things I learned about in baseball this week/how i learned to stop worrying and love baseball

So.

This year I did something I didn't expect; I got into baseball.

It started in the summer, suitably. I couldn't sleep. I have several ways to deal with this but I usually start off by reading something boring. I was on Deadspin, they had one of those "how can Shohei Ohtani flourish?!" type articles on it. I read, I stayed awake, I read more. If I'd read about NFL, maybe I'd have fallen asleep, but no.

This went on for a few weeks and it only got worse, not better. I started talking to Pirates fan/general legend mookieproof about this, who started sending me interesting deep cuts. I mentioned it in passing to Red Sox dad Tracer Hand, who responded with enthusiasm and encouragement. I asked lifelong Cubs fan felicity about it, who was amused but who also encouraged this interest & would talk about her beloved Cubs and favourite players over the years. These three are my baseball gurus. I listened, I learned, I looked up their faves, I was and am grateful for their attention and patience with my nonsense.

Now, I didn't exactly know literally nothing. From the Yakuza games, I knew the different pitches, how/why you foul off a pitch, stealing signs (supposedly more serious an offence in Japan!), from general, idk, life? a lot of the terminology, a good chunk of the teams. I also knew that, given the inclinations of my gurus, I wouldn't be supporting the Yankees. (I do not actually have a team and tbh I don't know if I will*?) But basically I was starting out with almost nothing.

And I had a weird disconnect. I knew I liked reading about baseball - something that seems less weird in a game where so many people are into sabermetrics. But I wasn't sure about watching it. For one thhing - the games are long. (I generally watch/follow football/rugby/GAA - you could easily watch 2 or 3 games of any of those in a baseball game.) For another, I live in the UK and the games are late (and, you know, on another continent). And finally, what if I'd spent all this time reading about Sandy Koufax and the Black Sox Scandal and sticky stuff and juiced balls and all that and I didn't actually like it?

But I'd watched plenty of clips on Youtube and so I found myself, much to my husband's disgust, months after this phase started, watching Mariners-Angels. Carlos Santana homered. Ohtani struck out. But you know what? I fucking loved it.

One of my late night readings led me to Andrew Baggarly's book about the 2010 SF Giants WS win and I was captivated by his prose and the romance of the story, so I ordered that. I also have his other book about the Giants which I finished reading & reviewing here: The (S)word in the Autumn Stone: What Are You Reading, Fall 2022?

The story of the team took me in and it's stories that kept me awake reading about baseball. That and redasses. I respect that.

I watched what I could of the current season (maybe 10 games?) & then I realised that I wanted to watch the games I was reading about from those Giants teams. So I started watching them on Youtube. This was when I was watching 2012 WS Game 1 (Zito clowning on & eventually scoring off Justin Verlander is hilarious af, sorry.)
https://i.postimg.cc/7Z5Q9VLw/53-BFBC89-9-E37-4955-A010-1-DF3-EB023-DA0.jpg

And so I kept doing it. (FYI I have watched patches of the Giants 2010 & 2012 postseasons and I am excited to eventually get to the Madbum series, though my next one is the ALCS game 3 2003 cos I want to see two legendary pitchers clear the benches - hbp just doesn't provide me all the violence I need in a sport you know.) So if you are still reading this extremely indulgent thread 1) lol wau 2) thanks, though 3) please feel free to recommend you any classic games you think I might like. I will watch any team. I like pitchers and defence as much as dingers - some of my favourite teams in football have been Italian teams strong on defence, so I guess I carry that over from other sports. Hoping to watch as much of current postseason live as I can, but, timezones & also that's over soon.

Anyway, tedious intro over. What did I learn about in baseball this week? (This is so far in the realm of useless but entertaining trivia as I have finished one book & I still have 3 more to read, 2 of which are not about the SF Giants. I feel as though I could read and watch for ten years and still feel like a dilettante but I won't. Also, I have a job and husband and other responsibilities.)

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX4L2LHGs98

2. That poor Bill Buckner features in a surprising number of song lyrics, mainly about going between the legs.

3. That Mark Mulder makes John Rocker seem liberal now. (RIP Big Three).

4. That Jimmy Carter likes the Braves

*I basically need some sort of connection to a team. My football team are the one my family supports; I support GAA & rugby teams from my part of Ireland. So, no team, but that's ok for me.

