LOOKING AHEAD 60 YEARS AGO: ASSESSING AL CONTENDERS

The Yankees won their sixth pennant in Casey Stengel's first seven years as their manager in 1955, beating out the Indians by three games and the White Sox by five. As close as that race was, and notwithstanding that the Yankees lost—yes, lost—the World Series to the Dodgers, Sports Illustrated's preseason scouting report on the Yankees' prospects in 1956 began with the simple question: "How are you going to beat them?"

LOOKING AHEAD 60 YEARS AGO: WHO SHOULD CONTEND IN THE AMERICAN LEAGUE?

If Sports Illustrated underestimated the Yankees in their preview of the 1955 season—they picked them second, in part because the Indians had beaten them out the previous year by a blowout 8-game margin—they were not about to do so again.

The Yankees, of course, had Mickey Mantle. If there were any questions about his talent and ability—and there really weren't—1955 put them to rest. It was by far the best of his five major league seasons. He led the league in home runs for the first time with 37, and also in triples with 11. He drove in 99 runs and batted .306. His .431 on-base percentage and .611 slugging percentage were the best in the league. Advanced metrics weren't then in vogue, but Mantle's 9.5 wins above replacement made him the best player in both major leagues—just ahead of Willie Mays's 9.0 WAR. And Mantle had been consistent all year, having only one "bad" month, in June when he batted just .248 in 30 games, but still hit 7 home runs with 17 runs batted in. Every other month, Mantle was over .300. His best months were May, when his "Triple Crown" home run /RBI /batting average splits were 8/26/.340, and August, when they were 12/22/.333.  

"Mickey Mantle is so good," according to Sports Illustrated's scouting report on the Yankees in its preview of the 1956 season, "they say he has a disappointing season if he doesn't hit .400." They got that right. It turned out he didn't hit .400, so big disappointment, but Mantle did hit .353 with 52 home runs and 130 runs batted in to win the Triple Crown.

But the Yankees were more than just Mantle. They had Yogi Berra, who had just won his third MVP Award in 1955, after having also won the award in 1954. (Mantle, incidentally, came in fifth—can you believe it? fifth—in the MVP voting in 1955, and failed to get a single first place vote.) And if the other Yankee position regulars were not "star" players, they were all solid. SI made a point of observing that while other teams' managers had to worry about finding a single player to fill a certain position, "canny old Casey Stengel worries only about which one or two—or three or four—of almost equal ability is going to play that day."

Of the other Yankee position players besides Mantle and Berra, who would you suppose was the only one to get a specific shoutout by SI in its list of "Mainstays"? Versatile infielder Gil McDougald, "who does everything well" and was slated to play shortstop in 1956? Nope. How about Hank Bauer, "a fixture in right field"? Not him either. Maybe Bill Skowron and Joe Collins, who were expected to platoon at first base? Not them. They just got mentions. 'Twas second baseman Billy Martin got the shoutout as "the peppery spark of the Yankee infield . . . who seems to improve each year." And SI singled him out even though he missed the entire 1954 season and nearly all of 1955 serving in the US Army. Martin played in just 20 games for the 1955 Yankees, hitting exactly .300. The only year he had been a regular on Casey's club was 1953, when he hit .257 in 149 games. And then he got drafted.

SI senior baseball writer Robert Creamer concluded that the Yankees would be in trouble "only if the pitching falters," which raised the rhetorical question in SI's scouting report: "The pitching staff is weak?" Not with Whitey Ford, who led the league with 18 wins in 1955, lost just 7, and had a 2.63 earned run average. Bob Turley won 17, Tommy Byrne won 16, and they were back. The Yankees' pitching was the best in baseball in 1955, with a major-league low ERA of 3.23.

As for the Yankees' competition, SI figured the Cleveland Indians to finish second again. Other than 1954, when the Indians interrupted the Yankees' string of five straight pennants only by virtue of 111 victories, second place seemed to be Cleveland's lot in American League life during the Yankees' Casey Stengel era. They were second to the Yankees in 1951, and 1952, and 1953, and again in 1955. One big thing changed over the winter. That was that the Indians traded their star center fielder Larry Doby (whose "only weakness in Cleveland was his temperament") to the White Sox for shortstop Chico Carrasquel and outfielder Jim Busby. The Indians may have lost a little something on offense, but they shored up their infield.

Either way, however, the Indians with Early Wynn, Bob Lemon, Herb Score, and Mike Garcia still had "the best pitching staff in baseball," SI wrote. Creamer, however, made the astute observation that that had been true for years, and only once had they overtaken the Yankees. Their excellent pitching just would not be enough. He had that right: Wynn, Lemon, and Score would each win 20, and it turned out in the end not to be nearly enough.

Finally, the Chicago White Sox, who went into September 1955 with the slimmest of leads only to fade out and finish third—their fourth consecutive year with third as their final resting place. Third was where they were projected to end up once again in 1956, even though SI's scouting report was very high on them. Chicago's line-up, according to SI, was "one of the most impressive in baseball. They can hit (well), run (very well), and field (beautifully)." Their offense was bolstered by the addition of Doby, and they were counting on highly-regarded Venezuelan rookie prospect Luis Aparicio to be successful at shortstop. He was why Carrasquel was expendable, especially to get Doby in return.

Creamer thought the White Sox had "the best chance of anyone" to beat out the Yankees, but made that contingent on outfielder Minnie Minoso returning to form. After batting .309 in his first four years with the White Sox, Minoso had slumped to .288 in 1955 and was not hitting well in spring training.

SI's bottom line looking ahead to the American League pennant race in 1956: the Yankees? "How are you going to beat them?"

LOOKING AHEAD 60 YEARS AGO: ASSESSING NL CONTENDERS FOR 1956

Sixty years ago in 1956, the Brooklyn Dodgers were set to defend not only their eighth National League pennant, but their first ever World Series triumph, having taken down the New York Yankees in seven games after failing in the two teams’ five previous Fall Classic match-ups. And the Yankees were angling to repeat as American League champions. 

After an off-season hiatus, this blog—Baseball Historical Insight—returns this year to follow the 1956 pennant races (along with other items of historical note that might come up from developments in the 2016 season), beginning with this first of two articles on how the would-be contenders stacked up for the baseball season about to begin on April 17, 1956. 

Spoiler Alert (since you can look it up): Both the Yankees and the Dodgers met once again in the World Series, but the Yankees got there by winning in a landslide, while Brooklyn won a hard-fought race by one game over the Milwaukee Braves and two over the Cincinnati Redlegs.

LOOKING AHEAD 60 YEARS AGO: WHO SHOULD CONTEND IN THE NATIONAL LEAGUE?

In 1955, Sports Illustrated's preseason prognostications cautioned that the Brooklyn Dodgers might have trouble contending against either the Braves or Giants because of the advancing age of so many of their core regulars. As it happened, however, the Dodgers got off to a phenomenal start winning 20 of their first 22 games and never looked back on their way to a blowout pennant. Writing an overview essay previewing the 1956 season, baseball writer Robert Creamer observed that while Brooklyn was a "big favorite" to win again, one had to "wonder if an aging team like the Dodgers can hold up if [their] pitching let's down.”

Amid reports of ailing pitching arms in camp and with World Series hero Johnny Podres doing time in the service of his country—the draft was still in effect even though the Korean War was no longer being fought (it still has not officially ended, as North Korea keeps reminding us)—pitching was considered to be a potential achilles’ heel, notwithstanding the return of Don Newcombe who was 20-5 in 1955. SI's scouting report acknowledged that the Dodgers’ core regulars collectively were "at a fairly ripe old age," but concluded that if their pitching was decent, they "should not have too much trouble—they are that good." Manager Walt Alston was confident in his staff, wrote SI, and Jackie Robinson, just turned 37 and about to begin his tenth season in Brooklyn, "on any given day can be the Most Valuable Man in Baseball."

The 1955 Milwaukee Braves had been considered "a good bet" to win the pennant instead of the old guys in Brooklyn, according to SI at the time, but were overwhelmed by the Dodgers' fast start and never came close. In 1956, SI's projections for the Braves were slightly more modest, concluding that "If Brooklyn can be beaten, the Braves are the team with the best chance to do it." Not only did they have Eddie Mathews (41 home runs and 101 RBIs in 1955) and Hank Aaron, who emerged as a star in 1955, his second big-league season, but they possessed a "solid" pitching staff led by Warren Spahn, Lew Burdette, and Bob Buhl, all three of whom had somewhat disappointing seasons the previous year.

