Center Field Gate

This is the way the ratings work: if you want people to listen to you, you had better do something interesting — and local. And so, to celebrate Mark McGwire’s coming out party on Monday, one local sports talk show asked its listeners to decide who had hurt their sport more: Mark “the needle” McGwire? Or Washington basketball semi-great Gilbert “Wyatt Earp” Arenas. The calls flooded in, though Sports Talk Radio afficianados are nothing if not predictable. If you don’t like baseball then Mark McGwire is “fatal to the game” (as one caller would have it) and if you don’t like basketball (”Let’s get ready to Gam-blllllllle“) then Arenas is a talisman of “a league of thugs.” There’s a better answer: if Mark McGwire had brought a gun into the Cardinals locker room he would have been immediately suspended for half-a-season – and right now he’d be in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

McGwire’s sin, or so it seems to us (and here we are — after a long hiatus), is not so much that he used steroids (didn’t we already know that), but that he took so long in admitting it. Oh, and in admitting it . . . well, he didn’t really admit it: he didn’t avow that somehow it had increased his power (which is what steroids do) and he refused to acknowledge that without them he might not have hit the 70 home runs that made the ‘98 season so memorable. That is to say, twenty-four hours after coming clean, McGwire is now being castigated for not really “coming clean.”

The most outspoken McGwire critics appeared on the MLB Network in the backwash of McGwire’s interview with Bob Costas. “The fact is, it is a form of cheating. And the question in my mind is can you award a guy with the highest award in baseball [election to the Hall of Fame] if he cheated? And my answer is no,” Peter Gammons said. Gammons took a surprising view: he said he had voted for McGwire’s entry before admitting to taking steroids, but that he would not do so now — and he predicted that it would be “a couple of tough years” for McGwire. That is to say: there’s no reward for coming clean, at least in Gammons’ mind, and it might have been better for him if he kept his mouth shut. “He wanted to be in uniform [as the new St. Louis Cardinals hitting coach] more than he wanted to be in the Hall,” Gammons reflected. There’s something to that: our guess here at CFG is that Cardinals’ owner Bill DeWitt probably insisted that McGwire clean up the past — if for no other reason than to keep the press from hounding him through all of Spring Training and beyond. But that meant a public admission and an apology. McGwire agreed.

MLB Networker commenter Joe Magrane added his own voice, wondering whether McGwire’s admission was really an admission — McGwire admitted to taking steroids to “heal faster,” Magrane noted, but without explicitly admitting that he used them. “I just don’t buy it,” Magrane said. MLB Cardinals’ reporter Matthew Leach had it the other way: “If there was anything that surprised me about the whole deal, it’s that he was a little more explicit than I thought he would be.” Leach then added a classic zinger: McGwire apologized, but without really saying what he was apologizing for.

Yeah, I buy that — but let’s get serious. McGwire could come absolutely clean (”I put the needle right here, Bob , because I knew it would help me break the Maris record) but such an admission, while fueling America’s twisted obsession with public and tearful repentence, wouldn’t make any of us actually feel any better. We still wouldn’t know what to do with all those records and (for those of us who watched every minute of the ‘98 season) we still wouldn’t know how to think about that day when Mark and Sammy made baseball history. (All I can say is, thank God Sammy didn’t take ‘em!) And that kind of admission (an I-did-it-just-to-hit-home-runs admission) might actually make us feel worse. Then too — lest we forget —  Bud and a gaggle of owners and senior baseball executives were all arrayed in the box seats at Busch watching when Mark and Sammy put on their show. And while Bud ”Claude Rains” Selig has appointed every kind of commission possible to investigate the problem, he stood and cheered just like the rest of us when Big Mac put one over the McDonald’s sign to break the record: ”Steroids? Steroids? I’m shocked to learn there were steroids in baseball.”

McGwire apologized and wants to coach St. Louis hitters. Let’s leave him alone. And let’s hope, for the sake of the Nats, that he does a lousy job.

