The Baseball Digest Archive
July 1981
I came of baseball age in the 1970’s, so therefore a lot of my perceptions of what the ideal form of baseball should be are predicated on what the sport was like in that decade. My thoughts on the aesthetics of baseball uniforms are shaped by the look of 70’s baseball. I have an affinity for bright colors and players sporting high stirrups. That’s not to say that I love all uniforms from that general era. Case in point: the threads that Carlton Fisk is wearing in this cover photo. It looks more like a uniform that Ed Walsh would wear in the deadball era. Hard pass.
One of the points I made when I was compiling my lists of the best players not in the Hall of Fame is that former Houston Astros who played half their games in the Astrodome saw their numbers suffer. Further proof of that notion came in this chart from an article about Atlanta Fulton County Stadium’s reputation as The Launching Pad. In the previous 5 years a total of 799 home runs were hit in that park as opposed to only 283 at The Astrodome. Yikes. Poor Jimmy Wynn; he would have had a significantly more impressive career home run total had he played in a more hospitable park.
Here are 4 top candidates for super stardom! You know the headline writer meant business with the inclusion of the exclamation point. The article spotlighted the players most likely to become 1980’s megastars. Two of them turned out to be future Hall of Fame players: Andre Dawson and Paul Molitor. The other two choices missed badly. There is always going to be an inherent risk when attempting to predict future stardom for a pitcher with the ever present risk of career-altering injuries. So I’ll give the writer a slight pass for missing on the Britt Burns prediction. He had a promising rookie season in 1980, but that would prove to be his best year. The Yankees famously traded for him after the 1985 season, but he suffered a terrible hip injury and he never threw a major league pitch for New York. The other choice was more of a head scratch - Terry Puhl. He was a solid all around player, and he went on to become one of the game’s top pinch hitters, but I’m hard pressed to remember what it was about him that would have made anyone predict stardom for the guy. My memory of him is that he was the type of player for whom you would shrug your shoulders and say “OK” when you’d open up a new pack of baseball cards and come across a Terry Puhl.
My other favorite article in this issue is the one that discussed illegal pitches. Accompanied by a drawing of Gaylord Perry, it discusses the assorted ways in which pitchers doctor the ball - spit, sandpaper, thumbtack, or good old fashioned saliva. What makes the article stand out is that every single quote is an anonymous one. No one, not even someone no longer in the game, was willing to go on the record.
I’ll close with this month’s reprint of a Gene Mack ballpark cartoon; this one of old Crosley Field in Cincinnati. You bet I noticed the notation which read “where girl batted in hilarious night game.” Setting aside the condescending tone of that comment, it made me curious to see what that was all about. In a story that I’m surprised to have been unaware of until now, in 1935 a female fan in the crowd named Kitty Burke was heckling Cardinals hitters and while there was a break in the play after 2 Cards outfielders collided in the field she ran onto the diamond and grabbed a bat to “pinch hit” against Paul Dean. It wasn’t an official at bat of course, but she hit a soft tapper to second.
Today’s Olympic Notes
In my college days I had the privilege of sitting in on teaching sessions from a legendary sportscaster, and one of his lessons was that you should never make fun of the names of international athletes. With that taken into account, please keep in mind that everything I say in this section is all in good fun.
The goaltender for the silver medal winning Croatian men’s water polo team is named Marko Bijac. Think for a moment how that last name is pronounced - bee-otch. During the gold medal match NBC’s water polo commentator Tony Azevedo emphatically said “No goals, Bijac!” and you could tell that he took pleasure in being able to get away with that mild profanity.
It’s also possible to have good-natured fun with names in the women’s handball gold medal match, in which Norway defeated France. One of the players on Team France is named Pauletta Foppa, the pronunciation of which sounds just like “faux pas.” All I could think of was that I hoped she would not make a crucial mistake that would cost France the gold. The number of terrible puns would have been exhausting. Also, one of the Norwegian players is named Nora Mork. Mork? The Norwegian equivalent of Chris Berman would have had a field day there. I certainly hope that some headline writer in Norway used the word “Shazbot!” following the victory otherwise why are we even doing this?
Tungsten Arm O’Doyle Never Did THAT
Only 6 men in MLB history have totaled both 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in the same season. On Friday evening Shohei Ohtani became the latest to join that exclusive club, picking up his 40th steal and 40th homer in the same game. In a plot twist that would have been rejected as a hack cliche had it been included in a script, the home run was a walk-off grand slam. With 2 outs. Because of course it was.
Even more impressively, if you look closely at the calendar you can see that last Friday’s date was August 23. There is still more than a month left to go in the season. 50/50 is an attainable goal. We can’t take for granted how special it is for us to witness Ohtani. Like many sports fans I lament the greats from the past whom I never got to see play or those who were old enough at the time I became a sports fan that I didn’t get to see them at their best. When we use that mentality it’s all too too easy to overlook our contemporaries who will go down in history as legends themselves. It is such a special privilege to be a sports fan in the Age Of Ohtani.
