A Wrigley Field Intro, a Record Inning, a Scorecard Mess

 IT WAS SCORCHING HOT that day at Chicago's Wrigley Field. 

The game time temperature hovered near 95 degrees with a real feel of about 104. I arrived at my field box seat just past first base adorned in my black New York Mets road jersey and matching cap.

Twenty years ago...

"Man, you look like my roof!" the guy seated next to me said.

It was July 16, 2006, a Sunday. I'd been a Windy City resident for about six weeks and savoring my first chance to see my home town team at the legendary Friendly Confines. This game did not disappoint, though -- truth be told -- I'd gone to the game a day earlier with a new friend from my new job and that one definitely did.

Seated Saturday on the field level, but in the shade of the third base stands, my pal Kevin and I watched the Cubs spank the Mets, 9-2. 

Hall of Fame Mets starter Tom Glavine gave way after six plus, having allowed four hits, three walks, and three runs -- all started with a triple by infielder Ryan "The Riot" Theriot, before being replaced by submariner Chad Bradford, who allowed two more. 

... a weekend at the Friendly Confines.

It was 5-2 Chicago after six, then someone named Henry Owens surrendered four additional runs in the seventh, all he'd ever allow in his Mets career, and that was basically the ballgame. 

Tempestuous Cubs ace Carlos Zambrano got the win, running his record to 9-3. Glavine took the loss, just his third against 11 wins.

Unsatisfied, I returned alone the next day. Sunday's game before a crowd of more than 40,000 would be historic, record-setting even.

Armed and Ready

The 2006 Mets were packed and arguably the most talented team they've fielded in this century. Their roster included Hall-bound center fielder Carlos Beltrán, slugging first baseman Carlos Delgado, all-star third baseman David Wright, all-star shortstop José Reyes and slugging left fielder Cliff Floyd. 

Carlos Delgado

The rotation included Glavine, Hall-bound Pedro Martinez, stolid Steve Trachsel and El Duque, the Cuban veteran Orlando Hernández. In the pen, Hall-bound reliever Billy Wagner.

Beltrán, Reyes, Wright and Delgado finished fourth, seventh, ninth and 12th in National League MVP voting. Wagner finished sixth in the Cy Young race. 

This was a very good ball club. The Cubs, on the other hand, were not, even as they were assembling the pieces for back-to-back playoff appearances in 2007 and 2008. 

As a lifelong National League Mets fan, I wasn't about to change allegiances... at least not for the perennially sorry Cubs. The team across town, however, was the then-defending World Series champion White Sox. I had no problem at all with rooting for them.

Sunday's starters would be Hernández and the rookie left-hander Sean Marshall. And, after the Mets went down meekly in the first, the Cubs made quick work of El Duque. 

Fleet center fielder Juan Pierre led off with a single, stole second and and with one away scored on catcher Michael Barrett's double. Third-sacker Aramis Ramirez doubled Barrett home. Hernández got an out, walked two to load the bases then escaped further damage by getting shortstop Ronny Cedeño looking. 2-0 Chicago.

The Mets went in order in the second and the Cubs resumed pounding New York's starter, starting with Marshall who belted a homer, the only one of his nine-year MLB career.

David Wright

Pierre singled again, stole second again and scored again after an out when Barrett doubled again. Hernández fanned Ramirez for out number two, but then Cubs RF Jacques Jones singled to plate Barrett and El Duque was done, having yielded five runs on seven hits and two walks in just an inning and a third.

New York went down in order again in the top of the third and it looked as though the day would belong to the cruising Marshall and the Cubs.

Lefty Darren Oliver, who'd relieved Hernández, surrendered a single and a double in the bottom of frame, yet somehow avoided allowing a run. Then Mets backup shortstop Chris Woodward crashed a homer to start the fourth, one of just three he'd hit that year, and New York was finally on the board.

Oliver surrendered another double in the bottom of the fourth, the Cubs' fifth of the afternoon, but again kept them at bay. Chicago 5, New York 1.

Detonation

Cliff Floyd opened the fifth with the Mets' second homer off Marshall. Right fielder Xavier Nady singled and it looked like New York might have something going, but the 23-year-old lefty retired the next three men in order. 

The Mets' Pedro Feliciano held the Cubs off the board next and it was 5-2 after five. But things were about to change in a record-setting manner.

Cliff Floyd

It happened like this:

With one out, Beltrán reached on an error. Delgado singled. Then David Wright did too, loading the bases for Floyd, who crashed his second homer of the afternoon -- this one a granny -- putting New York up 7-5 and chasing Marshall from the game in favor of righty Roberto Novoa.

Novoa promptly walked Nady. Catcher Ramon Castro reached on a fielder's choice with Nady safe at second on an error. OF Endy Chavez, batting for Feliciano, singled, scoring Nady and moving Castro to third. 8-5, New York.

Chavez then stole second. 2B José Valentin reached on an infield hit to reload the bases and Woodward's grounder to third forced Castro at home, bringing up Beltrán with the bases loaded again.

And for the second time in the inning a New York hitter unloaded them with a home run. That second slam increased the Mets' lead to 12-5 and they weren't finished.

