untitled / baseball twaddle

Damn. You know what? Good on you, Joe. I love this story.

If Joe Torre hadn’t been low-balled by the Yankees, he might have spent the weekend watching up close as balls flew out of the new Yankee Stadium seemingly every time someone swung a bat. Instead, he was at Dodger Stadium watching them sail out of what is normally a pitcher’s paradise.

[ ... ]

But he does crack an occasional smile in the dugout. And he appears to be having fun with his players, something that seemed impossible in later years in New York.

Winning by big margins, of course, helps.

I do, I love this story, and my appreciation is layered.

A large part of it is, of course, deriving the schadenfreudic jolt any Red Sox fan would at the sight of someone getting a last laugh and twist of the knife at the expense of the Steinbrenner hydra.

And a large part of it–the better part–comes from being a fan of the game first.

Joe Torre’s one of many great–and, damn it!–likable people that have passed through the Yankees organization. I hold Girardi in high regard, too, as a matter of fact.

Torre certainly figured prominently in presenting a worthy rival for Sox fans. I wish him the very best with the Dodgers (and speaking of storied rivalries, am I ever gonna hear it now from the Giants fans in my life, hoo boy).

And I wish him extra luck with harnessing the energy of that toxic-genius-space-shot Manny Ramirez

(when she was good she was very very good, and when she was bad she was horrid).

Best Nickname Ever. Also Least Imaginative.

Pie Traynor.

I’m a fan of the game of baseball, although I came to it really in early adulthood, and my grasp of the game’s historical and statistical finer details is pretty thin. I’d honestly never heard of the guy (and he’s apparently a Hall of Famer), having learned of him in an article recapping down-three-games-to-one comebacks in the history of postseason baseball.

It’s a germane topic this morning, what with the Boston Red Sox—having made the list three times: 1986, 2004, and 2007—perhaps threatening to turn in another turn around. Going into last night’s ALCS Game 4 against the Rays, down 3-1, having dropped three straight by way of too many exploitable pitches, and too much silence among their most reliable regular season big bats, Boston scored eight unanswered in the late innings to take the game, and to delay their tee time for at least another couple days, by a score of 8-7.

Amazing. But back to Pie. And to pie.

I like pie. I like the smell of pie. I like the very thought of pie. I just like to *say* pie. I may even like to say pie and think about pie more than I like eating pie, although that there could just be crazy talk.

Pie. Pie, pie, pie, pie, pie. Pie.

When pie calls, who doesn’t answer?

And it pleased me immensely to have learned of one of the baseball greats of the 20′s and 30s who, literally, answered to “Pie.”

And why?

Harold Joseph “Pie” Traynor (November 11, 1898 – March 16, 1972) was a professional baseball third baseman who played his entire career with the Pittsburgh Pirates (1920-37).

Traynor was born in Framingham, Massachusetts. He received his nickname for a fondness for eating pie.

Mystery solved!