This is round 2 of Humbugardy. I’m your host, Alex Scorebard.

Note: In this round, searching the web is allowed.

For the second year in a row, the A’s have the AL Rookie of the Year. Huston Street follows up Bobby Crosby’s win from last year.

It also marks the fourth year in a row that the AL Rookie of the Year is a product of the A’s farm system. 2003 winner Angel Berroa was traded to Kansas City in the Johnny Damon/Mark Ellis trade, while 2002 winner Eric Hinske was traded to Toronto for Billy Koch.

Joe Blanton and Nick Swisher finished tied for sixth. Dan Johnson did not receive any votes. I would have voted for Johnson before Swisher, but I guess Swisher gives the writers who vote on this award better quotes or something.

I do agree with the writers giving the award to Street. Yeah, Blanton had a higher VORP, but Street came in and did something special. Was there any reliever in the American League, with the possible exception of Mariano Rivera, who was better than Street last year? Blanton established himself as a solid pitcher, but Street showed himself to be an elite one. It’s a rare achievement, and very much worthy of celebration.

In 1986-88 the A’s won three straight ROYs: Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, and Walt Weiss. It was also a sign of good things to come; with that core of young players in place, the A’s went on to win three straight pennants.

That worked out quite well. Hey, let’s do it again. Daric Barton, anyone? Andre Ethier? Dan Meyer?

Begin transcript

The Candidate: Welcome. Come in. May I take your coats? I appreciate that you would come to visit me here, in my humble abode, instead of at your office. I hope you understand. My pet tuatara Josephine can be quite mischievous at times. Yesterday, she knocked over a bowl of Skittles onto the floor, effectively transforming a delicious confectionary refreshment into a treacherous layer of rainbow-colored ball bearings. I stepped on them. I lost my balance. I twisted my ankle.

Although my mobility is limited, I feel that the psychological effect is even more damaging. I find I am now conscious of every step I take. Heel…ball…toes. Heel…ball…toes. It is quite disconcerting.

Please…have a seat. Frank. Jamie. May I call you Jamie? It is such a lovely name. It reminds me of one of my all-time favorite television shows. The Bionic Woman. Jaime Sommers. Lindsay Wagner…God, I love that woman. On her recommendation, I recently purchased a Sleep Number 9000 bed. Do you have one of those? No? They are a luxurious combination of comfort and support. My number is 45. I sleep like a baby.

My dear friend Ronny Cox, with whom I worked way back in 1972, had the good fortune not too long ago of making a film with Ms. Wagner. What was it called? I pestered Ronny for details about what it was like to work with that fantastic woman. I hope someday to be so fortunate myself. I confess, there was a time when I actively pursued Ms. Wagner, but she rejected my every romantic advance. It leaves an emptiness in my soul that I fear shall never be filled.

I recall now. Frog and Wombat. Thankfully, the film title was not at all descriptive of its contents. I once had the misfortune of stepping in wombat guano and ruining an exquisite pair of leather shoes.

Amphibians terrify me. Although, not quite as much as raccoons.

Forgive me. Where are my manners? Can I get you something to drink? Some champagna, perhaps? Or would you like a snack? No? I have Cheez-Its in the pantry if you change your mind.

OK, then, let us discuss business. Let me say that I am honored to be considered for this position. Our national pastime is a sacred trust. Like the cinema, it has over time become ingrained into our collective national soul.

I am humbled, and yet excited, by the idea that you, Frank, and you, Jamie, and I, could come together. We could unite these two pillars of American culture. Baseball. Film.

They are so similar. You need good reviews to fill the seats. You must please the critics. You must bring the stars out in attendance. To create a buzz.

There are writers, and there are actors. A GM needs to be an actor. When the role calls for it, a GM needs charm the press. When the role calls for it, a GM needs to be cold, distant, and sinister. I can do both. Better than anybody.

Please excuse my temporary lack of modesty. I do not mean to boast, but at times, my emotions overtake me. I lose my head. I forget myself. I am sure a lovely couple such as yourselves can understand the intoxicating effects of passion.

Jamie. Frank. You have a fever. I am your prescription. Imagine, Dodger Stadium filled every night with A-List celebrities. Imagine your ballpark becoming a transcendent blend of America’s two greatest pastimes: baseball and stargazing. You simply must cast me. I am sure, with some time to contemplate my offer, you will come to agree with me. Come, let me walk you to the door. I shall hand you your coats. It has been such a pleasure meeting you. Let’s do this again. Please, have your people contact my people, and we will work out a deal.

End transcript

This is round 2 of Humbugardy. I’m your host, Alex Scorebard.

Note: In this round, searching the web is allowed.

Yipes! The Witasick deal is for after all.

Still, if you include the option buyout, the deal is $1.5 $1.375 million a year for two years. I’m still not crazy about guaranteeing two years, but that price ain’t too bad.

* * *

Speaking of guaranteeing two years, remember the two-year deal the A’s gave Mike Holtz in 2002? Two years, $1.8 million. The dude lasted two months, then got cut.

Relievers are like that. They can be unhittable one year, and awful the next. The Dodgers traded Guillermo Mota in 2004 because they had Yhency Brazoban in the wings. 2005: they both sucked.

And then there are these two words: Arthur Rhodes.

So I’m gunshy about relievers. So here’s really hoping the A’s don’t offer two years to Ricardo Rincon. Rincon will turn 36 next year. He looks like could fall off the proverbial career cliff any time now. I’d be very surprised if he has two good years left. One year, maybe, but I think he’s approaching the end of the line.

* * *

Speaking of done, the A’s declined the option on Scott Hatteberg. Good move. Not sure what took so long. Were they really considering keeping him? Hatteberg is a likeable guy, but he is of no use to the A’s anymore. Johnson has the 1B job, and Swisher can back him up there. There are plenty of other players who can put up better numbers as the team DH. Hatteberg can still put up a fightin’ AB, but there’s no jump off his bat anymore. The best use for him might be to sit on some National League bench somewhere and be a pinch-hit specialist. But with all the stathead GMs losing their jobs lately, who’s gonna hire him?

* * *

Speaking of hiring, the A’s have hired a new hitting coach: Gerald Perry. The impressive part of his resume is that he was the Mariners’ hitting coach during their peak offensive years from 2000-2002.

The last three years, however, he’s been the hitting coach in Pittsburgh, where he’s had some hitters, like Brian Giles, Jason Bay, and (most importantly) Jason Kendall have success under him, but the talentless team as a whole has struggled to score runs.

Which goes to show two things, if nothing else:

1. A hitting coach is only as good as his hitters, and
2. Gerald Perry is at least capable of fulfilling a batting coach’s Hippocratic Oath: first, do no harm.

Perry may not do miracles, but at least he probably won’t screw anybody up. If he can do anything beyond that, it’s gravy.

Perry has some fight in him. He got into a scuffle with Dave Duncan before a game back in August. That’s OK with me. Baseball ain’t hockey, but you still like to see someone in your dugout who’s got your back, and is willing to do some enforcing. That seemed to be missing this year in Oakland without the likes of Tejada and Hudson.

* * *

Speaking of coaches in dugouts, the A’s did some shuffling. Rene Lachemann is now the first base coach, Brad Fischer is now the bullpen coach, and Bob Geren is now the bench coach. Why, I don’t know, but when Ken Macha demands something, by golly, Ken Macha gets it every time. Or something like that…

I received a frightful scare this morning. I read in the SF Chronicle this morning that the A’s are expected to re-sign Jay Witasick to “a two-year deal with a club option”.

At first I read this as two years plus an option for a third. And I went, “Eeeek! Jay Witasick is going to haunt us for three years!”

But then I realized my eyes were being tricked. They must mean that the second year was the option. Whew! What a relief. I mean, why would you give a guaranteed two-year deal to a 33-year-old player with a long history taking random moments to suddenly turn into a pumpkin?

