Happy Fourth Of July …

Happy July 4^th, everyone; today the United States is 247 years old.

I have said here more than once that I think Sally Jenkins is the best sports columnist practicing that art today.  Here is a link to her most recent work.  It is not just a column; it is an essay, and the Washington Post ran it in the front section – – not the sports section.  It is long compared to a sports column but do yourself a favor and take a few moments to read it.  I think it is brilliant.

Over last weekend, there were a couple of other “anniversaries” that I did not mention yesterday; so, let me point them out today.  Most known among sports fans is that last Saturday was July 1^st and that date is informally known as Bobby Bonilla Day.  The NY Mets signed Bonilla to a contract with deferred payments so every July 1^st between the years of 2011 and 2035, Bonilla gets a check from the Mets for $1.19M.  He last suited up for the Mets in 1999 and he retired from MLB after the 2001 season.  But that deferred compensation is the gift that keeps on giving.

The NY Mets are peripherally involved in another similar “anniversary” from last Saturday.  Max Scherzer is currently on the Mets’ pitching staff; but on July 1^st, Scherzer got a check for $15M from the Washington Nationals.  That “deferred compensation” comes from the deal he signed with the Nats prior to being traded to the Dodgers and then signing as a free agent with the Mets.  Scherzer is going to get 5 more such payments of $15M through 2028 and since his salary from the Mets this year is about $43M, his tax return for 2023 should be a fun read for the IRS auditor or whose desk it lands.

Sunday was July 2^nd and that was the 60^th anniversary of a MLB game that will not come close to happening anytime soon.  On the surface, the game might seem ordinary.  The SF Giants beat the Milwaukee Braves when Willie Mays hit a walk-off home run; the final score was 1-0.  Actually, this may have been the greatest pitchers’ duel of all time because:

• The game lasted 16 innings.
• Juan Marichal started for the Giants and pitched all 16 innings.
• Warren Spahn started for the Braves and pitched all 16 innings.
• Marichal threw 227 pitches that day.
• Spahn – – at age 42 no less – – threw 201 pitches that day.

[A pitching coach somewhere just felt a twinge in his elbow simply because I typed those last two sentences.]

Neither Marichal nor Spahn needed any miraculous recovery interventions after that outing.  In fact, the 42-year-old Spahn managed to win 10 more games for the Braves in that 1963 season and he led the National League in complete games that year with 22.  Spahn pitched through the 1965 season ending his 21-year career with the SF Giants.

The argument offered most as to why modern pitchers cannot throw as many pitches in a game as in “the olden days” is that modern pitchers throw harder and that puts more stress and strain on their body parts.  That makes sense but it does make me wonder if it is a bit too simplistic.  By the end of the 1963 season, Warren Spahn had been in the major leagues for 19 seasons and over that part of his career he threw a total of 4872.1 innings of major league baseball and at the end of the 1963 season he had also thrown 370 complete games.

Modern pitchers have access to more sophisticated training methods and regimens, and it is difficult to imagine that someone like Warren Spahn who came of age in the early 1940s grew up with better nutritional guidance than a baseball player in the 2020s.  So, I wonder if there might be more to the usual explanation offered up for why today’s starting pitchers are “less durable” than their counterparts in the past.

Let me stay with baseball for one more item that relates to the ongoing saga of the Oakland A’s quest to move to Las Vegas.  Last week, A’s fans in Oakland staged a “reverse boycott”; they organized a night when people would flock to the stadium to see the A’s play as a way to demonstrate that they – – the fans – – are not the problem in Oakland; it is the team ownership that is the problem.  A little more than 28,000 fans showed up which is significantly more than the 10,089 fans who show up for an average game in Oakland this year.  [Aside: That average is inflated somewhat by the 28,000 who showed up on “reverse boycott night”, but let’s not quibble.]

The A’s attendance has been bad for more than a couple of seasons; the A’s have been up and down in the standings, but they have been in the playoffs 3 times since 2017.  The stadium is a hot mess to be sure, but one can make the argument that team management has intentionally gutted the roster to make the product on the field in that hot mess of a stadium very unpalatable.  Consider this:

• When a team selects a pitcher to be the “Opening Day starter”, that usually means he is considered to be the staff stud.
• The A’s starter on Opening Day in 2023 was Kyle Muller who was acquired from the Braves in a multi-team trade.  Muller is 25 years old.
• Prior to 2023, Muller’s MLB stats are meager.  He had started 11 games for the Braves over 2 partial seasons; his record was 3-5 and his ERA was 5.14.

I am not saying that Kyle Muller is a turkey; he may turn out to be an All-Star during his career.  However, if in April of 2023, those are the credentials of the “staff stud” on a team’s roster, it is reasonable to think that the team is particularly thin on the mound.  And maybe – – just maybe – – that thinness on the mound might not be an accident…

Finally, let me close today with an observation by the baseball philosopher, Yogi Berra, that might have a bearing on the attendance stats for the A’s in Oakland:

“If the people don’t want to come out to the park, nobody’s gonna stop ‘em.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports ………