Archive for the 'Conventional Wisdom' Category

Seeing Things New

Ted, April 9, 2010, 1 Comment

Is it a cliche that every time you watch a baseball game you will see something that you’ve never seen before? I am putting this old rhubarb to the test, in any event, as I have already watched more baseball more closely this year than any I can remember (playoff games excluded).

This is because I started a personal project called Every Day Ichiro, chronicling my year in being a new Mariner’s fan. A tad specific for Pitchers and Poets, it involves watching a lot of Ms games, with specific focus on Ichiro’s at bats and overall presence.

More importantly for PnP concerns, I see things. It turns out that when you watch just about every inning of a baseball game, strange things will happen. Rare things, things that will legitimately surprise you. I thought I’d run through a few of those, as well as some other notable moments from the young season:

During yesterday’s Mariners-A’s game, Adam Moore scooped up a bunt with his mask. It was a most unremarkable gesture. He didn’t catch a ball over the fence with his mask, or throw the mask up in the air to deflect an errant ball the way every Little Leaguer has done, only to have his catch buddy tell him that’s illegal. He simply bumped an already stopped ball towards himself. Despite the insignificance of the mask-tip, the umpires after a quick meeting granted the baserunners a base apiece. Chad Pennington, who reached base on the bunt, ended the play with the rare infield double.
Matt Tuiasosopo battled through a 13-pitch at bat in the same A’s game. During that at bat, he popped two balls into Oakland’s acreage of foul territory. Two different players muffed a foul ball apiece, each taking one off of the heel of the glove and granting Tui TWO free lives at the plate. He struck out swinging.
Milton Bradley tipped his hat in a show of gentlemanly good cheer when Rajai Davis stole a home run from him.
Moving away from the Mariners: Jason Heyward. I mean. Are there any superlatives left? I had the good fortune of catching Heyward’s Homer live on TV on Opening Day, and felt that perhaps unjustified sense of the beginning of Something. It was chilling; I jumped up and did a lap around the living room, swelling with the urge to talk to somebody. I called my friend Seth in Atlanta, who had luckily taken a day off from work. I think I woke him up from a midday nap.
In a game between the Dodgers and the Pirates, outfielder Reed Johnson came barreling home and executed a near-perfect hook slide as catcher Ryan Doumit caught the incoming ball and tried to apply the tag. Johnson looked safe. As he got up in a cloud of dust, though, he and Doumit both were looking to the umpire, who had yet to make a call. The ump was just standing there, without doing a thing. The Nation looked to him for guidance, and all he offered was your basic man-waiting-for-a-train stance. Suddenly, Doumit got it, and jumped at Johnson to tag him out. Johnson had never touched the plate, so the play was still live, and there had been no call for the umpire to make.
Mark Buehrle Superstar.

Baseball Culture and Conventional Wisdom, 1 Comment

On Sabermetric Transparency

Eric, April 3, 2010, 3 Comments

Over at Walkoff Walk, 310toJoba (somebody get this guy a first name), writes about the mega-awesome-super news that Bill Simmons, the internet voice of the Sports Media Industrial Complex has officially embraced sabermetrics. This is a major (if inevitable coup) for the stats-y baseball blogosphere. If no longer the Voice of the American Sports Fan, Simmons remains influential. He is also useful as a bell weather. As Simmons goes, so goes the sports fan.

Anyway, 310toJoba asks many great questions of the article, and hits Simmons for his navel-gazing and the back-handedness of his compliments. It seems futile to point out that a Simmons column without navel-gazing has yet to be written. And as to the back-handedness, I didn’t really read the article as pejorative. But perhaps that’s because I’m not a numbers guy myself and this is not a numbers blog.

But once again, that’s not what I’m here to write about. 310toJoba says the following of The Sports Guy’s desire to understand what goes into making these statistics:

On the one hand, I appreciate his efforts to attain a better grasp on the stats as a whole; he consistently tries to find out how they’re calculated. Good on him. On the other hand, perhaps Simmons is getting a little too overzealous and missing the point.

And later:

Again, it’s admirable that he wants to go all the way with his newfound obsession, but he comes off as being condescending and too in depth when there’s no need to be.

310toJoba then honorably admits that he has no idea how many of these stats are calculated and questions whether actually understanding the formula would make him a better or better-informed baseball fan. All this amounts to the typical argument “there are smarter, better suited people to do this, I’ll just trust them.” (Not an actual quote).

