I had a question recently in "Hey, Bill" about players who went out on top; players who were very good players in their last major league season. I kind of blew off the question by saying we’d already been through that, but later it occurred to me that this is still an interesting question, so here goes. . .an All-Star team of players who retired after having played well and played almost full time in their last season.
Catcher—Dave Nilsson, last year, 1999, 21 homers, 62 RBI, .309. .954 OPS. Reason for retirement: Had serious injury, went back to Australia, got real fat and wasn’t able to get back in the game.
Alternate—Darren Daulton, last year, 1997, 14 homers, 63 RBI, .263. Reason for retirement: bad knees, colorful lifestyle.
Alternate—Thurman Munson, last year ,1979, 3 homers, 39 RBI, .288. Reason for retirement: poor aviation skills.
First Base—Will Clark, 2000, .319, 21 homers, 70 RBI. Reason for retirement: I think he just didn’t want to become a steroid junkie in order to stay in the game.
Alternate—Hank Greenberg, 1947, .249, 25 homers, 74 RBI, 104 walks. Reason for retirement: High personal standards.
Alternate—Roy Cullenbine, 1947, .224, 24 homers, 24 homers, 78 RBI. Reason for retirement: managers in that era genuinely didn’t understand that his 137 walks/.401 on base percentage made him a valuable man despite his low batting average.
Alternate—Tony Horton, 1970, .269, 17 homers, 59 RBI. Reason for retirement: serious mental health issues. Institutionalized.
Alternate—George Brett, 1993, .266, 19 homers, 75 RBI. Reason for retirement: age, high personal standards.
Second Base—Bobby Doerr, 1951, 13 homers, 73 RBI, .289. Reason for retirement: Dignity, injuries.
Alternate—Ray Durham, 2008, 6 homers, 45 RBI, .299. Reason for retirement: Not sure; I remember there was a big surplus of second basemen in the market that winter, and I think his agent may have missed the opportunity to land a good spot.
Alternate—Joe Gedeon, 1920, 0 homers, 61 RBI, .292. Reason for retirement: Black Sox Scandal.
Alternate—Joey Cora, 1998, 6 homers, 32 RBI, .276, 111 runs scored. Reason for retirement: Not sure.
Third Base—Buck Weaver, 1920, 2 homers, 74 RBI, .331, 208 hits. Reason for retirement: Black Sox Scandal.
Alternate—Tony Boeckel, 1923, 7 homers, 79 RBI, .298. Reason for retirement: Killed in a car wreck.
Alternate—Doug Rader, 1977, 18 homers, 67 RBI, .251. Reason for retirement: Don’t know.
Shortstop—Ray Chapman, 1920, 3 homers, 49 RBI, .303 average. Reason for retirement: Killed by a pitch.
Alternate—Sam Wise, 1893, .311, 5 homers, 77 RBI, .311, 102 runs scored. Reason for retirement: Don’t know.
Left Field—Joe Jackson, 1920, .382, 12 homers, 121 RBI. Reason for retirement: Scandal.
Alternate—Ted Williams, 1960, .316, 29 homers, 72 RBI. Reason for retirement: Age.
Alternate—Barry Bonds, 2007, .276, 28 homers, 66 RBI, 132 walks. Reason for retirement: Huge jackass, nobody wanted him around if he wasn’t going to hit .350 with 40 homers.
Alternate—Indian Bob Johnson, 1945, 12 homers, 74 RBI, .280. End of World War II brought the players back from Europe and created unusual pressures for roster space.
Center Field—Kirby Puckett, 1995, .314, 23 homers, 99 RBI, .314. Reason for retirement: Medical condition; I think it was glaucoma.
Alternate—Lyman Bostock, 1978, .296, 5 homers, 71 RBI. Reason for retirement: Murdered.
Alternate—Happy Felsch, 1920, .338, 14 homers, 115 RBI, 40 doubles, 15 triples. Reason for retirement: Scandal.
Right Field—Jermaine Dye, 2009, 27 homers, 81 RBI, .250. Reason for retirement: Why Dye no job?
Alternate—Larry Walker, 2005, .289, 15 homers, 52 RBI. Reason for retirement: Aging, bad knees, had made a lot of money.
Alternate—Buzz Arlett, 1931, .313, 18 homers, 72 RBI. Reason for retirement: Returned to minors. Was probably making more money as a superstar in the minors than playing for the Phillies.
Alternate—Roberto Clemente, 1972--.312, 10 homers, 60 RBI. Reason for retirement: Killed in plane crash.
Alternate—Paul O’Neill, 2001. 21 homers, 70 RBI, .267. Reason for retirement: Age, dignity.
DH—Albert Belle, 2000, .281, 23 homers, 103 RBI. Reason for retirement: Injury. Belle had a big-bucks contract which was insured so that his team was paid by the insurer if Belle couldn’t play at all. If Belle had tried to come back and had played at a diminished level, as 99% of injured players do, that would have let the insurance company off the hook, thus costing his team millions of dollars.
Starting Pitcher—Sandy Koufax, 1966, 27-9, 1.73 ERA, 317 strikeouts. Reason for retirement: arthritis, chronic fluid buildup in the elbow.
Starting Pitcher—Eddie Cicotte, 1920, 21-10, 3.27 ERA. Reason for retirement: Black Sox scandal.
Starting Pitcher—Mike Mussina, 2008, 20-9, 3.37 ERA. Reason for retirement: Too Old to Rock and Roll.
Starting Pitcher—Lefty Williams, 1920, 22-14, 3.91 ERA. Reason for retirement: Black Sox scandal.
Fifth Starter—Larry French, 1942, 15-4, 1.82 ERA. Reason for retirement: World War II. I think French actually was an Intelligence Officer in World War II, and stayed in the Navy after the War, eventually retired as a high-ranking officer.
Starting Pitcher—Henry (About) Schmidt, 1902, 22-13, 3.83 ERA. Reason for retirement: Texan who hated the East, didn’t want to come East to play baseball any more.
Closer—Robb Nen, 2002, 6-2, 43 Saves, 2.20 ERA. Reason for retirement: Injury.
Closer—Steve Olin, 1992, 8-5, 29 Saves, 2.34 ERA. Reason for retirement: Killed in a boating accident.
As you can see, for a productive player to retire has been much, much more common in the last fifteen years than it was before 1995. Part of this may be that some players did not want to continue taking steroids in order to stay in the game. Another part may have been that the very high salaries of modern baseball make it unnecessary for an aging player to hang on after his best days are behind him.
Others of note: Dave Orr, 1890, Ed Konetchy, 1921, Sam Dungan, 1901, Joe Adcock, 1966, Del Pratt, 1924, Scott Brosius, 2001, Al Rosen, 1956, Joe Wood, 1922, Curt Walker, 1930, Ty Cobb, 1928, Steve Evans, 1915, Bill Lange, 1899, Bill Joyce, 1898, Perry Werden, 1897, Piggy Ward, 1894, Ecky Stearns, 1889, Charlie Ferguson, 1887, Joe DiMaggio, 1951, Mickey Mantle, 1968, Chili Davis, 1999, Johnny Dickshot, 1945, Eddie Morgan, 1934, Bill Keister, 1903, Irv Waldren, 1901, Reggie Smith, 1982, Bernie Williams, 2006, Johnny Hodapp, 1933, Ross Youngs, 1926. Pitchers: Jim Hughes, 1902, Britt Burns, 1985, Allie Reynolds, 1954, John Tudor, 1990, Paul Derringer, 1945, Larry Jackson, 1968, Ed Doheny, 1903, Vin Lingle Mungo, 1945, Phil Douglas, 1922, Jeff Zimmerman, 2001, J. R. Richard, 1980, Spud Chandler, 1947.
