I will forever remember Bobby's rant against the Mariners sending him down in the Spring of 2004. He was livid that the Mariners were never actually running a competition in Spring Training and had always planned to keep the Kevin Jarvises and send the Madritsches down no matter what.
That's what Mike Carp reminded me of last year, getting tossed in his first minor league game after getting sent back down, stewing in (self?) righteous anger about the injustice being done to him.
Madritsch did make it back after proving the Ms wrong - not that it really helped him or us - but that FIGHT, that competitive fire to get back up on the mound or to the plate and go best 2 out of 3, or 3 out of 5, or 39 out of 77...
That's the DNA I want to stock this team with.
I don't think Peguero has it, actually. He doesn't grind himself to dust over failure like Saunders, but his "Eh, I'll get em next time" is more wistful than vengeful. Felix used to gnash teeth after a bad event and let it give way to a bad inning and then a bad game. I think a certain amount of bad intention is important for success.
Luckily we've improved the talent in our fighting categories over that in our excuse making categories markedly in the last couple of years. It bodes well for our success in the 162-game fights in the coming years.
~G
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=== Linkage ===
After the intrasquad game, Jeff Sullivan was witty even by his own standards. He's the most famousest of all 'net hobbits, and that's sayin' a lot. In this paragraph he hit for the cycle and turned an unassisted double play:
Brendan Ryan hit a home run off Oliver Perez and subsequently didn't run the bases. He just turned around and walked back to the dugout. Every part of this is my favorite. One interpretation is that Ryan doesn't know what a home run is, and so he wasn't sure what to do. Another interpretation is that Ryan wanted Perez to feel as bad as possible. The actual correct interpretation is that Ryan didn't want to rub it in Perez's face and figured the homer would've been a fly out in Safeco, but they don't hold spring training so that players can just walk around and do whatever they want. Ryan was supposed to jog, and he didn't jog. Look for Eric Wedge to make Ryan do some disciplinary circular jogging over the weekend.
So the first two sentences have to be burned on a setting forth of the facts, but check out the next six sentences. Either 4, or 5, depending on your taste, are XBH in the comedy box score:
Every part of this is my favorite - HEH! I've never heard that phrase before, have you? It could be a cultural catchphrase.
One interpretation, wasn't sure, didn't know what to do - You picture the fan in the stands as wondering about Ryan wondering. That's funny. Also, it snags the sweater of reality enough to run the fabric, so he shoooots he SCOOOOooooores :: Rich Eisen ::
Ryan wanted Perez to feel as bad as possible - Don't you love the phrase "as _____ as possible"? At some future time, the universe will become as cold "as possible". Lady GaGa wants to be as outrageous "as possible". Cut Shawn Camp as quickly "as possible;" can you be off the phone in eight seconds or six? We'll be timing you.
There's a line in Dune in which a Trade Guilder threatens the Empreror: "Silence! Do Not Speak! ... or you will live out your life in a pain amplifier!" Ryan wanted Perez to feel as bad AS POSSIBLE ... by not deigning to even finish a play that shouldn't have been constructed in the first place...
Disciplinary circular jogging - Gary Larson said all humor was based on the sudden perception of incongruity, like dinosaurs holding a medical discussion over their walnut-sized brains, or like Eric Wedge depending on a glove-first shortstop whose neck is in traction every night. Here's Brendan Ryan, dejected, running home run circles ....
Gotta haaaaavve it! LL, that is.
.
=== Alex Liddi ===
As we were marveling over the standup-class quality of blog material that will, after all, be noticed for about 18 seconds, Jeffy followed up with this picture of Alex Liddi:
Which actually is disconcerting. The year's not over, Alex.
We just read an article by an ML scout who reveals his secrets when checking high school players. Suppose you've got an 18-year-old Nick Franklin and an 18-year-old Willie Bloomquist. Be honest, now. How do you decide between them?
He said, three things:
- Mastery of fundamentals and their own swings, ability to adjust and learn
- Joy in the game, love for the game
- Ability to handle failure
Felix Hernandez' life is absolutely filled with failure. You and I would get scared - as Danny Hultzen and James Paxton were scared, yesterday. Felix sits in the locker room and he could go, MAN! What if I throw a bad pitch and some guy hits it 420 feet into the bleachers? In front of 40,000 people?
Here's the thing: that WILL happen.
Felix' worst fears are going to come true. Often.
................
You see rookie pitchers come up and give up hits and react like, HEY MY BAD! I SHOULDN'A DONE THAT! WON'T HAPPEN AGAIN! IT'S RARE FOR ME TO EVER DO ANYTHING UNPERFECT!
