This just in! Kids take dads to camp!

Wait! In fact, we have a new trend in Spring Training! Today I saw a photo of Roger Clemens watching his son take batting practice in Spring Training camp! Somehow it didn't give me the same warm glow that I got from the photos of Herb Score and his wife and kids or the handsome Colavito clan arriving, suitcases in hand, in sunny Arizona.

The kids don't come to Spring Training any more

Wallowing in Spring Training nostalgia the other day, I came across a Cleveland Press photo of Rocky Colavito arriving for Spring Training in Tucson with his two kids, probably that fateful spring of 1960. The tykes were three years old and a year and a half. Cute kids, too. (Jeez, they'd be in their 50s now!) (So are some of us!) The player and his family arriving in camp used to be a stock photo. That was before the players were all millionaires, and their families had to be carefully hidden from view. I'm glad the players get paid well; they are the ones that generate all that cash. But those Spring Training photos of families arriving with our heroes were something the working stiff could identify with. Each time one of those touchstones disappeared, the gap between player and fan widened. Is it any wonder it's reached the point where the "stars" are shooting up illegal drugs intravenously, then lying about it in the largest public arena in the land?

Holdout! Another forgotten rite of Spring

The most famous holdouts of my youth were Sandy Koufax and Don "set em up boys!" Drysdale. I was reminded of the way Sandy and Don teamed up to stick it to Walter O'Malley in the spring of 1966 when I chanced across a yellowing news clip from the Philadelphia Daily News the other day.

Baseball writer Stan Hochman was giving Koufax's side of the holdout. If you recall,most writers and fans were livid that a star like Koufax would dare to return his contract unsigned--and drag Drysdale into the mess. Sandy explained : "Don and I went into this thing with the realization that we were serious about it. We teamed up, because as long as I can remember, we were played off against each other."

Koufax waxed quite eloquently about the lopsided nature of contract negotiations. "Actually, there's no such thing as negotiations. You sign when the club reaches what it decides is the highest point it will go."

He also stressed that what he and Drysdale did was no big deal. "The reserve clause won't be abolished. Chaos would result."

In fact, the joint holdout was the first serious blow struck by players against the reserve clause. Had Koufax not retired after the 1966 season, he no doubt would have knocked more holes in it. As it was, Curt Flood took it outside the white lines of baseball in 1970 and into the legal arena. Although he benefitted little from his battle, the reserve clause was doomed.

And with it, the Spring Training Holdout vanished as well. Like the blockbuster trade, the Holdout was something we Cleveland fans learned to fear. Would The Rock refuse to sign this year? Or would Frank "Trader" Lane bully him into another parsiminous pact again? Men and boys alike (and some girls like my mom) opened the sports pages with trepidationin those days, as the annual drama played itself out in sunny Tucson.

Why We Love Trades

Having grown up in the dark shadow of the evil Frank "Trader" Lane, I learned to fear trade rumors around The Wigwam in Cleveland. Lane's abysmal abomination of a trade of Rocky Colavito for Harvey Kuenn still ranks as one of the most traumatic events of my life. Too, I believe players should not be chattel, and that they should make lots of dough. They earn it.

And yet, I now yearn for the era of the swashbuckling trader g.m.s. Today, the big transactions are all about the money. Back then, money was a factor only occasionally. The Yanks even kept payroll rather modest thanks to Casey's platoon system, which ensured that many key players only got to bat 350 or 400 times. So a star's salary rarely motivated a big trade.

What we fans back then loved about the blockbuster trade was the opportunity it gave us to second guess it. Among the savviest trading clubs was St. Louis. I was just reading an old Baseball Digest article today (July 1966) analyzing the Cepeda/Sadecki swap between the Giants and the Cards in May 1966. Just two years earlier, the Cards had hornswaggled the Cubs by dealing pitcher Ernie Broglio for future HOL Lou Brock. That may have been one of the most lopsided trades of all time. the Cubs never really recovered from it. Certainly, St. Louis thought it had outfoxed the Stoneham gang when it landed Cepeda. But in fact, that trade was just about a wash. True, with Cepeda in the lineup, the Cards won the pennant in 67 and 68. But Sadecki had an excellent (12-6) second year with SF and pitched well in 68, altho is 12-18 record didn't reflect it. His ERA was below 3.00 and he struck out 206 while walking just 70. Cepeda fell off badly in '68 and was shipped to Atlanta for Joe Torre, who would later be traded by the Mets for --Ray Sadecki! Both Cepeda and Sadecki had good, long careers, playing on World Champion teams.

But the real sleeper of a trade pulled off by the Cards in that era came before the 1967 season. The Yanks dealt an unhappy and unpopular Roger Maris to the Cards for the legendary Charlie Smith. All Maris did in his last two seasons was help the Cards to two pennants with his excellent outfield play and timely hitting. He even hit .385 with 7 RBIs in the 67 Series. Augie Busch was so pleased that, when Rog announced his retirement, Augie set him up with a beer distributorship in Florida, where he made more money before his early death than he ever made playing baseball.

