Random Thoughts From St. Louis ...

I'm talking random here. We might even do a little random blogging during tonight's Royals-Cardinals game, Gil Meche vs. Todd Wellemeyer, with the baseball championship of Missouri on the line.

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We were talking the other day about the glory days of The Sporting News, and we all agreed the downfall began with the end of “Hal the Referee.” I’m probably overselling that a bit since I was the only one who really felt that way. To me The Sporting News WAS Hal Lebovitz answering inane sports questions from readers. Hal, in case you don’t know, was a fabulous long-time sportswriter in Cleveland – he co-wrote a book with Satchel Paige, to give you an idea – but he was probably best known for that Sporting News column where he would try to clear up absurd rules questions from readers.

Dear Hal: “My buddy and I were arguing. Let’s say a player had really, really long legs – or even that he had the sort of superpowers that would allow him to stretch his arms like rubber – and he could touch first base and second base at the same time. Would he be out if you tagged him at that precise moment that he was touching both bags? Is there a rule against touching two bases at once? My buddy says yes, but I think he would be safe. What do you say?” Signed: Confused.

And then Hal, would respond in some gentlemanly fashion:

Dear Confused: Shut up.

My favorite Hal-Lebovitz-type column, though, used to run in the Lake County News Herald in the 1990s. I’ve talked about this before, but I never get tired of it … by that time Hal was pretty old and his mind tended to drift a bit – so his columns mostly read like Larry King mocks. But even at that age, Hal had amazing sources, so in the middle of the most ridiculous sections you would have these enormous breaking news stories and remarkable bits of fortune telling. In 1993, the Hal column would read something like this:

My wife was in the backyard planting petunias and I told her that I think the petunia has to be the prettiest flower. She responded that she always preferred the violet. And I have to admit that violets are nice too … Whatever happened to Joe Lis? He always seemed like a very nice young man to me … Don’t be surprised if Art Modell, strapped for money, moves the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore … I don’t like oatmeal when it’s lumpy. Smooth, sure, I can eat smooth oatmeal. But lumpy oatmeal is the worst. I don’t like lumpy soup either. Soup is not supposed to be lumpy. Maybe if they left the carrots out, it wouldn’t be so lumpy. … The Terminal Tower is still the tallest building in Cleveland, I think, but I remember when the tallest building was John Munneli’s house on Superior. It had to be four stories tall. And that doesn’t include the basement. I’m pretty sure the Munellis had a basement though.… There’s a 9-year-old kid in Akron who I hear might be one heckuva a basketball player. Just remember the name: LeBron James … I once heard a fan tell Rocky Colavito he stunk. That wasn’t nice at all. The Rock was a good person and he deserved better than that. … I hear through the grapevine that the baseball players will strike in 1994, and they will cancel the World Series. I certainly hope it doesn’t come to that, although with the rampant use of performance enhancing drugs, the downsizing of the strike zone, the hardening of bats and the shrinking of ballparks, I would not be a bit surprised if we have some sort of offensive explosion in the game after the players return … Tennessee has three syllables in it. I always thought it had four. … I disagree with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I’m afraid of spiders.

This blog of utterly unrelated things is dedicated to the late, great Hal the Referee.

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Sammy Hagar threw out the first pitch for the Royals-Cardinals game on Tuesday. They are calling him the “Red Rocker.” Apparently this has nothing to do with his political leanings – it goes back to like the 1970s when he wore red all the time. I had never heard that Red Rocker thing before – I must admit not being as up on my Hagarography as I could be; I just knew him as the lead singer when Van Halen started to suck.

Hagar did not perform after throwing out the first pitch, which is a shame because I would like to be able to say I have heard Hagar and REO Speedwagon perform national anthems in the same year. I can tell you this, though: Sammy Hagar cannot throw 55.

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One of the great things about being a sportswriter is that you often get pivotal information before anyone else. For instance, I just got a press release from ESPN with the gripping subject line: “ESPYs Presenters Named.” Well, like you, I’ve been waiting forever to find out who will present at the ESPYs.

