[Posted Tues. p.m. See note below.]
Baseball Quiz: The Wall Street Journal’s Dave Cameron had a story the other day on players who win the MVP even though their team finishes .500 or below. Seven have done so since 1931, with the last being Alex Rodriguez, 2003, Rangers (71-91). Name the three who won the award with losing or .500 clubs in 1987, ‘89, and ‘91. Answer below.
*Folks, I’m scrambling to get a ton done before heading to Ireland for a little R&R (which really isn’t rest because my buddy and I will stay up about 72 hours straight misbehaving and hitting a ton of errant golf shots), so I’m posting this earlier than normal and won’t be in a position to do a BC for Monday. I’ll catch up a week from now.
–It’s over…Estimates on the settlement between Tiger Woods and Elin are anywhere from $100 million to $750 million. Both Woods and Nordegren were present at the 5- to 10-minute hearing. In a statement, Woods and Nordegren said: “We are sad that our marriage is over and we wish each other the very best for the future.
“While we are no longer married, we are the parents of two wonderful children and their happiness has been, and will always be, of paramount importance to both of us.
“Once we came to the decision that our marriage was at an end, the primary focus of our amicable discussions has been to ensure their future well-being.”
According to one report, Elin and Tiger may have been trying to repair the marriage when Woods ran his Nike commercial, with a recording of Earl Woods saying: “Did you learn anything?” A source told the Daily Telegraph, “Elin was violently angry over this commercial and thought it was a cheesy thing to do.” Elin had also hoped Tiger would take more time off away from the course.
The two will share joint parenting, though how this is going to work out remains to be seen.
Liz S. passed along a piece I missed from New York magazine by Drew Magary, who observes:
“Other players are better now, and they aren’t scared of (Tiger).
“It’s hard to be afraid of a guy who texts some chick telling her he’d ‘love to have the ability to make you sore.’ Oh, do you lack that ability? Well then, guess you aren’t so intimidating after all. Woods is a laughingstock among his peers now. Maybe there was some Tiger Mystique before. That’s gone forever, now that everyone knows that Woods is a brat who pisses and moans at errant shots and talks a lousy game even with women who want him.
“Turns out, Tiger Woods is not preternaturally immune to pressure.
“If Woods fails to win another major in his career, no one will doubt that the destruction of his reputation was a very large reason why. If Woods fails to win another major, he will be perhaps the first great athlete whose game was destroyed by his own lechery, and the magnitude of that collapse is unfathomable. That record is all he has left. If he doesn’t get it, then what is he? In his own eyes, nothing. Breaking the record has now become both a letdown and an enormous burden….
“It turns out Tiger Woods is not the wizard of compartmentalization many assumed. His putting average this year was 1.779, which would rank him 89th on the PGA Tour if he played enough to be included in the stats. His rank last year? Twenty-fourth. You don’t have to play golf to know putting is a skill that involves atomically precise levels of concentration. He hasn’t gotten better over the summer, given his blowup at Bridgestone and his lackluster showing at the PGA. This scandal has messed with his brain, and every major he loses from now on means he has to think more and more and more about being The Guy Who F—ed It All UP. No human being is immune to that kind of pressure. Woods used to be chasing something great, and now something very bad is chasing him….
“When Tiger Woods had the image of being an indestructible force of nature, he was precisely that. He needed that reputation. It fed him. And now that it’s gone, he has nowhere else to draw strength from. Tiger Woods built his perfection upon the illusion of it. And that’s why, as far as major championships are concerned, Tiger Woods’ career is now over.”
But I’m guessing Tiger starts to play well, beginning this weekend at The Barclays.
“Some day, Earth will miss Brett Favre. The old scruff dog really was something, wasn’t he? He may still be. Throughout his two-decade NFL career, Mr. Favre’s been a perilous mixture, a cruise ship margarita. Just his last name is a brand, associated with fearlessness, with slinging, with teetering precariously between greatness and heartbreak.
“Unfortunately, it also stands for driving America totally bonkers. Has there been an athlete who has done more lately to unnecessarily torment the sporting public than Brett Lorenzo Favre?
“Please don’t say LeBron James – that was a dust-up, a trifle, a parking ticket.
“Three straight years we’ve endured this ludicrous retirement soap. In and out Mr. Favre wanders, round and round. It’s always the same script. Eat, Pray, Favre. Dejected geezer goes back home, sits in an easy chair, pronounces himself finished, says he’s too banged up for one more, grows out his beard, lards on a little off-season flab, starts daydreaming about that final game, how it didn’t end the exact right way and then…
“No way. The wise sports fan immediately bails out. You’re not going to get sucked in by Mr. Favre this time. You’re done with No. 4, you’ll catch him later – enough with these insufferable midlife crises. Let us know when he makes his decision.
“The boycott lasts a day or two. Maybe a week at most. You move on to other, worthier football sagas…but then, almost unconsciously, you peek at ESPN and see those five familiar letters scrolling across the red ticker on the bottom of the screen, right after the baseball scores and the free agent gossip.
“You don’t have to read the tape. You know what it says. Mr. Favre may be back. But he’s not totally back. It’s brutally non-committal, like a homecoming queen ignoring an invitation to the prom….
“Then he’s back. The news lands meekly, like a surprise party for a spouse tipped off by the strange cars in the driveway….
“But no one has been hurt here. This is not an arrest or a positive test. Mr. Favre’s faux retirements are less an affront than a musty punch line, like Larry King’s marriages or Tiger Woods’ cell phone….
“Nobody ever loved Mr. Favre for being perfect. He’s back, and despite all logic and protests, so are the rest of us.”
Musial celebrates his 90th birthday on Nov. 21, and I was going to wait until then to write something, but after Joe Posnanski’s recent outstanding article on Stan the Man in Sports Illustrated, for the archives here are a few of his tidbits on Musial’s legend.
“Even after all these years it is hard for people to explain exactly what Stan Musial means to them. Willie Mays, sure, that’s easy: He means youth and a baseball cap flying off in a rush of wind and long-ago stickball games in Harlem. Mickey Mantle means tape-measure home runs and impossible promise and a body that could not hold up to the pounding and late nights. Hank Aaron means dignity and consistency, and a home run record pursued through pain. Sandy Koufax means high fastballs and low curves and a pause for Yom Kippur as the World Series began. Ted Williams means the never-ending quest for perfection and just the right pitch to hit.
“But what of Stan Musial? There has never been a best-selling biography of the man. There has never been a movie about his life. There are few legendary stories about him. There are few baseball records he can call his own.
“ ‘Stan Musial didn’t hit in 56 straight games,’ says Musial’s friend Bob Costas, who began his broadcasting career with KMOX in St. Louis. ‘He didn’t hit .400 for a season. He didn’t get 4,000 hits. He didn’t hit 500 home runs. He didn’t hit a home run in his last at bat, just a single [Ed. I think it was a double]. He didn’t marry Marilyn Monroe, he married his high school sweetheart. His excellence was a quiet excellence.’”
ESPN called Stan Musial the most underrated athlete ever. Consider:
“Only Aaron had more total bases. Only Tris Speaker and Pete Rose hit more doubles. Using Bill James’ famous formula, only Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds created more runs.”
Stan Musial also was never thrown out of a game…1941 to 1963 (with a year spent in the Navy in ’45).
Aside from being known as the nicest man in the sport, Musial was famous for signing autographs. When Harry Caray called Cardinals games, he “used to tell a story of a Sunday doubleheader in the St. Louis heat and humidity. Musial played both games, of course – in the 11 seasons after he returned from World War II, Musial averaged 153.5 games per 154-game season. And after the nightcap, Caray said, Musial looked as if he had been through a prizefight. In those days they still called boxing matches prizefights.
“When the second game ended, Musial stumbled out to the parking lot. He barely looked strong enough to stand. And there, at his car, he found dozens of fans waiting, hoping, shouting, ‘Stan! Stan the Man!’ Caray turned to the person next to him and said, ‘Watch this.’ And together they watched Stan Musial walk up to the group and shout out his trademark ‘Whaddya say? Whaddya say! Whaddya say!’ And he signed every single autograph.
In 1948, Musial came within one home run of becoming the only man in baseball history to lead his league in batting, runs, hits, doubles, triples, homers and RBIs.
He may not have led the league in homers, but with his customary hustle out of the batter’s box, he led the N.L. in doubles eight times and triples five.
Musial never struck out 50 times in a season.
And where did he get the name “Stan the Man”? Try Brooklyn, not St. Louis. You see, Musial hit .359 for his career at Ebbets Field, and it was the griping Brooklyn fans, with their “Here comes the man again” that gave him the moniker.
But the story of Stan Musial is as much about character as it is his stats. He defended black players who came up when few others did. He believed in being a role model. Heck, he was a spokesman for Chesterfields, but “when he realized how he might be influencing kids, he quit the Chesterfield job and, shortly after that, quit smoking. In the interim he would smoke under stairwells so nobody would see him.
“In 1958 he became the first player in National League history to make $100,000 in a year. The next year he had his worst season – he hit only .255 and missed 40 games with nagging injuries. He went to Cardinals management and insisted they cut his salary by the maximum 20% (which the Cardinals did). Years later, when asked about that move, Musial said simply, ‘There wasn’t anything noble about it. I had a lousy year. I didn’t deserve the money.’”
Hey, Mets fans. Do you think Oliver Perez will ever do that? [Perez is being paid $12 million this year to be a bum.]
Of course to the people of St. Louis, Stan Musial is more than just a legendary ballplayer. He means everything to the city and its natives. He loves St. Louis and they love him back.
Musial’s not doing well these days, health-wise. He is old, after all…slowing down. His memory isn’t what it once was. The people of St. Louis, the Midwest, and the entire baseball world will be crying the day he passes from the scene.
“Maybe there have been a handful of better ballplayers. Maybe there have been a handful of more important baseball players. Maybe there have even been a handful of more memorable players. But no baseball player, none, worked so hard to make people happy. He hit the ball hard into the gaps, ran hard out of the box, signed every autograph, shook every hand and turned dollar bills into memories. And, all the while, he kept telling us that he was the lucky one. Whaddya say!”
But in looking through “The Biographical Encyclopedia of Baseball,” I forgot that Musial almost didn’t make it to the majors. You see, he was drafted by the Cardinals as a pitcher, out of Donora High School in Donora, Pa., and he struggled his first two seasons, with one Cardinals official recommending his release. But in 1940, Musial went 18-4 for Daytona Beach of the Florida State League and hit .311, splitting his time between the outfield and the pitcher’s mound. However, the Cards didn’t know that late in the season, Musial hurt his shoulder making a diving catch in the outfield.
So during spring training in 1941, the organization found out about the injury when he gave up some long home runs and again he was almost released, before Ossie Varek, who had scouted Musial in high school, gave him a shot in the outfield at Class C Springfield of the Western Association.
Musial blossomed, hitting .379 with 26 home runs in 87 games before being called up to Triple-A, where he continued to hit well and then at the end of the year, the Cardinals brought him to the big leagues, where all Stan did was get 20 hits in 47 at bats, a cool .426 (plus he struck out just once). The next year he was installed as the regular left fielder, hit .315, and the rest is history.
Aside from the above-mentioned stats on the number of times he led the National League in doubles and triple…Musial was…
3-time MVP
7 batting titles
6 times led league in slugging percentage
7 times on-base percentage
5 times runs scored
6 times hits
10 times he drove in 100
Stan Musial hit .331 for his career with 3630 hits…which leads to the astounding fact he had 1815 hits at home and 1815 on the road.
How did one pitch to Musial? Brooklyn’s Preacher Roe was asked. “I throw four wide ones, and then I try to pick him off first.”
Lastly, there is this tale from Daniel Okrent and Steve Wulf’s “Baseball Anecdotes.”
“Before Willie Mays’ first appearance against the Cardinals, Leo Durocher ran down the St. Louis batting order for him, telling the rookie how the various hitters should be played. He described the lead-off batter, and the number two man, and then moved to the clean-up hitter.
“ ‘The third hitter,’ Durocher said, ‘is Stan Musial. There is no advice I can give you about him.’”
–I went back over the payroll situation in Major League Baseball, per opening day rosters as displayed by USA TODAY.
