All-Star Game Rumination

With the All-Star balloting in full swing, a salient thought spontaneously popped into my head: Bad baseball fans don't cast All-Star votes. Good baseball fans vote as much as they are allowed to (or more), filling out the entire ballot with members of their team. Great fans, however, vote for the best and most deserving players, regardless of the team.

I would like to use "broken" to describe the state of all-star player selection, but two things stop me. First of all, it seems a trifle dramatic to decry a system that works more often than it does not in a field that does not really matter so much. Second of all, the flaw of the current system is that it allows fanatical fans of a particular team to flood the books with votes and send their players to the midsummer classic, even if they do not deserve it. And no fan base is more fanatical than that of my beloved Giants, as is clearly evident by last year's ballot totals.

While Buster Posey and Melky Cabrera both deserved and received a starting position in the All-Star Game (at least we thought so before we learned Melky had taken performance enhancing drugs), Pablo Sandoval garnered 5,743,524 votes, surpassing David Wright's 4,133,380, despite the latter's arguably superior numbers.

Perhaps far more outrageous were the Giants that did not win starting spots, but came close even if they had no business doing so. Look no further then Freddy Sanchez. How many times did someone cast a ballot claiming that Freddy Sanchez was the best second baseman in the National League in 2012? 2,289,147 times. How many many games did he play in 2012? Zero games. He spent the whole year on the disabled list, and garnered more votes than all but three other second baseman. He got more votes than Rickie Weeks, Chase Utley, and Omar Infante; even though they were all more deserving. I think you could make the argument that Jimmy Rollins, who played one game at second, was more deserving than freddy sanchez in 2012. Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford, Angel Pagan, and Aubrey Huff all were similarly endowed with a flood of votes despite not deserving them.

Its unfair, but unfair in our favor, and who would complain at that? But when I had my epiphany about how great fans don't just vote for their favorite team's lineup regardless of merit, I realized that if I was to claim to be a great baseball fan, I would have to criticize the current system, even if, or perhaps especially because, it gives the Giants an unfair advantage.

Finding a good way to fix the system is difficult. Ending fan balloting would cause an uproar. Restricting a fan's ability to vote for members of his own team by one way or another would perhaps end mindless favoritism but would only favor big-money teams with many fans in other zip codes. So here is my propsal on how to reform the All-star voting system: Learn from the US electoral college, in which electoral voters are "obligated", but not absolutely required, to cast ballots for the candidate their jurisdiction most supported. The fan vote will be presented to a group that has the power to change some parts of it. Since it is not one person, there would be little favoritism. My suggested would be a small roundtable of a few managers, coaches, umpires, and writers (to pick the best players from an on-the-field point of view) and a few front-office types and league staff (to make sure the All-Star lineup is good from a marketing/PR point of view).

Maybe, just maybe, fans would see that voting for their favorite players regardless of the numbers would be futile in this scenario, and would start casting ballots for those that deserve it. 

POLO GROUNDS

There are few stadium in American sports as iconic as the Polo Grounds. The Grounds played host to the New York Giants (both of them), the Yankees, Mets, Jets, and dozens of other teams of varying importances and sports. In fact, the oldest know photograph of the field is of a memorial day football game between Yale and Princeton in 1882. There would not be much more time for more pictures. During an 1889 city-wide revamping, it is said that city workers "[showed] up suddenly one day and began cutting through the fence at the appropriate point for the new street." Despite public protest (the team had a large following even then) the stadium, which was, in fact, made for polo, was destroyed. The tenant ball club found a new site for a park very close to its present location (one Babe Ruth home run away, but I'll get to that later) and set about building a park that retained its original name, now called Polo Grounds II. This stretch of time was not particularly remarkable except for two things; the land was rented from the Coogan family (as in Coogan's Bluff) and the team was successful despite a stretch in which it did not really have a home ballpark. Shortly thereafter (1890) there was a dispute between players and the National League owners and many of the players left to form the so-called Player's League. Some Giants players moved (to their present location) to what was called Brotherhood Park and took the Giants name with them, while some stayed and continued to play in the National League. For an entire year, there were two Giants teams that were so geographically close that upper-level fans in one stadium could see the action in the other. The Players League went the way of the XFL and the NL team moved into Brotherhood park. The vacated Polo Grounds II then became "Manhattan Field" for its last few uneventful decades. Brotherhood Park's name was changed to… you guessed it. Thus was born yet another incarnation of the park, this time Polo Grounds III. This was on the very same location as the final version, and had many of the characteristics that we associate with the Polo Grounds of the 50's. 

