Friday Rewind: Reality Bites

Thursday proved a somber reminder that baseball, like life, is fleeting. We prefer to think of it as a kid’s game, played easily, day after day, in the sunshine. You hit the ball. You throw the ball. You catch the ball. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes it rains.

But the game is more violent and vehement and cruel than all that. On Thursday, we were left with the wreckage of Shohei Ohtani’s elbow, torn apart again, throwing his pitching career and all the joy it brings us in doubt (and probably costing him tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars).

On Thursday, we were left again with doubts about the future of Mike Trout; he was, for eight seasons, about as good a player as any of us had ever seen. And he has been, since turning 29, a shell of himself. He’s 32 now and injured again.

On Thursday, we learned that Stephen Strasburg — perhaps the most thrilling pitching prospect in baseball history — will retire at age 35 because, even after removing a rib and two neck muscles, the doctors couldn’t quite put his body back together this time (as they had so many times before).

It’s a reminder that while baseball owners cry poor and try, as always, to squeeze as much money out of their communities as they possibly can, it’s the ballplayers, always the ballplayers, who are out there playing the game and enduring through pain and facing existential threats that can strike at any moment.

However much money he makes, Ohtani is worth a lot more. (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

What has Shohei Ohtani been worth to baseball these last three years? Is it even calculable? On the field, he has been worth maybe 25 or 26 wins above replacement, an estimated value of some $200 million on the open market. And off the field? What is it worth to have a player who stretches the mind, expands horizons, actually gets the kids to talk about baseball on TikTok? Again, is it even calculable for a game always looking to win over the next generation?

Ohtani has been paid $38.5 million over the last three years.

Of course, it’s a lot of money. And of course, it’s a tiny percentage of what he has been worth to the Angels, to Angels owner Arte Moreno, and to baseball itself. Would a baseball owner sell a club for one-fifth or one-eighth or one-tenth of what it’s worth? Of course not. But this is what baseball owners demand of its young players. Keep playin’ kid. Maybe, someday, when you’re older, when your body is used up, you’ll get paid what you’re worth. Heck, if you last that long, you might even get paid MORE than you’re worth.

And then we’ll get the fans to complain about how overpaid you are.

All of it has made what Orioles owner John Angelos said to Tyler over at the Times all the more infuriating. Angelos is paying his World Series-contending players a tiny fraction of what they’re worth this year, because they’re so young and overachieving — it’s the bargain of the year.

Adley Rutschman
Getting paid: $733,000
Probable value: $25 million or more

Gunnar Henderson
Getting paid: $733,000
Probable value: $20 million or more

Felix Bautista
Getting paid: $731,000
Probable value: $20 million or more

Kyle Bradish
Getting paid: $728,000
Probable value: $20 million or more

Kyle Gibson
Getting paid: $10 million
Probable value: $20 million or more

And so on. Ryan Mountcastle, Yennier Cano, Austin Hays, Cedric Mullins and Anthony Santander are all outperforming their contracts, all of them combining to give the Orioles the best record in the American League, even though they have the 28th-highest payroll in baseball.

And what does Angelos say about this bounty, this winning lottery ticket? Right, he talks about this team — one that Forbes estimates cleared $66 million in profits last year and one Angelos could sell tomorrow for at least $2 billion — is a financial anchor, and how the only way he could ever pay the players what they are actually worth is if he raised ticket prices so high that nobody could ever afford to come to a game.

This, of course, is the owner’s game and has been for a century or more.

But Thursday was a reminder that it’s not a game for the players. How many of those Orioles players will be made whole from the incredible value that they are providing this year? Some, maybe. Not all, for sure.

From a financial standpoint, yes, Stephen Strasburg did all right, but only because he signed a huge and much-disparaged free-agent contract in 2019, just before the injuries ended his career prematurely. From a financial standpoint, yes, Mike Trout did all right, but only because he was so impossibly great at 27 that the Angels signed him to a 12-year, $400 million deal after he had won three MVP awards and probably should have won a couple more.

In other words, they just happened to get the timing right. How many are so lucky?

Here’s something that I keep thinking about: Shohei started the first game of a doubleheader on Wednesday and felt some discomfort. He didn’t think it was bad, but something just felt off. We now know that he had torn his UCL, and that will likely lead to a second Tommy John surgery, and his pitching future is very much in limbo. He didn’t know that then.

And you know what? He played the second game of the doubleheader as a designated hitter.

Players play. Owners own. So it always has been. So it always will be.

Hey, if you feel like it, I’d love if you’d share this post with your friends!

WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL Updates

Lots and lots and lots of book stuff — we’re almost a week out from the WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL pub date!

— Please follow @whywelovebaseball50 on Instagram. It’s being run by my young friend Talia, who I have watched grow up since she was like 2 years old. She recently graduated from college and is trying to break into the book publishing world. She’s doing an incredible job with it; I think you’ll enjoy it!

— OK, we’re starting our book tour on Tuesday, Sept. 5 in Spring Lake, N.J., about an hour outside of New York. I’ll be in conversation with Hall of Famer Bob Costas. It will be amazing. Get your tickets here.

— On Wednesday, Sept. 6, I’ll be in Newport, R.I., with my friend, Red Sox aficionado and Broadway star Alex Edelman. I might have Alex do a dramatic reading of Mike Schur’s greatest Red Sox moment in his thickest Boston accent. Get your tickets here.

— On Thursday, Sept. 7, I’m in St. Louis with the incredible Gerald Early. Tickets are going fast, I’m told — and of course they are. I mean, it’s Gerald Early. Get your tickets here.

— On Friday, Sept. 8, I’m in Kansas City with Mike Schur. Nothing more needs to be said. Get your tickets here (and get them fast).

Here, by the way, is a super-nice thing they wrote about the book in The Kansas City Pitch. I particularly like this story because they pulled out one of my favorite little sections in the book, one I did not necessarily expect anyone to notice.

— On Saturday, Sept. 9, at 4 p.m., I’m talking with Jeff Garlin, and then we’re going to the Reds game that evening, and it’s just going to be a big bowl of awesome. Get your tickets here.

— On Tuesday, Sept. 12, Molly Knight, Nick Offerman and Mike Schur will join me in Los Angeles. Get your tickets here.

— On Wednesday, Sept. 13, I’ll be at Copperfield’s in Santa Rosa. Get your tickets here.

— On Thursday, Sept. 14, I’ll be in San Francisco with Molly and Giants GM Farhan Zaidi for the private party that Substack is throwing at Harlan Records. We’ll be sending out confirmations this coming week to those of you who got tickets. If you’d like to get on the waiting list, email us here.

— On Saturday, Sept. 16, I’ll be chatting with Bill James (I mean, seriously, how about this lineup of guest stars!) at the Kansas Book Festival in Topeka.

— A bit of a downer, the Why We Love Baseball Day at Knights Stadium in Charlotte isn’t going to happen on Sept. 17. Nobody’s fault. There were just too many moving parts, and it didn’t quite come together. I’m still planning to have a super-special and unique Why We Love Baseball event here in Charlotte — if you have any cool ideas or thoughts about what that could look like, please feel free to reach out.

— There are still a bunch of cities on the book tour starting in late October — Dallas, Washington, D.C., Cherry Hill, Atlanta, Toledo, Houston, you can keep up on the Book Tour page.

— I’ve done a BUNCH of interviews, with many more to follow — you think you’re sick of me NOW — but I did want to make special mention of this conversation I had with Keith Law, because it’s always fun to chat with my old friend.

— You still have a little bit more than a week to preorder the book, and if you do, then you can get special bonus book content, including a chapter I wrote about the biggest baseball moment of my childhood and a little something Mike Schur wrote about the most amazing baseball performance he ever saw live. All you have to do is preorder the book and then fill out this form.

Happy Friday! The Rewind is free so everyone can enjoy it. Just a reminder that Joe Blogs is a reader-supported newsletter, and I’d love and appreciate your support.

Strat-O-Matic Rules!

You might remember a week ago, for a Brilliant Reader Challenge, I put together an All-Small Team and an All-Big Team.

Well, the good people at Strat-O-Matic had the teams play each other … and the result was spectacular. Before I give you the details, I should point out that Strat-O-Matic is going to be a part of my book tour! At every tour stop, we’re going to give away Strat-O-Matic games, there’s going to be a special discount code, it’s going to be awesome.

OK, so what happened in the game? Glad you asked!

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RENO, Nev. — Roy Campanella hit two home runs and Harvey Haddix allowed just two runs over nine innings as Team Small beat Team Huge 5-2 in the much-anticipated battle of sizes in Reno, the Biggest Little City in the World.

