Thursday, April 20, 2017 |
A Diffident Anniversary: Six Years Ago, MLB Ousted The McCourts
Monday, June 15, 2015 |
Wid Matthews' Matchless Track Record
Jackie [Robinson] says the Dodgers blew a chance to land Willie Mays when he was a 16-year-old phenom with the Birmingham Black Barons. “The Dodger players were much impressed with Mays when we played an exhibition game with the Barons,” said Jackie. “The front office in Brooklyn was contracted, but Wid Mathews, Mr. Rickey’s assistant, turned down Willie because Wid said he couldn’t hit a curve ball.”This is genuinely incredible, because Wid Mathews also wrote off Jackie Robinson as "strictly the showboat type". It's one thing to be wrong about a player, but to clank so impressively on two Hall of Famers is something like a reverse Midas touch.
Saturday, December 01, 2012 |
Stadium Graveyard, And Proposed But Unbuilt Stadiums
- Wrigley Field (Los Angeles) expansion that would have extended the outfield and upper deck to wrap all the way around the park. The Dodgers instead elected to play temporarily at the Coliseum.
- The Buckminster Fuller-inspired Brooklyn Dome, which would have been the first of its kind.
- A different Angels Stadium that would have been situated in the abandoned Baldwin Hills Dam site.
- Here's one that sounds like an Irwin Allen movie waiting to happen: a stadium floating in Mission Bay in San Diego.
Labels: angels, dodgers, history
Friday, March 09, 2012 |
Harry Wendelstedt, RIP
Drysdale threw a 2-2 pitch that struck Dick Dietz on the elbow, and the shutout streak seemed to be over. But Wendelstedt, the plate umpire, immediately ruled that Dietz didn't try to get out of the way. Wendelstedt called the pitch a ball and told Dietz to get back in the batter's box."I'd never seen that call before in the big leagues," Lasorda recalled. "Never had seen anyone make it."
After a heated argument, the game resumed. On a full-count pitch, Dietz flied out and Drysdale wound up pitching a shutout. Orel Hershiser set the shutout record of 59 innings in 1988, pitching under Lasorda.
"Harry had a wide strike zone, he liked to see hitters swing the bat," Lasorda said, laughing. "Dick Dietz. Harry, he got him out. And the streak continued."
Labels: deaths, dodgers, giants, history, obituaries, umpires
Wednesday, February 15, 2012 |
Fear That New York Would Corner The Free Agency Market — In 1912
Labels: history
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 |
Happy Birthday, Jackie Robinson
I was sitting in the audience at the Summit Meeting of Negro Leaders yesterday when you said we must have patience. On hearing you say this, I felt like standing up and saying, 'Oh no! Not again.'I respectfully remind you sir, that we have been the most patient of all people. When you said we must have self-respect, I wondered how we could have self-respect and remain patient considering the treatment accorded us through the years.
17 million Negroes cannot do as you suggest and wait for the hearts of men to change. We want to enjoy now the rights that we feel we are entitled to as Americans. This we cannot do unless we pursue aggressively goals which all other Americans achieved over 150 years ago.