I can’t give you all the names because I don’t want to preempt the extensive coverage we will have in the Kansas City Star, but I will tell you the show will be hosted by LeBron James AND Jimmy Kimmel. Heck, just one of those guys would have made the ESPYs a titanic experience. But both! It reminds me of those great 1970s star vehicle movies where they would take Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Bill Holden, Robert Wagner, Faye Dunaway (had to have Faye), O.J. Simpson, and Richard Chamberlain and throw them all in a single movie.

Producer 1: What’s the movie about?
Producer 2: What the hell do I care? We got Newman and McQueen right? Put them in a burning building if you want.
Producer 1: Great idea. Let’s make it a burning skyscraper. Towering Inferno.
Producer 2: Whatever. Is Astaire in?
Producer 1: He’s in. We’ll get a dance number in there somewhere.

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The amazing thing about baseball’s switch to the five-man rotation is that nobody seems exactly sure why it happened. I have asked numerous people who were around the game in the mid-to-late 1970s, when the shift was in motion, and all of them say something like: “You know, I’m not really sure why they did it. I guess they wanted to protect pitchers or something.”

I’m not sure I buy that. Baseball owners have never been the most benevolent people in the world. For years, they fought for the right to own their players in perpetuity, like they were toasters. I’m just trying to imagine a scenario where a general manager walked into the owner’s office and said, “Look, we really don’t want these pitchers to get hurt, so we’re thinking about taking away a few starts from our top pitchers and giving those starts to some schmo we have in the bullpen now. What do you think?”

Bill James says that the five-man rotation as a philosophy really began with the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 1972, the Dodgers used five starters – with Bill Singer getting 25 starts in the fifth spot – and they won 85 games. The next year, Al Downing was the fifth starter, and the Dodgers won 95 games. Even with that, though, the five-man rotation didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. Singer wasn’t all that good. Downing wasn’t all that good either. And in 1975 the Dodgers went back to four starters.

But by then, the five-man-rotation boulder was rolling downhill. Teams loved the new idea. And the pitcher who started 40 games – which was very much in vogue in the early 1970s – began to disappear:

Number of pitchers who made 40-plus starts:

1970: 6
1971: 2
1972: 6
1973: 12
1974: 9
1975: 3
1976: 2
1977: 2
1978: 3
1979: 1 (Phil Niekro)
1980: 0

There were a couple of managers who rebelled against the five-man rotation. Earl Weaver – as he was with sacrifice bunts, umpires, religion in the clubhouse, tall people – was violently opposed to five-man rotations. If he had seen the inventor of the five-man rotation, he would have punched in the nose.

Whitey Herzog also tried to stick with a four-man rotation in Kansas City. Paul Splittorff, who was a part of that rotation, said that Whitey had a very specific idea about pitching – he didn’t want his pitchers to throw under duress late in games, he thought that’s what caused injuries. He was ahead of his time on that one. So if Whitey saw any of his starters in trouble in the sixth or seventh inning (with the exception of Dennis Leonard, who Herzog believed got stronger as games went along) he would get out the hook. But, Whitey always told his pitchers this: “Don’t worry about me taking you out because you’ll be out there again in three days while the other pitcher will have to wait four.”

Mostly, though, everybody went along with the five-man rotation. I guess it just made sense to people. Pitchers seemed to like it. Managers generally didn’t fight over it. And over time, the five-man became engrained in the baseball culture. Few in baseball seemed to ask the important question which was: Why in the hell are we doing this? Rany Jazayerli did an involved study of the four-man rotation a few years ago, and you can still find that work on Baseball Prospectus. I’ll point out one thing he wrote:

He found evidence that seems to conclude that pitchers throwing on three days rest pitched slightly BETTER than if they were throwing on four days rest. He looked at 160 starters from 1978-2001 who had made at least eight starts in a season on three days resr and at least eight starts on four days rest. He found that those same pitchers on three days rest had a 3.57 ERA. On four days rest, their ERA was 3.85.