And here is where I find myself disagreeing with Mr. 310. I think Simmons’ desire to understand the formulas is entirely reasonable. And I don’t see how it is in any way condescending. Here he is admitting to the great wide world that sabermetrics are better than traditional numbers at measuring baseball performance. That’s still a pretty big deal, and for people to embrace that notion, they have to understand why these numbers are better.

There is a tendency among people at the forefront of change and new ideas to assume that the masses will somehow intuit why their proposed changes and new ideas are better. This assumption is why Americans were so vehemently opposed to Health Care Reform – they just saw it as an amorphous blob set forth by people unwilling to explain it in a palatable manner. So when guys like Joe Morgan (or Lindsey Graham), say that these ideas are wrong, or un-American, or will have horrible consequences, the urge is to recoil from them. The remedy to all this is spelling out exactly what these new ideas amount to, and doing so in simple and tangible terms. Just saying “trust us, it will be better,” is not enough.

The baseball stats we grew up with are very easy to calculate. If they aren’t counting stats like runs or runs batted in, they are equations with few inputs requiring basic arithmetic. Walks Plus Hits Divided By Innings Pitched. Okay Simple. We trust those stats because we have a good grasp on what exactly they are telling us. And we know that although not perfect, they are not necessarily bad. Baseball was just fine without sabermetrics. So who are you to tell me that this newfangled stuff can make it better?

I’m not sure it’s enough to just have some smart person tell you “OPS+ is a great metric for offensive performance!” and just believe them on blind faith. I’ve grappled with this myself. I am a pretty sabermetrically literate guy. But I hate relying on statistics I do not fully understand. It often feels like I am arguing on a foundation of quicksand; like somebody could open the curtain and reveal that Bill James is as phony as the Wizard of Oz, and because I don’t fully understand how to calculate UZR, I too will be revealed as a phony.

Obviously, I know this is not the case. I know that smart and well-intentioned people are doing this research to help our understanding of the game. But I know this because I write a baseball blog, and because I’m a curious guy who has tried to learn the formulas. I am not inclined to take it on blind faith that new stats are better stats, and neither are most other baseball fans. It might take, as Simmons says, only ten minutes to be a better informed fan. But it takes more than ten minutes to figure out how VORP is calculated. Does being able to rattle off advanced stats really make one a better informed fan? Or is there some obligation to learn how the gears grind beneath the sheen of the number itself?

Conventional Wisdom, Media, Stats, Thinking and Walkoff Walk, 3 Comments

PnP Fantasy Baseball: Now with Actual Strategy!

Ted, March 10, 2010, 0 Comments

On Eric’s recommendation, I just read Sam Walker’s book Fantasyland, about his madcap pursuit of victory in a league of fantasy baseball experts. On his heroic journey, Walker works to find a balance between the cold, hard numbers and the soft, gooey lives of the individual players. He is a sports journalist with clubhouse access, and he uses that to what advantage he can, against most of the objections of his sabermetrically gifted NASA-analyst employee, as they build a team.

It’s a drama for the times, and even if it’s from 2006 and the names have changed, the debate remains the same. I left feeling as conflicted as ever — also being so into fantasy baseball right now that I’m afraid my head will explode. (Note: I am extending Eric’s recommendation on to you, and I’m sure this won’t be the last you hear of this awesome book.)

Sam Walker, author of Fantasyland

One personalty- framing device of the book is strategy. Who uses it, who doesn’t, how one strategy can foil another, what market inefficiencies hidden talents are out there. The fantasy experts are renowned for their acronymical strategery, from drafting only cheap pitchers (this particular league was auction-based, but the same idea can extend to the draft position) to sticking with established, consistent stars, to chasing in on the underrated young guns. With every goofy personality, there is a corresponding strategy. As I read and became fascinated with the acrobatics, I realized something: I employ very little significant strategy when I play fantasy baseball, and what little I have has been extremely successful.

I should preface by saying that mine isn’t a very strategic brain. While viewing the big picture looking for revealing trends, I’m often side-tracked by the proverbial passing butterfly, and an hour later I’ve forgotten what it was I was looking for in the first place. This just happened when my brother-in-law asked me to evaluate the overall worth of his old baseball card collection. I opened the trunk, caught of a whiff of old cardboard, and Wilkered away the next few hours poring over the right side of the top layer of cards.

My point being, I don’t surprise myself with my lack of proper fantasy planning. However, a few hours reading Walker’s book and a five hour plane ride across the country proved sufficient ingredients in the crucible to produce some real-life strategic thinking. This will be the year when I approach fantasy drafting with a sense of purpose, with a team point-of-view. I will exploit the prejudices of others; I will Beane them, and I will claim victory.

