Digging for Gold in Boxes of Baseball Cards

I was digging through my baseball cards the other day and it was quite an experience. There's the wave of nostalgia, the thrill of looking up how much certain cards are worth (almost uniformly "not much"), the discovery of a few golden nuggets (as much as it pains me, I have a Derek Jeter rookie card that is apparently worth $12 already), and the endless amount of entertainment that comes from goofy pictures, names, and trivial tidbits found on the cards. I wish I had the kind of time to go through all of my cards and dig out the highlights, but that is a daunting task and one that risks getting my complete sets out of order. The biggest thing I learned from the experience is that collecting baseball cards in the late '80s and early '90s was a terrible time to practice that hobby (apparently having a Pedro Martinez Upper Deck rookie card doesn't mean much, though I kind of want to pay the subscription fee for Beckett.com to get some real numbers). There is one thing I want to single out, though:

I don't know why all of my valuable collectibles are of people I can't stand*.

That's right, friends, an autographed Barry Bonds card. I remember going down to The Hitting Machine in Lemoyne to wait for his autograph. It may be a faulty memory, but I seem to remember there being some pretty strict and prickly rules on how to conduct your interaction with him (maybe my dad can help me remember). 

The would-be librarian in me really wants to go through and catalogue my collection in a spreadsheet citing the card maker, the card number, the player, the copyright year, and how much it's worth. That sounds like a great activity to do while sitting in front of the TV watching, say, The Andy Griffith Show (which is amazing!). 

Now, if I can hold on to these cards for just another twenty to thirty years, they should really be worth something.

*The Chipper Jones Rookie card is worth over $3.

Great Fan Catches*

One of my favorite things about baseball is the way the game extends into the stands. Fans get to keep various souvenirs that fly out of play (generally baseballs) or, if they have to give a bat back, they typically will get some signed swag in return. Because things are constantly flying into the stands, it gives fans lots to anticipate and lots to do. Most dream of catching a foul ball**. Some cower in fear (like my old roomie did) while others rise to the challenge whether they're holding a beer, pizza, or their child. Even when the action only gets close to the stands, it gives the fans a chance to steal attention away from the game. These are a few of my favorite moments***:







If you've got any favorites, please share them!


* This was one of the most annoying posts I've ever written. I couldn't find half the videos I wanted and when I did find them, they weren't embeddable because MLB has stupid rules about sharing game action.


** I didn't catch one, but I did get one that landed near me and tossed it to a kid even though I really needed a baseball. Moral of the story: I'm a saint.


*** h/t to Deadspin for introducing me to most of them.

More Nostalgia

I've already featured a few posts dealing with nostalgia after I returned from Pennsylvania earlier this month. I'd imagine this has something to do with having a child and getting married in the next two and six months, respectively. Age and responsibility lead one to look back the path leading to the present, I guess.

Anyway, I just want to share something that I threw away while I was sorting through all of my junk over the holidays, but rescued when I remembered I needed a calculator with a big screen at work.

Yes, I was willing to throw out this amazing and still functional calculator (albeit, with two pieces missing) while I was at home. It has since stopped working (that dot on the screen is all it displays now) and I'm having trouble letting go. Maybe it's because the calculator is one of my oldest possessions or maybe I'm just too excited for baseball to start up again, but I just can't throw it out. It's too awesome!

Pitchers as MVP

Justin Verlander won the MVP award in addition to the Cy Young this year. Good for him. He clearly deserved it. But what shocks me is that there are still people out there who don't believe that pitchers should be considered for MVP. Some say that they already have their own award in the Cy Young award. Others, like Jim Ingraham (quoted at the bottom of this article), believe that pitcher don't play in "79% of their games" likening the situation to a quarterback who only played in three games of the season being named MVP.

Can Ingraham really not see the difference in these scenarios? Does he not understand baseball at all? A pitcher may only pitch once every five days, but when he's playing, he's exerting himself consistently on every pitch of the game. The only other person who touches the ball as much as him is the catcher. The strain on the arm is immense and has done loads of harm to many pitchers. The rest is an essential part of being a consistent pitcher and for having a long career.

Another factor: he looks like a nice guy, too.

