Author Archive

Video: Dave Cameron on Clubhouse Confidential

UPDATE: MLB.com has uploaded Cameron’s appearance to their site, so that all the world can remember this world-changing moment.

An enterprising member of the World Wide Web appears to have captured and uploaded to YouTube footage from managing editor Dave Cameron’s appearance yesterday (Monday) on MLB Network’s Clubhouse Confidential (link).

Absent from this clip — and I don’t know why, really — is the three-minute stretch during which Cameron made a series of horrible remarks about Brian Kenny’s mother, a lot of it in what I’m pretty sure was Polish.


Photos: Things Bert Blyleven Has Worn on His Head

Apropos of mostly nothing, here are three things that Hall of Famer Bert Blyleven has worn on his head before:

Cake Hat:

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Point and Laugh at Dave Cameron on the TV

In an effort to reinforce the popular notion that all sabermetric analysts are poorly socialized nerdbones with unfortunate hair cuts, Brian Kenny and the producers of MLB Network’s Clubhouse Confidential have invited FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron to appear on today’s (Monday’s) edition of that program.

Kenny, for his part, does a good job with the show. He appears genuinely interested in asking, and attempting to answer, smart questions about baseball. Furthermore, he has a head of hair that will outlive us all.

The show broadcasts at 5:30pm ET — with what appears to be another showing at 7:30pm ET, for those viewers whose abdominal muscles aren’t fully cramped after pointing and laughing during the first.


Video: Justin Verlander on His Future Cause of Death

Making an appearance on TV’s Conan on Wednesday, Detroit Tiger SuperAce Justin Verlander announced both to O’Brien and all of America that he will one day die either of congestive heart failure or diabetes — just not in those words.


Kenesaw M. Landis Reacts: Greenpeace Canvasser

Excuse me, sir, do you have a minute to save the environment?


Kenesaw Mountain Landis Reacts: Paternity Test

Kenesaw Mountain Landis… you are not the father.


Kenesaw Mountain Landis Reacts: Nice Pants

Hey, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, nice pants.


A Mostly Complete History of the Bolo Tie in Baseball

There’s no more expedient a means for announcing to the world that one’s lovemaking is, like the mesquite plant of the Southwestern desert, both capable of puncturing a tire and delicious when combined with barbecue sauce — there’s no more expedient a means to this desirable end than the donning of a bolo tie.

That’s reason enough, of course, for celebrating this important article of decorative neckwear in these pages. However, in addition to these True Facts, there are also three baseball- and bolo-related images on the internet!

Let’s look at them, before mom finds out.

Here is a young man celebrating freedom with Hall of Famer Ted Williams:

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Readings: A Baseball Winter, Chapters 1-9

As noted in these pages last week, I recently purchased A Baseball Winter: The Off-Season Life of the Summer Game, a day-by-day account — edited by Terry Pluto and Jeffrey Neuman — of the 1984-85 offseason of five clubs: the New York Mets, the California Angels, the Atlanta Braves, the Philadelphia Phillies, and the Cleveland Indians.

As also noted, the book is written in a very compact, diary-like* format, which makes for an urgency, a feeling of being present, that’s very pleasant.

*Diary-esque? Diary-y? Is there an adjectival form of diary?

Here are some note on what I’ve read.

Contracts
Free agency was still a newish concept in 1984-85, and it’s clear from this text that a number of teams didn’t understand particularly well the level of risk associated with signing players — and particularly pitchers — to long-term contracts.

Consider some examples:

• Atlanta, led enthusiastically by owner Ted Turner, signed 32-year-old reliever Bruce Sutter to a six-year, $6.75 million deal — or, $1.125 million per year. A marginal win cost about $330 thousand in 1985, meaning $1 million ought to have bought ca. three wins above replacement. Sutter’s signing came after a precipitous drop in his strikeout rates, from the high-20% area in 1977-79 to about 16% in 1983-84. He would have had to produce roughly 20 wins to earn his contract. In fact, he produced 0.2 of them — wins, that is. His WPA over that same span was -3.79.

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Life Ain’t Nothing but Phil Rizzuto and Money

This video footage of Phil Rizzuto maniacally sawing a live woman in half represents only one of roughly 800 video spots the late Yankee shortstop and broadcaster did for consumer financiers The Money Store in the late 1980s and early ’90s — i.e. at precisely the same time giants of rap N.W.A. very-not-coincidentally released their single “Gangsta Gangsta”.

Next week, we’ll look at Rizzuto’s spokeswork for noted clothier American Apparel.