Yes, the Braves were that stupid

Growing up in the 50s and 60s as an Indians fan, I suppose I was too self-absorbed to realize that, in a land far to the northwest, another group of fans was suffering at the hands of the team's management. Now that I study it, the fate of the Milwaukee Braves was eerily similar to Cleveland's. The chief difference was that Cleveland's Tribe was disarticulated by one insane man, Frank "Trader" Lane. The Braves were ruined by a thoroughly stupid management staff that was completely clueless when it came to evaluating talent.
And they were unlucky.
And probably racist.
And, at some point, they got tired of tired old dirty, boring Milwaukee. But that's another story.
I like baseball stats. Always have. Even as a kid, I looked for new ways to interpret existing data. But what I love even more than stats are player personnel decisions. And that's what really killed the once-proud Milwaukee Braves.
This analysis is gonna take some time. Too much for one blog post, certainly.
So let's start with some basics.
1) After the development of the farm system, but before the era of free agency, baseball trades flourished. It was how many teams tried to build winners.
2) Today, free agent strategies have replaced most trades. These strategies are just as fascinating as trades used to be, but I don't want to talk about them on this blog.
3) In most cases, I believe, most teams in the trading era would have been better served by not trading players than by trading them. This is the non-trade trade. There are exceptions all over the place, but essentially, teams that traded a lot were run by people (Frank "Trader" Lane, for ex) who thought they were smarter than the next guy. Lane wasn't. The Yankees were smarter than the A's during this era. The Braves and Cubs were not smarter than anyone. (We won't go into the Cubs here, except to mention Brock for Broglio later on.)
4) You can't judge most trades by "Who they got for who." You have to follow the thread a little further--in most cases. But the Braves' trades were so bad that you really don't need to follow the thread, because it just gets worse as you follow it.

Basic premise of this treatise: The Milwaukee fans were robbed of their team by a management that made stupid trades beginning in 1959. The Braves could have continued to contend, and doubtless would have won at least one pennant, from 1961 through 1966, if they had done nothing at all besides use the considerable talent they had at the end of the 1959 season. The squandering of the in-house talent in that period caused the team to collapse, attendance to dwindle in the small Milwaukee market, and paved the way for the move to Atlanta.
At least Cleveland didn't lose its team during this era. Almost, but not quite. But Milwaukee fans lost not only what should have been an exciting contending team, they lost the whole franchise.

What I intend to do is demonstrate how the Braves team of 1948, just like the Cleveland team of 1948, was poised for greatness. But because the owners panicked a decade later, Milwaukee (and Cleveland) were destroyed from within.

Today, in Milwaukee Disaster Blog 1, we will start with some history.

1948: Spahn and Sain and pray for rain. Team wins the NL pennant, loses to Cleveland in WS, but nontheless is a fine squad. Scrappy guys like Eddie Stanky, Al Dark, Tommy Holmes and slugging Bob Elliott.
The team slumps, and by 1952, finishes 7th. But who's showing up in the lineup? Eddie Mathews, Johnny Logan, Lew Burdette. The future has arrived.
1953: Joe Adcock, Billy Bruton, Del Crandall and Bob Buhl arrive. WOW!
1954: The Home Run King appears: Hank Aaron. Gene Conley, all 6-foot-8 of him (also a pro basketball player) joins the pitching staff. This team is stoked. Moves up to 3rd place, then second in 55, second by one game in 56, and then, POW! Two consecutive pennants, including a world championship, in 57-58.

To understand the significance of this, you need to know that the NL was extremely competitive in those years. It was right before expansion, but right after the collapse of the Negro leagues. Hispanics were being signed left and right (but not by Milwaukee). There was a glut of talent on a small number of teams. And the Braves just snared two pennants in a row.

Consider who they had: Pitching: Spahn, Burdette, Joey Jay and Juan Pizarro, with Don frickin McMahon in the bullpen. Hitting: Mathews, Aaron, Bruton, Crandall (one of the top hitting catchers ever in his prime), and Wes Covington. A forgotten player today, but then, Cov was one of the most feared left-handed platoon hitters in the game. In 58, his slugging average was .622! And Joe Adcock, the George Scott of his day (think Hafner), was being PLATOONED with the singles hitter Frank Torre, even though Adcock had proven he could hit righties and lefties earlier in his career. With the outfield dominated by the fleet Bruton and the quick, lithe Aaron, the infield anchored by Johnny Logan and various good fielding second basemen, this was a solid team from top to bottom.

Then.... they finished second by TWO GAMES to the Dodgers in 59, and second again in 1960. SECOND!!!!!!!!!
Stay tuned and find out tomorrow just how stupid the Braves bosses would be....

Opening Day!

How sweet it is! The Tribe smashes the hated White Sox, 10-8, with two of my favorite players, Casey Blake and Jhonny Peralta, among the heroes. The Home Opener at The Jake goes in the W column. All is well in Mudville, at least on this day.l

Takes me back to my most memorable Opening Day game in Cleveland. 1975. Frank Robinson, F. Robby, Take Frank to the Bank, managing his first game ever. Puts himself in the starting lineup and smashes a 3-run home run to win the game in front of a sell-out crowd at Municipal Stadium. OMG what a game! Did we scream our lungs out or what?

