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?

Interview: Bill James

I pay three dollars each month to be “friends” with Bill James. This isn’t the first time I’ve traded money for companionship, and it probably won’t be the last. As you know, I’m not afraid to open up my wallet if I want something bad enough, and if I’m short on cash: I’m not opposed to opening up somebody else’s wallet. If things ever became really desperate, I’d consider putting on a ski mask and robbing a liquor store.

But that’s just the kind of man I am, the way I was raised. Bill James, on the other hand, is also from the wrong side of the tracks. He’s a rebel, an outsider. And although he’s denied it repeatedly: I believe he’s a direct descendent of either Jesse James or Jesse Owens; or possibly both Jesse James AND Jesse Owens. To me, his mysterious past is one of the most compelling elements of his appeal. Well…his past, and the fake beard he’s been wearing for thirty-plus years.

Based on a thorough examination of several black-and-white publicity photos, James appears to stand about 7’5” and weighs maybe 260 pounds dripping wet. To follow is his harrowing tale, the story of a Midwestern everyman clawing his way up from the seedy depths of the baseball stat underworld…

George William H. Bonney “Bill” James (born October 5, 1949) has been turning sabr-tricks since the 1970s, when he began peddling crudely rendered baseball smut from a dark alley behind a pork and beans plant in Kansas. Business was slow at first; with James offering an enigmatic selection of stat-urbation, sometimes published in Baseball Digest, the contents of which befuddled most hardcore baseball johns at the time.

During those pre-Cable TV days, back when Gerald Ford was stumbling over ottomans in the Oval Office, most traditional hardball hustlers would say, “Johnny Bench IS the toughest catcher to steal against,” then quickly move on with their lives. It was an impersonal, wham-bam, love ‘em and leave ‘em commentary which often left customers feeling cheap and dirty. James had a different approach, more personal. He’d ask, “Is Johnny Bench the toughest catcher to steal against?” then gently invite you into his thought process as he tackled the problem. You’d experience him going through box score after box score after box score, adding up the numbers for a large “sample” of catchers, then watch as he presented statistical evidence answering his question. It was an exotic, interactive experience; and over the first few years he developed a small, but lustful, cult following.

About this same time, James began publishing a subversive paper called the “Baseball Abstract.” In retrospect, the outsider’s annual Abstract was to the insider’s weekly Baseball Digest, what Larry Flynt was to Hugh Hefner. Whereas the Digest was classy, but conservative; the Abstract was loaded with page after page of explicit, uncensored baseball analysis. James would take readers “around the world,” then “blow” their minds with the kind of “full frontal” investigations that may have made Red Smith blush.

Bill James’ Statistical Inquisition (he later coined the term “sabermetrics”) soon became a cottage industry, albeit not quite mainstream, due to the vehement opposition of baseball authorities, barkeeps, and the media elite’s cliché peddling pimps. He had to break through a powerful cabal of old school big league skippers, scouts, beat reporters and TV broadcasters, who for years had made a quick buck telling us things like “the Cardinals play better on artificial turf,” or “Ron Guidry is tough in day games,” or “this kid’s gonna be a great hitter because he’s got a solid baseball chin and a large penis,” even though they had no concrete evidence to support their claims.

Bill James brought a ruler and a calculator, and said “Let’s measure it!”

Sabermetrics changed the game, and like another literary giant, Heidi Fleiss, soon Mr. James had a national book deal and several best sellers. The Kansas Kid was able to the leave the dirty world of back-alley, baseball-bump-and-run for good. The baseball street hustler had made it.

PART TWO: Today Bill James is the kingpin in charge of a multinational sabermetric empire, with posh offices located in Kansas and on the east coast. He’s been known to rub shoulders with many of the biggest names in the game, including Ty Cobb and Mark Grudzielanek.

In fact, the former wheeler dealer is now a high-ranking informational Geisha inside the Boston Red Sox front office. His sponsoring danna is a youthful man named Theo Epstein, a Harvard grad who first became smitten with James’ work after secretly thumbing through some old Abstracts during his youth, which nearly caused blindness. After rising to a position of power in Beantown, one of Epstein’s first official orders of business was to clean up the old stat master and put him on his payroll.

The man who first made a name for himself dabbling in the cheap thrills of Major League Equivalencies (MLEs), Ballpark Effects and the Platoon Differential; now slides around the floors of 4 Yawkey Way in his split-toed tabi, whispering secretive, high-level saberotica into the ears of the Bosox brass.

After a 263-year drought, the Red Sox finally won a World Series.

PART THREE: Some of the former drifters and curb crawlers who first jumped on the James bandwagon back in the early 80’s have suggested that BJ’s lost a little bit off his fastball since going “mainstream.” I’m not going to provide any evidence to the contrary just yet, not with a golden opportunity to extend this introduction another couple hundred words.

But I will say this: Bill James has tried to keep one foot rooted in his old school, sabermetric past. When not wearing his black and red kimono in Boston, BJ is an active partner in billjamesonline.com, a site foisted on the internet back in ‘07. BJOL (as it’s known to hipsters on the ‘net); is a clean, ad free, pay-for-play baseball bordello, offering a number of exotic services and experiences to its subscribers, with a menu rivaling that of an ancient Roman bath house.

There are basically 12 major categories for subscribers to explore, including things like POLLS AND ARGUMENTS, FUN STUFF, and POWER RANKINGS. But three areas seem to stand out above the others: STATISTICS, OTHER COLUMNISTS and HEY BILL, although not necessarily in that order.

STATISTICS- BJOL offers a mountain of obscure baseball data, courtesy of Baseball Info Solutions, Inc., whose owner is a partner in the web site. Not the traditional Jamesian analysis, rather it’s a collection of raw statistics, intricate data not found at the conventional web-based sites, such as baseball-reference.com. They chart things like batter performance during various pitch counts, and the number (and type) of pitches thrown by every Major League hurler during the previous couple seasons. There’s also some Clutch Hitting, Skill Assessment and unconventional Fielding data available at the site. Having access to this kind of information allows subscribers to cobble together their own sabermetric studies, which is often dangerous and boring.

For instance, over the past six months, I’ve been using the information for my ground-breaking study regarding how well married players perform during the various stages of their wive’s menstrual cycles. Also, I’ve been working feverishly on a little something I call “PCAFs,” or, Protective Cup Adjustment Factors. We’ll just have to wait and see where these studies take us.

OTHER COLUMNISTS- Last Summer, during periods when James was otherwise predisposed with his Red Sox work, his “guest” columnists were often charged with keeping the BJOL ship afloat. I say “guest” columnists because they’re not really employees of the site, but rather a collection of volunteer writers and sabermetricians making high-standard contributions to the venture. Most of them were selected during an American Idol-like talent search promoted by Rob Neyer at ESPN.com; and in fairness, Bill James said upfront that winners were unlikely to receive any compensation for their efforts. In other words, after beating out hundreds of aspiring writers, they get paid zippo; although some of them did get to take a bubble bath with Simon Cowell.

The problem is, as a subscriber, I don’t know when or if my favorite columnists are going to produce anything new. Most of the Other Columnists got out of the gate pretty fast, producing new stories every week, but then quickly slowed down. Without the Cash Factor (CF), it must be a challenge to summon up the creative motivation on a consistent basis. Some columnists continue to contribute new material every couple weeks, while others have regressed to monthly columns or something new every 5 or 6 weeks. One guy, one of the guys who was there at the very beginning, hasn’t written anything new since the last time Billy Martin was fired by the Yankees. This is a serious issue.

Open letter to Mr. Bill James:

Dear Bill,

I have three demands. Number one, start paying the columnists. Number two, pay them well. Number three; demand that they contribute high quality stuff on a weekly basis in exchange for their compensation.

I don’t care if you have to start selling ad space on the site, or stealing money from Big Papi’s locker, just get it done.

Oh, and I have one more demand. Number four; fix the boiler down in the columnist’s locker room. They’re sick and tired of cold showers after a strenuous day at the keyboard. It’s the least you can do.

(To the columnists: as your de facto agent, you’ll kindly tithe 15% of your weekly income to me, ad infinitum.)

Sincerely,
Scott (Boras) Simkus

HEY BILL- Hey Bill is a Question & Answer column, where subscribers get to pepper the Jamester himself with a variety of baseball (and non-baseball) questions. I believe the concept is modeled after the classic newspaper feature called “Dear Abby.”

For those of you too young to remember, Dear Abby was a popular newspaper column syndicated nationally for over 50 years. Although nobody reads newspapers anymore, a different version of Dear Abby continues to run today; although the weekly readership is said to consist of less than two dozen people.

The concept of DA was simple. Dear Abby’s original writer, Pauline Phillips (a socialite who lived a life of privilege in Beverly Hills), offered heartfelt advice and answered questions which had been submitted by idiots.

Hey Bill is a little like DA, but with a twist. The questions aren’t necessarily submitted by idiots; but James uses a creative arsenal of quips, barbs, Pravda-like editing, and snarkiness to make them appear stupid. It’s all intended to be innocent, masochistic fun, harkening back a bit to the good old days behind the pork and beans plant.

I like it.

PART FOUR: The Book.

Over the past several years, Bill James has been threatening to publish something he calls a “Crime Book,” and although not completely positive, I believe it’s going to be the tell-all autobiography we’ve all been waiting for.

Rumor has it; over 100 pages will be devoted to Bill’s thoughts on retired Houston Astro slugger Jeff Bagwell.

I decided to utilize the Hey Bill section to press James for some more details about his autobiography. To follow is an unedited transcript of the questions, with some parenthetical commentary following each one. Because these were originally published at BJOL, and may or may not violate a number of copyright laws, you’re advised to read them at your own risk.

SCOTT SIMKUS: When you were risking your life working nights at Stokely Van Camp, did you ever have to fend off any would-be criminals? It’s my understanding the black market for pork and beans was pretty lucrative (and ruthless) during the 1970s. And as a follow-up question: Although you were paid to protect the inventory, were you ever tempted to pilfer any merchandise?

BILL JAMES: You wouldn’t steal that stuff either if you saw them packing it.

(I think it’s pretty obvious BJ isn’t being completely forthright in his answer here. Very short answer, tense. As if I had struck a nerve.)

PETER JENNINGS: Is your crime book going to include “sabermetric-styled” statistical analysis? Just hoping it does…

BILL JAMES: It doesn’t contain statistical analysis, no, but it does contain certain types of arguments and analysis that will look familiar to you.

(This is an homage to one of my favorite journalists, the late Peter Jennings. When I use the Hey Bill section, I’ll often put on a disguise at my computer and type in questions using a fake name. And yes, the “just hoping it does” thing is part of a well-known, textbook suck-up strategy used by all the great media outlets, including the E! Network)

SCOTT SIMKUS: To follow up on Peter Jennings’ question about the crime book…Having worked on the thing for a couple years, do you have any sense of whether there is more violent crime, less violent crime, or perhaps the same amount of violent crime per capita as there was, say, 50 years ago?

BILL JAMES: There is certainly less. Much less. Violent crime has decreased in this country throughout most of the last 140 years, with the exception of a few periods such as 1963-1976 and 1903-1914 when there were significant increases in crime rates.

(This is one of my signature moves, to secretly follow up on one of my own questions. How can Bill not respond to a follow up on Peter Jennings query?)

Over the past few months, I’ve submitted dozens of probing questions to Bill James. Sometimes I’ve used my own name, other times not. Sometimes Bill answers them, while other times he simply hits the delete button and moves on with his life. To see the rest of the interview, my attorney has advised me to suggest that you subscribe to Bill James online. You’ll find the rest of the stuff there.

At three dollars a month, it’s a pretty decent bang for your buck.

Interview: Josh Wilker

Josh Wilker, one of my favorite writers and mastermind behind the popular Cardboard Gods blog, stopped by for a little electronic chit-chat. Among other things, we covered petty crime, washing dishes with Uma Thurman and playing Strat-O-Matic with Buster Olney…proceed at your own risk.

I warned you ahead of time that my interview style is very similar to Barbara Walters’. I’ll start out with a series of seemingly innocuous questions, then- Pow!- out of left field I’ll hit you something that’ll have you sobbing like a school girl. Sound like fun?

OK, as long as you don’t ask me any questions about my past. I’m a doer, and my life only goes in one direction: forward.

Uh, ok. Turns out we know a lot of about your life. Courtesy of your essays at Cardboard Gods, where you mash-up your life story with reflections inspired by your aging baseball card collection, we get a pretty good sense of where you’ve been. What’s going on in your life right now? Are you married? What’s your day job?

I got married a couple years ago after my prospective bride passed a Diner-inspired multiple-choice and short answer test about the history of the Boston Red Sox. I cling to the borders of economic solvency by working as a proofreader and editor. (Really I do it more for the sheer adrenaline rush than the money.)

