Santo Revisited, Revisited

Nice going guys! I guess you 25 who didn't vote for Ron Santo feel much better about yourselves now. You must be much prouder of your Hall membership for keeping Santo waiting. Shame on each of you!

Vote Santo into the Hall...NOW!

Tomorrow the ballot of the Veterans' Committee of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will be announced. The odds are overwhelming that if anyone is elected it will be Ron Santo and/or Gil Hodges. I'm not a Dodger guy, but honesty compels me to say that Hodges doesn't cut it among first basemen in the Hall. There are 18 players identified as first basemen in the Hall's accounting-leaving out those such as Aaron, Banks and Musial who spent time there, but are pricipally identified with other positions. There are three others who played in the Negro Leagues, which, tragically, means that their statistical records are incomplete, and therefore cannot be used in a comparison like this. Hodges doesn't stack up. Sorry. Good man, great leader, pretty good manager. Not a Hall of Famer.
But then there is Ron Santo.
Santo is said to fail the Hall test due to his .277 lifetime batting average. Let's take a look at the numbers. There are 10 players in the Hall identified as Major League third basemen. It's a pretty darned impressive group: (in no particular order) Brooks Robinson, George Brett, Wade Boggs, Mike Schmidt, Eddie Mathews, Pie Traynor, George Kell, Jimmy Collins, Frank "Home Run" Baker, and Freddie Lindstrom. (For the sake of brevity, I will speak as though Ron is in.)
Games Played: Ron comes in sixth of the eleven;
At Bats: again, sixth of eleven;
Runs Scored: Ron lands seventh;
Hits: sixth;
Doubles: seventh;
Triples: eighth;
Home Runs: Ron is third-and most of his hit during the best pitching years of the modern era;
RBI: fifth-see the previous comment about the 1960's;
Batting Average: eighth;
Slugging Percentage: fourth;
OPS: fifth;
Ron, not surprisingly, trails Mike Schmidt, Eddie Mathews, George Brett and Wade Boggs in most offensive categories, although Ron leaves Boggs in the dust in the power categories. Santo is comparable, offensively, to Brooks Robinson, and bests Robinson by ten batting average points. In fact, Ron's BA is better than Brooks', Schmidt's and Mathews'. And, again, batting average is the primary issue cited against voting him in. Once more, Santo was batting against Bob Gibson's 1.12 ERA, Sandy Koufax' no-hitters, Don Drysdale's brushbacks, Juan Marichal's kick and toughness, and all of them and more throwing from the higher mound. None of the third basemen in the Hall had to take most of their career ABs between 1960 and 1968, and Santo STILL put up those numbers! Remember, Yaz won the AL batting title in 1968 with a .301 average.
Santo beats Kell, Traynor, Collins, Baker and Lindstrom in most all of the categories.
Oh yeah, there's one more measure: defense.
The Gold Glove award isn't perfect, but it certainly is one standard. Only four of these eleven men won multiple Gold Gloves. Brooks Robinson, of course, is the gold standard with 16. Michael Jack Schmidt claimed 10. But then it's Ron Santo next, with 5. (Wade Boggs won 2).
Ron says that he doesn't want to be elected to the Hall of Fame because he's a great guy and a legitimate inspiration, having played his entire career as an insulin dependent diabetic, who has now lost the lower portions of both legs to this vicious disease. My wife has been an insulin dependent diabetic from about the same age as Ron. It is a challenge for diabetics to make it through each day with the balancing of food, exercise and insulin, much less perform as a top-flight professional athlete while doing all of that. And this isn't even to mention that Santo is one of the genuinely tremendous human beings on the planet. He routinely, without cameras and microphones, make calls and visits to children who are newly diagnosed with diabetes, and hosts them and their families in the WGN radio booth at Wrigley. Because he wants those strangers to know they are not alone in their fight, and that they can persevere and realize their dreams, because he did.
Ron Santo doesn't need a sympathy vote to get into the Hall. He doesn't need a hero's respect to get in. Ron DESERVES, on the merits of his career, to be voted into the Hall of Fame. The problem with the new Veterans' Committee procedure is that giving the vote to the living HOFers encourages them to see themselves above anyone not elected by the BBWAA. They want Cooperstown to be exclusive, because the more exclusive the club is, the better they must have been to have gotten in. To quote the legendary Col. Sherman Potter, "Horse Hockey!" It doesn't demean George Kell or Frank Baker or even Mike Schmidt to give Ron Santo what he earned on the field.
And I have no doubt that Ron Santo will one day be elected. If his disease and personality play any role in this consideration, it is that it would be a crime to wait until Ron has passed from the scene to induct him. The Hall of Fame is poorer for Ron's absence. And that should be corrected when the vote is announced on Tuesday. Don't take the chance of leaving it to the next Veterans' ballot in 2009. Take care of this injustice now!

