The Joe Torre Way

Tony Jackson wrote a great article about the Joe Torre method of Baseball. Sure, it means longer games, but who cares if your winning. More importantly, the Dodger players appear to be following the skipper all the way.

A hitter goes to the plate not to swing at just anything that might be in the strike zone but to swing only at those pitches in his own hot zone, at least early in the count. That usually means he's looking for a pitch in a specific quadrant of the strike zone.

By laying off anything outside that area, the hitter runs the risk of falling behind in the count. But he also greatly reduces the chance he will chase something that initially looks like a strike but ends up being far beyond the zone and far beyond hittable.

In an age when starting pitchers rarely are allowed to go much beyond 100 pitches, a frequent by-product of this approach to hitting is that opposing pitchers have to throw so many pitches to each batter that they reach their limits and must be lifted by the fifth or sixth inning. That gives the Dodgers a crack at hitting against what presumably is the weakest part of any team's staff - the middle relievers.

It's so simple and brilliant at the same time.

Lelands: Waner and Wheat

Lelands auction house just closed their April internet auction that had a couple of nice Dodger related items. They are both photos of Hall of Fame players wearing Dodger uniforms. Here is a pic of Paul "Big Poison" Waner taking a swing during Spring Training in 1943.

Paul Waner was elected into the Hall of Fame for collecting over 3,000 hits with 3 batting titles while batting a lifetime .333 for the Pittsburgh Pirates. By the time be came to the Dodgers he was in the twilight of his career. He played for us during parts of the 1941 season and from the 1943 to 1944. What he is most famous for, though, is not what you might expect.

(Waner was) famous for his ability to hit while hung over, when Waner gave up drinking in 1938 at management's request, he hit only .280 - the first of only two times that he failed to hit .300 as a Pirate. As Casey Stengel said in complimenting his base-running skills, "He had to be a very graceful player, because he could slide without breaking the bottle on his hip."

Waner was also nearsighted, a fact that Pirate management only learned late in his career when he remarked that he had difficulty reading the ads posted on the outfield walls. Fitting him with glasses, however, only interfered with his hitting, as Waner now had to contend with a small spinning projectile rather than the fuzzy grapefruit-sized object he had been hitting before.

Auction Link: Paul Waner press photo:

Below is a photograph of Dodger Hall of Famer Zach Wheat from 1912. What I like about the photo is the uniforms. This style was only used during the 1912 season and features a Baseball diamond surrounding the Brooklyn "B" emblem hat and a white pinstripe jersey. It sold for $362.09.

Auction Link: Zach Wheat photo:

Matt Kemp Named Player of the Week

Matt Kemp is starting to get his due. On top of that both Furcal and Juan Pierre were also nominees. Below is from the Dodgers press release.

Kemp led the National League with 11 RBI and six stolen bases and tied for the league-lead with 11 hits. The 23-year-old right fielder hit .407 (11-27) with four doubles, seven runs scored, a slugging percentage of .556 and an on-base percentage of .433. On May 2^nd at Colorado , Kemp hit two 2-RBI doubles leading the Dodgers to an 11-6 victory and their seventh consecutive win. He recorded four multi-hit games and three multi-RBI games and hit safely in all six games played. This marks the first time that Matt has won weekly honors, and it is the first time that a Dodger has captured this recognition since Andre Ethier won in July 2006... Other nominees this past week included Kemp’s Dodger teammates Rafael Furcal (.393, 1 HR, 4 RBI) and Juan Pierre (.563, 3 RBI)

Pic Link: ThemBums:

Card Of The Week: Bubblegum and Championships

Since I failed to post a "Card of the Week" last week I thought I would make it up by adding some bonus cards to this weeks selection. Below is one of funniest cards to feature a Dodger player. Chan Ho Park, in this 1999 Topps Stadium Club card, is showing off his best bubble gum gem for all to see. He looks shocked it hasn't popped yet.

Pic Link: Atlanta Cards:

The LAPD police & safety sets produced for the Dodgers are probably one of the most successful regional sets ever produced. They started in 1980 and ran for over 20 years. If I'm not mistaken, cards were available directly from police officers and police stations. Were sets also handed out at games too? Below are four cards from the 1982 Dodgers LAPD set that feature the Dodgers recent World Championship win from the previous year.

eBay: Banks and Prints

There were a couple of great items found on eBay recently. Below is a rare 1950's era porcelain "razor blade" bank of the Brooklyn Dodger bum produced by Gibbs-Conner. It measure about four inches tall and is in great shape. This is the first time I've ever seen one of these. I suspect it may have come from a Gibbs-Conner estate sale from several years ago. It went unsold in this eBay auction.

eBay Auction Link: Gibbs-Conner 1950's Dodger Bank:

When I first saw this print on eBay last week I knew its made by Nicholas Volpe and I was hoping I was the only one who noticed it. Unfortunately, I wasn't. If you've been a long time Dodger fan then you know Volpe. His prints have graced the southland from the southern reaches of Orange County to the Central Valley Basin. Do you remember stopping into a Union 76 gas station in the 80's hoping to get that 9 1/2 x 11 inch picture of your favorite Dodger? I remember one year they had black backgrounds with color portrait paintings. In the 70's they made coffee cups with Volpe paintings on the surface. The below print is of Dodger broadcasters Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett. It was produced from 1958 to 1960 and were sold as a set of 16 at Dodger souvenir outlets. It sold for $52.51.

eBay Auction Link: Volpe Scully Doggett Picture:

Mastro May Auction

Mastro recently concluded their most recent major auction. They sold nearly $8.5Mil in memorabilia. There was plenty to see from rare cards to historical memorabilia.

Below is one of my favorite prewar Baseball cards. Babe Ruth who is the "Sultan of Swat" is also the "prince of peace" as he holds a dove in front of the Yankee Stadium crowd. The unusual pose and that guy to Ruth's right make me crack up. What the heck is going on here? This card sold for $3,500.00.

Auction Link: 1922 E121 American Caramel Babe Ruth:

Here is a 1953 press photo of the Dodgers most feared hitters. It includes Carl Furillo, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella. $400.00 was the final bid.

Auction Link: 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers Fearsome Foursome Photo:

This is a 1939 Press photo of an aging Joe Jackson as a liquor store proprietor on the 20th anniversary of the Black Sox scandal. As noted on the back by a reporter,

"Shoeless Joe Jackson ... 20 Years After"... whose legacy became "... one of the blackest blots on baseball history," and that "Jackson, with others, was convicted of accepting the bribes of gamblers to throw the game."

This pic sold for $600.00.

Auction Link: Joe Jackson 1939 Press Photo:

What an important piece of American history. Below is a American Continental Congress lottery ticket sold in 1776 to help finance the revolution.

The lottery was calculated to yield substantial prizes for winners, and to provide a profit for the young nation's Treasury. Regrettably, the government actually wound up losing money on the proposition... The lottery was a well-intentioned building block conceived by the Continental Congress, but it unfortunately did not produce the reservoir of cash the body had hoped to generate.

It sold for $325.00.

Auction Link: 1776 US Congress Lottery Ticket: