Alfredo Aceves has made a name for himself in Boston. While he’s not nearly so celebrated as Jonathan Papelbon, the Red Sox long reliever has provided a steady diet of scoreless innings and wins-in-relief. Aceves is now 8-1 on the season, which makes him 22-2 over the four years that he’s been in the majors. That’s Elroy Face territory, the Pittsburgh Pirates reliever who made it into the baseball record books on the strength of an 18-1 record in 1959.

Like Face, Aceves is known around baseball as a “vulture,” an endearing term reserved for those relief pitchers who turn “holds” into victories — or worse, who blow leads and then benefit when their team scores enough to give them the win. Pittsburgh’s Roy Face was the ultimate vulture. He was so unsteady that in 1959 — the year he notched eighteen wins — he gained four of them off of blown saves. The record so infuriated baseball writer Jerome Holtzman that he came up with the “saves” (and “blown saves”) stat to keep guys like Face from getting too much credit.

Current baseball writer Tom Singer tells us that Sandy Koufax should be credited with inventing the concept of a baseball “vulture” in the midst of the 1966 season, when Dodgers’ reliever Phil Regan posted a 14-1 record — all in relief. Regan got a win in relief after Koufax struck out sixteen Phillies in eleven innings, then did it again the next time Koufax left in the middle of a 1-1 match-up. “Man,” Koufax told Regan, “you’re a real vulture.”

But while Regan might have been baseball’s “real” vulture, Elroy Face was its “ultimate” vulture. While Holtzman adjudged Face as a pitcher who fed off the agony of others (and profited by it), it’s hard to argue with his numbers. Face was the first reliever to ever save twenty games more than once and held the record for games pitched until 1986. Face didn’t invent the forkball (that honor goes to Yankee reliever Joe Page), but he was the first pitcher to use it effectively. It was the “cutter” of its time.

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You can understand why some baseball writers never particularly liked Bert Blyleven. “I’m not going to kiss the asses of the writers,” Blyleven said a few years back. “I put numbers up that are Hall of Fame numbers. Until they recognize that, you can only look at January 6th and say ‘it’s another year.’” Well, it’s now January 6 — and Blyleven is finally in the Hall of Fame. The announcement came yesterday as Blyleven (this was his fourteenth time on the ballot) and second sacker Roberto Alomar (who was picked on 90 percent of the ballots) were elected to the Hall and will be inducted in July. There’s been a continuing and surprising argument over Blyleven’s qualifications, but there’s never been any question (or, at least, we think so) over his abilities. The most compelling “case for” was made in December 2004 by Rich Lederer, who quoted Blyleven critics as giving three reasons why the slick righty “didn’t belong”: he didn’t win a Cy Young award, he wasn’t a dominant pitcher in his era — and he wasn’t any better than Tommy John or Jim Kaat. Lederer demolished these arguments.

Blyleven’s stats are impressive. He’s tied for sixth all-time in the number of 200-strikeout seasons, is ninth in career shutouts, is fifth all-time in career strike outs (who would have guessed that), was third most on the day he retired (behind Nolan Ryan and Walter Johnson), won 38 1-0 ball games, and has stats similar to Don Sutton, Gaylord Perry, Ferguson Jenkins, Tom Seaver and Early Wynn — all of whom are in the Hall. Longevity is always an important, if incomplete, “metric” of pitching solidity, and Blyleven had it: 22 seasons, a 3.31. ERA. He was in the top ten in strikeouts in 14 seasons and was in the top ten in innings pitched in 11 — in two of those seasons he led his league. The question is not whether Blyleven deserves to be in the Hall, but why he wasn’t in sooner. Oddly, perhaps, I’d pick 1985 as his best season, even though he was traded by Cleveland to Minnesota that year: he threw in 37 games, completed 24 of them, and led the league in innings pitched and strikeouts.

So why did it take Blyleven fourteen years to reach the Hall? My sense is that if Blyleven had played in New York (or even Oakland), he wouldn’t have had to wait so long. This has nothing to do with “big team, big city” preferences (well, as least I don’t think so) — but rather to that fact that Blyleven consistently pitched for mediocre teams and received terrible run support. As one statistician has noted: from 1970 to 1977, Blyleven notched 82 quality starts (two earned runs or less in six innings, three earned runs or less in 7, 8, or 9 innings — 4 earned runs or less in 9+). In those starts he compiled a 2.19 ERA. His record? 0-53! In 1974, for instance, Blyleven (17-17 for the year) was 17-9 in 27 games and 0-8 in the others. In those 0-8 games he posted an ERA of 1.80. It would be tough to run those numbers over all of baseball’s pitchers post-1900, but I would bet they’re damned near unprecedented.

But what the hell: let’s suppose that the pro-Blyleven crowd actually has a point — that Bert was late to the prom because he didn’t pitch in New York (or Boston, or Atlanta — or even Oakland). The only way to show that that might be true is to compare him to Hall of Famers who did, but whose numbers are comparable or (arguably) worse. Like? Like Catfish Hunter: who won fewer games (224 vs. 287), had fewer strikeouts (2012 vs 3701), fewer shutouts (42 vs. 60),  and fewer complete games (181 vs. 242). Of course, Hunter won a Cy Young, and Blyleven didn’t. But then again, a Cy Young is given out by baseball writers — the same cadre that kept the big righty out of the Hall all of these years.

