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When Oakland A’s owner Charles O. Finley failed to make a life insurance payment on a policy in pitcher Jim “Catfish” Hunter’s contract in 1974, making Hunter a free agent, he had no idea what he was unleashing on major league baseball. The year before, in 1973, the New York Yankees had been purchased by a group led by George Steinbrenner, and little did anyone know at that time what an effect the shipping tycoon from Cleveland would have on sports in America. Steinbrenner, who initially made the statement, “I’m going to be a hands off owner”, didn’t exactly live up to that. He proceeded to aggressively sign any free agent player that he felt could help his team, and relentlessly pursued World Series titles with his checkbook like no other owner would even imagine. The Yanks pretty much tore the heart out of Finley’s 3-time champion Oakland A’s team by signing away Hunter and slugger Reggie Jackson, and the additions of Goose Gossage and Don Gullett, along with some shrewd trades, built the Yanks into 2 time champions in that era. Steinbrenner was a perfectionist. This story was told on ESPN after Steinbrenner’s passing yesterday, by Rob Parker. One night George had invited some friends to his owner’s box for a game, and the friends showed up late because they had been delayed in the stadium parking lot. The next day as Parker, a sportswriter, pulled into the press lot, he saw Steinbrenner in the lot parking cars. He asked George, “What are you doing out here?” Steinbrenner’s reply – “I’m going to show these guys how to run a parking lot!” His stubborn ways made him as hated at times as he is loved now that he has passed away. His hirings and firings of manager Billy Martin were almost like an Abbott and Costello comedy routine. He certainly wasn’t perfect. I mean, how can ANYBODY have a falling out with a jovial guy like Yogi Berra? At the end of the day, however, you can’t deny Steinbrenner’s insatiable desire to not only win but win championships. Any fan that says they wouldn’t want him as the owner of the team they root for would be lying. He never cheated the fans. Stories of his loyalty and quiet charitable contributions have come out over the last 2 days also. He was rushed to the hospital when he suffered his heart attack that had a sign outside advertising the “Steinbrenner Children’s Emergency Unit”. When Steinbrenner was young and trying to break into sports, Lou Saban hired him as an assistant football coach when he became head coach at Northwestern, and took Steinbrenner with him when he moved on to Purdue. Saban’s nomadic coaching career is well known, and when he seemingly ran out of options in the football world after changing jobs almost every year (or at least it seemed that way), Steinbrenner hired him as a vice president with the Yankees in 1981. I’m about the furthest thing from being a New York Yankee fan as there is, but there is no denying the impact Steinbrenner’s term as Yankee owner has had on baseball and the sports world in general. Certainly every major league player who is collecting paychecks on a massive contract should thank him.

Today’s sports card of the day is of one of the pioneers of relief pitching in baseball, Roy Face of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and it got me to thinking how much pitching has become specialized in major league baseball today. In the past starting pitchers were expected to finish what they started, and horses like Don Drysdale, Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal and Wilbur Wood would be upset if they didn’t complete their starts. I believe Wood once won both ends of a doubleheader, although he didn’t start both games and was a knuckleball pitcher which is less strain on the arm.  In today’s game, a starter is considered to have made a “quality start” if he lasts 5 innings, and then the game gets turned over to the specialists, the middle relievers, the “set up man”, and finally, the “closer”. Pitchers are paid enormous amounts of money to come into a game and get 3 outs (sometimes only 1 or 2), then if they come in for an inning 2 nights in a row, they need to be rested. Yes, I did just roll my eyes. Don’t even get me started on pitch counts. For better or worse, the game is what it is now, and the role of closer has evolved into a much-respected position in baseball. New York’s Mariano Rivera has elevated the position to new heights. In the 1960s there were relievers who began the “closer evolution”, like Face, Hoyt Wilhelm and Ron Perranoski of the Dodgers. The first pitcher that I remember who started to glamorize the position was Rollie Fingers (pictured above) of the three-time World Series champion Oakland A’s in the early 1970s. His handlebar mustache paved the way for the mean-looking facial hair look of guys like Rich Gossage, Bruce Sutter and later on Dennis Eckersley. So the days of Koufax, Drysdale, Claude Osteen and Johnny Podres starting games and once in awhile turning the late innings over to Perranoski are over. Now every team has a five man starting rotation with each starter getting at least 4 days rest between starts, and a bullpen loaded with short relievers, long relievers, mop up men, set up men, left-hand specialists and closers to finish the job for them. When I see how many of those starting pitchers wind up on the disabled list, it makes me wonder if progress is always for the best, and gives me a greater appreciation for modern day guys like Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and C.C. Sabathia, for whom the complete game is not a lost art.

