2021 World Series: Parade of Spare Parts

11/1/2021

Only seven years ago, real starting pitchers

Is this the World Series that is going to take baseball down?

I ask this as a certified Old Guy who has been following the World Series since 1946 (I was quite young) when Harry (The Cat) Brecheen, a wiry lefty, pitched 20 innings and won three games for the Cardinals.

Pitchers were epic back then and remained so until the past decade when almost all of them became spear carriers in an opera that drones on, too long, every night.
(And it’s not totally the fault of Joe Buck and Fox, either.)

In the formerly showcase season-ending event that once saw Deacon Phillippe of Pittsburgh pitch 44 innings and win three games in 1903….and Bob Gibson of St. Louis pitch 27 innings and win three games in 1967 ….and, as recently as 2014, Madison Bumgarner of San Francisco pitched 21 innings and won two games.

Seven years later, pitchers are interchangeable, and mostly forgettable, used by managers and coaches who burn to win, and know their game and their players, but are under the un-calloused thumb of mysterious analytics wizards, chained in the laboratory, coming up with numbers that general managers (and club owners) pay for and force upon their managers.
The result is two pitching staffs of spare parts, not a commanding figure among them.

To be fair, I love some players on both teams -- the miniature second basemen, Altuve and Albies, the Old Reliables, Brantley and Freeman. As good as it gets. But gone is the epic figure on the mound , the center of the action.

After five games – the shuttle resumes Tuesday night in Houston, with the Braves up, three games to two – the pitching staffs are mutually anonymous.
The most innings by a Braves pitcher is 5.1 by Kyle Wright who pitched most of the season for the Gwinnett farm team in the Atlanta region.

The most innings by an Astros pitcher has been tossed by Jose (Hombre de Acero) Urquidy – a massive total of 6. Urquidy also has 2 victories – but may not be remembered along with Bob Gibson, who on the final weekend of the 1964 season pitched eight innings (and lost to the Mets) and then gutted his way through 4 innings on Sunday to help the Cardinals nail down their first pennant since 1946.

I remember. I was there. I can still see Gibson on the stairs to the players-only loft. “Hoot, how’s your arm?” a reporter asked. “Horseshit!” Gibson bellowed. After that game, kindly Manager Keane was asked why he went so often with a fatigued pitcher. “I had a commitment to his heart,” Keane said softly – one of the most touching answers I have heard in decades of sports interviews.

Gibson then started the second game of the Series and pitched 8 innings and lost, and won the fifth game in 10 innings) and then won the seventh game in 9 innings to ice the World Series. He had pitched 56 innings in 22 days

Is this sort of super-human out of stock these days? Have the hitters become so bulked-up, so fearsome, that statisticians dictate pitching changes, while a rank smell of fear permeates the ball parks?
Is this the reason baseball has the feel of an ancient ritual, that appeals mostly to geezers with memories, like me?

Part of the problem is the glut of commercials and other baseball promos between every inning.
And the television production is numbing, with statistics for “post-season” accomplishments being flung at the viewers with no context and no compelling narrative. Joe Buck is plastic and John Smoltz, while he surely knows the game, is humorless.

I’m an early person anyway, and I dozed here and there, but for the fifth game I switched to radio,with the TV on blessed mute.
The ESPN crew of Dan Shulman, Jessica Mendoza and Eduardo Pérez was vastly better – more interplay and humor and even disagreement, plus expertise (Mendoza was an Olympic softball star, Pérez played over a decade in the majors.
Vastly better. ESPN is 98.7 on the FM radio in the New York area.

Nevertheless, the World Series lacks star pitchers who command attention. No Christy Mathewson, no Smoky Joe Wood, no Mickey Lolich, no Randy Johnson.

You want a plot? You want drama? Go watch baseball, in the international spotlight, throttle itself.

Dusty Baker and Latter-Day Iron Man

Alan D. Levine

11/1/2021 10:02:54 pm

I just plain haven't watched. My wife, Sandy, and I found the final four episodes of the 2019 Ric Burns Country Music history in the library and watched one episode a night. TCM had "Blow Out," which we had never seen, on. I've had work to do. The New Yorker arrives every Tuesday. I'll be back to baseball in the Spring. And, I might add, my fifty-one-year-old son, who goes with me to about twenty Mets games every year, hasn't watched either. He's either working (at last, after theater and music venues being shut down for eighteen months) or working his way through his cache of DVRd Japanese films.

George Vecsey

11/2/2021 07:49:45 am

Alan: Our quite-grown son does go to games, and agonizes over the Mets. But soccer has moved into the younger generation(s)...and I can understand. Liverpool-Man City: under two hours, and constant action.
We're spoiled by the Mets announcers. I miss them more than I miss the egomaniacs Lindor and Baez, GV

Alan Rubin link

11/2/2021 03:12:10 pm

I have read several books on the use of statistics in soccer. Simom Kuper has several good ones.

Some teams and managers make too many decisions based upon the stats they receive. Good managers use them properly, look for a few meaningful stats and make decisions based upon what is happening in front of them.

Alan Rubin link

11/2/2021 02:55:43 pm

I'm with Alan Levine. I no longer watch baseball, but I watch soccer games with the sound off, even if I cannot get them on the radio. It is closer to the feel of being in the stands.

My retail appliance store was on the SW corner of Broadway and 98th Street. I always had a TV on in the front window during the World Series. Remember, they played during the day back then.

At one of my daughter's book talks in NYC, some told of how he and his brother would watch the WS on the TV in the store window and listen on the radio.

I believe that relief pitching became more noticed, and important, with Joe Page of the NY Yankees back in the 1940's. He was one pitch from being sent down.

It was the ninth inning and I was watching the game on TV. He walked three batters to load the bases with on outs at Yankee Stadium. He then struck out the side and went on to being call "The Fireman" for his reliable relief pitching. He became a true stopper.

I have always been fascinated by the history of people over the centuries who were one step from disasters and went on to achieve greatness.

Link to NYT article of 5,000 days at the Grand Old Opry.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/31/arts/music/grand-old-opry-5000-broadcast.html

I listened every Saturday night in the 1940's as a kid in Manhattan.

George Vecsey

11/2/2021 03:46:19 pm

Alan: I saw Billy Martin catch Jackie Robinson's wind-blown popup, in the window of an appliance store on Hillside Ave.,outside the subway stop, while waiting for the bus home from junior high school. Yankees ruined another day for me. GV

Bill Wakefield

11/1/2021 11:47:43 pm

George - I had to smile because unprompted by your Parade of Spare Parts - I was thinking/doing the exact same thing. For all the games - I mute the TV and listen to ESPN -- terrific!!!!! It's slightly out of timing but so what!! They are terrific!!! I too was there for the Mets- Cardinals final weekend in St Louis. Hey I got Mike Shannon out!! Gibson was a competitor!! Games Too long -- too many names to recognize. Too many factoids! Maybe need 14 pitchers and 3 catchers!! But I'm watching - First one for me 1948. I read the box in KC Star.

George

11/2/2021 07:46:33 am

(Bill Wakefield, from Stanford and a former Cardinal farmhand, pitched for the 1964 Mets -- and often enlightens this site with memories of Casey Stengel. After baseball, he went into business in the Bay Area.)
Bill -- that final week in St. Louis was epic. First the Phillies, then Alvin beating Gibson, and then Sunday. As your pitcher pal once said,"I got my guy." Thanks. GV

Randolph

11/2/2021 06:38:04 am

George,
How about a poem!

Line-Up for Yesterday
D is for Dean,
The grammatical Diz,
When they asked, Who's the tops?
Said correctly, I is.
— Ogden Nash, Sport magazine (January 1949)

Memory can bring us joy and also misery. Yes, I remember World Series games being played in the daytime. I miss that.
I wasn’t around when the Gashouse Gang was flinging bullets at the plate, but I remember Bob Gibson standing tall as any God in the heavens throughout that 1964 World Series.

Thanks for the tip, I will try the ESPN announcers with the TV on mute.
Please give Miss Whipple my best.
RF

George

11/2/2021 07:52:21 am

Randy: I'm sure you can get ESPN radio in the hills....and also on FM. I get it on my tinny little portable, like getting the Opry (see today's NYT) on the fickle old car radio -- even on Long Island on Saturday nights, years ago. We could get St. Louis and Boston and Baltimore ball games at night, east of the city. Be well. GV

Darrell

11/2/2021 12:10:00 pm

Even I, a pro-analytics guy, agrees that the pitching thing in the post-season is crazy. I think part of it has to do with the longer season and post-season. Even Gibson admitted he got tired during his Series work load. What do you think Keane would have done if there had been a best of 5 AND a best of 7 series before the World Series?" And that "I had a commitment to his heart," is poetic, but from my reading, what he said to Gibson about sending him out to pitch the 9th with a 4 run lead was "They might hit 2 homers off you, but they won't hit 4." They hit 2. The longer innings guys were mostly hurt for both teams. This is why teams are so paranoid about pitch counts and high stress innings. You pay $30 million for an ace and he's hurt. It just makes sense to try to replace him with 3 Ten million pitchers, or, even better, 12 guys who pitch one inning and are as interchangeable and anonymous as the Aussies at Gallipoli.

