Is the Orioles’ reign of error ending?

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Is a new day really dawning at Camden Yards?

You thought the National League West ogres in Los Angeles had a long World Series title drought? The Orioles haven’t won a World Series since over a week following the premiere of the first Hooters restaurant. (In Florida.) And, since a decade before Peter Angelos bought the team out of bankruptcy court.

“Bankrupt” has been a polite way to describe the Angelos reign of error. Oriole fans celebrated, then cringed too often for comfort after Angelos bought the team from Eli Jacobs. Now they may have cause to celebrate something sweeter than the Orioles’ slightly unexpected return to competitiveness last year. May.

Once upon a time Angelos swore the Orioles would be pried from his literal cold, dead hands, as in upon his death. Now, his son John, who’s been running the Orioles since his father was diagnosed with dementia, plans to sell to two equity billionaires, David Rubenstein (the Carlyle Group) and Mike Arougheti (Ames Management Corp.). The price: $1.73 billion.

This, writes The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, whose career as a baseball writer began by covering the Orioles for the Baltimore Sun, could portend the turn toward a new direction.

The Rubenstein-Arougheti group won’t take complete control of the team right away. They’re beginning with a minority investment but intend to take complete control upon  Peter Angelos’s death, allowing the Angelos family a tax benefit by waiting to give the group full ownership. (Rosenthal observes they’d have faced a capital gains tax levy on the difference between the team’s 1993 and current valuations.)

Rubenstein is known to have Baltimore ties and to be a significan philanthropic presence in the region. His personal worth is said to be $3.8 billion, while Arougheti’s is said to be $1.8 billion. Rosenthal also cites a Baltimore Banner report saying Hall of Fame shortstop and Orioles icon Cal Ripken, Jr. is going to be part of the new ownership group. Could the future look any sunnier for Oriole fans?

Well, they once thought it was sunny days ahead when the elder Angelos bought the team, too.

Two years later, in the wake of (let’s call it as it really was) the owner-provoked and pushed players’ strike, Ripken made it safe to love baseball again when he passed Lou Gehrig for consecutive games played and marked the occasion with a hefty home run off Angels pitcher Shawn Boskie in the fourth inning.

The Orioles have been to a few postseasons and through a lot more losing in the Angelos era. The elder Angelos became too hands-on despite a lack of common baseball sense. Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated once described his style as slash-and-burn management, as in burning eleven managers in eighteen seasons before the comparative stability of Buck Showalter (8.3 seasons) and incumbent Brandon Hyde (entering season six).

From 1998-2011 the Orioles endured what was once believed unfathomable for a franchise with a history proud enough: a fourteen-season losing streak. The elder Angelos also dithered on creating an international Orioles scouting operation and presence and let his already chaotic front office mistreat valued players.

Things once hit so far bottom that Verducci reported in 2001 that agents with Oriole clients found those clients telling other free agents, “You don’t want to come here.” That sentiment was inconceivable in the era between their first World Series title (1966) and their last.

Last year’s Orioles surprised the world by reaching the postseason at all. They saw enough of their young talent start coming of age, and they saw a farm system looking plenty good enough for the seasons to come. Right?

Oops. Along the way, John Angelos was stupid enough to suspend his lead television broadcaster Kevin Brown over information on a team-provided graphic comparing last year’s O’s against the Rays to previous seasons in which the Rays seemed to own them. Oriole fans can’t be blamed if enough of them think they can’t have nice things without something nasty along with them.

Barely had the news sunk in about the Rubenstein-Arougheti group agreeing to buy the Orioles when bing!the team swung a trade for former Cy Young Award-winning Brewers pitcher Corbin Burnes for a shortstop on the cusp of Show readiness but with a few warning signs, a pitcher who might project as a useful reliever, and the 34th pick in the 2024 draft.

Further warning signs, though: Burnes has lost some hop on his signature sinkerball, his strikeout-to-walk ratio has dipped, and big boppers had a finer time with him last year than two years earlier. (2021: seven homers allowed. Last year: 22 homers allowed.) But he’s still Corbin Burnes and he’s still formidable enough. For a season to come at least. They hope.

Thus far the apparently glandular adulation thrown the new ownership group seems to be precisely what NBC Sports-turned-independent Craig Calcaterra calls it: “he’s not John Angelos, therefore he’s perfect, and if you suggest otherwise, blogger boy, you’re a hater.”

But Oriole Nation has been there/done that in the past, a little too often. The Angelos Era may be over, but then Mets fans threw champagne parties over the end of the Wilpon Era and the advent of Steve Cohen, too.

