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Pregame Pepper
Did you know ...
In his entire career, Jacob deGrom has allowed just one home run on an 0-2 count . . .
Before Joe Musgrove threw the first no-hitter in San Diego history, five Padres pitchers lost no-hitters in the ninth inning . . .
Musgrove, who grew up a Padres fan in El Cajon, CA, wears No. 44 because it was once worn by his favorite pitcher, Jake Peavy, but it didn’t prevent him from defeat in his first game following the no-hitter . . .
Portly Pablo Sandoval, now a slugging pinch-hitter for the Braves, hit the first bases-loaded triple in the history of the All-Star Game less than a year after hitting for the cycle on Sept. 15, 2011, at Colorado’s Coors Field . . .
The 1959 Baltimore Orioles were the first team to executive a triple play on Opening Day.
Leading Off
Upick: Another Dubious Look For Pete Rose?
By Jeff Kallman
Yes, it does seem a little strange to think of Pete Rose as 80 years old, which he became on Wednesday. Especially for those among us who remember him playing, from his first appearance as a fresh Cincinnati kid in 1963 to his playing retirement after 1986. And, who knows there was a lot more truth than Rose probably wanted to ponder when he once said, “I was raised, but I never grew up.”
Rose made news of a sort this week, coinciding with his birthday, when it came forth that he signed up to sell baseball predictions for $89 a month, to subscribers to a Mexico-based sports pick selling Website, UpickTrade. He insisted in a Wednesday news conference that no, he himself won’t be betting on his picks; and, no, again, working for Upick won’t damage his Hall of Fame chances any further.
“By me working with Upick, I'm not hurting [baseball commissioner] Rob Manfred,” Charlie Hustle insisted during that conference.
I'm not trying to show him up by doing that. I'm trying to make a living like everyone else. I'm not making a bet on the baseball game; I'm picking a baseball game. I'm using my knowledge to pick a game for whomever is working with Upick. But picking games on Upick doesn't make me a bad person. It's not me trying to give baseball a black eye, because I'm not. I love baseball.
Strictly speaking, Rose is right. About his signing with Upick, that is. There’s nothing especially wrong with a private citizen going to work for a legal gambling Website. (There’s not much Rose can do to hurt Manfred, either, considering the commissioner does a splendid job of wounding his own self.) Since he hasn’t been allowed to work in baseball for over three decades and remains on the sport’s permanently ineligible list, Rose can (and usually does) do any old thing he chooses to get by.
The fact that baseball’s most notorious gambling banishment this side of the Black Sox now ties himself to an operation picking events for bettors to bet and gives himself another dubious look is entirely coincidental. Right? “For those people who are worried about the Hall of Fame, you’ve got to remember I got suspended in 1989,” Rose said during that Wednesday conference.
That’s 32 years ago. I’m not going to live the rest of my life worried about going to baseball’s Hall of Fame.
If I’m ever bestowed that honor, I’ll be the happiest guy in the world. I don’t think picking games—not betting on games, I have to keep saying that—picking games for customers will not in any way, shape or form hurt my opportunity to get to the Hall of Fame someday. I’m not the only guy that’s ever made a bet in the world of baseball. I probably bet today less than any of them.
Strictly speaking once again, Rose is right once again. About his work for Upick hurting his Hall of Fame chances. Those chances were vaporized already. Three guesses who vaporized them. Hint: He’s that now portly fellow who tours the autograph circuit when pan-damn-ic safety protocols allow, signing assorted memorabilia including baseballs onto which he’s been known to inscribe some particularly witty phrases:
I wish I landed on the moon.
I’m sorry I broke up the Beatles.
Thanks Mickey Mantle for naming me Charlie Hustle.
I’m sorry I shot J.F.K.
Actually, it wasn’t Mantle who hung that one on Rose in a 1963 spring exhibition game—it was Mantle’s Yankee running mate and personal cleanup man, Whitey Ford. (You can’t help wondering the value in today’s dollars every time Ford had to open his wallet to get Mantle out of assorted off-field messes.) Even involving something as simple as his famous if sarcastically applied nickname, Rose can’t help himself.
