Rob Fitts is blogging the All-American baseball tour of Japan.
It's going on through November...
...1934, that is.
Remember, if you want to go see baseball in a stadium Babe Ruth played in, in addition to Fenway, you can always come to Japan and go to Jingu or Koshien! :)
(I'll be writing a bit about Japan Series Game 4 shortly -- sorry for the delay.)
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Movie Review: "Last Game - Saigo no Soukeisen"
ラストゲーム 最後の早慶戦 [official site]
If you are expecting to watch a movie about baseball, you will find that this is a movie about World War 2. If you are expecting to watch a movie about World War 2, you will find that this is a movie about baseball.
Soukeisen is a word meaning "Contest between Waseda University and Keio University", and while it can be used to describe pretty much any sport in existence, since the two universities have a long-standing rivalry in every sport, by far the best-known sports rivalry, and best-attended game, is the annual meetong between the two universities' baseball teams, which started over a century ago. Nowadays, the Soukeisen series is the last weekend of the Tokyo Big 6 University League season, and with the recent surge of stars on both teams, is a sellout event at Jingu Stadium.
But, that's not how it always was.
This movie takes place in 1943. After the 1942 season, in the midst of the war, the Japanese ministry of education dissolved the Tokyo Big 6 League, claiming that baseball was the "sport of the enemy". Despite that, the Waseda baseball club continued to practice baseball at Totsuka Stadium, mostly due to the leadership of a man named Suishu Tobita, who had been a player for Waseda near the turn of the century, and then spent years and years coaching the team afterwards. He was famous for a phrase, "一球入魂", which basically means "pour your soul into every pitch", and he tried to teach his players the spirit of baseball, as it were.
The movie opens with a beautiful breathtaking panorama of a reconstructed Totsuka Stadium, complete with Waseda baseball guys wearing the antique style uniforms and equipment, happily playing ball. You wouldn't even realize anything was strange about the situation, until one student, Junji Toda, goes home to meet with his family. His brother, a former star pitcher for the Waseda team, is dressed in full Japanese army uniform, and is apparently on leave to see his family for a few days. The brothers talk together, joke together, even note the old notches on the wall from where they used to measure height, seeing that they are now the same exact height.
After you've been introduced to the main character and his family, you meet his second family, the Waseda baseball team: his roomate, Kurokawa; the old housekeeper Wakasugi and her daughter (granddaughter?) Tomoko; the good-looking baseball manager/upperclassman Aizawa; and of course, the head coach and faculty sponsor of the team, Mr. Tobita.
Junji's brother heads off to war. They go to the stadium one last time, Junji holding his brother's sword like a bat, and his brother pitching the ball to him. "Take care of our family," he instructs him, and then he is gone.
Shortly afterwards, we see the newspaper headlines: the Japanese government will no longer allow university students to be deferred from the draft. Starting in December, all men aged 20 or above must prepare to go to the front lines of battle in the war. (You see, it's a war movie after all.)
The president of Keio, Mr. Koizumi, comes to visit Mr. Tobita. He has a request from the Keio baseball team: "We'd like to play against Waseda one final time before we go off to war. Let's make some good memories." Tobita agrees, and when he tells the team about the proposal, they are overjoyed.
Unfortunately, there's two major things blocking the event from progressing. One, the president of Waseda University won't allow the game to happen, because of the serious situation in Japan brought about by the war. Two, they can't do it at Jingu stadium, since it's being used for army training.
Even Totsuka Stadium gets taken over by army training; there are scenes where the baseball club is practicing on the same field as the military training for students. A baseball rolls over and the military captains yell at the ball players to "stop disturbing their important work", before Tobita steps in to prevent any further problems.
Well, Waseda's team continues practicing baseball anyway, because they believe in Mr. Tobita, and they believe in baseball, and it's really the only happy thing they have anyway, in the light of having to go off to war. (Well, the only thing, aside from every member of the baseball team writing a love letter to the housekeeper's daughter, but that's beside the point.) The Waseda president continues to insist that there will be no game, but in the meantime, the events keep building up to everyone telling Tobita they're counting on him to make it happen, such as Junji's brother dying and his whole family getting into a huge dramatic argument over whether Junji should be allowed to continue playing baseball.
So naturally with some perseverance and a lot of talking, and eventually just agreeing to go ahead and have the game behind the backs of the Powers That Be, as an "unofficial friendly game" the final Waseda-Keio game is scheduled to be held on October 16, 1943, at Totsuka Stadium.
In the movie, as in real life, the Waseda team plasters the Keio team 10-1 (as the story goes, the Keio team hadn't been practicing and the game happened with very short notice), but that isn't the important thing. The important thing is that the players got together for that final game and created a memory before going off to die in war. The scenes were reenacted as they supposedly happened in real life: the president of Keio sits with the students instead of in the nice seats. The teams got up and sang EACH OTHER'S fight songs as a salute after the game.
And naturally, footage of these guys is made to blur into the actual footage of the students taking part in military training five days later, to give some "names to faces", as it were.
The only thing is, aside from Tobita and Koizumi, none of the names of players in the movie are actually of real people from the real Soukeisen. The closest is probably that they had a guy portraying Keio's legendary player Kaoru Betto, but that wasn't the name they used for the character.
I watched this movie on a Friday afternoon in Urawa, and I would guess the average age of the patrons in the theater was around 60. Most of them were crying by the end (including this older woman down the row from me who was outright bawling). I have to admit that I had to bite back tears at a few scenes near the end; if nothing else, the movie really did capture the urgency of playing the final game plus the strong bonds that these players had to each other and to baseball itself, and how many obstacles they had to overcome just for that one final day in the sun before going off to die in the war.
I'm not sure whether I'd recommend this movie to non-Japanese people, to be honest. If you are interested in historical baseball movies and just want to see some gorgeous reconstructions of college ball from the WWII era, it's definitely worth it for that aspect, but if you really start thinking about all of the ramifications of the war, you'll get really depressed, I think. I felt distinctly uncomfortable leaving the theater, just for being an American, and I have to admit I'm almost worried about whether it's politically incorrect for me to review this movie at all.
I do think it is an important story to be told, though.
Another English preview of the movie is here in the Daily Yomiuri, written a few months before the movie came out, but has good background.
And here is an English article from Waseda's newspaper from a few years ago, reflecting on the last Soukeisen, including quotes from Takeo Mori (the real second baseman in the game) and some photos and a shot of a scorecard from the game.
Wikipedia article in Japanese about the final game: 出陣学徒壮行早慶戦, which means "farewell Soukeisen game to send students off to the battle front", essentially.
On that note, today is the first day of baseball for the Tokyo Big 6 University League! The weekend opens with Meiji playing against Tokyo and Keio playing against Hosei, and next weekend Waseda and Rikkio will join the fray. The season continues until the weekend of November 1st, when we can see a much less depressing Soukeisen. I, for one, am really looking forward to seeing some exciting college baseball games this fall.
If you are expecting to watch a movie about baseball, you will find that this is a movie about World War 2. If you are expecting to watch a movie about World War 2, you will find that this is a movie about baseball.
Soukeisen is a word meaning "Contest between Waseda University and Keio University", and while it can be used to describe pretty much any sport in existence, since the two universities have a long-standing rivalry in every sport, by far the best-known sports rivalry, and best-attended game, is the annual meetong between the two universities' baseball teams, which started over a century ago. Nowadays, the Soukeisen series is the last weekend of the Tokyo Big 6 University League season, and with the recent surge of stars on both teams, is a sellout event at Jingu Stadium.
But, that's not how it always was.
This movie takes place in 1943. After the 1942 season, in the midst of the war, the Japanese ministry of education dissolved the Tokyo Big 6 League, claiming that baseball was the "sport of the enemy". Despite that, the Waseda baseball club continued to practice baseball at Totsuka Stadium, mostly due to the leadership of a man named Suishu Tobita, who had been a player for Waseda near the turn of the century, and then spent years and years coaching the team afterwards. He was famous for a phrase, "一球入魂", which basically means "pour your soul into every pitch", and he tried to teach his players the spirit of baseball, as it were.
The movie opens with a beautiful breathtaking panorama of a reconstructed Totsuka Stadium, complete with Waseda baseball guys wearing the antique style uniforms and equipment, happily playing ball. You wouldn't even realize anything was strange about the situation, until one student, Junji Toda, goes home to meet with his family. His brother, a former star pitcher for the Waseda team, is dressed in full Japanese army uniform, and is apparently on leave to see his family for a few days. The brothers talk together, joke together, even note the old notches on the wall from where they used to measure height, seeing that they are now the same exact height.
After you've been introduced to the main character and his family, you meet his second family, the Waseda baseball team: his roomate, Kurokawa; the old housekeeper Wakasugi and her daughter (granddaughter?) Tomoko; the good-looking baseball manager/upperclassman Aizawa; and of course, the head coach and faculty sponsor of the team, Mr. Tobita.
Junji's brother heads off to war. They go to the stadium one last time, Junji holding his brother's sword like a bat, and his brother pitching the ball to him. "Take care of our family," he instructs him, and then he is gone.
Shortly afterwards, we see the newspaper headlines: the Japanese government will no longer allow university students to be deferred from the draft. Starting in December, all men aged 20 or above must prepare to go to the front lines of battle in the war. (You see, it's a war movie after all.)