Delgado doubled off the reeling Novoa, bringing up Wright, who drove a 2-0 pitch over the ivy and into the right field bleachers -- their ninth hit of the inning -- mercifully driving Novoa from the game. 

The Mets' messy record-breaker

It was 13-5. The Mets had homered three times in a single frame, twice with the bases loaded, scoring 11 runs, the biggest inning in their history to that day, bettering a 10-run effort by the lowly 1979 edition against the Cincinnati Reds.

New York got just two more hits the rest of the way. A Phil Nevin two-run homer off the Mets' Aaron Heilman made the score a slightly more cosmetic 13-7 and that's the way it ended. Feliciano -- he of the scoreless fifth inning -- was credited with the win. Marshall took the loss.

The Mets single-inning runs record would stand for nearly a decade before being bested by a 12-run performance against the San Francisco Giants in April 2016.

Post-Script

That Sunday loss dropped the Cubs' record to 35-56. They'd finish 66-96, last in the NL Central, costing manager Dusty Baker his job. Sweet Lou Piniella would take over the next year and bring them home in first.

The Mets' offensive explosion was one highlight of what proved to be a bittersweet year. They ran away with the NL East, rolling up a 97-65 record, finishing 12 games ahead of the second-place the Philadelphia Phillies, their first outright division title since 1988.

Carlos Beltrán

They swept the Los Angeles Dodgers in the Division Series, only to run into a hot, but inferior, St. Louis Cardinals team in the NLCS. The climactic seventh game featured Chavez making one of the all-time greatest catches in post-season history, robbing Cards HoF 3B Scott Rolen of a sure two-run homer and keeping the game knotted 1-1 after six. 

There it stayed until the top of the ninth when Cards catcher Yadier Molina, who'd hit just .216 on the season, drilled a two-run shot off Heilman in the top of the ninth. 

The Mets would load the bases in the bottom of the inning against rookie reliever Adam Wainwright, bringing up Beltrán with two outs. The Mets had signed the outfielder to a seven-year, $119 million deal in 2005 for a moment just like this.

Wainwright quickly got head of Beltrán, 0-2, then broke off an unhittable 12-6 drop curveball that caught the Mets centerfielder looking, the bat frozen on his shoulder, ending their season.

-- Follow me @paperboyarchive on ex-Twitter

The Calm Before the Crazy: Springtime for the '75 Yankees

NO GEORGE. NO BILLY. No Yankee Stadium. No feuding amongst the owner, the manager and the superstar. No fistfights in elevators or with marshmallow salesmen. All those things were still in the future. 

But they did have Bobby Bonds before almost everyone else did.

It was Spring 1975 and strange times for the storied New York Yankees, then deeply entrenched in how the other half lived.

Ephemeral Yankee Bobby Bonds,
from the team's '75 Yearbook

It had been 10 years since their last American League pennant, 12 since the last championship, and it would be the second in which they'd play their home games in someone else's ballpark.

From 1921 through 1964, the Yanks had appeared in an astonishing 29 World Series, winning 20 titles in an era where there was no divisional play and no playoffs. Ten of those championships came in 1947 or later. Their dominance created a cavalcade of household names: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford and Casey Stengel.

The Yankees weren't just baseball's best, but in an age when the sport was America's pastime, they were America's best. 

And then they weren't.

Bronx Bummers

In 1965, the Yanks finished sixth in the 10-team A.L. A year later they finished dead last, 26 games behind the eventual champion Baltimore Orioles. The next three seasons saw them finish ninth, fifth and fifth again.

And while they were being mediocre in their decaying stadium, the newfangled cross-town New York Mets went from atrocious to miraculous, winning the World Series in 1969, just their eighth season of existence, capturing the hearts and minds of New Yorkers and the nation. 

The 1970 Mets drew more than 2.6 million fans to their seven-year-old multipurpose stadium in Queens, while the Yankees attracted only 1.3 million to the House that Ruth Built.  

In '72, The Mets drew 2,134,185. The Yanks? Just 966,328.

In '73, managed by Berra, the Mets made it to the series again, losing to the Oakland A's in seven games, and outdrawing the Yankees again, by nearly 700,000.

Forget about being number one in the nation, the Yanks weren't even number one in their home town.

Enter George and Bill

In between their bottoming out at the box office and the Mets' second flag, the Bronx Bombers were acquired by Cleveland businessman George Steinbrenner -- a man who didn't take losing lightly -- and a collection of limited partners. 

Shea Stadium Under-Tenants

Prior to buying them however, Steinbrenner had allegedly made illegal contributions to President Richard Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign and to those of other politicians. In April, 1974, he was indicted on 14 felony counts by a federal grand jury, and later pleaded guilty to two of them. That August he was fined $15,000, his American Shipbuilding Co. hit for $20,000 more.

That November, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn suspended the Yankees's new principal owner for two years, a punishment later trimmed to 15 months.

Adding to their woes, the Bombers were temporarily homeless. Their stadium, open since 1923, was undergoing a two-year renovation. In 1974 and '75, the Yanks were forced to play their home games in the Mets' ballpark, Shea Stadium, where they'd continue to be outdrawn by its primary tenants.

