Next year's stamps, all together

Don't these look beautiful? They'll be great to have -- one sheet to keep, others to use -- next summer*.

*Assuming the Post Office still exists.

From ND to MLB: Cy Williams

Fred Williams bears the names of two of baseball's greatest players. The nickname he was known by, Cy -- as in "Cyclone" -- naturally sparks thoughts of the winningest pitcher in Major League history. And the surname is shared with the self-described "greatest hitter who ever lived," Ted Williams. But Cy Williams made a name for himself as a pretty decent power hitter and speedy outfielder during a 19-year career with the Cubs and Phillies. He was said to be the fastest player in the game and such an athletic talent that, in addition to serving as the backup left end on the football team (Knute Rockne was the reserve on the right side), he apparently passed up a chance at the 1912 Olympics as a hurdler and broad jumper.

Williams' baseball career worked out just fine. Signing with the Cubs in 1912, he became the first slugger in the Senior Circuit to reach 200 home runs and went into his final season, 1929, as the National League's career leader, with 246. He hit just five in his final season, and during that campaign, Rogers Hornsby blew past him, taking the lead in June with the 250th of his career in a 39-homer season, which he finished with 277. Williams hit 202 home runs from 1920-30, a total surpassed only by Hornsby's 252 and Babe Ruth's, um, 516.

Williams went straight from Notre Dame to the Cubs, playing 28 games and batting just .242 with one RBI in his rookie season. He spent five years in Chicago, first playing in the West Side Grounds and then moving to the new Weeghman Park in the years before it was known as Cubs Park (starting in 1920) and then Wrigley Field (beginning in 1926). In 1915, his first full season, he slugged 13 home runs to finish second in the league. A year later, his 12 round-trippers would be good for the Major League lead.

Williams was dealt to the Phillies before the 1918 season, and in 1920 started a run of nine straight seasons of double-digit homers, including NL-leading totals of 15 in 1920, 41 (tied for the MLB best with Ruth) in '23 and 30 in '27. The spike in power came as the Dead Ball Era ended and Williams got comfortable with the Baker Bowl's dimensions: 300 feet to right-center (with a 40-foot fence) and 272 down the right-field line (with a 60-foot fence and net). There's no need to bother with other dimensions of the Phils' home field, because Williams was known as such a pull hitter that, according to his SABR bio, opposing managers positioned their fielders on the right side of the diamond, employing what became known as the "Williams shift" -- for Ted Williams -- two decades before it was used on the Splendid Splinter.

After his retirement in 1930, Williams got his only minor league experience by serving as the player-manager for the Richmond Byrds in the Eastern League for just one season. He then retired from the game, returning to his dairy farm in his native Wisconsin and beginning the second phase of his life as an architect and running a construction company.

Cards for the earliest players are hard to come by -- at least on a budget. While there are a few contemporary cards available from the 1920s, the prices tend to be anywhere from $30 to $70. Some PSA graded autographs go for hundreds of dollars. So while I would've preferred something more first-hand, this 1991 Conlon card fits my needs, showing Williams in his Cubs uniform. Works for me.

Painting the game

After reading this Larry Dierker column about former Red Sox pitcher Frank Sullivan, I came across this piece that recounts the day Sullivan and some teammates -- but not all -- sat for Norman Rockwell as models for his painting "The Rookie." That's Sullivan on the left of the image, the No. 8 visible on his back (he wore No. 18), his arm across the shoulders of outfielder Jackie Jensen.

I've long been a fan of Rockwell's art, particularly all his baseball images, and that's a cool story behind the making of "The Rookie." It's a bit like how they make some commercials these days, when it's easier to put two star pitchmen together digitally than to arrange their schedules to be able to make the shoot at the same time. (I'm not sure if they were done this way, but I always think of the Jeter-Federer-Woods commercials -- I don't even remember the product -- in which they all seem to be jovially joking with one another, but there's a disconnect that makes me think that they were filmed separately and not together the same afternoon in some studio.)