Secondly, just because position players play nearly every game, they spend much of the time not participating. And many plays don't require them to give 100% of their effort. They aren't called routine fly/ground balls for nothing. Baseball is a pretty leisurely game that's interrupted by bursts of action. That's one of the appeals of the game for me. As a result, the players have a lot of "idle" time (in quotes because they should still be paying attention). As Ingraham mentions, part of the experience is the 162-game season. Well... who really wears down more? The player playing every game but only needing to exert himself at intervals or the pitcher who pitches 100 pitches every game, many in high stress situations, and can't afford to let up on the intensity at risk of giving up runs.

Plus, just because pitchers have off days doesn't mean they are sitting on a couch eating Cheese Puffs. In my experience, pitchers are required to run more than any of the position players because their position is an endurance one (don't believe me? Try pitching in 95-100 degree heat). They also have pitching sessions to keep themselves loose and to fix kinks in the motion. And let's not forgot all the time they spend studying film of other teams and developing the strategy for their next start.

Pitchers may not play in every game doesn't mean that they should be left out of the MVP race. It's ignorant and asinine. They are as much as part of the team as anyone. As the link above shows, Verlander was tied for league lead in WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player). Therefore, even though he only played in about 21% of his teams games, he added more wins by himself than anyone else on the team. It's times like this that I wish FireJoeMorgan was still churning out new content.

Baseball Bits and Pieces

It's halfway through November and I'm in some serious baseball withdrawal. I love the Hot Stove action, but the problem is that news comes in fits and starts. Many of the big moves haven't happened yet and anything else (like Dale Sveum going to the Cubs instead of the Red Sox... more or that later) is worth only about an hour of discussion. However, there are a few things worth talking about and my reaction to them varies.

One article deals with two of these issues (it's how I found out about both. I swear I'm not just poaching someone else's blog post. I SWEAR!). First on the chopping block: The Astros are moving to the A.L. West! Periodically in the past, I'd wonder why one division only has four teams while another has six. It didn't make sense to me. Then I'd remember that there are thirty teams and if they were split down the middle, that would leave two teams in each league dangling without a matchup. Of course, interleague play has been around for a while, so having those teams face each other isn't such a big deal, but having two leagues with fifteen teams doesn't do much to help balance the already unbalanced schedules. A team like the Orioles has to play the Yankees, Red Sox, and Rays (all with 90+ wins) over 50 times during the season wheres there was only one 90+ win team in the A.L. Central. Throw in some unlucky interleague pairings and some teams are going to get screwed big time. On the flip side, though I'm not much of a fan of interleague play, I like the idea of having it occur with two teams randomly throughout the year instead of as big chunks of space with forced "rivalry" games.

My solution to all of this is some good, old-fashioned English Football-style relegation. Since it would be asine to add six more teams so each division broke down into six teams each, let's chop it down to 24 teams. The six bottom teams get relegated to the minors while six top minor league teams can join the pros. There's stuff that would need to be worked out to make the system work, but not only does it bring each division to an even four teams, it adds a lot of incentive for the bad teams to keep playing hard. Those end of season Royals-Twins games would be a lot more exciting. Which brings me to...

...The revamped playoff system. I've ranted about this before (ignore all of the stuff about the Red Sox and Braves, if you could) and I still think adding teams to the playoffs is a bad idea. Even at ten teams, MLB would still have the smallest percentage of teams making the playoffs of the four major sports, but having a one game playoff to between to Wild Card teams to see who moves on to the Division Series seems pretty pointless and a recipe for more confusion and additional one-off games. The point of the playoffs is for the elite teams to fight it out for supremacy. The more teams added to the mix, the more mediocrity has a chance to infiltrate the system. But that's not really the big issue. Look how close we came this year to having two ties for the Wild Card spot. Expanding the playoff pool into the pack means that you start getting to that cluster of teams with similar records. Is it that hard to imagine that there could be a tie for the second Wild Card spot? Or even a three-way tie? Now it's not just a on-game playoff, but a one-game playoff to get into the one-game playoff to get into the playoffs. And all of this flies right in the face of having a 162-game season. Why play that many games and get that large of a sample size to have the season literally come down to one game for certain teams? That's the whole point of having a 7-game series (or even a 5-game series). I like this approach to expanding the playoff better than letting four additional teams in, but it doesn't seem in line with the spirit of the game.

Finally, a personal and specific complaint. I don't know what I'll do if the Red Sox hire Bobby Valentine as their manager. He may have had two good seasons with the Mets, but his record doesn't inspire confidence. Plus, his ESPN work shows him to be an idiot and he's volatile presence and we don't need one of those in the clubhouse. Plus, I don't want to have to root for this guy:

Red Sox... please don't do this to me.

So Many Hours of Baseball... in Chart Form!

The above image is taken from Flip Flop Flyball and is a chart of how many hours of baseball each team played during the 2011 regular season. If you haven't been to the web site before and you love baseball and/or infographs, you need to check it out. The creator of this material is a British man named Craig Robinson who came to the game late and is a Yankees fan, because why not? Aside from loving the fact that a person from a largely baseball-less culture could fall so strongly for a foreign game, I love Robinson's approach to the game. He has a wholly unique perspective and sees the games in ways I'd never dreamed. 

This post isn't really about pimping for a person I've never met. Robinson created the above graph (for a bigger version, click here because I haven't linked to his page enough) and it got me thinking. Unsurprisingly, the Red Sox and Yankees are at the top of the list with most hours played (a bright note knowing that we played more hours than anyone since the season ended prematurely... at least we got to watch more baseball during the season! Yeah, that's not working for me, either). They play a particular brand of baseball in which taking pitches is de rigueur and the offense scores a lot of runs. Any fan of these teams can tell you that when they face off against each other, you can expect a four to five hour game.

But what I find particularly interesting about this chart is that there seems to be no correlation between record and game length. The best team in the American League (by record), the Yankees, rates at second most in hours played yet the best team in the National League (as well as overall), the Phillies, are fourth from the least number of hours played. The rest of the playoff teams fall randomly between.

There's no real logic to any of it. Bad teams might play shorter games because they can't score runs. Then again, maybe they play longer games because they can't make outs. And the reverse holds true. It would be interesting to see if the bad teams with good pitching and bad offenses play shorter games than bad teams with decent offenses and poor pitching. I'd also be interested to see a companion graph that charts how many pitches each team threw throughout the year and how many their opponents through against them to see if there's a correlation. Hmm... maybe I am starting to think a little outside the box.

Robinson also made an informative and amusing chart for the eight teams in the playoffs (now seven... sorry Rays...) for Grantland. 

How Long Until Next Season?

I never really thought that the season would get worse than the first two weeks. And through the summer, I was confident it wouldn't (also, sorry Braves). But a shit-storm came in September and the pitching, hitting, and defense all shut down. 7 - 20 record. It wouldn't even matter that much right now if the Yankees hold on to their 7-0 lead through seven whole innings (I'm convinced the Yankees tanked on purpose because they didn't want to risk playing the Sox in the playoffs. That's what I'm telling myself, anyway). We'd be going to a playoff, not that my confidence is that high that the Sox would turn things around for that game, or the playoffs had they made it. And that's gets to the crux of what I want to talk about.

Blowing a 9-game Wild Card lead (and losing any hope in taking the division) sucks, but that's not what's making me sad. In Boston, most people are moving on to the Patriots (many probably did a few weeks ago), then the Celtics, then the Bruins. The only sport I care about is baseball. Instead of getting another month of passion and watching my team try to win a championship, I have to wait until next April to watch them play a game that matters. Watching the Rays and their fans celebrate after the walk-off homerun in the 12th, sure I was depressed, but how can that sort of unbridled enthusiasm not make you a little happy? And that's the exact thing that I'll be missing. I'll watch the playoffs and enjoy them. I have teams I'm pulling for (Rays, Tigers, Brewers, and Phillies, in that order). But I won't be emotionally invested in the games.

I'm also not going to get too upset about the whole thing. I could be a Cubs fan. The oldest person in the world (115 years old) might remember the last time they won a World Series, but few others do. Or I could be a Pirates fan who haven't had a winning record since 1992 and, before that, lost three consecutive National League Championship Series. At least the Sox give me something to root for late in the season.

I'm sad that I won't have the chance to watch the games with my friends who are fans of other playoff bound teams. I'm sad that I don't get to listen to Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy goof off in the booth. But mostly, I'm sad that I won't be able to watch the team I love play until next year.

Rivera, Hoffman, and Saves

Mariano Rivera just broke the all-time saves record. By the end of his career, it'll be more like he smashed it, ground it into a fine powder, mixed it into his smoothie and drank it. I want so much to be able to refute all of the Yankees fans running around bragging about this. I want to be able to point out that Trevor Hoffman is still better or at least point to another closer. After all, the statistic has only been official since 1969. Surely there is someone else who is better. But there probably isn't.

