The Colorado Rockies last week locked in catcher Joe Girardi in a three-year deal for $5 million. But there is more to the story than dollars. The Rockies want Girardi for life. “He’s a very valuable man to a club,” explained General Manager Bob Gebhard. “It’s like having an extra coach.”
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A former Cub, Girardi missed 60 games because of hand surgery but nonetheless handled all 25 pitchers who appeared with the Rockies last season. According to one of his teammates, “When they were in trouble, Joe had a knack for carrying them through an extra inning.”
Whatever, there is no mistaking there is something special about “Northwestern Joe.” I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but this much I know: Sometime during the 21st Century, when the 29-year-old Girardi hangs it up, he is certain to be a big-league manager.
Dueling turnstiles: Mention of Girardi reminds me that the Rockies, in their inaugural season last year, had a home gate of 4,483,350. Add the Toronto Blue Jays’ regular-season home attendance of 4,057,947 and you get 8,541,297-which is 2.5 million more than the entire National Football League drew in 1969.
I can hear the pro football fans say, “Oh, what about 1970 when the NFL merged with the AFL?”
All right, we’ll figure that one, too, Their combined gate was only 9.5 million. To bring it up to date, the NFL, this season, had a record attendance of 13.9 million-3.5 million less than the aggregate home attendance of the Rockies, Blue Jays, Braves and Orioles.
Football? Bah humbug!
Which supports my long-held belief that the overwhelming majority of football fans watch on television because they need an announcer to explain who has the ball, who caught the pass, etc. Put them in the same color uniforms and take the numbers off their backs and nobody would know who was playing.
Anyway, one medium-sized gorilla could whip the Dallas Cowboys in the morning and the Buffalo Bills in the afternoon. But King Kong couldn’t hit Steve Carlton’s slider or a Sandy Koufax fastball.
A dogged guy: Dick Ravitch, the owners’ chief labor negotiator, says that 10 percent of the ballplayers are making 50 percent of the money. The San Diego Padres are an excellent example. They are expected to have a $14 million player payroll, half of which will go to outfielder Tony Gwynn and pitcher Andy Benes.
Some of the owners still aren’t completely sold on whether Ravitch can convince the players union to accept a team salary cap. I, too, have some doubts, but I agree with the American League executive who said: “Ravitch is like a bulldog, a pit bull actually. He never gives up, and that’s the kind of guy we need.”
Whoa Nellie: Could be another year of bad news for the Nellie Fox Society. When the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee assembles Feb. 25 in Tampa, there will be three new members-Yogi Berra, Pee Wee Reese and Bill White. And two of them, perhaps all three, are expected to push for Phil Rizzuto, who has been passed over for the last 17 years.
The Veterans Committee is limited to two selections-a former player who has been retired for at least 18 years and one choice from the following categories: club executive, field manager and umpire. Perhaps this year William Hulbert finally will be recognized.
Hulbert created the National League and constantly fought the twin evils of gambling and drunkenness and often was described as “the man who saved the game.” Hulbert, who died in 1882 at the age of 49, is buried in Graceland Cemetery. He also made this wonderful statement: “I’d rather be a lamp post in Chicago than a millionaire in any other city.”
And speaking of Chicago and environs, some mention should be made of the outrage expressed by the New York and Eastern press in regard to the recent owners meeting in Ft. Lauderdale, where Bud Selig agreed to continue in his role as baseball’s interim commissioner.
The New York Times quoted an anonymous NL owner as saying the “Great Lakes Gang” is running the game: Selig of Milwaukee; Jerry Reinsdorf of the White Sox; Stanton Cook of the Cubs; Braves President Bill Bartholomay, who lives in Chicago; and Carl Pohlad of the Twins.
What seems to anger the Gotham scribes is that they can’t seem to understand that baseball can survive without a commissioner sitting on Park Avenue. They also may be reacting in fear that the commissioner’s office will be transferred here, in the midst of the Midwest prairie.
The commissioner’s office has been in New York for 43 years-without complaint by any in Chicago. Nobody has described the commissioner and his cohorts as the “Hudson River Rascals” or the “New York Nabobs.”