The 2012 NL Batting Champion?

An interesting development is happening in baseball this season with regard to the National League batting champion.

All-Star Melky Cabrera of the San Francisco Giants was suspended for 50 games on August 15, 2012 for use of performance enhancing drugs. He was having the best season of his career, hitting .346 with 159 hits, 11 home runs, and 69 RBIs. And this is where things gets interesting.

Melky had had 501 plate appearances. He was in a tight race with Pittsburgh Pirate Andrew McCutchen for the National League batting title, with McCutchen leading. In order to qualify for the batting title, you need to have at least 502 plate appearances, so Melky fell one short, right? Wrong. The rules say you that a non-qualifying player will have as many hitless at-bats added to his total as it takes to get him to the qualifying number. So then Melky with have an 0-for-1 at bat added his number and this brings his batting average that will appear on the back of next year's baseball card too.... .346. No change at all.

Earlier this week, McCutchen's batting average fell below Melky's, and is currently at .344. Unless McCutchen raises it above .346 before the season is over, Melky will be this years batting champion, without having played the last 45 games of the season.

I can't wait to see what happens then!

Oldest Winning Pitcher

This one flew under my radar, as it occurred last week, but I have to give it some recognition.

Bill "Spaceman" Lee became the oldest pitcher to win a professional game when he earned a win over Maui Na Koa Ikaika of Hawaii, 9-4 on Thursday for the San Rafael Pacifics. He is 65 and ended up pitching all 9 innings!

The lefty won 119 games in 14 seasons for the Boston Red Sox and Montreal Expos.

He ended up breaking his own record, which he set when he was 63 years old for an independent Massachusetts team.

Take that Rocket!

Baseball is pretty amazing

I was all ready to post up a completely different piece, and then this happened:

Pablo Sandoval loses the ball in the air and makes a desperate scoop. Brandon Crawford comes out of nowhere to dive and save he catch. As teammate Sergio Romo described "Homeboy comes down diving. Baseball is pretty amazing." Just another one of those plays that makes you smile and feel good.

Triple Play

Last Tuesday, the Oakland A's turned a triple play in the top of the 5th against the Minnesota Twins. These plays are rare and always a treat to watch, particularly going around the bases.

Pantone colors

I wanted to share another great infographic from Craig Robinson over at Flip Flop Fly Ball. He compiled this great visual of different team Pantone colors, and which teams use the same color. As he said, it's interesting to note that if you bleed Dodger blue, you are also bleeding the exact same blue as Cubs fans.

404 error

Everyone is familiar with the 404 error that occasionally comes up when visiting websites. It's an HTTP standard response code indicating that a client (i.e. YOU) was able to communicate with the server, but the server could not find what was requested.

I get a kick out of the following picture, because it shows Seattle Mariners center fielder Michael Saunders coming up short on a hit by Tampa Bay Rays' Matt Joyce. The distance from home plate to the wall at this point is 404 feet, and is shown in the picture as well, making it very appropriate... he couldn't get to the ball!

Stealing first from second

No, you read the title of this post correctly. While we're used to seeing people steal second from first, or perhaps first from second at a tee-ball game among kids, there was a player named Herman “Germany” Schaefer who pulled this off a few times.

Now Schaefer was known as a prankster. If he thought the game should be called due to darkness, he was known to carry a lantern out into the field to give the ump a not so subtle hint.

The first time Schaefer stole first from second occurred sometime in 1908. There is no official record of it, but  his teammate Davy Jones talked to Larry Ritter about it in his book, The Glory of Their Times:

So now we had men on second and third.  Well, on the next pitch Schaefer yelled, ‘Let’s try it again!’ And with a blood-curdling shout he took off like a wild Indian back to first base, and dove in headfirst in a cloud of dust. He figured the catcher might throw to first — since he evidently wouldn’t throw to second — and then I would come home same as before. But nothing happened. Nothing at all. Everybody just stood there and watched Schaefer, with their mouths open, not knowing what the devil was going on.
The umpires were just as confused as everybody else. However, it turned out that at that time there wasn’t any rule against a guy going from second back to first, if that’s the way he wanted to play baseball, so they had to let it stand. So there we were, back where we started, with Schaefer on first and me on third. And on the next pitch, darned if he didn’t let out another war whoop and take off again for second base. By this time the Cleveland catcher evidently had enough, because he finally threw to second to get Schaefer, and when he did I took off for home and both of us were safe.

