Author Archives: Jeff Kallman

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About Jeff Kallman

Member, Internet Baseball Writers Association of America and the Society for American Baseball Research.

Underhanded Counselling?

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Craig Counsell

No, the Cubs did not poach Counsell from the Brewers. What they did to David Ross, however . . .

Would you blame David Ross if you discover he feels like the husband who was thrown over with little to no warning because the wife decided something better was available? OK, that’s not really a fair analogy. Grandpa Rossy is seven years younger than Craig Counsell. But considering the Cubs’ treatment, he might as well be seven years older.

But something isn’t passing the proverbial smell test about Counsell’s hiring and Ross’s firing.

First, let’s clear this one at once. The Cubs didn’t poach Counsell. Not from the Brewers or from anyone else. Counsell’s contract expired first. He didn’t exactly lack for interest once it became known he intended to test his own managerial market. But test it he did, as a proper free agent.

Now, that said, the manner in which the Ross firing and Counsell hiring were done was a weak look. Team president Jed Hoyer had a deal done with Counsell before flying to Ross’s Florida home to meet and execute Ross, the guy from whom Hoyer said he wasn’t really looking to move on. The headline on The Athletic‘s Patrick Mooney’s take said it with jarring simplicity: “David Ross’s downfall as Cubs manager? He isn’t Craig Counsell.”

Just like Rick Renteria wasn’t Joe Maddon. Just like, as things turned out, Maddon—on whom the Cubs “soured” almost too swiftly when they faded from World Series drought busters to also rans—wasn’t Ross, who’d been one of his more valuable role players for that almost surrealistic 2016 World Series run but received a front-office grooming for the bridge to follow after his retirement.

Maddon also proved not to be Counsell. It was Counsell’s Brewers who chased Maddon’s Cubs down in 2018, possibly putting Maddon onto a very warm seat the heat from which swelled a year later—when the Cubs fell from contention, had a chance to knock the Cardinals out of the races, but got swept by the Cardinals in Wrigley Field in their final home set of the year.

Hopefully, someone in the Cubs’ orbit has tipped Counsell to watch his back in case the Cubs’ administration decides, somewhere along the road, no matter what success that administration allows him to have, that he’s not whomever they’d like to romance and marry in due course.

Especially if, as they did with Ross, the Cubs announce he’s their guy in public only to romance a purported upgrade behind closed doors. Especially if they announce Counsell’s their guy despite a season being ended at the hands of Counsell’s now-former team. With the way the Cubs are administered, nothing’s impossible, including infamy.

This isn’t the single most suspicious fire-and-hire I’ve seen in a lifetime of baseball watching. Nothing compares to the shameful Yankee double switch of 1964. They canned an undermined Yogi Berra the day after the Cardinals beat his Yankees in the World Series. Then, they hired Johnny Keane, the skipper who’d just beaten him in that Series.

We learned only later that then-Yankee GM Ralph Houk had every intention of dumping Yogi after the season, no matter what, even backchanneling during the season to gauge Keane’s interest in the Yankee job, if the Cardinals were ready to let him go before their own pennant race comeback and triumph.

At least Ross didn’t get it the way the Mets once dumped an embattled Willie Randolph, either. Feeling fire under his hindquarters over the Mets’ blowing a seven-game National League East lead in September 2007, Randolph and his Mets opened 2008 34-35 and he was fired—after managing a doubleheader split in New York, then flying coast-to-coast to Anaheim to manage a win over the Angels, and getting fired . . . at 3:11 a.m.

As a manager, Ross was better than some, perhaps not as good as others. He earned his players’ trust even as the Cubs administration allowed a championship team to dissipate and a seeming team of also-rans to replace it. Yet he steered them deftly through the 2020 pan-damn-ic and into that surrealistic postseason. And his Cubs played hard in 2022, especially after the All-Star break, and despite the front office fire-selling at that year’s trade deadline.

In 2023, a Cubs team not supposed to compete competed. They pulled themselves to .500 by 27 July, then to 78-67 on 11 September. But from there they collapsed to going 5-12 to finish the season. They’d ended August taking two of three from Counsell’s Brewers but ended the season losing two of three to them.

Counsell’s NL Central-winning Brewers returned to first in the NL Central to stay on 3 August and probably secured it with a nine-game winning streak during that month’s second half, though going 8-4 to finish the regular season didn’t hurt. Then they got swept right out of the wild card series by the eventual NL pennant-winning Diamondbacks.

