February 9, 2010

Funky Ball—1977 Style

Facsimile Mr. Cub signature; but a GENUINE Ivan Dejesus!

PLAY THAT FUNKY BASEBALL

I’ll have more thoughts on this later.  But in the meantime, go take a quick gander at Jeff Polman’s latest bell-bottom-inspired brainchild.  I’m just lucky to be part of it: He’s gathered an All-Star managerial crew for this 1977 Strat-O-Matic online novella.  Getting my big collar shirts cleaned at the Chinese place down around the corner, and picked up some super fly gold chains over at Penney’s the other day.  Ya dig?

Oh, Also: I’m targeting an April release for the much anticipated subscription ezine.  Let’s call it “baseball history with balls.”  Like any crystal meth dealer worth his weight in salt, I’ll give some of the product away for free at the beginning, let you taste it a bit.  If you want a free copy of the first edition, just send me an email at S_Simkus@yahoo.com  Put “baseball” in the subject line and I’ll add you to the list!  Thanks to everybody who’s already signed on!

February 1, 2010

Hangin’ ‘em Up!

Dear 42 People who Visit my Blog Everyday:

It’s over.  Well… sort of. 

No, no, it’s not what you think!  I’m talking about the blog here, considering driving this vile baseball bulletin into the digital garage, turning the ignition key on, and then lowering the steel door about halfway.  I don’t want to kill it—it’ll still be here—so much as put it into a deep comatose state.

I’ll probably pull it out of the carport every once in awhile, post something new, more for my own self-edification than anything else; e-mails to planet Mars.

Instead of *blogging*, I’ll focus my attention on launching a baseball history ezine, where I can share the 6,000 and 9,000 word essays and research papers I’ve been slaving over during the past couple years.  Stuff which, due to its sheer size and scope, isn’t well-suited for the blogosphere.

We’re targeting an April release date, but more details will magically appear here in the near future.

If you like baseball history, gallows humor, and above-average writing, you’ll probably like the ezine.  If you’d like to receive a free copy of the first edition, simply email me at s_simkus@yahoo.com.  Put *baseball* in the subject line. 

With some hard work and a little luck, I figure we’ll have 17 or 18 subscribers by 2015.  And if I have to include pictures of naked women to reach that goal, I will.

Maybe someday this blog will come back full-time, return to its vigorous pace of one new post every 7.8 days, and this day’s entry will become legend, part of a bizarre dream sequence.  Only time will tell.

If you like baseball history, “drop me a line.”

Cheers,

Scott Simkus

Customer Service

“The Scott Simkus Blog”

***UPDATE***  Thanks for emails.  There’s been quite a few people interested in the premier edition of the ezine.  Keep ‘em coming…we might hit 18 one or two years ahead of schedule.

January 18, 2010

The Real Pete Hill…

Gary Ashwill was one of the key figures behind unraveling the mystery of Hall of Famer Pete Hill’s life story and home town.  The fascinating details can be found here.

January 14, 2010

Derek Jeter Stinks

I don’t know how it got here, but the latest Avon catalogue somehow found its way onto our coffee table the other day.  I hadn’t seen one of these since Ronald Reagan was in office, when my mother used to purchase bags of their lipstick and rouge from one of the fleshy, over-perfumed ladies in the neighborhood.

Thumbing through it, I was surprised to see Derek Jeter in there, smugly daring me to try his cologne.  He’s just the latest in what has become a long line of celebrity perfumers; actors, actresses, rappers challenging to raise our scents to the next level.  Actually, it looks like Jeter has six unique Eau de Toilette Sprays; fougere fresh, oriental woodsy, fougere green, aromatic spices, fresh citrus and warm cedarwood.  Prices range from $18 to $24 per bottle.

It says in the catalogue that Derek Jeter is a “baseball champion, founder of the Turn 2 Foundation and role model for our generation.”

Now, I know the haters are going to be out there in full force.  Even though Jeter’s cologne is going to become hugely popular and have a long run of sales excellence this season, the academics at the Society of American Fragrance Research (SAFR) are going to shred his legacy to pieces through persuasive argument and paradigm-shifting mathematical formula.

Any day now, somebody’s going to write one of those scathing safermetric essays about the cologne, how Jeter’s fougere green’s scent complexity “doesn’t have the range of 50 Cent’s ‘Power,’” or how Jeter’s warm cedarwood “is not nearly as consistent as the natural aromatics one finds in Sean Jean’s ‘Unforgivable.’”  

