Some Ideas on Baseball and Their Playoffs

Some Ideas on Baseball and Their Playoffs

1)  Let's have a DH in all of baseball or none of baseball.

It seems silly to think that since 1973, the AL and NL have been playing under two separate sets of rules.  

The time has come, since Commissioner Bud Selig is leaving, for the NL to adopt the DH, or for the AL to abandon it.

At this point, the best move is probably for the NL to adopt it.  

Fans look down at Forbes Field from the Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, 1960 World Series.  Games took around Two Hours back then.  Now they take closer to Four Hours.

2)  Let's have another team in each league

It's nice that Bud Selig thought it would be a good idea to move the Houston Astros to the American League, but in the past forty years, the Milwaukee Brewers have shifted from the American League to the National League, and the Astros from the National League to the American League, so the net difference is "zero".  

The entire reason that Milwaukee moved in the first place was to keep the number of teams in each league even, so that interleague play would not be constant.  

They should simply add one expansion team to each league, making sixteen teams, and then split the teams into four divisions of four teams in each league.  Leading to the next point.

3)  Let's have more playoff teams and more playoffs

Assuming we do what we said above, we could have four division winners.  After that, it would be appropriate to have four wildcard teams in each league play as well.  

Next, the first round and every round of the playoffs should really be seven games.  Just like hockey and basketball.  

A lot of cities go years without seeing playoff baseball.  By having 1/2 the teams in the playoffs each year, the fans won't have to wait as long to get into the playoffs.  

Babe Ruth and George Herbert Walker Bush, later President of the United States (1989-1993), then a Yale First Baseman

4)  Shorten the Games

Pitchers today can't finish nine inning games anymore, leading to 12 and 13 man staffs and super specialist relievers.

A simple solution is to do what high schools do--limit the game to seven innings.  

Radical, but think about it--most baseball games today are lasting well over three hours, and with all the bullpen changes, sometimes longer.

A seven inning game means more complete games, and if the bullpen is needed, only one or two guys will be needed.

It means getting back to a ten man pitching staff and a 15 man hitting roster.  

5) Shorten the Regular Season and Lengthen the Playoffs

Obviously the season is now way, way too long.  Athletes are getting hurt, they are trying all manner of illegal substances to last the season, and it's all out of control.

The obvious answer is to cut down the regular season, and by a lot.

Baseball should shoot for a 130 game regular season, to start in mid April and end in mid-September.  The math is easy:

12 games against your 3 division foes = 36

6 games against your 12 non-division but in league foes = 72

3 games against each of 8 teams in two divisions in the other league = 24 (meaning you cycle through the other league every two years and do home and away every two years)

That makes for a very well-balanced 130 game schedule.  It's about the number of games they play in Japan.  If you add to this 8 teams in the playoffs, then you would have potentially 7-7-7-7 or as many as 28 playoff games in the post season, including the World Series.

But the entire total would only be 158 games total.  

And the ratings for the post-season would be much higher than for the regular season.  

6) Total Revenue Sharing and a Hard Salary Cap

Baseball will never be fully healthy until the owners agree to full and total revenue sharing between all of the clubs of any and tv revenues, and have all tv contracts negotiated by the league office. The MLB Network has to have control of all of this, and there should be no local advantage to being the team from LA, NY or Chicago.  All the money should go into a central pot, and the TV revenue shared equally.  

Likewise the players have to agree to a Hard Salary Cap fixed at a percentage of what the owners earn each year in the CBA.  

People like Scott Boras are making way too much money, and now people like the agents in the Caribbean representing 12 year olds, as well as Japanese baseball teams, have become free riders demanding negotiating rights, from owners who have no sense of what they are doing.

This has led to the bankruptcy of the Dodgers, to name but one team, as well as of the Mets, to name another.  

It all needs to be fixed.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Baseball needs to create a product that moves more quickly, gets done more quickly, has a shorter regular season, has more postseason, is fairer to all fans, has more opportunities for all teams to get into the postseason, does not overpay athletes or owners, and is a better product overall.

One other important notion would be for the American champion to play internationally against the winners of the Mexican and Japanese Leagues.  A shorter season would allow this, and more players would be interested in the World Baseball Classic then.

The MLB Baseball Playoffs 2013

THE MLB BASEBALL PLAYOFFS 2013

Well, it's that time again--well, baseball, having played too many games, now will play too many playoff games.  

