Truth, Strangely

Larry Walker, 1996 Upper Deck

Here is a Larry Walker baseball card, part of an Upper Deck series entitled “Strange but True.” My mind is racing with the possibilities of what I will discover about Larry Walker that is simultaneously strange and true! Perhaps he has a pet Koala Bear that speaks Russian! That would be strange, and also true if it were true. Maybe he is an amateur ballet dancer, which would be so strange in its contrast to baseball! Or maybe Larry Walker dips his baseball glove in milk before every game for no apparent reason! Or maybe I should stop speculating and turn the card over:



First allow me to say that I thoroughly enjoy the pencil-sketch portrait of Larry Walker. It’s very classy, and truly encapsulates the strangeness yet trueness at hand. Now:

“The Rocket in Right Field”
In 1995, Walker recorded a rare feat by throwing out a runner at first base on an apparent single. He has three other similar plays in his career, and in 1992, he gunned out more men at first (three) than third (two).

Breaking news from the strange but true department: Baseball player throws out runner! Granted, I realize how rare it is for an outfielder to throw a runner out at first base –- that’s the kind of stuff that happens in Little League, and woe is you if you are the hitter, and your dad is the coach, and you just lollygagged it to first on a single and got tossed by the right fielder, and your dad gives you a look as you walk back to the dugout like, “Just wait until the car ride home…” –- but there is a difference between rare and strange. For example, it is rare for a player like Larry Walker to throw a runner out at first from right field, though it is indeed true that he has done this several times. It is strange to depict this rare feat in cartoon form with nonsensical dialogue and a bumblebee wearing a baseball hat.

I’m not ashamed to say that I had to read this thing like three times before it sort of sunk in. To recap, two men are watching Larry Walker throw a baseball. The assistant coach –- who has no face –- says to the manager – who also has no face, but wears a “MGR” on his chest, as managers do: Funny – it doesn’t look like a canon. And then –- get this -– the mgr says: It’s not……he throws farther! Also, completely out of the picture to the right is a bumblebee with binoculars that adds: Target sighted!

Here is how I comprehend this cartoon. The assistant coach was told that Larry Walker has a canon for an arm. The assistant coach, who is a moron, took this literally, and so when he is watching Larry Walker throw, he marvels at the fact that Larry Walker’s arm does not physically resemble an actual canon, and states as much. The manager, amused by this moron, assures the assistant coach that he was misinformed –- Larry Walker’s arm is not a canon. This is evident because Larry Walker throws farther than a canon. (This is obviously not true, because a canon can shoot farther than Larry Walker can throw. I know that because I saw it on Mythbusters.) Also, the manager gives no explanation as to what Larry Walker’s arm IS, unless, by not stating anything, he is implying that Larry Walker’s arm is simply an arm, albeit a very, very strong one.

However, the aforementioned title of “The Rocket in Right Field” leaves one to believe that Larry Walker’s arm is actually a rocket. So we can only conclude that Larry Walker’s arm is either an arm or a rocket. We also discover that, although his arm/rocket is undoubtedly strong, Larry Walker’s accuracy is not solely of his own accord, as he employs a bumblebee that wears a baseball hat and uses binoculars to locate “targets,” which in this case would be runners or, more definitively, the teammate covering the respective base. It remains uncertain however, why Larry Walker cannot use his own eyes to locate his targets, as he is the only character depicted that has a face. But hey, I don’t want to get too involved here. It’s just a cartoon.

Mike LaCoss, Unleashed

Mike LaCoss, 1989 Topps

Hey, I’m Mike LaCoss! Check out my FORKBALL! Or split-fingered fastball, or curveball, or whatever! I don’t really like to classify my pitches. The point is -- my forkball does crazy stuff! It’ll bend your KNEES! I like to throw it when I’m angry, like when a batter tries to call timeout because I’m taking too long to decide which kind of forkball I want to throw! Arrrrgh! I hate that! But that’s when I’ll hit you off with the ol’ forky and you’ll be sorry you ever wasted Mike LaCoss’ time! How much you wanna bet I can throw this forkball over them mountains?! One time I threw my forkball so hard that it split into four baseballs and I ended up striking out a guy in France! I didn’t find out until three weeks later when the guy sent me a letter and all it said was “Nice forkball!” At least that’s what I think it said because I don’t read French! FREEDOM fries!



