Clutch 20-2016: The Boston Clutch Party

On the eve of another baseball road-trip, memories of its origin come to mind. Though it seemed like just yesterday, seven years ago Mr. Clutch had one of those eventful, round number anniversaries of birth. Technical you only have one “Birthday” which is your date of birth. When that dates rolls around from year to year it’s the anniversary of that event, thus the use of that term when referencing the date back in 2009. It was a good year, though from a depression perspective a time when one starts to officially feel “Old”. The number of the anniversary will remain unknown. The question is begged of why we celebrate these things anyway. Is it because we “Made it” another year? Sounds like an archaic ritual.

The idea popped up of taking a baseball weekend road trip with some old childhood friends who were around close to the actual birthday. Little was it known that the celebratory activity would spin into an annual event. Mr. Clutch and three amigos headed up to Boston to watch the rematch of the Mets and the Red Sox. It was the first time they were to play each other since the bulls locked horns in Flushing those cold 1986 nights in October. Mr. Clutch saw those games too – 23 years earlier. This time the Mets were on the road, playing at the iconic Fenway Park.

If you are a baseball fan, or play one on TV, there are at least two stadiums you need to see in up close and personal. The place we were embarking too and of course the immortal Wrigley field. The experience of watching a baseball game, regardless of who were playing and/or the outcome is a must for any bucket list. These places look, feel, sound and smell just like you think it would: An old-school ballpark.

First there is the fact that Fenway is one of the best “Walk-up” stadiums around. Before even getting within a football field distance of the place the aroma was simply delicious. No big modern everlasting parking lots, industrial building surrounds or empty open pitted areas leading to the stadium like most of the others. Instead on foot you follow the rest of the livestock on the way home. While walking through the neighborhood streets the views of baseball jerseys and earshot listening of baseball chatter went on for blocks and blocks. It was two hours plus before the game and all the attendees had already long forgot their life problems and were locked in and focused on one thing which was that night’s game.

The pre-game ritual of hanging out on the street behind the stadium was just awesome. Blocked off for ticket-holders only, it was the party before the party. Beer was flowing, dead pig on a grill was being consumed and Boston’s version of Mardi Gras was in full swing. There and then the pastime feel continued to intensify. Because it was slightly more than your average weekend series with the “Rematch” over two decades in the making, there was some additional television reporters and press on the scene. One of the Clutch entourage was actually interviewed for the local news.

The seats were field level behind home plate. The actual seats themselves were narrow, wood, uncomfortable and phenomenal all at once. It was quickly noticed that most of the fans in the surrounding area actual knew each other. Sure the concept of the “Season ticket” is an old one, but it’s rare to actually see it being executed on that level. It was clear that these people actually committed 81 days or nights to come hang out with their game day friends. Though the Clutch posse was on foreign turf sitting around the enemy, everyone was just fans of the sport that night. Friendly folks and pure fans of the game filled in the entire stadium.

The Mets won that night courtesy of Johan Santana’s arm and a collaborative effort with the team bats. It was a great night of baseball, with the gang sucking in every moment that the ballpark afforded. It was the perfect night of baseball with the slight exception of Ramon Martinez making two errors at SS. Oh how many missed the days of the sure-gloved Rey Ordonez, or even Frank Taveras. Here’s one interesting factoid on Ordonez, who was certainly one of the best defensive middle infielders of his day; he would never oil up or break in his glove. This was because he never actually “Caught” the ball in his glove, meaning close the glove with the ball in it. He would use the glove to “Stop” the ball and then transfer it out in a quick and seamless motion.

The walk from the ballpark back to the hotel after the game brought about clearly the funniest moment of the weekend. As all the dejected Sox fans passed the first hotel closest to the stadium, a bunch of Met fans were up in their room on the third floor with a window facing the street. Next would be something that is classic New York style, and would only really be expected by fans of that ilk. A guest yelled something along the lines of “Hey Red Sox fans”, and then cordially mooned the entire city of Boston out the window. Yes, exposed buttocks out with the big dipper and other stars of the night. It would be considered juvenile to most, but pure comedy gold to others.

The next morning featured a tour of the stadium. This included seeing the HOF area, Green Monster, Budweiser porch and all the other ins and outs of this baseball shrine. The tour was given by and old guy who was likely doing it for 30 years and probably worked at Fenway as a kid 30 years before that selling peanuts for .5 cents a pop. He knew the history of the team and explained it flawlessly. The story of Babe Ruth going across the street for a beer during a game was quiet interesting, though possible a fable at best. What a weekend and way to celebrate a round number anniversary of birth!

