Gene Wojciechowski casually references a notion in his recent column that bothers me to no end, namely, that Cal Ripken Jr. "saved" baseball. I don't know why this phrase became engraved into our sports lexicon, but the notion that Cal Ripken somehow saved baseball is ludicrous on like six different levels. If I were a better person this wouldn't bother me so much, but alas.
Supposedly, the 1994 baseball strike had everyone so disgusted with the greed of professional baseball players that we were all going to swear off baseball forever, until Cal Ripken got into the "saving" business. Clearly, the '94 strike wasn't fantastic, but baseball wasn't in dire straits as many suggested. Although it appeared that the NBA was the new force to be reckoned with, that league would soon learn that only Michael Jordan drew a 20 rating, even with a '94 final involving the New York Knicks. Hindsight is even clearer: the mid 90s would deliver a steady stream of body shots to the NBA - a decline in scoring led by excessive hand-checking, failure of would-be stars to reach their potentials, and, worst of all, rising perception that the league was full of thugs.
Of course, baseball's trouble wasn't only about the competition - stadium attendance was down. I'm sure there were a lot of fans who cancelled their season tickets for 1995 (and the numbers do bear this out), but they were coming back eventually, Ripken or no Ripken. The inescapable truth is that people love going to baseball games. Although a number of cities showed meaningful attendance declines, seven cities actually posted higher attendance in 1995 versus 1991. The attendance decline was further exaggerated by the 1993 introduction of the Colorado Rockies and the Florida Marlins, as expansion teams draw huge numbers initially, but quickly settle at smaller levels.
Baseball was never going to die.
I can put this even more simply: of the "Big Four" sports during the 1990s (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL) only two continue to have a substantial percentage of white Americans in 2007. I'm confident you can do the math from there, and if not, go talk to a NASCAR fan.
I never understood what was so impressive about the streak. Baseball players have professional trainers, the best doctors, professional nutritionists, fly first class or on chartered jets, don't carry their own luggage, work only 8 months a year and get tons of days off. They make physical contact with another player once every 25 games and spend about 2 hours and 56 minutes out of a 3 hour game either standing in place or sitting down. When you think about it, the wonder isn't that Cal Ripken could play in so many games - the wonder is that all the other guys get hurt so freaking often. If you were to go play a baseball game right now with some friends, you would estimate your personal chance of injury at somewhere between 0% and 1%, with the only meaningful difference being that the tension on your body trying to hit 90 mph pitches is different from trying to hit 70 mph pitches. (As a sidebar, I just saw Derek Jeter have to leave a game after injuring himself trying to change directions quickly on the basepaths, which is pretty much what a basketball or football, or hell, soccer player does every single play every game. And Jeter is TOUGH for a baseball player!)
What separates Ripken from, say, Miguel Tejada is nothing more than pure chance. Well, except that Tejada is a lot better, at least versus Ripken at that point. Ripken had a '95 park adjusted OPS of .746, which is roughly comparable to second-half-of-their-careers Omar Vizquel and Royce Clayton. That was at least an improvement over '92 when he was REALLY mediocre, posting an OPS of .689. The logic in giving a .689 OPS guy 715 plate appearances is somewhere between dicey and really dicey.
In summary, we had in "1995 Cal Ripken" a guy who by chance did not sustain a major injury in a sport where you really shouldn't be having major injuries who continued to get every possible plate appearance at the expense of his team winning games. We were really lucky to have him around, because without this overpaid and overrated shortstop (he had at least 6 undeserved all star selections) we would never have been able to save a game that did not need saving in the first place.
Supposedly, the 1994 baseball strike had everyone so disgusted with the greed of professional baseball players that we were all going to swear off baseball forever, until Cal Ripken got into the "saving" business. Clearly, the '94 strike wasn't fantastic, but baseball wasn't in dire straits as many suggested. Although it appeared that the NBA was the new force to be reckoned with, that league would soon learn that only Michael Jordan drew a 20 rating, even with a '94 final involving the New York Knicks. Hindsight is even clearer: the mid 90s would deliver a steady stream of body shots to the NBA - a decline in scoring led by excessive hand-checking, failure of would-be stars to reach their potentials, and, worst of all, rising perception that the league was full of thugs.Of course, baseball's trouble wasn't only about the competition - stadium attendance was down. I'm sure there were a lot of fans who cancelled their season tickets for 1995 (and the numbers do bear this out), but they were coming back eventually, Ripken or no Ripken. The inescapable truth is that people love going to baseball games. Although a number of cities showed meaningful attendance declines, seven cities actually posted higher attendance in 1995 versus 1991. The attendance decline was further exaggerated by the 1993 introduction of the Colorado Rockies and the Florida Marlins, as expansion teams draw huge numbers initially, but quickly settle at smaller levels.
