Lee Lowenfish

One of the well-worn yet correct cliches about the immense MLB season is that it is a marathon not a sprint.  Yet as autumn approaches, when there are barely 20 games left to determine division winners and wild card participants. each game takes on added importance. Only the mentally strong can balance the pressure of the schedule with the need to trust your own stuff and understand what you body is capable of doing on the given day. 

 

In the National League, two divisions have been long ago decided, Atlanta in NL East and LA Dodgers in NL West.  They are assured byes in the first round of the playoffs that will begin early in October with a best-of-3 wild card series in each league.   The third division champion doesn't get a bye but plays the third wild card in its league.  

 

For most of this season, the NL Central was surprisingly inept, the perennially contending Cardinals falling to the basement and no other team really excelling. But now two teams are comfortably above .500, the Brewers, before games of Mon Sep 11, leading the Cubs by 4 games and the surprising Reds also with a shot at the last wild card.

 

Defending NL champ Phillies have the lead in first wild card but only two games ahead of Cubs, narrowly holding 2nd wild card by two games over the surprising Diamondbacks who have a slight lead over Marlins with Reds and Giants still alive. 

 

You can't beat the drama of last weekend.  The Cubs salvaged the last game of a 4-game series against upstart Arizona at Wrigley Field.  Balls were flying unpredictably all over the ancient ballpark on Chicago's North Side, everywhere but towards the outfield stands as windblown home runs.  So pitching was at a premium and Zac Gallen, another onetime St. Louis Cardinal rashly traded, threw a complete game victory.

 

To me, the Cubs southpaw Justin Steele has established himself as a legitimate Cy Young contender - unlike Blake Snell of the vastly disappointing Padres, Steele wants to go deep into games and has 16 wins to prove it.  After a late season slump, Gallen may be back in the Cy Young conversation. His teammate, crisp speedy outfielder/leadoff man Corbin Carroll, looks like a Rookie of the Year favorite. 

 

In the inter-league matchup of the Brewers at Yankee Stadium (I must think twice to say "interleague" because I, for one, still consider in my bones Milwaukee an AL team and Houston an NL team), Milwaukee won the series but lost out on a sweep despite reigning Cy Young winner Corbin Burnes throwing a 8-inning no-hitter and closer Devin Williams putting up a zero in the 9th.

 

But the Brewers could do nothing against American League Cy Young favorite Gerrit Cole who threw a 7-inning 3-hitter and the Yankees' first bullpen pitchers kept putting up zeroes. Brewers twice took leads in extra innings but Yankees came back and ultimately won 4-3 in 13 innings.

 

Turning to the AL, the Central division is virtually decided with the Minnesota Twins holding a comfortable 7 1/2 game lead on the sub-.500 Cleveland Guardians.  They will not get a bye but will play the third wild card entrant in that 3-game series with home field advantage.

 

The other two AL divisional races are still up for grabs.  Prior to games of M Sep 11, the surprising Orioles led the perennially contending Rays by 3 games, 4 in the lost column. 4 big head-to-head matchups come up Th thru Su Sep 14-17 in Baltimore. Birds cannot afford to overlook at home 3 games with the disappointing-but-still-potent Cardinals and ditto the Rays playing 3 on the road in Minnesota.

 

The AL West has turned into a three-way tussle featuring defending World Series champion Houston, now narrowly in first place two lost games ahead of both Seattle and Texas.  As I mentioned in my last post, the Astros have likely the easiest schedule playing one series each against the A's and the Royals, teams on their way to over 100 losses.  The return to health of Jose Altuve, Jordan Alvarez, and Michael Brantley really deepens the Astros' lineup. Whether their overall pitching is as good as last year's will be something to watch carefully.    

  

In another dramatic series last weekend, Tampa Bay knocked the Mariners out of first place by winning at home the last 3 games of their 4-game series.  A controversy erupted after Tampa's come-from-behind Fri night victory when George Kirby, impressive young pitcher for the Mariners, emotionally confessed to reporters that he felt gassed after throwing 90 pitches in 6 innings and holding a two-run lead. 

 

He felt that he didn't want to pitch in the 7th and proceeded to lose the lead after giving up a 2-run homer to backup catcher Jean Pinto who like many Rays has emerged from minor league obscurity to be a big contributor.  Kirby immediately apologized the next morning, saying he never wants to be taken out of a game, but it was too late. 

