I'm Fascinated by Sacrifice Flies: Inside the Game We All Love

I'm Fascinated by Sacrifice Flies: Inside the Game We All Love

I'm Fascinated by Sacrifice Flies: Inside the Game We All Love

I'm Fascinated by Sacrifice Flies: Inside the Game We All Love

eBook

$11.99 

Available on Compatible NOOK Devices and the free NOOK Apps.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers


Overview

Hilarious and insightful tales from the world of professional baseball by ESPN baseball analyst Tim Kurkjian

The New York Times Bestseller!


In the aftermath of the Steroid Era that stained the game of baseball, at a time when so many players are so rich and therefore have a sense of entitlement that they haven't earned, ESPN baseball commentator Tim Kurkjian shows readers how to love the game more than ever, with incredible insight and stories that are hilarious, heartbreaking, and revealing.

From what Pete Rose was doing in the batting cage a few minutes after getting out of prison, to why everyone strikes out these days and why no one seems to care, I'm Fascinated By Sacrifice Flies will surprise even longtime baseball fans. Tim explains the fear factor in the game, and what it feels like to get hit by a pitch; Adam LaRoche wanted to throw up in the batter's box. He examines the game's superstitions: Eliot Johnson's choice of bubble gum, a poker chip in Sean Burnett's back pocket. He unearths the unwritten rules of the game, takes readers inside ESPN, and reveals how Tony Gwynn made baseball so much more fun to watch.

And, of course, Tim will explain to readers why he is fascinated by sacrifice flies.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781466890275
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date: 05/03/2016
Sold by: Macmillan
Format: eBook
Pages: 256
Sales rank: 813,980
File size: 669 KB

About the Author

TIM KURKJIAN has been a baseball writer, reporter, analyst and host at ESPN for over 18 years. A senior writer at ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com, he has been a regular on Baseball Tonight and Sportscenter for all 18 years. He is the author of Is This a Great Game, or What? and I'm Fascinated by Sacrifice Flies.
Tim Kurkjian has spent his entire professional career covering baseball. He is an analyst/reporter for Baseball Tonight and SportsCenter, a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine, a columnist for ESPN.com, and a frequent guest on ESPN Radio. He is the author of Is This a Great Game, or What? and I'm Fascinated By Sacrifice Flies.

Read an Excerpt

I'm Fascinated by Sacrifice Flies

Inside the Game We All Love


By Tim Kurkjian

St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 2016 Tim Kurkjian
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-9027-5



CHAPTER 1

THE BEST GAME

I Put Aqua Net on My Glove


Baseball is the best game.

I knew that when I was 6 years old, and I know that better than ever at nearly 60. It is the best game for so many reasons: its degree of difficulty, its rich history and tradition, the odd, quirky results that it so often brings, the odd, quirky players that it so often produces, and the leisurely pace at which it is played, which allows us so much time to examine and dissect the diverse and important questions within a game.

"During the game tonight, while we were sitting on the bench," then-Braves center fielder B. J. Upton said to me after a game, "my brother [Justin] asked me, 'What size shoes do you think Tim wears?'"

"I wear a 7 ½," I said.

"Wow," he said, "that's really small."

It is the best game because almost every player, manager, and coach in the game is connected in some way, be it former teammates in A-ball at Bakersfield, or in winter ball in the Dominican, or part of this uncomfortable first-time meeting between a hitter and a catcher in the batter's box during a big-league game: "I fucked your cousin last week," the catcher said to the hitter. The shocked and appalled hitter said, "Cindy? You fucked Cindy?"

Former pitcher Steve Karsay is the common denominator for the Hall of Fame Class of 2014: managers Bobby Cox, Tony La Russa, and Joe Torre, and players Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Frank Thomas. Karsay played for all three managers, and with all three players. "I didn't even know that," he said. And then there was the trip to Marlins camp on the ESPN Bus Tour in spring training 2011 when I asked my large, lovable friend John Kruk if he knew Marlins manager Edwin Rodriguez.

"Yeah, I picked up his teeth one day," Kruk said. "The last week of the [winter ball] season [in 1985], he turned the wrong way on a fastball and got hit in the mouth with a pitch. His teeth came flying out. I picked up his teeth and gave them to him."

Rodriguez could laugh about it twenty-six years later, saying, "José De León was our first-base coach that day. He came to home plate to see how I was doing after being hit. He saw all the blood pouring out of my mouth, and he fainted. They put him on a stretcher and took him away in an ambulance. They didn't take me."

