El Presidente – El Perfecto

Just before the new year I was able to watch a great thing, Dennis Martinez’s perfect game at Chavez Ravine in 1991.  If I’m fortunate, I may be able to watch it again, but we’ll see.

Now, now, I know that the internet has provided us all with endless opportunities to study such things as those that I am about to relate.  But trust me, trust me, my friends, you can search and search after 50 years, and you will never find people who really do remember it or who saw it.  I know.  From falling hands.

What a hot day it was, nothing for Dennis.  The ‘spos had been shut down lately—Mark Gardner almost throwing a no-hitter on his own—clearly, the ‘spos were beginning to round into the form that made them World Champions in 1994.  Dodgers were  hot—league leaders, huge team average.

The ‘spos had that idiot coach, Tom Runnells, who initiated spring training with a foghorn and in fatigues, previewing the Jays’ Tim Johnson, who said he was in ‘nam when he wasn’t.  Baseball brings out the worst of Americans. . . .   Having gone through Earl Weaver, Dennis, Nicaraguan, would have regarded such things if not with irony, then with experience and determination, one of less than 10 to win 100 in both leagues.

I think, if I remember it right, Andres Galarraga was either in the doghouse or on the d/l, and a youngish Larry Walker came in to play 1^st base.  He proved to be pivotal.  Alongside Delino DeShields, who took most of the chances, it was Walker, above all, who just had the feel and the grit and know-how for the game that got Dennis through the perfect game—and Walker was clearly not at his accustomed position, or anything like it—he was just one hell of a ballplayer.  One hell of a ballplayer—five tools and smart—Larry Walker was six tools.

Dennis was pushed by Mike Morgan, the tired Dodgers’ starter—in fact, it was more or less a perfect game for both through about 4.  Morgan was a top starter, and the Dodgers had an astonishingly good hitting team, very American league, with Kal Daniels and Eddie Murray as relatively easy at-bats. The Expos knew they were good, but they had an idiot manager.  Dennis, I think, was challenged a bit by Morgan, not so much by his own team or his manager.  On the other hand, Gardner had gone out there and shown he could shut down a team completely—Dennis had to show he could still do that. Morgan pitched very well, but Dennis found another gear through the middle innings that truly asserted his presence; he would not be schooled by a boy.

In those days, they didn’t have all the newfangled devices we do now.  If Dennis threw about 110-112 pitches, I bet at least 95 were curves.  He had that tight curve working, and the Dodgers had a left-handed lineup, and as expert analyst and perennial .300 hitter Ken Singleton said, “you’d need a pitching wedge to get that one.”  Delino DeShields, at 2^nd base, must have had 12 chances, easy (remember, Walker).  The outfield probably only got about 3 chances all afternoon.

In and  out.  The Dodgers’ lefties would top ball after ball to DeShields at 2^nd.  Looking back, you would say, how could they do it?  But that was just how tight Dennis’s spin was.

Umpiring—let’s talk about umpiring, for that always must feature, just as refereeing does in hockey.  Well, I think Dennis got more calls than Morgan did, but only about 2-1, in terms of obvious calls that should have been gotten.  There were only a couple of calls that either pitcher should have gotten, and if you watch the game, well, Dennis maybe got at most 2 that Morgan didn’t get.  It was pretty even up, I think even Morgan would say.  Dennis also didn’t get a couple, but on the whole I would say Morgan was -1 or -2.  I’ll have to go to the tape.

Morgan tired, and Dennis knew he had his stuff.  He shook it out in his kinky way and then twisted into that trademark delivery.

Dennis threw at most 3-5 fastballs the whole afternoon, up and in, smokin’ 90, if that can be called smokin,’ at the Dodgers’ lefties. . . .  Dennis threw maybe 5-6 changes the whole afternoon, but when he did, they were devastating.  The Dodgers were looking curve so much that they might get fastball and then they get. . . change.  I really think Dennis should have thrown the change more that day, at Chavez Ravine, when he threw a perfect game.