For the Musically Uneducated: Essential Information

If you live in/near Memphis, TN, and don't care about music, I have just one question: Why?
Why are you here? Why are you wasting your life? Why don't you know what matters? Why don't you know you are living in the best place on earth? Why? Okay, that's six questions.
Mini-rant completed, here's a little hope/help for you.
Two words: DiAnne Price. That's all you need to know. She's all you need to hear to change your bereft existence and your apparently meaningless meandering through your alleged life. DiAnne plays at the downtown Huey's periodically on Sunday nights, she plays at the Vault on the Highland Strip on Wednesdays, and a Crosstown club called Sessions on Thursdays. More often than not, she is accompanied by some combination of Tim Goodwin on bass, Tom Lonardo on drums and Jim Spake on saxes. DiAnne's forte is barrelhouse blues piano with the appropriately smoky, incredible voice that goes with it. She knows every song every written, and no two shows are alike. DiAnne won the Memphis Magazine poll for Best Female Vocalist so many times in a row in the late 80's and 90's that they retired the category. Understand?
Her Boyfriends, as the gentlemen are known, are (not even arguably, really) the finest players on their instruments in this music rich city. Spake's discography is only surpassed by Jim Dickinson's (genuflection accomplished). Goodwin and Lonardo are everywhere with everyone of note, pun intended.
Full Disclosure: DiAnne has been my friend for 16 years, but don't assume any bias here. She is the best, she loves her audience, and by the end of an evening's performance, you will feel that you've known her forever, too.
Mack Orr is another treasure. The stage name is Daddy Mack. By day, hard-working mechanic. By night, a powerful singer and guitar player who decided as a middle-aged man that he needed to let the music out of his soul, and so began to study the guitar. The result is delightful. Mack fronts a band that includes local legends William Faulkner on drums and the brothers James (bass) and Harold Bonner (guitar). These guys have been participants in the fluid world of The Fieldstones over the years, and comprise the house band, as the Universal Blues Players, at the Blue Worm on Lamar on Friday and Saturday late nights. Mack plays all over, and is a warm, gracious man who puts on a great show. Look for him!
Venue: The Center for Southern Folklore, far and away. Judy Peyser maintains a little oasis a couple of blocks off of Beale that is much more authentic Memphis than just about anything you can find today on Beale. A daquiri bar, for crying out loud? Skip it. Go to the Center. No smoking in there, a great bowl of chili and hotwater cornbread, cold beer and real music. Daddy Mack plays there many Fridays. Judy puts on the best music festival in the city every Labor Day weekend (please-go back to including Mondays!). Everybody who's good performs, in every tradition, from the fun old pop of Smoochy and Hooch to the powerful harp of Big George Brock, from the inimitable Billy Gibson and David Bowen to the cool jazz of Renardo Ward's band The Promise, from the gospel of the Orange Mound Messengers to the country train songs of Roy Harper, to my pal DiAnne Price, there is absolutely something for everyone. The Beale Street Music Festival has the name; the Memphis Music and Heritage Festival has the musicians!
For radio, no question, it's WEVL, FM 89.9. My favorite is Cap'n Pete's Blues Cruise, 9 to midnite on Fridays. Delta to Chicago, oldest to newest, with just the right host. This is an education and joy every single week.
I still am waiting for Tater Red to get back on the radio. For years, the Beale Street Blues Show on Rock 103 was my Sunday night wind-down. But then Satanic media destroyers Clear Channel bought the station and wrecked everything good about it, Tater first. He moved over to 107.5, the Pig, an eclectic format, doomed for failure. We Memphians, as a group, don't like our own music. I can only surmise that we're too dumb to see (hear) what we consider a birthright. The Pig put Tater on mornings. Tater isn't a morning, sunshine, stupid cute banter guy. He's a late night, real blues, smokey room kind of guy. No body better at that. Come back, Leo! We need you!
Now, a bit of a left turn: on the internet, check out KALW out of San Francisco late on Monday nights. At 11 pm our time, they play Beale Street Caravan. They follow the Caravan with Mark Naftalin's Blues Power Hour. Then comes Fog City Blues, a really good show hosted by the improbably named Devon Strolovich. Go on Ebay, buy a pMarq stream recorder, set it for 180 minutes at 11 pm at cd quality. Thank me later! (any good audio converter will let you make the .wav file into an mp3, ready to be carried on your personal choice in players--just don't get anything in the abominable ipod line! Creative Vision:M, Creative Zen Micro or Zen MicroPhoto are all excellent, as are the iRiver iFP 799 or 899-I have them all, and recommend them all unreservedly-just stay away from the spawn of Satan ipod! Much like Andre Agassi, all style and marketing, no substance whatsoever!)
Now, take this information to heart, and go grow a soul!