I’m getting’ a little low here, can you pass me another beer?

Have it all. I have a good old-fashioned hangover this morning, courtesy of Mr. Jameson.

I saw some books on the internet; Julius Erving, Race Car Legends, Wayne Gretzky (Ice Hockey Legends), which claim to have been written by a Josh Wilker? Did you write these, or do we have a law suit in the works? Or perhaps a little bit of both, you wrote them AND we have a law suit in the works?

I wrote the first and the third book you mention, and wrote a book on A.J. Foyt, which was part of the Race Car Legends series. In all, I wrote ten books of that nature (young adult nonfiction), but there is an eleventh young adult nonfiction book out there which has someone named Joshua D.G. Willker (with two L’s) listed as the author. It’s a book I was tentatively approached to write but nothing ever came of that first contact from the editor. It’s a mystery. I think I got into on the site, maybe in a piece on the now-forgotten Mike Tyson who played baseball in the 1970s.

What’s the largest amount of money you’ve ever stolen from somebody?

When I was 19 I worked for a couple months pumping gas at a Chevron station in Santa Barbara. I worked with this one guy who showed me how to smoke pot out of a Coke can. At a certain point we started skimming money off the top of some customer transactions. I think the deal was that customers were supposed to get a better per-gallon rate if they paid cash, but we’d charge them the credit card rate and pocket the difference ourselves. If anyone were ever to complain, we’d pretend we’d done it accidentally, out of stupidity, a role we were both well-suited to play. I don’t know how much it amounted to, maybe a buck or two a day in change.

Only a buck or two a day, Josh, but that’s when a dollar was worth 75 cents. Nowadays, a dollar’s worth only, like, a nickel…

Your fans keep wondering when you’re going to publish a book based on your essays, even though they can currently get the stuff for free. If I opened up my checkbook and told you to give me 100,000 words; would it be something based on the Cardboard Gods concept, or do you have another book in mind?

Sometimes I have stray ideas about future books, but I think I can only write one book at a time, and the one I’m working on and loving (and sometimes hating) now is the Cardboard Gods book, which will have its roots in the blog but which will be a different animal than my ongoing Internet-related effort to use my cards to cling to sanity on a semi-daily basis. I see the book as being more novelistic, with a beginning and end and a “rising action” and all that other Aristotelian shit. Plus it’s something that you will be able to hold in your hand, which will provide something that echoes what it was like to hold a baseball card in your hand. At least that’s my hope.

Is there a baseball book you’d like to see somebody else write?

I love Jonathan Ames’ writing, and I know he’s a baseball fan. He could certainly produce a weird and hilarious baseball novel, if he was so inclined. I was also reminiscing a couple weeks ago about the beat writing Joe Sexton did for the New York Times in 1993 covering a surly, haunted Mets team that lost over a hundred games. With each mounting loss, Sexton veered further and further away from reporting the increasingly meaningless details of the game and more into the existential abyss into which the Mets were falling. I may be over-romanticizing it, but I remember it as a great season-long tour-de-force in beat writing that transcended beat writing. I don’t know what kind of demand there’d be for a book of those dispatches from the edge, but I’d certainly buy it.

Um, I didn’t order mushrooms on this pizza. How’d these things get on here, Josh?

I, uh…

You’ve probably answered this before, but I have a very poor memory. What’s your favorite baseball book, and why?

The Southpaw, by Mark Harris. Most of the books in my top ten favorite books of any kind are first-person narratives with really distinctive voices. A lot of them are coming-of-age novels. So I guess I’m a sucker for those elements in a book, and The Southpaw has both of them going for it, and on top of that it allows me, whenever I read it, to dissolve completely into a well-imagined, note-perfect fictional universe centered around my favorite sport.

Do you have a favorite “brush with greatness” story?

I went to boarding school for a couple years, or almost a couple of years, and they had this thing there called “work-job.” Every day or every couple days you had to do some chore or other for a half hour or so. One semester I ran a dishwashing machine with Uma Thurman. There used to exist a sarcastic photograph of me in a pose as the Dishwasher Stud. I stood in front of the dishwashing machine in Wayfarer sunglasses and my fast-food style paper dishwasher hat, and Uma Thurman and another girl who worked in the kitchen hung on my shoulders, as if enthralled by my magnificence. The photo was destroyed a couple years after it was taken, in a fire in the apartment of my former boarding school roommate, Bill. I have never gotten over this loss.

I’ve got a couple shots of me and Uma, but they’re mostly photo-shopped things. Okay… they’re ALL photo-shopped.

Kerouac is one of your literary heroes. Turns out he played a little baseball growing up and even created a card-based baseball simulation game when he was a kid. You’ve mentioned Strat-O-Matic in your work, can you tell me a little bit about your involvement with the game? Is there a singular memory, or favorite card that comes to mind?

As with my involvement with baseball cards, my early involvement with Strat was prodded along by a baseball-crazy kid who lived in our town, Buster Olney. My older brother started playing in a league with Buster when both of them were away at the aforementioned boarding school, and when they came home from school we had three-team round-robins.

One clear memory of that time was when I paused in the middle of my team’s ninth inning rally against my brother’s team with my best slugger, Eddie Murray, at the plate, to run upstairs and blast the section of my Eddie Murphy record where the crowd chants “Ed-die! Ed-die!” (The crowd noise didn’t help Murray, who popped out to end the game, I think.)

Another memory is when it was just Buster and me playing game after game deep into the night in my family’s kitchen, and by some freak of the dice I kept winning every single game, until Buster finally roared his favorite expletive phrase—“What a chunk of shit!”—and stormed out of the house and went home. In general, Buster kicked the crap out of everyone he played by loading his roster with lesser-known guys who years later would be thought of as Moneyball-type players. (He loved Gene Tenace.)

One other memory I have from those days stems from the sound effect Buster used whenever his closer, Goose Gossage, recorded a strikeout: “Hwaaa!” (Like a demonstrative ump signaling a third strike.) One day we went to play some basketball by the high school, and there was a karate class in session on the grass behind the outdoor hoop. The sound the leader made whenever he chopped or kicked, and which was then imitated by all the students, was exactly like Buster’s Goose Gossage sound. “Hwaaa! Hwaaa!” I learned that it’s impossible to play basketball when you’re laughing so hard you’re crying.

But most of my Strat-playing (including a lot of seasons of Strat basketball) was done alone. The highpoint of all those many hours whiled away alone in my teen years was when I presided over a no-hitter (1981 Dave Righetti against the Dodgers). I tacked the notebook page I’d used as a scorecard to the wall of my room.

You have to drive across the country, I was going to give you a choice of Bukowski versus Kerouac…but no. You have to pick Joe Morgan (the self-proclaimed greatest second baseman of all-time) or Tim McCarver as your wing man. 1. Which one do you choose? 2. How far do you make it before dumping your choice on the side of the road?

I did a fair amount of hitch-hiking when I was a teenager, so I have some practice being agreeable to people I’m trapped in a car with. But you know, even though these guys have developed TV personas as somewhat tiresome blowhards, I think face to face they’d be more human, just a couple old guys who could answer a lot of questions about baseball history. I guess I’d opt for McCarver, since he goes back a little farther. Plus I have a hunch he might enjoy a drink now and then.

The first time I flunked out of college, I was spending my afternoons playing a J. Henry Waugh-style solitaire SOM league; while my evenings were spent in bars, chasing tail and getting beaten up. I don’t have the time to play Strat during the afternoon these days, and nothing really exciting happens to me anymore. Is this a coincidence?

Could be. What’s to hold a guy back from staying out until last call when all he’s got going the next day is some afternoon dice rolling and scorekeeping.

This hitter’s cashed, man. Can you pass me that paper clip so I can clean it out?

I, uh . . .

Is it just me, or does troubled Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich remind you of a “Who” from “Whoville.” You know, the Dr. Suess book?

I am spacing on what those characters looks like, but there is definitely a Suessian paunch to Blago’s cheeks, like he’s hiding incriminating microfilm in there.

You’ve mentioned that the garish 1975 Topps set is your favorite of all-time. Who would you have in your all-time starting line-up? This could be your favorite baseball cards, position-by-position; or merely your all-time greatest starting line-up.

All right, my staff is a bit heavy on bullpen guys, but here goes.

C: Skip Jutze, 1978
1B: Carl Yastrzemski, 1980
2B: Dave Cash, 1977
SS: Rudy Meoli, 1975
3B: Carmen Fanzone, 1975
OF: Bob Coluccio, 1975
OF: George Foster, 1978
OF: Terry Puhl, 1980
DH: Hank Aaron, 1976
P: Mike Barlow, 1980
P: Mark Fidrych, 1980
P: JR Richard, 1977
P: Rich Folkers, 1975
P: Greg Minton, 1978

Okay, so you went with your favorite baseball cards. Interesting choices, Josh. They’d suck the big one, but I’d volunteer to travel with them as their batting practice pitcher. I have a feeling it could be a fun group.

I’ll ask you the same question I asked Craig Calcaterra, what are blogs?

I’m not very good at defining things like that. For me it’s a way to share my writing after enduring many years when most of the stuff I wrote never reached beyond my notebook. It’s also a way to read a lot of great writing and get a lot of interesting info that I would otherwise not be getting. Two guys from Baseball Toaster, Ken Arneson and Jon Weisman, have had really thoughtful posts that succeed at providing a more general answer to your question. Ken, the founder of Baseball Toaster, sees blogs as conversations, more fluid and interactive and capable of fostering unpredictable growth than, say, a newspaper article. (He’s careful to say that blog posts aren’t inherently better than newspaper articles, just different.)

You and I are about the same age, I think the way people follow baseball is different today than it was in the 1970s. I’m not saying it’s necessarily better or worse, just different. Do you agree?

I think information about the game existed then more as written narrative, or as spoken narrative in radio broadcasts, and now everyone can watch everything whenever they want, or have it boiled down to highlights. Images don’t sink as deep as narratives, at least for me. Then again nowadays fans can talk via the Internet about baseball, and the stories in baseball, all the time. In some ways, it’s a good time to be a fan, because of the availability to so much information. On the other hand, tickets are so expensive it’s hard to go to many games if you’re not wealthy or willing to go into sizable debt.

Everything is starting to turn green here; wondering if it’s these frickin’ ‘shrooms on our pizza…

I, uh . . .

Calcaterra liked this one: Do you think there will be Major League baseball in 100 years?

If so, I hope it’s more like soccer in England, where there are just a shitload of teams all over the country in leagues of varying prominence, and each team has the chance to move up a level if they play well or to get “relegated” if they stink up the joint.

Don Stanhouse is 57 years old. Do you think you could take him in a fight?

I doubt it. I have never landed a punch on anyone, while Don Stanhouse was on hand for the 10-cent Beer Night riot, presumably among the Texas Rangers that bat-wielding manager Billy Martin led onto the field to take on the drunken portion of the population of Cleveland.

Are you crying yet?

Only on the inside.

Thanks, Josh. You’ve been a good sport. I’ve gotta go, dude, I think the cops are coming…

Interview: Glenn Guzzo

Glenn Guzzo's Strat-O-Matic Fanatics

Glenn Guzzo, former editor of The Denver Post and executive sports editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, is the author of several books, including The New Ballgame, and Strat-O-Matic Fanatics: The Unlikely Success Story of a Game That Became an American Passion. Glenn was kind enough to take some time and answer a broad range of questions.

Scott Simkus: Glenn, it says in the Strat-O-Matic book that you’ve been playing the board game since 1963. Is there one singular memory that stands out from those early experiences with SOM?

Glenn Guzzo: Among the many, there are two indelible memories, both involving my brother Alan. We never fail to mention them when we see each other. The first: It’s the classic situation every kid dreams of – the chance to hit a two-out, walk-off grand slam to turn a three-run deficit into a victory. It happened for us with 1963 Leon Wagner, who rolled 2-10 for a Homerun 1-19, flyball B 20. You can guess: 20. The second, I come home one day, probably in 1967, to find out Alan has traded our 1962, 1963, 1964 and 1965 original baseball card sets for two Bill Cosby albums. The Cosby stuff is classic and hilarious, but I was not laughing. Mind you, the ’62 set was mine alone and the others were half mine, half his, and he makes the swap without even consulting me. Want to talk the worst trades in baseball history? The Lou Brock deal has got nothing on this. I never have been able to replace those ‘62s and ‘63s.

How much baseball did you play as a kid? Any Little League horror stories? And looking back, what kind of SOM ratings (stealing, running, arm, etc.) would you give yourself as a player?

This can’t be right, but I remember playing baseball all day, every day, all summer. From fourth grade on we lived next to a park and every house near it had two boys: The Guzzos, the Kadars, the LaBodas, the Exels, the Owens, the DeShongs, the Lubecks. We had rules for nine to a side, eight, six, five. We played baseball mostly, but we dominated the summer city-parks softball league two years in a row. If only two or three of us were around, we played Wiffle ball. Or strikeout – we’d chalk a strike zone against the side of a building. You pitch a rubber ball or a tennis ball, and I try to hit it. If I took the pitch, you had to get it in the chalked area for a strike.