That might mean something. After all, you don’t need pitchers on three days rest to be BETTER to have the four-man rotation make sense. There are so many other advantages. With a four-man rotation, you are (1) semi-eliminating the fifth starter, who, almost without exception, sucks; (2) opening up a roster spot; (3) getting your top pitcher out there more often, which has to be a good thing; (4) getting more for your money.

No, you don’t need pitchers to throw better on three-days rest … you just don’t want them to throw significantly worse or get hurt significantly more often. Rany says he's studied this more than anybody and there is absolutely no evidence anyone has seen that shows a pitcher throws better or stays healthier on four days rest.

Bill James says this: “My understanding of what happened is that baseball, between 1973 and 1988, did two things in an effort to keep pitchers healthier. First, they switched from a four-man to a five-man rotation. Second, they imposed pitch limits. … essentially, in modern baseball, a 100-pitch limit, although when it started in the early 1980s it was more like 140. … It is my opinion that of these two efforts, at least ONE was clearly redundant.”

So it seems obvious that SOMEONE should at least try to go back to the four-man rotation. Then again, if it’s so obvious why hasn’t someone done it in the last decade or so? Well, I think there are several reasons, all of them having to do with difficulties of breaking away from the pack. The five-man rotation is now in baseball’s blood. An organization serious about going to a four-man rotation would need to completely shift its thinking – from scouting to player development to free-agent signing. There might be issues with the union and agents. Some pitchers might rebel against the idea.

I think the biggest problem, though, would be sticking with it even after something goes wrong. Bill James wrote a terrific essay about how many people in 1973 had determined that the DH would completely change the landscape on 20-game winners. That year, 12 different pitchers in American League won 20 games. In the National League, though, without the DH, only one pitcher won 20 (Who was that pitcher? That’s our AFLAC trivia question. AFLAC. Ask about it at work).

So, Bill says that sportswriters all over the place wrote about how the DH was a travesty, it was wrecking the tender balance between pitcher and hitter, it was creating all these faux 20-game winners in the American League, stats would be forever ruined, nobody would be able to compare pitchers of different generations, birds would fly backward, people would turn to stone, etc. Well, of course, things settled down, and while there have been a few more 20-game winners in the AL than the NL, it hasn’t exactly brought baseball as an establishment to its knees. And it probably has little to do with the DH anyway.

The point is, that whenever something goes haywire with the team that tries the four-man rotation, people will blame it on the four-man rotation. If that team goes into a hitting slump, people will blame that on the rotation. If that team finds out that one of its players allegedly threatened to kill his wife and kids, people will blame that on the rotation. If that team has two fights in the dugout in the same month, people will blame that on the rotation too.

And when a pitcher in a four-man rotation gets hurt (as he will), the uproar and indignation will crash down like Superfly Snuka off the top rope (yes a wrestling reference for you grappling fans – we here at TSOB care about all our readers). People will flip out. And it won’t matter if the general manager says, “You know, pitchers got hurt all the time in the five-man rotation too.” It won’t matter if you can show statistics that prove conclusively that pitchers on a four-man rotation stay as healthy or healthier. It just won’t matter. The heat will turn up white hot, and I don’t think many organizations in sports can handle that sort of heat.

All that said, I still think a team should try it. I think the Royals are the perfect team to try it. They’ve been losing. Their pitching has been abominable. They’ve been getting ripped. What do they have to lose?

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Oh, we owe you an answer to our AFLAC trivia question. I wonder if one day I’m going to come home and find a check from AFLAC for the mentions I give them in this blog. I’m also happy to mention Alcoa for their “Fantastic Finishes” commercials. I loved those.

Anyway, the only NL pitcher to win 20 games in 1973 was Ron Bryant, who won 24 with the San Francisco Giants that year. What a strange career – Bryant had never won more than 12 games in a season. Then he won 24. The very next year, he won three games, then 0, then he was out of baseball. Has any other pitcher ever been utterly nondescript, won 24 games in a season, then disappeared again?

Well, it’s actually happened a few times, though not quite to the Ron Bryant level:

-- Steve Stone. From my Cleveland suburb – South Euclid, OH – he’d batted around for a while, won 15 games in a season once, and then in 1980, blammo, he won 25 games and a Cy Young (Mike Norris was probably the deserving choice that year; Goose and Quiz were in the mix also) The next year, Stoney won four and was out of baseball.

