Shameless Self Promotion

I started the blog for two reasons.

(1) Because I love writing about baseball.
(2) To raise some awareness for my new book: "The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America."

OK, I just lied. Well, I didn't exactly lie. I just put those two reasons out of order. See I'm really not too good at the self-promotion thing. A couple of weeks ago - by complete fluke - I ended up having dinner with the President and CEO of Sam's Club. He's a young guy (Doug something or other) and he seemed very nice and remarkably interested in what I did for a living. When dinner was over, I was telling my wife about it.

"Did you happen to mention that you have a book coming out?" she asked.

"Um. No. Do you think that would have been a good idea?"

She just shook her head sadly. I had just asked her: "Do you think it would have been a good idea to mention to the President and CEO of the nation's largest warehouse club that I have a book coming out?"

Of course, she already knew: I'm terrible at this stuff. But I do want to get the word out about "The Soul of Baseball" because I loved writing this book about the year I spent with Buck O'Neil, and I'm proud of it, and because I want to help keep Buck's name alive (I mean this in more ways than one - part of the proceeds of the book will go to help build the Buck O'Neil Education and Research Center in Kansas City). So, if you will indulge me, I have put a couple of links on the right side which you can click to buy the book from Amazon or Barnes & Noble. You can also learn more about the book by going to our site at www.soulofbaseball.com.

Thanks for reading this. I promise the next entry will be about baseball -- and specifically whether Curt Schilling deserves to go to the Hall of Fame.

My Barry Bonds Admission

Sportswriting is, of course, a wonderful life. I love this job. There are, however, a few fun little irritations every sportswriter must endure. Every sportswriter will remember times, for instance, when they got beat by deadline. You know you are beat when you are staring at a blank screen, two minutes to deadline ... and the game is not over. That's a bad feeling.

This often happens at the Orange Bowl (with its 4 hour, 19 minute halftime show) or at an NBA Finals game, which now begins at 11 p.m. This deadline crush leads to all sorts of comical moments. One legendary old sportswriter apparently faced too many impossible deadlines. So late in his life, when his deadline expired while a baseball game trudged through extra innings, he simply took his computer (which back then weighed roughly 228 pounds) and threw it out the press box window. That story may just be a legend. One true story invoves a friend, who was dealing with a Monday Night Football game that would not end. In the press box he started shouting "I don't know who is going to win!" over and over again.

We've all been there. During Game 4 of the 2001 World Series, deadline hovered, it was the ninth inning, the Yankees were down to Arizona by two runs. I was OK ... I had an entire column written about how the Yankees (soon to be down three games to one) were finally finished, and all I had to do was hit the send button. Then Tino Martinez hit a two-run homer to tie the game, and I was left staring at 800 of the most useless words you have ever seen. By the time Derek Jeter hit the extra inning home run that won the game (finishing off one of the greatest games I've ever seen), I was a trembling wreck. In the madness, I somehow adjusted the column to almost, sort of fit the occasion (mostly by adding the word "not" as in "The Yankees are NOT finished") but I slept fitfully that night. I had post-traumatic Tino disorder. I thought: "Wow, I can't go through something like that again."

The next day, the Yankees trailed Arizona 2-0 in the ninth inning. It was Scott Brosius this time who hit the two-run home run that wrecked my deadline and my blood pressure.

Anyway, there are a few minor annoyances that sportswriters must deal with -- bad deadlines, canceled flights, computer glitches, lost reservations and so on. But many sportswriters will tell you the No. 1 difficulty of being a sportswriter can be summed up in two words: "Barry" and "Bonds." I think it's fair to say that if you asked sportswriters to come up with a field of 64 bad guys to deal with in sports, Barry would be the overall No. 1 seed.

Everybody in the business, it seems, has a story about the evils of Barry, whether it was seeing him insult a kid who wanted an autograph or shove a teammate out of the way so he could get to his locker room recliner or verbally assault a sportswriter who asked an innocent question such as: "Hi Barry." There are the steroid stories, the bad teammate stories, the ego stories. And, of course, there was the time he threw rocks at that orphanage.

