The Golden Age of Baseball

ESPN columnist Bill Simmons writes that the golden era of baseball was the five year span of 1988-1992. That just so happens to coincide with my introduction to the sport. The era began with me as a ten year old just beginning to scour and memorize the backs of baseball cards. I finally got old enough to stay up late and watch World Series games. I loved my Oakland A's - Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Dave Henderson, Dave Parker, Carney Lansford and Walt Weiss. And of course a pitching staff of perennial 20 game winner Dave Stewart along with Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley and Bob Welch, who was awarded the 1990 Cy Young by winning an improbable 27 games. Those A's went to three straight World Series from 1988-1990, winning in 1989 against the rival Giants.

But the real treat, and perhaps the moment that truly sucked me in as a baseball fan, was the 1991 World Series. Both the Twins and the Braves had finished in last place the year before, but now they faced off with the winner becoming the first worst to first team in baseball. The Braves had just escaped Barry Bonds's Pittsburgh Pirates in what was an amazing series in its own right. But that was merely the appetizer to the real Series. The Braves had young Tom Glavine, Steve Avery, and John Smoltz. In what was the greatest game I've ever watched, in what many have said was the greatest World Series ever, game seven had Smoltz pitching 9 shutout innings only to be bested by Jack Morris's 10 scoreless. With game seven ending 1-0 in 10 innings, the Series had 3 extra inning games, and 5 one run decisions. The home team won every time, only the second time that had ever happened. Almost every game went down to the wire, and pitching duels were the norm. To this day I prefer a close, well pitched game to a high scoring one.

As this era ended, the steroid induced home run era began. Sadly, two main players from my beloved A's, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, were heavily involved in ushering in the steroid era. I never quite regained the same passion for baseball or even baseball card collecting after that. The game had changed. 1991's pitching duel was replaced by 1993's slug fest between the Blue Jays and Phillies. And the home runs never really stopped for another decade and a half. Only now are things beginning to come back to normalcy in the game.

It's nice to hearken back and remember those early 90's years as a golden era for baseball. Unfortunately it was followed by the era of strikes and steroids. As my son approaches an age where we can sit and watch a game together, my hope is that baseball will be able to clean up the game in time to start another golden era.

Thoughts on Baseball, Fantasy & Otherwise

Last time we discussed my fantasy baseball prowess, I was tanking in both leagues - one team was in last place, the other in 6th. That was midway through June. The regular season just ended, so both of my teams have now finished playing. Here's how they fared.

After completely tanking the first couple months, my last place team played .500 ball the rest of the year and climbed out of last. Our 8 team league had two divisions of 4 teams each, and each division took 2 teams to the playoffs. So despite having a poor record, I was still in the playoff hunt. It went down to the wire between me and another team. I had a 2 game lead with 2 to play, both against my rival. It would take an epic fail to miss the playoffs. And epic fail I did. I lost both games, and since I lost the season series to that team, I also lost the tiebreaker and he went to the playoffs and I was sent packing.

But I still had my other league to follow, and I was again making a late charge to the top. This league was rotisserie scoring rather than head to head, so all I had to do was concentrate on specific categories in order to make up ground. My stolen bases were too low, so I added Willy Tavares and rode his 60+ steals to the top half of the league. Sadly, he completely stopped hitting over the last month, and then he got hurt so I fell only 4 steals short of gaining all the points in that category and pulling the leaders down.

My pitching staff finally took shape as Ryan Dempster continued his inexplicably great year, Adam Wainwright came back from the DL and pitched well, and I rode the huge second half comebacks of Roy Oswalt and Brett Meyers. I pieced together a serviceable bullpen by adding Jonathan Broxton and Brad Ziegler to Francisco Cordero and Kerry Wood. My ERA and WHIP finally started dropping, while my wins, saves, and strikeouts climbed. I ended with the most wins and third most saves, and it looked like I was going to catch the leaders in WHIP. But then Brett Meyers 2.0 reverted to the old Brett Meyers we all know for his final two starts and killed that chance. In a last ditch effort, I added Hiroki Kuroda and Jesse Litsch for the last day of the season, hoping they could bring my WHIP down. They did well, but it was too little, too late. I was able to tie the leaders in WHIP, but I couldn't get past that mark.

Going into Sunday's final games, I was 4 points off the overall lead with 5 or 6 categories still in play. I wound up 3 runs, 4 stolen bases, and .01 WHIP percentage points short of first place, finishing in 3rd overall, 2.5 points off the lead.

This was by far the worst showing I've ever had in fantasy sports. But it was a lot of fun.

My other baseball thoughts as the regular season closes:

Albert Pujols is the best player in the game. Period.

Josh Hamilton is the best story of the year. And he's a darn good baseball player too.

Yankees suck!

Minor Leaguer Should Sue For Giambi's Spot?

Rick Reilly thinks so.

Jones played in the Yankees' farm system from 2000 to 2006 as a corner outfielder and first baseman. He hit 39 HRs in a season, and nobody in the Bronx even blinked. That's because the Yankees had Jason Giambi at first and Gary Sheffield in right. And guess who were both cited in the Mitchell Report? Giambi and Sheffield.

BYU Player Beats Up Jose Canseco

American League Rookie of the Year. AL MVP. Baseball's first 40/40 season. World Series winner. And once-favorite player of yours truly. Sigh.

Fantasy Baseball

Fantasy Baseball is where you pick real players to compile your fantasy team and use their stats to compete against other fantasy teams. I have played fantasy baseball for almost a decade and have always done well, finishing either first or second every year. This year I have two teams I'm managing, so based on a decade of experience I had high expectations for how the year would end up.

So here we are, almost midway through June and my teams are in 6th place (out of 12 teams) and last place (out of 8 teams) respectively.

My sixth place team has been as high as second and as low as last. My pitching is weak, largely because I traded my best pitcher for an outfielder who was supposed to solve my stolen base problems. He's batting .215 and has been on the disabled list for a month. I traded that pitcher because he has a history of injury problems. So of course he's completely healthy now - and the pitcher I kept is hurt.

My offense is little better. I have Big Papi as my DH. He's now on the DL. I already mentioned my base-stealing outfielder. The one silver lining was that I have the best player in the game on my team - Albert Pujols. He hits for power and average, drives in runs, and even steals a few bases. He's a lock for the Hall of Fame. Imagine the sunshine that filled my world when I found out this morning he's headed for the injured list with what could be a year ending leg injury.

This is the sort of thing that happens to other fantasy managers. The ones in last place, the ones I dominated for years. I'd go look at their roster and see it decimated by injuries and off years. Poor guy, I'd think. He should have known that those players were injury prone. He should have seen the down year coming. I prided myself on spotting those players and avoiding them. I considered it the secret to my success.

Oh how the mighty have fallen

Baseball Hall of Fame

Today this year's baseball Hall of Fame votes will be announced. Jayson Stark over at espn.com has a good article on who he voted for and why. Some of what he writes coincides with the baseball-related thoughts I've been having lately.

I got into baseball in the late 80's. I started collecting baseball cards and became stat obsessed. Bo Jackson and Jose Canseco were huge back then; my card collecting buddy chose Bo as his favorite player, and I chose Canseco. In 1988 he batted over .300, was the first player to hit 40 homers and steal 40 bases in the same season, and had 120+ rbi's. He won the MVP that year, just a couple years after he had won Rookie of the Year. He was the game's current and future star. Sadly, he stopped being the good all around player that I loved and became a home run hitting, .250 batting average getting, injury riddled, defensive liability best known for letting a fly ball bounce off his head and over the fence for a home run. Even more sad was that once his quest for 500 home runs ended because no one would give him a job anymore, he wrote a tell-all book about steroids, naming names and incriminating players all over the game, including himself. In a way it was a fitting end to his career, as he became the face of the steroid era for me, and his book was a big step towards exposing all the secrets.

What this has to do with today's Hall announcement is that Canseco's career ushered in an era of huge offensive numbers. An era that was directly preceded by very low offensive output. Home runs and batting averages were way down when compared to the 90's. When Cecil Fielder hit his 50 and 51st home runs on the last day of the 1990 season, it was the first time since 1977 that a player had reached the milestone. In fact, only one player hit 50 or more home runs between 1965 and 1990. The 80's are the only decade in baseball without a 50 home run hitter. Coincidentally, these are the stars currently up for enshrinement. And they've been waiting a long time.

Jim Rice, Dale Murphy, Andre Dawson, and Tim Raines come on down!

Their numbers don't compete well with the stars of the next decade. None of them reached 500 home runs. None of them broke single season or all-time hitting records. But compare them with their contemporaries, and they shine. All of them were the stars of their era. And all of them belong in the Hall of Fame.

Baseball Quote of the Day

"If the Red Sox get Santana," said an executive of one NL team that's grateful to be in the other league, "they might be the best team in the history of the frigging universe."

From Espn.com's story on the Boston Red Sox sweeping in and possibly trading for multiple Cy Young winner Johan Santana to add to World Series MVPs Josh Beckett and Curt Schilling, as well as Japanese superstar import Daisuke Matsuzaka.

The rich get richer, but at least it ain't the Yankees.