Steven Rubio's Online Life

in my life: baseball, 1953-present

I’ll be 60 in a little more than a month, and today I found myself thinking about how life has changed during my life. When my father was 60, he had lived through the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. He had lived through Coolidge and Hoover and Roosevelt and Truman and Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon and Ford and Carter and Reagan. He lived through the prominence of radio entertainment in the home and its replacement by television. Big band music, rock and roll, disco, and the beginnings of hip hop.

Just to take one example of change during my lifetime, here are some of the ways baseball has changed.

When I was born, there were 16 major-league teams, split into two leagues of eight teams each. The champions of each league met in the World Series; that was the extent of the “post-season”. Now, there are 30 teams, fifteen in each league, and a post-season including division winners and wild cards.

• In 1953, the Boston Braves had just moved to Milwaukee. They later moved to Atlanta. Milwaukee eventually got an expansion team, which had spent one year in Seattle.
• 1953 was the last year of the St. Louis Browns. They moved to Baltimore the next year and became the Orioles.
• The Cincinnati Reds spent several years in the 1950s calling themselves the Redlegs to avoid and tint of Commie Menace.
• In 1953, the Dodgers and Giants played in Brooklyn and New York respectively. They moved west in 1958. In the 1953, the big team in San Francisco was the Seals of the Pacific Coast League.
• In 1953, the Athletics played in Philadelphia. Two years later, they moved to Kansas City. In 1968, they moved to Oakland. In 1969, Kansas City got an expansion team.
• In 1953, the team in Washington was called the Senators. In 1961, they moved to Minnesota. That same year, Washington got an expansion team. In 1972, that team moved to Texas. Meanwhile, in 1969, Montreal got a major-league team. They moved to Washington in 2005.

In 1953, the average team stole 42 bases for the entire season. In 2012, the average was 108. (League average caught stealing totals were 33 in 1953, 38 last year … teams are a lot more efficient at steals than they used to be. The caught stealings are roughly the same, while the successes have increased 2 1/2 times.) Saves were only tracked by a few teams; they wouldn’t become an official stat until 1969. The leader in saves in 1969 was Ron Perranoski of the Twins, with 31. In 2012, 15 different pitchers had 31 or more saves, led by Jim Johnson with 51.

In 2012, the minimum salary for a full season in the majors was $480,000. In 1954, on his return from military service, Willie Mays made $12,500.

At the beginning of the 2013 season, Forbes valued the Giants as being worth $786,000,000. In case you thought all the money these days was going to the players.

In 1953, and for a few decades thereafter, the “basic” stats like batting average, runs batted in, and wins were considered the final word on performance measurements. I can recall my father telling me Juan Marichal was a great pitcher because he got lots of wins. In 1973, Tito Fuentes played in 160 games at second base for the Giants, leading the league in assists and fielding percentage. He hit .277. He received votes for league MVP. Seven NL second basemen played enough in 1973 to qualify for the batting title. Wins Above Replacement hadn’t been invented yet. With hindsight, we know that Fuentes finished 6th out of those seven in WAR for 1973. He didn’t walk, he didn’t hit for power, and he didn’t have great range at second. But he hit for a decent average, he didn’t make errors, and he played every day. Not MVP quality, but by what we knew at the time, he was considered in the general vicinity of awards.

music friday: more giants

Last week, I highlighted music associated with the Giants for Opening Day. I’ll continue that theme now, featuring some of the music you hear at the ballpark. How about some walk-up music?

Batting leadoff, Angel Pagan:

Batting second, Marco Scutaro:

In the third slot, Pablo Sandoval:

Buster Posey, cleanup:

Batting fifth, Hunter Pence:

Sixth, Brandon Belt, who doesn’t seem to have a walk-up tune.

Seventh, Gregor Blanco:

Brandon Crawford hits eighth:

And pitcher Barry Zito at the bottom of the order:

And the song they play the moment another win is in the books:

another year, another flag raising

Some random thoughts after my 34th consecutive Opening Day:

My son has been there for more than 30 of them. I told him I was glad he didn’t have to wait 50 years for the Giants to win the World Series. No, he said, just 35.

I missed my daughter, who has been to many Opening Days with us, as well. She has an 8-month-old baby, so it wasn’t going to happen this year, but we’ll get there.