Felix, his first year, was like that. He'd show emotion after a bases-clearing double. Pitching coaches and managers won't tolerate it. If you're going to be in the big leagues, you're going to react to failure professionally.
How do you do that? How does Jered Weaver, after an HR, convey the idea that he doesn't care in one way, but does care in another way. Convey the idea that he wasn't ripped off and isn't complaining, but it was a fluke, buddy, and good luck to you after this. How does Felix maintain an aura of invincibility when he's 13-12?
.................
Mariners who give off a great vibe after failure: Brandon League, Carlos Peguero, Jason Vargas, Franklin Gutierrez, Miguel Olivo .... do you remember Jarrod Washburn's goofy smile after a double? Peguero's kind of like that... Erik Bedard was the best I ever saw at getting back on the mound more determined the next time. Jamie Moyer.
Mariners who seem a little shrill after failure: Justin Smoak, Chone Figgins, sometimes Ichiro ... Randy Johnson, early in his career, would give up a hit in the 4th inning and just quit, just go "The no-hitter's gone. What's the point?" He quit in 1998, too, before the trade to Houston. It's not an irremediable quality.
James Paxton deals with setbacks and comes back with "Zenkai Power" afterwards. He reincarnates with double hit points after death. Add "makeup" to everything else in the floral basket. Probably the Mariners should send him down in order to annoy him.
Comments
In case you wondered why newspapers are strange:
At one point in his life, prior to becoming famous, Frank Herbert worked on the Seattle PI night copy desk . Seated next to him was Tom Robbins. Robbins once told me neither of them was close to being the weirdest guy there.
Most of the greats hate to fail more than they like to succeed, whether they somehow take great joy in playing the game or just seem angry at the world. Ultimate competitors who love the game and can't be pried off the field. Examples: Edgar Martinez, Randy Johnson. Moyer graduated to here.
The next level, who hate failure just as much but grind themselves into dust fighting it, are the fellas you need to convert to competitors who can use failure as fuel for success and not self-immolation. Examples: Jeff Cirillo, Brian Fuentes. I'd put Washburn and Cammy here.
And then there are the excuse makers, who need perfect environs, healthy clubhouse leadership and the ability to deflect questions and quibbles to succeed. Examples: Rich Aurilia, Ryan Franklin...can we put Junior here as one of the most amazingly talented of this breed in history?
You can have HOFers in any of these categories. The fact that I LIKE the guys in group one better on average doesn't mean that Cal Ripken (Grinder) or Junior Griffey (Excuse Maker) aren't all-world talents. So if I were to break the current batch of Mariners down...
Ultimate Fighters (sport is expression of life) :
- Felix, Ackley, Nick Franklin, League, Montero, Wilhelmsen, Paxton, Walker, Robinson
Grinders (sport is an expression of self) :
- Ryan, Smoak, Gutierrez, Ichiro, Carp, Hultzen, Liddi, Seager, Vargas, Wells
Excuse-Makers (sport is a reflection of self) :
- Figgins, Saunders (quickly plummeted from Grinder level), Moore.
We've ditched most of our excuse makers, majors and minor leagues. Cortes? JC Romero? Morrow? Gone. It seems Jack doesn't like that kind of player, which makes sense. They can be contributors on a winning team but are anchors on a losing one.
There's another group, the "I don't have a pulse" sleepwalkers, who have talent and maybe even desire but don't kindle that into ultra-competitive fire. Playing ball because they like the money, or someone thought they should. Sport is a reflection of life, aka the Halama group. I have Beavan and Peguero and Mike Wilson in this group, and I don't look to them for help in anything other than filling a roster and holding places for more competitve, less passive players. I used to toss up whether to put League here as the best of this sort of player, but there's a difference between ice water in the veins and valium, and I'm going with ice water in League's case.
It's wonderful to see the number of guys in category 1, and the number of guys I think can grind positively instead of negatively in category 2.
I can't help but be excited by it.
~G
Just a funny picture. Which reminded us of an article we'd read lately.
A lot of inside, and fringe-inside, people consider Liddi the M's most realistic ML prospect, other than those who have already established themselves. Basic consensus is that he's 1, at most 2 years away from becoming an AL regular.
The K's bring their skeptics, of course, but the big September weighs more heavily than 'net rats realize.
He presents himself well after a K, and he doesn't let it warp his aggressiveness the next time, but I can kinda see the "wistfulness" and the lack of a better plan the next time.
