the short baseball life of Luther Lane Stuart

I'm not sure what drove me to imagine a major league ballplayer who had one monstrous at-bat, and then never did anything at the plate again. That vision, of course, led me to Google, which led me to a Wikipedia page that is both insightful and tragic. If the Wikipedians are to be trusted--and the Baseball Almanac corroborates--as of this date, there are 114 big-leaguers who smacked a home run in their very first at-bat. Eighteen of those men have since retired from the game with only that single dinger to their name. (Four others are still active, and who knows what glory awaits?)

None of those players exactly fits the description, as all had plate appearances to follow their lone homer.

One comes close, though: Luther "Luke"
Lane Stuart.

Luke Stuart played a grand total of three games for the St. Louis Browns in the late summer of 1921. In his first time up, he walloped an inside-the-parker off the inimitable Walter Johnson, becoming the first of only two MLBers to clear the bases the hard way in their debut. (The other: Johnnie LeMaster.)

Stuart is one of eleven alumni of the Guilford College Quakers to reach the big leagues. As Charlie Bevis describes in his biography of the one-hit wonder,

On August 8, at Griffith Stadium in Washington, Stuart again played in the late innings of a blowout, this time for McManus. Washington scored seven runs in the bottom of the eighth inning to push the score to 16-3 when St. Louis came to bat in the top of the ninth inning against future Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson. With a 13-run lead, there were likely few spectators left in the stands, and probably even fewer newspaper writers. Those who stayed witnessed Stuart crack a two-run home run off Johnson to make the final score 16-5.

After an 0-2 outing in his next game, Stuart was sent back to the minors, where he spent the rest of his career--three short years. After time away selling insurance and real estate, Stuart circled back to baseball, scouting for the Yankees.

Perhaps already succumbing to a fatal condition, Stuart died at his own hand 21 years later.

The North Carolina Room blog has a great two-part summary of his life and context. In the first part, you learn that Luke Stuart once saved a teammate from an opponent / gangster by the name of Snipes. In the second, you learn more about Stuart's career, and his post-baseball existence. Both are interesting slices of Americana, and just another reason to love the Internet.

the zen mastery of Marshawn Lynch

The Seattle Seahawks--this blog's Super Bowl favorites--are blessed with two of the greatest talents in football. One has talk to match the game; the other is all game, no talk.

I refer, of course, to Richard Sherman and Marshawn Lynch.

Sherman recently made waves for a post-game tirade that sent shock waves through Twitter, woke up a bunch of dumb racists, gave some pundits the vapors, fired up a million op-eds on the State of Sport, launched at least sixteen sociology lectures on otherwise dull college campuses, led to an eventual apology, jazzed up an already-hyped Media Day, and is probably still echoing in Centurylink Field at this moment.

Lynch, on the other hand, garnered a since-retracted $50,000 fine for not talking with a microphone in his face, and then turned a mandatory Media Day appearance into a series of zen koans.

No, really:

It was legendary. It’s like he was speaking in yearbook quotes. “I’m just ’bout that action, boss” single-handedly got me fired up for Super Bowl. “I ain’t never seen no talking win me nothing” should be our answer to stupid questions everywhere. “Lay back, kick back, mind my business, stay in my own lane” is the American Dream and should be printed on money.

And in the end, the only thing I’ll always remember from my first media day is the one guy who talked the least, and someone I never actually saw in person. For an event that makes no sense in 10 different ways, that’s pretty much perfect.

Since Marshawn Lynch is likely to be the Super Bowl MVP (you read it here, though I doubt first), I offer him some epigrams to deploy at the post-game presser.

"Whereof one cannot speak, one must thereof be silent."

--Ludwig Wittgenstein


"The wren
Earns his living
Noiselessly."

--Issa


"Silence is more eloquent than words."

--Thomas Carlyle


"The talkative parrot is shut up in a cage. Other birds, without speech, fly freely about."

--Saskya Pandita

Pick any one, but just one, Marshawn. You're welcome.

And Go Hawks.

the fast and the furious

Johnette Howard of ESPN has written a fascinating summary of the triumph and travails of Oscar Pistorius, the path-blazing runner who might get a shot at the Olympics, as well as the controversy created by his technologically facilitated racing. Even the scientists disagree as to whether Pistorius' prosthetics give him an unfair advantage. Quite the paradox.

Linnenkohl gets his shot

Congratulations to Capital grad Alex Linnenkohl, who was signed by the Chicago Bears to a 3-year contract, getting a shot at center. The Olympian reports:

Linnenkohl, who finished his college career last season as one of Oregon State’s all-time best centers, signed a rookie free agent contract with the Chicago Bears on Tuesday afternoon, fulfilling his longtime dream of getting a chance to play in the NFL. He was one of two undrafted centers signed by Chicago, joining Mississippi State’s J.C. Brignone.

“This is all I’ve ever wanted,” Linnenkohl said Tuesday from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Ill., where the Bears will begin training camp Saturday. “It’s pretty surreal right now. It hasn’t really hit me yet.”

What follows is one of those I-knew-him-when's: Back in 2006, I appeared on the same stage as Linnenkohl in an improv comedy show. The papers always report his work ethic (second-to-none) and his determination (at only 303 pounds, he's small for a center), but what they miss is his quick wit and killer sense of humor.

Best of luck, Alex. Strike that: do what brought you here, and keep working hard. If you get a Superbowl ring before the Seahawks do, I won't even complain.

the vuvuzela as a biological weapon

Enjoy your vuvuzela, you germ-spreading hooligan, you.

dude can dunk

Apropos of nothing: Jacob Tucker.

The Fighter

If I was a little road-ragey on the drive home yesterday afternoon, it wasn't just because the freeway was clogged by idiots (58 in the left lane! Merging at the last possible second! Random brake-slamming!), but because I had just seen The Fighter, and was a little caught up in the testosterone.

The film is just that good. Perfect casting, a tight script, and great camerawork keep it from veering too close to cliché or caricature. Mark Wahlberg is solid as Micky Ward, a boxer who has to escape his family in order to chase his title dreams. His older brother Dicky, played by Christian Bale, has a boxing philosophy that sums up how the film affects the viewer: "Head Body Head." I'd rate it my second favorite boxing flick of all time, right after Body and Soul.

Let's hope it boosts tourism in industrial Lowell, Mass.


Added 12/20: Sports Illustrated interviews the real Micky Ward about the film. A snippet:

On his family's reaction to the film's often unflattering portrayal
"I'm sure it's hard for Dicky to look at it and see the way he was. He'll never go back [to that life] again. I don't know how my sisters and mother are going to feel, either. I'm not sitting next to them when they see it!"

"Swung on and belted!"

Dave Niehaus, the soul of Mariner baseball, has passed away at seventy-five. In his honor, 710 ESPN has compiled some of his most memorable calls, late summer sunshine for a cold November night.

More audio at MyNorthwest.com

the King is dead; long live the Cavs

"I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER ‘KING’ WINS ONE"

Dan Gilbert, in his open letter to Cleveland fans.



[via Slate's Twitter feed]

vectors and victors

Longtime readers of the blog know that every now and then I feature the latest speculation about Toxoplasma gondii and its potential influence on human behavior, and... the World Cup?

Rank the top 25 FIFA team countries by Toxo rate and you get, in order from the top: Brazil (67 percent), Argentina (52 percent), France (45 percent), Spain (44 percent), and Germany (43 percent). Collectively, these are the teams responsible for eight of the last 10 World Cup overall winners. Spain, the only one of the group never to have won a cup, is no subpar outlier—the Spaniards have the most World Cup victories of any perpetual runner-up.

What is going on here? Does Toxo really make people better at soccer?

The relationship is neither linear nor foolproof. Italy managed to win the World Cup in 2006, despite its relatively average infection rate of 33 percent. Certain African countries plagued with public health problems have astronomical Toxo rates. Yet the heavily infected players of Ghana, Gabon (71 percent), and the Ivory Coast (60 percent) have not yet managed to win a single cup. On the other end, England (6 percent), the U.S. (12 percent), and Japan (6 percent) are pretty OK at soccer yet have some of the lowest rates in the world.

Read the whole thing for the rest of the nuances and caveats.

Speculation is speculation, and this one, I'll say, kicks its hypothesis a little too far past the post.

