Hey Royals: This St. Louisan still believes

OK, OK. So I was in Kansas City over the weekend for a Promise Keepers event, and I saw the Royals’ obituary in the Kansas City Star yesterday. It was a great season, they said, but it’s over.
Well, it wasn’t technically over. It could have ended today, if the Minnesota Twins had beat the Detroit Tigers (which they did) and the Royals had lost to the Chicago White Sox. But the Royals thumped the Best Team Money Can Borrow 10-4, helped in part by their own borrowed gun, Rondell White.

So now what? The Twinkies have five more games. They’re off tomorrow, then they host the Cleveland Indians for two games before wrapping up their season at Detroit.

Meanwhile, the Royals have six home games against Detroit and the White Sox.

The Royals need to win five of six against a team they’ve dominated and against the only team in the division they’ve played poorly against.

Meanwhile, Cleveland has to revert to its old form and beat the Twins twice, and Detroit has to temporarily forget how to play like the 1962 Mets and sweep the Twins in three games.

Long shot? You betcha. But then again, in April everyone thought the Royals were a long shot to just finish over .500.

There’s a sign hanging outside the Fellowship of Christian Athletes building just across I-70 from Royals Stadium Kauffman Stadium. It still reads, “We believe.” In reference to the Royals–belief in God, I hope, is a given for those guys.

I still believe in both too.

Some baseball players entertain; Dave Dravecky changed my life

This evening I looked at the list of short biographies I’ve written. Some were requests. A number of them were people I found fascinating. And in the case of Lyman Bostock and George Brett, they were men who changed the way I lived life.
I asked myself who was missing. And I came up with some names.

Dave Dravecky.

Dave Dravecky. Man, what can I tell you about Dave Dravecky? He happened to be pitching on one of the worst days of my life. I won’t go into details–it wasn’t his fault. The day would have been a little bit better if he hadn’t pitched those two shutout innings, but not much.

Three years later, my dad scored tickets to Game 2 of the 1987 National League Playoffs at Busch Stadium. Dad and I made a career of living in eastern Missouri and hating the Cardinals; we donned our Royals gear and watched Dravecky pitch the best baseball game I ever saw in person, tossing a sparkling two-hitter. Amazing. I remember thinking that must have been what it was like to watch Lefty Grove or Sandy Koufax pitch.

The next season, Dravecky started feeling sick. Doctors found cancer in his pitching arm. They took half his deltoid muscle and froze the humerus bone. The doctors’ goal was to kill the cancer and leave enough arm for him to be able to do things like tie his shoes. Dravecky’s goal was to pitch in the majors again.

You can probably guess what’s next, since the story’s not over yet. He pitched two games for the San Francisco Giants in August 1989. The first game was a drama. Not a masterpiece like the game I saw at Busch, but a solid 8-inning performance that he won 4-3. The second game, he felt his arm start to tingle in the fifth inning. In the sixth inning, it broke as he threw a fastball to Tim Raines. The Giants were headed to the World Series that year and everybody knew it, and Dravecky wasn’t going to be able to contribute any further. It was heartbreaking. It was heartbreaking because he’d been through so much. And it was heartbreaking because the Giants lost that World Series, and Dravecky’s left arm probably could have won it for them, and what a story that would have been.

Dravecky’s arm broke in a second place during the celebration as the Giants won the last game of the playoffs. Dravecky was asking God some questions after that. Not “Why me?” but rather, “Why was I so stupid?”

Well, some good came of it. A doctor was examining the x-rays to make sure the two breaks were lining up. The good news was, they were. The bad news wasn’t that he’d never pitch again. The bad news was what else he saw.

The lump was back.

Two surgeries later, the cancer was gone, but Dravecky’s once strong arm was a dead limb. He had no range of motion and he was in pain and it was constantly infected. Two years after his aborted comeback, he had to have the arm amputated. Now he really wasn’t going to pitch again.

So now Dravecky is a former baseball player, as well as an author and evangelist. His 1992 book, When You Can’t Come Back, is inspiring. I read it in high school. Flipping through it to find details for his bio, I decided I really need to read it again.

