Sometimes people ask us why baseball is our favorite sport. There's no one good answer but it's easy to come up with reasons it appeals to the obsessives, the nostalgics, the fastidious among us. Scorekeeping is just one of the symptoms, in that it is more than just keeping score, it is an institution. The language of scorekeeping, the history and the symbolism, speak to our collective desire to log the proceedings, to set the course of events down on paper.
Buried in the subconscious of the every amateur scorekeeper is the fantasy that someday, years into the future, a researcher will stumble across that mustard-stained scorecard from a Sunday afternoon in Arlington, and use it to construct the final, Rosebud-like paragraph of said scorekeeper’s biography.
The point is, this Scorekeeping Week at Pitchers & Poets. We felt like the act of scorekeeping was both personal enough and broad enough to justify an entire week of posts, from a range of perspectives, from the graphic designer to the professional broadcaster, and all of the fans in between.
This is also the first time we have ever laid claim to a week, labeled it, and singled it out for any official purpose. Seeing as scorekeeping is a universal activity, we hope that you ponder it along with us on your own blog, or better yet in our comments section.
In the next few days you can look forward to interviews with scorebook visionary Bethany Heck and with Seattle Mariners TV broadcaster Dave Sims, as well as reflections from friends of the site, all on the topic of scorekeeping.
I haven't written about it in a while, but I'm an Astros fan. Please, hold your applause until the end.
As a team, the Astros are in the awkward tween stage right now, lurking around the punch bowl at the edge of the MLB dance floor after the jettison of two of their long-time icons, Lance Berkman and Roy Oswalt.
The core of young Astros (if a blob of Jello like this team can be said to have a core), includes third baseman Chris Johnson, first baseman Brett Wallace, and catcher Jason Castro, none of whom are highly anticipated prospects anymore, and they are the likes of which only an Astros fan could invest much effort in watching develop.
That said, an Astros fan could, a few days ago, muster some excitement about this campaign. This would have been the first year when the three youngsters from Ed Wade's rebuilding process were to be chucked onto the field from day one to prove it in practice over theory.
The only solace of Astros fans this year--with the playoffs so unlikely and barring a miracle--will be to watch to see if some big leaguers emerge from the pool of wannabes. When Castro's knee gave out, 33 percent of that potential pleasure pool spiraled down the drain.
As quick as I could read the news that morning, Astros Spring Training transformed from a place of youthful optimism to a purgatory of scrap heap catching talent and aging retreads.
Watching a team like the Astros, you spend more time hoping against disaster than celebrating success. Much of the pleasure of young players comes from learning that they can hold their own, and that they are as good as you hoped they would be. Humberto Quintero and J.R. Towles, the most likely to fill Castro's new shoes, have failed numerous times to pull that sword out of the stone. Castro's turn had come, and now it's another year of waiting.
I shouldn't be so pessimistic, even if, when it comes to the Astros, the rest of baseball is. Nobody knows where the next surprise will come from. Anyone can make an educated guess, but there were 15 teams that overlooked Lance Berkman in the first round of the 1997 draft (Pick #15? Jason Dellaero), and 22 rounds passed before Roy Oswalt was drafted in the same year. Pessimism didn't foresee Jose Bautista's explosion last year, and who knows what 2011 may hold.
Instead of moping, I should just wait around and hope for some kind of Texas miracle, like an oil geyser spouting up from beneath the flagpole in center field, or Nolan Ryan coming out of retirement.
There's one lesson in spring: cliches are easily busted, just as quickly as a ligament snaps. Or maybe cliches aren't busted, maybe one simply gives way to another. The youngster trying to make his mark on the game quickly becomes the promising young player whose chance to make his mark is cut short by a chance injury. If the fragmentation of cliches is infinite, do cliches exist at all?
We passed over the news when it scrolled across the bottom of our screens a few weeks ago, but Gary Sheffield has retired.
With that, I thought it a good time to re-post parts from the wonderful paean to the man penned by Eric back in August of 2009, in a post he called The Sheff Abides:
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 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.
For all of the madness that Charlie Sheen has injected into the pop culture conversation of late, there’s a side note, a low harmonic hum just beneath the blaring orchestra of drugs and sex, that bears noting here: the man loves baseball.
Evidence:
Sheen invited current and retired ballplayers (some speculate that he’s imitating Brian Wilson this whole time, which, if it were sanctioned would prove to be near-Franco level pop culture foiling) to his house to watch the movie that he made about baseball. That movie, Major League, is one of the best baseball movies ever, due, in no small part, to Sheen’s performance. He referred to himself and his buddies Wilson and Lenny Dykstra as “gnarly gnarlsons.” Of the visit, Wilson said, “When Rick Vaughn calls the bullpen I'm going to answer — on a professional level, of course.”
A story came out from Houston’s Richard Justice that Sheen had a go-to guy to set up a full-on baseball game every time he came to town. A full game! This not like rounding up the usual suspects for a pick-up game of basketball; this is occupying a college baseball field with full sets of nine or more.
Of the few people he follows on Twitter, two of them are baseball stars (Nick Swisher and Brian Wilson). In the pictures he links to via Twitter, he wears an Indians cap.
He gave a pep talk to the UCLA baseball team, in which he inspired the team with the following message: “Don’t do crack, drink chocolate milk, and enjoy every moment. That’s all I got.” He wore a Cincinnati Reds hat for the raspy appearance.
Of course, Eric let us know about Sheen’s trips to the ballpark to take batting practice and oh, by the way, mash. Must be the tiger blood pulsing through his veins. Or the chocolate milk.
Is Sheen the ambassador that baseball is looking for? Probably not, but his love of the game seems to be some kind of a space anchor for him as he hurtles through the Milky Way.
Ted likes to make fun of me for constantly retelling the story of when Jack Nicholson said "I'm not a fucking magician, take the cap off the pen," after 12-year old Eric asked him for his autograph. He likes to call me name-dropper. I'm not a name-dropper, though. I just grew up in Los Angeles -- Culver City at that. The New York Times recently said Culver City was a "nowhere" becoming a "somewhere." But for as long as it's been anywhere, movies have been made in Culver City. Sony Studios (once MGM) is there.
The point being that there were movie stars around sometimes. One of them was Charlie Sheen, who you may have read about lately. As his meltdown became increasingly legendary, I told Ted that Charlie Sheen could really hit the hell out of a baseball. He was like "huh?" And I said "seriously."
When I was in high school in the early 2000s, Charlie Sheen would occasionally drop by our field after we were done with practice and take BP. He never spoke to any of us. But he did launch home run after home run. It was one of those slightly surreal things you think little of at the time, but realize afterward are interesting. And now there is video evidence, courtesy of the new and awesome "Let's Go Dodgers!" Tumblr:
