The Luckiest Man

Winding up his gracious farewell speech to the Giants fans, players, executives, and friends who filled Oracle Park yesterday to thank him, Bruce Bochy, ever the baseball man, mindful of the game's tradition, and resolutely modest about himself without conceding any of the glory his team accomplished during his 13 years as manager, echoed the words of Lou Gehrig as he surveyed the scene before him. "Today," Boch quoted, "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth." Facing the sea of fans whom he had just thanked for their "kindness," the greatest manager in San Francisco history doffed his cap to the crowd in salute, and then stepped away, joining his beautiful wife Kim and riding off into history, serenaded by the voice of Tony Bennett, and the heart he left in San Francisco.

Tim Lincecum was there, cap on backwards, Giants jersey failing to hide a trademark unbuttoned flannel shirt underneath. He walked right up to the man who never stopped believing in him, and they embraced in a warm bearhug as throats all over the place tightened. Brian Sabean, who never stopped believing in Bruce Bochy, stood alongside Larry Baer and the new guy, Farhan Zaidi. Madison Bumgarner, who has nothing in common with Lincecum except that same undefinable presence on the mound, stood somberly on the infield dirt, watching the only man he's ever played for say farewell. A happy crew of Giants from the 2014 World Championship team, perhaps Bochy's crowning achievement, clustered together on the grass nearby-- Ryan Vogelsong, whose storybook career owes so much to Bochy, and Jake Peavy, effusive as always, who can certainly say the same. A familiar bearded presence among the throng revealed Brian Wilson, and Aubrey Huff's beaming face lit up the infield.

All of these guys, and more, were there because Bruce Bochy's genius as a manager has never been focused on strategy and tactics-- though he has those and other in-game skills in spades-- but on the people whom he gathered around himself and who gathered around him. His whole farewell speech was about everybody else-- the fans, the players, the executives, the friends. Before and after Bochy's own address, over and over came the same comment, delivered in many different ways in many voices: he changed me, he believed in me, and he made us all better; for many of us, he made us better than we thought we could be.

In that moment, for those of us whose lives were enriched by Bruce Bochy on and off the baseball field, we all had right to consider ourselves the luckiest men on the face of this earth.

Fare Thee Well

Robert Burns Hunter, who passed away earlier this week at the age of 78, was a throwback and a visionary at the same time. As a lyricist who wrote songs to be sung by someone other than himself, he worked in the great tradition of Lorenz Hart, Sammy Cahn, Oscar Hammerstein, and rock & roll's own Jerry Leiber. But he also delivered his songs, co-written mostly with his best friend Jerry Garcia, specifically for performance by one of the most innovative, unpredictable, and musically challenging bands of the last century, the Grateful Dead. Though he professed himself often astonished by the tunes Garcia and the band chose to frame his words, Hunter had a poet's gift for rhythm, for emphasis, and for timing.  The Dead's songs, which unabashedly celebrated American exceptionalism while also humorously poking holes in its paper facade, were a lot more, well, interesting-- and provocative-- thanks to Hunter's contributions.

He was a prolific writer and poet who produced a lot more than just Grateful Dead tunes; on several occasions he formed his own backup group and took his songs on the road, singing them in his earnest, sometimes strained, everyman voice. We remember a two-man folkie-type show in spring 1979 at the Other End in New York; we also remember a time he rehearsed what he hoped would be a full-blown stage musical, complete with sets and chorus girls.  As the Dead's cult-like popularity became something of an albatross, the publicity-shy Hunter may have been hoping to extricate himself from its burdens by branching out into other forms. But over time, his obvious gifts led him to work with just about everybody; to cite just one example, Bob Dylan's wonderful "Together Through Life" (2009) is almost entirely co-written with Hunter.

Geoffrey Himes at Paste magazine has written a fine and fitting tribute to the man; it can be found here.  The article is worth reading if only for the hilarious anecdote on how the key line in the Dead's signature tune, "Uncle John's Band," came to be.

Robert Hunter's best-remembered lyrics came during that amazingly fertile period from 1970-1977 when he and Garcia (and occasionally Bob Weir) wrote the Dead's most beloved songs. There are so many, it would be hopeless to list them. But one thing both he and Garcia noted at the time was that this golden age came about when Hunter learned how to phrase his lyrics to fit the way the band played. Perhaps the ideal blend was the serendipitous composition of "Terrapin Station," certainly among the more complex and challenging of Hunter's pieces, yet one that fit perfectly into Garcia's theme. In that song, Hunter writes, and Jerry sings,

                                             The storyteller makes no choice,

                                             Soon you will not hear his voice--

                                             His job is to shed light, and not to master.

At his best, Robert Burns Hunter did both.

With America under renewed attack from within and without, from those overseas who've never given up in their efforts to destroy her, and from those within who seek to "transform" (that's the latest euphemism for "destroy") her, it seems appropriate on this day of remembrance to remember how it all began, and what it cost, and what it still costs. God bless America.

Yaz Sir, That's My Baby

Without getting too awfully worked up about it, we've been poring through the record book as well as various articles, stories, compendia, and other baseball minutiae, trying to determine if we San Francisco Giants fans, in the middle of a mediocre season of transition, are seeing something not just special, but actually unprecedented, unfolding before our eyes.

Or whether we're just seeing the latest version of a story that's already played itself out too many times.

We speak of Mike Yastrzemski, grandson of Hall of Famer Carl, lately a stalwart outfielder for our Giants and, if the whole thing isn't half a season's worth of mirage, a most unusual player indeed.

Mike Yastrzemski turned 29 years old two weeks ago. He made his major-league debut-- not his Giants debut, mind you, but his MLB debut-- on May 25 of this year, at age 28 years and 275 days.

And in the the three-plus months since, Mike Yastrzemski has shown every indication of being a solid, reliable, everyday starting major-league outfielder. His numbers across the board are good; not All-Star worthy, perhaps, but good: .270/.326/.531, a .857 OPS, which is best on the team among regulars. He's hit 19 homers in 307 at-bats; his 162-game projections show 34 homers, 95 runs, 92 RBI. Come to think of it, those are All-Star numbers, especially on this team. Having missed the first eight weeks of the season, he's fourth on the club in WAR, just behind Evan Longoria among position players and well ahead of the next guy, Kevin Pillar, and that's playing in significantly fewer games than either.

We're not aware of this ever happening before; we mean in, like, ever. When was the last time a 29-year-old career minor league position player with no major-league experience came up to the bigs and established himself like this? For that matter, when was the first time? Is this it?

It has been our contention for some time, backed up by solid evidence, that this doesn't happen. Sure, pitchers can, and do, rediscover themselves after a decade or so of mediocrity and turn it around-- R. A. Dickey, for example, or Hoyt Wilhelm, or the all-time late bloomer, Hall of Famer  Dazzy Vance, a rookie at 31. But hitters? No, it just doesn't happen. By the time you're 27, if not at 26, you are who you are. Potential no longer exists. A 27-year-old minor-league hitter is a finished product-- what you have seen is what you will get. In recent years we watched the trials of Jarrett Parker and Mac Williamson, two guys who put up fine minor-league numbers for years and years, finally getting their shot at the bigs at age 27 or so. And while fans desperate for new faces issued hopeful comments about "giving the kids a chance," there we were, ready to tell them that no, these guys ain't "kids," they're veterans, and second, hitters don't all of a sudden "find it" as they're approaching 30 and magically turn from "AAAA" players into major-league regulars. Oh sure, we see some of them hang on for a year or three as fifth outfielders, pinch hitters, commuters on the AAA shuttle, and so forth, but 150-game regulars? Starters? Never. Seriously. Never.

