28 Jul 2009, by Eric
Ricky Henderson was inducted into the Hall of Fame this weekend. We didn't necessarily mean to ignore that fact (or Jim Rice's induction), but we have. So PnP makes amends to Ricky the best way we know how. This work by Robert Francis, a student of Robert Frost, captures the tension of a stolen base like only poetry and Ricky Henderson can. And unlike Ricky's career, it's quite short:
Poised between going on and back, pulled
Both ways taut like a tight-rope walker,
Fingertips pointing the opposites,
Now bouncing tiptoe like a dropped ball,
Or a kid skipping rope, come on, come on!
Running a scattering of steps sidewise,
How he teeters, skitters, tingles, teases,
Taunts them, hovers like an ecstatic bird,
He's only flirting, crowd him, crowd him,
Delicate, delicate, delicate, delicate - Now!
24 Jul 2009, by Eric
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.
22 Jul 2009, by Eric
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.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="334" caption="Never lose that lovin' feeling."]
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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.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="399" caption="El Senador no toma prisioneros. "]
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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.
21 Jul 2009, by Ted
A hypothetical exploration in this week's poem, "Playing Catch," by poet Tim Seibles, published in Ploughshares. What if all the world's balls disappeared? What then? How hard will we fall when the crutches are kicked out from under us?:
for Hermann Michaeli
On the day the balls disappeared, men playing soccer
suddenly looked like crazy people chasing invisible
rabbits through the short grass. Men playing baseball
became more clearly what they’d always been: bored
teenagers waiting around for something to happen.
Spectators, at home and in the stands, believed
they were being jerked around by a player
conspiracy, that this was the first whimper
of another strike that would cancel all the fun.
On the day the balls disappeared, the sun did not
smear its way up above the dew-damp rooftops as if this
were a day to keep your finger on. And if all the umps and refs
overslept that morning, it only meant they were a little extra
tired of instant replay highlighting their best mistakes.
In fact, it was a good Saturday: sunlight the color of a canary—
everybody was outside! I remember one woman in particular,
alone in the schoolyard practicing lay-ups. Each time
she left the ground she balanced the basketball like
a breakable thing, then let it slip off her long
white fingers toward the rim.
It had been August for more than a month and, as usual,
the televisions were jam-packed with sports: preseason
football, golf, baseball, soccer, some rugby . . . If you didn’t
know better watching TV could make you think the world
was really just a million fields separated by a few
rivers and roads—that life was, in essence, a chance
to love one of the many artificial spheres.
I guess they went all at once or, at least, within
the same fifteen minutes. I had been watching the U.S.
Open Tennis Championships when Pete Sampras, ready
to serve, gestured to the ball boy who quickly
pointed at the other and shrugged, hoping not
to be blamed. People in the stadium began whistling
and stomping their feet. I went to the fridge
and grabbed a plum.
But I remember noticing
a boy and his sister across the street playing catch
in the yard half-framed by my kitchen window.
He had a new red glove. She was a lefty and
brown as coffee, and, just to show off, she whipped
the throw just above his reach.
A moment later
he yelled, I can’t find it—I don’t see it—
it ain’t out here! She thought he just wanted her
to go get it, just to get on her nerves. She thought
he was just kidding around.
20 Jul 2009, by Ted
The Pitch:
Gopher balls might sell Big Macs and steaks, but the savvy marketeer knows that it's character, not four-baggers, that defines a spokesman. I'm talking about the kind of character sculpted from a career of undeniable mediocrity, in which the only currency is stick-to-it-ive-ness and positivity in the face of sure obscurity. An OPS over .700? No thanks, you've probably got a big head about it. Your baseball-reference stats compare you favorably with Barry Larkin and Ryne Sandberg? I bet you don't even tip well. In this economy, it's all about value, it's all about trust.
Well sir, I'll ask you, then, what better face for the business you want to build than a nine-year utility infielder with fewer career home runs than Carlos Zambrano? Humility, good cheer, and light-hitting whimsy, thy names are Casey Candaele, and thy baseball-reference page is now available for the price of seventeen Big Macs, or 25% of one steak: I'm talking ten American dollars.
Player Report:
Listen, I'm not going to chew your earflap off claiming that Casey Candaele had a noteworthy career, or that he changed the way the game is played. I'll save that for the bigwigs over at Champion Ford of Alexandria. I'm here to say that Casey was there when you needed him, no matter how sparingly, or even if you needed him to be somewhere else, like upstate New York, or Canada. He's in touch with the real America, folks, and the real Canada, where there's REAL MONEY (Canada not included).
If an unremarkable baseball career of no distinction isn't wetting your whistle, then let me give you an insight into Casey's aforementioned character. While most of your hot shot big money sluggers were headlining charity golf tournaments and getting roasted by their celebrity friends, Casey Candaele was hosting Naked Batting Practice. According to an old mlb.com article, "Sunday mornings were designated 'naked batting practice' days. Candaele would go to the batting cages located near the Astros'clubhouse, wearing nothing more than his Spring Training sunburn, to take a few cuts in preparation of [sic] the upcoming game." If you happen to run a tanning salon, or coordinate membership for a nude beach, I don't even know why we're still sitting here talking all business-like.
Click Here To Sponsor Casey Candaele!
(If you're some kind of masochist and you want an informed, detailed account of Casey's baseball career, you'll find it here.)
[Have a player you'd like to see featured here? Does your childhood hero need a home? Feel free to send your suggestions to tips (at) pitchersandpoets (dot) com]