(Pause as I wipe away a tear or two.)

In earlier years, when we were younger, it often fell to my sainted mother to take us all to Opening Day. If the old man couldn't get off work, she'd pack us into the car and haul us down to the lakefront, wind howling off Lake Erie, the ballpark an absolute refrigerator even when the sun broke through. We didn't care. Opening Day. Ya had to be there. No matter how the rest of the season went--and it usually went very poorly for Tribe fans back then--you couldn't dampen the the thrill of Opening Day. The buzz was everywhere. "This is gonna be the year." "Did ya see that Rookie Max Alvis, what a kid, huh?" "The Rock is back with the Tribe and all will be well again!"

Self-delusion is an essential quality in a Tribe fan. And the delusion is never stronger than on Opening Day.

Bonus Baby Boomers

Billy Consolo died the other day. His passing subtracts another name from the list of living 1950s/60s "Bonus Babies." These were young players usually right out of high school who were offered what was then considered a large amount of money to immediately sign with a Major League team. (According to the back of his 1959 Topps baseball card, Consolo got $60,000 to sign. The cartoon shows him hauling off a giant sack of money with a Brink's guard, gun out, at his side.)

Back then, as today, baseball owners in the smaller markets objected to the largesse the more well heeled teams could dump on young talent. So they forced through a stupid set of rules that were triggered by a big bonus. The most egregious rule was that the kid had to stay with the Major League team for at least two years before he could be farmed out.

I have not done a study of Bonus Babies. I would like to, but there are a lot of things I would like to do that my wife tells me are silly and i don't have time for when there are bathrooms to clean and bills to pay. But my rcollection is that a high percentage of these Bonus Babies did not have stellar careers. Now, that may be because they rusted on the big league bench for two years when, as very young men,they should have been competing with other kids and drinking beer with other kids and chasing women of their own age. It may be because most young players don't have impressive careers; a huge percentage of players who start out chasing the dream don't make it.

But it does seem, if not unfair, which is a term I don't like, at least weird that kids like Consolo would be anchoring the south end of the Red Sox bench with insane adults like Jimmy Piersall, Frank Sullivan, Ted Williams and Mel Parnell only too eager to warp the young man's mind and body. First, they're jealous of the dough he got. Second, he might take one of their jobs. Third, those guys just gave kids shit for the fun of it.

Billy Consolo got into 603 games in 10 seasons and hit .221--which was still a lot better than many of the Bonus Babies did.

At least Billy got his revenge. For years his pal Sparky Anderson kept him around as a bench coach (read: synchophant) (as in most of Don Zimmer's jobs) where he reportedly told yarns and tall tales one on top of another to the unsuspecting kids on the Tigers teams. (I can't imagine the veteran Tigers of that era, Jack Morris, Frank Tanana or Darrell Evans sticking around for Billy's Story Hour.) Basically, Billy Consolo became a clubhouse clown and entertainer to the players and a drinking buddy to the boss.

The aging Bonus Baby gone creased and golden brown in the summer suns of too many hapless, frustrating seasons, making the best of bad policy concocted by pallid old used car dealers who wished they were in New York or Boston instead of Pittsburgh.

For those of you who are like me (you have my condolences), here's a good article on the subject: http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/cash-in-the-cradle-the-bonus-babies/

That was really good for me!

Just completed my first purchase of cards from checkoutmycards.com, the Seattle-based sports card site. I'm happy to report that the site was easy to use and to navigate. I was able to closely examine the cards, front and back, prior to purchase. And when they arrived today, they looked even better in the light of day than they did on the site. Kudos to Steve Hollander for a smooth transaction.

But then how could a purchase involving Valmy Thomas, Eddie Kasko and Willie Jones be anything but satisfactory?

When the Irish ruled MLB

In my bedside Ninth Edition (1993) of the MacMillan Baseball Encyclopedia, 73 position players are listed whose surnames start with O'. That pretty much makes them Irish. (O'Briens comprise the largest single group, if you care.) Of those, 63 played before 1960. (Danny O'Connell retired in 1962 but I still didn't count him as having played before 1960. Just a technical thing, you know?) You could look it up. But the fact is, St. Patrick's Day is no longer an excuse for half the players in Spring Training to go missing on March 17.

The Irish once ruled MLB. It was the typical story--a way out of the slums and also out of a really nasty job of some sort. It was a different game in those days, a lot dirtier, the fight to keep one's job much more desperate than today, when most third-year players have more money than they'll ever need for the rest of their lives.

So today, be sure to raise a glass to those scrappy, rascally Irish ballplayers of yesteryear. Maybe you'll even run into Billy O'Dell or Johnny O'Brien, Paul O'Neill or Pete O'Brien, Kid O'Hara or Hustlin Dan O'Leary on your rounds today. Tip o' the hat to 'em, by god!