At the outset of the ‘09 season, baseball’s prognosticators picked the Cardinals for second place in the NL Central — or even third — behind the Cubbies, who had rejiggered their line-up to be more “balanced.” The Cubs had traded super utilityman Mark DeRosa to the Naps and signed on left handed hitting Milton “Game Board” Bradley, mixing a righthanded heavy line-up that had been swept in the playoffs at the hands of the hated Trolleys. The Cubs — a veritable set of mashers — were on the way up, the Cards (a bunch of sore arms and also-rans) were on the way down. Now, months later, the results of all those moves are in: and the Cardinals are running away with the division crown. While afficiandos focus on the Cubs’ failures, there’s more reason to argue that Cards G.M. John Mozeliak made all the right moves and all of them just at the right time. So what happened?

The Cardinals began their sprint to the top of the NL Central at the end of June: the timing coincided with their trade for Cleveland’s DeRosa. The Cards shipped reliever Chris Perez to Cleveland to land DeRosa to shore up a wobbly infield and undermanned outfield. Just one day later, DeRosa went on the DL, but the deed was done and the Cards were overjoyed with their acquisition. So was DeRosa: his last place ass had landed in a tub of first place butter: “From a selfish standpoint, I get to battle for a division title again and I’m in a good position with a great team.” Then, at the end of July, Mozeliak traded a passel of prospects to the White Elephants for Matt Holliday. It’s not simply that Holliday was a good hitter, he knew NL pitching and could provide protection behind Pujols, who was starting to see more walks than Cards manager Tony La Russa liked. Holliday cashed in a Mozeliak’s trust, setting the league on fire.

But Holliday was just one piece of a make-over that Mozeliak had in mind. Two days before sealing the Holliday deal, the Cards G.M. traded away Chris Duncan to Boston for under appreciated shortstop Julio Lugo, who had worn out his welcome with the Red Sox. With acquisition Khalil Greene (whom Mozeliak had hoped would plug the Cards hole at the position) not working out, the Redbirds were desperate to find a solution. Lugo hasn’t exactly been ripping up the NL, but La Russa has done his usual sleight-of-hand in getting the most from him: he starts at second against left handed pitchers (for left swinging Skip Schumaker) and at short when breakout youngster Brendan Ryan needs a breather. So far so good: such mixing and matching would not have been possible in Boston, where psychologically hobbled Theo Epstein would never have subbed for Dustin Pedroia.  

There’s more. The acquisition of John Smoltz, it is now reported, is the result of a recommendation to La Russa and Mozeliak by the newly acquired DeRosa, who told them that the future hall of famer would fit in nicely in St. Louis. The Cardinals bit: outbidding the Marlins, Dodgers and Rangers for his services. For the Cubs (and the rest of the N.L. Central), DeRosa can be counted as the latest in a series of team curses. He has become a kind of Jason of the N.L. Central — an unforgiving and murderous nightmare, taking retribution on the Baby Bears for not having enough confidence in him to keep him around.

There’s no question. Signing Smoltz was a gamble for the Cardinals, but so far (at least) it seems to have worked out: in Smoltz’s first outing against the Friars, the righty threw five innings of three hit ball. He looked sharp and confident. He looked at home on the mound. He looked like he was back. The outing raised eyebrows around major league baseball: maybe the old guy still has something left. Yeah, maybe. But Smoltz doesn’t have to be the lights-out John Smoltz of old. He just has to pitch well enough to give the Cardinals another arm in their already superb arsenal of arms: Chris Carpenter, Adam Wainwright and Joel Pineiro. Smoltz could set the Cards up for a good run in the offseason. He could bring them into the post-season as the team to beat. And wouldn’t it be nice to see St. Louis facing off against that other great team in the league: The Los Angeles Dodgers The Colorado Rockies.

Andy Warhol's rendition of Pete Rose

Pete Rose has never done himself any favors. Arguably one of baseball’s greatest players — and inarguably the greatest player to ever put on the uniform of the Cincinnati Reds – the inimitable “Charlie Hustle” bet on baseball games. And he lied about it for fifteen years. Coming clean in his autobiography My Prison Without Bars (intended as an apology to baseball for his actions), didn’t seem to help: Bud Selig refused to remove Rose’s name from the ineligible list. Of course, for some this is old business. The punishment is set, the man is banned — let it go. He bet on games and that’s all we need to know. But the continued punishment of Pete Rose is of moment now, particularly after recent reports that Bud Selig was considering reinstating Rose — and letting bygones be bygones.

