Baseball and Black Friday

This is Black Friday, when millions of bargain-crazed Americans head to the malls to shop for deeply discounted merchandise. The only purchases I’ve made today have been on behalf of my son: at the doctor’s office, the pharmacy and – in a weak moment – an online gaming site.

If you’re a baseball fan and a fan of baseball caps, the Major League Baseball site is running a sale at the MLB.com Shop. I’m not buying anything there today, but this orange-billed San Francisco Giants cap did catch my eye.

I also stumbled onto a link to one of what the site describes as several recordings of classic baseball games on radio that you can buy. The one in the Giants’ area was of a game against the Astros at Enron Field. That park carried that name for so short a time that I’m amazed there was time to find a classic there. I’ll be poking around to find more classic broadcasts available on the site.

I’d love to dredge up some old Cleveland Indians’ broadcasts from the 1960s, when the team was usually terrible. Imagine reliving thrills from 1967 as the Tribe and Washington Senators battled for seventh place in the American League! Seriously, I’d love to hear random games from the past, if only to recall so many fine old players like Ken McMullen and Sonny Siebert or to hear announcers like Jimmy Dudley on WERE in Cleveland or Ray Lane and Ernie Harwell on WJR in Detroit.

What exit? Yes, It’s the Jersey Turnpike World Series!

1985: The Cardinals and the Royals meet in an all-Missouri matchup, and it’s the I-70 World Series.

1989: The Giants and Athletics endure an earthquake to play in the Bay Bridge Series.

2000: The Bronx Bombers rumble with the Metropolitans of Queens in an all-NYC Subway Series.

This is 2009, Yankees versus Phillies, and there’s only one possible name for it: The Jersey Turnpike World Series!

It’s time the Garden State gets its due with a World Series of its own. New Jersey connects Manhattan’s George Washington Bridge in the north to Philadelphia’s Ben Franklin Bridge in the south. In between, millions of baseball fans from area codes 201, 609, 732, 908, 973, et al. are passionate the Yankees, Phillies or (rarely) both. From the Delaware Water Gap to Cape May, the people of New Jersey will be watching these games intently.

So come on, America. Recognize this series for what it is: A celebration of New Jersey!

The Twins win, and we’re stuck with more games in that horrid dome

Twins win

The Minnesota Twins defeated the Detroit Tigers 6-5 in 12 innings Tuesday night to win the American League Central title, and I’m not happy.

Not because the Twins won per se. They’ve been a terrific story this season, charging from behind to tie the Tigers and force the one-game playoff for the division title.

What irritates me is the prospect of at least one more baseball game being played in the  abomination that is the Metrodome. Although I’ve never set foot in it, I’ve loathed that dome for years.

When the Brewers were in the American League and played there, I hated it on general principles.

When Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek and that generation of Twins were in their heyday, I hated it for the homer hankies the fans waved. (I’ve always hated any team whose fans in an act of mass silliness wave hankies or towels or – please, God, no – thundersticks.)

I even hate the dome in football season, as in the past two weeks when the 49ers and Packers lost in succession to the Vikings.

Why do I find the dome so revolting? I don’t begrudge the Twins and Vikings fans a warm place to sit when it’s freezing outside. But the Metrodome is an over-the-top artificial environment, a chamber of Nordic screams designed to rile and rattle the opposing team. The building is a huge advantage for the home squad, and unfairly so.

There are other domes in professional sports. I’ve been in Skydome or whatever it’s now called in Toronto and the old Kingdome in Seattle (inset), for which I had a minimal, grudging tolerance. I’ve also been in Miller Park in Milwaukee, with the roof open and closed. None of those parks approaches the Metrodome in affecting the outcome of a game.

Quirky differences among ballparks parks add to baseball’s appeal — the Green Monster at Fenway Park, the ivy at Wrigley Field, McCovey Cove in San Francisco, the arches at Yankee stadia, old and new. Those features constitute charm and give the home team a bit of a boost. But they don’t loom oppressively over the game as does the Metrodome.

That the Twins are moving to the new Target Field next season is good news. It can’t come soon enough.

For most of us, it’s ‘Wait Until Next Year’

Playoffs notwithstanding, for most baseball fans today is the first day of the long winter. The season is over, the concession stands are empty, the lockerrooms bare as the players have packed up to go fishing or hunting or whatever they do in the off-season.

For followers of the Chicago Cubs, the Cleveland Indians, the Kansas City Royals, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the San Francisco Giants, another year has passed without post-season play. We small- and mid-market fans will watch glumly as the Cardinals, Dodgers, Phillies, Rockies, Angels, Red Sox, Yankees and Tigers or Twins stretch their seasons.

For those teams, hope remains for October glory, a pennant, a World Series champagne spray. But for most of us — like this crushed Cubs fan — our refrain is “Wait until next year.”

Spring training can’t come soon enough.

Iconic baseball caps: The Los Angeles Dodgers

The Los Angeles Dodgers cap is one of the best in baseball.

With their blade-straight serifs against the deep blue fabric, the white “L” and “A” form one of the most instantly recognizable logos in sport.

Look at this book cover photo of Sandy Koufax at left. (What a great portrait!) Even the most hardened Dodger hater has to admit: the cap is classy.

As a blue-eyed kid in Cleveland reading about Koufax, Don Drysdale and the rest of the Dodgers way out west, I fantasized every now and then about wearing Dodger blue. As an adult who’s spent most of the past two decades close to Candlestick and AT&T parks, I can’t bring myself to wear it now.

Alliances notwithstanding, I have to say the Dodger cap is one of the most aesthetically pleasing caps of all time.

Less than excited about baseball wild card races

We’re in a wild card race. Awesome!!!

Well, hardly. Wild-card races in Major League Baseball have been running for a couple of decades, and I still can’t fully accept them.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll take a wild card berth. As I write this post, I’m listening to the Giants and the Dodgers. I want the Giants to sweep LA this weekend as I simultaneously pray for the Colorado Rockies to drop each game in their series with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

But the race for a wild card berth doesn’t nearly get me as excited as someone claiming a league or division title. Way back in the late 60s as baseball contemplated following the NFL into multi-division playoffs, I can remember my father telling me that the playoffs were supposed to be the antidote to the all-too-frequent runaway teams atop the old single-division American and National leagues.

In many years, that vision has come through. But — Yankees and Red Sox fans, don’t hate me — I grow weary of the same teams returning to the playoffs year after year after year. The seemingly endless run of playoff appearances by the Atlanta Braves is a good example. They hoarded playoff appearances, although I must admit my judgment carries the bitter tinge from their only Series victory in recent memory, in 1995 over the Cleveland Indians.

Then there was the ‘97 series, in which the NL wild card team – the Florida Marlins – defeated the Tribe in the series. Where’s the justice in that?

I know I’m fighting the last war by whining about the wild card concept, so let this be my last harangue on the subject. I will now turn my attention back to the Giants, and hope against hope that their stellar pitching and anemic hitting manage to sneak them into the playoffs, on the road to a World Series victory against an AL team that won 20 more games in the regular season.

The All-American baseball cap, by way of China

This is 2009, and Google pretty much rules the world. For no particular reason, tonight I typed “baseball caps” into the Google Images search bar to see what would come up first.

And here it is, at right: the “6 Panels Baseball Cap with Brass Buckle” as displayed on made-in-china.com.

The irony cannot be escaped. The first image for the All-American baseball cap is a generic black hat on a Web site in China where, for all I know, the people are banned from viewing my blog (poor comrades!).

I did a quick check of several of the caps in my closet, and at least half were made in China. Of the Major League Baseball caps I checked, the Giants, Cubs and Nationals all said “made in China.” My Phillies and Mariners caps are from Macau, and the Marlins lid is from Bangladesh. I couldn’t determine the origin of my Brewers lid, which is from New Era.

I’ve come to two conclusions. The Chinese must love our national pastime, if only for economic reasons. And I need to find a few more caps from the American League.

Baseball players should wear caps, not earrings

With the San Francisco Giants losing horribly to the Los Angeles Dodgers tonight, I must vent my frustrations. I haven’t posted in a while, but here goes: baseball players shouldn’t wear jewelry.

