Game 19

Friday, January 27, 2012
Game 19: Wells Fargo Center
Sixers 89, Bobcats 72

PHILADELPHIA — Recently, there was a small controversy in Los Angeles because Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the only NBA player to win the MVP Award six times, did not have a statue of his likeness outside of the Lakers' arena, the Staples Center. As far as controversies go, it was pretty tame, but there was a point...

If Kareem can't get a statue, who can?

One of the problems in the whole thing that it was Kareem doing the complaining. Even if the guy deserves a statue, a bobblehead doll or fat head poster, you don't go around complaining when one isn't there. That's just gauche.

In Philadelphia there is nothing to worry about as far as public artworks around the arena. In fact, there is just one statue of any former Philadelphia athlete and it's the biggest and bestest of them all.

Indeed, Wilt Chamberlain, the Overbrook High graduate and Hall of Famer who played for both the Warriors and the 76ers, has some sort of avant statue on the south side of the Wells Fargo Center. Sculpted by Omri Amrany and unveiled in 2004 (five years after Wilt's death), the statue shows two images of the man. One is a bust of Wilt's head and the other is of him rising with the basketball as if to throw one down. The part that seems odd -- aside from the two faces of the man -- is the whisps flowing from the ball and Wilt's body as if to show motion and flight.

It's odd because there is no need to show the motion with such graphic detail. If there is a picture of a man holding a ball above his head while his eyes are focused on something in the distance, movement is assumed.

Anyway, Amrany seems to have cornered the market on sports stadium sculptures in the U.S. He is also the artist behind statues of guys like Michael Jordan at the United Center, Pat Tillman in Arizona, as well as several statues of Washington baseball greats at Nationals Park. Those, just like the one of Wilt, also show those waves of motion.

Interestingly, Philadelphia was once the city with the most public art outside of Paris, but of all the statues, sculptures and murals, sports figures are barely represented at the complex in South Philly. Aside from Wilt, there was a statue of Julius Erving outside of the Spectrum. However, since the Spectrum has been torn down, the statue of Dr. J has been removed. One can assume that Doc will find a new home, but for now we're still waiting.

The Phillies seem to have done a pretty good job with the artworks celebrating the greats of their franchise. Outside of the ballpark, there is a statue of Mike Schmidt, Robin Roberts, and Steve Carlton, which is aptly out past left field. Inside the stadium, a young and speedy Richie Ashburn is shown running the bases from a perch in center field, while his old broadcast partner, Harry Kalas, has a home on the concourse close to the restaurant that bears his name.

Otherwise, the only controversy seems to be that the statue of Wilt doesn't do justice to arguably the greatest basketball player who ever lived. For his time Wilt was an athlete beyond reproach. He was a track star, a volleyball pro and even dabbled in boxing. The only thing Wilt couldn't do well was shoot foul shots.

But if the Wells Fargo Center is going to be around for a while, maybe there ought to be some more artwork around the building. The arena is set on the former spot of JFK Stadium, which hosted 42 Army-Navy games, Live Aid and the famous Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney fight for the heavyweight championship of the world in 1926. Tunney won the fight with a 10-round decision, setting the stage for the rematch at Soldier Field in Chicago. That one turned out to be the famous "Long Count" fight in which Dempsey knocked down Tunney, but because he would not move to a neutral corner, the referee delayed his 10-count. Tunney had plenty of time to rest, regroup and take the fight from Dempsey in a unanimous decision.

Maybe a Bobby Clarke statue or one of Bernie Parent celebrating the Flyers' last championship in 1975 would look good outside of the building? Or how about one of Charles Barkley rising for a two-handed tomahawk slam? Either way, there is plenty of concrete and open space down there just waiting to be accessorized. 

Game 18

Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Game 18: Wells Fargo Center
Nets 97, Sixers 90 OT

PHILADELPHIA — For one reason or another, people like to invite Ian MacKaye to sporting events. The so-called iconoclast/punk hero must give off the vibe that he would not like checking out a ballgame or something, as if so-called iconoclasts/punk heroes don't have time to kick back and relax.

So it comes as a surprise to some folks when MacKaye reveals that he often takes up offers to go to games. For instance, back in 2000 when the Lakers faced the Pacers in the NBA Finals, a friend flew MacKaye to Indianapolis where he sat near Larry Bird, Phil Jackson and Jack Nicholson.

There's more, of course, like the standing offer from his uncle-in-law to see the Phillies the next time they make it to the World Series. Or the fascination with former Red Sox and Expos lefty pitcher Bill Lee, who attended a premier of a documentary a friend made about The Space Man in San Francisco and put on a show of sorts sitting in the audience as well as on the screen.

Better yet, MacKaye remembered going to RFK Stadium to see his hometown Washington Senators before they moved to Texas after the 1971 season. Like everyone else, MacKaye was excited to see slugger Frank Howard, who was known for blasting rockets into the upper deck for Ted Williams's Senators.

“I remember it being a big deal at the time,” MacKaye said about the trip to RFK.

So what's the point? The guy gets out a bit, big deal? Lots of people go to a lot of games. Who cares if some punk rock dude gets invited to places?

Truth be told, I just wanted to write about a phone chat with Ian MacKaye.

Yeah, those are good questions. But it was during that conversation with MacKaye that the topic of the athlete and his role in society came up. My contention was that a lot of athletes did not realize that they were part of a show—that they were, in essence, entertainers. The way I saw it, pro athletes were competing against Hollywood and television for the entertainment dollar. The thing is, I said, most athletes didn’t sign up to be entertainers. They just wanted to play ball.

Which brings us to Kris Humphries, the power forward for the New Jersey Nets…

When he was in high school, Humphries was an All-American, which helped him get a scholarship to the University of Minnesota where he spent one year. In 2004, Humphries was drafted by the Utah Jazz with the No. 14 overall pick. Since entering the NBA, Humphries has played for four different teams and earned nearly $17 million in salary. At age 26, Humphries is just coming into his prime as a ballplayer and his 19 rebounds against the Sixers on Wednesday night was a season-high.

So it would seem that Humphries has everything going for him. He has money and a successful career in which he is finally coming into his own.

Now all he needs is to meet that someone special to settle down with…

Game 17

Monday, January 23, 2012
Game 17: Wells Fargo Center
Sixers 103, Wizards 83

PHILADELPHIA — A few years back before the Phillies had won a championship and became the darlings of the city, I was chatting with a player when suddenly realized it was time to go.

“You guys have a ceremony to get ready for,” I told the player.

“Really? What’s this one for… the 10th anniversary of the 12th anniversary?”

It’s pretty funny when one remembers how the Phillies used to be. The team seemingly had a special event every other weekend to celebrate its handful of trips to the World Series as well as its lone championship. It was a running joke that the Phillies would do anything to celebrate their shitty history without actually acknowledging they were the losingest franchise in the history of North American professional sports.

And here’s Ben Chapman… the man who tried to prevent Jackie Robinson from breaking Major League Baseball’s color line!

The Phillies don’t do much of the rehashing of old times with ceremonies and parades of former players because they have to anymore. The not-so secret is that good teams and good players pack the stands and since the Phillies are winning, they don’t need to bring back Mike Schmidt or Steve Carlton as much anymore.

In Philadelphia, the Flyers are the team that re-lives its history at every chance and like the Phillies, th Flyers are still celebrating a long ago championship that most folks can’t recollect. It’s been 37 years since the Flyers last won a championship and it doesn’t appear as if the team is any closer to winning one anytime soon.

The Sixers, on the other hand, don’t go the sentimental route all that much. Oh sure, the team brought back Allen Iverson to play for a bit when it was clear there was no other way to get fans to the games, but that act got old quickly.

As far as the Sixers go, there was a celebration for the 25th anniversary of the 1983 championship team, a nice ceremony for the last game played in the Spectrum and a retired number fete for Charles Barkley. Otherwise, the Sixers haven’t dipped into that well all too much over the past decade.

Part of that has to do with unresolved grudges between players and former ownership, and another factor is that the Sixers have not been too great for long stretches of time. In fact, the Sixers’ history includes a team that many argue was the greatest ever (1966-67) as well as the team that set NBA record for futility (1972-73).

Regardless, Philadelphia has a strong basketball tradition. When the BAA began in 1947, the Philadelphia Warriors won the championship. The Warriors lost to the Baltimore Bullets in the second year of the league and in 1950, when the league changed its name to the NBA, the Syracuse Nationals (later to become the Philadelphia 76ers) made it to the championship round in their first season.

A team from Philadelphia has been to the NBA Finals nine times in the history of the league. 

Travel/off day

Two hours prior, it was 80 degrees and sunny.

The lost art of the triple-double

MIAMI – In an age of advanced metrics and heightened statistical analysis, the triple-double still stands alone. Often it is the pinnacle of all basketball accomplishments. To get double-digits in points, assists and rebounds, or even blocks or steals, is the mark that a ballplayer had a really good game.

Actually, a triple-double is a true indicator of the all-around player. Typically, players don’t get them by accident. In other words, all of a sudden a player isn’t going to “get hot” and mess around to get a triple-double.

If it could be labeled as such, the triple-double is the most organic of all statistical phenomenons, yet they never sneak up on anyone. If someone is an assist or a rebound or two away from a triple-double, everyone in the gym knows it and they keep track. A triple-double is like a hand grenade, in that when it is about to blow, it makes some noise. That's the way it seemed when Larry Bird and Magic Johnson used to get them. 

And yet heading into Sunday’s action, there has been just one triple-double in the NBA this year. It came from the Celtics’ Rajon Rondo on Jan. 1, when he put 18 points, 11 rebounds and 14 assists on the Washington Wizards. 

Yes, even though the season has reached the quarter pole, the triple-double has become more elusive than ever.

Maybe it’s just a lost art?

“I don’t know if it’s a lost art, it’s just always been rare,” said Andre Iguodala, a player who is known for filling out the stat sheet. “You have your guys from different eras who always got them starting with Oscar Robertson and Magic and Larry did it a bit. I remember one year M.J had about 11 or maybe more. Then you have Jason Kidd, LeBron is up there, Rondo is up there and Chris Paul gets them every now and again, so you have your select few guys.”

Actually, the select club has trimmed down its members this year. Perhaps it’s because players are a bit behind offensively because of the lockout or maybe the scouting and the defenses have gotten so good that the triple-double has begun to disappear from the game like the mid-range jump shooter.

“You have to be a unique guy physically to get that just because you have to rebound or get assists, that’s tough,” said Sixers’ coach Doug Collins, who as one of those mid-range jump shooters back in the day, never got a triple-double.

Oh, but he’s coached a few unique players, including Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen in Chicago and Grant Hill in Detroit. He also has Iguodala in Philadelphia who has seven career triple-doubles.

“There are a lot of guys who are on that cusp,” Collins said. “If you’re a smaller player, to get 10 rebounds is a lot and if you’re a bigger player to get 10 assists is a lot. So you have to be that hybrid guy who plays on the perimeter, who handles the ball, who has the size – Grant Hill had the size, Magic Johnson had the size, Jason Kidd had the size. If you look at the triple-double guys, you have to have the size to get the rebounds and the assists.”

But as Iguodala explains it, there really is no trick to getting a triple-double. A self-professed gunner in his younger days, Iguodala says he never really learned to be a good passer until he got to the University of Arizona and learned from the son of one of the best-passing big men ever to play.

“Luke Walton taught me how to get triple-doubles. I had one in high school, but in college, Luke Walton really taught me how to get them,” Iguodala explained. “He used to kill me every day at practice during my first year. He was the slowest guy, couldn’t jump off the ground – a slow white dude and how is he beating me? He’s beating me with the pass and everything, but he taught me how to pass and how to keep it simple.”

Keep it simple, as in don’t get caught up in it, is a pretty good way to go about it says Sixers’ ball-friendly big man, Spencer Hawes, who missed one on opening night in Portland by an assist. In that game Hawes said he kept his mind on the game, unlike the time when he was playing for Sacramento against the Sixers and came an assist shy of the triple-double.

