Andrus Center

The Anti-Strasburg

Everyone showed up last night at National’s Park in the center of our political universe – Washington, D.C. – to see a star perform, but the understudy got the call and ended up taking the bows.

Talk about a no-win situation. It was like the hot and sticky sell-out crowd of 40,043 bought standing room only tickets to see a Broadway show with a big name star. Instead they got the kid from summer stock. The fickle faithful were expecting something magical; think Yul Brenner strutting his stuff in The King and I. Instead they got a skinny, ex-Mariner who has rarely strutted much stuff and has often had to slink off the stage under fire.

Its not very generous to boo a guy, as many of the Stephen Strasburg-crazed D.C. baseball fans did last night, who scattered three singles, struck out six and didn’t gave up a run in five innings, while shutting down the division leader. Understudies get no respect.

When Miguel Batista took the mound for his on-field warm-up last night, the guy next to me said what 40,042 other baseball fans were thinking: “where’s the kid, where’s Strasburg?”

Strasburg, who has been the talk of baseball since joining the Nationals earlier this season “couldn’t get loose” before the game and the general manager nixed his appearance. His understudy was ready.

Batista, having gotten the call fifteen minutes before game time, obviously knew his part.

“Imagine, if you go there to see Miss Universe,” he said after the game, “and you end up having Miss Iowa, you might get those kind of boos. But it’s OK. They had to understand that as an organization we have to make sure the kid is fine.”

Miss Iowa showed some class, got a 3-0 win and, after an MRI, it looks like the kid is fine.

One of the great things about sports is the “on any given day” factor. Last night was Miguel Batista’s given day. I admit to being one of the 40,000-plus who panted into the ball yard last night yearning to marvel at the 98 mile an hour fastball and the devastating curve of the young guy who has captivated the baseball world since the Nationals brought him up to the show earlier this season. Instead, I witnessed something even better, a 39-year old pitcher in the twilight of a mediocre career rising to the moment.

Strasburg has been getting more ink – and hype – inside the Beltway than a ban on earmarks and maybe he deserves it. (The Beltway’s “must read” political writer, Mike Allen of Politico, featured the Strasburg Scratch in his morning email along with the news that White House stars Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod where among the disappointed 40,043.)

But last night, at least for a few precious innings, a guy who hadn’t won a game since George W. Bush was in the White House made a statement.

I know, I know, the last minute substitution was no doubt a prudent precaution to protect a franchise player with a long career ahead of him, but who can’t get loose in 90 degree weather with 85 percent humidity? That guy next to me, even with a couple of beers, could have gone three innings in that heat. With water – or was it beer – dripping down my forehead, I had to wonder if a 17-year-old Bob Feller ever had trouble “getting loose?”

The 40,043 were reminded last night that “baseball is a business” and there is no effective liability reform that can protect against a young and sore arm. Still, I hope someone bought Miguel Batista a steak and a beer after the game. I have a feeling he was pretty lose last night.

The understudy pulled it off. And, you gotta love that.

Time to Get Serious About a New Stadium

The Boise Hawks open their home season tonight. The Northwest League affiliate of the hapless – why does that word fit so well – Chicago Cubs play Salem-Keiser at aging Memorial Stadium. The stadium, near the Ada County Fairgrounds is actually in Garden City, and it is, did I mention this, aging?

I’ll be in my third base box, but I’ll be thinking, as I do every year at this time, about the need for a new, improved venue that could, I believe, accomplish several important objectives for the community. It’s time for Boise to get on with the plan. Here’s a partial list of what a new, multi-purpose stadium could mean for Boise and southwestern Idaho.

1. We all know the community – and southwest Idaho – needs some economic development activity. A new, multi-purpose stadium in the right location would be first and foremost an economic development tool.
2. Boise needs to take serious steps to secure minor league baseball for the long haul and if the community ever aspires to move up – and why not – to Triple AAA, Memorial Stadium isn’t going to cut it. Some of us can remember the Boise minor league team playing at the old field at Borah High School – you couldn’t get a beer – and the move to the Fairgrounds location was like moving from a sandlot to Yankee Stadium, but now its time to re-think the location, quality and attractiveness of a stadium that could be home to the Hawks, maybe a minor league soccer franchise, local high school sports, concerts and more.
3. New, well-conceived stadium projects have shown that they can revitalize a neighborhood that needs a shot in the arm. There are many potential locations and it’s probably too early in the assessment process to focus on any one site, but the City of Boise owns land along the Connector, west of downtown that needs to be seriously evaluated. Goodness knows that neighborhood, now the domain of abandoned auto dealerships and vacant lots, could use us a little love.

