The Strasburg effect

If only he hadn’t been quite so good, I might be watching Stephen Strasburg pitch in person tomorrow.

Strasburg, of course, is the hard-throwing rookie pitcher for the Washington Nationals, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2009 Major League Baseball amateur draft. I’ve been tracking his progress through Washington’s minor league system this season, in the hope that he would still be on the roster of the Nationals’ Triple A affiliate in Syracuse, N.Y., when they came to play the Charlotte Knights.

The Chiefs start a four-game series at Knights Stadium tonight, and if he were still with the team, Strasburg would have been scheduled to start Sunday afternoon, according to the Knights PR staff’s monitoring of the Syracuse rotation. (And it would have guaranteed the Knights their largest non-July 4 Sunday crowd in history, unless I miss my guess.)

Instead, the 21-year-old right-hander out of San Diego State will be making his second major-league start for the Nationals against the Cleveland Indians. His first, on Tuesday against the Pittsburgh Pirates, was called the most hyped pitching debut in the history of the game – you know it’s big when ESPN has a countdown clock to the first pitch.

And the kid lived up to the buildup.

Strasburg struck out 14 batters – one short of the major league record for a pitcher in his major league debut -- and gave up only two runs in seven innings as the Nationals beat Pittsburgh, 4-3. He didn’t walk anybody and at one point, news reports said, his fastball was clocked at 100 mph. But in addition to the “heat,” he also threw deceptively effective off-speed pitches.

In short – the whole package, as they say. (It’s also worth noting that the rookie strikeout record of 15 took nine innings for each of the two pitchers that hold it – Karl Spooner in 1954 and J.R. Richard in 1971 -- to accomplish. If he had pitched a complete game , Strasburg would almost certainly have broken that record.)

So is he the real deal and can he keep pitching at that level in the big leagues? After all, skeptics say, his debut was against the hapless -- and, oh, how it pains me to say that! -- Pirates and fueled by the adrenaline of the big event. Strasburg is easing into his big league career – his first four scheduled turns are all against teams that have sub-.500 records right now.

But the career of young pitchers can be fragile. As proof, I couldn’t help notice the names of the two pitchers whose first-game strikeout record Strasburg threatened.

Spooner, who was 23 when he made his debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers against the eventual World Series champion New York Giants on Sept. 22, 1954, followed that with a shutout of the Pirates. He struck out 12 in that one. “Spooner should have come up sooner,” was a popular saying of the time among Brooklyn fans.

He came back from knee surgery that fall to have a pretty decent 1955 season (8-6, 3.65 ERA) as a starter and a reliever for the National League champion Dodgers. But he developed a sore arm and never pitched again in the major leagues after losing his only start against the New York Yankees in the World Series.

Richard is an even sadder story, even though he had a 10-year major league career and won more than 100 games with the Houston Astros. He was having his best big league season in 1980 – he was the starting pitcher for the National League in the 1980 All-Star Game and had a 10-4 record – when he started to complain of numbness in his arm in July.

Medical tests revealed some arterial blockage in his right shoulder but doctors decided it wasn’t serious enough to warrant treatment. But on July 30, 1980, he suffered a stroke during a pre-game throwing drill and had surgery to remove a blood clot. It was effectively the end of his baseball career. Minor league comeback attempts with the Astros in 1982 and 1983 were unsuccessful and the team released him.

Strasburg, by all accounts, is a level-headed sort, the anti-Ben Roethlisberger. (He married his college sweetheart back in January.) He seems to be poised to have a long and successful career and I hope his story has a happier ending.

Late innings

Somebody up there must know that I don’t have a lot of baseball left to cover this season, because I got an extra helping last night.

The first five innings of the Charlotte Knights’ game against the Gwinnett Braves last night at Knights Stadium were nothing extraordinary and went by in a little over an hour. Then baseball happened.

By the end of six innings, the game was tied 6-6 and then, after nearly 3-1/2 hours of play, went to extra innings tied 7-7. Thankfully, because I had to meet a 9:30 class this morning, it didn’t last much longer.

The Knights’ Tyler Flowers, a 23-year-old catcher who played in the Atlanta Braves’ organization last season, ended the game close to 11:30 p.m. with a two-out, three-run homer in the bottom of the 11th, giving Charlotte a 10-7 victory. Time of game, 4 hours and 4 minutes.

That makes it tough on a deadline but I did have time enough to talk with Flowers after the game. I should have been paying more attention to the game notes, as I missed the "guy beats the organization that traded him" angle. But it did come out in, I think, a more interesting way than usual.

