Rock for Hall of Fame (For the Umpteenth Time!)

It's a personal human tradition for me to write in this blog one month prior to Baseball Hall of Fame voting time to launch an impassioned plea for sports super star and icon, Mr. Rock Raines, to be accepted into baseball's most hallowed of shrines.

Previous Ones:

2011: http://writtting-d.blogspot.ca/2011/12/baseball-hall-of-fame-is-incomplete.html

2012: http://writtting-d.blogspot.ca/2012/12/last-year-prior-to-hall-of-fame-voting.html

2013: http://writtting-d.blogspot.ca/2013/11/rock-hall-3.html

2014: http://writtting-d.blogspot.ca/2014/10/the-greatest-lead-off-guys-evar.html
(this one I wrote whilst watching the world series and went on really looong and I wroted A LOT).


In all seriousness, I'm out of things to say......I really am.

So.....This year we will be comparing the Rock to other people and things who share the monicker of "Rock" and attempt to decide via a scientific ranking method....which is the greatest Rock of All Time.

The entries are the following:

1) Tim "Rock" Raines
2) Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
3) Rock and Roll (the musical genre)
4) Charles "Roc" Dutton
5) Actual Rocks (like you see in mountains and in nature and whatnot)


Which of these five Rocks shall be crowned the King Rock? You'll have to read to find out (or scroll to the bottom...I guess that would work too).


The Rocks 


1) Tim "Rock" Raines

Tim Raines is the greatest. Tim Raines is an icon. Tim Raines is by far one of baseball's champions of the 80s and 90s.

This man could really play well. He could really knock it out. He was number one in the mix. He was the greatest baseball player. He could really rock it out. He could literally Rock the Place Apart.

Rock over London.
Rock on Chicago.
Wheaties.....Breakfast of Champions!

Tim Raines can Rock...he can Roll....he can Rock 'til the age of 101 years old and therefore his final rating on a scale of 100 will be 101. Wow.


Final Overall Classification: 101/100




2) Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson

Dwayne Johnson is in this contest? Oh crap. That's some stern competition for Greatest Rock of All Time. This Rock is a Legend too.

The Rock Says, The Rock Says....

This man was at one time the self proclaimed Most Electrifying Man in Sports Entertainment. He is possibly the most quoted man of all time. People think like Einstein or someone is the most quoted man of all time....but they are very wrong.

If the Rock said anything back in the day....800 million people would start saying it the next day at work and at school. Like one time he said...."know your role".....and the day after he said that EVERYONE started saying that. Like, one time he called someone a Jabroni and then EVERYONE started to say that.

Now, as a person who oft uses the term Jabroni, it must be noted that the Rock did not invent that term but merely propelled it into stardom and into the Webster's Dictionary.

In the Documentary film, "The Sheik", by the Magen Brothers....The Rock has this to say about where he came across the term "Jabroni"....

"[Sheik took me under his wing to share his insight and wisdom]....and I'll never forget, I'll never ever forget...it was a very long flight and he said....'Bubba, let me tell ya, you go into the locker room, you sit down, you keep your mouth shut, you open your ears and you listen to everybody, ok? Don't be the Jabroni'...."

        (The Rock, from The Sheik Movie, 2014)


It is an undisputed fact that he learned the word from the Iron Sheik....but even then...it was the Rock who propelled that term into being the greatest word of the modern era.

It is. It's AWESOME.

It is a pretty great feat to have introduced the greatest word of all time into our lexicon. Damn, this greatest Rock of All Time is going to be harder to declare then I previously thought it was going to be.

All in All, Dwayne Johnson may have coined the best word of our times but since the Iron Sheik originated it....unfortunately......this Rock must be given a negative 10 deduction to his otherwise perfect score.

Final Overall Classification: 90/100



3. Rock and(/or) Roll, The Musical Genre

Everyone always tells me that Rock and Roll is Dead. That it died in about 1991. We know music sucks now and no one makes good music anymore....but is Rock n' Roll really Dead?

I don't think so. I think Rock and Roll has been jettisoned from the music scene these days but I know for A FACT that Rock and Roll cannot die. Rock and Roll is more powerful than a mere human like you or I can grasp. Even if we cannot see Rock and Roll anymore in today's music it doesn't mean it's gone forever.

Yes, as of right now Rock and Roll is dormant....yet.....we all know that no one can kill Rock and Roll. You might think Rock and Roll is dead...but one day, you're gonna walk into a MacDonald's and out of nowhere....Rock and Roll is gonna Rise Above like a Phoenix of the Night and Rock your fucking ass OFF.

Ya!

Rock n' Roll is not dead....it's just harder to find it these days.

