Pat Allen: The View from Right Field

Woody, Thanks.

I’m sorry we couldn’t win it for you, today, but thanks so much for so many memories.  The twenty strike out game.  The playoff game against Maddux in 1998.  Your comeback in 2000.  Game 5 in Atlanta in ’03.  Your comeback in 2007; Glavine may have won his 300th, but you got the cheers.  And the Cubs Convention the last two years.  It has been great.  Thank you so much.

------------
Update (5/19/2012 11:50 pm):  I was in a rush to post something about Kerry Wood retiring yesterday because, well, it seemed the right thing to do.  Let me mention in some more detail the two "comebacks" I referred to.  On May 2, 2000, Kerry was making his first start since the 1998 playoffs.  He had been out all of 1999 rehabilitating from surgery, and May 2 was his first time back.  The Cubs beat the Astros, 11 to 1, and Kerry hit a home run in the second inning.  On August 5, 2007, Kerry was returning from fourteen months on the disabled list.  Before that he had always been a starter; now he was a reliever.  This was his first game back, and when he came into the game in the sixth inning, Wrigley Field was electric.  I will never forget either one of those games.

Jamie Moyer Sets Another Major League Record

I was thinking about writing about how bad the Cubs were last night in losing to the Florida, oops, I mean Miami, Marlins, but then I saw that Jamie Moyer won another game – at 49 years, 150 days old, the oldest man ever to win a major league game.  And he didn’t do by pitching in relief, he did it by starting and pitching seven innings, giving up just six hits and two runs, both unearned.

David Schoenfield’s story is here.

My scorecard from Jamie Moyer’s first major league game, on June 16, 1986 is here:

Fantasy Baseball - The Real Kind

“Fantasy baseball” is a big deal.  Personally, though, I have always thought that the real fantasy baseball was baseball itself.  How could fans care so much if it were not for fantasy – expect maybe Yankees fans, but they don’t count.

In any case, with baseball season starting two weeks from today, I give you this cartoon on Fantasy Baseball from the April 2, 2012 issue of Baseball America.  Paul Trap, who draws the cartoons for Baseball America, is awesome.  His cartoon is the first thing I look for in every issue of Baseball America. 

The New Baseball Postseason: Good – But Not As Great As They Think

Bud Selig’s new Star-Spangled, Super-Fantastic, Two Wild Cards In Every League Postseason Playoff Scheme is with us.  It’s fairly simple.  Instead of one wild card team, plus the three division winners, getting into the postseason from each league, we are now going to have two wild card teams from each league.  The two wild card teams will play a one-game playoff, with the winner joining the three division winners in the Division Series.

The idea is not only to put an extra team in the playoffs (and keep more teams in contention, and more fans interested, in September), but also to make winning the division more significant.  Up until now, winning the division was important but it wasn’t critical.  The wild card winners were just about equal with the division winners.  From now on, however, the wild card teams are going to have to win the wild card play-off game to get to the Division Series.  That is a big risk.

I understand the logic behind the move, and on balance it is a good idea, even if it dilutes the postseason a little more by allowing fully one-third of the teams into the playoffs.

But I object to one argument in favor of the new idea: The argument that wild card playoff games will give us, every year,  the excitement of September 28, 2011 (see here), when the wild card spots in both leagues came down to the final game of the year.  Similarly, I have heard it said that the excitement of the Cubs-Giants playoff game in 1998 (also on September 28), when the Cubs and Giants had a playoff for the wild card spot, would have been the same under the new system - because the Cubs and Giants would have still been playing that night anyway.  It would have just been the first game of the postseason, i.e., the game between the two wild card teams, instead a playoff game at the end of the regular season to see who would get into the postseason.

That argument is wrong.  The excitement will not be as great.  I watched September 28 last year, and I still have a videotape of the September 28, 1998.  Here’s the difference: Last year, and in 1998, the games were all about getting into the postseason.  The new wild card playoff game will just be about advancing in the postseason, not getting there.  It has come to not be all that big of a deal to win a Division Series.  The League Championship Series is a big deal because you get a pennant and you get to the World Series.  The Division Series?  Just a stop on the way.  And that is what the wild card playoff game has a chance to become.  Just another stop on the way. 