“In the Portland game I don’t think at any point that I was forcing it. It was just the flow of the game, we were moving the ball and guys were finishing shots for me and it happened for me once before in my second year against the Sixers,” Hawes said. “I remember being a lot more caught up in it and I had the assists count in my head. I got the rebounds and the points early and then I started on the assist count and I got too caught up in it. A guy missed a layup and a guy missed a three-pointer, and I was thinking, ‘No!’ This time I just let it flow.”

Hawes has gotten close, but not all the way there. Interestingly, though, he remembered a game in high school when he nearly got a quadruple-double until his coach benched him.

“I started taunting the crowd and the coach pulled me out,” Hawes said.

Wait… what?

“I air balled a free throw and the crowd started chanting, ‘air ball’ at me,” he said. “I made the next one and I turned and started chanting, ‘scoreboard’ and then he yanked me. I think I was two blocks and three assists away from a quadruple-double.”

Still, though Rondo is the only guy to get a triple-double this season, there have been a handful of near misses. Six players have come within one assist of getting it, including Iguodala last Wednesday night and Hawes in the season opener in Portland. Sixers’ guard Evan Turner also missed a triple-double by two assists in a game last week, and boy did he know it. After the game when he returned to the locker room, his phone was filled with text messages from friends.

“I’m saving my first triple-double for later,” Turner joked. “When I get one everyone is going to know it.”

Turner isn’t much of a threat to catch Kidd, who, with 107 triple-doubles, is the active leader. Meanwhile, Robertson, famously, averaged a triple-double during the 1961-62 season for the Cincinnati Royals before folks even knew what it was he was doing. That season Robertson averaged 30.8 points, 11.4 assists and 12.5 rebounds per game, making him the only player ever to pull off the feat. He almost did it during his rookie season, too, going for 30.5 points, 10.1 boards and 9.7 assists per game in 1960-61 and again in 1962-63 when The Big O came seven rebounds away from the triple-double average.

Magic Johnson came 29 rebounds and 37 assists away from doing it in 1981-82 and 107 rebounds away from pulling it off in 1982-83.

For the Sixers, Iguodala had three triple-doubles last season, which is the most in franchise history since Charles Barkley got three of them during the 1986-87 season. Then again, the records are incomplete and it wasn’t until later when some players realized what they were doing. For instance, the Sixers have the only double triple-double in NBA history when Wilt Chamberlain got 22 points, 25 rebounds and 21 assists against Detroit at the Spectrum in 1968. Chamberlain also got a quadruple-double, but because steals and blocks were not an official stat in the NBA until the 1973 season, he doesn’t have credit for it.

In the meantime,if there is one statistical anomaly all players pay attention to, it’s those triple-doubles.

“I always keep in touch with how I am with active players,” Iguodala said. “I think I’m like sixth or seventh, so I’m coming up.”

He’s getting there, but so far hasn’t climbed the charts this year.

Game 16

Saturday, January 21, 2012
Game 16: American Airlines Arena
Heat 113, Sixers 92

MIAMI — Every once in a while it’s the little things that amaze me. For instance, a few years ago I was covering the 2009 NLDS in Denver where snow and sub-freezing temperatures made for delays and bad baseball. It was so miserable and cold that on the day Game 3 was snowed out, I spent the afternoon shopping for winter gear.

But when the series ended, we climbed into a flying tube and were transported to Los Angeles where it was nearly unbearably hot.

I spent the off day shopping for summer clothes.

Anyway, I was better prepared for traveling from the snow and sleet in the northeast to the 80-degree climes of Biscayne Bay because my trip to Miami lasted less than 17 hours. Essentially, I flew in to watch a basketball game, wrote about what I saw and flew home.

It was as if I wasn’t even there.

And maybe in a sense the same thing goes for the 76ers. Though the team has been playing shorthanded without starting center Spencer Hawes for some time, nowhere was that exposed more than against the Miami Heat. In the game, the Sixers made just 9 of 20 shots at the rim and were 6 for 15 on shots from 3-to-9 feet, according to HoopData.com.

Meanwhile, the Heat were 18 for 32 on those same shots and simply hammered the Sixers on the boards. When rookie Nik Vucevic went out of the game with what was later revealed to be a hyper-extended knee, the Sixers had no chance.

Why are the Heat so good? Obviously, the quick answer is because they have LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh—three of the best players on the planet. You know, duh.

But what really makes the Heat tick is that they have Joel Anthony and Udonis Haslem on the frontcourt and veteran Shane Battier as a defensive stopper on the perimeter. Certainly Anthony’s and Haslem’s contributions can be measured with rebounds, blocked shots and steals. Moreover, there are advanced metrics that can be used to also quantify the contributions of the frontcourt mates.

Much has been made of how advanced statistical analysis has changed baseball, but when it comes to the advanced metrics revolution in sports, basketball comes the closest to truly measuring the value of a player. Actually, when compared to baseball it’s not even close. After games in the NBA, coaches and players pour over the stat sheet, looking for nuggets of information that might offer an insight to performance. With the Sixers, Doug Collins lives by points off turnovers and second-chance points. He also talks about forcing the opposition to take shots “in the yard,” which is to say, no three-pointers and no shots in the paint.

Going old school, during my high school days at McCaskey in Lancaster, Pa., we determined a player had a decent game if he scored more points than shots attempted. I’m not sure that figures into the world of advanced metrics, but in terms of stats having a value, it worked for us.

However, Battier is one of those players that defies categorization and unlike the cultish reactionaries that subscribe to all mathematical data as a way to truly define a baseball player, even the devotees to basketball metrics look at Battier and just shrug. In fact, Battier must be seen to be believed. Against the Sixers, Battier had seven points and three rebounds in 30 minutes—not exactly eye-popping stats.

But Battier was often guarding the Sixers’ swingman Andre Iguodala and held him to just four points. During extended periods during the second half of the game, Iguodala rarely even touched the ball because Battier was hounding him so much.

If there were a number to go with guarding your guy so tightly that he can’t even catch the ball, then Battier would be an All-Star every year.

“I have the ultimate respect for Shane Battier. I think when you put him on your team, you’re automatically better.”

So if there is one reason why the Heat are better this season than last year, it’s because they have Battier, the guy who makes statistics nothing more than silly little designs on a piece of paper.

Game 15

Friday, January 20, 2012
Game 15: Wells Fargo Center
Sixers 90, Hawks 76

PHILADELPHIA — Let’s say, for instance, you are a really good painter. In fact, you’re such a great painter that galleries fight to hang your work and critics can’t get enough of it.

And yet even though you are a terrific painter, people still get on you because you are a lousy sculptor. You’re going to say that doesn’t make sense, right?

Yeah, well, welcome to Andre Iguodala’s world.

When it comes to playing defense in basketball, there are very few people on the planet as good as Andre Iguodala. Truth is, Iguodala is such a good defender that he very well may earn a spot on the U.S. Olympic team set to defend its gold medal in London this summer.

“If you would talk to the best scorers in the league that he’s guarded and say who is one of the toughest guys you have to go against, they would say, Andre Iguodala,” Sixers’ coach Doug Collins said.

“From a coaching standpoint, you understand what he brings. I love what Andre does for us.”

Yet for some reason the biggest criticism of Iguodala is that he is an inconsistent offensive player.

How does that make sense?

There is perception and then there is the reality when it comes to Iguodala and his weird relationship with certain segments of the fandom. The problem with that is the perception is usually the part that gets the most fanfare.

Often, Iguodala is criticized because his salary is “excessive,” yet it barely cracks the top 40 of all NBA players. Meanwhile, it seems as if Iguodala’s perceived unpopularity comes from his personality. He’s neither boisterous nor zany. He’s not one to suffer fools as evidenced in the 2006 Dunk Contest where he pulled off the most impressive and nuanced dunk of the show only to lose to Nate Robertson because he’s short and a better story. Rather than grin-and-bear it, Iguodala hasn’t appeared in another competition figuring there are better ways to have one’s time wasted.

Iguodala is all nuance and professionalism. There are all the things we can see like the fact that heading into last year he had missed just six games in six seasons and played in 252 regular-season games in a row. He’s led the league not only in games by playing in all 82 in five of his seven seasons, but also minutes played and average minutes per game. The dude plays the game and he's rare in that he's a ridiculously talented athlete with instatiable hard-nosed/blue-collar chops, too. He's the best of both worlds and he shows up and goes to work.

He earns his pay.

Last year he played the final two months of the season with tendonitis in his knees. Actually, his condition was similar to the injury that forced Phillies second baseman Chase Utley to miss the first two months of last season, yet Iguodala is rarely talked about as a gritty and scrappy player the way Utley is.

Ah, so maybe there’s a personality issue or something.

Iguodala is a bit of a rarity in sports in that he is a truth teller. He’s immune to cliché (well, as much as possible) and actually answers questions. Want an answer? Iguodala has one. And though it could be off the mark like some of his long-range jumpers, he’s always provocative. For instance, last year Iguodala and the team's top draft choice, Evan Turner, clashed a bit. It wasn't anything serious, just two guys from diffrent perspectives trying to figure each ither out. So, when asked about it, Iguodala presented a thoughtful, honest answer.

“Evan and I have had a pretty interesting year together — good and bad,” Iguodala said. “We’ve always tried to lean on each other. Over the past week we really bonded and I was happy to see him be in position to do something good and follow through with it.

“I’ve been saying all year that he’s a confidence guy and when his confidence is high, he plays really well. When his confidence is down, he has a lot of self doubt and he doesn’t believe in himself,” Iguodala explained. “But we all know he can play ball and we’ve had many arguments throughout the year in regard to talents and he’s going to prove a lot of people wrong.

“We had a chance to sit down and we had dinner together and were together for about three hours. We just reflected on the whole year and things that happened and what could have changed and things that made us better people or held us back a little bit. It was a good chat.”

When do athletes ever talk like that? It’s kind of like when asked a simple question about whether he will return to the Sixers next year and instead chooses to discuss the legacy he hopes to build.

“I always think about that, keep climbing the charts with some of the greatest basketball players ever — Dr. J, Maurice Cheeks, Bobby Jones, Hal Greer, Wilt Chamberlain. The franchise has been here forever. And just for my name to be brought up for the guy with the most steals in team history is something I've always thought about,” Iguodala said. “I want to continue to climb the charts and take the team to the next level.”

No, Iguodala is not like most of the athletes that have come through town. He seems to be a strange mix of Charles Barkley, Donovan McNabb and Scott Rolen. At different times all three of those guys were the most beloved or loathed athletes in town. Iguodala is just different. He's the guy a lot of folks just can't accept for who he is.

Game 14

Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Game 14: Wells Fargo Center
Nuggets 108, Sixers 104 OT

PHILADELPHIA — It’s not unreasonable to believe that David Stern is the greatest commissioner in the history of American major league sports. A lawyer by trade with a background in marketing, Stern took over the NBA from Larry O’Brien—the James Buchanan of commissioners—and ushered the game into a new era.

Actually, Stern had plenty of help. It just so happened that Stern became the commissioner just when Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were coming into their primes, plus, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon and John Stockton entered the NBA during Stern’s first year as commissioner.

But give the guy credit for not sitting idly by. Under Stern’s watch, the NBA went from being a league that only serious basketball fans followed to an American-based Premier league of sorts. Internationally, the two most popular team sports are soccer and basketball and that comes in no small part from Stern’s ability to market his league.

That doesn’t mean the league is not without its flaws. After all, since Stern took over the NBA, labor peace has been virtually non-existent. In fact, there have been four player lockouts, including one in 1999 that left the league with a 50-game regular season and this year’s lockout that has teams playing 66 games in four months.

So when Stern turned up in Philly for a media session before the game against the Nuggets, one of the biggest topics was the condensed season and players’ health.

“I can tell you that we had the same short training camps in the last lockout, so I don’t think that’s the problem,” Stern said during the press conference. “As for the injuries, I reserve the right to see how things play out over the next few weeks before I draw any conclusions. I will take a look at the data and then I’ll call you.”

The idea when creating the condensed schedule was to come as close to representing a full, 82-game season without playing 82 games. When the league had its 50-game season, it was too short.

“When we got together with the player representatives and made the deal, I knew that if we got it done that (Thanksgiving) weekend, we could start on Christmas and we could play 16 games every 28 days, rather than 14 games every 28 days,” Stern said. “To us, the two extra games, to get in as much as we could of the season was important, so people wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, it isn’t a representative season.’”

Stern says fans love the condensed schedule. Coaches must hate it because of all the injuries and beat up players left in the wake, but this NBA season feels like a baseball season in that there is a decent game on every night. In fact, Sixers’ coach Doug Collins told us before the game in New York that he felt like a baseball manager with all the travel and games, but so little practice time.

“You win and you lose,. People say, ‘You have too many games,’ or, if you go to 50 games, as we did before, then you get told that you are not having enough,” Stern said. “We thought the 66 games were do-able. It seems to be doing OK. We’re pretty pleased with it. From the fans’ perspective, I’ve had people telling me, it’s great, you go home and there are all these games on League Pass, and so our fans are loving it.”

From a journalists’ perspective, the season is a blast. There is tons of action and when we get home from the arena, the west coast games are burning up the TV.

However, it’s no fun writing about injuries and it’s also not much fun to see ballplayers gimp around in the locker room before and after games. Sometimes, a players’ health dominates the news end of things and we get stuck writing speculative stories about when someone will return.

Injuries are also a drag on the quality of play, too. At its best, basketball is unlike any other sport. Sometimes a basketball game is a prize fight, a ballet and a chess match all rolled into one and when players are injured, it takes some of the fun out of it. 

Game 13

Monday, January 16, 2012
Game 13: Wells Fargo Center
Sixers 94, Bucks 82

PHILADELPHIA — Everyone knows by now that the NBA schedule is a little different this season. Because of the lockout, the season did not begin until Christmas day and rather than just pick up the schedule where it would have been, the league and the NBPA agreed to a 66-game season squeezed into four months.

It also means that instead of 15 or 16 games a month, there will be 18 games a month complete with piles of back-to-backs as well as two back-back-to-backs per team.

In other words, the season went from being a grind to a goddamn war.

Another quirk of the 76ers’ schedule is that there are just two day games. What makes this nice is that those who regularly attend NBA games can get into a routine. For a 7 p.m. game, the shoot around typical starts at 10 a.m. and lasts for an hour. After that, the players get in an afternoon nap, maybe some daytime TV and then head back to the arena around 3ish for the game.

A day game, however, is a monkey wrench in the operation. There is no shoot around or afternoon nap. And since most day games are on the weekend, it can put a crimp into a young players’ style a bit.

Case and point: Last year several players on the 76ers went to a concert at the Wells Fargo Center. Normally that’s no big deal except for the fact that the players had to be back at the arena the next morning for a noontime tipoff against the Sacramento Kings. Instead of a victory over a inferior team, the Sixers lost in overtime and didn’t look particularly good in doing so.

But what is one of the best aspects of this team is that the players stepped up and admitted they needed to be more responsible. Better yet, coach Doug Collins told the players that it was up to them to police themselves in that instance. After all, why should the coach have to tell grown men with multi-million dollar salaries when to go to bed?

And that’s the question, isn’t it? How much motivation to well-paid professional athletes need? Considering that they are in a performance driven business, it seems as if motivation would be innate. In fact, motivation should be what separates the top players from the rest. Every player in the NBA is talented and the skill set of the best and the worst players really aren’t too far apart. What divides the likes of Dwyane Wade and Kobe Bryant from the 12^th man on the bench is some intangible that can’t be measure.

Hell, it can’t even be described.

Anyway, the Sixers dropped the Bucks in the first of two day games this season. The next one is on March 10 at Madison Square Garden, which should heighten the magnitude of the game even more.  Maybe instead of patrolling Manhattan the night before a noontime tip, the Sixers will remember last year’s game against the Kings.

Game 12

Saturday, January 14, 2012
Game 12: Verizon Center
Sixers 103, Wizards 90

WASHINGTON — The first time I went to an NBA game was in March of 1980 in a late-season game between the two-time defending Eastern Conference champion Washington Bullets and the lowly Detroit Pistons. The game was played at the Bullets’ arena in Landover, Md., called the Capitol Centre.

As far as suburban arenas go, there was nothing too unique about the Cap Centre aside from the fact that there were no levels in the seating area. It was like a high-school gym with bleachers ringing the playing surface.

Granted, it would have been a pretty big high-school gym since the Cap Centre had a capacity for more than 18,000 people, but a high-school gym nonetheless.

There wasn’t anywhere close to 18,000 folks in the Cap Centre on a sunny Sunday in March of 1980. In fact, I got the sense that my dad wasn’t too excited about going to see the Bullets’ game even with the free tickets. I was insistent, though. I always was when it came to going to games.

Anyway, we saw a few Hall of Famers that afternoon. Elvin Hayes, the Bullets’ high-scoring forward was 34 and winding down his NBA career and Wes Unseld, the rebounding machine, was in his next-to-last season in the league. The Bullets also had All-Stars Bobby Dandridge and Phil Chenier, as well as standouts like Kevin Grevey, Greg Ballard, Mitch Kupchak and a guy called “Super” John Williamson.

Detroit had Hall of Famer Bob McAdoo and had just fired a little-known coach named Dick Vitale. When the gig with the Pistons didn’t work out, Vitale gave broadcasting a try.

With all that talent on the floor, it was the smallest dude out there that stole the show.

Point guard Kevin Porter had 24 assists that afternoon, which at the time was the fourth-most in a game in NBA history. In a game two years earlier, Porter got the record of 29 assists in a game, which he held until the 1990-91 season when Scott Skiles got 30.

In all the years and all the games that followed, I never saw anyone come anywhere close to matching Porter’s 24-assists game. And I have seen a lot of games. Hell, I was even at the game where Willie Burton scored 53 points to set the single-game scoring record at the Spectrum, but no one ever has come close to emulating Porter in that very first game I attended. Actually, 24 assists in a game has been surpassed just nine times by seven players in the 32 years since my first game and the last of those came in 1996.

Chances are I saw something I’ll never see again that day at the Cap Centre.

Game 11

Friday, January 13, 2012
Game 11: Wells Fargo Center
Sixers 120, Wizards 89

PHILADELPHIA — There is nothing as intoxicating as promise. Better yet, there was nothing as great as the unknown. Nearly 20 years ago basketball fans were drunk off the idea of a Eastern European basketball player plying his trade in the NBA with the best players in the game. In fact, the thought of this great unknown playing on the same team as Michael Jordan was like the formation of some sort of super team.

But for every Robert Altman ensemble piece, there is an Ishtar lurking stage right. To that regard, Toni Kukoc wasn’t exactly an NBA flop, but he wasn’t the Jordan of Europe, either. No, Kukoc was a decent NBA player… nothing more or nothing less.

In 13 NBA seasons, Kukoc averaged 11.6 points per game. At 6-foot-10 he became the stereotype for the Euro-styled basketball player. He was tall, but rarely went down to the low post. Instead, he worked out on the perimeter where he could be a playmaker—he was the quintessential point forward.

After earning three rings as the second scorer on those epic Bulls teams, Kukoc landed in Philadelphia in a three-way trade involving the Sixers, Bulls and Warriors and names like John Starks, Bruce Bowen, Larry Hughes and Billy Owens. It was a pretty exciting time for Sixers’ fans because coach Larry Brown was turning things around and Kukoc seemed to be ready to encore his act as the other scoring option with Allen Iverson.

The thing is, however, Iverson always preferred to work alone.

Kukoc lasted just 90 games with the Sixers (including the playoffs) and was dealt away to Atlanta for Dikembe Mutombo. In other words, Kukoc was integral in helping the Sixers win the Eastern Conference in 2001.

More than that, Kukoc could be the last of the great unknowns. Because of the proliferation of the media, players like Kukoc, Arvydas Sabonis, Oscar Schmidt, Sarunas Marciulionis, etc. are no longer unknowns.

Game 10

Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Game 10: Madison Square Garden
Knicks 85, Sixers 79

NEW YORK — In 12 years of serious sports writing, I had never been to Madison Square Garden for work. Oh sure, I’d been there plenty of times if you count the basement of the building where Penn Station is located. But as far as working as an accredited member of the sporting press, I had never been to The Garden.

That’s weird because it’s called, “the world’s most famous arena.” It’s quite an ironic title, too, that actually might be a bit of an understatement. See, New Yorkers really like the things they have and often go so far as to tell folks in other cities how much better their stuff is than everyone else’s. Sometimes that idea is correct, but like anything else, consider the source.

Still, I like to rate an stadium or a building on how excited the performers get when they go there. For instance, with baseball players the reviews are mixed on old shrines like Wrigley Field and Fenway Park. Though they are fun places to play a game, the amenities are substandard and ancient by anyone’s standards. The underbelly of Wrigley Field makes even the rattiest high school gym look like the Taj Mahal.

But Madison Square Garden is universally viewed as the place to go. No, I’m not going to list all the famous events that went down at The Garden, but just know that most athletes and performers feel as if they have made it when they get to play MSG.

In my first working role at The Garden—or newest new Garden since it is being torn apart and remodeled—I took home no souvenirs. Sure, I lingered on the hardwood and tried to soak up the views, the shimmering lights and the theatrical darkness that shrouds the seating area, while searching out celebrities and for me that was enough.

After all, I already had a souvenir from Madison Square Garden in the form of a scar on my right knee.

In 1991, my friend John and his pals from college decided to drive to NYC from Vermont to see a Grateful Dead show at The Garden. Though not the biggest of Dead fans out there, I usually was up for any type of adventure so when John asked if I wanted to meet him at The Garden, he didn’t have to ask twice.

Truth be told, it was a pretty good show. Branford Marsalis played a few numbers with the band and Bruce Hornsby played the piano for the entire gig that opened with the well-known, “Touch of Grey.” It was pretty cool even though I watched from the right side of the stage with blood streaming down my leg.

What happened was I walked into a utility pole on 34^th Street. Actually, it wasn’t too far from the spot where the photo from the media room was snapped. See, while we were waiting for the doors of the arena to open up, John, his friends and I walked around The Garden just checking out the pre-gig festival. We had bought big bottles of water, bananas and sandwiches from a nearby bodega and were just doing our best to have a fun time.

But while eating a sandwich and walking all while imitating Chevy Chase in the movie Vacation when he flirts with Christie Brinkley, my knee banged into a utility pole that I never saw. Worse, it was a utility pole that looked as if it had been severed with a chain saw or a bus accident, leaving behind a gnarled mess of steel with jagged edges.

Even worse than that, the pole was severed at knee level for a 6-foot-1, 20-year-old dude goofing around with a sandwich before a Grateful Dead gig at The Garden.

There was nothing sold at the concessions that could ever last as long as the souvenir I got more than 20 years ago.

Game 6

Friday, January 6, 2012
Game 6: Wells Fargo Center
Sixers 96, Pistons 73

PHILADELPHIA — Call it a throwback night. Or better yet, a way back night. In opening the home schedule for the 2011-12 season, the brand-new owners of the Philadelphia 76ers decided to call on some of the heroes from the franchise’s best era of extended glory.

More specifically, it was the players from the 1983 NBA Championship team that were summoned to a building that none of them ever played in. Earl Cureton, the bench player whose job was to give the MVP frontline players a break and to grab a few rebounds, was there. So too was Bobby Jones, the reed thin forward who was known for his ability to play defense and fill the lanes on the fast break.

In fact, Jones was so good a defender that he was nicknamed, “The Secretary of Defense.” In the early 1980s, the shoe company Nike put out posters of Jones that depicted him behind a big, oak desk as if he were some sort of military giant. It was an interesting look for Jones, knowing that he was (and is) a devout Christian.

Moses Malone and Julius Erving made it back, too. Frankly, the Sixers can’t reasonably have a reunion of former players without the inclusion of Moses and Doc. What would be the point? Not only were they the catalysts behind the championship team, but unarguably the two most popular players, too.

Certainly there isn’t very much we can add here to further the legends of Moses and Doc.

No, the real legend in the building that night chose not to participate in the public celebration of the championship, though he was shown on the video board above the arena.

Indeed, Andrew Toney had finally returned to the basketball arena in South Philly.

Reportedly back at a Sixers game for the first time since his playing career ended prematurely because of a foot injury, Toney seemingly has buried the decades long grudge against the organization that was spurred on by the poor treatment he reportedly received from former owner Harold Katz.

Toney had it all. He was a shooting guard, but built like a forward. He played with a mean streak and was fearless with the basketball in his hands. It didn’t matter who was guarding him because Toney wasn’t going to back down.

To the folks who were too young to see Toney play, I described him as Allen Iverson with a jumper and the ability to play in a team structure. He could pass it almost as well as he could shoot it…

And boy could he shoot it.

In his first five seasons with the Sixers, Toney averaged more than 20 points per game, made two all-star teams, got to the Eastern Conference Finals three times and the NBA Finals twice. He was rewarded with a big contract (for the time) before his sixth season because it would have been stupid not to keep him in town. Not only was Toney good, but also he was popular. Ask any kid born in the early 1970s who their favorite Sixers player was and undoubtedly the answer would be Andrew Toney.

I know he was my favorite Sixers player ever. Living so close to Franklin & Marshall College where the team held its preseason training camp, I was lucky enough to see Toney play from close up. Better yet, as the resident gym rat of F&M’s Mayser Center, I often rebounded shots for Toney when he remained after practice to shoot jumpers. The farther he went out on the court, the softer the ball seemed to float as it would nestle itself into the net only to be returned and fired up there again.

Truth is I saw Toney’s shooting technique so much from so close that his method became mine. Going up against the competition in the CYO league, my jumper started with a half step of my right foot before rising up to let it fly.

Believe it or not, the result didn’t change all that much from idol to fan.

For those lucky enough to have seen Toney in his prime, they know that he was The Truth. Called the Boston Strangler for the way he wrecked the Celtics during the postseason as well as the Silent Assassin, Toney was on the way to a Hall of Fame career until the injuries came. He was the second-leading scorer on the Sixers the year they won the championship, but the most-feared player on the team.

Larry Bird said Toney was the best clutch player he had ever seen and Charles Barkley claimed he was the best teammate he ever had.

Malone doesn’t disagree, either.

“Andrew was tough, man,” Moses said. “He had a way to get it done. He played with a lot of heart and he loved the game. If you’re like that you’ll be the best.”

But Toney’s career ended abruptly and with controversy that no man should endure. After he got that big contract, Toney appeared in just six games during the 1985-86 season because of stress fractures in his foot. The problem never got much better and Toney played two more abbreviated seasons before he packed it in at age 30.

Before that he was derided and belittled by the owner Katz, who aside from being cheap when it came to running his ballclub, didn’t believe Toney was really injured. Katz forced Toney to take drug tests and questioned his fortitude in public because he couldn’t take the floor. Reportedly, Katz even went so far as to hire private investigators to find out if his well-paid but injured All-Star had a nefarious side.

So when his playing days in Philadelphia ended, Toney never looked back and never stepped foot at another Sixers’ game…

Until Friday night home opener.

Toney did not take part in the brief, pregame ceremony, nor did he show up for the media availability with his old teammates, either. But Toney, who these days works as an elementary school teacher in suburban Atlanta, was introduced to the crowd during the second quarter of the game.

Obviously, the crowd went crazy.

“Andrew finally made his mind that he had to come back and see the fans,” Malone said. “He knows they love him.”

And the elusive great one finally returned, too. If you blinked, though, you missed it…

Kind of like Andrew Toney’s entire career. 

Changes... again

As you can see, this site looks different again. Chances are, the content on these pages is going to be a little different, too.

Since there is ample space for the baseball and other sports writing on the CSNPhilly site, there is no real need to use this space for the overflow or the ol’ shaking out the notebook jawn. Instead, this will be a more traditional, “blog.” Call it a catch all for whatever comes down the pike.

You know, for fun… you’ll see.

Albert the Great

Technically speaking, Albert Pujols is having the worst season of his career. Though he leads the National League with 36 home runs, he also leads it in grounded in double plays. Worse, Pujols is only batting .300 with a .371 on-base percentage and a .921 OPS—all the worst totals of his career.

In fact, a quick glance at the numbers Pujols has produced this season proves that he soon will drop to the status of a mere mortal. Of all the years to lead the league with only 36 homers and a subpar .300 batting average, Pujols picked the worse one.

See, Pujols is playing out the last year of his eight-year contract signed before the 2004 season. His salary is $16 million for 2011 and speculation is that it could climb as much as twice that rate in the future. Whether the Cardinals can afford Pujols no matter what the price tag remains up in the air, so it’s understandable that the team is making some contingency plans.

Nevertheless, if the Cardinals lose Pujols there likely will be some fallout in St. Louis. That only makes sense considering Pujols not only is a pillar of the community in his hometown, but also is the best hitter of this generation.

Actually, when all is said and done, Pujols could go down as the greatest right-handed hitter to ever play. He could be the yin to Ted Williams’ yang, or perhaps more apt, the right-handed Stan Musial.

Fact is fact… Albert Pujols is the best hitter I have ever seen.

I only caught the tail end of Rod Carew’s career and I remember seeing him play a few times on NBC’s Saturday afternoon Game of the Week with Tony Kubek and Joe Garagiola doing the call in the late ‘70s. Carew had that big old chaw in his right cheek and that crazy batting stance of his. When my friends and I would play ball in the courtyard behind our home in Washington, some one would always imitate Rod Carew or Lee May, who was the DH and star for the Orioles before Eddie Murray came into his own.

And yeah, I remember George Brett, especially during the 1980 season when one of the 12 channels we got back in those days would cut in to the regular programming to let everyone know that Brett’s latest hit pushed him over the .400 plateau.

Then there was Tony Gwynn, who was as pure a hitter as there was. Gwynn made it look like he was using a tennis racket at the plate. I remember a doubleheader at the Vet on July 22,1994 when Gwynn went 6-for-8 – four hits in the first game and two more in the second. Though for some reason it always seemed as if Gwynn got nine or 10 hits that day.

All of those guys are great hitters, but for some reason I think Pujols is the best.

But I needed an expert opinion to see if I was on the right path. Sure, in the first three games of the series at the Bank Pujols is 6 for 12 with two walks with a home run on Sunday night that was hit so far that it should be finishing its first orbit around the earth shortly. The numbers, occasionally, speak for themselves.

Still, there are just a handful of people on the planet who understand hitting a baseball as well as Charlie Manuel. Think about it – when Charlie was first coming up through the ranks in pro ball, none other than Ted Williams took a shine to the Phillies’ skipper. There was something about that big, lefty swing from that raw-boned kid from Buena Vista, Virginia that caught the eye of the greatest hitter who ever lived.

While coming up with the Twins, Hall-of-Famers Harmon Killebrew and Carew were his teammates. When he joined the Dodgers, Charlie couldn’t unseat Steve Garvey, Bill Buckner, Ron Cey or Jimmy Wynn for playing time. Because he couldn’t get the opportunities in the U.S., Charlie went to Japan where he and the legendary Sadaharu Oh were the top sluggers.

Back in the states as a coach, Charlie mentored some of the all-time greats. Hitters like Kirby Puckett, Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, Albert Belle and now, Ryan Howard and Chase Utley thrived under Charlie. Some of them are headed to the Hall of Fame. No doubts there.

So Chuck, how good is Pujols?

“He’s up there,” Manuel said. “He’s right up there with the best of them.”

Manuel says it’s difficult to compare Pujols to the all-time greats because his style is so unique. It’s impossible to compare him to Ted Williams or any other all-time great because there is no other standard. With his wide stance and the way he holds his hands back far when he loads up, the style stands out. It’s impossible to label Pujols’ method anything but his own.

“He has a style all of his own,” Manuel said. “You’re not going to see too many guys spread out like that and hold his hands the way he does. He’s unlike anyone.”

Charlie wasn’t ready to gush platitudes all over an opponent when there still are games to play in the series. Plus, Pujols is still a work in progress. Though he’s wrapping up his 11^th season in the big leagues, Pujols is 31—two months younger than the Phillies’ Ryan Howard.

It’s not unreasonable to believe that Pujols can have even greater years of production in the short term. If he plays long enough, Pujols very well could be the first player to get 3,000 hits and 700 home runs. He needs 940 hits and 256 homers to get there.

So Chuck, how good is Pujols?

“You know what, with the way he stands in there he’s a lot like Joe DiMaggio,” Manuel said. “Only stronger. He’s like a stronger Joe DiMaggio.”

I like that. When Pujols first come up, DiMaggio was the comparison many in the press made simply based on the production. However, 11 years into his career it’s clear Pujols is going to places very few have seen.

The smart thing is to get out to the ballpark and see for yourself. Chances are Pujols will be the greatest hitter your eyes have seen, too.

The forgotten hero of the champion Cubs & Columbia, Pa.

Back when the Continental Congress was figuring out where to locate the permanent capital, a little town in Pennsylvania called Wright’s Ferry decided to lobby for the gig. Figuring its location along the banks of the mighty Susquehanna River that separates York and Lancaster counties was perfectly located and easy for delegates from the other colonies, Wright’s Ferry challenged for the privilege to be capital.

First things first…

Wright’s Ferry had to do something about its name. It needed something catchy or something that befit a burgeoning nation. Therefore, in 1789 Wright’s Ferry changed its name to Columbia. Perfect, huh? With a name like Columbia, how could the little town on the western edge of Lancaster County go wrong?

Location? Check.

Infrastructure? Check.

People of influence on its side like George Washington? Check.

Name? Done, done, done and done.

Nevertheless, southern states Maryland and Virginia carved out a rectangle of unwanted swamp land along the Anacostia and Potomac rivers not too far from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Next thing the folks in Columbia, Pa. knew the District of Columbia had edged it out by one vote and the rest is history.

Some influence that George Washington had, huh?

Anyway, since it had the name and the location, Columbia attempted to become the capital of Pennsylvania. Again, it had the location, the name but maybe not the influential supporters. Instead, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania went with the more centrally located Harrisburg to be the seat of its government.

Since then, Columbia became most well known for burning down the bridge connecting it to Wrightsville in York County (called the Wright's Ferry Bridge) to ward off the approaching Confederate Army in 1863. As a result of this act, the Confederates and Union armies got together in a little town that not many people had heard of called Gettysburg.

Columbians, meanwhile, petitioned the U.S. government to replace the bridge only to be denied for more than 100 years.

The act of burning the bridge kept General Robert E. Lee’s army from attacking Harrisburg, Pa. from the east while it gave the Union army enough time to protect Harrisburg, Lancaster and Philadelphia as well as confront the Confederates in what was to become the bloodiest battle of the Civil War.

These days, though, Gettysburg is as synonymous with American liberty as much as any landmark in the nation’s history. Because of that, tourists flock to the little burg in south-central Pennsylvania and spend millions in restaurants, hotels and whatever else travelers like to buy.

Columbia, on the other hand, is a struggling industrial town with no real claim to anything in American history aside from a century’s worth of near-misses of historical fame. 

***

There are no parks named for Jimmy Sheckard in Columbia, Pa. and as far as we could tell, there are no statues or other public memorials for the man, either. In Lancaster city’s Buchanan Park, beneath a copse of trees near a statue of James Buchanan, the 14^th president of the United States, there is a stone plaque with kind words for Sheckard and his career in baseball. But aside from that, there really isn’t anything else in Lancaster or Columbia to remember Samuel James Tilden Sheckard.

That’s certainly a unique way to remember a hometown ballplayer once described by writer Ring Lardner as, “the greatest ballplayer in the world.”

