Is Jose Abreu the Next Babe Ruth?

The White Sox completely overhauled their team during the last offseason and got rid of a bunch of dead weight while bringing a lot of new talent. The club has done a full about-face now and could even win their division before it's over. Center stage of all this is Cuban defector Jose Abreu.

Abreu is a rookie, but he's no kid at 27. He spent several years playing in the Cuban Serie Nacional league where he regularly hit near .400 and was known for his ability to hit home runs and get RBIs. He hit .453/.597/.986 with 79 runs, 93 RBI and 33 home runs in only 66 games in 2010-2011.

Abreu currently has 29 home runs and is on a pace to surpass both Babe Ruth and Roger Maris' single season records, and he may even do it in less at-bats than either of them. And in his rookie season no less. Ruth had 25 dingers going into July 1927. He had 30 by July 12th. However, the Yankees opening day wasn't until April 12th back then. Had they started April 1st the way we do now, Ruth would have had between 27 or 28 by July 1st. Abreu had 26 homers on July 1st. The White Sox played 10 more games in April than the 27 Yankees did, but Abreu spent 15 days on the DL at the end of May, and the Sox played a game on every one of those days, so by July 1st Abreu played in 5 games less than Ruth did and only had one less home run. Abreu is not only on the same pace as Ruth in 1927—he's ahead of him! Of course Ruth had one hell of a September back in '27, but Abreu has shown over his years in Cuba that he's just as capable. And did I mention that he's also great in the field?

To surpass Ruth and Maris' single season home run records as a rookie seems unimaginable, but I have a feeling this will just be a drop in the bucket compared to what Jose Abreu will do before his career is through. He's quick, strong, smart, friendly, and downright likeable. His teammates call him "Yogi" because of his imposing stature and amiable demeanor. Jose Abreu is the new face of baseball.

Cheating In Baseball (Hello St. Louis!)

I've written once before here about steroid use, but not cheating in general and what we can and should do about it in Major League Baseball.

Steroids themselves don't really bother me so much. It's the cheating aspect I find vexing. I honestly thought the Cardinals were above hiring a known drug cheat, but apparently General Manger, John Mozeliak, is not the man I thought he was. Peralta is on the team. It's a done deal. Can someone tell me what all this Christian Night at the Ballpark was about last summer? Apparently it was little more than a publicity stunt.

What kind of example does this set for our kids in town? If you cheat in baseball you get a fat contract worth tens of millions of dollars! That's what it teaches them. Mozeliak talks about giving second chances to ballplayers who make "mistakes." But this wasn't a mistake. Peralta took PEDs on purpose. He didn't accidentally shoot-up the wrong drug. It was a premeditated decision on his part.

Cheating in sports is not like breaking other laws. It's not like speeding or tossing a cigarette butt on the sidewalk. People pay a fine for those things and get a second or even third or fourth chance, and it brings a little revenue into the city in the process. Sports are different.

Second chances don't apply to cheaters in sports for a few different reasons. One, we fans enjoy baseball stats. We love talking about who had the best batting average,  the most home runs, the pitcher with the most no-hitters and so on. Cheating makes those statistics useless while lessening the enjoyment of the sport. Two, drugs that enhance a player's performance will also enhance his contract and entitle him to more money than he deserves. Third, players who did only marginally worse while not shooting drugs may lose a slot on the team to a cheater.

Cheaters only win if you let them. If you get caught cheating on a test at Harvard, Stanford, or just about any other Ivy League college you get booted from the school, and you don't graduate. You'll also have a hard time getting into any other Ivy League school, which means going to a lesser college and probably making less money in the real world.

If you really want to stop cheating in Baseball or sports in general, you can't give second chances to someone who has permanently tarnished the game. Boot the cheaters out of the Majors and maybe they can get a job playing for a lesser league like the Independent League or the Mexican Pacific etc. But get them out of the Majors.

Shame on the Cardinals and John Mozeliak in particular. I won't be attending any Cardinal games next year. I'd sooner drive up to Chicago and watch the White Sox lose every game, but lose them honestly.

Cardinal Bob Gibson Playing With the Harlem Globetrotters?

Many people know that Cardinal pitching great, Bob Gibson, was also a great basketball player in college at Creighton during the mid to late 1950s. He also played with the Harlem Globetrotters during their 1957-58 season before turning to baseball fulltime. I've never been able to find any footage of him playing at Creighton, but I may have found some of him playing with the Globetrotters in 1958. At least 1958 is the date of this video. I know that Wilt Chamberlain played with them during the 1958-59 season, and he's obviously not in this video, so I'm guessing it's from the 57-58 season when Gibson should have been there. He was a 6'1" guard, but I have no idea what his jersey number was. I'm guessing, however, that if he's in this video at all he must be number 33.



