TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Saturday, October 02, 2004

Cubs Prepare For Move to Manila

As of Sept. 24th, the Chicago Cubs had an 87-66 record, a two-game lead in the loss column over the S.F. Giants for the NL Wild Card, had won 8 out of 10 games in a 9-day stretch covering 4 cities, and had Mark Prior and Kerry Wood lined up to finish the trip in New York before coming home for a regular season-ending 7-game homestand, starting off with 4 games against the lowly Cincinnati Reds.

We all know how things turned out, now that the Cubs have been eliminated from Wild Card contention after this afternoon's 8-6 loss to the Atlanta Braves. A playoff berth which was theirs for the taking was lost with dispatch. The Cubs might wind up fourth in the WC race in the end, pending the outcome of the Cubs' final game and the S.D. Padres' final two.

Given the way the Marlins and eventually the Cubs faded down the stretch, it seems certain that that final part of the schedule of 20+ days with no days off caught up to both teams. The Marlins also had the misfortune to absorb some key injuries down the stretch, but the Cubs were more or less at full strength and still couldn't avoid some serious fade action. I really thought the bullpen would be in decent shape, and they were excellent up until the final homestand, but Hawkins did have some trouble down the stretch, though he wasn't the only one, just the one with the highest profile. The bats also fell silent in key situations. From an e-mail I sent David concerning the Cubs' Wednesday loss against the Reds:

Who would've thought that it would have been the bats going silent that would keep the Cubs out of the playoffs. I know there's been some blown saves in there, but come on, bases loaded nobody out in the 7th (yesterday) with Alou, Ramirez, and Lee coming up and you get one run?! Those blue "run-scoring play" balls from the mlb.com gameday thingy in the two run-scoring Alou PA's yesterday were extremely deceptive. Bases loaded with nobody out in the 7th and runners on the corners with no outs in the 12th (I think) and the run-scoring plays were a sac fly and a GIDP. Way to get those runs home, Moises, Jeff Kent would've been proud.

This wasn't an isolated instance of the Cubs failing to pick up ducks on the pond during this final fateful homestand. Through that Sept. 24 date, I noted that the Cubs had won their last three one-run games, all on the road, and almost mentioned something about it here. I'm glad I didn't, as the Cubs dropped five one-run contests, including three at Wrigley, during this season-ending 1-7 "run," a run fueled as much or more by a lack of timely hitting as by bullpen woes.

There's plenty to look forward to for Cubs' fans next season, but there's a lot up in the air as well. Carlos Zambrano has established himself has a bona fide ace and workhorse with his performance this year. I think we finally saw the real Mark Prior in his last few starts this season, so it seems a fair bet that we'll be treated next year to the Prior who showed up in these last few weeks and Aug.-Oct. of 2002. Glendon Rusch could make things interesting regarding the status of Matt Clement, who's eligible for free agency. Kyle Farnsworth quietly strung together several solid appearances after returning from the aftermath of his karate lesson with a clubhouse fan before finally getting tagged with a loss in his most recent appearance. And the 3B problem that has plagued the Cubs for decades finally seems under control with Aramis Ramirez manning the position.

The uncertainties are numerous as well, however. It seems almost certain that neither Moises Alou nor Nomar Garciaparra will be back next year. There have even been whispers that Sammy Sosa might be traded. That's a lot of thunder in the lineup that would need replacing. The closer situation is a bit unsettled. LaTroy Hawkins was great for two weeks after the postponed series in Florida, but this final week and a half have been trouble for him. Will Joe Borowski return and move Hawkins back to his more comfortable setup role? Will next year finally be the year that Farnsworth comes into his seeming birthright of being a 40-save guy? Is Ryan Dempster in the mix for a closing role, or barring that, a shot at the rotation? Can the Cubs get Corey Patterson to run a little less hot and cold than he did in August and September this year? Tune in next year.

posted by Tom Renbarger 1:48 PM

Thursday, September 30, 2004

C'est Tout

I tuned into watch the Expos-Marlins games last night with a sort of car-wreck curiosity about how the fans would react. I thought I would be able to be detached, but this is one car-wreck I ended up witnessing from the back seat. My wife, another veteran of Le Grande O, thought there would be no on-field incidents because of the inherent politeness of Canadians. I pointed out the history of the perpetual-minority of the Quebecois might counter-act the tendency to be civilized with one final protest act. As it turned out, there was one incident with a golf-ball thrown on the field, a little debris here and there, but with only a dozen or so on-field security present nothing at all like the farewell Senators riot of 1971.

Instead the fans cried, and the club actually had the temerity to have a farewell ceremony on the field. It ended up with all the feel of a wake, or at least a funeral service. The difference, of course, is that the officiants at this funeral murdered the deceased, took his estate, and then thanked the rightful heirs for their cooperation.

I teared up when I thought that this indeed was really the end. No more smoked meat sandwiches, poutine, mais souffle, and Labatts with all the alcohol. No more hiding from Youppi! when he/she/it inevitably came trolloping by. No more talking baseball in English to the fan on one side and in French to the fan on the other. No more of the nicest ushers in organized baseball. No more wiling away the hour before the game at the botanical garden across the street, or taking the metro downtown for a nice dinner afterwards.

What's far worse is all the baseball memories that are bound to fade. Tales of Le Grand Orange, Andre, Rock, Gary, or Lar-ry Wal-kerrrr will not be passed down in the stands by one generation to the next. The team will fade and become a footnote, and with it the real living history of the club -- the fans' continuous experience -- will die off. Much has been written elsewhere about the disgraceful manner in which baseball was killed, but all too many of these stories continue to blame the fans of Montreal. The fans were there when the team won, the fans were there when the team lost but had hope. When it was run into the ground, then sold to out of towners, and the ownership and major league management kept telling Montrealers how worthless they were, the esprit, the elan, l'amour de jeu got squashed out, and everytime baseball jumped up and down on the corpse more remnants of life were stomped out until nothing was left.

Yet over 30,000 fans came to the wake, a record for the last day of a "dead" franchise by far. Those core fans will suffer the indignity of seeing their collective stream of baseball consciousness fade out. That's the one thing that unites us as fans, and the thing that binds a local community to baseball. MLB hasn't just taken a franchise out of Montreal; they've taken the baseball out of a community of fans. The community of fans that made Montreal the most successful minor league city of the first half of the twentieth century, the community of fans that was the first to welcome Jackie Robinson in 1946, the community of fans that embraced the sport in a unique way that will now be lost to baseball forever.

I went to one game at Jarry Park and dozens at Stade Olympique over the years. I have many great memories of the place despite its celebrated deficiencies as a playing field. The one series that sticks out the most in memory is the three-game set against the Pittsburgh Pirates in June, 1990, over St. Jean Baptiste day weekend. This is the national holiday in Quebec, and the city was in its usual festive mood for the occasion. But the Expos-Pirates showdown was the focus of the town's talk. The Expos were playing great, and entered the series two and a half behind the Buccos. We went to all three games, and all three games were sold out. The Expos played tight baseball, staged a come from behind win, won one game in extra innings, and on Sunday capped it all off by sweeping the Pirates and moving into first place. It was electric; it was unifying. It was everything a sports franchise is often fancifully imagined to be for a community. It was real.

Montreal was not a small market. It's a big market. Montrealers did not abandon their team. They supported it during the vast majority of its years in the town, even suffering through two of the worst ballparks ever played in (Jarry Park had the field of a 1940s minor league class B ballpark; there was a swimming pool in right field -- not like Bank One Ballpark, though -- it was the municipal swimming pool!) If nothing else, fans in other cities should take this cautionary tale: if it can happen to Montreal fans, it can happen to you.

I'll mourn and move on. The Expos weren't even my "main" team; they were New England's second team, and I am pretty sure the Red Sox are staying put. But I'll be leaving behind many friends in Montreal, and for them I know no words that will make this any better. I know many new fans will be made in DC, and old Senators fans like my dad are happy today. It's a minor tragedy in the grand scheme of life.

For the Expos -- c'est tout.

posted by The Crank 8:16 AM

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

The Worst Fans in Baseball?

Twins Deserve Better Support

The Yankees, Anaheim, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego, Houston, St. Louis, Boston. That's nine of the top ten teams in attendance this year, in raw totals. (Philadelphia, with the new ballpark, is in fifth.) Sure, you say, they're all playoff contenders, of course they have good attendance. The Minnesota Twins rank 23rd in the majors, behind, among others, Detroit, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and Arizona.

If you rank the Twins' attendance by percent of capacity, it's even worse. Only 48.1% of the seats in the Metrodome were filled this year. Only three teams did worse this year, counting the Expos.

