The Baseball Digest Archive

August 1981

If it’s 1981 you knew that there would eventually be an issue with Fernando Valenzuela on the cover. There have been few years in which one player captivated the sport quite like Valenzuela did in that season. In addition to his cover feature he also inspired another article in this issue; a story on Carl Hubbell, who was still alive at the time. Hubbell was famous for his mastery of the screwball, a pitch that brought success to Valenzuela as well.

In a sign of how much the game has changed, take a look at this chart which accompanied the Steve Carlton article. It speculated on his chances of eventually breaking Walter Johnson’s career strikeout record (he did, but Nolan Ryan caught up to both of them and he & Carlton had a brief back and forth before Ryan blew past him and established the record which is likely to stand forever.) The K’s per 9 innings for some of the game’s premier strikeout kings don’t look very impressive when compared to later generations of fireballers.

Two separate articles in this issue serve as companion pieces to each other. One listed the pitchers who won at least 20 games in their rookie seasons. Not all of this can be attributed to overuse at a young age, but this jumps out. 2 of the 29 who reached this achievement were all-time greats/300 game winners Christy Mathewson and Grover Cleveland Alexander. They were also the only 2 who managed to even win more than 200 in their careers. In fact, only 6 others even reached 100. Later on was another article inspired by Valenzuela’s 1981 which pointed out that a great rookie season was no guarantee of sustained future stardom.

It is often mentioned that nicknames just aren’t as creative as they used to be, and that was a point even brought up as far back as 1981. This list shows some of the better ones of that time; nothing as uncreative as simply initializing a player’s last name, but even these old school monikers don’t have the panache of a Sultan Of Swat or Splendid Splinter. The Mad Hungarian came close. I honestly don’t remember people calling Valenzuela El Toro.

Quickly running through some of the other pieces in this issue, Gaylord Perry was in fact the next man to reach 300 wins, but the 1981 strike meant that he had to wait until the 1982 season to reach the milestone. Baseball’s most durable infield was of course the long time Dodgers quartet of Garvey/Lopes/Russell/Cey. 1981 would be their final year as a unit; the Dodgers traded Lopes to Oakland before the following season; Garvey and Cey would both depart the following year. And the longest game ever was a legendary 32 inning game played early in the 1981 season between the AAA affiliates of the Orioles and Red Sox. Two future Hall Of Famers played in that game. Wade Boggs had 4 hits in the marathon, but Cal Ripken Jr. only went 1 for 12.

Does Merrifield Have A Point?

I found this story fascinating. Quick background - last week Whit Merrifield was hit in the back of the head with a fastball. It appears that he escaped injury and he passed concussion protocol, but he was understandably livid after the game. He is not the first hitter who has complained that young pitchers are firing fastballs up & in without command. In short, if a pitcher doesn’t have enough of a feel to know where the pitch is going it’s uncalled for & dangerous to throw high pitches. This complaint is a timely one; in addition to Mookie Betts having to miss a big chunk of the season after being hit by pitch, now Jeff McNeil is out for at least the rest of the regular season after taking a pitch to the wrist. BTW, in an unrelated injury Merrifield fouled a ball off of his foot on Friday and is expected to miss the remainder of the regular season.

What can be done? You can’t police command, but Merrifield seems to think otherwise. The linked article is behind a paywall, but the gist is that he says that the competition committee is likely to look into the matter this offseason. Similar to the way technical fouls or personal foul penalties are used in other sports, baseball could institute penalties for headhunting. I can’t see the feasibility, however. Can umps really read a pitcher’s intent with certainty? How can they possibly judge when a pitch is thrown with malice as opposed to one that simply got away?

An additional byproduct is that this might also help cut down on pitching injuries. The thought is that penalizing hit by pitches would both improve command and necessitate dialing back on the extreme velocity and spin rates that are a major factor in the epidemic of pitching injuries. We’ll have to see about this. I have no idea if Merrifield has inside info on discussions of a possible rule change, or if he was still speaking from the emotion of getting plunked. Regardless, I would be shocked if this rule change actually takes place.

Reviewing Olympic Sports

Basketball - Decades later it’s amazing to see how perfectly things played out. The introduction of NBA pros to Olympic (and World Cup) ball initially resulted in a litany of blowouts with the only real drama coming from the battles to see who would finish in second place. The hope was that the chase to compete with the Americans would cause the level of play to rise throughout the world. That’s exactly what happened. The United States remains the odds-on favorite whenever the squad consists of the “A” team, but it’s not assured. Just look at how tight this year’s tournament was. (The American women remain head and shoulders above the rest of the world by a wide margin. The gold medal game in Paris was a tight battle, but the US ultimately prevailed. They are up there with the Chinese divers as the most dominant force in international sports.)

My take on Olympic basketball is that as much as I love the sport, there are so many other events going on during the Olympics that I don’t watch much hoops until the elimination rounds begin. I do try to watch the quadrennial World Cup tournaments as long as it’s being held in a time zone that makes it convenient for me to watch the games.

Beach Volleyball - I actually prefer indoor volleyball to beach, but this is still a sport near the top of my priority list. One of the reasons why I prefer the indoor variety is that playing on sand minimizes the ability of the players to plant their feet and leap high or run quickly. You don’t see the unworldly vertical leaps or the floor dives tgat are so prevalent in indoor volleyball. That reality does put a premium on great reflexes, however. This part of the game always puzzles me. The players don’t wear sand socks. I can’t imagine how hot that sand must get on a sunny day; how do they not suffer from burnt feet?

I have a slight pet peeve over the camera work on the matches. (This is likely more of an issue with the world feed than with NBC. NBC only has a certain amount of control over the pictures.) Too frequently the coverage uses a low level camera shot behind the players rather than the wide, side view. That angle doesn’t always show the entire court, so too often a shot lands outside the camera view. Even worse, in that angle the top of the net covers the boundary line; that means it’s hard to tell if a shot has landed out of bounds or not. It drives me somewhat bonkers that the director doesn’t let us fully see what is going on. I am not a crackpot.

The Ceremony Is Drawing Near

One of the main reasons that there is such a long gap between the announcement of a new Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame induction class and the actual induction ceremony is to allow the honorees time to clear their schedules - as an example, it gives them time to reschedule any tour dates that would conflict with the evening. The drawback is that it takes away momentum; I suspect that many people have already forgotten several names from this year’s list.

I bring this up now to serve as a reminder that this year’s ceremony will take place on October 19. Expect the radio silence to continue for a while; producers of the ceremony have become increasingly interested in making the evening as surprising as possible. Last year they didn’t even announce the special guests ahead of time, so we couldn’t play the matchup game - oh, this person is appearing. He or she will clearly induct that person. If any news drops in the next few weeks it would likely come from social media accounts of presenters - you’ll see stuff like “I’m so thrilled to induct ___.” I’ll keep an eye on things and report if I see anything interesting. For example, a couple of weeks ago Ozzy Osbourne confirmed that he will attend; no word if he intends to perform. (That seems unlikely, but you never know.)

EGOT Alert!

The Creative Arts Emmys were handed out this past weekend; those are the dozens of awards that are not presented during the Emmy broadcast which airs Sunday evening. Among the recipients were the 2 newest additions to the EGOT list. Songwriters Benj Pasek & Justin Paul were part of the team that won the Best Original Song for “Which Of The Pickwick Triplets Did It?” from Only Murders In the Building. That completes their collection, as they had previously earned the G, O, & T. (The Oscar was for writing “City Of Stars” from La La Land. Has anyone checked to make sure that Moonlight didn’t actually win that one?)

The Oscar Mulligan - 1992

Best Picture: Unforgiven

Other Nominees: The Crying Game, A Few Good Men, Howards End, Scent Of a Woman

1992 is another easy year; the nominated movie which deserved to win did, and it has the requisite level of rewatchability. As for the others: I’m not a big fan of Merchant Ivory movies, although I admire how well made they often were. For the record, my favorite Merchant Ivory production was probably Remains Of the Day, but Howards End was a solid one as well.

The Crying Game had a lot of attention due to its shocking plot twist. It wasn’t gratuitous; the story very effectively led to that moment. Wonderful movie, not at the level of Unforgiven. As for Scent Of a Woman; it’s probably unfair but my chief issue with this one is that it’s the movie for which Al Pacino finally won his Oscar. That trophy basically rewarded his tendency to chew scenery; for all of the iconic performances he made, he finally wins for “whoo-ahhhh!?” I’ll give the movie this - his role was relatively small, but it was an early indication of how great of an actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was.

A Few Good Men would have been a fine alternate choice for Best Picture. It is also a movie that holds up well, and has more than its share of memorable quotes. Col. Jessup’s complete testimony could practically have its own chapter in Bartlett’s Famous Quotations. On a side note, I got a kick out of the promos when NBC first aired the movie. The network billed it as starring Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, and… Noah Wylie!

But Unforgiven was easily the best of these 5. And yes, deserve’s got everything to do with it. I think the branding of the movie as Clint Eastwood’s “apology” for a career filled with violent movies was a bit overstated, but there’s no denying that his famous speech about taking away all a man’s got and all he’s ever gonna have would have sounded a lot less powerful coming from a different actor. Clint Eastwood the actor and Bill Munny the character are basically mirror images.

It’s a testament to how deep Unforgiven’s bench was that Morgan Freeman portrayed what was only the 4th best character. Gene Hackman’s Little Bill Daggett was a most compelling villain. It was a nice twist that he wasn’t some sort of unstoppable beast; I loved the fact that a look at the house he was attempting to build showed his incompetence. And Richard Harris’s English Bob was one of the great examples of hubris in action.

The odd thing is that in many ways this movie felt like a career capstone for Eastwood, yet there were still many highlights in his future. I do believe this was the best thing he ever did. There have been occasions (cough, Pacino) in which an Oscar win feels more like a career achievement award than an honor for the specific movie, but it’s nice to see a deserving reward such as this one was.

Closing Laughs

I’m still only 4 prizes away from being an EGOT myself. Maybe someday. Have a great day everyone, and I’ll see you all again on Wednesday.