It was a joyous occasion when we first came across this project in the Year of our Baseball Existence 2009.
It made the cut as part of our inaugural list of 30 new baseball books to be reviewed — 307 pages with index for Harper Collins, a swell sell at $22.99, taking more than two years to knit together.
Megdal, at that time covering baseball for the New York Observer, may have secured glowing reviews about the book’s importance from industry scribes such as Jeremy Schaap, L. Jon Wertheim and John Eisenberg. But we were more enamored with how Megdal summarized it all himself in the last graph:
“Let this … book ring out in response to the well-known ‘Airplane!’ gag about Jewish athletes. In baseball alone, there are more than just a pamphlet. I encourage you, should anyone make that joke to you — throw this book at them. And I don’t mean rhetorically. Actually throw this book at them and say, ‘Does this feel like a pamphlet? Well? Does it?’”
Not then, and not now.
Note the book has increased in size, dropped the index, found a new publisher, procured a snappy new forward by Jason Stark (to augment more quippy endorsements from Schaap, Eisenberg and Wertheim), all there for the low, low price of $28 — at a time when too many things of value go up exponentially to keep up with inflation.
Make no inflated mistake in how Stark, the former ESPN reporter and now senior baseball writer at The Athletic who in 2019 was given the Baseball Hall of Fame’s BBWAA Career Excellence Award, admits that this “one of the most important baseball books ever written – it’s one I’ll keep handy on a shelf near me every day of the year.”
Stark’s point was driven home by a cool thing that happened in the 2021 World Series: In the second inning of the sixth and final game, Max Fried pitched to Alex Bregman, who flew out to Joc Pederson. It was the first time three Jewish players were on the field for a World Series game at the same time — and now were involved in the same play. (The Astros also had a Jewish backup catcher, Garrett Stubbs, who didn’t get into the series, but he adds to the history).
— JewishBaseballMuseum (@JewishBBMuseum) June 16, 2022
(One more thing we found as astounding in the 2020 World Series, when the Dodgers were facing Tampa Bay in Texas: The Rays had last-minute roster addition — a left-handed reliever named Ryan Sherriff. Both his material grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Jewish fans (and those with a sense of history) were anticipating a time when Sherriff might be brought in as a specialist to face the Dodgers’ Pederson. It didn’t happen. But it could/should have, so those of us paying attention.)
Before we get into the frolic and perhaps frivolity of what’s at stake here, it is poignant to note how Megdal, whose calling card now focuses on his founding of The IX: Your Curated Guide to Women’s Sports as well as The Next @ The IX that highlights women’s basketball, writes in his introduction why we should have a better understanding how this project brings some added value and renewed importance. Consider the rise in hate crimes against Jews. Community centers under bomb threats. Insane, incited things elected representatives are allowed to say and do these days:
This is an America where some figures on the left, preaching intersectionality, always manage to leave Jews out of the equation. This is not an accident. We hear those comparisons. We hear the silence. These people mean to write us out of the American story. This is the American Jewish conversation in the summer of 2021 at socially distanced barbecues and family dinners. … This is most definitely not the book that grapples with such disturbing, sinister trends. This is where we go to escape from it, to revel in what the Jewish people have accomplished, and to celebrate what achievements lay ahead. What makes baseball such a perfect emotional haven for us all is the sheer size and complexity of it. That we could engage with the game, even as we all navigated the early unknowns of COVID-19, speaks to the ways baseball can fill our lives even during periods when most other aspects of life are shut down. But the reason it matters so much to us as Jews is the extent to which baseball itself is an extension of America writ large.”
There are far more things to honor, Megdal points out — the emergence of Jewish leaders like Justine Siegal, creator of Baseball For All (see above), creating a pipeline for women to play the game. Two Orthodox Jews taken in the 2021 MLB Draft (Jacob Steinmetz and Elie Kligman. The emergence of Team Israel in the Olympics.
