There are a whole lot of people in the world who appreciate Edwin Donald “Duke Snider” more than me — and most of them grew up in Brooklyn. Snider, who died Sunday at the age of 84, came to define the Brooklyn Dodgers as few others, including Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese. Snider was the original “great Dodger” in an era before Koufax or Drysdale, and lived and played with Robinson and Reese. These were those great Dodger teams that, after years of futility, dominated the National League, winning six pennants in ten years. Their names are legendary: Gil Hodges, Carl Erskine, Ralph Branca, Clem Labine, Carl Furillo, Joe Black, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe and Jim Gilliam.

For Dodger fans, the 1950s (before their sainted heroes decamped to LA) were the golden age of New York baseball — with Snider, Mantle and Mays all in center, all contenders. Brooklyn Dodger fans still claim that Snider was the best of the three (and he was very good), but memories of Snider among Brooklyn fans have been dusted with the passage of time. Snider never got on too well with New York baseball reporters or Brooklyn diehards and when the O’Malley family beat it out of town Snider (an L.A. native) was quoted as saying he preferred it that way. He said he was misquoted (and probably was), but Brooklyn’s faithful believed it. He was “surly” and self-pitying; the book on the Duke was that he never quite lived up to his potential. Which, like much else having to do with Snider, just wasn’t true. He was better than just good and was voted into Cooperstown in 1980.

Brooklyn fans are notable for telling us how they never missed a game, loved every one of “dem bums” and supported them in everything they did. It’s not true, of course, but never mind: Snider’s immortality (never a sure thing in Brooklyn) was sealed as soon as he was missed. The same holds true for the team. The Dodgers were beloved in Brooklyn, but few went to see them play, the city would not build them a new stadium and their record for futility before the glorious days of “the Duke” would make a Cubs fan wince. “Duke Snider was proof in the flesh that great teams had once played in Brooklyn,” Howard Megdal wrote in today’s New York Times, and that about sums it up.

Well, not quite. Snider patrolled center field for the Dodgers for sixteen years (11 in Brooklyn, five in L.A.), still leads all Dodgers in HRs and RBIs, had one of the best hitters’ eyes in the game (though, paradoxically, struck out a lot), led the league in runs for three consecutive years, and in home runs (with 43) in 1956. His numbers for ’53 through ’57 are astonishing. He was an eight time all star. “Swing hard,” he told hitters, “in case they throw the ball where you’re swinging.”

Bob Costas had Bob Feller on his baseball show last week and “the Heater from Van Meter” was as outspoken and irascible as always. And fascinating. Feller, the former Cleveland great is now 90, knows how to turn a phrase, loves baseball — and has little modesty when it comes to dropping names of the great and near-great. He spent time with the Babe (“he was the best to ever play the game,” he said) and Gehrig. The three of them would head out to the bars in New York and Ruth “would bend an elbow” and Gehrig would be drinking water and not saying very much. “We never talked about baseball,” Feller told Costas. Feller thought Ruth was a fascinating man and much beloved and never had a bad word to say about anyone.

Feller was proud that in that last great picture of Ruth (the one where he’s leaning on a bat with his head down and the crowd is around him), the bat he used was Feller’s. The Indians were playing the Yankees that day and Ruth grabbed a bat from the Cleveland dugout to steady himself and he stood there and he waved his hat and then he listened to the cheers come down and he leaned on Feller’s bat. Feller took the bat and saved it and it’s now in his museum, just off of I-81 in Van Meter, Iowa. “The Babe was a very sick man,” Feller said. “He was dead in five months.”

Like Ruth, Feller doesn’t give the impression of being very modest, but he knows the game and loves it and he has decided opinions on pitchers and hitters. He’s an admirer of Nolan Ryan (“he’s a very close friend of mine,” he told Costas) and believes Sandy Koufax (I tilted an ear to hear this and think I got it right) was the best lefty he’d ever seen and “for five years” the best pitcher in baseball. Feller should know, I suppose, but vaulting Koufax to the top of the lefty list puts him ahead of Warren Spahn and Lefty Gomez. Feller talked about his own vaunted speed, saying that he had been clocked at 107 mph — an amazing feat if true. But no one was faster than Johnson, he said. He talked about World War Two, with Costas noting that Feller’s three years off to fight the war probably cost him 300 wins — and perhaps as many as 350-360. Feller says he has no regrets. “That was one we had to win,” he said. “Studio 42″ (the Costas program) showed Feller in the Navy. Feller was a part of “The Great Mariana Turkey Shoot” in the Philippine Sea in June of 1944.  “If you were killed you were a hero,” Feller said. “If you didn’t you were a survivor.”  

