“You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.” - Jim Bouton
"I was such a dangerous hitter I even got intentional walks during batting practice." - Casey Stengel
"This isn't a job. This is a privilege, that's what this is!" - Mike Krukow, TV Commentator, on being at the ballpark each day.
"I've found that the knowledge of the game is usually in inverse proportion to the price of the seats." -Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox owner.
"Derek Jeter's accomplishment puts Pete Rose's hits record in perspective. 3,000 hits is phenomenal. 4,000? Freakish!" - Anthony Castrovince via Twitter
"The best possible thing in baseball is winning the World Series. The second best thing is losing the World Series." - Tommy Lasorda
"You teach me baseball and I’ll teach you relativity.... You will learn about relativity faster than I learn baseball." - Albert Einstein
"Baseball is a game of race, creed, and color. The race is to first base. The creed is the rules of the game. The color? Well, the home team wears white uniforms, and the visiting team wears gray."
Joe Garagiola
Interesting but I have a few corrections.
I don’t get your argument that, “There’s a lot of players who probably deserve to be All Stars but since voting starts somewhere around February, March, April, there’s no way they’ll be able to make the team.”
The All Star voting begins at the end of April, and doesn’t get going strong until around June as the game gets more press. If your argument is that players who DO NOT deserve to be in the game get voted in too quickly based on a very small sampling of stats. I agree with that. Especially in the case of injured players like Heyward and Utley who’s large number of early votes, (pre-June), made catching them difficult.
However,
As a Braves fan I watched guys like Prado, Glaus, and McCann move up very quickly during Mid-late June based on how hot they were at that time, (Glaus and McCann after slow starts), they gained huge amounts of ground showing that even a late streak can move you steadily up the rankings.
Also,
You might want to take back your Winfield praise:
“A few years back there was a player, Dave Winfield, who refused to play for the Yankees, no matter how much money they offered. There was a lot of rumors and press involved in this, but I’ve always admired his decision, based on a principle.”
Winfield played for the Yankees for 9 Seasons!
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In 2001 Winfield chose to enter the Hall of Fame as a Padre rather than a Yankee. He did indeed play for the Yankees. Thanks for setting the record straight! GFBB
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As a fan of the frequently hapless Mariners, I appreciate the “at least one player from each team” rule. There have been years where that was the only reason a Mariner was on the All-Star Team.
I, too, am frustrated with when the voting takes place. I would like to see the stats calculated from the last All-Star Game. This would allow for the possibility that some players who historically have slow starts would have stats that placed them higher on the scale, for those of us who look at things like that.
And speaking of stats, why don’t they include fielding percentage? (I’m pretty sure it wasn’t included.) Some players’ primary contribution to their team is their fielding. Shouldn’t they be considered for All-Star status?
Glad I stumbled upon your blog.
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Well, Helen, for sure as long as you have Ichiro there’s no worries. My kids live in Seattle so the Mariners have a special place in my heart! Glad to have you on board. Your comments are my favorite part of blogging.
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