It’s the same sad song . . .

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Mike Trout

Another season, another unwanted injury for a star-crossed star.

Once upon a time, when cooler heads actually found a hearing in the Angels’ front office, the idea was floated to talk Mike Trout into moving out of center field and into one of the less demanding outfield positions. Maybe even moving him toward designated hitting for the majority of his time in due course, went a reasonable concurrent thought.

With Trout then coming away from some injury-disrupted seasons, they talked about it during the owners’ lockout of 2021-22. They planned to talk to Trout about it when the lockout ended. They didn’t bank on then-manager Joe Maddon blabbing about it to reporters before they had the chance to present it to Trout.

Idea killed before it could spend its first hour out of its crib. Maddon’s execution orders may have been written right there, awaiting only one false move on the season to stamp them irrevocably.

The guillotine blade dropped after those 2022 Angels went from a deceptive 27-17 start to a twelve-game losing streak. And, after Maddon ordered an intentional walk to the Rangers’ Corey Seager with the bases loaded and the Angels down. Just as inexplicably, the Angels overthrew a wider deficit to win that game at the witching hour. It wasn’t enough to save Maddon’s rep or his kishkes.

But the busted Trout plan probably did make it a matter of when and not if the Angels would purge Maddon. The plan might also have kept Trout from inflicting any further great risk upon a body that simply refuses to cooperate with its owner’s iron will.

We may never know whether a leftfielder named Mike Trout or a right fielder named Mike Trout would have managed to avoid some of what bedeviled him from that point forward. 2022: Five weeks on the injured list with a back issue that might yet bear the potential of putting paid to his career. Last season: Hamate bone fracture in July, one game in August, season lost otherwise.

Now we have a spectre that’s only too familiar to baseball world as a whole and Angel fans in particular: Trout on the injured list, about to undergo surgery for a torn meniscus in his knee. Expected to be out anywhere from eight to twelve weeks. Exactly what triggered the tear isn’t quite known, but we do know that Trout felt it go while walking back to the Angels’ dugout.

Even though he said, “It’s just frustrating. But we’ll get through it,” we can’t really know the precise thoughts and feeling that poured into his heart and mind when he noticed the tear and resigned himself to yet another injured list term. If he’s telling himself, “This is getting to be more ridiculous than a contemporary presidential campaign,” there isn’t a jury on earth that would convict him of warped thinking.

Until that injury, Trout spent the season’s first month doing whatever he could to prove he still had what made him both the single most outstanding player of the 2010s and, concurrently, the number five all-around center fielder who ever played the game.

His hitting average was an anemic .220 and pulled his lifetime number down to .299, but even at this writing he leads the Show with ten home runs, while exactly half his 24 hits have been for extra bases. He’s even stolen six bases, something he’d said he wanted to return to doing after letting that side of his run-making game expire after 2019.

According to my Real Batting Average metric (total bases + walks + intentional walks + sacrifice flies + hit by pitches), Trout was actually batting .611 before his knee said not-so-fast. Little by little, piece by piece, he put himself back together into a semblance of his 2010s self when disaster decided it was time to speak up. Again.

For his first eight full seasons, Trout’s ability to post wasn’t even a topic. He’d averaged 145 games a year over the eight, and he did things the best players do in their fantasies. After the pan-damn-ically short 2020, his body became an orthopedic experiment. And all he’d ever done wrong was play the game firmly.

He’s also been loyal to a fault to an organisation administered like the Mad Hatter’s tea party, overseen and often overlorded by an owner whose fortune came from marketing but who hasn’t yet figured truly that marketing doesn’t build winning baseball teams.

The Angels had two generational talents, Trout and Shohei Ohtani. The latter took the first available hike as a free agent. The former insists he wants to be around when the Angels return to a winning culture and even a postseason or two. But the Angels’ administration still hasn’t figured out how to restore that culture. And, may not for the rest of Trout’s career—however long his body allows him to have one.

Trout could retire this instant and his Hall of Fame plaque would be prepared for his first-ballot election. That might still outrage fans who still cling to the idiocy that injuries are signs of moral turpitude and character weakness. Those fans should be dismissed.

“It’s not as though he has a singular chronic issue,” writes The Athletic‘s Sam Blum. “They’re all independent of each other, and seemingly haven’t impacted him beyond the duration of their individual recoveries. But they add up to the same problem: an all-time legend who can now no longer stay on the field.”

Trout is still good enough that, as FiveThirtyEight says, “the cost to the Angels of losing him for only a couple of months would be on par with season-ending injuries suffered by other star players.” Indeed.

Almost promptly, the Angels signed veteran Kevin Pillar as a fourth outfielder. Once a good center field defender, he’d be behind Mickey Moniak now despite Moniak’s modest bat. Pillar cleared waivers after the White Sox designated him for assignment. He’s considered good in the clubhouse and has a relationship with Angels manager Ron Washington from Atlanta, where Pillar played last year while Washington was the Braves’ third base coach.

Pillar will cost the Angels nothing more than a prorated major league minimum salary. That’s the least of their losses. Losing Trout—again—costs them something no dollars can replace. But imagine what it’s costing Trout in his mind and heart. Again.

Max the Knife: Let Robby the Umpbot rank the umps

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Max Scherzer

“We need to rank the umpires . . . and talk about relegating (the bottom ten percent) to the minor leagues.”—Max Scherzer.

Hunter Wendelstedt’s toss of Yankee manager Aaron Boone Monday has now been deemed “a bad ejection,” according to SNY’s Andy Martino, citing an unnamed source. “Bad ejection?” How about unwarranted? How about irresponsible? How about letting reputation overrule the moment erroneously?

And, how about Max Scherzer suggesting a very good way to start holding umpires better accountable for such unwarranted, irresponsible errors?

Nobody with eyes to see and ears to hear should have cared two pins that Boone had 34 previous ejections plus a reputation for being a bit on the whiny side. Boone kept his  mouth tight shut following an early warning over a beef involving a hit batsman on a low pitch, but a blue-shirted fan seated behind the Yankee dugout barked and Wendelstedt decided Boone should get the bite.

Wendestedt not only ejected a manager erroneously but doubled down with one of the most mealymouth explanations you’re liable to hear from anyone among the people who are supposed to be the proverbial adults in the room:

This isn’t my first ejection. In the entirety of my career, I have never ejected a player or a manager for something a fan has said. I understand that’s going to be part of a story or something like that because that’s what Aaron was portraying. I heard something come from the far end of the dugout, had nothing to do with his area but he’s the manager of the Yankees. So he’s the one that had to go.

Imagine parents hearing one of their children call them an obscene name while in another’s bedroom, then deciding the child whose bedroom it is should be grounded a week instead of the pottymouth. That’s what Wendelstedt’s ejection was, and the crime didn’t happen from the Yankee dugout but behind it.

The only thing MLB government intends to do, Martino observed, is add the Boone ejection to Wendelstedt’s evaluation for game management. Seasonal evaluations have impacts on whether umpires get plum assignments such as leading crews, working All-Star Games, and working postseasons.

Wendelstedt isn’t a crew chief despite being a major league ump for 28 years. (He works today on Marvin Hudson’s ump crew.) He hasn’t worked an All-Star Game since 2011; he hasn’t worked a postseason series since the 2018 National League Championship Series. You might consider thirteen years since his last All-Star game and eight since his last postseason assignment punishment enough.

But players, coaches, managers are subject to prompt accountability for their misbehaviours. They get fined and/or suspended for bad arguments on the field and MLB government can’t wait to make those punishments public. Blocking an errant ump from the postseason may seem like punishment to you, but how much damage might his regular-season mistakes and doubling down on mealymouth excuses for them have wreaked upon a pennant race?

On 26 July 2011, plate ump Jerry Meals ruled incorrectly that the Braves’ Julio Lugo was safe at the plate in the bottom of the nineteenth on 26 July 2011. Pirates catcher Michael McKenry tagged him out three feet from the plate, and you can see McKenry make the tag right before Lugo stepped on the plate.

Meals apologised profusely after the game and the day after. (He also incurred death threats against his wife and children.) His public acknowledgement of his mistake may have saved his hide; he got to work a 2011 NL division series and was promoted to crew chief in 2015, a rank he held before his retirement in 2022.

But that call cost the Pirates a win after a very long night and helped knock the wind out of their pennant race sails. They were a game out of first in the National League Central when that game ended. They split the next two games with the Braves before hitting a ten-game losing streak, losing fourteen of their next sixteen, and falling to fourth in the division to stay.

There are and have been those umps such as Meals who hold themselves accountable for their mistakes. Umps such as Meals, also-retired Jim Joyce and Tim Welke, and still-working Chad Fairchild. Umps such as the late Don Denkinger, who owned up to his infamous 1985 World Series mistake and also came out strong for replay.