Final Overall Classification: 67/100

4. Charles "Roc" Dutton

Now, I've read that he Don Kinged some dude(s) back in the day and I don't know anything about that. It's neither here nor there....I only know Charles "Roc" Dutton from the characters he's portrayed in Movies and Tv Shows.

It's not so much his portrayal of the Roc character that wins him a spot on the list of greatest Rocks of All Time (and yes I understand that his name is missing the K and it's more like Roc the mythical bird but whatever). It is his portrayal of the maintenance man in "Rudy" that wins him a spot on this list.

Man, in that movie Rudy...that friggin' Rudy was being a little weiner at one point being all whiny and shit....and then Roc tells him...."Rudy, you're a spoiled brat...you think that getting a college grade education is a "waste"? You're a fool, Rudy." (or something to that extent...I'll see if there's a clip on youtubes).

Oh shit....there's a REGIS VERSION!? WHAT THE HECK!? This is cool.....

Haha. This is cool.

I saw that movie Rudy when I was a youngster and that scene really taught me to "Count my Blessings as Such" and that's a pretty powerful lesson for a youngster to learn, bubba, and I learned that very valuable life lesson from the Roc....so yeah...he really does deserve a spot on the greatest Rocks list even if he is missing the K in his name.

Final Overall Classification: 74/100


5. Actual Literal Rocks like in Nature and Mountains and Whatnot

There's three types of geologically classified Rocks and that's...

1. Igneous
2. Sedimentary

and,

3. Meta-Morphic

People flip over Meta-Morphic because it sounds like some Voltron or Power Rangers type rock but it's not. Meta-Morphic mostly has to do with lava and volcanoes.....which is kind lame.

Whatever, Actual Rocks. Who Cares?

Igneous sounds like a sturdy sorta Rock you can really hang your hat on. I respect Igneous Rocks, yes. Sedimentary is cool because it's all layer on layer and it looks nice when you see like a mountain that has all these layers of different colors. It's very appealing to the eye.

I mean lava, and layers, and sturdiness is ok and everything....but I'm not really all that a big huge fan of regular rocks. Like, you can be in snowball fight and a stupid kid'll throw a snowball that has a rock, or stone, or pebble in it...and that's it man....you get that in the face and it's lights out and someone's mom makes you stop playing snow ball fight and everyone has to go home.

Never really liked Literal Rocks all that much, really.

Final Overall Classification: 42/100



Final Assessment on Rocks

From worst to most Greatest Ever.....

5. Literal Actual Rocks like in Nature and Mountains and Whatnot
4. Rock and Roll The Musical Genre
3. Charles "Roc" Dutton
2. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson


and.......The Greatest Rock of All Time........is......

1. Tim "Rock" Raines !!!!  

 

Rock the Hall 3

When the snow starts falling that means the Hall of Fame voting season is about to get under way. It's becoming sort of a winter tradition to promote Timmy Raines for the Hall of Fame.

2011 piece) The Hall of Fame is Incomplete without Tim Raines in it

2012 piece) On Tim Raines and the Hall of Fame (again) 

This year we're going to focus on some "what if" projections to showcase some flashy numbers. I love projecting using statistics ever since I first learned about it. You know that cross-multiplying business? I love that...I really honestly enjoy cross-multiplying. I cross multiply like a mad man sometimes. I cross multiply like a bat outta hell and don't even think twice about it. I like taking data of past trends to project future trends...it's really really fun. You can use it to quantify and project all kinds of stuff too not just baseball statistics.

Cross Multiplication

Alrighty, so in this year's traditional Tim Raines for Hall of Fame article, we shall take it simple and take two events from the past and apply cross multiplication to produce "what-if" scenarios.

First off, let's take a nice past event, like the 1981 season, which for Expos fans is like THE season of seasons. Here's Rock's stat line from the 1981 campaign:

Plate Appearances: 363
Hits: 95
Walks: 45
Stolen Bases: 71
Caught Stealin': 11

As many of you know, the 1981 Major League baseball campaign was a strike shortened due to labor disputes and it was not a standard 162 game season. In a standard season players, and in this case a leadoff batter, can get up to 700+ plate appearances. You know where I'm going with this right? If he stole 71 bases in 363 plate appearances...then how many would he have stole if the season was a standard 162 game season instead of a shortened one?

Enter now my homie...Mr. Cross Multiplication,

71 over 363...over a nice round number such as 700 would give us...137.

If he continued at that pace, the Rock would have stole 137 bases in 1981. That's 7 more than the 130 Rickey Henderson stole in 1982 which is the most all time. If the strike never happened Rock could have been the single season stolen base champion, it is very conceivable and highly plausible.

