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.
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
Everyonealways 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......
I mainly write things in this blog to get better at the skill known as Writing. It's like any other skill, writing is, like you have to practice to get any good at it. I always used to read a lot but writing is more harder than reading and thus is a harder challenge to take on. Gettin' good at writing is like going to the driving range, or taking a car to a field to drive around and learn it....to really learn writing you got to go to a field (a paper or a computer screen) and start punchin' up keys 'til you gain proficiency as such.
This site mainly deals with essay-style writing because that's the only style I really know...but movie writing seems fun too.
I was on the internet the other day and saw someone a tweet a movie pitch he had to Jean Claude Van Damme over twitter. It was the internet writer Seanbaby and he pitched a sequel to Time Cop via twitter. He broke the pitch into 48 twitterable chunks and then assembled them chronologically backwards so if you are reading the film from his twitter feed...it would read from start to finish.
I realized while reading that Time Cop 2 pitch...that I've seen so many movies....that I can play a movie in my head and basically construct and visualize an entire film that doesn't exist in my brain. While reading the Time Cop 2 script I could easily visualize the goings-on of this film, no problem at all. It feels like I've already seen Tim Cop 2 even though it does not even exist.
Looking back, I've visualized entire films in my head over the course of a general-day many times....just from my imagination and nothing else. I look into the abyss of nothingness in my skull and then slowly visualize entire films from start to finish. Films that don't exist...films constructed from experiences of watching many films.
Sanguillen's Quest
Like one time, I read this article about how Pirates catcher Manny Sanguillen refused to believe that Roberto Clemente died in a plane crash and vowed to search the area where his plane went down and find his friend alive. While reading that article, I kept thinking, "damn, this would make such a touching film." The next day while at work and showering and stuff....that movie happened in my head. Manny Sanguillen's search for his friend kept me unbored while doing shitty stuff at work. This wasn't a great movie, though, it was a long time ago, it was probably like 10 years ago...my mental movies are better now. My imagination got too out of hand with this film and Sanguillen, whilst in the jungles of Nicaragua (or was it Ecuador?), had to battle lizards....and then the lizards kept getting bigger...and by the end he was fighting Dinosaurs with Lazor Beamz and it was just a silly place to take a heartwarming film such as this.
Committing these mental movies to some sort of existent record may be a fun exercise. Maybe it'll teach me how to write movies. You have to stick to your strengths when trying to write a new style of writing....and when it comes to movies...I seem to have some experience writing bio-pics for obscure baseball catchers.
Oh wait...I just remembered....
One time I did write a baseball bio-pic in school as a sort of joke thing to see what the teacher would say. I copied it to this blog and it's in this article over here....
That Steve Jeltz Christmas story is a very very heartwarming story. I was young when I wrote that, re-reading it now...I think I was a better person back then.
Soooo.....the only experience I have in both fiction writing and story telling is with obscure baseball players so I might as well train harder in the Obscure Baseball Player Story Telling genre in order to not have to learn anything new or apply myself too much whilst practicing movie writing.
First we'll need an obscure player, and sticking with the back-up catcher motif, we shall try and write a back-up catcher bio-pic. Hmmmmm, how about.....
A Mike LaValliere romance-comedy? No.
A Tony Eusabio crime drama?No.
A Ron Karkovice buddy cop film?No.
A deep introspective kafka-esque Lenny Webster vehicle?No.
A Rick Cerone workin' man movie? Hmmmmm......Yes!
The Rick Cerone Story
Well, that's the movie I'm gonna play around with in order to try and learn how to write movies. So, you can stop reading now if you want or you can follow me on this amazing adventure in learning.
Baseball bio pics are pretty common....I read there's a Bill Lee one coming out produced by Eric Gagne. I'm gonna watch that for sure.
The premise for the Bill Lee movie (this Bill Lee movie is a real one not like mine) has him fooling around in rural Quebec from what I've read and I don't know how that will sell to American audiences. I think they'd make more money setting it in Boston, no? It's not even Montreal it's set in, it's set in like the Triple AAA league and in like Granby or something.
