Post Coming

I plan on making a very long post about forgotten and semi-forgotten and not-really-forgotten-but-not-really-remembered players in baseball as soon as my calendar clears up.

Just so those of you (if any) reading this know that this blog is neither forgotten, nor semi-forgotten, nor not-really-forgotten-but-not-really-remembered.

The Unwritten Rules of Baseball

On "my" other blog, FireJayMariotti I posted an underdeveloped, underexplained "takedown" of something Will Leitch wrote on Deadspin criticizing the development of the knockdown/small of the back pitch as retaliation into the perfunctory and symbolic "punishment" it has evolved to.

Okay. I don't mean to bring that half-assed post and my opinions about Leitch's opinions into this discussion, but I want to jump off from there and talk about the idea behind the idea of HBP punishment, retribution, et cetera in Major League Baseball. That idea, of course, is the idea of the "unwritten rules" of baseball. It's an idea that inspires a lot of divergent opinions--and usually brings that ultimate argument ender "you don't understand because you never played the game" into play, thus killing the possibility of any intelligent.

Well what this blog is about is that possibility of intelligent discourse, so I want to take the opportunity the soapbox of a free blog presents and talk a little about the value and validity of baseball's "unwritten rules".

Let's start by trying to characterize the unwritten rules of the game. The laws in question generally involve things like:

1.) Don't steal bases if the outcome of the game is not (realistically) in question
2.) Don't show up the pitcher when you hit a home run
3.) Don't bunt to try to break up a no-hitter
4.) Don't yell "I've got it" if you're a base-runner and you're passing a fielder trying to catch a fly ball

Those spring to mind as the most obviously agreed upon unwritten rules of the game. Then there is a certain gray area where the unwritten rules are not so obvious. There are certain rules of comportment that some classify in the "bush league" category the above are subject to, and some categorize as "doing what it takes to win". Examples:

5.) Stealing signs
6.) Dancing around on the basepaths in an attempt to distract the pitcher
7.) Running to first base on a walk
8.) Juking out baserunners by faking a tag or pretending to camp under a flyball on a line drive base hit

What does this variance tell us? Why are "rules" 1-4 almost universally understood to be verboten in baseball and rules 5-8 subjects of controversy? And why are rules 5-8 even considered by some to be off-limits?

Let's back off for a second and talk about professional athletes. Professional athletes (for the most part) are an elite rank. When you consider the number of people who at some point participated in organized baseball (totaling in the millions) and the number of people from their generation who actually make it to the major leagues (totaling in the very very small thousands) we're talking about a fraction of a fraction of a percent. The top, let's say .05% of adult males play professional sports.

There is of course, then, along the way to becoming a pro ball player, a selection process that thins the ranks of all who don't rank among the top fraction of a percent. How does that thinning happen? The obvious answer would be that, chronologically speaking, the first disqualification would be talent (or lack thereof) but that misunderstands exactly how elite professional athletes are. The thing that make professional athletes remarkable is that nearly everyone in America can do what they do, at least to some extent. Professional curlers or ski jumpers or equestrian riders--those ranks are thinned early by aptitude. But one can advance a long way in baseball without having exceptional (that is to say, top .05%) talent. Therefore, the first thinning component in professional baseball is work ethic. It is not particularly hard to hit a high school fastball. It is not particularly hard to stay in the kind of shape required to play high school Left Field. It is not particularly hard to learn how to run the bases adequately when catchers and centerfielders have a difficult time throwing accurately and completely (i.e. w/o one-hopping it) to their bases. If you have a rudimentary desire to teach yourself to play well (and a modicum of talent) you can play high school baseball.

From that point, things get more difficult--the second thinning process is something that might draw some askance eyes from the less hokum-inclined among you, but is something that is relatively real at the lower levels. That quality is "grit". This is what's germane to the discussion of unwritten rules, and where I have been going all along with this.

Look--talent always wins the day. Talking about clutch hitting in my last post, I mentioned (or at least I meant to mention--I don't remember which) that everyone who's played high school ball knows there are people who are "unclutch". Who have the inability to shut out surrounding details and persevere in difficult situations. People who lock up when the big hit (or strikeout) is required. But at the MLB level this is irrelevant, because those people don't pass through. The only people who pass through are those who come through.

Well likewise, talented people pass through. Do you have major league power? Are you built like a brick shithouse with a pretty swing? You'll find a team willing to let you take up some space in low-A ball. Can you throw 95 MPH (even though you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn)? Do you have perfect mechanics? A pitcher's build? Are you left-handed? There's a place for you on a minor league roster.

But there are more college and minor league players than there are players with MLB talent. And while "grit" might not be particularly relevant nor may it be a particularly valuable asset at the MLB level (grit being, I should probably mention, the quality of working incredibly hard and being willing to do "whatever it takes to win"), at lower levels--levels where even the most talented have yet to completely hone their skills--it absolutely is a relevant quality. At least, it is in the eyes of those who make the decisions of who stays and who goes, and in terms of who stays and who goes, that's all that really matters.

Look at it this way: in high school I had a very very intelligent coach. His philosophy of baserunning was to be aggressive at all times, going for the extra base whenever it was at all plausible. His reasoning was simple: In order for you to be thrown out four things had to happen:

1.)the fielder had to field the ball correctly

2.)the fielder had to make a good throw

3.)the baseman had to catch the throw

4.)the baseman had to make a good tag

At the high school level he was absolutely right. As I said before, nearly anyone can play high school baseball if they work hard enough. But that doesn't mean anyone can play well on every single play. A lot of people playing high school ball can't throw the ball perfectly every time (I know I couldn't--that's why I played first base). A lot of people playing high school ball sometimes bobble throws or ground balls. A lot of people have a hard time making a quick and accurate tag. It pays off more often than not at the lower levels to take advantage of these inabilities through hard work, hustle, and fundamentals. Grit.

