NBA in terrible shooting slump

 BUD LITE WASN’T THE GREATEST CONSERVATIVE BOYCOTT, NBA WAS, according to Clay Travis. He wrote a rather lengthy article (WSJ??) last week.  Around the time of the millennium, viewership of NBA finals was 45 million and Super Bowl was 95 million.  Today, Super Bowl is 130 M and NBA finals is 11 M.  What happened?  First a series of scandals—players going into stands to beat up fans and throwing chairs at them, countless children sired out of wedlock, athletes involved in crimes, etc.  Then the came Michael Brown “Hands up, don’t shoot” fallacy, players sympathized heavily with criminals and activists, eventually wearing BLM and about 8 other leftist activist slogans on jerseys rather than their names.  A lot of us old OKC Thunder fans and others stopped watching. New Commish Silver is a flaming liberal who sees politics as something important, not just good basketball. He moved the NBA All Star game out of Charlotte one year because North Carolina's conservative legilsature  introduced a bill prohibiting trans men from invading girls restrooms.  Some on the left claim this NBA shunning by viewers is racism, but while the NBA has declined, Women’s NBA and college basketball have improved viewership smartly.  Yet, as Travis notes, you don’t hear a peep about the collapse of NBA viewing.. Most Sports announcers and commentators are flaming libs themselves. The media has kept this very hushed.  Watch any sports commentary show and half the news is about NBA, as if nothing unusual is happening.  Meanwhile, Baseball gets about 2 minutes out of an hour, almost uncovered, even in July when it is practically the only game goiing. And despite baseball successfully cutting game times by half and hour this year, they are rarely broadcast. Do the commentators even own a glove or a bat?

What's wrong with Baseball

 World Serier final game summary.  Phils brought out the big bird, Schwarbler who hit a homer.  Desperato Alvarado pitched to Alvarez who hit it a mile and pitching all around was almost unhittable.  All runs come via home runs. Greatest mystery was if Dusty Baker uses the same toothpick all game long of it he goes for a new pick each inning. But I was happy to see the Strohs win.

            As a 70-year baseball fan, I must lament that baseball has become boring.  Batters work on homer hitting since that excites fans, makes the replays, and brings mega salaries.  Nobody bunts. Few stolen bases.  The squeeze play is so rare the broadcasters would have to look it up in the history books. Otherwise pitchers throwing hundred mile-per-hour fastballs rule.  Teams stock numerous relief pitchers so the pitch count doesn’t get too high for the starter.  Batters can’t hit very much.  When they do get a single, outfielders trot to retrieve the ball usually with no resolve to make a spectacular play.  The result is a game dominated by long at-bats as pitcher attempts strike-outs on junk pitches. Home runs make most of the scores.  It begins to look like a hockey game or soccer where you wait 3 or 4 hours to see a run and batting averages of .300 are rare. 

            They have tried all kinds of solutions and baseball is losing fans every year.  I’d move the pitcher back 6 or10 feet so that the batters would have a better chance to time those lightning pitches.  That would mean more hits and the increased spacing would encourage the ancient art of bunting once again. The pitch time would increase fractionally and give base stealers more of a chance.  With more hits, great fielding would become a premium more. Then move the fences back about 15 feet which may be as simple as fencing off the lower 4 rows of outfield binocular seating.  No home runs less than 400 feet. Then playing the outfield would be more of a game.  Use robotic ball-strike calling to get rid of the absolutely wrong pitch calls. Finally, we now have 12 of the entire 30 teams competing in playoffs. It means that one mediocre team can get hot and beat everybody. Which leaves fans wondering if there is any reason for playing a regular season. If that is the intent, then stop the regulation season at 154 games as of old, midway through September.  Have all playoff series be best of 7 games long, none of this 2-and-done stuff.  Baseball is always a game of probability and an extended series is needed to derive a champ.   

Football and the color of your truck

            I keep saying that I don’t understand how a carmaker can put in a navigation system, 2 backseat DVD players, satellite and every other kind of radio, MP3 player, complete climate module, Bluetooth, and every other electronic thing possible, and yet can only offer about 6 colors.  Black and white, brown and gray.  Then you get some version of red. With modern technology, why can’t you get your choice of 256 colors?  It is as if we are progressing to texting/electronic crash dummyism and regressing to Henry Ford’s “You can have any color so long as it is drab.” 

            So I decided to do a little research.  Went to Wichita today and started logging semi truck colors.  I thought that if half of drivers are independents who spend their own money on a tractor cab, they paint it the color they want.  And the other half are either providing the tractor and using someone else’s trailer or they are hired drivers.  Even the guys just driving for a company will have a color that company has selected.  So here are the results of what was on the road.

            White-68

            Blue-48

            Red-27

            Gray-16

            Purple-13

            Gold-10

            Black-4

            Green-4

            Brown-4

            Yellow-1

            Orange-1

White is the color of a lot of company trucks.  The better to display a logo.  You see few white trucks that have no company advertizing.  "White" also includes some which have large color swaths and details.  Blue is a favorite male color and since almost all truckers are men, it stands to reason that this color predominates. There were a couple bluegreens which I called “green”. But there were some surprises.  Purple and Gold are fairly popular.  Green and yellow aren’t.  Gray is also on a lot of company trucks, mixed with other color banners and stripes.  Brown, and Black are unpopular. But those colors predominate on pickups that people drive personally.  So is Detroit and the industry missing something?  Why would 3 times as many truckers pick purple as brown? Maybe I’m not so wrong after all.  Detroit needs more colors.  They could see what the plebians choose. (Maybe they choose colors by focus groups who are all depressed and gloomy and live in Detroit.)

