SEN. RICK SANTORUM V. SEN. BOB CASEY JR. – NOT MUCH DIFFERENCE ON WOMEN’S ISSUES AT ALL
February 23, 2012
Rather than engaging in ad hominem attacks on Sen. Santorum’s religion or on the Catholic Church, it behooves all of us to instead analyze the politics and electorate of Pennsylvania. Ad hominem attacks are an abusive form of argument; proper arguments should address the merits of an opponent’s position, and refute the merits thereof, rather than attacking either the person, or a straw man, e.g. a caricature of the person. Abusive argumentation has long been recognized, since the time of Aristotle, as a form of FALLACY, not entitled to serious logical consideration by rational minds. Consequently, let us engage in some rational discourse on the merits of the question at hand and cease from ABUSIVE and FALLACIOUS ARGUMENTATION techniques such as ad hominem attacks and attacking a straw man.
Sen. Arlen Specter of PA
Let us turn, then, to the Politics of Pennsylvania (“PA”), and why it produces such conservative politics and politicians, especially conservative male politicians, and particularly conservative male catholic politicians recently. It was for many years a bastion of moderate Republicanism, and indeed, until the 1930s, Philadelphia and the Union League were synonymous with the post-Civil War consensus that the Republican Party was the proper party for all educated persons to vote for in the Northeast. Indeed, the city was so identified with core national Republican values that the Athletics even adopted an elephant as their team logo in the early 1900s, a symbol retained to this day by the Oakland Athletics, though it is dubious they know what Connie Mack was thinking when he adopted the symbol 111 years ago.
This consensus began to break down after the Great Depression and FDR, though it lingered on for many years as the so-called “Rockefeller-Eisenhower-Nixon” wing of the party, which was Northeast and moderate, and bipartisan with the Democrats on foreign policy, social security, fiscal & monetary policy and many other fundamental issues. This consensus of course began to break down with the emergence of the Goldwater faction in 1964, which was opposed by the Scranton faction in 1964 (again led from PA), leading to Nixon re-assuming the reigns in 1968 and 1972. With Nixon’s resignation in 1974, Ford took over and Rockefeller became VP, leading to a bitter fight between the Reagan and Ford wings of the party in 1976, and another bitter fight between the Bush and Reagan wings in 1980, finally emerging in victory both in nomination and election for the conservative wing of the Republican Party in 1980 for Reagan and the conservatives. A new day had dawned in America. But to some degree, the bipartisan consensus which had existed since FDR between the Democrats and the moderate Republicans was now endangered.
Nowhere was this tension more dramatically played out the past forty years than in PA. PA was represented until 1991 by two stalwart moderate Republicans–Sen. Arlen Specter, a bipartisan member of the Warren Commission, and Sen. John Heinz, a moderate Republican loyal to the elderly and to Social Security. These two Senators were cornerstones of what was, up to that point, a still very strong Northeastern moderate wing of the Republican party. Both were solidly dedicated to bipartisanship, courtesy, gentlemanly behavior and getting things done on the Senate floor notwithstanding partisan differences.
This began to unravel slowly with the sudden airplane death in 1991 of Sen. John Heinz.
The Late Sen. John Heinz of PA
A sudden election was called in 1991 and an unknown political consultant was brought in from the South named James Carville to manage the campaign of an enormous
PA Sen. Harris Wofford with President John F. Kennedy in early 1960s
underdog, former University President and JFK kitchen cabinet member Harris Wofford, who was to stand election against former Governor Richard “Dick” Thornburgh. At
Gov. Dick Thornburgh visits Centralia PA to inspect its ongoing Mine Fires in the 1980s
the time, Thornburgh had something like a fifty point lead in the polls, and tons of money.
James Carville - Wofford's 1991 PA Political Consultant
Sen. Heinz’ widow Teresa Heinz, now heiress in part to the Heinz catsup fortune, would then go on to marry Mass. Sen. John Kerry, in effect making him an instant near-billionaire and projecting him to the front rank of presidential contenders for 2004. This nearly changed U.S. history, but Kerry’s bid failed. Looking back, it is all too likely that a John Heinz bid for President would ultimately have succeeded in the long run just where Kerry failed–he had the looks, the charm and the moderate views to win.
Sen & Mrs. John & Teresa Heinz prior to his untimely death in 1991
This might have changed the entire course of the Republican Party and US History.
Sen & Mrs. John Kerry & Teresa Heinz Kerry; Her Money Inherited from John Heinz's Death in 1991 Nearly Made Kerry President in 2004
Returning to the 1991 election, Carville made universal health care an issue, and Wofford shocked the nation by defeating Thornburgh, becoming the first Democratic Senator from PA in decades. At the same time, Carville’s work came to the attention of a bright young Governor from Arkansas with Presidential aspirations–one William Jefferson Clinton. Carville’s conjunction with Clinton, and with George Stephanopoulos, on the 1992 campaign, documented in THE WAR ROOM documentary film, is now legendary, but all of this began in PA with Carville and Wofford.
It was during the Wofford campaign in 1991 that Carville legendarily quipped that “between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was Alabama in between,” referring to the fact that Pennsylvanians in all portions of the state except for Philadelphia & Allegheny county regions were pro-gun, pro-life, pro-death penalty, exceptionally elderly (the oldest voting population in the USA outside of Florida) and very church-going, as well as being one of the most demographically Catholic and ethnic voting populations. In addition, PA has the lowest % of college educated persons of any state in the Northeast corridor–it is the prototypical location of high school educated union card carrying labor, and many of those voters were either Nixon Republicans or Reagan Democrats, but definitely not liberal Democrats. Except of course for the two large cities, and even there, most of the male voters care more about football than about politics.
In 2008 Hilary Clinton carried nearly every county of PA v. Obama and won the PA Primary by running to the right of Obama
Fast forward to 1994. The Clinton Administration has badly failed on its health care initiative, and Sen. Wofford has to stand re-election in his own right. This time, he is the heavy favorite to win, but Carville is not working on the campaign. Wofford is facing an unknown challenger–Congressman Rick Santorum. No one, absolutely no one, is giving Santorum a chance of winning. In fact, Santorum is given less chance of winning than Wofford was given in 1991.
What happens next shocks not only the nation, but PA as a whole. Not only does the Republican Party and the Contract with America sweep the midterm elections in 1994, but Santorum runs unexpectedly strongly and defeats Wofford narrowly to win election to the United States Senate.
Part of the problem with Sen. Wofford is that he is intellectual, aloof and takes re-election for granted, whereas Santorum is hard-working, engaged, personable and likeable. The rest of the problem is that Santorum is pro-life, pro-gun, pro-death penalty, and a church-going fellow, whereas Sen. Wofford is a Northeast liberal who is none of these things–consequently it is Santorum who fits the mold of what PA voters want in their candidate (except for Pittsburgh and Philadelphia). However, since Santorum is FROM PITTSBURGH, the Western Part of the State votes for Santorum, especially as Wofford is from the Eastern Part of the State, thus negating any liberal sentiment emanating from Allegheny County.
Sen. Santorum wins re-election in 2000, and actually runs better in PA than does Pres. Bush, who loses the national popular vote as well as the popular vote and electoral vote in PA, while Santorum wins his election in PA, in effect demonstrating that Santorum as of 2000 is more popular than President Bush.
Now we fast forward to 2006, and to the election Santorum lost for Senate by a considerable margin, to Sen. Bob Casey, Jr.
Let’s examine why he lost this election.
First, Bob Casey, Jr. was and is the son of a popular, two term Governor of PA who was known throughout the state. Second, Bob Casey, Jr. was from a prominent Irish-Catholic political family as well-known in PA as the Kennedys’ are known in Massachusetts and nationally. According to wikipedia:
“Casey was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, one of eight children of Ellen (née Harding) and Bob Casey, the 42nd governor of Pennsylvania. He is of Irish descent on both his mother’s[citation needed]and father’s side. Casey played basketball and graduated from Scranton Preparatory School in 1978. Following in his father’s footsteps, he graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1982, and received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America in 1988. Between both college and law school, Casey served as a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and spent a year teaching 5th grade and coaching basketball at the Gesu School in inner city Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Casey practiced law in Scranton from 1991 until 1996.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Casey,_Jr.
This is the most perfect Jesuit, Irish-Catholic resume you could possibly have for running for office in PA–Scranton Prep, Holy Cross, Catholic University, the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and a year teaching at an inner city catholic mission school in Philadelphia. Sen. Casey is just the most perfect catholic prepster ever.
Next, Casey is pro-gun, pro-life, pro-death penalty, and as we see above, a church-going catholic just like Santorum–in fact, he’s Irish-Catholic, as opposed to Italian-Catholic, which in PA, is a real advantage politically, just as it is in Massachusetts and nationally.
Consequently, the same wedge issues that HELPED Santorum win in 1994 and 2000–the issues that appealed to the “Alabama” parts of PA that are pro-gun, pro-life, pro-death penalty, and church-going and conservative on social issues–were of no use running against Bob Casey, Jr. because Casey, if anything, ran to the right of Santorum on all those issues. As noted by Casey’s wiki bio:
“In the Democratic primary, Casey faced two Democrats with more liberal viewpoints: college professor Chuck Pennacchio and pension lawyer Alan Sandals. Both argued that Casey’s views on abortion and other social issues were too conservative for most Pennsylvania Democrats. However, Casey easily defeated both challengers in the May 16 primary, receiving 85% of the vote….Abortion….Casey, like his father did, identifies as pro-life. He has publicly stated his support for overturning Roe v. Wade.[29] From Casey’s election until Specter’s party switch in April 2009, Pennsylvania had the distinction of being represented in the Senate by a self-identified pro-life Democrat and a pro-choice Republican (Arlen Specter). He supports the Pregnant Women Support Act,[30] legislation that grew out of Democrats for Life of America‘s 95-10 Initiative. The Initiative and the Pregnant Women Support Act seek to reduce the abortion rate by providing support to women in unplanned pregnancies. He expressed support for the confirmation of both John Roberts[31] and Samuel Alito[32] for seats on the Supreme Court of the United States; these judges are believed to be in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade. Casey also opposes the funding of embryonic stem-cell research.[33] However, Casey voted against barring HHS grants to organizations that provide abortion services, though such services may often not be central to the organization’s chief purpose.[34] Casey also supports over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception,[35] and has voted to overturn the Mexico City policy, which bars the issuance of federal funds to overseas organizations that perform or refer for abortions.[36] The authenticity of Casey’s pro-life commitment has been questioned by some prolife sources.[36][37] In January 2010, a writer for CBN wrote, “I wouldn’t want to be Senator Bob Casey right about now. He is coming under enormous pressure from pro-life groups because they say the ‘Pro-life’ Democratic Senator has not stood strong on the abortion issue during the current healthcare debate.” Casey, according to the CBN writer, had recently gotten “an earful and then some from pro-lifers during a press conference held at the Pennsylvania Capitol.”[38] ….”
Id. Clearly, Casey ran to the RIGHT of both of his Democratic primary opponents, and then ran to the RIGHT of Santorum in the general election on the social issues, not to the LEFT as his past opponents had done. Casey was like the Democratic Santorum–only smarter, more conservative, more polished, and a better version, and even more socially conservative and catholic than Santorum was. Casey ran to the RIGHT of Santorum on the social issues, but to the LEFT of Santorum on the bread and butter, economic and labor issues.
This makes Casey’s election to the US Senate in 2006 very unique among all of the elections in 2006, even though it is clear that 2006 generally trended Democratic and it is pretty likely that Santorum faced an uphill battle in any event even if Casey had run as a traditional liberal. But Casey was no traditional liberal. No one on the editorial staff of the Huffington Post or the New York Times would endorse him for national office if they truly understood either his positions, or the positions of the PA electorate. In truth, the PA electorate holds positions at variance with the Northeast liberal elite and the West Coast elite, excepting Philadelphia, State College and Pittsburgh.
The results of Casey’s strategies were very clear; he ran well to the right of Santorum on social issues, but ran as a Democrat on union and bread and butter economic issues, while still remaining pro-gun, pro-death penalty, pro-life, pro-church, anti-abortion, anti-contraception, and pro-adoption.
In short, there isn’t a bucket’s worth of warm spit’s difference between these two candidates on women’s issues at all. In fact, PA has NEVER elected a women to the United States Senate. Ever. Not even close to ever.
Only two women have even been nominated to run for US Senate in PA History and both have lost, one back in 1964, and more recently Lynn Yeakel, who lost a relatively close race to incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter following the Anita Hill hearings in the 1990s, but still she lost and then rapidly faded from sight and power.
PA is clearly not a state conducive either to women’s issues or to women running for office. PA has never had a female governor, a female senator and only rarely has it had female congresspersons. According to the Huffington Post, as of 2009, there were only two women in its entire Congressional Delegation. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/senate-guru/pa-sen-the-potential-demo_b_187357.html. It is astonishing how limited women are in political power in PA.
PA is well to the right of NJ, NY, DE and all the other northeastern states with regards to women’s issues and specifically women’s reproductive health issues. The state legislature is overwhelmingly dominated by men, especially religious and catholic men, and the men who serve there are openly sexist and demeaning towards women who serve in the legislature and create what is in effect a hostile work environment for women who are elected and choose to serve their constituents there. Recently, one of the houses of the PA Legislature voted 2012 “The Year of the Bible” by nearly unanimous resolution, while also simultaneously voting to cut student financial aid and aid to all state universities by more than one-third in the very same session that they also authorized tens of millions of dollars to hire replacement football coaches to take over for Joe Paterno at Penn State. Apparently male legislators have their priorities in PA. And first rate Division I football in Happy Valley is really far higher of a priority than education for the poor or the middle class, apparently.
Sad to say, often the same holds true in many of the rural county courtrooms as well as many of the appellate courts, although there at least in the past few years, some progress has been made. However, in the major law firms of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, men hold by far the reins of power and women simply do not have any share of either the partner proceeds or the political shares of power that lead to business and partner revenues.
In short, it is a boy’s club, and often, a man’s only club in PA, notwithstanding the lip service paid to equality and opportunity. Things in PA are NOTHING like NYC or Boston or DC. They are backwards by at least twenty to forty years. Many of the female partners who do make it in Philly prefer working over in New Jersey or up in NYC whenever possible–they find PA courts and clients to be very stifling and sexist in the extreme, and in any case most of the business is elsewhere.
Perhaps the reader imagines this is exaggeration, or opinion? Let us introduce some evidence!
This is an actual example of tactices used against a female candidate for office in Allentown PA reported in the Huffington Post which occurred in 2006 and again in 2008:
“When she ran for mayor of Allentown, PA in 2001, Siobhan “Sam” Bennett was already well-known in her hometown. A former PTA president, she was a pillar of the community, having founded, led, or served on the boards of various civic organizations. So she was completely taken aback by what happened during her first stump speech as a mayoral candidate. Standing before a room full of men, she began to deliver her remarks when the chair of the meeting interrupted her with a totally bizarre and inappropriate request: “Sam, I want to ask a question all the men in this room have been dying to ask you: Just what are your measurements?”
As Bennett wrote in the Huffington Post:
I was in disbelief. And if this wasn’t bad enough, a reporter who witnessed this unabashed display of sexism wrote an article about that stump speech–and didn’t even mention the incident.Unfortunately, that experience was only a hint of what would come my way….
The Opposition’s Vehemence
What came her way when she ran for Congress in 2008 was far worse. Bennett was facing a possible challenger in Pennsylvania State Senator Lisa Boscola, and Boscola’s chief of staff, Bernie Kieklak, was well known in political circles for posting no-holds-barred commentary in local blogs. The remarks he let fly about Bennett at one online site are indicative of the level of sexism and misogyny many women candidates face.
To convey the intensity of Kieklak’s over-the-top sexism regarding Bennett and his extreme vulgarity, his comments are reproduced in their entirety below with minimal censorship: Sammy Bennett is a phony political w_____e who gives good h_____d and makes cheap, blatant political opportunists look like Mother F***ing Teresa. Even her p___y is made of plastic.” [sic] [offensive language edited].”
Truly shocking, abusive behavior towards a female politician. But run of the mill for PA, sad to say. Welcome to the training grounds of Sens. Santorum, Casey et al.
In short, to be successful in politics as a female in PA, you have to be not twice as good, not three times as good, but about ten times as good as a man, and have a hide made of armor plated kevlar. Morever, many notable male politicians (including a prominent past governor) are well-known for their womanizing and aggrandizing tactics towards females, which can most generously be characterized as “Clintonesque”. Even though these matters have been reported, still they go on.