Obviously, my coach's strategy would have worked very poorly at the Major League level. Yes, you still need to do those four things to throw out a baserunner taking an extra base if you want an out, but the difference is at the Major League level all four things are so close to automatic it's not worth dissecting the components of the out. Anyone who would have a difficult time fielding an OF ground ball and making a decent throw to second base has probably been weeded out by now (or is playing DH). Any SS who can't field a throw and tag a runner out in his sleep is probably not playing SS anymore. Obviously in the ranks between high school and MLB, as you move up in level, the value of hustle and fundamentals becomes less important because everyone hustles (more or less) and everyone knows their fundamentals (more or less). And the ones who don't hustle and don't have good fundamentals have exceptional physical gifts to make up for their lack of "grit".

But why does this help define these unwritten rules? Well, look--I've been talking about grit and talent as if they were mutually exclusive. As if half the people who play college ball are supremely talented athletes who don't need to work at their skills and that the other half are talentless grinders who are only there because of their willingness to get their uniform dirty. As if half of college (and minor league) ballplayers are Nuke LaLoosh and the other half are Rudy Ruttiger. Obviously this isn't the case.

As I said before, nearly every red-blooded American has a certain amount of talent at baseball. And nearly every supremely talented baseball player has a certain amount of grit inherent in his competitive spirit. There are, of course, many people playing college ball who wouldn't be there without their grit or their talent. People whose talent is borderline MLB quality, but who really distinguish themselves by hustling, playing great defense, being in proper position, running the bases smartly, etc. If we think back on all the players known first and foremost for their "grit" we get a list of supremely talented players: Pete Rose, Ty Cobb. . . hell, even Lenny Dykstra was a pretty great hitter. Thinking even of David Eckstein, it's obvious the kid has a pretty awesome stick (compared to mere mortals) if he can hit .280 off Major League pitching.

This is not a shocking point, obviously--that people in MLB are talented. But it does seem to suggest that for a number of players, "grit" is an important screening process. How many players in Major League Baseball feel (probably correctly) that they are there because they work hard and "will do anything to win"? And how many exceptional talents resent these players with grit for being pests who raise the expectations of effort?

I mean, look--think about the media perception of Manny Ramirez compared to David Eckstein. Manny's looked at as lazy (except for the odd story which explores Manny's stoic and studious approach to the art of hitting) and Eckstein is looked at as. . .well, whatever the opposite of lazy is. Industrious? Adequate? Whatever. The implication seems to be that Manny should work harder--as hard as Eckstein.

Well, maybe. Maybe you could argue that if Manny gamed as hard as Eckstein he'd be even better. But at the end of the day Manny works as hard as he needs to work to be a Hall of Famer. Eckstein works as hard as he needs to work to have a major league job. I'm not taking a side on this issue, but look at it from Manny's perspective--he's doing the amount of work he needs to do to put up HOF numbers and people are telling him his work habits should be like this guy who can barely stay in the lineup? Clearly that's going to cause a certain amount of friction in ideals.(Obviously Manny and Eckstein are examples. I don't mean to suggest that in the real world Manny resents Eckstein, or hell--even thinks about him at all)

Now look at those first four unwritten rules

1.) Don't steal bases if the outcome of the game is not (realistically) in question
2.) Don't show up the pitcher when you hit a home run
3.) Don't bunt to try to break up a no-hitter
4.) Don't yell "I've got it" if you're a base-runner and you're passing a fielder trying to catch a fly ball

Can you see the tension between those to whom the game comes naturally and those who need to work every second of every play?

Which teams steal bases? Teams without home run talent. What does celebrating a home run suggest? That you haven't "been there before"--that hitting a home run is something unusual to you. What does bunting to break up a no-hiter mean? It means acknowledging you're not talented enough to get a regular hit off a pitcher. And of course, yelling "I've got it" as you pass a fielder is just a genuinely douchey thing to do.

The main controversy here seems to be the one between exhibiting a willingness to "do anything to win despite a lack of talent" and exhibiting a cool and natural familiarity with greatnes.

Since the majority of MLBers are by definition not great (at least not in the context of MLB) why do these rules seem to be dictated by the "great"? The answer, I think, is that gritty or not, most players want to be great. Let's look at the next four rules, the less agreed upon rules:

5.) Stealing signs
6.) Dancing around on the basepaths in an attempt to distract the pitcher
7.) Running to first base on a walk
8.) Juking out baserunners by faking a tag or pretending to camp under a flyball on a line drive base hit

Even in the context of "grit" vs. "talent" these rules seem arbitrarily distinguished from the first four. But I think there is a logic to them. The first four seem to be the "Gritty" aceding to the "Great". "Yes," they seem to be saying, "We want to be like you, and have the same grace and dignity. We will do anything that generally seems to promote winning, but only when it's necessary."

These, on the other hand, seem to say, "Look--if you fuck up, we'll take the edge." In other words, "If you're too stupid to keep me from stealing signs then I'm going to steal your signs. If you're too mentally weak not to shut out my base path antics, I'm going to take the extra base or the extra ball. If you can't execute a simple throw back to the pitcher after a walk, I'm going to take the extra base. If you can't pick up your first or third base coach, I'm going to trick you into sliding into second."

While the first set of rules seem to be a request that the "gritty" comport themselves like professional athletes, the second seem to be the opposite request--that the "talented" athletes execute the very basic fundamentals of the game.

So, to conclude--the issue of the unwritten rules of baseball seem at once byzantine and foolish. A sort of macho posturing that places dignity over practicality (I remember once telling my dad I thought it was stupid when guys faked a bunt and waved their bat around on a 3-0 count. He responded, "Chris, I thought the point was to win the game. Not to look good doing it." It was a pretty good point, I have to say.) and to some extent it is. But there is a logic behind it. The people to whom the appearance of effort is not essential are asking those to whom it is to not turn the game into a spectacle. The people to whom fundamentals are key are demanding that those to whom they aren't not turn the game into a comedy of errors. In the end these unwritten rules intend to make the game more watchable--more the contest of skill, grace, power, and execution the game was meant to be.

Does it work? Maybe. Maybe not. But is the logic behind it silly or quixotic? I'm having a hard time seeing how it is.

Clutch Hitting and. . . The Purple Heart?

In my last post I looked at the game and how (and if) it's played on paper. One of the more controversial aspects of this new era of statistical obsession baseball has undergone is the issue of clutch hitting. Let's begin there.

Or rather, let's begin this discussion of clutch hitting with a bit of a digression. Once upon a time, there was an era of baseball "fandom" where people's views on baseball were absolutist and concrete (this is an exaggeration, but close enough to the truth). If a player was a .300 hitter he was a good hitter regardless of if he played in Fenway Park or Candlestick. If a pitcher won 20 games he was more valuable than a 12 game winner, no matter what offensive support he received. If first base is open in a late inning and the cleanup hitter is up, you walk him. No matter what. These were hard and fast truths and nearly everyone believed them.

Then Bill James (and the rest of the SABRmetricians came along) and changed all that. Instead of accepting as truth that these long "tested" and accepted truths were--for lack of a better word--true, James began by asking the fundamental questions of human inquiry. What is the purpose of the game: to get hits or get on base? How does a ballpark affect a hitter's ability to hit? What control does a pitcher have on his won-loss total at the end of the year? When is it statistically advisable to give a batter an intentional walk? Before James if you asked a manager why he bunted a runner over to third in the 5th inning with none out, the manager would tell you he was playing the percentages. If you asked a manager why he was keeping a 13th reliever on the roster to exploit the platoon advantage, he would tell you he was playing the percentages. If you asked a manager why Carney Lansford was less valuable than Jim Rice he would point to the numbers and tell you the stats showed that Rice was a better hitter.

What James did was expose, through better statistics, that the old statistics were faulty. That seems to me to be the fundamental misunderstanding of SABRmetrics today. That is to say--people think that "statheads" are attempting to make the game about stats. Clearly the game has always been about stats--when someone attempts to decry Defense Independent Pitching Stats they usually point to won-loss record. When someone attempts to decry EQA they usually point to batting average. What Bill James said is, "this is a game that will always be about stats. So why not find the best stats we can."

This is a mode of thought that can be applied to aspects of the game beyond stats--so long as we understand what this mode of thought is. It is not "let's reduce the game to statistical models and then we'll have the advantage." The mode of thought is a more Socratic, "We don't know everything about the game and we never will, so let's try to see which of our most closely held fallacies is most easily correctible." The eye sees and the mind perceives, but what it sees and perceives is fashioned by our prejudices. It is best not to avoid that those prejudices are there, but rather to acknowledge them and then attempt to move beyond them.

The reason I mention this is that there is a new packet of sports fans who are no different from the old packet--rigidly set in their ways, unequivocally convinced that they are right, and derisive of those who diverge from their POV's. The only difference between the new faction and the old is that this new faction's conviction comes from statistics and research. This is not. . . necessarily. . . a bad thing. But it's something worth noting.

I talked in a previous post about the mindset of certain atheists and I suppose it's worthwhile to return to that idea for this discussion. I wrote this about religion:

If you want to believe in God, you absolutely should. If you want to believe there's no evidence to suggest there's God, you absolutely should believe that. If you want to take that to the Richard Dawkins extreme and say that because there's no evidence to suggest there's God, believing in Him is superstition, that's fine too.

I was talking to a friend about my phrasing here the other day, and he was a bit--let's say--upset that I referred to the Dawkins POV as an "extreme." That word obviously has a number of important connotations within the theological field of discourse and was perhaps poorly chosen (although I think perhaps I did mean those connotations to some extent). My point, at the time, was merely that on one pole of the "God question" you have people who are convinced that anyone who disbelieves in God is undoubtedly wrong and foolish. On the opposite pole of the discussion, Dawkins and those who think like him believe the opposite--that anyone who DOES NOT disbelieve in God is superstitious, wrong, and foolish.

I called these two POV's extreme because they define the shades of belief between them. Any room for tolerance in someone's opposing view falls between these two extremes.

So maybe you see where I'm going here. There are a number of followers of statistics on these here interwebs who have little tolerance for the idea that stats don't tell everything there is to know about baseball. The most obvious example of this is in the Hall of Fame voting every year. When the ballots come out, there's always some loudmouthed, old school baseball writer who attacks the career and defenders of Bert Blyleven as idiotic, explaining in no uncertain terms that he doesn't "feel" like a HOFer. That he just "compiled" stats and that his "stats" don't "measure" his "ability" to "win." All these scare-quotes refer to liberties said author takes with reality, where he redefines terms that he will later use in the same article to defend the HOF credentials of some other candidate (Jack Morris usually). "Jack Morris had tons of opening day starts and complete games!" the man will say, somehow distinguishing Morris's compiling from Blyleven. "Morris had a long run of seasons with 200 IP or more," the man will say, somehow distinguishing Morris's "stats" "ability" to "measure" his quality from the same in Blyleven. And so on.

