From Today in Baseball History, where someone seems to have hacked a photo of themselves in Little League into the chronology:
1990 After retiring 26 consecutive A’s player, Mariner Brian Holman gives up a homer to Ken Phelps.
So close, and yet so far . . . Many more details here.
Fnarf, you recall this?
Oh, and Milton Bradley was twelve years, five days old when Holman just missed perfection. Sorry I missed his 32cd birthday in my April 15 post.
Hey, if it’s on a wiki, it must have happened, right?
;->
Are you drunk, Chifan? Many typos.
Of course I remember that. Mariners highlights were few and far between in that time period. It was made more poignant by the fact that Phelps was one of my alltime favorite players, and is so representative of a certain kind of player whose career is destroyed by idiot baseball men who can’t recognize hitters when they see them that it has a name: the Ken Phelps All-Stars.
Phelps is the perfect example of a guy who did absolutely nothing his whole career except hit the snot out of the ball, but in ways that baseball “experts” running teams in those days couldn’t see it — experts whose attitudes are much like your own, in fact.
Phelps was a monster of the Three True Outcomes — virtually every plate appearance resulted in a strikeout, a walk, or a HR. The latter two came at such prodigious rate that, while his BA was low, his OBP and SLG were astronomical, year after year after year. Yet he toiled away in the minors, with all the experts decrying his ugly body, zero foot speed, and high K rate. No “tools”, you know. He was the kind of guy they always called “a AAAA hitter”, too good for AAA, but failing in his few short (and thus meaningless) trips to the majors.
If you projected his minor league numbers, though, you saw a different story. In fact, the real story here is that minor league numbers are EXACTLY AS GOOD as major league numbers for projecting hitters, if you know how to adjust for age and league. The minor league numbers suggested that Phelps would eventually brutalize major-league pitching if he ever got a reasonable chance.
Which is exactly what he did, many years too late. When Seattle finally found a free clue lying on the ground, and picked it up, they got a guy who, although well past his prime, in his 30s, was able to pound out 24 HR in just 360 PA in ’84, 24 in 441 in ’86, 27 in 424 in ’87, and 24 in 371 in ’88, all while getting on base at a .400+ clip. These were monster numbers in the mid-eighties, superstar numbers, albeit in limited duty.
By the time we traded him to the Yanks in the middle of that ’88 season (for Jay Buhner), he was old, and about done; he finished strong that year but never again was able to match those numbers. We robbed the Yanks.
But all of baseball robbed Ken Phelps of the first half of his major-league career. He could have been one of the prodigious sluggers of his time if given the chance that he proved, over and over, that he deserved. If anyone was going to break Holman’s no-no, I’m glad it was him.
But you “BA-RBI” guys never saw that, never gave him a chance, and still to this day don’t have a good understanding of what you missed, or why. Ken Phelps All Stars are scarcer today, because more teams understand how to read minor league numbers. Baseball’s come a long way.
This absolutely happened, you four-eyed putz. I watched this game on TV in rapt attention. Holman was masterful that day save for the one error. It was the first indication that the Mariners might have some respectability in the future. At least in my eyes. Holman came in the Langston trade with along with Randy Johnson. Thought it might have been the M’s first no-hitter let alone a perfect game. It was not to be.
@1, fuck you, Will.
Speaking of near-no-hitters, I was really pulling for Fister last night. (Wait – that sounds dirty.) Still, six innings of no-hit ball isn’t bad.
Man, everyday you twist the knife deeper into the hearts of Mariners’ fans. “So close, yet so far…” No shit. Yes, of course this happened. Not only was it an amazing game at the time, but Larry Stone posted an article catching up with Holman in the Times two days ago.
You owe us a post about Chris Bosio on Thursday.
Holman was an excellent pitcher derailed by arm injury. He managed 32 wins for the Mariners. Of those 14 were complete games. Also of note, that was Ken Phelp’s last career HR.
Fnarf, you should be GM. Or at least a scout.
@4 took you a while.
What, were you on a reefer break with Joni Earl?
@8, oh, god no. I would suck donkey balls. Unless I hired a bunch of smart people to tell me what to do — the same people they should hire instead of me. I’m ten years behind the times, compared to guys like Tom Tango and whatnot. And the clubs already know. Virtually all of them use both skills scouting PLUS stat analysis.
“Ken Phelps was underappreciated” is about on a level with “The Bee Gees had some good tunes” as far as insight goes.
My skill level is well-suited to blog commenting, I think.
@9, do go on, Will. You obviously have so much to contribute on this subject. Come on, Will: it’s baseball. What have you got? Could you even so much as name a current or former Mariner if someone was holding a picture of Ken Griffey, Jr. in front of you? No? Then why don’t you GO THE FUCK AWAY?
“A wiki, lol”. Is it a brain tumor? Hypoxia? A poisoned waffle? What the fuck is wrong with you?
PS: the “Today in Baseball History” website Chifan linked to is not a wiki. That’s what makes me so unreasonably angry at Mr. Shitpants here.
Fnarf, you are right about Phelps. One bright blue Saturday morning in July, in a tournament in Richmond BC, he almost took my left ear off with the clothesline line shot into which he converted my funny little 15-year old lefty’s hanging curve ball. Cruise-missile-like, it didn’t land until it was in the gap beyond our center fielder. Triple. I still remember the feeling on my ear as the ball whistled by, like it grazed the peachfuzz there……
@13, you pitched against Phelps? That’s a great story. Sounds like you were about two inches from a month-long hospital stay!
That’s how I felt about it. Of course, we’re talking nearly 40 years ago, and these tales have a way of growing hair. I wonder if any of my old teammates on 14 Minute Dry Cleaners remember this game. Perhaps they will tell me I kicked an easy dribbler into shallow right-center…..Anyway, Phelps played for Stone-Kassuba Construction, along with–get this–Floyd Bannister, in the Seattle Summer Senior Babe Ruth League, which may or may not exist any more. The All-Stars from that league were the national champs that year. I was, um, elsewhere.
Mariners up by one and Miltie is 1 for 1!
In other news, the Cubs Lose Cubs Lose!
PS- Silva again couldn’t get an out or a strike.
PS2- Perhaps he’ll do better tomorrow.
Chi:
I went to Wrigley on Saturday, wearing my Mariners cap. The old men directing people to their seats kept stopping me, and all seemed a bit smug about Silva for Milton.
Then I watched the 90-million-still-owed-Soriano not run for a pop fly, letting it drop, apparently because he didn’t feel like it, followed by him just plain dropping one a few innings later. Then they lost to the Astros (and believe me, Lyon tried to give it away). That team still seems to be a train wreck, post MB.
On the bright side, I got a free stocking cap with a HUGE Old Style logo on it.
I’ll never, ever forget Phelps goosing the home-plate umpire as he finished circling the bases.
Hey ChiFan- Do you think the Cub’s misfortunes would be reversed if they were able to sign Roy Hobbs in 1923? They might have even converted him to a hitter (like Babe Ruth) and won multiple World Series. Just think, if not for one deranged fan, the Cubs could be like the Yankees today.
… but they’d still have Silva, so they’d suck this year.
@17 Trade you a magnet schedule for the Old Style hat–my other brother loves that swill.
@ Y’all: no knife-twisting here, just baseball history in all its trivial glory. When something good happens in Mariners’ history, I’ll post on that, never fear.
@Slake: only criticize Silva when he’s actually pitching, OK? And I do limit my WouldaCouldaShoulda fantasies to actual ballplayers, not fictional ones. If only Ken Hubbs had lived. . .
@ Fnarf: so, you’re basically saying that Phelps coulda been Mark McGwire, all HRs, walks, and K’s? Good for him. And I don’t see any typos in my post. . . you high?
I remember that game perfectly. My dad looked like he was going to die.
To add to the collective pathos:
– The A’s were the best team in the A.L. at the time, and arguably the best team in baseball.
– The Mariners were the worst team in the A.L. at the time, and unarguably the worst team in baseball.
– Ken Phelps was a former Mariner.
@20, “26 consecutive A’s player” and “32cd birthday”.