INNINGS

BARRY AND THE DEATHLY NUMBERS

Barry Bonds, the Lord Voldemort of baseball, has prevailed in the end, rapping the enchanted No. 756 and, for the moment, closing a complex tale that has held us too long and (here in Eastern Daylight Time, at least) way too late. The image may not hold up, since it casts baseball commissioner Bud Selig as Harry Potter, but for half a decade now a dank moral haze and a sense of unlikelihood have surrounded the Giant slugger Bonds as he pursued the famous seven-hundred-and-fourteen lifetime home-run mark established by Babe Ruth, and then Hank Dumbledore’s all-time seven hundred and fifty-five. An irritated non-reader (or non-fan) who happened in on this story three days earlier and saw Commissioner Selig standing up in his box in San Diego but not applauding Bonds as he circled the bases after his tying seven-hundred-and-fifty-fifth poke, against the Padres, would sense at the same moment that footnotes or a movie version would not begin to clear things up. You had to have read the books.

Bonds’s record dinger, in the fifth inning of a night game against the Washington Nationals at Petco Park, in San Francisco, came in his third at-bat of the evening, succeeding a loud double and a single. One vacationing Maine-coast cottager with a dinky summertime TV set—this cottager—had recently fallen into the habit of going upstairs to brush his teeth and put on his pajamas after watching Bonds’s first at-bat, returning before the second one, and tottering back up to bed when it was over, never mind the rest of the game. This time, the vision of Barry’s locked-in, more characteristic swings kept him awake, and brought him back down again minutes before midnight: just in time for the blessed three-and-two solo blast, four hundred and thirty-five feet to right-center field, and the clenched fists to heaven; the slow but not too slow base-circling; the extended-family hugs (including one with Willie Mays, who is Bonds’s godfather); a careful but placating prerecorded concession by the saintly and now deposed Hank Aaron, delivered on the Jumbotron (“I move over now and offer my best wishes to Barry and his family on this historical achievement”); and locally—on the stairs once again, with the set turned off at last—a “Yesss!” in the dark.

© The Saul Steinberg Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (Credit 32.1)

The rejoicing here is not just over an expected natural decline in the booings and editorializings about Bonds’s inferred but unproved use of steroids during the 2000 to 2003 seasons, late in his career (he is forty-three), when his customary thirty-seven or thirty-eight homers per season jumped into the upper forties and, in 2001, produced the all-time single-season record of seventy-three. Another hope is for less piety, a shift in the altogether mystifying popular notion that the lifetime home-run mark is somehow sacrosanct—“baseball’s most hallowed record,” as the news reports called it the other day. Hallowed but hollow, perhaps, since home-run totals are determined not just by the batters but by different pitchers, in very different eras, and, most of all, by the outer dimensions of the major-league parks, which have always varied widely and have been deliberately reconfigured in the sixteen ballparks built since 1992, thus satisfying the owners’ financial interest in more and still more home runs. Bonds has been called a cheater, but the word should hardly come up in a sport whose proprietors, if they were in charge of the classic Olympic hundred-meter dash, would stage it variously at a hundred and six meters, ninety-four, a hundred and three, and so forth, and engrave the resulting times on a tablet.

The weight of records and their breaking could be seen in Barry Bonds’s vapid swings and feeble pop-ups and dribblers during the six homerless games he endured before tying Aaron’s mark. By coincidence, the same frailty overtook Alex Rodriguez, the Yankees’ celebrity thumper and third baseman, who is leading all comers in home runs this year but fell into a career-worst, oh-for-twenty-two stretch at the plate while he attempted to deliver the round-tripper that would put him into the élite five-hundred lifetime home-run club, with every pitch to him now weirdly illuminated by the glisten and flare of thousands of digital cameras. The same strain, for that matter, lay within the preoccupied, baggy-eyed stares of Tom Glavine, the slim elder lefty of the Mets, as he went for his splendid three-hundredth lifetime victory. The reprieves almost overlapped—A-Rod’s first-inning homer against the Royals arriving on Saturday afternoon, and Glavine’s win the next night, against the Cubs—and two days later Barry set us free. He is not much liked—“churl” and “churlish” have had a wide revival in the media lexicon when he is under discussion—but his smile after the homer and the hoopla was benign. This was Opening Day.

Talk, August, 2007

NOTHING DOING

With the Yankees’ pitching in a perpetual flummox and the distraction of a home All-Star Game looming into view in the last summer of baseball up at the Stadium, this is a good time to bring up a vivid, semi-obscure Yankee team record that almost rivals those fabled thirty-nine pennants and twenty-six World Championships. Telling it only takes a minute. On Sunday, August 2, 1931, the Yanks were shut out on the road by the Red Sox, 1–0, in a game played, mysteriously, at Braves Field, the home of Boston’s National League club in those days. The Yanks were not shut out again, away or at home, until August 3, 1933, a span of three hundred and eight games, or, as measured back then, exactly two seasons. Zeroes are baseball’s most insistent number, but no other major-league team has come anywhere close to this astounding skein. The parallel record in the National League, for instance, is the Cincinnati Reds’ two hundred and eight games not-shut-out, between April 3, 2000, and May 23, 2001. Last year’s Yankees were shut down eight times, while last year’s Twins were goose-egged fourteen times.

