By Hal McCoy
UNSOLICITED OBSERVATIONS from The Man Cave, trying to put this thing together when my Havenese, Parker, keeps bringing me her ‘squeaker’ toy to play tug of war and fetch.
—THE STREAKERS: Remember when two naked streakers ran across the Shea Stadium outfield and when New York Mets manager Yogi Berra was asked if they were male or female he said, “I don’t know. They had bags over their heads.”
Streakers were a fad back then and fortunately it has faded away, but streaks in baseball are important.
One of the reasons the Milwaukee Brewers own the best record in baseball is that they have had winning streaks of 14, 11 and 8.
And that’s a Reds problem. Their best streak is five straight, done three times. It is at the bottom of a list of streaking teams.
Minnesota won 13 straight, Boston and Toronto won 10 straight, the Phillies and Cardinals won nine straight.
Even the Athletics have won eight straight and Pittsburgh has won six straight.
As is evident, long winning streaks don’t guarantee success, unless ‘Milwaukee’ is on the front of your jersey.
But with the Reds hanging around the bottom of the wild card standings, a long winning streak would go a long way toward securing a spot in the post-season, where somebody will have to tell them how to act.
They need to become streakers. . .and they can keep their clothes on.
—FREE FRALEY: Sometimes you just have to read between the lines, like in the case of the Cincinnati Reds designating Jake Fraley for assignment.
It seemed so heartless that the Reds did it immediately after he made a big error that helped the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Reds.
And he hurt himself on the play and limped off the field.
But manager Tito Francona’s quote on Fraley’s dismissal is a clue: “We just came to the idea that giving Jake a chande to go play where maybe he thinks he deserves to play is better than sitting the bench here.”
My diagnosis? Fraley wanted more playing time and thinks he can play regularly somewhere else and probably asked to be moved.”
Fraley signed with the Atlanta Braves this week, so let’s see how much playing time he gets.
And speaking of player moves by the Reds, when are they going to do the ultra-struggling Matt McLain a favor and send him to Class AAA Louisville so he can relax and catch his breath.
The perfect solution is unstitching baseballs at Louisville, a guy named Sal Stewart. Since his promotion from Double-A Chattanooga, he has played only 29 games for Louisville and is hitting .315 with seven homers, 13 doubles, 24 RBI and 14 walks.
Maybe it’s coming. He plays mostly third base but recently played a couple of games at second base, McLain’s position.
—OH, REALLY?: I laughed out loud when the MLB Network ran a crawl line on the bottom the screen that said, “The Detroit Tigers are 14-0 when they score 10 or more runs.” Well, duh.
And the Cincinnati Reds are 1-0 when they score 24 or more runs, as they did against Baltimore.
—HOME AWAY FROM HOME: This a case of the landlord showing up and making the renter pay up.
The New York Yankees cracked nine homers in a game Tuesday against Tampa Bay. They were the visiting team, but they really weren’t.
The game was played in the Tampa bandbox known as George Steinbrenner Field. It is where the Yankees train for six weeks during spring training. The Rays are renting it for league games while a new roof is put on Tropicana Field after Hurrican Milton turned the old roof into tatters. So the Yankees wore their road grays, but they were really quite at home and did everything to the Rays but evict them.
And those nine homers that tied a franchise record. Did it tie the 1927 Yankees of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig? Actually, no. The Yankees hit nine home runs earlier this season, nine against the Milwaukee Brewers during the second game of the season in Yankee Stadium.
Even manager Aaron Boone lost track and asked after the game, “Did we hit nine?” Yes, nine. . .one short of Toronto’s MLB record 10 hit in a 1987 game.
—THE POWER PLAY: As a life-long fan of the Cleveland Indians (never the Guardians), one of my favorite players was Vic Power. Power did something in 1958, my senior year at Akron East High School, that hasn’t been done since.
He stole home twice in the same game. And the second theft ended a game, a walk-off win over the Detroit Tigers. A walk-off? No, this was a slide-off.
Somebody draw together a pool as to when Elly De La Cruz steals home to win a game. It is going to happen.
—MICK THE HICK: Baseball writers sometimes can be harsh. Yes, I’m guilty, too.
When Mickey Mantle was a fresh-faced rookie just out of high school on the Oklahoma badlands, he was extremely shy and suspicious of strangers, especially writers.
The New York writers considered him a hick. Joe Trimble of the New York Daily News tried to interview him and got cryptic one-word answers, so he wrote, “Mantle is a hillbilly in a velvet suit.”
And Dan Daniel of the New York Telegram wrote, “Mantle is a kid with a bad haircut whose sport coat barely cover his wrist.”
Not long after they were all groveling at his feet and fawning all over him.
—ADVANTAGE PITCHER: The strike zone always has been an elusive thing and sometimes varies due to which umpire was calling balls and strikes.
