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“Intentional Balk: Baseball’s Thin Line Between Innovation and Cheating”

The authors:
Daniel R. Levitt
Mark Armour

The publishing info:
Clyde Hill Publishing
258 pages
$22
Released July 12, 2022

The links:
The publishers website
The book’s official website
At Mark Armour’s website
At Daniel Levitt’s website
At Bookshop.org
At Indiebound.org
At SkylightBooks.com
At DieselBookstore.com
At Powells.com; at Vromans.com; at TheLastBookStoreLA; at PagesABookstore.com
At Amazon.com; at BarnesAndNoble.com

The review in 90 feet or less

Consider the headline in the Washington Post last April: “Cheating Is Part of Baseball, Says MLB. A Federal Court Agrees.”

Say it ain’t so, Jose Altuve.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had just rejected a lawsuit by fans who were already duped into thinking they’d make money with the fantasy baseball website DraftKings.com, but now claimed their betting results were compromised by a couple of illegal sign-stealing scandals that happened between 2017 and 2019.

The plaintiffs, who meticulously built their faux teams with real players and lived and died on the points they gained based on those real players’ performances, claimed they were protected by the MLB’s plausibility that all games would be played fairly. That didn’t happen. A league investigation found the Houston Astros and the Boston Red Sox violated rules that bar stealing signs via electronic means. In the DraftKings’ fans eyes, that meant their player performances were skewed by inaccurate fantasy stats.

If only this was a victim-less crime.

The court wasn’t asked to decide whether cheating actually occurred. Or whether the MLB misrepresented its product. Or if the plaintiffs relied on the MLB’s credibility. The question was whether all of these claims, if proved, would give rise to liability.

It did not, the MLB insisted in its defense. The judges agreed. They said: “(A)ny reasonable spectator or consumer of sports competitions — including participants in fantasy sports contests based upon such sporting events — is undoubtedly aware that cheating is, unfortunately, part of sports and is one of many unknown variables that can affect player performance and statistics on any given day, and over time.”

The court of public opinion may disagree. But that’s the deal, bro. Go have a fantasy parade for your team now.

Somewhere in his home at Vero Beach, Fla., Fay Vincent’s head exploded. That incident has yet to be updated on the Wikipedia page: “Cheating in Baseball.”

Vincent, a former entertainment lawyer, securities regulator and business executive who became the accidental MLB commissioner following the passing of Bart Giamatti in 1989, bared his baseball soul in a 2013 interview with America magazine, an intellectual weekly publication by Catholic Jesuits about faith and culture. The church of baseball is always in their crosshairs.

On the subject of the morality of baseball, Vincent was asked to expand on an op-ed piece he had done published in the Wall Street Journal that gave him real estate to talk about what he would have done with players who were caught using performance-enhancing drugs. That headline read: “Tell the Baseball Druggies: Strike Out, You’re Out.”

For American magazine, according to a transcript of the interview, Vincent laid it out there about the sport’s seemingly acceptance of various shades of defrauding, deception and dishonesty:

I think all cheating is dangerous and pernicious … I think one of the problems with sports, especially with baseball, is we sort of smiled at spitballs, tinkering with bats. Those seemed to us to be innocent forms of cheating. But it’s like saying we’re going to permit a little cheating on your income tax. I mean if you cheat, you cheat and I think this kind of performance enhancing drugs is a major form of cheating. It’s also illegal. It’s violative of the prohibited substance act. The federal statute says: You can’t be using these drugs without a prescription, you can’t be selling them in any event. I think one of the problems with baseball has been that we’ve been too tolerant of what we call innocent forms of cheating. There is no such thing as innocent cheating.”

Vincent’s run as commissioner was brief, ending in 1992 when some baseball owners decided he was too much a threat to their business and could have someone like future Hall of Fame inductee and Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig there instead to watch out for them with a strike/walkout looming.

America editor in chief George W. Hunt was moved to address the situation that sent Vincent away from his lofty post: “Ever since that bite of the tasty fruit, the way of the world has been that third-raters conspire to denigrate or oust first-raters in their midst. ’Twas ever so in playgrounds, factories, boardrooms, even churches, since the same Tree of Knowledge feeds the appetites of ignorance and stupidity as well. This sad tale was retold again recently when a handful of dissident owners, alarmed at integrity and intelligence, persuaded some straddlers to vote ‘no confidence’ in the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, Mr. Fay Vincent Jr. The vote was 18-9, with one abstention, requesting his resignation. Mr. Vincent originally intended to contest this dubious decision and fight to the end. Fortunately, he changed his mind, and his leave-taking was as dignified and forthright as his conduct in office has been.”

In this new book about the history of how the game has managed to survive despite those who find gray areas to manipulate in its credibility, SABR stalwarts and unimpeachable historians Daniel R. Levitt and Mark Armour aren’t demanding a call to action that pushes current commissioner Rob Manfred to do a better job cleaning up the sport from its cheating past, present and likely future.

