I’ll start with last night. I had dinner with my Hot Stove editor. It was our 36th anniversary. Moose hit a walk-off homer. Scooter Gennett of the Reds hit 4 home runs. Scooter who? Tonight: Will the Warriors continue their perfect playoff run?
California Here We Come: Rita and I head to San Diego on Friday to start our stadium tour that will take us to the home fields of the Padres, Dodgers, Angels, Giants and A’s. We will see Scooter and the Reds at the Dodgers game. In honor of Frank Deford, my book reading during the bus rides will be his The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball. Obviously covers an era before the Giants moved to San Francisco.
Broadway There We Were: Rita and I took in five Broadway shows over a long Memorial Day weekend. We had also planned to see the Royals at Yankees Stadium, but the game was rained out. We saw three Tony-nominated shows, and based on that small sample size, we are rooting for Come From Away for best new musical, Andy Karl for best actor in a musical (Groundhog Day) and Corey Hawkins for best actor in a play (Six Degrees of Separation). No, we did not see Bette Midler in Hello Dolly, but assume she will be a winner. We will find out this coming Sunday night as Kevin Spacey hosts the awards.
I do have a baseball angle to this. Many of you are probably familiar with the Kevin Bacon game based on Six Degrees of Separation. The idea is to see how few degrees of separation there are from Kevin Bacon to actors who overlap through a series of movies. What I recently learned is that there is a baseball version, The Oracle of Baseball. You can plug in any two names of baseball players to see how close they came to playing on the same team. For example, Eric Hosmer is separated by five degrees from Babe Ruth. The Oracle lists the players, teams and years that connect them. Try it yourself here.
Forever Royal – Edison Volquez: Remember when Eddie Volquez returned home to the Dominican Republic for his father’s funeral during the 2015 World Series? He then returned and was unsure if he could pitch again in the Series. He started Game 5 and allowed only two hits and two runs in 6 innings. The Royals went on to win in extra innings to wrap up the Series. Volquez added another emotional page to his life last week. He pitched a no-hitter for his new team, the Miami Marlins, on the birthday of his good friend Ace Ventura. He faced the minimum of 27 batters as his two walks were wiped out by double plays.
Forever Royal – Jarrod Dyson: Now with Seattle, Dyson currently leads the AL in two categories: Steals (14, tied) and Hit By Pitch (9). Jarrod tied a major league record on May 16 when he was hit three times in one game (this has happened 25 times since 1913). The oddity is that Dyson was hit a total of only 17 times in his prior seven years in the majors.
Dyson getting hit by many pitches reminds me of bartender Coach in Cheers. He claimed to hold the minor league record for getting hit: (1:44) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PZJE1A_Igc. And then there is Kramer in Seinfeld. He was pitching at a Yankees fantasy camp and “throwing some smoke” when he gave some “chin music” and “plunked” Joe Pepitone for crowding the plate. The benches emptied. Vintage Kramer: (2:13) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GrnjRJG32g.
Forever Pine Tar: Just when you thought there was nothing new to say about the Pine Tar Incident (as it is titled in Wikipedia). George Brett has again used a banned substance, but not on a bat (in both cases, sticky, but not addictive). I will link both videos, but you should not watch the second one if you do not want to read or hear words that would cause an umpire to kick you out of the game (and maybe NSFW; my editor tells me that this is the shorthand for “not suitable for work”):
The original (3:26).
The new (1:10) [NSFW].
Last year, I read an excellent book by Filip Bondy: The Pine Tar Game: The Kansas City Royals, the New York Yankees, and Baseball’s Most Absurd and Entertaining Controversy. My review is consistent with our old friend Frank Deford in his blurb on the book: “As only Rumpelstiltskin could take straw and turn it into gold, Filip Bondy has turned pine tar into fun, frenzy and foolishness. I had a ball reading about a bat.”
Steve Palermo: Looking to a different Brett umpire experience, George had some nice comments for Steve Palermo who died last week at age 67. Most Hot Stove readers likely know the Palermo story – his move to KC after marriage; becoming a highly respected umpire; his heroic act to protect women being attacked, leaving him paralyzed from a gunshot wound; and his inspiring battle to walk again and his continuing contributions to baseball. Brett: “I remember when he came up…it didn’t take him long to be respected as one of the finest umpires in the game…probably the best umpire in baseball” And on Palermo being animated, “You can get on YouTube and pull up Steve Palermo and arguments, and Earl Weaver has a couple of really good ones with him.” Below, Palermo and Weaver.
Homer Simpson in the Hall of Fame: In 1992, The Simpsons aired the classic “Homer at the Bat.” Homer Simpson led the softball team for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, and their undefeated season got them to the championship game. The owners of the two teams made a million dollar bet, prompting the recruitment of ringers as temporary employees. Springfield’s new temps were Clemens, Ozzie, Griffey, Sax, Canseco, Boggs, Strawberry, Mattingly and Scioscia. The real players had speaking parts in the episode.