Although something has to explain Bill Simmons' recent unabashed and unabated soccer love.

the ones that got away

Jeff Sullivan tackles the myth that ex-Mariners inevitably thrive upon exiting Seattle. A sample:

Cha Seung Baek: Traded to San Diego. Made 20 standard Cha Baek starts, got hurt, disappeared. Still has no reason to smile. Not better.

Wladimir Balentien: Traded to Cincinnati. Was okay, then lost his job. Demoted to AAA, where his OPS is under .700. Not better.

Miguel Batista: Signed with Washington, where he has more walks than strikeouts in relief. That the Nationals are rebuilding makes this doubly hilarious. Not better.

Adrian Beltre: Dominating in Boston with 33 extra-base hits and his usual defense, albeit with a few errors thrown in. Becoming popular for hating when Victor Martinez touches his head. Predictably better.

It's a nice reminder that confirmation bias is the enemy of rational fandom--if there is such a thing.

Also, don't bet on sports.

your homework, due April 4th

Baseball websites are bursting at the seams with statistics of every stripe. (Yes, I went there--twice.) And now, remarkably, you can find a series of the web's best intros to the various methods of sabermetrics all in one place.

Now you have no excuse.



[via Dave Cameron]

the eye of--and on--the storm

Peter Gammons recaps 20 years with ESPN.

ESPN sent me to every World Series in those 20 years. In 1991, when I got out onto the field at the Metrodome six hours before Game 6 between the Braves and Twins, Kirby Puckett was coming out to take early BP before the lights were fully turned on. "Petey," he yelled at me. "When you go on 'SportsCenter' before the game, tell 'em Puck's gonna put the Twins on his back. I ain't done [----]. This is going to be Puck's night. Tell everyone in ESPN land." Four hits, a game-saving catch and a game-winning homer later, there was a seventh game, perhaps the best game I've ever seen. Jack Morris-John Smoltz. Morris outlasted the great Smoltz; the Twins won in the 10th, 1-0; and at 5:30 a.m., Morris came back to the field to do a Sunday Conversation for "SportsCenter."

Twenty years of triumph and turmoil that changed the face of the sport--of all sports--and Mr. Gammons was a level-headed, supremely professional reporter, a voice of reason and sanity in the middle of it all.

Enjoy your retirement, Mr. Gammons. You will be missed. See below.

The Prodigal Fan

In case you doubted the inherent and insatiable sociality of the human species, or, at least, will cheer for anything: Improv Everywhere's Rob Lathan gets "lost" at a Knicks game.

football for nerds, and nerds for football

1. Kevin Kelley of Pulaski Academy High explains his team's no-kick approach to football. The short story: it's all about the numbers, and the numbers say keep possession.

2. In an excerpt from his book Eating the Dinosaur, Chuck Klosterman explains why he loves football more at 37 than he ever did at 17. The short story: it's all about the game's radical/conservative duality.

Who says nerds can't love / rule sports?

throw more curveballs

Steven Levitt and Ken Kovash claim that pitchers, among other athletes, are too predictable:

They first analysed over 3 million pitches thrown in major-league baseball games between 2002 and 2006. For each type of pitch, they measured the batter's "OPS" – a number that represents how likely a batter is to reach a base or to make a big hit. They found, on average, that fastballs tended to give batters 20 per cent higher OPS than curveballs.

If pitchers played according to minimax, the OPS for curveballs and fastballs should be the same, but in fact pitchers gave batters a slight edge by throwing too many fastballs.

Levitt and Kovash then looked at whether or not pitchers chose their pitches as unpredictably as minimax theory says they should. They found that when a pitcher threw a fastball, his next pitch was 4 per cent less likely to be a fastball as well. If pitchers played truly rationally, there would be no such bias towards switching the type of pitch. "Pitchers are being just a little too cute on the mound when they're switching back and forth so often," says Kovash.

Read the entire thing for the (predictable) caveats and nay-saying. OPS isn't the be-all end-all of baseball stats, for one.

I wonder how a pitcher who dialed up pitches totally randomly would fare in the bigs. It could be pretty interesting: randomness means the possibility of, say, throwing five fastballs in a row, then a curve, then four more fastballs. There'd be no such thing as a "fastball count," and a batter who thought that a curveball was "due" would fall prey to the gambler's fallacy.

