June 2009
Yankees: Supporting evidence!
After my comments yesterday about people in Britain wearing Yankee caps, it was a funny coincidence that a person on Twitter mentioned the same thing today.
@davidjlowe tweeted: “I must have seen at least 50 people wearing New York Yankees baseball caps on the way to work this morning…in London! WHY?”
So there you go. I would guess that of those 50 people, only five would have known who Derek Jeter is. And four of them would have been Americans.
Oh well, at least it shows Brits taking a bit of interest in baseball, even if that interest begins and ends at a stylish cap.
MLB Teams: New York Yankees
After the Mets yesterday, today we turn to the Yankees.
Walk up to a Brit in the street and ask them about the New York Yankees and most would know that they are a baseball team. That may not sound like much to an American, but it’s more knowledge than your average Brit would possess about any other MLB team.
Therein lies the dilemma with the Yankees.
The fact that they are so well known is because of their illustrious history, an association with excellence and a reputation as one of the most important sports franchises in the world. Their list of former players includes a who’s who of many of the best ever, from Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, to Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and many more. These great players have been part of great teams who have achieved great things, all of which any newcomer to baseball will enjoy learning about, regardless of whether you love the Yanks or consider them to be the Evil Empire.
Although they haven’t won a World Series since 2000, the Yankees are primarily known for being the most successful team in North American sports. Their ability to compete every year is largely a product of their enormous wealth, symbolized in brick form by their palatial new Yankee Stadium. They do not have owners that simply sit there and milk the cash cow for all it’s worth (or to pay off debts, like the Glazers and Manchester Utd FC). The vast revenue the franchise generates is looked at in one way: as a resource to put together the best possible team with the intention to win a World Series every year. Yes, this annoying when you are a fan of a smaller team, but you have to grudgingly respect them for it.
The recent offseason perfectly illustrated the Yankees’ commitment to winning. They signed the best free agent pitcher on the market in CC Sabathia, then got arguably the second-best free agent pitcher as well in A.J. Burnett before completing the set by signing the best free agent hitter in Mark Teixiera (trumping the Red Sox in the process). Perhaps Yankee fans soon become blasé about their team’s pursuit of the top players. I was excited enough when it was announced that the A’s had signed Matt Holliday, despite knowing that we have no chance of keeping him beyond 2009.
Many would have a strong urge to be part of such a franchise, particularly if family allegiances have lumbered you with a life supporting a nondescript sports team with little prospect of great success in the future. With baseball, most Brits are free to choose which team they support. If you are fed up with being a small fish in a sea of sharks, why not get out of the choppy water and hop onto the most luxurious yacht in the marina?
However, what makes the Yankees such a formidable opponent is exactly what puts many people off. The ‘glory hunter’ tag may not sit easily on your shoulders and it’s one that inevitably you will be charged with if you pick the Bronx Bombers. If we go back to that Brit on the street, they may well have been wearing an NY cap. Most British baseball fans quickly learn the lesson that asking such people about the Yankees’ most recent series is only going to prompt a blank look.
Maybe that is part of the challenge though: being one of the few souls wearing the interlocking NY in Britain who doesn’t just know all about their starting rotation, but also the prospects in Scranton. You can prove that you are a knowledgeable fan, while enjoying the benefits of supporting a team that can field a team full of All-Stars.
MLB Teams: New York Mets
After a brief break, I’m getting back to the task of evaluating all of the thirty MLB teams from a British perspective. The next two days will be given over to the two teams from New York.
I compared the Chicago rivalry to that of the two Manchester football/soccer clubs earlier in this series. For the Mets and the Yankees, we can find parallels with the rivalry between Everton and Liverpool FC. They split their respective cities into two and, while one team is traditionally seen as being the dominant force, both have enjoyed periods of success.
The Mets are the equivalent of Everton. They both know that their local rival is held in higher regard around the world, but they can point to their own history to show that they are much more than second-class citizens.
It didn’t start off well for the Mets. In fact, their debut season in 1962 was historically terrible. Casey Stengel was always good for an entertaining quote, but he was able to excel himself while coming to terms with the roster he had to manage that year. A 40-120 record at least meant that the only way was up, but they lost 100 or more games in five of their first six seasons.
That run changed in 1969. After nothing but ineptitude in previous seasons, they pulled together a 100-62 season and went on to win a World Series in just their eighth season.