Umps such as Gabe Morales, who seemed itching to apologise for blowing the call—when plate ump Doug Eddings asked for help on Wilmer Flores’s check swing, bottom of the ninth, two out and a man on first, the Giants down one run, Game Five of a 2021 NLDS riddled with dubious calls—for game, set, match, and early winter for the Giants. We’ll never know if Flores would have risen to the occasion on 1-2, whether against Max Scherzer or Marvin the Martian, but he should have the chance to try.

What to do about the Wendelstedts? About the Angel Hernandezes, Laz Diazes, C.B. Bucknors? Now pitching on a rehab assignment at Round Rock for the Rangers, Scherzer himself has a thought. A very good one. You’re afraid of Robby the Umpbot? Max the Knife says not so fast, Robby might actually do us a huge favour if he’s deployed properly and baseball government doesn’t screw his pooch:

We need to rank the umpires. Let the electronic strike zone rank the umpires. We need to have a conversation about the bottom—let’s call it 10%, whatever you want to declare the bottom is—and talk about relegating those umpires to the minor leagues.

Scherzer’s said something I’ve argued before. Remember: relegating low-ranking, low-performing umpires to the minors for retraining is precisely what the Korean Baseball Organisation does. If MLB’s government can’t get the World Umpires Association to sit down and talk seriously and reasonably about umpire accountability without Robby the Umpbot, maybe the point that many umps aren’t exactly paranoid about Robby’s eventual advent offers a way to get it without undermining umps or bruising egos too seriously.

Accountability is an absolute must. Max the Knife’s thought put into play would be a far better look than leaving the Wendelstedts excuses to double down on their most grievous errors and verbal diarrhea to follow, or leaving baseball’s government excuses to continue letting them get away with it.

“I don’t care who said it.”

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Aaron Boone

Aaron Boone fingers the culprit impressionist who really barked at umpire Hunter Wendelstedt after Boone kept his mouth shut following one warning. (YES Network capture.)

Umpire accountability. There, I’ve said it again. The longer baseball government refuses to impose it, the more we’re going to see such nonsense as that which Hunter Wendelstedt inflicted upon Yankee manager Aaron Boone in New York Monday.

The Yankees welcomed the hapless Athletics for a set. Wendelstedt threw out the first manager of the game . . . one batter and five pitches into it. And Boone hadn’t done a thing to earn the ejection.

Oh, first Boone chirped a bit over what the Yankees thought was a non-hit batsman but was ruled otherwise; television replays showed A’s leadoff man Esteury Ruiz hit on the foot clearly enough. Wendelstedt got help from first base umpire John Tumpane on the call, and Tumpane ruled Ruiz to first base.

The Yankees and Boone fumed, Wendelstedt warned Boone rather loudly, and Boone kept his mouth shut from that point.

Until . . . a blue-shirted Yankee fan in a seat right behind the Yankee dugout hollered. It looked and sounded like, “Go home, ump!” It could have been worse. Fans have been hollering “Kill the ump!!” as long as baseball’s had umpires. George Carlin once mused about substituting for “kill” a certain four-letter word for fornication. His funniest such substitution, arguably, was “Stop me before I f@ck again!” The subs also included,  “F@ck the ump! F@ck the ump!”

Neither of those poured forth from the blue-shirted fan. Merely “Go home, ump!” provoked Wendelstedt to turn toward the Yankee dugout and eject . . . Boone, who tried telling Wendelstedt it wasn’t himself but the blue shirt behind the dugout. “I don’t care who said it,” Wendelstedt shouted, and nobody watching on television could miss it since his voice came through louder than a boat’s air horn and, almost, the Yankee broadcast team. “You’re gone!”

I don’t care who said it.

“When an all-timer of an ejection happens,” wrote Yahoo! Sports’ Liz Roscher, “you know it, and this qualified.”

There was drama. There was rage. There was the traditional avoidance of blame on the part of the umpire. It’s a classic example of the manager vs. umpire dynamic, in which the umpire exercises his infallible and unquestionable power whenever and wherever he wants with absolutely zero accountability or consequences of any kind, and the manager has no choice but to take it.

Bless her heart, Roscher actually used the A-word there. And I don’t mean “and” or “absolutely,” either. She also noted what social media caught almost at once, that Mr. Blue Shirt may have mimicked Boone well enough to trip Wendelstedt’s trigger even though the manager himself said not. one. syllable. after the first warning.

May. You might think for a moment that a manager with 34 previous ejections in his managing career has a voice the umpires can’t mistake no matter how good an impression one wisenheimer fan delivers.