Clutch 19-2016: Cardboard Paradise

Outside of playing and watching America’s pastime, the next best thing was collecting imagery and ink of it. A committed kid’s favorite candy store brand was Topps and not Hershey. Then there was this fascination with having a name written on any kind of paper in cursive. It was the baseball fans two favorite non-active hobbies of collecting baseball cards and autographs.

In Clutch’s early days Topps was tops, not sort of pun intended. For a while it was the only game in town, and then like anything else successful dusty roads formed as others started to roll in to town. Fleer and Donruss were two that come to mind. Topps really controlled the market though and their cards were considered the industry standard. Unfortunately baseball cards are one of many victims of the Internet. Cards value from an information perspective is just no longer there.

The buying process was pretty simple and streamline. The purchaser would work hard to scrounge up the .35 cents needs to buy a “Pack”. A pack was a sealed package of 10 or so cards that came with what else? A stick of gum was included. It’s kind of impossible to think about that as a good idea. Fusing a food product with a collectible is something that just wouldn’t fly in current times. Likely some marketing executive at the company thought the gum would entice the kid to make the purchase. Good idea, but it was exactly the opposite of that. Nobody in the history of modern times purchased a pack for the sugary benefit. We had bazooka-Joe for that.

Opening the pack and zipping through the random players received was 10 seconds or so of Xanadu. Kids at the time had no concept of the potential “Value” of the cards and just sought out their desires. Those were almost always local team players, all-stars and just players that they may take a fancy to. The things typically not wanted and frown worthy were team photo cards, scrubs, odd stat cards and of course the dreaded “Check-list” card. Little did anyone know that the true value was held in things such as “Rookie card” status on players that would go on to be super-stars regardless of the team they played for.

The question was what to do with the mass-produced card-board? Well, first was to just look at it. The front was normally an action or pre-posed photo, but the back was where the action was. It held the players life-long stats including of course the past season, which was usually of most interest. It also typically had other information such as all-star game appearances, league leading categories and the all-important player demographics like height, weight and hometown. Some cards included trivia or a player factoid such as where he worked during the off-season! All of this data is now a mouse-click away and no longer needed to be obtained by digging through files for a hard-copy version.

If out of cash and having the want to get “New” or “Different” cards, you would find a fellow collector of baseball cards and barter one of many ways. The first was the straight out trade where you proposed and negotiated a deal. Commonplace was to trade off “Doubles” (Multiple copies of the same card received via bad luck in additional packs purchased) of decent players.  You can also trade players from teams that our trade partner was a fan of while you were not. This was easy in cities that had multiple teams like New York.  Though not a normal part of the deal other items could be thrown into to close deals. Those items could be a Spaulding ball, mini high-bounce ball (Those were fun for a limited time), cash, candy or anything else that one had in their pocket at the time of sitting down at the negotiation table a.k.a. sidewalk.

There was another non-commerce way to obtain cards – which was the part-sport part-gambling game called “Flipping”. Two competitors entered the arena with an evenly amount of cards scrambled in random order. You entered the game knowing the result could be additional stock of cards, or leaving with nothing. How it worked was each kid put a card face-up in a single pile. Cards back then all had a solid colored border, typically the rainbow was used and the colors closely matched the team. Anyway, the “War” kept going until a kid dropped a card atop the pile that equally matched the border color of the previous card. You then got the entire pile, placed it behind the cards already in hand and the game started over again. It would end when one contestant ran out of cards, submitted or got called home for dinner.

When the real baseball season ended and the cold weather hit the card collecting season ended to. Most kids piled all their years keep in one or more shoeboxes, sorted by team, and then tucked the box of gold away in the back of the your room closet behind other things that were decreed as much less valuable. Not to fear as a few short months later, though it seemed like an eternity, a regular trip to the local candy store for that sugar rush would generate smiles. The next year batch of cards arrived! It was time to start the process all over again.

There are plenty of stories out there by disgruntled male adults who are specifically mad at their mothers. The reasons are all the same in that when these boys-to-men went away to college, the military, got married or for any other reason vacated “Their room”, mom followed up with a major cleanup part and parcel with converting a bedroom to a lounge or guest space. With that came mass exodus of toys, matchbox cars, planet of the apes action figures and those boxes in the back of the closet filled with cards.

For those like Mr. Clutch who were lucky enough to preserve their past and get the goods out before the primitive version of 1-800-555-JUNK got to it, history is saved. Perusing through and touching those cards from time to time brings back specific memories of where, when and how they were obtained. It’s a glimmer back into a childhood that didn’t have the technological advantage of documenting every step via a photo.  Great times come back alive and still exist, as does Al Oliver, Vida Blue and George Brett rookie cards.