Brad Lidge & Chooch Ruiz Celebrate the Phillies Winning the 2008 World Series

1) I made my picks on FB.  

2)  I picked Rays over Rangers.  Got that one right.

3)  I picked Rays over Indians.  Got that one right.  

4)  I picked Pirates over Reds.  Got that one right.

So far, three for three (1.000 batting average).  

5)  NLDS - Cards over Pirates, Dodgers over Braves.  

6)  ALDS - Bosox over Rays, Tigers over As.

7)  NLCS - Dodgers over Cards.

8)  ALCS - Bosox over Tigers.

9) World Series - Dodgers over Bosox.  

The Sheer Joy of Winning - 2008 World Champion Philadelphia Phillies

If you are wondering, the Brooklyn Dodgers faced off against the Boston Red Sox in 1916. The Red Sox won.  Some guy named George Herman Ruth had an ERA+ of 158 over league that year.  23-12, over 320 IP, 230 H allowed, 170 K (in an age when no one struck out) and zero HR allowed.  For good measure, the Babe hit 3 HR and had an OPS+ of 121 over league as a hitter.  So Babe Ruth, as a pitcher, hit more home runs than he allowed in 1916.

The Shoe is on the other Foot this year. Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in baseball, and he can pitch, field and hit.  Any comparisons to Sandy Koufax, bring them on.  There is no one on the Red Sox remotely as good as Kershaw.

Thems' my picks.  

2013 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot

2013 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot

Well, the 2013 Baseball Hall of Fame Ballots have been announced, and the amount of talent on this year's ballot is staggering--so staggering that it is fair to say that no single ballot has been this impressive in many, many years.

Featured in this years ballot for the first time are Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza and Craig Biggio, all of whom are clear Hall of Famers.  

Curt Schilling won Game 5 of the 1993 World Series for the Phillies, hurling a 2-0 shutout v the Blue Jays.  He later won World Championships with the AZ Diamondbacks and the Boston Red Sox. He had a dominant fastball.

The famous "bloody sock" of Curt Schilling during the Red Sox postseason run to  "reverse the curse".

Barry Bonds holds the single seaon HR record with 73 HR, as well as the Career HR Record, having hit more HR than Henry Aaron or Babe Ruth.  He drew more than 200 walks in a season.  He is the greatest player every to play baseball.

Roger Clemens and his lovely wife Debbie

Left over from prior years ballots are Jack Morris, Larry Walker, Alan Trammell, Tim Raines, Edgar Martinez, and others who also deserve election to the Hall of Fame.

In short, there are more than ten clear choices on this years ballot, all of whom not only deserve election to the Hall of Fame, but who demonstrably and empirically deserve election based on the JAWs system worked out on Baseball-Reference.com, which compares peak and career WAR for a player with the average peak and career WAR for a comparably player at that position already in the Hall of Fame.

By this standard, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza and Curt Schilling are by far the clearest admits to the Hall of Fame.  Their peak and career WARs are far higher than the comparable peak and career WARs of current average HOFs already enshrined, and in the cases of Bonds & Clemens, nearly twice as high.  

With this in mind, this would be my Hall of Fame Ballot, in order of deservingness:

1)  Barry "Home Run King" Bonds

2)  Roger "Cy Young" Clemens

3)  Jeff "Killer B" Bagwell

4)  Mike "Norristown" Piazza

5)  Curt "Bloody Sock" Schilling

6)  Alan "Trammell & Whitaker" Trammell

7)  Larry "Colorado Kid" Walker

8)  Tim "Rock" Raines

9)  Craig "Killer B" Biggio

10 Jack "Mr. Tiger" Morris

A quick note on Jack Morris.  He does not deserve enshrinement under the JAWs system; however, he is in his last year on the active ballot, he is over 60% on last years ballot, and he has done 100% of the things you should do to get into the HOF, including winning a lot of games, winning the most games during the 1980s, leading his team to a championship, leading another team to a championship, being great in the postseason, being a dominant pitcher at his peak, and in the end, being a symbol of the dominant Tiger team of 1984.  

Much as my stathead mind wants to vote for Edgar Martinez, the fact is that Edgar Martinez was a DH, never won anything, and without the absurd DH rule, probably wouldn't have gotten enough bats to have a career.  Morever, his WAR numbers are biased upwards by his not having had to play defense;  his negative defensive WARs would have sagged him down at least minus one-two each and every year, so he's not the HOFer you think he is.  

Turning to the Veterans Ballot, regardless of who's listed on the ballot, there are four names I think should go into the HOF:

1) Marvin Miller

2) Pete Rose

3) Shoeless Joe Jackson

4) Eddie Cicotte

The time to lift the ban on betting, and give both Rose and the Black Sox a pass, has come.  And why is baseball blackballing the single most important figure in modern baseball?  

Of the actual veterans ballot figures, I suppose I'd vote for Big Bill Dahlen and Wes Ferrell.  Bucky Walters was really, really good, too.  Tony Mullane played in the 19th century, and he threw underhanded, so I'm not sure he belongs.  Marty Marion actually doesn't belong at all, even though he was a great shortstop, he didn't hit at all.  If we put him in, we may as well put Larry Bowa in--a key defensive player on a very good to dominant team.  

Finally, they still have not enshrined enough Negro Leagues players, even though they've shut the door on this.  Until as many players from the Negro Leagues from the 1920s, 30s and 40s are in the HOF as are in the HOF from white baseball, this will not be fully redressed.  

One final note:  The Hall of Fame voting should be revised a bit to allow Hall of Fame election based on 50% of the ballots, instead of the current 75%.  Not that many candidates receive 75%, but not that many attain even 50%, so this won't elect that many more.  Second, there are, due to expansion, almost twice as many qualified candidates as before, and this year shows this.  Biggio and Bagwell played for the Astros, Walker for the Rockies, and the effects of expansion on the quality and quantity of HOF players will cause a massive backup in the HOF unless the HOF changes its voting rules.  

Quite honestly, sportswriters have a tough time agreeing on anything with 75% unanimity.  

List of things sportswriters will agree upon with 75% of the vote:

1)  People still read newspapers and think they matter.

2)  Beer is a main food group.

3)  The right to free press box seating for all print sportwriters is enshrined in the United States Constitution in the first amendment.

4)  All ballplayers are overpaid.

5)  "If I just had five minutes on SportsCenter, I could show them I'm just as good as Peter Gammons".

6)  The New York Yankees Rule (if you're from New York).

7)  The New York Yankees Suck (if you're not from New York).

8)  Babe Ruth was the greatest player ever, even though he drank, womanized, gambled, was foulmouthed, ate too much, talked back to his managers, always showed up out of shape every spring, and gave the same kind of speeches about practice as Allen Iverson did.    

9)  Using Steroids is a far worse crime than throwing spitballs, using emory balls, loading up the ball, throwing mudballs, vaseline balls or any kind of cheating by pitchers, as was done by Hall of Famers Gaylord Perry, Don Drysdale, Jim Bunning, et al.  

10)  Newspapers are the only true source of sports information in the world.

Reinstate Pete Rose: Put Him in the HOF

REINSTATE PETE ROSE

LIFT THE BAN! AT LIFTTHEBAN.NET

originally posted to DAVE PINTO'S "Baseball Musings" in 2004 at http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/005910.php
My only emendations would be that Pete Rose NEVER took steroids, NEVER threw the World Series, NEVER doctored a baseball, and was by far the dominant player of his era.

PETE ROSE WAS THE GREATEST HITTER OF NOT JUST HIS ERA BUT ANY ERA.  IF YOU RECALCULATE HIS STATISTICS TO 2000 AND PUT HIM IN FENWAY PARK, HE WOULD HAVE HAD 200 HITS 18 CONSECUTIVE YEARS, WOULD HAVE HAD 5,000 CAREER HITS, WOULD HAVE HIT .394 IN 1968, .386 IN 1969 AND .386 IN 1973, 62 DOUBLES IN 1978, 174 RUNS SCORED IN 1976, 283 HITS IN 1973, CAREER LINE OF .341/.417/.460/.877 WITH 902 CAREER DOUBLES 5165 HITS 2912 RUNS 2900 RUNS CREATED IT IS A JOKE TO SAY DEREK JETER IS ANYTHING CLOSE TO PETE ROSE; PETE ROSE PLAYED IN A PITCHER'S ERA BUT PUT UP HITTER'S NUMBERS

Regarding Pete Rose and gambling. It is critical to put Pete Rose's gambling into perspective. Harold Seymour's three part series on the history of baseball which culminates in "The Golden Age,", and from which Bill James liberally borrows (with annotation) for many of his sidebars in the Historical Baseball Abstract and his Guide to Baseball Managers, makes it perfectly clear that a large number of famous, Hall of Fame baseball players gambled routinely and gambled on their own teams. Those players included Hal Chase, Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, and may have included countless others who were bitter after salaries were reduced (1) after the American and National Leagues achieved peace in the early 1900s and (2) after the Federal League was disbanded and peace was achieved. As Eliot Asinof points out in Eight Men Out, even the eight men of the White Sox had ample reason for taking bets, because they were miserably underpaid by Charlie Comiskey, who according to Seymour, cleared in excess of $500,000 in profits from the Chisox during the 1910s during an era of no income tax or 1-3% income tax. He never shared that revenue and only spent about $25-40,000 of that on his players.

LIFT THE BAN!!!!!! REINSTATE PETE ROSE, CHARLIE HUSTLE! 

Next, let's talk about more recent players. Anyone read Ball Four by Jim Bouton? Mickey Mantle spent his whole career whoring and drinking and womanizing. Hall of Fame. Did anyone forget about beaver-shooting from that book??? The entire Yankee clubhouse from the early 60s, of which many are in the Hall of Fame, engaged in that despicable practice.Baseball players all played poker. All years of this century, they gambled on cards, they drank and they womanized. We know that cocaine was common in the Pittsburgh Pirate and KC Royals locker rooms even while they won World Series titles, and many of those players testified at drug trials in the 1980s. A lot of those players ended up in the hall of fame.

Babe Ruth. Traded from the Red Sox. Why? Because he had prostitutes everywhere on Kenmore Street, drank every night, gambled and ate too much. In short, he was dirty and stayed out all night in a small town Boston atmosphere. The same team allegedly dumped Tris Speaker for salary, but really wasn't it because he gamled on games in 1916???

Babe Ruth didn't win a series with the Yanks until 1923. He lost in 1921 and 22. He lost in 1926 to an alcoholic famous for being so drunk he never showed up to games. That man was Grover Clevelan "Pete" Alexander. That guy only won 373 games and made it to the Hall of Fame. Oh, and Ronald Reagan played him in a movie where he struck out Lazzeri with the bases loaded to win the 26 series.

So Rose is a gambling addict. Ruth was a sex and food addict. Alexander was an alcoholic. Cobb was a vicious racist who also gambled and purposely spiked people while playing. Eddie Collins & Joe Cronin were visious racists while running the Red Sox and preventing the integration of the Red Sox for more than 30 years, according to new research. The same racist Joe Cronin who was President of the the American League. Hal Chase's gambling kept the Yankees and other teams in the 2d division for all of the 1900s and 1910s and no one did anything about it. Doc Gooden and Daryl Strawberry were fed cocaine by Keith Hernandez in 1986, but no one every sent Hernandez to jail, much less banned him from baseball, even though he ruined two lives and two Hall of Fame careers.

Ty Cobb was a bastard jerk, but his accomplishments put him in the hall of fame. Pete Rose is a lot nicer guy than Ty Cobb; was never a racist; was a team player; and achieved his records in eras, the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s which were comparatively dominated by pitching, especially the first seven years of his career.

It is unfair to bar him from the Hall of Fame for having fallen into a moral abyss of late. A five or ten year suspension is more than enought punishment. He didn't throw the World Series, as Bill James correctly points out, which is what Joe Jackson allegedly did. He did what at least 200 other players did in baseball, including Ty Cobb, which is bet on baseball. Ty Cobb was called into a Commissioner's meeting in 1926, and he was not barred from baseball for throwing a game, even though there's plenty of evidence he threw that game and plenty more, along with Tris Speaker.

fair is fair. Reinstate the man. The Philly fans still love him and we want him back here to throw out as many baseballs as we can give him. He was an integral part of three World Series teams and six pennant or division winners. Unlike Cobb, he was a team player, a winner and a champion, and he loved his teammates no matter what their color. He never threw a game to give a batting champtionship or pennant to someone else, which Cobb allegedly did. He never threw a World Series, which Joe Jackson allegedly did.

His crimes pale in comparison. Justice as Aristotle says must be in accordance with the crime. The punishment in this case is far too great for the crime; Free Pete Rose!!!

