The Southpaw

Tom Seaver Doubleheader: Then and Now

As the old saw goes, I was born a Mets fan. The Mets were less than a month old when I entered this world, and on some level when the team started play in 1962 I was already rooting for Chris Cannizzaro, Choo Choo Coleman, Jay Hook, Gil Hodges, and Al Jackson. Then there was poor Roger Craig, who lost 24 in 1962 and, thanks to an 18-game losing streak, 22 in 1963.

I could go on about the characters on those early Mets teams, but the point here is to talk about one particular triumph that came four years later, when the Flushing front office was wise (and lucky) enough to draft a young fastballer named Tom Seaver. The Braves had actually taken him first, but lost him due to a technicality.

I remember also when the Mets traded Seaver to the Reds in 1977, in what was called "Grant's Massacre," in honor of Mets GM M. Donald Grant, who made the boneheaded move. Seaver enjoyed 4 1/2 fine seasons in Cincinnati (and one lousy one); one year he was an All-Star; in two other seasons he finished fourth and second in the Cy Young voting.

This first video, after the jump, has some nice footage of Tom Terrific during his time at Shea.

A Rau Deal? Lasorda Doesn't Think So

The sitch: Game 4 of the 1977 World Series. Yankees are up, two games to one. Doug Rau, who's pitched well (14-8, 3.43) for the Dodgers all season but who has a sore left shoulder and has tossed only one inning in the last three weeks, is on the mound for L.A. Ron Guidry, who's in his first full season for the Yankees, is practically money in the bank (16-7, 2.82).

Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda has decided to start Rau, despite the obvious risks, in order to give staff ace Don Sutton a extra day of rest.

Bad decision. Rau makes it through the first inning without a problem, but in the top of the second Reggie Jackson doubles and Lou Piniella singles Jackson home. Then Chris Chambliss doubles, sending Piniella to third. Down a run, two men in scoring position, nobody out. Lasorda decides Rau's done enough for the day.

He goes out to the mound, and finds out that Rau doesn't agree. A heated discussion ensues. And we get to hear it, because Lasorda has allowed himself to be miked for the game. So he tones down his language. But not much. So if you have sensitive ears, click elsewhere.

Rick Rhoden, who has also had a fine season as a Dodgers starter, gets the call. He goes seven innings, retiring 17 of 19 batters and giving up only two hits and one earned run (Piniella and Chambliss both scored in the second, but those runs belonged to Rau).

If you want to delve more deeply into this incident, read Jeff Angus' fascinating post about it over at Management by Baseball.

Don Cardwell throws no-hitter in Cubs debut -- video of final outs

Don Cardwell was only 24 years old on May 15, 1960, but he already had three seasons as a major league starter under his belt, all of them losing ones with the Phillies. But maybe things were turning around. Just two days earlier Philadelphia had swapped Cardwell and Ed Bouchee to the Chicago Cubs for Tony Taylor and Cal Neeman. It wasn't exactly a banner trade -- both the Phils and Cubs were second division teams, and neither would ride this exchange to a pennant.

Still, there was some real excitement in the air when Cardwell took the mound for his first appearance as a Cub. He was facing the Cardinals at Wrigley Field in the second game of a doubleheader. Wrigley was packed with 33,543 fans eager to see the Midwest rivals go at it. The Cards had won the first contest.

In the second, Cardwell retired the first batter, walked Alex Grammas, and then put down 26 straight for a no-hitter. He struck out seven, including Stan Musial, who appeared as a pinch-hitter in the 8th inning. In the process, Cardwell made the greatest pitching debut with a team in Major League history. No other pitcher had thrown a no-hitter in his first appearance in a new uniform.

As a result, Cardwell got an immediate $2,000 boost in salary, to $10,000. He'd go on to finish the year with a 9-16 record, and much later in his career would start 21 games for the 1969 Mets.

Enjoy the remarkably crisp video of the Cardinals' ninth below -- it includes a couple of heart-stoppers.