After blogging about my 10 year old grandson Josh’s youth baseball experience the other day, naturally, I had to do the same for my younger grandson, eight year old Connor. Now with Connor, style and looking good for the fans is a very important part of the baseball experience, as you can see in his picture above. Sporting his old school Rickey Henderson shades and shiny metallic Candy Apple red batting helmet, Connor warms up in the on-deck circle and is clearly ready for action. He had some really great hits and made a few plays in the field also. In fact, I was really impressed with how “baseball knowledgable” all the players were in the game, fielding the ball well, throwing accurately to the right base and knowing not to run on a popup if they’re on base,etc. – all the little nuances. It’s a credit to their coaches, I think. These are all kids that are eight years old or younger, and thinking back to when I played in Little League (not long after Abner Doubleday invented the game), I remember being nine years old already when I played for the first time. These days kids start with tee-ball at five and are seasoned veterans by the time they reach eight.  Members of my family have probably heard this story a thousand times but i’ll tell it anyway to make a point about how far youth baseball has come since I played.  That first year at 9, I played third base and wasn’t a bad fielder, but my throws to first base were terrible. I hardly ever reached the base and if I did the throw usually wasn’t in the same zip code as the base. Even kids on the other teams would say “What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you throw the ball??” Well, after completing that first season, my good friend Tim, who loved sports more than anything and is the person who introduced me to all the sports I love to this day and taught me everything he knew about them, invited me to eat dinner over his house. As I was eating, he looked over at me and said “What are you doing??” With a puzzled look I replied “Eatin’ some food.”  He shook his head and asked “Why are you eating with your left hand?” and of course my answer to that was easy – “Because I’m left-handed.” He started to laugh and asked why I had played the whole season of baseball right-handed. And again, my reply made sense to me anyway – “Because the glove you gave me to use went on the left hand so I figured I had to.” Needless to say my parents got me a glove that fit on my right hand for the following season, I switched over to the other side of the diamond and played first base, and even though I was never a really good player, I did a lot better and all was well with the world. Tim, of course, has gotten a lot of mileage out of that story over the years. He ran the auto insurance company I had my coverage through and once I called ahead and let him know I was coming in to pick up the insurance cards for a car I had purchased. When I walked in the door of the agency and let the receptionist know who I was she said “Oh, hi Lefty…how are you?”

I’m very proud of my grandson Josh who is the regular catcher on his youth baseball team this year and doing a fantastic job. I have to admit though, that he is poking a hole in my theory of how a coach picks his catcher on a little league team. I always enjoyed coaching my son’s Babe Ruth league teams when he was growing up, and one of the enjoyable things was taking a group of 12-15 kids who show up at the first practice and organizing them into something that resembles a real baseball team. There’s always the short, agile, quick kid who can hit, field and throw (usually because he had 3 older brothers who had him out in the field playing with them at the age of 2). He is automatically the pitcher / shortstop. Then there’s always a tall, gangly kid who doesn’t throw very well but catches the ball and for some reason always seems to be lefthanded. He is your first baseman. But I always joked that I had a method for picking out a catcher each year and Josh doesn’t fit the mold. The first practice session was usually held in early spring and up here in Buffalo that means the players are all decked out in winter jackets, winter gloves under their baseball mitts and winter wool hats instead of baseball caps. Then there was always one kid who would show up late, flying in on his BMX bike, hair messed up, decked out in shorts and a camouflage t-shirt, with snot hanging out of his nose. His idea of parking his bike would be to jump off it and let it crash into the backstop to stop it. You just waited for this kid to show up, pointed at him and said “Get the gear on, you’re the catcher!”  I always assumed this was pretty close to the same method hockey coaches used to choose their goaltender, and football coaches  their nose tackle, since all these positions require a “special breed” of person. There’s a reason baseball has always referred to the catcher’s equipment as the “tools of ignorance”. The poor guys who play the position take a beating and work harder than anybody else on the field. Actually I think it was a catcher who made up that term, and I always hear Fox broadcaster Tim McCarver, a former catcher, use it.