2010 Baseball Thread No. 2 (which was my Little League number!)

I was only a kid when he played but Cito Gaston wasn't a bad ballplayer as I recall.

 

Roger that.

 

Torre should be in the Hall of Fame as a player, and certainly will get in as a manager. Here are the current Hall of Fame managers (courtesy of Baseball Almanac), with Torre, Bobby Cox and Tony LaRussa certain to join the list as soon as they've been retired long enough.

Walter Alston --- Had one major-league at-bat and struck out (1936 Cardinals)

Sparky Anderson --- Played one season in the majors (1959 Phillies), but got 477 at-bats. Only hit .218 with no power, but still, you'd think he'd have gotten another shot. Anybody know the reason he didn't?

Leo Durocher --- Classic good-field, no-hit shortstop, though he wasn't as bad a hitter (career average of .247) as people remember (he was nicknamed "The All-American Out)." Hung around for 1,637 games over 17 seasons, but is more famous for supposedly stealing Babe Ruth's watch than anything else he did as a player.

Rube Foster --- Negro-Leaguer. Damn good pitcher in his day by all accounts, though the early black baseball records are sketchy. Supposedly taught Christy Mathewson his famous "fadeaway" pitch, though many historians dispute that.

Ned Hanlon --- Played 13 seasons in the 1880s and 90s, but was only a .260 career hitter in an era when guys routinely hit 100 points higher.

Bucky Harris --- Fairly good hitter, though not much power. Regularly hit leadoff (.352 career OBP) for some very good Washington Senators teams in the 1920s.

Miller Huggins --- Very similar player to Harris --- slap-hitting middle infielder who walked a lot, but played about a decade before.

Tommy Lasorda --- Pitched 58 innings over three seasons with the Dodgers in the mid 1950s. 0-4 with a 6.58 ERA.

Al Lopez --- Caught nearly 2,000 games for several teams in the 1930s and 40s. Wasn't much of a hitter (most catchers in those days weren't), but made four All-Star teams.

Connie Mack --- Played 11 years for three teams in the 1880s and 90s, but was, again, your classic no-hit catcher. The difference with Mack was that he couldn't field, either. He somehow managed to commit 76 passed balls in 1887.

Joe McCarthy --- Never played in the majors, which was extremely rare for a manager of his caliber at that time. Supposedly, that's among the many reasons he and Babe Ruth clashed so much.

John McGraw --- An excellent hitter and baserunner from 1891 to 1906 (though he was more or less done as a player by 1902). Hit as high as .391 and stole as many as 78 bases.

Bill McKechnie --- A .250-hitting third baseman with no power or speed, but managed to get into 846 major-league games.

Wilbert Robinson --- Like Lopez, hung around forever and was considered one of the better catchers of his day. Not a bad hitter, either, at least for a catcher (.273 career average).

Frank Selee --- Never played in the majors.

Casey Stengel --- He was such a legend (and a clown) as a manager that people forget how good a player he was. A .284 career hitter, drew walks, actually had some power (89 career triples) and was at least a league-average outfielder defensively. Played 1,277 games over 14 seasons in the 1910s and 20s.

Earl Weaver --- Never played in the majors.

So that's the list. I'd agree with Michael that the best "player" among the Hall of Fame managers was McGraw, then Stengel, followed by Lopez, Robinson, Harris and Huggins.

McGraw might have made the Hall of Fame as a player even if he'd never managed. I don't think you can say that about anyone else on this list, except maybe Lopez. Torre would be in that discussion as well.

 

Found this on Sparky Anderson. He had the record for fewest hits for any player to play 150 games in a season until Dal Maxvill broke it:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=10820

Still, you would think that someone would have called him back up, to fill in somewhere.

 

Also with Mack, when he had those 76 passed balls, that might have been when catchers started setting up directly behind home plate, instead of 20 feet back. I'd think with the lousy equipment of the time, plus having pitchers only 45 or 50 feet away, it'd be much harder to catch a pitch.

 

I wonder if Anderson also holds the record for most at-bats among players who played in only one season. It wouldn't be unusual for him to have gotten those 477 at-bats over, say, four or five seasons, but to get them all at once --- and never get another shot --- is very strange indeed.

I thought maybe he had "retired" and gone directly into coaching/managing after the 1959 season, but he actually hung around for several years at Triple-A Toronto. Jack Kent Cooke was Maple Leafs owner at the time, and he offered Sparky a job managing in the minors in 1964 (when Anderson was 30). He was a coach for the Padres in 1969, and took the Reds job the following year.

Anderson was only 36 when he took over the Reds, which people forget because he was already white-headed. He's only seven years older than Pete Rose.

 

Sparky was a Phillie for a while when I was a little kid in the late '50s. He was not a regular. If you couldn't win a starting job with that team in that era, you have pretty much defined your major league ability level.

 

Respectfully Michael, you're wrong. He played only one season with the big-league Phillies (1959), and got 477 at-bats. He never appeared in the majors other than that, before or after.

That's what makes his career arc so unusual.

 

When I was a kid my dad always told us about the time he met Sparky Anderson during his one and only big league season.
Dad would often take the train to from Jersey to Philly with a couple friends and go watch the Phillies. One time Sparky was getting off the train and my dad and his buddies recognized him. They chatted him up and walked together all the way to Connie Mack Stadium. I think he even got his autograph, IIRC.

 

Josh Hamilton hit a clear home run that bounced off a railing above the left field wall in Arlington.

Ump said it hit off the wall. Ron Washington came out to argue.

Ump did not take advantage of instant replay, instead insisting he was right and that he basically didn't need replay to confirm it. Of course, the ump was wrong.

I'm guessing all managers will have red flags beginning next spring because umps are too ego-riffic to take advantage of the tools they've been given.

 

Let me guess, C.B. Bucknor?

 

Bucknor's on the crew. Kerwin Danley's got the plate tonight. And much to my surprise, Joe West is not involved in any way.

AP: Second base umpire Doug Eddings signaled safe, indicating the ball was still in play, and Hamilton stopped at second base. Rangers manager Ron Washington came out to question the call when the umpires didn’t come together as a group or visit the replay booth.