The Re-Assuring Saga of the Jay-Walking Candidate
In the 1972 movie The Candidate Robert Redford plays a very nice-looking young man, a novice to politics, who runs for and wins a seat in the Senate. The character that Redford plays (Bill McKay) is essentially an empty vessel, not a bad man, but not a man who has any real ideas or any real substance, just a nice-looking, well-dressed, articulate, self-confident young man who can be used by others to gain power. The Candidate reflects a cynical view of politics that I think is still common, and especially common among reporters: that this is all a show, that politics are all flash and no substance, that the candidates are merely shills for behind-the-scenes Svengalis whose real agendas are known only to them.
There is something very comforting in the Presidential campaign of Rick Perry. Perry has a broad smile, great hair, a good voice, walks with a swagger and projects a great deal of self-confidence. Unfortunately, the man is a moron. I’m not saying this as a political judgment; he’s not a moron because I disagree with him about anything in particular; actually, I agree with him about many things. He’s just dumb as a post. I can’t ever remember anybody running for President who was just this frigging dense. I think he is probably a very nice man with good values, and the country would probably be fine if he was President, but I went through old lists of people who ran for President (Lamar Alexander, Dick Gephardt, Eugene McCarthy, Nelson Rockefeller, Dan Quayle) and I couldn’t find anybody with so limited an intellect who thought that he should be President.
Actually, even Rick Perry knows perfectly well that he has no business being President; he had to be dragged into this race kicking and screaming. I watch all the debates and then re-watch them several times; I enjoy them. The first few times that Perry said something extraordinarily silly I excused him and defended him to my friends, saying that I didn’t think he was actually dumb, he just sounded dumb because he panicked, which is a very easy thing to do when you are on stage or on television and people are looking at you. Perry would get into the middle of sentence, lose track of where he was going and what he was trying to say, and slap some rhetorical flourish onto the end of his sentence like "got to do what’s right for Amurica" or "bring some common sense back to Worshington," and hope that nobody would notice the difference. Sometimes the rhetorical flourish that ended the sentence didn’t fit at all with the first half of the declaration, so it sounded moronic, but. . .so what? This was what I said BEFORE he forgot what the third cabinet-level department he wanted to abolish was, and that event merely re-enforced this opinion: sometimes he panics in mid-sentence.
What it took me a while to accept is that he panics in mid-sentence because he knows that he doesn’t belong here; he knows perfectly well that he doesn’t have any well-developed ideas about any of the issues that he is supposedly discussing, and he is just trying to get through the sentence without revealing that his understanding of the issues would make Bill McKay look like Caspar Weinberger. This creates severe anxiety for him, which manifests itself in an inability to concentrate. Set that aside; when you set aside the times that he has panicked, when you excuse entirely the stupid things he has said because he got into the middle of a sentence and started looking around desperately for some rhetorical escape hatch, the fact remains that he doesn’t have any real understanding of roughly 97% of the issues he is supposed to be discussing. It’s not that he doesn’t know the things the other candidates know; he doesn’t know the things my 18-year-old son knows. Perry speaks of memorizing lists of names of Supreme Court justices—excuse me, Supreme Court judges—as is this was a feat that would test the capacities of Ken Jennings. My son knows not only who the justices are, but roughly how old they are, when they were put onto the court, who appointed them, and what their politics are. You could give Rick Perry a list of nine racehorses and nine Supreme Court justices, and it’s 50/50 whether he would have Harness Breaker as a thoroughbred or a strict constructionist.
He has fifteen or twenty sound bites that he has memorized, and when he is asked any question, he tries to find some way to affix one of his sound bites to the matter that he has been asked about. He virtually never answers the question he has been asked, not because he is being evasive but because he just doesn’t actually KNOW any of the answers. He has never really thought about these issues, or read about them, or studied them or been briefed about them in any depth. It is not that he is a bad man; he is just hopelessly out of his league.