As the '75 season dawned, the Yankees were led by former Pittsburgh Pirates skipper Bill Virdon. Crowding the owners' box were 15 people not named George Steinbrenner, among them businessman John DeLorean, Broadway producer James Nederlander, former Cleveland Indians star Al Rosen, former Indians general manager Gabe Paul and Mike Burke, who'd ran the Yanks while they were owned by CBS Broadcasting.

Bill, not Billy
from the 1975 yearbook

Photos of the team's limited partners all would appear in the team's yearbook. But the general partner's would not, nor would his name be mentioned. 

The '74 squad had done well, winning 89 games and finishing second in the A.L., just two back of the perennial powerhouse Baltimore Orioles, who copped their fifth division title in six years. 

Virdon was named manager of the year by The Sporting News. Not bad for a consolation prize. Steinbrenner had really wanted Dick Williams, who'd quit the A's after they beat the Mets, because of Oakland owner Charlie Finley's endless interference. 

Finley demanded compensation because Williams was still under contract. So the Yanks settled for Virdon, who'd been fired by the Bucs a year earlier.

Importing Stars

Suddenly not under contract after the '74 season, due to a Finley flub was A's ace Jim "Catfish" Hunter, coming off a 25-12 season where he made 41 starts, hurled 318.1 innings and won the A.L. Cy Young Award.

The Yankees reeled him in for five years and a record $3.75 million.

The Yanks' other big off-season pickup was Bonds, acquired from the San Francisco Giants for home-grown Mantle heir-apparent Bobby Murcer. 

Murcer failed to meet enormous expectations despite finishing in the top 10 of Most Valuable Player voting three years running. He had a sub-par year in '74 and that was that.

From the '75 yearbook

Bonds had a great talent for hitting home runs and stealing bases, but also for striking out. He did that a record 189 times in 1970, a mark that endured until 2004.

He would join the a lineup featuring catcher Thurman Munson, infielders Chris Chambliss, Jim Mason and Graig Nettles, outfielders Lou Piniella, Roy White and Elliott Maddox.

Hunter would lead a pitching staff including Pat Dobson, real life physician George "Doc" Medich, Larry Gura, Rudy May, Tippy Martinez and Sparky Lyle. 

Despite the two marquee additions, the Yanks were a .500 ball club wobbling along at 53 and 51 on August 1. Hunter's record on that date stood a decent 14-10. Bonds was batting .251, with 21 homers, 19 steals and more than a few strikeouts. A change was needed. A catalytic spark.

Exit Bill, Enter Billy

Virdon was sacked in favor of scrappy one-time Yanks infielder Billy Martin, recently pink-slipped by the Texas Rangers.

Though he'd steered Texas to a second place finish in the A.L. West a year earlier, Martin's characteristic combativeness wore out his welcome, just as it had with the Minnesota Twins after a first-place finish in 1969 and in Detroit after an A.L. East title for the Tigers in '72.

Hunter, the Yanks' big catch
from the '75 team yearbook

The Yanks took a while to get going under the new regime, ending August at a flat 67-67. A 16-10 September brought them home at 83-79, a game better than their Shea stablemates. They finished third, 12 1/2 games behind the eventual A.L. champion Boston Red Sox.

Catfish earned his keep, going 23-14 on the year. Leading the league with 328 innings pitched, he finished second in Cy balloting behind Orioles star Jim Palmer. 

Hunter would be back, though in ever decreasing quantities as his workload took its toll. 

So too would Munson, who had driven in 102 runs while batting .318. Other returnees for 1976 included Chambliss, Nettles, White, Piniella, Lyle, a slim rookie left-hander named Ron Guidry, and Martin.

All of them would be part of a team that once again ensconced at Yankee Stadium, and with Steinbrenner back in charge, would win the A.L. flag in 1976 and a drought-ending World Series championship in '77.

Billy and George

After spending just a single season in the Big Apple, hitting .270 with 32 homers, 30 steals and 137 strike outs, Bonds was sent to the California Angels in exchange for CF Mickey Rivers and pitcher Ed Figueroa.

It was the beginning of an odyssey that would see him also play for the Chicago White Sox, the Rangers, the Indians, the St. Louis Cardinals and finally the Chicago Cubs, all by the end of 1981.

Bonds died in 2003, at just age 57, leaving behind a legacy of unfulfilled promise as well as his son Barry, whose career would be greater and more controversial.

The Yankees would win the series again in 1978. Martin -- perpetually feuding with Steinbrenner and resident superstar Reggie Jackson -- would be forced to resign in midseason.

His replacement, Hall of Famer Bob Lemon, would pilot them to the championship, by which time Martin had already been anointed Lemon's successor for 1979.

Both victories were over the Los Angeles Dodgers, who returned the favor in 1981. During that series, the Yankees owner broke his hand in an alleged elevator fight with two L.A. fans. After it was over he apologized to his team's fans for losing. 

Martin did manage the Yankees in '79, then was fired after a fight with a marshmallow salesman. 

He came back again, and stayed, for all of '83 after a three-year tour in Oakland, during which Steinbrenner cycled through Dick Howser, Gene Michael, Lemon again, Michael again, and Clyde King.

Martin would also manage the Yanks for parts of 1985 and '88, but never win another championship. He died a passenger in a one-car accident on Christmas Day in 1989.

