Friday Stuff

Monday

We began the week with an ode to scorekeepers everywhere. One super awesome guy on Twitter re-posted it with the snarky, yet grammatically-incorrect comment, “if they stopped mommy score booking , we would be nice Paul”.

I’m not sure what “mommy score booking” is, but it seems pretty misogynistic, on top of being a pretty clear signal that he didn’t read the actual post. Ah well, it’s nice to have fans.

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This was the anniversary of the death of two great sluggers who played in Detroit, Hank Greenberg and Turkey Stearnes. Neither is talked about enough, in my view, likely because they were each overshadowed by bigger stars while also battling bigotry of different types. But let’s just quickly recognize something:

• Greenberg averaged 38 homers, 148 RBI and a .313 batting average for every full season of 162 games that he played, despite missing all or part of FIVE seasons due to service in World War II.

• Stearnes averaged 31 homers, 165 RBI, and a .348 batting average for every full season of 162 games, and did that over the course of 18 years.

They are, without question, two of the greatest hitters in baseball history, inner circle Hall of Famers.

Tuesday

I apologize profusely to those who got flashbacks to math class when they read my piece from Tuesday about the stats we should be using instead of batting average to judge players. I couldn’t be helped.

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Baseball great Napoleon “Nap” Lajoie would have been 149 years old on Tuesday if he’d dedicated himself to setting the record for oldest living person. Slacker. No, seriously, he was a remarkable player who lived in the shadow of Honus Wagner and Ty Cobb.

He was so good, in fact, that the entire Cleveland team was named for him for a while. From 1903 to 1905, the were called the Cleveland Napoleons, and then were the Naps for another nine seasons. Then Lajoie moved on the play for the A’s and Cleveland decided to go with Indians for the next century or so.

If teams still did that today, we’d have some awesome team names like the L.A. Mookies, L.A. Shoheis, Atlanta Acuñas and the Baltimore Gunnars, and baseball would just be a little more fun, wouldn’t it?

Wednesday

When I was a kid, the Phillies were constantly good and I was always rooting for them to finally get past the Dodgers or Reds or whoever ad get to the World Series. They were the National League equivalent of the Royals, who were also good at the same time but couldn’t beat the damned Yankees.

Then 1980 happened, and both the Royals and the Phillies finally got to the World Series and played each other. I didn’t like the Phillies at that point because we’d moved to Kansas City, and I had made the Royals my second-favorite team behind the Red Sox. Plus, the Phillies had added Pete Rose, who I still couldn’t stand from the 1975 World Series. When they won, I was not happy.

Still, I kind of always appreciated the path they took to get there, so it was sad for me when they sort of fell apart for a decade. On Wednesday, I wrote about how their decline happened, and the string of bad decisions that led to it.

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I don’t want to besmirch the reputation of a good guy and great player, especially on the anniversary of his death, but Lou Brock is one of the most overrated players in history. He did three things really well, and they’ve carried his reputation.

First, he was really fast and attempted a ton of steals, leading the league eight times. You know what else he led the league in a lot? Getting caught. Brock was caught stealing over 300 times, leading the league seven times. His career success rate of 75% is right on the line that divides a base stealer who is adding to his team’s chances to win or taking away from them.

Second, he was super durable. Brock played over 150 games 11 straight years, allowing him to keep racking up those steals, along with hits. He topped 3,000, and is pretty easily the worst player to ever do that. Of the 33 players who have 3,000 or more hits, his career WAR of 45.3 is dead last. And by a lot. Next closest is Ichiro Suzuki at 60.0.

Finally, Brock was a genuinely excellent postseason player, with a .391 average and 1.079 OPS in postseason play.

Beyond that, he wasn’t that good at anything. He struck out a lot for a guy with so little power, didn’t draw many walks, and was a terrible defender. I’m okay with him being in the Hall of Fame, and he’s certainly not the worst player there. But he was elected on the first ballot based on those hit and steal totals, despite the fact that they masked any otherwise good-but-not -great player.

Thursday

Ripper Collins left school at 14, was married at 17, worked in coal mines into his early 20s, and kept playing baseball anyway, looking for a way out of the same poverty he’d been raised in. He didn’t play a full year in the majors until he was 28, but kept up a happy-go-lucky, prankster personality. That struck me as worthy of being remembered this week.

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This was the anniversary of Ken Boyer’s death from cancer in 1982 when he was just 51 years old. His career peak was just prior to the time I called The Golden Age of Third Basemen, so I didn’t cover his career as much in that piece, but he certainly falls into the same category with the third basemen who’ve been unfairly overlooked. He stands 14th on Jay Jaffe’s third base rankings, right in the middle of the Graig Nettles, Buddy Bell, Dick Allen, Sal Bando group that came along as his career was wrapping up. Whatever Era Committee for the Hall of Fame that Boyer currently falls into could do a lot worse than finally giving him a spot in Cooperstown.

Friday

This is Buck Leonard’s birthday, the man often called “The Black Lou Gehrig.” Let’s compare their respective 162-game averages:

Wow, super close, huh? More homers for Gehrig, but that’s not unusual. It was common for Negro Leagues players’ normal homer totals shoot up once they finally made the major leagues (Roy Campanella, Luke Easter, Sam Jethroe, and others), likely because they weren’t playing doubleheader after doubleheader, with better equipment, better lighting, better travel, etc. Make a similar adjustment for Leaonard, and he and Gehrig are virtually the same player. This is one of those times the nickname really fits.