No, Jimmy Sheckard was not the greatest ballplayer in the world in any era. In fact, Sheckard is not even a member of the baseball Hall of Fame or regarded as one of the greatest players for Brooklyn or Chicago, the hometowns of the ballclubs he made his fame. But Sheckard was a terrific ballplayer by any standard. Moreover, he has the rarest of distinctions of any player…

Sheckard was a member of the only two World Series champion teams in Chicago Cubs’ history.

Think about that for a second… the number of people who have World Series rings with the Cubs is probably the most select group in the game. There was Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance, the famous double-play combination that become fodder for poetry as well as pitchers Orvall Overall and Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown. Matched up against Ty Cobb’s Detroit Tigers in 1907 and 1908, the Cubs won eight out of nine World Series games and were viewed as the greatest teams in the early history of the game.

But how many Cubs’ players have come and gone since that last title? Before the Billy Goat and Bartman and the black cat of 1969; before Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Ron Santo, Kerry Wood and Sammy Sosa—hell, before Wrigley Field… there was Jimmy Sheckard in left field for the Chicago Cubs.

“Sheckard was one of the brightest ball players in the business,” Hall-of-Fame teammate Johnny Evers said. “He was a bigger cog in the old invincible Cub machine than he ever received credit for being.”

From 1906 to 1910, Sheckard was the left fielder for the juggernaut Cubs teams that went to the World Series four times and won the title in 1907 and 1908. Here we are in 2011 and the Cubs haven’t come close since Sheckard held down left field. In fact, a good modern-day comparison for Sheckard might be Johnny Damon circa 2004 with the champion Red Sox in 2004. Sheckard was a leadoff man extraordinaire, a Gold Glove-caliber fielder and a power threat in the Dead Ball Era.

Also like Damon, Sheckard was known as a bit of a zany dude on and off the field. A prankster and a singer in a barbershop quartet, Sheckard also carried some of his quirky behavior onto the diamond. For instance, there was a game in Pittsburgh where the Pirates’ hitters had a knack for spraying line drive all over left field far out of the reach of Sheckard. So rather than position himself in the outfield traditionally, Sheckard spun around in circles in the outfield, tossed his glove up in the air and decided he’d position himself where the glove landed.

The game was stopped so Cubs’ pitcher Orval Overall could re-position Sheckard back into the middle of left field instead of on the foul line, but the outfielder wouldn’t budge. When Overall gave up and went back to the mound, his next pitch was hit directly to the unconventional Sheckard playing left field practically in foul territory.

He also boasted that he would bat .400 in the 1906 World Series against the White Sox, but instead went a Burrell-esque 0 for 21 and did not hit the ball out of the infield as the Cubs were upset in six games. Before the 1908 World Series, Sheckard was almost blinded in his left eye from a fight with teammate Heinie Zimmerman. During an argument, Sheckard threw something at Zimmerman, who in turn fired a glass bottle of ammonia at Sheckard prompting a clubhouse melee. In a way, the Cubs’ brawl kind of sounds like the stories about the 1970s Oakland A’s—minus the bottle of ammonia, of course.

Needless to say, Sheckard was very popular with the fans. This was despite the fact that Sheckard was a bit flaky when choosing a team to play for. Early in his career, Sheckard had a penchant for abruptly switching teams in the middle of the season. From 1899 to 1902, Sheckard jumped back and forth from the Brooklyn Superbas to the Baltimore Orioles and back again, four times. Finally, after being traded from Brooklyn to the Cubs before the 1906 season, Sheckard found his home.  

Oh, but Sheckard could field his position without the silly antics, too. In Bill James’ Historical Baseball Abstract, the author lists Sheckard on the gold Glove team of the 1900s as well as the No. 24-rated left fielder of all time in the 2001 edition of the book.

But Sheckard’s play, as well as his inability to pick a team, was marked by inconsistency. Actually, if Sheckard’s playing career could be defined properly, it was his consistency at being inconsistent. Or, perhaps, Sheckard was focused on one aspect of the game. He led the league in slugging one season and stolen bases in another. Actually, Sheckard’s superlatives are downright wacky:

• NL record for sacrifice hits in a season with 46 (1909)

• NL record for walks in a season in with 147 (1911)

• NL on-base percentage leader (1911)

• NL slugging percentage leader (1901)

• NL runs leader (1911)

• NL triples leader (1901)

• NL home runs leader (1903)

• NL bases on balls leader (1911 & 1912)

• NL stolen bases leader (1899 & 1903)

• 100 RBI seasons (1901)

• 100 Runs scored seasons (1899, 1901 & 1911)

• 50 stolen bases seasons (1899 & 1903)

As James wrote in the Historical Baseball Abstract:

Sheckard drew 147 walks in 1911, which was the National league record until Eddie Stanky, and is still one of the highest figures on record. He also hit as high as .354 (1901), stole as many as 77 bases (1899), and led the National League at various times in triples, home runs, runs scored, walks, sacrifice hits, stolen bases, base runner kills (outfield assists), on-base percentage and slugging percentage.

Sheckard had sort of a Toby Harrah-type career. He did a lot of things well, but not necessarily at the same time. The first half of his career he was a middle-of-the-order hitter, and a good one; the second half of his career he was a leadoff man, and a very good one.

With Sheckard, the only big leaguers to lead the league in home runs and stolen bases in different seasons during the modern era are Ty Cobb, Chuck Klein and Willie Mays. Only Sheckard has led the league in homers in one season and sacrifices in another.

***

It seems as if Columbia’s biggest moment came when it burned down that bridge to thwart Lee’s army from launching an attack on Harrisburg. Meanwhile, as the civil War raged, a Columbia native named Stephen Atkins Swails had left his job as a waiter in Cooperstown, N.Y. and, with 17 other men from Columbia, joined up with the 54^th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Swails started as a private, received a commission and became first sergeant. After the battle at Fort Wagner in 1863, Swails took over as acting sergeant-major when the platoon’s commander was killed. Then in a whirlwind three months, the Columbian was injured in battle at Olustee and received a promotion to Second Lieutenant.

Swails was the first African-American promoted to officer rank during the war.

Parts of his story were copped and told in the movie Glory, the story of the all black 54^th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry that earned Denzel Washington his first Academy Award.

Swails never returned to Columbia, instead taking the rare path of a free black man to settle in the south. After the war he was a lawyer, mayor and state senator from Kingstree, S.C. However, as a black man in the south after the Reconstruction, life wasn’t exactly easy for Swails. When a mob attempted to assassinate him, Swails gave up politics and found a job through the Republican party with the U.S. Postal Service and the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C.

Like with Sheckard, there isn’t much left in Columbia to memorialize its hometown hero. However, some members of Swails’ unit are buried in town at a hillside cemetery near the high school.

***

It is in that cemetery where we stumbled upon a simple grave stone marked that read:

HUSBAND

JAMES T. SHECKARD

1878 — 1947

That’s it. Nothing about the Cubs or the World Series or even the major leagues. Nothing else about the fact that at the age of 10, Sheckard’s family moved from just over the river from York County to Columbia where he was discovered as a baseball prodigy.

In fact, Sheckard’s grave was as austere and plain as his legacy in his hometown.

And it was back to Columbia where Sheckard settled after his playing days ended following the 1913 season. By that point, at age 34, Sheckard was a .194 hitter for the Reds and Cardinals though he retained his keen batting eye. One has to figure that there are not too many players in big league history that had a sub-.200 batting average in 99 games, but still were able to have a .368 on-base percentage.

Nevertheless, Sheckard had settled into retirement, spending some time in the Navy in World War I as well as a stint as a coach for the Cubs. Home though was Columbia and it was there in 1929 when he lost everything in the stock market crash. Fortunately, his status as a former big leaguer made the search for work a little easier. So Sheckard spent years hauling giant milk containers for farmers around Lancaster County. He also worked at a gas station in Lancaster, which was conveniently located across the street from Stumpf Field.

Travel to Lancaster today and you will still find Stumpf Field in its original location. It was there where the Lancaster Red Roses of the Interstate, Piedmont and Eastern leagues played as an affiliate for the White Sox, Tigers, Philadelphia Athletics, Cubs, Cardinals and Dodgers. In 1932, Sheckard managed the Lancaster Red Sox for a season at Stumpf Field, as well as the college team nearby at Franklin & Marshall and some semi-pro teams in the area.

As it turned out, Sheckard’s quirky behavior didn’t end when he stopped playing in the big leagues. Les Bell, an infielder from Harrisburg who went on to play for the Cardinals, Braves and Cubs, told a researcher about Sheckard’s fun with tobacco:

“As a manager he wore white socks and a white shirt and was always chewing tobacco,” Bell said. “He'd hitch his pants at the knees, sit himself down and spit away. Funniest damn thing I ever saw. By the end of a game those white socks were always a very distinctly brownish color.”

Shortly after his stint on the bench with the Lancaster Red Sox, Sheckard inexplicably turned down an offer from Connie Mack to manage the A’s farm team in the Eastern Shore League. Who knows… it could have been his path to the big leagues.

Instead, Sheckard kept working and living in Lancaster and Columbia. It was in January of 1947 near that gas station located across the street from Stumpf Field when he was hit from behind by a car. Three days later he died from head injuries at age 68.

And that was pretty much it for Sheckard. His friends held a memorial for him at Stumpf Field and the city of Lancaster placed the stone monument in his honor at Buchanan Park, located three blocks from the former president’s estate. Coincidentally, a future president spoke at a rally just steps from the memorial 61 years after it was placed in the park. Then again, Buchanan Park isn’t exactly the size of Central Park.

Once, he was “the greatest ballplayer in the world.” Today, only a few folks remember the Pennsylvania Dutchman who was an integral member of the only two Cubs teams to win the World Series.

The annual, rambling essay on Jim Thome (and why the Phillies should get him)

It usually comes around once per baseball season that I will find a reason to write something about Jim Thome. Sometimes it's actually newsworthy, like if he had just joined a team ready to play the Phillies in the playoffs. But mostly it just has to do with the occasion of him showing up in town or appearing on the cover of a magazine.

See, it's easy to write about Jim Thome. It's easy because he's so likable and genuine. He's one of those guys that if you ask him a question, he's going to try as hard as he can to give you a good answer.

Case in point:

We were at Shea for a day game in 2003, which was Thome's first season with the Phillies. It was kind of an odd time in team history because the Phillies were supposed to be really good with guys like Pat Burrell and Bobby Abreu coming into their primes along with players like Placido Polanco and Jimmy Rollins solidifying their standings as top-shelf talent. Mix in Thome and Kevin Millwood and the sky was the limit.

The problem was the Phillies didn't quite know how to be good. Worse, the manager, Larry Bowa, liked to talk about "winning" as if it were a character trait. He seemed to believe that abrasive behavior and misplaced anger was synonymous with being a leader. He was the exact opposite of Thome because Bowa could never get out of the way of his own ego. Thome was the biggest slugger in the game during the 2003 season and he was practically ego-less. Thome thought mutual respect and a positive attitude were synonymous with being a leader and always seemed to have dozens of teammates following his every move.

Anyway, we were at Shea and I was thinking about writing a story about how Jimmy Rollins was quickly becoming a Gold Glove-caliber shortstop in the National League. This was back in the day when it was not uncommon to hang in the clubhouse after a game and rapping with Rollins about baseball and the special insight he had. Jimmy was in just his third season in the big leagues at the time and had not yet gone completely "Hollywood." See, there is a term certain old-school ball writers like to use to describe certain players who come up as happy, chatty and down-to-earth dudes, but change as soon as a little bit of fame, accolades and money comes in. It's called "going Hollywood," as in, "Barry Zito used to be really cool until he went Hollywood."

Rollins has straddled that line between regular dude and Hollywood a lot during his career, but when he was just an up-and-comer, Jimmy would demonstrate to a writer how he is able to go from an all out sprint to a sudden stop without his momentum carrying him into the outfield or ripping his ACL to shreds. He'd also explain with great detail how if given the choice between Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Nomar Garciaparra, the top American League shortstops from a decade ago, that he'd take Omar Vizquel.