The statistically minded might suppose that the endless connivings of chance played a role in the Yankees’ great run, but any eleven-year-old interested enough to punch up the 1931–33 Yanks on his bedroom iMac would know better the moment he saw that their starting lineup in those days included six regulars subsequently voted into the Hall of Fame: catcher Bill Dickey, first baseman Lou Gehrig, second baseman Tony Lazzeri, third baseman Joe Sewell, and outfielders Earle Combs and Babe Ruth (who was nearing the end of his career). There were also three future Hall of Fame pitchers on the Yankee roster—Herb Pennock, Red Ruffing, and Lefty Gomez—although, with one exception, the Yankee pitchers didn’t play much of a part in avoiding shutouts. The exception is Ruffing, who, on August 13, 1932, blanked the Washington Senators over a scoreless nine innings—scoreless for both teams—in their home park, Griffith Stadium.

Allowed to bat again in the tenth (he was good enough at the plate to be called on regularly as a pinch-hitter), Ruffing hit a solo home run, and then closed out the Senators in the bottom half, to preserve the win and the string. Ruffing, the Yankees’ ace, had slitted eyes and high cheekbones, and held further interest for every New York boy fan of that time because he’d lost four toes on his left foot in a mining accident, back home in Illinois, at the age of fifteen. Now he had accounted for both scores in the same game. No other pitcher has matched this extra-innings deed in the ensuing seventy-six—well, almost—years.

But how come the Yankees played at Braves Field on the day of their last previous zero? For the answer, we called up Seymour Siwoff, the founder and proprietor and chief enthusiast of the Elias Sports Bureau, the Fort Knox of sports statistics, and put the question.

“Back in a minute,” he said, and 2.316 minutes later he was back. “Sunday blue laws!” he cried. “Oh, I love this place—we have everything! You couldn’t play ball on Sunday at Fenway because there was a church within a thousand feet of the park. Maybe more than one. So they’d go over and play at Braves Field instead. The Monday game, back at Fenway, was the beginning of the Yankee streak. Listen, do you know who ended it—who shut them out finally? Should I look that up?”

“It was Lefty Grove,” we said, naming the Philadelphia Athletics grandee, the primo starter of his era.

“Grove, of course!” said Siwoff. “I had an inkling. I almost knew.”

Talk, July, 2008

YAZ’S TRIPLE CROWN

Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera’s new triple crown—he led the American League in batting, home runs, and runs batted in this year—has brought Carl Yastrzemski back in the news again, and about time. Yaz was the last player in either league to turn the grand trick, in 1967, when his deed helped propel the Red Sox into the World Series and won him an M.V.P. award as well. Cabrera’s M.V.P. will have to await the postseason balloting, but there shouldn’t be much news in it this time around: a feat outweighs an honor any day.

Yastrzemski carried the Red Sox on his back through that month of September, collecting twenty-three hits in his last forty-four at-bats. On the final weekend, with the Twins, the White Sox, and the Tigers also still in contention for the pennant, he went seven for eight in the season’s last two games, at Fenway Park, against the visiting Twins, hit a game-winning home run, and threw out a base runner at second with a rally-killing peg from left field. I was elated by all this but not exactly surprised. Earlier that month, when Yaz came up to bat in a critical moment against the Tigers in Detroit, the Globe’s Clif Keane, then the reigning baron of the Boston media, addressed him from behind my seat in Tiger Stadium. “Go ahead!” he cried. “Prove that you’re the M.V.P.! Prove it to me! Hit a homer!” Yaz hit the homer.

He played on for another sixteen years, retiring in 1983 with the third most at-bats and the seventh most hits in the history of the game. One of my poignant private regrets when he departed was the same one I felt when Nikita Khrushchev stepped down: I knew how to spell their names without looking. I also knew about an honor of his that never came to pass. A Sox-smitten friend of mine had determined to name his awaited new baby boy Yaz, and was only thwarted by his wife’s absolute veto. Pity. The kid, grown up now and a valued colleague and pal, could have shared his zingy byline with the likes of Jay-Z, Dizzy Dean, Itzhak Perlman, and Zooey Deschanel: Yaz McGrath.

Post, October, 2012

THREE AT A TIME

The Yankees’ triple play last night, which came in the second inning against the home-team Tampa Bay Rays, received the customary tepid buildup in the ensuing media recountings. Customary because triple plays, despite their rarity, are over almost before they begin, and rarely involve a great play or a close call anywhere. Someone grabs a line drive, steps on a base, and gets off an everyday infield fling: one, two, three, the inning is over, the teams are changing sides, the TV goes to a commercial, and the mini-event is done in less time than it takes to read this sentence. Last night’s play came after a second-inning leadoff double against Yankee starter C. C. Sabathia by the Rays’ Evan Longoria, then a walk to the right fielder Wil Myers. The next batter, Sean Rodriguez, hit a bouncer to third baseman Yangervis Solarte, who backed up and touched third, flipped to second, where the pivoting Brian Roberts stepped on second and got off a poor throw to first, where Scott Sizemore uneasily swiped at and held on to the one-bounce relay. Bang-bang-bang. Not much news there, so let’s quickly add that Sabathia was also on the mound for the Yanks on the occasion of the previous Yankee triple play, at Baltimore, on April 12, 2013. And then, wow, let’s not forget that Sizemore was playing first base for the first time ever in his career.

Triple plays are rare—they happen three or four times a year, on average—so it’s a good bet that you never saw one. What’s great about them isn’t really their scarcity but the fact that they beautifully illustrate the invisible force that hovers about each pitch and play and inning and game in this pausing, staccato, and inexorably accruing pastime: the laws of chance. Neither Sizemore nor Roberts nor Solarte had ever been involved in a triple play before, and there is an excellent chance that none of the three ever will be again. The only triple play I ever witnessed came at Yankee Stadium on May 29, 2000, when Oakland second baseman Randy Velarde grabbed a mild liner from Yankee outfielder Shane Spencer, took a step or two forward to tag out the oncoming runner from first, Jorge Posada, and, without hurrying or changing direction, stepped on second to easily triple-off Tino Martinez, who had been heading for third. Yay, wow—I mean Wow!—but Velarde, arriving at the visiting team’s dugout, appeared almost embarrassed: Geez, guys, it just happened. I stood up at my press-box seat to yell, but everyone else was still seated and at work. Unless it’s the lottery, you can’t scream over a number that’s fallen out of the sky.

I wasn’t on hand on August 23, 2009, when Phillies second baseman Eric Bruntlett grabbed a low liner, tagged a nearby runner, and almost dazedly stepped on second for a game-ending unassisted triple play, becoming the first player to pull off this caper since 1927. The abruptly losing team against Bruntlett’s play was the Mets, which simultaneously and perfectly illustrated the opposite of unexpected.

Post, April, 2014

ZIM

Don Zimmer, who died yesterday at eighty-three, was an original Met and an original sweetie pie. His sixty-six years in baseball were scripted by Disney and produced by Ken Burns. (Grainy black-and-white early footage, tinkly piano, as he marries for life at local home plate in bushy, front-porchy Elmira, New York; smiling baggy-pants young teammates raise bats to form arch.) As a stubby, earnest third baseman and utility infielder, he compiled a .235 batting average over twelve seasons for six teams, including the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers, the Chicago Cubs, those 1962 ur-Mets, and the Washington Senators. In the off-seasons, he played ball in Puerto Rico and Cuba and Mexico. Turning coach, he was hired eleven times by eight different teams (there were three separate stints with the Yankees) and along the way managed the Padres, Red Sox, Rangers, and Cubs. Two championship rings as a player with the Dodgers, four as a coach with the Yanks. He finished up with the Rays, in his home-town Tampa: a coach, then a local presence.

But never mind Disney: only baseball could have produced a C.V. like this, and it’s not likely to happen again. I think Zim is best remembered as the guy right next to manager Joe Torre on the right-hand side of the Yankees dugout in the good years: a motionless thick, short figure, heavily swathed in Yankee formals. The bulky dark warmup jacket and the initialled cap neatly and monastically framed his layered white moon-face, within which his tiny, half-hidden eyes remained alive and moving. He could also run and yell, of course. Boston fans—no, fans everywhere—will not forget the night he charged Pedro Martinez on the mound in that Fenway Park playoff fracas in 2003—and instantly wound up on his back, like a topped-over windup toy. Zim burned hard, and the hoots and yells and laughter that ran through the fiercely partisan Back Bay stands were familial and affectionate.

Zim sitting is the way he comes back to mind, for me. Like a few other old coaches, he had converted clubhouse silence and immobility—elbows on knees, hands folded, head aimed forward and downward, lips zipped—into something like a regional religious practice. If he caught your gaze as you walked past the coaches’ little anteroom on your way to Joe Torre’s office after another late game—he was down to sweats and clogs by now—he might manage an infinitesimal nod of recognition. Yep…same old.

Our affection for Zim is complicated, beginning as it does with our childlike joy in his bald cannonball head and stumpy bod and jack-o’-lantern grin, but encompassing as well, I think, a deep trust in and respect for his decades of exemplary competitive service, without stardom or contemporary distraction. He was a baseball figure from an earlier time: enchantingly familiar, tough and enduring, stuffed with plays and at-bats and statistics and anecdotes and wisdom accrued from tens of thousands of innings. Baseball stays on and on, unchanged, or so we used to think as kids, and Zimmer, sitting there, seemed to be telling us yes, you’re right, and see you tomorrow.

Post, June, 2014