Except for pan-damn-ically short 2020, Counsell had only one losing season on the Brewers’ bridge. They reached nine postseasons and one National League Championship Series under his command. And Counsell earned respect for managing those runs despite the Brewers not exactly being or behaving like more than a small-market team.

When his contract with the Brewers expired, many were the speculative stories sending Counsell to a very different Mets organisation, under still-new ownership and now administered by the man who hired him in Milwaukee in the first place, David Stearns. Counsell built a reputation as a communicative players’ manager in tune with the game’s analytic side and in synch with the human side.

David Ross

So much for being “their guy” . . .

I saw some speculation that Counsell leveraged the apparent Mets interest in him to carve a large contract out of whomever might win his favour at all. But I also saw smarter observations that the Wisconsin-reared and rooted Counsell—the winningest manager in Brewers history—didn’t want to stray far from home in any job change.

He got what he wanted and more, the Cubs signing him for five years and $40 million to steer their Ricketty ship. That alone may do wonders on future markets for steadily successful managers who are usually expected to work for comparative peanuts and be bosses to players who could buy and sell them for the equivalent of a year’s worth of sales taxes.

The Cubs may not fall into big bidding wars for this winter’s free agency class, but they’re expected to be active enough to fortify a team that looked like a rising team often enough in 2023. Cub fans know only too well how swiftly expectations can turn, of course, but let’s leave it be for now.

I would repeat my earlier counsel to Counsell: watch your back—and not just from Brewers crowds ready to hammer you the first time you lead the Cubs to Milwaukee for a series. The next rising managerial star might turn Cub eyes toward him at the first sign of availability, too. And it may not matter whether or not you continue building a resume that might include managing the Cubs to another World Series title, either.

It took Ross—a World Series hero as a role player on the 2016 Cubs, who hit his final major league home run during that staggering Game Seven—several days to speak out about his execution. Telling Talahassee Democrat writer Jim Henry that anger is poison to him, Ross preferred gratitude:

There was a lot of people who worked really hard alongside me. … I am really thankful for the four years I got, coming from zero coaching experience to getting the chance to manage such a great organization that has impacted my life in a great way. There’s great people there. I really don’t have a whole lot negative to say, to be honest.

I get mad from time to time but I have a lot to be thankful for.

Few men and women pick up and dust off from their unexpected purgings with that kind of grace. The Cubs should consider themselves fortunate that Grandpa Rossy didn’t elect to stay away from future team commemorations as long as the incumbent ownership and administration is in place. As with the case of a certain Yankee legend, nobody might blame him if he did.

“They think you’re supposed to win running away”

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Dusty Baker

“After awhile, you just get tired of answering questions.”—Dusty Baker.

The Yardbarker headline says, “Dusty Baker blames surprising source for retirement.” Then, citing his interview with The Steam Room podcast hosts Ernie Johnson and Charles Barkley, they note the “surprising source” is “bloggers and tweeters” Baker deemed unfair. Baker is not necessarily wrong.

“We had a lot of success here, Ernie and Charles, and then the last couple of months here weren’t very pleasant, because we weren’t ten games ahead,” Baker said of his Astros, whom he managed to a seventh American League Championship Series game this year and in pan-damn-ic short 2020, plus a 2021 World Series loss in six but a 2022 World Series ring—also in six.

You spoil people. They think you’re supposed to win this every year running away and it’s not like that. Every year’s different.

There was a whole bunch of criticism from 30-year-olds and bloggers and tweeters that I’m not doing this and I don’t know that, and I told my wife, ‘You know, I’m kind of tired of this and tired of the scrutiny and if I could go manage and show up at say 6:30 for a 7 o’clock game and leave 30 minutes after the game, don’t do the (pregame and postgame interviews), I could manage for another four or five years.’ You know what I mean? After a while, you just get tired of answering questions.

God and His servant Casey Stengel only know success can soil and spoil. In certain ways, the 74-year-old Baker and his Astros were actually fortunate. Their run of sustained success is comparatively recent. Astro fans actually have time to reconsider, reflect, and remind themselves that sustained success may not always live long. Their own franchise history might be a fine place to start.

They might look to those longtime American League ogres who carried slightly more than half a century worth of pennants and slightly more than a quarter century worth of World Series titles into the current century. Yankee fans are nothing if not spoiled rotten enough to believe a) the World Series is illegitimate without the Yankees in it; and, b) they are as entitled to Yankee success as the Yankees themselves.

