Baseball

The sad story of Scott Spiezio

Dave Farquhar Baseball ,

Scott Spiezio was a mediocre baseball player who could really rise to the occasion. A good defensive first baseman with a so-so bat, he was nevertheless a key part of the Anaheim Angels’ 2002 World Series team. During the regular season he hit .285 with 12 home runs, and when injuries called for it, he slid across the diamond, filling in capably at third base. During the postseason, he went ona tear and hit .327 with three home runs.

In 2004 he signed a lucrative contract to play third base for the Seattle Mariners. His career quickly imploded, with only a .215 batting average in 2004. The next season, he sported a microscopic .064 batting average in 29 games and the Mariners released him in August.

In 2006, the St. Louis Cardinals gave him a chance as a bench player. He filled in at five positions: first base, third base, second base, and left and right field. He also hit well, and his clutch hitting in the postseason when other players faltered made him a fan favorite.

Unfortunately in 2007, the honeymoon ended. The 2007 Cardinals had a lot of off-field problems. First, manager Tony LaRussa was involved in an embarrassing DWI incident. Then pitcher Josh Hancock plowed into a tow truck at high speed on an interstate while driving drunk, killing himself. Then Spiezio abruptly left the team, checking himself into rehab for unspecified substance abuse problems.

Spiezio returned with a lot of fanfare. St. Louis fans are quick to remember past heroics and eager to forgive when someone makes an effort to right wrongs. In late January 2008, he spoke to St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Derrick Goold of ways to avoid making what he called “bad decisions,” and taking responsibility as an example-setter.

What Spiezio didn’t mention in that interview was that about a month earlier, in late December, he’d made at least one of those bad decisions. According to a California police report, he got behind the wheel of his BMW after drinking vodka, wrecked the car after driving erratically, and fled the scene. A neighbor then tried to help him, and that ended in a fight, with Spiezio throwing punches at the neighbor and slamming him into a wall.

On February 27, the story hit. Spiezio was wanted in California, facing six charges. The Cardinals promptly released him.

Unless there was an unusual provision in his contract, the Cardinals will pay Spiezio about $2.5 million to not play baseball this year. Over the course of his 10-year career, he’s already made nearly $17 million. He should be more than set for life. Even if that money is gone, this year’s salary should provide for him and his children for the rest of his life.

The question is whether he’s lost enough.

I don’t know what will happen next to Scott Spiezio. He had a good job with the Cardinals, a good organization where he fit in well and the fans loved him. Right now is a bad offseason to be unemployed. A lot of talented players are still trying to find work. Some of them have more baggage than Spiezio, but some don’t. Spiezio does have several things going for him: He’s young enough to still have two or three or more productive seasons left, plays five positions competently, he switch-hits and has some power. He probably can’t be an everyday player anymore, but there aren’t very many players who have his mix of skills and he could be a useful player coming off the bench for almost any team–if he can keep it all together.

I can see Spiezio landing on his feet and perhaps even ending up on a contending team. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to see him playing in the World Series again this year.

Staying clean and sober is the harder challenge. I know from watching my dad and others struggle with alcohol that the only way you overcome it is when you hit bottom and realize that unless you overcome the addiction, you will most likely lose absolutely everything that matters to you (if you haven’t already). And even then, it’s possible to relapse, however briefly. As far as anyone knew, former Cardinals catcher Darrell Porter had been clean and sober for the better part of 21 years when he died from side effects of recreational cocaine use in 2002.

I believe the Cardinals did the right thing by releasing Spiezio. It sends a much-needed message to him, the organization, and the fans that no matter how versatile and important you are, staying free of substance abuse is more important than playing baseball.

For Spiezio’s sake, I hope that whatever happened in California is an isolated incident and he is able to do whatever he has to do to keep it that way. History is littered with the names of good baseball players whose lives turned tragic in spite of what they accomplished on the field. There’s no need for him to become another one of them.

2016 update: A couple of months after I wrote this, Scott Spiezio signed with the Atlanta Braves as a free agent. They released him a week later. Spiezio never played baseball in the major leagues again. From time to time he makes promotional appearances in St. Louis, where fans still fondly remember his role in the 2006 postseason.

Mark Littell: Playoff goat to YouTube star

Dave Farquhar Baseball , ,

It used to be that Mark Littell was known for two things: Giving up a walk-off home run to the Yankees’ Chris Chambliss in the 1976 playoffs (a la Brad Lidge), and being traded for Al Hrabosky.

I’m not sure if his new claim to fame is much better, but it’s humorous.