-- Follow me on no-longer Twitter @paperboyarchive

The End of the World Series Program As We Knew It

OCTOBER 1974: Gerald Ford was two months into his abbreviated presidency. The Muhammad Ali-George Foreman boxing match in Kinshasa, Zaire -- known as the Rumble in the Jungle -- was set for Oct. 30. 

Earthquake, in Sensurround!, starring Charleton Heston, Ava Gardner, Geneviève Bujold and Lorne Greene would strike America's movie theaters in November.

But something else was afoot, something far more subtle and pernicious, but to those of us of a particular bent: horrifically depressing.

Meh, before meh was even a thing.

Fifty years ago this month, Major League Baseball ended the era of team-produced World Series programs, subbing out the often charming, definitely distinct and occasionally iconic locally-designed and produced magazines for more uniform, corporate and nationally available... blah.

Yes, this is entirely about judging these books by their covers. But you only get one chance to make a good first impression. 

MLB's first cover art was a globe stand where the Earth is replaced by a baseball.

Inspired. Clever. Ooh. In other words, not good.

Who's playing in this series? Doesn't matter. And it wouldn't matter again for about 20 years and even then, well... feh.

Less than a decade earlier and from the same spherical starting point, the Los Angeles Dodgers had produced this bit of Project Gemini-inspired whimsy:

Truly out of this world.

Now artistry was banished in favor of mass produced, mass market product. At least they were up front about it, more or less.

"'1974 World Series marks an all-time first,'" the publication self-referentially declared on its page 3. "Previously the two teams involved in a World Series each published a separate program. '1974 World Series' represents the first joint World Series program. It is designed to tell the story of this year's major league baseball season and features both the East and West Division champions of the two leagues."

Yay.

It's tempting to say at least some of this was in response to frugal Charles O. Finley, then-owner of the then-two time defending champion then-Oakland A's.

The famously skin-flinty Finley just they year before had substantially just repurposed the team's joint scorecard and yearbook as its World Series program,  slapping American League Champions on the top left, New York Mets beneath "Oakland A's" at the top right, and re-labeling the bottom right "1973 World Series Souvenir Scorecard & Program."

The post-season publication was otherwise almost indistinguishable from its regular season predecessor.

 The regular season program

The not-so-different World Series edition

To be fair, the only somewhat less frugal Mets had repackaged one of their regular season game programs as their National League Championship Series program.

But when it came to the World Series, they issued a new magazine with split screen cover, the left side featuring a pensive skipper Yogi Berra, the right a photo of predecessor Gil Hodges and the team riding down Manhattan's Broadway amid a ticker tape parade celebrating their 1969 championship. Now that program was special.

Retro-perspective

And retrospective

More likely, the shift from local pubs to national had to do with the money to be had from national advertisers, and from sales to a national audience to which the new mags could be pitched. 

It wasn't a change for the better. Not for the public and, to be honest, not for those of us who collect, as part of the fun of that hobby is collecting things that are scarce. 

Those home-spun programs spoke of the teams that created them, their personas and places they played. More importantly, they spoke to their fans. 

The new generation shifted the game program vibe from Main Street shop owner to chain store shopping mall: deliberately faceless, representative of any town and any team, one size fits all, or -- in reality -- one size fits none.

Just how generic?

In the early '80s, baseball pulled its own Finley maneuver, taking the artwork created for the 1980 World Series program, a contest between the Philadelphia Phillies and Kansas City Royals, and re-using it three years later for the three-way AAA World Series involving the Tidewater Tides, Portland Beavers and Denver Bears.

From the grand stage...

... to AAA

Yes, the 1980 program artwork got demoted, and they didn't have to change anything about the image to do it.

They never really got better. In fact, as the years wore on, they got worse, more generic and more forgettable even as the digital publishing revolution allowed for tighter deadlines, more content, more recent content, contestant-specific covers and inevitably, higher prices.

Along the way Major League Baseball gained dominion over all the other post-season playoff programs, plus that of its mid-Summer classic, the All Star Game.

Product. Product. Product.

Montreal? Texas? Who knows?

Recognizably Pujols and Big Papi

Nowadays, we're kind of back to where we started: with team-specific looks, but they're soul-less mass produced representations of what once was, some with cover advertisements, and sometimes ironically shadowed by special stadium-only versions attempting to restore some of that old-time collectible exclusivity.

The 2016 Series program,
Wrigley Field edition

The 2019 series program, 
brought to you by YouTubeTV

Handsome zombies. You can buy the one for this year's showdown between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers online, or just look at it for free. 

-- Follow me @paperboyarchive on the social network formerly known as Twitter

A Legendary Post-Season Clash Gets a 21st Century Reboot

MORE REBOOT THAN REMAKE, and certainly not a sequel, the renewal of post-season hostilities between the Houston Astros and Philadelphia Phillies figures to play out like a lot of modern Hollywood retakes on earlier hits.

The stakes are higher, the staging infinitely more expensive and elaborate, and the settings are completely different.

But whether the 2022 World Series can recreate, let alone exceed the drama of the 1980 National League Championship Series? That tension that left a baseball crazed kid writhing on the floor of his parents' den? That, sports fans, remains to be seen.