They might look to the National League West owners, too. Those Dodgers who’ve won ten of the past eleven NL West races, including eight straight before 2021 and the past two consecutive, and who had considerable success in the second half of the 20th Century. Starting with winning six pennants (including two pair of back-to-back flags) and Brooklyn’s only World Series in eleven years; continuing with four pennants and three World Series rings within their first nine years in Los Angeles.

Dodger fans are almost as spoiled as Yankee fans these days. And, almost as frustrated. They may not yet think a World Series is illegitimate without the Dodgers in it, but they can’t fathom any more than the team itself how the Dodgers could win ten of eleven NL West titles with only one pennant and Series ring to show for it.

If Baker (once a Dodger player himself) thinks bloggers and tweeters were rough on his Astros this year, he may not have seen how rough they were on the Yankees and the Dodgers. That roughness almost makes any hammerings on the Astros for not running away with the AL West this year seem like love taps.

Baker also may not have seen how much rougher than that were lots of blogging and tweeting fans of other teams upon whom atomic expectations fell at the season’s beginning but upon whom atomic deflations fell almost as fast. Met fans of the past several years have come to believe a season lost upon one bad inning—in April, never mind when big moves became big falls.

Don’t get me started on Cub and Red Sox fans, even if the former finally broke its long World Series drought almost eight years ago and the latter have more World Series rings this century (four) than anyone else. Or Cardinal fans, priding themselves as the best in the game but guilty of unnecessary roughness when the Redbirds finished at the bottom of the weak-enough NL Central this year after a decade of nine first or second place finishes in eleven seasons. Or Braves fans, respoiled by recent success after the comparative drought following that protracted NL East ownership of the 1990s-early Aughts.

Baseball is about rooting and caring, but too many fans take protracted defeat and failed high expectations personally. There may never again be the Yankees’ 20th Century dominance. God willing, the Yankees today won’t succumb to the temptation too many of their fans still ask: What would George do? More fan bases than just the Yankees’ base see lack of success and wish their teams had that kind of owner. Not so fast, folks.

There may take several if not many years before the next small dynasty comes out to play. Nobody guarantees that a solid club of Rangers who just won the World Series in five thrilling games can do it again, and again, and again, consecutively or at least consistently. Nobody guarantees the Astros’ success run will continue indefinitely.

The advent of the blogosphere and social media makes fan frustration seem about a thousand times more intense than when all we had was the morning paper, the evening news sports reports, and assorted retrospective books by which to go. Interviewers asking foolish or even stupid questions didn’t begin with Xtwitter.

Brutal fan attacks didn’t end with the letters to the editor sections. Death threats, even, didn’t end when Roger Maris (single season) and Hall of Famer Henry Aaron (career) finished knocking the Sacred Babe to one side in the arguable two most hallowed pages of the record books.

Baker’s hardly the only manager who ever got fed up with the witless who come forth worse than whatever mis-step they’re criticising. He may be the first to retire over it. Some of us think we should consider ourselves fortunate if certain players don’t retire when the social media universe attacks them without knowing the possible wherefores behind what they’re attacking.

Questioning mediocrity is one thing. But when once-glittering star players decline when they’re not exactly old men just yet, the social mediaverse seems to prefer hammering first and asking questions later. Even when it sees those players among the walking wounded on the injured list, the social mediaverse is only too prepared to dismiss them as fragile goldbricks still.

Go ahead and say Baker finally couldn’t stand the heat so he walked out of the kitchen at last, if it makes you feel good. But ask yourselves, honestly, how many of you would really be willing to go to work when it’s before five-figure audiences in a ballpark and seven figure audiences watching television, listening to radio, watching online, Xtweeting as they watch, or all the above.

That’s what I thought.

Not now, Snakes

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Arizona Diamondbacks

The Diamondbacks fell in this World Series, and losing the final three at their own Chase Field really stings. But . . .

Stop right there. I mean you, everyone who thought “Bill Buckner” the moment Diamondbacks center fielder Alek Thomas over-ran Jonah Heim’s top of the ninth RBI single into an extra Rangers run, two outs before Marcus Semien slammed an exclamation point down upon the season and the Diamondbacks’ fate.

For one thing, the Diamondbacks still had three outs to play with coming at the plate. For another thing, these Snakes were that resilient bunch who usually found ways to overcome when absolutely necessary, no?

Not this time. Just as they couldn’t quite close a Game Four blowout into a possible tie and overthrow, they couldn’t turn a near-eleventh hour Game Five deficit into another tie or overthrow. It hurt even more losing the World Series with a three-sweep at home after splitting the first pair in Arlington.

At last, as Semien’s two-run homer off Diamondbacks finisher Paul Sewald disappeared over the left center field fence in the top of the ninth, that Diamondbacks resiliency failed them even as the Rangers’ equal resiliency hurtled them to the Promised Land in five arduous World Series games.

“I definitely could have done a better job of getting in front of the [Heim] and calming down and just fielding it,” Thomas said postgame, refusing to shrink away, “but I think I rushed it and just didn’t get the glove down. I think I made an error on that two times last year and this year, and I think by now I should learn my lesson on how to go about that ball. But definitely gonna work on that in the offseason, make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

Long before Thomas had his moment of ill fate, the Diamondbacks failed to rise to several occasions. Their gallant starting pitcher Zac Gallen took a no-hitter through six innings while his Rangers counterpart Nathan Eovaldi pitched into and out of heavy traffic yet refused to surrender so much as a single run.

They loaded the bases on Eovaldi in the first and the fifth and left them that way. They had to know Eovaldi didn’t have his best stuff to throw and couldn’t do more than four hits despite also drawing five walks on the veteran righthander.

Then the most they could do against the Ranger bullpen was a seventh-inning walk, an eighth-inning base hit, and nothing else to show for it while that pen struck them out five times, including Ketel Marte looking at strike three from Josh Sborz to end Game Five and the Series whole.

“To get a taste of postseason baseball and the World Series,” said veteran Snakes designated hitter Tommy Pham, “if this doesn’t motivate you, I don’t know what will. This is a young team. There’s a core you can build around. And now everybody knows what it takes to get here.”

Pham surely didn’t mean backing into the postseason in the first place, as the Diamondbacks did claiming a wild card slot after finishing well back of the National League West-owning Dodgers on the regular season. Once they got there, though, they swept two division winners (the Brewers, the Dodgers) out of the wild card and division series rounds, then fought the Phillies to a seven-game National League Championship Series conquest.

Then they ran into the Rangers. Except for their 9-1 Game Two win, for the Diamondbacks this was like running into a pack of snake hunters unwilling to show much in the way of mercy. Even when they fought back from a 10-1 blowout in the making to make it 11-7 in Game Three, the Rangers were too much for the Diamondbacks to handle.

These Snakes didn’t have the star power of their 2001 World Series-winning predecessors. They kind of liked it that way, too. “I felt like we’re definitely a bunch of misfits,” said relief pitcher Ryan Thompson after Game Five ended.

That’s what makes us special. We got a bunch of young guys who are hungry, doing it for the first time. We got a bunch of veterans who have been there, done that, but not quite won the whole thing. It’s awesome being able to put our names on the map.

Gangs of misfits have won World Series in the past, with or without star power. The 1934 Cardinals, that shameless brawling Gas House Gang, was one. The Bronx Zoo Yankees of 1977-78 were another. The 2004 Red Sox called themselves the Idiots as though it were a badge of high honour. The 2010 Giants—managed by now-triumphant Rangers manager Bruce Bochy—thought of themselves as a bunch of morons.

What these Diamondbacks had was future star power. Corbin Carroll, Gabriel Moreno, Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, and Thomas himself. You could say it wasn’t their fault the Rangers hunted, pecked, pounded, pricked, and pulverised them. But you’d also have to say these Diamondbacks made enough of their own mistakes to enable that Ranger romp, too.

You credit the Rangers for such seizures. But you hand it to the Diamondbacks for making a showing for themselves before the World Series arrived. In a sane world, ruled by a sane commissioner and group of owners, they wouldn’t have reached the postseason in the first place.

But under the way things are set now, the Diamondbacks made the most of their entry. They left the Brewers looking brewed to a fare-thee-well. They left the Dodgers to a winter of self-re-examination. Then they ran into a Texas chainsaw massacre, more or less. There was no shame in that.

Oh, sure, they looked foolish a few times. Especially when manager Torey Lovullo talked early in the postseason about all those “receipts” the Diamondbacks kept to stick right back up the rears of those who doubted, the cynics who figured they were due for an early and painful postseason exit, the snorters who figured the big bad Phillies would make rattlesnake stew out of them.