Obviously as a thinking sports fan I find this mode of thought offensive, not only for its logical fallacies. The HOF is a completely subjective concept (though one with very real consequences for those included and excluded) and the thought that anyone is silly, stupid, or foolish for their opinions is patently ridiculous (I for one believe that Dante Bichette is a no-doubt first ballot guy). The problem is, though, that there is a knee jerk response from the opposite "extreme." While the windbag old-school "proven winner not compiler" faction are furiously pecking away at their typewriting machines, all the while some statistic devotees are composing parallel but opposite columns, deriding Morris (or Dawson or Mattingly) backers for the opposite reasons. Wielding numbers like torches and pitchforks, this vocal online contingency often characterizes supporters of their most hated candidates as the Dan Shaugnessy's of the world treat their pet projects.

Understand, I am not referring to those who question the HOF, MVP, and CY Young votes they disagree with--especially if said inquiry addresses specific fallacies a voter used to justify his vote. My issue is not that the methods these statheads use are wrong. They're not. They're much better, more refined, and more intelligent than the traditional stats. Unlike the Blyleven decrier in the above example, these articles don't bother me on all accounts. Only one--this singleminded misunderstanding of the principle that Bill James used to bring advanced statistics to baseball's foreground. And that is the constant and overarching understanding that even with the help of statistics and intelligent inquiry, that you can not be certain you understand baseball. That is the fundamental misunderstanding, I think, in statistical discourse in baseball journalism today, and one I think that leads to such heated debate over the clutch question.

What is the controversy over clutch hitting? Simply the fact of its existence. That's all. Of course, the debate over whether something which may be intangible and is certainly difficult to define is the most difficult kind of debate. Pornography, God, theoretical economic models--this kind of shit brings out the worst in people. And so does debate on clutch hitting. On the one hand you have those in the "Blyleven sucks" camp ridiculing those who believe anything but absolutely that Joe Carter, Derek Jeter, and David Ortiz have some ineffable attribute of clutch virtuosity and that Alex Rodriguez, Ted Williams and Ty Cobb had the opposite inability not to choke when the chips were down. On the other hand, you have the faction who decries the idea of clutch hitting and anyone who embraces it as witchcraft of the silliest order.

The arguments on both sides are convincing, and that's what makes the singleminded exclusionary discourse so frustrating. Bill James wrote an excellent article on clutch hitting call "Underestimating the Fog" which compares the search for the sustained ability to hit in the clutch with sentries searching via beacon through thick fog for enemy forces beyond their battlements. James argues that, no, statistics do not as of now show that though clutch hits clearly exist--though the definition of clutch is difficult to pin down around its edges--the ability to hit in the clutch is at all sustainable. However, James continues, just because we can not see those statistical proofs now does not mean they don't exist. Like the sentries searching through the fog, we would be silly to conclude that just because we don't see the enemy, that does not mean they don't exist--especially if we have a strong suspicion they are out there.

Of course on the other hand the argument that no one can make the major leagues without being clutch is a strong one. By the time a player makes the major leagues he will have played in thousands of baseball games. Advancement is always heavy on the mind of the high school, college, and minor league player--and at no point is the pressure any less. Fail to perform as a high school player and you will not be drafted or asked to play for a college ball team. Fail to perform in college and you will not advance to professional ball. Fail to perform as a minor leaguer and you won't get called up to the major leagues. At any point, constant failure leads to the end of a career, leaving only the "clutch" performers in the pool of major league ball players.

Of course this doesn't take into account players with scads of talent (like Javier Vazquez, an oft-accused "unclutch" player) who teams are willing to take a chance on because of raw stuff irrespective of "performance" and players who are supposedly "compilers" (Alex Rodriguez, for example) who are supposedly good enough to put up huge numbers against lousy teams in low-pressure situations to make up for their failures "in the clutch."

It all sounds well and good, as long as you refuse to listen to the opposing argument. And the stats are little help. What is a valid statistical model? Much like the concept of "heart" any attempt to define "clutch" can be disarmed. Is clutch measured by the statistic "close and late"? Close and late is defined as  an at bat in the 7th, 8th, or 9th inning when the deficit is 3 runs or less in either direction. The problem with using this to define clutch hitting are legion enough to make this statistic laughable. According to close and late, an April at bat to lead off the 7th inning with the score 3-0 in your favor is valued equally to a Setpember at bat with two out in the ninth, a man on second, your team down by one, played against the first place team in your division while you trail them by one in the standings. Everything in between that is defined as close and late. Obviously this is a wildly imperfect measure of clutch hitting (and yet people still use it to prove whatever they hope to prove about clutch hitting, proving time and time again that people with an axe to grind will use whatever idiotic methods they can to quote/unquote prove their point)

But even more adequate definitions of clutch are assailable. Is clutch any at bat in a pennant race? Clearly must be more specific than that, as a third inning at bat in a blowout shouldn't count for anything w/r/t clutch. Is it an at bat when the game's outcome is in question? The opposite problem here, as games in April or May or while in 4th place clearly shouldn't count the same as games in a pennant race. And what about the playoffs? How do those at bats compare in clutchness to regular season games? To pennant races? And what about pitching? Do we only count games as a whole? Or "clutch" pitching in leveraged situations (like with the bases loaded and no out)? And how do we account for the fact that the pitcher himself created those leveraged situations?

Perhaps we could define a system where each individual outcome were rated on a scale of 0-100 for its "clutchness". In such a system an at bat in the bottom of the 9th in the 7th game of the World Series with the tying run aboard, down by one, and two outs would rate something like a 98 (because it could always be in extra innings, or your job might be in jeopardy, or your dying father might be in the stands, or Robert Deniro might have kidnapped your son and threatened to kill him unless you came through. . . or didn't come through. All those things would probably be required for a rating of 100). But even if you came up with such a system and everyone agreed upon its merits and you went about scoring players in terms of their clutch value, you'd run into a serious problem: inclusiveness.

