Balls and Wheels: September 2020

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Remarkable consistency

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mccanbr01.shtml

Hit 18-26 home runs each year from 2006 to 2016. Incredible, especially for a catcher.

Bill James on small business

How did Mayetta, with 300 citizens, sustain 4 grocery stores? People coming in from out in the county?

Asked by: matt_okeefe

Right. 300 people, but probably 600-700 farmers from surrounding areas. And the grocery stores were small, nothing like the supermarkets of today. When I came to Lawrence (a much larger town) in the 1960s there were still little grocery stores everywhere. Mom and Pop operations.

This relates to the question of wealth distribution. We do have a problem in this country with wealth distribution, too much wealth in too few hands. It's the same problem. In what might be called an organic local economy, everyone has a role to play, nobody is truly rich but everybody makes a living and people take care of one another. As the economic Egg grows larger, concentrations of wealth develop, but also more people get left out, can't find an appropriate role. It becomes necessary for the government to intervene.

It's like. . . .take a Banker's Box. If you fill it with ball bearings or shotgun pellets or rice, there is almost no air left in there, because the small pellets occupy almost the entire space. But if you fill it with bowling balls, you only have room for two or three bowling balls, so there is lots of air in there. The same principle; the larger the units, the more space is not reached. The smaller the units, the more completely they fill the space.

The way to fight the wealth concentrations in too few hands is not to try to tax the rich; it is, rather, to break up the economic units. If you force Amazon and Walmart and Exxon and Apple, etc., to break into smaller companies, first of all, no one is actually hurt by that, but those competing smaller companies will reach the smallest units more effectively than the large companies ever will.

Played in play offs, but never in regular season

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/k/kigerma01.shtml

Sunday, September 27, 2020

Huge power increase at age 31

https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=zimmer002roy

Friday, September 25, 2020

Worst Cy Young award winner ever

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/v/vuckope01.shtml

https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=wright001taf

Would have had 3,000 pro hits if it wasn't for the war.

TSN milb stats for selected players-1935

Feb. 20, 1936, p.3

Thursday, September 24, 2020

An interesting career

https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=pascua002car

Interesting story

https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/charlie-cuellar/

Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Russell Wilson played 2 years in the Rockies' organization before becoming a NFL quarterback.

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

https://sabrbaseballcards.blog/2020/09/21/player-collection-spotlight-tim-jordan/

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

https://studiogaryc.com/2020/09/15/my-process-part-1-the-seeds-of-a-story-2/

https://studiogaryc.com/2020/09/16/my-process-part-3-jake-becomes-jack-who-becomes-jake-again/

https://studiogaryc.com/2020/09/16/my-process-part-4-finding-the-visuals/

https://studiogaryc.com/2020/09/17/my-process-part-4-finding-the-visuals-2/

https://studiogaryc.com/2020/09/23/my-process-part-8-color/

https://studiogaryc.com/2020/09/24/my-process-part-9-where-in-the-world/

Monday, September 14, 2020

Old pitchers die hard

https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=root--001cha
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/q/quinnja01.shtml
https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=mcginn001jos

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/j/johnsfr01.shtml

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/wilheho01.shtml

1917 MILB No-hitters (incomplete)

April 15- In PCL, Chief Johnson, of Vernon, beat Portland 6-0.
April 19- In Texas League, Guy Zinn, of Waco, shut out Fortworth 4-0.
April 25- In North Carolina League, Joseph Thornton, of Durham, shut out Winston-Salem 4-0.
May 8- In Northwestern League, Sutherland, of Tacoma, beat Great Falls 3-0
May 9- In PCL, Hoff of Salt Lake beat San Francisco 9-0
May 12-In Texas League, Couchman, of Galveston, beat Fort Worth 1-0
May 13- In Northwestern League, Strand of Seattle beat Spokane 1-0, without a man reaching 1st.
May 13- In Central League, Kernagher, of

Good Dave Fleming articles

https://www.billjamesonline.com/how_old_is_bryce_harper/?AuthorId=5&pg=2
https://www.billjamesonline.com/finding_nimmo/?Au thorId=5&pg=2
https://www.billjamesonline.com/old_blue_eye_and_the_freak/?AuthorId=5&pg=2
https://www.billjamesonline.com/the_best_player_revisited/?AuthorId=5&pg=2
https://www.billjamesonline.com/mike_trouts_first_rival/?AuthorId=5&pg=2

Bill James on Willie Wilson

This is kind of a complicated story and I'm not sure anybody cares, but the Royals' hitting coach of that era, Charlie Lau, became a revered figure in baseball for a few years. He was the original hitting guru, probably the first ex-player who WASN'T a great hitter who nonetheless became famous as a great hitting coach.

Lau, and I am not in any way trying to put him down, but he had a kind of schtick; he taught this principle and that principle and the other one, and he tried, to a certain extent, to put everybody into his mold, which is (in modern baseball) very much frowned upon. Coaches aren't supposed to do that, but his stuff worked for George Brett and Hal McRae and probably a few other guys, and helped the team.

But it wasn't working for Willie Wilson, who was hitting barely over .200 (career) more than 150 games into his major league career, and in danger of having his career fail. Herzog fired Lau as his hitting coach after the 1978 season, in part because he didn't like what Lau was doing with Willie Wilson. Finally, in May, 1979, Whitey Herzog called Willie to the ballpark for a morning workout session, just Whitey and Willie and support staff. Whitey told Willie that he wanted him to forget that stuff that Charlie Lau had been teaching him; it wasn't working for him. He wanted him to focus on just using his wrists, which were very strong, and just drop the bat head on the ball. Just wait for the pitch, identify the pitch, and put the head of the bat in front of it.

This worked unbelievably well; Wilson was hitting .355 on June 6 (1979), and of course had 230 hits in 1980. He was essentially doing what Rod Carew did: just swat the ball over the infield, in front of the outfield. Just flip the ball over the infielders; that's all there is to it. It worked for him.

Whitey got fired after the 1979 season, and the Royals went through several hitting coaches over the next several seasons. In 1984 they hired Lee May as their hitting coach. May was a very likeable, charismatic man and, in part because of that, the worst hitting coach in the history of the world. Wilson had had an off year in 1983. May told Wilson that he wanted him to hit the ball harder, and showed him how to do it. And he did; after May worked with him, Willie hit the ball MUCH harder for the rest of his career.

Unfortunately, when he hit the ball harder, it would hang in the air longer, somebody would run under it and catch it. Wilson's average dropped to the .260s, .270s, and stayed there for the rest of his career.

It always amazed me that Wilson could not see what he was doing wrong, but he was proud of hitting the ball hard, and he wanted to continue to hit the ball hard--which he did, for the rest of his career. It cost him a Hall of Fame career. If he had just stayed with the Carew-type approach that he used from 1979 to 1982, I have no doubt that he would be in the Hall of Fame today. But he preferred to hit the ball hard.

9-14-20