1968: My Lai, My Graduation, My Liberation, Third Place

This blog is about my fascination with baseball. But it is not about me most of the time. But as I review that incredible year of 1968, I find I have to blog at least a little about myself.

To baseball fans, 1968 was The Year of the Pitcher. The Cleveland Indians did well in a year in which the deck was stacked in the pitchers' favor. We had an amazing pitching staff--McDowell, Siebert, Tiant, Hargan, Stan Williams, Vincente Romo in relief. And we got just enough hitting to make Alvin Dark look like a genius. Unfortunately, baseball was not much on my mind that year.

I was a high school senior, and not a happy camper. I was probably clinically depressed, I was clearly anorexic, I had almost no friends and would have probably been a goth if they'd been invented back then. But I did love music. I convinced a local church to let me use a basement room to hold monthly folk music shows, which of course featured my folk act as well as lots of others. One day, maybe in June or July, I got a call from a former neighbor, Ron Haberle. He was in the Army, he said, had some interesting photos, had heard about our venue (called The Blues Hole) and wondered if he could show the photos there some time. I said sure, why not?

Turns out Ron was the official Army photographer assigned to My Lai, the village where an Army massacre would galvanize the world for years. As the room darkened and Ron's photos popped onto my dad's movie screen, the room fell silent. Asians lined up. Asians being shot. Asians being dumped into trenches, or lined up in the dirt paths of their village. Dead Asians, men, women and children. We were the second group in the U.S. to see Ron's photos of My Lai. The world had not yet had a chance to judge them. But as I sat there, transfixed, all I could think of was: I am NOT going to Vietnam.

Graduation from high school was a sort of liberation for me. I was free of all the phonies, the conformists, everyone I hated--the jocks, the sports fans, all those idiots who didn't understand that high school was bullshit. Although I later realized that I was a bit harsh in my judgments, getting out of high school and into college was a huge and very positive transition for me. I became so enamoured of my college life that I basically forgot about The Tribe and baseball for most of the time I was a student. It was 1968-72, one of the most powerfully seductive periods of any century, and I was in the thick of it.

Looking back, it seems like a dream. And although it tooks me years to work through all the anxiety that built up in my adolescence, my four years at school were like a rebirth. I came out the other end ready to take on the world--and ready to dive back into baseball fandom once again. The Rock was long gone--1968 had been his last hurrah, as he went out with a .211 BA in a parttimer's role. The 1970s would bring new and more painful frustrations for Tribe fans, but my own life had been enriched to the degree that I no longer lived and died by the Tribe's box score. In some sense it is sad to see such a fervant passion cool. But other passions took its place, ones over which I had (or thought I had) more control.

Paving the way for Bill James

In the July 1969 issue of Baseball Digest, writer/author John Holway tried to make the argument that, based upon "exclusive new figures," Luis Tiant was the best pitcher in 1968.

The "new figures" he cited involved computing hitters' averages against pitchers based upon how many hits the pitchers gave up during the season. Holway considered this to be a better way to evaluate a pitcher than either ERA or W-L record. Using this system, Holway proclaimed Luis Tiant the "stingiest" pitcher that legendary year--better than Gibson and his 1.12 ERA, McLain and his 31 wins, and so on.

Only one problem: Holway didn't include walks yielded as a factor. So, by his calculation, Sam McDowell and Sonny Siebert were "better" than McLain. If you add walks plus hits, for instance, and subtract them from innings pitched, the best pitcher in 1968 was Baltimore's Dave McNally. Gibson, Tiant and McLain were neck-and-neck in this rating, but behind McNally. They each were about plus-34-35 if one subtracted walks plus hits from innings, while McNally was plus 43.

The true master of keeping runners off base was Sandy Koufax. He had a couple of years where he simply blew the standard away. In 1965, he was plus 58. Had he been pitching in 1968, god only knows what numbers he might have put up.

McDowell didn't give up many hits in 1968, but he walked 110 batters and actually had more hits plus walks than he did innings pitched. Same for Siebert.

Holway has been at the cutting edge of much of baseball research and has gone far beyond such simplistic evaluations during his long career. He was another fan in 1968 who was much taken by the year's pitching achievements, most of which were due to rules changes designed to help pitchers. When the rules makers decided fans wanted more offense, they simply reversed course, lowering the mound, narrowing the strike zone and juicing up the ball.

Then along came steriods. Let's see how the rules makers handle this one.

'Miracle Mets'? Nope, just great scouting

The Summer of 1969 was not supposed to be the stuff of legends. The St. Louis Cardinals were expected to pull off a three-peat. Who knew that Vada Pinson was an old 30 and that the man he was traded for, Bobby Tolan, would have 3 monster years in a row for Cincinnati? How could they give 372 at bats to a shortstop (Maxvill) who hit .175? Everyone else had an average year but there were precious few career years. And, as we know, bad trades and average years result in no pennants.

But the Mets had it all, and it was no miracle. They made good trades, they got lucky with a trade, but more important, they grew their own and somebody in that organization knew a pitcher when he saw one. The really good trade was the one that brought Donn (why two n's?) Clendenon to the Mets for pretty much no one. Clendenon anchored an awesome bench and preceeded to have two more very nice years for the Mets. His power off the bench and in subbing roles was crucial to the pennant drive. Throw in Art Shamsky's similar role, and you had a Mets bench that outshone any other that year--and contributed 39 HRs!

Then there was the lucky trade that brought Tommie (ie? what is this?) Agee over from the luckless Cubbies with Super Sub Al Weiss for Tommy Davis. The trade preceded the 1968 season and, at first, it looked like a dud. Davis tore the cover off the ball in Chi-town while
Agee hit an anemic .217. But just wait: In 1969, Agee had what was for him a career year, hitting .273 with 22 HRs and 44 SBs. (The guy finished his career with 999 hits. How can you do that?) And Weiss turned out to be a post-season hitting monster that year, which overshadowed his many day in, day out contributions during the campaign. Davis and Agee had one thing in common: They loved to crash into walls, a habit which shortened both careers, Agee's more than Tommy's.

But the key to the "miracle" was just good scouting. Nearly every regular that year was homegrown: Harrelson, Kranepool, Garrett, Swoboda, Cleon Jones (another career year player), Gaspar, Boswell. Then there was the pitching staff: Seaver, Koosman, Ryan, Gentry, McAndrew, McGraw. With the key career years from Agee and Jones, solid fielding and admirable management of the pitching staff by Gil Hodges, the Mets finished 8 games ahead of the Pythagorean Theorum 92 wins they "should" have had.

No, not a miracle at all. The miracle is that they didn't win more pennants with that pitching staff. But as with all organizations, the Mets squandered their bounty, the farm system stopped producing, and Gil Hodges died in 1972--just before another pennant he set up, but too soon to keep the machine running smoothly.