Zisk Issue # 9

Publisher’s Note:

I’m only about 5% Scottish yet I’m one of the cheapest people in the world; thrift is a matter of pride. I figure the money I save by buying store brand dish soap and baked beans in bulk trickles into used books and ’zine projects—the things that really matter. It’s called budget living, and I need not extol its virtues to you, the Zisk reader, for chances are you’re a convert. I know the Zisk contributors are. Whenever we organize an outing to Shea everyone votes for upper deck seats.

But this spring I was offered a pair of luxury box seat tickets. To a Yankees game. I figured pride could be set aside—it’s one of the seven deadly sins, right? No baseball fan, self-respecting or self-loathing, could pass up such a potentially memorable experience.

And memorable it was. While waiting in the lobby I got to see adult Yankees fans heckle 10-year-old Mets fans…

Thirty-something Yankees fan getting into elevator, to kid wearing a Mets cap: Hey, Mets fan, good luck!
Other thirty-something Yankees fan getting into elevator, to same kid: (Bends over, gets eye to eye with the kid, points to Yankee insignia on his cap) Don’t worry about luck, kid!

So, yeah, there was the requisite ugliness that not even the fancy setting could mask. There was also the ridiculous service.

Yankees Fan Relations Guy, speaking to the guy sitting next to me: I’m sorry, sir, but, yes, batting practice has been cancelled due to the weather. You may go to your seats, if you’d like.
Guy sitting next to me: Will it be dry there?
Yankee FRG: Let’s see, you’re in row G. There may be a little residual mist there, not rain, but residual mist is possible.

Residual mist. Clearly, I’d set foot into a different world. But I’m here to apologize, not to list the lavish accommodations. I apologize because I did not kill George Steinbrenner. You see, after meeting up with my wife, we went up to the club level, and as we stepped out of the elevator we walked by Steinbrenner. I passed within six feet of George, and though he was flanked by lackeys, there were no barriers between us. I could have exterminated evil, removed baseball’s biggest thorn, and I didn’t. I’m shamed. Please forgive me. I offer this new issue of Zisk as the first in a series of acts of contrition.

That said, with the Mets painfully distant from the playoffs, let’s go Dodgers or Cubs or Red Sox or Twins or A’s!

Mike

Duckie Nation:
Two writers and friends, one a Yankee fan and the other a Red Sox diehard, discuss the very nature of their disagreements through the lens of pop culture.
By Dan Dunford and Ari Voukydis

“Springtime comes, and the leaves are back on the trees again.” So begins a relatively obscure song by Wilco side project Loose Fur, alternately called “Laminated Cat” and “Not For The Season.” If you think about it, it’s a wonderful sentiment for the Northeast, especially at what feels like the tail end of an excruciatingly bitter winter. However, said sentiment is followed by an afterthought of intriguing nature, as the next line of the song notes that, with the leaves back on the trees, “The snipers are harder to see.”

It’s as though the verse was written by the collective voice of the Boston Red Sox fan base.
The first sign of spring for many of us in the seasonally desolate Northeastern United States comes courtesy of baseball, when across this continent (and one city in Asia), the opening pitches of the season have been ceremoniously tossed from the outstretched arms of politicians. After all, to quote both Don Henley and Roger Kahn, the players who participate in our national pastime are “the boys of summer.” If they’re playing ball, that means two things: summer is approaching, and Boston fans are filled with discontent and paranoia.

This year is no exception, courtesy of the New York Yankees’ recent acquisition of shortstop Alex Rodriguez. For those of you unfamiliar with Rodriguez and his recent saga, let me draw a parallel. Alex Rodriguez, this winter, was much like Molly Ringwald’s character Andie Walsh in Pretty In Pink: gorgeous and available. Ultimately, it boiled down to two candidates for his affection and services: the honorable, yet geeky, Duckie (Jon Cryer in the movie, played in this saga by the Boston Red Sox) or the “hunky” Blane McDonagh (Andrew McCarthy/the 26-time World Series Champion Yankees). As in Pretty In Pink, the hunk gets the girl. But, unlike the movie, the geek had a real chance to score with the gorgeous girl in the baseball world—in fact, one might parallel what happened to the Red Sox to an alternate version of Pretty where Duckie gets into some heavy, heavy petting with Andie and even gets to see her imaginably perky nipples. Yes, folks, it was that close for Alex Rodriguez and the Boston Red Sox. They almost “did it.”

Cut to the next morning, and a satiated Alex Rodriguez is smoking in bed—this bed is located in Yankee Stadium’s Monument Park, next to the Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig plaques.
You’d view something as optimistic and beautiful as spring through the twin eyes of bitterness and paranoia, too, if you were a Red Sox fan. (I’m not, but I’ve been told that I’m pretty “empathetic” for a man, whatever the hell that crap means.) I mean, hell, you do everything short of lip-synching “Try A Little Tenderness” to try to get the prize, and you lose out to the hunk—every year since 1918.

To which I reply, well, so what. Ask any aficionado of Reagan-era teen cinema what they remember about Pretty In Pink, and the odds are good that they’ll talk about Duckie. Why? Well, it’s probably because Duckie carves out the most resonant persona of the movie—in losing, ultimately, he wins the hearts of the viewer. Similarly, the Red Sox have created a dazzling history colored by failure and near-success, from the trade of Babe Ruth through the presumably soul-crushing Aaron Boone home run. Much like Duckie losing Andie to Blane in Pretty In Pink, the Red Sox’ failures in baseball have been colored by the successes of the archrival Yankees. One wonders what happens to Duckie after the credits roll on Pretty In Pink. I think it’s safe to assume that he eventually did win the heart of some lucky girl, and probably managed to mold himself a remarkable life. Similarly, I’m pretty sure that the Red Sox might someday mold themselves into a champion of some sort or another, if they can only escape the shadow of the Yankees.

The kicker here, echoed in the last scene of another great ’80s-era teen movie, The Last American Virgin, and the truths at the heart of any unrequited love stories of the era and beyond, is that this will probably never happen. Everybody loves Duckie, but he never succeeds while we’re watching him. And, now, we look at Duckie, and see that his back’s perpetually pinned to the wall—and that wall might as well be the 37-foot behemoth that stands in left field of Fenway Park. I have many friends who are Red Sox fans, and in a way, I root for them to someday understand the remarkable feeling that you get when your team wins it all. Despite my status as a card-carrying Yankee fan, I’d be the first one to call them and congratulate them if their team ever won a World Series. Ultimately, though, I guess I never expect to make that call. After all, the Red Sox are the human, baseball-based personification of unrequited love. Call them Team Duckie, and remember—if you, too, were doomed to a lifetime as runner-up, you would also see the leaves on the trees and think about hidden snipers.
Dan Dunford

Dear Dan,
I enjoyed your latest article about Alex Rodriguez and the New York Yankees vís-a-vís Pretty In Pink. I believe that Mr. Dunford was correct in his assertions, and for all the wrong reasons. It is a matter of public record that:

1) In the original script to Pretty In Pink, it is Duckie who ends up with Andie. That’s how John Hughes wanted it. During the original screenings, however, the test audiences were creeped out by the “correct” ending because they felt it implied—to put it in a Bushian context— “class warfare;” that the Rich were evil and that Love, as an ideal, belonged not to the rich but to the Integrity Punks / Nerds. Thus the ending was changed so that Andie ends up with Blaine. If you don't believe me, look it up.

2) I am not making this up. This is a matter of public record.

3) With this in mind, rent Pretty in Pink again. The whole plot leads, inexorably, to Duckie and Andie getting together. The hastily added “go to him” part is obviously hastily added.

4) Duckie ends up with Kristy Swanson—not so bad, but not “what the founders had intended” as constitutional scholar Larry Tribe might say.

5) No man with integrity watched that movie and rooted for Blaine. Every guy rooted for Duckie. If you rooted for Blaine, you probably didn’t see the movie in the theaters. Also, you’re a douchebag.

6) The moral of the revisionist Pretty in Pink is that the Rich always win. Moreover, the earnest, punk rock working-class is reduced to flashing a shit-eating grin and settling for the vacuous consolation prize (Kristy Swanson as Manny Ramirez? Don't ask me, kitten, I only work here).

7) Let me ask this directly: When you first saw Pretty in Pink, were you rooting for Duckie, or Blaine? The Red Sox are Duckie. The Yankees are Blaine. Steinbrenner is Steff (James Spader's character). If you root for Blaine and Steff, then you missed the point.

8) Pokey Reese is Annie Potts.

9) Okay, I’m just making stuff up now.

10) The point is: Blaine is the enemy. Steff is the enemy. The Yanquis are the enemy. Honestly, how long do you think Andie and Blaine really lasted?

11) This one goes to eleven: Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the House in blackjack.

Ari Voukydis

Dear Ari,

While it may be a matter of public record that Duckie was intended for Andie, and it may be at the heart and soul of everybody with half of a heart/brain who watches the movie to believe that Duckie belongs with Andie, it never actually happens. Ask anyone who’s ever seen the movie, which is the ultimate public record of Pretty In Pink.

I refer you, then, to the countless preseason predictions of writers over the years who, in their own hearts and first drafts (and regardless or not of their affiliation as a member of Red Sox Nation) scripted a season where the Red Sox won it all. I hate to point this out, but there have been several seasons where everything has been scripted towards the inevitable conclusion of a Red Sox title. Then, a horrible tacked-on ending spoils the whole thing. The weird little kink endings to seasons—the ones that have shattered your heart so many times that I hesitate to bring them up—don’t they jibe all the more with the “hastily added” assertion about Pretty In Pink?

That said, did I—and everyone, really—root for Duckie? Absolutely.

And, if you rooted for Blaine, were you a douchebag? I think that’s a little harsh—I’d go with “more superficial.” What I disagree with is your contention of (paraphrase) “Yankees as Blaine, Steinbrenner as Steff.” Here’s why. It’s never that simple. (Of course, you want to codify the parallels between Pretty in Pink and the Sox/Yankees Battle to make it so that the owner of the Bronx Bombers gets played by Professional Asshole James Spader. Well played, Voukydis.) But, realistically, we know that in this type of argument and relationship, we’re never that removed from it. As fans of our team, we’re not watching the movie objectively, we're living it. We are minor, background players, already allied. And, just like in real life, you go with what you know. If you're born and raised next door to Blaine, you’re more likely to root for him—no matter what the objective reality of the situation. In simple terms, you get caught up. It’s life, and it’s living. If that means that the Yankee fan base (as opposed to George Steinbrenner) are a collective Steff, then so be it. That’s how the cookie crumbles. But, remember, we're just looking after what we know. You would, too, if you were born “on this side of the tracks.”

And, as hot as Kristy Swanson is—and she still is (see Playboy layout sometime last year, if I'm not mistaken)— she's the consolation prize. The ALDS Championship trophy, if you will.
While Andie and Blaine might have never had a wonderful lifelong companionship together, all we can bank on as truth is that they wound up together. In a John Hughes movie, and a John Hughes world, that's the ultimate form of currency. It's the end of the movie. When the screen fades to black, and the lights go on, that's how things are.

We love Duckie, and we root for him, and we see ourselves in him—and, for Christ's sake, there’s true and tremendous honor in being Duckie—but his fate is sealed as soon as the movie ends, no matter what the original screenplay might note.

Dan Dunford

Dan,

My point was that your Pretty in Pink analogy is, in fact, perfect. Furthermore, in being perfect it underscores the inherent loathesomeness of the New York Yankees. Every time we watch the movie, we don’t really believe in our hearts that the ending will magically change; that hey, this time maybe Duckie will get the girl. But though we know the story by heart, we still root for Duckie.

Again: we know he doesn’t end up with Andie. But even so, we root for him. It would be amoral to rent Pretty in Pink and root for Blaine because hey, we know he wins and everyone loves a winner—even if the winner was determined, literally, by choosing money over integrity.
But you know who does that? Anyone who bought their first Yankees cap after 1996. Anyone who abandons their hometown Tigers (or whomever) and gets a Jeter starter jersey and then yells “1918” at me on the street. The signing of A-Rod draws a line in the sand. If you were not a Yankee fan in the ’80s, or at least early ’90s, it is corrupt to be one now. One thing I pity about lifelong Yankee fans like Mr. Dunford is that they can never trust the company they keep: are the people in the seats next to me, behind me, around me real fans? Or are they the kind of mercenary poseurs who will root for nobody but the Overdog? We Sox fans don't have that problem. If you jumped on the Sox bandwagon when they were winning Series after Series, you are very old and probably easy to spot.

The Red Sox Nation will always root for Duckie. It is our nature. And perhaps, this year, some new director’s cut will be released and fans will get to see the movie the way it's supposed to end. I wonder: will the Nouveau Yankee Fans hide their caps, remove their blazers and ties, and claim they were with the good guys all along? What if the Yankees lose several years in a row? What if they lose 84 years in a row? Think they’ll still be there? We will. The Nation will. The Nation is. Because the ship will one day be righted, the injustices corrected, the piper paid, and when that happens, a whole lot of Yankee fans—as Steff says to Blaine—“won’t know whether to shit or go sailing.”

Ari Voukydis

Dan Dunford is a writer and teacher who originally hails from the Bronx, New York. He currently resides in Albany, New York, where he teaches pre-school.

Ari Voukydis is a writer and actor born and raised in Boston. He currently resides in Manhattan, and is a C-list celebrity who can be seen on like a thousand VH-1 shows, including Best Week Ever, A2Z, Celebrity Smackdown, Get Your Geek On and All Access.

They Make The Call
by Steve Reynolds

“I think I might like George Bush better.”
– An anonymous Red Sox Fan on Tim McCarver

Baseball fans are not only passionate about their teams, they’re also very passionate about their baseball announcers (as evidenced by the quote above). In this age where players change teams with regularity, announcers usually stay the same. While it’s highly unlikely that now a play-by-play announcer will be with a team as long as Hall of Famers Ernie Harwell (Detroit Tigers) or the late, great Bob Murphy (New York Mets), many current announcers have been with their teams for more than a decade, which is long enough for fans to link the best and worst of their teams with that person’s voice.

Five years ago in the very first issue of Zisk I penned a piece rating the best baseball studio hosts and play by play and color announcers. Unfortunately my attempt at judging the best was flawed—simply by the fact that I couldn’t possibly have heard every TV announcer out there without living in every baseball market for a few weeks in one season. This year all of that changed, as I was finally able to get digital cable in my sleepy little area of Brooklyn (thanks a lot, you overcharging Cablevision bastards) and I decided to take the plunge and subscribe to the MLB Extra Innings package. For 149 bucks spread over four months, I could watch almost ever game (well, at least parts of every game) every day of the week—except Saturdays when FOX had national broadcast rights. The first week of having this package I watched parts of 37 different games. It was heaven. And it also led me to rethink my analysis from five years ago. So with that in mind, here is an updated list of the worst and best announcing teams covering America’s national past time.

The Worst
5) Bill Brown, Jim Deshaies FSN Southwest (Houston Astros)
These two jokers deserve to call a team that has that jackass Roger Clemens. The way these two guys talk, you’d think Jimy Williams or Phil Garner were going to call them in pinch hit (“We gotta score here,” “We need a good pitch here”). The only reason they aren’t higher on the list will become readily apparent to most when you read the next four.

4) Skip Carey, Joe Simpson Turner South, TBS (Atlanta Braves)
Is it possible than two guys could make a ball game sound more boring—and sound so pompous while doing it? (Wait, maybe team # 2 does) They have such a stuck up attitude about their team that I want to punch my TV.

3) Ken Harrelson, Darrin Jackson FSN Chicago (Chicago White Sox)
These two are the worse home rooters in baseball. I heard one of them say the following during a game against the Minnesota Twins (I am not making this up): “It’s 9 to 7 bad guys, but we got two more pops at them.” Holy crap, do these guys even know the term objectivity?

2) Michael Kay, Ken Singleton YES (New York Yankees)
If you’ve heard Kay’s home run call when the Yanks win a game, you know why he’s here. And Singleton’s mumbling will make a coke head fall to sleep in less than 30 seconds

1) Fran Healy, Keith Hernandez FSN New York (New York Mets)
It’s not bad enough that my favorite team has sucked for four consecutive seasons after getting beat by the Yankees in the World Series. We Met fans also have to deal with Healy’s spelling out the obvious inning after inning and Hernandez telling us why he’s better than every hitter on the field. I think it’s no coincidence that when Ted Robinson (the normal play-by-play man) went on leave for the Olympics and the U.S. Open in Tennis and left these two—along with pregame host Matt Laughlin—to do all the Mets games that the team went into their free fall. Thank goodness we have a great radio team (Gary Cohen and Howie Rose) that knows Mets history and knows how to entertain when the team is sucking.

The Best
5) Daron Sutton, Bill Schroeder FSN North (Milwaukee Brewers)
Covering Brewers games for years would probably suck the life out of anyone, but somehow Sutton and Schroeder still have a genuine enthusiasm for every facet from the game. Whether it’s sterling defensive play (which the Brew crew have made with surprising regularity) or a well executed hit and run, it’s readily apparent that these guys appreciate quality baseball, no matter which team is making the great play. The only minus for this duo is how much they act like homers—Sutton has a tendency to sprinkle his play-by-play with “we” a bit too much. But when the Mets played the Brewers in Milwaukee, I wished I could be listening to Sutton root for his team (out of town broadcasts of game against NY teams are blacked out).

4) Greg Papa, Ray Fosse FSN Bay Area (Oakland A’s)
I haven’t gotten the opportunity to watch more than five games Papa and Fosse have called. But even after just one game you can tell these two have worked together for a while and operate like well oiled pitching machine. Their voices are so soothing I feel like I’m in California watching the game. (Except I don’t have to fear someone from the Texas Rangers throwing a chair at me.)

3) Don Orsillo, Jerry Remy NESN (Boston Red Sox)
When you have to call a cursed team, you have to make sure you’ve got a good sense of humor, and these two have a great sense of humor. These two have no problem telling humorous stories that embarrass themselves while they’re waiting for Nomah to do his 86 motions while at bat—I especially loved the time Remy talked about leaving the parking brake on in their rental minivan while driving from San Francisco to Oakland. During one game against the lowly Tampa Bay Devil Rays Orsillo and Remy were visited by the comedians Dennis Leary and Lenny Clarke, who were at Fenway to promote a charity event. These four riffed on baseball, facial hair and so many different topics I thought they should get their own morning show on a radio station somewhere. And by the way, Orsillo and Remy also have a great eye for detail when calling a game, picking out the small things that make a difference between winning and losing.

2) Thom Brenneman, Joe Garagiola FSN Arizona (Arizona Diamondbacks)
Brenneman and Garagiola don’t work together that often (ex-D-back Mark Grace is usually the color man), and nepotism is definitely behind Garagiola’s position (his son is the D-backs GM). But there’s a reason these two have both been on national baseball telecasts (Joe obviously for a much longer time)—they’re damn good. Brenneman has great knack for capturing the flow of a game and setting up his partners to make good points, while the approaching-80-years-old Garagiola still has the smarts that made him a staple of NBC’s Game of the Week while I was growing up. Too bad FOX didn’t have these two guys work playoff games together.

1) Vin Scully FSN West 2 (Los Angeles Dodgers)
What else can be said about the Hall of Fame voice that moved from Brooklyn with the Dodgers? Scully’s national work for NBC is imprinted in my memories of the Bill Buckner play in the ’86 World Series (“A little roller…behind the bag. It’s through Buckner! Knight comes in and the Mets win it!) and Kirk Gibson’s home run in 1988 (“In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened!”), but I’m sure any Dodger fan would have a list of memories a mile long of that quintessential American voice. It stunned me at first that Scully still works solo all these years after his radio days, but somehow he makes it work. His preparation is still immaculate—he always seems to come up with some odd anecdote about a player from the other team that boggles my mind. I wonder if Dodger fans know how lucky they are to still have a connection to their glorious past.

Myths of Place
by David Shields

When Jim Fassel, who was born and raised in California and had coached primarily in the West, was hired to be the head coach of the New York Giants, the New York Daily News wondered whether someone who was “accustomed to bikini weather and a pretty passing game would struggle with the elements of player discipline in the He-Man’s land of the NFC East.”

Boston Celtic Paul Pierce, an All-Star, by reputation one of the grittiest players in the NBA, and a native Californian, said, “The hatred for the West Coast player—it’s everywhere. Especially in high school. When you go back East, it’s always, ‘the West is soft.’ I can’t tell you how many guys I got into it with over that. That probably has something to do with why no one had heard of me until the McDonald’s All-American game.”

Pierce’s then teammate, Kenny Anderson, who was born and raised in Queens, told him, “Because there’s no ballers on the West Coast like in New York, the mecca of basketball. That’s why nobody heard of you.”

Kenny Anderson was a high school phenom and a college star but has been an NBA journeyman; inevitably, it’s the middle- and lower-rung players who cling to the badge of geographic superiority.

When Larry Bird, longtime Boston Celtic star, was coaching the Indiana Pacers, he said, “The East used to have the defensive powers. But with the new rules, scoring is up, and it hurts us. It’s a softer game now, and the West always has had soft teams.”

Jalen Rose, then of the Indiana Pacers, replied, “The West is about scoring and putting three or four guys out there who can actually put the ball in the basket. In the East, two guys might be robots.”

The West is about pretty skills; the East is a manly scrum.

Texas Tech defensive coordinator Greg McMackin said, “The West Coast offense is a finesse offense that’s built on rhythm. They dink and dunk in the short, quick, passing game so they can have third-and-short situations.”

After the Sonics defeated the Knicks in New York several years ago, Seattle’s Sam Perkins said, “It’s no problem for us being physical. We’re not as soft as people say we are. We just don’t have the reputation. We’re not seen as much on the East Coast. People think we just run and shoot. They don’t really see how we are, until today.”

Ex-New York Yankee and (current Houston Astro) pitcher Roger Clemens claims that he’s “seen a few times in Anaheim where a guy is throwing a cool game and people get up in the fifth, sixth, or seventh inning and head for the beach.”

The myth persists that West Coast fans always arrive late and leave early, whereas East Coast fans supposedly arrive on time and stay until the bitter end: they have true forbearance, persistence, stick-to-it-tiveness. In actuality, at lopsided games at Yankee Stadium, fans leave in the fifth inning, as they do anywhere else. When the Knicks are way behind, fans throng to the exits midway through the fourth quarter, the same way people do in the rest of the country. When the Yankees were bad during the 1980s, attendance fell dramatically; so, too, at Madison Square Garden, attendance is way down now that the Knicks are terrible.

Everybody needs someone to beat up, and the East Coast defines itself as the East Coast by caricaturizing the West Coast, which I didn’t fully understand until I moved back to the West after growing up in California and then living in the East for fifteen years. It’s simple but true: power is a fulcrum. East/west; north/south; white/black; male/female: Group X always needs Group Y to buff its own sense of superiority. We are mind-haunted civilization; you are the physical beauty we’ll contemplate.

In the New York Review of Books, Thomas Powers writes, “Larry McMurtry, a widely read and cosmopolitan man despite his reputation as a Western writer….”

Jonathan Raban, a British writer who lives in Seattle, says, “Living in the West, I find myself a victim of ‘Westism’—that mixture of condescension, sentimentality, and naïve romanticism, which is strangely like old-fashioned sexism. The assumptions of the East about the West-its politics, society, open-air sports like fishing and skiing-are mighty annoying, if you happen to live in a region conceived by New York to be a sort of rugged national park, stretching from the Mississippi to the Pacific, inhabited by unlettered rustics. In actuality, there are many more nerds than Marlboro Men in the West I live in, from Bill Gates to Jeffrey Katzenberg.”

A box at the bottom of the front page of the New York Times guides readers to stories inside: “G.I. Killed in Afghanistan,” “Fujimori Seeks a Comeback,” “US Airways Plans Cuts,” “Office Shopping Spree,” and “Bear Concerns at Yosemite.” The West is forever the 22-second nature non-story at the end of the network news.

Philadelphia Phillies manager Larry Bowa, born and raised in Philadelphia, says, “There’s more of a sense of urgency to excel on the East Coast. They don’t have a lot of other things to do, whereas fans have a lot of stuff to do out there on the West Coast. Going to the ballpark’s more laid-back. It’s a little more casual. It’s really a form of entertainment for them. On the East Coast, it’s, ‘Hey, we want you to win at all costs. It’s our summer; don’t screw it up.’ If you’re not a mentally tough person and you’re traded to an East Coast team, it might have an effect on you—fans calling you a bum. If that bothers you, you might want to get into another line of work. Or try to get traded back out West.”

The West is invariably referred to as “out West,” as a way to underscore that the Northeast is the center of American civilization. China/Japan; Japan/Korea; Athens/Rome; Christianity/the Roman Empire; London/New York; East Coast/West Coast—every society has forever condescended to every society that followed afterward.

Mo Vaughn was raised near Boston and had several good years with the Red Sox before being traded to Anaheim, for whom he was an extremely expensive disappointment. “Being on the West Coast, I learned how much I love the East Coast,” he said. “The intensity of the will to succeed just wasn’t there. Every place has got its issues. But for me, as a ballplayer, I need to be in the fire. I can’t be out there on Mars.” Out there. “I’ve got to be in the mix, man.”

Upon being traded to the New York Mets, Vaughn said, “You’re in the limelight here and you’re going to be seen. If you’re not intimidated by it, it can help you as a player. For me, to have that on an everyday basis can only bring your game up, because you can’t hide. There’s nowhere to go.” This relentless scrutiny was the very thing that drove Vaughan out of Boston—he said he felt suffocated playing in the same place where he had grown up—and in New York he was an even bigger bust than he was in Anaheim.

“I was brought up in a pressure-packed situation in Boston,” he said. “Overall, the East Coast is a get-it-done-yesterday type situation, and I seem to thrive on that.” In 2002, his first season with New York, he batted .259—his worst average in ten years—while Anaheim won the World Series.

Geographic snobbery is the last refuge of the fallen. One of the least motivated players ever to play in the NBA, Benoit Benjamin, shortly after being traded from Seattle to New Jersey, said, “As far as I’m concerned, the real basketball games are on the East Coast.”

In a letter to the editor in the December 2002 issue of Harper’s, Joe Ferullo, of Studio City, CA, said, “Mark Slouka rightly argues that September 11 generated an apocalyptic response because Americans considered themselves immune to, and protected by God from, such acts. Let me take his argument further. The attacks of 9/11 generated such a response because they took place in New York City. Many of the people Slouka quotes, and nearly all the media reports he mentions, are from New York. The attacks hit them where they live, and the commentators, although they purport to speak for the nation, have for quite some time spoken for a small world confined by the Hudson, East, and Harlem rivers. I strongly suspect that if those horrible events had occurred instead in Los Angeles, the national (that is to say, New York-based) media reaction would have been different. After an appropriate period of respectful silence, the talking heads and newsweeklies would have trotted out timeworn homilies about how Los Angeles had brought this on itself, thinking it could be isolated from the real world in a bubble of sand, sunshine, and mass-produced make-believe. If Seattle had been the target, I imagine national commentators would have ruminated on how this was one more, though extraordinarily painful, step in that city’s decline since the irrationally exuberant dot-com days. An attack on, say, Miami would not have been expanded into evidence that evil had returned to the planet, that the entire world had been irrevocably altered, that nothing would ever be the same anywhere.”

New York native Gordon Edelstein, for many years the artistic director of the Seattle Repertory Theater, said, upon becoming artistic director of the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, “In Seattle, when the curtain rises on a play, the audience is open, but their tacit agreement is that life is pretty good, it’s important to be comfortable, and human beings actually can be healthy. The curtain rises on a New York audience, and everybody agrees we’re basically sick and we want redemption and we want a good time, but we’re not made uncomfortable by deeply disturbing news about our psyche. In fact, that feels like the truth to us.” Of course this feels like the truth to you: you get to control what’s agreed upon as truth. The issue isn’t that this E/W dichotomy isn’t indicative of real regional differences; it’s that the dichotomy gets completely cartoonized and the “greater than” arrow always points to one side of the equation.

Larry King once said, “Bums in New York could run a grocery chain in Des Moines.” In my experience, people in the West (or, for that matter, the Midwest) are at least as intelligent and driven as people in the East; they just cloak these qualities in a more understated cultural style.

In Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon, Reverend Cherrycoke says, “As to journey west, in the same sense of the Sun, is to live, raise children, grow older, and die, carried along by the stream of the day, whilst to turn Eastward is somehow to resist time and age, to work against the Wind, seek ever the dawn, even, as who can say, defy death.” “Eastward” here is capitalized; “west” is lower-case.

The East is part of the history of art; the West is the mere muck of life.

The New Yorker sponsored a cruise ship going around the world from Los Angeles to Greece; different New Yorker contributors entertained passengers on different legs of the journey. On the L.A. to Australia run, all of the New Yorker artists on board ship were cartoonists.

S. Bass, of San Francisco, in a recent letter to the New Yorker, wrote: “In lauding Manhattan’s street grid plan in his review of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, Paul Goldberger fails to comment on one invidious urban effect that was unforeseeable when the plan was adopted in 1811: the grid plan’s ‘equalization’ permits motor vehicle traffic to universally intrude on and interfere with pedestrianism, making New York unlike other great cities in the world, where it’s relatively easy when walking to find a quiet side street. In deeming the plan brilliant urban planning, Goldberger seems to be confusing New York’s ‘determined rambunctiousness’ with the stress caused by the grid’s constant, omnipresent crush of traffic.” New York’s much vaunted “energy,” in other words, is just gridlock. New Jersey Nets’ (famously fragile) forward Donny Marshall said several years ago, “I feel more comfortable with the East Coast style of basketball. You go to southern California and you see palm trees and beautiful people.” Marshall himself is model-handsome. “I remember our trip to New York to play St. John’s when I was at UConn. The people weren’t beautiful; they were jittery. Everything was so fast. I loved it.”

Mark Twain wrote about New York, “There is something about this ceaseless buzz and hurry and bustle that keeps a stranger in a state of unwholesome excitement all the time, and makes him restless and uneasy.”

Even Japanese baseball star Hideki Matsui, when he was being courted by several American baseball teams, told Japanese reporters, “I want to go to an East Coast team where there’s some pressure to perform.” Or, alternatively and interestingly, a “West Coast team if that team can help me develop further as a player.” Skills vs. scrum.

Coming from Philadelphia to Phoenix for his first season, Charles Barkley said, “Guys thought I was too mean in [training] camp, but they don’t get it. You can’t just show up on opening night and say, ‘O.K., now we’re going to be mean.’ I think living in the sun makes these guys soft. John Havlicek [of the Boston Celtics] told me that. In the East, you wake up, you look out, and there’s snow on the ground. You start the day pissed off. Out here”-out here-“you wake up, it’s beautiful out. You put on the Bermudas and have breakfast on the porch.”

During the 2002 season, Washington State University quarterback Jason Gesser played on a severe ankle strain to lead his team to a victory over UCLA and into the Rose Bowl. It was about as courageous an athletic performance as one could hope to see; if he’d been from Pittsburgh, there would have been be much discussion of how both his grandfather and father had worked in the coal mines, but Gesser is from Hawaii, so no one knew what to say to mythologize the moment.

A New York Times interviewer didn’t understand why Albert Brooks didn’t find it a compliment to be called the “West Coast Woody Allen.” When she asked him what he’d rather be called, he said, “Why do I have to be called something?” She still didn’t get it, so he said, “How about ‘the living Stanley Kubrick’?”

In the 2001 NBA Finals, the Los Angeles Lakers were expected to defeat the Philadelphia 76ers easily, but Philadelphia won the first game. Afterward, sportscaster Marv Albert said, “Philly was down, 18-5. If this were a series in the West, you’d feel like Philly didn’t believe in themselves. But Philly came back.” Only people in the East believe in themselves. Only people in the East have heart. Everyone else is a scarecrow or, perhaps, the Cowardly Lion. Los Angeles won the next four games, but it had nothing to do with heart or character. They were just, boringly, the better team.

When Arizona beat the Yankees in the 2001 World Series, it wasn’t perceived to be a fable; the Diamondbacks got lucky in Game 7. When Anaheim beat the Yankees in the 2002 American League Division Series, New York only happened to be in a batting slump at the wrong time. When Seattle came back from a 2-0 deficit to beat New York in the American League Championship Series in 1995, the Mariners weren’t displaying superior fortitude; the Yankees ran out of steam. When an East Coast team, or especially a New York team wins, it’s a morality tale about the little engine that could or, contrariwise, the unstoppable forces of capitalism. When a team from somewhere else wins, it’s just, shrug, a game. It’s not shrouded in mythology. Whoever owns the story tells its meaning.

David Shields is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award) and Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity (winner of the PEN/Revson Award). His most recent book is Body Politic: The Great American Sports Machine.

The Great Debuts of 2004
by John Shiffert

All right class, please pay attention. It’s time for a pop baseball quiz. No, Dickie Stuart, you don’t have to actually catch the pop, just take the following quiz…

What do Hank Aaron, Danny Murphy and Bruno Haas have in common?

Well, let’s see…they’re all members of the species Homo Sapiens. They were all major league
baseball players (though if you blinked back in 1915, you missed Haas). And they were all better fielders than little Dickie Stuart, although, for that matter, my five-year-old Jared is already a better fielder than Dr. Strangeglove. All correct answers…but not what we’re looking for today. Let’s try another question, very closely related to the first, and see if that helps…

What do David Aardsma, Kaz Matsui and Casey Daigle have in common? That’s right, they’re all currently professional baseball players in the good old U.S. of A. But, what in the name of Bombo Rivera do they have to do with Aaron, Murphy and Haas?

It just so happens that Aardsma, Matsui and Daigle all made their major league debuts in 2004. And quite notable debuts they were, though for different reasons. And, it just so happens that Aardsma’s, Matsui’s and Daigle’s debuts harked back to those of Aaron, Murphy and Haas (in that order). Still confused? Read on…

It was 50 years ago that the future home run king, who started his professional career as a teenaged infielder in the Negro Leagues with the Indianapolis Clowns, made his major league debut in a game at Crosley Field against the Redlegs (you didn’t dare call them “Reds” in the McCarthy Era), thanks in part to a spring training broken leg on the part of Bobby Thomson (who also had a little fame for hitting home runs). The Braves, then still in Boston, had paid the Clowns the typical pittance—$7500—for Aaron in May 1952. At least that was $7500 more than Branch Rickey and the Dodgers paid the Kansas City Monarchs for Jackie Robinson in 1945. After a year-and-a-half in the minors, Aaron desegregated the Braves (bet he was glad they didn’t move to Atlanta until 1966, because this was just five years after the Klan threatened to shoot Robinson and/or Roy Campanella if they played in an exhibition game at Ponce de Leon Park) in their 1954 opener. For the record, Cincy won the game, 9-8, with Bob Buhl getting the loss and Joe Nuxhall picking up the win in relief of…Bud Podbielan? That’s right, the old Dodgers pitcher was a starter for Cincinnati in 1953 and 1954…although why he was starting the 1954 opener is a little hard to explain, since he’d gone 6-16 with a 4.73 ERA in 1953. Maybe because the rest of the Redlegs starters were Art Fowler, Corky Valentine and Fred Baczewski.

While the 20-year old Hammer didn’t hit any of his 755 home runs in his debut—he only hit 13 all year in 468 at bats—he did set one notable standard that lasted for almost 50 years. In fact, a mark that will, in all likelihood, prove to be longer lasting than his career home run mark, which figures to expire in its mid-30s in a few years. When Hank Aaron took the field in Cincinnati on April 13, 1954, he became the all-time major league leader in the alphabetical roster, supplanting Ed Abbaticchio, a Phillies, Braves and Pirates infielder from 1897 to 1910. (Before Abbaticchio, it was Bert Abbey, an 1890s National League pitcher.) “Batty,” as he was known, was a mostly forgettable second baseman/shortstop, creating slightly more than the league average in runs created per 27 outs (4.12 to 3.95) and posting range factors slightly above (shortstop - 5.58 to 5.54) and below (second - 5.08 to 5.27) the league figures.

And while Aaron’s home run mark is still intact at this writing, his alphabetical record fell on April 6, 2004, when pitcher David Aardsma, the Giants’ 2003 first-round draft choice (22nd overall), picked up a win in his first major league game. Debuting with two scoreless, though shaky, innings against the Astros in the Juiced Park, Aardsma got the win when the Giants welcomed Andy Pettite to the National League and real baseball, shelling he of the career 9.54 hits per nine innings and $11.5 million salary for 11 hits and six runs in 5 1/3 innings. Aardsma, who got the game ball and the lineup card, was pitching for his hometown Rice University less than a year before his major league debut. Not surprisingly, he left dozens of passes at the “Will Call” window, including some for his former teammates, who were conveniently rained out of a game against the University of Houston.

Aardsma, in relief of a badly-battered Brett Tomko (seven hits and three runs in four innings…he didn’t last long enough to get the win), managed to escape from his two innings (the sixth and the seventh) without being scored upon, despite giving up three hits and a walk without striking out anyone and throwing just 32 of 52 pitches for strikes. However, no matter what Aardsma does or doesn’t do from here on in, he’s now number one in all the encyclopedias. And, he can always say he took a record away from Hank Aaron.

Then there was Danny Murphy, who made his American League debut on July 8, 1902 with the Philadelphia Athletics against Boston Somersets. If you thought Kaz Matsui broke in with a bang… Certainly, Matsui’s first American major league game at Turner Field was worth noting. A home run on the first pitch he saw, plus two doubles and two walks. Five times up against the Braves, and five times on base. That’s 3-1-3-3 if you’re scoring at home.

Unprecedented? Not quite. There's a fairly close historical precedent to Matsui's big opening night...in fact, an even bigger first game, albeit in the American League and not the American major leagues. Back in April 1902, the Philadelphia Athletics lost superstar Napoleon Lajoie (his 1901 Triple Crown season was .426-14-125) to a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling, once again proving the difficulties involved in dealing with Philadelphia lawyers. Seems as if the Court felt that King Larry was a unique commodity, and was thence still the property of the Philadelphia Phillies, despite his one-sided contract that, in effect, tied him to the Phillies in perpetuity (i.e., the Reserve Clause). Connie Mack then spent the next three months casting around for someone, anyone, to play second base. Primarily, this meant Jud Castro, one of the first Latin Americans (born in Medellin, Colombia) to play major league baseball. However, Jud was a dud…playing about like someone who had been sampling Medellin's most famous export. His range factor and fielding percentage were way below the league averages (Rng - 4.54 to 5.44; FPct - .918 to .948) and his OPS was right at the Ordonez Line (.601 to be exact) as he hit .245 with only four walks.

Finally, Mack remembered a good Philadelphian (he loved to use local players) who had played 27 games for the Giants in 1900 and 1901, going 24-for-94 with exactly one extra base hit. Undeterred, Mack called for Danny Murphy, who didn’t arrive in Boston on the afternoon of July 8th until the game against the Somersets was already in the second inning. Without any kind of warmup or batting practice, Mack promptly stuck him out at second base in what ended up being one of the wildest games of the year. Murphy proceeded, in his American League debut, to go six-for-six with a grand slam (his only home run all year) off Cy Young in a 22-9 A’s rout. Actually, it took until the sixth inning for Murphy and his new teammates to really warm to the task at hand. By then they were facing Doc Adkins, and the Mackmen scored 12 runs on 12 hits with five players; Murphy, Topsy Hartsel, Harry Davis (Why aren’t you in the Hall of Fame?), Lave Cross and Socks Seybold all getting two hits apiece. (This sound anything like the 18-10 game the day AFTER Matsui had his five-for-five?) Davis would also hit a grand slam in this monumental blow-out (which tied the ML record for GS in a game), and even winning pitcher Rube Waddell (who only faced three batters in relief) singled in the big inning, which also helped set an AL record for hits—45 in all, 27 by Philadelphia. In the field, Murphy also proved an upgrade from Castro, handling 12 chances without an error. At this point, Mack didn’t think he’d found a replacement for Lajoie, he probably thought he’d found another Lajoie. And, while that wasn’t the case—Murphy would go on to hit .313 with a .767 OPS for the rest of the 1902 season and accumulate almost 1500 hits for Mack in the next 12 years—there’s no doubt that the A’s took off after Murphy joined the team. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Waddell had joined the pitching staff (coming from the Los Angeles Loo-Loos…honest) a couple of weeks before Murphy arrived. Standing at 30-29 on the morning of July 8, the Athletics would proceed to go 30-12 over the next 42 games, ending up at 83-53, five games ahead of the St. Louis Browns for Mack’s first pennant.

Of course, not every youngster Connie Mack picked up worked out as well as Danny Murphy. Even given that codicil, Bruno Haas’ June 23, 1915 debut in the second game of a doubleheader against the New York Yankees was a dilly. Seems as if Mack’s son Roy (of whom it was later said, Connie Mack’s sons became senile before he did) was attending Worcester Academy in Massachusetts while his dad was busy dumping salary before and during the 1915 season. With the A’s pitching staff taking the biggest hit, the elder Mack was throwing every warm body he could find out on the mound. (Indeed, the starter in the first game of the June 23 doubleheader was another youngster making his pro baseball debut—Minot “Cap” Crowell, recently of Brown University. He gave up three singles, and lost 3-2 in 10 innings on a throwing error by one of Home Run Baker’s stand-ins at third.) So, when Mack junior told him about the ace of the Worcester Academy staff, a rather funny-looking, stocky, barrel-chested lefty with Walter Johnson arms, Mack senior signed Bruno Haas to a contract, and brought him to Shibe Park to oppose Jack Warhop and the rest of the visiting New Yorkers. He would have been better off staying in prep school (although he was 24 at the time…maybe he was a ringer at Worcester).
Since Mack didn’t necessarily believe in relieving a pitcher’s suffering, and since the Athletics were already 21-35 on the season, he left Haas out there for the duration of a 15-7 loss. And what a pitching line he rang up—a complete game 11-hitter with 16 walks and three wild pitches. Plus an error, just for good measure. Those 16 walks in one game to this day remain the American League record, much to the relief of Boardwalk Brown, who was sitting in the Yankee bullpen in Shibe Park that day…just 70 miles from his old high school in Atlantic City, N.J. (hence his nickname, Boardwalk). Two years earlier, while pitching for the Athletics, Brown had set the previous record for walks in a game with 15. Although he walked more than he struck out (291/251) in his 133 game, 731 inning career, Brown did go 17-11 in 1913 and was 38-40 in five major league seasons.

Which is better than Bruno Haas made out…at least in the majors. Despite what he saw on June 23, Mack was desperate enough for pitching—27 would-be hurlers saw mound time for the A’s in 1915, including five who only appeared in one game, and four (one of whom was the one-and-only “Squiz” Pillion) who had just two appearances—that he actually threw Bruno back out there five more times, including another start on June 30 against the Red Sox (a 10-5 loss this time, although Bruno didn’t get the decision.) And, since Haas did have an excellent arm (even if he wasn’t sure where the ball was going), Mack also used him in the outfield for three games. His final major league totals? 0-1 in 14-and-third innings in six games. Twenty three hits, 27 runs (only 19 earned—the A’s fielding was also terrible that year), 28 walks and seven strikeouts. That’s an 11.93 ERA. He was also 1-18 at the plate, with a walk. However, Bruno did do far better than you or I would have done in the major leagues, and he did go on to have a successful minor league career… playing until he was 55 years old. As Tony Salin notes in his Baseball’s Forgotten Heroes, Haas’ 12-game major league career was followed by 2246 games in the minors—mostly with St. Paul of the American Association as a .300-hitting outfielder with good doubles power and, in his younger years, 20 or so steals per season. He also went 8-8 as a minor league pitcher, getting his last win for Fargo-Moorhead in the Northern League in 1946…31 years after he first took the mound in Shibe Park.

Somehow, it seems unlikely that Casey Daigle will have a similarly lengthy minor league career…if only because the career minor leaguer has basically become an extinct species. As to how Daigle will do in the rest of his major league career, well, he’s lucky he’s not extinct after his major league debut on April 9 against the Cardinals. He’s even luckier he doesn’t have a severe case of whiplash after the Cards pounded five home runs off him through the still air of Bank One Ballpark (the roof was closed) in what may be the worst debut since Bruno Haas. Daigle’s line in the 13-6 (almost as bad as 15-7) pounding…

IP H R ER W K HR
2 2/3 10 8 8 0 0 5

Ouch! That’s a Game Score of 6. At least he didn’t walk anybody. Of course, maybe part of the problem may have been that 35 of his 49 pitches were strikes, strikes that tended to end up traveling long distances (he also gave up a couple of doubles to the 16 batters he faced). In case you missed it, here’s what happened to the 23-year old right-hander…

First inning: Albert Pujols hits a solo homer to put the Cards up 1-0. Well, that could happen to anyone. He hit 43 last year, and should have been the National League MVP.

Second inning: After the D’Backs stake Daigle to a 3-1 lead in the bottom of the first, Reggie Sanders comes off the DL (well, that’s where he usually hangs out) and hits a two-run homer as part of a three-run inning that puts St. Louis back in the lead, 4-3. Third inning: Ray Lankford, who has hit exactly six major league home runs since the end of the 2001 season, hits a solo home run. Three batters later, Scott Rolen hits a two-run home run. Two batters after that, Sanders comes up again and hits another solo homer, making the score 8-3 and, since Bob Brenly is more humane, though not a better manager, than Connie Mack, ending Daigle’s first major league appearance…and maybe taking Bruno Haas off the hook.