Cohen has been through more than a few growing pains thus far. Met fans whose patience rivals that of the piranha at mealtime (they are legion) think one bad inning equals grounds for summary executions—in April. Oriole fans may be far more patient, but the Angelos reign of error wore that patience to the thickness of a sheet of paper.

The Rubenstein-Arougheti (-Ripken) Group has quite a job ahead, assuming the rest of baseball’s owners approve their advent and their purchase deal. It’s not simple being viewed en masse (and perhaps prematurely) as saviours. Once upon a time America thought (really) that even Richard Nixon had to be an improvement over Lyndon Johnson. How did that work out?

Oriole fans may (underline that) be wise to consider what investigative journalism giant Sidney Zion used to advise: Trust your mother, but cut the cards.

A trio grand for Cooperstown

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Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, Joe Mauer.

L to R: Newly-elected Hall of Famers Beltré, Helton, Mauer—They’ll join Contemporary Baseball Era Committee choice and longtime manager Jim Leyland on the Cooperstown stage come July.

The third baseman whose surname begins with “belt” and was way more than just a great belter. The first baseman who wasn’t just a Coors Canaveral product at the plate. The catcher forced to first base by concussion but who forged his case as the game’s number seven catcher all-time, defying his haters who still call him a thief.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet your newest Hall of Famers—Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, and Joe Mauer. Beltré and Mauer deserved to be the first-ballot Hall of Famers they are now. Helton should have been, too, if only the voters his first time around on the Baseball Writers Association of America ballot had taken the dive that went deeper and deeper the longer Helton stayed on the ballot.

Beltré is probably in the most unique position of the trio. The number four third baseman of all (I’d rank him a touch higher for his combination of power hitting and off-the-charts defense) has something none of his peers can claim. Quick: name the only third baseman, ever, with 1) 3,000+ hits and 2) five or more Gold Gloves.

Hall of Famer Wade Boggs has two Gloves. Hall of Famer George Brett has one. Hall of Famer Paul Molitor (who probably got in more as a designated hitter than a third baseman) has none. Beltré, of course, has five. Now you can argue that a lot of Gold Glove award voting has been suspect over the years. You can’t argue with only two of the quartet being in the top twelve for run prevention at third base: Beltre (+168 total zone runs; 2nd) and Boggs (+95; 12th).

There’s only one other third baseman in the top twelve for run prevention who had anything like Beltré’s power in hand with it: Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt. Hall of Famer Eddie Mathews (512 home runs) was worth 40 defensive runs saved but that doesn’t get him quite to the levels of Beltré and Schmidt among the biggest bopping third basemen.

Here’s Beltré, among post-World War II/post-integration/night-ball era Hall of Fame third basemen, according to my Real Batting Average metric (RBA): total bases + walks + intentional walks + sacrifice flies + hit by pitches, divided by total plate appearances:

HOF 3B PA TB BB IBB SF HBP RBA
Mike Schmidt 10062 4404 1507 201 108 79 .626
Chipper Jones 10614 4755 1512 177 97 18 .618
Eddie Mathews 10100 4349 1444 142 58 26 .596
Scott Rolen 8518 3628 899 57 93 127 .564
George Brett 11625 5044 1096 229 120 33 .561
Ron Santo 9397 3779 1108 94 94 38 .544
Wade Boggs 10740 4064 1412 180 96 23 .538
Adrián Beltré 12130 5309 848 112 103 97 .533
Paul Molitor 12167 4854 1094 100 109 47 .510
Brooks Robinson 11782 4270 860 120 114 53 .458
HOF AVG .555

You see he was hurt most at the plate by taking a lot less unintentional walks than everyone else on the list. But he’s the number two most run-preventive third baseman ever behind Brooks Robinson. His combination of power and defense should nudge him up to the number three all-around third baseman who ever played. WARriors, take note: Beltré’s 93.5 is bested among Hall third basemen by two, in ascending order: Mathews (96.0) and Schmidt (106.8).

Among his group of Hall of Famers, Beltré was also the most fun Fun Guy of the game. Even if his career was an ascending trajectory to genuine greatness (people still wonder how the Dodgers could have let him take a hike into free agency), there was always a sense about him that he really did play more for the fun of it than the riches of it.

I’ve asked elsewhere: how often do you get to send one of the real Fun Guys to Cooperstown? Too many playing or managing greats were about as fun as open-heart surgery. Too many of the game’s Fun Guys weren’t all that much fun when they were actually on the field or at the plate. (Dick Stuart, for example, was one of the funnest of his time’s Fun Guys—but he earned his nickname Dr. Strangeglove at first base. He only got to play major league baseball because he could hit baseballs across city limits.)

