New Poll: 30% Of Yankees Fans Know Nothing About Baseball

During the top of the 6th inning, the YES Network revealed the results of their nightly text poll which asked if viewers thought Ken Griffey Jr. would be a first ballot Hall of Famer or not.

It's a really stupid question, right? I mean, he is one of the guys that gets named when you talk about players who people think almost definitely didn't take performance enhancing drugs, probably the most iconic player of his era, played 22 seasons in the Bigs, made the All-Star team in 13 of them, has 630 home runs, won the 1997 AL MVP, has five more top 5 finishes and won 10 straight Gold Gloves while playing a premium defensive position. He has a better chance of becoming the first unanimus HoF inductee in the history of the game than not getting in on the first ballot.

Uh...

Michael Kay and Al Leiter took the results of the vote to task on air, so I'm not exactly breaking new ground here, but I can certainly use more vulgarity than they did.

Seriously, what the fuck? We think HoF voters are clueless, but if the vote was conducted among people who responded to a YES Network text poll, they would have made him wait an entire year (at the least) to get in because... um... they are fucking clueless?

I think there are a few possibilities here:

• People honestly have no concept of what it takes to get into the HoF and/or Ken Griffey's career because 14 year old kids are the only ones who respond to text polls and they weren't mentally conscious when Griffey was in his prime.
  
  
• It's a small sample size and, as we've delved into before, that sample is badly skewed.
  
  
• They are stupid. No one has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
  
  
• The respondents are only Yankee fans, as opposed to baseball fans. But even still, if the only time you watched Griffey was when he played the Yankees and listened to the broadcast, there's a good chance that one of the announcers - amid the praise the were lavishing upon him over the clip of the home run he stole from Jesse Barfield - specifically referred to him as a "first ballot Hall of Famer".
  
  
• They just pressed the wrong button.
  
  
• Voters are confusing the term "first ballot" with "unanimous". Maybe people have just enough knowledge about the game to know that no one has ever gotten all the vote in their first year of eligibility but don't know the term or aren't paying close enough attention to the question.

It's probably a combination of all of these and some other things that I couldn't think of but I'm leaning towards the last one. One way or another, the results of the voting either illustrate the stupidity of the question or of the sample. Or both.

Al Leiter's Magic Baseball

Top of the 6th inning in YES broadcast booth:

Leiter: Michael, have you ever said to yourself, "Gee, How do those guys do it? It must be hard to be a Major League pitcher".

Kay: Sure, just look at the torque these put on their arms. It's amazing that they can make it through one pitch without getting injured, let alone a whole season, let alone a 19 year career like you, Al.

Leiter: Well, have you ever wished that you were out there on the mound, throwing high heat and snapping off nasty curveballs?

Kay: I used to when I was a boy growing up as a big Yankee fan in the Bronx, sure.

Leiter: Well now you can, with Al Leiter's Magic Baseball®! Here it comes... Nah-na-na-na-na-na-non-on-no-no-on...

Leiter: Watch, this is how you can throw a blazing 87mph fastball like I did when I was playing! You just go like this.

Leiter: And then it's like 'Whooooohhhhssshhhh'...

Leiter: And 'Ssssssssssfffffffvvvvvrrrrrrrmmmmm'...

Leiter: POP! Steeeeeerikkkee threee! YOU'RE OUTTA THERE!!1!1

Did you catch that?

Kay: I did. You apparently struck that batter out with one pitch.

Leiter: Use your imagination, Michael! Did I mention I used to be a Major League pitcher?

Kay: You did, Al. And the 1-0 from Matusz...

Kay: And Gardner swings and misses at a...

Leiter: (/interrupting) Okay, now look at the curve. It comes in like this... 'Peeeeeeeewwwwwwwwww'

Leiter: Then drops off like this 'Kkkkkkkkksssssssssssttttttttt'...

Leiter: And 'Bbbzzzzoooooooommmmmm.... pffffftt'. Steeeeeeeerrrrikkkkke!