In the final at bat, the Dodgers pinch hitter got just a little bit out in front of it, and it was just a bit in on his hands.  It was a good piece of hitting, because he had been studying up.  I actually think Dennis was a bit lucky.   Dennis felt that way, too.  We’ll never know, but it would have taken a good 20 ft more to get it out of the park—that was no warning-track shot; that one was caught on the wide green field of dreams.

The Chavez Ravine fans, they were classy.  They knew they’d seen a fine duel between Morgan and Martinez.  They clapped when Martinez came on for the ninth, and even stood while Dennis completed his perfect game—very, very classy fans in the true Vin Scully mode.  In Canada, you know when people know hockey, and they applaud it; I’m no Dodgers fan, but the Dodgers fans did show they liked baseball.

And then.

So what.  El Presidente, El Perfecto.  Dave Van Horne gets a new piece of turf, and Dennis is only one of the less than 10, joining Fergie Jenkins, who did it in both leagues.  What an achievement.

The ‘spos move on.  On to be the best team in baseball in ’94, so far out in front they  played with water pistols in Georgia before the Strike.

Best team ever.

zr

Nolan Ryan and the Death of Baseball

Put it on Pallid Puddle/Porridge-Faced Nolan Ryan! Fox Producers Hasten the Death of the Great American Game

That baseball has a lot of problems we all know.  For those of us who love the game, those problems are mostly situated with other people, who don’t get its beauty.  I saw Fox throw up a graphic about one of the teams, pointing out how there were a bunch of Hispanics, on one team, anyway, and how that made this “World” (oh the cringeworthiness of Americans, selling the sizzle and never the steak) Series really international.  May-be, but was there even one black American on either team?  I mean, on the playing field, as a regular?  I don’t know.  But I do know that 20-30-40 years ago, you’d sure see one hell of a lot more black Americans playing the game.  Somebody needs to break the barrier, again.  The last couple of World Series’ of baseball, involving Japan and Cuba, and Japan and Korea—man, now that was some baseball.  My lord that was good ball.  This 2011 World Series was such a joke, in terms of execution, that you really had to wonder if anyone out there knew how to play this game.  Abner Doubleday wouldn’t turn around in the street if somebody called his name after this fall classic. It sure looked as if Americans had handed the game over to those who cared more about it; hell, Canada shut down the U.S. at the Pan-Am games.  A little hustle and a little heart, which Canadians possess (forget talent), is enough to do in America now.

Anyway, I love the game, and, yes, sure, baseball has problems.  One is that it isn’t a very good tv sport, but that has everything to do with producers.  One can, of course, beg the question of just what is a good “tv sport,” and maybe Americans would have to travel before they realized the basic oxymoronic nature of the phrase “tv sport.”  How about we watch guys on couches watching sports?  ** wait—I just trademarked that.  It’s called: “real guys watch tv.”  Done and done.  That patent has pended. Baseball always shows us pitcher throwing at catcher, which is weird when you consider the number of players on the field.  Then, in that Sunset Boulevard death-in-life way American tv producers have, we get the 1 camera go-to of pudgy porridge-faced Nolan Ryan.

This, this was a series I just wasn’t much interested in.  When it began, I found myself in the impossible situation of kind of cheering for Texas, a team I never could have imagined cheering for.  But, for personal fan reasons, I just always had the hate on for Tony La Russa, whatever his baseball genius and tenacity (and then there’s the McGwire taint, etc.).  But as time went on, and I grew so completely sick of seeing camera 1 on Nolan Ryan every 10 seconds, well, I shifted my allegiances.  In the end, perplexing to me as it was, I had become a Cards fan.  By not being Nolan Ryan, the Cards seemed to become a symbol of baseball for people like me—people who like the game, not fat, ossified billionaire celebrities sitting next to brittle, evidently bored and uncomfortable wives, and ex-presidents who couldn’t spell “millionaire” despite being one.  The Fox camera 1 on Nolan Ryan puts many things about the state of the game in a nutshell.  A complete disinterest on behalf of Americans and tv producers regarding anything else but vapid wealth and celebrity, etc.  I mean, consider other sports.  When your go-to moment is, dozens of times per telecast, a picture of a fat, dull man in a black overcoat rubbing his eyes (many of these times well after midnight on the east coast), well, I think you could say that that black overcoat is a-coming to get your sport and yank it into history, where they only had black and white, and often not even the black to give the white any perspective whatsoever.