John Shiffert is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and a sportswriter of some 35 years experience. His first book, Baseball: 1862 to 2003 will be published by Publish America later this year. He writes a baseball e-zine, 19 to 21, that compares historical baseball events with the events of the current season. 19 to 21 is available by e-mail (johnshiffert@mail.clayton.edu), or through his website www.baseabll19to21.com. He is also in the process of compiling stories from other authors for a baseball anthology entitled Fathers and Sons and Baseball. Submissions may be made by e-mail.


Mickey Mantle's Mistress
by Michael Baker

Is it always my fault if the meat
is too rare, the wine still corked?
Even in my foothold in the sheets
I dream of sundaes and earthquakes,
not these baseball bats of sterling silver.
There’s no line between desire and despair:
Cleveland has already made that mistake.
You say that older players also feed
on manuals, suntan lotion, and dusty statistics,
that like soldiers they are alone,
stripping others near warming showers
and sleeping until noon,
giving away broken shoelaces for parting gifts.
I see only wrinkles and smoky voodoo
and won’t learn how to live here there.
I think now I may let you both go
for my knees ache: I’m going to squat
and piss on your pinstriped knick-knacks
and in my will leave my underwear
to wives, the dirty parts highlighted.
For you, I’ll give back your damned jockstrap: too bad
Jesus left his penis on the cross.

Clemens Is Still a Wiener And Other Thoughts That Occured to Me While Watching the 2004 All-Star Game
by Lisa Alcock

The idea for this article came about after an e-mail discussion with my good friend Kip. I’d inquired if he was going to watch this year’s All-Star game, his response: “You bet. I cannot wait to see Clemens and Piazza as battery mates.” I read that statement and for a brief moment I had blocked the reality of Clemens in the National League. Then, reality came back and hit me in the face like a frying pan: ‘Oh crap, now I have to root for Roger’ (even though I would never do such a ridiculous thing). And, ‘Oh my God! This game has so much comic potential!’ This is the conversation that transpired between Kip and myself

Me: “I hope Roger remembers to not throw at Mike’s head. I hope he remembers they're on the same team. Oh to be a fly on the wall in the dugout...”

Kip: “I don't think there will be any pitcher-catcher meeting before the game to discuss strategy.” [Laughs]

Me: “Yeah Mike will skip that. Though, a conference on the mound might be funny…”

In an article I read about Piazza and Clemens on Yahoo Sports the day of the game, Piazza is quoted as saying, “I don’t know if we’re going to be playing golf anytime soon…But we’ve got a job to do.'' Clemens added: “It’s not that big a deal. It’s not an issue.” Roger also said, “I’m glad I’m throwing to (Piazza) and I don't have to face him.” (Yes, I’m sure you are, you moron. Though I’m sure you can afford another $50,000 fine). So, the comic potential at this year’s game was definitely there. You know what have been really funny? Seeing Piazza give Clemens the finger while giving him signals before the pitch. Oh, a girl can dream, can’t she? But all joking aside I wondered: how can I want my league to win and not root for Clemens at the same time?1

Ugh. Oh the horror. What follows is my play-by-play of the 2004 All-Star Game:
I’m watching the All-Star game at my boyfriend Alec’s house. He’s totally not interested in baseball and will probably tune out my ranting at the TV during the game.

Oh God. Joe Buck and Tim McCarver are covering the game. I should have known. Please kill me now. Why couldn’t Fox have gotten Ernie Harwell or George Kell and Al Kaline to cover the game? I guess that’s too much to ask.

8:45 pm: Starting player introductions. I boo and hiss when the camera pans to Clemens warming up in the bullpen. (Poor Alec)

8:55 pm: Top of the first. Roger has two outs…the American League is up by three runs. A small part of me giggled with glee when Manny Ramirez got an home run off Roger. The inning seemed to drag on for an eternity. Joe Buck commented, “And this nightmare isn’t ending for Clemens.” (Why thanks, Joe, for that astute observation. You can always count on certain broadcasters to point out the obvious.) It is a 30-plus pitches first inning for Clemens. The score is 6-0; let’s hope the National League bats can catch up.

9:04 pm: Pujols gets a double...and, man, I thought it was out of the park!

9:08 pm: Joe Buck has just announced that both Jack McKeon and Jimy Williams decide that Roger is done for the game! I say, “Well, it looks like I can now watch and enjoy the game. My work here is done.” As I type I start laughing out loud. I read the previous sentence to Alec and he says, “You’re really amusing yourself, aren’t you?” “Well, yes, of course I am” I reply. “Roger has just written my article for me.”

9:34 pm: Top of the third, Piazza is still in the game. Priceless.

After that, it’s all a blur to me.

Okay, okay, I admit I didn’t watch the entire game (besides, who the hell can stay awake that long?). In the end I was able to root for my league and not have to worry about Clemens. Clemens pitched horribly. Perhaps he had an off night, or, perhaps we witnessed a little thing called Karma in action. And by the way, why did Bud Selig have to present Clemens with that award? He wasn’t pitching well that night and Houston is 44-44 as I write this. It would have been nice to wake up this morning to see the National League had won, but they didn’t. They haven’t won since what, 1996? So the Red Sox bats helped the Yankees gain home field advantage. Whatever. I got my wish, Clemens had a wretched performance. I had fun watching the game and all the random players I like to follow (Mulder, Pujols, Guerrero, etc.) and will watch next year. Hopefully Scooter (see below) will be dead by then.

Here are some other random game notes:

During the pre-game ceremonies, was I the only one who really wanted Ali to punch Jeter on the other side of his jaw so he could have a matching scar?

Joe Buck and Tim McCarver both note when Pudge comes up to bat, “Ivan Rodriguez really enjoys the music of Yanni.” (Huh??!) Alec and I looked at each other and cracked up when Joe adds “Somewhere Pat Morita is weeping…” in regards to hearing the music of Yanni as a backdrop to Pudge’s home run. (And I thought Joe and Tim weren’t funny!).

Scooter, the animated talking baseball who informed us about curveballs and sliders, needs to die a slow, painful death. He’s as irritating as the Pillsbury Dough Boy™ and that creepy Snuggle™ teddy bear.

I really liked the MasterCard commercial with the Red Sox fans. They were asked ‘What would you pay to see the Red Sox in the World Series?’ Responses included “my first born,” “my girlfriend,” and “my salary.”

Oh, and I also watched a little bit of the Home Run Derby on Monday night. The funniest moment had to have been when I saw my hero, Hank Aaron, sitting in the stands looking at his cell phone, as if he was text messaging someone. I wondered if he was texting Frank Robinson. Perhaps he was telling Frank how much he didn’t want to be interviewed by the annoying Chris “I’m in Desperate Need of a Good Haircut” Berman. And speaking of Frank, I think he could be Robert Guillaume’s (of Soap, Benson and countless films fame) twin brother. Every time I see Frank I think that Jessica, Chester, Burt, and Mary (and the rest of Soap’s characters) can’t be too far behind.

(Author’s update: After Roger’s horrid performance (much to my glee) Kip informed me that he believed it was Mikey who threw the game for Roger. Kip actually thinks that Mike told the batters beforehand what pitches Roger was going to throw. I shook my head and laughed at Kip when he told me of his conspiracy theory. Man, I love my friend…but I think he might be certifiable. Hello, Bellevue?)

1 - Perhaps I can pull it off the same way I’ve not yet rooted for Karim Garcia while watching the Mets. You do recall the bullpen “incident” last year at Fenway in which Garcia was involved with a Red Sox grounds keeper, right? (Garcia was traded to the Orioles for reliever Mike DeJean on July 19th.)

Much has happened to Lisa Alcock since Zisk #8. By the time this issue is published she will have moved in with her boyfriend, Alec, pursued another job, watched her brother graduate from ICP (International Center of Photography), and suffered through another horrible Mets season (groans). Also of note: the softball team, on which she plays, The Pubs, went to the playoffs this season but lost in the third round and took second place overall in their division. While it is college football season, the author maintains that she has not lost interest in baseball and looks forward to the playoffs and to the Yankees losing yet another World Series (but let’s hope they don’t even make it that far). You can read her (almost) daily ramblings on her new website: socgrrrl.squarespace.com.

Words Can't Describe How I'm Feeling
by David Shields

I’ll be honest with you: I’m here to tell you: The big key is: The bottom line is:

There’s no question about it. There’s no doubt about it. You got that right. I couldn’t agree with you more. Obviously, the statistics speak for themselves. He’s a highly touted freshman. Last week was his coming-out party. He has all the makings of a great one. He has unlimited potential. He’s a can’t-miss prospect. You’ll be hearing a lot from him. He can play at the next level. He can play on Sundays. He’s got his whole future ahead of him. He’s a youngster who bears watching. He’s being groomed for a future starting job. The team is really high on him. He’s going to set the world on fire. He’s a rookie phenom. He moves well for a big man. He’s sneaky-fast. He has lightning-fast reflexes. He has great lateral mobility. He can pick ’em up and put ’em down. He has both speed and quickness. He’s a cutter and a slasher. He has speed to burn. He’s fleet-footed. He’s a speed merchant. He can fly. He can flat-out fly. Speed kills. You can’t teach speed. He’s a unique physical specimen. He has a low center of gravity. He plays bigger than his size. He’s built like a brick shithouse. He’s a stud. He’s a warrior. He’s a bulldog. He has a linebacker mentality. He’s fearless. He’s a physical player. He’s an impact player.

He’s a tough, hard-nosed player. He’s their spark plug. He’s their role player. He understands his role on this team. He lets the game come to him. He’s the consummate team player. He’s an unselfish player. He’s a real throwback. He plays with a lot of emotion. He has a passion for the game. He always gives 110%. He plays for the name on the front of the jersey, not the name on the back of it.

He’s their playmaker. He’s their field general. He’s their floor general. He’s a good table-setter. He’s the glue that holds this team together. He makes the players around him better. He’s a stand-up guy. The team looks to him for leadership. He’s a leader on this team. He’s a leader on and off the field. He’s a true professional. He’s a professional hitter. He just goes out there and gets the job done.

I was just doing my job. I was just hoping I could make a contribution in whatever way they needed me. He’s some kind of player. He’s the real deal. He’s legit. He can flat-out play. He’s as good a player as there is in this league. He’s one of the best in the business. He’s in a league of his own. He’s a franchise player. Players like that don’t come along very often. He’s a future Hall-of-Famer. He’s a first-ballot lock. You can’t say enough about him. He’s got ice-water running through his veins. He thrives under pressure. He always comes through in the clutch. He really comes through at crunch time. He’s their go-to guy when the game’s on the line. He’s money. He can carry the team on his shoulders. He can take them to the promised land. He’s shooting well from downtown. He’s making a living behind the 3-point arc. He’s getting some good, open looks. He’s shooting the lights out. He’s in a zone. He’s feeling it. He’s in a groove. He’s lighting it up. He’s on fire. He’s hot. He’s locked in. He’s unconscious. He blew ’em away.

They pay him to make those catches. That pass was very catchable. He’s usually a sure-handed receiver. He usually makes that catch. He heard footsteps. He’s become a little gun-shy. He’s got all the skills; he just needs to put them together. He needs to bulk up in the off-season. He needs to elevate his game. He’s playing out of position. He lacks the killer instinct.

He’s only played sparingly this season. He’s the subject of trade rumors. He’s being shopped around. He’s on the trading block. He has a new lease on life. He’s bounced around a lot. He’s a journeyman. He’s the player to be named later. He’s lost a step. He’s their elder statesman. I just want to give something back to the community. He’s a great role model. He’s a winner in the bigger game of life. I just want to be able to take care of myself and my family.

He doesn’t have that good fastball today. He’s getting by with breaking stuff. He took something off that pitch. He’s getting shelled. He’s getting rocked. They’re teeing off on him. Stick a fork in him; he’s done. They need to pull the plug. He hits the showers. Today I didn’t have my plus-stuff. Regardless of what kind of stuff you have on a given day, you just try to go out there and pitch to the best of your ability and give your team an opportunity to win.

He got hung out to dry on that play. That was blown coverage. That was a missed assignment. They’re playing in the shadow of their goalposts. He couldn’t turn the corner. They’re looking at third down and forever. They have to establish the running game. They have to air it out more. They have to take care of the football. That missed extra-point could come back to haunt them. You gotta hit the holes they make for you. You gotta follow your blockers out there. He’s been quiet so far; they need to get him some more carries in the second half. This is their deepest penetration of the half. They’ve got to punch it in from here. They can’t cough it up here. They need to just go out and make football plays.

He has all the time in the world. He has all day back there. He has all kinds of time. He has an eternity. He threw into double coverage. He threw up a prayer. He’d like to have that one back.

We just couldn’t execute. We weren’t able to sustain anything. They got us out of our game plan early. They took us completely out of our rhythm. We got beat like a gong. They beat us like a drum. They outplayed us. We ran into a buzzsaw. We didn’t execute. Turnovers absolutely killed us. We didn’t get any calls. Sometimes this game just comes down to the way the ball bounces. We didn’t get any breaks. The better team won. They were the better team today.

Give them credit. We just didn’t get the job done. We weren’t mentally prepared. For some reason they’ve just got our number. We didn’t come to play. They stepped up and made football plays. They wanted it more than we did. We have to put this loss behind us. This was a wake-up call. I tip my hat to them. We beat ourselves. We only have to look in the mirror. I don’t want to point any fingers. We came up a little short. We had our chances. They wanted it more than we did. They outplayed us in every phase of the game. They just made the big plays and we didn’t. We dug ourselves a deep hole. We have to put this game behind us. It’s going to be a long plane ride home.

The coach is on the hot seat. His head is on the chopping block. Unfortunately, there are days like this. We’re in the business of winning. It’s the nature of this business. It’s time to move on. We have to look forward. We need a change of direction. We need a clean slate. We need someone who can take us to the next level.

I feel the time has come for new leadership of this ballclub. Everyone has to be held accountable. It’s all about winning and losing. I take the blame. I’m not going to stand up here and make excuses. Obviously, I’m disappointed things didn’t work out. This is my responsibility and I feel badly I haven’t been able to get us going where we should be going. I want to thank our great fans. I’m looking forward to the next chapter in my life. First I’m going to spend more time with my family.

I’m excited about this opportunity. I’m looking forward to the challenge. I have high expectations for this team. This franchise has a great winning tradition. We’ve got a good, solid foundation to build on. We’re going to right the ship. We’re going to get things turned around. This is a great sports town.

They stumbled coming out of the gate. They got off on the wrong foot. They’re finally showing signs of life. They need a late surge. It’s been an up-and-down-season. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. This team is starting to make some noise. The players have bought into the system. He’s got them headed in the right direction. He’s a players’ coach. He’s more of a people person than an X’s-and-O’s guy. These guys have been busting their tails for him. He gets the most out of his players. They’ve turned the corner. They’ve raised the bar. They’ve gotten over the hump. They’ve finally gotten off the schneid. They’re loaded this year. They have a strong supporting cast. There’s no “I” in “team.” They’ve added a new wrinkle to their offense. They’re finally getting the respect they deserve. They’re for real. They’re here to stay. They’re playing with new-found confidence. They’ve got great team chemistry. This team is like a family. Everything’s clicking. We’re starting to gel. Everybody’s on the same page. We’re hitting on all cylinders now. Everybody’s contributing.

We’ve got the league’s best offense against the league’s best defense; something’s gotta give. We’ve got an intriguing matchup. This is a pivotal game. This game is for the bragging rights. These teams flat don’t like each other. There’s no love lost between these two teams. There’s bad blood between these two teams. It’s gonna be a war out there. When these two teams get together, you can throw out their records. You have to respect their athleticism. You have to respect their quickness. They have tremendous leaping ability. They can put up big numbers. They do a great job defensively. They play tough D. They’re feeling each other out. Here’s the payoff pitch. He chased a bad pitch. Tough to lay off that pitch. 3 up, 3 down. This is shaping up to be a real pitchers’ duel. That ball should be playable. It’s a can of corn. The ball took a bad hop. Strike-’im-out, throw-’im-out double-play. Inning over. He got a good jump. That brings the tying run to the plate.

He hits ’em where they ain’t. He’s a long-ball threat. He hit a solo-shot back in the fifth. He’s seeing the ball real well. He wears them out. He made good contact. He hit that ball squarely. He hit that ball on the sweet spot. He knocked the cover off the ball. In any other ballpark, that’s a home run. Chicks dig the long ball. He’s sitting on dead red. He got all of it. He went yard. He hit it into the cheap seats. He flat jacked it. He went deep. He went downtown. Going, going, gone. It’s outta here. See ya later. Goodbye, baseball. Kiss it goodbye. Aloha means goodbye.

It’s been all theirs to this point. It’s theirs to lose. They’re not playing to win; they’re playing not to lose. They’re putting the ball in the deep freeze. They’ve gone to the Four Corners. Now’s the time to run some clock.

Looks like we’ve got some extracurricular activity going on out there. Let’s hope cooler heads prevail. They’re mucking it up in the corner. He stood him up on the blue line. That’s gotta hurt. He was mugged. He’s gonna feel that one on Monday. Looks like we’ve got a player shaken up. Looks like he got his bell rung. That hit really cleaned his clock. He ran into a brick wall. He was literally run over by a freight train. He was blind-sided. He’s slow getting up. He was really clotheslined. They can ill-afford to lose him. Their locker room must look like a MASH unit. X-rays are inconclusive. He left the field under his own power. We hate to speculate on the nature of the injury.

There’s a flag on the play. It depends where they spot it. Terrible call, terrible call. We got hosed. We got jobbed. We got robbed. Highway robbery. They’re the best refs money can buy. The refs should just let them play. Bad calls even out over the course of a season.

As Yogi said, it ain’t over ’til it’s over. It ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings. They won’t go quietly. We’ve still got plenty of football left. No need to panic; there’s plenty of time left. You can feel the momentum shifting. Big Mo. They’re going for the jugular. They can smell blood in the water. They’re within striking distance. Now we’ve got a football game. It’s a whole new ballgame. This team shows a lot of character. This team shows a lot of poise. This team shows a lot of resiliency. This team shows a lot of heart.

It all started with good field position. They’ve marched down the field. That was a goal-scorer’s goal. He lit the lamp. He went high to the top shelf. He put the biscuit in the basket. He found the twine. He went upstairs. He nailed the buzzer-beater. She really stuck the landing. He hit paydirt. Nothing but net. This should be a chip shot for him. The kick splits the uprights.

What an incredible turnaround.

We found a way to win. A win is a win. It wasn’t pretty, but we’ll take it. I’m really proud of the way our guys hung in there. This is always a tough place to play. We’re just glad to get out of here with a W. We’re happy we could pull this one out at the end. They’re tough competitors. They gave us all we could handle. They’re a class act. Give them a lot of credit. I tip my hat to them. There are no easy games in this league. The game was a lot closer than the final score indicates. They weren’t going to come in here and just lie down for us. We’re going to use this as a building block. We’ll use this win as a stepping stone to the next level.

What a difference a week makes.

We were really on our game. We took them out of their game. We really came to play. We brought our A-game. We knew what we had to do and went out and did it. We answered the call. This team has finally learned how to win. It was a total team effort. Obviously, this was a great win for us. It was a big win for us. We came to play. We stuck to the game plan. It was a total team effort. We wanted to make a statement. We sent a message. We came through when it counted. We’re going to savor the victory tonight, then tomorrow morning we’ll start looking at film.

The only thing that matters in the Stanley Cup playoffs is the man between the pipes. You can’t win an NBA championship without a dominant big man. You can’t win in the NFL without establishing the run. Offense puts fannies in the seats; defense wins championships. You’ve got to have pitching if you’re going to make it through the postseason. We just need to go out there and take care of business. It all just comes down to execution. You can’t leave anything on the table. We need to bring it. We need to dig deeper than we’ve ever dug before. We just gotta go out tomorrow and have fun. They’ve battled back from the brink of elimination. They’re down but not out. They’re in a must-win situation. They need a win to stave off elimination. Lose and go home. There’s no tomorrow. I know it’s a cliché, but we just have to take it one game at a time.

We gotta stick to the basics. We need to remember what got us here. You gotta dance with who brung you. This is it. This is for all the marbles. They need to keep up their intensity. They have to stay focused. They have to get after it. They have to rise to the occasion. They’ve got tremendous mental toughness. They’re a blue-collar team. They’re overachievers. They’ve come out of nowhere. They’re a real Cinderella story. They have to stay hungry. They’re loaded for bear.

The city has rallied around this team. We’ve got die-hard fans. We feed off the energy of our fans. Our fans are our twelfth man. We’ve got the greatest fans in the world.

We’re happy to be in the post-season and now we want to go out there and do some damage. We’re capable of going deep in the post-season. We’re not just happy to be here. This team has a chance to do something special. Hopefully, we can steal one on the road. In the playoffs, anything can happen.

Game time.

The fans are on their feet. This crowd is going wild. This place is a madhouse. This place is pandemonium. You can feel the electricity. Ya gotta love these fans. You gotta love this game.

Zisk Vs. ESPN
by Mike Faloon

Anthony Kazmierczak: Mike Faloon, please.

Mke Faloon: I hate telemarketers! You’re not a telemarketer are you?

AK: No, not really, my name’s Anthony Kazmierczak, I’m an associate producer with Baseball Tonight, and I’m...

MF: …calling to apologize for letting one of your ESPN.com goons steal our ideas? It’s about time!

AK: I don’t know what you’re referring to.

MF: Come on. Jim Baker, ESPN Insider, January 13, 2004. The jerk wrote about MEPs, “Most Entertaining Players,” we introduced that idea back in 2002—Zisk, issue #5.

AK: I don’t know what you’re referring to, and with all due respect, a little gratitude would be nice. We only make one of these calls to fans a year. I’m calling…

MF: If you’d have called me a few years ago, you could have avoided hiring Rob Dibble.

AK: Hey, he’s good. He played for a World Series winner. He’s got personality, he calls them as he…

MF: Stop, please, before you compare him to Jim Rome. Isn’t Dibble the wizard who said, “I’ll run through the streets naked if Ichiro hits over .280?”

AK: Just like a Mets fan, living in the past. That quote’s from 2001. It’s ancient history, Swoboda. Let’s cut to the chase: our coverage here in 2004. I’ve got a lunch with Musial at 1:00.

MF: Seriously? Stan the Man? That’s awesome!

AK: I know, Stan’s a great guy.

MF: Where do you start with a guy like that? The ’46 World Series? Winning three MVPs? His 3,000th hit?

AK: Actually, you act like you already know those answers, and you ask him about his last round at Pebble Beach or how his granddaughter’s doing at CalTech.

MF: Curb your enthusiasm, right. I never remember that.

AK: That’s why you’re still in ’zines.

MF: And you’re calling me because?

AK: Because that doesn’t mean you’re always wrong. Our numbers are down this month, and we hear you don’t like our Ichiro coverage, just wondering if there’s a connection. A little bit of market research.

MF: Your numbers should be down, your Ichiro coverage—or lack thereof—sucks. When I checked the scores this morning, on ESPN2—you know when you guys list the scores on the bottom of the screen?

AK: We call that a crawl.

MF: You showed the Mariners/Rangers score from the previous night. The Mariners won 16-6 and Ichiro got four hits and yet he didn’t even get mentioned in your “crawl.” But you did list Randy friggin’ Winn. That’s wrong, that’s getting second class treatment. And don’t feed me the “small market” line either. Sure, Seattle’s smaller than LA and New York, but it’s not like you’re waiting for the Pony Express to deliver news from that little remote outpost in Seattle. Just look at the guys Ichiro’s going to pass in the coming weeks: Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, Lefty O’Doul. Legends! Ichiro’s putting up numbers nobody’s approached in over 70 years, and the Devil Rays got more airtime for arriving late in New York for a meaningless series with the Yankees. The Devil Rays!

AK: Let’s be honest. Ichiro…

MF: I’m not done yet. He’s also got a shot at the record for most hits over a four-year span. Granted, that’s more obscure, but it’s no less impressive. And all I hear from ESPN is how Ichiro never walks, and how few RBIs he has, and his low slugging percentage. He’s not there to slug the ball, he gets on base. And who’s he going to drive in? The Mariners are awful. What more can you ask for than a guy, like Ichiro, who hits over .360 with runners in scoring position?

AK: Where’d you hear ESPN make those arguments?

MF: On ESPN radio.

AK: Okay, well, there’s a reason those guys are in radio. Where was all your righteous fervor the last time Ichiro took a shot at the single season hit record, back in 2001? Sounds like you’re just another numbers geek, in awe of certain stats. You probably own a copy of Cat Stevens’ Numbers album, right? His numerology record?

MF: Anthony, put the gloves back on—that’s ugly, man. But just to be clear, that’s the one with “Banapple Gas” on it, right?

AK: Just as I thought—just like I told the other producers—you’ve got nothing. Next, you’re going to tell me to cut back on the amount of airtime Baseball Tonight gives to home runs.

MF: (Pause) Hear me out. All homers pretty much look the same. But, triples! It’s all about triples! The throw from right to the cutoff man to third base, the slide, the tag! I’ve also got an idea for an hour-long special on why the pitching mound should be lowered. Originally I envisioned it as a three-part series, but I’m a pragmatic guy.

AK: Well, now…

MF: You know what I mean, right? And web gems, those are cool, but you should make each clip longer, show more of the set up leading to the great play. And you should lead with the Ichiro countdown. Don’t wait until he’s five hits from the record before you start cutting away for every one of his at-bats. Who cares about Bonds? It’s just a matter of time before he passes Hank Aaron, he just has to stay alive to get his record—which is a mere 30-years-old, I might add. Ichiro has severe limitations on his record, he’s in a race against time!

AK: You know, you’re making a lot of good points. We’ve got a couple guys leaving for Fox’s Saturday game of the week—you’re a teacher, maybe next summer, during your break, you’d like to come in and do some freelance work?

MF: Seriously?

AK: Fuck no. My god, triples? Thanks for your time. (click)

MF: Hello?

Single season hit leaders (as of 9/25/04)
1. George Sisler, St. Louis Browns 257 (1920)
2. Bill Terry, New York Giants 254 (1930)
3. Lefty O’Doul, Philadelphia Phillies 254 (1929)
4. Al Simmons, Philadelphia A’s 253 (1925)
5. Rogers Hornsby, St. Louis Cardinals 250 (1922)
5. Chuck Klein, Chicago Cubs 250 (1930)
6. Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle Mariners 249 (2004)
7. Ty Cobb, Detroit Tigers 248 (1911)
8. George Sisler, St. Louis Browns 246 (1922)
9. Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle Mariners 242 (2001)

Mike Faloon is the publisher of Zisk, and steadfastly denies he’s in line for Tom Arnold’s job on the Best Damn Sports Show Period.

Zisk Book Reviews
by Michael Baker

The Meaning of Ichiro: The New Wave From Japan
and the Transformation of our National Pastime.
Robert Whiting. Warner Books, 2004.

‘I like to wing it,’ Valentine explained, ‘because conditions change from day to day.’
From The Meaning of Ichiro

Whiting, the author of this book’s non-official predecessor, You Gotta Have Wa, and the great The Chrysanthemum and the Bat, attempts to do the impossible here in his Ichiro: start a revolution without a cause. The book traces the emergence of Japanese players in the majors, looks closely at the historical, and often nasty, relationship between Japanese and American owners, deals with individual histories, and, best, defines the essential differences between American and Japanese baseball. These contrasts are found in preparatory techniques, baseball unions, and in definitions of sacrifice and teamwork. That many of the differences seem to be abstractly philosophical and that many of them seem too far from playing fields, you should still excuse the hyperbolic semantics of his full title. There really hasn’t been a “wave” of Asian ballplayers; nor, if there were, would the game be transformed. The meaning of Ichiro will remain hidden for at least another generation.

Parts of the book are excellent, valuable additions to the rich tradition of understanding baseball from the top down: understanding contracts, anti-trust laws, the relationship between unions and management, and the lives of the owners, insightful veins that are mined well. Equally impressive is the longish section on the gifted Seattle outfielder Ichiro Suzuki and his history with both his overbearing showbiz dad and the tortuous path through Japanese organized baseball. By the 1990s, Japan and its athletes had become less resentful towards outsiders and cultural influences from abroad; Ichiro, although relentlessly single-minded about hot pursuit of excellence (hours of training, ceaseless repetition of skills, no days off), begins to chaff under “indentured servitude” of the Japanese baseball system.

These sections about the training methods, about the influence of patriarchal nationalism evident at home and in society, and about the changing in Japan styles are well done, with dozens of pertinent quotes from both the participants and journalists. The book’s smaller asides surround the spirit of wa, and Japan’s reliance upon “loyalty, cooperation, and trust,” a collective harmonious embrace of selflessness. The exact correlation between this groupism’s deference to authority and Ichiro’s preternatural individual skills is really not discussed, nor is wa and the Japanese take on non-articulated employee contracts elaborated when such concepts have no bearing on the many individual players’ cases here narrated. In fact, connections are often lost or not taken up: much of the book’s second half is taken up with stringing together of the players’ bios and American experiences, journalistically and temporally, instead of thematically, and there is no cumulative point. “Player A came and was good for awhile; Player B came here and was a bust.” The book could have made clearer the decreasing difficulty for Asian players, but as it is, there is such paltry evidence. There really has not been a new wave, or a transformation.

Other difficulties arise from more serious problems: the book is breezy and informal, not the tone or style befitting a look at culture. Many of the so-called Japanese traits unique to that island don’t really explain Ichiro’s success or Irabu’s disappointment. The overthrowing and pitch count alluded to constantly should be analyzed with greater sampling. If gangsters and betting, as well, surround the game, it should be either footnoted or elaborated. There is much repetition of facts, as befitting a book that so often lacks direction. All baseball books need players’ stats at end; the pictures in the middle do not need the Yankee’s Matsui in a staged taxi photo shot. If this is a history where are the pictures of the Japanese greats? Also bewildering are the suppositions regarding whether Japanese majors could play. Bobby Valentine, a constant apologist and blowhard on the subject, suggests yes; the performance of these ten or so players here recently, otherwise.

The book, however, is invaluable as a coda of actual athletic performance to Whiting’s You Gotta Have Wa; there, many of these points—backward labor dealings; harmony and sacrifice—are elaborated upon. In fact, the entire story is more interesting as a backdrop to Asian-American relations in general since Hiroshima, just not two books’ worth. I will never need to see athletes compared to slaves again; I expect in a book of serious aspirations to have a partially annotated bibliography, not the citations listed here, many of which don’t match up to the quotations used in the book. I’m not sure, moreover, if Ichiro’s success is not partially based upon his father’s ridiculous and severe training regimen; if so perhaps abuse of children, mentally and physically, for the reason of a parent’s need for glory, should be examined, if not prosecuted. Just let the children play. That would be a transformation of our international pastime.

Babe Ruth: Launching the Legend.
Jim Reisler. McGraw-Hill, 2004.
“You can’t describe him, you can’t compare him with anybody else. He’s Babe Ruth.”
Miller Huggins, quoted in Babe Ruth

Babe Ruth, braggart, bombastic denizen of brothels, and beer-drinking god, needs to be examined critically with each passing generation, as with FDR, Joe McCarthy, Paul Robeson; how each passing age confronts this athlete of gargantuan skills and appetites will partially be that age’s litmus test for morality. In Reisler’s biography, Babe Ruth, our hero is pigeonholed, as it were, into an uncomfortable twelve-month period of 1920. But what a year! Women’s voting, bars’ closing, Black Sox’s cheating, and the decade’s roaring—and, perhaps most memorably, Babe’s taking center stage in the Bronx, building a dynasty, stadium, and tradition, on his feminine legs. In terms of prior Babes, if Robert Creamer lionizes the subject in his masterly biography, and if Boston fans vilify, and if Hollywood twice brutalizes, here Reisler schmoozes Babe, acting as his winking, best pal.

But like starfish, Babe Ruth lacked a brain, and if 260 pages of watching a man child and his Id run amok defines your jollies then start here: the book does excellently when running through the season, game by game, but less fortunately when analyzing Babe’s relationship to his world. The historical backdrop is well attended, although often not in depth and pointless considering Babe’s lack of political engagement; the beleaguered manager’s portrayal, Hall of Famer Miller Huggins, is solid; the three-way American League pennant race, eventually won by the Clevelanders, is dramatic and exacting; and the fans’ love affair with the Sultan is vividly chronicled. The drama between the Giants’ McGraw and Yankee management is wonderful, as are the eye-popping mini-narratives of many of Babe’s game-transformative clouts, often beyond fence, stadium, and a writer’s imagination.

Life for Babe at the Ansonia Hotel where the new decade and the Yankee fans waited breathlessly for each new feat was too perfect; what was arduous were the players themselves, in the main stolen from Yankee accomplice and witless narcissist, the Red Sox’s Harry Frazee: a team of misfits, with surly veterans mixed uneasily with raw novitiates, all ready for collapse any given weekend away from home. Solid players were aplenty: Pipp, keeping Gehrig’s sack warm, centerfielder Bodie, and Peckinpaugh at short; the hurlers were even keener, if also, obstreperous, harder to handle: pugnacious Carl Mays, ancient Jack Quinn, and gentlemanly Bob Shawkey. In fact, Mays’s killing of Cleveland’s Chapman with a runaway pitch, and his later quarrels with Huggins and management, and Huggins’ futile quest to keep this staff together in September is the real spine of this narrative. By not having Ruth in the post-season, Reisler misses a sense of conflict, urgency, and resolution that would carry the book to less journalistic transparencies and evanescence.

Also missing is a proofreader. One time Waite Hoyt is 30 in 1929, but 31 in 1921; as with Cher, something is wrong. Also in error are the author’s casual disregards for the distinction between flout/flaunt; the first is what Babe does with convention, the second also refers to Cher. Baseball fans would be surprised to find that Leo Durocher, and his paltry 23 extra-base hits in three years, is considered a Yankee great. Nor in a book mostly about men should pronoun antecedence be ever confusing: one dangling he, and the logic of a paragraph could collapse. Baseball attendance may have soared in that year, but not to the degree constantly stated: averaging 16,000 did double the total of the year before, but the stadium was still half empty. Even emptier are those seats starting the next year, almost a decade before the Wall Street collapse: Reisler should mention the steady decline, culminating in average crowds of 8,000 a mere five years later. Yankee Fever? I doubt it. Equally jarring are asides that detail the influenza as being more devastating than the Black Death, or the rather pointless comparisons between Harding’s presidency with McKinley’s interrupted reign.

Perhaps because of the need to scrutinize Babe, and of course, America’s fascination with power, size, orphans, New York, and cartoony figures of uncontrollable urges, this should have been a more gripping story. Having baseball writers examine athletics vís-a-vís historical epochs, or having novelists wax rhapsodically and ignorantly about the game itself, are bad ideas. This was a swift read, and a good story, but sometimes the chronology is askew, highlighting connections that aren’t really there, and sometimes the prose is too “Gee!, Gosh!,” as when Babe “saves” the 1920 season and baseball from the 1919 World Series scandal, even if the scandal story broke in late 1920; or how after Chapman’s death the Bambino’s 43rd home run helped, for earnest Reisler, “[Make] everyone realize that baseball, just baseball, had returned for good.” Except for Mrs. Chapman and all of us Yankee haters.

Michael Baker teaches composition at New Jersey colleges, where his students write about their fierce hatred of the New York Yankees.

Rants From the Upper, no, Lower Deck
by Steve Reynolds

For the first time since I’ve been writing Rants From the Upper Deck in Zisk, the title of this column isn’t appropriate. Yes Zisk readers, I have seen how the other, richer half lives—I have sat directly behind home plate at a major league ballgame. As a matter of fact, I sat in the upper deck only once at a Met game this year, thanks to my good friend Jocelyn, who works at the Mets flagship radio station, WFAN. It seems that people with money to afford really good season tickets can’t or don’t use them all the time, which led to me seeing baseball games without needing oxygen. This year I sat in great free seats on the first base side, directly above the net behind home plate and the aforementioned home plate seats.

How does a baseball peasant approach sitting in these seats? By acting like a total fool, of course. I called my friend Joe and asked him to tape the game because we might be on T-V, and he asked, “How many rows back are you?” I replied, “None back,” and then burst out into maniacal laughter. Myself, Zisk publisher Mike Faloon and our friend (and drummer extraordinaire) Pete Hayes cackled like kids getting out of school for the summer when we discovered there was waiter service at our seats...the same kind of seats that they started putting in the big “stadium” theaters a few years ago. I have never been so comfortable sitting through a three-hour game in my life. I never had to get up for anything—the waiter brought me seven-dollar beers, six-dollar chicken fingers, five-dollar fries and the largest bag of popcorn ever made. And all I had to do was sign the credit card receipt—oh yeah, he had a little machine on his belt to swipe my card. The only thing the waiter didn’t offer to do was empty my bladder for me.

So you might wonder about the game itself. Who cares?!?! They bring you sushi with wasabi sauce to your seat—who needs to watch the game when something like that happens? Honestly, I don’t even recall who won, but I do know that from behind home plate every ball that was hit hard seemed like it was destined to leave the park. And we were so close that when you spoke out to players, they could actually respond. Cliff Floyd had a rough at bat his first time up, and when he came up a second time I yelled out something like, “Don’t let the fans get you down, you can do it.” He then looked up at me, and the pointed the barrel of his bat right at me, and then went up and got a double. At that point, I should have taken over for Art Howe.

This season I also got see how the semi-rich live in my borough of Brooklyn at Keyspan Park, the home of the Mets single A team the Brooklyn Cyclones. Through my friend Erik’s connections with a beer baron, we got two tickets for the “Party Deck” on the top of the park. There is a long single row of seats right along the rail, so you can over look everything that’s happening below. But what is even better looking is the limitless supply of free American beer you get until the bottom of the seventh inning, which sits right alongside a huge table of hot dogs, chicken fingers, salads, cookies and many more foods I can’t eat on my low-carb diet. Once again, the game seemed secondary to novelty aspects of where I was sitting. (By the way, I do remember that the Cyclones won that game.)

So what have I learned from this baseball season of great seats? No matter where you sit, George Steinbrenner still looks like an insensitive prick. The shabby treatment of the whole Hurricane Frances/Tampa Bay Devil Rays travel fiasco offended many fans, but the Boss did something that was even more offensive, yet much less reported. After the Yankees were thrashed by the Indians on August 31st, Steinbrenner ordered his minions to put up a bunch of silly inspirational messages on the scoreboards and on the big sign on the stadium’s facade. When Jack Curry of the New York Times asked Howard Rubenstein, Stenbrenner’s spokesman, why the messages had been placed around the stadium, the PR flack came back with a whopper of a response for King George:

“I wanted to show the fans that we have the same courage and the same attitudes all New Yorkers have had fighting back from that terrible episode on 9/11. New Yorkers never give up and the Yankees never give up.”

I just about screamed out loud on the subway while reading this little statement. Baseball did help many people (this writer included) get over the initial shock of the first couple weeks after the attacks, but to insinuate that a 22-0 loss is even close to the same realm as almost 3,000 people dying is just plain offensive. I don’t think anything Steinbrenner has said over the years has ticked me off more. I hope the man rots in hell and dies a horrible, long drawn out death because of some incredible painful and embarrassing disease.

Speaking of embarrassment, that’s what I feel looking back upon at least two of my projections for the division winners. (The Royals? Was I smoking crack? Was I given the intelligence of our 43rd President for a day? What was I thinking?) In any case, it’s much easier (and safer) to hand out our almost annual Zisk Year End Awards. (These aren’t who I think will win, it’s who I think should win.)

AL MVP: Gary Sheffield, New York Yankees. With apologies to my Red Sox and David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, those guys didn’t play with a separated shoulder all season. As much as I hate the Yankees and everyone associated with them, I have a deep respect (and a burning sensation in the pit of my stomach) for what Sheffield has done this season—and he’s eradicated all that baggage caused by his demands for trades from teams in the past. The Yankees would be even more of bust without Dwight Gooden’s nephew. (But I still hate him.)

AL Cy Young: (Tie) Johan Santana, Minnesota Twins and Curt Schilling, Boston Red Sox. Would either one of these teams have locked up their playoff spots without these two guys? No way.

AL Manager of the Year: Mike Scoscia, Anaheim Angels. With amount of injuries this team had in the first half of the season, the fact that they were still in the race at the end of the season is a testament to the former catcher’s ability to fit the right spare part into the right position.

AL Least VP: Jason Giambi, New York Yankees. Okay, so the guy was sick and then had a benign tumor, but his secretive nature when it was finally diagnosed made him even more a distraction to a team with plenty of them.

NL MVP: Barry Bonds, San Francisco Giants. Really, how could anyone doubt this? He’s still one of the biggest assholes of the game this side of Ty Cobb, but the Giants are basically a one-man team (two when out next winner pitches).

NL Cy Young: Jason Schmidt, San Francisco Giants. Schmidt stumbled a bit after he hurt his groin, but that doesn’t take away the fact that he delivered whenever called upon to keep the Giants in the playoff race.

NL Manager of the Year: Bobby Cox, Atlanta Braves. Again, I hate this team, but Bobby Cox’s pact with the devil was at its highest level this year.

NL Least VP: Kaz Matsui, New York Mets. I was temporarily blinded by Matsui’s big splash on opening day, but after a while my initial impressions from spring training were correct—this guy was the second coming of Tsuyoshi Shinjo.

Ah, the Mets. Back to where we started this column. What can be written about the Mets that hasn’t already been said by most of the sports “journalists” in New York? 2004 was truly an odd year to be a Mets fan. For the first time in at least eight seasons, I had low expectations for the team. In the late ’90s they got better each year, just missing the playoff two years in a row before getting in in ’99 and then going all the way to the World Series in 2000. Those teams had an excitement about them—you never felt that someone trying to improve their fantasy league team assembled them. But the past three seasons were one bad decision after another (Mo Vaughan, Roberto Alomar anyone?).

However, as 2004’s opening day approached I actually felt the Mets could avoid last place for a third consecutive year. GM Jim Duquette seemed to have a great plan of mixing the team’s youth with some newcomers that could actually catch the ball to play off the fact that Shea Stadium is still a pitcher’s park. I couldn’t wait to see Mike Cameron make some great defensive plays and to see Matsui and Jose Reyes become a middle infield destined for the Web Gems segment on Baseball Tonight. Heck, even Peter Gammons, whose baseball opinion I respect more than anyone’s, said that the Mets had done a good job in the off season.

As we all know from the past few years, what looks good on paper doesn’t always come together. Reyes got hurt for the 100th time, Matsui couldn’t figure out how to play shortstop anymore and Cameron’s struggles at the plate caused him to press too much on defense. Yet the Mets stayed in the race in the NL Least until mid-July—and then Duquette blew apart his carefully constructed plan for the future. After saying this wasn’t a “win now” year he traded a pile of youth for two pitchers that didn’t have winning records, one of which could leave as a free agent (Kris Benson) and the other one with a gimpy arm (Victor Zambrano). What a jackass. Or maybe it’s the Wilpons (both father and son) who are the jackasses. Perhaps they saw their chance for a division title (and a spot on the back pages of New York’s tabloids) and ordered Duquette to make the trades. Every time I see Scott Kazmir pitch for the Devil Rays, I reach for a bottle of Pepto, as I know I’m not going to like how well he pitches while Zambrano and pitching coach Rick Peterson try to use some zen healing to make his arm whole again. Has there ever been an organization that has given up on so many talented players too early, only to watch them blossom into stars for other teams? Well maybe the Yankees, but they’re definitely a distant second.

For me, the moral of the 2004 season is this—even if you get to look at shit up close, it stinks just as much as it does in the upper deck.

Steve Reynolds is the senior editor of Zisk, and has already sent in his application to be the Mets skipper next year—how could he do any worse?

Rock and The Red Sox: Bill Janovitz and Boston's Two Obsessions
by Steve Reynolds

In Zisk #8 we brought you a story about Hot Stove, Cool Music the charity benefit concert in Boston (which inspired an all-star album) that has very strong baseball ties. In this issue we bring you an interview with one of the artists that has been a big supporter of that fundraiser, Bill Janovitz. The singer-guitarist is best known for his work with the Boston trio Buffalo Tom, but this September he put out Fireworks on TV, the first album recorded with his solo band Crown Victoria. He’s also written music that was used going into and out of commercials for the Red Sox radio broadcasts on WEEI. And like one of the members of Zisk staff, Janovitz has been both a Mets and Red Sox fan (just not at the present moment).

With all these baseball connections, Janovitz seemed like a perfect person to include in Zisk’s series of articles about musicians and baseball. So just before the release of Fireworks on TV, Zisk had the chance to talk to Janovitz about his other passion, baseball.

Zisk: So what do you think of the Nomar trade?

Bill Janovitz: How much tape do you got? (Laughs) What do I think of the Nomar trade? I think it was inevitable, but I hated to see it happen. It was like a relationship that all of sudden comes to an end and you just go, “Wow, how did that happen? Why did it happen?” Nomar’s a complicated guy, from what I can tell. I met him very briefly a couple of times, so I can’t speak from personal experience, but from what I can tell—and I know some guys that are on the daily Red Sox beat—and from what I can gather from all of these different accounts, he’s just a really complicated, misunderstood guy, by no small fault of his own. I don’t think he handled things extremely well, but in Boston—and I lived in New York, I grew up as a Mets fan—nothing, nothing compares to the media coverage of the Red Sox. Because we have one team in this town, and they mean almost everything to almost everybody. And it’s just an impossible situation for almost every player that’s played on the team. (Laughs) And it’s a nightmare, so he couldn’t handle it. I think his skills, here anyway, were diminishing. I think he’ll have a renaissance wherever he goes—Chicago if he stays there. He’s already shown signs of life. I just think it was affecting his play. And I think the Red Sox are better off without him. And I hate to say it, and I’m sad to say it, because I wanted to see him stay here. I want to see all my favorite players stay and finish their careers here, and I get emotional about it. And this current team is really still really hard to get a hold of, and part of it was because they had a revolving door of injuries this year.