Whatever you think of his performance since he took over in from Vincent’s predecessor, Bud Selig, in 2015, Manfred has already seen plenty of pushback from how he handled the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal — doing his best to appease the owners by punishing team GMs and managers involved – but not players – in the wake of a longer investigation.

He says he has the best interest of the game’s future – mostly because sports wagering is becoming a business partner, and fans (see above) want guarantees about the game being conducted on the up and up. It is ultimately why you’ll someday soon see robotic umpires at home plate on balls and strike calls, and a likely expansion of replay to make sure everything is as close to perfect as possible.

Levitt and Armour, as MLB historian John Thorn writes in an endorsement of the book, “may raise an eyebrow at this infraction or that one, but they are not moralists. For them, play is serious fun, and so is their book.”

We start there because, if you’re looking for a revolutionary chapter after chapter of essays damning the game and throwing intense shade on those who’ve failed to do something about it, that’s not the point. Instead, it’s something much more entertaining, educational and enlightening.

Continue reading “Day 31 of 2022 baseball books: Shenanigans, again and again, and the doctrines that go with ’em” →

“Feeling a Draft: Baseball Scouting
And the first 50 Years of the Amateur Player Draft”

The authors:
Fred Day
Ray McKenna

The publishing info:
Self published/
iUniverse Publishing
408 pages
$33.99
Released Nov. 18, 2021

The links:
The publishers website
The authors website
At Bookshop.org
At Indiebound.org
At Powells.com
At Vromans.com
At TheLastBookStoreLA
At PagesABookstore.com
At SkylightBooks.com
At DieselBooks.com
At Amazon.com
At Barnes & Noble.com

The review in 90 feet or less

So what do you hear about “The Hispanic Titanic?”

It’s a person, not a place or thing.

And it could be a really big thing someday.

Perhaps you can become one of his OG fanatics.

So we’re watching the MLB Network last Sunday morning, and up comes an interesting segment about hitting mechanics. The subject is Ivan Melendez, a 6-foot-3, 225-pound, Jose Canseco-looking first baseman from the University of Texas. He just won the Golden Spikes Award in 2022 as college baseball’s best player – .387 average, school-record 32 home runs, 94 RBIs for the Longhorns, who returned to the College World Series.

The show about getting to “The Show” was another in a series related to the upcoming 2022 MLB Draft — the first round starts July 17, this year held in the LA Live plaza for the first time, as another element of the All-Star Game festivities in Southern California. (ESPN will also cover the first round on that Sunday at 4 p.m. in place of an MLB game). The draft doesn’t end until two days later.

So, no, you didn’t miss that MLB draft that usually comes in early June during the College World Series. Starting last year, it was pushed back (despite the wishes of teams who lose a month’s worth of time in development) to make it all more … Compelling? Convenient? Consolidated with the All-Star Game stretch that has actual life-affecting news attached to it.

In the order of picking for 2022, the Angels have the 13th choice overall. The Dodgers would have had No. 30, but — after these sandwich rounds for compensatory picks to help teams that lost free agents players, and a “competitive balance” round where small-market teams get some extra juice — they had to forfeit 10 picks and now, at No. 40 to start the official second round, this is payback for “exceeding the competitive balance tax threshold.”

This 2022 Dodgers lineup valued at $261,273,489 (with $35,333,333 in suspended animation) is your tax dollars at work.

Continue reading “Day 30 of 2022 baseball books: Looking an MLB Draft horse in the mouth (and look up draft horse, it’s a real thing)” →

“Charlie Murphy: The Iconoclastic Showman
Behind the Chicago Cubs”

The author:
Jason Cannon

The publishing info:
University of Nebraska Press
400 pages
$36.95
Released June 1, 2022

The links:
The publishers website
At Bookshop.org
At Indiebound.org
At Powells.com
At Vromans.com
At TheLastBookStoreLA
At Skylight Books
At Diesel Books
At PagesABookstore.com
At Amazon.com
At BarnesAndNoble.com

The review in 90 feet or less

Murphy’s Bleachers, the human circus with the green awning holding down the corner of Waveland and Sheffield, is among the must-observe places in Chicago’s Wrigleyfield when soaking up the neighborhood vibe before a Cubs’ game. Perhaps even break through the fence and order a beer if time allows.

From the center-field bleachers at Wrigley Field, you can look down upon it, but don’t look down on it. You find yourself asking: What I am doing up here if all those folks are jammed into that brick-building patio below seem to be having so much fun?

It started as a hot-dog-and-beer stand in the 1930s right after prohibition. It became Ray’s Bleachers in ’65. It was sold to a Chicago police detective named Jim Murphy in 1980, and his family has taken care of it ever since (his name is even officially posted on the street corner sign).

