What If the Mets Had Drafted Reggie Jackson?

Note: This originally appeared in the March 26, 2010 edition of Uncle Mike's Musings, as a challenge from Jon Lewin, the Met half of the blog Subway Squawkers. (See link to the right.) Be careful what you wish for...

In 1966, the Kansas City Athletics -- soon to move to Oakland -- chose outfielder Reggie Jackson of Arizona State University with the 2nd pick in the Major League Baseball draft.

The first pick belonged to the Mets, who chose Steve Chilcott, a catcher just out of high school in Lancaster, California, outside of Los Angeles.

Why? Not because of original Met manager Casey Stengel's advice: "You gotta have a catcher. If you don't have a catcher, you'll have all passed balls."

No. According to legend, a legend Reggie was told at the time and continues to believe, it was because Reggie was black and had a white girlfriend.

Actually, Reggie's girlfriend, Jennie Campos, was Hispanic, the daughter of Mexican immigrants born and raised near Arizona State's Tempe campus. They eventually married... and divorced.

How could the Mets be so racist? Well, there's a line that has been attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Napoleon Bonaparte and Robert A. Heinlein, which I first read from the late great anthropologist and Yankee Fan Stephen Jay Gould: "Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." With the Mets, always think stupidity before malice. Maybe the reason Reggie believes he was passed over by the Mets due to racism is that his agent wanted to soften the blow, by providing an explanation that, however false, and however vile if it had been true, made sense -- when there appears to have been no explanation that makes any sense. Make sense? As Bernie Kopell would have said on Get Smart at that time, "Zis is ze Mets! Ve don't make zenze here!"

Or maybe Reggie just wasn't ready for New York. Even in 1977, there were times when it didn't seem like he was ready. Sure seemed like it by September of that year, though. Definitely in October.

What happened to Chilcott? Well, he played 6 years in the minors, but injury kept him from reaching the majors. He had invested his $75,000 signing bonus in real estate, and that proved to be a far wiser decision than the Mets drafting him.

Only Chilcott, Brien Taylor (1991 Yankees) and, for the moment, Matt Bush (2004 Rays) have been Number 1 MLB Draft picks who never reached the majors.

Ironically, the Mets won the World Series in 1969 and the National League Pennant in 1973 anyway, with Jerry Grote -- not much of a hitter, but a good catcher -- behind the plate. So maybe they didn't need what Chilcott could have become if he'd stayed healthy.

But what could Reggie's booming bat, which hit 563 homers in RL, have done with the Mets? True, Yankee Stadium had that short right-field porch, and Shea Stadium was a pitcher's park. But he also played a lot of home games at the Oakland Coliseum and Anaheim Stadium, neither of which is a hitter's park.

So let's imagine that the Mets had done the right, and smart, thing...

*

1967: Reggie debuts with the Mets.

1968: Reggie is the Mets' starting right fielder, meaning that Ed Kranepool now plays a lot more first base, and Ron Swoboda gets traded. Swoboda ends up on the Oakland Athletics.

1969: The Mets win the Pennant, but lose Game 4 of the World Series when Reggie -- in the place we remember occupied by Swoboda -- not only doesn't make a great catch on Brooks Robinson's 9th inning liner, but does what we remember him doing at Fenway Park on June 18, 1977, "not hustling" in Billy Martin's words. The Orioles win that game, 3-2, win Game 5 3-0 (they did lead by that score until the 6th), and take the Series in Game 6 in Baltimore. Reggie hit 38 home runs, a Met record that will stand until 1996, but he is remembered as the goat of the Series.

1971: Unhappy with Reggie's contract demands following a strong '71 season, M. Donald Grant trades Reggie to the Chicago Cubs, whose owner Philip K. Wrigley not only is willing to pay Reggie the $120,000 a year he wants, but has some of Reggie's friends on the team: Billy Williams, Ferguson Jenkins, and the recently-retired Ernie Banks. Banks joins Negro League legend Buck O'Neil on the Cubs' coaching staff. The Cubs' manager (although, as it turns out, he gets fired the next season) is Leo Durocher, who managed Reggie's idol, Willie Mays, and until Leo is fired, they get along. Good situation for Reggie.

1972: The A's win their first World Series since 1930, when they were in Philadelphia, beating the Cincinnati Reds in 7 games. (Remember, Reggie was hurt and didn't play. I suspect Swoboda may have hit a home run in that Series.)

1973: Reggie Jackson is the Most Valuable Player of the National League, and the MVP of the World Series. First, the Cubs win the NL East. Then, in Game 3 of the NL Championship Series at Wrigley Field, Reggie slides into third base safely, and Pete Rose tags him in the face. Reggie clobbers Rose. Shocked that someone would not only stand up to him but beat him, Rose is never the same player. The Cubs take the Series the next day. Reggie homers off Oakland's Ken Holtzman in Game 7 of the Series, and the Cubs, Pennant winners for the first time in 28 years, are World Champions for the first time in 65 years -- the first World Championship for either Chicago team in 56 years. The Yankees remain the only franchise ever to win three straight World Series. (The A's, with Reggie, did so in 1972-74, and remain the only other one to do so.)

1974: The Cubs slump as Billy Williams and Ron Santo are getting older. The Orioles beat the A's in the American League Championship Series and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series, for their 4th World Championship. (1966, 1969, 1970, 1974. That's one more than they've won in real life, as they add a 5th in 1983.)

1975: The Boston Red Sox beat the A's to win the American League Pennant, but lose a classic World Series to Willie Stargell and the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates win the Pennant by beating the Reds, as Rose goes hitless in 11 at-bats.

1976: Charlie Finley breaks up his A's. The Mets that won the Pennant in '69 and nearly the Division in '73 have already been broken up. The Yankees win the Pennant on Chris Chambliss' homer. They lose the Series to the Philadelphia Phillies, who beat the Reds and then sweep the Yankees to win their first World Championship in 94 seasons of trying. Yankee owner George Steinbrenner opens the vault, and signs Reggie. After all, George reasons, if he can help Chicago win a World Series, why not New York?

Then history reasserts itself, until 1980, when the Phillies, who didn't need Rose to win the Series in '76, have the confidence to win it without him in '80.

Well, almost...

1978: The Denver A's debut at Mile High Stadium. This time, Finley completes the sale of the team to Marvin Davis.

1983: Pete Rose retires, shortly after finally getting his 3,000th hit. He is never named manager of a major league team. Ty Cobb remains baseball's all-time hit leader.

1984: Leon Durham scoops up a key grounder, and the Cubs manage to beat the San Diego Padres to win the Pennant. But they lose the Series to the Detroit Tigers.

1986: Former Met ace Tom Seaver comes in to close out the Red Sox' Game 6 win over the Mets at Shea Stadium, 5-3. His last pitch is a strikeout of Kevin Mitchell. (I originally had it as Gary Carter, but in the wake of Carter's death, and all the talk about him absolutely refusing to make the last out of a World Series, I decided to change it to the next batter.) The Sox win their first World Series in 68 years. The phrase "the Curse of the Bambino" never makes it out of Massachusetts. The Mets have never won a World Series.

1988: The Mets win the NL East, but Dwight Gooden meets Mike Scioscia. The Dodgers go on to beat the A's, who have won their first Pennant in 25 years, their first in Denver.

1989: In a World Series interrupted by an earthquake, the A's beat their former cross-bay rivals, the San Francisco Giants, to win their first World Championship in 27 years, their first in Colorado.

1990: The Reds beat the A's in the World Series. It is the Reds' first World Championship in 50 years. Their former star, Pete Rose, serves a short prison sentence for tax evasion.

1992: Seaver is elected to the Hall of Fame, wearing a Reds cap on his plaque.

1993: Reggie is elected to the Hall of Fame, wearing a Yankee cap on his plaque. Cub fans are not pleased, but, hey, it's only been 9 years since they won a Pennant, and 20 years since they won a World Series. The Washington Nationals and the Florida Marlins begin play as expansion teams. (These Nats are not the RL-Montreal Expos, but the RL-Colorado Rockies. Remember, the A's are in Denver in TTL, and the idea of returning Major League Baseball to Oakland doesn't seem so hot.)

1996: Pete Rose, having been briefly imprisoned, but not banned from baseball (since he was never Reds manager and never bet on baseball in such a capacity), is elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his 5th year of eligibility, despite having 3,000 career hits.

2000: The Yankees win the World Series, beating the Mets in 5 games. The Mets have now won 3 Pennants, but never a World Series.

2003: Cubs Hall-of-Famer Reggie Jackson throws out the first ball before Game 6 of the NLCS. The Cubs nearly blow a 3-0 8th inning lead, but hang on to win 3-2, and take the Pennant. The name of Steve Bartman is quickly forgotten, after Moises Alou remains calm after a minor incident. The Cubs go on to beat the Yankees in the World Series, winning Game 6, the last World Series game played at the old Yankee Stadium.

2004: The Red Sox beat the Yankees for the Pennant, but, having won the Series just 18 years earlier, it's a big deal, but not nearly as big a deal as we remember. The Expos, not having a good option to move (the Oakland Coliseum having been renovated to make it football-only for the returning Raiders), remain in Montreal for the time being. Pete Rose sues the makers of the film Mr. 3000, because of the premise of a player with 3,000 hits not making it into the Hall of Fame in his first 4 years of eligibility. The fact that the film's protagonist (played by Bernie Mac) is a black man playing for the Milwaukee Brewers, who is not a switch-hitter, and puts his massive ego aside to make a comeback, appears to be lost on Rose, who eventually loses the case.

2006: Aaron Heilman meets Yadier Molina, and the Mets blow a Pennant.

2007: The Mets lead the Phillies by 7 games with 17 to play, and end up not even getting the Wild Card. They get edged out for it by the Washington Nationals (RL-Rockies), who end up winning 21 of their last 22 games, including the postseason, to win the first Pennant for a Washington-based team in 74 years. But they lose the World Series to the Red Sox.

2008: The Mets lead the Phillies by 3 1/2 games with 17 to play, and end up not even getting the Wild Card.

2009: Following the collapses of the previous three seasons, David Lennon of Newsday publishes The Curse of M. Donald Grant, just in time for the Mets to leave title-less (unless you count the 1968-69 Jets) Shea Stadium for the new Citi Field.

2010: After 2 years of sharing U.S. Cellular Field with the crosstown White Sox, the Cubs move into a newly renovated Wrigley Field, now a modern(-ish) facility with 46,000 seats, but retaining some old touches like the ivy, the brick wall, the bleachers, the scoreboard. A fitting home for a team generally viewed as a winner.

2011: No appreciable change as far as standings are concerned.

2012: The Montreal Expos begin their 44th season of play, under new owners, who agree to build a new ballpark, thus saving the team for Montreal for the foreseeable future.

So the Cubs, Boston, Pittsburgh, Denver and Montreal benefit. The Mets, Oakland and Cincinnati get hurt. Pete Rose gets hurt, but he is better off than in RL, isn't he?

Reggie Jackson? He's a winner with the Cubs and the Yankees. With the Mets? Not so much.

What If the Mets Had Not Traded Nolan Ryan?

This is an update of an article I first posted on one of my blogs on March 27, 2010. It has been edited for spelling, grammar, and any other errors.

December 10, 1971: The New York Mets trade four players to the California Angels for shortstop Jim Fregosi.

