Is This a Great Game, or What?: From A-Rod's Heart to Zim's Head---My 25 Years in Baseball

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Overview
Editorial Reviews
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Table of Contents

Overview

ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian has spent more than twenty-five years covering almost three thousand major league baseball games and interviewing about that many players, coaches, managers, and executives.

In Is This a Great Game, or What?, Kurkjian combines his years of experience, uncanny knowledge, and deep love of the game, to create a book filled with some of the most fascinating insight into Major League Baseball this side of Jim Bouton’s bestseller, Ball Four. Whether he’s explaining what goes through a ballplayer’s mind when he faces a fastball in the chapter “My Face Was Crushed by a Bowling Ball Going 90 MPH,” detailing bizarre rituals and superstitions performed by baseball’s greatest players, or taking us into the locker room to see what transpires in the clubhouse of a major league team, Kurkjian’s tales are at times hilarious, other times horrifying, yet always entertaining.

Kurkjian has spoken to some of the greatest ballplayers ever over the years, and they have revealed details about themselves and the game they love with a candor that readers won’t find anywhere else. Filled with anecdotes and fascinating insights, this is an essential book for baseball fans or anyone curious about America’s pastime.

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Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

“An informative and entertaining joy from start to finish.” —-Washington Times

“Is this a great book or what? Hilarious, irreverent, informative.” —-Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe columnist, author, Reversing the Curse

“You already know baseball’s a great game. But any time you ever need reminding, pick up Tim Kurkjian’s delightful new book, Is This a Great Game, or What?”—-Mike Vaccaro, The New York Post

“Tim Kurkjian has collected more delightful and insightful stories than anyone since Casey Stengel . . . like a leisurely lunch with Tim. Bon Appetit.”—-George F. Will

“There may be no one in Tim Kurkjian’s class in his ability to extract respect from his subjects, put them in historic perspective and still remain true to his passion for baseball and its people. In a jaded time, Kurkjian is not only a masterful chronicler, but someone whose peers would agree is the model of honor and integrity.”—-Peter Gammons

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Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780312362249
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication date: 5/27/2008
Edition description: First Edition
Edition number: 1
Pages: 288
Sales rank: 311,781
Product dimensions: 5.54 (w) x 8.10 (h) x 0.78 (d)

Meet the Author

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.

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Read an Excerpt

Is This a Great Game, Or What?

My Mom Was My Catcher

It is the best game. Ask anyone who follows it. Ask George Will; he says, "Baseball is the background music in my life." Ask Billy Crystal; he got chills the first time he met Ted Williams. Ask Jon Miller, the best broadcaster in the game today. I once went to his room at midnight in Minneapolis after he had called an Orioles-Twins game. He was playing Strat-O-Matic by himself. "I love the Blue Jays bullpen," he said. Ask the president of the United States. As I went through the receiving line at the White House in 2003, Mr. Bush whispered in my ear, "Who hit the home runs for the Yankees today? Did Ruben hit one?"

It is the best game because once it grabs you, it never lets go; it is so seductive, it really is important for some to know whether Ruben Sierra hit a home run today. I am so incurably hooked by my passion, I check Sierra's batting line first thing every day for a far more important reason: to see if he was hit by a pitch. He has not been hit by a pitch since 1990. How pathetic am I? The daily ritual of devouring box scores at the breakfast table is a rite reserved only for baseball, and intriguing box score lines don't just appear—such as Ben Petrick's 3-0-0-4 or Curtis Granderson's 5-0-5-0—they flyoff the page and hit me in the face. And to be sure I absorb them, I have cut out every box score from every game for the last seventeen years, like a seven-year-old doing a current events assignment with scissors and tape.

"You know you can get all that on the Internet," said my wife, Kathy.

"I know," I said, "but I remember it better when I do it by hand."

It is the best game because the players look like us. They are not seven feet tall, they don't weigh 350 pounds, and they don't bench-press 650. We can relate to them. We can see them—they're not obscured by some hideous face mask, and they don't play behind a wall of Plexiglas—we can touch them and we can feel them. I see Greg Maddux with his shirt off, with his concave chest and no discernible muscles, and I marvel: This is one of the six greatest pitchers in the history of the game? I see Tony Gwynn with his shirt off and I see a short, fat guy with the smallest hands I've ever seen on an athlete, and I wonder: "This is the best hitter since Ted Williams?" This game is open to all shapes and sizes, including the Cardinals' David Eckstein, who is five feet six; he can't throw, he gets hit by a pitch thirty times just to get on base, and he was the shortstop for the World Champion Angels in 2002 and the World Champion Cardinals in 2006. Pedro Martinez told me that when he was in the minor leagues, he weighed 138 pounds and threw 93 mph. How can that be? Mets reliever Billy Wagner is five feet nine and throws 100 mph. "The first time I met him," said six-ten pitcher Randy Johnson, "I thought, 'This guy is a foot shorter than me, and he throws harder than I do.'"

Phillies pitcher Jamie Moyer doesn't throw harder than anyone—about 83 mph—yet he has been one of the game's most consistent pitchers over the last ten years. On the ride home from the ballpark one night after a game he pitched, one of his young sons asked him, "Dad, can't you throw just one pitch 90 (mph) ? Justone?" To which, Jamie Moyer said, "Son, that's not how I pitch." As they drove on, Moyer's son noticed how fast his dad was driving. "Dad," he said, "you are driving the car faster than you throw a baseball."

The players, at least most of them, and their stories, are so human. Former pitcher Pete Harnisch helped work his way through Fordham University by appearing in police lineups. "Twenty-five bucks for a regular case," he said. "Fifty bucks for a murder case." Ex-Twins first baseman Kent Hrbek was the only player who showed up for World Series parties in 1987 and '91 because the food and beer were free. In 1990, he met White Sox rookie Craig Grebeck, who wore number 14, same number as Hrbek, and was roughly half his size: 280 pounds to 140 pounds. "You're too small to wear that number," Hrbek told him. "Put a slash between the 1 and the 4 and be 1/4." Hrbek went camping with Andy Van Slyke. "Around the campfire," Van Slyke said, "he played a tape recording of his favorite farts."

They are regular guys, at least most of them, who just happen to be really, really good at something that everyone else is not. Padres outfielder Ryan Klesko was a terrific high school pitcher. He had a mound in his backyard. His mother often caught him. "She wore a mask," Klesko said, "but no shin guards." The mother of former major-league infielder Casey Candaele played in the Women's Professional Baseball League, which was glorified in the movie A League of Their Own. "She had a better swing than mine," Candaele said with a smile. "She was the only mother ever to be banned from playing in father-son baseball games at school because she was too good." Orioles pitcher Mike Flanagan's seventy-two-year-old grandfather was his catcher in the backyard. "If I threw too far inside or too far outside, he couldn't reach it," Flanagan said. "And if he missed it, he would have to chase it. So I had to learn how to hit the target."

Normal guys? Rangers outfielder George Wright went three forfive on Opening Day 1982. "Did you have fun today?" I asked. He said, "Yeah, I'd never been to a major-league game before." Amazing: the first major-league game he had ever seen, he played in and got three hits. Former reliever Bob Patterson used to fix the gloves of teammates as he sat in the bullpen during the early innings. Teammate Gary Redus called him Dr. Glove. In the minor leagues, he was nicknamed Emmett after the fix-it man on The Andy Griffith Show. "He's coming over Saturday to upholster my couch," said Rich Donnelly, one of his coaches. The day Keith Hernandez left home after being drafted in 1975, he packed his Strat-O-Matic in his suitcase. "You're not taking that," his father said. "You're a professional ballplayer now.'" Hernandez said, "But, Dad, I'm halfway through the '72 season!"

Human? Brewers third baseman Jeff Cirillo made the 1997 All-Star team. As he was stowing his overhead luggage in the plane on his way to the game, a man behind him asked, "Aren't you Jeff Cirillo?" Cirillo was shocked that anyone recognized him. "Yes, I am," he said proudly. The man said, "Aren't you going to the All-Star game?" Cirillo said yes.

"This plane is going to Detroit," the man said.

Even the best players, at least some of them, are genuine. There is no finer person, no more unpretentious superstar, than Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson of the Orioles. When Robin Roberts came to Baltimore late in his career, he unsuccessfully tried to field a bunt down the third-base line, preventing Robinson from making his trademark barehand catch-and-throw play. Robinson patted Roberts on the butt and said, "Let me have that one the next time; I'm good on that play." In the late '70s, Gordon Beard, a sportswriter in Baltimore, made a speech at one of the retirement functions for Robinson. "In New York," Beard said, "they named a candy bar after Reggie Jackson. Here in Baltimore, we name our children after Brooks Robinson."

It is the best game because it's a romantic game. Our finest essayists write poetically about it, yet ultimately they're all wrong. In truth, it is a hard game played by hard men; the romance disappears when that ball is traveling at your face at an incomprehensible rate of speed. It is, without question, the hardest game in the world to play, yet it looks so easy on TV. It isn't. My wish is for everyone in America to get one at-bat in a major-league game against Randy Johnson, and to stand even with third base when Albert Pujols hits a rocket down the line. Then everyone would appreciate what I appreciate: the speed of the game and the danger involved. It is a game that requires tremendous skill, athleticism, and courage. It is golf, except with running, jumping, throwing, sliding, and an overwhelming fear of the ball. PGA Tour players are amazingly skilled and disciplined, but imagine hitting an eight-iron into a green with a baseball that's hard as a rock and coming at you at 95 mph, or, after finishing your swing, having to avoid a 225-pound man in metal spikes who is coming at your knees at full speed. How hard is it? Ask Danny Ainge, perhaps the best all-round athlete of the last twenty-five years. There wasn't a sport that he couldn't play, and he did play in the major leagues, but when Orioles pitcher Tippy Martinez was asked what he threw to get Ainge out, he said, "Strikes."

How hard? Ask Michael Jordan. His greatest feat was not leading the NBA in scoring by more than eight points and winning Defensive Player of the Year in the same year, it was hitting .202 in Double-A ball after having not played baseball since high school, sixteen years earlier. It was a miracle that he hit that high. I thought he would hit .050, and I wasn't alone. Jordan will tell you that hitting a baseball is a lot harder than hitting a jump shot. A great NBA shooter misses ten shots in a row and he can't wait to shoot the eleventh because he knows it's going in. But a major-league hitter goes twenty at-bats without a hit, and he's a mess. Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, who had one of the greatest rookieseasons ever, and is the most confident hitter I've ever met, told me "I went something like 0 for twenty-five during my second year and I honestly thought I'd never get another hit." Dante Bichette was a really good hitter for nearly ten years, but he told me, "Every day I come to the park I wonder if it's the last day I'll be able to hit in the big leagues."

How hard? The Yankees' Alex Rodriguez has been the game's best player for the last ten years. His talent level is astonishingly high, far higher than that of Derek Jeter. Someday, he might be the all-time home run king, and could have the best numbers this side of Babe Ruth.

And yet, due to his failures in the postseason for the Yankees in 2004-06, critics have questioned his ability, his courage and his heart. He has been savaged by the press in New York and the fans at Yankee Stadium, where he has been booed liked an itinerant player with no track record rather than a two-time MVP, and the only infielder ever to win a Gold Glove in a 50-homer season. Only in baseball can the most gifted player on the field perform like the worst player some nights. That can't happen in basketball. On a bad night, Larry Bird was the best player on the court, the guy who always took the last shot.

There's nothing wrong with A-Rod's heart. It's his head. "The guys who are most affected by slumps are the bright guys who think so much and care so much," says veteran outfielder Jeff Conine. A-Rod cares too much about things around him, especially his image, and he thinks way too much. In 2006, he spoke on the phone for ninety minutes with ESPN basketball analyst Dick Vitale looking for answers for his hitting woes, as if Dickie V. might actually say something that would help A-Rod hit a 98 mph heater. Basketball players just react, they let their bodies take over because there's no time to do anything else. In baseball, with so much time to think, a player can think himself into trouble.

"You know what he's thinking right now?" a former teammate of A-Rod said after A-Rod made the final out of the eighth inning of a playoff game against the Tigers in 2006. "He's thinking 'great, I don't have to bat in the ninth inning?'" What? That's what a scared, overmatched, ten-year-old thinks! How can a guy with 460 home runs at age thirty-one think like that? It's baseball. It will strangle you if you let it. That's what makes it the best game.

