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ReWrighting Third Base History

G-Fafif Jul 11 2006 02:02 PM

This just in: David Wright is real good. http://faithandfear.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/7/11/2102745.html

A Boy Named Seo Jul 11 2006 02:14 PM

Nicely done. Minor brain flap: ]Last year, Chris Woodward and Miguel Cabrera played third as Mets for the first time. It wasn't a story that the tally of Met third sackers had reached 131. Even Cabrera can't take the job from Wright.

Edgy DC Jul 11 2006 02:21 PM

Ninety-seven percent of me is all about that essay. Three percent, based in and around my stomache, says stuff like "He hasn't been locked up yet," and "Nobody's that perfect" and "Re-read Bill James's refelctions on Steve Garvey" and "Don't go falling in love there, Edgy." And I'm not in love. So don't forget. It's just a silly phase I'm going through.

G-Fafif Jul 11 2006 02:26 PM

A Boy Named Seo wrote: Nicely done. Minor brain flap: ]Last year, Chris Woodward and Miguel Cabrera played third as Mets for the first time. It wasn't a story that the tally of Met third sackers had reached 131. Even Cabrera can't take the job from Wright. WHOOPS! Good catch, will fix. But, y'know, it's SO easy to confuse Miguel Cabrera and Miguel Cairo. Especially if you've never watched baseball.

Elster88 Jul 11 2006 02:31 PM

="Edgy DC"]And I'm not in love. I am.

G-Fafif Jul 11 2006 02:33 PM

="Edgy DC"]Ninety-seven percent of me is all about that essay. Three percent, based in and around my stomache, says stuff like "He hasn't been locked up yet," and "Nobody's that perfect" and "Re-read Bill James's refelctions on Steve Garvey" and "Don't go falling in love there, Edgy." And I'm not in love. So don't forget. It's just a silly phase I'm going through. It's always good to keep 3% in reserve for just-in-cases, but look at it this way: If I were inventing the blog at the end of 1985 and then blogging that "Dwight Gooden is clearly at least the second best starting pitcher in Mets history," there would be much that would go wrong in the next 21 years, but the statement would still stand the test of time (all due respect to Kooz who came before him anyway). That is to say there is no denying that Wright has accomplished a great deal in a short time. Going out on the limb of supposition to believe it will continue and improve? If we can't do that for Diamond Dave, then who? What were James' reflections on Garvey?

Edgy DC Jul 11 2006 02:39 PM

I'll post them after five. It's some of his finest writing.

Edgy DC Jul 11 2006 03:41 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Jul 17 2006 09:39 PM

This comes from the Bill James 1983 Baseball Abstract, written before Garvey's first season in San Diego, and (Scott Gray, author of The Mind of Bill James, from which I transcribe, appears wrong on this point) before the paternity suits and tell-all book by Cyndy came to light. What is it about Senator Garvey that rings so false when you know in your heart that it is probably as genuine as the contented look on the face of a cow and and deeply held as Halloween candy in the hand of a child? I have a cousin who strikes me exactly the same way, and I'll bet you do too; we'll call mine Wally. Wally graduated from high school with the highest hosannas and went straight to Harvard, where he met and married a reasonably pretty girl with an awfully sensible head on her, and then he got his master's degree and went to work in corporate America, shinnying rapidly up the ladder of success and making oodles of money and saving it so that his children will never have to worrry about who will pay for their next orthodontist's appointment. Wally is an awfully nice man and he has never said an unkind word to me in his life, and he is brilliant, and I avoid him at all costs. There is something about the very sensibleness of his life that seems to any normal person to be almost accusatory, for sometimes I am chubby while he retains an accusing trimness, and sometimes I am underemployed while he rests in accusingly attainable affluence, and sometimes I might neglect to have my teeth looked at for a decade or two because of an irrational fear of dentists while I know without a thought that if Wally had such a fear he would deal with it directly, and if he didn't his wife would spin him around and kick him in the butt and send him on the way to his appointment anyway, so that you would never know the difference. It does not ring false, perhaps, but hollow, that since the very enssence of life is a mystery, life seems unreal without sefl-dobut, and we must see that self-doubt in others before we can accept that they share our humanity. Garvey never allows the question marks to rise in his eyes or to afflict his performance, and thus he seems... what is it that people say about him? A robot? A programmed performer? How can he be a human without doubting himself, without yielding to periods fo frustration and futile anger? It is not only Garvey's chin which seems chiseled in granite, but his values, which were given to him in grade school along with the rest of us. But while the rest of us have eroded ours by turning them over and over and examing them in different ways, Garvey seems, impossibly, to have let his stay untested and unworn. One might think that when this period is in the past Garvey will be humanized somwhat by what the networks refer to as his "mental torment," by his accompanying sub-Garvey seasons. What is so unnerving about Wally and Steve is to think that they have never lost a year or two out of their lives because they were wondering about something, got their values confused, never sifted through the ashes before. 1981 and 1982 were the years Garvey lost in the fire, and one might hope that he will have the sense not to hide that from us. Welcome, Steve; welcome to the human race.

