23 Apr 2010, by Eric
Along with three friends, I am coaching a Little League team of seven, eight, and nine year olds. All four of us are in our early twenties. Needless to say, we are the only coaches in the league without kids of our own. Our goal? Utter domination. Throughout the season I will keep Pitchers & Poets readers updated on the goings on surrounding the team.
Bryce Harper is seventeen years old. He will most likely be selected with the first pick by the Washington Nationals in June’s MLB Amateur Draft. As he continues to hit baseballs arguably harder than any other person his age ever has, his myth only grows. When he was sixteen, Harper was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. His talents are so blatant that denying them would be akin to denying the existence of gravity.
Young Shawn Green is nine years old. He will most likely be picked first or second for soccer or football at an upcoming recess. As he continues to hit baseballs farther than any player on our team, his spot in our batting order only improves. To my knowledge, Young Shawn Green has yet to grace any magazine covers, but if he ever does, it will probably not be Sports Illustrated. One possibility is Chess Life, as he will be missing our game next Saturday to compete in a statewide tournament.
There is a catch with Bryce Harper. Kevin Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus recently wrote about fears surrounding his mental makeup. Every baseball professional who has scouted Harper, Golstein writes, “genuinely dislikes the kid.” One GM even calls Harper “the anti-Joe Mauer.” It is perfectly possible, as Rob Neyer points out, to be both a great baseball player and a lousy human being. And it is certainly possible that Harper will turn out to be a good person – after all he is only seventeen. Either way, like many other child prodigies, his story can be a cautionary one.
So far as I can tell, there is no catch with young Frank Thomas. His bat speed leaves much to be desired, as does his foot speed. His focus on the diamond is questionable at best. Sometimes he occupies himself between plays by digging holes in the infield, others by building dirt mounds. In the dugout, he enjoys climbing chain link fences and other such silliness. Yet young Frank Thomas can really hit. Line drives jump off his bat. He can also play guitar. He missed a game last week for a recital.
To get as good as Bryce Harper has, as quickly as he has, requires a determination bordering on the inhuman. Sacrifices must be made: other sporting interests fall by the wayside, social lives get put on hold, schoolwork becomes less than a priority and any other interests are relegated to the distant background. These sacrifices, for all their benefits (likely tens of millions of dollars of benefits), come at the expense of, well, a well-balanced humanity.
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="279" caption="There appear to be no young Bobby Fischers in the bunch."]
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The Killer Bees roster is not short on balance. Young Shawn Green has chess tournaments, Young Frank Thomas has guitar recitals, half-a dozen more have soccer practices; all of them, it seems, have Pokémon in their lives. This is an extracurricular world, and Little League coaches are just living it.
A few weeks ago, I wrote an essay on the mechanics of coaching: “This post is not about building character,” I wrote, “this is about building baseball players.” Well this post is about character, I suppose. Character is not something that can be coached – unless you are willing to engage in absurdities, which we are not. Character is something that goes far beyond what Little League coaches who see these kids only a few hours a week are capable of. So how do we address it?
First off, the way to address character is not by teaching it. Little League is not Sunday school. Our job is not moral instruction. By third and fourth grade, these kids have an idea of right and wrong. They know how to listen to their coaches and they know not to hit each other in the head with the baseball bats. That said, character is not something to ignore completely.
As coaches, we try to se a good example and encourage positive behavior. We try to be fair and consistent with the kids, we try to keep our swearing in check. And we try to commend them for cheering one another on, and supporting one another when things go wrong. But beyond that, how do we address it? How do we fulfill our league-assigned duty as Double Goal Coaches? The lines of sportsmanship are blurry, as we discussed after last week's post on getting blown out. We want to foster a desire to succeed, partly so the kids will learn to cope with both victory and defeat (there is no avoiding failure in baseball). But we also want to teach perspective.
Of course perspective is easy when baseball is just one of a dozen activities every week. These are the joys of the short attention span. We won a very close, exciting game last week. For five innings, the Killer Bees were locked in. They knew the score, they knew the outs, they even knew the counts. But five minutes after snack was handed out, it was on to piano lessons, on to Pokémon, on to play dates. Win or lose, home run or strike out, it’s the same story.
There are no Bryce Harpers on this team. Nobody cries, nobody taunts, nobody hits 450 foot line drives. We are more easily distracted than easily set off, more oblivious than we are anxious. The Killer Bees, it turns out, are populated by a bunch of Doug Glanville and Ross Ohlendorf and Bernie Williams types. It turns out that we resemble Joe Mauer – a multi-sport superstar in high school and amateur musician --more than Bryce Harper.
Mauer’s well-roundedness has always struck me as a result of his varied interests, his awareness of the fact that the cliché is true: it’s only a game. Unfortunately, there are not, as Neyer points out, many Joe Mauers in the world of baseball. Perhaps that’s why displays that people playing baseball are more than ballplayers come as a pleasant surprise to me. Perhaps that’s also why I’ve been so surprised by the character of the Killer Bees.
The credit for this, of course, goes to the team’s parents and schoolteachers and other more durable adult role models. They are the ones who instill balance. For us, coaching character is as easy as instinct. Tell them they did a good job. Remind them that winning is no big deal, don’t worry about the score. The rest of it is taken care of by the sum of all their other experiences. It’s taken care of in the places where a kid like Harper may not have spent enough time. It’s taken care of at soccer games, at guitar practice, at chess club, and at the dinner table.
21 Apr 2010, by Eric
In Podcast #7, we mourn the retirement of Eric Gagne and contemplate the decline of David Ortiz. We can't help getting all hyperbolic over Jason Heyward, and bringing Casey McGeehee and other overachievers down to earth. We ask the age old questions: talent or athleticism? Scouts or stats? What's it like to hug Matt Kemp? How does it feel to live in Jason Heyward's massive shadow? (That's you, Matt Wieters). Most importantly, we contemplate the perfect symmetry of the Josh Hamilton -- Edinson Volquez trade and it's possible impact on the economy.
Special cameos from Shawn Carter, Turtle from Entourage, Jaime Moyer, and Celine Dion. Update: Not to mention my (Eric's) favorite actor of all time, Danny Trejo
If the spelling of Ty Wigginton's last name has confounded you for years, get this podcast in your ears:
[podcast]http://roguesbaseballindex.com/pnp_podcasts/PnP_007.mp3[/podcast]
19 Apr 2010, by Ted
Ted: Eric, Ubaldo Jimenez threw the first no-hitter of the year, which creates a great opportunity to discuss one of the more distinct accomplishments that baseball has to offer. I can't think of another accomplishment in sport that receives so much attention for preventing something from happening. No shutout by any goalie, dominant number of blocks from a basketball big man or NFL defensive wall has quite the cultural cachet as the no-no does.
I still get all tingly when a pitcher throws a no-hitter. What is it about the feat, and the watching of the feat, that is so dramatic and compelling?
Eric: I have always admired the basketball Triple Double because it comes with a sense of completeness -- it highlights balance and teamwork and efficiency. But rebounds are far less romantic than strikeouts. The great thing about the no-hitter is that it's a high-wire act. With every succeeding batter the odds of it actually happening get slimmer. The other thing is that like a high-wire act, a no-hitter allows for a certain amount of wobbliness.
Ubaldo Jimenez walked a precarious six batters when he threw his no-no. That's far from a perfect game. The perfect game is a different feat, a symmetrical achievement that borders on the artistically genius (I wrote about it here). A no-hitter like the one thrown by Jimenez is as much about guile, as much about nerves, as much about fear, as it is about pitching.
When pitchers throw perfect games, they look invincible. But when they throw no-hitters, they look human. That's why I won't let go of my high-wire metaphor. Have you seen Man on Wire by the way? I've been meaning to check it out on Netflix Instant.
Ted: I have seen Man on Wire. You will love it for the same reasons you'll love the 1978 Expos: if you're into the 70s and eccentric French people.
I don't know if I'm buying your starry eyed vision of a 6-walk no-hitter. When I heard that little side note about the free passes I felt the feat was that something of a gold-plated clunker, to get the credit for a no-no when you've let six men on base. After all, the point of a no-hitter is that you dominated the opposition, not that you gave up an inordinate number of free outs. There's a point at which it becomes a gimmick, like saying a guy just threw a no-doubler or a no-balker.
Now obviously I'm exaggerating; it was still a dominant performance. But can we put this into the canon of great performances? I suppose it doesn't matter: it's really fun to watch a pitcher walk the tight rope.
Have you ever seen a no-hitter in person? I haven't, and I wonder what it's like. Thoughts?
Eric: This is the point in our conversation when I inevitably tip my cap to the blogosphere's ghost of the Expos, Jonah Keri. Moving on, I don't know if I buy your sudden sabermetrically induced skepticism. It's a no-hitter, not a no-walker. Have there been 1-hitters or 3-hitters pitched better than Ubaldo's no-hitter? Probably. But they aren't magic.
In other words, I don't think the idea is that you dominated. The idea is that you didn't allow any hits. NO HITS! I don't see it as a gimmick at all. The no-hitter is not about retrospect. It's not about analysis. It's about the moment. Some accomplishments grow greater in scope as we look back on them. No-hitters are at their most dynamic as they are occurring.
I haven't seen a no-hitter in person. But this is why I've always wanted to. I don't think there's any sporting achievment I'd rather see in person. I saw Fernando Tatis take Chan Ho Park for two grand slams in the same inning. I saw Ichiro break the single season hit record. But I'd trade both to see a no-hitter in person. I can only imagine the shivers and the tension and the elation at the end of it all.
What about you? If you could see any baseball achievement in person, what would it be? I know you're a fan of the cycle's mystique.
Ted: I feel fortunate to have actually seen the achievement I most wanted to in person: Craig Biggio's 3,000th hit. As you've very effectively pointed out, that one was about retrospect, not about the tension of the moment. If you're talking single-game variety achievements, I'd most want to see Josh Wilker throw out the first pitch at a Vermont Lake Monsters game.
Some cynical part of me thinks that a no-hitter is best appreciated from home, via television. That's where the mastery is clear, after all. From the stands, most pitchers look the same, as do most pitches. The results would be engaging, obviously, but the true depth of the accomplishment goes out the door. I'm not saying I wouldn't want to be there, just that the experience is profoundly different. It's very likely that I am over-thinking it. I'd love to see a no-hitter in person.
Having no-hit myself with 18 walks, logic-wise, we'll just have to agree to agree. No-hitters are as awesome as eccentric French people and the 70s.
16 Apr 2010, by Eric
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="200 in Roman Numerals is CC"]
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This is our 200th post. So before we get to the Weekend Reading portion, Ted and I wanted to try something new: namely request feedback. This is both general and specific request. Generally, feel free tell us some things about the blog. How is it doing? What do you like/dislike?
Specifically, we want you to suggest topics for the podcast. We are always looking for relevant and interesting topics. If there is anything you'd like us to discuss, please post it into the comments section of any post, or shoot us an email at tips(at)pitchersandpoets(dot)com. Also, after listening to said podcasts, you are always free to tell us how dumb/smart/funny/lame we are by comment or email.
An example of this would be this (very minor spoiler alert): In yesterday's Podcast 6: Jackie Robinson Day I bemoaned the Red Sox taking so long to integrate their team. I was, however, unable to recall the name of their first African-American player, Pumpsie Green. That's the kind of thing we rely on you folks for: knowledge.
Onward with the links...
- The Rogue's Baseball Index has never been in higher gear. This week, we brought you The Official Sponsor, Old Milwaukee, and The Fantasy Paradox.
- At least one person is reading: Larry Granillo of the idiosyncratic Wezen-Ball brings us the complete history of Old Milwaukee ("the title bestowed upon the eldest active member of the Milwaukee Brewer roster").
- Meanwhile, Ted is exploring his new found Mariner fandom. Every Day Ichiro is as flashy as a thousand Japanese Paparazzi cameras at Safeco Field, and far more contemplative.
- It's not baseball, but it's still a blog. I've joined a few friends in exploring HBO and David Simon's new series Treme. What About Treme?
- MLB Network take's the words "Filler Content" to new, trance-inducing heights (Walkoff Walk).
15 Apr 2010, by Eric
In Podcast 6, Ted and I discuss Jackie Robinson day in critical (not critical as in negative, but in critical as in we are doing criticism) terms. We also contemplate the obligations of broadcasters as they call no-hitters, the nature of Chicago White Sox fans, and the pace of play between the Yankees and Red Sox. Plus, cameo appearances from Frank Deford, Mark Mulder, and Mel Gibson.
Put on your No. 42 jerseys, America, and turn up the volume:
[podcast]http://roguesbaseballindex.com/pnp_podcasts/PnP_006.mp3[/podcast]