Hot Tip: Q/A With Ron Fairly

Great Q/A with Ron Fairly over on Fangraphs. Be sure to check it out. Good stuff on Juan Marichal, the Roseboro incident, Bob Gibson, Koufax, Drysdale and more. Wow! What a trip down memory lane!

Blast From the Past: RIP Ron Santo

The baseball heroes of my childhood are starting to die off. That is something that makes me sad. Ron Santo passed away this week at the age of 70, not a particularly advanced age in these times, but Santo overcame a lot to live that long.

Back in the 1960's, before free agency, most players, especially good ones played their entire careers with one team. I can still remember whole lineups from the '60's because they were the same year after year. Back then, the Cubs had a pretty good team, not as good as the Giants, of course, but a pretty good team. Their lineup looked something like this for several years running:

SS Don Kessinger
2B Glen Beckert
LF Billy Williams
1B Ernie Banks
3b Ron Santo
C Randy Hundley
CF Adolfo Phillips

They also had Ferguson Jenkins, Bill Hands, Ken Holtzman on the mound with Phil Regan, the "Vulture" as one of the first true closers in the game. Ron Santo was a key member of those Cubs teams, a perennnial all-star. He may have been the best third baseman in the game for the decade of the '60's. Many analysts believe that Santo is the best position player to have not made the Hall of Fame, a close call with pitcher Bert Blyleven for best overall.

What I remember most about Santo, and what comes out if you look up his stat page is his incredible consistency. For 13 seasons, from 1961-1973 he averaged 25 HR's with a BA of .280 and an OBP of .360 and never strayed too far from those numbers in any given season.

There are several things that have likely contributed to keeping Santo out of the HOF all these years. For one thing, he was not a flashy player and his consistency worked against him as he never led the league in anything except OBP while consistently finishing in the top 10 or top 20 in many categories. For another, the Cubs never went to the post-season in his career, something that gets a player a lot of attention outside their home city. The 1969 Cubs were probably the best team in the NL, but suffered an epic collapse down the stretch and lost the NL East title to the eventual WS champions, the Amazin' Mets.

Thirdly, he career was relatively short which held down some of the counting stats that get a player almost automatic consideration for the HOF. Santo may have contributed to the truncation of his career through some irrascibility. He often clashed with his Cubs Manager, Leo Durocher. After the 1973 season, in which Santo hit 20 HR's, the Cubs wanted to rebuild their team and had a young third baseman named Bill Madlock coming along. They worked out a trade to the Angels, but Santo exercised his newly acguired 10/5 privileges to veto the trade. He told the Cubs he would only approve a trade to one team, the crosstown Chicago White Sox. The White Sox gave up some pretty good players to get Santo, but didn't really have a place for him to play. They tried him at 2B, but he just didn't have the range for the position and struggled. He retired at the end of the season. Whether he could have put up a few more 20 HR seasons with the Angels and run up his counting stats, we'll never know, but had he done so, he would likely be in the HOF by now.

What makes Santo's story all the more remarkable is that he played his entire career and lived the vast majority of his life with type I diabetes. In case you are not aware, diabetes is incredibly destructive to the human body, gumming up the tiny arteries that supply blood cells carrying oxygen to the cells of the eyes, nerves, skin and kidneys causing those organs to fail long before their normal shelf life. I have personally seen many young diabetics with severe damage to their organs in their teens and twenties. Back in the 1960's, modern insulin preparations, insulin pumps, self testing of blood, and hemoglobin A1C's were unheard of. The primary goal of treatment was often to keep the patient out of hypoglycemia or insulin shock. As long as patients were not in diabetic ketoacidosis and not having hypoglycemia, most physicians thought they were doing great. For a baseball player to have a full career playing at a HOF or near-HOF level and then go on to live to age 70 and eventually die from another disease in that age is simply remarkable.

I don't know if Ron Santo will ever be voted into the HOF. If he is, it is a shame that he did not live to see that day. He is a member of my personal Hall of Fame, though.

Blast From the Past: Reggie Smith

Hey gang! There is a great read over on The Hardball Times entitled Card Corner: Topp's top 60 and Reggie Smith.

There's a Hardball Times link over on the right hand side of this blog. If that doesn't work for you, try

www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/card-corner-topps-60-and-reggie-smith

I remember the one season Reggie Smith played for the Giants. I was never sure what happened to him after that. Sounds like he had a pretty wild time over in Japan. Anyway, the featured card is Reggie Smith's 1983 Topps card from the 1 season he played for the Giants. Lots of great stuff in there including some nice things to say about Candlestick Park!

Highly recommended to check it out.

Blast From the Past: 1968 World Series Case Study

The 1968 World Series was only the 4'th World Series to enter my consciousness, but it is still one of my favorite ones to this day. The series featured the defending World Champion St. Louis Cardinals against the Detroit Tigers, a team that hadn't been in the World Series, let alone win it, for a long time. It was the Year of the Pitcher. Bob Gibson had his 1.12 ERA. Don Drysdale had his scoreless inning streak. Juan Marichal had what might have been the best season of his Hall of Fame career. On the AL side, Denny McLain of the Tigers became the first pitcher since Dizzy Dean, and maybe the last pitcher in baseball history, to win 30 games in one season.

I can still remember that Cardinals lineup like it was yesterday, exactly the same every day for 2 straight seasons:

LF Lou Brock
CF Curt Flood
RF Roger Maris
1B Orlando Cepeda
C Tim McCarver
3B Mike Shannon
2B Julian Javier
SS Dal Maxvill

My memories of the Tigers lineup are less clear. As a Giants fan, pretty much all of the games I listened to on the radio during the season were NL games, so I don't know much about the AL players. The Tigers offense was led by a couple of aging vets, Al Kaline and Norm Cash plus Willie Horton(no, not THAT Willie Horton!)

Game 1 was much anticipated as it featured Gibson, coming off one of the most dominant seasons a pitcher has ever had and winning 3 WS games against the Red Sox the year before. Of course, the Tigers had Denny McLain the 30 game winner. The game was no contest. McLain wasn't a bad pitcher, but his 30 wins were due as much to great run support as pitching brilliance. Gibson, on the other hand, had been truly dominant all year and Gibby always seemed to be at his best in the World Series. The WS games were all played in the daytime back then. I remember our teacher turning on the TV in the classroom for the 9'th inning as Bob Gibson finished off a World Series record 17 strikeouts for a complete game 4-0 shutout. Wow! Knowing that Gibson would be pitching 2 more games in the series, and knowing what he had done to the Red Sox the year before, things certainly looked bleak for the Tigers.

The Tigers, though, had an ace-in-the-hole, another pretty good starting pitcher named Mickey Lolich, a lefthander, who had won 17 games in the regular season. Lolich was a fat tub of lard, especially around the middle part of his body, and was fond of making jokes of it, trying to appeal to Joe Sixpack who was watching the games on TV. I didn't think too much of his 8-1 victory in game 2 featuring his only HR of his career.

I don't remember the pitchers for game 3, but Lou Brock continued to run wild on the bases stealing 3 and the Cards won 7-3. The series seemed to be all but over when the Cards embarrassed Denny McLain in Game 4 while Gibson continued his dominance while winning 10-1. It was Gibson's 7'th consecutive World Series win dating back to 1964.

When the Cards opened game 5 with a 3 run first inning off Mickey Lolich, any reasonable person would have thought that was it. Lolich hung in there, though. He pitched 8 more innings of shutout ball. Lou Brock got a bit careless and was thrown out by LF Willie Horton at home plate trying to score standing up from 2B on a single to LF. The Tigers fought their way back and ended up winning 5-3. The Tigers still trailed the series 3 games to 2 with 2 left to play in St Louis and Bob Gibson slated to pitch the final game. In desperation, the Tigers sent Denny McLain out on 2 days rest, I think more to get him away from having to face Gibson than anything, but it seemed like a reasonable move since McLain had come out in the 3'rd inning of game 4. Jim Northrup hit a grand slam HR and McLain had this strongest start of the series as the Tigers cruised to a 13-1 win.

Now Game 7 loomed as the deciding game. The mighty Gibson was on his normal 3 days of rest while the Fat Tub of Lard, Lolich, was coming off just 2 days of rest after pitching two complete game victories already. It didn't seem possible that this obviously out of shape pitcher nobody had heard of before could do anything to stop the inevitable Gibson domination. Lolich, though, matched Gibby pitch for pitch, out for out, for 6 innings of a scoreless game. I was in school and the game had started at 11:00 PDT. The teacher turned on the TV at lunch time, I think it was around the 5'th inning or so, and then let us stay in from recess to watch the game. In the top of the 7'th, Gibson, amazingly, was the first to crack. With 2 outs, Norm Cash and Willie Horton both singled. Jim Northrup then hit a towering drive to dead center field that the Gold Glover Flood misjudged and allowed to sail over his head for a two run triple. Catcher Bill Freehan then doubled to drive in Northrup and the score was suddenly 3-0 Tigers. It was, and still is, one of the darndest things I've ever witnessed as a baseball fan. Lolich hung on for a complete game, 5 hit, 4-1 win and the Tigers were the World Champions!

So, what lessons can we learn from this tale? I have several thoughts that might become applicable as the Giants head into a 7 game series in which they are the clear underdogs:

1. Don't panic if you lose the first game. 7 games is actually a long series and there is opportunity for comeback.

2. Don't panic if your ace gets blown out by their ace. Again, it's a 7 game series with opportunity for redemption.

3. Keep competing for every inning of every game. You never know what the turning point of the series will be or when it might happen.

4. There is time to make adjustments. If something isn't working in the first 3- 4 games, try something different!

5. Most important, in a low scoring pitcher's duel, ANYTHING can happen in the late innings. It was true in game 7 of the 1968 series and we saw it repeatedly in the NLDS.

Go Timmy!! Go Giants!!!

Blast from the Past: Gene Conley

I'm usually pretty good at sports trivia questions, but I learned something new this last week.

Q: Who is the only athlete to win championships in 2 of the 4 major U.S. sports?

A: Gene Conley.

I guess I had vaguely heard of Conley before, but I have to admit this was a completely new one to me. I knew Dave DeBusschere, who starred with the New York Knicks had also played MLB baseball. Of course, I knew about Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson more recently, but none of them won championships in baseball.

Gene was born in Muskogee, OK(Yes, there actually is a Muskogee, OK) in 1930, but grew up in eastern Washington state. He was a big kid at 6'8", 225 lbs, and starred in both baseball and basketball for Washington State University where the baseball team achieved a #2 national ranking, and he scored 20 points/game in basketball where he made honorable mention to the All-American team twice.

He signed a professional baseball contract with the Boston Braves organization for $3000 in 1950 and was in the majors by 1952. The Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee, and Conley's first full season was 1954 about the time Hank Aaron was breaking in with the Braves. Conley went on to pitch successfully in the majors until 1963. He compiled an overall record of 91-96. During this time he made 4 All-Star game appearances and was the winning pitcher in the 1954 MLB All-Star game. He played on the 1957 Milwaukee Braves team that won the World Series. He only appeared in 1 WS game giving up 2 runs in 1.2 IP. He regularly finished in the top 25 pitchers in the NL in multiple categories and in some years in the top 10. Gene pitched for Milwaukee through the 1958 season and then finished his career with the Phillies and Red Sox.

His baseball teams did not want him to play basketball and sometimes gave him extra pay to agree not to play basketball. The lure was always there, though and he played a total of 6 seasons in the NBA with the Celtics(1953, 1959-61) and the New York Knicks(1963-64). He was mostly a reserve power forward and rebounding specialist who averaged 6.3 rebounds in just 16.5 minutes played per game. He played on 3 championship teams with the Boston Celtics in 1959-61, playing with the likes of Bill Russell.

Conley loved the Boston area and settled there after retirement from professional sports. He and his wife Kathryn owned their own company, the Foxboro Paper Company for 36 years until they retired from the business. They moved to Florida and currently live in New Hampshire at their long time vacation home. His wife Kathryn wrote a book about his career and life that was published in 2004 entitled One of a Kind. It is about his life in both baseball and basketball and how the family dealt with him being away so much. Kathryn worked on the book for about 10 years. Gene did not look at it until it was published.

Gene Conley is the answer to one more sports trivia question: Who is the only professional athlete to play for 3 major league teams in one city? (Boston Braves, Boston Celtics and Boston Red Sox). Gene Conley was truly one of a kind!