RA Deserves His Own Thread

[Ceetar]

as it stands right now, I'd find it hard to be pissed,or even mildly annoyed, if Kershaw won it, and i suspect that doesn't bode well.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

R.A. Dickey Wins 2012 Branch Rickey Award R.A. Dickey, star pitcher of the New York Mets, has been named the winner of the 2012 Branch Rickey Award, presented by AMG National Trust Bank. Jim Wilkins, founder of the award, made the announcement today during a press conference at the Denver Athletic Club. Dickey, currently one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball, will be inducted as the 21st member of the Baseball Humanitarians Hall of Fame� during a banquet on Saturday, Nov. 10 at the Marriott City Center Hotel in downtown Denver. Created by the Rotary Club of Denver in 1991, the Branch Rickey Award honors individuals in baseball who contribute unselfishly to their communities and who are strong role models for young people. Each year, the Major League Baseball teams nominate one player from their team for this nationally acclaimed award. All of the nominees personify Rotary International�s motto, �Service Above Self.� Dickey was chosen by a National Selection Committee, comprised of 350 members of the sports media, past award winners, baseball executives and Rotary district governors. All 30 Major League teams submitted a nominee for the award. Combining forces with a teammate from the bronze-medal-winning 1996 U.S. Olympic baseball team, Dickey helped found Honoring the Father Ministries, a benevolent charity that distributes baseball equipment and medical supplies around the world. He has personally traveled to Cuba five times, as well as visiting Mexico, Venezuela and Costa Rico to meet with young baseball players and give them instruction and equipment. This January, Dickey climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, helping to raise more than $100,000 for the Bombay Teen Challenge, an organization dedicated to rescuing young women from forced prostitution in India. Dickey, a high-velocity knuckleballer, is one of the best pitchers in the Majors this year with an 18-5 record, 2.68 ERA and 197 strikeouts. Before joining the Mets in 2010, he had played professional baseball for 16 years, mostly in the minors. The story of his long and frustrating journey to the pinnacle of pitching is chronicled in his recently released book, �Wherever I Wind Up, My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball.� Dickey is the only Major League pitcher who now throws the knuckleball, a spinless pitch that is as difficult to master as it is to hit. The late Branch Rickey, known to millions as �Mr. Baseball,� is credited with breaking the color barrier in the Major Leagues in 1945 when he signed Jackie Robinson, the first modern day African-American player. He also hired the first Hispanic player, Roberto Clemente. Rickey helped develop the farm system in baseball and stimulated the sport�s expansion into more cities. Always an advocate for underprivileged children, he spearheaded the development of the famous �Knot Hole Gang,� to allow kids to attend big league games. Previous recipients of the Branch Rickey Award include: Dave Winfield, Toronto Blue Jays; Kirby Puckett, Minnesota Twins; Ozzie Smith, St. Louis Cardinals; Tony Gwynn, San Diego Padres; Brett Butler, Los Angeles Dodgers; Craig Biggio, Houston Astros; Paul Molitor, Minnesota Twins; Al Leiter, New York Mets; Todd Stottlemyre, Arizona Diamondbacks; Curt Schilling, Arizona Diamondbacks; Bobby Valentine, New York Mets; Roland Hemond, Chicago White Sox; Jamie Moyer, Seattle Mariners; Tommy Lasorda, Los Angeles Dodgers; John Smoltz, Atlanta Braves; Trevor Hoffman, San Diego Padres; Torii Hunter, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim; Vernon Wells, Toronto Blue Jays; and last year�s winner, Shane Victorino of the Philadelphia Phillies. Winfield, Puckett, Smith, Molitor, Gwynn and Lasorda, as well as Branch Rickey, have also been inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The Branch Rickey Award is a replica of The Player,� the 13-foot tall bronze sculpture that stands at the entrance to Coors Field at 20th & Blake in Denver. It was created by internationally prominent sculptor George Lundeen, and was dedicated on June 2, 2005 in celebration of Rotary International�s Centennial Year.

[TransMonk]

Dickey wins Rickey!

Congrats, Rickey Awardian.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Four bad innings and suddenly, Cueto's edge in sabrmetric stats isn't as imposing as it appeared. Also, between Operation Strasburg Shutdown and Kershaw' hip injury, Dickey might take the NL Strikeout crown by default.

[metsmarathon]

dark horse: medlen.

will never happen, but damn if he's not eye-popping!

[Edgy MD]

Nats down 3-1 in the seventh as Gio goes for his 20th.

[Frayed Knot]

That was 5 innings, 2 runs on 4 hits & 4 BBs for Gio tonight -- and no 20th win as the Nats get swept by the Braves.

One thing that might hurt Gio's chances at the CY is that his walks - even though down considerably from his past [5.1/per 9 in 2010 to 4.1 to 3.4 this year] - are still higher than most of the other contenders and that also serves to get his pitch count up and keep his innings down.
He was just 17th in the NL in IP starting tonight and is still outside the top 10 approx 20 IPs or so behind the likes of Dickey & Cueto & Kershaw. That gap should at least be considered as a factor.

[Guest The Second Spitter]

can't remember the last time I cheered so loudly for a Braves win.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Wins: G. Gonzalez, 19. R. Dickey, 18. J. Cueto 17.
Strikeouts: C. Kershaw, 206. R. Dickey, 205. S. Strasburg, 197. G. Gonzalez, 196.
ERA: R. Dickey, 2.67. C. Kershaw, 2.70. K. Lohse, 2.81.

[G-Fafif]

That clever Terry Collins could figure out a way to get him an extra start with a little of that three days' rest action they talked up constantly (he's gotta be reasonably well rested considering this stupid six-man rotation) -- and they can get him an extra home start (against the Pirates, against whom he's excelled).

9/21 vs MIA (against whom he's also excelled)
9/25 vs PIT
9/29 @ ATL (where he hasn't been so hot)
10/3 @ MIA

[Edgy MD]

As far as I can see, the six-man thingie appears to be working, except maybe we should trade one of those six men for a leftfielder who can hit .200 or so.

[Guest Mets � Willets Point]

Today is Knuckleball Day in Boston, to be celebrated Sept. 20th in New York.

[batmagadanleadoff]

[TransMonk]

He will be on NPR's Talk of the Nation later this hour.

[HahnSolo]

TransMonk wrote: He will be on NPR's Talk of the Nation later this hour.

Oh, boy. Where's JCL?

[TransMonk]

It was a decent interview conducted live from Citi. They even got in a couple of phone calls from listeners.

Much more about the upcoming Knucleball movie than about Dickey's book.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Any promotion is good promotion for Ready Anytime Dickey.

[G-Fafif]

G-Fafif wrote: That clever Terry Collins could figure out a way to get him an extra start with a little of that three days' rest action they talked up constantly (he's gotta be reasonably well rested considering this stupid six-man rotation) -- and they can get him an extra home start (against the Pirates, against whom he's excelled). 9/21 vs MIA (against whom he's also excelled) 9/25 vs PIT 9/29 @ ATL (where he hasn't been so hot) 10/3 @ MIA

They're not getting him an extra start but they are giving him two at home -- Saturday 9/22 (a day earlier than planned) and Thursday 9/27 (home closer) before his last start at Miami. Will not pitch at Atlanta.

[Guest themetfairy]

What's the rest of the rotation for the homestand?

[G-Fafif]

From Newsday, R.A. thinking through beat writers' jobs better than most of them do.

