Andrus Center

Winter is officially over. Baseballs are being tossed around in the Sonoran desert. I know because I sat in the sun this week and took in a spring training games in the
Cactus League. The adoring fans were in their seats – we San Francisco Giants fans tend to be a well behaved group – the brats were pretty good, the beer reasonably cold, the pitchers predictably rusty and the guys wearing uniforms with numbers like 79 and 93 looked a little stunned. Perhaps it was all the sun after a long, cold winter.

Or it might have been the one big surprise of spring training: the clock in the outfield.

One of the many things I love about baseball, at least until this year, is that there has been no clock. Theoretically a baseball game could last forever. What bliss. There is a shot clock in basketball. Periods are timed in hockey, football and (sort of) soccer, but baseball just unfolds slowly and at its own considered pace. However, it apparently unfolds more slowly than some in the Commissioner’s office think it should. So now we have a clock in the outfield specifying how long pitchers have to get ready between innings and how long the warm-up period lasts when a manager brings out the hook and a new thrower jogs in from the bullpen.

And the new rules designed to speed up the venerable game do not just involve pitchers. Hitters, some of whom treat each at bat as an orgy of unnecessary movement, are now expected to keep at least one foot in the batters box between pitches. No more, the theory goes, the endless and mindless stepping away from the plate, knocking the bat on the cleats, adjusting the batting gloves fourteen times, pulling up the sloppy pants, taking eleven practice swings and praying that you’ve guessed correctly that the next pitch is a fastball.

I predict pitchers will adapt better than hitters, but the throwers best get ready since a clock timing pitches is looming. The Arizona Fall League experimented with that concept last year and the average length of games dropped to 2:51. Double and Triple A will continue the experiment this summer. The big leagues can’t be far behind. Pitchers will protest the effort to make them work faster, but they should take it up with men and women on an auto assembly line. Greater production is the American way, even if it is not the way of a $20 million a year baseball pitcher.

The crack down is sure to come, as well, for hitters. Mike Hargrove, who during his
twelve year career played for the Indians, Rangers and Padres, was so slow making his way to the batter’s box with endless adjustments of his equipment and tugs to his uniform that he was dubbed “ the human rain delay.” Hargrove reportedly contended his routine – he did it between every single pitch – only took 19 seconds, but under the new rules ol’ Mike would likely be fined. Indians’ manager Tony Francona joked recently that were Hargrove playing today he would “be playing for free,” with all his salary consumed by fines generated by all his fluttering and flapping around home plate.

Major league baseball has finally decided that the game of the endless summer needs to unfold a little faster. Last year the average game took 3:08 and more than once – many more than once – I’ve sat until the last out of a game that took three and a half or four hours. Particularly if the beer is cold and the restroom a long walk those games do seem like endless summer.

I’m a baseball purist. I still don’t like the designated hitter, enclosed stadiums and too many night games. I like the players to wear their pants correctly, put a slight curve in the bill of the cap and wear the headgear straight on their heads. And like show girls, I like a ballplayer to show a little sock. Aluminum bats at the college level are about as welcome as a Clinton-Bush presidential match-up next year. I like guys who don’t wear batting gloves and do wear sleeves. Fake grass is just that – fake. I like pitchers who work quickly and batters who get in the box, stay there and take their cuts. I like fans that keep score and stay in their seats. I’m old school about baseball and proud to be.

But even a purist has to admit the typical game takes too darn long to play. Look at some old game summaries from the 1930’s and 1940’s and you will see games that took an hour and three-quarters to play. The average length of game in 1950 was 2:21; hardly time enough to get a second beer. A doubleheader (a thing of the past, sadly) in the old days could often be played as quickly as a single game today. I’m reluctant to embrace any change in the great game, but I hope the clock in the outfield cuts a few minutes off a game and that the hitters adjust their batting gloves before they get to the plate.

