I posted this on Twitter earlier this evening, but I thought it deserved it's own post here. Below is a picture of the single best in-stadium giveaway I've ever received. I found it again tonight after I had "put it away" a year or two back:

I got this "How to Keep Score" clipboard at a Fresno Grizzlies game in August 2005. It was actually the last night I lived in Fresno, as I headed on out to Milwaukee the next morning. My brother and I celebrated the night with a bunch of one-dollar, Thirsty Thursday beers and this awesome clipboard.

Size-wise, it's about 9x12, hardly bigger than a piece of paper. Very convenient for taking to the ballpark. And while I need absolutely no help in keeping score, it still makes me happy to score on it. It's like the last, ultimate piece of the baseball nerd uniform, and I'm proud to wear it.

(And while we're talking about keeping score, here's the piece I wrote almost two years ago in defense of the pad and pencil.)

So what's the single best item you've ever received from an in-stadium giveaway?

Missing baseball here in the depths of winter, when a Rams/Seahawks Week 17 game is all that ESPN & NBC can muster as a "Game of the Week"?

If you are, then you should definitely check into Jeff Polman's Play That Funky Baseball Twitter stream tonight at 7pm Pacific time. The 1977 Los Angeles Dodgers, managed by yours truly, will be battling for first place against the 1977 Pittsburgh Pirates, managed by WHYGAVS' Pat Lackey. The Dodgers sit one game back - but tied in the loss column - of the Pirates with only about two weeks left in the season. Should be fun.

Plus, how could you miss a battle between Jerry Reuss and Don Sutton, the two whitest perms of the '70s? Just check out that poster up there.

Hope to see you on the Twitter tubes tonight!

Earlier this week, over at The Hardball Times, I took a look back at some 1980s newspapers to show that the whole “Jack Morris as Pitcher of the ‘80s” thing has been around at least since the winter of 1986, when Morris and a slew of other players were victims of collusion. It’s a narrative that has been around for nearly 25 years now and is quite possibly responsible for Morris’ increasing support for the Hall of Fame.

Bert Blyleven has been in a similar situation, with a certain narrative following him around for seemingly his entire career. Blyleven’s narrative, though, has been almost the exact opposite of Morris’: that Blyleven is a pitcher with ridiculous stuff who just never learned how to win games.

Digging around through the Sports Illustrated vault last night, it’s become clear that this narrative has followed Bert around for over 35 years, since he was a 23-year-old with 66 wins, 58 complete games, and over 850 strikeouts under his belt. Somehow all of this combined into an unimpressive package for baseball fans at the time. Perhaps it was Bert’s personality?

"Bert has a better curveball than Seaver," says Hundley, "and his fastball may be a bit quicker, too." But Blyleven is a copy without the original's shades and textures; without his classical foundation. "Bert's a thrower," says Hundley. " Seaver's a pitcher."

And:

Bert Blyleven is a mild, unobtrusive man who exudes not charm but stolidity.

Plus:

Blyleven's pitching success is as unobtrusive as his character. He gels seven or eight strikeouts every game rather than 18 in a burst. He does not have a phenomenal ERA one year, a mediocre ERA the next. Blyleven's have been merely excellent—and are improving (2.82 in '71; 2.73 in '72; 2.52 in '73).

Although his own nature and his career have been understated, it has been to Blyleven's advantage, allowing him to cultivate his craft in privacy.

Those are quotes from a May 1974 SI piece on Blyleven called “Glowing Within the Oyster”. The subtitle of the article is “A pearl of a pitcher, Bert Blyleven is fortunate to be encased in an inconspicuous shell; undisturbed, he can add luster to his skills.”

Let's just be clear here. At the start of the 1974 pitcher, Blyleven was 23 years old with 66 wins, 58 complete games, 18 shutouts, and 845 strikeouts to his name. The only pitcher in history up to that point with more strikeouts by that age was Bob Feller. Only Feller, Smokey Joe Wood, Babe Ruth, and Christy Mathewson had more wins by that age; Wood & Walter Johnson were the only two pitchers with more shutouts and Blyleven was the first pitcher in 30 year (since Feller) to have as many complete games by that age.

And if we're going by winning percentage - a big knock on Blyleven his entire career - then we should probably note that, at the start of his age 23 season, Walter Johnson was 57-65, for a .467 winning percentage (compared to Blyleven's .521). Walter Johnson, of course, is quite possibly the greatest pitcher of all time.

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)

Presented without comment, from the October 22, 1990, issue of Sports Illustrated. Here's a screengrab of the third paragraph of Sally Jenkins' piece:

And the text, in case the image is hard to read:

The attitude of athletes such as [Jack] Morris, the Detroit Tigers' pitcher—who two months ago told a female reporter, "I don't talk to people when I'm naked, especially women, unless they're on top of me or I'm on top of them"—is the kind normally associated with crustaceans and other lower forms of life.