"King of the Hill" -- classic documentary about Ferguson Jenkins and the 1972 Cubs

This is a classic documentary, hard to find for a long time but now available on a few Web sites -- almost always for a fee. The focus is on Ferguson Jenkins and the Cubs during the 1972 and 1973 seasons, and because the Cubs were just decent (1972) and then poor (1973), you get to hear some of the things that go unsaid in the celebratory documentaries that focus on championship teams. You hear about how much the players hated their manager, Leo Durocher, and how, after he was fired in mid-1972, "The Cubs were, once again, a happy ball team." You also get the details on how this bad blood played out: "Ron Santo had been so enraged one day, he jumped on Durocher and nearly strangled him." There are great snippets of dialogue on the field, in the dugout, and in the training room; brief but nifty footage of players like Billy Williams, Ron Santo, Joe Pepitone (with monster sideburns), and Randy Hundley; and a nice little summary of third base coach Pete Reiser's notorious career ("He was carried off the field unconscious 11 times ..."). And of course, there's Fergie Jenkins. We're told, early on, that he'll be expected to start 40 games, and would be paid $3,000 for each one. We get to see his beautiful, compact delivery over and over again. We see him lionized when he's pitching well, and booed when he's pitching poorly. And finally, we're told that after the 1973 season he got his wish, and was traded to the Texas Rangers. "King of the Hill" is just short of an hour long, but in my opinion, if you're a baseball fan you'll find it well worth your time.

Video of Jimmy Qualls Talking About Breaking up Tom Seaver's 1969 Perfecto

The Mets hold the dubious distinction of being the major league team that's gone longest without a no-hitter. The Mets have completed 45 seasons, and have yet to see those first two zeros, signifying no runs and no hits, on their scoreboard line.

But on July 9, 1969, Tom Seaver, pitching at Shea Stadium against Chicago, came very, very close. He was perfect through eight innings. In the top of the ninth, with a comfortable 4-0 lead, Seaver grabbed Cubs catcher Randy Hundley's bunt attempt and threw to first baseman Donn Clendenon for out number 25. Two more and the record 59,083 fans at Shea would get to see history.

Next up: Jimmy Qualls. A rookie outfielder, Qualls would have a short career, hitting only .223 with 0 homers and 10 RBI in 139 big league at bats. You would also call it an undistinguished career -- except for what he did when he followed Hundley to the plate as the second Cubs batter in the ninth.  Which was: he hit Seaver's the first pitch, an outside fastball, hard to left-center. It hit the turf long before the speedy Tommie Agee could reach it. Perfect game: over. No hitter: nope. The Mets went on to win, 4-0, and blew by the Cubs in September to win the NL East, but Qualls would be the equivalent of a curse word in New York that summer, and he got the hate mail to prove it, as you'll see in the video.

"It was a base hit," said Ron Swoboda, quoted in Peter Golenbock's oral history, Amazin'. "There was no way it wasn't. And it was a shame. You ask, How much worse is a one-hitter? It's the difference between being a virgin and not."

Seaver got the last two outs, an enormous ovation from the huge crowd, and an important victory. He'd needed only 99 pitches to get the one-hit win. But he was heartbroken. "Never in any aspect of my life, in baseball or outside, had I experienced such a disappointment," he said.

In the video below, Qualls talks about his career, and that game.

Scully Calls Koufax's Perfect Ninth

There couldn't have been a more perfect combination -- Sandy Koufax and Vin Scully. On Sept. 9, 1965, Koufax was on the mound at Chavez Ravine, throwing a perfect game against the Cubs. Scully was there, too -- up in the booth, narrating with incredible improvised poetry that had a magic all its own, a broadcast equivalent of Koufax's achievement on the mound.

"[Koufax] was just great," said Cubs first baseman Ernie Banks after the game. "It was beautiful. The first five innings he was getting the curve ball over real good. Then he got tremendous momentum. I thought he'd be a little less tough, but he just kept throwing the ball right on through. And throwing strikes."

