HOF Wing Winners

[G-Fafif]

Tom Boswell, definitely one of those “he didn't win it already?” guys, wins the Hall of Fame's writer award, formerly the Spink.

[MFS62]

Well respected.

Good choice.



Later

[metirish]

Always enjoy him in Ken Burns Baseball

[G-Fafif]

A man without a natural beat for too many post-Senator/pre-National years, making do with columns and Orioles (and a few essential collections).

[G-Fafif]

This Boswell masterpiece, from October 20, 1999, has stayed with me for more than a quarter-century.

I Love This Game By Thomas Boswell ATLANTA -- Some people think that there are better games than baseball. But they're wrong. Something in sports can, perhaps, be just as good as Tuesday night's game between the Mets and Braves. But how could anything be better? Within one game, baseball can create so many individual dramas, so many subplots, so many countervailing trends and crosscurrents that you want to break up laughing at the sheer ridiculous richness of the plot. These two teams reached a point Tuesday night where virtually every player came to the plate or took the mound with a personal playoff legend trailing behind that was of almost Arthurian weight. What has this brave knight Piazza done before to prove his valor? Will the knave Punk Rocker be punished? Can the humble servant Todd Pratt save the whole realm again? Will the sorcerer Valentine find potions to neutralize the incantations of Cox? Can the jester Kenny Rogers, so often the object of mockery, redeem himself? Or will he wear the cap and bells again? And what amazing fluke of fate--a runner caught between bases who escapes, a bobbled throw at the plate, a double switch that backfires two hours later, deep in extra innings--will change everything that follows? Oh, by the way, the Atlanta Braves won the National League pennant Tuesday night, 10-9, in 11 innings in Game 6 of the league championship series. Andruw Jones drew a bases-loaded, six-pitch walk from Rogers who, once again, simply crumbled under the same pressure that seemed to bring out the best in almost every other player on both teams. Rogers's inability to throw a ball within two feet of his target with the season on the line seemed to be a cruel abject lesson: This is what would happen to any normal human under such conditions. Imagine the strength of these others. For the legion within baseball who consider Mets Manager Bobby Valentine the game's premier overmanager, this was the richest imaginable ending. With a man on third and one out in the 11th, issuing one intentional walk--to set up an inning ending double play--is the normal book call. The overmanager, however, is tempted by a second intentional walk--injecting himself into the game, seeking credit--that will load the bases and set up a possible force at the plate. Valentine went for the second intentional walk, putting incredible pressure on a pitcher who desperately needs a margin of error to breathe. What ever happened to "Know thy men"? To say that such a final act could capture such a story would be a joke. The Braves led 5-0 after one inning and 7-3 after six innings. They had this game locked up, salted away and hidden in the family vault twice. The Braves also trailed 8-7 in the eighth inning and 9-8 in the 10th inning. They were absolutely dead twice and on the verge of facing a humiliating Game 7. Team of the '90s? Dream on. If they lost that one, they'd be remembered longer as the only team in baseball history ever to hold a three-games-to-none lead and lose in October. However, unlike almost any game you have ever seen, this four-hour-plus combination of blood feud and chess match was more a testament to the sport itself than to the determination of a champion. Some research, at a future date, when the blood is not pounding in everyone's ears, will no doubt be required to decide whether this playoff series between the Mets and Braves was the all-time best of its breed. The scores were 4-2, 4-3, 1-0, 3-2, 4-3 (in 15) and 10-9 (in 11). Every one a spellbinder. But, whatever the result of that analysis, one thing's for sure: This dog can hunt with any. They say that sixth games are usually the greatest in baseball's historic seven-game October wars. Carlton Fisk's home run off the Fenway Park foul pole in 1975 was a Game 6. So was Bill Buckner's error in Shea Stadium in the '86 Series. This series, however, had the great good fortune to end on an amazing crescendo. No anticlimax this time. The subtext of this entire game was the slaying of ghosts. How many times do you have to kill a ghost to make it stay dead? Or is that a contradiction in terms? Baseball players seldom bother themselves with such issues. But the Braves had to face it for more than four hours. For the Braves, who thought they had their fifth pennant of the '90s all sewed up just four days ago, Halloween seemed to have come unnervingly early. They've been booed in New York. But the biggest "Boo" of all came here in Game 6. The Mets totally ignored a five-run first inning by the Braves that knocked out New York's best starter--Al Leiter--before he could get a single out. How was that for a first-round knockdown? "Ding!" Walk across the ring. Left hook and a right cross. Break the guy's nose and loosen a few teeth. See how bad he wants to get back up. The Mets wanted to get back up as badly as any baseball team ever has. The player who epitomized the Mets' gallantry was Mike Piazza. His two-run homer over the right field fence off John Smoltz in the seventh inning tied the game at 7. Piazza has hit many similar homers, yet none was remotely like this, because few players have been as injured, bashed and singled out for misery by their foes as Piazza has been in this series. These teams have despised each other all year. The memories of head-hunting and bad-mouthing criss-cross back and forth from one dugout to the other. Yet it is the great Piazza, symbol of the Mets, who has been the Braves' target in every game. Tuesday night in the sixth inning, the Braves' Brian Jordan--a former defensive back for the Atlanta Falcons of the NFL--leg-whipped Piazza at the plate, cutting his feet out from under him on a force out. In the regular season, such a play would have absolutely mandated an immediate bench-clearing brawl. Instead, Piazza simmered. For one inning. In the seventh inning, he had his revenge, hitting his homer over the head of which Braves outfielder? Jordan, of course. That moment was typical of a dozen in this one game. At one point, it seemed that Pratt had struck the game-winning sacrifice off John "Punk" Rocker in the 10th inning. Yes, you read that right. Pratt--the ex-pizza delivery boy who has hung in the big leagues by the thinnest of threads--got his third utterly crucial postseason RBI. And he did it off the despised (Off Your) Rocker who, a week ago, called Mets fans "stupid." Just to prove how smart he was, on Monday, Rocker slammed his sports car into a tractor trailer, totaling the front end and ripping a wheel sideways. As he sleeps the sleep of the reprieved, Rocker can thank Jose Hernandez, who tied the game in the eighth with an RBI single, and Ozzie Guillen, who slapped a single off Armando Benitez to tie the game again in the bottom of the 10th. Of course, everyone who saw this game ought to thank all of 'em. The Pittsburgh Pirates once beat the New York Yankees, 10-9, in the seventh game of the World Series on a 10th-inning home run by Bill Mazeroski. So we probably can't say that this 10-9 Braves win to capture a pennant was the best game ever to conclude a postseason series. Such categories are a kind of eternal 10-way tie. Everyone gets to pick their favorite. Let me sleep on it. This might be mine.

