Check out this gem via Baseball and Booze: An article written by MLB Hall-of-Famer and 361-game winner Kid Nichols in the Jan. 1948 issue of Baseball Digest titled, Pitchers are Sissies Now.In support of this thesis, Nichols opens by noting that "in [his] day, the [eighteen-]nineties, if you won only twenty games the club owner would say, -'You didn't do so good this year - we're going to cut your salary this season.'" He goes on to recall how he would frequently pitch complete games on consecutive days, sometimes even three in a row.
He had seven 30-win seasons and a 2.95 ERA over his sixteen-year career, and won five championships, so he certainly knew of what he spoke.
We're not sure whether the game is any better or worse today, with so much less demanded from our pitchers, but we are sad to note that veteran ballplayers just don't write editorials like they used to.
Back with more later. Happy Wednesday, folks.
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46 comments:
Interesting perspective Frownies. In some ways (through blogs, reality shows, 24/7 SC), we have more direct contact with athletes than ever before. Is it that you regard those mediums as less authentic? On the pitcher thing, well, maybe, it is a complex issue as you note. After all, we may have so many fewer 260 inning 25 game workhorses, but we also have far more pitchers who have longer careers on average I think. It is an interesting debate though, as to whether "coddling" pitchers as they mature has made them less able to handle big workloads.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/football/nfl/05/08/nfl.owners/index.html
Um, how did Lerner not make the bottom five? Maybe they're taking into account the success of his other football team.
Damn, they must have had some powerfull "juice" in the "90's"
Coupon . . . you are in tune, brother. I started drafting a "how in the world did Lerner not make the bottom five" post this morning, titled "SI Just Doesn't Get Us," and didn't have enough time to finish it before the whip started cracking at the mines, so threw up the Nichols post instead. Stay tuned.
d: Not sure about less authentic, but surely less meaningful, for whatever reasons, surely one of them being the format.
WORD VERIFICATION: amudst -- prep. "Frownie dwells amudst the murky murky murk of Cleveland sport."
Mraz...no doubt re: serious juice! That was back before we had the nanny state. Those guys could get their hands on anything, including Carbolic Smoke Balls!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbolic_smoke_ball_co.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:
Carbolic_smoke_ball_co.jpg
seems to me that if ur one of the highest spending owners in the leagure u should not be in bottom 5... those other ones would b much worse than randy...
what do you mean highest spending? there's a salary cap. how are you measuring this?
not arguing with you, just wondering where you get this idea from.
look at overall expenditures. not saying that directly translates to being even in top 15, but clearly i would much rather have him over the bottom 5 listed.
btw, pitchers pitch far more today than ever before, just not in games.
also slept on, ALWAYS, w/r/t pitch count issue is actual TIME of game. those old games FLEW by, no commercials, no preening btw abs, etc. easy to keep your arm warm. I would say the average five-inning starter pitches LONGER than the avg. complete gamer used to do. given how unnatural pitching is, spreading it out over a long period of time is a harder thing to do.
These young whippersnappers of today couldn't hold a torch to the Tom Candiottis, Greg Swindells, Jesse Oroscos and the Ernie Camachos of days gone by. This game is going straight to the gates of hades I tell ya!
Something else to check out on this soon to be stormy sports day:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page
2/story?page=simmons/090513/part2
This is part of an exchange between Gladwell and Simmons. No matter what you think of either (I generally like the former and hate the latter) this has some interesting ideas for the NBA and other professional sports. The part about the draft especially is good. I can see some obvious counters, more so with the NBA and NHL than either the NFL or MLB, but damn interesting stuff.
@ Bryan. Your point is interesting. With all of the various debates I've had or read on the pitch count subject that is an angle I haven't seen. If you are still posting on your Blog, that would be an angle I'd like to read more about.
There are lot of factors contributing to pitching so many innings back then: dead balls, crappy/swing happy hitters (I imagine it was considered ungentlemanly to take walks frequently) and I assume lax attitudes regarding ball scoffing.
Yeah, I'm still posting, 3 at a time, new batch coming soon (they're all almost done, but our the potassium benzoate mines are keeping us down at the moment). It's an angle no one talks about but I think is pretty crucial...
I'm an unapologetic Simmons fan and a Gladwell so-so-er, but it annoys the shit out of me they did this this way. It's a publicity thing. They're jerking each other off in a way that wouldn't have happened on the Simmons podcasts, which are excellent.
There may be pearls of wisdom in there, but I'm not sorting through a sandbox to find them.
Cliff Lee pitched great today again...looks like me and Bik were right in regards to the type of year Lee will have. Smitty expected a bad year, but as we both said before give him more starts to show what type of year he will have, so far so good though smitty.
era at 3.0!!! congrats cliffy, let's just hope the bats can score some more runs for you.. we seem to score for everyone else but cliff..
FIRST SERIES WIN OF THE YEAR FOR THE TRIBE!!!
let's keep it going guys, we are now 6 games out (hopefully 5.5 if KC and chicago lose) and for as bad as we've started, that's not so shabby.. outscoring the rest of the division by a mile as well.
It's too early to think about waving the white flag, but Lee's trade value has shot up at least. But the AL Central winner's only gonna finish around .500, so it's anyone's division.
Bryan, excellent points, all of them. You should pen a rebuttal to Nichols and tape it to his gravestone (or at least do a post at TGBB).
Coup and ManLove make good points too, esp re: "ungentlemanly." Biz surely agrees.
Smitty: U just got served.
Lenny/Bik: Good call! *so far*
d: Will peep it later.
All: What about tonight's hoops action? Nugs? Mavs? Stay away?
Bik: How do we measure these "overall expenditures" you speak of?
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/30/sportsmoney_nfl08_Cleveland-Browns_307074.html
nice to see we are ranked 15th and still have the 2nd lowest priced ticket in the NFL. lerner must be doing something right as an owner. sure the players and coaches haven't lived up to expectations or stayed healthy.
again i'm not saying the guy should be anything higher than 15, probably somewhere between 15-20, but you have yet to make your argument as to why he is WORSE than any of the 5 that they mentioned.
The NFL's salary cap is not as "hard" as the NHL's or even the NBA's. It has an effect, but no star who a team wanted to keep has been lost in a number of years. Sure, teams let marginal starters or back-ups or still useful veterans go, but NFL spending on the players is hardly curbed by the cap these days. Hence the owners desire to throw-over the current system (potentially leading to an uncapped year shortly and a revolution in NFL/NFLPA dynamics). There is a still hidden story here b/c the NFL is so profitable generally that everyone sorta expects the owners and players to work things out, BUT..........golden geese have been slain before.
Fully agree on the state of the AL Central, as bad as the Indians have been, they aren't done yet.
Bryan, the key for me is skimming over all their mutual bullshit, but I could see how it would annoy someone. Better than a podcast (at least to me) though.
Where do you see total expenditures there? That appears to just rank the teams based on each franchise's value.
Bik: Confident we'll have no problem making the argument that he's LOADS worse than the others on the list.
Relatedly, pretty telling and sad that the Ravens are worth more than the Browns.
Yeah, d, agreed.
Number of podcasts we've ever listened to:
0.
I will admit that podcasts supplement the subway travels and walking of this NYC resident pretty nicely, and that's where we do most of our damage.
Which is not to discourage you: you should podcast away.
In fact it is my dream to CREATE a podcast for TGBB and no doubt Frownie might make a good (first) guest, ah, ah?
Seriously, it's not that hard to make one and I've got People® who can sound mix for me if they're not busy Edotaging shite.
can't even figure out how to get songs on my pod...how could i ever get a cast on it. crap.
if u have voice disguising technology, we are IN for the Frowncast tho. nnnoooo dizzle.
Maybe I could get Schtee or Hogg as a guest
Cliff Lee is now 2-5 with the win today. Consider me served to the maximum degree.
Lenny: U got served! 2thamax!
Bik posted the below comment at yesterday's post. If that doesn't show how dumb he is, the comment will:
only loads there will be is randy's all ovah your faaaace frownie.
keep hating.. no wonder this is called frowns.. all the frowner does is HATE hate HATE, except of course illicit class I narcotics, which you seem to have no problems with.
keep up the good work! can't wait to hear about how much lerner is worse than:
Mike Brown
Tom Benson
Ralph Wilson
William Clay Ford
Wayne Weaver
York Family
Al Davis
May 13, 2009 3:19 PM
Lerner is awful. My 2 cents. Throwing money around like an idiot doesn't make you a good owner.
And for the record...we have the 2nd worst record in baseball. I am not really going to celebrate that.
i never said he was a great owner, i just said he's not bottom 5 and made a list longer than 5 who i as well as whoever at SI made that ranking feel are WORSE owners...
is this going to be your pulitzer piece frownie?? another negative story?? what are you the skip bayless of cleveland??
i think you should smoke some crack and turn that frown upside down!
his W-L record hardly shows how well he has pitched since you have said 2008 was a fluke. over his past 5 starts he is 2-3( yes a losing record) but he has pitched on avg over 7 innings each start only allowed 6ER and over 5 K's The wins will come as the tribe decides to hit for everyone but cliff lee in the run support dept.
most importantly is his ERA over the past 3 weeks and 39 innings is 1.41 with 30K's, bringing his season era to 3.0. that is clifftastic
agreed bik, nice pull...he has been pitching well, but as i said before give him a bigger body of work before we can say either way how the year will go. Wins and losses dont always dictate how well a pitcher is doing smitty
he just made his 8th start which i believe is a decent enough sample, but let's give him 2 more starts for a nice round number of 10. if he keeps his era is below the current # of 3.0 will you agree that last year wasn't a flash in the pan smitty?
its no newsflash re: lerner, so no pulitzer for us. it's just a matter of our frownbligations to point out when SI makes such a glaring mistake regarding the plight of the browns fan. u don't have to be a d*ck about it.
frowns, bryan, we can record the whole thing over skype i'm sure and disguising voices and doing a mix isn't a problem either. let's do this.
word veri: toolit
yeah
"u don't have to be a d*ck about it." that's like callin the kettle black isn't it mr/miss frownie? i mean i'm a browns fan too and i don't put even 20% of the "browns plight" on lerner, as i've said in the past, how many injuries have happened to the clowns these past 4 years, i suppose that is because lerner doesn't put bars around the stadium as you've stated in a previous post???? whatevs
i'll take lerner over those owners i listed, and that is more than 5. i've actually had the priviledge of meeting wayne weaver and that guy is a bonafide d*ckhead.
again i didn't say he was a "great" owner, just that he's not in the bottom 5.
I'm down, but if Frownie can't even get songs on his iPod, Skype might be too hahd:
HEY FROWNIE HEAH YOU GO
YOU GO TO SKYPE DAWT COM
YOU DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAM
YOU SET UP A USAHNAME
YOU LOG ON AND TALK
IT'S THAT SIMPLE
NO ONE DENIES THIS!
Bik: Injuries happen b/c Lerner doesn't care enough to make sure the Browns have a decent trainer. It all starts at the top. Can't believe you don't get this.
browns didn,t have a decent trainer??? first of all they have a full staff my friend. that is approved by the nfl and various accreditations ... do u really not get that??????????????????????????
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