            I have also been looking at baseball stats this week.  It turns out that the National league teams which made the playoffs—Mets, Dodgers, Cards, Cubs, and Pirates—are exactly the top five pitching teams.  However, they are #5,6,10,13,and 14 in hitting. Very similar results for the American leaguers. Good pitching is what really counts.  And that gets interesting with about 8 terrific pitchers up for free agency this year.

            Now football is another matter. Football makes major state colleges more money than tuition. And to what effect?  At Missouri U. I guess a football strike can get a President and Provost fired for nebulous, unrelated reasons. Back in my days at the U., I was fortunate enough to have a series of jobs and mostly work my way through school.  But the darned hippies protested one year and robbed me of 3 weeks of shut-down classes.  That was money out of my pocket!  We didn’t finish Calculus III and that meant the next semester I struggled with Series and Differential Equations.  Those darned hippies still owe me for three weeks tuition.  So here’s my fix for Missouri U.  What I have learned over the years is that liberals don’t know what to do with you when you protest them.  They aren’t used to getting protested.  So show up at the next MU football game with some banners.  Hopefully ESPN or FOX sports is there.  Get at least 2 dozen people to sit together for protection.  Sign on one side says, “WELCOME TO FOOTBALL SELLOUT U.”  Flip it around and it says, “NEXT MU PROTEST: MATH VICTIMIZATION”.  A little academic taunting never hurt education. Evidently lack of football does.

           

Miscellaneous stuff

We took some time off to visit Branson and see some shows, then go to War Eagle Craft Fair.  I have a few observations.

Have you ever noticed at just about every craft show, half the sellers have something Christian?  Signs and doormats say things like “As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord”, crosses and symbols made in hundreds of ways, Christian books, Christian logos, etc. Then walk through any mall and notice Christianity is almost banned.  What this says to me is that people want their faith and they buy it at craft shows.  Meanwhile the big businesses who market nationwide big box stores, are scared of a few rare complaints about showing some faith.  That’s why they were quick to adopt “Happy Holidays” and made the public angry over the banishment of Christmas. 

We saw a country show, the Chinese acrobats, and Shoji Tabuchi.  In all three cases they had good things to say about USA.  Even the acrobats, who don’t talk during the show were outside in the lobby gushing about how happy they were to have been selected to come to America to perform and what a wonderful experience this is.  Shoji is the Japanese classical violinist who loved country fiddling and came to America, tells lame jokes while making all sorts of noises on his violin.  His endearing feature isn’t just the music but his love for his adopted land.  And of course country shows always end with something patriotic.  Democrats are turned off by patriotism.  Do they not go to country music shows? 

I hear Trump is now blaming W. for 9/11.  Why does he remind me of Floyd R. Turbo under that hat, spouting idiocy? But I will tell you where I am sympathetic toward a guy like Trump.  I believe it is nearly impossible for a businessman to become President.  That’s because to be a successful businessman you have to take risks and fail often.  Most people are risk averse.  Politicians pretend they have never been wrong and get more votes.  But then we will never change government unless we have someone who will take risks politically.  I still hold out hope for Carly and Ben, but already they are damning Carly because she was fired from HP.  That’s because she tried to take HP in a direction of personal computers where the founders didn’t want to go.  But today, HP’s computers are proof she was right.  I’d be proud to have been fired that way.  Just don’t try to sell that to the 80% of Americans who cling to their jobs and don’t want changes.  (Realistically, I think Cruz might bridge this gap.)

While I was gone, about 20% of our city’s voters voted for a huge school bond.  I say ‘school’  with some irony, because it was 6 million for a new football stadium pressbox, 4 million for a new weightroom, and 10 million for a performing arts center.  Almost nothing for education where it counts.  I asked a couple guys in Arkansas, one a teacher selling crafts, how Arkansas has the fifth rated schools in the country.  They pay teachers better, as well as Kansas and Missouri, and 10% more than Oklahoma.  But Arkansas’s total tax take is lowest in the nation at 6.7% of average person’s earnings.  How so?  They have very low property taxes and pass modest school bonds. This fits with what I see.  I drive all over OK and see towns with run down houses, but the school looks like some Frank Lloyd Wright marvel.  Do we need this?  Some of my best education took place in temporary trailer houses.

Dems seem stumped when asked what the difference is between themselves and socialists.  Let me help.  Socialism is the philosophy that government controls most everything.  International socialism is where the gov’t owns all the means of production—communism.  National Socialism is where gov’t owns or controls only certain large industries but sufficient to control society overall.  Let the street flower vendors remain as is.  For industries government doesn’t own, this has a corollary. Government can’t control a scattered industry with thousands of players, so it seeks to consolidate everyone into a few large companies, giving mega-corporations favors, while persecuting the small guys out of businesss.  This is precisely Obama’s intent, as it was also Mussolini’s, Peron’s, and Hitler’s, and every progressive’s since Debs and LaFollette.

Cubs beat the Cards this year and from this point forward I am hoping the Cubs win it.  What! You say, has an old Cardinals fan lost his rudder?  Nope.  I am sick and tired of hearing the Cubs blather on about their darned goat or some other spell that has been cast.  Maybe they can turn it around and become a normal team.  Look, you team lost in the past because they didn’t play so well.  All the world can tell you this.  Just like all the world can tell Chicago that the reason they have so many teens killing teens is because you have gangs and incomplete families.  On second thought, maybe I’ll be all in for the Royals.

