The 1972 Oak Park Little League Rams, American League Champs, Padre Steve’s One and Only Trip to the Post Season

Well, I gave my divisional playoff picks last night and as I start this post the Twinkies and Pussy Cats are going to the 12^th inning tied at 5. As I said last night I hope the game goes as long as the Braves-Astros NLDS game that went 18 innings back in 2004. While I’m waiting and watching to see who wins I need a bit of a review to see how my teams in the major and minor teams do this year?

Well…let me change the order of things here, the Twins just won the game actually fulfilling my prediction.  It was one of the best baseball games that I have watched in a long time.  Jim Leyland and Ron Gardenier both did a great job of managing and both teams played really hard.  There were some amazing plays and the Twins pitchers came up big when they needed to in difficult situations often aided by outstanding defense including a play at the plate with the bases loaded with one out in the top of the 12^th.  It ended with one out in the bottom of the 12^th when Alexei Casilla singled to right off Tigers closer Fernando Rodney to drive in Carlos Gomez.  As I predicted the Twins had the advantage of the 10^th man in the Metro Dome.  To win the AL Central they won 17 of their last 21 games and overcame a 7 game Tigers lead.  Even more amazing they came back from 3 three game deficit with only four games left in the season to force the playoff against the Tigers.  When they did that I knew that they would win tonight.  There are some things in baseball that you can feel and no matter how many times the Tigers took the lead I knew that it wouldn’t last.  On a side note, Twins reliever Bobby Keppel got the win. Keppel pitched here in Norfolk when the Mets were the Tides major league affiliate.  It was good to see one of the Tides come through in the clutch to deliver the win.   What a game, I hope every playoff series is this exciting.

As anyone who knows me can tell you I love the game of baseball.  So unlike most people who live and die with one team I can honestly say that I have a number of favorite teams, often for different reasons but always because I like something about them.  This doesn’t mean that they are all winners as is evidenced by some of the records this season, or maybe the past few seasons.  Likewise it means I get conflicted sometimes when two of my favorites play one another.

Of course my favorite team is the San Francisco Giants. They came out west the year before I was born across the Bay in Oakland.  I cannot forget all the greats who have played there and how close they have come to winning the World Series but not doing so.  Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichel, Bobby Bonds, Gaylord Perry and the list can just keep going.  I saw my one no-hitter back in 1975 at Candlestick when Ed Halicki no-hit the Mets.  I won’t forget watching the 1989 World Series when the Bay Area was rocked by a major earthquake or when I saw Barry Bonds hit 756 when sitting in a Army Dining Facility eating breakfast at Camp Victory in Baghdad.

I also have liked the A’s, well I was born in Oakland and even though my dad hated Charlie Finely and never was a fan of the American League I enjoyed the freewheeling A’s of the 1970s, the teams fielded by Tony LaRussa and Billy Ball.  We saw a couple of games in the A’s and Tigers Championship series.  It is really amazing to think that back then you could get field level tickets for a decent price on game day.  There is some tension here because I have a soft spot for the Anaheim Angels who happened to be the California Angels when my dad took us to a huge number of games at the “Big A” before Disney redid everything.  I really came to love the feel of a ballpark in the confines of the “Big A.”  I still have a Angels hat signed by a number of the players from that era including Jim Fregosi, Sandy Alomar, Jim Spencer and Chico Ruiz.  I have pictures of my brother and I with Angles Manager Left Phillips and 3^rd Base Coach Rocky Bridges.  Back in those days’ players and managers still had interesting nicknames like Lefty, Rocky, Catfish and Mudcat.

I also liked the Orioles because when we moved to Stockton California they were affiliated with the Stockton Ports of the California League.  I had an Orioles cap that I got there for many years afterward.  I visited Orioles Park back in 2004 and fell in love with the place.  When the Orioles affiliated with the Tides in 2007 I renewed that affection for the O’s even though they have not been very good the past few years.  This year was great to see a number of Tides go up to the majors and do well.

In  2003 I came to follow the Atlanta Braves after seeing their AA and AAA affiliates on a regular basis beginning when I saw the AA affiliate when they played Jacksonville in the Southern League and the Richmond, now the Gwinnett Braves play Norfolk in the International League.  In 2004 when they had the year of the “baby Braves” I had seen all play in the minors that same season.

So how did my teams do?

San Francisco finished 3^rd in the NL West despite having an 88-74 .546 record. The Braves had a very similar situation finishing at 86-76 .531 behind the Marlins and Phillies.  Both teams were in contention for the NL Wild Card until the last week of the season.  They had the 6^th and 7^th best records in the National League.

My American League Teams did not do well with the exception of the Angels.  The Orioles had a bad season topped by a dismal September.  They were able to pull off a 4 game win streak to end the season and keep from losing 100 games.  They finished 64-98 .395 and 39 games out of first place.  They have some positives to build on as they had a very young and fluid roster.  I expect them to be significantly better next year.  The A’s also had a bad year, not as bad as the O’s but bad.  They finish last in the AL West at 75-87 for a .463 winning percentage 22 games behind the Angels.  The Angels though won the AL West with a 97-65 .599 winning percentage. They had the second best record in the American League.

That is why there is always next year.  Besides I still have the game and this post season could be a great one if tonight was any indication.  I’m sorry but the battles on the gridiron cannot compare to the drama that happens on the diamond.  That is why I belong to the Church of Baseball, Harbor Park Parish and this is my view from 102.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

Minor League Moves: The Orioles Affiliated with The Norfolk Tides in 2007

Minor League Baseball teams move around for many reasons with a fair amount of regularity.  At the end of every season there are almost always a number of teams that either changes their major league affiliation or moves to another city.  A few years ago my team here in Norfolk told the New York Mets and the Minaya – Bernazard Axis of Idiocy to “get out of town and don’t let the door hit you.”  The Mets had treated their AAA affiliate badly for years and these guys gutted the Mets farm system.  I talked with various Mets scouts this year who although not saying anything on record nodded in agreement about my observations of the Mets.  So the Mets went to New Orleans and this year to Buffalo and managed to continue their mangled management of their minor league system.

However teams change affiliations for a number of reasons.  One reason that Baltimore relocated to Norfolk was the entrance into the Hampton Roads TV market.  Other reasons include facilities, distance from the home club, fan base issues, tradition or local government policies.

When I was a kid I lived in Stockton California where I got my first taste of Minor League ball watching the Stockton Ports of the California League in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  At the time the team was affiliated with the Baltimore Orioles.  A few years back I had opportunity to talk with Orioles great Paul Blair who remembered his days playing in Stockton at Billy Hebert Field.  The Ports have since been with the Brewers, the Rangers, the Reds and the Athletics and maybe a couple of others over the years.  This is not unusual as teams try to move their teams closer to the major league club or local owners negotiate deals with major league franchises to move teams to their markets.

Last year there were several moves in the International League and the Pacific Coast League. In the PCL the biggest news was the relocation of the Dodgers AAA affiliate from Las Vegas to Albuquerque, a move that returned the Dodgers to one of their tradition minor league cities.    The Ottawa Lynx franchise left that city for Allentown Pennsylvania to become the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs. This left that city without any baseball.  A Canadian league that was supposed to move a team there folded.  This is actually sad for Canada as both Ottawa and Montreal which had a long baseball heritage with the Major and Minor leagues no longer have teams.  This is in large part due to the Canadian government’s tax policies that ensured that minor league players would be taxed by both the US and Canadian governments.  This made the situation difficult if not impossible for many minor league players from the states and as a result the major leagues moved all of their teams out of Canada except the Vancouver Canadians in the Northwest League.  Since the Northwest League is a short season single “A” league and most of the players are college players there is a different dynamic at work than the rest of the minors.

In 2009 the New York Mets brought the team once known as the Norfolk Tides from their home in post-Katrina New Orleans to Buffalo. In Buffalo the Mets replaced Cleveland who had moved their team to Columbus.  This ensured that the city of Buffalo and especially Bison’s fans would bask in the misery inflicted on both Norfolk and New Orleans fans for the foreseeable future.  The Bisons under Mets management finished the season with the worst record in Triple “A” ball.  I saw them several times in Norfolk and there wasn’t a young prospect of any caliber on the team.  There was an ass-load of older “has been” players who are deep into the tail end of their careers and I looked like I was in better shape than some of them, some of the guts and butts were simply huge.   The Mets under the current Oscar Minaya management are pathetic.  They have no prospects, their minor league system is broken and if the Bison’s plight was not enough their AA affiliate the Binghamton Mets were the worst team in AA Ball.  If Ross Perot was talking to Larry King about them he would say “That’s just sad Larry.”

