Baseballminutia

When I first discovered baseball, I realized my grandmother was a Mets fan (she lived in the Hudson Valley) not a Yankee fan… that was fine with me, for I was a Tiger fan early on and then a Reds fan when my family relocated to Cincinnati. My earliest memory of the Giants was Willie Mays (not only there)… however me and the Giants had a future, and I didn’t even know it back in the 70’s .

I moved to the Bay Area in 1982, Joe Morgan ruined the Dodgers that year and I found that as a NL fan I would have to listen to the Giants feed, not the A’s if I wanted to hear about the Reds. I listened to a LOT of Giants baseball for 20 years, I went through the Chris Brown years, the Humm Baby years, the year they won 103 games and stayed home, the big headed Bonds years…in short I was almost a Giants fan bu association, I just didn’t have any emotion investment in their winning or losing… then I moved to the Portland area, and once I moved here I noticed a good portion of older fans who followed the Giants, they were the team before the Mariners came, before the Pilots they even used to have a delayed feed of the games on AM until a few years ago… I couldn’t get away from them.

In short they are a big part of my baseball life, and that’s not even touching on the fact that I also learned from Grandma that Giants catcher Wes Westrum lived on my dads street in Poughkeepsie in 1951, and back then she was a Giant’s fan… not a Dodger fan, not a Yankee fan… a Giants fan.

So congrats to the Giants fans, 4 WS in 52 years is the pits, the town will party tonight.

And it’s a good party town.

Tonight a wondrous thing happened, after a decade of stink the Reds have achieved a .500 record. While this seems like a nominal task, one that doesn’t deserve praise I’ll counter that the moment is indeed monumental, indeed wondrous. The Reds last finish with an above .500 record was in the year 2000, Bill Clinton was President and no one knew who Snookie was.

This run of sub .500 records is the teams 2nd worst, falling only behind the stench that was emitted from the 1945-1955 teams who couldn’t crest that .500 wave.

I have what I call a visual look at the final standings in MLB history, it has a base of ABOVE .500 and BELOW .500. Each is represented by a color, white for sub. 500 and green for above .500. If a team gets in the playoffs they are marked maroon, if a team gets in the World series they are marked red.

This particular chart only covers the era of divisional play an era that (for the Reds) started out with a BANG and until this year was laid out like a world leader at a viewing, stiff, unexciting, grim and morose.
Finally a green (or maroon/red) will stop the sea of white and in that moment of joy all I can say is that I’m glad I’m not a Pirates fan.

http://www.baseballminutia.com/images/season_69.gif

The draft was instituted in the mid 60’s to help stem the bonus money that was pouring in the game in the 50’s and hopefully give some help early on to the poorer teams in the game.

The first pick in the initial draft in 1965 was by the Kansas City A’s and they picked Arizona State OF Rick Monday.

Since then the following teams have had the 1st pick.

Padres - 5 times
Mets - 5 times
Rays - 4 times
Mariners - 4 times
Pirates - 3 times
Yankees - 2 times
Rangers - 2 times
CWS - 2 times
Angels - 2 times
Astros - 2 times
Nationals - 2 times
Braves - 2 times
Twins - 2 times
Phillies - 1 time
Royals - 1 time
Cubs - 1 time
A's - 1 time
Tigers - 1 time
Orioles - 1 time
Marlins -1 time
Brewers - 1 time

13 of the 21 teams have had the pick more than once, 9 teams have never had the pick.

The players drafted positions have been the following:

10 - RHP
10 - SS
9 - OF
5 -C
4 -LHP
4 - 3b
3 - 1b

No 2nd basemen has ever been the number one pick.