Magic
I rooted for Larry Bird and against Magic Johnson. I was born in Boston, MA, grew up in Worcester, MA, and basketball was my favorite sport. I've said this before, but I don't think I have ever loved a team as much as the '86 Boston Celtics. Not the 2001 Patriots who improbably launched a Super Bowl dynasty. Not the 2007 Celtics who rescued the team from years of mediocrity to win their seventeenth World Championship. Not even the 2004 Red Sox who ended a miserable 86-year curse. No. The '86 Celtics stood alone. They were an amazing team. But, more importantly, they were an amazing team when I was fourteen years old. And that's when you learn to love a team. That's when you can be a true sports fan, filled with pure, unfiltered passion. At fourteen, I didn't have a driver's license, I didn't have a girlfriend, and I certainly didn't have a monthly mortgage payment to worry about. All I had was sports. And the Celtics were the center of my world.
I loved the players on that team – their talent, their chemistry. It was stacked with all-stars and Hall of Famers. Bird, McHale, Parish, DJ, Ainge, Walton, Sichting, and Wedman. They would run teams out of the Garden. They would blow teams out.
As much as I liked the Celtics, I had a proportionally inverse dislike for the Los Angeles Lakers. They were the rivals. They were the enemy. Equally talented, equally loaded, they took the court with players like Kareem, Worthy, Cooper, Rambis, Byron Scott. And Magic. Of course there was Magic.
Basketball had never seen a player like Magic Johnson. Literally. He was a 6'9” point guard who was as tall as some centers (like Dave Cowens, Elvin Hayes, or Alonzo Mourning, for example), yet passed the ball better than anyone on the planet. It was a scary combination of phyiscal gifts and virtuosic talent. One of things I distinctly remember from that period, over twenty years ago today, is that writers, announcers, and analysts kept making the same pronouncement about Magic Johnson: he was going to “revolutionize the game.” Everyone predicted that players would undergo a radical evolutionary shift. They were going to get bigger and stronger while also developing better skills. That was the natural direction of the game. That's where everything was headed.
While I suspect that the idea is true, Darwin pointed out that evolution does not take place overnight. Rather, it happens over the span of several lifetimes. So even as players continue to grow bigger, stronger, faster and refine their marvelous skills, we might never live to see the day when all ten players on the court look like Magic Johnson.
Future Days
evolution (n.) - A gradual process of changes into a different, more complex, or better form.
revolution (n.) - A sudden and momentous change in situation.
Where is baseball going? What changes will we see that could dramatically alter the landscape of the game in the years and decades and centuries that stretch before us? How will it be played differently, who will be playing it, and will we be able to recognize the sport of baseball a hundred years from now? Will the changes come gradually, by way of evolution, or will they come suddenly, like a revolution?
I like thinking about the future of baseball. I might as well share my thoughts, as crazy and radical and ridiculous as they are. Let's go.
The Babe, Jackie, and Bill
Major League Baseball has undergone some seismic shifts in its history, thanks to a few revolutionary individuals. Babe Ruth dragged the sport out of the deadball era into the technicolor excess of a new, home-run happy age. Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers, broke the color line, and created a level playing field for all athletes regardless of their skin color. And the man who runs this site, Mr. Bill James, began his own quiet revolution by crunching numbers, analyzing the sport, and discovering the hidden knowledge of how to build teams and win games. Baseball was a different game before each of these men came along, and it was a better one after they made their contributions.
When Bill pointed out the utility of On-Base Percentage, front offices and general managers started to value the players who could get on base. If you could no longer take advantage of market inefficiencies by hoarding players with good OBPs, then maybe defensive measurements were the next frontier? Certainly with zone ratings, and +/- stats, great baseball minds were trying to quantify the defensive impact of individual players.
But let's be honest: there is really nothing radical or innovative about the idea of gathering good defensive players. I suspect that defense has been valued since the beginning of the game. What are some of the truly unexpected changes that would make it difficult for us to picture the game a hundred years from now? Let's start with ambidexterity and the art of switch-pitching.
1) We will see more Ambidextrous Pitchers in the future
Mickey Mantle, Eddie Murray, and Chipper Jones are happy to smash the ball batting either lefty or righty. Switch-hitters aren't all that extraordinary. Switch-pitchers are a little more unusual. There have been pitchers who've thrown both lefty and righty, but with less success and fanfare than Mantle, Murray, and Chipper. The three best switch-pitchers who I'm aware of are Tony Mullane, Greg Harris, and Pat Venditte. Mullane and Harris were Major Leaguers, Venditte played Div I ball, got drafted, and is playing in the minors right now. All three are documented ambidextrous pitchers. So it can be done. But clearly, it's very difficult to do at the highest level. Mullane and Harris switched hands more as a novelty than as a weapon, and Venditte hasn't demonstrated he's ready to bring his act to the Major Leagues.
The difficulty level is relatively intuitive, the math makes sense. Throwing a ball at the Major League level is difficult. Throwing a ball at the Major League level with both arms seems slightly preposterous. But if Mullane, Harris, and Venditte have already started paving this road on the College, Minor League, and Major League levels, then it seems like an exceptional athletic specimen would be able to build off their precedent and develop a devastating ambidextrous arsenal.
The advantages would be obvious – platoon differentials would be difficult to exploit, pitch counts could be expanded as each arm takes a separate level of stress, and roster size could be maximized with a reduced need for carrying relief specialists on the roster.
I'm not saying it will be easy. I'm saying that a) it's possible, b) there are clear benefits to be gained from it, and c) a hundred years is a long time to develop a new complement of skills. Think of it this way: Mickey Mantle wasn't the first switch-hitter. He was just the best one. I don't expect Pat Venditte to be the final product of the revolution. I just want him to be the trigger man.
2) There will be more Two-Way Players in the future
I was fascinated by the off-season stories of Ichiro Suzuki throwing off a mound and working on his pitching as a possible contingency plan for the World Baseball Classic. It seemed like an entertaining notion – Ichiro has a cannon for an arm, he is acutely aware of his mechanics and his conditioning, so why not let him throw an occasional inning or two?
I think that as the game evolves, Major League Baseball will start developing a plethora of players who can pitch and hit. To be honest, the growing evidence for this trend is pretty substantive. Names like Brooks Kieschnick, Micah Owings, Rick Ankiel, Carlos Zambrano, Dave McCarty, and Adam Loewen jump to mind immediately as recent modern examples.
Brooks Kieschnick was a legitimate two-way player for the last couple of years of his career in Milwaukee, making appearances as a both a hitter and a pitcher. Micah Owings has been a starting pitcher for the Diamondbacks and the Reds, who is regularly called on to pinch hit because of his .319/.355/.552 lifetime stats in the Majors. In 2000, Rick Ankiel started 30 games, won 11, and had a 3.50 ERA as a rookie, then transformed himself into a centerfielder who hit 25 homers last year. Carlos Zambrano batted .337/.337/.554 last year with 4 HRs and 14 RBIs in 83 AB in 2008. Dave McCarty put up a 2.45 ERA and a .818 WHIP in 3 mound appearances in 2004 while making over 80 appearances as a first baseman and outfielder. And Adam Lowen has started 29 games as a pitcher for the Orioles in the last three years, but is now undergoing a conversion as a hitter because of the damage sustained by his arm.
Clearly, “a pitcher who can hit” or “a hitter who can pitch” is not some far-fetched, fanciful notion. These athletes exist, and they walk among us even now. But their skills are rarely utilized to full capacity. With the possible exception of Kieschnick, rarely are they expected to contribute equally on both sides of the equation.
It's odd that in a sport where the most iconic player in history was a left-handed pitcher who was converted into a slugging outfielder due to his batting prowess, that there isn't a greater proliferation of athletes who hit and pitch. I suspect that people think it's hard to develop both sets of skills. Except that players like Kieschnick, Owings, Ankiel, and Zambrano seem to have done it with a decent level of success without any undue hardship.
Maximizing your players' abilities is smart. Necessary, even. The mantra for most teams when they bring a young player into their developmental system is to force a prospect to choose one path or the other. In the future, I would not be surprised is teams started to think of ways to harness the full range of a player's abilities. It seems like a natural progression.
3) There will be more Multi-Sport Athletes in the Future
Jeff Samardzija is a pitcher for Chicago Cubs. Before he was a Major Leaguer, he was better known as a record-setting wide receiver while playing college football at Notre Dame. He was considered a superior football prospect over a baseball one, and there was discussion about whether he would try to play both sports coming out of college. Instead, he made a choice and dedicated himself to baseball.
Bo Jackson, Deion Sanders, Brian Jordan. For a while there, it seemed like NFL players were regularly invading the Major Leagues. Elite athletes with power, strength, speed, and coordination realized that they could play more than one sport at the highest level.
Football isn't the only sport that allows athletes to cross-over. Guys like Mark Hendrickson, Danny Ainge, and Gene Conley were all NBA players who also played in the Majors, while Michael Jordan walked away from the NBA for a while to play minor league baseball.
I think that this is a relatively untapped source of talent. As athletes advance to higher levels of competition, it becomes more and more difficult to dominate in more than one field. But so many athletes possess natural gifts that translate well across different sports – strength, speed, coordination, focus, competitive instincts – that baseball would benefit from a greater influx of two-sport athletes. I think that as the sport evolves, we will see more and more superior athletes crossing over, learning to compete in the NBA or the NFL as well as the Majors simultaneously.
4) There will be a greater presence of players from China in the Majors
One out of every five people on the planet is Chinese. Any time the nation of China dedicates their attention to a sporting activity, they are uniquely positioned to achieve a global impact at the sport's highest levels. Because of the structure of their government and the sheer overwhelming supply of their population base, they have greater resources to dedicate to any given task than any other country on the planet.
China's interest in basketball is relatively recent, but it has enjoyed an explosion of popularity in the country having produced NBA players like the freakishly coordinated 7'6” All-Star Yao Ming and his Olympic teammates -- the 21 year-old seven-footer Yi Jianlian who currently plays for the New Jersey Nets, and seven-footer Wang Zhizhi who played for the Mavericks, the Clippers, and the Heat in his five-year NBA career. Once China took an interest in basketball, Chinese players started to compete in the NBA.
Baseball is already popular in several Asian countries, like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. With players like Chien Ming Wang, Hee Seop Choi, Byung Hyun Kim, Jae Seo, Shin Soo Choo, Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Takeshi Saito, Hideki Okajima, Kenji Johjima, Hiroki Kuroda, Hideo Nomo, and so on – it seems clear that players who develop their craft in Asian leagues can come in, compete, and thrive in the Majors. China is only beginning to notice the sport of baseball. If and when it ever decides to bring its undivided attention to America's Pastime, I truly believe that the impact will be dramatic.
Conclusion
While the NBA is still full of players of varying sizes and skill levels, it's clear that Magic Johnson's influence has reverbrated through the game. Players like Penny Hardaway, Grant Hill, and LeBron James went on to develop playing styles that were not strictly defined by their size, but rather by the diverse set of skills they had mastered. Every player is not yet Magic Johnson. But he provided the template, and the game is racing fast to try and catch up.
History has shown us that when an evolutionary advantage develops, it is adapted until it eventually becomes the standard. It does not happen with immediacy, and it might not happen in the course of one lifetime, but natural selection always favors adaptive advantages over time. In a hundred years, there will be a switch-pitching outfielder/reliever from China playing in both the NBA and the Majors. And when he takes the mound, just remember that you heard it here first.
If you have any thoughts you want to share, I would love to hear from you. I can be contacted at roeltorres@post.harvard.edu. Thank you.