Cleveland moved its affiliation to Columbus to be closer to the major league team while the Washington Nationals who had been in Columbus moved to Syracuse when Toronto moved its Triple “A” affiliation to Las Vegas in the Pacific Coast League.    In the mean time Atlanta which had been embroiled in a decade long contest with Richmond’s clueless city council led by Doug “I have no plan or clue” Wilder for a decent stadium to replace the cesspool called “The Diamond” gave up.  Since they and not a local owner controlled the franchise, they moved the Braves to the Atlanta suburbs of Gwinnett County.  Richmond has one of the worst if not the worst ball park in the International League and maybe the minors.  Having been to the Diamond many times I have to say that it was the worst venue that I have ever seen a ball game, decrepit and uncomfortable seating, poor amenities, and a field that flooded if so much as a thimble full of rain fell made it a horrible venue for fans as well as players.  Thus the city which refused to work cooperatively with the Braves lost its team and AAA franchise, a franchise that has been for many years one of the best in the minor leagues.  Richmond lost their hockey team as well to this bunch’s inept leadership.  These people have to be one of the most clueless city government s in the entire United States and certainly the worst managed state capital.

All of this leads to the first move of the 2009-2010 off season.  On the 23^rd of September the Eastern League announced that the Connecticut Defenders franchise would move to Richmond in time for the 2010 season.  The city has agreed to make improvements on the Diamond to keep it viable until a new stadium can be build by 2012, a plan that should be doable unless the city has decided to make their plans for the new stadium on the Mayan calendar which assumes that the Cubs will win the World’s series, that Jesus will come back and the world as we know it will end.

The team is an affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, which means that if the Tides are not in town that I may make a number of trips to Richmond in 2010.  The Giants will stay with the team through the end of 2010 and hopefully for me will remain in Richmond for many years.  Richmond is allowing fans to suggest new names for the team.  A link to that site is here: http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/sports/baseball/name-the-team/

There will be more team moves announced in the coming month or so as cities and major league teams alike assess what they need.  Cities with a long minor league heritage may lose teams, some cities are building stadiums to get teams and some cities may end up with teams in the independent leagues.  Regardless Minor League Baseball will continue to do well and fans will come.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

Grainger Stadium Kinston NC

“The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and what could be again.” – James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams (1989)

There is something about baseball that is healing.  It is part of the fabric of our American culture something that somehow overcomes the political and religious divisions that so divide our country right now.  We were at Gordon Biersch watching the last couple of innings of a qualification game for the Little League World series between a team from Peabody Massachusetts and one from Rhode Island.  It was one of those magical games that ended with a walk-off Grand-Slam home run in the bottom of the 6th.  It triggered a flood of memories for me and ait got Judy, the Abby Normal Abbess and I talking about some of our own expereinces travelling the country and watching baseball.

I love the game of baseball especially going to a ballpark and seeing a game.  The experience of this for me has been life-long though difficult to continue from about 1983-1999 due to a tour in Germany with the Army a very difficult four years of seminary followed by residency, my first hospital job where I worked the second shift, a mobilized tour in Germany prior to coming in the Navy in early 1999.  During those years getting to games was a rare event, either due to time or money.  Despite this we as a couple got to a few games and I got in a couple on my own when traveling.  Thankfully, Judy, the Abby Normal Abbess tolerates and even joins me in my own baseball journey.

When I went into the Navy and moved to North Carolina that began to change.  North Carolina of course is the setting of the classic baseball movie Bull Durham and once can visit some of the same ballparks as are shown in the movie. The adventure of going to the ballpark again became a regular part of our lives.  It began in a little town in Eastern North Carolina called Kinston, the home of the Kinston Indians.  Kinston is a town that has seen better times, but the Indians, or the K-Tribe as they are known is part of the lifeblood of the community.  They play in Grainger Stadium, which though an older ballpark is still a great place to watch a game.  The Indians Carolina League which is advanced “A” ball and for a number of years dominated that League. When were stationed in Camp LeJeune we would make the trip to Kinston on a regular basis when I was in town. At the time the Indians farm system was producing a lot of great prospects, many who now are major leaguers, including Grady Sizemore, Jhonny Peralta Shane Victorino and Victor Martinez.  When we left LeJeune we were stationed a brief time in Jacksonville Florida, where we lived very close to the Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville, home of the Jacksonville Suns then the Los Angeles Dodgers AA affiliate in the Southern League.  The ballpark is a great venue to see a game and the Suns management led by Peter Bragan and Peter Bragan Jr. who are part of a great baseball family run a great show, and the Dodgers staff was a class organization.  I got to meet Tommy Lasorda in Jacksonville as well as Steve Yeager.  I have 2 game worn special issue jerseys from the Suns.  When we moved to Norfolk in 2003 the season was already over but beginning on opening day of 2004 I began to worship at the Church of Baseball, Harbor Park Parish.  This if you follow this site is the home of the Norfolk Tides.  Ever since then I have had the opportunity to see the game close up on a very regular basis.

In addition to attending the games near us we would travel and see other games. We would make trips down to Kinston from Virginia.  Once we went to a reunion of a singing group, the Continental Singers and Orchestra that I ran spotlight for back in 1979 which was being held in Kansas City.  On the way we saw a game in Louisville with the Louisville Bats, followed by a game in Cedar Rapids Iowa where we saw the Cedar Rapids Kernels play the Battle Creek Yankees and followed it with a trip to the “Field of Dreams” outside Dyersville, where that film was made.  Judy indulged me by playing catch with me on the field and taking my picture coming out of the cornfield.  It was almost; well it was a spiritual experience.  Occasionally when we visit Huntington West Virginia we try to see the West Virginia Power in Charleston.

Until I went to Iraq Judy and I used to take trips to Minor League ballparks around our Wedding anniversary.  We would take about four or five days and travel city to city to see some of the most fascinating baseball venues around.  We haven’t made a trip like that, even outside the wedding anniversary in a while mainly due to time as my much leave time has been spent going home to assist with my parents, especially the past 18 months where my dad’s Alzheimer’s Disease has progressed to the point of him being in a nursing home on palliative care.  Despite that I would always try to find time to see a game when in Stockton.  Before Iraq we would see the Stockton Ports in Billy Herbert Field.  The Ports now play in Banner Island Ballpark which is a great place to see a game.  If the Ports have not been in town we have occasionally been able to see the Giants, the A’s or the Sacramento River Cats, the AAA affiliate of the A’s.

The anniversary trips took us to some of the most interesting places to see games.  I have already mentioned Kinston where on one of our anniversaries we got to throw out the first pitch.  We have also travelled to Winston-Salem, when they were the Warthogs and Charlotte home of the Knights, the AAA affiliate of the White Sox.  Actually, Charlotte’s stadium is just down the road a way in Round Rock South Carolina.  We got rained out in Winston-Salem as a major storm hit at game time.  To our north we have been up to Frederick Maryland, home of the Frederick Keys, the Carolina League affiliate of the Orioles and Harrisburg Pennsylvania to see the Harrisburg Senators, the Montreal Expos-Washington Senators AA Eastern League affiliate at Metro-Bank Park on City Island.  This park was used in the movie Major League II as the Spring Training facility. There were two really cool things that happened at Harrisburg which was on our anniversary.  First we saw Phillies Slugger Ryan Howard about tear the cover off a ball hitting a double down the right field line and the General Manager had a ball autographed for us by the team.  That was really cool.  Likewise when Atlanta still had its Richmond affiliate, the Richmond Braves, we made a number of trips to “The Diamond” in Richmond.  This was the worst stadium I had ever watched a game in, though the team was always good.  We saw a playoff game there in 2004 between the Braves and the Columbus Clippers, who were then the Yankees AAA affiliate.  Sitting behind home plate I saw Jason Giambi play for the Clippers on a rehab assignment.

