All-time Pitching Rotations--Vol. IV

The greatness of a pitching rotation continues to be discussed mostly in simple terms of wins and losses, despite how much more we now know.  Wins are what the game is all about--getting them however possible.  But wins are a team stat, not an individual one.  Few teams won as many games in a three year span as the Baltimore Orioles of 1969-1971.  They won a combined 118 games en route to three straight pennants and one World Series title (1970).  Much of the credit for their success has been lauded on their pitching staff, led by a young Jim Palmer.  1971 was the standout year, as all four starters reached that magical benchmark of 20 wins.  But were all those wins the result of dominant pitching, or the byproduct of a great team executing in all facets of the game?

This is a Picture of Hipster Lance Berkman

Just eating a sandwich and rockin' a deep V.

ManBearZim

Just what in the name of Bill Veeck is going on down in Florida this off-season?  It seems as if the Rays and Marlins are trying to out-zany each other.  The Marlins fired the opening shots with new technicolor uniforms, aquariums on the playing field, and an acid induced home run structure.  The Rays retaliated with DJ Kitty, and now this.  The Zim Bear:  Half Don Zimmer, half Teddy Bear, half morphine induced fever dream.  Get your own on June 29th when the Rays take on the Oakland A's (free to the first 10,000 fans), or just go ahead and do an eBay saved search now.

All-Time Pitching Rotations--Vol. III

The Big Three: A novelization by Nicholas Sparks.

The night sky was dark.  Not like coal, but dark like the undulating waves of Barry Zito's hair, cascading in folds across his laconic brow as the cool breezy Bay breezes flowed into the stadium.  The lights came on.  The crowd filed in, rapt in anxious excitement as they prepared for battle.  A hotdog to calm the nervous swishing in their bellies, an ice cold beer to numb their nerves, which were dancing a waltz through their quivering bodies.  The grass is green as freshly mowed grass, the rigid blades tickling the players' cleats like the love-hair prickles of a wanton lover...oh sugar!  This is a baseball blog, not the newest from literary laureate Nicholas Sparks.  You'll have to wait for that one.  It will be published too soon.

Our search for the greatest pitching rotation in history marches on with The Big Three from Oakland, and that other guy.  They were good, boyos.  Even better than I remembered.  But do they stack up to the best?

Through the Looking Glass

LOLcats are taking over baseball.  It started in 2010 when the Seattle Mariners had an I Can Haz Cheezburger promotional night complete with a cat bobble-head, then the Tampa Bay Rays started playing this video on the scoreboard between innings.  The slightly terrifying image you see above is DJ Kitty, the newest mascot of the Tampa Bay Rays (yes, that is a cowbell hanging from its neck).  If the O RLY owl makes his MLB debut this year, may God have mercy on us all.

R.I.P. Gary Carter

1954-2012

All-Time Pitching Rotations -- Vol. II

A trio of justifiably self-satisfied young men.

Any conversation about pitching greatness eventually comes around to the Atlanta Braves of the 1990s.  Most of the time, the conversation both begins and ends there.  Growing up in Atlanta during this period, despite being a Cubs fan, I had the supreme pleasure of watching these guys pitch an awful lot.  The summers were great for a baseball fan down here: watch the Cubs flounder lovingly at 2:20ET, dirty the side of the house with tennis ball-shaped red clay splotches, watch the Braves play beautifully at 7:10ET.  Why in the hell did I not shift my allegiance, especially with no actual ties to the city of Chicago?  That's an answer for another day, but surely, in part, because I was a fool.  Although my Cubs fanship will one day pay huge dividends.  Besides, failure is all a part of it, and the Cubs have only failed for twenty-three years that have mattered to me personally.  Back on topic...the Atlanta Braves were great.  They should have won more World Series Championships, and they earned more than the five pennants they won.  But did they have the best rotation of all time?

33 Reasons to be Excited for the 2012 Season

These guys are excited. Are you?

The long wait is nearly over.  Pitchers and catchers report in less than a week, marking the beginning of the baseball new year.  Here are 33 reasons why we here at Crum-Bum Beat are excited about the 2012 season.

All-time Pitching Rotations -- Vol. I

Dominant...as advertised.

I will be embarking on a leisurely exploration of the greatest pitching rotations in baseball history, operating from memory and stories told and bold claims made.  This will not be a perfect, or even comprehensive study, as I don't have the patience or knowledge or time to delve into the multitude of pitching statistics at my disposal.  Nor do I understand all of them yet.  And while baseball is a passion, it is not my only one, nor am I fortunate enough to make a living delving into all of baseball's intracacies.  Plus, the lady in my life, while tolerant of my baseball obsession, can only excuse my incessant baseball meanderings to a certain point.  And keeping her happy takes precedence over any baseball analysis I intend to indulge.  So excuse the holes that surely exist in my findings, and feel free to fill them as you see fit.  This is, after all, just for fun.  So let's us get on with, do it please ya.

This is a Picture of Pete Rose

Notice how much hairier his right arm is.

Rickey-isms

Rickey Henderson was a hell of a ballplayer, a once in a lifetime talent that demanded your undivided attention any time he was on the field.  Bill James was quoted as saying, "If you could split him [Henderson] in two, you'd have two Hall of Famers," and his career 114 WAR comes close to backing up that claim.  During his peak, he stole bases at a dizzying pace, three times notching triple digit steals in a single season.  The game today is certainly different than it was twenty years ago, but consider that this year's stolen base leader was Michael Bourn with 61 steals, Rickey bested that number ten times in his career (with one of those times occurring in his age 39 season!).  It is a pretty safe bet to consider Rickey's career stolen base total of 1,406 an unbreakable record, right up there with Cal's consecutive games, Cy's career wins and DiMaggio's streak.  Granted, the effectiveness of stolen bases as sound baseball strategy has been diminished a bit by the sabermetric movement, but Rickey was not a one-trick pony; he could hit for power (297 career home runs), get on base (.401 career OBP), and field his position as well. 

It wasn't just his on-field talents that made Rickey one of the most memorable players in baseball history, though.  Rickey knew that part of his job was to be an entertainer.  He would pimp home runs, snatch fly balls out of the air with a flick of his glove, and provide reporters and fans endless fodder with stories of Rickey being Rickey.  It was said that before every game he would stand naked in front of a full length mirror and say to himself "Rickey's the best," for several minutes, he would take a stretch limo to games where the ballpark was less than a mile away from the team hotel, he would check into hotels under assumed names to avoid the press, he frequently forgot the names of his coaches, managers, and GM's, he once had to miss three games in August due to frostbite after falling asleep on an ice pack, he played two seasons of Independent League ball after no major league teams would sign him, and the tales go on and on. 

Rickey was also one of baseball's greatest wordsmiths, on par with Casey Stengel and Yogi Berra.  So, follow me after the jump for some of Rickey's most quotable quotations. 

Of the Times...

Oriole Park at Camden Yards by Max Mason

The scene is instant, whole and wonderful.  In its beauty and design that vision of the soaring stands, the pattern of forty thousand empetalled faces, the velvet and unalterable geometry of the playing field, and the small lean figures of the players, set there, lonely, tense and waiting in their places, bright, desperate solitary atoms encircled by that huge wall of nameless faces, is incredible.  And more than anything it is the light, the miracle of light and shade and color--the crisp blue light that swiftly slants out from the soaring stands and, deepening to violet, begins to march across the velvet field and towards the pitcher's box, that gives the thing its single and incomparable beauty.
     The batter stands swinging his bat and grimly waiting at the plate, crouched, tense, the catcher, crouched, the umpire, bent, hands clasped behind his back, and peering forward.  All of them are set now in the cold blue of that slanting shadow, except the pitcher who stands out there all alone, calm, desperate, and forsaken in his isolation, with the gold-red swiftly fading light upon him, his figure legible with all the resolution, despair and lonely dignity which that slanting, somehow fatal light can give him.
                                                                                           --Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River

It has been said that baseball is who we were, and football is who we've become.  But who has ever written about football as beautifully as Thomas Wolfe does above?  Baseball will undoubtedly live longer.  At the very least on the green fields in our minds.  

Line-Up for Tomorrow

It's still winter, though we are almost there.  To pass the time, I say let's read some poetry.  Why the hell not?  Come along, if it please ya...

Found!: the Dutch Stache

In our continuing coverage of Derek Holland's mustache; it appears to have been stolen by actor Michael Cera.  This is certainly a big story, and rest assured, we here at Crum-Bum beat have our best guys on it.  More on this as it develops.