--Arthur J Kyriazis
Biotech Consultant; biostatistician
Posted by: Art Kyriazis at April 29, 2004 04:03 PM

YOU CAN ORDER THIS BEAUTIFUL LIFT THE BAN T-SHIRT WITH PETE ROSE NAME AND CAREER NUMBER #14 FROM LIFTTHEBAN.NET AND WEAR IT PROUDLY TO ANNOUNCE WHERE YOU STAND ON THIS ISSUE

From "Lift the Ban" a website devoted to Lifting the Ban against Pete Rose:http://www.lifttheban.net/pete-roses-records/

Major League records:
Most career hits – 4,256
Most career outs – 10,328
Most career games played – 3,562
Most career at bats – 14,053
Most career singles – 3,215
Most career runs by a switch hitter – 2,165
Most career doubles by a switch hitter – 746
Most career walks by a switch hitter – 1,566
Most career total bases by a switch hitter – 5,752
Most seasons of 200 or more hits – 10
Most consecutive seasons of 100 or more hits – 23
Most consecutive seasons with 600 or more at bats – 13 (1968–1980)
Most seasons with 600 at bats – 17
Most seasons with 150 or more games played – 17
Most seasons with 100 or more games played – 23
Record for playing in the most winning games – 1,972
Only player in major league history to play more than 500 games at five different positions – 1B (939), LF (671), 3B (634), 2B (628), RF (595)

National League records:
Most years played – 24
Most consecutive years played – 24
Most career runs – 2,165
Most career doubles – 746
Most career games with 5 or more hits – 10
Modern (post-1900) record for longest consecutive game hitting streak – 44
Modern record for most consecutive hitting streaks of 20 or more games – 7


http://www.lifttheban.net/

http://reinstatepeterose.com/

YOUNG LIFT THE BAN ACTIVISTS PICTURED WITH PETE ROSE.  THOSE T-SHIRTS LOOK GREAT!  PETE ROSE INVENTED THE HEAD-FIRST SLIDE, NOW COMMON IN BASEBALL TODAY.

Bill James defended Rose from the accusations in the Dowd Report.  There was a piece published on the Baseball Prospectus website refuting James' account at http://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/20021031zumsteg.shtml on October 31, 2002.  Although in the end Rose confesses to betting on baseball in his memoir, Rose does not anywhere confess to all of the charges made in the Dowd Report.  Even accepting all of the charges in the Dowd Report as true, a reasonable person would still have to argue for Rose's reinstatement, because his crimes are not nearly as great as those of others.

Just to take one more example, there is excellent evidence that DENNY MCLAIN was injured to to his involvement with gambling and mobsters towards the end of the 1967 season, and that his injured toe directly influenced the outcome of the 1967 pennant race--leading to the Tigers losing and the Red Sox winning.  According to the SABR bio of McClain, Bowie Kuhn and practically the whole world knew about McClain, but rather than being suspended from baseball, McLain was only suspended for half a season:

DENNY MCLAIN - HIS GAMBLING INFLUENCED THE OUTCOME OF THE 1967 PENNANT RACE BUT BASEBALL ONLY SUSPENDED HIM FOR ONE HALF OF ONE SEASON DESPITE CONCRETE EVIDENCE THAT GAMBLING AND RACKETEERING AND MCLAIN'S INVOLVEMENT IN THEM AFFECTED THE RACE - HE WAS LATER CONVICTED TWICE OF RACKETEERING RELATED FELONIES BUT WAS NEVER BANNED FROM BASEBALL - PETE ROSE WAS TREATED MUCH MORE SEVERELY

In February 1970, Sports Illustrated featured McLain on its cover next to the headline “Denny McLain and the Mob, Baseball’s Big Scandal.” The mob? According to the magazine, in early 1967 McLain invested in a bookmaking operation based in a restaurant in Flint, Michigan; several of his partners were part of the Syrian mob. When a gambler named Edward Voshen won $46,000 on a horse race, his bookie couldn’t pay it off, suggesting instead that Voshen find the bookie’s partners. One of his partners was McLain. Voshen spent several months trying to get his money, finally enlisting the aid of mobster Tony Giacalone. According to the magazine’s sources, Giacalone met with McLain in early September and, while threatening much worse, brought his heel down on McLain’s toes and dislocated them. This would have coincided with time of McLain’s ankle-toes injury in September 1967. The magazine also reported that Giacalone had bet heavily on the Red Sox and Twins to win the pennant, and had made a large bet on the Angels in McLain’s final start.