Speaking of baseball playoffs, I think the modern system of a month’s worth of playoffs with 10 teams is a failure.  When I was a child, it often became apparent who was going to be in the World Series by mid-September. People who normally rooted for the KC A’s who were 30 games out, nonetheless studied the likely pennant winners, got familiar with their players and still watched the Series.  Today, half the people are interested at the beginning, but root only for their favorite team.  Once your team loses, you turn off the championship.  MLB’s big horror is when two small market teams, far from the east and west coasts, play in the Series because no one is watching.  The season is too long—everybody says this! Once you start playing in cold weather, curve balls and sinkers don’t curve and sink. It advantages the hitting teams.   All the off days mean that a team with just 3 good pitchers instead of 5 is advantaged.  Wild card teams, often the hot team of September are often advantaged. You don’t have to play a good season, just finish hot.  Good grief! Go back to just a single playoff series and get it over with by Oct. 7.

Franchise Fours

MLB asked fans to vote on the greatest players of their teams, each team to select 4 players as “The Franchise Four”.  And when you ask fans to vote, I guess you get what you pay for.  All the players seemed to come from the last 50 years.  Not surprising but when you consider that the Cincinnati Red Stockings got started in 1871 as the first fully paid professional baseball team, doesn’t it seem a bit odd that the oldest good player they can find was Johnny Bench and Pete Rose? Weird that they didn’t have anybody before about 1970 to elect.

            Now of course some teams haven’t had a lot to cheer and some are so new all their players are still playing (Rays).  But the Phillies missed the boat when they couldn’t remember Connie Mack who played and then managed for a total of 53 years, won 5 World Series and 9 pennants.  Well, of course he wasn’t that smashing a player, I understand. So pick Grover Cleveland Alexander whose 1.22 ERA was the lowest ever until Bob Gibson of the Cards beat it in 1968.

            And either the Giants who couldn’t elect anyone older than Willie Mays, or the Orioles should have named John McGraw.  He hit .350 lifetime on the 1890s Orioles (of course the present Orioles in Baltimore derive from the St. Louis Browns) and went on to manage the Giants for 30 years and 10 pennants.  He was brilliant, innovative and a tyrant.  He cursed fans and was famous for his battles with umpires, once organizing a lynch mob after a game in search of an ump.  Or the Giants could have chosen Christy Matthewson, the first well-educated and wholesome player in an era of baseball by street punks.  He won 373 games and invented the curveball and screwball.  He won 30+ games in 1903, 1904 and 1905, a consecutive record that surely will stand forever. And what happened to Bill Terry who hit a lifetime of .341 over 14 years and was considered the best shortstop in baseball?

 I wonder, why didn’t the Cubs select Pop Anson who not only was a terrific early player, but a manager and principal author of the rules of modern baseball.  Well, I guess we should also point out he hated blacks and was also responsible for the fact that they were shut out of MLB for 50 years. Or alternatively select Al Spalding, the dominant pitcher of the 1880s who went into the business of making balls and gloves and became a household name.  He and W.A. Hulbert organized the National League in 1876.  Their rules of ownership, no liquor at games, no gambling, and published schedules became a model for all sports leagues. Or why not choose Frank Chance, the first baseman who immortalized Tinkers to Evers to Chance and invented the 6-4-3 double play?  As player-manager he won 4 pennants and 2 world series.  Evers went on to play for the Miracle Boston Braves of 1914 who went from last place on July 19 to WS winners in 4 games.

Of course some guys didn’t stay in one place, like Al Pujols or Hippo Vaughn who went from Yankees to Senators to Cubs.  He was unstoppable from 1908 to 1921 and had a lifetime ERA of 2.49.

The Cards, Tigers and Yankees elected old-timers with Hornsby, Cobb, Greenburg, Ruth and Gehrig. These teams have a long history of stars although Cards and Yanks began badly before 1918.  Hornsby was considered the best all around hitter to have ever lived with a lifetime .358 average. His lifetime slugging avg. of .557 is still the National League record.  But ‘Rajah’ was arrogant and tactless and played and managed 5 different teams because he couldn’t get along with anybody.  Ty Cobb, the Georgia boy who lost his father and turned bitter, was probably the only guy who was more hated.  But it was also Rogers Hornsby who, in 1919 was told as a rookie to “gain some weight”, went home to the farm and put on 40 pounds of pure muscle.  When general manager Branch Rickey asked in astonishment what he had done, he said, “farm system” which gave Rickey the brilliant idea to buy up small town minor league teams and organize them into a “grow your own talent” system.  The Yankee voters didn’t even consider Lefty O’Doul who played with a succession of teams and had a lifetime .349 avg.  He started and ended with the Bronx Bombers.

The Redbird I voted for and wasn’t elected was Dizzy Dean who holds the 5-year record of 120 wins which will surely stand as an MLB record forever.  You couldn’t shut him up and his extremely colorful hillbilly language popularized baseball as Cardinal announcer and CBS Game of the Week announcer.

All things considered, I guess the fans had their vote.  Just wish more of them knew some history which is pretty fun.

Yet another reason there are no jobs

            The Patriots, whom I dislike, and the Cardinals, who I am a fan of, have both been hit with recent scandals.  The fans of other teams love to loath the rivals and all the talk on sports radio about how people want to see the team with the trouble “get nailed” is almost astonishingly obtuse by my perspective.  In each case, the investigating authorities have announced that chief suspects are underlings and that management had little idea it was happening. 

            May I point out that this is every business-owner’s nightmare.  That wino you hired as a dishwasher might pinch some woman’s butt in the elevator and she sues you for $50 million.  Your entire business can go bankrupt, simply due to a crazy minimum wage person you hired.  Thus, I predict that fast food will increasingly be automated as fewer and fewer workers start making $15 an hour.  A machine doesn’t have the liability of a rogue employee. Our society is increasingly ordained and ordered by lawyers who defend the lower class workers most susceptible to bad behavior while suing businesses because they aren’t perfect.  And you  wonder why all those people you saw on TV in Baltimore are out of work? 

