Card Collections and 101-MPH Fastballs
Plus, a few thoughts about the Cleveland Cavaliers and the NBA Playoffs.
Let’s start with our Friday splash of joy:
What’s your favorite ever baseball card?
Brilliant Reader John: My favorite baseball card is actually two cards — my 1955 and 1956 Topps Ted Williams cards. I bought them at a flea market in Nashville when I was 11 years old in 1977 for $20 each because he was and is my favorite player of all time. My mother about lost her mind when she learned what I paid. I still have them. Little did I know then that I would later be involved in the litigation over Ted Williams's remains in 2002-2004 (I represented Bobby-Jo, his oldest daughter, who wanted to carry out the terms of his will — cremation, not cryonics).
Brilliant Reader Robert: I was certain the Phillies had a future Hall of Famer. In hindsight, Kevin’s wearing a Henley shirt on the card. I still have it, encased in plastic on my bookshelf. You can get one yourself for less than a dollar on eBay.
Brilliant Reader Deepak: A friend gave me this 1959 Ernie Banks card two years ago. I hadn’t collected in 35 years. Now I collect again with my son. Banks is 28 here — young, resolute, hopeful, unaware of the decades of losing ahead. These days, that quiet optimism feels like something worth holding onto.
From Joe: The 1959 Ernie Banks card is absolutely one of my favorites.
A quick baseball card story: So you must know by now that Mike and I have been spending the week doing a bunch of interviews for our book BIG FAN, which comes out in THREE DAYS! It’s already so much fun. Here’s an interview we did with Mass Live.
Well, one of the interviews we did was with The Art of Fatherhood podcast, one of our favorites, and at some point, Art thought it would be fun to open a pack of 1989 Donruss cards while he asked us questions. One of the questions he asked was: What baseball player have you collected the most? Mike went first because his answer is easy: He has tried to collect every single Mookie Betts rookie card ever produced. He had not gotten there and never will, but as his friend Olivia said when she saw his Mookie stack: “I mean, I guess I would say, ‘That’s too many Mookie Betts rookie cards.”
In the middle of the book, we have a color photo insert, and this is my favorite spread:
In case you can’t read the words, they say: “These are some, but not nearly all, of the Mookie Betts cards Mike owns.”
Anyway, that’s not the story. Art then asked me the same question, and I said that I don’t collect the way Mike does now, so I have to go back to my younger days. And in my younger days, I collected Cory Snyder cards like a madman. I bought every one I could possibly find. I traded for them. I bought them in shops. I opened countless packs to find more. At one point, I’m pretty sure I had at least 200 Cory Snyder cards — had them both because he was my favorite Cleveland player at the moment and because I was sure he was going to be a Hall of Famer, which would make his card worth enough to ensure my retirement.
We know how that turned out.
But what was great was that as I talked about Cory Snyder — I mean LITERALLY as I talked about him — Art pulled a 1989 Donruss Cory Snyder card.
This is bonkers because, as mentioned, BIG FAN comes out in three days — my first BIG FAN event is in Charlotte in just TWO DAYS — but on Thursday, a new book popped up on the book sites.
Yep, Fifty Seasons is ALREADY available for presale.
I need to slow down. Enjoy life a bit more. My wife has started calling me James … after James Patterson. I think she means it as a compliment. Maybe.
Fifty Seasons publishes on February 2.
Here, by bWAR, are the six best starting pitchers in baseball right now:
Halos’ Jose Soriano: 6-2, 1.66 ERA, 61 Ks in 54 innings
Southsiders’ Davis Martin: 5-1, 1.62 ERA, 52 Ks in 50 innings
Redlegs’ Chase Burns: 5-1, 1.87 ERA, 55 strikeouts in 53 innings
Bombers’ Cam Schlittler: 5-1, 1.33 ERA, 59 strikeouts in 53 innings
Phils’ Chris Sanchez: 4-2, 2.11 ERA, 67 strikeouts in 55 innings
Guards’ Parker Messick: 5-1, 2.35 ERA, 58 strikeouts in 53 innings
That’s some list, right? I mean, other than Sanchez, could you have called any of them? Yes, they are followed by two familiar names — Sale and Ohtani — but after that comes 33-year-old Clay Holmes and 35-year-old Nick Martinez.
We’ve talked a lot here about the fading significance of starting pitchers, but it feels to me even more stark than we’ve discussed. There are still superstarters like Paul Skenes and Max Fried and the injured Tarik Skubal and Garrett Crochet, but, yes, the injury watch is always on for those guys, and so you can’t really count on any of them to be good for a decade or more the way you could count on Kershaw and Scherzer and Greinke and Maddux and Unit and, well, you know the names.
For instance, I watch Jacob Misiorowski’s impossible feats of strength with anxiety and worry. On May 1, MIsiorowki threw 23 fastballs 101 mph or faster.
Seven days later, he threw 29 fastballs at 101 mph.
Five days after that, he threw THIRTY fastballs at 101 mph.
I want to enjoy that the way I enjoyed watching Nolan Ryan or Rob Dibble or Justin Verlander throwing blazing pitches.
Alas, when I watch Misiorowski pitch, I can’t help but see the “Misiorowski Feels Elbow Discomfort; Will Skip Next Start” headline, followed by, “Brewers Optimistic That Miz Will Not Need Surgery,” followed by “Misiorowski Hope For Quick Recovery from Tommy John.”
But what can you do? Ask The Miz to throw slower? I mean, that’s not viable.
I sometimes wonder: Would baseball be a better game if teams were allowed to use only two pitchers on any given day? This is not a serious suggestion — it’s obviously not going to happen — but more like a thought experiment. What would happen if MLB announced: That’s it, starting immediately, teams are only allowed to use two pitchers.
In the short term, of course, there would be chaos. Offense would explode. Teams would run out of pitchers and have to use position players constantly. Pitchers used to maxing out for five innings would find it hard to adjust to their new reality.
But what would happen long term? I imagine that long term, velocity would drop, pitchers would develop more secondary pitches, the knuckleball would return into the game, star pitchers who could throw 250 or 300 great innings would become the most valuable commodity in the game. I think, in time, iptchers would adjust because they’d have no choice but to adjust.
I’m not saying that’s a better brand of baseball — in many ways, it’s not — but for people my age, it’s a more familiar game.
My fandom of the Cleveland Cavaliers has definitely gone up and down over the years, simply because my interest in the NBA tends to rise and fall based on where I am in my life. Right now, I’d say my NBA fandom is peaking because of Wemby and the surprising rise of the Charlotte Hornets and my friendship with Daryl Morey … and that has meant that I’ve been watching the Cleveland Cavaliers playoff run with a passion I haven’t felt since the LeBron days.
This Cavaliers team is hard to figure. They will go through dismal stretches — especially against a great defensive team like the Detroit Pistons — where it appears they have only just learned the rules of basketball. They will commit the most egregious of turnovers one after another after another. They will simply forget to cover that big guy standing right by the hoop. They will take shots that would make World B. Free — one of my all-time favorite Cavs and maybe the greatest ball hog in NBA history — blush.
And then they will go through heavenly stretches where you think that no one could ever beat them.
I suppose this comes down to their two stars, Donovan Mitchell and, especially, James Harden. This is not a two-man team. Evan Mobley is a 6-foot-11 wonder who does everything on the court — he was defensive player of the year last year, he’s a rebounding force at times, he brings the ball up and shoots threes now and again, he’s the energy that drives the team. Jarrett Allen is listed at 6-foot-9, but there are times when the guy just turns into Shaq. He was preposterous in Game 7 against Toronto; he scored 22 points, grabbed 19 rebounds, blocked three shots, picked up a couple of steals, and he just took over that game.
Max Strus is such a funny player to me — funny because I absolutely loathed him and thought him absurdly overrated when he was on Miami, and I love him and think he’s criminally underrated now that he’s on Cleveland.
But it’s Mitchell and Harden who make this team go, and they’re so different. Mitchell is a modest whirlwind who can disappear for entire quarters at a time, and then suddenly he takes over the game by being everything, everywhere, all at once. In the first half of Game 4 against the Pistons, you wondered at halftime if he missed the team bus. He then scored 39 points in the second half, tying a playoff record.
But it’s Harden who has my full attention now. He has to be the weirdest great player in NBA history — I mean weird on the court. The Beard is 11th all-time in scoring, 12th all-time in assists, 22nd all-time in steals, and fourth all-time in free throws made. He has led the league in scoring twice. He has shot more three-pointers than anyone in NBA history except Steph Curry.
And nobody has any idea what to make of him.
Watching him closely, as only a devoted fan can, has not cleared up anything at all. All I can say is that James Harden is always doing something dramatic that will either win or lose the game. He’s dribbling into double teams and falling down after getting stripped of the ball, or he’s blowing by a defender (how can he still have such a quick first step at 36?) and hitting a gorgeous floater over nine outstretched arms (while getting fouled, of course). He’s shooting some off-balance three airball as the shot clock expires because he dribbled it out, or he’s dropping a Magic Johnson pass to Mobley in the paint when even Mobley didn’t know he was open. He’s complaining to an official while the guy he’s covering breezes down an empty lane for a dunk, or he’s making the dagger three that knocks a team out.
I’ve never really rooted for anyone quite like him in any sport. And yes, I know, I’m late to the party, I know that Oklahoma City fans and Houston fans and Philadelphia fans and Brooklyn fans and Clippers fans are all saying the same thing: “This is not new. This is the James Harden Experience.” And I’ve been well aware of that from the outside looking in.
But it’s different when you’re the fan looking out. Tonight, the Cavaliers try to take out the Pistons, and there’s no doubt that James Harden will be front and center, and I imagine he will win or lose the game because that’s just what he does. I just don’t have any real sense of which way it will go.