Saving Baseball

I'm not sure I truly believe baseball really needs "saving", so claims made by the title of this post may be for imagination's sake only.

Rob Manfred, the new commish of baseball, has been bringing different ideas to the table to stem the erosion of the sport's popularity. The fan base has been skewing older and whiter as of late. Some ideas are on the table just to discuss, like the elimination of the shift. Not that I'm the most vocal purist, but eliminating the shift is ludicrous. Learn to lay down the bunt...

Creating urgency is now the driving desire of the Sports-Industrial Complex. In a world where live entertainment is so sought after, the importance of each of those live events is becoming paramount. The NFL has figured this out. MLB has yet to figure out how to make the marathon season into something more tasty for the young crowd.

Manfred talks about making games shorter. Maybe even lopping those extra 8 games and getting back to the "classic" 154 game schedule.

This conversation happened last night:

Me: So the new baseball commissioner is thinking of shortening the baseball season. Urgency's the name of the game now...

Corrie (in that way great wives listen and pay attention to shit they don't care about): Ooh really? How many games is he planing on taking?

Me: Eight.

Corrie: (Cute smile) Wow...that's it?

I rattled off a brief history of the 154-game schedule but trailed off. "What baseball really needs to do is..."

I then laid out a proposal that had been festering away in my imagination in an unformed state for too long. Maybe it had been the day spent slowly roasting in the sun at my master's graduation ceremony, marinated by the slow drip of scotch from my flask, or fullness of my belly with pork porterhouse and Pinot Noir, but at that moment last night the idea flowed from my brain through my mouth out to the ether.

I started by telling Corrie that what baseball needed to compete with the specter of its own past were changes far more radical than anything on the table.

I propose two separate regular seasons, one 90-110 games long, the other 30-40 games long with a two week break in the middle for All Star festivities. I propose that the two best teams from each league from the first, longer regular season (Season A) are put into a half a single-elimination bracket. The four best teams from Season B, two from each league that aren't the same as from Season A, will fill out the rest of the bracket. Those bracketed teams then play single elimination games for the right to represent their respective leagues in the best-of-seven World Series.

Why not exploit the randomness of small samples sizes? Imagine a team like the Marlins, knowing that if Jose Fernandez will be healthy by June or July, deciding to simply not risk bringing him back until later, knowing they only have to kick ass in the B season? How about a good team securing a spot in the post-season bracket from the A season then trying out all rookie squads for a while in Season B and get better at developing their own players? How about teams that only play for the shorter Season B?

Since baseball is ruled by statistics and numbers more so than any other American sport, think about leaving the stats for a year-in-year-out basis being the combined Seasons A and B--that way they'll at least resemble what we recognize.

Anything partly inspired by the '81 strike has to be mostly insane, but it's time to get radical. What type of prize could there be for wire-to-wire dominance? A bye? Maybe it should be the three best from each league each half, with byes for statistical juggernauts...

This will never happen, but it may be radical enough that if it were adopted, a new era of intrigue and urgency would be brought to the game.

Scottle of Botch

In the rare event of friends visiting our Long Beezy apartment, I would find myself eventually offering them some scotch.

How I came to be in possession of scotch is itself an interesting anecdote: Auntie Peg prefers Dewars, and people give her Glenlivet as gifts. "I don't drink single-malts," she says, "Here, Patrick, do you want this? Just take it..."

"Why, I think I can make a home for that," I nod as I look it over. Then thank her. I guess that anecdote isn't that interesting...

Anyway, the only hard liquor we ever really have in our apartment, when we do have some, is either Jameson or Beefeater. Irish whiskey or London gin. Old school and works for us.

The Glenlivet, for me, was similar to Jameson, only smoother. It was warm and sweet and relaxing and deliciously fiery. I started to learn why people drink scotch. I've tried it with ice, but as of now, I prefer it neat.

Anyway, I offer it to the random visitors. "Ooh, I don't dig on peat," they say. "Ahh, that's to peaty for me. I don't like the smoke..."

What? "What exactly does peat taste like?" I ask them. Smokiness, or something...I can't get a satisfactory answer from them. In fact, it sounded like a line oft repeated in peer circles I am no longer privy to. Like everybody agrees to dislike something because of a perceived sleight. I have, for full disclosure, been part of those peer circles before, agreeing that I dislike something for reasons that I may have agreed with, but certainly never explored how strong the perceived dislike was through experimentation.