They outlasted the Phillies. It wasn’t really easy to do. But the Rangers were another proposition entirely. The Diamondbacks really didn’t stand much of a chance no matter how bravely they hung in for five games, no matter that this Series matched two of baseball’s best defensive teams on the season.

The Rangers were only too happy to stuff those Diamondbacks receipts right back where they came from. But the Diamondbacks have no reason for shame otherwise.

“I’m so proud of what they’ve done,” Lovullo said. “And we have to step back for a minute and tell ourselves that we’ve done a lot of really amazing things this year. And then we got on this really fun ride through the course of the postseason. You just never want it to stop.”

But that’s the problem. They can never rescind the rule that somebody has to lose games.  The good news further is that the Diamondbacks are a comparatively young franchise and lack the kind of snake-bitten history that once plagued such antiquities as the Cubs, the Red Sox, and even the 63-year-old Rangers. And still plagues the Guardians, who haven’t won a World Series since the Berlin Airlift.

Barring unforeseen calamity or brain damage, the Diamondbacks will be back soon enough. For now, let them mourn lost opportunity while celebrating how they got to have the chance in the first place.

Of great misfortune and unforeseen reward

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Texas Rangers

Big man lost? No problem, so far . . .

Maybe, as much as he loathed the original move of the second Washington Senators to Texas for 1972, the late Frank Howard put a good word in when he arrived in the Elysian Fields Monday. On the same day he departed, the Rangers got just what they needed to win World Series Game Three. On the day after, they got a lot more of what they needed to end Game Four one win shy of a franchise-first Series title.

Rest assured, however, that the gentle giant nicknamed Capital Punishment did not arrange for the Rangers to lose Max Scherzer and Adolis García for the rest of the Series.

The Rangers needed anything Scherzer had left in Game Three and got it, until his back tightened after three shutout innings to open. They needed their bullpen, paced by usual starter Jon Gray, to keep the Diamondbacks from getting frisky at the plate, and they got that, too, other than one late excuse-us! run.

They needed just enough runs to make a difference and to stop a couple of potential runs with their arms and leather, and they got both. They even needed the usually mistake-conscious Diamondbacks to make a critical mistake and got that, too. But they didn’t need García straining his left oblique after an eighth-inning swing at the plate.

Losing García for any length after everything he did to get and keep them here could have been even more grave than losing Scherzer, who wouldn’t have expected to see further Series action until a possible Game Seven. But the Rangers didn’t just rise to the Game Four occasion on Halloween, they smothered it.

“What good is it,” asked Howard once, “to be able to throw a ball through a brick wall if you can’t hit the wall?” The Rangers didn’t expect Scherzer to throw anything through a brick wall, just elusive enough to Diamondbacks bats or enough to compel them to hit them where they were. He’s not Max the Knife anymore, but he didn’t have to be. So long as he kept the Snakes from biting, he set a tone for the Ranger pitching staff. He set it well enough to leave room for the Rangers to win Monday night, 3-1.

Of course, he and they got more than a little help from their friends. Shortstop Corey Seager provided an early blast plus a late defensive double play that probably saved Game Three. Adolis Garcia took advantage of a critical Diamondbacks baserunning mistake, Christian Walker running through his third base coach’s stop sign, to help save it defensively, himself.

Then came the news that García wouldn’t be in the Game Four starting lineup at least. Then, later, came the news he’d be off the Rangers roster along with Scherzer the rest of the set, barring divine (Howardian?) intervention. Their replacements: a relief pitcher named Brock Burke and a utility player named Ezequiel Durán.

Durán can hit a bit and with some long-ball power, and he can handle shortstop especially if Seager needs a break or matchup relief. Burke is a testy proposition at best; he can miss bats but when he doesn’t it can be disaster. (4.37 ERA; 4.90 fielding-independent pitching rate; 5.78 K/BB ratio but 9.7 hits per nine and 2.0 home runs per nine.)

Thus did the Rangers plug difficult-to-impossible holes, not to mention inserting Travis Jankowski into right field in García’s place, and reach for a bullpen Game Four. As did the Diamondbacks. Andrew Heaney opening for the Rangers, Joe (Be Fruitful and) Mantiply for the Snakes.

