I found an old copy of a 1976 Sports Illustrated at a yard sale recently. The issue cost me a dollar, the same price printed on the cover thirty-two years ago.
I love old sports magazines. They’re relics of the past that communicate a great deal about how previous generations thought about the game, and about the larger world. Tellingly, the 1976 issue features ads for fuel efficient cars, gin, and polyester sportswear, as well as a dozen or so cigarette ads. An ad for Tareyton cigarettes features an interesting sidebar titled “Charcoal: History’s No. 1 Filter!”, which details the uses of charcoal from ancient Egypt to Kentucky bourbon production and its presence on spacecrafts. People sure liked to learn things in the 70’s.
Mike Schmidt was on the cover of that Sports Illustrated. Those of us born after 1976 don’t have clear memories of seeing Mike Schmidt play. We didn’t follow his career as it progressed. Instead, we have in our minds a certain conception of Mike Schmidt, an image created on the sum totals of that career. Most of us know him as an elite power-hitter, the greatest third baseman of all-time. He had a bright shock of hair and he collected model trains. That our image. We’ve come to that image in hindsight, in retrospect. It’s Mike Schmidt in conclusion. If his career is a novel, we’re reading the cliff notes.
The 1976 Sports Illustrated gives us Mike Schmidt in chapter. It shows us how he was understood in his time. Larry Keith wrote that article, titled, “It’s Either A Clout Or An Out.” And it’s about Mike Schmidt and Dave Kingman.
Think about that for a minute: someone once wrote an article about Mike Schmidt and Dave Kingman. Mike Schmidt, one of the greatest players ever, and Dave Kingman.
Such a premise seems absurd from our vantage point. It wasn’t: the article was written in early May of 1976, when Schmidt and Kingman seemed like very similar players. They were the same age, and in 1975 they finished 1-2 in the National League in homeruns and strikeouts. Here are their stats from 1975:
|
HR
|
RBI
|
SO
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
Schmidt
|
38
|
95
|
180
|
.249
|
.367
|
.546
|
Kingman
|
36
|
88
|
153
|
.231
|
.284
|
.494
|
The article points out the statistical and stylistic parallels between the two players, and even has both players describe what it was like to play baseball as youths. Schmidt states: “When I was a kid I always tried to crush the ball,” while Kingman explains, “At a very early age you find out what kind of player you are.”
Yet for all their parallels, the article details a sharp difference in the way each player approaches the game, a contrast in their approaches to baseball. In all of his comments, Schmidt stresses his failings. He is disparaging about his abilities, citing a litany of mistakes he makes every time he steps up to bat. He calls his 180 strikeouts during the previous year “unacceptable.” He makes no mention to having led the NL in homeruns for the last two consecutive season; instead Schmidt worries that he’ll never hit .300. “I’m a dangerous hitter,” he says, “but I’m not a smart hitter.”
Kingman’s response is the opposite of Schmidt’s: “I don’t think I’ll ever hit for average. I’m not unable to do it. I’m just not that type of hitter. I could choke up, punch the ball and almost totally eliminate strikeouts, but I wouldn’t hit any homeruns. And that’s what I’m paid to do, to hit homers and drive in runs.” Later Kingman adds, “I’ll always have the same swing.”
Rejecting the Gift
A thought experiment: imagine Mike Schmidt and Dave Kingman as twelve-year olds on their Little League teams. Imagine them in high school ball or coming up through the minors.
At some point they had to know. At some point along the way they had to realize that they were the possessors of a tremendous gift. Maybe it was in Little League, when they were the only kids who hit the ball out of the schoolyard. Maybe it was later, in high school, when scouts started showing up to their games.
At some point they recognized their gifts, and later Schmidt and Kingman had to come to a reckoning with that gift, a moment when they could choose to embrace their gift or challenge it.
Kingman embraced his gift. He decided to rely on it, to let it define him. At some point he said: Hell, someone gave me the talent to crush a baseball really far. I might as well use it. I might as well be a power hitter who crushed baseballs. In the Sports Illustrated article he is insistent on this point: he says that he could cut down on strikeouts. But why the hell should he?
And in that regard, I think Dave Kingman is like most of us. He figured out the thing that he was good at, and he focused on that. And isn’t that what we all do? We study the subjects in college that we are good at, or choose and follow careers in fields where we feel capable and sure. If we’re good at math we go to school to become engineers. We don’t write poetry. If we’re fast runners we join the track team or play wide-receiver on the football team. We don’t try to learn the shot-put or ask to play quarterback.
But Mike Schmidt wasn’t like the rest of us. He rejected his gift. It wasn’t enough to lead the league in homeruns: he wanted to know why he wasn’t hitting .300.
