R.I.P. the great Bob Gibson

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He is a baseball legend. I have written a lot about him over the years because he was not just a great talent, but also a larger-than-life figure because of his skill at intimidation.

Did you know – that he is the most effective pitcher in history against right handed batters? I covered the exact stats on that in the article linked below, but as a top-line summary, here are the batting averages against Gibson of the greatest right-handed hitters of the National League in Gibson’s era.

Hank Aaron .215
Roberto Clemente .208
Ernie Banks .229
Willie Mays .196
Frank Robinson .229
Orlando Cepeda .222
Dick Allen .211
Tony Perez .121
Johnny Bench .204
Mike Schmidt .214
Tommy Davis .167

Those are not typos. All-time greats like Roberto Clemente, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron struggled to cross the Mendoza line when they had to face Gibby, so you can imagine how poorly mere mortal right-handers fared. You may have suspected that he had that kind of performance, but you may not know that, compared to all pitchers of his era, he was a completely mediocre pitcher against lefties, and compared to the left-handed pitchers of his era, his performance against lefties was actually below their average.

As opposed to the right-handed stars detailed above, many left-handed and switch hitters hit Gibson hard. The Willies, Stargell and McCovey, each batted .290 with power. Eddie Mathews batted .326 with power. Richie Hebner batted .387 with an 1.127 OPS. Ralph Garr also batted .387. Al Oliver batted .342. Joe Morgan hit .313 with power. Billy Williams batted only .259, but with ten homers. Unheralded Dave Rader batted .484 against Bob Gibson. Many other lefties and switch hitters topped the .300 mark.

I covered all of that (and more) in my article, “Wither the Complete Game, and Why?” That article is not specifically about Gibson, but he is prominently featured for many reasons, particularly his fierce insistence on pitching complete games.

I also wrote a long article about the very day a chance opportunity delivered by a childish teammate lifted Gibson from “struggling minor league long reliever” to “future baseball God.” It just so happened that this transpired under the watchful eye of a 9-year-old me, because Gibson played for my home town heroes in the first full year that I ever followed the game. That article is called “The Day Bob Gibson’s Stardom Began (in My Home Town)“

R.I.P Don Larsen

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Larsen memories:

He was the last living St. Louis Brown.

He was an excellent hitter for a pitcher. Over the course of his career he batted .242 and poled 14 homers in just 596 at bats. One year he batted over .300 with an OPS over .900. He got into 75 games as a pinch hitter, and even played occasionally in the outfield.

And I hear he pitched a pretty good World Series game once, a game which ended with one of the most famous baseball images of all time (below).

And he was either drunk or hungover when he did it! Teammate Mickey Mantle said,

“Where was Don the night before he pitched the perfect game? I haven’t the slightest idea, but you could smell liquor on his breath all day. I’ll tell you this: He came to the ballpark feeling pretty good. In fact, to Don, the whole game was a joke. After each inning, guys left him alone, not because of the smell, but because they didn’t want to jinx him, and he’d say with a smile and a laugh ‘You think I’m gonna do it?’”

Here’s his obit at ESPN.

I became a baseball fan in 1957, the year after Larsen’s perfecto, so he seemed like he should have possessed superhuman skills. He always disappointed my juvenile expectations. He was a sub-.500 pitcher for his career and never won more than 11 games in a season. He did lose 21 one season, with only 3 wins. Ouch. That’s not one to tell your grandkids about. But he had his moment.

And what a moment it was.

The Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl?

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“A 6-6 Ohio vs. a 7-5 Nevada — two programs with virtually nothing in common — is essentially the poster child for the idea that there are too many bowl games.”

Best name (given that there is no Ty-D Bowl, inexplicably): Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl.

When I was a fresh-faced lad, mankind had almost nothing: no cable TV and no streaming computers or phones. We would sit by the telegraph with our hungover, racist uncles on New Year’s Day and listen for the short and long clicks that brought us news from the faraway Rose, Cotton, Sugar and Orange Bowls. Aunt Elsie would bring us body temperature milk she had just squeezed out of ol’ Bossy, and regale us with tales of how she had once seen the real Orange Bowl in a black and white postcard. Uncle Florian would take out his squeezebox and play some tunes for a private halftime show, often after he had emptied a pint of hooch into his glass of milk. It was difficult for them to teach us the proper racist attitudes toward “negroes” and “DPs,” because they only had a few minutes on a single day to impart all of their wisdom, so they had to hold on to our sleeves and continue to mumble drunkenly as we stood in the doorway and tried to take our leave.

Today I can conveniently pass down that racism at a leisurely pace to my own nephews during 40 bowls on several weekends. It’s truly a tribute to mankind’s eternal progress.

Apropos of nothing, I just realized that the Avengers films follow the Scoopy Unities

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About two decades ago, in reviewing various films, I pointed out that all fantasy movies have exactly the same plot. The last two Avengers movies follow the formula almost perfectly.

Here is my official outline of the Universal Plot:

In order to gain all power in the universe, the Full Rizzuto, it is necessary to re-unite all the pieces of the Holy Cow, as written in the sacred Book of Ish in the scriptures of forgotten Kabibble. This is an opportunity that only occurs every 5,000 years, so the Insane Evil Dude has to act fast before the Cosmic Offer expires, and infinite power returns to its regular price. The Insane Evil Dude, who has almost finished assembling the Holy Cow, is usually an old white guy who plans to use the Full Rizzuto to create tax breaks for the rich, safaris, corporate golf outings, Republican fund raisers, and other stuff that evil old white guys like.