Ernie Banks, Yogi Berra, Bert Blyleven, Roy Campanella, Dizzy Dean, Whitey Ford, Lefty Gomez, Rickey Henderson, Minnie Miñoso, David Ortíz, Satchel Paige, Babe Ruth, and Warren Spahn were bona-fide Hall of Famers and Fun Guys in the bargain as players. (And several of them had to do it through unconscionable bigotry.) Casey Stengel was both as a manager. Beltré will grace their company.

I did notice someone aboard social media ask aloud if someone could arrange for his old Texas teammate Elvis Andrus to come rub his head at his induction. Not a half bad idea. Barring that, maybe the Hall could arrange for Beltré head-touching bobbleheads to pass out come induction day? Barring that, maybe the Hall staff would let him drag the on-deck circle mat lonce more?

Helton may have finished what Hall of Famer Larry Walker started and fractured the idea that a career spent half or more with Coors Field as your home ballpark will kill or at least cast abundant doubt on your Hall credentials. Helton lacked what Walker had, enough time in another uniform to show that he was Hall of Fame good without the Coors factor. But Helton has this distinction: the first Rockie-for-life to go to Cooperstown.

Now, look deeper, once again, please. The Toddfather posted an .855 OPS on the road to his 1.048 at home. An .855 OPS across the board might mean a spot in the Hall of Fame for a lot of players. Helton’s road OPS is higher than the across-the-board OPSes of (in ascending order) live ball-era Hall of Famers Eddie Murray, Gil Hodges (who played most of his career in a bandbox home park), Orlando Cepeda, Ben Taylor (Negro Leagues), Sunny Jim Bottomley, Harmon Killebrew; and, one point below Fred McGriff. His across-the-board .953 is better than all but nine Hall of Fame first basemen.

Let me apply my RBA to Helton among post-World War II/post-integration/night-ball era Hall of Fame first basemen:

First Base PA TB BB IBB SF HBP RBA
Jim Thome 10313 4667 1747 173 74 69 .653
Jeff Bagwell 9431 4213 1401 155 102 128 .636
Todd Helton 9453 4292 1335 185 93 57 .631
Willie McCovey 9692 4219 1345 260 70 69 .615
Harmon Killebrew 9833 4143 1559 160 77 48 .609
Fred McGriff 10174 4458 1305 171 71 39 .594
Gil Hodges 8104 3422 943 109 82 25 .565
Orlando Cepeda 8698 3959 588 154 74 102 .561
Eddie Murray 12817 5397 1333 222 128 18 .554
Tony Pérez 10861 4532 925 150 106 43 .526
HOF AVG .594

Helton has the number three RBA among those Hall of Fame first basemen, he’s 37 points above the average RBA for those Hall first basemen, and it wasn’t all or purely a product of Coors Field. He also had a 144 OPS+ over his ten-year peak of 1997-2007. OPS+, of course, adjusts for ballpark factors. That peak OPS+ alone should disabuse you once and for all about whether the Toddfather was pure Coors.

By the way, for those of you obsessed with swinging strikeouts at the plate and the metastasis thereof, be reminded that Helton lifetime walked more than he struck out, especially as the leverage situation rose. He averaged eleven more walks (96) than strikeouts (85) per 162 games, and he walked 160 times more than he struck out. Would you like to know how many of the other aforelisted Hall of Fame first basemen walked more than they fanned? Z-e-r-o.

Mauer joins a unique Cooperstown group—one of the three field positions (catcher) that have resulted in only three first-ballot Hall of Famers. (It’s still impossible to believe that Yogi Berra wasn’t a first-ballot Hall of Famer.) Thus does Mauer join Johnny Bench and Ivan Rodríguez in the Cooperstown Trinity of the Tools of Ignorance. (The other two positions with only three first-time Hall of Famers: first base and second base.)

He also has a .569 RBA that puts him third among post-World War II/post-integration/night-ball Hall catchers. (Only Mike Piazza and Roy Campanella—who played in the same bandbox as Hodges when he made the Show in 1948—are ahead of him.) He wasn’t all bat as a backstop despite his gaudy batting averages, either; the pitchers who threw to Mauer posted an ERA almost a full run below his league average, he was worth +65 total zone runs behind the dish, and he threw out a respectable 33 percent of runners who tried to steal on him lifetime. (He led the American League twice: 53 percent in 2007; 43 percent in 2013.)