That background on the painting also shed some light on one thing that never sat well with me: Ted Williams, standing at his locker behind the bench, looks more like Carl Yastrzemski, even though in 1956, Yaz was still in high school. Turns out that Williams acquiesced to his likeness being used, but didn't sit for Rockwell. So it's Sullivan who assumed the pose for Rockwell's photographs.

Now I'm curious if any of the pics are in the book of Rockwell photos that came out last year. I'll have to check that out.

And we're back

After a thoroughly enjoyable, active and at the same time relaxing vacation, I'm back at it. It will take me a bit to catch up on some of the stuff I missed, but I did ignore several developments, too. There's no point in rehashing what's a week or several days old.

But let's start off with the Ryan Howard-for-Albert Pujols rumor. I don't deny that there may have been some "internal discussions" by the Phillies. It is, after all, Buster Olney reporting, and his sources are as good as anybody's. Though, because it's the Phillies, it's surprising that writer-in-residence Jayson Stark didn't have this first.

As for the internal talks, someone could've said, "Hey! Let's trade Howard for Pujols!" in a drunken stupor at the team holiday party and it could be considered, technically, "internal discussions." (Incidentally, the well-known near-swap of Ted Williams for Joe DiMaggio that was referenced in that story allegedly was agreed upon after a night of drinking, tabled until the morning for further consideration in the sober light of day, and withdrawn after more clear-headed evaluation.)

Even if the Phillies may have thrown out those two names in the same sentence, and though the Howard-in-St. Louis angle has some merit, not only do I not see the Cardinals dealing Pujols, I don't see him getting away. For various reasons, the Cardinals might not have the revenue of the Yankees or Red Sox or the ability to stretch their payroll as far as the top-paying teams in each league, but I have to believe that none of that applies to the contract discussions with Pujols. Of course, they won't let Pujols and his agent know that, but -- ahem -- internally, they'd better be saying if there's one player for whom they can be creative to sign on his terms, it has to be King Albert.

The Cardinals draw well. They probably sell a lot of merchandise in the Midwest. They contend every year -- especially with Pujols. On the surface, the chances of them hamstringing themselves because of what they pay Pujols are minimal; obviously, we don't know what their financial ledgers look like. But you have to believe that they wouldn't have signed Matt Holliday to $120 million over the next seven years if they felt that would prevent them from signing Pujols.

The last paragraph of that story mentions the blockbuster deal in December 1990 when Blue Jays GM Pat Gillick (now an adviser in the Phillies front office) traded Tony Fernandez and Fred McGriff to the Padres for Roberto Alomar and Joe Carter. It's amazing that that was nearly 20 years ago, and I was curious to see which players were active during the 1990 season and in 2009.

It's a short list:

Ken Griffey Jr.

Tom Gordon

Randy Johnson

Jamie Moyer

Gary Sheffield

John Smoltz

Omar Vizquel

That kind of puts into perspective how often these kinds of deals happen, and the Phillies just made a pair involving Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay, so should this one have any legs, it would be two once-in-a-generation deals going off within about a year.

Thinking of baseball on the day of the big game

It's Super Bowl Sunday, so that has me thinking ahead to baseball season (and I'm not the only one). After this game is when I really start to look ahead to Spring Training, counting the days, beginning fantasy baseball preparation, thinking about pulling a few more jerseys out of the closet.

Today's game has a few other connections. There are the two No. 9s above. Drew Brees, who wore No. 15 at Purdue, wears 9 because of Ted Williams (last item on the page). Michael Lewis, who wrote Moneyball, also penned a long-form feature on Eli Manning for The New York Times Magazine and played for the same baseball coach in New Orleans as the Manning boys later did. And Wezen-Ball did a great breakdown of the baseball histories in Indianapolis and New Orleans.

If the Colts win, they will share a birthplace with the World Series champion Yankees -- both franchises originated in Baltimore. If the Saints win, um, well, their coach, Sean Payton, will have won the first Super Bowl in which he appeared as a head coach, just as Joe Girardi won the first World Series in which he appeared as a manager.