At this point, there was nothing wrong with wanting a healthy Jim Fregosi on your team. He would be just 30 years old on Opening Day 1972, had been an American League All-Star 6 times, won a Gold Glove in 1967, and until slumping to 89 in 1971, had never had an OPS+ (on-base percentage + slugging percentage, in relation to the league average) lower than 108 in his first 8 full seasons in the majors, peaking at 141 in 1964.

His highest batting average had been .290, in 1967; peak home runs, 22, and peak runs batted in, 82, both in 1970. In 1968, he led the AL in triples with 13. The franchise was just 11 seasons old at that point, but Fregosi was, without a doubt, the greatest player the Angels had yet had.

Certainly, Fregosi was a better player than the Mets' incumbent starting shortstop, Derrel McKinley "Bud" Harrelson. Although Harrelson had helped the Mets win the 1969 World Series, and had won the '71 season's National League Gold Glove for shortstops and was selected for the last 2 All-Star Games, Harrelson couldn't hit a lick. His highest single-season OPS+ was 82, well below Fregosi's slump season. His peak batting average thus far was .254, and he would top that only twice; his peak RBI year was 42, and his peak home run year was... 1 -- in each case, it would remain so.

Clearly, what the Mets needed to do was make Harrelson a backup, a "defensive replacement." Or maybe the Mets could move him to third base, where 1969 starter Wayne Garrett had badly tailed off, and incumbent starter Bob Aspromonte was at the end of the line. (Bob was a Brooklyn native, now best known as the last active player who had played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was also the brother of the somewhat better Ken Aspromonte.)

Instead, the Mets kept Harrelson at short, and moved Fregosi to third. At first, it seemed to work, but then Fregosi got hurt, finished the season with only 32 RBIs and an OPS+ of just 89, and was never the same again. His 382 plate appareances that season would be far and away more than he'd ever have again.

Between the ages of 21 and 28, Jim Fregosi was, statistically speaking, similar to Alan Trammell, the longtime Detroit Tiger shortstop who is maybe one step short of being elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame (and would be in, as would his double-play partner Lou Whitaker, if they could go in as a unit, like the Chicago Cubs' early 20th Century combo "Tinker to Evers to Chance"). But between the ages of 29 and 36, Fregosi was just another broken-down player.

At 36, in 1978, the Angels fired manager Dave Garcia, and asked Fregosi, then playing out the string with the Pittsburgh Pirates, to come back; he instantly accepted the job, retired as a player, and in 1979, his first full season on the job, led the Angels to the AL Western Division title, their first postseason berth. In 1993, he managed the Philadelphia Phillies to a Pennant.

*

Did the Mets blow it by trading 4 players for an injured formerly solid player? Not necessarily. We have to take a look at those 4 players, to see if the Mets gave up anything worth having.

Frank Estrada. He was a backup catcher who'd played 1 big-league game, for the Mets in '71, and never appeared in another. No loss there.

Don Rose. A pitcher, he'd also reached the majors for 1 game with the '71 Mets, put up a 1-4 record for the '72 Angels, and by April 1974 had appeared in the majors for the last time. No loss there.

Leroy Stanton. He was a right fielder, and he turned out to be a good player, putting up OPS+ seasons of 110, 116 and 123, before slumping a bit in 1976, and being left unprotected in the expansion draft. Taken by the Seattle Mariners, he put up an OPS+ of 130 in 1977, before an injury ended his career the next season at just 32 years old.

Still, the Mets could have used someone like that from 1972 to 1977, particularly after trading Rusty Staub after the '75 season -- another dumb Met trade, as they got Mickey Lolich. Staub for Lolich would have been a good trade, even after the '71 season; but not after '75. (Interestingly, on Baseball-Reference.com's "Similar Batters" list, Number 1 on Stanton's list is... Ron Swoboda. Former Yankee World Champions Gary Thomasson and Ricky Ledee are also in his top 4.)

*

And now, to confront the elephant in the room: The remaining player sent from Flushing Meadow to Anaheim.

Lynn Nolan Ryan of the Houston suburb of Alvin, Texas.

At the time of the trade, he was a month and a half short of his 25th birthday. He had a career won-lost record of 29-38. Not good, especially when you consider that the Mets had won 100 games in 1969, 83 in 1970 and 83 again in 1971. He struck out a lot of batters, but also walked a lot, giving him a WHIP (Walks and Hits, divided by Innings Pitched) of almost 1.6 in '71. His ERA was nearly 4, not good in the NL of the time, which was pitching-friendly with a lot of concrete multipurpose oval stadiums (3 new ones in the preceding season and a half), and, of course, no designated hitter.

With Ryan having been disappointing thus far, and with Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry, a somewhat-still-effective Ray Sadecki and a rising Jon Matlack in their rotation, the Mets could afford to let Ryan go. Or so it seemed at the time.

In 1972, his first season in the AL, Ryan led the League in both walks and wild pitches... but also led it in strikeouts with a whopping 329, and shutouts with 8, forging a 19-16 record for a team that won just 75 games. A decent Angels team would probably have made him a 23-game winner.

In 1973, he set a new major league record (since the 1893 adoption of the 60 feet, 6 inches pitching distance, anyway) with 383 strikeouts. That record has never even been approached, except by Ryan himself the next season with 367. Nor is it likely to be approached, unless managers suddenly decide to stop babying pitchers and let them pitch 7+ innings every 4 days instead of the post-1990 idea of only letting them pitch 6 to 7 innings every 5 days.

By the close of the 1974 season, Ryan had 3 seasons of 300+ strikeouts, 4 no-hitters, 3 games with at least 19 strikeouts (he would add a 4th, although "only" 1 of those came without the benefit of extra innings), 91 wins (but also 86 losses), a career ERA of 3.01 (not bad considering he was now in the DH-affected AL), and 1,572 strikeouts -- and he was only 27.

Putting aside for a moment all the things Ryan would achieve after 1974 -- 233 more wins, 3 more no-hitters, and enough additional strikeouts to place himself 4th on the all-time list even if you only count from 1975 onward -- this was still a bad trade for the Mets. Add in everything Ryan did from Opening Day 1972 until his retirement after the close of the 1993 season, and Ryan-for-Fregosi -- even if you forget about the decently talented Stanton -- looks like a candidate for the title of "The Worst Baseball Trade Ever" -- and not just the worst Met trade.

*

But is it? There is another elephant in the room. (You ever smell a room with 2 elephants in it? Smells worse than the Mets... most of the time.)


Big question no one ever seems to ask: Would having Nolan Ryan have helped the Mets any from 1972 onward?

It's easy to say, as does Greg Prince, author of the book and blog Faith and Fear in Flushing, that the Mets lost the 1973 World Series to the Oakland Athletics because manager Yogi Berra pitched Seaver in Game 6 and Matlack in Game 7, each on just 3 days' rest.

And Yogi wasn't that "old school": He was only 48, and had seen his mentor, Casey Stengel, adapt to changing conditions pretty well when they were together on the Yankees from 1949 to 1960. And it's not like Yogi had a lot of choice: Koosman had started Game 5, and couldn't have pitched again unless rain pushed Game 7 back a day; Sadecki had pitched in relief in Game 4; and he and George Stone, the Mets' other starter, had pitched in the Series only in relief and weren't much better options.

Besides, if you're a Met fan, who would you rather have, pitching a game that could win you the World Series, in a park that really, really favored pitchers, as the Oakland Coliseum always has: Tom Seaver on 3 days rest, or... any other pitcher then active? Especially knowing that, if Tom Terrific couldn't go the full 9, you had a workhorse reliever in Tug McGraw?

If the Mets had Ryan in '73, that would have been a huge boost for them. Not just in the Series. Don't forget, due to the closeness of the race, and rainouts, the Mets did not clinch the NL East until October 1, the day after the season had originally been scheduled to end, and even then they had to play a doubleheader at Wrigley Field to get Games 161 and 162 in. They clinched in Game 161 when they won and the Pirates lost, making Game 162 meaningless, and more rain led to the umpires canceling it.

Having Ryan's 21-16 in the rotation instead of the combined 8-12 of Sadecki and Jim McAndrew might have gotten the Division clinched sooner, thus enabling the Mets to set up their NL Championship Series rotation better; having Ryan there, against the Cincinnati Reds, might have gotten the Pennant clinched before Game 5, thus helping the Mets set up better in the Series.

Or... would it? Ryan's career postseason record is mixed. He saved the Mets' bacon in Game 3 of the '69 NLCS against the Atlanta Braves, and did so again in Game 3 of the World Series against the Baltimore Orioles -- all this before he became NOLAN RYAN.

After that, he next appeared in postseason play in 1979, and while he pitched well for the Angels, it wasn't enough, as they lost the game and the Pennant to the Orioles.

In 1980, now with his hometown Houston Astros, he blew the Pennant-clinching Game 5 of the NLCS, at the Astrodome no less, enabling the Phillies to win their first Pennant in 30 years (and then their first World Championship in 98 years of trying). At that point in their history, blowing a Pennant to the Phillies was like losing to Suzanne Somers on Jeopardy! (This was when she was playing Chrissy Snow on Three's Company, well before she proved her smarts as a fitness expert and a businesswoman.)

In the strike-forced Division Series of 1981, Ryan pitched well for the Astros, but in the process, he only got a split of two decisions against the Los Angeles Dodgers. And he made just one other postseason appearance, in the 1986 NLCS with the Astros, losing Game 2, and pitching well but not getting the decision in a Game 5 his team lost... to the Mets.

Add on the fact that, from 1974 to 1983, the Mets were not in one single Pennant race, and it's hard to say how much difference Ryan would have made then.

Then there's the Mets' glory years from 1984 to 1990. Then again, for all their talk, there wasn't a whole lot of glory. Could Ryan, who pitched remarkably well even until he was 44 in 1991, have made a difference there?

*

So, really, what might have been the impact of the Mets keeping Nolan Ryan after 1971? Keeping in mind that, like Anaheim Stadium (or whatever the California Angels are calling it, and themselves, these days), Shea Stadium was a pitchers' park extraordinaire; but also that Ryan had a career winning percentage of just .526, is the all-time leader in walks, and is among the all-time leaders in wild pitches, we can surmise the following:

1973: We can presume that Ryan would have made a difference. The Mets clinch the Division sooner, and Ryan pitches well in the NLCS, where the Met rotation is Seaver-Koosman-Ryan-Matlack (in that order), clinching in Game 4, instead of Seaver-Koosman-Matlack-Stone-Seaver (as it was in RL), going the full 5.

The World Series? Instead of Matlack for Games 1, 4 and 7; Koosman for Games 2 and 5, and Seaver for Games 3 and 6; we get Seaver for Games 1 and 4, and potentially 7; Koosman for Games 2 and maybe 5; and Ryan for Games 3 and maybe 6, with Matlack as the long man if one is necessary.

Ken Holtzman pitched great for the A's in that Series in real life, so the Mets probably still lose Game 1 in this timeline. The Mets win Game 2 anyway. Against a tired Seaver, the A's needed 11 innings to win the real Game 3; against a rested Ryan, the Mets might win, and there's your difference. Presuming the Mets still win Games 4 and 5, get the riot police ready, it's another Shea Stadium clincher. New York Mets, 1969 and 1973 World Champions.

After this, the Mets aren't in contention again until...

1984: Ryan was only 12-11, but the Astros weren't very good that year. Without him, the Mets finished 6 1/2 games behind the Cubs. Would having Ryan have made 7 games' worth of difference? Probably not: After Dwight Gooden and Ron Darling, the Mets' rotation had Walt Terrell, Bruce Berenyi and a not-yet-there Sid Fernandez. Having Ryan instead of one of those might have made it closer, but the Cubs would still have won the NL East.

