That's what it's all about, from sea to sea

When one talks about John Brattain embodying the glue that ties together Canadian baseball fanatics, it stories like the one Jonah Keri related last night.

The punch line was perfect, but it's Jonah's, so click through, please.

Baseball Digest Daily has details: A memorial service will be held at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses, 4183 Old Highway 2, Belleville, Ont., April 4 at 2 p.m. Joe Hamrahi (jhamrahi(AT)baseballdigestdaily.com will provide a private address for anyone wishing to send cards or flowers.

Related:
RIP John Brattain (JonahKeri.com)

To John Brattain ...

John Brattain seemed to spread warmth and cheer into every nook and cranny of the web, which made it much easier to have a writing addiction.

It's slowly wending its way through the baseball blogosphere that John, who was 43 years old, died Monday. He went into the hospital for a heart procedure, which he had been open about in his writing, and did not survive. He is survived by his wife and two daughters (one of whom, true to John's spirit of putting others first, has learned American Sign Language and will soon being helping the hearing impaired).

It's a huge loss, first and foremost for John's family, which resides near Stirling, Ont., north of Belleville. Family takes precedence when someone goes before his time.

The rest of us might feel like they lost their older brother; Baseball Think Factory already has three pages' worth of comments. John showed that you didn't have to be accredited if you knew what you were looking for and stood behind what you said. He built up an impressive body of work, with Baseball Digest Daily, MSN Canada, and The Hardball Times and several other sites.

This is about someone who was an e-friend, not even necessarily a close one, but John, who resided in the Belleville area, always came off as someone who gave fully of himself, who put others first. He took an interest not only in other like-mindeds were writing, but where they were coming from and where they had been. He always signed his posts, "Best regards, John Brattain," and it seemed to say, no matter how much we might vehemently disagree, in the end we're all friends because we care so much about the same things. Make no mistake, John spoke his mind; he was out front of everyone when it came to defending Barry Bonds, as well as denouncing the Florida Marlins' stadium deal.

That is really what it's all about with passionate hobbyists who take up writing a blog. It's not about competition. It's really about the desire to be well-informed and help share in the spreading of knowledge. It goes double when you live in Canada, especially if you live outside the GTA. Everyone else seems to be swallow the 24/7/365 diet of hockey. The beauty of living in this digital age is knowing there are more than a few of us in the frigid north who are always dreaming of some distant ball diamond.

John, by action and deed, took that to heart. He carried it forward. Bill Baer from Crashburn Alley left a tribute over at BDD that bears sharing:

"He gave me indispensable advice whether it was about baseball, writing, or just life in general.

Even when he was talking with someone who had a completely different perspective on an issue than he did, he never got angry, he never got out of line; he treated every single person he dealt with with respect and dignity."

Speaking personally, John sought me out for the raines30.com page a while ago. It was an act of courtesy and consideration which will never be forgotten.

Best regards,

Neate Sager

Related:
In honour of John Brattain (Bill Baer, Crashburn Alley)
BDD Mourns Passing of Writer John Brattain (Brian Joseph, Baseball Digest Daily)
John Brattain (Drunk Jays Fans)

Zen Dayley: Get out the A-Roid headlines and try not to learn anything

One can still look at Alex Rodriguez the same way one did 24 hours ago and believe everything in Sports Illustrated.

He is a pawn in a political game. The real subtext is deeper than a three-time MVP, the shining beacon, the one who said, "we're in a non-trusting era with the fans," being outed as a 'roidoid.

Major League Baseball has had its towline cut today in terms of management-union relations and terms of trust between MLB and union, players and fans, any two entities you want to name. The testing where Rodriguez was nailed was supposed to be anonymous, except for the part where he was tipped off by his union. ("I knew it wasn't anonymous," ex-Jay David Segui said on MLB Home Plate this morning.) It does no good to get hung up on why Rodriguez's name was the first of the 104 who tested positive to get out. Go ask Ben Johnson about being that big skin on the wall.

This will have ramifications in what yours truly jokingly calls the Labour War of 2012. Marvin Miller, back in early 2005, said MLB was risking losing the players' trust permanently. The union might have lost some players. Miller was right all along, just like Jose Canseco. As well, John Brattain points out that the players' agents are villains in this for looking out for the almighty buck and throwing due process to the wind.

On another level, you might want to focus on Rodriguez as villain. He's going to get booed with great gusto, as well he should. Please bear in mind Major League Baseball has handled the steroids problem by selling out its athletes in ones and twos, while the enablers, the agents and owners, get off scott-free. It's such a cynical hand-washing exercise by the moneymen that it has to be rationalized away, unless you're of a mind that stupid reality should never intrude on your sports-following (not entirely unreasonable, given the state of the world).

It beats playing the I-knew-it-I-knew-it-I-knew-it game, or wondering who will be the next big name to suffer a takedown. To be completely honest, the reflexive stance for a baseball nut which has evolved over the past 10 years is just to assume everyone is kinda suspect, the same way you're cool with your favourite authors, actors and musicians are wasted, wired, stoned, bombed, hammered, smashed and shitfaced.

The question I have for everyone, have always had, is why people look at sports differently than other forms of entertainment.

It's too funny to sit here listening to XM Radio, hearing host Casey Stern on MLB Home Plate citing Rodriguez' 60 Minutes interview with Katie Couric, where he said he did not feel he needed steroids to be a better ballplayer. It was a soft focus piece on a commercial network, barely a step up from the stage-managed pieces on Entertainment Tonight. It was, in Earl McRae's phrase, "disco journalism," indicative of sweet FA.

However, it all comes back to the word "trust." People, to put a twist on one of the late Jack Buck's iconic calls, want to believe what they just saw.

You can lose yourself in fiction, but sports still has to be seen as legitimate. There is probably no getting past that in our lifetimes. The view has hardened that Henry Aaron is the clean home run champion. Aaron hit 755 home runs legitimately, while Barry Bonds hit 762 semi-illegitimately, even though in Hammerin' Hank's case, to quote Mike Wilner from a few days ago, "From about the 1950s, maybe earlier, until last year PRETTY MUCH EVERY PLAYER IN THE MAJOR LEAGUES WAS ON SPEED. Sorry, that's just the way it was."

Rodriguez was supposed to be the one who would reclaim the record for the good guys. Well, sorry, that's a kindergarten view of the world. It ignores a lot of what has been going on for 15 years, as John notes.

"Everybody profited big time from this: Bud Selig makes almost $18 million a year, Don Fehr is among the wealthiest union leaders in the country, player agents like Scott Boras looked the other way and reaped obscene commissions off the players that injected themselves with these substances and there is no escaping it – the 'steroid boom' caused revenues to spike and this in turn showered money on all parties.

"The dollar will never fall as low as the means people will stoop to acquire it. Greed won the day and it wasn’t just the players that were responsible – they had a lot of accomplices."

At least Rodriguez and his handlers can keep this at an arm's length than others have. They have learned from Roger Clemens' legendarily bad example how to conduct a defence in the court of public opinion. He'll be booed in every ballpark he visits, except the new Yankee Stadium. You want it make this about Alex Rodriguez alone, fair enough, but it is not. Look at the guys who get to play forever, because it's their ball.

Related:
Sources tell SI Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003 (Selena Roberts and David Epstein, SI.com)

Zen Dayley: Beleaguered big-leaguer; jungle of jaggled little pills

Baseball is so embarrassed over Mark McGwire that it is taking out on J.C. Romero.

MLB can point to Romero's 50-game suspension as evidence of the success of its crackdown on performance-enhancing drugs -- as much as one hates to dignify talk-radio shorthand. They got a solid middle reliever -- an established player, but not one whose absence would be noticed the same way it would with Ryan Howard or Chase Utley (oops, bad example). The kicker is that Romero is being punished for his "negligence" for using a supplement that, coincidentally, was "created and marketed" by the same guy who was the first in the U.S. to sell androstenedione, which was what Big Mac took. That is irony writ large.

Two big takeaways are that (a) at least the media, notably Peter Gammons at ESPN.com, are saying this is bogus; and (b) at least people are understanding that what Romero took is part and parcel of what it takes to get through the Long Season. It is kind of like MLB is still stuck in Dick Cheney's America and believes people will swallow whatever is handed down, no equivocating, no ifs, ands or buts, while most everyone else is over here in 2009.

It is all pretty greasy. Romero and other ballplayers are in the same Minnesota Vikings' Kevin and Pat Williams, in the StarCaps case. Big Pharma in the North America is such a multi-headed beast that the ball-and-stick leagues are really powerless themselves to do anything. It's like a jungle of a jagged little pills.

Ultimately, this does come back to the spectre of McGwire and Barry Bonds (and if you haven't read it already, go to the Hardball Times, where John Brattain has written a pretty impassioned defence of Bonds.)

Like the Philadelphia Inquirer story put it, "Baseball, because of its embarrassing mishandling of the steroid issue in the 1990s, is under pressure to catch cheaters and create the impression it has improved its policing techniques. At the same time, the FDA has had enormous enforcement issues with federal laws regarding the ingredients in over-the-counter supplements."

It is stranger still that Romero has been "ruled guilty of 'negligence' " (Cherry Hill Courier-Post), but there's no punishment for people in the Phillies organization who were advising him. There are so many gray areas, and if you read through the stories, there's conflicting stories about the labeling on the package, the involvement of the players' association, the advice from the Phillies's strength coach, and so on.

Gammons, God love him, also points out the biggest part of why the guy would use a quote, unquote PED.

"The season is a grind," Romero said. "When you're a middle reliever, you have to be ready to get up and down and pitch every day. Everyone takes something. Some guys drink coffee, others supplements. We try to make sure they're all legal. I certainly did."

It is brutal. Please try to have some consideration when a ballplayer gets caught. Calling someone a cheater is just too easy.

Zen Dayley: Mr. Henderson presents

Out of Left Field is looking over the legitimate candidates for the Baseball Hall of Fame -- no disrespect to Dan Plesac -- over the next few weeks. Now batting, Rickey Henderson.

The Golden Baseball League is campaigning to have Rickey Henderson go into Cooperstown as a San Diego Surf Dawg.

Of course, they're kidding, especially seeing as the Hall of Fame no longer lets players pick which cap they're depicted wearing on their plaque. It just figures you would get something like that, since Rickey Henderson seemed to attract zaniness. He has become this larger-than-life character whose baseball legend probably exceeds the full gamut of his personality, only because the stories about him not knowing teammates' names and refusing to cash million-dollar cheques have been repeated ad nauseam, to the point where fact and fiction blur.

The real question is whether Henderson is going to get 98% of the vote. A gut feeling is it might not be that high, but it should top 90%, easily.

Was he ever regarded as the best player in baseball? Did anybody, while he was active, ever suggest that he was the best player in baseball?

That was the case in 1990, when Henderson won his MVP award after putting up a sick 1.016 on-base-plus-slugging and leading the Oakland A's to a 100-win season. He was also second in MVP balloting in 1981, a strike-shortened season.

Was he the best player on his team?

He was the A's best player, certainly from 1980-84, and again in 1990. He was the Yankees' best probably in 1985 --when he became the first player since Lou Gehrig almost a half-century earlier to average more than a run scored per game -- and likely again in 1986, when he scored 130 runs.

Was he the best player in baseball at his position? Was he the best player in the league at his position?

By mid-1986, Sports Illustrated had proclaimed Henderson and Tim Raines as "simply the best leadoff men ever." (John Brattain, who knows his stuff cold, notes that from 1983-89, Raines was the more productive of the two.)

Henderson and Raines as the game's best left fielder was a toss-up throughout much of the decade, save for 1987, when Rickey was limited to 95 games by a hamstring injury. Henderson was also the game's best in '90, and remember, that was the season Barry Bonds won his first MVP award.

Did he have an impact on a number of pennant races?

No Jays fan needs any reminder of 1989, when he dismantled the Jays in the ALCS by OPSing 1.609 and going 8-for-8 stealing bases in Oakland's five-game win. This question can probably be spun around to post-season performance. He was on eight playoff teams and hit .284/.389/.441 in the post-season, with 47 runs and 33 steals in 60 games -- and remember, that's when you're only seeing the best of the best pitching staffs.

Jays fans might not remember this. During the Jays' Drive of '85, Henderson scored 39 runs from Sept. 1 through the end of the season.

Was he a good enough player that he could continue to play regularly after passing his prime?

Rickey hasn't passed his prime, just ask him. Rickey is still going strong. Rickey -- who turns 51 on Christmas Day -- is working on his comeback.

Henderson hung on for way too long -- he actually played his final pro season in a stadium named after Tony Gwynn, one of his contemporaries. However, from age 37 to 39, he could still get on base at close to a .400 clip and steal a lot of bases. In 1996, when he helped the Padres win the NL West, he very nearly had more runs scored (110) than hits (112), which is nearly unheard of. (He walked 125 times.)

Is he the very best player in baseball history who is not in the Hall of Fame?

Pretty much, outside of Barry Bonds, who isn't yet eligible.

Are most players who have comparable career statistics in the Hall of Fame?

No one really compares to Rickey Henderson. The way the similarity scores on baseball-reference.com work is that a score in the 900s says two players were very similar. Once you get below 900, they really weren't that similar.

The most similar player to Rickey Henderson is Craig Biggio with a score of 721, which means he wasn't anything like Rickey.

Do the player's numbers meet Hall of Fame standards?

This will be a slam dunk. He scored a record 2,295 runs, stole 1,406 bases, is in the 3,000-hit club.

Is there any evidence to suggest that the player was significantly better or worse than is suggested by his statistics?

If anything, he was better. Henderson's lifetime batting average was .279, but his secondary average was .416 when you factor in all the walks, stolen bases and extra-base hits. According to baseball-reference.com's stats neutralizer, his career OPS of .820 would have been in the .900 range if he had played in a "historically neutral environment."

He only won one Gold Glove, since it's tough to win it playing left field, but many have written that his fielding was excellent. He was good enough to play almost 450 games in centrefield.

Is he the best player at his position who is eligible for the Hall of Fame but not in?

Yes, he is. Bill James rated him as the No. 4 leftfielder of all time in his New Historical Baseball Abstract, with Tim Raines eighth.

How many MVP-type seasons did he have? Did he ever win an MVP award? If not, how many times was he close?

He had at least three -- 1981, the strike year, when he hit .319/.408/.437, won a Gold Glove and scored 89 runs for an A's team that played just 109 games. He finished second behind the Milwaukee Brewers reliever, Rollie Fingers.

Four years later, after being traded to the Yankees due to some fiduciary troubles the A's were having, he had a MVP-like season in the Bronx -- only the award ended up going to Don Mattingly, who was the only driving him in more often than not. (Actually, it could have gone to George Brett.)

It's curious, all these years later, to note that Mattingly's OPS, .939, was just a smidge better than Henderson's .934. The big difference is that Yankee Stadium was tailored to lefty hitters, and Mattingly hit 22 of his 35 homers at home. Henderson hit 16 of his 24 on the road, where they probably had more impact, since the Yankees were sub.-500 away from the Bronx, which cost them the AL East pennant. Mattingly was not a bad pick, but Henderson or Brett might have been better.

Finally, in 1990, Henderson won the MVP going away, but it took a massive season.

How many All-Star-type seasons did he have? How many All-Star games did he play in?

He was a 10-time all-star, starting eight games. He wasn't selected in 1981, the strike year, when he was MVP runner-up. He was also left off the AL team in 1993, when he had a .462 on-base percentage at the break. Cito Gaston, and you probably had to be there, took catcher Terry Steinbach to fill out his Oakland quotient.

Did most of the other players who played in this many go to the Hall of Fame?

It's not really relevant, so the answer is yes.

If this man were the best player on his team, would it be likely that the team could win the pennant?

He was the A's best player in 1989 and '90, and they won the pennant. He was the best player on the 1985 Yankees, whose 97-64 record was second-best in the AL in that pre-wild card era.

What impact did the player have on baseball history? Was he responsible for any rule changes? Did he introduce any new equipment? Did he change the game in any way?

People have said that in the NFL, the rise of the shotgun formation, the two tight end offence and the emphasis on left tackles was a reaction to pass rushers such as Lawrence Taylor in the 1980s. Henderson was so quick and so smart; as the scout Charlie Metro said it was basically impossible to throw him out. Over the course of his career, pitchers began shortening their motions and putting more emphasis on their pickoff move; that was certainly a counter-move to Henderson, Raines and other basestealers of the 1970s and '80s. The speed revolution was not enduring, but it did make for a fundamentally different type of ball, for a time.

Did the player uphold the standards of sportsmanship and character that the Hall of Fame, in its written guidelines, instructs us to consider?

For all the colourful history, and the contract holdouts, there really is no major baggage. That, "today, I am the greatest of all time" speech should be forgotten.

Zen Dayley: Powder-blue pity party of one ... the saddest words ever typed

If Christmas came in October, this reporter would write on baseball every day. One can only assume he wanted to get FJM'd ... so just for grins, here goes, without malice:

Jays Fans Watch Helplessly As Former Players Reach World Series Elsewhere
Oct. 27, 2008

A small point -- when do fans not watch helplessly? That is kind of the definition of being a fan.

It's no secret the Toronto Blue Jays will need every single star to align if they hope to make a World Series run in any season to come. That said, it's natural for fans of Canada's only baseball team to wonder how so many of their formers have gone on to reach the game's biggest stage with other clubs, and for that matter, why?

The Spidey senses are saying you're going to have an answer for us within the next few paragraphs. Having a point is kind of the definition of being a journalist. Otherwise, it's just word-masturbation.

As October - and thus the baseball season - draws to a close, Jays faithful sit back and watch the Philadelphia Phillies and Tampa Bay Rays battle for rings, they also watch as New Brunswick native Matt Stairs, dealt away in order to make room for future star Travis Snider, looms repeatedly as a key pinch hitter for the NL East champs.

There's a book deal waiting for the genius who can explain why it was bad to trade away one month of 40-year-old Matt Stairs to give 20-year-old Travis Snider an aggressive promotion. In a future column, Mr. Miller will explain why you should just constantly buy new clothes instead of doing laundry.

"Repeatedly," evidently is now defined "as batting once in the NLCS." Stairs has hit once in the World Series, batting in the pitcher's spot last night in the eighth inning with the Phillies ahead 6-2. Granted, a four-run lead with three outs wasn't safe for the Fightins. Brad Lidge has only converted 100% of his save opportunities this season, plus he was rested.

A small point to add is that using a period works wonders. It caps a short, declarative sentence. It keeps you on point. It's wonderful.

Stairs was used sparingly down the stretch in Philly, but did launch a key home run in the NLCS that helped propel Charlie Manuel's club into the Series. Should they win that series (it's looking good), it'll undoubtedly be bittersweet for fans of the Blue Birds, even as they're happy for 'Stairsy'.

The quote mark goes outside the period, big guy. Still, you're doing well. Fight through. This is setting up like you found some Jays fans who are just sideways over this calamity. Matt Stairs having to get that ring in a Phillies uniform is pretty bittersweet. It makes him the most tragic figure of the last seven to 14 days, next to this person. Please don't give Blue Jays fans any credit for appreciating that baseball is a multi-billion dollar business with next to no room for sentiment -- and fans, if anything, are less sentimental than the players and the front-office guys. Prepare to set your faces to stun... players change organizations all the time.

(Neate makes a really obnoxious hand gesture, even though he is alone with his Jack and coke at 3:30 a.m.) Carry on.

Not that Stairs -- who'd hoped to finish his career in Toronto -- was the difference between this or any other Jays team winning a division title or the American League.

Thanks, Mr. Defeat The Purpose Of Your Own Column. When are we going to get those to Jays fans feeling a sense of helplessness? Temper tantrum in 3, 2, 1 ...

But there he is, mere months separated from his time in T.O. and playing for the championship most never have an opportunity for.

That is so sad. You know what else is sad? Kittens, puppies, the sun rising over the Atlantic Ocean and you leaving a dangling preposition.

So too is onetime cast-away Jayson Werth, a key corner outfielder in Philly that the Jays unceremoniously dealt to Los Angeles three years ago.

It was actually four years ago. Far be it to believe you didn't check that on the Internet, which is now on computers. The Jays really should have found a way to hang on to an outfielder whom no major-league team gave 400 plate appearances in a season to until this season. Werth is 29, a little late to get started on the road to Cooperstown. The Jays were stupid to mess around with plugs such as Alex Rios (who was a regular at age 23), Vernon Wells (also became a regular at age 23) and Adam Lind (still only 25). Worse yet, there's that Snider fella, threatening to be an everyday player at 21. Trading Werth was for the greater good. It gave Reed Johnson a chance to play. He, in the eyes of some media folk, went on to become the greatest outfielder in Jays history -- about 10 seconds after he was released.

In the opposite dugout sit the American League champs, the team that won the Jays' division. Among them, Gabe Gross and Eric Hinske, two former Blue Jay golden boys turned trade bait and disappointing castoff respectively.

You're making it sound like it was good to get rid of them ... wait a second, that runs counter to your entire column,

Again, it's not that the former Auburn quarterback (Gross) or the former AL rookie of the year (Hinske) are the missing pieces from a Blue Jays team that wasn't.

Thanks, Mr. Defeat The Purp -- damn it, used that line already. This is akin to two magicians showing each other their illusions. Can we just saw each other in half and call it a night?

But again, they're two guys the Jays gave up on that are pieces of a championship team that could be.

Another dangling preposition. Where is your editor at, sir?

Hinske was left off the World Series roster to start prior to its start, but was added ahead of Game 4 and promptly responded by slugging a pinch-hit homerun in Sunday's 10-2 win.

The Phillies won the game, though. Hinske, by your logic, so-called, wasn't helping the Rays win. He was only helping them lose by a little less, which is all he was supposedly good for when he played in Toronto.

But heck, Hinske's already got his ring. The lumbering first baseman and outfielder wasn't a star, but he did figure into the World Series run enjoyed by the Red Sox in 2007 before heading down to Florida.

Hinske did figure into that Red Sox championship. He figured out where to sit in the dugout so he would get on TV when the Fox or TBS cameras focused on Boston manager Terry Francona. His contribution in the 2007 playoffs: Two at-bats, no hits. Pinch-ran for David Ortiz in the eighth inning of a blowout. That was all.

Ex-Jays backstop Kevin Cash took the opposite route, making a brief appearance in Tampa before ending up in Boston last year as a backup to Jason Varitek. For that Cash got his own ring in 2007, and while he isn't playing in this year's Fall Classic, his Red Sox -- you might remember -- weren't that far off.

It was more than a week ago, so it also slipped into the recesses.

Cash does ultimately appear to lack the skills most GMs would expect from a starting catcher and should probably never be one on a full-time basis.

What are you talking about? He's got a ring!!! You have argued, more convincingly than a hybrid of Clarence Darrow and the James Spader character in Boston Legal, that it's all about the ring, no more, no less. Baseball has officially taken on the hockey ethos. Any guy with a ring is great. No ring, you're nothin'. Ernie Banks, Robin Yount, Tony Gwynn, or Carlton Fisk will live out their days in a pit of shame. It is no wonder that they sign so many autographs whenever they visit the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Then again, you could've said the same for Gregg Zaun close to 500 games ago.

Zaun's annual OPS+ in Toronto: 96, 94, 112, 98, 87

Cash's best OPS+ in the majors: 67

Even Trever Miller, once a steady hand in an ungodly Blue Jays bullpen, has since returned to Tampa Bay by way of Houston and paid dividends there. Toronto had one of baseball's best relief corps in 2008, but it wasn't good enough to get them into the second season.