WARriors should remind themselves, too, that in the ten seasons Mauer played as the Twins’ regular catcher, he out-WARred the three other catchers active during all ten of those seasons by a wide margin: his 44.6 bested Victor Martinez (28.1), Yadier Molina (27.6), and Jorge Posada (20.0).

Well, now. A year ago, after Scott Rolen’s election to the Hall of Fame provoked the usual chatter about who’d be elected this year, Twins fans tried to smother social media with assaults and batteries of Mauer for “stealing” the money in that yummy contract extension he signed before his first concussion compelled the Twins to get him the hell out from behind the plate.

He suffered his second well into the extension, chasing a foul ball from first base. Those brain-dead fans either forgot, never knew, or didn’t care that injuries incurred in the line of duty don’t equal goldbricking or defrauding. I swore then that I wouldn’t say another word about their idiocies, but I can’t resist today.

Who has the last laugh now?

Bud Harrelson, RIP: Don’t back down

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Bud Harrelson

Perhaps unfairly, Bud Harrelson is remembered less for solid shortstop play than for getting plowed into an NLCS brawl by Pete Rose.

God rest her soul, my paternal grandmother (herself a victim of Alzheimer’s) called her favourite Met “my little cream puff.” The reference was to Bud Harrelson’s not-so-tall or large dimensions, surely. Hall of Famer Yogi Berra, a longtime Mets coach and their manager for three and two-third seasons, merely called him Shorty.

The only Met in uniform for both their World Series triumphs (as their starting shortstop in 1969, as their third base coach in 1986) was anything but a cream puff on the field. “Buddy was 150 pounds soaking wet,” his Hall of Fame teammate and best friend Tom Seaver remembered three decades later, “but he wouldn’t back down from anyone.”

Not even from Pete Rose, who plowed him moments after Harrelson threw on to first to finish a 3-6-3 double play in Game Three of the 1973 National League Championship Series. Not even from umpire Augie Donatelli in the World Series to follow, Donatelli calling him out at home despite Oakland catcher Ray Fosse seeming to miss the tag and provoking a wild Met argument around the plate.

And not even from Alzheimer’s disease, with which Harrelson was diagnosed in 2016 and against which he fought a bold fight until his death at 79 Thursday morning. Some of the obituaries that followed lasted several paragraphs before mentioning the Rose play and the infamous bench-and-bullpen-clearing brawl that erupted. Some of them lasted only several syllables. It almost figured.

Rose entered Game Three of the set between the Mets and the Reds steaming over Harrelson’s post-mortem following Mets righthander Jon Matlack’s Game Two two-hit shutout. It wasn’t braggadoccio by any means. The .236-lifetime-hitting Harrelson’s grit was matched by his wit. He observed Matlack had “made the Reds look like me out there” at the plate, adding only that he thought, “It looked like they were swinging from their heels.”

That doesn’t seem normally to be an observation that would steam a team, not even a Big Red Machine. Indeed, as New York Post columnist Mike Vaccaro observes, most of the Reds weren’t interested when Rose tried to use Harrelson’s benign remarks as the equivalent of what we call today bulletin-board fodder.

The most “printable” of Rose’s post-mortem replies, in Vaccaro’s word, was, “What’s Harrelson, a [fornicating] batting coach?” Hall of Famer Joe Morgan even warned Harrelson during pre-Game Three practises that one more such remark would get him punched out, and Rose was going to get him at second if given the opportunity. Some of the Big Red Machine weren’t exactly renowned for a sense of humour about themselves.

So, come the Game Three top of the fifth, Morgan tapped one toward Mets first baseman John Milner, who threw to Harrelson to get Rose (a one-out single up the middle) by ten plus feet for one before Harrelson winged it back to Milner to get Morgan for the two. The next thing anyone knew, Rose had plowed and thrown an elbow at Harrelson and the pair were up and swinging.

“When he hit me after I had already thrown the ball I got mad,” Harrelson once remembered. “And we had a little match. He just kinda lifted me up and laid me down to sleep and it was all over.” It wasn’t all over that quickly, alas. To say all hell broke loose in Shea Stadium after Mets third baseman Wayne Garrett hustled over to try protecting Harrelson would be to call a prison riot a debate.

The less-than-willing Reds had little choice but to back their impetuous star. After order was restored at last, Rose took his position in left field and that portion of the Shea crowd let him have a shower of debris that included a glass bottle near his head. It got so out of hand that the Reds’ Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson pulled his team off the field. (“Pete Rose has done too much for baseball to die in left field,” the ever locquacious Anderson said postgame.)