Feller said that the champion 1948 Indians team (on which he played) was a good team, but not nearly as good as the 1954 team that lost four straight to the New York Giants. In ’48, Feller lost a first game nail biter to Braves’ pitcher Johnny Sain and then an 11-5 blow-out to Warren Spahn. Satchell Paige relieved Feller in the blow-out and Feller talked about him. “He was 44 at the time,” he said. “He claimed he was 42 but he was 44,” and then went on to talk about the barnstorming white teams that he had put together to play the Negro Leaguers prior to baseball’s integration. Paige, he said, had a wicked fastball “but not much of a curve.” The 1954 series, a 4-0 New York Giants sweep. Feller cited Willie Mays’ catch in the first game and Giants’ pitcher Johnny Antonelli’s pitching as the reasons for the sweep. “Antonelli never pitched better in his life,” he said.

Feller’s most interesting comments, however, had to do with hitters. He was particularly outspoken — blunt really — when talking about his success against great hitters. “Gehrig couldn’t hit me,” he said, “not at all.” During the last games of 1938, Feller recounted, he put Greenberg down in order to kill whatever chance the Detroit first sacker had of breaking Ruth’s home run record. Greenberg had 58 round-trippers that year, in addition to 146 RBIs. He walked 119 times. But he couldn’t solve Feller, who issued one of the best baseball one-liners I’ve ever heard: “Hank Greenberg couldn’t hit me with an ironing board,” he said. Rapid Robert’s answer to Costa’s question about who hit him well came as something of a surprise: “Tommy Henrich,” he said, and there was an edge of defiance in his voice. The great ones couldn’t hit Feller — one of the few who mastered Gehrig — but Tommy Henrich sprayed him to all fields.

Tommy Henrich is one of those Yankees who played in the shadow of Gehrig and Ruth and DiMaggio — but he was beloved by his teammates: in part because he seemed to play harder when the Yankees were behind. He had four World Series rings with a lifetime batting average of .282 with 183 home runs. Like Feller, he took three years away from baseball during World War II. He hit .308 with 25 HRs and 100 RBI in 1948, arguably his best season. But “Old Reliable” is probably best known for his heads-up play in the 1941 Series that might have saved the series for the Yankees. With Brooklyn set to tie the series at two games apiece and leading 4-3 with two outs in the ninth, Henrich came to the plate. With the count at 3-2 he swung at strike three. But Trolley catcher Mickey Owen couldn’t handle the ball and Henrich was safe at first. Joe DiMaggio then singled, and Charlie Keller doubled to score both runners and take the lead. Joe Gordon later doubled to bring in two more runs, and the Yankees had a 7-4 victory and a 3-1 Series lead. And the Yankees went on to win the series.

Henrich was a fine ball player and a good man. He was known for his glove in the outfield, his mentoring of younger players, his deep voice and good sense of humor — and his ability to hit the heck out of Bob Feller. Feller still can’t figure it out. “It’s just one of those things.” Oddly, a mere two weeks before the Costas-Feller interview was aired, Henrich died in Dayton, Ohio. He was 96. 

Bobby Thomson hit “the shot heard round the world.” Thomson’s walk off home run came at precisely 3:58 pm, New York time, on October 3, 1951 — and is considered the most dramatic moment in baseball history. Thomson’s bottom of the 9th shot came off  Brooklyn Dodgers’ right hander Ralph Branca with two men on. With the Dodgers leading 4-2, Branca threw Thomson a first pitch fastball over the center of the plate. The next pitch was inside and high and Thomson swung. The hit was not a towering fly ball, but a line drive that sailed into the left field seats of the lower deck in the Polo Grounds. It gave the New York Giants a 5-4 win and the N.L. Pennant, two games to one. The two teams had finished the season with identical 96-58 records. The Giants had taken the first of the three game playoff series (3-1) and the Dodgers the second (10-0). Deadlocked at one game apiece, the third game would decide the pennant. What made Thomson’s home run even more dramatic is that the Giants had won 37 of their last 44 games to force the playoff, having trailed the Dodgers by 13 games in mid-August.

Also known as “The Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff,” Thomson’s home run is celebrated in the immortal broadcast of Russ Hodges that was heard on WMCA-AM radio — “The Voice of the New York Giants”: “There’s a long drive… it’s gonna be, I believe…The Giants Win The Pennant! The Giants Win The Pennant! The Giants Win The Pennant! The Giants Win The Pennant! Bobby Thomson hits into the lower deck of the left-field stands! The Giants win the pennant and they’re goin’ crazy, they’re goin’ crazy!”

For many years it was not known what happened to Thomson’s home run ball. While innumerable myths have surrounded its whereabouts (most recently in Don DeLillo’s Underworld), it is now believed that a Franciscan nun recovered the ball and kept it in a shoebox for fifty years. When she died, her sister collected the shoebox and deposited it in a landfill. Willie Mays, then 20, was on deck when Thomson hit his home run.

Sometime this next week, Seattle Mariners’ right fielder Ichiro Suzuki will break William Henry “Wee Willie” Keeler’s record for most consecutive seasons with 200 or more hits. Keeler registered eight consecutive seasons of 200-plus hits from 1894 through 1901 while playing for the Dan Brouthers-John McGraw Baltimore Orioles of the then 12-team National League and American Association. Barring an unexpected injury, Ichiro will eclipse Wee Willie’s record — one of the oldest and most legendary in the game — when he plays this week against the Belinskis in Anaheim. The Mariners, and all of baseball, are aware of the moment: the Mariners’ website features an Ichiro hit counter and the MLB Network (and undoubtedly, “Baseball Tonight”) will tune in to capture the famous moment. Ichiro’s streak began in the first year he was in the majors, in 2001, and comprises a run that includes seasons of 262, 242 and 238 hits.

Baltimore Orioles' stars: (standing) Wee Willie 'hit em where they aint" Keeler and John McGraw and (seated) outfielder Joe Kelley and shortstop Hugh Jennings

 

 

If You Think We Have Problems, all you have to do is take a second  look at the Snakes line-up.  Arizona’s best hitter is cast-off Felipe Lopez (hitting .314), who has revived his career in the desert after a  so-so stint in D.C. After that, all of the “great young hitters” that the “Showboats” boast fall through the floor. Arizona third baseman Mark Reynolds leads the mangy pack at .248, while the talented Chris Young and Conor Jackson are hitting .183 and .184 respectively. But Reynolds is the embarrassment: in 109 at-bats he has 39 strike outs. Last year, Reynolds led the league in both strikeouts and errors — an adventure in futility matched only once before, in 1965, by Twinkie’s SS Zoilo Versalles. The fans know — AZ Snakepit described last night’s game as “rancid.”

Mark Reynolds: Futility Infielder

So which would you rather have — an infield of Zimmerman (.336), Guzman (.386), Hernandez (.310), and Johnson (.317) or an infield of Reynolds, Lopez, Josh Wilson (.227) and Chad Tracy (.215)? The argument that things are bound to change once the injured Stephen Drew returns doesn’t cut it: prior to going on the DL, Drew was hitting .205.  Still, baseball experts bloviate on the D-Backs “young hitters” — Sports Illustrated called them “the envy of the game,” a common enough notion among experts who would love to have one of the youngest infields in the majors. The problem is: they can’t hit. The other problem is: they can’t field. And with Dan Haren the only great arm left in the system (Webb is on the DL, Garland is steady but not a stopper, Doug Davis is just so-so and Max Scherzer is unproven — and 0-3), their pitching is questionable. To contend at all, they need Branden Webb back. The sooner the better.  

