- Oct 9, 1999
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'Wow, Jean, great ruckus, thanks!
Man, any thread that mentions both APBA baseball and John Kruk is sure to put a sh!t eating grin on my face.
I haven't heard nor read ANY mention of APBA baseball (points if you know it's not pronounced A P B A, but as a two syllable word) since my childhood, back in the late Pleistocene period, when fish first grew limbs and became obnoxious. In the last three and a half decades, all I've ever seen reference to is Strat-O-Matic, the cheesier, johnny come lately, poseur copycat of the one and only.
Ahhhh, APBA baseball! It's mostly how I knew that Joe Morgan (a measely 7) was not a good defensive second baseman his first few years in the league.
And John Kruk! I'll never forget, during the Phillies magical '93 season, John Kruk's father being interviewed by Harry Kallas on TV and referring to his son, in passing, not as John or my boy but "the Krukker". I nearly fell out of my seat!
The 1993 Phillies were magical. Not the greatest collection of atheletes by a country furlong, but ball players who really knew the game. Did you know that there were FOUR guys in the lineup who had 100 or more walks? Did you know that they were not shut out the ENTIRE SEASON until after they had clinched the pennant with about 7 or 8 games to go and rested most of their regulars?
As a true baseball fan, it was an absolute joy to watch Lenny Dykstra ply his craft as the leadoff hitter. As a civilian, Dysktra seems to have the intelligence of a doorstop, no offense to doorstops, but he was one of the smartest ball players I personally have ever had the close up pleasure to watch play. To start off every game, he would purposely take several pitches and would always run deep counts because he knew part of his job was to expose the pitcher's repetoire for the rest of the lineup to see. Amazing! Yet he still batted around .320 with over a hundred walks and more than 20 home runs (elite pre 'roid leadoff power). Then, in the late innings of do or die games in the playoffs, when his team needed him most, he used the season long cover of his previous batting tendencies to wail on the inevitable first pitch strike and send it, time and again, out of the ballpark. He was a man. :beer:
Dyskstra, Darren Daulton, Kruk, Pete Incaviglia -- those boys loved their brew, their brew bellies, and their brew belly belches.. They were a modern equivalent of the legendary St. Louis Cardinal's gashouse gang. I won't be mentioning the Mitchie Poo, aka the Wild Thing in this particular reverie (sigh).
(All good, gramps, but answer the question?) Question? OH YEAH, is Barry Bonds the greatest player of all time?
Well, he certainly has earned his place in the highest pantheon, the elite of the elite. He has matured into one hell of a hitter. As others have pointed out, he does far more than just bash the ball, he hits for high average (these last few years) and does so while having the amazing patience to garner league leading numbers of walks. The man has my respect, no doubt.
As the thoughtful have also pointed out, it's nearly impossible to compare players from different eras. Babe Ruth was a titan. I didn't see it pointed out, but he could field a lick or two and he could run damn well, which is surprising when you see the old newsreel footage of this barrel chested behemoth doing a home run trot on his spindly sparrow legs. His pitching prowess has been pointed to, though. I remember duing the 1960 World Series when Whitey Ford broke the record for consecutive scoreless innings by a pitcher in the Series, something like 20 innings or so. It was Babe Ruth's record he broke!!! In sum, IMHO, I don't think you could say that any player was ever better than the Babe.
Ted Williams. A man amongst men. Maybe the best pure hitter the game has ever known. In 1958, near the very end of his career, he hit .388 (or some such ridiculous number like that -- I've been going off the top of my aged head this whole post). And you know there weren't many leg hits in that total. Ted Williams answered his country's call both in WWll and the Korean War (ok, police action). Like I said, a man amongst men. If not for those lost baseball years, in the prime of his career, his already impressive numbers would have been far greater. IMHO, it is difficult to say that anyone ever swung a sweeter stick than Mr. Williams.
If you've read this far, would you please go get a life? One of has to, and it obviously ain't gonna' be me.
Finally, though, I'm going to take a stand. After all, this is OT the Valhalla of the unsupported opinion. Statistics are just that, a big 'ol pile of numbers. What's that old Harry Truman quote, "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics". You can lose the forrest for the trees . . .
So I nominate my personal, subjective pick for all time best: Mr. Wiilie Mays. The man played the game, all aspects of it, with a consummate grace and flair that puts him at the very top. It's like another of these rainy day, barroom posers, "Who's the best guitarist of all time?' All I can say is that back in the day, no one, not Eric Clapton or anyone else, ever wanted to go on stage after Jimi Hendrix. Again, it's really a question no one can answer, but that pretty much sums it up for me.
And so it was with Mr. Willie Mays. Back in the early '60's, when I was a young lad taking full notice of these things, the All Star game between the, ahem, Senior Circuit and that upstart, the American League was more of an old school, hard fought affair.
Those were the days, as Red alluded, when pitching was king. The National League would usually win a close, relatively low scoring affair. You know how? By standing back and letting the big dog eat. They would bat Willie lead off and usually leave him in the whole game, and he would somehow make the difference -- with his bat, with his glove, or with his legs. In a game of the best, he was THE MAN, and everyone on the field from either league knew it, too.
Did I mention he invented the basket catch? Not as a showboat act, but as a way to get the ball out of his glove that one or two milliseconds faster and back to the infield. He invented that. The man knew his job.
Finally there is the film of Mays making that full tilt, over the shoulder circus catch of, I think Vic Wertz's fly ball in a (series?) game in, I think, 1954. The catch itself is a miraculous achievement of infinite grace and beauty, but hardly the most astounding part of the whole sequence. It's what he does just afterwards. Running flat out away from the action, he makes the catch and defying the laws of physics IMMEDIATELY whirls around and FIRES a throw back to the action, as no mortal man operating under the laws of Newton should have a right to. His head was always in the game. He was the most complete player I ever saw. He had godlike talent. He could hit a bit, too.
As a coda, and because the gods are always listening, I would like to mention two names we might not otherwise hear in this thread: Stan Musial and Roberto Clemente. Thank you.
Man, any thread that mentions both APBA baseball and John Kruk is sure to put a sh!t eating grin on my face.
I haven't heard nor read ANY mention of APBA baseball (points if you know it's not pronounced A P B A, but as a two syllable word) since my childhood, back in the late Pleistocene period, when fish first grew limbs and became obnoxious. In the last three and a half decades, all I've ever seen reference to is Strat-O-Matic, the cheesier, johnny come lately, poseur copycat of the one and only.
Ahhhh, APBA baseball! It's mostly how I knew that Joe Morgan (a measely 7) was not a good defensive second baseman his first few years in the league.
And John Kruk! I'll never forget, during the Phillies magical '93 season, John Kruk's father being interviewed by Harry Kallas on TV and referring to his son, in passing, not as John or my boy but "the Krukker". I nearly fell out of my seat!
The 1993 Phillies were magical. Not the greatest collection of atheletes by a country furlong, but ball players who really knew the game. Did you know that there were FOUR guys in the lineup who had 100 or more walks? Did you know that they were not shut out the ENTIRE SEASON until after they had clinched the pennant with about 7 or 8 games to go and rested most of their regulars?
As a true baseball fan, it was an absolute joy to watch Lenny Dykstra ply his craft as the leadoff hitter. As a civilian, Dysktra seems to have the intelligence of a doorstop, no offense to doorstops, but he was one of the smartest ball players I personally have ever had the close up pleasure to watch play. To start off every game, he would purposely take several pitches and would always run deep counts because he knew part of his job was to expose the pitcher's repetoire for the rest of the lineup to see. Amazing! Yet he still batted around .320 with over a hundred walks and more than 20 home runs (elite pre 'roid leadoff power). Then, in the late innings of do or die games in the playoffs, when his team needed him most, he used the season long cover of his previous batting tendencies to wail on the inevitable first pitch strike and send it, time and again, out of the ballpark. He was a man. :beer:
Dyskstra, Darren Daulton, Kruk, Pete Incaviglia -- those boys loved their brew, their brew bellies, and their brew belly belches.. They were a modern equivalent of the legendary St. Louis Cardinal's gashouse gang. I won't be mentioning the Mitchie Poo, aka the Wild Thing in this particular reverie (sigh).
