There are worse beers
Reader Chris sent us a heads-up on this. Go to this page for Northern League transactions. Scroll down to 5/1:
Assigned the contract of RHP Nigel Thatch (Rookie) to Fullerton of the Golden Baseball League in exchange for 1 pallet (60 cases) of Budweiser beer.
I wonder which M’s players we could get a pallet of beer for.
430 pitches
From Robert Whiting’s You Gotta Have Wa
In 1984, Hiroka ran an “autumn camp” for the younger players on his squad, and some veterans as well. […] Lasting fifty-nine days, from season’s end to late December, […] it consisted of an average of nine hours of daily drills, including 600 swings a day for each batter, 430 pitches a day for each pitcher, as well as swimming and akido – a kind of self-defense- sessions.
Reading accounts of Japanese training, I find it a wonder that any Japanese players survive long enough to make it to free agency or posting.
You said the union forever
The MLBPA should have used their power to help support and thus end the minor league umpire strike. I know it’s close to being settled now, but the state of umpiring in the minors is bad enough without scab umpires taking twenty minutes to make horrible calls.
The MLB Players Association gets attacked all the time for being a bunch of horrible spoiled millionaires, and I’ve defended them again and again over their right to bargain on issues like drug testing, or salary caps, or whatever. It’s their livelihood and I respect their right to act in whatever way they think best benefits their own interests. I’ve differed with them on a lot of issues — their lack of attention to the situation of minor leaguers is pretty horrible, for one thing — and this is another one.
A lot of the resentment of the MLBPA comes from something most people don’t really think about though: they don’t act like a union. They never respect strikes by other unions and seem, at best, to give only glancing attention to those issues. They act more like a guild of the rich. This isn’t unique to the MLBPA. Like other unions, pro athlete or not, too many are led by the veterans and all too willing to sell out the newest members on the chain (there’s an exemption for signing players with more than 5 years of experience — take it out of the draft pick structure).
I’m not arguing that the MLBPA should honor every strike — but it should at least take them seriously. If there was a serious threat the players wouldn’t take the field over an issue like that, that’s an enormous pressure to settle things amicably and fast. And if it means that blue-collar janitors have the team’s star player looking out for them in some small sense, that’s worth a lot.
In cases like this, though, where it’s a union the players aren’t exactly allied with but who have a great affect on their working environment, they’re obligated to act. Every person on the 40-man roster is a member of the players’ union, even if they’re in the minor leagues. They’re also disproportionately the cream of the system. For example, guys in the Mariners’ minor league system as I write this who are not on the 25-man:
Pitchers
Yorman Bazardo, Travis Blackley, Renee Cortez, Jesse Foppert, Emiliano Fruto, Jeff Harris, Cesar Jimenez, Clint Nageotte
And then the hitters:
Wladimir Balentien, TJ Bohn, Shin-Soo Choo, Mike Morse, DOYLE(!!!)
That’s the high-level talent in the system. The Rainiers would barely field a team without those guys. Supporting the minor-league umpires’ strike would force a quick resolution to the negotiations because teams would be a team short until they settled.
Now, there are obvious sacrifices to be made. Unless the MLBPA puts on its own camp to let these guys all play (and hey, staff it with the striking umps), they’re losing development time, and I’m against that (plus, it might violate the terms of their contracts).
It means teams would have a lot harder time working out rehab schedules for players coming off the DL.
It inflicts a lot of pain on the minor league teams: instead of having horrible umpiring, they’d have much worse teams. It could be a big blow to their pockets, and minor league teams as a whole are running pretty close to the red anyway. However, they’re employing scab umpires, so I’m not sympathetic.
But for the pain, there’s a greater long-term win here. The MLBPA has been losing the public relations fight with the owners for years, as the owners have successfully painted the players are spoiled brats who are against drug testing, lower ticket prices, and cute puppies.
In sticking up for minor league umpires, they had an opportunity to stick up for a fellow union that’s directly connected to their ability to do their job, honor the sacrifices of those who fought for the collective bargaining rights they enjoy, and also to shed their image as a self-interested boy’s club where they light their cigars with hundred-dollar bills and chuckle at news of the poor and downtrodden.
Maybe next time.
Incompetent clowns
Go to the minor league baseball site’s audio page.
Go back to the May 3rd page.
Pick the “Oklahoma RedHawks @ Round Rock Express” game.
Fast forward to the 1 hour, 47 minute mark.
Listen. It’ll take a minute or two of neccessary exposition before you get to the good stuff.
I plug Deanna’s book club again
Deanna, of Marinerds fame, has a bookclub thing going for M’s fans. Next meet is Saturday at Elliot Bay, where they’re doing Baseball Between the Numbers and editor-dude Jonah’s going to show up and frolic about in his amusing Jonah way.
cough couch hack hack
HACKING MASS is back! This is always a great time: you try and pick the worst players in baseball this coming season based on a combination of awfulness and playing time.
From the Mariners this year we don’t have a lot of candidates. Reed/Lopez if you don’t believe in them, Beltre if you’re in the anti-Beltre camp. Meche as a pitcher if you don’t think he’ll get yanked from the rotation at some point, though even as bad as he is, he’s not bad enough to win the game for you.
Betancourt’s an interesting choice: we like to look at the chance he’ll develop offensively, but if he doesn’t, they’ll still run him out there every day because he’s so good with the glove. He could be the worst-hitting shortstop and not worry about his job.
And if you’re going to win, you’re going to have to make some choices everyone else isn’t.
Have fun.
Roger Clemens, The 21st Century Wants a Word With You
Roger Clemens gets a ticket from me. I’m handing it to him next time I see him, likely when we’re playing darts and listening to Jim Croce.
