15 Apr 2011, by Ted
A wet, stormy day in Kansas City, the broadcasters were practically calling this one before it started, hoping to make it official before the big blow moved in to stay. Even an early surge from the Royals this year wasn't enough to ward off the dreariness of a gray spring day. 8,811 damp souls hid under umbrellas while they watched Bruce Chen sling his journeyman's selection of pitches. The Mariners came into the game with 4 wins and 8 losses.
The day in Ichiro:
1. In his first at bat against Chen's sling-armed arsenal of low 80s to high 80s cheese, Ichiro reached low and lofted a pop-up to shallow center. The hit was just about to drop expertly between the center fielder and the shortstop--another in Ichiro's legacy of perfectly placed hits--when Alcides Escobar, raced under it, reached out at the last possible moment, and caught it over his left shoulder, at waist level. A professional hitter met with a professional defensive play.
2. The close-up camera filming Ichiro's pre-pitch warm-up shook violently in the wind, and it was raining steadily for Ichiro's second at bat. He took a fastball strike outside, then fouled off a sweeping Chen breaking ball. Color man Mike Blowers said of the pitcher-hitter match-up, "Ichiro saw plenty of pitchers like Chen in Japan, so I'd think it wouldn't bother him." There may be something to the observation, that Japanese pitchers don't throw as hard as major leaguers, and that they throw a lot of breaking stuff, the way that Chen does. My initial reaction was skepticism, as Ichiro's been in the bigs for a decade, a far cry from his roots by now. On reflection, though, there must be a deeply ingrained familiarity with the style that wouldn't simply disappear. Only just now did it occur to me that Chen's name might have subliminally triggered the broadcaster's association with the Asian game. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Ichiro soon smacked a single as neat as a bounce pass dead up the middle, past a reaching Chen to the shortstop Escobar again, who fielded it, spun, and nearly pegged Ichiro at first. Alcides and Ichiro seem to be developing a strange sort of relationship, the inklings of a rangy duel.
3. Chen served up a lazy swerver right down Broadway in Ichiro's third at bat, and Ichiro hit it squarely and sent it up the middle for a clean base hit. Said the line drive: "You robbed me once, Escobar, and almost again. Not this time." Am I crazy to think that Ichiro decided before the game to hit everything straight back up the middle? Is that even possible?
As a sidenote, the game itself was over from around the third inning. The Mariners barely hinted at scoring.
Point being, Ichiro is often the game itself. I don't much care what goes on around him on nights like this, even if he does. To me, his exploits are comprehensive. It's Ichiro v. Escobar tonight amid the rain and mud.
4. In the eighth inning, with the team down five to zero and the bluster thickening, Ichiro chopped one more ground ball up the middle for Alcides to gather and deliver to Kila Ka'aihue at first. The game was called and put down in the books after eight innings. A young guy on tarp duty fell in front of the big roll and it steamrolled him. He appeared dazed but conscious afterwards.
The record will indicate that this game pitted the Kansas City Royals against the Seattle Mariners. The truth, as we now know it, is that Ichiro Suzuki and Alcides Escobar rallied like Federer and Nadal, lobbing gambits and exchanging volleys while the world around them plodded past.
15 Apr 2011, by Eric
In this podcast we visit the supermarket in order to make sense of it all, discuss baseball writing in the context of Eastern spirituality, talk pitcher jackets on the basepaths, and question the wisdom of generalists.
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_026.mp3[/podcast]
To download the file directly, right click and Save As:
http://pitchersandpoets.com/podcast/PnP_026.mp3
14 Apr 2011, by Ted
There is no nickname listed on Miguel Cabrera’s Baseball-Reference page. I consider Baseball-Reference to be the baseball site of record in this day and age, and it has evolved into one of the last word’s on semi-formal cultural markers like nicknames. Cabrera is certainly prominent enough to have a nickname, and that such a good ballplayer wouldn't acquire even one of note was surprising. Baseball-Reference isn't even stingy with nicknames. For example, Carl Crawford, who I have never heard referred to by any nickname whatsoever, has been attributed the moniker "The Perfect Storm." It's a great nickname, but not hard-earned, and Cabrera deserves at least a similar treatment.
How does one of the game's greatest hitters lack even a tenuous moniker on the Baseball Encyclopedia of today? Has one of the best hitters in baseball not sparked the meager imagination required for even a pop culture nod? There are three nicknames on the Baseball-Reference page for Albert Pujols: The Machine, Prince Albert, and Phat Albert.
