Looking at Albert Pujols' long-term future — he could be an all-time leader

Now that Pujols appears to be over most of his plantar fasciitis problems, and hitting like something near the 2011 version of Pujols (sorry, Arte Moreno and Mike Scioscia, you're not getting the 2008 version or whatever back), where will he wind up in terms of career numbers? I'm noting that, with Josh Hamilton back by the end of this month, and hopefully batting reasonably well for the 3.5 years he has remaining with the Haloes, and Mike Trout there for years to come, this is based on a modest-to-moderate normal career decline arc through 2016, gaining some speed in 2017-2018, and arcing downward more for his last three seasons, albeit offset by playing more at DH.

So, here's some tentative predictions as to where he'll finish on some counting, and sabermetric, numbers in relation to Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and others, whether great classic figures of the past or people with some "help" in more recent years.

That includes noting that he has an outside shot at becoming the all-time leader on at least one counting stat.

First, slugging percentage. Pujols is currently seventh. I expect him to fall no lower than No. 11, staying ahead of current No. 12, Miguel Cabrera, and possibly just to ninth, ahead of current No. 10 Joe DiMaggio. That would still leave him above the majority of people on the list above.

Park-adjusted OPS+ is a good all-around measure of a player. Pujols is currently 10th, at 165. Aaron and DiMaggio are among a group tied for 22nd at 155. Cabrera and Joey Votto are among those tied for 25th, one point lower. Ed Dehalanty is 30th at 152. I certainly don't see Pujols going lower than that.

Next? Total bases, where Pujols is No. 50, with just over 4,450. A strong, but not overly aggressive prediction of 1,950 for the rest of his career gives him 6,400, behind only Aaron. Even a conservative estimate of 1,680, or 225 per year, which he's easily done every non-injury year, still puts him ahead of Musial in the No. 2 slot. (And yes, Stan Musial is No. 2 in career total bases; I just wish more semi-casual, but semi-serious, baseball fans would see this and recognize just how damned good he was.)

In RBIs, Pujols is 49th. He's 773 behind Aaron, 690 behind Ruth and 651 551 behind No. 3 Cap Anson. An output of 90 RBIs per season for the rest of this year and the next 7 full seasons left on his contract would put him past Ruth.  With 85 or so ribbies, he's past Anson, at least. We'll put him there, with a shot at Ruth. He can get just under 70 per year and pass Bonds into No. 4, which seems it should be no problem. (Per the commenter, thanks for the catch on the math on Anson. It still will be somewhat of a sled to catch Anson.)

And, finally, Pujols has a semi-reasonable shot at becoming the career leader on one list. That's if he can get about 430 more total extra base hits.

As of early May, he was 25th on the career list, 428 behind Aaron and 391 behind Bonds. If he has 58 extra base hits the rest of this year, for 76 on the season, that leaves 360 in the next seven years. Just 52 extra-base hits a year puts him past Aaron.

Possible? Yes, but not easy. For obvious reasons, I'm not going to look at Bonds.

A few others:
Aaron had 318 extra base hits his last seven years
Musial: 291
Mays: 275
Ruth (not counting his partial year in 1935): 495.

However, especially with not counting 1935, Ruth's career ended three years earlier than those other gents. For his last four full seasons, he had 240 extra-base hits. But, 47 a year over three more extrapolated years would put him at the 380 mark.

So, it's possible. And, just 46 extra-base hits per year after this year puts him after Bonds.

Baseball fans, where were you on Aaron-watch 40 years ago?

Hank Aaron, April 8, 1974.

April 8, 1975 was when Hank Aaron passed Babe Ruth with homer 715, and became the new all-time home run champion.

And now, 40 years later, it's time for reminiscing.

First, on the personal side. People under 40 aren't familiar with what sports coverage was like before the proliferation of sports-specific cable channels. WGN, WTBS, and KTLA in Los Angeles were some sort of "superstations," but none of them yet had true nationwide reach.

Growing up in western New Mexico, we got KTLA as part of our basic (there was no premium) cable package, in part because the Albuquerque Dukes were the L.A. Dodgers' AAA farm club. (I still can't get used to the name of the new team, the Albuquerque Isotopes.)  So, I heard Vin Scully on Dodgers games, as that was their home TV station. And, on some nights, all the way in Gallup, N.M., this Cards fan could pick up KMOX, a radio superstation, and hear the gravelly voice of Jack Buck calling Redbirds games.

Otherwise, you watched NBC for your national games of the week on Monday night; NBC had junked Saturday baseball and did only Monday night games, until it and ABC split rights in 1976 and NBC moved to Saturdays.

And fortunately for all of us, including the gracious-in-infamy table-setting pitcher, Al Downing, that game was on NBC on Monday night.



And, we get Curt Gowdy, not as gravelly as Buck, but enough. (I'm old enough to remember a fair chunk of Gowdy's broadcasting, and not just MLB. No, he wasn't Vin Scully. But, he wasn't as bad as some people make him out to be.)