(And I was actually looking for something nice to say about Jack Morris when I found that!)

In my latest post over at The Hardball Times, I go back to the 1980s to try and find out when the narrative of Jack Morris as "the pitcher of '80s" came into being:

His supporters like to appeal to the prevailing wisdom of the era in which he pitched, so one must wonder when exactly in his career he adopted that level of reverence. The safe bet would have Morris gaining the mantle of the “Pitcher of the ‘80s” after the 1989 season, once the competition was over and the title was securely his. Others more cynical might expect the “Pitcher of the ‘80s” talk to have begun after Morris completed his other big claim to fame, the 10-inning shutout of the Atlanta Braves in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series. A more literal fan might think of the title having been granted to Morris following the 1985 season, when he took the “most wins of the 1980s” crown away from Steve Carlton.

It turns out the narrative really began years earlier, in the winter following the 1986 season. That was the year that Morris reached free agency but no one made him any offers thanks to the rampant collusion that year. Head on over to The Hardball Times to read how all of this tied together to put Jack Morris on the brink of the Hall of Fame twenty-five years later.

Later on this afternoon, after I finish writing this post and maybe going for a walk by the lake on a beautiful winter vacation day, I will be renewing my membership to the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) for the second year in a row. If you're already a member and have not yet renewed your membership, you should take the time to do so now. And if you are not a member, you should seriously think about joining.

I'm guessing that most people that read this blog on a regular basis already have a pretty good idea of what SABR is and what it's about (I talk enough about it, anyway), but if you don't - or if you're wondering why you should join - please read further.

SABR is *the* national organization for people who love baseball, whether it be the sport, the history, the stats, or anything else. SABR members are a group of people who care so much about baseball that they want to celebrate it whenever possible; they want to get together with random people and get into heated discussions about the 1957 Braves' place in history or how the shrinking of foul territory has effected the game or what would have happened if 27-year-old Satchel Paige got to face a 27-year-old Babe Ruth; they want to encourage young fans to devote themselves to the greatest sport on the planet; they want to preserve long-forgotten history and easily-overlooked details.

SABR offers plenty to its members in the way of research tools and data - access to the complete Sporting News archives, a library of original articles and research in The Baseball Research Journal, The National Pastime, and SABR Bulletin, a membership directory, a decades-old mailing list that connects you to smart, dedicated people around the world, a detailed baseball encylcopedia, a lending library, regional chapters around the world and much more - but it's more than just research tools. SABR also promotes original research through grants, prestigious awards, and publication in high-quality journals. 

Most importantly, SABR is a community of people who love baseball - love talking about baseball, love studying baseball, love arguing baseball, and more. We all know how valuable that kind of community is. Chances are, if you're reading this blog post, you probably already consider yourself a part of the community. Online conversations on blogs and message boards and Twitter and everywhere else all help to grow and foster the baseball community as a whole. Joining SABR takes you one step farther, though. It shows your commitment to preserving and growing the community for decades to come by providing for a physical, tangible repository and by actively enabling community outreach, original research, and public events and conventions that help get people excited about the game.

If you're at all interested in growing the baseball community and helping true baseball fans discover new and exciting things about the game, or if you would like to see more events that connect the public to the likes of Hank Aaron or Frank Howard or Bobby Cox, then please consider joining SABR. It's a terrific organization and, even if you never use any of the many research tools available, you'll get a lot out of it. I hope to see everyone at future SABR meetings and conventions! (And, hey, if you're under 30 years old, you get a discount!)

It's the end of the year and we all know what that means: many, many year-end lists recounting the best of 2010. I never expected to join in the fray, but then I read Jayson Stark's "Strange But True" column from last week and it reminded me of how many great home run trots there were in 2010. And if I don't take the time to highlight some of my favorites, then there's a good chance that some of them will disappear and be forgotten forever.

Here then are the ten most memorable Tater Trots of the year, for various reason. From personal favorites to those that really defined how we talked about the year in trots, it covers a pretty broad range of the year. If I missed one that you think was better, feel free to let me know in the comments. As we all know, there were a lot more than ten great trots.

Top 10 Tater Trots of 2010

10. Jim Thome Walks-Off Target Field
August 17 - 22.23 seconds [video]
One of my favorite sub-plots of the 2010 season was watching Jim Thome have one of the most surprising age-39 seasons I've seen in a while. The guy just hit home runs all year and always seemed to be having a blast while doing so. This August 17 blast was the first walk-off home run ever hit in Target Field and was Thome's second-fastest trot of the year. It was a great night for Twins fans, and it was made all the better by the fact that Thome was the one hitting the bomb.

