The Diamond Fan

With the White Sox winning a tense victory over the Twins the field is finally set for the American League playoffs.  In contrast to the National League field, this group is comprised mostly of teams that have had great success recently (with the notable exception of the Rays, of course).

• The Red Sox, White Sox and Angels have all won World Series titles this decade (the Red Sox twice). Between them they have four World Series appearances (all victories), as opposed to none for the four NL playoff teams.
• Between them the three teams have 10 playoff appearances this decade (versus five for the NL contenders).
• Of course, prior to this decade these franchises all suffered from a notable lack of success. The Red Sox “curse” is well known, and the White Sox had not won a championship since before the notorious Black Sox scandal of 1919.  The Angels’ pennant in 2002 was the first ever for the team.

So, while based on recent events the Rays have to be your team if you like to cheer for the underdog, longtime fans of the other three teams may rightfully feel they still have some making up to do for long years of championship drought.

I just hope the Tampa Bay fans show up to see their excellent young team compete in what should be an exciting playoff. The Angels-Red Sox matchup is one of the best first round pairings ever.

Sports Illustrated’s web site has an interesting article about the discovery of a diary entry from 1755 with a reference to the game of “base ball.” This pre-dates the earliest previously known reference to baseball (by that name) by a good half a century.

I’m not sure the discovery is all that earth-shaking.  It is well-known that the sport that developed in 19th Century America had antecedents that date back centuries, and given the nature of that category of games it is not surprising that someone might have referred to one such game as “base ball.”  In any event the game that the diarist (William Bray) described must have been a rather sedate affair, as fully half of the participants mentioned were women.  It’s hard to imagine young women from British society during the reign of George II engaging in anything resembling the robust, competitive sport that was baseball in its early days of development in the USA.

Still, it is an interesting discovery, and warrants further research into what kind of sport this “base ball” may have been and what role it may have played as a forerunner of American baseball.

mlb.com now features clickable linescores on its scoreboard.  Just click on the score for any half inning in the linescore and you can watch a replay of the inning, courtesy of mlb.tv.  Outstanding!  Major League Baseball keeps coming up with new and creative ways to make its web site better and more useful for baseball fans.  The video is not available the day of the game (presumably to protect the market for the subscription-based mlb.tv webcasts), but this is a great service for fans who want to see selected action from previous games and not just a canned “highlights” selection.

There is a nice article on mlb.com today on the Dodgers’ 1968 draft. (”The greatest Draft in baseball history“) It really was a remarkable haul of talent: Bill Buckner, Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, Davey Lopes, Bobby Valentine, Geoff Zahn, Joe Ferguson and Tom Paciorek, all in one draft. All of these guys reached the majors and had long, productive careers.  A few (Buckner, Garvey, Lopes, and Cey) were truly outstanding players, even if none of them quite rose to the Hall of Fame level.

Most significantly for me, several of those guys formed the nucleus of the teams that made me into a Dodgers fan while I was living in the Los Angeles area in the 70s and 80s. I can still hear Vin Scully now, setting the Dodger defense in the top of the first: “The Dodgers have Dusty Baker in left, Billy North in center, Reggie Smith in right. And the infield: Garvey, Lopes, Russell and Cey…”

Garvey, Lopes, Russell and Cey. The longest running infield in baseball history, and great players all. What a please it was to watch them play. And 3/4 of that historic infield came out of that one draft. Billy Buck was a great one, too, but while he put in some good years with the Dodgers, he spent the majority of his superb career outside the Dodger organization, as did Paciorek and Valentine.  But, wow, that may very well have been the greatest draft in baseball history.

Jon Weisman on SI.com has a good article on baseball traditions worth keeping (and some not worth keeping). I say “good article”, of course, because I agree with most of what he says.

The ones he says should not change:

1. No designated hitter in the National League
   I could not agree more! And while we’re at it, get rid of it in the AL too. Why do we need to keep seeing overage and overweight used-to-be-good players who can no longer really play baseball stick around and make millions just to walk up to the plate 4 or 5 times a game? The DH is and always has been an abomination.
2. All-Star Game representation for every team
   I agree on this one, too, and like his reasoning:

   And substituting another Yankee for a Royal and another Met for a Pirate isn’t likely to make the game substantially more competitive, anyway.It’s an exhibition, after all. It should be fun for everyone. If there’s a solution to making the All-Star game more appealing, narrowing the playing field isn’t it.

3. Expanded rosters in September
   I’m neutral on this one. I’m not crazy about changing the rules right at the critical part of the pennant races, but I see the reasons for it. And besides, it has always been part of the game so it’s not as if people aren’t used to it. Plus it can be really fun to see a previously unheralded rookie may a big impact on a pennant race.
4. The wild card
   Again, this is one I am not too fond of in concept, but as Weisman says, “if you’re going to rule out a second-place team from one division, even if that team has a better record than a first-place team from another division, then what’s the logic of allowing the inferior division winners into the postseason mix?”