Atlanta Braves To-Do List for 2014

So it’s been a while since I’ve written about baseball, but my Braves were eliminated early from the playoffs last night, in what has become an all-too-familiar pattern. 

I was saddened by last night’s events, but not surprised by them—Braves fans are conditioned to generally expect heartbreak in the postseason, and I was specifically convinced that this Braves team was not assembled in such a way as to contend for a championship (more on that below).

So what do the Braves need in 2014 to be better (And by “better,” I don’t just mean win more games—the Braves won 96 games in the regular season, so that isn’t the problem. I mean win games when it counts.)? Here are a few things:

(1) Get a legitimate ace. The Braves have several good pitchers, but it’s been quite a while that we had a legitimate ace who we could trot out in game one of a postseason series and feel confident that a win was coming. I love Tim Hudson, but he will turn 39 next year. Brandon Beachy, Mike Minor, Kris Medlen, and Julio Teheran are all good, promising young pitchers. Maybe one of them will develop into an ace, but for now, we have a bunch of pretty good pitchers who, over the course of a season produce a lot of wins, but are overmatched in the playoffs.

(2) Get a better manager. I don’t think there’s any way that Fredi Gonzalez gets fired, which is too bad, because he’s not very good at his job. I don’t dislike him, and think he would make a great bench coach or first base coach, but his decision making is questionable—a lot. In Game 3, he left Teheran out too long when he was clearly off, and then did the same thing with Wood. In Game 4, he let Carpenter blow the game in the 8th inning while Craig Kimbrel, who has arguably put up the best three year stretch of any closer in history, sat on the bench and watched. Stuff like this happens frequently, and in my opinion, it happens because Fredi isn’t very good at his job.

(3) Get some guys who know how to field. It is so frustrating to watch Braves players bungle plays, either by making outright errors, or by making poor decisions in the field that turn singles into doubles and short innings into big rallies. By my reckoning, of the eight standard (non-pitcher) positions, the Braves have two excellent fielders, about two more who are above average, two who are mediocre, and two who are train wrecks. When it comes to playoff time, this does not work. You cannot have clueless outfielders at the corners and hope that somehow it won’t hurt you. It will, time and time again as this series against the Dodgers showed.

(4) Figure out something—anything—to do with Dan Uggla and BJ Upton. These are two of the biggest free agent busts in history (maybe it’s too early to say that about Upton, but with Uggla, it is more than clear by now). So much of Atlanta’s money is tied up in these two, and they get almost no return on the investment. I don’t know what the solution is, but we can’t keep trotting out .180 hitters all season, or the alternative, which is to basically bench two guys who are collectively making over $27 million a year.

Okay, my rant is over. Here is hoping to a more successful 2014!

Daring and Determination in the Christian Walk

As any regular readers of The Doc File know, I am a huge fan of Jackie Robinson. In addition to being a world-class athlete, Hall of Fame baseball player, and, behind Martin Luther King Jr., the most influential player in the American Civil Rights Movement, he was also a man of great personal character.

I recently came across the photo at the top of the page of Jackie on the base paths. It’s a picture I love because I think it so well captures two of Jackie’s characteristics which were integral to his success and are also necessary in the daily life of the Christian: daring and determination.

Daring

Integrating Major League Baseball left Robinson open to constant torment and abuse. Racist fans heckled and berated him constantly, opposing managers would threaten not to play the Dodgers if Jackie was in the lineup, and baserunners from other teams would try to spike him with their cleats. None of that was a surprise—Dodgers GM Branch Rickey had warned Robinson in detail of the kind of abuse he would face if decided to take part in the “Great Experiment” and become the player to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball—but Jackie Robinson was willing to take the risk.

In addition to his daring in integrating the big leagues in the first place, Robinson was also daring in the way he played he game. Bringing the style of the Negro Leagues to Major League Baseball, Robinson was a terror on the basepaths, stealing bases, distracting pitchers, and stealing signs.