So we’d play ball till dusk, get dinner, then reconvene at someone’s house to play Strat or pinochle, downing soft drinks and pretzels and listening to whatever baseball game we could get on the radio. We favored the games out of Cincinnati and Pittsburgh – probably because their stations were strong enough to reach us in Detroit, but also because some of us adopted those teams.

Little League stuff was all fun until I was about 17 and found out I could not hit a slider – and looked really bad failing to do so. Feeble, late swings. Dribblers to the right side of the infield. I was actually hitting .000 10 games into the season. I realized I had to do more work than I was willing to do. At 5-9 and slow, it wasn’t like time in the batting cage was going to propel me to pro ball. So I played serious softball instead. That was big fun.

I was never among the best athletes, but I learned to play the game right much sooner than other kids. Once they learned the game, their superior skills took over. I went from pitcher to first base, from quarterback to linebacker, from point guard to bench.

SOM ratings? At my best, 20 years ago as a softball player, I was a 3B-1 and a SS-2, with the good SS rating all on positioning, technique and arm, because I was slow. I’d be a stealing E with 1-11 speed. On pure speed, I probably would be 1-10, even 1-9, but I knew how to run the bases, and all the slides. I had a good infield arm, but on the rare occasions I played OF, I’d have to rate OF-3(+1). At bat, I sacrificed power for a batting average high enough to bat third on most of my softball teams. I’d have N power, but wouldn’t have an automatic HR on my card. We won a lot of championships. I made some all-star teams. But there were better athletes on every team I played on and all the teams we played against. I simply respected the game to get all the mileage out of my meager skills.

Favorite Strat-O-Matic card?

Gosh. So many. But the guys who were on fire all season long for me were guys with auto HRs at 3-6 and the rest of their power in the 2 column: 1930 Hack Wilson, 1961 Frank Robinson, 1979 Fred Lynn, 1987 Eric Davis. There are better cards, but these guys were heroic on the scale of ancient Greeks.

What’s the most solitaire SOM (board) games you’ve ever played in one day? To be fair, I’ll out myself here as a dork first and admit that I once played 15 or 20 games, probably spread out over ten hours…

We’ve got to whip you into shape, man. Not often, but I’ve hit 30-35 in a day solo. Head to head, a friend and I used to play 18 every Saturday as adults in the 1980s. Took us six hours with no lunch break. Actually, back to the ‘60s with those brothers around the park, we’d play one 60-game season after another all summer, combining two stock teams each that we drafted. I swear that one very rainy day when we couldn’t play outside, we took over the LaBoda basement and played an entire 60-game season, probably from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. It was basic game and we didn’t keep many stats. Those sets had only 20 cards to a stock team and we played only the best guys. By mid-summer we knew most of those cards from memory. 3-9 on Ron Santo? That’s a walk. Don’t even look at it.

I was too much of a stat freak to play more than 15. Had to calculate the numbers, fielding percents, everything. Okay, you get to draft one card to build your team around, which Strat-O-Matic card do you select?

Everybody’s gonna say Bonds or Ruth, and they wouldn’t be wrong, but I think we’d have a better chance to find an outfielder to be more competitive with those guys than we would to find a second baseman to compete with the new 1924 Rogers Hornsby. The guy’s card will probably be over .600 vs. RHP.

You had to pick ONE line-up of SOM cards (a mix of any years, but you can only use each player once- can’t have three different Ruth’s in the outfield, for instance), what would be the starting line-up (including DH) on your All-Time Strat-O-Matic cards?

OK – no ringers, right? And no platoons. But it’s advanced, so it’s gotta be guys who hammer pitchers both ways. The lineup has to have a lefty-righty mix. And the catchers ought to be able to throw. I’m going to forget some better players, I know it. But off the top of the head:

DH: 1930 Hack Wilson. He’s an axe-murderer.
1B: 1927 Lou Gehrig
2B: 1924 Rogers Hornsby
3B: 1980 Mike Schmidt
SS: 2001 Alex Rodriguez
LF: 2001 Barry Bonds
CF: 1954 Willie Mays
RF: 1920 Babe Ruth
C: 1955 Roy Campanella

Need another lefty. But I think there’s enough offense here to overcome Bonds’ defensive shortcomings and the lack of a 1 at either SS or 2B.

I’ll bite on the platoon issue. Who would be in your all-time Strat platoon?

If we’re platooning, probably at least these:
DH: 1941 Ted Williams vs. RHP
1b: 1994 Jeff Bagwell vs. LHP
3b: 1980 George Brett vs. RHP

What’s your favorite team name from one of your leagues? It could be your team, or perhaps one of the other teams in your league. When we were kids, my buddy John Paraoan managed the “Glen Head Rivals,” even though neither one of us had ever been anywhere near New York!

My Walla Walla Bing Bangs, in the Western Division of a play-by-mail draft league league. Bing Bangs described this singles/speed team that I inherited when a guy quit four games into the season. League with about eight teams made up of 1986 NL cards. The Bing Bangs had NO power. Leadoff man Steve Sax was my best player and MVP. The DH platoon was R. J. Reynolds and Mike Fitzgerald, a backup catcher who had “W” power. The rest of this motley crew: C Jody Davis (HR leader with 21 actual), 1B Sid Bream, 3B Chris Brown, SS Garry Templeton, OF: Chili Davis, Eddie Milner, Mitch Webster, Reggie Williams.
Solid, but unspectacular pitching: Ron Darling, Floyd Youmans, Dennis Eckersley, Joe Price, Jim Deshaies. Frankie Williams was my closer. Last-place team, right? They made it to Game 7 of the World Series. We chased Mike Scott, but lost 10-8 with the tying runs on when we ran out of time.

I know you were an editor at several important newspapers, and that you do a lot of different things for Strat-O-Matic these days, but what’s your day job now?

Varies by season, and I’m always juggling, but I teach writing and editing at the University of North Florida part-time year-‘round.

Do you have a favorite “brush with greatness” story?

As a professional journalist for 35 years, I’ve met quite a few celebs. You can’t be in awe of them and still do your job well. I was a cub reporter when I interviewed Al Kaline as he approached his 3,000th hit. In Detroit at that time, Kaline was the No. 1 hero.

In Denver, I’m in a luxury box and who’s in the one next door? Reggie Jackson, helping to entertain Qwest clients. So the game’s over, and Reggie and I are walking out of the stadium, just strolling out of Coors Field and down the block, talking baseball, with nobody else trying to get Reggie’s attention. He wasn’t happy with the way Benito Santiago had failed to run out a ground ball that turned into a double play.

I played softball in Miami against former Major League pitcher Alex Fernandez, of the White Sox. Most don’t know that when he wasn’t pitching at U. of Miami, he was the DH. When Alex wasn’t around, our team killed his softball team. When he showed up, he single-handedly destroyed us. I never saw anyone hit higher, deeper line drives – and do it every time up.

The quirkiest was probably the time that I chased down (by phone), Princess Grace Kelly of Monaco. She was in Paris at the time and I was in Texas. The princess’ personal assistant was quite annoyed that I had the private direct line to their suite in Paris, but when Grace came to the phone she couldn’t have been more gracious.

Then there was the time I was hosting the assistant sports editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer at a nice downtown restaurant. We’re talking a lot of baseball, so the big guy at the next table interrupts to chime in about Danny Heep. It’s Eric Gregg, the umpire. What follows is 30 minutes of back-and-forth, with Gregg saying all kinds of things he wouldn’t want out – his wide strike zone on getaway days in Pittsburgh, the politics of umpiring schools, what Mike Schmidt said to him the day Gregg tossed him a week earlier, and more. Turns out Gregg didn’t know we were from the newspaper. When I handed him my business card, he almost turned white. I said “Glenn Guzzo,” offered my hand, and Gregg shook it, saying, “Charlie Williams” – the only other black umpire in baseball at the time.

The Chicago Tribune just filed for bankruptcy here. Not really baseball related, but in a paragraph or two, what do you think about the future of newspapers?

I wouldn’t have said it two years ago, but now I’m certain that we will see one or more major newspapers die within two years. 2009 is a better ETA for the first one. I could predict the future better if I saw great leadership in the industry, but it’s scarce. I think it’s a safe bet that some big papers will publish fewer than seven days a week, and some will go solely online.

Are there any other projects in the pipe line that you’re at liberty to talk about right now?

I have some very big ideas, but they aren’t close enough to reality to say they are in the pipeline. Some involve writing books and some involve me leading unique, entrepreneurial efforts. The necessity of paying the near-term bills is quite an annoyance. I’d rather be using the gifts God has given me to a) get more people to read the Bible and b) contribute significantly to a healthier democracy.

I have a bit of experience in the latter. As for the Bible, I didn’t start reading it seriously until two-three years ago. Now I’m convinced that everyone who will read it will change his/her behavior for the better. The messages are that profound, and that humbling. You want to do something big with the rest of your life? Get closer to God. It’s a life’s work and the payoff is huge.

Thanks, Glenn. Have a Merry Christmas…

Interview: Craig Calcaterra

It was a busy weekend for Craig Calcaterra.  The brains behind the ShysterBall experience packed up his keyboard and creativity, taking up residence as the new featured blogger du jour at The Hardball Times.  In between lifting all those heavy boxes, Craig was kind enough to field a few batting practice fastballs from yours truly, the Larry King of internet interviewers.  Among other things, Craig shares his “all-time” baseball team, with a twist only a Shyster could appreciate…John Wockenfuss at catcher.  Columbus… Hello!

First of all, congratulations on your move to The Hardball Times.  You’ve led a somewhat nomadic existence: both in real life, meandering from Michigan to West Virginia to Columbus, Ohio; as well as on the internet.  Your work has found a new home after having been anchored at a couple different previous locations; instead of asking about predictions regarding your creative future, I want to know how you think your work has evolved since your first efforts in 2001?  

 

Thanks, Scott.  I’m pretty excited about the move.

 

As for evolution, I guess I’d say that I take myself less seriously than I did seven or eight years ago.  I didn’t write a ton of content back at the old web magazine, but re-reading it makes me cringe sometimes.  It seems like I tried to support every point I tried to make with an argument, a response to an anticipated counter-argument, and then an extra rebuttal or three, all before I could get through a column.  I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that I wasn’t thinking like a blogger yet.  The beauty of a blog is that you’re able to develop your ideas over dozens of smaller posts over time, change your mind if you must, interact with readers a bit, and simply have your ideas evolve rather than stand for eternity as a single isolated post the way most columns appear.  These days I view any given post as an invitation to a conversation rather than some pronouncement from on columnist high.

 

 

Although your forum has become a popular destination for baseball wonks over the past couple years, there must be a steady stream of new visitors who’ve never seen your work, especially given your new address.  How would you describe your stuff to first-time readers?

 

I tend to write about (a) whatever interests me; and (b) whatever inspires me to an opinion of some sort.  I figured out pretty early on that it’s OK not to write about the big news story of the day – say, a trade or a manager getting fired or something – because there are only so many original takes on The Big Story.  This leads to a lot of random stuff – just this morning I wrote about fast food, branding, the Cleveland light rail system, early 19th century warfare, and the arbitration deadline.  The thing is, they all had at least something to do with baseball.  At least I hope so.

 

More generally, outside of my daily, in-season recap post, I tend to write about the context of baseball, the environment in which baseball operates, and how baseball intersects with the culture at large more than I write about the game itself.

 

 

What are baseball blogs?  Are they a more erudite version of the sports radio format (as I suspect), or something different?

 

I’ve heard the sports radio analogy before, but I think blogs are a different beast entirely. Talk radio seems to be designed to get a rise out of people.  I worked at a radio station when I was in high school, and the expression applied to any on-air business that led to yelling, crying, or other high emotion was “that’s good radio.”  I’ve yet to come across an analog in the world of blogs.

 

Obviously there are many different kinds of bloggers, but I think the ones that do the job well are akin to the people who get the conversation going at a cocktail party but then step back and participate on an equal footing with the partygoers.  Talk radio hosts act like it’s their party alone.

 

One of the challenges in our electronic, info-overload culture is sifting the gold from the garbage.  Talent notwithstanding, can you use organized baseball’s classification system (MLB, AAA, AA, Rookie Ball, etc.), to help establish a road map for online baseball readers?  For instance, if Rob Neyer’s column at ESPN is “MLB,” then Shyster’s pre-THT site was what? AA?   Where would THT (or the LA Times, Sports Illustrated, or the dozens of smaller, independent team-specific blogs) fit into this electronic hierarchy?