Friday, January 13, 2012 |
Bill James Predicts The Lansford/Burleson/Hobson Trade Outcome
But what brought this to mind was a Sports Illustrated article by Daniel Okrent (h/t Jay Jaffe on Twitter) introducing the then-unknown Bill James to a wider audience. In particular, check out this passage about that deal, freshly struck, and the far more even-handed deal that sent Fred Lynn to the Angels:
This season James relishes the textbook cases he expects will develop from the big Boston-California switches of the past winter, when players shuttled between the best hitters' park in the league (Fenway) and the third-worst (Anaheim). "One is tempted to say," he writes, "that when you put Carney Lansford in Fenway he will inherit Fred Lynn's statistics, and when you put Lynn in the Big A, he will pick up those left behind. That could very possibly happen, and I've hung myself on cruder scaffolds."Pretty impressive, really.James then made the following bold declarations:
- Lynn, over a period of years, will not even approach in California the offensive production he had in Fenway. If he hit .300 two-thirds of the time in Fenway, it might be one-third of the time in California. James admits that Lynn is unpredictable, but he estimates that in the long run he will be a .285 hitter in Anaheim, with 18 to 24 home runs a year. [In fact, he only once in four years with the Angels posted near a .300 average, in 1982 when he hit .299. — RLM]
- Third Baseman Lansford, a .261 hitter in Anaheim with 15 homers last year, is pegged for a .310 season in Boston with 25 home runs, but, says James, "that doesn't represent the upper boundary of his ability." [Lansford went on to post two very good seasons with Boston, and then found himself traded to Angels' AL West division rival Oakland, where he finished his career.]
- Rick Burleson, the ex-Boston short-Stop, never used Fenway to his particular advantage and should hit just as well in California. [He did — for one year — separated his shoulder in a spring training game in 1982, missed most of that year, posted solid numbers in 1983, but missed most of 1984 when he re-tore his rotator cuff lifting weights before the season.]
- But Butch Hobson, the third baseman sent from Boston to California, is in for trouble. His home-run frequency will hold up, but his average will plummet so much that, in combination with his poor defensive play, it will make him a bad risk. The Angels will eventually bench him, since they already have an abundance of designated hitters and first basemen, and there's no other place to play Hobson. So he'll wind up hitting .230, with 15 to 22 home runs, in no more than 350 to 450 at bats. [Just so. He hit .235/.321/.336.]
- Joe Rudi will drive in 100 runs in Boston if he's healthy and playing. "But," adds James, "if he'd been healthy, he would have done it in California." [I can't tell if Rudi was healthy, but judging from the 49 games he appeared in in 1982 for Boston, I take that as a "no".]
Labels: angels, history, red sox, sabermetrics
Saturday, May 14, 2011 |
Pickoff Moves
Weaver, Mediocre: Rangers 4, Angels 1
I missed much of this game, but the parts I missed I either didn't want to see anyway or wished I had. Jered Weaver has, despite my flawed memory, pitched fairly well in Arlington, with a career 3.73 ERA in 71 IP. He gave up four tonight in six innings of work, not great but hardly terrible.The major good news was Kevin Jepsen and Trevor Bell each providing a clean inning in the seventh and eighth innings respectively. Otherwise, the Angels' offense fell down on the job, save for a fluke solo homer by Erick Aybar, causing the Halos to drop their third straight game, and slicing another win off their division lead, now only a half game over Texas. Nice while it lasted, I guess.
Dodgers Barely Hold On To A Kershaw Win: Dodgers 4, Diamondbacks 3
Kershaw was masterful through seven, giving up only five baserunners while striking out eleven. Unfortunately, the bullpen nearly gave it all back, as anointed closer Vicente Padilla left the game in the ninth with the tying run in scoring position, and the winning run at first. That was that, and Don Mattingly pulled him for Kenley Jansen, who somehow managed to finish the game without further incident. Yow.Sad News: Harmon Killebrew Nears Death
From esophageal cancer; the great Twins slugger was their cleanup hitter in the 1965 World Series against the Dodgers. A great player and a nice guy by all accounts.Late: Is Howie Kendrick For Real?
Yes, but we'll see how real; his BABIP is awfully high in early going.Just For Fun: Harry Shearer Does Vin Scully Announcing The McCourt Fire Sale
Starts at about 32:00. Great fun.Labels: angels, diamondbacks, dodgers, funny, history, rangers, recaps, twins
Tuesday, May 10, 2011 |
Dick Walsh Passes, Former Dodgers Exec And Angels GM
Labels: angels, dodgers, history
Friday, May 06, 2011 |
Red Letter Day For The Dodgers: 1960's Spring Training Uniforms
Also, at the bottom of that article, it appears that the Tigers will be wearing pink shoes for Mother's Day. Hmm.
