I will admit that this article will probably interest Brett, Griff, and a handful of high school baseball players from Colorado and Utah who also frequent the Newschoolers forum…and literally no one else.   Sorry Arlo.  This is just what September and October mean to me: baseball playoffs and the anticipation of winter.  The title probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to very many readers, but these are a few nicknames of some of skiing’s greats.  Growing up the majority of sports media to which I subscribed were ski magazines, Internet forums devoted to skiing, and ski films.  I paid way more attention to the world of professional skiing than I did to the world of professional baseball until I was around 20.  At that time I found myself at school in Iowa playing baseball.  Iowa surprised me with something that at least resembled skiing in the form of a trash dumb covered in manmade, but it was far enough from the skiing that I knew that I let it go a little.  This time of year always brings me back to yesterdays and the days to come on the hill.  Griff and Brett are two of my favorite people in the world to ride with, so I am really glad that they also write for The Sombrero.  Anyway, with this piece I will compare a legendary skier to the Big Leaguers that I believe their personalities, talents, and styles most represent.

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Winning Major League Baseball’s Triple Crown is arguably the noblest distinction an offensive player can receive. To hit dominantly for both power and average is a tremendous feat and even if someone manages that, a good bit of luck is still necessary to provide the base runners necessary to bat runs in. As prevalent as offense was throughout the steroid era, it still never happened. In fact, the feat is so rare that it was last accomplished by the Boston Red Sox’ Carl Yastrzemski in 1967. That season, the Yaz hit .326 with 44 home runs and 121 runs batted in. But we are now past the halfway point of the 2010 campaign and there are presently four different players still in the running for this most illustrious of baseball awards.

The first and most likely candidate to keep up the consistency needed to win the Triple Crown is Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera. The four time All-Star first baseman is currently second in the majors in batting average, hitting .349, and considering he is a career .314 hitter it is definitely within his capabilities to maintain such a high mark. At the moment he is also second in the American League in home runs with 24 and leading the AL in RBI at 88. Prior to this season the once wild-partying Cabrera entered treatment for alcoholism and followed up with a promise that he has so far delivered on to be more focused this year. The Tigers are currently three games back in the AL Central division and with lead-off man Austin Jackson hitting well over .300 there should be ample opportunity for Cabrera to drive home runs. If he doesn’t fall off the wagon down the stretch either personally or professionally then Miguel Cabrera is by far the most probable contender to become MLB’s first Triple Crown winner in over forty years.

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Every time I attempt to consolidate a specific amount of videos for an article within this series, I am divided over which videos are worthy of the cut. In my opinion, there simply isn’t a bad baseball commercial out there; each video is hilarious or unique for some reason or another. Over the past decade, the emergence of team commercials have provided baseball fans with an opportunity to get to know some of their favorite players, on their favorite teams. For as much pride as these players’ possess in playing for their team, it seems that they possess an equal amount of pride representing their team through these commercials.

This notion seems especially true in the case of the St. Louis Cardinals.

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Other than seeing someone get kicked in the ballsack, there is nothing more hilarious than a quality baseball commercial. There is just something about seeing a professional baseball player reduced to the goofy child that he really is that makes me respect them in a unique way.  As a youngster growing up in the ‘90s, I was privileged to witness the rise of ESPN, their programming and the hilarious commercials that they produced to stay ahead of their competitors. Specifically, it was the commercials that they used for Wednesday and Sunday Night Baseball, as well as the occasional Baseball Tonight clip, that remain a centerpiece in my baseball recall.

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May 23, 2010

As nothing more than a casual baseball fan that doesn’t play fantasy, I have always been more fascinated with all-time records and idiosyncrasies than the statistical minutiae most of you pore over regularly.  I would rather find Babe Ruth’s highest combined total of home runs hit and hot dogs consumed in a single game than hear about Pujols’ OPS for the month of May.  I make my way through Wikipedia, page after page, delving deeper into the obscurities of our national pastime with every click of my mouse.  Knowing more about mind-altering substances than I probably do about baseball, I find the fact that Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter on acid to be arguably the most impressive feat in baseball, if not all sports, history.  I learn and subsequently forget useless baseball trivia habitually, but last summer I came across something I felt compelled to remember and share with as many people as possible.  This was something so remarkable that when given the chance, I felt that I had no choice but to inform an entire nation of gilded-Mexican-hat-wearers.

