DL: Was on-base percentage underrated in your era?
KS: Most definitely. I think that nowadays — with the attention paid to OBP and OPS — people would have seen me in a different light. That said, I was fortunate enough to play for Earl Weaver, who, maybe before his time, knew what on-base percentage meant.
My first year in Baltimore, there really weren’t a lot of guys stealing bases. He called me into his office in spring training. I thought that maybe I was in trouble, but what he wanted to tell me was that I was going to lead off. I told him that I wasn’t capable of stealing many bases, and he said, “That’s not the idea. The whole idea is that you walk a lot, and Bobby Grich walks a lot, so you’ll bat first and he’ll bat second.” I set the Orioles record for walks that season [118] and it still stands. Bobby Grich walked 107 times that season.
My first at bat in the American League came in Tiger Stadium on a cold day. I drew a walk. I went to third on a base hit and scored on a three-run home run [by Lee May]. I scored our first run of the season. When I got back to the dugout, Earl Weaver looked at me and said, “That’s what I was talking about. Get on base.”
by Jon DeRosa |
September 7, 2011 7:42 am |
7 Comments
The future schedule is packed so tightly there’s no room for rainouts and make-ups. Last night’s game was rainout from start to finish, yet they played anyway. The first pitch was after 11:00 PM and the game didn’t end until 2:15 AM. The Yankees won 5-3, and much more importantly, no one got hurt.
Phil Hughes got the water-logged ball late last night. I wonder if he was glad to pitch while nobody was watching. He was very good under adverse conditions, striking out five in six innings and only walking one. He held the Orioles scoreless for the first five innings before Weiters touched him for a two-out, two-run homer. It tied the game at two and Hughes was done after six. The fact that Hughes did not dissolve in the rain was a positive result; six good innings were bonus material. Teix singled in Jeter to back-up Hughes and give him a brief shot at earning the victory.
Posada had a time-capsule game for us – a homer and a base running blunder. If he only got behind the plate and made no attempt to frame any pitches and dropped a couple of fastballs down the middle, it would have been a definitive collection.
Girardi asked three pitchers to get through the seventh when one probably would have been a better choice. Boone Logan came in to face one lefty and failed. When a LOOGY fails, it shakes the earth. They get one hitter and no chance at redemption.
Forgive the Orioles for looking past the bottom of the seventh after Posada ran into the second out. With nobody on, Francisco Cervelli at the plate and Brett Gardner on deck, Buck Showalter might have been looking ahead at match ups for the eighth when the top of the Yankee order would come to bat.
Snap, crack, back-to-back jacks. Cervelli has been channelling Bill Dickey lately and Gardner is having a strong start to September. It was an unlikely pair to hit consecutive homers, their fourth and seventh respectively.
The Yankees pounced on the lead and sent the Hammer and the Sandman out to seal the win. The Hammer had a very disappointing outing, only striking out one batter. Let’s chalk it up to the rain. Mariano worked around a error by Teixeira and zipped through the next three hitters. I hope the Yankees have PJs in their lockers, because tomorrow afternoon figures to be much more of the same – a rainy day and an unforgiving schedule.
Just when the authors of this blog had given up on the chance of a game being played and decided to hit the sack–it is a school night, after all–the Yanks and Orioles took the field. They got it in and the game ended after two in the morning New York time. We are happy to report that under 1,000 fans, often referred to as “brave souls,” but more aptly known as “complete nuts” or “stadium employees,” watched the Yanks win. Upon further review, it would have been worth staying up just to hear John Sterling bellyaching.
Jon D will be around in a bit to give you some more details.
My life began to change for the better as soon as I caught a glimpse of Hollywood in my future. I believe that’s known as the magic of show business. Of course, the Philadelphia 76ers, being mostly very tall, as professional basketball teams inevitably are, did what they could to obscure my view by playing a game they appeared to be as uninterested in as I was. But we all had to be someplace that January night in 1985, so there we were. Afterward, out of desperation more than anything else, I tried, unsuccessfully, to coax a sentence or two out of Moses Malone. All Moses seemed to have in him was a few grunts, and a few grunts do not a column make.
It was snowing when I headed back to the Daily News wondering how I was going to tap dance my way through this one. Sometime between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., I remembered the “Red on Roundball” feature that Red Auerbach used to do on the NBA’s TV games. One of his guests had been Moses, and when Auerbach asked him what the secret of rebounding was, Moses said, “I take it to the rack.” Though hardly as memorable as “Give me liberty or give me death” or “I can’t get no satisfaction,” those words became my inspiration for an ode to Moses, who, after all, would end up in the hall of fame as a player, not an orator.
Afterward, while driving home through the snow, I realized that (1) I had turned 40 while I was in the process of immortalizing that big sphinx, and (2) I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life doing this. In truth, I didn’t want to spend another day doing it. But I needed the dough, and besides, in just a few hours, I had an appointment to see Steve Sabol at NFL Films about his search for someone to replace the late John Facenda as the voice that would stir the soul as the game’s behemoths shook the earth. For what it’s worth, I wrote a column nominating Tina Turner. She didn’t get the job.
Not that I cared. I was too busy thinking about Hollywood. At first it was an abstraction, the way it had been when I was a kid so fascinated by movies–-never TV, always movies–that I drew crude versions of them on sheets of paper. If you want to be generous, I guess you could call what I did storyboards. The movies I chose to give my special touch were primarily Westerns, and not great ones, either. We’re talking about the bottom half of a double bill. I didn’t start thinking bigger until I picked up “The Craft of Screenwriting,” a book of interviews with heavy hitters like William Goldman and Robert Towne that my wife had given me for Christmas in 1981. In her inscription, she had said she expected me to be writing in Hollywood in five years. She was my ex-wife by this point, of course, but I realized that if I hustled, I still had a chance to make her deadline.
I’d been in Philly for less than three months, and I already knew it wasn’t for me. The only time I liked the city was when I was looking down at it from a plane bound for Los Angeles. Mike Rathet, the Daily News sports editor, was incredibly generous about giving me assignments on the West Coast. I must have made eight or 10 trips there in 18 months. In each of the two holiday seasons that I worked for the News, I spent three weeks in L.A., ensconced in an out-of-the-way hotel where somebody interesting was always in the lobby–Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, James Earl Jones. I heard that Elvis Costello stayed there, too. Lots of rock-and-rollers did. God bless them, because the women they attracted made the rooftop swimming pool the eighth wonder of the world. But I was equally fond of the clerk who greeted me on one of my visits by saying, “Oh, Mr. Schulian, welcome back. Are you filming?” Only in my dreams.
The spoiler was always my return trip to Philadelphia and the low-grade depression that set in the moment my flight touched down. Once again, I would be trapped in a world where the good guys were becoming harder to find. They were still there, of course–the ones with the stories and the one-liners and the moments of insight and reflection–but there were more and more athletes, coaches and executives who were the writers’ enemy and reveled in it.
And so there came a night when John Thompson, the Georgetown basketball coach, decreed that there would be no speaking to his two star players after they had mumbled a couple of forgettable clichés in a post-game press conference. This was in Madison Square Garden after the Hoyas had just beaten Chris Mullin and St. John’s. I marched down the hallway to Georgetown’s locker room, determined to either talk to the kids or get thrown out trying. And then I hit the brakes. Screw it, I told myself. There would be no confrontation with Thompson or that horrible crone he had watching over the team. There would be no more groveling.
I’d spent enough time choking on the cynicism in the press box at wretched Veterans Stadium, too. There wasn’t any place in the country that was its equal for toxicity. While the artificial turf curled like discount-store shag and the paying customers howled for blood, some immensely talented knights of the keyboard entertained themselves by, among other things, mocking a ballplayer with a speech impediment.
What I was sickest of, however, was my own writing. I’d read years before that someone–-I think it was Russell Baker, the New York Times’ op-ed page wit–said you spend your first year as a columnist discovering your voice and the rest of your career trying to get over it. In Philadelphia, where I was new to readers, everything felt old to me -– the anecdotes, the turns of phrase, the choices of column subjects, the striving to establish myself. I’d done it all in Chicago, and the prospect of doing it again felt like a death sentence.
Faulkner in Hollywood
Writing in Hollywood promised to be as different as fiction is from fact. There was a chance it might even be my salvation. That may seem a curious choice of words when you consider the fate of writers far better than I who have washed up on the rocky shoals of the movie and TV business. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote the most beautiful prose America has ever seen, was baffled by screenwriting no matter how hard he worked at it. William Faulkner, weary of executives who thought he was loafing if his typewriter wasn’t clickety-clacking, simply went home to Mississippi and soothed his soul with bourbon. But I couldn’t be scared off by Fitzgerald’s fate, nor could I drink as much as Faulkner. This was about me and no one else. I had to close my eyes and jump.
When you drink sweet tea, your body starts to pump out insulin like water from a fire hose. Then, you have the caffeine. Which stimulates your adrenaline. Which confuses your metabolism. And keeps you from feeling sated, as one normally would after swallowing that much sweetness. Only a select few can eat seven pieces of cheesecake at a sitting, for example. But nearly everyone I know nods and says, “Just one more” when the lunch lady comes around toting the clear pitcher with the rubber band snapped around the handle. Say what you will, but sweet tea is the real hillbilly heroin.