Saturday, April 30, 2011 |
Oldest Living Negro Leaguer, Emilio Navarro, Passes
Update 5/1: His AP obit, via ESPN. He was also apparently the oldest professional ball player.
Labels: history, obituaries
Thursday, April 07, 2011 |
Jackie Robinson Biopic, Take 2
Wednesday, March 09, 2011 |
Brendan Donnelly Retires
Donnelly picked up two World Series rings, one with then-Anaheim and a second with Boston in 2007, a World Series win in 2002 Game 6 (the best World Series game played this century, IMO). A great reliever.
Labels: ex-angels, history, retirements
Sunday, February 27, 2011 |
Duke Snider Passes
The Duke of Flatbush, a smooth-fielding outfielder and, thanks to his prowess as a home-run hitter, a fan favorite in Ebbets Field, was a Dodger, both in Brooklyn and his native Los Angeles, for 16 of his 18 years in the major leagues. A Hall of Fame member, the eight-time All-Star helped the Dodgers to six National League championships, and Brooklyn's only World Series title, in his first 11 seasons, providing Dodger power from the left side of the plate.Snider hit 40 or more homers in five consecutive seasons and during the decade of the '50s led all major leaguers in home runs, 326; runs batted in, 1,031; runs scored, 970; and slugging percentage, .569. He finished his career with a lifetime batting average of .295 and 407 home runs, 389 of them as a Dodger, still the team record. He is the only player to have twice hit four homers in the World Series, matching his 1952 feat in '55, the year the Dodgers won the Series and he was named major league player of the year by Sporting News.
He hit the last home run in Ebbets Field and had the first hit in Dodger Stadium, a single on opening day in 1962, and was part of the 1959 Los Angeles Dodgers team that beat the Chicago White Sox in the World Series.
Labels: dodgers, history, obituaries
Wednesday, February 09, 2011 |
The 1988 Dodgers: The Fourth-Worst World Series Winner In History
Labels: cardinals, dodgers, history, postseason, twins
Sunday, January 16, 2011 |
Review: Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend
By Larry Tye
© 2009 Larry Tye
Random House, New York
Long before Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby crashed the major leagues' gates, there was an implicit assumption among many of the Negro Leagues' elite that they should be the ones to integrate baseball. It didn't happen that way, of course, and Satchel Paige was irretrievably bitter about the slight. Robinson was then a newcomer on the scene with almost no bona fides, as far as Paige was concerned. "I'd been the guy who'd started all that big talk about letting us in the big time," he wrote in his memoir. "I'd been the one everbody'd said should be in the majors," an insult that cut him as "when somebody you loves dies or something dies inside you."
A big part of that was because Paige instinctively grasped something few others did: "Americans have room for just one hero at a time", Larry Tye writes in his fine biography of the pitcher. Paige had to wait until he was 41 to pitch in the majors, then and now a record for a rookie. By that time, his best years were well behind him, but despite it, he became the first black pitcher to record a win in the majors, as well as the first to appear in a World Series game.
Tye chronicles Paige's rise from the black slums of Mobile, Alabama, through reform school, and ultimately, to a kind of twilight stardom in blackball. Though his audiences were necessarily smaller, the venues frequently second-rate, and the owners often thinly disguised gangsters, as the game's leading star he was able to cut himself deals unthinkable today, abandoning contracts as soon as someone else waved enough money under his nose. His skill made him a first-rate draw in the U.S. (one black paper wrote that he turned out "more Negroes ... than Lincoln freed") and overseas — he hired himself out to teams in the Dominican Republic and Mexico. Along with Cleveland's Bob Feller, he played in integrated leagues like the old California League of the 1930's and 40's, dueling some of the majors' best white talent — and frequently winning.