The president of Keio, Mr. Koizumi, comes to visit Mr. Tobita. He has a request from the Keio baseball team: "We'd like to play against Waseda one final time before we go off to war. Let's make some good memories." Tobita agrees, and when he tells the team about the proposal, they are overjoyed.
Unfortunately, there's two major things blocking the event from progressing. One, the president of Waseda University won't allow the game to happen, because of the serious situation in Japan brought about by the war. Two, they can't do it at Jingu stadium, since it's being used for army training.
Even Totsuka Stadium gets taken over by army training; there are scenes where the baseball club is practicing on the same field as the military training for students. A baseball rolls over and the military captains yell at the ball players to "stop disturbing their important work", before Tobita steps in to prevent any further problems.
Well, Waseda's team continues practicing baseball anyway, because they believe in Mr. Tobita, and they believe in baseball, and it's really the only happy thing they have anyway, in the light of having to go off to war. (Well, the only thing, aside from every member of the baseball team writing a love letter to the housekeeper's daughter, but that's beside the point.) The Waseda president continues to insist that there will be no game, but in the meantime, the events keep building up to everyone telling Tobita they're counting on him to make it happen, such as Junji's brother dying and his whole family getting into a huge dramatic argument over whether Junji should be allowed to continue playing baseball.
So naturally with some perseverance and a lot of talking, and eventually just agreeing to go ahead and have the game behind the backs of the Powers That Be, as an "unofficial friendly game" the final Waseda-Keio game is scheduled to be held on October 16, 1943, at Totsuka Stadium.
In the movie, as in real life, the Waseda team plasters the Keio team 10-1 (as the story goes, the Keio team hadn't been practicing and the game happened with very short notice), but that isn't the important thing. The important thing is that the players got together for that final game and created a memory before going off to die in war. The scenes were reenacted as they supposedly happened in real life: the president of Keio sits with the students instead of in the nice seats. The teams got up and sang EACH OTHER'S fight songs as a salute after the game.
And naturally, footage of these guys is made to blur into the actual footage of the students taking part in military training five days later, to give some "names to faces", as it were.
The only thing is, aside from Tobita and Koizumi, none of the names of players in the movie are actually of real people from the real Soukeisen. The closest is probably that they had a guy portraying Keio's legendary player Kaoru Betto, but that wasn't the name they used for the character.
I watched this movie on a Friday afternoon in Urawa, and I would guess the average age of the patrons in the theater was around 60. Most of them were crying by the end (including this older woman down the row from me who was outright bawling). I have to admit that I had to bite back tears at a few scenes near the end; if nothing else, the movie really did capture the urgency of playing the final game plus the strong bonds that these players had to each other and to baseball itself, and how many obstacles they had to overcome just for that one final day in the sun before going off to die in the war.
I'm not sure whether I'd recommend this movie to non-Japanese people, to be honest. If you are interested in historical baseball movies and just want to see some gorgeous reconstructions of college ball from the WWII era, it's definitely worth it for that aspect, but if you really start thinking about all of the ramifications of the war, you'll get really depressed, I think. I felt distinctly uncomfortable leaving the theater, just for being an American, and I have to admit I'm almost worried about whether it's politically incorrect for me to review this movie at all.
I do think it is an important story to be told, though.
Another English preview of the movie is here in the Daily Yomiuri, written a few months before the movie came out, but has good background.
And here is an English article from Waseda's newspaper from a few years ago, reflecting on the last Soukeisen, including quotes from Takeo Mori (the real second baseman in the game) and some photos and a shot of a scorecard from the game.
Wikipedia article in Japanese about the final game: 出陣学徒壮行早慶戦, which means "farewell Soukeisen game to send students off to the battle front", essentially.
On that note, today is the first day of baseball for the Tokyo Big 6 University League! The weekend opens with Meiji playing against Tokyo and Keio playing against Hosei, and next weekend Waseda and Rikkio will join the fray. The season continues until the weekend of November 1st, when we can see a much less depressing Soukeisen. I, for one, am really looking forward to seeing some exciting college baseball games this fall.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Saving Face
Every morning I take a look at the baseball birthdays for the day on baseball-reference.com, and I see if I can pick out who they chose for the birthday of the day on my wall calendar before looking at it. I'm usually right about 50% of the time.
I look at February 20th, and several names jump out at me:
- "Baby Braves" Brian McCann and Ryan Langerhans
- Justin Verlander
- Livan Hernandez
- Bill "Gully" Gullickson, Clyde "Crazy" Wright, and Shane Spencer, all of whom have legacies of sorts in Japanese baseball
- Sal Yvars and Tommy Henrich, both of whom had roles in "The Era", which I read recently
- Muddy Ruel AND Sam Rice, teammates during the glory years of the 1920's Washington Senators
Well, it seems obvious to me, that since Sam Rice is a hall of famer, he'd be the calendar birthday. Right?
No. The calendar birthday is someone who didn't even jump out at me at ALL - Roy Face.
I'll be honest, all I remembered about Face was that he was one of the Pirates pitchers who screwed up that infamous topsy-turvy 7th game of the 1960 World Series. Last time I'd looked at the events of October 13, 1960, it was because I was thinking more about how Hal Smith would have been the Series hero instead of Bill Mazeroski, if Bob Friend and Harvey Haddix hadn't given up those two runs in the 9th which nullified Smith's 3-run homer in the 8th. But of course, when Roy Face came out to pitch in that game in the 5th inning, the score was 4-1 Pirates with runners on first and second. When he left the game at the top of the 8th for a pinch-hitter, it was 7-4 Yankees. Not the best impression to leave if that's the only game someone remembers of your career.
But then when I look at the rest of Roy Face's statistics, several things stand out as being sort of crazy. For example, in 1959, he had a won-loss record of 18-1, despite having never started a game. With wikipedia to the rescue, one can also find out that he was the first guy to save three games in a World Series, namely games 1, 4, and 5 of the 1960 series. One might note that the Pirates won every game in that Series that Face pitched in, outscoring the Yankees 24-17 in those four games, as opposed to the other three games of the series, where they were outscored 38-3 by the Yankees, making for one of the most lopsided contests in history. Games 1 and 4 had been won by a combination of just Roy Face and Vern Law, the 1960 Cy Young winner, so it's no wonder that the Pirates staked game 7 on this combination as well.
Face may not have been a super power pitcher, but he struck out more guys than he walked, didn't give up many home runs, and obviously kept his team in the game. The 1959 Pirates scored 29 less runs than they gave up, but finished with a 78-76 record, indicating that they had a little more luck, or control, of their close games. 9 of Face's 18 wins that year were in one-run games, and 11 of them were in extra innings. If Joe Page was Casey Stengel's first contribution to the world of high-leverage situational relief ace management, then it seems like Roy Face was Danny Murtaugh's.
Like many other early relief aces, Roy Face's career mostly predated the actual save statistic, which came along in 1969. 1969, however, was Face's last year in the majors. He officially saved 5 games for the expansion Montreal Expos, who were only marginally worse at 52-110 (.321) than the first Pirates team Face pitched on in 1953 at 50-104 (.325), who were one year removed from arguably being one of the worst teams in the 20th century.
So, happy 78th birthday, Roy Face, and forgive me for not realizing you deserve the honor.
I look at February 20th, and several names jump out at me:
- "Baby Braves" Brian McCann and Ryan Langerhans
- Justin Verlander
- Livan Hernandez
- Bill "Gully" Gullickson, Clyde "Crazy" Wright, and Shane Spencer, all of whom have legacies of sorts in Japanese baseball
- Sal Yvars and Tommy Henrich, both of whom had roles in "The Era", which I read recently
- Muddy Ruel AND Sam Rice, teammates during the glory years of the 1920's Washington Senators
Well, it seems obvious to me, that since Sam Rice is a hall of famer, he'd be the calendar birthday. Right?
No. The calendar birthday is someone who didn't even jump out at me at ALL - Roy Face.
I'll be honest, all I remembered about Face was that he was one of the Pirates pitchers who screwed up that infamous topsy-turvy 7th game of the 1960 World Series. Last time I'd looked at the events of October 13, 1960, it was because I was thinking more about how Hal Smith would have been the Series hero instead of Bill Mazeroski, if Bob Friend and Harvey Haddix hadn't given up those two runs in the 9th which nullified Smith's 3-run homer in the 8th. But of course, when Roy Face came out to pitch in that game in the 5th inning, the score was 4-1 Pirates with runners on first and second. When he left the game at the top of the 8th for a pinch-hitter, it was 7-4 Yankees. Not the best impression to leave if that's the only game someone remembers of your career.
But then when I look at the rest of Roy Face's statistics, several things stand out as being sort of crazy. For example, in 1959, he had a won-loss record of 18-1, despite having never started a game. With wikipedia to the rescue, one can also find out that he was the first guy to save three games in a World Series, namely games 1, 4, and 5 of the 1960 series. One might note that the Pirates won every game in that Series that Face pitched in, outscoring the Yankees 24-17 in those four games, as opposed to the other three games of the series, where they were outscored 38-3 by the Yankees, making for one of the most lopsided contests in history. Games 1 and 4 had been won by a combination of just Roy Face and Vern Law, the 1960 Cy Young winner, so it's no wonder that the Pirates staked game 7 on this combination as well.