Bad Boys of the 1960s

When you live in a town like Portland taht doesn't have a MLB team, you don't get the good stuff about the players. I mean, we get all that crap about who's doing steriods or who isn't, etc etc. but not what bars they're busting up or what dames they're running around with.

In my Golden Youth, that's what Bad Boys did. Like Sudden Sam McDowell. Every spring, the reporters would send back these stories about Sam from Tucson that you knew were about Sam being drunk in Tucson. I especially remember one about him being out in the desert with a handgun, allegedly trying to hunt those wild pigs they have out there. Wink wink--Sam got drunk and went shootin in the desert!

Then there were the Bo Belinsky stories. You had to love Bo. He had the hottest babes, top shelf liquor, flashy new clothes. Mediocre pitcher at best, but you didn't love him for his game. Hell, he was in the National League anyway, so why would we care?

Now Billy Martin was a different story. It was one thing for Mickey and Whitey to go out on the town, raise a little hell, grab some ass. But where Mick and Whitey were playful, Billy was an angry drunk. As much as he loved Billy, the Ol Perfesser had to trade him. Orders from above and so on. Can't have a mean street fightin banjo hitter out there getting the expensive boys in trouble.

But this was as bad as it got back then. There were no drugs to abuse. No steriods to take (or not take, no that was my wife taking those, not me). Dudes didn't get paid $10 million a year, so they didn't have lavish coke-infused lifestyles with dozens of hangers-on to suck them dry.The worst Mickey and Whitey had was Billy. And he got traded cuz he was just too bad for Mr. Topping's liking.

Gimme some love, Derek!

Good for Andy Pettitte! Barry Bonds, Pete Rose, Roger Clemens, take notice. If you fess up and apologize, you get a hug from everyone's All American, Derek Jeter. And you probably can continue to exist in your chosen field.

The question isn't should players use steriods, it's their body, who's hurt, etc.? The question is, If rich people who entertain us do something illegal, are they going to get busted? When you break a law that can affect the outcome of a baseball game, you have to pay for it if you get caught.

What the New England Patriots did in trying to steal signals is different. It is not against the laws of the U.S. Sure, that could affect a game's outcome. But no one will go to jail for doing it. It's a different situation when an individual breaks a law to get an unfair advantage.

But the way to avoid being creamed by the media and investigated for years is to come clean, apologize, and throw yourself into Derek Jeter's arms. Then you at least have a chance to repair your rep and continue to make millions on a baseball diamond.

The Splendid Splinter and The Rock

One of my very favorite arguments to tear apart is the "Ted Williams didn't really do that much for the Red Sox. After all, they only won one pennant while he was on the team." I just read an old Baseball Digest article that posited this theory. Fans will insist that a man who was arguably one of the top two or three hitters in the game's history had inflated stats because he played in Fenway; because guys like Bobby Doerr were on base to give him those gaudy RBI totals; that Ted was an indifferent fielder; that Ted wasn't a team player. Just before Rocky Colavito was traded, people were saying similar things about The Rock. It was bullshit in both cases.

Some players do benefit from home field advantage. Ted was one. But he still hit .328 on the road--and had more road homers in fewer at bats than at Fenway. Yes, he had people on base in front of him to drive in. but don't you think if the various managers that managed both players thought Doerr was the better run producer, one of them would have put Bobby behind Ted? C'mon, he was a great and powerful hitter. He got paid to drive in runs and he did that.

Was Ted an indifferent fielder? Maybe he just wasn't that good. You could make a long list of HOL outfielders who weren't. When you drive in 140 runs, you can let in 6 or 7 more a year than Willie Mays and still not hurt your team. And team player? Richie Allen was not a team player. And teams dumped him after a while, despite his talent. Ted may have thumbed his nose at fans and snubbed the press, but that doesn't mean he was a disruptive influence. Again, if you drive in between 113 and 159 runs in 9 seasons, you are ateam player, whether you go drinking with the boys after the game or not.

These are the kinds of arguments that get started when people react emotionally to a player they either like or don't like, and then try to find statistics to support their emotions. What I always loved about Bill James was that he, too, had his opinions. He reacted emotionally many times. But he didn't mix his opinions on a player's character with that player's stats.

Valentine's Day--My Funny Valentine cards

When I was a kid in the 1950s/early '60s, the months between the end of football season and the day the first fresh pack of Topps Baseball Cards arrived at Piersdorff's Drug Store in Fairview Park was a dreary time. No sports cards to collect. None of us cared about basketball cards. But in mid-to-late January, we got a whiff of relief. That's when the Funny Valentines cards would hit the shelves for just a few short weeks. I still have some; they're pretty battered, because we actually traded them around just for fun. Between those and Mad Magazine, my sense of humor was warped at an early age.

He doth Protesteth Too Much

OK, who out there thinks Roger Clemens used HGH? (A large show of hands.) Who thinks it was his WIFE who was using HGH? (His agent's hand is in the air, I see.) Rog is getting himself in a terrible jam, way down there in Texarkan. What is it about these modern athletes that they think it's OK to lie in front of Congress? I mean, unless you are a MEMBER of Congress, you really shouldn't do it.

Now who out there thinks Ol Rog is goin down? that's what I think too.