Fate of the Seams

79 have done it in baseball history. 50 of those were in the Senior Circuit. While the game has been played for well over a Century, no Ranger ever did it, including the time as the Senators. No Twin has ever done it, including the time as the Senators. Needless to say, no Senator ever did it. Sandy Koufax is the only pitcher in history to do it three times for the Dodgers. Nolan Ryan, was only one of three pitchers to ever do it twice. And of course as a member of the Hall of Fame, he did it once in each league, the only player to accomplish that feat. Dodgers did it six times. The Yankees did it five times. The Brewers and Athletics are the only teams to have done it four times.

This past Thursday, Milwaukee Brewer, Mike Fiers did it…he struck out all three Dodger batters he faced, Enrique Hernandez, Carlos Frias and Joc Pederson, perhaps the hottest hitter in the league, in the top of the 4th inning. Nine pitches. Three strike outs. 9 pitches, 9 strikes and 3 outs. It is called the ‘Immaculate Inning’.

This obscure stat began on June 4, 1889 when John Clarkson of the Beaneaters struck out Jim Fogarty who led the league in stolen bases (99), Big Sam Thompson, the right fielder who led the league in home runs that season with 20, and the big first baseman, Sid Farrar, of the Philadelphia Quakers in the top of the 3rd in Boston.

The famous names that have done it are impressive. Rube Waddell of the Athletics did it in 1902, Lefty Grove was the other pitcher who did it twice in 1928 for the Athletics. Billy Hoeft of the Tigers did it in 1953. Jim Bunning of the Tigers did it in 1959. Al Downing of the Yankees did it in 1967. Ron Guidry of the Yankees did it in 1972. Roger Clemens of the Blue Jays did it in 1997, Pedro Martinez of the Red Sox did it in 2002. Felix Hernandez of the Mariners did it in 2008. Dazzy Vance of the Dodgers did it in 1924; Robin Roberts of the Phillies did it in 1956; Sandy Koufax did it three times for the Dodgers in 1962, 1963. Tony Cloninger did it for the Milwaukee Braves in 1963. Bob Gibson did it in 1968. Milt Pappas did it for the Cubs in 1971. Bruce Sutter of the Cubs did it in 1977. David Cone accomplished the task in 1991. Orel Hershiser did it as a Giant in 1998. Randy Johnson did it twice, once in 1998 as an Astro and the other in 2001 as a Diamondback. Ben Sheets accomplished the task for the Brewers in 2004.

So where does Fiers accomplishment rank, a portend of the future as a great pitcher or along with the likes of Pat Ragan, Joe Oeschger, Bob Bruce, Pedro Borbon, Lynn McGlothen, Joey McLaughlin, Jeff Robinson, Rob Dibble, Sloppy Thurston, Danny Jackson, Jeff Montgomery, Stan Belinda, Doug Jones and the like.

Only 79 did it. As beautiful as it was, it is a ‘Fate of the Seams’.

Play Ball!

Money, Money, Money

On this day in 1927, Babe Ruth became the highest paid player in major league history when the Yankees announced the Bambino would earn $70,000 per season for the next three years. The historic deal is struck when the ‘Sultan of Swat’, who had asked for $100,000, met with Colonel Jacob Ruppert, the club’s owner at the Ruppert Brewery in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. The Colonel got his money’s worth. On the 15th of April, Babe hit the first of his historic 60 home runs off of Howard Ehmke who would go on to win 12 games that season and only give up 13 home runs all season long for the Philadelphia A’s. On May 31st, Babe hit another off of Ehmke on his way to #60 which came off of Tlm Zachary of the Washington Senators on September 30th. If you would like to see it, click on this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOt0Tmwc2Rk.

George Herman ‘Babe’ Ruth scored 158 runs that season; drove in 164 RBIs; 29 Doubles; 8 Triples; he hit .356 and had a slugging percentage of .772 with an OPS of 1.258. In the World Series that season, he hit .400, had 2 home runs and the Yankees won the Championship. All in all, Mr Ruth earned his $70,000 and more.

The Yankee’s payroll was $250,000 that year. The Bambino’s salary was 28% of the entire team’s payroll.

Let’s take a look at what some teams are paying their top player and see if it can guarantee what the Colonel got from Babe’s contract.

The team that has a player who was closest to what Babe was paid in terms of percentage of payroll this coming season the Twins, the Mariners, the Astros and the Mets. First the Minnesota Twins have an estimated team payroll of $82.5 million. Joe Mauer, playing First Base this season will be paid $23 million or 27.9% of the team’s payroll. All Mr. Mauer has to do is hit 60 home runs, drive in 160+ RBIs, have his team win the pennant AND win the World Series. Can he carry his team to the heights to reach the playoffs? That’s what he’s paid to do.