 

The many pundit nay-sayers all over the baseball world, including former pitchers like hotheaded David Wells, branded Kirby as the poster boy for the spoiled 21st century starting pitcher who never wants to go beyond 5 or 6 innings in any game. 

 

I call myself a "lively dinosaur" because I, too, along with a lot of oldtime baseball fans, yearn for complete games by pitchers who want to complete what they started.  Yet I cannot overlook a lot of data that indicates after 100 pitches, pitchers tend to weaken. It was not the case in Cy Young award-winning Corbin Burnes' 8 no-hit innings against the Yankees on Sunday, but he was moved after throwing 109 pitches, 6 short of his career high.

 

Trying to look to the future dispassionately, the big problem is that today virtually every organization doesn't allow any minor league pitcher to work more than 5 or 6 innings. How can you develop major league arms that way?  Learning to pitch when tired to me is the essence of good pitching. And the essence of good coaching should be to teach pitchers to understand their arms and bodies and to help them understand the difference between being simply sore as opposed to be seriously injured. 

 

I know how hard it must be to make this distinction when adrenalin, testosterone, and competitiveness in service to the team all are in the mix.

Since common sense is so uncommon, especially in sports, you can see how this will be a long uphill struggle.  But one worth definitely worth exploring and fighting for sanity. 

 

Before I close this edition, here's a shoutout to another successful Kelly Rodman Memorial All-Star Game held on August 24th, a day early because of rain in the forecast at Worcester's Polar Park, home of the Red Sox Triple-A farm club the WooSox.  Spearheaded by veteran scouts Matt Hyde of the Yankees and Ray Fagnant of the Red Sox, the game features promising high school and college players from all over the country. 

 

The game is the culmination of a late summer program of clinics and intrasquad games that in its 14 years of existence has sent three dozen players into pro baseball.  Since 2020, the game has been dedicated to the memory of Yankee scout Kelly Rodman who rose quickly in the organization to become an advocate for amateur players like promising rookie shortstop Anthony Volpe.

 

She left us far too early at 44 years old, but her exhortation to aspiring players, "Be Great Today!," sums up the fiercely optimistic spirit that any successful player must exude.  I believe that telling her story was a perfect way to end my recent book, BASEBALL'S ENDANGERED SPECIES:  INSIDE THE CRAFT OF SCOUTING BY THOSE LIVED WHO LIVED IT.       

 

That'a all for now.  Always remember:  Take it easy but take it!  And don't forget - stay positive, test negative.  

 

During the first week of July I taught another class in the Special Studies program at the Chautauqua Institution. This year I called it: "Can Baseball Survive The 21st Century?"

 

I had a very receptive class of attentive adult listeners who asked good questions. I was glad that there was rewarding interest in my first book THE IMPERFECT DIAMOND: A History of Baseball's Labor Wars.

 

The topic of the endless player-owner conflicts in baseball seems especially relevant these days because the sport has always has been peopled by nay-sayers who think the game was always better in the past. 

 

As early as 1912, sportswriters were complaining that the games were too long!  Around the same time, John Montgomery Ward, the polymathic leader of the 1890 Players League which actually outdrew the established National League in its one season, gave up his brief job as president of the Boston Braves because he felt the players of HIS day were more serious about the game than contemporaries. 

 

I'm not a cockeyed optimist about the future of the sport in an expanding spectator sport market, but here is what I see as some positive signs: 

 

**The games in 2023 are shorter by a half-hour on average from last year's unacceptable average of over three hours a game. 

 

**The All-Star Game was more exciting than usual even if Felix "The Mountain" Bautista, closer for my Orioles, served up the game-winning 8th inning HR to Rockies catcher Elias Diaz. (Happily, Bautista suffered no hangover from his defeat because he successfully closed the Birds' first two post-ASG wins.) 

 

Diaz, a 32-year-old journeyman, is probably having a career year for one of the few teams that has no prayer of making the playoffs. The most obscure of the All-Stars, Diaz's heroics proved yet again that baseball remains the most delightfully unpredictable of all our sports.

 

As always I offer a fervent wish that the analytic hordes swarming around every MLB franchise don't try to take that unpredictability away from us in the name of "the next big thing." 