As Up in the Air and then The Blind Side played on the crappy little screen on the airplane, a mere day after the Oscars no less, I said to myself, “What is a real fantasy baseball strategy?” After I awoke from the hour-long nap that caused, I determined that strategy is finding value in something that others will overlook or ignore, thereby devaluing what they are pursuing (I got a C+ in the only economics course I ever took, FYI). The most valued stat, I figured, was home runs. The opposite of home runs are steals, and the opposite of slugging percentage is batting average. I would employ a strategy that valued steals and singles, and that treated home runs like Nate Silver at a Veterans Committee meeting.

I thumbed through a copy of SportsWeekly’s Fantasy Baseball addition, starring Chone Figgins and X-ing Evan Longoria; starring Brian Roberts and X-ing Adrian Gonzalez.

It was exhilarating.

For years I’ve drafted fantasy teams with that “best available” approach that I’m guessing a lot of amateurs like myself use. I had a sense of who I liked, who I thought would do well and who I had no interest in, but there wasn’t a unified theory. I wasn’t looking for a type of player, just good players. The hope was that this intuitive gathering of talent would result, obviously, in the best team. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t, but ultimately I came out of the draft feeling like I’d just dreamed it and ended up with a list of dudes.

Not so with The Iron Kirtons. That’s the team I just drafted (Kirton is my middle name). They are swift, and small. I drafted them with a special knowledge of particular goals. I was focused in a way that I’d never been before in a fantasy baseball draft. I had particular targets, overlooked by many but with the kind of secret skills that would enable me to dominate the categories where others would lag: runs, batting average, steals. (I went with the old school categories in this league, as they feel kind of classic, and they allow room for a more diverse approach to Rotisserie strategy, which is important when you don’t know what you’re doing).

Because I know that you’re interested, here’s the starting lineup (with pitchers, I went with the usual selection of middle of the road starters in the middle of the draft, not much interesting there):

They won't be saying "Going, Going Chone" anytime soon, and that's fine with me.

C – Yadier Molina, 1B – Joey Votto, 2B – Brian Roberts, 3B – Chone Figgins, SS – Ryan Theriot, OF – Ryan Braun, OF – Carl Crawford, OF – Denard Span, Util – Hunter Pence, Util – Nyjer Morgan, Bench – Placido Polance, Bench – Adrian Beltre, Bench – Felipe Lopez

Yes, I know, it makes me slightly queasy too, this team of slap hitters and burners who are lucky to punch a homer out four or five times a year. But that’s the BEAUTY of it. I figure, if it makes me uncomfortable, that must mean that there’s a vision behind it. And that’s why I enjoyed drafting The Iron Kirton: there was a sense of purpose. I battled sweating palms as I let traditional sluggers pass by (except for 4th overall pick and pretty speedy slugger Braun, and irresistible high average slugger Joey Votto) because I trusted my plan. Whether or not the plan pays off this year, I will have learned something. I will have planned.

Fear us, Yahoo Public League #430362, for we are The Iron Kirton. We will steal. We have a plan.

Conventional Wisdom and fantasy baseball, 0 Comments

Rally Caps Ain’t The Way…Or Are They?

Eric, October 6, 2009, 6 Comments

Today’s Situational Essay comes from Kenneth Morgan, a Mariner fan, and (at least compared to Ted and I) mathematical genius. His essay, in a lot of ways, gets at the essence of Pitchers and Poets. How do we reconcile what we believe to be true and what we know to be true? The superstition and the super-advanced statistical analysis?

“When you believe in things that you dont understand
Then you suffer
Superstition aint the way”
- Stevie Wonder

It wasn’t this particular verse per se, but rather the smooth transition between my invaluable Stevie Wonder’s Greatest Hits CD and the Mariners game. After listening to Dave Niehaus stumble through another half-inning, I started to fuse those last two things I had listened to. I began to realize that I am a much more superstitious fan while following a baseball game than any other sport. What makes baseball so special?

Caps turned inside out, fingers crossed, hands in the praying formation, and watching with one eye closed. Why do we resort to such archaic rituals? I’d argue that our behavior can be largely attributed to mirroring the very players we root for on the field. All hitters have some form of superstitious ritual they practice while hitting, with varying degrees of sanity. We recognize some of the usual suspects: Nomar’s toe tapping and constant re-adjustments of his uniform, Tony Batista preferring to be parallel to the catcher before the pitcher winds up, and Craig Counsell stretching his bat so high in the air you’d think he was trying to touch the moon. These routines are a main reason why we display these same superstitious traits; to help establish familiarity and in turn a level of internal comfort.

