Road Trip

BY KEVIN KERNAN

Make no mistake, two first-time Hall of Fame candidates will be inducted into the 2025 class next summer in the beautiful rolling hills of Cooperstown, New York.

Hall of Fame weekend is always a special weekend, but for me, what makes this class extra special is relationships I built with both Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia.

But that is just the start of it.

What really, really makes this extra, extra special is that both Ichiro and Sabathia are two types of players, a hitter and a pitcher, who are no longer really in the game because of what the Nerd Revolution has done to baseball.

In his first 10 years in MLB, Ichiro averaged 224 hits per season while striking out 70 times per season. Over his 19-year MLB career Ichiro banged out 3,089 hits while striking out 1,080 times, never more than 86 times in a season. He batted .311 over his career and rarely took a day off; he hit .350 his first season in the majors after coming over from Japan at the age of 27.

Then there is Sabathia.

Starting pitchers in this era of Nerd baseball no longer go deep into games, something that was a staple for Sabathia. He finished his 19-year career with a 251-161 record and a 3.74 ERA, throwing 3,577 innings while striking out 3,093 batters in an era when hitters actually tried to put the ball in play. Sabathia posted.

And he’s lefty.

Only two left-handed pitchers struck out more batters than Sabathia: Randy Johnson and Steve Carlton. Sabathia also finished with 38 complete games. Imagine how many strikeouts Sabathia would have in today’s game.

I expect Ichiro to be a unanimous Hall of Fame selection.

Sabathia will easily get in on his first try. As for my ballot, I will write a column explaining my picks at a later date, but make no mistake, I am checking the boxes next to the names of these two superstars.

The Mariners, Yankees and Cleveland – they used to be the Indians when Sabathia spent the first eight years of his career there – will all be represented in Cooperstown. Maybe the Brewers (11-2, 1.65 ERA) will send someone because of Sabathia’s trade fling with Milwaukee.

Here is what I would like to see.

I don’t expect it to happen, though, because the analytical people in charge of teams now do not have the ability to look in the mirror.

But, if I were an owner, I would order my Chief Nerd to Cooperstown for Induction Weekend to just see and hear what superstar major league players actually look like – and hear what they have to say about the game and how they approached it. I would have executives hang out at the Otesaga Hotel for the weekend and make sure they interacted with real baseball people, real Hall of Famers, just to open up their perspective on what makes a great ballplayer, a great executive, a great manager.

Is that too much to ask?

Get out of the echo chamber that is currently Major League Baseball.

Road trip, fellas.

I know I am asking for the moon and that weekend the Nerds will be busy watching their hitters strike out 14 times in a game and watching their starting pitchers perhaps make it through the fifth inning if all the stars align, and then watch a parade of relievers come into games. Exciting stuff.

Well, to be truthful, they may not be watching, but they will open their laptops and iPads.

The game needs a baseball renaissance. It is that simple. This is already happening in places like San Francisco, addressed here at BallNine last Sunday, with Buster Posey allowing his manager to manage.

I am offering an olive branch to the Nerds.

I didn’t realize it until I heard Will Clark talk about it, but the earlier Nerd-centric front office of the Giants had systematically removed pictures of Giants greats that lined the hallway that leads into the Giants clubhouse only to replace them with, according to Will the Thrill, “graffiti.’’  Imagine that. I used to go down that hallway all the time and to the left was the office of manager Bruce Bochy – where baseball knowledge flowed.

These people just can’t help themselves; they have no respect for what came before them. That is why it is incumbent on teams to send a key representative to Cooperstown just to recognize what did come before them and look at those numbers of Hall of Famers, those numbers that really mean something like RBIs, complete games, hits, batting average, home runs, earned run average, and the list goes on and on. It’s not just about WAR, it’s about doing the things to help your team win, it is about real production not about the expected batting average of balls put in play or velocity.

That’s why it will be interesting to see if Brian Cashman of the Yankees thinks back to his days with Sabathia and what made his 2009 Yankees team a World Champion while in Cooperstown. Back then Cashman had super-scout Gene Michael to help guide him in all baseball matters, a real baseball person.

I would often run into Stick Michael in Cooperstown at the induction ceremony. He came up on a regular basis with super lawyer and scout Kevin Brosnahan. Gene Michael had time for the Hall of Famers and I’m sure he not only had a good time, but he would also pick up a few pearls of wisdom that helped him put the best team together that he could for the Yankees.

A lot of his handiwork made it into the Hall of Fame, too.

I am offering an olive branch to the Nerds.

Come up to Cooperstown and learn about baseball and all the inner workings of the game.

It is not just numbers. Look at it as a weekend where you can expand your baseball mind and there is a great coffee shop in town, Stagecoach Coffee, and a wonderful Italian restaurant right across from the Hall called Toscana so your pampered lifestyle need not be limited.

Do what I do when I was up there on a regular basis for induction ceremonies. Make sure to talk to Cal Ripken Jr. about the game, he is a wealth of knowledge; and before you know it, Cal will be demonstrating different batting stances on the veranda of the Otesaga Hotel overlooking picture postcard Otsego Lake.

“Iconic Luxury’’ is the way the Otesaga Hotel bills itself. And that is exactly what it is; make sure to enjoy the breakfast buffet where all the Hall of Famers show up.

While you are there, Nerds, check in with that little bespectacled guy who weighed about 170 pounds when he pitched but managed to win 355 games, including 109 complete games. That would be Greg Maddux. Ask him about the baseball he once autographed for his brother that wound up in the hands of a fan – baseball can be fun too – it’s not always about the pressure of the game. Enjoy the ride. It’s not always work. There is some play and it certainly isn’t a statistics class 24-7. Ask Maddux about baiting the batter, not just going max velo all the time. By the way, the right-hander struck out 3,371 hitters over his 23-year career and walked only 999. He managed to pitch 5,008 innings, too.

Ask Ichiro about his respect for the game and his respect for the brick-and-mortar Hall of Fame building on America’s Main Street, right across from the post office. You will quickly see that Ichiro speaks perfect English. That is something I learned when I covered him in the latter part of his career with the Yankees and Marlins. The first time I saw Ichiro was in a spring training game in 2001 in Peoria, Arizona and he tripled for the Mariners. It was a sight to see.

Speed and running the bases is an art.

While in Cooperstown, if you dare, also ask my friend Goose Gossage about multiple inning relief appearances. Believe it or not there is no rule that says a reliever has to come out after one inning. Goose had more saves of at least two innings than saves where he pitched one inning or less. He earned 310 saves.

Gossage, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2008, once gave me one of my favorite quotes about baseball, saying, “I didn’t invent this game. I was taught it. I didn’t learn this on my own… The coaching I got was invaluable. I never would have had the career I had if I had not run into these people early in my career. Now they don’t even believe in coaching, you have to be their best friend. They have no clue into the little things that go into playing the game.’’

Sure, all these teams have built pitching labs, but they haven’t built pitchers who can go the distance or put up multiple innings of relief.

Or throw enough strikes.

Think of all this as a fact-finding mission. Here in one small town, in one classic hotel, you are going to have the best players to have ever played the game, a symposium of greatness. Seek out information. Talk to the players who have been the most successful players in the game and now with the new class of Ichiro and Sabathia, you have stars who did not retire until after the 2019 season. They know what is going on – and Ichiro loves the Hall of Fame so much that on his own he would often make off-season excursions to Cooperstown just to pay homage to baseball’s past.

Many of these players are heartbroken over the direction the game has taken because they simply love the game. Why not get the best information you can from some of the best players who have ever played baseball?

Whenever a new Nerd GM or president of baseball operations takes over a team, they always say they will leave no stone unturned in trying to build the best organization possible.

With that in mind it is time for a Road Trip. Turn over some stones.

Get up to Cooperstown for Hall of Fame induction weekend Friday July 25th to Monday July 28th. Enjoy the ceremony at the Clark Sports Center on Sunday, July 27th. On Saturday night go to the plaque gallery cocktail reception and visit one table after another of the game’s greatest living players. Get outside your comfort zone of metrics and percentages and get into the baseball zone with the game’s greatest players and be sure to talk to Reggie Jackson and Pedro Martinez, too.

Try something new for a change and you just might learn something new about baseball.