Christians need to be daring as well. To a large degree, I believe a Christian’s influence in the world is nullified when she or he refuses to be daring. Doing things that make you feel uncomfortable like sharing your faith with a friend or co-worker or taking an unpopular moral stand when others refuse to requires daring. Being willing to attempt great things that you’re not sure you are capable of doing like adopting a child or teaching a Bible class also requires daring. Attempting to fulfill the mission given to us by Christ of seeking and saving the lost requires a great deal of daring!

Author John Augustus Shedd once famously said, “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” It is a great quotation! Too often, I think that Christians look at the church as a safe harbor, and because they like the safety, they fail to venture outside of its (figurative) walls. Certainly the church is a safe place, but it should be a place where Christians are equipped to engage, change, and save the world, not where they can hide from it.

It’s not “safe” out in the world, but it is where our light is most needed. Christians must be daring!

Determination

In the picture above, the look in Jackie’s eyes oozes focus and determination. On the basepaths, he was completely locked in to his psychological and physical battle with the pitcher, and was determined to defeat him.

It’s interesting—baseball really wasn’t Robinson’s best sport. In college at UCLA, Jackie lettered in four different sports. In track and field, he won the national championship in the broad jump in 1940. In football, he led the nation in punt return average in 1939 and 1940 and led UCLA in rushing, passing, total offense, scoring, and punt returns in 1940. In basketball, Robinson led the Southern Division of the Pacific Coast Conference in scoring in both 1940 and 1941. Baseball was his fourth best sport! 

Later on, after spending some time in the military during WWII, Robinson honed his baseball skills playing in the Negro Leagues, but here’s the point I’m getting at: I’m really not sure that Jackie Robinson should’ve been a Hall of Fame caliber baseball player, but he was just so determined to succeed! Robinson knew that he carried the weight of the hopes of Black America on his shoulders, and he was determined that he would not let them down. So his determination led to great success.

Christians also need to be people of determination. You can’t accidentally live a faithful Christian life—it requires the determination on a daily basis to live a life of discipleship regardless of cost or consequence.

That’s counter-intuitive for us today (especially the part about cost or consequence) because we live in a consumer culture where different products are constantly vying for our attention and loyalty—if you’re not losing enough weight on your diet, quit it and try a new one. If you don’t like your cell phone plan, drop it and switch over to a competitor. If going to church doesn’t seem to be improving the quality of your life, cut it out and try something else…when taken to the extreme, we become people devoid of commitment or determination, and, quite simply, people who give up too easily. 

It is not easy to be a Christian, but Jesus never promised that it would be. Faithful discipleship requires determination!

Jackie Robinson’s ability to change the world certainly involved his natural talents and abilities, but equally if not more important were his character traits of daring and determination. If Christians, as citizens of the Kingdom of God are going to engage the world and change it for good, then we have to possess those same characteristics in abundance.

So Long, Chipper

It has been a few days now since my beloved Atlanta Braves were bumped from the playoffs in the NL Wildcard game against the St. Louis Cardinals. I didn’t get to watch the whole game because I had to be at a wedding rehearsal during the same time, but in hindsight, that was probably a good thing. A couple of takeaways from the game:

• The Braves didn’t deserve to win. Committed too many errors and left way too many men on base. 
• Regardless of this, they still had a chance to win, which was negated by one of the worst calls in the history of Major League Baseball. Regardless of the fact that umpire Sam Holbrook stands by his call and other officials have closed ranks around him, it was a terrible call. Not only did it betray a fundamental lack of understanding of the word ‘ordinary’, it failed to take into account the whole line of reasoning behind the institution of the Infield Fly Rule in the first place—to protect the offensive team.
• A one-game playoff between two wildcard teams is completely stupid, as it negates the 162 game regular season. Anything can happen in a baseball game, which is why we play series in the playoffs—to more accurately and less randomly determine the better team. Add this to MLB Commissioner Bud Selig’s loooonnngg list of baseball sins.

So yeah, I was bummed about the game. The biggest bummer of all though is that the loss represented the end of Chipper Jones’ Hall of Fame career. 