Last summer, several of Newt Gingrich’s political operatives quit and went to work for Rick Perry. They were upset with Newt because they wanted to tell him where to go and what to say and how to run his campaign, and Newt’s not all that pliable; Da Newt’s gonna do what Da Newt wanna do. They bet instead on the Robert Redford playbook: just find this nice-looking, pleasant, agreeable candidate with a reasonable resume who represents a pocket of the political economy where there is a ton of money to work with, and his handlers and operatives can do the rest.
No, they can’t.
The real lesson of the Rick Perry campaign is that the Bill McKay scenario is a cynical myth, at least at the level of the Presidency; you can’t actually make some vacuous random alpha male into a credible candidate, at all. They couldn’t do it with John Edwards—although they came closer—and they couldn’t do it with Rick Perry. The system is not so easy to manipulate, after all.
The ABZ problem
I have been re-reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, which, I would stress, is a very good book filled with interesting ideas. What Gladwell does successfully is something that I try to do on a more limited scale: to challenge people to think again about things that they assume they understand, to get them to back off and come at the issue from a different angle. There is, however, this paragraph, page 80:
What Hudson is saying is that IQ is a lot like height in basketball. Does someone who is five foot six have a realistic chance of playing professional basketball? Not really. You need to be at least six foot or six one to play at that level, and, all things being equal, it’s probably better to be six two than six one, and better to be six three than six two. But past a certain point, height stops mattering so much. A player who is six foot eight is not automatically better than someone two inches shorter. (Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player ever, was six six after all.) A basketball player only has to be tall enough—and the same is true of intelligence. Intelligence has a threshold.
With regard to height and basketball, this is absolutely untrue; in fact, it could not be any more untrue. Height in basketball is not a "threshold" question, at all. Saying that it is a threshold question implies that the difference between being six foot and six-two is important, but the difference between being six-eight and six-ten is much less important. In fact, the opposite is true; the difference between being six-eight and six-ten is much more significant than the difference between being six foot and six-two. Any way that you studied the issue would show you that that is true. Graph the percentage of the male adult population of the United States which is in the NBA against height. If what Gladwell was saying was true, the graph would flatten out above the threshold. In fact, the opposite would happen: the rise in the graph would accelerate dramatically as the players got taller and taller.
What this really is is not a threshold question, but what I call and ABZ problem. An ABZ problem is a mathematical problem in which there are many variables, every one of which is critical to the outcome. A basketball game that ends 71-70 is an ABZ problem. There are 150 possessions in the game, roughly, but it isn’t that one of these possessions is critical, but that every possession is critical—or, at least, every possession on which the winning team scores is critical, and every possession on which the losing team does not score.
In an ABZ problem, if you have 95% of the information you need, you can’t solve the problem. If there are 150 possessions in a basketball game and you know what happened on 140 of them, you don’t know who won. You know who won if the game was 83-66, but if it was 71-70, you don’t. Scouting baseball players is an ABZ problem. A player has to have many different gifts to succeed in the major leagues, some of which you can observe by scouting him and some of which you can’t. In baseball we collect fantastic amounts of information about amateur players—and yet we are often totally wrong in evaluating them, because it’s an ABZ problem. If you have 95% of the information you need, you’re going to get the wrong answer a large percentage of the time—and you can’t get 100% of the information.
Height in basketball is not definitive not because it’s a threshold question, but because it’s an ABZ problem. When you ask "How tall is the player?" height is an advantage, and an increasing advantage as the player becomes increasingly tall. But you also have to ask, "How good a shooter is he?", and "How quick is he?" and "How well does he understand basketball?" and "How strong is he in the lower body?" and "How determined is he to fight for a rebound?" and "How willing is he to work on his game?", and probably a hundred other questions. It isn’t that one of these questions is critical and the others are not, and it isn’t that one of these questions is critical but only up to a point. It is, rather, that a very large number of players are fighting for a very limited number of seats at the table; therefore, no one advantage is sufficient to lift a player above the competition, and therefore, each of these questions is critical to the outcome.