 

I can’t even go with the analogy, for the simple reason that there is no uniform scouting or talent development system for blogs pursuant to which players are rationally assigned to a given level.  I think it’s true that Neyer would be a Major Leaguer no matter what, but so too would Babe Ruth have been if baseball was integrated in the 1920s.  Fact was, however, that there were all kinds of players who would have starred in the Majors then but didn’t either because no one knew about them or because they weren’t allowed in the front door.

 

This is not to say that the mainstream media is keeping baseball writing talent out in some organized fashion.  It’s simply to note that there are tons of great writers with oodles of talent writing for very small readerships on obscure blogs while people who couldn’t’ reason or write their way out of a paper bag draw large salaries from major media companies.  It’s certainly better now than it was five years ago, but the large platforms – places like Sports Illustrated, the networks, ESPN, and the major newspapers – still have a bit of trouble understanding that a writer’s popularity is not determinative of his or her quality as a writer.

 

 

 

Woody Allen once wrote his “only regret in life is that he wasn’t somebody else.”  With the emergence of Beyonce Knowles/ Sasha Fierce, Sean Combs/P Diddy, Chad Johnson/Ocho Cinco, and (the reemergence) of Bruce Wayne/ Batman; it’s become rather fashionable to actually be a couple different people at one time.  Author Chuck Palahniuk wrote a best-selling novel, Fight Club, about this duality premise, although his main protagonist- it turns out- was schizophrenic or something. First of all, is your toggling back-and-forth between a legal career and baseball blogging an indication of an undiscovered illness?  And secondly, if you had to do it all over again, would have majored in something other than law; such as English or Journalism or Mass Communications- or are you okay with your current trek up the creaky ladder?

 

No illness here.  If anything, the blogging is a sign of health.  I still make my living in the law and I think I’m pretty good at certain aspects of it, but anyone who has ever met a lawyer who defines himself or his self-worth solely in terms of the practice of law has met a sick individual.  All of the healthy lawyers out there – and there are many of us – have hobbies or pursuits that nourish our sense of humanity in ways the law is simply incapable of doing.  Sometimes that’s charity work.  Sometimes it’s extreme sports.  Sometimes it’s breeding show dogs.  In my case it’s writing about baseball.

 

Which is not to say I’d have done anything different with my career.  Indeed, I am certain that I would not be half the writer or thinker I am today if not for my legal training and experience.  Everyone who goes to law school encounters a professor who tells them that they are not there to learn the law, they are there to learn how to think like a lawyer.  That’s a cliché, but it’s a very true one, with “think like a lawyer” meaning to think critically and analytically, to express oneself clearly, and to generally accept the clams of others with a healthy bit of skepticism.  Those are the key skills of a good writer and a good blogger.

 

 

With your legal beagle/ baseball big foot DNA, did you ever consider becoming a… sports agent?

 

Never.  It’s a cutthroat world, and I simply don’t have the disposition for it.  I’m also somewhat risk averse on a personal level, and while I am able to set that aside when I’m helping a big company or a rich client make decisions about their legal strategy, I think I’d be less able to do so when an 18 year-old kid was asking me what he should do.  I’m afraid my advice would always be to sign early, take the money and run, and that’s not always the best advice.

 

You’ve got to drive a mini-van across the country, who would you rather have in the passenger seat as your wing man, Bob Costas or George Will?

 

George Will.  Not because I hate Bob Costas or anything, but I simply think I’d learn a lot of stuff I didn’t know already if Will was riding shotgun.

 

Comedians: Sasha Baron Cohen or Dane Cook?

 

Sasha Baron Cohen if I have to choose.  I’m more of a George Carlin guy, though.

 

You’ve got an entry in this year’s Hardball Ball Times Baseball Annual 2009; if somebody opened up the checkbook, is there a solo book project (baseball or otherwise) you’d like to tackle?  Is there a baseball book you’d like to see somebody else write?

 

I’m actually trying to hammer out a book proposal now, so that check might serve as added incentive to get off my butt and finish it.  At the moment I’m kind of enthralled with the idea of how sports fandom (specifically baseball fandom, but it applies to other sports as well) has changed from following the action to following the context or the behind the scenes stuff.  Kids don’t want to grow up to be the shortstop anymore, they want to be the GM.  Sabermetrics and fantasy baseball continue that dynamic.  NASCAR fandom is made up of just as many people who care deeply about sponsorships and team ownership as people who care about the race itself.  It may even be accurate to say that Mark Cuban-the-team-owner is the ultimate example of that kind of fandom.  The idea is still gelling, but I have a title:  “Metafans.”  If the idea doesn’t work I may still keep the title.  I kind of like it.

 

Non-baseball:  I’ve written the first 40 pages or so of about five different detective novels and the first 30 pages or so of two different books about men who move out to the suburbs while experiencing career ennui.  I’d like to finish one of them before I die, but I wouldn’t wager on it ever happening.  They seem to peter out just when, you know, the plot is supposed to kick in.

 

Book by another person:  I’d like to see a salacious tell-all book of interviews of Derek Jeter’s doormen, personal assistants, maids, butlers, valets, neighbors, and pharmacists over the past 15 years.

 

 

Bill James published his first Abstract in 1977, Daniel Okrent came up with his wacky “Rotisserie Baseball” concept in ’79, how have sabermetrics and “fantasy baseball” changed the way fans consume baseball today?

 

See the previous answer for part of that.  There’s just so much more content now in terms of the business of the game, the context of the game, and of course the world of statistics that motivated fans can never run out of fresh stuff to devour.  This may be a bit of a double-edged sword in that there may be a certain brand of casual fan that simply can’t converse with the uber plugged-in fan down at the corner bar.  I think this is far outweighed, however, by the fact that fans are less likely to grow bored with baseball as they get older.  That certainly was the case for me.  I drifted away from baseball quite a bit by my early 20s, and if it wasn’t for guys like Rob Neyer, Bill James, and websites like Baseball Prospectus and Baseball Think Factory, I may not have come back into the fold.

 

 

It doesn’t have to be baseball-related, but do you have a good “brush with greatness” story you care to share with my readers?

 

I’ve got a good baseball one.  Summer of 1984.  I had just turned 11, and I was on vacation with my family in our big RV, driving through somewhere in North Carolina. As we pass through Williamston, North Carolina, my dad pulls over and stops to make a phone call at a pay phone. He gets back into the RV and says “we’re stopping for lunch.” As we pull away from the phone booth, I see a sign that says “Welcome to Martin County, Home of Gaylord Perry.”

 

Fifteen minutes later we are pulling up to a house next to a huge peanut farm, and a woman comes out.  She says to my dad “are you the fella that just called? Well, come on in!” She welcomed us inside and says “Gaylord will be here in a minute.” My brother and I freak out as we look around the room and see pictures of Gaylord Perry, jerseys, and other stuff.  A minute later, in walks Gaylord freaking Perry, having just came in from doing whatever you do on a peanut farm.

 

Gaylord and his wife were awesome. They said that not too many people just up and stop by, and that they were always glad to see fans when they did.  Mrs. Perry made us sandwiches.  Gaylord signed autographs (as with any RV vacation we ever took, my brother and I had baseball cards with us, including a few Perry cards too).  He showed us a bunch of memorabilia he had in his living room and pictures of him and his former teammates.

 

Before we left, Gaylord took us back to his office, reached into a drawer and gave us each a baseball autographed by George Brett (he had all kinds of stuff like that from former teammates).  He gave my mom an autographed T-shirt commemorating the pine tar game. My dad took pictures of my brother and I with Gaylord and with that, we left.

 

Hindsight and history has me thinking that he was maybe just as happy to see us as we were to see him.  It was his first summer away from baseball in his adult life, and I can’t help but think he was missing it and the fans.  I later learned that his farm went bankrupt two years later, so it’s possible he wasn’t all that hot on farming either.

 

Will there be Major League baseball 100 years from now?

 

I think so.  And Jamie Moyer will be starting for the team from Europa.

 

When I was a kid I’d write letters to old-time ballplayers (Carl Hubbell, Bill Terry, etc.) and ask them to list their “All-Time” teams.  It’s quickly becoming a tradition with my interviews here at the blog.  Who would you put on your all-time team?

 

I’m not going to go with the best players of all time, and in some cases not even my favorites.  I’m going to go with the guys I’d want to see on that team for personal reasons, excitement, or mere randomness.  Given that I’m 35, you won’t be surprised to find a bunch of 70s-80s guys on this list.

 

C:  John Wockenfuss.  Not much of a catcher, but he was versatile, got on base a lot, and was always a favorite of mine for some reason;

 

1B:  Will Clark.  Great swing.  When I was 14, he just seemed like the quintessential ballplayer;

 

2B:  Lou Whitaker.  Because you can’t have the next guy on this list without him;

 

SS:  Alan Trammell.  My childhood baseball hero.

 

3B:  George Brett:  Schmidt was better, but I was an AL kid, and every kid I knew considered Brett to be the best player in the game when we were growing up;

 

LF:  Rickey Henderson.  He’d always have the green light on my team;

 

CF:  Eric Davis.  I’m assuming the guys I pick are frozen forever at their peaks?   If so, there’s nothing like Eric Davis circa 1987;

 

RF:  Hank Aaron.  It’s always risky to assign moral value to someone you don’t know, but based on what we do know, I don’t think there has ever been a greater combination of baseball player and person in the history of Major League Baseball;

 

SP1:  Greg Maddux.  He and Trammell go back and forth as my all-time favorite;

 

SP2:  Lefty Grove:  The stuff he did in a hitters’ era boggles the mind;

 

SP3:  Pedro Martinez:  It’s all about the torque;

 

SP4:  Phil Niekro.  Because in baseball Valhalla, there’s always room for a knuckleballer;

 

SP5:  Mickey Lolich:  he’s my #2 brush-with-greatness story.  No, he’s not the pitcher these other guys are, but with the crew you can go with a four man rotation with Mickey as a swing man and spot-starting for Pedro when necessary.  Besides, I’m guessing he’d be a lot of fun on road trips.

 

Setup:  Aurelio Lopez.  Senor Smoke and Lolich would make a great pair;

 

Closer:  Mariano Rivera.  Because every team needs a stone cold assassin.

Interview: KJOK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First a confession. When I learned KJOK was a rabid St. Louis Cardinals fan, I was surprised to discover he could not only read and write, but was a proficient numbers analyst as well. Having grown up in an ultra-conservative Chicago Cubs household, I was raised to not trust those who lived south of Springfield, or west of the Mississippi. Cardinal fans were said to be communists, immoral, and known for their heinous cruelty to animals. We were taught they ate with their hands, lived in caves, and eschewed the use of soap. We were not, under any circumstances, allowed to interact with Redbird worshippers; unless, of course, the interaction involved pelting them with rotten cantaloupes.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become an agnostic baseball fan (that is, I’m not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of the Cubs), and often seek out activities which challenge my old prejudices.  Such was the case with my KJOK e-mail exchange.  Turns out he’s a decent guy.  Not just decent, but an actual human being named Kevin Johnson.  He sent me a picture as evidence, and although I’ve sent it to a Washington, DC laboratory for authentication (it’s hard to break old habits), I’m 95% sure it’s him.

We’ve got a few things in common; he’s a family guy, has a job, used to play softball.  He also enjoys researching baseball.  His internet handle has become a brand name, recognizable on many baseball sights.  What I like about Kevin- and all bullshit aside here for a moment- is his versatility.  Whereas a lot of baseball nuts find their particular niche; whether it be focusing on minor league ball, sabermetrics, negro leagues, whatever, Kevin deftly ventures into many different areas of baseball history.  Not only does he have a broad palette, he actually gets stuff done; posting articles, commentary and statistical information on a wide variety of baseball themes.  A lot of his original work can be found at www.seamheads.com, where he is one of the founding contributors.

I haven’t shared this with KJOK until now, but his work on SABR’s minor league database is one of the big reasons I finally decided to join the group.  Seriously.  I saw the thing (through a link at www.agatetype.typepad.com, and said, “If this is what they’re doing now, I’m in.  Sign me up.”    

If you take all of the crap I’m going to post on this blog over the next ten years and combined it, it won’t be anywhere near as valuable to other baseball researchers and writers as the SABR minor league database Kevin helped build.  It’s a pretty astonishing achievement.  KJOK was kind enough to put some projects to the side and share some of his time:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KJOK.  It’s become a brand name of sorts on the internet.  First off, I have to know: is KAY-JAY-OH-KAY, or KAY-JOCK?  

When coming up with an internet handle, I took Kevin Johnson from Oklahoma to create KJ-OK, so it’s supposed to be KAY-JAY-OH-KAY, but I think most people read it as KAY-JOCK

 

 

Ok, cool, I guess I’ve had it right the last couple years.  I’m sort of curious about the man behind the initials.  Who is KJOK?  Can you share some non-incriminating details from your past.  Where are you from?  What college did you attend?  And finally- I know this sounds like I’m asking you out on a date, but… what was your major?