I have always been a big Chipper fan. At the height of my baseball fandom (when, in addition to just following the Braves I was also obsessively collecting baseball cards and playing baseball all the time myself), Chipper burst onto the scene in 1995 as the Braves’ star of the future. Atlanta won the World Series that year, Chipper should have won the NL Rookie of the Year Award, and it looked like the future was very bright.

And for Chipper, it definitely was—he’s a first ballot Hall of Famer for sure, as well as being in the top 3 all time in the following categories:

• Switch-hitters: I’d actually put him at number 2, behind Mickey Mantle. In my opinion, definitely ahead of Eddie Murray.
• Third basemen: I think you could make a case that he’s the best of all time, but I’d put him behind Mike Schmidt and ahead of George Brett.
• Braves: Third best Brave ever, behind Hank Aaron and Warren Spahn (apologies to Tom Glavine…you really shouldn’t have signed with the Mets though).

You might disagree with where I have Chipper ranked within the top 3 of these categories, which is fine. You might also disagree that Chipper belongs in the top 3 of these categories, but you would be wrong.

Chipper played his entire career with the Braves, and as you’ve likely heard all season if you are a baseball fan, “he played the game the way it’s supposed to be played.” The degree to which he was respected around the league was evident this season as team after team honored him when he would make his last visit to play in their stadiums. 

Chipper’s retirement is poignant for me, because he represents the last link to the dominant Braves teams of my youth, who won 14 divisional titles in a row. That streak had already begun when Chipper broke into the big leagues, but he was there for its peak, when the Braves won the World Series in his rookie season in 1995. Probably no one would have believed that it would be his last, but as it turned out, the Braves of Chipper Jones were largely characterized by great pitching, a ton of regular season wins, and disappointment in the playoffs. 

That being said, looking ahead, it’s hard to be excited about the prospect of the Braves ascending to the top of the baseball world without their best player and longtime clubhouse leader around. Over the last few years, as his skills declined (slightly) and it became harder and harder for him to stay healthy, it also became increasingly obvious how important he was to the team: when Chipper was in the lineup, it always felt like the Braves had a chance to win. Without him, any victory seemed to be a lucky one.

He’s still a good player, and could probably still be productive for a couple more seasons, but he’s made it clear over and over again this season that he’s done, and there’s a lot to be said for going out well, rather than hanging on as long as you can and potentially tarnishing your legacy.

So so long to Chipper Jones, the best Brave of my lifetime. You will be missed.

          

Friday Summary Report, September 28

It has been a while since the last Summary Report, but things continue to be busy.

One of the grad school classes I’m taking this semester, Greek Readings, is taking a ton of my time. I’m doing well in the class (we have weekly quizzes), but between the translation assignments, the memorization of paradigms and principal parts, listening to the class lectures, and learning new vocabulary, it is just a lot of work. It’s just the end of September, and I know I’ve still got a lot of the class left, but I am looking forward to December.

I’ll be going to Memphis in a couple weeks for Global Evangelism, which is the second class I’m taking this semester. I have been so busy with the weekly work for Greek that Global Evangelism has taken a backseat, which means that I have a plethora of reading to do over the next two weeks. I honestly don’t know how I’ll be able to get it all done.

In addition to my classes, I have all of my regular ministry responsibilities, so it’s a full plate. My blogging will likely take somewhat of a hit for a few weeks.

Some random tidbits:

• This weekend is Bikes, Blues & BBQ in Fayetteville; I will be doing my best to completely avoid it.
• The Arkansas Razorback football team continues its complete nose dive. We are currently at 1-3, and are facing an unlikely opportunity for a road victory at Texas A&M this weekend. And we thought we had a shot at contending for the SEC title?!

And finally, a few articles from around the net worth reading:

• As Chipper Jones nears retirement, here’s a great article from ESPN on the significance of his career. A first-ballot Hall of Famer, no question. Seriously, indisputable.
• Matt Marino writes a really good blog post entitled “What’s so uncool about cool churches?” in which he critiques the craving for trendy, relevant churches and/or youth ministries. He makes a lot of good points, and some of his thoughts closely mirror some of my own reflections on current problems with youth ministry.
• Here’s another great ministry article (this one more directly related to youth ministry) entitled, “The Myth That Can Kill Your Ministry.” It’s a really good read for anyone who works in youth ministry, or anyone that ever talks to someone who does.