Mike pitched 5 straight Shutouts and a No-Hitter in high school.

Remember high school, dork?! I probably struck you out like, a zillion times! My forkball wasn’t even refined then! I didn’t care –- I threw it anyway! Watch out, here it comes! Psyche! Scared ya’, didn’t I? I throw my forkball during sex! Sex with women!

He enjoys raising his own bird dogs.

Another thing I like to do is raise my own bird dogs! Not other peoples’ bird dogs -– my own bird dogs! If you have a bird dog and you think I’m gonna raise it for you, well –- you got another thing coming, buddy! I raise ‘em from birth, and teach how to hunt, and catch birds, and then they kill ‘em! Yeah! Stupid birds, squeaking and quacking all the time! Shutup! I’ll sick my bird dogs on ya’, you stupid birds! And I raise ‘em right! A buddy of mine said he liked to raise his own bird dogs too, and then one day I was hanging out with him, drinking some moonshine and talking about mustaches, and a bird flew by, and his bird dog just sat there! I was like, “What kind of a bird dog are you?!” My bird dogs would’ve eaten, digested, and pooped that bird out before his dumb dog even realized there was a bird in the area! Arrrgh! I hate when other people say they raise their own bird dogs but really don’t! One time we were supposed to play the Cardinals and my bird dogs ate the entire team before the game started! I was like, “Ooops!” But not really! Sometimes I play fetch with my bird dogs by throwing them my FORKBALL! They catch my forkball better than my own stupid catcher! And he’s a person! Last year my stupid catcher let one of my forkballs get past him and the winning run scored! I was like, “You iiiiiiiidiot!” Then I gave him a real stern look, like this, and I threatened to throw my forkball in his freakin’ face! And he was like, “Cool, that should mean it’ll hit near my feet!” And I was like, “Arrrgh!” And I went to hit him, but I missed, and then he punched me in the face, and I fell down. But then he helped me back up. We're cool now. I mean, that’s my catcher.

The Message

Dante Bichette, 1996 Topps



Buoyed by a 23-game hitting streak, Dante was named to his 2nd All-Star Game in 1995. After being selected in ’94, he received a congratulatory call from his idol, Ted Williams, but wasn’t at home.

Hi, you’ve reached the Bichettes. We’re not home right now, but feel free to leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Beeeep.

Hello? Hello? Geez la freakin weez. Daniel? Listen, I don’t know if this confarnit machine is on or what. This is Ted Williams. Somebody told me to call you, because you uh, used to like me or something. Ya’ know, when I was playing ball – not in a homosexual kind of way, so just get that thought out of your head right now! Anyway David, I heard you made the All-Star team, and I wanted to say: Wow, what an honor. Can you sense the sarcasm there, Danny boy? What do they invite to that game now, 70 guys? If I had to call every guy they invited to the All-Star game my freakin finger would fall off! Mostly because I still use a rotary phone, and it takes me 12 minutes to dial locally. I time myself. Anyway, when I was playing ball, they invited two guys to the All-Star Game. Two! Me and DiMaggio. Not Dom – the good one. There was no one on the National League team, because they sucked, so me and DiMaggio would go out and there and hit until our hands were bleeding, and that was the game. In the ’41 game I hit 12 home runs and afterwards I caught a 54-lb marlin off the coast of the Pacific, so stick that in your ballot, Jimmy! And DiMaggio hit in 32 straight games that day, and it was only one game! You figure it out. But believe me – it happened. Hope you enjoyed your famous 23-hitting game hitting streak this year, Billy Bob. I once hit in 23 straight games myself, and by “hit in 23 straight games” I mean "shot down 23 enemy planes in the freakin’ war!" But really, hooray for you. By the way, it says here that you play for Colorado, so if somebody is pullin’ my chain and this is a prank call, my apologies. Baseball in Colorado…..pfft. Nothing but tree huggers over there, so good luck finding baseball bats! I met a Native American fellow in Colorado once. Cured my hangover with squirrel’s blood and two scoops of mulch. Nice fellow. Didn’t speak a lick of English though, and smelled like a sonofabitch. You’re not Native American, are ya’, Donald? Ehhh, I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. These days. So…glad I caught you. Maybe the next time your childhood idol calls you’ll remember to be home, and not out dilly-dallying all over town with your long hair and what not. So I hoped you liked someone other than me growing up, cause I sure ain’t calling again. Maybe uh, Arthur Fonzarelli will call you up next week and you’ll be home, and the two of you nincompoops can talk about the good old days. I’ll be out on the lake trying to pretend this whole thing never happened. Anyway, congratulations.