Zisk: It seems to me that last year’s team somehow connected more with Boston and New England in general than the previous few years.

BJ: Oh absolutely, especially if you compare it to this year. Whereas this year they have all these dramatic late inning one run losses, last year it was 180 degrees different, where they were coming back and winning these games consistently. They didn’t play great consistently until September, but they had a lot of dramatics and they were really underdogs. And this year they were picked to win the World Series. And they had no injuries last year, so it was a blast to follow until the last minute. And then that last minute was just the most nightmarish situation, and it would have been that much more painful had it not been so predictable and inevitable. (Laughs) I had grown men, friends of mine, calling me up crying, like sobbing, and I’m not messing with you, I’m talking about sobbing.

Zisk: I believe that. I absolutely would believe that. I was up there [in Boston] the day after, and it was like walking through a city that had been to a funeral.

BJ: Were you up here? (laughs) What were you doing up here?

Zisk: There was a Gentlemen show that was the next day, and I was thinking the night before, “Wow, if they win, tomorrow night is going to be one of the greatest nights ever in Boston.”

BJ: Oh, you’re right.

Zisk: And I was like, “If they lose, it’s going to be one of the worst nights ever.” (Laughs)

BJ: You were right, it was a nightmare. Here’s the thing—I was transitioning from being a Mets fan as a kid, to not caring at all, so I didn’t even really care in the ’86 series. I was watching at a pub in Northampton, Massachusetts, going to school, and I was full punk rock, artsy guy at that time. Did not really care about baseball. But I watched it and thought how dramatic it was and could appreciate it, and if anything I guess I was leaning towards the Mets as I was only in Massachusetts for few years at that point. But I saw the devastation that that reaped on U-Mass’s campus. There was literally like riots. But I don’t think—and from everybody I talked to that grew up with the Red Sox—nothing compared to this, because it was just nuts, and that was it. It was the end. In ’86 they had a chance to come back the next night.

Zisk: When do you think you transitioned to being a Red Sox fan? When did you feel like a true Red Sox fan?

BJ: I can almost pinpoint the moment, I just can’t remember exactly when it was—it was sorta like ’94 or ’95. You know, I always watched the Red Sox and I watching them increasingly more as I got older, especially if we were around for summers during the Buffalo Tom years. We would go to these countries, we would be playing a gig, and there’d be a World Cup thing and we wouldn’t play. We’d have a set and just skip it because nobody would watch us. So we’d end up going on three hours late or whatever. And forget World Cup, just like important national games, and the countries were just shut down. And so you’d have all these rock and roll fans where sports would take the priority. It was sort of like Fever Pitch [Ed: a book about British soccer fans by High Fidelity author Nick Hornby]. And I gained an appreciation for that. I had a friend from Australia who was our tour manager for most of the years and he was full on into cricket. And he explained all the intricacies of cricket to us, so we got this great appreciation for it. And one time he was staying with me in Boston for a while and we had the Red Sox game on and I’m explaining the game to him, and I just had a newfound appreciation for what this game looks like to an outsider. And explaining it to him made me appreciate the finer points of the game that much more. And then I started watching regularly and got into the whole kind of local angle of it in Boston. I had been in Boston for long enough and going away so much on tour made me realize how much I loved the town. And I think it’s sort of like that Tom Waits song, ‘I never missed my hometown until I stayed away too long.’ It’s that kind of sentiment. And coming back home after a tour made me identify more as being a Bostonian, which is weird because I still kind of feel like an exile. I grew up in New York, I don’t really feel like I’m a Massachusetts guy so much. So it’s all that stuff and then in ’99 my daughter was born, and she was born in the spring. So I had the night shift and so I watched every game that season and I haven’t stopped watching almost every game every season since. So that’s the arc of my Boston Red Sox fandom.

Zisk: I just got that digital cable baseball package this year, and so I watch a lot of Red Sox games now. That’s a good thing considering how horrible the Mets commentators are. I’d much rather listen to Jerry Remy talk than Fran Healy.

BJ: Isn’t Remy great?

Zisk: Yeah, it’s a pleasure to listen to competence, considering how bad the guys are here in New York.

BJ: Yeah, and the national guys are awful too. The talk radio lines here in Boston are lit up the next day after a national game because they can’t believe they have to sit there and listen to Tim McCarver and Joe Buck. Joe Buck is bad enough, but with McCarver it’s like having a retarded guy calling a game. (Laughs)

Bill Janovitz and Crown Victoria’s Fireworks on TV is one of the best albums of 2004 (at least in the opinion of the senior editor) and can be ordered at Qdivision.com or through Janovitz’s website BillJanovitz.com.

Winning is Nothing, Vengeance Is Everything
by Ken Derr

In 1967, Charlie Finley moved his lowly Kansas City Athletics to Oakland. In the next 13 years, he would wedge a path of self-obsessed destruction and dark triumph through this fair city unlike anything seen even from the likes of Rick Barry or John Matusak. Charlie was a man so in love with himself and so needy for attention and power that he drove a stake through the heart of his best players and teams if either dared to get more attention than he did. Along the way, he even tried to revolutionize the game in Veeckian fashion. Who can forget orange baseballs, designated runners, Charlie O the mule (a more fitting mascot there never was), the mechanized rabbit that would pop up and give the home plate ump fresh balls, nearly neon uniform colors, a 12 year old M.C. Hammer officially listed as Vice President of the organization, and many more. Almost everyone that came into contact with him attests to his charms when he needed something from them, but if there was a pettier or crueler professional sports owner in the last 30 years, he’s going to have to duke it out with Charlie in the grave.

Whenever a player got too big for his britches in Charlie’s mind, Charlie would have to bring that player down a peg. For instance, in 1970, the A’s ace, Jim “Catfish” Hunter, took out a $150,000 loan from Finley for a 500-acre ranch he wanted to buy near his home in North Carolina. Hunter was to pay back Charlie $20,000 a year at 6%. That year, Finley proceeded to call Catfish every day he was scheduled to pitch to ask about the loan. He was relentless. Hunter become so upset about the harassment that he went into a horrid slump and failed to win a single game in August, and this was from a consistent 20-game winner and all-around terrific guy. Catfish finally sold off 400 acres and paid back the loan in full, because he was afraid his career would be ruined if he didn’t get out from underneath Charlie’s constant badgering.

Reggie Jackson, as most folks know, has a gargantuan ego. Even Reggie’s desperate narcissism, however, was dwarfed by Charlie’s. After Reggie’s 1969 season in which he hit 49 homers and received a tremendous amount of media coverage, Jackson’s agent demanded a considerable salary increase. Charlie refused and instead offered five grand more, stating that only seasoned veterans deserved large bumps in salary after they had produced consistent seasons, and Charlie wouldn’t budge. Reggie was incensed, and held out for part of spring training, but he eventually became eager to play. Finley finally agreed to a $10,000 increase, still some $30,000 less than Jackson wanted and the market called for, but Finley vowed to teach that ungrateful bastard a lesson. He had Reggie benched against left-handers for most of the season (until Dick Williams would arrive the next year, Finley made puppets of his managers), pinch hit for him at critical times and even threatened to send him down. Jackson hit .237 with 23 homers in 1970, and once again, Charlie had used his power to win a personal grudge at the expense of the team and its fans. And that made him happy. At least for a while.

In 1971 Finley hired irascible Dick Williams to manage the team, who early in spring training called a meeting. Williams had heard that in previous years, players had gone behind the manager’s back to Finley if they had problems, and Williams was going to address the issue. “Here is the phone. If you want to call Charlie, go ahead. But that’s the last time you’re going to call him. I’m the manager, and if you have any problems, you come to me.” Williams earned the respect of his players, and the A’s won their division, only to lose to the more experienced Orioles in the playoffs. In 1972, however, the unthinkable championship run began. The A’s again swept to the division title, and in the ALCS, they took on the Tigers, led by the fiery Billy Martin (who would later become the A’s manager, establish his own brand and style called Billyball, and set records for whiskey shots in the Oakland Hilton, but that’s another story).

Martin and Finley had bad blood between them over an alleged contract offer that Finley made to Martin to manage the A’s in 1970, which Martin claimed Finley reneged on. Finley, of course, said Martin backed out. Earlier in the season, the two teams had brawled when Tiger pitcher Bill Shayback plugged Campy Campaneris and Angel Manguel in consecutive at bats, apparently to let Charlie know that nobody messes with Billy, and he was playing hardball. So the stage was set for fireworks, and it didn’t take long in Game 1 when Martin ordered Tiger pitcher Lerring LaGrow to hit Campy (they just don’t name ‘em like they used to) in the ankle, in an attempt to take out his legs, which were an integral part of the A’s offense. Campy took a different kind of offense and proceeded to fling his bat at LaGrow’s head, just missing the stunned hurler. Less psychotic heads eventually prevailed, but after the game, AL President Joe Cronin suspended Campy for the series. LaGrow and Martin got out of jail free, which incensed Finley, who claimed the league had a vendetta against him, which it probably did, but it probably had one against Martin too, proving intent is harder to prove than a bat that is flying through the air, and there it was. Campy’s suspension put a crimp in another of Finley’s moonbeam strategies. All of the A’s second basemen were weak hitters, so each time one would come to bat, Williams would put in a pinch hitter and then replace him at second, only to pinch hit again when the replacement’s turn to bat came. With Campy out of the series, however, Dal Maxville had to move to short, which forced Williams to use catcher Gene Tenace late in Game 3, who then proceeded to drop a sure double play throw that would have given the A’s the sweep. They went on to win the series in five games, but Williams vowed to abandon Finley’s directives forever. Reggie also pulled a hamstring in Game 5, which would keep him out of the upcoming World Series, but the A’s weren’t done sticking pins in themselves yet. Starting pitcher Vida Blue came in late in Game 5 to save the game for John “Blue Moon” Odom, and after the game, he asked Blue Moon why he couldn’t finish what he started and put his hands around his neck in the universal choke sign. Odom attacked Vida and they went at it briefly before teammates separated them. They were now officially ready for the Big Red Machine.

Going into the ’72 Series, no one gave the A’s a chance against the team that everybody considered the class of the league. The Reds had superstars in Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and Pete Rose, and they were scoring runs in bushels. But unlikely star Gene Tenace hit two homers in the opener off Gary Nolan to help the Oaktown boys shock everyone and take Game 1, which prompted the always gracious Rose to state, “ I’m not impressed by the A’s. They have nothing.” The mustachioed one, Rollie Fingers, saved Catfish’s gem in Game 2 after Joe Rudi made one of the most miraculous homer-saving catches of any World Series off the bat of Denis Menke, and suddenly, the A’s had a flabbergasting 2-0 lead in the Series. The Reds managed to win Game 3 by a 1-0 score, but all anyone remembers is what transpired in the 8th. With the Reds threatening and Fingers at a 3-2 count to Bench, Dick Williams visited the mound. As he began his return to the dugout, he pointed at first base and put up four fingers, signifying that he wanted Fingers to put Bench on. The A’s catcher put out his right hand to indicate the free pass, and Rollie through a strike right down the middle, ending the inning. The A’s lost the game, but won the battle for Game 3 memories.

Tenace hit another homer in Game 4 to help the A’s win 3-2 and put the A’s in an unthinkable position—taking out the Machine in just five games. The Reds rallied, however, sliming out a 5-4 victory. Before Game 6 in Cincinnati, a woman in line to get in the Stadium overheard a man say, “If Tenace hits a homer, he won’t walk out of the park.” She alerted officials, and the police found a loaded gun on the nutbag, prompting Reggie to tell Tenace after the game, “Hey, if ya got to go, Gene, at least it will be on national television.” Obviously shaken by the insanity running through the city that Jerry Springer would soon run, the A’s fell quietly, 8-1, setting up the ultimate finish. In Game 7, the A’s used all their best starting pitchers to subdue the Shrinking Red Machine and eked out a 3-2 victory. Oakland finally had its championship, and pitcher Kenny Holtzman explained why: “Finley kept us all hungry and at each other’s throats and at his too. That gave us the edge we needed to win.” Finley would dance on the dugout with his wife that night, but the fun was just beginning.

1973 began typically, as the A’s traded for perennial grouch Billy North, who had nearly come to blows with Leo Durocher in Chicago. North and Reggie were at each other from the beginning, and it probably didn’t help that they were dating the same woman. One night it exploded in a clubhouse donnybrook, but details were kept relatively secret. When asked later who had won the fight, North smirked, “I played that night, and Reggie didn’t.” But clubhouse brawls only fueled the fires of resentment, and the A’s again won their division, led by their three 20-game winners: Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter and Kenny Holtzman. Again they were to take on the Orioles, but this time they were the defending world champions, and they were stupid with confidence. That didn’t stop more fisticuffs, though, as Rollie Fingers and John “Blue Moon” Odom went at it after the A’s blew Game 4. Catfish calmly stepped in to shut them out in Game 5, however, to send the A’s back to the Series, where they would meet the New York Mets.

The A’s took Game 1, but all hell broke loose in Game 2 in what would become one of Finley’s lowest moments. In the 8th inning, reserve infielder Mike Andrews, who had played sparingly but was inserted into the game late, made errors on two consecutive plays to cost the A’s the game. In the clubhouse afterwards, Finley met Andrews with a contract stating that Andrews was physically unable to play, which had already been signed by the team doctor. Andrews was fine physically, but Finley wanted him off the team at once, and he also wanted to get another player on the roster, which he wouldn’t be able to do if he just kicked Andrews right out of the clubhouse for incompetence. The next day at practice, the A’s players arrived wearing black patches with Andrews’ number 17 on them, and threatened to boycott the Series if he was not returned to the lineup. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn may have ironically saved Finley the further embarrassment by reinstating Andrews himself and reprimanding Finley for embarrassing his own player. The A’s won Game 3 and the Mets got Game 4, which was probably most notable for Met fans giving Andrews a standing ovation when he came in to pinch hit. The Mets took Game 5, but the A’s came back to win the last two to secure their second consecutive championship. Once again, however, nothing went smoothly in the East Bay, as manager Dick Williams announced on national TV after the game that he was resigning effective immediately, which may be the greatest indicator of how miserable it was to work for Charlie Finley.

Finley replaced Williams with Alvin Dark, who had almost been run out of baseball in 1964 after he suggested in an interview that blacks and Latinos weren’t as smart as white ballplayers. Dark had found God since then though, and this now devout Christian, who had run off with a stewardess while married with kids, now had the unenviable task of replacing the man who had commanded the respect of the Mustachioed rowdies and were riding more than a little high on themselves after two titles. Dark was just happy to be back in baseball, and he was essentially Charlie’s lackey. When Finley suggested they find themselves a speedster as a designated runner, Dark suggested Herb Washington, whom he had seen win the 60-yard dash in an indoor track event. That year, the A’s were not as dominant during the regular season, but they still managed to win the division with 90 wins. Again they took out the Orioles in the ALCS, and then it was time for more the A’s singular brand of twisted fun. The A’s were to take on the LA Dodgers, but there was trouble in Oaktown. Rollie Fingers was going through a nasty divorce, and he was near the emotional boiling point after weeks of his teammates’ ribbing. When, you guessed it, John “Blue Moon” Odom made a classy comment about Fingers’ inability to keep a woman before Game 1 at a workout in Dodger Stadium, Fingers erupted and punched Odom in the face. Odom retaliated by head butting Fingers’ chest. Obviously, the A’s were ready, and they took Game 1. The Dodgers had a 3-0 lead in the 9th of Game 2, but the A’s rallied, scoring two on a Joe Rudi single. Alvin Dark then replaced Rudi with Herb Washington, hoping the designated speedster could steal second. Dodger iron man reliever Mike Marshall, however, had other ideas. He stepped off the mound three times. He threw quickly to first almost nailing Washington, and then, just as Charlie’s prized invention started to take his lead, Marshall winged a quick throw over and picked him off, effectively ending the experiment that had never really worked in the first place. The Dodgers won, 3-2, but it was their last hurrah. The A’s won the last three games of the series, sweetened in Game 5 when Bill Buckner, who had been talking trash about the A’s the whole series, idiotically tried to turn a double into a triple in the 8th inning of a one-run game. The A’s had won three consecutive World Series, the most unlikely of dynasties, but it was all about to come to an inglorious end.

Despite one of the greatest and most improbable runs in baseball history, few of the A’s players were happy, and almost all of the reasons pointed in one direction: Charlie Finley. Catfish Hunter had never forgiven Finley for the loan incident, and when Charlie failed to make a payment on a life insurance policy for Hunter that was part of Catfish’s contract, Hunter contacted his agent, which was in September of their ’74 drive for the title. Catfish did not want to do anything until after the Series, but then, after much legal wrangling, Marvin Miller, Executive Director of the Players Association, claimed that Finley had breached Hunter’s contact and that he could become a free agent. More negotiations, threats and insults ensued, but ultimately, Peter Seitz, the only independent member of the arbitration committee, ruled Jim “Catfish” Hunter an unrestricted free agent. Baseball would never really be the same again. Once Hunter was free to negotiate, he learned how valuable he was on the free market. He eventually signed a $3.75 million deal with the Yankees (not much has changed in 30 years) over five years, which may now sound like much, but his previous year’s contract was $100,000. Amazingly, the A’s still went on to win 98 games and their division the next year, but this time, they did not have enough in the playoffs, and the Red Sox swept them in three games.
Between the 1975 and 1976 seasons, Seitz made another ruling that was arguably even more critical to the future of the game than the Hunter decision. Seitz ruled that the reserve clause in players’ contracts bound them to their teams for only one year beyond the contract. They could become free agents after that. The writing was on the bloodied clubhouse wall, and Charlie Finley’s bare bones operation had to come crumbling down. Finley’s first move was to trade Reggie Jackson and Ken Holtzman to Baltimore. Then on June 15, the day of the trading deadline, he sold Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers to the Red Sox for $1 million each. Then he sold Vida Blue to the Yankees for $1.5 million. The players were in a state of shock, especially since the A’s were scheduled to play the Red Sox, but Rudi and Fingers switched uniforms and clubhouses and then sat on the opposite bench. Three days later, Bowie Kuhn declared the sales null and void, and Finley countered with a $10 million lawsuit against Kuhn. His claim, however, was denied in U.S. District Court. Meanwhile, Finley wouldn’t play the players he had sold. “You don’t belong to me,” he said. When the players threatened another boycott, Finley backed off. Through all the chaos, the A’s still put together a respectable season, falling just 2 ½ games shy of another West Division title. The damage, however, had been done. Fingers, Rudi and Sal Bando were gone as free agents after the season. Vida Blue was traded to the Giants after one more season. Billy North was traded to the Dodgers. The next year, the A’s lost 108 games. In 1980, Finley would sell the team to Levi’s owner Walter Haas, ironically one of the most decent men imaginable, and the end of the era was over.

Charlie Finley “presided” over one of the greatest dynasties in baseball history, but you could argue that he helped create the conditions that led to the explosion of free agency, George Steinbrenner and the Yankees’ resurgence. Finley ruled in a time when owners were still feudal lords who were not shy about reminding their serfs who was boss, but when the times began to change, he refused to. He was creative and charming and one miserable son of a bitch if you crossed him, and he minded the ship for one hell of a ride. It’s hard to imagine a ragtag bunch of underpaid, under shaved and under disciplined players winning three straight these days, as the money in the game is so great and the stakes for success so high that perhaps the days of wacky but extraordinary characters are gone forever. So while it’s nearly impossible to find anyone today who has much good to say about Charlie Finley’s integrity or business techniques, maybe we can remember him as the creator of such absurd conditions that only absolute failure or success could thrive under them. The Swinging A’s created their success, but when Catfish Hunter took off for New York, perhaps something real left with him. Forever.

Ken Derr lives in Oakland but roots for the Giants, a childhood choice that has cost him thousands in therapy.

They Called Him Spaceman
by Tim Hinely

Over the years major league baseball has seen its share of characters, many who resided on the mound: Luis Tiant with his unusual wind-up and huge cigars he would chomp on after the game, Mark “The Bird” Fidrych talking to baseballs, and of course the late Tug McGraw with his goofy faces and requisite glove slapping against his thigh. But perhaps no one had given baseball fans and reporters alike more chin-scratching or odd looks than Bill “Spaceman” Lee.

Lee, a lefty, was born on December 28, 1946 in Burbank, California and he stayed nearby to attend the University of Southern California (USC—odd since it’s a very conservative school and Lee is anything but conservative). Lee came from a sports playing family as his grandfather played for the Los Angeles team in the early 1900s, his brother was a two-sport player and his aunt, Annabelle, pitched the first perfect game in the history of the Women’s Semi-pro Hardball league.

At USC Lee made a name for himself by shagging flies in the outfield in his jock strap and, more importantly, leaving with a 38-8 record (at the time a USC record for most wins). After bouncing around the minors for a few years he made his major league debut on June 25, 1969.
Lee got his nickname early in his career from Red Sox teammate John Kennedy following a radio interview in which Lee spoke more of the moon and planets than he did of his baseball skills. And also, keep in mind that he played or most of his career with the Boston Red Sox, one of the most conservative and straight-laced teams in all of baseball. To the horror of some Boston baseball fans, he would occasionally trot out onto the field in such disguises as a gas mask, a Daniel Boone cap or a propeller beanie. Yup, he was an odd one all right but Lee didn’t think much of his behavior was odd. He agreed that while it might be a bit strange for baseball that he was “basically normal in real life.” He disagreed with the “Spaceman” tag and instead wanted to be called “Earthman” and wasn’t all that hot on posing for the cover of Sports Illustrated (or his biography) in an astronaut’s outfit.

And, of course, Lee became the oddball of the Boston media by pontificating on such topics as the rape of our planet Earth, zero population growth and the relationship between mysticism and baseball. He also took ginseng, wondered aloud about the Bermuda Triangle and read the much-more-liberal-back-then, Rolling Stone. To the more radical college students of Boston, Lee was a bit of a folk hero but to the many old-time Bostonians he was just plain weird.

Lee did have talent too—he won 17 games three seasons in a row (1973-1975). In the now-legendary ’75 World Series between the Sox and the Cincinnati Reds, Lee lost game 3 in the 9th inning but was then asked him to pitch in game 6. After a few days of rain delay management reconsidered their decision and instead went with Luis Tiant, which lead to Lee starting game 7. Lee carried a lead into the 7th when Reds slugger Tony Perez, who he had previously struck out on Lee’s infamous “eephus” pitch, came to the plate. Lee tried to sneak across another “eephus,” but Perez sent it over the Green Monster. The Sox lost the series and Lee immediately headed for China.

He was always at odds with Red Sox management and especially with Sox manager Don Zimmer. Lee once referred to Zimmer as “the designated Gerbil” and also once called him “a front-running son of a bitch.” Lee had spent nearly 10 years with the Sox when he was shipped off to the Montreal Expos in 1979. For his inauguration into Canadian life he grew a long beard. But one of Lee’s most memorable moments came when the Expos were playing the Red Sox in Boston during spring training. When a reporter finally ask him about drug use Lee replied, “Reefer madness, hemp, doobies?? Oh yeah, I’ve been using that stuff since 1968. I’ve never had any problems with it.” The following day the sports headlines read LEE SMOKES POT. When questioned by a member of the commissioner’s office Lee replied, “I don’t smoke pot, I use it. I have these organic buckwheat pancakes and I sprinkle about a half ounce of marijuana on them and eat ’em.” For this he was fined $250 and donated $251 to an Eskimo charity.

Lee had a few injuries during his career, one of which came during the now-infamous Carlton Fisk/Lou Pinella brawl in 1976 when Lee jumped in and got pounded by both Mickey Rivers and Graig Nettles. Then, while playing for Montreal in 1979 (and having a solid 16-10 season), he got hit by a car while jogging. After a few years of complaining about the injury and complaining even more about being scapegoated and the trading of his pal Rodney Scott, Lee was released by the Expos. In doing so Expos owner John McHale told Lee he would never play in the major leagues again and Lee never did. Lee believes he was blackballed by McHale and said that McHale “put his name in a computer with Shoeless Joe, Al Capone and Jack the Ripper.”

In the years after baseball, Lee ran for President as a member of the Rhinoceros Party. It was once proposed that Hunter S. Thompson be his running mate. He instead chose Dick “The Monster” Radatz and explained the virtues of mandatory drug testing: “I’ve tested them all,” Lee said, “But I don’t think taking them should be mandatory.” Joking aside, Lee felt taking psychedelic drugs was a major turning point for him. He felt that after taking them a person would “never vote Republican again and with the advent of knowledge you reach a whole other level of consciousness and can never go back again.”

Lee definitely danced to his own drummer and was one of the most outrageous players to ever play the game. His behavior, more than likely scared the very conservative leaders of the major leagues and it’s possible he was indeed blackballed. Still, the game needs people like Lee—people who shake up the status quo. But in this day and age when the most radical thing is Johnny Damon growing his long, hideous hair, I’m afraid the days of the Lees, the Tiants and the Tuggers are long gone. Lee was a good guy with a true hope for the planet and the human race and I think he summed it up best when he said that on his gravestone he never wanted it to be said “that I was responsible for the death of the late, great planet Earth.”

(Author’s Note: References for this article include Oddballs by Bruce Shlain, Baseball Babylon by Dan Gutman, Baseball’s Greatest Insults by Kevin Nelson and various websites.)

Tim Hinely loves the Pittsburgh Pirates and lives in Portland, Oregon. He has been publishing his own zine, Dagger, for several years now. Send him $3.50 to see a copy to: PO Box 820102 Portland, OR 97282-1102 or write at: daggerboy@prodigy.net.

Zisk Issue # 8

And now a word from our editor’s mom, Mary Faloon, regarding some of the language used in Zisk #7…

The other morning, a work morning ever so early, I was eating my usual work day breakfast—a mix of Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios with soy milk. And as usual I wanted something to read with my meal. Ahaa, a good time to take a look at Zisk, a magazine put out by my oldest son. Hey, here's an article about people I know—two of my sons and their uncle (referring to “The Year in Baseball: 2003 – As Seen by the Faloon Family”). Great!!

Well, I started reading the article and then I started chocking on those little o’s trying to make their way to my stomach. I came across these words that were absolutely horrible, words I'm not sure what they meant. And to think they were used by my own fresh and blood, babes out of my womb. I was just appalled to think that my sons who I have never heard say anything naughty were using such awful, awful language. Needless to say no way could I finish my breakfast of champions. Then I thought it had to be someone else using the Faloon name. Hopefully I’m right.

Sincerely,
Mary Faloon

Neither my brother nor my uncle could be reached for comment, but, Mom, I know Casey (my brother) warned you about the last issue and that you opted to ignore him. For the love of god do not read the last article in this issue. —Mike Faloon

Rants From the Upper Deck
by Steve Reynolds

Whew, what an offseason. That snapping sound you heard was the Ranter’s neck twisting with every new and intriguing development since Josh Beckett’s wonderful masterpiece to close out the World Series. There was so much going on that it seems like R.E.M. could have re-recorded “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” and replaced some lyrics with baseball items. Sing it with me now: “Schllling/A-Rod/Nomar/Manny/All Going Nowhere/Vlad’s an Angel/Pettitte’s Gone/Clemens Unretires/Brown’s In/And Now Vazquez/Pete Rose/BALCO Steroids/A-Rod Again/Maddux Goes Home Again.”

After a stunning post-season that kept me glued to the edge of the recliner like no other, I wasn’t that surprised at the intensity level baseball maintained over the winter. While other parts of the U.S. moved on to other sports for a while, New Yorkers still focused on the Yankees-Boston Red Sox rivalry (due in no small part because both football teams stunk up the stadium across the Hudson River and the Knicks and Rangers kept up their not-so-loveable losing ways). The Post and Daily News sports pages devoted so much ink and paper to A-Rod (between the failed and successfully completed trades) that he should donate part of his salary to plant trees somewhere.

Many folks (including some of my fellows Zisk staffers) have argued that the Yankees fantasy league-inspired spending needs to be reigned in with a salary cap of some sort. While I’d love to see the Yankees somehow stopped (and they will be again this year, which I will explain later), forcing them to curb spending isn’t the answer. George Steinbrenner has laid out the biggest amounts of cash in the majors the past three seasons, but that hasn’t bought him another championship. The Yankees of 1996 to 2000 won not because they had the biggest payroll, but because they had a good core of homegrown players and smartly chosen free agents. (Well, that, and that five-year pact with the devil Joe Torre signed.) Yes, the baseball economic system is still out of whack, but a salary cap isn’t the answer. A salary minimum and a specific amount of shared revenue that must go towards payroll? Now that’s something I can get behind.

The BALCO case is bound to take up headlines throughout the season, and deservedly so. Yes, players obviously were able to juice their numbers over the years. And yes, they were stupid to risk their health for so many years. And yes, they look idiotic for not coming up with a stronger testing plan ages ago. But if steroids make everyone play better, why aren’t Ken Caminiti and Jose Canseco still playing in their late ’30s like another alleged user, Barry Bonds? If Bonds is found to have used steroids, people will say his single season home run record is tainted. Well, last time I checked, steroids don’t make your eyes as good as Bonds’s. And it’s not like Bonds wasn’t one of the most talented players ever before the alleged steroid scam started. (And trust me, I would never want to defend the pricks of all pricks Bonds, but somebody has to cut through the crap with this case.)

And while we’re on the drug front, does steroid use by major league ballplayers need to be mentioned in President Bush’s State of the Union address? Does Attorney General John Ashcroft need to hold a press conference in Washington, D.C. to announce the findings of a grand jury all the way across the country? Might there be some more pressing issues at the moment? Perhaps trying to find out where Osama Bin Laden is? Or figuring out where the intelligence breakdown happened over weapons of mass-destruction? Or why job growth has been at its slowest in decades? Politics has pushed the steroid issue further into the spotlight, and if it wasn’t an election year, Bud Selig and Don Fehr would be nowhere near a Congressional committee. That being said, let’s hope the owners and players sit down and hash out a real testing plan at some point so fans and sanctimonious sportswriters will be happy.

So now that the dust has settled on the off-season, what will 2004 bring? Well, for the AL East—perhaps more properly called the AL Beast—it’s a season in which the division is far and away the best in baseball. The Toronto Blue Jays could most likely win the AL Central or NL West with the young pitching and hitting they have, while the Baltimore Orioles and Tampa Bay Devil Rays could be .500 teams in the Central. I’ve heard of the East Coast bias about West Coast sports teams, but who in their right mind could not think that the battles in this division will be like no other this year. And in the end, the Ranter will go for Yankees winning the division with the Red Sox again claiming the wild card.

The AL Central is stocked with three teams (Minnesota Twins, Kansas City Royals and Cleveland Indians) that have put a successful small market plan into action. By growing their own players and picking up a quality free agent here and there, these three teams have set foundations to compete for the next few years. But the Indians aren’t quite there yet, and the Twins lost too much bullpen in the off-season. So the Royals will become division winners for the first time since George Brett roamed the infield.

The AL West is the second best division in baseball, with the Oakland Athletics, the Seattle Mariners and California Angels all making the postseason with the past three seasons. Alas for Mariners fans, they look like a team that’s about to go on a down cycle as key parts get older (Edgar Martinez, John Olerud, Jamie Moyer) and a front office that made only one decent move in the off-season (signing “Everyday Eddie” Guadardo). The A’s lost another former MVP (Miguel Tejada), but still have great pitching. However, both teams will be trumped by the Angels, who were busy spending their new owner Art Moreno’s money. And he’ll be happy, as Vlad Guerrero and Bartolo Colon will be just the pieces that manager Mike Scioscia needs to get back to the playoffs.

In the NL, the East and Central divisions will both come down to the last days of the season. The Braves lost a third of their offense with the defections of Gary Sheffield, Javy Lopez and Vinnie Castilla, so the possibility of them not winning the division looms large for the first time. The Phillies will finally be able to close some games with Billy Wagner in the pen. But what most folks seem to overlook are the World Champion Marlins. Derek Lee is gone, Pudge Rodriguez is in exile in the Motor City and both closers (Brandon Looper, Ugeth Urbina) are gone, replaced by Mr. Choke himself, Armando Benitez. But the young core of this team is still together and has been battle-tested by last year’s playoff run. I think the Marlins will take the division led by Josh Beckett blossoming into a premier pitcher, with the Phillies as the wild card to save Larry Bowa from the ax.

The NL Central will once again by a three team race. The St. Louis Cardinals have a great lineup, but they still don’t have the pitching. The Houston Astros now have pitching with the additions of Roger Clemens and Andy Pettite, but Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio are certainly on the downside of their careers. This leaves the Cubs, who not only have the pitching but also have solidified their hitting the trade for the Marlins’ Derek Lee. The Cubs will repeat as division winners for the first time ever.

The NL West is up for grabs—I’ve even seen someone taut the San Diego Padres as potential division winners. The guess here is that the Giants will make the playoffs for a third year in a row, unless the steroid scandal truly blows up and Bonds is suspended.

As for the playoffs (here comes that Yankee theory I promised), the ALCS will come down once again to the Yanks and Red Sox, with the Sox taking it in seven games because the bullpen will hold a lead this year. The Yankees will once again go without a title, which can be blamed upon one man—George W. Bush. Actually, that’s not entirely correct. The Yanks drought can be blamed on the Republican party. The New York Yankees have won 19 of their championships while Democrats have been in the White House and only seven with Republicans in the Oval Office. The last time the Yankees won a title with a Republican president was 1958. The Eisenhower curse will live another year. Steinbrenner better vote for John Kerry.

In the NL, the Cubs and Marlins are destined for a rematch, and this time Moises Alou will catch the winning out. Which means—yes, I am crazy—a “world is coming to an end World Series” with the Cubs versus the Red Sox. And the winner? Does it really matter? Baseball, indeed, all of America will be the big winner this October. (But I’ll definitely be rooting for the Sox).

The Pete Rose Case: One Fan's Opeinion
by Jeff Herz

It is two days before Pete Rose’s book comes out and he is the talk of the sports world. I was at the gym last night watching (reading the captions of, actually) some talking heads on CNN Headline News discuss this matter. One proclaimed ethics expert spoke of America’s ability to forgive and forget. He was essentially saying that Pete Rose has spent the last 14 years in purgatory and therefore has paid his punishment, deserves to be forgiven by the master asshole himself Bud Selig, and should be reinstated back into baseball.

This schmuck clearly knows nothing about baseball and even less about Pete Rose. First off, there is one cardinal rule in baseball that is made 100% clear in any locker room (or so I am told since I have never been in a major league locker room)—gambling is not allowed. Even today’s whipping boy, illegal drugs doesn’t have the same effect as gambling does. Just ask any of these former players: Steve Howe, Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, Dwight Gooden, Willie Aikens, Ferguson Jenkins, Otis Nixon, Leon Durham, Vida Blue and Pascual Perez. They were all suspended for drug use and returned to the game after their suspensions.

Not since the “Black Sox” scandal of 1919, has a person associated with MLB returned to the game after being associated with gambling or gamblers. Even Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were asked to disassociate themselves from the Yankees and Giants in the 1980s by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, when they were employed as greeters at casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

Whether you agree with the precedent or not, gambling is the death penalty in baseball! (Anyone heard from the SMU football team since they received this judgment from NCAA in 1987?) Pete Rose now admits he gambled on baseball while he was managing the Cincinnati Reds. He claims not to have done it from the field, though the Dowd report has wiretaps from the manager’s office to his bookie, he claims not to have used insider information to his advantage, which is impossible considering he is an insider and would know if his closer is tired or his cleanup hitter tweaked a hamstring (Jayson Stark, ESPN.com, January 6, 2004),
and he admits he only bet on the Reds to win, which in my mind contradicts the not acting on insider information statement. By not betting on your team on days you know you are benching certain players is just as bad as betting on your team when all your players are on fire.

After 14 years of lying, he has finally admitted he was gambling. Big fucking deal. To think Rose was not betting on baseball you have to have been living on Mars since 1989 when A. Bart Giamatti, the last real commissioner of MLB (who subsequently dropped dead of heart attack a few days later) suspended Rose for life, with the opportunity to apply for reinstatement after one year. If he has been lying for so long, why should I believe him now?

What I have not seen or heard from him is an apology to the fans, and this gives me no reason to welcome him back to the game. Mike Francesa pointed out on WFAN in NY that Rose is broke and is desperate to get back into the game. Rose has lied for 14 years and he is carefully crafting the book, the interviews, and every other piece of PR for two reasons. The first is to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame, which he deserves—in spite of being a slimy creature who should crawl back under the rock beneath which he came. The second is to return to a role in organized baseball. But what role should putz master Buddy S. allow Peter to play?

The ownership of the Cincinnati Reds would hire Rose again in a minute assuming the used car salesman from Milwaukee gives #14 a full reprieve and unlimited entry back into the game. Others have suggested that Rose should be allowed to be a spring training instructor but not allowed to be a fulltime employee of an MLB organization, essentially keeping him away from real games and subsequently keeping him away from temptation. What will the man who decided, “I am going to call the All-Star game a tie,” do? I don’t know, but here is my suggestion.

A (real) commissioner of MLB would lift the banishment for the sole purpose of allowing the BBWA to induct Rose into the Hall of Fame prior to 2006, when his eligibility expires. Let’s face it; there are a lot of nasty folks in that building who did some bad shit. It is a place for the best baseball players of all-time, not a personality contest. And let’s face it, though I have issues with hangers-on (Dave Winfield, Don Sutton), Rose personified baseball in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s with his “Charlie Hustle” style of play. We would be able to celebrate Rose the player, not Rose the manager, not Rose the gambler. He would be in Cooperstown, and then he would go away, off the baseball radar.

If Rose is allowed into Cooperstown, he should not be granted anything else. He should not be allowed to be a spring training instructor, he should not be allowed to be general manager, he should not be allowed to a field manager, he should not be allowed to participate in an old-timers’ game, he should not be allowed to be involved in publicity nights, he should have no contact with the game without expressed written consent of the commissioner of MLB. There has to be some punishment for gambling, and keeping him off the field away from the game is the best way to accomplish that. But that is just me.

Assuming Selig does reinstate Rose in some manner, isn’t it time that Shoeless Joe Jackson also be reinstated? Unfortunately, Joe did less than Rose and has been banned much longer than him. Jackson was a poor Southerner who played in a different age and there is no one left to take up his cause. He received a lifetime ban in 1920, and his lifetime ended in 1951. His still has the third highest all-time average, which to me is a much more substantial record then total number of hits.

It boils down to this—Pete Rose: in Cooperstown, but off the field.

Some Bitter, Bitter Winter 2003 Thoughts
by Jeff Herz

I can’t stand A-Rod and it has nothing to do with the Red Sox.

It is currently December 16, 2003 at about 1:00 pm. I am jazzed to be thinking and talking about baseball in mid-December. It is about six to eight weeks until pitchers and catchers report and I am excited about what is happening. Don’t get me wrong, as a life long devoted Yankee fan, I think what George Steinbrenner is doing to the Yankees is a travesty. He has stopped listening to his baseball people and is acting like a rotisserie owner, looking for the best player at every position. As of this morning, the Yankees have, or are about to have, up to 17 former all-stars on their roster. It will be interesting to see if this fantasy roster can morph into team and do what it takes to justify the money the owner is spending, and everyone who has followed baseball in the last 10 years knows the only goal is winning the World Series. I hope we are not sitting on a redeux of 1982—the last time King George took over and stopped listening to his baseball people. This resulted in 13 years of no playoffs and the eventual suspension of Mr. Steinbrenner, which ultimately led to this current Yankee dominance.

I will concede that the Red Sox were the better team in the playoffs and should have won game 7, if Grady Little had pulled the trigger on Pedro sooner. In the ALCS, the Red Sox bullpen was lights out. They were using Timlin in the 8th and Williamson in the 9th. It was a good combination that worked. If there is one thing I have learned from watching Joe Torre for the past eight years is that you rely on what is working and if that means pulling an ace, you pull him. You have to have the balls to pull the trigger, Grady Little failed to do that and therefore the Red Sox failed. The Red Sox management realized this and quickly terminated Little in the off-season.

With that in mind, the off-season has seen the continuation of the Yankees vs. the Red Sox, this time with team management taking center stage. The Sox struck first by acquiring Curt Schilling (who Steinbrenner wanted to replace the “retiring” Roger Clemens) from the D’backs for a bunch of nobodies. I have to admit, I am a little disturbed by the fact that other teams try screw over the Yankees (like when the D’backs asked for Nick Johnson and Alfonso Soriano for Schilling) and then turn around and give the same player away to another team for significantly less, but I guess that is another issue. The Yankees then countered by getting the younger Javier Vazquez from the Montreal / San Juan / Monterrey / Portland / DC / Northern Virginia National League baseball club being run by the other 29 MLB teams for Johnson, outfielder Juan Rivera and the almost never-used left handed reliever Randy Choate.

Then the Yankees maybe agree to terms with Gary Sheffield, then again maybe they don’t. The Yankees call Vlad Guerrero to inquire about his price and Sheffield acquiesces. While all this is going on the Yankees sign enough relievers to pay for the Milwaukee Brewers entire payroll (Yankees bullpen = $40 million, Brewers projected payroll = $30 million). The Yankees (read Steinbrenner) then commit a mortal tactical mistake by allowing Andy Pettite to walk away. They spin the situation by saying they never had a chance since he only wanted to play at home for the Astros, but anyone who follows the team knows that history means something to Pettite and he had the opportunity to surpass Whitey Ford as the all-time winning Yankee left hander. So the Yankees then go and trade Jeff Weaver, some non-prospects and cash for Kevin Brown. As the last move, the Bosox then sign free agent Keith Foulke, giving them a legitimate closer for the first time in years. I guess you won’t see the closer by committee this coming year in Beantown.

What does any of this have to do with Alex Rodriguez? Well I am sure you are aware, while this entire New York-Boston chest thumping thing is going on there are rumors that grow stronger and weaker depending upon the day that say A-Rod is coming and Manny is going. Now if the shitty Texas Rangers and the AL club from Boston can work an amicable trade (which I question) that works in both clubs favor, what can I do? Quite frankly, I am not sure what Steinbrenner can or will do to counter this move considering the Yankees now have a former all-star at every place on the field and a butt-load in the pitching rotation and bullpen, but again that is a different issue though from a one-up concept, I am interested in seeing what he does.

What gets my goat, is A-Rod signed this ridiculous contract a few years ago, saying what a great organization the Rangers had and why he was looking forward to spending the rest of his career there and helping bring a World Series title and making them champions. Now, I called it bullshit at the time, and I am still calling it bullshit since it always has been and remains about the $252 million (a quarter-billion dollars) contract he signed. This contract paralyzed the Rangers making it impossible to sign any other decent talent (and I hold Chan Ho Park as exhibit one). Now that they have hired Buck Showalter as the manager and his job is to develop talent and build for the long haul, and what is A-Rod’s response “I want out.”

He is telling anyone who will listen that he would love to play in Boston, and honestly who wouldn’t consider how the two beasts of the east are positioning themselves. I am sick to death of over-paid athletes signing contracts to play a game we the fans all love, then complain when their teams don’t win. Rather than ask to be traded, why not defer money past his playing days so the Rangers can compete now. All he does is whine. He knew the consequences of signing that contract, and if he did not, shame on him. He has essentially forced the Rangers hand into making a deal because he is making clear that this team is no longer for him. That shit ain’t right, and that is why I cannot stand A-Rod, and I will dislike him even more if he winds up with the Red Sox. The trickle down effect is the Red Sox are then going to screw Nomar right out of Boston.

By the way—the baseball writers of America have no clue what a most valuable player is since they voted for this jackass this year. Would the Texas Rangers have been any worse if this hump was traded before the 2003 season? No, they would have been the same: last place in the AL West. I agree that the AL MVP was a wide-open race in 2003, but the winner should have come from a competitive team where their presence significantly helped the team. Shannon Stewart from the Twins would have been a much better choice. John Flaherty would have been a better selection, since he had some influence on the Yankees pennant.

As a final thought, has anyone else noticed how strong the AL East has become? The Orioles have already signed Miguel Tejada and Javy Lopez. The Blue Jays have four solid starting pitchers (Halladay, Hentgen, Lilly, and Batista) and a very young, talented offense. For as much as the Yankees and Red Sox are duking it out, the AL East is potentially up for grabs more so this year than any year in the past six years.

A Valentine's Day Massacre
by Kip Yates

The clock was ticking away on Valentines Day, a Hallmark holiday if there ever was one. I was slowly running short of time to cook a romantic meal for Jamie whom I have been married to for almost seven years and have been “dating” for fifteen years. This is our day.

Jamie and I usually celebrate our anniversary with a wink and a smile to Valentines Day because we know better. I had planned to make prosciutto chicken, something that said “I love you” without being too complicated and was more than the usual spaghetti and marinara sauce I have tried to pawn off as romantic dinners in the past. The cheesecake from Junior’s was in the fridge. River, our son, was napping. I just had to cook the meal before Jamie arrived home from work. Yet I found myself staring blankly into my computer screen. I could not quite believe what I was reading. It was like getting punched in the breadbasket. It was a 2 x 4 upside the head. The headline taunted me.