Edgy DC Jul 11 2006 03:49 PM Edited 3 time(s), most recently on Jul 17 2006 09:43 PM

Man, that just captures so much doesn't it? Could use some copyediting (and a thimbleful of commas), but right there is the shadow of Garvey's downfall fefore it happened, nebulously sensed by a man too easily praised and dismissed as "The Guru of Statistics," but is in fact an acute observer of human beings, relationsiips, systems, processes, psyches, evolutions, and the other moving complex thiings that a recluse in Kansas can muster the persepctive to observe. Right there you can see Keith Hernandez's problem with Gary Carter (and Carter's sadness that Keith could maintain a relationship with a brother embittered by his own washed-out baseball career, but Carter could not). Right there, you can see Batman's problems with Superman. ("Sure we're on the same side, and sure, we're both orphans, but his values are programmed in him by a father he never knew, and reinforced by goodly midwestern fosterparents who never knew a city street. Mine came tempered in a furnace where parents bleed to death on sidewalks and where I grew up with only the demons I wrestled with.") I daresay it seems to me to capture some of the problems that some forumites have had with me, though I have lost years of my life sifting through ashes My brother seems to have a simliar problem with our cousin Bryan --- straight A's, Ivy League, MD. Going back years, decades even --- I remember brother quoting Billy Joel's then-new "Should I try to be straght-A student?/If you are, then you think too much" at Bryan. But you know, I've sat with Brian alone, without his perfect kids around, and he's kind of sad too, and even self-doubting. Just something in his makeup keeps his keel steady as he sails through it, where I would go off course. I guess I'd still be shocked to find out he was sleeping around or piling up secret gambling debts or writing himself prescriptions or something. Maybe I'd be shocked to learn that about Carter also. I don't think I was that shocked about Garvey, though. Or maybe I do and don't care to articulate it any further. I don't know what it says about me.

ScarletKnight41 Jul 11 2006 03:56 PM

Great column Greg :)

A Boy Named Seo Jul 11 2006 03:57 PM

That is some great writing by James (I love the contented cow line), but all early accounts of Wright through tv or radio interviews, printed quotes, chartible acts off the field, etc., point to a real grounded, humble, down-earthiness that seems to not be present in Wally, Brian, or the Garvey James describes. Wright's only 23 (I think I was working my last year at Pizza Hut at 23) so there's plenty to worry about if you think about it long enough, but I think a lack of humility and a complete absence of any self-doubt would not be among those things.

Edgy DC Jul 11 2006 04:09 PM

A Boy Named Seo wrote: That is some great writing by James (I love the contented cow line), but all early accounts of Wright through tv or radio interviews, printed quotes, chartible acts off the field, etc., point to a real grounded, humble, down-earthiness that seems to not be present in Wally, Brian, or the Garvey James describes. No doubt, and I guess we're all taking --- consciously or subconsciously --- some relief in hearing him curse publickly, whereas Garvey, interviewed before the 1974 World Series, said "I always try to act as though there is a little boy or a little girl around, and I try never to do anything that would give them a bad example." Not that it's good to have him drinking whiskey and cursing, but nothing is a recipe for disaster like publickly making a point of drinking milk while the whiskey bottles pile up in your closet. Well, I guess suitcase-size nuclear weapons are worse, but you get my drift. Maybe he can find a way to find a happy medium betewen the characters of Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter. That's not too much to ask, is it? Is it? Maybe the Rusty Staub model, perhaps without the whole gay-guy-in-the-closet aura?

G-Fafif Jul 11 2006 04:38 PM

Roger Kahn on Steve Garvey, A Season in the Sun (written in 1976): Steve Garvey, the Dodgers' best ball player is intelligent, handsome and so accommodating that I later asked Vin Scully, the broadcaster, if he could be as nice as he appeared. "His is truly exactly that nice," Scully said. "And he hits and he has a beautiful wife and lovely kids. In fact he's so nice some people who aren't so nice resent him for it." Bill James on Steve Garvey, The New Bill James Historical Abstract (published a quarter-century after Kahn's assessment): Garvey was a good player. When he was active, I always thought he was a selfish player, and I probably never said a good word about him. After he retired, however, one of his managers (Dick Williams) wrote that he was a selfish player, and his ex-wife wrote a book in which she said he was a selfish everything and gave interviews in which she compared him to Ted Bundy. His image changed so much that a lot of people almost forgot about the things that he could do. He used to get to 200 hits a year, regular as colockwork and they weren't 200 singles. I'm not exactly sure what any of this has to do with David Wright, but perceptions can change, especially as events warrant. I have only the anecdotal evidence I've heard and read, same as the rest of you, regarding David Wright the pillar of society. He doesn't come off, in my judgment, as a goody two shoes. He comes off as not an a**hole, and we're so used to either that or guys overdoing their non-a**hole images that we probably overestimate the goody-two-shoesness factor. He's not Hernandez. He's not Carter. He's not Staub. He's David Wright, so far, so good. Regarding Garvey, his career had a whole other trajectory from Wright's. He floundered for quite a while (3-1/2 seasons) as a third baseman and didn't start performing like a star until he was 25, the year after he was moved to first to make room for Ron Cey (the Dodgers were almost Metsian in their search for a third sacker). His non-pitching teammates in the golden age of Garvey were pretty much his peers. Almost all of them came up through the system at the same time. Not sure if it means anything, but David is learning the ropes alongside some of the great veteran character guys in the game. Garvey, probably more than Carter (it helped he was in L.A.), seemed to seek out the BIG spotlight. I don't get that impression from Wright. The spotlight will find him. And he gives every indication (as inferred by me, anyway) that he'll be a human being about it.

Edgy DC Jul 11 2006 04:44 PM

]He's not Hernandez. He's not Carter. He's not Staub. He's David Wright, so far, so good. So far, but deep down in my troubled sleep, I see an Ivory-scrubbed brown-haired white man with a strong chin, and that jerk-ass Garvey leaps off the cover of my Boy's Life.

A Boy Named Seo Jul 11 2006 04:47 PM

]Maybe he can find a way to find a happy medium betewen the characters of Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter. That's not too much to ask, is it? Is it? It don't know if it's too much to ask for, but it's not too much to hope for anyway. But the perception I get with Wright is that he'd score very low on the FoS (Full of Shit) Meter. Sure, he's polite and nice and says the right things in the media, but he doesn't come across as a phony like it sounds like Garvey really did, and ARod sometimes does. I guess you could say that you never know someone's full of shit until you find out they're full of shit, but I get a feeling of genuineness out of him.

soupcan Jul 12 2006 07:54 AM

The difference I find between Garvey and Wright is that while Garvey was this robotic model of consistency and perceived perfection. David is just really good with an 'aw shucks' type of attitude. I loved Garvey when I was a kid. I trained for and ran a 10K simply because it was the 'Steve Garvey/Pepsi 10K' and Garvey greeted the runners at the finish line and shook their hands. And by the way and a bit off topic.... ="G-Fafif"]Jeff Kent? After he couldn't play second and before he turned into the greatest-hitting second baseman ever, he tried third for us. He didn't like it, which was OK since we didn't like him. Thank you.

Benjamin Grimm Jul 12 2006 08:26 AM

I've said it here before, but to me, David Wright is our Cal Ripken. He's never reminded me of Steve Garvey; he's more of a Ripken. Hopefully I'll still be thinking that twenty years from now.

old original jb Jul 12 2006 08:47 AM

] The Yanks have A-Rod, the most accomplished athlete in the sport. As a player, he's excellent. As a personality, he's eczema. But you can't have it all. Brilliant.

MFS62 Jul 12 2006 09:02 AM

old original jb wrote: ] The Yanks have A-Rod, the most accomplished athlete in the sport. As a player, he's excellent. As a personality, he's eczema. But you can't have it all. Actually, he tries to be nice to everyone. (But I guess you can't please everybody) But in doing so, he comes across so Mary Poppinsish that it makes you itchy. And maybe that has been confused with eczema. :) LOL! Funny line. Later

Johnny Dickshot Jul 17 2006 07:54 PM

Great thread I seemed to have missed. I have some doubts about what Wright's really about too. I don;t for a second fear he'll turn out to be a complete jerk, and would guess that all things considered is probably a lot more grounded and down to earth and respectable and a good bet for a long happy career than the average ballplayer. I happen to agree with James' being perceptive about Garvey: What freaked me about him was that he and Cindy were sharing details of their private lives as guests on Bert Convey's Tattletales game show. I remember thinking: What good could come of that? And also: How come no Mets are on? What I do fear is the general idea that writers and fans tend to be absolute suckers for ANY young player as successful as Wright (Gooden for example... Miguel Cabrera ... Jose Reyes? I'm sure I could find a lot of articles lauding AJ Pierzynski's posiotive attitude and sportsmanship when he was a young guy). It's always a tragedy when they get these great personal characteristics stick to them when they're young and good, because when they finally act like regular old humans it's a long way down. And all that said, I think to be an elite athlete you almost have to be an asshole (hyper competitive, driven, singleminded, fearful).

Edgy DC Jul 17 2006 09:54 PM

What Dickshot is summarizing is from page 900 in the Dwight Gooden comments of the The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, which I've quoted before in full. James ranks him 76th greatest pitcher of all time (through 2000). He may well have been subsequently passed by John Smoltz (87), but the only other active pitcher behind him was David Cone (98) and he certainly didn't pass him. Interestinglly, James (or his miserable editor) has two listings for Gooden in the index --- one as "Gooden, Doc" and one as "Gooden, Dwight" --- which really captures the nature of the guy's image, doesn't it? It's like there were two guys, the most exciting and engaging young pitcher ever, and the dicky doppleganger that took his place. The Mind of Bill James expands on those ideas, of the reporter's role in setting up a fresh young athlete to be a paragon of virtue, and then tearing him down when he's inevitably not.