Six Hundred

Minnesota Twins DH Jim Thome joined an elite group last night, hitting his 599th and 600th career home runs to join this group:

Barry Bonds 762
Hank Aaron 755
Babe Ruth 714
Willie Mays 660
Ken Griffey Jr. 630
Alex Rodriguez 626
Sammy Sosa 609
Jim Thome 600

Jill wrote me last night to say she, Byron and 10-year-old Mack had seen five of the eight play in person. Only two for me I think, Rodriguez and Griffey. (Jill also reminded me that we saw Rodriguez play in the first series of his career, July 1994 Seattle at Boston.)

Joe Posnanski has a nice tribute to Thome.

Hardball

Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman was hit by a pitch thrown by Yankees pitcher Carl Mays at the Polo Grounds on this date in 1920. Chapman apparently never saw the pitch. It hit his head hard enough that Mays thought it had hit the bat; the pitcher fielded the carom and tossed it to first for the presumed out. Chapman took a few steps and collapsed (some reports say he collapsed immediately). He died the next day.

The tragedy caused Major League Baseball to direct umpires to replace the baseball whenever it became dirty. The spitball was outlawed as well, partially in response to Chapman’s death. Previously pitchers dirtied every ball as soon as it was put in play, with dirt, tar, tobacco juice, petroleum jelly. A sticky, dirty off-balance ball could be thrown contrary to the batters expectations — and was hard to see.

Batting helmets were not made mandatory until 1971, though some teams adopted them earlier. Older players could choose not to wear a helmet. The last was in 1979.

On April 12, 1909, Philadelphia Athletics catcher Michael Riley “Doc” Powers crashed into the wall chasing a pop up. He died of of peritonitis as a result of the surgeries two weeks later. And he himself was a physician. It was opening day.

Those are the only two fatalities from on-field action in Major League history.

I attended a game, probably in 1957. Kansas City vs. Detroit at Briggs (later Tiger) Stadium. If I’ve found the right game, it was Jim Bunning vs. Don Larsen. I do remember Vic Power coming to the plate as a pinch hitter and declining a batting helmet. Bunning made him reconsider quickly however, and Power made a great show of going to the dugout and putting on a helmet.

This Time It Clanks

Posnanski has some thoughts on the All-Star Game and you need to go read them all. But here are some teasers:

Of course it’s not perfectly fair — nothing on this earth is perfectly fair except for the slice-and-choose method of dividing pie*.

*One person slices the pie, the other gets to choose which piece she wants, That — along with 90 feet between bases, grilled corn on the cob, Thunder Road and “the sea was angry that day my friends” Seinfeld — are the closest man has come to perfection.

____________________

*And for crying out loud, TV announcers, I’m not qualified to tell you how to do your jobs, but PLEASE STOP TELLING ME HOW MUCH INTENSITY THERE IS OUT THERE. Just stop it. Stop telling me that they want to win. Stop telling me that they’re really into this. I was out there. I know exactly how much intensity was out there. If you could harness all the intensity from All-Star Weekend and turn it to battery power, it would not start a single Coleco handheld football game.

____________________

Most of all: Stop telling us that the All-Star Game counts. It doesn’t count. That’s important, too. Everyone tries to romanticize the past, but the All-Star Game has NEVER counted. Pete Rose did not run over Ray Fosse because the game mattered more then. Pete Rose ran over Ray Fosse because he’s a jerk.*

3000

4256 Pete Rose
4189 Ty Cobb
3771 Hank Aaron
3630 Stan Musial
3514 Tris Speaker
3435 Cap Anson
3420 Honus Wagner
3419 Carl Yastrzemski
3319 Paul Molitor
3315 Eddie Collins
3283 Willie Mays
3255 Eddie Murray
3242 Nap Lajoie
3184 Cal Ripken
3154 George Brett
3152 Paul Waner
3142 Robin Yount
3141 Tony Gwynn
3110 Dave Winfield
3060 Craig Biggio
3055 Rickey Henderson
3053 Rod Carew
3023 Lou Brock
3020 Rafael Palmeiro
3010 Wade Boggs
3007 Al Kaline
3003 Derek Jeter
3000 Roberto Clemente

All 28 are in the Hall of Fame except Rose, Biggio, Palmeiro and Jeter. Biggio last played in 2007, Palmeiro in 2005.

[Nearly 17,000 men have played Major League Baseball.]

Ranking Baseball’s Best Ballparks

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight ranks the ballparks.

. . . I looked up the average rating — from one to five stars — for each of the 30 major league stadiums at the popular review site Yelp.com. It’s no more complicated than that. All of the ballparks have at least dozens if not hundreds of ratings from individual fans.

The winner by a country mile is Pittsburgh’s PNC Park. . . .

Click the link above for all 30.

Jock of all trades

Second-baseman Wilson Valdez went 3 for 6 and a walk and then came on to pitch the top of the 19th inning and get the win for Philadelphia last night. He is the first player to start the game in the field, then win as a pitcher since Babe Ruth did it in 1921.

I’ll have what he’s having

40-year-old Jason Giambi had three homers in his first three at bats for the Rockies last night in Philadelphia; 7 rbi.

Giambi’s the second oldest player ever to have a 3 home run game. Stan Musial did it at 41. Others who were 40 but younger than Giambi with three homer games: Reggie Jackson and Babe Ruth. Nice company.

Of course, there was the required cliché: “I’m just glad I was able to help the ballclub.”

Twitter update

Most posts will be here on NMK but a few others will be just tweets and some will be both. You can see the half dozen most recent tweets in the sidebar and click on them as you choose (or click on NewMexiKen on Twitter to see more).

Twitter is just another form of communication, no more, no less. I enjoy its conversation-like nature and spontaneity. Like the larger web, much is inane, so selecting the right people to follow makes it more or less valuable. You may assume my tweets will have the same half wise, half whimsical, half wit qualities you find on NMK.