During a large percentage of pitches of a ball game, I’ve found following baseball to be a very passive and relaxing activity. This isn’t to say that I am indifferent to what is transpiring, but rather I find it very difficult to be fully invested in every one of the hundreds of pitches in each game. When more important situations arise I become much more invested, and occasionally will use one of my own superstitious techniques to try and help my boys out. I usually save my empirically sound “good luck” techniques for high leverage situations. There’s no need to waste them on less important at-bats right?

During my earliest years of following the Mariners I adopted a superstitious activity that I’ve caught myself practicing occasionally even up until this day. My toe-crossing spawned from what I’d imagine was a very tense situation at the end of a Mariners game in the early-mid 90’s. At the time of its conception it was as if I truly believed that my toe-crossing would somehow transmit some positive vibes to the M’s pitcher or hitter in his time of need.

My background is in Statistics and Math and over the past year I’ve tried to really immerse myself in the world of Sabermetrics. The more I have learned about topics like UZR, Dewan’s +/-, tRA, wOBA, WPA+, and BABIP fluctuations, the more my superstitious practices have dwindled. Now when I catch myself in the midst of one of my rituals, the condescending voice of “Applied Math/Statistics” always seems to chime in with some variation of, “Even after all we’ve learned, this is how you still behave?!” Well Math, I hate to break this to you, but you’ll never completely extinguish my superstitious flame.

To set the scene: Ichiro is up in the bottom of the 9th, down by five, two outs, with runners on 2nd and 3rd. It would be extremely easy for me to be cynical, detach myself from the moment, and cross my arms while informing those near me what the minute probability of the Mariners winning the game, under these circumstances. But I still enjoy staring the pitcher down and trying to persuade him to throw a hanging curve or a ball in dirt with my robust game-altering psychic powers. Does the great Ichiro even need my help here? Nah. I should probably save my heavy artillery for a crucial Jack Wilson at-bat in the ALCS.

–How superstitious are you while following your favorite team?
–Is baseball the sport where you find you’re the most superstitious?
–What are some of your favorite superstitious rituals?

Conventional Wisdom and Situational Essay, 6 Comments

Minor League Prospects in Person: Perception, Reality, or Dizzy Bat Races?

Ted, September 3, 2009, 3 Comments

dizzy bat race

I’m headed to a minor league game tonight between the Everett Aquasox and the Vancouver Canadians, a Northwest League short season A-ball match-up. A ritual that I like to go through before hitting a minor league park–aside from donning my raggedy Astros cap–is to research who the supposed “top prospects” in the game are. It’s a tough thing to keep up with, the prospects game, beyond the top 20 or so, but I’ve found that it can be a great way to engage with a randomly attended minor league game.

The guys who show up as top prospects do seem to have an air about them that sets them apart: a little stronger, a little more relaxed in the batter’s box. Just…something. I watch them a little more closely, noting the quickness of their hands or the snap of their fastball, and their hands seem a little quicker, their fastballs a little snappier than everyone else’s.

It is likely that these are tricks of the mind, and that I perceive these chosen players as superior because their status has been planted into my brain by the bloggerati. This is a notable 180 from the usual baseball blogging/SABRmetric goal of pointing out who is actually better than he appears to be to the naked eye.

The real trick would be to take my amateur scout’s eye to a game and make the determination myself about who looks the sharpest. Then I could check that against the prospect lists and see what happens. Granted, one game is nothing on lengthy scouting trips and reports, but I have to think that most scouting–by anybody, at any level except the highest–is firmly rooted in the second hand to begin with.

It’s too late to try this experiment tonight, as I’ve already got the names of the chosen ones bouncing around in my head, but perhaps soon I will trek to minor league parks unknown and challenge myself to a Scout-Off. It’s me VS. the Internet. I’d better wear my glasses.

How do you watch a minor league game? Is it all beers, conversation and promo night hi jinks, or do you try and get into the prospect-watching yourself?

(For the record, my favorite prospect site is John Sickel’s Minor League Ball.)

Conventional Wisdom, 3 Comments

When Life Throws You Curveballs, You Take Them The Other Way

Eric, August 31, 2009, 3 Comments

In a literary sense, I sort of like clichés. Before they become hackneyed and mundane, they are tight exceptional metaphors and similes. The first time somebody compared his lover’s eyes to a glowing moon, or her beauty to a red rose it was brilliant. The meaning of those words has worn over time, but not the initial spark of genius from which they were born. Like any writer, I avoid clichés as much as I can, but their initial spark remains bright in my mind.