He thinks baseball was “stuck in cement” for decades over gambling, though it’s a big part of American life today. “Legal gambling, it’s something that’s there,” he said during that media conference.
It’s like your mother or your grandma going to play bingo. They go play bingo every Sunday because it’s fun and you can win. Betting on baseball, betting on football, betting on the Kentucky Derby is fun because you can win. But you can also lose. If you enjoy the sport and you want to bet on it, who cares? You're not hurting anybody, just bet within your means.
Mother and Grandma don’t play bingo in violation of their job conditions. Mother and Grandma don’t have to answer Rose’s question, “If you enjoy the sport and you want to bet on it, who cares?” in the terms that got Rose banished from organized baseball permanently. (Try to remember: “permanent” is not synonymous with “lifetime.”)
Beer remains legal and baseball hasn’t banished beer advertising from the ballparks or the broadcasts, but that doesn’t mean baseball players are sanctioned to drink on the job. (It doesn’t always stop them, of course: think of the notorious in-game chicken-and-beer contingent of the 2011 Red Sox, for one.) Baseball may have made its cross-sponsorship deals with assorted legal gambling enterprises, but that doesn’t mean baseball players, coaches, managers, or other team personnel are sanctioned to bet on games.
Rose learned that the hard way. Except that in more ways than one, neither Rose nor his remaining partisans seem to have learned in actuality. (You did notice that Rose referred to his mere “suspension,” didn’t you?)
Rose’s partisans seize upon excuse after excuse to argue against his continuing banishment—from organized professional baseball and from appearing on a Hall of Fame ballot—whenever there’s cause to mention his name. Rose’s opponents seize upon that excuse to cast appropriately wary eyes and point appropriately wary fingers. The finger that counted the most to place Rose into baseball’s Phantom Zone remains enunciated very clearly, wariness be damned, in that pesky rule book:
(1) Any player, umpire, or Club or League official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has no duty to perform, shall be declared ineligible for one year.
(2) Any player, umpire, or Club or League official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform, shall be declared permanently ineligible. (Emphases added.)
Just in case you might have forgotten or not cared, the plain language in those two clauses offers no distinction whatsoever between betting on your team to win, betting on your team to lose, declining to bet (which sends gamblers signals not to bet on them, by the way, if you’re as notorious a bettor as Rose was), or betting on your team to produce or prevent certain numbers of runs, hits, and so forth.
“I'm trying to make a living like everyone else,” said Rose about signing with Upick, never mind that he makes a none-too-shabby million or two a year from his signature alone even within the restrictions of the pan-damn-ic.
Nobody wants to deny Rose his right to make a living. But nobody should take his association with Upick without the thought that, the small details to the contrary, this is yet another dubious look for a man who’s had too many of them. He would look far better if he autographs a baseball, puckishly enough, “I’m sorry I tried to steal the election.”
Jeff Kallman is an IBWAA Life Member who writes Throneberry Fields Forever. He has written for the Society for American Baseball Research, for whom he is now one of the editors of their Games Project, plus The Hardball Times, Sports-Central, and other publications. He has lived in Las Vegas since 2007 and, alas, has been a Met fan since the day they were born.
Cleaning Up
Conforto Game-Ender Recalls Dick Dietz HBP-That-Wasn’t
By Dan Schlossberg
The New York Mets got a gift win in their April 8 home opener when slumping slugger Michael Conforto “took one for the team,” stepping into a pitch with two strikes and the bases loaded.
Home-plate umpire Ron Kulpa called it a strike, then changed his mind, motioning the outfielder to first base and triggering a wild but undeserved celebration at CitiField.
“I knew there’d be some controversy,” Conforto conceded later. “It barely skimmed the edge of my elbow guard.”
Even the partisan Mets broadcasters admitted the umpire made a mistake. So did he.
“The guy was hit by a pitch in the strike zone,” he told pool reporters. “I should have called him out.”