This is the environment from which both Sens. Santorum and Casey have emerged and from which they ran for office.
Here was the result of Sen. Casey’s running to the right of Sen. Santorum on Social Issues according to Sen. Casey’s wiki bio:
“On election night, Casey won the race with 59% of the vote, compared to 41% for incumbent Senator Rick Santorum. Casey’s margin of victory was the highest ever for a Democrat running for the United States Senate in Pennsylvania.[11]Casey’s 17.4-point victory margin was the largest victory margin for a challenger to an incumbent Senator since James Abdnor unseated George McGovern by 18.8 points in 1980.”
Id. However, the bio goes on to note that as Casey’s re-election approaches this year, he is beginning to distance himself openly from President Obama again in order to appeal to the conservative PA electorate, particularly with his blue-collar base in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton (Luzerne & Lackawanna Counties) who are very upset with the President’s performance on economic issues:
“Casey is up for re-election in 2012, and has stated that he intends to seek a second term in the Senate.[12][13] His re-election prospects are uncertain. Observers have noted that as the election approaches, Casey, an early supporter of Obama, has “started to oppose the president outright or developed more nuanced responses to events that differentiate him from Mr. Obama. Analysts say Mr. Casey wants to put some distance between himself and a president whose job approval ratings in Pennsylvania are poor.”[14] In October 2011, the National Journal noted that “the Scranton area is hugely important for 2012” for both Obama and Casey, but “the city has among the worst unemployment in the state, and it’s filled with the blue-collar Dems who weren’t very enthusiastic about Obama when he first ran for president. How Casey navigates his relationship with the president will speak volumes about his re-election prospects.”[15]“
One cannot get away from one’s positions–a candidate is what a candidate espouses. Sen. Santorum, like Sen. Casey, is a warm, charming and personable fellow. Both are married with a number of kids–Casey has four kids, and Santorum has even more, and both their wives are full time stay at home moms. Because that’s what they believe in, for the most part. That moms and wives should stay at home and take care of the kids, that is. And both of them are pro-gun, pro-second amendment, pro-death penalty, pro-life, pro-catholic, anti-abortion, anti-contraception, pro-adoption, and so on. Indeed, it is very difficult to measure their differences on women’s issues or women’s health issues at all.
This addresses the issues, as opposed to attacking ad hominem or creating a straw man. These candidates have espoused their positions and come to be what they are in large part, it is theorized and shown here, because of the electorate they spent a good deal of time cultivating–the uniquely conservative PA electorate. Whether appealing to that electorate will work nationally in either Republican primaries or a National Presidential Election remains to be seen. There has not been a President elected from PA since James Buchanan in 1856 (though Eisenhower famously took up residence near Gettysburg after he retired, and was considered an honorary PA resident, and his family still live in PA). Perhaps with good reason.
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SEN TED KENNEDY 1932-2009 RIP
August 26, 2009
According to recent news reports, the Federal Oncology Commission, headed by the Earle Warren Orchestra and Dr. Earle Warren on saxophone, will issue a report this morning that the immediate cause of Sen. Kennedy’s death was a lone cancer cell, acting alone, without the assistance of other cancer cells, and that any hint that the cancer cell acted in conspiracy or with the assistance of other cancer cells is silly and ridiculous.
Also, there were no cancer cells in the grassy knoll.
In heaping praise on the late Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy, let us not fall into the logical fallacy of overly admiring the ante-decedent Kennedies, and seeing the current Kennedy in their light, which would be an post-decedent ergo propter antedecedent hoc fallacy, or roughtly, the fallacy of denying the antedecedent.
Sen. Kennedy’s three older brothers were great men–joe jr. gave his life for his country in wwII, JFK was a great president, a princeton man who transferred to Harvard and graduated from there, and was known to have romanced the actresses gene tierney, marilyn monroe as well as his gorgeous wife jackie o, all in one spectacular lifetime, not to mention saying “ich bin ein Berliner.”
plus we all know that don draper wants to be JFK.
Bobby Kennedy had one best friend in the world other than jack, and that was Rosie Grier, a huge lineman who had gone to penn state with lennie moore and played on the fearsome foursome for the rams. rosie was not happy when bobby was gunned down in the ambassador hotel the night bobby won the california primary on national television.
so jack and bobby were martyrs, and teddy gave a beautiful eulogy, and about a month later mayor daley and lbj all but offered him the nomination, and he turned it down.
humphrey lost.
Kennedy set his sights on 1972, and nixon set his sights on ruining kennedy. nixon had the fbi watch him every minute.
meanwhile, ted kennedy got annoyed that jackie married ari onassis because he could only think how that would affect his own political prospects.
jackie told him where he could go with that one.
other errors of ted kennedy:
1) he destroyed the democratic party in 1979-1980 by running against pres. carter. this split opened the way for the reagan revolution, which in my view was a good thing, but it ended the 1932-1980 era of democratic party rule and began the 1980-2008 era of republican rule. it was a colossal error and misjudgment and an act of egotism on kennedy’s part.
2) he was negligent in the death of mary jo kopechne in 1969 at chappaquiddick. Mary Jo Kopechne was a girl from northeast pennsylvania, buried in forty fort, and no one in wilkes-barre scranton area ever forgave ted kennedy. america didnt forget.
3) he had a freshman take his spanish final for him at harvard. harvard instead of expelling him let him do two years in the army and reinstated him. he was later allowed to get his law degree at uva.
4) He was an alcoholic, and enabled his wife to become one too. as his ex-wife, joan has serious alcohol problems which have prevented her from being a proper mother to their kids.
5) he was a skirt-chasing adulterer. his circle of drunken skirt-chasers usually included sen moynihan, according to rumors.
6) he separated from joan in 1978, then reunited crassly in 1980 for his presidential run, fooling no one.
7) kennedy may have obstructed justice in the investigation of a rape case involving his nephew in florida in the early 1990s.
now there are many good things i can say about ted kennedy, but likewise, there are just as many bad.
he was a lot like nolan ryan, about half wins, half losses, and his fastball was great, but his wild pitches and walks would cost you ballgames, because the man was wild and had no self-control at all.
everything wrong with the democratic party was symbolized by ted kennedy–a liberal drunken divorcee, addicted to young women and booze, a drunk driver, reckless, not loyal to his own president, and egotistical.
also, he had no foreign policy views, which was really his achilles heel.
Unlike jfk, his older brother, who was an ardent anti-communist, ted kennedy was pretty much a blank on foreign policy issues. where jfk had concrete notions on handling russia and stopping communism and leading the military, ted kennedy’s only answer was to cut military spending and vote against every war every chance he got.
Kennedy also made sure the party nominated a string of northeast and massachussetts liberals-that had no chance of winning–because they were proxies for ted kennedy–when only a southerner could win such as al gore or bill clinton.
kennedy fomented a north-south, liberal-conservative split in his own party that kept it from winning the presidency for 8 out of 11 presidential elections, starting with 1980, but really going back to 1972, when kennedy backed mcgovern and 1976, when he was lukewarm over carter.
in short, he was not realistic, not a party man, and was 100% devoted to a liberal agenda that had passed the country by with the passing of the 1960s.
Ted Kennedy misapprehended the legacy of his own brother who was an ardent anti-communist, was pro-cia, pro-interventionist, anti-abortion, and even anti-birth control. even on civil rights, JFK and RFK were not as liberal as people think, at least back in 1962-63.
that’s why reagan was able to say, “i didn’t leave the democratic party, the democratic party left me”, a quip referring to the kennedy, liberal wing which had shifted to an anti-war, anti-american bias.
this created the reagan democrats, ethnic, blue collar, catholic and formerly jfk men and women, who now starting voting republican after 1980 and continuing thru to the obama election of 2008.
ted kennedy’s blind spot on his own brother’s views and legacy was a lasting weakness that marred his legacy.
regardless of how many laws he passed, he was never truly carrying the torch of the jfk legacy. that torch passed to LBJ and then onto Reagan a long, long time ago. bobby kennedy briefly had it but his flame was snuffed out in california that awful night in 1968 while rosie grier was standing next to poor bobby. bobby martin & john.
Abraham Martin & John by DION
Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham,
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lotta people, but it seems the good die young
But I just looked around and he’s gone.
Has anybody here seen my old friend John,
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lotta people, but it seems the good die young
But I just looked around and he’s gone.
Has anybody here seen my old friend Martin,
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lotta people, but it seems the good die young
But I just looked around and he’s gone.
Didn’t you love the things they stood for?
Didn’t they try to find some good for you and me?
And we’ll be free,
Someday soon it’s gonna be one day.
Has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby,
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill
With Abraham, Martin and John
NEW LAST VERSE FOR TEDDY:
Has anybody here seen my old friend Teddy,
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill
With Abraham, Martin, Bobby & John….
He freed a lotta people, but it seems the good they die young
But I just looked around and he was gone.
http://www.uulyrics.com/music/dion/song-abraham-martin-john/
–art kyriazis, philly/south jersey
home of the world champion phillies
So I guess we know now why Manny Ramirez was so irritated all the time at his teammates, why he was having anger management problems, why he wanted to leave Boston despite winning two world titles, and why he was depressed, moody and suicidally despondent at times despite being the best ballplayer in the AL at times—it was all because of the steroids.
And why he grew the longest dreadlocks this side of Jamaica-mon.
LA made him no happier and now we know why. There’s nothing really to say, except that when a right handed slugger defies statistical norms, fails to decline in age-related fashion the way every other player has for decades, and fails to regress to the mean the way every other player does, it’s either because a) he has the talent of a hank aaron or babe ruth, b) the laws of statistics and probability have failed us or c) he’s taking steroids to beat the odds.
In the cases of Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriquez and now Manny Ramirez, we know the answer to the statistical riddle of how it is they could do what no other ballplayers could do. The answer is, they took performance enhancing drugs. They cheated, and they cheated badly. They wanted to beat the house odds and beat father time.
I still think the pitchers who threw spitballs and scuffballs and vaseline balls should be treated the same; it’s the same sort of deal. But as all of this gets worse and worse, we are left with fewer and fewer heroes. Even Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker gambled on baseball, but somehow they were set free.
And a voice in the distance, ever so faint, cries out more loudly;
FREE PETE ROSE!
FREE PETE ROSE!
FREE PETE ROSE!
FREE PETE ROSE!
FREE PETE ROSE!
FREE PETE ROSE!
FREE PETE ROSE!
FREE PETE ROSE!
And what the heck, Shoeless Joe and the Black Sox as well…
Art Kyriazis
Philly/South Jersey
Home of the Philadelphia Phillies
DOES DEREK LOWE THROW THE SPITTER? OR IS HE JUICING?
April 7, 2009
In the Phil’s home opener, the boobirds waited all of half an hour to get on Brett Myer’s case just because he gave up a couple (ok, three) home runs early to Atlanta. In this case, those runs held up as Derek Lowe, formerly of the Boston Red Sox and the LA Dodgers, and acquired by the Braves as an off-season free agent, did his thing and limited the Phils to just one run.
However, I am extremely curious as to why it is that Derek Lowe is suddenly such an effective pitcher at 36 years of age, an age when most pitchers are usually either washed up or on the way down. He’s known for throwing a hard sinker, and right away, looking at him pitch and throwing that sinker, it really looks like a doctored pitch, either a spitter, a scuffball, an emery ball, or something put on the ball to make it dive.
The question then is, since there are two sides to every question, is there any evidence that Derek Lowe suddenly got better in the middle of his career when it looked like he wasn’t going anywhere fast? One hint is given in Rob Neyer’s Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (Simon & Schuster, NY, 2004), where it states about Derek Lowe that he is six foot six, weighs 214 pounds, and throws “1. Hard Sinker 2. Curve 3. Change 4. Cut Fastball Note: The Cut Fastball was added or refined in 2002, when Lowe went from relieving to starting.” Id. at p. 285. Well, so Lowe added a “cut fastball.” Really.
In 2001, out of the bullpen, Lowe allowed 103 hits in 91 and 2/3 innings, gave up 7 homers, 39 runs and 36 earned runs, and walked 29 batters, while striking out 82, with an ERA of 3.53 and a park adjusted ERC of 4.31, according to the Bill James Handbook for 2009, id. at p. 172. He won five games, and lost ten, and had 24 saves in 30 opportunities.
The next year, 2002, when he started and “learned the cut fastball,” his numbers were dramatically better. Lowe won 21 and lost just 8, with an ERA of 2.58, an adjusted ERC of 2.13, pitching 219 2/3 innings, giving up only 166 hits, only 65 runs and 63 earned runs, allowing 17 homers, walking only 72 and striking out 127 batters.
The question becomes, how did Lowe get so much better?
The answer should be pretty obvious from the fact that the year before, in 2001, striking out 82 batters in 103 innings, Lowe wasn’t effective, while in 2002, striking out 127 batters in 220 innings, Lowe was terrific. LOWE COMMITTED TO THE SINKER, OR ELSE LEARNED HOW TO THROW THE SPITTER. Since Lowe is 6’6” tall, coming with a good fastball, curve and change, a spitter/scuff ball/doctored pitch that drops off the table in necessary situations is a great out pitch for him, especially since he was pitching in Fenway Park.
Alternatively, Lowe may just have started juicing. After all, it worked for A-Rod.
After that dramatic success, Lowe had another good year in 2003, winning 17 and losing 7, but in 2004 although he won 14 and lost only 12, his ERA ballooned up to 5.42 with a park-adjusted ERC of 5.31. Lowe was now 31 years old. Lowe led the AL in runs allowed in 2004 with 138. It was reasonable for the Red Sox to think he was beginning to embark on an age-related decline. So off to the LA Dodgers went Derek Lowe.
From 2005 through 2007, Lowe had almost identical seasons statistically, with ERAs around 3.60 and park adjusted ERCs between 3.50 and 3.70; in 2006 he led the NL in wins with 16, going 16 and 8 on the year. Every year he pitched around 210 innings, allowed around 100 runs, 90 earned runs, 15 homers, and struck out around 125 to 140 batters while only giving up 55 walks. He was like a machine.
In 2008, Lowe broke out of this pattern, and actually had a BETTER year—211 innings pitched, 194 hits, 84 runs allowed, 76 earned runs, 14 homers, 45 walks, 147 strikeouts, 14 wins and 11 losses, an ERA of 3.24 and a park adjusted ERC of 2.72. 2008 was Lowe’s best season since 2002, and this at age 35.
And now Derek Lowe comes out of the gate in the first ballgame of 2009, and twirls a masterpiece against the Phillies, a team that scored the third highest number of runs in the National League in 2008, and a lineup that is packed with lefthanded power bats.
Which brings me round to the topic sentences—is Derek Lowe throwing the spitball? Or is he just juicing? Because a 36 year old pitcher just can’t be this good. He’s BETTER now than he was two years ago, and pitching BETTER now than he did at any time in his career, except for his breakout year in 2002, which was a year when almost everyone in baseball was juicing.
I’m sorry for accusing a ballplayer of cheating, but we live in awful times, and I just don’t believe Derek Lowe is that good. The next question is, does Derek Lowe’s pitching profile resemble that of other spitballers? The answer is clearly, yes.
Ed Walsh of the White Sox threw a spitball, a fastball, a change and a curve. Don Drysdale of the Dodgers, also a 6 foot five inch right hander, very similar to Derek Lowe in almost every way, and who relied on the Vaseline ball, threw a fastball, a curve, a change, a slider and a spitter. Senator Jim Bunning of the Phillies and Tigers, also a spitball/Vaseline ball artist, and also a tall righthander, threw a slider, a fastball, a curve, a change and a spitter, usually a doctored Vaseline ball. Bunning threw a no-hitter and a perfect game in his hall of fame career.
Hugh Casey is another famous tall righthander who supposedly threw the spitball, although it’s claimed his out pitch was the sinker, supplemented by a slider, fastball and a curve. According to Neyer, Hugh Casey was pitching on the mound and threw a spitter to Mickey Owen in the 1941 World Series; that was the famous passed ball that led to the Dodgers losing the Series. Id. at p. 57.
Then you have Gaylord Perry, who was also a tall righthander, six foot four, 205 pounds in his prime, heavier later, a great spitballer, who also threw the slider, the fastball, the curve, the forkball/splitter and the change. Perry also claimed his spitter was a sinker, although after he retired he admitted it really was a spitball after all.
So comparing Derek Lowe to many of the famous spitballers, and their pitching repetoires, it would seem that there is a pretty good match. Derek Lowe is the same build as Don Drysdale and Gaylord Perry, and uses approximately the same pitches as they did. In sum, the circumstantial evidence against him is pretty strong that Derek Lowe probably is using a spitball, and not really throwing a sinker at all. Finally, you have the fact that pitchers like Gaylord Perry lasted long past their points of decline–Perry was winning twenty games at ages like 35 and 40–further evidence Lowe is greasing the ball.
–art kyriazis, philly/south jersey
home of the world champion Philadelphia Phillies
TINA FEY v. AMY POEHLER ON PHILLY v. BOSTON BEFORE THE SUPER BOWL EAGLES V. PATRIOTS FEBRUARY 2005 SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
April 7, 2009
Paris Hilton Saturday Night Live Show Transcript 2-5-05
Download .zip file
TINA FEY v. AMY POEHLER ON PHILLY v. BOSTON BEFORE THE SUPER BOWL EAGLES V. PATRIOTS FEBRUARY 2005 SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
FEY: A man identified as an NYU professor was detained at LaGuardia Airport Thursday after human remains were found in his luggage. However, he was let go when he told authorities the body parts were ‘teaching tools.’ Said the professor, ‘….teach that bitch to cheat on me.’
POEHLER: The Canadian government formally introduced a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. At which point the bill insisted on being called William.
FEY: As we mentioned earlier, this Sunday is Superbowl XXXIX, between the Philadelphia Eagles of my hometown and the New England Patriots…
POEHLER: …of my hometown…Burlington, New England.
FEY: So, we thought it would be fun to have a little hometown fans Point/Counterpoint. Amy has elected to go first.
POEHLER: Thank you, Tina. [In Boston accent] If you think your Eagles are any match for our top notch New England Patriots, you’re a moron.
FEY: [In Philadelphia accent] Okay, don’t even start, alright. Cause everyone knows New England people are a bunch of losers, you’se went down there losers, and you’re goin’ home losers.
POEHLER: Give me a break. We’re unstoppable. It’s our year – first they Red Sox, now the Superbowl. Okay, you can go cry in a pile of Philly Cheese stakes, and watch that gay movie they named after your city.
FEY: Okay, rebuttal. First of all, your whole city smells like baked bean farts. Second of all, how do you’se even have time go to the Superbowl? Aren’t ya too busy getting molested by priests and cryin’ about it?
POEHLER: Good point. Point well taken. But, uh, let me just say this. Your mother’s a whore and your father holds the money.
FEY: You dirt bag!
[end of transcript]
FROM AN ACTUAL SNL SHOW 2005 BEFORE THE EAGLES PLAYED IN THE SUPER BOWL AGAINST THE PATRIOTS.
TINA FEY IS AN EAGLES FAN!!!!
Art Kyriazis/Philly South Jersey
Home of the World Champion Phillies
RANDOM NOTES ON THE PHILLIES AS THEY START THEIR SEASON
April 5, 2009
The Phillies begin their World Championship Title Defense tonite, hosting the Atlanta Braves.
First, I have to get ride of one of my pet peeves, and this is the often quoted statistic that the Braves won 14 division titles in a row from 1991 through 2005.
A plain look at the statistics laid out on baseball-reference dot com shows that this isn’t so.
First of all, from 1991-1993, the Braves were IN A DIFFERENT DIVISION, the N.L. West, and the league was split into two divisions, not three. The Braves did win the N.L. West in 1991 and 1992, but they tied in 1993, and were forced to a one game playoff with the San Francisco Giants (incredibly, both the Giants and the Braves won 103 games in the regular season that year); it was only by winning the one game playoff that they earned the NL West Division title. That has to have an asterisk, right?
Next, in 1994, the strike year, Atlanta was switched to the NL East–where they finished SECOND to the Montreal Expos. The Expos won the NL East in 1994, no one else did.
That would mean, by all reckoning, that Atlanta would have to have started a new streak in 1995–and from 1995-2005, they did, in fact, win eleven straight NL East Division titles–a prodigious accomplishment by any stretch of the imagination–but not the fourteen straight titles that sports commentators often ascribe to them.
That dog won’t hunt.
Incidentally, last year, Atlanta lost 90 games and finished twenty games behind the NL East champion Phillies. Hopefully they will prove once again this year to be cannon fodder for the Phils powerful bats and potent pitching arms.
Some random notes on the Phillies as they start their season:
1) Chan Ho Park was named the fifth starter ahead of J.A. Happ. I’ve already reviewed this in a prior blog and stated that Happ should be starting. Happ is a 26 year old 6 foot six lefty who strikes out a lot of ballplayers, while Park is a righty with age-related decline issues whose ERA outside of Dodger Stadium is more than 5.00 career. Happ’s minor league stats are impressive, and his starts last year for the Phils were good, as were his spring numbers. This is just a mistake by the Phils, much like when they blocked Ryan Howard with Jim Thome.
2) I predict that Happ will eventually replace Park in the starting rotation, and that Happ will develop into a superior starting pitcher in this league.
3) Having said that, either Park or Happ is CLEARLY an upgrade from Adam Eaton or Kyle Kendrick.
4) Cole Hamels might be on the shelf for a while. I’d rest Hamels and start Park AND Happ during April. It’s April, why risk injuring your meal ticket in Hamels? Let the man have a month off. He pitched an extra month last year, and might have to do it again this year. It’s not like you need him in April, is it?
5) The Phils released Geoff Jenkins, in a puzzling move, since they still owe him $8 million salary. But they also kept Matt Stairs, who is 41 and can only play first base, and Miguel Cairo, who is about a thousand years old, and can only play second base, and can’t hit anymore. Why keep those two old fuddy-duddies, and release Jenkins, who is a legit ballplayer? This is a truly imponderable move.
6) The Phils should have kept Jenkins, and released Stairs. Jenkins can play left or right fields, he can pinch run, and he can pinch hit, plus he’s already on the payroll, and he’s a power hitter. Stairs can’t field, and Cairo can’t hit, so Jenkins is a more useful bench player than either of them. Jenkins had key hits in the postseason off the bench. He’s shown he can be useful off the bench.
7) Jayson Werth is injury prone, and the Phils will need a corner outfielder to spell him. That guy had to have been Jenkins.
8) Eric Bruntlett can spell anyone in the infield, and Dobbs can spell anyone in the outfield or third base or second base. Why keep Cairo? Cairo hasn’t had a hot hitting streak since the pyramids were built, and his fielding range is about as narrow as the Nile at that point where you can step across it. I don’t think Cairo has hit a home run since Moses led the chosen people out of Egypt right after the Passover miracle and the slaughter of the first born of Egypt. The last time Cairo took an extra base, they were filming the Ten Commandments. I’m not saying Miguel Cairo is old, but I’m pretty sure he and Edward G. Robinson used to make gangster films together in the 1930s. Miguel Cairo is so old, he has a card in my oldest Strat-O-Matic baseball game that was just cards and dice from back in the 1970s. Miguel Cairo is so old, that even his wife has forgotten how many years he shaves off his real age whenever he crosses the border and lies about his birthday to immigration officials. I’m not saying the man is old, but Miguel Cairo is the guy who recruited Roberto Clemente to play baseball. It’s not that Miguel Cairo is old, but Cairo once played minor league ball with Fidel Castro in 1950s pre-Communist Cuba. I’m not calling the man old, but Julio Franco, who retired last year at age 50, calls Miguel Cairo “Uncle Mike” out of respect for his elders.
9) Jenkins, Bruntlett and Cairo were the obvious ones to keep. Cairo’s career stats are mind-numbingly awful. Jenkins by contrast is a career power hitter. Bruntlett can field and has good sped while Dobbs is a good hitter. Stairs can’t field, he’s a dh basically and should go to the AL where he belongs.
10) The Phils made no effort to sign Garry Sheffield, but on the bright side, he signed with the Mets. I’m about 90% sure at this stage of his career, stuck on 499 homers, Sheffield only wants to get into the Hall of Fame, and is only about Sheffield, not the team, so I think the Mets have bought into a problem there. Sheffield will demand playing time to pad his stats, and even if he’s hitting .220, which is what he hit last year with Detroit, he will demand more playing time. Plus he’s another over the hill superstar, which the Mets seem to collect boatloads of.