Flowers hit his home run off a former teammate in the Braves minor league system, pitcher Juan Perez.

"I had caught him before, so I knew he had a good breaking ball and I didn't want him to beat me with it," Flowers said. "I wanted to get in the position to get a fastball."

He got one on a one-ball, no-strike pitch and slammed it to right center field to end one of the International League's longest games of the season.

In addition to describing this game, the title of tonight's post, completely and totally stolen from one of the many wonderful books about baseball by Roger Angell of The New Yorker, is appropriate for this part of the season.

After tonight the Knights (62-69 after Wednesday night's win) have just 12 games left and only four more home games. They're practically, if not quite mathematically, eliminated from playoff contention. So how does a player give meaning to the last string of meaningless games?

"There's plenty to play for," Knights manager Chris Chambliss said after the game. "These guys are trying to position themselves well for next season, whether it's with this organization or another one. And we play the contenders, so the schedule gives us a lot to say about who will get in the playoffs from our division."

I'm not sure I've ever believed that a non-contending team gets a lot of satisfaction out of playing that "spoiler" role, unless the "spoilee" is a hated rival.

But to paraphrase John Lennon, whatever gets you through the last long nights of the season, it's all right. It's all right.

Baseball, fireworks and the American way of life

In almost all of the past 15 years, I've finished up the Fourth of July at Knights Stadium in Fort Mill covering a baseball game. (I've always wondered how the Charlotte Knights manage to get the July 4 home game nearly every year.)

As I've noted before, I always enjoy covering baseball, but the "event" that is the Fourth of July makes that game extra enjoyable. And so it was last night. The Knights have been plagued by low attendance in recent years -- near or at the bottom of the International League most of this season. (It's ominous to note that the teams that have kept Charlotte out of the cellar in recent years solved their attendance problems by moving -- Ottawa to the Allentown, Pa., area in 2008 and Richmond to Gwinnett County, Ga., earlier this year.)

But the July 4 game always brings out a crowd at the stadium near the N.C./S.C. state line. Crowd was 15,020 last night, third best in the stadium's 20-year history, and surpassed only by the previous two July 4 crowds. See the video for a look at the fans.



And it could have been just the number of people in the house, but it also seems like Independence Day brings out the best in the patriotic rituals that usually accompany an athletic event in this country. You could actually hear folks singing the National Anthem and a full-throated rendition of "God Bless America" at the seventh inning stretch was gratifying.

They were rewarded with a nice performance by the Knights, who beat the Durham Bulls, 11-2. Click here for my story in The Charlotte Observer. In addition to the offensive fireworks noted in my story, the Knights also got great pitching. Starting pitcher Carlos Torres (8-4) gave up four hits and struck out nine in eight innings. His strikeout total (93) gave him the International League lead.

I talked with Torres after the game and pursued this story line a little, but he minimized the importance. "The guy I passed has been in the major leagues for a month," he said. "I'd rather get them all out in one pitch. It's more of a tribute to my catchers for calling the right pitches in the right spots."

Gwinnett's Tommy Hanson, who was called up to the Atlanta Braves on June 3, had been the strikeout leader.

Then it was time to watch a little fireworks. I was glad that the comparatively brief game -- 2 hours, 22 minutes -- gave me a few minutes to go down to the bottom of the ramp the players take to the field and watch the pyrotechnics. Like everything else about July 4, the fireworks were bigger and better than the Knights' usual Saturday post-game fireworks -- which I usually miss because I'm working.

It was an appropriate ending to a good day in America.

Reporter's notebook, June 19

"This ain't football. We do this every day."

So said the legendary Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver, and the point was that -- unlike the big-event atmosphere of an NFL schedule, with just 16 chances to get it right -- baseball is a day-to-day grind and one loss is nothing to get excited about. And you have to ride out some ups and downs and roll with some changes. (Contest: how many cliches were in that last paragraph?)

Anyway, the same thing goes for covering a baseball team. I'm not going to as many Charlotte Knights games as I have in the past, and I can tell the difference when I do go to the ballpark. One constant at the Triple A level is change in the roster. Because it's the last stop before the major leagues, players tend to come and go more than they do at the lower levels of the minor leagues. So there are always player moves to catch up on.

The Knights added a couple of players from the Class AA Birmingham Barons to their roster the day before. I always start looking for a possible story angle early on, even before the game starts, knowing of course that that can change. I thought a good "first game in Triple A" from either of the newcomers, pitcher Brian Omogrosso and infielder Brandon Allen might be a possiblity.

I was hoping for an opportunity to write about Buffalo pitcher Lance Broadway, a former Knight recently traded by the Chicago White Sox, Charlotte's parent club, to the New York Mets, Buffalo's parent club. But I learned that he's pitching out of the bullpen for the Bisons. He didn't play in Buffalo's 10-3 victory over the Knights.

Omogrosso, who was second in the Southern League in wins (7) at the time of his call-up, didn't have a great debut. He gave up four runs in two innings of relief pitching. So that left Allen. He's a 23-year-old Texan who has been considered one of the White Sox' top prospects but had had some hitting struggles in his first minor league seasons before finally blossoming a little at Birmingham.

He had a nice first game in Charlotte -- 3-for-4 with two doubles and an RBI, about the only bright spot for the Knights at the plate. I arranged to talk with him after the game.

As I introduced myself, I tried a conversational gambit that I try to teach my students -- do whatever you can to establish a little rapport with the interviewee. I decided on the Texas connection. Allen is from Montgomery, Texas, a little town of about 500 people about 40 miles west of Houston. It's just down Texas Highway 105 from Navasota, a charming little town where Jayne and I both worked for the weekly newspaper when I was in graduate school at Texas A&M. The two high schools have often been in the same district for athletic competition.

I mentioned that connection to him and he took the bait positively. "Oh, yeah? Rattler Country," he said with a smile, mentioning Navasota's nickname. The rest of the interview went well, coincidentally or not.

I must also note that this doesn't always work. I was part of the coverage for the 1994 Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh for my employer at the time, the North Hills News Record. My previous paper, the Pensacola (Fla.) News-Journal had contacted me to do a story for them about Travis Fryman. The Detroit Tigers' All-Star third baseman had been a Pensacola-area high school baseball star.

I approached Fryman during a media availability the day before the game, told him who I was and that I used to work for the News-Journal and even threw in a reference to Tate High School, his alma mater, for good measure. His reaction to all that was the same as if I had just told him I worked for the newspaper in Wausau, Wisconsin. A blank.

The approach may have fallen flat, but I suppose that's the difference between a young minor-leaguer and a major league veteran. Professional that he was, Fryman was cordial and gave me a good interview anyway.

Bidding John Updike adieu

The author John Updike died yesterday at age 76 and I immediately thought of the Boston Red Sox.

Let me walk you through it. Updike was one of America’s greatest men of letters in the second half of the 20th century and quite possibly the most prolific – authoring 50 books, including 40 novels, countless short stories, essays and articles, and a book of poems. He won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice.

But if he had never written another thing, he produced one of the best pieces of sports writing ever at the age of 28, an essay called “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” which appeared in the Oct. 22, 1960 edition of The New Yorker. Here’s a link to it and if you love baseball, even if you hate the Red Sox, you should read it.

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/hub_fans_bid_kid_adieu_article.shtml

“The Kid” was Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame slugger Ted Williams and the article was based on Updike’s observations after having attended the last game of Williams’ major league career, on Sept. 28, 1960 at Fenway Park.

Updike is no sportswriter, and in this case that’s a good thing, as the article starts, not with Williams, but with one of the most felicitous phrases I’ve ever read about baseball (“Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark.”). He goes on to perceptively describe the often stormy relationship that Williams had with both the Boston media and fans. It’s evocative and full of the emotion that only a fan knows.

Sports also played a part in several of Updike’s most famous works of fiction, the four “Rabbit” novels he wrote over a period of 30 years. His protagonist, Rabbit Angstrom, is a former high school basketball star who finds that real life is a lot more complicated than a basketball game. He leaves his wife and children and eventually attains material success in life, but not peace of mind or spiritual fulfillment.

I have to confess that I’ve never read those books, except for a few anthologized excerpts. But it’s a theme that I’ve thought about over the years as I’ve covered high school football in small towns, especially football-obsessed Texas, the Florida Panhandle and western Pennsylvania.

I don’t want to stereotype or be overly dramatic. But I think it’s quite possible that some of these young men will have received more public acclaim, and will have a greater sense of accomplishment, at 18 than they’ll have for the rest of their lives.

That’s a theme that a lot of sports literature over the years has tapped into. Updike, the chronicler of middle class, suburban and small-town angst, apparently did it especially well.

A baseball note

The sports weekend on TV has been filled with college basketball and NFL football. (My assignment covering the Queens-Limestone game last night saved me from having to watch the Panthers' playoff debacle against Arizona.)

But earlier today I was going through some old VHS tapes -- yes we still have a VCR -- and I found the HBO movie "61*" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250934) that I had taped off TV when it came out in 2001.

Directed by comedian and lifelong New York Yankees fan Billy Crystal, the movie is a dramatization of Roger Maris' pursuit of Babe Ruth's single-season home run record in 1961. It's pretty well-researched, written and artfully-acted, especially by Barry Pepper (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001608) as Maris. (The Canadian-born actor has also portrayed Dale Earnhardt Jr. in a TV movie.)

As a sports writer, I've always found the movie's portrayal of the media coverage of the record chase to be quite interesting, if borderline stereotypical. But much has been written about the media's treatment of Maris, a stoic Minnesotan who was generally self-effacing, quiet and not very quotable, as he neared the magic 61 home run total. Reporters preferred the more approachable (usually) Mickey Mantle, who was always ready with a quote.

In case you've ever wondered, this view of the media is pretty much spot on. Reporters tend to gravitate toward the players who will give them the best story, while being much less charitable toward an equally talented player who may not be as good an interview subject.

I read a story today about former Boston Red Sox slugger Jim Rice, who is a case in point. This year is his last shot at being elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame before he goes into that pool of veterans who have been retired 15 years or more without being elected. Rice, whom I first saw play in an American Legion game in my hometown in the late Sixties -- he hit a couple of homers that may well still be in the air somewhere -- has career statistics that are probably Hall-worthy. But he gained a reputation in his career for being uncooperative and surly with the media, who are the voters for the hall. This also explains the absence of Dave Kingman (442 career home runs) from the Hall, I believe. Well, that and a .236 career batting average.

But I digress. On re-viewing the movie I was struck by a couple of things. The story starts in 1998, with the Maris family (he died of cancer in 1985) watching St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire on TV as he hits his 61st homer of the season -- they then get ready to fly from their home in Gainesville, Fla., to St. Louis to watch McGwire break the record.

The movie came out before the full extent of steroids use in baseball had received a lot of media attention, so there's a little irony in going back and watching it now in that context.

And I had to laugh at a little scene at the beginning of the movie. Maris, who had been traded from the Kansas City Athletics to New York in 1958, had won the American League's Most Valuable Player award in 1960 for a 39 home run, 112 RBI season. As the 1961 season started he had what apparently had become an annual conversation with his wife on buying a home in New York while keeping their residence in Kansas City, where the kids were in school.

"But, honey, you know we can't afford two houses," Pat Maris tells her husband.

I suspect it's been a while since the reigning MVP of any major pro sport has had to hear something like that.

The whole story

Sometimes you just don't get enough room.

I'm posting a longer version of my Charlotte Knights story which appeared in today's Charlotte Observer. For the space available, it got a pretty good edit, but it was just a story I liked, and hoped more of it would survive.

So if anybody out there is still reading, then I thought I'd let it see the light of day. You know, I just ought to do this blogging thing more often.

By KEITH CANNON
Special Correspondent


FORT MILL -- Brad Eldred's bat is back in the Charlotte Knights' lineup, but he was just one of a bunch of heavy hitters in a 15-4 rout of the Buffalo Bisons on Friday night.
The Knights (50-57) set season-highs for runs and hits (19) in their first game back from a rough road trip. Eldred, playing in just his fourth game back after three weeks on the disabled list, went 3-for-4 hit one of four Charlotte home runs in the game.
"Everybody wants to play a full season, but you can't worry about what could have been," said Eldred, who led the International League with 26 homers and 72 RBIs when he suffered a fractured metacarpal on his left hand on June 22. "I'm just trying to get my timing back and get back in the routine I had before."
He's still the IL leader in RBIs and picked up three more in Friday night's slugfest.
Fernando Cortez hit his first two homers of the season, a bases-empty shot and a three-run homer, and Chris Getz was 3-for-5 with a two-run homer in the third. Jason Bourgeois was 3-for-5 with a pair of doubles.
"Everybody contributed," said Knights manager Marc Bombard. "We had a tough road trip (2-6), and didn't get a lot of big hits when we needed them so this was good to see."
The Knights held a 9-4 lead in the eighth when relief pitcher Mike MacDougal loaded the bases with none out. Todd Linden, who also had a pair of homers, doubled and Jordan Brown and Chris Giminez walked, but McDougal recovered to retire the next three batters.
"They're right in the game if anything happens there," Bombard said. "Mac made some good pitches to get out of the jam he got himself in."
Charlotte wrapped up the game with a six-run eighth. Starting pitcher Lance Broadway (9-6) got the victory, giving up four hits and three earned runs in six innings.
The Knights have been active in roster moves in the last several days. Infielder Josh Fields and relief pitcher Ehren Wassermann have been called up by the Chicago White Sox. It's the third straight season Fields has been promoted from Charlotte. Outfielder Jerry Owens was activated from the disabled list and outfielder Noah Hall was released.
"So it goes in this league," Bombard said.

