Torture Never Felt So Good!

I never in a million years expected the Giants to win the World Series last year.

The fact is, in my 32 years of avidly following the team, I never expected them to win the World Series any year. They’ve been such a mediocre team for most of those years that I am usually thrilled if they simply have a winning record. The years that the Giants actually made the playoffs always seemed like they were too good to be true — like the cliché, I was just happy to be there.

So last year’s Giants’ World Championship run was even more surreal for me because, for the majority of the playoffs, I was traveling through the Middle East, literally on the other side of the world from where their exploits were taking place. I tried my best to follow the action with iPhone and laptop updates, but that region isn’t exactly known for its interest in baseball, and the time difference kept me from monitoring the games as they happened. Sitting in my Jerusalem hotel and reading of the Giants dispatching the Phillies in the International Herald Tribune made me feel like I was in a time machine — it was exactly as it had been almost 25 years earlier when I spent a fall semester in London following a rare Giants playoff appearance (they lost that year in the National League Championship to the Cardinals).

Fortunately, I made it back to the States in time to catch the last four games of the World Series, as the Giants almost anticlimactically made short work of the fearsome Texas Rangers.

My most treasured holiday gift from this past December is a deluxe DVD set of the Giants’ path to victory (thank you, Sari!), and I’ve been gearing up for MLB 2011 by watching it. So, seeing as how today is opening day, and the beginning of the Giants defense of their title, here are some key happy memories of 2011:

It’s become a cliché but it’s still true: the 2011 Giants were a team of misfits. Brian Wilson’s dyed beard. Aubrey Huff’s lucky thong. Pat “The Bat” Burrell’s resurgence. Castoff Cody Ross and his playoff slugging heroics. Tim Lincecum’s awful August followed by his awesome September. The fact that the Giants almost blew a three-game lead with three games to go. (Remember, torture is the theme here.) Fear the Beard!

And then the World Series itself:

• Game 1: Crazy opening to the Series, with aces Lincecum and Cliff Lee both off their games. Giants win 11-7 in a slugfest, including Freddy Sanchez’s three doubles.
• Game 2: Matt Cain’s dominant performance — seven shutout innings, and the team’s breakout of five runs in the ninth inning. This was the Giants team that was supposed to win games 2-1 or 3-2, not 11-7 and 9-0!
• Game 4: Rookie Madison Bumgarner’s poise and calm, as he mowed down the Rangers with eight shutout innings
• Game 5: Lincecum’s amazing pitching performance, one run in eight innings, including ten strikeouts. Aubrey Huff, who had never had a sacrifice bunt in his entire career, laying down a perfect one to set up the key runs of the game! And let us not forget (the dear departed) Edgar Renteria’s “called shot”!

Because of the Giants, I’ve always felt like an underdog — in just about anything I’ve done. So for this whole last off-season it’s been really strange — and, I have to admit, very pleasant — to be a “winner.” (Apologies to Charlie Sheen.)

Baseball/Softball Encyclopedia: Josh Neufeld

[Originally posted April 12, 2006 — updated for 2012 with final 2011 stats]

In honor of the new baseball season, I’ve asked Bill James and the good folks at Baseball-Reference.com to compile my career (so far) statistics. Unfortunately, the records are spotty. Though they date as far back as my 1982–1983 stint as a Little Leaguer playing baseball against such classic teams as 15th Street Iron Works and Aurora Phoenix Construction, there is a disturbing absence of information for almost the next twenty years!

I know! No stats from the glory days of the mid-1980s, when man_size, larrondo, thamesrhodes, pango_lafoote, and I tested the confines of Riverside Park during summer softball?! Or the three years at the helm of the Oberlin College intramural softball teams — The Dascomb Lords of Fresh (1987), Better Than You (1988), and Like a Big Dog (1989)? Or those great seasons in the early 90s as captain of The Nation magazine softball team, as we squared off against the likes of The Village Voice and Money magazine? I know: a travesty.

But, since I joined their “league” in 2003, the nutty nutjobs of Prospect Park Sunday softball have stepped up to the plate. With an obsessiveness for stats I can only stand back and admire with awe, they record every out of every game we play during our April–November season.

So sit back and peruse my (admittedly sparse) stats, which prove beyond doubt that I was a born softballer. As the records clearly show, I couldn’t hit a curve — or a fastball, for that matter. (Though I was a pesky hitter, working out a fair number of walks and wreaking some havoc on the basepaths.) And the results some years later weren’t any better: I was cut from the Oberlin College baseball team, a Division III team with no athletic scholarships!

Anyway, my softball stats are a bit better — at least I’m over the Mendoza Line. However, I believe hitting anything less than .400 in softball is nothing to be proud about, so I’ve got plenty of work to do. (The two stat lines for the 2004 season reflect two leagues I played in, the first being P.P. Sunday Softball, and the second being the weekday Zen League, featuring real umpires. My team, the Plug Uglies, won the championship, but I found it all a little too intense — and time-consuming — and didn’t return the subsequent season.)

So the 2006 season has just begun, and assuming I don’t break any more fingers, I hope to really get my swing in the groove as the summer moves along.