 I was in New York for the week for winter break, and decided that I have to go see the Polo Grounds themselves. The historical yard (version 4) was torn down in 1963, of course, but this did not deter me from going to check out the area. At 155th street, the former location is pretty much as far north as you can go without leaving Manhattan and far away from any present-day Manhattan landmark except maybe the Harlem River. I woke up at noon one day and ventured off into the city without a plan. Impulsively, I hopped on a green line train- I don't remember the specific train route- and disembarked at the last stop in Manhattan, at 125th street. I began to explore the area. 125th is near the heart of Harlem and it is filled with apartment buildings, fast food restaurants, and cheap stores. People were everywhere, sitting on all the steps in front of buildings and flooding the sidewalks. I spotted someone wearing a Giants cap, but he was asleep, in a wheelchair, and looked homeless. As I continued eastward, I got a phone call and had to abort the mission, returning downtown on the same train. Resolving to go back, I took care of what I had to do and this time took another train that would take me to 125th, but further west and closer to the site. I took a city bus up to 148th, which would leave me about 15 blocks away. I began walking up a street lined with small apartment blocks and industrial shops and turned to follow a wide road that eventually became a bridge over the Harlem River. I passed a large complex of apartment buildings that looked a lot like the x-shaped brick towers I had seen in pictures at the Polo Grounds, but ascertained that they were not the ones I was looking for. Approaching the river, and seeing "The House That Steinbrenner Built" it struck me how close Yankee Stadium was to the Polo Grounds. I knew that in actuality there was very little to be gained by visiting the site of the ballpark and had been hoping that I would learn one or two things that I couldn't without physically being there. This realization was just the sort of this I was hoping for. The distance between the two stadiums was probably less that a mile. Another such realization is that the park was just like 3rd and King- on the water. The Harlem river runs just past center field. 

In 1911, Polo Grounds III burned to the ground, leaving only the metal uprights and piles of ash. The cause of the fire that consumed the 21-year old stadium has never been discovered, but, at any rate, another New York based baseball team named the Highlanders let the Giants share their field. So the Giants packed up their bats and moved to Hilltop park until the 34,000 seat Polo Grounds IV was completed. It was only the second concrete-and-steel stadium in the National League, and had an unusual horseshoe shaped field short to the sides and a center field wall 483 from home plate. In 1913, the tables were turned and the Highlanders moved in to the Grounds as well. As their name was no longer relevant after their move from Hilltop Park, the Highlanders changed their name. And so the Yankees came into existence. In 1920, Babe Ruth was traded to the pinstripes from Boston and so then called 155th street his home ballpark. Ruth's first home run as a Yankee allegedly landed in the previously-mentioned and then-vacant Manhattan Field, aka Polo Grounds II. I just love this fact- Babe Ruth hit such a long homer that it landed in more or less the same park except two generations previous.  The distinct time-travel science-fiction note is very fitting with Ruth's mythical demigod legacy, I think. He didn't have the chance to hit many more (a relative term, to be sure) out of Coogan's Bluff. The two teams coexisted for a while, but in 1922 John McGraw, no longer feeling magnanimous, sent the Yanks and their star outfielder packing.

I finally approached the bridge and had to double back and cross the street in the direction of a mechanic's shop on a wedge-shaped street corner. I looked up and, with a perhaps overdone sense of wonder considering that I was looking at public housing buildings, realized that I was staring at the Polo Grounds Towers. The four buildings are massive and thirty stories high, and I still had a ways to go to get there. I passed the mechanic down a narrowish road that ran for two blocks until it ended abruptly at a dirty-ish hill, with what looked like an old hospital above. It was getting dark and I was eager to quicken my pace, and was not really concentrating on my surroundings. It was only just before I got there, that it occurred to me that I was looking at Coogan's Bluff. The Bluff was small and dirty, although not so insignificant as to cause wonder as to why it deserved a name. I am not really good at judging heights, but the hill towered over the three and four-story buildings across from it. It was covered with trees and dark rocks and dirt and copious amounts of garbage and dark dead leaves. To my right, an overpass of white-painted metal stood. Past that, the towers and their parking lot stood, waiting for the impeding sunset. 

