This Is Getting Ridiculous

OK, so it's Monday evening. I turn on the television machine to see if there is anything that will serve as appropriate background noise while I go about my tasks.

I scroll down the programming guide and the listing for the MLB Network informs me that the Brewers/Mariners game is on. Now, the game was played that afternoon (I know because I saw the final score on the Yahoo MLB page), but who cares? It's baseball, and I'll watch it.  God knows I've watched older games.

So I turn my DirecTV crank to channel 213 and get ready for some baseball.  Alas, it was not to be.

Instead of a pleasurable, meaningless spring training game, I saw nothing but a blank screen -- and an on-screen message telling me that "This program is blacked out in your area."

Really, Major League Baseball?  As if the blackout restrictiosn aren't goofy enough -- now you're blacking out Brewers games that have already been played?

Perhaps Baron Budhausen is scared that we'll all stay home and watch the tape delayed game instead of hitching a lift from this guy for the roadie to Arizona:

Holy Crap!

This is post number 1,000 on our little cow-town blog.  Who'd have thunk we'd be making that much interweb noise?

Not me, that's for sure.  Especially over the last year or so.

Jerome Holtzman

Chicago sportswriting legend Jerome Holtzman died yesterday.

Those of you of a certain age (say, about my age and older) who grew up in a certain area (say, the greater Chicago metropolitan area) will certainly remember Holtzman, one of the finest journalists to work in Chicago. I grew up reading his stuff, and it was a sad day for all when he retired from the newspaper grind (to be replaced as the Trib's baseball writer by [shudder] the estimable Dr. Phil).

Anyway, his daily columns were a joy to read. I was blessed to be in the right time and place to read at least some of his work before he died.

For those folks who weren't in that right time and place, Holtzman is probably best remembered for two things.

First is the piece in Bill James' The Baseball Book 1991. On page 375 (and I know because I have a copy open on my desk right now), James (perhaps a bit too antagonistically) penned an essay titled "Jerome Holtzman Has a Cow."

The cow-birthing involved some minor corrections made to the eighth edition of Macmillan's Baseball Encyclopedia. As hard as it might be for some of you kids to understand, back in the day stats and records were kept by hand, not on Excel, and occassionally errors would creep into the records. The only way to make sure you were right would be to go through all the box scores and and it up. Again, by hand.

Anyway, here's how James described the situation:

When they were putting together the book, the editors of the new Macmillan undertook to rectify some errors in the old stats. Honus Wagner had previously been credited with 3,430 career hits, but Macmillan decided that the actual total was only 3,418. Larry Lajoie, credited with 3,251 hits, was pared back to 3,244.

Well, Jerome Holtzman just about sht in his pants.

In the June 10 issue of the Chicago Tribune, Holtzman wrote that the editors were "tampering with baseball's most sacred and trusted text." Wagner and Lajoie, said Holtzman "have been the civtims of a statistcal grave robbery," which he compared to "a baseball Watergate."

Uhhh...yeah. Not one of Jerome's finer moments. Holtzman doesn't get much more rational in the rest of the piece (I just dug it out of my archives).

Just for the record, baseballreference.com lists Wagner with 3,415 hits and Lajoie with 3,242. No word on what Holtzman thought of that, at least that I saw.

On a similar topic, when those damned grave robbers found another RBI for Hack Wilson, raising his record-setting 1930 total to 191, it was officially okee-dokee with Holtzman. Guess it just goes to show that everyone can get goofy about something...

The second thing Holtzman is famous for, of course, is the creation of the save. Few people can say that they single-handedly changed how the game is played, but Holtzman did with the save.

Thanks to Holtzman, we're now treated to the sixty-five inning closer. The guy who comes in only in the ninth inning and only with a lead of three runs or fewer.

And we're also subjected to the usual round of gibbering about the importance of "proven" closers and how important it is to find the guy who's mentally tough enough to protect that three-run, ninth inning lead.

I think it just goes to show how smart Holtzman was that even he had some second thoughts about the value of the save:

"The reality is, he revolutionized baseball," former Sun-Times columnist Bill Gleason said. "He glamorized the relief pitcher, who was just another guy before [the save rule]. Jerome said not long ago that he was sorry he'd come up with the concept, that it wasn't necessary. But there was no need to apologize. If there were more people who thought like Jerome Holtzman, the newspaper business would be in better shape."

Holtzman was right -- saves aren't necessary.

And Gleason (a terrific writer in his own right) was right -- the newspaper business would be in better shape if we had a few more like Jerome Holtzman. Our condolences to his family and friends. We will all miss him.

Just in Case You Have a House That Gets Hit by Lightning All the Time, or in Case You Have a Loved One Cryogenically Frozen in Your Basement

If it weren't for the unintentionally funny e-mails I get from some of my co-workers, this would be the most hi-sprockin'-larious thing I've read in a long, long time.

Thank you, Mr. Kermit, for teaching us to laugh at love -- again.

Surf City, Here I Come

The Tribune's Phil Rosenthal reports that new Tribune Co. headmaster Sam Zell expects the media behemoth to "retain a minority interest" in the Chicago Cubs.

That would be the same Sam Zell who also holds a minority interest in the Chicago White Sox.

We may have to toss out the Second City nickname for Chicago and replace it with Surf City. To paraphrase Brian Wilson -- Two teams for every boy!

Zell received an exemption from Baron Budhausen regarding this dual ownership. For good reason, it's quite against Major League rules for anyone to have an ownership stake in multiple teams.

Reportedly, Zell was in the process of off-loading his White Sox share when he leveraged himself into the TribCo's top job. I haven't seen any further report of movement on this front (Gentle Readers, please correct me if I am wrong). Let's hope the Baron uses his Commissioner's powers to hasten the process along...

Yankee Fan Was Right

A-Rod is a wimp!

Alex Rodriguez passed out during the birth of his first daughter.

“The one nurse had a cold cloth on his head. The other nurse had the blood pressure on his arm. And my mother was like rubbing his back. And he is passed out on a couch. And I am there, in the middle of labor,” Cynthia Rodriguez, wife of the New York Yankees star, said on an episode of the YES Network’s “YESterdays” that is scheduled to be broadcast Wednesday night.

“And really, I am not being paid much attention to besides the doctor and a couple of nurses,” she said. “And he is there moaning. In between pushing, I am going, `Honey, are you OK?’ and `Are you breathing? Are you OK?’"

Look for plenty of jokes about this for the next eleventy bajillion years...

But speaking as a guy who was also nearly overcome by the miracle of childbirth, I have to ask: why does Yahoo consider this the sixth-most important baseball story of the evening?

Frank Thomas Memorial Link Dump

** There's nothing better than beating the livin' bejeezus out of the Mets. Well, almost nothing. I admit that beatin' the living bejeezus out of the Cardinals comes first.

But what makes beatin' the livin' bejeezus out of the Mets even more special is recapping the series through You Tube videos.

** Hey -- Rob Neyer's got a new book out. I might have to give it a look-see.

** Thank you to Goat Rider Kyle for quantifying "Scrappiness." Hey, it makes as much sense as any of Dr. Phil's alleged analysis.

** Mike Downey tells us all about scrappy white guy Reed Johnson. He's a "31-year-old who hustles like Pete Rose and hero-worships Ty Cobb."

As my bilingual friends might say, Donde los yikes! Let's hope he stays away from the casinos. And doesn't beat up handicapped fans in the stands.

** This just about sums up Brewer Fans' reaction to Ben Sheets' latest.

** We've got a new addition to the links: Where Have You Gone, Andy van Slyke? Show a Pirate Fan some love, would ya?

** I was going to point out that Corey Patterson is still not having a good season, but Pat (from the aforemention WHYGAVS blog) beat me to it.