I say back off a little bit guys.  It’s too early to pass judgement on the shortstop/perfumers body of work right now.  Let’s let history judge his stench.

January 12, 2010

Mark McGwire and Steroids

I’ve read the transcripts, followed the coverage of Mark McGwire’s confession regarding his use of steroids, and tried my level best to digest everything over the past couple days.  Listen, I’m a long-time baseball fan, and need to sort this shit out for myself.  I’ve wrestled with this thing, tried to examine how I honestly feel…and I’ve come away with just one revelation:

For a variety of reasons, I never had as much fun watching baseball as I did from 1998 to 2003.

Nothing before or since has even come close.

January 6, 2010

Batting Practice Fastballs: Jeff Polman

Eleven months ago, magazine production artist-former editor-former screenwriter-longtime baseball junkie-tax payer-upstanding citizen Jeff Polman launched one of the most ambitious baseball blogs in the history of western civilization, 1924 and You Are There!!.  Using Strat-O-Matic, a well-known baseball simulation board game, and his flair for the written word, Jeff builds an online novel around the fictional replay of a classic Major League season.  Well, actually, its told through the “eyes and hearts” of his two different protagonists, Vinny Spanelli, a 17-year-old hardcore Phillies fan, and Cal Butterworth, star baseball beat writer from Detroit.

Jeff was kind enough to put down the dice, push away the keyboard, and jump into the box for six Batting Practice Fastballs:

Scott: This is supposed to be one question, but I’m going to cheat here and a lump a few together.  Where are you from?  What was your favorite team growing up? Who was your favorite player?

Jeff: I’m a New Englander through and through, born in Hartford while living in Providence, then raised outside Springfield, Mass.  Needless to say, this makes me a Red Sox junkie, and the allegiance was sealed when my dad took us to Boston in May of ‘63 to see them play the Maris/Mantle Yanks.  All it takes is one day at Fenway Park to make any impressionable kid a baseball fanatic, because the field is so small it glues you to the action.  Watch the people behind home plate the next time you see a televised game from there.  They barely move, and stare at the field like it’s some priceless Van Gogh landscape.  Anyway, Carl Yastrzemski was far and away my favorite player, despite his talent for making final, tragic outs.

Scott: I understand you were a screenwriter in a previous life.  A horror film of some sort?  Give me the quick-and-dirty on your Hollywood experience:

Jeff: I was a newspaper writer and editor in Vermont when I moved out here to L.A. in 1982 to try my hand at scripts.  Two of the twenty I wrote actually got produced:  a straight-to-video ghost story called Grave Secrets, kind of an X-Files story before anybody knew what the X-Files were, and a suspense thriller with Donald Sutherland and Amy Irving called Benefit of the Doubt that was out in movie theaters for two weeks.

Neither experience was all that rewarding.  Benefit ended up with three producer teams on it, the last pair being the Weinstein brothers at Miramax, who had the gall to put other writers on the project while I was in Hawaii on my honeymoon.  Naturally the script got worse, and when Gene Siskel called the movie “two hours of sleaze” on national TV I felt pretty vindicated.  When you look at how screenplays are routinely put through ego blenders, it’s a wonder any good films ever get made here at all.

Scott: What’s the inspiration for “1924 And You Are There!”?

Jeff: It’s more like an inspiration stew.  My favorite movie of all time is The Time Machine, George Pal’s excellent 1960 version, which I actually paid to see 17 times when I was a kid.  Something about its cool time-travel effects and utter heroism of the main character (a home inventor who saves human civilization) just got me going. Then I had this goofy script idea for years called Bosox Anonymous, about a club of crazed Red Sox fans who find a way to go back in time to 1920 and kidnap Babe Ruth to keep him from going to the Yankees.  I naturally abandoned the project after the 2004 Curse-breaker season, but always felt time travel and baseball would be a nice mix.

Then two things happened.  I’d been replaying past seasons with some regularity for a long time, and after discovering the excellent Strat Fan Forum site, decided to start sharing my results there with game blurbs and daily standings.  (The Astros outlasted the Indians in the never-played 1994 World Series, by the way.) I got a lot of great response there and realized it was something I had a knack for, so decided to get more creative and branch off with my own blog site for 1924.  As far as the Strat Negro League set goes, I honestly didn’t think of adding it to the narrative until mid-summer when I learned when the cards were being released.  Cobb and Ruth and Johnson and Hornsby were enough to get the thing cooking in my head.

