Don Larsen and Yogi Berra have ushered in the MLB Network to rave reviews. While the airing of Larsen’s famous World Series perfect game has been the perfect inaugural broadcast for the new TV station, Larsen suffered through a terrible trip to film the piece. In a story reminiscent of a John Hughes movie, Jack Curry relates how it took Larsen six days to make what should have been a 60-hour round trip. The former Yankee hurler was stranded in the airport, delayed and delayed again which is just proof that even famous baseball players go through hell when dealing with the airlines.
Remembering Dock Ellis
Dock Ellis, a pitcher famous for reportedly tossing a no-hitter while on LSD, passed away yesterday. He’ll be remembered for his battles with drug addictions and subsequent anti-drug activism, but for a brief moment in time, he was a member of the Yankees.
In a way, Dock Ellis was an incidental and accidental piece of the Yankees’ late-1970s success. He was on the Yanks for all of 1976 and 19.2 innings in 1977. Along the way, he was involved in two instrumental trades and had a season quite odd in the annals of baseball.
The 1976 season saw George Steinbrenner’s passion for winning build. Following a third-place finish in 1975, he retooled the Yanks by bringing in Ellis, Willie Randolph and Ken Brett in exchange for Doc Medich. Ellis would win 17 games in 1976 but also managed to pull off the rare feat of walking more hitters than he struck out. His only World Series appearance that year was an ugly start in Game 3.
A few weeks into the 1977 season, Ellis, persona non grata around the Yanks due to his drug problems, was shipped off to the Athletics in exchange for Mike Torrez. Torrez would go onto win 14 games for the Yanks and two more in the World Series that year.
I never got to see Dock Ellis pitch. He was on the Yanks before I was born, and all I know of him come through stories. Jay Jaffe, however, saw and loved Ellis. Check out his take on the former Yankee and one-time troubled baseball soul.
Joe Gordon and the Hall of Fame
When Joe Gordon earned his spot in the Hall of Fame last week, the reception was rather underwhelming. The Yanks issued a perfunctory three-sentence congratulatory press release, and the reaction from the fan base was a deafening silence.
Joe Gordon seemingly is a man last to baseball history. Despite garnering contemporaneous praise from many in baseball and winning an MVP the same year Joe D Ted Williams won the Triple Crown, his accomplishments are lost on the vast majority of Yankee fans. He doesn’t have a plaque in Monument Park. His number isn’t retired. He’s just not part of that Mystique and Aura surrounding the storied Yankee history.
On the surface, Joe Gordon seems like a rather unlikely candidate for the Hall of Fame too. He played for only 11 seasons, surrendering his age 29 and 30 seasons to World War II, and his career accomplishments aren’t that impressive. He didn’t hit any major offensive milestones and ended his career with a .268/.357/.466 line and a 120 OPS+. Should this open the Hall of Fame floodgates to a whole bunch of people who were good but not great over the course of their careers? It’s certainly a question we’ve debated around here over the last few weeks.
I still think, however, that the answer is no, and there’s a reason why. At the time of his retirement, Joe Gordon was probably the top offensive second baseman of all time. Since 1950, he has been overshadowed by plenty of others, but as The Times noted last week, Gordon’s success as a second base was largely unparalleled at the time. He won an MVP award. He earned himself nine trips to the All Star Game and had five World Series rings. By the time he retired, Gordon held the mark for most home runs by a second baseman and considered to be the better fielding half of the double-play combo he formed with Phil Rizzuto.
Gordon’s Yankee tale ended after the 1946 season. After a sub-par post-War campaign, the Yanks shipped him off to Cleveland, and the trade worked out for both teams. In return for Gordon, the Yanks landed themselves Allie Reynolds. Reynolds, a name not lost to history, would go 7-2 over six winning World Series for the Yanks. That is one deal that certainly worked out.
In the end, Gordon is a deserving member of the Hall of Fame. He was the best his position for the better part of 13 years, and it seems as though his time had long since passed. I wonder how many other deserving players have been lost to baseball history.
2000: The year the blog forgot
When comparing the top of the 2008-2009 free agent class, the first year that comes to mind is 2000-2001. A-Rod, Manny, Hampton, Mussina, and Juan Gone to this year’s Teixeira, Manny, Sabathia, Burnett, Lowe. After browsing through some New York Times articles from November 2000, I’m wondering how Yankees fans would have reacted on blogs back then, had blogs existed.