McLain denied most of the story. He admitted to investing in the bookmaking business to the tune of $15,000, but claimed that his partners reneged on him, causing McLain to withdraw his support. He told Bowie Kuhn, baseball’s commissioner, that he was completely uninvolved in the ring at the time of the Voshen bet, but oddly admitted that he had loaned $10,000 to one of the partners to help pay off the debt. Furthermore, he had never met Giacalone, and McLain retold the story of his toe injury. (In subsequent years, McLain recalled that it was an ankle sprain, not injured toes.) Just prior to spring training, Kuhn suspended McLain indefinitely while he conducted an investigation.

The problem with all of these accusations was that many of the people making them were criminals and lowlifes, as Sports Illustrated acknowledged. Although he has continued to deny the allegations regarding his injury, his denials have been in themselves damning. In his 2007 memoir I Told You I Wasn’t Perfect, he writes that he was heavily distracted in September 1967. “I was spooked about Ed Voshen and worried about being exposed,” he writes. “I kept expecting someone to tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, where’s my money?’ or that my car was going to blow up.” This fear is precisely why baseball has a paranoia about gambling.

If these problems were not enough, McLain was also suddenly broke. Though his annual income was close to $200,000, McLain had entrusted it all with a lawyer, who either mishandled it or stole it before fleeing to Japan. Without his baseball income, McLain’s financial problems caused him to file for bankruptcy. Claiming that all of his problems were due to “poor business decisions,” his petition listed debts of $446,069 and assets of only $413.

On April 1, 1970, Kuhn announced his decision. He continued McLain’s suspension until July 1, roughly half of the season. Kuhn’s report, among other things, said: “While McLain believed he had become a partner in this operation and has so admitted to me…it would appear that he was the victim of a confidence scheme. I would thus conclude that McLain was never a partner and had no proprietary interest in the bookmaking operation.” Kuhn also absolved McLain from any charges that his actions had any effect on baseball games or the 1967 pennant race. (On the contrary, McLain’s later recollection that he feared for his life in September 1967 suggests that the pennant race was quite affected.)

After Kuhn read his statement, a reporter asked him to explain the difference between McLain attempting to become a bookmaker, and actually becoming one. “I think you have to consider the difference is the same as between murder and attempted murder,” responded the wise commissioner. Reporters all over the country, and especially in Detroit, thought the decision was a whitewash. Denny’s teammates seemed surprised as well. Dick McAuliffe spoke for many when he said: “If Denny’s innocent, it should be nothing. If he’s guilty, then this is not enough.” Jim Price, the Tigers’ player representative, said that most Tigers thought McLain would get one or two years, or else nothing at all. Nonetheless, three months it was.

Denny McLain

This article was written by Mark Armour.

http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/6bddedd4

BOOK REVIEW Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball. December 15, 2008

BOOK REVIEW Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball.

December 15, 2008

Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball. Jerrold Casway. (University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IL, 2004). Reviewed by Art Kyriazis.

Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball by Jerrold Casway

Professor Casway has written something more than the standard glorified biography of a ballplayer in the above-titled book about nineteeth-century Philadelphia Phillies outfielder and batting champion “Big” Ed Delahanty. Professor Casway specializes in early modern Irish history and nineteenth-century baseball, and teaches at Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland, where he is Professor of History and Chair of the Social Sciences/Teacher Education Division.

The “Emerald Age” refers to the dominance during the 1890s of Irish-Americans in professional baseball. Prof. Casway supplies empirical data in his book demonstrating that more than forty per cent (40%) of professional major league baseball players during the 1890s were Irish-American, along with a substantial number of the most influential managers, coaches and team captains. Thus, the author concludes, this era constituted the “Emerald Age” of baseball, since these Irish-Americans were originally drawn from the “Emerald Isle,” Ireland.

At this level, “Emerald Isle” is a work of profound historiographic sociology, examining in detail the racial and ethnic compositions of the game’s players during Big Ed Delahanty’s playing career in the 1890s, and examing in further detail the various impacts this had upon the game. Weighing in at more than three hundred pages, the book is carefully researched, with footnotes, appendix, bibliography and index, much more like a scholarly work than a journalistic work.

Ed Delahanty's Hall of Fame Placque He was Inducted in 1945.