[Edgy MD]

Pretty damned majestic.



What a man for our times John Rocker would have been. Had he come 15 or 20 years after he did, he might have gone right from the bullpen into Congress.

[bmfc1]

Boswell was great, really great, but in the last decade (even though he retired he shows up now and again) he has become a PR hack for the Nationals, as evidenced by his latest:

https://wapo.st/4fehbHAhttps://wapo.st/4fehbHA

[G-Fafif]

Cleveland voice Tom Hamilton, well-regarded already, nabs the Ford C. Frick Award I'd have preferred go to Gary Cohen. Congratulations, Tom; Gare's day will come.



At least it wasn't Sterling.

[MFS62]

=G-Fafif post_id=180817 time=1733937433 user_id=55]


At least it wasn't Sterling.

[Edgy MD]

"If you told me that John Sterling was going to run for president and win, that wouldn't be any more improbable."



　　— Ernie Johnson, 7/5/1985

[MFS62]

Edgy MD wrote: "If you told me that John Sterling was going to run for president and win, that wouldn't be any more improbable." 　　— Ernie Johnson, 7/5/1985

Right. If I want an 80+ year old Jewish President who likes to talk, I'll vote for myself.

Later

[Benjamin Grimm]

I think we've learned, twice now, that no potential president is too improbable.

[Edgy MD]

Well, the late Ernie Johnson was speaking in 1985. And presumably suggesting that his notion of probability had been shattered by Rick Camp.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Timeliness!



Venn Diagram to the max!





Newly minted HOF inductee Thomas Boswell on the newly minted Met, Juan Soto and the signing itself.



Lotsa ugly truths in this piece, especially about the crap shoot nature of playoff baseball and how the best playoff pieces for a baseball team to have are dominant pitchers.



Steve Cohen has stupid money, but this Juan Soto deal might be foolish



Don't despair over Soto's megadeal: The Mets and their big-spending owner will get what they deserve.

When did common sense about the difference between “price” and “value” stop being at the core of our methods of measurement? Sometimes, we reach a moment when we sense that we've become uncentered, when something of value, even impressive value, suddenly has a price so extreme that we suspect we've lost our balance, that our gyroscope is smashed. On Sunday, New York Mets owner Steve Cohen shattered every record for sports spending by signing Juan Soto for $765 million for 15 years, with none of the money deferred. As CNBC pointed out, that is $1 million more than the combined worth of the largest total value contracts ever in the NFL (Patrick Mahomes, $450 million) and the NBA (Jayson Tatum, $314 million). And Soto's deal now dwarfs the present-day value — a calculation that acts as if no money were deferred — of the roughly $460 million that the Dodgers gave to Shohei Ohtani, our modern Babe Ruth. Soto has no blame in this gaudy excess. He is 26, and his career is a nearly flawless diamond. His closest statistical comparisons at his age are some of the best players, especially early-career players, ever: Bryce Harper, Frank Robinson, Ken Griffey Jr., Mike Trout, Eddie Mathews, Miguel Cabrera and Mickey Mantle. But Cohen lost his price-value scale long ago. Make it simple: If the rest of Soto's career matches those of the superstar players mentioned above, then Soto will end up in the Hall of Fame, yet the Mets contract will still be a stink-to-heaven overpay. We'll get to the illustrative numbers later. What's ugliest right now is Cohen's cynical disregard for the most basic appeal of sport — the level playing field. That's for suckers. Ever since Cohen bought the Mets in 2020, he has been a poster boy for this sports era. Ostentation in purchase prices is his trademark. Once, he tried to buy a work by Picasso from Las Vegas casino guy Steve Wynn so he could set the world record price of $139 million for a painting. Before the picture could change hands, Wynn stuck his elbow through the canvas while showing it off to friends. Oops, no deal. Years later, Cohen bought that same painting anyway — for $155 million. Sometimes, ego just has to have its say. The Mets owner also once bought a Jeff Koons sculpture called “Rabbit” for $91.1 million — another record price. I like Koons, too. But I settled for a pair of socks with a copy of his sculpture “Balloon Dog” on them for $9.95. My guardedly cheerful expectation is that everybody in this movie is going to get what they deserve. New York has great baseball fans; now, Mets followers, so often second-class citizens, get to see peak Soto. They may even win their first title since 1986. But modern baseball is a different sport than its may-the-best-team-win 20th-century ancestor. With its wild expanded 12-team playoffs and its insanely silly yet riveting short series, the soundtrack of October baseball should be the Red Queen screaming at Alice: “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.” The whole month can seem like madness, especially to teams built around a core of sluggers, such as Soto, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton with the Yankees last year. Foes can hope to pitch around or frustrate key hitters. One slugger may be irrelevant in a lopsided game or when few runners get on base. Dominant power pitchers, however, cannot be avoided — as the Washington Nationals demonstrated in 2019. They will dominate the 30 or so hitters they face in their starts. And they may even be used in the highest-leverage bullpen situation. Because of this, Cohen is likely to end up looking like a callow rube at this baseball hustle. And more so with time. Why? The Mets signed Soto for 15 years. I assumed that was about five too many. Then I did some digging. It may be more like 10 years too many — especially at $51 million a year. Remember those seven glamorous names mentioned earlier as similar to Soto? Add two more, Andruw Jones and Orlando Cepeda, to give us the nine men most like Soto. If the last 10 years of Soto's contract — starting with his age-31 season — are similar to those of the nine (seven of whom have retired), Soto will keep his dignity. But the Mets won't. As a group, the seven stars who have retired averaged only 137 home runs for the remainder of their careers starting with their age-31 season. That's all. And that ain't good. Robinson and Griffey were the “best.” Both played exactly 10 more seasons through age 40. Robby averaged 115 games, 21 homers and 68 RBI a season, and Junior managed 19 homers and 57 RBI a year. Mantle was typical — only 132 more homers, in six seasons. How happy do you think the entire decade of the 2030s is going to be for Cohen if Soto gets paid $510 million, all of it guaranteed, to hit 137 homers? Want more data points? Look at Trout. The past two years, at ages 31 and 32, he was injured for two-thirds of the Angels' games and hit .252 when he played. Harper was exceptional his first three years as a Phillie, including an MVP season. But the past three years, at ages 29, 30 and 31, he is down to 123 games a year with 23 homers and 75 RBI. Elbow surgery has moved him from right field to first base. The Phils are happy with him, but they paid “just” $330 million, not $765 million. Soto is one of my favorite hitters to watch — ever. I (really, really) hope I get to watch him bat .388 at age 38, like Ted Williams. Or hit 40 homers at 39, like Hank Aaron. But if Albert Pujols could get creaky and only hit .261 from age 31 onward, then old age still has its thumb on the wheel. The good news for baseball is that while super-rich teams such as the Yankees and Dodgers can buy their way into the postseason almost every season, they don't actually get to the World Series, much less win it, terribly often. [The money quote - emphasis added] I was amused by those who moaned this year about “another” Yankees-Dodgers Series. I covered the last one in 1981. Once every 43 years is fine with me. As the Oldest Member, I'm invoking my option to imagine the future just the way I prefer it. Mets fans get plenty of contending teams with Soto but, like the Phillies with Harper, their team doesn't dominate the division. Cohen joins the long list of smart guys who turned out to be Dumb Money in baseball. MLB's salary structure gets stretched out of shape (again), but the game's accidental luck of stumbling into a fall format that promotes a loopy parity will keep the sport in its usual state. What is that? Flawed enough to keep us continually griping about how it should be better. But entertaining, crazy and beautiful enough, as always, to keep us fascinated every year.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/12/10/juan-soto-overpaid-steve-cohen/https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/12/10/juan-soto-overpaid-steve-cohen/