Paige's talent came at a considerable price to his buyers, and he got accustomed to the high life quickly once he'd proved his mettle (and his drawing power). Yet, he also insisted on good treatment for his teammates, demanding hotels, restaurants, and taxis that would take black customers while still in the middle of the Jim Crow era. Presaging the Curt Flood era of free agency by a good forty years or so, he also spent his career fighting in his own way for desegregation and equality.
Paige was a master storyteller — the myth of his variable birthday was one such he embellished repeatedly to grow his legend — but it was his pitching that had the most art. So feared was he in his heyday that
... John "Mule" Miles did not wait for the strikeout call. Satchel threw his first pitch and the umpire bellowed, "Strike one." The Chicago American Giants outfielder dug in again but never got the bat off his shoulder as the umpire said, "Strike two." With the count 0-2, Miles walked slowly back to the dugout. "My manager asked, 'What the heck are you doing?'" Miles remembers. "I said, 'I didn't see the first two. What makes you think I'm going to hit a third one?'"Tye's biography provides a window to the cruelties of Paige's segregated era, as well as the highlights of his career that exposed the fraud of separate-but-equal. It's a worthy, comprehensive treatment I recommend highly.
Labels: books, history, reviews
Tuesday, December 07, 2010 |
On This Day: Angels Selected As New Franchise Name
Monday, October 25, 2010 |
Please, Let's Keep The Angels' 50th Anniversary Celebrations To A Minimum
Friday, October 15, 2010 |
On The Occasion Of Kirk Gibson's Pinch-Hit Home Run In 1988
And Frank is not the man to take the team there.
More on the celebrations: Vin Scully, MLB.com via the Dodgers' official Twitter feed.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010 |
Reimagining The 1987 Draft
8. Los Angeles Dodgers
Actual pick: Dan Opperman, RHP, Valley HS (Las Vegas, Nev.), N/A
Revised pick: Albert Belle, OF, Louisiana State U. (Baton Rouge, La.), 37.4 WAR
Drafted out of the same high school that produced Mike Morgan (en route to 17 losses for the Mariners that year) and Greg Maddux (then taking his lumps as a rookie for the Cubs), Opperman never reached the big leagues. He worked a tick over 300 innings in his minor-league career before retiring at age 23. Apparently there had been concerns about Opperman's elbow before the draft and the situation deteriorated from there.
Belle slipped to the second round. After a couple false starts, he made an impact with the Indians in 1991, hitting .282/.323/.540 (134 OPS+). Had he done that in Los Angeles, it might have made a difference.
The Dodgers went 93-69 that year, finishing one game behind Atlanta in the NL West. The Dodgers started Kal Daniels in left field; his WAR was 1.0. Belle's WAR in 1991 was 2.2. It is possible that Belle's presence might have been enough to lead the Dodgers past Atlanta and push them into the NLCS against Mussina's Pirates.
With Belle, the Dodgers almost certainly win the NL West in '96. Todd Hollandsworth enjoyed a fine rookie campaign, but there is no comparison between him and Belle that year:
Player PA BA OBP SLG OPS+ Belle 715 .311 .410 .623 158 Hollandsworth 526 .291 .348 .437 113Add in the fact that the Padres don't have Caminiti (who won NL MVP that year) or Finley, and it's looking good for LA. How well the Dodgers would have done in the postseason is another story altogether. They hit just .147/.204/.221 while being swept by Atlanta, and Hollandsworth is the only guy who contributed anything on offense.
Of course, if the Dodgers had drafted Belle, this would have affected another organization as well, although perhaps not as much as you might think. The Indians produced some terrific young talent in the early-'90s (Belle, Kenny Lofton, Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome), and although they would have taken a talent hit without Belle, they also ran away with the AL Central in 1995 (finishing 30 games ahead of the White Sox) and 1996 (winning by 14.5). After the '96 campaign, Belle signed with the White Sox, who—you guessed it—finished second to Cleveland.
Labels: dodgers, draft, history
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