1. Yankees…$206.3 million payroll…record through Monday…77-48
2. Red Sox…$162.4…72-54
3. Cubs…$146.6…52-74
4. Phillies…$141.9…70-54
5. Mets…$134.4…62-62
6. Tigers…$122.8…62-63
7. White Sox…$105.5…67-57
8. Angels…$104.9…62-64
So while I’ve been bummed over the Mets, Cubs fans have really had a dreadful season.
Padres…$37.8 million…74-49
Rangers…$55.2…70-54
Rays…$71.9…77-48
–So Johnny Mac and I would like someone to explain the power surge this year from Toronto’s Jose Bautista. I mean check out this progression.
2004-05…first 116 at-bats in big leagues…ZERO home runs
2006…Pitt…400 AB…16 HR
2007…Pitt…522 AB…15 HR
2008…Pitt-Tor….370 AB…15 HR
2009…Tor…336 AB…13 HR
2010…Tor…438 AB…40 HR!!! [through Monday]
Of course Mr. Bautista is from the Dominican Republic, where they eat steroids for breakfast. So we’re just wondering if somehow he has been excluded from Major League Baseball’s drug tests.
On a somewhat related basis, while us Mets fans suffer through another season of shattered expectations, at least we have an outstanding broadcast crew; Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez, and Ron Darling. But while they haven’t discussed Bautista in particular, whenever they bring up a player who had a career year that he then never approached again, lately they’ve thrown around the name of Norm Cash quite a bit in these conversations.
Cash was the solid first baseman for the Detroit Tigers who out of nowhere hit .361 in 1961, only to never bat higher than .283 his next 13 seasons.
The thing that ticks me off is our announcers then never mention that there was a good reason why Cash hit .361. By his own admission, later, he was using a corked bat! So like, guys, bring this up next time.
–Washington Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg is having a second MRI on his arm, this after he was returned to the disabled list.
–In a USA TODAY online survey, Hank Aaron’s 715th home run was rated the most important ever hit by 48% of the voters. But the runner-up wasn’t Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” (16%), rather it was Babe Ruth’s called shot in the 1932 World Series (18%). That’s bogus. For starters, experts are still split on whether the Babe even called it. So how can this be rated over Thomson’s? Bill Mazeroski’s 1960 Game 7 homer was ranked 4th, by the way.
–I missed the Miss Universe pageant! How did I let that happen? Jimena Navarrete of Guadalajara, Mexico won the crown. Asked by Olympic gold-medal figure skater Evan Lysacek how she felt about unsupervised Internet use, Navarrete said, “I do believe that the Internet is an indispensable, necessary tool for the present time. We must be sure to teach them the values that we learned as a family.”
Meanwhile, should Ms. Navarrete prove to be a member of one of Mexico’s drug cartels, first runner-up Miss Jamaica would assume the crown. Should Miss Jamaica be found to be part of one of her country’s street gangs, then second runner-up Miss Australia would get the luxury New York apartment with living expenses, a one-year scholarship to the New York Film Academy, plus other parting gifts, including Mets tickets down the right-field line.
—Kenya’s David Lekuta Rudisha set a new world record of 1:41.09 in the 800 meters at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, 2/10ths better than the mark set by Kenyan-born Wilson Kipketer in August 1997.
–As I head over to Ireland, I see this from the one of the papers there.
“Retailers are selling alcohol for less than the price of a soft drink, with a can of beer now costing as little as 67c.” Or like 85 cents U.S.! Forget buying a bunch of sweaters and golf shirts, I may just stock up on beer, know what I’m sayin’?
–Just had to pass along a piece from the Los Angeles Times on the Mt. Hood, Oregon, area, which I’ve flown over a number of times but never explored. It is very cool that in August, you can ski at Timberline, where the snow never melts (you take a chairlift from there into the snowfield), and then a ½ hour later play golf a few thousand feet below. Then again, I haven’t skied in ages so I’d take the chairlift up to the top and just swing right back down to pick up my sticks.
–Authorities in New South Wales, Australia (the eastern region that includes Sydney), have released “Report into the NSW Shark Meshing (Bather Protection) Program,” an exhaustive examination of the shark nets lining NSW beaches the past 20 years. The findings are disturbing.