-- Tony Cloninger. He won 19 in 1964 with a slightly below league average ERA, and then in 1965 he won 24 and threw 279 innings. He only won double digits twice more in his career.

-- LaMarr Hoyt. He doesn’t exactly fit in here – he won 72 games from 1982-85 – but he’s worth mentioning again because he was a terrible Cy Young winner in 1983 when he went 24-10 with a 3.66 ERA. Dan Quisenberry was clearly the right choice then, and I think people would remember and respect Quiz’s career more had he won the Cy Young Award he deserved.

-- Bobby Shantz. He won 24 games and the league MVP in 1952 at the age of 26. Injuries hit then, he won only five games in 1953, and though he poked around for another 11 years (mostly in the bullpen) he was never the same.

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I was arguing with a friend about whether or not Bob Barker is a first-ballot television Hall of Famer. Well, yes, I’m using the word “arguing” loosely here because my friend could not care less about Bob Barker, and the argument was decidedly one-sided.

Me: Bob Barker is definitely a first-ballot TV Hall of Famer.
Friend: …
Me: I mean, you can’t deny him. The guy has hosted Price is Right for 35 years. I mean, he has won 19 Emmy awards.
Friend: …
Me: Plus, it isn’t just The Price is Right. He did Truth or Consequences for years. Remember that show?
Friend: …
Me: He did have those six sexual harassment charges. I’m not sure what that does to his case … do you think there should be a character clause in the TV Hall of Fame bylaws?
Operator: If you would like to make a call, please hang up and try again.

Anyway, I think Bob Barker is not only a first-ballot Hall of Famer, I’m thinking that he’s a candidate to be an original class Hall of Famer. If you could only have five original class members, like in baseball, I might nominate:

1. Lucille Ball
2. Walter Cronkite
3. Bill Cosby
4. Homer Simpson
5. Jerry Seinfeld

Of course then, you’re leaving out Mary Tyler Moore, Rod Serling, Carroll O’Connor, Milton Berle, Alan Alda, Jim McKay, Bob Newhart, 25 different Saturday Night Live performers, Flip Wilson, Shirley Jones, James Arness, Sid Caesar, Andy Griffith, Mike Wallace, Howard Cosell and a lot of others. It’s not an easy ballot. That’s why Bob Barker just missed being one of the original five. But he’s still a first-ballot guy.

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OK, this is a little old, but did you see what happened during the Missouri-Louisville baseball game a couple of weeks ago? Missouri was leading the game in the eighth inning when Louisville third baseman Chris Dominguez, a freshman, hit a two-run homer. Big home run. Here's the thing, Dominguez started to run backward around the bases. He jumped around. He taunted Missouri players as he ran. He pointed at the Missouri bench.

Now, maybe this makes me a bad person ... but you can't let that guy make it around the bases, right? I mean, you can't just let some guy show up your pitcher, your team, you school, everybody like that. I'm not saying you try to hurt him or anything like that -- I'm sure Chris just got caught up in the moment -- but there are rules in baseball, and then there are RULES in baseball, capital letters. You can't let a guy get away with running backward around the bases after he hit a big homer against you. Sorry. You just can't.

Well, it gets worse. The next day, Missouri and Louisville played again, with the winner going to the regional. Dominguez came up in the first inning with the bases loaded, and the fans booed him hard. Missouri pitched to him -- it's understandable, the bases were loaded -- and he hit a grand slam. Louisville scored eight runs in that first inning.

It gets worse from there. Dominguez came up in the third and again in the fourth. Missouri pitchers did not hit him or (as far as I know) knock him down either time. I don't get it. What's worse, Dominguez hit a double, and then he hit ANOTHER home run. Hey, I appreciate that this is college, and you don't want to teach college kids to take revenge or be violent or whatever. Hey, I'm a pacifist. But I'm sorry, to me, that guy had to go down.

Of course, like always, I'm willing to be corrected.