A forfeit to the Reds was threatened. Under National League president Chub Feeney’s urging, Berra led Seaver plus Hall of Famer Willie Mays and outfielders Rusty Staub and Cleon Jones to plead for peace in the stands. Order was restored and the Mets finished what they started, a 9-2 Game Three win and a five-game triumph over the Reds for the pennant.

Rose didn’t hold a grudge for very long. Handed the Good Guy Award by the New York contingency of the Baseball Writers Association of America the following January—the long since disgraced and banished Rose was one of the game’s great notebook fillers during his playing days—Rose accepted it . . . from Harrelson himself.

“I want the world to know,” Harrelson cracked as he presented Rose the award, “that I hit him with my best punch. I hit him right in the fist with my eye.” In due course, Rose returned the favour, signing a photograph of the fight, “Thank you, Buddy, for making me famous.”

In some ways, Harrelson was responsible for the Mets making it to that postseason in the first place. He missed significant regular season time with an injury and the Mets slumped almost coincidentally. But when he returned to action the Mets—with or without a little firing up from relief pitcher Tug McGraw’s “You gotta believe!” holler, aimed sarcastically at first (at a pep talk by general manager M. Donald Grant)—ground their way from the basement to the National League East title that September.

“You had Seaver, who was the greatest pitcher I ever saw,” Rose told Vaccaro in 2008,  “and you had great hitters like Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee, and later Rusty [Staub] and Milner. But the heart and soul of that team—ask anyone who played against them—was Bud Harrelson.”

Harrelson’s weak bat was offset by his sure-handed play at shortstop; he averaged turning  57 double plays a season in his twelve prime seasons from 1967-1978, even missing significant time to injuries. He also retired being worth +34 defensive runs above his league average, retroactively leading the National League’s shortstops with a +17 1971.

He roomed with Seaver for the entire time they were Mets together, having first met in AAA-level ball in the Met system. “We were perfect roommates,” Harrelson remembered in his memoir, Turning Two. “Tom did all the reading and I did all the talking.”

After finishing his playing career with two seasons in Philadelphia (where Rose was a teammate) and one in Arlington, Harrelson returned to the Mets and soon became their third base coach. That was Harrelson giving Ray Knight a pat and running down the third base line with him as Knight scored, after Mookie Wilson’s grounder skipped through hapless Bill Buckner’s feet, to finish the Game Six comeback win that sent the Mets toward their 1986 World Series conquest.

Later, when Davey Johnson was finally cashiered as the Mets’ manager 42 games into the 1990 season, Harrelson took the bridge and helmed the Mets to a 71-49 record the rest of the way, good for a second-place NL East finish. The following season, enough of the 1980s Mets’ contending core players were gone and suspicions arose that Harrelson was just the dugout figurehead while bench coach Doc Edwards called the shots.

The Mets went 74-80 under Harrelson, toward a fifth-place NL East finish, before he executed before the season’s final week. There were those who thought Harrelson’s problem was trying to manage like a pal more than a leader. Harrelson himself said, candidly enough, “If the public wanted a manager with vast experience, I wasn’t it . . . If they wanted somebody who would grow with the organization, I think that was me.”

1969 Mets

Harrelson (far left) traveled with a few 1969 Mets teammates plus After the Miracle co-author Erik Sherman (center rear) for a final visit in California with Hall of Fame teammate Tom Seaver (front right). Joining them: pitcher Jerry Koosman (second from left), outfielder/After the Miracle author Art Shamsky (second from right, rear), and outfielder Ron Swoboda (far right rear). Seaver was stricken with Lewy Body dementia; Harrelson, with Alzheimer’s. (Photo posted to Xtwitter by Erik Sherman.)

In due course, Harrelson helped bring minor league baseball to Long Island as the co-owner, senior vice president, and first base coach of the Long Island Ducks. He even managed the Atlantic Leaguers to a first place tie in their maiden season. Then, come 2016, after a few incidents first attributed to aging’s mere memory lapses, Harrelson and his former wife, Kim Battaglia, got the fateful diagnosis.

Battaglia remained his close friend and primary caretaker. Harrelson was part of the contingent of 1969 Mets—organised by outfielder Art Shamsky, also including pitcher Jerry Koosman and outfielder Ron Swoboda—who trekked to California for a final visit with Lewy Body dementia-stricken Seaver at his vineyard a year later. The journey was recorded by Shamsky with Erik Sherman (who accompanied the group) in After the Miracle. (Seaver, alas, died in 2020.)

