Ghost Of Honus

If you ever collected baseball cards, there are a few you desire more than most. Certainly at the top of your list is the 1952 Topps #311, Mickey Mantle, rookie card from that particular baseball card company. From that same series, #407, Eddie Mathews’ rookie card is also a desirable piece of cardboard. The 1954 Bowman #66A, Ted Williams, is an important card. But after you get past the modern era, there is one that is called the ‘Holy Grail’ of baseball cards…the T-206 Honus Wagner card. Recently a graded (PSA 5 tobacco card)  marked in excellent condition sold for $2.1 million.

Baseball card collecting has long been called the penny stock market. With the latest Wagner sale, it appears it takes 21 million pennies to own it. Baseball card collecting is alive and well.

What makes the Honus T-206 card so valuable? Legend has it that the printing of the tobacco card was stopped when Honus declared that he didn’t smoke and that he didn’t want the kids who admired ballplayers to think smoking was good for them. Imagine: one of the stars of all baseball at the time stood up to the establishment and declared smoking was not good for you way back in 1909? You’ve gotta love a guy like that. Sweet Caporal cigarettes (‘The Standard for Years’) stopped printing the cards and thus created a shortage of the little gems. Or so the story goes.

The continuation of that story is for another time and another place. Autograph collecting is alive as well. Imagine getting a ball signed by Mantle, Mathews or Williams. Now imagine a ball being signed by Honus. After the story of the T-206 card being sold, Nathan Bernstein of Chicago wrote an interesting tale of his life experience with the great Mr. Wagner. He wrote that in 1938 or 1938, his father took him to Wrigley Field for his first Major League baseball game. It must have been a day filled with anticipation, joy and total wonderment. Imagine walking into Wrigley, the park then only twenty some years old, and seeing the magic of the field in front of you, the field where your heroes walked and played the game you loved so much. There were the Waner brothers for the dreaded Pirates from Pittsburgh. And there was the man…now a coach for the Pirates, Honus Wagner himself.

Bernstein wrote, ” after the game Wagner descended the clubhouse steps in street clothes. My father handed me a pencil and the scorecard and said, ‘that bow-legged man is the great Honus Wagner. Go over to him and ask him for his autograph’.” That’s what fathers did back in the day when they didn’t want to appear childlike and ask for an autograph himself. They sent the kid even though the autograph was the dream of the father’s youth.

When Bernstein got to the big man, “Wagner’s reply to me was a sarcastic “I don’t know how to write kid.” And he walked away.

The Ghost of Honus must have been with Bernstein for a time because his story didn’t stop there. He wrote, “In 1944 a fellow printer of my dad went home to Pittsburgh on vacation. When he returned to Chicago he gave my father a Forbes Field Pirates/Phillies scorecard autographed in pencil by Honus Wagner and Pittsburgh blooper-ball pitcher, Rip Sewell. In 1985, I had the scorecard appraised at $350. I was told that the appraisal would have been higher if Wagner had used a pen instead of a pencil.”

What this appraiser failed to realize was that few people went to the ballpark with a fountain pen in those days. As Bernstein noted “1944 was prior to the introduction of ball point pens.”

The Ghost of Honus. Did he really tell the tobacco company to stop the printing of the cards because he didn’t smoke? Was he really that surly in refusing a kid his autograph? All we know for sure is that someone captured the ghost and for 21 million pennies, has him locked up in a plastic covering showing Wagner, Pittsburg (no ‘h’), in his resplendent heroic youth as the greatest baseball player of his time in magnificent form in his grey flannels.

Play Ball!

The Amazing Tommy Monza

Tucked away in the minors, Tommy Monza has been struggling. In 2006, he was on everyone’s ‘can’t miss’ list.

The hope and the dream was right there on the sandlot of Scottsdale’s Horizon High. Famed for developing players that reached ‘The Show’ including Brandon Wood and Tim Alderson, Tommy was cast into the limelight early. As is custom in Arizona, in a land where former ballplayers and scouts gather at the drop of a dime or where ever a free ticket into a game is available, opinions are as available as armpits. The “I remember when…” or the “He looks a lot like….” run rampant. The smell of the dirty uniform and the whiff of rosin is all it takes to make the gathering a daily ritual around the Valley. Armed with a cup of coffee from Frys up Greenway a bit, all eyes are on the kid in center field, loosening up.

“Not sure I’ve ever seen a kid with so much action on his 2-seamer at this age.”, said one. “Reminds me of Duren, back in the day.”, said another. “Duren? You think the kid has a problem with his eyes?”, questioned the old codger who once was a star with the Oakland Oaks of the old PCL. “I saw Duren and he really couldn’t see without those big specks.”, he continued. “This kid’s using big glasses to scare the opposing left handed hitters.” “I played against Duren and they said he just wore those glasses to scare the hitters,” said another.

True today as it was in a time long ago. Tommy wore big rimmed glasses simply to scare the hell out of the opposing hitters. He figured that with his velocity, he could occasionally throw one over their heads and have every one of the hitters drifting back a bit on their heels. But in all honesty, he threw flames. His 2-seamer danced. It was like watching Koufax at 17. Like Koufax, Monza was using high school to win a scholarship to a major baseball power in the collegiate ranks.

That was 2006. Things didn’t exactly work out as planned. He did earn his scholarship to the University of Miami but changed his mind because of his family and signed with USC. Once there in the land of Troy, he got hurt in his Freshman year and underwent Tommy John. To his good fortune, he had the best Tommy John surgeon in the world repair his arm, Dr. Frank. Monza’s ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, where his medial elbow was replaced with a tendon from his forearm, worked to perfection. In about a year, TM was throwing again, first tentatively, using his Sophomore season as a recovery year. Hitting the books gained him a new prospective on things and he found a fascination for medicine. This new attention to physical conditioning improved his overall outlook on life. Baseball suddenly became a ‘second most important thing’ in his new world of discovery.

By his Junior year, he was back on the mound. Everything felt just a bit different. The most noticeable difference was the connection between his ears and where the ball ended up. Before the surgery, he could work the ball at will to any point around the paint. Now his confidence level had taken a turn to the unknown. His target was as big as the backstop. In a word, he was ‘wild’. Remarkably, he could take a couple of steps back from behind the mound and zero a throw to a precise position. He found, after his operation, he couldn’t throw from the mound but any distance from more than 60’ 6”, he was devastating.

The experts most clubs carry try to ‘fix’ everyone for everything. Believe it or not, they have opinions on everything. I once knew a coach who actually gave advice on how to chew gum during a game. “You take a new square of Bazooka and begin on the right side of our mouth, if you are a right hander. If you are a lefty, then begin on the other side. Take twenty chews on one side before shifting to the other side. It’s all about symmetry. Can’t be out of balance to play baseball.”

Most of the time, the magic of baseball advice came in the form of remembrances. Sparky Anderson stated, “Casey (Stengel) knew his baseball. He only made it look like he was fooling around. He knew every move that was ever invented and some that we haven’t even caught on to yet.” Or listening to Willie over at Don & Charley’s after a spring game in Scottsdale Stadium, “Baseball is a game, yes. It is also a business. But what it most truly is…is disguised combat. For all its gentility, its almost leisurely pace, baseball is violence under wraps.”

For Tommy, it was the daily advise session from the latest coach or pitching expert. “Your right elbow has to be closer to the body as you begin your motion to the plate. That shorter distance allows for better control. Believe me!”, said one. “Your push off has to be stronger and you always have to remember, never over extend.”, prompted another. “It’s all about the release point. It has to be right here.”, a former Hall of Famer suggested. The problem was, Tommy lost his pinpoint control off the mound. That was the bad news. Tommy believed in Jon Lester’s advice, “We have two options, give up or fight.”

The good news was Tommy could throw out a runner at any base from the outfield. It was bringing a whole new dimension to playing the game. A runner simply could not advance without risking a cannon throw from center via the Tommy-gun.

