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PaperclipPerfector
3d ago
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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My Life Measured in Captains of the New York Yankees
— The Pre-Socratics: The line of Yankee Captains starts in the dim prehistory of the pre-Ruth era, many of them nondescript players on nondescript teams before Babe Ruth came and changed baseball forever. There’s even some archivists who dispute over whether some players who were Captains of the Yankees who aren’t officially recognized by the team. Hal Chase and Roger Peckinpaugh are the first according to the Yankees’ official list, two players I’ve vaguely heard of, though historians claim to have found newspaper clippings referring to Clark Griffith and Kid Elberfield as Captains, but I have no idea who those players were. After Babe Ruth was purchased, and built the team and the House that Ruth Built, he was very briefly made Captain, but he didn’t even last a season. The Bambino, true to his character, dove into the stands to fistfight a heckler, and was deposed as a result. Everett Scott would succeed him for three years. Then would come the man who defined the role so well he was almost the Last Captain…
— The Iron Horse: Lou Gehrig is nearly unique among all sports legends across all fields, in that he’s a man whose incredible Greatness at baseball is often overshadowed in public memory by his tremendous Goodness as a person. Gehrig was top 20 in WAR all time by Baseball Reference, he hit .340 across his career, he ended just a few weeks of an incurable disease from 500 home runs and 2000 RBIs. His 162 games average across his career were 8.5WAR, 113 walks, 37 home runs, and 149 RBIs; his career OPS+ was 179, he was 79% better than an average hitter. He was the cleanup hitter for Ruth on the Murderer’s Row lineups, providing the protection that let Ruth hit more home runs than many whole teams. If he had been a jerk, he’d still an inner circle Hall of Famer. But he was a hero even more as a man than as a baseball player. The Iron Horse, because he played in 2,130 consecutive games, a record which would stand for 56 years*, and would only be broken by Cal Ripken Jr. and then only with the help of a timely blackout. The movie made out of his life, Pride of the Yankees released in 1942, would open with a title card reading:
My wife would bawl when we watched the movie together, because she didn’t realize he was going to die. I said “Darling, he’s Lou Gehrig, he dies of Lou Gehrig’s disease, he gives the “Luckiest Man in the World speech” and she wailed “YES BUT I DIDN’T KNOW IT HAPPENED RIGHT AWAY!” I’ll reprint the text of his speech here:
A leader on the field and off. Jonathan Eig wrote in the WSJ, when talking about his work as a biographer and how you deal with finding out horrible things about great men. Eig talked about dealing with how to report MLK’s philandering, Ali’s controversies, two men who were in many ways secular saints of the 20th century. And then he talked about researching Gehrig, and he never found any controversy, except that maybe he loved his mother too much. But just before the book went to press, some never before published letters came to his attention, and he had a knot in his stomach as he opened them…but there was nothing, just more of Columbia alum Lou Gehrig, momma’s boy.
I of course never saw Gehrig play, neither had anyone I knew. I’m just barely old enough to have said hello and shaken Yogi Berra’s hand at a gas station in New Jersey. Gehrig was a dim legend of ancient days, but he was a symbol of how a man should be. Show up every day, do your job, love your family, do what you need to do for your teammates, and when it’s time to move on, take it with a smile on your face.
Gehrig was so Great, and so Good, that Joe McCarthy would declare that there would never be another Captain of the Yankees. Dimaggio, Mantle, Berra, none were named Captain. And McCarthy's word would hold for 30 years.
— The Middle Period: George Steinbrenner, in his grasping overwrought Boss era, would reinstate the role with Thurman Munson. After Munson’s untimely death in an airplane accident, it would pass to Graig Nettles, then to co-captains Willie Randolph and Ron Guidry. These were names I knew, players that older guys at the Yankees Fan Club had seen play, but who I never saw myself. Parts of Yankees lore, sure, but not part of the peak periods. I would be born during the reign of the next Captain...
— The One Who Never Reached the Promised Land: Don Mattingly was the bright spot of a mediocre series of Yankees teams. He would hit .307 over his career, winning MVP in 1985, but his bittersweet ultimate honor is that (as of now) he is the only player in New York Yankees history to have his number (23) retired without having won a World Series. I probably watched him play, but I don’t remember it if I did: he retired in 1995, when I was still too young to really watch or remember a baseball game. Donnie Baseball is the first Captain that is part of my life, but distantly, like an uncle who died young. Friends and relatives older than me would talk about how great he was, reporters would write about his potential, but I never saw him myself, and he never really made it, never won the Last Game of the Season. He would retire the year before the next golden age of the Yankees would begin with the debut of his successor as Captain. The essential tragedy of Donnie Baseball is that if he had shifted his career by just a few years, he would have been a Champion, but some things can’t be helped. I would always hear of him in those terms, as a sad figure, who never got what he deserved. Contrasted to...
— The Captain: Derek Jeter would become a full time player in 1996, the same year that I would become conscious enough of the world to really follow baseball, he would win Rookie of the Year and the Yankees would win the first of five World Series rings over the course of his career. I naturally idolized Jeter. My golf swing still has a vicious slice off the tee, because I modeled by baseball swing off of Jeter’s famous “inside out” swing. Jeter aimed at the short porch in the right field of Yankees Stadium; in little league I simply knew that every team hid their worst fielders in right field and that if I hit it dead to the right fielder I had a high chance of reaching base on an error. Jeter is the modern exemplar of a player who is so overrated that he became underrated: he hit a lifetime .310/.377/.440 as a shortstop, for an OPS+ of 116. He had 3,000 hits (6th all time), and lead the league in hits as late as 2012. His poor range at shortstop was the object of sneering by stats nerds by the end of his career, but the bat he brought to the position was valuable, and in the end by bWAR he’s a top-100 player and an easy Hall of Fame choice. But more than that, growing up as a kid, Derek Jeter was so incredibly cool. He was the impossibly amazing older brother that you wanted to be, in every way. He was great on the field and off. He was nice. He did everything for the team to win: he would say over and over that the only record he cared about chasing was Yogi Berra’s ten World Series rings. He dated beautiful women, but was never known as a whoremonger. Captain Clutch, Mr. November, he competed with a vicious, self-sacrificing will to win; but he was never bitter or talked trash, he was friends with his rivals. As his career progressed and I grew up, I was aware of the less savory aspects of his persona, the way the mask had eaten the face, but as a kid I read and re-read his authorized autobiography, I still remember anecdotes from it. He would refuse to move off his iconic shortstop position when the team acquired Alex Rodriguez, who was a better shortstop, a widely criticized move. A-Rod and Jeter would have a certain Ruth-Gehrig style relationship: A-Rod the hyper talented all-timer with a bad attitude, Jeter the classy and sportsmanlike complement.The Captain Giftbasket stories were mildly hilarious. And he declined with the last of those 2000s Furious George teams. He would of course be one of the Core Four alongside Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettite; the four players who bridged the 1996-2003 dynasty Yankees and their later 2009 World Series win. To be a team leader for an era of greatness like that is a singular accomplishment. People criticized the Yankees for overpaying him and him for being overpaid in his later years, but I watched those teams: they weren’t Derek Jeter’s salary or lineup spot from competing, and I watched in part to see him play. I was watching with my now-wife when he blew out his calf in 2013, a sad decline. But he would finish his retirement-tour 2014 season as only he could: he ripped an RBI single with that beautiful swing, and got a standing ovation from the Fenway Park crowd.** His retirement would coincide with my graduation from undergrad, my passage from a child into a man. I looked up to Jeter, now he was gone. It was my time.
— All Rise: Aaron Judge was the first star player for the New York Yankees that I followed from before he was even drafted. The Yankees, coming off a scuffling year in 2011 where they won division with an aging team held together with duct tape and pixie dust, had maneuvered to get three first round picks that year at 26, 32, and 33. Eric Jagielo, picked at 26, would never make the majors and now works in finance in Denver. Ian Clarkin, taken at 33, never pitched in The Show and today plays indie ball for the Cleburne Railroaders. But Aaron Judge, taken at 32, is a multiple time MVP, a surefire Hall of Famer, one of the faces of the sport, the leader of the Yankees from the time he debuted. You just can’t predict baseball Suzyn.
