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

New Orleans’ Perfect Storm

Yesterday kicked off a momentous fortnight in New Orleans, with a mayoral election, the Saints’ participation in the Super Bowl, and Mardi Gras all taking place in a span of eleven days.

Saturday’s election of Mitch Landrieu ushered in the city’s first new mayor since Hurricane Katrina. (Ray Nagin was term-limited — and surely would have been voted out this time). You may recall that back in August, I signed a copy of A.D. for one of the mayoral candidates, State Senator Edwin R. Murray, at The Doctor’s A.D. release party. Well, Senator Murray pulled out of the mayoral race last month. In any case, although Landrieu will be New Orleans’ first white mayor in over thirty years, he won 66% percent of the vote, including a large share of the African American electorate. Let’s hope Landrieu truly is a mayor of unity and progress, and speeds up the Crescent City’s post-Katrina rebuilding.

As for the Saints, all eyes will be on them and their stars Drew Brees and Reggie Bush this evening. And when I say "all eyes," I really mean it — I’ve never seen a more football-crazy town than the Big Easy. I’ve lived in some big sports towns in my day, including Chicago and my own New York City, but New Orleans beats ‘em all when it comes to the Saints. They truly are a team that unites folks from disparate backgrounds: black & white, rich & poor, corporate-type & artiste, etc. — which is all the more remarkable given that for most of the Saints’ history they’ve been worse than mediocre. But this year they’ve been pretty damn good, and it should be a good match with the (slightly) favored Indianapolis Colts (whose quarterback, Peyton Manning, is a New Orleans boy himself).

So what’s A.D.‘s connection to the Saints and the Superbowl? Check this out: Last August, right at the beginning of the NFL season, A.D. character Leo McGovern published an editorial in his music zine Antigravity. It took the form of a dream he’d had, and went like this: "It’s the morning of February 7th, 2010. I’m cleaning my Mid-City apartment and making the final preparations for what will surely be the greatest party ever thrown. All the food is simple — chips, dips, vegetable trays, and pre-made sandwiches, as to not give the hosts (me, my wife and our roommate) any chance of having to be away from the television for any reason. . . . So I’m now putting the finishing touches on a clean apartment, tapping the kegs and arranging the sandwiches, because tonight we’re watching the Saints play in the Super Bowl."

Unfortunately, Leo’s dream didn’t reveal who won the big game, but like any good New Orleanian, Leo will "have two kegs of a local amber and, for backup, a few bottles of a local rum — enough to make us forget, if it comes to that." But should the Saints win tonight, you can be sure next Tuesday’s Mardi Gras parade will be a city-wide party to remember.

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.)

Adam Morrison in “Escape From New York”

Who says Japan has produced the best basketball comic? Steve Morrison’s fumetti-style strip gives Slam Dunk a run for its money. The newest chapter features Adam Morrison trying to pick up new Charlotte coach Larry Brown at JFK airport; and co-stars Michael Jordan, Carmelo Anthony, Allen Iverson, Yao Ming, the entire roster of the New York Knicks, and Ron Burgundy! Check it out…

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?

NOLA, Hoops, and All That Jazz

The National Basketball Association has hit New Orleans this weekend for the annual All Star Game, which tips off tonight at 8 p.m. Television coverage of the event has been… interesting… as it simultaneously celebrates the glitz of the French Quarter and bemoans the sad state of the rest of the city. Shots of commentators and tourists thronging Bourbon Street alternate with NBA stars lending helping hands to redevelopment projects in neighborhood schools and community centers. And of course there’s been a big effort to incorporate as much local musical flavor into the weekend spectacle as possible, with (among others) Marc Broussard and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band performing during the slam dunk competition, and Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis scheduled to play for the main event this evening.

Larry Blumenfeld, a pickup basketball playing buddy of mine and an accomplished music writer, has a piece in today’s New Orleans Times Picayune about the connections between jazz and hoops. Larry is currently a Katrina Media Fellow with the Open Society Institute, and has been documenting cultural recovery in New Orleans for The Wall Street Journal, Village Voice, and Salon.com. And he has a blog at www.artsjournal.com/listengood. Check it out while you enjoy the game and all that good music.

[cross-posted to A.D. website]

Sean Taylor, RIP

The murder of Washington Redskins’ safety Sean Taylor reminded me of an illo about him I did a couple of years back for the Washington City Paper. Seems Taylor was a bit of a troublemaker on the field, and had made headlines for spitting in another player’s face. The City Paper piece about him was called “Dishonorable Discharge” — clever, don’tcha think? It’s not the most flattering tribute to the tragic death of a professional athlete, but here’s that old illo:

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”:

last-second assignments

In the last week, I’ve gotten two one-day illustration assignments. Other than when you’re working for a daily paper, this is extraordinarily rare. Like, usually when an art director gives me a “quick turnaround” project, they may have “only” two weeks before the deadline. Not usually a problem.

Well, last Thursday night, at 8pm, I got my first-ever assignment from Time magazine (!), for a piece due 11pm Friday! Barely 24 hours. Plus, it was for a very dry topic (527 committees and the Federal Election Commission) and they had no ideas for the illustration. AND I was leaving for SPX the next morning. Oy!

Well, I got the job done, brainstorming and coming up with seven sketches at 1am Thursday, and doing the complete, full-color illo after I got to Bethesda on Friday afternoon. It meant I lost a full day at the con with Pekar, but, oh well, the pay was great, and it was for fricken Time. (The irony is that tho’ the illo was supposed to run this week, the story ended up getting bumped. So look for it next week…)

I thought that was a one-time thing until I got a call yesterday from a regular client, The Washington City Paper.

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.