I’m from St. Louis County in Missouri.  I attended Washington University in St. Louis.   My major was Business Administration with an emphasis in Mangement Information Systems.

 

I understand you followed the Cardinals as a wee pup.  Who was your favorite player growing up? 

My favorite was Lou Brock, probably because I was a speedy, non-power hitting outfielder myself.

 

And who would you have in your all-time Cardinals starting line-up?

KJOK’s All-Time Cardinals starting Lineup:

C – Simmons

1B – Pujols

2B – Hornsby

SS – Smith

3B – Boyer

LF – Musial

CF – Lankford

RF – Slaughter

P – Gibson 

 

Where the heck’s Lou Brock?  Is it hard leaving him out of the line-up?

Lou is definitely on the team.  But he can’t beat out Musial, so he’ll be doing a lot of pinch-running I guess.

 

 

Ok you’ve already stated you were a mini-Lou Brock growing up.  I always like to ask about people’s tour of duty in Little League, because it’s part of the genesis of why we still follow the game as adults.  There’s the good, bad and ugly of it that makes it so unforgettable. What was your LL experience like? 

I was fortunate to join a team that almost never lost.  We either went undefeated or had just 1 loss every year.  There were already ‘all-star’ players at all of the infield positions, so I got put into the outfield.  I was a decent fielder with a strong arm, but not much of a hitter.  Offensively, I mostly walked, bunted, and stole bases.  My claim to fame is I was never thrown out stealing.

 

After Little League, did you continue playing ball?  When did you finally hang up the cleats?

I played football and soccer in high school, but once I graduated, I started playing softball.  Some years I played on 3 different teams at once.   I finally hung up my cleats in my early thirties due to low back problems.

 

 

What is your day job today?  On your seamheads.com bio, it says you’re married with two children—how do they deal with your baseball obsession? 

I work for a travel technology company, mostly crunching numbers to analyze work load and performance trends.   My wife is an early to bed, early to rise person, while I’m a ‘nite owl’, so I’m able to feed my obsession at night when the rest of the family is in bed.

 

I know you’re in Broken Arrow , OK .  Ever bump into Warren Spahn before he got called up to the big leagues in the sky?

No, my ‘touch’ with fame in Broken Arrow has been seeing Brad Penny pitch when he was in high school, and being a co-worker for awhile with Patsy Brewer, who is the widow of Jim Brewer, former Dodger pitcher.

 

When did you first get involved in SABR? 

I first became a member around 1986, after reading about the organization in one of the Bill James Abstracts.  I took a 10 year break from 1991-2001, but have been a more active member my second go-around.

 

When did you get involved with the minor league database?  How many people are working on this project? 

 I became involved with the Minor League Database over two years ago.   There are four ‘main’ people working on the project, plus another 5-10 volunteers at various times who are massaging specific pieces of data, such as ballparks, for example.  We need more volunteers!

 

If somebody is interested, how would they get involved in the minor league database project? 

Email sabrmilb@gmail.com.

 

What is the most important thing you’ve learned while working on the minor league database? (this could be anything, from the logistics of managing a large project, or something about baseball history you may not have known)  What can expect from the database in the future?

The most important thing I learned may be that there is just SOOO much data that is available, but not in digitized form. It’s a very slow process to get data ‘cleaned up’ and entered into the database.  The other thing I’ve learned is how knowledgeable some people are about biographical info of minor league players.  It’s a huge issue to try to figure out instances such as if John Jacobs from 1948 Louisville and Jack Jacobs from 1948 Des Moines are the same player, or two different players, etc., but there are actually experts out there who are great at figuring these things out, and that’s a tremendous help to getting a good database.

 

What can expect from the database in the future?

In the future, I’m hoping we can continue to see leagues, teams, players, ballparks, etc. added bit by bit to the database.   The best line to use is that this is a PROJECT, NOT an Encyclopedia.  It probably won’t be ‘complete’ in my lifetime, as there’s just so much that can be added in.

 

You’re not just a minor leagues guy, of course, you’ve also written a quality piece on the 1928 St. Louis Stars play-off series, and done some nice work with MLEs.  Can you talk a little bit about your diverse interests?

When I ‘came back’ to to baseball research in the early 2000′s, in addition to continuing my ballparks research, I wanted to focus on areas I didn’t really know much about, so I got involved in learning about the 19th century, Japanese Leagues, and Minor Leagues.  A Negro League expert by the name of Gary Ashwill was in a historical simulation league with me, and he turned me on to researching the Negro Leagues, which is probably my favorite area of research right now.

 

You’ve done some biographical stuff on blackball stars, including Andrew “Rube” (Bishop?) Foster, what other kind of Negro League-related projects do you have in the works?

Finding out Rube Foster’s real birthplace possibly being La Grange was just a lucky accident.  I was searching Google Books for anything related to the Negro Leagues, and found a sociological study of race relations in Chicago following the race riot of 1919, and one of the example anonymous  subjects, with occupation “baseball mogul”, was obviously Foster.   Gary Ashwill then found the “Bishop” name in the 1880 census taken near La Grange.

 

Most of my blackball work is statistical as opposed to biographical.  I have a book manuscript I’ve been working on, tentatively called “Lost Leagues:  1928 Negro National and Eastern Colored Leagues”.   It uses statistical research done by Gary Ashwill to do a ‘Bill James Abstract’ type of treatment on the 1928 Negro Leagues.

 

Bud Selig calls and says YOU can vote five more Negro League players into the Hall of Fame.  Who would they be?

 

Bill Monroe, Quincy Trouppe, John Beckwith, Alejandro Oms, Dick Redding.

 

Let me give you a choice: Chino Smith or Dick Lundy?  It’s “Super Star” for a couple years versus “Star” for a long, long time… 

I’d have to go with Lundy, as he was such an important figure, and he managed too.

 

You’re a very active participant on www.seamheads.com.  If somebody is a baseball history buff, but has not yet stumbled upon the site, how would your describe it to them?  What is it about?

We hope it’s a site for even already knowledgeable fans to learn about baseball.  It is a history site, but that includes CURRENT history, as we have articles about current teams, fantasy baseball, etc. in addition to articles that go back and re-examine more distant events, and events that may not be that well-known. 

 

What’s the story behind the site?  What do you envision in the future for the site?

Seamheads is really the creation of my friend Mike Lynch, who is the author of the book “Harry Frazee, Ban Johnson, and the Feud that Nearly Destroyed the American League”.   Mike first started an OOTP historical simulation league called ‘Diamond Kings’ that I was part of, then he created a spot to host the league data and message boards, and called it seamheads.com.  When he was ready to launch a baseball site, the URL and the cool name was already his to use, and he graciously asked me to join him in the initial launch.  We now have over 20 writers contributing to the site.  Besides high quality articles, we envision this will be a site to get some baseball data you can’t get from even Baseball-Reference.com, such as detailed ballparks data, including minor leagues, Negro League World Series/Playoffs data, Negro League Major League Equivalents (MLE’s), pre-1984 Player Salaries, etc.  

 

What, specifically, can we look forward regarding the historical MLEs? 

There are 3 other guys that have done detailed MLEs.  I’m very hopeful that we’ll have a database available on seamheads.com by early next year that contains the 4 different MLE’s for 100 or so Negro League players.

 

Any other things coming up that we should know about?  Books?  Upcoming articles?

My current article on seamheads.com is on the 1927 Negro League World Series.  I’ve recompiled the batting, pitching and fielding stats from play-by-play accounts.  

 

I’ll also have a small section in the New Negro Leagues Book coming out sometime next year I believe.  I’m writing the section on the history of the St. Louis Stars franchise.

 

Is the Negro Leagues Book a revised edition of the Lester/Clark book from 1994?

Exactly.   It’s been 14 years, and a lot of new research has happened since then, so hopefully this will be the new definitive book on the Negro Leagues.

 

Ok, you’re on a deserted island: Give me your top 5 baseball books to bring along.  

This is the toughest question!

 

Baseball is a Funny Game

The Glory of their Times

Bill James Historical Abstract

The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia

Ball Four

  

Finally, taking in ALL of baseball history (black, white or other), give me your all-time greatest starting line-up.  Eight position players, one DH, two starting pitchers, and a closer.

C – Josh Gibson

1B – Lou Gehrig

2B – Rogers Hornsby

SS – Honus Wagner

3B – Mike Schmidt

LF – Stan Musial

CF – Willie Mays

RF – Babe Ruth

DH – Ted Williams

SP1 – Walter Johnson

SP2 – Lefty Grove

CL – Mariano Rivera

 

Thanks, Kevin.  Please come back down the road…

Brock in 1967

Interview: Gary Ashwill

Gary’s Favorite Cookie

If you have a serious interest in Negro League or Cuban baseball history, but haven’t yet discovered the work of Gary Ashwill, you might be in jeopardy of having your Baseball Dork Membership revoked.  Ashwill was a member of the Negro League Research and Authors Group (NLRAG), a team charged with the responsibility of collecting and compiling statistical information from the pre-integration black leagues.  Sponsored by MLB and the Baseball Hall of Fame, this historic study was used during the selection process in 2006, when 17 players and executives from the apartheid circuits were inducted at Cooperstown.  After completing his work with NLRAG, Ashwill has continued to be an active researcher, contributing to conversations at the Baseball Think Factory (Hall of Merit), as well as posting copious amounts of ground-breaking material to his popular blog, www.agatetype.typepad.com. Ashwill has always let the integrity of his work speak for itself and has seemingly shied away from crass self promotion.  Today, this elusive researcher- the Beethoven of Blackball Stats- lets down his guard a little bit, sharing information about the past, present and future of all things Gary A.

Gary, first of all, thanks for being a willing victim here at the blog.  There’s a number of us who’ve loitered around your site over the past couple years, a gaggle of baseball history drifters and ne’er do-wells… but we know more about your work than we do about you the person.  I’m sure you prefer it that way, but I was hoping you could share some non-incriminating details from your past.  Where are you from? What college(s) did you attend?  What was your major?

 I’m from Kansas City. I went to the University of Kansas for undergrad, Duke University for grad school.  Oddly, I am not really that much of a college basketball fan, though I root for the Jayhawks in a kind of disconnected, not-that-intense way.  I was an English major.

What baseball team did you follow as a child?  Who was your favorite player?

The Royals.  My favorite player was (who else?) Amos Otis.  I also liked Dan Quisenberry and Frank White (still the best defensive second baseman I’ve ever seen) and, when I was really young, Cookie Rojas, mostly, I think, because his name was “Cookie.”  And of course there was the Mad Hungarian, Al Hrabosky!  And Dirty Kurt Bevacqua.  Whitey Herzog remains my favorite manager.  One of the greatest moments in my life was when George Brett crushed that 3-run home run off Goose Gossage in game 3 of the 1980 ALCS.

Oh, I was a Cookie Rojas guy myself.  When he finally hung up the cleats, after 16 years as a replacement level player, he became a replacement level coach with the Cubs here in Chicago.  He had the horn-rimmed glasses, looked like an electrical engineer, and never said a word.  We loved the guy!

Now, in between fawning over Amos Otis and the Quiz, you must have played some ball as a kid.  What kind of ballplayer were you growing up?  What position(s) did you play?

HA HA HA.   I didn’t do sports that much as a kid due to health reasons, but I did play some in Little League.  I was a second baseman, could run & field pretty well, but had a crappy arm and couldn’t hit.  Which would make me the little-kid equivalent of…Sparky Anderson? (As a player.)  If I could be any kind of player, I would be a soft-tossing lefty junkballer with an unorthodox delivery and an arsenal of weird breaking pitches. (In reality, I’m right-handed.)

I want to jump back really quick to the whole Kansas/Missouri thing for a second.  I was just wondering, what is it about that area and baseball people?  Bill James, Rob Neyer, Larry Lester, Phil Dixon, and Kevin (KJOK) Johnson have all lived (or passed through) there at some point in time.  Please tell me I’m simply not adjusting for context here. That if I looked at NYC, for instance, I’d discover a significantly larger group of influential baseball writers and researchers.  Can you put your finger on anything, or is it really a matter of coincidence (or context)?

Patrick Rock also lives in KC (on the Kansas side), I believe.  I’ve thought about this, too, but really, I have no idea.  Kansas City is historically a great baseball town (though David Glass has done his level best to put an end to that), so that’s probably got something to do with it.  Thinking about the Negro Leagues, the Monarchs were a more prominent institution in the black community than teams in other cities, and lasted longer.  Your NY Black Yankees fans, for instance, were probably never very passionate in the first place, given that the team sucked & that there were so many other options, plus that fanbase would have dissipated pretty quickly, whereas the Monarchs were still around through the 50s.  So there’s a lot more civic consciousness of the Monarchs there than teams elsewhere.  None of that really explains anything, though.  Just think of KC and its eastern Kansas hinterland as the San Pedro de Macoris for baseball nerds.