Charles Webb Murphy, the pre-Wrigley caretaker of the Cubs franchise from 1906 until he was forced out in 1913, doesn’t seem to have any familial roots to the place. Too bad. That would make it all the more historic and hysterical.

So let’s pretend anyway.

“You don’t know the history of the Chicago Cubs until you know the story of” this “ebullient and mercurial owner” of the franchise that, under his watch, won four National League pennants plus the 1907 and ’08 World Series titles — then went into championship hibernation for about 108 years.

The book-jacket blurb to encourage picking up this heavy-duty biography also wishes you to know this gentleman with the bowler cap, sporty mustache and holding a cigar on the cover has also been labeled as, in no particular order: Impetuous, lucky, sharp, lovable and loathable. Full of brash, bluster and hustle with explosions of creativity. Act first, apologize later.

“Hate him or love him, he is always interesting, and that is something,” said his longtime friend and sportswriter Hugh Fullerton, the famous whistle blower in the Black Sox Scandal (played by Studs Terkel in the 1988 movie, “Eight Men Out.”

He’d also refer to “Murph” as someone whose “spectacular success, and his brilliant showmanship naturally made enemies, especially of other club owners. He out-witted them, out-traded them and out-talked them.”

Continue reading “Day 29 of 2022 baseball books: When Murphy’s Law in Chicago meant there was no wrong way to run the Cubs” →

“The Church of Baseball: The Making of ‘Bull Durham’:
Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings and a Hit”

The author: Ron Shelton

The publishing info: Knopf/ Penguin/Random House; 256 pages; $30; Released July 5, 2022

The links: The publishers website; at Bookshop.org; at Skylight Books; at Indiebound.org; at Powells.com; at Vromans.com; at TheLastBookStoreLA; at PagesABookstore.com; at Amazon.com; at BarnesAndNoble.com

The review in 90 feet or less

In the big inning …

If the church of baseball works as a metaphor for “Bull Durham” — and those who continue to gospel sing its praises nearly 35 years after its release into the world — it can work the other way around in real-time church talk.

In 2017, Dr. Jason Lief, a professor of biblical and theological studies at Northwestern Christian College in Iowa who got his Ph.D. from Luther Seminary, wrote an essay for ReformedJournal.com headlined “Strikeouts are Fascist: Crash Davis and the Body of Christ.”

Hang in there, it’ll make some sense.

Tom Verducci’s lamentations in Sports Illustrated about the state of Major League Baseball was this jumping off point. In light of specialization — the decrease of the number of balls put into play, and the action often reduced to walks, strike outs or home runs — baseball has become boring. The piece refers to a scene in “Bull Durham” when Crash Davis is exasperated with Nuke LaLoosh, calls time, goes to the mound, and blurts out one of 238 memorable lines (*or maybe just a Top 37) from the flick:

Relax, all right? Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some groundballs – it’s more democratic.”

Lief sees that as a burning bush moment.

“What makes baseball good and what makes baseball interesting is when it is a collection of players with different skills and abilities working together as a team. We can’t all be shortstops, and we can’t all pitch. We need the gritty little players who slap hit the ball to the opposite field to move a runner, and we need the big swinging lefty to get us back into the game …

“When baseball teams start following some universal pattern, and players start playing the same, looking the same, and sounding the same… well, we get bad baseball. Or, at least boring baseball.”

He ventures to book of Colossians, where Paul says in the New King James Version: “Where there is no longer Greek nor Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all, and in all!” (Colossians 3:11).

Lief reads into that as: “The church is a unified diversity, or maybe a better way to say it is a diverse unity … We need shortstops, left fielders, catchers, and pinch runners. We need different personalities — the clubhouse clown, the Crash Davis veteran, and the hotshot young pitcher with loads of directionless talent.

“The problem with the church is the same problem affecting baseball — we all want to be the same. We only want to worship with those think like us. We only want to hear the ‘truth’ of scripture that fits with the ‘truth’ as we see it. We don’t want to be bothered with the hard task of serious interpretation or discernment. We certainly don’t want to be bothered with the hard task living in real community, as opposed to the vague, overused, rhetoric that people mistake for community.

“When it comes to the social issues ready to rip our denominations and congregations apart, what if we stopped listening to the loudest, and often most ‘certain’ voices and started listening to the Crash Davises within our communities? What if our churches stopped worshiping at the cult of personality and become much more democratic, much more empathetic, and much more interesting?

“We need each other in all of our diversity and quirkiness. Maybe we need to start playing church (and I mean the word play in a philosophical sense, not a ‘let’s pretend’ sense), and stop talking about being the church.”

Amen and pass the hot dog relish.