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Even before this offseason's debacle of a DUI arrest, the unstoppable locomotive that was Miguel Cabrera’s career shimmied on the track. It was late in the season, 2009, the Tigers were in a heated playoff race, and Cabrera’s wife called the cops at 6 a.m. to report an incident. Cabrera wasn’t arrested, but the criticism came fast and furious, including questions about his motivation and game preparation. The Tigers would lose their first place position on the last day of the season, to the Twins, primarily because of the team’s inability to hit (though in his defense, Cabrera hit well in the 163rd and final game of the 2009 year for the Tigers). A fulcrum-type player, Cabrera, the superstar, could either stand up or fold the season after such a tumult.
Cabrera stood. After the season, he addressed a pattern of alcohol abuse, and started to see a therapist. As I noted in my earlier post on Cabrera, before the 2010 season, he said he'd be better, all-around. Indications seemed to be that he had kept to his word, and it showed in his 2010 numbers.
How does one of the game's greatest hitters lack even a tenuous moniker on the Baseball Encyclopedia of today?
He had improved, and if there was a list of players for whom improvement would seem impossible, Cabrera would be on it. In 2010, the 27-year-old had, according to Fangraphs, his best season as a hitter, with his average up from 2009, his power up, his on-base average up.
MLB.com writer Roger Schlueter wrote, “In 2010, Miguel Cabrera hit .328, got on base at a .420 clip (the best in the league), slugged over .600 (.622), had 38 home runs (and a total of 84 extra-base hits), compiled a league-leading 179 OPS+ (the best of his career) and also led the league with 126 RBIs. Cabrera's 126 RBIs left him tied for seventh-most for any player with at least 30 intentional walks. For most players, a season like this would stand out like a sequoia in the middle of a pygmy forest. But for Cabrera, his 2010 was simply another data point on an extraordinary career arc.”
Cabrera was, and is, the kind of hitter whose offensive influence seems to expand beyond his single spot in the lineup, sailing ahead of his teammates like the flagship of an armada.
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The term "nickname" comes from the 15th century, derived from the Old English word eaca, meaning "an increase," and related to the word eacian, meaning "to increase." A nickname increases, obviously, the number of names that apply to an individual. But it also adds to the persona, the sort of ether that hangs around a cultural figure.
A nickname is a way for a large group of people to codify their affection for a baseball player. The nickname embodies a player's character and style, and it becomes a shorthand for the initiated, bringing the fan closer to the player, and fans closer to one another. When Cardinals fans praise The Machine, they honor not only the mechanical precision of the team's best hitter, but they also honor their commitment to his success, and they use the nickname to signal to others the sort of fan that they are. They enrich themselves and contribute to the collective usage of the baseball player's persona.
When Miguel Cabrera asked, "Do you know who I am?" he could as easily have asked, "What's my nickname?"
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Outside observers who are not as affected by his daily excellence have often wondered if Cabrera would get too fat, if his defense would hold up, whether he cared enough. He has been so consistently great from so early on that his greatness has become commonplace, allowing room for these minor slights. For an example, see prominent Tigers blogger billfer, who included this footnote on a year end wrap-up of the 2010 Tigers season: “*Note Cabrera would have fit my proprietary [monthly] ‘top performers’ criteria for every month but September, when he was still OPS+ 130, so let’s just save everyone the time on him.”
There was only room in the baseball multiverse for one unflappable demigod.
There was only room in the baseball multiverse for one unflappable demigod, and that was Prince Albert. And for a while, Miguel Cabrera’s booze-related faults illustrated just how stoic and productive Pujols really was, reinforcing the trope that greatness is an endurance sport. Of his faults in the wake of the 2009 scandal, Cabrera said, “Sometimes you feel like your body is kind of lazy.” Lazy! If Prince Albert has ever let the l-word escape his lips, it’d be news.
But the Pujols contract situation has lately tarnished the once-spotless Machine's chrome fittings. Pujols himself now seems capable of the sort of slick self-evaluation that Cabrera let slip during his arrest, the Cardinal's contract deadline being a muted version of the Tiger's impaired braggadocio. A machine is not supposed to question its place in the hierarchy; it is supposed to hit without question. This is the first season that we're watching Pujols hit as a human being with a few flaws and foibles. It may even be just enough humanizing to jar him from his perch as the unflappable superstar. However far apart they remain, he and Cabrera are closer now than they ever have been.
(Just to be clear, I don't think that the Pujols contract conversations are particularly compelling or anywhere near the scale of the Cabrera saga, just that the negotiations showed a different catch of light in the Pujols diamond.)
The window for Cabrera to occupy some kind of baseball equality with Pujols may be small, but it's there right now. Albert is slumping to start off the season (.222/.225/.447 thank you very much), while Miguel Cabrera has of late knocked walk-off hits and been walked in the late innings to avoid giving up a late run, putting up .382/.488/.794 numbers. Early in his first season as a mortal, Pujols is playing poorly. Early in his first season as a question mark, Cabrera has answered with a firm-handed statement: learn who I am.
