Top 32 Players In Baseball

This should go big on the Sports Illustrated site tomorrow, but if you would like an early look .. here is is my 11,000-word monstrosity on the Top 32 players in baseball.

The 32 Best Players In Baseball For 2011

An Interview With UZR

Brilliant Reader Jon sent in this story by my friend Pat Reusse called "You can take your UZR and ..."

The story is actually quite a fun read. I mean, yes, there are a couple of shots at statistics and the people who love them. So what? My friend Dave Krieger in Denver wrote about me being abducted to Planet Bill James (the cable channels up there are INCREDIBLE). I sometimes wonder why anybody in this crazy business of sports would take him or herself too seriously.

Sports Poscast Theme Song

So, here's the deal. The Poscast needs a theme song. Well, if you want to get technical about it, the Poscast needs a better studio host, an iTunes home, better sound quality, crazy sound effects like they used to have on the old Hanna Barbera shows, and, of course, free Buffalo wings for everyone.

The First Sports Poscast

Well, against my better judgment -- and the better judgment of anyone who has ever heard me on radio -- I have decided to start podcasting. This is not entirely because of my editor, who has been stalking me for more than a year to get me to do it. This is only MOSTLY because of my editor, who has been stalking me for more than a year to get me to do it.

The great thing about doing Sports Poscasts (at least in theory) is that I don't have to do them alone ... and I have the good fortune of knowing some great people who are much better at this than I am. I'm hoping to have them as regular co-hosts so they can carry me. We will see how it plays out.

My first Sports Poscast co-host is with one of those great people -- Michael Schur, creator and Executive Producer of the fabulous Parks and Recreation on NBC (Thursday nights, right after The Office). Mike, as you probably know, is also one of the founders of the legendary Fire Joe Morgan Web site and one of the funniest people I've ever met. He's also Paul. We preview the baseball season and, as you might expect based on this blog's history, go way longer than we intended. Future Poscasts should be shorter. Comments, questions, suggestions, chocolate-covered strawberries can all be sent here.

You may notice, if you listen that long, that when we had the conversation, Bartolo Colon appeared slotted as the Yankees fifth starter. Please feel free to replace those words with the equally frightening words "Freddy Garcia." Next time, we'll get the thing up faster.

The next Sports Poscast, I'm hoping, will be with Bill James though I must admit that I'm not entirely sure Bill is completely out of hiding after the Kansas game just yet.

Here is the first Sports Poscast.

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Postscript: I should add here that the Sports Poscast will be on iTunes, hopefully in the next couple of days. Will keep you updated. Also the sound quality should get better when we get all the equipment set up in and in working order. Until then, yes, we do indeed plan on continuing to record our Poscasts through a baby monitor.

Who Am I To Argue?

My mother cannot quite tell a joke. I think my mother is very funny, and she has a great sense of what is funny, but she cannot quite tell a joke, which is a very different skill. She disagrees, of course, but there is quite a lot of family evidence going back years to the Posnanski famous, "I passed all the cars on the road," punch-line. She was telling the rather famous joke about the man who is pulled over for speeding and says to the officer: "You think I was speeding? You should have seen the cars I passed."

My mother's version was: "You think I was speeding? I passed all the cars on the road."

In any case, my mother's favorite joke in my mind involves the correct way to respond when winning awards. That correct way is like so: "I don't deserve this honor ... but who am I to argue?"

Chinese Jibberish

"And then I was looking at the little Chinese lady. There was a beauty to her -- she was just a tiny little Chinese lady, I was staring at her because I was fascinated by her. I don't know anybody like her, and I am SO not a little old Chinese lady.

"Then I look and I think, 'What are her thoughts?' That's what I was burning inside with. 'What is she thinking right now?' I can never know. And my dumb brain is telling me she's just thinking: 'Ching chung cheeng, chung cheeng chaing.' That's how dumb I am, that I think Chinese jibberish that I made up is in her actually Chinese mind."

-- Louis CK

Men of Honor

Years and years ago, I wrote a newspaper column that -- technically, I guess -- could have gotten me fired. It was a column about silence. I won't go into too many of the details but I'll tell you that the column involved a barber shop, a series of racist jokes and the disgraceful silence of the young man getting his hair cut, the young man being me. I just sat there, in that lost world between embarrassment and rage, while these racist jokes flew around the room. I didn't say a word. I didn't express my disgust. I didn't walk out. I didn't stand up and break out into a "To Kill A Mockingbird" speech. I just stayed quiet. The column was about my own shame, about the shame of being silent in the face of small injustices, about that "Hey, you can't change the world," feeling that I used as a crutch to make myself feel better.

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum

When you first walk into the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, you will find yourself looking at a baseball field with players on it. Only you will find yourself looking at that field and those players from the other side of chicken wire. The image, of course, was about separation. Through the years, I looked through that chicken wire with Willie Mays and Hank Aaron and Albert Pujols. Through the years, I stood by that chicken wire and listened to stories from Buck O'Neil and Double Duty Radcliffe and Connie Johnson and the great Monte Irvin, who on his best days, before the war and before integration, might have been the best who ever lived.

The Biggest Winner

January 23, 2011
Weight: 247.3 pounds
Overweight by 71.3 pounds

What does inspiration mean in sports? Strip down the word. Remove its jewelry. I was there the night Derek Jeter hit the home run at Yankee Stadium while smoke rose from Ground Zero, and the crowd sang "New York, New York," again and again long after the game ended, as if to shout "We're still here!" And it felt … inspiring.

But what does that mean? What is inspiration? I was there the night Mario Chalmers hit a long jump shot, the night Usain Bolt disappeared into a blur, the day Tiger Woods chipped in on the 16th green at Augusta. I was there when Kerri Strug landed on one leg, when Pete Sampras vomited and won, when David Tyree pressed the football against his helmet, when Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal. Inspiring? Certainly. All of it.

Except … these bits of inspiration are wrapped in a minor chord. Inspiration in these cases means to be animated with a powerful emotion. I felt chills. I was overcome by wonder. My feelings soared. I wanted to stand and shout. That's inspiration, sure, but there's another meaning of inspiration, a bigger meaning. Sometimes, at its grandest, inspiration actually inspires us -- to do something, to be something, to reach for something bigger and deeper and higher within ourselves.

How often does real inspiration happen in sports?

An Announcement

Growing up, I never could have imagined that I would write a book. In those days, I could barely imagine reading a book ... unless it was something by Alfred Slote or Matt Christopher or someone like that. I remember when I was 8 or 9, my mother decided it was time I read Moby Dick. If someone had told me at any point during that agonizing process that I would write a book, any book, I would have undoubtedly thrown Moby Dick at them. And, as you know if your mother made you read Moby Dick, that would have hurt.

The Bonds Trial

So here's the thing: I love courtroom scenes. Paul Newman in "The Verdict," and Al Pacino in "And Justice for All?" Awesome. The jury room in "12 Angry Men?" Fabulous. The real culprit shouting out from the back of the court room, "Yes I did it! And I'd do it again!" in Perry Mason? Can't get enough. I love the cross examination of Jack Nicholson (as unrealistic as the Perry Mason scenes), the literary recounting of Scopes in "Inherit the Wind," the throwing of the briefcase on The Brady Bunch, and the yutes in "My Cousin Vinny." Basically, I love them all.

Terrible Timeouts

I love just about everything about the first week of March Madness. I love the wall-to-wall games. I love the upsets. I love the blowouts. I love the great individual performances. I love the close final minutes. I love the enthusiasm of the players, the fans, Kevin Harlan. The regular college basketball season doesn't do much for me, but March makes it all worthwhile.

Except for one thing ... I am SO sick of the studio hosts talking again and again and again about the officiating.

Lamp Posts

Brilliant Reader Elmaquino5 just put into absolutely perfect words why I find that anti-stats crowd so baffling. He puts it it perfectly in back to back sentences in a comment, the first sentence his own, the second sentence a famous quote by Vin Scully:

First sentence: "That's why I'm content with averages, HRs, etc. I just don't see why you have to get too specific."

Second sentence: "Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: For support, not illumination". --Vin Scully.

My Mother's Basement

"It won't be long before we get the first wave of nonsense from stat-crazed dunces claiming there's nothing to be learned from a batting average, won-loss record or RBI total. Listen, just go back to bed, OK? Strip down to those fourth-day undies, head downstairs (to "your mother's basement and your mother's computer," as Chipper Jones so aptly describes it) and churn out some more crap. For more than a century, .220 meant something. So did .278, .301, .350, an 18-4 record, or 118 RBIs. Now it all means nothing because a bunch of nonathletes are trying to reinvent the game?"

-- San Francisco columnist Bruce Jenkins

Guest Post: Year of the Pitcher?

You probably already know about my obsession with the juicing and deadening of baseballs. I am not a conspiracy theorist by trade -- that's my wife's department -- but I remain utterly (and, I admit, bizarrely) convinced that the commissioner of baseball can dramatically influence the game by having the composition of the baseball changed even slightly. More than that, I remain convinced that commissioners HAVE dramatically influenced the game.

But, to even things out, I also believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

In any case, I think that nothing -- not steroid use, not harder bats, not higher mounds, not widened strike zones -- can so clearly and overwhelmingly impact offense like changes in the baseball. I believe that's how the home run year of 1987 happened. I believe that was an important part of the offensive spike after the 1994 strike. There are numerous other smaller examples. I'm not saying -- and, in all seriousness, do not really think -- that this was always a masterminded plot. But whatever the reasons, I think that in baseball if you want to explain a rather sudden and shocking shift ... check the baseball first.

So, naturally when Brilliant Reader Chuck sent along a theory about how he thinks 1968 might not have been the year of the pitcher as much as it was the year of the mushy baseball, well, it was like sending a hare-brained plot to Oliver Stone.

And so, I reprint it here. Please discuss:

Zero Intentional Walks

So I was thinking about one of the coolest statistical anomalies in baseball history -- that Roger Maris was not intentionally walked a single time the year he hit 61 home runs. I first heard that stat, nerdily enough, at a baseball card show. There was some kind of trivia contest going on, and one of the questions was, "How many times was Roger Maris intentionally walked the year he hit 61 home runs?"

Bizarrely, my guess was 61. Well, how would I know? I was like 14.

Carrying A Team

While looking up Darrell Porter's career for the recent Royals Hall of Fame post, I came across George Brett again. This happens every so often -- George's career is endlessly fascinating to me. And I realized that George could have won four MVP awards in his career. I'm not saying he SHOULD have won four, but he certainly could have ... there's a strong case to be made for all four. I should tell you that this post, by the end, is not specifically about George Brett ... it's about the best offensive players on World Series teams. But it will take a few paragraphs to get there.

George Brett won his only MVP award in 1980, of course. It's one of the greatest offensive seasons in baseball history. My first ever book idea was actually to write about Brett's 1980 season ... and how close he really came to hitting .400. I'd love to revisit that someday.

Why We Have Halls of Fame

We have a couple of Royals inspired posts today to go along with my story in this week's Sports Illustrated about the exciting future of the Kansas City Royals. We start with the sad promotion that is "Fans voting for the Royals Hall of Fame."

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Sometimes, I think people complete miss the point of Hall of Fames. I am talking specifically here about the Kansas City Royals. But this really could refer to almost anyone. It seems to me that a Hall of Fame is about celebrating something -- a sport, a team, a a culture, something. The most famous (and in my opinion, best) of these is the Baseball Hall of Fame because of its history and mythology and remarkable flexibility. By flexibility, I mean that people tend to think the Baseball Hall of Fame is exactly WHAT THEY WANT IT TO BE.

Inspiration and Perspiration

Got a great little lesson about stats, life and Tiger Woods last week. Well, it might not actually be a lesson about life or Tiger Woods, but it is definitely a good lesson about stats.

I recently posted a long and rambling thing about a few of the hitting stats that I find interesting. I don't like all of them, certainly do not like them all equally, but what I like about advanced baseball statistics are that they can get you thinking about HOW you might try to measure something. How would you go about trying to measure a batter's hitting ability? A pitcher's ability to prevent runs? A defender's ability to play his position? These are complicated questions with many, many layers of questions within them. It's fascinating for me to see some of the more thoughtful statistical minds attack all these questions.

Stones

When I was in Japan a few years back to write a story about former Royals manager Trey Hillman, I woke up in the middle of the night with a kind of crazy back pain. I wrote a bit about it -- and how Bruce Springsteen's "Girls in their Summer Clothes" helped save me. But the thing is I never really knew what happened that night. I figured that it had something to do with how hard the bed or something. The funny part is that I was talking about it with Dave Owen, brother of Spike, who was Trey's bench coach in Japan. And Dave said: "Well, at least it wasn't kidney stones."

And I said: "Well, that's good to hear. I was actually worried that it was kidney stones."

And he said: "Oh, if you have kidney stones, you will know. Worst pain of my life."

My Guide to Stats: Offense

Last week, I made a mistake on Twitter. That's a pretty common sentence, I suspect. In this instance, I was talking about how I will almost certainly (and, I suspect, stupidly) buy the iPad 2 within the first couple of days, and I said that this is because I'm a "technology geek." I meant this as self-mockery. I meant geek in the textbook definition of the word, geek being "a person with eccentric and unhealthy devotion to a particular interest." The trouble is, geek has taken on new definitions in 2011 America. Best Buy has a Geek Squad. It is often said that the Geeks -- Bill Gates and that Facebook Guy being the most obvious examples -- are taking over the world. Computer geeks are viewed as the kinds of people you want as friends, or at least friends when your computer screen turns bright purple.

Geek has come to mean "somewhat socially inept but incredibly brilliant person when it comes to one subject." Well, I'm not that kind of geek I don't know squat about technology. I just like buying the overpriced latest thing. It is why my wife and I owned what I have to believe was the third or fourth DIVX machine ever built (or, certainly, one of three or four LAST DIVX machines ever built), it is why I have about 50 stupid and pointless gadgets stacked around my house, it is why the other day I made a specific run to the Verizon store so I could spend a half hour looking at the new XOOM tablet even though I ALREADY HAVE an iPad and ALREADY DECIDED I'm going to get the new one as soon as possible. I have an unhealthy obsession for buying new technology though I know absolutely nothing about it. There's no word I know for "Dumb Geek."*

*Deek?

Quick Update

Got a bunch to say -- about baseball stats, about the Tremendous writer's retreat we just finished, about the subject of my favorite ever sports event, about the iPad 2, about the 32 best players in baseball, about my favorite day in the NBA, about something that is still secret -- but I'm running in so many directions at the moment that I'm not sure how or when I'll get to any of it.

In the meantime, through a series of misunderstandings, I ended up downloading William Hazlitt's "Lectures on the English Poets Delivered at the Surrey Institution." I assume that this is a classic because I was able to download it for free, but I must admit I knew nothing whatsoever about it or Hazlitt or really English Poets. I am reading it now and I am shocked to report that ... it's is absolutely wonderful and mind-blowing.

Two quotations -- the first a bit longer -- about poetry, but really about writing, but really about life:

"Fear is poetry, hope is poetry, love is poetry, hatred is poetry; contempt, jealousy, remorse, admiration, wonder, pity, despair, or madness, are all poetry. Poetry is that fine particle within us that expands, rarifies, refines, raises our whole being: without it 'man's life is poor as beast's.' ... The child is a poet, in fact, when he first plays hide-and-seek, or repeats the story of Jack the Giant-killer; the shepherd-boy is a poet, when he first crowns his mistress with a garland of flowers; the countryman, when he stops to look at the rainbow; the miser, when he hugs his gold; the courtier, who builds his hopes upon a smile; the savage, who paints his idol with blood; the slave, who worships a tyrant, or the tyrant who fancies himself a god."

