Right As Rickey

Twenty-eight members of the BBWAA did not vote for Rickey Henderson in his first year of eligibility for the Hall of Fame.

Cosmically, this is irrelevant. Rickey (one of the few players afforded the singular honor of needing only his first name for identification) breezed into the Hall with 94.5% of the vote, one of the highest totals ever. Only 75% is required for induction, so some months hence, on a sunny day in the small town of Cooperstown, Rickey will make a heavily-anticipated* speech and take his place amongst baseball’s immortals. It’s no skin off his back.

*Rickey is what is commonly referred to as a “character”. He has a habit of referring to himself in the third person, and although this may be exaggerated, it’s become a defining part of his image. Before games, Rickey would stand in front of a full-length mirror, completely naked, and shout “Rickey’s the best! Rickey’s the best!” over and over again. He framed the first million-dollar check he ever received, without cashing it. Late in his career, searching for a team that would give him another shot, Rickey called up Padres GM Kevin Towers and left this message: “This is Rickey, calling on behalf of Rickey. Rickey wants to play ball”.

Where it matters intellectually is as such: Rickey Henderson is, conservatively, one of the top 25 players in baseball history. He is so far above the standard of the Hall of Fame that it’s almost silly; you would do better to create a separate wing for players of Rickey’s caliber than to vote against him. To wit: Rickey has stolen 1406 bases in his career. The second-highest guy has 938. He’s first in runs scored, first in unintentional walks, won and excelled in two World Series, won an MVP award, broke a million and one smaller records, and (I’m convinced of this, and it may warrant a separate post), turned otherwise-unremarkable sluggers into mini-superstars. Rickey went beyond Great—he was Exceptional and Unique.

Twenty-eight writers looked at that sterling resume, scratched their heads, and thought “Naaaah—just don’t see it”

And that’s a problem.

Sure, it’s not a problem on the level of War or Famine or even Fall Out Boy, but it’s still a problem. So let’s look at the ballots.

According to several online sources, at least two writers did not submit any names on their ballots. This is due to a policy of not voting for any players who played during the so-called “Steroid Era”, roughly the mid-90s to mid-00s. So those guys probably thought Rickey was good enough to merit induction, but were making a political statement about baseball in general (Rickey is considered to be above steroid suspicion, as he never blew up like a balloon or developed severe backne).

One writer, Corky Simpson of the Green Valley News & Sun, simply left Rickey off his ballot without explanation. He explained his “no” votes on several choices, as well as his “yes” votes (for such a luminary as Matt Williams, for instance), but relegated Rickey to a “And Here Are Some Players Who May Yet Be Elected” list. Later, Simpson explained on the Columbia Journalism Review that:

“No one in the history of baseball has ever gotten into the Hall of Fame on a unanimous vote,” he notes. “I mean, we’re talking about Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb and Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson—nobody. And if anyone out there thinks that Rickey Henderson can carry one of those guys’ shoes, he’s crazy.”

That’s twenty-five ballots left unaccounted for. I have a feeling most of them fall into the Corky Simpson line of thinking, which is where the problem’s crux lies.

The first Baseball Hall of Fame class was named in 1936—Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Christy Matthewson, and Walter Johnson. None were elected unanimously—Cobb came closest, with 98.2 percent of the vote. According to Simpson and, ostensibly, most of the naysayers on Rickey, this is a sign that no player should ever be elected unanimously. After all, if the Baseball Writers of 1936 didn’t believe that Babe Ruth—the greatest player of all time, a name synonymous with “baseball”—wasn’t worthy of unanimous induction, then no one should be given said honor. Therefore, a set of “guardians” will simply leave players off their ballot if they are up for their first year of eligibility. There’s no thought process to it—they just don’t check the box next to said player’s name.

The problem is that this doesn’t jive with history. Baseball-Reference.com (probably the greatest pure website ever invented by man) has statistics going back to—wait for it—1871. Players in this day and age are eligible five years after they’ve retired, and can stay on the ballot a maximum of 15 years—hence, you never have any player who retired more than twenty years ago on the ballot.

Voters in the first election were working off a SIXTY-FIVE YEAR backlog of players. A special veteran’s committee was set up to vote exclusively for pre-1900 players, but the rules were unclear, and several players appeared on both ballots. Twenty-three players appeared on the 2009 ballot. There was no such list of eligible players on the 1936 ballot, but FORTY-SEVEN received at least one vote apiece.

Do you see the issue here? A voter might have felt that the stars of yesteryear were being forgotten, and tilted his ballot away from the obvious stars in order to give the Edd Roushes of the world a better chance. The more options you give people, the better chance they’ll lack unanimity on the obvious choice.

