Let's Play Two!

As Ernie Banks would say.  So let's do two baseball posts today.

Just realized Albert Belle turns 60 today.  Was reminded coming across this video (below) titled "Albert Belle Was The Most Un-Hinged Baseball Player of All-Time" by sportswriter Jeff Pearlman.  While a reminder of the craziness of Albert at times (just watch his assault on second baseman Fernando Vina), the title and language are somewhat overhyped as everything seems to be in recent years.  It's worth a watch and has an unexpected and relatively happy ending.  Turns out Albert and his family are neighbors of ours in Scottsdale.

Belle was an incredible hitter.  He only played ten full seasons (1991-2000), retiring just after turning 34, but he could pound the ball.  Over those ten years he averaged per season 38 doubles, 37 home runs, 120 rbi, with a .297 batting average.  At the time he retired Albert had the 10th highest career slugging percentage in major league history.

He was capable of prolonged hot streaks, over the last 90 games of the strike-shortened 1994 season hitting .367, with a OBP of .447, while slugging .757 with 67 extra base hits and 90 rbi.  During the 1995 season, Belle had 103 XBH.  During the final 87 games of the 1998 season his splits were .389/.461/.799, including 63 XBH and 93 rbi. I remember how intimidating he could look at the plate.

As far as being the "most un-hinged" ballplayer, Albert has a lot of competition.  Take Ty Cobb for example.  In my review of Charles Leersehn's revisionist biography, Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, I noted:

As Grantland Rice, a friend and admirer, wrote years later:

When I first met Cobb I found him to be an extremely peculiar soul, brooding and bubbling with violence, combative all the way, a streak, incidentally, he never lost.    

Throughout his career, though much less after he retired, he reacted quickly to any perceived insult.  In commenting on his penchant for fighting Leerhsen writes:

. . . he provided such a dizzying array of examples to choose from - fights with complete strangers, fights with teammates, fights with rival players, fights with hotel employees, shopkeepers, and rowdy cranks [fans] . . .

The author goes on to provide an account of his behavior over a short period during the 1916 season; fighting with Buck Herzog of the Giants both on and off the field; an incident in Comiskey Park when, angered by a called third strike, he threw his bat into the stands; flinging a handful of dirt into the face of a Senators pitcher; and being pulled out of stands in St Louis by teammates and police before he could pummel a heckler.

I also quoted Bill Veeck:

"Wake up the echoes at the Hall of Fame and you will find that baseball's immortals were a rowdy and raucous group of men who would climb down off their plaques and go rampaging through Cooperstown, taking spoils, like the Third Army bustling through Germany". 

The Black Sox

I read Eliot Asinoff's Eight Men Out many years ago and enjoyed John Sayles 1988 movie based on the book.  Over the years, I've become aware of the many inaccuracies in both.  Asinoff and Sayles were both sympathetic to the plight of the eight Chicago White Sox players who threw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, becoming known as the infamous Black Sox. In their telling, Charles Comiskey, the Sox owner, was the bad guy who drove the players to take payoffs from gamblers.

Several years ago, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) published Eight Myths about the Black Sox, along with an exhaustive appendix of the significant, and not so significant, errors and omissions in the book and movie. 

To give you a flavor this is the first of the myths:

This is the central thesis of Eight Men Out: Charles Comiskey’s “ballplayers were the best and were paid as poorly as the worst,” as Eliot Asinof wrote. That couldn’t be further from the truth. We can’t climb into the heads of the Black Sox to know exactly why they threw the World Series. But the players themselves rarely claimed, as Asinof did, that it was because of Comiskey’s low salaries or poor treatment — and we now have accurate salary information to back that up. Newly available organizational contract cards at the National Baseball Hall of Fame show that the White Sox’s Opening Day payroll of $88,461 was more than $11,500 higher than that of the National League champion Reds, and several of the Black Sox players were among the highest-paid at their positions. If they did feel resentment at their salaries under the reserve-clause system, so did players from 15 other major-league teams. The scandal was much more complex than disgruntled players trying to get back at the big, bad boss. 

You can find the 8 Myths here and the detailed appendix here. 

With the proliferation of sports gambling sites and their active promotion during the broadast of sporting events I fear we will eventually have another huge scandal like the Black Sox. 

Rolling Down A River

In late December of 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, the young Frenchman who would become famous for writing Democracy in America, was on a steamboat traveling down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.  On December 27 Sam Houston and two Cherokee boarded the boat in Arkansas, soon meeting de Tocqueville, who was well aware of Houston's notoriety and recorded their conversation.

Houston is the most emblematic figure of that period in American history between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, as recounted previously, representing a constellation of beliefs that don't neatly fit into any of today's categories. The French traveler was meeting Sam at a low point in his life. In early 1829 he'd been the newly elected governor of Tennessee and was also newly married to Eliza Allen, when she suddenly left the governor's house in the middle of the night, and refusing Houston's entreaties to return.  The distraught Houston resigned and fled to the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) to join his Cherokee friends, with whom he'd already lived with for three years as a teenager.