We may well continue the tradition that there is “no crying in baseball,” but we can’t say any longer there is no clock. We’ll see how it works. As a purist that hopes to see the game return to the old, quicker model – and if I could be Commissioner of Baseball for a while – I would forget the clock and demand players again wear those big, heavy wool flannel uniforms and dress in stuffy locker rooms without air conditioning. Ban Gatorade from the dugout. Play mostly day games, particularly in July and August. With the arrival of August’s really hot weather in places like Washington, Detroit and Atlanta the speed of play would surely increase. Players would decide, as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb surely did in their day, that the only relief was a cold shower and a colder beer.

A more realistic purist might say it would be better if the players, managers and umpires just had a little talk and decided among themselves to speed up the game rather than introduce a clock to a game that has never had one, but every fan knows that is about as likely as the next 30 game winner or the Cubs winning the World Series.

There is so much to see at a baseball game, even when there isn’t much going on, but now we add the clock and one more old and dear tradition fades away. What next? Dodger fans arriving early and staying late? Yankee fans suddenly turning humble? A pennant in our nation’s capital? The Cubs in contention in September? Even on the clock a purist can dream, can’t he?

Oh the irony. It just ain’t fair.

As the paralyzing cold of January gives way to the anticipation of warm sun and pitchers and catchers reporting in a few weeks, and just as the wise the guys of winter pick next October’s World Series winner – oh the bitter irony, some actually pick the Cubs to win – Ernie dies.

Ernie Banks, Mr. Cub, the greatest Cub in that lousy losing franchise’s pathetic history is gone. I thought he would live forever. If anyone should have Ernie should have.

It would just be like the baseball Gods to finally – after a short interval of 107 years – permit the Cubs to win the World Series this year. We know that it will have to be a matter of divine intervention when it does happen. The Cubs, with more than a century of championship futility blowing in their faces like a stiff wind off Lake Michigan, can’t possibly do it with mere players on the field. A good general manager in a luxury suite won’t get it done. And inept owners like the Ricketts family can’t possibly make it happen. Blame poor Steve Bartman all you want. It’s a sure thing. God will have to intervene for the Cubs to win. I hope she is listening.

Who among us who love the great game would deny that its time for Wrigley to host a World Series? Long-suffering Cub fans deserve to have something to do during the playoffs. “Wait until next year” is the baseball equivalent of “mistakes were made.” It’s old and worn out. But, oh the irony if – OK, when – it happens the greatest Cub of all will have to watch on the ultimate satellite TV hook-up. Mr. Cub is gone.

Ernie Banks died, one must surmise, with a smile on his mug. He was probably thinking about stepping in against Bob Gibson, looking for a fastball and planning to drive it into the ivy. Ernie, it seemed, never had a bad day. During a long and illustrious career that began in the Negro Leagues he hit 512 of them out of ballparks. He was the best power hitting shortstop to ever play the game. He signed autographs. He charmed crusty writers. That White Sox fan in the White House gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He deserved it.

Ernie really did say on a hot afternoon during another long hot summer at Wrigley that it was such a nice day that they oughtta play two. No one plays doubleheaders anymore. Ernie would have played a twin bill every day and then hung around for extra batting practice and to take a few more ground balls.

Just as the Cubs are looking better Mr. Cub has left for the ultimate spring training.

When he checked in up there – Ernie was always early – he probably showed St. Peter his highly polished spikes, pumped his left hand into the pocket of his glove, offered the old gatekeeper an autograph and asked where he could suit up.

If heaven really exists, it must be like Wrigley on a long, bright summer afternoon. The sky is deep blue. The clouds are fluffy and white. The breeze is cool. The seats are filled with smiling folks and the organ music is loud and just a little off key. Four of five guys dressed in red and white striped shirts and wearing straw boaters are playing ragtime in the concourse under the grandstand. Everything is green and there are no owner’s boxes and no obstructed views. The hot dogs and mustard are plentiful, the peanuts are fresh, the beer is cold and it’s all free in this heaven.

Ernie will trot out to short, shouting encouragement to his teammates. Is that Joe Cronin at second? Gehrig at first? Ernie shouts to the pitcher – today its Lefty Grove – and says, “Groove it, Lefty. This guy’s got nothing.” Honus Wagner steps in and smiles. Musial is on deck, smiling. Everyone is smiling. Even Ty Cobb in center is smiling. Joe Jackson is smiling in left. Ernie knows he didn’t do it. The umps are smiling. Ernie is smiling. Of course, Ernie is always smiling.