To a large extent, Prof. Casway posits, the influence of the Irish-Americans drove the style of play of the two most dominant clubs of the 1890s, the Boston Beaneaters and the Baltimore Orioles, each of which won multiple National League pennants during this era.

Each club was dominated by a core of talented Irish-American ballplayers, and according “to the popular press,” writes Prof. Casway, “baseball, associated with brain, pluck and skill,” was an Irish trait. [id. at p. 124]. One columnist of the 1890s wrote, “teams need an infusion of Irish blood to make it win,” adding that “crafty Irishmen provided the sport with its generals and diplomats.” [id. at p. 127].

These two clubs’ style of play, according to the author, were in turn based on the prototypical play of the 1880s St. Louis Browns, led by Charlie “The Old Celt” Comiskey.

"Big" Ed Delahanty was one of five brothers to play big league baseball

The core of the Boston club consisted of Hugh Duffy, Jimmy Collins, Tommy McCarthy, Bobby Lowe, John Clarkson, Vic Willis, Jack Stivetts, Fred Tenney, Cy Young, Kid Nichols and were coached by Frank Selee. The Baltimore Orioles core consisted of Wee Willie Keeler, John McGraw, Hughie Jennings, Steve Brodie, Bill Hoffer, Joe Kelley, Wilbert Robinson, Dan Brouthers and were coached by Ned Hanlon. Many of these players or managers would end up in Baseball’s Hall of Fame.

A second broad theme of Prof. Casway’s work is the widespread labor unrest that characterized professional baseball during the 1880s and 1890s. Rival leagues, contract jumping, players’ unions and legal wrangling over many legal issues including the so-called “reserve clause” were all part and parcel of the professional baseball game as Ed Delahanty knew it in the years of his professional career.

Prof. Casway provides us with an accurate and tightly focused recital of the rise and fall of the Players’ Brotherhood and the Players’ League of 1890, and more importantly the effects of those two entities upon Ed Delahanty, who apparently of a mind to please everyone, signed contracts with more than one league, in the end pleasing no one. This was a situation Delahanty would repeat again during the war of the American and National Leagues in 1900-1902.

Ed Delahanty was the greatest leftfielder in Phillies history by far

The author suggests that Delahanty was unhappy over such matters as rival leagues, legal decisions and contract jumping, and that such things may well have contributed to Delahanty’s state of mind during the fatal episode that led to his mysterious death on board a train bound for New York in the summer of 1903.

The author strongly suggests that Delahanty was unhappy playing for Washington of the American League in the summer of 1903; further than Delahanty did not want to return to the Phillies of the National League; and in light of the George Davis decision by President Brush, had quietly opened negotiations with John McGraw of the New York Giants of the National League to sign a contract to play for McGraw in New York.

Indeed, Delahanty’s very final train ride may well have been on his way to meet McGraw to plan on his jumping clubs to play for the New York Giants. We can only speculate what the 1904-05 New York Giants, an already powerful club with Christy Mathewson, Iron Man McGinnity and George Davis, might have been like with a happy and well-paid Ed Delahanty playing left field and hitting in the middle of their lineup. The notion is tantalizing from a “what if’ standpoint; as late as 1902, Delahanty was the American League Batting Champion, and likely had some more years of good baseball left in him, even in the decline phase of his career. Moreover, by this time of his career, Delahanty badly wanted to play for a winner. This, more than any other factor, seemed most important to him by 1903—this his great desire to leave Washington (AL) and join the New York Giants and John McGraw. The New York Giants without Delahanty won the National League pennant in 1904 and 1905; with him they might well have ranked as one of the all-time great teams of history.

The main thrust of this fine book is the year by year tracking of Big Ed Delahanty’s career, along with tracking the late 19th century Philadelphia Phillies, a team that had two of the most gifted outfields in baseball history—first Sam Thompson, Big Ed Delahanty and Sliding Billy Hamilton, in the early 1890s, and later in the decade, Elmer Flick, Roy Thomas and Big Ed Delahanty. Yet despite this plethora of baseball talent in the outfield, and also having at one point Nap Lajoie at second base as well, the Phillies were never able to do any better than second place during the Delahanty years, for a variety of reasons, mainly due to lack of pitching.

The author looks at Phillies management, Phillies finances, Phillies fans, attendance and also analyzes the reasons for the teams successes as well as the teams failures at the box office and on the field during this period. In large part, the author suggests that there were problems both with team management and with team makeup.

