The Chris Moeller Archives

Can I interest you in some more baseball talk?

I'm a tremendous baseball fan, but I don't harbor illusions that I would be fast pals with most of the guys who suit up for my favorite team. It also doesn't matter. What appeals about the sport is the escapism. Former pitcher Bill Lee shares my politics and my comic sensibility. Former Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith shares my musical taste and I like to eat at his restaurant. Some players, like Rick Ankiel, are endearing because of their personal stories. Anyway, they're few and far between. Many of what seem to be the average player's favorite topics of conversation-- deer hunting, trucks, church, and weightlifting bore me to tears. When I read player "profiles" anywhere, I'm endlessly disappointed at their choices for "favorite movie" or even "favorite athletes." (Really? Michael Jordan again?) Their musical selections when they come up to bat are almost always abysmal, and that gap in taste will only widen as I grow older and they stay the same age. Two players I grew up rooting against-- the Cubs' Mark Grace and Rick Sutcliffe-- seem to be, by their broadcasting styles, two of the cooler guys in the game. But they're Cubs. Like Jerry Seinfeld said, we're rooting for laundry.

In 1994, while living in St. Louis, I had the occasion to attend an old timers game... excuse me, "Heroes of Baseball" game. It was my one and only chance to see Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle in person. The Yankees great was just 62 years old, but he had less than a year to live, and he was physically unable to play in the exhibition because of the advanced liver cancer that had been brought on by his alcoholism. Still, the fans' reaction to him was quite moving, partially for that reason. He was a baseball hero and a role model during an era before Americans became fully aware of the difference, and his playing days overlapped a time in which we knew much less about the personal lives of the players. For fans in 1994, he was a man they got to know much better as he was dying than when he was playing.

We get in big trouble when we ask our baseball stars to be accomplished at anything other than baseball. They're not there to be role models. That's a disgusting turn of phrase anyway. The rush some people have to tear them to ribbons is just as frustrating to me as the rush to put them on a pedestal. We should be forgiving to all of them in the same way we should be forgiving of each other and ourselves. Some of these guys, like Mantle, are naturally fascinating as they combine those terrific physical gifts with poignant human frailty. Jane Leavy has written a book called "The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood" that promises to be an intriguing read despite the ridiculous title. It focuses more on Mantle's later years than previous biographies have, and unfortunately-- or perhaps, fortunately, for context and her own human development-- Leavy got a chance to know Mantle well enough in his last years to have her childhood illusions shattered. It would seem that in this book, as it's advertised, both author and subject escape with their humanity intact.

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My grandmother's favorite baseball player, at least during her septuagenarian years, was the Cubs' Dave Martinez. She would be excited, I think, to see that the former outfielder, now Tampa Bay bench coach, is considered a candidate by some for the Cubs' open managerial position this offseason. I remember watching a game once with Grandma in which Martinez came up to bat with the bases loaded and struck out. "Oh well," she said, "There wasn't any room for him on base anyway." Grandma knew her baseball quite a bit better than that, of course, but she sometimes would recite musings like that she didn't think I had heard before. She got a letter once from my cousin Eric, another grandson, when I was at the house. Eric was playing high school water polo at the time in California. She told me, "Eric doesn't think I'm very smart. He told me, 'Grandma, I'm playing water polo, but don't worry, we don't use horses.'" I don't think he had actually written that. I was only about 10 years old. I hardly knew what actual polo was, but I already knew that was a take off of the joke probably as old as the sport itself-- "I tried water polo but my horse drowned."

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The Reds were no-hit by Roy Halladay on Wednesday during their first playoff game in 15 years. You probably know that fact by now, but you probably aren't aware that the Reds' pitching staff allowed only one hit against the Phillies between the third inning of Game 1 and the fourth inning of Game 2-- a span of 8 2/3 innings. Maybe if there were an "ESPN Cincinnati", but alas, there isn't.

If you follow Bill James-developed sabermetrics in baseball-- and I know you do-- you'll be interested to know that Halladay's no-hitter warranted him a 94 "game score" for Game 1 of the Division Series, the same tally as Don Larsen's World Series perfect game in 1956. Impressive, for sure, but the San Francisco Giants' Tim Lincecum actually earned a more dominating 96 score for his two-hit, 14-strikeout performance against Atlanta on Thursday. This means that giving up two hits is actually better than giving up no hits. Cardinals fans, remember that the next you feel the urge to boo Kyle Lohse.

posted by CM @ 2:49 PM