1985: Hard to say. Ryan was 10-12 for another under-hitting Astro team, with a 3.8 ERA and a 1.3 WHIP. If he were in the rotation instead of Ed Lynch...

The Mets finished 3 games behind the St. Louis Cardinals. I don't know if Ryan would have made 3 games' difference in this season. If he had, do the Mets beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS? Maybe, the Dodgers had Tom Niedenfuer in their pen; Jack Clark hitting a Pennant-clincher in the top of the 9th in Game 6 wasn't a surprise, but Ozzie Smith hitting a walkoff in the bottom of the 9th of Game 5 was. I can certainly imagine Niedenfuer giving up homers to Lenny Dykstra in Game 5 (or maybe Lenny still hits his in Game 3) and Gary Carter in Game 6.

The Series, against the Kansas City Royals? I don't know, because the Cards did lose, and if Cardinal fans still curse the name of umpire Don Denkinger over a quarter of a century later, what would Met fans say if that same call were made? I think the Mets win the '85 Pennant, but lose the Series.

1986: No, Ryan makes no difference here. How can he? The Mets won the World Series. The only difference is that the Mets beat the Reds in the NLCS, since the Astros don't have Ryan. (Then again, the Astros won the NL West by 10, so maybe they win it anyway.)

1987: This is the season Ryan, at age 40, led the NL in ERA and strikeouts, but had an 8-16 record, because the Astros remembered that they are the Houston Astros: Great pitching, good defense, can't hit the ground if they fell off a ladder.

I saw Ryan pitch that year, at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, as a friend of the family had a relative who briefly pitched for the Astros. I got to sit right behind home plate as Ryan, still mighty fast at 40, was zippin' 'em in there. Being 75 feet away from Mike Schmidt as he batted against Nolan Ryan, even at that stage of each man's career, was awesome. It was a typical game for Ryan that season: The Phils won, 2-1, beating Ryan with a Randy Ready single in the 8th.

Anyway, in 1987, the Mets finished 2nd to the Cards again, 3 games back. Ryan definitely would have made a difference here, and the Mets would probably have beaten the San Francisco Giants for the Pennant. But the Minnesota Twins were not going to lose any World Series games in the Metrodome. Nobody beat the Twins in the Dome in October. Nobody. (Except, as it turned out, the 2003, '04 and '09 Yankees, who clinched 3 ALDS in that disgraceful facility.) So the Mets reach their 3rd straight Series, but win only 1.

1988: The Mets lost the NLCS to the Dodgers in Game 7... or, rather, they lost it in Game 4, when Mike Scioscia took Gooden deep in the 9th. The Mets started, in the 7 games, Gooden, David Cone, Darling, Gooden, El Sid, Coney, Darling. Ryan had a good year, but I'm not sure where he starts. In all honesty, I can't say with any certainty that he makes a difference in this series.

1989: In his first season with the Texas Rangers, Ryan had his last big season in terms of wins, 16, for an 83-win team. The Mets finished 2nd to the Cubs again, 6 games back. Maybe with Ryan, now 42 but still effectve, the Mets don't make that dumb trade for Frank Viola, and win the Division.

But I don't think they win the Pennant, unless there's another dumb trade they don't make, Kevin Mitchell to the San Diego Padres for Kevin McReynolds. Mitchell's trade, soon after, from the Padres to the Giants made the Giants a postseason team in '87 and '89, and they beat the Cubs soundly in the NLCS; they would have done the same to the Mets.

1990: The Mets finished 2nd, 4 games behind the Pirates. Ryan had a pretty good season, and if he'd been in the rotation instead of the sinking-fast El Sid, they might have won the Division. On the other hand, as I said, if they still had Ryan, they wouldn't have traded for Viola, who won 20 in his one good season for the Mets. No, having Ryan at this point probably hurts them.

1991: In Ryan's last effective season -- as a fastball pitcher at age 44! How come no one ever tested him for steroids? -- the Mets collapse, finishing 20 1/2 back of the Pirates. Having Ryan wouldn't have helped. Having him in the disastrous '92 and '93 seasons, Ryan's last 2, wouldn't have helped, either.

So, in their history, real and alternate...

Real Life Mets, 1962 to 2011, without Nolan Ryan after 1971: 7 postseason appearances, 4 Pennants, 2 World Championships. Not great, but plenty of teams haven't done that well, including some teams that have been around longer.

Alternate Mets, 1962 to 2011, with Nolan Ryan from 1971 (really, from 1966) to 1993: 10 postseason appearances, 6 Pennants, 3 World Championships. Not a huge improvement, but a significant one. After all, when you've only won 2 World Series, winning a 3rd is significant. Ask fans of the Chicago White Sox. And those of the Chicago Cubs.

*

My, my, this room is getting cramped. Do you know why? Because there's a third elephant in the room.

It's what happened to the Mets after the 1973 World Series. Team chairman M. Donald Grant -- who "didn't know beans about baseball," according to '69 Met scout and later highly successful big-league manager Whitey Herzog -- broke up the team, piece by piece. In 1977, he got rid of Seaver by playing him (and his wife Nancy) off the Anaheim-based Ryan (and his wife Ruth), with the help of New York Daily News columnist Dick Young, a once-great (and once-liberal) sportswriter who had became embittered, pedantic and pedestrian (and arch-conservative).

When Ryan signed with the Astros in 1980, it made him baseball's first $1 million-a-year player. At the time, if you asked most fans to name 5 current players who might be worth that, I think most of them would have had Ryan as one of the 5. (The others would have been Reggie Jackson, Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton and maybe Dave Winfield.)

Grant would not have been one of those who believed that Ryan, or any player, was worth $1 million a year. (Then again, he was not a baseball fan in the classic sense.) It is likely that Grant would have gotten rid of Ryan well before the 1979-80 off-season.

After all, he had already traded several fan favorites before Seaver and Dave Kingman in the June 15, 1977 "Midnight Massacre" moves: Swoboda in 1970-71, Tommie Agee in 1972-73, Harrelson and Tug McGraw in 1974-75; Staub, Stone and Cleon Jones in 1975-76, and Garrett during the 1976 season; Matlack and John Milner would follow in 1977-78, and so would Koosman in 1978-79. And, unlike Fred and Jeff Wilpon letting Jose Reyes go in 2011-12, Grant didn't let those guys go because he desperately needed to save money, but because he greedily wanted to.

So, chances are, keeping Nolan Ryan beyond the 1971 season would have meant giving him up well before 1984. Therefore, the most likely scenario is that the Mets would have increased their winnings by 1 World Championship, and no other postseason berths.

Then again, think of how much 1 more World Series win would have meant to Met fans from 1973 onward.

A Met fan born between October 17, 1962 (who presumably would have been aware of baseball by October 16, 1969) and October 17, 1977 (the day before the Yankees won another Series) could have told a Yankee Fan born during that same stretch, "The Mets have won more World Series in our lifetime than the Yankees have!" And from October 16, 1969 until October 17, 1978, and again from October 27, 1986 to October 26, 1996 -- 19 of their 34 years -- that would have been true. And for all 34 years, the Mets would have been either ahead of the Yankees or tied with them (it would have been 2-2 from '78 to '86).

Of course, we're talking about the Mets here. Even with Tom Seaver, they found a way to lose the 1973 World Series. So who can say, with even 99 percent certainty, that they wouldn't have found a way to blow it with both Seaver and Nolan Ryan? After all, for much of their history, the Yankees have usually found a way to win; while, except for '69 and '86, the Mets have usually found a way to lose.

What If the Red Sox Had Beaten the Yankees in 1949?

NOTE: I first posted this on "Uncle Mike's Musings" on October 2, 2009, the 60th Anniversary of the game in question. It has been corrected for grammar, spelling, and one historical error: I had Roger Maris in Kansas City at a point where he would still have been in Cleveland.

October 2, 1949, Yankee Stadium, New York. Regular-season finale. Winner takes the Pennant.

The New York Yankees lead the Boston Red Sox 5-1 going into the ninth inning. But the Sox rally, and a fly ball goes out to the great Joe DiMaggio in center field. DiMaggio had a bad heel in the first half of the season and pnuemonia now, the Yankee Clipper had played his usual sensational in between. But Joe D dropped the ball.

That made the score 5-3, and the tying runs were on base. DiMaggio walked in from center field, disgusted with himself, taking himself out of the game.

Pitcher Vic Raschi had one more out to get, Sox catcher George "Birdie" Tebbetts. Get him out, and the Yanks win the first Pennant of the Casey Stengel era, and begin the transition of the 1940s DiMaggio-Henrich-Rizzuto Yankees to the 1950s Mantle-Berra-Ford Yankees (though Rizzuto is still a vital contributor for the first half of the Fifties). Lose the game, and...

This single game may be the most important in Yankee history other than their first Pennant win in 1921. If the Yankees fail to win, and thus lose the Pennant to the Red Sox, it's not hard to imagine baseball history taking some very different turns...

*

An injured and frustrated DiMaggio, already not happy with Stengel, tells owners Del Webb and Dan Topping, "Either he goes, or I go."

Committed to Stengel, at least in the short term, and with plenty of talent already on hand and coming up through the farm system -- including Mickey Mantle, who just finished his first pro season -- the owners call the Yankee Clipper's bluff.

He retires at age 35, having spent only 11 seasons in the majors (having lost three due to World War II). He still makes the Hall of Fame, and is still one of the most revered players ever due to his 1941 hitting streak and his comeback from injury to almost lead the Yanks to the Pennant in 1949. But with only enough games to amount to 10 full seasons under his belt, no one thinks of him as "Baseball's Greatest Living Player."

The Red Sox, confident after their 1949 Pennant, beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series, and come back in 1950 and win another Pennant, beating the Philadelphia Phillies in the Series. No one questions Ted Williams' ability to play in the clutch, or that he is a "greater player" than DiMaggio. And the Red Sox' World Series drought ends at "only" 31 years. Of course, after 1950, it takes them another 54 years to win another, but nobody talks about a "Curse of the Bambino." Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy has to come up with another explanation as to why the Red Sox haven't won a World Series since the early days of the Korean War, rather than the last days of World War I.

The Cleveland Indians succeed the Red Sox as the dominant team in the American League, winning Pennants in 1951, '52 and '54. They beat the New York Giants in the '51 World Series and the Dodgers in '52, but lose to the Giants in '54.

The Dodgers finally win their first World Series in 1953, giving Brooklyn its greatest day. This gives Walter O'Malley the impetus he needs to get his new stadium built in downtown Brooklyn. He has more time to work City officials, getting around City and State construction boss Robert Moses, and Dodger Stadium opens in 1958. The Dodgers still win the World Series in 1959, '63 and '65, plus the Pennant in '66, but as the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The City also builds a new stadium for the Giants, opening in 1960 in Flushing Meadow Park. It's called Stoneham Stadium, after the Giants' owner. Bill Shea, a noted New York attorney, has nothing to do with it, aside from being a Giants season-ticket holder, and lives the rest of his life with almost nobody outside the City ever hearing his name. And the Giants still win the Pennant in 1962.

However, when expansion comes in 1962, there's no need to put a new team in New York. So the team we know as the Mets goes somewhere else. Since the American League got the Los Angeles Angels in 1961, the National League gets San Francisco in 1962, a team named the Seals after, as were the Angels, the preceding Pacific Coast League team.