Their only other World Series so far came in the mid-Eighties, coincidentally the same period when Everton enjoyed their most recent run of success. The 1986 World Series winning team has gone down in history as much for their off-the-field antics as for their on-the-field achievements. Jeff Pearlman’s brilliant book ‘The Bad Guys Won’ brings them to life in a way that leaves you laughing and shaking your head in disbelief.
As I wrote in my review: “the 1986 New York Mets walked with a swagger, performed with supreme confidence and spoke with unconfined arrogance. Loveable they were not, but that’s what made them a great team on the field and what makes them such a great source of hilarious stories”. It’s definitely a book you need to add to your collection if you don’t have it already.
The Mets do come with the big city self-assurance that you would expect from a New York franchise, yet they don’t make you look elsewhere in the way that other big teams like the Yankees or the Red Sox might. Quite simply, the Mets are a team that will make you suffer. They don’t do things the easy way and you will quickly earn your supporting stripes if you decide to throw your backing behind them.
Their most recent seasons are a great example of this. The Mets are set up in a way that screams ‘mass market domination’. They have one of the highest payrolls in the Majors and make at least one big splash most off-seasons. When premier players like Carlos Beltran, Johan Santana and Francisco Rodriguez became available, the Mets paid big money to pick them up (in Santana’s case the money came in the form of a contract extension after he was acquired in a trade with the Twins). They’ve also been successful in bringing through their own talent, with David Wright and Jose Reyes forming one of the most talented left-sides to an infield that you will find.
With all these resources at their disposal, you would think that the Mets would stroll into a season and sweep the National League to one side in a way that soon becomes a bit boring. But no, they’ll find a way to make things interesting every time. Their last three seasons have ended in heart-breaking misery, the sort that Brits are naturally drawn to. We’re a nation that prefers to wallow in hard luck stories rather than glory in endless victories. That description sums up the Mets quite well.
New York is obviously a great place to visit, so you can start planning a wonderful road trip to the new Citi Field. The Mets are also one of the better supported teams among Brits so you will be joining a decent group of like-minded fans, people who enjoy the fact that they are an organization with the resources to be competitive every year, but without the air of superiority that you often find with such teams.
Raul’s a real loss for the Phillies
It was a shame to read today that Phillies outfielder Raul Ibanez has been placed on the 15-day DL.
I have to admit that I was quite critical of the Phillies’ general manager Ruben Amaro Jr when he dived into the free agent market and signed Ibanez to a three year/ $31.5m deal midway through December last year. The GM was new to the job and had one major hole to fill from the World Series-winning roster, with Pat Burrell being allowed to depart when his contract expired. Ibanez was undoubtedly one of the candidates to fill that spot in left field, but there were other outfielders on the market and teams were in a holding pattern waiting for the prices to drop.
All teams except for the Phillies, that is. Amaro decided that Ibanez was the guy he wanted and he just went ahead and did what it took to get him.
Ibanez has been a solid offensive player for years, but he’s also been one of the few fielders who has challenged Burrell’s ranking as ‘scrap iron glove’ of the Majors. Both have a history of not getting to balls they should reach and too often not making plays when they do actually get there. Add in the fact that Amaro appeared to have rushed in and bought at top dollar and the deal looked like a potential dud.
Ibanez had played in sixty-two games prior to hitting the DL today. Over that span he has batted .312/.371/.656 with 22 homers and 59 RBIs: not exactly the sort of stats you would associate with a free agent flop.
Sixty-two games don’t make a season for a position player, and Ibanez needs to continue producing over the next two years to fully justify Amaro’s faith in him, but it’s been a terrific start to his career in a Phillies uniform.
It’s been so good in fact that Ibanez has accumulated more All-Star votes than any other NL outfielder. Hopefully this trip to the DL gives him enough time to rest and he can be back playing in good time to start the game in St Louis.
Castillo’s clanger costs the Mets
When I wrote about Milton Bradley’s balls-up yesterday evening (British time), I fully expected he would be the goat of the day despite there being a further fourteen games to be played later that night.
How wrong I was.
Luis Castillo’s clanger on a pop-up would have been a bad mistake if it had come in the first inning of a standard game. To do it when leading 8-7 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth against the Yankees in a subway series game, allowing them to win it 9-8, is a blunder of epic proportions.
Why didn’t he use two hands? Why did he throw to second base rather than home plate? Did he get out of Yankee Stadium alive? Those are just three of the many questions that immediately spring to mind (I’m assuming the answer to the third is ‘yes’ as I’ve not seen any ‘Mets infielder mauled by enraged fans’ news stories yet).
People often like to exaggerate the impact of a single moment in a game or to pin the outcome of an entire contest onto one person. Normally that isn’t a very accurate way to sum up a game, but in this case it’s fully justified.
Castillo’s error was the reason the Mets lost and nobody knows that better than Castillo himself.
The New York press will have a field day with this. The reaction of Mets fans on the web is predictably furious and Castillo is undoubtedly going to be mercilessly heckled (or plain verbally abused) by Yankee fans at today’s game. Professional sportsmen have to deal with such pressures on a regular basis, but this is going to be a tough day for Castillo.
Let’s see how he responds. Jerry Manuel has a decision to make on whether he sends him straight back out there. He’ll know Castillo’s character and should be able to judge if he’s the sort of person who would cope better by taking a day out of the firing line or meeting the situation head on.
It’s a day game at Yankee Stadium, so British baseball fans can join their North American counterparts (and other fans around the world) by following the action at a convenient hour. First pitch is set for 21.10 British Summer Time.
It promises to be quite an occasion.
Curse of the Bradley Goat
The Twins have just beaten the Cubs at Wrigley Field by a score of 7-4. This was a day game in Chicago, making it perfect Friday evening viewing here in Great Britain. It wasn’t perfect viewing for Cubs fans though.
They are not happy with their right-fielder.
Milton Bradley made two bad plays in the field. The first was an unfortunate case of him losing a high fly ball in the sun during the seventh inning. The fielder is always made to look completely clueless in this situation, with the ball landing several feet away, but it can happen to anyone.
The second mistake was less easy to forgive. The right-field crowd were on Bradley’s back due to his previous moment (not an ‘error’ for the purposes of the scorecard, of course) and when he easily grabbed a fly ball in the next inning, he posed to the crowd before chucking the ball into the stands.
Unfortunately for Bradley, his catch was only the second out of the inning.
The consequences weren’t huge in the context of the game. Punto tagged up and came home to score from third, something he would have done regardless of Bradley’s brainless error. Harris was able to move from first to third, but he was left stranded so no extra runs scored as a result.
However, it was a deeply embarrassing moment for Milton. He’ll have to put up with seeing it replayed countless times in the days and weeks ahead. More immediately, he’ll have to deal with the fans in right-field at Wrigley, who were not exactly holding back on telling Bradley what they thought of him.
Somehow controversy seems to follow Milton around.
MLB Draft 2009
In less than an hour, the Washington Nationals will be ‘on the clock’, ready to make the number one pick in the 2009 First-Year Player Draft. They’ve had months to prepare for this moment and by now they will have made their decision. We’re just waiting for it to be confirmed.
No doubt they will still take the full five minutes before actually announcing Stephen Strasburg. The draft isn’t exactly a quick-fire contest, although nor should it be considering how important it is for every team.
Just don’t take the full five minutes if you don’t have to. That’s all I ask.
We had the farce last year of the Rays sitting around for five minutes despite having already stated earlier in the day that Tim Beckham was their man. ESPN got some nice shots of Don Zimmer on the phone though, so I guess they were happy.
The whole concept of a player draft is intriguing to Brits as we don’t have an equivalent process in our sports. I can’t say watching it on MLB.com last year was my televisual highlight of 2008 as the whole process of waiting around for teams to pick does get a bit boring after a while. In an attempt to keep things interesting, I decided to write a live blog of the event last year.
Had I known beforehand that the first round alone would take three hours, I probably would have passed on the idea, but once I had started it I felt honour bound to finish that first round at least. Looking back over the text, it made for quite a fun evening.
I won’t be repeating it again this year because the start time of the draft has been pushed back by four hours. That means the first pick will be made at just after 11.00p.m. British time, with the first round due to be completed at two in the morning.
Nope, there’s no way I’m going to be able to keep awake all that while, particularly if Bud Selig is the Master of Ceremonies again.
I’m aiming to stick with it until the A’s first pick, lucky 13, and will be ‘tweeting’ along (remembering to use the #mlbdraft tag) instead of blogging. Follow @mattbaseballgb if you’re interested in the tired and slightly confused ramblings of a Brit with only a vague knowledge of the players involved.
Who wouldn’t want to follow after a sales pitch like that?!