Thoughts on Legacy, Cap Anson, and Enoch

Cap Anson was Major League Baseball’s first superstar. Anson spent the majority of his career as a player/coach for the Chicago White Stockings, and was the first professional player to amass 3,000 hits.  Some of the many records he set during his career lasted for decades.

Anson was a fierce competitor, and his accomplishments in baseball were so important to him that he left instructions that his tombstone read, “Here lies a man who batted .300.”

I’m a huge baseball fan and I think it would be neat to play it at the same level as someone like Cap Anson, but to choose to sum up your entire life with a baseball statistic? Even I think that’s a little sad, and it reveals a perspective on life that is more than a little skewed.

If you could write your own epitaph, or choose just a few words to sum up your life, what words would you use? Perhaps a better question would be, if others were to sum up your life based on what they saw—how you spent your time and money, the things that seemed important to you—what words would they use?

• Always looking for a promotion…
• Had the largest house on the block…
• Biggest gossip in town…
• Obsessed with cars…
• Lived vicariously through his children…

Closely related to all of this is the idea of legacy. In legal terms, a legacy is a gift of property or money, usually by means of a will. In a more general sense, your legacy is whatever you leave behind for those who come after you—in some ways it is a token or a synopsis of your life.

If we had the benefit of hearing the epitaphs that others would write for us, it might reveal how skewed our perspectives can be at times (not unlike Cap Anson’s), and let us see that the legacies we leave are often shallow and insignificant.

In Genesis 5, in the midst of a list of Adam’s descendants, we are introduced to a man named Enoch. Enoch lived for 365 years, but his life was summed up in just a few brief words:

“Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.”

“Walked with God.” That’s an epitaph that I could be happy with, and a legacy that I would be proud to have. But legacies like that don’t come about by accident; rather, they come from a stubborn, persistent lifestyle of discipleship.

So all that leads to this question: What will your legacy be? Put in another way, if you were to pass from this life today, what would your tombstone say?

If you would like it to read differently, then it’s up to you to live differently.

Designed to Break Your Heart: Tom Barlow

Hartford Dark Blues, 1875

This is a first post in a series introduced here. 

In the early days of professional baseball, in the 1870s and 1880s and even on into the 20th century, baseball was a hard game for hard men.

Protective equipment was rare, the travel was difficult, the wages were decent but by no means extravagant, and job security didn’t exist. College-educated professional ballplayers were rare; for many, a job in the big leagues was a ticket out of the coal mines. Players tended to brawl and misbehave, both on and off the field.

Tom Barlow was a catcher and sometime shortstop for the Brooklyn Atlantics and Hartford Dark Blues in the early 1870s. He is credited as being the originator of the bunt, and had his best season in 1872, when he hit .310, and caught all of his team’s games, a feat which has only been accomplished eight times (and not since 1945).

In 1874, while playing for Hartford, Barlow sustained an injury while catching for Cherokee Fisher, renowned as a devastating fastball pitcher. In a letter to the Boston Times on September 16, 1877, Barlow described the incident:

“It was on the 10th of August, 1874, that there was a match game of baseball in Chicago between the White Stockings of that city and the Hartfords of Hartford, now of Brooklyn. 

I was catcher for the Hartfords, and Fisher was pitching. He is a lightning pitcher, and very few could catch for him. On that occasion he delivered as wicked a ball as ever left his hands, and it went through my grasp like an express train, striking me with full force in the side. 

I fell insensible to the ground, but was quickly picked up, placed in a carriage, and driven to my hotel. The doctor who attended me gave a hypodermic injection of morphine, but I had rather died behind the bat then [sic] have had that first dose. 

My injury was only temporary, but from taking prescriptions of morphine during my illness, the habit grew on me, and I am now powerless in its grasp. My morphine pleasure has cost me eight dollars a day, at least. 

I was once catcher for the Mutuals, also for the Atlantics, but no one would think it to look at me now.”