There’s been some piling on: Rose agreed to be put on the ineligible list in 1989, with the apparent understanding that he could apply for reinstatement the following year. There was a wink-and-nod appearance, it was said, that Rose would be punished, but that the punishment wouldn’t be permanent. Rose apparently believed that (having served his time on the list), he might be soon forgiven. It didn’t happen. In 1999, Rose was named to the MLB All Century Team, and his name is there still — on the MLB website — just above Babe Ruth’s. But after appearing at a ceremony marking the naming of the team, Major League Baseball refused to allow him to participate in 25th anniversary ceremonies celebrating Cincinnati’s “Big Red Machine,” he was barred from a ceremony marking the closing of Cinergy Field and then from a ceremony marking the opening of the Great American Ballpark. Rose is also barred from entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame, but that decision came after Rose was declared ineligible, as if to emphasize the stain that marked him. The punishments never seemed to cease.

Did Rose have it coming? There are those who argue that Pete Rose’s sin is equal to that of the “eight men out” of Black Sox fame. They gambled and they were barred. But those who make that claim nearly always fail to add that there’s no evidence that Rose actually attempted to throw games. That’s not true of Joe Jackson and Company, despite the recent romance surrounding ”Shoeless Joe.” Joe Jackson, his defenders say, didn’t set out to enrich himself. He did not know that what he was doing might destroy the game. And that’s right. Joe Jackson didn’t set out to enrich himself and harm to the game, but his buddies did and he was a part of it. And they damn near succeeded.

That’s not true of Pete Rose.

There’s a case to be made for reinstating Rose, but it comes with some caveats. The first is that the vast majority of baseball fans (according to any number of polls) want him reinstated. Critics might respond that the argument carries no weight because baseball isn’t a popularity contest. They’d be wrong. Of course it’s a popularity contest. That’s what makes it America’s game. And that’s what makes Rose is a fan favorite. He always has been. The second reason Commissioner Selig might reinstate Rose is that he’s done his penance to baseball — as demanded. Penance does not require rehabilitation, but forgiveness seems well within the American tradition. “This is America, you’re supposed to be given a second chance,” Rose said in January of 2006. ”But a lot of people don’t want me to have that.” He’s right. It’s hard to forgive. But we might remember, while Pete Rose bet on baseball, he didn’t kill dogs.

Finally, while the argument that Pete Rose should be reinstated simply because he was a great ballplayer remains  suspect — even intellectually dishonest — there’s something to it. Especially for diehard fans. There has been only one other player like Pete Rose in baseball history, and that’s Ty Cobb. For decades Cobb’s record of most hits by a major league baseball player was never in peril. It stood, like a great marble column, over all of baseball. It was the record that could never be broken. Cobb’s record of 4,190 hits, it was said, could never be matched. Rose shattered it, in Cincinnati, on September 11, 1985. 

What is most poignant about Cobb’s record is that it was broken by a player most like him. Cobb was fast, tough, was a choke-it-up and bang-it-out singles hitter who played the game hard and was deeply disliked by his fellow players. That true for Rose: he was a roll-in-the-dirt ballplayer who made few friends and a lot of enemies. “He’s a pain in the ass, but he’s one of the greatest two-strike hitters I’ve ever seen,” pitcher Bill Lee once said. And there’s this, also. Like Rose, Ty Cobb bet on baseball games. He did so in 1919 with his boon buddy and fellow Hall of Famer (and one of my very favorites) Tris Speaker. The allegation was made by pitcher Dutch Leonard who said that he and Cobb and Speaker and ”Smokey” Joe Wood bet on a baseball game in 1919 that they knew was fixed. Kennesaw Mountain Landis investigated the charges and exonerated Cobb and Speaker.

And there it stands — though not exactly. It’s still hard for baseball historians to believe that Leonard, in implicating Cobb, would also implicate himself. Then too, Landis knew that in 1925, when the allegations were first aired, baseball could not stand another gambling scandal. And finally, any number of baseball scholars have been through the evidence, and weighed in with their own views: Cobb and Speaker were exonerated, but probably guilty. So it is: Cobb and Speaker (and Leonard and Smokey Joe) are dead, their records are in the books. And Ty and Tris, two of the greatest players of all time, are in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Which is where they belong. So too does Pete Rose. Swallow hard and listen to Hank Aaron: “I would like to see Pete in. He belongs there.”