To say Southerners drink sweet tea like water is both true and not. True because the beverage is served at every meal, and all times and venues in between—at church and at strip clubs, at preschool and in nursing homes. Not true because unlike water or wine or even Coca-Cola, sweet tea means something. It is a tell, a tradition. Sweet tea isn’t a drink, really. It’s culture in a glass. Like Guinness in Ireland. Or ouzo in Greece.
(When I was stuck in New York for a stint, a bout of homesickness led me to get the words sweet tea tattooed on my left arm. I could think of nothing else that so perfectly encapsulated the South of my pining. Now that I have moved home, it serves less as a touchstone and more as a drink order.)
Theories abound: Southerners prefer sweet tea because back in the day we used sugar as a preservative and our palates grew to crave the taste. Southerners like sweet tea because it is served ice cold and it is hot as biscuits down here. Southerners like sweet tea because we are largely descended from Celts and Brits, making a yearning for tea a genetic imperative. Southerners like sweet tea because Southerners are poor and tea is cheap. (Cheaper than beer anyway.) Southerners like sweet tea because it is nonalcoholic but it still gives you a hearty, if somewhat diabolical, buzz.
The train was packed this morning. The space is filled, summer is over. Folks have returned from vacation, kids going back to school. It is gray and raining but the faces I saw are still tanned. There are new clothes, bright and crisp. My only complaint is that some of the perfume and hair product that came in my vicinity was enough to knock a buzzard off a shitwagon.
Freddy Garcia got lit up but good this afternoon. He gave up seven runs, didn’t make it out of the third, and yet the Yanks were still leading when he went to the showers. That’s cause they put up six runs in the second inning, highlighted by a grand slam from Robinson Cano. It came off the second Orioles pitcher of the day, Chris Jakubauskas, who threw Cano nothing but fastballs. I couldn’t figure it at the time and sure enough, Cano ripped the seventh pitch he saw into the right field bleachers.
The Orioles kept at it–they scored a run off our old pal, Scott Proctor (and yes, the comments section here was alive with mordant humor)–but the Yanks stayed in front thanks to two home runs by Jesus Montero, a solo homer and a two-run shot, both to right field. Couple of curtain calls, the full Monty.
Sometimes they don’t come easily and even Mariano Rivera struggled.
He allowed a run in the ninth and there were runners on second and third when he struck out J.J. Hardy to end the game.
Hey, perfection is overrated. Bottom line, Mo got the save, Yanks got the win.
Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Andruw Jones RF
Russell Martin C
Jesus Montero DH
Brett Gardner LF
C.C. Sabathia, another fine performance. He left the game with one out in the eighth and the best player in the American League did this to Rafael Soriano. (Never mind that he’s 0-18 against Sabathia.)
But then the Yanks scored a mess-o-runs in the bottom of the inning and sailed to a 9-3 win. Mariano Rivera was warming up in the Yankee bullpen when Nick Swisher hit a two-run home run to make it 7-3. Before the ball landed, Rivera stopped throwing, and headed back into the bullpen clubhouse. Not a wasted movement with that man.
Derek Jeter hit a three-run homer and had 5 RBI in all. Alex Rodriguez added a solo shot–he got jammed and was frustrated with the swing but the ball carried over the right field fence all the same–and Jesus Montero had a couple of hits.
The Red Sox lost. Sabathia has win #19. We are happy.
I went to the game today with the wife. Her favorite Yankee is Francisco Cervelli though she didn’t care for his hand-clapping schtick the other night in Boston. When he hit a long line drive in the second inning, I knew off the bat it was headed over the fence. I jumped up and started pushing and grabbing at her. She knew something good was happening though she wished I’d stop shoving her.
Cervelli hit the ball hard four times today and had two hits to show for it. Bartolo Colon was decent, struck out seven, though he wasn’t his usual efficient self. Ricky Romero, on the other hand, kept the Yankees off-balance, but he left the game on a sour note, hitting Curtis Granderson and walking Alex Rodriguez with two men out in the seventh. His day was over but both runs came round to score on a double into the right field gap by Robinson Cano. That put the Yanks ahead for good. Nick Swisher followed with an RBI single, and David Robertson pitched the final two innings for the save. Oh, and Jesus Montero singled passed the shortstop, good for his first big league hit.
There were some Jays fans sitting about ten rows behind us. Two couples, late forties. The two women clapped loudly anytime the Jays did something good. Don’t know why, but they irked the hell out of me and I glared at them a few times. Wouldn’t you know it, with one out and the tying run on second in the ninth inning, they left. Talk about a bunch of Herbs.
Yankee fan, starching-up this afternoon
It was a good day. My favorite moment came in the top of the eighth just as warm-ups ended. When Cervelli threw down to second, Cano fielded the throw and then made like the was shooting a jump shot, and plopped the ball a few feet to his right, over to Eduardo Nunez. Silly moment but I liked it.
