembers.

And the Thomson home run?

"I've been over that game so many times," he says. "There's still holes in what made [Charlie] Dressen bring in Ralph."

Branca and Erskine were the two choices that day. When Dressen called pitching coach Clyde Sukeforth, he told Dressen that he'd been bouncing his curve.

"Ralph's first pitch was a low fastball," Erskine says. "We all gasped because we all know Thomson was a low fastball hitter.

"He took that first pitch. As they say, it had hair on it."

The next pitch, inside, is the one Thomson turned on, sending it into the left-field seats and winning the pennant for the Giants.

"I think it was fate," Erskine says. "You could've brought in Walter Johnson, you could've brought in anybody … I think it was bound to happen."

When his career was done, Erskine came back to Anderson, 32 years old, four kids, no job, but knowing his family would be able to help.

Roger Kahn's landmark book "The Boys of Summer" poignantly tells the story of Erskine's youngest son, Jimmy, born with Down syndrome.

Today, the dad drops Jimmy off at the local Applebee's for a work shift and notes the parallels he's seen.

"Jackie broke down the social barriers," he says. "Jimmy helped do the same thing with Down syndrome.

"When you got to know Jack, you liked and admired him. Same with Jimmy."

Yep, Carl Erskine has seen some things.

chris.erskine@latimes.com

Andre Ethier closing in on a Dodger record: Willie Davis' 31-game hitting streak

2011-05-06T22:26:00.000-07:00

Willie Davis' 31-game string of hits is now being
threatened by Andre Ethier. (Los Angeles Dodgers)

In 1969, Davis -- a center fielder known for speed, not power -- put together a string of hits that's now being threatened by Ethier. Davis found the winning formula for the streak by emulating the mechanics of Matty Alou.

By Ben Bolch
Los Angeles Times
May 5, 2011

Pick a renowned slugger from the 1960s and chances are the late Willie Davis tried to emulate him.

Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Willie McCovey, the list goes on. Davis even implemented a style that was a cross between the long-retired Mel Ott and Japanese home-run king Sadaharu Oh.

The Dodgers center fielder could imitate them perfectly, former teammate Wes Parker recalled — until the pitch came.

"And then he was Willie Davis," Parker said Thursday.

Davis, whose greatest asset was speed, not power, found a winning formula late in the 1969 season after duplicating the mechanics of Matty Alou, a diminutive spray hitter from the Pittsburgh Pirates. It was this approach that enabled Davis to embark on the Dodgers-record 31-game hitting streak that is being threatened by Andre Ethier.

"If you want to put your finger on one thing, it was that he changed to a batting style that he should have used all his career: choking up on the bat, a short, compact swing and not trying to pull the ball," said Maury Wills, the former Dodgers shortstop.

Davis didn't make much of his burgeoning streak until late August, when he neared the franchise record of 29 games that had been set in 1916 by Zach Wheat of the Brooklyn Robins. The Dodgers were engaged in a heated five-way race in the National League West, but soon there was a dual focus around the organization.

Reporters started asking Davis about the streak before games and Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley, who had given Sandy Koufax $500 for each of his no-hitters and Don Drysdale's wife a string of 56 pearls after the right-hander pitched 56 consecutive scoreless innings, promised to reward Davis handsomely if he broke Tommy Holmes' National League record of hitting safely in 37 consecutive games.

Davis, who was 69 when he died of natural causes in 2010, may have benefited from a break or two along the way. He extended his streak to 27 games with a sharp grounder to Philadelphia's Richie Allen that the first baseman lost from his glove as Davis crossed the bag. The official scorer contemplated the play for several minutes before ruling it a hit.

"Given Willie's speed and the difficulty of the play, I thought it was a hit all the way," said Ross Newhan, the Hall of Fame baseball writer who then covered the Dodgers for The Times.

After tying Wheat's franchise record Sept. 1 with a second-inning to single to center field, Davis received a good-luck telegram from the record-holder the following day before taking the field against the New York Mets at Dodger Stadium. Wheat was then 81 and living in Missouri.

Davis broke the record with a sixth-inning double, bowing his head in response to a standing ovation. But he was more focused afterward on his ninth-inning strikeout that stranded two baserunners during a one-run loss.

He avenged the failure the next day with a ninth-inning double that drove in Wills with the winning run against the New York Mets and stretched his streak to 31 games, the longest in baseball since Dom DiMaggio's 34-game streak in 1949.