This is also the umpire whom The Big Lead and Umpire Scorecards rated the third-worst home plate umpire in the business last year, worsted only by C.B. Bucknor (second-worst) and Angel (of Doom) Hernandez (worst-worst). I’ve said it before but it’s worth repeating now. Sub-92 percent accuracy has been known to get people in other professions fired and sued.

A reporter asked Boone whether the bizarre and unwarranted ejection was the kind over which he’d “reach out” to baseball government. “Yes,” the manager replied. “Just not good.”

Good luck, Skipper. Umpire accountability seems to have been the unwanted concept ever since the issue led to a showdown and a mass resignation strategy (itself a flagrant dodge of the strike prohibition in the umps’ collective bargaining agreement) that imploded the old Major League Umpires Association in 1999.

The Korean Baseball Organisation is known for its unique take upon umpire accountability. Umps or ump crews found wanting, suspect, or both get sent down to the country’s Future Leagues to be re-trained. Presumably, an ump who throws out a manager who said nothing while a fan behind his dugout barked would be subject to the same demotion.

If the errant Mr. Blue Shirt really did do a close-enough impression of Boone, would Wendelstedt also impeach James Austin Johnson over his near-perfect impressions of Donald Trump?

Well after the game ended in (do you believe in miracles?) a 2-0 Athletics win (they scored both in the ninth on a leadoff infield hit and followup hitter Zack Gelof sending one into the right field seats), Wendelstedt demonstrated the possibility that contemporary baseball umpires must master not English but mealymouth:

This isn’t my first ejection. In the entirety of my career, I have never ejected a player or a manager for something a fan has said. I understand that’s going to be part of a story or something like that because that’s what Aaron was portraying. I heard something come from the far end of the dugout, had nothing to do with his area but he’s the manager of the Yankees. So he’s the one that had to go.

The fact that an umpire can order stadium personnel to eject fans or even toss a loudmouth in the stands himself (it happened to Nationals GM Mike Rizzo courtesy of now-retired Country Joe West, during a pan-damn-ic season game in otherwise-empty Nationals Park) seems not to have crossed Wendelstedt’s mind. The idea of saying “I was wrong” must have missed that left toin at Albuquoique.

Major league umpires average $300,000 a year in salary. If I could prove to have a 92 percent accuracy rate and learn to speak mealymouth, I’d settle for half that.

Do better, Met fans

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Max Weiner

Max Weiner, hoisted by the fan group Metsmerized Online, in the image that stirred SNY’s Andy Martino to outrage. Weiner didn’t call himself the Rally Pimp, so far as we know.

A Mets fan named Max Weiner has been turning up often at Citi Field of late. This would not be great news except that Weiner has a thing for appearing in assorted garish haberdashery at least some of which appears comparable to that worn by actual, professional pimps, and he has become a symbol of the Mets’ in-season resurgence.

Identity unearthed by the Mets fan group known as The 7 Line, Weiner has been tagged colloquially as the Rally Pimp by fans; he may not have  assumed the nickname for himself. But he and they have stirred up a small social media storm, particularly since the Mets have gone 9-3 since his first known appearance at the park following a 1-5 season opening that included losing their first five straight.

We’ve become coldly accustomed to “pimp” as a verb referencing the bat flips and other celebratory displays upon home runs long and longer or theatrical plays in the field. It’s sobering to think that those deploying it so casually may have too little comprehension about the word’s actual, core meaning, in times when baseball’s handlings of domestic violence and sexual assault matters stir contradictory but deeply troublesome passions.

The deployers aren’t just fans any longer; you can hear some broadcasters and journalists use it with the same casual carelessness. But one journalist, SNY’s Andy Martino, author of Cheated, one of a pair of excellent books conjugating the Astros’ illegal, off-field-based, electronic sign stealings of 2017-18, isn’t amused one feather by the Rally Pimp idea. Saying so has gotten him a few rounds of social media abuse.

“Pimp imagery is problematic on so many levels,” Martino Xtweeted, after spying and re-Xtweeting a previous Xtweet from a Mets fan account a photo of Mr. Weiner in a purple fur jacket and large gold-looking chain around his neck holding the Mets’ interlocking NY cap logo at the chain’s end. “Let’s think about it for 2 seconds. Can we please not make this a big part of the 2024 Mets’ imagery? Cue replies about woke culture blah blah. I don’t care, I’m right about this.”

We don’t really know whether Weiner called himself the Rally Pimp or whether the tag was attached to him by zealous Met fans. It certainly didn’t help Martino to say flatly at the finish, “I don’t care, I’m right about this.” But Martino has a point. To tag such haberdashery that way above others, you might (must?) first ask how much you know about the actual doings of actual pimps. Reclaiming Hope, a group dedicated to caring for the survivors of sex trafficking, offers as clear a definition as you might ask of the pimp and his operating style:

Traffickers are often referred to as “Master Manipulators”. They use a variety of tactics to recruit victims and pimps are many times classified as (1) “A Romeo” pimp or someone who portrays himself as a “boyfriend” who loves her and will take care of her, or (2) A “guerilla” pimp who controls through force.

The modern day pimp/trafficker initially seems like a very nice guy who cares deeply about their victims. Then the manipulation and threats begin. One of the most powerful ways traffickers keep their victims controlled is by the trauma bond that develops between the victim and trafficker. Victims are controlled by their pimp through repeated beatings, rapes, drug dependency, withholding of food and sleep, debt bondage, isolation, and psychological abuse, which can include threats against family or friends.

Sex trafficking is a high profit, low risk business with a relatively small risk of a pimp going to prison for human trafficking. Additionally, their “product” can be sold repeatedly, unlike drugs or weapons, where the product can only be sold one time. The faces of victims know no ethnic, religious or social-economic boundaries.

Considering that baseball’s last few seasons have been pockmarked by several players and even front office personnel tagged and disciplined for domestic violence, sexual harassment, and sexual abuse, bringing “pimp” to bear as a term of endearment for a particular and colourfully expressive on-field celebration or a particular and colourfully expressive fan in the stands is described most civilly as grotesque.

More agreeably, the Mets have gone 10-3 since that season-opening five-game losing streak. They’ve done it against teams seen as contenders in the early going, though some may think it debatable that the like of the Reds (from whom they took two of three), the Royals (two of three likewise), and the Pirates (a three-game sweep) will go the distance that way.

Why soil it by attaching to one hideously if demonstrably dressed fan in particular a colloquialism that emanates from a profession whose victims often incur damage even more deranged than those victims of the Roberto Osunas, Aroldis Chapmans, Domingo Germáns, Trevor Bauers, Sam Dysons, Julio Uríases, Wander Francos?

This Met fan since the day they were born urges: Do better, Met fans. Weiner’s costumery is also the type that might be seen wrapped around the bodies of contemporary rock, pop, and hip-hop musicians. Would “Rally Rocker” have had insufficient thrust?

Carl Erskine, RIP: From Jackie to Jimmy

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Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson, Carl Erskine.

Carl Erskine (right) congratulated by Hall of Famers Roy Campanella (left) and Jackie Robinson (center) after he no-hit the Giants in 1956.

If you consider The Boys of Summer as author Roger Kahn did, the 1952-53 Brooklyn Dodgers he covered for the New York Herald-Tribune, Carl Erskine was the last Boy standing. Which may have surprised him as much as anyone else.

If you consider them to include Brooklyn’s only World Series winners from 1955, Erskine’s death at 97 Tuesday leaves Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax (a bonus rookie on that team who didn’t appear in that Series) the last Boy standing. It almost seems sadly appropriate.

Erskine’s fourteen strikeouts in Game Three of the 1953 World Series stood as a Series record until Koufax broke it with fifteen punchouts in Game One of the 1963 Series. “Don’t worry, Dad,” one of Erskine’s sons said to his father after they finished watching the game on television. “You still hold the record for righthanders.” (He did until Hall of Famer Bob Gibson broke both him and Koufax in the 1968 Series.)

Either way, Erskine’s long and exemplary life doesn’t prevent mourning. A good pitcher who was a better man no longer lives and walks among us.

“He was a calming influence on a team with many superstars and personalities,” said former Dodger owner Peter O’Malley, whose father Walter owned the team from 1950-1979. “But getting credit was not Carl and that is what made him beloved.” No, that only began to delineate what made Erskine beloved.

The Hoosier righthander known for the kind of big, overhand curve ball Koufax himself would develop and surpass from the left side, Erskine grew up in Anderson devoid of prejudice and was a boyhood friend of eventual Negro Leagues baseball player and Harlem Globetrotters basketball player Jumpin’ Johnny Wilson.

Joining the Dodgers a year after Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson broke the major league colour barrier, Erskine was approached by Robinson, who asked, “Hey, Erskine, how come you don’t have a problem with this black and white thing?” Erskine mentioned his friendship with Wilson, saying, “I didn’t know he was black. He was my buddy. And so I don’t have a problem.”