Jeff Torborg, behind the plate for the Dodgers, said that Koufax "was throwing much faster at the end than at the beginning."

It was Koufax's fourth no-hitter, a record, and fourth in four years. His unfortunate opponent, fellow lefty Bob Hendley, suffered the loss despite throwing a one-hitter and allowing only one run -- unearned. At the time, it was only the third perfect game in NL history and the ninth in major league annals.

Torborg, one of the few major league backstops to catch three no-hitters (he caught Nolan Ryan's first on May 15, 1973), later said, "You really feel [the pressure], no doubt about it. Your heart's pounding. With Sandy's perfect game, Sandy was so special that I couldn't have put down the wrong sign. There wasn't too much I could've done wrong there. I just had to catch the ball."

And Scully just had to tell listeners what he was seeing. But he did so much more.

Listen.

Mark "The Bird" Fidrych explains

I remember, in 1976, the mania that surrounded Mark Fidrych, who as a rookie hurler for the 5th-place Detroit Tigers went 19-9. He also started the All-Star game, led the AL with a 2.34 ERA, and also led the junior circuit with 24 complete games. As you probably know, his pitching career was all but over when he injured his arm early in the 1977 season. He attempted minor league comebacks for years, but was never the same.

In the 1985 video, below, Fidrych talks about the many misconceptions about him. For example, he didn't talk to the ball -- he talked to himself, to calm himself down and stay focused. The many times he got down on one knee to dig a hole in the mound, or to fix another: "What am I supposed to do, call out the grounds crew? I just wanted to be comfortable." There's a lot of other good stuff in this video, but I'll give away just one more. It's a segment shown on a sports talk show, and after the segment, the talking heads put in their $0.02.

They're talking about the possibility of Fidrych, then 31, making a comeback after having had arthroscopic shoulder surgery that fixed the problem that dogged him all those years. They mostly agree it won't happen. John Mengelt, a journeyman guard who played in the NBA from 1972-81, including a few years with the Pistons, says he thinks that Fidrych's partying probably took a toll -- too many late nights. Then he adds, "I don't think players do that any more." Right. Baseball players at that time made sure that they took their cocaine responsibly and got a good night's sleep. Seriously, had he no clue about the baseball drug trials that did (or would soon) get underway, implicating more than 20 players directly in taking the powder?

Guess not. What a strange thing to say.

Former Brooklyn Dodgers star pitcher Clem Labine dead at 80

Clem Labine, a long-time right-handed reliever for the Bums, the beloved "Boys of Summer," died yesterday in Florida. In the 1955 World Series, Labine got one win in relief and a save as the Dodgers beat the Yankees. But this was just one highlight in a long career that included 513 games pitched (38 were starts), two All-Star appearances, five World Series (including one with the L.A. Dodgers in 1959 and another with the Pirates in 1960), and the honor of being an Original Met.

Labine also notched two classic starts. In the 1951 playoff, he took the mound in Game 2  against the Giants and shut them out 10-0. And in Game 6 of the 1956 World Series, he blanked the Yankees 1-0 in 10 innings.

In The Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn wrote about Labine as an executive and designer for a men's clothing company after his baseball days ended. The company closed, and after that Labine became a banking executive before retiring. His son, Clem Jr. (know as Jay), stepped on a land mine while serving in Vietnam with the Marines, and lost a leg.

In Tales from the 1962 New York Mets, Janet Paskin tells the story about a spring training incident involving Labine -- who'd been almost officially relegated to a coaching position -- and catcher Joe Ginsberg. They came into the team hotel late one night after playing golf, and went into the dining room to find the only others in the joint were Casey and Edna Stengel.

Stengel, ever the gentleman, signalled to the waiter that he wanted to buy the two players a drink. They accepted, of course. But there was only one problem -- Stengel had a rule barring players from drinking in the hotel.

The following day there was a pre-practice meeting. "Something happened last night," said Stengel. "We had two ballplayers go in that dining room last night and they were drinking beer, and it's going to cost them $50 each. Okay, you two guys stand up."

