09 May 2011, by Eric
Welcome to 1990s First Basemen Week.
In the lead-up to this week, a few people have asked us why we chose the 1990s first baseman as a subject for celebration and exploration. Those people have generally not been baseball fans. Baseball fans know that the 90s were a wonderful period for first basemen. These imposing anchors of the infield sparked our imaginations as the sluggers of note in a time before A-Rod and Jeter redefined shortstop, and before the sabermetric revolution asked that we look past the pop to deeper truths. First basemen in the 1990s were the last great hitters before the dawn of the age of cynicism.
The 1990s provided Hall of Fame performers like Frank Thomas and Jeff Bagwell, charismatic local legends like Mark Grace, lumbering power hitters like Cecil Fielder, since-forgotten stars like Greg Jefferies, friends of Mike Piazza like Eric Karros, steroid era icons like Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire, defensive wizards like JT Snow, stoic and steady performers like John Olerud and Fred McGriff, and even the indescribable Mo Vaughn.
In other words, the 1990s first baseman are of a type, fixed in our brain as perhaps the best and most evocative symbol of an era just before the next great unrest in baseball. They are also a menagerie. There is no single word or phrase potent enough to describe the gamut of first basemen in the 1990s, and the various emotional and cultural niches that they occupy. But we hope that with a lot of words -- from both ourselves and from an array of talented friends -- we can do those fine and often un-fine men justice.
This week Pitchers & Poets will feature essays, commentaries, team surveys, statistical analyses, and a great deal more, all of which explore the first basemen of the 1990s. There will be plenty of the long posts you expect from us, as well as some insight from our resident statistician as we search for the most representative first baggers of the decade.
We have also asked some notable voices to comment on which first baseman they consider to be the most quintessentially representative of the decade. We’re calling them Short Hops, and we’ll share these answers throughout the week.
Our friend Kolin Pope -- find him on Twitter -- designed the awesome banner you see above.
So please, tune in and comment as we laugh with, cry over, and cheer for the biggest stars of a brawny age. This is 1990s First Basemen Week.
Eric & Ted
P.S. We’ll tweet about this with the hashtag #90s1BWeek -- so please, please join us in taking the 90s first base experience worldwide.
06 May 2011, by Eric
We don't do too much self-promotion here on Pitchers & Poets, but sometimes it's necessary. And as our traffic grows -- which it has quite a bit in 2011, thank you new readers! -- we hope that you follow the site in all its other iterations on other platforms.
We also hope that you tell your friends about P&P --the content and the podcast. We appreciate it a great deal when people spread the word. Now is a good time to do it, too, because next week we will be celebrating something everybody loves, First Basemen of the 1990s, with the help of many good friends. With that in mind:
You can follow Ted on Twitter @Ted_PandP
You can follow me, Eric, on Twitter @ericnus
You can follow the blog itself on Twitter @pitchersnpoets
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And most importantly, you can get in touch by emailing tips@pitchersandpoets.com -- we love hearing from readers.
05 May 2011, by Ted
Last night, Eric and I went down to the Georgetown section of Seattle, where, nestled between tendrils of the Union Pacific and BNSF Railway, some warehouses surrounded by barbed wire, and a few coffee shops, Fantagraphics Books runs a richly stocked half and half store full of graphic novels and records. On tap for the evening was a conversation between Wilfred Santiago, author of the recently published graphic novel 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente, and baseball writer and Baseball Nation editor Rob Neyer.
The graphic novel is a beautifully wrought Clemente collage, following the hitter from the impactful events of childhood through his career as a Pirate and up to his untimely death. While there were several poignant dramatic through lines, the book's strength lies in its brilliant visuals, which far outweigh its strictly biographical content. In addition to his many other notable qualities, like his humanitarianism and his greatness as a player, Clemente was a beautiful man, with a striking physicality. Drawing on this aesthetic truth, Santiago stuns and heightens it, with an imaginative and dramatic illustrative style, with its palette of Pirates yellow, and orange and black. The oral tradition of myth-making is put into visual form here.
Neyer interviewed Santiago about Clemente and about the book, covering topics like Clemente's spiritual bent, his legacy as a humanitarian, and the creative challenges of translating baseball into the graphic novel form. Afterwards, Santiago signed copies of the book, and Neyer was nice enough to hang around and chat with a couple of lowly, esoteric baseball bloggers.
04 May 2011, by Eric
Last night I was talking with Eric Freeman about No Hitters. By talking I mean agreeing that it's pointless and purposefully joyless to whine during and immediately after a no-hitter that the game isn't as "well-pitched" as other games that aren't no-hitters. There is inherent value in the sheer improbability of a game like the one Francisco Liriano pitched yesterday. It was a messy, unbecoming, a nerve-wracking, defense-driven spectacle of the highest order.
No-hitters are news because they are rare and dramatic, not merely because they are impressive. As far as I know, there isn't a contingent of people out there screaming and tweeting that Francisco Liriano pitched the best game of the season last night. There isn't a contingent yelling about how he's the league's best pitcher. That's besides the point. The point is that there is joy in the string of lucky plays and defense and building tension that defined his performance.
I went to the Mariner game last night. Erik Bedard tossed five of the ugliest no-hit innings in baseball history to open the game. He even allowed a run. Anybody in the park could have told you that it wasn't a great performance. They would have also told you that they were disappointed -- and yet not surprised -- when Ian Kinsler broke it up with a double. It has to do with the streak. It has to do with the fact that the baseball fan experience is defined by narrative as much as it is by statistical understanding.
That might be the whole point of this blog. I don't think we're working against the grain here. I don't think we're anti-sabermetrics. We love and embrace them. They are useful. They make us smarter. But from my angle, a central element of that world is this ill-defined quest to seek out the 'objective best' of everything. I think that comes at the expense of the 'subjective best' -- the most interesting, the most dynamic, the most grok.
The Francisco Liriano no-hitter was an anomaly. Jeff Sullivan from Lookout Landing tweeted that "Since the beginning of the 2010 season, 86 starts have a higher game score than Liriano's yesterday." If anything that makes the performance all the more compelling. Sullivan later tweeted that the start was "impressive in a different way than usual." Damn right it was different. Let's celebrate different. Francisco Liriano is a pitcher on the verge of total collapse. He -- with the help of his team and yes, precarious luck -- held it together for something magnificent. Let's sing about it.
03 May 2011, by Eric
In this episode, we are joined by Paul Franz to discuss the connection between Abbottabad and ex-big leaguer Jim Abbott, baseball and education, homophobic ranting and other fretful major league behavior, the Twitter musings of Will Rhymes, and the drama of repeated foul balls resulting in long at bats.
We're still hammering out some details, like getting the podcast back in the iTunes store, but for now you can subscribe in iTunes yourself, or via any RSS reader. Just use this feed url:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ThePitchersAndPoetsPodcast
In iTunes, just click Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast, then enter that url, and you're in business.
[podcast]http://pitchersandpoets.com/podcast/PnP_029.mp3[/podcast]
To download the file directly, right click and Save As:
http://pitchersandpoets.com/podcast/PnP_029.mp
Click here to read Paul's blog Nicht Diese Tone.