If there is a God, Ernie is working on her. “It’s about time,” he’ll says. “Like George Will said, everyone can have a bad century. Don’t you think it’s about time? Wrigley is such a nice place in the fall. Maybe we should play two.”

She’s smiling. It might work. How do you say no to Ernie Banks?  When the Cubs do make it, credit Ernie.

Loyal readers know that I am a long-time fan of the San Francisco Giants. I’m hard pressed to identify why precisely I have been following the Giants since the days of Mays and McCovey, Marichal and Cepeda, but I have. They are my team and with the events of last night – if you missed it a 3-2 Game 7 win in the World Series – I may just make it through the winter.

There was much to like about the just completed World Series: two wild card teams playing for the big rings, a team in the Kansas City Royals who electrified their town and region and came darn close to a championship, two old school managers, some great pitching and some marvelous defense. While I’m glad my squad won, I love baseball and it was a good series to remind us again why we love the great game.

I’ve been following this Giants bunch even more closely than normal this year. The MLB app for your iPhone lets you listen to the radio broadcast of any game and I have been through all the ups and many downs of this Giants’ season, as broadcaster Jon Miller would say, “on the radio…”

My comments about the Giants are based on watching – or listening – to the evolution of a team that, let’s be honest, had little right to expect to win it all – again. Like all teams the Giants had injuries, tough breaks and a monumental losing stretch in mid-season that might have doomed many other teams. Some how this team kept scratching and winning.

I have absolutely nothing original to say about Madison Bumgarner’s historic pitching performance in Game 7 and I’ll leave it to others to proclaim the franchise located South of Market as “a dynasty.” My thoughts on this first day until pitchers and catchers report turn to that one word: team.

In a game that seems fixated most of the time on individual performance: earned run averages, batting averages, on base percentages and some of the new metrics I can’t explain to my wife, I love that the new World Champions really seem like a team in a game that often celebrates the individual.

Taking nothing from the World Series MVP, who will be mentioned all his days for his 2014 Series performance, I revel in the small things that teams do that make for success. A young second baseman who few had heard of in August turns a spectacular double play at a pivotal moment. A defensive left fielder not hitting much above his weight makes a key catch. A wacky journeyman DH with enough hair and tattoos to star in a Harley commercial understands that his role as a teammate is to hit a fly ball to the outfield that scores a run and later take an outside pitch to right field to score another. An even wackier right fielder – what is with those pants Hunter Pence – brings a head-long infectious enthusiasm, not to mention intensity, to everything he does and you can’t escape the fact that it rubs off on his locker room pals.

During one sweet moment in the game the camera caught Bumgarner in, what for him, was an unusual spot – siting in the bullpen between a couple of his relief pitching teammates. Starting pitchers don’t sit in the bullpen very often – maybe only in the World Series – and Bumgarner was there, of course, to do precisely what he ended up doing in the World Series. But before any of that, the star ace put his arm around the guy to his left, I think it was relief specialist Jean Machi, and just kind of casually patted him on the back. It didn’t appear that words were exchanged, just a knowing pat on the back of a teammate. It was non-verbal communication that said more than words, including that we’re in this together – the biggest big game pitcher and the guy they send in to get one out and then send to the shower.

I’m as cynical as the next guy about the big salaries and the even bigger egos in professional sports and I hesitate to make too much of isolated gestures and small, even routine events, but I think I detect in the San Francisco Giants what every corporate manager or Marine Corps platoon leader strives to create and sustain: teamwork. Teams need leaders, of course, and the Giants have their share – Manager Bruce Bochy, catcher Buster Posey and the wacky and wonderful Hunter Pence. But all leaders know you can’t lead well if your team doesn’t first want to be a team and doesn’t understand the power involved in being good teammates. Being part of a good team covers a multitude of individual shortcomings and that, I think, is why the Giants went all the way.