So glad you started this thread

“Classic games” is an interesting one - so much of it is situational - like within the context of a season or a series. I’d love to know what other people think are classic games worth watching in and of themselves

I'd start with Carlton Fisk and Game 6, '75 Series--pretty sure the whole game's on YouTube. Fisk just scratches the surface of that game. It's also probably the last moment baseball was incontrovertibly "the national pastime." (Game 7 of the '75 Series was watched by 51 million people, second most ever--for some reason, more were watching Game 6 of the '80 Series.)

WS Gm 6, 1986, Mets/Red Sox.

If you are going to watch Gm 3, 2003 ALCS, you are sort of starting in the middle of the story. You might want to set it all up by watching some selected BOS-NYY games from the 2003-2004 regular season (7/01/2004 is a good one), the entire 2003 ALCS, Game 3 and Game 7 are classic moments, then top it all off with the 2004 ALCS. This is pure drama.

That’s a good lineup

The Joba Chamberlin midges game (Gm 2 2007 ALDS) is a tight game with some late laughs.

Might appeal to your sense of humor maybe.

Oh, sorry for so many Yankees recommendations, but the entire 1995 ALDS is amazing from start to finish.

That would be NYY-SEA.

What playoff baseball does better than any other sport is slow motion drama - the gradual tightening of the vice as the bases are loaded in a tight game and the pitcher's natural advantage gives way to pressure. Overtime playoff hockey has drama like no other, but the continuous action of the game and how suddenly it is over, doesn't let you appreciate the build the way baseball does. This is what I love about baseball.

Hey I'll watch any team! I just have the Yanquis permanently crossed out in my heart. Thank you for the recommendations! Fwiw the Game 3 rec was following on from the Phanatic-Dodgers video, in the genre of "fat old men getting mad".But I've been watching the 2010 postseason out of order anyway.

Lol @ old fat men getting mad - you've come to the right sport.

A thing I learned (though not this week) is how fast things can go downhill in this game. Managers are so fast to yank a pitcher off when he fucks up, but it's always unfortunate for the guy who inherits the mess afterwards. Postseason has delivered so much of this. The Mariners-Astros game, we had to stop after 12 innings, but I was so impressed by the way the pitchers held it together under what must have been immense pressure. Stuff like that, stuff like Tim Lincecum having a shaky first inning against the Braves in his first postseason game before going on to strikeout 14 of them. That's all stuff I love.

G7, 2001 WS was incredible, but, as pointed out above, detached from the rest of the series--and detached from the years preceding it, when it seemed like the Yankees owned the WS--it might not seem so incredible.

Probably true, but I don't really have a choice in the matter since I wasn't there. I will be watching these games, just fyi!

The background to 2003/2004 Sox/Yanks in my mind is that it’s the modern Yankees not quite in their full pomp but close to it, a young Jeter, Torre at the helm, just a few years removed from “greatest team ever” status (they got that engraved on their 1998 World Series rings). so-called because they set the MLB record for most wins in a season (though not the most regular-season wins iirc). They’ve still got Mariano (greatest closer ever), Bernie, Posada, Soriano, Pettite, Weaver, David Wells for god’s sake, Clemens, Contreras was great that year, they’d just signed Matsui. They were a great team. A-Rod was still playing short in Arlington, Texas.

Boston largely already had the lineup that would win it all a year later. Crazy to realise that Nomar was still playing for them in 2003! Feels like he doesn’t belong in this era of the team but there he was. It was Big Papi’s first year in Boston. Dustin Pedroia was NOT on this team (?!?) Schilling wasn’t either. The starting pitching was hittable apart from Pedro. And no real certified closer. Foulke was busy locking up the American League lead in saves in Oakland.

For a self-contained game, maybe G6, 2011--the David Freese game. Incredible...I think the Rangers were one strike away from winning the series three times.

Last post for a bit, else I'll never shut up...If you're interested in individuals, not just games, I'd suggest Reggie's 3-HR game in the '77 Series, Brooks Robinson in the '70 Series, and Roberto Clemente in the '71 Series. Not sure which specific games to look for with Robinson and Clemente.

5. Buster Posey grew up playing baseball in a purpose-built batting cage on his parents' 50 acre farm.
6. "Soft hands" - this is such a weird term omg?