In the old days, the sun would have set over a large Chesterfield Cigaret advertisement over the center field wall of the Polo Grounds that supposedly puffed real smoke into the air. The ad was set over a curious nook in the centerfield wall, maybe 50 feet wide and 30 feet deep. The playing area was more or less shaped like a horseshoe, 280 and 258 feet down the left and right field lines, respectively, and a booming 450 (approximate) feet to most of the outfield wall. The very back of the indented area was at 483 and was made up of windows that gave a limited view into the clubhouses. Over a sign marking the distance from home plate and a column supporting the overhanging clubhouses, a plaque remembers Eddie Grant, a Giants player killed in World War One (the plaque was later lost and recreated in AT&T Park). The clubhouses are raised and under the windows the playing area goes another few feet. Two flights of stairs lead up to each of the clubhouse doors, in Game 2 of the 1936 World Series Joe DiMaggio caught a long fly ball and ended up on the steps. These same stairs would have been in Willie May's line of sight, just to his left, when he made the legendary catch in the 8th inning of the first game of the 1954 World Series. No player ever hit the clubhouse, and only five players ever hit a ball into the center field stands since the remodeling of the park. It was just as well that no baseball ever reached the clubhouse window. Rumor has it that a Giants coach, Herman Franks, would sit at the clubhouse windows with a telescope and steal signs. According to his 2009 obituary in the New York Times, "Franks was said to have had an electrician alongside him activate a buzzer in the Giants’ bullpen in right-center field, one buzz for a fastball and two for a curveball. Sal Yvars, a reserve catcher in the bullpen, would listen for the buzzes. If Yvars held on to a baseball, the Giants batter glancing at him knew a fastball was coming. If Yvars tossed a ball in the air, it meant a curve could be expected." The section of center field was iconic and an unmistakable symbol of the Polo Grounds and the Giants. It would have been great if the Giants had tried to recreate this, even subtly, in San Francisco. If part of the center field fence was just a few feet indented from the rest of the wall (the rest could be brought in by 2 feet), if the plaque for Eddie Grant still stood there, if the Giants installed an old facade in the area above center field that currently has nothing, the Giants could have made AT&T more beautiful and interesting and saluted their past. There is still time for some minor remodeling. 

Walking to the opening of the huge parking lot, I noticed a long stairway dug into the side of the hill. It had been part of the stadium complex and, unlike the stairs in the outfield, had survived into the new millennium. It was the historic John T. Brush stairway, which had been used by untold thousands of patrons on their way to catch ballgames at the Grounds. The several sports teams that made up its still-in-business former tenants, including the Giants (yes, both), have pitched in to help preserve and restore the dilapidated stairs. According to a recent New York Times article, which itself sites a "Times article from July 9, 1913, retrieved by the Parks Department, says that on that day the baseball club would be formally presenting the 'John T. Brush Stairway' to the city. The Giants’ team president, H. N. Hempstead, was to present the gift to the city parks commissioner, Charles B. Stover, to honor Mr. Brush, the Giants owner who had died in 1912." I crossed the mall-sized parking lot and passed a few people who did not seem to notice me. The four buildings lie within a complex that will be marginally familiar to someone who has played the video game "Grand Theft Auto IV", which is based around a fictional New York and has levels near the fictional towers. Between the bases of the buildings there is a confusing maze of walkways, fenced-off grass zones, and small concrete open areas. 

More or less since the Second World War, the Polo Grounds were in decline. The stadium was horribly maintained, the neighborhood had once boasted the "darling of the jet-set" was destitute, and the Giants teams were awful. Ticket sales and fan following were abysmal, not just by premier-franchise-that-is-in-New-York standards but by any measurement. We all know the story, and the Giants and Dodgers moved west. The grounds were empty for three years, until the newly-formed Mets and NY Titans (soon to be NY Jets) moved in. This was only temporary, as the stadium was extremely undesirable, and the city decided to tear it down and replace it with public housing in 1961. The Polo Grounds were demolished in 1964 by workers in Giants jerseys and the very same wrecking ball that destroyed Ebbets Field in 1960. The wrecking ball was painted like a baseball.