Megdal then concludes, perhaps referencing his own “throw this book at them” line from years earlier:
“Celebrating Jewish excellence in baseball is not a difficult thing to do despite all the jokes through the years. It is, at its heard, a supremely Jewish thing to do, too: Finding joy in the argument, in the discussion of statistical evidence and sense memory and arcane topics, in cultural pride. It’s a recognition that one of us did something that made our group proud and a larger group, us among them, collectively cheer.”
Here’s a mensch who doesn’t mince words. Hear, hear.
But don’t think that trivializes the next 300-some pages trivial.
Just the opposite.
== Explain how Hank Greenberg remains the greatest Jewish major leaguer in history instead of Sandy Koufax – who just got a statue in his honor at Dodger Stadium? C’mon, the gap has to be closing at some point with all the numbers crunched and re-crunched these days. (Spoiler alert: Nope).
Given a chance to pick up a title that, by those who do such things, categorize it as both literary fiction as well as women’s fiction, we know this to be fact: We don’t often get the pleasure to read enough fiction. Especially baseball-related fiction. Maybe one title jumps out per season.
When something comes flying toward us, we take a most direct path to flag it down.
The New York Times gives this one some fair ground, we’re caught up in the synopsis:
Writers have forever used objects as a tool by which to tell their stories — Hawthorne’s letter, Maupassant’s necklace, Hammett’s falcon. … The literary object, at its most effective, is a powerful revealer of character — telling us about the people who possess it and those who covet it; those who are drawn to it and those who are repelled by it; those who deem it meaningless and those who endow it with outsize importance. In Alison Fairbrother’s warm and funnydebut novel, “The Catch,” the revelatory tools are a baseball and a tie rack. … The importance of the baseball is linked to James’s most famous poem, ‘The Catch.’ And in both the poem and the novel, the title’s meaning mutates as the truth about the baseball, and therefore her father, continues to unfold.”
You had us at baseball. And for some reason, something called a “lucky baseball.”
Where do we go from here? The main character, Ellie, has a 10-year-old step brother named Van who wears at Orioles cap and loves to “pour over our father’s baseball magazines.” The father, James, loved to gather his family around the holiday table (celebrating Thanksgiving in the summer when he had custody) and emotionally recite Lou Gehrig’s famous speech (with modified echo): “Today, I consider myself, the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
And then we get to see the famous poem he wrote, “The Catch,” recited by the daughter at his funeral, which goes:
but, if time could kneel, as a catcher shifts to his knees when the pitch is wild For the summer we played in ruffled green grass, or indoors if the sky shivered with rain, Tossing the ball from end to end in dusty store aisles. Would the solid walls still echo with the hollow slaps of our hands to leather mitts, Or would I leave you there your arms outstretched as if to receive me.
Pause to ponder … Cool poem, eh?
The author, we’re also told — she actually wrote this poem as something include in the fiction work, right? — is an associate editor at Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House (which publishes Meg Wolitzer, Elizabeth Gilbert and Brit Bennett), worked as a journalist in Washington, D.C., before getting her MFA at Stony Brook University. She lives in Brooklyn.
In her acknowledgements, she also mentions her late father’s name is James.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because the lead character is a journalist in Washington, D.C., and her deceased father is named James.
For what it’s worth, we’re 44.444 percent into Shohei Ohtani’s 2022 season. In just the last two games, we’ve been told again — warned, actually — that what we’re watching is nearly unimaginable on a Major League Baseball diamond. We still have a hard time believing it.
A night after a career-high eight RBIs, including the second of two three-run homers in the ninth sending the game into extra innings, Ohtani throws eight shutout innings and posts a career best 13 strikeouts, ending another Angels’ losing streak. After the first two Royals hitters connect on singles, Ohtani strikes out two of the next three and doesn’t allow a hit the rest of the way, with just one walk. He retires 16 in a row at one point and the last seven batters he faces, at one time touching 100 mph in the seventh inning. In the process, he’s the first since Babe Ruth to record 100 career home runs at the plate and 300 strikeouts on the mound.