Happy viewing, all. Go, Your Team! Two weeks until pitchers and catchers.

Still a fan of the summer of '98

Mark McGwire at Wrigley Field, May 1, 1998

I graduated from college in 1998, so that was a special summer for me, too. I set up my spring semester schedule to only have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My friends and I popped champagne on our apartment balcony after our last finals. We caught a Cardinals-Cubs game at Wrigley Field on a pleasant May afternoon. After the commencement ceremony -- which took place on the same day the Yankees gave away Beanie Babies for a game against the Twins (and David Wells pitched pretty well, I believe) -- I came home to New Jersey and spent six weeks going to a few graduation parties and planning my cross-country trip.

And all that summer, as I drove out to California and back, I followed what has become known as the Great Home Run Chase. Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and the ghost of Roger Maris. I saw McGwire hit home run No. 12 that season, a ninth-inning two-run shot off of Rod Beck in a game the Cubs won, 6-5. When I stayed in Major League cities, I checked the schedules to see if the Cardinals were in town, just missing them in San Diego when I was in L.A. and in Colorado when I got into Denver. And in a small bit of personal symmetry, I was back on campus in South Bend, watching the Labor Day afternoon game on ESPN when McGwire hit his 61st long ball that season. An interview for a job with a local newspaper kept me in town the next night, too, when I watched him hit his 62nd. I might've teared up watching it happen.

It was all so compelling: missing first base in the excitement, high-fives from Cubs infielders as he rounded the bases, a bear hug with his son at home plate, Sammy Sosa's sprint in from right field, his tearful embrace with Maris' widow and sons. As baseball fans, how could we not become enthralled? The 1994-95 strike was still pretty raw, robbing fans of the World Series for the first time since John McGraw didn't feel the Boston Red Sox, of the inferior "American League," were a worthy opponent to his National League pennant-winning Giants in 1904. Cal Ripken may have broken Lou Gehrig's consecutive-games streak in '95, but that came too close to the strike -- and he would've broken it sooner if it weren't for the strike -- to help the healing. We didn't have enough distance.

Three years, it seems, was enough distance to bring us back, to capture our attention with a chase at one of the game's great records. We all watched, and few of us, I think, questioned it. Mike Lupica wrote a book about it. I bought it and read it and still love the cover image.

But even if we did suspect at the time that McGwire might not be all natural, we did so in a less accusatory tone. Yeah, it may have happened, but who can really say? It wasn't like today, when accusations of performance-enhancing are not brushed off so easily and we find ourselves pausing to contemplate whether or not we think the player mentioned compiled his stats solely on his own ability. When McGwire first appeared on the Hall of Fame ballot, Lupica said that he doesn't think McGwire should be elected. Bill Simmons called him on it. We're all still trying to figure this out.

In 80 plate appearances against three admitted or widely suspected performance-enhancing pitchers, McGwire hit four home runs -- two each off of Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte and none against Jason Grimsley. He struck out 14 times vs. Clemens (in 53 at-bats), five vs. Pettitte (in 21) and had none against Grimsley (but with four walks in six at-bats). But now that our suspicions are being proven, will we look at the steroid era any differently? Will it someday come to the point that, yeah, hitters were juicing, but they were facing pitchers who weren't clean, either? Are others going to come forward? Is Sammy Sosa next?

I never thought I'd be saying this, but I may not care anymore who was on steroids. With every new player whose name comes up, I think my outrage subsides a bit. I liked McGwire in the '90s and I can't say I like him any less now. I'm a bit disappointed, both in the fact that he decided to cheat and that he waited so long to come clean. But he still came clean faster than Pete Rose did for his transgressions and some of these other players we've got at the top of our suspected users lists. Knowing what I know now, confirmed, may sadden the 33-year-old me, but the 21-year-old from 1998 still remembers a great summer.