11) Having said all this, I still think the Phils will make a good run and repeat as NL East champs and go on to win the world series yet again, for all the reasons I set forth in my earlier blog on this.
–art kyriazis philly/south jersey
home of the world champion phillies
CURT SCHLLING RETIRES
March 25, 2009
On Monday of this week, Curt Schilling, he of the bloody sock, the hero of the 2004 World Series that finally cured the curse of the Red Sox forever, and the last active playing member of the great 1993 Phillies team that nearly beat a powerhouse Toronto Blue Jays team in an awesome world series matchup, finally retired, joining Lenny “Nails” Dykstra, Darren Arthur Daulton, John “Krukster” Kruk and other legends of the 1993 Phillies in retirement.
Of course, Schilling was an integral member of numerous world series teams, as was Daulton (1997 Marlins) and Dykstra (1986 Mets). Collectively, all of these guys were winners, with a capital W. They lived to win, and winning was all they knew how to do.
Here I have to point out that as I am a Phillies fan, I have always had a very soft spot in my heart for Curt Schilling. From 1992, when he first emerged as a terrific power pitcher, to 2000, when he was erroneously and mistakenly traded from the Phils to Arizona (instead of their locking him up for another multi year deal), he was 1) the ace of the staff 2) the voice of the Phillies, frequently appearing on local sports radio, sometimes daily and 3) the best starting pitcher I’ve ever seen here since Steve Carlton.
But the main thing I loved about Schilling is, he hated to lose, and he loved to win. He pitched complete ballgames, nine innings, and he pitched to strike out the side. He was old school, he had old fashioned ideas, he was in every way a throwback to pitchers and players from like fifty years ago. In that sense, he was completely and totally refreshing.
From 1997-2000 the Phillies organization had a core of Curt Schilling, Bobby Abreu and Steve Rolen. Had they simply and properly built around that core, the Phillies could have built a division winner, or at least a wild card team. Schilling was an ace of the staff, Abreu was in the prime of his career, a .400 OBA man with a .500 slugging percentage, and Rolen was earning 30 win shares a year routinely with his glove and his bat. In those years, Rolen was slugging .500 or more easily, hitting tons of doubles and homers.
Where the team was weak in those days was up the middle—they didn’t stock themselves at short, second, catcher and centerfield properly (except maybe for Mike Lieberthal, but he was no Darren Daulton). And everyone knows a championship club needs to be strong up the middle. Kevin Stocker, who had played well in 1993, began to fade. Mickey Morandini, who was terrific in 1993, also began to fade as the decade wore on. Milt Thompson wasn’t around anymore and Lenny Dykstra was gone by 1997. Darren Daulton was also gone by 1997. If they had Dykstra and Daulton, and a healthry Morandini and Stocker, the 1997 Phillies would have been contenders—but the story was different.
By 97-99, they were playing guys like Marlon Anderson and Alex Arias up the middle. It wasn’t the same. Doug Glanville could field and run, but he never drew a walk.
The Phillies didn’t make immediate efforts to replace Daulton or Dykstra with great talent, nor did they replace Stocker or Morandini with great talent. They did waste a lot of money on bad free agents (see below) but we’ll get to that.
Behind Schilling were non-entities pitching—they did not put together a staff anywhere close to what they had in 1993, with Tommy Greene, Schilling, Danny Jackson, Terry Mulholland et al. and Mitch Williams as the closer. In 1994 Williams’ arm was blown and he was traded, but he never pitched again. Mulholland was traded, a bad trade since he pitched ten more years or more in the bigs. Jackson was never the same again and Tommy Greene’s arm was blown, he never had another year like 1993.
Because the Phillies did not make the effort to replace the great 1993 players with new and great players, eventually both Schilling and Rolen wanted out of Philadelphia. This was not good news for the Phillies GM and Phillies management, because Schilling and Rolen were the kind of players you built a team around.
A starting ace, and a gold glove third baseman who hits 30 homers and 35 doubles a year with 30 win shares a year, those are the two players you want to start a team with. You don’t want to lose those two guys.
The fundamental mistake of the Phils as they turned the corner on the new century was to let Curt Schilling go, even more of a mistake than letting Scott Rolen go, though both were mistakes. Curt Schilling won three world series with Arizona and Boston after he left (2001, 2004, and 2006) while Scott Rolen won one with St. Louis and got to another. Instead of realizing what they had, they wasted money on bad players instead.
You can’t help but wonder, what if the Phils had held on to these guys, and they had been around while the Phils developed Jimmy Rollins, Pat Burrell, Chase Utley, signed Jim Thome, etc. You have to think some of those 86 win seasons would have been 92 or 95 win seasons.
After Schilling was gone, the Phillies went on an endless search for the next big ace. They traded Johnny Estrada, a great catching prospect, for Kevin Millwood. In fairness, Millwood had a great 2003 season, throwing a no-hitter, throwing a lot of innings and having a great adjusted ERA. But the next season he sort of blew up, and wasn’t the same again, and the Phils let him go in free agency.
The next big ace was Eric Milton. The phils traded Carlos Silva for him. Eric Milton arrived to much fanfare, and proceeded to lead the NL in homers allowed the next two seasons. To say he was awful understates the situation. He just never adjusted to the new park.
The next big ace was Freddy Garcia. We all know about him. He never even pitched. He was hurt and didn’t pitch at all.
There were so many other horrible pitchers the Phils brought in. I can’t name them all. Jon Lieber, Adam Eaton, etc.
Meanwhile, the Phillies actually got some players for Rolen and Schilling, which were basically, Placido Polanco and Vincente Padilla. Polanco played second until Utley came up, and then Polanco was out of a job. The Phils shipped him to Detroit for Ugueth Urbina, but should have kept him to play third but at the time they had David Bell playing third.
Padilla for a while had a couple of good seasons with the Phils, but eventually they shipped him to Texas. Padilla has been pretty awful for Texas, his innings pitched are still high, but so is his ERA. He’s not really been a great pitcher, just an innings eater.
Polanco has been a starter in Detroit and it seems to me the Phils should have held onto Polanco. He was a good righthanded hitter, could play the corner outfield positions, as well as 3d and 2d, and was a good RH pinch-hitters bat off the bench. I’d have kept him. While he doesn’t walk much, he has a high batting average, had above average speed, and hits a lot of doubles and triples, and occasional homers. And he’s great in the clubhouse.
The lack of an ace in the Phillies starting staff from 2001-2007 is what kept them from winning a world series. During six of those years, Curt Schilling could have been that ace and put them over the top in any given year.
Having an ace in Cole Hamels in 2008 is one of the keys to the Phillies having won a world series and a world championship in 2008. Cole Hamels was finally the guy the Phils had been searching for since 2000, when they let Curt Schilling go for a guy named Vincent Padilla.
Bill James, in the Bill James Gold Mine 2008, at p. 2007, has an illuminating article on this subject, called “If I Had a Hamel.” He basically examines each of the Phils seasons from 1986-2007, and notes who was the Phils most dominating pitcher in each of those years. In 1992, 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000, Curt Schilling was the best pitcher on the Phils’ staff, and then he was gone. Then in 2007, Cole Hamels was the best. Writes James in his article: “I have a friend who is a Phillies fan. He is optimistic about the 2008 season because, he says, we finally have an ace. We haven’t had an ace of the staff since we traded Schilling. He is referring of course to Cole Hamels….Cole Hamels Season Score [in 2007] was 233, which was the highest by a Phillies pitcher since 1998. Schilling was at 327 in 1997, 271 in 1998.” Id. at p. 207.
James also points out how silly it was for the Phils to move Brett Myers from starter to closer in 2007, and that bringing him back to starter would be a good move for 2008. Id. at p. 2007.
So there you have it—the two key moves that put the phils over the top—Cole Hamels as a staff ace, and Brett Myers back as a starter. Add to that Brad Lidge as a top shelf closer, and you have two legs of the Phils formula for world champion success in 2008.
I think it would have been nice for Curt Schilling to retire as a Phillie, myself.
Curt Schilling by the numbers: Curt Schilling was an awesome pitcher. He led the National League in strikeouts in 1997 and 1998, striking out more than 300 batters each of those years, 319 Ks in 1997 (in 254.1 innings pitched) and 300 Ks in 1998 (in 268.2 innings pitched). Schilling was a horse—he finished more games and completed more games than any modern pitcher, by far. Of 436 games he started in his career, he completed 83—19% of his games started, he COMPLETED.