This will never happen again in baseball, thanks to Rule 52, Section 2, which became Rule 7.08i and reads:

After he has acquired legal possession of a base, [if] he runs the bases in reverse order for the purpose of confusing the defense or making a travesty of the game… [the] umpire shall immediately call “Time” and declare the runner out…

This rule was written shortly after his death, probably due to Schaefer.

An Eephus pitch

Eephus is another one of those great baseball words I was talking about last week. It's a junk pitch, thrown with very low velocity. A good one can catch a batter off-guard with its off-speed. While a normal pitch in baseball comes in between 70-95 mph, an eephus has a high arc and came come in at less than 50 mph.

Last weekend, Barry Zito of the San Francisco Giants had a pitch get away from him against the San Diego Padres, which very much resembled an eephus. It didn't fool anyone!

Baseball Lingo

The pickle. A balk. The Bronx cheer. A cutter. Baseball is rich with terms and lingo that make it unique and give it a flavor. Announcers are revered, and their lines repeated by the teams loyal followers. This were even crazier not too long ago, as shown by this transcript from a 1909 game between the Pirates and the Giants:

With the third inning faded into the dim and forgotten past, the fourth spasm in the afternoon’s matinee of Dementia Baseballitis hopped into the glare of the calcium glim. It was the Giants’ turn to paddle the pellet, Murderous Michael Donlin taking his turn beside the glad glum. Mike biffed the bulb on the proboscis and sent it gleefully gliding to the distant shrubbery. … Bresnahan managed to get next to the seamy side of a floater and the Toledo kid sent the denizens of Coogan’s Bluff into Seventh Heaven of Gleefullness by starting the pulsating pill on a line for the extreme backyard. But they reckoned without the mighty Wagner. The Carnegie Dutchman extended a monster paw, the near-two bagger was cleverly captured by a dainty dab of his lunch hook and before you could bat an eye he had whipped the globule over to Abby, who made an earnest effort to put Donlin down and out but missed by a fraction of an inch.

Can you decipher what's going on?

A 1903 Baseball Patent

In 1904, James E. Bennett submitted a patent for a really bizarre looking catching contraption. He intended it to replace the catcher's glove entirely. A big wire cage went over the chest and the catcher's face was also protected via a fence shield. The catcher would then catch the pitch with his chest, getting it to pass through flapped doors, which closed immediately. The ball would hit a padded spring against his chest. Then, gravity would bring it down a hole at the bottom of the cage, where the catcher would grab it and return it to the pitcher, or give it to the umpire. You can see the apparatus in greater detail below!

The 2006 World Series

Baseball has brought me some of the best stories I've ever heard. One of those I'd like to share concerns a good friend of mine named Joel. I read about it from a blog he posted, and it brings a smile to my face every time I read it, so I figured I'd repost it here. Enjoy!

How I broke into the World Series.
Wednesday, October 25
Game 3 of the 2006 World Series
Series tied Cards 1; Tigers 1

