Sorry, I don't know how else to communicate with you...re: a Supreme Court case, I thought the same thing, but the criminal defense attorney told me that wasn't what happened. If you find out differently, I'd be interested to know.

Re: attendance vs caliber of players employed, I think you're overlooking the different cultural space occupied by pro vs college sports. There is widespread regional fanaticism in college sports culture, made possible by the fact that college sports developed such that access to the highest level of competition was not as restricted as that in MLB and other professional sports. As a result, all kinds of highly-driven local fanbases remain viable economic propositions despite the much greater number of teams. Pro sports, on the other hand, are culturally-positioned as "the best of the best".  

 

I'm a Nebraska fan and my team has been unprecedentedly terrible for 4 of the last 5 years. We continue to sell out every game. I saw us get stomped by OSU in a stadium that remained 60%-70% full to the end. That doesn't happen in MLB - bad teams still have diehard fans, but the fairweather fans that drive the real economic gravy train stay home, and they sure as heck don't sell out the stadium.

Just a bit more about Dick Pahmahmie: He did go 18-10 in 1949, with a 3.63 ERA, but he might have been better in '48, when he went 13-3 with a 2.51 ERA. He fell off pretty dramatically after that, but it does look like he was Topeka's star pitcher for two years there, as you remembered.  

 

 

I’ve heard and read that story about Finley from old interviews of Marvin Miller. According to Miller, "Charlie Finley was the only owner out there with any sense when it came to free agency." "The other owners were running scared of free agency and were doing everything possible to prevent it." "But Finley came right out and said, [Allow every player to be a free agent after every season]." "Finley’s proposal was considered off the wall by the other owners but to me it was a big worry." Miller shrewdly offered the owners what seemed like a compromise by limiting players to free agency after 6 years of service time. According to Miller, "I didn’t want free agency every year, you flood the market that way and salaries would only be a fraction of what they became." "You just want a few guys out there every year, this way the demand was far greater than the supply, Finley was the only owner who understood that."

I just googled Mayetta Kansas and learned that its population declined somewhat through most of the 20th century but has since rebounded and has been increasing since the year 2000. Two questions: were you aware of this and do you attribute it to anything in particular? Thanks.

Does your Kansas book include material related to your personal experience of relations between the races in your hometown, as you talked about it in that answer about Dick Pahmahmie? (I hope so.) And, while we're at it, any update on what's happening with the book?

Just a comment. When I had a summer job as a popsicle man in Birmingham in the early 70s, the owner and I would talk baseball. He had gone through the school system with Charley Finley. He said the guy was an asshole in elementary school.  FWIW.

The game of baseball may not depend on any one player, but doesn't the appeal of MLB rest on the generally understood premise that this is the most competitive baseball on earth? If the owners in MLB decided they could do without Betts and Trout and Verlander, and a substantial number of the best players went to Japan, or Mexico, or the Lost Civilization of Atlantis Central Division, wouldn't there be a significant fall-off in interest, attendance and revenue?

Thanks so much for the whole story of Dick Pahmahmie. When I went looking for the right player, there were two that seemed possible, and he was "the other guy." There were two reasons that I went past him. The main one was that his page on baseball-reference (https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=pahmah001ric) is just blank on some of the usual bio info: where he was born, death date or current age, which seems to mean a guy was pretty unknown, and I guessed that this player wouldn't be. Also his biggest year was actually 1949 (where he is shown as going 18-10) and I guessed that your guy's big year wouldn't have been quite that far back. (I recognize that such listed records can be incomplete or wrong.) BTW from that page it seems he likewise had his whole career in organized ball with that Topeka team, also likewise 5 years, from 1948 to 1952. Thanks again very much for expanding on the story.

Bill, thanks for your response re: "The Man from the Train". One question I had when reading your book concerned your statement that back then, to avoid the Double Jeopardy problem in cases of multiple, simultaneous killings, prosecutors would sometimes charge someone with only one killing so they could re-try the accused on others later if they wanted. I wondered how this worked today, so I asked a local criminal defense attorney. He told me that generally the court would order the cases over the crimes to be consolidated but upon motion & for good cause, a petition may be made to have separate counts tried separately. "Good cause shown" might be when multiple defendants are charged, but factually, one defendant is far less culpable than the others. That defendant would want to avoid being painted as guilty with one broad stroke of the brush.  

 

Generally it is defense attorneys who are more likely to file to separate cases, but the prosecution can do it also.  

 

Anyway, thanks again.

It seems as if Charlie Finley understood the free agency problem right away. By only letting a few free agents trickle out at a time, they were massively inflating salaries because the supply never kept up with the demand. If you’re making Richie Zisk & Larry Hisle two of the highest paid players in baseball, how much were Schmidt, Fisk and Brett worth? Was there ever a movement by some of the owners during the 80’s or early 90’s to adopt Finley’s plan of yearly universal free agency?

tkoegel: I remember being saddened... about the loss of minor league baseball in the restructuring... and the old system that started at Class D was restructured...  Removing colorful locales like Medicine Hat.  

 

Please don't mourn the Hat - the A's and Blue Jays had a Rookie League affiliate there from 1977-2002. The Medicine Hat Mavericks have played in the Western Canadian Baseball League (collegiate summer baseball) since at least 2003, winning three titles. Beautiful team logo: https://medicinehatnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Mavericks-logo-300x263.jpg.  

 

The Okotoks Dawgs play 25 minutes from my house. I've been meaning to take my family to a game for years and need to get to it when the league resumes next summer.

At what point is it appropriate for me to acknowledge that I’m apparently going to call Bryce Harper Brian Harper for his entire career?

Bill,  

Regarding the runner on second in extra innings rule, this is what MLB.com has to say:  

"The runner placed on second base at the start of each half-inning will be the player in the batting order immediately preceding that half-inning’s leadoff hitter, or a pinch-runner."  There's not going to be a designated runner, or a choice about who the runner will be (unless the team puts in a pinch-runner.)  

What do you think the odds are that any team will play 60 games this year?  Isn't it likely a few players on each team will test positive, and the whole team'll be forced to go into quarantine for two weeks, probably more than once?

Hey Bill --  

 

Re: Stengel. In the late '40s and early '50s, he seemed to use Allie Reynolds both as a starter and as a reliever. Seems Virgil Trucks got similar usage. Was that standard practice with other top starters with other teams?