 

In addition to the disproportionate rise of the analytic crowd, there remains the unwholesome marriage of television and MLB. I realize younger fans like all the new bells and whistles, but personally I can do without the in-game interviews.

 

It reached a new low in the ASG when pitchers Nathan Eovaldi and Josh Hader were interviewed as they were pitching. Thank God a line drive didn't rocket towards them at the mound while they were chatting with the prattling Fox Sports broadcasters Joe Davis and John Smoltz.  It also looked like Padres outfielder Juan Soto might have caught a foul ball in the right field corner if he hadn't been distracted by an interviewer.   

 

Since I prefer to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative, let me add some more comments on my Chautauqua experience.  Located in southwestern New York State about 50 miles from Erie, Pennsylvania, the Institution was founded in 1874 as a retreat for Methodist Sunday school teachers.  (Somewhat remarkably, there is no evidence that [Wesley] Branch Rickey ever spoke there - I guess his baseball work in St. Louis, Brookly, and Pittsburgh and devotion to his southern Ohio roots kept him from coming.)   

 

There is important political as well as religious history at Chautauqua.  William Jennings Bryan gave his "Cross of Gold" speech there during the 1896 campaign against eventual winner William McKinley.  Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his "I Hate War" speech during the 1936 campaign.

 

Today's Chautauqua has become more secular and it brims and overflows with inspiring music, art, and dance as well as stimulating lectures every weekday morning at 1045.

 

On the Fourth of July I heard an especially memorable talk by Scott Simon, the longtime host of NPR's Saturday morning news and features show.  I knew he was a big Chicago Cubs fan but I didn't realize his father's best friend was Cubs broadcaster Jack Brickhouse and his aunt married Charley Grimm, legendary Cubs first baseman and manager.

 

An author and journalist who has traveled the world, Simon told a moving story of attending a soccer game in Kabul between the Afghani national team and a British team that took place during the brief interval when the Taliban had been routed by Allied forces. 

 

When the Afghanis scored the first goal of the match, a British woman paratrooper showed her support by

taking off her burqa letting her hair become visible.  It was the first time in six years that Afghanis could revel in the beauty of flowing female hair and the crowd went wild. Soon women all over the stadium took off their

burqas too. 

 

Simon could not hold back tears telling this story of a moment that did not, alas, lead to freedom and self-expression in a country now ruled again by the Taliban.  It did show the transcendant qualities of sport at its best. 

 

Chautauqua's summer programs last nine weeks through the end of August.  It is a gated community so everyone there must carry a gate pass although Sundays the grounds are open without charge to the larger community.  For information on programming this year and the themes for 2024, the sesquecentennial anniversary of Chautauqua, check out chq.org

 

As readers of this blog surely know, I had to see live baseball not just talk about it.  I attended the Fourth of July day game of the high-flying Jamestown Tarp Skunks against the Elmira Pioneers, two teams in the Perfect Game Wooden Bat Summer League. 

 

The Tarp Skunk nickname is a homage not only to the spunky animal in the area but also to Howard Ehmke, Connie Mack's surprise choice to start the 1929 World Series against the Cubs. Ehmke hailed from Chautauqua County and later became an inventor of a tarpulin used in many ballparks. 

 

In this age of inventive logos, there is now a skunk tail featured through the last number on the back of every Tarp Skunk uniform.  I'm not sure I like it, but it certainly is different.

 

There are only three regular season home games left for the Tarp Skunks, the last one on Fri July 28. They play at classic Diethrick Park built in 1939 and located 20 minutes from Chautauqua. Brief playoff series will follow.  For more info, check out tarpskunks.com

 

That's all for now - heading to Baltimore to talk about my new book on scouting BASEBALL'S ENDANGERED SPECIES at the Babe Ruth Museum Tues July 18 at 4p. Missed the Orioles split of the four game series at Yankee Stadium because I was at Chautauqua. 

 

Looking forward to seeing live the last two games of the Orioles' three-game series against the Dodgers. I'm not ready to call it a preview of a sequel to the 1966 World Series, but I can dream, can't I?  More on this

adventure in the next post.

 

In the meantime - Always remember:  Take it easy but take it, and stay positive test negative.