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Another year, another manager

Dave Farquhar Baseball ,

Buddy Bell resigned his job as Royals manager at the end of the season to spend more time with his family, then promptly took a minor-league job with the White Sox. Given their last-place finish, it’s not much of a loss.

They named a replacement today.His name is Trey Hillman. I know little about him, except that he managed in the Yankees system and he turned around a poor team in Japan. He’s won everywhere he’s been.

I see this as a good thing, since Buddy Bell hasn’t won anywhere he’s been. And Hillman has experience as a turnaround artist, which is what the Royals need.

The best Royals managers (Dick Howser, Whitey Herzog) had big-league experience, which is a knock on Hillman, but neither was what you could call distinguished. Herzog was nobody before coming to KC, but then the Royals went on to have several of their best seasons under him. Howser won a championship with the Yankees but didn’t bring home the World Series title that Steinbrenner wanted, so he axed him. The Royals hired him, and they never finished lower than second place with him at the helm.

In this ESPN piece about Tillman, he says all the right things: Work ethic, develop in-house talent, pay attention to the team atmosphere and adjust when you feel it drop.

If he does half those things, I know he’ll do better than Buddy Bell did with his all-veterans-all-the-time approach.

My baseball heroes

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Joe Posnanski just did an entry on his childhood baseball idols, and lots of people chimed in about their unlikely heroes. So I got to thinking about mine. When it comes to likely heroes, of course George Brett and Ryne Sandberg were on my list, but that makes me no different from about 10 million other people. Bo Jackson is more of an underdog because his career was so short, but he’s a pretty obvious choice too. There’s an old joke in Kansas City that nobody can name a current Royals player except for George Brett. I mean Bo Jackson. I mean Bret Saberhagen.

If you followed the Royals through the 1990s, it’s funny. I’m sure the overwhelming majority of people who come across this page will have to take my word for it.

Anyway, here’s my list.3. Calvin Schiraldi.

I have no connection to Boston except for a little bit of personal baggage that isn’t Boston’s fault, but in October 1986 I was a Red Sox fan. Why? They were playing the New York Mets in the World Series, and if the Mets were playing the Cuban Nationals, I’d probably root for the Cubans. The only time I root for the Mets is when they play the Yankees.

In 1986, Boston’s closer was a young fireballer named Calvin Schiraldi. Schiraldi pitched well early in the series, but not so well later on. In the fateful Game 6, an exhausted Schiraldi was the pitcher who gave up a single to Ray Knight, setting up the infamous Mookie Wilson ground ball between Bill Buckner’s legs that forced Game 7 and cost Boston the World Series. Schiraldi didn’t throw that pitch; he watched helplessly from the dugout while Bob Stanley tried to pitch out of the jam.

I still remember the images of Schiraldi sitting in the dugout afterward, his face buried in a towel.

Schiraldi took the ball again in Game 7 and took the loss in that game too.

For me, Schiraldi came to symbolize the guy who takes the ball when his team needs him, whether he has his best stuff or not, and no matter how tired he is.

I had the chance to meet him a couple of years later, but I had no idea what to say to him. I wish we’d talked baseball a little, but I don’t know what I would say if I had the opportunity again tomorrow either.

2. Ron Hassey.

I think I told this story before. Ron Hassey was a left-handed hitting catcher who worked well with pitchers and had some pop in his bat. In 1984, the Indians packaged Hassey up along with relief pitcher George Frazier and starting pitcher Rick Sutcliffe for outfielders Mel Hall and Joe Carter. Yes, Joe Carter as in the hero of the 1993 World Series.

Rick and I are related, but it’s not like he looks me up when he’s in St. Louis or anything. I’ve met him twice. Once the day after his 200th major-league win, and once at his grandmother’s funeral. (His grandmother was my great aunt.) But I digress.

The Cubs didn’t really know what to do with Ron Hassey. Jody Davis was the Cubs’ catcher, and he made the All-Star team every year as Gary Carter’s backup and he was a fan favorite. One night that summer, Hassey got a rare start at first base, which wasn’t his usual position. I don’t exactly remember how it happened, but Hassey hurt himself on a play at first base. It was either his leg or his knee. Writhing in pain, he hit the ground, but he had the ball. He had the presence of mind to literally roll over to first base and tag the bag to get the out.

I’m not sure that the team doctor approved, but I always thought that was the way baseball was supposed to be played. Play hurt and play hard.

So, for all those times I played softball trying to disguise a sore hamstring so the opposing team wouldn’t get the wrong idea… I guess you could day I got the idea from Ron Hassey.