Barlow was 22 years old the day he was injured behind the plate. He disappears from historical records after 1880; details of his later life and date of death are unknown.

I first became aware of the story of Tom Barlow through Ken Burns’ PBS documentary Baseball. Other details for this post were gleaned from Wikipedia and Bleacher Report.

Branch Rickey’s Original Plan for Integrating Baseball

Baseball historian John Thorn has written a fascinating article on a forgotten piece of baseball history—Branch Rickey’s master plan to integrate Major League Baseball.

Of course, we know the integration of MLB through the collaborative efforts of Rickey and Jackie Robinson was an unqualified success, but it didn’t go the way Rickey originally intended:

“…Rickey had never planned for one black man to deal with all the problems [of integrating the game] alone; he had meant to announce the simultaneous signing of several others.”

You can read the rest of Thorn’s article here.

Baseball: Designed to Break Your Heart

A. Bart Giamatti, Major League Baseball’s seventh Commissioner and a formidable scholar (having previously served as the President of Yale University), once famously said about baseball:

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.

Giamatti knew what he was talking about. A lifelong Red Sox fan, he had the unenviable task of overseeing Pete Rose’s lifetime ban from baseball, and then suffered a fatal heart attack eight days later.

I find Giamatti’s words to be true in my own experience as a baseball player, fan, and amateur historian. As a player, the joys of fielding ground balls and taking batting practice were gradually overshadowed by the political squabbles of battling for playing time with coaches’ sons and the increasing awareness that I was never going to get a shot at the Big Leagues. As a fan, the majority of my childhood was spent rooting for Atlanta Braves, the winningest team of the 1990s, and yet, looking back, it is not the hundreds and hundreds of victories that I remember but the failures in the playoffs year after year. And as an amateur historian, the stories that most readily spring to mind tend to be the saddest ones.

It is some of these stories that I would like to share, on an intermittent basis, as part of a new series. Designed to break your heart or not, I love baseball, in large part because of the poignancy of its illustrious history.

Hope you enjoy them.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Jackie Robinson

Last week I wrote about Jackie Robinson’s integration of Major League Baseball in 1947 and mentioned that, after Martin Luther King Jr., Robinson was the most important figure in the American Civil Rights movement.

Today, while reading an article (which I recommend, by the way) about Jackie’s widow, Rachel Robinson, I came upon this quotation about Robinson from Dr. King:

“Back in the days when integration wasn’t fashionable, he underwent the trauma and humiliation and the loneliness which comes with being a pilgrim walking the lonesome byways toward the high road of freedom. He was a sit-inner before the sit-ins, a freedom rider before the Freedom Rides.”

Always a trail-blazer, Robinson was court-martialed in the Army (and later acquitted) for refusing to sit at the back of a military bus—11 years before Rosa Parks.

For more information regarding Robinson’s pioneering efforts in the field of Civil Rights, see this interesting blog post I came across.

Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King Jr. receiving honorary
Doctor of Laws degrees from Howard University in 1957.

Guts Enough Not To Fight Back: Jackie Robinson

Jackie steals home against Yogi Berra and the Yankees in the 1955 World Series.

As a general rule in college and professional sports, teams retire the jersey numbers of the all-time greats who played for them. For example, no Chicago Bull can wear number 23, because that was Michael Jordan’s number and it has been retired. No New York Yankee can wear number 3, because that was Babe Ruth’s number and it has been retired. If you play Major League Baseball, regardless of what team you play for, you can’t wear the number 42, because that was Jackie Robinson’s number, and it is the only number to be retired by Major League Baseball.*

Sixty-five years ago yesterday, on April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson donned that number 42 Brooklyn Dodgers jersey and appeared in his first regular season Major League game, breaking baseball’s racial color barrier.**

Robinson’s Hall of Fame career and handled himself on and off the field opened doors for other black athletes in professional sports (and ultimately many other fields as well), and it has been said that only Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. accomplished more for the American Civil Rights Movement than did Jackie Robinson.