The muscle-bound good guys must prevent him from doing this. The good guys have something that helps them, like a magic sword, or a piece of the Holy Cow, or the Sacred Key to Kyser, ancient college of all musical knowledge. The Kyser Key is the only force in the universe more powerful than the Full Rizzuto.

Simply change the proper nouns, and you have your own fantasy adventure.

For example:

In the case of the Avengers saga, the Holy Cow is called the Infinity Gauntlet, the pieces of it are called the infinity stones, and the Full Rizzuto is (as usual) infinite power. The Kyser Key is a time machine.

The Avengers saga has only two real variations from the universal plot, and they seem minor when considered within the big picture:

(1) The Insane Evil Dude is not acting in his own self interest. He’s even more insane than that. (Hint to Thanos: instead of using the Infinity Gauntlet to halve the population of the universe, use it instead to double the size and resources – same exact result without all that pesky murder!)

(2) The Insane Evil Dude actually succeeds in obtaining infinite power, so the good guys must use the Kyser Key to undo his actions rather than to prevent them.

Talkin’ baseball and the color barrier

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There’s an article in today’s WaPo about Fleetwood Walker, a black man who played in the major leagues before Jackie Robinson, albeit in the 19th century.

I’m glad to see Fleet get the recognition he deserved, but I’m not even going to link to the WaPo article because it is basically wrong about everything. (Could Trump be right about “fake news”? I hope WaPo’s contributors know more about politics than they know about baseball.)

1) Fleetwood Walker wasn’t the first black man to play in the majors, although he was the first regular, as far as we know. The first one we are currently aware of was a star Brown University player named William Edward White, who played one game on June 21, 1879 when called into emergency service by an injury affecting the crosstown National League team, the Providence Grays. He had a single in four at-bats, two stolen bases, scored a run, and played errorless ball at first base, recording 12 putouts.

One of the very cool things about William Edward White is that he looks like a time-traveling Barack Obama!

2) Jackie Robinson wasn’t the first black man to play in the modern game, and therefore did not break the modern “color” barrier. His specific achievement was that he was the first African-American man to play in the 20th century. In 1944, however, three years before Robinson’s debut, an African-Cuban man named Tomas de la Cruz slipped under the radar as a regular starting pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds. (De la Cruz’s achievement is doubly impressive, because he wasn’t even playing in a friendly home town. Cincinnati is just about a southern city, with suburbs in Kentucky! One must wince to think of the problems he must have endured.)

With WW2 raging, the majors were so desperate for players in 1944 that “Tommy” was barely noticed. Although he pitched respectably (9-9, 3.25 ERA), he was no longer on the roster once the first white guys started drifting back from the war. In an odd coincidence, de la Cruz also wore #42, the number Robinson would make famous.

3) De la Cruz was obviously a black guy, but even before him came at least three Latin-American players of mixed descent (some African included) who slipped under the racial radar: Roberto Estalella, Alex Carrasquel, and Hiram Bithorn.

4) Hi Bithorn also owns a claim to another bit of historical importance. He was the first Puerto Rican to play in MLB, and should also be called the first Puerto Rican star, easily preceding Vic Power and Roberto Clemente, because in 1943 he won 18 games for the Cubs and led the National League in shutouts. (Clemente was 9 years old at the time.)

Joe Mauer is retiring after 15 seasons with the Twins

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Mauer’s is a great story in many ways, and it’s nice to write about something positive.

The 6’5″ Mauer was arguably the best high school multi-sport athlete in history. In 2000, he was USA Today’s high school player of the year – in football. He repeated as the player of the year in 2001 – but this time for baseball. Oh, yeah, and he was also all-state in basketball.

He was the MLB #1 draft pick overall. That’s not surprising, given that he batted above .600 in his senior year of high school, which was completely expected because he had never dipped below .542 in any previous season. Hell, he had batted over .500 with no strike-outs as a freshman, while playing against the big kids. In his four years of high-school baseball, he struck out only once!

He spent his entire major league career with the same team. As ESPN notes: “He is one of 22 former MVPs to play his entire 15-plus-year career with one franchise. Each of the previous 21 is in the Hall of Fame.”

But it was not just any team that he dedicated his entire career to. What makes the story really great is that it was his home-town team. The only city where he ever played major league baseball was the very same one where he was a high school phenom. In fact, he was born in the twin cities and never left home.

A quick summary of his achievements in pro baseball:

He is one of the best offensive catchers in baseball history, and won three gold gloves on defense as well.

He won three batting championships en route to a .306 lifetime average, but as high as that is, it is deceptively low. According to baseball-reference.com, he batted .328 lifetime in games he played as a catcher. (He stopped playing that dangerous and demanding position after a serious injury.) Among all catchers with 3000 or more at bats, that is the highest lifetime batting average in baseball history.

The top five:

Joe Mauer .328
Mickey Cochrane .320
Mike Piazza .313
Bill Dickey .313
Ernie Lombardi .308

In his MVP year, 2009, Mauer may have had the best offensive year any catcher ever had. He led the American League in both on-base percentage and slugging average, and got 27 of the 28 votes in the MVP balloting. To put that in perspective: Mike Piazza, who is generally considered the best offensive catcher in MLB history, never led his league in either OBP or SLG, but Mauer led in both in the same year, and also led in OBP in another year.