Second Greatest Mormon Baseball Player (Pitcher Division)

Our quest to identify the second greatest Mormon baseball player brings us to the pitchers.  I'm proud to say that this is a pretty good crop.  There seem to be more very good Mormon pitchers than Mormon position players, and if anyone has a theory as to why I'd like to hear it.  But this analysis comes down to five pitchers: Roy Halladay, Jack Morris, Dennis Eckersley, Bruce Hurst, and Vernon Law.

I'll just note here that my search for the second greatest Mormon baseball players is not contingent on church activity or faithfulness.  First, I have no way of knowing and second it's not my place to make those judgment calls anyway.  Eckersley, for instance, is only known to have been active for a few years as a youth and has had some well publicized trials and struggles and as far as I can tell does not identify as a Mormon, but he was baptized and so we consider him.  I'm not sure if this is the best way to do it or not, but I'm a big-tent Mormon kind of guy and so we push on.

This is going to get a little long so let me just dispense with the suspense right now for those that don't want to read the whole thing: Roy Halladay, with even a partially completed career, is the greatest Mormon pitcher of all time and by the time it's all said and done it won't even be close.  There, you know how it ends, now lets enjoy the journey, in alphabetical order.

Second Greatest Mormon Baseball Player (Non-Pitcher Division)

If Harmon Killebrew is the obvious greatest Mormon baseball player of all time, and I think he is, then it behooves us to identify the second greatest Mormon baseball player of all time.  This is a bit of a closer call, so we'll break it down into two posts with this first one focusing on everyday players and the next one on pitchers.

This really comes down to Dale Murphy and Jeff Kent, though we'll throw Wally Joyner in there because he was pretty good, as well.  We'll start with a couple WAR chart comparisons from Fangraphs and then break 'em down individually.

Harmon Killebrew, Greatest Mormon Baseball Player, Dies

Harmon Killebrew died of esophageal cancer yesterday.  He is the greatest Mormon baseball player to ever live.  Let's explore.

They called him Killer because his name was Killebrew but his personality was the exact opposite.  There are hundreds of stories out there about how kind and gentle and approachable Killer was.  But at the plate the man lived up to the name.  As the incomparable Joe Posnanski points out, he was inhumanly strong and hit home runs at a pace greater than Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, and Sammy Sosa.  He was born to rake.

In his career he hit 573 home runs, including eight 40 homer seasons (and one 39 homer season), which is good for 11th all time.  Though the list is now polluted with steroid users, at the time he retired he was in the top five or six fifth all time.  His career slash stats are .256/.376/.509, which means that while he wasn't a high average guy, he did the things which are actually important really well, i.e. get on base and hit with power.  In his MVP year of 1969 he had a 1.011 OPS, led the league in on-base percentage, hit 49 home runs, and led the league in intentional walks.  He was voted to the Hall of Fame in 1984 (it inexplicably took four tries to get voted into the Hall, which is more evidence that the BBWAA should not be solely in charge of that process).  He did all this in an era of depressed offense, which is reflected in his career OPS+ of 143, which is about the same as A-Rod, Vlad Guerrero, Willy McCovey, and Mike Schmidt.

There has always been a rumor that Killer was the model for the MLB logo, though it is not entirely clear.  You can read up about it here.  Killebrew always maintained that it was him, and the man that supposedly designed it maintained that was just a composite of a lot of different batters.  In any case, he is an iconic figure in baseball, the face of Minnesota Twins, and, in my opinion, one of the mythical "inner circle" Hall of Famers.

Dale Murphy was a pretty great centerfielder and has a good case for the Hall of Fame, Jacoby Ellsbury is a Red Sox which automatically makes him capital-G Great, Jeff Kent is one of the great offensive second basemen of all time, Bryce Harper is quickly gaining legend as perhaps the greatest prospect ever, and when all is said and done, Roy Halladay may end up taking the title of greatest Mormon baseball player of all time from Killebrew and leave Killer just as the greatest Mormon hitter of all time, but for now Harmon Killebrew stands alone, and baseball and Mormons have lost a great one.

Baseball and Politics: Expansion

I desperately want a major league baseball team in Salt Lake.  I could see myself going to a few dozen games every season.  As a lifelong Red Sox fan I would have no problem switching allegiances to a new, local team (especially after the Sox have won a couple World Series recently).  The only way I see this happening is through expansion.

There are currently 30 major league teams.  There are 16 teams in the National League and 14 in the American League.  The reason they are unbalanced is because in baseball every team plays just about every day, and teams play in (typically) three game sets, so you need an even number of teams in each league to avoid scheduling problems.  This means that the NL Central has six teams while the AL West only has four.  It would be ideal to add a couple of western teams to even out the leagues and enfranchise some disenfranchised parts of the country (I think Portland would be perfect for a second team).

On Manny and Steroids and Human Nature

There is no more over-written-about subject on the internets than steroids in baseball. I have tried to remain aloof. I have tried to reserve judgment. I have more or less navigated my way through the stages of grief quietly and introspectively. But now it has hit a little too close to home and I must make my completely unoriginal thoughts on the matter known.

It recently became known that Manny Ramirez, currently on the Dodgers, formerly of the Red Sox, has been suspended for 50 games, or about one-third of the season, for taking performance enhancing drugs. The offending substance was hCG, which is, and I find this amusing, a female fertility drug that steroid users inject at the end of a cycle of steroids to get their bodies back to normal (I think the term of art is, "cycling out").