You're starting to lose us. It is as if your article lacks any central thesis or any answers for why ex-Jays end up with World Series rings. You also haven't quoted any actual Jays fans. Some A-holes, but not this one, would accuse you of being a little prolix putz throwing a pity party in powder-blue pyjamas. You basically were lucid enough, for about half a hour, to notice that the two World Series teams have some players who at one time or another, wore Blue Jays black. And if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle. So what?

Of course that's not to say bringing back Miller was the answer, but then again Toronto brought almost everyone else back last year, from Shannon Stewart in Left to Cito Gaston on the bench and most recently, to Paul Beeston in the front office.

To be fair, you haven't seen the knuckle curve Paul Beeston has refined. Satchel Paige will have nothing on him by next February in Dunedin. And where are all those depressed, mopey Jays fans you promised us?

Pat Gillick, the former GM and architect of the Jays' glory days might have made a return too, only he was busy in the City of Brotherly Love, helping the Phillies reach a summit they've been struggling towards since being denied by some game named Joe and an upstart team from the wrong side of the border.

The upstart team that had the highest payroll in the game in 1992 and '93. They were a regular bunch of Bad News Bears with all the various hired guns such as David Cone, Rickey Henderson, Jack Morris, Paul Molitor, Dave Stewart and Dave Winfield. Some upstarts. Granted, all bets are off when a U.S. senator who voted with Bush 92% of the time is calling himself a "maverick."

Getting back to the point, sir, you haven't proven a damn thing. A good percentage of the players competing in this World Series are ex-somethings. No one in Seattle is trying to overdose on Starbucks since Jamie Moyer, ex-Mariner, is going to get a ring in Philly. It's probably the same in Houston, Lidge's one-time home. No one in Milwaukee is begrudging Geoff Jenkins getting a ring, even though the Phillies beat out the Brewers in the first round. The funny part about that -- none of those three franchises have won a World Series.

Every baseball fan roots for guys who used to be on her/his favourite team. They probably root for a few who were never on their favourite team. That's the way she goes.

That goes double for a Canadian such as Stairs. You, sir, are trying to make Jays fans, and Canadian baseball lovers, feel bad for rooting for one of our own and being patriotic. Well, sorry, it's not happening.

It's a peak the Blue Jays and their fans will have little choice but to continue looking up at or back to.

That is, at least until they get out of town.

Do you need help packing up? On second thought, stay put, since only in Toronto can you get paid to write such self-pitying garbage. (OK, Boston, too.)

Related:
Jays Fans Watch Helplessly As Former Players Reach World Series Elsewhere (Aaron Miller, CityNews.ca)

Other business:

• Neither manager has proven to be a tactical mastermind,
• It's a story from ESPN that makes Fox look bad, so consider the source ... evidently the network pushed to only have the starters introduced before Game 1 of the World Series, meaning it was hard cheese for the likes of Canada's own Matt Stairs. Like anything with Fox and baseball, it's brutal.


• John Brattain has a take on Barry Bonds that rates a read, laying out the parallels to the collusion of the late '80s.
  

  "Where do people learn to hate with such vehemence that blinds them so much that they cannot see the irony of hating Bonds for 'breaking the rules' (the stated reason for their loathing) while celebrating MLB’s possible breaking of the rules because he suffers because of it? You cannot be anti-collusion because it means you’re a Bonds-lover.

• From the Democracy Doesn't Work department, fans selected the Cubs' Aramis Ramirez (.289/27/111 Triple Crown stats) as the Hank Aaron Award recipient as the best offensive performer in the National League. What about that guy in St. Louis? Yeah, him -- the guy who hit 37 homers while striking out only 54 times, as if he were playing in another generation.
  
  It's a real shock a Cub and a Red Sock would win an award voted on by fans.

Zen Dayley: Cuban would be in the Bonds market

The longer Barry Bonds remains in left-handed slugger's limbo (it's not bad, but it's not great), the more it increases a fan's desire to Mark Cuban win the Chicago Cubs sweepstakes.

Cuban is anteing up $1.3 billion for the Cubbies. As you probably know, he will face a major challenge trying to get the required three-quarters approval from 23 of 29 MLB owners.

The Cubs also have Alfonso Soriano in left field, but this is not really about Bonds playing for Chicago. It's not even about the 44-year-old home-run king getting a chance to succeed or fail on his own merits, even though every other Hall of Fame player, was given that courtesy, and not just the nice guys. (Bonds says he's in fighting trim.)

The point is that Bonds, or any other player with a nasty reputation, are anathema to members-in-good-standing clubs such as the Houston Astros and your Toronto Blue Jays. They don't want the drama, the whiff of controversy -- or the end to their lack of left-handed power at the DH/corner outfield spots. Granted, you know what you're getting with Brad Wilkerson. In the Jays' case, that's a .221 average and 13 homers from the DH spot.

For Bonds -- and maybe Milton Bradley, almost need by an Al Davis type. Cuban comes closer to that than anyone else who currently owns a major professional team.

Perhaps Cuban would play by the house rules if he landed the Cubbies. He's mellowed out over time with the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA; he says only been fined once by the league in the past five years. He and Sam Zell, who wants to unload the Cubs, could sue to get him into the owners' ranks. Eamonn Brennan wrote last week, "Major League Baseball likes its old-boy owners, its old money, its quiet yes-men, and it doesn't like to have its quaint club disrupted by those of ill-repute. Mark Cuban's antics do not endear him to Major League Baseball. After all, when was the last time you saw an MLB owner take pregame press questions on his treadmill?"

That's a big matzo ball hanging out there. But would Cuban sign a Bonds type, or maybe in a few seasons, an aging but still productive Manny Ramirez? It stands to reason that he would be more likely to do so than some teams. There are a few which, to quote Houston columnist Richard Justice, "have a reputation for wanting guys that look and sound alike." (Justice also sticks the dagger by pointing out that if personality is an issue, well, the Astros have employed Jeff Kent and Roger Clemens.)

Point being, he wouldn't freeze out a controversial player, because in his words, to "make good money is a win for everyone." The NFL realizes this -- it's show business. Cuban would be too late to the game for Bonds, but not too late to shake up baseball. A byproduct might be that it would help a few players who have been smeared with the bad-apple brush.

Errata

• Speaking of which, FanGraphs has a look at what kind of offers the Rangers' league-leading slugger Milton Bradley is going to elicit in the off-season. As is always the case with Bradley, it's fraught with something. He can hit, no question, but no one's likely to guarantee him more than two seasons.
  
  The U.S. economic slowdown probably won't play a part in what kind of offers Bradley does or doesn't receive. Baseball's coffers are still flush; any change in the player market won't come until after the 2009 season.
• Ken Griffey Jr.'s return to centrefield is working about as well as expected. It's time for the White Sox to break out the nerve tonic.
• Phillippe Aumont had a decent outing in his first game with the Mariners' Class-A team since coming off the disabled list. He went three innings, giving up one run on three hits with two walks, one strikeout and a wild pitch. One positive sign: Five of the nine outs he got came on ground balls.
• In other 2007 first-round draft pick news ... the Rays promoted phenom left-hander David Price to Triple-A. The over/under on how long it is before he's called up to the majors is three starts.
• One takeaway from Yahoo Sports' Tim Brown's column on Skimgate is that MLB would have to re-open the collective agreement in order to have a universal entry draft (which even the stodgy NHL has. King Kaufman also noted that this means that Gary Sheffield had a point when he attributed the diminishing number of black players in baseball to the belief that Latinos "are easier to control."

Damn, the Jays

• No disrespect, but if Paul Beeston and Pat Gillick are coming back to the Jays, how come it's on the website of an out-of-town newspaper?
• It would only be fair if the Jays rack Cy Young candidate Cliff Lee pretty well on Sunday after abandoning Roy Halladay on Saturday.
• Great stat from John Brattain: The Jays have scored four runs or less in a game times since Opening Day 2007. That's almost an entire season's worth of never having a big night with the bats.
• Mike Wilner is calling out Alex Rios for being lackadaisacal yesterday: "one hopes that with the new regime in place, they’ll be able to get a stern message across to Rios about his at-the-very-least occasional lack of effort, but for now their hands are tied. It’s not like they could put Joe Inglett or Brad Wilkerson out in centrefield tomorrow with Cliff Lee on the mound, nor should they."
• Please read The Tao of Stieb's takedown of those who would make a big show out of pronouncing the Jays dead and buried (they are, but that's not the point).
  