There are other names that came to mind. Ron Hassey. I’ll never forget a game in 1984, after he’d been traded to the Chicago Cubs. He went from the starting catcher for the cellar-dwelling Indians to a little-used backup for a contender. One day, out of the blue, he was playing first base. Not his usual position. And at one point in the game, he stretched to make a catch, and pulled a muscle. He made the catch, then he collapsed, grimacing in pain. Players surrounded him. And you know what Hassey did? He rolled, squirmed, stretched, somehow made his way over to first base, tagged the base, and made the out. Then they carried him off the field on a stretcher and it was two months before you saw him again.

How he noticed that he could take advantage of the situation and get a cheap out, I have no earthly idea. I admire people like that.

I like people like that. People who give 100%. Even when their 100% is a mere 1% of what it would be on any other day, people who still give whatever it is they’ve got. I don’t know how many people remember Ron Hassey, but I’ll never forget him.

And I know I’ll never forget Dave Dravecky. Dravecky lost everything. For as long as he could remember, his left arm was the reason people were interested in him. Then, one day, it was gone. He learned what he could do with what he had left. He could give people courage. Hope. It took him some time. But he’s afffected thousands of people in a powerful way. Not bad for a guy who wondered what he had left.

There are people who give momentary thrills, and there are people who change your life.

I know which one I’d rather be.

Dave’s formula for winning a pennant

I’ll lead off with my best, like the Royals need to be doing, but more on that later. New Wikipedia entries for the day: Rick Sutcliffe (I couldn’t resist) and Chris von der Ahe. I wrote up Rick, well, because he’s family, and von der Ahe, well, let me tell you about him.
Christian Frederick Wilhelm von der Ahe was the George Steinbrenner of the 1880s. Actually, take George Steinbrenner, Charlie Finley, and Ted Turner all wrapped up in one, and you’re not far off. The eccentric von der Ahe was the clown plince of baseball, and if you called him that to his face, his English was so bad, he’d probably take it as a compliment.

After winning the World Series in 1885, von der Ha Ha, who liked to run around calling himself “der boss president”, celebrated by erecting a large statue outside of Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis. But the statue wasn’t of any of his star players. It was a statue of himself. How totally aristocratic.

By 1898 his micromismanaged team was a consistent cellar dweller and literally was a side attraction to an amusement park and a circus. Late in the season, a fire broke out in the stands causing numerous injuries but, remarkably, only one death. He lost the team in the resulting lawsuit. He ended up tending bar in a grubby little saloon. When he died in 1913, the statue got moved to his grave.

Von der Ahe’s team got sold to two brothers named Robison, the owners of a really bad team called the Cleveland Spiders. The owners pretty quickly figured out that the solution to the problem of owning two really bad teams is to shuffle all the best players to one of the teams and make one good team and one incredibly bad team. The 1899 Cleveland Spiders made the 1962 Mets look like the 1927 Yankees by comparison, and the league voted on contraction the next year, killing off the Spiders and leaving the Robisons with one good team. They changed their name the next year, to the St. Louis Cardinals.

Note to David Glass: Buy the Detroit Tigers! Then, after you win the World Series, build a large statue of yourself… outside Yankee Stadium!

It’s probably a good thing I don’t own a baseball team.

So, what’s new? An awful lot.

The Royals’ problems with young pitchers continue… They’ve burned out Dan Reichert, Chad Durbin, and numerous others in recent years, and now their opening-day starter, Runelvys Hernandez, needs Tommy John surgery. I don’t get it. I think the Royals need a new team doctor. Terry Weiss, D.O., where are you?

But the Royals, to their credit, have made two trades this week. Yesterday they acquired veteran left-handed pitcher Brian Anderson from Cleveland, which gives them two dependable left-handed pitchers. In their glory days, they had two lefties named Gura and Splitorff, who fared well against the Yankees in the playoffs. I sure hope history repeats itself. Then I hope the Yankees end up in the cellar. There’s historical precedent for that–and George Steinbrenner looks a little like Chris von der Ahe.