The Cincinnati Reds are the oldest team in professional baseball, so you’d think that after all these years their rich legacy would have yielded a tradition as intimidating, or as legendary, as (say) the New York Yankees. Not so. While nearly 120 years old (they were founded as the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1866), the Reds have struggled more than triumphed – with their earliest years being the team’s most successful. In 120 years, Cincinnati has won five world championships, their last coming in 1990. Even “the Big Red Machine,” the leave-em-for-dead powerhouse of the 1970s, is now a fading memory, with the proud franchise along the Ohio River continually and vainly groping for an identity. The last time Cincinnati won a world championship was in 1990 and they’ve never finished higher than third in any of the last nine years. So . . . what’s the problem.

There’s a big problem in River City and it starts with a ‘p’ and it ends with a ‘g’ . . . and it’s called pitching. The problem with the Cincinnati Reds is that through all of their history, the franchise have never really (ever) had any pitching or, rather, they’ve never had any overwhelming pitching. Go ahead, name a really great Cincinnati Reds’ pitcher. Or better yet, name a really, really good one. In a game where pitching is at a premium (and something you can never have too much of) the Reds have never really had any. Is that even possible? Well, let’s check the record. In a list of the top ten Reds’ players of all time — a very subjective list — there are no pitchers. Here’s my list: 10. Dave Concepcion (shortstop), 9. Ted Kluszewski (first base), 8. Vada Pinson (outfield), 7. Barry Larkin (shortstop), 6. Edd Roush (outfield), 5. Tony Perez (first base), 4. Joe Morgan (second base), 3. Johnny Bench (catcher) 2. Frank Robinson (outfield), and 1. Pete Rose. Five of that list played for the Big Red Machine, Pinson is a maybe (you could as easily have included outfielders Eric Davis or George Foster). Truth is, you might even be able to make a “Top Fifteen” list of the greatest Reds — and not one of them would have been a hurler.

Of course, there’s always Eppa Jephtha Rixey, a gangly pretzel of a Reds’ pitcher who is now in the Hall of Fame — having been put there by the veterans’ committee back in the 1960s, long after Eppa hisself had passed from the scene. The problem with Rixey (one fine pitcher, to be sure) is that his 266-251 record is what kept sportswriters from considering him as one of the all-time greats. In two years he led the National League in losses. There’s also Joe Nuxhall, who pitched in his first major league game when he was 15 — they thought he was that good. It would be another seven years before Nuxhall returned, and he pitched well. But even with that, Nuxhall’s career numbers are not that good and he developed arm trouble that hampered his later years. The pitchers for the Big Red Machine were good, even very good, but they weren’t great: the Reds’ won the ‘75 world championship with a front line of Gary Nolan, Jack Billingham, Fred Norman and Don Gullett. None of them won over fifteen games and the best of them, Billingham, had a very good but (again) not great career. The Big Red Machine was not a pitching machine.

We’re left with this: not counting Rixey (and I’m not counting Rixey) either Bucky Walters (who came from somewhere else) or Tom Browning are the best pitchers in Reds’ history, with Jim Maloney, Don Gullett, Noodles Hahn and Johnny Vander Meer third to sixth. Then you have to search. Of course, Reds’ fans will tell you that Tom Seaver was great in Cincinnati, but he went into Cooperstown as a Met. Don’t kid yourself, when Tom Terrific went to Cincinnati people (except in Cincinnati) stopped paying attention. He was terrific — in New York. Which is to say: we can look forever through the endless pages of Cincinnati baseball history and never come across a Sandy Koufax (Dodgers), Mordecai Brown (Cubs), Pud Galvin (Pirates) Christy Mathewson (Giants) Warren Spahn (Braves), Robin Roberts (Phillies) or Walter Johnson – Senators. That’s seven teams, all from the original senior circuit of the original eight and all of them with great pitchers. Some of them, by golly, even have two.  But not the Reds. Looking for great Reds’ pitching is like looking for blue food. There isn’t any. 

This year isn’t any different, of course, but at least one thing has changed. The Reds front office has been transformed into a pitcher-hunting development hit squad that understands there’s no way to win this game without some arms — and they’ve done their best to get some. True, Bronson Arroyo and Aaron Harang aren’t the long-term answers, but Homer Bailey and Johnny Cueto might be. (If Dusty doesn’t throw out their arms first.)  But even with that (even with that) there’s a sense, a whisper almost, that like so many other traditions in baseball (the Cubs aren’t going to win this thing, are they — and the Marlins may win it, but only by accident), this one is so deeply rooted that it may last forever. Cincinnati has never had pitching and they never will. Cincinnati is where pitchers’ arms go to die.

There are plenty of priceless stories about Ricky Henderson — the fact that he refers to himself in the third person, that he once unblinkingly described himself as “the greatest” (via the public address system, no less), that he failed to cash a $1 million bonus check — but far fewer about Bosox great Jim Rice. Rice waited fifteen years to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame, a fact that fans of ”the Nation” view as one of baseball’s great injustices. But there are two reasons for the postponement: Rice’s career is ”right on the Cooperstown borderline,” baseball reporter Larry Stone says, and the former Red Sox outfielder had a moody relationship with baseball reporters — and with fans. “Privacy is important to everyone,” Rice once said. ” People say that you owe the public this or that. You don’t owe the public anything.” Rice’s most notorious temper tantrum is legendary: he engaged in a shoving match with Red Sox manager Joe “Walpole Joe” Morgan in 1988, after Morgan sent Spike Owen to the plate to pinch hit for him. The incident outraged even Bosox fans, who had grown tired of Rice’s devolution as a hitter — a .264 batting average in 1988, with just fifteen home runs.

Rice’s election to the hall after a fifteen year wait revived all of the controversy surrounding the Red Sox left fielder, a lot of which is reflected in an often-angry exchange of claims by his least sympathetic supporters — those who write about the game — with those who view him as one of his era’s most feared hitters. 

“Rice, lauded for his power production, in reality was only average in this department,” an outspoken critic writes. ”His meager .502 slugging percentage, .854 OPS, and 128 OPS+ testify to this assessment much more accurately than the remembrance of those who saw him in action. Sure, his 1,451 career RBI total is very good total – 56th all time – but even that number leaves him well short of deservedly snubbed Hall candidates Andre Dawson (1591) and Harold Baines (1628) and 15 short of non-Hall of Famer Rusy Staub, who also had a higher OBP than Rice in a dominate pitchers era.” Other writers jump to Rice’s defense, baldly reminding readers of Boston’s racial history. ”Listen closely to the stories you will hear from many of those who were there about Rice being surly and one of the nastiest SOB’s anyone has ever met,” baseball writer Ed Berliner opines. “The honest stories will also tell of how baseball beat reporters back then hammered Rice into a corner and made his life as miserable as they could. And how there was no doubt in the minds of many bigotry was at the core of many a comment and many a story line.”

Most recently alot of these arguments have been put aside — not only because of Rice’s new found openness with reporters, but also because those who follow “the Nation” are now retailing Rice’s more selfless, if less well-known, side. A kind of Jim Rice ceasefire is taking place. During a press conference in Cooperstown, Rice downplayed his poor relationship with the press: ”That’s over with,” he said. “I don’t wonder about that.” In Boston, meanwhile, baseball writers are busy reminding their readers of Rice’s best moments — like the time he went into the stands and grabbed a boy hit by a foul ball. ”He scooped up the injured boy, carried him into the dugout, up the runway and into the clubhouse. Doctors arrived, and soon the little fellow was on his way to the hospital,” Boston Herald reporter Steve Buckley writes. ”That’s the story that gets placed into evidence as People’s Exhibit A whenever there is any discussion or debate about Jim Rice’s everyman quality. Indeed, it could rightly be called the biggest play of Rice’s brilliant 16-year career in the majors.”

The debate over Rice’s qualifications for the hall will inevitably fade — he’s there. As will the controversy over his relationship with the fans who, despite his rocky relationship with the Boston media, turned out in droves to see him play those caroms off the green monster. “He played it like he built it,” one Red Sox fan proudly notes. Then too, there’s this: the people who reportedly liked him the least are the people who decided that, in spite of all the controversy, Jim Rice deserved a plaque in Cooperstown.