Proving that the ability to throw a baseball does not necessarily correlate with enlightenment, the jolly one popped off a racist wisecrack today:
“Roger Clemens was discussing his future Tuesday at the Astros season opener when he responded to a question about his health after the World Baseball Classic with a comment that some might consider racially insensitive … he made a questionable comment when speaking about the devotion of the Japanese and South Korean fans.
“None of the dry cleaners were open, they were all at the game, Japan and Korea,” Clemens said. “So we couldn’t get any dry cleaning done out there, but I guess the neatest thing is that 50,000 of them were at Anaheim Stadium.””
I’m sure your first reaction, like mine, was: hilarious! I have never, ever in my life heard that one. Do you get it? See, Asians work in laundries!
I’m equally certain that your second reaction was: wait a second, isn’t the stereotype the Chinese laundry? Man, Roger can’t even get his racism right.
If you’re going to wade into the stereotype sewer, at least be sure you’ve got the correct address. Not since Ice Cube made his threat to kick Koreans’ “chop suey asses” has a public figure so brazenly permuted bigotry and inaccuracy.
Clemens gets more points than Cube, since he didn’t threaten to burn down any stores. But he also committed two unforgivable sins: being a jackass for no reason, and — worse — being unfunny about it. I mean, dry cleaning? If you’re willing to risk offending a wide swath of people, shouldn’t your one-liner elicit more than an eyeroll?
For some time, I have kicked around the idea of printing up fake tickets. For efficiency’s sake.
I would give these tickets out at parties or around town, sometimes to ignorant but well-meaning folks — those that announce proudly “I have black friends,” or say “Oriental”. It would save time and provide the individual with a handy quick-reference guide for home study. A sort of embarassment-prevention program.
There would be other, more strident tickets for more overt acts of racism. These wouldn’t have the “Hey, maybe you should consider this” tone of the aforementioned, but more of a “Please, for the sake of all your fellow white people, stop saying things like this. The next time I meet an Asian person, I do not want them thinking that the strange thoughts that run through your deranged melon also bounce around in mine.”
When I meet Clemens at the next White People Convention, I’m going to blow my whistle, check a box, and give him the inaugural ticket. “Nothing personal,” I’ll tell him, “but you’re making us all look bad here.”
Okay, this isn’t going to happen. White people don’t all gather together at a convention, just like Asian people don’t all work at laundries, and the Indian guy you meet at a party probably doesn’t know the Indian guy you knew back in Cleveland. So I’ll have to hope for another solution.
While I’m not a believer in karma as literal truth, and I certainly don’t wish any physical harm to the future Hall of Famer, a fitting end to this saga might involve the yakuza setting up a dry cleaning front operation in Texas and waiting for him to come in. Just waiting.
Patiently and politely. You know, like Asians do.
Book Review: The Museum of Clear Ideas
T.S. Eliot once wrote that April is the cruelest month. Given that Eliot was the most British American ever conceived, it is unsurprising that he did not appreciate baseball’s approach. This despite being born in St. Louis and living during the era of Rogers Hornsby. Working on some poem is barely an excuse.
To the rest of us — poets, too — April means baseball. After reading Donald Hall’s vastly underappreciated 1993 work, Museum of Clear Ideas
In Clear Ideas, Hall draws on themes from sport and visual art. The book’s first baseball poem is an attempt to explain baseball to Kurt Schwitters, the artist acknowledged as the 20th century master of the collage.
The volume isn’t all baseball, but the narrative of the game informs (and bookends) everything else. We start with a non-baseball poem (“Another Elegy,” which nevertheless alludes to rain delays), then move on to nine long baseball poems divided into nine poetic “innings”. Concluding, Hall offers three warm, darkly beautiful extra-inning baseball poems that are succinct and perfect, like black pearls.
Like Schwitters, Hall wraps seemingly unrelated elements into a package that works. And while any fan of poetry ought to enjoy the book, you might have to be a longstanding baseball fan to truly appreciate some of the wit here. Besides lines about storied games from yesteryear, there are references to Dock Ellis’ acid no-hitter, Wade Boggs’ affairs, Steve Blass disease, expansion and Nolan Ryan’s Advil ads.
To the poet, baseball is a pleasure (“Baseball is not my work. It is my/walk in the park, my pint of bitter,/My Agatha Christie or Zane Grey.”), but it also reflects the grand collage of life. Generations of young men become old men, barely hanging on as skills and vitality fade. Hall’s is a world where ” … even losing three out of four/is preferable to off-season,” as life is preferable to death.
Baseball, like sexual intercourse
and art, stops short, for a moment, the
indecent continuous motion
of time forward, implying our death
and imminent decomposition.
Being a Red Sox fan, Hall knows something about loss, death, hope and rebirth. Even if you win the Series, he reminds, the season ends anyway. Fortunately, there is still spring.
The Museum of Clear Ideas
[Ed note: those are affiliate links. We recommend the book even if you go buy it some other way. Standard disclaimers apply.]
AJ the joking gamer
From ESPN: in a long article about AJ Pierzynski, who, it turns out, is just misunderstood:
Two hours earlier, the same man stands behind home plate during a team workout. A ball just dropped in front of outfielder Jermaine Dye, and the catcher won’t let his friend hear the end of it. “Don’t you know how to run?” he yells to Dye. “We run here.”
Dye mumbles his rebuttal, but the catcher has one of his own. “What’s that Jermaine? I’m sorry — we don’t speak Ebonics,” he says jokingly. “I can’t understand you.”
How, exactly, is it a joke to say that to a black teammate?
BP: “What do statistics tell us about steroids”
I wrote a review of