Meanwhile, I had taken a few years off from screenplays to write a novel called The Madcat, a coming-of-age story about a 17-year-old roller coaster operator named Vinny, based on my own experiences during the mid-70s.  It landed me a reputable New York literary agent who got it into the marketplace.  Then early last year I saw that my old pals at Miramax were coincidentally releasing Adventureland, a coming-of-age movie about a young amusement park worker during the mid-80s.  The tone and decade were different, but the subject was close enough to briefly devastate me, and my 17-year-old Phillie fan Vinny Spanelli was born as a result.  The wonderful thing about writing on the Internet is that you don’t have to wait one to six months for an agent or development person to get back to you.  The response is immediate, your satisfying “published” feeling a daily event.

I guess the Internet in itself is also an inspiration.  Ninety-five percent of the baseball news I get now is not on TV or in newspapers, but on a myriad of fabulous Web sites devoted to the game.  I’m a loyal member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, which has well over 100 blogs now and is growing like a weed.  Most of these blogs are focused on individual teams, but on Baseball Prospectus, The Hardball Times, the ESPN baseball page and NBC’s Circling the Bases there is a metric ton of inspired, informative, often humorous writing.  I am certainly no sabermatician—Rob Neyer tore me a new one last spring for a woefully under-researched rant about pitch counts I got posted on the Seamheads site—but I still cherish my Bill James Abstracts from the late 70s and believe the stats revolution is one of the best things to ever happen to the game.  Obviously my site was designed to mine the more literary, nostalgic side of baseball rather than the statistical one, but like the best bloggers I also wanted to do something thought-provoking and fun and avoid cliches at all costs.

Scott: Between playing the games, writing stories, finding appropriate graphics and posting on the web, we’re talking about an awful lot of work on your Strat-O-Matic season replay.  How much time do you put in each week on this labor of love?

Jeff: I have a full-time job as senior production artist for a magazine publisher, but it’s not the kind of work you bring home so it never intrudes on my daily blogging.  My normal routine is to plot out each entry while I’m walking my dog early in the morning, then spend about 30 to 45 minutes researching, writing and posting it before heading off to work.  Sometimes picture-hunting can take a while, but Google Images usually makes that part of the job a breeze. 

I can play a Strat game in about ten to fifteen minutes, so with at least four played each night, that’s about two hours minimum of work on the site per day, or ten per week.  I’ve been posting on Sundays lately to try and speed the season up a bit, but also because people tend to be on their iPhones more and more and do read blog material through the weekend.  And just in case all this doesn’t keep me busy enough, I’m also entering my second 160-game season in a fabulous nationwide draft league that’s been going for over 35 years.

Scott: If a conventional publisher approached you and said “I like your blog, pitch me a book idea,” what would it be?

Jeff: Something like this, probably…

“Many baseball fans secretly wish they could forget about steroids, million dollar contracts and freezing World Series games past midnight and return to the sweet, simple days of yesteryear.  Since last February, 1924 and You Are There! has been providing that transportation.  Told in the language of the time, the ‘daily baseball time machine’ is for lovers of story and character, and like fans of old-time serials, for the daily anticipation of reading a fresh installment.  Because I generally let game outcomes decide the course of the interweaving plot threads, I’m never sure how things will unfold, creating what can only be called a ‘living baseball novel.’  Will the Pirates and Senators continue to steamroll the opposition?  Will young Phillie fan Vinny Spanelli ever marry his Brooklyn fan bride?  Will Tigers reporter Cal Butterworth keep from having a nervous breakdown?  Stay tuned…

There are scores of fantasy baseball sites on the Internet, but there has never been anything like this.  I strongly feel 1924 And You Are There! lends itself perfectly to book form, either as is, or re-shaped as an historical novel set in the ‘actual’ season with the same characters.”  Whaddya think, Mr. Tweed?

Scott: What’s one question you’re dying to answer, but never gets asked?

Jeff: I guess a good question would be “What’s on your Strat-O-Matic blogging agenda for the new year?”  One reason my ‘24 characters have been put through so many twists and turns is because both pennant races are in the toilet and I’ve been forced to get more creative.  But that can be exhausting, so my current plan is to do this again with Strat’s new past-season release, 1977, use the same 16-team format with the best eight teams per league and hopefully have some tight races again. 

Obviously I’ll come up with some new persona/voice from the Disco Era to report the games, but I’d also like to get the readers more involved by soliciting rotations and lefty-righty lineups from “absentee managers” in the teams’ home cities, something I did successfully on the Strat Forum in 2008.  The ultimate fantasy would be to have a handful of Strat-playing notables in the owner mix, such as Spike Lee or Joe Sheehan for the Yankees, Joe Posnanski for the Royals, Negro League researcher extraordinaire Scott Simkus for the Cubs or White Sox (your choice, and you don’t have to manage the South Siders wearing shorts), Jon Miller and Bob Costas for whoever they want, Doug Glanville for the Phillies, etc., and then I’ll just play the games and report the fun results.  I won’t even take Boston just to be fair, though with people like Reggie Cleveland, Mike Paxton, and Don Aase on that pitching staff I shouldn’t have to worry about them winning.

Scott: A chance to manage Bill Buckner, Ivan DeJesus and Bobby Murcer on the ’77 Chicago Cubs?  Count me in.

 Thanks, Jeff.  You’re outta here….who’s next?

January 3, 2010

Batting Practice Fastballs: Phil Dixon

Over the past 25 years, Phil Dixon has established himself as one of the leading voices in Negro League research.  Dixon has written several books on the subject and has been published in a wide variety of publications.  He won the prestigious Casey Award for Best Baseball Book of 1992 and a SABR MacMillan Award for his excellence in baseball research.  In addition to his busy schedule as a public speaker, Phil somehow found the time to publish three new books this past year:

 Purchase new books for 2009 from author Phil S. Dixon…

  1. John “Buck” O’Neil, The Rookie, The Man, The Legacy, 1938 http://www.authorhouse.com/bookstore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=59102 
  2. Phil Dixon’s American Baseball Chronicles, Great Teams, The 1931 Homestead Grays, Volume I http://www2.xlibris.com/Bookstore/bookdisplay.aspx?bookid=60329 
  3.  Wilber “Bullet” Rogan and the Kansas City Monarchs  (released in spring 2010) http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-4425-0 

I’ve just finished reading Phil’s book on the 1931 Homestead Grays, one of the most famous teams in Negro League history.  Phil’s been kind enough to step inside the batting cage for six “Batting Practice Fastballs,” so let’s get started:

 Scott: You’re one of the first well-known baseball historians to take the Neg Lg versus semi-professional competition seriously.  What have you learned by collecting those box scores and game stories over the years?

 Phil: I have learned that all games, each person and every city is important to the story of American baseball history.  The statistics are also important but numbers aren’t the only story.  Looking back, the powers that were in baseball assumed it would be impossible to compare the legendary African-American players to the big league stars because the question of competition would always arise with the numbers achieved.  Well I figured that a home run hit by Grant “Home Run” Johnson felt just as good to him as a home run hit by Babe Ruth, so who am I to say it did not amount to much.  Furthermore, I wanted to show the big picture, the far reaching contribution of African-Americans in baseball history.  It is impossible to show our contribution without talking about  games against all competition.   The numbers are also effected when you show only the games played against African-American competition.

 Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s in my job as Assistant Director of Public Relations for the Kansas City Royals, I did actual game entries for the Royals that went to the major league office and were later released to the media.  In doing this work I realized that a player who is batting .400 after 20 or 30 games may not be a .400 hitter.  I actually saw players who had .250 averages after an entire season, get hot for 10 to 20 games, but this was not the real story of that player’s ability.  I also learned the importance of detail.  Well, I was working on The Negro Baseball Leagues, a Photograph History, at the time and did not want to make the same errors that I saw others making when writing on the history of Negro baseball.  That was the early origin of my wanting to show the full spectrum of a player’s ability-not just games played against other teams of African-Americans.  In fact, if you look at any of my work you will see no lifetime statistics, this I have always believed was bad scholarship.  Also, I was one of the first to show that every player was important.  Inclusion of players, not just those in the Hall of Fame, or the ones with the larger than life names, was one of my early contributions to Negro baseball history.  I was among the first to use photographs of little known players to illustrate my efforts.  Since that time, other historians and baseball fans have gotten on board and this is just fantastic. Now we are learning more than ever about the men who played in the league.  The public’s mood was vastly different some 30 years ago when I was first started to talk about the Negro Leagues.  I was happy to have scouted some unknown territory for others to follow.   Games against semi-professional teams is part of that legacy.