Witasick is a useful player. He puts up pretty decent numbers on average. But he fluctuates around that average wildly. His command can disappear for weeks at a time. As a result, you only want him in the middle of your pen. He’ll spook you if you rely on him too much in high-leverage situations.

Billy Beane probably still believes that relievers are where the bargains are these days, but remember, this is Jay Witasick. The cost may seem like a sweet treat now, but if things turn rotten, it may leave a painful cavity in the roster and the budget. So please, let’s revisit him at least once a year.

This is round 2 of Humbugardy. I’m your host, Alex Scorebard.

Note: In this round, searching the web is allowed.

This is round 2 of Humbugardy. I’m your host, Alex Scorebard.

Note: In this round, searching the web is allowed.

Nice to see Jermaine Dye get the MVP. The A’s didn’t their money’s worth out of him, but he has always been a class act. I’m happy for him.

When I saw the White Sox in spring training this year, they looked like a real impressive team to me. They hit well, and fielded well. I had a sense that day, a feeling in my gut, that the White Sox were going to be trouble for the American League, a really hard team to beat.

But the logical side of my brain, the one that reads sabermetric blogs and books like Baseball Prospectus, kept saying that no, this is an illusion: the White Sox are mediocre. Like a poor simpleton, I believed it. I picked the White Sox to be a .500 team. I fell for the misguided propaganda of the rationalists, and let their ineffective “logic” affect my decision making.

Well, no more. Thanks to Kenny Williams, Ozzie Guillen and their squad, I have now learned my lesson. Logic may lead to truth, yes, truth is nothing but a bunch of non-committal probablistic hedges. What’s the use in that? Your instincts, your guts, lead to something far more effective: truthiness.

Now some of you may subscribe to Rick Peterson’s adage, “In God we trust, all others must have data.” But I say, Rick Peterson is wrong. The data didn’t predict the White Sox.

You may reply, “Ken, you just don’t get it.” And then I go, “No, you don’t get it.” And then you’re all, “No, you don’t get it.” And then I just go, “No way, dude, that simply isn’t truthy.”

Ha! Gotcha there.

I do get it. I am an it getter. I know data. I am a data knower. I speak SQL, the lingua franca of data, fluently. I have helped build database queries for telecom monopolies and nuclear power plants, for police departments and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States. Indeed, I might as well come right out and admit it: I am a querier. Some of my best friends are queriers. I have worked and played intimately with the founders and designers of some of the world’s most widely used database query engines. I hang with some of the queriest people on the planet.

But do any of these people have a World Series ring? Simply put: no.

As the season wore on, I came to learn my lesson. Over time, instead of telling the facts to you, I began, like the best of analysts, to feel the news at you. In the end, I used no logic at all for my playoff predictions, and ended up correctly picking the White Sox to be champions.

It’s very difficult to change. Sometimes your rational mind just tries to take over, trying to make you make sense. But that’s not the real you talking, that’s your logic addiction. But you can overcome it. I did. You just need to take it one day at a time. If you just wake up every morning and confront your rationality, saying, “today, I’m not going to let you win,” you can turn your life around. It’s up to you.

Go with your gut. Don’t trust the data. Data isn’t cool. Data doesn’t rule.

Data is dead. Truthiness is king. Long live the king!

This is round 2 of Humbugardy. I’m your host, Alex Scorebard. Let us now finish off this despised category, once and for all:

Note: In this round, searching the web is allowed.

This is round 2 of Humbugardy. I’m your host, Alex Scorebard.

Note: In this round, searching the web is allowed.

This is round 2 of Humbugardy. I’m your host, Alex Scorebard.

Note: In this round, searching the web is allowed.

This is round 2 of Humbugardy. I’m your host, Alex Scorebard.

Note: In this round, searching the web is allowed.

This is round 2 of Humbugardy. I’m your host, Alex Scorebard.

