*** VD 13 Commentary Thread ***

[heyelander]

B-Fly would do great on Rainier

Right? I would have just gone half-way and told (was it TW or GITH?) to fuck off.

[The Feral Slasher]

I hate it when I'm mistaken for a Feral Trumper !

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1235048386975297536

[heyelander]

In today's Place County News...

ROCKLIN (CBS13) – The Rocklin Fire Department says three of their employees have been quarantined over their exposure to a coronavirus patient.
Health officials announced on Wednesday a patient with coronavirus in Placer County had died. It’s the first confirmed death related to the disease in the state.

I'm living in Rocklin... headed to the PONY auction in Ohio over the weekend... stop-over in Dallas, so I figure I'm a vector in the impending pandemic.

[The Feral Slasher]

In today's Place County News...



I'm living in Rocklin... headed to the PONY auction in Ohio over the weekend... stop-over in Dallas, so I figure I'm a vector in the impending pandemic.

My work and home are pretty much in the epicenter from what I understand. They are starting to cancel more stuff and their is actually a noticeable decline in traffic from what I have heard.

[The Feral Slasher]

In today's Place County News...



I'm living in Rocklin... headed to the PONY auction in Ohio over the weekend... stop-over in Dallas, so I figure I'm a vector in the impending pandemic.

Maybe take half a loaf of bread and drop it off in Dallas while you are there ?

[Ken]

Maybe take half a loaf of bread and drop it off in Dallas while you are there ?

Well I'm in the Dallas area, I can bring My Lite Caesar

[heyelander]

Well I'm in the Dallas area, I can bring My Lite Caesar

I'll be there on Friday evening for 45 minutes if you want to meet up and run from one gate to another with me. I won't even be pissed if you only run half way to the gate with me.

[The Feral Slasher]

Well I'm in the Dallas area, I can bring My Lite Caesar

Meet him halfway ?

[Bene Futuis]

Tulsi Gabbard is an anagram for Albus Dirtbag.

[The Feral Slasher]

Tulsi Gabbard is an anagram for Albus Dirtbag.

Albag Dirtbus

[The Feral Slasher]

The Feral Slasher = Hearse Hell Farts

[heyelander]

#22 Lefty Grove

[heyelander]

But beyond numbers, beyond awards, beyond everything, Grove was a legend who threw one of the hottest fastballs the game had ever seen. “Lefty Grove,” Westbrook Pegler famously wrote, “could throw a lamb chop past a wolf.”

“Sometimes,” Joe Sewell said, “when the sun was out, really bright, Grove would throw that baseball in there and it looked like a flash of white sewing thread coming up at you.”

Robert Moses Grove was a driven, volatile, profane and talented son of a gun. Boy, did he hate losing. He was born that way. Bobby Grove, as he was called, grew up poor in Lonaconing, Md. where his father and older brothers were coal miners. He didn’t see that as any kind of life. As the story goes, Bobby worked in the mines for just two weeks before quitting for good.

“Dad,” he famously said, “I didn’t put the coal in here and I don’t want to take no more of it out.”

He attended a little red schoolhouse for about as long he could — he might have reached the eighth grade — before seeking non-mining work around town. He worked at the big glass factory. He put down rails for the railroads. He worked in a textile mill that made silk thread. There wasn’t much time for baseball; Grove did not play on an organized team until he was 19 years old.

But he did throw things a lot. Rocks mostly. Bobby Grove drew a home plate in the dirt on the side of his father’s barn and 60 feet, 6 inches away, he drew a line to represent a pitching rubber. Then he would throw rocks as hard as he could over that home plate (or anyway, considering his wildness in the early days, as close as he could get).

His father used to say he could tell how much his son’s fastball was improving by the size of the dents on the side of the barn.

But he never played for the B&O baseball team. No, before the season began, he was recruited to play for a real professional team in Martinsburg, WV, about 90 miles away. According to legend, he bicycled the whole way even though there weren’t particularly good roads (or any roads) between the towns.

Grove wasn’t in Martinsburg long but he was there long enough to leave an impression. Apparently, in one game, he walked 16 batters and struck out 23.

"he" here is the owner of the AA Baltimore Orioles

Then, only five years later, he heard about this left-handed whirlwind throwing in West Virginia. He sent his son, Jack Jr., down to see what the fuss was about. Jack Jr. was profoundly impressed, and wanted to make a deal. It turned out that the Martinsburg team owner had a problem: His stadium didn’t have any outfield fencing. Jack Jr. offered about $3,000, enough to cover a new fence for the ballpark.

And just like that, Dunn’s Orioles had signed the greatest hitter and greatest pitcher of the next era within a five-year period.