Baseball was never going to die.
I can put this even more simply: of the "Big Four" sports during the 1990s (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL) only two continue to have a substantial percentage of white Americans in 2007. I'm confident you can do the math from there, and if not, go talk to a NASCAR fan.
I never understood what was so impressive about the streak. Baseball players have professional trainers, the best doctors, professional nutritionists, fly first class or on chartered jets, don't carry their own luggage, work only 8 months a year and get tons of days off. They make physical contact with another player once every 25 games and spend about 2 hours and 56 minutes out of a 3 hour game either standing in place or sitting down. When you think about it, the wonder isn't that Cal Ripken could play in so many games - the wonder is that all the other guys get hurt so freaking often. If you were to go play a baseball game right now with some friends, you would estimate your personal chance of injury at somewhere between 0% and 1%, with the only meaningful difference being that the tension on your body trying to hit 90 mph pitches is different from trying to hit 70 mph pitches. (As a sidebar, I just saw Derek Jeter have to leave a game after injuring himself trying to change directions quickly on the basepaths, which is pretty much what a basketball or football, or hell, soccer player does every single play every game. And Jeter is TOUGH for a baseball player!)What separates Ripken from, say, Miguel Tejada is nothing more than pure chance. Well, except that Tejada is a lot better, at least versus Ripken at that point. Ripken had a '95 park adjusted OPS of .746, which is roughly comparable to second-half-of-their-careers Omar Vizquel and Royce Clayton. That was at least an improvement over '92 when he was REALLY mediocre, posting an OPS of .689. The logic in giving a .689 OPS guy 715 plate appearances is somewhere between dicey and really dicey.
In summary, we had in "1995 Cal Ripken" a guy who by chance did not sustain a major injury in a sport where you really shouldn't be having major injuries who continued to get every possible plate appearance at the expense of his team winning games. We were really lucky to have him around, because without this overpaid and overrated shortstop (he had at least 6 undeserved all star selections) we would never have been able to save a game that did not need saving in the first place.
8 comments:
i was never a big cal ripken fan, it always bothered me that he changed his batting stance every year. and as you should know, little superficial things piss me off a great deal. but i think your lack of baseball knowledge shines with this post. ive disagreed with many of your stances on baseball in the past, but since now i can leave a comment without having to engage you in a long baseball discussion, here goes.. haha
while you are correct that if you were to play a baseball game today, the chance that you would get hurt is very small, if you were to play a game 13 out of the next 14 days and do this repeatedly from april until late september/early october, the chance of tweaking something is pretty high.
middle infielders actually get the most contact out of all baseball players, as baserunners will be trying to break up double plays every game. add in artificial turf and the amount of time spent playing on it, and it can be hard on the knees and ankles, and shoulders (should you be an infielder that dives for ground balls) my friends from ucsb who played on our softball team said its also common for infielders to tear their acls while trying to field and turn to throw. and as for changing directions, its not expected in baseball. for a baseball player, youre mainly running in a straight line, so you have all your weight going one way, to then unexpectedly turn the other way can lead to pulled hamstrings or groins. where a running back or a point guard has it in the back of their mind that they might need to plant and push off to change directions and would be ready for such a move. injuries can also occur while running. running full speed, then lunging towards first base and landing on the base awkwardly, you could easily pull or tear your muscles. or sliding awkwardly into second base and getting your hand or leg caught in the dirt or stepped on. all of that is to say that random seemingly minor injuries like that happen all the time in the game and for none of that to happen to you for 15+ years in a row is a feat to marvel at.....