1.7 decades of futility

No matter how terrible your sports franchise of choice has been over the past couple decades, at least it's probably had a winning season or two. No such luck for Pittsburgh's baseball fans: the last time the Pirates had a winning season, Bob Dole--no stranger to failure--was still a senator dreaming of the presidency. ESPN has the story:

The Chicago Cubs assured the Pirates of an unwanted place in baseball's record book, getting two homers from Derrek Lee and an effective start from Ted Lilly while beating the last-place Pirates 4-2 on Monday.

By losing their 10th in 11 games, the Pirates are guaranteed of finishing below .500, just as they have every season since 1993. The 17 consecutive losing seasons represent the longest streak for any team in the four major North American pro team sports, and only the Phillies (1933-48) have also had as many as 16 in a row.

That the Cubs are the ones cementing the Pirates' place in the record books is an irony as sweet as Bob Dole's peanut butter.

origin of the Usain Bolt pose

I kept thinking, I know I've seen that Usain Bolt pose before.


Because I had. Milk River, Alberta, 2006.

As you can see, Bolt's pose is the universal symbol for "Shower Me With Endorsement Contracts."

a monopoly on nostalgia

Topps, maker of some of the ugliest baseball cards in existence, has crowded out its last major competitor, Upper Deck, by signing an exclusive agreement with Major League Baseball. Slate's Dave Jamieson has the story--and the history--behind the move.

When I was a kid, I bought Donruss, Fleer, or Topps packs with whatever change I could scrimp from chores, blissfully unaware of the economic forces at play. (Upper Deck? Who had that kind of money?)

Now I'm nostalgically disoriented.

soccer: coming to a country near you?

When the FIFA World Cup came to America for the first time, I was 15. I knew nothing about the sport, except that everyone else in the world played it. I'm pretty sure my mom bought me this beach towel because it was on sale, not because of its historical import.

It's taken fifteen years longer than the optimists hoped, but it finally seems that international soccer is about to break through in the U.S. Bill Simmons five reasons why.

1. Americans enjoy watching the best (fill in any sport). We are elitists. That's why we like the Olympics, that's why we enjoy any finals, that's why we watch Wimbledon and the Masters, that's why we don't care about sports like the WNBA, MLS or arena football as anything other than a niche sport. International soccer plays into this. It's the best of the best. Hell, we even liked "The Best of the Best" even though Eric Roberts was the biggest star in it.

2. The games zoom along: no commercials, no sideline reporters, no corporate tie-ins, no four-hour games like in baseball, no "takes 20 minutes to play the last two" like in the NBA. You can sit down for a soccer game and say, "I'm going to spend the next two hours watching this and then I'm going to do something else." Like watch more TV.

3. Give credit to ESPN for committing air time in non-Cup years to elite international soccer tournaments like the UEFA Cup. I know that's how I started paying more attention. If you like sports, you cannot NOT get caught up in the level of play, the maniacal crowds, the intensity and tension and everything else. It's impossible.

4. Widescreen TVs make it easier to see the field; HD makes it easier to see faces and numbers (and the grass looks green and vibrant); and better camerawork (and also more cameras) make the games more intimate. Now you feel like the players are flopping right onto your living room rug! Just kidding, soccer fans. Seriously, settle down. Jokes.

5. International soccer never took off here for the simple reason that American sports fans had trouble following anything they couldn't attend in person and/or watch on television at their leisure. Now? We're turning into a sofa culture; since it's more expensive to go to games, many of us find it just as rewarding to stay home, save money and watch games on a nice TV. Throw in the Internet, DirecTV, fan blogs and everything else and you really can follow soccer from across the Atlantic.

That's why, over the next decade -- starting with the World Cup in 2010 -- I predict international soccer takes off to a modest degree in America during the '10s. Not to compare everything to "The Godfather," but for America, the NASL was Sonny (exciting, impetuous and ultimately self-destructive), the MLS is Fredo (weak) and international soccer is Michael (the heavy hitter who was lurking all along). That's how this plays out I think.

The palpable excitement in Seattle over the Sounders' match against Chelsea is, hopefully, a sign of things to come.