Beeeeep.

The Bottom Line

Curt Schilling, 1999 Stadium Club

It is 1999. The world is about to end. Computers are bound to go haywire, compromising the future possibilities of posting old baseball cards to the Internet. None of this bothers you however, because you have just arrived to this land called America. You love baseball. You attend your first baseball game –- a Philadelphia Phillies game -– and you are loudly booed when a foul ball hits you in the teeth. In your country, booing means, “Are you okay?” and so you immediately take to the fans of Philadelphia. Furthermore, you have just watched Curt Schilling work seven scoreless innings. He is your new favorite player.

You want to know everything about him. What’s he like? you wonder. Is he outspoken? Will he ever win a championship because of his socks? If the computers stave off disaster, will he ever become a contributing member of the blogosphere? Also: What are his grass/turf splits? So many questions you have. So many weird questions. Because you are from another country, and you are so freakin’ weird.

You read up on everything about Curt Schilling. You discover he is from Alaska and you’re like, “Wtf?!!!” Even you make fun of Alaska. You marvel at his 300-strikeout 1998 season, which is the second time in his career he reached that mark. You wonder what could have been had he made the commitment to tap into his vast potential earlier in his career. They haven’t even come out yet, but you buy his fathead.

You have absorbed every possible bit of Curt Schilling information. Your mind races with data, and you are going insane. You race out of your house grabbing your hair and screaming –- your mind overflowing with largely useless Curt Schilling-related facts. You need immediate relief, something to override and replace all of the information you have gathered. You need a brief and concise summary of Curt Schilling up until that point in his career –- something that encapsulates what he means. In essence, with regards to Curt Schilling, you need the bottom line.

You run into me in the street. You grab me and scream, ”What is the bottom line on Curt Schilling?!” I think you are so weird, but you are also oddly endearing and have no teeth and so I sympathize. Also, I think that I may be on some type of hidden camera show, and want to act appropriately should this air on television. Now, I have an idea of the bottom line on Curt Schilling, but considering your plight, I want to be certain. Luckily, and completely randomly, I remember that I have his 1999 Stadium Club baseball card in my wallet. I take it out and flip it over. You scream again, “What is the bottom line on Curt Schilling?!” I say, “Calm down, dude!” and squint again at the back of the card.

“Okay,” I say. “You want the bottom line on Curt Schilling?”

You are shivering.

“That’s easy,” I say. “He holds the sixth-best strikeout-per-nine-innings rate –- which is 8.45 –- since World War II, with a minimum of 1,500 innings pitched.”

You look at me quizzically, panicked. “World War II?” you ask.

I look back at you.

You spontaneously combust.

Ron Darling Probably Wore His Uniform Everywhere

Card Sleuth: 1955 Topps Misprint

I got out of work early yesterday in anticipation of the holiday weekend, and headed over to Bay State Coin on Bromfield Street in Downtown Crossing, a shopping district of Boston. I asked to go through their box of off-condition 1956's, and found this 1955 Topps card of Joe Frazier in there for $1.



Nothing special on the front, just a lot of creases, tears, and paper-loss goodness. As you can see in the scans, the back is the real star of the card. It's my first misprint from 1955 Topps. I say 'misprint' rather than 'miscut' because only the back of the card is wrong; the front's as it should be.