At the end of the year, the Cubs packaged him up in a deal with the Yankees for a couple of forgotten names, Brian Dayett and Ray Fontenot. Trades involving Hassey then became something of an annual offseason tradition for the Yankees for a few years, kind of like firing Billy Martin. Eventually the Oakland Athletics got their hands on him, and he became Dennis Eckersley’s personal catcher.

1. Lyman Bostock.

There’s a lot I can say about Lyman Bostock, but I’ll start with this: Lyman Bostock is the greatest baseball player of all time that you’ve never heard of. He only played two complete seasons, but he was a contender for the batting title both years. He was kind of like Tony Gwynn, only with better speed and range.

But his final season is the reason he’s on my list. He signed with a new team and stunk up the place his first month, so he went to the owner and tried to return his salary. He refused, so Bostock announced he’d give the money to charity instead. He received thousands of requests, and personally went through all of them to see who really needed the money the most.

These days, when a free agent signs a fat contract and promptly tanks, he laughs all the way to the bank.

There’s a good reason why Bostock isn’t in the Hall of Fame, and it’s the same reason you’ve never heard of him. Toward the end of the 1978 season, he was visiting his uncle in Gary, Indiana. Bostock’s uncle pulled up to a stoplight with his goddaughter in the front seat of his car and Bostock in the back. The goddaughter’s estranged husband walked up to the car and fired a shotgun blast into the car. The shot hit Bostock in the head and he died two hours later.

I never actually saw Bostock play, seeing as he died when I was 3, but he posthumously became one of my heroes. He wasn’t just the kind of guy a father can point to and tell his son, "Play baseball like him." He was the kind of guy a father should point to and tell his son, "Live your life like him."

This is why Joe Posnanski is one of my favorite sports columnists

Dave Farquhar Baseball , ,

Joe Posnanski is a columnist for the Kansas City Star. He writes about baseball. He writes about the Royals sometimes, because that’s his job.

But he’s probably at his best when he writes about the Indians. He grew up in Cleveland, after all.This blog entry from him, It’s Like Being 10 Again, is a really good example.

I really think he should have printed this one in the paper.

Read it, even if you’re not a big baseball fan. It’s really good.

Rod Beck is a sad loss

Dave Farquhar Baseball

Rod Beck was once one of the most intimidating relief pitchers in baseball. Part of it was because he could throw a baseball hard, but part of it was because he looked like the meanest guy in the entire south.

I never was much of a fan, until I read the story of his 2003 comeback. He was pitching in the minor leagues hoping someone would need him, living in an RV parked outside the stadium, hanging out with the fans afterward.

That’s class.Search for a picture of Rod Beck and you’ll probably think the word “class” would be the last thing you’d associate with him, but the shoe fits. He didn’t necessarily look the part, but in his down-to-earth way, he modeled it well.

And he did make it back to the majors that year, signing with the San Diego Padres in early June and he had one last great summer, saving 20 games and compiling a sparkling 1.78 ERA while filling in for the Padres’ injured closer, Trevor Hoffman. But then it was over. The next year, he briefly left the Padres to spend two months in a rehab center getting treatment for drug addiction, and after he returned, he struggled through 24 games acting as one of Hoffman’s setup men. The Padres released him in August, and he retired at age 36.

In this day and age of athletes wearing as much bling as possible, driving fancy cars, and otherwise glorifying themselves, it’s nice to remember a player who would walk out to the parking lot at the end of the game, turn on the light, open up the fridge, and talk baseball with whoever wanted to drop in. He knew he had to make a living just like everyone else standing there, and that pretty much everyone there would love to make a living throwing baseballs if they could, and he just happened to have what it takes to do that.

Beck’s cause of death is unknown, but the story of his career ought to be made into a movie. The story of a guy on top of his game, getting hurt, working his way back, spending time in the minors living in the parking lot and hanging out with the fans outside his RV, and then making it back for one last glorious summer, relying on an 86-mile-an-hour fastball and (mostly) heart and guts.

Sounds like a fantastic story to me, except nobody would believe it.

I hope it isn’t forgotten in two months.

Before they were Cardinals…

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I just finished reading Before They Were Cardinals, a history of the American Association St. Louis Browns, by Jon David Cash.

I have mixed feelings about the book.Most people know the Cardinals are one of the oldest baseball franchises. What most don’t know is that the Cardinals didn’t start out in the National League, were formerly known as the Browns (not to be confused with the later St. Louis Browns of the American League that moved to Baltimore in 1954), and that the tradition of the World Series originated here in St. Louis,

This book gives a nice overview of the early history of the St. Louis franchise and the American Association, the league in which the team had its first early successes.

The upside of the book is that it is very academic. It cites everything and the old maps and photographs prove the author spent hours at the Missouri Historical Society unearthing treasures.