Everybody on Team Small is 5-foot-9 or shorter.

Everybody on Team Huge is 6-foot-5 or taller.

“This just goes to prove that it isn’t the size of the fight in the dog, no, wait, that’s not it, no, it isn’t the size of the dog in the ring, no, OK, I’m not sure how the saying goes, but the point is that we won,” said Team Small honorary captain Voltaire, who managed to write more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books, according to Wikipedia, despite being just 5-foot-3.

It looked like Team Huge would run away with things early — Dexter Fowler led off the bottom of the first by doubling off Haddix, and Aaron Judge followed with a two-run home run. Team Huge honorary captain, King Kong, pounded his chest in triumph.

And it seemed that Team Huge starter Randy Johnson would make it stick. He dominated the Small lineup for six innings, allowed just two singles and striking out nine. But in the seventh, he walked Willie Wells, and then gave up a single to Oscar Charleston. That brought up Roy Campanella, who likes to say that “You gotta be a man to play baseball for a living, but you gotta have a lot of little boy in you, too.” Campy smashed a three-run home run to give Team Small the lead.

Haddix took over from there — he worked his way around hits in each of the successive innings. And Team Small put it away in the ninth when Campanella hit his second homer of the game off an exhausted Johnson, and Jose Ramirez followed with a solo shot of his own.

“Does this make up for losing a 12-inning perfect game?” Haddix asked. “Well, I don’t know about that. But as far as imaginary games go, this one was pretty good.” He added that you can read all about his 12-inning masterpiece in an upcoming book called WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL.

“Do you think when that durned book finally comes out, we’ll finally stop hearing about it in every post and will finally be able to go home again?” Team Huge official scribe Thomas Wolfe asked.

“I wrote 2,000 books,” Voltaire said.

“Showoff,” Wolfe replied.

BOXSCORE: 2023 5-9 & Under  At 2023 6-5 & Over                      8/24/2023
 
5-9 & Under     AB  R  H RBI AVG     6-5 & Over       AB  R  H RBI AVG
J.Morgan 2B      5  0  1  0 .200     D.Fowler CF       4  1  2  0 .500  W.Wells SS       3  1  1  0 .333     A.Judge RF        3  1  1  2 .333
O.Charleston CF  4  1  1  0 .250     F.Freeman 1B      4  0  0  0 .000  
M.Betts RF       4  0  0  0 .000     F.Howard LF       4  0  0  0 .000  
R.Campanella C   4  2  2  4 .500     T.Glaus 3B        2  0  0  0 .000  
J.Ramirez 3B     4  1  3  1 .750     J.Mauer C         3  0  0  0 .000  
T.Raines LF      3  0  0  0 .000     E.De La Cruz SS   4  0  1  0 .250  
J.Judge 1B       4  0  1  0 .250     A.Cianfrocco 2B   4  0  2  0 .500  
H.Haddix P       3  0  0  0 .000     R.Johnson P       3  0  0  0 .000  
                  -- -- -- ---                            -- -- -- ---      
    Totals      34  5  9  5               Totals      31  2  6  2
  
5-9 & Under..... 0 0 0  0 0 0  3 0 2  -  5  9  0
6-5 & Over...... 2 0 0  0 0 0  0 0 0  -  2  6  1
 
5-9 & Under (1-0)        IP       H   R  ER  BB  SO  HR  PC    ERA
H.Haddix WIN(1-0)         9       6   2   2   4   7   1 134   2.00
 
6-5 & Over (0-1)         IP       H   R  ER  BB  SO  HR  PC    ERA
R.Johnson LOSS(0-1)       9       9   5   5   1  13   3 139   5.00
 