I read about Judge on Mike Axisa’s old blog RiverAveBlues, months before the draft. Mike would profile players coming into the draft who might draw the Yankees attention, and wrote an article pointing to this huge kid from California, who would be the tallest position player of all time if he made the bigs, a power hitting centerfielder with great intangibles. Reading it, I wanted the Yankees to pick him up. Not for any good reason, man I didn’t know shit, but a giant herculean centerfielder just seemed cool. He was a lottery ticket: he’d probably never figure out the high strikeouts with a strike zone larger than anyone’s and a long swing path. But it’s way more fun to dream on that size and power turning into a star than to draft a left-hander who profiles as a high likelihood innings eater back of the rotation starter. I was working out in my parents’ basement, home for the summer from undergrad, when Judge was drafted, watching the draft on MLB Network on cable. I had just taken up lifting, trying to get into shape for the next year’s crew season. Thrilled to see them take the big fella I had read about, I stopped my set of deadlifts and texted all my friends who were fellow fans.
My relationship with Aaron Judge after that was rather like the way you follow the rise of a band that you saw play to twelve people at a bar before they hit it big, or a writer or podcaster you knew when he was just another commenter. Largely, I read RiverAveBlues Down on the Farm articles summarizing minor league outcomes. Judge was not a guy who ripped through the minors, despite being drafted out of college. He debuted in the minors in 2013 after the draft, and wouldn’t reach the majors until a cup of coffee in 2016, and wouldn’t full graduate until 2017. Following his rise, mostly in the form of box scores, was a process of slowly building excitement. The lottery ticket might pay off. But no one imagined who he would be when he reached the majors, even the most optimistic Yankees fans wouldn’t have guessed.
He burst onto the scene in 2017, winning Rookie of the Year, the Home Run Derby at the All Star Game, setting a record for hardest hit ball of the Statcast era, set a since broken rookie HR record, and had the most walks by a rookie since Ted Williams. He would have won MVP if the Astros hadn’t cheated. Judge was a big revelation for the team, and has been the team’s heart ever since. His Baseball Reference page is filled with black ink: he’s lead the league in bWAR twice, in runs twice, in HRs and BBs three times. He’s won MVP twice, and this season he looks on pace to win it again barring injury. For 162 he averages 8.8bWAR and 51 HRs. A total superstar.
And in all this Judge has been my peer, we’re the exact same age. He was drafted out of college when I was in college. He reached the big leagues when I entered the work force. And as he declines physically, so will I. But not for now, for now I can look at Aaron Judge and be inspired to push myself harder than ever, we still have some good years left in us.
It’s early yet, but so far this is his best season of his career, maybe one of the best seasons ever on the off chance he should keep it up. We’re a little past the 1/3 mark of the season, and he is flirting with hitting .400, with a .500 OBP, and his SLG would make a decent OPS. He’s got a 244 OPS+, he’s better than two other players by value. Fangraphs gives him a 42% chance of walking away with a Triple Crown at the end of the year, which translates to a near certainty of a third MVP. award. He probably won’t hit .400, he’ll hit a slump in the dog days of summer, but he has a very good chance of an all-time-great season. On top of all that, another ten-win season translates to pushing his career total from “probably makes the Hall of Fame eventually on the quality of his peak seasons” to “definitely makes the hall of fame on the strength of his overall resume.” If you figure an aging curve on the aggressive side, of 1war a year rather than the typical .5war, he still might have eight more years of average MLB player left in him, which would put him potentially in the 80 win range, a top-100 player of all time. For right now, we’re having the best years of our lives, and we’ve still got years left to go, we can still hang with the young bucks.