  There are going to be times during the season when, for sanity's sake, it's best to give the Jays a pass for a week or so.
  
  There's an odd phenomena, though, when you cheer for an also-ran team -- you find yourself drifting back in during August and September. It stems from the feeling that the season is almost done and it won't be that long until you're staring at five long months of fall and winter before spring training opens down in Dunedin. The beauty of baseball, of course, is that your team can still be interesting to follow when they're not in the hunt. The same can't be said of NFL, NHL and NBA.

Les Rapidz

• On his vacation, good friend Carl Kiiffner caught up with former Lynx owner Ray Pecor and GM Kyle Bostwick, who are no worse for wear with the Vermont Lake Monsters of the NY-Penn League. (Carl's headline is very self-explanatory, let's just leave it at that.)
• No one needed any reminder of what Ottawa baseball fans lost with Ed Nottle's ouster. Channeling Stephen Colbert: Thanks a lot, Nashua Telegraph.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

Zen Dayley: the Nationals disgrace

First off, in the NL Central, who do you have -- the Cubs, with two Canadian starters, or the Brewers, with Canadians in the GM's office?

The Nationals disgrace

• Bless you, John Brattain, for suggesting a suitable fate for the Washington Nationals owners. As previously noted, imagine the nerve it takes to refuse to pay rent on a $611-million ballpark that you were given for free:

  "... the whole lot of them should be rounded up and stuffed into a time machine set to 1789 Paris when they knew how to deal with people like them. Since they may struggle with the language we'll send along some bilingual baseball fans from Quebec to help them adjust. Never forget, these are the ones who decry greedy players; the players only want to paid what their talents are worth to the game. The owners want to be paid even though insofar as the public good goes, they are completely worthless and do not wish to work for their money.
  
  "The major league cartels are out of control; they abuse their monopoly power to the detriment of society at large."

• Hey, a team that gave Cristian Guzman a two-year, $16-million extension has to find savings somewhere.
• Dan Steinberg's rebuttal to a Washington Post reader who complained about the paper's coverage of the last-place Nationals holds up very well, two weeks later. God, it would be nice if more newspapers addressed whiny readers head-on.

Other business

• Jorge Costales, a Miami accountant, has a good go-to blog for anyone who wants to keep current on what's happening with the Florida Marlins stadium. It's looking like Jeff Loria will get his wish.
• It's possible Reds super-prospect Jay Bruce really is Joe Hardy in Damn Yankees -- a middle-aged man in the body of someone much younger and stronger. He shrugged off his strong start due to a "small sample size." Now ShysterBall has noted that his at-bat music is an Electric Light Orchestra song that's eight years older than him.
• Please read this Poz post about Stan Musial. Even if the story is part urban legend, it's still true that Stan the Man never got ejected once in 3,026 career games. Supposedly, he also never cracked a bat, even though he hit 475 homers (but never hit 40 in a season).
• Again, it's the 25th anniversary of the Pine Tar Game. Can you imagine being at that game and having to explain what was happening to someone who'd never seen a baseball game in her life?

Damn, the Jays

• Jesse Litsch is riding the shuttle to Syracuse. It's not a stunner. The Beep did call Lil' Litschy "the right-handed Chacin" at the outset of this season.
• The skinny on Gustavo Pierre, the 16-year-old Dominican shortstop that the Jays just finished singing, is that he's a power bat who projects more as a third baseman or outfielder.
• Here's an excerpt from Jeff Pearlman's profile of former Syracuse/Toronto folk hero Sal Fasano that appears in the August issue of Reader's Digest. It might be in the Canadian edition (note: check a newstand). There are plenty of Quadruple-A players who paid the price for not paying the price during the Steroid Era -- last season's Lynx cleanup man Gary Burnham was probably a prime example.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

Zen Dayley: Building the most inoffensive team possible...

A night away from the Jays spent waiting out a rain delay at The Zip (great to be back out at the ballpark), and nothing's changed ... 5-4 to the Brewers.

Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi's response to a question about a trade for Cincinnati's Adam Dunn during his Jays Talk appearance last night was pure pathos.

The Jays had teams during Ricciardi's early seasons that could bash out homers and the GM got roasted for it by all the know-it-alls in the Toronto media since those teams had hitters who struck out a lot didn't steal bases, which makes baseball more exciting, at least when you're 12 years old. Now they've gone the other way,tried to go with patient hitters who put the ball in play, bunt runners along and can't score any runs to save their lives (12th in the American League). J.P.'s diatribe about Dunn reflected how much his thinking has undergone an apparent 180 (which is about what the Jays are hitting with runners in scoring position).

J.P.: What do you know about Adam Dunn?

Caller: Well, he's a great hitter, he's a power hitter ...

J.P. (interjecting): He's a great hitter?! He's a lifetime .230, .240 hitter that strikes out a ton and hits home runs.

Caller: Yes, he hits home runs, which none of the Toronto Blue Jays are doing.

J.P.: You know the guy doesn't really like baseball that much?

Caller: He doesn't like -- he doesn't like baseball?

J.P.: No. You know the guy doesn't have a passion to play the game that much? How much do you know about the player? I mean, there's a reason why you're attracted to some players and there's a reason why you're not attracted to some players. I don't think you'd be very happy if we brought Adam Dunn here. I think you'd be one of the guys callin' me on Wednesday night complaining about, what, you know all the deficiences that the guy has. We've done our homework on guys like Adam Dunn and there's a reason why we don't want Adam Dunn. And I don't want to get into specifics, but we've done our homework on a lot of the guys that you guys keep mentioning to us. We're way ahead of you guys in looking at things and there's a lot of things and lot reasons why we wouldn't go get those guys.

David Mamet should write dialogue this layered. In the course of about 90 seconds, it was as if Ricciardi betrayed everything that's been said about the sneaking suspicion that his thin skin has been manifested in trying to build a team that would never offend the so-called baseball purists, including a couple who are on the staff of Toronto newspapers. It's understandable, except for the fact that his job is to put a good ballclub on the field and not worry about anyone who believes baseball games are tests of character and fortitude, when they're about who can pitch and who can hit the ball.

It's almost like he's said, "Fine, you want a team full of hitters who are all fundamentally sound fielders, who don't strike out a lot and put the ball in play? I'll give you one and we'll see how it works..." (under his breath) "... Jerks."

Obviously, that wasn't the plan, but it's sure worked out the way. Only three teams in the American League have struck out less than the Jays. They are third-last in runs scored, next-to-last in slugging percentage and home runs and last in extra-base hits. It's hard to imagine a team that could use a huge bullhunkus in the middle lineup such as the 6-foot-6, 275-lb. pound Adam Dunn, with his 18 homers this season, more than any two Blue Jays.

(Update, 1 p.m.: Dunn called the Jays GM "a clown" in response. Frankly, it's hard to argue with him.)
The reality that Ricciardi was trying to cover up last night was that teams which strike out a lot actually tend to score more runs than those who don't (also, when you strike out more, you hit into fewer double plays, something the Jays lead the world in). The Jays are reaffirming this on a nightly basis. Who knows, perhaps those high-strikeout teams swing the bats with a little more of that "urgency" that Roy Halladay mentioned back in spring training instead of hitting easy grounders to the second baseman.

The simplest way to test this was to compare the average runs total for the three biggest-whiffing teams in the AL -- the Ryan Howards -- with the most contact-crazy clubs, the Rance Mullinikses over the past few seasons. This is way too simple, and sure, there are numerous other variables that smarter people can account for, but for four years running (or jogging), the Ryans have been beating the Rances:

2007
Ryans: 803
Rances: 778

2006
Ryans: 794
Rances: 778

2005
Ryans: 855
Rances: 754

2004
Ryans: 879
Rances: 797

2003
Ryans: 728
Rances: 749

The Rances came out ahead in 2003 -- and by a slim margin -- since the Ryans' average was dragged down by that 119-loss Detroit Tigers club, whose hitting was so bad it should have been stricken from the record. (It's the same story in 2002 -- the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, a 106-loss club, didn't strike out a lot because they had a bunch of potent hitters, they just plain sucked.)

The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book has a chapter comparing static teams with dynamic teams that bunt and steal more often. The sit-on-your-ass, wait-for-the-home-run teams not only score more runs, but apparently field just as well as the smallball teams, so you're not sacrificing that much on defence.

That 25-run advantage over 162 games might not sound like much. Please keep in mind that the Jays are 11-17 in one-run games. Those 25 runs, especially if they were bunched up via the odd three-run homer, could mean a few extra wins.

For God knows what reason, Ricciardi seems to have changed tactics after years of being skewered for a so-called Moneyball approach (the critics ignored that no one ever said Moneyball was a sure-fire way to win the World Series -- Michael Lewis' book was simply about the history of an idea). Jays fans seem worse off for it, because it's led to a team whose hitters are less than the sum of their parts.

In fairness, it's really easy to simplify from this vantage point. The way the game is being played is in an upheaval in the wake of the Steroid Era, but the reality hasn't changed all that much. A team needs home-run hitters. Ricciardi, by his inaction and by his words last night, seems to be in complete denial of his team's need for power, which is why it's probably time for a new general manager.

It's absolutely asinine to be defensive over the imagined reaction to Adam Dunn's low batting average (his on-base percentage is always around .400, though), high strikeout totals and, uh, lack of polish in the field. He's a sideshow and seeing as baseball was a fallback when he couldn't become the starting QB for the University of Texas football team several years ago, so he might not eat the game for breakfast, lunch and dinner, in A.J. Burnett's immortal phrase. So what, though?

The Jays have tried to make sure they have a nice, well-rounded players at each position -- no big holes, but they also have no ways to fill holes. Trying to do it Ricciardi's right way, so-called, is failing. Like a character in The 40-Year-Old Virgin said, they need to try some wrong.

Other business...

• J.D. Drew is worth the money. Really, he is.
• Please read John Brattain's take on how he soured on Ricciardi. They should have been able to find a left-fielder who can actually produce an OPS above 750 (which isn't even good) by this point. Corner outfielders with that level of production should be a dime-a-dozen.
• Here's hoping people who watched the Ottawa Lynx last season have noted that Joe Thurston is stinging the ball pretty well. He's hitting .322/.371/.459 for the Pawtucket Red Sox with 49 runs scored, most among International League middle infielders.

Jays are hurtin', but not for a Murton

It's too speculative by half, but the Chicago Cubs have recalled outfielder Matt Murton, possibly as trade bait.

Wasn't there a bit of news about some Blue Jays pitcher, A.J. Burnett, who will become a free agent after this season, saying he'd love to play in Chicago? Now, this is why it's a bad idea as a fan to start pitching trade ideas (although that Seinfeld episode where an out-of-work George Costanza contemplating getting a job in sports, "like the general manager of a baseball team" should have cured you of the notion).

(UPDATE: Case in point -- on Jays Talk tonight, a caller asked J.P. Ricciardi if the Jays had talked with the Cubs about trading Burnett for their one good prospect who's not already in Chicago already, 18-year-old third baseman Josh Vitters. As if the Cubbies are going to sacrifice last year's No. 3 overall draft choice this soon.)

Murton would only give the Jays another well-rounded hitter who doesn't hit for power (although at least he's younger than Kevin Mench). The Cubs don't have a lot in the farm system that would make it worth the Jays' while to make a 3- or 4-for-1 trade. It's best to wait for the Cubbies to cut and run with Jeff Samardzija, the former Notre Dame wide receiver who got a jesus-big signing bonus to give up football and is now struggling with his control down in Double-A.

Incidentally, the Cubs are trying to get a David Eckstein error from last Saturday changed to a hit ... that would tack a few points on to Roy Halladay's ERA, since he gave up a three-run homer to the next batter.

(Meantime, the axe flashes at the top of its arc over the hards of John Gibbons and Godcciardi.)

Related:
Let there be blood in the streets... (John Brattain, Hardball Times)

Zen Dayley: Feeling a lot better now

Roy Halladay gets some run support, The Tao is full of pith and vinegar and dropping killer Tom Waits references...

• A comeback win took the onus off obsessing over the Jays running themselves out of a scoring inning in the third. Alex Rios got a leadoff single and was caught stealing. The Jays eventually left the bases loaded.
  
  John Brattain has an in-depth piece up about the Jays trying to find an offensive identity. There's some potential for them to become a good on-base team.
  
  The slash stats John cites for the Jays left fielders -- .231/.306/.294 -- are beyond bad. Go ahead, check the splits for their expansion-era teams. Cool Standings, by the way, rates the Jays' playoff chances at 29%. It was as high as 49% less than a week ago.
  
  Hey, it's always darkest before the dawn.
• Ichiro Suzuki, by unofficial count, is 54 hits away from 3,000 for his major-league careers on both sides of the international date line.
• It is completely normal to have the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end when TV guys start talking about baseball history. The CBC's Jim Hughson, while talking about Halladay's complete games on Sunday, started talking about the 1971 Orioles and their four 20-game winners.
  
  Hughson talked about how that an era in baseball "when starters were expected to finish games and relievers were just pitchers who couldn't start." Guhhhh. That might be how Hughson remembers it. In '71, Hoyt Wilhelm was winding up his Hall of Fame career as a relief pitcher. Rollie Fingers, who's also in the Hall of Fame, was making the switch to being a full-time reliever. Sparky Lyle and Mike Marshall, future Cy Young winners who are still among in the top 50 in career saves, were already established as relievers.
  
  Something else prompted doing some sifting through the stats. That '71 Orioles has always eceived the Shula Treatment as a decades-old sports accomplishment the media just take at face value. The 1971 staff's Adjusted ERA+ wasn't even in the top five for an Earl Weaver-helmed Orioles team, let alone the best:
  

  '69: 127
  '79: 123
  '72: 122
  '73: 121
  '70: 116
  '71: 112

  All four of the 20-game winners -- Mike Cuellar, Pat Dobson, Dave McNally and Jim Palmer -- were at full health in 1972, and they pitched much better. Three of the four lowered their ERAs, with McNally's rising just slightly; the team's was 2.53.
  
  No one remembers that, though, because the Orioles didn't hit for beans that season and they finished just six games above .500.
  
• Big League Stew's big ballpark review has reignited the urge to start spitballing about how Toronto needs a real ballpark to replace the Rogers Centre. One Yahoo! Sports commenter called " last and best of a dying breed -- the domed, turfed failed monuments to god that were all the rage before Camden Yards came along and started the rage for parks you might want to play baseball in."
  
  Stew is looking for recommendations for each park -- where to go before or after the game, food and drink tips, where to sit, how to get there. The only thought that comes to mind is to sit in the 100-level outfield seats during July and August day games, in order to be in the shade. The Eastside Mario's on Front St. isn't a bad place to stop before the game, since the food is cheap and will soak up the overpriced beers.
• Baseball America is right on top of the ramifications of Cuban defector Dayan Viciedo (pictured) arriving in the U.S. -- does he become a free agent who can sign with the highest bidder, or does this means he has to go in the amateur draft next year (where he would still probably go to the highest bidder).
  
  It sounds like Viciedo, who's 19, is a power hitter with a position to be named later.
• From the department of, "As I was saying...", The Hardball Times is explaining how Joe DiMaggio was the likely spur for the Hall of Fame bringing in the five-year waiting period. That rule, of course, as given us the concept of a first-balot Hall of Famer.
  