Labine and Ginsberg stayed put, but eventually admitted their "guilt" to Stengel. But Labine was sure that Stengel had no idea who he'd played his little trick on.

RIP, Clem.

Steve Hamilton and the "folly floater"

The Eephus pitch, which may have been invented by Pirates pitcher Rip Sewell, is a slow, high-looping toss, the ultimate junk pitch that's sometimes traveling less than 50 mph when it crosses home plate.

I've never seen one thrown -- at least, I can't recall ever having seen one -- but I was probably watching when Bill Lee threw his "space ball" against the Reds in Game 7 of the 1975 World Series.  Other's who've thrown a variation of the pitch include Bob Tewksbury, Orlando Hernandez, and even Mark Buehrle of the White Sox, who tried to fool Ichiro with the pitch in a 2004 game. Casey Fossum of the Devil Rays also throws one; he's got a fastball that averages 90 mph, but his Eephus has been timed at 43 mph.

After watching Fossum throw a 46 mph strike to Mike Sweeney in a July 2005 contest, Scott Kazmir said, "I'll leave it to Fossum. It's hard to throw. I've tried throwing it in the bullpen. You have to keep the same motion."

Steve Hamilton, who had a 12-year major league career, pitched for the Yankees from 1963 to 1970. Hamilton was 6-feet-7-inches tall, so it's easy to imagine him being an intimidating figure when staring down batters from the mound. But he frequently used his "folly floater" with great effectiveness.

Here's the New York Times Leonard Koppett describing a Hamilton outing in the first game of a June 24, 1970 twin bill against the Indians:

In the first game, Sam McDowell pitched a five-hitter and had a 6-0 lead by the middle of the fifth inning, but his performance was completely overshadowed by Steve Hamilton's comedy act. Pitching the ninth for the Yankees, Hamilton unleashed his "folly floater," his stop-action, high-arc slow pitch, twice in a row on Tony Horton, who fouled out on it.

The crowd roared, both benches got hysterical, Horton acted appropriately disgusted, and the whole thing was praised by everyone as good, colorful baseball fun--since it really was an effective pitch, not just a stunt."

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology and a quirky little promotional film entitled "The Bullpen," we can watch the Hamilton-Horton sequence today (and get to hear narrator Lindsey Nelson call a famous Yankee announcer "Bill Rizzuto").

 

Hamilton was very effective with the pitch. About a week after the game against the Indians, he used the folly floater against the Senators in Yankee Stadium, trying it against Frank Howard, who nailed the pitch to left for a single. According to George Minot Jr. of the Washington Post, "it was only the fourth safe hit off the pitch in the two years since the left-hander has been throwing it."

The other three batters to hit Hamilton's floater were Tommie Agee, who succeeded against it in the old Mayor's Trophy exhibition game between the Yankees and Mets; Horton, who managed to single off the pitch, and Tony Conigliaro, who laid down a bunt that baffled both Hamilton and Thurman Munson, who both charged the ball and ended up knocking each other over as Tony C. ambled safely to first. Conigliaro hadn't been fond of the pitch, leaving the batter's box while Hamilton's first lob was on its way (it bounced before reaching the plate), and then getting fooled by a fastball on Hamilton's second pitch.

Eddie Lopat -- another pitcher's pitching coach

Zita  Carno, who wrote an excellent biography of Eddie Lopat for SABR, sent The Southpaw a note praising Lopat as a pitching coach. Zita wrote:

Reading about Johnny Sain, I was reminded of something I'd like to share with you. Sain and Yankee lefthander Eddie Lopat were teammates in the early 50s, and Lopat, who doubled as an extra pitching coach, told Sain a lot of things about working with pitchers--no wonder their approaches were so similar!  Sain took what Lopat told him and took it a step further.  Let me give you an example of these similarities:  Lopat---who was my pitching coach for a little over three years (and what an incredible pitching coach he was!)---told me once that every pitcher has a natural motion, and what Lopat did was to help that pitcher make the most of it.  Sain put it a little differently, but the meaning was clear.  He said that there were as many different ways to pitch as there were pitchers.  With both of those guys there were no hard and fast rules.  Neither one was a stick in the mud who believed that there was only one way to do things.