Held in an era when that one middle step from regular season to the final round was mostly just called "the playoffs," the 1980 NLCS was played entirely on artificial turf in Philly's since-imploded Vet, and in the Houston Astrodome -- once the "Eighth Wonder of the World" -- now a modern ruin.

It was a best-of-five series that went the distance and then some. Four contests were decided in extra innings, including the clincher. Pete Rose tried to take the very large head off a catcher-be-famous-later.

There were 11 stolen bases, and just one home run. And there was a triple play that wasn't, because NL President Chub Feeney said it wasn't.

There were Houston's tequila sunrise uniforms, Philadelphia's powder blues, Howard Cosell in the booth, and a quartet of future Hall of Famers hoping to be difference makers. 

Neophytes and Failures

Though their 93 wins paced the National League, back then it was the Astros who were the upstarts, making their first post-season appearance ever. 

The Phillies were back for the fourth time in five years, having lost in '76 to the Rose-led Cincinnati Reds, and to the Los Angeles Dodgers in '77 and '78. A founding franchise in the senior circuit, they'd only ever won two pennants, in 1915 and 1950, and never a championship.

From the Phillies' NLCS program

Now Rose was on the Philly side. So too was hard ass manager Dallas Green, who upon taking over for the deposed Danny Ozark, preached "we, not I," and drove his underachieving squad to succeed, even if that meant they hated him.

Lefty Steve Carlton, coming off the third of his four Cy Young season, anchored the Phillies rotation. Mike Schmidt slammed 48 homers and drove in 121 runs en route to his first of three Most Valuable Player awards. A rejuvenated, re-animated Tug McGraw anchored the relief corps.

Up the middle, the Phillies were Fort Knox. Their catcher: 7-time Gold Glove winner Bob Boone, the shortstop 2-time Gold Glover Larry Bowa, their second-baseman, 3-time GG Manny Trillo, and in center, 8-time winner Garry Maddox.

While lacking comparable bling, the Astros were not without their weapons, chief among them, free agent acquisition Nolan Ryan, baseball's first $1 million per year pitcher, who briefly formed a flame-throwing tandem with J.R. Richard.

Richard though, was felled by a midseason stroke from which he'd never fully recover.

Also from the Phillies' NLCS program

Houston held another ace though, knuckleballer Joe Niekro, who compiled back-to-back 20-win seasons, plus veterans Ken Forsch, Vern Ruhle and a cavernous pitching-friendly, climate controlled stadium. In the bullpen, McGraw's temperamental opposite, the calm, composed Joe Sambito.

Tailored for their ballpark, the Astros swiped 194 bases while stroking just 75 home runs. Among their everyday stars, left fielder Jose Cruz and Hall-bound returnee 2B Joe Morgan.

The Series

Hosting, the Phillies fell behind in the third before rallying to take the opener, 3-1. It would be the only game decided in regulation.

Game two to saw the guest Astros again take an early lead and lose it, only to regain it in the top of the eighth, lose it again in the bottom half of the frame, then score four in the 10th to pull away. 7-4.

Back in Houston, game 3 was a nail bitter, scoreless through regulation before the Astros walked it off on a bases loaded sac fly in the 10th to take a 2-1 series lead. The home team was one victory away from its first pennant, the visitors only a loss away from yet another wasted campaign.

Houston struck early in the potentially decisive game 4, holding a 2-0 lead until Philly posted three in the top of the eighth. The Astros tied it with a walk, a sac bunt and a base hit in the bottom of the ninth, sending yet another game into extras.

The Phillies, however, strung together a single and two doubles to plate two runs, holding on to knot the proceedings at two wins a piece.

Game five would be win or go home, and again Houston struck first with an RBI double by Cruz in the first, scoring outfielder Terry Puhl. Philly responded immediately, with two in the top of the second off Ryan.

The Astros fought back with one in the sixth and three in the seventh, 5-2 Houston heading into the eighth inning at the Eighth Wonder. The Phillies, unbowed, posted five runs -- the biggest single inning in the series -- to pull ahead, 7-5, but Houston came right back to tie it.

There it stayed until the top of the 10th when doubles by Del Unser and Maddox plated the winning run, 8-7. Game, set and match.

The Phillies had their first pennant in 30 years and, days later, would lock down the first championship in their 98-year history.

Nowadays

The ensuing 42 years have seen the Phillies win four more pennants, though just one more championship. The Astros captured their lone NL flag in 2005, lost the Series to the Chicago White Sox in a sweep, did a complete tear down, moved to the American League and emerged a perennial, albeit tainted, powerhouse.

Now, with Houston housed in a Juice Box and Philly in a band box, with analytics, launch angles and exit velocities ensuring a plenitude of home runs, with future Hall of Famers like Justin Verlander, Jose Altuve and Bryce Harper, in an era when everyone's a million dollar ballplayer, they battle again, this time for all the marbles.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Damning Derek Jeter With Faint Praise

AS A BASEBALL FAN, it was easy to admire Derek Jeter's abundant success. As a New York Mets fan, it was hard not to resent it.

The former New York Yankees captain will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame today and I'd be dead wrong if I said he didn't deserve it. He played for 20 seasons, accruing 3,465 hits, a Rookie of the Year award, more than a dozen All-Star selections, five Gold Gloves, five Silver Slugger awards and played on five championship teams.

