One Worth Remembering

Still, for all the tumult, it was a hell of a life, being a baseball player and a hell of a time to be a baseball player, and for the rest of their lives, they understood what a privilege it had been.

- Mike Vaccaro from The First Fall Classic

Baseball’s 2009 postseason was certainly one to remember. Over the course of 28 days and through 30 games fans were treated to some excellent baseball (the Angels dominating the Red Sox), thrilling finishes (the two extra inning games of the Yankees/Angels series), heroic efforts (Alex Rodriguez, Chase Utley), and more than a little controversy (a handful of miscues by the men in blue). And in the increasingly crowded and competitive entertainment market, baseball did as well as it has in any recent season with television ratings higher than any since 2004, in no small part due to the presence of two teams from Los Angeles and one from New York among the final four left standing.

But as good as this most recent version was, Mike Vaccaro in his new book, The First Fall Classic: The Red Sox, The Giants, and the Cast of Players, Pugs, and Politicos Who Reinvented the World Series in 1912, reminds us of two central facts of baseball history while providing an antidote to a still too common, but preciously incorrect, sentiment regarding baseball’s past.

Regarding the former, Vaccaro’s tome aptly reminds us that thrilling finishes and controversy in October (and now November) are more than a century old, and through much of the 20th century baseball held the preeminent place in the nation’s professional sporting life.

As for the remedy, for those who still hang on to the picture of baseball’s early history as simple and even innocent as compared to dim view of modern “baseball as a business” in a world of free agency, arbitration, PEDs, and the intense media spotlight, Vaccaro provides an education in how thoroughly professionalized the game was in every sense of the word. From the intense controversy over the size and source of the player’s share of the gate, to the newspaper columns that players (some of whom were involved in the series such as Christy Mathewson) penned to monetize their position, to the large sums of money that exchanged hands in bets both outside and inside the ballpark by fans, managers including John McGraw who wagered $500 on his team (to win of course), and players alike, and even extending to the interference of an owner in an attempt to extend the series thereby increasing his profits, there is very little innocence and simplicity to be found. Perhaps Fred Snodgrass, Giants center fielder in the series and the man who would be bludgeoned with the business end of the sport for the rest of his life, would say fifty years later, “We were professionals. And professionals get paid”.

For those who aren’t familiar with the details of the series I’ll leave you to discover just how the elements of civic pride and rivalry, religion and the rift it caused in one of the clubhouses, and yes, the monetary interests of everyone involved all coalesce to make those nine days (that’s right, nine days in which eight games were played with a mostly alternating schedule – and you think modern travel is tough?) in October 1912 so interesting in Vaccaro’s retelling. One mark of the greatness of the series, as Vaccaro points out in the introduction is simply this: prior to 1912 baseball's postseason was known as the "world series" while after it was the "World Series".

While the book focuses on the series itself, similar to Cait Murphy’s excellent Crazy ’08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnets Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History, the author does a good job of setting the scene of the times by primarily following two concurrent events; the attempted assassination of “Bull Moose” presidential candidate Theodore Roosevelt in Milwaukee on the day of game six, and the murder trial of New York City police officer Charles Becker in which Becker stood accused of ordering the murder of the gambler Herman Rosenthal. Suffice it to say the story ends well for one and not the other. Although Murphy’s book is a little broader in its social and historical context (not to mention its main subject matter as it deals with the entire season and not just the World Series) Vaccaro adds enough of the back stories of the players and coaches (particularly Mathewson, McGraw, Tris Speaker, Snodgrass, and “Smokey” Joe Wood), as well as the owners and “politicos” (Boston Mayor John “Honey Fritz” Fitzgerald, grandfather of JFK) to paint a picture of what it was like to live in that time. In addition, he focuses on the crowds gathered at the many sites, particularly throughout New York, where the rabid throngs could assemble and “watch” the progress of the game with as little as a six second delay through a mechanical version of MLBAM’s GameDay - a recreation sometimes complete with high tech lights and buzzers and moving figures. During the series baseball crazy fans in the tens of thousands without tickets to the Polo Grounds or the gleaming new Fenway Park would make their way to sites hosted by ten daily newspapers in New York and four in Boston to take in the action. Short vignettes of a few of those regular folks serve to complete the picture.

The book is structured chronologically leading off with a recap of 1912 regular season where the Red Sox, led by Wood’s 34-5 record and 344 IP, dominated the American League with a record of 102-50 and outpacing the Senators by 14 games. The “Speed Boys” as they were known despite stealing “only” 185 bases (the Senators led with 274) and leading the league in homeruns with 29, led the league in runs scored and fewest runs allowed. In the National League the Giants, while not as dominant, won 103 games and finally shook off both the Pirates and Cubs in the final months of the season. For the Giants it was their second consecutive appearance in the series having lost to Connie Mack’s Athletics in six games in 1911 while the Red Sox were returning for the first time since the inaugural series played in 1903. From there the book offers a chapter for each of the eight games and an extra for the final day of the series along with a well done epilogue that wraps up the few loose ends that remain and provides a platform for a poignant commentary on how we remember our heroes. Perhaps the only nitpick with the presentation is the lack of an index, a feature most readers with baseball libraries would I’m sure find useful.