And I can assure you that neither September 28, 2011 nor September 28, 1998 were just another stop on the way.

A Couple of Comments on Ryan Braun

First, Ryan Braun is not guilty of taking performance enhancing drugs.  While we will not know the exact reason for the arbitrator’s decision until he issues a written opinion, that is, in effect, what he said.  If we are going to take the arbitrator’s decision when he says athletes did take drugs, why don’t we take his decision when he decides the other way?

Second, Major League Baseball seems incensed by the decision, which makes no sense to me unless they think their drug testing system is absolutely perfect and never, ever makes a mistake.  But nothing in this world is perfect, and people do make mistakes.  How does major league baseball know this wasn’t the time a mistake was made?

Speaking of which, if MLB’s system is perfect, how did the results of Ryan Braun’s test leak out?  Wasn't it supposed to be announced only after any appeals?  So why did we find out before that?  Does that mean the system isn’t perfect?  And if it’s not perfect in this way, in terms of secrecy, how do we know it’s perfect in the other way; i.e., in terms of the results of the tests?  Also, where was MLB’s apology to Ryan Braun for the leak of the results?  Did I miss that?

Finally, I would be a lot more impressed by Bud Selig’s outrage at this decision if it had not taken him so long to speak out on the issue of drugs in baseball.  I understand that MLB couldn’t institute a drug testing regime without consent of the players union, but did that mean Mr. Selig couldn’t take a public position?  The problem of drugs in baseball was obvious to a lot of people for a long time before the commissioner or the owners said anything.  Their self-righteousness now is a little late.

Goodbye, Carlos

I’m sorry to see you go.  There were times when you did things that you shouldn’t have (like beating up on Michael Barrett), but there were other times when you told it like it was (last summer).   And a good part of the problem was a Cubs management that let you get away with things they shouldn’t have let you get away with for far too long.

So, goodbye and good luck.  And keep hitting those homers.  Someday maybe you’ll catch Wes Ferrell.  Just don’t do it against us.

Did Somebody Say Pedro Cerrano?

This from Paul Sullivan:

“The Ricketts family's $20 million purchase of the McDonald's and its parking lot across from Wrigley Field makes perfect sense for long-term planning, but goes against the grain a bit for the organization. After the team hired a nutritionist in 2010, clubhouse employees were banned from making McDonald's runs for the players.

The team relaxed the fast-food ban somewhat last summer and now allows players to eat Popeye's chicken when Matt Garza starts.”

-----------
Explanatory note to people who have not watched “Major League” at least ten times:  At the end of the movie, before the playoff game between the Yankees and the Indians, Pedro Cerrano, a religious refugee from Cuba (his religion? Voodoo), wants to sacrifice a live chicken in the clubhouse.  Jake Taylor tries to divert him by bringing in a bucket of chicken from the Colonel.

The Heckler

For those of you who don’t read it, The Heckler is a satirical sports publication.  It started in Chicago, focusing on the Cubs.  It expanded to other sports and other teams and then to other cities.  I got my first article published in The Heckler yesterday: "Braun blames drug test on eating a leftover chorizo from the sausage race".  You can find it here.

And Then There Were Four

Ernie, Billy and Fergie have – finally – been joined in the Hall of Fame by Ron.  It took way too long – and especially a year and two days too long – but Ron Santo, the sixth best third baseman in baseball history*, has been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame and will be inducted on July 22, 2012.  See you there.

--------
* According to The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, p. 541 (2001).  Mr. James ranked him behind only Mike Schmidt, George Brett, Eddie Mathews, Wade Boggs and Home Run Baker.

World Series: Cardinals vs. Rangers

With the World Series starting tomorrow night, I thought it might be appropriate to post this picture, taken on about October 27, 1985: