Lee Lowenfish

"The only problem with baseball is that someone must lose every day," a veteran baseball scout once wisely noted.  I definitely wanted the Braves to knock out the heavily favored haughty Dodgers in the NLCS, and was happy for Dusty Baker that the Astros eliminated the Bosox.   

 

With the glamor teams gone, I now face a quandary. I guess I'll root for six or seven games and may the games be as memorable as a lot of the NLCS and ALCS were. 

 

Both series went six games and each contained plenty of wonderful unpredictable baseball drama.  It looked like the loss of Houston's number one starter Lance McCullers Jr. would doom the Astros and they did fall behind Boston's explosive offense two games to one.

 

Then, their unheralded young starters, Dominican Republic native Framber Valdez and Venezuelan Luis Garcia, flushed from their memory ineffective performances in the first games in Houston and stepped up big time in the unfriendly confines of Fenway Park.

All of a sudden Boston's bats went silent including that of the amazing ex-Dodger Enrique "Kike" Hernandez.

 

Valdez and Garcia were obviously given confidence boosters by manager Dusty Baker and pitching coach Brent Strom, two baseball lifers in their early 'seventies. How can any longtime baseball fans not like these guys?  And what better leaders to guide the team after the sign-stealing scandal of 2017 that wasn't uncovered until two years later.

 

Strom came up with the Mets but never won a game for them.  He went 22-39 in his MLB career, pitching mainly for his home town San Diego Padres.  In 1978 he became the second pitcher to undergo Tommy John elbow surgery but he never returned to the majors.  

 

He has since become a widely-respected coach. This year he has been working wonders with a largely farm-developed staff along with some trade additions like closer Ryan Pressly and set-up man Kendall Graveman. 

 

Manager Dusty Baker, born Johnnie Baker Jr, is closing in on almost 2,000 regular season victories. He has taken five teams to the post-season but this will be only Baker's second World Series adventure as a manager. 

 

A master story teller, Baker recently told AP sportswriter Kristie Rieken that after losing as Giants skipper the hard-fought 2002 7-game World Series to the Angels. Baker's father groused to him that he would never have another chance at a Series win. 

 

Johnnie Baker Sr. was a career military man and a practitioner of tough love. He coached his son in Little League as well as Bobby Bonds, Barry's father. Baker Sr. died a few years ago but Dusty feels he is looking down over him.  

 

So is Henry Aaron who was Baker's mentor when Dusty signed with the Braves in 1967 and reached the majors to stay in 1972.  Aaron promised Dusty's mother he would look over her son and he certainly did.   

 

In addition to Brent Strom. the Astros possess other fine coaches.  Joe Espada, Joe Girardi's bench coach with the Yankees, has the same role in Houston.

  

Former fine center fielder Gary Pettis just came back to the team after extensive treatments for myeloma. He's not ready to return to his third base post, but he will be a presence in the dugout.

 

Gary's son, Dante Pettis, plays for the New York football Giants and threw and caught a pass from Giant QB Daniel Jones this past Sunday in what turned out to be a rare easy victory for the 2-5 Giants over the Carolina Panthers.

 

I love these connections in sports.  One of the Astros' hitting coaches is Troy Snitker, 32, the son of Braves manager Brian Snitker.  Brian, 66, is another baseball lifer who is impossible to dislike. He was hired by Hank Aaron when the Hammer was the Braves farm director.

 

Snitker's base coaches, Ron Washington, 73, and Eric Young Sr. (the former Rutgers and Dodgers infielder-outfielder), are brimming with passion for teaching the game.   

 

The NY Times reporter Scott Miller wrote a wonderful story over the weekend about Washington's teaching infield fundamentals via pepper, the oft-forgotten drill that keeps players on their toes by having someone batting balls to them as they gather closely together in a circle.  

 

It is hard to recall two better collections of infielders than the ones we will see in this Series. The Astros feature at the corners Alex Bregman and Cuban Yuri Gurriel, the NL batting champion.  The double-play combo is Carlos Correa and Jose Altuve.

 

The Braves have two MVP candidates at the corners, young Austin Riley at third and Freddie Freeman at first.  Dansby Swanson at short and Curacao native Ozzie Albies are superlative at their positions, and all eight of them can really hit, too.

 

There was a touching moment before Game 1 of the NLCS when Atlanta's former star center fielder Dale Murphy went to the mound to throw out the first ball.  Arriving wearing his #3 jersey, he suddenly took it off to reveal underneath the late Henry Aaron's #44. And beneath that, he displayed Austin Riley's #27.

