Coloring outside of the lines

WASHINGTON – Most folks who follow the posts on this page have already grasped the concept that I am a fan of baseball from the 1970s. I think there are about 50 3,000-word essays about the subject all over this jawn. Some are about Reggie Jackson’s swing, Mickey Rivers’ love of handicapping horses, Pete Rose, Mike Schmidt, the fact that Steve Carlton did everyone a favor by not talking to the press, and of course the dervish that is Larry Bowa.

But lately, the waxing on here has been about the relief pitcher of the 1970s, particularly end-of-the game types like Bruce Sutter, Goose Gossage and (of course) Rollie Fingers. All three of those pitchers are in the Hall of Fame and all three blew saves like crazy.

But aside from the romanticism applied to the era of my childhood, I also have a bit of a crush on the way the game was played back then. For one thing the thinking wasn’t as compartmentalized as it is now. People didn’t treat baseball strategy as if it were some sort of scientific dissertation with statistics, or worse, like baseball was played as if it were football with the division of labor, constant meetings and basic boringness.

For instance, a pitcher named Will McEnaney was on the mound to close out the ninth inning of the seventh game of the 1975 World Series - that series was regarded by some to be one of the greatest World Series ever played. But have you ever heard of Will McEnaney? The chances are that you never heard that name in your life (unless you are a baseball geek of the highest order) simply because McEnaney saved exactly 32 games in his six-year career, including that one in seventh game of the ’75 World Series.

The thing about that was McEnaney didn’t even lead the ’75 Reds in saves. Rawly Eastwick led the team and the league with 22 saves that year, but manager Sparky Anderson needed his “closer” in five other games in the series and for two others in the three-game NLCS.

In other words, ol’ Sparky Anderson went with the best guy he had at the time. That simply was the norm back then. If a team needed a big out in the seventh inning, it wasn’t uncommon for “the closer” to come into the game. It also wasn’t uncommon for the so-called closer to finish up from the seventh inning on. But if that guy got into trouble there were always a few pitchers like Will McEnaney ready to mop up in the ninth.

This evening I was discussing the very subject with Gary Matthews and mentioned how many four-inning saves Gossage used to get - especially in the final months of the season. Matthews said he remembered facing The Goose in those days and used to complain that "it's not time for him yet."

Hell, back then the hitters didn't want to have to face the closer any more than they had to, but these days they only get an inning.

So what does this have to do with Charlie Manuel and Brad Lidge?

Well… everything and here’s why...

Unlike football, Manuel does not have to label his “closer” before the game as if he were the quarterback or backup or whatever. Labeling a guy a set-up man or a closer and having such hard and fast defined roles is part of that compartmentalized thinking that is so maddening. Maybe the labels and defined roles help folks understand the game better? Maybe the game has been so crunched down and beaten up by statistical analysis that there has to be a signaling of roles for everyone involved. If someone isn't a closer or a set-up man, what is he?

"We called them relief pitchers," Sarge told me.

Manuel is a victim of this thinking, too. Clearly it drives him nuts because Charlie came from the 1970s. He played under managers like Bill Rigney, Billy Martin and Walter Alston. Those were the days when it was OK to color outside of the lines, so to speak. That was the era when the closer changed from game-to-game just like the starting pitcher.

But really, if you really want to know who Manuel’s “closer” will be from here on out, follow one of his old idioms: “Watch the game.”

If you watch the game and see Brad Lidge or Ryan Madson or Brett Myers get the last out of the game, that just might be your closer. Oh sure, he might say Lidge is guy with the label of “closer” just to make easier for everyone to understand, but actions speak louder than words.

Here’s what Charlie says:

“When I tell you he's my closer, I don't tell lies. I don't like to go back on nothing. But the team and the game is bigger than my heart and it's bigger than anything else, if you want to know the truth. Winning a game is what it's all about. It's baseball and why I manage and it's what comes first.”

That means, “watch the game.” Just because a guy is called the “closer,” doesn’t mean he has to be the last pitcher of the game. It also stands to reason that the Phillies' closer hasn't stepped forward yet. Think back to a few World Series winners this decade and you will find championship teams whose closer did not emerge until the last month of the season. There was Francisco Rodriguez setting up in 2002 for the Angels, Bobby Jenks closing games for the White Sox in 2005 and Adam Wainwright stepping up to do the same for the Cardinals in 2006.

Maybe the Phillies are just like those teams?

This ain’t football, folks.

Remembering 'The King' and the 'Angel'

To this day, and after all these years, watching Michael Jackson do the Moonwalk at the Motown Anniversary in the early ‘80s was the most electrifying musical performance ever. We shrieked when he did it, my sister, mom and I, because (borrowing a word I heard used to describe Michael Jackson today) it was “unearthly.” Never before and never again.