ATTENDANCE- 46,583 DATE- Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2023 TIME- Night 
T- 2:48
LEFT ON BASE- 5-9 & Under: 5  6-5 & Over: 7
DOUBLE PLAYS- 5-9 & Under: 1  6-5 & Over: 0
ERRORS- R.Johnson
DOUBLES- D.Fowler(1st)
HOME RUNS- R.Campanella-2(2nd), J.Ramirez(1st), A.Judge(1st)
RBIs- R.Campanella-4(4th), J.Ramirez(1st), A.Judge-2(2nd)
CAUGHT STEALING- J.Ramirez
SACRIFICE HITS- H.Haddix, R.Johnson
WALKS- W.Wells, A.Judge, T.Glaus-2, J.Mauer
HIT BY PITCH- T.Raines
STRIKEOUTS- J.Morgan-3, O.Charleston-3, M.Betts-2, R.Campanella-2, T.Raines, H.Haddix-2, F.Freeman-2, F.Howard, T.Glaus, E.De La Cruz-2, A.Cianfrocco
GIDP- F.Freeman
RLISP 2-out- A.Judge, H.Haddix, D.Fowler, J.Morgan, R.Johnson
TEAM RISP- 5-9 & Under: 1 for 4  6-5 & Over: 2 for 6
WEB GEMS- Bot 8th: Jose Ramirez robbed Freddie Freeman of a base hit.

Checking the Email

I’m lucky on so many levels, and one of those is that I get a lot of nice emails. Pretty much every day, I get at least one email — and often several — that gets into my soul. I try to respond to all of them, but, alas, I often fall down on the job. I do want you to know that I read them all and they mean the world to me.

Yesterday, I got an email that actually got me to tear up a little bit. It was from a woman named Elizabeth Mobley. And the story goes like so: More than 30 years ago, I worked for The York Observer, a Charlotte Observer bureau in Rock Hill, S.C. Our mission at The York Observer was to cover the YLC (York, Lancaster and Chester Counties!) the way the Atlanta Journal famously covered “Dixie like the Dew.” I was a kid, 20 or 21 years old, and my job was to write about EVERYTHING SPORTS — bike clubs, softball teams, golf tournaments, bowling leagues, etc.

One day — and I have no memory of this, I must admit — I went out to write about a T-ball game. While I don’t remember actually doing this, I look at the article (and the series of photos taken by my old friend J. Allen Williams) and realize it was probably a big deal for me because I was allowed to write it as a featured column. At that point in my life, writing an actual sports column was the biggest dream I could dream. My first internet password was “column.” The fact that a newspaper let me write a column (with my photograph next to it!) — even a small paper and even if it was about a T-ball game — was the biggest thrill imaginable.

Elizabeth played in that T-Ball game. She was 6. She was noticeable, apparently, for her coolness — no matter how loudly fans shouted her name, she did not react. And this is what I wrote: “It became very clear. She was staying quiet to avoid autograph seekers. I saw Michael Jordan pull the exact same trick. He didn’t do it as well.”

When you write something — especially when you’re just a kid — you don’t really think about the impact it might have. I’ve told the story many times about the first note I ever wrote in a newspaper, one where I wrote about Magic Johnson coming to a department store for an autograph signing, and I got the date wrong. That taught me an important lesson pretty quickly, that words matter. Still, I’m sure I just wrote that Elizabeth bit to be funny, and it never occurred to me that one day, more than three decades later, Elizabeth would write to me.

I’ll keep much of what she wrote private — it’s very sweet and kind — but the part that I want to share is that as she grew up, her family liked to make fun of her about the article, and she secretly loved that, and after she grew up, she had the article framed. “I see it every day,” she wrote, “and it brings me so much joy.”

She also tells people that a sportswriter once compared her to Michael Jordan.

Like I say, I’m lucky on so many levels. I feel that every single day, I really do. I’ve traveled the world chasing sports. I’ve written cover stories for Sports Illustrated and won Emmys with NBC Sports. I’ve written seven books, eight if you count a collection of columns, and why wouldn’t you count that? I’ve got this newsletter and all you readers who give me a chance to do exactly what I’ve wanted to do ever since I was young. And, obviously more than anything, I have an incredible wife, and two incredible daughters, and a big, slobbery dog who barks me out of bed every morning so he can jump up.

And then I get emails, like this one from Elizabeth, and it makes my heart sing, and I’m reminded once again, despite how it often feels, we really are all in this crazy journey together.

JoeBlogs Week in Review

Monday: Wrote about the epic Djokovic-Alcaraz title match in Cincinnati.

Tuesday: Five MLB Players Who Have Been Scorching Hot Since July 1.

Wednesday: The Readers Have Spoken: Five More Players Who Have Been Scorching Hot.

Thursday: Special guest post from my friend Tom Haberstroh — the riddle of the vanishing two-sport megastar.

Thursday: A baseball roundup, including the White Sox shakeup, every team’s biggest free agent and more.