The professor walked into the classroom with a pair of stylish white sunglasses resting on a mop of brown hair. He wore jeans and a Star Wars stormtrooper T-shirt. But that's what you get when school is in session with R.A. Dickey . The Mets knuckleballer -- and serious Cy Young contender -- turned the press conference room at Citi Field into a classroom, leading a question-and-answer session with 10 sports journalism students from NYU and Rutgers. Funny, humble and at times strikingly honest, Dickey talked about a life with as many turns as his knuckleball, while also offering practical advice for the aspiring reporters. "When I get interviewed by a sports writer after a game -- in spring training, doing a feature, whatever it is -- I always pay attention to the question," he said. "A lot of people will not. The people that you interview that will be your better interviews will challenge you in that they will pay attention to what you ask. If someone gives me a question that doesn't have much heart to it, then they're going to get an answer that doesn't have much heart to it. "Eighty percent of the time you're going to get the person that doesn't really care. And he's going to say 'How does it feel to be in the big leagues?' 'It's a dream come true.' I mean that's what you're going to get, when the real answer is much deeper than that. And that's what connects with the reader." Dickey speaks from plenty of experience, on both sides of the spectrum. He's a popular interview subject in the Mets clubhouse given his success and his thoughtful quotes. And he's also written an autobiography, Wherever I Wind Up. "When I have something that I want to share, I will find the guy that I trust the most in the clubhouse," Dickey said. "And the way that I gauge that is how the person has asked questions. How he has been curious. What has he been curious about? What has he done with some of my teammates? How has he presented an argument? The smarter players, the players you're going to want the stories from mostly, will pay attention to that kind of stuff." Jennifer Woo, a junior at NYU who wants to be a broadcast journalist, took the lessons to heart; even if she didn't know much about the teacher until recently. "I honestly didn't know who R.A. Dickey was or what a knuckleball pitcher was before I read his book," she said. "He was as eloquent in person as he was in his book. He has such a huge heart for what he does and he owns up to everything he has done. He's not ashamed of anything." The event was organized by Joe Lapointe, a sports journalism professor at NYU and Rutgers who's covered Dickey with the Mets. "I've seen R.A. around for three years and I always thought he was an interesting person and an intellectual person," he said. "Now that I'm teaching a sports reporting class, I thought this would be the perfect athlete for some of my students to meet early in the semester. It would give them encouragement about the possibilities of interviewing athletes and what you can draw out of them. Obviously R.A. Dickey is an extraordinary interview. He's a very good speaker, he's a very good thinker and he combines the two well." Just what you look for in a professor. Even the ones who show up for class in a Star Wars T-shirt.

[G-Fafif]

R.A. joins a club that now includes 6 Met pitchers and encompasses 12 individual Met seasons.

No Met who's ever won 19 games hasn't also won 20 games in his Met career.

Mets 20-win seasons have all been clinched in one of two stadiums: Three Rivers twice (Seaver, 1972; Viola, 1990) or Shea (all the others).

Seaver's four 20th wins were earned with 43 strikeouts (7, 13, 13, 10). They were all complete games (5-1, 6-1, 1-0, 3-0).

Viola's 20th (7 IP) and Gooden's 20th (6 IP) were the only two of the eight Mets 20th wins to date that weren't CGs.

Gooden had just come off a 16-K shutout of the Giants before his rather mundane effort against the Padres and Davey wanted to give him some rest once he had a big lead.

Viola threw 96 pitches and was going on short rest on the season's final day.

Seaver in '71, Cone and Viola all needed their final start of the season to attain No. 20.

Gooden was the only Met to ascend to 20 in August (8/25/85).

In the 19-win realm, Koosman in '68 and Seaver in '73 each got theirs in their final start, with Seaver's clinching the N.L. East title.

Koosman's clinched the Mets' first non-90 loss season.

Gooden's 19th kept the Mets afloat in '90 in his second-to-last start. His final start came on short rest (his only short-rest start all year) and was his first loss in a dozen starts, only his second in his last 23 starts of the year. Gooden was 3-5 on June 2, 16-2 thereafter.

MUST BE 19 OR OVER TO BE ADMITTED

25
Seaver (25-7) 1969

24
Gooden (24-4) 1985

22
Seaver (22-9) 1975

21
Seaver (21-12) 1972
Koosman (21-10) 1976

20
Seaver (20-10) 1971
Cone (20-3) 1988
Viola (20-12) 1990

19
Koosman (19-12) 1968
Seaver (19-10) 1973
Gooden (19-7) 1990
DICKEY (19-6) 2012

[Benjamin Grimm]

Another update on R.A.'s quest for the pitching Triple Crown:

Wins: G. Gonzalez 20, R. Dickey 19, J. Cueto 18
Strikeouts: R. Dickey 209, C. Kershaw 206, C.Hamels 202, G. Gonzalez 201.
ERA: R. Dickey 2.66, C. Kershaw 2.70, K. Lohse 2.71.

