Now You Find Yourself in '82 (One Sixty-Two: Day 120)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day One Hundred Twenty: B.J. Upton, Tampa Bay Rays

We’re going to make a baseball-to-movies analogy here, and it manages to connect E.T. to B.J. Let’s start with the films.

In 1982, the Oscar nominees for Best Picture were so outstanding that Academy Award voters had an incredible challenge on their hands. The most notable nominee was Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, which had become the highest-grossing film in history as well as a critically-acclaimed masterpiece. But there was also Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi, also adored by critics and, with its three-hour-bio-epic structure, was just the kind of film that typically wins these awards.

But there’s more. There was the Dustin Hoffman-Sydney Pollack tour de force known as Tootsie. There was the Sidney Lumet-David Mamet-Paul Newman classic The Verdict. And there was the intense drama Missing, featuring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek tearing up the screen.

These five nominees weren’t even the only ones labeled “classic” in 1982. Among those films not nominated for Best Picture: the Meryl Streep tragedy Sophie’s Choice, the Ridley Scott cult hit Blade Runner, the Richard Gere-Debra Winger drama An Officer and a Gentleman, and the highly-decorated German film Das Boot.

It was an unbelievable year for movies, with cinema soaring to a supremely high level. You can argue that any of the nominees from 1982 would have taken the Best Picture prize in 1985, when Out of Africa bested The Color Purple, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Prizzi’s Honor and Witness for the top trophy. But sometimes, a lot of cream rises to the top at once.

This takes us to our baseball connection. In 2010, the American League East Division has taken a 1982 Oscar bent. The New York Yankees lead the division with the best record in baseball, followed by the Tampa Bay Rays who at one game back sport the second-best record in the game. In third place, the Boston Red Sox sit 16 games over .500 and would be leading the American League West Division by one game were they in that group. Instead, Boston sits 6½ games behind the Yankees in the division and 5½ games behind the Rays in the Wild Card hunt. In fourth place, the Toronto Blue Jays remain six games over .500 and would be just five games back in the Wild Card race were they in the National League. But alas, they are in the AL East, and are therefore 11½ games behind the Yankees in the division and 10½ games behind the Rays for the Wild Card. In last place, we have the Baltimore Orioles, who would be in the cellar in nearly every division. But there’s got to be at least one punching bag in a division this strong.

There will be room for only two of these teams in the playoffs, as the American League’s Wild Card entry surely will come from here. There are a lot of games to play before it’s over, many of them pitting the divisional rivals against one another. Tampa Bay centerfielder B.J. Upton has begun to heat up, as he often does this time of year, and he’s certainly looking to help his young Rays defeat the mighty Yankees for the division title and, if needed, during the playoffs as well. But the Red Sox and Blue Jays aren’t done yet, either, and the Orioles under new manager Buck Showalter are ready to play the role of spoiler.

The baseball analysts will probably tell you to expect this year’s division winner to come from the South Bronx. They’ll tell you that the Yankees are just too strong a team to lose this year. And they may be right. But you never know. The experts can be wrong.

There were a lot of people thinking in 1982 that E.T. would win it all, with its blockbuster status and its heartwarming ending. But this was not to be. It was the year of Gandhi, as the film took top honors, as did Best Actor winner Ben Kingsley.

E.T. is, of course, the most enduring film of these 1982 classics, as it is rented, bought and watched far more than the others. But if even E.T. can go down in the Best Picture race, why can’t the mighty Yankees fall as well? It’s enough to keep B.J. and his boys playing their hardest, night after night. The cream has risen, and it’s about to overflow.

Throw Away the Book (One Sixty-Two: Day 55)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day Fifty-Five: John Jaso, Tampa Bay Rays

I was leaving a local library yesterday when I passed a display of old books for sale. The last thing our house needs is another book. But of course I stopped.

And I almost walked away. But then an old hardcover caught my eye: How to Steal a Pennant, by Maury Wills with Don Freeman. I knew that Wills was an infielder and base-stealing master with the Los Angeles Dodgers back in the 1960s and ‘70s. I also had a faint recollection of Wills managing the Seattle Mariners for a while in the early ‘80s. But as I looked at the book, I realized that it consisted of Wills’ philosophy on managing – before he ever had the chance to do so. Published in 1976, How to Steal a Pennant featured a retired ballplayer’s ideas on how to manage baseball better than the men he’d been watching in the dugouts while working as a TV analyst.

Wills’ No. 1 advice for managers was simple: Throw away “the book” that tells you how you’re supposed to manage a game. Instead, Wills advised, think outside the box – er, book. If you’re losing a game by four runs, Wills wrote, don’t wait for the grand slam. Chip away – bunt a runner over, scrape for runs here and there, and claw your way back into the game. Don’t hesitate to steal bases, don’t hesitate to let a lefty reliever throw to a righty hitter, and don’t hesitate to throw a strike on an 0-2 count.

I’m sure that when he watches ballgames today, Maury Wills admires the work of Joe Maddon, manager of the Tampa Bay Rays. There is no “book” in the Maddon managerial code. This is a man who starts a catcher in the leadoff spot, even though that catcher – rookie John Jaso – has just one stolen base. So why does Jaso lead off? The reason is simple: Because he gets on base 40 percent of the time. To Maddon, getting on first is more important than one’s ability to steal second.

But that doesn’t mean Maddon hesitates to let his runners steal bases. Not at all. Outfielders Carl Crawford and B.J. Upton both have more than 20 steals already this year, and slugging third baseman Evan Longoria has swiped 10 bases. The Rays lead their league in stolen bases by far this year.

And thinking different doesn’t stop there for the Rays – while Maddon has a bona fide closer this year, he hasn’t hesitated in the past to use a closer-by-committee approach to finishing games. Rather than put the game in one man’s hands, Maddon has let the best matchup determine who finishes the game. Just go with what works.

This time of year, we hear a lot of graduation speeches encouraging young people to take the road not taken. Maury Wills was encouraging that nearly a quarter-century ago. I found his book, and heard his advice to throw away “the book.” Joe Maddon hears this advice, too. And he follows it. Maybe that’s why no team in baseball has a better record this year than the Rays.