A View Up Close

On of the delights of baseball is the ability of fans to get up close and personal with the players of the game.  During the years one can become fascinated with how a player not only performs on the field but how he presents himself, when seemingly nothing is happening and no one is watching.

Then just when you think you have seen a player being perfect, he picks his nose, spits baccy juice on the floor of the dugout and on his perfectly clean uniform. There are always the crotch grabbers and fixer uppers. There is an unnamed infield that always blew his nose in the right arm short sleeve of his uniform. Well it was a traveling uniform and not the home ‘whites’.

But there is one guy who honestly is above all of that. I first saw him when he came up. I’ve seen him in only two stadiums in my life. One was in old Milwaukee County Stadium and the other at BankOne/The Chase in Phoenix.

Derek Jeter appears to be perfect. He simply responds to things in a way you would think the Captain of the New York Yankees should perform. He avoids most confrontations. He smiles. He hits in the clutch. Rarely shows excessiveness. He comes back from injury by slapping a ball right up the middle. He is stoic in nearly every thing he does on the field. He is a gentleman off of the field. He has proven he is a champion. He is, in short, a hero.

That is the set up.

For many of baseball’s great players, we have placed them on the Jeter pedestal, one which places the player above any wrong doing. He smiles as though he is only smiling at you. He stairs at disbelief as no other. He responds to a strike out as if he has let not only the team down, by you the fans in the stands, and the fans over the YES Network and throughout the world via radio, down. And we all feel his pain. But as he walks back to the dugout, we feel empowered to cheer for him harder so he can make that pitcher pay the next time he steps up to the plate. You can literally see Derek Jeter transform from a mortal ballplayer into a champion whom we all know will be the real ‘Mighty Casey’ the next time at the plate or the wonderful fielder on defense. Remember, the play at the plate? You don’t even have to qualify that play. You already know it in your heart.

This past week, the Hall of Fame elected three great players. Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas. Saw all three in their best days. Tremendous performers. Maddux was so good he could even convinced the plate itself that it was a strike that he had just thrown. Glavine followed Maddux. Thomas was as close to Babe Ruth in our era as we will ever see. He was big. He was powerful. And he was clean.

Why did we have to bring that up? He was clean? The other day when the  election was announced, most of the discussions centered around those who were not elected. Many have been placed into the PED barrel, either through admittance or through innuendo. It was at that time I read one of the most interesting articles I have ever read on the subject. It was written by Bryan Curtis. And if you are a fan of the game, this is a must read. (http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/10261642/mlb-hall-fame-voting-steroid-era)

In the field of those who will be honored at Cooperstown this summer and receiving the sports highest honor will be one former manager of a couple of teams which won pennants. Nearly all of them were won with  a player or players who were heavy PED users. After you read the article above, if you are a fan of his and have held him on that pedestal, you all can say it is a lie. If not, you can ask yourself, ‘Why are we honoring this guy?’. Of course he may not show because he is rumored to be the next skipper of the Seattle Mariners. Suddenly, the Mariners have more money than a game developer.

Now you see the problem that was created by the nomination to the Hall of Fame. Very few words in this article are addressing the wonderful accomplishments of the three elected. Maddux painted the corners of a plate that at times got so big, his reputation became that of Picasso on the Mound. His brush was his imagination and an arm that could put the ball where he wanted it. Glavine followed Maddux. Thomas was a huge man who absolutely everyone in the third base section of the stands always began to drink coffee two innings before he came to bat for fear that a foul ball would be heading their way at over 100 mph. Thus one of the reasons why the best place to see baseball is from the first base side, behind the dugout, right down the first to second line (see above).

Derek Jeter. The Captain. The Yankee of this Era. All Photos On This Page: © Lance Hanish.

Derek Jeter. The Captain. The Yankee of this Era.
All Photos On This Page: © Lance Hanish.

Which brings us all the back to the Captain. As Ed Bradley, the famed CBS reporter told us back in 2005, as a child, Jeter’s parents made him sign a contract every year that set acceptable and unacceptable forms of behavior. Yankees scout Dick Groch, convinced the Yankees to draft him #6 in the first round selling them on the idea by saying “the only place Derek Jeter’s going is to Cooperstown”. Today, he may finish #5 on the hits list all-time. He has a chance of moving ahead of Paul Monitor, Carl Yastrzemski and Honus Wagner with a mediocre year. If he has a Jeter year, he will move into the fourth spot, ahead of Tris Speaker. He need 199 hits to do that.

Six years from now, when one Derek Jeter is eligible to enter the Hall of Fame, let’s not waste time talking about the injustice of why a guy who bet on baseball was not elected into the Hall. Let’s not waste time discussing why the ‘bloated one’ who pounded the ball over the fence as if he was filled with helium, wasn’t elected, yet again.

Wait! That’s it. They were all on helium. That’s why their muscles exploded overnight. That’s why the ball looked like a ping-pong ball. It was all about helium. Why didn’t the Commish think about this before.

Here’s to helium.

And to Jeter, getting into the Hall and having all of us talk about one of the greatest players who ever played the game and retelling others why he was placed on that pedestal,  deserves all of our recognition. Real heroes are like that. They have earned our admiration.