9. Angel Pagan's Inside-the-Parker
May 19 - 14.48 seconds [video]
The single quickest home run trot of the year. Pagan's inside-the-parker wasn't just remarkable for it's sheer speed but also because he needed every split-second of the trot in order to score. If he was even as slow as a 14.61 second trot (the second-quickest single trot of the year), he might not have scored the run.

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)

The first Christmas of writing this blog (two whole years ago now!) I did something that I thought would be a little fun for everyone: I collected some of my favorite baseball-related Peanuts strips and put them up as "A Charlie Brown Christmas" for everyone. Little did I know that, a year later, I'd be compiling the stats for the entire baseball run in strip.

Anyhow, with Christmas here again, it seemed like a good idea to bring the post back one more time. I, of course, love the strips and there's a better-than-good chance that most readers here haven't seen it yet. No matter who you are, though, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and enjoy the strips! I have a lot of fun writing here and it's all thanks to everyone coming back. Thanks for a great year, and here's to an even better one.

It's Christmas-time now and...I thought nothing seemed more appropriate going into the holiday than a few words about the sport - what it's like to win, what it's like to lose, and what it's like to be a fan - from Charlie Brown and company.

Enjoy, and Merry Christmas!

(I'm leaving the strips small because I don't want to get anyone angry. That's why I've included transcripts of the comics below each one. Click on the image to make it slightly more readable.)

On Winning
There's actually not a whole lot in the Peanuts oeuvre about winning, as Charlie Brown was rarely lucky enough to be on that side of the field. Still, there are some good bits if you look.


Charlie Brown lies in bed, clearly happy
Charlie Brown: We won our first game of the season... I can't believe it!
He starts tossing and turning
CB: I wonder how the other team feels...
He sits up, with a look of sadness
CB: I don't know... when we lose, I'm miserable... When we win, I feel guilty!


Charlie Brown ecstatically does cartwheels down the road
Charlie Brown: I hit a home run in the ninth inning, and we won! I was the hero!!
Sally (meeting him at the doorstep): YOU?!


Lucy walks up to Charlie Brown on the mound.
Lucy: What's the sense in playing when we know we're going to lose? If there was even a million-to-one chance we might win, it would make some sense...
Charlie Brown: Well, there may not be a million-to-one chance, but I'm sure there's a billion-to-one chance...
Lucy: There is? PLAY BALL!

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)

This Zack Greinke-to-Milwaukee trade has got me so excited I don't know what to do. Been excitedly smiling and talking Brewers baseball all morning. On December 19, no less. Can't complain about that. It feels great to have the Brewers be the focal point of Major League Baseball for something positive. As the Terrific Girlfriend said, now we do the dance of joy!

And I'm not the only one. Brewers fans all over have been airing their excitement around the web. Twitter, especially, has gone crazy with Brewers fans and non-Brewers fans alike talking up the trade. I don't think there's a single baseball fan out there who doesn't have an opinion. The fact that most seem to think that the Brewers got away like bandits is only icing on the cake.

But, as with all fan bases (especially those used to failure), there are quite a few people bringing out the negativity and doubt about the trade. In fact, one of the first things I thought about after the initial euphoria was how I would have to explain the value of the trade to a friend of mine at work whose a little too risk averse when it comes to the Brewers.

The key complaint, as you can imagine, is that the Brewers are giving up too much of their future for two uncertain years (or only one year, depending on how much you value Prince's contribution). Forget for a second that, while Odorizzi and Jeffress are two of the Brewers top prospects, none of the traded players are all that "can't miss" or high impact. What bothers the doubters - and what I expect to hear from my friend at work - is that, if the Brewers don't capitalize on Greinke this year or next, then the team will be looking at 2013 with many of their best players gone and no one in the pipeline to replace them. "Is it really worth being good for only one year if we're going to be terrible for five years afterwards?"

I understand the concern, but, look - trades just don't work that way.

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)

Halladay. Lee. Hamels. Oswalt.

There's been a lot of ink spilled this week about the new Phillies rotation, featuring their "four aces". After signing Roy Halladay last year and then trading for Roy Oswalt (who caught fire after the deal), people were already talking about how great Philadelphia's rotation was. But, with the Cliff Lee signing the other day, the rhetoric exploded. Now you can't go anywhere without reading about how great the quartet is.

The value of having four aces is almost too obvious to mention. By being able to pitch a viable top of the rotation starter every four out of five days, the Phillies will never let up on their opponents. "Great, you don't have to face Roy Halladay. How nice. But now you have to deal with Cliff Lee. Nice consolation."

But the biggest advantage comes at the back of the rotation. In a normal series, when the opponent is pitching his number four starter, than the team is also throwing his number four starter. So Kyle Lohse gets to match up with Manny Parra. When you have four aces, though, that Lohse/Parra match-up becomes Hamels/Parra without sacrificing an ace-on-ace matchup two days later. That's a huge benefit for the Phils.

(Click "Read More" to continue reading (and for tables!).)