SHORT HOP - My Career In Baseball by David Driscoll

[Tib]

Excellent comments, AdmiralACF. You want to be my editor?

I'll fix the Kansas City/Japan thing right away. I never caught it. Also, the second paragraph was apologetic and I'll take it out. In the back of my mind I had a concern that I was getting too far away from the baseball part of it and that's where that paragraph came from.

Thanks for the insight. It helps make the writing better.

[Faroo6]

is Tib ok? Its 7:45 PST and still no story?

[WWBL Commissioner]

Originally Posted by Faroo6

is Tib ok? Its 7:45 PST and still no story?

He said the story would be on Sunday this week

[Tib]

I know, I know, I know. Saturday has come and gone and no chapter. I didn't have time to do a final polish because a friend called and asked if I'd like to demo a new golf product that'll be hitting the market in 2005. When I got to the course I found out they were filming an infomercial, so it took a lot longer than I had planned. Anyway, if you're watching the Golf Channel next year and you see an infomercial for the SkyCaddy, look for me. I'll be in there somewhere, I'm sure. The guys doing to filming were infomercial vets, but they had no idea I used to be in the golf industry. In short, I was the "perfect" infomercial interview. Great fun. BTW, all my thoughts on the product are 100% legitimate, but I definitely had fun being the "overly impressed random golfer".

So here we are at Chapter 27. Baseball starts again; the 2007 season. Thanks to everyone for their continued positive comments.

[jaxmagicman]

Alright, bring it on.

[Tib]

Chapter 27

Georgia Asphalt

In 2007 Kansas City’s spring training facilities were in Phoenix, Arizona. I drove there from KC, arriving on March 1st. The team had undergone some significant changes in the off-season. First off, Clark McKinnon’s contract had not been extended, making him a lame duck manager. This gave Tom Faraday the flexibility to negotiate an extension if we did well or to terminate without having to pay guaranteed salary. McKinnon didn’t like it; he’d been pushing for an extension for almost a year, but the Knights were standing fast. Mark Schernborg’s contract was renewed. I was happy about that because my hitting was improving.

The Knights signed Ollie Caffey to handle the new pitchers. This was a great signing for us. Caffey is a remarkable guy. For those who don’t know, Caffey was an All-Star pitcher for the Scouts back in the mid-80’s. He was 6-0 in 1987 when he was hit by a drunk driver on his way to the ballpark. He was paralyzed from the waist down. After a much-publicized suicide attempt, Caffey came back with renewed determination to make it back to the Bigs as a pitching coach. One of my fondest (and earliest) memories of baseball was of him in his first game as pitching coach for San Diego. I’ll never forget seeing him roll his wheelchair up that ramp and out onto the field for the national anthem. And I’ll always remember the ovations he got in San Diego (really everywhere) whenever he came on the field.

Galindo and Britt loved him. Especially Britt. He and Caffey both had a fighter’s instinct and the tenacity of a swarm of rabid mosquitos. We used to come running whenever we heard them fighting because it was bound to be entertaining. Some of the best lines I ever heard were from their arguments. Ruthless. But they had an understanding. They respected one another. You just knew that no matter what was said, it came from the determination to be the best, and they knew that too.

Which reminds me of Moose. He was having a tough time, mired as he was in the Generals system. He hit .307 with 27 homers and 77 RBI for Raleigh and still hadn’t been called up, not even when they expanded the rosters. He called me from spring training in Florida and told me he was going to be patient. “They know my numbers,” he said. “They can’t ignore me forever.”

Moose filled me in on some of the old crew from Hinesville. Keith Hart hit .308 for Raliegh and he had become his old arrogant self. Little Jose Landeros hit .282 for Durham. J.R. went .308/24/82 for Hinesville. He was putting up great numbers, but there just wasn’t any room for a low draft pick among Atlanta’s talented outfielders.