MLB Teams: Minnesota Twins
Today we move from the NL Central to the AL Central to look at the Minnesota Twins.
Fellow British MLBlogger Marty has become a diehard Twins fans by following the advice of his Twins-supporting girlfriend (wise man!) and there are plenty of other reasons to make Minnesota your team as well.
Supporting a so-called big name team like the Yankees has its benefits, but for most Brits the prospect of getting behind a small-market team that has to battle against the odds to succeed is much more appealing. The Twins fit this description, to the extent that they recently had to battle just to stay in existence.
One of Bud Selig’s bright ideas of the late Nineties and early 2000s was to contract MLB to twenty-eight teams. Of course, that wouldn’t have meant two teams being relegated to a lower division; they would have simply ceased to exist.
The Twins were one of the main teams in the firing line and thankfully they avoided that fate. Well, perhaps it’s more accurate to state Minnesota avoided that fate, as the Twins’ owners didn’t exactly seem against the idea and had been trying to move the team elsewhere for years. As the team sprang back into life during the first-half of the 2000s, the threat of contraction was lifted (with the Expos being ripped away from Montreal and rebranded as the Washington Nationals) and baseball fans in Minnesota can now look ahead to the future with hope rather than the fear of their team being taken away.
That future includes a brand new ballpark. Target Field is scheduled to open next year and it will replace the unique Metrodome. I’ll miss watching games on TV being played there as it made for a very different setting, but no doubt the players and fans are looking forward to a new open-air home (subject to the wind and rain), without artificial turf and a white baggy ceiling that makes flyballs disappear like an Asprin dissolving in a glass of water.
A new ballpark means little if you haven’t got a good home team playing there (pick your own example from several contenders). The Twins have little to worry about in that respect as they have been a keen competitor in the AL Central for several years and no other team looks set to dominate the division in the near future.
Their small-market budget makes hanging on to their top players difficult and the passing of time won’t make seeing Torii Hunter and Johan Santana in Angels and Mets uniforms respectively any easier. However, smart teams are able to replace established stars with younger versions and that’s just what the Twins have done.
The Twins organization has a happy knack of spotting and developing pitchers, as shown by their current rotation containing Francisco Liriano, Scott Baker, Nick Blackburn and Kevin Slowey (along with Glenn Perkins who is currently on the disabled list). The one criticism of the Front Office in recent years has been their reluctance/inability to go out and add that one extra big bat to make the difference. Strong regular season campaigns produced five postseason visits between 2002 and 2006, yet they fell at the first hurdle on four occasions and were beaten 4-1 by the Angels in the ’02 ALCS in the only time they got any further. Just one more piece could have been enough to get them to the World Series, but a trade or big free agent signing never materialized.
Minnesota have brought through some talented position players though, not least the modern day ‘M and M’ boys: Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer. The former signed a five-year contract extension at the start of 2008 to tie him to the club until 2013 and thoughts are now turning to Mauer’s future as he will become a free agent at the end of the 2010 season. If they can keep hold of the local boy, the Twins have two excellent position players to build around for years to come.
Just to add to their appeal to Brits, the Twins also have a European link in Bert Blyleven. Blyleven was born in the Netherlands and is considered by many to be the best eligible pitcher not in the Hall of Fame. He helped the Twins win a World Series in 1987 (he also won one with the Pirates back in 1979) and now serves as the co-commentator on the Twins’ TV broadcast where he has become known for ‘circling’ fans with a telestrator (look out for all the ‘Circle me, Bert’ signs).
Oh, and their Double-A affiliate team are the New Britain Rock Cats.
Quite frankly, the Twins are one of the main teams I would recommend to a British newcomer. They are small-market underdogs with a strong recent history of bringing through home-grown players and they will have the attraction of a new ballpark to go and visit very soon. That makes for an excellent combination.
MLB Teams: Milwaukee Brewers
If you want to appeal to a British newcomer, having a name that relates to beer is as good a start as any. The Milwaukee Brewers get a tick in the box right from the off.
What’s more, the Brewers used to emphasise the link to their ale-brewing history even further through their mascot. Bernie Brewer would celebrate a home run by the home team by hurtling down a slide into a big mug of beer. Unfortunately that ‘dream-come-true’ moment was stopped when the team moved to their current ballpark, Miller Stadium, in 2001.