When Divisional play begins in 1969, the Dodgers, Giants, Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago Cubs and expansion Montreal Expos are put in the Eastern Division, while the West has the Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds, Houston Astros, St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Seals and expansion San Diego Padres. When the three-Division setup begins in 1994, the East has the Dodgers, Giants, Philadelphia, Montreal and the expansion Florida Marlins; the Central has Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and St. Louis; while the West has Houston, the San Francisco Seals, San Diego and the expansion Colorado Rockies.

Assuming each franchise still wins as many games as it did in real life, with Divisions adjusted for geography, this means the following teams win the following Division Titles:

* Arizona Diamondbacks: West, 1999, 2002, '07, '08; Wild Card, '01.
* Atlanta Braves: West, 1983, '91, '92, '93; Central, '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, 2000, '02, '03; Wild Card, '04, '05.
* Brooklyn Dodgers: East, 1973, '74, '78, '80, '81 first-half, '83, '85, '88, '95, '96, 2006, '09.
* Chicago Cubs: East, 1969 and '84; Central, 2007, '08.
* Cincinnati Reds: West, 1970, '72, '73, '74, '75, '76, '77, '78, '79, '81 first-half, '90 in the West; Central, none yet; Wild Card, '95.
* Colorado Rockies: West, 1995, 2009; Wild Card, 2007.
* Florida Marlins: East, 1997; Wild Card, 2003.
* Houston Astros: West, 1980, '81 second-half, '98, 2001, '03, '05.
* Milwaukee Brewers: None since moving to NL Central; Wild Card, 2008.
* Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals: East, 1981 second-half, losing to Brooklyn in the playoff forced by the strike year's split-season format.
* New York Giants: East, 1987, '89, '93, '98, '99, 2000, '01, '02, '03; Wild Card, '97.
* Philadelphia Phillies: East, 1976, '77, '82, '86, 2005, '07, '08; Wild Card, '09.
* Pittsburgh Pirates: East, 1970, '71, '72, '75, '79, '90, '91, '92; Central, none yet.
* St. Louis Cardinals: West, 1971, '82, '85, '87; Central, 2001, '04, '05, '06, '09; Wild Card, '96, 2000, '02.
* San Diego Padres: West, 1984, '89, '96; Wild Card, '98, 2006.
* San Francisco Seals: West, 1969, '86, '88, 2000, '06; Wild Card, '99.

The Playoffs take some different turns. The Cubs and Seals (our reality's Mets) are in different Divisions, so they both win Divisions. But the Cubs still lose, and the Seals, so horrible from 1962 to '68, continue their '69 miracle, with all those hippies in the stands at Kezar Stadium (since Horace Stoneham isn't there to approve the mistake known as Candlestick Park).

The Pirates beat the Cards instead of the Giants in '71. There's a New York team beating the Reds in '73, but it's the Dodgers. The Dodgers do it again in '74. The Phillies win more games than the Dodgers in '77, but not in '78; each team beats the Reds in the NLCS. Instead of one game for the NL West, the Dodgers and Astros play a best 3-of-5 for the Pennant, and the Astros reach the World Series 25 years sooner.

The Dodgers still beat the Expos in '81, but a round sooner. The Astros beat the Reds, and the Dodgers beat the Astros, but a round later. In '82, the Phillies finally get revenge on the Cards for the 1964 collapse. The Dodgers beat the Braves for the '83 Pennant -- Sorry, Braves manager Joe Torre, but your home Borough wins this one. The Cub fans still get their hearts broken in '84, and Jack Clark still beats the Dodgers with a homer for the Cards in '85. With the Seals (Mets) in the West, they beat the Phils rather than the Astros in a nail-biter of an NLCS.

The Giants finally end a 25-year first-place drought in '87, but lose to the Cards. The Dodgers still beat the '62 expansion franchise in '88. With the Giants and Cubs in the same Division, the Cubs miss the Playoffs in '89; the Giants beat the Padres for the Pennant. The Giants then lose not the Division, but the Pennant to the Braves in '93.

In 1995, Braves over Dodgers, Reds over Rockies, Braves over Reds. In '96, Braves over Dodgers, Cardinals over Padres, Braves over Cards. In '97, Braves over Giants, Marlins over Astros, Marlins over Braves. In '98, Padres get Wild Card, not Cubs, despite Sammy Sosa's 66 home runs and Kerry Wood's rookie pitching heroics, Braves over Astros, Padres over Giants, Padres over Braves. In '99, Braves over Seals, Giants over Diamondbacks, Braves over Giants.

In 2000, Giants over Braves, Seals over Cards, Giants over Seals. In '01, Cards over Astros, D-backs over Giants, D-backs over Cards. In '02, Giants over Cards, Braves over D-backs, Giants over Braves. In '03, Braves win Central, so Cub fans get their hearts broken again, but at least Steve Bartman is off the hook; Marlins over Braves, Giants over Astros, Marlins over Giants. In '04, Astros over Dodgers, Cards over Braves, Cards over Astros. In '05, with the Expos moving to become the Washington Nationals, Cards over Braves, Astros over Phillies, Astros over Cards. In '06, Seals over Dodgers, Cards over Phillies, Cards over Seals. In '07, Rockies over Phils, D-backs over Cubs, Rockies over D-backs. In '08, Phils over Brewers, D-backs over Cubs, Phils over D-backs. In '09, it'll be Dodgers over Cards, Phils over Rockies, Phils over Dodgers. In 2010, Phils over Reds, Wild Card Giants over Padres, Giants over Phils. In 2011, Cards over Phils, Brewers over D-backs, Cards over Brewers.

The New York Giants last won a Pennant in 2010. The Brooklyn Dodgers last won a Pennant in 1988. The San Francisco Seals -- TTL's stand-in for the Mets -- last won a Pennant in 1986.

*

And what about the Yankees? Frustrated that Stengel hasn't won them a Pennant, Webb and Topping fire him after the 1952 season. Bill Dickey, who had briefly managed the Yanks in 1946, is asked to rise from the coaching ranks and take over again. After all, he's a winner, and Yogi Berra and Phil Rizzuto trust him. He gets the Yankees back in gear, as they win the Pennant in 1953, their first in 6 years. But they lose the World Series to the Dodgers, finish second to the Indians in '54, and lose the Series to the Dodgers again in '55 and '56, as Mickey Mantle never quite warms up to Dickey the way he did to Stengel in RL, even though Mantle is from Oklahoma and Dickey from neighboring Arkansas.

After the Copacabana Incident in '57, general manager George Weiss cleans house. Billy Martin is traded away, and Dickey is fired. Charlie Dressen, who had managed the Dodgers to the '52 Pennant and the '53 World Championship, had just been fired by the Washington Senators, and Weiss picked him up. Following the season, in which the Yanks lost another World Series, this time to the Milwaukee Braves, Mantle went over the head of Weiss, who never liked him, to owners Dan Topping and Del Webb, saying he and Dressen couldn't get along. "Either he goes, or I go," the Mick said.

At the start of the 1958 season, Mickey Mantle was playing center field for the Kansas City Athletics, having been traded for several prospects.

The Yanks still win the '58 Pennant, but again lose to the Braves. They had now won four straight Pennants, five in six years, but had lost the World Series every time. (In essence, the TTL-Yankees have become what the RL-Dodgers were: A star-crossed club, close but no cigar.) After a few more deals with the A's, including obtaining promising young outfielder Roger Maris, the Yanks finish third in '59, and win the Pennant in '60, but lose the Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Dressen is fired, and replaced by Ralph Houk.

Without Mantle to bat behind him, Maris doesn't get as many good pitches to hit, and finishes the 1961 season with 45 home runs. Babe Ruth's 60 in 1927 remains the single-season record until 1998, although, with the steroid explosion of that time, many still consider the Babe's 60 to be the real record. The Yanks finish second to the Detroit Tigers, who beat the Cincinnati Reds for the World Championship.

The Yanks win Pennants in '62 and '63, but lose a Subway Series each time, to the Giants in '62 and the Dodgers in '63. Houk is fired, and replaced by Berra. The Yanks finish third behind the Chicago White Sox and Baltimore Orioles in '64; the White Sox lose the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals. This time, there is no second chance: Yogi is gone, and never again appears in Yankee Pinstripes.

Since winning the whole thing in 1947, the Yanks had played 17 seasons, and won 8 Pennants, including four straight from '55 to '58, but lost all eight World Series. Then the team collapses, and never wins another Pennant while playing in Yankee Stadium.

In 1972, along with the NFL's New York Giants, the Yanks accept a deal to play at the proposed Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey. There is only a minor outcry, as they are the 3rd most popular team in the City, and Mayor John Lindsay does not feel obligated to lift a finger to stop it, any more than Robert Wagner Jr. did in RL when (at least theoretically) he had the chance to save the Giants and Dodgers in 1957.

Yankee Stadium is demolished after the 1973 season, and the Yankees share Stoneham Stadium in Queens with the Giants for two dreary years.

Meadowlands Stadium opens in 1976, and while the Yankees are good enough to win the American League East that season, they lose the League Championship Series to the Kansas City Royals.

The Royals win the Pennant again in 1977, but lose the '78 ALCS to the Boston Red Sox, who battled injuries and the onrushing, but not quite successful, Yanks. The death of Thurman Munson crushes the Yanks in '79, and after a rough 1980 regular season in which they beat the Orioles, they get swept by the Royals.

Dave Winfield signs with the Dodgers instead of the Yankees prior to the '81 season, and after the Yanks get embarrassed by the Milwaukee Brewers in the strike-forced Division Series, Reggie Jackson, to use his own words, "got on the first thing smokin' and headin' west," signing with the California Angels. He could've made the Meadowlands his for all time, but he didn't want to deal with that meddling George Steinbrenner anymore. And, not having won so much as a Pennant in his first nine years as owner, Steinbrenner begins making some crazy deals that further doom the franchise.

*

The World Series is won by the San Francisco Seals over the Orioles in '69, the O's over the Reds in '70, the Pirates over the O's in '71, the A's over the Reds in '72, the A's over the Dodgers in '73 and '74, the Reds over the Red Sox in '75, and the Reds over the Royals in '76.

In 1977, in their 95th season of operation, the Philadelphia Phillies finally win a World Series, beating the Royals. The Dodgers beat the Red Sox in Game 7 of the 1978 World Series when light-hitting shortstop Bill Russell -- who had the same name as a Boston sports legend, no less -- hits a home run over the Green Monster at Fenway Park, off Mike Torrez. It was the first World Championship for a New York team since the '65 Bums.

The Pirates beat the Orioles in 1979. In 1980, the Royals lose the World Series to the Astros, who have never won a World Series in our reality. There is bedlam in Brooklyn again in 1981, as the Dodgers beat Billy Martin's Oakland A's in the World Series. The Phillies beat the Brewers in 1982, the Orioles dethrone the Phils in '83, the Tigers over the Padres in '84, and the Royals finally break through in '85 against the Cards.

Some things don't change. Bill Buckner is one of them, although when Mookie Wilson hits that grounder between his legs, it's not at Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadow against the New York Mets, but, rather, it's at Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park against the San Francisco Seals.

The Minnesota Twins, with hometown hero Dave Winfield leading the way after his contract runs out in Brooklyn, beat the Cards in the '87 Series. In '88, Kirk Gibson's homer off Dennis Eckersley lands in the right-field pavilion of Dodger Stadium in Brooklyn -- any further and it would've landed on the Long Island Rail Road tracks heading out to Nassau and Suffolk.

