David Cooper - phenom

This article (commenting on how, basically, all major league players start of as shortstops when they're kids) reminded of a chapter in ‘Fever Pitch’ (excellent soccer book, not crappy baseball movie) that goes through the numbers of exactly how mind-bendingly awesome of a baseball player you have to be before you can SUCK LIKE A WHIRLWIND at a major league level. The fact they’re all shortstops is a symptom of that.

So (because I feel like writing an essay), if we use David Cooper as our symbol of an archetypal ‘not very good’ major league player:

• There are 750 players on the major league rosters (25 man).
• There are 11.5 million baseball players of all ages in the USA alone. Perhaps double that worldwide.

Therefore a generous estimate is that for every 15,333 player who pick up a bat, David Cooper will have been better than all of them. A fairer global number might be nearer 30,000. And not just a bit better. He will have been incredibly, mind-blowingly better than nearly all of them. He will have been the best player his high school ever saw, by a huge margin.

In fact, Cooper went to a good baseball school, that’s had at least 8 players drafted (thanks Baseball Reference), in the perhaps one of if not the best places in the world to grow up if you want to get drafted (California), but Cooper was much better than any of those earlier high school stars had been. Probably outstandingly better. Only one other person made it from his school to the MLB – who played in a total of 26 games over two seasons.

In fact there’s evidence of how good Cooper was: http://www.lodinews.com/sports/article_ff187a90-42a8-11e1-b3d0-0019bb2963f4.html?mode=image&photo=1

Then, he went to college, posting .359/.449/.682 with 19 home runs and 55 RBIs in his junior year, got drafted high (one behind Brett Lawrie) and stormed through the minor leagues, breaking records and winning titles.

In other words, the guy has never known anything but success at everything he’s done in baseball. By any normal criteria, he is more than a phenomenon. David Cooper is, as far as people like me are concerned, as close to the perfect baseball machine as I am ever likely to encounter.

But David Cooper is not very good. David Cooper’s career was being written off by most even before he got to the major league level, and he’s done nothing much to alter anybody’s opionion of him since he arrived.

Why? He’s ‘weak’ defensively (by which we mean he’s incredibly strong and talented defensively, but not quite as good as about 500 other people in the known universe), and doesn’t hit with enough power to be a first baseman (by which we mean he hits with a huge and astonishing amount of power, but not as much as the 30-40 other people in the entire universe who also are not great defenively, and who are therefore competing for first base/DH jobs).

All of which qualifies me, an out-of-condition, fat, middle-aged ass sitting at home, to say:

a) Cooper, you suck.
b) What moron ever drafted that piece of useless shit.

Life is not fair.

Burn Down the Hall of Fame

All round good-egg and thinking-man's jock Stephen Brunt commented on the Clemens/Steroid/Hall of Fame issue yesterday, saying "Halls of fame aren’t churches. No one is asking anyone to declare Clemens a saint."

But the problem is, it is. MLB and baseball writers have made it that since the beginning. Although the Hall may be full of cheats and bums, they are cheats and bums whose dark sides were often hidden from the public during their careers. The writers, at least until Jim Bouton's 'Ball Four', conspired to protect fans from the truth about ballplayers, because it was deemed too corrupting to our sensitive souls.

American Heroes with Feet of Clay

The Hall of Fame was designed to be a Hall of American Heroes who happened to be successful athletes as well. That's why Shoeless Joe is not there; that's why Pete Rose is not there. The movement that will try to keep out Bonds and Clemens out (and I suspect eventually fail) is the last dieing gasp of American Baseball Hero-worship, whereby a player's moral cleanliness was as important as his athletic performance.

The writers have always known it was baloney - they were always complicit in covering up the cheats, drug abusers, philanderers, peeping-toms and drunkards. But as long as that was all hidden, everything still worked. Players were exemplars for American youth, symbols of moral and physical purity and the American Way, and the myth that anybody can achieve their dreams if they just try hard enough. Was any baseball journalist surprised or appalled that Alex Rodriguez visited a strip club in Toronto? I doubt it. They were surprised and appalled because it was reported.

The players have never been hypocrites. From the dawn of baseball they've done what humans do - they've cheated and striven for success at any cost; they've been human and frail and weak; they've combined incredible physical success with awful personal failures. When faced with a sport that preferred to turn a blind eye, they've done what competitive people will always do - made the most of it.

The real sinners here are in the Commissioner's Office and the Baseball Writers of America - just as they have been ever since Baseball became a symbol for America. It's their collective work of fiction - the Baseball Hall of Fame - that is the problem. Burn it down.