At the end of the 1972 season, Steve Carlton was awarded the NL Cy Young award for his efforts with the Philadelphia Phillies. He certainly earned it. He posted a 12.1 WAR, a 22% strikeout rate, and an ERA- of 56. What many voters and fans were looking at, however, was his wins — 27, the most in the National League.

That number is impressive for a different reason to my father. Steve Carlton’s 27 wins in 1972 are important to my dad because it is included in one of his favorite baseball tales, a not-so-secret weapon for dads — Steve Carlton won 27 games in 1972, the same year the Phillies won all of 59. For those keeping score at home, that means that Steve Carlton was awarded a pitcher win in 46% of the games that the Phillies won all together.

This is more in the “fun fact” category than the “useful information” one, but it’s an eyebrow raiser nonetheless. Still, I needed to set the record straight and, during the 14th or 15th time my dad relayed his trivia nugget I, politely, mentioned that pitcher wins perhaps aren’t as important of a stat as we once thought. This led to a discussion involving all the usual stuff statistically-minded people mention when discussing wins. We sort of agreed to disagree, I guess, but something still stuck with me.

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The first season of South Park debuted in 1997. I was a freshman in high school. An episode came out in December of that year that involved the school putting on a Christmas program, only all the parents wanted it to be either non- or universally-denominational, so the whole thing ended up being performed in unitards and it was all very cold and strange. One of the jokes circled around the fact that the music was composed by Philip Glass. Out of the group with which I was watching, I was the only one who laughed at that joke, because I was the only band nerd in the group who had any idea who Philip Glass was.

The joke fit the narrative. This was a play stripped of all decoration and pomp being accompanied by minimalist music. It was also an easy joke, because jokes about minimalist music are fairly easy to make. There’s no guitar riffs, there’s no hook, there’s no chorus. It starts with an idea. That idea is built upon, added to, modified, deconstructed, rearranged. Then, at the end, it’s right back to where it started. No matter how different or unique things get in the middle, that original idea is just under the surface — always present. It imitates life more than any other style of music. Life throws us all kinds of garbage, but it’s tragically repetitive. Babies, new jobs, weird guys on the bus, movies — they are all tiny differences, tiny theme changes, from the pulsing march of our lives. Baseball, more than any other sport, mimics that as well. There’s a beginning, there’s a bunch of wonderful and heartbreaking stuff in the middle, and then it ends. The day before Opening Day is the day after the last World Series game. Over and over — rinse, repeat. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2013 Winter Meetings came and went without a team reaching an agreement with Shin-Soo Choo, the best free agent outfielder available, at least after the signing of Jacoby Ellsbury. During the meetings, reports were coming in from various sources who report on such things that the Rangers, the Reds, and perhaps the Mariners were all kicking Choo’s tires. All of this makes sense. Those were three reasonable destinations for Choo at the time. But the rumors were just that, and nothing was doing on that front as the Winter Meetings came to a close. Then, as the meetings were winding down and people were boarding planes home, USA Today’s Bob Nigtengale tweeted this:

One veteran GM believes that the #Astros will wind up to be the landing spot for Shin-Soo Choo.

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 12, 2013

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I wish I could remember the date. One of my favorite pastimes is looking at the box scores of games I attended that were meaningful for some reason. I was there when Johan Santana struck out 17. I saw Carlos Gomez score from second base to win Game 163 of the 2009 Twins season. But, for the life of me, I can’t remember the date of this game. It was at Target Field — I know that. I was with my wife and two family friends, Abbey and Andrew. We were in the upper deck overlooking left field. Right next to me, a man — a Twins fan, I discerned from his hat — was watching with a companion from England.

From what I could overhear, this companion had never seen a baseball game before, and the other man was trying to explain the basic goings on of the on-field action. He was teaching her how baseball was played, ostensibly. And he was doing a fine job, I remember. He would slowly and assuredly explain how the runners moved, the idea of balls and strikes, tagging up, foul balls, etc. Basically, everything a newcomer to the game would need to know. I don’t even remember who the Twins were playing — the Royals? This is bothering me. But sometime later in the game, just as the English spectator was starting to recite what happened back to her friend in a way that signified that she was beginning to understand, it happened. Just when the traveled fan must have felt pretty good about his lesson, he was shouldered with the unenviable task of explaining just what the hell a balk was. That poor so-and-so.

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When the A’s acquired Craig Gentry from the Rangers earlier today, it seemed somewhat clear that another outfielder would have to be moved. With Coco Crisp, Josh Reddick, Yoenis Cespedes, and Seth Smith already taking roster spots, there was maybe not a lot of room for Gentry, even with a DH spot to utilize. Something had to give. For the time being, that something is Seth Smith. In a straight-up deal, the A’s sent Smith down the coast to San Diego in exchange for — you guessed it — a reliever.

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Humans have had a long and storied relationship with tools. From rocks and sticks to pocket knives and sonic screwdrivers, we have depended on tools to make our lives easier and more efficient. But a recent study shows that our use of tools might also have a lot to do with how we use our hands. A study from the University of Sussex shows that our (humans’) penchant for right-handedness has a lot to do with what part of our brain thinks about how to manipulate tools. Our left hemispheres do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to how we interact with tools. This is how humans and their close cousins came to be right-hand dominant species. This also could help explain how humans developed speech, as the constant working of our left hemispheres — the side responsible for speech — caused them to get stronger.  However, the study shows that this dominance only manifests when the subjects were dealing with inanimate objects. When dealing with animate objects — like other animals or themselves — no real dominance was shown.

There are a lot of studies about handedness in humans — how it affects their personalities, relationships, careers, etc. From what I found, there really aren’t many on just how many people are left-handed. Perhaps that has to do with the fact that they don’t pass out a lot of grant money for just counting stuff. However, there seems to be a general consensus that about 10% of humans are left-handed. By left-handed, of course, I mean left-hand dominant. Many people fall somewhere in the middle along the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory.  I’m right-hand dominant, and very much so. I do everything I can think of as a righty, though I’ve been told I sweep like a lefty when curling. I know many people, and you may too, who switch it up, though. They may write and eat left-handed, but throw and bowl and play pool right handed. They may use their right to pick up the phone, but their left to open a door. Again, a lot of it comes down to what we’re interacting with. This is the point when I talk about actual baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

My cousin Cindy has a batting cage on her property. If you knew Cindy, this would absolutely not surprise you. She had been a farmer her whole life, and as she gets older and does less farming, she needs things to fill those now-free 18 hours or so. She needs things that involve activity as well, as she still has a lot of energy to burn. So when she had a family reunion of sorts last summer, there came a time when everybody had to take a turn in the batting cages. There were no helmets worn — these were strong Wisconsin folk, mind you — as the pitch speed was usually turned to the lowest setting. These were changeups, ostensibly. And when it was my turn to take some hacks, they still looked fast. I fouled a few off to begin, then was able to make some contact (note: making contact means weak grounders when it comes to my hitting.) Toward the end, the oddest thing happened. I started swinging early. I started getting comfortable enough that I started being proactive instead of reactive. In hitting terms, I adjusted.

Hitters in the middle of a cold streak use platitudes about their timing being off all the time. When a hitter is coming back from a prolonged injury, they often do rehab in the minors to get “their timing down.” Leg kicks can be added or removed from swings in order to assist with timing. It’s an integral part of hitting, is the point I’m making, and the point you already knew. It’s why so-called soft-tossing pitchers can still get away with cashing a check from a major league team. Their fastball might be weak, but they can counter that by taking enough from the off-speed stuff, that a hitter’s timing can still be thrown off significantly.

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We can wax poetic about baseball fairly easily — some have pretty much made a career out of it. The greenness of the park, the sheer number of games, and its tight ties to history are all bullet points in the “why baseball is the best sport” argument. There’s also the pace of the game. Baseball doesn’t have a clock! It can go on forever! While this can get overplayed at some times, it certainly is a draw. We perhaps aren’t interested in watching six-hour games every day, but the inherent pace of the sport brings with it another facet — drama.

Every sport has dramatic moments. There are always points in a game where one’s palms can get sweaty and knees bounce in anticipation. College basketball — specifically the NCAA tournament — may hold a monopoly on this, at least as far as intensity goes. But baseball has the most high-drama moments, simply due to the fact that there are so many games. But that’s the exact reason we don’t think of baseball — at least regular season baseball — as high-drama. There are so many games. No matter what happens, there is a game tomorrow. The effect of one at-bat on an entire team’s season is far less than the effect of one play on a football team’s season. That’s just the numbers. But baseball has the most, certainly. And the king of dramatic situation — the great bringer of the bouncing knee — is the full count. Read the rest of this entry »

Writers and readers of this site found their way here via many different avenues, but with relatively the same goal in mind: to try and dig deeper into baseball, to deduct meaning from things that perhaps aren’t evident on the field. I think it’s fair to assume that we were brought to the game as a whole for totally different reasons. This is especially true for young people, but it’s generally the look of the game — the aesthetics — that draw people in initially. You may not (or know someone who does not) fall into this category — I understand I’m painting with broad strokes here — but the presentation of the game still appeals to the lizard parts of our brain. We think it’s pretty, we think it’s exciting, we think it’s fun to watch. This is why we scoff when the tired adage of “you can’t watch a game on a spreadsheet” gets bandied about. We do watch the games, of course. It’s what drew us in in the first place.

As far as the baseball season goes, we’re in a limbo of sorts at the moment. The World Series is over, and free agency has yet to start. Fans (and certainly writers) are waiting for that other shoe to drop. We’re in a holding pattern until we can start discussing and analyzing front-office moves, and looking ahead to the rookies, signings, and trades that will start shaping what a team will look like next season. There are a few of these dead spots in a year — when things just don’t really happen in a real meaningful baseball sense. It’s times like these when we can turn back to the aesthetic, to the eye candy. Read the rest of this entry »

In the afternoon of Saturday, October 10th, 1931, the Cardinals took on the Philadelphia Athletics at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis. This would be the seventh and final matchup of these teams in that year’s World Series. Philadelphia had gone 107-45 that season (beating their Pythagorean record by 10 games), behind the one-two-three punch of catcher Mickey Cochrane, a young Jimmie Foxx, and outfielder Al Simmons. They also boasted a pitching staff including the likes of Lefty Grove and Waite Hoyt. Though they had won six less games, the Cardinals were no slouches, either. Hall-of-Famers Jim Bottemley and Frankie Frisch manned the infield, with Pepper Martin in the outfield in his first full season. Paul Derringer and the fantastically-named (and HOF spitballer) Burleigh Grimes anchored the rotation for St. Louis. The Athletics were favored to win the series somewhat heavily, as Connie Mack’s club was coming of two consecutive world titles, and had beaten the (more-or-less) same Cardinals team the previous year. It was a fairly evenly-matched series all-in-all, save for Game 6 when the Athletics kicked around the Cardinals to the tune of 8 – 1. Al Simmons was hitting out of his mind that series, and would eventually end up with a 1.030 OPS for the fall classic, while Pepper Martin posted a 1.330 OPS with the Cardinals. Grimes was dealing, allowing only one run over 18 innings, while Grove and George Earnshaw were racking up the strikeouts for the Philly (well, as much as you could rack up strikeouts back then.) Read the rest of this entry »