The View from Right Field

Goodbye 2016. Hello 2017.

Paul Trapp, from the current issue of Baseball America:

The World Series or the Presidential Election from He**?

For Chicago Cubs fans and Cleveland Indians fans, it's an easy choice.  For baseball fans in general, it's an easy choice.  For fans of America, it's a good choice, too.  You can ignore the presidential election from he** for a few more days.

100 Wins; Best Record. Nice. But It’s All About October.

Yesterday’s Chicago Tribune had a list of how well teams with the best record in the majors and/or 100 wins have done in the playoffs since the three divisions/wild card system was instituted in 1995.¹  Assuming each of the eight teams in the playoffs² has an equal chance of winning, that’s an average of 2.625 World Series championships for any team over this 21 year-period, if the team was in the playoffs every year.

Now, look at what actually happened.  Over the 21 years, the team with the best record in the majors has won the World Series four times, instead of a projected 2.625 times.  Actually, since five times there was a tie for best record, you are looking at 26 teams, which projects to 3.25 championships³ – versus the actual four times it occurred.  Not much of a difference for having the best record in baseball.

50 Years Ago: September 25, 1966: Kenny Holtzman vs. Sandy Koufax.

Earlier this year, I wrote about going to a Cubs game with my dad fifty years ago, on May 28, 1966, and how I went with our son to the Cubs game on May 28 of this year.

Well, let me mention one more 50th anniversary, coming up on Sunday. Ed Sherman wrote about it in last Sunday’s Chicago Tribune.  It is the 50th anniversary of the day Kenny Holtzman, the Cubs’ left-handed Jewish rookie pitcher, started against Sandy Koufax, the Dodgers’ (and the world’s) greatest left-handed Jewish pitcher.  Koufax was famous around the world for not pitching on Yom Kippur during the 1965 World Series.  Koufax was famous around the baseball world for being just about the best pitcher in baseball in the early and middle 1960s.

Colin Kaepernick and the National Anthem: A Bit of Baseball History

I am a little late on the Colin Kaepernick brouhaha, but then it is perhaps not too late to bring a little history to questions like this.  The question, of course, is standing for the National Anthem before sporting events – or, rather, the playing of the National Anthem before sporting events.  The National Anthem is always played before sporting events.  Baseball games.  Football games.  Just about everything.¹  So it is a big deal when some player won’t stand or pay attention during the Anthem.²

But the point is the Anthem hasn’t always been played before baseball games.  I remember the Chicago Cubs didn’t play the Anthem before games in late 1950s and early 1960s.  (I can’t speak to before the late 1950s; I wasn’t there – or at least I don’t remember.)  They would play it for holidays, like Memorial Day or the Fourth of July, but not for regular games.  It was only when our involvement in Vietnam started to increase in the mid-1960s that Philip Wrigley began having the National Anthem played before all games.  Obviously, it is standard now (and Wayne Messmer always does a fantastic job when he sings for the Cubs), but it is perhaps useful to remember that it wasn’t always so.
---------
¹ It’s not played before high school or college tennis matches; at least not at the ones I have been to.
² I am always impressed by the respect that foreign baseball players show while the National Anthem is played.  I mean, if you are from the Dominican Republic, etc., it’s not your anthem.  But they always stand there respectfully.

August Is Nice – But It Doesn’t Matter Until October Anymore

The Cubs are hot, and people are talking about them.  I frequently get people coming up to me, talking about the Cubs.  I realize the fact I am wearing a Cubs hat is probably part of that, but I have been wearing a Cubs hat a long time.  People weren’t coming up to me in 2012 or 1996.  It sometimes gets a little frustrating because, anymore, as long as you make the playoffs, and five out of fifteen teams in each league do, the regular season just doesn’t matter all that much.

Back before they created the divisions, and especially before they came up with the Wild Cards, the regular season mattered.  You needed to win.  And if you did, you got to the World Series.  Which meant people remembered the regular season.  The Giants coming from 13-1/2 games back in August to tie the Dodgers and win the playoff (Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard ‘round the world”).  Gabby’s “Homer in the Gloamin’” in ‘38.  The Merkle game in 1908, and the Indians beating the Red Sox in 1948.  People remember those games.

The 1945 World Series as Preview of the 2016 Presidential Election

If predicting the outcome in November wasn’t hard enough with the two candidates with the highest disapproval ratings having won their respective party’s nomination for president (assuming Hillary Clinton actually winds up winning hers), consider this:

Both Donald Trump and former Secretary Clinton have done their best in primaries in states that are solid for the other party.  Former Secretary Clinton’s biggest wins have been in the south; Donald Trump’s in New England and New York.

Which makes you think the election in November might wind up being the political equivalent of the 1945 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and Detroit Tigers.  With their war-depleted rosters, Chicago sportswriter Warren Brown famously said: “I don't think either one of them is good enough to win it.”
-----------
UPDATE (5/21/16 1:00 am):  I deleted some language in the first sentence of the second paragraph to make it read better.

Why I Boo #Brewers Ryan Braun

Ryan Braun was not in the Brewers’ starting lineup last night.  But with two men on base and the Brewers down by three runs in the eighth inning, Brewers’ manager Craig Counsell sent him up to pinch hit.  Cubs fans, including me, started booing Braun before he was even announced.  When Braun hit a double, driving in two runs, on the first pitch, he was pumped, probably figuring he showed us Cubs fans.  Well, maybe.

But you see, the reason I booed Ryan Braun was not because he took steroids or whatever performance enhancing drug it was that he took.  As the Brewers fan behind me commented, Braun was punished for that and now he can play under the rules.

#Cubs Jake Arrieta Saves Our Streak

Readers of this blog will know that I am, and was, very proud of the Cubs record of not getting no-hit since September 9, 1965¹ – until July 25 of last year.  Fortunately, I was on vacation at that time and didn’t see or listen to the game – or read anything about it.  When it ended, the Cubs no-hit streak had reached 7,920 games.  A major league record – by far. 

Except, sort of, for the Cincinnati Reds, who had not been no-hit, before tonight, in the regular season, since June 23, 1971, a total of 7,109 games.  The Reds had been no-hit in the postseason, however, on October 6, 2010, something which I felt counted even if other people didn’t.  Still, now the Reds streak is over no matter how you look at it. 

April 20: The 100th Anniversary of Pat Pieper’s First Game at Wrigley Field

Tomorrow is not only the 100th anniversary of the Cubs’ first game at Wrigley Field.  It is also the 100th anniversary of Pat Pieper’s first game as public address announcer for the Cubs.  Pat started to work for the Cubs in 1904, selling peanuts at the old West Side Grounds.¹  When the Cubs moved to what was then-called Weeghman Park in 1916, Pat became the public address announcer.  His first game, and the Cubs’ first game in what would become Wrigley Field, was April 20, 1916.  The Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds, 7 to 6, in eleven innings.

Until 1932, when the loudspeaker system was installed, Pat would go up and down the sidelines carrying a huge 14-pound megaphone, announcing the lineups.  But whether with the megaphone or the loudspeaker, it was always the same:

“Attention … Attention, please … Have your pencils … and scorecards ready … for the correct lineups … for today’s ballgame”