1870s
Dick Higham hit .327 in the first season of the National League, 1876, leading the league in doubles. He played in the International League in 1877—the International League in that era was more or less on the same footing as the National League-- then came back to the NL in 1878 to hit .320, once more leading the league in doubles and this time in runs scored as well. This made Higham, by our formula, the first Comeback Player of the Year.
Not that anybody would care; Higham, of course, is famous as baseball’s only crooked umpire. Despite rumors that he was involved in game-fixing as a player, Higham was hired by the National League to umpire the games in Detroit. He devised a code. He would wire (send a telegram) to his gambler friend in New York saying "Buy all the lumber you can," which meant that he was going to call the game in Detroit’s favor. If he didn’t send a telegram, he would call the game so Detroit would probably lose.
George Wright was the younger brother of the man who more or less organized the National Association, Harry Wright. He (George) was a superstar in the National Association, hit just .225 in 1878, then came back to hit .278 in 1879, and was third in the league in runs scored. Comeback player of the year, 1879.
Break One
I have tried for years to devise some way to "score" college basketball teams to determine objectively who should be in the NCAA tournament. What I have in mind is a system in which, let us say, Xavier has 332.01 points and St. Louis has 341.04. Xavier plays St. Louis in St. Louis. If Xavier wins, they get some number of points for that victory—let us say 6% of St. Louis’ total, which would be 20.46 points, which would give them 352.47 points on the season. If St. Louis wins, they get 5% of Xavier’s total, giving them fewer points because Xavier has fewer points to begin with, and fewer as well because it is a home game for St. Louis. So if St. Louis wins they pick up 15.60 points, which would give them 356.64 points.
In this construct the loser doesn’t LOSE points; it is merely that the winner increases his score, so that teams move up as the season goes on. Whoever winds up with the most points is the #1 seed in the tournament.
I take the advantages of such a system to be apparent. It is better, to me as a fan, if teams earn their position in the tournament, rather than if they are given a position by The Committee. Some people like the idea of the high and mighty committee; I don’t like it. The old coaches who broadcast games talk about teams "impressing" the committee, and about getting people on the committee who really watch the games, rather than just going by the numbers. The numbers. .. .you mean, like, winning the game? Beating good opponents? Silly numbers like that?
Screw the committee; sort it out on the floor, where it belongs. The only problem is, I’ve never been able to figure out how to devise a system that actually works. I know a million ways to rate teams, of course, but none of them is exactly right for this purpose. It’s dangerous to use the score of the game, for this purpose, because that would give an incentive to a team to beat another team by as wide a margin as possible. You have to have a system in which teams start out even, regardless of what they have done in past year. You have to have a system in which games at the end of the year mean more than games early in the year.
But every system I can come up with creates perverse incentives. If everybody starts out even, then all early games tend to be "even" accomplishments, which discourages teams from scheduling tough opponents early in the season. If you get more points for wins late in the year, that encourages teams to play as many games as they can in February. There has to be some way to dodge all of those problems and create a system that works, but I don’t know what it is.
The 1880s
Cap Anson hit only .317 in 1879, and became the Comeback Player of 1880 by hitting .337 and leading the league in RBI for the first time. (It was a weird year, and only a few people had comeback scores greater than zero.)
Tom York in 1881 (batting averages .309, .310, .212 and .304 from 1878-1881). Roger Connor in 1882 (another weird one, like 1880.) Charley Jones in 1883; he had held out for two years in a contract dispute, returned to lead the league in RBI. Jones had a Comeback Score of 105, which is the highest we have seen so far. Cap Anson again in 1884; Sam Wise in 1885.
Arlie Latham in 1886, with a new-record score of 158; Latham had hit .206 in 1885. Oyster Burns in 1887, with a new-record 161; the scores were getting bigger because the season was getting longer. That’s not a true comeback; Burns had missed the 1886 season, but had never really been good before then. It’s the 19th century; the data is just a little off sometimes because of rapid changes in the rules and style of play. Tom Brown in 1888, after hitting .217 in 1887. George Gore in 1889, hitting .305 after a .220 season in 1888; Gore scores at a record-shattering 275.
Gore was a good player, a great defensive outfielder, a lifetime .300 hitter, and led the league in walks three times. A 19th century Richie Ashburn.
Break Two
I’d like to get a discussion going here about who looks good in spring training. I’ve seen about 12 games down here; the most impressive player I’ve seen is Andrew McCutchen of Pittsburgh. I don’t know when I’ve seen a player with such a quick bat. Some of you guys must have seen some games, right? Who have you seen who looks good? Share with us.
The 1890s
The Baseball War of 1890 brought a bunch of players out of retirement, and led to a slew of very high comeback scores. Pete Browning, winning his first batting title since 1885, was the Comeback Player of the Year with a score of 387. Arlie Latham again in 1891; Buck Ewing in 1892 after missing most of the 1891 season with an injury. Sam Wise for the second time in 1893.
