Ranking MLB Stadiums, Part 1

Posted 8 February 2010 by Jonah
Categories: Stadium Series
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Chris Jaffe, an excellent writer for The Hardball Times and one of two Jaffes at the top of my recommended baseball reading list, has penned a fun feature ranking his favorite baseball stadiums. It’s such a good idea, I had to nick it for myself.

One advantage I have over Chris (and even the biggest baseball nerds) is a history of baseball road trips. The mid-to-late 90s were a blur of frantic 400-mile drives, TripTiks, ballpark beverages and pitcher heckling. Those trips enabled live baseball viewing in every major league market but one (that white whale will be revealed shortly).

Start by reading Mr. Jaffe’s piece, and feel free to consult the fine series done by ESPN.com’s Page 2 a few years ago as well.

Then move onto Part 1 of this seven-part series reviewing the 34 MLB stadiums — both past and present — that I’ve attended for a major league game. Note the eight criteria considered in stadium rankings. In no particular order:

Food
Location/Views
Seating
Architecture
Fan Support/Noise
General Atmosphere
Value
Bonus Features

One final note: Though I’ve been to a bunch of parks as a member of the working press, those trips weren’t factored into the rankings. These were all tickets bought on my own dime, with a lot more obnoxious behavior than any press box would allow.

34 Candlestick Park (San Francisco): The only redeeming quality found upon my visit to the Stick in 1994 was Deion Sanders playing in the game for the opposing Cincinnati Reds — I’m not ashamed to admit I owned a Deion baseball/football poster in my youth. Prime Time aside, we were treated to lousy weather (windy and chilly even in the middle of summer due to the stadium’s location on wind-blown Candlestick Point), a dead crowd and drab overall atmosphere, and football-in-mind seats that defined multi-use stadiums in those days and made sitting anywhere down the baselines a battle for worst neck cramps. There are a few other highly forgettable stadiums on this list, but the Stick gets the honor of last-place for being an abysmal place to watch a game in what’s otherwise a fantastic city — one that’s since built one of the best venues in all of North American sports, no less.

33 Exhibition Stadium (Toronto): Saw two games at the Jays’ old park before the opening of Rogers Centre. The second time, I was about 10 years old, and went with my dad. We had decent seats, in the infield. Yet even in the better seats, we were forced to sit on metal football-style bleachers rather than proper chairs with backs. This wouldn’t have been too bad, if not for the fact that it was pushing 35 degrees that day (that’s 95, for you Yanks), with a relentless sun beating down from a cloudless sky. Funny story: Turns out metal conducts heat really, really well. We Keri men are a pale, blue-eyed, light-haired bunch, which made sitting there exposed to the elements even more painful. And just to make the day that much more unpleasant, the Jays fell behind something like 13-3 by the 3rd inning of this afternoon game — against the lowly Indians no less. I probably left maybe three baseball games early, out of many, many hundreds, before my 30th birthday. This was one of them.

The only thing preventing me from ranking Exhibition Stadium last, given the park’s concessions were dreadful, seating configuration ridiculous and atmosphere funereal, was its unique location. If you were willing to brave the icy, lake-side evening temperatures, you could spend the day adjacent Exhibition Place riding roller coasters and strolling the midway, then hop over for a Jays nightcap. Pretty sweet.

32 RFK Stadium (Washington): When we hit RFK in 2007, the last year of the park’s existence as the Washington Nationals’ home field, I expected a rickety, old stadium unfit for baseball. That’s exactly what we got. Throw in that DC was the city that poached my beloved Expos, and you’d expect a ranking of 149th out of the 34 stadiums listed.

The reality wasn’t nearly that bad, though. Blessed with the compact architecture that defines many old stadiums, our upper-deck seats behind home plate were pretty damn good for the price. The game we saw wasn’t heavily attended, but fans seemed genuinely enthusiastic about baseball, even in the Nats’ third season of futility. My favorite part of the trip was probably the Metro connection. This was as close as I’d ever come to childhood memories of exiting Pie-IX station to see the Expos play at the Big O.

31 Riverfront Stadium (Cincinnati): Your basic, multi-use, cookie-cutter stadium, but it trails some other, similar parks for its lack of rabid fans (St. Louis) and its inferior waterfront location (the Ohio River is more pleasant when crossed with two others in Pittsburgh, for some reason). Food was lame, configuration stunk, crowd noise didn’t travel well, etc.

