By Blaidd Dwrg

You probably have never heard of him – Cal McLish. He passed away Thursday at the age of 84. Cal McLish was a pitcher for the Dodgers, Pirates, Cubs, Indians, Reds, White Sox and Phillies who went a very unassuming 92-92 in his career and was pretty much a league average pitcher.

Why call him a legend? A couple of reasons – he was actively involved in his community for many years, eventually earning election into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame for his contributions; he is a legend among autograph collectors – he was always willing to sign his name, answer any questions and talk about baseball; and he holds a records in baseball that may never be broken – he has the longest name in Major League Baseball history.

You may ask, “Drwg, how long could his name possibly be?” Well, the guy, who was known by the nicknames Buster and Bus, was born with the name Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma McLish. Yes, that is his given name.

The story goes like this:

His full name was Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma McLish. His father chose the name after McLish’s mother told John McLish he could name their son.

“There were eight kids in the family, and I was No. 7, and my dad didn’t get to name one of them before me. So he evidently tried to catch up,” Cal McLish told The Oklahoman in 1999.

I had always wanted to ask him to sign something for me with his full name, just because I thought it would look interesting. Alas, I will not get that chance.

Cla McLish was one of the few remaining connections to the Brooklyn Dodgers and now he has passed but hopefully will not be forgotten.

By Blaidd Drwg

Jim Caple, who is always good for a laugh or two when he writes, wrote an espn.com piece titled “Page 2’s Top 10 fictional home runs“. It is surprising how few “memorable” home runs have occurred in the movies, considering the love of the dramatic ending in Hollywood (how much more dramatic can a walk off HR in the bottom of the 9th to win a game get). My favorites:

8. Thanks to his secret weapon, Wunderbat, Homer Simpson homers throughout the season to send his team to the nuclear plant softball championships (“The Simpson’s,” Homer at the Bat). Unfortunately Homer gets benched when Mr. Burns hires big league ringers for the big game.

HOMER: You’re Darryl Strawberry!

STRAWBERRY: Yes.

HOMER: You play right field.

STRAWBERRY: Yes.

HOMER: I play right field, too.

STRAWBERRY: So?

HOMER: Well, are you better than me?

STRAWBERRY: Well, I’ve never met you, but … yes.

The “Homer At Bat” episode was a vastly underrated early Simpsons episode, featuring a lineup of baseball all-stars (remember when Steve Sax and Mike Scioscia were all-stars). It also gave us this: Talkin’ Baseball (Simpsons).

My other favorite? This one:

9. The Jeffrey Maier home run (1996 ALCS) off the bat of Derek Jeter. C’mon, you know it wasn’t a real home run.

By Blaidd Drwg

For those of you old enough to remember (which, considering that I know most of the readers of this blog should be just about all of you), TWIB stands for “This Week In Baseball”, the weekly half hour baseball show hosted by the late, great Mel Allen that used to air right before the Saturday afternoon game of the week. “How about that!”

There were two big baseball stories occurred in the last week that I feel the need to comment on them.

Bobby Thompson – Bobby passed away earlier this week at the age of 86. Everyone remembers him for “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World” off Ralph Branca in the 1951 playoff that put the Giants into the World Series. People forget that he was a pretty good ballplayer beyond that, playing 15 seasons and hitting 264 Home Runs. I personally got to meet Bobby Thompson years ago in the mid ‘80’s at a baseball card show. There was no one waiting behind me to get his autograph so I talked to him for about 10 minutes. He was humbled that a kid who wasn’t even born when he retired knew so much about his playing days and we talked about him growing up in Staten Island (and being born in Scotland), his military service and having the opportunity to play for the Giants while they were in NY. I would highly recommend reading Joshua Prager’s book “Echoing Green” –  it is a fascinating read about how the Giants were stealing signs in 1951 and the personalities involved in the battle between the Giants and Dodgers. It spends a lot of time talking about Thompson and Branca.

“There’s a long fly ball…THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT…THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT…BOBBY THOMPSON!…” I still get chills thinking about Russ Hodges’ call, made 22 years before I was born.

Roger Clemens – Clemens is going to be indicted for perjury before congress. One, this is going to mean absolutely nothing in the long term and two, why is this a big deal. Does anyone really think that Senate sub-committees aren’t lied to on a regular basis by people under oath? (I am looking at you BP). Besides it is a baseball player lying about steroids. I am sure that has somehow compromised national security.

By Blaidd Drwg

The Boston Globe printed an article about how the scalpers at Fenway Park are not making money on reselling Red Sox tickets this season. Maybe I am being insensitive, but am I supposed to feel sorry for these guys?

One of my favorite parts of this article:

Rich wistfully talks about the pre-championship Red Sox and laments the way things are now. Back then, a $50 ticket went for $200, easy, he says. Now there are days where he struggles to get 50 percent above face value.

OK, I am sorry but these guys are still gouging the hell out of the ticket prices. How bad are things for the scalpers? Here you go:

Rich claims he made about $100,000 in his first year re-selling tickets to NASCAR events and Sox games. This year, though, he says he’ll be lucky to bring in one-third of that.

WTF, this guy is making $30,000 this year for a couple hours of work a day, 82 days a year. I don’t feel sorry for them.

These guys are the scum of the earth. They are shady, arrogant and really not bright. They would rather not sell a ticket than sell a ticket for less than they want, even after the game has started.

Another gem:

Now, it’s the middle of the first inning, and he’s one of several sellers occupying the corner off Brookline Ave. The game has started but his price remains fixed. His field box seats, with a face value of $52 apiece, are going for $150.

Like many of his colleagues, he is having trouble moving the seats. To a casual onlooker, the solution seems simple. Drop the price. But when the idea is brought up, the man in the gray cotton T-shirt quickly shoots it down.

“Let me ask you something,’’ he says. “If you owned a store, and you sold milk, and all your milk was about to go bad, and everyone held out until the last minute to buy your milk, and you dropped the price, what would happen?’’

He doesn’t wait for an answer. He explains that no one would be willing to buy milk at full price. The integrity of the product would be compromised.

Integrity of the product? Please. These guys are selling baseball tickets, not life saving medicine.  Actually, if I knew a product was going to go stale and I was faced with selling at a loss or not selling at all, I am going to sell at a loss (and have done that with tickets – I figure $20 for a $40 ticket is better than $0 for a $40 ticket I can’t use). This guy has probably never seen fresh food in his life – stores regularly discount products that are about to expire or go bad and yet, people still buy the regularly priced product too.

My scalper story – back in 2004 before the Sox won the World Series, I tried to go to a game at Fenway with a friend of mine. We did not have tickets and it was a July game against the Rangers with Tim Wakefield pitching. The cheapest tickets I could get from a scalper were bleachers (which I believe were $20 face value) for $100 EACH. This was before the game, so we decided to go to a bar, have a few drinks and come back after the game started. We came back to where the scalpers were hanging out, it was the 3^rd inning and the Sox were down 3-0. The ticket prices had barely moved – including the moron who wanted $100 each for bleacher tickets. I offered $100 for any pair of tickets that any of the scalpers were willing to sell and got no takers, so we went back to the bar. I never understood that – it is not like there are that many people who are willing to pay that kind of money to see 6 innings of a baseball game anyway. I refuse to ever buy or sell a ticket from a Fenway scalper because of that.

By Blaidd Drwg

The box score is almost as old as the game of baseball. Every morning, millions of people get up and hop onto any number of sites and look at one to see how their favorite team, favorite player or fantasy baseball team did.

I happened to be scanning ESPN.com this morning and came across this article by Tim Kurkjian. I am not a big fan of Kurkjian, but I have to appreciate the uber-geekyness of clipping box scores for 20 years. I think you would be hard pressed to find a baseball fan over the age of 30 who did not do this at some point in their lives. This article brought back some memories for me. I remember vividly scanning the box scores during mornings in the summer in the 1980’s looking to see the results of my beloved Cubbies and Red Sox, wondering if Leon Durham jacked a homer or Wade Boggs went 3 for 4 the previous night. I also remember the frustration of finding that there was no score available for games on the west coast (I was living in NJ at the time) and having to wait for the NEXT DAY to find out the results of a game. Boy, have we come a long way – I can now watch every game that is taking place, live from the comfort of my living room and I can check a box score instantaneously. A couple of weeks ago, I actually looked at a box score in a paper – it was the first time I had done that since I can’t remember.

I am also guilty of clipping box scores myself. Somewhere there exists a notebook with just about every box score for the Cubs and Red Sox from 1985 – 1988. I still remember the frustration of the Cubs every 5 days trucking out a lanky 21 year old right-hander in 1987 because he kept getting pounded every time he pitched. He ended up 6-14 with an ERA of 5.61 that season which, considering how much less offense there was in 1987 than today, and despite rumors of a juiced ball, was terrible. That pitcher – Greg Maddux.

by Coltrane

Or:  “The Fat Ladies Are Singing.”

The M’s season is over.  That’s not breaking news.  When the Mariners are in contention there’s one website that I check regularly — coolstandings.com.

Coolstandings uses two methods to predict each team’s odds to make the playoffs.  The first method creates the “smart” standings, using runs scored, runs allowed, and strength of opposition.  Their other method produces the “dumb” standings.  The “dumb” standings assume that every team is fundamentally a .500 team for the rest of the season.   The Coolstandings FAQ page is here. 

I prefer the “smart” standings.   I think they’re more “real”, and give better results.

The NL West has a good race going on.  Here are Coolstandings current odds for each of those teams:

Thats’s Team, Wins, Losses, Winning Percentage, Games Back, Runs Scored, Runs Allowed, Expected Wins, Expected Losses, “DIV%” is the odds of winning the division, “WC%” is odds of getting the Wildcard, and “POFF%” is the odds for the team to make the playoffs either way.  As you can see, San Diego and San Francisco are neck and neck, but they both have a good chance to make the playoffs regardless.

I’m writing this post because every time the Mariners are 8-10 games back in July there will inevitably be a caller on the radio, or a guy at the bar, who says “Yeah, but 1995!  Blah, blah, blah!”  (The bold emphasis on “Blah, blah, blah!” is mine, because it’s all I hear when people talk about 1995.)

1995 was great.  It probably saved baseball in Seattle.  But it created the most delusional bunch of baseball fans I’ve ever been around.  It ultimately makes it more challenging to manage the M’s organization when “no lead is insurmountable.”  The specter of 1995 pressures the front office to consider trading to improve the team this year, when they should be building for the future. 

Delusional fans are utimately bad for competitive baseball in Seattle.  Coolstandings is a part of the cure.  Please help spread the cure around.