Baseball has so much to show us.  Defensive alignments that shift with virtually every pitch, to say nothing of every batter; batters warming up, signs being given—really there are endless ways to try to interest people in the game.  But we get fat puddle-faced Nolan.  “They say he threw 95 back in the day.”  Yeah, I remember that, very well.  But that was then.  That and five bucks will get me a coffee, today. 

Hockey has become infected with the same hopeless bug, too.  Now, instead of looking at anything on the ice, producers are ordered to lock on pictures of GMs, gleaming beneath the hideous fluorescent glow of upper booths, amidst the styrofoam diet-pop detritus of the end of the day; they might as well give us a downcast Willy Loman coming up the walk and mopping his brow and loosening his tie and wondering how he’s going to trade in that Chevy, or that fridge.  Or that Kotalik.

Anyway, this is merely a ragged rant that evidently has not got a lot in terms of constructive criticism (unless one draws from and *builds* upon it and so forth).  Maybe I’ll say more.  Others will.

I’ll just finish by saying what I started out to say.  This was a colossally badly played World Series, from every aspect (as they often are).  If you want to see real baseball, see the World Series played every four years, involving countries that really give a damn about baseball, the game.  Going in, I couldn’t believe it, but I probably did want to cheer for Ron Washington and the Rangers. ????  But it didn’t take me long, after watching Nolan Ryan every couple of seconds, to decide that, well, my allegiance was with baseball, not fat ol’ Nolan.  So I became a Cards fan.  And the Cards won.  Somehow I don’t feel really happy that my team won, but in the sense that fat ol’ Nolan didn’t, and baseball maybe did, I, as a fan, feel less bad than I could.

**[And a footnote.  All those who say, well, you could turn off the tv.  Duh, of course I did.  Most of the time I had Shulman, Valentine, and Hershiser coming through my computer or radio as I was raking leaves.  Those guys were mostly better than Sutcliffe and Horne – Thorne? – the tv talking heads were ok.  But surely to goodness every now and then you must go to the tv to see the most dramatic play—the home run, the inning-ending double play, and so on.  Surely you must see that!!  But no, you’ll see fat ol’ Nolan sitting there, like Pete Rose’s wife, inscrutable and unviewable.  Illusions shattered, you’ll go back to raking leaves, too, baby.]

Cards win! Cards win!  Bleh.  Whatever.  Minor victory for the game over dubya n’nolan, though.

If you love this game. . . .

zr

Jerry Howarth and Gregg Zaun – A Winning Combination

Jerry Howarth and Gregg Zaun – A Winning Combination

Have got to say I have enjoyed Gregg Zaun’s turns with Jerry immensely.  I do like Alan Ashby, but he sure is serious and technical and humourless; he really does seem to be auditioning for a TV job, and not grasping at all the necessary familiarity of a radio role.  He probably could, but he clearly doesn’t want to; you can tell by his voice and incision that he sees himself on TV, not radio.

Pat Tabler, well.  Pat is a bit like Kelly Hrudey.  I cringed so much when I first heard and saw Pat that I felt bad for his family.  Pat’s gotten better, but I don’t imagine I’d be able to have a conversation with him in a lineup for free beer.

