A Bit About Baseball

I suppose everyone considers the generation of baseball they grew up with to be the Golden Age of Baseball. Being that our first exposure to it usually overlaps the sweet and carefree days of childhood, it's hardly surprising.

And I am no different.

Beyond the infamous Chicago Cubs of the late-sixties and early-seventies, I grew-up watching guys like Henry Aaron, Johnny Bench, Jim Palmer, Roberto Clemente, Bob Gibson, Carl Yastrzemski, Juan Marichal, Frank Robinson, Pete Rose, Willie Mays, Tom Seaver, Willie McCovey and Brooks Robinson.

I could go on. Gaylord Perry, Reggie Jackon, Orlando Cepeda, Tony Perez, Joe Morgan, Tony Oliva, Harmon Killebrew, Al Kaline, Lou Brock, Steve Carlton, Nolan Ryan, Al Oliver, Dick Allen and Vada Pinson.

Not all are in the Hall of Fame. But all played with distinction.

Were they better than the major leaguers of today? Hard to say. One thing is clear—they were different.

They were better-versed in the nuances of the game. More likely to utilize the array of strategies that had evolved over the last hundred years. Baseball hadn't yet de-evolved into an either-or game of home run or strike-out.

Today's baseball is a distillation of its most-obvious elements. Like an abstract painting, only the subject's largest and most-prominent features make it to the canvas. The rest disappears into the background.

Which is appropriate for our attention-deficit disordered times. We are so distracted by our onslaught of technology we can barely process the big things, much less the finer and more subtle ones.

If it isn't a corporate tag line repeating a dozen time in a fifteen-second spot or a hyper-strobed light in seizure mode it hardly registers. I mean, who even has the patience for a sacrifice bunt or a hit and run???

In a new-fashioned take on an old expression, hit it out or get off the pot.

I'll even go so far as to suggest that every one of today's MLB starting pitchers ought to total 3,000 strike-outs for their career. If they don't, they just aren't trying.

And while kids today no doubt see Clayton Kershaw and Bryce Harper through the same gauzy haze of hero-worship that I did Tom Seaver and Henry Aaron, they won't ever be equal.

Are the 2019 Cubs the 1987 Minnesota Twins?

For the second time in three nights, the Cubs balled-up a gorgeous pitching performance and tossed it into the trash. They may not be able to hit the side of a barn with men on base, but they're Mark Price when it comes to swishing the circular file.

Tuesday, Jose Quintana pitched six innings, allowing five hits while striking out fourteen. Owing to their clutch-averse batting, the score upon Quintana's exit was tied at two. Naturally, the Cubs went on to lose, allowing a run in each of the seventh and eighth innings.

Tonight, it didn't matter that Yu Darvish, who in this up-is-down-and-down-is-up season has emerged as the staff's ace, pitched a seven-inning, ten-strikeout, four-hit shut-out. The Cubs' bullpen, as hapless as it is overworked, again found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by allowing a run in the eighth and six in the bottom of the ninth.

(Wednesday's outcome didn't require the services of the bullpen, as starter Cole Hamels saved them by allowing an unfathomable eight runs in just two innings of quote-unquote “work”.)

If it even needs to be said, the Cubs are on the road, where they should labor under the name Doctors—because they make everybody better.

Miraculously, the Cubs remain tied for first in the National League Central Division—even with their odorous 23 – 38 (.377) road record. It has been a long time since a division contender possessed such a Jeckyl and Hyde personality; dominating at home while practically soiling themselves on the road.

In the fifty seasons since divisional play began, many clubs have cinched a division title with mediocre road records. 38 – 43. 40 – 41. You get the picture. But only one featured a Cubbish road record and still seized the division crown.

And that team would be the 1987 Minnesota Twins.

For those of you lacking both age and perspective, the late-eighties and early-nineties were great times for Twins' fans. With the 1987 edition featuring starters like Bert Blyleven and Frank Viola with fire-breathing reliever Jeff Reardon coming out of the bullpen, and a line-up studded with folk like Kent Hrbek, Gary Gaetti, Kirby Puckett and Tom Brunansky, the Twins could be a handful.

Especially at home.

Road games were another matter, as the team struggled to a 29 -52 record.

Yet they managed to defeat the 98-win Detroit Tigers in the ALCS, taking two out of three at Tiger Stadium.

In the World Series, the Twins faced-off against the mighty 95-win Cardinals of St. Louis.

In a seven-game classic, the Twins jumped out to a quick two-games-to-nothing lead, taking games one and two at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.

In typical fashion, they surrendered games three, four and five at Busch Stadium before rallying to take games six and seven at the Metrodome. Thusly, the 85-win Twins won a world championship.

I believe it's called home field advantage.

Without that option, hope resists the corrosive effects of reality and sustains the belief that, yes, the Cubs could somehow do some damage in the post-season.

After all, the 2008 Los Angeles Dodgers had the worst road record of any team in that year's MLB playoffs yet still managed to defeat the Cubs twice (outscoring them 17 -5) at Wrigley Field in the opening games of that year's NLDS series.

Yes, dreams die hard.

Manny Machado and the Free-Agent Log Jam

Sssshhh. Did you hear that? It almost sounded like a pen on paper. 

Wait—it was!

Holy crap! Could the collusion really be over? Are baseball players once again free to sign decades-long guaranteed contracts for outrageous sums of money? And are addled MLB owners once again able to protect their pockets from the stacks of cash burning a hole in them?