It’s possible to pitch to Albert Pujols — but you do so at your peril. Scott Olsen knew this of course (every major league pitcher knows it), but that didn’t keep him from missing an up-and-in pitch to the St. Louis powerhouse, who promptly deposited it in the left field seats. That was home run number 35 in the slugger’s season, a plus-30 total that he has now reached in each of the last ten seasons. The Pujols’ dinger (number 401 of his career, after he hit number 400 on Thursday) was not the difference in the Cardinals’ 4-2 victory on Friday night, but on a day that saw Washington’s top pitching prospect announce that he would undergo Tommy John surgery, the appearance of Prince Albert at Nationals Park might prove reason enough for Nats fans to make the trek to Half Street.

How good is Pujols? A 2008 manager’s survey named him as the most feared hitter in baseball — and for good reason. The slugger’s numbers draw comparisons to Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Mel Ott, Frank Robinson, Babe Ruth — and Lou Gehrig. The Gehrig comparison seems appropriate: both Pujols and Gehrig won one batting title when they were under 30, and Gehrig stroked thirty home runs and hit over .300 for nine consecutive seasons — a mark broken by Pujols last year. In truth, Prince Albert has already matched Gehrig’s greatness (a claim that is heresy in New York), for while Gehrig was an RBI machine (175 in 1927, 184 in 1931), Pujols is arguably the better slugger: Gehrig stroked over 40 home runs five times in his 17 year career, while Pujols has hit over 40 six times in ten years. If Pujols stays health, he’ll add to that record next year and quite possibly for many years after. Additionally, Pujols’ slugging numbers are breathtaking: he has led the league four times in ten seasons, Gehrig did it twice.

Stan “The Man” Musial remains the most iconic Cardinal (as Pujols readily admits), but he never had Pujols’ power (Musial stroked 475 home runs in 22 seasons, Pujols has hit 401 in ten), or his RBI potential — Musial had ten seasons of plus-100 RBIs, which Pujols has already equaled. But what Musial lacked in power he made up for in hits: he led the N.L. in hits in six seasons, Pujols has led his league once. Pujols’ power is Willie Mays’ power: Mays hit 40-plus home runs six times in 22 years, Pujols has done it five times in ten. Pujols’ strike out rate compares favorably with Henry Aaron’s and his power is similar. Aaron hit 30-plus home runs in 15 of his 22 seasons, a mark that Pujols could equal (with that important caveat — if he stays healthy) in five years. And Pujols hits for a higher average.

While feeding a comparison compulsion is a pastime for baseball fanatics, it has its rewards — it compels us to understand just how great the truly great were: Ted Williams led the majors in walks six times, Pujols has never done it once, though Pujols will undoubtedly eclipse Williams’ RBI totals. Then too, while pitchers fear Pujols, they were petrified by Williams (who led the A.L in walks eight times); that, or Williams had the better eye (or both). But Pujols (on the other hand) has a much better eye than Frank Robinson, who sported high OBPs — but absolutely hated to walk. Robinson won the MVP twice, Pujols has done it three times. Mel Ott (underrated and below-the-radar Mel Ott) was a horse, playing and playing and playing without injury year after year. Pujols will outhit Ott, but he’ll have to stay healthy to equal his total games mark. Oh, and Ott knew how to walk and (arguably) had a better eye at the plate. But just barely. And while Pujols does not have the power of Barry Bonds, he could add something (and this year) that Bonds never had — a Triple Crown.

So while Nats fans justly mourn the loss of a potentially great pitcher (and a pitcher for the Washington Nationals, no less), they might take modest solace that — at least when the St. Louis Cardinals visit D.C. — they can watch one of the very greatest players who ever played the game. Pujols is so good that he is not only drawing comparisons to Ruth and Gehrig and Musial and Williams (and maybe half-a-dozen others), he has already equaled or surpassed many of their more celebrated stats. Albert Pujols is already the Lou Gehrig of St. Louis and he already has Hall of Fame numbers — and he’s only getting started.

By now every baseball fan knows that A-Rod has reached rareified air after hitting home run number 600. No matter what you may think of him (and — as you might guess from the above photo — you now know what I think of him), you have to admit: hitting 600 home runs is quite an accomplishment. Not only is Rodriguez just the seventh player to hit 600 homers, no one has ever done it at such a young age (he’s just 34). By comparison, Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron were 36 when they hit their 600th. And Edward Tufte, the free swinging left fielder for the Cards teams of the late 50s and early 60s, didn’t hit his 600th until he was 39. Edward Tufte? Ah . . . well . . . no.

Edward Tufte couldn’t hit his way out of a paper bag. And for good reason. Tufte is not a ballplayer, he’s a statistician and professor emeritus at Yale University. He also popularized “informational design,” which is the art of putting data in picture form to tell a story. I’m reminded of Tufte because of the graphic the New York Times created to compare Rodriguez to the top 200 home run hitters of all time. Tufte’s graphic is a wonderful representation of A-Rod’s achievement by age and  season. If you scroll through the various lines in the graphic you discover a number of interesting nuggets — like the fact that Mel Ott began his career at the same age as Rodriguez, but only (ha! “only”) hit 511 home runs; or that Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby played 23 seasons (1915-1937), but hit the bulk of his 301 home runs between 1921 and 1929.

The most striking thing about the Tufte-like graph of major league homers hit by season is what it says about Ruth, Mays and Aaron. Given that the mound was higher, the ball softer and the physical training far less focused in that earlier era, what those players did was absolutely stunning.

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 RoseÂ

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.”