Every Opening Day I would think to myself, maybe this will be the year. And every October, I would face the fact that “the year” still hasn’t happened. Now, the Giants have won the World Series twice in three years. Life is absurd.

This stuff makes me emotional. More than once, as I was putting together those videos I posted Friday, I found myself on the verge of tears (and by “on the verge” I mean “crying”). I don’t understand this. I take meds that, as their primary function, suppress my emotions. I think the same stuff I always did, but the anxiety is almost completely gone, as is the anger. Yet I think about the final outs of the 2010 and 2012 World Series, and the floodgates open.

At the end of the season, when I am leaving my last game of the year, I always spend a little time just looking around the park, taking it in one last time. I figure I might die before the next season starts up, and I want to have something burned into my memory. But then it’s April, and we’re at the park, and it feels like we were just here a couple of weeks ago. Everything fits. I don’t bother to take a fresh look around … I just happily accept that I’ll be there for another season.

While I wasn’t expecting it, I nonetheless luckily found myself in the rest room during the seventh-inning stretch when they sang that awful, awful “God Bless America”. As I’m peeing, I hear Renel announce that performing that crappy song would be Jefferson Starship. I want to ask what the world has come to, but why bother?

The final score was 1-0. Saturday night I’ll be at the Earthquakes match, and I’ll bet more than one goal will be scored. But I’ll have to listen to people say that Americans don’t like soccer because there isn’t enough scoring.

Supply and demand: our Opening Day tix cost around $180 each. Wednesday afternoon, I’ll be at a game, sitting in comparable seats that I paid $16 each. On the next home stand, there are several games where I can sit in the same general area for $6 each.

Nice touch: arguably the biggest applause during the introduction of the teams before the game came for Cardinals coach Bengie Molina. I complained a lot about Bengie when he was a Giant, but I was cheering along with everyone else today.

That was then, this is now: among the absentees at today’s ceremonies: Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal, Orlando Cepeda, Barry Bonds, Lon Simmons. They have opened a second McCovey’s BBQ stand, though. It occurs to me, they have food stands named after Mays and McCovey and Cepeda … I wonder why those are the guys they chose? OK, Mays and McCovey make sense, and Cepeda was my boyhood hero, but it seems funny that his name adorns one of the stands.

The first three batters for the Giants: Angel Pagan, Marco Scutaro, Pablo Sandoval. The Giants have a lot of Latinos on their team. Number of African-American players on the team? Zero. It’s especially odd/sad since the two best players in San Francisco Giants history are Willie Mays and Barry Bonds. The Giants were also one of the first teams with an African-American manager, and, of course, Dusty Baker helmed the team for many years. Now it’s Where Have You Gone, Emmanuel Burriss?

music friday: opening day

opening day #34

I wrote this blog’s first Opening Day post in 2002. Barry Bonds homered in the bottom of the 10th to win it for the Giants. I compared that game to the home opener for the then defending champion San Jose Earthquakes, who in their brief existence already had one more title than the SF Giants who had been around since 1958.

I spent the first couple of weeks in April of 2004 chronicling all the openers I’d been to (24 up to that point).

In 2006, I noted that while the game was going on, my father-in-law was getting married. I think he understood why I wasn’t there (no one was there but my wife, but we did have dinner together afterwards).

Last year, I proclaimed that it was “the best Opening Day of my 33 years of attendance.”

There’s nothing new to say. Not only is it my 34th opener, it’s the 12th time I’ve had to come up with a blog post. There is a factoid I never thought I’d write: this will be the second time I’ve seen the team celebrate their previous year’s World Series championship.

So I’ll just write about a random game. How about the one I attended when I was 34? That would have been April 7, 1988. As I begin this, I have no idea what happened that day. Let’s check it out.