But the worst part, by far, was our encounter with stadium security. We visited Cincinnati the weekend of June 14-16, 1996. How do I remember the dates so clearly? First, June 16 was my buddy Andrew’s 22nd birthday, so we were psyched to hit the town, get hammered, then see the Expos battle the Reds. The Spos took the first two games of the series, much to our delight. On the Saturday night, we all went out drinking. This was our core group of Expos lunatics, the same guys who’d been going to games together at the Big O for years. With one exception: One of my buddies dropped out at the last minute. Since we’d already bought all the game tickets for our multi-city trip and booked hotels, we needed a replacement. So my friend Brian invited his roommate Mark.

The new guy seemed pleasant enough. As we wound our way down from Canada, he even told us of a 60 Minutes special he’d watched on a special drink. Really, what’s it called, we asked. Jagermeister, Mark said, beaming. Jagermeister either not being a big drink choice in Montreal, or just generally off our radar, none of us had tried it, so we figured we’d give it a shot. We go out, hit multiple bars, end up in this packed place. We start ordering beers. My buddy Elan, the engineer with the gut of steel, then starts buying rounds of tequila shots, because the man likes his tequila. This was already getting out of hand – we’re all plastered by now. Then Mark chimes in: Guys, we should try Jagermeister now! Ummm…sure! What the hell, our collective judgment was fried at this point.

In retrospect, we should have realized that when a product gets profiled on 60 Minutes, that’s probably not a good sign. Indeed, Jagermeister turned out to be…not the best choice. We all got violently ill, to the extent that my then-girlfriend (now very forgiving wife) had to call security to break down the doors to two of our group’s rooms and make sure people didn’t asphyxiate. It took 10 years before I could even hear the word Jagermeister and not want to toss my cookies.

The next morning, everyone was recovered, except for myself and the birthday boy. I was, let’s say, still refunding. Andrew, meanwhile, was completely passed out. While I waited in the hotel lobby with my dead weight friend, the rest of the group made a late-morning Burger King run (ugh), plus one other stop: They’d gone to a local store and bought a bunch of brooms and mops, anticipating a possible Expos sweep. I could nearly see the face of death by this point, but had to admit the broom-and-mop run was inspired.

We get to the game, hand our tickets over to the ticket-takers — and are quickly told we can’t bring brooms and mops into the ballpark. We begged and pleaded, told them our friend Andrew was in a vegetative state, and these household cleaning implements were the only way we could see a flicker of life in his motionless body. No dice. They took away our brooms and mops. And the Expos got blasted, 7-0.

Screw you, Riverfront Stadium.

Cross-posted at Rotosynthesis

Comments: 3 Comments

I Wouldn’t Have Noticed Either

Posted 4 February 2010 by Jonah
Categories: Random commentary
Tags: , , ,

…that Joshua Bell, perhaps the world’s greatest classical violinist, was playing three feet away from me. Read this awesome, three-year-old Washington Post article and you’ll understand what I mean. It’s an amazing experiment in social psychology and how the world works.

Hopefully, despite my lack of an ear of classical music and general obliviousness, I’ll appreciate the music when Bell performs tonight at the Portsmouth Music Hall.

Comments: 1 Comment

Try Harder

Posted 2 February 2010 by Jonah
Categories: Random commentary
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Over the past few months, I’ve half-jokingly told anyone who’ll listen – friends, acquaintances, house pets – that writing a book is a terrible idea, and that no one should ever do it.

There are obviously fun elements to writing a book. I particularly enjoyed the reporting, traveling from city to city and talking to people inside and outside baseball, tracking down subjects’ friends and family members to add the little details that will hopefully paint a more vivid picture for readers. The writing can be fun in its own way, writing and rewriting paragraphs, phrases, even single words, until you find the bon mot that brightens up your day. Exchanging ideas with fellow writers, brainstorming over titles, planning exotic, if impossible, book tour stops in one’s mind (hello Budapest!) – all of these are great parts of the process.

As with everything in life, though, it’s tough to understand opportunity cost until you see what you’re missing whiz by. There’s no way to sugarcoat the big things: Spahn and Sain turn 4 months old tomorrow, and I haven’t held them nearly as much as I’d like. Wife time, sadly, must also defer to The Book. There are times when I want to chuck my computer out a window, go sit in the babies’ room with Dr. F, and just watch the future co-presidents of the Independent Republic of Live Free Or Die sleep for a few hours. Actually, this happens a lot.

What really sneaks up on you, though, are the little things. I miss watching Jon Stewart belittle Democrats for having no spine, and Republicans for having no policies, other than “no.” I miss thrice-weekly pickup hoops games. A full night’s sleep is almost too luxurious to imagine.

