Personally, I am beginning to feel, albeit totally unintentional, a little bit like those journalists who get get pinned with the tag of "east coast bias" when it comes to spreading the good word about any athlete or team west of the eastern time zone. Despite my passion for baseball and being able to sit and watch game after game on TV, it is simply too hard to follow west coast teams. Sure, you can catch some highlights on the various sports re-cap shows. But, trying to really follow and learn about a certain player or his team by watching a handful of highlight clips is like hearing a 30-second sound bite from a politician and trying to fully understand their solution on how to fix the economy. They are just snippets--they catch your eye or ear for a few seconds then it's on to something else.
I wish I could see more of some of the better west coast players on a regular basis, but a 3-hour time difference is brutal when if you, like me, require 7-8 hours of sleep to function effectively.
That's why I am particularly excited about the chance to see the San Francisco Giants "Tiny Tim", 25-year old right handed starting pitcher Tim Lincecum, take on the big bats of the American League. Lincecum, who is just 5'11 (in cleats) and weighs only a buck-70, won the NL Cy Young Award last year and is well on his way to another. Tiny Tim found his groove in June as he dominated opponents by remarkably turning in three complete games, including two shutouts. He heads to St. Louis boasting a 10-2 record and a sparkling 2.33 earned run average.
For the season, opponents are hitting a paltry .215 off of him. He leads the league in strikeouts with 149 in 127 innings of work. He tames opposing lineups that feature a host of multi-million dollar hitters, yet Lincecum is a bargain, for the time-being, with his original contract paying just $650,000 this year. A Washington state native, Lincecum pitched collegiately for the UW Huskies.
There is some talk that Lincecum may have to take a backseat to Arizona's Dan Haren for the starting nod on Tuesday. I hope not. America deserves to see an average size guy, to whom many can relate, do extraordinary things.
THOUGHT-PROVOKING ALL-STAR YEARS IN HISTORY
Sports Illustrated did a nice piece trying to pick all-time all-star teams for both leagues and to have at least one player from every team that has ever fielded a major league team. In doing so, they tried to select a player based on what they felt was that player's best season, and it be a year in which he was chosen for the all-star game. I picked up a few interesting things that you, too, might enjoy.
1941 was the year that two of the most amazing feats in baseball were achieved. Joe DiMaggio hit safely in his amazing 56-game streak, and Ted Williams finished the year with a .406 batting average--the last man to finish above the seemingly unattainable .400 mark. How did Williams feel when Joe D. ended up getting the league's MVP award? I don't know how you don't have co-MVPs. 1941, what a year, huh?
One of my favorite pitchers of all time was Baltimore Oriole Jim Palmer. In 1990 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Keep in mind, this was just prior to the designated hitter becoming part of the American League, but Palmer's 1975 season showed the tremendous disparity between the load that pitcher's used to bear before the pitch-count crazy, pitcher coddling era came in recently.
Palmer started 39 games (today's best may get 30-32), he completed 25 of the 39--all nine innings! Of those 25 complete game, 10 were shutouts. His overall record was 23-11, so two of those complete games were in a losing effort--probably one of those low-scoring 1-0, or 2-1 duals. He yielded way less than a hit per inning (just 253 in 323 innings) and pitched to a glistening 2.09 ERA.
In 1978, "Louisiana Lightnin'", Ron Guidry of the Yankees, put up the best ERA of the DH-era in the American League. It was tied 22 years later by Pedro Martinez, but Pedro's total innings, number of decisions, and overall numbers fell short of Guidry's overall stats. The lefty with a wicked slider, who was also nicknamed "Gator", Guidry posted a lofty 25-3 record in 1978. He started 35 games, completed 16, and fired 9 shutouts. His ERA was a minuscule 1.75 over 273 innings of work. That was all done with nine legitimate hitters in the lineup, as we have come to know American league baseball for about 30 years now.
Tuesday night the 80th All-Star game will be played. Who will we see in that game and still be talking about in another 30 years or so?
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Great post! BTW, our "Kung Fu Panda," Pablo Sandoval got hosed
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