  A few months back, The Walrus magazine ran a DiMaggio-debunking article titled 56*. It was a good effort, holding the historic hitting streak up to modern-day scrutiny. The author's case fell apart (as I noted when asked to reply in the letters section) when he argued that DiMaggio must not have been that big a star, since he didn't get into Coopestown until his third try. That was actually pretty good in those days; it was also the spur to realize something had to change when Joe DiMaggio was forced to wait. That's the risk with revisionist history.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

ZEN DAYLEY: A CASE OF (VANISHING) RUNS

Hey, Roy Halladay only works about every fifth day and that works pretty well ...

• Apparently the Jays' struggles with the bats are just part of a giant league-wide sucking sound.
  
  Bringing this up after a 6-5 game is poor timing, but Baseball Prospectus has provided the context on the league-wide drop in run-scoring across the American League.
  
  (It's topical since Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi mentioned it tonight during his weekly CYB session that this is like the first time since 1974 that the National League has been outscoring the AL. Nate McLouth has more homers than anyone in the AL, for pity's sake.)
  
  Scoring in the AL is down more than half a run per game compared to this point in 2007, when it was also down by about the same amount compared to the same point in '06. All told, it's down 1.26 runs per game from 2006; that's enormous.
  
  That doesn't get the Jays off the hook for not being able to bring home anyone from second with two outs -- just read John Brattain's impassioned analysis for Hardball Times. It explains it in part.
  
  As the Beep notes, teams are trying to get more defence into their lineups, so you see players such as John McDonald end up as a semi-regular. It ends up taking away runs for both teams. The AL also seems to have a lot of pitchers -- Fausto Carmona with the Clevelands, Chien-Ming Wang with the Yankees -- who thrive by 'pitching to contact' and make hitters get themselves out.
• Brattain, by the way, even goes so far to say that Barry Bonds could even use the Jays' numbers hitting with runners in scoring position to build a collusion case.
  
  The Jays signed Kevin Mench and Brad Wilkerson -- nice guys, who can certainly help, but you wouldn't want to mock them by even comparing their 2007 numbers to the 43-year-old Bonds. (Six months later, the gut feeling remains that Bonds won't serve a day in jail -- but those U.S. prosecutors, god bless them, are determined to make something/anything stick.)
  
• Sox & Dawgs has a clip of that Manny Ramirez catch where he high-fives a fan sitting in the first row and then throws back to the infield to double off Kevin Millar.
• There are no master switches, but the Rays' bullpen has an earned-run average of 3.16 -- exactly three runs lower than their major league-worst 6.16 last season.
• Joe Posnanski has a book to sell for only $5.99.
• It figures that a post that would start off talking off about disappearing offence would come on a night when the Syracuse Chiefs scored 16 runs in back-to-back innings.
• It's probably not that amazing that smart people still deny Bill James' work at the same time that it's being used to help explain complex political strategy. A version of sabermetrics might have a hand in determining the next leader of the free world, as this article about a Barack Obama campaign strategist named Jeffrey Berman details:
  
  

  "A glimpse at Berman's, and the campaign’s, detailed, Bill-Jamesesque approach to the game of politics came in a spreadsheet the campaign sent to Bloomberg reporters, it said inadvertently, on Feb. 5. The spreadsheet had estimates of the outcomes and delegate counts in every state; it has called the winner wrong just twice.
  
  "... the heart of Obama’s victory has been technical and tactical — to the frustration and disbelief of (Hillary) Clinton's inner circle." (Emphasis mine.)

  That would make Hillary analogous to Joe Morgan, then. (Link via the very essential ShysterBall.)
• Last but not least, contributors from D-Rays Bay and Drunk Jays Fans have a hand in the AL East Blog, which might become a regular stop. Their Yankees chronicler, get this, is named Hank Sager -- no relation.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

THE LAST, LAST, LAST, LAST LEITCH-BISSINGER POST, PROMISE

There's no telling how much bandwidth was spent on Buzz Bissinger melting down all over Will Leitch on Costas Now.

In a continuing effort to secure a lower rung on the inferno, here's a kind of best-of symposium, presented in the same way the newspapers and the TV networks do their Sunday wrap-up. That ought to pacify the old-schoolers.

The Tao of Stieb: "Blogs haven't caused the decline of sports journalism. Sports journalism has caused the decline of sports journalism.

"... We link to the Globe or the Star or wherever because we want to continue the conversation on our own terms. We don't want to sign in to your site to make a two line comment. We want to go on at length, and examine and discuss. Journalists don't have an inherent right to the last word on any subject, and there is immense value to the extension of the dialogue beyond the newsprint and ink. Sometimes we want to hold up your writings to be praised, and sometimes we post them out of scorn. But it's ultimately healthy to have someone out there watching the watchers."

Incidentally, William Houston's, in The Tao's view, "overly sympathetic treatment" of Bissinger sparking off a great comment thread on The Globe's website. It was cut off after just 24 comments -- which kind of proves The Tao's point.

In fairness, a couple did make jokes about recreational drug use among members of the Ottawa Senators. That rumour, again? We can't have that sort of thing.)

Hey Jenny Slater: "Bissinger went to an elite prep school, was an editor of the student paper at Penn, and won a Pultizer, and I've done none of those things. But if Buzz says that, say, Tony Romo is a good quarterback and I say Romo sucks, none of those academic or professional highlights make Buzz any righter than I am ... Buzz is understandably angry that his position at the top of the heap is in danger of being usurped, but in expressing that anger, he demonstrated that -- ta-da! -- he's no different from any of the rest of us. His elite Northeastern education may have given him more knowledge, credentials, and access than any of us will ever get on our own, but apparently it didn't give him enough manners to keep 'I think you're full of shit' from being the very first words out of his mouth directed toward Will Leitch."

John Brattain weighed in, bless him.

Baseball Digest Daily: "The media is a deadbeat dad -- we are their children. Well 'Dad' maybe if you were responsible and set a better example maybe we wouldn’t be knocking on your door right now. Guess what Pop? We're home and we’re all yours and the more you screw around the more of us will keep showing up."

The guys at The Scrum Brandon talked to Michael Schur (AKA Fire Joe Morgan's Ken Tremendous, AKA Mose Schrute from The Office) for a podcast -- huge get, by the way.

"If you've been allowed to write about any subect you've wanted to without having anyone research it or challenge it, and then suddenly, basically overnight, there's an instantaneous, massive fact-checking machine that can be operated by anybody with a computer and a cable modem and you're getting put through a rigorous vetting process every time you print something, that's really scary. And I think that is probably affecting the way these people see blogs and the Internet in general."

This kind of touches on the points I made the last time I retired.

Sports On My Mind: "The people attacking 'bloggers' have not yet realized that a synonym for 'bloggers' is 'people.' We're not some underclass coming out of hiding in the caves ...

"Enough covering my own ass, though. Let's get to it: Leitch isn’t exactly blameless here, either.

"I mostly enjoy Deadspin. I read it everyday. I have it on my RSS feed. I comment over there, from time to time. But I'm also not going to pretend that it's above reproach. It's not a watchdog site, or a news site; it is an opinion site and it *is* a gossip site."

Who knows, maybe this is a spur to aspire to something else. That said, people like gossip — hey, did you hear that Elisha Cuthbert and Calgary's favourite Cro-Magnon man, Dion Phaneuf, are supposedly dating? That changes everything.

One more, and then enough's enough:

Sarah Schorno, Huffington Post: "What (Bissinger and Bob Costas), and most blog critics, fail to understand is that both mainstream media and blogs can co-exist peacefully. Bloggers aren't set out to replace print journalists. They exist to add commentary and color to the news that is reported in print and online every day. Readers don't use blogs to replace the news they get from the mainstream. They use it to add substance.

".. What is going to happen is that the poor journalism that existed previously due to a lack of choices is going to fade away. Blogs aren't destroying journalism, they are forcing it to improve."

Will Leitch can really write, and he will still do so, in some way, shape or form, whether it on the web or in dead-tree format. This shall pass for him; as for the rest of us, let's not to be too sure.