The flaccid, hopeless Buck.  How it is that Toronto keeps going to this fake-tan ‘man’ for every job going—what’s next, dogcatcher?  Fartcatcher?—poor Buck.  He’s so far out of his league in every league.  All he can think to do is hail the brilliance of terminators like Jon Rauch.  It’s too pathetic even to discuss.  I just feel bad for Buck.  He needs to reinvent himself.  Maybe he could try catching.

(Honestly, I am only being half ironic in typing that, really I am.  Buck has got to figure out who Buck is and be it, and quit being the hopeless genuflector he is.)

Sportsnet in Canada admittedly has limited penetration, so you can’t really get Blue Jays broadcasts in any kind of major centres, but even if Sportsnet did have a robust national profile, I’d still have to go with the paysite mlb.com I’ve got and get the radio with the superlative Jerry Howarth.

Jerry’s been making the Jays come alive almost since the Jays were born—for so many years, he had to work alongside the crude, rude, monosyllabic pill that was Tom Cheek.  Well, not to speak ill of those who are. . . but in the end I basically just tuned out Tom altogether and brought the volume back up when the descriptive and enthusiastic Jerry came on for his innings.

Jerry’s had a few partners since, and I think even Jerry doesn’t know what to do with Gregg Zaun.  I don’t know that Zaun is all that suited to the TV commercial-break role that sees him have to be stiff and spit out 8-word platitudes; he can’t use much of his spontaneous humour, or, more importantly, his rapidly felt and real and insightful thoughts and comments.  Zaun’s frank and real and humorous commentary probably isn’t so good for sterile tv.  He seems almost made for radio.  And if you think that’s a slight, when was the last time “made for TV” was a compliment?  Painting my garage, driving my mower, I’ve heard numerous nuggets and insights from Zaun; just out on the Oakland trip, Jerry called, “. . .and there’s a foul off now to the right, down the line, into those empty seats.  Only 12, 000 fans tonight!”  To which Zaun instantly riposted “Jer, Jer, didn you git the memo?  Iz green seat night tonight!”  Classic.  Zaun clearly has stuff he prepares, but he also can get in the spirit of things like a player and a fan, and no-one else with the Jays can do that, nobody.  Sure, Zaun brags a bit; sure, some of his self-effacing shtick is already old; sure, he’s so close to some buddies, like Travis Snider, that he makes errors in broadcast judgment—but he sure is a fresh gem in the Blue Jays’ history.  Even more, and crucially, he actually _brings out_  Jerry, something that has probably never really ever happened at all in Jerry’s generation-spanning career, certainly not with Tom, and not so far with Alan.  Jerry’s one straight Christian who’s never going to criticize so he’s never going to really let fans in much on the intricacies of the game, but still he does love the game and he’s been watching it and calling it long enough to remember some things.  Zaun asked him recently who Jerry thought was the most intimidating fastballer the Jays had ever had, and Jerry was actually so stunned that he never ever responded, not even in subsequent innings.  The Blue Jays have a resource in Jerry, and when you’ve got a guy who can bring just about everything to the table _and_ bring out Jerry, why, then you’ve got something just about any broadcasting executive would have to instantly kill because fans might enjoy it.

Anyway, Al’s back in the booth now, now that the Jays are home again, and Jerry has picked up his dour mood.  Last night Jerry was hectoring a fan who had apparently got onto the field or something—Jerry visiting his Christian outrage upon probably some over-exuberant fan.  That’s not Jerry, really.  He may be prim and pushin’ for the Lord above all, but Jerry does like the game and he has spent a long time around it, and a fellow lover of the game, with a sense of humour, like Zaun, is just what he needs.  If Zaun ever joins Jerry, that’s appointment listening for me.  Too bad Sportsnet has such tiny radio coverage in major centres in Canada, but I’ll pay mlb for that and the Ueck and Vin’s first 3 and so on.

Tune me in for sure when it’s Jerry and Gregg; tv or radio, Sportsnet’s loss is mlb’s gain.

zr