Bambino's Curse

Easter break

I'll be taking a few days off from posting, as my family and I travel to Texas to be with my wife's family at Easter. (Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to attend the final Red Sox spring training game against Houston at Enron Saturday. Goodness knows I tried to finagle it.)

• Regular postings will resume on Thursday, April 4th, at which point we hope our Red Sox will be 2-0.

As always, thanks so much for making Bambino's Curse one of your stops on the web. Your daily visits, comments, and emails continually renew my spirit.

Until Thursday, then, I leave you with the words of baseball's sage, the late, great A. Bartlett Giamatti:

If we have known freedom, then we love it; if we love freedom, then we fear, at some level (individually or collectively), its loss. And then we cherish sport. As our forebears did, we remind ourselves through sport of what, here on earth, is our noblest hope. Though sport, we re-create our daily portion of freedom, in public.

Happy Easter. Godspeed. Go Red Sox.

55 pitches

I listened to yesterday's Sox Grapefruit League game against the Reds and, although Pedro struggled a bit at times, when he struck out the side with the bases loaded, getting the first two guys on 6 straight strikes, I felt pretty friggin' good.

I tore off my head phones, prairie dogged out of my cubicle and yelled, "Oh, yes, boys and girls, Pedro is in the house!"

(Must admit I'm lucky as anything to have a job where I can listen to Red Sox games on web radio and nobody minds, providing I continue to deliver the goods on time.)

Madness

The more I thought about Selig's pledge in his town meeting speech yesterday, the more it started to sound really hollow, typical Dilbertesque corporate speak. Then when I read that head of the union Donald Fehr called Selig's pledge a publicity stunt and "a possible prelude to a change in work rules", I really started to consider the unthinkable.

We've got a good chance of another player walkout at some point during the season.

And I got a second opinion during the Gorden Edes chat at the Boston.com:

Bambino's Curse (216.12.86.225, 12:49PM)
Do you think Selig's "pledge" yesterday on a full season was just a publicity stunt, as Fehr called it? A work stoppage is still a possibility?

Gorden Edes, The Boston Globe (205.188.197.24, 12:51PM)
I think Bud's pledge was hollow. This is starting to look a lot like '94--no agreement, and the players deciding to strike when it becomes clear the owners plan to unilaterally impose their own set of economic rules.
Madness.

And you know, you just know that if there is a strike it will occur with the Red Sox in first place and everything going great. That's the way it always goes.

"Severe Problems"

I listened to the entire speech and Q&A session by Selig yesterday afternoon. I found it unsettling.

There was the obligatory rah-rah baseball is so cool:

Major League Baseball is in the midst of a remarkable renaissance. We drew more than 73 million fans last season and have set attendance records in three of the last five years. Along with the minor leagues, more than 110 million people attended games last year.

Countered by the just as obligatory we are in dire straights remonstration:

… despite the remarkable renaissance, there are problems -- severe problems -- that must be resolved.

The record is clear. From 1995 through 2001, a total of 224 MLB postseason games were played. Only five were won by clubs whose payrolls were in the lower half of the industry. None advanced past the Division Series, and no team, other than those whose payrolls are in the top fourth of payroll, has won a World Series game during this period…

Currently, MLB is divided between the haves and have-nots …

Selig goes on to say that contraction will happen (in November of this year), and he will continue to move the players union toward more revenue sharing.

What was most unsettling to me is that I think there are even deeper, bigger problems ahead for MLB beyond competitive imbalance and money, and I'm unsure whether the Commissioner's Office or the union and players is paying much attention.

That is, even if they contract 2 teams (or 4 or 6 or however many) and MLB gets a revenue sharing plan and even a salary cap rule similar to the NFL and all this results in every team having a chance and every year a different team wins the World Series … I'm not convinced that is enough to guarantee baseball's future.

What I'm getting at is relevancy. I worry that in the near future baseball will cease to matter.

Here are some warning signs I see:

• Baseball is no longer considered the national pastime
  
  Just about everyone has conceded that this title now goes to the NFL.
  
  
• The average person, especially those younger than 35, really has very little interest in baseball
  
  In my own day-to-day experience I've found this to be increasingly true. And it's important to remember that I haven't lived in the New England area for 10 years now. The Boston/NY fan base is different. Baseball is part of the culture and it isn't going away anytime soon. But step outside that zone and you'll find lots of apathy toward baseball. (Heck, the whole reason why I do this blog is that no one around me wants to talk baseball.)
  
  When I taught community college, hardly any of my students, avg. age 19, had anything but a passing interest in baseball. When I mentioned how much I enjoyed the game they looked as me as if I said I like to attend funerals. "How can you enjoy something so boring?" they'd ask.
  
  Little League is in decline nationwide and has been for years.
  
  
• The record attendance should be taken with a grain of salt
  
  Yes, people are going to baseball games, but do they really get into the game? Go to a game someplace other than the Northeast or the Rust Belt and see what I mean. Fans are far more interested in the dot races on the Jumbotron or the free giveaways. Look at the World Series last year in Arizona. The people splashing in the pool were at least as much of an attraction as the game on the field. (They even had to publish a special section in the Phoenix newspaper called "Baseball 101" to explain the rudiments of the game to the fans.)
  