Shohei Ohtani is the 1st MLB player with both an 8-RBI game and a 13-strikeout game in a career.
In between those games, there’s ESPN’s Olney on the air during a chat show warning that the Angels face a “looming crisis” ahead of Ohtani’s free agency at the end of the 2023 season – and the New York Mets with their GM Billy Eppler, who helped orchestrate Ohtani’s landing in Anaheim when he worked there, could be a favorite landing spot.
Let’s not panic or anything.
So already this season, we enjoyed this a story last May from The Athletic about how “One Moment at Fenway Perfectly Captured the Shohei Ohtani Experience,” most notably how he went out to the mound one inning to pitch against the Red Sox and forgot he still had his batting gloves in his back pocket. That was the game he struck out 11 with no walks in seven shutout innings of an eventual 8-0 win — and also hit a line drive so hard to the opposite field that he knocked his own No. 17 number of the pitcher’s slot in the manual scoreboard on the Green Monster. That’s the stuff of “The Natural.”
In early June, we had Ohtani ending the Angels’ franchise record-setting 14-game losing streak almost single-handedly – throwing seven one-run innings against Boston and hitting a well-timed home run to spark a 5-2 win.
Then on June 15, Ohtani, extending his hitting streak to 10 games, ropes a triple down the right field line with one out in the top of the ninth to break up a no-hit bid by the Dodgers’ Tyler Anderson. He then scores one pitch later to end the Dodgers’ shutout bid. It happened on the Dodgers’ Japanese Heritage Night with taiko drummers pounding in the distance. No matter how this publication in India seemed to mangle the translation of the story.
The current issue of Sports Illustrated even devotes six pages to his sense of humor. In “Goofball” (compared to the print edition that refers to it as “Funnyball”) writer Stephanie Apstein explains how that while “Ohtani’s English has improved, he still relies on (translator Ippei”) Mizuhara for nuance. But the language barrier is less imposing than it might seem, and besides, many gags require no interpretation: the weightless ball prank … his laughter — often directed at himself — is childlike and infectious.”
They said the same once upon a time about Fernando Valenzuela.
And this is all pre-2022 All-Star Game at Dodger Stadium. The drum keeps beating for Ohtani. Who wouldn’t just want to shake his hand, after shaking their head?
Shohei Ohtani thought the umpire just wanted to shake his hand when he was actually trying to do a substance check 😂😂😂
“I hope you don’t start taking that for granted. Like it’s old hat,” former Angels manager Joe Maddon once said about all this. “It’s just so unusual. It’s otherworldly, on this level of this game.”
Not to worry. We’ve also got 2021 to remind us what’s going on here.
So, once upon a time, Time magazine carried prime-time gravitas in the media world.
When it put Shohei Ohtani on its April 25/May 2, 2022 double issue cover, declaring he is “what baseball needs,” it definitely stood out — like something out of GQ.
Even trying to outdo the British GQ edition that already had him on the cover of its February 2022 issue, calling him “The Dominant Star of Modern Baseball.”
This Time magazine story with the “Sho-Time” screamer on the front also needed Ohtani’s image to carry the back end.
Inside the back cover, there is a full page glossy ad with Ohtani, in generic baseball apparel, promoting another aspect of his abilities. He hits, pitches and “trades .. he does it all” on the “official crypto exchange partner of MLB.”
Ohtani is currency these days. In dollars, yen, tickets, ratings, and whatever other stuff people are just making up.
It all makes dollars and sense based on what happened in The Year of Ohtani 2021. He performed as if he was as easy as playing in a video game. And he just continues to baffle and bedazzle.
The 2021 American League MVP, the Commissioner’s Historic Achievement Award, the MLB Players Association Player of the Year honor, a Sliver Slugger award, and participating in the All-Star game as the starting pitcher and lead-off hitter a day after nearly winning the Home Run Hitting Contest are just among the things allowed to be placed on the display shelf at this point.