** The week's most shocking news, of course, was the Blue Jays sudden dumping of Frank Thomas. Reaction ranged from mocking the Jays for ditching their best hitting just because he had a bad two weeks and praising the Jays for getting rid of selfish, mean, no-good Thomas (both encapsulated here by FJM's Junior). Mike Downey wonders why Thomas is waiting on the unemployment line with Barry, Sammy, and Roger.

I can't reckon why the Blue Jays pulled the plug like that. The most obvious answer is economics -- after a certain number of PA's, Thomas' option for '09 kicks in. But eating the rest of this year's contract seems to be an odd way of getting out from under that option.

Thomas is on the downslope of his career, but there's nothing that makes me think he'd be a waste this year. I think some enterprising AL team needing a cheap DH would be more than happy to pay Thomas the Major League minimum for the rest of the year...

** In honor of Frank Thomas, I continue my award-winning Rutles retrospective. This song is from the Rutles' second film (the one in color that wasn't as good as the black-and-white one). Enjoy!

Tuesday Night Link Dump

It's the laziest post of the week, as I just don't feel like thinking all that much...

** Listening to the Rays/Mariners game tonight, I just heard what could be the greatest radio promotion of all time!

If you bring a radio to the Trop, and one of crew there spots you with it, they'll give you a game ball. And a chance to give a shout-out on the air.

OK, so it's not much. Still, I think it's pretty cool.

** As far as bloggers go, Sully makes me look like someone who puts effort into it. He rarely posts anything that isn't a cut-and-paste from his pieces in the next day's paper (unlike White Sox beat reporter Mark Gonzales, who seems to understand that the blog provides a medium that offers the opportunity to post in real time).

Sully, though, was quick to put this post up trumpeting the Cubs' blown seven-run lead Monday. If you're looking for a follow-up post that mentions in passing the Cubs winning that game in extras...well, you're still waiting.

What do you think about that, Kenny Williams?

There's only one sports team in Chicago that will get a pass. I won't name them. But it ain't us.

** I've already mocked Dr. Phil for his dopey "Power Rankings." Fortunately, Bad Kermit at Hire Jim Essian! presents a funnier mockery of the "Power Rankings." He even includes a re-set of this famous play:



** Fire Joe Morgan's Ken Tremendous presents a cogent write-up of what I consider to be the greatest moment in the history of ESPN Sunday Night Baseball. I mean, did the guys at ESPN really expect the umpire to say something not bleep-worthy after getting drilled in the face with a pitch?

** I'm not sure what The New Yorker's Roger Angell is trying to say here. I think he's saying that baseball players used steroids because they want to make an assload of money, not because they want to tarnish the game's hallowed records. Any thoughts on that?

** As you may have heard, the pit known as Shea Stadium is closing after this year. And while MLB.com's Michael Bauman mentions one famous non-baseball event held there, I don't understand how he could leave this one out of his column:



** And just for the hell of it, take a trip in the Way-Back Machine and revisit a classic episode of Batgirl's Legovision. Because I miss Batgirl.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

Well, OK, not exactly twenty years ago today. But close enough.

Feeling a little nostalgic, and on the prowl for an easy idea to fill a blog post, I wandered over to Retrosheet.org to check out the goings-on for Opening Day 1988. Who were the big stars twenty years ago (ok, twenty years ago April 4)? Let's find out:

The Brewers scored 12 runs on 16 hits against Baltimore's Mike Boddicker and three relievers. Ted Higuera got the win for the Crew. B.J. Surhoff batted third and put up a boxscore line of 4-3-2-1, while Dale Sveum capped off a six-run eighth with the only dinger of the day. The O's would go on to lose twenty more games before breaking into the W column, and another 86 times that year. As my bilingual friends might say, "Donde los yikes!"

In Boston, Jack Morris proved one more time what a big-game pitcher he was, taking the win in a 5-3, ten-inning game. Roger Clemens struck out eleven in nine innings, but the Bosox were done in by a Spike Owen error to lead off the tenth. Two outs later, Alan Trammell homered and hung Lee Smith with the loss.