Again, the only hole in the authors’ analysis is sabrmetrics, and those easily demonstrate that the main hole in the Phillies teams of the 1890s were on the pitching mound—Cleveland, Boston and Baltimore, when they were winning, had better pitching staffs. Where Philadelphia had Jack Taylor but no other good starters, Boston had Cy Young and Kid Nichols, Baltimore had Sadie McMahon and several other good starters, and Cleveland had several good starters.

One point that clearly comes across is that Big Ed Delahanty was one of the most feared hitters of the 1890s, and even through 1902, of this or any other time in baseball. He was a feared hitter, he hit the ball hard and far, was known for hitting home runs in an age when home runs were relatively rare, and hit lots and lots of extra base hits. He hit for power, for average, and had a high on base average. In short, he was an offensive machine.

In addition, he was one of five Delahanty brothers, all of whom played baseball in the minors or majors, and one of whom, Jim Delanty, played major league baseball for at least ten years and was a reasonably good fielder and hitter, in his best season of 1911 hitting .339 and knocking in 94 RBIs, a truly Delahanty-like season. Tommy Delanty played twelve years in the minors with a .295 lifetime batting average; Joe Delahanty played fourteen years in the minors with 170 triples; and Frank Delahanty, the “last of the ballplaying Delahantys”, played in the American Ass’n and had a lifetime average of .276, and was the last of the five brothers to pass away in 1966. [id. at p. 292]. For all five of the Delahantys, the totals are 3,596 major league games and 4,214 major league basehits. The author renders us a poem written by John F. Herne which remembers the Delahantys:

To the Delahanty Family

There’s Frank and Jim, Tom and Bill

And another one called Joe

But the greatest batsmen ever

Passed away sometime ago

Their appearance on the diamond

Brings us back to other days

When their big and famous brother

Heard the robin sing its lays

But glory waxes and wanes

Much like the silvery moon

So look out you Delahantys

That you don’t go back too soon

Ed Delahanty, “The Only Del”, was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945, along with Roger Bresnahan, Dan Brouthers, Fred Clarke, Jimmy Collins, Hugh Duffy, Hughie Jennings, King Kelly and Jim O’Rourke.

Of Big Ed Delahanty, the author says, “Delahanty was the age’s ultimate explosive Irish power-hitter. He would have no successors. Decades after his death, his feats were reverently recited.” [id. at p. 295]. On July 13, 1896, Big Ed Delahanty hit four home runs in one game in Chicago. In 1899, Delahanty was the National League’s batting champion, with this line: a .416 batting average, 242 hits, 54 doubles, 137 RBIs, 335 total bases, 135 runs scored. The 1899 Phillies would go 94-58 that year, but that was only good enough for 3d place, 9 games back of Brooklyn. Delahanty would use only two bats that year—one weighing 45 oz., the other weighing 50 oz. [id. at p. 166].

The 1899 Phillies, perhaps one of best Phillies teams ever, would feature three twenty game winners in Pratt, Donahue and Fraser, and Roy Thomas, Elmer Flick and Nap Lajoie all hitting well over .300, with Thomas scoring 137 runs, stealing 42 bases and drawing 115 walks, Flick driving in 98 runs, and Lajoie hitting .378 and driving in 70 RBI and scoring 70 runs in just 76 games. Delahanty’s legendary career with the Phillies would ultimately consist of 1,555 games played, 2,213 hits, 1,286 RBI driven in, and 1,369 runs scored.

This is a well-written and wonderful book to read, and it is also very good in that it does not focus so much on the 1890s Baltimore Orioles, about whom too much has been written already, but rather on other aspects of 1890s baseball. It is not merely a fine biography of Big Ed Delahanty, but also the portrait of an age and a time in baseball that came and went, and will be no more.

THE END

–art kyriazis, philly/south jersey

http://pedrofeliz3b.wordpress.com/2008/12/15/book-review-ed-delahanty-in-the-emerald-age-of-baseball/

http://www.amazon.com/Ed-Delahanty-Emerald-Age-Baseball/dp/0268022852

http://books.google.com/books/about/Ed_Delahanty_in_the_Emerald_Age_of_Baseb.html?id=1QwBAQAACAAJ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Delahanty

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/delahed01.shtml

http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/d835353d

http://baseballhall.org/hof/delahanty-ed

"I think Ed was the best right-handed hitter I ever saw. Sam Crawford" id.