Was I waking from a lucid dream to a bona fide nightmare? There it was in black and white: Alex Rodriguez going to the Yanks. I had just completed writing what I would share with Zisk readers as my theory that the birth of my son signaled the end of the Yankees dynasty and now, not only was the dynasty alive and well; it had baseball’s greatest shortstop, if not greatest player, on their payroll. Seconds ticked by and I asked myself several questions. Do I need to rewrite my article on the premature demise of the Yankees? Does this deal make sense? Can it be believed? Should I get out of town before the parade? Should I serve spinach as a side dish? I sat there for several minutes and then I did something that absolutely surprised me. I went on with my life.

Alex Rodriguez is now a Yankee and I could not care less. I am surprised at my sudden shift in attitude but not that surprised. I guess my priorities have changed or I have just thrown in the towel when it comes to hating the Yankees. Maybe I am just in denial. The mega deal the Yankees made with the Texas Rangers doesn't make a difference to me whatsoever. It's a good deal for the Yankees and a bad one for baseball in general. What else is new? I was one of the many fans hoping the Red Sox would make the trade for Pay Rod. I prematurely celebrated with my brothers-in-arms and fellow Yankees haters. When that deal fell through, I truly believed Pay Rod would at least open the season with the Rangers. I never thought in a million years that he would be traded to the Yankees. Then third baseman Aaron Boone blew his knee playing basketball and everything changed. Like they always have been able to do, the Yankees got their man and then some. They always close deals like this. Boston, on the other hand, always seems to screw up deals like this and when they do, the whining reaches epic decibels. Boston is always trumped by New York and has been since 1918. The falling apart of the Pay Rod deal to Boston is, in a nutshell, why the Red Sox cannot win anything. It’s tough to win it all when you are only trying to beat the Yankees. The “Curse” is in the heads of the entire entity. The front office, team, fans and city all have been driven crazy over the years like Captain Ahab and the Yankees are their Moby Dick. They could have had Pay Rod, but they were not offering enough. They could have kept Ruth! They could have been the first to sign a Negro Leaguer instead of the last. They could have had Mays. They could have won in ’78 but they choked and not just in the Bucky Dent game. They should have won it all in ’86, but didn't. They could have won the AL last year but were again beaten by the better run team. If this winter has taught me anything, it’s that when it comes to wheelin’ and dealin’ in the off-season, Boston can blow their trumpet pretty loud but they always get blown out by the Yankees brass and it carries over into the season. The Yankees get it done. That’s the bottom line. They are closers and the Red Sox are posers.

Boston: handled trade negotiations for Pay Rod through the media because they could not wait to announce that they had outdone and outspent the Yankees. They alienated two of their superstars in the process and did not close the deal.

New York: handled the affair with an air of secrecy and did not announce anything until the deal was done. They added a seventh All Star and closed the deal to much fanfare.

I hate everything Pay Rod stands for. He gets to win now and keep his money and to hell with the other 24 guys that he was contractually obligated to stick by in Texas. Pay Rod gets his cake and gets to eat it too. I don't buy his “team first… I just want to win” shtick for a moment. He is the most selfish player playing on the most selfish team in the most selfish league in all of sports. Just as selfish is his agent, Scott Boras, who engineered everything from the record breaking blockbuster contract to the potential trade to Boston and eventual trade to New York. New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica said of Boras: “…the de facto Yankee general manager, was down the row, beaming at A-Rod when he wasn’t checking the floor in front of him in case somebody had dropped a 20-dollar bill.”

I read the other day that Boston’s payroll is about 20% higher than the nearest competitor. New York’s payroll is about 50% percent higher than Boston’s. In the NFL, at the beginning of the season, even the Lions have a shot at the Super Bowl. The same cannot be said for the Tigers. The collective bargaining agreement has been a disaster. One owner continues to thumb his nose at the luxury tax that other owners put into their pockets and not their teams. I hope that the current labor agreement expires without another agreement in place and baseball players go on strike for about seven years. Sure, I will miss the game but not this game. Without a team salary cap, you can rest assured that anytime a player signs a $100 million dollar contract with another team besides the Yankees, the celebration will be short-lived. Why? Because owners like Tom Hicks will continue to strap their team’s payroll to only a few players and George Steinbrenner will continue to bail them out and take on their all stars because he can and does afford it and they can and will not. I look for Mike Hampton and Jim Thome or Albert Pujols to be New York before all is said and done.

With that said, don’t start planning the parade route in New York just yet. Boston still has all-star caliber pitching and the Yankees have all righties. Boston has team chemistry, give or take Nomar and Manny, and New York has a clubhouse of ultra egos that could implode at any moment. Don’t forget: no team has ever won the World Series with a $100 million dollar guy on their payroll. And the Yankees have four of them! Also remember: what looks good on paper does not always look good on the field. See the 2001 Mets! I am stepping off my soapbox now. There will not be any more rants about the Yankees from me. I am done. I am exhausted. I don’t care anymore. Besides, I have a spaghetti dinner I need to make.

Kip Yates, a mild mannered supervisor by day at a posh New York publishing office, likes to don his cape and pretend to be Subway Man by night. When an elderly woman is shoved into the doorway of a train car, Kip will be there. When a pregnant mother is not offered a seat on the train, Kip will be there. When a man suffers from a mild case of elephantitis of the scrotum and takes up more seat than is his fair share, Kip will be there. When Kip cannot be there, he is usually home with his wife and their love child. Much has changed for Kip in recent months. For instance, he stopped leaving the toilet seat up, uses eating utensils, wears shirts at the dinner table and started closing soda bottle caps tighter. The fizz escapes that way, ya know. Kip, an avowed Yankee hater, is tired of hating the Yankees and wishes they would just go away. He has promised his wife no more anti-Yankees rants. Though she gave him three “in case of emergency, break glass” scenarios.

The Real Red Sox A to Z
by Frank D'Urso

While driving home the other day I heard the most bristlyingly annoying ad I’ve heard in a long ass time.

The Red Sox wives, your Boston Red Sox wives, do a great deal of charity work. They do a semi-regular cook book in the summer. This winter for a change they’ve put together a book called Boston Red Sox A to Z. Proceeds go to charity so by all means go out and buy it. But dear Zisk readers, forgive me this thought and crux of this article—these women are all multi-millionaires. They could give these charities more money than they need without batting an eyelash let alone even asking their husbands for spare cash.

I guess I’m mad that they take their free time, do this good work, and expect us sports minded slobs in greater New Bling Bling to shell out money to make them feel like they are helping a cause? Gah!!!! And egad!!!!

So while listening to these kids recite the first few letters of the Red Sox Alphabet (“B” is for “Ball”) I decided to create my own version of this A to Z list and encourage y’all to drop a few extra coins towards your local charities next time you run across one.

“A” is for “Aarrrrrrrgh” I screamed in Game 6 (the game six). It’s also for Harry Agganis who died before his time.

“B” is for the brick that I “borrowed” from reconstruction of the area behind Fenway’s homeplate.

“C” is for Tony C, gawd bless his soul, another Red Sox who died young.

“D” is for dummy. Grady Little should have taken Pedro out

“E” is for Eckersley. That guy had cool hair.

“F” is for Frazee, who screwed us over and how.

“G” is for the Green Monster, and all those who’ve secretly had their ashes mixed into the playing field.

“H” is for Hawk Harrelson. The dude could play and was cool.

“I” is for the Impossible Dream year of 1967, which formed the foundation of my preteen summers.

“J” is for Jim Rice, #14, my own personal hero. He deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

"K” is for Ken Coleman, a voice I grew up listening to.

“L” is for losing because of that stupid damn curse.

“M” is for money, which drives the game today, and also Margo Adams, who was chicken man's lay.

“N” is for Negroes, because the organization was shortsighted enough to turn away Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron...

“O” is for Orlando Cepeda who played for them briefly, and Oil Can Boyd who played for them for awhile.

“P” is for Pedro, who will drill you in the ass.

“Q” is for Dan Quisenberry who pitched against us so queerly.

“R” is for RED

“S” is for SOX, RED-SOX, RED-SOX, RED-SOX!

“T” is for Ye Olde Town Team, the best nickname, and El Tiante, a giant of this game!

“U” is for Ugueth Urbina who we let go to use “Closer By Committee,” which failed.

“V” is for victory, the all-elusive World Series victory to add to the FIVE they earned.

“W” is for wins. This team can pile them on when they “Cowboy Up.”

“X” is for X-Red Sox Roger Clemens, and all the rest. They all come home eventually.

“Y” is for Yaz, the potato-farming, hard-working, hard-playing, long-careered sunnovagun.

“Z” is for Zisk. Richie Zisk would've been great if he wore the carmine hose.

Frank D'Urso is a member of SABR and travels to Cooperstown every summer.

Time to Eliminate the DH
by Jeff Herz

In honor of Paul Molitor’s election to the Baseball Hall of Fame, I would like to begin a grassroots movement to eliminate the designated hitter (DH) from organized baseball. I believe there are three compelling reasons to remove this blight on the game. The DH rule was implemented in order to increase offense, which is no longer necessary. The game is more strategic and fun to watch without the DH. The sport has evolved into one organization instead of two independent leagues.

The DH rule was implemented in order to increase offense
The 1960’s were known as the decade of the pitchers. Gibson, Koufax, Drysdale, Ford, Bunning and Marichal all defined that decade. In 1969, MLB uniformly changed the rules, lowering the height of pitchers’ mounds in order to decrease the advantage of the pitcher and give batters a better opportunity to hit the ball. After a decade of station-to-station baseball, the American League was still looking for a way to bring more hitting to the game. So in 1973 they implemented the DH, allowing a designated hitter to hit for the pitcher, in an effort to increase offense. Evidence supports that this change both helped the hitter and hurt the pitcher, which is the intent of the rule. This effectively increased the run production in the AL compared to the NL, which is still the case today; however it had a negative effect in that it took a certain level of strategy away from AL managers.

For the past 25 years or so, the DH has effectively served its purpose bringing more offense to the game. Today, I don’t think anyone would argue that we need more offense. In fact, the way the game is played now is radically different than it was played even in the early ’90s. Offensive numbers are skyrocketing, pitchers are being shellacked left and right, and where there are multiple reasons for this phenomenon (expansion, shrinking strike zones, etc.), one glaring fact is that in half the games played pitchers don’t hit for themselves. They either have an over-the-hill slugger or a slow-footed youngster hitting the ball a mile rather than producing outs or sacrificing a runner to the next base. Eliminating the DH could once again help level the playing field between the pitcher and the batter.

The game is more strategic without the DH
Since 1973 it does not take a brain surgeon (in spite of Tim McCarver’s book of the same name) to manage in the AL once the game starts. Once a lineup is set with a DH, all the manager needs to worry about is when to pull a pitcher and when there is a need for a pinch hitter or pinch runner. In the NL, these decisions are integrally linked together, and that component adds a significant strategic piece to the game that is lacking in the AL.

In spite of the fact that I root for an AL team, I honestly think the NL is a more interesting league to watch for the simple reason that there are more strategies involved. Having to decide when to pull a pitcher because he is coming up to bat, when to do a double switch, when to sit tight adds many more facets to the game. Watching the AL is entertaining if you like Earl Weaver’s strategy to sit back and wait for a three-run home run. Once the lineup is set at the beginning of an AL game, very rarely is there a change to the lineup made unless there is an injury, a defensive replacement late in the game or a situational hitter/pitcher match up.
Having a pitcher in the lineup alters how you plan your pitches up and down the lineup. Knowing that the pitcher is coming in the 9th spot, allows you to vary how you attack the 7th and 8th hitters in the lineup depending upon the situation and time of the game. I remember going to a Yankee game in the mid 1990’s when they were playing the Cleveland Indians and noting that the visitor had nine players batting over .300. There is no such thing as a sure out in that lineup; any single person can kill you. How boring.

The AL has also forgotten about the sacrifice and the stolen base. I am not going to attempt to pull a Bill James here and justify the value of either of these statistics, but the fact that they are underutilized and add a surprise element makes the game more enjoyable to watch from this fans’ perspective. Eliminating the DH will force managers to think more and make the game more interesting to the fans.

The sport has evolved into one organization instead of two independent leagues
For almost a hundred years the two leagues acted as separately as they possibly could. There were interleague trades, there were interleague games in spring training, but once the season began, the leagues only met in the All-Star Game and the World Series. That all changed with the advent of interleague play a few years ago. It is time that they bring the rules into uniformity as well. In the past few years, the league presidents have been eliminated, umpires are now employed by MLB not by the leagues, and the All-Star game is now just a glorified superstar show case and home run hitting contest, which the current commissioner has made compelling by awarding the winner home field advantage in the World Series. MLB is attempting to regulate the game time, the strike zone, and overall conformity. AL vs. NL has essentially lost all its meaning in the past few years. So the last standing bastion between the leagues should also be eliminated immediately which translates to KO’ing the DH.

Argument against eliminating the DH
Some will argue that the players union will never allow some of their own to go unemployed. There is a simple way around this argument; increase the roster size from 25 to 26 or 27. This allows a team to keep a player who would have been the designated hitter on its roster. They can then be used as a pinch hitter or in the field if they are still capable. The union cannot complain about its highest paid players being forced to the unemployment lines since the teams are making provisions to keep them employed.

I know the economics of the game will never allow this change to happen, but I thought it would be fun to dream about baseball the way it is supposed to be played, with nine players on the lineup card.

Jeff Herz is a rabid baseball fan—and yes, Virginia, an unbridled Yankee fan to boot. He begrudgingly works in the interactive marketing advertising field in order to support his wife Nancy, his 2 1/2 year old son Jacob and his yet to be known unborn child due in August 2004. He has been writing for Zisk since its infancy though has not had the distinction of being published in every issue to date. He has recently brought his baseball card collection down from the attic and has become addicted to this hobby, so if you have any cards for trade or sale, feel free to contact him at herzy69@yahoo.com.


Hot Stove, Cool Music, Great Cause
by Steve Reynolds

One side of Major League Baseball usually gets overlooked in the all the chatter about high salaries, performance-enhancing drug use and where the Expos may end up—many organizations head up great charitable efforts. Major League Baseball itself has provided funding for Boys and Girls Clubs around the country for almost a decade and runs Baseball Tomorrow, which provides equipment and uniforms to youth baseball leagues. The Mets, lead by players like Al Leiter and John Franco, are involved with 22 community-outreach programs throughout the metropolitan area. And both the Mets and the Yankees were tremendous supporters of post-9/11 needs.

But the longest-running and best-known baseball charity is Boston’s Jimmy Fund. Anyone that grew up in (or in my case, near) New England will remember ushers in their local movie theater collecting for the fund each summer. The Jimmy Fund was started in 1948 by the Variety Club of New England. The club organized a radio broadcast from the bedside of a young cancer patient dubbed Jimmy as he was visited by members of the Boston Braves baseball team. Contributions poured in to buy Jimmy a television set so he could watch the Braves play. The fund truly got off the ground the next year with the theater collection program.

When the Braves moved to Milwaukee, the owners of the Red Sox took on the major support of the fund by naming it the team’s official charity. Ever since then the team has raised money for the fund, which has helped numerous young people battle cancer for more than 50 years. And the Red Sox players throughout the years have always been big supporters—the 1967 Boston Red Sox “Impossible Dream” team voted to give the Jimmy Fund a share of its winnings from making it to the World Series. (And back then post-season money actually meant something).

In 2000 a new Jimmy Fund benefit came on the scene in Boston—Hot Stove Cool Music. The project was hatched by Boston Herald sportswriter Jeff Horrigan and ESPN baseball guru Peter Gammons. The duo had long talked about putting together a benefit. (Gammons—well known for musical references in his columns—says, “I always joke that some people do golf tournaments while I do rock concerts.”) Horrigan was inspired one night after seeing a show where one opening act was named for the late Yankee catcher Thurman Munson. Horrigan knew another band called Carlton Fisk, and thought a benefit with both bands and other baseball-themed acts would be a great idea. Horrigan called Gammons the next day, and he suggested an auction of baseball memorabilia to fill out the evening.

The first Hot Stove Cool Music concert took place in December 2000 at Boston’s Paradise Rock Club. The night was headlined by ex-Letters to Cleo singer (and big baseball fan) Kay Hanley. Gammons served as the evening’s MC, and Hanley’s bassist Ed Valausakas (also from the Boston band The Gentlemen) recalls that, “People came out in droves just to hear [Gammons] talk baseball between the bands.” The night was a great success. Valauskas adds, “The end of the evening culminated with an ‘all-star jam’ (in other words, a train wreck) on ‘Surrender’ by Cheap Trick featuring Kay and Nina Gordon (ex-Veruca Salt) on vocals, with neither of them remembering the words to the first verse. It was kinda funny.”

Three more Hot Stove Cool Music benefits have happened since 2000, with the last one this past January selling out in no time. “Each year its just grown a little bit more,” Gammons says. “And this year it’s sort of taken on a bit more of a life.” That life Gammons is referring to is Hot Stove Cool Music: Volume One, an album filled with a diverse roster of acts with baseball connections. Pearl Jam contributes a live version of “Bu$hleaguer,” which takes on the former Texas Rangers owner-turned politician. Gammons says singer Eddie Vedder has always has a baseball and music connection. “He wrote some of his first songs in a little donut shop right across from Wrigley Field.” Hot Stove stalwart Hanley contributes “Your Summer Baby,” which is a perfect theme for the boys of summer, while Valauskas and The Gentlemen contribute the appropriately titled “Hit That.”

The disc also features baseball players and employees. Trauser, led by Red Sox general manger Theo Epstein on guitar, tackles Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.” Sandfrog, the band led by former Angel and current Mariner Scott Speizio, and Stickfigure, led by ex-pitcher Jack McDowell, each contribute original material. Gammons is especially impressed with McDowell’s development after his career ended a few years ago. “I think he’s evolved into an outstanding musician, and he’s evolved into himself. Which is true of a lot of musicians. You start out sort of copying the people that you idolize, and then you eventually grow into your own personality.”

The disc also features the Hot Stove All Stars (Valauskas, Gentlemen drummer Pete Caldes and ex-Letters to Cleo guitarist, and Hanley’s husband, Mike Eistenstein) backing up Buffalo Tom’s Bill Janovitz, ex-J. Geils Band singer Peter Wolf, Mighty Mighty Bosstones frontman Dickey Barrett and several Red Sox players singing on a cover of Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part One.” “Part Two,” which has no lyrics except for the “hey” chant, is the one that gets played at parks around the country. Valauskas says, “I thought it would be interesting to do the version with lyrics mostly because it is just weird and that not very many people know it.”

Gammons, who played in a band in college, turned from MC to performer at the 2003 benefit. He jokes that his first concert appearance in almost 40 years was made easier by the “great safety net” onstage of The Gentlemen with Janovitz and Eisenstein. That led to Gammons and the Hot Stove All Stars covering Chuck Berry’s “Carol” for the album. “Peter was great in the studio,” comments Valauskas. “I was a little surprised only on that he hadn’t recorded since 1964. His singing on that track is really good and it didn’t take him very long to nail it. Initially it was a little strange backing him up because of the famous person aspect, but that went away pretty quickly. It is a pretty natural fit with the Gentlemen because of the old school rock n’ roll thing. Gammons is such a music fan and rock n’ roll historian—it is not only a good time playing with the guy but you actually get a music history lesson (as well as some baseball insider info) playing with him.” As for his studio experience, Gammons adds, “I was amazed at how it turned out. I said to Ed at one point, ‘That isn’t exactly what I thought I sounded like.’”

For Gammons and company, the goal now is to keep raising money for the Jimmy Fund. A DVD of the 2003 show is in the works for later this year. And a second album is also in the planning stages, with even more baseball and rock connections. “In addition to the Gammons track and the Gary Glitter cover,” Valauskas reveals, “We cut a version of ‘Simple Man’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd that we were hoping to get Tim Wakefield to come down and sing on but unfortunately, scheduling never allowed it to happen. Maybe we’ll get him for the next one.”

Gammons adds that Boston is the perfect place to keep doing this benefit series. “One of the reasons this works so well in Boston is that Boston is America’s biggest college town. And it’s essentially two things—baseball and rock n’ roll. Those are the two biggest things in town. Maybe that’s why I love it here so much.”
(To order the album, go to HotStoveCoolMusic.com)
___________________________________

Postscript: I couldn’t let a chance to speak with Peter Gammons go by without asking a couple of regular baseball related questions.

Zisk: Who do you think improved the most in the off-season?

Gammons: The Phillies. Getting Billy Wagner and Tim Worrell and Eric Milton—they had pretty good starting pitching. Now they have great starting pitching and a great bullpen. They could be really, really good.

Zisk: If Larry Bowa has slow start with this team, does that put him in jeopardy after the end of last year.

Gammons: Yes, I think they’ll be a great deal of pressure because everybody expects him to win.

Zisk: What do you think of how the Mets approached the off-season?

Gammons: I think that Jim Duquette has instituted a philosophy, a philosophy I thought they should have had a long time ago. And that is, “We’re not going to go around and get slugging name stars that will please the back pages of the papers. We’re going to go out and get players that can adapt to Shea Stadium.” Shea Stadium is one of the worse places to play and hit in baseball. So his idea is to go out and get good defensive players, get pitching and make life miserable for people when they come there. And I think that’s the way to be successful, and I think that he’s got a plan that has a chance to be really successful. In my mind, you can have Andruw Jones and Tori Hunter and all the rest of them. In my mind, Mike Cameron’s the best centerfielder in the game. They got a great defensive shortstop in Matsui, and Reyes will be a great second basemen. They started out by really improving the defense in the middle. They’re not going to go to first place in one year, but for once they have a plan, which is something they haven’t really had in the past, you may have noticed.

Zisk: Yes, yes I have. (Laughs)


The Oddball Events of 2003
by John Shiffert

Strange events in baseball come in many shapes and sizes. Some take place on the field. Others, off the field. Some evoke a feeling of déjà vu. Others leave you wondering, “How in the world did that happen,” or saying “That’ll never happen again in a million years.” (Want to bet? Oops, can’t say that...there’s no betting in baseball.) In that regard, the 2003 season was no different than the 150 or so odd campaigns that proceeded it. So, let’s take a look at the Oddball Events of 2003, and see if they’re any odder than some of baseball’s past strange occurrences.

The fun this past season actually started in Spring Training, when Padres pitcher Jay Witasick got hurt taking out the garbage. Although that escapade earned Witasick the Injury of the Year Award, it’s unlikely he’ll be seen singing “I Love Trash” anytime soon. Now, while there haven’t been many other trash-related injuries in baseball (unless they were the end result of trash talking), Witasick certainly isn't the first person to get hurt in an unusual manner—remember when Wade Boggs broke a rib falling on to a couch while trying to put on a pair of cowboy boots? Or, the day George Metkovich got his nickname, by getting speared in the foot by a catfish he had just landed on a fishing expedition? So, at least Witasick has company in the odd injury category.

However, there is simply no matching what has to stand as THE Oddball Event of 2003: On the Field Division. It took place on July 9, in Milwaukee’s Miller Park, proving, at least for one day, that the Brew Crew made headlines for something other than ineptitude on the field. Randall Simon of the Pirates became, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, the first major leaguer to attack a seven-foot Italian Sausage with a baseball bat between innings. (Actually, it was during a smoked meat footrace...the daily highlight of Brewers’ home games, and a tribute to Miller Park’s fine knockwurst.) And, to get suspended for three games for same.

There has since been much speculation as to the possible reason for the Simon Sausage Slashing...some of which you may not have heard previously...

• He thought the offending link was mocking the Pittsburgh team’s former nickname. In 1887, when they first jumped from the American Association to the National League, the Pittsburgh team wore gaudy blue and black striped uniforms, leading some sportswriters to call them the “Smoked Italians.” (No, I’m not making this up.)
  
• Simon thought that John Rocker had taken up a new career, dressing as a sausage and running through ballparks (he might as well, he certainly can't pitch anymore). In case you’ve forgotten, Rocker was thought to have been referring to Simon in his “fat monkey” comment in his infamous Off-the-Rocker Sports Illustrated interview.
  
• Since he was dressed all in bright yellow (the Pirates’ hideous late ’70s retro unis), Simon was just trying to put some mustard on the hot dog in the race, and missed.
  
• He knew the person in the Sausage outfit was a young woman, and, caveman-style, he was trying to get a date.
  
• Since Simon is 6-0 and about 250 pounds, and the game was running long, he wanted to spear a snack with his bat.
  
• Finally, since Simon’s career Strikeout/Walk ratio is 2:1, he’ll clearly swing at anything.

Now, that’s not to say there haven’t been plenty of other equally odd happenings in baseball over the years, even within in the Mascot Category. For instance, there was the time in 1978 when the San Diego Chicken almost caused a riot in Veterans Stadium by practically molesting the Phillies’ pin-up ballgirl, Mary Sue Styles, on the field before a game.

And while we’re speaking about assaults, the most famous event took place on May 15, 1912, when Ty Cobb went into the stands in Hilltop Park in New York and attacked Claude Lueker, a crippled Tammany Hall flunky (“He has no hands,” someone in the stands called out. “I don’t care if he has no feet,” answered Cobb) with a vile tongue. What’s not commonly known about this event, according to Ron Cobb—no, I don’t know if he’s a relative—is that the two protagonists knew each other, and there was already bad blood between them from earlier contretemps down South.

Here’s what Cobb (Ron, that is) had to say about the fracas: “Lueker and Cobb had a long running feud from down south, and Cobb selected Lueker to pounce on because he recognized him when he jumped into the stands.” Cobb (Ron again) even provides a quote from the

February 27, 1913, Cincinnati Times-Star on the subject...
“Tyrus Cobb may have a rocky session or two when he visits New York this summer. The man he walloped that fateful day on the bleachers has not forgotten or forgiven—I know, because I know him and have talked with him. By the way... little attention...was paid to the fact that his famous fracas was only part of an old Southern feud, entirely disconnected with base ball. Long ago Cobb and Claude Lueker, who received the wallops, were Georgia boys, and never harmonized, having many fights and contracting a strong personal enmity.”

Actually, no direct quote of what Lueker said has survived, so we’ll speculate that maybe he was singing (to the tune of “Dixie”)...
“Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton.
I smell you, and you smell rotten.
Get away, get away, get away...
you stink!”

Maybe... hey, this is a family magazine!

And then there’s June 30, 1959, a day that will go down in history for unintentional low comedy on the diamond. The Cardinals are playing the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Bob Anderson is on the mound, pitching to Stan Musial in the top of the fourth. A 3-1 pitch gets by catcher Sammy Taylor, who, instead of pursuing the ball (while Musial is heading to first, and subsequently second) stops to argue with umpire Vic Delmore, claiming the ball hit Musial’s bat. Meanwhile, despite the fact that no one has called “time,” the Cubs’ batboy gives the ball to famed PA announcer Pat Pieper (who sat right next to the field) just before Cubs’ third baseman Alvin Dark arrives on the scene to retrieve same in an attempt to prevent Musial from getting three bases on a walk (was Stan the Man great... going for a triple on a walk). He guns the ball down to Ernie Banks in the neighborhood of second base. With “time” still not having been called or granted, the harried Delmore, still at home plate, does the unthinkable... he pulls out ANOTHER ball, and plops it in Anderson’s glove, at just about the same time Dark makes his throw from way behind the plate. Anderson, seeing The Man on the basepaths, guns the new ball towards second base, only to have it go into center field. Stanley Frank, seeing this ball sail by him, lights out for third, only to run into future fellow Hall of Famer Banks, who is holding the original ball.

After a 10-minute argument featuring extended legal briefs from all parties involved (can you imagine what would have happened if this was 10 years later, and Leo Durocher was the Cubs’ manager?), Musial is called out. Well, Banks DID tag him with the original ball. Cards’ manager Solly Hemus (a notorious crybaby, anyway) protests the game, which turns out to be meaningless when the Cards win 4-1.

And you wonder why one of the Cards’ broadcasters of that game, Joe Garagiola, wrote a book called, Baseball is a Funny Game…

There were, of course, other funny (or strange or oddball) events in 2003.

How can you explain the continuing complete loss of control by the Cardinals’ one-time top pitching prospect? Yes, Rick Ankiel still has Steve Blass Disease. In 54 innings of Double A ball in 2003 he walked 49, hit six batters and threw 10 wild pitches and ran up a 6.29 ERA.

Also in the Strange Pitching Feats category, were the happenings in the second week in April. Three of the best pitchers in baseball—Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez—all suffered historic shellings within three days of each other.

Pedro - 4 1/3 IP, 9 H, 10 R/ER, 4 BB, 5 SO
The Big Unit - 4 2/3 IP, 10 H, 10 R/ER, 2 BB, 4 SO
Mad Dog - 5 2/3 IP, 12 H, 10 R, 7 ER, 3 BB, 7 SO

At least Maddux had the excuse of pitching against a team that had Jim Thome in the lineup (the Phillies.) Pedro got blitzed by the Orioles and the Big Unit by the Brewers. One thing none of the three of them had was an injury excuse. However, that’s not to say 2003 didn’t have other interesting injury angles. For some reason, there was an epidemic of oblique muscle injuries early in the year—10 players sent to the DL in less than two months...
March 19 - Dan Wilson, C, Mariners
March 21 - Kevin Mench, OF, Rangers
March 21 - Carlos Beltran, OF, Royals
March 26 - Ben Broussard, 1B, Indians
April 1 - Jason Michaels, OF, Phillies

After the season started, there was a two-week hiatus before the oblique bug bit again (it’s worth noting that only nine players were disabled with oblique injuries during all of 2002)...
April 17 - Jeff Cirillo, 3B, Mariners
April 20 - Josh Fogg, P, Pirates
April 29 - Chad Fox, P, Red Sox
May 2 - Rodrigo Lopez, P, Orioles
May 5 - Stephen Randolph, P, Diamondbacks

Now, maybe you consider the Sammy Sosa corked bat incident a minor affair, or a major faux pas. In either case, it was hardly unique. For instance, in August 1923, Babe Ruth was caught using a bat that was actually four different pieces of wood glued together. And not only that, but when Dave Henderson had a chance to examine another Ruthian bat in 1983, he noticed that the round end of the bat didn't match the wood of the barrel of the bat. “That’s a plug,” said Hendu. “This bat is corked.” Actually, altering bats is an old and (dis?)honored baseball tradition. Here’s a very brief list of some of the other players who have been identified with souped-up bats: Albert Belle, Billy Hatcher (superballs), Ken Williams (maybe the first to cork a bat), George Sisler (he drove nails in his bat, and filed off the ends), Norm Cash (“I owe my 1961 batting title to my hollow bats,” he is supposed to have said), Graig Nettles (he also used superballs), Amos Otis and Wilton Guerrero.

And then came the post season... and we were treated to a seemingly unending parade of strange happenings. Now, I don’t believe in curses, whether at the behest of the greatest baseball player of all time or an aggrieved goat owner. And yet...you could almost see it coming on the evening of October 14, 2003. Almost 74 years to the day from the biggest disaster in World Series history, the 2003 Cubs saw history repeat itself...blowing a shutout, and a seemingly safe lead, late in a key postseason game. In 1929, in the bottom of the seventh, Charlie Root had the A’s just as much under control as Mark Prior had the Marlins, only then it was an 8-0 lead and just nine outs to go before the Cubbies would even the Series at two games apiece. As you probably know, the Athletics dropped a 10-spot on the Cubs. Even worse, both Cubs teams, in addition to giving up the two biggest innings in post season history, were absolutely squashed by a steamroller that was rolling mainly through improbable circumstances. (Of course, it doesn’t help to have Dusty Baker deciding when and when not to change pitchers.) In 1929, it was Hack Wilson misplaying two catchable balls into a single and a home run. In 2003, it was Steve Bartman getting his grubby paws on a foul ball, and Alex Gonzalez failing to get his paws on a fair ball.

And then, two nights later, things got really weird, when the Red Sox saw 1949 repeat itself. The Yankees had led the Sox all that year, holding a 12 game lead in July. However, Yankee injuries and the Sox’ two pitching aces, Mel Parnell and Ellis Kinder, closed the gap and Boston actually had a one game lead going into the final two games of the year which, as fate would have it, were at Yankee Stadium. Game one, on October 1, put Allie Reynolds against Parnell. The Sox chased a wild Indian early in the game and took a 4-0 lead in the third inning. (When’s the last time the Sox had a 4-0 lead early in a key game? Gee, seems like just last October.) However, the Sox’ 25-game winner faltered a little in the middle innings, and manager Joe McCarthy (yes, the same Joe McCarthy who kept shuffling pitchers in and out for the Cubs on October 12, 1929... I told you this was going to be weird...) pulled him in the fifth for Joe Dobson (whose ERA was more than a run higher than Parnell’s) to get the platoon advantage... the Yankees promptly tied it at 4. With two outs in the bottom of the eighth, the Yankees’ fifth outfielder, Johnny Lindell, who would hit all of six dingers on the year, pulled a Dobson fastball down the left field line (where else?) for what would prove to be the game winner. At least it wasn’t a knuckleball. (In case you’re interested, Aaron Boone hit six home runs for the Yankees during the regular season.)

It gets better. Or worse, if you’re a Red Sox fan. The last game of 1949, on October 2, with the two teams tied, pitted the Yankees’ Vic Raschi (a pure power pitcher who liked to throw close to hitters... clearly, Roger Clemens was his stand-in) against the Sox’ Ellis Kinder (who, although he could throw hard, was an excellent and deceptive slider/change-up pitcher as well... and who liked to throw at hitters... hmmm, Pedro). Just two of the best pitchers in the AL going head-to-head with the season on the line, that's all. Kinder, trailing 1-0 in the top of the eighth, was lifted for a pinch hitter (by Joe McCarthy, of course), and the Yankees scored four times in the bottom half of the inning off of Parnell and Tex Hughson. The key blow? A bases-loaded pop fly double by Jerry Coleman that drove in three runs to make the score 5-0. (He had an extra RBI on Jorge Posada in the deal.) The Sox came back to score three times in the top of the ninth, but it was too late and the Yankees won 5-3.

As hard as it may be to believe, those weren’t the biggest flukes of the postseason...the biggest fluke was the Marlins (Marlins, fish, flukes... get it?) winning the World Series despite the Yankees leading them in every offensive and pitching category. And, of course, THAT had already happened to the Yankees once before as well, in 1960, when they absolutely slaughtered the Pirates, outscoring them 55-27, and still lost in seven games:

AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI W K BA OBP SLG OPS
1960 Pirates 234 27 60 11 0 4 26 12 26 .256 .293 .355 .648
1960 Yankees 269 55 91 13 4 10 54 18 40 .338 .380 .528 .908

The Yankees managed to top the Pirates in every offensive category (except that they struck out more than the Pirates)...just like what happened in the just-past World Series:

AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI W K BA OBP SLG OPS
2003 Marlins 203 17 47 8 0 2 17 14 48 .232 .281 .300 .581
2003 Yankees 207 21 54 10 1 6 21 22 49 .261 .332 .406 .738

Finally, a couple of statistical oddities. It was a bad year to be a pitcher named Franklin. Ryan of the Mariners led the American League in home runs allowed, with 34, and Wayne of the Brewers topped that, leading the National League in home runs allowed with 36. And then, there was Joe Kennedy, an otherwise innocuous 3-12 pitcher for Tampa Bay. Kennedy went out on May 2, 2003 and threw a one-hit, one-walk, six-strikeout shutout at the sorry Detroit Tigers. A fine game, running up a Game Score (Bill James’ method of ranking the quality of a pitcher’s start) of 90, a mark good enough to tie for the AL lead for the best Game Score of 2003.
However, that’s not what makes Kennedy so remarkable. His claim to fame is that, in his very next start, on May 7, he was pounded by the Minnesota Twins for 13 hits and 10 runs—all earned—in just four innings. Thus, in consecutive starts, we learn that Mr. Kennedy posted the best Game Score of the 2003 AL season (90) and then the WORST Game Score of the 2003 AL season (-5). Way to go, Joe.

John Shiffert is a member of the Society for Baseball Research (SABR), the former publisher of the Philadelphia Baseball File (1989-1991), the former Sports Information Director for Earlham College (1973-1974) and Drexel University (1975-1979) and a sportswriter of some 35 years experience, starting in high school in Philadelphia. Every week Shiffert (a baseball historian and Phillies fan living in exile outside of Atlanta) looks at a timely event from baseball's history and ties it into a event or news story from today's headlines in his free e-zine, 19 to 21 (www.baseball19to21.com).


What An Asstro (Fan): Why I Think My Friend Kip Is a Wiener
by Lisa Alcock

Monday, 1.12.04

I am at work and I just received an e-mail from my friend Evan informing me that Roger Clemens has signed with the Astros, press conference at 3:00 pm. I immediately e-mail my good friend, Kip (with whom I work and who you might remember wrote a scathing, anti-Clemens article in the previous issue of Zisk, titled: “Why I Think Roger Clemens is a Wiener”) whose immediate response is: “SWEET!!! You made my day!” My response is: “Huh?? What??? Who abducted my friend? Kip? Kip???” I feel like Michael Corleone when he’s betrayed by his brother, Fredo. You broke my heart, Kip. Sigh.

God is dead.
There is no Santa Claus.
I’ve lost faith.
I feel lost and alone.

Oh, Kip. What happened to your vitriol? How misguided you’ve become. I don’t even know who you are anymore. Remember when we both agreed on Clemens? We both thought he was a jackass. Remember when we rejoiced every time Clemens and the Yankees lost the World Series? Allow me, kind sir, to quote your article that appeared in the last issue of Zisk:

“I love to root against Roger Clemens. I can't stand to see him win…”

“No, my vitriol was saved for Roger Clemens.”

“Since his trade to the Yankees, Roger Clemens has done incredibly stupid act after annoying act.…”

“Well do us all a favor Roger, and puh-lease, make an ass out of yourself one more time.”

Did you forget that it was I who gave you the title for your aforementioned article? What’s happened?? Did becoming a dad make you more tolerant? Kip, how can I believe anything you now say? You’ve gone over to the dark side. You can say nothing to convince me otherwise. (Kip has just come over to my desk and while dancing sings: “I heart Roger Clemens!” about five times, and it took all my might to restrain myself and not punch him).

I don’t like Roger. Never have. Especially not since he beaned Piazza in the head…and threw bat fragments at him. He’s a wiener, period. Please, Roger, stay retired and go play golf or whatever it is retired ballplayers do.

Well, I guess this is the reality now—Clemens is an Astro. I can’t help but now wonder: will Roger bat when the Astros come to Shea Stadium this year? Hrmmm…well, wait, maybe there is a bright side to this story. Nah, he’ll probably have a clause in his contract that states he only pitches home games. Though, he did face Shawn Estes in 2002. (That was a great game. I was there. Roger’s first time at Shea after the “incidents,” the entire stadium erupting in chants of “Roooooger, Roooger.” Estes struck him out…and then Estes got a grand slam off of the wiener. The Mets shut out the Yankees too.) Fans don’t forget. I don’t forget. Step up to the plate, Roger Dodger. You’ve made several enemies in your career.

So, today I learned a valuable lesson: my friends are not infallible. Kip is still my good friend, even if he is misguided. I will say that I’m now prepared for (almost) anything.

Next thing you know Kip is going to tell me that he’s a Yankees fan.

Author’s note: Can Lisa and Kip put aside their off-the-field differences and play as one mean double play unit on their company softball team? Well, only if Kip can offer Lisa a contract for, say…$5 million. Bwahahahaaa!

Author’s second note: Truth be told…Kip and Lisa have been good friends for many years…nothing could really dissolve their friendship, except, well, if Kip did become a Yankee’s fan….which is where the author draws the line.

I Call Him Skywalker
by Kip Yates

It was close to midnight, October 22nd 2003, game four of the World Series, the New York Yankees up two games to one, the Florida Marlins clinging to a tenuous two run lead, top of the ninth, two runners on and Ruben Sierra one strike away from ending the Yankee threat. A Marlins win would even the series at two games a piece. Sierra lines a shot down the right field line; two run triple, tie ball game. I remember it so well because that was when my wife, Jamie, announced, “Kip, it’s time!” At that moment, that particular game ceased to exist, for me anyway. I could hardly care less about what happened now. So what! The Yankees would somehow pull this one out and win either game five or six and yet another World Series Championship. I wouldn’t know until much later that the Marlins somehow hung on for the next three innings and won the game on a 12th inning Alex Gonzalez home run. Tied Series! I didn’t know until later that afternoon. I had more pressing concerns. My son River was born a few hours earlier and because of some minor complications, was staying in the hospital special care ward. The next few days were a blur and the World Series was an after thought. I witnessed the last two gut-wrenching innings of game five and then slept off my very busy day. River was getting better by the hour but had to stay in special care for five days. By the time, I had the inclination to care, The Marlins had defeated the Yankees 4 games to 2 and I missed it. I missed Josh Beckett’s near immortal game and series clincher. The Yankees, as in 2001 and 2002 were defeated. Then I started to think: the Yanks are 0 for River, meaning that since my son was born, the Yankees had not won a game. My lord, how long into April 2004 would this streak go? Thus I dubbed him Skywalker. For at his birth began the crumbling of the Evil Empire.

You could argue with me if you want to, but facts are facts. The Yankees we have known for the past decade are falling apart. They are older and have traded away younger talent for uber-expensive flavors of the month. George Steinbrenner is up to his old tricks. Joe Torre is on the hot seat as the season begins more than he ever has been. Don Zimmer was practically driven away to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The team’s biggest free agent acquisitions are over 35 years of age. They lacked a legitimate third baseman thanks to Aaron Boone’s off season basketball misadventures and obtained shortstop Alex Rodriguez from the Texas Rangers with the intention of switching him to third. He is a mighty expensive band-aid. Their former MVP first baseman has shaky health. To top it all off, 60% of their 2003 staring rotation is gone and best of all, 40% of last year’s rotation will now call Houston home. My Houston Astros signed Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens. The formerly hated Roger Clemens now revered Roger Clemens! (See my article in issue #7 and check out Red’s [Ed: Zisk contributor Lisa Alcock] current article, a defamation of my very character, in this issue.) Does it get any better than one of the greatest pitchers of our generation and another of the most consistent pitchers of the past decade suiting up for my team? Well, River smiled at me the other day so maybe it does get better. The Houston Astros don’t make off season moves like this all of the time. I thought signing Jeff Kent last year was an aberration but this winter has been off the charts abnormal.

So, let’s get down to brass tacks. I am aware of what I wrote last year about Roger Clemens and maybe Jerry Seinfeld is right when he says that we don’t cheer for players, but rather we cheer for laundry. Roger Clemens is wearing the right laundry and that is all that has to be said. He is Anakin Skywalker. He fought for the good guys (Texas Longhorns and Boston Red Sox) and was swayed over to the dark side (the Yankees). He is now that battle-hardened veteran we see at the end of the last Star Wars episode, though not dead and glowing lime green while Ewoks dance around. Remember the end of the movie when Luke pulls off the helmet Darth Vader wore and for the first time we saw the man he used to be before he became a machine? That is Roger! He was lulled out of retirement and will figure prominently among an already good staff with the Astros. He just makes them better. He makes them more formidable. He and Pettitte bring a winning attitude to their hometown team. They have joined the rebel alliance and we all know that the good guys win in the end.

Ya Gotta Bereave
by John Weber

Some people aren’t supposed to age—or die. Like Captain Kangaroo. Or Johnny Cash. And certainly not Tug McGraw. Unbelievably, at least to the people of Philadelphia, the Tugger left this playing field on January 6th, 2004, at the way-too-young age of 59 after a ten-month-battle with a brain tumor.

I’ve been fortunate enough to see the life and career of Frank Edwin “Tug” McGraw from almost all perspectives. As a young, pennant-starved Phillies fan who watched Tug strike out Willie Wilson for the last out of the 1980 World Series, still the last Phillies world championship to date. As a colleague who produced Phillies baseball on the radio while Tug was a popular TV feature reporter. As a journalist who interviewed Tug on his life and times. And even as a member of Tug’s extended “family.” The family of Phillies fans who truly loved and appreciated this man’s warmth, humor and dedication, the family who still finds the fact that Tug is gone just unbelievable.

Why did we love Tug so much? The World Series win? Sure, but Mike Schmidt sure isn’t loved like Tug, and he had a little something to do with that championship as well. Neither is Steve Carlton nor Manny Trillo nor Garry Maddox, all important pieces of that ’80 squad. What made Tug stand out?

It was the twinkle in his eye. His banging his right thigh with his glove after a tough out. His exaggerated sighs of relief and patting his chest after wiggling out of a tough jam (and he sure LOVED to load the bases.). Tug also worked his tail off on that mound, pitching through pain, through injuries, through overuse, through just about everything, especially in ’80. If there’s one thing that Philadelphia likes to see in their sports heroes, it’s seeing them sweat. We wanna see the effort. Mike Schmidt was never fully embraced by the Philly fans because he made everything look easy. We didn’t see Schmitty sweat. Tugger, meanwhile, was usually drenched, and, most times, with a smile on his face.

And the things Tug would do for a laugh. There are so many moments, enough to fill the pages of this entire magazine and then some. For instance, in his first spring training as a Phillie, Tugger entered a game on St. Patrick’s Day…in a Phils uniform he had dyed green! Although the green uni didn’t go over well with the umpires, they let him keep the green hat. That started a tradition of the Phils wearing green caps every March 17th and auctioning them off for charity afterward. The day Elvis Presley died, the team was in Montreal closing out a series with the Expos. Tug showed up in the locker room with a complete Elvis outfit—right down to the hair. He then proceeded to wear the outfit on the flight to Chicago after the game! That started another tradition—Tug did his Elvis dress-up every year after that on the anniversary of the King’s death.

