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Currently at Toronto Pearson: 0. That's where it's been for 24 of the last 25 hours, with light on-again-off-again marginally freezing rain.
I think often of something they used to say about Mats Sundin: whenever things were going badly with the Leafs, what he would have to say about it was "I've got to be better." Here are Mats Sundin's point totals for the twelve full seasons he played for the Leafs: 83, 94, 74, 83, 73, 74, 80, 72, 75, 78, 76, 78. That is some uncanny consistency. What it suggests to me is that Mats Sundin never could have been better. Because he always wanted to be better, he was always the best he could be.
You know what "clutch performers" are? People who don't always try as hard as they can. (Or, well, flukes. David Ortiz, I just don't know.)
A few weeks ago I happened to come across my long-lost copy of George F. Will's Men at Work, so I could finally look up that thing about Andre Dawson that I was trying to quote from memory back here. It turns out I'd gotten a couple of different stories, on consecutive pages, mixed up. The funny thing is, for a long time I remembered it being Tony La Russa who had said "he was playing hard" about Dawson's risking injury in a "meaningless" situation, but I knew La Russa was never Dawson's manager (and an opposing manager would have no call to comment) so that didn't make sense. Actually, on the previous page, there's this:
Standing in the manager's office in Baltimore's Memorial Stadium late on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of June, 1989, and in the dishevelment of a man eager to get out of uniform and out of town, Tony La Russa, manager of the Oakland Athletics, was being asked why the Orioles, recently such lowly wretches, were playing so well. They had just beaten the Athletics three times in three days. What was the secret? Was it pitching? Defense? Neither, said La Russa, his natural curtness now compounded with impatience at journalistic obtuseness. The secret, he said, clipping every word like a fuse, is no secret. It is at the core of all baseball success. It is intensity: "They are playing hard."
So, the Dawson story:
When asked after the game why he would risk injuries in those situations when the outcome of the game was not in doubt, Dawson replied laconically, "Because the ball was in play." Dawson probably found the question unintelligible. The words and syntax were clear enough but the questioner obviously was oblivious to the mental (and moral) world of a competitor like Dawson.... Baseball heroism is not a matter of flashes of brilliance; rather, it is the quality of (in John Updike's words) "the players who always care, about themselves and their craft."
It might as well be said that, of course, George F. Will is better known as a "conservative" columnist, and there is some good deal of "conservative" mythologizing going on here. The Orioles lost 107 games in 1988; in 1989, they won 87, and took the Blue Jays down to the wire for the AL East division title. In 1990, they sank back beneath the waves. It's very easy to say that it's unlikely that the difference between the 1989 Orioles and the 1988/1990 Orioles was how hard they played. Jeff Ballard was an excellent major league pitcher for one year in his life, and it was 1989. I don't know what happened to him in 1990, but it wasn't very likely that he "wanted it less". Then again, something might've gotten into his head. God knows something has gotten into Rickey Romero's head--he throws as hard as he ever did; nothing has gone physically wrong with him at all, but he used to be a fine major league pitcher, and now he's a lousy AAA pitcher--and at this point it'll be a shock to everyone if it ever gets out. There's been a running joke among commentators on the Drunk Jays Fans blog about how it all started when Miss America dumped him, but that joke isn't funny anymore.
Anyway--I was reminded of Mats again a few weeks ago when Roy Halladay signed his one-day contract with the Jays, so that he would retire a Blue Jay. Which was nice and all (though, you know, if I was a Phillies fan, I guess I'd be a bit pissed off about it), but: he forced a trade out of here, because he wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, and win. (Everyone seemed to think it was great when Ray Bourque won the cup with Colorado, but it looked hollow to me, even if it didn't to him: Ray Bourque was a Bruin, and that cup he won with Colorado just wasn't his.) Mats Sundin vetoed a trade out of here because he didn't want to win except with his boys.
And, of course, he never did win with his boys. His boys were just never good enough, and he couldn't be better, because he was as good as he could be.
I think often of something they used to say about Mats Sundin: whenever things were going badly with the Leafs, what he would have to say about it was "I've got to be better." Here are Mats Sundin's point totals for the twelve full seasons he played for the Leafs: 83, 94, 74, 83, 73, 74, 80, 72, 75, 78, 76, 78. That is some uncanny consistency. What it suggests to me is that Mats Sundin never could have been better. Because he always wanted to be better, he was always the best he could be.
You know what "clutch performers" are? People who don't always try as hard as they can. (Or, well, flukes. David Ortiz, I just don't know.)
A few weeks ago I happened to come across my long-lost copy of George F. Will's Men at Work, so I could finally look up that thing about Andre Dawson that I was trying to quote from memory back here. It turns out I'd gotten a couple of different stories, on consecutive pages, mixed up. The funny thing is, for a long time I remembered it being Tony La Russa who had said "he was playing hard" about Dawson's risking injury in a "meaningless" situation, but I knew La Russa was never Dawson's manager (and an opposing manager would have no call to comment) so that didn't make sense. Actually, on the previous page, there's this:
Standing in the manager's office in Baltimore's Memorial Stadium late on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of June, 1989, and in the dishevelment of a man eager to get out of uniform and out of town, Tony La Russa, manager of the Oakland Athletics, was being asked why the Orioles, recently such lowly wretches, were playing so well. They had just beaten the Athletics three times in three days. What was the secret? Was it pitching? Defense? Neither, said La Russa, his natural curtness now compounded with impatience at journalistic obtuseness. The secret, he said, clipping every word like a fuse, is no secret. It is at the core of all baseball success. It is intensity: "They are playing hard."
So, the Dawson story:
When asked after the game why he would risk injuries in those situations when the outcome of the game was not in doubt, Dawson replied laconically, "Because the ball was in play." Dawson probably found the question unintelligible. The words and syntax were clear enough but the questioner obviously was oblivious to the mental (and moral) world of a competitor like Dawson.... Baseball heroism is not a matter of flashes of brilliance; rather, it is the quality of (in John Updike's words) "the players who always care, about themselves and their craft."
It might as well be said that, of course, George F. Will is better known as a "conservative" columnist, and there is some good deal of "conservative" mythologizing going on here. The Orioles lost 107 games in 1988; in 1989, they won 87, and took the Blue Jays down to the wire for the AL East division title. In 1990, they sank back beneath the waves. It's very easy to say that it's unlikely that the difference between the 1989 Orioles and the 1988/1990 Orioles was how hard they played. Jeff Ballard was an excellent major league pitcher for one year in his life, and it was 1989. I don't know what happened to him in 1990, but it wasn't very likely that he "wanted it less". Then again, something might've gotten into his head. God knows something has gotten into Rickey Romero's head--he throws as hard as he ever did; nothing has gone physically wrong with him at all, but he used to be a fine major league pitcher, and now he's a lousy AAA pitcher--and at this point it'll be a shock to everyone if it ever gets out. There's been a running joke among commentators on the Drunk Jays Fans blog about how it all started when Miss America dumped him, but that joke isn't funny anymore.
Anyway--I was reminded of Mats again a few weeks ago when Roy Halladay signed his one-day contract with the Jays, so that he would retire a Blue Jay. Which was nice and all (though, you know, if I was a Phillies fan, I guess I'd be a bit pissed off about it), but: he forced a trade out of here, because he wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, and win. (Everyone seemed to think it was great when Ray Bourque won the cup with Colorado, but it looked hollow to me, even if it didn't to him: Ray Bourque was a Bruin, and that cup he won with Colorado just wasn't his.) Mats Sundin vetoed a trade out of here because he didn't want to win except with his boys.
And, of course, he never did win with his boys. His boys were just never good enough, and he couldn't be better, because he was as good as he could be.