One request. Go back and watch some series games or highlights from the 80s, let alone the 60s. If you haven't, you will be amazed at how thin and unmuscular and unathletic most hitters are compared to today. Easier to pitch if only the 3-4-5- hitters are likely to go long. Now everybody can. And those pitchers, even in the 1980s, 90 MPH was a big deal. Now it is the minimum requirement, almost. And the movement. Sliders now break two feet and very late, not the 5 inches that used to impress. I am surprised that pitchers today don't break their arms with every pitch. Pitchers used to, many of them, be jeeps and Trucks. Now they are Ferrarris. Scary fast and able to negotiate hair pin curves, but delicate machines whose next run might be their last.

George Vecsey

11/2/2021 01:52:11 pm

(Darrell has been writing and following baseball for eons; I always enjoy his take when our group meets for lunch. GV)
Darrell, all good points. .i'm reacting viscerally, and you see a different picture.
It's true that post-season drains athletes. I watched the New York Islanders try for their fifth straight Stanley Cup -- three straight games in Edmonton -- and I knew they were done. Skating in slush. Most of them had played the equivalent of a full season's worth of Cup games in the previous four years. Hard to watch, for somebody like me who was around and respected them.

Speaking of Jacob deGrom, as we sort of are, I was close to sick to my stomach watching him start to shed parts mid-season -- a Maserati destructing. Koufax at least had a condition, maybe from overwork, maybe just physiognomy. DeGrom blew his body out pitching AND hitting. My opinion? He won't be back, at least the Jake we knew.
Instead, we get an operatic procession of spear carriers
Oy.

jay schreiber

11/2/2021 01:48:03 pm

One thing that is striking about all these four-hour postseason games is that the home crowd actually hangs in there on every pitch -- if the game is close. In other words, if you have a real emotional interest in the outcome, you can endure four hours, as absurd as that seems But if you don't have an emotional stake in the outcome, yeah, you might head off to bed.
Which is why, I think, that local TV ratings for MLB are fine, but the national ones are not. The wider audience isn't going to stick around for four hours. It doesn't even want to try.
And as for shortening these games, who knows. The only logical solution is 7-inning games, but hard to see that being accepted.

George

11/2/2021 01:59:43 pm

(Jay Schreiber was the long-time baseball maven and assistant sports editor at the NYT; he also knows from soccer, so you can see why it was a double treat to work with him. GV.)
Jay: Very observant of you. If that were McNeil and Pete and Conforto out there, I'd be wide awake, instead of dozing off. I do know the ups and downs of a few dozen Mets pitchers.
As for shortening games, don't give them any ideas. MLB has already sold out to gambling dens and gambling sites. Seven-inning games in the Annual Fall Classic? Next thing you know, there would be a Manfred Man prancing off second base to open the eighth inning. Good to hear from you. GV

Altenir Silva

11/2/2021 08:27:11 pm

Hi George: I’m coming to baseball now. I love to learn about the past of the ballplayers and teams. As you know, Babe Ruth is my hero (movies and books), and his life has taken me into this amazing baseball world. Watching this World Series, I see much technology (clothes, gloves, sneakers). All these items help the ballplayers.

Once someone asked Pele if he would be a skilful player currently. Pele answered he would be much better because the ball is more rounded and lighter.

Best/Altenir

George

11/3/2021 10:48:16 am

Hi, Altenir: very good point. My friend Darrell (above) points out how much bigger and more athletic today's BB players are. In soccer, we have Ibra 6-5, Haaland 6-4, :Pogba and Lukaku and Van Dijk 6-3 and Cstiano Ronaldo 6-2, and looks bigger in the air.
As for the equipment, from my couple of years playing in high school (and pretty fast gym classes in college) the ball was like a cannonball, particularly on a muddy field. Today's player can put more torque on the ball than anybody could back in the day. I also suspect kits and shoes are more aerodynamic.
When I started covering baseball, at 5-11 and 180 pounds, I was the same height as a number of players. Today they are almost all giants. Not all of it attributed to illegal stuff, either. GV

Andy Tansey

11/3/2021 08:34:53 am

If you're taking a poll, I ain't watching baseball. Agreed that being a fan of one of the teams might help, but even then, I am a sore loser and the Yankees lose early. The interminability of the games and commercial breaks makes it intolerable.

I do watch soccer, and I think the NBC/Peacock broadcasts of the English Premier League are great. I leave the sound up, and I find the English commentators worth the listen, with some exceptions (wish somebody'd knock Jon Champrion off his perch; too cheeky, though he may not be in the NBC/Peacock mix nowadays). I especially enjoy the interplay when Arlo White, Lee Dixon and Graeme Le Saux team up, though I'm not sure we still get that trio.

