August 18, 2002: Harry Kalas Hall of Fame celebration

Major League Baseball offers its fans numerous opportunities during the regular season to honor the most cherished members of their team’s extended family, be they former players, coaches or front office executives. Dad and I made sure we were present for Phillies’ most anticipated of these occasions during the 2002 campaign, and for many in attendance, the celebration recognized not so much a person, but a voice.

The calming baritone to which I refer belonged to none other than Phillies play-by-play announcer Harry Kalas. Despite hailing from the Midwest, Kalas was as Philadelphia as cheesesteaks. He endeared himself to the fans and the players with his easy-going personality and blue-collar devotion to his craft. In the days before he gave up drinking, he could be frequently found at the local watering hole until the wee hours, belting out classic oldies for his listeners, but he always somehow turned up to the broadcast booth on time with a clear head.

And that voice. It carried you to a special place that made baseball an inviting and comforting diversion from life’s daily grind. Kalas also stirred up the adrenalin in just the right doses on every exciting play. Whenever he raised his voice to an enthusiastic yell, particularly on his trademark “outta here” home run calls, he showed his genuine love for the game and his job. I owe my appreciation of baseball to my father, but Kalas played a definite role as well, as he did for multiple generations of Phillies fans.

Now in his 32^nd season with the organization, Kalas received baseball’s highest honor for broadcasters, the Ford C. Frick Award. It’s akin to a Hall of Fame induction for players, and a plaque signifying Kalas’ award is displayed in Cooperstown.

The Phillies commemorated this special recognition with Harry Kalas Day, resulting in Veterans Stadium’s only sellout in another disappointing season. Kalas, donning in a white suit jacket and purple lei around his neck, was honored with a touching pre-game ceremony on the field. Hosts Glenn Wilson and Darren Daulton led the crowd through several of Kalas’ most memorable calls, including Mike Schmidt’s 500^th home run and the last out of the division-clinching game in 1993. Kalas’ family and several members of the ‘80 and ‘93 Phillies teams joined him on the field, and he received a lap around the edge of the field while perched in the back of a red convertible. At the end of the ceremony, we finally got to hear Harry the K himself when he took the microphone to thank the fans for their support over the last 31 years. Kalas’ words carried a special weight for my dad, who had been watching and listening every one of those years.

One of the most touching moments of the ceremony for me occurred when Scott Rolen, who was traded to the visiting St. Louis Cardinals just three weeks earlier, emerged from the visitors dugout, gave Kalas a hug, and then opened the car door for him just prior to the lap. It’s a shame that Kalas and Rolen’s soundtrack to this moment was a chorus of boos from a majority of the crowd. Rolen’s difficulties with Philadelphia manager Larry Bowa were well documented, and some fans never forgave Rolen for his unceremonious departure, but for this one magical event they should have taken the high road.

Rolen wasn’t the only Cardinal under fire.

J.D. Drew became public enemy No. 1 in 1997 when he rejected the Phillies drafting him second overall because they refused the $10 million signing price that Drew’s evil agent, Scott Boras, demanded. The Cardinals gave into Drew and Boras when they drafted him the following year. During Drew’s first visit to Veterans Stadium in 1999, the fans famously showed their displeasure by throwing countless objects, including D-cell batteries, at him.

When Drew came to the plate in the top of the sixth inning to the usual round of boos, some fans sitting near my dad and I in the upper deck took things too far. I guess they counted on Drew to possess X-Ray vision because they stuck up their middle fingers while screaming obscenities. Other fans seated several rows below began shouting up at them to knock it off in deference to the children trying to enjoy the game. That only encouraged the offenders to scream louder, which prompted security to remove them from the area.

My dad and I and the people immediately around us could only shake our heads and laugh. One guy in the row behind us perfectly summed up the situation. Channeling his inner Rodney King, he pleaded innocently, “Can’t we all just get a Bud Light?” I couldn’t believe fans were still getting this worked up over Drew, but at least they provided me with better entertainment than the Phillies, who lost the game 5-1.

Every fan who attended the game received a special item: a bobblehead of Kalas and his former partner in crime, color commentator and Phillies Hall of Fame centerfielder Richie “Whitey” Ashburn. The two of them worked together in the booth for 26 years until Ashburn’s untimely passing in 1997. Their chemistry and humor on the air remains wonderfully unique.

And what would Ashburn’s response to that day’s celebration be?

 

As His Whiteness would say, “Great job, Harry. Now, let’s order a pizza!”

April 30, 2000 & July 26, 2005: McGwire vs. Sosa

Some hometown fans go to baseball games to get a glimpse of superstars playing for the opposing team. I never considered myself among them until Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa came along.

The home run had not been in such high demand since Babe Ruth popularized it in the 1920s. Eighty years later, seemingly untouchable offensive records were falling left and right by these slugging freaks of nature, and I rooted for them every time they stared down their helpless enemy 60 feet and 6 inches away.

In recent years, I have grown to appreciate the delicate art of pitching, but it still does not compare to the thrill of a baseball leaving the yard. A player whips his large, wooden stick through the strike zone and connects with a ball that flies 400 feet to its destination. The crowd bellows a collective, “Woah…,” upon contact, and then hurls a cacophony of cheers into the atmosphere after the ball clears the fence. Four seconds of pure elation.

I hoped for that feeling 20 times over as my dad and I ventured to our second Phillies game in 20 days. We arrived nearly two hours before first pitch, and I went down to the 200 level ready to see some batting practice blasts, for which McGwire had become legendary. I stood and watched behind home plate for a good half hour as Cardinal after Cardinal took his hacks, but Big Mac never appeared. As we would see during the game – and by McGwire’s eventual confession 10 years later – it’s not like he needed the practice.

To be clear, I wanted the Phillies to win this game. I envisioned a meaningless Big Mac homer in a 10-1 blowout, but McGwire ended up being a much bigger factor in this one.

Curt Schilling started the year on the Disabled List, so this was his season debut. He looked in mid-season form, striking out eight and holding the dangerous St. Louis lineup at bay until the sixth, when McGwire batted with one out and one on, and the score 2-1 in the Cardinals’ favor. With one mighty swing, Big Mac hit the 530^th long ball of his career, giving St. Louis a lead it would not relinquish.

I had missed McGwire’s record-breaking 62^nd home run of the 1998 season by seconds on TV, and I missed seeing this one live, as I was stuck in line at the concession stand. Given what I know now, I don’t mind failing to experience these moments in baseball history. Mickey Morandini’s grand slam seven years earlier remains a much better story.

The only thing that mattered was the Phillies were now down by three runs. My dad certainly didn’t feel good about seeing McGwire’s homer, and we both left the Vet shaking our heads. A month into the season, our team was in dead last with a record of 7-17.

I saw Sosa live once as well, five years later, in the twilight of his career with the Baltimore Orioles. By this time, reports of rampant steroid use in baseball were well known. That March, Sosa and O’s teammate Rafael Palmeiro had both testified before congress (along with Schilling) that they had never taken performance-enhancing drugs. Palmeiro famously emphasized his point with a defiant index finger.

I was actually in my seat when Sosa went deep in this game. Though the Orioles were fading fast from contention in the AL East, the general mood at Camden Yards was high thanks to the four white banners hanging up on the B&O Warehouse, reading the number ‘3,000’.

I obviously didn’t know it then, but I picked a crazy time to go to an O’s game. It fell a week after Palmeiro reached the 3,000 hit milestone and a week before he was suspended for 10 games for a positive steroids test.

The news hit me pretty hard, not only because Palmeiro was my favorite Oriole, but his suspension peeled the first layer off an onion of deceit. Major League Baseball is just as at fault for allowing the steroid culture to thrive with no threat of punishment, but I can’t ignore that these players made the choice to poison their bodies to give them an unfair advantage. They accepted endless adoration, smiling through their lies the whole way through it. When they were finally caught, they made the innocent who played alongside them guilty by association.

There are arguments on both sides of the great debate on whether or not stars from the Steroid Era deserve election into the Hall of Fame. All I can say is, I’m glad I’m not a member of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. My gut reaction is that steroid abusers have no place in the Hall, but I’m sure there are members in now who cheated in some form or another. Amphetamine use in baseball predates the Steroid Era by several decades, and there are players like Ty Cobb, a well-known racist man with a violent temper that he unleashed on other players.

On the other side, Pete Rose is denied eligibility at all for betting on baseball. As far as the sport is concerned, he’s considered more of a villain than McGwire. I have always stated that baseball will eventually lift the ban on Rose, but probably not until right after he dies.

 

It’s unfortunate that the fans of my generation were brought up on a fixed game, but we learned that the stars we held up so high in our youth turned out to be flawed human beings, just like our parents.