What’s bugging me lately is the lack of time to read. I’ve been stuck on one book for about five months now, reeling off two or three pages a day, tops, due to lack of free time. Fortunately, this book is so good that even these short bursts of reading are enough to jolt me out of any bouts of lame self-pity.

The Catcher Was A Spy by Nicholas Dawidoff is a funny, tragic, eye-opening, meticulously-researched gem. I can’t imagine how long Dawidoff spent poring over old letters Berg wrote and stories Berg told, how much effort he expended verifying little things like how fluent Berg really was in Italian, which pitchers liked throwing to him, and which teammates found him aloof. Several years, certainly, not just in raw time but with intense commitment and precision. A reader might decide he’s not that into tales of espionage; another might tire of tales of a .220-hitting catcher and his decidedly uneventful on-field career. But no one will throw this book down in disgust, upset over a lack of detail or the author’s failure to fact-check. Dawidoff has invested far too much of himself in this book for that to happen.

One of the first pieces of advice I got in the book writing process was to tell stories. Vivid stories, stuff that stays with you long after you’ve shoved a book onto your bookshelf and forgotten about it, or lent it to a friend knowing you’ll probably never see it again.

When you think of Moneyball, for instance, what comes to mind? The general theme of exploiting market inefficiencies in baseball, or the image of Billy Beane chucking a chair at a wall in the draft room? Michael Lewis would probably hope your answer is, “both.” When you’re writing a book, especially a work of non-fiction, you certainly want some kind of thesis, a coherent theme that carries you from beginning to end. But without colorful studies, many readers (myself included) will bog down by page 25. Unless you’re writing a textbook, it’s imperative for the writer to dig and dig and dig until he’s found the little nuggets that make you want to keep reading. When I talk to other writers, they often say that’s what keeps them going. It sounds so simple, but they want to write the stories that people want to read.

The privilege of being chosen to write a book, much less getting paid to do so, is awesome, in every sense of the word. I’m still amazed that a publisher has placed its trust in me to produce 90,000 words that will make people want to spend their hard-earned money to read them. When it’s 3 a.m. and you’re struggling to remember if “Naimoli” has two i’s or seven, you imagine the people you can’t let down by mailing in a paragraph or failing to triple-check a tiny factoid. You hope that you’ve got enough chair-throwing stories to liven and leaven discussion of Ultimate Zone Rating and keep the reader interested.

Even though the subject matter is vastly different, I go to bed after a full day’s writing hoping I can approach what Dawidoff did with his tale of Moe Berg, the light-hitting catcher who became a spook. Like this tidbit on major league players’ 1934 good-will tour of Japan:

Babe Ruth had been in a malaise when he left the United States. Thirty-nine years old, with a body he’d lived in hard, the Bambino hoped to retire and manage a major league team, but none wanted him. Japan perked him up. Ruth arrived to find himself everywhere: on the cover of the program sold at ballparks; in newspaper headlines — “Babe Ruth, Sultan of Swat, Arrives,” bannered the Osaka Mainichi; and in milk chocolate advertisements. Everybody wanted to see him and fete him, and so the Americans were rushed from appointment to appointment — to welcoming ceremonies in which players and politicians exchanged messages of friendship, to garden parties, teas, luncheons with royalty, and dinner dances, and to private tours of department stores, castles, Buddhist temples, and, inevitably, a geisha house. At the last, the subtleties of young women attired in layers of silken costume, shuffling across a room to perform ancient ritual ceremonies, were lost on Ruth. He pawed at one increasingly flustered woman every time she passed. Watching nearby, Berg wrote down some characters in katakana and handed them to Ruth’s victim. The next time she felt a large hand groping beneath her carefully tied obi, she paused, bowed, smiled sweetly, and said, “Fuck you, Babe Ruth.” That, Ruth understood.”

“Fuck you, Babe Ruth.” If that doesn’t inspire a reader to smile, or a writer to try harder, nothing will.

Comments: 3 Comments

Le Voltigeur de Centre, Center Fielder…Andreeeee Dawson!

Posted 27 January 2010 by Jonah
Categories: Random commentary
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See you in Cooperstown!

Comments: 1 Comment

It Should Get Better, But It Won’t

Posted 16 January 2010 by Jonah
Categories: Random commentary
Tags: , , , , , ,

Cross-posted at Huffington Post

Rob Neyer writes this morning about a relatively obscure player named Dallas McPherson, and the roster challenges that conspire to keep McPherson out of a major league job.