            Yet to date, I have never heard a pundit on the tellie tell this story.  Business is ultra cautious about who they hire and what they instruct.  Nonetheless, some flunkie is going to try to hack the Astros and then you will lose a dozen draft picks and get fined a couple million.  The entire sport, not just your team will lose repute.

            And it’s not that these are just a few odd happenings.  The general public goes around like a loaded gun looking for litigious events.  The first thing you need to learn to survive in business is to take an interest in customers so that they go away happy or at least proud of themselves that they raised a stink.  Remember, that $29 million hot-coffee spill McDonalds had to pay started because the local manager thought that $488 in doctor bills was excessive and wouldn’t pay for it.  Pay the 488 and send flowers and check on her well-being for two weeks thereafter, dummy!  The public is ready to shake you down. 

            Meanwhile workers are separating into two groups, the haves who get education, skills,  morals and jobs.  The have-nots who are not held to standards for responsibility.  There’s a government program trying to serve everyone who can blame their misbehavior and lack of skills on some sort of victimhood.   

            We ate dinner the other night at a Chinese buffet.  I looked up midway through my won ton and saw a guy come to the cashier and he began hollering about how his food wasn’t done and he was not going to pay for it.  Cashier was the boss who couldn’t come up with words and let this guy stalk off in a huff.  I resisted the urge to follow the lard ass customer and ask whether it was his second or third plate where he noticed the food was unfit.  And didn’t he voluntarily take it off a buffet line?  You took it.  Can’t you just quietly push it aside?  Instead I handed the boss a twenty for our meal and told him to keep the small excess.  “You’ll need it to defray the cost of that Hottentot who refused to pay.  We used to run a restaurant and know what you are going through.”  Suddenly he brightened, going from whipped puppy to businessman again and thanked me for coming to his place. 

            But here’s my point.  This is one more nail in the coffin of entrepreneurship.  Regulate everything to death, demand Obamacare mandates, then play lawsuit roulette, and pretty soon you get an economy that cannot recover from a recession, growing at one and a half percent a year, like Portugal.  Are we proud of ourselves, Americans, for 93 million people who aren’t working?  For negative wage growth since the recession ended? More business closings in 2011-14 than openings—first time that has ever happened in our 408-yr. history?  I dunno.  You still wanna play the game?

Always October

Nothing like watching baseball in October.  Looks like things in Kansas City have gone about as fur as they can go.  But if they keep playing like this, they will win the whole thing.  6 steals in a single game—wow! I used to joke that I had a hard time cheering on KC since I wasn’t a masochist and they only had two guys, Roy and Al. Well, and Billy Butler, so make that 3.  But this year they have a whole host of young guns and even traded for Aoki—anybody called ‘A Okie’ is OK with me.  What they play is what we used to call Whitey Ball in St. Louis—hustle stuff, named after manager Whitey Herzog.  The Royals call it their Dyson Ball.  Which is why they swept the Angels. 

I often watch a game and turn off the volume when Shirley goes to bed and I get tired of the banter of sportscasters.  So much of sports announcing is sugar-coated and designed only to feed the egos of old, converted jocks who show off their knowledge of the game.  But if you’ve ever played sports, no matter how much you know, it means nothing unless you can perform.  Some can, some can’t, some have other problems. So you never hear announcers say anything controversial, “He’s dumber than a brick but can sure hit the ball.  He’s got a bad attitude, a real coach-killer, but throw him the ball and he makes touchdowns right and left.”

With the TV on mute, I watched most of the Nationals game against the Giants.  Pitcher pitched a high ball up around the armpits of a batter and the ump called a strike. Batter got upset.  Another pitch around the armpits and another strike call which struck him out.  Batter got really ticked off, slammed his bat in the dirt and got thrown out of the game.  Manager came out and protested and he got thrown out.  Now all this time, I noticed that the usual manner of showing the strike zone box and the slow-mo of the pitch was never done.  But after all the eruption, they finally reviewed both pitches.  Being an undistracted deaf guy watching only the screen, I noticed something.  Somebody had defined the strike zone way up at the armpits, not mid chest as is the rules.  Sure enough, it showed both pitches were truly strikes.  Ahem!  So after all the ruckus, and by this time I had the sound on, the next batter came to the plate.  Same pitches, up high.  But interestingly enough, this time the ump called balls.  Hmm. 

When I was a kid in days of yore I hated the Giants.  Giants fans always noted that they had won more pennants than any other team except the Yankees.  But if you looked at this historically, they won about 9 out of 11 before 1921—the days of yore-yore.  I’d even root for Dodgers because they hated the Giants more than anything.  Nowadays the Giants play good ball but grow even better beards.  Must be allergic to razors.  You can tell they come from cool San Fran because only mad dogs and Englishmen have a lot of hair and play in the summer in Houston or Florida.  They have good pitching, headed by Bumgarner.  Good German name.  I had a friend named Bumgartner, which is what Bumgarner derives from.  That means you can’t even grow a tomato.

Washington had the Senators when I was a kid.  I didn’t understand, but newspapers used to call them the “Nats” (i.e., Nationals) because they thought “Senators” was too big a word for headlines.  (as a poor speller, I thought that calling a team the “gnats” was an insult.) So the headline would say, Nats stun Yankees.  Nowadays we know Senators as Presidential Wannabees and we also text.  If they had had these advancements in the 1950’s the headline could have been even shorter, “PWs stun NYY”.  Of course that would be a worse insult than Gnats.

And of course, if the Cardinals ever regain their speedster team as in the 80’s, they won’t be able to call it Whitey Ball, because that would be racist.

Not in the Cards

It wasn’t in the cards for the Cards tonight.  Still, they should hold their heads high.  Four pennants in last ten years—2004,2006,2011, 2013.  Plus two more memorable years.  2005 had 105 victories but they lost in the playoffs.  2012 had a 3-1 lead over San Fran in NLCS and didn’t win pennant.  At 18 pennants they are the winningest National League team.  And they didn’t even start winning pennants until 1926.  So in 88 years they have won 18 pennants.  They are the most copied franchise in baseball for their ability to bring up new talent, and thus they win with bargain basement payrolls against teams that spend sometimes twice as much.  Beginning with the radio era when Branch Rickey decided to put them on as many stations as possible and they became America’s team, they have been a business success.  I noticed that Fenway Park in Boston a huge Budweiser sign over right field.  Buy another one and send the money to StL!  I remember listening to ESPN, the voice of the coasts in sports who couldn’t hide their disdain for the Redbirds when pitchers Motte, Carpenter, and Garcia were lost for the season.  Ha! The 'Birds reloaded!

Basher and baseball

Obama keeps avoiding Syria because Basher Assad is alive and well here in the USA and rented from me. He left very suddenly, in the dead of night 3 days ago -- bashed 4 holes in the sheetrock, two windows, one door, and a hole in the wall of the garage.  The furniture rental company got back two bashed and smashed chairs.  The corner of the dining table was bashed down like someone had taken a baseball bat to it.  Basher Assad, no?

Now I’m remodeling.  Maybe I will turn that house into a Second  Baseball Hall of Fame—the players that should have been noted but never got in.  They didn’t make it because the baseball writers elect HOF members.  Those famously alcoholic writers now refuse to recognize players who might have used steroids. And they know little of the significance of history.  Here’s who I would put in.

The writers seem only able to read statistics. “Old Hoss” Radbourne is in the Hall.  He won 60 and lost 12 games pitching for Providence in the National League in 1884, the most games ever won. But his career was very much shortened because he fought with everyone and went from team to team.  Ed Delahanty also had a shortened career.  He hit over 400 twice and had a lifetime .346 but he was a drunk.  Playing for the Washington Senators in 1903 he had a .333 going when he got in a drunken brawl on the team train. They kicked him off the train, he tried to re-board, fell in the Erie River and was swept over Niagara Falls. His body was found a week later.  Just thought you’d like to know what wonderful, “non-drug using” guys are in the current Hall of Fame.

Cap Anson is already in the HOF but no note is made of “the Grand Old Man of Baseball’s” most significant and awfulest contribution.  He was a superstar in the 1880’s, player coach who first innovated spring training. But his worst contribution was that he was a blatant racist who refused to let his team play any team that had a player of African ancestry. That forced black players into a negro league that segregated baseball for 70 years. By the way, Anson changed the name of the Chicago team to the Chicago White Stockings.

So perhaps you’ll forgive some of my nominees to the true history of baseball hall of fame.  How about Andrew Freedman, owner of the Giants in the 1890’s and a big wheel.  He advocated ‘syndicate baseball’, that is, all the teams in the league should be in a trust and teams would then become franchises, players salaries would be capped, and players would be jointly pooled, shifted around as profit opportunity was found.   His system was not wholly adopted, but you can see parts of it still today, and players salaries were once capped.  Not until Curt Flood, one of the better defensive center fielders to play and still not in HOF, sued MLB and won rights of players to become free agents, did player servitude end.  Flood’s contractual free agency changed the game profoundly.

Before 1900 there were numerous leagues, the National League being the biggest, but American Association and Players League being rivals. In 1900 baseball drew fewer fans than did polo, another popular sport.  It was a rough game of men who brawled and cheated.  The National’s Baltimore Orioles of the 1890’s have 5 Hall members.  Skipping a base if the umpire wasn’t looking was routine.  Honus Wagner of the Pirates explained how he didn’t get a home run because he was roughed up by Orioles as he rounded the bases, “the first baseman gave me the hip as I rounded the base, the second baseman slugged me, Jennings tripped me at shortstop and when I got around 3^rd, McGraw was waiting with a shotgun, I think.”

So what made baseball grow and polo die off?  Baseball could be a family sport. You could play baseball at a picnic.  Women in long skirts could bat with a child as designated runner.  For the honor of making baseball civilized, I would nominate Mr. and Mrs. Frank Robison who bought the St. Louis Browns in 1899.  His wife thought the uniforms were hideous and had a new set of bright red uniforms tailored with red striped socks.  The wild colors caused quite a stir in the press, the team was jokingly nicknamed ‘Cardinals’ when Willie McHale of the “St. Louis Republic” overheard a woman say “what a lovely shade of cardinal!”, and game attendance by families soared with special discounts for families to attend.  The red uniforms were scrapped, but not the new nickname and the team logo now became two birds on a bat, the first truly recognizable logo (rather than just a letter or town name). Cardinals sold their “Browns” name to another team in the city.

Most of the original MLB teams were in a narrow eastern belt from Chicago to Boston.  But baseball grew to be enormously popular in the west.  And the guy who helped fund many minor league teams was the oil tycoon Harry Sinclair.  In 1914, he formed the last rival league to challenge MLB with the Federal League.  They raided players from the American and National Leagues and sued MLB (quite correctly) under Sherman Anti-trust Law.  The judge who presided was Kenesaw Mountain Landis who dallied and delayed not wanting to make the obvious decision in favor of the Federals.  Eventually MLB negotiated a settlement with Sinclair and changed some of its monopolistic rules to allow owners to have greater autonomy.  For this, Sinclair is nowhere near the HOF but Landis, the opportunistic judge who secretly favored the established leagues, was awarded “Commissioner of Baseball” and became a dictator for 26 years at the head of Major League Baseball.

