The Day That Baseball History Was Rewritten

America's Pastime is alive and well. The nation watched, remote in hand and finger on the flashback button, flipping between ESPN, the MLB Network, and whatever local affiliate was providing baseball coverage. By 1:00am ET, the social media tsunami was at full strength as no one could believe what they just saw. Not even Disney writers could come up with a script so full of hyperbole.

It was a night that changed the perceptions of baseball amongst even the most casual fans. The 162 game season has been chastised in the past for dragging out way too long. Especially when many teams don't have much to play for in the waning weeks. Football is commonly believed to be the new #1 sport in the US, but that game is largely just 3 hours of play followed by 144 hours of analysis and breakdown. Football welcomes the casual, attention deficit fan who wants to see sports as a hobby. Following baseball is a part time job. And yet after 5 months and over 2,400 games played, day number 162 was every bit the emotional roller coaster as any week of football in history.

You'll have to bear with me while I try to compile reasonable, and coherent thoughts on the happenings of last night. With so much occurring at such a late hour, it's tough to differentiate what was seen and what was just a dream.

Jose Reyes batting title...

The first controversy of the day goes to Jose Reyes and his decision to duck out of the final game of the season after bunting for a single in the first inning. Entering the day a few decimal points ahead of Ryan Braun in the batting title race, Reyes might be the only guy in baseball I can imagine with the audacity to even try such a stunt.Especially in front of his home crowd in what could very well be his last game in a Mets uniform. I could almost begin to understand his logic if there was a stipulation in his current contract that gave him a bonus for a batting title, but there isn't. In fact, MLB doesn't allow contract bonuses for that very reason. If he believes that adding a batting title to his resume is going to outweigh the negative publicity he receives for this move, he's sorely mistaken. The MLB owners are a network of good-old-boys who take note of selfish acts by players and have blackballed guys for similarly tainted acts. Jose Reyes will get his contract considering the value of a speedy, high average hitting, SS in his prime, but his suitors won't be blind to the fact that he just put the name on the back ahead of the one on the front.

The Cardinals...

With their drubbing of the Astros, the St. Louis Cardinals have won (?) the opportunity to bring their team to Philadelphia. But with Chris Carpenter throwing 8 innings yesterday, don't expect to see him until game 3. That means the Phillies will see Jaime Garcia and Kyle Lohse face Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee. And while the Phillies only managed a 3-6 record on the season against the red birds (one of only 2 teams they held a losing record against), two of those games were virtually meaningless and their run differential was virtually identical at 32-34. Not a single one of those games featured a Phillies lineup at full strength (at least two of Gload/Schneider/Valdez/Martinez/Orr/Sardinha/etc. started each game). The Cards march out a rotation that has given the Phils some problems but on paper is incredibly pedestrian. Once they have to hand the ball over to the bullpen, it's open season on runs. Plus, we all know that Ryan Howard kills it against his hometown Cardinals with the Howard family in the stands.

The Red Sox... 

You'd think that giving a Gold Glove left fielder and former MVP candidate a $142M contract would inspire a little hustle in the outfield when a potential season ending and franchise destroying fly ball headed his direction, but you'd be wrong. In a season riddled with disappointment for which Crawford already apologized for, the botched line drive was just the icing on the cake. That's a play that pre-2011 Crawford makes on the regular. But the past month has truly been a team collapse. On September 1st, the Red Sox were at a 99.3% to make playoffs. A virtual certainty. And yet, brutal pitching performances, lack of hitting by anyone not named Ellsbury, and an inability to win back to back games sealed Boston's fate as being the first team to lose out on a playoff spot after having a lead of at least 9 games entering September. Those black clouds that rolled into Baltimore and delayed the game during the 7th inning rained failure all over Red Sox Nation. Now, the team that made some of the biggest splashes last off-season is faced with the likelihood of ditching either their manager or general manager just to shake up their $163M locker room.

The Rays...