Face may not have been a super power pitcher, but he struck out more guys than he walked, didn't give up many home runs, and obviously kept his team in the game. The 1959 Pirates scored 29 less runs than they gave up, but finished with a 78-76 record, indicating that they had a little more luck, or control, of their close games. 9 of Face's 18 wins that year were in one-run games, and 11 of them were in extra innings. If Joe Page was Casey Stengel's first contribution to the world of high-leverage situational relief ace management, then it seems like Roy Face was Danny Murtaugh's.
Like many other early relief aces, Roy Face's career mostly predated the actual save statistic, which came along in 1969. 1969, however, was Face's last year in the majors. He officially saved 5 games for the expansion Montreal Expos, who were only marginally worse at 52-110 (.321) than the first Pirates team Face pitched on in 1953 at 50-104 (.325), who were one year removed from arguably being one of the worst teams in the 20th century.
So, happy 78th birthday, Roy Face, and forgive me for not realizing you deserve the honor.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
1960 Phillies experts, anyone?
Holy crap.
I was emailing with my dad about the late Johnny Callison and he sent me scans of the program from the awards dinner he was at in the spring of 1960 -- Dad was getting a citizenship award from the Committee of Boys' Work of The Union League of Philadelphia for a bunch of volunteer work he'd done in high school, and he tells me:
"The autographs are Phillies except for two... one is a bank president and the other is Harry Litwack (the head coach of the Temple basketball team almost forever before John Chaney) and all were seated at my table because I didn't feel like table hopping. The speaker page shows Yankee pitcher Lefty Gomez gave a speech."
Scan of the program listing
Scan of the signatures page
It's a good thing most 17-year-olds these days know better and would get every single person within sight to sign something. Mr. Vernon "Lefty" Gomez! Wow! And it shows John Quinn, the GM of the Phillies, also gave a speech. Lefty Gomez is now in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Harry Litwack is in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Anyway, I am trying to figure out who the Phillies signatures are, going from the 1960 Phillies roster. I've picked out so far:
Ken Silvestri (was a Phillies coach that year)
Harry Anderson
Ken Walters
Johnny Callison
Cal Neeman
Jimmie Coker
Bobby Malkmus
Bobby Del Greco
The ones I can't figure out are to the left of Harry Anderson, basically. One's probably that bank president he mentioned. Maybe the other one's a coach, like Silvestri? They're not listed on baseball-reference. Maybe neither of them are Phillies signatures and he just forgot after you know, 46 years or so.
Any ideas? Isn't this just plain neat? The funny part is, he somehow assumed that I wouldn't care about players from before I was born. Little does he know...
I was emailing with my dad about the late Johnny Callison and he sent me scans of the program from the awards dinner he was at in the spring of 1960 -- Dad was getting a citizenship award from the Committee of Boys' Work of The Union League of Philadelphia for a bunch of volunteer work he'd done in high school, and he tells me:
"The autographs are Phillies except for two... one is a bank president and the other is Harry Litwack (the head coach of the Temple basketball team almost forever before John Chaney) and all were seated at my table because I didn't feel like table hopping. The speaker page shows Yankee pitcher Lefty Gomez gave a speech."
Scan of the program listing
Scan of the signatures page
It's a good thing most 17-year-olds these days know better and would get every single person within sight to sign something. Mr. Vernon "Lefty" Gomez! Wow! And it shows John Quinn, the GM of the Phillies, also gave a speech. Lefty Gomez is now in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Harry Litwack is in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Anyway, I am trying to figure out who the Phillies signatures are, going from the 1960 Phillies roster. I've picked out so far:
Ken Silvestri (was a Phillies coach that year)
Harry Anderson
Ken Walters
Johnny Callison
Cal Neeman
Jimmie Coker
Bobby Malkmus
Bobby Del Greco
The ones I can't figure out are to the left of Harry Anderson, basically. One's probably that bank president he mentioned. Maybe the other one's a coach, like Silvestri? They're not listed on baseball-reference. Maybe neither of them are Phillies signatures and he just forgot after you know, 46 years or so.
Any ideas? Isn't this just plain neat? The funny part is, he somehow assumed that I wouldn't care about players from before I was born. Little does he know...
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
If it weren't for those four bad starts, eh?
Over on USSM today, Derek pointed out an article on the Hardball Times by Craig Burley called Phranklin, which is an interesting read, regardless of whether you're a Mariners or Phillies fan, or just like to read people discussing whether a particular pitcher is bad or seems bad.
The upshot of the THT article is that "Pat Gillick claims if you just remove Ryan Franklin's four awful starts, he really wasn't that bad a pitcher" -- and Burley sets out to prove that no, really, he still was that bad a pitcher. Which makes you wonder whether it's a valid claim at all, and contrariwise, how much worse would a good pitcher be if you just took out a few of their good starts?
Well, because I just finished tallying up the 1940 game log for Hughie Mulcahy tonight (though, sadly, my numbers, the NYT season numbers, and baseball-reference's numbers don't agree -- I have him at 91 walks and 81 strikeouts, NYT had him at 90 and 81, and b-ref has him at 92 and 81; I'm going to check the Baseball Encyclopedia tomorrow), let's see if I can do this four-worst and four-best thing on him. Since, after all, my original thought was that he wasn't such a bad pitcher either, but was just cursed by run support and by being on the 1930's Phillies. This is a guy who got named to the 1940 All-Star team despite a 7-10 record at the break, who would work his way to a 12-10 record before dropping 12 straight decisions to go 13-22 for the season.
Here's Hugh Mulcahy in 1940, with all his games, and then adjusted to remove his four worst starts - I'm using baseball-reference's numbers for now; I added in FIP and WHIP to Craig Burley's numbers:
For the day, Mulcahy really wasn't so bad a pitcher, if you think about it. In 1940, you could lead the NL in K/9 with less than 5 (as opposed to today's near-10s), could lead in K/BB in the mid-2's... of course, there weren't really relief pitchers back then, either, at least not as we know them today. (The guys leading the leagues in saves had 7.) The AL had slightly higher numbers to lead their pitchers that year - well, higher K/9 but lower K/BB and such.
Yes, a guy with a 2.83 ERA still would have lost 18 games. Why? Because the Phillies that year suuuuuuuuuucked. This is a team that scored 494 runs, allowed 750 (87 of which were unearned -- Bobby Bragan alone made 49 errors that year in 132 games) and averaged 3.23 runs scored per game. As I calculated it, the team scored 115 runs of support while Mulcahy was on the mound, and he allowed 141 runs total, 112 of which were actually earned.
If you calculate the Pythagorean expected W/L on his games, real and adjusted for removing the 4 worst:
Ahh, and there he is, a 20-game winner, if not for all those damn errors and those four bad outings! The funniest part is, there was an article in the July 31, 1940 New York Times actually saying "Will Mulcahy be the first 20-game winner the Phillies have had in the last 24 years?" Naturally, that was right before his 12-game losing streak.
Now, I'm going to do this the other way, taking out his four best starts (I'm going on earned runs to pick them -- he had three shutouts, and I'm including what I thought was his best start outside them -- a 13-inning complete game on May 23 where he gave up 15 hits, walked none, struck out 10, and of course, the game-losing run came in on Chuck Klein's error):
Hmm. Yeah. Still bad, of course, but really not as atrociously bad as one would expect a guy to be to win a moniker like "Losing Pitcher". And if he'd been playing on a team like the Pirates where they were averaging 5.19 runs scored per game, he might have even had a .500 record.
You can't compare Losing Pitcher Franklin and Losing Pitcher Mulcahy easily, to be honest, but I'm working on it. They both definitely had one thing in common: they went out there and threw a metric crapload of innings for a pathetically bad team (albeit one with a much better defense, that's for sure) and came out looking much the worse for the wear.
The upshot of the THT article is that "Pat Gillick claims if you just remove Ryan Franklin's four awful starts, he really wasn't that bad a pitcher" -- and Burley sets out to prove that no, really, he still was that bad a pitcher. Which makes you wonder whether it's a valid claim at all, and contrariwise, how much worse would a good pitcher be if you just took out a few of their good starts?
Well, because I just finished tallying up the 1940 game log for Hughie Mulcahy tonight (though, sadly, my numbers, the NYT season numbers, and baseball-reference's numbers don't agree -- I have him at 91 walks and 81 strikeouts, NYT had him at 90 and 81, and b-ref has him at 92 and 81; I'm going to check the Baseball Encyclopedia tomorrow), let's see if I can do this four-worst and four-best thing on him. Since, after all, my original thought was that he wasn't such a bad pitcher either, but was just cursed by run support and by being on the 1930's Phillies. This is a guy who got named to the 1940 All-Star team despite a 7-10 record at the break, who would work his way to a 12-10 record before dropping 12 straight decisions to go 13-22 for the season.
Here's Hugh Mulcahy in 1940, with all his games, and then adjusted to remove his four worst starts - I'm using baseball-reference's numbers for now; I added in FIP and WHIP to Craig Burley's numbers:
GS W-L IP H R ER HR BB SO ERA FIP WHIP
Real 36 13-22 280 283 141 112 12 91 82 3.60 4.15 1.336
Adjusted 32 13-18 263.7 253 111 83 9 80 77 2.83 3.97 1.263
For the day, Mulcahy really wasn't so bad a pitcher, if you think about it. In 1940, you could lead the NL in K/9 with less than 5 (as opposed to today's near-10s), could lead in K/BB in the mid-2's... of course, there weren't really relief pitchers back then, either, at least not as we know them today. (The guys leading the leagues in saves had 7.) The AL had slightly higher numbers to lead their pitchers that year - well, higher K/9 but lower K/BB and such.
Yes, a guy with a 2.83 ERA still would have lost 18 games. Why? Because the Phillies that year suuuuuuuuuucked. This is a team that scored 494 runs, allowed 750 (87 of which were unearned -- Bobby Bragan alone made 49 errors that year in 132 games) and averaged 3.23 runs scored per game. As I calculated it, the team scored 115 runs of support while Mulcahy was on the mound, and he allowed 141 runs total, 112 of which were actually earned.
If you calculate the Pythagorean expected W/L on his games, real and adjusted for removing the 4 worst:
RA RS PW-PL ER RS PW-PL
Real 141 115 14-21 112 115 18-18
Adjusted 111 109 16-16 83 109 20-12
Ahh, and there he is, a 20-game winner, if not for all those damn errors and those four bad outings! The funniest part is, there was an article in the July 31, 1940 New York Times actually saying "Will Mulcahy be the first 20-game winner the Phillies have had in the last 24 years?" Naturally, that was right before his 12-game losing streak.
Now, I'm going to do this the other way, taking out his four best starts (I'm going on earned runs to pick them -- he had three shutouts, and I'm including what I thought was his best start outside them -- a 13-inning complete game on May 23 where he gave up 15 hits, walked none, struck out 10, and of course, the game-losing run came in on Chuck Klein's error):
GS W-L IP H R ER HR BB SO ERA FIP WHIP
Real 36 13-22 280 283 141 112 12 91 82 3.60 4.15 1.336
Adjusted 32 10-21 240 250 137 109 11 85 67 4.08 4.30 1.396
RA RS PW-PL ER RS PW-PL
Real 141 115 14-21 112 115 18-18
Adjusted 137 99 11-21 109 99 15-17
Hmm. Yeah. Still bad, of course, but really not as atrociously bad as one would expect a guy to be to win a moniker like "Losing Pitcher". And if he'd been playing on a team like the Pirates where they were averaging 5.19 runs scored per game, he might have even had a .500 record.
You can't compare Losing Pitcher Franklin and Losing Pitcher Mulcahy easily, to be honest, but I'm working on it. They both definitely had one thing in common: they went out there and threw a metric crapload of innings for a pathetically bad team (albeit one with a much better defense, that's for sure) and came out looking much the worse for the wear.
Friday, January 13, 2006
Reconstructing Hughie - More Fun With Box Scores
I wanted to make this post yesterday, but I spent three hours banging my head against this and didn't have an answer then. I still don't exactly, but I figured, hey, let me unleash my latest thing upon the world and maybe they'll have some input for me.
This is probably too dorky/nerdy/geeky/whatever for almost anyone reading this, but hey, this isn't Seattle MariNERDS for nothing.
Anyway, as some of you know, I like puzzle games a lot. I participate in events like Microsoft Puzzle Hunt and play an inordinate amount of puzzle video games and such. I like to solve puzzles for the heck of it, and I'm usually pretty determined to figure things out.
So, in the midst of attempting to calculate some game-by-game breakdowns for my latest baseball history obsession/project (which I'm almost dubbing "The Truth About Losing Pitcher Mulcahy" in my mind, sort of like my Jack Nabors thing a few weeks ago), I've been reading box scores from the New York Times from the Phillies 1940 season, trying to get Mulcahy's game-by-game log, which means figuring out his earned and unearned runs per game. Sometimes this is really easy, like if (as he often did) he pitched 9 innings and nobody made any errors. Sometimes it's not that simple but the flavor text in the article gives it away by saying when the errors were made.
And sometimes it's nigh impossible to reconstruct the game events at all.
In other words, I've stumbled across a boundless set of baseball logic puzzles. This is both beautiful and frightening.
Currently, I'm puzzling over the box score from a game between the Giants and the Phillies on July 5, 1940 (PDF file, copied from the New York Times archive, I hope I'm not going to hell for this). My goal is to figure out: when did Mulcahy get taken out of the game, and how many earned runs were assigned to him?
Let's see what we know, shall we? I'm going to retype the box score just because I know some of the numbers are hard to read on the original scan, and I'll include the relevant text from the bottom (the fact that there were 4702 paid patrons and 5532 ladies since it was Ladies' Day is irrelevant, I think):
Relevant notes from the flavor text include:
"Young opened fire with a two-run homer in the first inning"
[in the second inning] "Two passes and four singles routed Mulcahy. Three more hits greeted Brown which, with an error, made the Giant total for the inning eight."
"A cluster of three runs came in the fourth, a triple by Burgess Whitehead banging in these three. Whitey also drove two more tallies across in the sixth with a double, his third blow of the day."
"When Brown, along with his catcher, Benny Warren, entered the game in the second..."
Irrelevant notes from the flavor text include:
"Young was so elated over his homer, his third of the year, that on rounding first he tripped and went sprawling inelegantly right in front of all of the ladies."
So, much like a logic puzzle, let's gather facts and try to piece together this crazy second inning and see if we can figure out the earned runs per pitcher. Welcome to my brain, ladies and gentlemen -- it's going to be a bumpy ride, so hang on to your hats!
Firstly, Burgess Whitehead hit in 5 runs -- three in the fourth inning and two in the sixth inning, which we found out in the text. Babe Young hit in 3 runs total, and 2 of them were in the first inning off his home run. If you're looking at the inning-by-inning count of runs... Every other run batted in by a Giant batter happened in the second inning. Namely, RBIs were collected in that inning as such: Moore and Melton both got 2, and Young, Danning, Ott, and Cuccinello each got one.
Secondly, as far as I can tell, no plate appearance counts for two outs. In order for Whitehead to have gotten 6 at-bats, there must have been at least 46 plate appearances by the Giants -- 5 times around the order is 45, and thus his 6th at-bat was a 46th. Well, in 8 innings the Giants were put out 24 times, plus they got 17 hits, plus there was one error, plus there were 4 walks (2 by Mulcahy, 2 by Brown) given them. If you add up 24 + 17 + 1 + 4, you actually get EXACTLY 46. Meaning that the very last at-bat of the 8th inning was Whitehead and he made an out somehow. (He couldn't get a hit then because the double in the 6th inning was described as "his third blow of the day" and the box score shows he only got 3 hits.) They DO list Hit-by-Pitch and Double Plays AND sacrifices and such generally in these box scores, so there just weren't any HBP, Sacs, etc.
Taking that, you know that the four men who walked were Rucker, Ott, Cuccinello, and Witek, because they don't have 5 at-bats each. (Ken O'Dea came in to replace Harry Danning at the plate during the seventh inning or so and managed to get an at-bat.)
Now, let's piece together the first inning to figure out who led off the second inning. Now, here's something interesting. If you make a grid and start filling in frames like a scorecard, you'll see that Moore had to be the batter driven in on Young's two-run homer in the first inning. Why? Because he scored two runs during the game, and there's no way the No. 1 hitter Whitehead could have driven him in during the 4th or 6th inning; it's simply impossible. Therefore, he scored one in the first inning and one in the second. (He can't have scored two in the second. With eight runs scored and three outs, even with three men left on base, that's a maximum of fourteen possible at-bats, which wouldn't get all the way back around to him.)
Okay, so in the first inning, Whitehead made an out, Johnny Rucker made an out, Jo-Jo Moore singled, Babe Young hit a home run. Harry Danning made an out. We know this because Whitehead and Rucker couldn't have also gotten on base or it would have been more than a two-run homer. Harry Danning also made an out -- we know this because he had exactly one hit all game, and he drove in a run -- meaning that hit HAD to come in the second inning. Therefore Mel Ott led off the second inning.
Mulcahy was taken out after 7 batters in the second inning. We know this because he is listed as pitching 1 and a third innings, so there must have been one out credited to him. The text in the article says "two passes and four singles routed Mulcahy." Therefore he definitely had to come out before Danning's double. If Ott led off the second inning, then Mulcahy faced Ott, Cuccinello, Witek, Melton, Whitehead, Rucker, and Moore.
Now the question is... how many earned runs were charged to him? And what exactly transpired in that second inning?
The easy answer to the first part is that 8 earned runs were charged to him total. 2 for the first inning, and 6 for all of the runners in the second (since 8 runs were scored, it stands to reason that all of his runners scored). But it's possible otherwise, especially in trying to figure out how that first out happened and also when Brown's error occurred.
And this is sort of where I'm stuck right now. I can't quite reconstruct a plausible second inning. I'm close, but I don't think it's quite right.