Carno said that Lopat had been his pitching coach in the early 1950s, when he had been playing high-level sandlot ball in New York. It's remarkable that a major league star would take time out to work with a young pitcher on an informal basis; I guess that's why Zita thinks so highly of him.

Lopat pitched most of his career with the Yankees, which is why it's not surprising that six times he finished among the top 10 in the AL in wins. But he did earn his W's -- he was also among the top 10 in ERA six times, and finished his career with an ERA+ of 116. Not too shabby.

Lopat served as a pitching coach for the 1960 Yankees (he was replaced by none other than Johnny Sain in 1961) and then for the A's. He died in 1992.

Perfect, Once Removed: An excerpt and interview with author Phillip Hoose

Perfect, Once Removed is a wonderful little gem of a baseball memoir. Phillip Hoose, Don Larsen's second cousin, recalls what it was like to be a third grader -- a new arrival in Speedway, Indiana who loved baseball but struggled with the basics of the game. A boy who seized on his blood relationship with a New York Yankee to gain a sense of belonging, who thrilled that his cousin took notice of him and invited him and his family to see the Yankees play in Chicago and to meet the Yankees.

That Hoose's first baseball memories coincided with Larsen's tremendous feat, the perfect game in the 1956 World Series, make them that much stronger, and more meaningful. Though Perfect, Once Removed has many universal themes relating to baseball, and childhood, and the feeling of being an outsider, that specific connection to Larsen makes the book more than just a paean to the game. It's also history, experienced from a unique viewpoint.

I spoke to Hoose by phone earlier this week. An excerpt from the book follows the interview.

Jeff Merron: What inspired you to write this book. Was it the 50th anniversary of your cousin's perfect game?

Phillip Hoose: Part of it was the 50th anniversary, because I saw it as a chance to shine a bigger, brighter light on Larsen’s game, which I think is the greatest pitching performance in the history of baseball. And it didn’t seem to me that the Yankees were really doing much with it. Certainly the 40th anniversary had not occasioned a lot of fanfare, and I wanted to help make the case.

Another thing was that this was my 50th year in baseball as well. I never stopped playing either baseball or softball. So I wanted to write a valentine to baseball. It was a combination of those things.

JM: The connection to Don that you have is crucial, but that experience, your childhood experience of struggling to just field grounders and popups and become a decent player really struck a chord with me.

Hoose: Even great natural baseball players worry about those ground balls and those popups. The ball's hard and comes at you very fast. It’s a game where being big and strong are assets, but more than football and basketball you can overcome size deficiencies through work and discipline.

Baseball stops at the end of every play – you have a pause, and it’s more a set piece, and you can practice motions and events over and over and over. I’ve taken tens of thousands of ground balls and fly balls in my life, just practicing these things, to the point where they've become part of my muscle memory. So often what happens in a play is determined in the first fraction of a second – it depends on how quickly you recognize what’s going on, how quickly your muscles remember having seen the same pattern before.

JM: You had that one connection – Don is your first cousin once removed – and to me it seems that having some kind of connection makes a huge difference in a fan’s experience of the game. I’m thinking about the kids who come down on the field before the game and get to have their picture taken with a player, or getting to run the bases after a minor league game.

Hoose: I think you’re right. I attended a fair number of baseball games in Cuba, and played with the kids down there. In the Cuban National League, kids run the bases after the game. They think that the best players in the world are the local team’s players. They know them. They get to watch them lift weights between games of a doubleheader. They roll out these barbell sets on wheels and they actually work out, lifting weights between games.

My special connection through having a relative on the New York Yankees meant a huge amount to me. That he would take any interest in me at all, and of course when I actually got to meet the New York Yankees it was just so inspiring to me. And of course later on, when lightning struck with this immortal game, it had coattails for me, too, in my school. I got a popularity bump. People were willing to teach me how to play ball and to hang out with me in a way that they had not been before.

