Diamond notes

I haven't had a lot to report about my umpiring of late, which you can usually take to mean things have been fine. No drama, no troubles, nothing weird going on.

I mean, aside from the usual Capitol Hill weirdness during my shifts there, one of which I had the other night. Games were all good, but there were some people hanging out in left field that not only refused to move out of the way, but were highly offended that we were in their way. Their right to sit wherever they want in a park, permits and field reservations and fees be damned. They were giving outfielders so much grief that I felt it necessary to intervene and explain that we had exclusive use of the field for the night, and if they chose not to move then they were choosing to be in the way of batted balls and running fielders and risking injury to all involved. Sadly, they kept yelling at me while I was trying to say all that, so I made do with pointing to our sign that says, essentially, we paid for use of this field and be in the way at your own risk. They didn't continue to yell at fielders after that, but they didn't move either. Cap Hill, baby.

Yesterday, though, I was at Green Lake. Not Capitol Hill, nor my typical Sunday posting at Northacres Ballfeld. I like Green Lake as a place to spend the day, but the fields are kinda lousy and, more to the point, historically the teams that sign up to play there have tended to be more...let's say, overly competitive, and thus more annoying. Still, even if I drew some hotheads, it's nothing I couldn't handle; the real issue for me was I had been assigned all of the day's games on that field and my colleague Ben had been assigned the whole day's slate on the opposite diamond. That's five games, or almost eight hours of umping, plus 15-20 minutes on either side setting up and then taking down things like outfield cones, out-of-play markers, bases, promotional banners, etc. Also, by unwritten rule, whichever of the two umps arrives first gets to choose which field to work, which is clearly going to be field #1 because starting around 1:30 or 2:00 the home plate area of that one is in the shade. Parking sucked yesterday, and Ben got there first.

Thus, from about 11:45am to about 8:10pm, I was out there in the 80-plus degree sun, on my feet the whole time, the only break coming way early when the noon game only lasted about 59 minutes instead of its allotted 85. I downed eight 12 oz. bottles of Gatorade (six brought from home, two thoughtfully given by players) and still had a bad headache when I finally headed back to my car (parked a few blocks away). When I got home I showered off the day's dirt, sweat, and sunscreen, put my feet up and watched the afternoon's Mariner game (ugh), and then uncharacteristically went to bed before midnight. The headache kept me awake/woke me up a few times, but I ended up sleeping about 12 hours. For someone who grew up in the Arizona desert and thought nothing of outdoor activities in 100+ degree heat, I sure have become vulnerable to too much sun; I feel like Bizarro Superman or something.

It's a damn good thing there weren't any troublemakers in my games. In fact, though I missed out calling a game for The Leftovers (they were on Ben's field), I did get a doubleheader's worth of a team called the Power Pink Ponies (don't ask, I don't know), which includes two old faves in Frankie and Stacy that I only rarely see these days since they tend to be at Green Lake and I don't. I called Frankie "Frankie Raye" at one point, which was a reference she didn't get nor did I expect her to, but she's a redhead with attitude, so why not be compared to a herald of Galactus?

Meanwhile, I attended a real baseball game on Saturday, witnessing Your Seattle Mariners play the visiting Kansas City Royals after a lengthy pregame ceremony belatedly honoring one of the team's greatest heroes. Randy Johnson developed into one of the game's most dominant pitchers after being traded to the Mariners as a rookie in 1989; in 1998 the M's decided he was both injury-prone and too expensive to keep, so he was traded away. I went to Saturday's game with Erik, someone with whom I had seen many a Randy Johnson game in the Kingdome back in the day, and he commented that trading for Johnson in ’89 was the best trade the Mariners ever made and trading him away in ’98 was the worst the M's ever made. I don't know if I agree, there are a lot of contenders for Worst Mariner Trade, after all, but his logic is sound—even though the M's got some nice players in return (Freddy Garcia, John Halama, Carlos Guillén), Johnson went on to win four more Cy Young Awards and pitch until he was 45. Plug Johnson's 2000 record of 19-7, 2.64 ERA, and 249 innings in place of Garcia's 9-5, 3.91, 124 IP and suddenly the 2000 M's aren't merely Wild Card entrants bounced out in the ALCS, but 100-plus game winners that host the ALCS and maybe get their first pennant. It's hard to imagine the 2001 M's losing two Randy Johnson starts in that year's ALCS.

Of course, that's all unprovable speculation and not trading Johnson would unleash a whole slew of domino effects. Who knows how things would have played out, but consider:

• 1999-2004 Randy Johnson WAR: 48.0.
• 1999-2004 Garcia+Halama+Guillén WAR: 39.7.

True, RJ got paid about $50M more than the three other guys in that span, and in those days you'd be talking about that difference being 20% of your team payroll; the team probably doesn't get Aaron Sele or John Olerud and has to make do with cheaper alternatives. Who knows. Fun to think about, though.

You can read Erik's account of the RJ festivities here.

Meantime, the Mariners lost the game in true 1990s Randy Johnson fashion: starting pitcher is great, strikes out 14, walks none, leaves with a lead, and the bullpen blows it. Perhaps there has never been a more fitting tribute.

Also, and not just regarding the Mariners but all of Major League Baseball, it seems, I am somewhat perplexed by the change in conventional wisdom regarding lineups.

In my youth, the logic was this in constructing your lineup:

Leading off you have a high-on-base percentage guy (e.g. Wade Boggs), a great stolen base threat (Vince Coleman), or ideally a guy who has both qualities (Brett Butler); in the two hole you have a contact hitter, a good bat-handler with a decent OBP and enough speed to go first-to-third on a base hit to right-center (Roberto Alomar, Ryne Sandberg); batting third is your best overall hitter, someone solidly in the .300+ range of batting average that can drive in runs (George Brett, Tony Gwynn; fourth is the "cleanup" position, where you put your best home-run hitter, ideally to hit one out and "clean up" the bases that have hopefully been occupied by at least one of the first three guys; fifth is your understudy for the three-hole; then six through eight you stagger lefties/righties while the nine spot is the easiest out for the opposition. (Occasionally you might haver a manager who prefers his best hitter at leadoff rather than third because the leadoff man is guaranteed more at-bats in a typical game than lower-in-the-order guys just by nature of the lineup turning over.)

That made sense to me and still does.

Today, managers are putting their big homer guys in the second spot. I don't like it. Yeah, the two-hitter is more likely to get another AB than the four-hitter, so another shot at him hitting a longball, but putting the power-hitter there means he's also more likely to whiff than anyone else (save maybe the ninth-place guy). I heard one broadcaster calling the two-three-four spots the "heart of the order" the other day. To me, the heart of the order is the middle of the order, conventionally—or, formerly conventionally—thought of as three-through-six. That's where your slug will come from. I guess the game has become so homer-centric and so strikeout-laden that managers don't think like they used to; everyone is going to rack up the Ks, so putting a high-strikeout guy at or near the top doesn't matter. A team has four or five guys that hit 25+ homers a season, so the four-slot isn't special that way.

Eh, I fell like Dana Carvey's Grumpy Old Man character thinking about this. In my day, teams were more balanced; in my day strikeouts were thought of as worse than other outs; in my day you'd never see Rob Deer batting second.

Alas.

Speaking of, I'm going to go watch the M's try to break their losing streak now.