KC is the San Pedro de Macoris for baseball nerds?  I think we’ve got a bumper sticker idea in the works.

What is your day job today?

I work as a freelance editor, mostly consulting with academic writers.

Married or single?

I’m married.  My wife doesn’t much like baseball, aside from the World Series, but she loves basketball, football & tennis.  We also have a lot of fun following the English premiership.

How old are you Gary?

41.

How did you first get involved in Negro League research? When did you get involved with the Negro League Researchers and Author’s Group (NLRAG)?

I started doing Negro League research on my own in 1999 or 2000, when, while working as an RA for a Duke professor, I noticed the Chicago Defender in the microfilm stacks.  One of the first years I read through was 1921, and it was a big surprise to find just how much coverage there was– two or three full pages, dozens of box scores, all these teams I’d never heard of.  Within a year or two I posted some fielding stats to SABR-L & the Negro League Yahoo group.  John Holway & some others were kind enough to discuss them with me, and soon Dick Clark wrote to ask if I wanted to help with the NLRAG project.

What did you learn while working on the HOF/Negro League project with NLRAG?

 Well, a great deal, obviously.  Those were the first two seasons I finished (1928 & 1934).  One thing that stood out was how much sketchier 1934 was than 1928, for a lot of reasons.  In the 1920s you will find box scores for the vast majority of Negro League games in mainstream daily papers as well as the black weeklies, and most of those box scores will be pretty good.  In the 1930s a lot of daily papers cut down on their box scores of non-major league games (a lot of the space was taken up by large photos), and even the black weeklies weren’t as complete in their coverage.

During my work with Strat-O-Matic, I’ve had to struggle with the stark contrasts between the pre-Depression and post-Crash coverage myself.  Now, what other things did you discover during your research?

If you mean specific findings, to me one of the biggest discoveries was that the 44-year-old John Henry Lloyd did *not* hit .564 in 1928.  You see that stat quoted a lot, so it’s kind of important.  He hit well, but not THAT well.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about the Hall of Fame data.  Have I (and the other 17 people around the country who are interested in it) blown things out of proportion with our angst over not having access, or should we still be fighting for it?  Over the past couple years (having busied myself with a ton of my own research), I now view that data as having become a garage full of stale, domestic beer.  I mean, there’s a lot of it there, but…it’s freakin’ Budweiser.  If I’m going to indulge in the spirits of baseball past, I’m resigned to focusing on the occassional vintage bottles of wine; like Phil Dixon’s work on the ’05 Philadelphia Giants, Patrick Rock’s monumental Replay achievement, or even David Lawrence’s statistical modeling efforts for APBA.  Is that fair?

Well, no, it’s not fair.  When the NLRAG statistics are published, they will be the Negro League equivalent of the original Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia, one of the most important books in the history of baseball research.  It’s a fundamental necessity.  It won’t be even close to the final word on anything, of course.  It won’t have pre-1920 stats, it won’t have Latin American data (I’m assuming). But it will give everyone a baseline to start with.  You could look up Rap Dixon’s or Oliver Marcell’s or William Bell’s career stats, which you can’t do now (except in the outdated Negro League sections of the Macmillan)–and see them in the context of their teams and leagues.  You could look up the starting line-up of the 1928 Cleveland Tigers.  Or whatever.  All (or most of) the things you can do at  baseball-reference.com or in the ESPN baseball encyclopedia for major league players.  And, like the Big Mac, it will have an influence.  People will say, “Who’s this George Scales guy? How come I never heard of him?”  Or Charles Blackwell, or Bus Clarkson, or Leroy Matlock.

On the earlier part of the question: I don’t know why it hasn’t been published yet, though I’ve heard various explanations.  I would say that everyone who’s interested should keep on expressing that interest, so that the decision-makers get some inkling that there is an audience for it.

Obviously, I was being a bit facetious with my question.  I think we both agree there’s a market for a Negro League Encyclopedia, and can appreciate the historical significance of it.  When you consider this country is going through one of the most dramatic changes in it’s history right now: I think the thirst for knowledge in this particular area is only going to increase with time.  Now, my personal frustration rests with the fact that whenever anybody contacts the Hall of Fame, MLB or Larry Lester, they seem to get a) the brush off, or b) a finger pointed at one of the other two groups.  It all seems eerily similar to the leadership of the actual Negro National League in the late 30s and 40s, when despite entering a strong financial period in the history of the league, the leadership struggled to put aside their personal interests for the sake of the greater good.

Ah, whatever, I’ll get off my soapbox…

Let’s make a bee-line for some fun stuff: You’re a very active blogger, sharing a lot of original research material through your public web space, can you tell me how (in terms of time, emphasis, or however you wish to define it) your research efforts have changed since the HOF project wrapped up in 2006?

I started my blog well after my involvement in the NLRAG was over.  The two biggest shifts in my research since I started the blog have been 1) delving into Cuban baseball and 2) more of an emphasis on biographical work: identifying players, finding birth & death dates, separating out players who have been mistakenly combined, etc.  The Cuban stuff started because there was an opportunity–one of the libraries I use happens to have important Cuban newspapers on microfilm.  The biographical work was originally a consequence of the statistical compilations.  I couldn’t help but notice, for example, when players’ names appeared differently in box scores than in The Negro Leagues Book or Riley’s encyclopedia or other reference books.  Or when somebody supposedly played for two different teams on the same day several hundred miles apart, meaning of course that they were really two different people.  It was also a matter of opportunity, with the relatively recent appearance of digitized databases of historical records (census records, passenger records, draft cards, etc.), especially at Ancestry.com, to which I was introduced by Patrick Rock.

If somebody is interested in baseball history, but has never seen your blog (www.agatetype.typepad.com), what would you want them to know about your work?

I apply rigorously empirical methods to a subject that tends to be dominated by tall tales and legends.  This involves anything from compiling playing statistics to investigating old mysteries to identifying players who only appear as last names in reference books.  Some of it resembles Rob Neyer’s recent book on baseball legends, I guess, like investigating what really happened when Ty Cobb when to Cuba in 1910, where he was supposedly thrown out stealing two or three or seven or eleven straight times by Bruce Petway.  Some of it is probably mostly intestering to obsessives like me, such as figuring our the identity of a guy named “Poree” who pitched in one game for the 1921 St. Louis Giants, or uncovering evidence that Rube Foster was really born in La Grange, Texas, rather than Calvert (orginally uncovered by Kevin Johnson & reported on my blog), and the earth-shattering revelation that his middle name might have been “Bishop.”

I think guys like you and Patrick Rock represent “Generation Next” (for lack of a spiffier catch-phrase) of Negro League researchers.  Having done a couple tours of research duty myself, I sometimes think about how challenging this stuff must have been for the pioneers; people like John Holway, Dick Clark and the late Robert Peterson.  I believe our work is easier these days, thanks to excel, the internet, web-based listings of library microfilm resources and digitized newspapers.  We’ll, let’s be honest, it’s also easier because of the foundation of information laid down by people like Larry Lester, Donn Rogosin, James Riley and Phil Dixon.  Considering how much our understanding of the segregated leagues has evolved over the past 38 years, when Peterson published the watershed Only The Ball was White, where do you think we’ll be in the next 38 years?  Hell, where will our understanding and resources be in the next five years?

In the near future I hope that more and more research files and newspapers are digitized and made accessible.  Also, I’m hoping that more genuine archival finds are made.  After all, Neil Lanctot, as I understand it, uncovered the 1926 Hilldale scorebooks only in the 1990s.  There must be more treasures like that out there, moldering in someone’s attic or forgotten at the back of some filing cabinet.  Or maybe newspaper runs we don’t have now, like the Pittsburgh Courier 1920-22.  And Latin American baseball.  I think a LOT of great data (in addition to what we’ve already got) will become available about Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican & Venezuelan leagues in the next few years.

In 38 years we will be travelling back in time machines to record the games ourselves.  Except the butterfly effect will cause all the results to be different, therby invalidating all our previous research. D’oh!  Or maybe somebody will travel back to beat up Cap Anson, and segregation will never have happened in the first place.

Oh man, time travel sounds cool!  Actually, I think the simulation world in 38 years will allow us to do something as close to time travel as humanly possible.  I think we’ll be able to pitch to Josh Gibson or Babe Ruth in a three-dimensional world.  We’ll be able to sit in the bleachers of old Yankee Stadium and watch the ’27 Yankees.  We’ll bat against Nolan Ryan or Satchel Paige.  It’s going to be the combination of physical athletics, video game technology and I-Max theatre stuff.  Everything will be customized; whether you want to be a player, a GM, a fan—you’ll select your own reality.  If you’d like, you’ll even be able to sleep with Claire Ruth.  It’ll be creepy…

Ok, back to the research; the data collection or “coding” we’re doing today that’s going to make all of the future stuff possible and realistic.  What’s the next challenge in blackball research?

Trying to compile and make sense of games against white semi-pro opponents.  Park factors.  Interpreting fielding stats–will my obsession with them result in any useful insights about, for example, how good a third baseman Ray Dandridge really was, or whether Oscar Charleston was really a great center fielder?  In general, interpretation of the data, especially in the form of major league equivalencies.  There’s already good work on this, as you know, at the Hall of Merit by people like Chris Cobb, Brent Moulton, and Eric Chalek.  But that’s only the start.  Like Mao supposedly said when asked about the consequences of the French Revolution: “It’s too early to tell.”  And since there’s never been a *complete”, systemic examination of the whole record for all the players, there are bound to be surprises.  I have a feeling there might be a couple of pitchers who turn our to have surprisingly good batting records, for example.  If we had enough data, players like Candy Jim Taylor, Bill Pettus, or Water “Steel Arm” Davis might turn out to be better than we think.  Of course, those are just hunches, informed guesses; the point is, we don’t know yet.

There are also interesting questions to ask about the larger theoretical issues, such as: what effect did not having access to good statistics have on managerial decisions?  My own feeling is that in a Negro League (& semi-pro) context, pitching and flashy fielding were considered much more important than hitting.  Sure, they wanted good hitters, but that’s actually soemthing that’s a little hard to judge without good statistics.  It’s like Bill James said: nobody *looked* like a better hitter than Moose Skowron.  When sportswriters and managers discussed the best Negro League first baseman, they were primarily talking about *fielding.*  For every Mule Suttles, you had a dozen guys like George McAllister or Lemuel Hawkins or Chance Cummings.  Was it just the talent available, or were they making conscious choices in favor of flashy fielding over better hitting?  Also, given the small rosters, they tended to emphasize flexibility.  So instead of stocking, say, left field with the best slugger they could find, they were more likely to keep a LF who could also fill in at shortstop or maybe pitch or whatever.  Anyway, I think it’s another challenge to try to account for the Negro Leaguers’ unique requirements for roster construction and player evaluation.

Another challenge will be presenting the data, organizing it, and making it readily accessible to a larger audience.  This might be through some Negro League version of Retrosheet, or new reference books, or (preferably) both.

We could probably talk about players all night, but allow me to throw out a couple names that have been hotly debated in recent years, Cool Papa Bell and John Beckwith.

Does Cool Papa Bell get an unfair shake by viewing him with today’s sabermetric tool box?

He was a good player, no doubt about that.  What little fielding data I have on him suggests that he may have been a great center fielder, at least in terms of range (as you would expect).  But was he really so fast that the records system breaks down in his case, and his case only?  Is there anybody like that in major league history?  Does Rickey Henderson or George Case or Lou Brock or Ty Cobb or Maury Wills or Luis Aparicio or Willie Wilson get an unfair shake?  Nobody seems to think so.  I know people will say, well, they were really sloppy about stolen bases, and didn’t count all of them.  One time Cool Papa Bell stole 5 bases in a game but they didn’t bring the scorebook.  That’s definetly true in the 1930s.  But we actually have a pretty good record of the 1920s.  And St. Louis box scores were very good about recording stolen bases.  Bell may have stolen more bases than anyone else in the NNL of the mid-to-late 1920s.  But not a LOT more.

There were other fast guys at the time.  I can show you a newspaper column from 1929 in which Dizzy Dismukes says (I’m paparphrasing), “There are these two speed merchants, James Bell of St. Louis and Eddie Dwight of Kansas City.  St. Louis fans will say Bell is faster, KC partisans will say Dwight.  I’m going to remain neutral.”

 Having done some work on Bell myself, I know he didn’t steal as many bases as the casual fan thinks.  There’s really no question he had explosive speed, but he was stealing bases at the rate of about 40-50 per 154 games, sometimes less.  I believe the teams he played for had a huge impact in how he was utilized at the top of the order.  He spent the vast majority of his prime hitting in front of guys like Willie Wells, Mule Suttles, Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard (usually two of these men at any given time).  I mean, he was leading off in front of a veritable “who’s who” of the greatest hitters in the history of Negro League ball.  I don’t think it was worth the risk running with that type of lumber behind him.