The Royals didn’t land the best impact bat on the market, but they picked up a decent bat in Rondell White. I sure would have preferred Pittsburgh’s Brian Giles, but it was San Diego’s acquisition of Giles who made White available, and supposedly the Royals have been after White for some time. If they’re smart, White will go into left field and Raul Ibañez will move to first base. I could also see them putting White in right field in place of Aaron Guiel, and Carlos Beltran taking Guiel’s leadoff spot. It would be a bold move, but I kind of like starting things off with a bang. He leads the team in home runs, but Beltran’s the ideal leadoff hitter with his blinding speed and high on-base percentage.

Why not combine the two ideas? How’s this look?

Carlos Beltran, cf
Joe Randa, 3b
Mike Sweeney, dh
Raul Ibañez, 1b
Rondell White, lf
Desi Relaford, 2b
Angel Berroa, ss
Dee Brown, rf
Brent Mayne, c

That looks like a lineup that could score some runs to me. It’s better by a longshot than the lineup the Royals used in 1984 and 1985, and both of those teams won plenty. Ibañez is a little uncomfortable at first base, but Ken Harvey can’t hit right-handed pitching and he’s not exactly agile. Brown’s been disappointing but he’s been more consistent, has some pop, and he has good speed so he won’t clog up the bases. Harvey’s better defensively at first than Ibañez, so in late innings he can come in as a defensive replacement and earn his keep. I think Harvey still can be a good player, but winter ball is the place to learn to hit. We’ve got a pennant to win.

Question of the day: The Yankees released 46-year-old Jesse Orosco today. Does he have anything left? Are the Royals interested in taking a chance on another situational lefty who spent his glory years in New York? I’d be tempted to sign him, if only to mentor the few young pitchers the Royals still have on the roster who aren’t hurt. He certainly knows how to stay healthy; the guy’s been on the DL once in his life.

And I see the Yankees sent disappointing Jeff Weaver to the minors. Steinbrenner’s obviously not happy with him; he didn’t send him to AAA, which would be the most normal thing to do (you generally don’t send pitchers with five years’ experience to the minors), but he sent him to A ball. Three steps down. Weaver can’t be happy. Not that I’ll cry for him–he’s the pitcher who picked a fight with Mike Sweeney two seasons ago. But it’s nice to see Steinbrenner regain his old form. Or something.

The Royals came to me this weekend

Once a year, the Royals come to St. Louis. And, inevitably, I’m doing something the weekend they’re here. This year, I wasn’t. So Gatermann and I went Saturday night. He rooted for his team, and I rooted for mine.
The Cards won that one. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Starting pitcher Darrell May is a flyball pitcher, and Busch Stadium isn’t nearly as imposing to power hitters as it was 20 years ago. Now the Cards are loaded up with people like Albert Pujols and Jim Edmonds, and, well, May got rocked. Then the Royals’ weak bullpen got rocked.

The big surprise was the number of Royals fans there–it wasn’t quite like the number of Cubs fans at a Cards-Cubs game, but it was significant–and, well, they were loud. As the first inning started, the Royals fans in the $11 seats above my section started chanting, “Let’s go Roy-als” and clapping and stomping. They had more energy than Royals fans in Kansas City. I thought it was hilarious.

I was wishing I’d worn my Royals shirt. Fans dressed in enemy colors didn’t used to do well at Busch Stadium, but Gatermann told me that’s very different today. Everyone sitting around me was good-natured and polite and had a sense of humor about my allegiance.

As we walked out, one guy complained about being harrassed for being a Royals fan, but I couldn’t tell how serious he was.

And I have to say I was very impressed with the play of Cardinals’ rookie second baseman Bo Hart. He’s already a fan favorite, but when you come up and get multiple hits in your first three games in the big leagues, you’re bound to become a fan favorite. He seems to be a scrappy player with a lot of guts and a lot of heart, along the lines of former St. Louis fan favorite Joe McEwing, or Anaheim’s David Eckhart, or former Met and Royal Keith Miller. I found myself cheering for the guy, even though I was rooting for the other team. You don’t see a lot of players like him.

