Welcome to the MLB Star Power Index -- a bi-weekly undertaking that determines with awful authority which players/baseball entities are dominating the current zeitgeist of the sport, at least according to the narrow perceptions of this miserable scribe. While one's presence on this list is often celebratory in nature, it can also be for purposes of lamentation or ridicule. The players/living baseball phenomena listed are in no particular order, just like the phone book. To this edition's honorees ...
Dodger Stadium Security/Enforcers of Righteousness
The institution of marriage is there for those who covet chancery-court licensing procedures, loud public arguments at a cake tasting, jointly filed tax returns, and cursory divorce-attorney searches conducted via incognito browser while marooned on the commode. All of that is fine enough and plainly stated on page 16 or seven or 38 – one forgets – of the service terms, and it's acceptable because it diminishes only the marriage participants and not the innocents of the public way.
Public marriage proposals, however, are not so benign. They interrupt errands and leisured pursuits and replenishing stares into the middle distance and even silent seafood dinners – flash frozen and then lovingly finished in the restaurant's industrial microwave for consumption in silence by those who have already endured the forced liturgies of matrimony. Worse still is when those proposals intrude upon This, Our Baseball.
This recently befell the unsuspecting masses at a Los Angeles Dodgers game – on Opening Day, no less. Most such chronicles of effrontery end there to the diminishment of all, but thankfully in this instance the Forces of Order were there for nowhere left to turn – i.e., all of us. Please witness the power followed swiftly by the glory and then heal in the warming rays of life-affirming violence:
No person deserves to be incinerated by a hired-security edge rusher in such a fashion except when that person absolutely deserves to be incinerated by a hired-security edge rusher in such a fashion. Beyond dispute, this is an example of the latter. Befoul This, Our Baseball with your attempts at transactional romance and your bones shall be earthquaked.
Ancient Viking raiders look upon this color television footage and nod in blessing. So too do to the rest of us.
Early this year, veteran reliever Darren O'Day announced his retirement from MLB. This leaves a void in the game in ways that go beyond mere bullpen considerations. O'Day, you see, was a Secret and True Left-Hander. Prithee, you say, what is a Secret and True Left-Hander?
A Secret and True Left-Hander is a moundsman who is said to be right-handed and even pitches with his right hand during baseball games but is actually left-handed. For instance, this Baseball-Reference screengrab is not unusual in that it straightfacedly claims that O'Day is right-handed:
Despite what we are told about O'Day and despite the obvious reality that O'Day does indeed ply his trade with his right arm and hand, the more prevailing reality is that O'Day is left-handed.
You see, the Secret and True Left-Hander overcomes his right-handedness with a specific suite of characteristics that allow him to emanate the qualities and hallmarks of the left-hander and inhabit the indelible milieu of the left-hander. The Secret and True Left-Hander can be said to be factually a right-hander but he can be said to be more factually a left-hander.
In O'Day's case, the right-hander can be said to be a Secret and True Left-Hander for the following reasons:
- He spent parts of 15 seasons in the majors as a reliever and pitched until he was almost 40 years old, which makes him left-handed.
- He played for the Orioles, which makes him left-handed.
- He threw from a low arm angle, which makes him left-handed.
- He led with a breaking ball, which makes him left-handed.
- The fastball he's forced to use can be described as "culturally left-handed":
And most essentially:
- His name was "Darren O'Day," which makes him left-handed.
Replacing a right-hander who is so plainly left-handed amounts to a titan's burden. At present, there are no potential successors who rise to O'Day's throughgoing embodiment of the archetype. So it is that we are reduced for the time being to declaring Logan Webb of the Giants, who is right-handed, as the leading current Secret and True Left-Hander. We half-heartedly declare this for the following reasons:
- At 6-1, 220 he bears the physical dimensions of a left-handed pitcher.
- He doesn't throw hard and barely ever calls upon a four-seam fastball, which makes him left-handed.
- He gets lots of groundballs, which makes him left-handed.
- He has a reasonably low arm angle, which makes him reasonably left-handed.
- His name is "Logan Webb" and more specifically "Logan T. Webb," which makes him left-handed.
And most essentially:
- See once again his headshot above and note that he's too happy to be right-handed.
While Webb among right-handers is not as left-handed as O'Day, he's still very left-handed. If you asked members of his own family whether Webb was left-handed, they would say of course he is and cite as evidence his height, ground-ball proclivities, arm slot, given name, and facial beam and twinkle. Look at you, nodding in quiet assent as you read the evidence Logan Webb's family has marshaled.
So in the post-Darren O'Day world that has been foisted upon us, Logan Webb will have to do for now when it comes to Secret and True Left-Handers. Let us congratulate him by insisting upon shaking his left hand.
Retired umpire Tom Hallion
On the matter of unwelcome retirements, let us now praise Tom Hallion. The veteran arbiter has stepped away from the ranks of active umps, and we are worse as a people because of it. This is not because of any soaring excellence relative to other members of his guild. Rather, it is because Monsieur Hallion's strike-three call was designed not to call the hitter out but rather to desecrate him.
Please enjoy the following mixtape of his life's work and righteous legacy:
An umpire making a strike-three call or a frontier lawman with nothing left to lose laying a knockout liver shot upon those who should've listened to him in the first place? Yes, is the answer.