It is the best game because of its unpredictability, which I learned again in the 2014 postseason when I went 0 for 9 in predictions. Nine postseason matchups, including the two Wild Card games, and I got them all wrong: 0 for 9. One of my colleagues at ESPN, Jim Bowden, a former general manager of the Reds and Nationals, was, like me, 0 for 8 heading into the World Series. I picked the Royals, he picked the Giants. "The loser is the worst," Bowden told me. The Giants beat the Royals in seven. So officially, I was the worst.

I am not proud or happy about going 0 for 9, but I will not apologize for it because it only proves my point: the game is too great for anyone to predict it or understand it. If we actually had any idea what was going to happen, baseball would be the NBA. I love basketball, I love the NBA, but we knew before the 2013–14 season that the Heat was going to play the Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals, and that's precisely what happened. But in baseball, we don't know what will happen from year to year, game to game, moment to moment.

And that is its special appeal. LeBron James dominates every game. One way or another, he is always the best player on the court; he touches the ball on every possession. Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Kobe Bryant always take the last shot. There is little chance that the last man on an NBA team is even in the game for the final seconds, and there's no chance that he will take the last shot. But in baseball, the 25th guy can be the hero; he can be Larry Bird for a night, for the biggest night. Ex-Cardinals third baseman David Freese quit baseball after high school, went to college as a regular student, decided to play ball again, then ten years later, hit a home run in the eleventh inning to win Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, perhaps the most remarkable game of the 3,500 or so that I have seen in person. When the Cardinals trailed by two runs in the tenth inning, after having tied the score with two in the ninth, I told my producer, Shawn Fitzgerald, if the Cardinals won the game that night, I'd never watch another baseball game because nothing could top this game.

Another lesson learned: the game always tops itself; it never disappoints, if you're paying attention. Freese joined a long list of unsung players in baseball history that, from nowhere, took the last shot and won the game. Marco Scutaro of the Giants was that guy in 2012, a little journeyman second baseman silently acquired from the Rockies in late July. He somehow helped carry the Giants into October, and became a World Series hero. On a different level, the Giants' Madison Bumgarner, a very good pitcher, became a combination of Sandy Koufax, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson in the postseason, dominating October while the best pitcher in the game, Clayton Kershaw, got shelled. Such things can't happen in basketball. LeBron can't be held to seven a game in the conference finals — it's impossible. In baseball, anything is possible.

It is the best game because heroes in baseball come in all shapes and sizes. Marlins right fielder Giancarlo Stanton, who in November 2014 signed the biggest contract in American sports history — thirteen years, $325 million — is the biggest, strongest baseball player I have ever seen, and hits the ball to places that no one in the game ever has. He is 6'5?, 250 pounds, has a 34-inch waist, and he can really run.

"He hit the genetic jackpot," said former teammate Greg Dobbs. "I'd like to look like him for one day."

When I asked Stanton if his parents are also big and athletic, he said his dad is "a normal-looking guy, maybe 6 foot, gray hair."

So normal, in fact, that former Marlins teammate Bryan Peterson once asked Stanton, "Who is that old guy that I see following you around all the time? Is that some sycophant?"

Stanton laughed and said, "No, that's my dad!" As for his mom, Stanton looked at me (I'm 5'5?), and said, "My mom is almost as short as you!" Almost.

The Rangers' Prince Fielder is 5'9?, weighs 275, looks nothing like Stanton, but "he is the strongest man in baseball," said former teammate Ryan Braun. "And I really believe if he entered the World's Strongest Man competition — you know, carrying logs on his back — he would hold his own."

Former teammate Casey McGehee said, "He is so strong, he doesn't even swing hard to hit a ball out of the ballpark. The rest of us are blowing snot bubbles just to get it over the fence."

Fielder's arms are so big, said former teammate Rich Donnelly, "You could put a tattoo of the United States on one bicep, and still have room for Argentina."

Fielder, when he played for the Tigers, once showed his teammates a video of him wrestling a professional sumo wrestler from Japan. "It was unbelievable," said former teammate Phil Coke. "Prince just chucked the guy across the room."

And then there is pitcher Loek Van Mil, who played minor league baseball for the Twins and Angels, but never made it to the big leagues, which is a shame because he is 7'1?, from the Netherlands, and didn't play basketball as a kid because it wasn't offered in his school in Holland. He said he gets asked "ten or fifteen times a day" if he is a basketball player.

"I've played some pickup basketball," he said. Asked if he can dunk, he said, "Yes. I only need a 6-inch vertical. White men can't jump, but I can jump 6 inches." Van Mil was a catcher until he was 14, when he was 6'6?. "I got a little too big to be a catcher," he said. "Shin guards are supposed to cover the tip of your toes, but they only covered my ankles. That's why I quit catching." His teammates loved him because he is the tallest player in the history of pro ball, he's funny, and he'd ride his bike to the ballpark. He laughed and said, "A lady stopped her car once and said, 'You're too big to ride a bike.'"