Pet peeves about soccer are the trends of lengthy stoppages for almost any free kick. The law (when I reffed) was that the team awarded the kick starts when it's ready and if a player from the other team interferes by not retreating ten yards he gets cautioned (yellow card); the ref intervenes only if requested by the team awarded the free kick, requiring a whistle for the restart. Now, it seems, opposing players violate the 10-yeard rule with impunity and the ref intervenes every time the free kick is within moderately threatening range. A quick restart leading to a goal is an exciting thrill almost gone; the 1999 USA Women used it in the World Cup.

Another pet peeve is a player sitting on the turf to get treatment for a minor knock. The physios come onto the field and administer treatment; then the player walks off comfortably and is promptly invited back on. THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW! Well, there is, but they don't use it.

Betting on soccer in Europe has been in place for a long time. I agree that gambling is a terrible menace. The lottery is the tax on people bad at math, and the government is very guilty there. Just from anecdotal observation, the folks buying tickets don't look like billionaires to me.

George

11/3/2021 10:56:57 am

Andy:: very good points...I watched and listened (the second half) to Fox in6th and final game. It's what I do...and write about it. I groaned out loud when Fried got stepped on at first base -- it looked like a career-ender. Thank goodness he was okay, total accident. Was dozing in later innings. Tough to be an early person.
As for soccer, two hours of the most dreadful mouth-breather commentary is better than 4 hours of Fox. Funny about Champion. Friend of mine -- Arsenal fan from over there -- can't stand Champion, says his accent comes off as /prep school toff...Most of the Brits are sparing with the words...they let the ball and the action speak. US broadcasters seem expected to avoid silence, alathough JP Dellacamera was sparing and knowing ...and I miss him on big games. GV

Ed Martin

11/3/2021 10:35:40 am

You see, the way I figure it, The Mets won half a season over the Braves, are in the same division, ergo the “strongest” division in MLB, and while I hope Dusty Baker gets another chance and wins, this all means the Mets are better than the facts indicate! “Wait ‘til next year!”—whoops, thats been copyrighted and not available. How about, “Someday my prince(s) will come….”

George Vecsey

11/3/2021 11:02:00 am

Ed, nice try, dude. The Mets were pretty dismal most of the time.
You know what held them up? Jake pitching every fifth game, even if he didn't win.He pitched innings, he could hit and field, a joy o watch, and it elevated the whole team. Lindor smothered the team with his showoff smiles and pretend teamwork -- a gamer like McNeil got obscured.The Braves dominated over 162 -- their GM found four -- count 'em, four --- outfielders when Acuna went down.
I'm a Met fan and I go by the Dante saying: "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate qui." (i.e. Hopeless)

11/3/2021 11:09:48 am

Well maybe this, GV? A redo on old Boston Braves’ refrain, “Spahn and Sain and two days of rain.” “Lets Have some, Jake DeGrom, anyone else is… dumb.

bruce

11/3/2021 09:35:11 pm

george,

the braves' GM is a montrealer who has done pretty well with so far.

also graduated from mcmaster university (known as mac) about a 20 minute walk from where i'm typing this.

getting back to reality after 2 1/2 weeks in a city where i didn't hear nuthin' aboot any of the four major league sports in NA.

Steve Lewis link

11/3/2021 11:36:15 am

As a boy who once saved enough Elsie Borden ice cream cup tops to win free bleacher tickets to Ebbets Field ... and who left drops of blue blood across the country following the Bums to California, baseball--post 1986--has slowly though progressively lost some of its heart for me. But when the cowardly Braves took out Anderson when he was throwing a NO-HITTER through five innings, I turned off the tv. That may have been the end of my love affair with the national pastime. Go Crystal Palace!

Alan Rubin link

11/4/2021 11:02:39 am

Steve. I'm with you in following the EPL teams that are not the four or five that are always near the top of the table. I also follow the lower profile managers.

They are doing better in recent years, but I have followed Leicester City.

A fun book to read is "Bloody Confused" by Chuck Culpepper, a former U.S. sports writer who got fed up with covering American sports.

He follows a team throughout an entire EPL season and discusses his conversations with fans on trains and at games.

ahron horowitz

11/4/2021 11:04:16 am

that is astounding.really leaves a bad taste.no gurantee that we will ever see a great pitching performance in a big game

Alan D.Levine

11/3/2021 11:51:56 am

James Reston wrote, many, many years ago, that Americans didn't concentrate on the election campaigns until the World Series was over. In other words, until around Columbus Day. So here we are in a world where the World Series finally ended while the ballots were being counted. I watched the election returns.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

2021 World Series: Parade of Spare Parts

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