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| Thursday, September 7 | |||||||||
| Not the right kind of glory ESPN.com | |||||||||
You've got Carlos Delgado and his Triple Crown chase. You've got Todd
Helton and his pursuit of Ted Williams.
You've got Braves-Mets. And Mariners-A's. And that madcap AL wild-card
race.
But if you think that's all you've got going as baseball roars down the
September backstretch, you've been reading way too many headlines and not
enough fine print.
But here in this corner of ESPN.com, we're equal-opportunity chroniclers
of the baseball scene. So here's a look at some of the less-glorious feats
being pursued this September:
It may have been 33 years since the last Triple Crown winner. But it has been almost that long since Bobby Bonds set the single-season strikeout record of 189 in 1970. Yet even in an age in which striking out has become trendier than "Survivor," Bonds' record has lasted through the years. But it's under some big-time assaults now, all right -- from Florida's very own human air conditioner, Preston Wilson. Now don't get us wrong. We love Preston Wilson. We love the way he plays. We'll take his 104 RBI and his 33 stolen bases on our team any time. We even share the same birthday. But history is history. And this guy has "Thomas Jefferson" (or maybe "Stanley Jefferson") written all over him. He had struck out 167 times through Labor Day -- meaning he needed 23 whiffs in Florida's last 26 games to break Bonds' record. Can he make it? Here are the pertinent facts: Big Mac got hurt. Slammin' Sammy got distracted by trade rumors. So we interrupt the regularly scheduled Great Home Run Race, normally visited in this space this time of year, for a different Great Home Run Race.
Since 1980, when Oakland legend Brian Kingman became the last pitcher to lose 20 games, we've had 62 20-game winners, four 60-homer men, three 40-40 men, 43 no-hitters and seven perfect games. Which tells you that losing 20 in one season must be harder than it looks. "Before I did it," said Kingman, who has become the ultimate authority on the biggest achievement of his career, "there was a 20-game loser almost every year. In fact, 1945 and '46 and 1958 and '59 were the only times that there were even two seasons in a row without one. Now we've gone 20 consecutive years since I did it. So go figure." Yeah, go figure. There's a stigma attached to losing 20 now that didn't exist when Kingman did it. But that's fine with him. This is one claim to fame he isn't anxious to lose, no matter how dubious a claim to fame it might be. But now, all of a sudden, his celebrity status is in serious jeopardy. Omar Daal has been reeling off losses with remarkable regularity -- and is now up to 17 of them. Daal is a scary 3-17, which would rank as the fifth-worst winning percentage of the last half-century among pitchers with that many losses if he headed home today. What makes this interesting, though, is that Daal isn't heading home today. He's heading back to the mound five more times, in theory. Which gives him a strong shot at losing 20. Except here's the Phillies' dilemna: They traded Curt Schilling for this guy. Do they really want to let him lose 20 games? For now, they're saying they intend to keep running him out there. But will they still be saying that if he gets to 19? When Minnesota's Scott Erickson got to 19 losses in 1993 and went to the mound the final weekend with a shot to get to 20, Kingman went to a sports bar, feeling, he said, like a man "on trivia death row." Well, he's not on death row yet this year. But he could sure use a phone call from the governor. All we can suggest is: Stay tuned. The other 30-30 club No one disputes that Troy Glaus has had a terrific year. But he's on the verge of joining a club full of many prestigious members -- all of whom were trying to avoid this particular brand of prestige. It's the 30-30 Club -- but not that one. This club is 30 homers and 30 errors in the same season. Glaus sealed the 30-homer portion of this thing long ago. In fact, he's up to 40, breaking Reginald M. Jackson's all-time Angels home-run record. That's good. But he's now up to 27 errors, bringing him within three E's of becoming the eighth member of that other 30-30 Club. That's not so good. Of course, four of the current members are Hall of Famers: Rogers Hornsby (39 homers, 34 errors in 1929, 42 HR and 30 E in 1922), Ernie Banks (47 HR, 32 E in 1958), Harmon Killebrew (42 HR, 30 E in 1959) and Tony Perez (40 HR and 35 E in 1970, 37 HR and 32 E in 1969). So that sounds better. And the other three members aren't exactly nobodies, either. There's Davey Johnson (43 HR, 30 E in 1973). There's Pedro Guerrero (32 HR, 30 E in 1983). And there's the most recent man to join this group -- Howard Johnson, who actually founded the 30-30-30 Club in 1991 (38 homers, 31 errors and 30 steals). So if it means anything, Troy Glaus, at least this is better company than hanging out in the same group as, say, Larvell Blanks, Bombo Rivera and Pepe Frias. By the way, back when HoJo was on the verge of joining the club, the Mets actually tried moving him to right field once he got to 29 errors, purely in an attempt to keep him out of the 30-30 neighborhood. But not even that could prevent that 30th error. So if the Angels are thinking of evasive action in Glaus' case, we suggest they think DH, where not even Jose Canseco has made any errors. Basement races We've often observed that not all the drama in baseball is at the top of the standings. We can't ignore the bottom of the standings, where three sensational races for last place are currently raging. There's the AL East, where the Devil Rays continue to hold off the Orioles by four games, thanks to three crucial head-to-head losses in Baltimore a week and a half ago. There's the NL East, where the Phillies have practically gone wire-to-wire but the fast-closing Expos (31-61 since May 23, 9-30 since July 23) have closed to within a game. And there's the wildest basement race of them all -- in the NL Central, where four teams are within two games of each other. The Astros just went back over the bottom Monday, thanks to a collapse by the Pirates, who lost their hold on the basement by inexplicably winning four in a row on the west coast. And here come the Cubbies. Chicago, Pittsburgh and Houston are tied in the All Unimportant Win Column (at 58), with the Brewers two out. And in a dramatic quirk of scheduling those four teams play each other on the final weekend (Cubs-Pirates, Brewers-Astros). So we could break into your regular programming at any time for that battle. Then again, maybe not. Jayson Stark is a senior writer at ESPN.com. | ALSO SEE Jayson Stark archive Chat wrap: Jayson Stark Off Base: It's all about September AUDIO/VIDEO   Jayson Stark talks with Trey Wingo on SportsCenter.RealVideo: ISDN | T1 | ||||||||