And in addition to all that black ink, Judge is a good guy. He’s friendly, he’s aww shucks, he’s a gentle giant, he’s everything you want your star to be. He was adopted as an infant by two school teachers, he didn’t even know he was adopted (or black) until he was in middle school. He publicly talks about how much he loves his adoptive family and advocates for adoption, and the greatest argument in favor of cross-racial adoption. He’s a great teammate, unlike Jeter when the team traded for another RF in Juan Soto last year he was willing to move to center, a position he hadn’t played since college, to get Soto’s bat in the lineup. And he would play CF every day and win MVP!
Sadly, last year with Juan Soto might have been Judge’s best chance to avoid Mattingly’s fate as a team legend who never wins it all. The Yankees finally won a pennant for the first time with Judge, but would lose in the fall classic to the Dodgers and Judge’s friendly rival for Face of MLB Shoei Ohtani***. If they had just found a league average first baseman, like Ben Rice who has broken out this year but wasn’t trusted last year at first base, and a decent third baseman, they might have won it all. This year the team is still good, still odds on favorites in the division, but Gerrit Cole is out for the year, and without an ace I just don’t think they have it. Aaron Judge might never win a ring, and if he does it may be with a whole new team around him lead by new kids who haven’t even debuted yet, one on which he is more role player and eminence grise than superstar. But regardless, he’s the kind of player that every team will honor when he comes to their stadium for the last time. One day he’ll take his retirement tour season, and I’ll make sure to get a ticket, because it’ll be the day I really start being old.
— The Little Brother: When he retires, though, I think he’ll pass the role of captain directly to his successor, already on the team: Anthony Volpe. Why Tony Fox? Well, it’s a hopeful projection, but he seems to have figured out his bat this year for a cool 116 OPS+, and his fielding is so slick that he put up back to back 3war seasons even when his bat was weak. He’s a good kid, a drafted Yankee. Like Jeter and Judge, he’s biracial, half Filipino and half Italian. He loves his mother, like Jeter and Judge and Gehrig. He’s a high character guy. But watching him, he’s not a peer like Judge or an Idol like Jeter or a legend like Lou; he’s like a little brother made good. He’s not The Man, he’s The Kid. I watch him with the pride of an elder, the young fella made good.
— The Future: And somewhere in the Dominican Republic, there’s some 13 year old who is already freakishly fast and freakishly strong. He’s got a sweet left handed swing despite being a natural righty, and he plays shortstop though the scouts already think he’ll thicken up and play third base by the time he’s 20. He can’t be signed to a contract for years yet, but his trainer already has a wink-and-a-handshake agreement with the Yankees scouts in the DR that he’ll sign with the Yankees the moment he can. Everyone at the complex is amazed not just at his talent, but at his brains, at his determination, at his baseball IQ. He watches film, what a world where kids can do that in the DR, to get better. He focuses on technique. And like the young hidden Cyrus the Great, his friends look to him as a natural leader. He’s in charge, he makes sure his teammates are focused, that they do their work, that they are all in to win. And fifteen years from now, he’ll be in the Bronx aiming for the short porch. He’ll be young enough that, chronologically, he could be my son. And with any luck, I’ll be able to take my son to the game and point to him and hand my son the binoculars and say, look at him, that’s what you want to be like when you play, that’s focus and sportsmanship and the will to win, that’s The Captain.
*Gehrig’s record would only be broken by Cal Ripken Jr. and then only with the help of a timely blackout. TLDR: One game in the middle of Ripken’s streak was canceled due to electrical issues. Rumor has it that Ripken told the team he couldn’t play that day, because he had caught Kevin Costner canoodling with his (Ripken’s) wife, and the ensuing fight had injured Cal both physically and emotionally. So maybe Gehrig’s record still stands, if Mike Pence has the courage to do the right thing!
**Clay Buccholz, that greasy prick, would later claim that he fed Jeter that pitch so Jeets could get a great moment to finish his career. Idiot, if you’re going to do it, you have to never speak about it again. Admitting makes you look petty and stupid.
