| BASEBALL PLAY AMERICA |
 |
 |
| Volume X | February through April, 2010 | Issue 34 |
|---|
NEW YORK – Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer is the American League’s Most Valuable Player after winning his third batting title in four seasons. He became only the second catcher in 33 years to win the award. Mauer received 27 of the 28 first-place votes by the Baseball Writers Association of America to easily out distance Mark Teixeira and Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees.  The 26-year-old Mauer batted .365 to earn his second straight A.L. batting crown. He set a major league record for highest batting average by a catcher. After missing April with a back injury, Mauer homered on his first swing of the season and went on to lead the American League in batting average, on-base percentage (.444) and slugging percentage (.587). Mauer set career bests with 28 homers and 96 RBIs. He had more walks (76) than strikeouts (63). Mauer was voted to his third All-Star team and won his second straight A.L. Gold Glove. Ivan Rodriguez in 1999 had been the only catcher since Thurman Munson in 1976 to win the AL MVP. The other catchers to win in the AL were Mickey Cochrane (1934), Yogi Berra (1951 and 1954-55) and Elston Howard (1963). National League catchers to win were Gabby Hartnett (1935), Ernie Lombardi (1938), Roy Campanella (1951, 1953 and 1955) and Johnny Bench (1970 and 1972). In addition to Mauer and Morneau, other Twins to win were Zoilo Versalles (1965), Harmon Killebrew (1969) and Rod Carew (1977).
“It’s a tremendous honor,” said Mauer. “I love catching, the demands that are put on me and the responsibilities that I have, although it might beat you up a little bit physically and mentally. I like being behind the plate making those decisions for my team.”The Twins’ catcher said, however, that he would rather have won the World Series than the MVP award. “I wish this press conference had been after Game Six or Game Seven,” Mauer said, “and we were talking about the year that we had. But we got to the post-season and had a great run at it.” “I think any player will tell you they want to win a World Series and be part of that,” said Mauer, adding that he watched the Yankees’ triumph this fall. “You definitely want to be on the field when that moment happens.” “Mauer has grown into such a finicky hitter,” wrote Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated. “He stands at the plate taking mental measurements of how the baseball behaves out of a pitcher’s hand. ‘I just try to see how the ball moves, especially my first at bat. I always like to see a couple of pitches before I offer at one. Ever since I can remember, I’ve always felt pretty comfortable with two strikes. When I get two strikes, I widen my stance a little bit and stay shorter to the ball. I don’t like to get in that situation, but if I do, I don’t panic.” “Because his swing is so compact, Mauer can wait longer to commit to pitches,” continued Verducci. ‘He sees that ball longer than any hitter in baseball,’ said bullpen coach Rick Stelmaszek, a Twins coach for 29 years. ‘As a boy growing up in wintry St. Paul, Mauer pounded balls into a tarpaulin hung in the family garage.’” Mauer can leave the Twins and become a free agent after the 2010 season, when he is to make $12.5 million. Minnesota is expected to try to sign him to a new deal. Mauer enjoys playing in front of his family and friends and his preference is to stay with the Twins. “Can we win here? Yes, I think so,” he said. “And that’s ultimately what I would like to do.” Photographs by Andy King, Associated Press, and Al Tielemans, Sports Illustrated. Tom Verducci of SI contributed to this article. |
With a consistent career and impeccable reputation off the field on his resume, Andre Dawson was rewarded with election to baseball’s Hall of Fame in his ninth year on the ballot. “It was well worth the wait,” he said in a conference call. "I’ve been patient over the years. My Mom always said, ‘It’s going to happen, just be ready for when it happens.’”  Dawson received 420 of 539 votes by members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, 15 more than the 75% necessary to gain induction into the Cooperstown shrine. The eight-time All-Star and eight-time Gold Glove winner was 44 votes short last year. Bert Blyleven, who had 287 wins, 3,701 strikeouts and 60 shutouts, finished second to Dawson, five votes shy with 400 and 74.2%, followed by Roberto Alomar, a 12-time All-Star who won 10 Gold Gloves. Alomar received 397 votes (73.7 percent), the most of any first-year candidate not elected. Dawson hit 438 homers with 1,591 RBIs in a career that spanned from 1976-96. Nicknamed “The Hawk,” he was voted National League Rookie of the Year in 1977 with Montreal and NL Most Valuable Player in 1987 with the Chicago Cubs, the first member of a last-place team to earn that prize. “It gave me new life, playing on a natural surface after playing in Montreal on artificial surface for 10 years,” he said.