Since HOF recognizes guys who fell off the wagon, like Delahanty, why don’t they have “Shoeless” Joe Jackson?  In 1919, the overwhelming favorite Chicago White Sox lost to the upstart Cincinnati Reds.  Big shots lost money they had bet on the Series and brought pressure on Landis.  Commissioner Landis determined after interviews, that 8 White Sox players had consorted with gamblers to “throw the series”.  Jackson was the poor country kid who was completely intimidated by his audience with Landis, the bullying prosecutor.  But most historians now believe that Jackson was innocent.  After all, he hit .385 during the Series and made several sensational plays—not exactly behavior expected of a guy throwing a game.  Considered the greatest hitter in baseball, he was banished from the sport. By the way, a jury acquitted all 8 players in 1921. None were ever allowed to play again and none are in the HOF.

There are weird deletions from the HOF.  Why didn’t Heinie Zimmerman, the great third baseman of the early Chicago Cubs get included?  In 1912 he hit .372 and led his team to the championship.  Ken Boyer of the 1950’s Cardinals? Pete Rose?

This brings me to players unlikely to ever be inducted because of steroid use.  MLB had no anti-steroid sanctions until the 21^st century, but they sure had a big problem after 1995.  Those were the years of the baseball strikes in which the Players Union demanded a larger share of gross profits and nearly destroyed MLB when fans went on strike.  Attendance by 1997 had dropped by half—drawing fewer fans than hockey that year.  All the rosy predictions of how the national sport would come back after the strikes went horrifyingly wrong.  20 teams were bleeding money and the Montreal Expos had attendance of 8000 people per game.  But in 1998 Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire got into a home run hitting contest that the game had not seen since Mantle vs. Maris, 35 years before.  The publicity and excitement saved the game.  Baseball made a big comeback in 1998.  Well, then it turned out that not just Sosa and McGwire, but also another 50 or so players were juicing themselves with a variety of drugs--all legal at the time.  Keeping McGwire, Sosa,Clemens and Bonds out of the Hall seems to me equivalent of saying that Picasso’s or Van Gogh’s art was illegitimate since they both had mental problems and drank.  Worse still, is the treatment of players who “seemed to play as if on something” and are now shunned by the Hall of Fame via rumor.  All this from dopey sportswriters who are electing nobody to the Hall. Perhaps they can’t find somebody who wasn’t suspicious in the 90’s.

Here’s my opinion.  Sportswriters make a living spinning mostly candy-coated versions of the game.  Their version of history is not always accurate because of their biases.  When confronted with a controversy, like steroids use, or gambling, or anti-trust law they scapegoat the problem. See, I should remodel my old house and make a museum.

Batshit Crazies

It snowed and we were housebound and watched a movie.  “Moneyball” was one of the big surprises of this year, a movie that was supposed to be grade B and the makers merely hoped would break even.  Instead it became a blockbuster hit.  It’s about the management of baseball talent, the story of how Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A’s managed to contract a bunch of cast-off players and remake the A’s after they had gone to the World Series the year before, but then all the big players had left for rich contracts with other teams. A’s had no money to replenish the team and Beane managed to hire a young kid who was a statistical/computer whiz who found the undervalued players.  And of course, if you know baseball history, the A’s made the playoffs and set a new major league record of 20 straight wins.  All the while Beane’s scouts and manager and the rest of the baseball public made fun of his changes.  But the punch line of the movie comes through the President of the Boston Red Sox who tried to hire Beane at the end of the season.  Roughly quoting, he said, “The first guy to break a barrier, to go through a wall, usually gets pretty bruised up.  That’s because the guy who comes in with a new idea threatens the guys in power, the guys who are used to running things their way, the guys who hold the reins.  And they go absolutely batshit crazy over the change.” 

How true in all things.  It was true of the Civil Rights movement when Southern governors and officials went batshit crazy over the marches and the marchers got pretty beat up.  True of Washington at Valley Forge, true of the guys who started Apple, true of Karl Benz and his auto-mobile. And most of all, I remember how true it was of Ronald Reagan and Arthur Laffer who came in with a novel idea that if you tax less, government gets more revenue.  That was utterly counter-intuitive for many political junkies and politicians.  Reagan’s own V-P went batshit crazy, calling it voodoo economics.  The media, the Europeans, the ruling Congressional Democrats, just about everyone went batshit crazy with criticism. But Lafferism worked.  And then Thatcher tried it also and it resurrected the Brits from “The British Disease” of welfare statism.  The Pacific rim countries paid note.  They had longed to become developed countries, and couldn’t decide if they wanted the Japanese model or the Chinese.  When they saw Lafferism they tried it and they became Asian Tigers of growth.

Sometimes the guy with the new ideas loses.  Benz just didn’t have enough resources to fight and wound up selling out to a guy who named the cars after his girlfriend, Mercedes.  Henry Ford had a vision of cheap cars but then when the country got richer, they wanted something upscale and bought GM.  And the Republicans put the Voodoo Economics Veep in after Reagan and gradually lost the movement to Washington political hacks.  But as the Red Sox Prez noted, “Next year any team that isn’t rebuilding their team with your model [Beane and the A’s], is going to ultimately lose.” And now the Northern Europeans as well as Asia are converting sheepishly to Laffer’s models. 

But here in America, the Batshit Crazies won an election with 52% in 2008 and 50.3% in 2012. They used all the old faithful ‘progressive’ tools—Class Warfare, Chickens in every special interest pot—and they are cocky as can be over 50.3%. Counter to the warnings of Britain and Scandinvians and Australians, they have doubled down on the Spend-Into-Prosperity model of government.  May I simply point out that it won’t work in the broader scheme of things.  Economics doesn’t lie.  We face horrid stagflation. What then? Default? Volcker 21% interest rates? At that point may I quote the words of Rev. Wright, “America’s chickens have come home to roost”.