Here’s a book to go with it.
Shohei Ohtani received his AL MVP award tonight… along with every other baseball award possible it seems 🏆 pic.twitter.com/NvSH9cWcBo
Jeff Fletcher, who has been covering the Angels for the Southern California News Group the last 10 years and on the MLB beat since ‘97, had already started to write an Ohtani tome in 2018. But things derailed when Ohtani’s UCL issues flared up and his already brief MLB career could have been doomed. It was wait-and-see from there.
(Smart move. For what it’s worth: In November of 2018, Sports Publishing LLC tried to crank out a half-baked composite Ohtani bio, a skimpy 140 pages from previous reporters work. We weren’t that into the hype of it with our April, 2019 review.)
But after what Ohtani did a season ago, the project begged to be revived, and not just as a rehash mashup.
“My goal was to go beyond a surface-level description of what he did in that amazing season, providing the context that explained it,” Fletcher writes about why he pitched it all again.
To everyone’s benefit, he does that and then some.
If Chapters 10-through-15 ultimately provide all the nitty and gritty of that 2021 season — from spring training, the first half, the All-Star Game, the second half team collapse and the assessment of experts about what just happened — it’s the necessary chapters one through nine that thankfully take all this from its beginnings to where it all makes a lot more impact.
That’s all the important stuff of Ohtani’s time playing in Japan, the negotiations to get him with the Angels, his arrival and first spring training in ’18, a couple of surgery issues with his arm and knee, the challenges of ’19 and ’20 (including the death of his locker room neighbor Tyler Skaggs, who shared the same agent, Nez Balelo), and the successful rebuilding of his workouts and regime through the advanced technology available at the Driveline Baseball organization.
Congratulations to Shohei Ohtani on winning the 2021 AL MVP! You made history – and it was truly an honor to work together. https://t.co/XWVGDwt3Ex
We also get an historical sense of what other Japanese players did in American in previous careers amidst overhyping, which made Ohtani “the most fiercely pursued player to come on the international market in the history of baseball,” Fletcher writes.
The season before Ohtani’s ’21 breakout comes as he was more in tune with his body, what needed to be done, and about 100 years after “Babe Ruth stepped into former boxer Artie McGovern’s gym to get in shape with sprints and medicine ball throws and more, a concept that was just as cutting-edge at the time,” Fletcher reminds us.
New York #Yankees legend Babe Ruth puts on boxing gloves and playfully spars with his daughter Julia at Artie McGovern’s Gym, NYC (January 1933) I sure hope that spring training starts soon! #MLB#Baseball#Historypic.twitter.com/xn45YDwQHb
He also notes that the Angels “treated him like a fragile artifact for most of his first three seasons in the big leagues, and you couldn’t blame them … Even when Babe Ruth did it in 1918 and 1919 he said the physical demands were too great” as he transitioned from pitching to hitting. “Ohtani by contract came to the majors specifically to be a two-way layer and it was up to the Angels to ensure that he could handle the workload.”
If not now, then when?
Also keep in mind, in the less-than five full seasons, Ohtani has already had four managers and two general managers, so the disappointments he had in the two seasons prior landing on blackjack in ’21 can’t be discounted.
Those previous two seasons, Ohtani once said, were what he described as nasakenai, which translates to, among other things, “pathetic.”
Now, it’s the fourth game of the regular season, at Angel Stadium, with only 13,000-plus in attendance because of COVID restrictions, the Angels faced the Chicago White Sox in ESPN’s first prime time Sunday Night contest.
Within the first 15 minutes of the game, the 26-year-old Ohtani touched 100 mph on the speed gun from the mound and hit a ball 115 mph for a home run at the plate (that traveled some 450 miles). It was also the first time he pitched and hit in the same game.
“No one else in the big leagues accomplished both those milestones in the season,” Fletcher notes, also pointing out that only six percent of pitchers have reached 100 mph in ’21, and only five percent of hitters produced contact of 115.2 mph.
This, after Ohtani gave up seven runs in 2 1/3 innings with five walks in his final exhibition tune-up against the Dodgers a week earlier.
“Let’s stay out of his way, let him play baseball and see what happens,” said Maddon, whose job this season couldn’t even be saved by what Ohtani has been doing.
Non-spoiler alert: Even if the reader knows what happens next, next, next – the Angels suddenly have no room for Albert Pujols, the “reverse double-switch” game Ohtani played some right field after he was done pitching so he could stay in the lineup, a go-head homer with two out in the ninth at Boston in May, the whole Colorado All-Star game break-out moment – the content feels fresh and important.
Such as a reference to how baseball researcher Eric Fridén tracks a stat he called “reserve power,” which measures the way a pitcher’s velocity increased with the pressure of the situation. Ohtani’s average fastball in 2021 increased from 95.3 mph with no runners in scoring position to 96.8 mph with runners in scoring position. Fridén said he had been tracking the statistic since 2008, and by his measure Ohtani’s reserve power over the course of the 2021 season was surpassed by only future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander and reliever Andrew Miller. Miller had done it just once, and Verlander had done it for seven seasons.
That is from June 8, 2021 — my 60th birthday – when I decided that COVID messiness or not, I wanted to go to Angel Stadium to see Ohtani play. He wasn’t pitching, but was the DH and would be batting second.
Just listen to the sound of the ball hitting the bat in his first-inning plate appearance:
On page 176, it is duly noted:
“The Angels faced the Kansas City Royals and former top prospect Kris Bubic … In the first inning, the twenty-three-year-old lefthander threw Ohtani a 2-and-2 changeup that ended up over the heart of the plate. Ohtani blasted it 470 feet — the longest homer of his career. The ball landed in the seats just a few feet from the fence alongside the green batter’s eye.
“ ‘That’s the farthest ball I think I’ve seen hit here,’ said Maddon, who had spent twelve years as a major league coach or manager with the Angels. ‘I’ve never seen one hit there before’.”
Nor had we.
We sent a text to Mark Gubicza in the Angels’ broadcast booth, and he texted back the same sentiments — which he said live on the team’s broadcast. And we recall seeing some majestic Reggie Jackson blasts in that facility, as well as one that Barry Bonds seemed to hit into no-where during Game 1 of the 2002 World Series.
We had seats on the top deck nearly behind home plate. It was like someone teeing up a golf ball and launching it toward the 57 Freeway, aiming at the Honda Center. The height was as impressive as the distance.
The official statistics of 2021 recorded that Ohtani hit 46 home runs (third-most in the MLB), had a .257 average (above the league average of .245), a .592 slugging percentage and .965 OPS (fifth in the majors). As a pitcher, he was 9-2 record, 3.18 ERA and 157 strikeouts in 130 1/3 innings. His WAR numbers — 4.1 pitching, seventh in the AL, plus 4.9 hitting — added to a 9.0, more than one better than the 7.8 by runner up and pitcher Zack Wheeler.
In Tokyo, a man reads an extra edition of a newspaper reporting Shohei Ohtani winning the AL MVP on Nov. 19, 2021 (Issei Kato/Reuters)
Along with touching on how tourism jumped in Anaheim with Ohtani’s arrival and all the other domino effects of his success, one of the elements that could have been perhaps covered with more detail is how the ’21 season played out with Ohtani in the media – a platform that couldn’t always get a handle on the best ways to frame him.
There was plenty of misplaced attention given to ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith mangling hot take about why Ohtani, on the eve of the All Star Game, might be bad for the game instead of good because he didn’t speak English in the media. As senior media writer Tom Jones said for Poynter.com: “He came off as the guy telling foreign players to ‘speak English’ if they wanted to be accepted and truly represent a sports league in the U.S. And that is simply unacceptable.”