After losing their closer and All-Star left fielder to division rivals, most figured the Rays were dead in the water this year. Fortunately, no one told Joe Maddon that. Behind the Red Sox by 9? No problem. Down 7-0 in the 8th inning? No Problem. Down to your very last strike with one run to go? No problem. The Rays played their hearts out the past few weeks with recipe of one parts dominant pitching, one parts timely hitting, and a dash of inning ending triple play magic. The game tying and winning HRs hugged their respective foul poles to a distance not much greater than the 315' it takes to reach the wall and the 11.5' height it takes to clear them at Tropicana Field.

The Yankees...

As if the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry needed more fuel to it's fire, Red Sox Nation was helpless as they watched the Yankees roll over to the Rays. New York hasn't blown a 7 run lead entering the 8th inning since 1953! That was almost 10,000 games ago! And with their $15M setup man Rafael Soriano and their recently anointed greatest closer in baseball history, Mariano Rivera, sitting on the bench, the Yankees sat by and watched the combination of Boone Logan and Luis Ayala proceed to give up 6 runs on 4 hits and a walk. Then, to take that knife in the Red Sox back and twist it just a little bit farther, the Yankees brought in Scott Proctor. This is a guy who had given up 6ERs in his past two appearances and whose ERA actually went down by giving up a game winning HR. Evan Longoria taking him deep is probably the least surprising thing that happened the whole game!

The Braves...

Similarly to Boston, Atlanta entered September with a 97.8% chance to make playoffs. On September 1st, Cardinals fans were busy saying their goodbyes to Albert Pujols, not planning playoff trips. What compromises the anatomy of such an epic collapse? Pitching injuries? Youth fading down the stretch? Disappointing performances by aging veterans? Or is Atlanta just breeding a culture of choking? From Brooks Conrad's eight errors in the final seven games of 2010 to Craig Kimbrel and Johnny Venters' September collapse in 2010, the Braves just can't get the job done like they used to. How does Dan Uggla not score from 2nd on the line drive to right field in the 6th? How does Jack Wilson punt the ball in the 7th? How do the Braves only muster 3 hits in 5 innings of work from rookie pitchers? With a Washington team that is stocked with young talent, just how big is the Braves window for success?

Where you been all my life, Cholly...? 

Last night's win gives Charlie Manual a career 646-488 record with Phillies. That's good for a .570 win percentage and an average of 92.34 wins per years while tenured with the Phillies. That means his AVERAGE season with the Phils would have been good enough to win the Wild Card in either league this year. Just how good is a .570 win percentage? Well, if the Phillies had a franchise win percentage of .570, they'd be sitting at 11,131 wins which would make them the winningest franchise in US sports history. The 10,000 loss milestone would have taken 143.55 years to reach instead of the 125 years that ended in 2007.Charlie currently sits at #21 on the career win percentage list as a manager and 8 of those guys ahead of him did it in fewer seasons.

Final Thoughts...

• How lame are "Wild Card" t-shirts? 
• The folks at ESPN sure were close with their post season predictions, huh?
• The Phillies never had the best record in baseball in 125+ years prior to last year. Now they've done it twice in a row
• What happens to all the extra champagne that was likely staged in the Braves and Red Sox locker rooms? Do they ship it off to a 3rd world country like they do with all those pre-printed t-shirts for the losing team?
• The Phillies announced the Domonic Brown, Joe Savery, and Justin De Fratus would be headed to the Instructional League this fall, but I'm hearing rumors that the might keep Savery around as a 2nd left hander in case of injury. It doesn't hurt that he can swing the bat in a pinch!
• Matt Holliday is back in the playoffs despite STILL not having touched home plate back in 2007...
• Be sure to check out Bob Vetrone's "Blogathon" where he provides interesting Phillies tidbits once an hour from the end of last night's game through first pitch on Saturday.