He may not glow with perfection or righteousness, but he gives us the chance to watch a human story, and he plays out the story that most of us aspire to. It's a story about exceeding some expectations, even as we fail to meet others, hoping that on any given day the former outweighs the latter.
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In The Neverending Story, my second favorite movie as a kid, at the pivotal moment the child empress asks the main character, a bookworm named Bastian, to save her magical world by saying her name out loud. Bastian throws open the windows, face in a lightning storm, and screams her name, which happens to be his late mother's name, and in so doing he recreates a universe.
In his work on myth, Roland Barthes says that "myth is a type of speech," defined not by its content--in this case the particulars of the empress/mother's name--"but by the way in which it is conveyed by a discourse." The saying.
With every hit, each of which affirms his excellence, Miguel Cabrera says something.
13 Apr 2011, by Eric
In honor of Milton Bradley and his earplugs, Ted and I have decided to begin a campaign. In the tradition of the Rangers' #claw and #antlers gestures, we want to get the Mariners -- not just Milton to begin using #earplugs. Kind of like this:
Seeing Ichiro (or even Ryan Langerhans, or especially Bradley) do the earplugs after an RBI double would be all the vindication Ted and I could ever want as bloggers. We urge you to get in on #earplugs now. Spread the word. This isn't a revolution, but it may be something close.
13 Apr 2011, by Eric
I'm getting to be like a concerned parent with all this Milton Bradley stuff. My friend Brett (who blogs about the Mariners' AAA affiliate Rainiers for alt-weekly Tacoma Volcano), said he can barely stand to watch Milton Bradley play. Brett sees the intense grimacing and the agony in Bradley's eyes and the tightness with which he grips the bat and can't help but feel the ominous presence of some future Bradley explosion creeping beneath the surface.
I realized, of course, that Brett is right.* It can be hard to watch Milton Bradley . And for different reasons, I'm probably worse than Brett is. I don't worry that he will explode – there's a weirdly maternal sense of denial telling me everything will be okay. Instead, I worry that the world will be cruel to Milton, that it will judge him unfairly, that it will seek out the worst angels of his nature.
*Brett was less right when he told me “To be a Milton Bradley apologist is human, to be a Matt Tuiasasasopo apologist is divine.”
Maybe I need to just accept the facts. I need to realize that the world will never accept Milton Bradley. Unless he hits for the cycle and fixes social security and starts dating Natalie Portman in the next few months, this will be another lost season in the public eye. Milton Bradley himself seems to have come to terms with this reality. To silence – or at least quiet – the boos, he has begun wearing earplugs on the field.
In theory this is not such a bad idea. The earplugs bring their own round of ridicule, but this time the ridicule comes with the knowledge that Bradley actually gives a shit, that he wants to make right, that he hears the world and that the listening is now too painful. But Bradley's earplugs are more than just a mirror held up to ruthless fans; they are a declaration of independence from them. He's given up trying to win the public over. He's isolating himself on the field. If anything, this puts more pressure than before on Bradley to perform.
The earplugs also make me nervous. They make me cringe. Don't you realize, I want to tell him, that this just makes you even weirder? Don't you realize that this is not a solution – that you're addressing only the symptoms? The earplugs can't drown out everything, they can't make the media disappear and they can't silence every heckler. Plus, if something does go wrong, then they are an even bigger joke – and Bradley too is an even bigger joke.
I hope I can soon leave this topic behind. I hope Bradley stays healthy and plays good baseball this year. I know the cringe-factor is part of what draws me to Bradley – the potential for something volatile. But I hope that it fades away and that the emotions we do see – like during that sacred season in Arlington – spill forth joyously.
***
Worth noting that this all comes couched in my ever-increasing confidence that Milton Bradley is a good person; that his problems are significant, but they can't define his nature. Mariners broadcaster Ken Levine said Bradley was a tremendously nice guy. He apparently has a sense of humor about himself as well. A fan essay on Lookout Landing last week (thanks Kenneth), described Bradley giving his bat and batting gloves to a pair of kids at Spring Training, garnering a round of applause for the deed, then stiffening up. He scowled and put his finger to his lips and told them "Hey now folks, keep it down! I have a reputation to keep up here."
Hank Waddles, who writes for the Bronx Banter and runs Go Mighty Card (a Stanford blog), shared an epic Bradley story in the comments to the Encino Man post from a while back. What it comes down to is that Bradley is an extremely gracious guy when it comes to his community, especially young people in his community. You should read it.