Bill Joyce hit just .245 in 1892, was traded to Washington and refused to report, sitting out the 1893 season. He had his best year in 1894, hitting .355 with 17 homers, 89 RBI, for a new-record score of 487. Buck Ewing again in 1895. Bill Dahlen in 1896; he hit .359 in 1894, dropped to .254, then back to .352, so that’s really a legitimate comeback. Perry Werden in 1897. Lave Cross in 1898. Tom Daly in 1899.
Break Three
Sometimes down here in Florida I can’t get on to the web site to answer (or even read) your letters to "Hey, Bill". The hotel has this annoying system in which they have to "verify" your "account" before they put you on the internet. When you are on and you move from page to page, sometimes their software interferes with what you’re trying to do, so sometimes—like now--I can’t get to your "Hey, Bill" letters. You guys may be screaming at me about something I’ve written, but I’m not ignoring you; I just don’t know. Well. . .I could be ignoring you. It’s theoretically possible.
The 1900s
Sliding Billy Hamilton was the Comeback Player of the Year in 1900. John Anderson in 1901; he’s the guy who is famous for attempting to steal second base with the bases loaded.
When the American League started in 1901 there was another effort to start a competitive league the same year, the Western League. They had teams in Kansas City, Denver, Minneapolis, Des Moines. They attracted some legitimate major league players; just not enough. Kid Nichols went to the Western League, Perry Werden, Emil Frisk. The league failed, hence is regarded now as a "minor" league, although it wasn’t that different from the American League at that time. Anyway, Jimmy Ryan went to the Western League, moved to the American League in 1902, thus is the "Comeback" player of the year for 1902. Turkey Mike Donlin in 1903; he was probably coming back from one of his jail encounters, I’m guessing. George Davis in 1904; I told his story at length in the Hall of Fame book. Mike Donlin again in 1905. Charlie Hemphill in 1906; his last previous good year was 1902, which was probably before he discovered the Hemp Hills. Ginger Beaumont in 1907. Turkey Mike again in 1908; Donlin didn’t have any "pretty good" seasons. He was always either terrible, missing, or sensational. Mike Mitchell in 1909.
Break Four
Justice for Trayvon!
To begin with, we have to fight back against the argument that there are 300 murders a week in this country, and this is just another one, that somebody has "picked" this case to make a point of some sort or another . The prevalence of crime in our society—and in every society—makes it impossible for us to care about each act of violence, each case of injustice.
One picks one flower from a field not because it is the prettiest flower; one picks one apple from a tree not because it is the tastiest apple, but because it comes to hand. We have a choice, then: do we choose one case to care about, because it comes to hand, or do we say that because there is too much injustice to care about each case, we are somehow barred from caring about any case?
It is not a bad thing, that we chose one cause in which to fight for justice; it is a very, very good thing. It would be a very bad thing if we stopped doing it, threw up our arms and said, "Oh, well; there will always be violence." We are defeated if we stop caring.
The salient fact about the murder of Trayvon Martin is not that a young black man was killed; there are, as we all know, a large number of young black men murdered every week, and there aren’t enough hours in the day to care about each one, as much as we may be distressed about that. The salient fact here is that a young black man was murdered, and the doors of the police station were immediately closed against justice.
The "Stand Your Ground" law is a distraction. It is as apparent as it possibly could be that, even with the Stand Your Ground law, charges should have been filed the next day. Does anyone really believe that, without the Stand Your Ground law, these "prosecutors" would not have found some other pretext to sweep this under the rug?
The President says that if he had a son, the son would look like Trayvon. Well, I have an 18-year-old son, and honestly, he doesn’t seem that different from Trayvon, either. He likes skittles and coke rather than skittles and iced tea; it doesn’t seem like a big difference. The President didn’t inject race into this; this has been about race since before the shot was fired. I am not saying that Zimmerman is a racist. Our culture conditions us to be hypersensitive about black teenagers, wondering if they are alright or if they are trouble. You can be nervous about who is in your neighborhood without being racist—but we don’t shoot people, or even harass them, because they make us uncomfortable.
The battle to eliminate violence from our culture is thousands of years old, and it has thousands of years yet to run. It is not a struggle in which we will surge suddenly to success; it is a matter of small steps forward, sustained from one generation to another. We have made immense progress; even in my lifetime we have made progress that is easily seen. This one random tragedy has been turned into an opportunity to take a small step forward. It is as much as we can do in this world.
The 1910s
Nap Lajoie hit under .300 in 1907 and 1908, hit .327 in 1909 but with only 56 runs scored and 47 RBI. In 1910 he hit .384, had 227 hits and "won" the disputed batting title against Ty Cobb—or not, depending on your interpretation of those events. Anyway he would be the Comeback Player of the Year. 1911, Jimmy Sheckard; scored a career-high 121 runs after not scoring 100 for ten years. 1912, Johnny Evers. 1913, Hans Lobert.
In 1914 there was a new league, the Federal League, so a bunch of players who were out or almost out returned to the majors or returned to full-time status, creating a flood of high Comeback Scores. The highest was by Steve Evans, who had had good years with the Cardinals, 1911-1912, and was one of the best players in the Federal League. 1915, Ed Konetchy; Federal League again, Konetchy would return successfully to the National League after the Federals folded. 1916, Shoeless Joe Jackson, coming back from a season in which he had only 142 hits. 1917, Ping Bodie, who once won a spaghetti-eating competition against a hungry ostrich.
1918, Lee Magee, hitting .290 after a season hitting .200. 1919, Joe Jackson for the second time, after missing most of the 1918 season due to military service.
Break Five
My process for identifying the Comeback Player of the Year is essentially the same as the process outlined last week for pitchers. It is based on season scores. For 2011, I would subtract the player’s 2010 season score from his career high prior to 2010, and then multiply that by the difference between the player’s 2010 and 2011 season scores. Comeback equals decline times recovery.
For position players, I modified the process in three ways. First, I limited the "points" given for the "decline" to 250. I can use Barry Bonds, 2006, to explain why. Bonds had a career high season score, prior to 2006, of 723. In 2005, playing only 14 games, his season score was only 38. In 2006 it recovered to 305—which is still a very good year, players have won MVP Awards with scores of 305, but it’s not a phenomenal season. Without this limit, Bonds’ score would be very high, which would make Bonds the comeback player of the year in 2006—and also in two or three other years; his "peak" is so high that every time he plays better than he did the year before, he’s the leading candidate for Comeback Player of the Year.
So I made that 250 times 267 (thus limiting the tendency of the award to go to aging superstars), but then I added a third factor. The third factor is the fourth root of the (2011) season score. The fourth root of 305 is 4.18, so I multiplied 205, times 267, times 4.18.
I made this change because there were some cases, in the pitcher’s list, of pitchers who had pretty awful seasons being named the Comeback Pitcher. I wanted a "quality check" to insure that the player who was named for the award had had at least a respectable season. I tried first to simply multiply the product of the other two by the season score, but this over-emphasized the quality of the comeback season. Let’s say 300 versus 100; 300 is three times 100, but the fourth root of 300 is only 32% greater than the fourth root of 100, so multiplying by the fourth root doesn’t have nearly the impact of multiplying by the raw number.
The third change is cosmetic; dividing the product by 1000, so that Tris Speaker’s score for 1920 is 297.654, rather than 297,654.
The 1920s
Tris Speaker hit only .296 in 1919, his only season under .300 as a regular, so when he hit .388 in 1920, that made him the Comeback Player of the Year. Speaker’s chief rival, Ty Cobb, played only 112 games in 1920 and hit "just" .334, so when he hit .389 in 1921, that made Cobb the Comeback Player.
1922 is an interesting one, Casey Stengel; Stengel hit .368 as a half-time player after dropping almost out of the league in 1921. Babe Ruth was suspended in 1922, had a poor year, came back to win his only batting title in 1923, so 1923 goes to Babe Ruth. George Sisler missed the 1923 season entirely, was the Comeback Player of the year in 1924.
1925, Milt Stock, hitting .328 after a .242 season. 1926, Babe Ruth for the second time; 1925 was the year of the famous abdominal emergency, the Yankees finished 7th. Ruth’s score in 1926, 552, was the highest score in history at that point. Hornsby had a poor year in 1926, was the Comeback Player of the Year in 1927.
In 1928 it was Unser Choe Hauser, famous minor league home run king, coming back from a serious injury. 1929 was Earl Sheely, playing regularly for the first time in three years.
Break Six
About Connie Hawkins; this is from Sports Illustrated, December 16, 1968.
Connie Hawkins has had an edge in basketball since his high school days in Brooklyn. Thanks to gamblers, he had a sort of double edge in 1961 when he was a freshman at Iowa, and it was almost fatal. Although a freshman cannot fix anything, the gamblers gave him $200 and performed numerous personal favors; the assumption is that they wanted Hawkins on their side when he moved up to the varsity. The investments never paid off. New York District Attorney Frank Hogan exposed the fixers, who were involved in bigger things than the attempted corruption of a freshman, and Hawkins was on his way out of Iowa.
To Howie Jones, coach at Brooklyn's Boys High, who had followed Hawkins from his days as a gang member and junior high truant to stardom and one of the biggest recruiting scrambles ever, the expulsion of the boy was at once understandable and sad. "I don't excuse what Connie did," he says. "A lot of other players have made it from here and resisted the temptation of taking money illegally. But this school is in the heart of Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Connie was from the bottom of the barrel economically even here. His mother was blind and on welfare, and when all of a sudden recruiters started pouring in and offering Connie the world he realized how valuable he was in terms of money. I don't feel that what a lot of the recruiters did was much less dishonest than what the gamblers did."
Although he was never prosecuted, Hawkins' failure to resist temptation resulted not only in his loss of a college education, but also in a ban from ever playing in the NBA.
The 1930s
Gabby Hartnett missed almost the entire 1929 season with an injury, returned in 1930 to hit .339 with 37 homers, 122 RBI, making him an obvious selection for our distinction. R. Hornsby missed most of the 1930 season with an injury, was Comeback Player of the Year for the second time in 1931 although he was a long way from the player he had once been.
Charlie Gehringer was injured in 1931, Comeback Player of 1932. 1933 is Evar Swanson. Swanson is an interesting player; he was. ..how to say? The Coco Crisp of his time? Raj Davis? He was the fastest player in baseball in that time, but it was an era that didn’t put a premium on speed. In 1929 he hit .300 for Cincinnati, but with no power, and he struck out more often than he walked (47-41). In 1929 78% of regular players (83 of 106 players with 400 or more plate appearances) had more walks than strikeouts, so the combination of no power and a poor strikeout/walk ratio was deadly for Swanson, whereas the fact that he hit .300 was really nothing (since 60% of regulars did) and the speed was not a huge positive (since it wasn’t a speed game.)
So he lost his job, went back to the minors, but came back in 1933 to hit .300 again, this time with 93 walks and 35 strikeouts. He is our comeback player of 1933. Mel Ott hit under .300 with only 23 homers in 1933, was the Comeback Player of the Year in 1934. George Watkins hit .373 as a rookie in 1930, hit .247 in 1934, was Comeback Player of the Year in 1935, just because somebody has to be. Lou Gehrig in 1936. Hank Greenberg missed 1936 with an injury, drove in 183 runs in 1937, thus had a Comeback Score of 724, which is a new record, and which is still the record today.
Jimmie Foxx hit 50 homers, drove in 175 runs in 1938; he hadn’t done that for a few years, so he was comeback player of 1938. 1939 is Boob McNair, Eric McNair, who had been a decent player early in the decade, hit just .156 in 46 games in 1938, then hit .324 as a regular in 1939.
Break Seven
By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration. The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.
Since it came up here somewhere, I located the Citizens United Decision (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission) and read through it. Very interesting. . .it’s 183 pages, with all the concurring and dissenting opinions. The pages are short, so it’s more like 120 pages, but legal opinions are dense and refer constantly to other legal opinions, so it seems more like 250 pages.
It is quite a good read. Very often Supreme Court decisions are boring, and nearly unintelligible. Often there’s a lot of back-and-forth about obscure legal issues that a layman either can’t understand or can’t see the significance of, or maybe you’re not sure what they’re saying because of the use of terms of art.
Not so here; the main opinion, written by Judge Kennedy—who I basically think is an officious ass—is lucid, graceful, and compelling, as are all of the other opinions. More to the point, they’re actually debating the main substance of the issue—not the intent of congress, not the precise language of the statute, but whether it is right or wrong, consistent or inconsistent with constitutional principles for the Federal government to limit the participation of corporations in pre-electoral debate.
I really did not understand, until I did this little bit of research, that the case involved a frontal attack on freedom of expression. What I supposed that it was. ..what one might get the impression the case was about, from secondary sources. ..was a profit-making corporation dumping a little bit of their vast resources into the political stream. Let us suppose there is a corporation, which we will call Morgan United Distributors, Cosmetics and Topicals, or MUDCAT for short. Mudcat has revenues of $170 billion a year, and Mudcat supposes that it would benefit from a having a Republican Senate, so they allocate some paltry amount of money—let’s say $15 million—to try to interfere in the Arkansas State senate race. In so doing, they bestow $5 million on each of three PACs to oppose the Democratic incumbent.
But actually—I learn from reading the decision—THAT activity would have been constitutionally protected anyway. It was already settled law that corporations have a right to participate in the democratic process when their economic interests are at stake. That’s not the issue in Citizen’s United. This was a direct attack on the ability of citizens to organize and participate in the political process. Citizen’s United is not a giant corporation; it is a nonprofit corporation, which has only the dollars that are donated to it for the purpose of making a political statement. It has an annual budget of $12 million, most of which has been donated by individuals; about 20% appears to have been donated by other corporations.
Citizen’s United made a movie essentially portraying Hillary Clinton as the Devil. The government tried to tell them that they couldn’t exhibit that movie within 60 days of an election in any venue where the movie might be seen by more than 50,000 people.
Well, if you can’t do that, then you can’t make a movie—whether a hatchet job or a work of great art—about a political candidate, as a part of the political process. Suppose that you and I and three other nitwits get together, and we decide that we want to get rid of our local congressman, because he is a saint and a shaman, and we only like nitwits. We decide that we’re going to make a movie attacking St. Shaman, but in order to do that we have to raise some money. I don’t want to run it out of my bank account or your bank account, so what do we do? We form a nonprofit corporation. The FEC tried to say, "No, you can’t do that." That seems to me like a fairly profound invasion into the natural rights of a citizen to participate in politics.
The 1940s
From 1936 to 1939 a hitter named Rip Radcliff hit .335, .325 and .330, a regular every year. In 1939 he dropped off to .264; in 1940 he bounced back to .342 with a league-leading 200 hits—making him the Comeback Player of 1940.
In 1941 the infamous Jeff Heath, after a season in which he hit .219, hit .340 with 32 doubles, 20 triples and 24 homers—one of a handful of players ever to his 20 doubles, triples and homers in a season.