Oh great day in the morning! We are saved! Saved!

Like you, I'm relived beyond description to learn that Manny Machado has signed a ten-year, three-hundred million-dollar guaranteed contract with the San Diego Padres. And that the disconcerting free-agent log-jam may soon be history.

This because I am amused by the sight of successful businessmen tossing logic to the wind as they unlearn everything they (presumably) learned while (presumably) building-up their businesses. Perhaps Bill James has done a cost-benefit analysis of long-term contracts and assigned them a WAR rating. 

But I haven't seen it.

So I'll fearlessly expose myself to public ridicule and venture to say that a MLB owner has to be certifiable to even entertain the idea of one. At least as certifiable as an athlete would be to turn one down.

Is there a soul extant who feels that Albert Pujols or Miguel Cabrera or Robinson Cano or Prince Fielder are anywhere near the players they were when they signed these contracts? Or will be when they expire?

Are major league owners even semi-cognizant of this?

Sure, I'm jealous. Aren't you?

Where jealousy turns to agitation is when it becomes apparent who pays for these contracts. And that's me. Granted, appearances tend to obfuscate this fact, driving as I do a mass-market Japanese sedan and living in a modest home.

But it's true.

And sports fan, you do, too.

As you swallow those thirty-dollar parking fees and twenty-dollar hamburgers and an ever-spiraling cable bill, remember Alex Rodriguez. David Price. And Giancarlo Stanton. Clayton Kershaw. Zack Greinke. And Max Scherzer.

Someone's paying those salaries, and it ain't the boss. (Which is, incidentally, how rich guys get rich in the first place.)

While the players receive the brunt of our derision when discord rears its ugly head, we shouldn't forget those who entitle the young men we call professional athletes.

Once upon a time, professional athletes were very underpaid. But that argument is as relevant as the pony express is to communications. A middling ballplayer like Edwin Jackson (who couldn't hold Jose Quintana's glove, much less Clayton Kershaw's) has earned sixty-six million-dollars playing ball.

Edwin Jackson. Think about that.

When you or I perform our jobs in kind, we usually find ourselves in the bosses office being educated in the finer points of our employer's performance plans. (This if we're not being made available to our respective industries, as a favorite euphemism goes.)

Major-league baseball is a TV show. It's a consumer product—just like laundry detergent and tires and those packs of underwear at Walmart.

If I may be so bold, I'd like to suggest that MLB owners and players think really hard about market saturation and price points. About the fiscal limits those of us in the ninety-nine percent have for non-essential consumables.

Is it understood by owners and players that there are not nearly enough people in the one-percent to support thirty professional baseball teams? Or thirty NBA squads? Ditto our thirty-two NFL franchises. And the thirty-one NHL aggregations we share with Canada.

I'm happy for Manny Machado. Seriously. Hell, if someone's going press three-hundred million-dollars (guaranteed) into your hand you'd be a fool not to take it.

But as a sports fan whose access decreases with every bump in a player's salary, I'm forced to relegate my fandom to the same category as my crush on Melanie Liburd and follow from a distance.

The players can strike and the owners can incinerate their fortunes on long-term, nine-figure contracts and hawk their over-priced merch until the future is female. But even as an ardent, lifelong music fan who reveled in the joy of attending concerts, I learned to live without them when their cost exceeded their benefit.

I can do the same with professional sports. And suspect I'm not alone.

Paying the Bryce

Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper has let it slip he's seeking a ten-year contract for 400 million-dollars.

In a coincidence that is beyond remarkable, so am I. Of course, rain that gets hurt while falling is more likely than yours truly ever seeing such a thing.

Bryce, on the other hand, is another story.

The precious millennial, known for wearing a hat with 'Let's make baseball fun again' embroidered across the front and for telling a grizzled sportswriter “That's a clown question, dude”, is a good-but-not-great player.Yet in our culture of microwave celebrity, he is considered a brilliant one.

He did stitch together a nice 2015, for which he was immediately awarded the National League's Most Valuable Player trophy. But aside from that single season, his play has yet to spark even a single rumor that Babe Ruth has returned from the dead and is inhabiting a Washington Nationals uniform.

Maybe Bryce is just having one on us. Using Harper-speak to get us to lighten up. And if so, good for him. Few things in life are reported with the grim severity as the unmet needs of a professional athlete with an expiring contract.

On the other hand, maybe Harper is outrageously-coddled. Maybe he is someone who's never held down an after-school job, much less a Monday through Friday one. Maybe he's been given a pass from the demands and expectations of the maturation curve because he could hit a baseball. 

Add to this equation that his agent is Scott Boras, one held in contempt by more than a few baseball GMs for his fuck-your-team-I-play-for-my-client mentality, and things take a decidedly darker turn.

Forty-million dollars per for a guy who's never driven in a-hundred runs, never lined two-hundred hits, never won a batting title, finished one season with a slugging percentage over five-hundred and can claim but a single post-season performance that wasn't a disappointment?

The guy who finished in the top ten in his league's WAR exactly once (there's that word again) should be the highest-paid player in baseball? Based on what? All of this factors into the Nationals' failure to advance beyond the opening round of the playoffs even once in three tries.

At his peak in 1930, Babe Ruth earned 80,000 dollars a year. Adjusted for inflation, that equals 1.1 million bucks a year in 2016 dollars. Any idea—any idea at all—why someone named Bryce Harper is worth forty times that?

Me, neither.