I remember a dinner with Mayor-elect Dave Bieter more than six years ago where the subject of a new stadium came up. The mayor has had plenty of priorities over those months, but now seems generally willing to think the multi-purpose stadium idea through. Good. It will take his leadership and the involvement of an enthusiastic community to move this idea forward.

The ownership of the Hawks have played a constructive role in this early discussion and have done some preliminary market analysis. More needs to be done, but it does seem clear that the Hawks could be the prime tenant for a new facility. If this effort is to get to first base and beyond a broad community need will need to be met. In other words, it is more than baseball, as important as I think that must be in the discussion.

Reno made a play for Triple AAA baseball and got it with a new downtown ballpark that anchors a redevelopment effort. Eugene (and the University of Oregon) built a new facility for the venerable Emeralds, a team long in the same league with Boise. Missoula finally got behind a new ballpark – the Beach Boys play there in August – and the Pioneer League Osprey seem sure to stay for a long time. Oklahoma City used the iconic Bricktown Ballpark to further renew an historic area in the heart of downtown. The list goes on and on.

I love Boise and have for the nearly 35 years I’ve been here. The city has so much going for it – great parks, new libraries, the Greenbelt, a nationally prominent college football team, a tremendous arts community with theater, music and more, the Foothills and the Boise River. Now, its time for a great, multi-purpose stadium venue to lock in professional baseball, attract minor league soccer, showcase high school sports and serve as a community venue for concerts and more.

Knowing Boise as I do, I know we’ll have the predictable debate over what role government institutions should play in drafting and pushing a new stadium plan. Here is a fact: these developments just don’t happen without a robust private-public partnership and a vast amount of community involvement.

Boise needs to take the next step and, with the Hawks opening another season tonight, its time to engage a community-wide conversation, make a plan and do something big and important for the city and the region.

 

Griffey Quits…Ump Blows It

Quite a day in baseball yesterday. Ken Griffey, Jr. made a good call and an umpire in Detroit didn’t.

The good call first.

Perhaps the hardest thing in baseball, politics, business, you name it, is knowing when to hang it up. Most of us stay too long, sitting on our past accomplishments, talking too much about the good ol’ days, hanging on when we should make way. Quitting is hard. Knowing when to quit is harder still.

Ken Griffey is – was – a pro. He must have known at age 40, when most of us think we’re hitting our prime, that he was finished. Sure, he could have held on until the end of the season. Mariner fans love the guy, and we have little enough to celebrate at the moment, but I think it was time Junior took the bow and made for the showers. He knew when to quit.

I want to remember Griffey in his prime, jumping up against that ugly outfield wall in the old Kingdome pulling in a fly ball or dropping the bat at home plate after one of the most perfect swings in baseball history sent one of his 630 home runs into a bullpen in some ballpark. Griffey had a Willie Mays quality to him – they both wore number 24 – that before all the injuries, made him a joy to watch, in part, because he seemed to be having so much fun playing a little kid’s game.

As the New York Times noted, Griffey was as good as any in his generation, a sure-fire first ballot Hall of Famer, and no taint of scandal, no personal excess and limited ego. He was the real deal, a natural. I’ll miss The Kid, but to everything there is a season and it was time.

Griffey’s announcement in Seattle was overshadowed by umpire Jim Joyce’s blown call in Detroit that cost Armando Gallarraga a perfect game. To Joyce’s never ending credit he was in anguish after the game telling reporters that he missed the call “from here to the wall” and “kicked the s–t out of it.”

Predictably, everyone has an opinion about what to do ranging from more technology to aid the umps, a bad idea, to a suggestion from that loudmouth Keith Olbermann that the Commissioner ought to intervene. A really bad idea.

Come on. Baseball, its been correctly said, is a game of inches played on a huge expanse of grass and dirt. Few things in baseball are perfect, which is part of the reason it is such a perfect game. Baseball is a game of judgment and error. You’re a brilliant hitter if you fail only seven out of ten times. In what other game would a ball that hits the foul pole on its way out of the park be declared fair?

There is no crying in baseball and no do overs, either.

I love the Tigers and I hate it when one of the boys in blue impacts a game, but that is the game. We’ve already had two perfect games in this long season and its only the first week in June. Perhaps the baseball gods just deemed three in a season one too many.

And, by the way, how about Jim Joyce for Congress. At least the guy can fess up to a mistake.

Harwell – A Voice of the Boys of Summer

It was a cold, wet night at Safeco Field in Seattle on Tuesday and the Mariners played like they would rather have been sitting by a fire sipping a toddy. Their shortstop made three errors, their clean up hitter proved again he is an expensive mistake and, like I said, the raw wind off Elliott Bay was cold.