Clutch 18-2016: Duplicity

Great athletes are just that; great athletes. It usually means that they are above average and have the ability to succeed at a high level in multiple sports. Sometimes this can include a sport in which the athlete knows little or nothing about. It’s also referred to as natural talent or natural ability. Generally speaking it kinds of makes sense. All specific sports were man-made, while the ability is in the DNA strand.

When thinking about the professional multi-sport athlete a couple of obvious ones come to mind. The one that is in a league by his own, no pun intended, is the phenom Vincent Jackson. You know, Bo. Jackson is likely considered by many as the best “Overall” professional athlete in the history of athletes. It would be pretty hard to debate that. No reason to bore you with the details, just watch the ESPN 30 on 30 that will tell you everything you want to know. For those under a rock, he was one of the best running backs in football history and an excellent outfielder in baseball. The kicker was – those accolades were effective at the same time.

As it relates to baseball, there are a few specific plays or acts that stand out during Bo’s career. They are both pretty well documented in the ESPN show. Thinking more about it there are three actually. The first is the sound of the ball hitting the bat which was recalled by a scout. The claim is that it was a unique specific “Perfect” sound heard last when Babe Ruth was in the box. The second is in his first at bat in which he demolished a pitch about 30 rows back into the seats off Hall of Famer Steve Carlton. The pitch was foul by inches and he settled for one of most exciting infield singles you will ever see. What looked like an average ground out to the second baseman ended in a hit with Bo two full strides past first base by the time the ball got there. Just a great at bat against arguably one of the best left handed pitchers ever. YouTube the at-bat when you get a chance.

The third is the one likely most popular which is simply known as “The throw”. It’s also a reason to go to YouTube for the visual reminder. Jackson barehanded a ball hit off the left-field fence while standing within the warning track. While this was happening, Harold Reynolds, who started the play on first base and part of a hit-and –run, was rounding third for what looked to be an easy run. Bo missed the cut-off man, likely on purpose. He threw out Reynolds on a fly from the warning track. Probably one of the best outfield putouts ever.

The other popular multi-sport star is Deion Sanders. Deion doesn’t have the accolades or list of famous plays like Bo, but he was an awesome football player, likely one of the best defensive players ever, while at the same time being a pretty good baseball player for nine seasons. Deion had speed on the base-paths, with 38 steals one year in two-thirds of a season. Sanders was also able to hit for average, usually hitting around .280+ with one season at .304. Not bad for his second sport.

Deion is in the short list of athletes Mr. Clutch refers to as “Timeless”, which means at 49 years of age he could likely suit up today and get a hit or two while playing a better than average center field. The other obvious one on that list is Ricky Henderson. There are a few notable facts for Prime Time, his well-deserved nick name. One is that he built up a pretty nice dossier of stats without every playing a complete season, mostly due to football obligations. Also, he is the only player in history to compete in two major sports in the same day. He had an NFL regular season game in the afternoon and an MLB playoff game in the night. That’s flashbacks of Mr. Clutch’s days of playing two softball double-headers in the same day. It was school-yard concrete league in the morning and grass arc league in the late afternoon.

The third notable would have to be Michael Jordan. Also the subject or an ESPN 30 on 30, where his attempt at a baseball career was well documented. Though not making it beyond AA ball, Jordan did steal 30 bases that year while batting a shade over .200. Rumor had it that he worked out excessively and was the hardest working player on the team. It goes to show you that sometimes pure talent and hard work just isn’t enough. One notable item here is that the brother of one of Mr. Clutch’s former colleagues played with Jordan in Birmingham. It was longtime Angels SS Gary DiSarcina, who’s brother was Geno. Geno claimed to be a better player than his MLB brother and was a left handed third-baseman.

There are also famous multi-sport athletes who decided to only play one sport at the professional level. Two to point out were the last two in history to be drafted in three major sports.  Dave Winfield was drafted in baseball, football and basketball. Winfield of course chose baseball, in which he had a hall of fame career. The other, and slightly more obscure, was Charlie Ward. Ward, the Heisman award winning football player, was drafted “For real” in football and basketball. He chose basketball, in which he had a good 10 year career with Knicks. The obscure part is that as a publicity stunt he was drafted by the Brewers in the 59^th round of the MLB draft that year. The obscurity was that he never played high-level organized baseball. Charlie was probably good enough of an athlete to get that done!