I watched that Jackie Robinson bio-pic with Harrison Ford and it was really good and it made big bucks. Montreal had a big role to play in Jackie's rise to success yet in the movie they really cut out any reference to Montreal except for a brief mention by Ford at one point. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed but I understand why they set it in Florida and that's because American audiences respond better to that. They don't want to hear about french Canada if they don't have to. The Bill Lee movie, I hope it does well, despite being set in rural french Canada. I think it's a great idea but I'm not sure how the American audiences will react to the non-american setting for the Bill Lee bio-pic.
Anyways, this article I'm writing is about my baseball bio-pic so we better get to it. My movie isn't gonna have any trouble with setting because it's gonna be set in the biggest city there is...New Fucking York in 19-fucking-81...The Big Apple, baby. That's the biggest setting there is!
Now we need some historical information to base our "based on actual events" bio-pic on. If you're not familiar with that phrase it basically means...."based on something we read once and it sounded cool so we stole the idea." I'm gonna use this New York Times article as my "actual events" as such.
Did you read it? Now do you see why a Rick Cerone "workin' man versus the big wig" type of movie would be awesome? All the characters for the film are set-up from that 1981 Dave Anderson article. The working hero and the rich evil big wig boss that is keeping our hero down.....those two polarized characters are easy to work with. George Steinbrenner as the villain is a great character to work with, most people remember the back-of-his-head portrayed in Seinfeld yet my movie will portray all-of-his-head and even his body.
The first high-drama climactic scene will be based of the actual event of Cerone and Steinbrenner "exchanging expletives word-for-word." The schism event will be everyone turning on Cerone which makes him feel down and sad...but as you can see from the source-material article....the victory at the end will be "50,000 fans cheering for the hero" Rick Cerone.... and in the end his enemy will accept him as being "my type of ball player." So it will be a happy ending for sure.
Hmmmm, we need a few more characters. We need a comedy-relief dopey side-kick who plays Cerone's roomate, we need a cool black guy who doesn't dig Cerone at first but by the end really digs him, we need a sub-boss secondary villain and we need a hot-chick too. I can fill those roles by looking at the 1981/1982 Yankees rosters....and for the chick I'll just google a hot celeb from 1981/82 and pretend Cerone and her were intimate lovers.
So let's make a list before it gets too confusing, these are the basics so far.
Title: The Rick Cerone Story
Hero: Rick Cerone Bad Guy: George Steinbrenner Vice-BadGuy: Bob Lemon Dopey Side-Kick: Lou Pinella or Bucky Dent Cool Black Dude: Oscar Gamble Hot Chick: Olivia Newton-John
Main Theme: A "Stone Cold vs. Vince McMahon" style thing of the Working Man fights back against The Boss. Secondary Themes: Baseball, Italian Culture of the 80s, White person and Black person becoming best friends, swearing, toilet humor.
Schism: Steinbrenner's dislike for Cerone spreads throughout the entire organization and all the Yankees, even the FANS, start hating poor Rick Cerone. Will he quit baseball forever or will he win back his teammates and fans hearts?
Climactic Victory: Through strength of character and a timely homerun....Rick Cerone wins his teammates respect and the adulation of New York baseball fans.
Oscar Gamble = Cool Black Dude
Ooooooh, it sounds pretty good, this movie. Obviously we need a cast. Now, for that Bill Lee bio-pic they cast a real pretty-boy named Josh Duhamel to play Lee....but my movie's lead is a workin' man so I can't cast a pretty boy type. I need a big overweight Italian guy to portray Rick Cerone correctly.
We need an overweight, Italian, preferably a Yankees fan, who excels at swearin' and toilet humor....hmmm....
An image is forming in my mind, yes, it is. I can see who meets these criterion crystal clear in my brain. The ONLY person who I can think of who possibly can do justice to this film and tell the important story that NEEDS to be told with this Rick Cerone bio picture is...of course...
Artie Lange.
Artie Lange as Rick Cerone.
Lange is the only human on earth who could enter into the Rick Cerone character and really do it the justice it deserves. It's a perfect fit. We're talking oscar here...not Oscar Gamble this time....but oscar like award-oscar. If someone actually makes this film and casts Artie Lange as the lead....I absolutely guarantee it will be regarded as a cinematic triumph of the amazingest degree. No joke.