There was one last standout public moment in the life of Tug McGraw. It was the final day in the life of Veterans Stadium. My dad and I went to the game together. It was a day filled with memories. After the game, there were a few things planned that would ensure the old girl’s final day was long remembered. Like a parade of players, in uniform, from all of the teams that had competed in the Vet’s history. All the players were introduced, one by one. The 1980 team came out. No McGraw. I had heard from my friends at the Phillies that, despite public proclamations to the contrary, Tug was not doing well at all, and they weren’t sure he would make it to Christmas. I told my dad this, and concluded that he wasn’t feeling well enough to participate.

After the player parade, the fans were promised three re-enactments of memorable moments in Phillies history. Steve Carlton stepped to the mound and pretended to throw a record-breaking strikeout. Mike Schmidt stepped to the plate again, slammed his 500th home run all over again, and circled the bases (although he did the actual deed in Pittsburgh). And then…a black sedan suddenly appeared next to the Phillies bullpen, cruising slowly toward the infield. The cheers were deafening as everyone in the park knew who was in that car. As Frank Edwin Tug McGraw exited that car between home and first and strode toward the mound, it really was 1980 again. He pitched from the stretch. The Vet was pandemonium. Tug threw that final imaginary pitch. An imaginary Willie Wilson missed it again. And Tug leapt into the air, just like he did on that incredible night. And as he came back to earth, every player from every Phillies team taking part in the day rushed toward him, engulfing him in a sea of red pinstripes, hugging him, patting him on the back, just trying to touch him, to grab a piece of magic.

It was another Tug McGraw memory no one in Philadelphia would ever forget.

Thanks, Tug, for everything you did—on the field and off.

John Weber produced Phillies baseball on radio for six years, including the grand and glorious World Series year of 1993, six of the best years of his life so far, and has attended every World Series involving the Phils in his lifetime (that would be three).

My Relationship With Baseball
by Lisa Alcock

So much has happened in the off-season, much of it enraging, some of it depressing and some of it comical1. My brother and a few of my friends are so mad at the sport—the sheer stupidity of the owners (Tom Hicks) and the greediness of the players—that they’ve decided to give up on baseball for good. I’ve read the same news stories my brother and friends have, yet I remain hopeful about the state of baseball. Recently I have realized that my relationship with MLB is quite similar to several of my past dating experiences with men.

Initially, I get excited about the prospects of a new baseball season. Usually in December when [Zisk staffer] Kip [Yates] and I are well into NHL season we begin to count down the days until pitchers and catchers report. In the dead of winter nothing seems more exciting than the promise of a new baseball season. My head begins to fill with thoughts of sitting at Shea with friends on warm summer evenings, beer in hand, enjoying the game. Similarly, when a prospective gentlemen (and I use that term loosely, because there have been so few to fit that definition) enters my life the first few dates are exciting and I’m filled with glee at the new prospect.

Getting back to baseball…something happens to piss me off in general, like, say the greediness of players (“Pay-Rod” comes to mind) who have no team allegiance and go to whatever team is offering them the most money; or owners who think they can buy themselves a championship. (Last I checked there were 162 games, Georgie. That and you need some lefty pitchers.) I get mad and frustrated and wonder “Why isn’t there a salary cap?” Or “Why can’t every team begin on a level monetary field?” I bitch about the Yankees to anyone who will lend a compassionate ear. Sometimes during mid-season I give baseball the cold shoulder for awhile—limit myself only to watching games on TV. But I never give up on the sport. I remain hopeful. (Or is it naivety? Am I ignoring the blaring inherent problems within baseball?)

Like baseball, I bitch about dating. I have great dates with guys, we make plans to go out again, then they cancel on me and I never hear from them again. Or I have really terrible dates where there’s no connection between me and the guy. I quit for periods, but I always come back….forever hopeful, thinking that if I just keep trying maybe I’ll meet a good one.

I agree with much of what Kip discusses in “Valentine’s Day Massacre?” [See article elsewhere in this issue.] However, I don’t think I could give up on baseball. How could I? I’ve been with it for so long; I can’t just quit cold turkey. I have many great childhood memories inextricably linked to baseball. I can’t remember exactly how old I was when my family and I started going to downtown Detroit to the corner of Michigan and Trumball to watch the Tigers. I remember being awed by Trammell and Sweet Lou’s abilities to make double play after double play seem almost effortless. I played years of softball in grade school which solidified my love and understanding of the game of baseball. I was on teams that were similar to the Bad News Bears, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t the best outfielder, but that’s not the point. Amongst other things I was learning how to get along with my fellow teammates and play as a unit. We were playing because we enjoyed softball and the competition. It was my Mom who took me to K-mart to buy my first glove (it was a Cooper) and my Dad who showed me how to oil it and break it in. I cherish the times playing catch with my dad in my backyard. He taught me how to ground worm burners and catch pop flies in the setting sun during Michigan summers.

I guess I could be jaded by my past dating experiences, and be cynical about current or future dates, but I’m not. Experience has helped me understand what I want. Just as I could be jaded and cynical about the state of baseball, I’m not. Baseball has the potential to change and build upon past mistakes. I think things will get better for the both of us.

An outsider might wonder why I still date. They may call it blind stupidity, but I call it hope. Hope that something will work out. I also have hope for the sport of baseball. Hope for a salary cap, hope for better revenue sharing and hope that there are still a few baseball players out there who really love playing the game, and are as wide-eyed about the sport as I am.

1 - I’d like to vote for my favorite couples of the season right now. For the NL: Clemens and Pettitte, and for the AL: Jeter and Pay-Rod.

By day, Lisa Alcock is a copyeditor at a legal publishing company. By night, she can usually be found at the gym, or at home watching Law & Order reruns and SportsCenter. Her dream job is to work at ESPN. It is also her dream to date Mark Mulder. The author would like to admit that she has not read the Chicago Manual of Style in its entirety. Kip Yates says of the author: “When she steps inside the white lines herself, she can also bring it!”

Richard Nixon, Reggie Jackson and My List of Enemies
by Mike Faloon

There is an old saying…opinions about why Americans ontinue to despise former president Richard Nixon are like assholes, everyone has one. Here is mine: even from the grave, Dick reminds us of our uglier selves. Who among us doesn’t yield to paranoia once in awhile? Who doesn’t cover up the occasional mistake at work? And who doesn’t keep a list of enemies? I know I do, a list of my baseball enemies.

I was nine when I began my list. It was Game 4 of the 1978 World Series. The Dodgers were up two games to one and clearly en route to avenging their defeat in the ‘77 Series, my first fall classic. I was in Mr. “I use the girls’ bathroom because it’s a jungle in the boys’ room” Hogan’s third grade class, and the only kid in the class rooting for the Dodgers. I knew nothing about the Dodgers prior to the series, but I knew that everyone in my class was pulling for the Yankees and my contrarian instincts led me to siding with Lasorda and company. Thus, my first World Series experience was one of social isolation and, when the Dodgers lost in six games, disappointment.

But ’78 was going to be different. The Dodgers were going to win, and I had an ally in Darin Watkins. He was not in my class, but he was in the class next door. And this being the ’70s and the era of open classrooms (In the school’s new wing, the classrooms were not separated by walls. Instead, a combination of cabinets, closets, and other storage units—all on wheels, none going from floor to ceiling, and at least one of which was a mere three to four feet high—divided one room from the next), Darin and I were able to touch base during the day. I remember leaning over the short counter in the short time between reading and math and discussing the series with Darin. We had a lot to talk about because the Dodgers had taken Game One in an 11-5 romp, and then won Game 2 in classic Davey and Goliath style. Dodger rookie reliever Bob Welch entered the ninth inning protecting a fragile 4-3 lead. Reggie Jackson came to the plate with two on and two out. The count went full and Jackson fouled off a trio of 3-2 offerings before Welch struck out Mr. October on the following pitch.

We were the only kids not rooting for the Yankees and we were certain that the Dodgers were going to win it all in ’78. Revenge for ’77 was in the air, bragging rights were imminent. Then Reggie Jackson stuck his ass in the way of our destiny. Or rather his hip.

Jackson had slugged the Yankees past the Dodgers in ’77, and though I disliked the guy, there was no denying his talent. Three home runs in a World Series game is the stuff of legend. In ’77 Jackson had earned the Yankees a World Series title; in ’78 he stole it for them.

Game 4, bottom of the sixth. Jackson was on first when Lou Pinella sent a low, soft liner to Dodger shortstop Bill Russell. Jackson assumed that Russell would catch the liner, so he, Jackson, stayed close to first. But Russell did not catch the liner. Instead he fielded it on a hop, flipped it to second baseman Davey Lopes who then relayed the ball to first baseman Steve Garvey. Only the ball never made it to Garvey. Jackson stuck out his hip and sent the ball into right field. Pinella reached base safely and ignited a Yankee rally. The pinstripes never looked back, going on to win the next three games and take the series in six.

At least that is the way I remember it. The record books will tell you different. They will minimize the impact of Jackson’s egregious actions. They will say that the Yankees scored but one run in the fateful sixth inning and did not tie the game until the eighth. They will tell further tales of the Yankees not winning the game until the bottom of the tenth. Do not trust the record books. I know what I saw. Jackson looked right at me and said, “Do you want to know what heartache feels like, kid? This is what you get for letting hope seep into your soul” just before he deliberately deflected Lopes’ throw. And he knew, like I knew, that he had just snuffed out the Dodgers’ momentum, that the Dodger collapse was underway, that he had stolen a World Series championship while millions watched.

And what better way to deal with bitter resentment than to start an enemies list?

Next issue: Enemy #2 - The Atlanta Braves

Mike Faloon is the publisher of Zisk. He denies allegations that he is currently in negotiations with G. Gordon Liddy and other former members of CREEP.

Apes And Angels: Contemporary Baseball Fiction and My Century of Misery
by Michael Baker

“Did Cartwright say that his
endeavor was to balance the arithmetic
of the game against its geometry?
All of sport, from bushkazi to
baseball, is man’s endeavor to balance
his animal instinct against his civilizing
intellect. On the sporting field, to borrow
Mister Disraeli’s phrase, we are both ape and angel.”
Eric Rolfe Greenberg,
The Celebrant

“Go fuck yourself.”
Albert Belle, to NBC’s Hannah Storm

The Seventh Babe, Jerome Charyn, 1979
Shoeless Joe, W.P. Kinsella, 1981
The Celebrant, Eric Rolfe Greenberg, 1983
The Greatest Slump of All Time, David Carkeet, 1984
Blue Ruin, Brendan Boyd, 1991

On April 22nd, 1901, the first game of the American League was played; the Chicago White Sox barely bested my later-to-be-loved Cleveland Indians, 8-2. And if you excuse the unlikely aberrations of the periodic anomaly—Bagby, Boudreau, or a Baerga—it has been downhill for the Tribe ever since, a ceaseless sadistic and masochistic contortion of cosmic athletic ineptitude, mind-bogglingly bad trades, selfish and preening players, shortsighted and greedy owners, and genius foes: Cobb, Ruth, Foxx, Greenberg, Williams, Mantle, and Killebrew. The Tribe that year finished 54-82; their clean-up hitter amassed 55 RBI’s; their leadoff hitter was Candy LaChance; their sterling reserves included Zaza, Truck, Shorty, and Paddy. Reading, however, baseball books, staring at muted TV’s in decaying bars in downtown Akron, listening to Herb Score on the radio, studying statistics, attending games for years in a near-empty stadium, and following, begging with, laughing over and sobbing because of my Cleveland Indians, have made me who I am, or am not: a complete shithead addled loser. And I wouldn’t change one called strike three, one late-August delusional hope, one dropped pop fly in the eighth. That absence of glory has become my cursed presence, the scarlet badge of a grinning drunk Indian.

There has been gleaned for me, however, some solace from baseball books. The ever present sense of spring renewal, the recognition of the latent potential in all human endeavor, the timelessness of a seven-run uprising, and the pouring over of stable statistics have called forth many a person, young and old, to whisper their secret fascination with this beautiful charade. And I am drawn to many of them: the dreamy and nostalgic non-fictions of Angell, Khan, Tygiel and Creamer; the saber-rattling of the hyper-zealous scientists, James and Palmer and their army of pencil pushers, who compare fielding statistics of Federal League third basemen; and, of course, the myriad fictionists. I prefer the odder ones: the game needs permanent debunkings, especially in opposition to the clichéd media heads or the seasonal comical angst of permanent losers—the Cubs, the Red Sox, and me. Some of the hallowed ones leave me cold, like forced eating of spinach or reading Tom Wolfe: they contain the same number of players and dirty jockstraps, but they call attention to their seriousness at every possible 7th inning stretch. Mark Harris’s “Henry Wiggins” novels are too homey, too winking at me because of their moral superiority. I prefer Thurber to Lardner. Period. Malamud—a great novelist—in his first, The Natural, uses many intelligent adjectives and way too many intellectual plot patterns, making me lament the dirt of my neighborhood ball field. Roth’s The Great American Novel blows up because of the comic tantrums, the great fabulist’s lack of details and perspiration. Better if one takes the game less mythically, with more immediacy, highlighting failed efforts, heroes in search of empty stadiums.

I prefer the protest and spirit of survival found in the non-Platonic pages of Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association, J. Henry Waugh, Prop., in the first third of DeLillo’s Underworld, and in the tiny men who inhabit their precarious tiny worlds of the five novels listed above. These celebrations and ceremonies, these mysterious powers of lost narrators, the prosleytizing characters who know not themselves, seek meaning, structure, and grace from the game. Marcus Aurelius, an opponent of the wild card and designated hitter, wrote that men need “sacrifice…the most primitive, the most natural and enduringly significant of old pagan sacrifices…and veritable consecration.” The characters in these books seek also to confirm beliefs: they have instinctive attachments to the order of 27 outs and 60 feet, 6 inches. While self interest, family, community, and the past may be crumbling, the game itself posits a radical morality, a set of codes handed down since Doubleday in hushed, secret conundrums exchanged in bars, dugouts, and hotel rooms. The characters here are anti-capitalists, anti-fascists. Although deeply washed in superstition, racism, provincialism, and hoary abstractions, these men, nonetheless, have predilections for the common, the same, the ordinary, free from the ache of longing. They are not liberated, or patriotic, or concerned with equality: they are ballplayers—adults in child-like games, attracted to patterns, and haters of dazzling interpretations.

These five novels share, besides the obvious, many things: enervated protagonists scarred from past falls, and fearful of future pink slips. They hate the owners; they are not even on firm ground regarding their fearless allies, the spectators. Each of the five novels share a love for the more ancient variety of the sport, when fans could walk up a buy a draught for their heroes; when the same couple thousand fans came to every game; when the salaries, gloves, and home runs were miniscule; when gamblers outnumbered the temperate. Except for Kinsella, whose famous novel became the more famous, and moribundly sanitized, Field of Dreams, the novelists here are wary of veteran players enjoying the sunsets from their southern porches, warm gins in their hands, daydreaming of Stonewall Jackson or Walter Johnson. These novels, and Kinsella’s, achieve what most great fiction achieves: prickings into our collective consciences; diagrams of failed dreams; a miniaturized and entropic present, harshly counter pointed with the bright promise of spring. The leaders of these fictions are jumpy, sad, seeking the balance between individual glory and collective action. Teamwork is often extolled, and as also with corporate America, iconoclasm is deprecated, caged, but these characters have secret weapons: they play brilliantly with beautiful bodies this game of chance and skill.

Shoeless Joe, W.P. Kinsella’s superb novel, restrained and tender, is about fathers and sons. Voices tell the narrator, Ray Kinsella, a struggling Iowa farmer, to build a baseball field. Once done, it is inhabited by members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox, architects of that year’s World Series scandal and their own dooms. The novel, like Caesar’s Gaul, is divided into three parts: the voices and the dream and the field; the bonding with another silenced artist, J.D. Salinger, who like Shoeless Joe Jackson of the Sox, wonders why he was chosen; and the long coda, where a former player who only got into one game with the Giants and another lost soul who for a half a century has claimed spurious professional experience add colorings of hope and integrity. They all seek reclamation, and they all get to rectify mistakes, or at least live second chances. Much sports fiction suffers from excessive idolatry, which partially mars this sad and thoughtful book. Bad baseball books, like French operetta or Lake Erie wineries, do not have a life outside their simplistic souls. Here, farming, fresh starts, and fathers take precedent, as the game, although sacred, is played for joy, more pitch and catch, less standing ovations. And the heroes, Jackson, Salinger, and the elder Kinsella are demystified, miniaturized. The strokes of portraiture are swift; the balance between cornball and baseball is taut. This is America: falling apart, isolated, seeking redress for long ago grievances. Although the character of the wife is transparent, and although the morality of gambling is never discussed, the book renders well the dignity of athleticism, the art of narrative making, and the fragile holds to positive delusions. The wicked bankers are beat back, the pristine players welcome all competition, and the narrator fights through his fear and trembling, putting on a glove and re-imagining the not-so-towering image of his father.

Because Kinsella’s book actually reaches concordance, and because it actually centers around decent people—delusional and felonious, but indefatigably decent—it is quite unlike the other four novels under consideration here. The tone and execution of Shoeless Joe is timorous, restrained, plangent in it its need for connections. The other four books celebrate chaos and cursing, doldrums and defeats—these multiple tongues can’t be shut down, so don’t bother inviting the Vicar for tea. Three of the four—excepting Carkeet’s novel of team and individual pathological depression—take place near the 1919, baseball’s watershed year. The shock of that scandal, the declining moments of glory of true heroes like Mathewson and Wagner, the war, the baseball fiscal disasters made pregnant by the Federal League War, uncertain boundaries extolled by Einstein and Freud, and the advent of Babe Ruth’s celebrated entrance to immortality in Yankee pinstripes cause these baseball worlds to collide with each other. Like the scales of measurement in Lilliput or Brobdignang everything becomes helter-skelter. Before 1919 there was a technical need for fantasy, but now with gambling and the Babe, the verisimilitude itself has become freakish and distorted. And obstacles are now the given: the curse of a banal democracy is that split between the shared principles of a unified shared purpose versus the fragmented individual’s search for identity. These novels depict America’s frightening embrace with onrushing darkness. The world was once safe and flat, and Cher was once a virgin, but now Babe Ruth out homers entire rosters.

David Carkeet’s The Greatest Slump of All Time is tender, mournful, and hilarious. The great painter Max Beckman promoted “a raw, average vulgar art which doesn’t live between sleepy fairy-tale moods and poetry but rather concedes a direct entrance to the fearful, commonplace, splendid, and the average grotesque banality in life.” This novel, about an entire starting roster on a National League team profoundly depressed, is as funny and as raw as any sporting book written. The ineffectual manager narrates a seemingly endless pornographic joke, constantly interrupted; the players devise or dream up improbable strategies that leave opponents open mouthed, bitter, and defeated. As the winning continues, the individuals fall apart, scared of success, resistant to the marital obligations, paranoid of teammates’ hitting streaks. There are bitterness, superstition, and roving day-to-day theories of life rejected and accepted; sad about the game, but terrified of life, these somehow sympathetic players endure each other, like Sisyphus. They batter the media’s clichés, fight for fathers’ and fans’ affections, and make it into the World Series. They, like Richard III, hate the idle pleasures of the day, and seek solace in guns, hotels, bars, and fantasies, all the while playing baseball expertly and gracefully. To one “the action on the field is like an orgasm taking twenty-three years to happen.” The skipper seeks patterns. Routine plays become baroque, confusing all except the individual engineer. Mothers sit silent. Many players “withdraw into silent, ardent resentment.” The novel, as with its depicted final game, never reaches satisfactory resolution. The players stalk off, and allow the reserves the glory, or the bitterness. One suicide and a mini rebellion and the players are soon prepping not for batting practice but post-career sadness, lives of deprivation, serious pain, and persistent disappointment. As with the running joke, and the fireballer pitcher’s virginity, and the season itself, there are no endings here, no voluntary mirth: just racism, grey depression, solitude, and no patterns; except the Yankees are in the World Series so the players go on a fishin’ trip, a few days earlier than they should have. Let their child conspire, and let the fans be ignorant of the players’ constant on-field panic. Fish neither talk back, nor carry weapons. There are no scores kept.

As rich as Carkeet’s book is about the fear of playing, similarly textured is the gambling fabric of Brendan Boyd’s Blue Ruin: A Novel of The 1919 World Series. As good as Eliot Asinof’s Eight Men Out is, Boyd’s fictionalization of the same topic rings truer: the conflation of post-War euphoria, the greed of gamblers and players, the profane slang, the depiction in to the minutiae of sadness of lost men, all sing here, through the eyes and voice of Joseph “Sport” Sullivan. Sullivan, a real actor in the drama of the Chicago team throwing, engineers a big payoff for himself, and once accomplished, the novel traces his fall; once Hamlet-like, contemplative, rueful, restrained, he was a pretty big fish in a dirty pond who owned a gambler’s code; after the bets were paid off, everything changed. Girlfriends were actually hookers; Hollywood was more real than the East Coast; money slipped through hands like water through a shot-up corpse. Ironically, the purposeful direction, conventions, and quotidian honor of Sullivan’s life were most in evidence in the planning and execution of the crime. Once it was discovered that a few people could manufacture such a catastrophic illusion-busting of this magnitude, the mosaic of life changed. There was no longer a bottom. Society failed in that it felt, as in slavery, mere codification, as in baseball player’s contracts, was mutual, or produced serenity. Just because a system works does not make it fair, moral, or desirable. The rebellious players and their sad lives; the gamblers who add, but don’t subtract; the owners and their pontifical avarice: no one at the advent of the Roaring Twenties was a winner. Sleep was forgotten. Money had no value. And every athletic competition could be fixed. In Mexico at the end, exiled, but safe from prosecution, Sport Sullivan is no longer a person: cut off from his language, his family, his way of life, he is rewarded with nothingness, no action, no wagering. All bets are off. He can dream of his foreign America, but that too is gone.

Another lost world, more tender, more simple, more moving, is conjured in Eric Rolfe Greenberg’s beautiful The Celebrant, a story about baseball at the turn of the century, the assimilation of Jews into society, and hero worship, here the larger than life pitcher for the New York Giants, Christy Mathewson, an immense figure, physically, athletically, and morally. Blue Ruin was slang for bad liquor, or disgraceful ruin, but here the sadness comes from within. Jackie, a pitcher of promise, a conflicted son of immigrants, and a master jeweler, traces Mathewson’s rise, and the Giants’, through a series of games realistically and accurately rendered: Matheweson’s perfect game; New York’s World Series win in 1905; Merkle’s boner; Snodgrass’s muff. Jackie’s brother, an inveterate gambler—friend to Hal Chase and John McGraw—provides the parallelism; at a time when the game itself provided the spectacle (as an execution) the viewer could only watch: the activity itself had a time-table, a rigid set of established rhythms and regulated repetitions. Fans were fans, that’s all. The physical elaboration of the event was all. But with the intercession of gambling, hero worshiping, stakes were raised, breaking the spirit of the contests and Jackie’s confidence in the American system, things as the dawn of the century had just promised. The game, and life, became reductionist parodies, thwarted by merely conventional ball playing or logical methods. There was too much pressure to bear; as the stakes rose, the play became a play. The naïve narrator maintained a nostalgic view of the game and as the ballplayers and owners exposed themselves as the brutal barbarians that they were, perception clouded. In the search for values, Jackie couldn’t maintain the balanced tension between vicarious fervor and the inherent naturalism of an action that ended either winning or losing. As a religious Jew, as an idealist, as a fan, he demanded transmogrification, not betting slips, mockery, or failed intentions. He lost his faith.

These immigrants’ sons—on and off the field—were drunken and disaffection scions of a hopeless heritage. The dialogue in all of these books resembles not so much a synthesis, or compromise, or communication, but jagged peaks of illogic. The characters can’t write about themselves because when they look into the mirrors they say “who the hell’s that?” Each of the novels loses momentum, writes about women badly, zigzags their tonal keys, and struggles for authenticity. But no sports book I know—not even Exley’s The Fan’s Notes—is as abrupt, vile, comic, horrific, or degenerative, with inane small talk, failed sexuality, questionable honor, as Jerome Charyn’s The Seventh Babe, a great American novel by a great American writer. Charyn practically re-invented, not merely re-invigorated, the American detective novel in his series about Marilyn and Isaac Sidel, and Blue Eyes and the Guzmans, and here his aim is equally rambunctious and high. The character, the seventh Babe in Baseball in the year 1923, Babe Raglan has a name that simultaneously echoes the motif of a Bildungsroman (a babe, around adult men for the first time), and Lord Ragland, creator of a literary chart of mythological patterns. Here, Charyn debunks these myths and re-applies them, for these baseball players, either in the big leagues or the outlaw Negro Leagues where Babe spends playing and managing the majority of his career, or for the hangers-on: truth and redemption come to the faux-foundling as he asserts his rugged individualism, frontier democracy, communion with and conquest of the natural world, and America’s sense of exceptionalism.

This books hums with life: it is wicked, scared and profane—almost a raw expose of the failure of sports, society, race, and the market during the 20’s and 30’s. Wounds, gaping physical ones and inner, figure preeminently, harkening to Sophocles’ last tragedy, Philoctetes, which is referred to several times near the end. As with all these books the past of baseball serves as a grand design that somehow becomes pale, and each of our heroes needs to grip with absent or unloving fathers, often hilariously symbolized by the wayward managers and their obtuse coaching staffs. No one knows the score at these contests. And if the story here is Adamic, searching for a prior Eden, the story is Oedipal as well, a tragedy that fathers get slain, before their time. Babe Raglan’s need for clarity is simply a need for the box scores of his daily life to measure concretely against the haziness of the dark hotel rooms. All five of these novels are picaresque and ribald, if also hollow inside: there are no benchmarks of greatness: Babe is no Babe Ruth no savior; Mathewson was gassed in France and died too young; Shoeless Joe, an illiterate hick with a magic bat, chased flies in South Carolina’s sandlots during his early fifties, fat, sweaty, and guilty; gamblers are exiled, outfielders commit suicide. The pockets of affirmation come from the relentless authorial zeal to depict the minor, but daily, struggle for domination in a game for children. Charyn does not curse democracy. He eviscerates it.

These fictions keep us warm during the long dark nights of our wintry discontent. They connect us to the past, create heroes from static box scores, and posit conflated vernacular, profane slang, and sporting lexicon to foment our limited vocabularies and imaginations. Virginia Woolf, noted switch hitter, said novelists were to “record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected….Any method is right, every method is right…no perception comes amiss.” These methods found in these five books are fundamentally the psychic disturbances of ambivalences. We love and hate. We pass, fail. Win. Lose. We yearn—or we should—for the underdogs, but loathe the congress of failures, the confederation of misery. And these fictions here are agent provocateurs stressing the potential sorry state of hero worship: we would probably be better off collectively mowing our lawns, painting our falling-apart porches, holding our children tighter, longer. Me? I have no porch. But I do have Albert Belle’s rookie card in my wallet, firm against my backside.

Michael Baker teaches composition at New Jersey colleges, where his students write about their fierce hatred of the New York Yankees.

The Hack Man
by Ken Derr

“What becomes a legend most?” the song goes, and when it comes to baseball, everybody has his own criteria. Some focus on power or clutch hitting, while other anal George Will-types look at consistency. For my greenbacks, though, a legend has nothing to do with the numbers. Hell, anybody can get lucky in the post-season, and if you believe the stat-geeks in Moneyball, the playoffs are all about luck anyway. No, to attain mythic status, one must perform with style, and it sure don’t hurt if that panache has a touch of the middle finger in it. To paraphrase then—who becomes a baseball legend most? Why, the Hack Man, of course.

Jeffrey Leonard was born in Hate City, Philadelphia, in 1955, the height of the Cold War—both of which seem appropriate to the man who would later become known as “Penitentiary Face” for his sullen scowl. Ironically, Leonard was signed as an amateur free agent by the dreaded Dodgers, but soon wisely made his way out of the great void and ended up in Houston, where he was named The Sporting News’ Rookie Player of the Year when he hit .290 with 23 steals for the Astros in 1979. But moving out of a cultural vacuum and into a literal one (the Astrodome sucked the life right of the game) was no way to make yourself a star, so when Jeffrey was traded, along with skill-deficient Dave Bergman, to the Giants for the work ethic-challenged Mike Ivie in 1981, it was only a matter of time before new nicknames were born.
Leonard bided his time by being aggressively mediocre for most of his years with the Giants. His stare was scarier than Dave Stewart’s, but he couldn’t match Stew’s playoff heroics or his falsetto. He was known as the “Hack Man” for his aggressive approach at the plate, which is really just a euphemism for a lack of discipline and a long line of strikeouts. No matter. The Giants, after years of bumbling ineptitude, finally returned to prominence under the Hum Baby tutelage of Roger Craig, whose down home country manner probably did not sit well with ole Penitentiary Face. But baseball is not about making kissy face—it’s about winning. So when the Giants finally won the West in 1987 and went off to face the Cardinals, few knew that a legend would soon be born.

Leonard had changed his Giants uniform number from 20 to 00, perhaps a sign of the nullity of human compassion lurking in his heart, or maybe just a count of the number of San Francisco Giant championships to this day, and that may have been the catalyst. Or it might have been the sea of St. Louis red hurling abuse in his general direction, fueling his lust for hate and his need to enrage entire cities. Who can say, but when Leonard homered in that first game, it was not the majestic flight of the ball that suggested a legend in the making. No, it was his trot, the now famous One Flap Down, with one arm held against his side and the other arm extended (one finger would have been too, in a perfect world). That alone would not have been enough, but he went on to homer in Game 2 as well, and Cardinal fans began to notice, and to well up with indignation. How dare he disrespect the house that Bud built?

When the black and orange returned to Frisco for Game 3, Giant outfielder Chili Davis (the same man who, when asked by reporters earlier in the season what he did differently after breaking out of a miserable slump and going 4-4 with two homers, replied, “I had 15 Scotch and sodas last night”) referred to St. Louis as a “cowtown,” which didn’t assure the boys a guided tour of the Arch upon their return to Bovine City for Game 6. Of course, Leonard homered in Games 3 and 4, and his One Flap Down rounding of the bases could not have lasted long enough for the hometown faithful. Four games, four homers, all punctuated by the best thirty-second middle finger in Giant history. So when the Giants returned, up three games to two, the suave fans of heiferland taunted the Hack Man, “Jeffrey Leonard eats quiche," “Leonard is a fruit,” showing off their devastating wit and progressive political sensibilities. What transpired in those two games I can’t recall, having repressed it so deeply that it must be lurking in the same murky strata of my subconscious as the event that stole my childhood, the Immaculate Reception—I do remember watching the games in Boulder, where I was pretending to attend grad school, and three days later, dropping out, driving straight to Vegas and waking up in the backseat of my Rabbit in the parking lot of a sleazy casino covered in hundred dollar bills, Colt 45 empties and soiled underwear. Like the events of those two days, memory of the final games is lost forever.

The Hack Man came to Spring Training in Scottsdale the next year even meaner than before. A buddy of mine was also there, and he somehow got his hands on one of Jeffrey’s cracked bats. Where the etched name should have been, it read, FUCK YOU, and it was inverted so he could put it right at the eye level of the catcher and the ump. Old Testament style rage was eating the man up, and he would never approach his ’87 greatness again. The Giants would eventually trade him to Milwaukee for the powerless and non-hitting Ernest Riles. Leonard would later briefly rejuvenate his career in Seattle before hanging up the scowl.

The Hack Man spent most of the ’90s as a minor league coach and hitting instructor, and would briefly resurface in sports pages in 2001, when Kevin Mitchell instigated a brawl against the team Leonard was managing in the Sonoma Independent League. In 2002 the Giants got their revenge against the Cardinals, sealing the deal when another mean-spirited bastard, Kenny Lofton, who had nearly started a brouhaha of his own earlier in the series after a brush back pitch, drove in David Bell with the winning run in the bottom of the ninth in Game 5. The San Francisco Chronicle looked up Jeffrey during the series, to take him for what turned out to be an unpleasant stroll down memory lane: “That series brings back bad memories for me. I still look at that MVP trophy (Leonard was then only the third player in postseason history to win the MVP award while his team lost the series) and have bad feelings. I was never an individual player. I was a team player. I remember holding that trophy during the interviews, saying, ‘I want a ring. I want a ring.’ Candy (Maldonado) messed up two fly balls, and it killed us. If they needed me to rile them up to play, they shouldn’t have been playing.” And so it’s not just me who suffers acute, pancreatic pains whenever I hear the name Oquendo. It’s not just me who wakes up in a cold sweat screaming “Death to Maldonado, Death to the Candyman!!!”

Jeffrey Leonard may now hold the coveted position of head baseball coach at Antelope Valley College in Lancaster, CA, but god dammit the man still cares about the past. He took on an entire city and almost brought it down, and he did it with the kind of singular, obnoxious flair that forever blurs the line between asshole and hero. What becomes a legend most? One flap down, baby, one flap down.

Ken Derr lives in Oakland and is deeply concerned about every aspect of this year's Giants roster. He vows that someday, some way, Jose Cruz Jr. will pay.

Bo Belinksy: Ladies Man Supreme
by Tim Hinely

I guess the closest thing we have to a ladies man these days is New York Yankees party boy Derek Jeter, which is pretty sad when you think about it (Jeter’s a dick) but no one, and I mean no one, talked the talk and walked the walk like Robert “Bo” Belinsky.

Bo was born in New York City on December 7th, 1936 but raised in Trenton, New Jersey. He made his major league debut on April 18th, 1962, but other than pitching a no-hitter in his rookie year of 1962, Belinsky had a rather unimpressive major league career. He played for five teams in his eight-year career and his career record was 28-51. His best year was that first year when he went 10-11, hardly the numbers of a Hall of Famer, but this guy was a legend for a different reason. Ol’ Bo could have any woman he wanted—and usually did. Did this make his teammates envious? Hell yes, but Bo didn’t care. In fact, there wasn’t much he did care about save for getting some tail at the end of the night.

In the early 1960’s baseball moved out to California and one of the upstart teams was the Los Angeles Angels, which started up in 1961. Bo’s career began the following year and, as legend has it, he held out for more money in his rookie year (Imagine that! The balls on this kid!) and got $8500 instead of the $6000 they initially offered him. This got the folks in la-la land talking about Bo Belinsky.

By today’s standards, a guy like Bo Belinsky would have women protesting his every game. But back then he could get away with comments like, “I think whores got a lot more class than some straight broads. You know where you stand with them” and “I have one rule about broads, they gotta come highly recommended.” Other pitchers, like Sandy Koufax to name one, had oodles more talent but didn’t get the kinds of headlines that Bo did merely because they didn’t drive a flashy candy-apple red Cadillac Eldorado or party all night at such L.A. hotspots like the Whiskey a Go-Go. Bo had the good looks and the attitude, that, “ I don’t give a shit” attitude that, for some odd reason, acts as a magnet for some women.

And the women—there were lots of them: Gilligan’s Island cutie Ginger, otherwise known as Tina Louise (Bo said, “Great body, great legs…hell of a broad”), Ann-Margaret (“She wasn’t quite as good looking or as sexy in person as she was on screen”), Connie Stevens (“Great girl but I wound up dating her 19-year-old cousin”), and many others like Juliet Prowse, Doris Duke and Paulette Goddard. But his best known romance was with Hollywood cheesecake pin-up/post Marilyn Monroe bottle-blond Mamie Van Doren. Hollywood gossip columnist Walter Winchell set them up and they actually hit it off. Legend has it that a sportswriter was interviewing Bo in his hotel room one day while Mamie sat next to them, naked, on the bed (“Greatest interview I ever had” remarked the scribe). They ended up getting engaged and Bo even got her a ring but when reality set in he got cold feet and called it all off. After more headlines and public fighting Bo got his $2000 ring back. And while they did get engaged on and off several more times, but they never did get married. In the end Bo made the comment, “I needed her like Custer needed Indians.” (Mamie later dated two other baseball players: Tony Conigliaro and Lee Meyers.)

Bo did eventually get married to Jo Collins, the former Playboy Playmate of the Year (1965) but the marriage was rocky at best. Bo cheated on Jo every chance he got and then got arrested for threatening her with a gun. He then very nearly killed both of them by crashing his car into a telephone pole and they ended up getting divorced a few years later.

Eventually Bo was sent to the minors in Hawaii. He loved it so much he moved there following his retirement in 1970, and then he faded away. One thing that kept him in the public’s mind was sportswriter Maury Allen’s book, Bo: Pitching and Wooing. In one chapter Allen asked Bo to reveal his secret to pitching that no hitter in his fourth major league game and Bo said, “The night before my no-hitter I bumped into this secretary out on the Strip. She was tall and thin and black haired so we wound up having a couple of drinks and I ended up making it with her at her pad...and I didn’t get home until 4:00 am. After having the no-hitter I tried finding her again and never did. She was my good luck charm so when I lost her I lost all of my pitching luck.”

In the end Hawaii ended up being a good and bad thing for Bo, as he got off booze and drugs (good) and ended up becoming a born again Christian (not good). Still, the thing that always sticks with me about Bo Belinsky is the comment he made once to former teammate Albie Pearson when Albie asked him what he wanted from life and Bo replied, “To live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse.”

Tim Hinely loves the Pittsburgh Pirates and lives in Portland, Oregon. He has been publishing his own zine, Dagger, for several years now. Send him $3.50 to see a copy to: PO Box 820102 Portland, OR 97282-1102 or write at: daggerboy@prodigy.net.

The Comedy of Baseball
by Steve Reynolds

Baseball managers throughout the years have made their mark by implementing great strategy (which ends up being copied by others), by coaxing the best out of less talented players and knowing exactly when to juggle their lineups. Some managers make their mark by using the f-word a lot. And so we present the transcript of Cubs manager Lee Elia’s legendary April 29th, 1983 tirade. This occurred after a daytime loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers at pre-lights Wrigley Field. Fortunately for us, local radio reporter Les Grobstein was there with his tape recorder, making his own Zapruder moment.

“Fuck those fucking fans who come out here and say they're Cub fans that are supposed to be behind you, ripping every fucking thing you do. I’ll tell you one fucking thing, I hope we get fucking hotter than shit, just to stuff it up them 3,000 fucking people that show up every fucking day, because if they’re the real Chicago fucking fans, they can kiss my fucking ass right downtown and PRINT IT.

“They’re really, really behind you around here...my fucking ass. What the fuck am I supposed to do, go out there and let my fucking players get destroyed every day and be quiet about it? For the fucking nickel-dime people who turn up? The motherfuckers don't even work. That's why they're out at the fucking game. They oughta go out and get a fucking job and find out what it's like to go out and earn a fucking living. Eighty-five percent of the fucking world is working. The other fifteen percent come out here. A fucking playground for the cocksuckers. Rip them motherfuckers. Rip them fucking cocksuckers like the fucking players. We got guys busting their fucking ass, and them fucking people boo. And that’s the Cubs? My fucking ass. They talk about the great fucking support the players get around here. I haven't seen it this fucking year. Everybody associated with this organization have been winners their whole fucking life. Everybody. And the credit is not given in that respect.

“All right, they don’t show because we’re 5 and 14...and unfortunately, that's the criteria of them dumb fifteen mother-fucking percent that come out to day baseball. The other eighty-five percent are earning a living. I tell you, it'll take more than a 5 and 12 or 5 and 14 to destroy the makeup of this club. I guarantee you that. There’s some fucking pros out there that wanna win. But you’re stuck in a fucking stigma of the fucking Dodgers and the Phillies and the Cardinals and all that cheap shit. It's unbelievable. It really is. It’s a disheartening fucking situation that we're in right now. Anybody who was associated with the Cub organization four or five years ago that came back and sees the multitude of progress that’s been made will understand that if they're baseball people, that 5 and 14 doesn't negate all that work. We got 143 fucking games left.

“What I’m trying to say is don't rip them fucking guys out there. Rip me. If you wanna rip somebody, rip my fucking ass. But don't rip them fucking guys because they’re giving everything they can give. And right now they're trying to do more than God gave ‘em, and that’s why we make the simple mistakes. That's exactly why.”

Steve Reynolds is the senior editor of Zisk and is known to curse as much as Lee Elia on occasion, especially when the Mets lose and the Yankees win. And he apologizes to Mike’s mom. He really likes the chocolate chip bars she makes.

Zisk Issue # 7

The Trail of Tears:
Every City I Move To Has a Shitty Baseball Team
by Lisa Alcock

To my utter and complete horror, it was recently brought to my attention by a friend of mine that every city in which I’ve chosen to live has had a baseball team with a shitty record: Detroit, Milwaukee and NYC (actually, I live in Queens and am a Mets fan). I can’t believe I’ve had such an impact, but let’s look at the facts.

Exhibit A:
I grew up in Canton, Michigan and the baseball team of my youth was the Detroit Tigers. I loved going to the corner of Michigan and Trumbull in Detroit to watch Sweet Lou (Whitaker) and Alan Trammell play. And who could forget the 1984 World Series? I couldn’t have been happier. But, every year after that the Tigers have yet to reclaim any sort of similar record. I got a little excited before this season began because the heroes from my youth: Alan, Lance (Parish) and Gibby (Kirk Gibson) were coming back to manage and coach the Tigers. I moved from Michigan to Wisconsin in 1994, so I cannot be held responsible for their record from 1995 to the present. Though, my parents still live in Michigan. Perhaps it’s their doing that the Tigers have only won 25 games this year and are on track to be worse than the 1962 Mets.

Exhibit B:
In 1994 I moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to attend grad school. I’m not sure I can be held responsible for the abysmal Brewers record though. I never attended a game at County Stadium and I was on hiatus from baseball. There was a period in my life that I didn’t pay attention to baseball [gasp!] on account of being disgusted with the sport. So my friend just might be wrong about my influence on Milwaukee’s horrid record. Though, wait a minute…I was following Cal Ripken’s consecutive game record…which I did watch, on TV. I am not sure if this actually counts as my re-introduction to baseball. Maybe I am responsible for their terrible record. Hmmm…

Exhibit C:
In 1999 I moved to NYC. Let’s see how the Mets have done since I’ve lived here: 1999: NLCS champs, not bad…but they could have gone farther. 2000: Heartbreaking loss to the Yankees in the World Series. 2001: They didn’t make the playoffs. 2002: Acquired very expensive players who didn’t produce, fired Bobby V. and hired Art Howe. 2003: I don’t think I need to comment on their current last place status.

So there you have it. Apparently I really do possess the power to influence a baseball team solely on where I choose to live. Now I think I can put my supernatural powers to work in a more positive fashion. So, I’ve decided to move. Hand me the Village Voice classifieds. You can reach me at my new address in the Bronx…

By day, Lisa Alcock is a copyeditor at a legal publishing company. By night, she can usually be found drinking a pint of Guinness at a local pub, or at home watching Law & Order reruns and SportsCenter. It is her dream job to work at ESPN. The author also admits that she has not read the Chicago Manual of Style in its entirety. Kip says of the author: “When she steps inside the white lines herself, she can bring it!”

Why I Think Roger Clemens is a Weiner
by Kip Yates

I love to root against Roger Clemens. I can't stand to see him win. I didn’t always feel this way. I grew up in Texas pulling for Roger Clemens but all that changed in 1999: the day the Rocket became a friggin’ New York Yankee. I pulled for the guy as he led the Texas Longhorns to a win in the deciding National Championship game in 1983. I pulled for him when he was selected 19th overall by the Boston Red Sox in that year’s draft. I pulled for him as he left game six of the 1986 World Series against the New York Mets because he had done it. He had led the Boston Red Sox to their first championship in almost 70 years. The Rocket had led his team to the promised land.

Boston had suffered numerous midsummer blues and the occasional October collapse throughout their colorful history. All the while, their hated American League rival, the New York Yankees, seemed to win every year. Baseball fans in Boston had suffered a dry spell that saw our grandfathers, long passed, who had rested their hopes on Red Sox teams led by Ted Williams, Dom Dimaggio, and Johnny Pesky, bequeath their suffering to their sons, our fathers, who similarly were wiped out by placing their hopes on Carl Yazstremski’s team and a little later, that of Carlton Fisk. Now, our fathers were gingerly placing their hopes on Dave Henderson, Dwight Evans, an elder Jim Rice, and a youthful Clemens. Their sons would not suffer the same defeat that killed their fathers and was summarily closing their own casket. No, their sons would know the sweet taste of victory. They would know what it was like to thumb their nose at New York and give their own “Bronx cheer”. When Roger Clemens excused himself from the remainder of game six, the Red Sox were only three innings from securing their first championship since 1918...and then all hell broke loose. You know the story. I don't have to rehash it. You know what happened and what didn't happen. What you may not be aware of though was that the Rocket tanked it long before Schiraldi grabbed the baseball, long before Bob Stanley's wild pitch, long before that ball went through Bill Buckner's legs. Roger Clemens was the man in 1986: winning the Cy Young, the MVP and setting a major league record by striking out 20 batters in a game. If there was anyone you wanted on the mound for the final out of the “final game” of the series, it was Roger Clemens; and he couldn't play through the blistering pain for a few more innings. For me that was when the myth of the Rocket started to show some cracks. You have to want to be on the mound when the deciding out is made. Especially if that final out relieves a city, such as Boston, from the long dark shadow baseball had cast upon it. And Roger Clemens didn't want to be there! It looked to me that he was content to watch his mates hold the lead he held when he left. After all, he was young; he had his whole career ahead of him to hoist his hand in the air, a number one gesture springing forth. What a cocky sum'bitch!