You could, theoretically prove that a certain player has a certain sustainable clutch ability. And you could conceivably prove that his clutch ability is superior to another player's clutch ability. But you could not come up with a realistic standard of measurement. Why? Because a lot of players simply do not get clutch opportunities. There are two many teams in baseball who are out of contention before the first pitch is thrown on opening day to get a standard of what is "good" on average and what is "bad" on average. For nearly every other stat (even "Runners In Scoring Position") every regular player in baseball will get a comparable amount of opportunities. But even if, say, Derek Jeter seems to be a monster when hitting with the game on the line in playoff and pennant race situations year in and year out, how can we compare him to a norm when guys like Adrian Gonzalez, Hanley Ramirez, Ian Kinsler, Nick Markakis, and many others haven't sniffed a playoff situation in years. And then there are the bit players, the ones who help us establish a mean.

If there were only 5 or 6 everyday players in major league baseball, only 5 or 6 players getting 600 PA's a season, and the rest of baseball were platoons, how would we know how difficult it were to hit .300? We could point to the fact that only 1 out of 6 players who got 600 PA's hit .300, but what would that really tell us? It would tell us they were better than the other 5. Even if we expanded that number to 30 players with 600 PA's, and 6 out of 30 hit .300, that still wouldn't tell us much about what hitting .300 over 600 PA's means.

You get the point. So what can we say about clutch? Is it worth talking about at all? I would say yes. Here's my argument: we may not be able to define clutch, but much like pornography we know it when we see it.  In Game 5 of the 2001 World Series, with the favored Yankees down to the Arizona Diamondbacks two games to one, with the shadow of 9/11 looming, in extra innings with the score tied and a full count, Derek Jeter hit a walkoff home run against D-Backs closer Byung-Yum Kim.

That is clearly a clutch moment. There is no doubt in the world that it is a clutch moment. And in that clutch moment, Jeter hit a home run to win the game. What does that mean? Does that mean Jeter is a clutch player? Probably not. But it does mean he came through in the clutch. And Yankees fans can name any number of similarly clutch performances by Jeter. Clutch performances mean more than regular performances by definition, and it's something to consider when looking at a player. Does everyone get a chance to have a clutch moment? Probably, but some have significantly more chances than others. Does everyone get a chance to have a moment like Jeter's World Series home run? Obviously not. But Jeter did and he came through.

You might be wondering why "The Purple Heart" is in this post's title. It's because in this respect being a clutch hitter seems to me a lot like being a war hero. I don't mean to trivialize war by comparing it to baseball. I don't mean to compare the two in any meaningful way. But I will say this: not everyone gets a chance to go to war, and not everyone who gets a chance to go to war has an opportunity to rise to a challenge and become a war hero. In fact, it's hard to define the gray area between what is an exceptional act of heroism and what is just the ordinary duty of a soldier. However, there are people who have undoubtedly had the opportunity for heroism of an exceptional order. Does this mean that they are of greater personal fiber than those who have not had a chance to rise to such an occasion? Perhaps or perhaps not. Does it mean they have some sort of sustained ability to be a hero in every occasion which calls for it? Perhaps or perhaps not. Does it mean that a failure to become a war hero is a deficiency in a person? Absolutely not.

What it means, and all it means, is that on at least one occasion, this particular person had a particularly exceptional challenge and on this particular occasion he rose to it exceptionally. That is something that may be of small importance in the grand scheme of things (and obviously of smaller importance in baseball than in war) and may be an achievement surrounded by hoopla and exaggeration and used to extrapolate things about the person involved which are likewise surrounded by hoopla and exaggeration, but it is something that happened and means something.

That shouldn't be a radical point to make, but sometimes it seems like the contemporary discourse makes the obvious and simple seem radical, and so--there it is.

The Game Isn't Played On Paper But. . . So What?

Let's consider even further the topic of my last post. The one about Nomah. Although Nomar's comments that there's no stat yet that measures heart explicitly was a critique of a particular shortcoming of statistics (viz. that they are incapable of measuring "heart"--whatever that is) what he really meant to "prove" was that, as the tired saying goes, "the game isn't played on paper."

This is an argument that takes any number of forms. Sometimes you'll hear a manager say, after a tough loss, that his team was the better team. . . on paper. Then he'll follow it up by acknowledging, sadly, that, "the game isn't played on paper." Or in the offseason, two fans will be discussing a key loss of a primadonna superstar with big numbers, and after one points out how devastating those lost runs will be to the team, the other will point out that his loss might be a net gain. After all, "the game isn't played on paper."

But the context the phrase is used most often is in decrying statistical analysis. Recently, Red Sox left fielder nee center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury (and his stats-minded general manager Theo Epstein) bristled at the idea that a stat called UZR claimed him to be one of the worst defensive players in baseball. The game, it turned out, wasn't played on paper. The paper, it turned out, was wrong about Ellsbury. On paper he had little range. But on the field he was speedy and rangy. How could those two facts exist within the same reality. Ellsbury, adhering to a sort of phenomenological imperative concluded that they could not. The game isn't played on paper!

I'm willing to acknowledge that the game isn't played on paper. And I mean that not just in the literal sense, but also in the intended sense. I would acknowledge (and I would suspect that a lot of SABRmetricians would acknowledge) that there are a number of very real things in the game of baseball that can't be measured. For instance, UZR--which measures, if I'm not mistaken, a player's ability to play defensively within a certain range (and beyond) as it relates to how the average defensive player at that position is able to play within that range (and beyond)--doesn't take into account whether the fielders around that fielder impinge on a player's ability (or need) to go outside a certain range to make a play. Clutch stats are always difficult to evaluate because clutch situations are difficult to define (for instance, the statistic close and late is almost entirely worthless, in my opinion--but I hope to talk about that at a later date). And so on.