In 1942 there really is no good candidate for the award. Our system gives it to Bobby Estalella, because it has to go to someone, but. . ..it’s a fairly arbitrary pick. In 1943 Augie Galan, who hadn’t been a regular since 1939, led the National League in walks, with 103, and had a .412 on base percentage. In 1944 there are two very good candidates, Johnny Hopp and Indian Bob Johnson; our system likes Johnson a little better. In 1945 Hank Greenberg returned from the War to drive in 60 runs in a half-season.
In 1946, one can debate whether the returning soldiers should or should not each be eligible for the Comeback Player of the Year Award. Our system declares them eligible, since it doesn’t know any better, so the Comeback scores of the two 1946 MVPs, Ted Williams and Stan Musial, are the second and third highest scores of all time—Williams, 717, and Musial, 584. Williams takes the award, but Musial will get it later.
Joe Gordon missed the 1944 and 1945 seasons due to serve his country, hit .210 in 1946, was an All-Star in 1947. Stan Musial had a subpar season in 1947, was the Comeback Player of 1948.
Mickey Vernon had a yo-yo career. In 1948 he hit .242 with 3 homers in 150 games. In 1949 he hit .291 with 18 homers, 83 RBI.
Break Eight
The two worst games of the 1948 season were both pitched by the same pitcher, Bill Wight of the Chicago White Sox. Wight didn’t have a great year; he was 9-20, and led the majors in walks with 135. Anyway, on July 23 against the Red Sox at Fenway, Wight pitched 4 innings, game up 9 hits, 9 runs, all earned, walked 5 and struck out 2, Game Score of 5. That was the worst game pitched by any major league pitcher that season—until Wight himself faced the Indians in Cleveland in the last week of the season, September 28, the pennant race set at "torrid". Wight lasted four and a third, gave up 10 hits, 10 runs, 9 earned runs, walked 5 and struck out 1. Game Score: 1.
The 1950s
Earl Torgeson played only 25 games in 1949, due to an injury, led the National League in 1950 in Runs Scored. As an aside, Torgeson is regarded by Win Shares as the National League’s co-MVP in 1950, tied with Stan Musial at 32 Win Shares, and finished third in the league in WAR—but 27th in the NL MVP voting. It is one of the largest discrepancies in history between MVP performance and value as measured by modern methods.
Eddie Joost hit .233 in 1950, would be the Comeback Player of 1951. Walt Dropo, after his phenomenal rookie season in 1950, had a very poor 1951, bounced back in 1952 to hit 29 homers and drive in 97. Carl Furillo hit .247 in 1952, bounced back to win the NL batting title in 1953 at .344.
In 1954 Willie Mays returned from military service and won his first MVP Award—the first great player to also be comeback player of the year since 1948. Roy Campanella hit .207 in 1954, was MVP in 1955.
Vic Wertz returned from tuberculosis to have an outstanding season in 1956. Actually, I’m not certain that’s true; I remember that Wertz had TB, but Wertz also had broken bones and other injuries, and he bounced from stardom to the waiver wires several times in his career, and I’m not certain which comeback was which.
Red Schoendienst would be the comeback player of 1957; this actually was before his battle with tuberculosis. He was just bouncing back from a couple of seasons of not playing at an all-star level. Pete Runnels hit .230 in 1957, was traded to Boston in 1958 and began a string of .320 seasons (.322, .314, .320, .317, .326). Eddie Mathews hit just .251 with 77 RBI in 1958, bounced back to have one of his best seasons in 1959.
Break Nine
Not counting Whitey Herzog, there were five Hall of Famers born in 1931—Mays, Mantle, Mathews, Banks and Bunning. If you took those five players out of the class of 1931, the remaining players born in that year would still easily outclass the talent born in 1929, 1930, 1932 or 1933. There were no Hall of Famers born in any of those four years, except possibly some manager that I might have overlooked. The non-Hall of Fame players born in 1931 include Catcher Ed Bailey or Hal Smith, 1B Joe Cunningham, Harry Anderson or Frank Torre, 2B Frank Bolling or Charlie Neal, 3B Ken Boyer, SS Don Zimmer, LF Bob Skinner, CF Bill Virdon, RF Whitey Herzog, and pitchers Larry Jackson, Hank Aguirre, Carlton Willey, Tom Brewer and Ed Roebuck—still clearly more talent than was born in any other year 1929-1933—not even including Mays, Mantle, Mathews, Banks and Bunning.
The 1960s
The Comeback Player of 1960 would be Ted Williams, who had his only poor season in 1959, and was the most effective hitter in the majors, at bat for at bat, in 1960. 1961 would be Rocky Colavito, who was booed all year in Detroit after he hit just .249 in 1960, drove in 140 runs in 1961. 1962 would go to Bob Skinner. 1963 would certainly be Dick Stuart, who led the American League in Home Runs and RBI after a miserable season in 1962.
1964 goes to Mickey Mantle, who missed most of 1963 with an injury, was still phenomenal in 1964. 1965 would be Willie McCovey, who hit just .220 in 1964. 1966 goes to Boog Powell, 1967 to Orlando Cepeda, who won the NL MVP Award two years after in injury that looked like it might end his career.