If only the ump knew something about baseball history.
On May 31, 1968, Don Drysdale was nursing a 3-0 lead in the ninth inning against San Francisco at Dodger Stadium. But the Giants loaded the bases with nobody out. Sound familiar?
Trying to protect a streak of 44 consecutive scoreless innings, Drysdale was fully capable of striking out three hitters in a row.
He went to 2-2 on Dick Dietz, a catcher who could hit, when he nicked the hitter’s elbow. Home-plate umpire Harry Wendlestedt noticed Dietz made no effort to avoid the pitch – as required by baseball rules – and called the pitch strike three.
As Drysdale wrote in his autobiography Once a Bum, Always a Dodger, “He was all set to head to first base and end my streak but Harry ruled that Dietz hadn’t tried to get out of the way of the pitch. Juan Marichal told me that Dietz had said in the dugout before he came to bat, ‘If it’s anything but a fastball, I’ll take one and that will end the streak.’ In other words, knowing that a hit batsman would bring in a run, Dietz was willing to get in the way of a pitch.”
Given a burst of new confidence, Drysdale completed the shutout and extended his streak to 58 2/3 innings, breaking Walter Johnson’s previous record. Twenty years later, Orel Hershiser topped Drysdale.
In New York, where 8,011 fans filled CitiField to 20 percent of capacity, a sheepish Conforto couldn’t even celebrate. “I guess I got the job done,” he said, “but it was tough for me to celebrate. Obviously, I’d like to use the bat next time. That’s not the way I wanted to win the ballgame.”
The inning started when Miami manager Don Mattingly, a New York icon himself, inserted journeyman reliever, Anthony Bass. Jeff McNeil, celebrating his birthday, responded with his first home run of the season, tying the game at 2-2. Two minutes later, or so it seemed, Conforto won the game with body arbor rather than a bat.
“If it’s in the strike zone, it should be called a strike,” said Mattingly, who once won an MVP award while playing for the crosstown Yankees. “I honestly think [the umpire] is feeling bad. I bet he feels awful. Umpires don’t want to mess up either.”
In addition to its obvious similarities to the Dietz game, the situation is comparable to the lost no-hitter of Armando Galarraga. On June 2, 2010, the Detroit right-hander worked 8 2/3 perfect innings against the Cleveland Indians before umpire Jim Joyce called Jason Donald safe at first base on a close play. Joyce later admitted he made a bad call but the damage had been done.
Had video replay been in use at the time, the play could have been reviewed. Galarraga went 26-34 while playing for four different teams in an otherwise forgettable career.
Former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ is weekend editor of Here’s The Pitch and contributor to forbes.com, Latino Sports, USA TODAY Sports Weekly, Ball Nine, and Sports Collectors Digest. He is also the author of 38 baseball books. Contact Dan by e.mail at ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia
Minnesota hates having “the Manfred man” on base at the start of every half-inning after the ninth – their first three defeats this season came in the 10th inning . . .
High-priced closers Liam Hendriks (White Sox) and Alex Colome (Twins) blew games on the same day for their new teams last Sunday . . .
Shaving his beard to conform with Yankees team regulations, Rougned Odor alienated his 3-year-old daughter, who refused to look at him . . .
With Ian Happ hitting well under the Mendoza Line, rookie Cubs boss David Ross, a former catcher himself, has resorted to topping his lineup with Willson Contreras on occasion . . .
Don’t look now but much-maligned right-hander Mike Foltynewicz held the potent Padres to two hits and one run in seven strong innings for Texas before taking the loss in a 2–0 game . . .
Braves boss Brian Snitker made a big blunder when he failed to replace weak-armed left-fielder Marcell Ozuna in a 6-6 game in Atlanta; Philadelphia’s Alec Bohm scored a disputed go-ahead run on a pop fly when Ozuna’s two-bouncer was late to the plate.
Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Brian Harl [bchrom831@gmail.com] handles Monday and Tuesday editions, Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] does Wednesday and Thursday, and Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com] edits the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HTP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.