Right off the bat, I can’t think of a person who’d be more fun to attend a baseball game with than Michael Powell, veteran journalist (New York Times, Washington Post, Bergen Record, New York Newsday, etc.) and author of the acclaimed Canyon Dreams. Powell left the Times for The Atlantic (maybe the salary was higher, maybe he had beefs—like Paul Krugman—with the editing, but it doesn’t really matter) in 2023. As I wrote earlier this week, I dislike the Laureen Powell Jobs-owned website/monthly, but will never pass up a Powell story on baseball. (He’s a diehard Mets fan, so must be pleased with the current standings; Powell’s also covered presidential and New York City politics, among other non-sports topics.) A game together is unlikely, as we’ve never met, but sitting in the stands at either Camden Yards or Citi Field with Powell would be memorable: his knowledge of the sport is thorough, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he jotted down the plays in a scorecard, an anachronism. (I never participated in that ritual, too impatient, but my late father-in-law Rudy did on visits to New York of Baltimore, and watching him was fascinating.)
Last week Powell ran an entertaining story about the once-revered pitching coach for the Atlanta Braves, Lee Mazzone, who molded a spectacular staff from 1990-2005. I write “once-revered” because, as Powell explains, the mentor to John Smoltz, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, among others, has pointed and unpopular opinions about how today’s pitchers rely on speed, speed, and more speed, often ruining their arms, and, more importantly aren’t expected to throw more than 100 pitches per start, which must baffle workhorses of the past like Pedro Martinez, Jim Palmer, Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax. Mazzone: “All anyone in the majors watches now is how damn fast a guy can throw. Grunt and heave, grunt and heave. It’s not pitching, it’s asinine… You see guys with these crazy-violent deliveries, spinning out on the mounds. Would I trust these guys in a game. Sheeit.”
I was surprised that Mazzone approves of the recent MLB rule that extra-innings games begin with a “ghost runner” because it adds “strategy.” So he’s not a complete throwback. As a Red Sox fan, a team I watch almost daily on NESN, I hate the gimmick: viewers or spectators have the option to finish the game. Used to be, I’d clock off in the 14th, and just find out the score later.
Powell agrees with Mazzone—now 76 and living in South Carolina, where the reporter visited him—saying the “Ivy League quants” who fill the management positions of most teams are denigrating the “beauty” of the game. He writes: “More than two decades into the sabermetrics era, baseball evinces what is obvious in many fields: Fixating on statistics changes everything, and not always for the better. Pitching is not math; it’s an art.” That’s an argument that has merit: pitchers today are fragile (just like position players) and it darkens the mood of any fan when one of their aces has the inevitable Tommy John surgery. Chris Sales’ often-brilliant career with the Red Sox was marred by injuries, and friends who religiously follow the Yankees were distraught by Gerrit Cole’s season-ending injury.
Although I don’t like a lot of MLB “improvements”—the pitch count, attendees at games clutching their phones instead of watching, the higher prices, the broadcasters’ recitation of velocity of balls hit (an out’s an out, no matter how hard it comes off the bat), and “spin rates” and the gambling ads that often comprise a fifth of the TV screen—it hasn’t dampened my enthusiasm. I still want the Sox to win every year, the Yankees to lose as many games as possible, and my son’s Fantasy League team to do well (it hasn’t this year; he swears a “Curse of the Bambino” settled on his after winning it all in 2023).
Right now, I’m more concerned with Boston’s underachieving first-quarter of the 2025 season. (Tanner Houck, an All-Star last year, has lost it and could use a stint in AAA to work on his pitching repertoire.) And, contrary to idiotic social media commenters and sportswriters (the few that are left) I think superstar Rafael Devers—moved to DH to accommodate off-season acquisition Alex Bregman—ought to be left alone and not man first base in the wake of Triston Casas’ brutal injury that could derail his career. Devers is a defensive detriment, and the Boston brass has plenty of other options.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023