When word reaches Stoneham Stadium in Flushing that an earthquake has rocked the home region of the A's, the Giants' 1989 World Series opponents, Game 3 is postponed, and, though there is talk about having the entire rest of the Series in New York, the Series is resumed as scheduled. As it turns out, a move is not necessary, as the A's complete a sweep. They are then swept by the Reds in 1990.

Twins over Braves in '91, Jays over Braves in '92 and '93, with a shaky Charlie Liebrandt giving up Joe Carter's capper. (Remember, the Braves won more games than the Phillies in '93, and in this version are in the same division. The Phils are still better off, title-wise.)

George Steinbrenner is sick of sharing Meadowlands Stadium with the football Giants and the Jets. At least, after 1993, he'll never again have to share it with Rutgers University's pathetic football program. Sickened by the labor strife of the 1994 strike, he sells the Yankees. "It's not like I'm selling the Mona Lisa of baseball," Steinbrenner tells the press. "Maybe the Yankees were that, once upon a time, but not anymore."

The man who buys the Yankees from Steinbrenner is Donald Trump, who promises a fabulous new stadium in New York City. With an obliging Mayor in Rudy Giuliani and an obliging Governor in George Pataki, it happens. In 1998, Trump Stadium opens at what was once John Mullaly Park in the South Bronx, across from the housing project where the original Yankee Stadium stood from 1923 to 1973. It is hailed by the New York media as an architectural marvel, half cathedral of baseball, half modern steel fortress. Outside the New York Tri-State Area, however, it is ripped as the ultimate in Trump's tacky taste.

Trump Stadium has field dimensions similar to Yankee Stadium, but that was too late to save the Yankees in 1996. In Game 1 of the ALCS, the Yanks trail the Orioles 5-4 in the bottom of the eighth. Rookie shortstop Derek Jeter hits a fly ball to right-center field, where it falls harmlessly into the glove of Tony Tarasco. About 20 feet away, behind the 375-foot mark on the fence at Meadowlands Sta- ... excuse me, First Union Field, I forgot that the naming rights had been sold... 12-year-old Jeffrey Maier sulks. For a moment, he thought that not only would this be a home run, but that he'd have a chance to catch it. The Orioles beat the Yankees in four straight, and are then bombed into submission in a five-game World Series by the defending Champion Braves. The Yanks don't win the Pennant in 1997, either, eliminated in the Division Series by the Cleveland Indians, who lose to the Florida Marlins.

It has now been 50 years, half a century, since the Yanks won a World Series. In comparison to The Curse of Pinky Higgins by Dan Shaughnessy (the Boston Red Sox ruined by their failure to pursue black players) and The Curse of Rocky Colavito by Terry Pluto (the Cleveland Indians ruined by one big trade), Mike Vaccaro of the New York Post writes a book titled The Curse of Casey Stengel.

Stengel, who has been dead since 1975 and had managed nothing but minor-league teams after his firing by the Yankees in 1952, has been nearly forgotten outside the Tri-State Area, remembered, if at all, for being the old ballplayer who got booed by some fans, tipped his cap to them, and having a sparrow he'd hidden under there fly out, literally giving the fans the bird.

With the opening of Trump Stadium in 1998, the Yanks have a truly formidable team. They set a new American League record with 114 wins, and look unbeatable. But the Curse of Casey strikes Chuck Knoblauch in Game 2 of the ALCS against the Indians, and the Yanks never recover. The Tribe wins in five games, and take their first World Championship in 46 years with a six-game win over the San Diego Padres.

The 1999 season is no better, as the Yanks fall apart in the ALCS against the Red Sox, making 10 errors in the five games, while the Boston fans beat up visiting New Yorkers in the stands at Fenway. The Red Sox end their curse, sweeping the Braves to win their first World Series in 49 years. Now, the only "cursed teams" left in baseball appear to be the Yankees and the two Chicago teams, the Cubs and the White Sox.

Somehow, the Yanks make a run for the ages in 2000, although a September nosedive makes it look like Casey is doing his dirty work again. But they hang on, and beat the A's and Seattle Mariners to win their first Pennant in 37 years, since the tragic last days of the Kennedy Presidency. This sets up a Subway Series with the Giants, who have their own drought: They haven't won a World Series since beating the Yankees 38 years earlier. (But nobody has said the Giants are under the Curse of Bobby Richardson, who, in this reality, just missed Willie McCovey's series-winning line drive in 1962.)

The symbol of the Series is an epic at-bat in the bottom of the ninth of Game 1 at Trump Stadium. Yankee right fielder Paul O'Neill fouls off pitch after pitch against Giant closer Robb Nen, but Nen finally gets him to fly out to left field, where Barry Bonds makes an easy catch.

Game 2 erupts in controversy, as Roger Clemens takes the broken barrel of Bonds' bat, and seemingly throws it at him. Bonds charges the mound, and the biggest fight in World Series history erupts. With both the Yanks and the Jints behind the Dodgers in the City's imagination, both sets of fans have their frustrations boil over, and fights break out in the stands as well. It takes the umpires five minutes to settle things, and public-address announcer Bob Sheppard tries to shame the crowd into behaving. Of course, since Sheppard has been there since 1951 and has never been there for a Yankee World Championship team, it's not like he's "the voice of God" or anything like that. As the game continues, there are still fights. The Giants win, and Mike Lupica writes in the New York Daily News that the Bonds-Clemens matchup is "the biggest reason yet why baseball must crack down on steroids."

The Giants take Game 3 at Stoneham Stadium, and while the Yankees salvage Game 4, Game 5 is a Giant victory. The Curse of Casey has struck again.

After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the hearts of baseball fans everywhere are with the Yankees as they make an improbable comeback against the A's and shock the 116-win Mariners to take the Pennant. The Arizona Diamondbacks slam the Yanks in Games 1 and 2 of the World Series. The Yanks take Game 3 and, incredibly, last-out homers save the Yanks in Games 4 and 5. But the D-backs win Game 6 in an ugly blowout.

In Game 7, Alfonso Soriano homers off Curt Schilling to give the Yanks a 2-1 lead in the top of the eighth. In the bottom of the ninth, the Yanks need three more outs to win their first World Championship in 54 years -- the same length as the Stanley Cup drought that the New York Rangers had (1940-1994). The D-backs are only in their fourth year of operation. But Mariano Rivera can't hold the lead, both his control and his fielding betraying him. Luis Gonzalez singles home Craig Counsell, and the Yanks have their most shocking postseason defeat yet. The Curse of Casey seems stronger than ever.

The 2002 Playoffs are a wash, as the Yanks lose to the Anaheim Angels, who go on to beat the Giants in an epic World Series. But 2003 seems hopeful for the Yanks, as they advance to the ALCS. Despite another brawl in Game 3 at Fenway, the Yanks need to win only Game 6 or Game 7 at Trump Stadium to win the Pennant against the hated Red Sox. They lose Game 6, and Game 7 looks lost as well. But four straight doubles by Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Hideki Matsui and Jorge Posada, bracketing Sox manager Grady Little's mind-bending decision to leave a tiring Pedro Martinez in, ties the game. Rivera silences his critics with a stunning three-inning performance, and Aaron Boone becomes perhaps the greatest postseason hero in Yankee history by homering on the first pitch of the 11th inning against Tim Wakefield. There is pandemonium in The Bronx.

But joy turns to anger in Game 4 of the World Series, as Jeff Weaver gives up an 11th-inning homer to Alex Gonzalez, and the Marlins clinch on Josh Beckett's shutout in Game 6.

The choke to the Red Sox in October 2004 is still too painful to discuss here. And the flop against the Angels in the 2005 Playoffs still has some fans calling for the heads of Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson. As the 2006 Playoffs began, there were those who hoped for a Subway Series between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, but both teams are beaten in the Division Series. Again, Yankee fans call for A-Rod's head, or at least for his trade.

Finally, Yankee owner Donald Trump can't take it anymore, and tells manager Joe Torre, "Yuh fie-uhd!" Lee Mazzilli failed to get the job done in 2007, the 60th anniversary of the last Yankee World Championship, and the Yanks finished 3rd behind Tampa Bay and Boston in 2008.

The Yankees swept the Twins in the 2009 Division Series, and beat the Angels to win the Pennant. But they lost Game 1 of the World Series to the Phillies. Then, before Game 2, the intended performance of "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys doesn't happen when the power goes out. The same is true for the Yankee lineup, and the Phillies take the Series in 5 games.

The Yankees lose the 2010 ALCS to the Texas Rangers in 6 games, and the 2011 ALDS to the Detroit Tigers in 5 games. Randy Velarde is now Yankee manager.

It's been 64 years since the Yankees won it all. The Curse of Casey Stengel lives. The only question for the 2012 season is, How will the Yanks blow it this time?

*

Of course, it didn't happen that way. Vic Raschi got Birdie Tebbetts to pop up to Tommy Henrich, at first base, and the Yankees won the 1949 American League Pennant.

Not only did this mark the first real Yankees-Red Sox Pennant race -- 1904 doesn't count, as neither team had adopted its current name and the Babe Ruth sale hadn't happened yet, and 1948 was a three-team race won by neither, rather by the Indians -- but it was the beginning of the most unbelievable run of success in baseball history.

It was the start of 9 World Championships and 14 Pennants in 16 years -- 7 World Championships and 10 Pennants in 12 years under Charles Dillon "Casey" Stengel. As the man himself said, "And you can look it up."

Well, if you do look it up, you'll see that this didn't really begin the Yanks-Sox rivalry. At least, not in the minds of Yankee Fans. Sure, there were the comparisons of Joe DiMaggio to Ted Williams, and maybe of Phil Rizzuto to Johnny Pesky.

But the Sox were pretty much terrible from Ted's 1952 reactivation by the Marines to serve in the Korean War until their 1967 Impossible Dream season. And by that point, the Yankees had collapsed. After all, nobody ever really compared Williams to Mickey Mantle, or Mantle to Carl Yastrzemski, or Mantle to Tony Conigliaro. It wouldn't have been worth the effort.

Not until the 1970s did it really catch on, with both the Yanks and the Sox falling a little short in '72, a Thurman Munson-Carlton Fisk fight in '73, both teams gunning for the Division but falling short to the Orioles in '74, the Sox holding off the Yanks to win the Pennant in '75, the Fisk-Lou Piniella collision starting a wild brawl on route to a Yankee Pennant in '76, the three-way race with the Sox and O's in '77 culminated with Reggie Jackson's blast ending a previously scoreless September game, and, of course, 1978, ending in the Boston Tie Party, featuring Bucky Dent's home run.

After that, there wasn't really a Yanks-Sox race again until '86, and the Sox won that. There was a five-way race in '88, with the Yanks finishing only 3 1/2 games behind the Sox, but in 5th place behind them, Toronto, Milwaukee and Detroit. The next one was in '95, with Mattingly heading out and O'Neill, Pettitte and Rivera having arrived, and the Sox won.

Then came 1999, the first Yanks-Sox race with Jeter, Cone, Tino and a few other Dynasty-makers having arrived to face off against Pedro and Nomar. And from there, it's been even more hate-filled than in the Seventies, certainly more so than in the Thirties and Forties, where there were several races where the Yanks and Sox finished 1st and 2nd, but except for '49 they weren't really close races.

If you haven't read Summer of '49 by the late David Halberstam, who was then 15 and lived in New York but had relatives near Boston and thus understood both perspectives, I urge you to get it. I reread it in 2009, the 60th Anniversary of that season, and, although most of its participants alive in 1989 are dead now -- including Halberstam himself, and Joe DiMaggio, whose reputation has taken a nosedive since he's no longer around to shame writers into not saying what he was like off the field -- the book holds up very well.

