history

Can’t Buy Me Love

~ latskojerry ~ Leave a comment

The Detroit Tigers had, and may still have, a legitimate chance to be Central Division champions of the American League. They also had a very good, proven pitcher in Tarik Skubal. What they have now are three highly rated prospects from the Los Angeles Dodgers “farm system” who may, or may not, be eligible to be traded in August of 2030 if they are any good. The Tigers have an opportunity, in turn, to become one of 29 teams trying to outbid the Dodgers for Skubal’s services next season. Just like Pete Kegsbreath has a chance to be voted Feminist of the Year.

Let’s make Dave Roberts chairman of the Strive For Parity Committee.

The President of the United States, a born rich bigmouth who is absolutely convinced that he deserves everything that he has and anything he can get, sets the pace for wealthy business owners like the ones in Major league baseball. Shame on us if we expect them to act in the interest of people buying tickets. I’m still with John and Paul when they sang “I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love.”

It’s always been a bit of a stretch for working class folks to buy tickets to major league games but it was once affordable. Now, I’m not so sure those people are not the backbone of success for a major league club anymore. That entity is television and those who now can afford tickets can be observed feeding themselves or watching their phones while the action takes place. Never mind all that,autumn is coming and the NFL and college football are both on the way so let’s enjoy life while we can.

Freddy Peralta will escape the strange sinkhole of the Mets organization and, I’ll predict, go back to being hard to beat for Tampa Bay. Kevin Gausman should have been kept in Toronto and may be of good use for the Cubs.

What bad thing did Logan Webb do to deserve this? It was declared early on that all of his teammates were available and he would be kept. Now he faces the second half of his career with almost no prospect of pitching in any meaningful games. The best way for a Giants player to get off the sinking ship is to play well, so maybe he’ll get dumped in the off season.

Buster Posey was a winning player but he is a loser as a team builder. Webb’s team also lost their most consistent starting pitcher, Robbie Ray, and gained minor league talent. It’s a good thing that Casey Schmitt got injured or he’d be gone as well. But the Giants will still have right handed power hitter Heliot Ramos—oh wait! He’s a Yankee now. San Francisco Giants investors will get bonus checks after their lapdog Buster saved them all that money. Bay area baseball fans have continued to fill the seats at Oracle Park but this, coupled with the fiasco on Pride Night may eventually attendance fall. Two years ago they lost a whole team when the Athletics bolted for Las Vegas via Sacramento. That was ugly, and this shapes up to match it.

All Star Talk Show

~ latskojerry ~ Leave a comment

They still schedule All Star Games in Major league Baseball but they don’t have them. Not really. They have talk shows featuring somewhat live entertainment, this day including Patti La Belle and lots and lots of people in military outfits or 21st century versions of what the colonial signers of the Declaration of Indepenence might have looked like. It was in Philadelphia, see.

Lots of people starred in the talk show format. Players got to sign their names with a feather pen like they were declaring independence. Dylan cease got to converse on the air with Joe Davis, the best that Fox could come up with, while pitching the first inning. Apparently, the “heaters” were being thrown in order to “get ahead”. John Smoltz probably could have handled that but talk shows are for talking. Cease got credit for the win for his inning partly because Christopher Sanchez of the host city’s team gave up three runs before getting three outs. I don’t know whether or not Sanchez got to talk with Joe Davis because I muted the sound when Joe started chatting with Cease while i wondered how Bob Gibson or Steve Carlton would have responded to his lollipop inquiries.

Oh, by the way, the American League won, 4-0. The National league tallied three hits for the game. When the two leagues were separate they usually had better All Star Games because some people were trying to win and not just talk and pretend. I’ve had a lifelong love of baseball, as in the game. I have no memory of being attracted to it because of what I ever heard anyone saying.

Now that the All Star Game has been played, many sports writers and speculating fans will turn their inattention to the almighty trade deadline. The general consensus is that there are buyers and sellers. Those baseball executives that opt to “stand pat” or not “buy” or “sell” are dismissed as being insufficiently eager to “help their team.” The idea that all of that arglebargle might be hogwash does not seem to occur these wannabe experts on assembling World Series contenders. The way this thread goes is, if you have a chance to be “winners” you buy. If you don’t, you sell. I think it traces back to the “Moneyball” Oakland Athletics who peddled their most promising young players to contenders before they qualified to be paid closer to what they were actually worth That somehow morphed and suckered these fantasy general managers into believing that owning an MLB team wasn’t about anything more than money Over time it has morphed again into this insane belief that, if your team isn’t doing well and 60 per cent of the schedule has been played, you should get rid of your best players. I know, it seems crazy, but I read every day that the San francisco Giants should trade Luis Arraez. Also, Jung Hoo Lee, who is finally playing well and healthy, should hit the road Maybe Detroit would take both of them for Tarik Skubal. The idea that anyone should think long term about building a strong roster with good planning investment, and talent assessment does not seem to occur to these screenheads. No wonder Fox TV is so popular.

Number Nine Was Pretty Good

~ latskojerry ~ Leave a comment

After a good, long life, Maz is gone. After years of cellar dwelling and general organizational ineptitude, the Pittsburgh Pirates showed some life in 1956. It was not an organization that could, like the Yankees of those days or the Dodgers of these days, spend themselves into championship contention. They had to be smart, know their baseball, and find good players.