From the 2009 season.

But still, the green eyed envy monster would rather not hear about it.

First time I saw Jeter play, he was penciled in as shortstop for the AA Albany-Colonie Yankees, who were playing the New Haven Ravens at the Yale Bowl on July 30, 1994. 

Rocketing through the Yankees farm system, he was batting .363, with 41 hits in just 113 at bats, 11 of which went for extra bases. He'd also walked 15 times, struck out 16, driven in 13 runs and registered a dozen steals. 

Jeter had started the year in Single-A Tampa and would rack up just nine more at bats -- and five more hits -- for the A-C Yanks before being promoted to AAA Columbus. Somehow he'd spend almost all of 1995 there, stuck behind Tony Fernandez and Randy Velarde on the Yankees' first wild card team.

Appearing in 15 big league games, he was briefly teammates with the man he'd spiritually replace and ultimately follow as the Bombers' captain, Don Mattingly, then in his last season as a player.

Jeter took over as starting shortstop in 1996, winning the American League's top rookie honors, while the Yankees won their first World Series since 1978, an almost unimaginable drought for them that coincided with the powerful Mets teams of the 1980s.

15 years earlier, in New Haven, Ct...

In '96, the Mets had promoted their own snazzy shortstop, Rey Ordoñez. And, while the Cuban-born Ordoñez couldn't hit like his crosstown counterpart, he could field his position like few others ever had.

The New York Times interviewed both for a feature titled My Shortstop is Better Than Yours, but the parity didn't last. 

Ordoñez finished just fifth in National League RoTY balloting but gained instant recognition for his defensive acrobatics, winning Gold Gloves in 1997, 1998 and 1999, before being derailed by broken arm sustained in a mid-2000 season collision, after which he was never the same. 

By that time, Jeter was already being kissed by fate, benefiting from Yankee fan Jeffrey Maier's hauling in a deep fly to right, converting it to a home run, kissing up to his manager, whom he respectfully if not obsequiously called "Mr. Torre," -- as dutifully reported by a fawning press -- and literally kissing pop star Mariah Carey, Miss Universe Lara Dutta and others.

...a rising prospect

The Yankees, who were capturing championships while Ordoñez was collecting his singular hardware, faced the Mets in the 2000 series and took the first two games, each by a single run before the Mets broke their momentum with a game 3 win.

Jeter led off the potentially pivotal game 4 by rocketing the first pitch of the night from Mets starter Bobby Jones into Shea Stadium's left field bleachers. The Yankees, who never trailed in the game, won 3-2, and took the series the next night.

The next season saw the Yankee shortstop make perhaps the signature defensive play of his career, in the A.L. Division Series, a maneuver that came to be known as "The Flip." It seemed the shortstop could do little, if anything, wrong. He'd even starting collecting Gold Gloves some say were undeserved, as well as Silver Slugger honors.

In 2003, he was named the franchise's fifteenth captain, putting him in the company of luminaries such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Thurman Munson and Mattingly.

From the 2009 game program, a mini poster.

In 2003, the Mets... well, don't ask. In this tale of one city, it was the best of times for Derek Jeter, the worst of times for the team from Queens. The obsequious Bronx mainstay played on, partaking in another Yankees championship and living his charmed life as the Mets' fortunes rose and fell. 

Then his own body betrayed him in game 1 of the 2012 A.L. championship series.

It was a stunning "behold a god who bleeds" moment, and a reminder that for all his exploits, for all the acclaim, for all the objectification, he was only human, exceptionally talented, gifted even and fortunate, but still just flesh and bone. He retired after 2014.

Jeter's Hall election came with 99.7 percent of the vote, the highest ever. He was selected on all but one of 397 ballots cast, a triumph of the hype. Other immortals were at least as deserving. But then why am I writing about him?

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Padres and Tigers and Cubs, Oh My!!!

IT WAS THE MEAL NO ONE ORDERED, a freakish mix up in fate's kitchen that swapped the expected meat and potatoes for a Big Mac and Domino's Pizza.

It was Major League Baseball's 1984 post-season, which appeared destined to feature two storied franchises, the Detroit Tigers and Chicago Cubs, in a rematch of the immediately post-World War II 1945 World Series.

But destiny had other plans, turning a bull into a goat and momentarily making a guy best known for his bubble gum blowing prowess into a hero.

The Cubs had been absent from the Fall Classic for four decades, biding their time playing day games only at their antique ballpark at the corner of Clark and Addison. The boys from Michigan and Trumbull hadn't fared much better, appearing only in the 1968 series where they upset the favored St. Louis Cardinals and ace Bob Gibson.

Their aggregate 78 prior seasons had yielded a grand total of two first-place finishes, one pennant and one championship, all by the Tigers.

But this was 1984. War was peace, ignorance was strength, slavery was freedom and the Cubs were contenders. Actually that last part wasn't Orwellian doublespeak, but literal truth. They were, in fact, National League East champs.

Led by budding superstar second-baseman Ryne Sandberg and pitcher Rick Sutcliffe, who reeled off a 16-1 record after being acquired in mid-June, the Cubs were for real, winning their division by 6.5 games over the second-place New York Mets.