With writer/director Ron Shelton’s incredibly insightful breakdown about how, why and what happened when “Bull Durham” came out in baseball’s spiritual summer of 1988 — it preceded the release of “Eight Men Out” and was one bookend of the Dodgers’ improbable World Series run – he often goes back to that church connection to explain, because that’s in his DNA.

He grew up with bible stories. He took required Old and New Testament courses at the Christian liberal arts Westmont College in Santa Barbara and found them to be “the most rigorous classes I’ve ever taken.”

But as a 12-year-old growing up in Santa Barbara, a baseball fan of local native Eddie Matthews and his Milwaukee Braves, when the team moved into in the 1957 World Series facing the New York Yankees, the “church thing” took on new revelations.

On a Sunday morning in October, after Shelton first attended church school and then went to services at First Baptist Church, his father suddenly took the family out of church to get home in time to meet the TV delivery man from Ott’s department store. A delivery on a Sunday? It was special order.

The black-and-white set came on to show the fourth game of the World Series, as the Braves were trailing two games to one, and prayers were needed.

From page 6: “We watched that game in terror, aware that Eddie was having a terrible series. But after the team tied it in the bottom of the tenth, our hometown hero hit a towering two-run homer to win the game. A great weight lifted up out of the room, my father looked around, his shoulders lightened and we started going to church less and less. The seed for the Church of Baseball was planted.”

The first lines of the movie that Shelton feeds Annie Savoy picks up on that:

“I believe in the Church of Baseball. I’ve tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I’ve worshiped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn’t work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there’s no guilt in baseball, and it’s never boring … which makes it like sex.”

A true Catholic rosary may have just 59 beads – a Mala necklace Hindu prayer beads from India actually has 108 for many more celestial reasons. But the point is made.

The beauty of Shelton’s book is it continues to enlighten and entertain, not through tawdry details about misbehaving cast or crew, but connecting the far more intimate dots, looks at the impact of the film (finding out people have named their kids after some of the characters) and how the city of Durham still credits it for a revival.

It’s also a detailed TED talk about how movies are made, from budgets, shooting schedules, changing scripts and scenes, interwoven music, and what one fights for and gives up on with the bosses.

Continue reading “Day 28 of 2022 baseball books: How Ron Shelton put us in the pews with ‘Bull Durham’” →

“Last Time Out: Big League Farewells
of Baseball’s Greats”

The author:
John Nogowski

The publishing info:
Lyons Press
328 pages
$22.95
Released July 1, 2022

The links:
The publishers website
At Bookshop.org
At Indiebound.org
At Powells.com
At Vromans.com
At TheLastBookStoreLA
At PagesABookstore.com
At Amazon.com
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Walmart.com

The review in 90 feet or less

Pull up a chair from the bullpen and let us tell you about Mark Lee’s last time out in a Major League Baseball game was nothing to write home about.

And if he did write home, it would have been to his family in Hawthorne, California — also my hometown. Lee came through Hawthorne High a few years ahead of me during the 1970s, as the Elton John glasses and Goose Gossage-like glare gives away that time period.

Nonetheless, and for the record, this occured:

October 4, 1981: The 28-year-old Pittsburgh Pirates reliever makes his 118th appearance as the team wraps up the strike-interrupted season at Three Rivers Stadium against St. Louis on a crisp Sunday afternoon.

Lee gives up a run on three hits over the fourth and fifth innings. His sixth inning is three up and three down — a Dane Iorg fly ball to Mike Easler in left field, Steve Braun grounds it back to the box Lee throws him out, and then coaxing Orlando Sanchez to fly out to right fielder Bill Robinson. In the bottom of the sixth, Lee Lacy pinch hits for Mark Lee, and manager Chuck Tanner sends Kent Tekulve to mop up the final three innings in a game the Pirates eventually drop, 4-0.

For Lee, and the other 10,022 in the park, time to go home for the winter.

Lee comes back to 1982 spring training for the Pirates, but he is apparently expendable. The Pirates sell him to the Detroit Tigers (there is video evidence above). After giving him some innings in Florida, the Tigers dispatch Lee to Double-A Evansville. But after 18 games — a 7.25 ERA with a 1-2 mark — Lee is released in early June.

But he’s not finished.

The Pirates are game to have him back, but only at their Triple A Pacific Coast League’s Portland Beavers. There could be worse places to wallow.

As the season wears down, Lee’s 0-5 record and 4.08 ERA aren’t all that notable, even when one factors in he had a team-best eight saves (following up his PCL-best 20 saves in ’81). The Pirates aren’t committed to this re-investment, so it’s time to cut ties. Again.

But if this were it was all going to end, Lee decided he’d go down on his terms. He would do it in a way a national wire services would find out, and the New York Times would follow up on it.

This was exit, stage right:

Continue reading “Day 27 of 2022 baseball books: If you want to make the baseball gods laugh, tell ’em your exit strategy” →