Note: In this round, searching the web is allowed.

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, “You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.”

The man replied, “Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.”

And they said then, “But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are.”

–Wallace Stevens, The Man With the Blue Guitar

Stevens’ poem describes the artists’ dilemma: trying to describe the world, using tools that by their very nature leave the task incomplete, and at the same time, trying to change the the world, using those same inadequate tools.

My dilemma today is to describe the world with Bill King in it, using a blog. But figuring out the right notes to play, right thing to say, and the right way to say it, is hard. Even when I have all day to think about it. The words don’t just flow out naturally. It’s a struggle.

There’s so much to say. I’m old enough to remember the days before King was the voice of the A’s (he joined them in 1981). But King was still the voice of my childhood, as his Holy Toledos punctuated the broadcasts for all the Warriors and Raiders that I listened to as a kid. So where to begin?

Let’s consider this. Get yourself a stopwatch, and see how long it takes you to read the following paragraph out loud:

Love with the ball. Gives it back to the top of the key to Sloan, then over to Walker on the right, looking for Love running a pattern, but Love has to come out to the right. Seven seconds on the timer. Walker one-on-one with Rick. Walker on the right side…turn, fallback, twist in the air, shoot…IN AND OUT! A rebound, taken by Love. GEORGE JOHNSON BLOCKS THE SHOT! Wilkes has it! And again defense gets the ball for the Warriors.

It takes me about 18-19 seconds to read that paragraph. To read it. Bill King said all those words during the 1975 NBA Western Conference Finals, live, instantly, both deciding what to say, and then saying it–in less than 17 seconds.

Unreal.

Now read that paragraph again. Look at what King did in those 17 seconds. He didn’t just describe where the ball went and who had it. He also described Bob Love running a failed pattern away from the ball. He gave us a shot clock update. He described the defense, that Rick Barry was defending Chet Walker without help. And then he summed up the whole sequence in less than ten words.

I listened to the Bill King tribute on KNBR today, and every time they played a tape of his basketball calls, I just sat in awe. Pure awe. Words just aren’t supposed to come so easily.

Bill King is the greatest basketball announcer ever. Some say Chick Hearn may have been just as great, and I can accept that, but I just don’t think it is humanly possible to be better. King completely mastered the art of announcing basketball. (For awhile, Hearn and King both announced Bradley college basketball at the same time for competing radio stations in Peoria, Illinois. Must have been something in the water.)

The faster the action was, the better Bill King was. That’s why he was so great at basketball. He also excelled at football: next time there’s an old NFL Films story about the ’70s Raiders, pay attention to the calls they use from Bill King. Watch how the pictures match his words, even though he was talking on radio. It’s amazing how much detail he packs into those moments.

Baseball is slower, so King’s greatest strengths weren’t put on display quite as often, but when the big moment arose, King nearly always had the right call, just the right words at just the right time.

But because baseball is slower, the fans got the time to come to know him and love him. King was both an elitist and an everyman. He’d put on his tux to attend the ballet, yet he wore shorts and flip-flops in the booth. He knew all the fancy restaurants in every city, yet he’d chow down popcorn between innings. His vocabulary was a veritable Oxford English Dictionary, yet he once called a referee a m–f–er on the air. He was beyond us, yet at the same time, he was just like us.

He was like the family member we’re most proud of, the one who went off to bigger and better things, but always came back home as if nothing had happened. The person who understood that we’re all imperfect, yet got as close to perfection as anyone we knew. The person who demanded our best, yet always forgave us our failures.

We lost the best part of ourselves today, but we’re all better for having had that part at all.

Thank you, Bill King, and may you rest in peace.

I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.

I sing a hero’s head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,

Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.

If to serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,

Say that it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue guitar.

Damn.

Damn damn damn damn damn damn.

I…I can’t think of anything else to say right now…

* * *

Maybe I’ll just link to a few articles I’ve written in the past about him:

The Vocabulary of Bill King

Things Are Looking Up

Bill King = Orson Welles?

The Athletics Zone

This is round 2 of Humbugardy. I’m your host, Alex Scorebard.

Note: In this round, searching the web is allowed.

Peter Gammons floated a trade rumor about a Barry Zito-for-Lastings Milledge trade in his latest column:

One interesting decision for Beane? Whether to trade Barry Zito if the Mets offer a package including Milledge. Problem is, while the A’s have positional players coming, they do not have any more pitching.

Now what’s this rumor really about? It’s probably just Beane using Gammons as a messenger, letting people know what he wants for Barry Zito: another Mark Mulder trade. Another Barton and another Haren.

Gee, I’d love to give you Zito for Milledge, but gosh, what am I going to do about my pitching if I do that? Maybe if I give you one of my many hitting prospects in the deal (like, say, Nick Swisher: he’s young, and he’s gonna be solid, really he is, and he plays a really good defensive first base, which I believe you may also need) perhaps you would be so kind as to give me one of your pitching prospects (like, oh, say, Yusmeiro Petit) to help me fill the hole that Zito would leave on our roster.

The free agent market is quite thin this year, so Beane might just be able to get that kind of price for Zito. Perhaps not from Omar Minaya, but from some other sucker. It’s probably a good year to be a seller. Not that I want to see Zito go, but the A’s have several starting pitcher options. They really really need some monsters in the lineup, a 1.000 OPS hitter or two. They have solid hitting prospects, .800-.900 types, but besides Barton, no real monsters. Milledge has a shot at becoming one.

* * *

The A’s picked up Jay Payton’s option, but not Keiichi Yabu’s. Neither move is terribly surprising. Yabu is replaceable. Payton’s salary is reasonable, and even if they didn’t want to pay him $4 million next year, they probably could find someone who might. The Yankees need a centerfielder, for example. The Yanks would probably be better off trading for Payton than blowing a wad of cash on Johnny Damon.

It was a school night, but I let my youngest daughter stay up to watch the end of the playoff game. It was only about half an hour past her bedtime, the game was almost over, and she really likes it when the players “jump all over each other.” Since the game was almost over, I let her keep watching.

She had been rooting for the Cardinals. When the playoffs began, she decided that Albert Pujols was her favorite player in the playoffs, so she would root for his team. She likes Pujols because he’s really good in Backyard Baseball.

But when I explained to her in the top of the ninth that the Astros had never been to the World Series before, she decided that it would be OK if the Astros won. We kept watching, counting down to the jumping-all-over-each-other moment…”two outs to go”…”one out to go”…”one more strike”…

And then Eckstein got a hit. Edmonds walked. Up came Pujols.

“Pujols is really good,” she said. “He can hit grand slams.”

“Well, right now,” I said, “he can only hit a three-run homer. But they’d still probably be pretty happy with that.”

And then…pow.

“Oh my God,” I blurted out, the instant he connected. And as it landed, all I could say was, “Wow…”

I instantly felt really sorry for the Astros fans. That’s gotta be one of the all-time stomach punches. As an A’s fan, I’ve suffered a few stomach punches of my own, but if the Astros lose this series, this one’s probably worse than all of mine. Yes, even the one-of-which-we-do-not-speak.

My daughter and I sat in a sort of stunned silence for the rest of the game. Well, maybe only I was stunned. She was probably just tired. The game dragged on another ten minutes past her bedtime. As soon as the last out was recorded, I said, “Off to bed, now.” She went, no objections.

Tomorrow, we’ll probably pay for this. My daughter will probably be cranky and irritable, and we’ll have to diffuse a tantrum or two. But the tantrums will only last a few minutes, and will quickly be forgotten. This evening may end up being one of her earliest baseball memories, one magical game that everyone talks about for years to come, that she was actually watching. The memory will last a lifetime. The price is worth it.

This is round 2 of Humbugardy. I’m your host, Alex Scorebard.

Note: In this round, searching the web is allowed.