Getting mistreated by Barry Bonds is more than an annoyance. It's a sportswriter rite of passage. It's one of those things sportswriters brag about over dinner. Everybody tries to top the other with a good Barry story.

I'm always quiet at those sessions. Here's my problem: Barry Bonds has always been nice to me.
I don't mean he's been semi-nice or tolerable. He's always been nice -- really, really nice. The first time I interviewed him, I was a kid columnist in Augusta, Ga. Nobody was nice to me then. The security guards on the field hassled me. The people working the concession stand mocked me. Barry Bonds was nice. He talked to me for an extended period of time, answered every one of the questions, never showed even the slightest sign of being annoyed or grumpy at all. I can remember sitting next to one of the Pittsburgh writers in the press box that night and saying, "Hey, that Barry Bonds is a pretty good guy, isn't he?" The writer glared at me as if I had said "You know, Stalin had his good points."

So, it was a fluke. By the next time I interviewed Bonds, I was a columnist in Cincinnati and I knew his reputation. I still needed to talk to him. I went up to him pretty timidly and asked if he had a couple of minutes. Maybe he was just shocked that someone wanted to talk to him because AGAIN he was great, perhaps even better than the first time. He talked happily about baseball and life -- Bonds can be a remarkably charming guy -- and he showed absolutely no interest in the interview ever ending. A writer who had covered Bonds for a long time told me, "Yeah, he can be like that once or twice a year. You caught him on the right day."

Actually, I had caught him on the right day twice. The third time was at an All-Star Game, so I knew there was no way he would be in a good mood with all those reporters around. But, surprise, he was great again. He saw that I was from Kansas City, and he talked about Buck O'Neil and George Brett and whatever else. Barry Bonds would not know me if I brought him five forms of identification, and yet every single time I approached him, he was great. Frankly I cannot think of another high-profile baseball player who was really good and open every time I approached him -- including some who have reputations as the greatest guys in the world.

So weird. A couple of years ago - this was after Bonds' body had transformed and his head had grown and all that - he came to Kansas City. He went to tour the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum with Buck O'Neil. Reporters were not allowed anywhere near him, of course, but about halfway through the tour I got a call from Buck and our friend Bob, who was leading the tour.

"You won't believe this," Bob said.

"What's that?"

"Barry was looking at all the photographs of the Negro Leagues players. He was walking right up to them and touching them. And ..."

"And?"

"And he just started crying."

I believed it. None of this is meant to negate the millions of "Barry is a bad guy" stories. Those are all real. He is on the brink of breaking Hank Aaron's hallowed home run record, and he's going to get obliterated by the press and fans and everybody else. The people running baseball will cover their eyes. That's OK, he brought most of that on himself. But I have to say: We sometimes create cartoon images of people in the media. There are countless stories casting Barry Bonds as the villain. And in the interest of full disclosure, I have to say: The guy's always been really nice to me.

In Defense Of A Fine Meche

The Gil Meche Defense Club meeting (held last month in the backseat of a Mini Cooper) has not added many members over the last few months. I must admit this surprises me. Sure, at first, when the Royals signed pitcher Gil Meche for the preposterous-sounding five years and $55 million, there was outrage and disbelief and mockery. Anyone could understand that. That’s a shocking amount of money. And Meche is not often mistaken for Pedro.

Over time, though, I expected some of that outrage to dissipate. This off-season was filled with all sorts of crazy deals. The Texas Rangers signed a similarly flawed Vincente Padilla to even more money per year (well, Padilla’s and Meche’s flaws are not actually similar, but they’ve both got 'em). Jeff Suppan, Miguel Batista and Ted Lilly signed big contracts though nobody's clearing shelf space for the Cy Young awards. Jason Marquis got $7 million per year for three even though he’s coming off a historically bad season. And Barry Zito got the richest pitching contract in baseball history – a seven-year, $126 million albatross – though I cannot find a single person who believes he will be worth it. The BEST I’ve heard from scouts is that Zito “might have a couple of good years.”

