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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
Duke Sims, in his seventh day as a Yankee, hit the last home run in the original Yankee Stadium . . .
Negro Leagues teams that played at Yankee Stadium when the Yankees were on the road had to dress in visitors’ dressing rooms . . .
The movie 61 was filmed at Tiger Stadium in Detroit because Billy Crystal believed its architecture was closer to the Yankee Stadium of 1961 . . .
Sal Durante, who caught the ball Roger Maris hit for his 61st homer, bought tickets at the stadium that same day (Oct. 1, 1961) because it wasn’t sold out . . .
Joe Torre saw three perfect games at Yankee Stadium: Don Larsen’s 1956 World Series gem as a 16-year-old fan and later perfectos by David Wells and David Cone when he managed the Yankees . . .
It took 500 workers 185 days to build the original Yankee Stadium . . .
The Yankees ended their practice of selling more tickets than capacity ended after a 1929 stampede in the right-field bleachers left two dead and 62 injured.
Leading Off
Meet the beetles
. . . that kicked American ash and our longest-serving baseball bats.
By Jeff Kallman
That was then: the Beatles singing and playing before a mammoth audience in Shea Stadium, the still-embryonic home of the New York Mets, in August 1965. (John Lennon, after the concert, to one of the group’s road managers: “We’ve been to the mountaintop. Where can we go now?”)
This was almost 40 years later, according to The Athletic, in an article led by Stephen J. Nesbitt: Not too long after Barry Bonds became the maple bat’s Johnny Appleseed (after being turned on to the wand by late-career Giants acquisition Joe Carter), Michigan State University etymologists discovered a barely-known insect of Chinese origin and unknown musical predilection, but having a particularly troublesome taste for a particular type of wood.
Biologists and etymologists alike agree. He can fly, he can hide, but for now it’s easier to contain nuclear fallout than to contain him and his.
Meet the beetle. The ash beetle. Compromiser of enough of North America’s ash forests that the long-classic ash bat is going the way of the hourglass, the outhouse, the typewriter, and the Pontiac.
Well, okay: the typewriter survives (barely) as a niche product for some stubborn writers. So will the ash bat, possibly.
Cincinnati’s Joey Votto hoards ash bats as Jack Benny (the radio character, not the man) once hoarded his money. The Athletic says Votto bought out the remaining major-league ash bat inventory of maple bat maestros Marucci. He stores his reported 50-70 bat stash in a dark room at home. Nobody knows whether he has an armed guard at the entrance. Yet.
The month the Reds first drafted Votto (June 2002) was in the year the ash beetle was first discovered finding a sea of greens in Michigan ash trees. Michigan State’s etymology crew couldn’t figure out what was doing to the state’s ash trees what Bonds and his maple were doing to baseballs.
Then, they couldn’t figure out the culprit—until a Slovakian expert on wood-gorging beetles told them about a Chinese forest researcher who’d first found the ash beetle’s way of life. That researcher, Yu Cheng-ming, proved no help: he’d been forced to common labor during the infamous Cultural Revolution, The Athletic says, and whatever he’d isolated about the ash beetle was lost.
A year before the ash beetle’s Michigan discovery, Bonds and his maple wands re-smashed the single-season home run record. Under suspicion that he had a little help from his actual/alleged performance-enhancing substance friends, Bonds’ fellow batsmen paid closer attention to his new lumber. In due course, Michigan’s and other ash beetle newcomers determined scientifically that the little bug’s moveable feast went back a few decades.
The ash beetles made their way to northeastern Pennsylvania and western New York around 2008. They found their own beetlemania, the white ash forests from which baseball’s harvested its bats for about seven-eighths of major-league history. While they feasted, the Louisville Slugger people found themselves staring at the pending end of the ash industry.
Maple is prized for producing syrup and for making among other things high-end furniture, flooring, and Gibson guitars. (Fair disclosure: your correspondent is also a guitarist, whose instrument of choice is the maple-topped, maple-necked Gibson Les Paul model.) Since Carter gave Bonds the word and the wood, it’s become most batters’ best friend. Perhaps forever, pending the advent of a maple beetle wanting maple to provide its ticket to ride.
“Maple is the hardest wood used for a modern wood game bat,” says Phoenix Bats, a Columbus, Ohio bat maker, “as evidenced by the tight grain structure. More energy is transferred to the ball, and the extra power that comes from maple bats versus ash bats translates into about 10-15 extra feet of distance.” Maple bats have shorter sweet spots than ash bats, but hitters in constant self-study learn soon enough how to work with that one shortfall on behalf of the long reward.
Well. While examining the wherefores of still-uninvestigated Ballgate (MLB providing differing baseballs for assorted game sets last year, one with less travel and one with more), I was reminded that the staffers at Baseball Prospectus—in their book Extra Innings—offered splendid evidentiary supposition that the era of actual/alleged performance-enhancing substances might have been at least as much the era of actual/alleged performance-enhancing baseballs. Perhaps the latter part of the era could also be, as much as anything, the era of actual/alleged performance-enhancing bats?
“Thank God maple came on when it did,” Pete Tucci—once a first-round baseball draft pick (outfielder, Blue Jays, 1996) who never saw action in the Show; today the chief of Tucci Lumber, a bat maker—tells The Athletic, “because the ash trees that are left wouldn’t be able to support the demand of baseball as a whole right now.”
