A Game Changing Play Brings Us Spring

Game #7 of the NCLS on a cold Fall evening in the upper Midwest is a rarity. Baseball in October hasn’t been played in these parts since the Fall of ’82, then for the American League Championship. But on this October day, the 20th of the month in the team’s 173rd game of the season, in the bottom of the 5th inning, the right fielder of the Milwaukee Brewers, Christian Yelich, who has had a miracle season and expected to be the National League’s MVP, slammed a ball to left center field. With a runner on second, this was surely going to tie the game and get the Brewers crowd roaring and the team exploding to a National League Championship.

But there was a fellow named Taylor, who began the game as the Dodger’s second baseman, who was moved to left field in a switch earlier in the game. And at the crack of the bat, he ran 85 feet to his left at full speed, raising his arm and extending it to its fullest and miraculously caught the ball in the glove’s webbing to make what some consider the best catch since Willie May’s in the 1954 World Series. Sliding to the ground Taylor still had the ball and took the breathe out of the capacity crowd in Milwaukee’s Thunderdome, better known as Miller Park.

The life came out of the team. It also took away hope from the fans in the park and throughout the State and the nation who had hopes of rekindling the days of Robin, Mollie, Rollie, Coop, Simba, Vouch and the gang so long ago.

But four months from now, in a refurbished baseball park in Maryvale, AZ, the weather will be warm and the the sound of another season will be upon us with a team that is now a contender, a team with a legacy of accomplishment and a host of great young pitchers who will finally bring the City and the State, along with all of Brewer fans everywhere the chance to hope that this season will be the best ever in team history.

Play Ball!

#watchingattanasio⚾️

A Reason For Kerfuffle

12 walks; 1 hit batsman, 2 catcher interferences, 4 errors against them and they get 10 hits. And two sausage races. 16 runners left on base. Five hours and four minutes with 21 Padres and 20 Brewers seeing action. And they loose a game. Wait! There was a free concert after the game so there were still fans in the stands.

That is the very definition of a ‘reason for Kerfuffle’. It is a disturbance. The word comes from part Scottish ‘curfuffle’, meaning to twist, turn and from Old Irish where there is disorder, confusion.

There is little doubt that there is disorder and confusion in Pigsville.

The home nine’s starting pitcher gives up back-to-back home runs and then the reliever does the same in the top of the 12th inning. The relief pitcher was brought in to pitch hit as the home team had no more position players left on the bench to pinch hit. He walked. Then he goes in to pitch and loses the game giving up the second of the back-to-backs.

Then the mind-dead shortstop, again, for the second time this week, created the third out attempting to steal third from his position at second with Lucroy coming to the plate. As Counsell stated, ’That was a mistake. Early in the count, it’s a play that makes sense, getting to third early. But at that point it was not a good decision.’ Not a good decision? With a third base coach who is acknowledged as the worst third base coach in baseball (including the minor leagues) and a shortstop with no brain, it certainly classifies as not being a good decision.

Madness. As Major General Anthony McAuliffe said in a note back to the Nazi’s at Bastogne, ‘Nuts’.

This is the best of AAA baseball. It is nuts. There are errors galore. There are mental mistakes everywhere. There are kids growing up and making mistakes as Major Leaguers. The Milwaukee Brewers were a great American Association team back in the day at old Borchert Field. They played as though they wanted to make it to the Majors. they played the Indianapolis Indians (farm team of the Pittsburgh Pirates), the St. Paul Saints (affiliate of the Brooklyn Dodgers), the Minneapolis Millers (New York Giants farm team), the Columbus Red Birds (St Louis Cardinals team), the Kansas City Blues (farm team of the New York Yankees), Louisville Colonels (Boston Red Sox’s team) and the Toledo Mud Hens, the best minor league team of the incredibly bad St. Louis Browns. It was zany. It was wacky baseball. Everyone was trying to make that mad dash to The Show with a great showing. Guys were flying everywhere. And on occasion you would see a glimpse of Eddie Mathews, Willie Mays and the like. But most of the time, you saw errors…lots of errors, both physical and mental. Yet fans were in the stands and eating brats and drinking beer, hoping for a day when they could see the real game…Major League baseball in their city.