On November 7 of 2000, Buster Olney reported that the Yankees had “an either-or interest in Mussina and Ramirez, who figure to be the most expensive free agents who are not named Alex Rodriguez.” I wonder how fans would have reacted in the comments if we linked to this article. After all, the 2000 Yankees finished with just 87 wins. They could have used the upgrades both at the plate and on the mound.
Like the speculation this year about a backup plan in case CC doesn’t sign, the Yankees had alternatives in mind if Mussina re-upped with Baltimore.
So Plan A for the Yankees seems to be this: Sign Mussina, and bring back Paul O’Neill to play right field for another year. Plan B: Sign Ramirez to play right field and another pitcher who would cost less than Mussina, such as the left-hander Denny Neagle or the right-hander Kevin Appier (whose agent has been contacted by the Yankees).
Neagle would have been a disaster, worse than signing Jon Garland. After posting a 5.81 ERA with the Yanks in the second half of 2000, he went out to Colorado and wasn’t very good. Though he did post a 5.38 ERA in 2001, which was just a few points above the league average ERA of 5.32. Damn you, Barry Bonds. Damn you.
Ponder this, too. According to Murray Chass, the Yankees actually coveted Mike Hampton more than Mike Mussina.
They really preferred Mike Hampton to Mussina. Hampton is four years younger and left-handed. But they determined that Hampton didn’t want to play in the American League.
Think Cashman would still have a job today if they signed Hampton instead of Mussina? Who knows, though. Maybe he fares better away from Coors Field. History could have written a different story for Mike Hampton had he decided to continue pitching in New York.
I can only imagine the arguments we had if RAB was around back then. Good times would have been had.
P.S. Don’t pay any mind to this. It means nothing.
Bernie Williams still not retired
So I got to thinking about the 2008 season and where we failed, and the answer came to me in a flash: Bernie Williams! If they had Bernie patrolling the outfield, they would have made the playoffs. He brings the mystique and aura!
Seriously, though, the only reason I bring up Bernie is because of his feature role in a movie, “Keeper of the Pinstripes.” Newsday’s David Lennon caught up with the Yanks legend to get his thoughts on retirement.
“I’ll be 75 and still not announce my retirement,” Williams said last night at a pre-production party in Manhattan. “I’m still within this two- or three-year period where I can say, ‘You know what? Let me just work out … ‘”
It’s nice that he’s keeping himself in shape, but the prospect of him coming back isn’t exactly realistic. Brian Cashman invited him to Spring Training in 2007, but Bern declined. It’s now two years later. It seems that ship has sailed. Bernie seems to know it, too: “But I’m not really thinking about baseball right now. It’s always in the back of my mind, but I’m not really thinking of getting out there.”
We’ll always remember Bernie’s contributions to the dynasty. I just don’t want to see him trying to make a (probably futile) comeback.
Not-so-old timers set to join Old Timers Day
Nothing makes a young fan feel old quite like Old Timers’ Day. In the past, Old Timers’ had long been the purview of players I never knew growing up. Sure, Don Mattingly’s made a few token appearances, but not until last year when Paul O’Neill and Scott Brosius show up did Old Timers’ Day really hit home. This year, it’s going to be even worse. The Yanks yesterday announced the cast of characters for the Old Timers’ Day set for Saturday, August 2.
On that list are a bunch of guys making their first appearances whom I grew up watching: Tino Martinez, Pat Kelly, Jimmy Key, Graeme Lloyd, Ramiro Mendoza, Jeff Nelson, Tim Raines, Rickey Henderson, Tony Fernandez and Buck Showalter. Kevin Maas, Wade Boggs, Steve Balboni and Jesse Barfield are set to make appearances as well. If these guys are Old Timers, well, that’s just a reflections on the whims of age in baseball.
Ruth’s daughter wants to see 3 retired
Should the Babe’s number be retired throughout baseball? That’s the cause Ruth’s granddaughter, Linda Ruth Tosetti, has been pushing for a while. This weekend, Rick Maese sat down and grilled Tosetti on the issue. In short, she feels that the Babe’s feel-good popularity saved baseball after the 1919 Black Sox scandal, and for that, his number should be retired throughout the game. While MLB is not on board with the issue, Tosetti continues to maintain an active website dedicated to the cause, and she plans to push her ideas hard during 2008, the 60th anniversary of Ruth’s death.
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