The end of my mission was to find a plaque that marked the approximate spot of home plate. I asked a UPS driver out in front of the first building if he knew of any plaque, and he didn't, but he did confirm that the stairs I had seen were the famous ones. I started off, moving around and exploring the grounds. I tried several doors, retraced my steps a few times and wondered where everyone was. The sun was just about to come down, and it seemed like there was nobody around. I saw an old man sitting on a chair outside. I asked him, trying not to sound to interested, lest he think me a stupid eager tourist that had come without realizing that the field had become a slum. He answered affirmatively, he knew where the plaque was, and pointed me around the corner. I walked over, and there it was. It was bigger than I thought, on the side of a building in a nondescript location. It read: 

POLO GROUNDS

APPROXIMATE LOCATION 

OF HOME PLATE 

HOME OF THE NEW YORK GIANTS 

NATIONAL BASEBALL LEAUGE

1890 - 1957 

WORLD CHAMPIONS

 1904 1905 1921 1922 1933 1954 

THE GIANTS SHARED THIS FIELD 

WITH THE NEW YORK 

YANKEES 

1915-1922

 THE NEW YORK METS PLATED HERE

 1962-1965 

I resisted the urge to add "2010" to the 8th line and took a picture, including one with my hand on the writing to prove I was there. I took off the way I had came. The UPS man was still there and asked me if I found it. I told him I had, and left through the parking lot. I ascended the famous steps, and came out on top of Coogan's Bluff. I crossed the street was walked atop the bluff, victoriously sending a few people pictures. The hill was just as dirty and unattractive from above. I looked back at top of the brick towers. I imagined all the people that had been right where I was, taking in a game down below. Watching Babe Ruth hit a home run into Polo Grounds II from Polo Grounds IV. Watching Willie Mays catch a fly ball facing away from home plate and fire in to keep the runner from tagging up. The view must have been fantastic. The poorest corner of Manhattan stretched out below, as far as I could see. 

PREVIEW TO OPENING DAY

The last two or three seasons, I have made predictions as to what teams will win each division, and what order the teams will finish in. When picking the order I am conservative, and am not significantly swayed by all the overblown hype before each season. Rather, I try to thoughtfully and dispassionate evaluate each team's strengths and weaknesses and carefully weight other factors and come up with a reasonable order. 

What a stupid thing to do.

It seems like every year my list is so far off that I could have picked the names out of a hat. 

It is embarrassing, really. So this year, I decided to cut out the middleman and actually pick the names out of a hat. Last year I bought a set of 30 plastic, golf ball-side helmets, each one representing a Major League Baseball team. So I took the set, grouped them by division, and put one division at a time in an upturned orange-billed 2010 World Series Giants cap. I closed my eyes, and the first one I picked out is my pick to win the division, the second one is my pick for second place, and so on. It is not as crazy as it sounds; Yankees manager Billy Martin choose his batting order that way at least four times to break his team out of a slump.

Here are the results:

AL EAST:

1 Toronto Blue Jays

2 Boston Red Sox

3 New York Yankees

4 Tampa Bay Rays

5 Baltimore Orioles

AL CENTRAL:

1 Minnesota Twins

2 Detroit Tigers

3 Kansas City Royals

4 Cleveland Indians

5 Chicago White Sox

AL WEST (Now with the Houston Astros!):

1 Los Angeles Angels of Aneheim

2 Seattle Mariners

3 Houston Astros

4 Texas Rangers

5 Oakland Athletics

NL EAST:

1 Philadelphia Phillies

2 Atlanta Braves

3 Washington Nationals

4 New York Mets

5 Miami Marlins

NL CENTRAL (Now without the Houston Astros):

1 Chicago Cubs

2 Milwaukee Brewers

3 Cincinnati Reds

4 St. Louis Cardinals

5 Pittsburg Pirates

NL WEST:

1 Arizona Diamondbacks

2 San Francisco Giants

3 Colorado Rockies

4 Los Angeles Dodgers

5 San Diego Padres

So there you have it. The Cubs will win the NL Central pennant and. You heard it here first.

Ok, well that was all in good fun. But know I need to make my actual predictions.

