Archive for June, 2008

As it turns out, Geovany Soto would not be the first rookie to be the primary starting catcher on a World Series winner -- even if the Cubs manage to pull it off. Thanks and a tip of the cap to Ajax, who pointed out in responding to a previous post that Andy Etchebarren was the rookie catcher on the 1966 world-champion Baltimore Orioles. Etchebarren made his big-league debut in 1962, when he was the youngest player in the American League at 19, and had another brief cup of coffee with the team in 1965, when he became one of many players whose every hit was a homer for a full season (he was 1-for-6). So he was still a rookie in 1966 -- one of three at critical positions up the middle for Baltimore, joining second baseman Davey Johnson and center fielder Paul Blair. Soto has already surpassed Etchebarren's 11 homers he hit in 121 games, and will soon top his 50 runs batted in.

Etchebarren batted just .221 in the middle of what has been called "the second dead-ball era," when pitching dominated in the 60s. Yet it's a mystery why Etchebarren isn't more celebrated for the feat. He received no votes in the American League Rookie of the Year balloting (won by the White Sox' Tommie Agee), and the Cubs' Randy Hundley was named catcher on the Topps interleague All-Rookie Team, even though Etchebarren did place 17th in Most Valuable Player voting that year. He caught all four games of the O's four-game Series sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the last three of which were shutouts, and Etchebarren recently told Baseball Prospectus of how they pounded the Dodgers with hard stuff on the outside corner to do it. Yet Google Etchebarren today and you're more likely to read of how by grounding into a double play to end the sixth inning of the second game of that series he was the last batter to face Sandy Koufax (soon to be retired), if not how Jim Bouton named him catcher on the All Ugly team in his 1970 book, Ball Four, no doubt thanks to his prodigious eyebrows. Etchebarren deserves better -- and Soto couldn't put himself in better company. 

Especially over the last month or so, I've heard some people remark on how unusual it would be for the Cubs to win a World Series championship with a rookie as their primary catcher -- if indeed they do win this year. But it seems as if no one has actually done the work to see just how rare it is. So while working on the profile of Geovany Soto in this week's Reader, I got out my trusty Baseball Encyclopedia and went through each series winner going back to the first in 1903. My findings? It has never been done before. Never. Not once.

Oh, some have come close. The Saint Louis Cardinals' Yadier Molina was in his third season when they won just two years ago. Before that, a few narrowly exceeded the rookie maximum for at-bats (130) the previous year and went on to win it all in their first full season. As I point out in the story, Joe Oliver of, yes, Lou Piniella's 1990 Cincinnati Reds batted 151 times the previous season to spoil his rookie status. And there are a couple of big names: the New York Yankees' Jorge Posada batted 188 times in 1997 before winning it all the following year, and--the closest to pulling it off --Mike Sciosia batted 134 times for the 1980 Los Angeles Dodgers, scotching his rookie status by four at-bats before winning it all in the strike-tainted following season. Among true rookies, a couple were part-timers on championship teams, including another big name, Yogi Berra, who played 83 games as a rookie on the 1947 New York Yankees, splitting duties with Aaron Robinson, and a certain Jack Lapp caught 71 games for the 1910 Philadelphia Athletics, sharing the job with Ira Thomas. Yet no rookie catcher has been the primary starter on a championship team.

In some ways Soto actually has more experience than many of those named above. He was up for cups of coffee in September of 2005 and 2006 before laying claim to the starting job late last year, but even so he kept his rookie status intact with 80 lifetime big-league at-bats. So don't worry about the Cubs' century-long championship drought: worry about them attempting something that's never been done before in World Series history. 

It's unfair to Ernie Els to cite him as an example of close but no cigar -- crossword puzzle fans know Els as the three-letter answer to the familiar clue "Won two U.S. Opens." However it was Els, always a few strokes off the lead, who put this idea in my head Sunday as I watched the latest Open on TV. Els was a little too far behind Tiger Woods and the other leaders to deserve stroke-by-stroke coverage. But whenever he lined up a birdie putt the NBC telecast shifted to him -- one or two birdies and he'd be in the mix.

These putts weren't for all the marbles. They were to put Els in reach of the marbles. And every medium-length birdie putt I saw him take -- the kind you make if you're going to win -- he missed. Bad putting day, I thought. Later in the afternoon NBC showed Els lining up par putts instead. The drama had shifted: a bogey or two and Els would drop completely out of contention.

These were also pressure putts. The further back Els finished the less money he'd earn. And instead of being listed among the top finishers he'd sink back among the also-rans. But there was no danger of these putts giving him a chance to win.

He sank them. Dead center.  

And I wondered, does golf have an expression for someone who putts like that? Or, to widen the lens, for the golfer who makes the shots he needs to make so long as they don't make him conspicuous? Just off the pace is a good place to be in a horse race or a mile run, but in golf it's possible to hide there.

Is this something Tiger Woods has done to the sport -- gotten other players to think the only way to win is to lurk a couple lengths behind where he might not notice them, and hope he pulls up lame? Well, Woods was lame but he didn't pull up.

The Cubs are in first place, the White Sox are in first place, and so, Aware One, am I -- in first place for the Golden BAT Award, that is. The BAT, or Baseball Acumen Test, as my friend and former Hot Type columnist Neil Tesser coined it, determines which Chicago sportswriter is best at picking the winners in baseball. Hey, I've won it before, in 1984 I believe, and at this point, through the first week in June, I have all six division leaders in baseball. That's right, six for six.

Yes, I have the White Sox finishing first in the American League Central -- more for the weakness of the competition, which I've thus far been proved true about, than for the strength of the Sox, which they've flexed recently -- and the Cubs in the National League Central. The others are all no-brainers, to my way of thinking: the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels in the AL, the Philadelphia Phillies and Arizona Diamondbacks in the NL. True, I'm far from being eight for eight, with the New York Yankees my wild-card pick in the AL and the Cincinnati Reds in the NL. Yet who picks second-place teams? Besides, the Reds are ascendant now that Dusty Baker has finally called up Jay Bruce and Homer Bailey (predicted, with all else, here), and who can count out my AL pick of the New York Yankees, with their deep pockets and resources for midseason trades? In any case, they don't figure in my World Series pick: Cubs and Bosox. So, no, it's not yet July 4, the traditional date for baseball league leaders to crow about their leads, but I'll take what I got -- and go from there. What else was the blog invented for other than to blow one's own horn? 

Here's an easy example of an all-too-typical, terribly misleading sports headline.

Colts rookie: NFL isn't tough

This is the attention grabber from today's "Truth & Rumors" section of Sports Illustrated's home page. Based on this phrasing you'd expect that a first-year player for the Indianapolis Colts said that the NFL isn't tough. The National Football League certainly has its share of hotheads, so maybe one of them got his first taste of the league and spouted off. Like he's been taking some NFL-size hits, some blocks or tackles, and doesn't think they're so bad. Like he's been looking some grizzled veterans in the face and doesn't think they're all that mean or intimidating. 

Colts rookie: NFL isn't so tough

This is the headline once you click the link from the home page. OK, easing away from the first statement a little already. It's still referring to a first-year player for the Indianapolis Colts. But apparently that player said the NFL isn't so tough. Like he's been taking some hits and they're not quite as bad as he thought. Like he's met some veteran players and is slightly unimpressed.

"'The only surprise is it's not as tough as I thought it was going to be, as far as practice and those types of things,' he said.'"

This is the actual quote from the blurb under the second headline. OK, backing off quite a bit now from the first headline. The blurb identifies the quotee as Mike Hart, the former running back for the University of Michigan who is indeed a first-year player for the Indianapolis Colts. Good for them, they got that right.

But Hart doesn't say the "NFL isn't" anything. Hart uses the pronoun "it" and follows that with something longer and more qualified than the terse statements of the headlines.

The blurb conveniently leaves out the question that prompted this quote or the line or two that may have preceded it from Hart, so we don't know the "it" he's referring to. But we do know that "it" is related to "practice and those type of things." This is sounding more and more different and benign.

"'It's a little different,' Hart said Saturday at Randy Wise Chevrolet in Flint, where he signed autographs. 'The only surprise is it's not as tough as I thought it was going to be, as far as practice and those type of things,' he said. 'It's more laid back.'" 

This is the full paragraph from the Detroit Free Press online article that the SI blurb quotes from. Here we get even more qualifications and a better sense of the "it" Hart's referring to. The article quotes him further:

"'Indianapolis is a different organization. You watch 'Hard Knocks' on HBO and you expect to be hazed and a lot of those things, but the Colts are a lot different. It's not as bad as I thought--we don't get taped, we don't get hazed with the Colts.' 

Even the organized team activities sessions over the past week are "'a lot more relaxed because there's more teaching,' Hart said. 'They get all the rookies and young guys prepared, because the vets on our team, they're proven. . . . Really they want to see what the young guys can do, so they slow it down and teach us. Minicamp, when the vets were there, it was all about the vets, to watch them and see how the speed of the game is.'"  

OK, so an articulate, open first-year player in the NFL thinks that the approach of the Indianapolis Colts--his team, not any other team, not the NFL at large--to welcoming and training its young players and to practicing as a team is "not as tough," "more laid-back," and "not as bad" as he was expecting. He expresses respect for the veteran players on his team, and his tone shows a sense of humility about being a member of the National Football League.

Sports Illustrated: "Colts rookie: NFL isn't tough."

For the International Quizzing Association, there's nothing trivial about trivia. Formed in 2003 in England, the IQA has created the World Quizzing Championships to determine the best trivia expert on the planet.

The IQA wants "to establish quiz as a mind sport," elevating it to the level of chess or bridge and adding yet another competition to the "Is it a game or sport?" debate (see also billiards and poker). I don't have much to contribute to that debate, but here is a concise discussion of chess that seems applicable to quiz.

If you want to be quiz's next great champion, enter the World Quizzing Championships this Saturday. Chicago is one of four U.S. cities to host the test--the others are New York, Los Angeles, and Denver--and the U.S. is one of 21 countries to participate. There's no qualifying, so anybody can show up, take the same free two-hour, 240-question exam, and find out within a week if they rule the world. There are no award ceremonies or prizes, just serious bragging rights.

Are you smart enough to win it all? According to local organizer Mitchell Szczepanczyk, people curious about their qualifications should look less to their IQ or SAT scores than to their competency at Jeopardy! "If you do well on that show," he says, "then you have a better-than-average chance of doing well on [the quiz]." Another measure of your competency might be your ability to pronounce Mitchell's last name.

The quiz questions address the following categories: Culture, Entertainment, History, World, Sciences, Lifestyle, Sport, and Media (e.g., What's the best alternative weekly newspaper in Chicago? ahem). In this sense the quiz resembles Trivial Pursuit. But Szczepanczyk says the quiz's breadth of coverage is "far wider" than the board game's, and overall it's "more challenging and, by extension, more difficult."

Check out these questions from past quizzes.

Event details:

What: World Quizzing Championships

When: 11 AM, Sat 6/7 (the quiz will begin at approximately 11:15 AM)

Where: Conrad Sulzer Regional Library, 4455 N. Lincoln Avenue, 312-744-7616

Cost: Free

Contact info: Mitchell Szczepanczyk, 773-641-2151 or mitchell@szcz.org (e-mail here to register in advance)

Web site: wqc2008.com

Ozzie Guillen threw not just his players, but his general manager under the bus Sunday after the White Sox were swept by the Rays in Tampa Bay, suggesting he didn't like his roster and that major changes needed to be made. But come on: the White Sox were still in first.

True, for anyone who remembers the 2005 Sox, this year's team did not look like championship contenders; there were holes, quite obvious to the fan, and therefore glaring to the opposition. True too, this year's Sox were not built to play "Ozzieball," not after GM Kenny Williams extended Jermaine Dye's contract last year. Considering the Sox were already committed to Paul Konerko and Jim Thome, it left them with a slow (if sometimes powerful) middle of the lineup prone to double plays. True again the team was not equipped with a true leadoff man: Nick Swisher and Orlando Cabrera have both failed in the uncomfortable position. So what's a manager to do?

Deal with it, dude. The GM traditionally sets the roster, and the manager has to put it to the best possible use. Look at what the Cubs' Lou Piniella did with a bulbous, misshapen, corner-heavy roster last year: he played Jacque Jones in center, shifted Ryan Theriot to short (both of which the experts said couldn't be done), and generally found a way to put the best eight players on the field.

So look, Ozzie, do the same. If you're not scoring runs, stress defense. Put Brian Anderson in center and leave him there. Play the three hot hands (or not-so-cold bats) between Dye, Swisher, Thome, and Konerko between first, right field, and designated hitter. If you want to run more, by all means put in someone like Alexei Ramirez and run and hit-and-run. Yes, it's a bulbous, misshapen roster, but the Sox are in first place -- remember? -- and it's your job to find a way to keep them there as long as possible. Given the roster, stress defense, on-base percentage, and power -- in that order -- and you'll get the most out of the players Wiliams has given you. And if wholesale changes are made and the Sox drop from first place? It's all on you, Ozzie.