Interesting note on Buzz Bissinger: He's raised a son who suffered severe brain damage during his birth. He's spinning this off into his next book, which will hopefully cut into Rebecca Eckler's share of the mommy-porn market.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

ZEN DAYLEY: WAYS TO EASE THE PAIN, BESIDES BOOZE

The only way to forget about that Blue Jays team that can't hit a volleyball with a two-by-four is to get more immersed in baseball. Seriously, you need to be able to laugh off a team which is hitting .100 with runners in scoring position. It's just a game. Here's some solaces:

• Keep in mind that's there still some sportsmanship left in the world.
• Marvel at Micah Owings, a pitcher, coming off the bench to hit a game-tying, pinch-hit home run for the Diamondbacks last night.
  
  (Forget his pitching. Can the Jays get Owings to start at first base against left-handers?)
  
• Read the Yahoo! Sports feature on St. Louis Cardinals reserve outfielder Brian Barton. It's timely in light of the hits that the younger generation of sportswriters have taken in the past 48 hours.
  
  Jeff Passan's piece would be great in any media. Don't miss the point, though. Web culture helps make this possible (and more accessible than if it was only in the print edition of the Kansas City Star). The typical paints-by-numbers profile that tells you everything about a famous athlete except what he/she is like and why you should give a damn about her or him isn't going to cut it for Yahoo!.
  
  Passan had more licence and latitude to profile an obscure backup outfielder who's majored in aerospace engineering, travelled the world for reasons other than to play sports and says nonjocklike stuff such as, "I like to invest in knowledge." He sounds a hell of lot more interesting than Alex Rodriguez or Sidney Crosby. The reality is that a lot of media highers-up will settle for the 1,000th feature on Crosby push a writer to bat out the first one about Bryan Barton -- assuming they've ever heard of Bryan Barton.
  
  That's something that Buzz Bissinger and Bob Costas never acknowledged during their character assassination of Will Leitch the other night. There's a bit of irony, then, that Barton plays for the Cardinals.
  
  (Also worth a look-see: Yahoo!'s piece on how attendance is up even with a slowing U.S. economy.)
• A little Googling turns up a 1994 profile of Can-Am League commissioner Miles Wolff that gives us all a model of behaviour to aspire to: "In conversation he's cerebral and dispassionate; even when calling somebody a jerk, he makes it sound more like analytical precision than scorn."

On the serious side...

• John Brattain has a requiem for John Gibbons at Hardball Times. No one's who is of a rational mind has ever said jettisoning Gibbons would automatically make things any better.
  
  It just wouldn't make it any worse.
• He's McGlovin, not McRunnin: John McDonald getting picked off while pinch-running for the designated hitter (which keeps him from going in for his fielding), that was karmic.
  
  Yanking Matt Stairs in a tie game is a kind of a low-percentage play. The runner's speed doesn't determine whether he can score from second base on a two-out single or from first on a double at Fenway Park, given its quirky dimensions. It's more about how the ball's hit, where the outfielder's positioned and how quickly he can make a good throw. Just look at David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez the past two nights.
• Drunk Jays Fans tees off on J.P. Ricciardi for his "you want to win with good people" sermon on The Fan 590 last night when the Barry Bonds question came up again. It was a little paternalistic, but that's part of sustaining a Big Lie.

Booze also helps. That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

TWO YEARS OLD; THIS WILL BE A TREAT

This little site began with a Warren Zevon reference two years ago, so piggybacking on his art is appropriate for marking Out of Left Field's birthday.

(Move ahead to the 3:45 mark and listen to man play.)

There is not much to be said that hasn't made it into one of the 2,406 posts that have appeared here across the past 732 days. There have been countless late, lonely nights, endless empty threats to retire, death by a thousand typos and of course, shenanigans.

Someone even got sued that one time. C'est la vie.

Please know that there is no end to the gratitude toward everyone who has contributed to two years that have never been dull, except maybe during the dog days of the baseball season and that period in the dead of Canadian winter when the sun is just a rumour. There are too many folks to mention by name, but it takes in readers, commenters, every other blog who's linked here, colleagues who have gone from not knowing what a blog is to understand what makes someone write one, plus the family and friends who have been very encouraging.

Truth be known, it's too hard to get through this without thanking some people specifically. It seems best to keep it to the family (Mom, Dad, Trina, Shawn and Amer) and friends who have been supportive sincebefore this site launched -- a group including but not limited to Neil Acharya, Jim Burnett, Keith Borkowsky, Samantha Craggs, Jeff Dertinger, John Gillis, Dan Hirschorn, Greg Hughes, Tiffany Mayer, Dan Pearce, Peter Roney, Dan Rowe, Darryl G. Smart, Trevor Stewart. and of course, Christopher J. Thomas, the world's oldest teenager.

Then there are the people who've become trusted associates through the blog, such as Jean-Pierre Allard, John Bower, John Brattain, Andrew Bucholtz, John Cosway, Andy Grabia, Carl Kiiffner, Tyler King, Greg Layson, Mark Masters, James Mirtle, Erin Nicks, Dennis Prouse, Pete Toms and Mark Wacyk. Everyone should be so lucky to have a commenter such as Dennis. Dan Pawliw of the Queen's Football Club gets a special thanks.

The Tao of Stieb deserves a special thanks; so do Deadspin, Boatmen Blog and the motley crew over at Epic Carnival. Last but not least are all the readers, who might prefer having staying anonymous. Every e-mail, supportive or critical, has done the trick.

Like Warren said, some will sink, but we will float.

UP AT 6: HAVING A BALL IN BEIJING

How did you get that motorcycle up there on the high dive, anyways?

• Twelve hours later, it's still stunning Canada qualified for the Olympics in baseball. Does it ever get tiresome pointing out that we did better in baseball in Athens that we did in Turin in men's hockey, especially considering the relative budgets for the two national associations?
  
  (Short answer: No, and yes, it's a bit unhealthy to always love the underdog.)
• John Brattain is just demented enough to believe that incident in the late '90s when Manny Ramirez hit a comebacker right off Josias Manzanillo's cup -- or would have if Manzanillo had been wearing one -- demands to be set off in verse.
• Another Rapids pitching signing: Left-hander Jason Pilkington, a former Northern Leaguer, is apparently close to signing here ... much obliged to the Guelph Mercury and Greg Layson.
• Never too early to start thinking about the March Madness south of the border: Is Florida going to miss the Tournament? (They were down 30-5 at one point last night to Alabama -- who way back in September, lost an exhibition game to Carleton.)

HARD TO FIND GOOD HELP THESE DAYS

Reading this post from John Brattain sums up a lot of how far behind the times the Baseball Hall of Fame has fallen.

"As to the Hall of Fame—the last three times I have been down there the research area has been locked. This was my fear about this trip and a phone call reassured me all would be well but nope — the reason for the trip would be off limits after all.

"Here's the thing, you can call the Hall and ask for research but it takes close to a year before they get the materials to you; if you decide to do it yourself they lock it down for the same reason gas prices take a jump. In other words they do it, but don't expect a satisfactory reason for doing so. In this case, it was closed for the holidays but would re-open on New Year's Eve.

"Huh?"

The Hall of Fame isn't just a museum; it's also a research library. One would think a sport that celebrates its past like baseball does would do everything to help writers such as John.

ANSWERING THE CALL, TO GET HIM IN THE HALL

I have been welcomed into the stable of writers compiling the Tim Raines: Hall of Fame 2008 website (raines30.com).

The site's purpose is to show the Expos great was as good if not better than most of the 1980s generation of players who are in the Hall of Fame, or who will be. My first article was posted today.

It's a kick to team up with John Brattain, Craig Burley, Jonah Keri and Tom N. Tango. Each of them has a high profile when it comes to writing about baseball for a web audience; more to the point, they have a profile. On this end, it's kind of like what Conan O'Brien said after being asked how he felt about being a "relative unknown" taking over on Late Night: "Sir, I am a complete unknown!"

Ken Davidoff of Newsday is the latest Hall of Fame voter to say the Raines is a yes.