What was it that Don Vito Corleone once said about great misfortune sometimes leading to unforeseen rewards?

First, García himself gave his teammates a pre-game talk that began with telling them how much he loves them and finished with a call to go out and win two more Series games he had no doubt they could do. Then, stirred by that address from a guy who isn’t known for clubhouse speeches just yet, the Rangers went out and got half the job done Tuesday night.

They made early work of the Snakes with a five-run second, the runs scoring on a wild pitch by Mantiply’s relief Miguel Castro, then a two-run triple by struggling Marcus Semien to chase Castro in favour of Kyle Nelson, and then a two-run homer from Corey Seager on Nelson’s dollar.Then they got nastier in the third: a two-run double (Jankowski, maybe doing a García impression) and a three-run homer. (Semien—did he figure out ways to break out of a postseason slump, or what?)

Meanwhile, it remained a bullpen game on only one side of the field. Surprising maybe everyone watching, Heaney pitched well into the fifth inning, his only blemish until then a second-and-third, nobody-out jam in the fourth out of which he escaped with only one run coming home on a sacrifice fly.

The Diamondbacks only thought they could out-smart the Rangers by staying with a bullpen game and using their lowest-leverage bulls to try sneaking outs through the basement. Until Ryne Nelson entered and swallowed five innings that went unblemished but for Josh Heim’s leadoff bomb in the eighth and Seager’s leadoff ground rule double in the ninth, the Snakes bulls got snaked but good early and too often.

“You’re throwing different looks at guys the whole game,” said Mantiply postgame, after getting the game’s first four outs. “Each hitter never really sees the same guy twice. Obviously, what Ryne did tonight was huge; he stepped up and ate five innings for us. But the strategy is to limit the amount of at-bats guys get off the same guy.”

If only Miguel Castro (the run-allowing wild pitch), Kyle Nelson (Seager’s blast), and Luis Frias (the third inning mayhem) could have followed the script. Then manager Torey Lovullo could have reached for his higher-leverage relievers such as Kevin Ginkel, Paul Sewald, and Ryan Thompson instead of having to ride the Ryne. But the Rangers’ early slashing and smashing turned out to be more vital than thought in the precise moments.

That’s because hese pesky Diamondbacks don’t give up without a good hard fight. The 11-7 final score still seemed lopsided because the Rangers led it 11-1 after seven and a half, but the Snakes rattled a four-run eighth (Tommy Pham with the one-out, bases-loaded sacrifice fly; Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. with the two-out three-run homer) and a two-run ninth (Gabriel Moreno with the two-out, two-run single) before it finally ended.

It just wasn’t enough to overthrow a Rangers team that spent the regular season finding ways around the injured list, never mind get the game to the Diamondbacks’ bigger bullpen bulls.

At various times they lost García himself plus Seager, Josh Heim (who hit a solo bomb in the Game Four eighth), Mitch Garver, Josh Jung, and Leodys Taveras. That was six lineup mainstays. They also had to make do at various times without Game Five starter Nathan Eovaldi plus starter-turned-Series-relief ace Jon Gray plus closer Jose Leclerc and fellow high-leverage bullpen bull Josh Sborz.

They lost free agency signing Jacob deGrom to Tommy John surgery and for the season. They landed Scherzer at the trade deadline but lost him to a shoulder injury in late September and—before the back tightness taking him out Monday—didn’t see him at work again until the American League Championship Series.

The Rangers could have buckled under any one of those injuries. They could have collapsed outright after losing García for the rest of the Series. The Diamondbacks might only wish that they had. Maybe now their fondest wish might be to keep García’s pre-game big mouth shut.

At least one good thing came forth for the Snakes. If Game Five starter Zac Gallen falters or gets torn up early, they’ll have Ginkel, Sewald, and Thompson fresh enough for service. Their second-fondest wish behind possibly muzzling García in the Rangers clubhouse might be getting those three to work in time enough to send the set to a sixth game at minimum.

“We put ourselves in a very tough spot right now,” Pham said postgame. “It’s going to take a lot.”

But Heaney, maybe an unlikely hero for the Rangers, did his team a favour just as big. His five one-run innings saved the meat of the Ranger pen for Game Five. Meaning Gray, Leclerc (who only worked a third of an inning to end Game Five), and Sborz ready to rumble if the Rangers strike early enough and often enough. They did pry three runs out of Gallen in Game One, after all.