Marrying Tiana Rogers, a Cherokee widow, Houston embarked on an epic drinking spree, earning the nickname "Big Drunk".  Tocqueville met him when Sam was part of a Cherokee lobbying delegation off to Washington DC, where Houston had served in Congress and was a friend of President Andrew Jackson who'd been his political mentor.

Tocqueville wrote of Houston, “His figure is athletic; everything about him indicates physical and moral energy,” and after writing of his downfall , “Since then, he has lived in the midst of the wilderness, half European, half savage.”  He then recorded much of their conversation in a Q&A format:

Q: Have the Indians a religion?

A: Some of them have no belief in the immortality of the soul. But generally the Indians believe in a God who punishes or rewards the deeds of this life in the other world.

Q: Have they any form of worship?

A: The Osages, who live on the frontier of Mexico, pray every morning to the rising sun. The Creeks have no worship. It is only in times of great calamity, or before undertaking some great enterprise, that they devote themselves to some public manifestations of worship.

Q: What sort of government have the Indians?

A: Generally a patriarchal government. Birth makes the chiefs. Among the tribes which contact with Europeans has made more enlightened, they are elected.

Q: What is the status of women among the Indians?

A: Complete servitude. The women have to do all the unpleasant tasks, and live in great degradation.

In response to a question about the intelligence of Indians and blacks, Houston replied, according to this History Net article:

. . . that he believed both Indians and black people were as intelligent as whites, and he suggested that freedom spawns intelligence while slavery thwarts it. “The Indian is born free; he makes use of this freedom from his first steps in life,” Houston told Tocqueville. “Surrounded by dangers, pressed by necessities, and unable to count on anyone, his mind must be ever active to find means to ward off troubles and to maintain his existence. This necessity imposed on the Indian gives his intelligence a degree of development and ingenuity which are often wonderful.” Meanwhile, Houston added, the black man’s native intelligence is crippled by slavery: “The first notions of existence which he receives make him understand that he is the property of another, that care for his own future is no concern of his, and that the very power of thought is for him a useless gift of providence.” 

As I've written elsewhere, Sam Houston was the greatest political defender of Indian rights in the pre-Civil War United States.  While he was not an abolitionist, and owning slaves, he opposed the extension of slavery, and later secession.  Sam was forced to resign as governor of Texas in 1861 when he refused to take an oath to the Confederacy, and freed his slaves when learning of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Lifes Rich Pageant

My favorite R.E.M. album, Lifes Rich Pageant(1), was released 40 years ago this summer, though my favorite song remains Driver 8 from their prior album, Fables of the Reconstruction.  The band hailed from the same place as the B-52s, Athens, Georgia.  Over its long recording career, R.E.M. had two distinct styles; songs on which you could not understand Michael Stipe's lyrics and those on which you could (Losing My Religion and Everybody Hurts are good examples of the latter).  THC much preferred the former earlier style.  R.E.M. were at their best when they featured jangling guitars,  strong melodies, and Stipe's mumbling vocals buried into the mix. I find a lot of later REM either dreary or just too much.

Burying the vocals in the mix dominated the early R.E.M. records in the 1980s.  It didn't mean that the listener couldn't make out any words in the murk.  Indeed, words and even phrases could be interpreted but there were always passages when you simply could not make out what they were saying.  And, back then, there was no internet to quickly search out the lyrics.  It also ensured that you often had no idea what the song was about, which in some cases may have been for the better.  Lifes Rich Pageant is a transitional record in which Stipe's vocals occasionally emerge above the mix.

Here's one of the best cuts from the album, These Days, and you should also listen to Fall On Me, Cuyahoga, Hyena, and Swan Swan H. 

 

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(1)  Yes, I know it should be Life's but that how it appears on the cover of the album. 

High Performance Driver Education

Came across this 2022 article from Car and Driver, "Why Attending A High Performance Driving School Is Worth It", in which their editors attended driving schools with BMW, Lexus, and Porsche and giving all the experiences a thumbs up.

It reminded me of my own experience with High Performance Driver Education (HPDE) in 2005, when my good friend and I took our Nissan 350Z's to Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, CT.  Lime Rock is a 1.5 mile long track which hosts competitive racing as well as education and training for drivers.  The track is not an oval, rather a curving, up and down cross-country path, with a 1/4 mile straight away at the end of each lap.  Except during the straight away most of the track is only two cars wide.  The Paul Newman straight is named after the actor, a Connecticut residence, who frequently raced on the track.

 

From what I can tell from the current Lime Rock website, our version of HPDE was a little looser than what is on offer now.  My friend and I had been talking about going there for a while so our wives got together and purchased seats, giving them to us for our birthdays, which were two weeks apart.  They also informed us that they had increased the amounts on our life insurance policies.

I can't remember which outfit ran the HPDE but they warned us before the training day not to count on any insurance coverage if our vehicles were damaged.  We assumed all the risk.

