Skip to main content /SHOWBIZ
CNN.com /SHOWBIZ
SERVICES
CNN TV
EDITIONS



Giving baseball a different spin

Allen Barra debates the game in 'Clearing the Bases'

Giving baseball a different spin


By Todd Leopold
CNN

(CNN) -- Some people grow up in a Jewish household. Others in a Protestant household. Allen Barra grew up in a Willie Mays household.

The Wall Street Journal and Salon.com columnist, author of the new book "Clearing the Bases: The Greatest Baseball Debates of the Last Century" (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press), says his home was devoted to baseball.

"We weren't strictly Catholic, but we were strictly Mays fans," he says in a phone interview from his home in South Orange, New Jersey. "We'd go to Mass, then check the box scores. Our lives were dictated by what Mays was up to."

Which made it all the more painful when Barra, trying to settle the Mays-Mickey Mantle who's-the-better-player debate in his book, finally decided on the New York Yankees slugger.

Mantle, Barra says, was judged too often on what he might have been rather than what he accomplished -- yet many of his achievements put him ahead of Mays, especially during the players' primes.

SIDEBAR
If Allen Barra were the king of baseball 
 
MORE STORIES
Technology takes the mound 
Bill James: Baseball not just by the numbers 
An all-star lineup of baseball books 
For all your All-Star Game coverage, turn to CNNSI.com 
 

But the author doesn't hold it against Mantle, whom he describes as a "secondary god" in his east-central New Jersey household. And the slugger's 1995 death highlighted the importance of baseball to America, Barra adds.

Mantle's death moved grown men to tears because of the emotional investment many make with their favorite players and teams, watching them through a long, sometimes exhausting 162-game season, over and over again, for years on end.

"Baseball has the impact of no other sport," Barra says.

Standing up for Juan Marichal

In "Clearing the Bases," Barra has chosen to spotlight some of the great debates in the game's history: who's better, what if, the oft-ignored.

Barra likes to turn conventional wisdom on its head, as he does in the opening chapter, an essay on Babe Ruth in which the author takes issue with several myths surrounding the Sultan of Swat. Ruth wasn't the savior of baseball, Barra asserts, nor was he a great all-around player. (His baserunning was poor, and he was only an average fielder.)

Babe Ruth
Barra takes on some Babe Ruth myths in "Clearing the Bases."  

Barra also delves into the Sandy Koufax-Bob Gibson-Juan Marichal debate revolving around the three great '60s National League pitchers. Marichal always seems to draw the short straw in that contest, the perceptions of his ability overwhelmed by Koufax's six-year stretch of sustained excellence and Gibson's World Series triumphs.

"Left out [of that equation] is that Marichal was the greatest gate attraction in baseball for eight or nine years," Barra says, not to mention that the stats of the Giants pitcher put him right there with his Dodgers and Cardinals contemporaries.

Marichal is underrated, Barra continues, partly because injuries robbed him of a long career, but mostly because of the 1965 incident in which the pitcher clubbed Dodgers catcher John Roseboro with a baseball bat.

"If that hadn't happened, he would have been" a shoo-in for legendary status, Barra says.

In "Clearing the Bases," Barra also takes a look at the 1986 New York Mets, "The Dynasty That Never Was"; the man he chooses as the player of the century (hint: He played third base for the Philadelphia Phillies); and why pitchers seldom go nine innings anymore. He also examines issues from other sports, such as Don Shula's NFL coaching reputation.

Slamming contraction

Bud Selig
Contraction, supported by Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, is a "silly thing," says Barra.  

Barra saves some of his most pointed comments for an issue that dominates baseball today: competitive balance.

"Only in baseball is competitive balance an issue," he says. "Nobody says we should restructure the NBA because the Lakers win every year or dismantle college football [because certain teams dominate]."

The Yankees, winners of four of the last six World Series, may have built their dynasty through some big-name free agent signings, he says, "but also through smarts."

The team developed much of its talent, such as Bernie Williams and Derek Jeter, in its farm system, and claimed players such as Robin Ventura for a song, Barra notes.

And contraction, the buzzword in Commissioner Bud Selig's office, is a "silly thing," Barra says. "It has nothing to do with solving the ills affecting Major League baseball." (For more of Barra's thoughts, see sidebar.)

Barra's obvious inspiration is Bill James, but he says he didn't start reading James' work, such as the seasonal and historical "Abstracts," until the mid-1980s. By that time, Barra already had been doing a "Football by the Numbers" column for The Village Voice for several years.

Still, he credits James with helping to build an interest in new ways of looking at baseball.

"Bill is the story behind what we're doing," he says, adding that he still enjoys reading James. "When I read Bill, I'm reading something that's lucid."

Derek Jeter
Some of Barra's favorite recent memories involve Derek Jeter's outstanding defense in the 2000 and 2001 postseason.  

Meanwhile, there's always the game itself, full of rich memories. For Barra, these include being a spectator at Game 1 of the 1963 World Series in which Koufax struck out 15 Yankees; Game 4 of the 1993 World Series, a wild 15-14 contest won by the Toronto Blue Jays ("Everything seemed to rise, rise, rise," Barra says); and watching Jeter make his great plays in the 2000 and 2001 World Series.

In fact, plays like Jeter's show that a book such as "Clearing the Bases" can't do the intangibles justice, Barra says.

"The book attempts to see how far" statistics can be taken, he says. But when it comes to a great, heads-up defensive play, it shows "you don't see everything."



 
 
 
 



RELATED SITE:
Note: Pages will open in a new browser window
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.

ENTERTAINMENT TOP STORIES:

 Search   

Back to the top