You also build a team to suit where you will play—and not just your home field. In 1968 there were only two fields with artificial turf. In 1989 there were ten. Because each team now plays a good number of games on artificial turf—on a plastic carpet put down on concrete—speed is more essential than it used to be. Or, to be more precise, speed is more widely recognized as valuable than it used to be. Artificial turf has reminded some people of how valuable speed always has been in baseball, anywhere, at any time. For example, a slow runner on first often allows the defense to “play soft,” not holding the runner on. This allows the pitcher to throw off-speed pitches to left-handed hitters who may get around on those pitches and pull them but will not have a huge hole in the right side to pull them through. This is true on a natural or artificial field.
Today’s increased emphasis on speed is one reason why many fans feel as Bill James does. “I do not like artificial turf,” writes James. “I like the game that artificial turf creates.” It is a game in which in 1987, the year the Cardinals won the pennant, Vince Coleman, the Cardinals’ speedster, scored 23 percent of his 121 runs with no hit coming from his teammates after he reached base. A runner is neither undignified nor unaesthetic when he gobbles up 270 feet by, for example, stealing second, going to third on an infield grounder to the right side and scoring on a sacrifice fly. If you are fast, the sacrifice fly does not even need to be very deep. Things get exciting.
Runs that come one at a time matter. Most runs come that way. By concentrating more baseball minds on the myriad ways of moving 90 feet, and on how to score one run at a time, artificial turf has had the partially—I say partially—redeeming effect of restoring balance to baseball. The balance was lost when home runs became too important to too many teams and fans.
After the 1916 season, in which the National League’s home-run leader had 12, the league was alarmed about the degradation of baseball by this epidemic of vulgar power. So the league ruled that all outfield fences had to be at least 270 feet from home plate. (Actually, only two parks were affected, the Polo Grounds in New York and what would come to be called Baker Bowl in Philadelphia.) At that time sports pages listed stolen bases and sacrifices in addition to batting averages, but did not list home runs.
The future, however, was in the process of being born in Boston. In 1915 a Red Sox pitcher in his first full season had 4 home runs. These 4 by Babe Ruth were almost a third of the Red Sox total of 14. In September, 1919, when Ruth was about to set the single-season home-run record with 29, Edward G. Barrow, Ruth’s manager on the Red Sox, said:
After Babe has satisfied himself by hanging up a record for home runs that will never be touched, he will become a .400 hitter. He wants to establish a record of 30 or 35 home runs this year, and when he has done that he will start getting a lot of base hits that will win us more games than his home runs. He will just meet the ball and hit it to left field as well as Ty Cobb. He will not be trying to knock the ball out of the lot after this season. He will be content with his record because it will be far and away out of the reach of any other player the game is likely to develop.
Ruth was a wonder, but he was more a harbinger than an aberration. The home run was here to stay, which was fine. What was not fine was that home runs began to drive out other forms of offense. When home runs became the center of baseball’s mental universe, the emphasis shifted away from advancing runners. The new emphasis was on just getting runners on base to wait for lightning to strike. The major league teams of the 1950s were like American automobiles of the 1950s: There was not much variety or subtlety. In the era of automotive megachrome and tail fins baseball was played (I am exaggerating slightly) like a board game: Move here, then wait; move there, then wait again. The stolen base was like the foreign car: It was considered cute and fun and not quite serious, and was not often seen. In the first seven years of that decade no team stole 100 bases in a season. Think about that. Not a single one of the 16 teams stole as many bases as Maury Wills was to steal in 1962 (104).
The 1959 World Series between the Dodgers and the White Sox foreshadowed the transformation of baseball back to a game emphasizing speed. The “Go-Go Sox” attack, if such it could be called, consisted largely of Luis Aparicio and Nellie Fox, two small middle infielders who could hit-and-run and steal. And the 1959 Dodgers were a far cry from the last Dodgers team that had appeared in a Series, the 1956 slugging team of Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, Roy Campanella and Carl Furillo. The 1959 Dodgers led the league in fielding, strikeouts, bull pen saves and stolen bases. Those sufficed.