Manny's excuse is that it was prescribed, just an innocent mistake. We've heard that one before. Some other reactions to getting caught with steroids or, more generally, performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) are:

• Complete silence in the face of overwhelming evidence;
• Testifying before Congress, untruthfully, while wagging an indignant finger, that you have never, ever taken steroids;
• Feigning like you don't speak English;
• Tromping around in a hissy denying it and filing lawsuits against accusers even though the entire world -- seriously, everyone -- knows that you took steroids;
• Admitting you did it when you were young and stupid but, for real, just the once and I totally didn't like the way it made me feel;
• Admitting that you did it when you were young and stupid for a just a few years but you are over it now (until more evidence comes forth);
• And so on.

Quick story about Roger Clemens. Last summer I was in New York City with my dad and brothers and we decided to go to a real nice steakhouse to, you know, get the complete feel of New York. At the table next to us is seated none other than The Rocket with what I imagine are some sons and other friends/family. I'm wearing my Red Sox cap, which he had to have seen. My thought is, I'm not the type of person that, as a grown man, will bother another grown man during dinner, so I'll just pull out my blackberry and take a real incognito picture because, hey, these things don't have a flash. It's a phone! It couldn't possibly have a flash! That would be absurd. I snap the picture, the entire dimly restaurant lights up in a blinding glow, and The Rocket looks right at me as I quietly put the phone away and act like nothing happened.

Anyway, like I said, this newest PED revelation about Manny hit a little close to home. I am someone who loves baseball, and I love the Red Sox. I am too old for this, I know, but it is what it is. My wife swears I came to tears when the Sox finally won the World Series in 2004 after an 86-year drought, and again when I bought the complete DVD's and watched the moment again. I say hogwash, but she is adamant. I almost named my dog Manny a few years ago to honor the greatest right-handed hitter of the generation who propelled the Sox to two World Series championships. And he's a druggy.

I was initially surprised and saddened. But that wore away pretty quick. Nothing should surprise us anymore in this regard. And then I remembered this take on the situation from baseball thinker extraordinaire, Bill James:

"You give me the opportunity to earn $22 million a year by taking steroids, I’ll shoot the pharmacist if I have to. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m not saying I shouldn’t be punished for shooting the pharmacist. I am saying it is self-righteous to pretend that I don’t have the same human failings that these guys do, and further, if you are insisting that you don’t have them, I don't believe you."

Now, obviously some people would not do it, and I imagine many baseball players resisted, but this is basic human nature, I think. There is a lot of money at stake, enormous amounts, and injecting a little steroids seems like a small price to pay. If I could inject something that I knew was illegal but that suddenly made me much better at what I do for a living and would increase my salary by three, four, five times, would I do it? I tell myself the answer is no but that is a very real temptation for anyone.

Another factor to consider is that advances in medicine and pharmaceutics has blurred the line between what is cheating and what is therapeutic. We can now remove ligaments from our ankles and insert them in our elbows to treat elbow injuries (the so-called Tommy John Surgery). We have medication that treats illness and allergies far better than in the past. We have corrective laser surgery for our eyes to make us see better.

Of course, we can see a distinction between these advances which are deemed safe and legal and corrective, as opposed to PEDs which fewer players are presumably willing to take because of long-term health risks and illegality, and which put the person on an unhuman level of ability and strength that the other treatments don't, but it really isn't so cut and dry. Especially in the heat of the moment with millions of dollars on the table.

So I don't end up angry, or sad, or give up the game completely. I try to remember how I felt when this happened. How I feel when I play catch in the backyard with my boy or watch one of his little league games. I try to remember that these are all still just humans and that, like the rest of the population, some are cheaters, some are jerks, some are idiots, some are genuine, some are honorable, and some are just completely normal except for the fact that they can throw a ball 95 mph and nail a precise target. Or hit a round ball coming in at 95 mph with a round bat, 400 feet and make tens of thousands of people cheer and forget about life for a moment.

Knowing this almost makes the game seem more real, in a finding-out-there-is-no-Santa kind of way. I feel a little nostalgic for the cleaner past, but more human knowing the truth.

The Rite of Opening Day

Let's take a break from our regularly scheduled political scrum to celebrate a national day of regeneration. In my own twisted mind I like to consider baseball's Opening Day as akin to the weekly sacrament. In both cases the regularly scheduled event is a way to brush off the unpleasantness of the past and look with new hope to the future. In the case of the sacrament we put an end to the previous week's sins and sadnesses and look forward with renewed hope and strength to the new week. In the case of Opening Day we put behind us the fact that the Red Sox did not win the previous World Series (or whatever other team you happen to follow, excluding the Phillies, of course) and the long, cold, baseball-less winter and look forward with renewed hope at the upcoming season. Is this a sacrilegious analogy? Perhaps, but aptness demands its expression.

Opening Day marks the beginning of spring and the end of winter. And for the next seven months baseball will be played every single day. You can no more hope to escape the influence of the game than you can the influence of the sun itself. Not only in the shear number of games played, but in its ubiquity in our culture. Think of the all the baseball phrases we use on a near daily basis: "Out of left (or right) field" for something unexpected, "Safe at home," "Hit a homerun" for doing something well, "Strike out" for failing to achieve a goal, "Three strikes" for giving a person three chances at anything, "Southpaw" for a lefthander, and so many more. The game is engrained in our national psyche and you have no choice but to embrace it.

Our nation has been celebrating Opening Day since around 1876. Opening day 2009 is just another chain in the link between the early game played by teams such as the Cleveland Spiders, the Detroit Wolverines, and the Providence Grays in the 1800's and the game that will assuredly be played in the afterlife in its celestial form (see: no steroids and Yankees go winless year-in year-out).