Think about that—Curt Schilling, CAREER STAT, completed about 20% of every game he started. No relievers, no help, just nine innings and finish the game.
That’s as old school as you can get. Schilling was a reversion to a pitcher of the first half of the 20th century. He was more like Robin Roberts or Bob Feller, guys who finished what they started. The bloody sock tells it all.
He led the NL in complete games FOUR times—in 1996, with 8 complete games, in 1998, with 15 complete games (of 35 started), in 2000 with 8 complete games, and in 2001 with 6 complete games. He led the NL twice in innings pitched, in 1998 with 268 and 2/3, and in 2001 with 256 2/3, and led the NL those same years in pitches thrown to batters with 1089 in 1998 and 1021 in 2001.
Schilling led the NL in wins with 22 in 2001, and led the AL in wins with 21 in 2004. His adjusted ERC of 1.86 (ERA 2.35) was the lowest in the NL in 1992.
Schilling’s post-season record is insane. In 133.1 innings pitched, he struck out 139, walked only 30, gave up no intentional walks, yielded only 12 homers, 3 hit batsmen, 115 hits, 41 runs and 36 earned runs for an ERA of 2.43 (ERC adjusted of 2.79). In 19 games he started in the post season, he had 4 complete games, a 21% completion ratio. His won loss record of 11-2 in those 19 games he started is legendary.
I attended Schilling’s 2-0 complete game shutout of the Toronto Blue Jays in 1993, World Series game Five, at Veterans Stadium Philadelphia. The Phillies had lost a slugfest the night before, blowing a four or five game lead in extra innings when Mitch Williams couldn’t hold the lead, and were down 3-1 in games. The game was do or die. They had to win.
Schilling did nothing less than twirl a masterpiece. He may have given up a hit, or maybe two or four hits, but the whole thing took well under two hours, and it was a masterpiece of pitching efficiency, mastery, control and power. The Blue Jays, who had scored something like 15 runs the night before, could hardly get their bats on the ball against Schilling, the master of the baseball.
I have rarely, if ever, seen a pitching performance like that one, in my life, let alone in post-season play. I had a great seat, my wife’s company at the time had some corporate seats along the 3rd base line, and I had a terrific view of the action. The game was like watching Koufax, Gibson, Carlton, the greats.
At this point I suppose I can point out that Curt Schilling is an obvious Hall of Fame selection. I know that Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine are both 300 game winners, but their post-season stats are awful. Only John Smoltz has post-season stats like Schillings, and he gave up four seasons to be a closer, or he would be closer to 250 wins than the 215 he had now.
Let’s talk now about wins and losses. Except for the 1993 Phillies, the rest of the Phillies teams that Schilling played for—1992, and 1994-2000—had losing records. Nonetheless, Schilling racked up winning or .500 records for all of those teams;
1992 14-11 Team 70-92
1994 hurt 2-8 Team 54-61
1995 hurt 7-5 Team 69-75
1996 hurt 9-10 Team 67-95
1997 17-11 Team 68-94
1998 15-14 Team 75-87
1999 15-6 Team 77-85
2000 6-6 Team 65-97
Total Schilling 85-71 percentage 85/156 = .549
Total Team 545-676 percentage 545/1221 = .446
Schilling was more than 100 percentage points higher than his teams in all of the losing seasons from 1992-2000 on the Phils—he had a .549 winning percentage, while the Phils had a .446 winning percentage.
Schilling was 14 games OVER .500, whie the Phillies were 131 games BELOW .500—Schilling was 145 games better than his team. That’s a whopping lot better than his team.
So Schilling, even with three seasons where he was hurt, and for a ballteam that was hundreds of games below .500, managed a total record of 85-71, fourteen games ABOVE .500, during the eight years he was with Philly. 145 games better than his team, 100 percentage points better than his team.
As if he was dragging a dead body and a lot of 45 pound plates around, and still managing to win ballgames.
Now let’s add in 1993, when he was 16-7 for a team that went 97-65 total, a .599 percentage. For that team, Schilling went 16-7, which is a .693 percentage. FOR THE 1993 TEAM, A WINNER, A PENNANT WINNER THAT ALMOST WON THE WORLD SERIES, SCHILLING STILL DID A HUNDRED PERCENTAGE POINTS BETTER THAN THE PHILLIES WINNING PERCENTAGE. The team was 32 games over .500, Schilling was nine games over .500.
Now, the final totals:
Schilling: Career with Phils: 101-78. Percentage: 101/179 = .564 winning percentage
Phils: Career with Schilling: 642-741. Percentage: 646/1383 = .464 winning percentage
Schilling is 100 points above philly’s winning percentage, .564 to .464, for a nine year run. Philly was 100 games below .500; Schilling was 23 games above .500.
That’s Schilling’s total for Philly. He won a hundred games in 8 years, for mainly lousy clubs. And led the league in strikeouts twice, in complete games three times, in games started twice, in innings pitched once, etc.
Schilling did all this dragging around a lousy team that was, except for the magnificent 1993 team, mainly a bad team that finished in the second division. Several of these teams lost as many as 94, 95 and 97 games (1996, 1997, 2000). They were dreadful, horrible, awful teams, and yet Schilling went out and led the league in strikeouts in 1997.
Also, that Gregg Jeffries, a free agent bust, was paid $5.5 million in 1997, while Schilling, clearly the most valuable Phillie on any day of the week, earned only $3.5 million in 1997. Schilling was correct to gripe about his salary.
In 1998, Curt Schilling got a raise to $4.7 million, but Gregg Jefferies got $6 million after a horrible year in 1997, and some turkey named Mark Portugal got $2.4 million to pitch, putting up some dreadful numbers for the Phils.
Scott Rolen was paid $150,000 in 1997 and $750,000 in 1998 after posting two outstanding years. Ridiculous.
In 1999, they raised Schilling to $5 ¼ million per year, but handed Ron Gant, who was past his prime, $6 million, and Gant had an average year in left field, while Bobby Abreu had a terrific year as a newbie in right field. Rolen meantime finally got raised to a million dollars, while having another monster year; Rico Brogna, who was awful was getting more than three million dollars a year.
There is no sense to what the phillies were doing with their payroll at this time. They should have committed to their best players, period. They kept wasting money on washed up veterans and on players who were having bad seasons instead of committing their payroll to Schilling, Abreu and Rolen.
Lieberthal, it could be argued, was a decent player, at catcher, but he shouldn’t have been getting $2 ¼ million, more than twice as much as Rolen, because Rolen was more valuable than Lieberthal. It didn’t make sense.
Some guy named Jeff Brantley got paid $2.8 million in 1999. He appeared in 10 games in 1999 and some more games in 2000, but he was entirely ineffective and washed up. A total waste of money. Brantley was out of baseball after 2001.
The Phils paid Chad Ogea about $1.7 million to be a starter in 1999. Ogea posted less than league average numbers in 1999. He was 6-12 with a 5.63 ERA. It’s almost certain that the Phillies could have brought someone up from the farm to be that bad for a rookie salary.
I could keep going on like this, but I think you get the point. The Phillies of the late 1990s were blowing money out the wazoo on bad, awful, over the hill, gassed, done, horrible players.
And then when Schilling & Rolen wanted free-agent money commensurate with their skills in 2000, the Phillies front office became hard asses? After giving Greg Jefferies and Ron Gant $6 million each? $12 millin to Ron Gant and Greg Jefferies and you won’t give $10 million a year to Scott Rolen and Curt Schilling for life?????
Are you kidding me????
No wonder the Phillies have only two world titles in 120 plus years. On the bright side, the Phillies learned from these mistakes and have been doing somewhat better in recent years in terms of front office management, although I don’t agree with all of their moves.
Let’s get back to the legend that is Curt Schilling.
Who can forget Schilling putting a towel over his head when Mitch Williams was pitching during the NLCS and the World Series?
If the Phillies had been able to close Toronto out in games four and six of that world series when they had had leads, Philly would have won the world series in 1993. Schilling did everything he could to win that series.
Curt Schilling went to Arizona, and dragged an expansion team of nobodies to world series glory. He made Randy Johnson, who everyone thought was too wild to be a great pitcher, into a world champion.