Wins seems unlikely; maybe a tie but an outright win is looking tough.
Strikeouts is looking good right now.
ERA race is a bit tighter as Lohse is making a move.

[bmfc1]

http://espn.go.com/mlb/features/cyyoung

"Victory Bonus"? How about "Bonus for Winning 19 Games for a Dreadful Team"?

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

bmfc1 wrote: http://espn.go.com/mlb/features/cyyoung "Victory Bonus"? How about "Bonus for Winning 19 Games for a Dreadful Team"?

It's a vote predictor, not a this-is-who-really-deserves-it meter.

[batmagadanleadoff]

September 26, 2012
R. A. Dickey Pitches a Book
Posted by Jesse Will

Early on a bright Friday morning, just after the New York Mets lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 16-1, their ace pitcher R. A. Dickey ambled from the Grand Hyatt hotel on Forty-second Street towards Grand Central Terminal, unnoticed and uninterrupted. �To be honest with you,� he said, �I�m a bit tired. Last night was rough. The team�s gone into some kind of dark tailspin.� The Mets had, maybe, but not Dickey. He would take the mound three more times in September in pursuit of a twentieth win and a probable Cy Young award. (Currently 19-6, he makes his next start on Thursday.) Dickey, the only knuckleballer in the major leagues, has become dominant courtesy of a strange, near spin-free pitch that hovers en route to home plate, then takes a trap-door drop that batters often can�t see or predict. But the pitch he was more concerned with on this morning was the plot of a children�s picture book he�d written. He was headed by subway to the offices of Penguin publishers in SoHo to present it to his editor there. The thirty-seven-year-old Dickey, who has the gentle comportment of a humanities professor, has no personal representative or manager��because I don�t consider myself marquee,� he said, �and I like to be in control of things.� He spoke in a soulful Nashville drawl peppered with words and phrases that would include, over the course of a morning, �edifying,� �antithetical,� �deus ex machina,� and �voluminous.� He is exceedingly polite. It is not difficult to imagine a character with his traits in a Wes Anderson film, though he would surely rather appear in a sci-fi or fantasy flick. (He warms up on the mound to �The Imperial March,� from �Star Wars,� and when he comes to bat, has the Citi Field public-address system play the theme from �Game of Thrones.�) An avid reader, Dickey keeps books in his locker at the stadium, where he often finds time to read. (Pitchers, he noted, tend to have a lot of free time.) As he navigated a transfer underneath Times Square, Dickey rattled off a few of this year�s summer reading titles, and when asked, followed up with reviews in miniature. A sampling: a rereading of John Steinbeck�s �Of Mice and Men�: �Still potent�; Chaim Potok�s �The Chosen�: �A rich education in Jewish culture;� Bill O�Reilly�s �Killing Lincoln�: �Entertaining, but he�s no Hemingway;� and William Saroyan�s �The Human Comedy�: �Actually, let�s skip that one.� �I think you�ll like my editor,� he said with a smile as he approached the Penguin offices. �I�m pretty sure she might have been part of the hippie movement. You�ll see what I mean.� He took the elevator, checked in at the front desk and sat down on a couch. It was nearly silent, and the lobby�s lower walls were painted with characters from children�s books. After a few minutes, a ruddy-cheeked young man wearing a tie and carrying a backpack introduced himself to the receptionist and informed her that it was his first day on the job. Dickey looked over and said softly, �Now isn�t that an exciting moment?� Just then Lucia Monfried, Dickey�s editor, appeared, a petite, fair-skinned woman with light blue eyes and long gray hair. On her wrist was a pinstriped New York Yankees watch and a blue silicone wristband that commemorated Derek Jeter�s three-thousandth hit. She didn�t look like a hippie. In a singsong voice that stopped and started, she welcomed Dickey and led him to a sunlit conference room with a view of lower Manhattan. She told Dickey that she was one of the �minute fraction of baseball-crazed people in children�s publishing,� and Dickey complimented her for her work on �Skippyjon Jones,� a book series popular with Dickey�s four kids, who live at his permanent residence in Nashville with his wife. The