Sports "think" radio?

This is about the only time of year that I pay much attention to sports talk radio, a medium with which I have a real love/hate relationship.

I love to talk sports as much as the next person, although not as much at this stage of my life as in my sports-obsessed youth. But too often the "dialogue" on these stations degenerates into "discussions" of who sucks worse, the Yankees or the Red Sox, or the Blue Devils or the Tar Heels, for example.

But the Dan Patrick Show,(http://www.danpatrick.com) to which I'm becoming a regular listener, seems to be an intelligent alternative in this genre. Patrick, the former ESPN anchor, is now doing his show as a part of Sports Illustrated magazine's big media convergence move. (This is actually worth a post of its own, maybe more later.)

His interview with Jose Canseco this morning was compelling radio. No screaming or name-calling, but some tough questions for the ex-American League slugger, an admitted steroids user who seems intent on taking as many people down with him as possible. (He has a second book out, in which he calls out the likes of Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling).

After the interview, Patrick made a good point which journalists of all kinds should remember. "I don't have to like him to believe him," said Patrick, who thinks that Canseco's allegations have the ring of truth. "You can't say that you believe Roger Clemens because he's a good guy and you like him, but you don't believe Barry Bonds because he's a bad guy and you don't like him. That's hypocritical."

Sound judgment and measured reaction -- talk radio should have a lot more of this.

An "underdog makes good" story

I sometimes feel like I don't take enough advantage of the capability that the blog gives you to be your own publisher. So here's a story of mine that I think deserves to see the light of day, but hasn't yet found a venue. (In the interest of full disclosure, a much-truncated version did appear in the Charlotte Observer about two weeks ago.)

It's about 26-year-old Ehren Wasserman, a relief pitcher for the Charlotte Knights who has an "underdog" story in the mold of "Rocky" and "Rudy." Undrafted four years ago after a good college career at Samford University of the mid-major Atlantic Sun conference, he signed a pro contract out of an open tryout camp with about 150 other players.

And he became a major leaguer when the Chicago White Sox called him up. Few players make the big leagues from that kind of start and there's not much of an analog for it in other professional sports -- for example, not many undrafted Division I-AA or Division II players will make an NFL or NBA roster this fall, period.

Anyway, here's the story:

FORT MILL -- Ehren Wasserman didn't take the usual route to a professional baseball career.
Signed four years ago out of an open tryout camp, the 26-year-old Charlotte Knights relief pitcher is climbing the minor league ladder one step at a time. And this week he adds another line to his resume as the Knights' only representative at the Triple A All-Star game Wednesday in Albuquerque, N.M.
It's Wasserman's third All-Star game selection at three different levels of the minor leagues. He earned All-Star status at Class A Winston-Salem in 2004 and at Class AA Birmingham last summer.
"It says I've had good pitching coaches and I've had good defenses play behind me," he said. "When I'm done with baseball I can look back and say it was a great honor. You can have great numbers and never get to be selected for an All-Star Game, so I'm thrilled to go again."
His numbers this season are a 2-3 record with a 1.99 earned run average and a team-leading five saves. Knights manager Marc Bombard says his value to the team has been in his ability to fill a lot of roles.
"It wasn't really the plan to use him as a stopper, but out of necessity we've used him that way," Bombard said. "He's saved some games, held some leads, whatever we've needed him to do."
He was named to the All-Star team last week to replace Gavin Floyd, who was called up from Charlotte to the Chicago White Sox.
Wasserman, a Sylacauga, Ala., native was undrafted at the end of his senior season in 2003 at Samford University in Birmingham, where he played for two years after transferring from an Alabama junior college. The White Sox tryout was the third of four in which he participated at the stadium in suburban Birmingham where the Barons play their home games. He also tried out with the Braves, Phillies and Padres.
"There's a scout and then a couple of other people right beside you watching, so it's a little pressure," he said. "A pitcher has eight pitches to hit 90 mph or they won't even turn your name in to the team (for more consideration)."
Three weeks later, as he was moving from one apartment to another, he received a call from the White Sox about a spot on the pitching staff of their Rookie League team in Bristol, Va. He signed a contract and joined the team the next day.
Wasserman downplays the unconventional beginning, but admits that it's been some motivation for the rest of his career. "It's just a different way to get somewhere," he said.
Bombard puts it in perspective.
"How many people even sign a pro contract from a tryout camp? Not many," he said. "And then the percentage goes down as you go higher up the ladder. It's good to see somebody like that succeed."