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cosmolinguistWhen I was little, baseball was a joy for a Minnesotan. I thought nothing of the fact that the Twins won two World Series (and yes, I know they don't actually involve the whole world; I think it's a silly name too) in five years, because I was five and nine when they happened. My dad bought the Wheaties boxes. He even had a baseball with all the (fake) signatures of the whole '87 team; I remember coming across it a few years later and looking at the antiquated names--Bert Blyleven, Kent Hrbek, Kirby Puckett, Dan Gladden, Gary Gaetti, Greg Gagne, Jeff Reardon (those are just the ones I know from memory now) ...
The Twins' decline could later be pinpointed to a specific series against the Oakland A's in 1992 (the year after they won their second championship), but I only know that from reading about it. Yet I distinctly remember the point at which baseball really hurt me. It's a perversely clear memory, in fact, of being twelve years old, on my way to summer camp, hearing on the radio that the players might go on strike before the end of the season. I couldn't fathom this. Baseball could just stop? With no playoffs, no World Series? I'd realized the truth about Santa Claus much more calmly than I was taking this news.
Baseball came back the next spring, but the fans weren't very enthused. The spell had been broken. Grown men playing a little kids' game wanted more money, and that didn't impress factory workers and farmers who might make in a year what some players made in a week. And for me, it certainly wasn't any fun because the Twins were still atrocious, losing handfuls of games in a row and spending a lot of time at the bottom of the division standings. Their owner refused to spend the money to afford even competent players.
These doldrums seemed to go on, for me and everybody else, until 1998. That was when everyone else got excited about the 'home run race' between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and I got excited because my family got a satellite dish. We didn't get the Twins' games yet, due to some boring technicality, but we did get nationally televised games on TBS--from Atlanta, so those were evil Braves games--and WGN--from Chicago, where the White Sox and the Cubs play. This meant that I'd heard of Sammy Sosa (a Cub) before he hit 20 home runs that June and everybody liked him. It also meant that I became quite attached to the White Sox' third baseman, a guy named Robin Ventura, who played great defense and seemed to have a talent for getting hits when they were especially needed ... yet he was no big star. My kind of guy.
I didn't find the home run race all that interesting--except I wanted McGwire to win, and I did watch the game where he got his 62nd homer of the year and officially beat Roger Maris's record. It's not my sort of thing; I'm old-school when it comes to baseball, which means I like low-scoring games because they have good pitching and defense. But no one else thinks such fundamental things are sexy, and so they went to games to see the ball hit over the fence.
Robin Ventura was traded to the New York Mets, who I hadn't thought twice about before but started following diligently after that. They were, in fact, a great team for me, because they had good pitching and their four infielders made the cover of Sports Illustrated that fall, along with the words 'The Best Infield Ever?' I tore the cover off and hung it on the wall in my room. (It wasn't even the only picture of Robin Ventura there; he's a photogenic guy because he tends to do things like jump and dive until his body's parallel to the ground to catch a ball ... and he catches them.) They almost made it to the World Series that year, and in fact did the next, but that team wasn't as good (among other things, they'd lost one of their infielders, who was also a great hitter, to Seattle, so the great infield I loved was no more) so the Mets got crushed by the Most Evil Yankees.
In a worse blow, though, Robin Ventura was traded to the Yankees after the season was over. I still followed his exploits ... though by then (for now we're up to a couple of years ago), my home team had gotten shockingly good again. All these unknown players with silly names--Jacque Jones, Torii Hunter, Doug Mientkiewicz--that the Twins had been 'developing' for a couple of years were actually paying off! The Twins could hit, they had decent pitching, they were no longer at the bottom of the AL Central Division--they were worth watching!
This was especially great because the Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Selig--a man universally regarded as a blight upon the land--had been talking about 'contracting' the league. The argument was that small-market teams were just not making enough money to be worth keeping around; they had bad players, bad fans, bad ballparks, bad towns ... everything was bad. The Twins were one of the franchises he'd offered to sacrifice. It added fuel to the unending debate about whether or not the Twins should get a new stadium (some people claimed that Selig merel wanted a piece of the revenue a new stadium would create), but it also seemed to coincide nicely with the new energy in both players and fans. The Twins won more games, and more people came to see them. They went from the verge of non-existence to the playoffs in no time.