Clearly there's some kind of correlation between most of the worst parks in baseball and low attendance. The bottom of the heap is Montreal/San Juan, Tampa Bay, Toronto, and Minnesota, the four remaining astroturf fields. I will allow Twins fans to plead the evil confines of their pathetic ballpark as an excuse to stay away. But only to a point. Oakland does better than you, with a not-great park and a competitor nine miles away with a great ballpark. Anaheim drew over 3 million this year, second only to the Yankees, with a recycled ballpark. (I've been to Yankee Stadium, too, and frankly I think it's a terrible pit to watch a game.)

Twins' management has given you fans three division champions in a row, and four years in a row of pretty good teams. I know you had a drought before that, but before that you won two World's Championships in five years. Compare this to the pathetic teams in Milwaukee and Pittsburgh and Kansas City and Toronto during those years, and you should consider yourselves blessed.

It's rare that I agree with Bud Selig, but maybe Minneapolis St. Paul isn't a good baseball town. Some years ago when the Commish called for contraction of baseball from the Twin Cities, I objected, and then gloated as the Twins proved him a liar and made it to the post-season with a small payroll. But there's a point where you say, enough. Given the middle-ranking of the size of your market and your successful team, you can do better.

Yes, I'm really sorry about the Metrodome. I've been there a few times, and it's dreary. But it's not like watching good baseball in a dreary park is a chore. It should be your pride and joy.

So light a torch under it, Minneapolipaulians, and support the Twinkies a bit better -- not just during the playoffs. They've earned it. Maybe if you give the club some more revenue when it's playing well, it might actually consider dipping into its own coffers to build a ballpark the club, and you fans, deserve.

posted by The Crank 4:24 PM

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Midnight Strikes for Expos Fans

No Stay of Execution This Time - Governor Sells Tickets to the Hanging Instead of Granting a Reprieve

The cruel and unusual punishment for Expos fans will finally end on Thursday, as Major League Baseball is expected to announce the sale and removal of the franchise to Washington, D.C. The agony of stayed executions has taken the stuffing out of the remaining Expos fans -- the first "last" season was first rumoured to be 1999 -- and the expected attendance for the last series will fulfill the lowest expectations of those who have been preaching the low expectations of self-fulfilling prophecy for the franchise for the last ten years.

Just to show you that MLB has learned its lessons from the Washington Senators, they're delaying the formal announcement until after the last series at the Big O is over -- the last game is Wednesday -- to avoid a riot like the one that closed down the Senators in 1971.

There are plenty of bitter ironies in this week's franchise announcements. Commissioner Selig, the man most closely associated with killing baseball in Montreal, has been right in the center of two of the last three franchise moves and peripherally associated with the third. Contrary to the weird mythology surrounding baseball economics, MLB has been the most stable of the major sports. There have been over four dozen franchise moves by the NBA/ABA, NFL, and NHL since MLB last moved a team. That last team, of course, was the old Senators, and the team before that that was moved was the Seattle Pilots -- to Milwaukee, moved there after one Allan Selig bought them in bankruptcy court. Selig had pined for baseball in Milwaukee after the Braves were "ripped out of the heart of the community" and moved to Atlanta, although of course the Braves had previously been ripped out of Boston to be moved to Milwaukeee.

Let us think about that for a moment. When the Senators/Expos reappear, that means the last four cities to lose baseball (not counting Montreal) -- Kansas City, Milwaukee, Seattle, and Washington -- will have all gotten it back. Not that Kansas City and Milwaukee have ever been great markets in terms of size; combined they still aren't quite as big as the basic market in Montreal. Somewhere at the heart of all this moving, or non-moving, is the truth that quality of the management counts.

Speaking of the quality of management, the Brewers (64-91, last in the NL Central) are for sale, and a buyer has been named. The Selig family still owns 26% of the Brewers, and the Brewers in turn own 3.45% of the Expos right now as part of MLB's joint ownership of the club. Just to do a quick recap on the Selig legacy in Milwaukee: the team hasn't finished above .500 since 1992. In the 35 years the Seligs have owned the Brewers, they finished above .500 ten times, half of them between 1978 and 1983. Since the labor "peace" Selig brought as commissioner after the cancellation of the 1994 World Series -- which the Expos almost certainly would've been playing in had it been held -- the team's record is 699-893.

The Brewers got a $310 million windfall during that period in the form of public money for Miller Park. Of the $90 million "contributed" by ownership, 100% has been covered by sale of naming rights and new parking and concession deals.