Now, a quickie here: Why isn’t John Beckwith in the Hall of Fame?

Questions about his “character” and defense, and also, if you are undertaking a serious analysis, a relatively short career (13-14 year) at the top level of black baseball.  As a hitter, he was regarded as one of the four or five biggest stars in the Negro Leagues in that decade, just as famous as Charleston or Rogan or Joe Williams.  The character stuff is complicated; he was involved in a lot of turmoil, and switched teams frequently.  But the same owners he fought with (Cumberland Posey, for example) often hired him again, or tried to.  He also managed a lot; after he wasn’t a big star anymore, he continued managing second-tier clubs into the 1940s.  There doesn’t seem to be much support for the more fanciful stuff about his supposed frequent troubles with the law and so on.  As I understand it, Beckwith’s friend Al Fennar admired him and objected strenuously to these accounts.

As for his defense: well, Negro League fielding sometimes resembles what Bill James calls a “bullshit dump.”  It’s where people go to assuage their anxiety that they’re overrating Negro League players. As in the case of minor league superstars like Buzz Arlett, anybody who wasn’t constantly praised for their great fielding gets turned into a legendarily horrible fielder.  It’s also a bit like something else James talked about, how when Dick Stuart hit 66 homers in the minor leagues people couldn’t process it, and dismissed it as meaningless, essentially pretending it never happened.  Beckwith was a slugging shortstop/third baseman; if you actually give credit for the positions he played, he begins to look like a pretty great player.  Since he was probably not a fantastic shortstop (he didn’t play the position his whole career), that turns into, “Well, he must have sucked.”  Which, for some, then turns into, “He was just a hitter, and had no defensive value at all.”  But compare him to a contemporary who’s in the Hall of Fame, Judy Johnson.  Everybody thinks Judy Johnson was, at the least, a very good third baseman.  Looking at his whole career, he played mostly third base, but with a fair number of games at shortstop (which was where he started out).  To cite Bill James again, this is a good shorthand for evaluating a player’s defensive abilities–how many games he played at tougher positions than his regular one.  Then turn around and look at John Beckwith–as a third baseman.  His proportion of games at tougher positions (shortstop, as well as catcher) is MUCH higher than Judy Johnson’s.  (You can do the same thing with Bus Clarkson and Ray Dandridge.) This doesn’t prove that Beckwith was a better third baseman than Judy Johnson.  For one thing, Beckwith also spent some time at easier positions (first base and corner outfield).  It does strongly suggest, however, that there couldn’t have been a HUGE difference between them in their defensive value.  And there is no doubt that Beckwith was a much better hitter than Johnson.

(Just because he was almost certainly a better player than at least one Hall of Famer doesn’t necessarily make Beckwith himself a Hall of Famer, of course.)

Well, I could go on, but should probably spare you.

Well, if you could vote for five more Negro Leaguers to be included in the HOF, would Beckwith be on YOUR list?  Who would the others be?

I don’t care who’s in the Hall of Fame.  They’ve made such a muddle of the standards over the years that it really doesn’t mean much of anything.  Plus the players I know most about aren’t around anymore to enjoy the honor.  I don’t even care who’s in alternative Halls of Fame like the Hall of Merit, because the line dividing who’s in and who’s out is arbitrary and ends up splitting players who are really not that different.  I *am* interested in some of the questions and issues that arise when people argue about it, though.

But I’ll play along, just for you.  So, how about: Grant “Home Run” Johnson, John Beckwith, Bill Monroe, Dick Lundy, and Ed Bolden.

If we’re looking for managers, Candy Jim Taylor won more games than anyone else in the organized Negro Leagues (through 1948), and three World Series.  His brother C.I. Taylor was a legendary manager, though it’s harder to quantify his achievements since they were mostly not in organized leagues.  It’s not altogether clear that the Hall got the right Taylor brother.

Finally, taking in ALL of baseball history (black, white or other), give me your all-time greatest starting line-up.  Eight position players, one DH, two starting pitchers, and a closer.

C Josh Gibson

1B Lou Gehrig

2B Joe Morgan (I could go with Eddie Collins, too)

SS Hans Wagner

3B Mike Schmidt

LF Barry Bonds

CF Willie Mays

RF Babe Ruth

DH Ted Williams

SP Walter Johnson

SP Lefty Grove

RP Hoyt Wilhelm

If I could add two more starters, they would be Satchel Paige and Pedro Martinez.

Oh, one more thing, I know you have a couple manuscripts in the works, are you able to share any details about what you’re working on?  Do you have a publisher?

I’m currently working on *The Negro National League, 1920-22: A Statistical and Biographical Guide* for McFarland.  It will include full statistics, including the kinds of breakdowns you’re doing for Strat (H/R, vs. L/R pitchers, etc.), park factor information, etc., plus a HUGE amount of new biographical data on players.  What I’ve put on the blog barely scrapes the surface of what I’ve got, frankly.

I’m looking forward to it.  Thanks for your time, will you come back when the McFarland book is released?

Sure.  You know where to find me.

 

 

 

Interview: Roel Torres

Roel Torres, traveling the world as host of a popular TV show a few years back.

In my post of October 20, I introduced you to Roel Torres, featured columnist at the premiere baseball site, www.billjamesonline.com. In an online baseball world flooded with Bill James-clones, peddling second-rate stat-based writing and analysis, Torres is a fresh, human voice amongst a mass of androids.  His deftly-crafted columns feature a personal, literary approach to the game.  Bill James himself- demonstrating once again he’s still one step ahead of the imitators- plucked Torres from relative obscurity and convinced him to be a columnist at his aforementioned web site.  Turns out Torres has had a remarkable journey, and the Harvard grad was kind enough to share his story…

 

Roel, you’ve certainly taken an interesting path to get where you’re at today.  Can you tell me a little bit about your background and where you’re from? 

 

I was born in Boston, MA in 1972.  My parents are both Filipino, but they were in Boston finishing up their medical studies at the time.  My brother and I were both born in the States, and that made us American citizens.  We went back to live in the Philippines when I was three.  That was 1975.

 

I grew up in the Philippines. It was a Third-World country, with a dictator who had appointed himself President For Life, Ferdinand Marcos, and we operated under a national state of Martial Law.  During this time period, a psychologically imbalanced woman who was sleeping with my father and had strong ties to the government issued death threats against me and my family.  So my mom, my brother, and I moved to the United States.  That was 1981.  I was nine.

 

As you know from our previous conversations Roel, my mother-in-law came to this country from the Phillipines under similar circumstances back in 1970.  She’d been a journalist in Manila and found herself on one of Marcos’ shit lists and had to quickly pack up her things and flee the country.  Although she was several months pregnant at the time (with my future wife), and had to leave her husband behind for over a year, she had a relatively smooth transition to citizenship here.  What was the transition like for your family?  

 

Yeah, your family’s history with the Marcos dictatorship is one of the reasons why I find it easier to discuss this kind of material with you.  Unfortunately, for people who have lived through these circumstances, the stories are all too familiar, all too predictable…

 

Well, to answer the question, the transition wasn’t exactly smooth.  My mom was still an illegal alien immigrant.  The US government spent years and years trying to deport her back to the Philippines.  She asked for Amnesty, but the American government refused to grant it because they did not officially consider the Filipino government to be a dictatorship.  Ferdinand Marcos was considered an important military ally by the Reagan administration, and it would have been awkward to recognize him as a dictator (note: when the Marcos family fled the Philippines, they went to stay with the Reagans.) 

 

My mom told the immigration agents: “My sons were born in Boston, they are American citizens, and they have a legal right to be in the country.  You can send me back, but you will be splitting up a family because I’m leaving my kids in the States.  I won’t bring them back to the Philippines to be executed by the government.”  Our family’s legal conflicts lasted for years.  Eventually, the Marcos administration was overthrown by a people’s revolution, Reagan left office, and the atrocious human rights violations in the Philippines were acknowledged.  My mom gained citizenship and the US government finally left us alone. Like I said, my family went through this for years.

 

Now, you wound up back in the Boston area, right?

 

Closer to Central Mass.  We settled in Worcester, MA. 

 

Okay, Denis Leary is from there.  Robert Benchley, Abbie Hoffman, Mark Fidrych and John Adams, too.  A rather eclectic group.  I’m from the Midwest, what kind of place is Worcester?  What was it like growing up there?

 

Worcester is a big city.  It’s the second largest city in the state, next to Boston.  It has a lot of resources, and you have access to all the advantages of a big city.  Good libraries, museums, colleges, major concert events.  So all these things are true.

 

But the city had an industrial history, and I don’t think it’s ever moved past that.  There are large sections of Worcester that are gritty and seedy and dangerous.  You didn’t want to let your guard down.  And it wasn’t a good idea to go downtown at night.  In the wrong club, or the wrong pool hall, you ran the risk of being shot.  Everyone was well aware of that reality.

 

Still, I was largely sheltered and insulated from all that.  After moving from the Philippines, my mom bought us a house in the suburbs, in a Jewish retirement community, with a synagogue down the street and the Orthodox Jewish community walking around the neighborhood most weekends.  And I went to private school.  It was almost all white.  The number of black kids in our entire high school did not break double digits.  Not even close.

 

You’ve said that writing has always been a big part of your life.  When did you notice you had a talent for it?

 

Pretty much from the start, I guess.  I was an avid reader growing up.  I like storytelling.  I’ve always liked to write.  In school, very early on, my teachers indicated I had a natural talent for it and they were always very supportive.  Every year, I would have a new teacher and they would tell me that I was one of the best student writers they had ever taught.  These were career educators who would take me aside and give me unsolicited pep talks about my potential.  That seed was planted in my head even as a kid, and in some ways, it’s never stopped.

 

And that encouragement continued in high school, at the private school?

 

Yeah. As a teenager, I started winning some National Writing Awards and got some recognition as one of the better young writers in my age group.  That helped me get into Harvard. 

 

What did you study at Harvard?

 

I was an English and American Literature concentrator, with an emphasis on Creative Writing.  I completed my undergrad studies at Harvard University, graduating with Honors (Cum Laude) in three years. 

 

One of your first writing jobs was with a travel show, right?

 

That’s right.  That was a good time, man.  Writing travel documentaries was a blast!  I loved it.  Millions of people saw them, and they were broadcast to 128 countries around the world.  I was paid six figures to travel to exotic locations while cameras filmed everything I did, and at the end of the process, they would put me on global TV.  I was getting recognized in the street, receiving fan mail, and getting autograph requests.  And – I was writing for a living.  That was great.  I would recommend it for anybody if they’re lucky enough to get a chance.  But in the end, it was a very lonely life.  I was living in Asia, and I missed all my friends, my family, and my girlfriend at the time.  When the Board of Directors offered me a long-term contract to keep working on the show for another four years, I turned it down cold.  No interest.  It was an amazing experience while it lasted, but it was time to move on to other things.

 

What’s your day job today?

 

I work at Harvard with the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS), doing Financial Analysis.  IQSS is a multi-disciplinary center that lets the top minds at Harvard collaborate to try and solve the major global social problems (poverty, racism, starvation, homelessness, and so on.)  Our faculty list is like a Who’s Who of Harvard professors.  We have rock star professors from the fields of Gov, Economic, Statistics, Pysch, and so on.  It’s a really impressive group.  Intellectually, we can hold our own with anyone.  My primary responsibility is to maintain the financial integrity of our programs.  The work we do is a little difficult to summarize neatly, but if anyone is actually interested in learning more, they are welcome to visit our helpful and informative website, www.iq.harvard.edu.  It’s a pretty thorough resource. 

 

Now, what were your earliest experiences with baseball? 

 

My brother and I both played on the same Little League team, Wachusett Molding in the Worcester Jesse Burkett league.  It’s actually a very strong and competitive league that has teams making deep runs at Williamsport on a regular basis.  I didn’t know that at the time, mind you.  But now, when I follow the Little League World Series, I have a keen interest in Worcester Jesse Burkett.  There is a small sense of pride there.

 

When I first signed up for Little League, I had never played baseball before.  I was the worst player on my team, but I didn’t know it.  They hid me at second base, because that was the only throw I could make.  I didn’t care, man.  I was ten years old, I got a uniform, my mom bought me a glove, I had teammates, and we played organized games.  I was in heaven.  I had no awareness of how I was doing.  I just enjoyed the opportunity to participate.  I was just happy to play.

 

And did you stick with the game?

 

Of course.  I played Little League until my eligibility ran out.  As I got old for the league, I developed into a first baseman with a good bat.  I hit in the middle of the order and got named to the league All-Star team.  It was only one year, but it was a good year.  At that point, I was like Keith Hernandez, Mark Grace, Will Clark. 