The wonder is that baseball took such a wrong turn into the cul-de-sac of the 1950s. Yes, that was a conservative decade. The Eisenhower years have been characterized as “the bland leading the bland.” Bland was fine in politics, especially after the overstimulation of the Depression and the Second World War. But baseball is entertainment and bland entertainment is not fun. True, the decade of Mantle, Mays and Snider—one city’s center fielders—can not really be called dull. But when baseball became monochrome, it was not as entertaining as it should have been, even though some color came from home runs. It was insufficiently entertaining because it was not sufficiently intelligent.
Furthermore, a lot of teams—those with power shortages relative to the big bruising teams—were at more of a competitive disadvantage in the 1950s than they needed to be. They would have done better if, instead of swinging from their heels, they had got up on their toes and run. Again, I concede the point that baseball boomed in the 1950s. But it did not boom as it was to do in the 1980s.
The 1947 season had provided what should have been sobering evidence of the competitive weakness of counting on home runs to power a team to a pennant, and the evidence would accumulate over the next two decades. The first team to hit more than 200 home runs in a season was the 1947 Giants. They hit 221. They finished fourth. Of the 22 teams that have hit 200 or more home runs in a season, only 5 won pennants: the 1953 and 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, the 1961 New York Yankees, the 1962 San Francisco Giants and the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers. Only 2 of those 5 (the 1955 Dodgers and the 1961 Yankees) also won the World Series.
The Cubs of 1971 had three players with 300 or more career home runs (Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Ron Santo) and finished in a tie for third place with a record of 83–79. The 1987 Cubs hit 209 home runs, more than any National League team in a decade, and they gave up just 159, but they were outscored by 81 runs, 801 to 720, and crashed into the cellar. Only 70 other teams had hit at least 50 more home runs than their opponents and only one of those 70 had been outscored. The 1987 Cubs’ opponents had 179 more men reach base by hits, walks and hit batters. The 1986 Mets won the National League East by 21½ games, the largest margin in the history of divisional play and second in major league history to the 27½ -game margin of the 1902 Pirates. The Mets managed their feat with the relatively modest total of 148 home runs.
The 1987 Orioles became the twenty-second team in history to hit 200 or more home runs in a season, and the first team in history to give up 200 home runs while hitting 200. They were next to last in runs scored. Nearly half (45.6 percent) of their runs were scored by batters who had hit home runs or by runners who were on base when home runs were hit. For the Orioles it was feast or famine, and the home-run feasts, although unusually frequent, were not frequent enough. The 1987 Orioles got fewer runners into scoring position than any other team and they finished sixth. The 1988 Athletics hit only 156 home runs but finished first.
Because baseball is a game of normal human proportions and abnormally small margins, people tend to make too much of sheer bulk when a lot of it is assembled on one team. Before the 1927 World Series, in which the Yankees were to sweep the Pirates, the Pirates’ Lloyd “Little Poison” Waner (150 pounds) watched Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bob Meusel and the rest take batting practice, then he turned to his brother Paul and said, “Jesus, they’re big.” They were indeed. And one of baseball’s durable myths is that the Yankees’ batting practice that day s
o demoralized the Pirates that they rolled over and died. Actually, although the Yankees swept the Pirates in four games, the Yankees won games one and four by one run and got only three more extra-base hits than the Pirates (ten to seven). But bigness can be mesmerizing in baseball.