Kay: Al, I don't really see how this baseball is "magic".

Leiter: Okay, it's not actually magic, it just has little wings that pop out and a jet engine in the back!

Kay: That just looks like a regular baseball , Al.

Leiter: It's not, it's not! It's Al Leiter's Magic Baseball® and it's perfect for completely pointless stationary demonstrations done in office chairs on baseball broadcasts.

Kay: But it's not magic, so you probably shouldn't say that it is.

Leiter: I can't say anything I want and I don't have to listen to you! (/plugs ears) Lalalalalalalalalalala!

Kay: ARE YOU SEVEN FUCKING YEARS OLD, AL?!?! PUT. THE. BALL. DOWN.

Kay: There. Now sit still, be quiet and watch the game.

Leiter: (/pouting) I want more candy!

Kay: Give me that.

(/proceeds to eat all of it)

f i n

Jack Morris, Drama & Pitching To The Scoreboad

At one point during Friday's game, Michael Kay trotted out a concept commonly uttered throughout baseball, "pitching to the scoreboard". He and Al Leiter went back and forth in praise of Jack Morris, the unofficial mascot of said scoreboard pitching, saying ridiculous things like "If Jack's Morris's ERA was higher, it was because he wanted it to be higher" and "if you scored two runs, he'd hold the other team to one".

I think most people who are statistically inclined instantly dismiss the concept of pitching to the scoreboard, but it's the type of idea that would be quite tedious and time consuming to disprove. Luckily, a couple of people informed Joe Posnanski that the topic was being thrown around on the Yankees broadcast and he took a crack at breaking it down:

To pitch to the score, you would need to have your team score the runs FIRST before you gave them up, right? I mean, if you give up seven runs, and your team scores three in the ninth to win, you didn’t pitch to the score did you? No, your team saved your butt. In order to pitch to the score, your team would have to score eight runs and then you would be thinking, “Well, la la la, I can give up some runs now.” Does this make any sense to anyone?

Joe takes a quick look at Morris' record in games in which his team scored one or two runs, and (surprise!) finds that he was 5-49 with one run of support and 12-37 with two runs. He contrasts this with Burt Blyleven, who has the reputation of not being nearly as adept at pitching to score despite a lower career ERA, and finds that Blyleven had far better records in both situations.

The reason I find this interesting has nothing to do with Jack Morris; I was 8 years old when he threw his last pitch. It's that one of the things that makes baseball endlessly interesting but seemingly no one wants to admit is that, despite your best efforts, you can't really control when you succeed and fail. The difference between a flyball and home run is often a few millimeters on the bat or a fraction of a second. Guys hit home runs on pitches out of the strikezone. It's not a perfect science.

If you look at WPA, which measures the leverage at the time of each at bat, you'll see that the leaders fluctuate every year. If there is such a thing as "being clutch", it certainly isn't an indelible part of someone's character or else the same people would be atop that list each season.

Like he so often does, Posnanski really nails this point:

There’s something about the long season of baseball that encourages players to believe in jinxes and superstitions and breaks evening out, something about the days turning to weeks turning to months that inspires this closely held belief that players don’t succeed because of talent or luck or even hard practice but because of character, because of a certain courage or gallantry or substance of the soul.

Part of this the collective ego-stroking you're likely to see in any elite fraternity. The fact that these guys have all risen to the top, passing hundreds of people at every level from tee ball on up makes them extremely special. It's easy to see why they feel this way. But the in the effort to find story lines, the media propogates these ideas and inner fortitude of the players is far overrepresented as a factor in success.

Sports are often described in terms of drama. A dramatic play, a thrilling climax, a heroic performance, a storybook season. However, watching sports is infinitely better than a fictional play or movie because they unscripted and unfettered. There's no need to infuse them with contrived plot twists and ascribe the players with heroic character traits. But don't try to tell that to Michael Kay and Al Leiter.