The Twins have done all right for themselves in the playoffs the last couple of years, though still falling short of the World Series. They lost some of their good people after that, which made me worry about them this spring. They'd figured out that they needed better hitters, which was what they'd been lacking, but now no longer had the great pitching they'd enjoyed for the last few years.
One of the thngs I'd been disappointed about was the loss of their closer. It's one of the things I find most interesting about baseball--this guy's job is just to come in and pitch the ninth inning when his team's ahead, and make sure they're still ahead when he's done. This is the last chance for the other team to win the game, so they have incentive to try hard. Tensions are often high among both the teams and the fans. Also, closers aren't really allowed many mistakes. A starting pitcher can and should be given a little leeway, and even the relief pitchers (and their managers) know that, though their mistakes might be costly, at least it's not the end of the world because it's not yet the end of the game. The closer needs to keep his cool and his precision, which doesn't seem very easy to me. If he succeeds in his job it's called a 'save,' since he saved the game for his team.
This year's closer is Joe Nathan. I watched a lot of Twins games (well, for the first two months of the season, when I could ...) so I know the name well, but I'd always thought of the guy as being as nondescript as his name is. Silly me--I should've remembered that the guys who seem invisible are often the ones who are doing their job best (a rule also true for other lines of work, from plumbing to network administration). But I didn't realize the extent of Joe Nathan's coolness until I saw a link to an article that said 'Nathan sets franchise record.'
Yes, this whole long thing was inspired by a little thing I read on the Internet today.
Clicking on that link, I saw that Nathan had gotten his 25th consecutive save last night, which amazed me.
The article begins:
Now that I'm inundated with international news of football players--at least, I'm pretty sure that's what I'm hearing about, though sometimes it's not actually stated at all, as it seems to be assumed that everyone will know what's being talked about--the idea of an understated, unknown, good athlete is quite appealing to me.
The Twins' decline could later be pinpointed to a specific series against the Oakland A's in 1992 (the year after they won their second championship), but I only know that from reading about it. Yet I distinctly remember the point at which baseball really hurt me. It's a perversely clear memory, in fact, of being twelve years old, on my way to summer camp, hearing on the radio that the players might go on strike before the end of the season. I couldn't fathom this. Baseball could just stop? With no playoffs, no World Series? I'd realized the truth about Santa Claus much more calmly than I was taking this news.
Baseball came back the next spring, but the fans weren't very enthused. The spell had been broken. Grown men playing a little kids' game wanted more money, and that didn't impress factory workers and farmers who might make in a year what some players made in a week. And for me, it certainly wasn't any fun because the Twins were still atrocious, losing handfuls of games in a row and spending a lot of time at the bottom of the division standings. Their owner refused to spend the money to afford even competent players.
These doldrums seemed to go on, for me and everybody else, until 1998. That was when everyone else got excited about the 'home run race' between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and I got excited because my family got a satellite dish. We didn't get the Twins' games yet, due to some boring technicality, but we did get nationally televised games on TBS--from Atlanta, so those were evil Braves games--and WGN--from Chicago, where the White Sox and the Cubs play. This meant that I'd heard of Sammy Sosa (a Cub) before he hit 20 home runs that June and everybody liked him. It also meant that I became quite attached to the White Sox' third baseman, a guy named Robin Ventura, who played great defense and seemed to have a talent for getting hits when they were especially needed ... yet he was no big star. My kind of guy.
I didn't find the home run race all that interesting--except I wanted McGwire to win, and I did watch the game where he got his 62nd homer of the year and officially beat Roger Maris's record. It's not my sort of thing; I'm old-school when it comes to baseball, which means I like low-scoring games because they have good pitching and defense. But no one else thinks such fundamental things are sexy, and so they went to games to see the ball hit over the fence.