From the office conference room to the neighborhood Little League there is absolutely no substitute for team. A few good teammates can make the best player look and be even better. Unless your game is chess, we all need teammates. It makes the game more fun and enhances dramatically the chances that you will win all the marbles. Just ask the World Champion San Francisco Giants.

Remembering Tony Gwynn

He certainly didn’t look like much of a ballplayer. He lacked the classic physique of a DiMaggio or an Aaron, but with a bat in his hands he became a baseball Toscanini, a maestro who could orchestrate his base hits with a flick of his wrists.

Tony Gwynn was arguably the best pure hitter of a baseball since Ted Williams, or maybe since Ty Cobb. The baseball world and the rest of the world mourns his untimely passing.

Statistics tell only so much of the Tony Gwynn story, but they tell a lot. Fifteen times an All-Star, a consensus first ballot Hall of Famer, 3,000 hits, a lifetime .338 hitter in an era when the long ball was too much celebrated. Think of this: 19 straight years batting at least .300. When Gwynn lead the National League in hitting in 1985 he went to the plate 675 times and struck out 23 times. Amazing.

Tony Gwynn was also something else just as important to baseball and the rest of humankind – he was a class act, a gentleman, loyal always to a usually less than stellar team, a great teammate and, like Ernie Banks and Cal Ripkin, an ambassador for the game and what it can be when it is played at its best.

“My mom and dad always used to tell me the best approach is just be humble,” Mr. Gwynn once told the Sporting News. “Be humble, go on about your business, do what you got to do and, when it’s all said and done you can look back and say, ‘Hey, I gave it a great run,’ or ‘Hey, I didn’t,’ or ‘Hey, I fell short,’ but as long as you prepare yourself every day to go out there and give it your absolute best effort to get it done, you can look at yourself in the mirror when it’s over.”

Good words for a baseball player and a person.

I always thought Gwynn would be an outstanding major league manager, but unfortunately he never got the chance. He was, as George Will wrote in his book Men at Work, not only a deeply devoted student of the game, but a scientist who had his own sophisticated theories about hitting a baseball, which, by the way, may still be the single most difficult thing to do with any consistency in sports. Gwynn was, like Williams, so committed to excellence as a hitter that he had his own hitting room constructed.

“It is a long, narrow batting room,” Will wrote, “big enough for a pitcher’s mound at regulation distance from a plate, and an ‘Iron Mike’ pitching machine with a capacity for about 250 baseballs. The room is lit at 300 candle feet, exactly as the Jack Murphy field is lit.”

Tony Gwynn has died much too young at 54 from cancer. He was a great player of the great game. When fans talk about baseball in 50 years or a 150 years Tony Gwynn will be in the conversation. He was that good and his passing is cause for both sorrow and joy. Sorrow that he’s gone too soon, joy that he brought such passion and perfection to the great game of baseball.

I think he may be the greatest baseball player ever. I’ve always thought that.

He still has – and likely will for a long time have – the legitimate record for most home runs in a career. An astounding 755 and he never hit more than 47 in any one season. Across 23 seasons he was the soul of consistency. All those home runs, a career batting average of .305, he led the league in RBI’s four times and averaged 113 runs batted in over a long, long career. He made it to the post season three times and hit .393. He had all the tools – hit for power, hit for average, run, throw and field his position. The complete package. The real deal.

Throwing a fastball buy him, the pitcher Curt Simmons once said, “was like trying to sneak a sunrise past a rooster.” He was that good.

Tonight in Atlanta the Braves will remember that cold spring evening 40 years ago today when he broke the most storied record in baseball, the Babe’s record that is now his record. Oh, Bonds may have his name first in the record book, but we all know that story. The real record – no asterisk – is his and he’ll be there tonight like he has always been there since 1954 – dignified, a little reserved, elegant, patient, always, always the very personification of professional.

When Howard Bryant wrote his biography he called him “the last hero” and it’s a fitting title. He came of age in the old Negro Leagues, then played in Milwaukee, then Atlanta and finally back to Wisconsin. His life and career traced the arc of our society’s racial transformation; a sad and vital journey still not finished. His life covered all the distance from his native Alabama, the home, as Dr. King famously of it in 1963, of “vicious racists” and a governor “his lips dripping with the words of  interposition and nullification” to the Hall of Fame.

While he marched on overtaking the Babe’s record in 1974 the death threats piled up. Hard to believe that a great baseball player needed guards to protect him from those who both denied his greatness and his manhood. “Three decades later it still pained him,” Bryant writes, to recall “how a piece of his life had been taken from him and how it had never come back.” It was one of the game’s worst moments, made good only by his grace and greatness.

His was a quiet and oh-so-effective example that told racism it would eventually always strike out. He put up with all the downside of stardom and celebrity, the pressure and pain of a black man quietly, and always with great dignity, making it known that he was the best that there ever was. He missed much of the really big money in the game, but never played for the glory or gain, but for the love.

He was the first player, well Willie too, that I really started to care about. I became a Braves fan because of him and a Giants fan because of the Say Hey Kid.

When he turned 75 a few years ago they threw a big party for him in Atlanta. Bill Clinton came. Barack Obama had just been elected and he said he was “thrilled” that a young black man was in the White House. Not many heroes in sports any more. Maybe too much money and too many egos. Tonight in Atlanta one of the heroes – maybe the last in the greatest game – will be back on the green grass that was his stage.

On this day 40 years ago he made history, but Henry Aaron will always be a genuine American hero.

Major League Baseball waited so long to get serious and was in denial so long about its doping scandal – remember Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire – that it is impossible to outfit Commissioner Bud Selig and his minions with white hats even while the guy who should be remembered as the greatest player of his generation boots away what little is left of his career, not to mention his credibility.

This is really all you need to know about Alex Rodriguez and his creams and shots and lozenges: Major League baseball accepted the word of a “drug dealer” over that of a guy with 654 home runs. Now A-Rod, never one to handle himself with anything other than blind self-interest, is swinging away with lawsuits aimed at nearly everyone – including, unbelievably, his fellow players. I guess if you have enough money and bluster you can convince your lawyers to adopt a legal strategy that doubles down on foolishness.

The tragedy of A-Rod begins, as many tragedies do, with what might have been. When the supremely talented, handsome and sure to be superstar arrived in Seattle years ago literally the entire baseball universe was his to command. But Seattle was always too small a stage for an ego so big. Rodriguez had to have it all – the money, the houses, the celebrity girl friends, Cameron Diaz’s popcorn, the hookers, the records, even if it meant bending, breaking and shattering the rules. I remember sitting in the stands in Seattle when Rodriguez made his first visit back to the Northwest after bolting for the still ridiculous contract the Texas Rangers lavished on him. The fake dollar bills cascaded down from the upper decks as one-time fans chanted “Pay-Rod..Pay-Rod…”It turns out those fluttering fakes were a metaphor for the doper at third.

Next, the Yankees bought into the hype and doubled down with an even bigger contract. A-Rod and Derek Jeter should have made for the best left side of the infield in modern baseball history, but the chemistry and selflessness was never there with Rodriguez. Baseball, for all its individual statistics and records, is still a team game. Jeter was a teammate, a superstar with his ego in check. A-Rod, who grumbled on moved from Jeter’s position to play third base, nevertheless acted like he’d been born there after hitting a triple. I’m pretty certain suing the Player’s Union will enhance his standing in the clubhouse – or maybe not.

As the New York Times reports, the lawsuit Rodriguez has filed has the ironic side effect of putting into the public domain the very investigative report Major League Baseball used to suspend him in the first place. “The report, attached to the legal filing Monday,” the Times reports, “relies on the testimony of [Anthony P.] Bosch [A-Rod’s dealer], as well as his phone records, his patient notes, text and BlackBerry messages. It also incorporated the findings of investigators hired by Major League Baseball, and the testimony of a senior baseball official and a senior Yankees executive, among others.”

Rodriguez’s complex drug regime looks like what a recovering cancer patient might require rather than a guy who plays baseball for a living.

But, back to what might have been. With all his natural tools and his good looks Rodriguez could well have conquered the baseball heights just by showing up, working hard and acting like a human begin. He chose the path that took his gifts and broke them like a used syringe.