Over two decades later, Erskine told Kahn for the latter’s fabled book, “Jumpin’ Johnny Wilson ate maybe as many meals at my home as he did at his own. With a background like that, the Robinson experience simply was no problem.”

Remembering further, Erskine also beamed when tellling Kahn of the welcome he got when the Dodgers brought him up from their Fort Worth (TX) farm in July 1948. “The team is in Pittsburgh,” he said. “I walk into the Forbes Field dressing room carrying my duffel bag.”

Just inside the door Jackie Robinson comes over, sticks out his hand, and says, “After I hit against you in spring training, I knew you’d be up here. I didn’t know when, but I knew it would happen. Welcome” . . .

. . . Man, I’d have been grateful if anyone had said “Hello.” And to get this not just from any ballplayer but from Jackie Robinson . . . I pitched that day and won in relief.

Known colloquially as Oisk by Brooklyn fans, Erskine was managed first by Burt Shotton. And Shotton made a grave mistake. During a start against the Cubs, Erskine suffered a torn shoulder muscle. He finished the game but awoke the following morning unable to lift his arm. He started next against the Phillies and could barely lift his arm after five innings.

“Why, son, you’re pitching a shutout,” Erskine remembered Shotton telling him then. “Now you go right ahead out there. If you get in any trouble, we’ll take care of that.” Erskine went on and again couldn’t lift his arm the following morning. “I did a lot of damage to my shoulder in those two starts,” he remembered to Bums author Peter Golenbock, “and I began then to have really, really severe arm problems, and it plagued me my whole career.”

Carl & Jimmy Erskine

Father and son beam as Jimmy Erskine displays his Spirit of the Special Olympics award, known to be the SO’s highest honour for a participating athlete. His father liked to hold up a World Series ring and one of Jimmy’s SO gold medals during personal appearances and ask, “Which of these means more?”

Somehow, Erskine managed to pitch two no-hitters (1953, 1956) and get credit for two wins in eleven World Series games between 1949 and 1956. “I’m very pleased and fortunate that I was not finished after I hurt my arm,” he told Golenbock, after admitting his retirement two years after the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles was for just that reason at last. “But occasionally it would cross my mind, I wonder if I had not hurt my arm, how good could I have been?”

Soon after Erskine retired as a pitcher, his fourth child was born. Jimmy Erskine was a Down’s syndrome baby (they called it mongolism in those years, alas) and everyone in the Erskine orbit, practically, urged Erskine and his wife, Betty, to have the boy institutionalised. The Erskines said, “Not so fast.” They determined, in Kahn’s words, “to make Jimmy Erskine as fully human as a (Down’s child) can become.”

At that time, Down’s children had an average life expectancy of ten years. Jimmy Erskine said, essentially, “That’s what you think.” Thanks to his parents and the Special Olympics, in which he participated for decades to follow, he lived 63 years, even coming to work in the restaurant business before his death last November. His parents and his three older siblings made sure people saw him as part of their family, taking him on normal outings to the supermarket, church, and restaurants.

His father worked in insurance and then as a bank president and an Anderson College baseball coach. But his father also plunged deeply into the Special Olympics among other advocacies for the developmentally disabled. One of Erskine’s friends became Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Jimmy’s parents also created the Carl and Betty Erskine Society to raise money for the Special Olympics.

Those who watched him pitch may have believed at times that his shoulder issues kept him from a Hall of Fame career, but Erskine arrived in Cooperstown regardless. His Special Olympics work and advocacy for the disabled helped earn him the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award at last year’s Hall ceremonies.

Erskine had a habit when speaking in public of hoisting his 1955 World Series ring, then hoisting one of the gold medals his son won as a Special Olympian. “You tell me which is the greater achievement?” he’d say. “Which of these means more?”

I’ll answer that personally. I’m the father of a developmentally-disabled son thanks to babyhood deafness (which cleared in due course) leaving him speech-language impaired. Bryan is an avid baseball fan and a near-rabid Los Angeles Angels fan, and he now works as a restaurant shift lead. He also played softball for the Southern California team in the 2018 Special Olympics in Seattle. He whacked a home run in his first-ever national SO plate appearance, and his team earned the silver medal. The only one who could have been more proud than him was (and remains) his father.

And I’ll still take that over any World Series title won by any major league baseball team, even any major league team that won one playing in the New York sunlight or under the New York stars. May Carl and Jimmy Erskine’s Elysian Fields reunion have been even more joyous than any of the times they shared on this island earth.