Can I just point out, I made this thread as a way of giving some relief to the people I was no doubt boring to death about it, so please don't worry. And yes I am interested in individuals too!

G6, 2011--the David Freese game

Maybe this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ypIakgaR2c

The whole game's on YouTube too--almost four hours.

post season baseball is the absolute best and I'm sad I can't really afford bt sport anymore to record the games and watch them during UK friendly hours. at least I got to see the Atlanta baseball team win the WS for the first time since my beloved maddux/glavine/smoltz era.

You could fall down the rabbit hole for weeks with these recommendations, but if I had to pick one game from the last decade it has to be Game 7 of the 2016 WS, Cleveland vs Chicago Cubs. The history and backstory won't ever be repeated (176 combined years between the two teams since their last championship) and the game has at least five or six "WTF did I just see????" moments.

good one

oscar bravo i guess you might cite the 1991 World Series? it comes up a lot in “the best ever played” conversations. the beginning of the Smoltz/Maddux era in Atlanta.

would recommend game five of the 2015 ALDS between toronto and texas

it was toronto’s first playoff appearance in 22 years. the blue jays lost the first two games at home, then won both games in texas to force a decisive fifth game. the seventh inning alone — top and bottom — is among the craziest single frames in history

would also recommend game one of the 1988 world series between the dodgers and a’s. it has a legendary conclusion and the announcer was vin scully, who was peerless

I remember that 2015 game (how did I not think of that first?)...Another insane one with the Jays: G4, 1993. I don't know that it's famous for any one hit or play, but I think it was the longest Series game ever at the time (4:14), and maybe the highest scoring (15-14). Mitch Williams took the loss, a bit of foreshadowing.

I am excited for you to be in a position to watch an entire season next year! Baseball is best when you can let it ambiently drift by for a summer and take in the rhythms by osmosis (“he’s having a good year…” you’ll nod to yourself when your 2B is slashing 240/300/275. “Whaddabum…” you’ll say about your fringey reliever who’s pitched 50 innings of low-leverage ball to the tune of a 2.00 era)

Off the dome shit:

Kerry Wood’s 20K game

A’s at dodgers WS 88 game 1

Any supercut of Pedro Martinez strikeouts

Any supercut of Bonds’ HR in 2001, to see what peak performance looks like

I have also recommended the book “Class A” by Lucas Mann as a contemporary look at the low minors.

The Rhys Hoskins bat spike this weekend was rad

xp on Kerry Wood & Pedro Martinez but I appreciate specific recommendations, tysm!

Also commit this to memory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn28Dz4RUxc

gyac, I assume you've seen this classic moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbEHAsZxRYo

Fun fact you might enjoy:

Left-handed relief pitcher Billy Wagner (known for his absurd strikeout rate) is actually a natural right hander but after breaking his right arm twice as a kid he learned to throw with his left arm. And now he’s probably going to wind up in the hall of fame for being such a dominant pitcher.

Game 7 of the 2016 series is also my pick. Classic Cleveland clutch comeback to tie it coupled with a classic Aroldis Chapman meltdown, finished off with a determined Cubs team scraping out two runs (and Cleveland making it tense at the end too.)

Ten cent beer night is an event that encapsulates baseball in Cleveland in the 70's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daWdOwqQhCs

I will respond to all these posts in time but I’m watching this alds game atm. However I am nearly finished A Band of Misfits, about the 2010 Giants, and I’ve seriously watched this clip about ten times & also Clark’s homer against Nolan Ryan in his first big league at bat (!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUkTfbOEKTs

Lmao both at the guy going “you’re overmodulating” and Clark going “HUH??? NO WAY!” And also the guy stepping in from the side to clearly try to calm him down, and Clark shakes his hand instead.

Supposedly he used The Thrill is Gone as his answering machine message as well. Legendary.

smoothest swing of all time

there's also a whole thread about BASEBALL MOVIES that i haven't really paid attention to

would recommend:

BULL DURHAM - it's long since passed into cliche (and tim robbins very obviously cannot pitch) but it presents the cliches in a nice manner, and also i used to live in durham and know where that house is

SUGAR - pretty honest look at what it's like to be a (dominican/puerto rican/venezuelan) kid left to fend for himself in the minor leagues. needless to say, there are a lot of non-success stories

NO NO: A DOCKUMENTARY - the story of 1970s pitcher dock ellis, who once threw a no-hitter (for the pirates, no less) while tripping on LSD. among other crazy shit like plunking four straight cincinnati reds to start a game. he was a troubled and interesting man

This, along with Aaron's 715th, is my favorite baseball memory ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4nwMDZYXTI

I remember that 2015 game (how did I not think of that first?)