I mean, what we know is that in the second inning, Young, Melton, Moore, Danning, Ott, and Cuccinello had RBIs (and also importantly, Witek and Whitehead and Rucker did NOT). And we can also deduce who HAD to score in the second inning:
-- Whitehead, because he is credited with a run but could not possibly score in another inning (he batted in all the runs after the 2nd without a homer -- and he could not have scored on a wild pitch because all the runs are accounted for with RBIs)
-- Rucker, for the same reason. Batting AFTER Whitehead, he could not be batted in during a later inning, and is credited with a run, so it had to come here
-- Moore, same reason as Rucker but credited with 2 runs, one of which happened in the first inning
-- Young, same reason as Moore
-- Witek, because he scored 3 runs, meaning he was batted in this inning and twice by Whitehead's later hits
-- Ott, credited with two runs, could not have scored both of them behind Whitehead's triple and double (do the math, with Cucc, Witek, and Melton scoring 7 runs between them total but only 5 runs batted in by Whitehead in those later innings, even if you gave them all runs in the 2nd that still accounts for 4 out of the 5 runs Whitehead batted in, so only that fifth could have been taken by Ott)
Also, curiously, Danning did NOT score in the second inning, according to the box score. I wonder if the box score was just wrong -- because THAT is the trickiest wrench to deduce.
So, here's the sequence I'm working with right now:
Ott - out
Cuccinello - walk
Witek - walk, Cuccinello to second
Melton - single, batted in Cuccinello and Witek (2 runs so far)
Whitehead - single, Melton to second
Rucker - single, Whitehead to second, Melton to third
Moore - single, batted in Whitehead and Melton, Rucker to second (4 runs)
Pitching change : Lloyd Brown replaces Hugh Mulcahy.
Young - single, batted in Rucker, Moore to second (5 runs)
Danning - double, batted in Moore, Young to third (6 runs)
This works out fine so far -- Moore was Mulcahy's last batter and he's scored. Great. Now here's where I run into problems. Danning somehow has to get out before crossing the plate, but Cuccinello has to get an RBI, as does Ott -- but DANNING CANNOT SCORE. So I *think* the following is possible, assuming Ott would get an RBI for a fielder's choice. This also assumes the error didn't actually lead to a run being scored.
Ott - Fielder's choice, Danning out at third, Young scores, Ott to second on the throw home. (7 runs)
Cuccinello - singles, Ott scores. (8 runs)
Witek - reaches base on error, Cuccinello to second.
Melton - makes an out. Inning over.
I think this works for the other innings --
Third inning - Whitehead, out 1. Rucker, walked. Moore, out 2. Young, out 3.
Fourth inning - Danning, out 1. Ott, singles. Cuccinello, singles, Ott to second. Witek, singles, Ott to third, Cuccinello to second. Melton, out 2. Whitehead, triples, bats in Ott, Cuccinello, Witek. Rucker, out 3.
Fifth inning - Moore, out 1. Young, out 2. Danning, out 3.
Sixth inning - Ott, out 1. Cuccinello, out 2. Witek, singles. Melton, singles, Witek to second. Whitehead, doubles, bats in Witek and Melton. Rucker, out 3.
Seventh inning - Moore, out 1. Young, out 2. O'Dea, out 3.
Eighth inning - Ott, walked. Cuccinello, out 1. Witek, out 2. Melton singles, Ott to second. Whitehead, out 3.
To sum up:
Whitehead - 1st: out. 2nd: single, run. 3rd: out. 4th: 3-RBI triple. 6th: 2-RBI double. 8th: out. 6 AB, 1 R, 3 H, 5 RBI
Rucker - 1st: out. 2nd: single, run. 3rd: walk. 4th: out. 6th: out. 4 AB, 1 R, 1 H, 0 RBI
Moore - 1st: single, run. 2nd: 2-RBI single, run. 3rd: out. 5th: out. 7th: out. 5 AB, 2 H, 2 R, 2 RBI.
Young - 1st: 2-RBI home run. 2nd: RBI single, run. 3rd: out. 5th: out. 7th: out. 5 AB, 2 H, 2 R, 3 RBI.
Danning - 1st: out. 2nd: RBI double. 4th: out. 5th: out. 4 AB, 0 R, 1 H, 1 RBI.
O'Dea - 7th: out. 1 AB, 0 anything.
Ott - 2nd: out. 2nd: RBI FC, run. 4th: single, run. 6th: out. 8th: walk. 4 AB, 2 R, 1 H, 1 RBI.
Cuccinello - 2nd: walk, run. 2nd: RBI single. 4th: single, run. 6th: out. 8th: out. 4 AB, 2 R, 2 H, 1 RBI.
Witek - 2nd: walk, run. 2nd: Error. 4th: single, run. 6th: single, run. 8th: out. 4 AB, 3 R, 2 H, 0 RBI.
Melton: 2nd: 2-RBI single, run. 2nd: out. 4th: out. 6th: single, run. 8th: single. 5 AB, 2 R, 3 H, 2 RBI.
Mulcahy 1.1 IP, 6 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 1 HR.
Brown 6.2 IP, 11 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 0 HR.
So, um, if you happen to have access to play-by-play data from this game and want to back me up on my reconstruction of the game, [Lumbergh]that'd be greeeeeeeeeeat[/Lumbergh]. For now, I'm going to sleep, because I've been thinking about this too much. I may or may not edit this down in the morning; I really just wanted to do a brain dump of it all, because dang, my brain's about to explode.
This is probably too dorky/nerdy/geeky/whatever for almost anyone reading this, but hey, this isn't Seattle MariNERDS for nothing.
Anyway, as some of you know, I like puzzle games a lot. I participate in events like Microsoft Puzzle Hunt and play an inordinate amount of puzzle video games and such. I like to solve puzzles for the heck of it, and I'm usually pretty determined to figure things out.
So, in the midst of attempting to calculate some game-by-game breakdowns for my latest baseball history obsession/project (which I'm almost dubbing "The Truth About Losing Pitcher Mulcahy" in my mind, sort of like my Jack Nabors thing a few weeks ago), I've been reading box scores from the New York Times from the Phillies 1940 season, trying to get Mulcahy's game-by-game log, which means figuring out his earned and unearned runs per game. Sometimes this is really easy, like if (as he often did) he pitched 9 innings and nobody made any errors. Sometimes it's not that simple but the flavor text in the article gives it away by saying when the errors were made.
And sometimes it's nigh impossible to reconstruct the game events at all.
In other words, I've stumbled across a boundless set of baseball logic puzzles. This is both beautiful and frightening.
Currently, I'm puzzling over the box score from a game between the Giants and the Phillies on July 5, 1940 (PDF file, copied from the New York Times archive, I hope I'm not going to hell for this). My goal is to figure out: when did Mulcahy get taken out of the game, and how many earned runs were assigned to him?
Let's see what we know, shall we? I'm going to retype the box score just because I know some of the numbers are hard to read on the original scan, and I'll include the relevant text from the bottom (the fact that there were 4702 paid patrons and 5532 ladies since it was Ladies' Day is irrelevant, I think):
Philadelphia New York
AB R H PO A E AB R H PO A E
Schulte, 2b 5 0 1 0 4 0 Whitehead, 3b 6 1 3 2 1 1
Mueller, rf 3 0 0 1 0 0 Rucker, cf 4 1 1 2 0 0
Marty, cf 4 0 0 0 0 0 Moore, lf 5 2 2 3 0 0
Rizzo, lf 4 1 1 3 0 0 Young, 1b 5 2 2 7 1 0
May, 3b 3 1 1 1 3 0 Danning, c 4 0 1 6 1 0
Bragan, ss 1 0 0 0 0 0 O'Dea, c 1 0 0 1 0 0
Monchak, ss 3 0 1 3 0 0 Ott, rf 4 2 1 3 0 0
Mahan, 1b 4 0 2 8 3 0 Cuccinello, 2b 4 2 2 1 0 0
Millies, c 0 0 0 1 0 0 Witek, ss 4 3 2 1 1 0
Warren, c 4 0 1 4 0 0 Melton, p 5 2 3 1 4 0
Mulcahy, p 0 0 0 0 1 0
L. Brown, p 3 0 0 3 0 1 TOTAL 42 15 17 27 8 1
Atwood ph 0 0 0 0 0 0
TOTAL 34 2 7 24 11 1
Philadelphia 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 2
New York 2 8 0 3 0 2 0 0 x 15
Runs batted in - Young 3, May, Melton 2, Whitehead 5, Moore 2, Danning,
Ott, Cuccinello, Mahan. Two-base hits - Danning, Whitehead. Three-base
hit - Whitehead. Home runs - Young, May. Left on bases - New York 7,
Philadelphia 8. Bases on balls - Off Mulcahy 2, Melton 3, L.Brown 2.
Struck out - By Melton 7, L.Brown 4. Hits - Off Mulcahy 6 in 1 1-3
innings, L.Brown 11 in 6 2-3. Wild pitches - Melton, L.Brown.
Relevant notes from the flavor text include:
"Young opened fire with a two-run homer in the first inning"
[in the second inning] "Two passes and four singles routed Mulcahy. Three more hits greeted Brown which, with an error, made the Giant total for the inning eight."
"A cluster of three runs came in the fourth, a triple by Burgess Whitehead banging in these three. Whitey also drove two more tallies across in the sixth with a double, his third blow of the day."
"When Brown, along with his catcher, Benny Warren, entered the game in the second..."
Irrelevant notes from the flavor text include:
"Young was so elated over his homer, his third of the year, that on rounding first he tripped and went sprawling inelegantly right in front of all of the ladies."
So, much like a logic puzzle, let's gather facts and try to piece together this crazy second inning and see if we can figure out the earned runs per pitcher. Welcome to my brain, ladies and gentlemen -- it's going to be a bumpy ride, so hang on to your hats!