(All good, gramps, but answer the question?) Question? OH YEAH, is Barry Bonds the greatest player of all time?
Well, he certainly has earned his place in the highest pantheon, the elite of the elite. He has matured into one hell of a hitter. As others have pointed out, he does far more than just bash the ball, he hits for high average (these last few years) and does so while having the amazing patience to garner league leading numbers of walks. The man has my respect, no doubt.
As the thoughtful have also pointed out, it's nearly impossible to compare players from different eras. Babe Ruth was a titan. I didn't see it pointed out, but he could field a lick or two and he could run damn well, which is surprising when you see the old newsreel footage of this barrel chested behemoth doing a home run trot on his spindly sparrow legs. His pitching prowess has been pointed to, though. I remember duing the 1960 World Series when Whitey Ford broke the record for consecutive scoreless innings by a pitcher in the Series, something like 20 innings or so. It was Babe Ruth's record he broke!!! In sum, IMHO, I don't think you could say that any player was ever better than the Babe.
Ted Williams. A man amongst men. Maybe the best pure hitter the game has ever known. In 1958, near the very end of his career, he hit .388 (or some such ridiculous number like that -- I've been going off the top of my aged head this whole post). And you know there weren't many leg hits in that total. Ted Williams answered his country's call both in WWll and the Korean War (ok, police action). Like I said, a man amongst men. If not for those lost baseball years, in the prime of his career, his already impressive numbers would have been far greater. IMHO, it is difficult to say that anyone ever swung a sweeter stick than Mr. Williams.
If you've read this far, would you please go get a life? One of has to, and it obviously ain't gonna' be me.
Finally, though, I'm going to take a stand. After all, this is OT the Valhalla of the unsupported opinion. Statistics are just that, a big 'ol pile of numbers. What's that old Harry Truman quote, "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics". You can lose the forrest for the trees . . .
So I nominate my personal, subjective pick for all time best: Mr. Wiilie Mays. The man played the game, all aspects of it, with a consummate grace and flair that puts him at the very top. It's like another of these rainy day, barroom posers, "Who's the best guitarist of all time?' All I can say is that back in the day, no one, not Eric Clapton or anyone else, ever wanted to go on stage after Jimi Hendrix. Again, it's really a question no one can answer, but that pretty much sums it up for me.
And so it was with Mr. Willie Mays. Back in the early '60's, when I was a young lad taking full notice of these things, the All Star game between the, ahem, Senior Circuit and that upstart, the American League was more of an old school, hard fought affair.
Those were the days, as Red alluded, when pitching was king. The National League would usually win a close, relatively low scoring affair. You know how? By standing back and letting the big dog eat. They would bat Willie lead off and usually leave him in the whole game, and he would somehow make the difference -- with his bat, with his glove, or with his legs. In a game of the best, he was THE MAN, and everyone on the field from either league knew it, too.
Did I mention he invented the basket catch? Not as a showboat act, but as a way to get the ball out of his glove that one or two milliseconds faster and back to the infield. He invented that. The man knew his job.
Finally there is the film of Mays making that full tilt, over the shoulder circus catch of, I think Vic Wertz's fly ball in a (series?) game in, I think, 1954. The catch itself is a miraculous achievement of infinite grace and beauty, but hardly the most astounding part of the whole sequence. It's what he does just afterwards. Running flat out away from the action, he makes the catch and defying the laws of physics IMMEDIATELY whirls around and FIRES a throw back to the action, as no mortal man operating under the laws of Newton should have a right to. His head was always in the game. He was the most complete player I ever saw. He had godlike talent. He could hit a bit, too.
As a coda, and because the gods are always listening, I would like to mention two names we might not otherwise hear in this thread: Stan Musial and Roberto Clemente. Thank you.
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