My dad and I never really talked about the steroid scandal, apart from the obligatory "that's a shame" lament whenever a new juicer was revealed. We were both on the same page concerning the guilty players’ fates. The unsuccessful teams the Phillies rolled out during the height of the scandal gave us the excuse we needed to believe that they were all innocent.

Luckily, in a few years, the game would clean itself up to give the Phils a fighting chance. And boy, did they ever take advantage.

Schmidt or Roberts?

Sorry to my readers for the overload of posts today, but this is one I've been holding for a few weeks. I decided against running it as a column in my paper, and it was ignored by a blogging site, so I'll share it with all of you now. We're no longer preoccupied with the Trade Deadline, and I think this is an interesting topic over which to mull. Enjoy.

Earlier this year, Bob Costas conducted an interview with Phillies great Dick Allen. As predicted, Costas asked him all about playing during the turbulent 1960s, the controversy he often stirred up as an outspoken athlete and his reputation for hitting tape-measure blasts.

At the end of the interview, Allen gave his opinion on who he thought the better Phillie was, Robin Roberts or Mike Schmidt. It’s generally an unfair comparison between a pitcher and position player, but much like he did during his playing days, Allen gave the controversial answer when he said Roberts. Costas pressed him on that briefly, but Allen simply replied that Roberts took the mound for nine innings every time out and dominated hitters.

In retrospect, Allen’s opinion is understandable, considering that he played when Roberts was already a pitching legend and Schmidt wasn’t on the map yet. It’s not surprising Allen would defer to the elder Hall of Famer.

But who really was a greater Phillie?

Several Top Ten Phillies lists found online all rank Schmidt higher than Roberts, though lists like that always tend to favor hitters over pitchers. Schmidt also helped Philadelphia to win its first-ever World Series title, and he added three MVP awards and numerous Gold Gloves. To be fair, Roberts guided Philly to its first World Series in 35 years in 1950, and the Gold Glove and Cy Young awards didn’t exist during his prime.

The only way to truly compare a pitcher and a hitter from two different eras is to see how they match up with their top contemporaries. Roberts’ were likely Warren Spahn and Whitey Ford, while Schmidt’s top competition were fellow third basemen Brooks Robinson and Darrell Evans.

Roberts was widely considered the best pitcher in baseball from 1950-1955, but his career ERA of 3.41 was significantly higher than Spahn (3.09) or Ford (2.75). His winning percentage was also the worst of the three, but he also had the lowest run support.

Allen wasn’t exaggerating about Roberts’ durability. He led the league in innings pitched for five straight years, and his 346 2/3 innings in 1953 are second-most by a Hall of Fame pitcher in a single season after World War II. He threw more than 300 innings in a season six times.

However, Spahn managed to pitch at a high level later into his career. He only threw more than 300 innings in a season twice, but he was still easily cracking the 200-inning mark into his 40s. Spahn pitched more seasons and innings than Roberts, while allowing 71 fewer home runs. That was perhaps Roberts’ biggest drawback; he wasn’t a ground-ball pitcher. He also never struck out 200 batters in a season – not as dominant as Allen originally suggested.

Saber-metrically speaking, one aspect of pitching that Roberts did dominate throughout his career was control. Though Ford posted the highest career strikeout rate of 5.6 per nine innings, Roberts’ strikeout per walk rate of 2.61 was far ahead of Ford and Spahn, who both posted a 1.8 mark. Roberts had the best WHIP (1.17) among the three, and his BB/9 rate of 1.7 is ranked 45th all-time and ninth among Hall of Fame pitchers.

Those final numbers help Roberts’ case, but Schmidt’s comparisons to Robinson and Evans aren’t nearly as hazy.

Robinson, dubbed “The Human Vacuum Cleaner,” was a better fielding third baseman than Schmidt, with a higher career range factor and fielding percentage, but Schmidt trumps the other two in nearly every offensive category. Phillies fans know about his 548 home runs, but Schmidt’s career OPS of .908 ranks 27th all-time among Hall of Fame hitters. Schmidt also set all-time team marks in runs, hits, RBI, walks and total bases.

According to the numbers, you can make an argument for and against Roberts’ superiority over his peers, but Schmidt was clearly the best. He also played during one of the organization’s most successful periods, further brightening his spotlight.

Sorry, Dick, looks like you got this one wrong. The best pitcher in baseball for a brief time doesn’t compare to arguably the best hitting third baseman in history, regardless of the discrepancy between pitching every fourth day and playing every day. Maybe Costas should have asked Allen’s opinion about a more sensible pitcher-hitter comparison like Schmidt and Steve Carlton. I put it to all of you to hash that one out.