Firstly, Burgess Whitehead hit in 5 runs -- three in the fourth inning and two in the sixth inning, which we found out in the text. Babe Young hit in 3 runs total, and 2 of them were in the first inning off his home run. If you're looking at the inning-by-inning count of runs... Every other run batted in by a Giant batter happened in the second inning. Namely, RBIs were collected in that inning as such: Moore and Melton both got 2, and Young, Danning, Ott, and Cuccinello each got one.
Secondly, as far as I can tell, no plate appearance counts for two outs. In order for Whitehead to have gotten 6 at-bats, there must have been at least 46 plate appearances by the Giants -- 5 times around the order is 45, and thus his 6th at-bat was a 46th. Well, in 8 innings the Giants were put out 24 times, plus they got 17 hits, plus there was one error, plus there were 4 walks (2 by Mulcahy, 2 by Brown) given them. If you add up 24 + 17 + 1 + 4, you actually get EXACTLY 46. Meaning that the very last at-bat of the 8th inning was Whitehead and he made an out somehow. (He couldn't get a hit then because the double in the 6th inning was described as "his third blow of the day" and the box score shows he only got 3 hits.) They DO list Hit-by-Pitch and Double Plays AND sacrifices and such generally in these box scores, so there just weren't any HBP, Sacs, etc.
Taking that, you know that the four men who walked were Rucker, Ott, Cuccinello, and Witek, because they don't have 5 at-bats each. (Ken O'Dea came in to replace Harry Danning at the plate during the seventh inning or so and managed to get an at-bat.)
Now, let's piece together the first inning to figure out who led off the second inning. Now, here's something interesting. If you make a grid and start filling in frames like a scorecard, you'll see that Moore had to be the batter driven in on Young's two-run homer in the first inning. Why? Because he scored two runs during the game, and there's no way the No. 1 hitter Whitehead could have driven him in during the 4th or 6th inning; it's simply impossible. Therefore, he scored one in the first inning and one in the second. (He can't have scored two in the second. With eight runs scored and three outs, even with three men left on base, that's a maximum of fourteen possible at-bats, which wouldn't get all the way back around to him.)
Okay, so in the first inning, Whitehead made an out, Johnny Rucker made an out, Jo-Jo Moore singled, Babe Young hit a home run. Harry Danning made an out. We know this because Whitehead and Rucker couldn't have also gotten on base or it would have been more than a two-run homer. Harry Danning also made an out -- we know this because he had exactly one hit all game, and he drove in a run -- meaning that hit HAD to come in the second inning. Therefore Mel Ott led off the second inning.
Mulcahy was taken out after 7 batters in the second inning. We know this because he is listed as pitching 1 and a third innings, so there must have been one out credited to him. The text in the article says "two passes and four singles routed Mulcahy." Therefore he definitely had to come out before Danning's double. If Ott led off the second inning, then Mulcahy faced Ott, Cuccinello, Witek, Melton, Whitehead, Rucker, and Moore.
Now the question is... how many earned runs were charged to him? And what exactly transpired in that second inning?
The easy answer to the first part is that 8 earned runs were charged to him total. 2 for the first inning, and 6 for all of the runners in the second (since 8 runs were scored, it stands to reason that all of his runners scored). But it's possible otherwise, especially in trying to figure out how that first out happened and also when Brown's error occurred.
And this is sort of where I'm stuck right now. I can't quite reconstruct a plausible second inning. I'm close, but I don't think it's quite right.
I mean, what we know is that in the second inning, Young, Melton, Moore, Danning, Ott, and Cuccinello had RBIs (and also importantly, Witek and Whitehead and Rucker did NOT). And we can also deduce who HAD to score in the second inning:
-- Whitehead, because he is credited with a run but could not possibly score in another inning (he batted in all the runs after the 2nd without a homer -- and he could not have scored on a wild pitch because all the runs are accounted for with RBIs)
-- Rucker, for the same reason. Batting AFTER Whitehead, he could not be batted in during a later inning, and is credited with a run, so it had to come here
-- Moore, same reason as Rucker but credited with 2 runs, one of which happened in the first inning
-- Young, same reason as Moore
-- Witek, because he scored 3 runs, meaning he was batted in this inning and twice by Whitehead's later hits
-- Ott, credited with two runs, could not have scored both of them behind Whitehead's triple and double (do the math, with Cucc, Witek, and Melton scoring 7 runs between them total but only 5 runs batted in by Whitehead in those later innings, even if you gave them all runs in the 2nd that still accounts for 4 out of the 5 runs Whitehead batted in, so only that fifth could have been taken by Ott)
Also, curiously, Danning did NOT score in the second inning, according to the box score. I wonder if the box score was just wrong -- because THAT is the trickiest wrench to deduce.
So, here's the sequence I'm working with right now:
Ott - out
Cuccinello - walk
Witek - walk, Cuccinello to second
Melton - single, batted in Cuccinello and Witek (2 runs so far)
Whitehead - single, Melton to second
Rucker - single, Whitehead to second, Melton to third
Moore - single, batted in Whitehead and Melton, Rucker to second (4 runs)
Pitching change : Lloyd Brown replaces Hugh Mulcahy.
Young - single, batted in Rucker, Moore to second (5 runs)
Danning - double, batted in Moore, Young to third (6 runs)
This works out fine so far -- Moore was Mulcahy's last batter and he's scored. Great. Now here's where I run into problems. Danning somehow has to get out before crossing the plate, but Cuccinello has to get an RBI, as does Ott -- but DANNING CANNOT SCORE. So I *think* the following is possible, assuming Ott would get an RBI for a fielder's choice. This also assumes the error didn't actually lead to a run being scored.
Ott - Fielder's choice, Danning out at third, Young scores, Ott to second on the throw home. (7 runs)
Cuccinello - singles, Ott scores. (8 runs)
Witek - reaches base on error, Cuccinello to second.
Melton - makes an out. Inning over.
I think this works for the other innings --
Third inning - Whitehead, out 1. Rucker, walked. Moore, out 2. Young, out 3.
Fourth inning - Danning, out 1. Ott, singles. Cuccinello, singles, Ott to second. Witek, singles, Ott to third, Cuccinello to second. Melton, out 2. Whitehead, triples, bats in Ott, Cuccinello, Witek. Rucker, out 3.
Fifth inning - Moore, out 1. Young, out 2. Danning, out 3.
Sixth inning - Ott, out 1. Cuccinello, out 2. Witek, singles. Melton, singles, Witek to second. Whitehead, doubles, bats in Witek and Melton. Rucker, out 3.
Seventh inning - Moore, out 1. Young, out 2. O'Dea, out 3.
Eighth inning - Ott, walked. Cuccinello, out 1. Witek, out 2. Melton singles, Ott to second. Whitehead, out 3.
To sum up:
Whitehead - 1st: out. 2nd: single, run. 3rd: out. 4th: 3-RBI triple. 6th: 2-RBI double. 8th: out. 6 AB, 1 R, 3 H, 5 RBI
Rucker - 1st: out. 2nd: single, run. 3rd: walk. 4th: out. 6th: out. 4 AB, 1 R, 1 H, 0 RBI
Moore - 1st: single, run. 2nd: 2-RBI single, run. 3rd: out. 5th: out. 7th: out. 5 AB, 2 H, 2 R, 2 RBI.
Young - 1st: 2-RBI home run. 2nd: RBI single, run. 3rd: out. 5th: out. 7th: out. 5 AB, 2 H, 2 R, 3 RBI.
Danning - 1st: out. 2nd: RBI double. 4th: out. 5th: out. 4 AB, 0 R, 1 H, 1 RBI.
O'Dea - 7th: out. 1 AB, 0 anything.
Ott - 2nd: out. 2nd: RBI FC, run. 4th: single, run. 6th: out. 8th: walk. 4 AB, 2 R, 1 H, 1 RBI.
Cuccinello - 2nd: walk, run. 2nd: RBI single. 4th: single, run. 6th: out. 8th: out. 4 AB, 2 R, 2 H, 1 RBI.
Witek - 2nd: walk, run. 2nd: Error. 4th: single, run. 6th: single, run. 8th: out. 4 AB, 3 R, 2 H, 0 RBI.
Melton: 2nd: 2-RBI single, run. 2nd: out. 4th: out. 6th: single, run. 8th: single. 5 AB, 2 R, 3 H, 2 RBI.
Mulcahy 1.1 IP, 6 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 1 HR.
Brown 6.2 IP, 11 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 0 HR.
So, um, if you happen to have access to play-by-play data from this game and want to back me up on my reconstruction of the game, [Lumbergh]that'd be greeeeeeeeeeat[/Lumbergh]. For now, I'm going to sleep, because I've been thinking about this too much. I may or may not edit this down in the morning; I really just wanted to do a brain dump of it all, because dang, my brain's about to explode.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
The Truth About Jack Nabors And The Wild Pitch
I walked out of the Seattle Public Library this morning, grinning gleefully and clutching a printout in my grubby little hands, secure in the knowledge that I was right, and several authors (and assumedly, their fact-checkers) were wrong.
The printout was of a baseball box score article titled "Champions Capture Two", detailing a double-header that the Red Sox played against the Athletics on June 24, 1916. The Sox won both games, which is not surprising, given that this was the year the Philadelphia Athletics managed to lose 117 games while only winning 36, and the Red Sox had won the World Series in 1915 and were on their way to winning it a second straight time in 1916.
Infact, the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics easily stand as one of the worst baseball teams of all time. Their 117 losses was an American League record until the 2003 Detroit Tigers managed to lose 119 -- and even they had a higher winning percentage, being 43-119 and .265 to the Athletics' .235. This is a team that finished 40 games out... of seventh place. It almost takes talent to be that bad.
The most hapless of the happy was a pitcher named Jack Nabors. Look him up if you don't believe me -- this man has a lifetime pitching W-L record of 1-25. Nabors had a W-L record of 1-1 after the A's won a game against the Red Sox on April 22, 1916 -- and after that, he dropped 19 straight decisions, giving him a record of 1-20 for the year. His roomate, Tom Sheehan, had a record of 1-16, making the pair of them a combined 2-36, despite their vaguely respectable ERAs of 3.47 and 3.69.
Nabors was not a good pitcher by most ways of counting it. The man made 13 errors in 1916 for a fielding percentage of .827. Unlike other pitchers with hard luck, he didn't help his case with the bat either, going .101/.139/.101 and scoring one run himself all year. In 212 innings, he gave up 206 hits, walked 95 and struck out 74. Still, according to one article about him, he was partially a victim of bad luck and lousy run support to some extent -- he lost five games by one run, another five by two -- on fourteen occasions, the A's scored two or fewer runs for him, and in five of those occasions, they were shut out. I'm sure if he'd played for another team, he might have won as many as five or six games that year!
Anyway, a quite amusing story that is often told about Jack Nabors is about one of his particularly stunning losses. I've read this story in at least three places, all told with varying details, but the final score is always cited the same:
From On A Clear Day They Could See Seventh Place:
And the way I originally read this story was in The Baseball Hall of Shame's Warped Record Book:
The story's also in Baseball Anecdotes, where they list Witt as getting 70 errors that year (he had 78) and the rest of the story is the same as Sheehan's quote.
Here's the thing. I really do think this is a hilarious anecdote and very descriptive of the 1916 Philadelphia Pathetics, but the facts just didn't seem right to me. For one, I completely doubted that there was any way in heck that Nabors possibly had a no-hitter going. And when I looked at the 1916 Athletics Game Log on Retrosheet, the only game that Nabors started and the A's lost to the Red Sox 1-2 was the opening game, Nabors pitching vs. Babe Ruth. So I was starting to think that this might have just been a crazy story told by an old man whose memory was failing him, not a set of actual events from an actual game. The details of the story as written suggested that the Wild Pitch game happened against the Red Sox sometime when it was hot out. Well, the A's played in Boston in April, June, and October. Tom Sheehan did infact pitch and lose a 1-0 game on June 23, 1916, the day before Jack Nabors pitched and lost the second game of the series on June 24, 1916. Thing is -- that game was lost by a score of 2-3, not 1-2.
So, either the details of the story were wrong, or Retrosheet was wrong. The lesson to be learned here is: Never doubt Retrosheet.
I've got the printout of the New York Times box score and article from the June 24, 1916 games. The text summary for the first game reads as follows:
And here's the boxscore (the Assists column is too blurry on the Philly side):
What are the errors in the stories as told, assuming this box score is correct?
Other notes about the game: Carl Mays pitched the last inning of the first game of the doubleheader and then also pitched a complete game for the second game of the doubleheader.
Pitching lines for the first game:
Nabors: 8.2 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 0 HR
Leonard: 8 IP, 7 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 5 BB, 6 K, 0 HR
Mays: 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 K, 0 HR
Yeah, he actually had a one-hitter going against the first-place team without being able to strike anyone out AND with a team that made 312 errors all year (in a league where the rest of the teams averaged out to 218 errors). The mind boggles.
Believe it or not, Nabors's story gets even sadder after this. He contracted the Spanish Flu that swept the world in 1918-1919, and pretty much spent the last three years of his life bedridden until his heart and lungs gave out in 1923, a few weeks short of his 36th birthday.
By the way, if anyone has any further information about the game, or access to Philly or Boston newspapers of the time that may have actual play-by-play information, or any suggestions for other places I can research this, it's gladly taken. I love looking into little details like this, though I'm amused that the Periodicals aide at the library didn't even blink when I specifically said, verbatim, "I need to access a newspaper that would have the box score of a baseball game played between the Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Athletics on June 24, 1916. Can you help me?" I guess they get bizarre requests all the time.
Anyway, today is Connie Mack's 143rd birthday, so I suppose it's only fair to be knocking one of the worst teams he ever managed. Baseball history is great this way -- I originally intended to write an article about Losing Pitcher Mulcahy, to honor Ryan Franklin's non-tender, but then when looking through books about lousy Philadelphia pitchers, came across the Nabors discrepancy instead. God, I love this stuff.
(Did anyone actually read this far? Is it interesting at all for me to share my research into historical quirks like this?)
As an aside, and here's your trivia question for the day: In 1916, there were four pitchers in the AL who lost 20 games or more. Three of them were on the horrible Philadelphia Athletics -- Elmer Myers (14-23, 3.66 ERA, 4.83 RA), Joe Bush (15-24, 2.57 ERA, 3.42 RA), and the aforementioned Hard Luck Nabors (1-20, 3.47 ERA, 4.65 RA) . Can you name the fourth (without looking it up)? Trust me when I tell you it's not someone you'd usually associate with *losing* 20 games in a season.
The printout was of a baseball box score article titled "Champions Capture Two", detailing a double-header that the Red Sox played against the Athletics on June 24, 1916. The Sox won both games, which is not surprising, given that this was the year the Philadelphia Athletics managed to lose 117 games while only winning 36, and the Red Sox had won the World Series in 1915 and were on their way to winning it a second straight time in 1916.
Infact, the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics easily stand as one of the worst baseball teams of all time. Their 117 losses was an American League record until the 2003 Detroit Tigers managed to lose 119 -- and even they had a higher winning percentage, being 43-119 and .265 to the Athletics' .235. This is a team that finished 40 games out... of seventh place. It almost takes talent to be that bad.
The most hapless of the happy was a pitcher named Jack Nabors. Look him up if you don't believe me -- this man has a lifetime pitching W-L record of 1-25. Nabors had a W-L record of 1-1 after the A's won a game against the Red Sox on April 22, 1916 -- and after that, he dropped 19 straight decisions, giving him a record of 1-20 for the year. His roomate, Tom Sheehan, had a record of 1-16, making the pair of them a combined 2-36, despite their vaguely respectable ERAs of 3.47 and 3.69.
Nabors was not a good pitcher by most ways of counting it. The man made 13 errors in 1916 for a fielding percentage of .827. Unlike other pitchers with hard luck, he didn't help his case with the bat either, going .101/.139/.101 and scoring one run himself all year. In 212 innings, he gave up 206 hits, walked 95 and struck out 74. Still, according to one article about him, he was partially a victim of bad luck and lousy run support to some extent -- he lost five games by one run, another five by two -- on fourteen occasions, the A's scored two or fewer runs for him, and in five of those occasions, they were shut out. I'm sure if he'd played for another team, he might have won as many as five or six games that year!
Anyway, a quite amusing story that is often told about Jack Nabors is about one of his particularly stunning losses. I've read this story in at least three places, all told with varying details, but the final score is always cited the same:
From On A Clear Day They Could See Seventh Place:
Tom Sheehan told a story: "Once we go to Boston for a series. I pitch the opener and give up one hit, by Doc Hoblitzell. But it happens to follow a walk and an error by Witt [one of 78 errors he made that year] and I lose, 1-0.
Now Nabors pitches the second game and he is leading, 1-0, going into the ninth. He gets the first man. Witt boots one and the next guy walks. Hooper is up next, I think, and he singles to left and the guy on second tries to score.
Well, Schang has a good arm and he throws one in that had the runner cold by fifteen feet. But we have one of those green catchers. I'll never forget his name, Mike Murphy. The ball bounces out of his glove, the run scores, the other runner takes third, and it is 1-1.
Nabors winds up and throws the next pitch 20 feet over the hitter's head into the grandstand, the man on third scores, and we lose another, 2-1.
Later I asked Nabors why he threw that one away.
"Look," he said, "I know those guys wouldn't get me another run, and if you think I'm going to throw nine more innings on a hot day like this, you're crazy."
And the way I originally read this story was in The Baseball Hall of Shame's Warped Record Book:
On his way to a record 19 straight defeats in 1916, hard-luck pitcher Jack Nabors became resigned to losing.
Although he pitched his heart out and recorded a decent 3.47 ERA in over 200 innings, he won only one game and lost 20 with the last-place A's - a weak-hitting club that won only 36 games all year.
Nabors's frustration was never more evident than during the no-hitter he was pitching against the Boston Red Sox. Holding on to a 1-0 lead, Nabors got the first out in the ninth inning before walking the next batter.
Shortstop Whitey Witt then booted a potential game-ending double-play grounder, putting runners on first and second. A moment later, the heartsick Nabors lost his no-hitter on a single to center.
But there was still hope of victory. Centerfielder Wally Schang scooped up the ball and fired home to head off the run. The throw was perfect. But catcher Billy Meyer got tangled up in his own feet and the ball caromed off the heel of his glove as the runner scored the tying tally. The other runners moved up an extra base on the play at the plate and now were perched on second and third with one out.