They'd need to dye his hair and stuff though so he can pass as being a 29 year old athlete....but he has range, Artie, so I think he can stretch the role and pull it off.
You should see how the movie goes in my head, it's great, like Artie is really really good in it. He's funny but he's also very believable and the audience really relates to him.
The other actors can be slotted in later...the villain has to be mean, the side kick has to be goofy, the black dude has to be cool, and the chick has to be hot...that's the only criterion for those roles.
Look, after I'm done punchin' up dis script I'm gonna shop it around to all the big movie people and shit so I'm not gonna just throw the script in the next section, but, I will provide dialogue samples from certain key scenes of the film.
Sample Scenes
Okie-doke, so here are some samplers from the script. I'll set them up so you know what the fuck is going on in the scene too.
Humorous Scene 2C: In this will-be memorable scene, Rick Cerone is catching in a game but needs to use the bathroom to move his bowels. The umpire is another Italian man named Ron Luciano (who is played by Ernest Borgnine....oh wait...he's dead...sorry...Ron Luciano will be played by Pat Cooper).
This scene is based on the actual event when Hubie Brooks one time (this actually happened) called time out to go take a leak during an at-bat.
Hubie had to go to the bathroom.
In real life Hubie had to number-1 but in my Luciano-Cerone scene it is a heavy number-2 that Cerone needs to evacuate from his body. Both characters being Italian, you'll noticed that, they use a lot of Italianized english terms and talk a lot about Italian cuisine. The scene begins as Cerone catches a fastball and turns to look at Luciano and says...
Rick Cerone: Luch! Holy shit! I...I....I gotta go!
Ron Luciano: Go? Whaddya talkin' 'bout "go"? Go where? Wat the fuck you talkin' 'bout?
Rick Cerone: You fuckin' fongoul...I gotta fucking take a shit!
Ron Luciano: A shit!? What? There's NO SHITTIN' IN BASEBALL! Ya dumb segarsi!
Rick Cerone: Luch, man, I gotta go, I'm not fucking shittin' you man...I gotta shit!
Ron Luciano: Are you fuckin' kiddin' me? You're fucking joking ya stupid asshole! Skeevosa!
Rick Cerone: You're gonna see in about 5 seconds that I wasn't jokin' you fat piece of garbage!
Ron Luciano: You cazzo-suckin' asshole! Turn aroun' and leave me the fuck alone!
Rick Cerone: Luch....on my grandmother's grave...I swear I'm telling the truth.
Ron Luciano: On....your grandmother's grave?
Rick Cerone: Ya. Man, I ate 2 cannolies, a pizza, and a buncha gnoccies for pranzo!
Ron Luciano: You crazy sonavabitch...........TIME!
(Wow, you should see Pat Cooper in this scene....he is simply impeccable....like his timing and stuff).
Confrontation Scene 1F:
In this scene Rick Cerone has just made a grievous mental error of a magnitude which most would describe as being "game-altering". George Steinbrenner (all of his head, not just the back of his head) calls Rick on the telephone and proceeds to tell him he's over-weight, stupid, and ugly.
Rick Cerone: Hello, it's me Rick Cerone. Who the fuck is this?
George Steinbrenner: Who the fuck is this!? Who the fuck do you think asshole!?
Rick Cerone: Oh, Mr. Steinbrenner hi, uh, howzit goin' ?
George Steinbrenner: Ooooooh just swell, just swell fatso.....
Rick Cerone: ....
George Steinbrenner: It's just that your dumpy mentally-crippled ass COST ME THE GAME!
Rick Cerone: Hey, hey...come on. Didja see how Goose pitched today? He sucked shit!
George Steinbrenner: No! You know who sucked shit out there, today? YOU DID FUCK FACE!
Rick Cerone: ME!? FUCK FACE!? Ya I'm a fuck face alright....BECAUSE I FUCK FACES!
George Steinbrenner: You fuck faces? NO! You have the face that gets fucked....fuck-face!
Rick Cerone: Wanna bet? How 'bout I come into your office and fuck you in the face?
