On the watching of baseball

I've been slowly reading through Roger Angell's Season Ticket over the past few weeks. Today I came across an intriguing statement in it from Roy Eisenhardt, former president of the Oakland A's. He says, "The delivery systems of baseball are a great concern now [...] televised baseball is is almost an auto-immune disease [...] Baseball can't really be taken in on television, because of our ingrained habits of TV-watching [which teach us to expect instant gratification ...] Baseball is a terrific radio sport by contrast, because radio feeds our imagination" (92-93).

My baseball-watching experiences jive with this statement. Although I now do a large majority of my baseball-watching via television, I would never have developed a love for baseball without first seeing it live. I became a baseball fan when my dad took me to a Mets game in 1985 when I was five years old. The Mets destroyed the Braves that day something like 13-3 or 14-4, and the two most mythical Mets of the era, Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry (whose names along with those of Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter I knew even then, even though at that point in my life I knew basically nothing about the outside world), played important roles in the outcome - Strawberry hit a homerun and Doc got the win. I was hooked. It wasn't just the fact that the Mets had shown that they were an entity to be worshipped with awe and devotion which converted me, but also the communal aspect of watching the game with thousands of other excited fans. The woman sitting next to us kept yelling "Yay Darryl Strawberry!," and gave me some wafer cookies, my favorite at the time. Once I was initiated into the community, I was able to take my appreciation of baseball and apply it to my watching of it on television, but this appreciation probably never would have been developed if I had just experienced televised baseball.

Once I became a fan, I did grow to love watching the Mets on WWOR-TV Channel 9 with Ralph Kiner and Tim McCarver announcing. This was back when McCarver was still a serviceable analyst, in large part because he respected Kiner as former player and therefore didn't feel like the burden of offering inside scoops to the viewers about the game rested solely on his shoulders. Now, when he is teamed up with Joe Buck (who is the most insufferable play-by-play announcer of this era) on Fox's baseball telecasts, McCarver tries too hard, he sounds like he thinks he must be brilliant every time he opens his mouth, and as a result is just shrill and annoying.

I also loved listening to the Mets on the radio on WFAN 660 with Bob Murphy, and later Gary Cohen. Aside from the food and the people, the thing I miss most about New York City is WFAN. In junior high I would come home from school and spend the afternoon listening to "Mike and the Mad Dog," and during the winter I would listen to Rangers hockey games at night with Marv Albert or Howie Rose doing play-by-play alongside Sal "Red Light" Messina. During the 1993-94 season when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup, I listened to so many of their games that I learned the Canadian national anthem by heart, something I've still been unable to do with "The Star-Spangled Banner," which is the worst national anthem ever - "America the Beautiful" would be a much better choice.

Strawberry vs. Piazza

I mentioned in a post yesterday that I thought Mike Piazza was the best Met ever offensively. In thinking about this statement, I realized that one could also make a strong claim for Darryl Strawberry to receive this honor. So let's compare the two and see what we come up with.

Strawberry played for the Mets from 1983-1990. In 1109 games he had 3903 at-bats, from which he produced 252 homers, 733 RBIs (both the most in Mets history), 1025 hits, and a .263 batting average.

Piazza played for the Mets from 1998-2005. In 972 games he had 3478 at-bats, from which he produced 220 homers, 655 RBIs (both second-most in Mets history), 1028 hits, and a .296 batting average.

Looking at these numbers, the two played for the team for approximately the same length of time, though Piazza played in fewer games because he was injured for much of his last three years as a Met (he never played more than 129 games in those seasons). Piazza's only deficits when compared to Strawberry are 32 homers and 78 RBIs. So if Piazza had been healthy those last three years, he would have come very close to Strawberry's numbers if he didn't pass them.

Therefore, because the numbers are so close, it is also necessary to think about the size of the role each player played in their teams' offense. In this category, Piazza clearly has the advantage. While Strawberry played in line-ups including Keith Hernandez, Gary Carter, and Howard Johnson (whose 192 homers are third in Mets history), Piazza had very little offensive help during his Mets tenure - John Olerud and Robin Ventura were it. So while opposing pitchers couldn't pitch around Strawberry much because of the other guys in the line-up, in many cases they could pitch around Piazza. This factor causes me to give my vote for the best Met ever offensively to Piazza. Of course, if defense were brought into the equation, Strawberry would have a large advantage there, but since we're just talking about offense, Piazza gets the nod.