The Giants, third in 1955, could finish "anywhere from first to fifth," SI speculated for 1956, concluding they would most likely be third again. With the best young player in baseball by name of Willie Mays—(although the team on the opposite side of the Harlem River in the Bronx would certainly have disagreed)—the Giants "will be hard to beat" if the "pitching jells." All three of the Giants' top pitchers the previous year—Johnny Antonelli, Ruben Gomez, and Jim Hearn—had losing records, so even if promising prospect Al Worthington delivered as hoped, that analysis in the SI scouting report seemed perhaps a tad optimistic.  

SI projected the Phillies to be fourth before finally getting around to the Cincinnati Reds, then known as the "Redlegs" because at the height of the Cold War, with the brutal Korean War and the McCarthy era of naming names of supposed Communist sympathizers fresh in memory, being called the "Reds" had bad optics. 

Cincinnati, fifth in 1955, had not had a winning season since 1944 during World War II when major league rosters were decimated by many of baseball's best players serving in the war. The Reds had been improving steadily, however, from 68 wins in 1953 to 74 in '54 to 75 in 1955. First baseman Ted Kluszewski hit 47 home runs and right fielder Wally Post had 40. And in 1956 the Reds were adding a young outfielder by name of Frank Robinson, who SI considered "a question mark" in part because he hurt his shoulder in spring training and "now babies his once powerful-arm." That aside, SI's scouting report said he had a good spring and was, all in all, a "tremendous prospect." SI also noted that Brooks Lawrence, a right-hander the Reds had acquired from the Cardinals to bolster their weak pitching staff, had both suffered ulcers and "lost his stuff" in 1955. Lawrence did, however, look good in spring training. 

SI's preseason bottom line on Cincinnati: "On some days, this is the best club in baseball, depending on who's pitching. Except for pitching (and disregarding the inadequate reserves), the Reds have a fabulous baseball team." But SI picked the Reds to finish fifth in 1956.

NOTE: The following is a link to the first article on my series following developments in the 1955 pennant race that was the focus of Baseball Historical Insight last year:  

http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2015/03/60-years-ago-when-wait-for-next-year.html

Monte Irvin and the Miracle of Coogan's Bluff

As we remember Monte Irvin, who passed away this week just a month-and-a-half shy of his 97th birthday, it is worth considering the decisive role he played in the New York Giants' epic comeback from 13½ games behind the Brooklyn Dodgers on August 11, 1951, to the National League pennant. On account of his dramatic bottom-of-the-ninth three-run home run off Ralph Branca to “win the pennant! win the pennant!” Bobby Thomson is of course the ultimate hero of the "Miracle of Coogan's Bluff." Monte Irvin, however, was the Giants' best player, their most valuable player, and arguably should have been the National League MVP in 1951.

Monte Irvin and The Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff

Monte Irvin is honored in the Hall of Fame as a star player in two separate baseball universes—the Negro Leagues and the Major Leagues, where he did not get the chance to play until he was 30 years old in 1949 because black players were not allowed. Irvin was among the trailblazers following in the footsteps of Jackie Robinson, and many Negro League players believed he should have been the one to integrate major league baseball. He and infielder Hank Thompson were called up by the Giants as their first black players on July 8, 1949.

Irvin had an outstanding Negro League resume and was hitting .373 for Triple-A Jersey City when he was called to New York. With Bobby Thomson, Willard Marshall, and Whitey Lockman all hitting over .300 in the Giants’ outfield, however, there was little reason for manager Leo Durocher to make a change; Irvin played in just 36 of the 81 games the Giants had left on their schedule; he started in just 19 and came to the plate only 93 times.

Durocher, however, certainly knew the quality player he had. After starting the 1950 season with Jersey City, where he hit .510 in 18 games (yes, .510 is correct), Irvin was back in New York, in the starting line-up—first in right field, then at first base—and hit .299 in his first substantive year of major league baseball. The next year Monte Irvin began at first base, finished up in left field, and validated that he was not merely a legitimate major league player, but an elite player. 

Bobby Thomson is the hero remembered, but there would have been no Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff without Monte Irvin in the Giants’ line-up. Moreover, the legitimacy of Thomson’s “shot heard round the world” has since been somewhat tarnished, or at least called into question, by the revelation that he may have had help—Bobby Thomson always denied this was so—from spying eyes beyond center field at the Polo Grounds. 