This spring, he is hitting .426 with a 1.029 OPS, hammering 6 home runs and driving in 17 runs. As Mickey Mantle said, “Hit the ball over the fence and you can take your time going around the bases.”

With Adam Eaton out 6 to 8 weeks, the Diamondbacks may have found a spot in the lineup for Tommy the phenom. We all have to dream. It is a part of baseball that keeps us all with the game. If it were only that easy or true. April fool. Tommy doesn’t exist. We all hope that he, or someone like him, would be real and be able to give our team new hope. It’s the dream we all have as another season of baseball begins this week

Bob Feller noted, “Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday’s success or put its failures behind and start over again. That’s the way life is, with a new game every day, and that’s the way baseball is.” Let’s all have a great season.

Play Ball!

Smelling The Rosin Of Spring

The off-season is filled with visions of money stacked tall and wide. It is that time to make THE haul in a baseball players career. Today’s top pitcher on the Market for a new contract is Zach Greinke. He may not be the best pitcher, nor even the best pitcher on his new team. But he will be one of the best paid pitchers in baseball.

It is all built on hope. The hope of the Los Angeles Dodgers is to win a pennant and another World Series. The hope of Zach Greinke is to have the biggest bank account in whatever neighborhood he decides to land in. But there are severe problems in achieving both of these hopeful goals. First, there is the champion San Francisco Giants. Second, there is chemistry. Third, there is history.

The San Francisco Giants have won the World Series two of the past three years. Here is a team that has the players in place with an understanding that it takes all 25 to make a successful season. They also have one of the deepest pitching staffs in baseball. They also have the best pitcher in the National League, Matt Cain. Plus, they have an excellent manager of the game. Nobody today manages crises better than Bruce Bochy.

Chemistry is an important ingredient in making up a championship ball club. It is the glue that holds a team together in tough times and the power behind the bonding that makes the good times even greater. Greinke has some interesting issues when it comes to this particular element. Can the highest paid pitcher on your staff be only the second best on your staff? Can the introverted guy meld into the blend that is La La? Sure, the news that will be coming out of Camelback Ranch this spring will be full of hope and how well Grienke will be fitting into those Boys In Blue. He’ll be shown laughing with what’s his name, Matt Kemp, in Center Field. He’ll be throwing down a few with what’s his name, Adrian Gonzalez, who just got here from Boston at First Base. He’ll be seen in a picture, smiling, alongside what’s his name, Clayton Kershaw, the 24-year-old, number one pitcher on the staff. But there will be Donny Ballgame attempting to manage it all. And there will be exhortations from Tommy saying that the second coming of the Dodgers to Los Angeles is well on its way and that he will shout from the top of his lungs, “Bleed Dodger Blue, Baby”.

That brings us to number three: history and Grienke’s six year, $147 million dollar deal in the National League. Zack’s history in the N.L. with the Milwaukee Brewers was spectacular at home. He never lost a game at home in Milwaukee. But on the road, it was a different story. What happens on the road when he hits his non-winning bumps, far away from the palm lined driveway in the Hills of Southern California? Could anguish set in behind the doubts he will have to live up to because of the immense amount of money he is making? No one will be able to console him because no one knows how to talk to him. He doesn’t really do that. But the real doubt that will haunt him is that he is not a #1. He was number two in Milwaukee. He was number two with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Yet he is being paid #1 salary by a desperate team.

Why are they desperate? San Francisco is the king. L.A. is the pretender. L.A. hates to be second to any city, especially to the City By The Bay. Least we forget, it takes more than just a great home field starting pitcher. The San Francisco Giants have a bullpen besides great starting pitching and a proven manager with a team loaded with chemistry.

But, this is what the Hot Stove is all about, isn’t it. You can talk about hope forever. You can talk about the pros and cons of paying Greinke whatever. All the time you are doing this, you can almost smell the rosin of spring. It’s only a few weeks away.

Play Ball!