Before he signed a contract to play for the Dodgers, Robinson was called into the office of Team President and General Manager Branch Rickey. To give him a taste of what it would be like to be the only black player in the Big Leagues, Rickey spent three hours taunting and insulting Robinson, calling him every racial slur he could think of. Rickey then told Robinson that this is what he would face every day on the field, and that if he wanted it to work out, he would have to promise not to fight back or respond to insults of any kind for the first three years of his career.

Robinson, who possessed a fiery temperament and was very outspoken, was put of by this and asked, incredulously, “Mr. Rickey, are you looking for a player who is afraid to fight back?”

Branch Rickey replied, “No, I want someone with guts enough not to fight back.”

After some deliberation, Robinson agreed to Rickey’s terms, and he lived up to them on the field. When opposing baserunners tried to spike him when sliding into second base, he didn’t fight back. When fans and players yelled and cursed at him and even questioned his very humanity, he showed them how wrong they were by taking the moral high ground.

He had the guts not to fight back.

What Branch Rickey told Jackie Robinson reminds me of Jesus’ words in The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:

“But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.”

The world tells us to stand up for ourselves when we are treated unjustly. It tells us to have the courage to fight back and not let others push us around. On the other hand, Jesus tells us to have the courage to show that we are different from the world because we don’t fight back, and He tells us to forgive others when they mistreat us.

Jesus wants followers with guts enough not to fight back.

•   •   •

* Yesterday, to commemorate the anniversary of Robinson’s first game as a Dodger, this prohibition was temporarily lifted as representatives from each Major League team wore number 42 in his honor.
**Contrary to popular belief, Robinson was not the first African-American to play in the Major Leagues. That honor goes to Moses Fleetwood Walker, who played for the Toledo Blue Stockings in 1884. Regardless of this, Robinson was the first African-American to play Major League Baseball in the 20th century, and it was his breaking of baseball’s color barrier that led to the permanent integration of the Major Leagues.

Opening Day

Baseball is back, and briefly, everything seems right in the world again. My favorite words on the subject of baseball’s return stem from the pen of American poet Donald Hall: 

The Old Game

The old game waits under the white,

Deeper than frozen grass.

Down at the frost line it waits 

To return when the birds return.
It starts to wake in the South, 

Where it’s never quite stopped. 

Where winter is a doze of hibernation,

The game wakes gradually,

Fathering vigor into itself.

As the days lengthen in late February 

And grow warmer, old muscles grow limber.

Young arms grow strong and wild,

Clogged vein systems, in veteran oak and left fielders both,

Unstop themselves,

Putting forth leaves and line drives in Florida’s March.

Migrating North with the swallows, 

Baseball and the grasses’ first green,

Enter Cleveland , Kansas City, Boston.

Aside: bonus points to anyone who can name the all-time great pictured above.

Reyes: Not The Way It’s Done

New York Mets shortstop Jose Reyes won the National League batting title Wednesday, but it will go down as a tainted accomplishment in the eyes of many.

Entering the day with a 2-point batting average lead over the Brewers’ Ryan Braun, Reyes led off the game with a bunt single and then pulled himself from the game, eliminating the chance for any later bad at-bats and the risk of his average dipping.

Certainly there’s no rule against what he did; it’s just incredibly lame. As ESPN’s Rob Parker writes (emphasis added),

Coincidentally, Reyes’ decision came on the 70th anniversary of Ted Williams sealing his historic .406 batting average in 1941. Williams, the Boston Red Sox slugger, played in both games of a doubleheader on the final day of that season, even though he began the day with his average at .400. Williams believed he didn’t deserve a .400 average if he sat out the two games against the Philadelphia A’s, and he wound up going 6-for-8, finishing with the improbable .406. Most people think that mark will never be broken.

Clearly, Reyes had no similar qualms about the need to “play it out.” Reyes is a free agent, and most people think that he’ll be somewhere else next season. Perhaps the worst thing for Mets fans is the fact that their last memory of a great player will be a disrespectful and ultimately selfish one.

So Long, Junior

This morning as I was watching Sportscenter I learned that Ken Griffey Jr. had retired after 22 seasons in the Major Leagues. I wrote about Griffey back when he hit his 600th home run, but now that he has retired, I just wanted to make a couple of remarks about his career.