The same can be true for most conventional wisdom: at one point, it was not conventional. It was just an idea that explained something fairly well, or a strategy that was effective most of the time. The sacrifice bunt, for example, is a conventional strategy in baseball. It’s often employed without second thought, lauded if effective, criticized if ineffective (or used too frequently). But the first time some manager trotted a weak-hitter out to move a runner over with a bunt, it probably blew minds.

In the tendency to assign grand meaning to Sports, I see both the cliché and the conventional wisdom. I see the initial reasoning for doing so and dig the value of this pretense, but I also see the worn out catchphrases and the strained logic and wonder why it happens. There are so many sayings about Sports – and I mean to refer to Sports as a proper noun here – that it gets hard to remember which ones came from Vince Lombardi and which ones originated with some orthopedic surgeon coaching his son’s Little League Team.

Football is War. Baseball is a microcosm for life. Casey Stengel and John Wooden and so on and so forth and I think I’ll grab myself a drink. The task of a coach is to mold young men, men who prove their mettle, prove their value as humans on the field of play. By this world view, people don’t dive in front of slap shots, or lean into inside fastballs, or take a hard charges in the lane merely because they want to win the game, but because winning the game has everything to do with winning at life. And damn it to hell if life is not about winning.

The point to all this crotchety, self-righteous, rambling is pretty much to bemoan the overwrought (ironic that I’m calling somebody that) way we think about sports. I’m thinking we should back up a smidge. Instead of seeking wisdom in the broad existence of Competition and Running and Playing and Winning and Losing maybe we can find wisdom elsewhere. Maybe the real wisdom can be found in the tiny situations, the intricacies of each game, the times that a particular sporting event lines up with a particular moment in our lives. Baseball is the National Pastime, not the National University or the National Church. Things are better this way.

The game serves a wonderful purpose: not as a metaphor, but as an entity that merits discussion on its own terms. There is insight to be had and wisdom to be found in baseball. The sport has its own language and its own issues and its own ongoing dialogue. Sometimes baseball mirrors greater society and sometimes it exists on a completely separate plane. Baseball and Sports in general, contribute to language and culture and dialogue the way anything else do. There are things a man’s curveball can tell us, but there also things his marriage or his job performance or his fashion sense can tell us.

I love the way Free Darko can extrapolate on-court behavior and performance into stunningly accurate and refreshing takes on an athlete’s broader position in our society, his own personal struggles, and the general mythology of sport. But I also appreciate that while Greg Maddux’s repertoire and approach and legend seem an accurate reflection of his entire existence, he probably wouldn’t put it that way. Sports is just another activity in our lives which means sometimes it’s an effective way to make the nuanced, the deeply personal, the incomprehensible events and emotions that we deal with every day a little easier to understand. But sometimes those events and emotions are better explained in the context of a road trip, or a meal, or a six pack of beer.

The Free Darko guys understand this. They like basketball and have a keen sense for what basketball can tell us about both itself and the broader world, but they realize that the game is not a perfect representation of society. Unlike the speeches of Vince Lombardi, or the pained reminiscing of nostalgia-crazed “those were the days” baseball fans, there is no dogma to be found here. There is only the transitory wisdom and pleasure of a pastime.

We must realize that while Sports can tell us unique and vibrant and refreshing things, it cannot tell us everything. A life is a life, a war is a war, and baseball, to end with a surprisingly fitting cliché, is only a game.

Baseball the Teacher, Conventional Wisdom, Meta and Thinking, 3 Comments

An Open Letter to Jim Tracy

Eric, August 24, 2009, 1 Comment

Dear Spaghetti Arms,

I try not to engage in criticism. That is, I try to avoid using this blog as a platform to shout about why a certain player should bat in a certain place, or why Joe Scouting Director should be Fired Immediately. There are plenty of blogs for that, but we at Pitchers & Poets pride ourselves on a different kind of thinking. We try to examine the game from both a greater distance and a much more intimate, immediate angle.

We’re much inclined to gently criticize a point of view, or go off for a thousand words on some inane theory on fandom than make actual concrete predictions. Most of this is because Ted and I don’t see baseball as just a collection of results. But another part of it, at least for me, is that I hate being proven wrong by insurmountable piles of data and cold hard facts.