I didn’t have to do anything. He becomes world famous, and I get a little bump. Fine with me! I’ll take it.

JM: After 1956 you saw less of Don.

Hoose: I probably saw him four times after that, before I went to visit him last year for this book. I think we went to see him a couple more times in Chicago when he was with the Yankees. I remember we saw him play in Indianapolis. He got sent down to Triple A, and he was in Indianapolis to play the Indians. It was terrible – there weren’t many people there, and there were some really abrasive, abusive hecklers.

I remember we were sitting in front of them and my dad was getting madder and madder. They were just saying all kinds of garbage. I also remember we went to Cincinnati, when he was with the Giants, and it was a great game. I’ll never forget it. Mays hit two homers to left field. Low, hooking line drives that just clanged against the seats. And then they nursed a slim lead into the ninth inning and Don came out. He was basically their closer, (He pitched in the ’62 Series and actually won a game.) He must have thrown five or six pitches and he retired each batter on long fly balls – warning track fly balls to each field. And that was it.

We waited for him outside the players’ entrance and Mays got into a cab. I had an autograph book and I went running after the cab and I actually got in the cab with him. I was half-in, half-out, and he was startled. He scribbled his name in my autograph book and he kind of tossed it out to me, in the street.

I told Don about this last year and he said, before I told him the whole story,  “I’ll bet it was the worst looking signature you’ve ever seen.” I said, “Yes!” He said Mays’ signatures were always a mess.

JM: How did Don respond when he found out you were writing this book?

Hoose: At first he didn’t respond much at all. He’s probably seen a number of projects come his way over the years. But I think the main thing was when I asked if I could visit. I didn’t know if he would see me or not. He said yes, but then when I tried to nail him down on a date I thought he would slip off the hook, but he didn’t. I think this book really became a reality for him when it came out.

He’s been wonderful. He’s been to two events with me where he’s signed the book. He didn’t have to. He signed hundreds and hundreds of them. He read it, he liked it. He’s been great.

He did two signings, one in the Bronx and one in New Jersey,  and there may be more. He’s been tremendously generous. He’s just a great guy.

JM: What did he think of your story? The book is really about you.

Hoose: He didn’t know, and couldn’t have known, how much that meant to me. He remembered us going to Chicago to meet him and the players. It was something that he did for several of us in that family – he’d either leave tickets or send tickets to us. Sometimes he’d invite people to the Del Prado hotel, where the Yankees stayed.

We just got lucky in that the game got rained out. I was distraught, I thought the whole visit was blown, we weren’t going to get to see the Yankees play and so forth. But my dad called him and he agreed to meet us at the hotel. We spent the whole day with the Yankees. God, it was a great day. These gods were all around us.

JM: How much has Don kept up with his Yankee teammates?

Hoose: He’s close with Hank Bauer, and with Yogi because fantasy camps and autograph card shows bring them together. But you have to remember that a lot of those people have passed on. Don is gong to have a charity event in New York on Nov. 4, and I was asking him who’s going to be invited,  and in addition to everyone who’s pitched a perfect game, he’s gong to invite all the living members of the Yankees and Dodgers who played in his perfect game. There aren’t all that many.

JM: Have you had any response from the Yankees to your book?

Hoose: None whatsoever.

JM: Have you tried?

Hoose: Yes. My publisher has tried several times and not gotten anywhere. It’s been disappointing. They didn’t get behind the 50th anniversary of Don’s perfect game either. It strikes me – if I were the Yankees, and my employee had pitched the greatest game in the history of baseball against a lineup of immortals under such pressure, the fifth game of the 1956 World Series – I’d just think you’d have one heck of a party to celebrate something like that. But they didn’t.

Excerpt after the jump.