Play ball!

Enhancing The Outcome

When can we agree on the time the drug era began in baseball? One of the first times I noticed it was when a player for the San Diego Padres hit his 50th home run at old Bank One Ballpark (now The Chase) in Phoenix on a warm September evening in 1998. I had watched this player for years in Milwaukee. As he trotted across the plate, he was a caricature of his former self. Bloated, muscular beyond his years, hyper-alert. Being behind the visitors’ dugout you could gain such a perspective. That is the day, in my mind, legitimate baseball records ended. Not that the player in question was not a good player. On the contrary, he was a very good ball player. But 50?

Recently, Baseball Digest published a fascinating article on players with the most home runs before the All-Star break. It wasn’t the list that was peculiar; it was a comment one of the readers proposed. He asked, what would this list look like without the drug era players participating?

In order to do that, a line has to be drawn on when the drug era began. My timeline is the year that player hit his 50th home run…1998

By removing all of the players suspected or admittedly used drugs, the list would look very different from the one published. By using the arbitrary HGH Era date, Reggie Jackson of the Oakland A’s would lead the list with 37 home runs before the All-Star break. He would go on to crack 47 in that season of 1969. Second on the list would be Frank Howard of the Washington Senators. He blasted 32 before the All-Star break on his way to hitting 48 during 1969. Ken Griffey, Jr. of the Seattle Mariners would be #3 with 35 dingers in 1994. In fourth place is the legendary Shanley High School star from Fargo, ND, Roger Maris who hit 33 before the break on his way to his 61 in the magical 1961 season. To complete the top five is Matt Williams then playing All-Star caliber baseball with the San Francisco Giants and had 33 homers before the break in 1994 on his way to crashing 43 that year.

I have not included any player after the 1997 season. I simply do not know who was on the juice and who was not. For that matter, I don’t know what the status of any player was before the 1998 season. We experienced the cocaine era, the alcohol era, the chewing tobacco era (if you have never had a chew of ‘baccy’, you can’t understand the buzz that is created the first time you use it and the ‘no-fear’ of a heater past your ears).

Synthetic human growth hormone (HGH) was developed in 1985 and approved by the FDA for specific uses in children and adults. That’s children and adults. For children it was approved for treating a number of medical cases including Turner’s syndrome; Prader-Willi syndrome, chronic kidney insufficiency, HGH deficiency or insufficiency and for children born small for gestational age. It was created for use in adults for short bowel syndrome or HGH deficiency due to rare pituitary tumors or their treatment. It was also approved for uses in muscle-wasting disease associated with HIV/AIDS.

However, most common uses for HGH are not FDA-approved. Some people use the hormone, along with other performance-enhancing drugs such as anabolic steroids, to build muscle and improve athletic performance. Because the body’s HGH levels naturally decrease with age, some so-called antiaging experts have speculated and claimed that HGH products could reverse age-related bodily deterioration. The use of HGH for antiaging is not FDA approved. Regardless, some people obtain injectable HGH from doctors who prescribe it for off-label purposes, the uses for which it has not been approved by the FDA, and through Internet pharmacies, antaging clinics, and web sites.

Now we are once again deep within the much publicized HGH era that the Commish, wanting sainthood along with Karol Jozef Wojtyla, before he retires from his $18.4 million salary (equal to what both the NHL & NFL commissioners make), has thrown down the gauntlet on some of the best players in the game because their names were on a piece of paper and a paid informant is spilling his guts about anything and everything he can regurgitate for fame and a little bit of fortune. Plus, there is the possibility of not being persecuted further. More on that after the commish white-washes the game with the spirit of cleanliness once he proclaims the game safe for all young and old.

He plays with the very foundation of the game…its loyal fans.

Nonetheless, here is the list, tainted or not, of what Baseball Digest proclaims as the players with the most home runs before the All-Star break.

Rank  Player                         Team                                      Pre-            Season            Year

1         Bonds                         San Francisco Giants             39                73                  2001

2         Reggie Jackson          Oakland A’s                            37               47                  1969

3          McGwire                     St. Louis Cardinals                 37               70                  1998

4          Ken Griffey, Jr.           Seattle Mariners                     35                56                  1998

5          Gonzalez                    Arizona Diamondbacks          35                57                  2001

6          Frank Howard            Washington Senators             34                48                  1969

7          Ken Griffey, Jr.           Seattle Mariners                     33                40                   1994

8          Roger Maris                New York Yankees                33                61                   1961

9          McGwire                     Oakland A’s                            33               49                   1987

10        Matt Williams              San Francisco Giants              33               43                   1994

I do not believe that any of the players who have been tainted with HGH should be honored with any record in baseball. True, proven before guilty is a cornerstone of our democracy. Yet when it comes to baseball, all you have to believe is what you see with your own eyes. In my lifetime, I have seen players who should not be allowed in the record books because they used a substance that gave them an advantage over others in the game. It is a game we played and look forward to comparing the best to the best that have ever played. It is this comparison that makes this game the greatest. Stats shouldn’t lie. But that is just my opinion.

What do you think?

Play Ball!