So I just assumed that as these deals registered in everybody’s mind, the Gil Meche deal would, at the very least, fade into the background the way another tacky hotel blends into the Las Vegas landscape. But no. As far as I can tell, even now the Gil Meche signing stands alone as the howler of the off-season, the one indefensible signing, the tackiest hotel in Vegas. My good friends and fellow Royals observers Rob Neyer and Rany Jazayerli have spent the entire winter arguing about the Meche move, with Rany saying it was merely disastrous while Rob believes it to be apocalyptic. It reminded me of a famous “Pro-Con” column debate in the Louisville Courier-Journal concerning the merits of horse trainer D. Wayne Lukas. The columns were so biting on both sides that it left a crumbled Lukas to ask: “Which one was supposed to the ‘Pro?’”

* * *

OK, so now I’m going to lay out why I think the Gil Meche signing was not only defensible but practically mandatory for the Royals. In this defense, I’m not actually going to talk much about Meche’s potential to develop into a good pitcher. I do think that potential is there – he’s a former No. 1 pick with ace’s stuff, pretty good makeup and he’s only 28 years old. About half of his Baseball Reference comps either became quite good (Chris Carpenter, Jason Schmidt, Todd Stottlemeyer) or still have the potential to do so (Jason Jennings, Matt Clement). People will point out that that there are plenty of 28-year olds like Gil Meche who are now working as loan officers, and that might be right too. We’ll wait and see.

No, here I want to talk about specifically about the Kansas City Royals and how they go about digging out of their crater. The Royals are a bad team. This goes without saying. The only way to go from being a tragically bad team to a reasonably good team is to get better players. Again, goes without saying. But how do you get better players – or specifically, how could the Royals go about getting an above-average Major League pitcher?

Four ways come to mind. I may be missing one or two. The Royals could:
1. Trade for a good, established pitcher.
2. Draft/sign/trade for a young talent and develop him into a good pitcher.
3. Sign or trade for a talented pitcher off the scrap heap who has generally underachieved or been hurt and then hope he harnesses his skills for at least a little while (i.e. get lucky with someone like Chris Carpenter or Esteban Loiaza or someone similar).
4. Sign a big-money pitcher, either in free agency, from Japan or from Latin America.

OK. Where does this leave the Royals?

(1) They really don’t have anything they can trade for a good pitcher unless they want to deal one of the few good young players they have. That, of course, would only make matters worse.

(2) New general manager Dayton Moore does intend to draft, sign and trade for as many young pitchers as he can find – this is the core of his rebuilding plan – but it will take years if it works at all. The Royals don’t have a single major league ready prospect and only three (Luke Hochevar, Tyler Lumsden and Billy Buckner – four if you still count Zack Greinke) who are even CLOSE to ready. The way pitchers get hurt and flop (especially in the Kansas City system), three reasonably close pitching prospects is hardly something you can count on.

(3) Trolling through the trash bins for a pitcher has been a big Royals’ focus the last few years. They actually had some success – they did find Paul Byrd and Jeff Suppan – but they also had lots of failures. The search continues. Luke Hudson, picked off the Cincinnati scrap heap, is the Royals No. 3 pitcher and he does have talent. Underachiever Jorge de la Rosa was acquired by Moore, and they have hopes for him too. The Royals have to search under every rock, but that hardly seems away to win a pennant.

That leaves Option (4) – signing a big money pitcher. But again, remember, these are the Royals. You know they can’t compete for the really high priced pitchers. Even if they could match the money -- which they probably could not -- the best pitchers are not going to Kansas City right now. The Royals knew they could not sign Barry Zito no matter how much money they offered (they did call his agent, who basically concurred). Same goes with Jason Schmidt. The Royals know right now they almost certainly won’t be a player in the Zambrano and Jennings sweepstakes next year, and they’re not going to sign Johan Santana when he’s a free agent. They can’t outbid the Red Sox or Yankees for the best pitcher out of Japan, and they get outbid for the surest guys in Latin America. These are hard realities.

* * *

So what to do? The Royals need pitching more than any team in baseball. So they looked hard at the free agent pitching class this year. They were ready to make offers to several of the second-tier guys like Suppan, Batista, Lilly and possibly Padilla.

Most of all, they wanted Gil Meche.

Why Meche? There are a lot of reasons why. The Royals scouts unanimously loved his stuff. The Royals SSGOR (Secret Stats Guy On Retainer) put Meche at the top of his free agent list (possibly because of his age, his improved strikeout numbers and the fact that he has allowed fewer hits than innings pitched in his career). The players GM Dayton Moore and others interviewed – some of them Royals, some of them former Meche teammates – had good things to say about the guy. "Sign him," the Royals veterans begged. And Moore himself liked Meche. He thinks the guy has a chance to emerge.

So that's the background. In the big meeting held as the off-season began, the Royals brain trust sat around a table and unanimously decided that among the pitchers they had a reasonable chance of signing, Meche was their No. 1 choice. They figure he’s already a decent pitcher, and he has upside. If given the chance, they would go for it.

Of course, at that time Moore had no real way of knowing if Meche would consider coming to Kansas City. Sure, NOW some general managers bad-mouth the Royals for this signing, but the truth is that when the off-season began Gil Meche drew lots of interest. The Royals made their pitch, and they perceived from the talks that did have a shot at getting Meche. The meeting went well. Everything felt right. Moore went to Royals ownership and said “I think we have a shot at this guy.” Ownership -- and this was a big deal in Kansas City -- said: “Go for it.”

Then finally it was crunch time. We know that a couple of teams offered Meche four years, $40 million. But as the final meeting approached, the Royals heard solid rumors that one team actually offered Meche four years at $48 million. They are still adamant that a $12 million per year deal was on the table and it was very real. So the Royals knew it would take a very special offer to get Meche to come to Kansas City. And they did something the Royals absolutely have to do in these circumstances. They went for it. They saw a guy, they studied him, they liked him, they went after him. The Royals offered Meche an extra year. They figured, hey, the guy’s only 28 ... giving him the extra year is a risk they were willing to take.

Dayton Moore says when it comes to trades, drafts, signings of all sizes, there is only one key:

GET … THE … PLAYER.

I agree with him.

They offered five years, $55 million. They got their man. And the “Royals are morons” commentary began about 12 seconds later.

* * *

Now, will it be a great signing, good signing, a bad signing, a tragic signing? My friend, Bob Dutton, the beat writer for The Kansas City Star, suggests that 60 victories is a good cutoff point – if Meche gets more than 60 victories in five years, then it was a good signing at least. If he gets fewer, for whatever reason, it was not so good. I think that’s fair enough. But I think there are other things to consider. Does he have one or two great years in there? Does he match-up with other teams aces and hold his own? Does he snap some losing streaks and keep some winning streaks going? Or does he go backward, crumble under the money pressure, get hurt? There is a lot involved here.

But in the end, Moore probably summed up this whole signing with a simple question. He asked: “Are the Royals a better team with Gil Meche or without him?” There’s really no doubt. If the Royals had not given Meche the extra year, some other team would have signed Meche for a lot of money. That team may have been ridiculed the way the Royals have been. And they may not have. Either way, the Royals Top 2 starters going into the season would have been Odalis Perez and Luke Hudson.

Baseball voting: Leftover No. 2

OK, I'll get into it the Joe Mauer-Frank Thomas thing that's been driving me crazy.

You see some bizarre anomalies when you look closely at baseball voting. All winter, I’ve been bothered by the American League MVP vote. Yes plenty was been written about Justin Morneau winning the award over Derek Jeter. I don’t think Morneau was the right choice (I was a rare Joe Mauer guy -- rare, I guess, because none of the voters picked Mauer even ahead of teammate Morneau. ZERO. NADA). But my point is something else.

Twenty of 28 voters selected Frank Thomas ahead of Joe Mauer in their MVP voting. Frank bleepin' Thomas. Even now, months later, my head is close to exploding when I consider this. Sure, I realize there are extenuating circumstances -- the big one being that voters fell in love with Morneau for whatever reason (and here are three: R and B and I) and were unwilling to vote TWO Minnesota Twins high on their ballot. So Mauer took the fall for that. And since Frank Thomas was the only "viable" MVP candidate on Oakland, he was high on a lot of ballots.

But that does not change the reality:
TWENTY PEOPLE DECIDED FRANK THOMAS WAS MORE VALUABLE TO HIS TEAM LAST YEAR THAN JOE MAUER.