Vizquel, said Rollins way back when, was the smoothest shortstop in the game. He got to everything and seemingly never in a position where he had to throw off balance or popping up from a dive. Vizquel was a shortstop's shortstop who could have been unappreciated because he was never on ESPN making some sort of dramatic play to make up for being out of position.

Back to the story...

Considering that Thome spent many years playing with Vizquel in Cleveland, I figured he would have some insight on Rollins' ability and potential. However, it's not always easy to grab a guy like Thome for a few minutes before a game. Big stars often have a lot of commitments when they play in New York City, so in order to get Thome I'd have to be quick. So when I saw him, I asked him if he had a second only to be told, "No, I'm sorry, not right now. I have to go see Ralph Kiner."

Ralph Kiner, of course, was the longtime Mets' broadcaster who led the National League in homers during his first seven years in the league. Injuries cut short his career, so Kiner hit 369 homers in 10 seasons before hanging them up after the 1955 season. If Thome had to go see Ralph Kiner, that was cool. I'd catch him some other time.

But instead, Thome walked into the bathroom/shower area in the tiny visitors' clubhouse at Shea, which led me to believe that "I gotta go see Ralph Kiner" was some sort of euphemism. As in, "Man, last night we went to some crazy Mongolian barbecue joint and now I gotta go see Ralph Kiner."

Maybe three minutes after Thome disappeared into the bathroom, I felt a tap on my shoulder. When I turned around it was Big Jim.

"Hey, come on over to my locker and we'll talk," he said.

In a baseball clubhouse, nothing like that had happened to me before or since.

***

Stories like that make it easy to understand why Thome is so easy to write about. I'm pretty much a nobody to those guys, a smart-ass who is essentially stealing a few words from ballplayers in order to scribble short, little vignettes about a brief moment of time. To the ballplayers, any random game is one of thousands they will play in their lives, but to us it's supposed to mean more because we sat there and watched it.

Thome flipped the script. He treated everyone like they were a big shot because all of our lives crossed paths. That might sound deeper than it should, but that just might be why Thome was so revered by everyone who crossed his path. He treats everyone with basic humanity and he doesn't think he's any more important than you just because he can hit a baseball really far.

***

Here's another favorite Thome story and then we'll get to the point...
It’s a common rite in baseball circles for players to quietly ask each other for autographs, jerseys or other memorabilia. What happens is one player on an opposing team gives a shiny, new baseball to a clubbie and sends him over to the other clubhouse to have it signed by a certain player. Players love signing those baseballs, too. It’s a huge thrill to sign for another player and a true sign of respect if a peer asks for an autograph (without actually asking).

Nevertheless, it’s usually something reserved for the big-time players. Word is Cal Ripken Jr. used to make special time just to sign items from the other team. All opposing team requests had to be made before the series against Baltimore began and Ripken would honor them before the opponent left town. But that was nothing like the one request I actually witnessed with my own two eyes and ears.

Sitting with an old family friend and Red Sox old-time legend, Johnny Pesky, in the home team clubhouse at Fenway Park, ol Mr. Red Sox summoned a clubbie to fetch two brand new balls to have signed by Thome. No big deal, right? Certainly Thome was asked to sign those pearls often, even for old-timers like Pesky, who was close friends with Ted WIlliams and nearly every Red Sox player who passed through Fenway.

But no more than 10 minutes later when the clubbie returned with two signed balls from Thome along with two more clean ones with a counter request, Pesky almost lost it.

“Jim would like you to sign these for him,” the clubbie told Pesky.

Pesky took a long moment, clearly taken aback by the request. Then, exhilarated by the fact that Jim Thome had sent two baseballs to have signed, Pesky looked at the clubbie before fixing a stare on me and asked:

“Are you joking with me,” Pesky said, amazed that Thome wanted the balls signed. “Jim Thome wants me to sign these?”

He took a moment, massaged the baseballs in his weathered hands, grabbed a ballpoint pen from the clubhouse kid and signed the ball. He repeated the drill again before signing the second one, then, as if he just ran wind sprint, sat back in his chair exhilarated.

Needless to say, Pesky had the biggest smile on his face…

***

The point of this exercise was to come up with a good argument why the Phillies should try to acquire Thome. The ideas were basic, like he could be a power left-handed bat off the bench or a DH in the World Series, et cetera, et cetera. But really, the only reason for getting him was completely selfish...

Thome needs two more homers to reach 600 for his career and it would be so cool if he did it for the Phillies. Actually, this was a feat we thought he was going to get for the Phillies when he signed that 8-year, $86 million deal in December of 2002. Who would have ever guessed that almost exactly three years to the day after he jumped out of a limo to greet the union guys from I.B.E.W. along Pattison Avenue that he would be traded for Aaron Rowand?

Besides, there have been a handful of stories that have hit the ether over the past few weeks about how no one really seems too excited that Thome was closing in on 600 homers. Depending upon how you judge the all-time home run list, Thome will become just the fifth or eighth man to hit 600. For the longest time the home run numbers stood at 755, 714 and 660, but thanks to chemistry and a focus on the bottom line, a few interlopers jumped into that 600-homer club.So why shouldn't baseball fans be excited?

If there is any player people should be excited about just for pulling on the uniform, it's Thome, and for those looking for a reason to expend lean tissue and time on a pro ballplayer, check out this passage from a story written by Joe Posnanski about Thome for Sports Illustrated last summer:

"I really do try hard to be a good teammate," Thome says. "I can't run very fast, but I try to always run hard. I may strike out a lot, but I try to walk to set up the guys who are hitting after me. The other day I didn't score from first on a double. I cost my guy an RBI. I felt terrible about that. I told him, 'Look, I really tried, but I'm old and I'm slow. I hope I can make it up to you in another way.'"

Teammates know he is sincere, and they love him for it. No, he can't run. He has played all of eight innings in the field (at first base) since 2007. His defense was the main reason the White Sox decided not to re-sign him. "[Manager] Ozzie [Guillen] wanted flexibility in his lineup," general manager Kenny Williams says. Guillen himself says, "Go ahead, blame me... . But I'll tell you I love Jim Thome. I wish I didn't. I wish I f------ hated the guy. But I can't hate him. Nobody can hate him."

Ex-teammates still talk about Thome lovingly in Cleveland (he does get booed a bit by Indians fans, but that's for leaving in the first place) and in Philadelphia and Chicago. He is relentlessly positive. Perkins remembers his first or second day back with the Twins this year after a long stretch in the minors. He was walking by Thome, who was taking his slow, methodical phantom batting practice. "And suddenly, he just stops," Perkins says, "and he smiles and gives me a fist. I mean, it's not like I'm Joe Mauer or Justin Morneau. He barely knows who I am. But that's the kind of guy he is. He's the best teammate I've ever had... . I think everybody thinks that."

Thome smiles in his sheepish way when the story is recounted to him. "I think you just want to be a good person," he says. "I'm getting to do what I've wanted to do my whole life. I'm getting to do what millions and millions of people would like to do."

Truth be told, I've been struggling with the "get Thome" ideas. After all, they already have Ross Gload and if there is anything the Phillies don't need it's another lefty hitter that can't play defense and must be run for if he gets on base. But then I found something I wrote about Thome in 2009 when the Dodgers picked him up just to pinch hit. Rowand, playing for the Dodgers' traditional rivals the Giants, explained why it was smart move to add Thome even if it's for just one at-bat a couple of times a week.

"Similar to the Yankees teams [Dodgers manager Joe] Torre had when [Darryl] Strawberry came off the bench. I think you’re kidding yourself if you’re a manager and he’s sitting on the bench that you don’t think twice before making a move,” Rowand said. “He’s a professional hitter – he doesn’t need four at-bats a day to stay sharp.”

Thome on the Phillies doesn’t guarantee anything. Hell, for a team counting down the magic number at the beginning of August, Thome might not even be needed in Philly even if he is a slight difference maker.

But then again, who doesn't want Jim Thome around? Better yet, with the Twins in the second division and Thome closing in on his 41st birthday, why not do the guy a favor and send him somewhere to potentially go out on top? Sure, he’d just be going up there looking to grip-and-rip at the twilight of his Hall of Fame career, but man…

What a good dude.

The Hall of Fame career that Matt Stairs could have had ...

PHILADELPHIA — Once upon a time, back in the late 1980s when you were much younger, thinner and had your whole future in front of you, the Montreal Expos had a base-stealing third/second baseman named Matt Stairs. He was a hockey player from St. John, New Brunswick who left high school for Canada’s National Baseball Institute in Vancouver, not exactly a hot bed for baseball talent, but it was a chance for Stairs to travel around the globe and play ball.

By 1988, Stairs was a member of the Canadian Olympic team and then signed as an undrafted free agent with the Expos. Twenty-three years later, in Washington, D.C., Stairs’ baseball life has seemingly come full circle. The Washington Nationals, the latest incarnation of the Montreal Expos, designated Stairs for assignment. At age 43 after playing for 13 different major league teams, Stairs could be at the end of his playing career.

That’s a big could, of course. This past April Stairs said he wants to keep on playing until the phone stops ringing and teams no longer call. After that, he wants to keep on coaching hockey in Bangor, Maine and maybe even coach or manage in the big leagues.

But that’s only if no team wants a power hitting lefty for the bench.

Certainly Stairs catching on with some team remains a possibility, but in the meantime there are a few things to think about when putting his career in perspective. For instance:

• What if Stairs would have come up in a proper position rather than as a second baseman?

Yeah, that's right... Stairs was a second baseman who swiped bases in the minor-league system for the Expos. In fact, during the 1991 season when he was playing for Double A Harrisburg, Stairs was the Eastern League MVP when he hit 30 doubles, 10 triples, 13 homers and 23 stolen bases.

Let that soak in a second—10 triples and 23 stolen bases.

Could you imagine Stairs as a second baseman during his playing career? How about when he was playing with the Phillies?

But what if he had been an outfielder from the jump? None other than Bill James, the godfather of statistical analysis, suggests that Stairs very well could be winding down a Hall of Fame career:

Look at it. Somebody decided he was a second baseman, he tears through the minor leagues, gets to Montreal, the Expos take one look at him and say, 'He's no second baseman, get real.' He bounces around, goes to Japan, doesn't really get to play until he's almost 30, then hits 38 homers, slips into a part-time role and hits 15-20 homers every year for 10 years in about 250 at-bats a season. ... You put him in the right park, right position early in his career ... he's going to hit a LOT of bombs.

Moreover, James also dug up this:

Stairs's career numbers are essentially the same as Reggie Jackson's (.262, .356, .490). All of his numbers trump those of Roger Maris. Other players with comparable numbers include Bobby Bonds, Frank Howard, Dwight Evans, Dale Murphy and Greg Luzinski. Nobody confuses those ballplayers with the ordinary.

It wasn’t until the last years of his minor league days that Stairs was moved off second base, largely because of his lack of fielding prowess. However, Stairs’ base-stealing ability also seemed to go away when he moved out of the infield. As a result, Stairs’ minor league stats make it look as if he underwent some sort of personality metamorphosis noting that he had 30 stolen bases in 19 big league seasons and 77 stolen bases in parts of eight minor league seasons. He also played just one major league game at second base, which came in the last inning of a blowout loss in Arizona when Stairs was playing for the Cubs.

Incidentally, Stairs played for the Cubs 10 years and 10 teams ago.

Stairs was the most prolific slugging journeyman of all time

During his career Stairs has played for 13 different teams and bashed 265 career home runs. Of those, 21 were pinch homers, which is the most of all-time. His 100 career pinch hits are tied with Rusty Staub for 18^th on the all-time list.

But Stairs was much more than a bat off the bench.

In 2008, Stairs passed another ex-Phillie, Todd Zeile, when he cracked homer No. 254 to give him the most homers amongst players who have played for 10-or-11 teams.