Apparently the sight of the kiddies’ favourite pal enjoying himself by bathing in booze wasn’t seen as being a very politically correct message to send out to impressionable youngsters. I guess they had a point, but it’s a shame nonetheless.
Bernie does still have a slide to ride down and if the absence of a beer-soaked landing means this act of entertainment doesn’t grab you, the famous sixth-inning sausage race might do instead. There’s nothing quite like watching a Bratwurst, Polish Sausage, Italian Sausage, Hot dog and Chorizo running down the warning track at Miller Park to make you forget about the worries of the world.
The Brewers do a great job of providing additional entertainment on the field, which does make you question whether these efforts are to cover up a lacklustre team.
There was a lot of merit to such a claim in the past as the Brewers haven’t been very successful over the years. The organization struggled in their 1969 debut season as the Seattle Pilots, a campaign immortalized in Jim Bouton’s ‘Ball Four‘. The team swiftly moved to Milwaukee for the following season and they’ve been there ever since.
Despite not moving location, the team has led a nomadic life for the weird and wonderful purposes of the MLB structure. First they were in the AL West, then the AL East, then the AL Central before controversially switching to the NL Central in 1998. They spent the majority of their time in the AL East (1972-1993), during which they achieved their lone World Series triumph in 1982.
That was the last time they had made the postseason until their 2008 season. The Brewers were playing well before the team’s owner did what every fan hopes for and made a blockbuster, ‘win now’ trade to acquire CC Sabathia. The team don’t have great financial resources and they knew in all likelihood they would be priced out of a longer term deal with their hired ace (and boy were they ever!), but they went for it anyway. Brewers fans enjoyed a mesmerizing three months in which Sabathia exceeded even the most outlandish expectations, finishing with an 11-2 record including seven complete games and an ERA of 1.65.
To further demonstrate their will to win, the Brewers made a stunning call by sacking manager Ned Yost with just two weeks of the season left to go. The team made it to the playoffs but couldn’t get any further than the first round and then saw Sabathia and Ben Sheets depart via free agency (although Sheets could possibly return once he regains his fitness). It made for a disappointing end to the fairytale season, yet at least the team had produced great excitement and genuine hopes of postseason success along the way.
Despite the departures, the Brewers remain as one of the better teams in the NL. Any team in the Majors would be happy to build around the likes of Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder and Yovani Gallardo and they are ably supported by other products of their farm system (J.J. Hardy, Rickie Weeks – when fit – and Manny Parra to name three examples) and some quality veterans. They look set to compete in the NL Central for the foreseeable future and the ownership and GM have proved that they will go all-out to try and bring success to the city.
Add those factors to the appealing ale links and the fact that they are not an ‘obvious’ pick (I haven’t come across many British Brewers fans) and you’ve got a team that should be a strong contender to win a Brit’s support.
And if they brought back the beer mug slide, it might not even be a contest.
An All-Star team of Major Leaguers who have played in Great Britain
British baseball fans all long for MLB teams to play a game or two on our shores in the near future. MLB has taken regular season and pre-season games out of North America in the recent past to help spread the baseball gospel and it would be incredible if it could happen.
The major obstacle to the plan is that we do not have a baseball-dedicated stadium over here. Games have been played at other types of venue, mainly cricket grounds, football/soccer stadiums and even greyhound stadiums, but the result is always something of a compromise for the players and, most importantly, the spectators.
So that dream will have to wait and we will look on with envy as NFL fans enjoy further regular season games in the UK and NBA and NHL fans hope for more games in the future (these sports can be accomodated much more easily in soccer stadiums and indoor arenas).
Yet baseball has visited the British Isles in the past, from the Big League Tour in 1874 and the famous Spalding World Tour of 1888-1889 to a Minor League game in 1993.
Josh Chetwynd (co-presenter of the much-missed MLB coverage in the UK and author of two McFarland publications: British Baseball and the West Ham Club, and Baseball in Europe) has written an article compiling an All-Star team of players who have appeared on British soil over the years. Featuring greats such as Willie Stargell, Tris Speaker, Cap Anson, Sam ‘Wahoo’ Crawford, Bob Feller and AG Spalding, it makes for an impressive team. More importantly, Josh’s article explains how every player ‘qualifies’ for the list, charting an interesting history of baseball’s visits to the UK.
The article has been written for Project Cobb (the Project for the Chronicling of British Baseball) and can be found at BaseballGB.co.uk.
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