But in 1963 the National League did pitchers a mammoth favor when it expanded the strtike zone. Before then, anything above the belt was a ball. They changed it to the letters.
How beneficial? The Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax went from 14-7 to 25-5, lowering his earned run average from 2.54 to 1.88.
Cincinnati’s Jim Maloney went from 9-7 to 23-7 and lowered his ERA from 3.51 to 2.77
The Cardinals Bob Gibson went from 15-13 to 18-9 and lowered his ERA from 3.39 to 2.65.
All three specialized in rising letter-high fastballs.
Speaking of Jim Maloney, on this same week in 1965 Maloney pitched a 10-inning no-hitter against the Chicago Cubs and only needed 187 pitches to do it. He should have been given credit for two no-hitters.
It was the most astonishing no-hitter of all-time. He walked 10 and struck out 12. He went to 3-and-2 counts 13 times. He had the bases loaded twice and the Cubs stranded 10 runners.
—TRIVIA TIME: Tidbits that only real baseball aficionados appreciate while others say, “Who cares?”:
—Bill Buckner’s legacy, if you can call it that, is the ground ball that squirmed between his legs that cost the Boston Red Sox the 1986 World Series.
And that’s too bad. Buckner could hit. He batted 2,511 times and not once did he strike out more than once in any game. Never twice.
—Who do you think is the oldest player to hit an MLB home run? My guess is Minnie Minoso. Wrong.
The oldest was 47-year-old Julio Franco. He pinch-hit for the New York Mets and hit an opposite-field home run just inside the right-field foul pole.
The red-faced pitcher was San Diego’s Scott Linebrink.
—Greg Maddux, my all-time favorite pitcher to write about, provides more trivia than any pitcher who ever lived. Another? It was incredible enough that he won four straight Cy Youngs (1992-1995), but during those four seasons he pitched more complete games (37) than he gave up home runs (33).
—Betcha don’t know who gave up the first of Babe Ruth’s 714 home runs. Neither did I. It was Ol’ King Cole. His real name was Leonard Cole, but he went by King Cole. It was 1914 and he pitched for the New York Yankees. What? Didn’t Ruth play for the Yankees? Not in 1914. He played and pitched for the Boston Red Sox.
—C.C. Sabathia did something in 2008 no other pitcher has done. He led both the American League and National League in shutouts in the same year. Showing how times have changed, he pitched two shutouts for Cleveland to lead the AL, then was traded to Milwaukee and led the NL with three.
—QUOTE MACHINE: Baseball people say the darndest and sometimes dumbest things:
—From former St. Louis back-up catcher and slow-footed Bob Uecker in a team meetiwhen the Cardinals acquireed Lou Brock and manager Johnny Keane said, “We are going to steal bases, a lot of bases: “It’s a hard job, but I’ll do it. I’ll steal those bases for you.” (Uecker couldn’t steal a base in total darkness.)
—From Pete Rose, late in life when asked if he likes today’s baseball: “No, I don’t. Everybody does nothing but swing for home runs. I never saw so many guys swing so hard at oh-and-2 pitches that they fall on their asses.”
—From former soft-hitting infielder Solly Hemus, explaining why he was a holler guy who never shut up on the field: “If you can’t hit, can’t run and can’t throw, you’ve got to holler at them.”
—From former Toronto Blue Jays general manager in 1981 and it’s even more true today: “When the one great scorer comes to mark against your name, it is not whether you won or lost that counts, but how many paid to see the game.”
—From Jim Murray, my favorite sports columnist: “A man is standing at a window in the Carew Tower when suddenly a falling figure shoots past the window and he says, ‘Uh, oh. It must be August. There go the Reds.’”
—From Hall of Fame Ty Cobb: “Every great batter works on rthe theory that the pitcher is more afraid of him than he is of the pitcher.” (Yeah, Tyrus, but you never faced Bob Gibson, Randy Johnson, Paul Skenes, Tarik Skubal or Hunter Greene.)
—PLAYLIST NUMBER 106: As record label executive Tiffanie DeBartolo put it, “Tell me what music you listen to and I’ll telll you who you are.”
—Good News (Shaboozey), All I Need (Jack Wagner), Stop, Stop, Stop (The Hollies), This Guy’s In Love With You (Herb Alpert), Sharing The Night Together (Dr. Hook), Long Tall Sally (Little Richard), So Much In Love (The Thymes), Rhythm Of The Rain (Cascades).
—People Got To Be Free (Rascals),On Broadway (Drifters), These Old Eyes Have Seen It All (George Jones), Amanda (Boston), Sledgehammer (Peter Gabriel), Living In America (James Brown), Soldier Boy (Shirelles), My Favorite Memory (Merle Haggard).