 

It was a fun childhood.  I enjoyed it.  My brother and I spent the vast majority of our time with three really good friends.  And – Scott, you’ll appreciate this next piece of information – we spent years and years of our lives playing baseball simulations.  That’s how we spent our teenage years.  Micro League baseball for the PC.  Then Earl Weaver baseball.  We were addicted.  Drafting teams, making trades, setting rotations, choosing lineups, bunting, stealing, pitching out, warming up relievers, sending in lefty pinch-hitters, designing ballpark configurations, calling players up from the minors.  The works.  It appealed to us on almost every level.  We were hooked.  We kept stats for all of it, handed out a trophy at the end of the play-offs.  Year after year, we stayed out of trouble.  We weren’t drinking or smoking or partying.  We would spend hours shooting hoop, then we would go inside and compete against each other in simulated baseball.  It was an awesome way to grow up, and I was very lucky to have such a good crew by my side.

 

Who was your favorite Major League player growing up?

 

The first time I met Bill James a couple of months ago, he asked me who my favorite baseball player was growing up.  I said, “Marty Barrett.”  When the answer came out of my mouth, it surprised even me.  I didn’t expect that.  Barrett was a smart and useful second baseman for the Red Sox in the eighties.  Apparently he left an impression on my sub-conscious.

 

And I was smitten with Eric Davis when he first broke out in the Majors.  I even wrote about it in my very first essay for Bill James Online.  The guy seemed superhuman.  Bill developed a Power/Speed calculation that measured a player’s combined skills.  At the age of 25, Eric Davis set the Major League record for Power/Speed number, at 42.53. (Since then, A-Rod has set the new record.)  But when I was fifteen, there had never been a player in Major League history as dynamic as Eric Davis. 

 

I remember feeling the same way about Eric Davis.  I was a teenager at the time, thinking- here’s our generation’s Willie Mays.  One of the guys in the Negro League All-Star set that I’m working on for Strat-O-Matic, Rap Dixon, is a lot like Eric Davis.  Same skill set, even looks like him a little bit.  Wiry, strong, fast, with a good arm and power.  And like Davis, Dixon got bogged down with physical problems right when he should have been entering his peak, curtailing what would have been a phenomenal career. 

 

So we’ve got a bunch of things going on here: the Phillipines, Harvard, a well-known Travel show, Little League, how in the heck did you wind up writing for the Bill James website?

 

A couple of months ago, Rob Neyer posted a notice on ESPN.com that Bill James was looking for five new writers to work with.  I lit up when I read that.  Bill James has been a personal hero of mine for over two decades.  I shot Bill an email asking him what type of writing he was looking for.  I feel comfortable with statistical analysis, but I don’t think it’s my strength.  I have a literary background, not a statistical one.  He told me that he wanted the applicants to write to the best of their ability.  I sent him a handful of sample essays that didn’t focus on numbers, but looked at the emotional component of sports.  They were very personal essays, and they were surprisingly scarce in baseball content.  It was a risky approach, but I felt like it was the only way for me to stand out in the pack.

 

I guess it worked, because I made the cut and he chose me as one of his five new contributing writers.

 

Care to elaborate on your personal writing style?

 

I think it’s pretty clear that my writing is very personal.  Maybe too personal, sometimes.  And it’s one of these balancing acts that I’m constantly struggling with.  I need to make sure that there’s enough baseball content in there to justify the personal material.  I took a recent break from posting essays because I couldn’t get the balance right.  I was going through a rough period in my life, and everything I wrote felt completely self-indulgent.  It was an emotional train-wreck.  I wasn’t happy with any of it.  Hopefully, I’ve worked my way though that little crisis in confidence.  We’ll see.   

 

Basically, I feel like I need to include a personal aspect to my writing, because it’s really the only unique thing I have to offer.  It’s all I’ve got.  I’m not a good statistical analyst.  I’m not a scout.  I never played baseball at an advanced level.  If I don’t put some of myself into the work, I don’t see what else I have to contribute.

 

With your personal approach, how do you think your Filipino-American background impacts your columns?

 

I think that when I write about myself and my feelings for the game, I can’t help but be influenced by the fact that I am a Filipino-American, and that I am the son of an illegal alien immigrant.  I can’t avoid it.  It’s a major part of who I am.  Not just in the way I see baseball, but the way I see everything.

 

Off the top of your head, what are some of your favorite sports memories?

 

The Red Sox winning the World Series in 2004 ending the 86 year curse and coming back from three games down to the Yankees stands out.

 

I was in Fenway the night the Sox clinched the AL East last year.  My brother got me tickets for my birthday.  It was surreal.  The game ended, and they put the Orioles/Yankees game on the giant video screen in centerfield.  My brother, his fiancée, my buddy Tarn, and I all hung around for a couple of hours after the end of the Sox game, watching Baltimore and New York go into extra innings.  When the Yanks lost and the Sox clinched, all the people left in the park started celebrating.  The team came back out on the field, and Papelbon started dancing around in his underwear.  That was some night.

 

Let’s see…  What else?  Adam Vinatieri kicking a last second field goal against the Rams in 2001 to win the Super Bowl was an unexpected joy.  I also won $950 from Vegas that year when I bet on the Pats to cover the 10 point spread against the Steelers in the AFC Championship game.  I remember that one pretty well.

 

Randy Couture came out of retirement to crush Tim Sylvia for the UFC Heavyweight Championship of the world.  I enjoyed that immensely.

 

My junior year playing varsity soccer in high school was a great ride.  I started every game at right fullback, and we made the playoffs.  We had a good team.  We could play.  Same deal for our senior year, but our goalkeeping wasn’t as strong that season.

 

The US Men’s National Soccer Team provided a couple of cool moments for me.  I was in Foxboro when the team clinched their berth in the 2002 FIFA World Cup.  That was fun.  Then when the World Cup started, I woke up at an absurdly early hour to watch midfielder John O’Brien score an opening goal against Portugal.  The US held on to complete that improbable upset which helped them advance to the next round.

 

And after my mom passed away in 2004, my brother, my buddies Drew and Tarn, and I went to a Lowell Spinners minor league game, which is low Single-A.  I basically needed something to cheer me up.  That game did the trick.  It was three hours of pure joy.  That was a beautiful, cathartic moment for me.  I’ll probably remember that one longer than any of the other moments.

 

Obviously you write about things other than baseball.  We’ve talked about your novel, would you care to share any information with the blog readers about the book?

 

Sure.  It’s literary fiction, it’s 330 pages long, it’s gone through five drafts, it contains some of the best work I’ve ever done, and it will probably never see the light of day.  How’s that?

 

What’s the subject? The theme?

 

The novel is about growing up in the Philippines.  It’s about a father and a son who don’t know how to communicate with each other.  It’s about being a decadent, hedonistic young man growing up without a sense of direction, and trying to find meaning in life.  I don’t know.  I think it’s a good novel.  I like it.  But that doesn’t mean someone would be willing to pay me money for the right to publish it.

 

Do you have an agent?

 

At one point, I had a great literary agent.  She’s had several books hit the New York Times bestseller list.  Better yet, she was a great agent but an even better human being, which is a rare combination.  I worked with her for years, made revisions based on all of her agency’s suggestions, and then we hit a point where she told me she could not sell my manuscript.  Fair enough.  I accept that.  If she can’t sell my novel, then she can’t sell it.

 

What’s the next step?

 

I’ve come to the realization that I might not have the proper personality to shop my book around to literary agents.  I don’t like trying to pitch myself or my work.  So that’s a sticking point.  Right now, the manuscript is sitting at the bottom of my desk drawer.  I suspect that it’s a lost cause.  That’s okay.  I’m writing for Bill James Online.  I’m writing for The Hardball Times, both online and in their Annual.  So it’s not like I’ve been sucked down some dark abyss, never to be seen again.  In life, some opportunities work out, some run into brick walls.  You play the hand that’s dealt.

 

There’s always the self-publishing route for the novel, but I haven’t really done any research on that option.  And I should mention here that when I met with Bill, he was kind enough to offer his help in getting my book published.  “We can do that,” he said.  So that was very generous on his part.  We’ll see, I guess.

 

Where are we going to see Roel Torres in ten years?

 

I would love to have an answer for that question and not to be evasive, but I can barely see ahead into next week.  I really can’t do it.  I’ve never been very lucky at it.  The opportunity to write travel documentaries and have my own show broadcast to 128 countries around the world fell into my lap without any forethought or planning.  The same is true for my opportunity to work with Bill James.  I didn’t see either of those coming until they happened.  Then, at that point, I was busy counting my blessings and thanking my lucky stars, just lost in the surreal wonder of it all.

 

I think this much is true – I was writing ten years ago, and I was writing ten years before that.  I’m writing now.  So I imagine I will still be writing ten years down the road.  In what form, for what audience – I don’t know. 

 

I’ve been lucky so far.  Insanely lucky.  It’s been a great ride.  And I guess that I’m as curious as anyone to see how it plays out.

 

Thanks Roel.  Through your columns at Bill James online, I have a feeling a number of us are going to be sharing that ride with you over the next couple years.  Check out Roel Torres’ work at http://www.billjamesonline.com

Torres on the other side of the world, missing Marty Barrett and the Red Sox

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Rookie

Roel Torres

A couple years back there was a warm, feel good movie about a guy named Jim Morris.  It was called “The Rookie,” featuring Dennis Quaid in the lead role, and told the story of an obscure, 35-year-old high school teacher who had jumped from coaching teenagers in Smalltown, Texas, USA, to pitching in the Major Leagues. The guy hadn’t played any organized baseball in over ten years or whatever, and on a bet from his gambling-addicted students, he tried out for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

 

Okay, okay.  So it was the 1999 Devil Rays (69-93 .426), but they did play AGAINST Major League teams.

 

As detailed in the movie, the dangerously handsome chemistry teacher hit 98-mph on the radar gun several times during the workout, prompting the desperate Tampa Bay scouts to wave a contract in his face. In two years service at the Major League level, Morris became the most famous left-hander in baseball history to finish his Major League career with an 0-0 record, 0 saves, and a 4.80 era.

 

Turns out Morris had been a prospect at one point in time, playing Class A baseball for a couple seasons before his inability to throw strikes and arm trouble ended his initial baseball journey.  Fast forward about a decade, to the high school ballplayers goading the old man into taking one more shot at accomplishing his life-long, boyhood dream of one day struggling with his control at the big league level; then landing a book deal, selling the movie rights and filling up his calendar with motivational speaking engagements. 

 

Morris walked 9 men in his 15 big league innings.

 

Dreams do, indeed, come true.

 

Now let me introduce you to a guy named Roel Torres. Like Morris, Torres is getting an unexpected shot at pursuing his baseball dreams in his mid-30s, but it’s not happening on the ballfield.  Torres is a writer who recently got a call from the big leagues of hardball blogs, and now works as a featured columnist at a premiere baseball site called www.billjamesonline.com  

 

Bill James is, of course, one of the most influential baseball writers of the past twenty-five years, and is credited with coining the term “sabermetrics,” as well as founding the Jeff Bagwell International Fan Club.  James now works as a statistical-special-agent-guru- thing-a-ma-bob-person for the Boston Red Sox, and also runs the aforementioned web site where Torres plies his trade.

 

Unlike Jim Morris, whose so-so story has been manufactured into an inspiring, melodramatic cottage industry thanks to the creative prowess of Disney screen writers, Roel Torres’ journey is one of genuine substance.    

 

The son of illegal immigrants from the Phillipines, Torres had to fight to stay in this country.  Blacklisted by the Marcos regime, his family feared imprisonment or possible execution if they returned to the islands.  After years of legal wrangling, Torres’ family earned the right to stay here, settling in the Boston area, where Roel enjoyed a typical American childhood of baseball, hot dogs and straight A grades at a private school.

 

Okay, he did well in school.  Very, very well….and I’m a little bit jealous.

 

Although English was his second language, Roel demonstrated early on that he possessed a natural gift for composition, which caught the attention of his teachers, and helped him win first place in several National Writing Contests.  Encouraged, Torres chased his academic pursuits, in between playing Little League and rooting for the Marty Barrett-led Boston Red Sox.

 

This young man, whose family was nearly kicked out of this country and fed to the wolves running Manila, wound up attending Harvard, where he graduated with honors (Cum Laude) in only three years.

 

Roel Torres was kind enough to sit down with me (1011 miles apart) via the super-magnetic-inter-highway.  We traded emails back and forth, discussing his fascinating journey around the bases, and how the hell he wound up writing for Bill James.  I’m going to publish the interview in a couple days.  If you’d like to read Roel’s columns,go to www.billjamesonline.com.  Believe me, it’s time well spent.