  To me, these are not signs of a sport in good health.
  
  
• Decline of cities and urban life
  
  In Take Time for Paradise, the late A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote that "sports as we know them -- physical contests pitting individuals or teams against each other -- are city bound, that is, connected to cities or to the creation of a city."
  
  Yet the most recent (year 2000) census data shows a strengthening in the continuing trend, first noticed in the 70s, of people from all demographics choosing to live outside of urban areas. Moreover, it is increasingly clear that the cutting edge of the US economy is becoming suburban rather than urban.
  
  If one accepts Giamatti's premise, but more and more folks and businesses choose not to settle in urban areas, doesn't this suggest a gloomy future for baseball, especially in light of the recent "contraction" plans? If some cites already can't support a MLB club, what about a near future in which cities play a vastly reduced role, both culturally and economically, in our lives?
  
  Will a kid growing up in a one of the off-the-beaten path blossoming economic centers like Boise, Idaho or Sioux Falls, South Dakota, far removed from a major league city, have much interest in professional baseball?

And that's just for starters. I could go on but I've already gone on long enough.

I don't mean to come off as a crotchety curmudgeon "things were so much better in the old days" kind of way, but I do think it's worthwhile to reflect on the potential cultural, political, and economic factors that will affect the game of baseball for good and for bad.

All aboard the bandwagon

Anyone still need a lift on to the Rickey bandwagon?

… Henderson grabs a bat and stands in front of his locker. He is demonstrating how to relax oneself at the plate. Players become so tense, he says, that they tense up and violently squeeze the bat.

''That's not how you're supposed to do it,'' he says. ''You're supposed to step out of the box and breathe.''

He clenches his teeth and then exhales.

''It frees up your hands … That's why I'm not afraid to get two strikes on me. I'm relaxed with two strikes. I'll do anything to keep that third strike from going by me.''

He jumps up and down. He simulates swinging the bat so it produces a foul chopper. Players are watching. Writers are watching. Rickey is rolling. He mentions that a run scored is just as important as an RBI. ''It's the same thing, isn't it?''(Holley, The Boston Globe).

Rickey talks the talk and we already know he can walk the walk (and then steal second). I got excited when rumors first started that the Red Sox were interested in Henderson, now I'm finding actually having him on the team is even better than expected.

"Baseball Town Hall"

In an effort to reach out to fans, Major League Baseball is giving us Commissioner Allan H. "Bud" Selig at 3pm today for his first ever online question and answer forum that MLB is calling a "baseball town hall."

I guess this is our chance to let him know how we feel about the contraction of the Expos, among other things.

Might be interesting. I plan to check it out, at least passively, to see if he gets grilled by the fans. Then again, knowing MLB's ongoing trouble in dealing with the online world, I suspect their servers will crash within the first 5 minutes and that'll be the end of the town hall. Of course the cynic in me is predisposed to wonder if the whole thing is staged from the get go.

Les Expos

A bit off the subject for a Red Sox blog, but with the surname Cossette you've got to figure that I have a soft spot for things Quebecois.

On Saturday NPR did an excellent piece on the Expos, their history and the coming contraction.

It's definitely worth a listen. (This link will spawn the RealAudio player or prompt you to download it.)

I must admit I never knew how strong a fan base baseball used to have or that the Montreal Royals, the minor league precursor to the major league Expos, were actually the first professional team to break the color barrier. Yep, they were the farm club for the Dodgers in the 40s and Jackie Robinson suited up for the Royals in 1946. (The team won 100 games that year in the International League.)

After listening to the NPR piece and learning of the remarkable history of the Expos, the thought of contraction makes me sad. Especially when you consider that it was the strike of '94 that seemed to kill the fan interest and led to the team's subsequent fire sales and lackluster performance on the field.

Disaster Planning

Great one liner from baseball blogger Tony Pierce: "Pedro Martinez says he's feels like a million bucks … which would be OK, but he gets paid $10 million."

Pedro is struggling. The extra weight he's carrying, in an effort to make him less prone to shoulder injury, seems to be one reason why the ace isn't his normal dominating self.

Surely, I'd take mediocrity in April and May in exchange for an unhittable Pedro in August and September during the dog days that have haunted this team for 83 years.

And at the risk of invoking a jinx, the whole Patrick Ewing Theory keeps popping into my head. It worked with the Patriots. Yes, it's an invalid comparison, Bledsoe and Martinez, for various reasons …

But I think we should be ready to face a reality in which Pedro Martinez is not around or not able to post a win every 5th game.

The thing that'll keep me off the Xanax when considering the above, is the emerging quality of pitchers who are not Pedro.

… lefthander Darren Oliver has made as strong a case as anyone for the [5th starter's] job. In holding the Twins scoreless on two hits and a walk over five innings in his fourth start of the preseason, Oliver lowered his ERA to 0.69, the best among the 14 pitchers remaining in camp.

Opponents are batting .178 against Oliver and .196 against Castillo.

A third candidate for the job, Juan Pena, has posted a 2.57 ERA and has held opponents to a .216 average (Hohler, The Boston Globe).

I think it'll be OK in the end. (What choice do I have?)