Alex – The Greatest of Them All

Reading Lawrence Ritter’s classic (or re-reading it again is more like it) “The Glory of Their Times”. The book was written in the mid 1960’s and Ritter dug up some aging deadballers and interviewed them. The book is amazing. The stories are great. One of the things that stuck me as I reread it was the number of guys that named Grover Cleveland Alexander as the best pitcher of all time.

He won 373 games and is tied with Mathewson there. Above Alex and Matty are only Walter Johnson at 416 and Cy Young at 511. I have a feeling that Alex may have been the best but really, who knows? Look up his record and you will see a string of wins and ERA that is just mind boggling, and, as these old timers point out, it was even more amazing considering half his games were in the old Baker Bowl where the right field fence was 280′ from the plate.

Alex is famous for a couple things. The strikeout of Tony Lazzeri to stem a bases loaded rally in 1926 when the Cardinals beat the Yankees in the world series. [Interestingly, Babe Ruth and the Yankees were in the series 1921-22-23 and 26, and they only won one of the first 4 they were in! The Giants beat them the first 2 times before losing one and the Cards got them in '26.]

So Alex fanned Lazzeri after a foul homer in the 7th inning and then finished the game. Ruth ended the series being thrown out stealing! Jeter would never do that, eh? He’s also famous for being an alcoholic and an epileptic. He’s also famous because Ronald Reagan played him in a big Hollywood movie about his life. The drinking came after the first world war and some accounts have him drinking as a way of dealing with the fear and prejudice of the epilepsy. In those Edwardian times, it might have been more manly to simply be drunk than to have an epileptic “fit”, so the drinking might have started out as a dodge on the disease, but by many accounts got a little away from him. Still, I think that this sports legend has gotten way, way blown out of proportion, as all sports legends do. I don’t think Alex was falling down on the mound, as Rube Waddell supposedly did once or twice.

From what I can gather, Alex threw one of the very first hard sinkers: down and in to righties. They called it the “fadeaway” back then and Mathewson, another RHP, is credited with the pioneering of the fade. If you take something off it and really turn it over, it’s called the screwball and for some reason, they usually only apply the screwball term to lefties. Righties are mentioned as throwing the good fadeaway or sinker later on. Alex threw the sinker and wasn’t all that fast, by these old accounts. That means, he had control and was smart. Contrast that with Walter Johnson, who was so fast that he only learned a curve and used it after he was in the bigs for 15+ years. Now THAT’s speed.

Of your top four right handers: Cy Young, Mathewson, Johnson and Alex, Cy Young ended up in 1911 and pitched most of those 511 wins in the 1800’s. That takes something from the numbers as the game wasn’t fully evolved until about 1901. Johnson was just a freak of nature and threw only fastballs for more than a decade. Mathewson played for real good Giant teams and won several pennants. Alex played for some lousy teams and in a horrendous ballpark. Look em up. Think it over, but don’t leave this guy out next time people talk about the best of the best.

Click here to launch Grover Cleveland Alexander’s stats in a new window

Here is a schematic of The Baker Bowl in Philadelphia. My goodness…

How will the GW crowd make this The West’s fault?

Dizzy and Paul at the Polo Grounds

I’ve spoken of him before, and even of this event re him, but I found a written account of the game that 93 year old Max claims to have gone to at the Polo Grounds.  Apparently the Yankees were out of town.  Max is a big Yankee fan and he lived at 165 and Grand Concourse in the Bronx.  Yankee Stadium is at 161st.  The Polo Grounds was right across the Harlem River in Manhattan at 155th Street and Max was such a fan that he’d go and see the National League doings there if the Yanks were away.  So that way, he didn’t miss Mel Ott, JoJo Moore, Bill Terry, Chick Hafey, The Waner Brothers, Lloyd and Paul and the Gashouse Gang. 

This series with the Deans pitching lights out is as the center of the Gashouse Gang legend in 1934, the year they won it all.  The Gashouse Gang was the St. Louis Cardinals, for those who don’t know.  They got their nickname somehow because of a comment that the American League champs wouldn’t play them “in a gashouse”, whatever that means.  “Gashouse” was some sort of Depression-era place or phrase and I have no idea what it means. 

The Gashouse Gang had the last 30 game winner in the National League in Dizzy Dean and his brother Paul Dean, who won 19.  The manager was Hall of Famer Frankie Frisch, “The Fordham Flash”, who had already played in a ton of World Series with McGraw’s Giants and the 1931 Cards. 

The shortstop was Hall of Famer (as manager–he couldn’t hit) Leo Durocher, who up until that time, was known for passing bad checks and stealing money from his drunken roomate, Babe Ruth, on the ‘28 Yankees. 