Almost 4,000 sea creatures have been caught in the nets and now environmentalists are calling for an immediate ban on the meshing.
Of the official count of 3944 creatures trapped, about 60% were sharks, 2521! Among these were 15 grey nurses [Ed. not to be confused with ‘hot’ nurses], a harmless species considered critically endangered. Also on the list were stingrays (1269), dolphins (52), turtles (47), whales (6), seals (4), a penguin and a dugong (like a manatee).
The nets are strung off parts of 51 popular beaches from September 1 to April 30 (the Aussie spring/summer).
Despite the nets, however, “Figures compiled by Sydney’s Taronga Zoo (great one) show there have been 151 shark attacks around Australia over the past decade, including 15 fatalities (really 42,050…but if the truth got out, no one would ever go to Australia). The zoo’s life sciences manager John West said shark nets were still the most effective method of reducing sharks in an area but he recommended shaving a month from each end of the meshing season.”
Get this…the government checks the nets every 72 hours, weather permitting, so I’m thinking we could have a good straight-to-video adventure flick here…where the environmentalist, Dr. Drake Freely, and his assistant, Pamela Anderson (played by herself), systematically cut the nets down when they aren’t being checked, unleashing 600,000 sharks on an unsuspecting bathing public. Ms. Anderson would be able to show off the latest in swimwear, and, you know…it’s straight-to-video for a reason.
Back to the nets, Adrian Salteer, owner of a fishing charter boat, told the Sydney Morning Herald that the nets should remain. “When there are 4 million people just in Sydney, it’s all about balance. Do you try and save the sharks or have people eaten?”
Tough call, Mr. Salteer, tough call. Certainly this is one editor who wouldn’t mind a little more material.
–Kenyan authorities made a massive seizure of two tons of ivory and five rhino horns at the main airport inside boxes labeled as avocados to be exported to Malaysia. Two suspects were arrested.
However, at least the ivory appears to be from elephants that died naturally.
–Songwriter George David Weiss died. He was 89. Weiss is best known for writing Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling In Love,” “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” (Tokens) and “What A Wonderful World” (Louis Armstrong).
—Kid Rock is coming out with his 8th studio album, Born Free, Nov. 16th. Your editor will be one of the first to get it. Sounds good, from the early review I saw.
–And Taylor Swift’s new one, Speak Now, looks like another blockbuster for her.
–And guess who teamed up for a new LP to be released by Christmas? Sly Stone and George Clinton! Clinton of P-Funk told Rolling Stone, “Sly always had music stashed, but he wasn’t showing it to nobody. All of a sudden, he started sending me tracks. I’m like, ‘You dirty [expletive deleted]!’ Members of both P-Funk and Family Stone are on the album.
You know, I really want to believe this could be fantastic, but I’m trying to temper my expectations.
Top 3 songs for the week 8/26/72: #1 “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)” (Looking Glass…popular tune on Wake Forest juke boxes) #2 “Alone Again (Naturally)” (Gilbert O’Sullivan…incredibly depressing song…makes you want to drive off a cliff) #3 “Long Cool Woman (In A Black Dress)” (The Hollies)…and…#4 “I’m Still In Love With You” (Al Green…in his prime with this one) #5 “Hold Your Head Up” (Argent..not bad, not bad at all…one-hit wonder, group formed by ex-Zombie Rod Argent) #6 “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want To Be Right” (Luther Ingram) #7 “Goodbye To Love” (Carpenters) #8 “Coconut” (Nilsson) #9 “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim” (Jim Croce) #10 “Baby Don’t Get Hooked On Me” (Mac Davis…just because I liked this guy doesn’t make me a bad person…great entertainer)
Baseball Quiz Answer: MVPs on teams finishing .500 or below.
A-Rod, 2003 Rangers…71-91
Cal Ripken Jr., 1991 Orioles…67-95
Robin Young, 1989 Brewers…81-81
Andre Dawson, 1987 Cubs…76-85
Ernie Banks, 1959 Cubs…74-80
Ernie Banks, 1958 Cubs…72-82
Hank Sauer, 1952 Cubs…77-77