Joined by Barry Bonds and Willie Mays as the only players with 400 home runs and 300 stolen bases, Dawson also spent time with Boston and Florida. Known for his strong throwing arm in right field, he had a .279 career average and 314 steals, playing through 12 knee operations. As Tyler Kepner wrote in The New York Times, “Dawson’s on-base percentage was just .323, the lowest among Hall of Fame outfielders, and he never played in the World Series. But his performance in the bedrock statistics – home runs and runs batted in – elevated his candidacy.” Dawson played his first 11 seasons with Montreal, batting .285 with 225 home runs and 838 RBIs. He was named an All-Star three times and won the NL Rookie of the Year Award in 1977. He played six seasons with the Cubs, where he won the 1987 NL MVP award after batting .287 with 49 home runs and 137 RBIs. “Cub fans will always be incredibly important in my heart, and I owe them so much for making my time in Chicago memorable, as did the fans in Montreal, Boston and South Florida, my home.” Gary Carter, a Hall of Fame catcher who played with Dawson in Montreal, said, “Andre was the consummate professional. He was one of those guys that had his game face on every day.” Steve Rogers, another former teammate, said, “I think Hawk did too many great things for the organization over too many years not to go in as an Expo.” The Hall of Fame noted that Dawson had 1,575 of his 2,774 hits as an Expo, won six of his eight Gold Glove awards in Montreal and led the Expos to their only postseason series win with a five-game victory over the Phillies in 1981. Dawson credited his mother Mattie Brown and grandmother Eunice Taylor for teaching him to work hard with dedication and determination. He cried as he arrived at the cemetery to thank his mother for raising eight children without a father in the house. Dawson will be inducted July 25 at Cooperstown along with manager Whitey Herzog and umpire Doug Harvey, elected last month by the Veterans Committee. Photographs by Sports Weekly and Jonathan Daniel, Getty Images |
| PITTSBURGH – Hall of Famer Bill Mazeroski soon will be able to walk down Mazeroski Way on Pittsburgh’s North Side and see a statue depicting him hitting one of baseball’s most famous homers. If a sad movie makes him cry, think how such a tribute feels to a man who, while growing up in a one-room house near Wheeling, W.Va., pretended to play baseball with a wooden stick and a rock because his family once couldn’t afford to buy him a ball and glove.
Mazeroski’s voice was shaky throughout a brief talk as a miniature version of the statue that will be erected outside PNC Park in his honor was unveiled. Former teammates Bob Friend and Dick Groat watched nearby. Mazeroski has received nearly every award and accolade a player can earn, but this was something special. “All I wanted to do was play major league baseball,” Mazeroski said. “I played in the All-Star game. I played in the World Series. I hit a home run that every little kid dreams of and 50 years later, they’re still proud and still talking about it. I got my number retired and, geez, I got in the Hall of Fame. I got a street named after you. Holy hell, how can you get a life better than this?” Now, he’s getting a statue that’s twice his size in real life. The 12-foot statue will depict him rounding second base, his batting helmet raised high in his right hand, after hitting the homer that beat the heavily favored New York Yankees in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. “I was flying,” Mazeroski recalled. “My feet didn’t hit the ground.” Fifty years later, it remains the only World Series-ending Game 7 homer in baseball history. An oft-overlooked fact: He also won Game 1 of the same World Series with a two-run homer after hitting only 11 homers in 151 games that season. While his Game 7 homer ranks alongside Bobby Thomson’s 1950 NL playoff winner for the Giants as among the most memorable in the sport’s history, Mazeroski made it to the Hall of Fame for his defensive excellence.
 Mazeroski’s only misgivings are that he believes he receives too much credit for completing one of baseball’s biggest World Series upsets. He wouldn’t have had the chance to bat if Hal Smith hadn’t hit a three-run homer during a five-run Pirates rally the inning before. “I was just a piece on that team,” said Mazeroski, who was 24 when he homered and is now 73. “I hit one home run. I get a lot of the credit and don’t deserve it.” The statue was created by Pittsburgh artist Susan Wagner, who also sculpted those for Clemente and Stargell. Funds to pay for the statues will be solicited from Pirates fans, whose names will be displayed on a brick wall behind the statue if they reach a certain donation level. Mazeroski’s homer traveled over the wall at the 406-foot mark in left-center. That section of wall was preserved when Forbes Field was torn down in the 1970s and will be part of the display. Photograph by Keith Srakocic, Associated Press; sequence-series of Mazeroski by Don Weiskopf |
When a pitcher takes the mound, he takes control of the game. And in the end, it’s his wins and losses that are in the box score. But often, the numbers don’t tell the whole story. In Game 7 of the 1965 World Series, Dodgers Manager Walter Alston started future Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax on two days’ rest against Jim Kaat of the Twins, who was also working on two days’ rest. A quick glance at the box score shows that Koufax pitched a complete game, three-hit shutout with 10 strikeouts, winning, 2-0, and giving the Dodgers their third world championship since the move to Los Angeles. But it wasn’t quite that simple. In the bottom of the fifth, with the Dodgers up, 2-0, Twins rookie Frank Quilici doubled to left with one out. Koufax then walked pinch-hitter Rich Rollins to bring the go-ahead run to the plate. Zoilo Versalles, who would be named the American League’s Most Valuable Player later that fall, then stepped to the dish and jumped on a Koufax delivery, crushing a hard ground ball down the third-base line that looked like a sure double. But Dodgers third baseman Jim Gilliam, who at 36 was the oldest player on the field, made a diving backhanded stop and performed the fielding gem of the Series. On a ball hit sharply down the line, Gilliam made a sensational backhand stab, spun around and stepped on third for the force out, saving one run and possibly two. Koufax then got Joe Nossek to ground out to end the inning and the Minnesota threat.
 Gilliam donated his glove to the Hall, and it’s now on display on the third floor of the Museum’s Autumn Glory exhibit. Photograph of Gilliam’s Hall of Fame 1965 World Series glove by Mangin/MLB Photos. The sequence-series of Gilliam’s spectacular play appeared in the 1972 textbook, The Complete Baseball Handbook, co-authored by Walter Alston and Don Weiskopf. Samantha Carr is the media relations coordinator for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. |
| “For decades, the closest fans could get to big-league action during the winter was sitting around the hot stove in general stores and barbershops, exchanging bits of baseball lore,” wrote Lee Allen. The term Hot Stove league refers to the gab, gossip, and debate that take place during the winter months when baseball is not being played. These discussions – relating the past season and anticipating the next – occurred at such gathering places, or a wood-burning, potbellied stove at the center of the conversational group.