The streak ended Sept. 4 when Davis went 0 for 4 against San Diego. He hit .435 during the streak, raising his average from .262 to .316 and winning a legion of admirers by realizing his immense potential.

The Dodgers faded over the final month of the season, finishing fourth in their division. Davis' final batting average was .311, a threshold he never reached again over an 18-year career that included 13 productive seasons with the Dodgers. He still has more hits, extra-base hits, triples, runs scored, at-bats and total bases than any Dodger during their years in Los Angeles starting in 1958.

Still, his former teammates said the fleet-footed outfielder who played in two All-Star games and won three Gold Gloves could have done more.

"He's not in the Hall of Fame and he had as much talent as any Hall of Famer ever," said Parker, who played first base for the Dodgers from 1964-72. "He wasn't satisfied with being a singles hitter. He wanted to hit home runs, and it killed him because it took away his biggest advantage, his speed. He was the fastest man in baseball."

Nevertheless, Wills said he believed Davis wouldn't mind if Ethier took his record this weekend.

"I really feel in my heart," Wills said, "that Willie is pulling for him to break it."

Times researcher Robin Mayper contributed to this report.

'I'm lucky to be alive'

2011-05-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

Although Luis Salazar lost an eye, he remains focused on his second chance at life

When he was young, Luis Salazar's parents often couldn't see him.

Growing up in the small coastal town of Lecheria, Venezuela, Salazar would hurry home from school each afternoon, disappearing through the door and into the house. Hearing his footsteps, his mother would yell out for her son to start his homework. Instead, Salazar would slip outside, escaping down the street to find the nearest ballgame.

"My family would be looking for me and they said, 'Where's Luis?'" Salazar remembered. "And I'd be down the block playing street ball with the other kids."

His teachers often couldn't find him, either, especially at lunchtime. When the other students lined up for lunch, Salazar ran out in search of a game of street ball.

But baseball scouts saw Salazar, especially after one of his teams won the regional championship and Salazar had started in place of the team's injured shortstop. Two months later, the Royals signed the 15-year-old. He arrived in the U.S. in 1973, scared, homesick and unable to speak or understand English. He lasted a month and a half, playing for the Gulf Coast League Royals, before returning home.

A coach from a Caracas team called a few weeks later, telling Salazar that he needed to come to the capital to play winter ball. He'd seen Salazar's potential, he said, and could envision him playing in the major leagues.

Salazar listened. He was signed again -- in 1975 by the Pirates -- and returned to the U.S. in 1976, playing briefly in the minors and then as a utility man in the majors for 13 seasons and four teams before transitioning into coaching.

In early March, the 54-year-old attended spring training in Florida, preparing for his first season as manager for the Lynchburg Hillcats, a high-Class A affiliate of the Atlanta Braves.

His passion for playing baseball has morphed into a love of teaching and seeing his former players break into the big leagues, he said. Salazar loves hitting fungoes before games or standing at the pitching machine, instructing his young players on mechanics and patience at the plate.

AP Photo/David Goldman -- Luis Salazar was back at the
Braves' spring training home two weeks after the incident.

So what did he do when that love almost killed him? When it took away half his vision and threatened to crush his spirit?

'It entered my mind fhat he was dead"

In the first inning of Atlanta's March 9 exhibition game against the St. Louis Cardinals, Salazar stood next to Braves outfielder Nate McLouth along the railing on the first-base side dugout. The two were discussing a play that had just happened at second base, McLouth says, and Salazar motioned toward second as he spoke, looking away from the plate.

Braves catcher Brian McCann, a left-handed hitter, stood at the plate. As Cardinals pitcherKyle Lohse threw a changeup, down and inside, McCann swung.

Salazar said he remembers the ball "felt like a missile." Then everything went black.

McLouth saw the ball -- briefly -- and ducked to his right. (Salazar was on his left.) "We were talking, and then seconds later he was on the ground," McLouth said. "When it hit [his face], it sounded like the ball had gone all the way back to the cement wall."

Braves catcher David Ross was sitting a foot away. "That ball was hit so hard and so fast at such a close distance," Ross remembered. "It hit him [Salazar] and he fell five steps, all the way down. He was knocked out cold."

The baseball, traveling at an estimated 115 mph, struck Salazar on the left side of his face, shattering his bones. Stumbling and falling down the dugout steps facedown, Salazar sustained a concussion from the force of the fall, which also fractured his right arm and shoulder. He lay motionless as blood poured from his nose, eye and mouth.