It was a cold, early November morning when I set out, driving my black, 2003 Z the hour to get to Lime Rock.  We started out with about an hour of classroom instruction, learning about driving the Apex and other techniques.  The instructors emphasized that our cars were capable of much more than we realized or had the opportunity to explore in our usual driving mode.  There were about 15 of us in the class, driving a variety of cars.

(2003 Nissan 350Z)

 

During the course of the day we had four driving sessions, the first 2 being twenty minutes and the last 2, twenty five.  In between each we had about an hour for more instruction or recovering from the experience.

All the cars started together.  We had an experienced driver with each of us.  We wore helmets that had speakers and mics so we could get active directions from our instructors.  My instructor was a retired bank executive who drove a Corvette with a 729hp engine when he raced.

I was instructed not to look at the dashboard, except to be aware that when my tachometer hit red I should shift.  Your entire focus was looking at what was in front of you through the windshield.  This was an experience where you can do absolutely nothing but concentrate on your single task.  You do not let your mind wander. 

Because it was cold that morning, when we started tires were pretty hard and had limited traction until we were underway for a little bit.  We started at the bottom left of the track map heading through the Big Bend.  As we got to the second turn (Lefthander) the car in front of me failed to negotiate the turn and went off the track (it was not damaged).  This was to happen a couple of other times that day. 

I was nervous during that first session.  There were cars all around me, but my instructor was quite good, calmly coaching me to slowly add pressure to the gas pedal, head towards a point at the side of a straight stretch, then tap the brake and turn the steering wheel 90 degrees to negotiate the turn.

By my third time out I was driving much faster, feeling okay going 90+ only a few feet off another car's bumper, and being sharp on my turns. Between my third and fourth sessions, my instructor asked if I would like to go out with him driving on the track.  He borrowed a Corvette from a friend (who quietly told me my instructor's car had a blown engine that cost 30K to replace).  We strapped in and took off.  Other, more experienced, drivers were on the track at the same time. 

It was like being in a rocket ship.  A few minutes in we were coming up to the West Bend, my instructor made the sharp turn to the right at the point where the track began to slope downhill so sharply that we could not see further until hitting the crest.  But right on the crest was another car which had spun three quarters around, squarely across both lanes, and not moving.  I saw the driver staring at us with his mouth and eyes wide open while at the same time I heard in my speaker my driver go "oh, shit".  The instructor managed to react quickly enough to miss the other car by inches; I still can't believe he do so. As we sped downhill we saw a Porsche that went out of control after passing the stranded car, had spun around and crashed into a fence.  Immediately, loud horns were going off and the track closed down, while the Porsche and the stranded car were towed off.  Thankfully, no one was hurt.

It was during my third session I had my best driving moment.  The most difficult section of the track for me was at the end of the long straight away (the Sam Posey Straight), where there was a sharp turn, requiring a double shift while you were among other cars on the curve. I was often missing up the turn and coordinating changing gears with using my brake pedal.  The end of Sam Posey was where you were driving the fastest on the course.  While, at the time, I never looked at my speedometer, I was later able to calculate that I hit 130-135 mph just before the curve.  Towards the end of the third session however, I was not only able to smoothly negotiate the curve, but passed another car on the inside while in the curve.  It felt exhilarating.

Towards the end of the final session, I could feel myself tiring and my concentration fading which led to making a couple of sloppy turns so I brought my car in a couple of minutes before the session ended. 

I was physically and mentally drained at the end of the day, a drove home very slowly. My car had a layer of tire particles over it.  Running my fingers over the hood you could feel and see it. My friend had to replace all his tires after the session.

It was a wonderful day.  I came away a much better driver and it made even my commute to work on the Merritt Parkway more fun.  It was also one of those rare experiences when you are totally concentrated on one thing, which I enjoyed.

I also came away with a much greater appreciation for professional race car drivers.  I'd been on the track for a total of 90 minutes during the day and came away completely exhausted.  I was not a follower of competitive race car driving and had no comprehension of the amount of physical and mental concentration needed to be maintained by race drivers for hours on end.  They are true athletes. Hats off to them.

Streaks

In Game, I pondered the recent success of the Red Sox.  I need not have been concerned as they've now lost six of their last seven games.  Observing the Sox who won 32 of 37 but who've taken 85 games to win another 33, I naturally thought of the 1916 New York Giants and took a look at the details of their season of extremes. The '16 Giants started off losing 13 of 15, then embarked on a long road trip winning their next 17.  Following a long period of post-streak mediocrity, the Giants then won a major league record 26 in a row, all on a home stand, before losing 4 of their last five.  They went 43-0 during the two streaks and 43-66 the rest of the season.  The Giants finished in 4th place with an 86-66 record.

If the Giants had merely played .500 ball apart from their two winning streaks, they'd have won the pennant.  Looking at it from the opposite perspective, apart from their season opening and ending 3-17 record, the team won 83 and only lost 49.