The Giants began 1988 with high hopes. The year before, they had made the post-season for the first time in sixteen seasons, and while their season had ended with what has been a bit of a problem for them over the years, an unexpected homer, that time from Jose Oquendo), 1988 was surely going to be the year they went all the way. As the marketing slogan said, “Humm Baby, Let’s Do It Again!” Here’s an example of what manager Roger Craig meant by “Humm Baby!”:

The Giants had their 1988 home opener after splitting two games with the Dodgers in LA. The visiting San Diego Padres had some familiar names in their lineup, like Tony Gwynn, and John Kruk, and future Giant Benito Santiago. Meanwhile, the Giants lineup looked like this:

1. Brett Butler cf
2. Mike Aldrete lf
3. Will Clark 1b
4. Candy Maldonado rf
5. Kevin Mitchell 3b
6. Bob Brenly c
7. Robby Thompson 2b
8. Jose Uribe ss
9. Mike Krukow p

The Giants got all the runs they needed in the bottom of the 4th, when Brenly broke up a scoreless duel with a 3-run homer off Eric Show. The Padres mounted a rally the next inning, putting two runners on with two outs. Padres manager Larry Bowa sent up a pinch-hitter for Show, as Krukow got that hitter to ground out to end the inning. The pinch-hitter is well-known amongst Giants fans … he’s the team’s current third-base coach, Tim Flannery.

Brett Butler homered in the bottom of the fifth (I was going to comment about how rare this was, but when I looked it up, I was surprised to find that Butler hit 54 homers in his major-league career). The Giants coasted to a 6-1 victory in a game that took just 2 hours and 16 minutes.

I don’t know if you are familiar with the web site Back to Baseball. They do graphic recreations of old baseball games. You can “watch” the 1988 home opener here:

http://www.backtobaseball.com/playballregularseason.php?page=4&IDindex=SFN198804070

mexico-usa

Tonight, the USA and Mexico will write the latest chapter in their long soccer rivalry, as they play a World Cup qualifier in Mexico City. This promo video, featuring Alexi Lalas and Jared Borgetti, is a bit playful, but it gives you the idea:

http://espnfc.com/video/espnfc/video?id=1388556

Probably the best-known men’s soccer player in the U.S. for the casual fan is Landon Donovan, primarily because of this:

Donovan is, as Cantor says in the above video, the greatest soccer player in U.S. history. He is now 31 years old, and he is no longer the best player available for the national team (most think it’s Clint Dempsey, or Tim Howard if you like goalkeepers). But he remains a vital part of the national team. And he has an interesting relationship with Mexico and their fans. For one thing, he has scored five goals against them in his career. For another, he speaks Spanish well enough to be interviewed by the Mexican media, and to do commercials like this:

All of this is just great, except … Landon isn’t in Mexico for tonight’s match. After his club won their second consecutive MLS Cup, Donovan went on a hiatus from which he has yet to return. He needed a break from the sport. I don’t know Landon Donovan, although I’ve cheered for him (he played for two San Jose Earthquakes championship squads, and of course, there’s the national team) and booed him (he plays for Los Angeles now). But I know what it means to need a break. Yes, Donovan is letting his teams (club and nation) “down”, although it’s hard to say how much good he’d be if he spent his time on the field wishing he was somewhere else. But no one should be miserable, even when doing something you’ve loved in the past. Some think Landon should just suck it up, but they’re wrong. Landon Donovan has been sucking it up for most of his life, and he deserves a break, even if it comes at an inopportune time for his teammates.

Do I think the U.S. can win, or at least pick up a draw, in Mexico tonight? Well, it’s possible, but I don’t expect it.

the 2013 rubio begonias

I’m in one league this year, and here is my team (10 owners, AL/NL, 25-man rosters):

•   C: Joe Mauer, Jonathan Lucroy
• 1B: Adrian Gonzalez, Brandon Belt
• 2B: Jose Altuve
• 3B: Todd Frazier, Trevor Plouffe
• SS: Erick Aybar, J.J. Hardy, Everth Cabrera
• OF: Mike Trout, Ryan Braun, Shin-Soo Choo, Angel Pagan
• SP: Kris Medlen, Jake Peavy, Jeremy Hellickson, Brett Myers
• RP: Jonathan Papelbon, Rafael Soriano, Addison Reed, Steve Cishek, Casey Janssen, Jonathan Broxton, Santiago Casilla

one month until opening day

Got our tickets for Opening Day. This will be my 34th consecutive opener, going back to 1980.

Last year’s worked out pretty well. I wrote at the time, “Giants pitcher Matt Cain retired the first 17 batters he faced. Then, improbably, the opposing team’s pitcher bounced a single into left field, ending the perfect game and the no-hitter. Cain proceeded to retire the final 10 Pirates he faced. Final totals: 9 innings, 11 strikeouts, one base runner, 28 batters faced. It was the best performance by a Giants pitcher since Jonathan Sanchez tossed a no-hitter back in 2009.”

Of course, later in the season, Cain threw the first perfect game in Giants history. Neal and Sonia were at that game. Neal was also with me on Opening Day, and I don’t think he’d been to a game between the opener and the perfecto. Which means after his first two games of 2012, he had seen Matt Cain face 55 batters and retire 54.

quakes 2013

Tonight, I’ll be attending Opening Night for the San Jose Earthquakes. They finished atop the standings during the regular season, which in MLS means they won the Supporters’ Shield (many leagues end their seasons without playoffs … in those leagues, the Quakes would be champs, but they fell in the playoffs to the hated team from Los Angeles). Many fans are hopeful that 2013 turns out even better. Me, I’m worried about their delightful penchant for late-goal heroics in 2012. Their motto was “Goonies Never Say Die”, and it was pretty amazing … just when you thought they couldn’t do it again, they did it again.

On April 28, Steven Lenhart came on as a substitute with 15 minutes to play in a 0-0 match. He scored to put the Quakes ahead, and then, after Philadelphia equalized, Lenhart scored the winner three minutes into extra time.

On May 13, the Quakes trailed from the 4th minute, but got a goal one minute into extra time to pick up a draw.

On May 19, a goal in the 90th minute gave them another draw.

On May 23, against the rivals from Los Angeles, the Quakes trailed 2-0 with 15 minutes to go. They scored twice to equalize, and then Alex Gordon got his second goal of the match, four minutes into extra time, to give the Quakes the win.

It goes on and on. June 20: trailing with 7 minutes to go, they equalized, and then got the winner in the second minute of extra time. June 23: they got the winner with 6 minutes to play. July 28: a goal in the 8th (!) minute of extra time gave them a draw. August 11: they scored the winner in the 3rd minute of extra time. September 19: they scored in the 2nd minute of extra time to pick up a 2-2 draw. September 29: a goal in the 5th minute of extra time gave them a 3-3 draw.

My concern is that the late-game heroics were thrilling, but that the best teams have already put their opponents away before the heroics are necessary. I had a long chat with my nephew Sean, who 1) knows a lot more about soccer than I do, and 2) actually works for the Quakes. He said that the best teams end the season with the most points, and thought I was silly to argue that the Quakes were not the best in 2012. What I meant to say was that they may well have been best, but their late heroics suggested otherwise ... all of those last-minute goals were necessary because they weren't quite as good as their Shield suggested.

Sean noted that the only real metric for success was total points, and it was there that I got hung up on semantics. Success and “best” aren’t necessarily the same thing. The measure of success in the season is total points ... the Quakes had the most points, no one can take that away. But there's a difference between "won the Shield" and "was best team". Goals, late or early, are good things ... but it says something when you need late goals to get the points that win the Shield. It shows great spirit, and a good use of end-game strategy, but I don't think it shows dominance. They could well have been the best team in 2012, and they deserved the Shield, obviously. I'm not saying they sucked.

But when I look at 2013, I assume that they won’t win as many games at the last minute, because I don’t think they won those games solely because they were the better team. They didn’t leave themselves much margin for error in those late heroics, and they are unlikely to beat that margin as often in 2013.

Of course, I hope to be proven wrong.

Meanwhile, MLS moves along, ignored by vast portions of the American sports world. There are areas where MLS (and soccer in general) has made progress in the States. The atmosphere at most matches is great, especially in the Northwest, which rivals the most famous venues in the world. The quality of play has improved. The league is stable. And the Quakes will have a new, soccer-specific stadium next season.

The one area where MLS isn’t successful yet is television. Televised soccer in America is available in mindboggling numbers for anyone who remembers watching one edited German match a week on PBS. There are a few cable channels that do soccer pretty much 24/7, in English and in Spanish. The great teams are on our TVs every week. But MLS TV ratings are low. We’ve gotten to the point where an American sports fan will watch a soccer match on television. But when they do, it’s likely to be Manchester United vs. Chelsea, not San Jose vs. Los Angeles. I don’t know the answer to this problem, and I’m not sure it needs to be addressed, although it’s essential if MLS wants to extend its cultural impact. I know this: when I show up at Buck Shaw Stadium tonight, I’ll be surrounded by 10,000 soccer fans who would rather watch the Quakes than watch Barcelona. (And if 10,000 seems like a small number, it is, but it’s also a sellout crowd in the small temporary stadium they’re using until the new stadium is finished.)

bernard king: 50

Stephen Curry scored 54 points for the Warriors last night in a losing effort against the New York Knicks. It reminded me of one of the greatest individual performances I had the good fortune to witness in person.

