Posted on 10/11/2010 11:53:35 AM PDT by BluesDuke
If there is justice, in the Atlanta Braves clubhouse and elsewhere, someone is performing early and often intervention upon Brooks Conrad.]
Five thousand minor league plate appearances, almost, worth of earning a full-season shot in the majors (he'd had a cup of coffee with the Oakland Athletics and maybe a quarter pot with the Braves prievious to 2010), and this has to happen to the substitute second baseman Sunday.
About the only thing for which the thirty-year-old journeyman can be thankful is that it didn't happen in the World Series, to which the Braves hope to send retiring manager Bobby Cox one final time.
Bobbling a grounder in the first inning, leading to no runs. Dropping a pop in the second inning that opened the door to the San Francisco Giants' first run. Then, after the Braves looked as though they had the game and a 2-1 National League division series lead in the bank, putting his glove down to receive Buster Posey's ninth-inning hopper only to see it perform a sickly re-enactment of Bill Buckner's hour of grief.
It let Freddy Sanchez score what proved the difference in a 3-2 loss unlike any in the Bobby Cox Braves' long and too often prematurely finished postseason history. But there's another saving grace to be had, if Conrad wants to hold onto it. He was wearing a Braves uniform when it happened, and the Braves weren't an out from a pennant or a strike from a World Series ring.
Conrad won't have to deal with even a sixteenth of what was heaped upon Buckner after Mookie Wilson's squibber up the first base line took that bizarre little hop beneath Buckner's downstretched mitt. Maybe.
You can argue that Conrad, who earned a reputation as lots of bat and little glove as an unlikely Atlanta spare part on the season, shouldn't really have been there, and that maybe fellow rookie Diory Hernandez (.138 batting average---though he hit well at Triple A and has a reputation as a superior infielder) should have been. Rob Neyer has.
But Cox opted for a slugging percentage (Conrad posted a .445 SLG on the season), took his chances with the glove (with Chipper Jones and Martin Prado down for the count), and looks more than a little like John McNamara staying stubbornly with his horse Buckner rather than playing his normal 1986 book and wheeling out good field/no hit Dave Stapleton for a should-have-been Series-clinching inning.
Errors are as much a part of the game as curve balls, bang-bang plays, and umpire miscues. So are things like the surreal seven-run ninth by which the Braves won a May game against the Cincinnati Reds---who've just been shoved out of a postseason into which they wandered as a badly-overmatched feel-good story.
Conrad had something to do with that surreal ninth. His pinch-hit grand slam crowned that inning and that game. It's been a mere five months between that extraterrestrial high and the extraterrestrial low into which Sunday stands to throw him.
"We love him more now than we ever have," said Atlanta starter Tim Hudson, whose magnificent pitching duel with the Giants' Jonathan Sanchez ended so ingnominiously when all was said and a little too much done Sunday. Hudson tipped a cap to Conrad's value off the bench on the season. "We wouldn't be here without him."
That's been said about no small number of baseball's goats over the years. The Arizona Diamondbacks said it about closer Byung-Hyun Kim in 2001, after the submarine-style righthander spent back-to-back World Series evenings starting his assignments by keeping the Yankees at bay one inning but seeing Tino Martinez, Derek Jeter, and Scott Brosius bring him to his haunches the next.
The California Angels said it about Donnie Moore, too, after the mound fierce/soul sensitive, veteran righthander---with the Angels a strike away from the 1986 World Series---threw two perfect, knee-high, down-and-away sliders to Dave Henderson. The first skittered away in a foul tick. The second took an unlikely flight over the left field fence. It helped give the Red Sox life enough to finish a trip to the 1986 World Series . . . and, to their own extraterrestrial disaster.
The A's were so determined to have Mike Andrews's back, after his back-to-back errors in the 1973 World Series prompted owner Charlie Finley to strong-arm him into signing his way off the club, that no less than manager Dick Williams---who wasn't exactly renowned for suffering errors gladly---was moved to resign effective after the Series following Finley's strong-arm. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn ordered Andrews' reinstatement.
Andrews got real lucky, though. In the next game, Andrews got sympathetic ovations from Met fans, including but not limited to Karl Ehrhardt, the famous Shea Stadium sign maker, being prepared for the first Oakland error. As soon as it happened (not by Andrews), he whipped up a colourful placard: YOU'RE FIRED! Even the A's laughed. Andrews, however, was out of baseball after the Series---which the A's won.
Kim actually managed to shake off his hours of very public 2001 and post a remarkable 2002; he actually led the majors in so-called tough saves (six) and nailed down a 2.04 ERA. But a combination of ankle and shoulder injuries to come, plus his dubious work ethic---he was actually an overworker who may have overworked himself right out of his talent while pitching through pain---joined hands with those who wouldn't let him forget Games Four and Five in 2001.
Moore wasn't allowed to forget the Henderson pitch for the rest of his career---and, as it turned out sadly, his life. Said to have been broken to tears too often by continuous Anaheim Stadium booing for the rest of his life as an Angel, first Moore's talent then his spirit were sapped, a sapping that ended grotesquely when he shot his wife and then, to death, himself in 1989.
You'd have thought the Moore tragedy would have put an end to the goat business, in all sports. Sports passions get out of hand enough that people forget, assuming they know it in the first place, that there's still a rule that somebody has to lose. (And it's worse in some levels of other sports. High school and college coaches have fallen under furious fire, calls for their firing, and even threats against their lives, if they lose even one big game. Sometimes those are the most polite reactions.)
Not everybody is as resilient as Ralph Branca, Tommy Lasorda, or Mitch (Wild Thing) Williams, who lived up to his nickname in exaggerated fashion in the 2003 World Series, proved to be.
Branca threw Bobby Thomson two pitches in the bottom of the ninth of a deciding National League pennant playoff. He'd planned to waste a second fastball, hoping to set Thomson up for a curve to end it, after the first fastball started the count with called strike one. The second fastball flew into the left field seats for game, set, and pennant. The shattered Branca got braced up by two sources---his family priest, who advised him God chose him for such ignominy because God knew he had the stones to survive it; and, Thomson himself.
"I lost a ballgame," Branca said when Thomson died this summer, "but I gained a friend."
If you can name any major league manager who made a worse move than Lasorda in the 1985 National League Championship Series, with the Dodgers one out from the World Series, my cap is tipped your way.
Lasorda thought it was safe to let Tom Niedenfeuer pitch to Jack Clark with first base open. That proved to be something like saying it was safe to name Clyde Barrow as Secretary of the Treasury. Clark hit a three-run bomb so monstrous they still don't know whether the ball landed in Casey Stengel's backyard, in nearby Glendale, or on the Rose Bowl's fifty yard line.
That one, of course, sent the Cardinals to a World Series in which they would be helped to ignominy at the partial hands of a goat who wasn't even wearing a player's uniform. You might care to know that Don Denkinger, whose Game Six ninth-inning safe call was refuted by numerous television replays, is now one of the more vocal voices in favour of postseason replay.
Lasorda had the easiest time shaking it off. He'd already lost a pair of World Series to the Yankees before winning one in 1981. He'd only go on to win another Series, in 1988, largely enough by the spiritual boost he and everyone else got when a Hall of Fame closer learned the hard way about (and these are his words coming) throwing sliders to cripples. It only took Kirk Gibson about a year to force his mummified legs to round the bases after his transdimensional walkoff landed over the right field fence.
Williams was bad enough in letting some of the Toronto Blue Jays' key basepath threats aboard before he threw the wrong fastball to Joe Carter. He shook it off, pitched a couple more seasons of no great impact, and has since become a level-headed baseball coach who makes periodic appearances with Carter, laughing all the way.
Those are good things, because Brooks Conrad needs all of that kind of history lesson that he can get.
The Braves could pick themselves up and overthrow the Giants, of course, but that may not be enough. The 2001 Diamondbacks went on to snatch the World Series, anyway, but it wasn't enough to keep the goat herders off Kim's back when all was said and done.
Buckner wasn't even close to the only Red Sox goat in 1986. The whole mess began in the first place when youthful reliever Calvin Schiraldi, thrown into the closing role down the 1986 stretch after he'd been a promising but inconsistent starter as a Met, couldn't shake away Gary Carter with the Red Sox a strike away from the Promised Land.
We even get selective about assigning the goat horns. There's no more stubborn belief in baseball than the one among Yankee fans that their heroes are entitled---entitled, mind you---to reach and conquer every postseason, every year. But not even the most chauvinistic Yankee fan was in a big hurry to hang the 2004 horns on The Mariano's head, after Dave Roberts stole second and, in short enough order, David Ortiz hit one into the bleachers.
