Observations: MLB Needed To Contract Its Own Teams, Not Minors

By Hal McCoy

UNSOLICITED OBSERVATIONS from my last day in St. Simons Island with an embarrassing confession. For the second straight year, I fell and bruised some ribs while on vacation after doing it last year in Rome.

On our second day here, I meant to sit on a bench, missed the end of it and a corner of the bench hit my ribs on my way down. I’ve been in pain all week. Clumsy should be my middle name, or at least my nickname.

—MLB DID IT WRONG: After the 2021 season, MLB and its greedy multi-billionaire/millionaire owners, strapped by their own stupidity of giving out insane contracts, decided they could save a few bucks by breaking a lot of hearts.

The owners and commissioner Rob Manfraud decided to indiscriminately eliminate 40 minor league teams, just say, “OK, we’re taking the balls and bats away from you and what are you going to do about it.”

It deeply affected a lot of towns in which a minor league baseball team was the top diversion, the top entertainment.

Tossed on the junk pile were towns like Williamsport, PA, Pulaski, VA., Charleston, WV, Elizabethton, NJ, and 36 others were told, “You no longer are affiiated with any MLB team. If you want to go independent, have at.”

The Batavia Muckdogs (love the nickname) were told to go away and they chose to place a team in a collegiate short-summer league.

MLB owners and executives extinguished long-loved community ballclubs to save the equivalent of a couple of rookie salaries.

We all know of the pomp and circumstance MLB puts into those Field Of Dream games. They spent $6 million to build a stadium among the cornstalks of nearby Dyersville, IA., where the movie was filmed. Just for one game a year.

The game supposedly is a celebration of baseball’s popularity. But while the second game was being played, MLB already knew that it was going to eliminate two Iowa minor league franchises not far away from Dyersville, Clinton and Burlington. That $6 million could have helped those two franchises, which were around for more than 100 years each.

And here is what they should have done. They should have contracted four to six MLB teams, teams that can’t compete because the balance of power is so titled —the very rich teams (and we all know who they are) and the very poor teams (which are many, in comparison to MLB’s Scrooge McDucks).

The Colorado Rockies, 4-and-23 as this is written, would be at the top of the contraction list. The Rockpile lost 103 games two seasons ago and 101 last season and are on pace to surpass both those loss totals with room to spare.

They have had losing seaons in 11 of the last 13 years. They are just once choice with solid contraction evidence. There are more.

One is the Pittsburgh Pirates (11-18), who play in the prettiest ballpark in MLB, but billionaire owner Bob Nutting only pays for a Triple-A roster.

He made his billions buying up newspapers and stripping them to bare minimum staffs and cutting coverage costs. Very little of the money he makes goes into the Pirates. The Pirates have had one winning season in the past nine years and haven’t appeared in the post-season since a wild card appearance in 2015.

Competitive balance in MLB isn’t a rumor, not even a whisper. It’s an impossibility without a salary cap. . .and that isn’t going to happen.

—EIGHT YES, TWO NO: A web-site called The Baseball Factory listed its 10 records that never will be broken. I agree with eight and disagree with two.

The list: Cy Young’s 749 complete games, Jack Chesbro’s 41 wins in a season, Cy Young’s 511 career wins, Nolan Ryan’s 5714 strikeouts, Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, Johnny Vander Meer’s back-to-back no-hitters, Leon Cadore’s 26 innings pitched in one game, Connie Mack’s 7,755 games as a manager, Pete Rose’s 4,256 hits.

My two maybes:

There is the possibility that some pitcher might throw back-to-back no-hitters.

There is a chance some hitter might break Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak.

—QUOTE: From Pete Rose on the pressure on his 44-game hitting streak, during which he collected 71 hits: “ Pressure? Well, it ain’t hitting in 44 straight games, because I done that and it was fun. Pressure is the playoffs.””

—LEFT ON LEFT ON LEFT: As a full-fledged lefthander (My right arm is as useless as ….), I wondered how many MLB players went by the name ‘Lefty.’

And I was stunned. I knew about Lefty Gomez and Lefty Groves, but research revealed that there have been 181 players in MLB that went by the name ‘Lefty.’

The first was Lefty McMullin, an underhanded pitcher for the 1871 Troy Haymakers. The 1921 Philadelphia Athletics had four guys named Lefty on their roster.

There are none on MLB rosters now and, in fact, the last was Steve ‘Lefy’ Carlton when he retired in 1988.

OK, so why has there never been a player that went by the name ‘Righty?’

—A FRANK FRANCONA: Cincinnati Reds manager Terry Francona is at the top of the list when it comes to being media-friendly during interviews.

But he has no time for foolish questions and benign comments.

After Noelvi Marte hit a home run in Miami, a media person mentioned to Francona that it tied for the hardest hit ball of year in all of MLB.

To Francona, the guy might as well have said the moon is round or the ocean is deep. He responded with a shrug and put it directly into perspective:

“OK, so we get one run. That’s fine,” he said, then moved on quickly to something else.

—FOUR SCORE AND AN ‘L’: Do you think maybe former Cincinnati Reds third baseman Eugenio Suarez reads these blogs?

In a recent rendering, I wrote about the 18 players in MLB history who hit four homers in a game.

So Suarez, now dressing in Arizona Diamondbacks colors, unloaded four times Saturday against the Atlanta Braves. The fourth one came off former Reds pitcher Raisel Iglesias on a 3-and-2 count.

The fourth homer came in the ninth inning and tied the game, 7-7, only to see the Braves win, 8-7 in 10 innings.

“Obviously, there’s mixed feelings because we didn’t win the game,” said Suarez, who leads MLB with 10 homers. “But this is baseball, that’s why this game is so special.”

—ANOTHER SATCHEL TALE: When Satchel Paige and catcher/pitcher Ted ‘Double Duty’ Radcliffe played together in the Negro Leagues, Radcliffe did something different.

When he caught Paige, to alleviate the pain in his palm from catching Satchel’s legendary high-octane fastball, he tucked a piece of raw sirloin steak between his hand and his glove.

It was never reported if the steak was cooked and eaten after games.

And I had to verify this one in Baseball-Refefence and it is there in black and white.

In 1965, Paige was 59 years old. As a so-called gimmick, the Kansas City Athletics signed him to a one-day contract.

He warmed up to start the game, then sat in a rocking chair until game time.

Some gimmick. He pitched three innings against the Boston Red Sox and only one batter reached base. . .a single by Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski. And he struck out one.

Some gimmick.

—FIREMAN JOE: There is a famous fire station, Engine Company 78 on Waveland Avenue, directly behind Wrigley Field’s ivy-covered left field wall.

Fireman used to sit on the station’s driveway in lawn chairs, awaiting home runs to bounce on Waveland Avenue.

One of those fireman was named, are you ready, Joe DiMaggio.. . .not the real Joltin’ Joe, just a fireman named after him.

—ANOTHER UECKER-ISM: Catcher/broadcaster/comedian Bob Uecker on getting bad press from baseball writers: “A lot of it had to do with a lot of bad press. Those guys always wrote stuff about the game. I did a lot of stuff after the game that merited a lot more than the garbage I did on the field.”

—PLAYLIST Number 167: As novelist/poet George Eliot put it: “Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.”

—Cherish (The Association),Ain’t No Sunshine (Bill Withers), I Honestly Love You (Olivia Newton-John), Spirit In The Sky (Norm Greenbaum), Everyday People (Sly & The Family Stone), Wings OF A Dove (Ferlin Husky) Lost In The Fifties Tonight (Ronnie Milsap)

Good Hearted Woman (Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson), Just To See You Smile (Tim McGraw), Swear (John Michael Montgomery), The Dance (Garth Brooks), I Told You So (Randy Travis), A White Sport Coat & A Pink Carnation (Sonny James), Little Deuce Coupe (Beach Boys).