Observations: ‘Skipper’ — You Can Book This One

By Hal McCoy

UNSOLICITED OBSERVATIONS from The Man Cave, thanking MLB’s streaming of every game so this baseball junkie can overdose on game after game after game.

—OF MANAGERS AND DOGS: There is a terrific new book on the market by Scott Miller, one of the game’s best baseball writers.
It is called ‘Skipper,’ a full-length book about managers and how different ones operated and operate — the old-school autocrats and the new-school analytics-driven managers. I can’t put it down. Of particular interest to me is Miller’s heavy reliance early in the book on former Minnesota Twins manager Tom Kelly, one of my all-time favorites.

Why is that? We shared three loves — baseball, cigars and greyhound racing. Kelly owned racing greyhounds and knowing my love for the ‘hounds he named one after me, Gary’s Real McCoy. It was a winner and dominated the highest level, Class AA, at Fort Myers. Knowing that was a long way for me to go from Sarasota during spring training, Kelly shipped the dog to the Sarasota Kennel Club, where I wasted many nights, so I could watch him run.

Because Fort Myers had a higher level of racing than Sarasota, I figured Gary’s Real McCoy would dominate the Class AA race in which he was entered. I wagered a hefty portion of my meal money. Bad decision. Gary’s Real McCoy finished seventh in an eight-dog field.
When I asked Kelly what happened, he told me it was because Gary’s Real McCoy had only raced at Fort Myers and was unfamiliar with Sarasota and probably was confused. So I said to Kelly, “Now you tell me and I’m more confused that the dog.”

—TRICKY RICKEY: Heard some playback for writing that Rickey Henderson is the all-time best leadoff hitter. The splashback came from the legion of Pete Rose fans. Yes, Pete was the prototypical leadoff hitter, but you can look up ‘leadoff’ in your Funk & Wagnalls and there is a picture of Rickey Henderson.
Permit me to list some reasons:
***He stole three or more bases in a game 71 times, four bases 19 times and once stole five in a game.
***He scored 2,295 runs, the most ever and just ahead of Ty Cobb’s 2,246.
***He drew 2,129 walks. Barry Bonds is the all-time leader with 2,258, but 688 were intentional. Just counting unintentional walks, Henderson drew 259 more than Bonds.
***Henderson owns the record for most bases stolen by a player over 40 years old with 109.
***He led off games with 81 home runs, meaning he broke up no-hitters and prevented shutouts 81 times as his team’s first batter of every game.
Henderson never once in his life was accused of being humble or bashful and always talked about himself in the third person, as in, “Nothing’s impossible for Rickey. You don’t have enough fingers and toes to count out Rickey.”

—TRUE BLUE: When Vida Blue pitched for the Oakland A’s, owner Charles O. Finley wanted him to change his name to True Blue.
Blue didn’t need to do that. He was a true treasure, a Blue-blood on the mound. He remains baseball’s only pitcher to win both the Cy Young and MVP, pitch for three World Series winners and start and win for both the American League and National League All-Star teams.
During the winter meetings of 1977 in Honolulu, Finley traded Blue to the Cincinnati Reds for first baseman Dave Revering and $1.75 million.
It looked as if the Reds would have Blue, Tom Seaver, Fred Norman and Bill Bonham in their rotation. But commissioner Bowie Kuhn stepped and said, “Oh, no. That’s too much money in a trade and is not in the best interests of baseball.” And he negated the deal.

But when Kuhn did it, the Reds media guide already had gone to press and Blue was in it. He never threw a pitch for the Reds, but his photo, biography and statistics are in the 1978 Cincinnati Reds Media Guide.
After the trade was made, I was working late in the pressroom, writing the story. My competition, Ritter Collett of the Dayton Journal Herald, was out to dinner and walked into the pressroom and say me pounding away on my computer.

“My, you’re working late,” he said.

“Yeah, the Reds just traded for Vida Blue,” I said.

“Yeah right. Tell me another one,” he said as he walked out of the room, believing I was joking.

—TRIVIA TIME: Pete Rose played in 17 All-Star games for the National League. How many did they win?
Rose once told an interviewer, “I played in 17 All-Star games and we won 16 of ‘em because in the 1960s and 1970s the National League had better athletes than the American League.”

Pete’s memory was a little off on that one. The NL won 10 of those 17 games, including the 1970 game in Riverfront Stadium when Rose ran over catcher Ray Fosse to score the winning run. Maybe that collision altered his memory on All-Star games.

—OH, YAHTZEE: For 25 years, between 1965 and 1990, only one player hit more than 50 home runs in a season and that was. . .Cincinnati Reds left fielder George Foster.
Foster hit 52 home runs in 1977, drove in 149 and batted .320 and was named National League MVP.
Foster, nicknamed ‘Yahtzee,’ was one of the first players to use a black bat. When asked about it, he said, “I’m integrating the bat rack.”

—MORE YOGI-ISMS: Words of wisdom from former Yankees catcher/manager Yogi Berra: “The hitting’s good these days because the pitching isn’t. But if you can’t imitate them, don’t copy them.”

—STEALING HOME: Do the Cincinnati Reds have another Elly De La Cruz in the embryonic stage?
Kyle Henley, a center fielder at low-A Daytona, stole home twice in one game and swiped three bases Sunday.
The Tortugas trailed the St. Lucie Mets, 8-3, but came back to win, 9-8. Henley is 20 for 20 in steal attempts in only 33 games. He was a 14th-round draft pick out of a Georgia high school in 2023.

—ALL FOULED UP: It was shocking enough not only to see the Los Angeles Dodgers lose their fourth straight game Monday night, but to see them get wiped out by the Arizona Diamondbacks was beyond shocking.
Shohei Ohtani hit another home run (ho hum), but the shocking thing was a 16-pitch at bat by Arizona’s Gabe Morales against LA pitcher Landon Knack.

Morales swung and missed Knack’s first two pitches, then fouled off 10 pitches, then flied to right on the 16th pitch.
And it wasn’t even close to the record. In April of 2018 San Francisco’s Brandon Belt saw 21 pitches against Los Angeles Angels pitcher Jaime Barria. Belt fouled off 16 pitches, including 10 in a row during the 13-minute at bat. Then, like Morales, he flied out to right field.

—ANOTHER UECKER-ISM: From catcher/broadcaster Bob Uecker, when asked if he missed acting after his TV series Mr. Belvedere ended and he no longer did ‘Major League’ movies: “I was acting when I played baseball.”

—PLAYLIST NUMBER 172: As Jack Kerouac, author of ‘On The Road’ put it, “Music is the only truth.”

—Tubthumping (Chumbawamba), Video Killed The Radio Star (The Buggles), Invisible Touch (Genesis), How Will I Know (Whitney Houston), Owner Of A Lonely Heart (Yes), Something About You (Level 42), Hold Me Now (Thompson Twins), When I See You Smile (Bad English.

—I Told You So (Randy Travis), Every Rose Has Its Thorn (Poison), Back In The High Life (Steve Winwood), Everywhere (Fleetwood Mac), Ain’t That A Shame (Fats Domino), What In The World’s Come Over You? (Jack Scott), Good Timin’ (Jimmy Jones), Please Help Me I’m Fallin’ (Hank Locklin), Heartaches By The Number (Guy Mitchell).