First, though, let us allow the land-owning NotGraphs commenters and their powdered wigs to justify their chosen nominations …
There aren’t a lot of classic baseball books out there, relatively speaking. This isn’t to say that there aren’t a lot of great baseball books; it’s just that the genre is temporal, and not many works last from one generation to the next. Unless the subject is a legend or the author’s writing style is groundbreaking, the names of the players and their personalities eventually fade, the ideas fall out of fashion.
So it goes with Daniel Okrent’s 9 Innings, a Proustian voyage through a single June 10 game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Baltimore Orioles. As the tale begins in the clubhouses before the game and winds its way through the ninth, Okrent pauses to reflect on the players, transactions, and history that brought that particular game into its state of being. Between these anecdotes, the author weaves in the game, continuing on in the background.
9 Innings isn’t the kind of book that ranks among many people’s list of favorites, and that’s sad. Okrent’s writing is thorough and honest, although his touch is a little heavy, not quite unable to escape the journalistic plodding of the beat writers of the time. The book is primarily failed by the players themselves, particularly the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers. The most famous players of that team, Paul Molitor and Robin Yount, are perhaps its driest characters; Okrent pointedly summarizes Yount as “cooperative and patient, but also singularly unexpressive, inarticulate, even dense.” Jim Palmer appears in the dugout and Cal Ripken, in the middle of his rookie season, is present but unformed.
Meanwhile, the most interesting characters in the book have largely been forgotten: names like Vuckovich, Oglivie, Gorman Thomas, and even Ted Simmons have faded into semi-obscurity, their statistics remembered but their faces forgotten. And because of this, in the end 9 Innings becomes more of a Milwaukee Brewers book than a baseball book, and an indication of how difficult it is for any author, no matter how talented, to make fans care about other team’s ballplayers.
Scene: a crowded cafeteria in a middle school lunch room. A group of young girls are sitting at a table, eating Greek yogurt. Another young lady takes a seat at the table, and begins talking.
Savannah: Oh. My. God. You guys. Have you heard about Scott?
Madison: No. What?
Kelli: Duuuuuh. He and Boston broke up. He’s with Arizona now. That happened like a week ago.
Aurora: Nuh uh, Scott and Arizona are broken up now. Tyffani told me that Arizona only went out with Scott because she wanted to get with Matt Albers. She totally used him.
Savannah: Yeah, but guess what? Destiny told me that Regan said that Kaylee heard from Audra that Zoe read on Peyton’s Twitter that Scott and Boston were back together.
Aurora, Kelli, Madison, in unison: SHUT UP!
Savannah: Totally. I talked to Makayla and she told me that Aubree saw them making out by Harper’s locker.
Madison: I always knew they’d get back together. They made such a cute couple. When Philadelphia dumped Scott, and then he started going out with Boston, it just made sense, ya know?
Aurora: Yeah, but what about Craig? Wasn’t Boston going out with him after she broke up with Scott?
Kelli: I think they’re still friends. I mean, Craig’s nice, but Boston can do way better than a LOOGY.
Aurora: Totally.
Madison: Totally.
Savannah, to Kelli: So are you gonna go out with Craig now that he’s single?
Kelli: NO! I mean, I guess he’s cute or whatever…
Savannah: I KNEW IT! You love Craig! You’re gonna have all his babies!
Kelli: No I’m not!
Madison: You guys. Shut up. Here comes Scott.
Scott, walking by the table: Hello.
All Girls: Hiiiiii Scott.
Scott passes.
Aurora, whispering at first: Oh. My. God. He’s so cute. Boston is so lucky. I bet they’ll be together forever.
The bell rings. The girls disperse and walk to their respective classes. Kelli got a B- on her math test, which she found to be totally gay.
R.A. Dickey doesn’t always throw his slow knuckleball. But when he does, he chooses to make an impression.
Update: This pitch was called a ball. It left his hand at 60.7 mph, and crossed the plate at 55.5 mph. It was classified a curveball. It’s possible it was a curveball, but it had six inches of ‘rise,’ which isn’t usual for a curve. This is what Dickey does to classification systems. And viewers, apparently.
OMG are you looking at what I’m looking at? B/c it’s a-MAZ-ing!
Hoo, hoo, ahhhhhhhhh!
No one has ever asked me how to become an internet baseball writer. In the event that somebody does do that someday, though, I’ve prepared the following document with a view to minimizing the potential horrors of interacting with a stranger.
1. Find Writers You Care About
This doesn’t necessarily mean other internet baseball writers. In fact, that’s probably precisely what it doesn’t mean. If you have ever said or thought “Reading is boring,” it’s probably because most books are boring and also that the act of reading itself is entirely tedious. When I was younger, I would read just so girls would notice me and then let me do things to them — like, in a sexual way, I mean. Then, as a junior in high school, I discovered the poems of James Tate, Charles Simic, and Kenneth Koch in rather rapid succession. They did things with words that I found very surprising and enjoyable — almost as enjoyable as the things I’d wanted to do to all those ladies.
Many of you have surely wondered: why don’t women play more baseball? Here the legendary Babe Ruth, staunch fitness advocate and tireless sports educator, tackles that question with all the diplomacy and sophistication you’d expect. The answer, as it turns out, is that women are hopelessly ignorant, uncoordinated, vain, distractible, and handicapped at every turn by their fat sisters. But however futile his efforts to mold the fairer sex, Ruth’s wisdom shines through for the rest of us, in such pearls of hard-won baseball insight as:
On pitching: “So you wind up, and when you throw it, just follow your arm right through.”
On hitting: “I’ve often been asked the difference between a baseball swing and a golf swing…Notice that the stance at the start of both swings is alike…The follow-through in both is exactly alike.”
On fielding: “On a slow ground ball like this, an infielder runs in at full speed, and throws the ball. He must be very accurate with his throw.”
And to think how close this came, this priceless window into a master’s craft, to being consigned to the dustbin of history! Watch, gentle readers, and learn! And if, by some misfortune, you happen to be female — fear not! We, like the Babe, will be there to snatch you from the jaws of failure.
Dear NotGraphs,
With the XXXth Olympiad underway in London, my geekage for the Olympics is at an all time high. And yet at the same time, I am super bummed that baseball — scientifically proven to be the greatest game in human history — is not part of Sport’s most extravagant and wasteful spectacle.
What can I, a lowly Rockies fan, do personally to help bring baseball back to the Olympics? Grassroots ballot initiative? Hunger strike outside the USOC? Or is there a better way?
Warmest regards,
Usain von Hercules
What we are doing is assigning cool nicknames to players rather than the opposite, which is a bloodless tradition that has been with us too much and too long.
So how does this running feature differ from the dear, departed exemplar of the genre? “Nickname Seeks Player” was devoted to active base-ball-ists, while “Nickname Seeks Former Player” is the province of those who no longer play this fine game because they are dead in spirit and perhaps also dead in the corporeal sense. Boileryard Clarke? Eligible! Sal Maglie? Eligible! Fred Lynn? Eligible! Dontrelle Willis? Eligible! Pete Rose? Asshole!
You may surmise from this that almost the entire sprawl of baseball history lies before you, like a sexy patient etherized upon a table. So prepare yourself to plumb both depths and heights as we ponder fitting candidates for this week’s name to nicked: “America’s Step-Dad”!
Before we proceed, though, let us remember those who have previously survived this crucible of sturdy ghosts. Last time out, Charlie Manuel edged Wade Boggs for the drilling rights to the nickname “Colonel Sanders’s Drinking Buddy.” So now let us — snifters in hand, cardigans beswaddling our mortal parts — gaze upon The Fireside Mantel of Reposed Fortune-Hunters:
“Museum of Questionable Medical Devices” – Ted Williams
“A Garbage Truck That Runs on Lightning” – Matt Stairs
“Colonel Sanders’s Drinking Buddy” – Charlie Manuel
And now … “America’s Step-Dad”!
Implications and Intimations
America’s Step-Dad might be a well-meaning sort like Mike Brady. He might have “step-dad hair” like a middle-aged Robert Goulet. He enjoys being mediocre at tennis. He wears an ionized bracelet because, who knows, it might work. Perhaps, right now, he is at a Knights of Columbus luncheon. His handshake is sturdy yet not punishing. He occasionally complains that the color of the tough-up paint doesn’t quite match the color of his very rational sedan. He thinks about gas mileage. His medicine cabinet suggests mounting fates. He and your mother were brought together by a love of the evening news.
Who, citizens of sufficient origins, should be nicknamed “America’s Step-Dad”?
Joe Mauer defines GIF, in regards to this foul tip by the Indians’ Shelley Duncan, as Getit Inda Froat.