The original team members were unhappy about being replaced, but some bizarre events took out all of the ringers except Daryl Strawberry. This still left Homer on the bench because Strawberry took Homer’s regular slot in right field. With the score tied 43-43 in the bottom of the 9th, Springfield loaded the bases with two outs and Strawberry due up – he had nine homers so far in the game. But the pitcher was a lefty, and the crafty manager believed that strategy demanded a right-handed batter. So he pinch hit Homer for Strawberry. As Homer set up at the plate, he became distracted by the manager’s signs. He never saw the pitch coming – it hit him in the head…to force in the winning run. Homer was the hero of the game, but unconscious. Here is a delightful 5-minute clip with the highlights of the episode.
To honor the 25th anniversary of the game, Homer Simpson was “inducted” into the Hall of Fame on May 27, 2017. Seriously. Boggs, Ozzie and Sax were in Cooperstown for the ceremony. Here is the plaque.
[Simpson Hall of Fame Trivia: Three other members of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant team have been inducted into the Hall of Fame: Ozzie Smith (2002), Wade Boggs (2005) and Ken Griffey, Jr. (2016). Not Roger Clemens.]
Moe Berg and Albert Einstein: Rita and I have been enjoying Genius, the National Geographic Channel’s series on Einstein. As is my wont, I went to Google to see what Einstein might have said about baseball. I only came up with one, but it was pretty good and it involved Moe Berg. As a reminder from Hot Stove #17, Berg was a major league catcher in the 30’s. He was also a linguist and a spy, inspiring a biography, The Catcher Was a Spy. After WW II, Moe and Einstein crossed paths at Princeton. Einstein, after playing a brief recital on his violin, said to Berg “you teach me baseball, and I’ll teach you mathematics,” and after a pause added, “But let’s forget it. I’m sure you’d learn mathematics faster than I’d learn baseball.”
Fear Strikes Out: When I was in high school, I was well aware of Jimmy Piersall of the Red Sox. I probably had his baseball card. His entry into the major leagues was tumultuous and he ended up in a mental institution (with what today would be called bipolar disorder). He fought that battle and ended up playing 17 years in the majors (1950-1967). His book Fear Strikes Out was made into a movie that I remember seeing when it came out in 1957 – Tony Perkins played the lead. After retirement, Piersall continued in baseball as an announcer and coach. He died at age 87 this past week.
A Triple Play – Finally: From 1876 to 2016, there were 709 triple plays in the major leagues. They all had two things in common: (i) three outs in one at bat, and (ii) I did not see any of them live, either at the park or on TV. That all changed in 2017 when I saw number 710, live on TV, but only because of some lucky timing.
On May 2, I attended grandson Ian’s little league game and then listened to the Royals game as I drove home. I flipped on the TV at home with the intent to watch the Royals. The TV came on with the MLB channel, and before I could change to the Royals, I saw Jackie Bradley of the Red Sox lift a soft pop fly that the Orioles’ shortstop pursued into short left field. There were runners on first and second and they held their bases. The ball fell between the fielders and was thrown back in to second and then first. The batter, the runners and announcer Bob Costas had all assumed the infield fly rule had been called (it had not), and in the confusion that followed, the batter and both runners were called out – a triple play! My first. Here is Costas, first with the wrong call, and then realizing it was a triple play.
[Triple Play Trivia: Larry Hesterfer played in only one game in the major leagues (9/5/1901) and hit into a triple play, started by shortstop Honus Wagner (6-6-3). Seattle’s Ron Wright had an even worse day in his only game in the majors (4/14/02). In three at bats, he struck out, hit into a triple play and a double play. Joe Pignatano had 689 at bats in the big leagues, his last being for the NY Mets in 1962 when he hit into a triple play.]
Derek Jeter: There was a ton of coverage about Jeter’s number 2 being retired, and a parade of folks came to Yankee Stadium to honor him. But there was one notable absence – his hitting mentor George Costanza: (click here, 0:38) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZz_rbAmfmY.
Golden Retriever Bat Dog: Doug Zubrin, a Hot Stove reader from Los Angeles, sent this charming video narrated by Derby, a bat dog (13:17).
Derby succeeded his father Chase (above) as bat dog for the Yankee farm team in Trenton, New Jersey. Chase has his own Wikipedia page and was honored, like Derek Jeter, with a night at Yankee Stadium.
Scooter Who?: There is so much to say about Scooter Gennett’s 4-homer game last night, but I’ll leave it to Joe Posnanski to tell you the big stories. First, on the challenge by the Cardinals’ manager that set up Gennett’s grand slam, click here. Second, on where Scooter’s game fits in with other big RBI games, click here.
No matter how many homers are hit by Gennett, it will not dim the star of my favorite player from boyhood: Hall of Famer Phil “The Scooter” Rizzuto.
This concludes my stream of consciousness.