Our 1968 citation would go to Don Buford, hitting over .250 for the first time in three seasons. 1969 would be Harmon Killebrew, who won the MVP Award after a season in which he had hit just .217 and driven in only 40 runs.
Break Ten
Beginning in 1966 we have record of an actual series of awards, the Comeback Player of the Year Awards, given by The Sporting News. The Sporting News gave two awards, one in each year.
On one level, it seems silly to posit who might have won an award in some past season, when there was an actual award; if you want to stop paying attention now, I’ll certainly understand. On the other hand, we still have systems to determine who "should" have been the MVP or the Cy Young Award winner in seasons when the Award was actually given, so I don’t know that that’s necessarily any reason why we have to stop here.
The purpose of creating a system to determine mathematically who should have won an award is a way of clarifying our thinking about the issue. If you don’t like my system for determining the proper award winner—and honestly, I don’t like it all that much myself—you can say, "No, that’s not the way it should be done; it should be done THIS way," and you can create something better. You can take those elements of my system that you think work OK, junk the ones that don’t work, and build something better. In the process of doing this you will have to think through the issues involved: What really makes a Comeback worthy of note? In this way knowledge evolves through study.
Our awards don’t exactly mesh; more on that in a moment. But there was a Comeback Player of the Year Award given before 1966, even though I can’t find the record of it on the internet machine. I vividly remember Al Kaline being named the Comeback Player of the Year in 1961 and Ron Santo in 1963, and, indeed, the SABR biography of Al Kaline does state that he "was voted AL Comeback Player of the Year" in 1961. The article fails to say, however, who voted him this honor, or who won that honor in any other season, so that is useless to us, other than confirming that I’m not imagining this.
Anyway, we have The Sporting News Awards from 1965 on, but they don’t exactly match; I am naming two Comeback Players of the Year, one pitcher and one position player, and The Sporting News is naming two each year, but it’s one AL and one NL. In 1965, for example, the two Sporting News winners are Norm Cash and Vern Law, while my two are Willie McCovey and Bob Shaw.
Comparing Shaw and Law, I would have to agree that The Sporting News seems to have a better argument than I do. Vern Law was the Cy Young Award winner in 1960, had a serious injury in 1961, fought his way back, and had a brilliant year in 1965. My system likes Shaw over Law because Law was better in 1964 than Shaw was, thus Shaw "came back" further just in 1965, but that doesn’t seem like a good rationale, so I would have to concede the point.
On the other hand, Willie McCovey seems obviously better-qualified for a Comeback player award than was Norm Cash. They’re comparable players, both left-handed hitting first basemen; Cash was much better in 1964 than McCovey, McCovey much better in 1965 than Cash.
We agree on Boog Powell in 1966, but for the rest of the decade we don’t agree on anything. Sometimes nobody is right. The Sporting News in 1968 chose Ken Harrelson, which is weird because Harrelson had never really been good before 1968. Our selection of Don Buford doesn’t seem much better. In 1967 our pitcher selection was Ray Sadecki. The Sporting News chose two pitchers, Dean Chance and Mike McCormick, but it’s a close call; Chance was second on our list, and McCormick fourth. Beyond that, this article is already long, and I don’t know that it’s going to be interesting to debate every discrepancy. Plus I’m probably going to lose most of the arguments.
The 1970s
In 1970 our Comeback Player of the Year would be Orlando Cepeda again; Cepeda hit .248 with 16 homers in 1968, .257 with 22 homers in 1969, came back to have his last big season in 1970. The Sporting News chose Jim Hickman, which I think is a much worse choice; Hickman’s numbers were similar to Cepeda’s, but Hickman had never really had a good season before. 1971 we have Willie Stargell in a close contest over Norm Cash (112-107); Stargell drove in 100 runs for the first time since 1966. The Sporting News chose Cash for the second time. 1972 is Jimmy Wynn; Wynn was recovering from a season in which he hit .203 and his wife stabbed him. The Sporting News chose Bobby Tolan, who was third in our system.
1973 is Davey Johnson; Johnson was coming back from a season in which he hit .221 with 5 homers and lost his job in Baltimore, came back to have his best season in Atlanta, hitting 40+ homers. The Sporting News also chose Johnson. 1974 is Ken Henderson; Henderson was a kind of Ben Zobrist-type player who did everything well, but was underrated because he didn’t do any one thing super well. Henderson missed half the 1973 season with an injury, had his best season in 1974.
Jimmy Wynn, after his strong season in 1972, stunk up the league in 1973, had an exceptional year in 1974. The Sporting News now chooses Wynn (1974); he is second by our system, and I think Henderson is a better pick.
1975 we have Greg Luzinski, coming back from an injury in 1974; Luzinski did everything well except run, throw and field. Ditto for The Sporting News selection for 1975, Boog Powell; he is fourth in our system.