Take the hint, Raul

(Roundtable host to Bob Feller): “In 1940, you threw the only no-hitter on Opening Day in major league history. What do you remember, or what can you tell us about that game?”

Feller: “It was cold as Hell.”


The 91-year-old Hall of Famer then elaborated on his unique feat, saying how happy he was to accomplish it in front of his teammates, fans and family.

Family was the recurring theme of the Father's Day Hall of Fame Classic Weekend in Cooperstown. The nostalgia was as thick as the summer heat, and my dad and I soaked it all in. The Baseball Hall of Fame was easily in the top five of the most incredible places I've ever been to in my short lifetime. As we walked around, my dad and I quickly realized that anyone who wasn't a baseball fan in this town was automatically an outsider. We expected that, but the feeling was still a surprise because it's usually the exact opposite. It was almost like coming home.

I would argue that the gigantic role that baseball has played in his life has kept 'Rapid Robert' going all of these years. All of the great memories and community feel of the sport have kept Feller young. Being surrounded by thousands of other devoted fans (yes, even the Yankee supporters) made us all feel like kids again, too. Feller and the other six Hall of Famers in attendance during the weekend jumped at the chance to recapture that feeling of innocence.

Feller conveniently leads me into my next topic, as tonight Jamie Moyer tied the former Cleveland Indians hurler nearly twice his age on the all-time wins list. He notched his 266th victory with yet another stellar showing on the hill against none other than Feller's old ballclub. The tame Tribe hitters were clueless against Moyer's slow deception, as they managed just two hits off him through eight innings.

Of course, one of those two hits was a moon shot by Russell Branyan to tie Moyer with another Phillie, Robin Roberts, for the most home runs allowed all time at 505. What's even more interesting is assuming Jamie plays out the remainder of his three-year contract as a starter and retires after the 2011 season, he might finish his career surrendering 548 dongs, which would match Mike Schmidt's Phillies-leading career total. It's quite a dubious honor, but obviously chalked up to Moyer's durability in the game, and it won't hurt his Hall of Fame eligibility.

One player who did hurt his own standing was Greg 'fallen-from-pinch-hitting-grace' Dobbs. As the Phils re-activated Jimmy Rollins from the DL, they designated Dobbs for assignment. Philly also ended the second brief, failed experiment with Scott Mathieson, recalling Mike Zagurski in what has to be an attempt to help the bullpen recover from one its worst meltdowns in recent memory against the Twins on Saturday.

It says something about the state of bench when you need to subtract a guy to make it better, but Dobbs has quickly turned from Mr. Dependable into Mr. Expendable. It's a sad result as Dobbs was such an integral component to the postseason-bound teams of 2007 and '08. Before I fully understood the dynamics of the situation, I was actually surprised when Jayson Werth started getting more playing time in the latter half of '08 than Dobbs, who was a better hitter. That is clearly not the case anymore.

The team is presently not making any headway with closing the gap in the division. The All-Star Break and the Trade Deadline are quickly approaching, so other major personnel changes may take place if the Phillies remain on their present course of mediocrity.

Raul Ibanez, take this as your final warning.

The 38-year-old Phillies left fielder hasn't been the player they expected him to be for a year now. He's not seeing the ball well, which was even a fact during last season as a whole when he posted the worst strikeout/at-bat (1/4.2) and ground out/fly out (1.27) ratios of his career.

Ibanez has only managed brief glimpses of his former self in 2010. The latest occurred earlier this month when he went 8-for-20 over five games against the Marlins and Red Sox, but he has returned to his usual output, hitting just 5-for-22 (.227) since. His overall batting average hasn't risen above .267 at any point this season, and his power is virtually non-existent.

I don't know how many more times I can hear Charlie Manuel say that Ibanez will work his way out of this funk. He just might, but we've been waiting for a full season now. Given a healthy number of at-bats, Ben Francisco could provide the Phillies with so much more at the plate and in the field. I'd give Ibanez another week or two at most, and then at the very least bench him for a few games. This lineup can't afford a black hole in the No. 6 spot any longer.

Tonight's win was good, and J-Roll's return was even better. Despite all the griping and negativity, the boys' ride through Interleague Play has turned out a little better than I feared. The toughest part of it is over, so it's time to finish strong. Simply summon your inner-Feller.