Now here's the interesting part…

When a guy has played for 13 teams in 19 seasons, it can be difficult for the fans in any of those cities to embrace him. But in Philadelphia, where the 5-foot-9 journeyman pinch hitter can become a folk hero in an instant and one of the family even quicker, Stairs just might forever be linked with the Phillies.

He played five years with the A’s and three with the Royals, but the season and a month he spent with the Phillies was where he became a legend.

Of course it took stints on 10 other teams before he got there.

Stairs joined the Phillies in a post-deadline trade with the Blue Jays for a player-to-be-named then went on to get one of the most memorable hits in franchise history.

Actually, it’s all of the home runs that are the biggest reason the sometimes tough Philly fans have identified Stairs as a favorite. However, those home runs aren’t the biggest reason why they like him so much. Firstly, there is that journeyman aspect to Stairs’ career. Of those 11 teams he’s played for since 1992, one team doesn’t exist anymore and in 2006 he played for three different teams after being traded once and waived another time.

Then there is that build. At 5-foot-9, the off-season high school hockey coach appears as if he could be playing beer league softball with Eagles fans. “Average Joe,” Stairs calls it.

“Let’s face it, I’m not 6-foot-2 and trim. I’m 5-foot-9 and 2-I-really-don’t-care – I still keep myself in good shape,” he said of his physique. “I don’t want to give the fans an excuse not to like me, but I guess when I hit a big home run they say, ‘Hey, that guy is just like us.’”

And oh yes, there are those big home runs. Since joining the Phillies in September of 2008, Stairs has had 34 regular-season at-bats, 11 hits and four homers. His slugging percentage was a gaudy .735.

That will get the fans excited right there.

But he kept them excited in 2009 even though he went hitless for two months. Manager Charlie Manuel isn’t known for using his bench that much and that oh-fer-two-months consumed 30 at-bats, however, Stairs still smashed five pinch home runs in 2009 and had another pretty huge plate appearance in Game 5 of the NLCS.

“I haven’t really haven’t had too many at-bats. But I had two pinch-hit home runs last year and two pinch hit home runs this year, and one in the playoffs,” Stairs said. “So for five out of 30-something at-bats I’ve had pinch-hit home runs.”

Oh yes, that one in the playoffs. It’s quite reasonable to say that Stairs’ hit the biggest home run in the history of the franchise. Can anyone think of a bigger one? Sure, there was Mike Schmidt’s homer to beat the Expos and clinch the NL East in 1980 as well as his blast in Game 5 of the 1980 World Series to help the Phillies take a 3-2 lead in the series, but Stairs’ pinch homer in the eighth inning of Game 4 of last October’s NLCS at Dodger Stadium rescued the Phillies in that game and helped carry them to the World Series.

Just like that, instant folk hero.

“I’ve had some memorable home runs. I had a 10th inning home run on Mickey Mantle Day and a pinch-hit home run in San Francisco in the Bay Bridge Series,” said Stairs, noting that he didn’t remember running the bases after that bomb off Jonathon Broxton in Game 4. “This one came in a better time in a great city.”

But don’t think for a minute that Stairs is immune to the excitement he generates. He hears you out there. Oh sure, he was a popular player in Oakland where he belted 122 homers in five seasons, including 38 in 1999. But it’s safe to say that Stairs loves the Philly fans back.

“On deck I have nothing on my mind, but I do hear the fans now and it fires you up,” he said. “You walk out of the dugout and all of sudden you hear the crowd yelling and you get those chills… put it this way, I take one practice swing when I’m on deck because the adrenaline going from the fans goes right into me and I have to get into the box and say, ‘OK, calm down.’

“I always say I take one swing for the fans and the rest for my teammates.”

The biggest home run in Phillies history? Yep, Stairs has it. And if he’s finished as a player, his short time in Philadelphia will be his most memorable.

Reliving Hall of Fame weekend

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — There was so much that happened during the Hall of Fame induction weekend that it was impossible for a guy to write about all of it. What also makes it difficult for one guy is that my train of thought is to encapsulate each event instead of simply reporting what happens. For instance, when Bert Blyleven talked about his curve ball, well, that was a 1,000-word story and not something to summarize.

Hey, some people think about weird things like that.

Nevertheless, with the benefit of this little site and a lazy day at home, here's the best of what I saw at the Hall of Fame induction weekend...

The point of the trip was to cover Pat Gillick's induction into the Hall. Gillick, of course, was the Phillies' general manager from 2006 to 2008 where he put together the start of the greatest era of the franchise's existence. The Phillies were founded in 1883 and since then have lost more games than any professional sports franchise on earth. That's not hyperbole, that's the truth.

The Phillies' history is crowded with bad moves, bad thinking, bad players and bad losses. The Phillies were the last franchise in the National League to integrate its roster and needed 97 years to win its first championship. Don't think for a second that those two elements do not go together. Almost 10 years to the day after Jackie Robinson broke destroyed segregation in Major League Baseball, the Phillies got a guy named John Irvin Kennedy, who played in five big league games in 1957 and then that was it. Kennedy got to the plate twice, struck out once and scored a run as a pinch runner.

Kennedy stuck around with the Phillies until May 3 before toiling away for the next five years in the team's farm system, mostly in the south, which must have been a lonely existence for him. For the Phillies, though, it wasn't until a trade with Brooklyn brought aboard a shortstop named Chico Fernandez that they fielded a black ballplayer in the regular lineup. Fernandez, however, was from Cuba and it wasn't until Dick Allen came along in 1964 until the Phillies had a significant African-American player.

By 1964, Jackie Robinson had been retired for nearly a decade.

So yeah, the Phillies' history is littered with bad times. Yet since Gillick came around before the 2006 season, the team has been in the playoffs in every season since 2007, been two the World Series twice and have one of the most diverse rosters in the game. Sure, the club may have been headed that way with Ed Wade as the general manager, but it was with Gillick where everything came together.

Besides, it's been said that the Phillies needed Gillick more than he needed them, though it seems as if the Hall of Fame career reached its apex with the 2008 World Series title. Ask Gillick and he'll tell you that without the World Series victory in '08 and he probably doesn't get to Cooperstown.

"Baseball is about talent and skill and ability," Gillick said poignantly during his induction speech. "But at the deepest level it's about love, integrity and respect. Respect for the game, respect for your colleagues, respect for the shared bond that is bigger than any one of us."

Then again, it's not like people try to get to Cooperstown... do they? Don't answer because they do. Billy Wagner, the former closer for the Braves, Red Sox, Mets, Phillies and Astros outwardly aspired to achieve enough to get into the Hall of Fame. It was a numbers race for Wagner and with 422 career saves, he probably fell a bit short for election by the BBWAA. Injuries cost him the end of the 2008 season and most of the 2009 season, but at 38 Wagner came back and saved 37 games for the Braves last year. The fact that Wagner was a terrific quote and always able to fill up a reporter's notebook should not hurt him when the Veterans' Committee gets its shot.

Of course when Lee Smith retired, he had saved more games than any pitcher in history. Despite that, he is headed to his 10th year on the Hall of Fame ballot and just got 45 percent of the vote last time around. If Lee Smith can't break through, what chance does Wagner have? Add in the facts that neither Smith nor Wagner ever got to the World Series and the road to Cooperstown gets even rockier.

Regardless, there were always whispers that Bill Conlin quietly campaigned to win the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, which is the de facto "writers' wing" of the Hall of Fame. Moreover, the Spink Award is the highest honor given to a writer from the BBWAA and the common mistake is to label it an induction into the Hall. It's not, but that's just semantics.

Nevertheless, whatever campaigning tricks he employed worked and Conlin had his day in Cooperstown on Saturday where he delivered the first address at the inaugural Awards Presentation at Doubleday Field. And frankly, the speech was terrific. As Conlin's colleague Rich Hofmann wrote in the Daily News' web site:

Conlin thanked his family and friends, and then the technology cooperated, and then he was off. All of the tools familiar to his half-century of readers in the Daily News were in evidence during his 10-minute speech: needle, scalpel, bludgeon, pie-in-the-face, and Battle of Gettysburg.

He was him.

Rich nailed it. But it is always curious to me that Conlin has always been labeled as a baseball guy for the past couple decades despite the fact he doesn't regularly go to games. Excluding postseason and spring training, where he often is found at the ballpark, I can count on one hand the number of times Conlin was seen at the ballpark for a regular-season game. The way it seems is that it is a badge of honor for the old ball writer to show up at the park four hours before game time to make the scene, yet Conlin gave up on that long ago. I can’t say I blame him, because the waiting around is for the birds. However, Conlin stopped going to the ballpark regularly when he was at age younger than guys like Jayson Stark. If we're talking as pure baseball writers, who adhere to the old-school unwritten laws of the BBWAA, Stark should be the next Spink Award winner.

Besides, if a baseball writer doesn't actually go to the park, he's pretty much just like those bloggers he has been railing against for years and years.

The elite club

As far as speeches go, Conlin was fantastic. Better yet, he had something to tick-off everyone, including Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson and chairman of the board of directors, Jane Forbes Clark, who dropped their heads as if to say, "Oh no he didn't!" after certain sentences.

Still, induction weekend is about the Hall of Famers and its new members. Actually, to those in the know, Hall of Fame induction weekend is like the debutante party, prom and homecoming dance all rolled into one for Jane Forbes Clark.

Heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune and of the famous Dakota building on Central Park West in Manhattan, Clark's grandfather started the Hall of Fame in 1935 when he converted an old gym into a small museum. By 1936, Clark's grandfather had turned the little museum into the capitol of the game of baseball and invited Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Connie Mack and Walter Johnson to his little Shangri-La on the banks of Lake Otsego to be the first Hall of Fame class.

And as the decades have raced on, everyone associated with baseball knows all about the Hall of Fame and Cooperstown. Though named for author James Fennimore Cooper and his family and once the summertime home for Union general Abner Doubleday, the town could very easily be named Clarkstown instead. After all, not only does Clark run the Hall of Fame down to the tiniest detail where she even determines how the museum is decorated, her family owns nearly all of the land around the area with the aim to keep it from ruining the perfect idyllic quality of Cooperstown.

Besides, the Hall of Fame not only is baseball's apex, it's Clark's family showplace. In the meantime, her aim seems to make the Hall of Fame the most elite of the elite secret societies.

In an interview with the Palm Beach Post, Clark said the Hall of Fame more or less defines its members.

"I think it's important for fans to see all of the Hall of Fame members, and in talking to the Hall of Famers it's important to them because the Hall of Fame is a huge part of their life," she said.

"I don't think you've ever interviewed a Hall of Fame member who didn't say how special it was to be a part of that elite fraternity. And that's exactly what it is. I wanted the fraternity to start coming back together and spending time together."

Only 14 of the 65 living members of the fraternity did not return this past weekend. Gary Carter could not make it because he is fighting brain cancer. Poor health also made it difficult for Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Stan Musial to attend. But Henry Aaron, Nolan Ryan and Cal Ripken were noticeably absent. So too was Carl Yastrzemski. Meanwhile, Mike Schmidt did not attend and Steve Carlton has been absent the past couple of years.

But Ryne Sandberg took a few days off from managing the Phillies' top farm team to be there, as did the big brass in the Phillies' front office like Ruben Amaro Jr. David Montgomery, Bill Giles and Dallas Green.

The best since Morgan

Still, the weekend was Ms. Clark's celebration for baseball and her family's museum as well as the new members of the elite fraternity. Gillick, just the fourth general manager to receive the induction, is someone we've written about exclusively for the past week, but haven't had much of a chance to mention the other inductees, Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven, both of whom had to wait a bit to get the call. Alomar missed by a handful of votes in his first year of eligibility on the BBWAA ballot last year, while Blyleven got in after 14 years along with a few of those spent actively campaigning for the votes.

I only caught Joe Morgan toward the end of his career and not in his MVP heyday during the 1970s. It was during that stretch where patron saint of the statistical wing of baseball fandom, Bill James, wrote that Morgan was the greatest second baseman ever to play the game.

