Actual email exchange between two baseball nuts

[Note: This exchange starts at the bottom of the post and works up to the top. Just in case you got confused.]

Me: It's a sickness, but it only affects us, so that's OK. You should read my most recent post "How My Mind Works." It starts with reading an article in a Baseball Digest from 1967. The article mentions Sonny Siebert. So I look up Sonny's stats in the MacMillan Encyclopedia. Then I go to baseball-reference.com to see who the most similar pitchers were. Then I start looking up their stats. Pretty soon it's dark out, I've had 3 glasses of wine, the dishes aren't done and I'm in trouble with the wife. All over Sonny Siebert! I'm in trouble with the old lady because I cheated on her with Sonny frickin Siebert!


Andy: > Yeah, 15 HRs in 1973, not too shabby. The Cubs made a habit of trading
> guys to the Expos who became pretty good: Andre Thornton, Rodney
> Scott, Dave Martinez, Breeden to some extent.
>
> God, why do I know this?
>
Me: He had one monster slugging average year. One more than either of us had in
> > the majors. On the other hand, we've both had some potent story count
> > years...

Andy: Yup, and by my calculation, they hit .233. Hal played a few more years
> >> with the Expos after leaving the Flubs.
> >>
> >> http://www.baseball-reference.com/b/breedha01.shtml
> >>
Me: Dammit! Were they brothers?

Andy: Thanks -- and Hal played first. Danny Breeden wa the catcher.
> >> >>
Me: Ha! I did read that post! It was excellent.
> >> >> >
> >> >> >

How my mind works

This is the sort of stuff that runs through my head. I was thinking about the 1959 season and of course you can't be a Tribe fan without wondering what the hell was up with Tito Francona that year? And then as I'm turning that one over in my brain, I'm thinking, what the hell was up with ex-indian Norm Cash in 1961? And then it turns out, as it always does, that, just like Kuenn and Colavito, Tito and Stormin' Norman have more in common than one would suppose.

In 1959, as The Tribe made its run for the pennant, Tito Francona suddenly became Stan Musial. Singles, doubles, triples, home runs--he ends up hitting .363! Kuenn wins the batting title because Tito didn't have quite enough ABs. So now we all think, shit, we've got the next Stan Musial right here in Cleveland. And of course that idiot Frank "Trader" Lane decides two batting champs on one team would be just the ticket to the Series, and he trades Colavito for Kuenn.

Except that Tito was only Tito, not Stan the Man. Had a few more good years but nothing like 1959.

Norm Cash: Tribe deals him for Steve Demeter in early 1960 before Cash even plays a game for the Tribe. Another great trade by Frank "Trader" Lane. Has a good year in 1960, but in 1961--oh baby! .361 BA, 41 HRs, 132 RBIs, 8 triples, 193 hits, 119 runs--all career bests in what would be a long career. But although Cash is a dominant first baseman in his era, he never approaches the 1961 numbers again. (Of course, those were driven by expansion, unlike Tito's 1959 season, which makes his even more amazing.)

So when the dust settles, 15 years for Tito, 17 for Norman: Career BAs: Tito, .272, Cash, .271. Too weird.

OK, I can sleep now. G'night.

1959: The Year We all got Sucked In

I was born in 1950. I came of age baseballically in 1959, musically in 1963 and got girl crazy in 1966. The music and girl coming of age were well timed. Baseball, not so much.

My father's generation grew up with a Cleveland Indians franchise that was always competitive. From post-WWII through 1959, they got to follow one of the best sets of teams ever assembled outside of New York City. They celebrated two AL pennants and one World Series win in the time period, with plenty of tight races in between. Stars like Bob Fellar, Lou Boudreau, Bob Lemon, Dale Mitchell, jim Hegan, Larry Doby and Minnie Minoso kept them in every game. They had a great G.M. in Bill Veeck to keep them amused when they weren't winning. My parents still talk about going down to League Park (predecessor to Municipal Stadium) just to sit behind Ted Williams in right field so they could taunt him. Those were great days to be a Tribe fan.

Naturally, our parents transmitted this excitement to us. And with the thrilling 1959 race sucking us into big league ball, we gladly joined the ranks of Tribe fans throughout the city. That '59 team was a sweet one, too: a superb pitching staff featuring young studs Mudcat Grant, Gary Bell, Jim Perry and Herb Score (who suspected he would never make a comeback?). Anchoring the youth were vets like Cal McLish and Jack Harshman. The position player lineup was weak at only two positions: third (an aging George Strickland) and second, where Billy Martin was being consumed by his demons. Catching was super solid with Russ Nixon and Dick Brown doing the lefty-righty platoon. Colavito, Minoso and Piersall formed a truly complementary outfield. Vic Power was probably the best first baseman of his era, while SS Woodie Held made up for lack of range in the field with pop in his bat. Tito Francona, a true natural hitter, led a solid bench. He hit .363 and slugged .566, and Jim Baxes slugged .466 in his only true Major League test.