Robin Ventura was traded to the New York Mets, who I hadn't thought twice about before but started following diligently after that. They were, in fact, a great team for me, because they had good pitching and their four infielders made the cover of Sports Illustrated that fall, along with the words 'The Best Infield Ever?' I tore the cover off and hung it on the wall in my room. (It wasn't even the only picture of Robin Ventura there; he's a photogenic guy because he tends to do things like jump and dive until his body's parallel to the ground to catch a ball ... and he catches them.) They almost made it to the World Series that year, and in fact did the next, but that team wasn't as good (among other things, they'd lost one of their infielders, who was also a great hitter, to Seattle, so the great infield I loved was no more) so the Mets got crushed by the Most Evil Yankees.
In a worse blow, though, Robin Ventura was traded to the Yankees after the season was over. I still followed his exploits ... though by then (for now we're up to a couple of years ago), my home team had gotten shockingly good again. All these unknown players with silly names--Jacque Jones, Torii Hunter, Doug Mientkiewicz--that the Twins had been 'developing' for a couple of years were actually paying off! The Twins could hit, they had decent pitching, they were no longer at the bottom of the AL Central Division--they were worth watching!
This was especially great because the Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Selig--a man universally regarded as a blight upon the land--had been talking about 'contracting' the league. The argument was that small-market teams were just not making enough money to be worth keeping around; they had bad players, bad fans, bad ballparks, bad towns ... everything was bad. The Twins were one of the franchises he'd offered to sacrifice. It added fuel to the unending debate about whether or not the Twins should get a new stadium (some people claimed that Selig merel wanted a piece of the revenue a new stadium would create), but it also seemed to coincide nicely with the new energy in both players and fans. The Twins won more games, and more people came to see them. They went from the verge of non-existence to the playoffs in no time.
The Twins have done all right for themselves in the playoffs the last couple of years, though still falling short of the World Series. They lost some of their good people after that, which made me worry about them this spring. They'd figured out that they needed better hitters, which was what they'd been lacking, but now no longer had the great pitching they'd enjoyed for the last few years.
One of the thngs I'd been disappointed about was the loss of their closer. It's one of the things I find most interesting about baseball--this guy's job is just to come in and pitch the ninth inning when his team's ahead, and make sure they're still ahead when he's done. This is the last chance for the other team to win the game, so they have incentive to try hard. Tensions are often high among both the teams and the fans. Also, closers aren't really allowed many mistakes. A starting pitcher can and should be given a little leeway, and even the relief pitchers (and their managers) know that, though their mistakes might be costly, at least it's not the end of the world because it's not yet the end of the game. The closer needs to keep his cool and his precision, which doesn't seem very easy to me. If he succeeds in his job it's called a 'save,' since he saved the game for his team.
This year's closer is Joe Nathan. I watched a lot of Twins games (well, for the first two months of the season, when I could ...) so I know the name well, but I'd always thought of the guy as being as nondescript as his name is. Silly me--I should've remembered that the guys who seem invisible are often the ones who are doing their job best (a rule also true for other lines of work, from plumbing to network administration). But I didn't realize the extent of Joe Nathan's coolness until I saw a link to an article that said 'Nathan sets franchise record.'
Yes, this whole long thing was inspired by a little thing I read on the Internet today.
Clicking on that link, I saw that Nathan had gotten his 25th consecutive save last night, which amazed me.
The article begins:
Joe Nathan doesn't stomp around and outwardly fire himself up before the ninth inning. He doesn't glare or throw around the rosin bag. He has no known bizarre ritual as he approaches the mound.So I know now that Joe Nathan is the sort of cool person I always like to see in the game, the kind who'll just shut up and do what he's supposed to--do it quite well, in fact--with no fanfare.
The Metrodome doesn't sound a gong like Shingo Takatsu has in Chicago. The scoreboard doesn't read "Game Over" like it does for Eric Gagne in Los Angeles.
But in 32 of the 33 times Nathan has appeared to get a save, the game has been over once the Twins closer steps on the mound.