Nabors surveyed the situation. He looked at the runner on third, took a deep breath... and deliberately hurled the next pitch high off the backstop, allowing the winning run to trot across the plate.
"What did you do that for?" Meyer asked Nabors.
"Listen," the weary pitcher said grimly. "I knew we'd never get another run. If you think I'm gonna pitch eight more hitless innings in this hot sun, you're nuts."
The story's also in Baseball Anecdotes, where they list Witt as getting 70 errors that year (he had 78) and the rest of the story is the same as Sheehan's quote.
Here's the thing. I really do think this is a hilarious anecdote and very descriptive of the 1916 Philadelphia Pathetics, but the facts just didn't seem right to me. For one, I completely doubted that there was any way in heck that Nabors possibly had a no-hitter going. And when I looked at the 1916 Athletics Game Log on Retrosheet, the only game that Nabors started and the A's lost to the Red Sox 1-2 was the opening game, Nabors pitching vs. Babe Ruth. So I was starting to think that this might have just been a crazy story told by an old man whose memory was failing him, not a set of actual events from an actual game. The details of the story as written suggested that the Wild Pitch game happened against the Red Sox sometime when it was hot out. Well, the A's played in Boston in April, June, and October. Tom Sheehan did infact pitch and lose a 1-0 game on June 23, 1916, the day before Jack Nabors pitched and lost the second game of the series on June 24, 1916. Thing is -- that game was lost by a score of 2-3, not 1-2.
So, either the details of the story were wrong, or Retrosheet was wrong. The lesson to be learned here is: Never doubt Retrosheet.
I've got the printout of the New York Times box score and article from the June 24, 1916 games. The text summary for the first game reads as follows:
BOSTON, June 24.-- The Red Sox took a double-header from the Athletics today, the score of the first game being 3 to 2 and of the second being 7 to 3. Hooper stole home in the first inning of the opener, his single being the only hit off Nabors up to the ninth, when singles by Hooper and Janvrin, errors by Nabors and Murphy, a wild pitch, and a fly to Schang let in the needed two runs.
And here's the boxscore (the Assists column is too blurry on the Philly side):
BOSTON. PHILADELPHIA.
AB R H P A AB R H Po
Hooper, rf 4 2 2 2 0 Witt, ss 4 0 1 5
Janvrin, 2b, ss 3 1 1 0 2 King, 3b 4 0 2 0
Lewis, lf 4 0 0 4 0 Strunk, cf 4 0 1 2
Hoblitzel, 1b 4 0 0 9 1 Schang, lf 5 0 1 3
Walker, cf 3 0 0 1 0 Lajoie, 2b 4 1 0 0
Gardner, 3b 3 0 0 0 0 McInnis, 1b 3 0 1 13
Scott, ss 1 0 0 3 3 Walsh, rf 3 1 2 2
McNally, 2b 0 0 0 0 1 Murphy, c 3 0 0 1
Carrigan, c 2 0 0 8 1 Nabors, p 3 0 0 0
Agnew, c 0 0 0 0 0
Leonard, p 2 0 0 0 2 TOTAL....33 2 8 26*
Mays, p 0 0 0 0 0 (* 2 out when winning run scored)
a Henriksen 0 0 0 0 0
b Thomas 1 0 0 0 0
c Ruth 1 0 0 0 0
TOTAL....28 3 3 27 10
a-Batted for Scott in eighth inning
b-Batted for Carrigan in eighth inning
c-Batted for Leonard in eighth inning
Errors-Scott, Witt, Murphy, Nabors.
What are the errors in the stories as told, assuming this box score is correct?
- The score was 1-0 and his wild pitch let in a run to lose it 2-1. No. The box score confirms that the score was 2-1 A's going into the ninth, with a Boston run in the 1st and 2 Athletics runs in the fourth, and the two runs for Boston in the ninth made it 3-2. Retrosheet confirms the 3-2 score as well.
- It was a no-hitter. No. It was a one-hitter, though.
- He got the first guy in the ninth inning out. At the bottom of the Red Sox lineup is listed Henriksen, Thomas, and Ruth, batting for Scott, Carrigan, and Leonard in the eighth inning, the 7-8-9 batters. Henriksen is not credited with an AB, so I do believe he walked. Now, due to the article text listing "singles by Hooper and Janvrin in the ninth", we know that Hooper got a hit in the ninth inning. Since Ruth batted in the 9-slot in the eighth inning, it stands to reason that Hooper, in the 1-slot, led off the ninth inning. Since Hooper and Janvrin are also listed as scoring runs in the 9th, Hooper can't have gotten out.
- Schang was the center fielder. The box has Strunk listed as the CF for both games of the doubleheader, with Schang playing LF the first game and catching the second.
- Billy Meyer was the catcher. No, Sheehan at least had it right that Mike Murphy was the catcher, and that he made an error in the ninth inning. Murphy played in 14 games that year, 15 in his entire MLB career, and that one error, his only ever, gave him a career .973 FP. My guess is his career was cut short more by his batting (.111/.143/.111 in 27 AB) and that he was cursed by the 1916 Athletics.
Billy Meyer, as a matter of fact, was only the team's regular catcher that year because Wally Schang injured his hand on opening day and spent most of the season in the outfield. Meyer ended up missing half the season due to appendicitis, and in 1917 became a true backup to Schang. He never panned out in the majors as a player again, although he later had a stint as a beloved manager in Pittsburgh in the late 40's and early 50's. - The sequence of the 9th inning was 'out, walk/boot, boot/walk, single, wild pitch'. While I'm not following the text of the article as if it's the literal order in which things happened, take a look at the box score again. It says (in the notes I didn't type in) that there were no doubles hit for the Sox, and only Hooper stole a base (in the first inning), and Boston only got first base on one error. My guess is that in the first inning, Hooper singled, Janvrin walked, Lewis reached on a fielder's choice, moving Hooper to third but Janvrin was out at second, and Hooper stole home.
To me, it seems like what may have happened in the ninth is: Hooper singled. Janvrin singled, advancing Hooper to second. (He probably grounded to Witt, who couldn't quite get his hands on the ball in time to make a double play, and instead it was ruled an infield single.) In the next play, Hooper and Janvrin advanced to second and third, while somehow Lewis was out and Nabors made an error. Hoblitzel comes up and pops the ball up to short left field. Schang catches it for the second out, and fires the ball home to try to catch Hooper. Murphy bobbles the play badly, and Hooper scores and Janvrin moves to third. With Walker at bat and the score now tied, Nabors throws the legendary wild pitch that ends it 3-2.
Or maybe the box score is wrong too. Or, it's possible the "error" Nabors was charged with was the deliberate wild pitch. - Did he even throw the wild pitch to end the game? Wouldn't you expect the article to mention that the game ended on a wild pitch if it had actually happened that way? I have been trying to reconstruct the ninth inning to sync with the story, but it's quite possible that the wild pitch happened before a sac fly to Schang.
- Where did he throw the wild pitch to? I have to admit that throwing it into the grandstand is a more entertaining notion than throwing it into the backstop. Who knows.
Other notes about the game: Carl Mays pitched the last inning of the first game of the doubleheader and then also pitched a complete game for the second game of the doubleheader.
Pitching lines for the first game:
Nabors: 8.2 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, 0 HR
Leonard: 8 IP, 7 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 5 BB, 6 K, 0 HR
Mays: 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 K, 0 HR
Yeah, he actually had a one-hitter going against the first-place team without being able to strike anyone out AND with a team that made 312 errors all year (in a league where the rest of the teams averaged out to 218 errors). The mind boggles.
Believe it or not, Nabors's story gets even sadder after this. He contracted the Spanish Flu that swept the world in 1918-1919, and pretty much spent the last three years of his life bedridden until his heart and lungs gave out in 1923, a few weeks short of his 36th birthday.
By the way, if anyone has any further information about the game, or access to Philly or Boston newspapers of the time that may have actual play-by-play information, or any suggestions for other places I can research this, it's gladly taken. I love looking into little details like this, though I'm amused that the Periodicals aide at the library didn't even blink when I specifically said, verbatim, "I need to access a newspaper that would have the box score of a baseball game played between the Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Athletics on June 24, 1916. Can you help me?" I guess they get bizarre requests all the time.
Anyway, today is Connie Mack's 143rd birthday, so I suppose it's only fair to be knocking one of the worst teams he ever managed. Baseball history is great this way -- I originally intended to write an article about Losing Pitcher Mulcahy, to honor Ryan Franklin's non-tender, but then when looking through books about lousy Philadelphia pitchers, came across the Nabors discrepancy instead. God, I love this stuff.
(Did anyone actually read this far? Is it interesting at all for me to share my research into historical quirks like this?)
As an aside, and here's your trivia question for the day: In 1916, there were four pitchers in the AL who lost 20 games or more. Three of them were on the horrible Philadelphia Athletics -- Elmer Myers (14-23, 3.66 ERA, 4.83 RA), Joe Bush (15-24, 2.57 ERA, 3.42 RA), and the aforementioned Hard Luck Nabors (1-20, 3.47 ERA, 4.65 RA) . Can you name the fourth (without looking it up)? Trust me when I tell you it's not someone you'd usually associate with *losing* 20 games in a season.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)