Then Schilling went to Boston, and promptly reversed the Curse of the Bambino, and brought a world championship to the Red Sox, something no one, and I mean no one, thought possible.
It was a magical accomplishment.
And just to put a flourish on it, Boston repeated in 2006, Mr. Schilling again assisting.
Finally, we have to point out, Curt Schilling never juiced.
Curt Schilling was a colorful, articulate and intelligent baseball player, and one of the most masterful men of the mound I have ever had the privilege to watch.
I’ve always missed him since he left the Phils. It was always my fervent hope that someday he might return for a final farewell tour year or two with the Phils, but apparently it is not to be. I think Schilling, no matter how he was throwing, would have been a terrific starter for the Phils this season and would have drawn fans.
And again, I say, the Phils should honor him, retire his number, and do him homage. He was one of the greatest of great Phils pitchers.
We will not soon see his like again.
–art kyriazis philly/south jersey
home of the world champion phillies
THE PASSING OF KURT VONNEGUT AND JOHN UPDIKE
February 10, 2009
Two great American writers have passed from the scene recently in Kurt Vonnegut and John Updike. Vonnegut exerted a dramatic pull on me while younger, since we read a good deal of his work during prep school english, and here I refer to Vonnegut’s classic works such as Slaughter-House Five and Player Piano. This work was imaginative, clever, funny and crossed the boundaries of science fiction, fantasy and plain old story telling. It’s hard to think of another writer who wove plots the way Vonnegut did across time and space. Naturally with all the science fiction we see on TV and the movies today, we accept this as a commonplace, but back in the day, this was not a conventional way of writing.
Vonnegut’s other work was so well-known that it made its way into the popular culture, into rock and pop lyrics, into band names, into other people’s novels and short stories, and was the inspiration for many television and movie scripts. Vonnegut has probably been “sampled” more than any other twentieth century writer. He had a distinctive voice, a distinctive style, and once you read him, you didn’t really look at things the same way again.
Of course, Vonnegut is best known for his depiction of the American fire-bombing of Dresden in one of his books, and the not-so-subtle comparison of it to the napalm bombings of Vietnam. It’s very likely that his literary use of WWII to make an antiwar comment about Vietnam gave rise in part to the Robert Altman directed movie MASH, which used the Korean War to make an antiwar comment about Vietnam, which in turn gave rise to the nearly ten year long TV show MASH. As I noted, Vonnegut’s ideas and notions were widely influential. The idea of protesting one war by fictionalizing another was uniquely Vonnegut’s, but it had slid into the mainstream by the mid-1970s and was hit comedy television.
Vonnegut was funny, disrespectful, and interesting to the end of his days. For this, we should commend him. We will probably never see his like again.
Updike was a prolific fiction writer. I never really got behind his Rabbit Run series about Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. I never bought into the seventies malaise of suburban growups trading wives, having affairs, or searching for answers after 40 and 50 in the arms of younger women. None of that made sense to me and consequently, none of his fiction resonated particularly with me.
What I did love were his essays about sports. He wrote about golf in a way that really made sense to me, and of course, he wrote one of the most famous baseball essays of all times, the essay about Ted Williams last at bat, which is so famous that if Updike had written nothing else in his career, he’d probably have gotten a pretty long obit just for that. But he seemingly tossed those off with ease. Of all Updike’s many obits, only Sports Illustrated noted his sports essays; what an omission by the general press.
John Updike on October 22, 1960 in the New Yorker Magazine published what is arguably the greatest baseball essay ever written, the essay that really gave rise to the entire mythos and legend that we now know as “Red Sox Nation”. Before this essay was written, the Red Sox were just another team. After it, they became the darlings of the Harvard and Northeast intellegentsia forever.
Here, I refer of course to the famous essay “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu”, which documents the final at bat of Ted Williams’ career, in which he hits a home run. The essay is so brilliant, I wouldn’t want to omit you reading it for yourselves, so here’s the link page to the New Yorker so you can read it for yourselves;
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1960/10/22/1960_10_22_109_TNY_CARDS_000266305
The essay is filled with Updike-isms. Ty Cobb is the “Einstein of Average”. Fenway Park is “a compromise between Man’s Euclidean determinations and Nature’s beguiling irregularities.” Ted Williams was known as “TED, KID, SPLINTER, THUMPER, TW, and, most cloyingly, MISTER WONDERFUL.”
Updike’s description of Williams’ last home run is immortal:
“Fisher, after his unsettling wait, was wide with the first pitch. He put the second one over, and Williams swung mightily and missed. The crowd grunted, seeing that classic swing, so long and smooth and quick, exposed, naked in its failure. Fisher threw the third time, Williams swung again, and there it was. The ball climbed on a diagonal line into the vast volume of air over center field. From my angle, behind third base, the ball seemed less an object in flight than the tip of a towering, motionless construct, like the Eiffel Tower or the Tappan Zee Bridge. It was in the books while it was still in the sky. Brandt ran back to the deepest corner of the outfield grass; the ball descended beyond his reach and struck in the crotch where the bullpen met the wall, bounced chunkily, and, as far as I could see, vanished.
Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs—hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn’t tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted “We want Ted” for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.”
New Yorker, id at p.6.
“Gods do not answer letters.” A true Updike-ism. That I consider this to be Updike’s finest essay, or that anyone might consider this to be Updike’s finest essay, should come as no surprise.
We live in an era of flawed heroes. Athletes who are constantly arrested, constantly in court, constantly discovered to have cheated, to have used steroids, brandishing tatooes, illegitimate children and other paraphernalia of personal baggage.
Ted Williams was a true hero. He served his country with distinction in the second world war and the korean conflict as a fighter pilot, and thought nothing of giving up five of his prime years of baseball to do so. even giving up those five years, and without juicing, junking or cheating, he managed to hit .400 in a season, win batting titles and smash home run records, drive in hundreds of runs, and hit more than 500 career homers while hitting well over .300 for his career, while drawing a huge number of career walks and scoring a ridiculous number of runs.
I’d like for someone to show me one professional athlete (other that the late Pat Tillman) who has given up pro sports to serve his country lately. It would be refreshing if the United States rekindled the draft and didn’t exempt professional athletes. a couple of years in the army might do them some attitude readjustment good. They might actually learn the meaning of the word “team”.
Updike of course understood all this. That’s why he loved Ted Williams and immortalized him for all time in his essay. Updike knew the difference between a hero and a mere mortal. Gods don’t answer letters. They just do heroic acts like serving their country and performing on the field.
A great book by Updike that also resonated with me was a wonderful collection of essays “Hugging the Shore,” which usurped his many fine essays from the New Yorker and elsewhere.
I used to love Updike’s essays in the New Yorker. I remembered one he wrote, which must have been five thousand words or more, on the joys of hanging out at the beach in the summer at Cape Cod. But Updike he also wrote many fine critical essays, as well as such personal essays, and all of them were finely crafted and well written. They were the essence of what you wanted to read in the New Yorker while commuting home from work, or just laying at the beach yourself.
Updike was a literate and intelligent man, and a writer’s writer. He was the editor of the Harvard Lampoon of 1954, but he was no buffoon, and no poonie turned Hollywood script writer. Instead, he became directly a man of American letters, an acknowledge novelist, critic and spokesman for his generation. He had a way with words.
Born outside of Reading, PA, in Shillington, he referred to his hometown always as “pollenny Pennsylvania,” a clever and abstract alliteration. Needless to say, he was a north shore man, not really a Cape Cod man at all, cleaving to Ipswich, Mass and their fine food and exquisite antiques.
Here I have to note that I have never liked Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, or any of a dozen other novelists who competed for attention on the shelves of bookstores with Vonnegut and Updike during their heydays. Much seventies writing seemed overly obsessed with self, sex, religion, or other personal subject matters that were hideously Dostoevskian and self-absorbed. It was as if writing one’s own life down on paper had become an acceptable substitute for the actual drafting of fiction.
Vonnegut and Updike didn’t buy into this. They actually were craftsmen. They seemed to transcend all, or at least a great deal of this, Vonnegut by consciously making fun of it all, and Updike by writing so well about so many things, he transcended the subject matter. In short, they didn’t fall into the malaise that many of the writers of their generation did, and consequently, they stand head and shoulders above them.
–art kyriazis south jersey/philly
home of the world champion philadelphia phillies