The White Sox put it on the board in the bottom of the seventh inning -- put it on the board five times, to be exact -- en route to an 8-5 win over the Angels. Current GM Kenny Williams was the offensive star of the game, with a 3-2-2-3 line, while current manager Ozzie Guillen ended that seventh inning trying to score from third on a wild pitch. Ricky Horton got the win, Bobby Thigpen the save. Bobby Witt took the loss.

George Bell predated Tuffy Rhodes by five years with his three-dinger day in Kansas City. All three came off eventual loser Bret Saberhagen. Jimmy Key opened the season with the win, and Tom Henke went two innings for the save. Didn't Jimy Williams know that you don't put your closer in before the ninth?

The A's set a precedent for much of what was to follow the rest of 1988 in their opener. Homers by Jose Canseco and Dave Henderson. 8+ innings of sterling work by Dave Stewart, with Dennis Eckersley picking up the save in the A's 4-1 win over the Mariners. Stewart balked in the M's only run in the first -- one can imagine him getting really, really annoyed by that and deciding then and there that no one else was reach base. And, until the ninth, no one else did.

It was dueling knuckleballs in Arlington, as the Rangers' Charlie Hough battled Cleveland's Tom Candiotti. The boys must've been swining away that day, as there were only six walks between the two. Texas won 4-3 on Pete O'Brien's second dinger of the day (off Chris Codiroli in the eighth). Mitch Williams picked up the save.

Over in the National League, the purists were happy as Cincinnati hosted Opening Day. Even better -- three free innings! Kal Daniels singled home Jeff Treadway in the bottom of the twelfth for a 5-4 win over the Cardinals.

At Chavez Ravine, the Giants' Dave Dravecky picked up the complete game W as San Francisco beat Los Angeles 5-1. According to Retrosheet, the first thirteen batters of the game took the first pitch. Fernando Valenzuela fell behind ten of those hitters, but outside of two shaky innings did OK.

The last game on Opening Day 1998 was the Mets and Expos. Sadly, Dennis Martinez (one of my long-time faves) got lit up by New York to the tune of six earned in six innings. The Mets cracked six homers -- two each by Darryl Strawberry and Kevin McReynolds, with Len Dykstra and Kevin Elster chipping in one apiece. Kevin Elster? Not Denny's best day, indeed. Dwight Gooden was marginally better (4 earned on 11 hits), but managed to last the five innings required to "earn" the 10-6 win. Future Cub hero Randy Myers pitch the last inning and two-thirds for the save.

The rest of the league opened on the 5th:

In the twenty-first-to-last Opening Day at Yankee Stadium, Rick Rhoden threw a three-hit gem against the Twins. Rhoden whiffed four and didn't walk a batter. Mike Pagliarulo and Rickey Henderson both took Frank Viola deep as the Yanks cruised to an 8-0 win.

Perhaps the wildest Opening Day game of the year was the Cubs-Braves tilt in Atlanta. Rick Sutcliffe coughed up seven earned in the fourth inning to stake the Braves to an 8-4 lead. Since the Braves were still lousy twenty years ago, they let the Cubs back in the game, with Bruce Sutter blowing the save by giving up two in the top of the ninth to tie the game. Current Cub hitting coach Gerald Perry could have won the game for Atlanta in the bottom of the ninth, but was called out for interfering with the catcher while trying to score on Albert Hall's single. The exhibition of mediocre baseball came to a merciful end in the thirteenth. Manny Trillo's sacrifice fly scored Vance Law for the Cubs' tenth run, and Mike Bielecki pitched a 1-2-3 inning to wrap it up.

The Astros staged a comeback of their own, putting up five in the bottom of the eighth to gab a 6-3 win over the Padres. Terry Puhl started the mayhem with a single lined off Ed Whitson's arm. Lance McCullers came in and fooled no one, taking the loss and a robust 27.00 ERA at the end of the day. Mike Scott struck out nine in his eight innings of work.

Finally, the Pirates and Phillies offered what I consider the least inspiring match up of the year -- Mike Dunne versus Shane Rawley. The Bucs hung on for a 5-3 win, with most of the damage coming in a four-run third. Barry Bonds (batting leadoff) hit a solo home run, and Darnell Coles followed three batters later with a three-run shot off Rawley. Jeff Robinson took over with one out in the sixth for a Gossage-like save (in terms of innings pitched, if not quality).

Hope you enjoyed this trip down Memory Lane. Thanks to the good folks at Retrosheet for all their hard work. Without them, I'd be way to lazy to look this stuff up...

Where Did I Go Wrong?

It was about 9:45 last night. I was watching ESPN's coverage of the Astros and Padres to wrap up the most important religious holiday on my calendar -- Opening Day.

It's Spring Break week here in beautiful south-central Wisconsin, so both heirs to the palatial estate were home with me. Between the pair of them, the Younger Heir is the one who enjoys the sporting life (he even likes football, for some reason). So he was with me pretty much from the Ernie Banks statue unveiling all the way through the festitivities in San Diego.

Like I said, it gets to be about 9:45 (and it's not a school night, so no cracks about my parenting abilities). The Younger Heir turns to me and says, "I think I watched too much baseball today."

I got right up in his grill and said, "Don't ever say that again. Not even in jest."

I mean, geez -- too much baseball? As if! Would you complain that the atmosphere had too much oxygen? Or that the radio played too much Beatles? Or that the best novel ever was just too much Jane Austen?

Hells, no!

He's young, so I'll cut him some slack. This time...

Let That Be a Lesson to Us All

Jerry Reinsdorf got a special award for "enduring contributions to equality?"

Geez, I guess the guy isn't as big a putz as I thought...

Numbers Don't Lie (But They Can Deceive the Easily Confused)

This week's issue of Baseball Weekly features some random noise from Tommy Lasorda, as typed by Bob Nightengale.

Most of it is pretty much what you'd expect out of Lasorda nowadays. But this caught my eye and resulted in some dark chuckles:

I remember one time, Alejandro Pena is pitching and (Yogi Berra's) son Dale is hitting. I told (then-Dodgers pitching coach Ron) Perranoski to go get him. He's had it. Then I said, "Wait a minute, look at that sheet." How has he done against Berra? They told me he was 1-for-11. I said, "OK, let him stay." Well, he hit the ball against the gate in left field and cleared the bases. I told him, "Don't ever let me look at that (darn) sheet again." And I didn't.

To sum up: Lasorda let Pena pitch to Berra and got burned. Lasorda blames the damned stat geeks for making the damned geeky match-up information available, because that swayed him to decide to leave Pena in the game.

Two thoughts immediately come to mind:

** Lasorda evidently is unfamiliar with the concept of small sample size. Eleven at bats? You can't conclude jack from that many at-bats. Maybe if Berra was 5-for-55. But no sentient being would think eleven at-bats was a significant sample.

** Lasorda says in his anecdote that Pena "had it." So he kept a pitcher in the game that he knew had nothing left just because the stat sheet showed he had some small success against a hitter? He deserved to get burned.

I know the anti-Moneyball crowd's favorite canard is to say that the stat geeks don't care about traditional baseball thinking or scouting in general. And while I can't universally say that there aren't any knuckleheads sitting at their computers who agree that the scouts don't know anything, the really smart guys (like Billy Beane, for instance) understand that there is a place for the more traditional ways of thinking. And that to ignore that received wisdom out of hand is dumb.

Lasorda should have known better. If Pena was done, he wouldn't have gotten anyone out. Not even a guy who went 10-for-110 against him.

Lasorda messed that up. Blaming the stats crowd just doesn't add up.