“I’m the only man traded for a fence,” Grove would say.

Grove was fantastic for Baltimore. He was still wild in those days — he averaged 156 walks a year his four full seasons in Baltimore — but he struck out everybody and he gave up so few hits. His record over those four full seasons was 96-34.

You will ask then: If he was so great, why did he spend four seasons playing for the Double-A Baltimore Orioles? And the answer is: Jack Dunn. He simply wouldn’t sell Grove (or Groves) at any price. Major-league teams were salivating. Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack saw Grove pitch and said, “When he is right, he’s unbeatable.” When Brooklyn Dodgers manager Wilbert Robinson saw him, he said: “He makes Dazzy Vance look silly,” which meant something since Vance was Robinson’s best pitcher.

The more desperate teams were to get Grove, the more Dunn played hard to get. “Why,” he would ask suitors, “would I ever trade away the greatest pitcher in the world?” Dunn’s recalcitrance kept Lefty Grove from getting to the big leagues until he was 25 years old — by then, in Dunn’s own estimation, he had already been the greatest pitcher in the world for three years.

First came 1925 and Grove’s worst season. He did lead the American League in strikeouts, but he also led the league in walks and wild pitches. He had his only losing season, going 10-12 with a 4.75 ERA. He might have been hurt. It might also have just been a case of nerves. Whatever the case, people were not patient. They called him the $100,600 lemon.

Still, even with that, 1925 was mostly a washout for Grove. The talk was that his wildness would prevent him from ever becoming a great pitcher. Grove’s famous temper boiled over that. “Huh, so I’m the wild guy in the league?” he asked John J. Nolan of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. “I’ll show them something next year.”

He did show them something. What Grove did that offseason before the 1926 season would become the stuff of fables. He went back to his father’s barn where he had drawn a home plate and a pitcher’s rubber. And on the barn itself, he drew a tiny little circle. And for hours every morning, he would throw until he hit that circle 20 times in a row.

Yes, he would show them something next year.

In 1926, he led the league in ERA, strikeouts, fewest hits per nine and, surprisingly, strikeout-to-walk ratio. He only went 13-13 but that wasn’t his fault — he lost 1-0 three times, 2-0 once and 3-0 once — and so not everybody realized just how good he was. Using today’s measures, he would finish top two in the Cy Young voting.

But here’s the deal with Grove’s 3.06 ERA. It’s absolutely incredible. In context, it might be more impressive even than Johnson’s career 2.17 ERA or Christy Mathewson’s 2.13 ERA. Look:

Best career ERA+ for modern-day starters*:

Pedro Martínez, 154
Grove, 148
Johnson, 147
Ed Walsh, 146
(tie) Smoky Joe Wood, 146
*We are not including active starters like Clayton Kershaw (157) or Jacob deGrom (148) because they still have some years to go.

Yes, if you incorporate time and place, Grove’s 3.06 ERA looks very different. Well, you know this has to be true because you know that nobody won as many ERA titles as he did.

Grove played in a time when offenses scored runs at will. In 1936, Grove had a 2.81 ERA, which seems good but hardly historic. It was historic, though. It was a half-run better than any other pitcher in the league. That year, American League teams averaged 5.67 runs per game, the most for any year in league history.

In 1928, Grove went 24-8 with a 2.58 ERA and led the league in strikeouts. Great year. But again, it was better than it looks because teams averaged 5.41 runs per game, the second-most in league history.

Off it (the mound)? He was hellfire. He threw tantrums repeatedly. He kicked water buckets. He swore often and loudly. He threw chairs and bats and gloves in the clubhouse when he lost. Once, he was in the middle of one of his spells and everybody was silent until Connie Mack finally tried to get Grove to quiet down. This was a mistake. As Doc Cramer used to say: “You had to wait ‘til the steam went out of him.”

“To hell with you Mack! To hell with you,” Grove shouted.

Mack watched Grove walk away sadly and then softly say, “And to hell with you too, Robert.”

But my favorite Grove hothead story came after he retired. He was in a clubhouse when he saw a young player kick the water bucket after a poor inning — the very thing he had done so many times in his career. Grove shook his head.

“Kid,” he said, “when you kick a water bucket, never kick it with your toes. Always use the side of your foot.”

[The Feral Slasher]

Lefty GRove had some slasher tendencies

[The Feral Slasher]

Big news in Seattle today. I got an Amazon package. Figured it was for my wife....so I asked her what she was expecting from Amazon. "Nothing that I know of"....So I look at the addrss label....addressed included the word "Feral". Now I'm curious, what could it be. One of you must know.