It was perhaps inevitable, given the physical bulk of the middle of their lineup, that the 1988 Athletics would be a much misunderstood team. They were, to the end, underestimated. Fans did not appreciate their versatility, which was illustrated when Jose Canseco stole second base for his fortieth stolen base. He had reached first base on a bunt. That was his only bunt hit of the season, but he and other Athletics sluggers had, as players say, “showed bunt” occasionally during the season. That is, they had shortened up on the bat as if preparing to bunt. By doing this they had achieved some hits because the opposing third basemen had been drawn in a step or two or three, thereby making it easier to get a sharply hit ball past them. Otherwise, third basemen against the powerful Athletics would have played unusually deep. It is hazardous enough playing third base in the big leagues; it is doubly so against the Athletics’ right-handed power hitters like Canseco and McGwire. But it becomes especially worrisome when these line-drive hitters can credibly shorten up and threaten to drop a bunt down the third-base line for a hit. A line drive reaches a third baseman faster than the fastest pitch travels to the plate. By “showing bunt” the Athletics’ batters pull their opponents’ third basemen in, make them nervous and add a few points to the Athletics’ team batting average. “Watch where the third baseman plays against us,” says La Russa. “Even to the bag, a step beyond it or a couple of steps in. Do you know what that means? There are balls in the hole and balls down the line that he doesn’t get to. Why would you want to let the third baseman play all the way back on the grass and take away all those hits, without showing the bunt and drawing him in?”
The 1988 Athletics had plenty of power:
HR RBI
Jose Canseco 42 124
Mark McGwire 32 99
Dave Henderson 24 94
Dave Parker 12 55
Terry Steinbach 9 51
TOTAL 119 423
However, the 1987 Athletics had more power:
Mark McGwire 49 118
Jose Canseco 31 113
Mike Davis 22 72
Carney Lansford 19 76
Terry Steinbach 16 56
TOTAL 137 435
But not even the 1987 Athletics measured up to the 1961 or 1927 Yankees:
1961 YANKEES
HR RBI
Roger Maris 61 142
Mickey Mantle 54 128
Bill Skowron 28 89
Elston Howard 21 77
Yogi Berra 22 61
TOTAL 186 497
1927 YANKEES
HR RBI
Lou Gehrig 47 175
Babe Ruth 60 164
Bob Meusel 8 103
Tony Lazzeri 18 102
Earl Combs 6 64
TOTAL 139 608
The 1988 Athletics won 18 of 19 in late April and early May and had only one minislump after that. When it occurred, cutting their lead to three in mid-July, they reeled off 22 wins in the next 28 games. They wound up with winning records against all clubs but the Royals (5–8), had the best record in the major leagues on the road (50–31) and demolished the once haughty American League East (57–27). They were 30–16 in one-run games, 14–5 in extra innings and won 24 games in their last at bat. They were a moderately dominating team, but only moderately. Consider a comparison.
The 1986 Mets outscored their opponents by 205 runs. Mildly impressive, but only mildly. It was the best differential since the 224 of the 1976 Big Red Machine. But since 1900, 65 teams have done better than the Mets’ 205. The run differential has narrowed over time as the differences in the capabilities of the teams have narrowed. This narrowing has occurred for the same reason the .400 hitter has disappeared. As baseball knowledge has become deeper and more broadly disseminated, wide disparities in individual and team performances have become rarer. To put all this in perspective, the 1927 Yankees had a run differential of 376, and even that is not the record. It is not close to the 1939 Yankees’ record of 411. The 1988 Athletics’ run differential of 180 was just 44 percent of 411.
The 1988 Athletics had a per-game margin over opponents of 1.3 runs. Note well, even a very good team like the 1988 Athletics has only a slim advantage. But it has it often.
To get that edge often, a manager must fret constantly. On a sunny May morning in Baltimore, La Russa is breakfasting abstemiously, as is his wont, on fruit and cereal and nothing else. He is thinking—worrying, naturally; for him, the distinction between thinking and worrying is a distinction without a difference—aloud.