I actually like Rivera. He goes about his business. Doesn't seems like an asshole or douchebag. I'm envious that the Yankees have had a solid closer for 15-odd years (except against the Red Sox, against whom he's blown the most saves, which is some solace). So instead of denigrating his achievement and, by proxy, the enthusiasm of Yankees fans, I'm going to denigrate the save statistic. It's the only way I can feel better about myself as the Red Sox have seen their Wild Card lead dwindle and the Yankees pull away.

But first, I can't help but try to poke some holes in Rivera's accomplishment even though it doesn't completely wash out. Rivera's numbers are, after all, slightly better than Hoffman's. I'll even forgive him for stealing another's entrance music (my entrance music would be Jeff Buckley's "Eternal Life", incidentally). However! Hoffman played for some pretty bad teams. Even though Hoffman, to this point, played more seasons than Rivera (he missed the 2003 season), his teams won a total of 1,243 games compared to the Yankees 1,460. Obviously, not every game the Yankees won had a save situation (same for the Padres), but I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that Rivera has had more opportunities to save games than Hoffman. In fact, over Rivera's career as closer, the Yankees have had less than 90 wins twice. Hoffman's teams have had more than 90 wins twice. What happens if Hoffman had played for the Yankees and Rivera for the Padres(/Brewers)? No way to tell. But their numbers are close enough that the argument could be turned around. The tipping point of the argument could be that as of June 29, 2009 Rivera hit 110 saves of more than one inning whereas Hoffman only had 55. Of course, that also increases the arguments for the likes of Goose Gossage and Rollie Fingers.

But the save is a ridiculous stat to begin with. It's a way to value a closer, but with the advanced statistics that have been developed, there's no need for it to tell how good a pitcher is. Why not use WHIP (Walks + Hits/Inning Pitched), Strikeout to Walk ratios, ERA+ (adjusts ERA to player's ballpark), or WAR (Wins Above Replacement player)? Just look at the requirements to register a save:

1. He is the finishing pitcher in a game won by his team;
2. He is not the winning pitcher;
3. He is credited with at least ⅓ of an inning pitched; and
4. He satisfies one of the following conditions:
   1. He enters the game with a lead of no more than three runs and pitches for at least one inning
   2. He enters the game, regardless of the count, with the potential tying run either on base, at bat or on deck
   3. He pitches for at least three innings

"A lead of no more than three runs"? Are you kidding me? A good pitcher has an ERA of around 3.00.  That means he gives up about 3 runs for every nine inning game. So a closer shouldn't be expected to not give up three runs in one or two innings? That's ridiculous. Any major league pitcher should be able to hold a team scoreless for one inning most of the time. Additionally, I would expect closers to have lower ERAs than starters since they only pitch for one inning most of the time. Sure, it's generally a high pressure inning (though I'd argue that a three run lead in the 9th isn't exactly high pressure), but it's not like they have the same type of fatigue. And if they're doing their job, they're only throwing about 15-20 pitches.

Also, I person can get a save for pitching at least three innings. Even if the scoreboard looks like this?:

Condition 2 is really the only one that makes sense. If that seems strict... well it should be. If you want to compete at an elite level, then you've got to have higher standards

Weekly Film Rec: Eight Men Out

The problem with my Weekly Film Rec's is that I keep a list of films for the list as I watch them, but occasionally I come across a film I really want to write about, so a lot of films get pushed back. I just end up with a list of movies I watched a few months ago and realize I'm going to have to call on this impression to write something pseudo-interesting. I'd take notes, but not every film is a winner (plus, I pretty much watch a movie a day... I'd be swimming in film notes). Some of the films are horror films which, after October, I promised to take a break from, but there's no real reason why the others should be pushed back. Anyway, this week's selection is coming from the archive, so to speak, and partially inspired by my recent Freaks and Geeks marathon and trivia win (Kevin Tighe is in both): Eight Men Out.

I'm a life-long baseball fan currently living in a city with no baseball team. Even our minor league team is leaving. This, along with the end of the baseball season (along with football and basketball moving to the forefront) made me wistful for my favorite sport. It's fairly surprising that I hadn't seen Eight Men Out before, but I'm certainly glad I finally caught up with it.

John Sayles (who wrote the amazing monster trio Piranha, Alligator, and The Howling) writes, directs, and even acts in this tale of the 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal. There is an astounding ensemble cast and all of the major players are well-drawn and sympathetic (well, maybe not Charles Comiskey), not a small feat fore such a huge cast. You really get the sense that these players want to excel, but they are driven to throwing the game by a selfish and stingy owner. The players all have different takes on the situation and the conflict is palpable. How can a team succeed when everyone is pulling in different directions. Even players in on the plot can't turn off their competitive spirit and wind up playing too hard at times.

