Pence the Unusual

Since he came to the San Francisco Giants, in a a trade on July 31st of 2012, I gradually became aware of Hunter Pence, baseball player. The unusual way Pence moves, swings, and also, looks, came across clearly from all the Giants fans I follow on twitter. There is this facial expression:

Which, while not all that creepy, per se, becomes more so when you realise that this is just his regular, calm face. There is a kind of, shall we say, intensity there that never goes away. It gives way, instead, to his actual intense expression:

Which, is more attention grabbing than I can manage in the mirror, even on my best mornings. So, there is a certain aura about Pence which follows him around the baseball diamond. That kind of thing is destined to stir up a little bit of magic with it.

Top of the 4th, Lineout SS

The play that led to this post is pretty great. With a man on first base, Brett Cecil delivers a pitch that gets ripped to the right of Yunel Escobar, and he makes a nifty little play to snag it on the fly.

You can hop to the MLB.com video of the play to see him in action.

First pitch of the 8th

On April 18th, 2012, Yan Gomes made his major league debut for the Toronto Blue Jays, of the American league. He played third base, and recorded two hits. As Darren Oliver entered the game to start the top of the 8th, he threw his first pitch of the game. Courtesy of The Blue Jay Hunter, you can see what happened below.

Nice play. Great reaction time! I've led you a little astray, though, because that's not Yan Gomes, 24 year old rookie. That's the very adept glove handling skill of Omar Vizquel.

Vizquel, for the uninitiated, is a very, very, veteran defensive replacement. He is 45 years old.

That's the magic of baseball for you. In a game with no clock, every so often, a player comes along and holds off father time in surprising ways. Vizquel came into the game to replace a 24 year old rookie, because he's believed to be the better glove man. And he showed it on the very first pitch thrown while he was in the game.This season Vizquel is not the only man testing his ability to turn back the clock.

Our even more unlikely candidate is below.




The hit pictured above is from Jamie Moyer. Moyer is just returning from a year off to have Tommy John surgery. Which means he is a pitcher. A pitcher who recently celebrated his 49th birthday. He is now the oldest player in MLB history to get a hit, and also the oldest to drive in a run. Moyer is the oldest player in MLB history to do anything that he does. He is the punchline to every 'this guy is older than something really old' joke made in the last 6 months.

Every day, though, Jamie Moyer is the one laughing. He gets up in the morning and can put on the uniform of a real big league team. He makes a real contribution to the Colorado Rockies. He's almost 50 years old, and he's still living the life of a baseball player, a life many former players who washed out in their 30s would still trade him for. Jamie Moyer is some kind of wizard.

If there is one player who best captured the impossible spirit of playing beyond any expectation, though, it is not Jamie Moyer, or Omar Vizquel, or Jesse Orosco, or Julio Franco. It is a man most associated with one number and one letter. The number is 5714. The letter, is K.

Nolan Ryan.

Nolan Ryan was a Time Lord. He debut in 1966. He led the league in strikeouts from 1987 to 1990. Those were his age 40 through 44 seasons. He continued to throw in the mid 90s, and even no-hit my beloved Toronto Blue Jays in 1991. Again, when he was 45. He struck out 5714 batters in his career. Is that good? Well, here's the all time list.

As a comparision, Moyer hasn't got a pitch that he can throw 80mph. Omar Vizquel had to come to camp and compete for a job this year. Ryan was heaving it up there like a champion, until his elbow ligament popped in his last start. Like at the end of every series of Doctor Who, when they finally change actors, time had defeated Nolan Ryan, but he had held it back in an unbelievable way.


Baseball is played on a field that is, in theory, infinite in dimensions. Take the fences away, and the outfield rolls on forever. The game has no limits, tie games are played on and on, without concern for the clock. Sometimes that timeless magic gets into a player's blood, and he looks like he could go on forever.

Tied, Top 8 PO, 5-3

Ryan Zimmerman is the kind of player you want at third base for you favourite team. He's a threat on both the offensive and defensive side of the game. He plays his position well, and over his career, has been a well above average defensive third baseman, getting a Total Zone Rating of between plus 10 and plus 18 for all of his full years playing, with the exception of 2011, when he was mysteriously below average.

We don't celebrate great careers here at Baseball Is Magic, though. We celebrate great moments, and Ryan Zimmerman had one on Sunday, April 15th, 2012. You'll see he's wearing number 42 on his back, because this was Jackie Robinson Day.

Zimmerman was channelling a different Robinson on this play, however.

Not, not Frank. Brooks. Or, Hoover, as he was called by his admirers.

Observe, four frames from the left field camera view:

Pitch on the way

Now keep your eye...

On the ball....

And he'll make it disappear!

Super job, Mr Zimmerman! The timestamp indicates that less than 2 seconds have elapsed from delivery to success. Well, success in stopping the ball. Ryan still has to make the play 100 feet away, where the first baseman is wondering how the heck he just did that.

The whole highlight is here on MLB.com.

Zimmerman's Snag

The tail end of the video is certainly worth it too, the batter is running well wide of the first base line. Why? He's looking to see how the left fielder is going to play the ball down the line. He has no clue Zim was even able to lay a glove on the ball. And he can go into the dugout and think about that for a little bit.

This story from the Washington Post brought Zimmerman's play to my attention.

Lineout CF

Baseball plays are, over time, reduced to simple phrases and numbers. E6, F9, K. They get to the bare bones of what happened, and from a scoresheet, you can reconstruct a game, much like a dot to dot in a colouring book. The subtle ways in which each F9 or 6-4-3 double play differ are lost in the piles of scoresheet data. You cannot copy a Rembrant using dot-to-dot. In baseball some plays deserve to be treated better, and better treatment is what I will give the following play: F8.

Colby Rasmus does not give the impression of being in a hurry. His pace from the dugout to the on deck circle, then to the batter's box, is deliberate. His words are chosen deliberately in interviews. He gives the impression of not really being pumped up for much of anything. Many of baseball's quickest outfielders give a much different impression. Bourjos, Gardner, even Rajai Davis, give the impression of a coiled spring, bouncing all over the place. Side by side with those guys, Colby looks like Eeyore to their Roo. This guy:

 

Courtesy Zimbio.com

He is responsible for patrolling the vast expanses of centre field. There has been some doubt about his presence there in the world of Blue Jays fans. He hasn't been around very long.

Take away the reporters, take away the 'practice' label. Definitely take away the saddest attempt at portrait photography I've seen since grade three. Now, put him in a nice clean uniform and glove, and put him in centre field in front of 48,000 screaming fans. Put him somewhere where a little magic can happen.

That's where he was in the third inning on April 9th, 2012, Jarrod Saltalamacchia was at the plate for the Red Sox. Salty is a left handed hitter, but Rasmus was shaded well into left field. When the hitter made contact, it was a looping liner into short right-centre. And all 48,000 fans got to see what Colby Rasmus saves up his energy for.

Big shout out to @james_in_to for this follow him on twitter!

No doubt in his mind, no concern for his body, nothing but webbing. F8, but really, so much more than that. F8 + spectacular.

Come back here when you are down and out about a dropped ball or bobbled relay, and remember where the magic happens.


You can find me on Twitter at @coolhead2010.