Will Las Vegas Earn All A's If Oakland Moves?
ALSO: WHY TODAY IS 'LOU GEHRIG DAY' IN MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
White Sox closer Liam Hendriks is back in the majors after missing two months with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma but finishing his treatment in April and announcing a cancer-free diagnosis . . .
Edward Olivares hit a home run so hard last Sunday that it left the Kauffman Stadium stadium scoreboard smoking. The Kansas City outfielder hit a game-tying solo home run in the eighth inning against the Washington Nationals. It went an estimated 452 feet, left the bat at 111 mph, and knocked out part of the left-field scoreboard at Kauffman Stadium . . .
Adam Duvall has started a Triple-A rehab assignment. Duvall was sidelined by a fracture in his left wrist, and a subsequent move to the 60-day IL means that June 9 is the outfielder’s earliest possible return date. Duvall was off to a huge start prior to his injury, posting a 1.544 OPS in his first 37 PA of the season . . .
Lance McCullers Jr., the oft-injured Houston starter, probably won’t be back at the All-Star break, as he’s no longer throwing from a mound. \The pitcher had progressed to bullpen sessions in mid-May but had moved back to throwing from flat ground . . .
Oakland’s walk-off 2-1 win over Atlanta Tuesday night marked the first time since 2005 that they won a series against the Braves. Prior to Monday, the unathletic Athletics had dropped 11 straight games against Atlanta dating back to 2008 . . .
Oakland entered Tuesday’s game with the second-worst record after 56 games (11-45) by any team since 1900 . . .
In the Pirates' 14-4 loss in San Francisco Monday, Pittsburgh’s Jack Suwinski launched two homers into McCovey Cove, becoming the only player besides Bonds to accomplish that twice in one game . . .
Gone but not forgotten: former slugging first basemen Jesus Aguilar and Luke Voit have been designated for assignment by the Oakland A’s and Milwaukee Brewers, respectively.
Leading Off
Las Vegas Doesn’t Need a White Elephant
Tell the A’s: “Pay your own way to stay in or leave Oakland”
By Jeff Kallman
From your ancient history: John McGraw, managing the New York Giants, couldn’t help observing that debt-addled owner Philadelphia Athletics owner Ben Shibe had a white elephant on his hands entering the 1902 season: Shibe defiantly placed a climbing white elephant on the left breast of his team’s uniforms.
Shibe initially fell into debt when he raided the National League for talent. McGraw was distinctly unamused, but his snarky observation was his way of saying Shibe’s spending would tank the Athletics. Well, now. The 1902 A’s, managed by Connie Mack, went 83-53-1 in a 137-game season and won the American League’s second pennant by five games.
What a difference 121 years makes. Today, the descendant Oakland Athletics are the worst team in the Show. As of Tuesday morning, they had a whopping 11-45 won-lost record. It might have been 10-45, except that the A’s played well over their heads on Memorial Day and beat the National League East-leading Atlanta Braves, 7-2. Before that, they had won exactly three of their previous 23 games.
Arise, 1962 Mets. You may well have four months left as the holders of modern baseball’s losing-est season. This year’s A’s may well finish with more than 120 losses. If McGraw thought Shibe’s spending spree would send the 1902 A’s into the tank, tanking doesn’t begin to describe the headless non-investment today’s A’s owner, John Fisher, performs almost headless.
Fisher has been the principal A’s owner since 2005. He has gone from keeping the A’s minimally competitive (2012-14) to maximally moribund (2015-17) to minimally competitive (2018-20) and back to where moribund doesn’t begin to describe it. The too-long-seedy Oakland Coliseum (oops—RingCentral Coliseum) contains small crowds of stubborn A’s fans almost more interested in protesting Fisher’s ten-thumbed ownership than in what the A’s do or don’t do on the field.
What Fisher seeks off the field, of course, is something else entirely. He failed to strong-arm Oakland and its host county into all but handing him a delicious new real- estate prize, with a ballpark included almost coincidentally. Now Fisher now wants to move the A’s to Las Vegas.
With the apparent blessing of baseball commissioner Rob Manfred, Fisher hopes to strong-arm Las Vegas and its host state Nevada into paying almost half or better — for a white elephant. He should be denied. Emphatically.
He has a fan base in Oakland. They simply got fed up with his deconstruction and his shenanigans. The fan bases of baseball’s other tankers have nothing on A’s fans for spiritual exhaustion. But it’s probably a waste of ink to suggest the owners—who may yet meet in June to vote on whether to let the A’s leave Oakland—should think, too, of forcing Fisher to sell the team.
He bought the A’s for $180 million in 2005. They’re worth a reported $1.18 billion today—which, as Sports Illustrated’s Stephanie Apstein has written, is six parts Fisher’s refusal to spend on RingCentral and half a dozen parts his refusal to spend on his team or its brains. (This year, the A’s team payroll is only $17 million higher than Aaron Judge’s 2023 salary.)
Jobs? Well. The Fisher people hope they’ve convinced Nevada lawmakers and Gov. Joseph Lombardo that it’ll mean 8,010 jobs a year. A baseball team’s full time staff actually isn’t a third of that. Full-time staff other than specific sports workers are usually no higher than two hundred, as LVSportsBiz.com reminds us. The “annual” staff will be mostly part time and low wage.
That would be in a not-unattractive, proposed 30,000 seat, partly-retractable roof ballpark that would stand where the Tropicana Hotel & Casino now stands . . . but without much in the way of parking. You guessed it. The A’s and their supporters among Nevada’s grand high muckety-mucks are banking on tourists walking down The Strip to provide most of the A’s audience.
Never mind that Las Vegas (whose non-tourist population is almost half that of the Bronx alone) has baseball in its heart, too. The Las Vegas Aviators, who just so happen to be the A’s Triple-A farm, have been the Pacific Coast League’s top draw for most of their life as the Aviators and in their spanking still-new, privately owned (by the Howard Hughes Corporation) Las Vegas Ballpark.
The Aviators aren’t exactly PCL terrorists, but compared to their Show parent they might as well be the Los Angeles Dodgers. Las Vegas may have baseball in its heart, but Las Vegas may also think to itself: We already have a Triple-A team. Do we need a second one in town, even if it’s the pig lipsticked as a major league team?
Can Nevada’s political class have seen the A’s play lately? Here’s a hint: The Original Mets, formed of the National League’s flotsam and jetsam, sucked . . . with style. They were baseball’s greatest traveling comedy troupe. This year’s A’s are as funny as a drowning man begging for an anchor.
Does Nevada know how these A’s may distort this year’s postseason picture even further than Commissioner Rube Goldberg’s array already distorts championship? As The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal has observed, they could cost the powerhouse American League East two of three wild card entrants. The AL West Astros and Mariners could claim the other two cards by nailing 13-0 season records against the A’s. At 6-0 and 7-0 against them now, respectively, they’re well on the way.
Fair disclosure: I’ve lived in Las Vegas since 2007. Would I love to see a major-league baseball team here? Ask me if I love playing a Gibson guitar. The key, however, is that I’d like to see a real major-league team, paying their own way into town. Nevada should, too.
Owners worth billions have no bloody business strong-arming the public into paying their way. Even those owners who don’t own white elephants of their own breeding.
Jeff Kallman is an IBWAA Life Member who writes Throneberry Fields Forever. He has written for the Society for American Baseball Research, The Hardball Times, Sports-Central, and other publications. He has lived in Las Vegas since 2007, where he plays the guitar and writes music when not writing baseball. He remains a Met fan since the day they were born.
Cleaning Up
Baseball Honors The Memory And Exploits Of Lou Gehrig, A Hero On And Off The Field
By Dan Schlossberg
Lou Gehrig was just 37 when he died from amyothropic lateral sclerosis (ALS) on June 2, 1941. Major League Baseball will salute his legacy before every game played today.
It’s not a milestone anniversary — 82 years have passed — but Gehrig, like Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente, deserves to be remembered, if not saluted.
He simply had more integrity, durability, and devotion to the game than anyone else — with the possible exception of Gehrig contemporary Hank Greenberg. Both were Hall of Fame first basemen in more ways than one but Gehrig has the misfortune of illness ending his career and his life ridiculously prematurely.
Gehrig actually died on the same month and day that he started his consecutive games playing streak in 1923. He played exclusively for the New York Yankees, for whom he won a Triple Crown, hit for the cycle, smashed four home runs in a game, and served as team captain.
The disease that killed him is a degenerative disorder that causes victims to lose motor skills, eroding their ability to walk, talk, eat, or breathe. There is no proven cure, though medical researchers in Israel seem close to discovering one.
BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics, an Israeli bio-med company conducting Phase II clinical trials on ALS patients, claims that some patients treated with a cell therapy called NurOwn have shown dramatic improvement – even walking and talking after the malady had stopped those functions.
Like Gehrig, Senator Jacob Javits, and actor David Niven, most ALS patients die 2-5 years after symptoms begin. Only four per cent last longer than 10 years. The United States has an estimated 25,000 ALS patients.
“Lou Gehrig Day” is designed to raise awareness of ALS and funds for finding a definitive cure. Players will wear red patches and wristbands and individual clubs will mark the day in their home ballparks.
Active players Stephen Piscotty (Athletics) and Sam Hilliard (Braves) have personal connections to the disorder. The former lost his mother to the insidious disease in 2018, the same year the latter learned his father had contracted it. Mike Piscotty, Stephen’s father, is president of the ALS Cure Project and a Lou Gehrig Day committee member.
According to Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, “While ALS has been closely identified with our game since Lou’s legendary carer, the pressing need to find a cure remains. We look forward to honoring all the individuals and families, in baseball and beyond, who have been affected by ALS and hope Lou Gehrig Day advances efforts to defeat this disease.”
Gehrig’s name has lived on through the Lou Gehrig Memorial Award, created in 1955 by Phi Delta Theta, his Columbia University fraternity. It goes annually to the player who best exemplifies the character of the long-time Yankees legend.
Gehrig was one of the game’s brightest stars when he was diagnosed at the Mayo Clinic. On July 4, 1939, when the Yankees held Lou Gehrig Day at Yankee Stadium, he gave a speech that was even more memorable than his Hall of Fame career.
“For the past two weeks, you’ve been reading about a bad break,” he told 61,808 teary fans at the celebrated Bronx ballpark. “Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
His gifts that day included a fishing rod and tackle from his teammates, candlesticks from the New York Giants, and a trophy from the Yankees featuring an eagle on top of a baseball. He even got a DON’T QUIT placard from the visiting Washington Senators.
A Bronx native who spent two years at Columbia before going directly to the Yankees in 1923 – the same year the stadium opened – Gehrig never made much money playing baseball. He got a signing bonus of $1,500 and had a peak salary of $39,000 a year.
Still, he played his heart out. Humble and low-key, especially when contrasted with bombastic teammate Babe Ruth, he produced 493 home runs, 1,995 runs batted in, and 1,888 runs scored on a .340 batting average. Only Ruth and Ted Williams topped his 1.080 lifetime OPS.
The soft-spoken first baseman played in 2,130 consecutive games -– ignoring broken fingers, lumbago, and multiple other aches and pains –- and hit .361 in seven World Series. Gehrig had 185 runs batted in, still an American League record, in 1931 and more than 150 RBI in six other seasons. He even knocked in 500 runs over a three-year span.
Only ALS stopped him.
“It’s a miracle he played at all in 1938,” says Jonathan Eig, author of Luckiest Man: the Life and Death of Lou Gehrig. “I think it’s the greatest achievement in the history of baseball. He had symptoms of ALS throughout the season but still hit .295 with 29 home runs and 114 runs batted in even though his muscles were melting away game by game.”
The first major-leaguer whose number was retired, Gehrig wore No. 4 because he batted fourth, following Ruth in the lineup of a team known as “Murderer’s Row.” His pictures and quotations are all over the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Yankees Museum, the Yogi Berra Museum, and Monument Park.
Modest to a fault, he once said, “I’m just the guy who’s in there every day, the fellow who follows Babe in the batting order. Whether he strikes out or hits a home run, the fans are still talking about him when I come up. If I stood on my head at the plate, nobody would pay any attention.”
Quiet and dignified, Gehrig had to be coaxed to the microphone on the day of his “luckiest man” speech.
“When he gave that speech, it was the first time many of the people in the ballpark heard him speak,” says Pinstripe Empire author Marty Appel. “Radio interviews were not that frequent so people in the ballpark did not realize he had such a strong New York accent.
“He didn’t need the support of Babe Ruth to be a great player – his performance on the field spoke for itself. His speech was a baseball moment that had nothing to do with playing. It was baseball’s Gettysburg Address.”
The record for consecutive games played eventually went to Cal Ripken Jr., who had the benefit of work stoppages that gave me occasional breathers. The night he passed Gehrig, Ripken told the gathered Baltimore fans, “Tonight I stand here, overwhelmed, as my name is linked with the great and courageous Lou Gehrig. I’m truly humbled to have our names spoken in the same breath.”
Former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ grew up in Passaic, went to Syracuse, and wrote more than 40 baseball books. E.mail him at ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia
Because his family was poor, Lou Gehrig held part-time jobs in butcher shops, grocery stores, and at Columbia University’s Sigma Nu Theta fraternity, where he was a waiter and dishwasher while his mother Christina was a housekeeper . . .
Although a New York Giants scout arranged a 1921 tryout for Gehrig, feisty manager John McGraw told his coaches to get the rookie off the field, yelling, “I’ve got enough lousy players without another one showing up” . . .
Teamed with fellow Yankee Babe Ruth, Gehrig earned $2,000 more on a postseason barnstorming tour in 1925 than he did during the whole season . . .
Gehrig hit a game-winning grand slam for Manhattan Commerce High School against Chicago’s Lane Tech High in Wrigley Field (then called Cubs Park) before he turned pro . . .
McGraw never took his New York Giants to Cuba for spring training even though he often went there on vacation. “Too many women, too much drinking, too much gambling, and the climate is much too hot,” he explained.
Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Benjamin Chase [gopherben@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.