I have done some parks on my own when travelling.  Any time I have been on the road in baseball season and have the chance I try to see the local team if circumstances permit.  I have seen a number of games in the Pacific Northwest seeing two Seattle Mariners short season single A Northwest League affiliate the Everett Aquasox and AAA Pacific Coast League affiliate the Tacoma Rainiers.  Everett is an especially interesting place to see a game.  The games are well attended and the team management has some great promotions including “Frogfest” where the team wears tie-dyed jerseys and there is a kind of 1960s hippy theme.  The Rainiers play in Cheney Stadium in Tacoma.  In Tacoma I saw Mariners pitcher Felix Hernandez pitch his first AAA game. Both Everett and Tacoma are nice places to see a game.  While on the USS Hue City at the Maine Lobster Festival I worked a deal with festival organizers to get tickets for our sailors for two games watching the Portland Seadogs the AA affiliate of the Boston Red Sox.  When the Seadogs hit a home run a lighthouse rises up from behind the fence and a foghorn sounds.

However the two most interesting place that we have seen games together are Ashville North Carolina, the home of the Ashville Tourists and Zebulon North Carolina home of the Carolina Mudcats.  Ashville has quite a history with McCormack Field dating back until 1919.  The grandstand was rebuilt a number of years back, but the playing field is the same.  The outfield wall backs up into a tree covered hillside into which home runs hit at night almost seem to dissolve.   Zebulon is another matter.  The stadium is about a mile out of town surrounded by farm fields.  When you drive to it down US 64 from Raleigh the stadium almost seems to emerge from nowhere as if it were beamed down from a orbiting starship.  It is a fairly new stadium and very modern a great place to see a game.  We went there to see the Mudcats, who were then the Marlins AA Southern League affiliate play the Mississippi Braves.  We got to the stadium and found that somehow I had left our tickets at home.  Since the game was in an hour and home was bout a 6-8 hour round trip I knew that going home to get them was not an option.  So I went to the ticket manager and explained the situation.  He had remembered taking my ticket order by phone as we had talked about shared military experiences.  He was able to print us duplicates for the seats that we had previously purchased and we saw the game, as always from down behind home plate.  In this game we saw Braves All Star catcher Brian McCann play the week before he was called up to Atlanta.

I hope that we have some time next year to make at least one trip out to see some other Minor League venues.  They are a lot of fun and part of the fabric of our country and somehow I believe if we reconnect in these locations, watching this timeless game that maybe just maybe we can overcome the emnity of all that divides our country and learn to be Americans again.  We will never all agree on politics, religion, domestic, foreign or economic policy.  No Americans ever have, but we can discover what it means again, through this wonderful game called baseball.  I do think that the Deity Herself approves of all of these local parishes of the Church of Baseball scattered about our land.  At the same time I always have my place in Section 102, Row B Seat 2 at Harbor Park.

Peace, Steve+

Bats Right,
Throws Right
Height 6′ 1″
Weight 200 lb.
Debut April 10, 1962
Final Game September 24, 1971
Born August 5, 1939 in Mobile, AL USA
Died August 16, 1984 in Atlanta, GA USA ((Tommie Aaron Obituary – New York Times on August 8, 1984

Tommie Aaron Is Dead at 45;
Brother of Home-Run Leader

ATLANTA, Aug. 17 (AP) — Tommie Aaron, the younger brother of Henry Aaron, baseball’s home-run leader, died of leukemia at Emory University Hospital Thursday. He was 45 years old and had served on the Atlanta Braves coaching staff since 1978.

Aaron, who also played for the Braves in Milwaukee and Atlanta, had been treated for leukemia after it was discovered in 1982 following physical exams of Brave personnel during spring training.

He reported to training this spring, but left the team before the regular season to seek further treatment. He returned to the Braves infrequently and handled defensive positioning before he was replaced July 20 by Eddie Haas.

Aaron had been in the Braves’ organization since 1958, when he signed as a first baseman. He managed at Savannah, Ga., and Richmond from 1973 to 1978 after playing seven years in the majors, compiling a .229 average with 13 homers and 94 runs batted in. Henry Aaron hit a record 755, homers in his major league-career.

In addition to his brother, Tommie Aaron is survived by his wife, Carolyn, and three children, Efrem, Tommie Jr. and Veleeta.))

Tommie Lee Aaron

Tommie Lee Aaron was a first baseman and left fielder in Major League Baseball, as well as a lifetime career baseball professional.  Tommie, the younger brother of MLB Hall of Famer Hank Aaron, is himself enshrined in the International League Hall of Fame.  He died of leukemia in 1984 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Like his older brother, Tommie started off playing for the Mobile Black Bears, along with future Cub Hall of Famer, Billy Williams.  Aaron did well enough to draw scouts on his own merits, and Tommie was signed by Milwaukee Braves in May, 1958, as an 18 year old amateur free agent.  From that point until his death in 1984, he was  involved in a variety of capacities with that organization.

Assigned to the Class C Eau Claire Braves, Tommie’s first season as a professional was adequate, if not exceptional.  Aaron hit .274 over 237 at bats, but only managed 3 home runs that year in the Northern League, which consisted of teams in cold northern outposts across North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Manitoba.  Back at Eau Claire in 1959, Tommie found his power stroke, delivering 26 home runs despite a small drop in average to .256.

The 1960 season dawned with Aaron assigned to Cedar Rapids, a class B club in the Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League where he produced very nicely, hitting at a .299, .370, .493 rate for more than 500 at bats.  Tommie also performed for six games with Class A Jacksonville of the South Atlantic League, and a single contest with AAA Louisville. Assigned to Austin of the Class AA Texas League for 1961 season, Aaron’s season was consistent with his prior efforts, as he again batted .299 with good strike zone judgment (an OBP above .370), while his 15 round trippers easily paced his club.

1962 saw Aaron with the big club as a 22 year old rookie, where he played in 141 games, primarily as a pinch hitter and defensive replacement, as he only actually started 74 games.  Tommie was very much in the shadow of his older brother, who had entered the league seven years earlier and was now in his prime.  That rookie year for Aaron also saw what was arguably his best game in the big leagues.  Leading off and starting in left field for Milwaukee on Thursday, April 26, 1962 at County Stadium in Milwaukee, Tommie tallied 3 runs scored and 4 batted in, as the Braves clobbered the Philadelphia Phillies by the score of 10-4.  For the game, Aaron had a home run and a triple among his three hits.

Tommie split time between Milwaukee and Denver during 1963, playing well only at the lower level.  Tommie’s .310 average and .492 slugging percentage in AAA ball continued to show some promise as a 23 year old prospect, but his .200 batting average without any significant power with the Braves spoke otherwise.  With the 1964 Denver Bears for the entire season, Aaron led the team with 21 home runs and 103 runs scored.  It should be noted here that baseballs tend to carry much better in the thin dry air at a mile high altitude than they do in a venue like County Stadium.

Back with the Braves to start 1965, Tommie was in the starting lime-up for a couple of games in April, and made it into a total of only 8 games before being sent back to the minors sometime after a May 2nd double header.  Milwaukee’s AAA affiliate was located in Atlanta for a single year in 1965, preparing the town for the arrival of the big club the following year, and Tommie spent the rest of the year there too, prepping the fans for his brother Hank.  Now 25 years old, having failed in two different stints with Milwaukee, Aaron’s minor league season was pretty dismal overall.  Although he produced a decent average at .284, Tommie’s power disappeared now that he was away form Denver.

When the Braves relocated from Milwaukee to Atlanta, their AAA affiliate was forced to move to Richmond, and Tommie Aaron moved right along with them.  His hitting stats for 1966 actually regressed in some ways from earlier efforts in the minor leagues, showing an AVG, OBP, SLG line of .269, .318, .441, which included some return of Aaron’s power stroke, but a continued erosion of his on base percentage.

As a 27 year old in 1967, again with the Richmond Braves, Aaron put together what may have been his finest minor league campaign, and was rewarded with the International League’s MVP award.  Aaron’s batting average for the season was .309, just a single point behind his teammate Felix Milan, his 181 total bases leading the team, as Richmond finished first in the IL by just a single game over Rochester.  That team’s finish, and the accompanying MVP trophy, earned Tommie one more shot at the big leagues in 1968.

The league batting average for the 1968 National League was .243, while Tommy Aaron’s was .244, not exactly the kind of production that will even completely justify a bench position for a left fielder or first baseman with little power.  Hitting rebounded some in 1969, the league average jumped up to .250, and yes, you guessed it, Tommy Aaron’s average ended the season at .250.

In my mind this is a pretty good metaphor for Aaron’s MLB performance, he was just league average in terms of batting average, and generally lacking in power in the big leagues.   Tommie was often used as a defensive replacement earlier in his career, and Hank has been quoted commenting on his brother’s defensive excellence, but that just wasn’t enough to support his bat in Left Field or Firstbase.

1970 was a tough year for Tommie, although it began in a fairly promising fashion.  In sporadic use, Aaron was finally living up to his minor league promise in Atlanta, showing a nice hitting stroke, producing an average over .350 as late in the season as July 20.  It was a steep downhill slope from there however, as a string of hit-less performances found Tommie’s end of year batting average just barely above the Mendoza line, a discouraging .206.

A 31 year old Tommie Aaron again was demoted, returning to work in Memphis to start off 1971.  Once again, AAA pitching proved to be to his liking, his percentage stats for ‘71 rivaling, or exceeding, his IL MVP performance from ‘67.  With a strong .318 avg, a .378 obp, and .490 slg performance, Tommie was once more invited to pack his bags and come to Atlanta.  Back playing on the Braves with his brother, one last time, Tommie only managed to eeke out a .226 average, and only two extra base hits, over 25 games.

A professional ballplayer, and an organizational trooper, Aaron returned to AAA for 1972.  There was no magic this year, and no end of year call up to Atlanta either.  1973 saw Tommie moved down another level to AA Savannah, where he played 133 games, and swatted 13 home runs, as one of the most senior members of the club.  Aaron was actually the second oldest player on the team, the oldest being a 36 year old named Francisco Obregon who had been bouncing around the minors since 1957!

That was the end of the road for Tommie as a player, but Aaron managed minor league teams in Savannah, GA and Richmond, VA from 1973 to 1978 and was an Atlanta Braves coach for six seasons from 1979 to 1984.  Aaron died tragically of leukemia at age 45 in ‘84, and it’s been speculated that, with his track record as a minor league manager and major league coach, if he had not died, he might have become the Braves’ manager sometime later in the 1980’s.

Tommie Aaron holds a share of the record for home runs hit by brothers in the major leagues with 768. Hank hit 755, and Tommie slugged 13.  He finished his career with a lifetime batting average of .229, 13 HR, 94 RBI, and 102 runs scored in 437 ballgames.  The Aaron brothers were also the first siblings to appear together in a League Championship Series as teammates, when Tommie played in a single game of the 1969 National League Championship Series, getting one at-bat.

In Aaron’s memory, the Richmond Braves award the “Tommie Aaron Memorial Award” each year to the most valuable player on the team.  In 2008, Aaron was elected to the International League Hall of Fame.

Three year normalized hitting peak

Tommie’s peak normalized performance is derived from his play in 1962, 1968, and 1969, with the Braves in both Milwaukee and Atlanta.

There are pretty well established ways to translate Minor League performance into at least fairly accurate projections for how a player would do in the Major Leagues, so I may decide to revisit Tommie Aaron at some point in the future, and replace one of his three “peak” years with the Braves with a projection based on a minor league year instead, although I doubt it would make any great difference.

Tommie Aaron’s peak normalized hitting card, as displayed, was produced by plugging his final hitting Peak Normalized Bettendorf Transformation numbers into the APBA Baseball utility program Wizard.  When I create teams for my own playing enjoyment, I do use a bit of subjective judgment in producing a player’s performance, and the current level of available statistics for analyzing fielding and base running is unprecedented.  With that in mind, as I put final teams together for myself in this carding project, I’ll likely make some final adjustments to defensive, speed and arm ratings.

As a resident of central Virginia, I have spent a fair amount of time covering the drama surrounding the former Richmond Braves. When the parent club decided to move their triple-A affiliate from Virginia’s capital city to the suburbs of Atlanta itself, Richmond residents were stunned.

The R-Braves, as they were known locally, had been in the area since 1966, so many couldn’t believe their beloved franchise was gone.

Local investors took a deep breath and plunged into the search for a replacement, however. And it’s starting to look like they’ve zeroed in on the next team to call Richmond home.

From the website of Norwich’s WTNH:

According to a Richmond newspaper, the plans call for the Richmond group to buy the Defenders for about $15 million and move the team to Virginia at the end of the 2009 season.

The deal must be approved by the Eastern League and by officials at Minor League Baseball and Major League Baseball.

[WTNH-TV]

Virginia hasn’t had a double-A team since I moved here ten years ago, so I’m kind of happy to hear this. It’s kind of like hitting for the cycle, affiliation-wise. The Defenders are tied into the Giants, so that should be an interesting change. Whether the club’s nickname changes or not doesn’t really matter to me, but I do hope they get a new stadium. The Diamond, where the R-Braves used to play, is a concrete eyesore, in my humble opinion. Then again, we don’t want to be wasting big bucks in these economic times do we?

Here’s hoping the sale goes through. It’ll be great to have a new Bus Leagues option near home.

I have been a fan of baseball for as long as I can remember and the first MLB game I ever went to was at Yankee Stadium.  For that I will always be a Yankee fan. However the first stadium I ever saw was Richmond’s Diamond. I can still remember it as we did our yearly trek from New Jersey to Florida.  My dad told us to look out the window at the baseball stadium as we drove through downtown Richmond.  I remember seeing it and thinking, wow, that looks like a real MLB stadium, just a bit smaller.

The truth is it was a lot smaller, but also a lot more fun to watch games in.  When I first started dating my wife, she used to go to school at Virginia Commonwealth University in downtown Richmond.  She really wasn’t much of a baseball fan, but she knew I was and she knew I had always wanted to go to a game there.  So one night, we decided to take a trip to the Diamond , really only about 5 minutes from her campus.  As we got out of the cab,  I saw the stadium up close and personal and started to notice all the nuances. It looked like old Fulton County Stadium, only pint sized.  We got our tickets which were only 5 bucks each and went in and watched the Richmond Braves beat up on the Rochester Red Wings.

After the game we went out near the players lot, and as each player left, they signed the bat I hat brought to the game for signatures.  Each of the players chatted with us for a minute or two, everyone being very friendly.  Not too many players from that team went on to become superstars. Wilson Betimit and Marcus Giles were the two big names from that team, and I got both of their autographs.  What I will always cherish from that night was the laid back attitude of the players and the fans, who were very willing to shop and chat with you.  Something I have never experienced before or after that game.

There are some games I will always remember in my life, some experiences that will last the test of time.  This is one of those games and experiences. Sure the stadium is old and doesn’t have a lot of the amenities a contemporary stadium might have, but it’s redeeming quality is the history it brings us.  The closeness the team has with it’s fans.  I think that is what is going to be missed from this great ballpark. Sure they might be able to snag a double A or single A team for next season, but the old Diamond can’t last forever and sooner or later there will be no Diamond in Richmond.  That my friends will be a sad day indeed.

Today Caroline and I went to a Richmond Braves game.  It was my last Richmond Braves game ever.  Tomorrow is the final game the Richmond Braves will be the Richmond Braves.  After this season my beloved team is moving to some town in Georgia.

I can remember my first Braves game.  I went with my family, all six of us, when I was in middle school.  We sat in the silver general admission seats.  I wore my hair in two french braids and wore jeans.  Is it weird that’s what I remember?  In high school I went often.  Once I took my baby brother and his friend just so I had an excuse to go.  When Mr. Wrong and I were together we used to go to several games a season. 

I love baseball.  I love the game.  I love watching the game.  I love the atmosphere at baseball games.  I love the seventh inning stretch. 

Richmond also used to be home to the Yankees farm team but that was years ago.  My friend’s dad is a Yankees fan because his dad used to take him to those games as a kid.  This, in my opinion, is the only justifiable reason for being a Yankees fan as a southerner.

One might think that growing up a Richmond Braves fan I might be an Atlanta Braves fan.  No.  I acquired my love of the Red Sox early, given to me by my great uncle who would listen to the games on the Palace Rocks on a transistor radio.  Besides the big Braves were owned by Ted Turner, a man I do not like and that soured me on them for good.

But our little AAA team.  I love them.  I love the memories I made at the Diamond.  I love the game of baseball that was played there.  Tomorrow will be the end of an era.  But today they won the game 2-1.  So long Braves, thanks for the memories, I will cherish them.

Comments and articles herein are the intellectual property and opinions of the writers and may not be copied without permission of the writers.

by Carolina Lady

He’s been with the Braves since 1977. Bob Dider signed him after he graduated from the University of New Orleans as a non-drafted free agent to fill out a spot on the Kingsport roster.

Fours years later, after he had wrested the last possible drop out of his playing career, then-farm director Hank Aaron made a job offer.

He told Baseball America -

“I played real hard to be mediocre and I was fortunate when Hank offered me the coaching job. I was single and living out of my car, so I gave it a try to see what happened.”

Brian Snitker

Brian Snitker. Born 1955 in Illinois. He didn’t have an easy time of it either. Never made it to the majors, but has made the best of his talents and abilities as player, roving instructor, coach and manager in the Braves system for more than 30 years.

He coached, taught and managed for 20+ seasons in the minors, leading clubs from the rookie leagues to AA in Anderson, Sumter, Durham, Macon, Danville, Myrtle Beach, Greenville, and Mississippi before he was named manager of the Richmond Braves in 2006.

Snitker once said, “The players are the one thing that keeps you coming back. And that’s because we have good players. The Braves always get guys who are good people with strong work ethics and great makeup. They have the intangibles that make them the best players they can be. And that’s what makes it fun to go to work everyday.”

He said he never really developed a “style” of managing because a minor league manager never gets to pick his team; he just works with what he has.

And he did pretty well at managing the rookies and kids: 1,140-1,145 (.499). Five of his clubs advanced into post-season play and he won 2 championships (back-to-back titles with Myrtle Beach in 1999 and 2000) and 3 Minor League Manager of the Year awards – 1997, 1999, 2000.

He was managing the Mississippi Braves in Pearl in ‘05 (Francoeur, McCann, Boyer, McBride, Lerew, James, et al) when an unprecedented 11 “Baby Braves” were called up to Atlanta. Still, Snitker led Mississippi to a 64-68 record in its first year, quite an accomplishment considering that they had just moved to a new city, most of the team’s stars were promoted to fill needs in Atlanta, and the last 8 games of the season were canceled due to Hurricane Katrina.

Snitker said, “It’s my job to hold things together and keep the best possible team on the field every day.”

When Dayton Moore was Atlanta’s farm director, he said, “Snitker is the most highly respected manager we have in our system.”

Brian was quoted as saying -

“You should expect your team to win. Winning needs to be a priority at this level. Results need to be a priority. You’ve got to have results to show you can play in the big leagues. Pitchers need to win games, and hitters need to produce in key situations.”

Mel Roberts, once Brian’s hitting/first base coach who has known him since the ’80s, said Snitker’s main strength is his communication skills.

He doesn’t do anything that’s just, ‘That’s the way we do it,’ Whatever it takes to get it done, that’s the way he’s gonna do it. When you relate that to these players, they relax, and they’re able to be a little more susceptible to what you’re trying to get them to do.”

After serving as Atlanta’s bullpen coach for parts of 3 seasons, he returned to the Minors in 1991. He didn’t know if he’d ever make it back the the Majors despite having accumulated 1,140 managerial victories with 9 different teams from Rookie level through AAA.

Guy Curtwright wrote for MLB.com:

After what amounted to a 16-year baseball road trip through the Minors, the 31-year Braves lifer is a full-time resident of suburban Atlanta again and no longer a far-away father.

“It was tough. Real tough,” the 51-year-old Snitker said of the strain that being a vagabond Minor League manager puts on family life. “You want to be there, but you can’t. Talking on the phone isn’t the same.”

When Snitker told his wife Ronnie last fall that he’d be home (in Lilburn, GA) the next year, she said, “What?? Were you fired?

Nope, Fredi Gonzalez went to Florida and Brian Snitker was back in the Majors again as 3rd base coach for Atlanta.

“Snit was like a father figure for us in the Minors,” Francoeur said. “Now he gets to be a real dad for his own family.” (He has a son and a daughter.)

“He’s had to miss a lot and I know that was difficult for him,” Ronnie said. “It isn’t easy to balance baseball and family, especially in the Minors.

“But it’s all worked out. He was a baseball player when I married him. We knew what we were getting into.”

'Snit'

Snitker always seemed to have a great relationship with his players and he’s said to be a great communicator. He’s coached or managed all the young players now in Atlanta – and, from what I’ve read, it seems to be accepted that one day he will manage in the Major Leagues. Along with Terry Pendelton, Brian was considered by the Royals for their manager’s position. Bobby’s successor??

It’s just my opinion, but I wonder if he wouldn’t better serve the Braves, Bobby in particular, as bench coach instead of Chino. Chino has managed but his strengths seem to be more in coaching, while Brian is clearly the better manager. That’s just my take on it.

Brian Snitker. He’s been there, done that, and got all the T-shirts. Got to respect those long, long years in the Minors, his perserverance and just plain old doggedness, as well as doing a really good job. Respect for a good guy.

~CL~

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According to a recent article in Baseball America, the High-A California League might be losing a couple of teams. And their loss will be the Carolina League’s gain.

The franchises in question are the Bakersfield Blaze (Rangers) and the High Desert Mavericks (Mariners). Both teams play in antiquated ballparks and struggle to draw enough fans. The article suggests that the Braves’ decision to pull their AAA affiliate out of Richmond might have provided the perfect opening for the transcontinental migration.

Richmond is the hot market available in the minor leagues, with plans for the Braves and the International League to release the territory when the R-Braves move to Gwinnett County in surburban Atlanta. One source said High Desert had the inside track to moving to Richmond, and that Bakersfield would end up in Fayetteville, N.C.; another source said more markets within the Carolina League footprint were under consideration.

“Nothing is set in stone, but do I think it is going to happen? Yes, I think it is going to happen,” one source said. “And I think it should happen.”

[Baseball America]

Further complicating matters for the California League is the decision by the Red Sox to move their high-A club from the geographically nonsensical Lancaster outpost of the California League to the slightly more distant, but less travel-intensive Salem, VA market in the Carolina League.

Some sources say that the league already has a deal in principle, which MiLB denies. The Carolina League bylaws stipulate a $1.5 million payment for each club that wishes to enter what is currently an eight-team league with a tight geographical locus.

As a resident of central Virginia, all of this sounds good to me, though I can’t imagine that a single-A franchise is the long-term solution in Richmond. I do feel bad for the California League, but the refusal of some localities to upgrade facilities is the sort of thing that MiLB just won’t abide any more. The Bus Leagues are getting tonier by the minute.

     J.A. Happ was pulled last night in the 3rd inning from the Iron Pigs while playing the Richmond Braves.  Happ up to that point pitched 2 2/3 scoreless innings and was yanked off of the mound and replaced by Steve Green.  There are many rumors swirling that Happ is either being called up to Philly or has been traded off to gain another bat or lefty in the bullpen.  I also have read that Happ was seen being congratulated in the dugout after being pulled, but there was no news release as of yet.

Some Sources:

Iron Pigs Baseball

Phuture Phillies

Last night I attended Dunn Tire Park (nee Pilot Field) to watch our beloved Buffalo Bisons take on the Richmond Braves. In a departure from my usual Thursday actitivies that include quick draw at King’s Court, followed by the Hyatt patio, and Eddie Brady’s; I decided for a night of $6.75 beers and Twizzler’s at the ballpark.

The world record breaking, Richmond Braves took to bat in the first inning and the strangest thing happened- Pitcher John Halama retired the side in order. I turned to my guest (herein referred to as the young lady by my side) and mentioned something to the extent of “that’s a good way to start the game”. She said “okay” and drank her beer while making fun of the little league team in front of us.

Then the Braves went three up, three down in the second inning. Around the sixth batter is when I started to think that I could be watching history. Okay, who am I kidding? After the first batter is retired I think to myself, “Am I going to get to watch a no-hitter today!?!” Obviously, the answer is, more often than not, not likely (or in my case never). So I once again turned to the young lady by my side, smiled, and asked if she was having a good time. She remarked something to the effect of “this game is going by fast!” “Hey” I thought to myself, “No hitters usually do that”.

Guess how the top of the third went down? Three Richmond batters came up. Three Richmond batters sat down. At this point, I am not only thinking about a no hitter, I am thinking about a “perfect game”. How cool would it be see a perfect game on a perfectly gorgeous Thursday night while most of the city is busy watching some stoner band at the square? To answer that question: it would be very awesome. My friends would be so pissed off, too. I would love it. At this point the young lady by my side said “I am going to get us more beers”. I let her buy me more beer. I was going to need it if is this pace kept up.

As the fourth inning began the condensation from my beer was nearly soaking through my scorecard. Though I may have been the only one excited about the impending perfect game, I was excited enough for the entire stadium. Not only that, the young lady by my side would be able to tell her friends how her awesome gentlemen friend loves baseball and got to see a perfect game and how happy it made him. This is going to be so great. Who knows, we might even have some celebration sex, man that would be awesome. I love baseball.

In the top of the fourth the first batter came up, only to sit back down. Next batter, same outcome. My hands were starting to sweat. That or the beers were just so cold that it created a similar effect. Either way, it was tense.

Just as I was beginning to think about telling the young lady by my side about the historical event that was taking place; Braves outfielder Brandon Jones hit a two out triple that barely made it inside the first base line. I was deflated. I turned to the young lady by my side and told her how she just saw what I think to be the worst part of any baseball game, when the chance of a no hitter is eliminated. She then responded

“There was a no-hitter happening, why didn’t you tell me?”

To which I said

“Well, I didn’t want to jinx it.”

She then told me

“That is stupid.”

The game went on, we drank our beers, we ate our twizzlers, and the Bisons won. Morgan Ensberg even had a pretty good game. Though, I have a feeling that he won’t be getting called up as a playoff reinforcement.

I will tell you what though, one of these nights, I am going to see a no hitter. Then I am going to take that scorecard and frame it right next to my scorecard of the game when Johan Santana threw 17 strike outs. I will look at it every day and remember how I hung on every pitch from the 2nd batter of the game on. Who knows, I might even turn to the young lady by my side next time and tell her what is happening. Well, only if it is my team being no hit.

]]> http://thetimblog.wordpress.com/2008/07/11/interview-with-matt-desalvo-part-ii/ Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:02:03 +0000 NPI http://thetimblog.wordpress.com/2008/07/11/interview-with-matt-desalvo-part-ii/

Here’s Part II of my conversation with Richmond Braves’ pitcher (and former Yankee) Matt DeSalvo about his love for reading. Part II focuses on his writing career, culminating in a novel. To read Part I, which dives into DeSalvo’s impressive reading habits, just scroll down a little.

TIM: You’re also a writer and you actually wrote a novel?

Matt DeSalvo: Yea, I have a few ideas for writing and after the first one…. I wrote a novel about a girl I was in love with at the time. It’s a story about love and a person’s journey–basically how love changes for a person. When we’re younger, we think that love is gonna be—well it is for some people—for me, I thought the first girl I ran into, and that was gonna be it. That was a mistake [laughs]. You go through different stages of your life where love is different. Then in college, I started trying to map a girl where I wanted to look like this, act like that. You ain’t gonna find a girl that fits your exact mold. You have to give and take. Actually, it’s kind of exciting when a girl doesn’t have the qualities that you thought. Like, I want a girl with blue eyes. Maybe you’ll find some fine-ass young woman that has green eyes that make you wanna be with her the rest of your life. And it may just be her eyes. She may not have any other qualities. Sometimes, love changes for different people. Definitely my previous relationship, I realized that. You may have one girl, one month tell you that she is head over heels and there ain’t nothin’ gonna change. But distance does, and lack of time does, especially when you’re young. And love is constantly evolving. In my mind, in everyone’s mind, it’s just how well does your partner listen to you and keep up with that constant evolution of love. And do they adapt well? You see a lot of people who are in love, and they don’t really listen well to their partner. And, all of a sudden they’re loving that person how they wanted to be loved a year ago, and they require different things. It’s not necessarily a lack of communication; it’s a lack of listening. You can say all you want to a person, but if they’re not really listening, you’re not really gonna get anywhere. So that’s what that’s kind of about.

When did you write that?

My first full year of professional baseball—2004 I think.

About how long did it take? How’d you find the time?

Wrote it on the bus. I shared it with a few guys I played baseball with. Different people deal with their emotions differently. If someone’s angry, one guy may punch a wall, another guy may just seclude himself, another guy might say, ‘Alright, I’m gonna go out and drink my ass off.’ Whatever. I decided I’m gonna try and figure this out. So I kind of tried to break everything down. For the most part, it’s the story of our relationship. And it got to the point where we got up to the present, how’s the future gonna play out? And that’s where it became fictitious?

Happy ending?

There was a happy ending, but in reality no.

Life never imitates art the way it’s supposed to.

That’s true.

Did you ever think about trying to get it published?

Nah. I wrote it for her, and it was kind of her story. She has it. She could have thrown it away, I don’t know. I could probably recreate it, the main plot, from memory. There was a lot of philosophy on love that I was hoping she would get because she wasn’t a girl that ever asked me questions about how I felt. It was something that was for her; it wasn’t really for anybody else to read. I think I sent it in somewhere, or my buddy did for me, but I didn’t really pursue it. There are tons of book ideas that I’ve had that I probably will wait until my career is over to pursue something. Or until I have somebody when I’m in the big leagues say, ‘Hey, you should write a story about this.’ And I’m like, ‘You know what? I think it’s about time.’ Till then, I don’t really give a shit. I definitely have interesting stories but I guess I’m not ready for that yet.

Do you write at all now?

Yea, I don’t keep a journal where I’m like, ‘Today, I…’

[Laughs] I actually do.

There’s nothing wrong with that. In school we had to keep journals when I was in like eighth grade. It is fun to go back and be like, ‘What was I thinking when I was a kid?’ And I would actually read my journals in eighth grade talking about astronomy shit. And I’d be thinking, ‘What the hell is my damn teacher thinking? Everyone else is probably like, “Oh, I love Johnny. He’s so nice.”’ And I’m sitting here writing about astrophysics and shit like that. What the hell was I thinking?

The journal that I keep is things that I read. I have my interpretations or my ideas that have come from what I’ve read, and I keep them down. It’s interesting to me to see how a lot of the ideas cycle through all the different stories that I read. There’s a lot of recurring themes, whether it’s from a love story or a political essay. There’s a lot of themes. I just finished The Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, and his concluding argument was that inequality is found in people in society who try to conform to everyone else. And that was 220 years ago, and we still do the same thing. We try to follow that high-school society. Everyone wants to be popular; everyone wants to have that certain clothing, all of that to fall into certain trends. It’s kind of interesting to think that’s not something new; that’s something that’s followed humanity through millennia. There’s this man 220 years ago and he’s talking about inequality and you can find that in a love story, in a love triangle with some guy who’s in love with a girl just because of what she wears or what she’s showing, but he leaves some girl in the dust who has a great personality and a similar body, but she’s poor or they can’t marry because it’d be a shame to his family. You find that shit all the time. It’s just interesting to see that it doesn’t matter what type of story, where you find that story in the library. They all speak similar themes.

Would you ever consider writing a blog?

No, as much as I read, I don’t know how to use my computer very much. I know how to use it; I don’t know how to do any stuff like that. And my opinion is my opinion. I don’t need to push anything on anybody. I’ve told people stuff before, but I don’t try to force any ideas on anybody. I could have read all this stuff, and I could sound like the biggest idiot in the world. Something I tell my buddies all the time is, there can be a red apple on the table, and a group of us could be around it, but we all won’t see that same apple as red and don’t taste it all as sweet. There maybe be a colorblind person in the group who sees it as gray. That’s why a blog, I would never do that. That would just be inviting somebody to confront me or do some kind of conflict. I’m not putting my ideas out there to change anybody.

About a week and a half ago, I talked with Matt DeSalvo, a pitcher for the Richmond Braves who has spent time in the majors with the Yankees. DeSalvo is an avid reader, and I was talking to him for this feature that ran on MiLB last week. I thought we had a really interesting conversation that spanned over 45 minutes, and DeSalvo was very candid with me throughout the interview.

Since it’s so long, I’ve split it into a few parts. Here’s Part I, which focuses on his reading habits.

TIM: What are you reading right now?

Matt DeSalvo: I just finished three books, but I’ve got five of them right now. Constellation of Philosophy, One Heart, The Beast in the Jungle, Day of Doom, and Discourse on the Origins of Inequality.

It’s kind of tough to balance five. How do you do that?

Well, I don’t watch much TV. I like Lost, that and Family Guy, cartoon network—that’s kind of an awkward set of things. I usually just have them almost like I’m watching TV: I’ll read a chapter from each book. I’ve always been able to do that, and it’s interesting to me to do it that way. I get bored easy believe it or not. I don’t particularly enjoy reading; I like to learn. And it’s not like I have a teacher who can follow me to all the crazy places I go, so I just prepare reading. I’m a slow reader, too. Very slow reader. I take my time and try to understand everything. When I do read, I come up with my own ideas of stuff, and it’s a very slow process. It takes me a long time to read.

Those aren’t exactly James Patterson, summer-reading type things.

I read a lot of fiction, too. Not any new-age stuff. Like Beast in the Jungle, it speaks to me right now because it’s a very powerful story. It’s a short story; it’s only about 40 pages. Some days some books just speak to you. Some days they’re boring, and you say, ‘What the hell was I doing trying to read this book?’ But in the end, there’s some reason I picked them. This is something I did five years ago, and it’s kind of fun to look at the books that I’ve chosen for myself. But I’ll start off and it’s, ‘What the hell is this book about? What am I reading this for?’ and by the end I’m like, ‘Oh, okay.’ I knew what I was trying to tell myself way back when.

How’d you come up with that list of about 400 books?

I read two Encyclopedia of literature. One was Encyclopedia Britannica. I just went through and I read; it basically had a summary of each book, it had a lot of authors in it and what they had written. If there was a book I wasn’t sure about, I went on amazon.com and looked it up, read the summary on amazon.com. Some books were very similar. A lot of the romance stories were very similar, so I just picked one I thought that I would enjoy more and just dotted off the other one. I eventually narrowed my list from like 1200 books down to 400 I really would want to read. For instance, I can’t stand mystery novels. To me, they’re all the same. When I initially did my list, there’s like 1200, and a lot of them were mystery, and I was like, ‘I can’t deal with mystery.’ To me, they’re very similar. Someone does something, someone finds out. I like books that teach lessons.

The Beast in the Jungle is about a guy who had a girl in front of him his whole life, and he thought his life was meaningless. And the woman is on her deathbed, and they were best friends all their lives, and he goes to her house, she’s deathly ill, and he’s thinking to himself, ‘What am I gonna do when she’s gone?’ like a very selfish person. And she had been in love with him his whole life, ever since they were friends. And eventually she tells him that ‘I hope you never realize the worst thing you’ve ever done to yourself.’ And he’s like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And he knows that she knows him more than he knows himself. She’s just like, ‘I hope you never find out.’ She ends up dying, and he’s sitting at her tombstone one day, and he figures out what she said. And it was the fact that he didn’t love her—that was the greatest fault of his life. She was there in front of his face his whole life. He just never pulled the trigger on it.

Things like that, there are plenty of books that talk about that kind of thing, but there are very few that are very powerful and speak to you like that. It’s kind of like love. There’s plenty of hot girls you’re gonna see out there, but which one is gonna speak to you out of a crowd of hot girls. There’s only one or two that actually would, and that’s how we fall in love. You go into a roomful of 100 models and you’re like, ‘I’m taking all these girls home.’ But eventually you’re like, ‘They’re all the same.’ You’ll come across that one that blows your mind. Her looks won’t knock you off your feet but her total personale will just knock you on your ass. That was a very powerful book for me.

Do you have a favorite book?

I do. I don’t know, Beast in the Jungle is kind of at the top of the list right now. My second one would be–this is a book that was my favorite book until this road trip, and it had been that way for about 10 years–My Struggle to Become a Person by Hugh Prather. That was my favorite book. It’s a guy who picked up a book–I forget who wrote it–he’s a psychologist who wrote a book called On Becoming a Person. Hugh Prather, he wasn’t an author, he wasn’t a psychologist or anything, but he asked himself questions like, ‘Why do I do things? Why does that guy over there piss me off when I don’t even know him?’ And he realizes that it’s things he finds fault with himself. It’s in poem form, like 80 pages with 10 lines on a page. So you just float through it. But it’s very powerful in that it asks you to ask yourself questions, like, ‘Why the hell do I act this way? Why am I not this happy person?’ That’s why that was my favorite book.

Do you ever return to that and read it over?

The funny thing is I don’t like reading books over again. I think that’s why I read them slow and make sure I get it the first time. But I understand the idea that going back and reading it again, you probably find stuff you missed. But I can’t—like with movies, it’s a 2-hour movie, and I just can’t do it. With that book, for some reason, I’ve read it twice. It’s the only book I’ve ever kept. Usually with the books that I read, I make notes in them, put them in a little journal I keep with things that authors have spoken to me and stuff like that, and then I throw the book or give it away.

So you’ve got your favorite passages in there?

Yea, I hate to have things. I’m the complete opposite of a pack-rat. When I was a young kid, I always consolidated my things, so if I needed to get out, I’d be able to carry everything I needed with me. That’s the way I’ve always been, which fits my lifestyle perfectly. I have a suitcase full of clothes, a bookbag with my electronics—my computer, my iPod—and then I have a lockbox in my car with my financial stuff that I need. So that’s my life: three bags of luggage, a car, and no place to go.

Did you run up a big bill buying all these books?

Well, Christmastime, everyone just gets me gift cards to Barnes & Noble. And a lot of the short stories that I’ve read I can just get off the internet. And some of the poetry and a lot of the books are in libraries. I don’t take out books during the season. I use my gift cards to buy books for the season I’ve planned out. And in the off-season, I go home and I read books from the library. So I really don’t spend too much money on them.

How do you order what you read? Is it preset or is it, ‘I feel like this today’?

It’s kind of both. In the off-season, I’ll go home and I’ll try to pick one book to read a week, and maybe for the month I’ll pick four books. So it’s kind of randomness but also planned out. For the regular season, I’ll pick out spring training books and then I’ll order them and wait to where I go, and then I’ll go to Barnes & noble there and order like 20 books for the season. I’ll just read those whenever I get there. So I’m not carrying things with me. I’m only carrying the small stuff.

How big a dent have you made in the initial list?

I’m down to 123 right now. I just finished a book today. My goal this year was to read 50 books, and I’m down to 22.

That’s a pretty good pace.

Yea, it’s not bad.

And you said you read slow.

I know. First of all, downtime in baseball…. Right now, I have to look like the weirdest guy that’s ever played minor league baseball, sitting in a staircase, sitting here reading a book. People keep walking down the stairs looking like [laughs]. It’s kind of awkward.

Do you ever get teased in the clubhouse?

I do all the time. I get called “Psycho,” people think I’m building a bomb and stuff like that. It’s funny to me, I don’t really care. You find you surround yourself with people that are very similar to you, and I bust balls a lot. Everybody in the locker room—I’m that kind of guy where crazy stuff just comes out of my mouth all the time. I get that shit all the time. It doesn’t really matter what people say. For Christ’s sake, I was booed out of Yankee Stadium, 60,000 people telling me I suck. I think I can take a handful of guys telling me I’m weird because I read.

Does anyone give it to you the worst?

They all do it playfully. I don’t think anyone takes any offense to it. It depends on the day. I’ll be sitting there by the locker reading, and whoever’s first in will probably say something like, ‘Oh, fuck DeSalvo.’

Have you always been that bookish type, reading since you were a kid?

Yea, I have. But when I was a kid, you go through high school and college, you’re so busy. And you have to learn what you want to read. The smartest man in the world isn’t a man who’s surrounded by a library; it’s the person who knows how to find knowledge. And it’s not that guy who knows the Dewey Decimal system or the Library of Congress; it’s the guy who knows how to educate himself with what he’s gonna enjoy and how he knows how to learn. Some people can’t do what I do. Some people can’t sit down and read, teach themselves from a book and tie things together. Some people need conversation to tie things together. So I’m fortunate in that sense where I can just read and figure things out for myself.

How much did that help you in school, where if you’re confused about something, you can just read it and get it down?