Gibson averaged over 20 pts. per game at Creighton and was the only non-white player on the team. In fact, he was their first non-white player ever. He had great leaping ability, and even at only 6'1" he could stuff the ball backwards with both hands.

His roommate with the Trotters was actually Meadowlark Lemon who years later said, “I thought Bob was a better basketball player than a baseball player. I think Bob could have played with any NBA team. He was that good.”

Goose Tatum

The clown prince of negro league baseball.

And ... the clown prince of basketball with the Harlem Globetrotters

Great Photos of Baseball's Greats

I think that some people have the idea that baseball a hundred years ago was very primitive and that the players wouldn't be great by today's standards. However, ask people from previous generations who really know the game and they'll generally tell you that baseball players were actually better the farther back you go. I know my dad always felt that way, but he was always quick to acknowledge a great modern day player too. He grew-up watching Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial with the Cardinals and would say unequivocally that the 40s Cards were considerably better than any team they've ever fielded since.

I think there's something about seeing really high quality photographs from the early days of baseball that makes you somehow appreciate the great calibre of play they had back then. I don't know why, it just does. So many of the photos you see from the turn of the 20th century are grainy and just plain poor overall, and I think this somehow causes people to believe this reflects on their play when this really couldn't be further from the truth. So here are some great photos from the golden days of baseball. You can click on most of them to enlarge them considerably.

Stan Musial as a roookie - 1941

 

Enos Slaughter - 1938

 

The Cardinals were a great team long before Musial ever joined them though. In fact, Stan came to the club as a regular in 1942, the year after the great Johnny Mize left for new York.

 

Johnny Mize - 1939

The Cardinals are known for big power hitting 1st basemen, and long before McGwire and Pujols was Johnny Mize. He and Slaughter were great together although the Card's never one a world series with them. (Slaughter did win several alongside of Musial later though.)

And of course before any of them was the old Gashouse Gang of 1934 with the likes of Dizzy Dean (probably the best pitcher of the decade and one of the best ever), Pepper Martin, Frankie Frisch, and of course Joe Medwick. That team had five starting players batting over 300 and won the world series that year. The Cards won five world championships between 1926 and 1934 with many of the players in that lineup. They may have been even better than the 1940s Cardinals. The Cardinals didn't win any championships before 1926, but they still had some great teams and terrific players like Jim Bottomley, Jack Fournier, and Rogers Hornsby.

Rogers Hornsby - 1925

Hornsby was almost certainly the greatest right-handed hitter who ever lived and maybe the best period. He was also one of the best 2^nd basemen. He hit over 400 three times and once hit for a 401 average and 40 home runs in the same season—a feat that will likely never be repeated. You might recall that the 1926 world series between the Cardinals and the Yankees was among the best ever recorded. It went the full 7-games and the Cards took game seven by one run. Babe Ruth hit three home runs in one game and hit the longest fly ball ever recorded at the old park. Actually, he kind of blew the series though. He walked in the 9^th inning and tried to steal second with two outs but didn't make it, and that was that. He hit two home runs recorded to be over 500 feet in the series though. I would have loved to have lived back then, but this was even before my dad was born.

I found some footage of that series. It's grainy, but it's very cool to see Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig play against (and lose to) Hornsby, Bottomley and the Cards in a world series.


Here are some other nice photos of some early ball players mostly from the dead ball era:

Babe Ruth in 1914 when he was still a pitcher.

Ty Cobb sliding into 3rd - 1914

Shoeless Joe Jackson -1920

Joe hit 408 as a rookie in 1911. Babe Ruth said he more or less copied Jackson's swing.

Tris Speaker - 1911

What a great stance Tris Speaker had! And what a great hitter. He would be in the top 10 or 20 at least on anybody's list.

Fielder Jones - 1904 with the White Sox

 

St. Louis Boys Will Always Show You A Good Time

Or at least a good tan.

What possesses people to rip off their clothes in the middle of a crowded stadium? No, it's not the Budweiser. That just gives you the courage. Some old school chums of mine went streaking through the local Dairy Queen wearing jock straps for masks back in the 70s when streaking was the fashionable thing to do. And of course “shooting the moon” (or the “stars” from the ladies) from a moving vehicle was almost a daily occurrence back then. Women taking off their tops while sitting on their boyfriend's shoulders at rock concerts was less fashionable, but it made for a good story at the next beer blast. I very nearly dropped my towel and swam naked at Ballys one day, though it would have only been a good laugh for a few friends in the place. But who on Earth takes off their clothes amid thousands of strangers, and in front of TV cameras, for a few fleeting moments of fame followed by a night in jail and a police record for lewd and lascivious behavior? St. Louis boys! No need to thank us. Just remember us fondly.