It Hurts to Be in Spring Training Camp

I don't know if I'm just paying more attention to this kind of stuff than I used to, but it seems to me that there are a lot of odd injuries cropping up the last week or two:

** Felix Pie got some Cub Fans' undies in a twist by...errrr...twisting something he keeps in his undies.

** Rocco Baldelli's downright scary ailment -- which the New York Daily News described as "a rare metabolic, mitochondrial abnormality in which not enough adenosine triphosphate - a molecule that acts as an energy carrier within cells - is getting to his muscles." Yikes. Although some folks don't consider it so much "scary" as "hilarious."

** Baseball Weekly reports that Coco Crisp has contended not only with "a pair of balky groin muscles," but he's also had a root canal. That, if you'll pardon the expression, must bite.

** No, we weren't surprised that Juan Gonzalez got hurt. Neither were we surprised when Jim Edmonds tripped in the batter's box and strained his calf.

** Finally, and almost as scary as the Baldelli thing, is Noah Lowry's "exertional compartmental syndrome." I'm not a doctor, but I know a lot about the English language -- and any time you get two words with the -al suffix strung together before the word "syndrome," it can't be good.

Although you gotta figure that if Lowry were a Cub, his condition would score 9.37 kilo-smirks on Sully's injury scale...

I've got no grand point to tie this all together. Just struck me as quite a week for the injury lists...

We Got a Pass

Dr. Phil -- the same guy who taught us that trading Babe Ruth for Neifi Perez and Brad Ausmus gives your team a +1 -- presents his latest bit of statistical analysis:

The Cubs, Red Sox, Diamondbacks and Phillies need to pick up the pace a little bit. Entering the weekend, those four 2007 playoff teams were among the 10 biggest losers this spring. There was only one playoff team from among the 10 teams with the worst records last spring. …

This just might be the first and only time that I've ever seen anyone refer to any previous year's spring training records. Because, frankly, who the hell cares about spring training performance?

And before you raise your hand and shout "Me! Me!" answer this question honestly -- what was your favorite team's exhibition record last March? I sure as hell don't know what the Cubs' March record was last year, and I'm the biggest Cubs geek in my circle.

By the way...as of this writing, there are ten teams with ten or more losses this exhibition season. The Cubs, Phillies, and Diamondbacks (along with the Giants and Pirates) lead the suck parade with twelve losses. Running a close second with eleven losses are Houston, LA, and Toronto.

Right behind those guys, with ten losses so far, are Washington...and the Chicago White Sox. Yep, the Pale Hose are among the "10 biggest losers." And yet, there is no exhortation from Dr. Phil for them to "pick up the pace," lest they fail to make the playoffs.

But remember -- there's only one sports team in Chicago that will get a pass. I won't name them. But it ain't the White Sox.

This Just In...

Stuff costs more than it used to!

Also -- young people use curse words...

SIlly Stuff

Been distracted the last few days, but just had to toss out some of the goofier stuff I've seen out on the internet tubes...

** The Trib's exceedingly estimable Dave van Dyck writes up Baseball Prospectus' 2008 predictions here. The sub-head reads:

Sox likely to improve; Cubs better but not good enough

Uh-oh...things sound bleak for my heroes. Let's go to the tape and see what those BP geeks have to say:

• The Sox, because of a series of off-season dealings, will rebound to 77-85 and third place in the American League Central, trailing the dominance of Cleveland and Detroit.

• The Cubs will follow their 85-victory NL Central championship with another division title, this time with a 91-71 record, second best in the National League but not enough to break their 100-year drought of winning the World Series.

Yes, there you have it, folks -- the eds at the Tower are quick to trumpet that the Sox will "improve" by five games and "rebound" to 77 wins (because of Kenny's brilliant wheeling and dealing). Meanwhile, the Cubs will schlep their way to 91 wins (without any off-season acquisitions, evidently) -- and while that six-game improvement is enough to be second-best in the league, it's just "not good enough."

To sum up, third place -- and an "improvement." Ninety wins -- sure, good enough to win the division, but ultimately a disappointment.

