NINE ACES Joker
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In what is a truly international effort, In Nine Aces and a Joker, leading British baseball writers Project COBB The Project for the Chronicling of British contributing authors include Harvey come together to provide an engaging tale of the sport’s Baseball (Project COBB) was founded Sahker (Ontario, Canada), Joanne by Joe Gray, who edited this book. Hulbert (Massachusetts, USA), Josh history in the country by focusing on standout pitchers’ Chetwynd (Colorado, USA), defining seasons. Beginning with John Reidenbach in 1890 NINE ACES Joe lives in Hertfordshire, UK. Jeff Archer (California, USA), and running through to Jason Roberts in 2010, nine “Ace” Mark George (Kent, UK), and Project COBB is a chartered Matt Smith (Cambridgeshire, UK). pitchers and a less conventional standout – the “Joker” – and a community of the Society for are put under the spotlight. In addition, several other star American Baseball Research (SABR). Additional research assistance was provided by Graham Rumble pitchers are featured in a short stories section. projectcobb.org.uk (Queensland, Australia), Colin Allan Joker (East Yorkshire, UK), and Alan Smith (London, UK; Auckland, New Zealand). Defining seasons from British Praise for What about the Villa?, Project COBB’s first book: baseball’s standout pitchers A “dazzling accumulation of research” that demonstrates “superb scholarship” — Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game NINE ACES NINE A and a A ISBN 978-1-907741-11-1 A ♠ ♠ ♠ Joke r MADE IN BRITAIN ♠ A fineleaf £18£15 9000 Fineleaf edited by Joe Gray fineleaf.co.uk fineleaf cover.indd 1 17/06/2012 19:53 Nine Aces and a Joker Defining seasons from British baseball’s standout pitchers main body.indd 1 17/06/2012 21:40 First published 2012 Copyright © 2012 by Project COBB ISBN 978-1-907741-11-1 Design: Joe Gray Main typeface: Bembo (10 on 12 point) Other typefaces: Lucida Sans, American Typewriter Print: SS Media Ltd British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Except as otherwise permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, with the prior permission of the publisher, or, in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of a licence issued by The Copyright Licensing Agency. main body.indd 2 17/06/2012 21:40 NINE ACES and aJoker Defining seasons from British baseball’s standout pitchers edited by Joe Gray Fineleaf PUBLISHED BY FINELEAF, ROSS-ON-WYE www.fineleaf.co.uk main body.indd 3 17/06/2012 21:40 Contents 1 – Introduction ................................................................................1 2 – John Reidenbach, Ace #1 ............................................................5 3 – Max “Lefty” Wilson, Ace #2 ................................................... 17 4 – Ross Kendrick, Ace #3 .............................................................27 5 – Wally O’Neil, Ace #4 ...............................................................37 6 – Alan Asquith, Ace #5 ............................................................... 51 7 – Cody Cain, Ace #6 ................................................................... 61 8 – Gavin Marshall, Ace #7 ...........................................................73 9 – Brian Essery, Ace #8 ................................................................ 81 10 – Jason Roberts, Ace #9 ............................................................95 11 – Short stories .......................................................................... 105 12 – Ben McGrath, the Joker ........................................................ 119 13 – Acknowledgements ............................................................... 133 main body.indd 5 17/06/2012 21:40 To anyone who has toiled on or off the field in the name of British baseball main body.indd 6 17/06/2012 21:40 1 – Introduction by JOE GRAY n a baseball game, pitchers can be viewed not only as the conductors, dictating the pace of the contest through the batons of their personal tempo, but also as Ithe protagonists. They are the central characters, both in their location on the infield and in the fact that they alone touch the ball in every play. In Major League Baseball (which consists of the American League and the National League), starting pitchers typically appear in just one-fifth of a team’s contests (a five- man starting pitching rotation is standard), yet their contribution can still be of sufficient magnitude to gain Most Valuable Player honours. In 2011, for instance, Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers scooped the American League award. The reason that a starter only throws one game in five is that Major League Baseball is played almost every day during the spring and summer, and pitchers need time to recover from the exertions of releasing a hundred missiles at close to 100 miles per hour, not counting warm-up pitches and pick-off throws, in every outing. In contrast, throughout much of Britain’s domestic baseball history, baseball has been confined to just 1 or 2 days a week. In leagues where sides play one nine- inning game each weekend, a team can, theoretically at least, survive with a single pitcher. In today’s British top-tier baseball (the National Baseball League), once- a-week seven-inning double-headers are the norm, and so two main pitchers can steer a team through an entire campaign. (Pitching restrictions written in league bylaws prevent a single player from throwing a complete double-header, even if physical capacity allowed for this.) Another important distinction between Major League Baseball and the British league is that pitching is a specialized role in the former but one of several potential contributions the same player can make in the latter. In the States, pitchers in the National League are generally viewed as an easy out at the bottom of the line-up, and in the American League they are absent from the line-up altogether. Over in Britain’s National Baseball League, though, a player might pitch seven innings in the first game of the double-header and play a key fielding position such as shortstop or centre-field in the second game, while batting high up in the order in both contests. Two major effects of these differences are as follows. Firstly, pitchers are almost always the most important players in British baseball. Secondly, the playing time 1 main body.indd 1 17/06/2012 21:40 Nine Aces and a Joker that they accumulate in Britain comes much closer to that of their Major League counterparts than is the case for batters. For instance, the pitcher ranked highest in the National Baseball League based on innings pitched in 2010 accumulated just under 40% of the total amassed by the Major League Baseball leader, while for the standard measure of overall playing time for batters (plate appearances) the equivalent figure was less than 15%. This means that the milestones that players in Britain can rack up are more impressive – at least on a Major League scale – for pitching than for batting, and also that the pitching statistics posted are less prone to drifting from a player’s true ability as a result of chance. There is at least one other significant impact of the scheduling difference, and this was an idea raised to me by Josh Chetwynd, one of the invited authors for this book, when we were having a discussion on pitching in British baseball several years back. In Major League Baseball’s postseason the schedule is less intense than in the regular season, with more gaps between games, and thus a pitching rotation will typically undergo contraction (to allow the best pitchers to maximize their playing time). In Britain, however, the postseason generally brings a more demanding schedule than is faced in the regular season, with teams often playing three or more contests on the final weekend. Thus, teams are often forced to find new arms to expand their staff. As a result, management of the pitching staff is often the most fascinating tactical aspect of the British postseason. Following the thread from the above argument that within the British baseball set-up a good pitcher is generally more instrumental than a good hitter in a team’s prospects of winning, this book brings together the stories of some of British history’s star hurlers in a defining season. There is one chapter each for nine aces, another chapter for a less conventional standout (the “Joker”), and a further chapter for a bundle of short stories. Together, they represent the second book produced by Project COBB (the Project for the Chronicling of British Baseball; www.projectcobb.org.uk). In selecting subjects, the luxury of having a complete statistical record to work off was absent. Moreover, it would have been a totally overwhelming task to attempt to assemble such a record from which to make the fairest possible selection of players. Instead, the limited resource for piecing together individual seasons (namely, research time) was assigned using a mixture of existing knowledge and informed guess-work. Other elements that had a bearing were the known availability of a detailed account for a crucial game in which a pitcher appeared – often a national final – and the breadth and quality of coverage that existed in the newspapers published in a player’s local area. While the process may thus seem to have been at the mercy of certain random factors, it is important to note that periods of high-volume press coverage of baseball often coincided