Evangelism

We had a district preacher's meeting today. One of the issues on the agenda was evangelism. More specifically, the issue is the loss of membership in our district. The bulk of our district is the northern half of Memphis and Shelby County. We are a white, middle-class church. Memphis is an increasingly black, poor city. Our church has black congregations. For the most part, at least in our city, those congregations are very small. With the exception of a couple, their pastor's salaries have to be subsidized by the conference to provide something resembling a living wage. The couple that are larger and self-sufficient worship much more in the style of the white churches than the COGIC churches that dominate Memphis' black community.
With the exception of our one megachurch, our congregations in the city limits are old and shrinking. Most of our pastors, and I was one of them at two different churches, spend the majority of their time visiting hospitals and nursing homes, and holding funerals. Our people are good people. They have tried to live good lives. But the vast majority of them have turned the corner of life. I believe that our lives are shaped like diamonds. We spend a long period from the start with our world getting bigger and bigger. But at some point, we turn the corner, and our world starts to draw down again. As we age, deal with infirmity, and move toward the end, the world gets smaller and smaller. It is just not realistic to expect those whose world has become very small to find a way to change worship styles, change the identity of their church, and lay aside whatever biases have burdened their existence for 70, 80 or 90 years.
We predominantly white United Methodists don't relate well to African-Americans in worship. We don't relate well to hispanics in worship. Hell, we don't even speak their language. And the white people in the city of Memphis are moving out, if they are concerned about the school system or personal safety, or dying out if they feel that they are too old to move and start over. And our churches will continue to decline until all of them except for three or four wind up closed. And it has nothing to do with anyone's desire to do evangelism. It has everything to do with the cultural expressions of worship.
All this is frustrating.
What infuriates me is that I have been the same guy for the last 8 years. For the first six of those I was seen as a failure because my churches shrank and we did not pay our conference and general church apportionments. For the last two years I have been seen as stunningly effective and successful! My church is growing by leaps and bounds, and the finances are growing accordingly. We pay everything, and even turned a profit of $11,000 last year. I'm the same guy. I didn't have any sudden epiphanies that turned my performance around. I was just moved from a city neighborhood where there are very few options for the white church, to a bedroom community outside Shelby County where people-most all of them families with children-are flooding in to avoid putting their kids in the Memphis City Schools. Now I'm an evangelism expert!
One promise: I will never, ever, forget that so much of this is contextual. I have sat in workshops and presentations by colleagues who never did anything but get appointed to the communities that the white folks were running away to. They get so impressed with themselves for all their accomplishments. I was as good in 1999 as I am in 2007. No matter what the numbers said.
And shuffling the white folks from city to county and county to outlying area isn't evangelism.