If The First Fall Classic isn’t quite as comprehensive in its historical context as Murphy’s or certainly Josh Prager’s The Echoing Green, in terms of the style Vaccaro hits a homerun in his descriptions of the action on the field. He notes in the introduction that the bulk of his research was in reading contemporary news accounts and so given the colorful language and detailed play by play that newspapers of that time produced, perhaps some of that rubbed off as I found that the sense of drama and reality he portrayed was simply first rate. While prior to reading I had a summary knowledge of the series, although not all the particulars to be sure, several chapters had that “page-turner” quality that are inherent in well written books. If for no other reason than its readability and drama I'd recommend this book. Of course when coupled with the other reasons noted at the beginning of this review, picking up this book is simply a no-brainer for anyone with an interest in a truer picture of the game's past.


As a quick aside, as always books like this interest me because of their ability to contrast, knowingly or unknowingly, how the game was played in the past with its modern version. And of course those that describe play in the dead ball era, when the art of playing for one run was king and defenses weren't particularly efficient in turning batted balls into outs, are even more appealing. To that end, a crucial baserunning gaffe, or should I say base coaching gaffe, by one of the teams in game three grabbed my attention since it came at an interesting time in the evolution of the practice of employing full-time coaches. While the first fill time coach, Arlie Latham, was hired by the Reds in 1900, it would be 20 years before the practice was widely accepted. Not surprisingly it was McGraw who hired both Latham and Duke Farrell as full-time coaches in 1909 while other teams used either their manager or a rotating set of players. Although the gaffe from game three might have occurred if there were a full-time coach there or not, it illustrates how far specialization in the game has come and with it a higher overall level of play.

Rookie Reporter Showdown

Given that I think all of us have at one time or another thought that we could call a game better than this or that announcer, I thought this contest was interesting. Gillette is offering fans the chance to join the MLB.com broadcasting team during the 2008 World Series.

To enter you have to go to the site linked above and upload a video that proves you're better than they are. Gillette will then choose 48 finalists from across the country to compete in a series of "reporter" challenges hosted by ESPN baseball reporter Erin Andrews that will air during live local MLB telecasts. Viewers are then asked to vote for their favorite to decide who will be the Rookie Reporter. Good Luck!

The Catch

Saw a link to this photo come across the SABR listserv with the author wondering whether this really does depict "The Catch" made by Willie Mays in game one of the 1954 World Series. I hadn't seen this photo before and if anyone has any comments on it I'll pass them along.



And for those interested in the background of "The Catch", here's a snippet from the Ken Burns documentary featuring George Will and Bob Costas.

An "External Malicious Attack"?

I thought this was an interesting followup to the Rockies ticket fiasco. In particular...

Major League Baseball officials have acknowledged that the Rockies were referring to brokers with ticket-grabbing automated software, not hackers, when they called the attack malicious.

Oh, I see.

You're only as vulnerable as your system design allows...

Game Three Notes

I worked the game last night for MLB.com which was certainly an experience in and of itself and too strange to relate here. So instead here are a couple thoughts on the game itself...

Here we go again. Right off the bat it seemed that the Rockies were in for a long night when Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia got hits on balls that weren't well-struck to say the least. Josh Fogg was fortunate to get out of the jam after striking out David Ortiz and going to 2-0 on both Manny Ramirez and Mike Lowell.

Poor Decision. The top of the third was fraught with poor decision making it seemed. After Ellsbury doubled Pedroia put down a bunt that for some reason Fogg decided to let Yorvit Torrealba field. Having to come so far towards the mound Torrealba had no chance to get Pedroia at first. Clint Hurdle then went too long with Fogg and allowed him to pitch to Mike Lowell and Jason Varitek before unintentionally-intentionally walking Julio Lugo. It was clear at this point that Fogg simply didn't have it and would have to be taken out shortly regardless. Given that the season was hanging in the balance I would have expected a strikeout pitcher to be up in the pen.

At the time the only thought I could conjure up as to why he would still be in the game is that his spot was coming up first in the bottom of the third. Even so, with Cory Sullivan in centerfield and two potential centerfielders on the bench, Hurdle could have and should have opted to double switch then and there (something he ended up doing the next time around the order with Ryan Spilborghs). But after the Daisuke Matsuzaka single he was pulled for Franklin Morales anyway who retired Pedroia for the final out. What was perplexing was that, now down 6-0, Morales was allowed to lead off the bottom of the third. Although he's a good hitting pitcher and he pitched well in his 2.3 innings of work the game situation dictated that no outs from this point forward could afford to be wasted.

