On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Captain C
This is the last part of the non-plaque part of our Hall of Fame visit. It covers the last of the history exhibit, and a couple of the other exhibits we saw. In addition to what’s here, we went to the bookstore (why yes, we did get books, why do you ask?), the gift shop (where I got a Mets-themed souvenir mini-baseball bat, AKA the little schlubwhacker, never to be taken to work to avoid temptation), and the library, which we couldn’t really check out due to a surfeit of sabermetricians* there for a conference (I think it was very historical sabermetricians, which actually sounds quite interesting. We did get to chat for a few minutes with the librarians, and assured them that they had one of the coolest jobs in all of librarianship.
*A sabermetrician is one who deals in baseball stats, especially advanced stats. Baseball has enough events in its seasons such that you can get statistically significant sample sizes and do some interesting and edifying analyses. If you are ever kidnapped and held captive by sabermetrician bad guys, ask them to define WAR, what constitutes it, and how the various factors should be weighted, and they will get in to such a deep discussion that you can not only escape, but you could probably steal their uniforms and the spaceship/submarine/whatever without them noticing.
A Tony Gwynn exhibit. Tony Gwynn was one of the best hitters ever, with an incredible eye, a sharp mind, and a picturesque swing that saw him finish his career with a .338 batting average, 3,141 hits, two World Series appearances (losing to a great Tigers team in 1984 and the otherworldly 1998 Yankees team), and then a reasonably successful stint as the San Diego State baseball coach. More importantly, he was one of baseball’s all-time class acts and ambassadors. Sadly, he died way too soon at the age of 54 in 2014.
A signed Mike Piazza shirt, and and what appears to be an inexplicable Mitt Romney campaign toy from his failed ’08 run. I did not notice the latter bit until today (when I posted this), as I was concentrating on the Piazza jersey.
More baseball comics. I love the Kent Tekulve Rubberband Man one; I remember him and his wild submarine style from when I was a kid.
After we finally finished our thorough walk through the history exhibit, we went upstairs and entered the exhibit on stadiums (stadia?) throughout the ages. As you entered, there were some statues of some of baseball’s most famous and flamboyant fans.
Among these are Hilda Chester, one of the most enthusiastic and loudest of the Dodger fans from their days in Ebbets Field. Per the sign, she was given her signature cowbell after a heart attack (somewhat) curtailed her yelling ability.
Home plate from and a panorama of Ebbets Field, the cozy bandbox in which the Brooklyn Dodgers played from when it opened in 1913 through their last Brooklyn season in 1957.
Cracker Jack and Cracker Jack-related paraphernalia. An essential ballpark snack.
The Phillie Phanatic, one of the oldest and best known of baseball’s ballpark mascots. Currently in mourning.
World Series rings over the years. They seem to keep getting larger.
The last exhibit we saw had a little locker for memorabilia/paraphernalia from each team, including some very recent ones. The Mets section included Mr. Met’s trumpet from 2022, used when Edwin Diaz entered the game with his theme song “Narco” by Timmy Trumpet and Blasterjaxx.
Coming up next, the plaque room…
Trivia Man
For some reason i cant link it, but look for song of Danny Kaye dong D-O-D-G-E-R-S, the epitome to me of a baseball game.
Thanks for the peek, some day i hope to hit the Hall.
Mark Field
WAR is not very hard to understand in concept. I’ll give a somewhat simplified explanation.
An average baseball game score is 5-4; that’s generally true across time though there are periods of high offense and low offense, but *on average* that’s pretty close. That translates to roughly 10 runs per win.
An average team will win 81 games (half of a season of 162 games), by definition (it would have been 77 games before 1961/2 when teams played 154 game seasons). It turns out you can estimate the number of extra wins by good teams by taking the difference between the runs they score and the runs they allow and dividing by 10. Thus, a top team might score 200 more runs than it allows and win 20 games more than average, or 101. Again, these are averages and there will be individual exceptions.
Now we get to WAR. WAR makes the same basic assumption for players as for teams: it takes 10 runs to equal an extra win. In this case, though, it’s not “extra above average”, it’s extra above a defined “replacement” level. A replacement level player is one who’s freely available and about equal to a Triple A talent. A team made up of such players might win just 40 games or so, but while that’s historically bad, it’s still about 25% of the games played. WAR uses “replacement level” to rank how much beyond that a player contributes: Wins *Above Replacement*.
In order to do that, the idea is to add up all the positives and negatives a player has — how many hits, the kinds of hits, how many stolen bases, how many caught stealing, how many putouts or assists on defense, etc. If you add all those up for the entire league, you can then estimate how many runs score as a result of a stolen base (about .25), how many from a single (about .33; turns out a walk is NOT as good as a hit:)), and so forth. Now go back to your individual player and add all those up. That will tell you how many wins that player contributed above the replacement level: WAR.
A couple of important things to keep in mind:
I’ve left out all the calculations and lots of the issues that people have dealt with over the years to get to where we are today, but I hope the basic idea is pretty easy to understand.
Anonymous At Work
THE quote about Tony Gwynn,
“Sometimes hitters can pick up differences in spin. They can identify pitches if there are different release points or if a curveball starts with an upward hump as it leaves the pitcher’s hand. But if a pitcher can change speeds, every hitter is helpless, limited by human vision. Except for that (expletive) Tony Gwynn.” -Greg Maddux
Trivia Man
@Mark Field: tell me more**
**while I sidle over to the door leading to my escape
Trivia Man
@Trivia Man: that is a good explanation. WAR came after my deep baseball interest but this is helpful to understand current conversations
rikyrah
This is one of the trips that I wish I had taken with my parents – both baseball fanatics.
Not that I like baseball, but, I wish I could have seen it through their eyes.
Hungry Joe
Tony Gwynn was also a great basketball player. He STILL holds the San Diego State record for career assists.
Captain C
@Hungry Joe: I seem to recall reading that Tony Gwynn had more assists in his college basketball career (3 or 4 seasons) than strikeouts in his pro baseball career (20 or so seasons). He also seems to have been a very decent human being. Gone far too soon.
Captain C
@rikyrah: I wish you could have too. I think that’s one reason why Dame N enjoyed this trip so much; she had her baseball fanatic boyfriend to share his enthusiam and knowledge.
Captain C
@Mark Field:
That was a very good explanation, but this:
Is the kind of thing that you could get the evil kidnapping sabermetricians to argue over to cover your escape :^).
Captain C
@Anonymous At Work: I love this quote. Maddux may have been the most intelligent pitcher to ever play the game; his opponents were probably grateful he didn’t have peak Randy Johnson or Pedro Martinez stuff to go with his command, late-breaking pitches, and craftiness.
Captain C
@Trivia Man: You’re welcome! It’s definitely worth the visit. Cooperstown itself it a pretty nice small town too.
Mark Field
@Captain C: Oh, they’d agree even if they’re evil. They just think a walk is better than an out. :)