I was 10 years old, and already then, an avid baseball fan in general, and Cards' fan above all, then a Dodgers fan of sorts after that.

Listening to different "calls" of the game, I also forgot that the Dodgers actually tried 1986 World Series goat Bill Buckner in the outfield; he was the left fielder who watched the ball go out. (And, he was kind of crappy as a defensive outfielder way back then.) And, Tom House, in the Braves' bullpen, had a magic glove, for a magic moment.

For additional calls? You can hear Scully, since he was the Dodgers' guy, and Milo Hamilton, the Braves' broadcaster, as well as Gowdy:



As for Aaron? As the AP story and many others note, he was relieved rather than jubilant. A boatload of racist hate mail had accumulated ever since he ended 1973 with 713 home runs. The two white fans who ran on the field during his home run trot certainly didn't help his nerves, or the moment in general.

Per this piece:

“If I were a white man, all America would be proud of me,” Aaron was quoted as saying. “But I’m black. You have to be black in America to know how sick some people are. I’ve always thought racism a problem, even with as much progress as America has made.”

Sadly, he was right then. Sadly, there's still a fair amount of rightness in those words 40 years later.

It seems 40 years is about right for such reminiscing, as it was for Apollo 11. You knew that everybody was aging enough that waiting until the 50th was too long. But, on the other hand, the 25th might seem too soon. With Apollo, there was the risk of it being triumphalist, coming soon after the downfall of the Soviet Union.

With Aaron, there was the risk that we didn't yet know how hard it might be to pass him. And, speaking of ...

Not only did Aaron become the new home run champion 40 years ago, he still is, in my book.

Sorry, Barry Bonds, you're not. And, Father Time is making sure Alex Rodriguez won't pass either of you. As for you ESPN writers who claim that the "greenies" Aaron may have taken can add just as much to one's batting as the best steroids? Sorry, Jim Bouton has already emphatically said you're wrong.

To his eternal credit ... Bouton not only disagreed, but got it exactly right. Some day, he says in the interview, baseball will have to reckon with years and years of records that will be artificially inflated, distorted beyond all measure, by the effects of a drug that lets you keep working out when the guys next to you – or before you, chronologically – have to drop the barbell. It was Bouton, after all, who had written in the eternal Ball Four that if a pitcher could take a pill that guaranteed him a) 20 wins and b) that he’d die five years sooner, he would’ve swallowed it before you finished that “b)” part.

Aaron himself was ... circumspect seven years ago, but it's clear that he's not totally on board with Bonds' claims, either. (And, while it's an overrated stat of the past, Aaron is still the all-time RBI leader.) And, a favorite player of mine, and presumed non-roider? Albert Pujols is likely also to fall short, though he may nick the 700 ticker tape before moving off the field.

And, he's not alone. Per this story, other players, like Ken Singleton, still consider Hank the champ.

It's hard comparing eras, and comparing hypotheticals, too. Would Ruth still be the all-time leader if he hadn't started his career as a pitcher? Would Ted Williams have passed Ruth before Aaron did, if not for three full years, and most of two others, of military duty in two wars? I'll put at least 50-50 odds if not better on a "yes" on that. On the other hand, without playing in The House that Ruth Built and Fenway, would their stats be different? What about Willie Mays missing all of one year and most of another in the military? I'll give you 50-50 on that, too, or near to it. Or Mickey Mantle having good bones and knees? I'll say "possible," while noting we're in a wider territory of hypotheticals now. (That said, Teddy Ballgame had his own bits of fragility; no guaranteeing he would have held up for 22 years.)

Others?

Sadaharu Oh, with his 868 homers and all? He had a nice passing of Aaron, but he never made that claim himself to be the greatest home run masher ever. Josh Gibson? Great player. Did he hit 800 HRs of the wildest of tales or not? Not in official games, to be sure; we do know that his 80-HR season included barnstorming games and more, and even then may be a myth. We do know that it was against outclassed competition, because progenitors of the racists who sent Aaron death threats wouldn't let him play in the major leagues.

Unfortunately, this is all part of the 40 years of reflection, as well. So is the diminishing number of American blacks playing baseball, though it continues to draw Hispanics, including Caribbean blacks and browns, and Asians, and a few Europeans, even. With all that, even if it's not America's game, anymore, it's still all-American in its own way.

Now, if umps would only enforce 20-second pitch counts. That said, the record-setter game, a 7-4 Braves win, clocked at 2:27, while the Cardinals' April 6, 2014 2-1 loss to the Pirates, with about the same amount of pitching changes, but a lower score, came in at 2:29.

Reading about Willie, and Mickey ... and the Hammer

Sorry, I've not come across a Duke Snider biography.

That said, I have recently read new biographies of (from oldest to newest) Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Henry Aaron.

Overall, from oldest to newest, they descended from best to worst.

On Amazon, I gave the Mays bio five stars, the Mantle one four, and the Aaron one, "The Last Hero," three.

From: "Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend"

I feel a bit of sadness about Willie, having read this book, the same sadness I had as a 9-year-old in 1973, watching him stumble when rounding second, trying to go from first to third on a single, in the 1973 World Series, and having to crawl back to second.

Whether due more to innate personality tendencies, his own reactions to segregation in his native Alabama in general, or associated with baseball, his family of origin, or a combination of this and more, it's sad that he doesn't open up even more.

And while I, being Caucasian, am in no position to judge Willie on his activism in civil rights, and agree with him that we don't all have the same temperament, Hirsch does show how Robinson and Aaron could wish so hard for more from him and be frustrated he didn't give that. ...

But, the not opening up is itself part of Mays. Hirsch also does a good job of showing how Mays, in his own quiet way, refuted or rejected various stereotypes.

From "The Last Boy" review:

Specifically, the one major new thing in this bio — Mantle's childhood sexual abuse suffering — is exactly what (Mantle hagiographers) most object to, and what I find one of the strengths of the book. That said, because Leavy chooses NOT to write a more traditional, fully chronological biography, we don't get this information until near the end of the book. Too close to the end, in my opinion; Leavy, without a chronological style, could still have introduced it near the start of Mantle's post-playing life, rather than when the book is 90 percent done. And then, she could have built on it more, more thoroughly interweaving it with his womanizing and his alcoholism.

From "The Last Hero" review, talking about Howard Bryant's authorial style:

Third, is the "Henry" style. Howard Bryant, serious baseball fans know Aaron went by "Henry" and not "Hank." To call everybody else by last name, but throughout the whole book, call Aaron "Henry," "Henry," "Henry" became annoying. It then rose to irritating, and even a bit beyond that.

Fourth, if you're going to do that, apply it similarly to other ballplayers. Calling Dick Allen "Richie"? MAJOR faux pas.

Fifth, why is he "The Last Hero"? Yes, publishers often have the final say on book titles, but I suspect this one came from Bryant. Is it because he got the home run record without roiding? Is it because he was the last player from the "semi-pioneering" age of African-American ballplayers? We're never clearly told.

Anyway, even Bryant's bio is worth a read.

Mickey Mantle, JFK and recent book reviews

Here's sneak peeks at some recent Amazon reviews.

First, Mickey Mantle:

"The Last Boy" is a borderline 4/5 star book in my estimation, and, could easily be bumped downward, were it not for all the 1- and 2-star reviews who can't seem to think of Mantle as anything short of God. I was going to 5-star it, but then moved back to 4 ...

Specifically, the one major new thing in this bio -- Mantle's childhood sexual abuse suffering -- is exactly what they most object to, and what I find one of the strengths of the book. That said, because Leavy chooses NOT to write a more traditional, fully chronological biography, we don't get this information until near the end of the book. Too close to the end, in my opinion; Leavy, without a chronological style, could still have introduced it near the start of Mantle's post-playing life, rather than when the book is 90 percent done. And then, she could have built on it more, more thoroughly interweaving it with his womanizing and his alcoholism.

Speaking of, that's her major sociological error. AA is NOT the only way to get support to quit drinking, and I hope that Ms. Leavy doesn't perpetuate that myth in another book about a hero with feet of clay. There are plenty of "secular" sobriety support groups out there. I suspect that AA influenced how Leavy viewed the sober Mantle in general.

On to environmental issues:

I've often thought of the tragedy of Marc Reisner dying fairly young. I have no doubt he would have written a third edition of Cadillac Desert, had he lived long enough to have the hard science on global warming issues that we're getting today.

Well, short of that, we have James Powell writing "Dead Pool," a worthy successor to both that and Donald Worster's "Rivers of Empire."

Finally, refuting JFK assassination conspiracy theories:

First, "The Kennedy Detail" doesn't claim to be a "tell-all."Nor does it claim to be historical in the sense of an exhaustive investigation.

That said, NOTHING, not even a voice from Sinai with two tablets in hand, will satisfy conspiracy theorist. And, Jerry Blaine, in discussing how the rise of the Camelot myth/story is part of what drives many conspiracy theorists - simply being unable to believe a lone gunman could topple Camelot - knows this.

What this book does give you is the most thorough, and most honest, in-depth discussion of the JFK assassination from multiple members of the Presidential Detail.

Jerry Blaine never specifically says he had this book put in the third-person to avoid putting too much spotlight on himself, but that may be part of why.

The "star" of the book is Clint Hill, talking in print in detail for the first time since the assassination. Hill, wracked for years by guilt at a high level even among the Secret Service, had been the chief agent for Jackie Kennedy, and the agent seen leaping, but just too late to save Jack, on the back of the presidential limousine.