The story well told in his book, The Echoing Green, Joshua Prager relates how Giants batters benefited at home when Durocher sent coach Herman Franks to spy on opposing catchers' signs through a powerful telescope from the Giants' center field clubhouse at the Polo Grounds, beginning on July 20. It was from that point that Thomson, who had been in a season-long batting funk that forced him into a platoon situation, came alive at the plate. He also resumed playing regularly on that very day as a replacement for Hank Thompson at third base after Thompson suffered a grievous injury that sidelined him for virtually the entire rest of the season.

Monte Irvin's hitting, however, carried the Giants at least as much as Thomson's. And Irvin had been hitting all year. At the time Durocher's spy operation went into effect, Irvin was batting .302, had 12 home runs, and his 61 runs batted in led the team. He finished the year with 24 home runs—second on the Giants to Thomson—121 RBIs to lead the league, and a .312 batting average.

When Durocher was canvassing his clubhouse to get his team's buy-in, quite likely making the point as an offer they could not refuse, Monte Irvin, according to Prager, had the temerity to tell his manager he didn't need extra help to be a dangerous hitter. Irvin proved his point, less by continuing to hit well at home (3 home runs,16 RBIs, and a .300 batting average from July 20 till the end of the season), than by going into other team's ballparks and tearing the place apart. 

In 39 road games after July 20, Irvin hit .340 with 9 home runs and 44 runs batted in. Irvin's productivity in road games was critical because not only did the Giants play more away games after July 20 than at home, all but seven of their scheduled games in the final month were on the road—where they did not have their unique Polo Grounds advantage—and they still had to make up a big deficit to catch the Dodgers.

In the three-game playoff to decide the pennant with the Dodgers, Irvin had one hit in each game, including a home run in the first game when the Giants got the jump on Brooklyn by beating them in Ebbets Field. So dramatic were the Giants' pennant drive and the Thomson home run to win it all that the ensuing World Series against the all-mighty Yankees was almost an afterthought. The Giants lost in 6 games, but Monte Irvin hit .458 (11 hits in 24 at bats) to lead both teams, got on base in exactly half of his plate appearances (also the best on both teams), and stole two bases—including home with guardian Yogi Berra making a desperate lunge to tag him out. Unlike Mr. Berra's insistence till the end of his days that Jackie Robinson, in another World Series steal of home plate against the Yankees, was out—OUT! OUT!—Yogi did not say the same about Monte Irvin's theft.

Based on the wins above replacement metric, Monte Irvin was only the fourth-best position player in the National League in 1951, after Jackie Robinson, Stan Musial, and Ralph Kiner. But especially given his clutch performance in the final two months of the season—Irvin hit .338 with 11 home runs and 49 runs batted in—when his team had to make up a seemingly insurmountable deficit against the Brooklyn Dodgers, a strong argument can be made that Monte Irvin was the Most Valuable Player in the National League. The Giants surely would not have won without his exceptional productivity.

Monte Irvin wound up with only five first-place votes for MVP, second-most in the balloting, and finished third overall in the voting. Brooklyn's Roy Campanella, who had 33 home runs, 108 RBIs, and a .325 average, won the award by a land slide, getting 11 first-place votes. Stan Musial finished second overall.

Through no fault of his own, Monte Irvin did not have the major league career that by rights should have been his. That does not change that he was one of the greatest players of his generation, and one of the best of all time.

THE UNFORGIVABLE SIN

Commissioner Manfred did not deliver Pete Rose the holiday gift he had hoped for. Rose is still officially banned from having any role in major league baseball, other than appearing at certain events. Although Manfred made clear there was a distinction between Major League Baseball and the Hall of Fame, for all intents and purposes Rose's continued banishment from the game means he will continue to be banished from consideration of being honored with a plaque in Cooperstown. Notwithstanding his great career, the sin of having bet on games—including betting on his team when he was manager—is too great to overcome. It is worth being reminded of why.

The Unforgivable Sin

Baseball, then indisputably America's national pastime, was dealt a devastating body blow in the closing days of the 1920 pennant races when the news broke that Chicago White Sox players had conspired with high-stakes professional gamblers to fix games in the 1919 World Series. They included three of Chicago's four starting infielders, two of the three starting outfielders—including the great Shoeless Joe Jackson—two  of the team's top three starting pitchers (and the third, Red Faber, was ailing and so unable to pitch in the Series), and a marginal bench player who, having heard about it, wanted in on the action.