NEW! UPDATED FOR 2012 [with 2011 stats]!

JOSHUA MICHAEL ROSLER NEUFELD
Born: August 9, 1967 Home: Brooklyn, New York
Ht.: 5’9″ Wgt.: 190 Bats: Left Throws: Left

YEAR	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	SB	AVG.	OBP.	SLG.	OPS
1982	9	17	5	3	0	0	0	5	9	6	6	.177	.391	.177	.568
1983	15	17	6	3	0	0	0	3	13	5	4	.177	.533	.177	.711
2003	—	60	19	25	6	0	5	18	4	0	—	.417	.453	.767	1.220
2004	—	104	22	38	5	1	4	29	13	0	—	.365	.436	.500	.936
2004	—	50	6	17	3	1	0	14	4	0	—	.340	.389	.440	.829
2005	24	69	20	26	3	1	3	18	9	0	—	.377	.449	.580	1.029
2006	43	127	48	67	13	2	3	31	17	0	—	.528	.568	.732	1.300
2007	40	133	42	71	9	5	3	50	12	2	—	.534	.565	.744	1.309
2008	23	82	26	41	8	5	5	27	4	2	—	.500	.667	.902	1.402
2009	25	78	30	41	9	2	2	26	8	1	—	.526	.570	.769	1.339
2010	26	82	28	43	8	4	4	43	9	1	—	.524	.542	.866	1.408
2011	23	67	26	37	7	5	2	30	11	2	—	.552	.578	.866	1.444

2010 Ford C. Frick award winner Jon Miller

San Francisco Giants radio play-by-play announcer Jon Miller yesterday was declared the winner of this year’s Ford C. Frick award. That means he’s going to the Hall of Fame! As a long-time baseball fan, I couldn’t be happier with his recognition. I’ve come to appreciate quite a few radio play-by-play announcers over the years, from Hank Greenwald & Lindsay Nelson, to Vin Scully, to Phil Rizzuto & Bill White, to Ed Coleman & Bob Murphy — but I like Jon Miller the best.

Miller has an uncanny ability to illustrate the action, to bring the game to life. It’s a true art, and through him I’ve really come to appreciate it. Miller’s terrific sense of humor is his chief tool (I love his banter with the other Giants announcers, especially the end of the game wrap-ups), but I also enjoy his easy, colloquial style, his appreciation of the weather, the stadium, and the fans. Not to mention his home run and double play calls.

I especially admire Miller’s sense of perspective. No matter how serious the situation, how dire things look for the Giants, he always reminds us baseball is after all a game: entertainment, a diversion. Baseball games are long (and occasionally tedious), and Miller’s anecdotes and stories of other gigs and other games enliven what could otherwise be dull radio. (Miller also does hilarious impersonations of other announcers, including a dead-on "Vin Scully".)

I think the moment I most enjoyed was the leisurely afternoon game he was calling where he spotted a guy with a radio headset sitting in the stands next to some friends of Miller’s. I’ll never forget the hilarity as Miller described the scene and got the attention of the guy, who was, of course, listening to him on the Giants flagship station KNBR! I imagine Miller might have gotten in a bit of trouble that day for "breaking the rules," but it was a treat to listen to, and really brightened my day.

Overall, Miller conveys a strong attachment to the Giants and their players, but combines that with an uncompromising honesty. He’s no "homer," unwilling to criticize the team or point out a bad play. That’s probably the highest compliment an announcer can receive, and I think Miller has struck the perfect balance. His Hall of Fame induction is well deserved.

P.S. After becoming a Giants fan as an 11-year-old kid in 1978, I left San Francisco for New York in 1980. Despite living out here in Yankees-Mets country, I stuck with my San Francisco team through thick and thin. (And most of those were pretty thin years.) As luck would have it, I moved back to San Francisco in the summer of 1997, which is where I discovered Miller and his unique announcing style. Knowing what little I do of Miller’s career, it seems our paths were somewhat similar in that we both had spent at least parts of our childhoods in the Bay Area and then returned later in life — in 1997! Though I moved back to the East Coast in 1999, it was a great pleasure sharing those three seasons of ’97–’99 with Miller and rest of the Giants’ announcing crew. Now, in New York, I am able to listen to many Giants games online, through mlb.com. I don’t get to tune it to quite as many games as I’d like, but thanks to a DSL connection and the fact that I’m self-employed and work at home, it’s turned out surprisingly well.

On The Road of Fantasy Fanatacism

An article in today’s Times about Jack Kerouac’s fixation on fantasy baseball caught my eye. (The term "fantasy," in this case, refers to a sort of role-playing baseball, rather than the rotisserie-type "fantasy" baseball that is so popular nowadays.) Seems most of his life Kerouac was obsessed with a baseball simulation game of his own creation, peopled with entirely made-up leagues, teams, and players. He chronicled the results of his games in various ways, including fake newspaper stories. (He also had a thing for fantasy horseracing, of all things.) Anyway, it appears that Kerouac kept this particular obsession entirely to himself, so even Beat buds like Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs knew nothing of it. I find it fascinating that the celebrated author of On The Road and The Dharma Bums had this secret life… as a nerd.

When I was a kid of about eleven or twelve years old, right when I really got into Dungeons & Dragons, I also really got into baseball (specifically the San Francisco Giants, as I lived in Frisco at the time). One of the things that drew me to both pursuits was their almost religious reliance on statistics: constitution values, batting average, hit points, earned run average, armor class, slugging percentage, saving throw — this way of measuring the world made sense to me. (A shrink would probably say it was my way of imposing a sense of order on what had been a fairly rootless, chaotic life up to that point.)

Subway Series: A City Divided

“Let’s-Go-Yankees!” “Yankees-Suck!”

That was the soundtrack to my Friday evening, at Shea Stadium for the second game of Yankees-Mets doubleheader. (In a rare event brought about by an earlier rain-out, the first game was played at Yankee Stadium, and the nightcap was at Shea.) The fans in our section were about 60-40 Mets-to-Yankees fans, with me sitting it out in my S.F. Giants cap. It was an entertaining place to be, though, as the Yankees fans would chant “Let’s-Go-Yankees!” and the Mets fan would instantly retort with “Yankees-Suck!” There was something poignant about this song of opposition: they were “singing” the same tune, and each side would dutifully wait for the other to finish their part.

The game started out evenly, with each group of fans getting their chance to make rude gestures and flaunt their team jerseys at the others, but the Yanks took control in the fourth inning, and ended up winning in a rout, nine-zip. Actually, it was when the game got out of the hand that the fans did too, and what seemed good-natured at first started to turn ugly. Groups of young men from each side got louder and more raucous, and security came by a couple of times to make sure things didn’t get violent.

As a fairly rabid Giants fan, I don’t have a problem with loudly rooting for your team, but there is something odd about this kind of intra-city rivalry. Unlike San Francisco and Oakland, two separate cities; or the North Side Cubs fans and South Side White Sox partisans; Yankees and Mets fans seem to split up much more raggedly once you get beyond the borders of the Bronx and Queens. For instance, in my experience, it seems like most Brooklynites favor the Mets, while those from Manhattan and Staten Island are Yankees lovers. Come to think of it, there definitely seems to be a class thing in evidence: Yankees fans proliferate in the Jersey suburbs and Westchester. It’s weird taking the train to Yankees games, with all those beefy Italian-American kids in Yankees jerseys and caps — who ever sees anyone like that in New York anymore? My assumption is they’re a bridge-and-tunnel crowd.

So maybe what was going on in our section Friday night was not so much a baseball rivalry as the first blow of a full-fledged class war?

Phil “Scooter” Rizzuto, dead at 89

Ex-Yankees player and broadcaster Phil Rizzuto passed away today. I listened to The Scooter during my prime baseball-fan days, as an adolescent, and he shaped my feeling for the game. I loved the way he combined a passion for baseball with a clear awareness that it was just a game, not to be taken too seriously.

He was known for his distinctive “Holy Cow!” exclamation, and I also loved how he called people “huckleberry.” During his prime as a Yankees broadcaster, he teamed up with classic straight man, Bill White. They made a great duo, the wise-cracking, diminutive old Italian-American bantering with the tall, distinguished African-American.

During broadcasts, Phil would get so involved in anecdotes, stories, or noting fans’ birthdays and anniversaries, that he would forget all about the game. The resulting non-sequitors made for classic TV and radio! And if a summer thunderstorm passed by the Stadium, he would literally run out of the broadcast booth to find shelter!

Years ago, the Village Voice took a few classic Phil monologues and transcribed them into poetic form. It was pure brilliance. Eventually, Tom Peyer & Hart Seely put together a whole book of his “selected verse.” Here are some of my favorite Rizzuto “poems”:

Come say hello to my little friends!

After some mix-ups with shipping, I finally received my X-mas gift from Sari, a set of curio cabinets for the small collection of toys, models, and action figures that I’ve acquired over the years. (Yes, like every other cartoonist on earth, I am at least part geek.)

So with a small amount of fanfare, I mounted one of the cabinets on the wall, and finally was able to create a home for (from top left. reading like a comic) Klinger, Hot Lips, Hawkeye, and B.J., Will Clark and Willie Mays; Boba Fett; Willie McCovey; Jack Clark; some cool Tintin chocolates; super-deformed Wolverine and Superman; the Giants Pontiac Firebird; Tintin, Snowy, and Captain Haddock; and Tintin, Snowy, and the Thompson Twins.

They all seem to be adjusting well to their new home.

Mr. Met act-i-vates AGAIN

Mr. Met act-i-vates

In commemoration of the new baseball season…

Fashion Backward, or a Lonely Li’l Baseball Fan

In honor of the upcoming baseball season, I thought it was time to dust this one off.

Seems when I was 13 or so, I felt compelled to draw the home & away uniforms of every MLB team, as well as alternate jerseys (an obscure practice in those days). I was obsessed with baseball, especially with the Giants — this was back when I lived in San Fran — and their distinctive orange & black. It was incredibly satisfying to get out the markers and fill the pages with all those colorful combinations of logos, stripes, and numerals.