But my argument would be: so what? This disjunction is being positioned as a new development in the game of baseball. As if this schism between the visually observed and the secondhand-reported is a "new problem" to the game of baseball. I would argue that not only is it anything but "new" but it also in no sense a "problem."

Look at it this way. If you're like me (that is to say, in your mid-to-late-twenties) and you're at all a "student" of the game of baseball (probably less a "student" and more someone who burns 95% of his free-time following a game) you are well aware that in the opinion of the majority of People Who Are Older and Wiser that 95% of what makes the game great came before you set foot on God's Green. Further, since MLB is particularly tight-fisted with rebroadcast rights (don't even bother looking for clips on YouTube) and since much of baseball history exists before television even existed, it's nearly impossible for you to have seen any footage of Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, et al "not playing the game on paper." So what's left? Written record.

I'll take it even further. Even with baseball today, the average fan is left with very little but paper. With semi-prohibitive ticket pricing and MLB's lousy out-of-market broadcast distribution, it's very difficult to see everyone play every game ever. I'll confess (at the risk of sounding like a bad fan) that before the White Sox acquired Jake Peavy, I'd only seen him pitch a handful of games. And those, mostly at bars. Hell, even after the White Sox acquired him, living in Arkansas, to have seen him pitch for the White Sox I'd have had to pray that the White Sox games on WGN happened to be games he pitched in if I hadn't ponied up the $40 a month for the Extra Innings package.

I'm not saying this to complain (or at least, not just to complain) but rather to point out a reality of baseball--that even the biggest fans spend most of our time experiencing baseball in print. Not live at the ballpark. Not on TV. Not listening to the radio. But in print. We, as baseball fans, have a rich tradition of elegeant sportswriting, box score searching, and yes--statistical computation (what is ERA if not a relatively complex statistical device to measure effectiveness?). This does not mean we completely understand the game. I mean, we understand it better as the years pass and the collective consciousness grows bigger. But the game is not complete "on paper." But what people like Nomar need to keep in mind is that for most people (and not just stat nerds), the game "on the field" is not the last word. It is not what baseball is to many fans, and even to those to whom it is, there are times when baseball slips into words--and even numbers. ".300", "56", "300", et cetera.

When this happens, this is not a failure of a fan to understand the game. This is the fan and his understanding of the game seeping through. The two things work in concert. And maybe that's what Nomar is saying--don't forget the heart when looking at stats. But maybe it's not. And if it's not I want to clarify for all of us: "On paper" is not, of course, where baseball's played. But "On paper" is and was and will always be where baseball's read.

A Brief Nomar Interlude

Much has been written (probably best written here) by many of the demystifiers of baseball about Nomar Garciaparra's claim that "there's no statistic that measures heart." I'm not going to repeat any of the typical "stat haters are curmudgeons" stuff that others will do better. I want to talk about the statement though.

It's the kind of thing that doesn't bother me, really--but still really bothers me. Let me explain. I don't have any problem with people believing that stats don't measure everything in baseball. Look--I know that stats do more or less measure everything worth knowing in baseball. I believe that. I believe that guys like Will Carroll and Joe Sheehan and Nate Silver (when he did baseball) are really onto something. But if a guy wants to believe that baseball is a byzantine game that exists beyond all possible mastery (except for those that have played the game), fine. Here's what I'd equate it to: Religion. If you want to believe in God, you absolutely should. If you want to believe there's no evidence to suggest there's God, you absolutely should believe that. If you want to take that to the Richard Dawkins extreme and say that because there's no evidence to suggest there's God, believing in Him is superstition, that's fine too. So I have no problem with Nomar suggesting that he believes that there is something that stats don't measure that's essential to baseball. None whatsoever.

Let's put that aside. What I do have a problem with is him distorting language. This is a pet peeve. Distortions of language and thereby distortions of logic. Look--we all know what Nomar means when he says "heart." Or at least, we have an idea. But that's the problem. What does "heart" mean? Obviously it doesn't literally mean heart. As in that big muscle that pumps blood through your veins and arteries. But it doesn't exactly mean something else. It's not like "he's got lungs" means "he can sing well" or "she's got good brain means"...well let's leave that one aside. It's a general gesture that "heart" is supposed to represent. It KIND OF means "courage" but doesn't really (that's "guts"). It's just a metonymic construct wherein the "essence" of being (viz. "your heart") stands in for whatever people define as the essence of being in the sense of character (as opposed to physionomy).

So of course we don't have a stat to measure heart. There can't possibly be a stat to measure heart. It doesn't mean anything. The statement is utterly misleading. Nomar's not talking about "clutchness" or "winnerness" or "leaderness" or some unmeasurable thing that has a distinct meaning. He's blurring the lines for the sake of making a point.

Well, why does that bother me?

Let's return to religion. Two nights ago I saw Deepak Chopra debating against some equally moronic atheist about God's existence. Moronic atheist spouted Dawkins lines like he was quoting the book. Chopra talked condescendingly about how he had medical degrees. I call the atheist moronic because he seemed to be unable to do anything but spout platitudes and call names (I realize the irony of me calling someone moronic because they called names, but it's my damn blog! you know?). But Chopra's moronacy bothers me a lot more.

Both factions agreed that a complex motion of forces were required for the universe to have existed and continue existing. Chopra loudly and confrontationally insisted that that force must be God. When confronted with the possibility that that force might not be God he insisted "no not the man in the beard perhaps, but it is God if it is beyond our understanding."

Oh, really? It's this sort of post hoc argumentation that's sending discourse down the tubes. Look--Nomar, I don't disagree with you, per se. I get more about baseball from prose and ballgames than I do from baseball-reference.com (although I do spend a lot of time there). But you can't be pulling this bullshit.

Namely:

Nomar: "Stats don't show everything."

Stats: "Well what don't they show?"

Nomar: "HEART!"

Stats: "You mean courage? Well they show that Lou Gehrig played in every game of his career despite suffering from ALS at the end. And that Bob Gibson threw a number of complete games in World Series play!"

Nomar: "No that's courage. I'm talking about HEART!"

Stats: "Well, we can measure sac bunts, stolen bases, defensive efficiency, baserunning."

Nomar: "No that's doing the little things. I'm talking about HEART!"

Stats: "Well why don't you tell us what heart is? Then we can determine whether we could measure it."

Nomar: "It's HEART! And by definition you can't measure it!"

...and so on. Religion, baseball, heart? I feel like WP Kinsella. But Nomar brings that out in me.

Allow Me To Introduce Myself and. . . er. . . Talk About Race

Hello and welcome to my new sportswriting endeavor. My name is Chris and I've spent a number of years writing on again and off again (mostly off again) for the Fire Joe Morgan rip-off blog "Fire Jay Mariotti". Now I am writing my own blog. A different kind of blog.

Although it's a lot of fun to rip apart bad sportswriting line by line, as I often tried to do at FJayM, I figured it was time to write about baseball on my own and give others a chance to rip me apart. I love baseball and I like to write, and hopefully the quality of the writing and ideas about baseball on this blog will reflect that.

Obviously, given the title of this blog, I don't expect everything I write to be 100% correct, airtight, perfectly thought-out, bulletproof, etc. Hell, I think even 50% might be a little much to ask. That's not the point of this blog. The point of this blog is for me to put out some ideas I have about things in baseball we don't think about all that often. Or that we tend to overlook even if it's right in front of our noses. Or things that we talk about all the time but that we don't talk about in a certain way. The point is to put those ideas out there and let them float around the ether that is the internet, just like the guy next to you at the bar puts his ideas about politics, religions, and beautiful women out there--just in case someone is listening and wants to hear it.

So take this with the grain of salt it deserves. I hope you find it as interesting as I do. Anyway, on with the opera.

I want to begin by tackling the topic of race. Not exactly the safest topic, but I figure this blog has zero viewers at this particular moment and may have more than zero at a later date. So this would be the time if any to stretch my brain muscles, as it were, around this oblong and protusive topic.

So look: everyone who follows baseball has heard and digested by now the words Torii Hunter exchanged with a reporter about Latin American players in Major League Baseball. Discussing the dearth of black players in the MLB, Hunter went out of his way to distinguish dark-skinned Latino players from black-American players, even going so far as to call Latin American players "imposters".

After the initial flare of public outrage cooled down, people generally came to the same three conclusions: 1.) Torii Hunter is a nice guy. 2.) Torii Hunter chose his words poorly. 3.) Torii Hunter is. . . well. . . right.

Point 1, though generally irrelevant to any discourse surrounding Hunter's remarks, is something nearly every sportswriter took pains to point out. Perhaps they wanted to distinguish between Hunter and other  hotheaded players just looking to bait an adversarial press (eg Gary Sheffield). Perhaps they wanted to further highlight the disparity between Hunter's niceness and the implicit rudeness of his remarks. Or perhaps they wanted to remind readers of their "insider" vantage point. In any case, Point 1 is not a subject of much debate. Neither is Point 2. Even if we acknowledge that Hunter is completely right about Latin-American players being utterly distinct from black-American players, certainly imposter is the wrong word. Latin American don't mean to fool anyone, nor do they hope to gain from a possible conception that they are black-American. So Point 3 would seem to be the only source of controversy in this whole debacle.

Except--it wasn't. Hispanic players all around the league stepped forward and said they were proud to be distinct from black-American players. Having heard the Latin-American contingency weigh in, the rest of the sports-culture "Think Tank" fell alongside. Latin-American players aren't imposters, the thought process seemed to go, but they aren't "Blacks" in the way the majority of Americans think about "Black" and "White". Or as the (patently offensive) redneck figment of my imagination might put it, "That Hanley Ramirez, he ain't black--he's Mexican!"

Well, problems with that conclusion aside (where, for instance, do you think the ancestors of dark-skinned Cubans come from? And how do you suppose they got to Cuba), we're left with the overwhelming question: If we agree that what Torii Hunter said is more or less true (though poorly worded) then where is the controversy?

The controversy, it turns out, was bubbling beneath the surface of the headline. Though "Hunter calls Latin Americans 'Imposters'" made better copy, the really divisive stuff was contained in the deep cuts from Hunter's interview. After we stepped back from the "Imposter" stuff and realized we all agreed, we found that there was really something to argue about down there. Hunter's comments went on to say:

As African-American players, we have a theory that baseball can go get an imitator and pass them off as us. It's like they had to get some kind of dark faces, so they go to the Dominican or Venezuela because you can get them cheaper. It's like, 'Why should I get this kid from the South Side of Chicago and have Scott Boras represent him and pay him $5 million when you can get a Dominican guy for a bag of chips?' ... I'm telling you, it's sad,"

There are certain litmus test's for racial point of view. I want to be careful how I phrase this, but there are certain litmus tests to see if people have a certain racial point of view. For instance, you might be talking to someone about the Middle East and all of a sudden you'll realize that they believe that the nation of Israel is behind everything wrong in geo-political relations. Or, you might be dating someone for two years before you find out that they think English should be made the official language of America. Or shouldn't. You know--it really depends on your perspective. But there are certain litmus tests to see what sort of racialist views a person holds. And although it's tempting to pigeon-hole people holding those views as racist--or at least, biased racially--it's important that we take a step back and consider where these people's views are coming from.