This week’s front office solution to the D-Banks woes was to fire Doug Melvin and replace him with untested and untried A.J. Hinch, a former major league catcher with no on-field coaching or managing experience. But the problem is not in the dugout and A.J. isn’t the solution. The front office has made a number of questionable decisions — getting rid of Adam Dunn, Orlando Hudson, Randy Johnson and a passel of young prospects, while signing Eric Byrnes (the ultimate showboat) to a three year $30 million contract. There are cabbies in Phoenix who would have made better decisions.

Stealing Home: One of me droogs sent along a New York Times article by Dan Rosenheck that dissects the fine art of stealing home — a Jackie Robinson special that (Rosenheck avers) is overrated.  Rosenheck says that Robinson was bold, but sometimes not smart: he stole home with one out too often, when a sacrifice fly might have gotten him plated.

Rosenheck uses a sabremetric tool called “run expectancy,” comparing the number of runs a team is expected to score in an inning after a stolen base attempt with the same number beforehand. Robinson might have done better if he had “stayed put,” Rosenheck concludes. But Rosenheck praises Robinson’s boldness: “Stealing home is like a poker player betting on an inside straight,” he says, “a low-percentage play whose payoff is great enough to justify numerous failures – but not too many.”  It’s a heck of an article and caused a flood of responses (and a Rosenheck defense) – all worth reading.  

It seems almost commonsensical that stealing home is too great a gamble for a ballplayer to take — particularly with one out. The chances of a sacrifice fly are too high. Then again, there’s something about a successful steal of home that can’t be measured by numbers alone. Robinson’s most famous steal of home (pictured above, in game one of the 1955 World Series) ignited the Dodger’s as few other events –and made Robinson part of national lore. Worth it, it seems to me.

The Nats swept the Dodgers in three — the result of good pitching, the maturing of some of the Nats’ younger players and the return of the infirm. The Nats can take pride in the sweep, even if these are not your grandfather’s Dodgers or even, for that matter, your father’s Dodger’s. The Dodger teams of yore were almost always legendary, if often mediocre. The facts are in: the Nats outpitched and outhit the “Bridegrooms,” with Balester, Redding and Lannan pitching deep into the games (and collecting the wins), while the Nats’ bats outscored the boys in blue by a combined score of 18-7.

And so, for just an eyeblink, Nats fans were able to peek into the future — where a building program premised on the Smoltz-Glavine-Maddux model that brought Atlanta a string of divisional championships in the 1990s is now being shaped. If it wasn’t clear before, it’s becoming eminently clear now: next year’s staff will be built on Lannan and Balester (and perhaps Redding), with Mock, Clippard and Detwiler waiting in the wings. The Nats sweep must be particularly sweet for Stan and Jim, reinforcing their conviction that baseball’s greatest teams are built more on pitching than big boppers. Deep in their hearts, Kasten and Bowden would love to have Manny, but they would never give up Lannan or Balester to get him.

The terrible truth about the Dodgers (a franchise that has accounted for six world championships and 21 pennants), is that they are on the down-slope of an era that was to have revived their reputation as the NL’s most storied franchise. You don’t do that with a front four of Lowe, Billingsley, Koruda and (an oft-injured) Penny and Joe Torre must know it. As the Dodgers look to next year, as now they must, they have to be wondering where the will get the arms to carry them past the likes of the D-Backs, who are stocked with throwers who (despite their mediocre record) can put them back in the post-season.

The Dodgers have always been built on pitching, even as their fan base slathered over muscled line-ups that could put the ball into the bleachers. 1953 is a year that defines this best. Brooklyn fans then extolled the virtues of a power-packed line-up that featured Snider, Campanella, Furillo and Hodges whose home run totals (42, 41, 21 and 31 respectively), wowed the rest of the NL. But the heart of the team weren’t the bats — it was a starting staff that boasted the arms of Carl Erskine (20 wins), Russ Meyer (15 wins), Billy Loes (14 wins), Clem Labine (11 wins) and Preacher Roe — who, though on the downside of an injury-marred career, produced 11 unlikely but key wins.