Hillerich & Bradsby lingered behind the maple curve until several years after Bonds mapled Mark McGwire to one side. Now, the Louisville Slugger makers thank God and Bonds (not necessarily in that order) for making players want their maple—and anyone else’s available.
“We really, really fell behind,” the company told The Athletic. “If Bonds hadn’t done what he did, I think a lot of companies would have been struggling. But it made for a way for other bat companies to get into the market, and—I’ll just flat-out say it—they helped make us a better company, and the players have one hell of a product to swing today because of it.”
They’ve caught up to maple the way baseball once needed to catch up to Babe Ruth’s home run prowess. In 2001, 95 per cent of Louisville Sluggers were ash. Just over two decades later, 87 per cent of Louisville Sluggers are maple, twelve per cent are birch, and “whatever’s left is ash.”
Thanks mostly to one particular slugger taking a teammate’s suggestion downtown on occasions too numerous to confine to one paragraph. And—with the little carnivore now in 35 states, a few Canadian provinces, and the District of Columbia, plus five of six ash species on the endangered list—to the pestiferous beetle that’s been kicking American ash since about a decade after the Beatles stopped kicking the world’s musical ass.
Jeff Kallman, a life member of the IBWAA, writes Throneberry Fields Forever. He has written for the Society for American Baseball Research, Sports-Central, and other publications. He is also a Met fan since the day they were born—and a Beatles fan since they hit The Ed Sullivan Show running in February 1964.
Cleaning Up
Who’s the Best Lefty In Baseball History?
By Dan Schlossberg
With a lockout in full force, baseball purists have only cards and memories to occupy their time when wild winter weather freezes roads and results in day-long backups.
This week’s sale of Topps to Fanatics for half-a-billion provided at least temporary fodder to feed the fantasies of fans longing for enormous transactions.
And the upcoming SABR Day, slated for Hank Aaron’s birthday on Feb. 5, will stir lots of passion among the history-loving types who love the Society for American Baseball Research.
A recurring theme among SABR-ites — who also argue loud and long about the merits of Cooperstown candidates — is an argument over all-time All-Stars.
Consider the position of left-handed pitchers, for example. There are lots of contenders, including Hall of Famers Lefty Grove, Warren Spahn, Whitey Ford, Sandy Koufax, Steve Carlton, Tom Glavine, and Randy Johnson.
Among active southpaws, Robbie Ray is the reigning Cy Young Award winner in the American League; Chris Sale shares the record for starting consecutive All-Star Games (3); and Julio Urias was the only pitcher to win 20 games this past season.
Grove, Spahn, Carlton, Glavine, and Johnson are among the two-dozen pitchers in the 300 Club — an achievement that requires an average of 20 wins for 15 years or 15 wins for 20 years. Few pitchers today win that many or last for so long.
Johnson won five Cy Youngs, Carlton four, Koufax three, and Glavine two but Spahn outdid them all. He finished with 363 wins, most by any southpaw in baseball history and more than any pitcher who worked after World War 2. He also had 363 base-hits — yes, the same number of hits as wins — and 382 complete games.
He not only hit 35 home runs, a National League record for a pitcher, but homered for the Braves in 17 consecutive seasons — a feat equaled only by Hank Aaron and Chipper Jones.
When his fastball faded, Spahn went to the screwball to prolong his longevity. He started All-Star Games in three different decades.
The only major-leaguer to win a battlefield commission during the Second World War, Spahn once said, “I played for Casey Stengel before and after he was a genius.”
He teamed with Yogi Berra on the 1965 Mets. Asked if they would be the oldest battery ever, he said, “I don’t know if we’ll be the oldest but we’ll certainly be the ugliest.”
Spahn had two no-hitters, one Cy Young, and 13 seasons with at least 20 wins. Thirteen!
He lost another sure win when he finished on the wrong side of a 16-inning game in San Francisco, ended by a Willie Mays solo home run, in 1963. Both Spahn, then 42, and Juan Marichal, some 20 years younger, went all the way, throwing more than 200 pitches.
Koufax might have been more spectacular but his flame burned out quickly. Spahn did more with less and did it longer, making him the best lefty in baseball history.
Former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ is the author of 40 baseball books. He covers the game for forbes.com, Latino Sports, USA TODAY Sports Weekly, Sports Collectors Digest, Ball Nine, and many others. E.mail him at ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia
Mel Allen’s brother Larry researched stats, answered fan mail, created elaborate lineup cards, and scoured the field for player changes to help his older sibling before spending an unhappy 1951 season announcing Cleveland Indians games. After the Yankees fired Mel in 1964, the Allen brothers returned to Alabama as owners of a Bessemer radio station.
New Hall of Famer Jim Kaat was the last active player from the original Washington Senators . .
Mike Marshall holds single-season records for games pitched in both leagues . . .
Willie Mays, Stan Musial, and Cal Ripken, Jr. hit a combined total of three postseason homers . .
Power must be the key to success: the World Champion Braves hit 23 post-season homers, more than any other 2021 playoff team . . .
The San Francisco Giants of 2012-16 won a record 10 elimination games in a row.
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.
After Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs using maple bats, MLB commissioned a study to determine whether maple outperform ash. I was part of a scientific advisory panel overseeing the study. Conclusion: There are no substantial differences in performance between maple and ash. Our metric of performance was exit velocity under well-defined conditions, which is essentially equivalent to fly ball distance. So, I am skeptical of the claim that maple outperforms ash by 10-15 ft, or equivalently about 2-3 mph. Unfortunately the results of that study were never published.