It was cold for another reason. Ernie Harwell’s mellifluous, calming baseball voice has been silenced. What little bit of warmth I felt on Tuesday at Safeco was the moment of silence baseball fans observed before the first pitch in memory of the 42 summers Ernie called Detroit Tigers games. Harwell died on Tuesday after a battle with cancer. He was a very young 92.

Harwell once said of baseball, “I love the game because it’s so simple, yet it can be so complex. There’s a lot of layers to it, but they aren’t hard to peel back.”

I’ve been a Tiger fan since 1968 when the boys from the Motor City beat the great Bob Gibson to become one of the few teams to recover from being down 3-1 in the World Series. Harwell said his greatest thrill in those 42 seasons behind the mike was Jim Northrup’s two-run triple in Game Seven of that series. That’s a good memory, but even better is sense of place that Harwell could create in even the most routine baseball game, sort of like Tuesday’s game in Seattle.

“On radio,” says Jon Miller, my choice for the best of the new breed of broadcasters,”we could tell a story about a player’s house in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the listener goes to that house. On television, you tell that story and you don’t go anywhere, because you see things that don’t match the story–the third base coach flashing signs, the pitcher getting ready. On TV, I caption what’s being shown. On the radio, it’s my story. As Ernie Harwell says, on TV, you get the movie version. The game on the radio is the novel.”

The New York Times obit for Ernie is a gem and reminded me that the guy could write, too. His Hall of Fame induction speech in 1981 is classic Harwell.

“Baseball is Tradition in flannel knickerbockers,” Harwell once wrote. “And Chagrin in being picked off base. It is Dignity in the blue serge of an umpire running the game by rule of thumb. It is Humor, holding its sides when an errant puppy eludes two groundskeepers and the fastest outfielder. And Pathos, dragging itself off the field after being knocked from the box.”

I only saw Harwell once in the flesh. It was the last season of old Tiger Stadium. When I showed up at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull to see a game on that piece of hallowed baseball ground there he was. Seated just outside the stadium, signing autographs and copies of his book and talking baseball with the fans – his fans. You couldn’t talk to Ernie Harwell, or listen to him, and not smile and think of the complexity of life and baseball and how marvelous he could make a simple game on a summer afternoon.

Good call, Ernie.

Hideous Baseball Uniforms

When it comes to baseball, I’m a traditionalist. Some of the most appealing aspects of the great game are its traditions. It’s been said that if a veteran of the Civil War could return for a day, go to Wrigley Field or Fenway and watch a game, he would immediately know what was going on. The game doesn’t change much, but when it does it is usually change for the worse.

I have never liked the designated hitter rule. Pitchers ought to go to bat. I’d be happy bringing back a 154 game season. With all the playoffs games that are needed now, the current season is too long and besides a return to a shorter season would make all the older records more relevant. I don’t like the trend of players wearing their pants so long they drag in the dirt. Whatever happened to stirrup socks, anyway? And while we’re at it, put a gentle but unmistakable bend in the bill of that cap young man. What gives with these young players that don’t shape the bill of a baseball cap?

Tradition = baseball.

The regard for tradition and history really took a beating in the 1970’s and early ’80’s when most teams went in the bag for truly hideous uniforms in gaudy colors. It amounted to a nationwide outbreak of polyester. The picture above is of Indians’ pitcher Jackie Brown – remember him – in the 1977 Cleveland uniform. It almost hurts to look at that thing. Brown’s career record in seven seasons was 47-55, but, hey, he got to wear that great uniform in whatever color that is.

A friend sent me the link to pictures and commentary on “10 pleasingly hideous baseball cards from the 1970’s.” Check it out…but not if you have a queasy stomach!

If you can look at the Reggie Jackson, Rollie Fingers or Oscar Gamble cards without a snicker, you’re a stronger person that me. Now that I think of it, bring back flannel.

Have a good weekend.

Anything to Say, Dear?

My all-time favorite cartoon appeared in the New Yorker several years ago.

In the cartoon, a fellow is settling into his big, comfortable chair with the TV remote control in hand. He says to his wife standing nearby: “Anything you’d like to say, dear, before the baseball season begins?”

While every team is in first place, before the post mortem begins on President Obama’s fastball – he’s throwing out the first pitch at the National’s home opener – and while you still have one ear tuned to the spouse it might be an appropriate moment to soak up some baseball trivia.

For example, did you know that Bullet Bob Feller, as a 21 year old fireballer with the Cleveland Indians, threw baseball’s only complete game opening day no hitter? It happened in 1940. You can look it up.

Play ball!…and, what was that dear?