With the A’s acquiring Kevin Kouzmanoff to play third base yesterday, Oakland likely no longer has room to carry McPherson, a Ken Phelps All-Star (woo, Jeff Bower links!) with a .280/.360/.635 line at Triple-A who’s never gotten a clean shot at an everyday job in the majors. Much of that failure to land a job has to do with the holes in McPherson’s game, namely his shaky defense and inability to stay healthy, to say nothing of some teams’ biases against high-strikeout hitters and their excessive reliance on small sample sizes to make roster decisions.

But the bigger reason, as Rob notes, is the current size of big league rosters, 25.

Thanks to the dozen-man pitching staffs that we all love so much, teams resort to platoons only as a last resort. You’ve got your 12 pitchers, your nine guys in the lineup, and your extra catcher, and now you’ve got room for only three more players. You also need a utility infielder and a fourth outfielder … and now you’re down to one roster spot.

Rob, like me, wishes teams deployed more platoons. It isn’t just nerds like us who obsess over Rob Neyer Baseball (Rob is clearly a superior nerd, having an actual game — a really good one too — named after him) that want to see platoons make a comeback. Great managerial tacticians like Earl Weaver regularly deployed platoons, be they straight righty-lefty platoons like Gary Roenicke and John Lowenstein or offense-defense time-splits like the kind Weaver executed with uberfielder Mark Belanger and whatever other shortstop Weaver had on the roster who could hit better than .250. (If you’ve never read the classic book Weaver On Strategy…what’s wrong with you? Go buy it now). Even today, you’ve got a manager like Bobby Cox, who once deployed platoons all over the diamond (who can forget the beauty combo of Garth Iorg and Rance Mulliniks?) and now rarely get such chances due to the glut of pitchers with today’s LaRussa-fied rosters.

Still, there’s hope. The current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires December 11, 2011. MLB and the players union are enjoying one of their most peaceful periods in decades, making a 2012 labor stoppage look unlikely at this point. But there were will be negotiations, and concessions, as there always are. Expect a slight tweak to revenue sharing here (but no real effort to account for market size, i.e. by opening the possibility of a third or even fourth team in New York), a minor adjustment to PED policy there (with no corresponding move to acknowledge the hypocrisy and inconsistency of current measures against certain players and not others).

In an effort to throw the union a bone during these talks, it’s not hard to imagine MLB offering a 26th roster spot for the 2012 season. The popularity of that potential offer among union members could be up for debate, since most current major leaguers aren’t at immediate risk of falling out of the majors, and even those who are at risk might not want to admit it. Still, some union support for another $450,000 salary, combined with a broader push from GMs, managers and others in the game, could realistically make this a reality two seasons from now. Probably too late for our friend Mr. McPherson. But soon enough to offer hope to the current generation of minor league Rob Deer and Mark Belanger clones seeking a shot at a steady big league job, right?

Well…maybe. The question is, what would major league managers do with a 26th roster spot? To make a ridiculously off-topic, yet somehow on-topic comparison, the book Half The Sky studies the harsh plight of women and girls in a variety of third-world countries. Rather than fixate on hollow hopes and promises for gender equality, the book’s authors look at what happens when female household leaders take charge of their family’s finances. Outcomes improve dramatically, with more money devoted to pursuits such as education. Conversely, funneling foreign aid to governments results in increased corruption and little help for those in need. Even getting funds into the hands of male household leaders often creates deleterious effects, with the money going to alcohol and other pursuits that do little to help the rest of the family.

Handing a 26th roster spot to today’s managers would likely yield similarly disappointing results. The runaway specialization of bullpens, driven by baseball’s obsession with the closer rule as much as true righty-lefty match-up considerations, has given us the 12-man (and occasionally 13-man) pitching staffs that are tying managers’ hands in late-game situations, exacerbating situations when position players suffer day-to-day injuries, and stiffing very capable, but somewhat flawed players out of major league jobs. Give a manager another spot to work with, and he’ll likely add that eighth or ninth reliever, as hard to resist and bad for their survival as that next bottle of booze.

If we want a return to greater roster flexibility, better player usage and more optimal late-inning match-ups, we’ll need GMs with the will to push for 11-man pitching staff limits. We’ll need managers with the confidence and self-confidence to eschew the strict closer usage that puts the wrong pitchers in the wrong spots and often limits the best arms to low-leverage situations. We’ll need a new generation of capable, multi-inning relievers, able to fill the true firemen roles that Joe Page, Goose Gossage, and even Pedro Martinez, once occupied.

Otherwise, we might as well clone Tony Fossas 30 times and be done with it.