Gambling, including wagering on the outcome of any kind of contest, was also an American pastime—one that was longstanding, although of course no one would say such a thing since gambling was decidedly less wholesome than baseball. Baseball as an institution was not at the time blind to at least the potential of players conspiring with gamblers to fix games, and probably should not be accused of having turned a blind eye to the problem. But baseball as an institution did not effectively grapple with players’ willful association with gamblers and allegations, often by teammates, of players being involved in not always playing “honest ball.”

The most notorious of the "dishonest" players—indeed, the player who defined corruption in the game—was Hal Chase, said to be a superb defensive first baseman and a charmer when it came to dealing with people, although one would have been advised to check one's wallet and count one's fingers after being in his presence. When he starred for the Highlanders (before they adopted "Yankees" as a nickname) from 1905 to 1912, Chase was said to "lay down" on his teammates and tried to entice a few to play along. Nothing could be proven, however, and American League President Ban Johnson took no action against him. 

When he played for the Cincinnati Reds—with whom he won a batting title in 1916—allegations of his playing to lose some games caused his manager, the esteemed paragon of morality Christy Mathewson, to suspend him in 1918 and National League President John Heydler to convene a hearing. With Matty off to serve his country in World War I and so unable to present his case, there was only hearsay testimony about his corruption, a few glowing testimonials on what a great fellow he was, and Chase got off scot free. But not for long. Heydler banned Chase from ever again playing in the National League in 1919 based on evidence he was able to obtain of Prince Hal's perfidy from a Boston gambler.

The Black Sox scandal forced major league baseball to do something about the betrayal of the public's trust in the national pastime. Fans trust that the games are not fixed. Betting on baseball by its participants—whether players or managers—compromises the integrity of the game precisely because they can effect the outcome of games. 

Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who was named Commissioner in the midst of the scandal playing out in a court of law and who demanded absolute authority in overseeing the integrity of the game, made it his mission to restore the public's trust in professional baseball; as a federal judge, he had once called the game a "national institution." He acted quickly and decisively in permanently banning the eight Chicago players for their role in conspiring to throw World Series games on behalf of big-time gambling interests. It did not matter to him that all eight were acquitted at their trial:

• Even if the trial jury chose to ignore or dismiss the grand jury confessions of Shoeless Joe and pitching aces Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams and the evidence against the others—which was particularly weak in the case of third baseman Buck Weaver, who like Jackson played well in the Series—the new Commissioner did not.
• It mattered little to Landis whether or not they really played to lose, which they all denied doing. In fact, that issue was irrelevant as far as the former federal judge was concerned. 
• The grand jury confessions and evidence spoke to their agreeing to conspire with high-rolling gamblers to lose World Series games, or knowing about the plot, and that was all that mattered to Landis.
• Even had they not affected the outcome of any game by their play on the field, their agreement to compromise the integrity of games for a payout, whether or not they received any money, was to defraud major league baseball's interests—and fan expectations—that games are played honestly and championships honestly earned. And that was unacceptable.

"Just keep in mind," concluded the Commissioner in his statement announcing his decision, "regardless of the verdict of juries, baseball is entirely competent to protect itself against crooks, both inside and outside the game."

Ever since, organized baseball's edict against betting on baseball has been fiercely uncompromising. It has to be, because the integrity of the game depends on it. The sin of betting on baseball is irredeemable for anyone involved in baseball. 

That said, baseball is a game that honors its past. The sinner may be forever banished from further participation in the great game of baseball, but his name is not erased from the record books, nor his achievements airbrushed out of the game's history. 

Pete Rose, with his record ten 200-hit seasons and record 4,256 hits, and Shoeless Joe Jackson, with his .356 lifetime average (third highest in history), are indisputably two of the greatest players to take the field and will always be remembered as such despite their fall from grace. And while neither is likely to ever be enshrined in the Hall of Fame, in that great museum in Cooperstown, NY, can nonetheless be learned what they did on the diamond when they were among the best of their time.