These days Toronto vs Texas G5 is the first thing I think of when it comes to games/moments that I want to rewatch. But I didn't want to be accused of homerism by recommending it first ...

Game 7 of the 2016 series is also my pick. Classic Cleveland clutch comeback to tie it coupled with a classic Aroldis Chapman meltdown, finished off with a determined Cubs team scraping out two runs (and Cleveland making it tense at the end too.)

And that's only the last three innings!

This week has been rough and I’ve barely watched any baseball.

More things I learned specifically about “Surfin” Barry Zito from reading excerpts from
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61frVWPOc1L.jpg

- Barry Zito did meth in his teens
- the first chapter opens with a quote from someone saying “if San Fran wins the World Series, does Barry Zito get a ring?” (Ouch - though I am a fan of brutally honest sports autobios).
- Barry Zito’s grandfather started a newspaper with Mussolini (!)

I need to read this book, there’s nothing more boring than reading stories of endless success from people who go to bed early and never do anything bad.

watch game 5 2012 NLCS giants vs cardinals if you want some more zito lore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8S-PI7HZ8o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Meay49NgGXI
giants down 1-3 in the series and he gets the start despite a very poor showing in the series before. giants win the next three then zito wins game 1 of the world series vs verlander which you mentioned.

I was thinking about which game I would recommend watching and actually realised the games I got the biggest kick out of weren't necessarily epic important ones. Like any Greg Maddux 85 pitch complete game shutout with like 2 strikeouts and upward of a dozen groundouts + handful of weak pop flys is amazing viewing imo. Especially with how different baseball is now.

Or Tom Glavine locating his fast ball consistently just outside the outside edge the strikezone with such monotone regularity that the umpire starts calling it a strike.

(xpost) You've almost perfectly described Maddux's G2 win against the Yankees in the '96 Series:

86 pitches, 6 H, 2 K, 0 BB, 0 runs. He didn't pitch a shutout, though--Bobby Cox brought in Wohlers for the 9th. He didn't let Maddux finish his Maddux.

yeah those 90s braves pitchers were clinical, hated them of course.

For what it's worth, Maddux was more of a strikeout pitcher than he's generally remembered as (with some help from the umps): 6.1/per 9 for his career, 6.9/per 9 during his '92-'98 peak. My favourite pitcher then--travelled to Montreal to see him somewhere in the middle there.

I did get the chance to see Smoltz's 3,000th career strikeout in person, that was epic. Still much love for him in the ATL.

I was thinking about which game I would recommend watching and actually realised the games I got the biggest kick out of weren't necessarily epic important ones. Like any Greg Maddux 85 pitch complete game shutout with like 2 strikeouts and upward of a dozen groundouts + handful of weak pop flys is amazing viewing imo. Especially with how different baseball is now.

ALCS game 3 2003

One that I forgot to recommend, on YouTube in its entirety: Mark Fidrych vs. the Yankees, June 28, 1976, 48,000 people in Yankee Stadium (on a Monday), ABC's Monday Night game, Fidrych 7-1 with a 2.18 ERA going in, the biggest story in baseball.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwGj4VfCreg

For style, Luis Tiant.

https://phildellio.tripod.com/tiant.jpg

Yeah I’m definitely making that fic post.

xps it was, actually, that Jeff Francis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPUoP2Ft3S8

gyac: I'm parked in front of Lyric Flowers right now--right in front.

🤩🤩🤩🤩

Andy Pages just struck out while Framber Valdez was walking around the mound. Something about pitch clock and the batter having to be set even while the pitcher is picking his nose on the grass.

What I learnt is that I still don't quiet get how the pitch clock/player-batter being "set" rules work.

I also learnt that I still hate the astros as much as I did 6 years ago

Man oh man. Casas drew a walk in the first inning, then had clutched at his side and was subbed out after the inning.

Me: 🙃

To recap, the starting infield for this team:

SS: Trevor Story - season ending injury
2B - Vaughn Grissom - groin strain in spring training, working through a rehab assignment
3B - Rafael Devers - sore shoulder, bone bruise on knee
1B - Triston Casas - “left field with left rib discomfort”

Cora said he's now fully convinced Trevor Story will play for the Red Sox this year. Story will take BP on the field Monday in what Cora said is a "huge step" for him.

Pivetta will throw a bullpen Monday before his next start either Wednesday or Thursday.

— Chris Cotillo (@ChrisCotillo) August 9, 2024

https://www.instagram.com/p/C-c_qqdoE0q/?igsh=MWs3anBmODZ3aHliag==

This article made me think of this thread.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/06/magazine/radio-baseball-mets.html

Fun piece in The Athletic about the language of baseball:

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5734020/2024/09/03/mlb-baseball-slang-guide-dictionary/?source=user_shared_article

I think I knew most of these but this was new to me.

Waffled

Everyday meaning: v. – equivocated, vacillated

Baseball meaning: v. – to be the victim of an emphatic hit, as a pitcher
“Last time I faced this guy, he waffled me. He hit it so hard I thought it was gonna go through the wall.”

When worlds collide: “It’s gonna take a while for the roads to clear; that ice storm waffled the whole town.”

The game isn’t fun atm with the way the teams I follow are playing, so…

An informal guide to Homer at the Bat & the things I understand/jokes i get and love all the more now that I understand baseball.

I’m literally just typing this into my phone so this isn’t going to be super coherent.

Mr Burns giving Homer the signs

Not only do I understand the purpose of the signs but I’ve seen Bruce Bochy do them!

https://i.postimg.cc/9Xxt4T5y/IMG-9400.gif
https://i.postimg.cc/BZwHZ0Hg/IMG-9399.gif

The episode title

Please see Casey at the Bat discussion upthread (one of my favourite series of posts of the year btw, dayo mvp)

things I learned about in baseball this week/how i learned to stop worrying and love baseball

Mattingly muttering “I still like him better than Steinbrenner”

This episode is obviously a classic but it’s amazing how much funnier it becomes when you actually understand lines like this.

Mr Burns’s original lineup
https://i.postimg.cc/3rSLpz5S/IMG-5278.jpg

Obviously you can appreciate this without knowing the names - classic Burns is insanely old joke - but when you do…

Most of these are obviously legends and/or Hall of Famers but his pick of Gabby Street at catcher is really intriguing. Street had a pretty perfunctory career compared to most of these guys, with a career 66 OPS+ and 2 career home runs. Intriguingly, he played for the Yankees in 1912 and then reappeared in St Louis in 1931 at the age of 48(!) for one solitary AB.

What we can conclude from this selection: Burns liked the cut of his jib & the plant’s catcher (Lenny?) was bad enough that it didn’t really matter who he out there.

Mr Burns platooning Darryl Strawberry based on a handedness matchup against an amateur

Just funny as fuck. Strawberry had a career OPS of .763 against LHP!

I haven't watched a new Simpsons episode in 20 years, at least, but they should do another baseball one with Judge, Betts, Lindor, etc.

Honestly good decision on your part it’s been awful for years. I stopped watching new episodes on a can’t miss basis around 2001-2 for school reasons (more time spent on school stuff, less time for everything else weeknight evenings) and every time I’ve watched a newer episode I’ve always regretted it.

Also, Canseco forcing them to rewrite him as a hero and then the writers choosing to apply this in a humbling Sisyphean fashion is just very funny to me.

Shohei would be a must, obviously, and they could get some good material from the takeover of analytics (Homer pontificates on ERA vs. FIP).

My parents are in America atm and they’re watching the World Series and they’re into it.

My mother: What is the story with Shohei Ohtani
Me: well he hits a lot of home runs
Me: and he pitches
My mother: 🤯

My dad was apparently talking about his 50-50 season. I swear if he ends up a Dodgers fan…

I hate the offseason.

However, I saw this AB for the first time and I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s part of what makes the game so magical to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1QfffRvWjM

Gagné locates his first two so perfectly that Bonds takes them. Bonds recalibrates, keeps his nerve, takes two outside. Fouls. Then finally, the moonshot.

The battle between pitcher and batter is an incredible thing to watch. Part of why I love watching Casas, he puts up some incredible ABs and knows the zone really well. But I don’t think anyone knew it like Bonds.

I certainly didn't see him play, but my guess is the one guy who knew it even better was Williams. Checked their career boxes, and Williams edged Bonds in BB% 20.6 to 20.3. And that includes those two or three seasons where, in my own opinion, teams went a little insane with all the IBBs to Bonds (over their careers, 688 IBB for Bonds to 258 for Williams).

Ted, not Mitch. Mitch's mastery of the strike zone was a little shaky.

I'm nitpicking, I know, and that's not what this thread is about.

Re: Homer at the Bat. My choice for old timey/oddly named catcher would have been Wally Schang. 60 grade catcher with an 80 grade name.

Damn good player--Jaffe has him as one of the 20 greatest catchers ever.

I know about him from an OOTP sim I did where I wanted to see what it would have been like if the Red Sox owner in 1919 didn’t fucking suck

thanks for posting that gyac.

The focus is frequently that batters had the advantage in the 90s/00s but here you see a failed starter turned ultra-elite reliever (Cy-winning!) going toe to toe with the only person to ever have used PEDs in MLB history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlVr45CHOuA

Thinking about this Bonds story today in light of his comments that Shohei has it easy compared to hitters of Bonds’s generation.

The Bonds comments:

When Bonds was asked about Ohtani's brilliance, he did tip his cap to the 2024 NL MVP. Bonds said he admires Ohtani's ability to excel in every aspect of the game.

"The pitching and hitting has been outstanding for what he's done," Bonds said. "Baserunning. He's a complete player. There's no doubt about the type of player he is and what he's accomplished in his career."

Despite that praise, Bonds asserted that hitting isn't quite as difficult now because fewer pitchers are plunking hitters following home runs. Bonds said Ohtani wouldn't have been able to hit multiple home runs without getting plunked in the old days.

"The game has just changed," Bonds said. "The game is way different than it was when I played. The same way Michael (Jordan) talks about it or anybody does. Ohtani is not gonna hit two home runs without seeing one go (by his ear) in my generation. I don't care what he does. He's not gonna steal two bases without someone decapitating his kneecap to slow him down. It's a different game back then."

He told a story from the 2002 World Series. During the Game 2 loss to the Anaheim Angels, Bonds grounded out on the first pitch from an impressive twenty-year-old rookie named Francisco Rodríguez. Writer Peter Gammons said to Bonds after the game that he thought Rodríguez would become the best young reliever in the game. “Peter, since you want to insult my ability and want to put this guy on such a high pedestal, when I face this kid again I’m going to hit the ball so hard you’re not going to see it.” In Game 6, Bonds crushed a high change-up off Rodríguez that disappeared through the tunnel in the right-field bleachers. When he jogged to left field at the end of the inning, he looked up at Gammons in the press box and said to himself, “Now what are you going to say about it?”

Bonds added there is less retribution for celebrating home runs in today's era. He claimed he would have been hospitalized for gloating after parking a ball in the stands.

He's kind of ignoring the elephant in the room, isn't he, in comparing 2025 to 2001? Not that I want to get into another discussion of THAT topic.

Yeah we’ve talked spin rate to death

calcaterra:

I think Barry Bonds was the best hitter of my lifetime, but this is still horseshit.

Barry Bonds did not have to face entire pitching staffs full of guys throwing 98 mph. Barry Bonds would walk up to the plate wearing body armor that William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke, would look at and say "damn, that's a lot of body armor, dude." We can obviously discount Ohtani's stolen base totals due to the rules changes which have made stealing bases easier, but the fact that Bonds cites intangible "toughness" considerations rather than rules gives the game away. He's not analyzing anything. He's merely denigrating youth, as almost all older people denigrate youth.

I've been linking this article whenever an old ballplayer says such things about younger ballplayers for nearly 25 years. I figure I'll never stop linking it.

also bonds never got plunked more than 10 times in any season he played, and i would bet most of them hit that enormous right elbow pad he hung out over the plate. 33 players were hit more than that last season.

In my day, we referred to this particular type of horseshit as “gossage.”

He's not analyzing anything. He's merely denigrating youth, as almost all older people denigrate youth.

i was gonna say that bonds never had to deal with bob gibson but tbh despite his rep bob gibson barely plunked anyone!

i guess you *can* say that modern middle infielders don't have to deal with chase utley wrecking their knees and that modern catchers don't have to get destroyed at the plate, but neither of these were ever barry's problems

Gibson barely plunked anyone because hitters knew when they would be thrown at (Unwritten Rules (TM)) and were ready to bail. Fear of pitchers still existed early in Bonds' career but by 2001 a pitcher could get tossed for throwing at batters. Bonds could bat wearing his suit of armor and stand directly over the plate without much worry about getting hit, and as noted, every team didn't have a parade of relievers throwing 98. Without those rule changes, Bonds wouldn't have hit 700+ home runs, so he's kind of derailing his own point.

Randy Johnson and Nolan Ryan were the last two pitchers I remember having real “hitters are scared” headhunter reputations but even they didn’t actually hit that many batters (and many of the ones they did came from their early wild years). Clemens sits between them in hit batsmen and was a bigger asshole than either so maybe he had the rep too and I’ve just forgotten.

Didn't Pedro have that reputation (deserved or otherwise)?

https://www.espn.com/classic/biography/s/Martinez_Pedro.html

Yes he did. I might have posted it earlier in this thread but if you search “Pedro Martinez plunk” the first video is titled “Pedro Martinez gets plunked” but starts off with Pedro himself hitting the batter. According to the Jomboy video of the infamous brawl where Pedro rolled Don Zimmer’s head like a bowling ball, Pedro claimed he hit 99% of batters deliberately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDA85mcVSxU

When Tim Wakefield died, Pedro spoke about him and claimed that Wakefield wasn’t any good at hitting people because of the lack of speed of his pitches, so when a batter leaned into one of his pitches to draw a walk, Pedro would deliberately hit the batter if he was pitching in the same series to make up for it.

Pedro talks about it here (“well the thing is if you’re going to lean into 77, you might as well lean in for 97, right?”)

https://vimeo.com/905924215

When I looked up Pedro, was going to throw in a Wakefield post--tied for 7th on the career HBP list! The very definition of bringing a knife to a gunfight, except with Wakefield it's more like a pair of safety scissors.

i'd heard a story that after being mediocre at the start of his career -- i think he was 50-50 at one point -- randy johnson asked nolan ryan for advice and was told to instill fear by periodically throwing behind batters

appears to be apocryphal, though -- all i can find now is that ryan did give him much-appreciated advice, but it was mostly about mechanics and the importance of throwing strikes (lol)

xp I feel like his have to have been accidental given what Pedro says about him having nothing when the knuckleball wasn’t working, right?

Oh, I don't think he was throwing at anybody, no. Goes with the knuckleball.

Here's the Top 20:

1. Gus Weyhing
2. Chick Fraser
3. Pink Hawley
4. Walter Johnson
5. Randy Johnson & Eddie Plank
7. Charlie Morton & Tim Wakefield
9. Tony Mullane
10. Joe McGinnity
11. Charlie Hough
12. Clark Griffith
13. Cy Young
14. Jim Bunning
15. Roger Clemens
16. Nolan Ryan
17. Vic Willis
18. Bert Blyleven & Jamey Wright
20. Don Drysdale

Pedro and Drysdale are the only two guys I know who were widely thought of as headhunters. Johnson and Ryan, yeah--mostly a combination of early wildness and their huge number of innings pitched. Two knuckleballers, with a pitch they couldn't really control. A lot of guys with a lot of innings, a couple I don't know. Charlie Morton and Bert Blyleven--don't know what their reputations are/were--Morton has led the league a number of times.

I think of Clemens as somebody who wasn't afraid of brushing guys back. He was a very aggressive pitcher.

Well Charlie Morton has been in the league 16 years so I thought maybe that’s a counting stat but he led all of baseball in hbp in 2014 with 19 plunks, despite only pitching 157 innings that year. Feel like Mookieproof might know more about it though.