These writers are holding up a standard which doesn’t exist.

So, you might say, why not simply educate them on their mistake? Perhaps a little enlightenment will shock them into some sense.

I have a feeling that’s not what would happen. The writer—as well as the pundit, or the politician, or some combination of the breed—isn’t interested in being right. He’s interested in being weighty. Rickey Henderson is not a Hall of Famer because of his statistics, or his accomplishments, or his sheer brilliance on the field of play.

Rickey Henderson is a Hall of Famer because I say so.

And I don’t say so.

And that’s the problem.

The Myth of Nomar

I have been so terribly irritable over the past weeks, and I think it's Al Reyes' fault.

There are other factors at work. While the wide framework of my life is solid, I've been beset by a series of petty failures--the worst kind, to be honest. Ideally, in the event of a life-altering reversal of fortune, you have some kind of support system--friends and family rally around you if you're fired, or sick, or otherwise indisposed. Fail at something stupid, though, and you will receive no pity.

The core of it is this: I haven't been able to write for the past month. This happens sometimes, and though the reasons vary, it always comes down to procrastination. I spent hours today avoiding the whole writing process--having to actually translate the clear threads of my imagination into something muddled and lacking.

To that end, I tried (and failed) to do the following things:

• Get the new version of AIM to work on my computer.
  
• Get through even a quarter of Samurai Shodown II (one of those classic fighting games that requires one to have methamphetamine reflexes to even dream of defeating the computer. So far, the pattern seems to be as such: start match, spend twenty seconds having every attack blocked with a dismissive effortlessness by the computer, lose match, consider throwing controller, and, ultimately, sink back into chair with a certain amount of despair and embarrassment.)
• Respond to e-mails sent by loved ones.
• Go to the gym.

God, I suck. The only thing I'm good at, in times like these, is writing. It's the cure-all. But up until fifteen minutes ago, I couldn't do it. It's somewhat liberating to be actually doing this, and someday I may write about the process, as it applies to me.

That, kids, is why the basic idea of Al Reyes has put me in a dark mood.

**********
At twenty-three years of age, Nomar Garciaparra hit .306 with 30 home runs for the Boston Red Sox.

At twenty-four, Nomar hit .323 with 35 home runs.

At twenty-five, Nomar hit .357 with 27 home runs.

I've always liked baseball, but I didn't really love it until Anthony Nomar Garciaparra (his famous middle name, which defined him to the world, became one of those words, which leapt above their original meanings and came to stand for so much more) became the starting shortstop for the Red Sox. Here he was, in the full flower of youth, so audaciously talented that, to a 13-year-old with glasses and acne, he didn't quite seem real. Nomar, along with the hated Derek Jeter and the distant Alex Rodriguez, heralded a new age of shortstoppery in baseball.

Shortstops had been, for a long period of time, smaller and scrappier, defense-first types, broken only by outliers like Cal Ripken Jr. Nomar was a sinewy howitzer, both on the field and at-bat. Two images stand out to me, when thinking of Nomar: his uncanny ability to rove into the hole between second and third base, spear a sharp grounder, then (all in one motion), turning, jumping, and firing the ball to first; and his power-laden swing, which (preceded by a series of ritualistic toe taps and glove adjustments that became iconic) seemed to produce naught but frightening line drives, at every angle. He was otherwordly. There was no effort to his ability.

We will never know his true talent level, because of Al Reyes. Near the end of his age twenty-five season, Reyes hit Nomar in the left wrist with a fastball.

Life is rarely cinematic. There was no hushed silence, no frozen movie frame--Nomar was hit, but he seemed fine., and he had an entire offseason to rest it up. In his age twenty-six season, Nomar hit .372, which to this day doesn't seem like an actual number. He wasn't even in his prime yet.

In his age twenty-seven season, the wrist began to act up. He missed a hundred and forty-two games.

In his age twenty-eight and twenty-nine seasons, he hit a combined .305. He could still mash. But it seemed to us, at the time, that Nomar was struggling, at least a bit. He was always aggressive, but his walks fell, as pitchers felt they could challenge him more often. More and more of those line drives turned into weak popups. He was falling off a mountain in slow motion.

In his age thirty season, Nomar Garciaparra played in only thirty-eight games for Boston, before being traded to the Cubs. The Red Sox won the World Series that year. Al Reyes' fastball had finally found its mark.

I've reached a point in my life where some things I once found essential are falling by the wayside. I can't remember my sixth-grade history teacher's name, or the names of the next-door neighbors at our old house. They're lost in the haze. I wonder if Nomar remembers what it felt like to truly turn on a pitch, the way only an elite hitter can. For the past two years, he's been far below adequate. Once the toast of Boston, a future Hall of Famer, news of Nomar's potential retirement due to "constant physical ailments" is buried deep in an article about something else entirely.

Don't pity him. Nomar is a millionaire several times over, married to a beautiful and talented woman--his life has been better, on balance, than billions and billions of others.

But the man used to be able to do something, and he no longer can. That alone is a kind of death.

Get Out of My Head

Have you ever had a song stuck in your head?

These are the first words I've written about one Juro Patton in about six years. I created him as part of a collabrative storytelling effort for a now-defunct fan website for a series of books, games, and online short stories*. I was perhaps 14 when I started frequenting the site's message boards, fleshing out the universe in which our characters would inhabit, discussing minutiae that seemed important at the time but escape me all these years later. We had a structure to the whole thing, but there was freedom to develop our own characters, stories, and niches.

*I won't be linking you to the site for a few reasons. First, it only semi-exists anymore. The front page doesn't have any links on it, and you'd have to fiddle around to get anywhere. Second, I'm not gonna lie--this whole enterprise was more than a bit nerdy. I started this whole blog thing to impress women, after all, so we'll be avoiding any temptation to comb through my unfortunately well-preserved post history. Sorry. You can probably still find it if you're a good internet detective.

Central to the whole process was the creation of a character that you'd use in writing said collaborative stories. It was part amateur sci-fi, part game. You'd write part of a story from your character's point of view, leave off at a dramatically appropriate point, then let the next person take over from their character's point of view, and so on. The point wasn't really to win, per se. Just to tell an interesting tale.

I came up with the idea for Juro Patton out of a need for a strong central character in one particular area. Juro, embarrassingly enough, started off as a bit of a Mary Sue, and for a short while was named Joseph Patton, which combined the names of my favorite general with, uh, my name.

Give me a break. I was 14.

The process of creating him was convoluted, so I'll spare you most of the nerdy details. You had to come up with the obvious physical traits, habits, hobbies, and so on. The real meat of the process was in a character's Virtues and Flaws, heroic traits and failings that could come up at any point in a story. This was important to the whole system because another player, while not allowed to take direct control over your character ("Biff Manly* shot a rocket at Juro Patton, blowing him into little piles of barely-recognizable gore"), could utilize his Virtues and Flaws in an appropriate way ("Biff Manly insulted Juro Patton, noticing that his words had a visible effect on the quick-to-anger soldier").

*I once created a fake player named Biff Manly in a baseball video game. He was seven feet tall and weighed four hundred pounds. I think he hit a hundred home runs in the one season I had him play.

The whole process actually helped me get better as a writer. It's useful to realize that your characters need to have realistic flaws and can't be super-awesome badasses a hundred percent of the time. Juro Patton eventually took form as a charismatic but deeply flawed tragic hero, an intensely loyal leader of men whose temper was quick, blinding, and almost crippling. He was mischievous but lacked tact. He leapt at danger but constantly overestimated his own capabilities. He was, without a doubt, the best character I'd ever created.

I should have stopped there. But I kept refining him.

The best movies, stories, characters, and plots are ambiguous and uncertain. The scariest and most memorable image from Jaws isn't the shots of the shark rising up out of the water--it's his fin, inexorably moving beneath the waves toward his prey. I should have left Juro Patton as a strongly defined collection of traits, bound together by a loose physical description, background, and anecdotes.

The end result was that I only ever wrote ABOUT him. Every time I thought he was ready, some perceived flaw would crop up--was kind of music did he like? Where did he get that scar on his cheek? What color were his parents' eyes? Was he a sportsman? A conservationist? What were his political positions?

Juro Patton became a Koch Snowflake.

It's a mathematical fractal, made by adding triangle after triangle to the primary shape. Here's an example of the first four iterations:

The length of a Koch snowflake is infinite, as it keeps on getting more and more complex. Its area is finite. You could draw a circle around it and it would never touch the boundary, even after increasing its area a billion-fold. By constantly redefining my character, I limited him.

I never wrote a story featuring him. Not one. He exists only in my head.

Worse, he's stuck there. If one puts that much effort into defining a character, it's tough to get rid of him. Juro Patton is six feet five inches tall, two hundred and thirty pounds, with blue eyes, shoulder-length black hair, a scar (from a teenage gang-fight) on his right cheek, extending from his ear to his lip, fond of jaunty uniforms and history, a harmonica player who loves the outdoors. I'll probably remember that for years.

You ever have a song stuck in your head? Try an entire person.