So it’s with a heavy heart that I apologize to you Jim Tracy. I not only questioned your hiring as manager of the Colorado Rockies, but berated the team’s management for it. Here are some of the silly things I wrote:

In both Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, Jim Tracy was epically dull, notably un-dynamic, and completely void of compelling traits.

Okay that’s still true.

Even on an interim level this might be the least inspired managerial hiring in the history of baseball.

Here are some statistics:

70-54 as of today

19-28 on May 29 when Clint Hurdle was fired.

51-26 since you, Jim Tracy, took over the club.

You can’t see it, but I’m actually looking away from the screen as I type this, so shamed I am by the numbers above.

It’s not Jim Tracy’s fault he’s dull and ineffective and keeps getting hired. I’m sure old Spaghetti-Arms is a nice enough guy and he certainly won’t screw things up too badly.

If you discard my sarcastic, mocking tone, then this statement is actually accurate too.

Anyway, the point is I was wrong about you Jim Tracy. Your arms remain discomfortingly long and your gaze remains eerily unaffected, but you certainly have the capacity to manage a baseball team. As much as I’d like to hold on with contemptuous pride to the words with which I described you (words like unsurprising, conventional, representative of a managerial stases in the MLB bloodstream, and retread), I must let them go. They were inaccurate and unjust and I have learned my lesson.

In the future, more esoteric, off-kilter, semi-obsessive posts on fandom, less pretending I actually know something about the inner workings of the Colorado Rockies. Alright, Jim. May you win the Wild Card, but fall comfortably short of the Dodgers in the NL West Race.

Warmest Regards,

Eric

Conventional Wisdom and Meta, 1 Comment

The Sheff Abides

Eric, August 5, 2009, 5 Comments

Last night I got the chance to sit front row behind the home dugout at Citi Field. Needless to say the game between the Mets and Cardinals was stunning. I saw Johan being Johan, Albert being Albert, and K-Rod being Joe Borowski.

But mostly I saw Gary Sheffield.

I’ve been fascinated by Gary Sheffield since his tumultuous stint with my Dodgers. He was awful off the field in LA. He bitched about his teammates in the media, he fought with management, and he whined and whined and whined. But goodness gracious did he hit.

No matter where he’s gone Gary Sheffield has always been that guy. He’s never been your favorite player, but he’s often been your favorite team’s best player. He’s never been enough of a problem off the field, or enough of a superstar on the field to elicit romantic baseball love or fanatic baseball hatred from fans. Gary Sheffield is meant to confuse, meant to muddle, and meant to be pondered. In my mind he is a first ballot Hall-of-Famer.

The thing about Gary Sheffield is that he’s very serious. I saw it yesterday. He emerged from the dugout for the National Anthem with a distant look on his face. As other players sang, blew bubbles, and grinned their way through the song, Sheffield stood focused. He was solemn and somber. I wondered for a moment if I had discounted him. Perhaps the brooding Sheffield was more complex than I had ever given him credit for. Perhaps he was a humble patriot doing his American thing for these few quiet moments before the game.

But his expression stayed that way. Over the nine innings, Sheffield’s face remained distant, sullen. It was as if he carried some burden, understood some troubling reality that we in the stands could never appreciate. Indeed, it was not the Anthem, it was just Gary. It was just Gary playing baseball. And when Gary plays baseball he is more than just immune to his surroundings – he appears oblivious to them. It’s as if he doesn’t even see his own teammates on the bench.

The game, it seems, happens around Gary. He simply is. The Sheff abides. He doesn’t put on a uniform, but rather the uniforms seem to put themselves on him. He doesn’t come to the stadium either. The stadiums he plays in grow organically from the ground beneath where he happens to be standing, so as to leave him at ease in left field, the batters’ box, or the on-deck circle. These things happen by sheer momentum. They are just the way of the universe.

In a sense, there’s a Ricky Henderson-ness to Sheffield. Ricky played baseball like gravity. He was everywhere, and he was the same everywhere. Sheffield is like that too. He is serious and wise and silent and ubiquitous and eerily consistent. He’s only played for eight teams in his career, but it seems like so many more. He hasn’t hit 30 home runs in a season since 2005, but his violent pendulum of a batting stance still induces the fear of nature into opponents.

Sheffield went 2-4 yesterday, with a double and a pair of runs batted in. He jogged and took a couple awful, lazy angles in left field. On an exciting evening, a back and forth, high scoring, star-driven evening, Gary Sheffield was muddled, inhibited, himself.