The media was also more proactive in comparing Ohtani beyond Ruth — going as far as a FiveThirtyEight.com piece that shines a light on the exploits of the Negro League’s Bullet Rogan.
If any of this is mentioned, we must have missed it, but it provides another layer of where people are getting their most pertinent information and framing opinions.
#Angels record when Shohei Ohtani has 2 HR and 8 RBIs:
0-1
Record of all other teams in live-ball era when any player has 2+ HR and 8 RBIs:
All in all, among the media types who provide back cover blurbs to help give this book some juice — quick hits by the likes of the New York Times’ Tyler Kepner, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Jason Stark, ESPN’s Buster Olney and MLB Network and Angels broadcaster Matt Vasgersian — the one that rings most true with us is from Gubizca:
I thought I knew everything about Shohei Ohtani because I had seen all of his games and interviewed him for the first time in Tempe in 2018, but I didn’t quite know the extent of everything he did to redesign himself on the physical and mental side until after I read (this book). I really appreciated learning about Ohtani’s dedication to be the best, starting from his days in Japan. I realized how much it took for him to get to this point, to have the best year in baseball history.
== For collectors: How the book looks promoted on Amazon Japan:
== Last January, a quick 32-page paperback on Ohtani as part of a sports bio project came out (Lerner Publications, $9.99) to attract the 7-to-11 age reader (second-to-fifth grade).
Using a Sharpie, protractor and some creativity allowed on an Auto Club fold-out map, the area to circle in Southern California that we’ve been calling the South Bay (as opposed to the one by the same name that also exists in Northern California) starts with anything in sweeping proximity of the Santa Monica Bay. Yet, you’re supposed to exclude the cities of Santa Monica, Venice and Marina del Rey, whose neighborhoods preferred to be more aligned with “The Westside.”
The coastline south of LAX and Westchester hits El Segundo, and the beaches of Manhattan, Hermosa and Redondo. The Palos Verdes peninsula juts out with Rolling Hills and San Pedro at the Port of L.A., which goes right up Wilmington, Carson and Gardena. It surrounds Torrance, Hawthorne, Lawndale, Lomita and Lennox, touching as far north as Inglewood. It can stretch East to Dominguez Hills and its Cal State campus, and it of course can wade into the Pacific Ocean to capture Catalina Island.
There are more than a dozen cities and boundaries of L.A. proper that claim it. And it’s baseball fertile, especially with youth teams, high schools and JCs.
The game’s royalty associated with the area starts with George and Ken Brett, George Foster, Garry Maddox, Mike Scott, Scott McGregor, Brian Harper, Jason Kendall and Alan Ashby. Dozens of MLB players are also connected to the area over the last 100 years.
Now’s as good a time as any to cast a bigger net when trying to record its history.
There’s the introduction to Raul “Bumble” Gonzales on the cover, in photo that appears to be hand-colored, highlighting the blue and white of his uniform of the Pan Pacific Fisheries.
Rickey Henderson, right, looks over J.J. Guinn’s shoulder to see the scouting report Guinn wrote about him in 1976. Credit: .Jim Wilson/The New York Times
In July, 2021, the New York Times’ Alex Coffey dove into the relationship between Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson and the scout that signed and nurtured him, J.J. Guinn. The focus is on what Guinn saw of Henderson on one particular day:
“Guinn focused on his strengths: Henderson’s speed, athleticism and lateral range,” writes Coffee. “Where others saw impediments, Guinn saw possibility. …
“Only two M.L.B. teams were present for an American Legion game at Bushrod Park on that day in 1976: the Athletics and the Los Angeles Dodgers. After Henderson struck out in his first two at-bats, the Dodgers scout stood up. ‘I’ve seen enough,’ Guinn recalled him saying. ‘I have a plane to catch.’
“Henderson homered in his next two at-bats and Guinn feverishly typed out a report to his scouting director. His advice: Sign Rickey Henderson ‘right away’.”