The second data set we shall take is the 1987 MLB campaign. The Rock's plate appearances were hindered in this season due to the collusion against free agents conspired against the players by the owners (see: 1987 collusion). He missed a full month of games due to the collusion and produced these numbers in that time:

Games: 139
Plate Appearances: 627
Runs: 123
Hits: 175
Walks: 90
Homers: 18
Steals: 50
Catched Stealin': 5

Okay let's get some numbers to work with...

1. 162 (games in standard season) - 139 =  23
2. Cross multiply PA with G and add 23 games worth would give us...103 extra PA to total 730.

Okay...so what would these numbers have been in a 730 PA season? Once again using our best friend cross multiplication, the hypothetical results are:

Games: 162
Plate Appearances: 730
Runs: 143
Hits: 203
Walks:  104
Homers: 21
Steals: 58
Catched Stealin': 5

Yeah...143 runs scored.

Without the collusion, Raines could have conceivably and very plausibly scored more than 140 runs in 1987...which is quite a lot. To me runs are what wins games, it doesn't matter to me if a player crossed the plate from a homerun or because he was wicked fast at getting around the bases. I know to most fans homeruns are the coolest thing ever and all but a run is a run and someone who can score that many runs in a year is pretty amazing.

For people or voters who think homeruns are the only important thing in baseball this projection also shows that Raines could have surpassed the arbitrary mark of 20 homers in a season as well. He had decent power too if that's what you want.

Conclusion

Just a short and brief Raines for Hall of Fame article this year. If you're a Hall of Fame voter some of these projection stats may stand out to you though. Without the strike of 1981 or the collusion of 1987 some pretty impressive stats may have landed in the columns of Tim Raines' baseball card.

137 Stolen Bases in 1981
143 Runs Scored  in 1987

Pretty intense if you ask me.

Comparison and Contrast of two Baseball Owners: Bill Veeck (the legend) and Bud Selig (the bum)

Veeck as in Wreck (or Cheque)

I've read a lot of books over the years, I like to throw in a baseball biography book every so often. I recently read Bill Veeck's "Veeck as in Wreck." In it, Veeck states that he began reading at a young age and by his teenage years until his late years he read at least five books per week. Judging by his insight, I believe that Veeck did indeed read five books a week throughout his life. This guy was a real renegade and it's too bad that all real renegades brains operate 20 to 50 years ahead of their time.

Backstory on Veeck

Veeck's father (Bill Veeck Sr.) was a sportswriter who in 1919 wrote a critical article of how the owner of the Chicago Cubs (Phil Wrigley Jr.) was operating his club, the article was poignant and sharp-cutting to the bone, enough so, to land him a phone call from Wrigley stating that if Veeck Sr. thought he could do a better job than why doesn't he come down and do it. Veeck Sr. did, and Wrigley hired Veeck Sr. to be president of the Cubs.

Eddie walked on 4 pitches...

Veeck Sr. gave his son (our protagonist Bill Veeck) a job counting tickets. After the years Veeck Jr. was promoted by Phil Wrigley into higher and higher posts with the Cubs. Veeck was in charge of all concession operations at Wrigley. According to Veeck, he was the one who had the idea of putting the now-iconic vines on the Wrigley Field brick outfield wall.

In 1942 (five years prior to the fall of segregation in baseball), Veeck had a great idea, he wanted to gather up some investors and pool up money to purchase the struggling Philadelphia Phillies. The team was horrible, posting only 43 wins and 111 losses in the previous 1941 campaign, and only drawing 231,401 fans for the entire season. Veeck knew he could get the club cheap and had a brilliant idea to turn a last place club drawing only 0.2 million fans into a first place club who could draw 2.0 million fans. What was his brilliant idea? After he purchased the club, he planned on stocking it with superstars from the Negro Leagues (Paige, Doby, Robinson, etc.).

Now, the color line in baseball was never written in any rule books. Black players were playing in baseball leagues with other white players with no problem in the late 1800's. The color barrier arose in 1884, when the premier white star player Cap Anson refused to take the field when his team signed a black catcher named Moses Fleetwood Walker. The league responded to Cap's protest by forming a "gentlemanly agreement" made between all the owners to not sign black players. The owners, being very racist but also men of their word it seems, kept their "gentlemanly agreement" in effect for over 60 years.

So, in 1942 as stated above, Veeck (who was also the midwest promoter for the all-black Harlem Globetrotters basketball club) wanted to buy a Major League Baseball club and load it with superstar black players from the negro leagues. How do you think the stuffy, conservative, old boys club, owners felt about this suggestion?