After battling the Chisox furiously in August, the Tribe finally lost the struggle in September and finished five games back. But I was galvanized by the pennant race. There are some games that still play through my head from that season. That was the year we all began to collect Topps Baseball Cards in earnest. I was only allowed to buy one pack per week with my nickel allowance. It was tough to watch Terry Hartman buy four or five packs at a time. He got a quarter a week. On the other hand, my grandmother quickly caught on to my lust for cards. She would look for any occasion to drop 10 packs in my lap, thus purchasing my love for all of eternity.

Our main source of cards was Piersdorff's Drug Store. The wiley proprietor understood that, if we came in with our mothers, we would wheedle and beg until they gave in and bought a pack. And that might lead to some candy being purchased--all feathering the Piersdorff nest. If for some reason Piersdorff was out of cards or we couldn't spare the time to walk the mile or so to get there, we could try Sav-On, the neighborhood grocer. They sometimes carried cards and were at least worth badgering our mothers to just pleeeee-se buy me one pack!

As the season progressed, the urgency to get Score and Colavito and Grant and Bell and Perry and Minnie and Jimmy increased. (I never did get a Woodie Held that year, which really bugged me.) We would try anything, including trying to trick some of the younger kids in the neighborhood to trade us their indians for crap like Mickey Mantle and Duke Snider. I recall one shameful theft attempt of Jamie Roller's cards; I later relented and took them back. Oh, what evil lurks in the hearts of Indians' fans!

In those days, we rarely traded cards in the way some kids did. While some would flip cards to see who got to keep the pair, we traded much more like G.M.s of big league clubs. Even doubles weren't given away; you had to get something in return. I recall Hartman as being an especially shrewd trader, Gary Chilcher as being overly cautious, Dale Crockett an easy mark and my brother--the poor kid was two years younger and just basically clueless.

We didn't stick cards in the spokes of our bike wheels the way a lot of kids did. I always thought those kids were idiots.What, did baseball cards grow on trees, that you could put them in your bike spokes just to make some stupid sputtering noise? Some people just do not understand the value of money.

Although the Tribe would bitterly disappoint my friends and me over the next three decades, their performance didn't dampen our enthusiasm for card collecting. When I went back some years ago and put my collection in order, I found that I had a large number of 1963 Topps cards. So at age 13 i was still an avid collector. But that was it. My collection included almost no 1964 Topps cards. The Beatles not only started a music revolution in 1963, but they also turned our attention from baseball cards to 45 RPM records. My large collection of 45s from that era demonstrates beyond a doubt where my meager funds had been redirected. I still loved the game and lived and (mostly) died by the Tribe's box score. But a new obsession was pushing baseball aside, or at least forcing it to move over. Before long, my life's obsessions would be set: baseball, rock n roll and girls, girls, girls.

Not a bad life, after all is said and done. And now the Tribe is winning again.

A Deadly Pause

Thinking back on it, the Yankees in 1961 sure didn't seem like a team whose foundation was cracking. The team was perfectly positioned to take immediate advantage of expansion. Adding the Angels and Senators to a league that already had a patsy (KC) played right into the Yankees' slugger-filled line-up. The Yanks cranked 240 HRs; amazingly, the Angels were (a distant) second, with 189.

Winning 109 games and four of five in the World Series, the Yankees' management may have decided to take a breather. They abandoned the Stengel / Topping / Weiss strategy of trading with the losers to pick up the pitchers and role players they would need to compensate for a lack of homegrown talent. But that left them with a woefully thin bench to backstop one of the oldest teams in the Majors. Some 14 roster players were 30 or over, and Mantle was physically well past 30. Key players like Ford, Howard, Berra, Skowron, Lopez, Ditmar, Turley and Duren were among the 30-plus crowd. Moreover, the front office clearly considered Mantle, Maris, Ford, Berra, Howard, Kubek, Richardson and Boyer Untouchables.

There wasn't much left to dangle in front of KC, LA and Washington, and expansion had thinned out the "talent" on their rosters anyway.

1962: The Yankees win again, but just manage to edge out Minnesota (by 5). In one of the most amazing expansion stories ever, the two-year-old Angels led by Bill Rigney finished just 10 back. Then the Yanks barely beat the Giants in 7. (Remember Richarson spearing McCovey ninth innning line shot? Oh Willie, we wanted you to get that hit!) And again, the front office stands pat.

Well, not completely. Skowron is traded for Stan Williams, the big Dodger righty. You can't fault the trade. They had to do something. (The Moose would get his revenge in the '63 Series with clutch hits that helped beat the Yanks.) Pepitone, the next Lou Gehrig (I'm not making this up), takes over at first base. Howard, 33, is now the regular catcher. Plays like a 25-year-old. But still ...