The term was given added popularity with the publication of Lee Allen’s book, The Hot Stove League (1955). A quote from Allen’s book: “No one knows when baseball followers first began to gather in the winter around the hot stove of a barber shop or country store. Obviously, there has been talk about baseball as long as the game has existed.” The phrase, ‘hot stove league,’ is of uncertain origin. Ernest J. Lanigan, historian at the game’s Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York, thinks it was almost certainly coined by a sports writer around the turn of the century, perhaps by Rex Mulford, who covered baseball in Cincinnati, and wrote long winter columns about the sport. A glossary of baseball terms published in 1897 does not include it.” However, Peter Tamony assembled information showing that the term predates 1900 when it was used to describe the off-season in horse racing. A dispatch from Knoxboro, N.Y. (Spirit of the Times, March 20, 1886, contained this line: “The sleighing has done, and most of the morning is done around the hot stove at present.” The general idea is even older. Tamony discovered the quotation from P.T. Barnum’s Struggles and Triumphs (1927) under “hot stove league”: “In nearly every new England village at the time of which I write (in the 1820s), there could be found from six to twenty social, jolly, story-telling, joke-playing wags and wits, regular originals, who would get together at the tavern or store, and spend their evenings and stormy afternoons in relating anecdotes.” “They described their various adventures, played practical jokes upon each other, and engaged in every project out of which a little fun could be extracted by village wits. These ideas were usually sharpened at brief intervals by a ‘treat,’ otherwise known as a glass of Santa Cruz rum, old Holland gin or Jamaica spirits.” Barry Popik offers the following from The Sporting News (December 29, 1939), putting the idea in a baseball context back into the 19th century: “In Selma (Ohio) … exists one of the oldest hot stove leagues in the country. It was founded 45 years ago in Clark’s general store and post-office, where it still holds its sessions, and while some of the original members have passed on, the same old stove still crackles and the surroundings generally are much the same as they were in the mid-nineties.” This Hot Stove League definition appeared in Paul Dickson’s revised edition of his award-winning classic, The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary, published by Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, 1999. Artwork by Paul Trap, Baseball America, January 19 – February 1, 2004. |
 |
|
|---|---|
| What is a Brushback Pitch?
A “Brushback Pitch” is one that comes so close to the batter’s chest that he is forced to step backward, thereby keeping him from digging in at the plate. When a batter crowds the plate, taking away some of the pitcher’s target area, a pitcher may decide to throw a pitch close to the batter’s body to encourage him to move back. As Jim Brosnan (The Long Season, 1960) put it: “To let the batter know the pitcher may, occasionally, lose control and to keep him from digging in at the plate with confidence.” Pictured here is a hitter being moved back away from the plate, as Cincinnati Reds catcher Johnny Bench receives the pitch. The brushback pitch is not to be confused with a bean ball, which is intentionally thrown at the batter’s head. Bob Gibson, in his 1968 book, “From Ghetto to Glory”, wrote: “One of the most valuable weapons at a pitcher’s command is the brushback pitch, but it is not a deliberate knockdown.” Reference: Paul Dickson, The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary, Harcourt Brace & Company, New York, 1999. Photograph by Don Weiskopf |
|
 |
||
|---|---|---|
 |
 |
|
| 1. The shortstop and a leader of the New York Yankees (1946-1956) that won nine pennants in his 13 seasons. In 1950, at 32, the Scooter had his best season, hitting .324, and was named American League Most Valuable Player. He had a .273 lifetime batting average. Later, the five-time All-Star became a popular broadcaster for Yankee baseball. | 2. The Baltimore Orioles shortstop broke a seemingly unbreakable record in 1995, when he played in his 2,131st consecutive games, one more than Lou Gehrig. He continued his streak until the Orioles’ last home game of 1998, when he ended it at 2,632 – more than twice as many as anyone except Gehrig. In 21 seasons, he collected 3,070 hits, 417 homers, and a .277 BA. | |
 |
 |
|
| 3. The all-around shortstop of the San Diego Padres and St. Louis Cardinals won 13 straight Gold Gloves at the position. He was not a high percentage hitter, .261, but when he got on base, he disorganized the opposition with his threat to steal. His 580 stolen bases ranks among the all-time top 25, and his Career hit total, 2,460, is in the top 100 during 2,573 games. | 4. The Dodgers’ shortstop reintroduced an old weapon to baseball. In 1962, his first full season, he led the National League with 50 stolen bases. In 1962, he stole 104 (the runner-up had 32) breaking Ty Cobb’s modern record of 96, set in 1915. He ranks in the all-time top 25 with 586 career steals. In 14 big league seasons, he compiled a .281 BA, with 2,134 base hits. | |
| Can you name these shortstops? | Find the ANSWERS in the Coaching Clinic page. |
|
| News Release | World Baseball | Coaching Clinic | Youth Baseball |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photo Gallery | Minor League | Baseball Quiz | High School/College/Senior |
| Test for Steroids | Major League Baseball | Skills and Strategies | Feature Stories |
|---|
| HOME | TOP |
|---|