Lunch Time Link Dump

• Roger McDowell is apparently a homophobe. The Braves pitching coach has been suspended two weeks for some interactions with fans where he made some gay slurs and insulted a father in front of his two kids... and this is all alleged to have occurred during batting practice. AT&T Park in San Francisco is one of the few ballparks in the majors that still maintains a "bullpen" in foul territory along the base lines rather than in its own area of the outfield. Without some sort of barrier between fans and players, relief pitchers are pretty much heckle-bait all game long. Not that I'm making an excuse for McDowell, who is probably more famous for the Hotfoot and other dugout antics than his pitching acumen. 

•  I've discovered an old SI.com article of things we miss in baseball and for the exact same reasons I mentioned above, they seem to miss the bullpens being in foul territory. They also miss "fans running into the field" and "wimpy middle infielders" to put into perspective what kind of writer we're dealing with. I do, however, find the first item on the list intriguing: Stirrups. Not just colored socks, or those white socks with a vertical stripe up the side. Actual stirrups you wear over your socks. I never really understood the reason for them, but hell if I didn't make sure my stirrups were pulled as high as possible during little league. Of course they were usually stretched out and dry rotted from the years and years of other kids wearing them, but that's nothing a few safety pins didn't fix! Bullpen carts and Youppi were two other good ones from the list.

• Possibly the most surprising and under the radar news of the year so far is the impressive start by Bartolo Colon. I had him listed at the beginning of the season as a zero risk, high reward player and so far he's been the latter. He's averaging a K/IP and keeping the Yankees in every game he's played, last night's fine performance included. The fat man seemed destined to be hanging up the spikes for good, but a couple of Yankee injuries made way for a spot in the bullpen and now a Phil Hughes implosion has made it likely that he hangs onto a starting job for at least a little while longer. He throws with finesse and deception. He's not the CY Young winner he was in 2005, but he's eating innings as thoroughly as he's eating pizzas. 

• As successful as the Bartolo Colon move was, Derek Jeter's new contract is looking like just as big of a failure. $15M this year (and at least $34M the next three) isn't a terrible deal if your team leader is batting at a decent clip and playing stellar defense. But Jeter isn't really doing either. In his last calendar year of baseball, Jeter is batting .257 with 6 HRs. And yet though 26 games this season, Jeter has led off 16 of them. His defense is as sub par as ever (despite his Gold Glove awards that can only be attributed to blackmail). The Yankees are in a really tough spot right now. Do they risk moving Jeter down to 7 or 8 in the lineup to see if he can right the ship? Do they need to bring in another player to share time with their $15M man? A solid year of sub par performance at age 36 is more than a slump. 

• ZooWithRoy.com made the "Huge Butt" announcement last week that they'll be working with Iron Hill Brewery to produce a ZWR Beer this summer. Naturally, that means a trip to Iron Hill Brewery is in order. One of my biggest selling points when trying new beers is the art on the label and you can bet that "So Cuttered Hoppy Wheat" will have some sort of Penguin/MS Paint image worth the price alone. 

• Reading through an article on PhilliesNation the other day about Baseball Prospectus rankings for players kind of showed me that for the most part their top 5 rankings have panned out pretty well from season to season. But that got me thinking about how actual draft picks work out. Luckily it only took about 30 second worth of Googling before I found this article on the rankings for 40 years of #1 overall picks from 1964-2004. For every A-Rod, there's a Matt Bush. The list counts down from the outside and the median #1 overall pick turns out to be Phil Nevin. Which pretty much explains why the MLB draft is such a crap shoot.

• The Common Man  over on Platoon Advantage has been doing a series of family trees for trades and signings that produced other players. In the latest installment, he shows how a 1967 draft pick would eventually turn into David Wright. It's pretty wild to think about and certainly a little far fetched considering all the moving parts involved in the deal, but I'd love to see a Phillies family tree that traces Granny Hamner to Bobby Abreu or something... I'm just too lazy to do the research myself.