Oh, it’s fine if they wear their diamonds off the diamond. But when they go to work between the foul lines, they should take off the bling. Having played a lot of shortstop as a kid and a teenager, I always cringed whenever I’d see Barry Bonds heading for second with that cross dangling from his left ear. He’s gonna get his ear lobe ripped out one of these days, I’d think.

I’ve seen a number of pitchers leaning in to get the sign from the catcher, and it always bugs me to see chains hanging off their necks.

My aversion to jewelry on ball players probably speaks to some deep inner insecurity of mine. Or maybe it goes back to the last couple of years I played as a teenager, during the disco era of the late 70s. I can’t pin it down, but I’m guessing I wasn’t crazy about a couple of teammates who wore those ivory horns or gold medallions strung from chains around their necks. (I actually had a pewter screaming eagle on a chain, but I’d never admit that publicly on my blog.)

There’s probably another reason I dislike bejeweled ballplayers. Prior to the free-agent era, most players didn’t get paid the stratospheric salaries today’s players receive. In the old days, most players didn’t have enough money to toss off a few grand or even a couple hundred dollars on a flashy necklace or earring, let alone wear it on the field. Even if they could afford it, can you imagine Joe DiMaggio or Stan Musial wearing an earring?

Not a chance.

Popular: Baseball caps are all about popular

I spent the day with my son and two of his friends at the Great America theme park in Santa Clara, Calif. While I joined the guys for several rides, I sat a few out and amused myself by taking inventory of the baseball caps people in the crowd were sporting.

As the San Francisco “Don’t Even Think About Moving Here, Athletics” Giants will unequivocally tell you, Santa Clara County is Giants’ territory. So it wasn’t a surprise that I spotted more orange and black caps than any other.  But it was nothing close to even 10 percent of all the caps on display.

The cap that most got my attention was a green Giants cap not unlike the one depicted, only the crown was spangled with glitter and the word “FRISCO” was emblazoned across the back. If San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen weren’t already dead, this cap surely would have killed him.

There were other colorful variations on Major League Baseball caps, such as a red, white and navy Oakland A’s lid on a guy ahead of me in a roller coaster queue. Another guy had a Yankees cap the color of lima beans with white piping (which actually was kind of cool).

I didn’t count, but the team most represented after the Giants and A’s was the Pittsburgh Pirates. The yellow-on-black “P” cap seems to resonate with young men.

After that, it was a mish-mosh of sox (Red and White), Yankees, Phillies, Nationals, even a Tampa Bay Rays cap. One Cubs cap, too, come to think of it.

Refreshingly, I didn’t see a single Dodgers cap all day.

Hitting the baseball perfecta

Inspired by a few trips to the betting window over the years, I’ve developed a system of rating how good a sports day I’ve had. To hit the daily double, my two favorite teams – the Cleveland Indians and San Francisco Giants – must win. That happens fairly often (although the Tribe didn’t exactly give me great odds during the first half of the season).

To hit a trifecta, the Tribe and Giants must win – and the Los Angeles Dodgers must lose.

For a superfecta: all of the above plus victory by the baseball teams next nearest to my heart, the Milwaukee Brewers and Oakland Athletics.

The parimutuel concept probably struck me in college, about the time I went to my first horse race. That was the 1976 Preakness at Pimlico in Baltimore. (I had bets on four of the horses in the field of six; neither won or placed.)

During college football season, the main components in my calculus were Ohio State winning and Michigan losing. Eventually, I added USC victories and Notre Dame losses to the formula.

In pro football, a Browns’ victory paired with a Steelers loss was extremely satisfying. Nowadays, my daily double is a San Francisco 49ers victory paired with a Dallas Cowboys loss. I’ll include the occasional (and I do mean occasional) Oakland Raiders victory  and a Steelers loss for good measure.

In September, when football and baseball seasons overlap, I can have either a mighty fine weekend or a miserable one, depending on the fortunes of the Indians, Giants, Buckeyes and Niners.

As for October, my baseball teams are usually watching the Yankees, Cardinals and Dodgers along with everybody else. But one can dream.