On page 34 of Howard Bryant’s book, now it can be retold with a few more pieces of info:
“The scouts who watched Rickey had no doubt they were watching a gifted athlete, but they were unconvinced about him as a baseball player. Doubt was baked into their DNA – scouts never missed a chance to emphasize what a player couldn’t do. Rarely did they see what a player was or what he could be. … So they were doubtful that 17-year-old Rickey would ever make it to the big leagues. Too many problems, they said.”
Yet this was an area that had not-too-far-back produced players like Curt Flood, Joe Morgan, Frank Robinson and Vada Pinson. As Bryant adds, “Oakland kids were defiant, wholly independent, creative outsiders with an irreverent style. Rickey’s generation was young, and they were imbued with the spirit of Oakland.”
Now it was Henderson, Gary Pettis, Claudell Washington, Dave Stewart, Von Joshua, Bip Roberts, Ruppert Jones, Glenn Burke … all-around athletes who might be lured to baseball for the right price and nurturing.
I just love posing this question to Oakland Technical High School, where the Pointer Sisters and Rickey would lose out to Clint Eastwood… https://t.co/eHXQBkorrc
The Dodgers had two full-time scouts in the area – Dick Hager and Dick Hanlan — who had been watching Stewart, an up-and-coming catcher (before he would be drafted by them and converted into a pitcher). This time, the franchise’s scouting director, Bill Brenzel, had come to watch Oakland Tech against Skyland (a high school game, not an American Legion contest?)
Brenzel was an Oakland guy, himself a player who grew up in the area 50 years earlier.
“He showed up, sat right down and waited for Rickey to show him what he had,” Bryant writes. “Brenzel introduced himself to J.J. Guinn, who was seated next to him. Guinn would recall that Brenzel’s countenance said it all: Important guy. With the Dodgers. The Dodgers always created a buzz.”
Henderson strikes out his first two times up.
“As Rickey walked back to the dugout, Brenzel was done. He was a performance scout, and Rickey hadn’t performed. Guinn would remember that, as Brenzel stood up, he heard the scout mutter something to the effect of ‘I’ve seen enough’ and ‘got a plane to catch.’ Then he left.
“And that is how J.J. Guinn and the Oakland A’s got the inside track on signing Rickey Henderson.”
Henderson homersin his next two at-bats, the second one longer than the first.
“ ‘If he’d have stayed,’ Jim Guinn recalled (referring to Brenzel), ‘Rickey would have been a Dodger.’”
Guinn watched Henderson for 20 games, 140 innings in all, yet still didn’t write up all that impressive scouting report. In the one done prior to the June 1976 draft – using the 2 to 8 scale, with 8 being outstanding — he gave Henderson’s running ability a 7 (present, and future), a 5 for baseball instincts and aggressiveness and a 3 for fielding and hitting ability. Guinn also compared him to a Cleon Jones because he threw left and batted right.
All in all, Guinn still recommended the A’s draft the local kid. As a pitcher. They did.
At the end of the fourth round, long after the Dodgers had already drafted catcher Mike Scioscia in the first round (who would play more games at that position in L.A. Dodgers history than anyone else), shortstop Don Ruzek in the second round, outfielder Max Venable in the third round (an eventual big-leaguer) and, six picks before Henderson, pitcher Marty Kunkler.
(Kunkler, listed by his formal first name of George below, was a 20th-round pick out of high school by the Dodgers in ’73. Then he went to college. He lasted two minor-league seasons in the Dodgers organization.)
For what it’s worth, Jack Morris went to the Tigers two picks later after Henderson, in the fifth round, and Ozzie Smith went to the Tigers and Wade Boggs went to the Red Sox in the seventh round. All Hall of Famers as well. The California Angels weren’t any more insightful, but at least were looking OK taking L.A. native Ken Landreaux in the first round out of Arizona State plus a couple others who got to the big-leagues without much fanfare.
Tom Hoffarth's The Drill: More Farther Off the Wall 