One of these litmus tests that I find most perplexing (and yet, somewhat paradoxically, most understandable) is the view that a lot of black baseball players (or former baseball players) seem to have that baseball is more interested in cultivating Latin American talent than black-American talent. To the majority of people in America that seems foolish. Like laughably foolish. I mean, the decline of the black American athlete in Major League Baseball seems to dovetail almost exactly with the proliferation of the black athlete in the NFL and the NBA (as well as the meteoric rise in popularity of those two sports leagues. Further, the salary structures and success rates in those sports vs. that of baseball, coupled with the equipment demands and pickup-game-readiness of basketball and football vs. that of baseball, coupled with the idea that black athletes trend toward the lower-income tax bracket seem to spell out in the sharpest of Occam-ian terms that the trending downward of the black athlete in MLB is a completely organic thing. That it is not attributable to the black athlete being "harder to control" or "cheaper to sign" (especially since, to most of America, it seems that those two points are patently false).

OK, so it seems ridiculous. But consider where some of these black athletes are coming from. They may have grown up with black baseball players as their heroes. And those black baseball players--Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Curt Flood--were not just ball players who happened to be black. No, those ball players represented something bigger than baseball. Or at least they did to many young black players.

Willie Mays, for instance, was given a tryout with the Boston Red Sox. I believe the apocryphal (or maybe even factual) story goes that Joe Cronin sat in the stand with his back turned as one of the greatest players ever to play the game offered his services to Joe's perennially losing club. Hank Aaron played a couple seasons in the Negro Leagues. Dick Allen claimed (probably unfounded claims but claims nonetheless) to be the subject of racial persecution throughout his career. So one can see why someone born and raised on these players (and their own personal experiences with the very real racial prejudice in our country) might be quick to assume the worst.

And yet, though that may be a natural thing, an understandable thing, is it a positive thing? I don't know. To attempt to answer that, though, let me change gears for a second. A while ago, Tom Tango asked the question whether the MVP award should undergo a name change. Evidently, what few people know about the MVP is that it bears the name of the first commissioner of Major League Baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

In this day and age, Landis is known for two and only two things: Kicking Shoeless Joe Jackson and co. out of basball, and for being a dyed in the wool racist who fought tooth and nail for segregation. There are many quotations out there where Landis speaks vehemently against integration, most of them containing that N-word we hear all too often when reading about baseball in the 20th century. Therein lies Tango's argument for changing the award's name: We should not celebrate a man partly responsible for the biggest blight on baseball's entire record.

What I would say is this: Landis did a number of things beside push aside segregation. He brought order and responsibility to a sport that had been largely lawless. Yes, he cleaned the gamblers out (or at least gave the impression that he did which--as Bud Selig would tell you, is just as important), but he also did his part to straighten out owner corruption, fought for players' rights (to some extent) and did his best to wipe out collusion in baseball (not that he succeeded completely). What is ironic about Landis is that while his racial attitudes kept baseball in the 19th century with regards to race, most of his policies helped to move the game into the 20th century in terms of competition, compensation, and industry.

That, I must make clear, does not erase what his racism accomplished. Segregation, as I wrote earlier, is far and away the biggest blight on baseball in the history of the game. Period. However, what do we gain by recasting a man as a villain when the truth is much more complex. If a man is unilaterally and vehemently racist in 2010 he is a terrible person. That we can all agree on (except, I suppose, those who are unilaterally and vehemently racist). If a person was unilaterally and vehemently racist in, let's say, 1776, he may or may not be a terrible person, but it is not completely on account of his racism. That, nearly everyone would agree (at least those who don't cast Thomas Jefferson as a monster of history. Granted, there are some who do).

But where does that leave the middle years? I'm not going to condescend to you as if you didn't know that "things were different then." Because by the time Landis was around, things looked a lot more like 2010 in regard to race relations than 1776. But the point is there is a nuance that is missing in any discussion of race that singlemindedly adheres to a single idea. "If you were for segregation in 1923 you are racist. If you were racist in 1923 you were bad." I don't get that mentality. Landis was in a position to heal the game w/r/t segregation and didn't. He shouldn't be honored for that. But should he be censured for that at the expense of his other accomplishments? When Landis had the MVP named after him, certainly no one was trying to honor his commitment to segregation (at least, not in itself). And if we were to demand the award be stripped of his name, we would be lobbying not to reverse the honoration, but to change the nature of it. From a refusal to recognize the nuances of the issue.

How does this relate to Hunter? Maybe it doesn't. But I think we have to look at this issue fairly carefully. Hunter is being singleminded about the cause of the dearth of black athletes in the MLB. That nearly everyone can agree on. But are we also being singleminded? The one thing that grates on me more than anything is when a person of color complains that something is racially offensive to them and some pundit (almost always white) says, "Why do we have to see racism in everything?"

What that jackass needs to be told is that we "have to see racism in everything" because racism is everywhere in America. This is a country with racism deep in its roots. It is here. In some ways it is stronger now than ever because it can never be acknowledged without forces pushing hard in every direction for silence. If something is racially offensive to someone it may be because they're being too sensitive. Or it might be because they have more reason than you to be aware of the various suggestions that stimulus holds which remind them of racial tension they have felt in their own life.

Torii Hunter suggests that baseball's lack of black players is racially motivated. We shrug it off as a paraonid person seeing racism where it is not. But racism is everywhere in baseball's history. Is it so silly to think it's completely gone? If Torii Hunter ever wins the MVP award (and I hope to God he doesn't because I hate the fucking Angels) he'll be receiving an award named after a man who fought tooth and nail to keep people like Hunter out of the game (and who allowed people like Al Lopez into the game). Is it silly to insist that that has anything to do with the way things are now? Perhaps. Probably. I would disagree with anyone who insists that he's right.

But I would argue that it's just as silly to insist that he's wrong.