 

One important question about the coming World Series will be:  Can Houston's Yordan Alvarez, another Cuban who was signed as a teenager by the Dodgers, and Atlanta's Eddie Rosario from Puerto Rico keep up their fantastic hitting?  Both hit over .500 in the previous series and were rightly named MVPs. 

 

Another interesting side story is how will LSU's Alex Bregman, a shortstop in college, fare against Vanderbilt's Dansby Swanson.  They went 1-2 in the 2015 amateur draft and Bregman wears #2 as a motivator because Swanson was the number one pick in the country.  

 

I hope the starting pitchers carry good enough stuff to go at least into the

sixth or seventh innings. Series opener Charlie Morton and the youngsters Max Fried and Ian Anderson may be capable of doing it.  Ditto Houston's Valdez and Garcia.  

 

It will be intriguing to see if Will Smith the Braves' lefthanded closer who excelled against

LA can keep up his good work against Houston.  He is known to get into jams. 

 

Can the other lefties in the bullpen, AJ Minter and Tyler Matzek, keep up their fine work?

 

It is not just 20/20 hindsight to say that LA lost the NLCS when they made the odd choice of calling on Mexican Julio Urias, baseball's only 20-game winner in 2021, to try to save Game 1 in Atlanta. He hadn't pitched in relief all season and he couldn't hold the lead. 

 

Max Scherzer, the trade deadline acquisition and likely future Hall of Famer, never fully recovered from his saving the game that eliminated the surprising Giants in the earlier divisional series.  He made only one start in the NLCS and couldn't answer the bell for Game 6.  

 

Kudos to Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro Martinez, a onetime LA Dodger, who in the pre-game show on TBS before Game 6 expressed his fervent wish that the Dodgers' analytics department will have to answer to their strange decisions on turning starters into closers and turning over entire crucial games to "openers" and "bulk relievers".

 

I just hope we see memorable baseball in the climactic week of the season. If there are no rain postponements, the Series will shift to Atlanta for the three weekend games after an off day on Thursday.  If games 6 and 7 are needed in Houston, they will be on Election Day Tuesday and Wed Nov 3.  All games starting after 8p EDT.

 

I will grit my teeth and try to blot out the political grandstanding that already is happening in the state of Georgia and probably soon in flamingly red state Texas. 

Before the final game against the Dodgers, the Braves hired country singer Travis Tritt to sing the National Anthem despite his outspoken opposition to vaccine mandates. 

 

It must have been a deliberate slap by Braves management of baseball commissioner Rob Manfred who had ordered the All-Star Game out of Atlanta because of Georgia's passage of voter restriction laws. Manfred has also demanded strict enforcement of Covid protocols since the virus broke out.   

 

All the games will be on Fox TV which means there will a lot of superficial comment from Joe Buck,  forced laughter from the pre-game trio of David Ortiz, Alex Rodriguez, and Frank Thomas, and only an occasional insight from Buck's sidekick John Smoltz.

 

And now here is one closing baseball quote.  Daisuke Matsusaka, 41, the former Red Sox pitcher, retired last week, pitching one inning in a planned goodbye in his native Japan. In his farewell statement, Dice-K wrote, "I want to thank my wife, my kids, my parents, everyone who was part of my life, even opposing fans who hated me."   

 

That's all for now.  Next time some more as the NYC cultural scene comes back to life with live performances.  In the meantime, always remember:  Take it easy but take it, and

Stay Positive, Test Negative! 

 

I never get deeply involved in arguments about the Hall of Fame because the voting always comes down to a popularity contest.  Ted Simmons even admitted as much when he spoke publicly on Monday Dec 9 after his somewhat surprising election to baseball's Cooperstown shrine.

 
"I knew everybody on the [14-man veterans] committee and they knew me so I thought

I had a chance," he said on MLB TV.  It is actually more surprising that Simmons got less than 5% when he was first eligible on the regular ballot in the 1990s.  Because his vote total was so low, he was removed from the ballot until some veterans committees gave him extra chances.

 
Certainly Simmons's numbers are impressive:  21 seasons, 13 with Cardinals, 5 with Brewers (where he made his only World Series appearance in 1982), and 3 with Braves.

Lifetime stats:  248 HR, 483 doubles (indicating that he had significant power in the gaps), 1,389 RBI.

 

And for someone at times maligned for his defense, he threw out 34% of runners attempting to steal. On ESPN.com's list of best catchers in MLB history, he is tied for 10th place with Hall of Famer Gary Carter.  And everyone above them is enshrined in Cooperstown except for still-active Buster Posey of the Giants.