Third base was Pepper Martin, “The Wild Horse of the Osage”.  Martin, not only played third without a cup, he such a country boy, he played without even any underwear. 

Ripper Collins drove in a 100+ at first and Joe “Ducky” Medwick played the outfield and had to be removed from the 7th game of the World Series in Detroit, because his presence was inciting a riot.  Yup.  The commisshioner yanked him off the field to restore order.  The commisshioner was Landis and you should use a lower case “c” for Landis, because he doesn’t deserve a capital “c”.  He’s the racist bum who single handedly kept non-whites out of the big leagues for 27 years until Branch Rickey stepped up and signed Robinson.  Besides being a low-down nasty thing to do, it deprived us of seeing guys like Josh Gibson play against big league competition.  And Satchell Paige and Buck O’Neill and Judy Johnson and Double Duty Radcliff and on and on.  Every stadium’s tape measure homer story that didn’t involve Babe Ruth, involved Josh Gibson.

Anyway, Max was at this very historic game, for all of you seamhead geeks who like this stuff.  Apparently, it was the attendance record at the Polo Grounds. 

Patented

I’m pretty sure that a lot of people have played “soccer-golf”. Yea, and, apparently, we owe this guy money now~

Actually, this is a real patent from the us patent office website. It’s fascinating reading, as you can see. What I don’t get it this: Patents cost a fair amount of money, no? A few thousand bucks? Why patent a schoolyard game? How are you ever going to “enforce” or generate revenue from this? Don’t people do this with Frisbees too? Does this guy hold that patent as well? Did he invent it? Or just lay out the cash to patent it? Too many questions…This reminds me of the time my wife talked me out of patenting Hopscotch.

United States Patent	6,200,234
Hannon	March 13, 2001

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Portable soccer golf game AbstractA portable soccer golf game in which the players arrange a course comprising a plurality of independent and successive stations each defined by a starting location and a goal location according to the available space and their particular skill level. The game is played by placing goals at the various goal locations, whereby a player kicks a soccer ball from the designated starting location along any desired path toward the given goal location with the intent of getting the ball in the goal. The player with the fewest number of kicks to complete the course is the winner.

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Inventors:	Hannon; Robert (Benton Harbor, MI)
Appl. No.:	09/396,601
Filed:	September 15, 1999

You can end up in rehab from Redbull?

Click here to open the story in a new window

 This story is hard to believe but here it is in The Sun.  I know my Scouser friends will never talk to me again for admitting that I clicked on The Sun.

Now, from everything I’ve read, I gather that Gazza is a super high strung guy in the first place.  So why is he downing 55 Red Bulls a day?  How can that be something that ANYone would want to do?  Yeesh.   

Invest in ballplayer futures

Click here to read about the venture

I have wondered when something like this would happen. A system for buying into sports futures. I envisioned this in the internet bubble in 1999 or so (and my co-workers laughed at the idea, of course). My original idea (if any idea can be original) was an exchange website that people could go to and “register” people–Sports stars, entertainers, movie stars, politicians, even finance and scientists. Once you register the personality, that is the IPO. Then a fixed number of “shares” of that person would become available at a very low price, assuming that the person was an obscure minor leaguer, still 2 years away from the bigs.

Then, as time goes by, just like the stock market, people will buy and sell existing shares of the personalities for more or less, depending on how their career is going. You know, last year, you might have bought 100 shares of Troy Tulowitzki at .02 cents per share and now they are trading for 2 dollars a share. Or perhaps you bought shares of Obama a year or two ago and now you’re sitting pretty.

All in all, the scale and the infrastructure of the site would be daunting. And, there’s nothing to say that if your idea was good, a Google or Microsoft GIANT company, couldn’t just up and start their own site on the same premise (copycats). And what would happen is a battle among several companies to be the recognized top dog. “What?, You say you have 1000 shares of the newest American Idol? But I own him on google and you own him on Frick and Frack Exchange dot com…HA-ha”

For all I know, this idea is already being done somewhere and someone will probably comment in on what a dummy I am for not knowing this. Oh well. Love to hear about it, but as always, if you’re rude, I won’t even finish reading the comment before hitting delete.

The ballplayer idea is different. He wants to have money to train in order not to have to get a job to support himself and so that he maximizes his short athletic window to getting the big money in the big leagues. His idea is that regular, wannabe Joes (me and you) pay him small amounts now so he can just train, train, train all day long. And then, if he cracks the big time, we will get it back, plus a little vig for our “risk”. A little free market capitalism here so I don’t expect you Democrats to follow it real well. That’s a little joke there guys. We pay just under half of our freedom in the form of taxes and I keep hearing that we just aren’t paying our fair share and that there’s more that rich guys like us can do–like change the weather.