Like any good movie, you don't need to know much about either the scandal or baseball to follow the film. Perhaps the oddest thing you'll come across is the players leaving their gloves on the field for the other team, a practice common at the time. And unlike other baseball movies ( Bull Durham ) all of the actors actually look like they can play baseball. The jazzy score is incredible and you'll finally be able to quote "Say it ain't so, Joe" with context.

Even though Eight Men Out is about a very dark time in baseball, I found that it's really about loving the game. Yes, people were banned for life from the Hall of Fame. Sure, the motivation is all about greed. But many players realize they aren't satisfied with money. They play the game because they love it and the coda really hits that home (pun mildly intended).

Tropicana Field Revisited

Just over a year ago, I made a trip to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, FL (Home of the Tampa Bay Rays) for a Red Sox - Rays series. My grandparents have season tickets located in the upper deck just behind home plate (a location the yielded me my first and only foul ball). Anyway, the experience was not the best. This time I was bringing a guest who'd never gone to a professional baseball game. I secretly hoped that the experience wasn't going to kill any desire for her to ever return to a game let alone watch one on TV.

To set the stage, the Rays just needed to win one game to clinch a playoff spot (they've since clinched the division thanks to help from the Red Sox taking two out of three from the Yankees in the final series of the season, but don't get me started on the Rays fan at Busch Gardens who "boo"'d by Red Sox hat who had apparently no understanding that she should be routing for the Sox that weekend). They were playing the Baltimore Orioles, owners of the 4th worst record in baseball at the end of the season, who had been playing well lately. Just the day before, Rays players were complaining about the lack of attendance for their playoff push (which is a whole other discussion given some of the press and public reactions). Apparently, the complaints helped a little because attendance was up about 5000 fans.

Maybe it was the fact that the Red Sox are a bigger draw than the Orioles, but the whole experience was exponentially better this time than last year. Sure, the horns need to be banned (and a quick look at stadium rules would lead one to believe that they already are), but the cowbells didn't seem nearly as obnoxious. Gone were a lot of the annoying songs and even the Ryan Seacrest-wannabe was toned down. The Ray Girls were barely noticeable, too! Maybe it's because I was less invested in the game because I wasn't trying to focus all my energy on bringing the Sox victory (it works, I tells ya!), but the whole experience was far more enjoyable.

I've never had the opportunity to see any team clinch a playoff spot in person (nor have a gone to a postseason game, which makes me very sad) which the Rays did that first night we went. It was quite an experience. As a baseball fan in general, it's hard to not feel happy for the fans and the players, especially of a team who had ten years of last place finishes. It's nice to see a well run, low to mid-market team succeed.

Unexpectedly, the experience made me incredibly homesick for Boston. I didn't watch any full Red Sox games this year and missed nearly all of the excitement of any possible playoff chase (of course, the Sox did there best to make the last weeks of the season as stressful as possible). I miss the feeling of fall baseball in Boston and the excitement at Fenway. It was a feeling that stuck with me the rest of the night, made worse by the fact that it meant my team was eliminated from the playoffs (the Yankees won that night as well), and that I live in a city with no professional baseball (and maybe no minor league baseball any more).

The next day, the Rays gave away 20,000 free tickets for the last regular season home game. They were gone in 90 minutes. It made for an interesting dynamic (at least to me). Here you have fans that were supposedly annoyed at the players for calling them out for not bothering to support the team in the playoff chase showing up the day after the Rays clinched and cheering them on like they'd been coming all season. My grandparents said that the Rays' television audience is one of the largest in the league, so I guess there are lots of fans, but it seemed slightly hypocritical to have them cheer so hard and I wondered what the players felt about it taking free tickets to get fans to show up (incidentally, the fans started the wave in the 3rd or 4th inning. I hate the wave, but that said, that's WAY to early to start the wave). The Rays gave the fan their money's worth by getting shut out by the Orioles for the second time.

However, even with 35,000+ fans, Tropicana Field was tolerable. Maybe if I'm to enjoy Rays baseball, I have to have no rooting interest (or at least mild interest in Rays success). I extended a courtesy by not wearing my Red Sox hat to the games, and Tropicana Field extended on back to me.