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Media: MLB.com at Noon ET

Posted 15 January 2010 by Jonah
Categories: Random commentary
Tags: , , , ,

I’ve fallen out of the habit of posting media hits on the blog due to…laziness? Twins? War and Peace-length book?

Here’s a fun one, though: Noah Coslov (@mlbCoz on Twitter) hosts a live, two-hour show that streams on the main page of MLB.com every day. I’ll be calling in for 10 minutes, starting at Noon ET, to talk to Noah and former relief set-up man deluxe Jeff Nelson. Expect discussion of Mark McGwire, the Hot Stove, the Tampa Bay Rays, and more. Just head to MLB.com and check it out (it’s an excellent show with great guests by the way, and I encourage you to check it out daily).

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Mark McGwire Something Something Self-Righteous Media

Posted 11 January 2010 by Jonah
Categories: Random commentary
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UPDATE: Thanks to the guys at SurvivingGrady.com for unearthing this oh-so-topical clip, which doubles as possibly the greatest sports commercial ever made.

Comments: 5 Comments

A Former Season-Ticket Holder’s Take On Pete Carroll and USC

Posted 9 January 2010 by Jonah
Categories: Random commentary
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Cross-posted at Huffington Post Sports

Over at Yahoo, Matt Hinton has a solid, brief review of the Pete Carroll era at USC, and the implications of Carroll’s pending move to the Seahawks to take over operational control of that team.

My review of Pete Carroll can be summed up in 10 words: He’s the reason I care at all about college football.

Back in 1999, the esteemed Dr. F and I were living in a one-bedroom apartment in Washington, DC, just trying to find our way. She was working at NIH as a prelude to grad school, while I was covering commercial real estate for Washington Business Journal – after a one-year stint covering community news in Reston, Virginia, with a starting salary of $17,000.

While she applied to grad schools, we discussed the pluses and minuses of every application. The University of Minnesota offered one of the best psychology programs in the country, but the Twin Cities area also promised punishing winter months, something neither of us wanted. Case Western offered a rich academic tradition, but it was also in Cleveland. On down the list we went, until she ticked off USC. Hmmm. Great city, perfect weather year-round, highly-regarded Masters/PhD program, plus something I hadn’t much considered until that point: Going to Trojans football games could be a blast.

College football was off our radar at the time, mostly because we’d never been properly exposed to it. Dr. F attended an East Coast liberal arts college, while I did my undergrad in Canada. Neither school offered much in the way of college football tradition or excitement. Now here was a chance to file into a huge stadium every Saturday, to take in all the sights and sounds that make for a big-time college football atmosphere. In the end, she chose SC for reasons that had nothing to do with what would transpire in the Coliseum. But I went along with her choice, and our move, in part for the chance to experience everything that power-conference college football (and college basketball) had to offer.

I’ll never forget our first game at the Coliseum. Home opener of the 1999 season against San Diego State. We parked on the north side of campus, then made the long trek south toward the stadium. It was a zoo. Tents and chairs everywhere, people eating and drinking, tossing footballs around, just so happy to be there. The lineup to get into the stadium seemed to stretch forever. When we finally got through the turnstiles, about 20 minutes remained before kickoff. We bottlenecked into one of the ancient tunnels leading into the stands. We were all packed in like sardines, sweaty and impatient. But it was euphoric. Chants of “Go SC!” rang out, as everyone started shouting louder and louder.

When we finally squeezed out of the tunnel, the view took your breath away: A giant, cavernous stadium, already jam-packed with fans, a sea of cardinal and gold all around. The vast Trojan marching band had launched into one of their trademark songs, getting everyone fired up. Strolling the sidelines was Traveler, a majestic white horse who’d run right past the student section after every Trojans touchdown. Riding Traveler was a guy dressed in a gaudy Trojans get-up, holding a sword aloft and exhorting the crowd. I’d been to packed baseball parks, NHL playoff games and plenty of other crowded, public events. This dwarfed them all.

I don’t remember many details from that game, other than that the Trojans won, and we had a blast. The kicker was the location of our seats. Since Dr. F was a grad student, both she and a spouse were entitled to tickets in the student section for every sport. For football games, that meant seats on the 30-yard-line, or near midfield if you showed up really early. For basketball games, you’d get to sit either under the basket or just a few rows up from the foul line in. Cost of tickets: $90 – for every game, every sport, for an entire year, with primo seats each time.

The football in those days was, to be blunt, pretty bad. SC went just 6-6 in our first year there, despite playing several cream puff opponents. The next season was even worse. Under bumbling coach Paul Hackett, the Trojans limped to a 5-7 record. It was worse than that. SC wasn’t just losing, they were embarrassing themselves. Never much of a football fan, Dr. F quickly picked up the nuances of the game during our trips to the Coliseum. She was all too quick to notice one infuriating feature of the Paul Hackett Era: Horrendous special teams. It’s one thing if your team has trouble moving the ball on offense, or gradually breaks down against a punishing running game on defense. But in a sense, you’re naked out there on special teams. When SC’s punter would shank a 22-yard wobbler, the kicker would miss 26-yard, chip shot field goals, or the coverage team would yield an 86-yard punt return for a touchdown, you know this team lacked talent, and more, that they were poorly coached and poorly prepared.

Still, we kept going to games for the pageantry. Win or lose, the Trojan Marching Band and the Song Girls were always a blast. We quickly picked up all the uniquely SC call-and-response cues of every song.

“Heartbreaker” by Pat Benatar

Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” … “U-C-L-A…SUCKS!”

“Conquest”

“Spirit of Troy”

Still, something was missing. Losing started to get old, free time was becoming more scarce, and we were nearing the point where we’d be happy hitting the home opener and the annual Notre Dame or UCLA rivalry game, then leaving it at that.

That is, until Pete Carroll arrived. What happened next is well known to even casual college football followers: seven consecutive 11-win seasons and top-five finishes in the final polls, two national championships, six BCS bowl wins in seven tries, and three Heismans.

But it’s the individual moments of glory that stick with you.

Those big games down the stretch in the breakthrough 2002 season, when signs pushing Carson Palmer for Heisman started popping up everywhere on campus and in the Coliseum. The Trojans hadn’t had a quarterback that good, and that dynamic, in years. When the team marched into the Orange Bowl and demolished #3 Iowa 38-17, you knew this was a program built for success, and built to last.

The 2003 season was even more memorable. Matt Leinart took over at quarterback, paired with big, unstoppable wide receiver Mike Williams. It’s crazy to think about now, given how poorly their pro careers have gone. But any time Leinart had time to throw, he was going to complete any pass he wanted to Williams, and there wasn’t a damn thing the defense could do about it. Far from the fastest player on the field, Williams a gigantic target who toyed with Pac-10 defensive backs. Jams at the line of scrimmage didn’t bother him. Double-coverage didn’t bother him. Cheap shots after the play didn’t bother him. The school was made its reputation as Tailback U, churning out Heisman winners in Mike Garrett, Charles White, Marcus Allen, and yes, O.J. Simpson, now boasted one of the most potential aerial attacks in the country. SC went on to win the Rose Bowl that season, beating Michigan, 28–14 and earning the top ranking in the AP Poll and a share of the national championship with BCS champion LSU. Most people remember the controversy that erupted, as the BCS, as usual, failed to resolve a situation that cried out for a playoff.

But what I remember was the Rose Bowl itself. As great as the atmosphere and the Coliseum could be – and by this point it was selling out 90,000 seats, or close to it, every game – the Rose Bowl was the most perfect setting I’d ever seen for a sporting event. The stadium sat in an impossibly beautiful location, tucked into the heart of Pasadena, within spitting distance of million-dollar homes, with an incredible view of the beaming sun setting behind the mountains in the distance. That game also featured, as Dr. F the psychologist later called it, “the scariest activation of the sympathetic nervous system” she’d ever seen. That’s fancy talk for “going completely bonkers”. The Trojans jumped out to a 21-0 lead, as vastly underrated #2 receiver Keary Colbert overshadowed Williams by hauling in two Leinart touchdown strikes. After Michigan cut the lead to 21-7, SC dipped into their bag of tricks. Looking to get the ball to Williams, Leinart tossed a lateral to his big wide receiver. Williams took a couple of steps, then stopped. (“What’s he doing?!”) He then raised his left arm (“Wait a minute!”), reared back (“Whaaaaa?!”), and lofted a pass toward the end zone (“Holy shhhhh….!!!”) landed safely in the hands of…Matt Leinart! Touchdown Trojans! (“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!”)

There were more than 100,000 people in the stadium at the time, and every one of them was making noise, SC’s side of the stadium exulting, Michigan’s side groaning in disbelief. I’d say I conservatively scared 12,000 of those fans, as loud as I was yelling, with a look on my face that said, “This guy is going to kill us all.”

It only got better from there. The Trojans won the undisputed national championship the next season, going 13-0 and capping its year for the ages with another big Orange Bowl win. That season, Dr. F fell in love with the player who remains her favorite athlete to this day: Reggie Bush. He was a 5′9″ Superman that year. Routine off-tackle runs turned into 80-yard highlight reels. A blocked path at the 5-yard line was merely a signal for Bush to leap over two players’ heads, into the end zone. Punt returns became the most anticipated play at the Coliseum. No matter the score, whenever the opposing team lined up to punt, the student section’s chant was always the same: “Re-ggie! Re-ggie!” It was no exaggeration to say that every time Reggie Bush touched the ball in the 2004 season, everyone expected him to score.

As amazing as all those offensive stars and defensive beasts performed in those years, every SC fan knew that Pete Carroll was the biggest reason for their success. Playing for the Trojans became a dream for high school kids around the country, not just in California, but in the South, the Midwest and East Coast. Big recruits who might’ve been ticketed for Texas or Florida or Notre Dame decided they’d rather head west and play for Coach Carroll. SC became such a hot destination that O.J. Mayo went to play for the school’s middling basketball team, because he’d seen what being a Trojan had done for the branding of stars like Leinart and Bush.

Dr. F and I moved to Seattle in the summer of 2005. But we kept our season tickets for one final season, figuring we’d get down to L.A. to see them at least once in person. At Husky Stadium a short walk from our new place, the Trojans swamped the Huskies 51-24, in a game that featured an 84-yard punt return for a TD by Bush that remains one of the most amazing plays I’ve ever seen (If anyone can find video of this play, please send it along). Later that season, we flew to L.A. for the big rivalry game — and saw the Trojans obliterate UCLA 66-19, a game that destroyed the record for most times hearing “Tusk” in one day.

We started to lose touch with the Trojans bit by bit as the years went on. Moving to the East Coast in 2006 started the fade, and the team’s falling performance accelerated it. By the time yesterday’s news hit that Carroll was leaving SC for the NFL, you couldn’t be too surprised. The team could face stiff NCAA sanctions for a variety of violations, Carroll saw a great opportunity, and got out before everything hit the fan.

Still, after going a lifetime without caring one whit about a sport, the Trojans made a convert out of me. I’ve talked to friends and e-migos about road-tripping to Oxford for an Ole Miss game, of hitting the Big House or the Horseshoe on a crisp autumn day, catching a Red River shootout, or seeing a game between the hedges. All of that interest stems from our seven years of season-ticket bliss, cheering on the Trojans. The pieces were in place at USC to get a Canadian noob hooked. But Pete Carroll sealed the deal.

Best of luck, Pete. Fight On.

Comments: 2 Comments

A Plea to the Hall of Fame – and an Answer

Posted 9 January 2010 by Jonah
Categories: Random commentary
Tags: , , , , ,

If you’ve detected a theme of Expos boosterism on this site over the past few days, you’re a pretty observant reader. Andre Dawson got elected to the Hall of Fame this week, and I’ve spent a considerable amount of free time I don’t have reminiscing about the Expos, and making the case for Dawson to get elected with the tri-color cap on his dome.

Thanks to the magic of the Interwebs, all it takes to make your feelings known to the gatekeepers at the Hall of Fame is a quick email. So I sent them one.

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Hello,

I’m a life-long Expos fan turned baseball writer. I owe my entire career to those childhood days rooting for the Expos and learning the sport. Their loss was devastating for me. If you want to know how the end of the Expos affected fans of the team…

…Please read this…

…and this.

The numbers all point to Dawson going in as an Expo – 10 years in Montreal vs. 6 in Chicago, with all the corresponding counting stats also in favor of his Montreal days.

But this isn’t about the numbers. Inducting The Hawk into the Hall of Fame would be an incredibly uplifting gesture for all the Expos die-hards who supported the team all those years, through good times (such as during Dawson’s heyday, when Olympic Stadium was packed and the Expos often outdrew glamour teams like the Yankees) and bad.

Expos Nation collectively jumped for joy when we heard the news of Dawson’s induction this week. It’s a mere five-hour drive from Montreal to Cooperstown, and everyone north of the border, and in the entire surrounding area, plans to pack the town, and the museum, for a weekend of Expos revelry and nostalgia.

Please, please reward our undying love for the game, for our team, and for our man The Hawk by making him just the second Expos cap-donning player to grace your hallowed hall.

Warm wishes,
Jonah Keri
–

Just three hours later, I received a reply.

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Jonah:

Thank you very much for your note.

The choice of which team logo appears on a player’s Hall of Fame plaque is the Museum’s decision, though the wishes of an inductee are always considered. As a history museum, it is important that the logo be emblematic of the historical accomplishments of that player’s career.