Lunch Time Link Dump

• From the Platoon Advantage, I've gained a new perspective on the "mallparks" that are modern day baseball stadiums. Sure, the Build-A-Bear Workshops and EA Sports Video Game booths may be a distraction from what you just spent $30+ to see, but with a child's attention span what it is, easing him into the game might just be the best approach. I know I couldn't sit still for 3 hours when I was a kid and there are times even today where I just want to walk around and people watch a bit. Old parks have charm and history, but little else to occupy your time if you're a child. Thinking of "mallparks" as an investment in the future of baseball fans is actually kind of brilliant... Not that this means I'm having a kid any time soon.   

• The more I read and write about baseball, the more I want to learn. So while doing a little digging into some local baseball history, I stumbled across a monumental bit of baseball history that is practically in my own back yard. Hinchliffe Stadium was one of the first Negro League stadiums and one of only three that still stand today. It was used by the Patterson school district until 1997 and it currently sits high on the list of America's most endangered historic sites, but there appears to be a plan in place to renovate the site. It's a graffiti covered, overgrown mess right now, but I'm definitely adding a visit to this site to my list of lazy Sunday projects.

• Who is the most hated player in your team's history? An interesting question if you're a Phillies fan. JD Drew gets votes for refusing to sign with the Phillies. Scott Rolen gets votes for basically whining his way out of town. Adam Eaton gets votes for crapping the bed for 3 years and somehow still getting a World Series ring. Ivan DeJesus cost us Ryne Sandberg. Danny Tartabull cost $2M and never got a single hit. Von Hayes never lived up to the 5-4-1 hype. Mitch Williams choked in the World Series. Billy Wagner and Curt Schilling thought they were too good for this town. Freddy Garcia earned $10M for one single win. Rod Barajas and Wes Helms couldn't hit worth a lick in red pinstripes, but come back to haunt us year after year... man, this list is getting long. Who would you choose? 

• Someone with the Yankees "accidentally" forwarded private info of all their season ticket holders to about 2,000 contacts. The list of info has popped up all over the internet in the past few days. Apparently, should some less than honest individual come across this list and decide to log into an account that isn't theirs, they could easily steal tickets by forwarding them to a different email address. Fortunately, Yankees fans are all upstanding citizens... right?

• Apparently attendance numbers are at record lows for most MLB stadiums so far this year. The Yankees set a new low water mark in three consecutive days and teams in the midwest have been drawing crowds of under 10,000 regularly. No issues in Philadelphia where I'm still crammed in like a sardine in my outfield seats. But some would argue that baseball is as healthy as ever right now. How? Cable TV revenue. Blackout restrictions are a bit difficult to explain, but the general idea is that the MLB Extra Innings package does not air games when a cable network in that area considers the team to be local to the area and has rights to the game themselves. Which basically means MLB Network gives way to PHL17 in South Jersey and the Phillies can instead cash in on cable revenue. For teams like the Houston Astros who might have down attendance, they cash in on most of the state of Texas getting their games as part of the cable package. Even worse are teams like Boston who have a controlling stake in their own cable network. NESN charges somewhere in the $3 range for each cable bill in the New England area that carries their channel. So every cable subscriber in the New England area pays about $30/year to an arm of the Red Sox... so who says baseball is failing?

• Tickets go on sale on May 9th for the Phillies ALS Phestival. I've gone a few times in the past, and while prices went up and options went down for this year, $25 for a handful of autographs and a meet and greet with some players is a pretty good deal. I'd recommend ordering at 9am on the dot, because this thing typically sells out in like 10 minutes. Maybe Cole Hamels will be less of a D-bag this year.

• I grabbed this book on Half.com the other day called "The Baseball Fan's Bucket List." It's exactly what it sounds like and while a lot of the items are a little obvious (visit Fenway), or far fetched (throw out a first pitch), there are definitely a few items I would really like to do. Attend a Little League and College World Series is among them. I'm going to work on compiling a list of 100 items for my own baseball bucket list (some of which I've already completed) and hopefully have something up in the next week or two.