The former Mrs. Harrelson urged Shamsky to have voluminous photographs taken to help Harrelson remember the trip. Harrelson himself admitted to Sherman that he’d begun writing numerous notes to himself to help him fight the Alzheimer’s memory robbery. He also described co-owning and promoting the Ducks as “the best thing I’ve ever done in baseball,” indicating his displeasure that the now-former Wilpon ownership was not always kind to himself and too many other former Met stars.

Harrelson and his former wife even joined and became active with the Alzheimer’s Foundation after making his diagnosis public in 2018. “I want people to know you can live with this and that a lot of people have it,” he said. “It could be worse.”

When traveling with Koosman, Shamsky, Sherman, and Swoboda for that final Seaver visit, Harrelson had nothing but praise for his former wife (“She’s the best ex-wife I ever had”) who urged him on. “She’ll call me and go, ‘You know you have to go to the doctor. Our son T.J. can bring you’,” said the twice-divorced father of five. “Married, we just didn’t gel after awhile. But I still love her and give her hugs. Kim doesn’t have to do what she does, but I appreciate it.”

Perhaps not quite as deeply as she and his children appreciated Harrelson’s grace under fire as he fought the insidious disease that finally claimed him. The scrapper who didn’t let Pete Rose intimidate him became the elder who didn’t let a medical murderer intimidate him.

Now Harrelson can be serene and happy in the Elysian Fields with his old roomie pal Seaver, his old skippers Berra and Gil Hodges, and too many other 1969 and 1973 Mets who preceded him there. Maybe Grandma Gertie will elbow her way out there to shake his hand, and maybe Harrelson can give her a wink and a “Your little cream puff, huh?”

Why Wander Franco must go

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Wander Franco

Rays shortstop Wander Franco amidst reporters as he arrived at a Dominican court Friday. (AP/WTSP Tampa Bay photo.)

Last August, when a social media post first hinted that Wander Franco dined upon forbidden fruit, he was held out of the Rays’ lineup. But he was quoted as saying, “They don’t know what they’re talking about. That’s why I prefer to be on my side and not get involved with anybody.”

Franco had the part about “they” not knowing what they were talking about kind of right.

He wasn’t just “running around” with an underage girl in his native Dominican Republic. Authorities there say he was sexually involved with her and, apparently, paying her mother about $1,700 a month for seven months in return for, as the old rhythm and blues song pleads, mama keeping her big mouth shut.

You thought Trevor Bauer turned out to be a nightmare for women and for baseball? Sexual violence with a fellow adult who wasn’t awake to continue giving her consent (which was never discredited in court even if his victim lost her restraining order bid) is demeaning and dangerous. What should we call kidnapping (for two days), seducing and schtupping a fourteen-year-old girl even once, never mind over four months?

Especially if the girl in question, fourteen years old when Franco began his relationship with her, may have been forced into this kind of rodeo before, sadly and sickeningly. She said so when interviewed by a psychologist during Dominican authorities’ investigation of the Rays shortstop.

“Since I was little,” the girl told a psychologist, according to court documents made available to The Athletic, “my mother has seen me as a way for her to benefit both from the partners she has had and from my partners. And it is something that I dislike very much.”

The shortstop who was worth sixteen defensive runs saved above the American League average in 2023 won’t be able to throw his way out of this one as readily as he can throw enemy batters out after slick and swift fielding of their batted balls. This isn’t, say, a high school sophomore having a romp with an eighth grader, as shattering as that sounds. This is a legal adult in his early 20s accused of putting it to at least one girl of eighth-grade age and possible others as well.

Like Franco, the mother is charged formally with commercial sexual exploitation. Like Franco, she could go to prison for 20-30 years if convicted in court. If her daughter told the truth to the investigating psychologist, mama may not have had to be paid to keep her big mouth shut in her daughter’s case.

For now, the Rays and baseball’s government have a more immediate problem to solve, namely what to do with a 22-year-old shortstop who’s at once a face of the Rays and a guy who was on baseball’s restricted list over this case from last August through the end of the World Series.

MLB has been investigating since. The sport’s protocols governing domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse allow teams and the commissioner to discipline a player for violating it regardless of a court verdict. Bauer escaped legal punishment but not baseball discipline. Franco’s case is far more grave than even Bauer’s.

It isn’t helped by a Tampa Bay Times column, written by John Romano, describing him as a ballplayer beyond his years on the field and at the plate but a comparative child off the field and without a bat in his hands.