The downside is that the book is academic. While I certainly understand the desire to rise above the sensationalist, opinionated late 19th-century journalism that serves as most of the book’s primary sources, a lot of the color that makes the early history of this team interesting isn’t in the book. The colorful and eccentric owner, Christian Frederick Wilhem von der Ahe, is presented as a German immigrant who bought a bar, noticed one day that his patrons all left in a rush for a few hours on Sunday, then returned to spend a leisurely rest of the day. After asking where everyone went and hearing about baseball, he invested in the team and made (and later lost) a fortune doing so.

That’s all fine and good, but it’s a one-dimensional picture of Chris Von der Ahe. Yes, he was an astute and successful self-made immigrant businessman–the embodiment of the American Dream if there ever was one. While some mention of his nouveau riche excesses is in the book, much of what made him so despised outside of St. Louis isn’t mentioned.

My personal favorite Von der Ahe story, the larger-than-life statue of himself erected outside of Sportsman’s Park to celebrate the successful 1885 season, gets no mention in the book. There is mention that Von der Ahe is buried underneath a large statue of himself, but no mention of where the statue came from.

I did find it very interesting that Von der Ahe, convinced there was no money left to be made in St. Louis, plotted to win the 1887 World Series and then move his world championship team to New York where he could draw bigger crowds, more beer sales, and bigger profits. The team never won another World Series under his ownership, however, so Von der Ahe never put that plan into motion.

Unfortunately, the book ends abruptly with the American Association’s merger with the National League, with only a brief epilogue at the end talking about the slow fall of Von der Ahe and his loss of the franchise.

In the book’s defense, Von der Ahe gets more treatment elsewhere while the American Association is little more than a footnote today, so I can see why the author chose to focus on the more neglected subject. It makes for better scholarship. Since this book is published by the University of Missouri Press and not Random House, I can see why the book was written the way it was.

If you want good history, particularly of what it was that made the American Association what it was–and this is fair, because the St. Louis club was the dominant team of that league and era–then this is a great book. If you’re looking for colorful stories about a guy who was like Ted Turner and George Steinbrenner and Charlie Finley and Bill Veeck all wrapped up into one with a dash of Jay Gatsby thrown in, look elsewhere.

So my Royals got some pitching…

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Up until this past week, whenever anyone asked what my Royals have done this winter, all I could say was they got a new backup catcher. Hardly exciting.

Now it’s not like they’ve replaced Angel "Swings at pickoff throws to first" Berroa with Alex Rodriguez, but now they’ve gotten themselves some pitching.They weren’t exciting moves. They traded the talented but wild Ambiorix Burgos to the Mets for Brian Bannister, the son of former big-league pitcher Floyd Bannister, who was one of the better strikeout pitchers of the 1980s. They signed ex-Mariner Gil Meche, the biggest objection being his contract, since he’s an average pitcher at best but once Mike Sweeney’s contract expires, he’ll be the highest-paid player on the team. And they pulled reliever Octavio Dotel off the scrap heap to be the closer.

Far be it from me to criticize any of these moves. This is a team that had a team ERA of almost 6 last year. When you can count on the pitching staff giving up six runs and your best hitter is a second-year guy named Mark Teahen who was playing hurt all year, you’re not going to win very many games.

The front office hopes Meche is about to break out and become a superstar. More likely, he’ll remain average. But average means he’ll give up 4-5 runs each start, which is a substantial improvement over what else they’ve got.

Dotel is damaged goods, but at least he’s closed out games before. If he comes in and he’s awful, then the Royals just have to explore other options, such as making Zack "Future Greg Maddux" Greinke the closer until they come up with another plan that allows them to put Greinke in the rotation. The Cardinals did that with Adam Wainright last year and that didn’t turn out so bad at all.

Bannister projects to be, well, the next Gil Meche. He won’t be great but the Royals need a starter, and they haven’t been able to get through to Burgos. Now Burgos might thrive with the Mets, or he might implode, but he’s someone else’s problem now.

Last year I got burned thinking the Royals would improve; instead they lost 100 games for the third year in a row. So I won’t count on miracles, but like John Lennon cynically sang in the background of "Getting So Much Better all the Time," things can’t get much worse.

Meanwhile, we can dream of the day when superprospects Alex Gordon and Billy Butler suit up in Kansas City and walk onto the field together for the first time. It might or might not happen in 2007, but once those two are ready, pitching really won’t matter as much because the Royals will stand a chance of scoring seven or eight runs a game a couple of times a week.

A story of baseball, drugs, vengeance and redemption

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I saw a familiar name that I hadn’t heard in a long time–years, probably–mentioned on a Royals fan site.