1976 there really isn’t anybody. Our system says Lou Piniella, but with a very, very low score (76); Piniella hit .196 in 1975, hit .281 in 1976, but as a half-time player. The Sporting News picked pitchers in both leagues. In 1977 there are a bunch of strong, strong candidates—Dusty Baker, Bobby Bonds, Reggie Smith, Willie McCovey, Jeff Burroughs, Johnny Bench and others. Our system says Dusty Baker; Baker hit just .242 with 4 homers in 1976, then hit .291 with a career-high 30 homers in 1977. In 1977 there are 19 candidates who would rank ahead of Piniella in ’76.
The Sporting News in 1977 chose McCovey and Eric Soderholm, which I don’t think is a particularly good pick; Soderholm was coming back from a serious injury, but had no history of being good before the injury.
In 1978 we have Willie Stargell, for the second time; Stargell’s career appeared to be dead until he drove in 97 runs in 390 at bats in 1978. The Sporting News also picked Stargell. In 1979 we have Bobby Grich, coming back from two very subpar seasons to have an MVP-type season. The Sporting News chose Willie Horton and Lou Brock.
Break Eleven
You know what people say that absolutely drives me crazy? About once a week I hear some TV mope say that the American people are becoming de-sensitized to violence.
What? What? The reality is that we are increasing our sensitivity to violence at an astonishing rate. Every month there is some movement to make us more sensitive to (and less tolerant of) some form of violence in our society. At the moment the two things that are running are the anti-bullying campaign and the NFL’s crusade to wipe out concussions. It’s always something. …violence in the workplace, violence in schools, violence in sports, violence against women, violence on TV. College football coaches are fired for "abusing" football players in a way that doesn’t approach what was done to high school football players in the 1960s. When I was in grade school a teacher would crack you across the back of the hand with a board for passing a note.
If you could go back 40 years in time, you would be astonished at the levels of violence you would see all around you. My generation, our fathers "disciplined" us with belts and razor strops. First-grade teachers paddled unruly kids with ping-pong paddles and canes. Fights broke out at sporting events (in the seats) virtually at every game, every contest. Fights on the field were 50 times more common than they are now. High school kids "fought" in the school yards after school. If police found a man beating up his wife, they’d separate them and tell them to cool down, and drive away. In the 1980s, you’d see parents slap their kids in a grocery store. The rate of deaths in car accidents is way, way down over the last 50 years. The murder rate is down. A thousand types of violence that we would never think of tolerating now were absolutely commonplace in our society.
We think we have "wars" now; shit, the British lost more soldiers on one day in World War I than America lost in ten years of Viet Nam—and the totals from our "wars" now are a small fraction of Viet Nam. The losses of our opponents (or victims, whatever you prefer) are a small fraction of the losses of other countries in the Wars of a hundred years ago. If you go back further in history, the numbers just get larger. It is difficult to conceive of America now tolerating deaths of our soldiers on any level remotely approaching the levels of the 1850-1950 era. We just don’t tolerate violence anymore.
Is it a good thing, that we have gotten rid of so much violence? Well, of course it is; I’m not arguing that. What concerns me a little is the misrepresentation of the world in which we live. Telling people that they live in a violent world is, in a certain sense, giving permission to behave violently. I guess I can’t put my finger on it, but it seems to me to be dangerous to portray the world in which we live as worse than it is.
The 1980s
In 1980 our Comeback Player of the Year is Cesar Cedeno; The Sporting News chose a couple of pitchers. 1981 there really isn’t anyone; we have Don Baylor and The Sporting News picked Richie Zisk, but neither is good candidate. In 1982 we have Robin Yount. . ..
I should re-write the system to disqualify the MVPs; we don’t think of the MVP as a "Comeback" candidate in most cases. The Sporting News chose Andre Thornton and Joe Morgan. Thornton is a very strong candidate; Morgan not so much. In 1983 we have Darrell Evans, having his best season in ten years; The Sporting News chose Alan Trammell, which looks like a dart-board selection, honestly. 1984 we have Dave Kingman, and The Sporting News concurs.
In 1985 The Sporting News chose Gorman Thomas, but Thomas hit only .215—hardly a stirring comeback. We have Thomas third on the list, behind George Brett and Dave Parker. In 1986 we have Larry Parrish, winning a 114-113 battle over Ray Knight; The Sporting News, of course, chose Ray Knight. In 1987 we have Jack Clark; The Sporting News chose two pitchers. In 1988 we have George Brett, again, while The Sporting News picked two more pitchers. In 1989 we agreed on Lonnie Smith.
Break Twelve
The great thing about Tebow in New York is that he challenges one of those baseless truisms of coaching that baffle and annoy the thinking fan: that every team has to have one #1 quarterback, that the team has to know who that quarterback is, and that only bad things can happen from losing sight of who your #1 quarterback is.
In the late 1960s the Oakland Raiders had a star quarterback, Daryl Lamonica, who threw for huge numbers of yards and touchdowns, and who was 66-16 as a starting quarterback in the pros. His nickname was "The Mad Bomber". Nobody was counting how often he threw deep, but it was normal for him to start a possession with two 40-yard throws. If he didn’t complete either one of them, then he would try to hit a12-yearder to save the possession.