 
Ted Simmons will be one of the most original and intelligent members of the Hall of Fame. I had some memorable encounters with him in the 1980s.   

He liked my first book, co-authored with former major leaguer Tony Lupien,  "The Imperfect Diamond: The Story of Baseball's Reserve System and The Men Who Fought To Change It."  I was flattered when I learned that Simmons had told his Brewers teammate Paul Molitor to read it.

 
Simmons is part of my book because in 1972 he almost became Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally three years before impartial arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled they were free agents because they had not signed their contracts in 1975 and thus the reserve or renewal clause was no longer valid.   

 
Simmons did sign a rare two-year contract in the middle of the 1972 season, becoming probably the first player in MLB history to start a season without signing a contract. 

The dispute was about money, not a principle, Simmons refreshingly told future Hall of Fame sportswriter Bob Broeg in an incisive June 1973 "Baseball Digest" article.

The piece was called "Losing Drives Me Crazy" and Ted declared, "Everyone strives to win, but it's 10,000 times easier to lose."  He also cited the wisdom of one of the great Cardinal minor league instructors George Kissell: "When things go wrong, check your own closet first."

 
Congrats again to Ted Simmons, the onetime University of Michigan speech major who never played for the Wolverines because he started his MLB career as a teenager. Not surprisingly, Simmons said that he is honored to go into Cooperstown with players union leader Marvin Miller who he served vigorously and effectively as a player rep.

 
A CLOSING NOTE ON THE MLB-MILB IMPASSE

As of this post goes up at the winter solstice of Dec. 21, the dispute continues between MLB and the officials of Minor League Baseball.  The majors are proposing the elimination of 42 minor league teams including some entire rookie leagues.

 

If the snafu is not straightened out, there will likely be law suits from some of the municipalities who have invested millions in improved facilities. As J. J. Cooper suggested in the Dec. 14 "Baseball America" post on line, MLB's master plan may well be that by the 2021 season, a whole new landscape will be in place with MLB controlling the teams in almost every lower league. 

 
Compromise has never been MLB's strong suit, but as someone who loves baseball on the lower levels, I sure hope some reconcilation happens early in the new year. For a body that endlessly intones the phrase "growing the game," cutting forty-plus teams seems very odd.

 

Coincidentally, I recently re-read a wonderful 1991 book, David Lamb, "STOLEN SEASON: A Journey Through America and Baseball's Minor Leagues." It is a lovely paean to the importance of a special American institution.  The book may be technically out of print, but I think an internet search can find a copy or I sure hope public libraries have it.

The late David Lamb was a foreign correspondent for the "LA Times" who needed a break from covering the wars in the Middle East.  The opening sentence of the book drew me in immediately:  "This baseball journey was born in the rubble of Beirut while some maniacs were blowing away my hotel with tanks, chunk by chunk."

 
So at the age of 49 Lamb decided to re-connect with his baseball-loving youth when he was such an ardent Boston and Milwaukee Braves fan that he wrote for their fan publications.  The Wisconsin team liked his work so much that he was invited to spend a week covering the team as a fully-credentialed teenager. 

 
Lamb's wife endorsed his mid-life crisis trip as long as he didn't come home chewing tobacco.  Hilarious and prescient insights like this one fill the book. He captures the joy of seeing baseball in small towns and meeting the local characters that make the game so unique.

 
Names of future major leaguers dot the pages of the book such as infielder Ron Washington who wound up managing the Texas Rangers to a World Series and told Lamb that every AB is an opportunity. We discover that the double play combination in Stockton California was Charlie Montoyo (now Blue Jays manager) and Pat Listach, who made The Show with the Brewers.

 
Lamb's visits to the Milwaukee heroes of his youth are revealing - among them: frank Eddie Mathews, thoughtful Warren Spahn, analytical Del Crandall, utility man Chuck Tanner who found far greater success as a MLB manager, and Bob "Hurricane" Hazle, the unheralded minor leaguer who rallied the Braves to their 1957 pennant but only received a 2/3 World Series-winners' share.  Now just "a backwoods whiskey salesman," he's more philosophical than embittered about life. 

 

I wish the prestigious Random House publisher had included an index and that Bill Bruton's and minor league flame-thrower Steve Dalkowski's name had been spelled correctly. But STOLEN SEASON is a most worthy read.  

 
Keep the faith, dear readers, in both baseball and the USA though both are certainly going through difficult times these days.  And always remember:  Take it easy but take it.