Balls Out: Dock Ellis...How to throw a no-hitter on acid

Great profile by Keven McAlester in the Dallas Observer ... Baseball has shunned Dock Ellis, McAlester concludes, in spite of itself. "Ellis' one-time problems, which prevented him from being a truly great player, have since revealed him to be something more like a great person. And baseball, like the rest of us, could use a few more of those."

The lead:

Thirty-five years ago, on June 12, 1970, Pittsburgh Pirate and future Texas Rangers pitcher Dock Ellis found himself in the Los Angeles home of a childhood friend named Al Rambo. Two days earlier, he'd flown with the Pirates to San Diego for a four-game series with the Padres. He immediately rented a car and drove to L.A. to see Rambo and his girlfriend Mitzi. The next 12 hours were a fog of conversation, screwdrivers, marijuana, and, for Ellis, amphetamines. He went to sleep in the early morning, woke up sometime after noon and immediately took a dose of Purple Haze acid. Ellis would frequently drop acid on off days and weekends; he had a room in his basement christened "The Dungeon," in which he'd lock himself and listen to Jimi Hendrix or Iron Butterfly "for days."

One nice thing about Ellis is that he talks about his acidic no-hitter candidly. There must be some self-interest at work -- the acidic no-hitter seals Ellis's place among the game's great characters. But he talked about it through the "just say no" Reagan days, when discussion of drugs being a part of life (or, sacré bleu being pleasurable) was almost seen as an act of treason. And he discussed it in outlets like High Times magazine and Lysergic World.

Dock to Lysergic World, 1993:

I was zeroed in on the (catcher's) glove, but I didn't hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me."

Movie Pitchers: The World Series rotation

I've watched (and analyzed) way too many baseball movies. One of the most interesting aspects of the genre is how good (or, most often, bad) the actors do at pretending to be athletes. Sports films still tend to be hokey, but the sports action has gotten better.

This is due to more sophisticated camerawork, better research, and better training, both of the main characters and the supporting actor/athletes. (Costume authenticity, both for players and spectators, also makes a big difference. For a good example, see "Seabiscuit." For a bad one, try to sit through a bit of Oliver Stone's "Any Given Sunday.")

Watching Jon Stewart bounce his ceremonial first pitch before a NLCS game at Shea (47 mph on the radar gun) reminded me of a subject I've been thinking about for a while ... who have been the best and worst actor/pitchers? I give you a totally unscientific survey  (with some second-hand analysis).

Hall of Fame aces (“Just give me the ball”)
Charlie Sheen
Kevin Costner
Sammi Kane Kraft
Joe E. Brown (Veteran’s Committee selection)

Dock Ellis and his hair curlers

There's a lot to love about Dock Ellis -- read Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball and you'll know what I'm talking about. (Written by Donald Hall, our current Poet Laureate, with Ellis, it's one of the best baseball memoirs of all time.) One of the things I like most about Ellis is that he was a true flake, not in the Bill Lee "look at how big a flake I am" style, but he's just Dock being Dock.

And part of Dock being Dock was wearing hair curlers on the field before a 1973 game. For this, Ellis got a warning from Pirate Manager Bill Virdon. "Ellis had contended that the curlers were necessary tohis Afro coiffure and that the anti-curler order smacked of racism," reported the Associated Press. "Nonetheless, he confirmed Monday that he would sidestep controversy and abide by the management order. 'I just don'w want to have to deal with it,' Ellis said with a shrug." Ellis donated the curlers to The Baseball Reliquary, which has more on the story (with photos).

Perfect, Once Removed: Don Larsen's cousin pens a memoir

Don Larsen's cousin, Phillip Hoose, has just published Perfect Once Removed: When Baseball Was All the World to Me. He writes about being 9 years old when his uncle pitched his perfect game in the World Series, and meeting his Yankee heroes. NPR has this interview with Hoose, and an excerpt from the book. Hoose writes of meeting Casey Stengel:

Don spotted Yankee manager Casey Stengel entertaining a cluster of baseball writers in the corner of the lobby. "Go on ... tell Casey you're my cousin." …

I stepped in front of him and introduced myself. His eyes widened. "You're Larsen's cousin, eh?" I nodded. The skipper grabbed my arm and pulled me close to his side. "Well, Larsen's a good man, no matter what you read." Reporters chuckled. …

"I just finished reading your biography, Mr. Stengel."