Sandberg, 24, won the NL Most Valuable Player, Silver Slugger and Gold Glove awards. The Cubs won 96 games, their most since '45.

From Sport Magazine's April '81 baseball preview

Impressive as Chicago was, the Tigers were better. Detroit broke from the gate with a 35-5 record -- the best 40-game start in baseball history -- and led the American League East from wire to wire,  one of just five big league clubs to ever do such a thing. They finished 104-58.

Their top player was former Cubs reliever Willie Hernandez, who had compiled a 1-9 record and 4.42 ERA hurling for the northsiders in 1980. Sport Magazine's '81 baseball preview warned "it was time to get the married Cubs off the field" when he came on to pitch. The article threw Sutcliffe under the bus too.

Four seasons later, nobody was making fun of Rick or Willie anymore. Sutcliffe won the NL Cy Young award based on his virtually unbeatable two-thirds of a season. Hernandez, with nine wins and 32 saves -- more than in his previous seven seasons combined -- copped the AL's Cy Young and its MVP award too.

Detroit was also bolstered by local hero Kirk Gibson, who'd starred in football and baseball for Michigan State. Drafted in both sports, he chose the Tigers over football's St. Louis Cardinals.

But the Tigers/Cubs betrothal wasn't assured. There was the formality of league championship play, pitting Detroit against the Kansas City Royals and Chicago against the San Diego Padres making their first ever post-season appearance.

Willie Hernandez and Kirk Gibson

The Royals, who won just 84 games in '84, provided no obstacle. A mere speed bump on the Tigers' expressway, they were outscored by an aggregate 14-4, and swept 3 games to none.

The Padres proved to be more problematic.

After years of languishing as also-rans, they'd hired former A's skipper Dick Williams, acquired a handful of veterans cast off by winning teams -- ex-Yankees Graig Nettles and Goose Gossage, plus former Los Angeles Dodger Steve Garvey -- and developed a nucleus of young, talented pitchers plus one superlative hitter, '84 NL batting champ Tony Gwynn.

Chicago countered with Garvey's ex-Dodgers teammate Ron Cey, spark plug Bob Dernier and veteran Gary Matthews, whose acquisition near the end of spring training pushed left fielder Leon "Bull" Durham to first base and Bill Buckner out of town.

The Cubs won the first two games of the still best-of-five NL Championship series at Wrigley, sending the Padres back to San Diego on the brink of elimination.

There, Chicago took a 1-0 lead in game 3. After that it was all Padres. The friars scored seven unanswered runs for their first ever post-season victory, extending the series.

A back-and-forth affair, game 4 was knotted at 5 in the bottom of the 9th when Garvey stunned the visitors with a walk-off two-run homer off future Hall of Fame reliever Lee Smith, tying the series at two games a piece.

An answered prayer: playing for a pennant

Chicago's date with Detroit and destiny suddenly seemed less assured.

The next day in San Diego. Bull Durham and Cubs catcher Jody Davis homered early, staking Chicago and Sutcliffe to a 3-0 lead. The Padres tallied twice in the 6th to pull within a run, 3-2.

Then San Diego's Carmelo Martinez opened the bottom of the 7th with a walk. A sacrifice moved him to second, bring lefty-hitting Tim Flannery to the plate with one out.

Chicago was eight outs away from the World Series. What happened next is etched in Cubs lore between Leo Durocher's black cat of 1969 and the unlucky fan who reached for a foul ball at the 2003 NLCS and opened the gates of hell.

Flannery hammered a ground ball toward the Bull that shot under his glove, through his legs and into right field. Martinez scored, tying the game. Then second-baseman Alan Wiggins singled. Gwynn followed with a bad-hop hit past Sandburg scoring Flannery and Wiggins. A Garvey rap plated Gwynn.

When the dust settled San Diego held a 6-3 lead. Six Cubs outs later, the Padres were NL pennant winners headed for a showdown with Motown.

The visual contrast between the clubs couldn't have been greater. Detroit, with its olde English "D" logo, classic uniforms and pre-war rust-belt city ballpark vs. San Diego, with their contemporary brown and white uniforms trimmed with orange and yellow. Hailing from sunny southern California, they didn't even exist the last time the Tigers won a pennant.

The Padres and Tigers had two things in common. Each had a Hall-bound manager -- the Padres' Williams and the Tigers' Sparky Anderson -- and each had a tie to fast food. Detroit's owner was Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza. San Diego's owner for a decade was Ray Kroc, the man who made McDonald's famous.

Kroc died in January of '84 and in tribute, the team added his initials RAK to the left sleeves of their jerseys.

The official program had a fold-out cover
evoking that other fall classic, Election Day.

In game 1, Tigers ace Jack Morris surrendered two runs in the bottom of the first inning, but muffled the Big Mac attack the rest of the way as Detroit clawed back a 3-2 victory.

Game 2, however, belonged to the Padres, who won 5-3, and one man in particular, utility player Kurt Bevacqua, who in 80 regular season at bats hit just .200 with one homer and nine RBIs.

Playing for six teams over 14 seasons, his greatest claim to fame had been winning the 1975 Topps/ Bazooka bubble gum blowing contest, his feat immortalized on cardboard.