A player’s election to the Hall of Fame is a career achievement, and as such every team for whom he played is listed on the plaque. However, the logo selection is based on where that player makes his most indelible mark.

After a period of research and analysis, the Hall of Fame will announce what will be featured on Andre Dawson’s cap on his Hall of Fame plaque.

Thank you very much for your interest in the Baseball Hall of Fame!

Sincerely,

Craig Muder
Director of Communications
National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
–

Form letter? Probably not entirely, though I’m sure there was at least some cut-and-pasting involved (I’ve probably answered about 98.5% of the reader email I’ve ever received, and confess to at least mild cut-and-pasting when the volume is too overwhelming). Regardless, the Hall’s reply made me feel oddly better. If Dawson goes into the Hall wearing a Cubs cap (which appears to be his preference based on the prevailing tea leaves), it would be another crushing blow for fans who thought they were done with heartache five and a half years ago. Any little gesture that temporarily gets our spirits up, we’ll take it.

Are you an Expos fan hoping to see Andre Dawson go into the Hall of Fame wearing an Expos cap? Email your thoughts to info@baseballhalloffame.org. Please be polite and thoughtful.

Comments: 4 Comments

That 1987 MVP Vote

Posted 8 January 2010 by Jonah
Categories: Random commentary
Tags: , , , , ,

Over and over, we’ve seen MLB Hall of Fame voters cite the value of MVP and Cy Young results in weighing the candidacies of various candidates.

There is some logic to this train of thought. If a player was widely regarded as elite in a given season, or in multiple seasons, that could be a good indicator of the impact he made at the time. The problem comes when such voting proves to be way off base.

We can dispense with a long diatribe about stats. Voters can use common sense. They’re also entitled to vote with their eyes as well as their brains. If a close race emerges and two candidates sport similar resumes, weighing intangibles, considering performance in close-and-late situations or even considering whether or not the two players teams contended for the playoffs are all reasonable tie-breakers.

Common sense did not apply in 1987.

Andre Dawson enjoyed a fine season that year, leading the league in both home runs (49) and RBI (137) and winning the Most Valuable Player award. He also hit a pedestrian .287 and posted a weak .328 OBP. His knees wearing down by this time, Dawson was a shadow of his former rangy self, playing a merely adequate right field while other MVP candidates shone on defense. He got a boost from Wrigley Field, at the time one of the friendliest ballparks in the majors for hitters.

Few people outside Bill James’ office paid much attention to advanced metrics at the time. But voters had to have some inkling that 1987 was a banner year for players who could do it, not just swat home runs. With the benefit of hindsight, we see that Dawson accounted for 2.7 Wins Above Replacement, making his total package of offense, defense and environmental factors the equivalent of a solid, but unspectacular big-league starter.

That year, baseball was filled with charismatic players and team leaders enjoying great seasons. Tony Gwynn hit a preposterous .370, notched a .447 on-base percentage, stole 56 bases and won the Gold Glove — good for 8.1 Wins Above Replacement, or a typical Albert Pujols MVP season. Tim Raines missed the entire month of April thanks to baseball’s collusive off-season. Yet Raines also put up phenomenal numbers, hitting .330/.429/.526, stealing 50 bases in 55 attempts and even leading the league with 123 runs scored, despite playing in only 139 games. His five months of play were good for 6.8 WAR. Jack Clark, Eric Davis, Darryl Strawberry and Dale Murphy also put up monster numbers in a season that was later revealed to have been played using juiced baseballs. All of them, and several other players, handily outpaced Dawson in their all-around contributions.

The kicker, of course, was the performance of Dawson’s team. His Chicago Cubs finished dead last in their division that year.

And after all that, Dawson won the MVP. Despite Tony Gwynn’s season, measured by one objective measure, being THREE TIMES more valuable.

As David Brown notes in a Yahoo column today, Dawson’s MVP award in ‘87 is the biggest shining light on the player’s resume, the single biggest reason he’s in the Hall of Fame.

But wait, there’s more. Dawson gained his biggest measure of fame in Chicago. Not just because the Cubs owned a much larger media presence than the Expos, but because Dawson’s MVP occurred while he was playing at Wrigley Field, not the Big O.

Andre Dawson is a fine player, and he’s far from the worst selection the writers have made for the Hall of Fame. But if the Hall of Fame decides to place a Cubs hat on Dawson’s plaque and not an Expos cap, and the 1987 MVP season is cited as one of, if not the biggest reason for his induction…well, I’m going to lose my shit.

Comments: 8 Comments

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