Clutch 17-2016: Fantasy Baseball in the Cro-Magnon Days

Mr. Clutch doesn’t necessarily claim to have invented the Internet, unlike a former Presidential candidate, but he certainly stakes claim to being one of the first people to be using it. Most people’s earliest remembrance of the Internet is typing in a www into the search bar of a graphical interface. Some newer folks don’t even refer to it as “The Internet” but instead call it “Google”. Oh boy, these newbies have no idea of what it was and how the idea of connecting computers and information really started.

Not to bore anyone with the history of on-line computing, but originally one would “dial in” directly to a bank of phone lines usually setup in some kids basement. It was called a BBS, acronym for “Bulletin Board System”. If you were lucky enough to connect you were able to swap files, read messages, post information and possible chat with another fellow on-line nerd. There was no monthly fee for this as you were just connecting peer to peer(s). It was the caveman days of the world wide web.

Next came CompuServe, a professional version of the BBS, and its graphical interface older brother called Prodigy. Prodigy was the closest thing to the real Internet before the real Internet. Cro Magnon man possible Prodigy was the first “Place” to play any sort of on-line fantasy baseball. For the historians in the house we’re talking 1984. That may seem like yesterday, but it was 32 years ago. The concept of capturing baseball statistics in a computer for analysis and use was born. Not to fear, as it was done with pen, paper and some ingenuity well before that.

Turning back the clock way back to 1963, most likely remember it as the year we lost JFK. A few others remember it as the year that Strat-O-Matic was born. Some math geek out there figured out how to, somewhat, accurately portray the result of a baseball game, and more specifically a players performance, based on a literal role of the dice. Each hitter had at-bat results listed on a card, with the dice roll deciding the result per at bat. Likewise, pitchers had the same. One die decided if the hitter or pitcher dictated the result, while the other two gave the specific outcome.

Seems like just another board game, but it was more than that. It was a game with a cult following that took the kid and adult baseball fan base by storm. Little Clutch and his friends would buy the update to the game every year and play complete seasons some summers. Sure kids should have been outside playing the game “For real”, and plenty of that happen too, but there was always time for “Strat”. Time was found early mornings, rainy days, late nights and the proverbial three-day weekend. Some of the player card would wear out from use.

How accurate was the stats? Well, in 1980 George Brett batted .390. In the complete strat season, he hit .405. That was pretty good and pretty accurate. The only thing the Strat failed factor in was things like home field advantage, stadium designs and weather conditions. With that, Brett probably would have hit .390 in both real life and on paper.

Of course today Strat-O-Matic is the do-do bird, or at least the manatee. With the Internet and all stats available on-line, and entire Strat season can be virtually calculated in minutes instead of the ins and outs of an entire summer. It’s one of those things, and there are not many of those “Things”, that should have stayed in the analog world. The concept of sorting player cards, setting up the cardboard field and making manger-like decisions while viewing your paper bench just beats doing it on a color screen any day of the week.

There was a reasonable facsimile of Strat in the computerized world that was not half bad. Back in 1984, the same year Mr. Clutch was a pioneer on-line with Prodigy, a computer game was released for the Atari 400/800 computer. The mention of Atari is a reference to the Atari computer, not the 2600 gaming system.  I’m guessing nobody has head of this game since back then only a tiny fraction of people had an actual home computer. Mr. Clutch was of course one of the fraction, again leading the way into cyberspace. The game was called “Microleague Baseball”.

Microleague was a baseball video game in which one did not control the players or actually “Play” the game. The best way to describe It would be a baseball simulation game with graphics. You set your team lineup for the team you were representing, while the computer managed the competition. When you started the game, each play was a statistical simulation based on actual player stats, primitive analytics and a little bit of luck. After each play completed, you had the option to make the normal managerial changes in the game. Sounds a lot like an automated on-screen version of Strat-O-Matic!

The results of the Microleague games and player performance were also very accurate, especially for the computing power available back in the day. Though playing the game seemed like a boring proposition, it actually was fun and better than Strat in only one way. Each simulated play was actually displayed on the screen as action. So, you saw the pitch being delivered, the ball being hit and possible fielded and the running of the bases. You didn’t know the result of the play until it happened. It really was like managing an actual game.

Today the baseball video game business is in the billion dollar range. New MLB endorsed video games was graphics that rival real life come out every year. The play action and everything else in the package is of course light-years better than the early 1980’s. Though there is no comparison to the play quality of the games in the modern era, it’s still likely that systems like Strat-O-Matic and MicroLeague more accurately portrayed the results of the game. Finally, a case where the machines have not taken over! Toot-a-loo Cyberdyne.