Baseball Minutia

Congrats to the Phillies, who in their 126 year existence just won their 2nd championship….. SECOND, even the Cubs won 6 before 1900, the Braves won 7 (amazing that the Red Sox so easily stole that city)

Here’s a list of the teams in baseball and their respective championships and total years in the game, as you can see the Phillies have a long row to hoe to get up that list. Below we have the number of championships the team won after 1900 (Al and NL each get one for 1901-1902) then the 19th century championships and then the team

26    0    107    New York Yankees
10    4    127    St. Louis Cardinals
10    0    107    Oakland Athletics
7    0    107    Boston Red Sox
7    0    127    Los Angeles Dodgers
5    1    127    Cincinnati Reds
7    0    127    Pittsburgh Pirates
5    3    126    San Francisco Giants
4    0    107    Detroit Tigers
3    7    133    Atlanta Braves
3    0    107    Baltimore Orioles
4    0    107    Chicago White Sox
3    0    107    Minnesota Twins
2    0    32    Toronto Blue Jays
2    0    47    New York Mets
2    0    107    Cleveland Indians
2    0    16    Florida Marlins
2    6    133    Chicago Cubs
2    0    126    Philadelphia Phillies
1    0    11    Arizona Diamondbacks
1    0    40    Kansas City Royals
1    0    48    Angels of Anaheim
0    0    16    Colorado Rockies
0    0    47    Houston Astros
0    0    40    Milwaukee Brewers
0    0    40    San Diego Padres
0    0    32    Seattle Mariners
0    0    11    Tampa Bay Rays
0    0    48    Texas Rangers
0    0    40    Washington Nationals

All ballplayers should quit when it starts to feel as if all the baselines run uphill.

Babe Ruth

Picking through the remains of a horrible season for Reds fans we try and find something to cling to other than hope for the future, looking back tends to be a Reds fan friend, this season this Reds fan was rendered speechless as well as awash in apathy regarding the franchise, future and the past. This feeling coupled with a heavy work schedule and more time spent on the computer than most humans should be allowed has stymied my need to ponder and explore every aspect of the game, the team and the history of both.

That said I have the itch to exercise my sleeping baseball curiosity and perform an exercise in exploring the game and its past, it’s in hope of finding the muse, and finding out more about the mundane, the moronic, the minutia of the game.

Last week Garret Anderson of the Angels played in his 2000th game as an Angel, incidentally all his games have been with the Angels, earlier this season Chipper Jones, the long time Brave achieved the 2000 game plateau as well.

2000 games is a LOT of games in major league baseball, based on a 154 games it is 13 season worth of games, 12.1 for 162. That’s a LOT of baseball, and when you throw that up in the air and all the names and facts fall out it makes me get all Rainmain like Hoffman and that box of matches. Thus we’ll start with the facts and we’ll see what we can squeeze out of a list that displays players with 2000 games played.

On to the list.

212 players have played at least 2000 games in MLB this is a a short breakdown of the list:

4% have played 3000 games
8% played between 2750-3000 games
11% played between 2500-2750 games
28% played between 2250-2500 games
49% played between 2000-2250

9% played ALL their games with one team
19% played at least 2000 of their games with 1 team

At the top of the list is Pete Rose with 3562 at the bottom is Ellis Burks with 2000, sidenote: Tommy Davis ended up with 1999 games played with no games left in the season in 1976. 14 players played between 1900-2000 games, falling one season of play from the milestone.

Of the 8 players with 3000 game splayed three did it with one team, Carl Yastrzemski, Stan Musial and Cal Ripken, Rickey Henderson played with 7 teams to get to his total (3081) including 4 different appearances with Oakland.

The First

Cap Anson was the first to get to 2000 games played, Bid McPhee the second. By 1910 the players who had reached 2000 games are as listed below, hardly household names in the history of the game.

GAMES                            G
1    Bill Dahlen                2442
2    Jake Beckley               2386
3    George Davis               2368
4    Cap Anson                  2276
5    Lave Cross                 2275
6    Tommy Corcoran             2200
7    Bid McPhee                 2135
8    Willie Keeler              2123
9    Fred Clarke                2120
10   Jesse Burkett              2067
11   Bobby Wallace              2014
12   Jimmy Ryan                 2012

Each man has story, each list a tale as well. 2000 games is not something that you can just sniff your nose at, it’s not all OPS (Royce Clayton has over 2000 games played) it’s a combination of skills and other items we could spend a lifetime looking at(free agent rules, talent, franchise needs, etc) but let’s make sure we all realize that 2000 games played is IMPRESSIVE.

Prior to this season 4982 players who weren’t pitchers took the field in MLB history.* 4.2% of them played in 2000 games, and only 9 of those men were in the game for more that 3000 games, and only TWO of them played all those games with one team, we’ll kick that around next and we’ll also take a look at what teams had multiple 200K men and what teams didn’t and maybe try and figure out why.

2000 games?

Who cares?

Sure there are games being played still and we could crunch those numbers with every other baseball blog that is out there, but that’s being done so well everywhere else… here (at least for awhile) we’ll be sifting thorough the marathon players the game has spit out over the years, maybe we’ll find out something we didn’t know, or something we can impress our wife with on one of those long drives in the future.

*13 pitchers have compiled 1000 games played, with Jesse Orosco holding that record still.

This piece was written two years ago and still applies to the game today.