In the Northwest, the Seattle Mariners this season will have a team payroll of $87.5 million and Robinson Cano, their newly acquired Second Baseman will earn $24 million or 27.45% of the team’s payroll. We all know what he has to do to equal and earn this Ruthian salary. All Cano has to do is have his team perform like they haven’t since….well, years and jump over the Angels, the Rangers and the A’s to get into the playoffs. But that’s what Cano is paid to do this year.

Down in Houston, they have a payroll of $49 million. This is the second lowest in the Major League this season. They have good reason for such a low salary. They are in a dispute with their local cable vendor who reportedly have not paid them since the middle of last season. It seems that the affiliate of Comcast, the media giant, has put its affiliate into bankruptcy. What a mess. Therefore, their highest paid ballplayer, a starting pitcher, Scott Feldman, will earn $12 million or 24.5% of the teams entire payroll. If he pulls off his Ruthian equal, that achievement in 2014 will be classified a ‘miracle’.

Then there are the New York Mets. With a team payroll of $82 million, their top player, David Wright who is their Third Baseman, will earn $20 million or 24.4% of the team’s entire salary. If Wright does earn the Ruthian standard set in 1927, the Met’s still will have a struggle to reach the playoffs this season. But that is what Wright is paid to pull off.

As for the other 26 teams, the Indians have a payroll of $80 million and Nick Swisher will make $20 million (18.75%); The Rays with a modest budget of $75.5 million will have David Price making $14 million (18.55%); the Rangers with a payroll of $131 million will have Prince Fielder earning $24 million (18.3%); Pirates payroll is $71.5 and Wandy Rodriguez will be earning $13 million of that or 18.2%. The Cardinals will have a payroll of $108.5 million the most in the Central Division of the National League and they will be paying Adam Wainwright $$19.5 million equal to 18% of the team’s payroll. The White Sox will have a payroll of $89 million and John Danks will be paid $15.75 million (17.7%).

The Rockies have a payroll of $91 million and their All-Star Shortstop, Troy Tulowitzki will make $16 million or 15.9% of the Colorado payroll. In Milwaukee, they will have the third highest payroll in the Central Division of the National League, just north of $100 million  and Third Baseman, Aramis Ramirez will make $16 million or 15.9% of the Brewers team payroll. Washington will have a team payroll of $130.5 million and Jayson Werth, their Right Fielder, will be paid $20 million, 571 thousand, 429 Dollars or 15.75% of the National’s payroll. Meanwhile those mighty Marlins will have a team payroll of $42.5 million and one of the best ballplayers in the Show, Giancarlo Stanton, will make $6.5 million or 15.3% of the Miami payroll.

Then there are the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Their estimated payroll of $151 million dollars, the sixth highest in the Major Leagues and fourth biggest in the American League, will have to pay Albert Pujols, their aging First Baseman $23 million or 15.25% of the team’s payroll. Can he pull off a season of Ruthian standard and carry his team to the top?

For the remaining 15 teams, all of them will pay their top player 15% or less of their team’s payroll. And it appears as though this is where the World Champion will come from. The top salary in baseball this season will be $26 million and will be paid to Zach Greinke of the  Dodgers who will have a payroll of $223,000,000. He will only be 11.7% of their payroll. For that amount of money, they better win the pennant, the World Series and a trip to Disneyland, by the bus that will take them there and give everyone FREE Dodger Dogs in the City of Angels for the next year.

Newton’s Theory of Relativity is absolute. What goes up must come down. This bubble will burst. It simply cannot go on forever. Baseball teams are playing with funny money. Television fees are paid because of content that gains eyeballs. Eyeballs bring advertisers. And advertising brings sales. If eyeballs leave, for whatever reason, prices for advertising come down and rights fees decrease. But some of these teams have long-term cable rights for 20-30 years. What if a cable network can’t get the advertisers to pay the teams what they have contracted for? Will it be a giant, Houston Astros v Comcast all over again, but this time on an avalanche sized financial rush downward?

Look, no network pays for boxing rights today. At one time, boxing was the biggest draw on television. The audience left boxing and turned to something else. The Pabst Blue Ribbon Fight Night no longer exists. Neither does the original Pabst Brewing Co.

Money, money, money. Can today’s players really earn the money they are being paid this season? Can their clubs with the pennant?

Play Ball!

#1 At Goudey

When you were a kid and bought your first pack of baseball cards when they came out for that next season, one of the things that struck you was the #1 card. Who would win the honor of being the first in the deck for this coming season?

Too often it was a struggle getting the #1 card as pack after pack contained journeymen players. Trades were hard to come by unless you had a Cub fan next door. They would trade for a beloved Cubbie. Lucky us. Bye bye,Dee Fondy. Hello Jackie robinson.

Historically, baseball sets belonged to the top players in the game. For instance, in 1940, the Play Ball set had Joe DiMaggio as the #1 card. In 1941, the famed pastel Play Ball set produced Eddie Miller of the Boston Braves as the #1 card. An All-Star in 1940 & 1941, he had a 276 batting average with 79 RBIs for the Bees the previous year. In 1943, the M.P. & Co. put out a set with Hall of Famer, Jimmy Foxx as the #1 card.

After the war, Leaf Candy Company of Chicago came out with a set (marked on the back of some of the cards as printed in 1948 but were produced jun 1949. It is marked as the 1948 Leaf set. It is an iconic set and is the first color printed baseball card set after World War II. The #1 card was Joe DiMaggio. This set had more stars than MGM, including the then recently deceased Babe Ruth as the #2 card. Bowman’s 1948 set had Bob Elliott of the Boston Braves as #1 after a .313 batting average and driving in 113 runs in 1947. In 1949, Vern Bickford gained the #1 position after a great rookie season and became the first pitcher to be so honored after winning 11 games for the National League Champion Boston Braves. In 1950, Mel Parnell, a sensational 25 game winner the year before for the Boston Red Sox, was #1 on the Bowman set. In 1951, Whitey Ford, with his rookie card, was #1 on the Bowman set that year. On the initial Topps 1951 Red Back set, his battery mate, Yogi Berra was the #1 card while on the Blue Back set, Eddie Yost of the Washiongton Senators was on the #1 card. In 1952 Bowman honored Yogi while Andy Pafko was #1 on the famed 1952 Topps series while Jackie Robinson was #1 on the 1953 Topps edition. Over at Bowman, they put out two sets. On the 1953 Black & White set, Cincinnati Redlegs great, Gus Bell, who hit .300 that season was #1 and on the 1953 Color set, Davey Williams, an All-Star second baseman that season was the #1 card. It is one of the most interesting cards ever produced as he is in a fielding position, eyes off the ball in front of him, with an empty Polo Grounds stands behind him. while Phil Rizzuto of the New York Yankees was #1 on the Bowman set, Ted Williams grabbed the #1 card in the 1954 Topps collection. In the 1955 and last of the great Bowman sets, Hoyt Wilhelm, the New York Giants pitcher who had a great 2.11 ERA in 1954 Championship season, held the honor of being the #1 card in the final Bowman baseball set. The 1955 Topps set was led off with Dusty Rhodes, the hero of the 1954 World Series for the Giants. You  get the idea. It was usually one of the stars of the game during the previous season.

But in the ‘modern’ era of baseball, the first hereat set that landed smack in the middle of the Great Depression, was the 1933 Goudey baseball set. Enos Goudey was proclaimed as the ‘Penney Gum King In America’ by none other than William Wrigley, Jr. In 1933, the Goudey Gum Company brought out the very first baseball card set with a stick of gum included in every pack. This set produced one of the greatest baseball cards of all-time,  #106 Napoleon Lajoie. It actually wasn’t in the original set but was a premium that you had to get through the mail after the season. This 240 card set is considered one of the Big Three in the history of baseball cards along with the famed T206 (Honus Wagner card) and the 1952 set (Mickey Mantle’s famed #311).

So who was honored as the #1 card on arguably the #1 set in modern baseball? It as a basketball and baseball star, Benny Bengough of the St. Louis Browns. Benny Bengough? St. Louis Browns? Born in Niagara Falls, NY, Bengough attended Niagara University. In 1923 he joined the New York Yankees and played with them in three World Series before Bill Dickey joined the team. Benny was released in 1930 and joined the Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association (Triple A franchise of the Boston Braves). In 1931, he was bought by the St. Louis Browns and played with them until his last major league game on September 24, 1932. He batted .252 in his Big League career and did not hit a single home run. So why was Benny Bengough of the St. Louis Browns the #1 card on the #1baseball card set in modern baseball?

He was one of Babe Ruth’s best friends on and off the field. One of the best defensive catchers in the game, he had a fielding percentage of .988 for his career 10 points above the average catcher in that era. But it was his friendship with one of the games greets players…the man who brought baseball out of the darkest period in its existence, the Black Sox scandal of 1919.

Benny Bengough. #1 at Goudey, the first of baseball cards in the modern era.

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 50^th 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 50^th 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!