"It was one of the scariest things I've ever witnessed on a baseball field," Ross said. "For a minute, it entered my mind that he was dead."

AP Photo/Dave Martin -- Braves catcher Brian McCann
visited Luis Salazar several times in the hospital.

Salazar lay unconscious for close to 20 minutes as paramedics rushed him into an ambulance and then a helicopter en route to an Orlando trauma center. Officials decided to continue the game, which the Cardinals won, 6-1. McCann checked himself out of the game and left the field. McLouth said that players on both teams were almost silent.

Baseball seemed so unimportant after that, like I could've cared less about what was going on on the field," Ross said. "I wanted to go home to see my wife and kids and give them a hug. I remember being shaken for a whole day after that. Reality just took a full turn; we could go at any minute. There's no guarantees in life, right?"

Salazar remembers waking up in the hospital, briefly, that night. He couldn't recall what had happened to him and says he "saw a very bright white light." He passed out again and woke up the next day after his first surgery.

I was in a lot of pain," Salazar said. Because of braces placed on his legs to allow for circulation, Salazar had trouble moving and got up only to use the bathroom. His wife, daughter and son visited him in the hospital.

Friends and strangers sent notes or called to offer their support. Messages of encouragement came from around the world from as far as Venezuela and as close as Albert Pujols and Johan Santana in their respective spring training camps.

After almost a week, Salazar said he began to feel better. He also looked in a mirror for the first time.

"I saw my [left] eye, and I knew something very bad had happened," Salazar said. "I still had my eye then, but my face was so swollen, so huge. I didn't recognize myself."

McCann and his wife, Ashley, visited Salazar in the hospital several times.

"Talking with Brian, the first conversation, he [felt] very bad; he almost cried," Salazar said. "I said, 'Don't worry about it; it's an accident. Now, I want you to move on.' He said that was the best news that he ever got."

The two talked for almost three hours during that first visit. They still keep in touch today: McCann said his wife often corresponds with the family through Salazar's daughter, Viviana, who's married to Mariners center fielder Franklin Gutierrez.

Salazar's good friend, Rafael Belliard, a former major leaguer now coaching with the Tigers, stopped by the hospital a few days after the accident.

"The first thing he [said] to me is, 'Rafe, I'm lucky to be alive,'" Belliard said. "He talked to me for about 15 minutes, and he was OK. I was a little shaky at what had happened."

Doctors tried to save Salazar's left eye, but after almost a week they realized they would need to remove it. Salazar's biggest fear wasn't losing his eye -- it was losing his job.

"I thought my career [was] over," Salazar said. "But then I [talked] to the guys at the Braves, and they said, 'No, you gonna be doing what you love: coaching.'"

Although Salazar's wife of 33 years, Graciela, said she never saw him depressed or frustrated during his hospital stay, she shared Luis' concern about his future in baseball.

"I said to the Braves organization, 'I don't want him sitting at home, getting a check every two weeks. I want him doing something.' Because he loves to be out on the field," Graciela said.

'He has no fear'

After a week in the hospital and another week resting at his home in Boca Raton, Fla., Salazar visited the Braves on March 23 at their Orlando spring training home.

Wearing sunglasses, Salazar "was in really good spirits, and you saw how happy he was to be back," McLouth said.

"He has such a passion for baseball," McCann said. "He wanted to get back on the field even when he was in the hospital. He was just thankful for this opportunity again."

After his visit with the team, Salazar began a program at the Braves' Orlando rehabilitation center, where he stayed for almost two weeks under the tutelage of head physical therapist Troy Jones.

In addition to working on the injury to Salazar's arm, Jones said the two focused on balance and depth perception: catching with two hands, one hand, different speeds, changing the size and weight of the ball, as well as everyday tasks like learning how to reach for a cup of water.

Throughout the exercises, Salazar picked up each skill with remarkable speed and poise.

"He's pretty phenomenal as far as how rapidly he gained his depth perception, balance and how quickly he picked up catching and throwing," Jones said. "The first time we had him try fungo work, he was incredible. It was as though he hadn't even missed a step.

"He has no fear -- even from the first day that we went out on the field, he jumped out there like it was another day at the ballpark, with no hesitation. I was a little apprehensive when we first went out and started to throw, but my apprehension disappeared quickly. It was just like tossing a baseball with anyone else."