Until now.  "Young Yaz" (relatively speaking) has shown no indication of cooling off. He's batted all over the lineup and done well. He gets on base enough to be a competent leadoff man, but he could bat third, fifth, or eighth. He doesn't strike out much. After 307 ABs, there are no more small sample sizes, no more well-that-was-the-Padres excuses, no more nothing. He's a major-league regular, he is hitting better at 29 than he has in any season since he was 24, and we have no explanation or precedent for it.

We know players coming out of college increase the age floor for rookies; what scouts and coaches looked for in 18- and 19-year olds three decades ago, they now expect to see at 21 or 22. Twenty-year old rookies were once common; now only the Mike Trouts, the Bryce Harpers, the Vlad Guerrero juniors, the generational talents make it to the bigs at that age. So yes, we see a lot of 25-year-old rookies now. Maybe, in time, we'll see more rookies at 29. But folks, we've never seen one like this before.
 
Looking for clues in his minor-league career, we see Yaz's Peter Principle kicked in every time he reached Baltimore's Bowie, Maryland, AA team in the Eastern League. A fine hitter coming out of Vanderbilt at 23, Yaz would put up good numbers again and again in A and A+ ball, then be promoted to AA Bowie, and his numbers would fall off. This Sisyphean journey continued for five full years. He hit well at Norfolk in AAA ball in 2017, and that could have been the turning point-- but last year his numbers dropped, and then cratered when he landed back at Bowie: .202/.276/.327.  The Orioles-- the 100-game-losing Orioles, mind you-- looked him over one more time, shrugged, and traded him to the Giants for a guy you never heard of. Looking at the numbers, it's hard to blame them.

Reviewing Jarrett Parker's minor-league stats over a similar span of years, he looks like the better player. Parker was always willing to take a walk, he had real power though his strikeout rate was appalling, and even accounting for the hit-happy PCL he grades out as a better minor-league player in 2017 than was Yaz a year ago. Yet Yaz is tearin' it up for the Giants and Parker languishes in the Angels' system. (Well, he was languishing-- he got a September 1 callup and so far has gone 0-for-12.)

What's the chance Yaz will still go the way of Parker, of Mac, of any number of players who looked promising but ultimately reverted to what their minor-league numbers said they were all along? (Chris Shaw, a favorite of those same hopeful fans, is reaching the same threshold now.) There is no way to tell. Yaz can certainly still improve-- we'd like to see him walk more, as he did in the Oriole system, and given the way he's turned his hitting around, showing a little more discipline up there shouldn't be a stretch since he's done it before. Defensively, he's a good fielder with average range, and skilled enough to play both left and right. On the Giants, he even has something of a comp-- Alex Dickerson, another 29-year-old minor-league veteran who started blasting the ball as soon as he arrived, but who has battled recurring injury throughout his career and is currently out of action. To us, that gives Yaz more upside. It's hard to believe at this point that he hasn't earned a job as the starting left fielder going into 2020. The question is, of course, can he keep it? Can he take what he's started here and have a five-to-six year career as a major-league regular?

Well, we don't know, and you don't either, because as near as we can tell this is uncharted territory.
 
On the fine Bleacher Report site, David Cucchiara posted a list of the "ten most legendary late bloomers in baseball history." Of the three position players-- Jose Bautista, Dante Bichette, and Lefty O'Doul-- none are really comparable. Bichette and Bautista hadn't done much before they exploded on their respective scenes at age 29, it's true, but both were legitimate major-leaguers for several years before that-- Bautista got 500 at-bats with the Pirates at age 24. O'Doul was a star in the old PCL, a strong independent minor-league in the 1920s; that he didn't sign a major-league contract until he was 30 doesn't mean he couldn't have played well in the big leagues if he'd wanted to. He certainly did once he arrived.

But if anyone out there finds another 29-year-old true rookie putting up these kinds of numbers as an everyday starting outfielder over three-fourths of a season on a major-league team, we'd like to hear about it, because we haven't found him.