The only rub with this brilliant idea is the fine print. As in all capitalistic ventures, you have to read the fine print. Don’t buy a mutual fund with a load when there is an identical one without a load. So you run this guy’s numbers and find out that you have to be real, real good at spotting talent just to break even. Some will stay away but some may cowboy up and say, “…I can buck the trend.” That’s what makes the world go around. Perhaps the idea will undergo some refinement and the payouts will change. It’s a sound basic idea and I wish this guy luck. –Fog

Fox Soccer Channel is not showing Liverpool Middlesboro at 10am. Phooey! Oh well, at least I won’t be screaming at the TV for Dirk Kuyt to once, just once take the ball to his right down into the corner and try to WIN a corner. Hopefully, Torres can have a nice day. YNWA

Gerrard!

no other words needed… 

Shove it, Pettite

Andy Pettite.  What can you say?  He draped himself in God and the flag and pretty much had the pipers going behind him but he WOULDN’T answer the first two questions put to him in the press conference about, “…what did you think when Clemens said you misremembered?”.

He said he was a role model to kids.  No.  No you’re not, Andy (as Francesa calls him).  You’re not a role model when you can’t answer that simple question.  Take your comments and your self-righteousness and shove it.  You cheated.  You lied to Mitchell.  You got caught on both and you’re STILL trying to protect your lying friend, Clemens.  Stop blowing smoke up our a$$es.  Go away pal.

He’s just a man, and not a freak…

Nothing much new today. Seeing the oil refinery explosion and realizing that oil isn’t going to pull back below $90 anytime soon. My strategy is to wait for the next big pullback, hopefully into the mid 80’s and then, assuming that that pullback pulls down MRO Marathon Oil to a nice, sub-45 price, I load up on some Marathon Oil and am pretty certain I’ll see it at 60 sometime in the next 12 months. Remember though, I’m no Jim Kramer.

Also trying to figure out a way to see Liverpool-Inter tomorrow at 2:45pm here Eastern Standard Time or Daylight Time or whatever. Options now are to see if Fox Soccer Channel will air it and tape it while at work. The other option is to go to work at 5am and not take a lunch (mostly don’t anyway) and then ride down to the Bronx at 2:30 and go to Rory Dolan’s and watch it. That’s where I saw them win the European Cup in 2005. Which reminds me. I had thought to list my “top greatest sports thrills” list, for anyone who cares. Here goes:

And this is just me, ok?

Tommy Smith has a go at Rafa

Click here to open the story up in a new window from soccernet 

Legendary Liverpool defender Tommy Smith has launched a stinging criticism of Reds boss Rafael Benitez after his side were knocked out of the FA Cup by Barnsley.

Smith admitted Reds fans may finally start to run out of patience with the Spanish boss.

‘I should imagine so. At the end of the day Bill Shankly used to tell us you’re only as good as your last result. How on earth does Benitez think he’s going to win stuff if he puts a second-class team out? ‘Because Liverpool’s squad is not as strong as I think he thought at the beginning of the season.

I don’t think he’s even got a strong first XI. ‘How could he leave (Jose) Reina, (Steven) Gerrard and (Javier) Mascherano out?’

Smith admitted the last-16 European tie with Inter is now do-or-die.

‘I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘He keeps going on about winning four cups and all that but at the end of the day it’s not even entertaining at Anfield at the moment. The crowd keep it going but they booed everybody at the end of the game and quite rightly.

‘The first person you put on the team-sheet is Gerrard. How on earth could he sit on the bench for 75 minutes and watch that…then he (Benitez) talks about chances. Well, they’ve gone. You can’t score after the game finishes.’

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I agree on the comment that Liverpool don’t have even a strong first team.  Bingo!  Rafa’s plan of rotation hinges on a couple of things.  It hinges on being alive in ALL the competitions, deep into the season where the matches get jammed up on the calendar just as everyone needs to rest some.

Well that hasn’t happened, has it?

It also hinges on having a deep squad that is good all the way to the bottom, ah-la Man United.  That’s not happening either because there is a marked dropoff as soon as you get below Torres and Gerrard and Mascherano.  Sami Hyypis is not a centerback anymore at the bigtime level.  Kuyt and Crouch can’t create if you gave them a pad of paper and a box of crayons.  Torres is the only weapon that the big sides don’t LAUGH out loud at.  So your rotation plan is not rational at this stage.  At this stage, you are playing the first 11 in both cups and the league so you can grab one cup perhaps or make a final and finish in 4th for next season!

I respect Rafa for the two Champs League finals but he is taking an awful gamble by putting all his eggs in Kuyt and Crouch’s basket now.  And I know how that happens: If Torres re-tweaks his hammy on Saturday and can’t play vs Inter on Tuesday, then Rafa is getting hammered worse.