America, Conventional Wisdom, Kooks and Thinking, 5 Comments

The Catch

Eric, July 24, 2009, 2 Comments

Last month Mark Buehrle, a career .100 hitter, slugged his first career home run on a sunny Milwaukee afternoon. Buehrle seemed to get all his weight into the swing. He lunged at it awkwardly, in that classic flailing manner of American League pitchers in National League parks. His front foot did a Robb Nen double tap. His back foot didn’t quite pivot; rather it slid and almost came off the ground. But as Buehrle scooted head down, around the bases, his line drive soared into the Brewers’ bullpen. The homerun came on a full count fastball, high in the zone and over the middle of the plate. It was just the sort of bad pitch that Mark Buehrle didn’t throw in yesterday’s perfect game, and has rarely thrown in the course of his ten year career.

DeWayne Wise deserves the attention he has received. The catch he made had me shivering and I look forward to watching it replayed the rest of this season and for years on end. But to me, his catch was not the defining moment of Buehrle’s perfect game. The moment that summed it up for me, that really epitomized the performance came in the next at-bat. With one down in the ninth, Tampa Bay catcher Michael Hernandez stepped to the plate.

In a perfect game the pressure on the pitcher is ratcheted up with every out. With each retired batter he is one pitch closer to immortality; one pitch closer to reaching a symmetry so scarce that it can’t be achieved in real life and can only seldom be achieved in the artificial world of baseball. Five outs to go, four outs to go, three outs to go, two outs to go … Mark Buehrle has a regular guy reputation. He doesn’t go for superstition and he is extremely self-aware. By the time he took the mound in the ninth, one has to imagine that his heart was lodged somewhere between his throat and his sinuses.

And after that catch, that space and time and gravity defying catch, everything was turned up a level higher. After that prayer was answered, failure to finish the last two Rays would have been more than just a disappointment, more than just a notable almost. It would have been a poetic let down for Buehrle, his teammates, and all of us who took the time in our day to watch or listen or follow online; for all of us who had attached our own emotions, our own hopes and dreams to that momentary brilliance. He might not have been thinking it explicitly but Mark Buehrle knew all this. At some level, after The Catch, he probably thought to himself, Oh shit, well now I really can’t screw this up.” Watch the replay. You can almost see it in the way he sighs and wipes his brow right afterward

Into the batters’ box, into the concoction of nerves and history and excitement steps Michael Hernandez. If you’re a pitcher and have to face one Ray in this situation, you probably pick Hernandez. He steps up to bat with an on base percentage below .300 and a reputation for nothing really. He’s a backup catcher, after all. Buehrle doesn’t hesitate. He works as quickly as any pitcher in the game and he interrupts the hometown broadcast crew in its post-catch hyperbole with a quick first pitch, fouled back by Hernandez. Second pitch before you can blink is a breaking ball in the dirt. Then an off-speed pitch away, then another off-speed pitch just misses the inside corner. All of a sudden, before you can even breathe, it’s 3-1.

You can almost feel it slip away. This is how these collapses happen too; almost quietly in the wake of the excitement, almost as an afterthought. Before you come down from the high of The Catch, you realize it’s all over. Everything is deflated.

One fastball thrown an inch away from home plate and that’s it. One fastball left over the middle, over the meat, and that’s it. Look how close it came to happening a moment ago. Look how easily it can all end. But instead of slipping, Buehrle took the ball from his catcher Ramon Castro without even stepping off the rubber. He rocked back into his windup, eased into his release, and threw a perfect fastball down and on the outside corner.

Full count.

And then it was never really in doubt. For a moment, failure loomed over Buehrle like the towering stadium seats and lights and noises. But when he threw that 3-1 pitch like it didn’t matter, like this was spring training or batting practice or just another 5-0 game, he won. The curveball with which he struck out Michael Hernandez was obvious. The routine groundball with which he retired Jason Bartlett was practically predetermined.

July 23 belonged to Mark Buehrle. The catch was wonderful, but the recovery, the poise, the finish. Those were perfect.

Conventional Wisdom and Thinking, 2 Comments

The Brother Grim

Eric, July 22, 2009, 2 Comments

Question 2 from last week’s quiz (follow up post coming soon) has overcome me:

2. Least enviable inferior big league brother. Example: Wilton Guerrero

There are so many answers, so many sets of siblings in sports, and so many tales to tell about the better and the worse. In a way it’s the same old story. Blood and friendship and rivalry: the ancient recipe for brotherhood and sisterhood and everything that comes with them.

Never lose that lovin' feeling.