Now, light years away from that time, they have their wish. Again, they see the great stadium around them but nothing on the field that represents Big Leagues in any way. Yes there are still, on occasion, the Braun sighting, a Lucroy playing up to his capability when he wants to play and not sounding-off wanting to be traded to a competitive team, and Nelson. But on a 25 man roster, that’s it for top talent. Sure there are fading stars like Hill and Carter, rising hopefuls like everyone else. But in the end, there is just another minor league team taking the field night after night in the City of Beer. #WatchingAttanasio #win63

By the way, the Polish won the second sausage race.

Play Ball!

As for those who are interested in the results of the survey last week, here it is:
Which teams will win 63 games this season?
100% said the Milwaukee Brewers would not win 63 games.

The Big 14

Every boy’s dream it to make it into the highest echelon of sports. Some youngsters dream about that big day when they actually walk onto their field of dreams. In baseball, every time you took to a diamond in the sand lots around your neighborhood with bat, ball and glove in hand, the dream became more real. Soon, that dream will come true for a couple of Major Leaguers when the Rookie Of the Year will be named. It is the hope of the winners that they will not become a Joe Charboneau, who became better known for opening a beer bottle with his eye socket than his long term batting prowess. Let’s not forget Walt Dropo.

His dream will be one of The Big 14. These are the men who became both Rookie Of the Year and a Hall Of Famer. They are the few…the greats of the game.

It began with Jackie, the ROY in 1947 as a Dodger and HOF in 1962. He is the only Dodger ever to accomplish this fantastic feat. Then there was Willie (’51 & ’79) as a Giant. Frank Robinson was the Cincinnati Red who became ROY in 1956 and Hall Of Famer in 1982. Then Luis Aparicio became the first American Leaguer to have become the ROY (’56 with the White Sox, the only member of the Pale Hose ever to do so) and HOF (’84). Orlando Cepeda (ROY ’58 with the Giants & HOF ’99); Willie McCovey (ROY ’59  as a Giant & HOF ’86) and Billy Williams (ROY ’61 as the first Cub to do so & HOF ’87). Tom Seaver was the only pitcher to ever accomplish this masterful feat by winning the ROY in 1967 as a Met and Hall Of Fame in 1992. He remains the only Met to do so. Then there was Rod Carew (ROY ’67 as a Twin & HOF ’91). Think for a moment of all the great Twin ROY’s who have not been elected into the Hall. Johnny Bench became the first catcher to win this double tribute (ROY ’68 as a Red & HOF ’89); Carlton Fisk (ROY ’72 with the Red Sox & HOF in 2000); Eddie Murray (ROY ’77 as an Oriole & HOF in 2003); Andre Dawson was the one and only Montreal Expo to win (ROY ’77 & HOF in 2010) and finally the last of The Big 14, Cal Ripken, baseball’s ironman who gained ROY in 1982 with the Orioles and entered into the Hall Of Fame in 2007. Eight from the National League. Six from the American League. Jackie did it when there was only one chosen in all of baseball.

Will two of the six up for the Rookie Of The Year award this year achieve the greatness of these great players? Or will they become the Jerome Walton or Dwight Smith like so many before them?

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!

The Green Of Spring

When you first glance at it in the spring, the field is like a carpet where only those heroes of the game are privileged to walk upon. It is perfectly cut and trimmed, green as green can be. In this time of chasing the statistical universe, one can only marvel at the setting where the basics of the game are played.

Legends bring the game into perspective. Joe walked toward that position. You should have seen him play. Did you see him? Was he as good as they say? He was certainly one of the greatest Yankees of them all. Henry played right there. ‘Slough Foot’ they called him when he first came up. He seemed to glide when catching a fly in left field of old County Stadium. Unbelievable bat speed. “Stan The Man” played there. Every kid in the nation copied his unique batting style regardless if you were a left hander or not. He was one of the few, at least in the games I saw him play, who was never booed at an opposing ballpark. So many stepped on that platform of green on their way to Cooperstown. Willie, Mickey and The Duke. Robin, Reggie and Teddy Ballgame. Who will be next to take this trip from outfield to The Hall?

Spring allows all to show us their wares. Trout, Harper, Cespedes and Aoki all showed exceptional talent in their first year patrolling the outfield, last year. Their rookie seasons presented great promise. Mike Trout had quite a year. At age 20, he hit .326, scored 129 runs, had 182 hits which included 8 triples, walked 67 times and had 315 total bases. He also had 49 steals. Oh yes. He had 30 home runs. In the field he had 4 errors for a .988 fielding percentage. Norichika Aoki, a 29-year-old rookie, batted .288 with 150 hits of which 37 were doubles. As a lead off hitter, he drew 43 base on balls, had 30 stolen bases and had an amazing 10 home runs. With 81 runs scored, he had 255 total bases. In the field, he had only 3 errors for a .988 fielding percentage.

Bryce Harper hit .270 on 144 hits with 26 doubles, 22 home runs and 18 stolen bases. He scored 98 runs. In the field, he had 7 errors for a .979 fielding percentage. At 19 years of age, he unquestionably has a future of brightness in front of him. Yoenis Cespedes, at 26, had 142 hits with 25 doubles, 23 home runs and 82 runs batted in while producing a .292 batting average. He had 70 runs scored and 246 total bases. In the field he had 3 errors for a .987 fielding percentage.

Who will step out and make those giant strides to Cooperstown? Any of them? None of them? That’s why the game is so much fun in the spring. The green of spring brings hope for all, including those of us who cannot seem to get enough of it. Lucky for us, we have a full month left during this amazing time of the year.

Play ball!

The Light In Their Eyes Go Out

It was an historic turn of events in the City on the Potomac. Their team, that had fought so hard all year to capture their first advancement to the National League Championship, fell upon the dreaded enemy of so many cities that field teams in the Senior Circuit. In the end, they simply did not know how to win.

You could see it in the eyes of the Nationals… that ‘deer in the headlights’ glaze that signaled defeat as they stepped to the plate and went through the motions of ending it in that nearly quiet, stadium stunned, last at bat. Here they were, just a few moments before, ready to enjoy the sweet taste of victory and advancement to a place rarely visited by any team in this City. They had the opponent on the ropes, up by two with two outs and two strikes on the batter, not once, but twice.

On the other side of the equation, the Cardinals from St. Louis had been here before and had done that time and time again. As recent as last season, they did the impossible by climbing back into the playoffs, fighting against all hopes, and won the World Series….for the umpteenth time in their long history. They knew how to win. They EXPECTED to win. The did just that, coming from behind and laying a four spot on the Nationals in the top of the Ninth.

Washington THOUGHT they could win. They didn’t. Jason Werth came to the plate in the bottom of the 9th and in stunned motion, retired. Then the rookie sensation, Bryce Harper who homered and doubled in the early innings, did what most rookie sensations do when they hit the ultimate clutch situation so early in their career…they fail to deliver when it is needed the most. It was over in a heart beat as he swung at a pitch clearly high over the strike zone nearly eye level. Anxious to perform, wanting to bring the home crowd an historic win, the Mighty Casey struck out. Ryan Zimmerman, the All-Star third baseman, ended the game mercifully lifting a soft fly to right field in what was now the valley of could-have-beens and would-have-beens and broken hearts. They went out with a hushed whimper and not a noisy bang.

Baseball is a cruel sport. It rarely awards the improbable yet teases us for months that there is hope. It is a sport with an eternal Spring yet a harsh, crisp coldness of Winter that slams the door shut when October comes around. Again this year, the teams that know how to win have gathered for the ultimate fight for the championship. The San Francisco Giants, the World Series winner just two seasons ago will host the St. Louis Cardinals for the National League Championship.

Again his season, there is a tradition of excellence that comes through….a legacy of Willie Mays against Stan Musial. Today these two teams begin their fight for the N.L title. In this series, they both know how to win.

Play Ball!

The Pasteboard Era of Legendary Charlie Silvera

It was a nice day. Sun was shining. Temperature wasn’t too bad. I was examining the yard when a neighbor asked if I would come over to their house in a day or two to look at some baseball cards he and his wife had collected. The neighbor was wondering what to do with them and how to sell them. As one who has collected the ‘poor man’s stock market’ material for years, I said I would. The day came and I dropped over.

When I sat down and began taking them out of their containers, the anxious rush of childhood enveloped me once again, full of anticipation that the next card would be that of the ‘big one’, Mickey himself. Naturally I want through the 1952 Topps first. And there it was.

The one card that nobody ever wanted to see in their pack, the pack that cost them a nickel which was everything in the world at that time, was that of one Charles Anthony Ryan Silvera, better know as Charlie Silvera. On this card was a brilliant yellow background behind the portrait of the back up catcher for Yogi Berra of the famed New York Yankees. For much of that summer of my youth, to avoid the Silvera card was the task. Every pack that was bought would be carefully peeled away at the back, slowly removing the folded wax paper wrapper to make sure we did not tear the wrapper, damage any of the cards and get the flat wide stick of sugary bubble gum and make sure it didn’t leave a stain on the card.

Then we would look at the first card.

Invariably it would be someone whom few had ever heard about except for his family and friends. This is where Charlie Silvera usually came into our lives. During the course of a year you could end up with five, six or seven Charlie Silvera’s which had absolutely no value in ‘kiddom’. You could only hope that there was a newbie who would move into the neighborhood and not know a thing about the value of these pasteboard wonders. Or, you hoped that a kid would come along and want to trade a card, any card, for a Silvera which he would usually put in the spokes of his bike, secured by a clothes pin to the front bike fork, and create a loud mechanical sound that represented a mad drummer banging at a  faster and faster rhythm against a metal drum the faster the kid peddled his bike.

Silvera was omnipresent. Two kids could go to the corner store and buy two packs of Topps. When they came out and unwrapped their packs, you had a very good chance of each pulling the dreaded Silvera yellow background card from their packs. Ugh……..

Silvera killed us that summer. Topps must have printed 10 Silvera’s for every star player card.

But it wasn’t the first summer he had done that. The 1950 Bowman packs contained the first sighting of Charlie Silvera. Card #96 was his true rookie card. In the 1951 Bowman set, he was missing. But the 1952 Bowman set contained a horizontal beauty. On #197, there he was in a throwing position, ball in his right hand cocked and ready to throw while his big pillow glove on his left hand sighted the way. With his cap on backwards and a stern, square-jawed portrait, it is one of the better looking cards of that era. But, it was a Charlie Silvera card and not that of Mickey, or Yogi or Whitey or ‘The Scooter’, ‘Willie’ or ‘Duke’.

That same year he made his way into one of the two greatest baseball card sets of all time…the 1952 Topps. (Along with the ’52 Topps, the 1957 Topps is one of the most popular Topps sets ever produced.) In fact, he was in every early Topps set from 1952 (#168), 1953 (#242), 1954 (#96), 1955 (188) to 1957 (#255) with the exception of the 1956 set.

Charlie Silvera played for part of 10 season in the Major Leagues hitting .282. However, he only played in 227 games. But he has two things he can tell his grandchildren: he hit one home run. And, although he was on six World Series teams, he only played in the 1949 classic and faced Preacher Roe of the Brooklyn Dodgers twice without a hit. But, he played in the Classic.

So there I was, once again flipping through memories of youthful dreams past, spouting off various statistics to my neighbors about the cards that I knew so well as I was flipping them over and WHAM!

There it was again, Charlie Silvera’s 1957 card, his last. Will this dreaded curse of Silvera never end?

It was a different place in a different time. Here’s to you, Charlie. Hope today in San Francisco you experience nothing but pleasure. I can only say that now. When I came across your image in those glorious days on the front steps of Lincoln Avenue unwrapping that treasured pack of baseball cards with Snookie, my next door baseball friend, seeing you was a dreaded reminder that we were all another pack away from collecting a quiniela of Silvera cards.

Play Ball!