Morton has led the league four times, with another seven seasons of double-digit HBP. So the evidence seems strong that there's a lot of purpose going on there...although, his lifetime BB/9 is 3.3, which is not good in the context of today (would have been seen as decent control in the '70s).

morton was called 'ground chuck' back in the day for his propensity to induce groundouts

i'm not aware of him specifically headhunting, but those pirates staffs of the early-mid 2010s were widely disliked for their insistence on pitching inside (and thus hitting more than their fair share of guys)

iirc when he went to houston they suggested that he throw more . . . i wanna say four-seam fbs rather than two-seamers, but it could be vice-versa. with the result that his strikeouts went up, but his HBPs were still high

Things I learned about baseball watching The Clubhouse:

- Being bilingual is nearly essential in the modern game. In the 2024 Red Sox clubhouse Cora is bilingual and presides over a roster that’s a mix of monoglots and players who are fully bilingual and who have mixed linguistic ability. Normally pitchers and position players don’t hang out but Brayan Bello spends most of his time with other Latin players and Spanish speakers, and most of them are position players.
- I still hate him but I gained some respect for Cora. There are two player’s problems that Cora handles sensitively that made me think more of him.
- The season is both short and long. An onscreen slider shows you at what point the season is in and it reminds you how brutal it is to commit months of your life to end up with nothing to show for it.
- A slump, which might only go for 10-30 ABs and is a drop in the ocean of the full season, is agonisingly long for the players. The day before Casas hits three home runs, they use a voiceover clip of his talking about slumping. “Being in a slump is the worst thing because I come to the field every single day and I feel like I’m doing nothing. There’s 45 minutes in between each at bat and you want it so bad that it feels like an eternity. It’s typically something that’s going on mentally that you just need to try to be able to flush.” It made me think of Raffy Devers, obviously, and Casas started the season almost as cold (and didn’t get to play in the statpad game to bump his numbers). When he hit a home run in Baltimore, the radio asked who he was talking to to try to get out of it and he said “Raffy Devers, because misery loves company.”
- players are close: you see them sitting on each others laps and huddled together in the dugout, but they spend so long together all day most choose to spend their scant few hours with their families if they have them.
- but players also understand it’s a business: they talk about themselves and their job security disparagingly and incredibly bluntly, and naturally this applies to players too. The way scouts talk about players is how players talk about players: bluntly, zero care for sensitivity, matter of fact.
- It’s a game that requires an incredibly tough skin to survive and thrive in.
- international players have more support now than they once did, and there’s some nice touches like English speaking coaches throwing in some Spanish endearments to encourage players but man, it must have been alienating before.
- the game makes it very hard to spend much time with a family during the season. Pedroia said that his oldest son resented baseball because it took his dad away from him so much of the time.
- most of these guys have daddy issues
- it’s not covered nearly enough but they’re fairly blunt about teams treatment of young Dominican players and how they’re essentially done if they’re not picked up by a team by 17.

I’m worrying about irl stuff atm that will come to a head one way or another this week and baseball isn’t giving me much joy/distraction atm as Triston Casas is in a brutal slump (.200/.279/.309 for April and his whole season totals are even worse due to starting the first four games of the season 1-18). So I thought I’d write about this and slumps to get this out of my head and in the hopes of somehow performing a reverse jinx.

Everyone slumps in baseball, though definitions may differ on what it is. Willie Mays told a group of Giants rookies in 2009 that he considered a slump 0-10. There this part buried in The Baseball Codes during a section about rookie hazing:

“The guys who make a big fuss about it, who get mad at it, they’re usually the ones who don’t last too long,” said Doug Mientkiewicz, who was forced into female clothing by his Twins teammates as a rookie in 1998. “If you can’t be mentally strong enough to wear a dress for one day when every other rookie is, too, then you’re probably not going to be mentally strong enough to handle an 0-for-35 stretch in four different cities.”

"David's fine," he said. "He's one of our teammates. It could have been me who hit into a double play. It happens to everybody. He's had 60 at-bats. A couple of years ago I had 60 at-bats and I was hitting 170 and everybody was ready to kill me, too. What happened? Laser show. I'm tired of looking at the NESN poll, why David's struggling. David's fine. He's one of our teammates. We believe in him. He came out of it last year, he's going to come out of it this year.
"I'm going to go online and vote on NESN.com: 'Papi's fine. Thanks for playing.'"

I know I'm like a broken record quoting Ball Four, but Bouton addresses the psychology of streaks and slumps a couple of times in the book (had to screenshot an Internet Archive copy--hope it's readable).

https://i.postimg.cc/nzgzr7fR/bouton.jpg

He was the professional athlete, not me, but I'm not sure I entirely believe him there--I've argued on this board before that I thought Kershaw probably fell pray to "I've failed in this situation before, and fuck, here am I again" thinking in the playoffs at some point. I don't see how that stuff can't get into your head at least a little bit.