What they did to the Snakes’ opening corps Tuesday was a lot more than just prying.

“Five runs in the second inning there, really takes a lot of pressure off,” said Heaney, a veteran who could be both remarkable and vulnerable as an Angel, a Yankee, and a Dodger, before joining the Rangers as a free agent but spending September and most of the postseason in the bullpen. “And then putting up five the very next inning, we had a ten-run lead. It’s a lot easier to go out there, attack the strike zone and not feel so confined to having to make perfect pitches.”

Just hope someone in the Elysian Fields reminds Frank Howard that Game Five doesn’t have to be even half as insane as Game Four.

Frank Howard, RIP: The gentlest giant

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Frank Howard

“Sometimes,” said a minor leaguer whom the Bunyanesque bombardier managed, “I think he’s too good for this game.” About Frank Howard, now gone, the gentlest giant of them all.

All of a sudden there’s a pall overhead. The one Washington Senator above all who didn’t want to move to Texas to become a Ranger has gone to the Elysian Fields at 87. The gentlest giant. The guy whose nickname Capital Punishment was as much a misnomer as The Killer was attached to his contemporary Harmon Killebrew.

Frank Howard. The behemoth whose home runs were conversation pieces long before that phrase was attached to the blasts hit by the likes of Dick Allen, Dave Kingman, Mike Schmidt, Darryl Strawberry, Albert Pujols, and Shohei Ohtani.

The third of six Ohio Howard children who had scouts bird-dogging him in the mid-to-late 1950s offering six-figure bonuses but who insisted that the money be divided as $100,000 for himself and $8,000 toward a new home for his parents, a condition only the Dodgers were willing to heed.

The 6’8″ galoot who became a Senator in the first place because of Sandy Koufax.

Howard had come forth as a Dodger who had that intergalactic power at the plate matched only by an inconsistency or three. The National League’s 1960 Rookie of the Year could break a game open with one swing but chased too many balls out of the strike zone. The giant with a fine throwing arm who moved too slow for an outfielder.

The guy who had enough trouble being the first Frank Howard without shaking off enough early career hype that sometimes called him the next Babe Ruth. The guy who assessed himself to Sports Illustrated too realistically despite a 1963 World Series performance that included a 450-foot home run off Whitey Ford en route the Dodgers’ sweep:

I have the God-given talents of strength and leverage. I realize that I can never be a great ballplayer because a great ballplayer must be able to do five things well: run, field, throw, hit and hit with power. I am mediocre in four of those—but I can hit with power. I have a chance to be a good ballplayer. I work on my fielding all the time, but in the last two years I feel that I have gotten worse as a fielder. My greatest fear was being on the bases, and I still worry about it. I’m afraid to get picked off. I’m afraid to make a mistake on the bases, and I have made them again and again, but here I feel myself getting better.

Howard ended up asking Dodger general manager Buzzie Bavasi for a trade after the 1964 season. As things happened, Bavasi was also hunting a solid lefthanded pitcher to plug in any spaces left by the possibility that Koufax—who’d been shut down for the year in August 1964, and diagnosed publicly with an arthritic pitching elbow (it turned out that was for public consumption)—would only be able to pitch once a week if at all.

Bavasi sent Howard plus infielder Ken McMullen and pitchers Phil Ortega and Pete Richert to the Second Nats in exchange for lefthanded pitcher Claude Osteen, infielder John Kennedy, and $100,000. Osteen became the reliable number three starter behind Hall of Famers Koufax and Don Drysdale; the Dodgers won the next two National League pennants plus the 1965 World Series.

Howard settled for becoming a marquee attraction in the nation’s capital. His old Dodger teammate Gil Hodges managed the Senators, convinced Howard to try a slight uppercut in his swing that might stop him hitting hard grounders, and turned him loose to become one of the American League’s power kings after shaking off two initial Washington seasons disrupted by injuries here and inconsistency there.

Then came the Year of the Pitcher (1968)—and Howard’s leading the entire Show with 44 home runs and a .550 slugging percentage, not to mention 330 total bases. He’d hit 48 out in 1969 (with another Show-leading 340 total bases) and 44 out in 1970. A new Senators manager finally convinced him to stop swinging at pitches that didn’t look hittable, which hiked his walk totals and gave him the plate discipline he wished aloud he’d learned a decade earlier. A manager named Ted Williams.

