Who is the most famous middle reliever ever? For the entirety of baseball history this has been an unanswerable question, for no middle reliever has ever really attained any kind of fame whatsoever.
Middle relievers ride unrecognized on the Green Line to Fenway Park, slump in the shadows during the cheers of starting lineup introductions, and, even if they manage to get into a game, are already in the showers by any climactic moments of victory. By contrast, their pine-riding brethren in the dugout, non-starting positional players, such as Bernie Carbo, occasionally have moments of great renown. Middle relief, like the bulk of life, doesn't really lend itself to special moments.
In recent years especially it has become abundantly clear that winning a World Series requires strong middle relief work, yet no middle reliever has ever won a postseason award (or a regular season award, for that matter). This could all change today, if the team featured in this preposterously titled Future Stars card from 1980 manages to close out the Boston Red Sox in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series (FOX, 8:23 ET): the Indians' best and most important player so far has been middle reliever Rafael Betancourt. By contrast, the Red Sox' middle relievers have been frighteningly shaky. This disparity in the area of middle relief does not bode well for the Red Sox, especially considering that their starting pitcher for today seems no longer capable of going deep into a game against a top-notch lineup like the Indians. That bullpen door is going to swing open at some point today and Red Sox fans are going to wish they'd spent more time praying to the underappreciated gods of middle relief.
Here are three of those gods, Future Stars that foretell of a future that will never escape the abundant limitations of the present. None of the men are that young, each with several seasons in the minors under their belt. One, Bobby Cuellar, had surfaced in the majors three years earlier but would never surface again. Another, Sandy Wihtol, would briefly seem the most successful of the three, appearing in 17 games in 1980 while his fellow Future Stars continued riding minor league buses, but Wihtol would be back in the minors the following year. The third Future Star, Larry Andersen, after seeming at first to be bound for the same oblivion as his cohorts, instead caught that long, steady wave that middle relievers sometimes catch, their major league careers stretching on and on for one franchise after another, their longevity finally imprinting some awareness of their name of the minds of casual fans, who are always surprised when these riders of the long, steady wave, who they thought had been jettisoned from the majors years ago, appear in a game.
Larry Andersen's renown has increased beyond that of the usual long-tenured itinerant middle reliever, mainly because the Boston Red Sox once acquired him for the stretch run by trading away a minor league first baseman who had yet to show any signs of being able to hit for power. Since the Red Sox had another minor league first baseman, Mo Vaughn, who had shown ample signs of being able to hold down the middle of a lineup, it didn't seem like a bad gamble to trade Jeff Bagwell away.
Many jokes have been made about the trade, some of them by the witty Andersen himself, but the truth is, as a Red Sox fan, if I could have just one of the two players in their prime on my team for today's game, based on the relative strengths and (glaring) weaknesses of the 2007 team, I'd pick Larry Andersen over Bagwell.
I'd pick the middle reliever.
Question for Red Sox fans: If you had the power to go back and undo the Bagwell trade, but you also had to undo the Heathcliff Slocumb trade, would you do it? Or would you still make both trades?
Of course, that would change next spring when he becomes a starter, and joins the large club of famous pitchers who spent a small portion of their career in middle relief, like Pedro Martinez, Fernando Valenzuela, Johan Santana, or Eric Gagne.
But yeah, it's probably nuts--Bagwell was pretty awesome. I never have cried over that trade though. He didn't look like a power-hitter at the time.
"If you had the power to go back and undo the Bagwell trade, but you also had to undo the Heathcliff Slocumb trade, would you do it?"
No way. Life without Varitek is unthinkable. And no title in '04 without Lowe. (And, not for nothing, probably no division title in '90 without Andersen.)
Speaking of Mets, I've always thought the best middle relief stint I ever saw was the one turned in by Sid Fernandez in game 7 of the '86 WS.
Indians (including no Indians)
G. Sizemore cf .250
A. Cabrera 2b .286
T. Hafner dh .158
V. Martinez c .316
R. Garko 1b .312
J. Peralta ss .286
K. Lofton lf .250
T. Nixon rf .250
C. Blake 3b .316
Red Sox (including one Indian)
D. Pedroia 2b .250
K. Youkilis 1b .421
D. Ortiz dh .400
M. Ramirez lf .471
M. Lowell 3b .250
J.D. Drew rf .312
J. Varitek c .211
J. Ellsbury cf .000
J. Lugo ss .167
Let's go Jacoby!!
Sid Fernandez was a Dodger farmhand. Looking at his stats (overall career) he had a pretty serviceable career with flashes of brilliance
My two favorites have to be Turk Wendell, he of the quick pitch, bear claw necklace and many odd quirks. And Dennis Cook, who never threw a strike unless he had to and who took his own damn time to throw the pitch.
And Sid Fernandez was Cy Young every third or fourth start. Just couldn't get past the belly or the 6th inning.
Josh, I hope for your sake Schilling has something left. But since my Mets died so terribly, I've been rooting for the Indians. And it really would be nice to continue this decade's streak of a different Series champ each year. Indians/Rockies would guarantee that....and that would be nice for the poor folks in Cleveland and Denver, who haven't had much to cheer about, ever
I had the good fortune (sic) to actually be in Cleveland during Super Bowl XXXV, when their former football franchise, now the Baltimore Ravens, won the whole thing. You could hear a pin drop on the streets. Literally.
My favorite middle-relieving Met as a kid may have been "Buzz" Capra. He just had the type of cool sounding name that would appeal to any seven-year-old, if not the best stuff. Of course the minute we traded him he became a successful starter for Atlanta...
I went to Rockies.com the other day & I was kind of surprised watching Vinnie Castilla practicing at 3rd base.
As for the Andersen deal, I wouldn't undo the two deals, either.
I tried to defend the Andersen deal once on a Red Sox listserv and got shouted down for it. My reasoning was, flags fly forever, and as Sweet Lou Gorman said in his book, the team did have Boggs and Scott Cooper ahead of him on the 3b depth chart.
Much later, I stumbled across some AA stats from that season, and I found that, plain and simple, Jeff Bagwell was at worst the second best player in AA that year. The only player even close to him statistically was Frank Thomas.
The playoffs are a carnival of great infield play.
Very good reference, though.
why DzzrtRatt?
If anything Bostonians will at least be neutral on him for a while
All we need now for an ex-Dodger trifecta is for Julio Lugo to complete an unassisted triple play, and Eric Gagne to get the save.
Trivia-DUH! Pat Darcy! WHo doesn't know that?
I've cancelled the credit cards. But someone did buy $3000 worth of clothing with it.
Man, that's cold. I've heard they carry there liquor like a necklace at some parts of Spain.
But, I've got to admit, Colorado vs. Boston feels like a potential classic.
Ellis Burks.
Reggie Jackson's hip makes more sense.
I was just referencing the suicide element from the other post.
I'm just saying, similar to Hicks, that anyone who questions the reasoning of someone who smokes or commits suicide needs to look around the world in which we live and mind their own business-ie the world is dreadful enough that I cannot blame anyone for wishing to leave it.
The bitterness was Hicks', not mine.
Sorry to give you any other impression than that.
Everyone has bills to pay.
I was recently listening to Bob Dylan's radio show and he responded to an email about songs in commercials. The emailer was outraged by it, and Dylan brought up the long history of commercial sponsership (I think he mentioned Sonny Boy Williamson being sponsered by biscuit mix or something).
re Dylan's comment: is Sonny Boy accepting sponsorship the same thing as giving an advertiser permission to use your music's power as uncredited riptide pulling an ad viewer toward buying a product? I'm not sure.
The greatest comment on this trend is here:
http://tinyurl.com/2t24ln
Well...there I was sitting down on the couch in my pajamas with my eldest son. He was watching TV. I was doing one of my favorite things -- I was tallying up all the money I passed up in endorsements over the years (laughter) and thinking of all the fun I could have had with it. Suddenly I hear "Uno, dos, tres, catorce!" I look up. But instead of the silhouettes of the hippie wannabes bouncing around in the iPod commercial, I see my boys!
Oh, my God! They sold out!
Now...what I know about the iPod is this: It is a device that plays music. Of course their new song sounded great, my guys are doing great, but methinks I hear the footsteps of my old tape operator Jimmy Iovine somewhere. Wily. Smart. Now, personally, I live an insanely expensive lifestyle that my wife barely tolerates. I burn money, and that calls for huge amounts of cash flow. But I also have a ludicrous image of myself that keeps me from truly cashing in. (laughter) You can see my problem. Woe is me.
So the next morning, I call up Jon Landau -- or as I refer to him, "the American Paul McGuinness" -- and I say, "Did you see that iPod thing?" And he says, "Yes." And he says, "And I hear they didn't take any money." And I said, "They didn't take any money?!" And he says, "No." I said, "Smart, wily Irish guys." (laughter) Anybody...anybody...can do an ad and take the money. But to do the ad and not take the money...that's smart. That's wily. I say, "Jon, I want you to call up Bill Gates or whoever is behind this thing and float this: A red, white, and blue iPod signed by Bruce "the Boss" Springsteen. Now remember, no matter how much money he offers, don't take it!" (laughter)
At any rate...at any rate, after that evening, for the next month or so, I hear emanating from my lovely 14-year-old son's room, day after day, down the hall calling out in a voice that has recently dropped very low: Uno, dos, tres, catorce. The correct math for rock and roll. Thank you, boys.
119 : Good question.
I haven't walked in the shoes of anyone with a song in an ad, but my problem as a listener has always been that the association of the song changes. There's a couple Stooges songs that are dead now because now they make me think of a running shoe and a luxury cruise.
Now, right now, he's worth a 17 year, $18 million dollar per year contract-but seriously, he isn't more than a six-seven inning pitcher on a regular basis.
I tend not to be a fan of the "for services rendered" type of contract. I think they did that with Varitek, and I think they are going to regret that at some point, and I have a feeling New York is going to do that for Posada, and I think they will regret it as well.
If Schilling asks any team to give him a deal longer than one year, they should just laugh at him. Basically, he'd be asking to get paid for two seasons but only play for one. "Nice try, but at your age, we'll take it a year a time."
I'm not in favor of collusion, but if Selig released a study of the unrecovered costs associated with the out years of contracts given to players past their prime, maybe GMs would stop giving them. Nobody should get a deal longer than two years after their 35th birthday, or longer than one year after their 40th.
Your posts rock DzzrtRatt.
So has the JD Drew effigy been converted to a statue yet?
And here comes Gagne - hope he doesn't blow this one.
The days when a kid's clock radio wakes him up to "Gimme Shelter" or "Lola" (which is how I first heard those songs) are over. The NP's deserve to be superstars, and if that ad gets them there, stranger things have happened.
The Boston Red Sox, leading all remaining playoff teams in "Old Friends."
And every gimmick hungry yob digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mike to tell us he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this and its been tested by research
That he who fucks nuns will later join the church
At least he didn't give a shout-out to his "pal," Dick Cheney.
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