Now that I'm inundated with international news of football players--at least, I'm pretty sure that's what I'm hearing about, though sometimes it's not actually stated at all, as it seems to be assumed that everyone will know what's being talked about--the idea of an understated, unknown, good athlete is quite appealing to me.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-08 08:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-08 09:06 am (UTC)Also, taunting me (again) about baseball out loud where there's no record of it like there is here on the Internet is hardly better. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-08 09:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-08 09:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-08 09:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-08 09:41 am (UTC)I won't argue miniscule baseball points with you, like "old school" being all about low scoring and defense. I just like it that you dig on baseball so much! I also like it that you recognize the Yankees as "Most Evil". I know that you spend a lot of time on the internet, and can be counted on to follow this stuff, so if my fantasy league ever needs another owner, I just might have to tap you to fill the spot! [GRIN]
And, yeah, Nathan is damn good. Wish I had him on my team. I have Gagne, but no other 'lights out' type closers.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-08 10:06 am (UTC)I do just really like the game, but (as this entry may show) in a sometimes-haphazard sort of way. I'm glad you recognized that, and thus can overlook my inadequacies. :-)
I didn't understand fantasy sports for the longest time--really didn't, mostly because it seemed the only people who talked about them were other people who did them, and I had a better chance of understanding Klingon than I did of following such a conversation. These days I get the basic premise and some of the skill it can involve, though I've still never seen the appeal of trying it myself. But helping a friend of mine if he wants it certainly does seem appealing.
The annoying thing is that I feel so out of it from way over here on this side of the Atlantic. Looking at scores and recaps on the Internet is one thing--it's certainly better than nothing--but it's still quite a bit more lame than watching TV or listenng to the radio. Le sigh.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-08 11:08 am (UTC)Being across the pond and not able to catch a game on TV or on the radio would be rather tough... webcasts aren't quite the same, nor are boxscores and recaps on the internet. There's nothing like having a game on the radio while engaged in a task around the house, pausing that task to listen intently to the action. Gotta love that!
As for fantasy sports, they can give you an appreciation for average players in other markets... I mean, really, would I really know who Salomon Torres was if my league did not value middle relief and I did not live in Pittsburgh? Fat chance, but he has been quite useful to my fantasy team. Fantasy baseball is just another avenue for following the game I love. Of course, I will admit it does WACKY things to one's loyalties. For instance, I like it when the Phillies and the A's do well... but it stings when that hurts my fantasy team... [GRIN]
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-08 11:22 am (UTC)Yeah, I miss just watching the games unfold. Highlights are fine and good, but I like watching or listening and getting excited or mad or whatever as things happen. It makes such great background for doing things, too.
Of course the night games all start at about one in the morning for me now, so that wouldn't be any fun anyway. Grr. Few things irritate me about being in England, but lack of baseball is certainly one of them. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-08 06:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-09 02:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-08 10:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-08 10:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-08 12:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-08 12:25 pm (UTC)Hey!
Date: 2004-08-08 12:07 pm (UTC)Re: Hey!
Date: 2004-08-08 12:10 pm (UTC)Re: Hey!
Date: 2004-08-08 12:19 pm (UTC)Cute
Date: 2004-08-08 12:50 pm (UTC)Re: Cute
Date: 2004-08-08 01:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-08 01:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-08 11:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-09 02:47 am (UTC)Besides, hadn't the Blue Jays won for the couple of years before that? ::checks:: Yep. Maybe that's about all the Canadian success baseball could stand. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-09 09:30 am (UTC)It's absolutely stupid what they're doing to the Expos right now.
I mean, having a BlueJays-Expos game, on Canada Day weekend... In Puerto Rico???
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-09 01:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-09 01:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-09 02:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-09 02:07 pm (UTC)And even I'm still surprised at the variety of things he can talk about, digress to, extrapolate, connect to some other and totally disparate thing ...
I shouldn't be, as he does this a lot. Sometimes I take it for granted, sometimes I'm half-asleep, but sometimes I just listen to him and smile.