What If George Steinbrenner Had Bought the Cleveland Indians?

NOTE: I first posted this one in July 2010, right after George died. I have made corrections for spelling and grammar where needed.

George Steinbrenner grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. He went to a lot of games at the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium, and loved Indians stars like Bob Lemon (who he would make manager of the Yankees, twice) and Al Rosen (who he would make general manager of the Yankees). He even helped out former Indians pitcher Mike Garcia when Garcia was broke during the illness that would take his life.

And yet, George loved the Yankees. He was always impressed with the way they would professionally go about dismantling the American League. It's easy for someone like me, who did not see the Indians finish within 11 games of first place (except in the split-season strike year of 1981) until he was 25 years old, to overlook that the Indians were a powerhouse team once. In 1948, they won the World Series. In 1954, they won the Pennant. In 1951, '52, '53, '55, '56 and '59, they finished 2nd.

And then... nothing. They weren't even in a Pennant race from 1960 until 1994, when Jacobs Field opened, and they got the crowds back, and were just a game out of first place when the strike hit. They won American League Pennants in 1995 and '97, and have won AL Central Division Titles in '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, 2001 and '07. But all through the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, into the early Nineties, even as the city of Cleveland rebounded from fiscal, environmental and sociological trouble to become one of America's best cities again, the Indians could still be hit with the tag that was once slapped on the city itself: The Mistake On the Lake.

George Michael Steinbrenner III wouldn't have put up with that kind of crap.

In 1971, George formed a group that offered Vernon Stouffer, the frozen-foods magnate who then owned the Indians, $8.6 million. Stouffer, who lost a lot of money in a corporate merger with appliance company Litton, was going to go through with it, but changed his mind. A year later, still needing a lot of cash, Stouffer sold the Indians to Nick Mileti, owner of the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers and the World Hockey Association's Cleveland Crusaders, for $10 million.

Undaunted, Indians president Gabe Paul, who was one of Steinbrenner's investors, told George that CBS (yes, the TV & radio network), which had owned the Yankees since 1964, was interested in selling the team. CBS took $8.8 million, and the deal was done on January 3, 1973.

If Stouffer hadn't lost... excuse me, changed his mind...

*

Dealing strictly with the Indians (before I get to what would have happened to the Yankees without George's dough), things wouldn't have changed all that much at first. George's legal issues, dealing with his illegal campaign contributions to President Richard Nixon, would have kept him mainly out of the loop until 1976 or so.

But there's no doubt that, as he did in RL, he would still have opened the vault for superstar pitcher Jim "Catfish" Hunter. Catfish, in those bright red uniforms that ex-Oriole Boog Powell (who should've known better, once dressed in Baltimore's bright orange) said made him "look like the world's biggest Bloody Mary"? Why not, Catfish wouldn't have looked any weirder in that uniform than he did in A's green & yellow.

George might have kept Graig Nettles at 3rd base in Cleveland, instead of getting him for the Yankees. He might have kept Chris Chambliss as the Tribe's first baseman. And he still might have made deals to bring in guys like outfielder Lou Piniella, starting pitcher Ed Figueroa and relief pitcher Rich "Goose" Gossage. He probably would've made the same free-agent deal that got 1976 Baltimore 20-game winner Wayne Garland to come to Cleveland, although that would have blown up in his face the same way it blew up in the face of the man who had bought the Indians from Mileti, Ted Bonda.

And, since Bonda, a team vice president in the Mileti regime, would likely still have been one of George's "limited partners," it's worth noting that Bonda traded for Frank Robinson, after Frank wore out his welcome with the California Angels. Bonda wanted to make Frank his manager after the 1974 season, because he respected Frank's leadership skills first and because he wanted the first black manager second. It's not hard to imagine George wanting to burnish his image -- especially after the Nixon conviction -- by hiring the first black manager.

But there's no way in hell that George, or Ted Bonda, or Gabe Paul, or even Frank Robinson, would have been able to lure Reggie Jackson to Cleveland. Most of what George said to bring Reggie to the Yankees was about New York, the flash and dash, the bright lights and the big money, the fans and the endorsements.

Ray Kroc, the McDonald's baron and owner of the San Diego Padres, was offering Reggie gobs of money (by the standards of the time, anyway), McDonald's stock, and Southern California weather.

"Ray Kroc's offering me more money to go to San Diego," Reggie told George.

"No," George said, "Kroc's offering you more salary to go to San Diego. This is New York, Reggie. Madison Avenue. You'll make up the difference in endorsements, and then some."

George was right: Reggie got to advertise Puma athletic footwear, Murjani menswear, Panasonic TVs ("They call it Omnivision. I call it Reggievision." He later switched to Hitachi), Volkswagen, Getty gas to put into said cars (An ad during the 1980 gas crisis showed Reggie striking out and saying, "I hate wasting energy"), and, oh yeah, Standard Brands candy and the Reggie! bar that they made. (And don't let these revisionists with their recent books tell you otherwise: The Reggie! bar tasted great. Definitely wasn't less filling, though.)

Seriously, can you think of a Cleveland athlete who made a lot of commercials? Before What's His Name who's in Miami now? Even the lure of having Frank Robinson as a manager wouldn't have gotten Reggie to take his talents to Erieside. Or, as he said at that press conference on RL-11/29/1976, "bringing my star with me."

In RL-1976, the Indians went 81-78, their best record since winning 86 in 1968, and finished 4th in the American League East. (They would be moved to the AL Central in 1994.) Here's their RL starting lineup for that season:

1B, Boog Powell, who would not have been obtained if Chambliss, 7 years younger, hadn't been traded to the Yankees on April 26, 1974.
2B, Duane Kuiper, good field, fair hit but with no power.
SS, Frank Duffy, so George still would've needed an upgrade, like he did with the RL Yankees with Fred "Chicken" Stanley.
3B, Buddy Bell, good player, but not necessary with Nettles still in Cleveland.
LF, George Hendrick, good power, despite "Cavernous Cleveland Stadium."
CF, Rick Manning, contact hitter, runner, fielder, all good, but no power.
RF, Charlie Spikes, really good player in '73 and '74, but fell off dramatically.
DH, Rico Carty, very good hitter, although the Cuban was one of these Caribbean guys whose age would always be a mystery; supposedly, he was 36 in '76.
C, Ray Fosse, he was once really good, but was now done.

The '76 Indians had a starting rotation of Pat Dobson, Jim Bibby, Rick Waits, Jackie Brown and a young Dennis Eckersley; and Dave LaRoche and Jim Kern as the top relievers.

I wonder... Who could George have lured to Cleveland? He needed a catcher... and a certain native of Canton did not like New York...

Here's the TTL-1976 Cleveland Indians lineup, with changes from RL in italics: 1B, Chris Chambliss; 2B, Duane Kuiper; SS, Bert Campaneris; 3B, Graig Nettles; LF, George Hendrick; CF, Rick Manning; RF, Lou Piniella; DH, Rico Carty; C, Thurman Munson; rotation, Pat Dobson, Jim Bibby, Rick Waits, Dennis Eckersley and Ed Figueroa; relievers, Dave LaRoche, Jim Kern and... Goose Gossage.

In RL-1976, the AL East had the Yankees winning 97 games, the Orioles 88, the Boston Red Sox 83, the Indians 81, the Detroit Tigers 74 and the Milwaukee Brewers 66.

With the improvements above, and with the Yankees no longer having Munson, Chambliss, Piniella and Figueroa... presuming, of course, that the Yankees would have augmented in other ways...

It's not hard to imagine a TTL-AL East with the Indians 91 wins, the Yankees 87, the Orioles 86, the Red Sox 81, the Tigers 72 and the Brewers 64. And then, in the Playoffs against Kansas City, it's not hard to imagine ABC Sports' Howard Cosell speaking those immortal words, "Chris Chambliss has won the American League Pennant for the Cleveland Indians!"

But the Indians' first Pennant in 22 years is not followed by their first World Championship in 28 years -- because the first all-Ohio World Series (something that still hasn't happened in RL) is still swept by the Cincinnati Reds in 4 straight. So George goes a little nuts, signing Garland, whose shoulder still gets shredded in spring training. And he signs Don Gullett, who's limited by injury to one good, but not great season, just as he was with the RL-Yankees. The Indians do not win the Pennant again in 1977.

*

And what of the Yankees? Who would have bought them from CBS? How about a Jersey guy? Jersey City native and Montclair resident, Dr. John J. McMullen, Ph.D., for example? In RL, he was one of George's limited partners, which led him to say, "Nothing is so limited as being one of George's limited partners." From 1979 to 1993, he owned the Houston Astros. In 1982, he bought the NHL's Colorado Rockies, moved them to the Meadowlands, and renamed them the New Jersey Devils, owning them until his death in 2005.

It's not hard to imagine McMullen leading a group that buys the Yankees from CBS in 1973, but without Munson behind the plate, Reggie and Piniella in the outfield, Chambliss at first, Nettles at third, and Figueroa and Gossage on the mound, the Yankees sure don't win the Pennant in 1976, '77 or '78.

In spring training of 1978, Eckersley's wife left him for Manning. It's not hard to imagine Steinbrenner trading the "immoral" (not to mention weak-hitting) Manning rather than the strong-pitching Eck. Of course, George would want Eck to get a haircut... And thus, while the Red Sox probably win the AL East in '77, there is no Playoff between the Yankees and Red Sox for the Division in '78, because both are short of pitching.

So from 1978 to 1983, the AL East becomes a dogfight between 3 teams: The Indians, the Orioles, and the Brewers, who got really good in '78 and stayed good for most of the Eighties.

Let me address the elephant in the room right now: If George Steinbrenner had not been the owner of the New York Yankees in the late 1970s, the Yankees, while not exactly stinking, as the Mets were then doing, would still have been New York's second-most popular team behind the Mets. So would I still have been a Yankee fan? Maybe not, there were, just down the New Jersey Turnpike, the Phillies... or would they have been too frustrating? Maybe I wouldn't have become a sports fan at all. And you wouldn't be reading this.

So... In the 1977 World Series, the Dodgers take advantage of the Curse of the Bambino, and beat the Red Sox; the Indians, with Catfish winning and the Goose saving the clincher, beat the Dodgers in 1978, and have their first World Championship in 30 years, George finally getting his title; the Pittsburgh Pirates still beat the Orioles in 1979; the Phillies still beat the Royals in 1980; the Brewers would have beaten the Expos in 1981 and, with the boost in their confidence, beat the Cardinals in 1982; and then, as several of the RL-Yankees/TTL-Indians got older, "history reasserts itself," and the Orioles beat the Phillies in '83, and so on.

Wait... Did I say the Montreal Expos would have won the 1981 National League Pennant? Yes, because that's where Reggie was most likely to go if he turned down the Yankees. He had considered San Diego, but the liquor-magnate Bronfman family owned the Expos then, and they could pay Reggie even more than Kroc could. I think the French fans of Quebec, used to the Montreal Canadiens' Stanley Cup-winning "Flying Frenchmen" style, would have loved Monsieur Octubre. They probably wouldn't have gotten past the Phillies in '77 or '78, or the Pirates in '79, and I don't want to take the '80 Series away from the Phillies (maybe there's a Playoff for the NL East title), but in '81, the Expos might have been the best team in baseball.

