Baseball-Related Program Activities

Sports Illustrated has an excerpt from Bill James's newest Handbook up today, ranking the twenty-five best young players. As always, James is using an arcane, yet probably solid system, but the most important part is his commentary. Like this on one of my favorites, giganto LHP C. C. Sabathia:

I have to tell you, as a baseball fan, I absolutely adore C. C. Sabathia. I always have. I've compared all these players to somebody else. It is sacrilege to compare C. C. Sabathia to any other pitcher. He is totally unique. For one thing, although listed weights of baseball players are so bogus that it's hard to see the point of listing them, C. C. has to be the heaviest player in major league history. He's huge -- 6'7"and has an aircraft carrier frame supporting large piles of necessary and unnecessary flesh, all of this adorned with comic little ears that stick out from his face as if the Lord couldn't find a flat place to put them. He has a unique delivery, hanging his massive leg in the air in seeming defiance of both gravity and nature, yet he is balanced and graceful. He projects a sort of genial warrior calm on the mound. He was an outstanding pitcher when he reached the majors in 2001 and has gotten steadily better, cutting his walks from 95 in 180 innings to 37 in 241 innings. He's 26 now, like Peavy, and his age is pushing him downward on this list; he is less of a young talent, and more of a mature product. But I don't think I've ever missed a C. C. Sabathia start in Kansas City when I was near KC or in Boston since I've been in Boston, and I hope he pitches forever.

I agree with every damn word. The fact that Sabathia didn't turn in the lights-out game he was capable of against the fearsome Boston lineup was one of the big disappointments of this postseason. May he get a chance to do it next October.

Labels: c.c. sabathia, fat pitchers

This is from the 1988 Baseball Abstract, but it's not written by Bill James; it's the work of Mike Kopf (briefly mentioned in this article), and is one of several "book reviews" taking up three pages' worth of space between the National League East and the National League West.

Darkness at Noon (The Battle Over Night Baseball at Wrigley Field)
Mike Royko
University of Chicago Press, 286 pages, $19.95 ($14.95 when purchased during daylight hours)

More interesting, these days, than the Cubs performance on the field is the ongoing battle over installation of lights in the friendly confines. This is a controversy, as Royko points out in his inimitable manner, that has torn close-knit Chicago families asunder, much as the Dreyfus affair is said to have done in France. Indeed, police reports for the past two years note an otherwise inexplicable increase in intrafamily homicides, as well as a seemingly endless array of bar wars, the patrons dividing into vitriolic camps of "suns" and "lights." Even teenage gang warfare in the Windy City, it is rumored, has crossed racial and ethnic lines to become a battle between "days" and "nights."

Not surprisingly, Chicago's notoriously corrupt politics has played a major role in the controversy. At first, skittish aldermanic and mayoral candidates tried to straddle the ivy, so to speak, but inevitably were forced to take sides. An already volatile situation was made worse when both pro- and anti-abortion activists jumped into the fray. The anti-abortionists began holding protest marches and labeled themselves "right to lightsers," while the pro-abortionists, predictably, came out in favor of "choice" and called for a Supreme Court ruling. This moved the "right to lightsers" to contemplate a constitutional amendment mandating the installation of lights.

Against this hysteria, even the remnants of the old Democratic machine felt themselves powerless. The late Mayor Washington, after flip-flopping on the issue at least twice, found himself finally vituperated by all factions, and Royko, in his most shocking disclouse, reveals that not everyone in Chicago is convinced that the Mayor died of natural causes: foul play by right to lightsers, who have long threatened a terrorist campaign, is suspected by many. Into this whirlwind stepped a newly appointed Mayor, and as the book went to press, his promise to appoint Jesse Jackson as head of a mediation committee seems at least temporarily to have calmed the storm. But lights or no lights for Wrigley remains one of the most volatile issues of our time, and readers are Royko's book are sure to come away enlightened and yet disheartened, because, as with Catholic versus Protestant in Ireland, or Arab versus Jew in the Middle East, no solution seems on the horizon.

Also reviewed: Water Under the Bridge: The Mysterious Death of Ed Delahanty; What, Me Worry?: An Insiders' Account of the '87 Twins (by Al Newman); The Secret Diaries of Shoeless Joe Jackson; and Ate Men Out: A Culinary History of Fat Men in Baseball.

Labels: al newman, bill james, ed delahanty, fat pitchers, mike kopf, mike royko, shoeless joe jackson, Wrigley Field

While the comments are down and I'm busy with work, you're all welcome to enjoy this article from ESPN.com's Page 2 on the all-time all-fat team.

While many in the audience will be disappointed that John Kruk didn't make it, they should remember that it's no shame to lose out when a team is being assembled from all of major-league history, just like it's no shame not to make the Hall of Fame. Many very, very good players will never make the Hall of Fame, and many very, very fat players will never crack the all-fat team.

Labels: fat pitchers, john kruk