Well in school, I didn’t really study in college. I was a typical jock, just here to play baseball. But I took the classes I wanted to. I went to a liberal arts college and I had to take certain classes to meet requirements, and I did that, but I did that on my own terms. I took a class called “Philosophy of Sex.” I didn’t take that because it was fulfilling a requirement; I took it because it was interesting to me. The teacher that taught me that was probably one of the better teachers I had at that school, and if I wouldn’t have taken that course, I would have never known who she was. I’m not sure I would have known how to come across the things I learned in that class if I hadn’t taken that class. I went for science, but there’s other things like art, I took piano classes in school. I didn’t take that to fill a musical course; I took that because, ‘Shit, I would like to learn how to play piano one day.’ It’s still one thing I want to learn to do, but it’s difficult to carry a piano on the road.

That doesn’t fit in the three luggage cases and the car.

But people around me know these things about me, and it’s very interesting for Christmas I got a little piano mat with 88 keys. You can roll it up. That’s great. Maybe next year, I have “Teach Yourself Piano Books,” so next year, who knows where the hell I’ll be? I can be at home. But maybe that will come with me.

You gotta throw those on the list.

You never know.

Whew, this was close.  I like to get “Now Batting For” posts up within a day or two of a prospect’s debut, if not before, and have updated my Google Alerts in the hopes that it will help improve my promptness.  One hundred alerts means one hundred emails a day, however, which can be impossible to sift through…which is how I missed Brandon Jones’ 2008 debut for a full 48ish hours after it happened.

Jones was brought up to the Braves from the AAA affiliate in Richmond at the end of last week, despite a .263 average and just two homeruns and 25 RBI in 2007.  He has responded with six hits in his first thirteen at-bats, including his first major league homerun, a solo shot off Ervin Santana on Saturday.

Atlanta’s fourth-ranked prospect and number 70 overall, Jones made his major league debut with the Braves last season, hitting .158 in five September games.  He was originally drafted by Atlanta in the 24th round of the 2003 draft.

Here are my two latest stories:

• DeSalvo crafting his own baseball story
• Holloway geared up for SAL All-Star Game

These are two of my more interesting stories–at least for me–because I spent a fair amount of time with each guy. I talked to DeSalvo for over 45 minutes about his reading and writing hobbies and his career, and he was as open as could be. (I may, in fact, post a lot of the interview here, as I wasn’t able to get a whole lot of into the still-quite-long story.)

I spent about 75 minutes with Holloway last week before a game, and he was just a really fun guy. Also candid and straightforward, and it was very easy to talk to him. I hope that comes across in the story.

This is a story I’ve been following with great interest, because the AAA Richmond Braves are the closest MiLB team to my home. The Atlanta Braves organization has already decided to pull their top affiliate from the city of Richmond, VA, and move it to Gwinnett, a suburb of Atlanta. I’d be the first to admit that Richmond could have done more to keep the team around, but I find it odd that the Braves are basically going to be competing for Atlanta-area entertainment dollars with their own minor-league affiliate.

Regardless, they finally broke ground on a new stadium, and appear to be proceeding with the plan to move:

In 2009, the Braves will move their top affiliate from its longtime home in Richmond, Va., to a new stadium about 36 miles northeast of Turner Field. The Gwinnett park will have a capacity of 10,099, including room for 2,300 on a berm beyond the outfield wall.

[Gwinnett Daily Post]

Hope that works out for them.

But what of Virginia’s capital city, soon to be bereft of baseball? While many people love The Diamond, I have to admit that I have always referred to it as a concrete mausoleum – it doesn’t have a lot of personality, and it’s too big, so it always seems empty. I suppose the city could use it to lure in a team that wanted to move right away, but it doesn’t seem like a long-term solution at all.

The biggest problem, however, is that the city has very little control over the process of luring their next baseball partner. First off, MiLB won’t award them a new franchise until they are dead certain that the Braves’ new nest in Gwinnett is properly feathered. In other words, if Gwinnett has stadium delays, the league could force Atlanta to host yet another lame-duck season – boy, won’t that go over well with the fans!

On top of that, it’s new MiLB prez Pat O’Conner who is reading the applications from teams willing to move, and he who will be deciding who gets the nod.

Minor League Baseball president Pat O’Conner will field applications from all teams interested in moving to Richmond. O’Conner will determine what team and what classification level best fit Richmond. If no one wants the franchise offered by O’Conner, that’s fine. Life will go on.

It probably will go on without professional baseball in the area, though.

Rejecting O’Conner’s first offer does not open the area for anyone willing to move another team here. It does not mean some local citizen with deep pockets and a love for baseball can buy a team and play ball here in 2009.

The most important words to remember from Minor League Baseball are, ” . . . the club or league whose application is approved may still have rights to the Richmond territory under Minor League Baseball rules.”

[InRich.com]

As a fan, I wouldn’t mind an AA club instead of triple-A. But then again, I live 50 miles away, so my civic pride isn’t on the line. I must admit, however, that I was amazed that nobody from the area gets any say in the decision. As the article above points out, money doesn’t even talk in these situations. It’s all in the hands of a baseball executive in Florida. I don’t believe that Mr. O’Conner will intentionally screw the city, but there’s no doubt in my mind that at least a consultation with someone from central Virginia might help him make the right decision. Even if it’s just on an informal basis.

I will, of course, monitor the situation, and keep you all on the edges of your seats with future updates.

Any time I read about some intrepid soul venturing out to see as many baseball games as possible, I get a little bit jealous. But when I read about an RV that will be hitting 60+ minor-league ballparks across the United States, and also chowing on pancakes, I just have to write about it.

It seems that the International House of Pancakes will be celebrating a 50th anniversary soon. To share the wealth, they’ve loaded up that beautiful machine you see above, and they’ll be driving cross-country bringing breakfast joy to the bus leagues. They’ll be driving over 8,000 miles before it’s all said and done, and in this time of spiraling gas prices, that’s true dedication.

The Pancake Express (my choice of name) will hand out T-shirts, sponsor games, and enter fans in a sweepstakes as part of the celebration of their half-century of “breakfast any time”. As a guy who has a five-year-old with a pancake jones, I’m most excited about the 2-for-1 coupons they’ll be offering, as well as the nine new pancake flavors. In addition, the “Most Valuable Pancake” mascot will be along for the ride, so I’m really, really hoping they make it to Montgomery, AL so the Pancake can meet the Biscuit.

We do know the first few stops of the tour. Jacksonville Suns (Dodgers) fans will get the first taste:

May 31/June 1 – Mobile BayBears @ Jacksonville Suns (7:05/3:05pm). The Suns are giving away emergency lamps on Saturday and having wooden bat day for the first 1,500 kids through the gates on Sunday.

June 2 – Rome Braves @ Charleston RiverDogs 7:05pm.

June 5/6 – Pawtucket Red Sox @ Charlotte Knights (both 7:15 starts). Might Justin Masterson pitch? Sweeter than syrup!

June 7/8 – Charlotte Knights @ Durham Bulls (7:05/5:05). The Knights are going to be eating a LOT of pancakes, if I’m any judge.

June 12-14 – Charlotte Knights @ Norfolk Tides (Thursday and Friday 7:15 starts) and Scranton Wilkes-Barre Yankees (Saturday 7:15). See what I mean about the Knights? It’s like they’re following the Pancake Express on purpose.

June 16/17 – Charlotte Knights @ Richmond Braves (7pm on Monday, double-header starting at 1pm on Tuesday). Getting mighty greedy, Knights. That’s all I can say.

Starting Monday, IHOP will be running a sweepstakes on their website, and putting up photos and tracking the progress of the Pancake Express. Check back to see when they’ll be in your neighborhood.

Oh, and please pass the syrup?

Charlie Morton, a 24-year-old right hander pitching for the AAA Richmond Braves, won his third game of the season on Sunday. In six innings, he gave up six hits, three earned runs, and he struck out three. His overall ERA is 2.00 and his walk/hit ratio is an amazing .98 in Richmond. Not too bad.

The Braves drafted the kid in the 3rd round of the 2002 draft. Right now, he has the most upside of any starting pitcher in the Braves farm teams. He is on the fringe of starting for Atlanta this year.

You can check here for an interview with Morton earlier this year.

Here is another post about Morton from his unofficial lobbyist.

Surely with John Smoltz extending his stay on the disabled list, Charlie Morton’s chances of reaching the big leagues look better.

Dan {BravesNuWorld.com}