Once I snuck through a service door in an over-21 club to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers back in the late-1980s. That was a few weeks after I saw Fugazi do a show in a parking garage in West Philly. Another time I saw a group called The Nation of Ulysses play and I was convinced they were going to take hostages. I saw Richie Havens play in a public park – he was just hanging out playing – and snuck off to Madison Square Garden during my college orientation to see The Who. Pete Townsend windmilled like a dervish that night.

If only he did the moonwalk like Michael Jackson, who died Thursday at 50. For a lot of us children of the '80s, that really was our Moon Walk. It was a where-were-you-when moment, almost like it was Thursday afternoon when the news first started to trickle out through the Internet.

And yet the end came like the beginning for Jackson – with lots of fans and lots of media jockeying for space. He was a star when he was just a child, and the attention never stopped. It was a gift and a curse. Especially over the past two decades during the creepy and not-so smooth criminal stage of his life.

So it’s hard not to think about that night we saw the moonwalk for the very first time. Granted, my sister and I were not even teenagers yet. I suppose I was in sixth grade at James Buchanan Elementary, but that simple dance step was a galvanizing force at school. We all practiced it and tried to nail it as perfectly as Michael did. In fact, we were in awe of the kids who could do it smoothly and somewhat effortless. Hell, sometimes those '80s kids break it out just because.

As the years wore on Michael Jackson and his music/moves became part of the cultural wallpaper. Again, this was before the disturbing "Jesus juice" crap. Us Gen-Xers tend to move on quickly. We know the reality and can see the strings that control everything so we try to get lost in the innocence of the moment for a short time.

Nevertheless, the kids from the 1980s were too young to remember when Elvis died, and we never got to see the Beatles together. We were too young to understand the punk rock scene coming from London and New York and were shielded from the psychedelic sounds of our parents’ era.

Those were things we’d have to learn about on our own.

But in the 1980s, at the end of radio and the beginning of MTV, Michael Jackson was The King. He provided the soundtrack for kids from the city, the ‘burbs, and beyond. Even if we couldn’t agree on much, in 1982 and 1983, we all knew that “Thriller” was something unique. If you were of that time and missed it, you must have been sick or in a coma or sipping too much of that new Coke.

Of course massive fame does things to people. Even the most grounded and together person with the most stable upbringing and genuine family and friends would be affected by the zealotry of fandom that Michael Jackson dealt with even when he was a little kid. Unfortunately Michael Jackson didn’t seem to have that stability in his life. Instead of being a kid from Gary, Ind. that made it big with his brothers, Jackson’s life descended into a screaming tabloid headline and crass commercialism. Certainly his eccentricities did nothing to sway folks’ opinions of him, and the lawsuits and court cases further exasperated the headlines, but man, what a talent.

Look at these kids... too bad it could always be like that:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DYgf_Cl59o&hl=en&fs=1&]

Was there anything better than watching Michael Jackson and his four brothers perform together on some grainy TV highlight from the early ‘70s?

Perhaps Dave Chappelle said it best in describing all the surgeries and changes in appearance that Michael Jackson underwent through the years:

Maybe he did that for you somehow. Somehow maybe he thought it would help him, “Maybe people will like me more…” But he did it for you…

Sure, it sounds funny, but in some odd sense it seems as if Michael Jackson did everything he did for his fans, and God knows he had a lot of them.

Hopefully, and this is not to belittle the serious crimes he allegedly committed, Michael Jackson is remembered as the “King of Pop” moonwalking across a stage or as that kid from Gary, Ind. belting out those great tunes with his brothers.

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Apparently, Thursday was the day the icons died. Early in the day, Farrah Fawcett was claimed by cancer at 60. Certainly Farrah was not the international superstar that Jackson was, but for a few years in the 1970s she probably wasn’t too far off.

Unlike with Jackson, I missed Farrah Fawcett at the top of her stardom. However, I can remember seeing that poster of her in a one-piece bathing suit nearly everywhere. Some say she was the last link from pin-up model to super model, which makes sense. After all, Farrah came from a time where the models and bathing beauties actually had to have a skill or a talent. It couldn’t just be smiling at a camera like the latter day super models.

So Farrah did “Charlie’s Angels” and became part of the cultural wallpaper – literally. But as time wore on – after “The Cannonball Run” and a relatively quiet period, Fawcett seemed to be more famous for being famous.

That is until the remade “Charlie’s Angels” and those posters reappeared as part of the ‘70s kitsch. Still, make no doubt about it, a lot of models and actresses owe part of their success, or at least a flip of a Farrah ‘do to the last of the originals.

*

We’ll be back with some baseball stuff tomorrow night from Rehoboth Beach. Gotta get out of town with the kids before the grind of the second half of the season.show