as for saying ripken was overrated, thats probably putting too much stock in his yearly stats. like you could look at david eckstein's numbers and say he's the 24th best starting shortstop in baseball today, which is fairly inaccurate. but again, i wasnt a big ripken fan during his playing days and couldnt tell you the little things he did to help his team win. as for being overpaid, he clearly wasnt as people came to camden yards strictly to see him play and people bought orioles merchandise because of him. the amount of revenue he generated for that franchise means he really was worth whatever they paid him. probably even more.....
ripken did have a large say in saving baseball. the numbers i see say that 5 teams had an increase in their per game average attendance from 1991 to 1995. with the 2 expansion teams not counted because obviously nobody was there to watch them play in 1991. and of those 5 teams you have montreal, the best team from 1994, with a city hoping they could repeat their strike shortened success. the two world series teams, atlanta and cleveland, the astros, and cal ripkens orioles. winning was the only other thing that could have brought fans back to the game that soon. because us regular people always get all pissed when there is a strike or a lockout, just look at the nhl today. "youre making that much money and you still have the nerve to complain?" so the fact that right after the strike there was some record that had stood for years about to be broken by one of the fan favorites in the game at that time, and yeah he got people back into watching the game when they otherwise would have been like my old roommate and given up on the sport. combine the ripken 95 season with the mcgwire/sosa 98 season and that got baseball popular again. sure if we would wait long enough everyone would be back, but the league would run the risk of needing to contract or fold all together. again, look at the nhl....
aging players always make the all star team. that happens in every sport every year. altho ripken was always voted in as a starter, and thats always a popularity contest and has nothing to do with skill.
and as for that link saying bonds and sosa have earned their way onto the all star team this year, i didnt read the story, only the headline, but i already disagree wholeheartedly.
Re: baseball injuries
I didn't mean to suggest that baseball posed no danger at all, but my point is more that baseball players simply do not play through pain as is mandated in other professional sports at similar income levels. I maybe exaggerated for comic effect in my post. Surely Ripken played a more dangerous position than many other players, and clearly he dove for balls, so Ripken playing that many games without a serious injury is quite the statistical anomaly.
That being said, it's nowhere near as impressive as AC Green's games streak or Brett Favre's game streak, both of which many fewer people cared about. To suggest that Ripken plays a game with an injury/danger risk anywhere near Green or Favre is patently false. I'd also contend that despite whatever your friend said, we all know that torn ACLs for major league infielders are not "common".
Anyway, my point is that a streak is impressive when a guy fights through pain to continue playing because he is his team's best chance to win. If Ripken playing is not his team's best chance to win, the streak has little merit. I.e. if he sucks, he ought to just take a day off. The other factor is of course playing through pain - I'm sure Ripken played through pain to maintain the streak, my point was that we maybe shouldn't consider that so exceptional when you consider the level of pain other pro athletes play through.
In summary, I don't think a streak is worth freaking out about in and of itself, a lot of other circumstances need to be looked at. Give me Favre's (and you know I'm not his biggest fan) streak over Ripken's any day.
Re: Ripken not being very good
I guess there's not much for me to go into here - some people don't believe in stats, and I do. I don't think all of baseball can be understood with numbers, but I think a lot can, so agree to disagree. (Also, how high do you rank Eckstein among starting shortstops? You're saying he's like the #12 guy?)
What the numbers say is that Cal Ripken is a deserving Hall of Famer, for his excellent defense and superb offensive production from 1982 to 1991. What they also say is that he suffered a severe dropoff from 1992 to 2001 (perhaps due to the streak?), and was a below-average hitter relative to his league in 7 of those seasons. Ripken was an offensive force at shortstop in an era where teams mostly played Cezar Izturis-types there, but in the second half of his career, shortstops were expected to hit, and Ripken simply wasn't hitting well.
It's not like he got the benefit of the doubt on being an all-star a couple times - the tail end of Cal's career (he wasn't a horrible player for much of it, just not an all-star) was effectively 10 seasons.
I don't really hate Cal Ripken. The reason this "saving baseball" thing bothers me is because it attributes some grandiose accomplishment to our hero Ripken - that by the force of his skill, will, and work ethic, he saved our national pastime from death.