In the years that followed, however, Roberto Alomar took the mantle from Morgan and ran with it. I missed the brunt of Morgan's career, but I saw every bit of Alomar's and he's easily the best second baseman I have ever seen. The best example of his hitting prowess I remember was during the 1993 World Series where he can Paul Molitor destroyed the Phillies' pitchers. Alomar went 12 for 25 with a couple of doubles, a triple and six RBIs. He had a hit in every game of the series, including four in Game 3 and three in the clinching Game 6.

Sure, Alomar was a career .300 hitter and played the third-most games at second base in history, but what makes him a Hall of Famer in my book was how he ratcheted it up for the playoffs. Frankly speaking, if we're looking at ballplayer and their career as nothing more than a pile of numbers, then maybe the postseason stats should be the most important? That is where the winners are decided.

Anyway, Alomar was the MVP of the 1992 ALCS where his home run off Oakland's Dennis Eckersley in the ninth inning of Game 3 sent it to extra innings and kept the Blue Jays on the path to win their first World Series title.

It's interesting to point out that Alomar received 90 percent of the votes in his second trip through the voting process after falling five votes short in 2010. Think about that for second... Alomar was not a first-ballot Hall of Famer because of five votes. In falling five votes short, Alomar was denied in an election in which five voters sent back blank ballots, while admitted steroid user David Segui, pitchers Pat Hentgen and Kevin Appier, as well as first baseman-turned-broadcaster, Eric Karros, combined for five votes. That’s 10 wasted votes and does not include the nine votes spent on Ellis Burks and Robin Ventura.

All of those guys were nice players, but there isn’t a Hall of Famer in the bunch. If the people who voted for guys like Diego Segui or Kevin Appier don't know that, then maybe they should reevaluate the voting process.

So with those 19 votes that were spent on making a point, silly politics, vendettas, or drunken dares, very easily could have been spread out so that worthy candidates like Alomar. Better yet, maybe Blyleven gets in with Andre Dawson in 2010 instead of 2011. Maybe then Gillick has the stage to himself this year or maybe a player like Barry Larkin, Jack Morris, Lee Smith, Jeff Bagwell or Tim Raines breaks through?

Apparently, what cost Alomar those five votes was the unfortunate incident where he spit on umpire John Hirschbeck during an argument at the end of the 1997 regular season. The voting writers held this mistake against Alomar despite the fact that Hirschbeck and Alomar have buried the hatchet and become friends. This protest vote was made despite the fact that Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Cap Anson, and Juan Marichal are Hall of Famers. Among those names are men who attacked a crippled fan, punched an umpire, beat an opponent on the head with a bat, and helped foster nearly a half-century of institutional racism and segregation.

Some say without Cap Anson, baseball never would have been a sport that denied the inclusion of some because of the color of their skin.

But, you know, Alomar spit at a guy...

Alomar is in now, though, and from the looks of it, Hall of Famers are not differentiated by the amount of vote they get. Shoot, Joe DiMaggio didn't even get elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. Yeah, try and figure that one out.

Nevertheless, the neat part about Alomar's induction is that he is just the third player from Puerto Rico to get in. There is Alomar, Orlando Cepeda and the great Roberto Clemente, and that's it. Alomar is also the first Blue Jays player to be elected so that brought out tons of fans from Canada and Puerto Rico for Alomar.

It also brought out his family, including Sandy Sr., a former player and coach with the Angels, Braves, Yankees, Rangers and Indians. Sandy Sr. was a teammate with Blyleven on the 1977 Texas Rangers and faced both Alomar brothers. Roberto went 1 for 2 with a triple against his Hall of Fame partner, while Sandy Jr. went 3 for 7 with two doubles. Blyleven did strike him out once, though.

Sandy Jr. introduced his brother and told a story about when as minor leaguers in the Padres' chain, the pair shared an apartment with just one bed. Sandy Jr. says the rule was the guy who had the better game got to sleep on the bed and the other guy slept on the couch.

"I slept on the couch all season," Sandy Jr. deadpanned. "And I hit .300!"

Blyleven finally made it

As for Blyleven, the long trip to the Hall of Fame seemed to be complete when he got to sit on a rocking chair next to his mother on the porch at the Otesaga Hotel that overlooked Lake Otsego. That was the pure, genuine moment that Blyleven could say to himself, "I made it."

“I did it yesterday. My mother Jennie, she's 85 years old, came in from California, so that's a long way for her to come. My sisters, my brother, my kids, we are all on that porch, we are chasing people away, but we got the rockers and we got my mother out front and we kind of reminisced a little bit about Pops, my dad, but mainly just enjoyed the company,” Blyleven said on Saturday. “And what I do, the broadcasting and also live in Florida, I don't see my family that much, so it was a nice reunion. And that's part of what this ceremony is all about for me, not only having the opportunity to have my mother here witness me go into the Hall of Fame, but also my family and friends.”

Blyleven was one of the more controversial inductees over the past few years. He fell two votes short in 2010 only to make it by 28 votes this time around. That’s a far cry from 17.5 percent Blyleven received in his first time on the ballot in 1998. In his second year his votes tally actually dropped more than three percent before his candidacy began to pick up steam about five years ago.

Truth is, I’ve gone back and forth on Blyleven’s Hall of Fame worthiness. In fact, I’ve been changing my mind about him all week, even while watching him give his induction speech. The drawback I had was if one has to mull over a players’ Hall of Fame-ness, then maybe he’s not a Hall of Famer. The answer should be, “yes” or “no,” immediately.

A Hall of Famer is a Hall of Famer, right?

Ah, but baseball is much more complicated than that. Sure, Blyleven had just a 287-250 record, won 20 games once and never finished higher than third in the Cy Young balloting. He also only went to the All-Star Game twice and gave up a major league-record 50 home runs in a season.

He was never a dominant pitcher.

Fair enough. But Blyleven was always there. He threw more than 270 innings eight times, with more than 290 innings three times. Once, Blyleven threw 325 innings during a season where he completed 25 of his 40 starts. Moreover, Blyleven was the staff ace on two different World Series champions—the 1979 Pirates and 1987 Twins. His biggest outing might have been in Game 5 of the ’79 series when down 1-0 in the sixth inning and down 3 games to 1, Blyleven came on in relief on three-days rest and pitched four innings of shutout ball.

From there, the Pirates won games 6 and 7 to stun the Orioles.

No, Blyleven’s stats aren’t sexy, but there is something to be said for a guy who was guaranteed for a minimum of seven innings for 22 years.

And of course he had that curveball, too. Yes, some say Blyleven’s curve, one he learned as a kid in Southern California from watching Sandy Koufax, was the best ever to be thrown. It was one of the 12-to-6 types that started out at the hitters’ neck and ended at his ankles. Hitters didn’t just bail out on it, they surrendered.

He called it a “drop,” though and made sure to listen in on the radio when Vin Scully called Koufax’s games.

“I grew up listening to Vince Scully describe Sandy Koufax’s drop,” Blyleven said. “Of course they had that 15-inch mound back in the '60s when I grew up in southern California. I remember the only Dodger game I ever went to was Sandy Koufax against Juan Marichal, one nothing. I sat up in the nose bleed section. I was just getting into baseball. I had to be 10 or 11-years old.  And I recall the foul pole was in my vision of the mound at Dodger Stadium and I had to lean on my left almost the whole ball game. And Sandy, we were sitting down the left-hand line, Sandy's back was to me, but Juan Marichal, we saw the high leg kick, which is unbelievable what he was able to do and then Koufax—I could almost picture it there the drop that, the mound, the tilt they had on that mound was incredible and I remember that and listening to Vin Scully describe his curveball or his drop, that's basically how I learned mine. I visualized what he did and then just on a block wall or playing with my friends, I picked up the curveball.” 

Maybe Blyleven is the Hall of Famer for those with specific talents. He ate up innings and had a rare pitch. His talent was not as all-encompassing like Alomar’s was, but it takes all kinds in baseball. That’s why Tommy John ought to be in the Hall of Fame and Jim Kaat, too, says Blyleven.

Why not? It takes all kinds.

Hall of Fame weekend: Greed is good

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — The fellows in the Cooperstown Rotary Club are pretty crafty. Knowing that the induction weekend is the largest collection of Hall of Famers in one spot anywhere under the sun, the Rotarians have commemorative miniature baseball bats made with each inductee’s superlatives.

At $5 to $7 a pop, it’s a pretty nice bit of cash to be made in a weekend.

But also understanding the mind of the collector, the guys in the Cooperstown Rotary know that there probably won’t be much of a market for certain keepsake bats. For instance, there were piles of Jim Bunning bats from when the former Phillies and Tigers pitcher was inducted in 1996. There were plenty of Eddie Murray bats too.

Could it be because Bunning has created a reputation for being a creep?

However, don’t go looking for a keepsake bat with umpire Doug Harvey’s name on it. There was a run on those last year when Harvey’s family and friends bought them all up.

“We made 50 of them for Doug Harvey and when they walked up and down Main Street and found out there wasn’t anything with his name on it, they snapped them all up,” a Rotarian said.

So thinking there would be a repeat of the run on Harvey mementoes, they made a limited number of Pat Gillick bats, who will be inducted to the Hall of Fame on Sunday afternoon along with Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven. After all, Gillick is kind of like an umpire in that he wasn’t known as a player. Plus, there are nine umpires enshrined in the gallery at the Hall of Fame and Gillick will be just the fourth general manager. Better yet, when Nolan Ryan was inducted in 1999, it took 12 years to sell all 300 bats.

In that case, there is no sense in flooding the market with items that might not sell.

Actually, just 50 bats for Gillick might not be enough. That’s especially so when noting that Alomar and Gillick are the first two members of the Toronto Blue Jays to be enshrined here in Cooperstown, and the media and fans contingent from Canada is pretty strong this weekend.

There are so many Canadians in Cooperstown for the induction ceremonies that Gillick had trouble going on a routine walk around town.

“I was out yesterday for a while in the street and it took me about an hour and a half to get back,” Gillick said during Saturday’s Hall of Fame press conference with Blyleven and Alomar.

Undoubtedly, Gillick was hit up for a few autograph requests. Truth is, Main Street in Cooperstown during Hall of Fame weekend looked like a wild bazaar where autograph and memorabilia collectors and dealers trolled the street looking to collect certain signatures on specific pieces. With 51 of the 65 living Hall of Famers in Cooperstown for the weekend, it was as if Main Street was a smuggler’s paradise.

Two men amidst the fray on Saturday afternoon carried a matted poster containing the signatures of 19 of the 20 living members of the 3,000 hit club. The only autograph missing?

Derek Jeter.

Strangely, this piece of memorabilia wasn’t in the museum on display. Instead, it was as if it were Main Street had become overrun with the money changers in the temple from the New Testament. Up and down the street high-priced baseball cards and elaborate, one-of-a-kind signatures were presented for sale and it made one baseball fan wonder…

What is the point of the induction weekend? Were folks in town to celebrate the national pastime or to make a buck off it.

Certainly that idyllic notion of fathers and sons talking about baseball and pouring over memories, memorabilia and exhibits in the Hall of Fame, had been replaced with the quest for collections. But not just any collectible, but instead, collections seen as pseudo-antiques in the form of pricey baseball memorabilia. Yes, it was there, but you had to really go looking for it.

Still, don’t think for a moment the Hall of Famers were being exploited. Oh no. During a two-block stroll down Main Street on Saturday afternoon, one could find most of the Hall of Famers sitting at long tables selling autographs in front of the local shops. On the north side of the street were Goose Gossage, Jim Bunning, Yogi Berra, Lou Brock, Frank Robinson and Gaylord Perry. Over on the other side of the street were Juan Marichal, Andre Dawson, Johnny Bench and the gate crasher, Pete Rose.

Pete Rose’s autograph in Cooperstown could be yours for $60 to $75. Or, one could fly to Las Vegas and go to gift shops in Caesar’s Palace and get it from Pete for free.

No, Hall of Fame weekend isn’t about the cozy images depicted in “Field of Dreams.” It’s more like “Wall Street,” only no one had to be reminded of the catch phrase, “Greed is good.” They already knew.