Bleacher Creature Feature

#15: Weaver's Legacy

4 June 2002

His teams were also a good combination of homegrown talent and smart acquisitions. Sound familiar?

One other thing that Weaver doesn't get as much credit for is changing the image of the shortstop forever. Weaver managed Mark Belanger at the tail end of his career, and he was the prototypical pre-1990s shortstop: great fielder, awful hitter. In 1970, when the O's won the Series, and arguably the best team of Weaver's run, Belanger hit .218/.303/.259. Even taking into account the low-hit era (two years removed from 1968's "Year of the Pitcher," when Carl Yazstremski won the AL batting title with a .301 average), that's pretty putrid.

Everyone knows that the Baltimore manager that moved Cal Ripken away from what everyone viewed as his natural position was villified and called a fool. What folks tend to forget is that that manager was Earl Weaver when he moved Ripken from third base to shortstop in 1982. Yes, that's right, the man Bill James ranked as the third-best shortstop of all time in his new Historical Abstract came up as a third baseman, and everyone thought Weaver was nuts for making him a shortstop. "He's too big," the naysayers cried. "He won't be able to move around enough." And, of course, he didn't fit the mold of a shortstop: short fast guy who can't hit. (From James's 1983 Baseball Abstract: "I don't think there has ever been a good six-foot four-inch, two-hundred-pound shortstop," a statement that seems ridiculous in 2002.)

Now, of course, Ripken's the Platonic ideal of the shortstop, viz. Jeter, Rodriguez, Vizquel, Garciaparra, Aurilia, etc. And those same people who thought Weaver was nuts in the 80s thought Davey Johnson was equally nuts for moving him back there in the 90s.

Right now, the Yankees are looking a lot like those 1970 Orioles, even though Joe Torre isn't ever likely to get confused with Weaver. But this is a team that walks a lot at the plate, yet doesn't give up a lot of walks from the mound (the 1970 O's had a stunning walks differential of +248 in 1970; the Yanks right now are at +74 after 58 games, and they project out to +206, which would put them among the best in baseball history). You look at the O's lineup that year, and you see some parallels (Jason Giambi and Boog Powell, Bernie Williams and Frank Robinson, Rondell White and Paul Blair) and the O's front three of Jim Palmer, Mike Cuellar, and Dave McNally is a fantastic comp for Roger Clemens, Mike Mussina, and Andy Pettitte.

Those O's beat the Reds in five games in the World Series. Something to think about as the Yankees languish in second place. (But hey, as either Joe Buck or Tim McCarver said before Fox's broadcast of Saturday's game, we're used to seeing the BoSox in first place in June....)

Some notes on recent games:

---Saturday, Enrique Wilson won the Luis Sojo Award for Unlikely Offensive Heroics By a Defensive Replacement by hitting a grand slam on an 0-2 pitch to give the Yankees a lead against the Red Sox. (Alberto Castillo got the award tonight with his two-run double.)

---Sadly, Wilson returned to offensively useless form after that. For some inexplicable reason, Torre pinch-ran Wilson for Ventura early enough in the game that Wilson might come up to bat again. Rather than pinch hit the superior hitter Ron Coomer (who has a .984 OPS in 49 at-bats, and could then have gone out to play third), Torre let Wison and his .604 OPS bat with the bases loaded. Naturally, he flied out to end the inning. (That was, by the way, the second time Wilson ended the inning with an out -- the other was when he was pinch running, and killed the inning by getting caught stealing.) The Yankees are fortunate that they have players like Soriano, Jeter, Giambi, Posada, Ventura, Williams, etc., and so can afford to indulge Torre's inexplicable obsession with weak slap hitters who are decent fielders. Said obsession has earned the likes of Luis Sojo and Clay Bellinger many World Series rings and a lot of money, and Wilson can now probably be added to that list.

---Wilson was also 0-4 in Sunday's game, but that hardly was unique on Sunday, when the Yankees simply couldn't do anything right offensively.

---The same Bleacher Creature who did his homework and gave us "baka Ichiro" as the Right Fielder Taunt when the Yanks played the Mariners, came through again on Sunday with the following for Trot Nixon: "Hey Trot, who's your daddy -- Mr. Ed?"

---Behind us on Sunday were a couple with their 18-month old son, who was at his first game. The slightly bullet-headed kid looked simply adorable in his little Yankee hat and tiny pinstriped jersey. Every time we got frustrated with the game -- which was fairly often in that 7-1 debacle -- we'd turn around and look at that cute kid, who was having a great time. No matter what, this was always going to be his first game, and that was cool.

---This Sunday, we get to see Barry Bonds. I am, to say the least, excited. Bonds is quite possibly the best player of this generation, and it's gonna be a thrill to see him in person.

NEXT: The Barrytown Trilogy

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