So now you know, Boston has not won a World Series in eighty-five years. What is worse, the Rocket has gone on to a Hall of Fame/Player of the Century career. Sure, most of those 300 wins happened while he was with the Red Sox. He continued to pitch reasonably and considerably well, despite what the Red Sox brass had thought. He even won two more Cy Young awards in Boston. However, in the Winter of 1997, Clemens, tired of the verbal abuse heaped on him by General Manager Dan Duquette, took his ball and went home—to Canada. The Rocket went through a rebirth as a Toronto Blue Jay, winning the Cy Young award twice more. Even then, I still had a considerable amount of respect for Clemens. I remember watching the television footage of him glaring at Mr. Duquette sitting in the Fenway box seat as he walked off the mound after a sterling performance against his former team and cheering for him. My respect for Clemens began to falter soon after though and since has continued to fall into an abyss of hatred.

In 1999, Clemens was traded to the (hated) Yankees. The boy who was denied a ring with Boston finally won a ring as an old man for the pinstripers, just one of the many, many, mercenaries hired by George Steinbrenner over the years. My respect for Roger Clemens dwindled slowly like black strap molasses leaking from a pan of southern fried goodness.

Originally, I was excited at the prospect of the hometown Houston Astros securing Clemens from the Blue Jays. Of course that excitement came to a screeching halt when Astros general manager, Jerry Hunsicker, proclaimed that he would love to have Roger Clemens but he was not going to meet the three year, 30-million dollar request that Clemens and his agents, the Hendry Brothers, were asking. Hunsicker held that Roger had a chance to get “Kevin Brown” money two years ago when he signed as a free agent with Toronto and he was not going to let this trade become a trade-and-sign. Good for you, Jerry, I concur. He can't treat a trade like a free agent signing. He missed that boat two years ago. Of course, Steinbrenner gave Roger everything he wanted. My Astros missed out on Clemens and I hated neither Hunsicker nor the grocer (owner Drayton Maclane made his fortune in the grocery business) for missing out on the Clemens sweepstakes.

No, my vitriol was saved for Roger Clemens.

Since the trade to the Yankees, Roger Clemens has done incredibly stupid act after annoying act. If he isn’t making a public spectacle of himself by touching the bust of Babe Ruth in centerfield before starting his home games, then it’s something else. There was the whole bean ball war with the Mets: The beaning of Piazza in an interleague game followed by the bat-throwing incident during the 2000 World Series. This was followed by the continued bad blood between Clemens and the Red Sox. Sitting on 299 wins and needing a victory against his former team for number 300, at the request of the Hall of Fame, he actually tried to wear a glove with a patch with the number 300 emblazoned on it. Clemens did not get number 300 that day and when he tried against the Detroit Tigers, one of the worst baseball teams to put on a uniform, he was denied again. The Roger Clemens number 300 train, sponsored by ESPN, pulled into the windy city and he was outdueled by fellow Texan and 20 strikeout pitcher, Kerry Wood. Woo hoo! Sure he finally got number 300 but it took him almost three weeks and stops in three cities before he joined the 300 club.

Then it got worse. Clemens started blabbing about how when he goes into the Hall of Fame; he wants to go in as a Yankee. But HOF executives claim that he will wear the cap of the team that he became a HOFer in and that my fine friend is the Boston Red Sox. Suck on that Roger! So what does he do next? He releases a statement saying if he is not allowed to go into the HOF as a Yankee, then he won't go to the ceremony at all, probably becoming the first player in history to raise a stink about something that cannot happen for over five full years. So again, he will just take his ball and go home. Well do us all a favor Roger and puh-lease, make an ass out of yourself one more time.

You big weenie!

An actor by trade, Kip Yates decided to give this writing thing a shot. Unfortunately, his wife Jamie refuses to listen anymore about the curse on the Red Sox and cannot bear anymore rants about Astros postseason failures ("He swung at ball four! Did you see that? Why did he swing at ball four...Oh my God Walt Weiss doesn't make that play again in a million chances...I hate you Kevin Brown, I really, really hate you...D-a-v-e- S-m-i-t-h?), so he relegates most of his time hating and consequently writing about the Yankees. Kip would like to thank Mike at Zisk for giving this poor scribe a chance. Oh yeah, Kip is expecting his first child this October and baby Yates will be indoctrinated into the world of baseball at a very young age.

2003 All Star Game: Behind the Music
by Jake Austen

Chicago is synonymous with “machine politics” (we used to be synonymous with the broader concepts of political corruption and election fraud...thanks Florida for letting us off the hook!) and the way the machine works is an elaborate system of favors and “hook-ups.” With that in mind I was absolutely shocked when I found myself with 2003 All Star Game tickets in hand acquired through completely legit means. Though I was prepared to work whatever meager connections and "people" I have to get in, somehow the postcard I sent in to the tickets sweepstakes yielded me four seats in the far corner of the towering upper deck. Though they cost in excess of $200 each for the worst seats I've ever had in the excess of 300 Comiskey Park I & II games I've attended, I was thrilled. In the end not having to rely on hook-ups served me well, as I likely would have broke my bank more severely to attend an exhibition game (for example, I ended up sitting next to the Smashing Pumpkins’ audio tech because my buddy who was going to sit with us got a “hook-up” that rewarded him with a lodge seat next to Billy Corgan that cost him half a grand and was within a high school quarterback's throw of our seat).

But that aside, my point in describing the remoteness of my seat is to make it clear that if you watched the game on TV you know what happened better than I. However, I'd love to tell you of some stuff you likely missed on TV...the 2003 All Star Game...Behind the Music!

There were a number of magical musical moments during the All Star Weekend, but the first was definitely the most amazing and I believe the highlight of the entire dozen hours spent at the stadium that weekend. The first night of activities was All Star Sunday, where two exhibition games were scheduled, one between USA born minor leaguers and non-US pre-rookies (“The Futures Game,” which replaced the more engaging and sentimental and superior Old-Timers Game) and one a softball game with celebrities and old-timers teaming up. Though it wasn't too exciting to watch a pitcher's duel between young players we never heard of, the late afternoon was far from unentertaining thanks to presence of nearly EVERY MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL MASCOT! That's right, a couple of dozen giant puppet-headed clowns were gleefully entertaining the fans to the fullest. Some of the puppets were a bit less talented and courser in their humor (the Rockies’ Dinger the Dinosaur and the Expos’ Youppi, for example) than some of the greats (the Pittsburgh Parrot and the classic Mr. Met). And some of the newer, hulking, generic “monster” characters seemed to have been built with pelvic thrusts as their main comedic activity (for example, Cleveland’s Slider, replacing the more offensive Chief Wahoo). But overall these were some entertaining dudes.

Between the baseball and softball games the mascots were introduced and danced on the dugouts while a couple of mini-trucks drove out, each pulling huge trailers with rows of giant amplifiers on them. Following was a large trailer with a rock band setup on it. After the mascots did their dances the band Live was introduced, and from behind the infield they played a couple of their ’90s hits on the rock float. I must say, the band seemed a bit out of place, with shaved heads and mohawks...only the burly, bearded regular-guy bass player looked like he belonged a the ballpark.

Not particularly interested in Alternative Rock as a concept, I spent the band's first song ignoring them and using my binoculars to get good ganders at my favorite mascots. I watched some general goofing, but then I was shocked to see my all time fave, the Padres’ Swingin’ Friar gathering in a couple of his fellow puppets (I believe Boston's Green Monster and Bernie Brewer) and putting their big heads together engaging in what seemed like a serious conversation. When I pointed this out to my wife she conjectured that these guys never see each other, it was like a convention, they were likely happy to see each other and discuss mascot issues. That seemed odd to me considering they were on the big stage, and luckily it turned out to be a bunk theory. For a ripple of a plan was now disseminating from mascot to mascot.

And when Live went into their second song the plan went into action.

Twenty-four giant puppet -headed mascots rushed the stage and formed a sprawling, chaotic, HILARIOUS mascot mosh pit! They were skanking, slamming, pogo-ing and shaking loosely hinged pelvises. Though there were no gorillas (only a lion, a cardinal, a bear and Billy the Marlin), they went APESHIT! It was one of the funniest gags I'd ever seen. They were going nuts, and when the Friar did the Curly/Angus Young lie-on-the-ground-run-in-a-circle move I was sold! This was the most hilarious ballpark rock & roll moment ever.

Notable is the fact that the band didn't seem to appreciate this spontaneous show of support. The lead singer completely ignored the moshers, pretending not to see them and the rockers didn't play to the pit at all. When their dreary song was over they left the stage without even a gesture towards the brilliant physical comics who made their brief set worthwhile. That is, all of them except Beardy, the best Live of them all, who jumped down and hugged the Pittsburgh Parrot.

If anyone doubts that the moshpit was spontaneous, note that when the pop punk band The Ataris played their cover of the hokey baseball hit “Boys of Summer” [Ed note: Penned by satan himself, Don Henley] before Mondays home run contest no such pit was enacted...those mascots had been taken to the woodshed.

There were several other good musical moments All Star Weekend. Brian McKnight matched Dave Winfield for longest softball dinger. Koko Taylor sang the tourist Blues chestnut “Sweet Home Chicago.” Sox legendary organist Nancy Faust rocked a few of her famous rock puns (“Proud Mary” for Scott Rolen...get it, "Rolen on the river...").

And Amy Grant bizarrely signaled for her band to pick up the tempo during “America the Beautiful”...and she was singing to a recording!

But all those paled compared to the punk puppet pandemonium. That marvelous moment proved that those mascots were truly All Stars!

Jake Austen edits Roctober Comics and Music magazine, the journal of popular music's dynamic obscurities, and (with his wife Jacqueline) produces the cable access children’s dance show Chic-A-Go-Go. His new book A Friendly Game of Poker is out from Chicago Review Press this Fall. His work has appeared in The Cartoon Music Book, Nickelodeon Magazine, Playboy, Spice Capades: The Spice Girls Comic Book and Bubblegum Music Is The Naked Truth. He has attended over 400 White Sox games, even when Gary Redus was the best player.

Ryan Duren: One Day at a Time
by Tim Hinely

Baseball and alcohol have always seemed to go hand in hand (at least as much as football and alcohol) and baseball has always had its share of drunks, guys who liked to tip more than a few back during their careers. Mickey Mantle was said to be sloshed on many an occasion while wearing the Yankee’s pinstripes. Old-time slugger Hack Wilson was said to be someone you wouldn’t wanna be around while he was hoisting a brewski and the same with Albert “Mr. Happy” Belle. In 1985 Sam McDowell called himself “the biggest, most hopeless, and most violent drunk in all of baseball.” Then there’s Bob Welch and Darryl Strawberry...well, we don’t even wanna get into those guys.

But what about Ryne Duren? Rinold George Duren Jr.? Who’s Ryne Duren, you say? Well, ol’ Ryne was probably baseball’s biggest AND most hopeless drunk (no, fuck you Sam). Duren’s career last for 11 years (from 1954-1965) and in that time span he played for seven different teams but perhaps his most prominent years were with the New York Yankees from 1958-1961.

For starters, the few photos I’ve seen of Duren made him look like nothing more than a reject from Revenge of the Nerds on a truly bad bender. He didn’t have the brash good looks of a Mantle or a Yogi Berra (snick snick) but what Duren lacked in Mel Gibson-ish looks he more than made up for in his fastball. Duren was known as baseball’s first “truly frightening power reliever.” He wore these thick coke-bottle glasses, probably couldn’t see a damn thing when he was straight, much less schnockered and this guy threw wall to wall heat. Rumor has it Mantle told him he was the fastest ever and even an authority as uh, knowledgeable as Tony Kubek said Duren tossed the ball faster than the Texas Tornado, Nolan Ryan (and Duren’s 87 strikeouts in 76 innings in 1958 and 96 strikeouts in 77 innings in 1959 is no small feat).

But alas, the powers that be in the office of the Yankees decided it was time to get rid of ol’ Ryne after the 1961 season. His game was falling off, his arm seemed to be losing strength, and, as Duren himself puts it, “By that time I was boozing quite a bit and my body was beginning to deteriorate. That’s why the Yankees got rid of me in 1961.” Well, there you have it. But this is no case of a guy quietly exiting the majors for comfy/pickled retirement years of lazing in the Lazy Boy. The life of hell was just beginning for Ryne Duren.

It all came down to self-esteem and Duren had none of it. “All I wanted out of life was for people to like me,” he once said. One time, while trying to impress Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, Duren got so loaded that both Mick and Ford came over to him and told him he couldn’t handle his liquor and to stop it. So completely hurt and embarrassed by this episode, Duren began to drink all by himself. Back in those days the apparent method of alcohol “rehab” was to trade the lush to another team. And this happened to Duren five more times from 1961-1965.

After hearing how hopeless of a drunk Duren was no team in baseball wanted him and a week after he tried to jump off a bridge he was out of baseball for good. From this point on Duren tried too many self-destructive acts to mention. He passed out with a cigarette and burned his house down. He zonked out while driving and slammed into another car. He blacked out one time and awoke face down in a swimming pool. He eventually was arrested for drunk driving and then, his wife left him.

On New Year’s Eve in 1965 he tried to cash in his own chips once again by parking his car on a railroad track in San Antonio, Texas. He sat there hoping to get creamed by the locomotive but instead the cops came and arrested him before the train could plow him down. If it wasn’t for bad luck, Duren would have had no luck at all. After that incident he hung around with the bums for a while before checking himself into the San Antonio State Mental Hospital. After 82 days there drying out with tranquilizers he went on the wagon for nearly a year, but didn’t have the strength to stay sober.

After a stint at the DePaul Rehabilitation Hospital he tried to kill himself a third time by sitting in a Milwaukee motel room for ten days and attempting to drink himself to death. After lapsing in and out of consciousness for a week, a stroke of better judgment came to him. As Duren puts it, “As a human being I was one big mess,” he said, “But I felt helpless to do anything about it.”
After a few more false starts at sobriety Duren was finally able to make it work with his third try at rehab. Duren finally stopped drinking in May of 1968 and since then he has devoted his life to helping professional and college athletes deal with alcohol and drug problems. In 1972 he became director of the alcohol rehab program at the Stoughton Community Hospital in Wisconsin and he even married a nurse he met there. He worked at that program until 1980. Since then he has written three books about his life, career and comeback from alcoholism (the same disease that apparently killed Mantle).

Today Duren, 73, still lives in his native Wisconsin and still works as an alcohol and drug abuse counselor. He works with a group called Winning Beyond Winning which is a group of ex-athletes helping people prevent the kind of life he (and many others in pro sports) have experienced.

Author’s note: Some of the information from this article came from a book called Baseball Babylon by Dan Gutman and two Internet articles on baseball; one by Chris Olds (entitled “One Baseball Card Can Reveal a lot From the Past”) and one by ESPN’s Rob Neyer (entitled “Loose Cannons Sometimes Go Astray”).

Tim Hinely loves the Pittsburgh Pirates and lives in Portland, Oregon. He has been publishing his own zine, Dagger, for several years now. Send him $3.50 to see a copy to: PO Box 820102 Portland, OR 97282-1102 or write at: daggerboy@prodigy.net.

Bring the Pain: An Epilogue
by David Shields

Pain is just weakness leaving your body.
—Slogan of The John Hopkins University crew team

During the 1998 and 1999 baseball seasons, while he was being sued for divorce, Atlanta Braves relief pitcher Mark Wohlers had difficulty getting the ball anywhere near the plate. In ’98, his earned-run-average (ERA) was 10.00, which is terrible; in ’99 it was 27.00, which is unheard-of awful. “I convinced myself the reason I couldn’t pitch straight was because I blew out my elbow,” Wohlers said, “even though deep down I don’t know what it was. The mind is a powerful thing.”

Karl Newell, a kinesiologist at the University of Illinois, says, “Consciousness gets in the way. If a pianist starts worrying where his fingers go while he’s playing, it will change the performance.”

Atlanta Braves catcher Dale Murphy made a few bad throws to second base during a spring training game in 1977. The next day, when an opponent tried to steal second base, Murphy threw the ball to the outfield fence on one hop. Later that year he twice hit his own pitcher in the back on throws to second base. “Your mind won’t let your natural abilities flow,” he said. “Your mind interferes, and you start thinking, ‘Where am I throwing? What am I doing? Instead of just throwing. Your mind starts working against you.” Unable even to return the ball to the pitcher, he was forced to move to the outfield, where he became a perennial All-Star.

At age 19, Steve Gasser was one of the stars of the Minnesota Twins’ minor-league system. In 1988, traded to the New York Mets and pitching in Class A ball, he walked 11 batters and threw 7 wild pitches in one inning, walked 21 batters and threw 13 wild pitches in six innings. He never pitched again.

Allan Lans, the Mets’ psychiatrist, says, “Everybody brings their personality to the game. It all comes down to an anxiety response. In baseball, people talk about someone getting wild. Then everyone comes rushing to the rescue to fix it and they just make the problem worse. ‘Just throw the damn ball,’ I tell them. ‘Stop thinking too much.’”

In I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self, Rodolfo Linás writes, “That which we call thinking is the evolutionary internalization of movement.”

Science writer Brian Hayes agrees: “Only organisms that move have brains. A tree has no need of a central nervous system because it’s not going anywhere, but an animal on the prowl needs to see where it’s headed and needs to predict, even envision its future place in the world. The poster-child for this close connection between motricity and mentality is the sea squirt. This marine creature starts life as a motile larva, equipped with a brainlike ganglion of about 300 neurons. But after a day or two of cavorting in the shallows, the larva finds a hospitable site on the bottom and puts down roots. As a sessile organism, it has no further use for a brain, and so it eats it.”

Baseball players suffer mental blocks far more often than athletes in more frenetic, less rote sports, such as football or basketball; in baseball, there’s too much time to stop and think. Shortstops and third basemen rarely suffer from the problem, since their throws are nearly always somewhat rushed. For second basemen, it’s the easy throw to first base that’s usually the culprit, not the difficult, rushed throw from deep behind second base; for catchers, it’s the even easier throw back to the pitcher. And it happens by far the most to pitchers, who, of course, have the most time to think.

Pat Jordan’s memoir, A False Spring, chronicles his experience as a minor-league pitcher whose arm went haywire: “I could not remember how I’d once delivered a baseball with a fluid and effortless motion! And even if I could remember, I somehow knew I could never transmit that knowledge to my arms and legs, my back and shoulders. The delicate wires through which that knowledge had so often been communicated were burned out, irrevocably charred, I know now, by too much energy channeled too often along a solitary and too fragile wavelength. I lost it all that spring.”

Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, makes a distinction between “implicit learning”—what the body knows—and “explicit learning”—conscious knowledge. In cases in which athletes develop mental blocks, a switch has been flipped from implicit to explicit. I played high-school tennis, and I remember this happening to me once, in the district finals. I won the first set against someone who was an obviously superior player, and when I realized this fact, I suddenly couldn’t get my right arm to stop moving in jagged, pixilated slow-motion. I felt like a marionette operated by some unknown other. I lost the last two sets 6-1, 6-0.

Hayes says, “None of us knows—at the level of consciousness—how to walk, or breathe, or throw a baseball. If we had to take charge of these movements, issuing commands to all the hundreds of muscles in just the right sequence, who would not collapse in a quivering mass?”

“I’d never heard of throwing percentage before I came to the big leagues,” Texas Rangers catcher Mike Stanley said. “I got here, and that’s what catchers are judged on. We had a very slow staff, but I started thinking it was me.” Although he was fixated on the percentage of base stealers he threw out, Stanley—his body in full rebellion against his mind—threw soft, high-arcing tosses to second and third base whenever anyone tried to steal. “I never realized how much of the game is mental. You can see it when guys walk up to the plate, which guys are afraid. I’m sure they could see the fear in my eyes.”

Rod Dishman, the director of the Exercise Psychology Lab at the University of Georgia, says, “When thinking interferes, it physiologically, neurologically leads to inappropriate tension. That causes change in velocity and delivery. It wouldn’t take much tension to throw it off. Just that split-second thought—‘God, am I going to do it again?’—can affect it.”

In 1997, Rick Ankiel, whom USA Today named the High School Player of the Year, signed with the St. Louis Cardinals and received a $2.5 million bonus. In 1999, he was the Minor League Player of the Year. In 2000, his first full season with St. Louis, his won-loss record was 11-7, and in the last month of the season he was 4-0 with a 1.97 ERA. At age 21, he started the first game of the National League division series against Atlanta. In two starts and one relief appearance in the 2000 playoffs, against the Braves and the Mets, Ankiel walked 11 batters in four innings and threw 9 wild pitches, most of which sailed 10 feet over the batters’ heads. In a game against the Mets, he threw 5 of his first 20 pitches off the wire screen behind home plate. He’s no longer in major-league baseball.

Ankiel says, “I was always the smallest kid. I was terribly shy. Maybe it was because my dad yelled at me so much. I was afraid to mess up. If I swung at a bad pitch in Little League, he’d make me run wind sprints when I got home. It was always, I could’ve done better. He always said, ‘Do what I say, not what I do.’” Rick Ankiel Sr. has been arrested 15 times and convicted 7 times—burglary, carrying a concealed weapon, and most recently, drug smuggling.
Ankiel says his father instructed him “never to show emotion on the mound, which I always thought was strange because I was never like that anyway.”

At 14, Ankiel told his father, “I’m never going to be in the major leagues, so I’m going to do stuff with my buddies, hang out on the beach, go surfing, go fishing” in Fort Pierce, Florida.
Ankiel’s father said, “That’s not gonna work. If you love the game, good things will happen.”

In The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity, Anson Rabinbach writes: “Neurasthenia was a kind of inverted work ethic, an ethic of resistance to work in all its forms. The lack of will or energy manifested by neurasthenics is the incapacity to work productively.”

When Ankiel started to have trouble throwing the ball over the plate during the 2000 playoffs, his father, Ankiel’s pitching guru his entire life, had recently been sentenced to prison for six years, and his parents had just gotten divorced. With his father gone, Ankiel made sure bad things happened.

Asked how he would treat Rick Ankiel, sports psychologist Jack Llewelyn said, “You pull out vintage throws, and then you repeat those throws 8-10 times on videotape. What you’re doing is bombarding the system by showing them what they’re capable of doing. They’ve almost forgotten over time about how good they are, since they’ve been bombarded lately with all the negatives. If he’s strong, young, and healthy, and he’s thrown well in the past, then he can get past it. But anybody who thinks he can get rid of it and not think about it again probably is kidding himself. I think it’s always there. I think you can do some things mentally to push it to the back. But the worst thing you can do when you start to throw better is to start to get complacent and say, ‘Well, I’ve got that licked.’”

Shawn Havery, a sports psychologist, says about players who have suffered this problem: “I believe that they come to, kind of first off, doubt their ability. They start to overthink something that should be really reflexive. They begin to take too much time to consider all the machinations that go with that. It destroys their ability to do what they’ve been practicing so long.”

Mets catcher Mackey Sasser had to pump the ball two or three times into his glove before lobbing the ball weakly back to the pitcher, which drove Mets pitchers to distraction and allowed opposing base runners to make delayed steals. During one game between New York and Montreal, Expo players counted Sasser’s tapping of the ball into his glove, then Bronx-cheered when he finally threw the ball back to the pitcher.

When Sasser struggled in spring training in 1992, Jeff Shames wrote, “The root of Sasser’s problem and mine is that we think too much about performing an ordinary chore. I stutter when I think too much about the act of speaking. All of us have difficulties in daily life. Sasser’s and mine are just a little more obvious. We do what we can, even if it’s not as quickly as some would like.”

Former major-league manager Chuck Tanner says, “You can’t be afraid to fail. If you worry about failing, you will. The biggest reason behind these throwing mysteries is players trying not to make mistakes.” The same is true of stuttering. Stuttering consists of nothing but the attempt not to stutter. Growing up in a maniacally verbal family, I placed so much pressure on speaking well that I developed a stutter. A similar thing happened to many of these guys: they’re almost all hypersensitive, hypertensive types; they wanted it too badly, and then their overstressed body rebelled.

In “On Sickness,” E.M. Cioran writes, “Flesh freeing itself, rebelling, no longer willing to serve, sickness in apostasy of the organs; each insists on going its own way, each, suddenly or gradually, refusing to play the game, to collaborate with the rest, hurls itself into adventure and caprice.”

A lot of these guys also had overbearing stage-fathers; the moment the father was dead or in prison or non compos mentis, the sons’ bodies celebrated their freedom from tyranny by self-destructing.

I’ve never heard of a stutterer who couldn’t talk fluently to himself; it’s a psychosocial disorder, as are athletes’ mental blocks. In both cases, the person is unable to exist in easy dialogue (conversation, catch) with another.

Mental meltdowns of this kind are not unrelated to stuttering—the blocked individual becoming self-conscious about a routine activity that everybody else takes for granted—and I think that's part of why I'm interested in the phenomenon, sympathetic to it.

The ritual of rituals, playing catch with Dad, gets problematized and so suddenly you can’t make the throw to first base, because you’re thinking too much. It's as if at age 22 or 24 or 28 or 31, these athletes newly discovered the activity (worry, contemplation, self-scrutiny) that the rest of us do all the time, or at least I do all the time. For some reason, they're thinking about something else—some failure or sadness or guilt or weakness—and now can’t perform without thinking about performing.

Kansas City Royals catcher Fran Healy (who, like Sasser, developed a mental block about throwing the ball back to the pitcher, and who, like Wohlers, is a native of Holyoke, MA—that mindful town) said, “The easiest thing a catcher has to do is throw the ball to the pitcher. It’s a thing that should be as easy as opening a door. But having to think about something that simple makes it a problem. The problem, to a degree, existed through my career. But I was able to hide it. I’d just flip it back real easy to the pitcher. I’d walk out after every pitch and say something like ‘Stay low’ or ‘Keep on it’ or ‘Bad call.’ As a catcher, you can disguise a problem like this. Pitchers can’t. Their careers are over.”

Dick Radatz, a Boston Red Sox relief pitcher, once threw 27 consecutive balls in a spring-training game.

Playing second base for Minnesota, Chuck Knoblauch made only 8 errors in 1996 and won the Gold Glove in 1997, maintaining a 47-game errorless streak. In 1999, playing for the Yankees, undergoing a divorce and watching his father (his high-school baseball coach and lifelong mentor) succumb to Alzheimer’s, he made 26 errors, including 14 throwing errors, most of which were on routine throws to first base. On plays on which he had to hurry, Knoblauch virtually always threw the ball fine. His throwing problems inevitably occurred on routine ground balls when he had too much time to think.

“I really think, deep down inside of me, something is going on,” Knoblauch said. “Something, somewhere along the line in my life, has affected me, and I don’t know what it is. It’s frustrating and it’s puzzling. I don’t ask, ‘Why me?’ because I’m a firm believer that everything in life happens for a reason. But I just have this feeling that whenever this thing stops, I’ll know it without even picking up a baseball and throwing it. When I get to the root of this problem, I’ll know I’m better without even walking on a baseball field. A lot of people have suggested that my throwing problems are going to be fixed simply by my going to left field for a while. I don’t think that’s going to be the case. That says this is something I can consciously correct. I know for sure it’s not.”

E.M. Cioran says, “Without pain, there would not be consciousness.”

“If we can just get the mental part out of this thing,” Yankees’ manager Joe Torre said about Knoblauch’s throwing problem, “we’ll be okay.”

David Grand, the proponent of a system known as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), says, “The problem appears out of nowhere. It can happen a few times and go away or it may never go away. People think what when you add ‘sport’ to ‘psychology,’ the reasons change. People, even top athletes, bring to the plate all of their life experiences. The public openness of the problem, for all professional athletes, makes it much worse. EMDR reaches deep into the nervous system and lets people work on releasing traumatic memories. Patients begin to make a connection between the memory and what they are experiencing in the present. Unless you deal with the traumas, you’re pulling up the weeds without the roots. Every time Ankiel makes a bad throw, it retraumatizes him. Give me three days with Ankiel and he’ll be back to where he was. Give me a week, and he’ll be even better. I have no question that Knoblauch can go back to second base without the yips and return to his Gold Glove position.”

Another psychologist, asked how many athletes overcome these mental blocks, replied, “Very few. Almost none.”

In 1957, at age 18, Von McDaniel won the first four games he pitched in the major leagues, pitched 19 consecutive scoreless innings, including a one-hitter, a two-hitter, and a perfect game for six innings. He finished the year at 7-5, with a 3.22 ERA. In 1958 he pitched two innings in which he walked seven batters; he never pitched again in the major leagues.

Lindy McDaniel, who pitched for many years in the major leagues, said about his brother Von: “He lost his coordination and his mechanics. There was no real explanation. Some people thought it was psychological, but who knew about those things then? They sent Von down to the minors, but he couldn’t get anyone out. He kept sinking further and further until he couldn’t pitch anymore. It depressed him for years after he left baseball. But he couldn’t talk about it.”
None of these guys can talk about what’s really bothering them. That’s the problem. They’re all repressive depressives, strong-silent types.

A student in my class, feeling self-conscious about being much older than the other students, told me that he had been in prison. I asked him what crime he’d committed, and he said, “Shot a dude.” He wrote a series of very good but very stoic stories about prison life, and when I asked him why the stories were so tight-lipped, he explained to me the jailhouse concept of "doing your own time," which means that when you're a prisoner you're not supposed to burden the other prisoners by complaining about your incarceration or regretting what you’d done or, especially, claiming you hadn't done it. "Do your own time": it’s a seductive slogan. I find that I quote it to myself occasionally, but really I don't subscribe to the sentiment. We're not, after all, in prison. Stoicism is of no use whatsoever. What I’m a big believer in is talking about everything until you're blue in the face.

Daniel Wegner, a professor of social psychology at Harvard, says, “People will develop an obsession not because there’s anything interesting about it, but because so much energy is paid in trying to suppress it. For some, the cure is to think about it on purpose. The thing to do is tell everybody you see. Talk about it, even laugh about it.”

Detroit Tigers third-baseman Darnell Coles said about the 1988 season, “The first six games of the regular season, I had three errors. Then disaster really struck. I had a three-error game in Kansas City, then a few weeks later I had three more in another game. It got to the point where I wanted to cry. I really didn’t want the ball hit to me. I wanted to die. Just crawl in a hole.”

In 1980, when Philadelphia won the World Series, Phillies relief pitcher Kevin Saucier—possessor of a 7-3 record and a 3.42 ERA—was named by fans the most popular Phillie. He said, “I’m a hyper person and I’ve always had a funny walk on me. So when I did a good job or we needed to keep loose, I wasn’t afraid to show a little emotion.” Traded to Detroit, he pitched even better in 1981; he had 13 saves, a 1.65 ERA, and was the best reliever in baseball at retiring the first batter he faced. In 1982, though—while his marriage was nearly unraveling—he gave up 17 walks in 16 innings. Sent to the minor leagues, he gave up 23 walks in 22 innings, had an 0-4 record, and an ERA of 7.36.

At the Detroit training camp, the next year, Saucier said, “That strange feeling hit me again, and it seemed like things were twice as bad as before. I wasn’t just missing high or low. I was missing side to side. I was throwing pitches twenty feet behind hitters. I could have hurt somebody, but then again, I never got that close. I just didn’t feel right. It was like I was under a spell. It was a feeling of being lost, like trying to type with no fingers. What do you do? You’re lost. You can’t help yourself. You try, you try to relax, and you can’t.”

Deborah Bright, a sports psychologist, says, “Too often, athletes with natural ability are not aware of what it is they do that makes them play well, and when they get off track, they don’t know what to look for. Also, few realize how much their private lives can affect their public performance.” Interesting that a female psychologist points this out, since it’s not a problem women are likely to have—failing to realize that their private lives can affect their public performance. So, too, women athletes are far less likely than men to be reluctant to talk about whatever might be plaguing them. It’s nearly unheard of for a woman athlete to suffer from the yips. (So, too, it’s also nearly unheard of for a black athlete to suffer from the yips. Absent other pressures, other oppressions, white men have a tendency to oppress themselves by overthinking.)

In James Joyce’s story “The Dead,” which takes place at a Christmas party, the protagonist Gabriel Conroy remembers a phrase from a review he wrote: “One feels that one is listening to a thought-tormented music.” Later, when he gives a toast, he says, “But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age.”

On routine plays, Texas Ranger minor-leaguer Monty Fariss, a rare shortstop with this particular mind-body problem, threw timidly to first base, often allowing the batter to beat the throw, although on difficult balls into the hole at shortstop he would still make strong throws across the diamond. “Everybody wants to help solve the problem,” Fariss said, “or help create one.”

In the bullpen, Oakland A’s pitcher Bill Mooneyham was so afraid of throwing a wild pitch, which could roll onto the field and delay the game, that while warming up he was able to throw only changeups.

David Mamet says, “It is in our nature to elaborate, estimate, predict—to run before the event. This is the meaning of consciousness; anything else is instinct.”

In 1987, a year after throwing a no-hitter, Joe Cowley of the Chicago White Sox gave up 21 hits, 17 walks, and 20 earned runs in less than 12 innings. He never regained his form.

In 1971 Steve Blass won 15 games for the Pirates, with a 2.85 ERA. He won games 3 and 7 for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1971 World Series. In 1972, he won 19 games, lost 8, pitched 11 complete games, had an ERA of 2.48, sixth best in the National League, and was an All-Star. Throughout his career he had allowed less than 3 walks per 9 innings.

During spring training in 1973, he walked 25 men in 14 innings, throwing a pitch that was so wild it nearly landed in the third-base dugout. In the 1973 season, Blass was 3-9 with a 9.85 ERA, walking 84 batters in fewer than 89 innings. He tried pitching from the outfield. He tried pitching while kneeling on the mound. He tried pitching with his left foot tucked up behind his right knee. He tried Transcendental Meditation. He studied slow-motion films of his delivery. Warming up or throwing on the sidelines, while working alone with a catcher, he pitched well, but the moment a batter stood in against him he struggled, especially with his fastball. Blass was permanently out of baseball the next year.

Blass recently said, “I still can’t pitch, not even at my own baseball camp.”

There were many theories about Blass: he was too nice, he lost his will to win, his mechanics were off, his eyesight deteriorated, he was afraid of being hit by a line drive, he was afraid of injuring a batter with a fastball, the death of his superstar teammate Roberto Clemente incapacitated him, a slump led to a loss of self-confidence, which led to a worse slump, which led to less self-confidence…

Dave Giusti, Blass’s close friend and fellow pitcher, said about Blass, “He is remarkably open to all kinds of people, but I think he has closed his mind to his inner self. There are central areas you can’t infringe on with him. There is no doubt that during the past two years he didn’t react to a bad performance the way he used to, and you have to wonder why he couldn’t apply his competitiveness to his problem. Last year I went through something like Steve’s crisis. The first half of the season, I was atrocious, and I lost all my confidence, especially in my fastball. I began worrying about making big money and not performing. I worried about not contributing to the team. I worried about being traded. I thought it might be the end for me. I didn’t know how to solve my problem, but I knew I had to solve it. In the end, it was talking to people that did it. I talked to everybody. Then, at some point, I turned the corner. But it was talking that did it, and my point is that Steve can’t talk to people that way. Or won’t.”

In Intoxicated by My Illness, Anatole Broyard writes: “The patient has to start by treating his illness not as a disaster, an occasion for depression or panic, but as a narrative, a story. Stories are antibodies against illness and pain. When various doctors shoved scopes up my urethral canal, I found that it helped a lot when they gave me a narrative of what they were doing. Their talking translated or humanized the procedure. It prepared, strengthened, and somehow consoled me. Anything is better than an awful silent suffering.”

Los Angeles Dodger second-baseman Steve Sax—after overcoming such a severe case of the yips (30 errors by mid-August in ’83) that it became known for awhile as Steve Sax Disease—said, “It’s a matter of eliminating all possibility of error as far as mechanics go. Get that down pat, make good throws, and get your confidence back.”

The Dodgers tied a sock over Sax’s eyes and made him throw balls to first base blindfolded.

The Tigers had Coles throw sidearm.

The Mets had Sasser practice throwing from his knees.

When Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Bruce Ruffin lost his control in 1988, a fan suggested that he take the can of chewing tobacco out of his back pocket.

Everybody tells a player with a mental block not to think about it.

Sax said, “It’s like a big elephant in front of you. You can’t ignore it.”

Sasser said, “I’ve been working with people on visualization. But either the throw’s going to come or it’s not. What can you do? Just pray.”

Mike Stanley said, “All I could visualize was making an errant throw. I couldn’t even visualize making a good one.”

In the Land of Pain is Alphonse Daudet’s diary of the disintegration of his body (and fellow sufferers’ bodies) from neurosyphillis. “No general theory about pain,” he writes. “Each patient discovers his own, and the nature of pain varies, like a singer’s voice, according to the acoustics of the hall.”

Nobody’s perfect.

Everybody’s human.

A magazine editor putting together a “How-to” issue asked if there was any activity about which I wanted to write a “How-to” article. “How about a ‘How-not-to?’” I replied. There are so many things I don’t know how to do properly—just for starters: blow a bubble, dive, whistle, snap my fingers. My former writing teacher, the novelist John Hawkes, often used to say, "Failure is the only subject.” “Winners” (Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, the Yankees, et al.) bore me silly; there’s nothing compelling to me about them, because there’s so little of the human predicament in their shiny glory.

Woody Allen says, “Basically, everybody is a loser, but it’s only now that people are beginning to admit it.”

Success has many fathers; failure is an orphan.

The mind is a powerful thing.

Everybody’s an expert.

Nobody knows anything.

“We work in the dark,” Henry James wrote. “We do what we can. We give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”
In the fairy-tale, sport is supposed to be some sort of transcendence, a lift-off from life’s travails.

The director John Cassavettes supported himself by acting in commercial movies. He said that he could take almost any line and make it interesting as long as he was allowed to put pauses in.

In other words, to insert thinking.

David Shields's Body Politic: The Great American Sports Machine is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in May 2004. He's also the author of “Baseball Is Just Baseball”: The Understated Ichiro and Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.


The New York Yankees Play Two
by Michael Baker

In Yankee Stadium where tragedies
happen at least twice a day and
it’s 5PM and workers belt bourbon
and beer after church and the mugginess cracks
over the light over the green fields,
as women stay startled, hands
reaching for tissues, garments shut tight.

In the bleachers we sought distraction
and the gap-toothed hag’s arms
seemed ready for flight. Every game she tells us
about the night she ate a box
of Cracker Jacks and fell into a coma.
Nothing could save her. Like Lindbergh
she left her easy life and floated,
without modern instruments, towards Kansas City
to have coffee with God: I can’t go forward,
I can’t go back. They argued about Fisk
and Bucky Dent, laughed about the Babe,
and arm-wrestled over Rizzuto in the Hall.
Help me, make me stronger, but God
always triumphs.

He grandly points to his groin: “Seed,
Divide, and Lay 7 on the Yanks.”
In twenty minutes the scoreboard stat line
starts to zigzag like a whore’s whip—
it’s 8-6 in the 7th, Tribe winning,
and she and her bleacher buddies scream
for Gehrig, Little Leaguers,
a miracle from the bullpen, if not merely cable coverage.
The fans ignored her and gave warnings about pills.
Later, we pray, she will join a circus in Double A,
become a minimum wage clown/masseuse,
a short order cook, and reliable plant
in Midwest barrooms for the visiting teams.

She will marry a blind, bald man, rear Koreans,
bathe in barbed wire, and get emotional
over cotton candy scandals. She will then come home.
She works the third base area near here now,
threatening the Wall Street types with crossed fingers
pointed in her pockets, following
other fathers to the restrooms
on Sundays, mocking their selections
of foot longs and generic domestics.

Weather and play become dull and damp
and our Faith, the fan, spreads with the sinking sun,
leaning towards our younger brothers, puffing
and scratching, day in day out,
dreaming of past World Series, hits of codeine
and Buds, her future fanatic tormentees,
because she knows soon the loud roar
after another comeback
alarms another fleshy heaven
that stains her thighs’ second game.

Michael Baker, an adjunct professor in Northern New Jersey, loves the Indians, both the Cleveland and the gambling varieties.


The Devil Bleeds Dodger Blue
by Ken Derr

Tommy Lasorda is the devil incarnate.

Don’t buy it? Let’s check the facts.

Remember that waddle as he ran on to the field to protest a call or hug (and all those hugs—come on, those be reminders to his trading partners that their souls were his) one of his players? Have you ever seen a human move in quite that fashion? All that flesh undulating about, reeking of physical indulgence and defiance of the spirit, wallowing in that ugliest of the seven deadly sins—gluttony. And while we’re defying God, how about pride? I seem to remember a certain commercial in which our malevolent hero sang loudly and often about his reduced pounds via some money-making (can you say greed?) but fraudulent diet. Despite the PR spin his agency liked to play on us, Lasorda was full of anger, often spitting and screaming at umpires in ways that embarrassed children and horrified first row fans. Of course, he was always wrong, because the Dodgers were never safe and they never got anybody out legitimately, but there was Tommy, humiliating his family with unjustified indignance.

His body was also a waddling testament to sloth. No man can eat enough to produce that much gravity. It takes a lifetime of couchdom, in addition to the aforementioned face-stuffing, to generate that much unsightly girth. For the purposes of public decency, I will refrain from illustrating lust, and you, dear readers, can breath a collective sigh of relief.

Now we come to the heart of this man’s diabolical makeup—his envy. Let us go back in time, to that glorious year of 1993, when Barry Bonds first joined the San Francisco Giants and led them to 103 victories. Sadly, in those days, the Atlanta Braves were also in the West Division, and they too had that many victories heading into the final game of the season. Of course, the Giants were playing their dreaded rival, the Los Angeles Dodgers, led by Beelzebub himself. Jump forward to the game, and for just a jot of context, the Dodgers, as always, were hopelessly out of the race. But for Mephistopheles, this game became the season. He did not watch idly as the good and the strong triumph and move forward. Oh no. He used every man on his roster and every pitcher in his pen. To cut a nightmare short, as the Dodgers won the game and prepared to head into the dugout to rightfully mourn yet another losing season, sending the noble and worthy Giants home for the winter (just look at the nicknames—one signifying the great Greek gods of old, and another the sleazy, shifty hustlers of the underworld) El Diablo stormed onto the field in full waddle, short, fat arms doing rings that looked mysteriously like Dante’s circles of hell, speaking in tongues, at least according to eyewitnesses near the spectacle, and radiated a pungent heat that left everyone within a four hundred foot radius suffering from colon trouble within a year.

Think I’m just a bitter homie? Remember what should have been that heart-pumping, fist-in-the-air 2000 Olympic baseball victory from several years back? Don’t you recall sitting on your couch, waiting for the tears to flow that never did? Here were our finest amateurs, in the purest tradition of Olympic excellence, tackling and conquering the pros of the former commie states, and yet there you sat, wondering why it didn’t feel like Lake Placid. And there was Dodger Blue, spouting more nonsense and homilies and tripe, and while you couldn’t digest what was happening within, you simply knew that the appropriate emotional response did not occur. Why? Well, you know why. Because a victory led by the devil is not a victory at all. The fallen angel who rules over the earth can change the laws of physics and push balls further than they ever had a right to go. How else could we ever explain Steve Garvey? That gold medal is beyond tarnished—it is literally dripping with wicked blue iniquity. It has the same credibility as that 1972 Russian basketball Cold War “win” when they put the time back on the clock.

Look, Italians have always been just a little bit closer to sin and salvation than the rest of us. It’s time for somebody to recognize that Jesus may not have come back, but his adversary has. Don’t put Tommy Lasorda in the Hall of Fame. Put him back where he belongs—in hell.
Ken Derr wishes he were Ken Stabler, or Kevin Mitchell, or Jeffrey Leonard, but since he's not, he says: "Let's put these fuckers in the Hall of Fame. Right fucking now." Amen. Good night.

The New York Mess...I Mean Mets: A Zisk Special Report
Editor’s Note: The past two seasons have not been kind to Mets fans. With many Zisk’s staff of writers based in and around New York, it’s inevitable that the topic of this team’s downfall would be top of mind. So here are three views on the horror reality show that is the New York Metropolitans.

If I were the Mets’ GM… by Lisa Alcock
Usually, from April to June of every year I take great pride in watching my hometown team, the Detroit Red Wings, play for the Stanley Cup. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case this year. No, I'm not bitter about that, not at all. I'm not bitter that my team lost to a team named after some lame Disney movie starring Emilio Estevez. Not me, nope.... So now that hockey has ended with the NJ Devils winning the Stanley Cup I feel I can put my full attention towards baseball. My only problem is that I just can’t seem to get into watching the Mets this year. To put it mildly, they suck. They’re in last place in their division. Hell, they’re not even playing .500 ball for crying out loud. As I write this they’ve won 36 games and lost 46. I have yet to get my ass out to Shea yet and it’s July. This is all new for me. Usually by this time I’ve already been to at least four to five games. A little over a month ago the Mets fired their GM, Steve Phillips. My running joke was that I was taking over as the head honcho. Then I thought about it: if given the chance what would I do to bring people back to Shea and how would I make a better team? What follows are some promotional ideas and trade ideas to get people—mainly me—back into the stadium…some of which might be a little unrealistic…but I mean, c’mon, so is my idea of being the new GM.

1) Win a Date with Joe McEwing Night. Ok, I admit, I’m being a total girl with this one. (And why is it my number one idea here? Who knows, maybe it’s my wishful thinking.) But please, he’s such an awesome utility player…and he’s pretty damn cute too. Why wouldn’t a girl want to go out with him? This promotional night is definitely aimed at the 20-37 female age bracket.

2) Bring back RC Cola to Shea Stadium. The appropriate beverages are crucial to any baseball game. I can’t recall when I was introduced to RC Cola, but I love it. I’d heard that it was offered at Shea up until the 1980’s, though, Evan—who claims he’s a life-long Mets fan—can’t give me a definitive answer as to when they stopped selling it at Shea.