two sat down and Monfried introduced the first order of business: having Dickey approve the general outline of a young-adult adaptation of �Wherever I Wind Up,� his autobiography, released earlier this year, which tracks his life from a troubled youth�Dickey moved around a lot and was sexually abused�to his career in professional baseball, which stalled until he learned the mechanics of the knuckleball. The conversation eventually turned to �Knuckleball Ned,� a thirty-two-page picture book that is the second of three books in the deal that Dickey signed with the publisher. Dickey pulled a twenty-page manuscript, dense with type, from his bag. On one of the pages was a cut-and-pasted image of Mr. Met. �Now, I know I might have to simplify what I have here,� said Dickey. He began to explain the plot of �Knuckleball Ned,� in which Ned, whose body has the shape of a baseball, negotiates a scene of being bullied. �Ned�s set apart because he wobbles. No one else wobbles, and he�s teased mercilessly. He�s the only one of his kind,� said Dickey. �Does Ned have any friends?� asked Monfried, drinking from a black coffee mug that said �So Many Books, So Little Time.� �Curve Ball,� said Dickey. �O.K. � maybe there should be a Soft Ball, too. Soft Ball�s gotta be fat,� said Monfried. �There�s Foul Ball, he�s kind of a gangster. And Slider.� It was unclear whether these would be friends or foes. �Maybe Slider smells,� said Monfried. It became obvious that Monfried thought Dickey had written too long. �You�ve got to think about who your audience is. I�m not sure, for example, that four-year-olds get what �bullying� is. I think you need to simplify,� she said as she read further. Later, she added, �It doesn�t sound like a light story. Are you funny?� �I would say I�m more witty than funny,� said Dickey. �Maybe this book is older. There�s some meat here, and that�s good. Ned is you, really. It�s not like the story of Derek Jeter�magic just happened to Jeter, found him. Jeter never had any problems, aside from when he was eighteen and went to A-ball and called his parents, homesick, crying.� Monfried didn�t look at the other pages of Dickey�s manuscript, but gave him encouragement, set some deadlines for another draft, and offered up some of �Lucia�s Laws,� which include �Talking is killing,� �Think visually,� �You can do anything you want in a picture book, but you can�t just do it once,� �Children don�t like description,� �Keep it moving,� and �The kid always solves the problem.� Dickey asked Monfried if readers will need to know why it is that Ned wobbles. �No,� she said. �So it�s not important that my character has a genesis�he can just be?� he asked. �Yes,� she said. The meeting wrapped, and Dickey returned to the train going back towards Grand Central. During a transfer underneath Times Square, he was spotted, finally: a young man approached with a Sharpie and a New York Post, with the page folded to an article about him. Dickey signed it and continued down the platform. The episode afforded the opportunity to change the topic of conversation to baseball. As the 7 train clattered towards Grand Central, Dickey likened throwing his pitch to �having a relationship with an organic, living thing�something that�s sometimes there and sometimes not.� So would he feel additional pressure, essentially pitching for the Cy Young during his last starts of the season? �No, extra pressure would only still the joy of the experience,� he said. And what made him risk everything on an odd pitch that baseball teams seldom seek? �It was only until I came to the end of myself that I was able to embrace it,� he offered. The train stopped, and we said goodbye, and Dickey took the sunlit stairwell towards Lexington Avenue, alone.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2012/09/ra-dickey-pitches-a-book.html#ixzz27bzcpFCj

[dinosaur jesus]

The kid with the backpack? That was me! I had a blast tossing ideas around with Lucia and RA. Spitballing, ha ha. RA's a great guy. We came up with a whole bunch of characters to be Knuckleball Ned's friends. Like Gyro, his buddy from Japan. His country cousin Eephus who everyone thinks is dumb but isn't. Screwball, who likes to party. And when Ned's in trouble his Uncle Charlie is always there to help him out. And there are some others I'm forgetting. You'll just have to wait for the book to come out!