On the T ride home, I got to thinking: how hard would it be to figure out the other player from just his stats? So when I got home, I pulled my Baseball Encyclopedia (1990 edition) from the shelf and scanned the 1954 season stats. And lo and behold, I found a match: New York Yankees third baseman Andy Carey.

And wouldn't you know it, Carey's stat line on his 1955 Topps card matches the one I found on the misprinted Frazier, like this:



So I imagine that during the printing process of Series 1 of 1955 Topps, Carey appeared directly above Frazier on the sheet, and at least one sheet was misprinted.


Thinking about misprints and miscuts is funny to me. For the longest time I felt that Topps should've been more careful not to let screw-ups make it out of the factory. But the more cards shows I went to, the more I realized that printing errors have been around forever, and that nobody really cared too much to catch them. I think they provide insight to the printing process, but to a little kid in the Fifties, how crappy would it have been when one card in your pack of one card was screwed up? How are you supposed to trade that?

Mark McGwire Will Never Make the Hall of Fame

And he knows it.

There are certain stigmas players can't get over when it comes to Hall of Fame enshrinement: gambling, drugs, cheating, and monumentally frosty relations with sportswriters. Oh, and a low batting average or a high ERA.

What about an alcohol problem? Next round's on me, Mickey. Were you a racist brawler? Hey, Ty Cobb is in there as an original member. Did you engage in folk-hero-esque cheating as a player? Get in here Gaylord, you lovable scamp.

Gambling is pretty cut-and-dry. Pete Rose? Never means never, man. Hal Chase? Not gonna happen. Shoeless Joe? I don't care if you have the IQ of a raisin, you just can't accept money or the promise of money from a known gambler. Of course, there are others who dodged the gambling bullet (John McGraw (he owned a poolhall, for pete's sake!), Tris Speaker, Ty Cobb), and don't forget that Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were briefly, officially exiled by Bowie Kuhn for conduct detrimental to the spirit of the game because of their post-retirement associations with casinos (as greeters, no less).

Drugs is less cut-and-dry, but let's just say that when your drug nickname makes it onto the front of your 1989 Topps card, you better just enjoy the moment there, Rock Raines, because while the Hall opens its doors for drunks, it does so with less frequency for known drug users. In fact, I think it's safe to say that if you were somehow involved in the Pittsburgh Drug Trials or perjured yourself in front of Congress whilst denying steroid abuse, you're not going to make it to the Hall. And honestly, the double standard is a shame. Especially in light of the "character" issue Hall voters use to judge players. So what – alcohol is ok but not drugs? Seems a little hollow. I mean, what if society was big into social drug use and drinking was considered a breakdown in morals? I'm guessing it would be the other way around, no?

What's important here is that between these two events — Pittsburgh Drug Trials and the House Committee hearing after the Mitchell Report — we're talking about a lot of talented players who will have the drug albatross around their necks forever. Guys like Dave Parker, Keith Hernandez, and Tim Raines, Rafael Palmeiro, Jason Giambi, Andy Pettitte, Gary Sheffield, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, and yes, Mark McGwire, to name but a very few. And in the end, it doesn't matter if drugs in any form were rampant or the accepted culture of the game: to make it to the hallowed Hall, you have to do it cleanly, on your own two legs.

So back to the original idea: Mark McGwire never making it into the Hall of Fame has nothing to do with statistics, though I think he's only a borderline Hall of Famer based solely on stats. And before that vein in your forehead pops, let me say this: being a prodigious home run hitter does not get you into the Hall of Fame by itself. You have to do lots of other things, too. Having a decent batting average helps, as does a relatively high hits total. McGwire was a career .263 hitter, with a total of 1,626 hits. Over a third of those were home runs.

Did you want McGwire in your lineup? Yes. Was it exciting to watch him break Maris's record? Of course. Did he take copious amounts of muscle-enhancing drugs? All signs point to yes. Were those drugs illegal at the time he took them? Ehhhh, no...