1963: Everyone in the infield has a career year: Howard (the MVP), Kubek, Richardson, Pepitone, Boyer. Ford and Bouton have huge years, as do Terry and Downing. But Maris and Mantle are hobbled by injury, Berra gets in only 35 games behind the mask. The bench includes 37-year-old Dale Long and Harry Bright (!). Maris is unhappy, the press says. The press is right.

If the American League is fooled, the Dodgers ain't buying it. They sweep--sweep!--the Yankees. Houk scurries to the front office, leaving the field boss job in 1964 to a completely unprepared Yogi Berra. And yet, they stand pat. No trades of any note.

1964: Still no one (except Stottlemyre) coming up from the farm to help out. Super sub Phil (Harmonica Man) Linz gets into 112 games, playing 2nd, short, third and OF as injuries (esp. Kubek) and age take their toll. Terry, former budding star Bill Stafford and Williams tank, not enough to undermine fine years by Ford, Downing, Bouton and Stottlemyre, but still worrisome. Maris and Mantle rebound (Maris is unhappy, the press reports), but Boyer and Tresh slump, their slippage covered up by another pennant. Comes the Series, and a team that slipped in, a team whose g.m. was fired in August and whose manager was put on notice--this team, the Cardinals, beats the mighty Yankees in 7 games.

1965: The wheels come off. Berra is canned, Keane comes over from the victorious Cardinals to take the reins--and finds an old, injured, burnt out squad in complete disarray. Pepitone is probably doing drugs by then (a first: the Yankees preferred drug was always booze!). He slumps. Kubek--stick a fork in him. At age 28, he's through. Maris barely plays due to "injuries." (He's really unhappy now, we don't need the press to remind us.) Mantle hobbles on and off the field (and bench) and only plays 108 games in the field. Elston Howard, at age 36, catches 95 games but is suddenly acting his age. Bouton's arm goes out on him and he goes 4-15. Guys named Mike Jerewicz, Jim Brenneman, Gil Blanco and Rich Beck are included on the pitching staff. And yet the front office does nothing to help. They let it happen. Did Keane screw Houk's wife in the off season or something? How can this franchise just sit back and watch this mess?

Casey could have told you. He knew nothing was coming up from the farm teams. He knew it took a special relationship between front office and field boss to get the players you needed and then have the guts, the nerve, the balls, to platoon wonderful players like Ellie Howard and Da Moose and Hector Lopez because that was how you won. Casey knew you had to trade a Billy Martin or a Norm Siebern or a Jerry Lumpe or Don Larsen or Tom Morgan to get something of value. And he must have known that, by the time he got the game a) the Yankees had too many Untouchables and b) there were no young players to dangle as trade bait left in the pipeline.

And so the Yankees, to the delight of millions of Yankee haters like myself, would wander in the desert. When they finally traded some of the Untouchables, they'd lost their value. Maris went for Charlie Smith (?); boy, did the Cards get the better end of that deal. Boyer went for Bill Robinson, which would have been a good trade if the Yankees had hung on to Robinson for more than two years. They got Ron Klimkowski for Elston Howard. Ouch! And nothing for Kubek, McDougald and Richardson, who all retired early.

The Yankees would be led out of the desert by an unlikely pair: ex-Clevelander George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin. (And free agency, of course, which automatically gave the Yankees a huge talent advantage over every other team on the planet.) But they would not return to punish and dominate and humiliate until the 1990s, when Steinbrenner finally got it right. And by then, other clubs, including the Indians, were able to regroup and become competitive once again.

When the music finally stopped in the Bronx

What happened to the mighty Yankees between Casey Stengel's dismissal following the World Series loss to the Pirates in 1960 and Johnny Keane's death on Jan. 6, 1967? It was in that period the Yanks went from one of their most devastating seasons ever (1961) to the dismal finishes of 1965 and 1966. Part of the answer, as we have mentioned, can be traced to the failure of the farm system to produce the kinds of players the Yankees were accustomed to bring up from the farm. But two other factors sealed the team's doom: the front office ran out of good players it was willing to trade, and it designated too many aging stars as Untouchables who could not be traded, at least not until it was far too late to get anyone decent in return.

Perhaps the top Yankee prospect to join the team in this period was Mel Stottlemyre. Mel was a true pitching star for New York. But by the time he came up in 1964, the rest of the staff was fading fast. Two other prospects who had passable Major League careers--Joe Pepitone and Tom Tresh--never truly blossomed. Kubek, Richardson and McDougald--the heart of the Yankee infield for many a pennant season--retired before they could be dealt away for new blood. And players like Mantle, Berra, Ellie Howard and Whitey Ford were allowed to ride into the sunset. The once-sly trading Yanks got nothing for this entire group of veteran stars. (Howard was finally dealt away in his final year, but my god, the man was the Yankee's starting catcher at age 37!) And the last major trade made during Stengel's era brought Roger Maris in from KC for budding star Norm Siebern. (His career would oddly mirror Maris's, minus the asterisk.)

But before the collapse, the Yankees enjoyed one last Viagral string of pennants. Of this, we will speak tomorrow.