In RL-1986, the Indians won 84 games, their best performance since 1968, but injuries derailed them the next season and they lost 101. But I doubt that George would have left them so bench-bereft. In TTL-1987, the Indians beat out the Tigers for the Division before losing to the Minnesota Twins. In 1988, they go all the way, beating out the Red Sox, shocking the Oakland Athletics' "Bash Brothers," and a newly-sober, still-starting Dennis Eckersley pitches a complete game in Game 1 of the World Series, striking out Kirk Gibson for the last out, as the Tribe take the Series in 5 games.

Opening Day of the 1989 season shows the raising of the 1920, 1948, 1978 and 1988 World Championship banners at... the Ohiodome in downtown Cleveland, at the RL-location of Jacobs (Progressive) Field. Seems George wanted real grass but also a retractable roof to keep out Cleveland's frequently nasty weather. It's not a great old-timey ballpark like the one the RL-Indians have, but it gets them out of Municipal Stadium 4 years sooner. The Indians would also win Pennants in 1995, 1997 and 2007, winning the World Series on the latter two occasions.

The success of the Indians means that, in 1989, the film Major League is made about the Chicago White Sox, rather than the Indians. True, in RL, the White Sox had been in a few Pennant races, but hadn't won a Pennant since 1959 (beating out the Indians) and hadn't won a World Series since 1917, and were then in a crumbling old ballpark (Comiskey Park) and had nearly moved to Milwaukee for 1970, to Seattle for 1976, and to Tampa Bay for 1989. And, unlike the Indians, who trailed the Browns (and maybe Ohio State football) for sports supremacy in their hometown, were, at least, the only big-league baseball team, a luxury the White Sox have never had. So Jake Taylor, Ricky "Wild Thing" Vaughn, Willie Mays Hayes, Pedro Cerrano and the rest make the White Sox, once again, the South Side Hit Men, if only onscreen, followed by the ChiSox, in RL, nearly making life imitate art by staying in the AL West race until the end in 1990.

The Ohiodome also enables Art Modell to keep the Browns in Cleveland, and they beat the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXXV, and, never having moved the team, Modell becomes a beloved elder statesman in Cleveland. Maybe the Browns even host, if not play in, a Super Bowl at the Ohiodome. George would have insisted on it. He might even have insisted on the dome hosting an Ohio State-Notre Dame football game in front of 100,000 people, and a postseason Buckeye Bowl and the Big 10 Conference Championship Game.

So, with Baltimore's Memorial Stadium already in place as a stopgap facility before a new stadium can be built, Robert Kraft gets frustrated with plans to build a new stadium next to Foxboro Stadium (which, in RL, did get built and became Gillette Stadium) or in East Hartford, Connecticut (RL-Rentschler Field, which got scaled back to 40,000 as the home only of the University of Connecticut and not a pro team), and sells the New England Patriots to Steve Bisciotti. The Patriots are renamed the Baltimore Ravens, and win 3 Super Bowls under coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady, but have now lost 2 Super Bowls to the New York Giants. The Boston area is still trying to get a new NFL team, but, just as with the plans for a new Fenway Park, Massachusetts politics has thus far killed the plan.

*

And what of the Yankees? Dr. McMullen would take until 1985 to get the right people to build the Yankees into a championship-ready team, including Billy Martin, less-stressed due to not having Steinbrenner to watch his every move.

They win the Division against the Blue Jays in 1985, but lose the ALCS to the Royals. But in 1986, with Dave Winfield and Don Mattingly leading the way, and with just enough starting pitching, they finish ahead of the Red Sox, beat the Angels in the ALCS, and... well, let's just say that Dave Righetti was better than Bob Stanley, and Mattingly was not Bill Buckner. The date the Yankees first clinch the World Championship at Shea Stadium is October 25, 1986. In other words, the Yankees win their 21st World Championship, and the Mets have not won the World Series since the Miracle of '69... The Curse of Joe Foy, anyone?

If McMullen builds the TTL-Yankees as well as he built the RL-Devils -- and not only as well as he built the RL-Astros, which resulted in just 2 Division titles under his ownership, and no Pennants -- then maybe they beat out the Blue Jays again in 1993, and it's Bernie Williams, not Joe Carter, who hits the home run off Mitch Williams of the Phillies to win the 1993 World Series. Becoming consistent like the RL-Devils, the Yanks won the Series in 1996, and again in '98 after an ALCS dogfight with George's Indians, and again in '99 and 2000.

But with the Yanks-Sox rivalry not really happening in the 1970s, the Sox don't measure themselves against the Yankees, and also don't end up with it being vice versa. Therefore, the Sox win the Pennant in 2003 -- and Aaron Boone is remembered mainly for being Bret Boone's brother and for briefly playing again after open-heart surgery -- before losing the World Series to the Expos (who take the place of the Florida Marlins, as Jeffrey Loria doesn't need to sell the TTL-more successful Montreal team). It takes the Yankees until 2009 to win another Pennant and their 27th World Series -- they have the same number, but with 1977 and 1978 replaced by 1985 and 1993.

Meanwhile, the Indians have 6 World Championships -- 1 less than RL-Steinbrenner had, but 4 more than the RL-Tribe.

And it's the Florida Marlins who move to D.C. to become the Washington Nationals, while Reggie Jackson, unable for whatever reason to do so in RL, leads an ownership group that buys his TTL-former team, the Montreal Expos, from Loria's group, and throws out the ceremonial first pitch at Parc Labatt, across from the Bell Centre and Windsor Station, on Opening Day 2004.

Is it a better world, this world in which George Steinbrenner owned the Cleveland Indians instead of the New York Yankees? Maybe, maybe not. But it's certainly a different one.

What If Brien Taylor Hadn't Gotten Into a Fight?

The rebirth of Otherwise Sports was inspired by a post in the blog "Bleeding Yankee Blue" (see link to the right), about the arrest of Brien Taylor.

http://bleedingyankeeblue.blogspot.com/2012/03/why-fall-of-brien-taylor-is-damn-shame.html

Who? Let me refresh your memory:

It's June 1991. Last year, the Yankees finished dead last for the first time in 24 years, only the 4th time in the club's history. For once, they had the first pick in the Major League Baseball Amateur Draft.

The Yankees chose Brien Taylor. A 19-year-old lefthanded fireballer out of North Carolina who had just graduated from high school.

Superagent Scott Boras snapped Taylor up, and told the Yankee brass that if they didn't agree to his demands, he would go to college for a year, thus making him eligible for the next year's draft, which means the Yankees would have stood a pretty good chance of losing him to another team.

At the time, Yankee owner George Steinbrenner was suspended, and not allowed to take part in any business dealings. The Boss sent a message to the media, that if the Yankees let Taylor get away, they should be "shot."

The Yankees agreed to Taylor's demands, including a signing bonus of $1.55 million. In 2012 money, this would be $2.58 million. A hell of a lot of money for a teenager, but a decent enough price for a pitcher who turns out to be a good one.

In 1992, pitching for the Fort Lauderdale Yankees of the Florida State League, Class A+, 3 steps below the majors, Taylor was 6-8, but his ERA was 2.57, his WHIP (Walks + Hits, divided by Innings Pitched) was 1.159, and his K/BB radio (strikeouts-to-walks) was 2.83 to 1. So far, so good. And he was only 20 years old.

In 1993, pitching for the Albany-Colonie Yankees of the Eastern League, Class AA, 2 steps below the majors, he was 13-7. His ERA had gone up to 3.48, not bad at all. His WHIP went up to 1.405, and his K/BB dropped to 1.47, not good signs. But he was only 21. Starting the next season in Double-A would probably have been the right way to go.

So far, Brian Taylor still looked like a future major leaguer.

On December 18, 1993, a week before Christmas, which was the day before his 22nd birthday, his world changed.

In a bar in Harlowe, North Carolina, Taylor's brother Brenden got into a fight, and suffered head lacerations. Once Brien found out, he and a cousin went to the assailant's trailer home to confront him. Brien, having apparently learned nothing from what happened to his brother, got into a fight, and fell on his shoulder. This resulted in a dislocated shoulder and a torn labrum, two devastating injuries for any baseball player, but especially for a pitcher.

Renowned sports surgeon Dr. Frank Jobe operated on Taylor, telling him he would miss the entire 1994 season, but would be back to his full velocity and control thereafter.

Jobe was wrong. Taylor gained 35 pounds, lost 8 mph off his fastball, and was unable to throw a curveball for a strike. He was only able to make 11 starts in the 1995 season, all in the Gulf Coast League, a rookie league. In 1996, '97 and '98, he made 30 starts, all for the Greensboro Yankees of the South Atlantic League -- Class A, the SAL or "Sally League," the level below the one at which the Yankees started his pro career. His ERAs for those 3 seasons were 18.73, 14.33 and 9.59; his WHIPs were 3.918, 3.074 and 2.053.

After the '98 season, the Yanks released him. He didn't pitch at all in 1999. The Cleveland Indians signed him for 2000, and he made 5 more starts in the Sally League, and got racked. And got released. He threw his final professional pitch at the age of 28.

One moment of madness, and it ruined his career.

Not just his career. His life.

He moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and worked as a UPS package handler. He then worked for a beer distributor, though not owning a distributorship like Yankee legend Roger Maris did in Florida after his retirement from baseball.

Taylor has 5 daughters -- 4 of whom he supposedly left alone for more than 8 hours in a 2005 incident, and for this he was charged with misdemeanor child abuse.

And then, just last week, at age 40, Taylor was charged with cocaine trafficking, after undercover narcotics agents purchased a large quantity of cocaine and crack cocaine from him over a period of several months.

*

Could it have been different? Let's say Brenden Taylor doesn't get into that fight. Or that Brien and their cousin meet the guy who hurt Brenden and they straightened things out without violence. Or even that Brien won the fight. Whatever the specifics, Brien Taylor wakes up on the morning of December 19, 1993, and his left shoulder is fine. He's about to turn 22.

The 1994 season begins with Taylor still in Double-A, with Albany. Having had a solid spring training with the Yankees, he does well in April and May. Early in June, he is called up to the Columbus Clippers (Ohio) in the International League, the Yankees' Triple-A affiliate.

The opposition is better: Well over half the batters he faces either will be, or have been and could be again, major league players. The problem now isn't his control, but his command: How do you make good hitters miss your good pitches? Over the course of the season, his WHIP is good enough, but he gets hit hard a few times, so his ERA is too high. But, by August 12, he seems to have figured it out and settled down. The suggestions that he will soon be ready for the majors return. Only August 12 is the day the Strike of '94 begins. There will be no September callup for Brien Taylor, or for any other minor league player.

The strike is settled in April '95, and Taylor begins the season at Columbus. He pitches well. He's getting Triple-A hitters, including players who've been in The Show, out with consistency. He's 24 years old. The Clippers don't make the Playoffs. And so, on September 1, 1995, Brien Taylor is called up to the major leagues. He is a Yankee.

I've looked it up: The lowest uniform number neither retired (officially or, like Ron Guidry's 49 then was, unofficially) nor worn by a player or coach on the 1995 Yankees was 52. With CC Sabathia, the idea of a lefty power pitcher wearing Number 52 is hardly strange, although Taylor wouldn't have been nearly as, how shall I put this, unsvelte. So TAYLOR 52 T-shirts start to be printed up.

Does having Taylor available down the stretch make a difference for the Yankees in TTL-1995? No. Being a September callup, he wouldn't have been eligible for the postseason. So if you're familiar with the 1995 American League Division Series, and you think he could have been brought in to relieve an exhausted David Cone in Game 5, forget it. The Yankees still lose that series to the Seattle Mariners, and the Don Mattingly era, including the managerial reign of Buck Showalter, comes to an end; the Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera era, including the managerial reign of Joe Torre, begins.