Although I still love baseball and expect that I always will, my obsession with baseball likely reached its peak in the early to mid 90s. At that point I played league baseball every year, watched every Braves game I had access to, spent every cent I could scrape together on packs of baseball cards, and each baseball season I devoted every ounce of free time I could to the imaginary baseball league I created in the back yard (I would play all the games myself and keep stats for all the players; it was pretty awesome in an OCD kind of way).

And during that time, Ken Griffey Jr. was the undisputed king of the baseball world. You could maybe even argue that we was the king of the entire sporting world—everyone respected Michael Jordan, but they liked Griffey. And how could you not? He did everything well and seemed to have such a good time doing it.

As time went on though, Griffey started to suffer through a string of injuries which somewhat limited his production, while at the same time a lot of other players suddenly got really muscular and started jacking home runs in quantities that made Griffey’s numbers look modest by comparison. At the time, Griffey was often overlooked because of this, but in the long run, I think it’s what will secure his legacy—he hit 630 home runs over his 22-year career, and he did it the right way. Only Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays could make the same claim, and that’s impressive company.

Finally, Griffey retiring is kind of sad for me personally as it sort of marks the end of an era—the up and coming young superstar of my youth is now too old to play. If “The Kid”—who always wore his hat backwards in batting practice while blowing big bubbles with his gum—has to retire, I guess all of us are getting older, huh?

The Best Day In Baseball History

This is an updated version of a post from last year.

Sixty-three years ago today, on April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball.

Robinson’s 10-year career had an unquestioned and inestimable impact on the Civil Rights movement in the United States. In the words of Princeton professor and civil rights activist Cornel West:

“More even than either Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, or Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights movement, Jackie Robinson graphically symbolized and personified the challenge to the vicious legacy and ideology of White supremacy in American history.”

The skill and grace with which he played and the way he handled himself on and off the field forced many Americans to face difficult questions about race for the first time, and ultimately resulted in the changing of the hearts and minds of millions.

Jackie Robinson made baseball, in fact, what it had always claimed to be—the national pastime.

What Ails Baseball

In an article written yesterday, Hank Aaron, Major League Baseball’s All-Time Home Run King (that’s right, Barry Bonds doesn’t count) suggested that Braves rookie Jason Heyward can help “what ails baseball.”

Heyward, a five-tool rookie sensation who some are touting as the best Braves prospect since Aaron himself, can certainly help what ails the Braves—a lack of production from the outfield—but what about Hank’s comments regarding baseball as a whole?

The “ailment” that Aaron refers to is the growing concern in certain circles that there are too few African-Americans in the Major Leagues.

While I agree with Aaron that the emergence of a young African-American superstar like Heyward (and as a Braves fan, I certainly hope that he develops into a superstar) could encourage more African-American youths to play baseball, I wonder: how big of an issue is this? Is it necessary/important for ethnic groups to be properly represented in major sports? If so, shouldn’t we be concerned about the lack of Caucasians in the NBA? Shouldn’t the lack of Asian-Americans in the NFL be a cause for great alarm?

After all, it’s not the 1940s anymore, and thanks to Jackie Robinson, neither African-Americans nor any other ethnic group are being systematically excluded from the Major Leagues. So that begs the question: why are African-Americans choosing sports other than baseball?

There have been many proposed answers, from the inherent expense involved in playing baseball to the lack of inner city baseball programs to the overall decline in baseball’s popularity compared to other sports.

I think the most interesting theory that I’ve heard (which would also explain baseball’s general decline in popularity) is suggested by political science professor Diana Schaub. Schaub argues that baseball is an “acquired taste,” the love of which is best passed on from fathers to their children. The increase in the number of children (and especially African-American children) raised without fathers has led to a generation of children with no love for baseball.

I don’t know if Schaub has stumbled upon the answer or not, but I recommend the article; it’s a fascinating read.

In the meantime, through one Major League game, Jason Heyward is batting .400 with a home run (hit in his first career at bat) and 4 runs batted in. Here’s hoping that, at the very least, he can help with what ails my beloved Braves.

George Will On Why Aluminum Bats Are Evil

For quite a while now I’ve been plodding through George Will’s Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball.

It’s a well-known book in the baseball world, and it’s been recommended to me multiple times. I’ve been a little disappointed in it so far (hence the “plodding through” as mentioned above), but that’s mainly because several of the characters Will spends so much time focusing on aren’t so impressive 20 years later (Orel Hersheiser, Greg Swindell, Jim Gott, Jose Canseco, Tim Raines, Wade Boggs, Dwight Gooden), and also because I’ve already heard his best anecdotes from his interviews on Ken Burns’ Baseball.

Nevertheless, Will does make some good points, and perhaps none of them better than his description of the insidious evil that is aluminum bats (which are, by the way, the main reason I don’t get into college baseball at all):

“And he was pitching to aluminum bats, which do not break. That fact is even more important than the fact that they put a few extra feet on fly balls and a few more miles per hour on line drives.

Because aluminum bats do not break, pitching inside becomes problematic, even futile. Jam a batter on his fists with a pitch that would shatter a wooden bat and he still may be able to put it in play or even over the infield for a hit. That is why college baseball games last so long and why college batting averages are so high—and why professional scouts have such a hard time judging college talent. Because of aluminum bats, college pitchers throw fewer fastballs than they otherwise would. They throw curves, sliders, split-fingers and other breaking balls, and they throw them away from the hitters.

This has three pernicious consequences: They do not develop the arm strength that comes from throwing fastballs; they jeopardize their arms with all the torque involved in throwing breaking balls; they do not learn to pitch inside.”

So, aluminum bats actually contribute to the weakening of the Major League pitcher (which, if you look at pitch counts, complete games and win totals, has continued at a dramatic rate since Will’s book was published 20 years ago).

Plus, they make that terrible pinging noise when the ball is hit. I hate aluminum bats.

p.s. One time I broke an aluminum bat in half. This is quite possibly the only piece of evidence in existence that I possess any sort of strength.

Apparently It Took More Than Milk

Mark McGwire has admitted to using steroids during his Major League career.

In other breaking news, ice is apparently cold.

Satchel Paige’s Rules For Staying Young

As the new year dawns I thought it might be appropriate to pass on some morsels of wisdom from Satchel Paige.

Paige is widely regarded as the greatest Negro Leagues pitcher of all time, and might have proven to be the greatest pitcher of all time period had he been allowed to pitch in the Major Leagues while he was still in his prime. Regardless of this, it’s probably safe to say that he was one of the top five pitchers in history, and as someone who pitched professionally into his 50s, is probably qualified to give the following advice:

Rules for Staying Young

1. Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.
2. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.
3. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
4. Go very light on the vices, such an carrying on in society—the social ramble ain’t restful.
5. Avoid running at all times.
6. And don’t look back—something might be gaining on you.

I’m not sure about number 5, but the rest sure sound pretty good.

Observation #6

In a pennant race, there’s a fine line between reeling someone in and just reeling.

Francoeur Sent To The Mets

So I’m a little late in commenting on Jeff Francoeur being traded to the Mets, but better late than never, right?

I, like virtually every other Braves fan, became a big fan of Francoeur during his rookie season in 2005. Francoeur started off on a tear, hitting over .400 for his first month with prodigious power and he also threw people out all over the basepaths. He seemed too good to be true.

And, well, he was.

Opposing pitchers began to figure out that Francoeur would swing at anything, and that if they didn’t throw him fastballs down the middle of the plate, he was a pretty easy out. And since then, to put it mildly, he’s struggled. Without going into the all-too-brutal statistics, over the last two seasons, Francoeur had devolved into one of the worst everyday players in baseball, and was showing no sign of turning things around this year.

Overall, I guess I’m not sad that the Braves traded Francoeur, but I am sad that he never turned out to be the player that we hoped he would be.

I hope he beats the odds in New York and reclaims some of the considerable potential that he seemed to have back in 2005.