The Golden Era of Major League Baseball: A Time of Transition and Integration

Rowman & Littlefield has just published my book on major league baseball in the 1950s, The Golden Era of Major League Baseball: A Time of Transition and Integration. Narrative themes include integration—especially the opportunities for blacks who were not elite players to compete for starting positions against whites of comparable ability; the Yankees and Dodgers many years of triumph; the powerful impetus for expanding the geographic reach of the major leagues, resulting in the first movement of franchises in half-a-century and leading inexorably toward expansion; the growing sophistication in structuring pitching staffs, the use of relief pitchers, platooning, and position-player substitutions; and the 1950s not being as boring in the style of play as has been the accepted wisdom. I also provide an in-depth analysis of the impact of Giants manager Leo Durocher's center field-clubhouse spy operation on the 1951 pennant race and Brooklyn manager Charlie Dressen's decisions in the Bobby Thomson-home run playoff game.

The Golden Era of Major League Baseball: 
A Time of Transition and Integration

by Bryan Soderholm-Difatte

I hope you will find this book on the key developments in the era a thoughtful examination from a different perspective.

Chapters are as follows:

1. The Arc of Integration
2. Boston's Postwar Dynasty That Wasn't
3. End of the Player-Manager Era
4. Enter Stengel the Grandmaster
5. Last of the Titans and Baseball's Expansion Imperative
6. Brooklyn's Answer to New York
7. Durocher the Spymaster
8. Charlie Dressen's Worst Day at the Office
9. The Age of Enlightenment About Relief Pitching
10. Slow-Walking Integration
11. Exit the Grandmaster
12. Consolidating Integration and the Importance of Hank Thompson
13. The Brooks Lawrence Affair
14. The Braves' New World
15. "Perfessor" Stengel's Controlled Chaos Theory of Platooning
16. Diversity and the Los Angeles and Chicago Speedways
17. Coming to Terms With Integration

The book is available through both the publisher and Amazon Books. The links are below:

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442252219/The-Golden-Era-of-Major-League-Baseball-A-Time-of-Transition-and-Integration#

http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Era-Major-League-Baseball/dp/1442252219/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1447209700&sr=1-1&keywords=the+golden+era+of+major+league+baseball

Baseball Humbles Superheroes and Sentiment

As the baseball world processes the World Series just ended—including the Kansas City Royals’ persistence, contact-hitting prowess, and relentless pressure on defenses—the New York Mets might consider whether they bought too much into the “Dark Knight” Batman superhero persona that their ace Matt Harvey has embraced and brings to the mound. After all, right or wrong, manager Terry Collins’s decision to yield to Harvey’s “no way!” demand that he not be removed after eight superlative innings in Game 5 of the World Series with the Mets nursing a slender 2-0 lead in an elimination game for them will be debated long into the winter, and then some. Rather than leaving the mound a conquering hero with a complete game victory to send the Mets and the Series back to Kansas City, Harvey failed to get an out in the ninth, the Royals tied the score, went on to win in 12 innings, and are now World Series champions.

Baseball Humbles Superheroes and Sentiment

Fifty years ago, with the 1965 World Series tied at two games apiece, Sandy Koufax pitched a complete game, 4-hits-allowed 7-0 shutout in Game 5 over the Minnesota Twins. No thought was given to him coming out of the game, despite the Dodgers’ big lead. Three days later, Koufax surrendered just 3 hits in another complete-game shutout to win Game 7 and the World Series. This time the lead was just 2-0, and despite pitching in near-exhaustion, again there was not a thought to bring in relief ace Ron Perranoski, whose 8 saves in September alone were critical to the Dodgers’ winning a close pennant race.

But that was a different time, a time when it was a given that self-respecting top-ranked starting pitchers finished what they started. Ask Don Drysdale (20 complete games in 1965), if you don’t believe Sandy Koufax (27 complete games and 336 innings pitched that year). These are different times, one where closers dominate the end-game, especially in must-win games that are close, like 2-0, in the last inning. In addition to their vaunted trio of young guns—Harvey, Jacob deGrom, and Noah Syndergaard—the 2015 Mets have a top-flight closer in the person of Jeurys Familia.

Harvey had not completed a game all year. He has just one complete game in 65 major league starts, a shutout in 2013. In today’s day and age, there is absolutely no disgrace to not finishing the game. Finishing games to protect a 2-run lead is the closer’s job. And moreover, while the presence of deGrom and Syndergaard meant Harvey would not be asked to pitch Game 7 on two days of rest as Koufax did in 1965, he would have been ready to do his best Madison Bumgarner imitation in Game 7—which surely the Royals would not have wanted to see for the second year in a row—if it came down to that.