Can definitely see Dustin Ackley as most-likely-UFC'er, in his weight class. Wilhelmsen would be uncomfortable in UFC, or in any venue without a broken bottle at hand.
That's kind of like ARod and Doug Mientkiewicz playing on the same high school team, isn't it? And were you there too?
Ouch! How old do you think I am? This was in the 1960s when I was but a wee lad. Robbins, by the way, is a big baseball fan.
Am running behind on sleep ...
I read JS's stuff...and saw the picture and his mention of Liddi just standing there.
We're making WAY too much out of that. First of all, he isn't standing in the box that he bats from...so he hasn't just stood there frozen.
I mostly think he's checking on a stance or hips or mental checklist issue.....which is exactly what ST intrasquad games are all about.
And trying to evaluate how players respond to failure by observing them immediately after the failure is fraught with risk too.
Jack Nicklaus never said "boo," when he skanked one, but probably no athlete ever dealt better with failure than he. I remember reading something written by one of his contemporaries. He was paired with Nicklaus and Jack yanked his driver into the left rough off the first tee. He played the rest of the round without hitting another driver, teeing off with his 3-wood, instead. Shot a 68 or something low After the round he headed immediately to the practice tee and wore out his driver until he had it straightened out.
Tiger, on the other hand, stormed and steamed at himself after a skanky effort......but by the time he was over the next shot the previous one was forgotten and he hit some kind of all-world recovery.
At first blush, they dealt with failure in entirely different ways. But in reality, they put their mistake behind them and moved on to the next shot.
No games are more ripe with failure than golf and baseball. What is critical in both is whether you let your last failure mess up your next effort.
I suspect that Liddi was working on something to make sure that wasn't the case.
moe
Dont worry, Sullivan is just making fun. No need to defend your BFF's honour.
Doc,
I love ya, man...but...
Every time you use a random Eastern language word or a really specific chess comparison or a comparison with an esoteric theological construct...you should be required to present a translation for rubes like me who don't follow MMA or Anime cartoons or Aikido and are merely OK chess players, not grandmasters and are just getting catechized in the Catholic Church and don't do it for a living. :)
Just saying...meant in friendship. :)
You must have missed out on the Star Trek Universal Translator that comes free to every registrant* on Doc's site. I ALWAYS have mine handy when reading posts here.
* limit one per person.
He's up on you by about 900 career RBI on the SSI site. He'll let you know whether you've got the pink backpack next week.
;- )
It hadn't occurred to me that anybody present had yet to purchase the remastered discs of DragonBall Z. Then it hit me that we do live in America, so...
............
Dennis Miller schooled us in referring to people nobody's ever heard of. He gives a winning smile and a laugh and you assume it must be funny. SSI has been getting by all right that way. My fave flavor is PSEUDO-mystique.
I dunno, sometimes people complain like you're trying to be condescending; others (like me) prefer to have a glossary available. I'll take this as encouragement to ratchet up the translation factor.
My bad ghost'a. Glad you said something.
Jeff
.... that's a bit of a wake-up call. That's a little like Spock asking Scotty, "Duuuude! What are you goin' on about?"
Spock was a very intelligent, comprehensively literate alien on a 1960's series called Star Trek. Scotty was an energetic, fast-talking engineer who was sharp in very specialized contexts but totally incoherent in any context. If Spock didn't understand you, it was your fault, not his.
New feature at SSI. The Oh Yeah!'s.
havin' a wee bi' o' FUN, captain sir!
...when i start worrying about any players getting made fun of, Doc.
I didn't even realize that Doc was being obscure. :-)
Though I do occasionally go "miracle what power??"...and when you concluded a recent post saying that in sports movement, Walker was second or third Kyu but in mentality he was first or second dan...I said "wow...I bet that means something really important...no idea what...but I'm sure that means something to somebody. :)"
Keep doing what you're doing...I haven't been at this sight for six years now for nothing. Just some occasional translator microbes (a la Farscape) would help. :)
:- )
But like Peppermint Patty told Lucy one time, "You shouldn't call him that. He might REALLY be a blockhead!"
There's a blinkin' good reason I'm touchy about being called a blockhead.
..........
Oh yeah. Peppermint Patty and Lucy were characters in a comic strip called "Peanuts," back in an era before kids called their dads "Homer" and little paranoid dogs had cavities in their teeth. In the quote above, the "him" was the lead character, Charlie Brown.
Thankee, Kep'n! That'll give me a chance to catch up on my technical journals!