In 1996, the Yankees had 4 main starters: Andy Pettitte made 34 starts, Jimmy Key and Kenny Rogers each made 30, and Dwight Gooden made 29. Cone was hurt most of the season. Until he came back, his spot in the rotation was taken by Ramiro Mendoza for 11 starts; between them, Scott Kamieniecki, David Weathers, Brian Boehringer, Mark Hutton, Wally Whitehurst and Ricky Bones made 17. Now, I realize it doesn't quite work this way -- Any of those guys could have made emergency starts in place of the regular starters, including the replacement Mendoza -- but, effectively, the "Cone spot" in the rotation made 39 starts.

Let's assume that Taylor becomes the 5th starter until Cone gets back. In RL, Mendoza went 4-5, ERA 6.79, ERA+ 74, WHIP 1.698. Surely, a 24-year-old with a 95+ MPH fastball and a good curve could have done better than that.

But when Cone comes back, whose place in the rotation does HE take? It's not clear: We think of Rogers as a very good pitcher for teams outside New York, but having been awful in it, first for the Yankees, then for the Mets; but neither Key nor Gooden had a particularly better season, statistically speaking -- Gooden's May 14 no-hitter notwithstanding.

Maybe it's not really important to figure this out. After all, the Yankees won the World Series anyway, right? Never mind the comment made by Jason Alexander as George Costanza on Seinfeld: "In six games." In RL, do you really think fans of the St. Louis Cardinals give a damn that they were down to their last out twice in Game 6 of last year's Series, and needed to go the full 7 to do it? Don't you think they value the memory of the 2011 Series more than they value the one they won in just 5 games in 2006, simply because of the drama? Face it, if Taylor starts Game 4 in 1996, maybe he doesn't fall apart like Rogers did, and the Braves don't jump out to a 6-0 lead, and we don't get the comeback completed by that Jim Leyritz home run...

So let's move on, to 1997, a season in which the Yankees did NOT win the World Series in RL. This time, only 8 pitchers started games for the Yankees: Pettitte 35, David Wells 32, Cone 29, Rogers 22, Gooden 19, Mendoza 15, Hideki Irabu 9 and Jersey City native Willie Banks 1. Rogers had easily the worst performance of the top 6, including the fact that he was the winning pitcher in only 1 of his last 8 starts, losing 3, with the Yankees winning only 2 of those last 8. But maybe Gooden is the one whose place Taylor takes: After pitching and winning on April 5, Doctor K got hurt and didn't pitch again until June 15. Maybe Taylor takes that spot in the rotation and runs with it, and Gooden gets traded.

Let's presume for a moment that whoever the Yankees got for Gooden turns out not to be a factor, but Taylor does. By my definition and by my count, Gooden had 10 bad starts from July onward. The Yankees won the AL Wild Card, missing the AL Eastern Division Title by 2 games to the Baltimore Orioles, whom they'd beaten in the previous year's AL Championship Series.

Suppose Taylor matches Gooden's performance in all but 3 of his starts, and turns those 3 starts from Yankee losses to Yankee wins. The Yanks win the Division by 1 game, and instead of getting eliminated by the Cleveland Indians in the ALDS, get revenge on the Mariners for 1995, instead of having to wait until 2000 and '01. In the RL-1997 ALDS, the Yanks lost to the Indians in 5; but in the TTL-1997 ALCS, it would be best-of-7, the Yanks would have home-field advantage, and instead of Gooden, who only made it to the 6th inning, starting Game 4, which turned out to be the pivotal contest thanks to Sandy Alomar's home run off Mariano Rivera, Taylor pitches into the 8th, meaning Torre doesn't have to call on all of Graeme Lloyd, Jeff Nelson, Mike Stanton, Rivera and Mendoza -- he probably only needs Nelson in the 8th and Rivera in the 9th. In Game 5, the Yanks close it out.

This leaves a 1997 World Series starting rotation, based on who started when in the Playoffs, of Cone, Wells, Taylor and Pettitte, all fairly well-rested, against the surprising Florida Marlins. The Marlins won that Series in 7 games, including the calamitous Game 7 when Jose Mesa melted down in the 9th for the Indians. The Marlins won the Series odd-numbered games, the Indians the even-numbered ones. In Game 3, the Marlins exploded for 7 runs in the 9th... and the Tribe pulled 4 back, but the Marlins won, 14-11. You think Mariano Rivera, relieving Taylor (and probably Stanton and Nelson), would allow 7 runs in the 9th? Not likely. The Yankees thus take Game 3, go up 3-games-to-1 in Game 4, and Game 5? The Marlins scored 4 in the 6th in RL, but if Cone (whose turn it would have been) got into trouble, Stanton could have bailed him out before handing off to Nelson and Rivera. Ballgame over, World Series over, Yankees win, theeee Yankees win, Title 24, titles back-to-back-and-a-belly-to-belly.

Presuming Taylor doesn't get hurt, or suddenly lose all control, the 1998, '99 and 2000 seasons remain the same: 5 straight World Championships, just like in 1949-53.

2001? In the RL-WS, against the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Yankee starters were Mike Mussina for Games 1 and 5, Pettitte for 2 and 6, Roger Clemens for 3 and 7, and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez for Game 4.

Hey, wait a second, you may be thinking. If Brien Taylor pans out, maybe the Yankees don't go after Clemens. And if they do, and Taylor is still contributing by the end of 2000, they don't go after Mussina.

Maybe they do: El Duque started to decline in 2000. Maybe, instead of Taylor's place in the rotation, Moose take's Duque's.

At any rate, Taylor would now be 29, almost 30, and would be in his 6th full season in the majors, and probably have around 80 major league wins. Maybe if he, rather than El Duque, starts Game 4, we don't have those incredibly dramatic home runs by Tino Martinez and Derek Jeter: 2-1 Arizona going into the bottom of the 9th becomes 1-0 Yankees going into the top of the 9th, and the Yankees won the game anyway... but we can't really fault Duque here, because he only allowed 1 run before Stanton relieved him in the 7th. So even if Taylor relieves a battered Pettitte in Game 6, and keeps the Snakes down to, say, 7 runs instead of the 15 they actually scored, it doesn't matter, because the Yanks only scored 2. Is Taylor going to make a difference this time? No: The Yankees still lose this one.

On Opening Day 2002, Taylor is 30, and if he's still in the rotation, here's where he begins to make a bit of a difference: If he's in, Ted Lilly is out; if Taylor is there instead of Lilly, the Yanks don't trade Lilly for Jeff Fucking Weaver because Weaver isn't necessary. Taylor doesn't make much of a difference yet.

But in 2003? The Yankees win the Pennant over The Scum on the Aaron Boone homer, and in the World Series... Taylor, approaching his 32nd birthday and now the 5th starter in the regular season, relieves Nelson (who had relieved Clemens) in the 9th, and is still pitching in the 12th, and gets "the other Alex Gonzalez" out, instead of him hitting that walkoff home run against Weaver. With the Yanks up 3 games to 1, Wells' back acts up, he can only pitch the 1st in Game 5, but Jose Contreras, having not pitched at all instead of throwing 2 innings in Game 4, is fresh, and gets to the 7th, and the Yankees win Game 5 and take their 28th World Championship.

Now comes the fun part. It's October 2004, and, with Clemens having followed Pettitte to Houston, in RL there's no lefty in the rotation. In TTL, there is Taylor. And, after the Red Sox have come back from 3 games to 0, who starts Game 7? Not Kevin Brown. Brien Taylor.

Top of the 1st. Manny Ramirez on 1st with 2 out. David Ortiz up, lefty against lefty. Taylor strikes him out to end the inning. No homer for the big fat lying cheating bastard.

In RL, the next 5 Boston at-bats were as follows: Jason Varitek grounds back to the pitcher, Trot Nixon grounds to 2nd, Kevin Millar singles, Bill Mueller and Orlando Cabrera draw walks.

In TTL, these are the same, with the exception that, instead of Varitek's groundout ending the 1st, it leads off the 2nd, so Damon comes to bat with the bases loaded not with 1 out, but with 2. And not against the rightanded Javier Vazquez, who relieved Kevin Brown-out, but against the lefthanded Taylor. Nasty curveball. Alex Rodriguez catches a harmless popup. Going to the bottom of the 2nd, and instead of 6-0 Boston, the game is scoreless.

The Sox threaten again in the 4th, but, again, Taylor gets Damon out, so that 2-run homer never happens.

The rest of the game happens as we remember it, which means... final score, Yankees 3, Red Sox 2. Despite blowing a 3-games-to-none lead, the Yankees win their 41st Pennant. They go on to do what the Red Sox did, sweep the Cardinals, for their 29th World Championship.

From this point onward, I don't really care what Taylor does. It's not that I'm grateful to him for 1997: It's that I'm grateful that he spared me Jeff Weaver in 2003 and Kevin Brown in 2004.

So, let's say, in 2005, at 33, Taylor loses his effectiveness, and "history reasserts itself": The Yankees win the Division in 2005 and '06, and the Wild Card in '07, but don't win a postseason series on any of those occasions; miss the Playoffs in '08, win the Series in '09, lose the ALCS in '10 and the ALDS in '11.

Taylor's Yankee contract runs out after 2005, and he is not re-signed. He goes elsewhere, and, here, in March 2012, at age 40, with 7 rings and a career record of 160-130 or so, he gets one last chance, from a team that can't pay him a whole lot... becoming the latest in a fascinating line of players who've played for both the Yankees and the Mets.

He won't make the Hall of Fame. He probably won't even have a Plaque in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium. And, in TTL, not knowing what happened in RL, he'll never know just how much agita (to use a favorite word of our old friend Phil Rizzuto), he has kept Yankee Fans from feeling.

Not to mention how much agita he has kept Alex Rodriguez from feeling. Can you imagine how differently A-Rod would be viewed if he'd just gotten that one ring in 2004, before getting his 2nd in 2009? (Which, in TTL, would be the Yankees' 30th.)

On the other hand, that might have prevented Lisa Swan, the better half (in so many ways) of the blog Subway Squawkers (see link to the right) and I from getting into it over whether A-Rod is "a real Yankee" that, just maybe, I never would have responded by creating this blog and Uncle Mike's Musings; they would never have happened.

You know what? I think I'd make that trade.

As Tug McGraw might say, you gotta believe that Brien Taylor would make that trade.

Welcome to Otherwise Sports

(NOTE: This blog was tried once before, but I let it slip. I'm trying it again.)

Welcome to Otherwise Sports, a site that will take famous -- and not-so-famous -- moments from sports history, and ask, "What if it had happened otherwise?"

Some of these ideas have been explored elsewhere. Others have not, to my knowledge.

Since I am a baseball fan first and foremost, the majority of these examinations will be about baseball. But I will do them for several sports, and I am open to suggestions from any sport, and welcome contact from readers looking to see their own ideas up here.

A note on abbreviations: On this site, a year or date preceded by the letters "RL" means that something happened in "Real Life," while a year or date preceded by the letters "TTL" means "This TimeLine."

Example: On RL-10/2/1978, Bucky Dent hit a notable home run; on TTL-10/2/1978, Bucky does NOT hit the home run, and the Red Sox... find another way to screw up that Playoff game and the Yankees still win. You get the idea.

At any rate, enjoy the site, and enjoy my original blog, Uncle Mike's Musings, link available on this page.