For the NL West I was ablated by my duty as a Giants fan to pick SF, but I think that I would still pick them even if I was impartial. LA is the logical second choice. I have always thought that these overhyped, high-spending, flavor-of-the-month teams that make the news because they splurge on star players (LA, TOR, and LAA this year, MIA, LAA, and TEX last year, and so on) almost always fail, but LA is still balanced and young enough for its massive talent to be productive. Still, I expect them to underperform in the spotlight and not overtake the Giants. As San Diego and Colorado are each pitiful, AZ, which has many young pitchers with great potential, has to be the third team, and I picked SD over COL because of its pitching and younger talent.

The NL central has been an oligarchy for a long time, with STL, CIN, and MIL jostling for the pennant and PIT, CHC, and HOU jostling for less than 100 losses. HOU jumped over to the AL West, leaving the Cubbies and Buccos in the basement. Really, the order kind of falls into place Starting from the bottom, I picked the Cubs to finish last and the Pirates ahead of them because of their marginally respectable team, which has managed to compete in the early parts of the last few seasons before flaming out. Among the top three teams, I expect MIL to finish third because of the team's downward trend after Prince Fielder's departure, which I believe will be heightened after further damaging steroid allegations against the one remaining superstar, Ryan Braun. That leaves STL and CIN, both formidable teams. I just have to go with the Cards. I have seen few teams that combine such hitting and pitching power with the underdog, come-from-behind, play-as-a-team mentality. They almost remind me of the Giants.

In the NL East, much like the Central, we have two classes of teams. Washington and Atlanta on the one hand, and then all the others. For Miami and the Mets, the battle is to see which team will act less like a AAA teams, considering both rosters seem like one. Mike, ahem, Giancarlo Stanton, Logan Morrison, and the pitching give the clear advantage to Miami. Phillidelphia is third because it still has many good players, even if they are mostly (or all) several years past their prime. The Nats and Braves are both formidable teams; Washington is as scary as it was last year, and Atlanta greatly upgraded an already grade ball club, largely making making 2/3rds of its starting outfield an Upton Brother. I has to go with WAS, because great pitching will always, always, trump great hitting. Plus, Chipper Jones's departure might set ATL adrift without a clear leader.

For the AL West, I think it is a pretty safe bet to put the pitiful division newcomers, the Astros, at the very bottom, and the semi-pitiful Seattle team just above them. I also do not think that Oakland has any chance to repeat, not after sending the great hope Jemile Weeks back to the minor leagues. So it is a contest between the Rangers and the Angels for the top spot, and while, like I said before, I think that most of these overhyped, star-packed, $200 million teams are busts, you just can't argue with Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton, and Mike Trout. That's not a lineup. That is the first three picks of a fantasy baseball draft.

Detroit is a good team, and I think that they will win again. I kind of stand alone in that I believe that the Royals, who are loaded with young, up-and-comming talent, will compete and come in second. Minnesota third because, unlike the White Sox and Indians, they actually have 3-4 names on their roster that a casual baseball fan would know. Go ahead, name as many Cleveland or Chicago South Side players as you can. Not a long list, huh?

The AL East always gets more attention than it deserves, maybe more than every other division combined, so I will serve up some poetic justice and give it the shortest preview out of any of the divisions. Which is kind of like a way to say "I am tired of writing" and not sound entirely lazy. All the teams are good, but with its strong starting pitching and perennial ability to play well despite low expectations and a budget lower than most Yucatec baseball teams (probably fewer fans, too). The Yankees have and excellent lineup and will be energized by Mariano Rivera's return. The Canadian team has a crazy-good roster, but like I said above, these things usually do not end so well. Then the Red Sox, who are mediocre, than the Orioles, who are a little worse. 

PREDICATIONS:

		HAT	JONAH
NL WEST	1. 2. 3. 4. 5.	AZ SF COL LAD SD	SF LA AZ SD COL
NL CENTRAL	1. 2. 3. 4. 5.	CHC MIL CIN STL PIT	STL CIN MIL PIT CHC
NL EAST	1. 2. 3. 4. 5.	PHI ATL WAS NYM MIA	WAS ATL PHI MIA NYM
AL WEST	1. 2. 3. 4. 5.	LAA SEA HOU TEX OAK	LAA TEX OAK SEA HOU
AL CENTRAL	1. 2. 3. 4. 5.	MIN DET KC CLE CWS	DET KC MIN CWS CLE
AL EAST	1. 2. 3. 4. 5.	TOR BOS NYY TB BAL	TB NYY TOR BOS BAL