Leave The Hammer Out Of It!

Henry Louis Aaron turned 73 a week ago. There is nothing that I can add to the reporting that has been done so ably on everything that Hank had to deal with in the run-up to April 8, 1974. That was the night that Al Downing grooved one, and the aging but still effective master pulled it over the left field fence in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. It was the 715th time The Hammer had parked one in the seats, and with it, the man from Mobile surpassed the greatest name in the history of American sport, seizing the most renowned record of all those held by athletes.
An awful lot of awful people did not want Hank to reach Babe Ruth's record, much less pass it. They were loud, profane and threatening in making their point. And in the face of all of it, Hank persevered.
Mr. Aaron has been a man of great dignity, grace and honesty for all of the years that his name has been known to the public. He has spoken truth to power on the opportunities for African-Americans in baseball, beyond the players' roster. He speaks with great credibility because Hank Aaron is not today, and never was, exaggerated. Hank didn't wear caps that were too small, so they would fly off in pursuit of fly balls. He is so smart that he positioned himself on defense so that he didn't need to dive for balls that were easily within his reach. He didn't swing so violently that he corkscrewed himself into the ground to ensure that everyone in the park would know how hard he was swinging. He knew that he could trust his magnificent wrists, and that maintaining control of the bat allowed him the best chance to hit the ball. Hank never struck out 100 times in a season. Reggie Jackson never had a season of 340 at bats without striking out more than 100 times. Hank never got the press that Willie Mays did; he just outplayed him in every facet of the game: 95 more home runs, almost 500 more hits, 101 more doubles, almost 400 more RBI, 112 more runs scored, 3 points higher in lifetime batting average, and 143 fewer strikeouts. Mays holds more Gold Gloves (12-3), but Hank played the bulk of his career up against the hot dog Mays, the manic Clemente and the elegant Curt Flood. Remarkable that the Home Run King won 3.
All of this matters because Hank Aaron is news again. If two creaky knees hold up, and the US Attorney's office holds off, Barry Bonds will break Hank's total of 755 homers this season. Bud Selig made news a few days ago when he let slip that he may not attend the games when Barry gets within a couple. I don't like Bud Selig, but Bud is a close and loyal friend to Hank Aaron, and has been since he brought Hank home to Milwaukee to end his brilliant career where it began in 1954. I appreciate Bud's feelings on the matter. I actually appreciate and respect his feelings on this matter. But I hope he goes. Otherwise, it will recall those days in 1973-1974 when former commissioner Bowie Kuhn had better things to do than respect Hank Aaron's accomplishment with his presence. Barry doesn't deserve to be cast in the role of victim.
Hank's presence, however, is a different story.
Ruth was long-since dead in 1974. There is no precedent in place, and that matters in baseball.
Charlie Steiner told on his marvelous XM Radio program, The Baseball Beat (channel 175, noon-2 cdt weekdays--plenty of reason enough to subscribe right there), of recently attending a dinner with Mr. Aaron. He posed the question, "Will you go?" Steiner reported that Hank sat quiet for a few moments, then responded that he expected he would be hounded with questions about whether or not Barry deserved the record, and that those questions would come whether he was in a succession of ballparks or at home. "I think I'll be more comfortable answering the questions at home," was the Hammer's final word.
And for all of us who wonder about Barry Bonds' place in the history of the game, Henry Louis Aaron's word is good enough for me. He earned the right to decide a long time ago.