The American people await new management.  The new manager will have to be expert at turnarounds in the political world, a communicator who can keep the people on his/her side, a bold artist of change back to the conservatism and free-market principles that made America the envy of the world.  We’ve come through the wall, been bruised a bit, but I have faith in American common sense.  Common sense will come out in spades when our team’s economy starts to look like the Royals and Expos.

In the end, Beane’s numbers guy encourages him to start attending the games and not distance himself from the team.  The romance of the game is still there.  So too, we need to take the fight to the Batshit Crazies.

Baseball Guys Night

Guy’s night while she is at a church meeting.  I am watching the Nationals score 5 runs in the first inning of the All Star game.  Don’t know how it will turn out.

Prince Fielder won the home run derby… again.  That guy is the perfect home run derby champ.  He swings for the fences on every pitch.  Often doesn’t hit real big league pitching and bats about .230 but hits big homers.  So when the derby allows them to hit at lob pitches, he’s unbeatable.  Ironically, he is not a fielder and fumbled a catch for the first error of the game. However, glad to see KC’s Billy Butler make the game.  Wish I was there.

I often wonder about the players chosen.  Fans vote for perennial names instead of true all stars.  Dan Uggla is a great second baseman but hitting .221 isn’t exactly all star starter territory. But I don’t understand a lot of things.  Why did they move the Brewers to the National League and then a few years hence move the Astros to the American?

Our newspaper wrote a story about the guy in Muscotah, Kansas who is starting a museum for Joe Tinker.  Funny I don’t remember Muscotah.  It must be tiny.  When I was at KSU, I was in charge of monthly reports from weather volunteers for 310 recording stations around the state.  So I guess I know every town except Muscotah.  Still, they got spunk in Muscotah.  Painted the round water tower to look like a baseball.  Went around town begging Tinker memorabilia for the museum.  Who was Joe Tinker, you may be asking.  He was one of the original inductees into the Hall of Fame  for his play from 1900-1916.  He and Evers and Chance invented the 6-4-3 double play.  And they became so good at it, that they left a wave of frustration in their wake as their Cubs won 4 pennants from 1906-10.  Shortstop Joe was about a .221 hitter like Uggla, but a masterful short-stopper, and consistently the best fielder in baseball. Long time ago.

Speaking of guy things, Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood, said today that he was pleased to see Lexus now had a hybrid car.  “Who would have dreamed two years ago that Lexus would have a hybrid.  This shows the administration’s initiative of asking for more green vehicles is working.”  Yeah, well only one problem.  Lexus has had hybrids since 2005.  Now forget that this dude is a major administration official.  Forget that as Transportation Secretary he should know or at least have staff who can check such things.  HE’S A GUY! And just as guys should know a bit about baseball, guys should know about their wheels! Imagine what the news media would have done to Sarah Palin had she made a gaffe like this.  And she’s not a guy!  La Hood (from the French, “the hood”), drives what????  What's under his hood?  Oh, that’s right, he’s a union guy so he has ridden in a limo since the time he was elected. Doesn’t change oil, either.

We need to stop these clowns before they get another 4 years. Donna Brazille says we don’t have a chance. Let me paraphrase:  “…How do you beat an unbeatable team? Romney to Rubio  to Chance…” (or substitute your favorite for second baseman)

Ha! Furcal hit a triple! Holliday hit a single! Tony’s smilin’.  Just like old times.

Clean the House

Everywhere I go people are disgusted with the Congress.  The want to throw out the majority of ‘em.  Trouble is, you can’t vote against Nancy Pelosi in Oklahoma.  But I have a plan:  Give ‘em the Clemens treatment.  You see, I took the family to St. Louis this week to watch baseball, and the news during the trip was about Roger Clemens’ trial and about Holder before Congress. 

I was shopping the Cardinals Club Shop.  For $75 they’ll put your name on the back of a jersey.  But if you want the back to say MUSIAL that costs $100.  And Ozzie Smith, O SMITH, goes for $300.   Whoa!  That presents arbitrage possibilities. “Excuse me.  I’d like one of those $75 custom jerseys with my name.” “Yes, sir.  What’s your name?”  “Oliver Smith.  Just put O SMITH on the shirt.”  (Sorry, it’s my business brain working overtime.)

Baseball is a terribly traditional game and sometimes the tradition gets overwrought.  There is always some statistics buff who thinks he can compare Pujols and Kemp with Nap Lajoie’s triple crown of 1901.  And he demands all statistics compare as well.  Give me a break!  I know why Ty Cobb or Lajoie could hit .400 every year.  They faced bad pitiching.  Pitching science, management, and skill development were in infancy.  Pitchers were sometimes used 12 innings.  Secondly, the fielders wore gloves that remind me of something you would use to get a pie out of the oven.  Third, the ball was softer and thus all hitters concentrated on average.  Still the Statistical Oversight Buffs (SOBs) tend to overlook such things, but get raving mad with foamed mouths over steroid use. 

Matt Holiday was benched with a back spasm episode last week.  My heart goes out to him since about once every two years I have the same back problems.  You can either spend about 6 weeks recovering in agony and taking Aleve and relaxants, or you get a steroid shot and relief in 3 days.  Alas, Matt would be kicked out of baseball if he did the latter.  Olympic athletes who accidentally took a cold pill, also a steroid, have been disqualified a year later for doping. 