The second quotation is the best description I have ever heard of blogging.

"It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant 'satisfaction to the thought.' This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, or comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and the pathetic."

If I ever thought something as awesome as "the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have," I'm pretty sure my life would be complete. Though I did write that thing about Snuggies.

The Joy Of Rooting Against LeBron

The bitterness, if it ever was really bitterness, has subsided for me now. I know it hasn't for everyone. I know that my friend Scott Raab still regularly unleashes "Careful ... hot plate" Tweets against the man he calls "The Whore of Akron." The book will be coming out soon. I know a few friends back home in Cleveland who still refuse to say his name, who will refer to him only (and rarely) as "traitor." I have one friend, a lifelong NBA fan, who in the last couple of weeks says he has simply given up on professional basketball; he says it's no fun if the players can simply demand trades and choose friends to play with like it's a high-priced pickup basketball game.

"I'm not saying that I'm right," he says (he's a lawyer). "The players have every right within the rules to do what they're doing. I'm just saying that it's no fun for me as a fan anymore."

Behind The Back Page

The best part was talking boxing. It's hard to explain how good it made me feel to be around Nick Charles for the Point After this week, hard to explain because this is one of the saddest stories I've ever written. Nick Charles is dying. How is it possible to feel anything but deep sadness in moments like that?

But believe me when I tell you: I did not feel sad being around Nick Charles. Certainly, of course, there was sadness in the air. Wistfulness. Nick talked about everything. He cried some and apologized for that. I felt a lump or two in my throat now and again and tried to keep Nick from seeing. But the tone was joy, and the themes were life, and the connection was family. We talked about growing up, and about our favorite books, and about watching Barbie movies with our daughters. We both think The Three Musketeers might be the best one. Neither of us was crazy about Mermadia.

1955 MVP: A Detective Story

Sometimes, I simply cannot let go of something. That's kind of strange because I hardly am the type of person who holds on to things. Most of the time I don't have the patience to hold on to anything. I don't do puzzles. I'm not the type of person who needs to make the last basket I shoot before leaving the court, or the type of person who avoids stepping on cracks in the sidewalk or even the type of person who cares that a chewed piece of gum has been on my desk for three months. Hey's IT'S WRAPPED.

But every now and again, something gets stuck in my head and I have to try and solve it or it drives me bonkers. This was the case a couple of years ago with the Stan Musial story about the umpire overruling a key Musial hit. The story was relayed several different ways in the various books and magazine articles I read about Musial, and I retold the story as it was recorded, and then someone pointed out that it couldn't be true as published. So I scoured -- and I do mean scoured -- old newspapers accounts for a long time before I finally found the true story, which was similar but not exactly the same.

Were the stories different enough that it REALLY mattered? I guess it depends on your point of view. Like I say, my crazy mind wouldn't let go.

So, my mind is stuck on another one: The 1955 MVP race between Duke Snider and Roy Campanella. I must find an answer. And so ... I started looking.

Frenchy And Hope

There are two things to understand about Jeff Francoeur, two contrasting things that constantly have head-on collisions, two things that have made him one of the more talked about players in baseball the last five years.

First thing: He is the most joyous guy out there. He is the guy who is running hard during base running drills and slapping guys on the butt as they get to home plate and bringing energy to a lazy Arizona morning. He is the guy smiling during batting practice as he tries to steal an extra swing or two, the one talking up teammates as they take their swings, the one sprinting from field to field to get to the next drill. He is the guy kidding one television reporter about his golf game, the guy asking the kid who wants his autograph his name and age, the guy who lost 25 pounds so that once again at the start of spring he would be in the best shape of his life.

It is impossible -- utterly impossible -- not to root for this Jeff Francoeur.