For a short while, Robin worked for a car dealership in Berkeley that had season tickets to the Warriors. Good seats, too, first deck, right at half-court. They were given to salesmen who had done something special … I don’t remember the details. What I do remember is that the tickets often went unclaimed, and when that happened, Robin would scarf them up, which explains why there was this period in the early-80s when we went to a lot of Warrior games. (It also explains why Joe Barry Carroll was Robin’s favorite player. Or maybe it doesn’t.)

So it was that on Saturday, January 3, 1981, we went out to catch the Warriors hosting the Philadelphia 76ers. There was one reason in particular we wanted to go to that game, a reason that made me wonder why no one else had taken the tickets: the 76ers were led by the legendary Julius “Dr. J” Erving.

That night, the Doctor scored 21 points, including, if memory serves, one monster dunk that started around the free throw line. The Sixers’ leading scorer for the game was rookie Andrew Toney with 24. Among their other players: Darryl “Chocolate Thunder” Dawkins, current Memphis coach Lionel Hollins, and Maurice Cheeks.

The Warriors that season had a lot of rookies, partly due to an off-season trade that gave them two first-round draft picks, including the #1 pick. Perhaps this is one reason Joe Barry Carroll became such a hated figure with local fans. He was the #1 pick that year, and he became a consistent, 20 PPG center who didn’t do much more than that, which is to say, he didn’t reach the expectations for a #1 pick. Due to the trade, they also got Rickey Brown in the 13th slot … you’re forgiven if you don’t recall Brown, who played a few years in the NBA as a backup center. The details of the trade were fairly simple: the Boston Celtics gave up the #1 and #13 picks in the draft (they turned into Carroll and Brown); the Warriors gave up the #3 pick and their starting center. The #3 pick was Kevin McHale, who played his entire career for the Celtics and is in the Hall of Fame; the center was Robert Parish, who played for 17 more seasons and also made the Hall of Fame. (Carroll was unfairly maligned; it wasn’t his fault McHale and Parish were so good. Carroll also wasn’t much for interviews, and he played with an emotionless look on his face that people assumed meant he didn’t care.)

The Warriors also drafted Larry “Mr. Mean” Smith, a rebounding stud who was a fan favorite, and Lorenzo Romar, who didn’t have a great career, but who has become a very successful college coach at Washington. But the team’s personality was changed immeasurably with two pre-season trades. In one, Phil Smith (who had played on the team’s only NBA championship squad) and a future #1 pick were traded for flamboyant shooter Lloyd Free, who had scored 30 PPG the previous season. Free, known as “All-World” (a year later, he legally changed his name to World B. Free), was a lot of fun to watch, and he led the W’s in PPG that season. In the other trade, the Warriors gave up a backup center and a 2nd-round draft pick who didn’t pan out, for a troubled forward named Bernard King. King was one of the league’s brightest lights, a young player with a seemingly limitless potential, who had missed most of the previous season being treated for substance abuse (alcohol). This wasn’t the first time King overcame troubles, nor was it the last, but overcome he did, finishing his NBA career with a total of almost 20,000 points scored.

That Saturday night in 1981, we saw some of the most colorful players in NBA history: Doctor J, Darryl Dawkins, World B. Free. But when I close my eyes, the person I see is Bernard King, flying down the wing, driving to the basket, and scoring. And scoring. And scoring.

The Warriors had a 3-point lead at halftime, but the Sixers pulled away in the second half on their way to a 119-105 victory. And, as the 4th quarter rolled towards its increasingly obvious conclusion, the Warriors really had only one weapon left at their disposal: Bernard King.

And so (again, if memory serves … the data on NBA games from that era isn’t as detailed as what we have in baseball), they went to King again and again, and he kept delivering. The game was out of reach, but the crowd was enthralled nonetheless. And when the final buzzer sounded, Bernard King had scored 50 points.

At the end of the season, King was named the Comeback Player of the Year. He only played two seasons with the Warriors, and is most famous nowadays for his years with the Knicks. But, thanks in part to that night in 1981, he remains one of my favorite all-time Warriors.