Cy Three (One Sixty-Two: Day 130)

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 Thirty: Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter & Jaime Garcia, St. Louis Cardinals

Every summer, our local library holds contests for kids each week in different parts of the building. There’s the “Find Buddy the Worm” contest, in which children have to find the laminated cut-out of a cartoon worm somewhere in the children’s section. There’s the “Fun Facts” contest, in which kids are asked a science question, often one about animals. There’s also the “Guess How Much Candy” math question, in which the youngsters try and determine how many Tootsie Rolls or lollipops are inside a clear jar. For all of these contests, the kids write down their answers, place their paper into a large jar, and hope that their correct answer will be the one randomly chosen that week.

So this morning, the phone rings, and it’s the library. Chelsea, I’m told, has won the “Find Buddy” contest, and her prize is waiting at the front desk. I tell her this, and her eyes light up. Her immediate instinct is to go and tell her sister … who is not so happy.

“What about me?” Katie asks. Oh, dear. Here we go.

The phone rings again. It’s the library once more. Katie has won the “Fun Facts” contest this week. Her prize is waiting, too.

Crisis averted. Cheers of joy in the house. It must be my day.

You can’t win everything. It’s just not possible. Even Michael Jordan finished more NBA seasons without a championship than with one. We learn, early on, to enjoy the journey and the many triumphs along the way in life, rather than expecting a prize for everything we do. Somehow, though, that hasn’t stopped me from announcing all the chores I do each day; my wife has explained that no medal is forthcoming, nor will it ever be. But that’s a different blog post for a different day.

The girls pulled off the rare sibling sweep of summer library prizes this week. But that kind of stuff doesn’t usually happen. Over on the baseball field, a trio of pitchers by the names of Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter and Jaime Garcia would all love to win the National League’s Cy Young Award this season. And all have put together years quite worthy of this honor. In fact, it is staggering to see just how much these three starting pitchers have carried the St. Louis Cardinals this year. Going into tonight’s action, the Cardinals were 69-59 on the year, good enough to keep them in second place and five games behind the Cincinnati Reds in the National League Central.

But without Wainwright, Carpenter and Garcia, the Cardinals’ season would be long gone. Out of the 69 team wins, the three aces have combined to win 43 of those games. Out of the 59 losses, they’ve claimed only 19 of them. All three men have earned-run averages below 3.00, with Wainwright and Garcia actually both below 2.40. In the way of strikeouts, the three pitchers have combined to punch out 440 batters, versus only 160 combined walks.

To put all of this in perspective, no other Cardinals starter has more than four wins on the year. The next-highest win total on the team comes from closer Ryan Franklin, who has won six games. The Cardinals have baseball’s best player at first base in Albert Pujols. But this season, Pujols has not been the only one handling the heavy lifting.

If any of these three men is to win the Cy Young Award, it will likely be Wainwright, who has more wins (17) and strikeouts (178) than the other two. But Wainwright could easily fall short of the honor himself, to premier pitchers such as Ubaldo Jimenez of the Rockies, Roy Halladay of the Phillies or Tim Hudson of the Braves. For now, though, one thing is very clear: The Cardinals are still in the pennant race because of the pitching of three incredibly capable men. These guys don’t need their library to call and tell them they’re winners: They’ve got a dugout full of teammates telling them that every day.

Fundamentally Sound (One Sixty-Two: Day 88)

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 Eighty-Eight: Tim Hudson, Atlanta Braves

I’ve written in previous blogs about my grandfather, Warren Mueller, and the profound impact he had on me and my brother. Warren was a good father, husband, son and brother, and an even better grandfather. He also was a terrific baseball player years ago, and as he grew older he shared his passion for the game with his daughter and grandkids. We used that mutual passion for baseball as a vehicle through which we could connect about much larger life issues.

Today, Warren would have been 92. He lived for 88 years, passing away in November 2006 after a battle with melanoma. During his 20s, Warren pitched in the Boston Braves’ minor-league system before moving over to the semi-pro ranks. He pitched against Joe DiMaggio and Jimmie Foxx, and was known as one of the best pitchers ever to come out of Staten Island, N.Y. In the mid-1940s, while pitching for two different semi-pro teams each week, Warren threw out his left arm and was forced to quit pitching. He still played first base, though, and soon enough had his own semi-pro club after purchasing a White Rock soda business.

While watching a game with my grandfather, I always had the privilege of viewing the matchup through the eyes of a ballplayer. He watched the pitcher’s windup, arm angle and follow-through, then looked to see how close each pitch came to the catcher’s target. Warren’s eyes honed in on heads-up base-running, proper execution of bunts, and defensive positioning. We'd talk about this as he grabbed us a couple of sodas out of the "icebox," as he called his fridge.

In essence, Warren Mueller believed that you won ballgames by executing the fundamentals. And, aside from the home-run-fueled years of the steroid era, he was right. This season, as offensive numbers have fully retreated to their pre-steroid levels, the game is looking more and more like the one my grandfather played.

I think he would enjoy watching Tim Hudson of the Braves pitch in 2010. Hudson, like Warren Mueller decades before him, pitches for the Braves organization. And Hudson, like my grandfather, experienced a serious injury to his throwing arm. The last 65 years have seen tremendous medical advancements, though, so Hudson is back on the mound after major reconstructive elbow surgery. What’s more, he’s pitching better than he has in seven years. Throughout his career, Hudson has been a gutsy pitcher who doesn’t take his team out of ballgames: He’s won nearly twice as many games as he’s lost, he strikes out more than twice as many hitters as he walks, and he fields his position quite well. At 35, Hudson was again an All-Star this season.

In short, he’s the kind of player an old-timer loves to watch – the kind of pitcher who knows how to grab the ball and find a way to win. So in honor of my grandfather, I salute Tim Hudson today. You’ve got to have players out there who work extra hard on the fundamentals, and who never give in to the opponent. Without them, it’s not really a game worth watching. At least that’s what my grandfather told my brother and me. We listened to him closely, and still hear his commentary today, from the ballfield all the way to the icebox.