Traded for Nine Paragraphs

The New York Times published yesterday an obituary of Charlie Williams, "a pitcher best known as the trade bait the Mets used to land Willie Mays in the twilight of his career...." Two-thirds of the nine paragraph obit is related in one way or another to the May 1972 trade.

Even the summation of Williams' career—23-22 in 268 games, 31 with the Mets—is preceded by the statistics for the Giants Hall of Famer. It must be strange to be remembered for something that was entirely outside of your control, although all reports indicate Williams wore it well.

Image: Associated Press

The remaining three paragraphs provide Williams' place and cause of death, survivors, and place of birth. Williams was born in Flushing, but 17 years before the Mets moved to Shea Stadium.

Image: centerfieldmaz

According to Brian Joura at Mets360, Williams is the only player in team history to hail from the Queens neighborhood. Joura's obituary runs to 14 paragraphs, provides more detail about his career—including the minors—and generally treats the player with more humanity.

The Late Light-Hitting Center Fielder from South Jamaica, Queens

Even I do not understand my obsession with New York State governors. But having written six posts about former New York State Governor David Paterson, I thought, "Why not one about Mario Cuomo?" (Just one, I promise.) The 52nd governor of New York State (1983-1994) died at his home yesterday, just hours after his son Andrew was sworn into his second term as governor.

In its lengthy, front page obituary of Mario Cuomo, the New York Times notes Cuomo played one season with the Brunswick (Ga.) Pirates of the Georgia-Florida League. With 254 plate appearances, Cuomo hit .244. His 10 doubles, two triples and one home run bumped his slugging percentage up to .311.

Albany Archives altered a card from a set issued by
 Upper Deck and broadcast it through its twitter feed.

The Mysteries of Matt Kemp

One mystery is solved; Matt Kemp will be playing in San Diego next year. The Dodgers' outfield was crowded so they thinned the herd by trading "The Bison," eating $32 million in salary to do so.

Padres fans got an early Christmas gift last week from rookie GM A.J. Preller, who acquired two more outfielders in a 24-hour-period, Justin Upton from the Braves and Wil Myers from the Rays, and then went out and got A's catcher Derek Norris and Boston third baseman Will Middlebrooks.

Still a mystery is the state of Kemp's health. The center fielder missed 150 games over the last three seasons. Kemp underwent a major shoulder operation in 2012 and had ankle surgery in 2013. He finished strong last year—leading the major leagues in slugging percentage after the All-Star Game—but a pre-trade physical reportedly found severe arthritis in both hips.

Most mysterious of all, however, is the question of who gave me a Matt Kemp figurine.

Bud Norris, Two Times

We saw right-hander Bud Norris twice this year, although only Melvin took note of the fact. We watched him in a mid-July minor league start during the MLB all-star break and more recently as the Orioles completed a three-game sweep of the Tigers.¹

Bud Norris pitches to Ian Kinsler; bottom of the first, Game 3 of the 2014 ALDS.

The division series game was, as my trilingual brother would say for effect, the ray-ZHON-det-TREAHR for the short October trip. However, any visit with Melvin and Watson is a profound pleasure whether or not baseball is involved and we spent our time together well.

Meeting Chicks on Twitter

My job requires considerable outreach to the public and so, a decade into the 21st century, I attended a seminar on social media. One of the take-aways was, register your preferred Twitter name now, even if you don't intend to use it immediately. You don't want, we were told, to be like those companies that thought the Internet was a novelty and later discovered someone else had snatched up their domain name.

Do not follow us on Twitter, but don't hesitate to follow us on Baseball Byways. We've gone from one follower, to eight followers, to the current nine.

Following this advice, Melvin and I have had but not used @BaseballByways. Despite not composing a single tweet, we managed over the three years since to acquire five followers ... all of the female persuasion.

Third Time's a Charm, the Second Time Wasn't Too Shabby Either

Or, the 2014 New York-Penn and Eastern league all-star games in brief, with tasting notes, travelogue and sundry observations

Encouraged by Pharrell Williams to clap along if they felt "like a room without a roof", this Happy couple put their hands together at MCU Park, home to the 2014 NYPL all-star game and like most baseball stadiums, a room without a roof.

Despite my general antipathy towards all-star games, I completed a hat-trick begun in June by attending a match between the best players in the New York-Penn League. A month earlier, Melvin and I saw the Eastern League' game, which for reasons we never learned was called the all-star "stop." The High-A contest retained its claim to most enjoyable but all three games were pleasurable in their own right.

Byways, but Little Baseball

A birthday weekend in northwest Massachusetts was the most enjoyable trip I have taken in a while, even if it included only three scoreless innings of collegiate summer league baseball.

What the trip did have was contemporary classical music, predominantly post-minimalist, contemporary art, often large-scaled installations, tasty food and a short walk in the woods.

Nothing but Net

Sometimes sitting right by the net is awesome (Jacksonville, Florida).

As promised and as a kind of footnote, here are some thoughts on nets. Sitting close to the game is a good thing. Sitting behind home plate or at least in the area between the dugouts is also a good thing. We do it whenever possible. We've seen a lot of games from perspectives like the one above. But it is not an unmitigated pleasure. 

The South Will Rise Again

Outside Castle Otttis

Following on the Easter debacle, we wrapped up our latest southern itinerary in Jacksonville. It's faintly amazing to me that after three trips to the South, we have at least two more tours to go--one cleaning up all the teams in North Carolina we haven't yet seen, another returning to Birmingham and heading south to Pensacola and, next year (maybe), Biloxi. And oh yeah, the rest of the Appy League—make it three trips.

Rising Up, Rising Down

It is risen. Or possibly coming down.

What, Fourth of July weekend already? Happy birthday, 'Merica! What better way to celebrate than with a comically overdue post on our Easter adventure in Daytona Beach? But first, some backfilling.

When last Rob was describing our April tour through Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida, things were going swimmingly—which was appropriate, given the monsoons we negotiated—until Blogger disappeared a post that would have been epic. Now we have always been at war with Oceania, and we've covered only the games we saw in Rome and Augusta.

But the truth is that not all towns and not all games are equally worthy of coverage. And so, leaning heavily on photos so as to get on to the Easter tale, here's a pathetically quick survey of our time in Myrtle Beach, Charleston, and Savannah.