And isn't it still a little bit bizarre that nobody on the north side of Chicago ever thought about hanging the horns on Leon Durham's head, for an eerie telegraph of Buckner's sad hour two years earlier, in a National League Championship Series in which the Cubs were still in position to do the unthinkable?
Before he became known (in George F. Will's unforgettable phrase) as Dred Scott in spikes, Curt Flood was a center field gazelle, maybe the National League's best defencive center fielder who wasn't named Willie Mays. Yet he misjudged a fly in Game Seven, 1968 World Series, that made a triple (it was so ruled) out of Jim Northrup's drive and hash out of Bob Gibson's powerful bid to lock down a second straight Series for the Cardinals.
Nobody in St. Louis was ready to run him out of town on a rail over that. Cardinal owner Gussie Busch didn't attempt the Trade Heard 'Round the World until the following October, after Flood spent 1969 struggling to a .285 batting average despite winning a Gold Glove, and with both his brother's arrest and his own clashes with Cardinal management.
Conrad may yet get his chances to redeem himself before this division series is over. Cox's infield options remain limited and, against the Giants' formidable enough pitching, he may yet opt to play Conrad for his bat and take his chances with Conrad's glove. (On the season, Conrad had had eight errors in 88 chances, mostly at third but sixteen at second.)
He may not think he can put Troy Glaus at third---even with a lefthanded San Francisco starter (Madison Bumgarner) slated for Game Four, favouring the righthanded, power-hitting Glaus---without a barf bag under the base for the veteran's prompt use. (Glaus hasn't played much third base this year and felt physically queasy after he scooped a grounder and turned a double play on it.)
He may not have any much choice but to play Conrad at second and Omar Infante at third. Unless a) he thinks either Jones or Prado can play in wheelchairs; or, b) he thinks the Braves can shake it off if he puts Infante or Hernandez at second but the Giants decide to bunt three times an inning against Glaus at third.
Even the Giants reached out a sympathetic hand after the horror swept around Turner Field Sunday. "I thought he would make the play," Posey told reporters after the Giants banked the unlikely win. "I wouldn't wish that on anybody."
"How is Conrad?" the Giants' senior advisor for baseball operations, Tony Siegle, asked in the aftermath. "I feel so bad for him over there."
So should every last baseball fan. Conrad wasn't playing out of position or letting his head lapse out of the game at the wrong moments. He was doing the best he could with what he had; he wasn't trying to do what he shouldn't have been trying to do.
In the aftermath, Conrad was quoted as saying he was trying to find a hole into which to crawl. Win or lose, Monday or Wednesday, the Braves shouldn't let him find it. Nor should anyone else.
It won't atone for the holes into which the ignorant drove Ralph Branca, Mike Andrews, Tom Niedenfeuer, Don Denkinger, Donnie Moore, Bill Buckner, and Byung-Hyun Kim. But it might make Brooks Conrad's days a lot more bearable.
Bobby Cox. Goes with “the book” when he shouldn’t, and refuses to when he absolutely should.
Bobby Cox is why John Smoltz and Tom Glavine don’t have 4 rings each.
Bobby Cox. Goes with “the book” when he shouldn’t, and refuses to when he absolutely should.Bobby Cox is why John Smoltz and Tom Glavine don’t have 4 rings each.
You don't think the 1991 Twins, the 1992 Blue Jays, the 1996 Yankees, and the 1999 Yankees---to say nothing of the 1993 Phillies, the 1997 Marlins, the 2000 Cardinals, the 2001 Diamondbacks, the 2002 Giants, the 2003 Cubs (of all people), or the 2004-05 Astros---had a little something to do with that, too?
Remember, and I'm not a strictly by-the-book guy myself: When the other guys cooperate, "the book" looks like the Torah. When the other guys don't cooperate, "the book" looks like The MAD Bathroom Reader.
Awwww - cry me a river. The only reason they won game 2 was on UNearned runs. Now that they lose a game on UNearned runs, the whining starts.
GO CIANTS!!
Awwww - cry me a river. The only reason they won game 2 was on UNearned runs. Now that they lose a game on UNearned runs, the whining starts.
GO GIANTS!!
I’d tell him not too worry.The Braves don’t stand a chance against the Phillies!
Then we can talk about crying rivers.
Bear in mind, too, that here I was writing about one player’s misfortune in committing three errors in a single game, as opposed to one team’s defencive troubles.
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