The team’s kicker, however, was Hall of Fame quarterback George Blanda. Blanda was well past 40 and couldn’t take the 60-minute pounding of a starting quarterback, and couldn’t throw deep with any accuracy, but he could pick a defense apart with a short passes. When the Raiders were behind with two minutes to go, sometimes Lamonica sat down, and Blanda ran the two-minute drill.
That wasn’t totally outside the box at that time; there were other old quarterbacks in that era who were sometimes called on when the game was on the line—and Lamonica himself had been nicknamed "The Fireman" in Buffalo after he had some good games in relief of Jack Kemp.
You can imagine how the young stud quarterbacks felt about this. They didn’t like it. By the mid 1970s, it had become conventional wisdom that all coaches hated quarterback controversies. From our standpoint—guys like you and me—there are two problems. First, it’s coaching in fear. What the coach is saying, in essence, is that he is not going to deploy his assets to maximum effectiveness because he’s afraid of how people are going to react to it. Rex Ryan—who is famously not afraid of pissing people off—is the perfect coach to stand up against that kind of decision-making. And second, the logic of it has never been persuasively articulated, at least to me; maybe there is a perfectly good explanation of why teams should only use one quarterback all the time, but I’m afraid I have missed it, so it seems like coaching in fear.
There are three obvious advantages to using multiple quarterbacks. First, if you have multiple quarterbacks you have less of a problem when one of them gets hurt, as one of them quite certainly will at some point in the season. Second, each quarterback is taking fewer hits, which improves each player’s ability to perform at his peak level throughout the season. And third, you have some ability to deploy each quarterback in his best situations—a short-yardage quarterback in short-yardage situations, a deep-threat quarterback at other times, one quarterback against one defense, another against a different one, etc.
Opposing that, you have. ..what? You have to divide reps in practice? You have less time to develop chemistry between the quarterback and his receivers? You’re going to create uncertainty in the clubhouse? It complicates your planning?
It would seem, intuitively, that the tangible benefits of two quarterbacks would outweigh the tangible costs. I understand why you wouldn’t do it if you have Drew Brees, but I don’t understand why you wouldn’t do it you have Mark Sanchez and you can pick up Tim Tebow cheap.
If this works, it challenges conventional wisdom. That’s what I love about it.
The 1990s
In 1990 our Comeback Player of the Year is Cecil Fielder, coming back from Japan; The Sporting News likes Dave Winfield, coming back from an injury.
Beginning in 1991, for some reason, we agree for several years. . .that is, our Comeback Player of the Year is either The Sporting News American League or National League Comeback Player of the Year. In 1991 both of us picked Terry Pendleton. In 1992, we both pick Gary Sheffield. In 1993 we both pick Andres Galarraga. In 1994 we both pick Jose Canseco.
In 1995 our system picks Edgar Martinez is a close contest over Ron Gant, 306-284; The Sporting News chose Gant.
Ken Griffey Jr. in 1995 hit just .258 with 17 homers. In 1996 he had the more Griffey-esque numbers of .304 with 49 homers, 140 RBI, and our system makes him the Comeback Player of the Year. The Sporting News chose Eric Davis and Kevin Elster, both of whom did have very fine comebacks. In 1997 our list goes 1. Larry Walker, 2. David Justice, 3. Tony Gwynn, and 4. Darren Daulton; The Sporting News chose Justice and Daulton. In 1998 we both picked Greg Vaughan, and in 1999 we both chose John Jaha.
Break Thirteen
Do you guys know what "Stare Decisis" is? Stare Decisis means "standing by a decision." The Supreme Court doesn’t like to reverse itself; it prefers, if at all possible, to stand by the decisions it has made in the past. It stands decided.
Stare Decisis is the legal equivalent of Papal Infallibility. Look, I get stare decisis up to a point. We can’t have the law jumping back and forth. We need to be able to count on the law this year being the same as it was last year. People have made investments based on the assumption that the law can be relied on—not merely financial investments, but plans, hopes and sweat. It is not fair to people who have undertaken actions based on the fact that the law is x to suddenly be told that the law is y. A Supreme Court decision carries an implied promise to defend that decision, and I get that.
Up to a point. The problem is, a very large percentage of the Supreme Court’s decisions are just flat wrong. I’m not saying this to criticize them; I would get an equal number wrong if I were on the Supreme Court. These are hard cases; that’s why they come to Washington.
But at the same time, because they hard cases, the Supreme Court very often decides them, history will show, wrongly. Roughly 50% of the decisions the Supreme Court makes are going to look stupid ten years later. Stare decisis, applied to a bad decision, becomes a way of doubling your bets when you’re on a losing streak.
Since 2000
Since 2000, our Award winners would have been:
2000-Moises Alou
2001—Larry Walker
2002—Nomar Garciaparra
2003—Javier Lopez (the catcher)
2004—Jermaine Dye
2005—Richie Sexson
2006—Jim Thome
2007—Carlos Pena
2008—Jorge Cantu
2009—Victor Martinez
2010—Josh Hamilton
2011—Jacoby Ellsbury
Jacoby Ellsbury’s score in 2011, 454, was the highest since Willie Mays in 1954. Jacoby did win The Sporting News and the official MLB Award.