The reported sale price of the Brewers after all this infusion of capital from the public trough is about $180 million. By contrast, the Texas Rangers, after getting a publically-financed stadium, went from a $75 million valuation to over $330 million. And the Montreal Expos, when sold back to baseball, went for a cool $120 million with no stadium, no home, and a fan base smaller than the membership of the Skull and Bones Society.

35 years after the two franchises came into being, and the Brewers, with a $400 million asset, revenue sharing more or less guaranteed, and they're worth only $60 million more than the Expos? Not quite! The Expos may be sold for $150 million or more, up to $175 million -- terms have not been disclosed by Major League Baseball -- so it's a marginal gap at best.

It's really hard to say exactly which team he's done worse by, but Selig will have the dubious record shared by few of having run two major league franchises into the ground. But he'll still make money on both deals, personally.

So here's how it works. If the Expos are sold for the purported $175 million asking price to the Washington DC-Malek group, the Brewers will take $6 million of that as co-owners of the club. If the Brewers are sold for $180 million, the Selig's family share of that will be $46 million. The $6 million will be transferred as a cash asset to the Brewers prior to the re-sale of the Brewers, so the current Brewers ownership group will benefit. So that's another $1.56 million in assets going directly to the Selig family as authorized by Commissioner Selig.

This is not like the 10,000% windfall on an out of pocket investment of $105,000 George W. Bush got when the Rangers were sold by his silent majority partners, to be sure, and may or may not be a lot to show for 35 years of work. We do not count executive compensation and profits taken out of the club by various family members over the years, of course, nor the Commissioner's salary. So relatively speaking, others have gotten a lot richer on baseball over the years than Bud Selig. It's a cheap form of grave-robbing, and the legacy will be a hollow team in Milwaukee and ghosts in Montreal.

Not quite. Baseball continues to employ as its Chief Executive Officer a gentleman who couldn't even break even, by his own testimony, in 35 years of trying to run his own business. I don't actually believe the Brewers didn't make money during Selig's ownership tenure, but that's the story they put out. What a great recommendation for promotion -- I did so badly in my middle-management job that I would like to run the whole industry, please. It's a sign of how great baseball is that it's prospered despite Selig's historically-long stint at commissioner/CEO, or maybe just an indication of how useful that anti-trust exemption really is.

The bottom line: when the Commissioner pulls the trap door on Thursday and finally kills baseball in Montreal, he'll be putting money in his own pocket. That's the only bottom line Mr. Selig has improved during his management of Montreal and Milwaukee's teams.

posted by The Crank 8:11 AM

Monday, September 27, 2004

The Death of College Baseball

Usually when the decline of college baseball is discussed, people spit chew tobacco and complain about Title IX and the money and scholarships it "stole" from men's programs. From another end of the spectrum, the nerds fire up their computers and complain about SEC overrepresentation in the CWS (yes, I have a rant about how the west coast teams get screwed, but now is not the time). Sadly, the NCAA is getting ready to put in effect new rules that will cripple college baseball as we know it.

The main thrust is that the start date of the season is going to be moved back to March 1. Some of us, the lucky ones who live in warmer places, enjoy the first pings of the season right around the Super Bowl. However, the northern schools have decided that if other teams were going to get their home schedules rolling while there was still snow on the ground, then they were going to take their ball and go home. The northern schools (with the Big Ten being the major players here), threatened to pull out of NCAA baseball and form their own league. So the NCAA bent over backwards, and it now looks like we'll be pissing away nearly a month of college baseball in the warmer regions of the country.

Other changes in the schedule - there will be a 45 day window for fall practices, you can even play games, although those games won't count. Teams will not be allowed to practice until February 1. And they'll push back the start of the CWS another week.

The fall practice window seems kind of crazy to me, what's the point of playing games if the games won't count? The winter blackout is just another concession to the northern teams. And the delay of the CWS puts addition financial burdens on schools that end in the early summer, as the baseball programs will be forced to pay for housing and feeding their teams for another week ("student-athletes" become very expensive when not actually students).

All of this is to please northern teams. There hasn't been a strong northern team since Jim Abbott was at Michigan. Some take this as strong proof that college baseball is seriously unbalanced. On the other hand, let's look at a history of the frozen four. See any Sunbelt teams in there? How about we change the rules to make things easier for the Southern and Western schools? Seems to me that some sports by their nature are regional sports. Weakening a sport where it is strong to help it develop in an area where it may never work is a bad idea.

posted by David 8:53 PM