Current Chicago White Sox Pace
Ohtani isn’t the only one to be on an implausible pace. On August 25th the White Sox lost their 100th game of the season. August 25! What’s gonna be even tougher for the rest of this season is that every opponent the rest of the way is likely to send their very best against them. Not only does no team want to face the embarrassment of losing to them, but each contending team will go into a White Sox matchup with the mentality that they cannot lose what should be a gimme game. Fairly or unfairly for a team in a pennant race a loss to the White Sox will almost feel like two losses.
For the record, the current Sox pace remains 38-124. To avoid matching the 120 losses of the 1962 Mets, they will need to go 12-19 the rest of the way, which sounds doable if not for the fact that they have played 5 months of the season at a .237 pace. They would have to practically catch fire to win at the rate that they would need to.
I believe I have finally discovered the secret behind that ineptitude and it relates to the cover photo on this week’s featured issue of Baseball Digest. Look at that photo again. As ugly as the uniform is, at least Carlton Fisk is wearing white socks. For a team that is nicknamed White Sox, it has been years since the team has actually worn white socks. The baseball gods cannot be happy with that level of deceit, and they are raining hell on the franchise. Heed the warning, White Sox organization.
More On Votto
Hat tip to Molly Knight for this nugget, but with Joey Votto’s retirement that means that this MLB season will go by without a single player over the age of 40 taking an at bat. There are pitchers in the league who are above 40, but with the universal DH neither Max Scherzer nor Justin Verlander will ever need to slip on a pair of batting gloves. This fact bums me out; as long as I have been a baseball fan there have always been grizzled graybeards in the game that have necessitated a smaller type setting in order to fit all of their career stats on the back of the baseball card. Come on, there has to be a team willing to sign Manny Mota to a ceremonial one day contract so that he can step up to the plate.
This is a byproduct of modern roster construction. 13 pitchers on a roster means that there are fewer available slots for position players, and with versatility at such a premium older players who are limited to first base and DH are a lot less valuable. Plus, the aging curve is looked at much differently. Front offices are increasingly wary of players on the wrong side of 30, never mind dudes older than 35.
What’s odd is that this is mostly limited to baseball; older athletes continue to thrive in the other team sports. Here’s a non-controversial statement - basketball requires a lot more athleticism than baseball does. You would think that also means basketball players would age out of their sport much more rapidly, but that’s not the case. Many fans hate the phrase “load management,” but take a look at the career records of players from the past. So many of the greats, particularly guards, were on their way out as early as the age of 32. Now, giving LeBron or KD the occasional breather is not the sole reason that they remain great players - training and nutrition are so much more advanced - but it has to be a factor.
50 Years Ago - The Sugarland Express
Sometimes it’s apparent immediately. There are examples of great directors whose earliest movies were somewhat standard stories on first glance yet stood out from the pack because their unique vision was already present at such as early stage. Think of the Coen Brothers with Blood Simple or Wes Anderson with Bottle Rocket. Or think of Steven Spielberg with The Sugarland Express.
Spielberg was only 27 years old in 1974, but even at that young age he had put together an impressive body of work directing for television, most notably with the intense Duel, which remains one of the top made for television movies of all time. Sugarland Express was his first theatrical feature, and although on the surface it looked like yet another young criminal lovers on the run tale, it made enough of an impression that the film’s producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown entrusted the precocious director to man the helm for their next picture, a big budget movie about a killer shark.
Based on a true story, it starred Goldie Hawn as a woman recently released from prison who learns that she and her still incarcerated husband were about to lose custody of her infant son to the foster parents who were raising him while they served their sentences. She springs her dim-witted husband from jail with the intent of “rescuing” the child. Along the way that take a young policeman hostage and go on a chase that takes place along the highways and roads of South Texas, becoming cult celebrities in the process.
From that description it sounds like the sort of movie that has been made dozens of times, but it was much more than that. It certainly helps that the film starred actors as impressive as Hawn along with Ben Johnson as the police captain coordinating the pursuit. As Duel had proved, Spielberg had the innate sense of how to stage action scenes on a reasonable budget. The characters felt like real people, and even though they were lawbreakers, it was easy to feel sympathy for their plight. It’s also worth noting that the film was scored by John Williams, the first instance of what would become arguably the most fruitful collaboration between director and composer in American film history.
The Sugarland Express was a small scale movie and made no impact at the box office, yet it holds an important place in film history. It’s what Started It All for Steven Spielberg. Without the connections he made it’s unlikely that he would have directed Jaws. I don’t want to overdramatize things; his talent was so evident that his career would have eventually been just as successful even without Jaws. The promise he showed with this movie certainly made his path to legendary status much smoother.
Closing Laughs
No rumors of a surprise Beyonce appearance in this corner. Enjoy the final week of the summer season everyone. See you all again on Wednesday.