Letterman and Me: 25 Years Together

I was 21 years old and almost exactly half of the way through college (yes, that's the 5 year plan) when one night Johnny Carson's genius was revealed to a new generation. I, well ok, all of us, met Dave and Paul. Actually we had some awareness of Paul. He had been on Saturday Night Live. The good version. But Dave was news. He spoke our language. He had our sense of humor.
Dave's favorite guest was Andy Kaufman. Andy may have been the strangest man who ever lived. And the funniest. Andy, like Dave, knew the world is full of crap, and deserves to be laughed at. It's the only way to get through without crying constantly.
Dave hired the ubiquitous Bill Wendell as his announcer. Wendell was old school TV. His voice, along with Don Pardo's (employed by Saturday Night Live) had introduced many, many shows for decades. He was reliable and predictable. He was a smokescreen for the mayhem to follow.
Pee Wee Herman, Harvey Pekar, Kaufman, Sandra Bernhart, Howard Stern-they were Dave's version of Carson's Benny, Hope and Groucho. Respect for traditions? I give you Larry "Bud" Melman!
One of my high moments was the night that the Andy Kaufman-Jerry Lawler feud found its way onto network television, with Jerry slapping the taste out of Andy's mouth after a run of classic wrestling promo insults. Andy responded with a totally bleeped diatribe, from behind Dave, where, theoretically, Lawler couldn't get at him. The classic Dave response followed Andy's rant: "I think you can say some of those words on tv."
Carson was rightly eulogized as the patron saint of three generations of comedians. Pryor, Carlin, Williams, Martin, and Letterman were all among those whose best early exposure was with Johnny. Now Dave has equalled if not exceeded Johnny's generosity. Dave still has Tom Dreesen on regularly. When did you last see Dreeson on any other show? Dave boosted Paula Poundstone, Jeff Altman, George Wallace, George Miller, Larry Miller, Steven Wright, Jake Johanson, Ray Romano, and a rat named Jay Leno.
When NBC betrayed Johnny Carson and David Letterman and promised the Tonight Show to the now spectacularly bland and unfunny Leno, Dave went to CBS and never missed a beat. He populated our world with Sirajul and Mujiber, Rupert Gee, Joe G from the pizza place and Grinder Girl and Hula Hoop Girl. He kept the brilliantly creepy Chris Elliot. Jay Thomas and Darlene Love make Christmas for me every year, with the quarterback challenge and "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" respectively. Who else could decorate a Christmas tree with a pizza, meatball, and miniature Empire State Building without drawing protests from the Ridiculous Right? And then knock the meatball off with a football the last show before Christmas?
We all hit middle age right behind Dave. His bypass surgery shook us all up. His hair changed color, and a lot of it departed, and we're all right there with him. He talks sometimes about the bad behavior of younger years, and we remember our own, thankful we survived it all. But still, he's funny.
Tonight, his 25th anniversary in late night tv, he again welcomed Bill Murray as his guest. Bill was the first guest on Late Night with David Letterman in 1982, the first guest on the Late Show with David Letterman in 1993, and many times in between. Bill's the perfect partner for Dave--same generation, same comic sensibilities, same staying power. Tonight they did a bit with CBS stuffed shirt Leslie Moonves. The masters even made that load funny.
Dave just re-upped through 2010. Interesting that NBC announced last year that Conan O'Brian will take over Tonight in 2009. Dave will continue beyond the man who owes his entire career to the best friend he stabbed in the back in 1992. Yes, Leno's ratings are higher than Dave's. But this is in the same country where Richard Nixon got more votes than Hubert Humphrey, Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter, and George II was allowed to steal two elections from obviously superior men. Those voted Most Popular in High School often have difficult lives. Popularity means nothing in this country. Paris Hilton and Kevin Federline are, apparently, popular.
David Letterman is funny. My kind of funny. Has been for 25 years on late night tv. And my life has been better for his work. Through a divorce, work ups and downs, issues with teenagers, deaths of dear ones and all the other stuff that makes up the journey, I've been able to have a laugh before going to sleep. Thanks, Dave! Can I have another 25?