Back to Clemens.  He and half a dozen others testified about steroid use in front of Congress 9 years ago.  The grandstanding congressmen entrapped the players, demanding to know if any of them had used steroids, a perfectly legal supplement in the 90’s.  Mark MacGwire was the bad boy for avoiding the question as if someone might charge him with Lying Before Congress.  He just said he wanted to move on and talk about the future of the game.  Others denied, denied, denied.  Now Rog is being charged with perjury.  Looks like MacGwire wasn’t so dumb after all.  Yet while Clemens had the book thrown at him, Holder is getting chance after chance to explain and stonewall and refuse to give documents to Congress over Fast-and-Furious which actually has created a wake of dead bodies, instead of slightly bigger muscles or my healed back.  (Oh, the evils of letting this Okie hang more sheetrock!!)

Err, suppose we were to treat Holder and for that matter, members of Congress to their own Inquisition.  As each member testified, he/she could be replaced by a temp ordinary citizen appointed by their Governor.  Wouldn’t you love to be Joe the Plumber asking Ted Kennedy about Chappaquidick?  Clinton about his BFFs? Obama about his birth certificate?  Do you really think most of the members could pass a test of Telling the Truth before Congress? The way I figure it, all the Democrats and half the Republicans would fail, and could be tried for Perjury and put away for about 20 years. Schumer would be the first to go. Last man standing would be Orrin Hatch.  But he’s so boring he might lose in a primary.  There you go—clean the House.   

Oh, by the way, I didn't hit one extra homer

Cardinal Math

Like Math? Here's a number sequence and you tell me the next number. 26,30,31,34,42,43,44,46,64,67,68,81,82,85,87,4,6,?
Answer: 11. These are the years that the Cardinals have won the pennant.
We were sitting and watching the game last night when the fifth inning ended with the Cards ahead by 5 runs. Now the way I figure it, teams score an average of 4.5 runs per game or .5 runs per inning. So the probability of scoring a run in any given inning is 0.5. The probability of 2 runs is 0.25, etc. This approximately jives with my sense that if you go into the ninth with a 1 run lead, you have at least a 50% chance of winning --or better if your closer has an ERA much less than 4.50. So then you calculate what is the probability of the Brewers scoring 5 runs in 4 innings? It's over one in thirty. But of course, this isn't dynamic. It assumes the Redbirds won't score again. It assumes that in such a crucial game the Birds won't put in an outstanding pitcher or two with an ERA of about 2.
So I turned to her and said, "I think we got 'em." As it turned out, the Cardinals scored again and the Brewers chances got even worse. Redbirds win. Pennant #18.
I once read about the life of Branch Rickey, the genius general manager of the Cardinals in 1918 who put together the beginning of this very successful baseball team. He was listening-in as the manager dismissed a young man from spring training tryouts. He told the kid to get some muscle on his bones, because despite his fielding prowess, he just didn't have much power in his hitting. The following fall, the kid showed up at the team offices asking if he could try out in spring training again. He was 40 pounds heavier and all rock solid muscle. The manager remember him, young guy by the name of Roger Hornsby. "What have you been doing!!" Rog just shrugged and said he was working on the farm. Rickey was given pause. He thought about how fortunate the team was to run into this kid again. What if they would spend a little money to buy some small town minor league teams and have scouts fan out across the countryside to locate talent, offer a contract to play ball on the minor league outfit and put the young men through training. Call it the 'farm system', ala Hornsby. Since you could buy a minor league team for about $6-8000, about what you'd pay a very good player per year, Rickey thought that if each of about 4 teams could produce a good player from the hinterlands, the purchase would pay for itself in a year. And the rest, as they say is history.
Next, Rickey gave some thought to how to promote his team. St. Louis has another major league team and was somewhat distant to the other teams being the westernmost club. There was a new thing called radio but in 1918 no one understood very well how it could make money. One idea was to get people to listen so that a company could sell more radios. A better idea was to get programming from civic activities and have advertizing sponsors. So radio stations would play, say, an opera that was performing locally. Rickey thought the stuff being done was pitiful and thought baseball would be much better if you could locate a good person to tell the 'game story' as it was being played. And what a perfect way to get the word out, way out West, about the Cards. So while many teams signed-on 2 or 3 radio stations in the town where they played, Rickey assembled an empire of 108 stations throughout the West and South. The cost was so minor it provided a return of almost 200%. Pretty good math, eh? The rise of Cardinal baseball caused the early success of many radio stations beyond the eastern seaboard, made fans in Tennessee lust to go to St. Louis for a game, and made every kid in America seem to want to play for the Redbirds. And started a grand tradition of radio play-by-play announcers--Dizzy Dean, Harry Carey, Jack Buck, Mike Shannon. Oh, and then there was that aggressive beer company in St. Louis who delivered fresh beer quickly by teamsters who saw a perfect match for Anheiser-Busch and a baseball team.
As Rickey's math grew successful, so did the Cardinal's math. In 1903, the team had the lowest winning percentage, .314 in their history, but 1906 was even worse with the team finishing 63 games behind the pennant winners. But from '26 to '46, the Cards won 8 times.
My grandfather said it was a great escape when the country needed an escape. You could come home dehydrated and dirty, having watched the grasshoppers eat your crop. The kids could be fighting , your wife could chew you out and the dog could bite you--but if the Cards won, it was a net positive day. Good math.
Note from Oct. 28--tonight at end of inning 7 Cards were ahead by 4. So with two innings to play the probability is 1/2times1/2 times 1/2 times 1/2 =1/16 but then there are two innings so it is 2/16 or one chance in 8. Result was Cards won as predicted. Dotel and Motte pitched and each had an ERA for the Series of slightly over 1. Hence the Rangers were really cooked! The squirrel was spotted crawling around on the scoreboard getting ready to celebrate. Congratulations, Redbirds!