Tall or short, the common denominator of every baseball player is strong hands, and no one's hands are stronger than those of the Cardinals' Matt Holliday. "When I signed with the Cardinals, for my physical, I had to take a hand-strength test," said outfielder Lance Berkman. "I had a very low score the first time so they asked me, 'Can you take it again?' I did. I scored low again, and the trainer said, 'For a guy with 300 home runs, you should have stronger hands.' I said, 'Sorry, this is all I got. But don't compare my hands to Albert Pujols's hands, or Matt Holliday's hands. His are stronger than Herman Munster's.'"

The Red Sox's Dustin Pedroia has really small hands. "It's like shaking hands with a seven-year-old," said former Red Sox manager Terry Francona.

Former Red Sox GM Theo Epstein said Pedroia's hands are the "smallest I've ever seen on a baseball player."

But those hands are really strong. Pedroia is 5'6 ½? tops, an inch and a half taller than Astros second baseman Jose Altuve, who, in 2014, became the second player since Snuffy Stirnweiss in 1945 to lead his league in batting, hits, and stolen bases in the same season.

Royals reliever Tim Collins is 5'6 ½? and throws 95 mph. In the 2014 World Series, he joined Bobby Shantz (5'6?) as the only pitchers under 5'7? to appear in a World Series game. "People don't believe that I'm a major league player, then after I convince them, they think I'm a second baseman," Collins said. "I tell them that I'm a pitcher and they say, 'No way, you're too short.' I'm not. And I read a book about Bobby Shantz."

In spring training several years ago, I interviewed Collins back-to-back, sort of a height-off interview. "I've never won one of these," I said.

"Neither have I," Tim Collins said. "Until now."

The Giants' Tim Lincecum is closer to 5'11?, but with his shirt off, he looks like he's 14. "I went to high school at 4'11?," he said. "I was throwing about 85 [mph] then. Then I grew to about 5'2?. I was throwing 90 then. Then I went to 5'7?, and all of a sudden, I was throwing 95." Lincecum is further proof that the throwing of a baseball is a God-given skill: you either have it or you don't, and it doesn't matter what size you are. Daniel Herrera has it. He pitched for several teams. He's listed at 5'8?, but said he's 5'6?, 145 pounds.

"The first time I saw him was during the week of the Kentucky Derby, and we figured he would have to leave the team that Saturday to go ride one of the horses," said former outfielder Adam Dunn, who was Herrera's teammate for part of one season in Cincinnati. "I've never faced him. But I haven't faced anyone his size since I was 11 or 12 years old."

Herrera has heard all the short jokes.

"The best one was in 2010," he said. "I was at Louisville [AAA]. One of our catchers, Albert Colina, who is a really big guy, picked me up and put me in his lap as he sat in the bullpen. Then he stuck his arm inside my jacket, and up my back. He wouldn't let me go. I thought, 'What is he doing?' Then, whenever I would talk, he would move his lips. Everyone was cracking up. He was the ventriloquist, and I was the puppet. That was the best one."

It is the best game because the players are so competitive. I played in a charity golf tournament, a scramble, in January 2013 in Orlando. The group behind us included Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander, who was just over a year removed from winning the AL MVP and Cy Young, but this day was about golf, not baseball, and all he cared about was winning the tournament, and the longest-drive contest. At the turn, I asked him how his group was doing. "We're one under birdie," he said. "In a scramble, you should at least birdie every hole, so I never count under par, I count under birdie." They were 10 under par at the turn, and won at 23 under. Verlander won the long-drive, and twice on the back nine, he hit into our group while we were standing on the green of a par four. Each time we looked around to see who had hit a ball at least 350 yards off the tee, there was Justin Verlander leaping in the air, arms raised, as if he had won the World Series.

That is how he lives his life: everything is a competition, especially pitching, and no matter what it is, he has to win. In spring training every year, the Tiger pitchers run sprints, and Verlander has to win every sprint. As a kid, he said, he always had to finish dinner faster than anyone in the family. "Even now, I'll be walking next to someone on the sidewalk, and I have to walk faster than him," he said. "I don't know why. That's the way I am."

Cal Ripken Jr. is one of the most competitive people I've ever met in my life. I used to play basketball with him and his group. One night, the score was 14-14, game to 15 by ones. No one was waiting, just ten guys on a cold December night in a dingy little gym. Ripken called a time-out — in a pickup game! — to figure out how they were going to score the last basket. They missed, we rebounded, we scored, and he was furious. I went about fifteen years without playing with him again until 2002 when I was assigned to do a story on the gym he had built at his house. He insisted that I play in the games that night even though at 45, I was totally overmatched against a 23-year-old who just finished his career at a Division II school.

Ripken flipped the game ball to me and said, "This feels just like your ball." Not only did he remember that we had used my ball as the game ball fifteen years earlier, but he remembered how it felt in his hands. So, thanks mostly to me, our team lost all nine games that night, same 0–9 as my postseason predictions in 2014. That was the last time I played basketball with him, and ten years after that embarrassing night, our friend Rick Sutcliffe asked if I had really played basketball with Ripken. "Yes," Ripken said, "and the last time he played, his team went 0–9." Ten years after a random night of basketball, one of a thousand nights that he played, he remembered what my team had done. Why? It was a competition, it was about winning and losing, not just for him, but for everyone.

"Why would you remember the 0–9 that night?" I asked him.

"Why wouldn't I?" he said.

Nolan Ryan threw a baseball as hard as any man alive for twenty-five years, and was proud of that. So, at age 65, he was asked to throw out the first ball at a Rangers game. Ryan, being Ryan, was not about to just go out there and lob a pitch from the front of the mound. He got loose in the batting cage under the stadium, went to the top of the mound, and fired his ceremonial first pitch at about 80 mph to Jim Sundberg, a six-time Gold Glover. But he was not ready for 80 mph. "I barely caught it," Sundberg said. "I had to bend down quickly to catch it. I split my pants."

It is the best game because the players so value the equipment that they use, especially their gloves. Before a game at Fenway Park in 2012, I watched infielder Nick Punto, then with the Red Sox, playing catch. His glove appeared to be wet. I asked him what he had put on his glove. "Well, today," he said, "I put a little Aqua Net on it, and a little suntan lotion. I do that to keep it lubricated, but it can't be floppy, it has to be stiff. Almost anything on it will work. The other day, I was in the bathroom in the clubhouse, and I'm sitting on the toilet, and when I'm done, I picked up a can of Glade off the floor and sprayed it in the air. Then I thought, 'Maybe this will work.' So I sprayed it all over my glove."

He smiled.

"This is my baby," he said. "I have to take care of it."

And then there's infielder Darwin Barney.

"I am very particular about my glove," said Barney, who carries five gloves, the exact same make and model, on all road trips. "I never use my game glove except to play in the game. I don't use it during BP. I don't play catch with it before a game. The first time I touch it on the day of the game is when I'm running out to my position to start the game. If I play catch with it too often, it can make the pocket too deep. The other four gloves, I rank them. My number 2 glove is next in line. One year in Washington, I went to my backhand and the ball popped out of my glove. That was it for that glove. I threw it away — in the trash can — and never used it again. It lasted a year and a half, but that was it. I couldn't use it anymore." His number 2 glove became his game glove. "Each glove I have is at a different level of being broken in," he said. "My number 5 glove isn't ready to be a gamer, but it will be."

Marlins utility man Jeff Baker is nearly as particular about his many gloves. He has a glove to play second base, another to play third base, one for the outfield, and a mitt for first base.

"No one touches my glove for second base or my glove for third," he said. "They are different. My glove for second base is 11 ½ inches, my glove for third is 12 inches. At second, I need a smaller glove because I have to know when I reach into my glove to grip the ball, it has to be in the same place every time, it can't get lost in my glove. If someone puts my glove on his hand, and stretches out my glove, and now it's a quarter of an inch off, then we have problems. That may be the difference between making the double play or not. At third base, I need the extra half inch in the glove. The ball hit down the line, that half inch might be the difference between getting an out, or the ball going for a double. The ball hit to my left, that half inch might be the difference between a hit and a double play. Even on the ball hit right at me at third, mentally I feel better with that extra half inch."


(Continues...)

Excerpted from I'm Fascinated by Sacrifice Flies by Tim Kurkjian. Copyright © 2016 Tim Kurkjian. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Best Game
Chapter 2: The Hardest Game
Chapter 3: Hit by Pitch
Chapter 4: Sounds of the Game
Chapter 5: Superstitions
Chapter 6: Unwritten Rules
Chapter 7: Sacrifice Flies
Chapter 8: Bonds HR Names
Chapter 9: The Quirkjians
Chapter 10: Box Scores
Chapter 11: Obits
Chapter 12: ESPN
Chapter 13: K’s
Chapter 14: Official Scoring
Chapter 15: State of the Game
Acknowledgements

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews

Explore More Items