But the controversy over his innings limits in his first year back from Tommy John surgery put Harvey in the middle of the argument between his agent and his general manager. Harvey’s awkwardness in handling the issue left a perception that he was more concerned about himself than his team, hardly becoming of the Dark Knight who would sweep away the Mets’ enemies. And so there was “no way!” Matt Harvey wanted out of that game, no matter that he had a Tommy John arm, had thrown over 100 pitches in the game, and Familia was warmed up and ready to close out the Royals so the Mets could get on their plane to Kansas City.

Sometimes, however, the interests of the team should take precedence over the macho posturing and desires of its best players, even the Dark Knight. That is the manager’s responsibility, and Collins acknowledged as much in his post-game remarks. With only a two-run lead in a game the Mets could not afford to lose, and with Familia—like most closers—most comfortable coming in to start an inning rather than to put out a fire not of his making, this was one of those times where, after his eight superb innings, it was time for Commissioner Collins to tell his Dark Knight:

We Metropolitans in Gotham are enormously grateful for what you have done to show these KC devils, who have drained our lifeblood with interminable paper cuts, that they cannot prevail. I realize they are not yet dead and buried, but it is time now for us to relieve you of the burden of finishing the job. At least for today. Rest assured, I will use my best man—Mr. Familia—to close this thing out. We will not lose this battle of Metropolitan good versus Royal evil, and we'll see what the next few days will bring. If we need you, O Dark Knight, to save the day on Tuesday or Wednesday—the day of the Final Judgment—to permanently vanquish these guys, I know where to reach you. And if needed, you WILL be called.

Instead, the Dark Knight insisted on finishing the job himself, and the Commissioner bought into it. “I let me heart get in the way of my gut,” said Collins.

This is the kind of thing where you just hope that everybody recovers from the ugly events that transpired. Especially that Matt Harvey, having put his Tommy John arm at risk, hasn't compromised his future and does not allow his stampeding his manager into an ill-advised decision to haunt him in the year ahead when his excellence will be needed for the Mets to return to the World Series.

And that Terry Collins be remembered for the superb job he did in guiding a team that was beset with injuries to key players and with virtually no offense worthy of the name for two-thirds of the season to an upset of the overwhelmingly-favored Washington Nationals in the National League East. Sure, the Nationals had their share of injuries, but the Mets overcame third baseman and team captain David Wright and catcher Travis d’Arnaud both missing more than half the season on the disabled list, a top-of-the-rotation ace, Zack Wheeler, missing the entire year with his own Tommy John surgery, as did lefty reliever Jerry Blevins, and would-be-closer Jenrry Mejia suspended for performance-enhancing drugs. Collins put the Mets in position to win it all—right up until he allowed the aura of the Dark Knight narrative, and sentiment, to get in the way of his better judgment.

Welcome back in 2016, New York Mets. Your opening day opponent? The Kansas City Royals.

The Post-Season No At-Bat Commonality: Mr. Rodriguez, Meet the Olympian and Mr. Boyer

In the National League Wild Card Game, Pittsburgh’s Sean Rodriguez suffered the indignity, if you wish to call it that, of being in his team’s starting line-up and then being removed for a pinch-hitter before his first plate appearance. Two players who undoubtedly felt his pain in post-season competition were the great Olympian Jim Thorpe and Clete Boyer.

The Post-Season No-At Bat Commonality: Mr. Rodriguez, Meet the Olympian and Mr. Boyer

Pirates manager Clint Hurdle decided to start Rodriguez at first base in the single-elimination Wild Card Game for the right to advance to the NLDS instead of Pedro Alvarez, Pittsburgh’s regular first baseman, because Jake Arrieta was on the mound for the Chicago Cubs. Arrieta, as we all know, has had a second-half of the 2015 season that is probably unprecedented in the annals of major league history. He’s been virtually untouchable.

Hurdle’s entirely reasonable calculus was to put in his strongest defensive line-up behind Pirates ace Gerrit Cole since Arrieta’s excellence placed a premium on limiting the Cubs to as few runs as possible—zero, if at all possible. Alvarez hit 27 home runs in 2015, but defensively was enough of a liability—23 errors in 907 innings at first—that he was replaced for defensive purposes in 69 percent of the games he started. His replacement most often was Sean Rodriguez, who made just 1 error in the 327 innings he played at first.