With the trade deadline looming in the future it’s only proper that some might wonder why, and how there ever became a trade deadline. It’s hard to find the exact moment in time that the rule was instituted, but we know it occurred in 1923 and we know it occurred following the trades in late 1921 and 1922. Of course we also know that 1921 was a watermark year in the sport, it was the first season that the power of that Ruth brought to the game began to show up throughout the league. It was the first season of Judge Landis’ long tenure and it was the first time the Giants and the Yankees would meet in the last nine game series what would become a regular battle for the world’s championship and the heart of New Yorkers. This battle would rage on for 36 more years and finally the original New York team, the Giants would be the team that fled the town in search of a loving fan base as the Yankees would become loved… and hated all across America.

However in 1921 the Yankees weren’t the team of the city, it was the Giants and their crafty, popular manager John McGraw, who was in his 20th season as the Giants manager and looking for his 7th NL Championship. What transpired that season was the sign of a new guiding hand in the game and the attempt it would take to usher John McGraw into the new era with his Giants.

In 1920 the New York Giants finished behind the 1st place Dodgers by eight games, a feat that occurred only twice before in McGraw’s tenure as manager, a feat that rankled the competitive McGraw, a man who took defeat lightly and also could see that the Yankees and Ruth (who were tenets of his team at the Polo Grounds) were stealing his teams thunder, 1920 was perhaps the first time that the Giants were the redheaded stepchild of the Big Apple. To remedy that McGraw saw that he would have to strengthen his team, and often for McGraw that meant infield defense, with the retirement of long time Giant Larry Doyle the first move McGraw hoped to make was sliding, young Frank Frisch from 3rd to 2nd base. To replace the hole at 3rd McGraw set his sights west and targeted Reds infielder Heine Groh, the premier third baseman in the National League and currently like fellow Reds Ray Fischer and Edd Roush was holding out for more money, a task that was not looked at fondly by the Reds brass who felt the pain of the post 1919 success in the team coffers.

The prior winter McGraw had spent a considerable amount of time trying to obtain Larry Kopf and Edd Roush from the Reds for Ross Youngs, refusing to pull the trigger was Reds chairman Garry Herrmann, who found himself trying to sign the three wayward Reds. At the time Judge Landis had been in office for 6 months and had already ruled on several cases involving players and owners, among them were several involving McGraw, including the order that he and Giants owner Charles Stoneham divest from horse track ownership in Havana and the institution of a lifetime ban to his starting leftfielder Benny Kauff. As far as McGraw was concerned the game had always been run a certain way and in his 20th year as Giants manager he didn’t expect that to change much. Thus when he offered Herrmann 100 grand and 3 players for the unsigned Groh he didn’t expect anything other then the Giants to get what they wanted, it was the way it always had been in McGraw’s National League.

However the National Commission was gone and the leader wasn’t seeing it that way, he refused to allow the Giants deal with the Reds to go through, demanding that Groh play the year in Cincinnati and then allowing the trade.

In the meantime the furious McGraw had a problem, the Pirates were controlling the league and the Giants were short a second baseman AND an outfielder. On July 1st the team addressed the second base problem when they obtained Johnny Rawlings from the Phillies, selling players was the usual way the Phils made rent and therefore was seen as nothing out of the ordinary, luckily for the Giants the move wasn’t questioned and their 4.5 game deficit was at 3 games on the morning of July 25th, when the Giants addressed their outfield issue, turning to the south and the hapless Phillies who had just suspended Irish Meusel for insubordination. Meusel had traveled with McGraw the prior winter on a Caribbean barnstorming journey, obviously his big bat was something that McGraw longed for and a couple of players and $30,000 later he had his man.

Once again the move was not questioned, not by the commissioner or any other official in the game. Pirate’s owner Barney Dreyfuss must have felt like the air was being let out of the first season since 1909 that the Pirates had really competed. Like many of the western clubs he didn’t have the same revenue as the eastern teams, nor could he play ball on Sunday, a day that was thought by most in the league of being the most profitable day to have a game. Despite all of this the Pirates held a commanding lead of 7.5 games on August 23rd, Dreyfuss was ecstatic, he received permission from the league to begin building extra stands to accommodate the fans that would be rushing to attend the first World Series in Pittsburgh since 1909. Pirate’s third sacker Charlie Grimm acted relaxed in the dugout playing his banjo as the Pirates came to the Polo Grounds to face the Giants.

A week later the Giants were a game and a half back, on the 14th of September the Giants were in first with a game and a half lead. The end of the season they found themselves alone and in first with a four game lead. The Pirates found themselves with a large bill for lumber and a section of stands designed for an event that would never occur.
After the World Series Dreyfuss leveled charges that the Dodgers were offered “incentive” money by McGraw to play the Pirates extra hard, this was never substantiated, but leads one to believe that Dreyfuss was fed up with the boys from New York and their cocky manner and most of all their deep pockets. That coupled with Irish Meusels incredible September run of .418/.442/.560 and 21 RBI’s led to complaints that went unheard that winter amongst the new rulers of the game.
The following July the New York teams were once again leading the league when each pulled off a late July trade to cement the lead (Hugh McMillan to the Giants, Joe Dugan to Yankees). Unfortunately for the New York team Branch Rickey was in the town that had not one, but two teams chasing the New York boys. Always the reformer Rickey initiated the City Council and the Rotary Club into action, and each club peppered the MLB office with complaints about the “big city” boys buying the pennant. This time the cries were heard and when the start of the 1923 season was underway there was a new deadline for deals during the season. This deadline was to fall on June 15th every year, after that time no deals could be made. This was an attempt to keep the richer teams from stocking up on the bottom division teams riches in moments of weakness. The dateline stood until 1985 when it was moved from mid June to the end of July, where it stands today.

Yesterday, of course the Yankees acquired IRod to plug up their catching hole, so once again this game never seems to change, and yet is always changing at the same time.