This bothers me on so many levels. Look, I have a great deal of respect for baseball writers across America. I know many of them. I know how hard they work. Every one I know puts tremendous consideration and work into their award and Hall of Fame votes (Caveat: I don’t know the guy who voted A.J. Pierzynski 10th on his MVP ballot but left Mauer off).

Still, no matter what the reasons, the facts are that 20 bright and hard-working baseball writers looked at Frank Thomas who:
1. Is a designated hitter.
2. Was probably the FIFTH BEST designated hitter in the American League (possibly fourth depending on where you stand on Jason Giambi).
2. Is fat
3. Can’t run.
4. Missed 25 games.
5. Hit quite a few home runs – some which were undoubtedly important – but also hit just ELEVEN doubles all year (some, to be fair, which may have been important too).

Then then they looked at Joe Mauer who:
1. Is a catcher and a terrific one.
2. Became the first catcher in league history to lead the league in hitting.
3. Was (according to the Bill James Handbook) one of the league’s better base runners.
4. Had a higher OPS than, among others, Frank Thomas.
5. Played in MORE games than Thomas, even though he was a catcher.
6. Did we mention he is a catcher and a terrific one?
7. Was intentionally walked 21 times while Thomas drew three, suggesting that pitchers and managers, at least, felt Mauer was the more dangerous batter.

Then after looking at these and other bits of evidence (three of those being R and B and I), these 20 baseball writers decided: “Frank Thomas was clearly more valuable. If I wanted to win, I would rather have had Frank Thomas this year than Joe Mauer.”

It’s worth noting that five writers had Thomas on their ballot and left Joe Mauer completely off. I guess I don’t understand people.

Baseball Voting: Leftover No. 1

OK, it's time to start talking a little baseball. So let's start with something that drives me absolutely up the wall about last year's Hall of Fame voting. It has something to do with Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn.

No, this will not be another complaint about the handful of voters who refuse to place a checkmark next to great players just to make sure that nobody ever goes into the Hall unanimously. I do think that's ridiculous, of course. It's a sports crime that 23 people did NOT vote for Willie Mays and 23 people did NOT vote for Stan Musial. The people who didn't vote for Mays, well, you could probably draw some fairly villanous conclusions about some of them. But Musial? Who on earth didn't like Stan Musial?

ANYWAY, this is not about unanimity. Cal Ripken received 537 out of a possible 545 votes, which is probably about as much as you can expect. If you took the same 545 people and offered them a blatantly obvious statement like "Crime is bad" or "Education is good" or "those Coors commercials featuring NFL press conferences are not funny" - fewer than 537 would concur. (In fact, I just got a letter from a discernibly intelligent woman with impeccable handwriting who insists that those Coors commercials are, in fact, the "perfect source of comedy." This just goes to prove that everything is a matter of opinion. Either that or impeccable handwriting does not always indicate a keen sense of humor).

ANYWAY, Ripken received 537 out 545 votes.
Tony Gwynn received 532 out of 545 votes.

And I have to admit, this has driven me crazy ever since. This means five people voted for Cal Ripken and did not vote for Tony Gwynn. Yes, this is the kind of pointless and illogical stuff that keeps me up at night. Does this make sense to anyone? I don't need to tell you about Gwynn. He won eight batting titles. He won five Gold Gloves. He hit .338 for his career, the highest batting average for any player since Ted Williams. He not only had a higher on-base percentage than Ripken (by almost 50 points) he also had a higher SLUGGING percentage than Ripken. And so on. I've asked 10 people in and around baseball which player (between Ripken and Gwynn) they would vote for if told they could only pick one. Eight said Gwynn.

But again, we're getting away from the point. They both clearly deserved the vote. People who left them both off the ballot, hey, I might disagree with them but I could at least vaguely understand their stance. But there are five sportswriters in America who are not trying to prove some ridiclous point. There are five sportswriters who honestly have drawn their Hall of Fame line right between Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn. There are five sportswriters who said: "Ripken, OK, I'll vote for him, he had the streak and everything. But Tony Gwynn? Hell no! A voter has to have his standards."

This bothers me almost as much as the 20 sportswriters who listed Frank Thomas ahead of Joe Mauer on their American League MVP ballots. Don't get me started on that one.