I’m on the record as saying the Bean-towners should not have traded Manny, but that doesn’t mean I believe a guy like Ramirez could put a team like the Dodgers over the top. He can’t. What the Dodgers needed (particularly in the NL West, where Webb and Haren can easily dominate) was pitching. Maddux, whom the Dodgers’ believed might be this year’s version of “the Preacher,” can’t do it alone. Exhibit A of that claim came against our Anacostia Boys over the last three days, when the bottom fell out of the Dodgers’ season.

Clem and the Whiz Kids: I met Casey Stengel in an elevator of Milwaukee’s Schroeder Hotel when I was eleven years old, in the summer of 1962. ”The old professor” was the then first year manager of the expansion New York Mets, but already a legend. “Say hello to Mr. Stengel,” my mother said. I recognized the name and man and he nodded to me and smiled. But as I remember it, he never asked whether I could play baseball: a conceit he allowed himself as he poked fun at a team that stands as one of the worst in baseball history.

I mention Stengel because I was reminded of him, the other night, when I channel-surfed right into the beginning of a  Twilight Zone episode from 1961. The Twilight Zone was one of my favorite shows as an eleven-year-old, in large part because it not only scared the bejesus out of me (honestly), but also because it was the last show I was allowed to stay up and watch on a Friday night filled with great shows — Route 66, Rawhide, Palladine and Gunsmoke. In that order.  

“Mr. Dingle, The Strong” features Don Rickles and Burgess Meredith, with Meredith playing “a much abused everyman” who is suddenly given tremendous physical powers by visiting unseen aliens. That’s not the point: the point is that the reason Rickles picks on Meredith (they’re in a bar) is that Meredith disagrees with Rickles over who has “better stuff” — Clem Labine or Robin Roberts. When Meredith hesitantly says “Roberts” (he knows this is not what Rickles wants to hear) he is summarily punched in the nose. It is only when he is given the gift of superhuman strength by the visiting invisible “Martians” that Rickles learns his lesson.

But who in their right mind would ever believe that Clem Labine had better stuff than Robin Roberts.

Labine was a servicable reliever who has gotten more attention than most servicable relievers deserve, in large part because he was a part of those great Brooklyn Dodger teams of the mid-1950s. Back before the save was acknowledged as an important stat, Labine led the Dodgers in saves — and the league.

 

But Roberts was a behemoth. He was the leader of the 1950 Phillies (the “whiz kids”) and winner of twenty games in five consecutive seasons. Towards the end of his career he pitched for the Orioles, Astros and Cubs, but those so-so years never detracted from what he did for the Phillies. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1976. And for good reason. His stats are breathtaking: 305 complete games and 45 shutouts.

Of course, I am quite sure that there are Labine partisans out there, especially among that particular baseball breed that views the Brooklyn Dodgers as the center of the baseball universe and are quick to dismiss all the rest of us as mere hobbyists.  Even so, if you love the Dodgers so much that you think that Clem Labine had better stuff than Robin Roberts you, like Luther Dingle, live your life with one foot in your mouth — “and the other in the Twilight Zone.”

Snakebit: It’s hard to feel sorry for the no-account D’Backs, particularly given their early season cheering section. One month into the season Baseball Tonight’s genetically incoherent Steve Philips dubbed the snakes “the team to beat” in the National League, which I cite as one of the reasons for their subsequent collapse. The D’Backs are well-built: great draft picks, a better-than-average pitching staff (including Brandon Webb, Micah Owings and Randy Johnson), good upper management and a stellar farm system. But it’s hard to ooh and ahh over a team that would now get into the playoffs while compiling more losses than wins. And let’s be honest. All that talk about their great young players is a little overdone: Justin Upton is hitting .242, Chris Young .236, and Alex Romero (we just can’t stop talking about Alex Romero) a breathless .243.

Then there’s the bevy of other players — dubbed “the D’Backs wealth of great young talent”: shortstop Stephen Drew (.256) and third baseman Mark Reynolds, who is hitting an anemic .255. Orlando Hudson is the only guy who has really met the team’s expectations; he’s hitting .302. Of course, the D’Backs have been beset by injuries, but that kind of whining doesn’t go down well in Anacostia. (Stop your whining and learn to hit a curve.) It would be great to sweep these guys, but that’s going to be tough, especially when you note that our beloved Nats have to come onto the field against, arguably, the best pitcher in baseball.