Rodriguez, of course, will always have his defenders and the sordid details of how Major League Baseball amassed evidence against him will make any fair-minded person uncomfortable. Still, when all is said and done, Alex Rodriguez isn’t going to jail Bernie Madoff-style for his cheating. He’s just losing a few million dollars, 162 games and a chance to be in the Hall of Fame one day. The Yankees save some money and will find they are better off without him. Rodriguez never thought that the game he reportedly loves was even a little bit bigger than him. It’s always been about him. Now, its about him alone with his denials and with more bluster – always more bluster.

When baseball’s enforcers were closing in on Rodriguez he arranged a hotel meeting with his drug supplier during a Yankee road trip to Atlanta. “Try to use service elevators,” Rodriguez wrote in a text message. “Careful. Tons of eyes.”

Rodriguez’s basic defense is that Major League Baseball is out to get him even as he refused a chance to make a deal that would have saved his career. He couldn’t even testify in his own defense. On one thing he is right. They were out to get him and it’s about time. As for the doper on third, it’s hard to think that the service elevator isn’t too good for him. The tons of eyes that A-Rod has depended upon to supplement his drug-enhanced career are looking away, ashamed and sad for what might have been.

This photo could have been taken during the first game I saw at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. I think it was 1987 or maybe 1988. Will “The Thrill” Clark was thrilling that afternoon and had a career day – seven RBI’s my memory says – and about 1,500 people showed up for a game in the middle of the week. I loved it all on a beautiful summer day. Love the Giants still and, while I’m ready for Christmas I’m really ready for spring training and harboring a strangely nostalgic feeling about The Stick.

The 49ers football team will play the last game at The Stick tonight and one more old ballpark will go the way of the wrecking ball. Most will say “good riddance.” I’ll be left, like so much that is my life with baseball, with memories. I fell in love all over again with the great game at The Stick all those years ago.

With some friends on another trip to see the Giants we left Union Square in the heart of downtown San Francisco for the bus ride out to Candlestick for a night game. It was August and a glorious Bay Area afternoon – sunny, about 72 degrees with a pleasant light breeze. By the third inning the notorious Candlestick Point fog was rolling across the stadium and from our vantage point in seats up above the third base line you could barely make out Kevin Mitchell in left field. The wind was swirling, hot dog wrappers were circling the field faster than a player could circle the bases, and beer was out of the question. Too cold. Stocking caps and gloves came out – it was August remember – and ballpark vendors were hocking hot chocolate. It wasn’t very good hot chocolate, but it was selling fast. I held the cup to keep my hands warm.

NPR had a great piece this morning on The Stick. Reporter Tom Goldman remembered that Giants’ owner Horace Stoneham signed the deal to build at Candlestick in 1957 during a morning visit when the wind was calm. Stoneham subsequently visited later in the day. “It’s said he asked a worker,” Goldman recounts, “Does the wind often blow like this? Yeah, every day, the worker replied. But only in the afternoon and early evening.”

Willie Mays played a good deal of his career at The Stick and slapped his 3,000 hit there in 1970. The Beatles packed them in during a 1966 concert. In recent years, with the Giants off in the cozy confines of their new park South of Market, Candlestick has been the football home of the 49ers, but that will end next year when the team decamps for a new stadium further south in warmer Silicon Valley. It can’t possibly be as cool as The Stick and in more ways than one.

I’ve reached the age where I don’t like to see anything torn down. OK, maybe, the Berlin Wall, but not old buildings and not icons like Tiger Stadium in Detroit or the real old Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. [Every rule has its exceptions. Mine would be the Kingdome in Seattle. Good riddance to that concrete monster.]

Instead of humming Christmas carols today I have the old Sinatra song stuck in my head.

And there used to be a ballpark where the field was warm and green
And the people played their crazy game with a joy I’d never seen
And the air was such a wonder from the hot dogs and the beer
Yes, there used a ballpark right here

While the kids wait for Santa in a couple of days, I will note that there are about eight weeks until pitchers and catchers report. Once The Stick is gone they’re putting up a shopping center. Not a fair trade – memories of The Say Hey Kid for a Dillard’s. I hope its windy and cold when they open.