The encouraging thing to me was that the Royals won the other two games of the series. I know the Cards aren’t having their best season, but they’re a strong team with two superstars who are of at least equal cailber to the Royals’ two superstars, and position by position, they’re the stronger team anywhere but first base.

I still don’t think my Royals will win the World Series. But this is going to be a fun year.

To cheat or not to cheat?

Sammy Sosa got caught this week with a corked bat.
For you baseball less-than-afficianados, corking a bat is the process of drilling out the center of a baseball bat, plugging the hole with cork or some other light material, then patching the top. The idea is to lighten the bat so you can swing it harder and hopefully hit the ball further.

It’s illegal. It’s said not to do any good (the loss of mass makes up for what you gain in batspeed). But people do it anyway.

Major League Baseball has examined 76 of Sosa’s bats and found none were corked. Sosa said he used this bat in batting practice to put on a home run show. I believe him. The question is, did he also bring out this bat during crucial moments of games, when the Cubs needed a longball?

We’ll probably never know the answer to that question. But I’ll bet the majority of people suspect he did. I sure do.

Baseball has a bit of a double-standard when it comes to cheating though. When hitters cheat, it puts a black mark on careers. Nobody remembers Billy Hatcher, except for his corked bat incident. Slightly more people remember Graig Nettles. Albert Belle had a terrible reputation, made worse by his use of a corked bat.

What about pitchers? It’s illegal to doctor baseballs, but it’s been known for ages that if you interfere the ball’s aerodynamics, pitches do crazy things. So pitchers long ago started inventing ways to rough up baseballs.

Gaylord Perry was so well-known for throwing greaseballs, he approached Vasoline about doing an endorsement. (Their response: “We soothe babies’ asses, not baseballs.”) He’s in the Hall of Fame. Don Sutton’s nickname was “Black and Decker.” It’s been said that when Perry and Sutton first met, Perry handed Sutton a tube of Vasoline, and Sutton thanked him and handed him a piece of sandpaper. Sutton’s in the Hall of Fame too.

The only thing I can think of is that virtually every shift in the game–the liveliness of the ball, the height of the pitcher’s mound, the size of the strike zone–has been in the batter’s favor, rather than the pitcher’s. So when it comes to cheating, it’s harder to blame the pitcher.

Sammy Sosa has weight training, a lively ball, a smaller-than-a-Sports-Illustrated-swimsuit strike zone, a tiny ballpark, and hours and hours of videotape of every pitcher in the league going for him. During his chase of Roger Maris’ homerun record, he developed an image as a good boy.

That’s gone now.

But he’s no more of a cheater than Perry or Sutton. And let’s face it. The physics say hitting home runs with a corked bat doesn’t work. Sosa does it. He has a skill. Perry and Sutton were skilled as well. They just happened to be better at doctoring baseballs than they were at throwing them, it would appear.

So he’s still a good baseball player. Overrated, but talented. How is Sammy Sosa, the man? The jury’s still out there. But I’d still rather tell a kid to be like Sammy Sosa than to be like Pete Rose.

Life has returned to Royals Stadium

The last time I went to a Royals game at Royals Kauffman Stadium (it’ll always be Royals Stadium to lifelong fans like me), it was 1996. Mike Sweeney was riding the bench. Johnny Damon was lifted for a pinch-hitter when the opposing team brought in a left-handed pitcher. And the place was as quiet as a library.
On Saturday night, I finally returned. The Royals were in first place, powered by a young and hungry starting pitching staff, the bats of a bunch of people who never got a chance elsewhere like Desi Relaford and Raul Ibañez (superstars Mike Sweeney and Carlos Beltran have been hurt much of the year). But the weather looked threatening and they’d just lost 4 straight, two to the traitor Johnny Damon’s Boston Red Sox and a doubleheader to the Baltimore Orioles. You can explain away the losses to the Red Sox. You’re happy to take one of three from them. Baltimore’s a different story. Maybe the Royals were fading.

Yet, 25,930 still turned up for the game. A year ago, the attendance would have been half that. There have always been much better things to do in Kansas City on a Saturday night than to go watch the Royals lose.

I knew things were different when earlier that day, I’d gone to the grocery store and I saw people wearing Royals hats and t-shirts. Those had become nearly as common in St. Louis as in Kansas City. Royals hats had become something worn by the fashion-conscious because their royal blue color looked good with the rest of their outfit. Most of them probably didn’t even know that hat had anything to do with a pro sports franchise. Then, on the way to the game, I saw ticket scalpers stationed along the exit ramp off I-70 near the stadium. I haven’t seen people scalp Royals tickets in, well, forever.

The stadium itself is electric. I remember the Royals’ division championship season of 1984. George Brett was still in his prime, and Bud Black was electrifying hitters and the rotation was rounded out with rookies like Bret Saberhagen, Danny Jackson, and Mark Gubicza, none of whom is a hall of famer, but all of whom showed signs of brilliant careers to come. It wasn’t a great team, but it was a fun team to watch.

There was more fire in that stadium on Saturday than I remember seeing in 1984. Well, at the start of the game, that is. The word “Believe” floated across the scoreboard, fading out to highlights of the still-young season like Ken Harvey muscling out home runs and Michael Tucker and Desi Relaford making diving catches in the outfield. A left-handed pitcher wearing number 32 took the mound. Twenty years ago, the Royals had a left-handed pitcher who wore number 32. His name was Larry Gura. He was good for 15-18 wins and made the All-Star team a couple of times.

This guy’s name was Chris George. If he can pitch like Larry Gura, I thought, this is gonna be a good year.

George retired the first batter on two pitches. The crowd was electric.

By the end of the inning, it was like a library again.

Chris George had a no-hitter through four innings. A walk here and there and a balk here and there had gotten him into trouble, but an umpire can call a balk if there’s a guy on first base and he doesn’t like the way you scratched yourself. Just ask my cousin. He was the perennial league leader in balks throughout the 1980s, pitching for Cleveland and Chicago. I think Chris George must have known that, because he pitched out of those situations. George impressed me. He’s definitely a finesse pitcher–he didn’t register higher than 88 MPH once that night–but he mixed up his stuff enough to keep Baltimore guessing and he racked up plenty of strikeouts.

But then Baltimore scraped together a couple of runs. The Royals came back in the bottom of the inning, with a couple of speed demons on first and second and the smooth-hitting Joe Randa at the plate. Randa stroked a double to center field. One run scored. Desi Relaford rounded third and was halfway home when he noticed his third base coach screaming for him to hold. He tripped, tried to make his way back, and was tagged out to end the inning.

That got the crowd’s attention.

The next inning, Baltimore’s slugging young right fielder, Jay Gibbons, hit a two-run bomb to right field. Well, the way the wind was blowing that night, I probably could have hit something that would clear the right field. fence. But it counts. Baltimore was up 4-1. But there’s some life in the Royals’ bleachers. Before Gibbons had rounded the bases, his homerun ball was back on the field.

By then, the temperature had dropped more than 30 degrees since the start of the game. The fans were shivering. Many had left. I stayed, only hoping there was as much life left in the Royals’ lineup as there was in that fan who’d thrown the ball back on the field.

The Royals rallied for three runs in the seventh off a Baltimore left-hander named Ryan and the immortal Kerry “Freak Boy” Ligtenberg, acquired from Atlanta in the offseason. Ligtenberg puts up good numbers, but every time I’ve seen him pitch in person, he’s given up a busload of runs. He didn’t disappoint. By the time Freak Boy managed to put out the fire, the game was tied, 4-4.

D.J. Carrasco, one of the best of the Royals’ young flamethrowing relievers, held Baltimore hitless in the top of the 8th.

With flamethrowing Mike MacDougal warming up in the bullpen, Raul Ibañez led off the bottom of the 8th with a double, which brought up Royals bruiser Ken Harvey. Harvey overswung at a couple of pitches, then cranked an up-and-in fastball 378 feet against the wind over the left field fence, giving the Royals a two-run lead. “It’s Mike MacDougal time,” I muttered. Fans jumped up and started chanting, “Har-vey! Har-vey!”

But this was to become the neverending inning. Between Baltimore meetings on the mound and Kansas City hits, the bottom of the 8th drug on for what seemed like 30 minutes. I swear that by the time the inning ended, MacDougal looked like Tom Hanks in Castaway. And the Royals had a 4-run lead. There’s no reason to bring in your closer to protect a four-run lead.

Except so much time had passed since the last time Mike MacDougal pitched, the rookie probably had two kids in college. And, well, when you’re Kansas City, you have to give the fans something exciting to watch. Royals fans used to pay to see George Brett, no matter how the rest of the team was playing. And Mike MacDougal is the kind of guy fans want to see.

So in the top of the 9th inning, the bullpen door opened, and MacDougal ran onto the field. The scoreboard went black. “Mike” appeared on the screen in white letters as “Rock You Like a Hurricane” blared on the stadium’s speakers. The word faded to show MacDougal striking out a couple of batters. “MacDougal” appeard in white letters on a black screen, followed by still more strikeouts. An animated baseball trailed by flames lit up the scoreboard. A few more highlights from MacDougal’s spectacular 10 prior saves showed up.

By now the crowd was pumped. And so was the team.

MacDougal’s a bit wild, but that’s a big part of his mystique. The guy can throw 103 miles per hour. He generally tones it down into the mid-90s because his pitches have more movement at lower speeds. When someone can throw 100 miles per hour, he tends to be effective. But he’s more effective when nobody–not the batter, not the catcher, not even the pitcher himself–knows where the ball’s going to end up. It’s harder to hit when you’re afraid for your life.

MacDougal gave up two hits, but his control was on. He threw 21 pitches, and 13 of them were actually strikes. Despite the two hits, he managed two outs without giving up any runs. The final Baltimore batter fouled off a pitch that registered 46 miles per hour on the gun.

“Bull,” I muttered. “When MacDougal throws a paper wad in the trash, it clocks higher than 46 miles per hour.”

He struck him out on the last pitch.

And the stadium sounded like anything but a library.

This is a so-you-know-I’m-alive post

I don’t expect my daily doings to be interesting to anyone. I mean, c’mon. Who wants to read ordinary? But since I haven’t posted in forever, I’ll post what I’ve got, which is this.I’m getting a lawnmower today. That’s good because I can’t get anyone to mow my itsy-bitsy yard for less than $25. For that kind of money, I’ll do it myself.

A friend is coming over this afternoon to help me install a programmable thermostat. That’s good because my utility bills are out of control. If I’d done it in December, I’d be about $400 richer right now. I’m also looking at some other creative ways to knock utility costs down, like compact fluorescent light bulbs, which use about 1/5 the wattage of a standard bulb and have about 10 times the life expectancy. They claim to save you about $30 in energy costs over their life expectancy. Multiply that by the 20 or so bulbs around the house that they’d be suitable replacements for, and you’re talking some real money.

My DSL connection has been sporadic the last couple of days. It seems to finally be stable. I’d get better reliability by upgrading to a static IP, but that won’t happen before summer. I’m still dealing with those unexpected expenses that creep up on new homeowners, and, well, I’m young. I don’t have the kind of resources someone 10 years older than me would have.

If I can find a steady writing gig, that’ll help.

I’ve got a couple of tape backup issues to look at for work. And that’s pretty much my day.

I wrote what I thought was a decent piece on bleeding-edge hardware. But somehow I managed not to save it. I may get time to rewrite it tomorrow, depending on how productive I am today.

Oh, and, tee hee hee, my Royals are 8-0. The last team that started the season 8-0 won the World Series. It was the 1990 Cincinnati Reds, who beat an awfully good Oakland Athletics team. And there’s reason for hope: The Royals have been doing it without Carlos Beltran (leg injury), and yesterday they won in spite of half the team battling the flu. Beltran and Mike Sweeney are the Royals’ only star players.

But the 1990 Reds only had two bona fide stars too, in Eric Davis and Barry Larkin.

Do I really think my Royals will win the World Series? Not yet. But I think this is going to be a fun year.

So far, 2003 looks like 1984, only better

It’s supposed to be a rebuilding year. The Royals start their season with four young, inexperienced pitchers in their starting rotation and a neo-veteran lefty who’s languished for several years, brought in for a variety of reasons, none of which would do for most teams: He’s left-handed, he can throw some innings, he’s more experienced than the rest of the rotation, and there’s a slight chance this is the first time he’s gotten a fair shake. And they’ve started the season without their star center fielder.
Yep, that’s the Royals today.

Only it isn’t. I just described the 1984 Royals. Against all odds, they won their division and went on to the playoffs that year. They were steamrolled by the Detroit Tigers, but considering they were just hoping to finish the year at .500 and hit the next level in a year or two, just getting to the playoffs was an achievement.

While 2003 sounds eerily familiar, the 1984 Royals didn’t start their season 4-0.

I want to believe. I really do.

Good thing: It’s baseball season. Better thing: My Royals won

Every time I turn on the radio or go online, I hear about how the Bush Dictatorship has plunged us into another Vietnam or how I’m a redneck just like everyone else who ever voted Republican. And at work, I’m buried in Backup Exec problems, a program so bad that it continues to make me think its main purpose for being written was industrial sabotage.
Am I glad it’s baseball season? You betcha. I need a distraction. Take your pick: baseball or booze. I’ll take baseball. It’s cheaper and healthier.

So we’re 12 days into this war and it’s another Vietnam. People seem to have forgotten it took us 6 weeks to drive the madman out of Kuwait. Did we really expect him to roll over and play dead when we hit his mother country?

And for some reason people seem to think appeasement is the way to go. A little over 60 years ago, people said the same thing about a guy named Adolf Hitler. You might have heard of him. Neither man had any qualms about overrunning their neighbors or killing their own people. Fortunately for us, they have comparable technology.

But I’m either preaching to the choir or a redneck. So I don’t think I wanna talk about it.

The Royals, on the other hand, I’ll talk about. They shut out the Chicago White Sox 3-0. That doesn’t happen often. Shutouts are rare in Kansas City anymore, especially against pennant contenders. And on opening day. Nice. New rookie closer Mike MacDougal got the save. That’s a good sign, because for the past four years or so, a three-run lead has been an adventure. You couldn’t count on Roberto Hernandez or Ricky Bottalico to hold that lead. There was a time when you could count on Jeff Montgomery, but not in his final season. So it’s been 1998 since a three-run lead in the 9th was a given.

And they did it in front of a sellout crowd at home. And visions of 1985 danced in Dave’s head. I know it’s too early to believe. But I think I’m gonna anyway. When it comes to baseball, I’m hopeless. I’ll grasp at anything that looks like you can hold onto it.

My contributions to the Wikipedia

When I was checking up on some facts on Joe Jackson, I found the free Wikipedia to be of use. In the very well-done account of the Black Sox scandal (to which I made some minor edits, replacing a couple of odd word choices and fixing some commas), I noticed a link to a non-existent biography of pitcher and ringleader Eddie Cicotte. So I whipped out my Baseball Encyclopedia, opened it up to Cicotte’s statistics, did a couple of Web searches to grab some more detail and check my own memory, and based on those references, I wrote one.
Cicotte was a knuckleballer, but I found the Wikipedia didn’t have an article on the knuckleball either. So I wrote one of those too. Along the way to writing that, I found the Wikipedia had a biography of Hoyt Wilhelm, which I didn’t touch, but didn’t have one of Phil Niekro, the most notable pitcher from my lifetime to throw the pitch. I didn’t write that biography.

I also found there’s no biography of Jimmie Foxx. That wrong will have to be righted by yours truly very soon. As will the criminal exclusion of Mike Sweeney, and the embarrassingly sketchy history of the Kansas City Royals. (The George Brett biography was reasonably complete; I made a few minor additions.) I can see how this can get addictive fast.

I read a while back some astronomical statistic about the Wikipedia’s size, but that it wasn’t yet as big as the Encyclopædia Britannica. I visited it, ready to contribute an article or two, but couldn’t think of anything. I figured I’d write about technology but found all the articles in my area of expertise were already very impressive.

So my contribution to this fount of knowledge is in the area of baseball instead.

Hey, it’s good that it’ll go somewhere.