EppsNet Archive: Baseball

Luis Tiant

My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Luis Tiant

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Luis Tiant won 229 games, with 2,416 strikeouts, a 3.30 ERA, 187 complete games and 49 shutouts. He was a three-time All-Star for and four-time 20-game winner. He was the American League (AL) ERA leader in 1968 and 1972 and the AL leader in shutouts in 1966, 1968, and 1974. In today’s game, where you can win a Cy Young award with zero shutouts and zero complete games, those stats would send you straight to the Hall of Fame but Tiant was not elected to the Hall of Fame. In 1968, Tiant Led the American League in ERA (1.60), shutouts (nine, including four consecutive), hits per nine innings (5.30) and strikeouts per nine innings (9.22), while finishing with a 21–9 record. His .168 opponent batting average set a new major league record, and his 19 strikeout/10 inning performance against the Minnesota Twins on July 3 set the American League record… Read more →

People I Thought Were Dead

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Jim Bakker – televangelist Richard Benjamin – actor Joe Biden – U.S. president Jimmy Carter – U.S. president Elizabeth Dole – U.S. cabinet secretary Sandy Koufax – baseball player Kreskin – mentalist and TV host Ralph Nader – consumer activist Richard Petty – auto racer Read more →

Pete Rose

My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Pete Rose

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Pete Rose was the greatest baseball player I’ve ever seen. If I had to explain baseball to an alien from another planet, I’d show the alien a highlight reel of Pete Rose. Rose is baseball’s all-time leader in hits, won three World Series championships, three batting titles, one Most Valuable Player Award, two Gold Gloves, and the Rookie of the Year Award. He made 17 All-Star appearances in an unequaled five positions (second baseman, left fielder, right fielder, third baseman, and first baseman). Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford gave Rose the nickname “Charlie Hustle” after Rose sprinted to first base after drawing a walk, which he did his entire career. (Current players rarely sprint to first base under any circumstances.) Despite, or because of, the derisive manner in which Ford intended it, Rose adopted that nickname as a badge of honor. There’s another version of the story in which Ford bestowed… Read more →

What Has Happened to Major League Baseball?

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View this post on Instagram A post shared by Boras Corporation (@borascorp) Blake Snell of the San Francisco Giants, the league’s reigning Cy Young Award winner, pitched the first no-hit game of his career a couple of nights ago, beating the Cincinnati Reds 3-0. Not only was it Snell’s first career no-hitter, it was the first complete game of his career. What has major league baseball come to when a starting pitcher wins a Cy Young award without throwing one single complete game?! It’s not as common as you might think for a reigning Cy Young winner to throw a no-hitter. It’s only happened five times before. Going back to when I was growing up watching baseball, Bob Gibson did it in 1971. As the Cy Young winner in 1970, Gibson pitched 20 complete games. That’s for one season. In his career, Gibson had 255 complete games. Baseball’s a totally… Read more →

My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Brooks Robinson

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Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson, the “Human Vacuum Cleaner,” has died at the age of 86. Robinson played his entire 23-year career with the Orioles. He was selected to 18 All-Star Games and earned the 1964 AL Most Valuable Player award after batting .318 with 28 home runs and a league-leading 118 RBIs. He won 16 consecutive Gold Gloves. He was the best-fielding third basemen I’ve ever seen. Robinson’s most memorable performance came as MVP of the 1970 World Series, a five-game triumph over the Reds, He hit .429, homered twice and drove in six runs. In Game 1, Robinson delivered the tiebreaking home run in the seventh inning. One inning earlier, he made a sensational backhanded grab of a hard grounder hit down the line by Lee May, spun around in foul territory and somehow threw out the runner. Robinson contributed an RBI single in the second… Read more →

My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Vida Blue

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Vida Blue was a left-handed pitcher between 1969 and 1986, most notably as a member of the starting rotation with the Oakland A’s dynasty that won three consecutive World Series championships between 1972 and 1974. He won the American League Cy Young Award and Most Valuable Player Award in 1971, the youngest American League player to win the MVP Award in the 20th century. He had a 24–8 record, an AL-leading 1.82 ERA, eight shutouts and 301 strikeouts. Those were the days when starting pitchers throwing a shutout weren’t taken out of the game because of a pitch count. Today, pitchers throwing no-hitters are pulled based on pitch counts. So eight shutouts is more than a current pitcher will likely throw in a lifetime. Pete Rose, the all-time hits leader and a good guy to go to for an opinion like this, said that Vida Blue threw as hard as… Read more →

My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Ray Fosse

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Ray Fosse was a major league catcher from 1967 to 1979, a two-time All-Star for the Cleveland Indians, a two-time World Series champion with the Oakland A’s, and a two-time Gold Glove winner. It probably has to be said that Fosse may be best remembered for the final play of the 1970 All-Star Game, in which he was injured in a collision with Pete Rose at home plate. Fosse sustained a fractured and separated shoulder, which healed incorrectly, causing chronic pain that was never entirely resolved. It was a controversial play. Rose said that he was simply trying to win the game, and it was well known that he played the game as aggressively as anyone. I assume Fosse thought that even Rose wouldn’t try to bolo him in an exhibition game, or maybe he was just trying to make a good baseball play. It does look from the photo… Read more →

My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: J.R. Richard

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Houston Astros icon J.R. Richard, whose career was cut short by stroke in 1980, dies at age 71 — espn.com We had a couple of catchers, one came with his arm in a sling and another came on crutches. There was something called J.R.-itis which was an incurable disease when you’re scared of J.R. Richard. It was like J.R. was only throwing from about 50 feet. With his reach and he was all legs, you didn’t have much time to make up your mind. … You didn’t really feel comfortable at the plate. He was the toughest guy I ever faced. — Dusty Baker Read more →

My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Henry Aaron

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Henry “Hammerin’ Hank” Aaron was an outfielder with the Milwaukee Braves, Atlanta Braves and Milwaukee Brewers. He was a 25-time All-Star, was elected to the MLB Hall of Fame in 1982, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002. He holds the MLB career records for RBI (2,297) and total bases (6,856), and was baseball’s home run king from 1974, when he hit number 715 off the Dodgers’ Al Downing, until 2007, when he was surpassed by the cheater Barry Bonds, who made a mockery of the most hallowed page of the MLB record book. Bonds hit 73 home runs in 2001 at the age of 37, and as Reggie Jackson said at the time, he would have hit 100 if anybody had pitched to him (he also had 177 walks). Aaron never hit more than 45 home home runs in a single season. Muhammad Ali once called… Read more →

My Boyhood Sports Icons are Dying: Bob Gibson and Joe Morgan

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Between games, [Willie] Mays came over to me and said, ‘Now, in the second game, you’re going up against Bob Gibson.’ I only half-listened to what he was saying, figuring it didn’t make much difference. So I walked up to the plate the first time and started digging a little hole with my back foot…No sooner did I start digging that hole than I hear Willie screaming from the dugout: ‘Noooooo!’ Well, the first pitch came inside. No harm done, though. So I dug in again. The next thing I knew, there was a loud crack and my left shoulder was broken. I should have listened to Willie. — Jim Ray Hart RIP Bob and Joe Read more →

My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Al Kaline

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Al Kaline played all 22 years of his career as a right fielder for the Detroit Tigers, played in 18 All-Star games, won 10 Gold Gloves, a World Series in 1968, had 3,007 hits, 399 home runs, a .297 batting average and was a first-ballot Hall of Famer. He died today at the age of 85. On his 80th birthday, he said: “To this day, I can’t believe the life I’ve had. I wanted to be a baseball player — and do the one thing I was good at. “Even now, I love it so much.” RIP Al Kaline Read more →

People I Thought Were Dead

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Earl Holliman, actor Sonny Jurgensen, football player Bill Mazeroski, baseball player Vera Miles, actress Pete Wilson, politician Read more →

My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Frank Robinson

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Frank Robinson played and managed for a number of teams, but I remember him best as part of the Baltimore Oriole teams managed by Earl Weaver, with Mark Belanger, Davey Johnson, Boog Powell, Don Buford, Paul Blair, Andy Etchebarren, Elrod Hendricks, Dave McNally, Mike Cuellar, Tom Phoebus, and fellow Hall of Famers Brooks Robinson and Jim Palmer. RIP Frank Robinson Read more →

Willie McCovey, 1938-2018

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Willie McCovey: Giants legend dead at 80 — SFChronicle.com My boyhood sports idols are dying . . . RIP Willie McCovey Read more →

People I Thought Were Dead

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Herb Alpert – trumpeter Max Baer Jr. – actor, “The Beverly Hillbillies” Barbara Bain – actress, “Mission: Impossible” Brigitte Bardot – actress Rona Barrett – gossip columnist Frank Borman – astronaut Roy Clark – musician Roger Corman – film producer Robert Crumb – cartoonist Bill Daily – actor Vic Damone – singer Angie Dickinson – actress Annette and Cecile Dionne – quintuplets Sam Donaldson – TV newscaster Hugh Downs – TV announcer Daniel Ellsberg – released the Pentagon Papers Barbara Feldon – actress Fannie Flagg – actress and game show panelist Larry Flynt – publisher of Hustler Whitey Ford – baseball pitcher A.J. Foyt – auto racer Ron Gallela – celebrity photographer, aka “paparazzo” Whitey Herzog – baseball manager Ernest Hollings – U.S. senator Cloris Leachman – actress Tom Lehrer – musical satirist Jerry Lee Lewis – singer and pianist G. Gordon Liddy – Watergate mastermind Rich Little – impressionist Peter Max… Read more →

World Series Game 7: Houston 5, LA 1

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Yu Darvish gives up 5 runs in an inning and two-thirds. Unless I’m forgetting someone, there really aren’t any clutch Asians in professional sports. Sorry Dodgers . . . see you again in 30 years. Embed from Getty Images Read more →

See You in Hell

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[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] I’m old enough to remember when professional athletes took pride in their trash-talking abilities. Now they sound like a bunch of 5-year-olds: he made a face at me, he called me a name, boo hoo hoo! One day when you’re rotting with leprosy and stewing in a million kettles of snot, cockroaches and gangrene — I stir them myself! — only then will you look back on this kindergarten-level bullshit and realize how good you had it! See you in Hell . . . Read more →

World Series Ring

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Our boy went to Chicago on a business trip . . . I was talking to him on the phone when he texted this picture from a Cubs game. “That’s a nice ring,” I said. “It’s a World Series ring.” “Where’d you get it?” “One of the ushers let me wear it for the picture.” “Ushers get World Series rings?” “Everybody in the organization got a ring.” I guess if you only win a World Series every hundred years or so, you can afford rings for the entire organization. Although I suspect the rings for the actual players have a little extra bling . . . Read more →

EppsNet Book Reviews: Mindset by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.

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Carol Dweck’s research is part of a tradition in psychology that shows the power of people’s beliefs. These may be beliefs that we’re aware of or unaware of but they strongly affect what we want and whether we succeed in getting it. This tradition also shows how changing people’s beliefs can have profound effects. Dweck’s insight into fixed mindset (bad) vs. growth mindset (good) is powerful but there’s really not enough to it to sustain a book-length exposition without a lot of repetition and illustrational anecdotes, the problem with which is 1) they tend to be overly simple tales of triumph and failure with clearly identified causes; and 2) they ignore the inevitability of regression. For example, two of the people Dweck identifies as exemplars of the growth mindset are Tiger Woods and Alex Rodriguez. Mindset was published in 2006, after which Woods’s career imploded in the wake of extramarital… Read more →

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