***Ohtani’s career arc is fascinating to me as a counterpart to his one-time teammate Mike Trout. Trout was the good guy who resigned with the Angels early, he’s only made the playoffs once despite being the best player in baseball for so long he got fewer MVPs than he deserved out of boredom. Ohtani chased money to the crosstown rival Dodgers, and looks to be winning multiple rings. But what about the fucking Angles? They had two all-time talents on league-minimum contracts in Trout and Ohtani, and never put together a consistent winner around them. What a tremendous failure.
I saw this just before I left work yesterday, and it inspired me to look up who the best players for the Pirates were during their memorable 20 years of losing seasons. The Dave Littlefield era (2001–2007) was particularly interesting, because while his predecessor and successor both tore the team completely down for a rebuild (the latter of which was successful), Littlefield seemed convinced that, following a failed rebuild, the team was just one or two tweaks away from success. They had some good players during those years, but also a lot of bad luck, and the whole time was marred by home-grown talent who would have a few good seasons before fizzling (Jason Bay, Oliver Perez), free agent acquisitions or trades who wouldn't live up to expectations (Matt Morris, Sean Casey), and players who were mediocre here but found success on other teams (Aramis Ramirez, Jose Bautista). So even if you went into the season knowing they were going to be bad, there was always something to at least make you think they had an outside shot of having a winning season, or maybe even at least still having a realistic chance at a winning season after the All-Star break.
So going through those old rosters gave me a bittersweet mix of nostalgia and regret, and then I came across a name that got me pissed off heading into the weekend: Cesar Izturis. I had totally forgotten that he had played for the Pirates briefly in 2007, at the tail end of the Littlefield era. But it wasn't what he did (or didn't do) in his 45 games with the Pirates that pissed me off. It's what he did (or didn't do) with the Dodgers in 2004. I have a theory that when it comes to Gold Gloves, unless there's an obvious "defensive wizard" who wins every year, the award is usually given to a good defensive player on a prominent team. In the case of shortstops and catchers, that player' offensive performance usually contributes way more than it should (see Derek Jeter's five Gold Gloves, which he wouldn't have won if he were on any team other than the Yankees, and which he wouldn't have won as a Yankee if he hit like a typical shortstop).
There was no natural Gold Glove shortstop in the National League in the 2000s, so in 2004 they gave it to Izturis because he hit .288 on the first-place Dodgers. Jack Wilson was the Pirates shortstop during that era, and he was one of the best in the game. Accordingly, he had one of the biggest contracts on the notoriously cheap Pirates, and as Littlefield's days were obviously numbered after the Matt Morris debacle (which itself only happened because his days were obviously numbered and he needed to make a big move), they were looking to cut salary. Izturis was a Gold Glove shortstop who was younger than Wilson and had a club option on his contract. He had also played under manager Jim Tracy while in Los Angeles. So they quietly traded for Izturis, the idea apparently being that they could start him and trade Wilson, giving the next GM some salary relief and some prospects. Except Izturis wasn't qualified to hold Wilson's jock strap, and the Bucs kept Wilson and declined the option on Izturis.
To be fair, Izturis's star had started to fade long before he arrived in Pittsburgh, and his Gold Glove season seems like an anomaly. But he hing around the league for over a decade, so he couldn't have been that bad, and would be an every day starter after that, and while his bating average never recovered, I doubt his defense was much worse. Jack Wilson was better in every defensive statistical category in 2004, and everyone who watched the Pirates regularly knew that he would have at least won a few Gold Gloves had he played for a better team. To add insult to injury, he was also much better offensively than Izturis ever was, batting .308 in 2004. He should have easily won the Gold Glove that year, and I'm still pissed off about that one.
Gold Gloves have always been the worst of the classic baseball awards. While they've generally not been awarded to true butchers, Jeets aside, they've historically been handed out more on offensive measurables than on defensive ones.
It's such a shame the pirates have been unable to put together a real team in so long. The gorgeous stadium alone should make it work. One of the best stadiums and one of the worst teams.
It's funny the grudges you have as a fan. The biggest hatreds I have are for players who play poorly for my team, then play well for a rival. Al Horford, oh boy. JA Happ. It's the random ones I really have a deep hatred for.
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