Charlie "Tokohama"

The only previous attempt to break the "gentlemanly" agreed upon color barrier, was in 1901 (as written about in Robert Peterson's book "Only the Ball was White") when Baltimore manager John McGraw tried to sneak a quick one by baseball's stuffy owners. He wanted to get second baseman Charlie Grant onto the Baltimore roster and his plan was to tell the owners Grant was a Cherokee Native American. Other Native American players were on rosters in that era (including Chief Bender, Bill Phyle, and Louis Sockalexis), only players of African decent were systematically kept out of baseball. McGraw listed Grant on his roster as "Charlie Tokohama" and hoped he could sneak him past the league officials and onto the Orioles. Unfortunately, McGraw's guile didn't slip past the stuffy owners, and his clever ruse ultimately failed.

Larry Doby

The same end met Veeck's attempt to sign black players. Since black Americans were fighting for their country in World War II, Veeck felt that times had changed and the owners wouldn't mind if baseball's 60 year color barrier was broken. He was confident enough to let the cat out of the bag too early, by letting the owners in on his plan. The crusty old commissioner of baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and the owners took over the Phillies before Veeck could buy the club. The owners jointly owned the club running at a loss until a new interested owner could be found (one who wouldn't sign black players). Eventually they found a stuffy old businessman named William D. Cox to purchase the league owned club and Cox surely did not sign any black dudes.

Max Patkin

Veeck eventually did purchase a team, the Cleveland Indians. After Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947 with Branch Rickey and the Dodgers, Veeck was able to sign black players and did so by adding hard hitting lefty Larry Doby and 50 year old legend Satchel Paige to the Indians roster.

Veeck went on to stints operating the Browns, and White Sox as well. He did not have an inherited family fortune like all the other owners, he had to keep his clubs afloat the old fashioned way, by giving his customers entertainment and satisfaction. Over the years he sent a midget to pinch hit, he hired colorful ball players like Max Patkin and others to play or coach bases, installed a fire works spouting "exploding" scoreboard, and accidently caused a punk rock riot at Comiskey Park by holding "Disco Demolition Night," where the blowing up of disco records turned a little unruly (as shown in the video below)...

With all due respect, credit for this idea should go to Canada's own punk rock icon Joey "Shithead" Keithley of D.O.A. who one year prior in 1978 held a "Disco Sucks" rally in Vancouver, Canada...

Ahead of his Time

Veeck brought up all kinds of things at owners meetings that were laughed at and scorned at by the stuffy shirted and cranky pantsed owners.

He had the foresight to see that the reserve clause (which kept players as being owned by their team) was not right and wanted to take it out of baseball. He even testified at Curt Flood's Supreme Court hearing when Flood challenged the reserve clause (Flood called the clause similar to slavery).

(newspaper article on Veeck's testimony at Flood's anti-trust suit)

Veeck proposed things from alterations to the minor league system, inter league play, and a slew of other things which were adopted by baseball 20 to 50 years later but at the time he proposed them they were considered as the ridiculous ravings of a jerk.

At the end of Veeck's book, "Veeck as in Wreck", there is a very omnious portion which sheds light on present day problems in baseball. After being out of baseball for years and finally returning as owner of the White Sox in the 70's, Veeck held a press conference in a hotel lobby and let in all the fans to chill and sell wares and whatnot. The new owner of the Milwaukee Brewers (a city where Veeck operated his first club, the minor league Brewers back in the early 40's and laid the ground work for baseball there), one Bud Selig, a young ugly punk, told Veeck that he is ruining baseball and turning it into a "meat market." Veeck knew that baseball may have had some new younger owners, but he realized that they were as stuffy and narrow minded as the old ones.

20 to 50 Years Later

Fast forward to the year 1997, and Bud Selig unvails the revolutionary concept of Interleague Play and the orthodox fundamentalist owners faction proclaims him a renegade genius who's "outside the box mousy radical" thinking is saving the game. Gee, I wonder where he got that idea from? 

Selig has been the commissioner for over over twenty years now, and the last twenty years is where baseball has gotten out of control. Salaries are out of control, steroids are out of control, the inequities between small and large markets are out of control, a World Series (1994) was cancelled, and a slew of other nonsense. He is the first owner to be commissioner which is an obvious total conflict of interest. Baseball really is a "meat market" now, but it wasn't Bill Veeck who made it this way, it was that bum Selig.

I think Bill Veeck is still alive somewhere having a beer with Elvis Presley, Andy Kaufman, and Bigfoot. I think he's taking cabs around whatever town he's in, hitting all the local bars, trying to drum up support from investors to buy a club. I hope he's telling them it's all in debentures and they'll get half their returns next quarter and the other half when "they can catch him." 

Who Selig? Yeah, we should jerk the bum.

Here's an ending quote to conclude this article from Mr. Bill Veeck himself,

"And who knows, the status quo of baseball might just look at the track record the next time I push for something like interleague play and say, 'alright let's humor this jerk for once.' And you know something? That's when it's time to start worrying. When they listen to your ravings with indulgence and, heaven help me, affection, you know you've joined the herd". 

-Bill Veeck