So maybe it's time Bud Selig and the baseball writers just give amnesty to all the steroid and HGH users from the past up until the Mitchell Report came out. If you used then, 'fess up, and all's good. Yeah, the numbers McGwire, Sosa and Barry Bonds put up may not be fair to Roger Maris, Babe Ruth (Sosa broke Ruth's record for home runs in one month) or Hank Aaron, but the 162-game schedule also wasn't fair to Ruth and so many other advances in baseball and technology have also tilted the playing field -- literally, in some cases. From expansion several times over to night games to domed stadiums to maple bats to elbow guards to dietary supplements to training regimens to ballpark design, the game has changed over the decades. Even comparing players of the same era is not fool-proof. Did Ted Williams hit 160 more home runs than Joe DiMaggio because he was more powerful, or did Yankee Stadium's Death Valley in left-center rob DiMaggio of a glut of long balls? Or what if DiMaggio hit left-handed? Sadly, maybe this is another variable to consider. Maybe, as others have written, the Steroid Era has to be treated like antithesis to the Dead Ball Era.

I'm not going to go out and buy a McGwire jersey and I don't see myself making an extra effort to get to batting practice and cheer him as hitting coach when the Cardinals come to New York. But I won't boo him, either. I won't make signs or yell insults. Maybe I've come to accept it, or maybe I'm just scared that the next name will be someone I truly adored, a name that will really upset me and shatter those memories of past summers.

On whining Yankees and intentional walks

Why does everything have to be a conspiracy for the Yankees? Derek Jeter has his shoulder separated in an accident in Toronto last year, and players -- even their upstanding manager Joe Torre -- question whether the Blue Jays catcher may have intentionally driven his shoulder into Jeter's.

Ridiculous.

Then Jorge Posada accidentally has his nose broken while sliding into second. The Angels' shortstop's relay throw to first in a double-play attempt is low, it ricochets off Posada's hand and hits him in the face, requiring surgery. And Torre questions why "he had to go so low" with the throw.

Ri-cock-ulous.

Joe was a catcher, maybe he doesn't realize that it's a bang-bang, split-second decision -- nay, a reaction -- in taking the toss from the second baseman, making the pivot, and firing to first in hopes of getting two outs on one pitch. Like there's any way the Angels middle infielders were thinking, "If we get a double-play ball, I'm going to try to sidearm the throw to first in hopes of embedding the ball in some guy's face."
I doubt that.

* * * * *

What to do about Barry Bonds? For some reason, this guy has become the most feared hitter since ... I don't know. Is it the Babe? Is it Ted Williams? Not even Ted Williams was walked this much in his career. There's talk here and there of whether or not the rules should be -- or could be -- changed to at least discourage intentional walks, if not outlaw them.

I think there's a simple solution, along the lines of those who say ban them outright. What MLB can do is make a rule prohibiting catchers from standing up before a pitch has crossed the plate (or at least before it has left the pitcher's hand). Sort of like making the the catcher's box (see the June 27, 2000 note) extend upward, rather than just horizontally on the ground. A catcher cannot stand up to call for four balls outside the strike zone. That way, an intentional walk has to start with the pitcher in his crouch. Managers won't order pitchers to throw three feet outside, because the catcher won't be able to get to it as easily and it increases the risk of a wild pitch. Because so many intentional walks happen with runners already on base -- often on second and/or third -- a wild pitch would be very dangerous.

Changing the rule to prevent catchers from standing could essentially do away with the standard intentional walk as we know it and force pitchers to pitch around a batter if they wish to walk him. In doing so, this would increase the chances of a potential mistake -- a change up hanging over the heart of the plate that could be crushed into the bleachers. Sure, many of the best control pitchers can fire one six inches outside that Bonds or any other hitter wouldn't think of touching, but there will still be enough who come close enough to induce swings or throw wild pitches outside or in the dirt. It'll make the game more exciting and intentional walks less obvious.

At least that's the way I see it.