[batmagadanleadoff]

RA deserves his own thread. And his own contract, too.

But don't expect Dickey to give the Mets a hometown discount

NEW YORK � As Tuesday evening bled into Wednesday morning, a blue neon sign shone off the side of Citi Field and out toward the Van Wyck Expressway. �R.A. GOES FOR 20,� the message beamed, an advertisement for R.A. Dickey�s start this afternoon against the Pirates. Using ticket packages and promotions, the Mets have attempted to milk every last dollar out of Dickey�s Cy Young-worthy season as 2012 limps to its merciful conclusion. This winter, as general manager Sandy Alderson attempts to extend Dickey through next season, the roles will reverse. No longer will Dickey (19-6, 2.66 ERA) agree to a hometown discount, as he did following the 2010 season, when he signed a two-year, $7.8 million deal with a $5 million option for 2013. �It�s different in that you accept the first contract trying to be compensated for 13 years of playing the game and finally getting a chance to take care of your family,� Dickey said this week as he prepared to become the franchise�s first 20-game winner since Frank Viola in 1990. �This mentality is different. Because I�ve done that now. I have more freedom to really weigh things.� His performance liberated him, and his current contract gave him long-awaited financial security. Which is why Dickey feels �I have more leverage� than in his last negotiation. He wants compensation commensurate with his production these past three seasons. He also feels that he and third baseman David Wright are something of a �package deal.� He struggles to envision himself inking a multi-year extension if the club doesn�t make an aggressive attempt to re-sign Wright. �If I don�t see them pursuing David hard,� Dickey said, �I think it would be a message to everybody that they�re content to spend the next five or six years rebuilding this organization. Rather than trying to be competitive, and trying to rebuild it at the same time. �I think you can do both. I think (doing both is) what they want to do. �But if you see them not really pursue him hard, that�s the message that I get. Unless they trade him and get multiple, big-league pieces back.� Alderson has not hidden his intentions. He wants to extend Dickey and Wright through their team options for 2013. The deadline to exercise Wright�s $16 million option falls three days after the World Series ends; Dickey�s deadline is two days after that. Last month, Alderson told The Star-Ledger those two were �at the top� of his list for offseason priorities. He reiterated as much during an in-game interview with SNY this week. The Mets engaged in tepid negotiations with Dickey earlier this season, with the hope of reaching an extension through at least 2014, as The Star-Ledger reported last month. The team elected to wait and observe Dickey during the course of the season. His value has only jumped since then. He enters today�s home finale leading the National League in ERA and innings pitched. His strikeout-to-walk ratio is a career-high 4.02 � an almost unfathomable statistic considering he throws a knuckleball. �Now I have much more of a platform to really be able to value yourself on,� Dickey said. �Like I have a good sample size to say �OK, this is who you are.�?� Dickey turns 38 next month, but opposing executives believe his knuckleball could sustain him for years to come. One suggested a four-year deal wasn�t out of the question if Dickey hit the open market after 2013. How much will he cost? In three seasons with the Mets, Dickey has thrown 603 innings with a 2.93 ERA. From 2009 to 2011, only 14 pitchers completed at least 600 innings with an ERA under 3.50. Their average salary in 2012: $15.5 million. Dickey will pitch somewhere in 2014. But odds are, he�ll cost a good deal more than the $5 million he�s due next season. He only hopes he can sustain this year�s success. �The way that I�ve performed,� Dickey said, �I would like to capture that and repeat it over and over and over again.�

[Guest The Second Spitter]

I can hear it now:

Fred Wilpon wrote: I cannot justify in good conscious, paying a 38 year old pitcher with a penchant for adventure more than $5M a year

[batmagadanleadoff]

The Second Spitter wrote: I can hear it now: Fred Wilpon wrote: I cannot justify, in good conscious, paying a 38 year old pitcher with a penchant for adventure more than $5M a year

I can hear that four months ago.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Eff Wilpon on RA Dickey in The New Yorker:

"He's a thoughtful player, but he's no Cy Young Award caliber pitcher".