While investigating the mysterious figures that stand atop Major League Baseball’s all-time career batting average list (Dan Brouthers of the Boston Beaneaters is in the top 10, really?!), I discovered a man who I believe to be the most influential baseball player you’ve probably never heard of, Wee Willie Keeler.  Now, if you are in fact already privy to the accomplishments and influence of Mr. Wee Willie, please stop reading this and notify me immediately, I want to personally congratulate you for your studiousness and depth of knowledge regarding baseball history.  Since I assume most of you are still reading, allow me to elaborate.  Standing a shrimpy 5’4” and weighing in at just a paltry 140 pounds, William Henry Keeler made his professional debut playing right field for the New York Giants in 1892.  Wee Willie reportedly used only a 30” bat, and with that diminutive stick the pocket-size player hit safely 2,932 times over his career for a lifetime batting average of .341.  Wee Willie won the NL Batting Title in 1897 with a career best .424, tops in single-season history for a leftie and 8^th best all-time, and then won it once again in 98.  He also had eight straight seasons with 200+ hits, a mark tied by Pete Rose and broken only last year by Mr. Consistent, Ichiro Suzuki, who had his ninth straight 200+ hit season in 2009.  Keep in mind, however, that Wee Willie never broke 600 AB’s during his streak.  And, his 44 game single-season hit streak is second only to Joe DiMaggio, with 56.  While all this is impressive, there are an astounding number of hitters who compiled incredible statistics during the dead-ball era in all categories except home runs, of course.  No, it isn’t statistics that you need to know about Wee Willie Keeler; it’s the way he played the game that crafted his indelible legacy.

Physically outmatched due to his slight stature, Wee Willie developed a number of techniques to become the game’s greatest place-hitter.  He once described his strategy to a reporter in five simple words, “Hit ‘em where they ain’t,” advice I still remember hearing from my little league coach shortly before being benched for either hitting ‘em where they were or more likely not hitting ‘em at all.  His fifth year in the league Wee Willie was traded to the Baltimore Orioles, where under manager Ned Hanlon, he and his teammates epitomized what is known today as inside baseball, more commonly referred to as small-ball.  Yes, much of the strategy during this time focused on manufacturing runs through speed and smart base running, but Keeler and his Orioles took it to another level.  The term “Baltimore Chop,” used to describe a ball hit hard off the dirt in front of home plate and high into the air, is directly attributable to this team.  While this now typically happens only by accident, the Baltimore Chop was such a focal point of Keeler and the Orioles’ strategy that the groundskeeper mixed hard clay into the packed dirt in front of home plate to provide them higher bounces.  Using this extra hang time, Wee Willie actually once legged out a double on a Baltimore Chop.

Wee Willie was also a remarkable bunter.  Honus Wagner once said about him, “Keeler could bunt any time he chose,” and he was right.  In his 1898 NL Batting Title campaign, only 10 of Wee Willie’s 216 hits went for extra bases.  There are no records for how many of those 206 singles resulted from bunts, but I believe it is safe to say Mr. Keeler was more than adept at getting on base without using power.  And it was this propensity for bunts that caused the league officials to reexamine the rulebook.  Wee Willie could foul off bunted balls almost indefinitely and was solely responsible for the rule change that now results in a batter being called out if he fouls off a bunt with two strikes.  This might not seem like a big deal, but in the 5^th inning of the Mariners game against the Padres on Thursday, the M’s shortstop Josh Wilson did exactly that with two runners on base and I bet he would’ve been cursing Wee Willie on his walk back to the dugout had he known the legend’s adroit bat control was responsible for his being called out.

In today’s age of hitter friendly parks and moon shot bombs, it is easy to forget about the little guys that paved the way for the game we know today.  Even Hall of Famer George Brett asked, “Is he the guy they named the cookie after? Wee Willie Keebler?” after being told by a reporter he tied Keeler for 20^th place on the all-time hits list.  But what Wee Willie lacked in size, he made up for with highly-skilled batsmenship and baserunning.  As Ted Williams once said, “he was small in size but he was huge with the bat.”  This combined with his impact on both the strategies and rules of baseball still to this day should make you want to go out and inform someone less knowledgeable than yourself about the wondrous career of the one and only Wee Willie Keeler.