Carl Crawford
I’ve been waiting a long time for Carl Crawford to become a great ballplayer:
Crawford
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
2002
|
0.259
|
0.29
|
0.371
|
2003
|
0.281
|
0.309
|
0.362
|
2004
|
0.296
|
0.331
|
0.45
|
2005
|
0.301
|
0.331
|
0.469
|
2006
|
0.305
|
0.348
|
0.482
|
2007
|
0.315
|
0.355
|
0.466
|
He was twenty years old in 2002, and for his first six major league seasons his batting average and on-base percentage increased every single year. That’s an impressive feat. He’s a tremendous player: a hitter of considerable skill who happens to be one of the fastest players in baseball.
He had a disappointing 2008 season, a fact obscured by his team’s remarkable run to the American League pennant. In 2008 Crawford posted a ..273/.319/.400 line, his worst since 2003. He missed a good portion of the season with an injured finger, and for the first time in five years he didn’t finish among the league leaders in stolen bases. As tellingly, Crawford is no longer the face of the Rays franchise. Evan Longoria and Carlos Pena are better hitters, and during the postseason it was B.J. Upton who hit in the #2 spot, while Crawford was slotted at #5, a new low for the former franchise player.
So why the drop-off?
In retrospect, there were obvious signs that Crawford was due to suffer a drop-off as a hitter. In 2007, when he posted a .315 batting average, Crawford enjoyed a .376 batting average on balls in play (BABIP), the sixth-best mark in the American league.
But I think it goes further than that.
To be frank, I think Crawford has been resting on his laurels somewhat. His on-base percentage, the single best measure of a leadoff hitter, is .330, lower than the American League average.
Plate discipline is a skill that can be learned. it is a skill that would also give Crawford more opportunities to use his best skill: his speed. Yet Crawford’s discipline at the plate hasn’t improved one inch, and he continues to strike out at a high rate:
Crawford
|
BB %
|
K %
|
2002
|
3.4%
|
15.8%
|
2003
|
4.0%
|
16.2%
|
2004
|
5.3%
|
12.9%
|
2005
|
4.0%
|
13.0%
|
2006
|
5.8%
|
14.2%
|
2007
|
5.2%
|
19.2%
|
2008
|
6.3%
|
13.5%
|
Strikeouts aren’t bad, not for most players. It doesn’t hurt Adam Dunn or Ryan Howard to strike out 180 times a year. But Crawford is a very fast runner, a man whose every weak grounder to short is a potential basehit. It is within his power to decrease his strikeouts and increase his walks, and he would be a better player for it.
The thing about speed is it’s a young player’s skill. Sooner or later Crawford’s ability to leg out infield grounders will leave him. Sooner or later he won’t be able to turn doubles into triples. For Crawford to survive, he cannot continue to rely on his speed.
Consider Rickey Henderson, a player possessing the same gift as Crawford. Rickey Henderson is a player who exists largely in caricature. There are the stolen bases, sure, and the undisputed title of Greatest Leadoff Hitter of All-Time. There was his constant use of the third person, and the brash egotism displayed when, after breaking Lou Brock’s record, he claimed that he was the greatest. We have an image of young Rickey, stealing second and third for the Billy-Ball A’s of the early 1980’s. And we have old Rickey, refusing to retire, bouncing from team to team.
You know what I remember most about Henderson? I remember his stance, that unique crouch he employed. I used to imitate it all the time when I was a kid. I didn’t realize until later why Henderson crouched down so much: he was trying to cut down on the pitcher’s strike zone, trying to draw walks.
Imagine that thought process: Henderson’s great gift was his speed, and he realized early on that the best way to utilize that gift was to get on base. So he adjusted his game to fit that need. It wasn’t enough to be fast on the bases. He wanted to get on the bases more than anyone else.
This is Schmidt all over again. Schmidt didn’t settle on being a dangerous hitter; he wanted to be a smart hitter, too. Henderson didn’t settle on stealing bases. He decided to maximize that gift, to work at getting on base so his speed could be utilized.
Carl Crawford hasn’t done that yet. He hasn’t changed. He hasn’t rejected the gift.
I don’t mean to be all doom-and-gloom about Carl Crawford. He is still a very young player, with plenty of time to improve. He is a motivated player: he was quoted a few years ago saying that he wanted to be the #1 fantasy player in baseball, a Rickey Henderson-esque moment of bravado which speaks clearly to his desire to be more than a speedster. And there is reasonable possibility that the injury he suffered this year will be a wake-up call to him, a figurative ‘brush with death’ that will trigger a change in how he approaches the game.
Right now, Crawford’s career is at a crossroads: he’ll either settle for being the American League burner, or he’ll figure out a way to utilize that gift effectively by becoming a more selective hitter. Among his comparable players right now are Roberto Clemente and Johnny Damon, who turned out to be pretty fine players. But Clemente was a .350 hitter in a lousy offense era: Crawford isn’t close to that level as a hitter. As it stands now, Crawford looks less like Damon and Clemente than Vince Coleman, another burner who had lots of strikeouts and few walks. Crawford is a far better hitter than Coleman, a more talented all-round player. For Crawford to join the elite players in the American League, he needs to refuse to allow his speed to define him. He needs to reject his gift.