And this could be McGwire's saving grace: when he took them, the drugs he took weren't illegal in the eyes of baseball. But now, in this post-shit-hitting-fan period where we're debating his eternal baseball immortality, the drugs are illegal. And not only that, but the drugs association is a bad one to have. A very bad one.

Statistically, McGwire could make it. But it's going to take him a heck of a long time to garner enough support. For one thing, he denied, denied, and denied again. They he shunned the spotlight. And after a tearful admission, his case seems really weak. Weak like "I'm only saying this so I can work again" weak.

Sportswriters and Hall of Fame voters may have a tendency to worship the ground sports heroes walk on, but when it comes time to vote on enshrinement, the player's entire history comes into play — not just what they said recently.

Collecting the 2nd Tier

Since baseball cards were invented, it's always been popular to collect superstars. Willie Mays, Reggie Jackson, Nolan Ryan, Cal Ripken, and have you heard of a certain switch-hitter from Oklahoma named Mickey Mantle? He's probably the most popular player ever, in terms of baseball card collectability.

But with a few certain exceptions, collecting certified Hall-of-Fame players isn't as interesting to me as collecting second-tier players. Who makes the second tier? Well, in the 1950s, guys like Vic Power, Harry Agganis, Al Rosen, Mike Garcia, Carl Furillo and Don Mossi are good places to start.

In the Sixties, guys like Bob Veale, Sam McDowell, Rocky Colavito, and Dean Chance fit the bill. And in the Seventies, Luis Tiant, Chris Chambliss, Keith Hernandez, and Dick Allen all qualify (and let's throw in Rick Wise while we're at it). For the 1980s, Vince Coleman, Don Mattingly, Dave Stewart and about fifty other superstars-at-the-time are all right there.

Here are my ultimate Second Tier Players, by baseball-card decade:

Position Player
1950s - Ted Kluzewski, Gil Hodges
1960s - Roger Maris, Rocky Colavito, Ron Santo
1970s - Cesar Cedeno, Bill Madlock
1980s - Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy
1990s - Mark McGwire, Fred McGriff

Pitcher
1950s - Don Newcombe, Allie Reynolds
1960s - Sam McDowell
1970s - Vida Blue, Luis Tiant
1980s - Jack Morris, Dave Stewart, Dwight Gooden
1990s - David Cone

Second-tier guys get respect in the hobby, but only to a certain extent, because of their lack of Hall of Fame credentials. And most Second-tier guys do not belong in the Hall of Fame. What makes them so interesting to collect is that they were superstars at the height of their careers, which means that they were included with the Mantles, Aarons, Ripkens, and Ryans in most special subsets and insert sets.

What got me thinking about the second tier was this question: How much would someone like Dean Chance have made today? Today, players are rewarded after one or two good seasons, either through a team getting scared that the player will bolt when their current contract is up, or a player and his agent being savvy enough to recognize the situation after a good season.


Dean Chance
In 1964, at age 24, Chance put together a hugely dominant season, just his third full in the Majors, when he won the Cy Young Award. He most certainly would've cashed out after that season, with his next four reliable campaigns (1965-68) coming on another team. Which is kind of how his career went anyways, just, one would assume, without the big payday.

Which (closer to) current player fits the Dean Chance career arc? Well, not too many pitchers win the Cy Young Award at age 24, but a few have done it. Tim Lincecum comes to mind, as does Barry Zito. Neither of these players really match up well with Chance. The closest former (and relatively recent) Cy Young winner who does, that I was able to find, is Pat Hentgen, who won it in 1996 at age 27, his fifth full year in the Majors. Although he didn't reach 20 wins again after his Cy Young season, he did put together four solid seasons after the award, then slinked slowly into oblivion, a la Chance. And according to Baseball Reference, Hentgen made close to $38-million in the process. After you take into account that that figure represents monies made in the 1990s, the amount earned in 2009 US dollars would be roughly $48.5 million.

Personally, I think Chance would've made more than $48.5 million in his career had he debuted in, say, 2001, and retired ten or eleven years later. Would he have transcended the second tier? Nope.