If his baseball skills had advanced beyond his chronological age, then Franco’s social skills were more like an adolescent.

It was nothing dramatic; nothing immediately noticeable. But common courtesies seemed to elude him . . . It wasn’t that Franco was mean or rude, he just didn’t seem to consider the needs of those around him.

There was also a propensity to make impulsive choices. Franco was a father at 17. He bought a Lamborghini, a Mercedes and a Rolls Royce SUV before he was 21. He traveled with high-end bling, which the world discovered when his car was broken into at a Jacksonville hotel during a minor league rehab assignment and $659,000 worth of jewelry was stolen.

He got into an altercation with centerfielder Jose Siri near the end of spring training in 2023, and then another with Randy Arozarena during the regular season. The longer he was in Tampa Bay, the more isolated he seemed to become in the Rays clubhouse . . .

The first public sign that there might have been issues was earlier in the summer when Rays manager Kevin Cash took the unusual step of sending Franco home for two games. It wasn’t a suspension per se, more like sending an unruly child to timeout. Cash talked that day about Franco needing to control his emotions better.

Eventually it was decided to invite one of his best friends from the Dominican, Tony Pena, to join Franco in Tampa Bay. A few years older, it was hoped that Pena would be a steadying influence. And for a short time, Franco’s off-field mood and on-field performance did seem to improve. He hit eight homers in a 32-game stretch in July and August.

Then came the social media post heard ’round the sport. Then the probe. Then Franco’s arrest during 2023’s final week when he failed to appear on a court summons. Then the details thus far in the current case. And, his release under such conditions as a guaranteed two million pesos payment (roughly $35,000 U.S. dollars), and showing up every month before the Dominican Public Ministry. (He is allowed to leave the country so long as he meets those conditions.)

Can the Rays or baseball government itself send Franco—who signed the fattest contract in Rays history after the 2021 season, eleven years and $182 million—back to the Phantom Zone before he goes to trial?

Hark back to 2019. Pirates relief pitcher Felipe Vázquez, in his second All-Star season, was bagged for having sex with a Florida girl whose age he claimed not to know was thirteen years old when he first intercoursed with her. Baseball’s government wasted no time putting him on the restricted list—they did it practically the moment he was arrested.

The Pirates wasted no time, either. They disappeared Vázquez just as fast. They scrubbed his image from scoreboard videos and banners outside PNC Park, not to mention removing his name from inside-the-park monitors showing National League relief pitching leaders. “By game time, looking around,” wrote The Athletic‘s Rob Biertempfel, “it was as if Vázquez had never played for the Pirates.”*

It was the least both baseball government and the Pirates could have done out of respect to Vázquez’s victim. Returning Franco to the Phantom Zone now is the least both baseball government and the Rays can do out of respect for his victim, too.

They may wish to consider a remark from Franco himself to the girl in question, during a WhatsApp conversation cited in the court documents and disclosed by the Dominican news agency Diario Libre: “My girl, if my team realises this it could cause problems for me, it is a rule in all teams not to talk to minors, and, nevertheless, I took the risk and I loved it.”

If that quote is accurate, the Rays and baseball government have even less time to move. For the girl’s sake, and for baseball’s. And in that order.

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* In due course, Vázquez was convicted and sentenced to two-to-four years in state prison with a 23-month credit for time served before trial and sentencing. He lost an appeal in Pennsylvania Superior Court in 2021 and was deported back to his native Venezuela last March.

Requiem for the Neglected

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Dave Stenhouse

Dave Stenhouse, the first first-year pitcher to start an All-Star Game . . . but pensionless thanks to the 1980 pension realignment’s freezout of short-career major leaguers who played prior to 1980. Stenhouse and several more of his fellow frozen-out players died in 2023.

Commissioner Pepperwinkle wasn’t baseball’s only leader to drop a ball or three in 2023. The Major League Baseball Players Association has welcomed minor leaguers into its ranks and backed them on a five-year contract doubling minor league player salaries . . . but still offered not even a peep about pre-1980 short-career major leaguers frozen out of the 1980 pension plan realignment.

That re-alignment began pensions to major leaguers with 43 verified days on major league rosters and health benefits to those with one verified such day. But it went to those whose careers ended after 1980. Those with those verified days before 1980? Nothing.

The union line then was that most of those pre-1980 short-career players were mere September callups. Not so fast. The majority of those players saw major league time in any year of their careers prior to September, as early as April, or even by way of making major league rosters out of spring training.

A few more of those frozen-out players passed to the Elysian Fields this year, including:

Mike Baxes (92; Kansas City Athletics, 1956, 1958)—A product of the legendary San Francisco Seals (Pacific Coast League), military service disrupted Baxes’s career in the 1950s before the Seals, suddenly cash strapped, sold Baxes and three other players to the Kansas City Athletics for $50,000. The infielder moved from backing third base to backing up shortstop and got his first major league hit off ill-fated Indians pitcher Herb Score in 1956.

Back to the minors, Baxes earned a rep as a slick fielding shortstop with a good bat. (He hit two grand slams in a 1957 game for the Buffalo Bisons, which the Bisons won 20-1; he was even named the International League’s Most Valuable Player.) He  returned to the A’s in 1958, and became their starting second baseman, but an ankle sprain turning a double play helped ruin what remained of his career. He returned to the PCL but called it a career in 1961.

Rob Belloir (75; Atlanta, 1975-78)—The 25th major league player to have been born in Germany. (His father was a military officer stationed in Heidelberg.) Started his short Show life hitting like a Hall of Famer with a 4-for-8 spell between two games including four runs batted in in the first of the game. He couldn’t sustain it and spent the next three seasons up and down between the Braves and their Richmond (VA) AAA affiliate.

A member of Mercer University’s Hall of Fame (he lettered in both baseball and basketball), Belloir became a church minister after his playing days.

Bill Davis (80; Cleveland, 1965-66; San Diego, 1969)—Among his claims to fame, the first baseman appeared on five Topps rookie cards, pairing him with one or two other players, without ever landing a card of his own: four times as an Indian (for whom he went 3-for-10 in 1965 including a double), and once as a Padre. He shared his Padres rookie card with outfielder—and eventual back-to-back World Series-winning manager—Clarence (Cito) Gaston.

John Glenn (93; St. Louis, 1960—No relation to the astronaut, this center fielder was a 1950 Brooklyn Dodgers signing blocked by Hall of Famer Duke Snider before he was traded to the Cardinals for outfielder Duke Carmel and pitcher Jim Donohue. He played fifteen years in the minors and might have reached the Show in 1958 but for knee surgery. As a Cardinal, he played in 32 games and switched to left field. He left baseball in 1963 to work in the chemical industry before his retirement. “Baseball,” he once said, “made it possible for me to know what life was all about and to live with people of different cultures.”

Dave Stenhouse (90; Washington, 1962-64)—The first first-year pitcher to start an All-Star Game, Stenhouse’s feat came during his only truly healthy major league season. A long minor league career preceded his rookie season (at age 28); his All-Star turn included striking out Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente.

A knee injury turned his 1962 from plus to minus, unfortunately; Stenhouse would also deal with bone chip surgery on his pitching elbow before his brief major league career ended. But his happy second act following a few more minor league seasons was spent in his native Rhode Island, as the longtime pitching coach for Rhode Island College and, later, Brown University. (He was also the father of former Montreal Expos outfielder Mike Stenhouse.)

Those men, too, died without seeing a full major league pension. Their only redress since the 1980 realignment was a deal between then-commissioner Bud Selig and then-Players Association leader Michael Weiner: $625 per quarter for every 43 days’ worth of MLB time, up to four years’ worth, with the stipend hiked fifteen percent in the 2022-23 lockout settlement. The kicker: when they, too, passed to the Elysian Fields, neither they nor their fellow neglected could pass that stipend on to their families.

Barely 500 such pre-1980 short-career major leaguers still live on earth. They still despair of getting more press attention for the wrong done them in 1980. They mourn when more among their ranks depart to the Elysian Fields. They long for the day yet when baseball will acknowledge and do right by them at last.

They still cling to hope that somehow, some way, someone with true influence will remember what they swear was longtime union leader Marvin Miller’s hope that the issue would be revisited and redressed fully after his tenure ended.

I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing and befriending a few of those players. They’re not bomb-dropping radicals. They’re not about to storm the ballparks. They ask for nothing more, but nothing less, than what they should have had if not for the short sight of their own union and the owners of the time who agreed to the realignment freezeout.

Miller himself once believed a key reason for the original freezeout was that the monies simply weren’t there to take care of those players. But that was 1980. The union’s 2022 revenues were a reported $82 million before expenses, $55 million after them. The players’ welfare and benefits fund is believed to be $3.5 billion.

Doing right by the remaining 500+ pre-1980 short-career major leaguers? Forget breaking the bank. It probably wouldn’t put more than a pinhole-sized dent in a wall.