He broke up laughing, as if this was the funniest thing he had ever heard.

"Lies, all lies!" he cackled. "Written by guys like these. ,,, Take a good look at these faces, son," he said. "Look at 'em hard. Now let me give you one piece of advice. Whatever you do, don't grow up to be a writer."

PinstripePassion.com recently interviewed Larsen about the perfect game and other Yankee matters. The Deadball Era has this recording of the last out of the game.

Syd Thrift, RIP

As I've written earlier, one of the more ambitious pieces I wrote for ESPN.com was a profile of Leo Mazzone. One of the many baseball men I had the pleasure of speak to was Syd Thrift, who, I discovered from my research, had released Mazzone as a pitcher early in 1976 and then offered him a job managing Corpus Christi in the Class A Lone Star League. It was Mazzone's first job as a manager or coach (he did pitch five games for Corpus Christi in 1976, but only because thought it would help the team win the championship, which it did).

My interview with Thrift, in June 2005, was one I wished had gone on for hours. He'd spent more than a half-century in baseball, and if hadn't done it all, he'd come pretty damn close.

Thrift died Monday night. He was 77.

Because much of my interview ended up on the cutting room floor, including some interesting bits, in honor of Syd, I thought I'd post a lengthier excerpt. I hope you'll find it interesting.

A man's life, file by file

Yesterday I was going through some clips that I had downloaded a few months ago ... all of them  with names like "ProQuest_90614334.pdf." All of them old New York Times and L.A. Times articles that related either to Johnny Sain or Jim Bouton. This wasn't an idle exercise -- I have to rename the files so they're useful for future research.

Many of the articles are about key points in Sain's career, and they're often terribly brief and offer little or no information beyond the facts. No analysis. No quotes.

The Curious Case of Sidd Finch

The Mets will clinch. They will. But maybe they can use some help. Is it time for Sidd Finch to come out of retirement? SI.com has been kind enough to post the original George Plimpton story from the April 1, 1985 issue.

An all-time classic that was expanded into a very good book.

The Braves and the Olympic Javelin Champ

On Sept. 24, Jan Zelezny, who won the javelin gold medal in the 1992, 1996, and 2000 Olympics, will hurl his last spear. Last week he announced he was retiring from the sport.

Zelezny set the javelin world record in 1996 with a toss just over 323 feet.  If he had started his throw from home plate at Turner Field, it would have pierced the right field warning track.  That's about 115 feet short of the world record for the longest baseball throw, held by former Phillie Glen Gorbous. But Gorbous had things a little easier than Zelezny: he was throwing a perfect five-ounce sphere that even a child can heave a decent distance.

Jim and Johnny

Ball Four is, by far, my favorite baseball book, and even that may be praise too faint: it's one of my favorite books. And I read an awful lot.

I first read Ball Four not long after it came out; probably around 1972 or 1973, when I was 11 or 12 years old. I wasn't an especially advanced or "cool" kid about matters carnal, and I don't recall being surprised or disenchanted when reading about the drunken escapades of famous ballplayers. Mickey Mantle wasn't my hero, but even if he was, he didn't seem diminished by what Jim Bouton wrote about him.

The man who I thought was the true exemplar of so much that seemed stupid and silly about baseball was

Pitchers rule! (at least for a day)

Seven shutouts in 13 major league games yesterday. That's the most since June 4, 1972, when Bob Gibson and Catfish Hunter were among those who tossed eight shutouts in 16 contests. Times have changed: five of the eight shutouts in 1972 were complete games. Only two of last night's goose-eggs were solo acts: Milwaukee's Doug Davis held the Dodgers to four hits in a 9-0  win, and Cincy's Bronson Arroyo three-hit the Giants.