How hard? Of all the stupid hypothetical questions I like to ask, my favorite is, "How many hits would you get in a hundred at-bats against Randy Johnson?" The answer for me is simple: zero. Any other fifty-year-old who hasn't played since high school, and thinks it's higher than zero, has no idea what he's talking about. Why? Because Johnson would sense my fear, he'd buzz the tower my first time up, and I'd never get back in there, and neither would you. I told this to ESPN's Dan Patrick on his radio show, explaining that he, too, would get zero hits in a hundred at-bats against Randy Johnson. Patrick is a good athlete, so he disagreed. I told Dan that he would get zero hits in a hundred at-bats against 200-game winner Jamie Moyer, whom I chose only because he's left-handed (Dan hits right-handed) and is a finesse pitcher who throws 83 mph, and not quite as scary.

"I'd get a hit off Jamie Moyer," Patrick said.

The next day, Jamie Moyer came on his radio show.

"You would never get a hit off me," Moyer said.

It is the best game because of its unpredictability. Every day you go to the ballpark, you might see something you've never seen in your life. How many other people can say that about their jobs? I saw Brad Komminsk disappear over the eight-feet-high fence in left-center field at Memorial Stadium after making a spectacular catch; his hand, with the ball in it, eventually reached over the top of the fence. I saw Bo Jackson run up the same fence, like a skateboarder on a banked turn, after making a great running catch. I sawBert Blyleven strike out nine batters in one game, all called third strikes. I saw a deranged fan jump out of the upper deck and land on the netting behind the plate at Yankee Stadium. I saw Jeff Stone make an out at all four bases in one game. Think about that one.

Unpredictable? Look, no one loves basketball more than I do. But in many basketball games, you know who is going to win, and how the game is going to be played, before it starts. When the Clippers would go to Chicago to play the dynastic Bulls, they couldn't win. That's never the case in baseball. No team in baseball goes 39-2 at home. Only in baseball can someone—in this case, me—pick the Angels to win the seven-team American League West in 1991, and the Twins to finish last, then have the Twins finish first and the Angels finish last. And I wasn't the only dope who made that call. In basketball, Michael Jordan is Michael Jordan, and Paul Mokeski is Paul Mokeski, and it never changes. The best player always dominates the game. The last guy on the bench never takes the game-winning shot. But in baseball, the best player might not even be a factor in the game, and his team can still win. The last player on the bench, be it Tom Lawless or Lenny Webster, or Geoff Blum in Game 3 of the 2005 World Series, might win the game. Francisco Cabrera was the last guy on the bench for the Braves in Game 7 of the 1992 National League Championship Series against the Pirates. His only expected role that night was to catch the ceremonial first ball before the game, yet his two-out, two-run single off Stan Belinda won the game and ruined the Pirates for what is now fourteen years: It remains the only postseason Game 7 ever to end on a two-out hit that took a team from behind to ahead.

It is the best game because of its rich history and tradition, from the seventh-inning stretch to my wife's favorite: the simple tossing of a baseball to the first baseman as he runs in after each inning so he'll have a baseball in his mitt for the next inning. It is a game of copiously kept statistics that have real meaning; they allowus to compare eras. At the 1999 All-Star game at Fenway Park, Ted Williams, who was introduced as The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived, sat in his wheelchair next to the pitcher's mound before the game. At the subtle urging of Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken—no surprise it was those guys—the rest of the All-Stars surrounded Williams to talk to the great man. "Can you smell the smoke on your bat when you really hit one?" Williams asked Mark McGwire. The current All-Stars revered Williams because they knew if he were playing today, he would be the best hitter on the field. And they would be right. If this had been a gathering of NBA basketball players, and that had been George Mikan, the first great big man in the league's history, sitting at center court, with all due respect, Shaquille O'Neal probably would have thought, "Man, I'd dunk every time on this guy," and he would be right.

Baseball is the only major sport in which some of the standard-bearers have been dead for fifty years, and a team that hasn't played in eighty years, the 1927 Yankees, are still mentioned in casual conversation, as in "The Indians are a good hitting team, but they're not the '27 Yankees." It is the only sport in which we can argue who was better, Walter Johnson or Roger Clemens, Babe Ruth or Barry Bonds. Johnson was the best ever, and not because I'm biased because I went to his high school, but because he threw 113 shutouts, more than Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, and Curt Schilling combined. Who is better, Bonds or Ruth? Entering the 2006 season, Ruth had as many career shutouts as Pedro Martinez (17). When Bonds becomes a pitcher, then we'll talk about who is the greatest baseball player of all time.

It is the best game because it begins in the spring, a time when the flowers are blooming, the snow has smelted, and summer is ahead. People build their vacations around baseball trips. Countless times I have met a family that is in the middle of a two-week odyssey in which they are visiting ten different major-league ballparks.They don't do trips like that in the NFL, do they? Baseball fans spend March going to every spring training site. Do football fans spend August visiting every NFL training camp? You're not even allowed in those places for fear that you might steal a team's game plan for next week. Does anyone really say, "We have to go to Arco Arena" in Sacramento? No. Why? Because NFL stadiums and NBA arenas are largely the same. The dimensions of the field and the court are always exactly the same. But in baseball, they're all different. When my family visited Wrigley Field in 2003, my wife, no big baseball fan, was dazzled by the ivy on the outfield walls and the hand-operated scoreboard. Every ballpark is different in its own way. I know. I've covered a game in forty-eight of them.

It is the best game because it is a family game, one that begins every spring with a father, or Ryan Klesko's mother, taking a son to the backyard for a game of catch. The Bell family is a three-generation family of big leaguers. Gus Bell, then with the Reds, would watch his son Buddy play as a kid, but so as not to draw any extra attention, Gus would sit alone in his car beyond the center-field fence. "If I made a good play," Buddy said, "he'd honk his horn once. For a great play, he'd honk twice." The Tyler family works in Baltimore. Jimmy runs the Oriole clubhouse. Fred runs the visiting clubhouse. Their dad, Ernie, is the umpire attendant. He has not missed a home game since he took the job in 1960, a Ripkenesque streak. There are thirteen Tylers, Ernie, Mom, and eleven kids. They once all lived in the same house at the same time. A baseball family indeed.

It is the best game because it's a daily game with great rhythm and flow to it. The game writes itself, and, if you're paying attention, it never disappoints. There are few days off, and, thankfully, fewer off-day stories to write. When Tracy Ringolsby, a Hall of Fame baseball writer, filled in briefly on his newspaper's NFL coverageyears ago, he asked a question of Chiefs coach Marty Schottenheimer, who scolded him, saying, "Today's Monday; that's a Tuesday question." In football, coaches can't completely comment on a game "until we've seen the film." In baseball, there is enough time between plays, between pitches, you have time to analyze it. In baseball, you don't wonder if the home run is going to be called back because of a penalty. You don't have to wait for the referee to stare into the replay monitor for twenty minutes to determine that, yes, now you're allowed to celebrate. And, in baseball, the ground can indeed cause a fumble.

It is the best game because it has the best broadcasters. We go to bed with them every night; they are our eyes and ears, members of the family. Their call is soft and soothing, not like the frenetic, apocalyptic call of a basketball game. Is there anyone softer and more soothing than Ernie Harwell? When Tiger Stadium was vacated in 2001, Ernie wanted a piece of a memorabilia from the park, so he chose one of the urinals from the visiting clubhouse. Why? I asked. "It's personal," he said. "Every great visiting player in the American League history used it. I'm going to clean it up and make it into a planter for my wife."

Jon Miller is as good a broadcaster as there is in the game today. When he was the play-by-play guy for the A's in the 1970s, they played the first game of a doubleheader at Tiger Stadium. The stands were virtually empty. The radio booth is right on top of home plate there. The A's Gene Tenace fouled a ball off his foot. Jon Miller, speaking on the radio, said something like, "Boy, that has to hurt." To which, Tenace, hobbling around home plate, looked at the broadcast booth and shouted, "You think so? And thanks for telling everyone!"

The only thing better than listening to Jon Miller call a game is to go out with him for pizza afterward. There is no one in the worldfunnier than Jon Miller. He can do any dialect, imitate any play-by-play guy, any public address announcer. When he does the venerable Bob Sheppard, the Yankee PA man, ordering breakfast—Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to my table. I'll have the Number 2, Two Eggs, Over Easy, With Toast, Number 2—I laugh so hard, I cry. When he does Sherm Feller, the once great PA man at Fenway Park, in a fictional Leave It to Beaver episode—Good morning, Miss Landers, boys and girls, today's lesson ...—I have to leave the room.

Well, maybe Bob Uecker, the Brewers broadcaster, is funnier. When Johnny Carson asked Uecker for his biggest thrill in baseball, he offered two: He saw a fan fall out of the upper deck in Philadelphia, and he got out of a rundown against the Mets. Uecker was the master of ceremonies at the Brewers' winter banquet one year. He winged the whole thing, and he was hilarious. The banquet was held soon after the Brewers had made a controversial trade of popular Jeromy Burnitz. "Look, people have differing opinions on many issues," Uecker told the crowd. "Take my career. Half the people thought I was the worst player they've ever seen, and the other half thought I was a disgrace to the uniform."

It is the best game because it has the best Hall of Fame. There is nothing better than a summer weekend in historic Cooperstown, New York, especially on induction weekend when you can walk down the street and run into a Hall of Famer. It's as if you've gone back in time. There is no better tour in this country than the Hall of Fame Museum, but the best tour ever is the basement of the museum, which houses, among other things, some old-time baseball gloves that are no more substantial than one you would use to shovel snow.

It is the best game because it has the best nicknames. Catcher Doug Gwosdz was Eye Chart. G-W-O-S-D-Z. Rockies pitcher David Lee was Diesel. Something happened to the bus driver inspring training 1999, so Lee had to drive the team bus. He pulled into a gas station and pronounced, "We need some diesel!" And there was minor leaguer Pork Chop Pough. "When I was eight, my nickname was Pokie," he said. "We had another kid on our team named Pokie, but I was much bigger than him, so everyone started calling me Pork Chop. Teachers in high school called me that. They didn't even know my name was Clyde."

It is the best game because it's the only one with a simple yet intricate system of keeping score. My fifteen-year-old daughter Kelly has to score every game she goes to. Most everyone knows how to keep score, but Tim McCarver didn't know until he went to the broadcast booth. Don Zimmer, who has been in the game for over fifty years, still doesn't know how. "I know that a double is two lines," he said. "But if I had to score a fielder's choice I'd have no chance. Hey, I've been in uniform my whole life. Who keeps score when you're in uniform?" No two people keep score exactly the same way. Is a called third strike a backward K, a K-C, or something else? Bob DiBiasio of the Cleveland Indians used to a run a seminar on keeping score at the club's winter banquet. As he was at the podium explaining the scoring of a complex play, a nun stood up in the back of the room and said, "That's not how you do it. Let me show you how I score that play."

It is the best game because the best in the game never forget anything, partly because the game moves at a pace that allows you digest all that is happening. "My wife says I can't remember the name of someone I met five minutes ago," said former Rangers manager Buck Showalter, "but I can remember pitch sequences from five years ago." Jim Palmer never gave up a grand slam in nearly 4,000 innings, amazing considering that Chan Ho Park gave up two in one inning, and, in 2005, Braves reliever Joey Devine became the first pitcher ever to give up a grand slam in his first two major-league appearances. I asked Palmer what was the closest he came to givingup a slam, and, twenty-five years later, he took me through an inning, pitch by pitch, from a game in 1973 in Cleveland. "Rico Carty hit a ball over the fence, but [Al] Bumbry reached over and caught it," Palmer said.

Pitch count? I met Billy Crystal, a New York native and a huge Yankee fan, for the first time on the field at Yankee Stadium before Game 1 of the 2003 American League Championship Series between the Red Sox and Yankees. I asked him, on live television, about his first recollection of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry. "I was sitting right up there [first-base side, upper deck]," Crystal said. "Second game of a doubleheader, Ted Williams strikes out against Bobby Shantz. Thirty years later, I meet Mr. Williams. I said, 'I have home movies of you striking out against Bobby Shantz in the second game of a doubleheader at the Stadium.' He looked at me and I swear, Tim, he says, 'Curveball, low and away.' He said, 'Ellie [Yankees catcher Elston Howard] dropped it and tagged me, right?' I said, 'Yes, that's it!'"

It is the best game because the equipment used is so personal and so important to the players. Tony Gwynn has been to the Louisville Slugger factory, run by Hillerich and Bradsby, to pick out the billets of wood used to make his bats; he could close his eyes and, from the feel, pick out his bat from a teammate's bat that was the exact same weight and length. "I broke a bat that I used for a whole year," Gwynn said. "I almost cried." Then there was former Reds outfielder Glenn Braggs, who brought twelve bats on one road trip, and broke ten without making contact. Braggs was so strong, he'd whip the bat with such force on his follow-through that the bat would snap when it hit his left shoulder. "I broke three like that in one game," he said.

Gloves are even more personal than bats. Future Hall of Fame second baseman Roberto Alomar wouldn't let anyone touch his glove for fear that any hand not his own would wreck the perfectform of his glove. "Who had his hand in my glove?" he yelled at no one in particular in the Indians clubhouse one day. "My glove is ruined." Former infielder Rene Gonzales would carry his glove in a Wonder Bread bag. Why? I asked. "Their slogan is 'No holes,'" he said. Former shortstop Walt Weiss was equally protective of his glove, mainly because he had used it since high school. It was so beat up, strings and such hanging from it, he called it "the Creature." Then there was Indians utility man Jeff Manto, who used to carry thirteen gloves with him on every trip, including two catcher's mitts, two first basemen's mitts, and a miniature glove that made him concentrate even more when catching the ball. "The guys call me "'Store,'" he said. "The equipment man hates me."

It is the best game because it contains so many elements and nuances, so much happening behind the scenes; it lends itself to strange circumstances, events, and plays, things that can only happen in baseball, things that make me smack myself in the forehead and say, "How great is that?" I did a story on the position of third base for Sports Illustrated. Why is it so hard to play? Why are there fewer third basemen in the Hall of Fame than any other position? Why have so many teams had such a hard time filling that position for a long period of time? The common answer I got from those who played the position was I Don't Know, which happens to be the name of the third baseman in the great Abbott and Costello routine "Who's on First?" Speaking of which, how great was the night that Glenn Abbott pitched for Detroit and Marty Castillo caught, making the battery of Abbott and Castillo? Or the night that Bud Black pitched and Steve Decker caught, a Black-and-Decker battery. Steve Rushin, the brilliant writer from Sports Illustrated , wrote that Decker wore the power tools of ignorance.

Strange things? How can it be that pitcher Dennis Eckersley could go four years between pickoffs, then the first guy he picked off in 1982 was the last guy he picked off in 1978, Kenny Williams.(At least Williams redeemed himself: he was the general manager of the 2005 White Sox, who won the franchise's first World Series in eighty-eight years.) In 1978, the Orioles' Tippy Martinez picked three runners off first base in the same inning. His catcher was Lenn Sakata, an infielder who had never caught, but had to that night because manager Earl Weaver had used up the whole bench trying to get the score tied in the ninth. So, with a second baseman behind the plate, three Blue Jays were a little too anxious leading off first, and Martinez nailed them all—a first, and surely a last, in baseball history. "Tippy had the worst pickoff move of any left-hander I've ever seen," teammate Mike Flanagan said. "I bet he never picked off another runner before or after that." Of course, Sakata hit the game-winning home run in that game, later voted by Oriole fans as the greatest game in club history. When Memorial Stadium closed in 1991, and many former Orioles were brought back to say goodbye, they went to the positions that they played for the Orioles. Sakata didn't go to second base, he went behind the plate. And every fan in the ballpark got it.

A lot of people get it. They get baseball. And they will always get it. They're the lucky ones. They know, and always will know, that baseball is the best game.

IS THIS A GREAT GAME, OR WHAT? Copyright © 2007 by Tim Kurkjian. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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Introduction     1
My Mom Was My Catcher     5
Business ... But It's a Pleasure     21
I'll Beat You Playing from My Knees     39
Phil Niekro's Teeth     59
I'm Old, I'm Fat, I'm Bald, I'm Ugly, I Have a Plate in My Head     77
My Face Was Crushed by a Bowling Ball Going 90 MPH     97
I Need It Now-Stat!     119
Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign     137
I'm Whacked     149
There Was a Blimp in Left Field     167
The Sun Will Rise, the Sun Will Set, and I'll Have Lunch     179
It's Ambidextrous, Not Amphibious     191
Angel, My Man     201
Why Can't There Be a Left-Handed Catcher?     217
Just Grab That Bat as Tight as You Can, Son     227
I Love Ketchup     239
Why Waste the 90 Seconds on the Front Page?     257
Acknowledgments     275

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