The Brooklyn Dodgers had Duke Snider and Carl Furillo in their outfield, but they had gotten sloppy about protecting a valuable Puerto Rican investment named Roberto Clemente who suddenly appeared in the Pirates’ lineup as their right fielder in 1955. He would remain there through 1972 in a legendary Hall of Fame career that ended with his death in a horrible plane crash when he was heroically helping earthquake victims in Nicaragua on New Year’s Eve. Suddenly Pittsburgh had a semblance of defense to help their promising young pitching staff including Vernon Law and Bob Friend. Then, in’56, the Pirates added a 19 year old rookie named Bill Mazeroski and their infield was much more serious as well. No one has ever made double plays as well or as frequently as number 9, Mazeroski, and he also would remain through 1972, winning eight Gold Gloves and hitting with occasional power. Shrewd general manager Joel L. Brown added a brilliant center fielder acquired from St. Louis, Bill Virdon and the Pirates began winning respect. Gone were the days of statues in the outfield like Ralph Kiner, Preston Ward, and Jerry Lynch.

I will always remember delivering a Sunday edition of the Pittsburgh Press that showed the ’56 Pirates suddenly in first place with a record of 29 wins and 20 losses, best in the National League. How could this be? Only two years earlier, Pittsburgh had finished dead last, winning 53 out of 154 games, eleven games behind the seventh place Chicago Cubs. Behind brash manager Bobby Bragan the Pirates were getting interesting but they fell out of contention soon enough. Bragan over used his best pitchers and the roster was still a bit thin despite the addition of young talent. They ended up trading places with the Cubs. 1957 was Mazeroski’s first full season and he did well, batting .283 and impressing the league with his glove work.

The Mlwaukee Braves were the big story in baseball that season, though, winning the World Series over the Yankees with the power of Henry Aaron, Eddie Mathews and Wes Covington along with their big three starting pitchers Warren Spahn, Lew Burdette, and Bob Buhl. The Pirates became serious contenders in 1958, finishing 8 games behind Milwaukee for second place with their own big three starters in Bob Friend, Vern Law and Ron Kline and Roy Face in the bullpen. Mazeroski won his first Gold Glove and batted .275 with 19 home runs at age 21. Even though the Pirates solidified the roster even more by by trading with Cincinnati for Don Hoak and Smoky Burgess they finished fourth with a 78-76 record in 1959. But the following year was the one they had waited over two decades for.

They held a rather comfortable lead over the aging Braves all season and won the National League pennant by seven games. The usual New York arrogance made the Yankees a strong favorite to win the World Series. The series, however, went to a fateful seventh game. After blowing an early 4-0 lead the Pirates entered the bottom of the ninth inning at old Forbes Field tied 9-9. Maz was the first batter and he delivered the winning blow and Yogi Berra watched it fly over the left field wall and the Pirates were champs. It was Mazeroski’s eighth hit of the series, second only for the team to Clemente’s nine, and his second homer.

Eleven years later, at age 34, Maz played in another World Series. This time it was against another heavily favored team, the Baltimore Orioles. That Baltimore team featured Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, Don Buford and four 20 game winners on the pitching staff—Mike Cuellar, Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, and Pat Dobson. Dave Cash had become the Pirates’ regular second baseman that year and Maz was limited to a single pinch hit appearance. He and Clemente were the only remaining from the 1960 winners. Clemente was the Series MVP as Pittsburgh again won the seventh game, this time on the road.

So the passing at 89 years old of a real icon to Pirates fans and fans of great defense leaves us with great memories. Seven times Maz was an All-Star. Two World Championships. 1,076 double plays, including 161 in 162 games in 1966. The kid from Wheeling, West Virginia was damned good.

A National Embarrassment

~ latskojerry ~ 2 Comments

The much heralded special event on FOX for Major League Baseball and I’m not sure what else only took two days to complete and embarrassment is just one of the emotions to feel. Most of us contribute in some way to the degradation of the environment but I don’t think that it is being preachy to to say that deliberately wasting what is called gasoline in an extravagant way by holding a “race” that awards the winner for ostentatious fuel burning while wars are waged with many unnecessary casualties over the production and profiting from petroleum products constitutes either bad taste or ignorance, neither of which is punishable as crime.

Attendance at the ball game at a racetrack was reported as 91,000 or so in Tennessee. In the land of Trump, the general mentality seems to open hostility to weakness, which is how wanting clean water, air and food is interpreted.

There is a World Cup for futbol scheduled to be played partly in the United States next year. There is an Olympics scheduled to be held in Los Angeles in 2028. F.I.F.A. and Olympics officials should very seriously consider canceling or moving both events as soon as possible. Nevertheless, that probably will not happen and that will certainly be to our regret. The excuse will be that because of something no one wants to say, at least not yet: millions, if not billions in potential “earnings” are involved. Potential big fires will be treated as little more than an annoyance to greedy Ben Dovers. Hot weather, hot fires, and hot politics will be forbidden by President Nero’s executive orders.

Switzerland was a good site for the Women’s Euros even though it contains many rich people because its cities don’t resemble war zones. The United States sells itself as the best place on Earth just like Disneyland as the happiest place. Most of the world knows what bullshit that is but television executives always go for the numbers. The World Cup and the Olympics should be examples of international cooperation and peace. Instead, with Pope Donald involved these are recipes for disaster.