Tell me again about the bias, George...

** As you can imagine, whenever those pencil-necked stat geeks go after Chicago's favorites, the columnists are there, defending their own. Today, Big Mouth Morrissey cracks back on the BP predictions:

Computers have no use for heart, or least they can't quantify it. They can't analyze what's inside an athlete, for example. They can't tell you who has the heart of a lion or the backbone of an earthworm.

Imagine about 800 more words describing White Sox players as lions and Cubs players as worms, add a bizarre and unnecessary reference to Marie Osmond, and you've got yourself a column. Another triumph from the Tower of Ideas!

** Sully checks in with this medical update about Felix Pie. A few quick thoughts:

1. Not content to provide a Wikipedia link about Pie's "personal problem," Sully goes on to describe it in detail.
2. I'm no mind reader, but given Sully's admitted history, I'm betting he had a big smirk going when he heard about this.
3. Sully concludes his post with a plea for "no tasteless comments." Ummm...Sully...are you familiar with this Internet thing? And the people who usually troll the message boards?

** The March 5 issue of Baseball Weekly notes that "Josh Hamilton is causing quite a buzz in camp."

Given Hamilton's well-documented "personal problems," should we really use the term "buzz" to describe how he's doing?

** Prince Fielder is a vegetarian. Thankfully, bagels don't contain any meat.

** Will the usual suspects claim that this guy is better than A-Rod, too?

** Hey Ranger Fans -- at least it's just a minor league contract. There's hope Jon Daniels will come to his senses soon.

** I like Dusty Baker as a person. As a manager, I've found cause to disagree with him. Usually because he keeps talking about how he doesn't like it when his hitters take a free pass when it's offered...

** Finally, just a word of advice for the kids out there -- if you're bent because you got lit up on the mound, don't punch doors with your throwing hands...

Knowledge and BS

Rich Lederer at The Baseball Analysts (I just discovered the site and think it's fab -- it's well worth your time) has been conducting some conversations with ESPN's Buster Olney over whether or not Jim Rice is a Hall of Famer.

In his post, Rich goes back to the archives for this quote from Bill James' 1985 Baseball Abstract:

Virtually all sportswriters, I suppose, believe that Jim Rice is an outstanding player. If you ask them how they know this, they'll tell you that they just know; I've seen him play. That's the difference in a nutshell between knowledge and bullshit; knowledge is something that can be objectively demonstrated to be true, and bullshit is something that you just "know." If someone can actually demonstrate that Jim Rice is a great ballplayer, I'd be most interested to see the evidence.

Well said, Mr. James.

No, I'm not just cracking on Rice -- feel free to extrapolate that into a universal truth.

As Yogi Berra once famously said, in baseball, you don't know nothin'. So don't believe what the guys at ESPN tell you, or what you hear on the sports radio call-in shows, or whatever scripts the guys at the Tribune Tower are typing out that day. Or, for that matter, whatever Jim and I are going about here.

Do the research and find out for yourself. Nothing wrong with delving through the archives...

Don Cardwell

Saw in the news today that former Cubs and Cardinal pitcher Don Cardwell died yesterday.

Cub Fans of my age are probably well aware of Cardwell's claim to fame (being the firt pitcher to throw a no-hitter in his first start after being traded). Even though Cardwell's gem came more than six years before I was born, I knew the last out of the game like the back of my hand.

Why? Because back in the day, whenever there was a rain delay and the guys in the TV booth got tired of gabbing, the folks at WGN TV would pull out highlight films to fill the time. Cardwell's no-hitter (complete with Jack Brickhouse's impassioned plea "Come on, Moose!" as Moose Moryn lumbered after the line drive he caught for the last out), Ernie's 500th home run, Ken Holtzman's no-hitters, and the 1948 World Series were on heavy rotation when the weather turned dodgy.

Rain delays also gave fans a chance to catch a rerun of that week's This Week in Baseball -- the good one with Mel Allen, not the half-hour of pablum they pass off as TWIB nowadays.