 Scott: According to folklore, Josh Gibson was said to have hit 75 home runs during the 1931 campaign.  Your research shows he actually hit somewhere between 40 and 45 during the 175 season.  Have you been able to unbundled the origin of the 75 home run myth?

 Phil: When we do poor research it seems to have a life all of its own.  Negro League baseball history is full of such poorly researched efforts. Much of the history can be summarized in one statement that was given to me by Negro Leaguer George Giles “Its the same cup of coffee warmed over.”   This was Giles’ way of saying that everyone was copying each other and that very little new research was being conducted.  That statement that “Gibson hit over 71 home runs” has been printed and copied so many times but never researched, that is until now.  I do have the origin of that 71 home run story written down in my records and to the best of my knowledge it started with modern day historians.  I have never found a primary source for this statement.  If someone has located a reference, I would love to see it.

 Starting back in 1994, I would take on a summer project each year.  I would look for great feats to see if they actually occurred, and if they could be verified.  This is why I began to search on Gibson’s reported 71 home runs and the 1931 Homestead Grays.  Before long I discovered that this talk of 71 home runs was in fact folklore and not verified with any real research.  When put under solid observation, ie. games with box scores, the entire schedule reconfigured and other sound historical research efforts, we see that Gibson’s great effort never occurred.  However, Gibson did other outstanding things besides hit home runs.  He collected over 200 hits, scored over 150 runs, and pounded over 50 doubles.  I think that the research contained in Phil Dixon’s American Baseball Chronicles, Volume 1, is more solid than anything previously published, and thus we don’t have to rely further on myths and folklore to show that players were great.  My projects with the Philadelphia Giants and Homestead Grays, which came from teams that played 26 years apart, show that the data is available if researchers are willing to do real research.  By the way, you can’t set on the world-wide web and call yourself a serious researcher.  Researchers might want to spend more time in the library.

 Scott: Your research indicates the Grays record was 143-29-2 (.831) during the long season.  How do you think they would have fared in either one of the white majors?

 Phil: This was without question a big league squad and a competitive one at that.  I do consider this Grays team as one of baseball’s greatest team-White or Black if not the greatest.    The numbers they produced in 1931 demonstrates that they hit well against all competition.  Great hitting, deep pitching, fast aggressive base runners, great defense, what else do you need?  This publication  fights in behalf of this great team.  So yes, they would have done well in any league-big league included. I would also give the 1931 Hilldale team as another team that would have won many big league games if given a chance.  They were also outstanding.   P.S. Think of all of the outstanding players who had to quit because of financial reasons?  As you know, a career in the Negro Leagues did not pay well.  I make this statement to simply show America what they missed with racism.

 Scott: In a seven-game series, Lefty Grove’s 1931 Philadelphia Athletics versus Smokey Joe’s 1931 Homestead Grays.  Who wins?

 Phil: I did not do a comparison of the Grays against the 1931 Philadelphia Athletics however, let us take a quick look.  The Athletics lacked speed with only 25 bases stolen.  The Grays stole nearly as many in one month, and this total was confirmed with much of the stolen base data being difficult to find.  I located 89 Grays’ stolen bases and three-fourths of the information is not available.  As a team the Philadelphia Athletics hit 118 home runs – Foxx with 30 and Al Simmons with 22 - and scored 858 runs, the remainder of the team hit very few home runs.  Bing Miller led the A’s with 43 doubles.  These numbers aren’t very impressive when standing along side the totals that Posey’s 1931 Homestead Grays produced.   Imagine this, Posey’s Grays amassed over 1,800 hits, over 360 doubles, over 100 triples and in excess of 130 home runs. Also the starting pitching of Joe Williams, Willie Foster, Lefty Williams, Roy Williams, George Britt and Ted Radcliffe was solid.  So, I would give a seven game series to the Grays.  Perhaps you are wondering how this team might rate with the very best big league squads?

 I did make a comparison to the 1927 Yankees, (considered to be baseball’s greatest team) but not a position by position comparison.  I matched players head to head.  Thus, Lou Gehrig vs. Jud Wilson, Babe Ruth vs. Josh Gibson, Tony Lazzeri vs. George Scales, Bob Meusel vs. Oscar Charleston, Earl Combs and Pat Collins vs. Ted Page or Vic Harris.   In most every case you would have to select the Grays’ player over the Yankee.  The Grays had more speed than the Yankees and far better pitching.  Read the book and then make the judgement for yourself as to which team was better.   I understand that this is controversial, but it is what it is.   Let the debate begin.

 Scott: Back in 2006, you published a book about the 1905 Philadelphia Giants (another legendary African-American baseball team), which featured Rube Foster, Pete Hill, Sol White and a host of other famous dead ball-era ballplayers.  The Giants finished their season at about 134-24-3 (.848) playing against African-American, white semi-pro and minor league teams.  Who was better, the ’05 Giants or ’31 Grays.

 Phil: Without question it was the 1931 Homestead Grays.   The Grays put up bigger numbers at-bat and collected more runs and many more hits.  Posey’s Grays’ team pitching was much stronger as they had five to six front line starters in Smokey Joe Williams, Willie Foster, Ted Radcliffe, Lefty Williams, George Britt , Roy Williams and others.  And yet, these front line starters did not strike out more batters than Rube Foster, Emmett Bowman and Dan McClellan.  For a dead ball era team the Philadelphia Giants of 1902 had power.  To have hit nearly 60 home runs as a team in the dead ball era is incredible.  Home run Johnson-should be in Hall of Fame-along with Pete Hill, Bill Monroe and Charlie Grant were equally as impressive hitters.  The Philadelphia Giants were among the first to score 1,000 runs in the last century (big league teams included).  Also, the 05 Philadelphia Giants always used a pitcher in one of the outfield positions.  Rrarely were the 31 Grays or the 05 Philadelphia Giants out hit by other teams.  Still,  I would have to stay with my choice of the 31 Grays as baseball’s best.  I also rate the 1910 Chicago Leland Giants ahead of the 05 Philadelphia Giants.  This is interesting since, Grant “Home Run” Johnson, Andrew “Rube” Foster, Pete Booker and Pete Hill were members of both teams.

 In 1910 Foster’s Leland Giants lost just 6 games while winning well over 100.  Remember we are talking about the really great teams here and the level of play was outstanding.  Other great teams included the 1923 and 1933 Kansas City Monarchs, the 1916 Indianapolis ABC’s, the Lincoln Giants of 1913, the 1942 and 1949 Kansas City Monarchs, the 1930 St. Louis Stars and numerous others.     I also like the 1899 Columbia Giants for their productivity.   The times when you say this or that team was great because of the number of Hall of Famers on the team is a flawed system.  Think of all the great African-American players that are not in the Hall of Fame. The list would include such outstanding players as Bill Monroe, George Scales, “Home Run” Johnson, Vic Harris, Newt Allen, John Donaldson, Chet Brewer, Clarence Williams, John  W. “Pat” Patterson and Charlie Grant for starters.

 When I do my Great Teams comparisons, I have a list of items for which teams must surpass to qualify.  In addition to the hitting and pitching numbers, I look at the schedules the teams played, the amounts of miles traveled, how they performed against other African-American teams, how many different opponents they faced and the level of the semi-pro competition they faced.  Then I begin my analysis.  Some teams with great records, did not rate as well when put under the microscope such as some of the Crawford teams.  However, any team that played over 150 games and lost less than 30 deserved a second look.  And thus, there are some barnstorming teams that will appear in my Great Teams series.

 There is an updated version of the 1905 Philadelphia Giants, Volume 3, book coming in the spring of 2010 with additional games located since 2006’s version was published.  I have other publications coming on the Great Teams series.  Volume 2, is on the 1910 Leland Giants of Chicago and it will be released by mid summer.  Volume number 4 of the great team series is also scheduled for release in 2010, but the team in this volume I am keeping under wraps for now.

 Scott: Thanks for your time, Phil.

 Phil: Again, thank you for the opportunity to talk about the 1931 Homestead Grays and other items of interest to baseball researchers and fans.   There is so much more work to be done, so let’s get busy and make it interesting for people who are enjoying this topic.

December 31, 2009

Miller Time: the Winter League

Babe Ruth isn’t hitting.  Halfway to the All-Star break, the once jovial Jidge has turned sour.  Fastballs which eighty years earlier would have ricocheted halfway moonward, now float softly into tiny leather gloves waiting just short of the wall.  Curveballs he’d usually blister up the middle for RBI singles have become looping pop ups to middle infielders or weak grounders tapped in front of the dish.  Change-ups— well, the slow-ball junk rag-armed pitchers kept down and away from Ruth during his prime—- are now catching the corners for strike three, sending the confused Babe into tourettes-like fits of rage.

 “S*&$!”

 “YELLOW-BELLIED F#@* M* &*(%$%!!!!”

 On the way out of the ballpark recently, after yet another goose egg in four tries, the man once famous for spending two straight hours leaned up against his car, signing autographs for every snot-nosed kid in the lot, was seen shoving one unsuspecting juvenile admirer out of the way, before jumping into a Hudson Essex and peeling across the gravel lot through a cloud of dust.

 He’s never played in a league this tough.  Nobody has.

 When I first approached Strat-O-Matic regarding the Negro League set, I didn’t think about the TV, radio and newspaper coverage the game would generate.  Never crossed my mind, actually.  What I really wanted to see was the cards.  The Strat-O cards. I wanted to see what the company could do with detailed statistical information, and more importantly, I wanted to play some games.

 Like a lot of long-time Strat-O-Matic fans, I’d wanted to see Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige and Buck O’Neil printed on one of Hal Richman’s officially sanctioned sets.  I wanted to pencil their names, positions, and range ratings on a score sheet and have at it.  A chance to roll the dice; with, say, Smokey Joe Williams staring down Babe Ruth from 60 feet 6 inches away.

 In the Winter League, the Brigadiers and Skywalkers are tied for first place, with identical 4-1 records.  They are followed closely by the Goblins and Enterprise (both 3-2), with the Kings (1-4) and Dragons (0-5) taking up the rear.  This is the league where the great Babe Ruth has been weathering an early season slump.  But the talent here is something else.  Something….other-worldly.  Bob Gibson and Willie Mays are in this league.  Rogers Hornsby is here.  Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner lace up the cleats once more; as do Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson and Smokey Joe Williams.

 This isn’t the Field of Dreams; it’s the Field of Dreams on Human Growth Hormones, steroids, and magic dust.  Everybody who was anybody in baseball history (black or white), is included in the improbable mix.

 The Goblins’ Rajah paces the loop with a blistering .583 BA thru the first 5 games, with the Dragons’ Mel Ott in second at .529.  Oscar Charleston is hitting at a .421 clip, leads the league with 5 stolen bases, and is tied for the tops in homers with 2.

 Around the batting cage before a recent game, Babe Ruth corners Cannonball Dick Redding, a legendary pitcher with the all-black Brooklyn Royal Giants back in the 1920s.  Ruth wants to swap war stories from the old days, perhaps recapture some of the Jazz age magic, maybe shift his luck some in the early going.

 “Remember the exhibition game we had here in the early twenties, Dick?”  Babe asked.

 “Which one now, Babe?”

 “We were playing in some local pasture, one of the ovals, my team against you and all your colored fellas, and I hit three home runs off of you before them damn keeds came streaming on the field and stopped the game, wanting my signature and tearing at my uniform shirt.”

 “I remember that, sure.”

 Ruth and Redding both paused, watched Gehrig taking his cuts in the cage against the offerings of righty Emil Moscowitz, a former semi-pro star with the Brooklyn Bushwicks, who’d later become the Yankees’ batting practice pitcher in the 1940s.

 “Babe, I need to level with ya, baby.” Cannonball said, never taking his eyes off the Iron Horse.

 BAM!- Lou cracked a line-drive off the right-center field wall, then shook his hands, wincing with pain.  He’d hit it off the handle.  Three-hundred eighty-six foot line-drive, and he’d caught Emil’s slow ball on the bad part of the bat.

 “Fire away, Dick.”

 “Now don’t get mad, but the promoter told me to throw ‘em right down Broadway for ya, nice and easy, Babe.  Told me ‘no funny stuff,’ right down the pike, and considering the pay day we was gonna get, I did what the man said.”

 “Aw c’mon, Cannonball, you’re just sore about it. Got the hat trick on ya fair and square, pal.”

 “Babe, we both been dead fifty plus years, why would I lie about that now, man?”

 “Bull crud.”

 Funny thing is, now that the Strat-O-Matic Negro League set is available, I haven’t had too much time to actually play the game.  Oh, I’ve run a few computer-generated seasons, played a handful of solitaire games with the cards and dice, but my baseball time has been gobbled up with media stuff, new research projects, proposals and writing.  I’ve had to live vicariously thru the creative replays of Strat-O gamers posted online at the StratFanForum, as well as the Strat-O-Matic Baseball Village.  I’ve been following these mini-seasons, tournaments, and leagues the way a nervous father watches his son’s first tee-ball games.

 One of the leagues I’ve been following isn’t available online.  It’s Stuart Miller’s winter league.  Several weeks ago, Miller wrote a piece about the Strat-O-Matic Negro League set for the New York Times and we hit it off during an hour-plus telephone conversation about blackball and the nuts and bolts behind creating a realistic simulation game.  An APBA man by birth, Strat sent Miller copies of both their 2001 Hall of Fame set AND brand new Negro League edition for research purposes.  Stuart Miller, it seems, has the greatest job in the world.

 As fate would have it, Miller’s young sons, Caleb (11) and Lucas (9) took an immediate interest in the game and a three manager, six-team league was quickly formed.  Dad has the Skywalkers and Enterprise.  Caleb rules over the Brigadiers and Kings, while Lucas runs the Goblins and Dragons. 

 Not that anybody’s counting, but Stuart’s two teams are a combined 7-3 with Caleb in second at 5-5.   Lucas Millers’ franchises are penciled in at 3-7 in the early going, but hoping to turn things around in a hurry.

 Babe Ruth has an explanation for his early season woes, and surprisingly, it has nothing to do with speakeasies or late night pork chop romps.

 “I wasn’t much for reading during my first go around on Earth,” Ruth confessed. “I mean, I liked some of the stories when I was a keed at St. Marys, the ones about pirates and buried treasures and pretty dames.  I liked those.” 

 “But today it seems like people write an awful lot about baseball.  They write about it, and they put their noggin to thinking about it much more so than actually playing the game.  Too much, maybe. Stop by a schoolyard or forest preserve picnic back when Coolidge was in office, you’d always see a little ballgame going.  Nothing organized, mind ya, just a little something between friends and families or whatever. During my few jaunts around town now, I don’t see much other than the youth league things, which is great, but no adults. Seems the adult game is dead, other than professional ball.”

 “But I’ve been trying to read some of this stuff, the books, in between ballgames, as I’ve found your modern television device gives me a headache worse’n early morning orange juice and bootleg vodka.  Everybody screaming real loud, and the movie pictures jumping all around real fast.”

 “Now, I was pretty fair at arithmetic back in my day, keepin’ track of my home runs and such, and it seems today’s books about baseball have more than their fair share of mathematics inside. Maybe too much. And there’s a lot of stuff in there I never heard of like ‘linear weights’ and ‘WARP’ which sounds like part of that old chemistry class Brother Matthias kicked me out of back at the home.”

 “If all the baseball stories are about linear weights and WARP, I doubt I’d want to play the game much either, if I was a keed again. Sounds like it’s for squares, you know?  I’d just as soon sit at home, watching all the rubes, hillbillies and nincompoops scream at one another on the television talkie shows.”

 “Before a recent game at Goblins’ Park, fella there showed me a book by Bill James.  There was a right-handed guy with Detroit when I first came up named Bill James.  I hit probably 3 or 4 home runs off that keed, but I doubt this book is written by the same guy.  James would have to be upwards of 125 years old now.  Do people live that long these days?”

 “So, in one of these chapters by James, he talks about something called ‘sample size.’  Reminds me when I lived in Sudbury, there was a bakery in town gave out free samples on Saturday morning.  And they were pretty good sized samples, so you knew pretty much how good a loaf of bread, or a coffee cake might be, and you might be more inclined to buy one.”

 “So what this fella suggests is baseball can be like a bakery, you see.  If you don’t have a large enough sample, you can’t really judge how good something is.  This is like my batting average after playing just five games in this league, I suppose.  You can’t figure on how I’m gonna do after just a few games.”

 “But, see, I’ve known this for a hundred years.  I know I’m gonna hit, given enough time, but this isn’t gonna stop me from cursin’ a blue streak after I strike-out or whatever.  That’s just my nature, having grown up in a lousy neighborhood in Baltimore, where cursin’ was just the native tongue.”

 “So I know what I need to do to turn things around.  Just stick with it and play my game. But there IS one thing which could speed it all up.  Put this Bill James fella on the mound.  I want to take a couple cracks at his liner weight ball, see how far that baby flies.  Hoo boy!”           

  

December 30, 2009

Correcting History | Culpeper Star-Exponent

Our friend Gary Ashwill has played an important role in this story regarding the birthplace of Hall of Famer Pete Hill.  Check it out:

Correcting History | Culpeper Star-Exponent.

December 24, 2009

Strat-O-Matic’s new card set brings Negro leagues to life – Joe Posnanski – SI.com