| 2009-08-13 13:00:00 (link to chat) | Apropros of the Robyn Hitchcock comments, it's only a hop, skip, and jump via the Venus 3 to Scott McCaughey to "The Baseball Project". It's a fun listen. You must be aware of that, no?
(Rob from Princeton) | Yup. I've seen McCaughey back up Hitchcock in concert on a couple of occasions. In fact, there's a concert documentary of a Hitchcock concert in Hoboken, NJ that floats about on cable, and if you watch carefully, you can spot me on the sidelines, along with a couple of pals of mine. I really enjoyed "The Baseball Project." The songs are songs first, not novelty tunes as so many baseball songs are. And many of them, such as the songs about Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige, and Ted Williams are good works of biography, too. (Steven Goldman) |
| 2009-07-31 14:00:00 (link to chat) | Albert Pujols vs Ted Williams. Who will end up having the better career? Love Pujols but is he better than the splendid splinter?
(Shawn from Winnipeg) | No.
Getting pulled out for ESPNews and some radio. Will jump back and answer a few more questions when I'm done. Thank you so much for following the trade deadline deals at BP today. (Joe Sheehan) |
| 2009-06-24 13:00:00 (link to chat) | "I just can't bring myself to spend almost $200 on a shirt, even if I think said shirt would dramatically elevate my mood whenever I wore it."
Even with the now-broken zipper, I'm approximately 1,000 times happier while wearing my Crackers jersey than while wearing a suit.
(P Bu from St. Louis) | I'm never happy when wearing a suit. A suit feels a lot like a set of pajamas to me. And what is it with people wearing pajamas out in public these last few years? One of the privileges of being a writer is not having to get dressed up too often, and even when I do I rarely wear a tie. This is a special benediction granted to us by Ted Williams, and I feel I am honoring the splinter whenever I leave the neckwear at home. The man hated ties more than he hated left-handed pitchers. (Steven Goldman) |
| 2008-11-14 13:00:00 (link to chat) | This is completely random, but....
Am I wrong in thinking that Joe DiMaggio is one of the most inappropriately worshipped superstars from baseball history? Maybe I've only read one side of the story, but when I think of Joey D., I think of wife-beating, mob slush funds, and poor treatment of his teammates. Also, the numbers don't even support him being the best player during his career - that would be Ted Williams or Stan Musial. I don't know if I'm being unfairly biased as a Red Sox fan, so I'm curious what your opinion of the man is.
(RedSoxWoo77 from Plymouth, MA) | Obviously, not being 65 years old, I didn't see Joe D play. There's a very good book by Robert Creamer that has gone by a couple of names - I read it as "Baseball in '41," but it has another title now. The thesis, and this seems right to me, is that DiMaggio wasn't terribly popular when he first came up, especially because he was a frequently injured, regular holdout, but that the timing of The Streak, coming when it did with the world in a very tense spot, really did something to translate him in the public mind from just another selfish ballplayer into something mystical. As for specific comps to Musial and Williams, they were more selective hitters, but if you put them in the same park and give DiMag credit for being an excellent defensive CF when the other two were just so-so corner guys, I think the differences start to disappear. (Steven Goldman) |
| 2008-09-09 13:30:00 (link to chat) | Albert's best season? The dude is hitting like Ted Williams.
(Steve from St. Louis) | With a messed-up UCL. What an incredible story. Nothing against Rocco Baldelli, who is fighting a terrible illness, but I'm more impressed by Pujols, who's playing at a high level despite a very, very bad injury. I feel like Pujols isn't getting enough credit for that, relative to Baldelli. (Joe Sheehan) |
| 2008-02-27 13:00:00 (link to chat) | If you could go back in time to watch one game, what would it be? I often think it might be the Merkle boner game, though I don't like being jostled by crowds and would thus spend 8 innings seeking high ground. Second choice for me: the game where Satchel Paige called in the outfield and infield in pitching to Josh Gibson, though that might be apocryphal and could break my time machine. How about you?
(oira61 from San Francisco) | That's a really tough call. I saw the Reggie 3-HR World Series game on TV when I was a tyke. That might be cool. Any game where Ted Williams had a couple of hits... The game where Casey Stengel let a bird fly out from under his cap... Any game Walter Johnson or Christy Mathewson pitched... Satchel Paige in his prime would be VERY cool to see. Great call there. (Steven Goldman) |
| 2008-01-08 14:00:00 (link to chat) | So I have to say I don't quite understand the Raines HOF love around these parts (although I guess better that than more Rice love.) He was a very good player with a couple of great years and he did all the little things yeah yeah, but basically we are talking about seven at best good/great years and a bunch of filler. He was a good basestealer and an onbase threat, but he wasn't a fantastic defender and he didn't have much power despite playing a position where you usually like to see some. That doesn't seem like a HOF shoe in at all, but rather marginal at best. Obv the Hall is filled with many such characters (and a number of well below marginal ones), but is adding one more really something we want to make a big cause celeb over?
(Alex from SF, CA) | Raines had more than a couple of great years. He's one of the top 10 LFs of all time. compares quite favorably to the average HOF LF in terms of his value at his peak and over the course of his career. He was every little bit as valuable as Tony Gwynn both at his peak and over the coursse of his career due to his ability to get on base and to advance himself.
From the JAWS piece I wrote:
"According to JAWS, Raines compares quite favorably to the average Hall of Fame left fielder, breezing past both career and peak benchmarks. By this measure he ranks as the ninth-best left fielder of all time, behind Barry Bonds, Stan Musial, Rickey Henderson, Ted Williams, Pete Rose, Jim O'Rourke, Ed Delahanty, and Carl Yastrzemski--some pretty fair ballplayers. If that sounds crazy, consider that the New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract ranked Raines eighth back in 2001, calling him the second-most valuable leadoff hitter in history, behind only Henderson. If you weren't around for it, he was that good. Raines' overall WARP score ranks 81st all-time, 62nd among hitters. His peak score ranks 122nd all-time, 91st among hitters, and his JAWS is 88th all-time, 67th among hitters. If those numbers sound low, consider that the Hall of Fame contains 198 players whose major league careers we can measure via this method (i.e., non Negro-Leaguers or late-career crossovers like Satchel Paige and Monte Irvin), and historical estimates suggest we're witnessing another 30 or so Hall of Famers currently active."
For the rest of the piece please see here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=7007 (Jay Jaffe) |
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