Formualic. When Matt Herges came in to the game in the seventh he disposed of the Sox hittrs on three strikeouts and 13 pitches inducing four swinging strikes. Despite his success and that with the game now at 6-5 and the prospect of extra innings, Hurdle opted to follow his formula to the letter and bring Brian Fuentes into the game. That it didn't work out doesn't really matter, at the time it seemed like a questionable move.

Good Umpiring. Both contentious calls last night (Ramirez getting called out at the plate and Varitek thrown out at first by Troy Tulowitzki) were called correctly by the umpires.

Bad Luck. Although the Red Sox are the stronger team and would win perhaps around 70% of the series against the Rockies if one could play it over and over again, once again the Rockies got a taste of what the Phillies and DBacks experienced in the previous two series. Three defensive plays, one by Cory Sullivan on a sinking liner to his right, one by Troy Tulowitzki on a Coco Crisp liner up the middle, and the other by Brad Hawpe on a ball down the right field line, were an eyelash from being caught. Meanwhile, pinch hitters Jeff Baker and Willy Taveras both hit line drives that were caught by Sox infielders.

Game Two Notes

Just a few notes from Game Two..

During the pre-game show Eric Byrnes, Kevin Kennedy, and Eric Karros all pile on to the "rust and too much rest excuse". Gee, how predictable was that? At least Kennedy noted that it was difficult to tell given that Josh Beckett was so overpowering.

Nice stat on Willy Taveras bunting only 17 of 176 times towards the first base line in his career. I've written about Taveras' bunting ability this season on several occasions and have certainly noticed that he has a decided preference for using the third base line. He needs to work on bunting down the first base line as well in order to bring the first baseman in and take advantage of lesser fielders like Kevin Youkilis and obviously David Ortiz in game 3 when needed.

I thought the second inning discussion of Ubaldo Jimenez using his curveball at altitude versus 20 feet above sea level at Boston was interesting. I wrote on this topic a few weeks ago and showed that Coors Field was at the bottom in movement on fastballs and third from the bottom in curves. For fastballs I found that at Coors they drop more--roughly two inches - presumably because the backspin on the fastball doesn't counteract gravity as well in air that is less dense. They also don't tail as much by about 2.3 inches. Curveballs seem to have roughly the same movement vertically but break 1.6 inches less horizontally than curves thrown on the road. In order to make this calculation I compared pitchers who threw fastballs and curves both at Coors Field and on the road and so Jimenez was included in the analysis. For Jimenez I had 103 pitches at Coors Field with an average pFX (the hypotenuse of the triangle defined by the vertical and horizontal movement and thus incorporating movement in both vectors) of 9.92 inches and 61 pitches on the road with a pFX of 8.05 inches. So perhaps this is just small sample size or measurement problems or park differences in the road parks but I didn't see any negative difference at Coors for Jimenez.

Early on Jimenez was being aggressive in the strike zone as you can do when you have his stuff. I loved the microphone on Bob Apodaca as he reiterated that Jimenez needed to stay aggressive. That's a great use of that technology.

The strikeouts of Ryan Spilborghs in the fifth inning and seventh innings and Willy Taveras in the ninth were all on pitches that were clearly inside. The first was almost three inches inside, the second about two and half, and the third an inch. That said, that pitch was being called a strike pretty consistently by Laz Diaz and in fact there were 15 called strikes that were technically balls on that side of the plate. There's no excuse for the Rockies hitters in not recognizing how the zone was being called and adjusting. Elevne of the fifteen called strikes were on Rockies hitters.

Gotta love this quote. Tim McCarver on David Ortiz . . . "one of the great clutch hitters of his era". Well, if by era you mean 2005 and 2006 then he has a point.

By the end of the third inning "Jimenez looked like he started to overthrow and his release point became inconsistent". And "Jimenez seemed to lose his mechanics after 60 or 70 pitches and was fortunate to get out with only two runs". I jotted both notes down during the third and fourth inning unaware that Will Carroll had posted something similar on BP Unfiltered. This morning I went back and checked and the result is the following plot of his release point in innings one through three and four and five (The perspective is from the catcher with a negative horizontal component indicating a release towards third base. These are also reflected of the ball at 50 feet from the plate and are therefore not "true" release points).



As you can see it is more varied (red) in the fourth and fifth and the standard deviation in both the horizontal and vertical components is about three quarters of an inch higher.