“Parker is struggling. I’m going to hit him second against Boddicker tonight.” Parker is a large, slow slugger who is past his prime. He is hardly the prototype of a number-two hitter. But he is in a slump and is swinging at a lot of bad pitches. Boddicker is an off-speed finesse pitcher. The key to La Russa’s thinking is his leadoff hitter, Carney Lansford, who always has hit Boddicker well and who, at the moment, is white hot, hitting everyone. If Parker comes up with no one on base, Boddicker will tantalize him to the point of distraction, frustration and futility. Parker will chase everything. “But suppose Lansford, a legitimate base-stealing threat, is on first. The pitcher is caught. The catcher is caught. You have to go one way or the other, but you can’t have it both ways. One way is to try to pitch to Parker with off-speed, off-the-plate junk. But that way you give up second base to a Lansford steal. Or you try to take away the steal by coming at Parker with a pitch he might hit for extra bases. That is why if I have a legitimate stolen-base guy, I don’t like to have a little slap-type hitter hitting next. A power hitter puts the pitcher in the problem.”
In 1988 the Athletics ranked sixth in the American League in sacrifice bunts. (The Chicago White Sox led with 67 sacrifice bunts; the A’s had a total of 54.) If a leadoff man singles in the first inning, will La Russa ever bunt? “Very rarely.” Even if the number-two batter has almost no chance to get a hit, La Russa prefers to try something more aggressive than a bunt, such as a hit-and-run to get the ball in play. This is a consideration when deciding whether to bunch or scatter the best hitters through the lineup. La Russa is often a scatterer. “Suppose you don’t have much thump in your lineup. You try to space out your hitters a bit. If you have four good hitters, bat one first, one third, one fourth, one seventh. If you bunch them all together you are grouping your best shot to score in just three innings. The other six you’re going out with no firepower. Instead, take one of your guys who may not be an outstanding hitter but who can handle the bat, and bat him second because if the first guy gets on base, you can do something with the batter to advance the runner.” Something like hit-and-run. Hitting-and-running is safer than bunting if your batter is someone who almost always makes contact. Bunting is a difficult art. It is devilishly easy to bunt the ball foul twice and then have to swing away defensively because you are behind in the count. And especially on artificial turf it is devilishly hard not to bunt the ball so far that a fielder can pounce on it and throw the runner out at second. Also, when the runner is breaking for second with the pitch and the bunt is popped up, the runner can be doubled off first. If the batter is a good contact hitter he probably will not swing and miss and leave the runner exposed to being thrown out at second. So in a hit-and-run situation the only risk would be a line drive to an infielder that gets the breaking runner doubled up at first.
In both cases, bunting or hitting-and-running, you start the runner, so he is at risk. Granted, if the batter hits a line drive at an infielder, the runner who started with the pitch probably will be doubled up. But if the ball is hit on the ground, the runner probably can not be forced at second. And if the ball goes through the infield—ideally, through the hole opened by the movement of the shortstop or second baseman toward second as the runner breaks from first—the runner winds u
p at third.
It is an old baseball joke that big-inning baseball is affirmed in the Bible, in Genesis: “In the big inning, God created….”La Russa knows the key to creating big innings. “First and third, nobody out. You’re talking about a big inning. To me, the secret of scoring a lot of runs is, as many times as you can get a guy into scoring position, do it.” But when considering a hit-and-run, there are three variables. They are the pitcher’s control, the batter’s ability to make contact and the runner’s speed. La Russa wants to have at least two in his favor. “Suppose the other team has a guy on the mound who throws real hard and is wild. Suppose you have a real free swinger at the plate and a slow runner on first. That’s about as bad a situation as you could pick for a hit-and-run, no matter what the score or game situation is. You want to hit-and-run when you know the pitch is going to be close enough to the strike zone that the batter can put it in play. Your free swinger may swing through even a good pitch, and the slow runner breaking from first base will be dead.”
Again and again and again La Russa returns to baseball’s fundamental trade-off, the purchase of opportunity by the coin of risk. The crucial concept in baseball is the creation of opportunities. That means putting people on base. Fans are fascinated by each hitter’s average with runners in scoring position. But the difference between an average of .275 and .250 is of little importance compared with the more important matter of how many runners the team gets into scoring position. Consider a team loaded with power hitters but short on hitters with high on-base averages. Such a team may have more trouble scoring runs in bunches than does a team short on power hitters but capable of getting lots of men to first base and willing to take risks by running.
Men at Work Page 7