Nowadays, as soon as the tarp goes on the field, WGN cuts to a rerun of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or Charles in Charge or whatever crappy show they have lying around. And that's too bad. Kids today should have an opportunity to see the stars of yesterday. Give 'em a sense of history and all that.

But enough of "back in my day." Our condolences to the Cardwell family and all his friends.

Another mournful note -- Johnny Podres also died yesterday. Saw a lot of him, too, when Channel 44 in Chicago would show the highlights of the 1959 World Series during White Sox rain delays. Our sympathies of Podres' family and friends as well...

Baseball Like It Oughtta Be!

Here in beautiful south-central Wisconsin, the local home-town team is the Northwoods League's Madison Mallards. For those of you unfamiliar with the league and the team, the NWL is a summer league for college players to get more playing time (and to get experience with wooden bats, which has led to some 1906-like league slugging averages).

You may remember Ryan Spilborghs from the 2007 World Series. He is the most famous Mallard alumni.

Because these kids want to keep their NCAA eligibility, they don't get paid. And so, in an effort to pander to the "these damned players make too damned much money" crowd, the team's marketing slogan was Baseball Like It Oughtta Be!

Because those kids played just for the love of the game, not because they were trying to get drafted by a big-league team and make too damned much money, don'tcha know.

Anyway, it looks like the Mallards are moving away from Baseball Like It Oughtta Be and into Baseball Like It Rather Depressingly Is in Real Life.

The Mallards play their games at Warner Park, which hosted the legendary Madison Muskies back in the day. Unfortunately, a lot of the park still dated back to the Pleistocene Era...errrrr...mid-eighties. So the Mallards are doing what every baseball team does at some point: demanding a new stadium!

OK, not a new stadium. Just a bunch of renovations of the current yard. However, the plan has run into a few snags.

The latest plans are projected to cost $5.6 million, a mere $1.6 million more than what was originally figured. No one knows where this extra money is going to come from.

And to top things off, the city and all the various commissions involved need to sign off on the project this month in order for it to be completed in time for the 2009 season. Of course, that has annoyed some of the alders and concerned citizens. For some reason they think the public needs to be involved in the discussion of how to spend the public's money.

Now the Mallards are saying that the renovation needs to be done for 2009, because the existing bleachers won't be safe after 2008:

Mallards General Manager Vern Stenman is not so sure that the Mallards can continue if the project is delayed another year.

In 2004, an engineering consultant to the city, which owns the stadium and leases it to the Mallards, determined that the existing bleachers can only continue to be used safely through the 2008 season. The consultant estimated replacing the bleachers would cost $800,000, which went into the city capital budget and is the only amount the city has so far agreed to put directly toward the project. The remaining $1.2 million of the city's share of the original $4 million project was going to be a loan the city took out on behalf of the Mallards.

"I've been working with these bleachers every day for seven years. It's time to replace them," Stenman said today.

Schumacher said he wants the bleachers looked at again by a professional to see if they really must be replaced before the 2009 season starts.

Neither Rhodes-Conway nor Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's spokesman, George Twigg, commented on the need for a new study of the bleachers, but Twigg said "the bleachers are close to the end of their useful life. They do need to be taken care of. All the issues are intertwined -- the schedule, the finances and everything."

Dodgy stadium financing, veiled threats from the team...gosh, it's like I've got a real-live Major Leaegue Baseball team right here in my backyard!

Come Hell or High Water

Perhaps...and this is just a "perhaps," mind you...MLB wouldn't have to squeeze games in at three o'clock in the sprocking morning if they weren't already cramming 162 games into six months, and then jamming over a month of post-season on top of that.

I resisted the idea for a while, but I'm beginning to see why some people want to scale back to 154 games (or maybe fewer). Either that or schedule some double-headers. Anything to build in a some leeway if the weather gets wonky during the season.

It will never happen, of course. At least it won't until the World Series is pushed back to Thanksgiving Day...