Lonnie Smith.

Lonnie Smith was a talented but troubled outfielder who rose to prominence while playing for Whitey Herzog’s 1982 St. Louis Cardinals. He could run like nobody’s business and he was a fearsome hitter on top of that, but he also had a drug problem.In 1985, Smith had a minor injury and missed the beginning of the season. His bat was diminishing anyway, and the Cardinals had a young guy by the name of Vince Coleman waiting in the wings. Coleman got Smith’s job, and the Cardinals shipped Smith off to the Royals in exchange for John Morris, a prospect who made it to the majors the next year but never became a star.

Meanwhile, in Kansas City, Smith put up respectable but unspectacular numbers. But the Royals needed someone who could hit between Willie Wilson and George Brett and, like Wilson, run like his hair was on fire when Brett made contact. Smith did that pretty well.

Now, about that drug problem. Smith spent 30 days in rehab in 1983 when he was playing in St. Louis. In 1985, after the World Series, when the players all had a chance to speak, Smith thanked three people specifically. He thanked Royals’ hitting coach Lee May and Royals’ DH Hal McRae for helping him get his hitting stroke back, and Jesus Christ for helping him get off drugs and stay clean.

He stayed clean for about four years.

Smith’s hitting improved the next season in Kansas City, but then history repeated itself, and Smith lost his left field job to another prospect, the two-sport flameout Bo Jackson. Jackson’s 1987 season showed much more promise than it did powerhouse, but the Royals liked what they saw enough that they considered Smith expendable, and they released him in December of that year.

Smith waited for a call from another team interested in giving him a chance, but the phone never rang. Depressed, Smith started taking drugs again. And as the story from earlier this month goes, if the phone hadn’t rung one day with the then-lowly Atlanta Braves offering him one last chance, he might have flown back to Kansas City and tried to murder the general manager who released him.

Instead, Smith signed a minor-league contract with Atlanta and worked his way back into the major leagues. He once again blossomed into a minor star, and earned $7 million in his 6-year comeback tour. Unlike many professional athletes, he saved enough of his fortune that neither he nor his wife have to work today. They live comfortably and he has established trust funds to take care of his kids’ future.

I had never heard the murder plot angle of the Smith story.

The story (linked above) makes for an interesting read. After reading so many stories about ex-Royals with unhappy endings, it’s nice to see a happy ending this time.

It’s time for some electricity in St. Louis

Dave Farquhar Baseball , ,

So, the Cardinals just played the Mets in a series that, frankly, I think is one for the ages. Lots of drama, lots of very good pitching, lots of great defensive plays–the obvious best was ex-Royal Endy Chavez jumping about 14 feet in the air to snowcone a would-be Scott Rolen homer, but there were others–and just a lot of other good things. The Cardinals supposedly had no business winning, but the patchwork team did.

Now they’re in the World Series. And I’m not sure if anyone knows, frankly.Two years ago, when the Cardinals were in the playoffs, to hear any St. Louisan tell it, the series was all but won. And this year, the electricity just doesn’t seem to be in the air. It’s almost like nobody can believe it.

I was in Kansas City in 1985 during the World Series. It was… different. Nobody outside Kansas City thought they belonged in the series either, but the city was electric. Everywhere you went, people were wearing Royals hats and shirts. Many–maybe even a majority–didn’t expect them to win, but hey, their team was playing in October and they were going to enjoy it.

St. Louis is usually like that too. But not this year.

As far as the Tigers, I do have to say I’m happy for them and for Detroit. The Tigers haven’t been to a series since 1984 and they haven’t been to the postseason at all in more than 15 years. But now the Tigers have a young team that’s a good foundation for years to come.

But is Detroit beatable? Sure. My 100-loss Royals swept them to end the season. Detroit has a good team, but it has weaknesses. They’re free-swingers. They don’t swing at pickoff throws to first like my Royals’ Angel Berroa, but they haven’t learned the Yankees’ secret of running every count to 3-2 and then fouling off seven pitches before putting the ball in play either. Don’t expect Detroit to wear down Cardinal pitching.

The Cardinals’ main weakness is that the team is beat up. Pujols, Edmonds, Eckstein, and Rolen are all battling one thing or another, and that’s pretty much the heart and soul of the team. But I remember telling one of my coworkers, every time he complained about the Cardinals, that things could be worse. The Cardinals never lost their biggest bat for the season like the Royals did (the not-quite immortal Mark Teahen). And then I said things could be worse, the Cardinals’ biggest bat could be Mark Teahan.

If the Royals without Mark Teahen can sweep Detroit, I think the Cardinals can make this series interesting.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m going to enjoy watching them try.