So I took my fascination to Google, starting with the man in the quiz question. I remember Wilton Guerrero vaguely from his stint with the Dodgers. He was notable for two things in particular. The first was being the older brother of superstar Vladmir Guerrero. The second was shattering his bat, then scrambling like a child at an Easter egg hunt to pick up the famously corked pieces.

There is little in the way of detailed biographical information about former second baseman Wilton Guerrero available online. He is no longer in the news, except for the occasional mention in a story about his brother (brother, mom visit Vlad Guerrero in Angel clubhouse etc.). Wikipedia says Wilton plays ball in the Dominican these days, but even that claim goes unsourced.

The Google search results for Wilton Guerrero at first glance seem unexceptional. There is his Baseball Reference page, some memorabilia, the Wikipedia entry. But the fifth item down changes all that. It’s a forum link to a website called DR1.com. The title is at once ominous and intriguing and totally shocking:

Will Wilton Guerrero Be Killed?

Wait just a minute. Have I missed something? Apparently not. A quick scan of the forum discussion reveals that there is another Wilton Guerrero out there. He too hails from the Peravia province of the DR and he too is a public figure. In fact, this second Wilton Guerrero is a hard-charging senator in the nation’s leading party, the PLD.

From everything I have read, Senator Wilton Guerrero is an ass kicker. Think Eliot Spitzer before the hooker. He is a bulldog, targeting primarily the corruption of the Dominican government by mostly Colombian drug cartels. In September of 2008, Senator Guerrero announced that drug gangs had placed a 10,000 Peso ($280K) price on his head. But he wasn’t backing down, he told his constituents. He wouldn’t be ruled by fear. Ten months later, he is still crusading.

In a lot of ways, Senator Guerrero is more like the Guerrero brother with whom he does not share a name. Both the Senator and Vladmir Guerrero do things their way and both get away with it. They are aggressive and confident and aren’t afraid of anything. Drug gang threats get spat upon. High and tight fastballs get launched into the left field bleachers. Whether a batters’ box or a legislative committee room, these men are masters of their domains. In their fields, these are important men.

El Senador no toma prisioneros.

Wilton Guerrero the second baseman is not an important man these days. Beyond the scope of his family and his community he is basically forgotten. Where his brother and the senator have charged through life as if success was a foregone conclusion, Wilton stumbled through his short big league career.

He was a meek and powerless player from the get-go. At 5-11 and just 145 pounds, he looked buried in his uniform, as if the jersey might swallow him up at any moment. And never did Wilton Guerrero seem as child-like as that June afternoon, leading off a game against St. Louis, breaking his bat, and then scrambling after the shards. It was 1997, his rookie season, and he had already resorted to a desperate act.

But was Wilton Guerrero really that bad at baseball? Next to superstar Vladmir, it’s hard to turn many heads as a light-hitting utility man. Mental errors and the corked bat and a generally lackadaisical style didn’t help much either. But he retired a .282 hitter, with innings logged at every defensive position but pitcher and catcher. Seems like he was at least somewhat useful – like maybe if he had a reputation for scrap and instead of signing from the Dominican Republic, he was drafted in the 87th round, he might have stuck around longer.

Wilton obviously wasn’t drafted. Rather, he was just the lesser brother, the walking mistake (the Dodgers signed him but passed on Vlad), the symbol of unfilled potential. Lincoln said that “Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” Wilton Guerrero is all shadow to us now.

And maybe that isn’t fair. Maybe we should consider the tree in a broader sense. Because what do we know about Wilton Guerrero the man? Maybe he’s a great father or husband or son. Maybe he volunteers in the community. Maybe he doesn’t. In this world of ours, making it from an impoverished Dominican town to the major leagues is a pretty miraculous achievement; making it form anywhere to the Major Leagues is. But as the brother of Vladmir (or namesake of a Senator I guess?), the standards get changed.

The failed brother in sports is hardly a failure at all. The Wilton Guerreros and Billy Ripkens of the world are placed in this unmanageable context. Instead of being compared to Joe Marginal Infielder, they are lined up with Joe Hall of Famer. That’s tough and it doesn’t take into account the whole notion that glory in sports is at least on one level artificial. Perhaps the Wiltons and the Billys have had happier lives because they didn’t spend long careers in the big leagues. Perhaps they are up at night thinking about it to this day.

Regardless, there are few things in life more ephemeral than glory. Even if your glory is small in the context of your superstar brother, even if your glory is the size of a shard that flew off your corked bat in 1997, it is something to be savored.

Conventional Wisdom and Thinking, 2 Comments