Another great quote. Joe Buck on Garrett Atkins while talking with Clint Hurdle: "Atkins looks like he can cover a ton of ground over at third base". Looks can be deceiving and neither the fans (-20 in Tango's fan scouting report) or the numbers (-17 in BP's FRAR) back up that assessment. The single by Manny Ramirez in the fifth inning past a diving Atkins was more typical of what you see when you watch him over and over. The fact is that he is not a good third baseman.

Matt Holliday makes the single biggest boneheaded baserunning play I've seen this season. End of story. Yes, Jonathan Papelbon had not picked off anyone in his big league career but you get the feeling that he could have stepped off the rubber, dropped the ball, fetched it, and tossed it underhand to Youkilis and Holliday still would have been out.

Game One and BIPChart

This week in my column I provide an updated version of the Balls In Play Chart software that includes 2007 data as well as a couple of new features showing batting average on balls in play and a grid view. In total the application contains data from 2003 through 2007 for both hitters and pitchers. You'll need the .NET Framework 2.0 runtime in order to run the software. Any suggestions for improvements would be welcome of course. The column also includes a discussion of home plate umpiring in the postseason and how it compares to the regular season using PITCHf/x data and a pretty graphic on the actual size of the strike zone.

Well, Game One was less than exciting as the Sox jumped all over the Rockies and Jeff Francis. To me, Francis looked like he did back in 2005 when he allowed a .376/.414/.518 line in the first inning. He seemed to have solved that problem somewhat in 2006 and his numbers weren't as bad in 2007 but last night he wasn't able to locate the fastball which forced him to throw more fastballs down in the count which of course led to hard hit balls all over the place. More than most pitchers the first inning is the key to his success.

Predictably the story lines out of much of the mainstream media are about the layoff and rustiness as well as the difference between the two leagues in terms of quality. I doubt that either played much of a role in last night's outcome as Josh Beckett was simply overpowering for much of the evening and Rockies pitchers couldn't find the strike zone. There's also lots of talk about Terry Francona's decision to leave Beckett in the game in the sixth and seventh innings although the game was sewed up. Although statheads like to talk about bringing back pitchers on short rest in situations like these I don't think you do that with Beckett. Rather, he should have been removed from the game because of the small but real risk of injury on a line drive, covering first, fielding a bunt or squibber on the wet surface, or even hurting his pitching arm. There's simply no defensible reason for leaving him in the game under those circumstances.

I like the matchup tonight for the Rockies with Ubaldo Jimenez on the mound. He can get by at times with less than great command because of the movement on his pitches and if he has both working, the Sox could be in for a long evening. Curt Schilling has to be the finer of the two and so could be hit around some.

Incidentally, both Eric Karros and Ken Rosenthal were less than stellar as Karros talked about the Rockies only taking batting practice for eight days and not mentioning the intrasquad games they played while Rosenthal had the Rockies playing the Cubs in the NLDS rather than the Phillies. Hopefully, they'll be a little better prepared tonight.

You Gotta Have Faith

Just a couple thoughts before Game One tonight in Boston.

First, I thought this was an interesting article on the Rockies, faith, and how they've put their team together. It's funny how when you're winning things like this are spun in a neutral to positive fashion and when you're losing they're seen as part of the problem.

Like many folks in the area I too have a Rockies-ticket-buying-horror-story to tell. On Monday morning I was of course shut out as were all but 500 others. On Tuesday I had three computers running and twice was taken to the page allowing (supposedly) ticket purchases. After selecting four best available (section 121 row 26 for Game Four), getting the seats, entering the credit card, and verifying it, I was at, presumably, the final screen. After clicking the button it spun and spun for about three minutes and when it finally returned it said my reservation had timed out. On the three or four previous screens I had spent probably a total of 20 seconds in data entry and so the timeout consisted entirely of the response time from their servers. On the same machine I was able to access the transaction a couple seconds later (since they used a cookie per machine approach) but that browser could not access the cart information and the session died. I was hoping that perhaps the order went through and I'd receive a confirmation email but to no avail...

I think it's pretty clear that the company that runs the system simply wasn't prepared for the load and then tried to shift blame by claiming a malicious denial of service attack. Their tentativeness in saying that they could have been a target of such an attack smells funny and the fact that all they apparently changed was upping the wait time from 60 to 120 seconds indicates that they were trying to lighten the load. I hope the Rockies and MLB aren't buying the excuses. It's also clear that after looking at the HTML code they used to put up a timer, a program could easily have been written (and I'm sure was by ticket brokers as evidenced by the thousands upon thousands of tickets that now grace StubHub and EBay) to "force your way in line" and therefore have a better chance of acquiring seats.

It's too bad that local fans didn't have much of a shot at acquiring seats. Although the Rockies rightly claim that internet sales are the most equitable way to sell tickets (assuming you have the technology) there are other considerations to be made as well.