3) Let’s get some vegetarian fare at the ballpark. How about a few veggie only food booths? I’d really like it if they had tofu dogs, veggie chik’n sandwiches and veggie burgers. Hey, vegetarians are baseball fans too. Don’t get me wrong, I love the overpriced beer, but that’s not a meal…well, maybe after three or four…*hiccup*.

4) Trade Armando Benitez1…PLEASE! And what the hell is he doing at the All Star game?? I’m so tired of screaming at the TV whenever they bring him in. He’s can’t strike anyone out to save his life. Some might ask me, ‘Was he ever any good?’ I think my grandma can pitch better than Armando. Wait a minute, maybe I should call my grandma...

5) Trade Alomar2, Burnitz3 and yes, Piazza. I like Robbie, but I think it was a bad move to obtain him in the first place. He probably misses Omar in Cleveland. I tell you, those times I did see the Indians, there was nothing more perfect that the Vizquel-Alomar-Thome double play.

6) Fans will get the chance to guess the number of errors committed by a certain position player in a particular inning of the game. Ballots will be available prior to the game and must be submitted before the National Anthem is sung. Fans who guess correctly will win that amount times $100! Example, three errors on the 1st baseman will get one lucky fan $300! The Mets have already proven they have money to throw away by acquiring players who don’t perform, so why not spend a few more dollars on this promotional night?

7) Be the Lead Off Hitter Night! (Right-handers only.). You think you can do a better job? Well, step right up! Arrive at batting practice and a panel of judges will decide who’s the best from a pool of potential hitters. (Note: only the first 100 will be allowed to “try out.”)

8) Be the new 2nd baseman!! Actually, I wouldn’t mind trying out for this position. I need a better job anyhow. And, I feel that my two years’ experience on my company softball team qualifies me to try out for the Mets.

9) Annihilate the “Up with Pepsi” people. (A.k.a. the “Pepsi party patrol”, those annoying, overly-excitable people who shoot crappy t-shirts into the stands directly at peoples’ heads.) One lucky winner will be able to turn the T-shirt guns on the Pepsi people. Kind of reminiscent of a firing line….

If the Mets lose—which they seem to be doing quite often lately—one lucky winner will get to pelt as many rocks as she/he can at the incredibly creepy, giant-headed Mr. Met. This will be a sponsored event…nothing like “Sausage-gate” in Milwaukee.

So, rather than the Mets just throwing in the towel for the remainder of the season I am sending this list to them. Hopefully they’ll take the rest of my ideas into consideration. If not, well, I guess I can concentrate on college football season, which begins before Labor Day. And I think I can get some Red Wings pre-season games on that pay-per-view hockey channel…

1 Author’s note: prior to publication…the Mets did trade Armando to who else? The Yankees. Man, that’ll be quite interesting. [Editor’s note: Benitez lasted less than a month in the Bronx—he was banished to Seattle for former Yankee bullpen mainstay Jeff Nelson.]

2 Author’s note: Also prior to publication of this fine zine yet another wish of the writer of this article came true: the Mets did indeed unload Robbie to the White Sox for three minor league players, an infielder and two pitchers.

3 Author’s note: Yet another trade! Burnitz went to the Dodgers on July 14th. In unrelated news, also going to the Dodgers that day from the Newark Bears: Rickey Henderson. Woo hoo, Rickey!

Mets Thoughts by Mike Bonomo
The Mets finally got the food court that is Mo Vaughn to waddle out of Shea. The Mets get $25 million from insurance for this because he has spent 90 days on the DL. Apparently the only one stupider than the Mets, who signed Vaughn, is the guy who wrote up the policy. I'd love to be his boss just so I could fire him. I guess Mo's knees just couldn't hold up his weight plus the extra pounds in his wallet from the money they gave him. The Mets negotiation: "Oh, you've been out of baseball for a year and weigh over 300 pounds? How much can we give you?" Of course this is the team that traded Nolan Ryan.

On top of Vaughn leaving, whatever it was that had been playing 2nd base went to the With Sox. Watching Roberto Alomar play was the closest thing I've seen to a player taking a recliner and a newspaper to the plate since Bobby Bonilla. Alomar also forgot to pack his gold gloves when he moved to New York.

I was glad to see Benitez on the All Star team because it prepared me for his trip across town. After he blows a few games in tight spots I'm sure Cashman will be looking for a new job.
I would love for the Mets to trade the apple that comes out of the hat, the airplane race, and the three card monte for kids to the Brewers in exchange for the sausage race. When Pittsburgh comes to the Mets again maybe we could get Randall Simon to hit Mr. Met on the head. It would make me happy if Mr. Met would ask Mike Tyson for an autograph if you know what I mean. It's hard enough enduring the team, never mind the constant embarrassment of having such a dumb ass mascot.

I still feel better about this Met team than I have in over a year. Reyes, Wiggington, Phillips and Duncan are showing some guts out there. With Piazza at first and Wilson/Phillips behind the plate, the Mets are much better. The young players on the team are giving me the toughest gift you can give a fan of a last place team, hope for next year. (Or the year after, or the year after that...) All the Mets need is some starting pitching, middle relief and a closer, and they're set.

I have mixed emotions about Detroit beating the Mets '62 won-loss record. Maybe we could loan them Mr. Met for inspiration.

Mike Bonomo is currently playing guitar with his band The Miscreants. He has written for The Teen Scene and PC Magazine. He likes bowling and softball and has been a lifelong Met fan, which may explain his drinking problem.

You Gotta Believe...that It Can’t Sound Any Worse by Steve Reynolds
The past two seasons have been painful to be a Mets fan, with botched front office moves, odd injuries, rumors and haircuts stirring up more news than the team’s shoddy play. But what makes watching this team even worse is one single factor—Fox Sports New York and MSG announcer Fran Healy. After many years of watching Mets games, nothing makes me cringe more than the sound of Healy pontificating.

Healy has the amazing ability to take the most glaringly obvious play and somehow repeat exactly what happened and make it sound like sturdy, in-depth analysis. For example, one evening I’m pretty sure I heard Healy talking about the Mets lack of hitting this way: “If you’re not hitting as a team, you can’t score any runs.”

[Pause to let it sink in.]

Really, Mr. Healy? And here I thought the Mets could just buy runs by paying off the umpires and not even bother with that pesky thing we call going up to bat.

Healy has ruined more games for me this season more than any other because he’s been paired with Ted Robinson, perhaps best known as the tennis voice of NBC. Robinson is a fine play by play man, and does a great job with the Mets radio broadcasts. But he’s content to let Healy and his hair-brained comments dominate most telecasts. Howie Rose, Healy’s partner since 1996, has been moved over to the radio side of things for much of the season. The few times Rose has worked with Healy I have let out an audible sigh of relief because I know Rose won’t allow Healy to say something insane like, “Tony Clark is swinging a really hot bat” when the first baseman is batting under .200.

Let me put my Healy hatred another way—I’d rather hear Tom Seaver and Keith Hernandez (two of the biggest egos in baseball) call a game together than suffer through Healy. While Seaver and Hernandez might spend much of their time behind the mic saying how much better they were than today’s players, I’m sure you’d never hear one of them say, “Benitez has really turned it around” when it was obvious to anyone that he hadn’t.

On a non-Healy note, I do miss Gary Thorne on the WB 11 telecasts. He made Tom Seaver bearable (which is a tall order in itself), he made fun of Seaver’s pomposity, he always sounded like he was excited to be at the ballpark and most importantly, he was consistently funny. Thorne’s replacement, Dave O’Brien, is good, but he doesn’t put Seaver is his place enough.
I know many people have suggestions about what free agents to bring in next season to make the Mets winners—personally I think the team should stick with the kids and let them grow another season. Who cares if having a young team robs Tom Glavine of his chance to get 300 wins? If he wanted that chance, he should have stayed in Atlanta. My suggestion for the Wilpon family is to bring in some free agents on the broadcast side of things. Bring back Thorne and Tim McCarver to do the WB 11 games. Many folks hate McCarver, but he’s miles better than anyone else out there. Dump Healy, and rotate Rose, Robinson and Hernandez on Fox Sports and MSG. And then when Al Leiter retires after next season, grab him as your color guy and let Hernandez do Brooklyn Cyclones games instead. Leiter has shown during his brief stints on ESPN in 1998 and 1999 and being miked during games by Fox that he has no problem speaking his mind and has a great ability to analyze baseball in simple terms.

Lastly, thank you Bob Murphy for a lifetime’s worth memories in the radio booth. Listening in the car to a Mets game will never be the same.

The Founding of the American League: Those Were The Days
by John Shiffert

1901—those were the days. The American League wasn’t polluted by the designated hitter or terrorized by George Steinbrenner. Maybe polluted by the lack of the foul strike rule and terrorized by Ban Johnson and John McGraw, but at least the DH and Steinbrenner weren’t on the scene yet. It was an exciting time in baseball history, because a new and promising league was on the horizon.

Following the untimely demise of the American Association in the fall of 1891, the National League ruled baseball with a less-than-admirable monopolistic grip. Syndicate ownership, rowdyism (the Baltimore Orioles and the Cleveland Spiders being the foremost practitioners), violence, competitive imbalance and salary classifications that resulted in a theoretical $2,400 per man salary cap, had taken a lot of the fun out of the game. Especially the concept of individuals owning pieces of more than one team--“Syndicate Baseball” it was called. And it was, indeed, a sin. After all, "monopoly" is an ugly concept, unless you're playing the Atlantic City-based board game.

It was into this unseemly situation that Ban Johnson, Connie Mack, John McGraw, Charles Somers, Charlie Comiskey, et al, brought the American League—an idea whose time had come.

Interestingly, it should be noted that, outrage over syndicate baseball to the contrary, there were also situations in the new American League where an individual had a piece of the action in more than one team. In fact, Charles Somers in Cleveland was Mack's and Shibe's financial angel (to the tune of $30,000) in getting the Athletics started.

However, neither Somers nor anyone else in the American League caused the wholesale shifting of players from one team to another. Although some player transfers were made, they were done to shore up struggling American League teams in the war with the National League, not because a joint ownership was trying to stack the deck for one city, as happened to the NL’s Baltimore, Cleveland and Louisville clubs.

Syndicate ownership aside, it's safe to say the National League was not an especially successful organization during its 12-team monopoly from 1892 to 1899. Despite its monopoly position, most teams lost money, and the competitive balance was terrible. Even the shakeout of four teams following the 1899 season accomplished little more than putting a lot of major leaguers out of work, and depriving fans in four cities of major league baseball, although it did provide the still-minor American League with half of its players in 1900. What four cities were dropped? As if you had to ask, Washington and the three less-favored "syndicate" cities, Baltimore, Louisville and Cleveland.

Even before the shakeout, the competitive situation in the National League was what Bill James has called, “A hybrid major/minor league, with teams competing against what would later be called their own farm teams.” In effect, the Baltimore, Louisville and Cleveland clubs had become farm teams for Brooklyn, Pittsburgh and St. Louis. Actually, this unique situation was repeated to a certain extent in the 1920's, when Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold off most of his good players (Babe Ruth, Waite Hoyt, Wally Schang, Sam Jones, Joe Bush, Everett Scott, Joe Dugan, George Pipgras, Herb Pennock) to the New York Yankees. It should further be noted that Frazee owed Yankee owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast Huston $350,000—and that the loan was secured by a mortgage on Fenway Park. The Yankees could have literally put the Red Sox out on the street, if they had so desired. Frazee made sure they didn't so desire.

Just to prove things seldom change in baseball, almost the exact same situation came up again in the 1950's, this time with the once-proud Philadelphia Athletics franchise, after it was sold to Arnold Johnson and moved to Kansas City. Although Johnson was sharp enough to divide and conquer the already-divided Mack family in buying the A's, he wasn't sharp enough to take advantage of the fact that he owned Yankee Stadium, and could have exercised some leverage on the Yankees. Indeed, it was Yankee owners Del Webb and Dan Topping who took advantage of the relationship with Johnson. Shortly after the A's moved to KC, Missouri baseball fans found they would not be able to enjoy their ill-gotten ballclub, because the Athletics became a farm team for the Yankees.

Over the course of five years, the two teams made 16 trades involving 60 players. In the process, Johnson invariably dealt off the Athletics' best players (Roger Maris, Bobby Shantz, Harry Simpson, Art Ditmar, Ralph Terry, Enos Slaughter, Hector Lopez, Clete Boyer, Ryne Duren, Buddy Daley) and fueled the Yankees' string of pennants in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In fact, it could be argued, only somewhat facetiously, that the fall of the Yankees' dynasty after 1964 stemmed not from New York's well-noted failure to sign black players, but from the failure of Kansas City to employ enough good players of any color.

Returning to the 19th Century version of “Let's Make a Deal,” the competitive results of syndicate baseball in the National League were astounding, and predictable. In the years from 1892 to 1899, the first place teams in the National League finished with an average record of 94-43, a .686 winning percentage. The 12th place team's average record was 35-102, a .255 winning percentage. The average difference? The last place team finished 59 games out of first each year.

Given the situation that fans had been living with for the past eight seasons, Ban Johnson's decision to re-name his Western League in 1900 was met with more than a little interest, especially since he also made it clear that his new American League was getting ready to challenge the National League's monopoly.

The history of Johnson's creation actually dates back to late 1893, when the original Western League folded. Johnson, a collegiate catcher who graduated from Marietta College (much later, the winner of three NCAA Division III baseball crowns) in 1887 and went into journalism with the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette was, like most sportswriters past, present and future, a highly opinionated individual. In Johnson's case, his opinions were directed at the biggest (and almost only) target in American sports—baseball. However, unlike most of his ink-stained brethren, Johnson was in a position to do something with his opinions—or, at least do something more than seeing them in print.

Johnson had caught the eye, ear and attention of Charles Comiskey, from 1892 to 1894 the manager-first baseman of the National League Cincinnati Red Stockings, and a key figure at the same two positions with the champion St. Louis Browns of the American Association in the 1880's. Since the not-yet-Old Roman was about through as a player, hitting .227, .220 and .264 in that high-average era, it could be speculated that Johnson was writing that Comiskey should retire.

However, that was not the case. Johnson and Comiskey ended up talking about the future of the game, and how a league should be run. (Actually, Comiskey did retire as a player following the 1894 season, with a career .264 average that suggests his Hall of Fame election was a tribute to his organizing, fielding and managing skills. It certainly couldn't have been for the pinch-penny ways and the player relations skills that helped bring about the Black Sox scandal.)

In November 1893, while still managing the Reds, Comiskey met with several club owners from the failed Western League, and persuaded them to re-group, and name Johnson as president. Thus, what would become the American League in 1901 began with the 1894 season and teams in Sioux City, Toledo, Indianapolis, Detroit,Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Grand Rapids.

When Comiskey was fired from the Cincinnati job following a 10th place finish in 1894, he joined Johnson, taking over the Sioux City franchise and moving it to St. Paul and eventually (following the 1899 season) to Chicago where he appropriated the National League club's old nickname, White Stockings.

One of the other key moments in the development of the Western League took place in September 1896, when Pittsburgh owner William W. Kerr, a managerial second-guesser such as baseball has seen time and again over the years, came to a parting of the ways with his frustrated catcher-manager, Connie Mack.

Johnson ran his Western League with a good deal more, for want of a better word, dignity, than the National League. Umpires were given real authority, parks were spruced up, drinking and rowdiness were frowned upon (although Johnson himself was known as hard drinker) and most of the clubs made money.

A key moment in the development of 20th Century baseball came after the 1899 season when, as previously mentioned, the National League cut loose Washington, Baltimore, Cleveland and Louisville from its unwieldy 12-team set up. Although the move to dump the weak sisters of syndicated baseball made sense (even though they might not have been weak sisters if not for the joint ownership situation), it gave Johnson an opening to upgrade his operation into a major league city, moving the Grand Rapids franchise to Cleveland. Of course, after what Cleveland fans had experienced from afar in 1899 (a 20-134 record), any reasonably capable team would have probably been welcomed with open arms.

At the same time, Johnson re-named his circuit “The American League,” and Comiskey moved his team from St. Paul to Chicago, interestingly enough, with the agreement of Cubs owner Jim Hart, who felt that The American League wouldn't prove a threat with its ballpark located in the malodorous stockyard section of Chicago. While still a “minor” league, and bound by the National Agreement that governed all organizations within “organized” baseball, there was no doubt that the now-renamed American League was getting serious, and war clouds were gathering at the edges of the National League's wooden bleachers.

Were the fans and the media ready for war? Did William Randolph Hearst invent “Yellow Journalism” a couple of years earlier to fan the flames of the Spanish-American War?

By the time the 1901 rolled around, and war was formally declared, there wasn't much doubt as to the potential of the American League, at least not in the pages of the Philadelphia Ledger. “Its course has been such as to win it many friends,” said the paper's April 23, 1901 edition regarding the new League. And this was the day before the Athletics' scheduled opener. "That it has outgrown being minor league cannot any longer be denied, for that has been demonstrated by its growing popularity, and more especially by the caliber of the teams that represent the cities composing its circuit."

Details of the actions of the new league and the impending war spread like wildfire through the industry's two trade papers, Sporting News and Sporting Life, as well as through dozens of local newspapers (this was the height of the newspaper boom, when a big city would typically have a half dozen dailies) in the late winter and early spring of 1901.

After a successful 1900 season, and after the National League had rebuffed an overture by Johnson to incorporate some of the Western League teams into the National League (which would have ended our story before it began), Johnson eliminated the minor league cities of Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Buffalo and Kansas City, and replaced them with Philadelphia, Boston, Washington and Baltimore. The first two were in direct competition with two of the National League's stronger teams and the last two were, of course, two of the recently evicted NL cities. These moves, in effect, changed the American League from a regional, midwestern loop to a national organization.

At an October 14, 1900 meeting in Chicago, Johnson, in what would prove to be one of his biggest mistakes, gave the Baltimore franchise to old Orioles John McGraw and Wilbert Robinson. McGraw's ego was as big as Johnson's, and, even worse, his behavior was far from the professional and more refined image that Johnson was trying to create for the new league. It was a case of open warfare from the beginning, culminating in McGraw jumping back to the National League in July 1902 and sabotaging the Oriole franchise through a slick stock transfer scheme that put control of the American League team in the hands of New York Giants owner Andrew Freedman.

While Johnson was bringing McGraw into the fold (a wolf in sheep's clothing, as it turned out), he was also giving control of the Washington franchise to Tom Manning (actually, Johnson himself owned 51% of the franchise) and dispatching Connie Mack from Milwaukee to the City of Brotherly Love.

If Mack's many responsibilities in Milwaukee did indeed stand him in good stead when he came to Philadelphia, standing him in even better stead when he was putting the Athletics together were...a couple of other newspapermen...Philadelphia newspapermen.

That's right, the establishment and early acceptance of the A's received a tremendous boost (and not just in the form of good publicity) from the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Associated Press, and various other local media outlets.

Mack arrived in Philadelphia following the 1900 season and set up shop in the Hotel Hanover, initially holding one-quarter of what became the Philadelphia Athletics' stock, worth between five and 10 thousand dollars. The rest was originally held, as previously noted, by Johnson's primary money reserve, Charlie Somers.

Two weeks later, Nick Young, president of the National League, wired Johnson to advise him that he had forgotten to renew his protection fees for the National Agreement for the 1901 season. Johnson, who viewed protection fees the same way as a small shop owner views paying protection to the neighborhood hood, wrote back in typically undiplomatic fashion that he hadn't forgotten. At the same time, he also referred to the on-again, off-again efforts various baseball people were making to revive the old American Association (or, at least, a new major league bearing that name) as a threat that helped motivate the American League's non-payment. (Just to confuse things further, the National League also attempted to form a minor league called the American Association in early 1901, with teams in all of the American League cities.)

Here's the important part of Johnson's letter to Young:
“The plan of the American League to occupy Eastern territory has been well defined, and I think the men of the National League thoroughly understand our position in this matter. For the two years we have been menaced by the possible formation of a league hostile to our interest and detrimental in many ways to organized baseball. This annual agitation is hurtful and we propose to so shape our organization as to check it in the future. In extending our circuit to the far East, it is unreasonable to assume we could continue along the old lines prescribed by the National Agreement. New conditions must alter, in part, our relations with the National League. This is a matter I have informally discussed with some of your members.”

Imagine being a fly on the wall of Young's office when this little missive came in...

"I think the men of the National League thoroughly understand our position."

"Yes, we understand you're trouble," growls Young.

"For two years we have been menaced by the possible formation of a league hostile to our interest and detrimental in many ways to organized baseball."

"Ho, ho. The pot calling the kettle black," snorts Young.

"In extending our circuit to the far East..."

"We'd rather you really extend it to the far East, say to China. Maybe you could get caught in the Boxer Rebellion," wishes Young.

"It is unreasonable to assume we could continue along the old lines prescribed by the National Agreement."

"Since when did you really want to follow the National Agreement in the first place?" asks Young.

"New conditions must alter, in part, our relations with the National League."

"As if you didn't create those conditions yourself," rages Young.

Certainly the part about the menace of another league (the new American Association) was a red herring, since Johnson had only one thing in mind, having the American League take on the National League for supremacy. He couldn't have cared less about a phantom American Association.

Actually, Young didn't directly answer Johnson's baseball version of firing on Fort Sumter, although the November National League annual meeting in Indianapolis decided that it would hold the high moral ground in a baseball war, since the American Leaguers were the secessionists.

However, Johnson, et al certainly weren’t viewed as secessionists, at least not in the sports pages of the April 24, 1901 Philadelphia Inquirer. (Inky Sports Editor Frank Hough was a stockholder in the A's!)

“The commanding position in the baseball world secured by the American League, which opens its championship season to-day, is due in great part to the mistakes of the older organization, the National League. While there has always been a well-defined sentiment favorable to two organizations of a national character, it would have been the work of years to build up the American League to its present proportions but for the shortsighted policy and the grab-all disposition shown by the National League magnates ever since the asinine Indianapolis amalgamation.”

Of course, Inquirer readers could also have gotten the picture from the cartoon of Ban Johnson holding an Emancipation Proclamation in front of an unchained American Leaguer. "The Liberator of the American Baseball Slave" the cartoon was titled.

Those were the days…

John Shiffert is a member of the Society for Baseball Research (SABR), the former publisher of the Philadelphia Baseball File (1989-1991), the former Sports Information Director for Earlham College (1973-1974) and Drexel University (1975-1979) and a sportswriter of some 35 years experience, starting in high school in Philadelphia. Every week Shiffert (a baseball historian and Phillies fan living in exile outside of Atlanta) looks at a timely event from baseball's history and ties it into a event or news story from today's headlines in his free e-zine, 19 to 21 (www.baseball19to21.com).

The Comedy of Baseball
by Steve Reynolds

In the opinion of this writer, and the whole Zisk editorial team, David Cross’s 2002 Shut Up, You Fucking Baby! (Sub Pop) is one of the best comedy albums of the past decade. It’s a tour de force of observations about politics, rednecks and people who talk in the third person. Now Zisk presents a transcription of Cross’s take on the champ of talking in the third person—Rickey Henderson.

“But there’s one guy who’s the fucking king, who’s the worst. Yes, you got it, it’s Rickey Henderson. If you’ve ever seen Rickey Henderson interviewed, it’s the best. It’s sweet, it’s sweet glorious music. It’s like he’s communicating secretly to like an intergalactic leader from another space federation. Every time he says Rickey Henderson he’s giving coordinates to the planet, or whatever.”

[Posing as a reporter] “Hey Rickey, I noticed you taped your bat up a little higher than normal—what’s that about?”

[As Rickey] “Well, you know, Rickey Henderson has to do what’s best for Rickey Henderson, you know. I mean, if Rickey Henderson feels that Rickey Henderson needs to tape his bat up higher, to be the best Rickey Henderson that Rickey Henderson can be, then Rickey Henderson is going to tape his bat higher in way that Rickey Henderson can perceive, as Rickey Henderson can, to be the best Rickey Henderson that Rickey Henderson can or will or want to be as Rickey Henderson qualifying in a Rickey Henderson-esque type of way to be a Rickey Henderson for which all Rickey Hendersons around us, being one Rickey Henderson to speak through Rickey Henderson as vessel to reach all Rickey Hendersons out there in the world in a qualitative Rickey Henderson-esque magnanimous display of Rickey Henderson-tude and quality that you can find only in Rickey Henderson as Rickey Henderson as want to do for Rickey Henderson being Ricky Henderson as Rickey Henderson.”

“You come in here, ‘Rickey, how come you taping you bat,’ you know, Ricky Henderson is going to answer you in a way that Rickey Henderson can to be—in fact, that reminds me, I got to give that motherfucker phone call, you know. Uh-huh, that’s right.”

[Phone rings a few times, machine picks up]

[Message] “Hi, this is Rickey Henderson. Rickey Henderson is not available right now, but if you leave your name and number, Rickey Henderson will get back to you when it is best for Rickey Henderson to do so [beep].”

[As Rickey] “Rickey Henderson pick up”

“Pick up the phone Rickey.”

“Rickey Henderson, pick up the phone.”

“Pick up the phone Rickey!”

“Rickey, pick up the phone!!!”

“It’s me—you! God damn, that motherfucker’s never there!”

Zisk Issue # 5

The Zisk Book Review

Amazin’: The Miraculous History of New York’s Most Beloved Baseball Team
by Peter Golenbock

reviewed by Steve Reynolds

Baseball books have always been a tricky proposition, for both author and reader. If an author gets too bogged down in the details, you’ll be putting people to sleep like Bill James; too little detail and insight and too much windbag-like opinion, and you might be Mike Lupica. For the reader…well, let’s just say this: carrying a six-hundred and fifty-four page book on the New York City subway system can be backbreaking and can attract a fair share of people you’d prefer to never talk to, especially when they get a glimpse of the cover.

Sample conversation:
Smelly guy with thick glasses and greasy hair: Hey, uhhh, is that a Mets book?
Me: Yes. (cough, cough)
Smelly guy: Wow. Are you a fan?
Me: Yes. (turning blue due to holding breath)
Smelly guy: So does it have anything about the ’86 World Series in it?
Me: Yes. (slowly blacking out)
Smelly guy: You know, I never liked Ray Knight. Hojo was a much better guy. You know I once sold coke to Darryl and Doc in the same night—is that in there?
Me: (8 stops from home) Excuse me, this is my stop.

In any case, Amazin’ is well worth the heavy load you’ll carry in your bookbag. Author Peter Golenbock has a solid baseball book background, even if he wrote books with some of my most hated Yankees like Graig Nettles (Balls), Sparky Lyle (The Bronx Zoo) and the biggest prick of them all, the late Billy Martin (Number 1). Golenbock has done an astonishing amount of research on the New York Metropolitians, the first edition of which started play back in 1883(!). The first few chapters give a great overview of National League ball in the New York area from 1900 until 1957. Golenbock lays out the ups and downs and the battles between the Giants and Dodgers by utilizing tons and tons of interviews with players and the reporters that covered the two teams. Especially invaluable are the quotes from longtime Newsday sports writer Jack Lang, who spells out all the behind-the-scenes dealing that broke one borough’s heart.

Lang’s tales help set up what, for me, is the unknown and most interesting history of the Mets—how they came to existence, and how the power of Bill Shea helped make it happen. Golenbock deftly puts all the pieces together (the help of old-time Dodger executive Branch Rickey, the competing league Shea and Rickey formed just to bring N.L. baseball back to the city and Major League Baseball desperately guarding its antitrust exemption) and creates a fascinating look at not only the birth of this team, but of the times and people that made it happen.

Don’t get me wrong, the rest of the book is a treat too. It’s a scream reading how players on the ’88 division winning team blamed Greg Jeffries for them not going to World Series just because he was management’s golden boy. Amazin’ is nothing if not a great chronicling of some of baseball’s biggest egos, in their own words. In-depth interviews with everyone from Ron Swoboda to Gary Carter to Al Leiter paint a humorous picture of life inside the clubhouse. My only complaint is that Golenbock (or perhaps his editor) didn’t make these interviews easier to read. The butchering of grammar and the English language by some of the old-time players made me want to get out my editing pen (if I owned one).

Amazin’ is a must read for any true Mets fan. Just avoiding reading it on the subway.

(Not) America’s Team
By Kip Yates

I was watching the American League Championship Series this past October between the New York Yankees and the Seattle Mariners when I heard a lame brained broadcaster (I don't remember who it was exactly. They all start to morph together after a while.) proclaim that the Yankees were trying to win it all for America. Now let me explain something. I cannot stand the Yankees. Hate'em if you want to get down to the nitty-gritty. There isn't a team in professional sportdom that I despise any more than I do the New York Yankees. Not just this current crop of pinstripers either. I am one of the few New Yorkers, my friend Matt and his Dad the others, who cannot stomach the long tradition and history and Yankee lore that we are force fed every October. (Mantle, DiMaggio, Ruth? I’ve seen better!) So it occurred to me that not all of America was rooting for the Yankees.

At this particular time, with the city of New York reeling from a terrorist attack only a month earlier, and American patriotism at a high not seen since World War II, I was wondering just who the Mariners were playing for. For whom did the Mariners and later the Arizona Diamondbacks want to win if not for our country? Were they not part of America too? We’re they in secret cohorts with the Communists or worse yet, terrorists cells throughout the World? The “Axis of Evil?” Who would dare oppose the mighty “All-American” Yankee squad? Then it occurred to me that these teams with the audacity to challenge the mighty Yankees must be punks...plain and simple. But Edgar Martinez and Brett Boone are pretty good guys as are Luis Gonzalez and Curt Schilling. This led me to despise the Yankees even more, and worse yet, I wanted a team, any team to “punk” them.

Shortly after the curtain closed on Game 5 of the World Series, I was left to ponder what might have been if Byung-Yun Kim had taken some computer job in his native Korea. I prepared myself for more of the same unadulterated machismo that I inherently wandered into while walking the streets of New York City after the Yankees had won another title. My nightmare would continue for another year, unless Randy Johnson and Schilling could shut down the Yanks in games six and seven. Of course, there was always the reoccurring nightmare of Kim picking up a ball again, which scared the daylights out of me. So my mind began to wander.

What collection of punks could dethrone this team? It had to be punks because the nice guys in San Diego, Atlanta, and that other New York team did not get the job done and it appeared that barring a miracle, the guys from Arizona were not going to dethrone the Yanks either. Who would I sign on to my All-Punk team? My un-American team if you will? Who would not be afraid to slide hard into Derek Jeter, besides Mariah Carey? What pitcher would not bat an eyelash at throwing a bull’s eye at Jorge Posada's noggin? Who would give these guys the just punishment they deserved? That is when I decided to assemble my team of miscreants and for what it is worth, here they are:

FIRST BASE: Wil Cordero is so punk that he has come full circle that he is not even “punk” anymore. Because he continually beats his wife despite jail time and an aborted league suspension (thanks again, Players Union!), he is the lowest of the “punk” order: He is a scoundrel! But the deposed Cam Bonifay, Dan Duquette and everyone’s favorite virtue merchant, John Hart, thinks the man can still swing a bat so that’s all I need. He hits number five in my line-up.

SECOND BASE: Felix Martinez, the little known former Kansas City Royals prospect for that broken jaw he gave a base runner a couple years ago with a hard tag. Just the kind of thing that Paul O‘ Neil needs. He is my number eight hitter.

SHORTSTOP: This is a toughie because they are all pretty swell guys, but I am going to take Omar Vizquel with this one. Sure there isn't anything remotely “punk” about him, but he did threaten to hold out for more money after Roberto Alomar joined the Tribe and I hear that, unlike contemporaries Alex Rodriguez and Nomar Garciaparra, he does not help old ladies cross the street. Vizquel is my number two hitter.

THIRD BASE: Charley Hayes doesn’t bring any particular talent to my team other than his willingness to rush the mound after every brush back, bean ball, ball on the inside corner of the plate, strike out...you get the idea. He bats seventh.

CATCHER: Mitch Meluskey is recruited because he punched Houston Astro teammate Matt Mieske during batting practice and pretty much wrote his own ticket to Detroit. Insert laughter here! Oh yeah... he’s punk! He's a number six in the order punk.

LEFT FIELD: Gary Sheffield represents my un-American all punk team in left because of his bad attitude and his even badder swing. I choose him even though I know that when we start losing he’s going to want to go play someplace else. Until then, he is my cleanup hitter.

CENTER FIELD: I have to be careful with this selection because I understand Carl Everett doesn’t like being called no punk. He also doesn’t believe that Dinosaurs ever existed but that's for another place (read: insane asylum). He is badder than Leroy Brown and ballsy enough to challenge Yankee Mike Mussina’s near perfect game. I like that... and did I mention that the guy can play. He bats third.

RIGHT FIELD: Ricky Henderson is not going to like that I am moving him to right field from left but he has to understand that in his 43 years, he has lost a step. Also, Juan Gonzalez wanted to play for my team, but at the last minute he chose the tax free money that the Barry Manilow All-Stars offered, so I had to settle for the Mouth in right. The best lead off hitter ever bats lead off.

PITCHER: Randy Johnson is not a punk in the same vein as the rest of these guys, but a nasty slider, a wicked fastball, six feet ten inches of intimidation personified gives my team the best opportunity to defeat New York. 200 wins, over 3,400 strikeouts, a near three E.R.A. and the ‘Kentucky Waterfall’ he sports is reason enough for him to anchor my team of outcasts.
There you have it. My starting lineup and last great hope to defeat the New York Yankees in the World Series and save me from another agonizing off season of what if's and woulda/coulda/shoulda’s.

And now, the Yankees are just Mark Grace, Damian Miller, and whomever Bob Brenley decides to pinch-hit for Randy Johnson away from winning their fourth straight World Series. Mariano Rivera is on the mound and has not blown a post season save in 23 games and he just blew threw the Diamondbacks order in the eighth inning. Arizona doesn’t stand a chance…At least that is what we all thought didn’t we. It turns out that there isn’t any need for my team of infidels and villains after all. The Diamondbacks are World Series Champions. They won it for America. Hallelujah!

A Yankee Fan Reviews the Ill-fated Playoff Run of the 2001 Yankees
By Jeff Herz

I have been a Yankee fan since the 1976 World Series when I was 7 years old. That was the year my beloved Thurman Munson played his heart out, batting .539 despite being swept by my neighbor and best friend’s team, the Johnny Bench-led Cincinnati Reds. From that fall on I had my team. I knew not of the future to come, six more World Series Championships, the most in my lifetime (Ed note: see sidebar below). I just knew that this was the team I was going to root for forever.

I love the New York Yankees but they should have lost earlier in the playoffs last year. The 2001 version of the Yankees was not that good. They were getting old (Scott Atrocious and Paul O’Neil retired at the end of the season as did Luis Sojo but he seems to have resurfaced again), they had lost some speed and punch (Chuck Knoblauch and Tino Martinez), and the 4 and 5 pitching spots were suspect all season long (who remembers Christian Parker as the 5th starter in April?). Injuries proved costly to them over the course of the season, but they were still able to make the playoffs because the Red Sox, as predicted, self-destructed before September.

Somehow, the Yankees were able to get past a hungry Oakland team in the Divisional Series. The Young A’s nipped at the Yankees’ heals for a second straight year. Pushing them to the brink until Jeremy Giambi’s inability to slide at home plate allowed Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada to make perhaps the best post season play I have ever witnessed (time and again on ESPN’s Sportscenter). Had he slid, he probably would have been safe and New York would not have even made it to the Series. It would have allowed the Mariners to fulfill my preseason prediction of the M’s going to the Series, since the A’s would have believed that they did what they needed to do by knocking out the dreaded Yanks. But Giambi did not slide. I bet the Oakland coaches have slid him to death this spring.

The Yankees were able to ride the momentum of that play through the ALCS and past the 116 win Seattle Mariners in a series without much drama. Some will claim that this series was payback for the 1995 Division Series, but enough players had turned over to make this theory a real non-issue (hell, Tino Martinez and Luis Sojo played for the other side in ’95 plus Jeff Nelson and Sterling Hitchcock had been back and forth in that time). Needless to say the New York Yankees were on to their fifth World Series in six years, and playing the expansion Arizona Diamondbacks, who were under rookie manager Bob Brenly.

On paper, the World Series looked pretty even. It will go down in history as one of the best Series of all time. Most of the games were close and had the intensity that you would expect from a World Series. The home team wound up winning every single game, which sent the fans home happy. The Yankees showed their legacy and pride, the fight and determination that had won four of the previous five series.

However, they only did this for four of the seven games played (games 3, 4, 5 and 7). They were manhandled and had their asses handed to them in the other games. They barely bothered to show up for the other games hoping for some kind of Yankee magic to miraculously lift them to victory.

Let me give credit where credit is due. The Diamondbacks deserved to win and were the better team. They outplayed and out-hustled the Yankees. They had a 1-2 pitching punch of Schilling and Johnson that was, in the end, impossible to beat. I don’t wish to take anything away from the—this hurts—World Champions since they were the better ball club, but here is my rant nonetheless.

Bob Brenly is a horrible manager, not the genius that he was made out to be after the World Series. His decision in Game 4 to pull Schilling in the seventh inning because of a pitch count is ludicrous. He has the three-time defending Champs on the ropes with his ace, who has no problem racking up the innings, on the mound in a groove killing the Yankees. Why is he concerned about Game 7 when he is about to go up 3-1? Does he believe in the Yankee mystique so much that he knows they are going to come back?

Then in just about the opposite situation in Game 6, he leaves Randy Johnson in for seven innings in a 15-2 blowout. He should have brought Johnson out in the fifth so that he qualified for the win. That way he could have used Johnson sooner in Game 7 (which he was obviously planning on playing since Game 4) than he actually did if Schilling ran into any problems. I have no idea what would possess him to leave his second ace in for all this time, in a blowout, and burn his arm out when he could have needed him earlier in Game 7. In retrospect he did not need Johnson until the 8th, but if you are going to play Game 4 conservative, why not play Game 6 conservative as well. I just don’t get it.

Finally, bringing in a 21-year old Byong-Hyon Kim in Game 5 after he got shellacked in Game 4, when you have experienced veterans like Mike Morgan, Greg Swindell, and Bobby Witt in the bullpen. Now, in hindsight there is no way you can predict that your reliever is going to self destruct two nights in a row, but Brenly had ample opportunity to see that Kim did not have his best stuff and could have pulled him prior to giving up the second bomb, that almost brought the Yankees back from the brink.

That is just bad managing. Brenly alone gave the Yankees multiple opportunities to come back, when he had the hammer in his hand ready to hit the nails in the coffin. Game 7 would never have been played. Had Brenly been a better manager, the outcome that will go down in the ages, should never had occurred. But it did.

In the end, if the D’backs had won Game 7 by a score such as 7-2 or 4-1 or even blew the Yankees out again a la Game 6, I would have been satisfied with the outcome. I would have been able to commend them on being the better team with no second thoughts. I might have even been able to read the paper and news articles about the greatness of the series or the individual games, without my stomach turning over. But how they won Game 7 will forever burn in my stomach, at least it still does today, five months later. They beat us at our own game, coming back in the ninth against the best and most clutch reliever in the history of the game, with one bunt, three dribblers (two that should have been turned into DP’s) and one well-hit ball. (Ed note: see sidebar below) It was a nice run while it lasted. The 2001 Yankees went further than they really deserved.

However, all is fair in love and baseball and April 1 we start anew. I expect the 2002 Yankees to reclaim the crown stolen by those snakes in Phoenix and I don’t really expect the Diamondbacks to repeat, nor do I predict they will even make it back to the Series this October. But that is just me, I have been a Yankee fan for over a quarter century.

Yankees over Cardinals in 6 games, unless Rick Ankiel pitches then the Yankees sweep.
__________________________________________
World Series Championships in my lifetime (1969-present)
NY Yankees – 6 (1977, 1978, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000)
Oakland Athletics – 4 (1972, 1973, 1974, 1989)
Cincinnati Reds – 3 (1975, 1976, 1990)
Baltimore Orioles – 2 (1970, 1983)
Los Angeles Dodgers – 2 (1981, 1988)
Minnesota Twins – 2 (1987, 1991)
New York Mets – 2 (1969, 1986)
Pittsburgh Pirates –2 (1971, 1979)
Toronto Blue Jays – 2 (1992, 1993)
Arizona Diamondbacks – 1 (2001)
Atlanta Braves – 1 (1995)
Detroit Tigers – 1 (1984)
Florida Marlins – 1 (1997)
Kansas City Royals – 1 (1985)
Philadelphia Phillies – 1 (1980)
St. Louis Cardinals – 1 (1982)
_______________________________________

Let’s painfully relive Jeff Herz’s thoughts on that (un)fateful night...

The unheralded rookie Alfonso Soriano hit what should have been a Series winning and MVP producing home run in the eighth. That should have been sufficient for the Yankees. Instead Joe Torre reached into the well a little too early and perhaps a little too often, starting the bottom of the eighth with Mariano Rivera. I suggested at the time he should have gone with Mike Stanton a little longer or brought Ramiro Mendoza in to start the inning. If either one of them got into trouble you could always go to Rivera and they were able to get through the eighth then that leaves Rivera fresher for the ninth, when you really need him at his best. Somehow, we got through the eighth virtually unscathed though Rivera looked shaky. It was raining in the desert, which is never a good sign. The Yankees went quietly in the ninth as the Big Unit retires Bernie Williams, Tino Martinez and Jorge Posada in order.

Then Mark Grace, Mr. Cub as far as I am concerned (why the hell didn’t the Cubbies re-sign him?) and Mr. Poopy-pants from my fantasy team perspective gets a lame hit off of Rivera to lead off the ninth. The rain continues to fall, making the grip on the ball more and more slippery. Grace is taken out for a pinch runner, you don’t need to be a brain surgeon to know that Grace is no Carl Lewis. A dribbler is hit back to the box. Rivera fields the ball cleanly then…

NOOOOOOO, FUCK, HE THROWS THE BALL INTO CENTERFIELD.

Ok, first and second, no one out. It should have been a DP, but whatever, he still has not blown a save in the postseason since 1997. Jay Bell then pinch-hits for Randy Johnson. He bunts. Rivera fields it cleanly throws to Atrocious at third for the force. But Atrocious does not attempt the DP. AAAARGGGH. He holds the ball instead of trying to get the slow-footed Bell at first. That would have left a one run lead, with two outs and a man on second. But no, now we have a one run lead, men at first and second and only one out. The rest is history: Womak doubles, scoring a run, Counsell is HPB, Gonzalez bloops a ball to left over a drawn in infield, game over.

Baseball Players Should Strike!!!
By Jeff Herz

April 18, 2002
Once again it seems that MLBPA and former car salesman Bud Selig are heading towards a colossal collision similar to the strike tainted 1994 season. Neither party is willing to bend or break away from their position of being greedy moneygrubbers, looking to screw the fans…AGAIN1.

Personally I think the owners are wrong in saying they are always losing money, since they are continually trying to upgrade teams like some people upgrade cars. They could do this by putting a better product on the field, but NO, they try doing it by purchasing a “better” franchise and diluting the product known as Major League Baseball. Now I can write a whole diatribe on why one franchise is better than another, but I won’t now. If this industry were such a dog, as Heir Selig claimed to Congress this past winter, then why would these smart successful business people want to upgrade?

All 30 owners were and are successful business people prior to their association with baseball that has afforded them the luxury of purchasing a major league franchise. They are not getting into this business (and lets face it, that is what it is) to lose money. I find it just a little ironic that Forbes magazine, a very credible periodical, states that the Milwaukee Brewers (Bud Selig’s team in trust, being run by his daughter while he acts as league dictator) was the most profitable team after profit sharing. In my business acumen, this makes no sense. You work with what you have and you attempt to make a profit. Now Commissar Selig disputes the Forbes report because Milwaukee is supposedly a small market team and according to his figures is supposed to be losing gobs and gobs of money, thereby forcing large market teams to support him through profit sharing. So in fact he wants to show that the majority of teams are losing money so he has a better bargaining position with the players. Blah, blah, blah.

Now with that said, I don’t think the players are beyond reproach here either. They have become a group of filthy millionaires themselves who no longer seem to care about who is ultimately paying their bills. Once again, my business acumen says if there are no paying fans, the owners cannot afford to pay the exorbitant salaries, which the players have easily come to accept as normal. The best way the players can keep the support of the fans, and hurt the owners, and crush King Selig would be to stage a short three-day strike in the middle of the season. And they should do this at a time when their actions will have no effect upon the pennant races…The All Star Break. Coincidently enough, this year’s All-star extravaganza is to be held in Milwaukee’s recently built Miller Park. By staging a strike for those three days, the only folks who will shed a tear will be the merchants in Milwaukee who are looking for a quick economic boost from the folks coming to town. If the local merchants knew that this was the players’ plan, they would urge local boy Selig’s hand to the negotiating table and force him to make peace with the players. He cannot afford to lose the support of the hometown fans, and the players need to seriously threaten this action in order to break this negotiating impasse.
So players, strike. Nobody really cares about the All-Star game anyway. That way you prove your point saying you can hurt the owners and you can hurt the commissioner, but don’t hurt the game and you don’t hurt the fans.
___________________________
1 Let’s look at what happened this off-season, which makes the owners look like a bunch of swindling folks, who don’t seem to concerned about collusion.

