Do You Ever Brag About Seeing a Great Manager?

As you may have noticed, I keep a list of the 36 best players I’ve had the pleasure of seeing play in person. My definition of “best” relies heavily on awards and recognitions. So, perhaps, “best” should be changed to “most accomplished” but that’s for another day. I realized that I didn’t update it with the new Hall of Fame class. I assumed that if someone was elected to the Hall of Fame, they’d already have enough awards to merit inclusion on the list. I was right. Frank Thomas, Tom Glavine, and Greg Maddux were already here. So, other than increasing the number of Hall of Famers I’ve seen to ten, it didn’t affect anything.

Then I realized that those weren’t the only three people elected to the Hall this year. Bobby Cox, Joe Torre, and Tony LaRussa were also elected. They weren’t on my list. Never even considered adding them to my list.

Should I?

The obvious answer is “no.” I don’t go to a game to see a manager. When teams try to sell tickets by promoting the visiting team, they never promote the visiting manager.

But, the reason I base my list on awards instead of talent is that my grandkids would be more likely to ask if I saw a former award winner, as opposed to some other great talent. Using that logic, shouldn’t I include the managers? Would a kid 20 years from now wonder if I ever say Joe Torre manage? Possibly.

Of course, I can’t picture the rest of the conversation. Let’s say that someone asks me in 20 years if I ever saw two-time MVP and triple-crown winner Miguel Cabrera play. I could respond that yes I had. I saw him in a playoff game strike out against Junichi Tazawa in a key spot. There’s a story there. If they asked me about a manager? I guess I could say, “Yup. I saw Joe Torre manage lots of games. Man that guy used more friggin’ pitchers than anyone I ever saw. I stopped going to September Yankees game because they were torture to watch.”

Not quite the same ring to it.

But, he’s still a Hall of Famer. He’s still somebody that my future grandkids could see on a website and wonder about. Am I ignoring a segment of baseball history? Is that wrong?

Would you add managers to the list?

Collecting the Sox: The Trophy

One subset of collecting “championships” is the trophy. There might not be anything that screams “the team just won the World Series” quite like the trophy. As such, it can be found on any number of collectables.

 If you like bobbleheads, you can focus your collection to just those with players holding a trophy. Or, make sure you get the Coke cans with a trophy on them. Many baseball cards show people holding the trophy. There are pictures, and t-shirts, and replica trophies, and…you get the idea. The list is endless.

Submitted by Mark

There’s one even more specific collecting area that you can go for. The actual trophy.

The Red Sox have done a great job of sharing the trophy with the fans. I don’t know if this is unique to the Red Sox, or if the other teams do this as well. I’m sure all the trophies re on permanent display somewhere. But, do they bring them around from place to place? The Sox bring it (them) all over so people can get an up-close look at it, and take their picture with it. That allows you to amass quite a collection of yourself with the trophies without as much effort as you might think. Usually the trophies are presented as a part of some other outing. They’re not usually just stuck in a gas station for an hour. They’re at an event with players. Or, at a charity event. Or, at least, a sporting goods store. So, you’re not just chasing down the trophy. You’re at least doing something worthwhile with your time. Then you can take your picture wherever you see it. What a great display that would make.

Submitted by Mark

You can use those pictures to track time, as the trophy collection has grown. You can put a picture of you with just the 2004 trophy next to one of you with two, followed by a shot with all three. What a progression. I have pictures with two trophies, and three trophies. I never got my picture when they only had the one.

Or, maybe as a travel log. How many places can you get a picture of the trophy in? Personally, I have taken the picture of the trophy in two places. I bet many of you have more.

How many places do you have?

From the Pedro Binder

2000 UD Ovation Superstar Theater

There’s a lot of shiny going on here.

One thing that keeps bugging me about these insert sets is that they have these clever names, but don’t relate the card to the names at all. Take this one, for instance. It’s called “Superstar Theater.” What an the card has anything to do with a theater? Maybe the name of the set going up the side is supposed to resemble a theater marquee? That’s a stretch, and the best that they get. How about instead of the ghost image in the background of a random ballpark, they use a ghost image of a theater? How about something? Make it look like a ticket, or a playbill. There’s plenty out there to work with. Why ignore it? I wonder if other companies were annoyed that Upper Deck wasted the copyright for the name on poor execution. Like when you’re trying to name a blog, and you see someone has taken the perfect name you wanted but only posts garbage once every six months. Was someone in the Topps design team kicking themselves over what they could have done with that name?

The rest of the card is beyond blah. In the scan, you can see what UD feels is the most important part of the card. Their logo, their brand name, and their set name. I’m a little surprised they let the picture of Pedro take up so much precious space. Pedro’s name? Stuck in that black bar. His team? Practically hidden in the ghost image. Who cares about that stuff? This is an Upper Deck card!

Apparently that’s all that matters.

Red Sox 1-36: 31 is for…

31 times Duffy Lewis was caught stealing in 1914

Yikes. That’s a lot!

As of late, the stolen base has been marginalized thanks to newfangled statistics. The new movement really values outs. The thought being, it’s not worth the out just for the chance to move up one base. So, these days, having 31 caught stealing would be a bad sign. The usual guideline is that you need to be successful on about 75% of your attempts to make it a positive effect. So, with 31 times caught stealing, Duffy would need to have been successful around 87 times to make it worth his while.

So, how many times was Duffy Lewis successful when trying to steal in 1914?

22

Yup. 22. So, he was successful about 43% of the time. What on earth was he doing?

I have to believe that there was something weird going on here. Maybe statistics back then weren’t as good as they need to be in order to look at that number. After all, baseball-reference doesn’t list a caught stealing total for more than half of the seasons in his career. It’s possible that back then, they weren’t seen as all that important. So, they weren’t even recorded. Maybe he didn’t know how often he was being caught. Maybe he didn’t care?

After all, he was never a burner on the base paths. It’s not like he was ever Tris Speaker. I could understand if he was getting old and talking a while to remember that he can’t run as much as he used to. But, the 22 steals in 1914 were a career high.

Out of curiosity, I looked at Tris Speaker, and in 1914 he stole 42 bases, but was caught 29 times. Clearly being caught stealing wasn’t something that the Red Sox worried all that much about. Although, at least Tris was closer to a 60% success rate.

That leaves the question of what Lewis was thinking. Was it just the game back then? If you could get the extra base, you gave it a shot? Nobody really cared if you got thrown out. Was the extra base more important in the dead ball era? Maybe it was no use being on first base?

Even if that was the case, I’m not sure I see the point in doing something if it only worked 43% of the time. Even in 1914, they had to see that he wasn’t actually getting that extra base very often. They had to see that it wasn’t worth the effort.

It doesn’t take new math to figure that out.

Do you have an explanation?

31 is for the 31 times Duffy Lewis was caught stealing in 1914.

Do Agents Have Ethics?

I know. I know. Of course not. They’re agents.

But, really. Do they  have some sort of “Code of Ethics” that they need to follow? Like a Hippocratic Oath? “Thou shalt do thy best to serve thy client to thy client’s supreme benefit?”

And how does that apply to multiple clients?

I ask because Scott Boras represents Stephen Drew. He also represents Xander Bogaerts. They both play shortstop and, if some people get their way, they both could be doing it for the Boston Red Sox. How is Boras supposed to handle that?

I can see how having Drew sign with the Red Sox could be a pretty good deal for him. Especially compared to having to twiddle his thumbs in the independent league hoping someone else calls. A steady job with a contending team is a pretty good way to go. Maybe the Sox won’t offer arbitration next year.

But, that would be a problem for Xander Bogaerts. Even if you think that Bogaerts is such a star that he would overtake Drew easily. The presence of a quality veteran would have to limit Xander’s playing time, right? If you’re looking for a big payday, you want as many at-bats as you can before hitting free agency. All the better to pad your stats.

And, what about Boras himself? Let’s be honest. Only one of the two players has a possibility of signing a $100 million contract at some point in his career…and it’s not Drew. So, it would certainly be in Boras’s best interests to keep Drew out of Boston. Not, I’m sure, that he’s supposed to consider that.

I bet it comes up a lot. Almost all agents represent more than one player. Conflicts like this have to occur. What’s best for one client might be worst for another. Maybe even if they’re not the same position. Or the same team. Say you represented both Jacoby Ellsbury and Robinson Cano this past offseason. Ellsbury could play in either Boston or NY, while Cano would really only work in NY since Boston already had a second baseman. Would you steer Ellsbury back to Boston even if they weren’t offering the most money since it left the Yankees enough money to sign Cano? Or do you send Ellsbury to the team that offers the most money, and let Cano try and find money elsewhere? Is there a rule in the agent’s manual to cover this? Is there a plaque in Boras’s office that says what he’d do? Or are they left to their own thoughts on the matter?

That could be scary.