Sports Writing

So says this article, courtesy of some comments in Surviving Grady: A fond farewell to reliever Curtis Leskanic, who has told friends he intends to retire. Leskanic, a boisterous character, played 12 seasons, ending his career as a member of the world champion Red Sox.

More news in this slow news week: apparently Mark Bellhorn has been signed to a 2-year extension, which is great. Meanwhile, since it was my mother’s birthday last week (happy birthday Mum!), I though I’d dig up Satchel Paige’s six rules for a long life:

And the big wheel keeps on turning. I’m not a football fanatic by any means (round here, football refers to soccer; we call the game with the pigskin “American football” - it’s a good game, but it hardly involves the feet!), although give me 15 minutes with Cold Hard Football Facts and I’ll talk the talk at any bar. But of course I’m a de facto Pats fan by dint of my time in Boston, so I got up at 5.30am on Monday morning to watch Pats-Colts. Great game. Funny to see Peyton dismanningtled. Actually, my take on Peyton Manning is kind of like my take on Derek Jeter, insofar as it’s annoying in both cases that they’ve been anointed as the Great Ones, but to be fair, that’s the media’s fault, not theirs.

One month till pitchers and catchers report, and it’s one of the slowest times of the year for a baseball fan. Such a blah day that Gordon Edes ends up noting the obvious: that the Sox were happy that the Mets got Beltran and not the Yankees, because Bernie Williams is decrepit in centerfield (ho-hum)…

Sir Sidney Ponson now hates being in Aruba. Yeah, being a local celebrity, getting a knighthood, owning a large house on a tropical island… life must be tough. On the bright side, Ponson did drop from 266 lb to 248 lb after his stint in jail, for which the Orioles must be thankful.

So, probably thanks to all the reports of him downing Metamucil to calm his stomach during the postseason (he drank it before every one of those last eight wins), Terry Francona is now Metamucil’s spokesperson. I guess this adds to his “regular guy” tag…

Thanks, Derek. Thanks for the no-hitter, the amazing K and ensuing Tejada-insulting crotch-thrust in the ALDS, and thanks, most of all, for that spectacular 2004 postseason. Best start on 2 days’ rest since Koufax, whose #32 you wore in Boston. And nice that despite getting no love from the Sox front office, you were gracious:

Every now and then I like to click on the “Next Blog” button I see in some blogs, and today that button brought me to The ‘03 Dynasty, a sabermetric Sox blog I hadn’t heard of before. Adding, of course, to the comment in Felines for Anarchistic Green Democracies that the Sox seem to have more blogs than anyone else…

Here’s a study of one-batter pitchers from the Hardball Times. The one-out guy is a modern phenomenon, and Clearly the teams that are good at using one-out guys last season were the Cards (54 PAs, 54 outs - wow. Thank goodness Steve Kline was left off the WS roster), the Marlins (31 PAs, 32 outs - the count includes pickoffs, caught stealings, and GIDPs), the Royals (28 PAs, 30 outs), and the Orioles (27 PAs, 27 outs).

So Randy Johnson shoved a hand into a camera. Unfortunately, while I hope RJ’s career is like Sean Penn’s in reverse - starts off great at his profession, then attacks paparazzi, and finally becomes a washout married to Madonna - I don’t think this reveals anything we don’t know about the Big Unit and his temper. Can he handle Noo Yawk? Probably, but at the first sign of things going wrong they’ll drag up the video of the incident and point to it as some fundamental “flaw” of character…

So Derek Lowe is almost likely a Dodger, and Rob Neyer’s really happy. That’s interesting. The usual spin on Lowe is that in 2003 he was average and 2004 bad, but got lucky with run support. But Neyer notes that the sabermetric-leaning teams, with the exclusion of the Sox, ranked him #3 among the available starters.

Back from a short excursion into Jakarta. On the news that occurred over the weekend: it’s Minky’s ball. I don’t see any way that it isn’t. And good luck to Beltran with the Mets. Omar Minaya with a budget - we’ll see how that pans out. (I’m guessing that the Mets will be decent, but the Braves will somehow find yet another way to win the NL East.) And finally, thanks to Surviving Grady for the shout-out.

A sad tidbit on Sox racism in the past in this Globe article on scout George Digby: “Eddie Glennon, the GM of our club in Birmingham, called Cronin,” recalled Digby. “The owner of the Black Barons had told us we could have Mays for $4,500. I said, ‘I’ll be back to you by tomorrow.’ Glennon had asked me, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘I think he’s a big leaguer.’ We could have had Mays in center and [Ted] Williams in left.

So Boggs and Sandberg are in the Hall of Fame, as they should be. I know there have been misgivings - I think it boils down to “Boggs was a good hitter, but somehow lacked a certain X-factor” - but the 92% vote for Boggs shows most people know what they were seeing. Lord knows why Sandberg was shafted was so long. A power-hitting second baseman (most homers for a 2B till Jeff Kent came along) who could play the pivot - what more do you want?

Pokey Reese is now a Mariner. As with anyone of the 2004 squad, I wish him nothing but the best of luck - except when he plays against the Sox. Here’s to some inside-the-parkers in Safeco!

… should be a no-brainer, yeah? Not the nicest of people, perhaps, but he’s definitely among the top 5 third basemen ever. And yet people such as Mike Downey (in the Chicago Tribune) and Chris Lynch (for Yahoo! Sports) are saying he shouldn’t be - and Downey even has a vote. Bizarre. Apparently you can’t be a Hall of Famer unless you’re at Mike Schmidt’s level - yeah, only the greatest third baseman ever. Another example of the ridiculous HoF standards to which 3Bs are held…

Congratulations to Johnny Damon on his wedding. Many female fans’ hearts must be broken. What a random guest list: Among those expected to jam were Sevendust drummer (and groomsman) Morgan Rose, former Creed members Mark Tremonti, Scott Phillips, and Brian Marshall, American Hi-Fi guitarist Jaime Arentzen, and bassist Drew Parsons, Jeremy Taggart of Our Lady Peace, and Michael Eisenstein, formerly of Letters to Cleo

For the new year, some thoughts on competitive balance in baseball, given the idea that’s been floating around that the Sox with their $130 million payroll aren’t that different from the Yankees in terms of spending a lot on payroll. (Ignoring the obvious point that the difference between the Yankees and the Sox dwarfs the difference between the Sox and the Angels, the Mets, and other big spenders in baseball.)

Watched the World Series DVD on Christmas night. Some memories that came back, making themselves clear in the light of day: the whole sad incident with Mariano Rivera’s relatives, and his 2 saves in the face of that. How close Game 1 ended up, despite Schilling being shelled. Tony Clark’s miraculous ground-rule double. So many times they stared elimination in the face and laughed. And one thing stood out - how seriously happy Pedro was at the end of the ALCS and at the end of the World Series. In retrospect, a sepia-tinged last Sox hurrah.

In one of the World Series DVD bonus features, there’s an old video of Smokey Joe Wood saying that his World Series share for 1912 was $4024.70. Using historical rates of inflation (plus some modifications for the period Jan 2002 to Oct 2004), I calculated that $4024.70 would be worth $80,461.95 in October 2004 dollars.