Blogging About Baseball

For the majority of Seinfeld fans, the most memorable story line in the episode “The Marine Biologist” revolves around George Costanza’s elaborate and continuous lying about being a marine biologist, capped by the gut-busting rescue of a beached whale with a Titleist golf ball lodged in its blowhole.

For me—and I hope I’m not the only one—it’s got nothing on the love story between Jerry Seinfeld and his beloved and beleaguered favorite shirt “Golden Boy.”

Golden Boy is a shirt that Jerry has had for six years. It’s the first shirt he wears out of the laundry; it’s the Cal Ripken Jr. of his wardrobe. But Golden Boy has problems. He’s fraying around the collar. His days are numbered.

Jerry: Elaine, see this t-shirt. Six years I’ve had this t-shirt. It’s my best one, I call him…Golden Boy.

Elaine: I’m on the phone here.

Jerry: Golden Boy is always the first shirt I wear out of the laundry. Here touch Golden Boy!

Elaine: No thanks. Yeah, Yeah I’ll hold.

Jerry: But see look at the collar, see it’s fraying. Golden Boy is slowly dying. Each wash brings him one step closer. That’s what makes the t-shirt such a tragic figure.

Elaine: Why don’t you just let Golden Boy soak in the sink with some Woolite?

Jerry: No! The reason he’s Iron Man is because he goes out there and plays every game. Wash! Spin! Rinse! Spin! You take that away from him, you break his spirit!

Everyone has a Golden Boy: that shirt or pair of pants or hat that just makes he or she feel good. Michael Scott from The Office has his jeans. The Sex and the City broads have whatever the hell they wear. Craig Sager has a whole bunch of tacky suits.

I had my Charleston Rainbows t-shirt.

I remember the moment I picked up Golden Boy and actually felt him in my hands. Mormons (Yes, that’s the second reference to Mormons in two blogs) say that when God sends them a revelation, they can’t explain the feeling—it just feels right. Well, that’s how it felt when I picked up Golden Boy. I knew that this was going to be the shirt that I would wear daily until he died, and I knew I might just die with this shirt on.

I, however, lost my Golden Boy. Where, when, and how it happened, I can’t be exactly sure. I’m fairly confident that I put Golden Boy down at a softball game in early August, but I didn’t see anyone take him away, hear him cry. He was just gone, like a child abducted unknowingly off a playground.

This is my last recorded memory of Golden Boy:

This Charleston Rainbows t-shirt was the perfect combination of two of my favorite things: comfortable clothing and classic baseball.

From 1985 through 1993, the Minor League Baseball club in Charleston was known as the Rainbows. Now an exceedingly successful single-A affiliate of the New York Yankees and known as the Charleston RiverDogs, the Charleston Rainbows club was a minor league outpost for the San Diego Padres (1985-1992) and the Texas Rangers (1993).

In addition to retro baseball, I’m a huge fans of underdog (read: bad) teams. Let’s just say that the Charleston Rainbows never really shined; starting in 1989, the Rainbows, and subsequently the RiverDogs, went eleven straight seasons without a winning record. Despite the terrible time in team history—known as the “Dark Days” according to Wikipedia—fans have fond memories of the Charleston Rainbows baseball club.

Walking through the supermarket, people would routinely stop me and ask, “Where did you get that? That’s an old shirt!” I explained that Golden Boy was actually relatively new (the RiverDogs started reproducing these shirts during the 2010 season), but that they better hurry to get one for themselves. These shirts were flying off the shelves.

You see, I wasn’t the only one who found a Golden Boy.

So today, the Charleston RiverDogs had a 25 percent off sale on all merchandise and apparel. As soon as I got out of work, I rushed over to Joe P. Riley Jr. Stadium to reunite with my best friend.

All of the Golden Boys were gone.

So like Jerry Seinfeld, whose own Golden Boy perished during a fatal spin cycle, I was forced to adopt a new Golden Boy.

Meet Baby Blue:

Or maybe, in this case, it should be shot in the ass.

I’ve spent a month away from blogging. In that time, I’ve started a new nine-to-five job and a brand, spanking new roommate moved in. Needless to say, it’s been hard to find the time to write. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t wanted to. So, with that said, pardon me if I’m a little rusty…

Mark McGwire. That’s who we’re here to talk about. Today, his admission to using steroids was the lightning bolt that came out of the sky, hit me right in the ass, and made me fire up Blogging About Baseball once again.

Maybe I’m ahead of the curve, but I believe I discovered Mark McGwire was juicing sometime in 1998. And if it wasn’t in ’98, then it was sure as hell in 2005 when, during his testimony in front of the House Government Reform Committee, he famously and repeatedly stated, “I’m not here to talk about the past.”

Still, I’m truly shocked about the upwelling of genuine emotion his heretofore inevitable admission has brought out of me.

I’m amazingly pissed. I mean really, really, really, f’ing pissed.

And there’s one reason: McGwire, along with fellow cheat, Sammy Sosa, broke Roger Maris’ decades old record for most homeruns (61) in a full season in 1998. And they didn’t just break it. They pulled their pants down and defecated on it. And then they set it on fire and put the fire out by urinating on it. In essence, they opened the door for Barry Bonds (who I will only dedicated this one sentence because I just might lose it) who put that crap in a flaming paper bag and put it on Roger Maris’ doorstep in 2001.