The owners attempted to contract two teams (Twins and Expos) a few days after then end of a great World Series, and just when the collective bargaining agreement with the MLBPA was expiring. This failed only because the good people of Minnesota filed a court injunction asking that the Twins honor their lease at the Metrodome, which expires after the 2002 season.
They allowed one of the owners (Jeffrey Loria, more on him later) of whose teams (Expos) were supposed to be contracted, to purchase another franchise (Marlins) so that another owner (John W. Henry) could purchase yet another franchise (Red Sox) at a huge (tens of millions of dollars) discount. Remember the bastard Dolan family who owns Cablevision (which are still preventing me from watching Yankee games) offered to buy the Red Sox for $700+ million, while Selig successfully bamboozled the Yawkey estate (the previous Red Sox owner’s for 60+ years) to accept Henry’s bid of $660 Million. Selig did this so he can keep control of the owners and ensure that they continue to tow the party line. If that is not collusion, I am not sure what is.

It was revealed Commissioner Selig and the Milwaukee Brewers accepted loans from Carl Pohland, the owner of the Minnesota Twins, a team that Selig wants to eliminate. Then Selig claimed there was no deal where the Twins would be contracted and Pohland would be bought out for more than market value.

Lastly, the joke that is Jeffery Loria. He was the same guy that promised to do what it takes to bring the Expos back to respectability when he purchased them. He told the fan base, however small it was, that he would spend the necessary dollars (Canadian or American) to make this team competitive again. Essentially he told the consumers that he was going to put a good product on the field to justify them spending their weakened Canadian dollars at the ballpark. Just a few years later after doing just the opposite and driving the team into a Triple A franchise for the rest of the league he sells the Expos to a MLB trust, so he can go destroy another team on the brink of failure. Now he is doing essentially the same thing in Florida. Now I don’t think Miami has done anything to justify keeping the team, but for whatever reason they were spared from the contraction guillotine this year. I think the fans in South Florida, if there are any and if they can afford to spend their social security to see a ball game, deserve better. Since the winter of 1997 when Wayne Huizenga dismantled the then World Series champions, they have been doing nothing but rebuilding and I don’t see that Jeffrey Loria is going to change that based on his Montreal track record.

Who Is Dick Allen?
by Jake Austen

Richard Anthony Allen should be remembered as one of the greats: he hit over 350 home runs, had over 1,000 RBI, and was the decisive AL MVP in 1972 when he led the league in home runs, RBI, walks and slugging. Instead, when he is remembered it is often in a negative light, based upon his incendiary chemistry with the fans and press. As Richie Allen he slugged for the Philadelphia Phillies from 1963-1969, where the notoriously brutal Philadelphia sports fans had it in for him (these are fans that historically have booed Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Destiny’s Child). When he came to the American league he found a home with the Chicago White Sox (and a new name, his experience in Philadelphia was so bad he insisted on being called "Dick" instead of "Richie") where he had a mixed reception. He was a fave with the royal family of Chicago, Mayors Daley I and II, and as one old joke goes, "Who was the first Black manager is baseball? Dick Allen, he ran the White Sox from 1972-1974." On the other hand, the press didn’t cotton to his unusual habits (he didn’t practice with the team, he smoked in the dugout, he didn’t give interviews) and the notoriously frank Sox announcer Harry Carey gave him hell, declaring, "Dick Allen has a million dollars worth of talent and 10 cents worth of brains."

Well one man is trying to right the injustices Dick Allen suffered, and that man is Ziff Sistrunk, Dick Allen’s #1 fan. We had a chance to talk with Ziff, and this is how it went down:

JA: Who is Dick Allen?

ZS: Dick Allen was a famous baseball player from the 70s. He was a person who was an example of the true American spirit of independence and freedom...a free spirit. He was a man who had tremendous power. Essentially, the black Babe Ruth.

JA: When did you become interested in Dick Allen?

ZS: I was a bat boy for him in the '70s. In those days they had contests, and I wrote a letter to the Cubs and White Sox, "Why I Want to Be a Bat Boy." I won the contest based on my letter and become the White Sox bat boy from 1973-1974. I was the first black bat boy in Chicago history.

JA: What is your greatest memory of Dick Allen?

ZS: Sparky Lyle on the mound for the Yankees, in front of a gigantic White Sox crowd. It was the second game of a double header, bases loaded, ninth inning. (White Sox manager) Chuck

Tanner sent me in to the clubhouse to tell Dick Allen he was pinch hitting. He was sitting out because his contract said he didn’t play the second game of a double header. He came out and hit a screaming line drive into the upper deck. Me and the trainer were jumping up and down, screaming and hugging each other! Dick Allen brought excitement to Chicago sports (comparable to) Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. Nancy Faust, the White Sox organist, plays a different song for every player, and for him she played, "Jesus Christ Superstar." I asked her why and she said, "Because he approached the plate like a king!"

JA: Do you consider yourself his number one fan?

ZS: Not only do I consider myself his #1 fan (other than his wife and his mother who just died a few years ago...he was a mama’s boy), I am also the official president of the Dick Allen International Fan Club on Race Relations. It is called that because Allen was subjected to a lot of racism, and baseball needs to acknowledge what he went through if the sport is ever to achieve real racial harmony. When he played Triple A for the Little Rock (Arkansas) Travelers he was the first black baseball player in that state. When he first arrived the Governor and 200 fans met Allen at the airport with a sign reading “Don’t Niggerize Our Baseball.” When he went to the Philadelphia Phillies, the Phillies had never had a black superstar. On the field one game Frank Thomas, a veteran on the team who was near retirement, called Allen a “nigger son of a bitch.” Allen knocked him down and Thomas hit Allen on the shoulder with a bat. This was in front of fans, and the Phillies fans turned on Allen. The next day the attendance shot up, just to boo Dick Allen. They brutally rode him out of Philadelphia. He had to wear a batting helmet in the field because they threw things...nails...at him. His life was in danger. If you threw a nail at a player today you would go to jail. Baseball didn’t protect Dick Allen. Can you imagine the mental strain...you can’t!

JA: What does being his #1 fan entail?

ZS: What it does is it has me trying to correct the way that Dick Allen was painted as a bad person or troublemaker. He was an independent person who exercised the United States’ Constitution’s right to free speech. He chose the freedom to not speak to reporters, so of course they wrote bad things about him. I’ve been working on a documentary about Dick Allen for years, but it doesn’t have an end yet. I’m going to take my Dick Allen museum on the road and collect a million signatures, and present them to the baseball commissioner so that he will make a special proclamation. I think Dick Allen should be in the Hall of Fame...it’s the only way his career could wind up and it’s the only way that baseball can achieve racial harmony in the sport. I was talking to (Allen), and he said he wouldn’t want to be in the Hall of Fame unless they also put me in as the first black bat boy. That was a nice thing of him to say. You know, this is the 30th anniversary of the season he saved the Sox (they were going to move to Seattle or Florida before Allen doubled the attendance). I am trying to get the White Sox to retire his number and erect a statue. (Gubernatorial candidate) Roland Burris said it best, he said I’m “keeping Allen’s legacy alive.” No, Channel 7’s Bob Petty said it best... “If Dick hadn’t been like Dick then there wouldn’t be a Dick Allen!”

JA: What’s the single act that you’ve done that best exemplifies your devotion to Mr. Allen?

ZS: I’ve collected over 500 pieces of memorabilia for my traveling Dick Allen Museum. His old uniforms, his bat, his glove...I went to the Academy Awards to support Michael Clarke Duncan (nominated for The Green Mile) who I went to King High School with, and he told me he had Dick Allen’s glove, which I thought was strange. Allen only had two gloves, I didn’t know him and Allen were close. Duncan sent the glove to me and now it’s in the museum.

JA: How would you like history to remember Dick Allen?

ZS: As one of the finest ballplayers to ever play the game. He ran like a deer, hit like Hercules and dressed like the president. When everyone in the locker room had cotton drawers, he was walking around with silk drawers and a big afro. They say he was a bad guy...he never threw his bat, never argued with the umpire...his mother raised him to be at peace with himself and to believe in God. The hostility he was subjected to was unfair. But he went through these things so others wouldn’t have to. Ballplayers are murdering people now, and Dick Allen is supposed to be bad. Yes, he didn’t like playing the second game of a double header, he didn’t go to spring training or take batting practice. He wasn’t perfect; once he had three homers and 6 RBI and had given the team an 8-run lead in the 7th inning and asked the manager if he could go. He went to the racetrack, and the team lost the lead and the game, and the reporters saw him at the track, so you can imagine how they let him have it. But ballplayers are murdering people now! He wasn’t a bad guy, just a rebel, an independent, free spirit.

JA: How would you like history to remember Ziff Sistrunk?

ZS: As a person who stood for what was right in Dick Allen’s case, who put this in front of his own career. This isn’t about racism, it’s about racial harmony, we’re still not over Jackie Robinson. As long as baseball looks at Dick Allen as bad there will never truly be racial harmony in the game.

Email Ziff at ziff15@hotmail.com if you would like to support his efforts to help Dick Allen’s legacy!

Editor’s note: Check out more info at:
White Sox Interactive
The Phillies Fan Union

(Non) Rants From the Upper Deck
by Steve Reynolds

Each time we get ready to roll out another issue of Zisk, I usually buy a six-pack of Rolling Rock, and bottle of gin and a bunch of uppers and sit in front of my antique PC and bang out my angry thoughts about the idiocy of baseball’s owners and players. But this time around the rants have been tempered by my love of baseball. More specifically, the renewed love of the game I found on September 17th.

Every person in America (and many others around the world) had their own reactions and ways of dealing with the events of September 11th. For me, it meant five nights in a row of some hardcore drinking at bars in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn; the same bars that firefighters of Squad 1 (which was decimated) would go to. Reading the paper morning after morning without a section devoted to the previous night’s games (and how the Mets were gaining ground on .500) added to the confusion of what the heck was going on in this world. (As was the evacuations of my office building because of bomb threats next door.)

So September 17th arrived with games around the country. When I got home from work, I immediately turned on the Mets-Pirates telecast from Pittsburgh. They’re weren’t a great deal of people in the stands, but those that were there wore I (Heart) NY buttons given out at the gate. Every single time the Fox Sports New York cameras were focused on the crowd, all you could see were little white spots on each and every fan. The game was a good one too, but that was besides the point—being able to cheer for Mike Piazza or wonder if Edgardo Alfonzo would break out of his season-long slump made me feel like one part of my life was there again. It gave me something good to hold onto, which seemed impossible to do at that time.

That same night I flipped to ESPN to watch the ceremony at the beginning of the Cardinals game. Their long-time announcer Jack Buck, wracked by Parkinson’s disease, stood in front of the Busch Stadium crowd and gave a speech that brought everyone to tears—including that evil contraction man Bud Selig. “I got home early Monday, turned on television and watched ceremonies in St. Louis with Jack Buck's speech. I cried,” he told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “I called Jack. I told him, ‘Now I know I made the right decision.' I watched not only Jack but the crowd, their faces and their emotions. I knew they were glad to be together.” Selig, for the first time in his life, had made a wise decision by waiting a week until letting the season resume.

One more thing I learned after September 11th is that Curt Schilling is a decent man. He wrote a thoughtful open letter, which the following excerpts are taken from:

“Words cannot heal your wounds, not even time will heal the wounds for those who have suffered loss this week. But other than money and blood, which I hope the players in MLB will be giving of both, it is all we have to offer.

We will step on the fields of Major League Baseball on Monday night, but please know that we are not doing this as an aversion to forget what happened on Tuesday. Nothing will ever make us forget that day. But we are doing so because it is our jobs, and I honestly feel that if you do have a chance to catch a few minutes of a game, and see every sports fan in every stadium stand for that initial moment of silence, and understand when we do so that we do so for you, and for your families. And in the seventh-inning stretch when this nation sings "God Bless America," we do so because we can, because in this country men and woman have died so that we can continue on as a free nation, and we will be thinking of you then also.

And it's my belief that if you watch close enough you will see players, many players in fact, trying in some small way to say thank you, and that we won't forget you or your loved ones as some of us will have messages scrawled somewhere on our hats or uniforms that you can read.
We will proudly wear the great flag of this country on our uniforms, and it's something I hope baseball adopts forever.”

No World Series This Year
by Mike Bonomo

There may not be a World Series this year. If the Braves and Yanks are in it, it won't exist for me. Especially if the Yankees win it. I'm not looking forward to hearing how they did it for NY when this New Yorker hates 'em. I'm not looking forward to the sight of Giuliani's dumb-assed mug's comb-over bedecked in Yankee cap. He smiles dickishly from the podium built tearfully close to Ground Zero. His steady lispy voice declares the Yankees synonymous with the “New Patriotic Resolve and Spirit of American Will to Win.” An unstated feeling that my Yankee hatred makes me less American.

There'll be cops and firemen with Yankee insignia on their uniforms and helmets cheering gratefully with their children and talking about their lost brothers who loved the Yanks. (Yes, that will bring tears to my eyes, too.) Jeter will don a fire helmet saying “This one’s for the department” and donate his salary to the cause. (It's a good idea.) The final feel-good moment of Giuliani's long, mostly hateful regime. I'll look on silently puking with a pang of guilt from the smiling faces of the newly fatherless children meeting the players. No, better to watch a movie instead.

I can feel good for those fans who, having lost a great deal, need a diversion from the pain of Sept. 11th. Even if they are Yankee fans. But the smirking condescension will take on a patriotic flag-waving element that will be more annoying than ever. It'll be like a red, white and blue painted asshole.

Worst of all will be Roger Clemens declaring how much respect he has for all New Yorkers. (Except for Mike Piazza, for whom Clemens has through his actions shown nothing but immature aggressive contempt.) His carpet bagged rings and bean balls get privately flown back to Texas and forgetful Yankee fans—who last year claimed they hated his guts—now kiss his ass because they couldn't do it without him.

No, better to ignore it all than give them the finger and end up on the list of “Un-American Activities.”

Pete Rose's Bloody Steak Napkin
By Frank D'Urso

This is a story about fame, fortune, a very rare steak, two bottles of wine and a round of toxicity called “Blue Hawaii.”

Every summer the guys all get together in Cooperstown, I'm the newest member so they call me the Rook even though it's my second “season.”

We call ourselves GALCO, short for Get A Life Company, and they made a trophy that we present to ourselves every hot summer on the “Field of Dreams.” Each participant gets their name engraved on it. For 364 days a year the trophy stays in an old cardboard box from a coffee urn.

We usually gather on Friday and have a nice meal at an authentic Italian restaurant on Main Street in Cooperstown. A few ballplayers and celebrities will show up and can be seen, the whole village is filled with the best living baseball players of all time. This year old time pop crooner Jerry Vale was there, he caused quite a stir with the older crowd.

Saturday we'll usually grab some hot dogs and street sausages while we investigate Main Street’s collection of stores and museums, capped off by a quick visit to the mighty Baseball Hall Of Fame itself. Last year I got to see Kirby Puckett all up close—he's a lot taller than when I viewed him from the outfield seats of Fenway Park.

Saturday night we go out of the village a little ways to a steak house. I don't know if it's a custom or not, but the “rookie” buys the gang a round of drinks while we wait for everyone to show up and get a table. My first year we all drank whiskey, so this year I asked the bartender to surprise us. She took the challenge wholeheartedly and made some strong concoction called “Blue Hawaiian,” she took a liking to me and even gave me an extra one...I was well on my way to getting lubricated.

My nickname, besides the Rook, is Da Bare because that's what my last name means in Italian. The other guys are El Presidente, Commander Kelshmo, Bull-Man, WhoreGay, DougLips, BoBo, Pretzelman and Morgan (whose real name is Morgan). These guys have been coming to Cooperstown for induction week for over ten years. I'm the youngest at 37 and Bull-Man is the eldest just having turned 60. Bull-Man is a large man with lots of momentum, and as can be expected of a former Marine, he can keep up with each of us and more.

The Steakhouse usually gets a few ball players to come out and get away from the crowds—last year we saw Stan Musial and Doc Gooden. This year, along with his posse, right in the front room was the living, breathing dynamo called Charlie Hustle. The waiters were even pretty impressed that he was there. They whispered gleefully that they hoped he tipped well. Pete Rose has been haunting the festivities hoping to gain some sympathy for his cause.

I peeked around the corner, and there he was, Moe Howard haircut and all, entertaining his group of about ten people. I noticed how sexy the two women that were dining with them were. I also noticed from the state of their table they looked like they were almost through. Bull-Man ran out to the car to get something for Pete to sign, WhoreGay staked out the corner of the bar that the Rose ensemble would have to leave through. He wasn't a fan of Pete, but did want to get a good look at the female talent with them. I stayed at the edge of the bar, feeling the happy tonic of the Blue Hawaiian course through my veins. The other guys, El Presidente in particular, stayed in their barstools, angry for Pete's desecration of the game.

Suddenly I noticed two tall thin sexy stripper type women walking towards me. They weren't actually that tall, it was the 6-inch stripper high heels they had on! One had the translucent style strappy heels that immediately gave me a hard on fighting through the edges of the blue stuff I was drinking. I happened to notice that WhoreGay had a stern yet satisfied look on his face, which is when I realized that I was ogling Pete Rose's wimmin'. One of these ladies could have been his wife. One of these ladies could have been Pete Junior's prom date before running away and becoming...a stripper.

Pete was behind the towering semi-blondes, and again, I noticed his haircut first. He threw a quick "get away from my bowl" dog scowl at WhoreGay and then turned toward my side of the bar. The moment of truth was suddenly upon me, how would I deal with this "brush with greatness"?

I thrust out my hand at the aged yet still virile short stack of power. "Hey Pete," I blurted out between what must have been blue blurred lips. His scowl turned into a quick smile as he took my hand and shook briskly, he patted me with his left hand, and I proudly patted Pete Rose on the back. In the brief second that we had contact I was sure that this man could still play major league baseball, I could feel the tight twirling energy within his diminutive frame. His chest muscles were bursting through his shirt. I quickly developed a mental picture of him fucking the one woman and then reaching for the next. The virility seethed from within.

The entourage made its way by us and was met by Bull-Man, who at 6'4" made Pete Rose look like a little boy. We were seated at the next table away from where Pete sat. The waitstaff were now buzzing, as if they had been holding their breath. They scurried off and did not return for quite some time. Meanwhile, us GALCO guys started in on a bottle of wine, I was buzzed enough to not be able to choose from the menu. I was feeling good, and hey, I just shook hands with PETE ROSE. We all were having a good laugh, for or against; Pete Rose was a good topic of conversation, especially when baseball fans are drinking.

I decided to go look at the mess of Pete Rose's table, perhaps I could learn something about him, something that would damn him or provide his salvation. Really I was just a semi drunk nosey bastard. But it was fun.

I picked up his white linen napkin, it was smeared with all sorts of steak blood—perhaps he likes his steak very rare? Yes, a baseball animal like Pete Rose would certainly eat his meat raw, preferably off the near dead frame of an animal in the wild. His butter knife was smeared with the stuff, surrounded by many breadcrumbs on the table cloth. That's it Pete, no worries about artery hardening with you, you’re made of steel! The shrimp fork was an oddity; it was between the seats of Pete and the blonder looking stripper that was probably his wife. I imagined they shared a shrimp cup, he feeding her like a master would feed its pet. I noticed the one bottle of wine they all shared, good for Pete I thought, not over drinking, he had enough vices. I picked up the cork...hmmm, I sniffed the same wine that Pete Rose drank!

At this point the guys grabbed me and we made our way to the salad bar, apparently I had a salad with my meal. While we selected our vegetable portions from the sneeze guarded buffet, a family of five was enjoying overhearing our Rose-related jocularity. I noticed that the daughter had an “I'm With Stupid” T-shirt on, with the arrow pointing at her Dad. I couldn't help but blurt out, “Your shirt says I'm with stupid.” I turned to the Dad, “Does that make you stupid?” Somewhere in between thinking and saying that I started to realize that it was a pretty dumb thing to say, but to my amazement and gratitude the entire family responded with the best entire family laugh that I have ever experienced. I said something else equally as stupid, and they responded uproariously, this family must’ve been tripping...

I decided to finish with one last laugh, and granted them “Pete Rose's Butter Knife” for their good-naturedness. I made my way back to our table, Commander Kelshmo was taking his turn with the comedy, followed by the efforts of Bull-Man. Every time I heard this family laugh I felt so good inside, these people were HEARTY laughers. A table behind us had asked us what the commotion was, and I explained how they had missed out on Pete Rose. I gave them the cork from the wine bottle and was rewarded with a kiss on the cheek from the thirty something hootchie mamma.

Things settled down for a while as we ate, then Bull-Man decided to do a magic trick. He took our empty wine bottle, pushed the cork back in, and using his napkin to create pressure, made the cork fly out. I was impressed, and inspired. I bet that he couldn't do that again with Pete Rose's empty wine bottle. I got the bottle off the still ignored table, drank the last drops (I drank wine with Pete Rose!) and presented it to Bull-Man. After about five minutes he earned the $20 bet, but the result was the cork flying out of the bottle and hitting in the head a guy on the table next to us. They were a little upset of course, but after we explained the Pete Rose scenario the victim was kind of honored. I gave them the bottle as a keepsake, and Bull-Man did the trick for them one more time to prove it was a magical accident.

We left quickly after paying our bill, I didn't want to get nabbed with the bloody steak napkin and shrimp fork that I still had. Bull-Man gave me the golf ball that he had Pete Rose sign, it was the only thing he could find in a hurry, Pete apparently tried to sign it, it was just a blue squiggle. We tried to trace out what the signature said—if it were a baseball it would be worth over one hundred dollars. As a golf ball with a blue squiggle it was worthless, except to me of course, for I am the owner of PETE ROSE'S BLOODY STEAK NAPKIN!

Frank D'Urso lives in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. He is a member of SABRE (Society for American Baseball Research), produces the 'zine BIZZAH and plays in the band called ROMANtheEDGE. Copies of BIZZAH (with 7" Vinyl) can be had for $4. Orders and comments welcome at fdurso@attbi.com.

The Zisk Predictions for 2002
By Steve Reynolds

AL East
1) New York Yankees
Oh how it pains me to make this prediction. I would like nothing more than to see these fat cats stumble and not even make the playoffs as a wild card. But that's not about to happen. The Yanks have six quality starters, and that the reason alone should guarantee them a spot in the postseason. Add in Jason Giambi's bat (which will come around by the time June rolls around) and the shocking reemergence of Robin Ventura as a power hitter and these guys are unstoppable. But watching the Red Sox take three of four early season games give us hope.

2) Boston Red Sox
Speaking of the Sox, I think a wild card berth could happen—if Pedro Martinez stays healthy and gets his control back; if Derek Lowe continues to pitch like the second coming of Roger Clemens; if Scot Hillenbrand keeps hitting: and IF Rickey Henderson isn't playing cards in the clubhouse during a game. But when one of these if doesn’t happen, the “Curse of the Bambino” will last for another season. At least Dan Duquette got rid of a lot of last year’s dead wood. And kudos to the new Sox owners for getting rid of the infested wood—a.k.a, Duquette. New skipper Grady Little has the respect of his players unlike Joe Kerrigan and Jimy Williams—and that’s even before he was hired. Little is shaping up to be the best quote maker since Bill Lee floated out of Fenway. On seeing a giant cockroach crawl across the floor of his office, Little said: "That might not be the first time a Red Sox manager's office has been bugged.”

3) Toronto Blue Jays
Wait—you’re telling me there’s still baseball in Canada? And that there’s TWO teams? No WAY

4) Baltimore Orioles
So Cal Ripken is gone—now what? Well, hopefully manager Mike Hargrove invested in the company that makes Pepto Bismol, as he’s going to have a long hard season watching this truly untalented team. The cupboard will likely be barren for a long time after the idiotic ways of owner Peter Angelos. This is one guy that should look back at the Yankees from 1985 to 1991 to see how karma can come back to get at an owner.

5) Tampa Bay Devil Rays
One of the two teams that should have seriously been considered for contraction (the other being the Marlins, as it is apparent baseball is not the sport for Florida, except in spring training) is the only thing keeping the Orioles from falling all the way to the basement. Ugh.

AL Central
1) Cleveland Indians
I would love for a Twins miracle finish which lands them in the playoffs for the first time since 1991, but Cleveland looks too powerful for the little team that Selig couldn’t kill. New GM Mark Shapiro probably had to change his phone number after trading away Robby Alomar and letting Juan Gonzalez go. Now he looks like a genius as the young and solid starting pitching is leading the Tribe to a huge start.

2) Minnesota Twins
Really, how could anyone think of getting rid if this team? The history (Orlando Cepeda, Rod Carew, Kirby Puckett) and the incredible 1991 World Series should have been enough to secure their place in the Twin Cities forever.

3) Chicago White Sox
If Frank Thomas comes back to have a monster season, they could be a surprise. But the pitching is a bit lacking, and having Kenny Lofton as your key off-season addition doesn’t spell title in anyone’s book.

4) Kansas City Royals
Chuck Knoblauch. Two words that will doom this team to another 90 loss season.

5) Detroit Tigers
“You know, if we open a great new park, we’re bound to win and thousand more people will show up!” Ah yes, the dream of four years ago is now a nightmare. They could challenge the Mets record for most losses in a season pretty easily.

AL West
1) Seattle Mariners
Seriously, how the hell did they lose to the Yanks? I’m still shaking my head over that one. They’ll get a second shot this year.

2) Oakland Athletics (Wild Card)
Jason Giambi has gone to live out his childhood dreams in the Big Apple. So where does that leave baseball’s low budget overachievers? Not that bad off actually. They still have four great starters, and David Justice should supply some muscle in the hitting department. And don’t forget, the Mariners somehow kept improving after losing their best players.

3) California Angels
There’s no way this team won’t be better than the Rangers. That’s about all you can say for them.

4) Texas Rangers
Alex Rodriguez sold his soul to the devil—and look what it got him.

NL East
1) New York Mets
I don’t usually pick my own favorite team to win their division because I fully buy into the curse of the Braves. This year seems different to me somehow. The Mets have played awful, horrific baseball the first three weeks of the season, just like last year. But the 2002 Mets are in first place. The pitching has been superb so far, which no one expects to last all the way to September. But if the hitting comes around and Mo Vaughn can actually contribute, this is a team that could go all the way.

2) Philadelphia Phillies (Wild Card)
Sure, they didn’t add any impact players. Sure, many of the players hate Larry Bowa. But this team got enough seasoning last year to make another good run at it this year.

3) Atlanta Braves
Ding-dong, the witch is dead. Finally, the Braves pitching (except for Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux, if he stays healthy) is their weak spot. Gary Sheffield will help, but he won’t be able to also pitch middle relief.

4) Montreal Expos
Frank Robinson will get the best he can out of the last year of this franchise.

5) Florida Marlins
The pitching has potential. Didn’t someone say that about the Mets in 1996? Ex-Expos owner Jeffrey Loria deserves a last place finish.

NL Central
1) St. Louis Cardinals
Mark McGwire is gone, so I imagine St. Louis will take a page from the Mariners book and do even better. Albert Pujols will led this team back into the playoffs.

2) Pittsburgh Pirates
Yeah, this makes no sense, but they got rid of Operation Shut Down Derek Bell! How can I not root for them?

3) Houston Astros
Larry Dierker got fired for not making it past the Division Series. What will happen to Jimy Williams when he doesn’t make the playoffs?

4) Chicago Cubs
Sammy Sosa could hit 150 home runs and drive in 300 runs—this team still ain’t making the post-season.

5) Cincinnati Reds
Do you think someone has told Ken Griffey Junior that you can’t go home again?

6) Milwaukee Brewers
It will be so great to see the team run by Bud Selig’s daughter lose more than 100 games this year.

NL West
1) San Francisco Giants
Barry Bonds will hit 75 home runs, drive in 130 runs and walk 200 times, and somehow won’t get the MVP. But he will make the playoffs.

2) Arizona Diamondbacks
If Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling could pitch every other day, this team would return to the World Series. Alas, this year the dynamic duo won’t be able to get them 90 wins.

3) Los Angeles Dodgers
A hurt Kevin Brown and no Gary Sheffield equal another long season for the Dodger blue. They’ll be heading to the parking lot in the fourth inning this season.

4) Colorado Rockies
Fuck you, Mike Hampton.

5) San Diego Padres
Oh where have you gone Tony Gwynn—a city turns its lonely eyes to you.

ALCS: Yanks vs Mariners

NLCS: Mets vs. Giants

World Series: Mets vs. Mariners

Oh, why not live in a world of fantasy: Mets in 5.

Fixing the Game...One Trivial Argument at a Time
by Mike Faloon

“Future Hall of Famer Mike Mussina.” Honest to Koufax, I read that very phrase in print (Bill Mazeroski’s Baseball). It’s time to cease and desist using the term “future Hall of Famer.” I don’t even like hearing the phrase precede such worthy names as Tony Gwynn or Cal Ripken, Jr. They’ve got eternity to carry the HOF tag, they can wait until they’re posing for their plaques before amending their name tags.

And while it’s a bit hasty to give Tony or Cal the future hall of famer treatment, it’s downright foolish to include Mike “11-15 in 2000” Mussina in their ranks. He has as many Cy Young Awards as I do and he’s led the league in wins only once more than I have (Mike M. -1, Mike F. - 0). He’s yet to win 20 in a season and has not had a sub-3.00 ERA since 1992. Hardly the figures of legend.

It’s bad enough that good-for-a-long-time-but-never-great figures like Don Sutton are already clogging up Cooperstown. Why further taint the hall’s reputation by speculating that its hallowed walls have more ho-hum in store? The point of the hall is to immortalize the all-time greats, those with a string of amazing years, the players who dominated at their positions for the better part of a decade, or more. Mussina has been very good for nearly that long but there has never been a point when he was considered a Pedro, Maddux or Big Unit. Those guys will be Hall of Famers. And if they’re going to bear that title for the rest of time, then they can wait until they’re inducted to add it to their resumes. Let the term “future hall of famer” go the way of the Maury Wills’ managing career—amusing but best forgotten.

***
“God bless the Diamondbacks!”

I never thought such words would pass my lips. But sure enough when Luis Gonzalez dropped that gloriously meager line drive over short to win Game 7, the D’backs spend a good three seconds as my favorite team in history.

“God bless the Diamondbacks.” Looks as weird as it sounds. The D’backs are an expansion team. They’re from the desert. Their stadium has a pool. War crimes, one and all. Toss in the ugly Steinbrenner-esque manner in which they assembled their team and you’ve got a club primed for loathing.

However, it’s too simple to say that the D’backs represent all that’s wrong with baseball. Not only did they thwart the vile Bronx Bombers but they did it riding the arms of the thunderous throw-back combo of Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. And that awful looking stadium has that cooler-than-cool patch of dirt running from the pitcher’s mound to home. The D’backs have bunch of things to counter the (many) painfully lame aspects of their franchise. What stands to be forgotten is that the yin/yang-like balance that fuels the D’backs surfaced long before Game 7.

It was a seemingly routine May game between the D’backs and Padres. Well, routine until it became evident that Curt Schilling had perfect game stuff. He took his perfect game bid, and 2-0 lead, into the 8th inning. With one out, Padres catcher Ben Davis stunned everyone in the park by choosing to bunt. No one expected a bunt from .238 hitting catcher who moves like Rerun (seven steals lifetime—Davis, that is, not Rerun). Even more surprising, Davis broke up the perfect game and brought the tying run to the plate with five outs left in the game. It was a perfect baseball move.

The Zen of the D’backs surfaced in the post-game reactions of rookie manager Bob Brenly and victimized pitcher Curt Schilling. Big Bad Bob went ape. He called Davis’ move “chicken shit.” He pissed and moaned about unwritten baseball rules. He told the press that “Ben Davis is a young player and has a lot to learn about how this game is played.” (This from a guy then in his second month as a manager.) According to Brenly’s Book of Baseball, if there’s a no-hitter on the horizon, be polite and give up. Even if the opponent is a divisional rival. Even if the tying run is in the on-deck circle.

But, just as you’re about to (rightfully) dismiss Brenly, his uber-sour grapes, and all things Arizona, up steps Curt Schilling with a largely overlooked post-game quote of his own: “Can’t be pissed about it.”

Screw the Diamondbacks. God bless Curt Schilling.

***
Dante Bichette swats a double down the third baseline at Fenway. In and of itself, the hit itself was impressive because Bichette managed an extra base hit somewhere other than Coors Field. But every ounce of “Hey, good for Dante!” evaporated when he called time out, removed an enormous elbow pad, jogged to the batboy, handed over the elbow pad, and then mosied back to second base.

Elbow pads, arm pads, shin pads, knee pads—hitters have padding for every part of the body potentially exposed to an oncoming pitch. And that’s fine, such devices help keep hitters in the line up. With a wide strike zone, hitters need to be able to dive over the plate, while also protecting themselves against the inside stuff. If they choose to shield themselves with bunker-like protective gear, so be it. My objections arise when needless delays are forced into the flow of a game. And not only are such actions a waste of time, they also come with the underlying arrogance of, “Come hither, piss boy, and fetch mine armor.”

Further, this equipment madness threatens to lead to further specialization in baseball, situational strategizing that could easily sink to sub-NFL levels. Imagine a player allowed to return to the dugout to fetch his less-than-two- out-runner-on-third-hoping-for-a-sac-fly spikes. Or his on-first-base-less-than-two-outs-slow-hitter-at-the-plate-hoping-to-stay-out-of-the-double-play cleats.

I propose the following rule changes:
1) Any equipment used by a batter must remain with him for the duration of his time on the basepaths. A guy can arm himself as he sees fit but has to schlep all of that armor until he returns to the dugout.
2) Any equipment used by a runner while on the basepaths must remain with said player from the time he steps into the batter’s box. A pitcher who wishes to wear a jacket while running must don that jacket while batting.

***
With the 2001 season having been so excellent, it’s only fitting that we close on a positive note. It’s time to unveil Zisk’s 2001 Most Entertaining Player, or M.E.P.

This honor is given to the player who most consistently entertained fans during the course of the 2001 season.

Points are awarded in three general categories: Off the field behavior, ability to make highlight-reel caliber plays and, most importantly, ability to make fans think every play, no matter how seemingly routine, might become an exciting play. Here we seek a player whose style is so unrelenting that each time he steps to the plate or fields the ball there is the potential for jaws to drop.

Our finalists are the respective MVP winners from the AL and NL, Ichiro Suzuki and Barry Bonds.

Category 1: Off the field
Ichiro is known by fans throughout the world solely by his first name. That’s star power. Likewise for his ability to have fans, at home and abroad, hanging on his every word before and after games. Bonds would love to go by “Barry” but lacks sufficient charisma to fend off challenges from other famous Barry’s, like Gibb, Goldwater, and Manilow.

Ichiro - 1, Bonds - 0

Category 2: Making the big play
Ichiro hit .350, stroked 242 hits, and scored 127 runs in his first MLB season! Bonds hit 73 home runs. I think home runs are overrated from an entertainment perspective (it’s out of the park...now he scuffles about the bases) but still, 73!
Ichiro - 1, Bonds - 1

Category 3: Potential to make the mundane exciting
Ichiro had 722 plate appearances, he ran the basepaths 631 times (that includes all non-strikeouts, walks, and home runs). 87% of the time this guy tore down the first base line; he was always a threat. Ichiro also stole 56 bases and played defense like a mad man, going hard every time and, with his cannon of an arm, never allowing opposing base runners to think they could get an easy extra base.

Bonds had 653 plate appearances, he ran the base paths 310 times. 47% of the time Bonds ran, the rest of the time he walked or strolled. Bonds’ stolen bases dipped to 13 and defensively, he divided his time in the outfield between sulking over how often Jeff Kent failed to drive him in and trying to think up new ways to remind the Giants faithful that he, Bonds, was a free agent at the end of the year.

Aside from the ability to hit the long ball, Ichiro trumps Bonds in every facet of the game. Plus, his stunning season put an end to the many race-based theories fouling baseball’s airs that Japanese players couldn’t hit MLB pitching. (An ignorant, eugenics-like chorus not far removed from the one that greeted Jackie Robinson. One of the last desperate efforts of baseball’s 1940s racists was that, well, ok, we’ll allow blacks to play in the majors but truth be told, the other reason they haven’t been playing in “our” leagues for the past 50 years is that they don’t have the talent. Right.) But that’s a whole other story.

At the plate, Bonds is going to homer or walk. In the field, and after the game he’s going to sulk. Occasionally exciting but generally predictable. Ichiro is everything but predictable.

Ichiro -2, Bonds - 1

Ichiro, Zisk’s 2001 Most Entertaining Player.

Zisk Issue # 6

An All-Star Diary
By Steve Reynolds
Baseball’s All-Star Game has always been a summer centerpiece for me. When I was growing up it was always an opportunity to stay up past my normal bedtime. There would usually be a good old-fashioned baseball-type meal that night—hot dogs, potato salad, beans, a pitcher of iced tea and some ice cream somewhere around the fourth inning. After rediscovering my love of baseball (and all sports) in the early ’90s, I would always try to replicate one of those nights of my youth. On the way home from work I’d hit the local supermarket and buy all of the aforementioned foods, and then set myself in front of the T-V for a few hours. This year I decided to keep a diary of my All-Star night…

7:30 Arrive at my stifling hot apartment with 26 bucks worth of food in tow, including hot dogs, buns, chips, salsa, dip, cheese and a big steroid size bucket of potato salad.

7:49 Cooking the hot dogs has made the kitchen so hot I contemplate putting my A/C on “hi cool” and stuffing it down my shorts.

7:50 Realizing that I can barely fit into my own shorts, I decide to run the A/C on high and let it keep its precious freedom.

8:00 The Fox pregame comes on with a horribly hokey opening where actors reenact great scenes from baseball’s past.

8:00:30 I check to see if Office Space just might be on Comedy Central. Dammit, it’s not. Back to the vomit-inducing opening montage

8:01 Jennie Zelasko and Kevin Kennedy start talking, and suddenly my dreams have been answered—Kennedy’s lips are moving but I don’t hear a single word. Alas, it’s just a bum mic, not the K-chip I installed.

8:08 Holy shit—Shoeless Joe Jackson is on the field. Oh, wait, it’s just Ray Liotta coming on to introduce the 30 greatest moments in baseball history.

8:10 Seriously, isn’t Office Space somewhere on cable?

8:20 Okay, I know Mastercard sponsored this 30 greatest moments shindig, but I thought their tagline was “priceless,” not “timeless.” As in, “this presentation will go on forever, therefore it’s timeless.”

8:34 Alright, finally onto the game! Oh, wait, it’s the lineups. Oh look, Jorge Posada let his kid run out to take his place in the starting lineup. Isn’t that cute. If this were the good old days, Pete Rose would have run the kid, and then Jorge, over without blinking an eye.

8:52 Pop diva Anastacia is singing...well, perhaps emoting the Star-Spangled Banner. Shit, I lost my remote.

8:53 Find remote just in time to hear Joe Buck say, “In case you forgot, we’ve got a game coming up next.”

9:06 First pitch. I drop the remote and start to relax.

9:17 Oh Bonds crushed it. Oh HOLY SHIT. TORI HUNTER! Wow—now that’s what the All-Star Game is about! That catch we’ll be seeing for the rest of the season. There’s no way anything in this game could overshadow that robbery of Bonds.

10:15 Bob Uecker, who has been the voice on the Milwaukee Brewers for years, enters the booth with Joe Buck and Tim McCarver.

10:16 I’m laughing at Bob Uecker so much my stomach hurts.

10:21 As McCarver and Uecker talk about their wild days with the Cardinals, Buck sets up a great line.
Joe: “You guys were married back then though.”
Uecker: “Well, not to each other.”
Ha ha.

10:23 Uecker leaves, and I consider the turning the T-V off. Why isn’t Uecker doing games nationally?

10:50 I have not seen Twins closer Eddie Guardado all year. I realize that he’s pitching wearing what looks like bowling shoes. Perhaps that’s the next career he’ll try if contraction actually happens.

11:08 I must have accidentally slipped in a tape of last year’s World Series, as it looks like Byung-Hyun Kim has just blown a lead.

11:19 Now Sasaki has blown a lead? What is going on here?

11:36 Oh shit, it’s tied. How long will this game go into extra innings?

11:48 Only in Milwaukee—Baltimore third baseman Tony Batista almost gets run over by a guy in a sausage costume.

12:00 Dear God, it’s midnight. When will it end?

12:15 Uh-oh, this could end in a tie they’re saying? Nah, no way Selig would allow something like this to happen.

12:26 Okay, what is taking so long this conversation between Torre, Brenley and Selig? Have they decided to call this game a tie just because they’re worried about stretching two STARTING pitchers past two innings?

12:30 They just made the announcement that if the NL doesn’t score, the game ends in a tie. I realize that if I ever meet Bud Selig, I’m going to kick him in the cock.

12:31 Fans start booing.

12:32 Fans still booing.

12:33 I join in with the fans booing.

12:34 Here’s a chant I’ve never heard before in a ballpark: “Let them play! Let them play!”

12:37 Game over. What a disgrace. I can’t believe I wasted this much time. It’s not like I turned on a Major League Soccer match—I deserve some closure!

12:39 Fox says they hope to have Selig explains his decision, but for some reason they have to sign off before they can find him. What a chicken shit.

12:41 I go to bed just like I have after many a Mets game—extremely frustrated.

Why I Wear Number 44
By Lisa Alcock
I play second base on our co-ed company softball team. This year when we got to choose jersey numbers, my very first choice was no. 44, the same number worn by my all-time favorite player. No, not Reggie Jackson (please!), but in my opinion, the only no. 44: Henry (Hank) Louis Aaron.

I’m only 32, not old enough to have seen Hank play in his heyday or really remember him in the early 70’s, up until he retired, in 1976. But from what I’ve read about him, and seen on sports specials/documentaries, hands down, Hank is the man.

Hank might not have had as much flair as Willie Mays in the outfield, but he didn’t need to. Hank got the job done. He also didn’t need to loosen his hat so it would fly off when he ran for a fly ball…like Mays was known to have done. In Hank’s 23 seasons, he played mostly right field (he also played first, second and third and was a DH in 1976). He played in 3,298 games with 7,436 put outs, a fielding percentage of .982 and only 144 errors. He has four Gold Gloves. Despite these numbers, I think Hank is mostly known for his hitting. Everyone knows the significance of the number 755; it is the most recognizable statistic in baseball. Hank’s lifetime batting average was .305. He was the first player to have 3,000 hits and 500 homers. He has two National League batting titles. In 12,364 at bats Hank has 2,174 runs, 2,297 RBIs, 3,771 hits, OBP is .374 and his slugging percentage is .555. His statistics are amazing…and what got him into the Baseball Hall of Fame. But that’s not the only reason I admire Hank.

If I could go back in time, he is one of the players I wish I could have seen play. He is the epitome of grace and power and quiet strength. He shut up a lot of critics when he surpassed the Babe’s HR record. I get goose bumps and a little teary-eyed when I see news footage of that game. If I could pick one baseball moment in which to be present, it would be April 8, 1974, Atlanta, Georgia, Dodgers vs. Braves. In that one defining moment a man from Mobile, Alabama made a statement and wrote baseball history.

It was the 4th inning; Al Downing pitches to Hank…Thwack! The ball was gone!!! There was Hank, rounding the bases…two fans ran onto the field and patted him on the back…the crowd erupting into a frenzy, and there, waiting at home plate along with his teammates, was his mom. She grabbed him and hugged him and clung onto him because she had feared he would get shot that day. She has said in interviews that if her son was going to get killed, she was going to go with him. Hank had received many death threats and thousands of pieces of racist hate mail on his road to beating Babe Ruth’s homerun record. (He’d also received letters of praise and encouragement, both of which he’s saved). Through the racist climate in Atlanta and throughout the country, Henry persevered and excelled. He let his bat and glove speak for him. Hank and his family were threatened as he moved closer to passing Babe Ruth’s HR record. (FBI agents accompanied his daughter Gaile when she attended Fisk University.) He had to endure things that no one should ever have to endure. He was the pillar of strength and dignity at the darkest hour. He was a strong, somewhat shy, reluctant hero. He's someone to look up to. Not only did he achieve baseball greatness, he brought attention to the fact that baseball didn't exist in a vacuum; the sport was also affected by the racist climate in the U.S. He gave hope to thousands of kids and adults (myself included) as to how far one could go. If you apply yourself, you can write history. I would think that many players today stand on the shoulders of this giant.

Now, when I step up to the plate, I admit, I’m no Hammerin’ Hank. I’m lucky if I get a double. But in the back of my mind…Hank is there, the reserved, dignified hero. Number 44.

A View From the Upper Deck
By Mike Bonomo

I was reading in the book The 25 Most Amazin’ Games in Mets History, by Howard Blatt, that the Grand Slam Single playoff game at Shea in 1999 was played in a hard driving rain. But for the record, it was a relatively light rain. A mist really. I remember getting home from the game and seeing clips on TV and thinking, “wow, it looks like it’s pouring.” Yes, I saw the game the way I’ve spent most of my time at Shea, in the upper deck.

You see it was really that game that made me love the upper deck. I saw the game for $50. But my seats were behind the plate and that makes all the difference. There are people who paid $150 for that game and sat near the foul pole in the lower deck far further from home plate than my perch in the sky. For regular games I pay $12. (plus the $3 service charge those pieces of shit put on each ticket even though I got them from the Mets club house store. Only buying tickets at Shea precludes this. (It’s part of the amazing Met magic that printing tickets on a laser printer at Shea is $3 cheaper than printing them on a laser printer at the Met store.) Now I must admit right off that if I could afford the box seats behind home plate I would sit there and never look back. But I can’t, so those people are all jerks. I have sat in great seats now and again. I saw St. Louis play the Mets in 2000 from the 2nd row off the field at first base. Sadly Big Mac was out with a hurt back that July. I remember hearing t