Anyway, I use an old timey safety razor with removable blades, cold water, and a badger brush; I shave at night before bed. My skin has never been happier. Now I enjoy scotch, and my liver may rejoice if I have three ounces of scotch instead of twenty ounces of beer.

I've never felt as grown-up as I do now.

Endless Optimism

Dad, I love the optimism you display regularly with our Yanks. I wouldn't say that I'm specifically pessimistic, but I'm far away from anything that constitutes a "Yankee baseball scene", especially since I don't ride the train anymore and I took the newspaper app off my phone (it sure did suck...).

But a few weeks ago I had my laptop and I went through and watched all the available videos concerning the up-and-coming Yankee prospects...the future, as it were.

I don't remember their names, but there were a few mentioned. I was trying to be optimistic, feeling that eventually we'd talk, and I was trying to guess your view. Really I was trying to talk myself into Teixeria not being totally broken down and A-Rod being useful.

Headley at 3rd I'm not really against, but it seems like Yankee-Business-As-Usual---hire a former all-star on the back end of his career. He was an all-star, right?

Anyway, I like the Caribbean kid they have to follow up Jeter, Didi Gregorious, even though it sounds like he can't hit. Maybe I just like his name.

Dave Robertson's gone...is Dellin ready to close? Tanaka is a superstar, for sure, as long as his elbow holds up. For sure the rotation depends on him and CC and that kid from Miami, Nate Eovaldi. The Eovaldi move, for me, didn't have the Pavano-stink that that particular move had, but how much of that is the perpetual optimism we Yankee fans have?

What's the over-under on wins for the season? 87? I just went to look it up: 86 wins. They also mention McCann and Ellsbury, two guys I forgot. For some reason Beltran makes me sad like Teixeria, but McCann should bounce back well, and he wasn't even that bad. And Ellsbury was everything we wanted, right?

Maybe Nova will return before the Break and Pineda will leave the pine-tar alone while working up his rebuilt elbow...

See? Talked myself into some optimism...

Author Notes

Happy New Year!

I was perusing Amazon.com the other day and checking up on a few books I'll be making the purchase of in coming months. One is by Marlon James and is titled A Brief History of Seven Killings, and takes place in Jamaica. It's about the corruption and craziness involved in social upheaval and what-not. I heard it was very good.

I was also looking up some info on Up Up and Away [Expos Book] by Jonah Keri. The subtitle is far too long to put here, so I paraphrased it. It's a book about the Montreal Expos, and it looks pretty cool.

Another baseball book that caught my attention came out in 2014 was titled 1954, and like the Expos book, had a long subtitle. Written by Bill Madden, a baseball writer from New York that I remember fondly, it's about, namely, 1954 and how that was the first year both world series teams had black players and the the social changes that happened the same year (Brown vs. Board of Ed.). It looks good.

Baseball books aside, it was on Amazon's page for A Brief History... that I saw, down on the bottom where they have suggestions about "Customers who bought this also bought...", a familiar name: Bone Clocks by David Mitchell.

Mitchell, Dan if you don't know, wrote the nested egg "novel" Cloud Atlas, which I'm guessing was better than the movie (which I missed). Dad turned me onto it a decade or more ago. Bone Clocks follows a similar structure it sounds like, but with more connection between the sections.

Next to Bone Clocks was The Laughing Monsters, about shady business folks and shady African deals and shady weddings and nationalities---but was written by Denis Johnson, he of Tree of Smoke and Jesus' Son fame. Denis Johnson and David Mitchell both had books published in 2014. What the hell was I doing that I missed these?

THEN I saw another familiar name: The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a novel about POWs during WWII carving a road out of the Indonesian jungle written by Richard Flanagan and published in 2014.

So, along with Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki..., Richard Flanagan and Denis Johnson and David Mitchell all published books last year, 2014.

Narrow Road... is being highly touted by the reviews on Amazon... Have you gotten to it yet, dad? I'll ask when I call sometime soon, seeing as how blog posts make for strange communiques. So far, besides Gould's... I've read Wanting and The Unknown Terrorist. Both aren't bad, but I would never had read them had I found them at a non-dollar bookstore AND hadn't read Gould's Book of Fish. Those two I don't really even recommend to people, whereas I've bought multiple copies of Gould's... as gifts for people.

Another book listed on that bottom scroll was Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel. It was familiar to me because of a list put together by the fine folks at Powell's Bookstore. Powell's is the Portland institution that we visited on our Oregonian sojourn, and I was reading up on their website about good books in 2014 and Station Eleven was listed. It tales place in some weird post-apocalyptic world where acting troupes roam wild...or something.

It kinda reminds me of something I'm reading now, Brittle Star by Rod Val Moore. It's published by a small press of LA writers, and Moore's been described on some websites as a "writer's writer". I guess that means his general audience is writers? It sure sounds like that's the case as I read.

Brittle Star is about prisoners that have been exiled on a distant planet where they are to remain for one year. These aren't hardened criminals, mind you, they are all former humanities professors. They are instructed to choose between two different colored uniforms upon arrival: one color is celery, the other, something called "celedon", which Corrie assures me is an actual thing. It's rare that I come across an English word that I've never seen while people like Corrie and other folks in the design industry use with regularity.

Anyway, celery and celedon are basically the exact same shit, and in the first 40 pages, picking the uniforms is about as exciting as it gets. I joke, and dad, you'd probably like it, but you'd also get what I'm saying. It's moody and well written, and, for better or for worse, is like the back says (incidentally the tidbit that convinced me to go with this book over another unknown quantity): Sartre meets television's "The Prisoner"; and A Brave New World as reinvented by Italo Calvino.

Now, I don't even know what the hell that last part is talking about, but I know I like Aldous, and my interest was piqued. Now I just need to look up Italo Calvino...

From Tyree to Beckham: Catches during the Eli Era

The Giants lost another winnable game last night, this time against the Cowboys. But during the first quarter fans were treated to a show.

Odell Beckham Jr. of the Giants had one of the greatest catches you may ever see. He was being mauled by the defender--it was a penalty. He shook the mauling off, snatched the ball one-handed and landed on his back in the end-zone, not part of him out of bounds...

Check out the extension:

I was thinking about Giants catches in recent memory, and how this could stack up. The other two that fully come to mind are both part of the Lore of Eli, like that's a William Blake illustrated classic or something.

The first is, of course, the Super Bowl-swinging, never-happen-again-deliberately-if-you-were-trying Tyree helmet-catch:

Watching Eli avoid the sack, get free, launch a pass to the middle of the field, and then see Tyree trap it against his helmet? Ridiculous moments turning into incredible memories. We knew the Giants were winning at that point. Twenty seconds later when Eli found Plaxico in the end zone open for the TD, we weren't surprised.

The second incredible catch had less to do with luck or the skills of the receiver, but were a bit of a show that Eli himself was putting on: another Super Bowl moment, but one in which Eli was fully the narrator of: Manningham on the sideline during Giants/Pats II:

Perfect throw to a tight spot. I was in Honduras for that game, watching it at a hostel with lounge music playing over the muted television. I had the feeling the G-Men were in control after the safety on Tom Brady's first pass attempt. They coughed up the lead, but I always felt it.

Of course, we'll always have the other side of the Eli-Era coin, the side titled simply "Eli Face":

It shows up regularly after interceptions, dropped passes, or blown routes. So there's that, too...

If it weren't for Eli, Tom Brady may have five Super Bowls championships and be considered the best quarterback ever. That makes me laugh.

(I'm not sure who took all of these photos, but I appreciate their professionalism.)

MVP! MVP!

I joke, but for the first time in LA's history, both the American and National league's MVPs reside in the Southland: Clayton over at Chavez and the reincarnation, it seems, of The Mick over in Anaheim--Mike Trout.

With Clayton and Puig and Trout we're in the middle of a bit of a Golden Age of baseball down here in los Diez Sur.

We Await Game 7!

Should we be upset that the Royals made the big series?

On paper the A's, Angels, and Tigers were supposedly better teams. The Dodgers were world beaters, along with the Nats, but we saw how that worked out.

Personally it doesn't bother me---if you're close enough to get in, and then get hot at the right time, so what? Is Billy Butler possibly getting a ring and not Mike Trout or Clayton supposed to get the purist blood in my veins boiling?

To quote Tony Soprano: "Ugats to fair! Who said anything about fair?" Trent Dilfer has a ring and Dan Marino doesn't.

I'm not sure what's more curious in my baseball temple at the apartment in Long Beach: that I'm actively rooting for the Giants (represent Nor-Cal!)(But I do like the Royals, and wouldn't be upset at their possible victory); or that I'm all for the single play-in game...

Which broken down hulk of muscle will man first base for the Yanks next year, A-Rod or Texeira? Are we really having this conversation? (Um, it appears so...)