That’s disrespect. If you know you’re doing something questionable and that something could possibly ruin everything the very game you supposedly love and revere stands for, you just don’t do that.

The integrity of the game. Tarnished.

The legendary records of the game. Tarnished.

Now, I’ve come to the realization that the game I love has never been played perfectly. Through the centuries we’ve seen pitchers throw spitballs. We’ve seen signs getting stolen in the most ridiculous of ways. We’ve seen batters cork their bats. We’ve seen guys hopped up on greenies. If there’s been an avenue to exploit, baseball players have found it.

But this is my generation of baseball and I’m entitled to all the tunnel vision I want. Except that I don’t truly think this is tunnel vision.

I don’t think we will ever look at those cheating tactics with the same disdain as we do steroids. And I don’t think future fans will be able to turn the same blind eye as we did to amphetamines and corked bats and scuffed balls to steroids.

The gains that both pitchers and hitters earned from sticking needles in their ass was (and possibly is) so exponentially and quantifiably higher than any of those other means of one-upmanship.

Brady Anderson hit 50 homeruns in 1996. Before that season, his season high was 21. After that season, he never hit more than 24. He was the team’s leadoff batter. Just think about how f’ing mind boggling that is.

And then we can think about guys like Luis Gonzalez (57 homeruns in 2001) or Greg Vaughn (50 in 1998) who are a little less glaring.

Every statistic from the 1990′s is skewed…or is it screwed?

If Bonds, McGwire and Sosa had not set any records in the 1990′s or 2000′s, we would be able to forget this whole catastrophe. In 15 years, it would have been like none of this had happened, another greenie epidemic, another stolen sign debacle. If only Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa had done exceptionally well, given all of the records a spirited chase and fallen short.

If only…

There were very few things that Seattle Mariner centerfielder Franklin Gutierrez couldn’t catch in 2009; so few things that he earned the nickname “Death To Flying Things.”

A Rawlings Gold Glove award, baseball’s highest accolade for defensive prowess, however, was one of those things Gutierrez just couldn’t snag.

In an announcement made Tuesday, the official 2009 American League Gold Glove outfield consists of the stalwart defensive standards of Ichiro Suzuki and Torii Hunter and first-timer Adam Jones.

Seattle’s Suzuki and Los Angeles’ Hunter both took home the award for their ninth consecutive seasons. Baltimore’s Jones, in just his second full Major League season, earned the Gold Glove despite playing, by all advanced defensive metrics, an average centerfield.

It was an award that Gutierrez, who patrols Jones’ former-centerfield in Seattle’s Safeco Field, should have won.

In 2009, Gutierrez played the best defense of all Major League Baseball players, not just outfielders.

The .985 fielding percentage is not indicative of how amazing Gutierrez was defensively. The almost-antiquated statistic is an effective measure of how well a player performs routine plays, but it doesn’t effectively take into account non-routine plays involving range or arm accuracy or arm strength.

To put the inefficiency of the statistic into perspective, fellow Seattle Mariner Yuniesky Betancourt owned a .968 fielding percentage in 2009. And so did Texas Ranger shortstop Elvis Andrus. Yet, Betancourt is routinely lauded as the “worst defensive shortstop in the history of the world” and Andrus is heralded as anything but.

Ultimate Zone Rating is quickly becoming the standard for measuring defensive efficiency. According to fangraphs.com, the relatively new metric is: “The number of runs above or below average a fielder is in both range runs, outfield arm runs, double play runs, and error runs combined.”

UZR exposes players’ defensive shortcomings. Yuniesky Betancourt’s negative-23.9 UZR reveals a molasses-like fielder with little range and the inability to make even routine plays. Andrus’ plus-11.7 shows a rookie with above-average range and defensive ability. Betancourt cost his team runs with his lackluster defense; Andrus saved them.

No player possessed a better UZR in 2009 than Franklin Gutierrez. In fact, it wasn’t even close.

Gutierrez saved his team 29.1 combined runs in 2009. Tampa Bay’s B.J. Upton was the next closest centerfielder with a positive-11.0 mark. Among all fielders, Tampa’s Evan Longoria was Gutierrez’s closest contemporary, but still fell 10 points short, posting a UZR of plus-18.5.

His positive-29.3 range runs saved was also 10 points higher than the next closest everyday fielder.

Gutierrez’s UZR was the best in a season since the inception of the statistic in 2002.

When one takes into consideration his solid offensive season, Gutierrez was worth almost six wins over the course of the Seattle Mariner’s 2009 season. His estimated worth was $26.4 million, but he made just $455,000 this season. He’s arbitration-eligible this year and seems destined for a significant pay raise.

Gutierrez’s omission in the Gold Glove vote is just the most glaring gaffe betrayed on the award since Texas’ Michael Young won against a much more deserving field of shortstops in 2008.

The Gold Glove vote needs to be re-evaluated. Instead of taking into account just errors, fielding percentage and personal preference (it should be noted that coaches can not vote for players on their own team) new and adjusted statistics like UZR and range runs must be included.

How can “Death To Flying Things” not be a Gold Glove winner?