We fall in love with smart players, with sharp players, with heady players. That’s true in any sport, of course. We write poems about “cerebral” quarterbacks, compose paeans to basketball players who “anticipate” and “outthink” their quicker, taller opponents, and positively empty the purple dictionary over ballplayers with “high baseball IQs.”
What’s forgotten sometimes is that being the smartest basketball player in the gym won’t help you if you can’t throw a ball in the ocean. That being a savvy baseball player is nice, but hitting a curveball is better. That Bob Griese, to name one intellectual quarterback, had a knack for zipping spirals into Paul Warfield’s waiting arms.
Smarts are nice. Talent’s better.
What you would like, of course, is both. We bring this up because of the travails of Daniel Murphy, who almost every night seems to have the grand misfortune of having a baseball hit somewhere in his vicinity, usually when the game is on the line. The old adage about how the ball’s going to find you? It was invented for Murphy. It finds him, all right.
This wouldn’t be an issue, of course, if Murph was a lousy baseball player. But the fact is, he’s spent most of the past month in the Top 10 in hitters in the National League. He has been raking almost every day since May. He has blossomed as a hitter. And though his glove may not be gold, his hands aren’t necessarily iron. He just makes mistakes. A lot of them.
“You have to question his baseball instincts,” was the way Keith Hernandez termed it on TV the other day, and you could tell Mex was using every ounce of diplomacy he had to describe it thusly. It’s a funny thing, instincts: some very good ballplayers have had some awfully tough collisions with them. In fact, if you were to build a Scale of Baseball IQ, it might look something like this:
10: Derek Jeter’s Flip Play.
9: A sun-blinded Lou Piniella pounding his glove, pretending he had a bead on Jerry Remy’s single, eighth inning, 1978 playoff game with the Red Sox.
8: Willie Mays having the presence of mind to heave the ball back to the infield after making The Catch.
7: Mickey Mantle somehow diving back into first in Game 7 of the ‘60 Series, when almost any other player in the game would have been tagged out. Watch it if you can.
6A: Home-plate collisions.
6B: Head-first slides.
5: Mike Piazza trying — often with discomfiting results — to play first base.
4: Lonnie Smith getting deked and not scoring the run that would have won the 1991 World Series for the Braves.
3: Bernie Williams trying — often with comic results — to go from first to third.
2: Jorge Posada running the bases — often with tragicomic results — anywhere, any time, any circumstance.
1: Whatever you want to call that botched run-down play the other night, when Murphy ran toward Florida’s Dewayne Wise, who had wandered wide of first, but never actually got around to tagging him out.
WHACK BACK AT VAC
Tom Sloan: Add more games to the baseball playoffs and maybe we can all sit around on Thanksgiving Day and argue whether to watch football or baseball. How about this: eliminate all wild cards, make teams wins their divisions, and play the World Series in October as it should be played — without mittens!
Vac: Baseball remains the hardest playoff system to qualify for, and adding two more playoff teams, if done right, won’t change that, and also won’t make the season appreciably longer if it’s done properly.
John Siciliano: Does Jason Bay have Jim Croce’s “New York’s Not My Home” on his iPod?
Vac: Note to faithful readers: the quickest, surest way to make this column is to shoot a Croce reference my way.
Ron Wieck: Someone really has to explain why A.J. Burnett’s spot in the Yankees rotation is set in stone. The guy has pitched to a sub-.500 record for three seasons now, and he’s on one of the best teams in the game. I am so tired of hearing about his supposedly great stuff he has — stuff that, through an unfathomable mystery, prevents him from winning.
Vac: If baseball — specifically, the Yankees — were indeed a meritocracy Burnett would be car-pooling with Kei Igawa right about now.
Jim Pollio: I get the beauty of a DVR, I sometimes do it myself. But there’s something wrong with watching baseball in fast forward. It just seems un-American. The leisurely pace of the game is part of what makes it so great.
Vac: You’re right about that. Though it does allow you to speed through Boone Logan appearances at a more agreeable pace.
VAC’S WHACKS
* I like Jerricho Cotchery every bit as much as the next guy, don’t get me wrong. But that doesn’t mean it was Wesley Walker the Jets released on Thursday, though that was hard to tell based on the outcry of Jets fans.
* For what it’s worth, my wife, Mrs. Whacks, who is no sports fan at all, has one rooting interest: any player in any golf tournament who isn’t Tiger. And I suspect she isn’t alone in that crowd.
* If we aren’t going to get a basketball season next year, can we at least get to keep Kevin Durant and continue to set him loose at our civic basketball landmarks?
* If there’s a more addictive show on TV than Adam Richman’s “Man vs. Food” on Travel Channel I haven’t seen it lately.