According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, more than 2.5 million eye injuries occur in the U.S. each year. Approximately 50,000 people permanently lose part or all of their vision. Ninety percent of all eye injuries can be prevented by using protective eyewear (which Salazar now wears), and 14.7 percent of eye injuries occur during sports. Although several coaches and players have been killed by hit baseballs throughout history (well documented in Robert Gorman's book, "Death at the Ballpark"), there are no available statistics that show the number of people who have lost an eye as the result of a baseball.

'This is what I love'

On April 15, Salazar stood before a TV camera on a windy Friday afternoon in Lynchburg, Va., his first day at the Hillcats' helm as they were about to face the Myrtle Beach Pelicans. The stadium sits high above the street, its brick-walled entrance worn with age. (The park was built in 1939.) Looking out from behind home plate, the Blue Ridge Mountains are visible in the distance, a jagged skyline reminiscent of a rapid, steady heartbeat line on a hospital monitor.

Salazar was wearing a blue workout shirt and shorts, and his calves and arms still held the muscle from his playing days. Jones said that Salazar's sturdy build on his compact 5-foot-9 frame had aided his speedy recovery.

Under a baseball cap, Salazar wore a pair of protective shatterproof Oakley glasses -- one of two pairs, he said, he will don during games for protection. Before the accident Salazar had never needed contact lenses or glasses, and he has retained the 20/20 vision in his right eye.

He expects to receive a prosthetic eye as early as mid-May, which his doctors say is ahead of schedule. Until then, he often wears a protective bandage over his left eye socket.

After several interviews, Salazar hit fungoes to his players. He neither flinched at the sound of bat hitting ball nor shied away from baseballs thrown in his direction. Playing catch with Tom Shields, a roving Braves instructor, Salazar laughed and smiled, taking a step back after each throw. He later spoke with Shields about his lingering arm soreness, although he's now thrown a baseball as far as 60 feet.

Approximately 5,170 fans filled City Stadium that evening, the largest crowd in Lynchburg's home opening history. Graciela flew into town for her husband's first homestand and sat several rows behind home plate. Instead of feeling nervous, she said she was happy her husband was back on the field. "It's the place he wants to be," she said.

During the announcement of opening lineups, the Hillcats' staff decided collectively to introduce Salazar last, rather than first (as is customary).

"Luis Salazar would like to thank God and the fans for his second chance at life," the PA announcer read during his lengthy pregame introduction.

AP Photo/Don Petersen -- At Lynchburg,
Luis Salazar plans to coach third base
in addition to his managerial duties.

As Salazar stepped onto the field, the entire crowd stood and cheered. Salazar walked down his lineup of players, shaking hands and fist-bumping. Then he walked over to the Myrtle Beach side, shaking hands with their players as well. After the national anthem, after the pronouncement of "Play ball!" and after all the players had returned to the dugout for the first pitch, Salazar remained on the field, standing near home plate and talking to two umpires.

When he finally returned to the dugout and play began, Salazar didn't sit back against the wall. Instead, he stood near the dugout steps or just behind them during his team's at-bats, watching closely. He will soon resume his role as third-base coach.

"I have no fear being back on the field," Salazar says. "This is what I love -- teaching, coaching baseball."

He is especially cautious of errant elbows in the dugout, ensuring that he protects his right eye. He continues the physical therapy work he began with Jones and says that life's daily routines don't feel any differently than they did before.

"Losing an eye is a traumatic event, and for a lot of people, the psychological effect is profound," says Dr. Michael Brennan, a comprehensive ophthalmologist in Burlington, N.C., and the past president of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. "But Luis is a confident guy who knows himself, and he will fight back fast."

Brennan says that some major league teams, including the Boston Red Sox, now offer training to pitchers on how to defend themselves from being injured by a hit ball. They spend time talking with young players about protection, coaching pitchers to finish their delivery so that they're not as vulnerable. McLouth said the Braves have talked about ways to make the field a safer place, especially for fans.

Salazar laughs often and is profusely thankful. The most common phrase he utters is "I want to give thanks," before offering gratitude to his family, the EMT staff, Jones, his friends, the Braves organization or the fans who sent him notes of support.

"When you have something tragic happen in your life, the only thing you can do is take the positives out of it, or you're gonna be miserable," McCann said. "He's taught me a lot about that. The way he looks at life is amazing."

Salazar said he is proud to be a role model, motivated by a renewed sense of thankfulness.

"I lost my eye, but at the same time I thank God he saved my life," Salazar said. "I have a second chance at life, and I very much appreciate it. Now, the rest is up to me."

Anna Katherine Clemmons is a reporter for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com.