New Blog on the Blogroll

Check it out, there's a new blog on the blogroll. "No Crying" is by a Twins fan I've virtually known for years. We've nearly crossed baseball paths a couple times but have not yet made it to a game together. Spike puts a lot of thought and a lot of passion into his appreciation of the game, you can read about it on his blog.

Draft Day Come and Gone

Draft Day is the best day of the entire Fantasy League season. The application we use moves at near-breakneck speed (90 seconds!) so the entire draft is completed in approximately two hours, a little more, a little less depending on how many people are on autopick (3 seconds) and how many people haven't a clue who they want to pick (90 seconds) or how many people are present but absent (90 seconds). Although our rosters have 25 slots, 4 are already assigned to our keepers from last season, so the draft is 21 rounds long and we have 12 teams (we have had as many as 15 and would like to get a few more managers to keep the competition stronger) so in theory the draft could take 6 hours and 18 minutes, but the longest we've gone since we switched to the current app is 2 hours and 24 minutes.

So there's the speed thing, the draft's done before you get (too) bored with it. In the later rounds people start grabbing players because they have a good baseball name, i.e. Stubby Clapp, or they have a sentimental attachment to a player.

The app provides a Live Chat space so draft day is the only time we are all online together (though it's never truly been everyone but spread out across a couple continents makes a good time for everyone impossible) and we spend much of it mocking each other's choices and our own. Seasons when the keepers had not been pre-assigned by the commish and not excluded by managers we spent a big chunk of our live chat announcing another keeper gone to the wrong teem and betting which keeper would be next.

The live chat has dwindled as our original line up of managers has shifted away from the initial group that started the league and moved toward a group with fractured acquaintances. New managers are brought in by someone already in the league, but there is no shared history between the newest manager and the previously established group. It's good to have new blood, but it also feels more like a pool of isolated stat geeks. The original Talkin' Baseball crew came from a common forum, where we had spent literally years arguing and debating the game so we had a strong connection, an understanding of the person/persona behind the wheel of each of the teams.

Normally I schedule at work vacation time so I can keep up with the draft while also working undisturbed in my office. The date I selected this year was the day my workplace was shut down for Spring Break so that option was out. My dial-up access at home no longer has the vigor necessary to run the draft app so I took my laptop to Tim Horton's for the free Wi-Fi. I had used it before, in December, to submit my final papers for an online class and anticipated there would be no problem. Nope. No access, no Wi-Fi. The donut was good, the coffee so-so, but no Wi-Fi. Hence no draft day fun for me.

I guess I should go check out who's on the Huskytown Dukes roster before Opening Day.

A Reason to Celebrate the Super Bowl!

The fantasy baseball site is up! Talkin' Baseball is back for its 11th season.

And.....pitchers and catchers begin to report the spring training in just a few more days.

My house may resemeble Varykino, but I can feel summer dawning.

Tony C - I Can't Get Over You

One of the things I do on a (nearly) daily basis is visit baseball-reference.com to view the list of players born that day and read the history log. Sometimes it's the expected info, other times it's a kernel of odd or neglected history. Like the bleachers burning down at Fenway in the 1930's, or the spat between Babe Ruth and Harry Frazee through the newspapers. Players and owners taking shots at each other through the media is nothing new.

Most days it's a quick visit to the site, maybe an interesting tidbit to share with my inivisipeeps on our history page. Occasionally, it's something that gives me pause. Today is one of those.

Born this day, in 1945, Anthony Richard Conigliaro. Tony C.

Tony Conigliaro had the makings of a superstar. In an era dominated by pitchers, he maintained a .270 batting average, a .334 on base percentage, and averaged 26+ home runs a season. He led the AL in homers in his second season, hitting 32 in 1965. He reached 100 home runs when he was 22, youngest player to reach 100 home runs in the AL, younger than A-Rod, younger than Johnny Bench, Hank Aaron, or Ken Griffey Jr.

Tony C, born in Revere, MA, graduated from Lynn, MA high school, was a home grown hero for the Red Sox. In his first plate appearance at Fenway, he hit a home run.

He was handsome, he was talented, he was popular. Like current-day superstars, he dabbled in show business, recording some songs, dating starlets.

Tony C gave hope to Boston's fans that the Red Sox could win the pennant and return to the World Series. He was part of the Impossible Dream team of 1967. Following a number of losing seasons, the Red Sox of 1967 were not expected to do well as the season opened, but they proved to be a new, different team, led by Carl Yazstremski as he won the last* triple crown in major league history. In August, as Boston caught up to the league leading White Sox, Tony C's place in baseball history was sealed.

On August 18, Tony C was beaned at the plate by Angels' pitcher Jack Hamilton.

The injury was big news, and the image of this baseball god-to-be became the haunting reminder of what the Red Sox lost, what Tony lost, what all of baseball lost.


He was out for the season, nearly blind in his left eye. He made a comeback in 1968, sporting a new batting helmet with an extension designed to protect his eye and cheek. He put together a couple more good seasons with the Sox, was trade to the Angels in 1971 where it became clear his career as a hitter was over. Tony was not done with baseball yet as he mounted a campaign to return as a pitcher and did in 1975 for a short time.

Tony was preparing to return to Boston, as a broadcaster, when he suffered a heart attack, quickly followed by a stroke that left him in a vegetative state. He died eight years later in his parents' home. He was 45.

Although I never saw Tony C play, I can easily imagine what it would have been like to see him play. I can do no more than sigh the lament "if only" and share his story with those who never heard of "Tony C," of "Conig." Most fans know landmarks of Fenway, Pesky's Pole and its partner that Fisk hit his historic homer off, the Green Monster, they may even know about the red seat in the bleachers where a man was hit by a Ted Williams' homer, but they probably aren't aware of Conigliaro's Corner, the small triangle of seats where the bleachers meet the left field wall. Tony had trouble seeing the ball coming out the pitcher's hand against the back drop of bright clothing, so that section is covered with tarps during day games.

When Tony made his original comeback, he wrote a book, with Jack Zanger, about his career, about the injury, and the fight to return to baseball. Written pre-Ball Four, it was an optimistic story of overcoming a serious injury, while downplaying how devastating the injury actually was. Years later, David Cataneo wrote a fuller, richer account of Tony's life, Tony C: The Triumph and Tragedy of Tony Conigliaro, a wonderfully moving book of a working class hometown hero who lost it all.