George Steinbrenner: YOU fuck ME in the face? You fat stupid retarded asshole! FUCK YOU. Rick Cerone: You're the fuck-face...you fucked-up fuckin' FUCK FACE. Fuck you MORE than FUCK ME! BYE! FUCKER!
(Ooooh that scene's intense. This is the eighties too so it's those rotary phones you can SLAM down hard and shit. Wow).
Reconciliation Scene 2B.1 In his scene Oscar Gamble and his humongous and wicked-cool afro come to make amends with Rick Cerone after Rick helps Oscar's girlfriend fend off creeps at a Detroit disco-tech after a road game.
Oscar Gamble:Yo smooth brother..... Rick Cerone: ???
Oscar Gamble: I.....I.....I.....yo.....thanks for helpin' my girl back in Detroit. Rick Cerone: Hey, it's nuthin' man. Oscar Gamble: Smooth brother....I'm sorry for calling you a fat ugly Guinea Dego piece of shit. Rick Cerone: Ya. I'm sorry for calling you a retarded moolie asshole. Oscar Gamble: Hey man....what's done is done. It's water under the bridge, smooth brother. Rick Cerone: Osc, you've really taught me a lot 'bout hittin' n' losin' weight....I..... Oscar Gamble: Hey man, we're teammates and dats what teammates do. Rick Cerone: Life is tough sometimes, Osc. Oscar Gamble: Hey, life is always tough. They don't think it be like it IS....but it DO!
Words of Wisdom
Filler Scene 3A:
To fill up some screen time there's a part where Cerone goes down to Mexico to play some Winter Ball after the '80 season and he befriends fellow Italian Don Demola who's re-conditioning his arm after surgery down there. They are battery partners when A HUGE BRAWL breaks out after Demola hits a batter with a pitch and Cerone picks up the batter and helicopter suplexes him.
This scene is based on the actual event stated in Tommy Lasorda's book where he claims in a winter ball game to have hit a batter....then the batter charged the mound....and then Lasorda CLAIMS to have picked him up, spun him around like a helicopter, and then suplexed him. Personally, I don't believe Tommy Lasorda did this but it is stated in his book that he did and this is the "actual event" that this scene is inspired/stolen from.
(Note: Don Demola is a pretty funny Italian guy with a good accent.....See this interview)
(Note II: The brackets mean they're thinking to themselfs.)
Rick Cerone: (He wants inside!? Fuck, he's gonna nail this asshole!)
Don DeMola: (I'm gonna whack dis asshole. Fuck this guy. I'm nailin' him)
Rick Cerone: (Oh shit....here we go again.) *WHACK*
Don DeMola: Here he comes! Aaaaaaaaaeeeeeeeeiiiieeeeeeeee!
Rick Cerone: What the fuck! He's getting his ass kicked!
Don DeMola: Yo Rick! Come fuck this guy up! Give him the helicopta suplex technique!
Rick Cerone: You ready!? You ready for the Rick Cerone Helicopter Suplex Mark II !?
Don DeMola: HOLY SHIT! HE'S GOT 'IM IN DA HELICOPTA SUPLEX! HOLY SHIT!
Rick Cerone: GRRRRRRRRAAAAARGH! BLAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGH! YAAAAAAAA!
Don DeMola: Whoa! Rick....dat was cool!
(This scene is really cool.)
Conclusion
Alrighty, so I'm gonna pitch my script to all the big producers and shit. It'll get made, probably. Someone'll probably steal the idea but it'll get made eventually I bet.....maybe.
It's so good this movie, it doesn't have T-Rexes like my Manny Sanguillen non-existant mentally visualized film but it's still very very good.
Pat Cooper's great in it, and the guy who plays Don DeMola is a kid who's new but really good at acting. Oh and fuck, the chick who plays Olivia Newtons-John is soooooo sexy it's not even funny.
Everybody wants the next big-thing and I can honestly ensure you that back-up catcher bio-pics is the way to go. It's the new thing.
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.
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:
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:
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.
How good was Tim Raines? That depends a lot on who you ask I guess. If you ask someone from New York they’ll tell he was a great forth outfielder/DH and a key factor in bringing the up and coming Yankees over the hump to win their first World Series of many. If you ask a guy from Chicago, he’ll tell you Raines was a great leadoff hitter who set the table for the south side sluggers (Frank Thomas, Robin Ventura, and Ellis Burks). All of that is of course true but what if you asked someone from Montreal? It seems much of what happened in Montreal in the eighties has been lost to the baseball world, in fact in ten or fifteen years the Montreal Expos will probably be lost from the collective mind of baseball fans all together. I however, am a guy from Montreal, and I know how good Tim Raines was.
Where to begin? Well, the first memory I have of the Rock was when I was about four years old and was attending a game at Olympic Stadium with my family. I was having trouble seeing what was going on because I was short and such, but all of sudden everyone stood up and went crazy. I asked my father and older sister what had happened and they told me Tim Raines just homered. Of course I was familiar with this “Tim Raines” character already, I had baseball cards and the like, I was no idiot you know. Angered for missing what just happened, I asked where he hit it, as to which my father pointed to a Cocoa-Cola sign in left-center field, and I was dumbfounded. How could a human-man hit a ball that far? I was used to hitting homers into the neighbors yard at this point in my life, from home plate to that Cocoa-Cola sign must’ve been 100,000 of my backyards taped together…a long freaking way man. At this point I was convinced this “Tim Raines” was not a mere man at all but rather some sort of human god born from the heavens and suns. I was not scared of him however for I knew he would use these strengths adorned to him for the benefit of the Montreal Expos and not for personal gain. After this moment I followed the career of Tim Raines somewhat more closely than that of his fellow Expo brethren, he became my “favorite player” if you will.
At the school yard in my youth talks of how good Tim Raines was and what he was capable of doing were rampant. I recall one of my friends asking me, “Who would win-in-a-fight, Tim Raines or Superman?” I found the question a bit stupid, Tim Raines of course. “Has Tim Raines ever been to the moon?” Well obviously, he probably has a summer cottage there. “I heard Tim Raines hit for two cycles in one game, drove to the Forum and proceeded to single-handedly defeat the Toronto Maple Leafs 18-0 while scoring six hat-tricks, is that true?” Yes, though I believe it was 22-0. All the questions just bread more questions, how good was this guy?
In Shea Stadium, circa 1987, Tim Raines shocked us all once again. After missing the first month of the season due to the owners free agent boycott The Rock returned with a vengeance. The game tied 3-3 in the bottom of the 13th, Tim Raines came to the plate already seven-for-seven with 2 doubles, 3 triples, 2 singles, 6 stolen bases, and three runs scored. The opposing Mets reliever Jesse Orosco (then a robust 36 year-old) served up a pitch no one would ever forget. Tim Raines hit the pitch out of Shea Stadium…and clear out of New York State. The box score read 7-3, but it should have read Grand Slam outta The City to 3.
That year, 1987, proved to be Tim Raines best season as an Expo. Rock finished the season with a .434 batting average, 78 homeruns, 7,000 RBIs, and 390 stolen bases despite not even playing in April. When asked what his numbers could have been if he played the complete season Raines replied, “I never hit well in April anyway.” Statisticians predict that had Tim Raines played the complete 1987 season and the collusion never happened he would have hit a remarkable .575 while knocking in close to eight billion runners. Wow…
In 1990, news of Tim Raines finally made it to the United States, and in turn the Americans greatest player challenged Montreal’s greatest player to a base-stealing contest. Rickey Henderson, the Greatest That Ever Lived, challenged Tim Raines to a base stealing contest in an exhibition game between the Oakland A’s and the Expos prior to the 1990 season. It was down to the wire, Henderson and Raines both had a dozen stolen bases by the ninth inning…Raines however on the last out made it a bakers by stealing home off of Dennis Eckersley and Terry Steinbach. Henderson, admitting defeat, sulked from the bench and proclaimed himself “The Worst of All Time” then proceeded to play Bobby Bonilla at cards or something. Tim Raines had done it, he became the first player in history to steal 13 bases in one game, though it was an exhibition game and was never recorded in the record books, it happened, believe me…
So how good was Tim Raines? It depends who you ask.
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.