(“Somebody’s getting him out,” snorted Seattle Pilots manager Joe [Ol’ Shitfuck] Schultz during a meeting to discuss how to pitch Howard. “The bastard’s only hitting .306.”)

Howard also moved from the outfield to first base as often as not, and while he was no defensive virtuoso his bat continued to thrill fans and terrorise pitchers. When Alvin Dark managed the Indians, he had a habit of switching his bullet-throwing lefthander Sudden Sam McDowell and an infielder during Howard’s plate appearances (Howard tended to kill McDowell) and then back after Howard was done.

Later, as a minor league manager, Howard was legendary for his generosity with the kids he managed whom he knew barely earned peanuts. Stories abounded of Howard stopping the team bus out of nowhere and ducking into a truck stop or a package store, whipping out his money clip, and buying cases of brewskis. (He made a considerable fortune owning a few choice Wisconsin shopping centers.)

Profiling him while managing the Spokane Indians (then a Brewers farm team) in 1976, Thomas Boswell quoted one of his talks to his minor league charges:

Boys, in this game you never play as long as you want to or as well as you want to. And sooner than any of you thinks, your day will come to get that pink slip that says, “Released.” When they pull those shades, they pull ’em for a lifetime. When it’s over, no one can bring it back for you. It’s a short road we run in this business, so run hard.

That from the man who lamented near the end of his own playing career, “By the time you learn to play this game properly, you can’t play anymore.” (“We lead the league,” Spokane third baseman Tom Bianco told Boswell, “in hustle, rules, and meetings. We even had a meeting after a rainout to go over the rain.”)

He left the Spokane bridge for a shot at major league managing. He had the Padres for two years; he had the Mets for one. “The players took advantage of him,” then-Padres general manager Jack McKeon said when they fired him. “Frank just couldn’t stop being nice.”

A man like that becomes a Washington institution even after his playing career ends and he relocates to northern Virginia and keeps in touch with the city that embraced him like a son and brother. He becomes one of three men to be cast in bronze outside Nationals Park, even though he never played for this franchise of Nats, joining Hall of Famers Walter Johnson (representing the ancient Senators) and Josh Gibson (representing the Homestead Grays who played much of their time in D.C.).

He might even leave Washington with a memory they’d never forget amidst a small closet full of Hondo hammers. With Bob Short shamelessly hijacking the team to Texas after the 1971 season, Howard came up to hit in the sixth inning of the Senators’ final game, against the Yankees. Leading off against Mike Kekich in the bottom of the sixth, Howard swung on 2-1 and planted one to the back of the bullpen behind the left field fence.

“I just wish the owners of the American League could see this, the ones who voted 10 to 2 to move this club out of Washington,” said Senators radio broadcaster Ron Menchine as Howard came down the line to cross the plate.

He comes out again. . . Hondo threw his helmet into the stands, a souvenir of the big guy’s finest hour in Washington . . . The crowd screaming for Howard to come out again . . . and here he comes again!! . . .  A tremendous display of the enthusiasm of Washington fans for Frank Howard . . . Hondo loves Washington as much as the fans love him. It’s 5-2 . . .

The Senators took a lead to the top of the ninth and asked Joe Grzenda to close it out. He got two quick ground outs right back to himself. Then the heartsick RFK Stadium crowd that was restless all day long finally burst. They poured onto the field with Yankee second baseman Horace Clarke at the plate and rioted. The umpires finally called a forfeit to the Yankees. The stadium resembled the aftermath of a terrorist attack.

Howard hit the final Senators home run and the first Rangers home park home run, which also happened to be the first major league hit to be nailed in old Arlington Stadium. But he had no illusions. “A guy just does the best he can,” he told SI. “We’re aware you can’t peddle a poor product to the public. It’s nice to think that these people’s first memory of major league baseball might be my home run, but I really hope that their memory is the win.”

He never lost his baseball introspection even as he never lost his love affair with fans who sought him out long after his last swing, his last shot to the Delta Quadrant. “When people look back on their careers, they say they wouldn’t change a thing. I would have,” he once said. “I would have made the adjustments. I would have given myself the chance to put up big numbers.”

Divorced from his first wife, he remarried happily in 1991. Howard left more than long ball memories. He had family and friends to love and remember. He left behind memories of a man who was so personable, gentle, and generous, that one of his Spokane players could and did say, “Sometimes I think he’s too good for this game.”

More than “sometimes.”