            I heard one of my co-workers, Nurse Jerry, was volunteering to run a concession stand for the game.  Anxious to find my way in the stadium any way possible, I asked her if I could tag along.  She said it was cool, but she highly doubted that I would get in.  So, after work we drive downtown and she takes me to the secret side door for volunteers.
            At the door there are like 5 cops and one of them asks who we're volunteering for and Jerry's like, "St. Andrew's for Habitat for Humanity".  The cop asks to see our IDs so I figure I'm already out of luck.  He takes our IDs and puts some dashes on his clipboard without running our names against it.
            Jerry leads me downstairs to this room where all the vendors and ushers are clocking in and getting their uniforms together, and I was freaking out with anticipation and excitement of possibly getting into the World Series.  So we go to this back room for volunteers and they give us shirts and pants to change.  I go to the dressing room and I'm changing with all these sexy vendors who are rapping about how high they are and so we kinda hit it off.  I get all sexy in my volunteer get up and go back to the volunteer room.
            The head lady tells me to sign in on these two sheets, so I find the ones for Habitat and sign in.  I'm feeling good, because I've got my outfit and I'm signed in, so I figure I'm gold.  Then this guy takes the sheet that I signed in on and pulls out this secret sheet that I didn't see.  He checks my name off the sign in sheet against his secret sheet, and he's like:
"Your name's not on here.  You sure you spelled it right?"
"Yeah"
"Huh, hold on", and he grabs the boss lady.
The boss lady is like, "So when'd you train?"
"Uh… I don't know, I guess a while ago."
"Well was it this year?"
"Yeah, I'm sure it was this year"
"Alright, let me see your ID."
            So I give her my ID and she takes into the back room to run it against her computer.  After a few minutes she comes back, and is like, "You haven't been trained this year.  You can't handle food or alcohol."  So I ask if there's anything else I can help out with.  She sends me to some other lady who laughs at me.  "It's the World Series.  We have more volunteers than we can use… You're gonna have to go change back into your clothes and leave."
            I get my clothes back from the guys who checked them and go change back out in the dressing room.  I'm talking to all the pothead vendor guys again.  They're still cool.  When I get back into my normal clothes I go out, but instead of going up the stairs to where all the cops are waiting on the first floor guarding all the entrances, I take the elevator up to the top floor – floor 4.
            When I get off the elevator, I run to the balcony and watch the Cards having batting practice.  I'm totally freaking out, because I'm in Busch Stadium for a World Series game.  I took some pictures and stood there for a minute before I realized that I was the only on the whole floor aside from a handful of ushers.  I looked outside and realized that people were still lined up and they hadn't opened the gates.  It was only like 5:00, so I had like 30 minutes before gates open and I looked pretty suspicious being the only guy hanging out up there and I definitely did not have a ticket.
            I ducked behind a corner and sat down Indian style and waited for like 20 minutes until people started coming upstairs.  Then I just walked around all Busch Stadium.  Took it in.  Watched the game.  Saw Carp pitch 8 shut out innings.  Jimmy Baseball delivered with a big hit with the bases loaded to continue to be The Man.  Hung out with drunk good old Jon Daly.  I can't wait to tell my grandkids.

But that's not all folks, there's a part two!

How I snuck into the World Series pt II (and shook Eckstein's hand, got on the news, and field)
Friday, October 27
Game 5 of the 2006 World Series
Series - Cards 3; Tigers 1

            So I got to the stadium at like 6 so I'd have an hour to make my plan of operation for getting into Busch for the potential clinching game for the Cardinals to be the World Champs.
            I spent an hour walking laps around the stadium.  I was looking for any low gates, or trash cans close enough to the gates, or unguarded gates or any possible way that I could break into the stadium and just bolt in.
            I met this really cool usher named Steve something who was guarding of the doors and begged him to let me in.  We kinda bonded and I told him about how I had snuck into game 3.  He was impressed, but couldn't let me in, because the door was covered by cameras.
            I kept trying, I ran into two teenage black guys who were taking those huge dumpsters on wheels around and loading smaller trash cans into it.  They were inside the stadium, so we talked through the gate, and I proposed giving them some cash to sneak me into the big dumpster, cover me in trash, and release me once I was safely inside.  They considered it seriously for a while, but decided against it.  Because there is a different crew who is allowed to go outside, so it would look funny if they went outside and came back in.
            I rallied up every group of punk kids who looked like they need to be inside as badly as I did.  I found a group of 5 of them who were eyeing a handicapped door which was unlocked and the guard wasn't really looking.  I debated that with them for a while.  Decided against and gave them a tour of all my previous ideas to get their feedback.  So while we're walking one of the kids said they got in the night before with a used ticket stub.
            So I bounced on the kids, called my boy Randy and begged him to slide his ticket out the gate for me.  He does, but it's too easy and I just know that it's not going to work.  Since I know it's not gonna work, I try to be too sneaky and go in one of the side doors – not the main gates.  At the door there are no ushers, just security guards.
So I'm like, "Hey, can I get back in here?"
The guards like, "Let me see your ticket…  It's not stamped…   You were already in?"
"Yeah."  I'm so full of it.
"Your ticket should be stamped.  Which gate did you leave out of?"
I point to my left.
"They shouldn't have let you out that gate."
            So I'm sick of this guy and it's not getting me anywhere, so I take my ticket and end our conversation prematurely and walk on to the next gate to try this scanning a used ticket thing.  At the next gate, I wait in line forever, get to the usher, she scans the ticket and it clears and beeps.  So I'm in.  The asshole security guard had followed me from the inside though, because I was being suspicious.  So he stops me and takes me back to the usher who scanned my ticket.
"Did this guy's ticket beep?"
She's like, "Yeah, I wouldn't have let him in if it didn't."
So the guards like 20 questions on me:  "Why'd you try to get in the other door?  Where'd you get your ticket?  When did you get your ticket?"
I bullshit lie to all of his questions and I'm like, "What's the deal man?  I'm just trying to go watch the game."  I'm totally freaking out at this time, but try to come of as cool.
            He asks me some more questions and I'm like, "Look, I hadn't already been in the stadium.  I was trying to go in your side door so I wouldn't have to wait in line."
It totally works, the guard laughs at me and calls me a dumbass and let's me go.  So I apologize for lying to him – kinda ironic – and go to the game.
            I go watch the game.   Weaver weaves us a dream.  Eckstien gets some big hits.  Pujols makes an amazing diving grab, rolls over, and throws to first between his legs.  Weaver wins, Verlander loses, and Wainright gets the save.  Cards won 4-2 and take the World Series in 5 games!!!
            After that, I run around hug a bunch of strangers, give more high fives than I probably have in my entire life.
            After watching all the footage of Eckstein winning Series MVP and the handing over of the trophy, I end up down to the left side of the Cardinals dugout where the gate is to get into the field.  I immediately start schmoozing the gatekeeper who's name is Aubrey.
I'm hanging out behind the gate for all the Cards interviews.  I got to shake hands with Dave McCay, Gary Bennet, and David Eckstien.  I took like 5 pictures of David and I hanging out, and I hear I was on the news because they were showing David hanging out with the fans.
After all the Cards went back to party, I kept schmoozing Aubrey, most of it went like this:  "Yo, let me on the field."
"Man, you really want to get arrested don't you."  He was joking.  He was really nice.  I keep bugging all the rich people walking into the field, "Hey, take me with you."  They all smile and laugh and keep walking.
            Finally, this one chick who had been on and off the field like 3 times, said that if she came back again she would take me with her thanks to a little Sjerven Shine.  So she really came back and told Aubrey that I'm cool, so he lets me on the field with a big smile.  He knew how hard I had been trying to get on, so he was happy for me.  I'm soooooo greatful to this mystery woman who brought me onto the field.  So I beg her that if there is anyway that I can ever repay her and I thank her for like 5 minutes.  She's all like, "No, just go run the bases and have fun."  So she took a picture of me sliding into home and a picture of me pitching off the mound.  Then I bounced so I could go check out the outfield and give my best Jimmy Edmonds impression.
            After I was done playing around in the outfield I was working my way back out and I got this guy to take my picture in front of the Cardinals dugout when another usher grabs me and is like, "Hey, you're not supposed to be in here."
I'm like, "Some chick brought me in, for real."
He drags me out to the gate and asks Aubrey.  Aubrey back me up, "Yeah, the owner's daughter took him in."
"The owner's daughter???  Aubrey, you didn't tell me that, man."  Damn!  Then I proceeded to run around downtown distributing more high fives, dancing like an idiot, and kissing poor Tigers fans.  That summarizes the greatest night of my life thus far.

May we all be this lucky one day and get the opportunity to share such a good story!

Barry Bonds was the greatest hitter ever.

I grew up a San Francisco Giants fan, and thus also a Barry Bonds fan. However you feel about the steroids things, I think it's undeniable that he was one of the best players ever. Craig Robinson over at Flip Flop Fly Ball makes some AWESOME infographics, and one of his recent ones about Barry caught my eye:

No one will ever be able to reproduce what he did between 2001-2004. Part of it will be that no one will ever be able to juice the way he (and the rest of MLB) did. Look at those ridiculous slugging numbers! And the amount of intentional walks in 2004! If he's not the best ever, he's certainly the best player I'll ever see live.