The pride of Brooklyn, Bobby Nitta, went 6-0 in 21 starts for Raliegh. He was expected to be the second of my old Gents team to make it, probably this season. Dexter Suttles went back to the bullpen, led the team with 74 appearances (more than half the games!) and went 9-6 (3.54 ERA). His teammates started calling him Index because he was in every game. Keith Hassell struck out 164 batters in 146 innings but gave up 31 homers in 24 starts (7-8, 4.63). Lino Lopez was in Raleigh, too. He hit .279 and stole 23 bases for the Wanderers. Moose said a strange thing happened when Lino got to Raleigh. He asked for number 4.

I hit .243 in 108 games my rookie year. Not bad when you consider I slumped the last three weeks of the season. Until then I was hitting .258. I led all rookie shortstops with 11 errors in 506 chances over 908 defensive innings, a .978 fielding percentage. In fact, I ranked third in the United League behind former Defensive Ace winners Terry Ruddy and Modell Carino. I even beat out ultra-mega star Wes Schmidt.

Breakthrough Player of the Year voting was very tight. I got two first place votes I didn’t deserve (one from the Kansas City Post’s Brian Duncan), but the race was really between Walt Redrick and Carlos Cabrera. In the end, Redrick’s .354 average and 83 RBI edged out Cabrera’s .275/28/103.

Scott Haslam also had a strong showing in the BP voting. After being unfocused and aloof for much of the season, he finished at .336 with 25 homers and 64 RBI. If his initial attitude had been better, he may have won over far more people than he did. Those numbers were very good, but he rubbed so many the wrong way he didn’t get the support when he needed it. To his credit, Haslam is the first to admit he was less than ingratiating. He told me once that the killer instinct his father tried to instill in him turned into “me-first” arrogance. "What did I know?" he told me. "I was all of 19 at the time". Also, he went through quite a lot that year with the split from his father. It’s a tough thing to push your father away like he did, especially when you knew in your heart that he had your best interests in mind. He listened to the right people (Doc Caswell among them) and made the right decision, in my opinion.

The 2007 season started with a whimper, in spite of all the hard work we’d done during the spring. At the end of April we were 10-19 and struggling to win. We were so far down in our division, wrote Chick Forsythe in the Post, that the bottom margin of the sports page was about to move into fifth place.

I was, as Dex used to say, hotter than Georgia asphalt. I don’t know what happened to me between spring training (.255) and the regular season, but I started out as hot as I had ever been. I hit in 17 of my first 22 games. Until I hit the skids the last week of April I was hitting .368, including a blistering .425 on the road and an unthinkable .550 against lefthanders. I think it was because I was hitting seventh against righties and second against lefties. I was setting the table; a role in which I felt very comfortable. And I was seeing a lot of good pitches. I made 2 errors in April (.984). I stole 6 bases. I was, as Dex would have said, like the roof on a whorehouse: I was all over the ****ing place.

I wasn’t the only one. The rest of the Squires were doing pretty well, too. Von Jones had 27 RBIs in April alone. Joel Kral had 6 homers, but was hitting just .236. Bobby Frisina was in what was to become almost a tradition: an April slump, but he still had 5 homers and 21 RBIs. The Disenfranchised Squire, Theron Richards, was hitting .338 for Boston. I hooked up with him on a road trip to Beantown in April. He had gotten another tattoo of a lightning bolt on his other arm.
“Are you going to tat yourself up now, like a basketball player?”
“What’s wrong with tattoos?” he argued. “They’re cool. You have one.”
“You got me drunk and gave me one.”
“I didn’t pour the liquor down your throat,” he said. “Besides, the tattoos were your idea. Oh, that’s right. You don’t remember that part.”
“**** you, showboat.”

In mid-May we were at 16-25 and I had cooled off. After a dismal 1-18 slump I was hitting .257. My OBP was still .356, due in large part to my continued success against southpaws. Detroit, Toronto and Oakland were pulling away and we were struggling. But other teams were struggling, too. Boston, Miami and Seattle were all 6 games under .500. Our relief pitching was atrocious. The worst in the league. Baseball Insider said if our bullpen had the ERA of the next worse team in the league, we would have won five more games in April. The player getting the most blame was Carlito Fuentes, our young closer. On the 15th of May he had 6 saves, 6 blown saves and an ERA of 5.64. There was grumbling that we brought him up before he was ready. Caffey defended him, though, and there was no more complaining.

A desperate manager will try anything to spark his team. In early June, McKinnon decided to experiment. We were 23-36 and there was grumbling of another kind, the kind Caffey couldn’t quell, the kind that said McKinnon’s days were numbered. After leading all UL shortstops in fielding percentage for more than 10 games (.988), I suddenly found myself DHing, watching Scott Haslam play in my stead. Haslam was made an outfielder because of me. Now he’s back to playing shortstop?

The press didn’t like it one bit. Roger Muggs of the Independence Courant wrote in his Muggshots column that the best thing about my game was my glove, not my bat, and that taking me out for Haslam (not the best defensive player) and keeping a struggling Joel Kral (.228, 10 homers, no range in left) in the lineup weakened the defense on a team whose only hope of a win was to rely on good fielding to overcome Fuentes’ inconsistencies.

After a sorry 3-12 stretch in mid-June the axe fell on Clark McKinnon. At 25-40 we weren’t scaring anybody. All the young guys (and we were a young team) were extremely pleased to learn that our new leader was John Grier. It wasn’t really a surprise; Faraday had been grooming Grier for some time and baseball pundits loved him, but we were relieved nonetheless. Grier came in without fanfare – just a small press conference and an ESPN interview. I was quoted as saying that I’d play my guts out for John Grier. The press immediately asked me if my recent benching was because I hadn’t wanted to play my guts out for Clark McKinnon. Note to self: do not talk to the press. Ever.

I meant what I said, though. Grier was exactly the kind of person who gains loyalty without having to work for it. There was just something about John Grier that gave you confidence. Faraday told Baseball Insider Clark McKinnon was a good baseball man and a good coach (he didn’t say manager), but the team needed a fresh change to try and catch a spark. Spark? Did he say spark? The last two weeks of June we played like we were shot out of a cannon.

We won eleven in a row, a franchise record. We hit .296 as a team. We averaged 6.2 runs per game. I hit .440 with 3 stolen bases, driving my average up to .283. In those eleven games our pitching staff gave up one run or less seven times. Fuentes had 11 saves when the streak began and had 17 when it ended. Our team pitching went from 19th in the league to 15th. Our confidence was sky high.

Grier looked like a genius. Maybe he was. We had daily team meetings. The infielders had meetings. The outfielders had meetings. The pitchers had meetings. At Grier’s invitation Tom Faraday himself came in to work with our catchers. Faraday probably hadn’t put on a catcher’s mitt in fifteen years but there he was, the former league MVP, the GM of the team, going over bunt coverage and pitch calling strategies with Purkey and Bynum.

On the 25th the streak was at ten. We were at home against the champs, Washington. We were up 7-1 in the eighth. The Sentinels’ Ross Watts was the first overall pick the year I was drafted. Von Jones was drafted three picks later. They were both left fielders. As they switched between innings, they had words. The next thing I know they’re going at it along the third base line. Nobody was really paying attention except Doc. “Fight! Fight!” he yelled and we all jumped up and ran out of the dugout like a Civil War bayonet charge. We hit the Sentinels hard. I jumped on Watts and somebody jumped on me and somebody jumped on them and the whole pile went down. I got hit in the face with an elbow but didn’t miss any playing time. Jones was okay, but Watts’ nose was broken and he missed almost two weeks. Jones and Watts got four-game suspensions. Fuentes got two games for punching Jason Minelli. Somehow I escaped punishment.

The headline from the Baltimore Sun read FIRST ROUNDERS THROW ROUNDHOUSES. Streaking Knights and defending champs in 8th inning brawl.

When the streak was over we were 36-41, only 5 games out of first place. As Dex would say, we were hotter than Georgia asphalt.

(Next week's chapter is as yet untitled, but it will be on Saturday).

[jaxmagicman]

Man you give and then you pull away. I think that you got me all excited about the Knights coming back, but you pull it away.

[Jazzmosis]

Another excellent Chapter... I especially loved hearing up on how Lino Lopez is still in AAA.

[Tib]

Oops. Fixed. THX.

[WWBL Commissioner]

Another great chapter Tib, keep them coming

[laxman2789]

Originally Posted by Tib

When the streak was over we were 36-41, only 5 games out of first place. As Dex would say, we were hotter than Georgia asphalt.

Do you mean 5 games below .500 or is your division really that bad? By the way great chapter and well worth the delay!

[benchwarmer]

Perhaps he means what he says Eli, that he was only 5 games out of 1st place???

[laxman2789]

perhaps steve

[Tib]

Many of you will have clicked on this thread because you saw my name and think there's a new chapter to be had. Well, there is a new chapter, but I having problems with it and I can't post it yet.

As with many things in this story, chapter 28 grew in the telling and several very important plot issues had to be resolved. The timing of certain events had to be reconciled with the AI's version of team performance, not to mention it's Christmas! In short, I'm not done with the jigsaw puzzle yet.

Worry not! Chapter 28 is coming, hopefully today. It's coming as a two-parter. After that I'm taking a short hiatus (during which I will be writing) to celebrate the holidays and family birthdays. SHORT HOP will return on Saturday, January 15th.

[Tib]

Chapter 28 is here. It's not a 2-parter because I just got done ****canning about half of it. Reconciling the AI's moves with the storyline has proven to be difficult this time around. Anyway, it's here. Thanks for being patient. It was absolutlely necessary to establish certain relationships and truths (especially about the current state of the Knights) for you to fully appreciate what is to come. And gmo, thanks for your help with my scheduling problem. I couldn't write you into the story, but the part about Grier's Ghost Memo is my way of saying thanks.

Chapter 29: The Alchemy of Winning will arrive January 15th. Merry Christmas, everyone.

[Tib]

Chapter 28

"We Got Trouble, Right Here in Kansas City..."

The story of the Knights’ 2007 season is really the story of the arrival of John Grier. However, I must take some time now to fill you in on the Kansas City Knights’ situation as it existed in the early months of the 2007 season. Once I do that you will better understand the importance Grier’s changes and the size of his vision.

Several big developments made a change to Grier possible. The pre-Grier team run by McKinnon and Faraday was very much in transition. Some would probably say it was worse than that; that it was stuck in Limbo, mired in a rut filled with mediocre veterans and unproven youth. Whatever your opinion, the Knights were certainly rudderless, winning one or two here, losing four or five there. There was no pattern to us, no discernable trait that told our critics: “we’re getting it”. There didn’t appear to be a plan for the future. Of course, we young guys could tell there was something there, but it was really just a feeling of camaraderie and of shared struggles to succeed in the cold, unforgiving world of Big League baseball. If there was a plan, no one told us.

Our roles were undefined. McKinnon, for all his skill with veterans, just didn’t react well to the energy of youth. He didn’t know what to do with us. I think we represented an unknown quantity for him. He just couldn’t bring himself to trust in us, especially when his job was on the line. Each day we would slip a little further back, not just in the standings (which was bad enough) but as a team. When that blank lineup sheet stared up at him, Clark McKinnon flinched. McKinnon was a veteran’s manager but the Knights didn’t have enough quality veterans to make a legitimate push for a division title, much less a winning record. But he and Marty Kellinger were tight, so Grier stayed in Santa Fe.

I must say that I liked Clark McKinnon personally. This is not meant to be a harsh criticism of the man. He was professional, knowledgeable and sincere. He was a good baseball man and tactician, but he would not turn down the road less taken. Like a traveler in familiar territory, McKinnon didn’t look around. I think more than anything that was his main shortcoming. Most of all, he was too complacent to notice John Grier coming up fast behind until it was too late. He preferred the known over the unknown.

Speaking of unknown, John Grier’s team didn’t yet exist. It wasn’t on a roster sheet, it was in his mind. It was a team based on theory and potential. It had what McKinnon’s team lacked: constant activity and undeterred focus. It was going to be built on desire and fundamentals and small victories. It was fueled by faith. But to implement it, he had to be in Kansas City. To get to KC, someone had to have faith in his vision.

It wasn’t a question of his skill. He had support. Santa Fe was a decent team, but it wasn’t the team’s performance that caught Faraday’s attention. It was the feedback from the agents of players caught in the Kellinger Shuffle. Only those players could gauge the effectiveness of both Clark McKinnon and John Grier. To a man they preferred Grier. Part of this may be because McKinnon was a vets’ guy and the players in the Shuffle were mostly younger, but the preference was clearly communicated to Faraday. Faraday knew the future lay in youth; with the second lowest payroll in the Bigs he didn’t have much choice. From that moment McKinnon’s days were numbered. But Kellinger and McKinnon were close and that made things difficult. Kellinger protected McKinnon until he couldn’t protect him anymore.

John Grier was 49 years old when he took over the Knights in June of 2007. As a former San Francisco Gulls farmhand (and 4-year veteran outfielder), he had been to the Show. He knew what players went through. He knew what it took to succeed, if only because he played for teams that were not successful. When he went into coaching, he made an immediate impact. In 1996, at the young age of 38, Grier was made manager of the Gulls’ A-ball San Rafael Gladiators. They improved steadily until he left for AA Fresno, where he took many Gladiators with him and led Fresno to three consecutive league titles. Somehow Tom Faraday heard of him. In 2002, he offered Grier the AAA Santa Fe manager’s job and Grier took it. Grier’s wife and family were from Albuquerque.

Grier proved to me that more than anything a manager is a visionary. He alone must assess the potential of his lineup, determine what they can and cannot accomplish and find a combination of existing and emerging talent that will make the vision a reality. It can be a lonely business. He must defend his vision from the impatient. He must convince and re-convince the skeptical. He must persuade his coaches. He must encourage the fans to believe because they won’t come if they don’t care. Most of all, he must inspire his players. I’ve played for realists. Theo Garner was a realist. Lyle Walker was a realist. I was never once inspired by a realist.

It didn’t take long for Grier’s style to make an impact, especially on Marty Kellinger. He and Marty were not going to get along. Kellinger was still bristling over Faraday firing McKinnon himself. He felt the responsibility should have gone to him, as McKinnon’s long time friend, to soften the blow. Also, there was the Ghost Memo controversy.

The Grier Ghost Memo was one of those legendary things that pepper the history of sports teams, corporations or big organizations of any kind. No one has ever seen it, no one is sure how it got out, everyone denies its existence, yet everyone refers to it as if it were real. In this case, upon his arrival in KC, John Grier supposedly wrote a lengthy memo to Marty Kellinger outlining the players he’d like to keep and those he’d like to move before the All-Star Break. Allegedly, this memo was the blueprint for the future success of the Kansas City Knights. I think at one time or another every member of our roster was on the Grier Ghost Memo. I know I’ve been on and off it for years. KC fans still bring it up to me at signings, asking in whispered conspiratorial tones where I keep my copy.

Regardless of the truth of the Memo, Kellinger and Grier began locking heads right away, and Faraday was right in the middle of it. From what I’ve gathered over the years, Grier didn’t like Kellinger’s old boy sensibilities and Kellinger thought Grier was condescending, arrogantly proposing to tell him how to do his job.

Tom Faraday, true to his personality, felt that there was nothing to be gained by looking behind you. “No one ever climbed backward up Mt. Everest,” he used to say. By early-July, Marty Kellinger was no longer VP of Baseball Operations. Whether is was fallout from the many Grier/Kellinger encounters, or the numerous instances of questionable decision-making, Faraday knew he had to take action or the season might be lost to internal bickering and indecision.

Faraday cited several Kellinger moves he thought were directly related (read: a reaction) to Grier’s many requests. Derek Souza was promoted to AAA and released outright a week later. Talented but inconsistent Mike Moore (who Caffey and Grier both wanted) was released as well. On May 4th solid, professional Bill West was on the road with us in Seattle. On the 5th he was released outright. No reassignment, no nothing.

Lance Britt (one of Grier’s “must-haves”, it was said) was openly critical of Kellinger’s methods. He wanted to see the Squires play. “The old Knights can’t defend the kingdom anymore,” he was quoted as saying. He said Kellinger’s constant reassignments were the reason for low morale in the farm system. He was right and the Kansas City press agreed. During the All-Star Break (on July 5th) Kellinger traded Lance Britt to St. Louis for Mark Lieb and Jerry Talbert. Prompted by Britt, the player’s union brought the heat down on Faraday. They had complaints and were willing to take them to the press if something wasn’t done. Faraday also had to fend off angry fans who thought Britt could teach these youngsters a thing or two about how the game used to be played.

In my mind Britt was justified in being upset at the timing of the trade, but he couldn’t have been upset with the results. Lieb was a disaster. Britt’s take-no-prisoners attitude might have worn on everyone, especially on the patience of Ollie Caffey, but it was still better than Lieb’s 85 mph fastball. Lieb pitched from behind the entire time he was with us (which wasn’t long). Caffey thought it was a bad trade but he was overruled. Faraday had had enough. Kellinger was gone on July 6th. Faraday took over VP BOPS.

One last thing about McKinnon/Kellinger – hindsight being 20/20: They may have dealt away our grittiest pitcher and kept youth in chains, but they deserve some credit for plucking Franklin Ward, Rob Saville and Moises Chupp from the free agent pool.

We were 10-16 in April. We were 10-15 in May. We were 5-9 in June before Grier took over and we went on that memorable 11-win run. When McKinnon was fired we were 25-40. In the entire CBA, we were 28th in team batting, 22nd in runs scored and 19th in team ERA. On the eve of the Britt/Lieb trade we were in last place. Okay, we were close to first, but we were still a long way from playing like we should. Thankfully, the Central that year was weak. Even so, like the song goes: we had trouble, right here in Kansas City. Okay, it's really River City in the song, but you get the point.

The first thing Grier did when he came to the team was put two signs up behind his desk. The first read: “A team’s capacity for success is equal to its capacity to learn”. The second read: “Enthusiasm is the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment”. I think that sums up John Grier. I think that’s why we played so hard for him. He convinced us that there was more to success than simple effort, that there was an intangible yet very real force at work when people were committed to a single goal. He convinced us we could harness that force by working together. He didn’t convince us to believe in him, he convinced us to believe in each other. John Grier didn’t make the most of what he was given; he made the most of what we were given.

Mark Twain said all you need to secure success in life is ignorance and confidence. Well, we had that in spades. We were young, talented and completely uncorrupted by the sometimes bitter business of Big League Baseball. In short, as I mentioned before about the Squires, we didn’t have a clue what we were doing but we were having a great time doing it. We were gaining professional experience the hard way; by being thrust into a bad situation and told to excel. Looking back now, it was a good thing we didn’t know anything or Grier’s job might’ve been a lot harder.


January 15th: Chapter 29: The Alchemy of Winning

[jaxmagicman]

Another chapter down. Good job. I am waiting to see what Grier does to get Driscoll to become an All-Star.

[jaxmagicman]

Hey it is the 15th were is the update.

[GoCubsAndJays]

Originally Posted by jaxmagicman

Hey it is the 15th were is the update.

Oh sweet! Today is the 15th! Sick, I thought we had to wait another week.

[Tib]

The good news: I have several chapters in the bag. The bad news: I've worked 54 of the last 72 hours and am still in the middle of editing them. I apologize because I said the 15th, but the new chapters are just not ready. Give me a day to recharge and delve into them again and I'll get them up ASAP.

Thanks. It's 2:30pm and I'm going to bed now.