The truth is, at that point in his previously distinguished career, he was really little more than a guy who never pissed anyone off who happened to be in the right place at the right time. I agree that many baseball fans probably needed a big bang to get back into baseball, but to say RIPKEN saved baseball is iffy to me. In my eyes, people were just starved for a positive baseball story after so much negativity, and Ripken more or less fit the bill. But I'm confident that if not for Ripken, the media would have trumpeted a different story, and even if it was a little less effective, the '98 home run chase would have made it all the same anyways.
Re: Attendance
I worded this poorly in my post - I didn't mean by pointing out that attendance had increased in some places (I counted a couple cities where teams moved into new ballparks, which is why we have different numbers) that baseball had somehow gotten more popular after the strike, I know that's ludicrous. What I was trying to say is that people just LIKE baseball. If their team is doing well, they're gonna go out and see them play, strike be damned. As the standings would undergo natural turnover, soon teams other than the Braves and Indians would be winning, people would buy their season tickets, and attendance would continue to climb. Clearly, a winning team seemed to magically erase all these "greedy bastard" complaints from fans.
Re: Other
You're right that by sheer virtue of fan interest, Ripken probably could never be overpaid, that's a good point.
Finally, I don't think baseball needed saving, but it is fair to say that it is much better positioned now than in 1995. I attribute this improved status to the following factors:
1. The strike was a long time ago, people are over it - that was inevitable
2. The decline of the NBA for both gameplay and social reasons
3. The boom in new stadium construction, financed by local governments
4. The re-emergence of the Yankees and Red Sox as perennial powers, which has a zero effect on attendance, but a measurable impact on national TV ratings
yawn...nothing interesting here folks. please move on.
Anonymous, you're welcome to link Vishal and I to your more interesting writing.
ah man, i knew leaving such a long comment was going to backfire. haha. now i have to read all that you typed. that will have to wait until another day. altho i will say that i didnt calculate my attendance figures correctly. i dont think it really changes my argument, but ill have to think about that more if you countered that point as well.
im a little puzzled by anonymous over here.. if you read something, and its boring, why go through the trouble of leaving a comment? just go on with your day.. but im all for more entertaining reading material, so anonymous, im waiting for your links to more engaging articles.
injuries:
part of the "greatness" of cal ripkens streak versus favres has to be that he broke lou gehrigs record. everyone loves to see a record broken, and not just any record, but one held by a yankee whos in the hall of fame.
also the length. its harder for football to compare in that regard because favre is at, what 237 straight starts? while that is still 15 years of starting, its 237 vs 2632. that big number just sounds better. regardless of whether or not it really is.
quarterback is no doubt a more dangerous position than shortstop, but was there some similar record held by someone from the past or is favre just compiling starts? if hes the one creating and extending that record, then im sure there will be some fuss made over whoever breaks that record as well.
as for an acl tear being a common injury, 'common' is probably a bad choice of words, and its better to describe that injury as 'not surprising'
ripken not being very good:
i dont know where i would rank eckstein in terms of all of the shortstops in baseball. obviously jose reyes and michael young are better. but i think the fact that he was a key part of 2 championship teams in the last 5 years shows that he should be in the top of that middle tier of shortstops, as that top tier is saved for those with more god given talent. also some of the things he does well at, like not striking out and having at bats long enough to 1) show his team the opposing pitchers pitches and 2)wear down the opposing pitcher dont show up in a stat column, but they help his team win. i cant make those arguments for ripken because i didnt watch enough orioles games when he was playing. stats show a lot as to the effectveness of a player, but they leave some things out. so i guess we will have to agree to disagree here.
as for whether or not the game truly needed saving:
thats also hard to accurately say. there was no down time in baseball where teams were getting like 150 fans/game. you can argue thats because ripken gave people something to cheer for the very next season or that people came simply because it was baseball. obviously winning would have cured any decline in popularity, but baseball doesnt have the parity that the nfl has, so that would only help the best teams every season and for the most part those teams are going to be good again the next year. so it wouldve resulted in a long wait to get baseball popular again. what the yankees success over the last 10 years has done for baseball now, cal ripken did for baseball that next season. maybe its better to think that he helped prevent baseball from falling into a temporary abyss like the funk that the nhl is in right now. but the degree of how much credit he gets depends on the person, as there really is no way to know how things would have been without him.
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