Cole falling behind by 3-0 in the third inning, however, laid waste to his manager’s best laid plans. Facing such a mammoth deficit against Arrieta and with Rodriguez due to lead off the Pittsburgh 3rd, Hurdle decided in favor of offense and sent up Alvarez to bat instead, thereafter to remain in the game at first base. Sean Rodriguez, after three innings in the field, never got an at bat. Alvarez, for his part, was a strikeout victim in all three of his at bats in the game. Arrieta K’d 11, but only Alvarez went down on strikes three times.

To whatever extent Rodriguez was stewing over his manager’s decision, he might perhaps take solace in the fact that the same thing happened to Jim Thorpe, then an outfielder for the New York Giants, in the 1917 World Series, five years after he blew away the track-and-field competition in the 1912 Olympics, winning Gold in both the pentathlon and the decathlon to become the most celebrated athlete in the world. Or if not Thorpe, how about the Yankees’ Clete Boyer in the 1960 World Series? Both of them were pinch hit for in games they started before having a chance to hit for themselves.

The circumstances were different in each case, however.

Jim Thorpe did not get his turn at bat because of his manager’s commitment to platooning in the starting line-up. His manager was, of course, the great John McGraw. Acquired from the Reds in mid-August, Thorpe became the right-handed half of McGraw’s right field platoon with the left-handed Dave Robertson. He sat on the bench the entire first four games of the 1917 World Series because the Giants’ opponents, the same Chicago White Sox team that would disgrace itself two years later, had started all right-handers—Red Faber twice, and Eddie Cicotte twice.

The White Sox started southpaw Reb Russell in Game 5, and so McGraw put Thorpe into his starting line-up, batting sixth. But with the Series tied at two games apiece, White Sox manager Pants Rowland quickly concluded Reb didn’t have it this day after giving up a walk, a single, and a double to the first three batters he faced. So Russell came out, and right-hander Cicotte came in. When it came Thorpe’s turn to bat, with two outs (both thrown out at the plate on ground balls to the infield) and two runners on, McGraw decided to play the percentages and sent up the left-handed Robertson to pinch hit. Robertson came through with a single to drive in a run.

It being that this was the top of the first, Thorpe did not get so much as even one inning in the field. The White Sox went on to win that game, then started Faber in Game 6—so Robertson was back in the starting line-up—which was another Chicago victory to end the World Series. Thorpe did not play in Game 6.

Clete Boyer was in Casey Stengel’s starting line-up at third base, batting seventh, in Game 1 of the 1960 World Series in Pittsburgh. When his turn came to bat in the second inning, he was removed for Dale Long, pinch hitting, because the Yankees were losing 3-1. The Yankees’ first two batters had both singled, putting the tying runs on base, and with nobody out against Pirates’ ace Vern Law, Stengel—whose penchant for platooning and substituting for starting position players at almost any point in the game was a hallmark of his Yankees managerial career—decided this was his best shot not only at overcoming an early deficit but also at taking command of the game and even the World Series with a Game 1 win. Long made out, but out of the game was Boyer. The veteran Gil McDougald went in to play third base for the rest of the game.

Boyer, however, unlike Thorpe, did get to play an inning in the field—the bottom of the first. Boyer played again in the 1960 World Series. He came into Game 2 as a defensive replacement and started Games 6 and 7. He was in at the end of all three games. In 12 at bats, Boyer had 3 hits—all for extra bases (two doubles and a triple).

Thorpe and Boyer were playing in their very first post-season game when they were ignominiously removed for a pinch-hitter before even one at bat despite being in the starting line-up, and so would have to wait for their first post-season at bat. For Jim Thorpe, that never happened. His entire World Series history turned out to be being written into McGraw’s Game 5 starting line-up, but never actually appearing on the field of play, either at bat or defensively. 

As for Clete Boyer, because he had the privilege of playing for the New York Yankees when they won five straight pennants from 1960 to 1964, he got to play in 27 World Series games, starting the last 25 he appeared in beginning with 1960 Series Game 6.

Perhaps Sean Rodriguez is miffed by his manager's decision, but Tuesday’s Wild Card Game was not his first in the post-season. He appeared in 12 previous post-season games—eight of them starts—during his years with the Tampa Bay Rays.