Now, the journeyman turned superman, slamming a decisive three-run homer in the bottom of the 5th, one of two he'd hit while leading San Diego with a .412 average in the series. Tied at 1 game apiece, the series shifted to Detroit

It wouldn't return to San Diego for 14 years. The Tigers pounced on Padres starters in each of the three games at the ballpark formerly known as Navin Field and Briggs Stadium, never trailing in any one of them.

Gibson slugged a pair of homers in game 5, Detroit catcher Lance Parrish added one too. San Diego had briefly tied the game, 3-3, in the fourth But Detroit gradually pulled away for an 8-4 win, making official what had been apparent since April, they were the best team in baseball, at least in 1984.

The Tigers' future Hall of Fame shortstop, Alan Trammell, was the series MVP. He'd led all hitters with a .450 average, drilled two home runs and had six RBI.

But, for all their heroics, neither the Padres, Tigers or Cubs returned to the post-season in 1985. Kansas City's Royals did, advancing from an afterthought to World Champions, downing the cross-state St. Louis Cardinals in seven games.

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Shoot the Moon -- The 1969 National League Playoffs

EVERYONE WAS SHOOTING FOR THE MOON in 1969, the Americans, the Russians and even the Atlanta Braves, at least metaphorically.

 The team from The Launching Pad

Fifty years ago this weekend, Major League Baseball's first franchise based in the American southeast fought for the National League pennant. They did it while claiming the entire region as their own, just four seasons after moving from Milwaukee.

It wasn't the first time relocation had rejuvenated the peripatetic Braves, one of the N.L.'s founding franchises.

Sixteen years earlier, as attendance tanked in Boston, the moribund 64-win team relocated to the good land, won 28 more games in their 1953 debut and then, four years later, a championship.

The 1969 edition won 93 games, finishing first in the newly-created NL Western Division. Their roster was studded with stars: future home run king Hank Aaron, his fellow future Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda plus slugger Rico Carty and former New York Yankees' mainstay Clete Boyer. Leading their pitching staff was a 23-game winner, knuckleballer Phil Niekro.

Stoked to plant their pennant, they produced a gorgeous 80-page playoff program -- full of articles, photos, rosters and stats -- wrapped by a moon landing-themed cover that declared, "One step for the Braves. One giant leap for the Southeast."

The first ever NL West champions (from the Braves' 1969 NLCS program).

But to reach their figurative moon, they needed to step past the New York Mets.

After languishing in last or next-to-last place for the first seven years of their existence and merely a .500 ball club as late as June 2, New York's NL franchise caught fire in the summer, overtaking the first place Chicago Cubs on Sept. 10 and then winning the Eastern Division by eight games. They finished at 100-62.

Leading their charge was brash power pitcher Tom Seaver, a 25-game winner who would have been Braves property had they not violated the rules for signing college players in 1966.

Three years after his Braves contract was voided, Seaver was not merely the best pitcher in baseball, but leading a staff that included 17-game-winner Jerry Koosman, rookie Gary Gentry and down the depth chart, a young fireballer named Nolan Ryan.

The Mets' NLCS program, an adaptive reuse of their
regular season scorecard with minimal new content,
offered for just a single home game for 25 cents.

Their lineup was a mashup of platoon players expertly deployed by Manager Gil Hodges, but led by left-fielder Cleon Jones, who'd hit .340, sterling center-fielder Tommie Agee and hard-hitting first-baseman Donn Clendenon.

"Good pitching will always stop good hitting, and vice versa," baseball sage Casey Stengel reportedly once said. The best-of-five Mets/Braves NLCS was a vice versa kind of series, where good pitching largely took a back seat to good hitting and somehow, the Mets had more of that too.

On Oct. 4, the series opened in Atlanta, in a bullring of a ballpark that came to be known as The Launching Pad. Seaver vs. Niekro. They traded punches until the eight inning when, with the Braves nursing a 5-4 lead, the Mets' erupted for five runs, helped by a pair of Atlanta errors. Game 1 to the New Yorkers, 9-5.

Game 2 the next day saw the Mets jump out to a 8-0 lead en route to an 11-6 romp. The Braves headed to New York, their moon landing in jeopardy.

Foreshadowing from the Braves program

There, Atlanta rapped out five hits and a walk in the first three innings off New York's starter, Gentry, one of them a two run homer by Aaron, his third blast of the series.

With two on and no outs in third, Hodges pulled Gentry in favor of Ryan, who sandwiched an intentional walk around two strikeouts and ended the inning on Braves catcher Bob Didier's fly out.

Atlanta would never seriously threaten again, while the Mets got homers from Agee and infielders Ken Boswell and Wayne Garrett.

Ryan pitched seven innings, striking out seven while allowing two runs to earn the win, one of just two post-season victories in his 27 year Hall of Fame career. Aaron wouldn't appear in the playoffs again. He retired as a Milwaukee Brewer after the 1976 season with the most homers in major league history: 755.

On Oct. 6, 1969, the Mets captured the NL pennant before a raucous crowd at Shea Stadium in Queens. Ten days later, they'd stun the Baltimore Orioles and the world by taking the World Series 4 games to 1. The moon belonged to them.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive