I have to give the nod to Ken Harrelson mainly because Brian Kenny was out-manned in the Thursday edition of MLB Now. Not only did Kenny have to contend with his co-host Harold Reynolds, another old-school guy, but a fired-up Hawk was like the voice of three men.

This wasn’t about content; both men made good points. This was about Harrelson controlling the debate.

After the opening pleasantries, Harrelson opened by saying:

“Let me ask you a question. Did any of you guys see the movie Moneyball? Was there anything in there that struck you as funny or odd?”

Old-school Reynolds replied, “They didn’t talk about the pitching in that movie.”

Harrelson: “That’s exactly right, Harold. When you got Mulder, Zito and Hudson, you can write any kind of book you want to write, and it’s going to be successful. This game is a game of defense with pitching being the first line of defense.”

Obviously, Harrelson is right, but it does help to have some hitting. The team he watches, the White Sox, are hitting .160 with runners in scoring position, the worst in baseball. Yes, it has been painful to be a Sox fan thus far.

Harrelson then mentioned the one trait that can’t be measured in a player: “TWTW, the will to win.” Whenever Kenny tried to box him in a corner, Harrelson repeatedly fell back on “TWTW.”

“Harold is a good example,” said Harrelson, no dummy on how to get people on his side. “40-50 years from now, people will look at his stats and say Harold was a pretty good player. No, he was an outstanding player because you don’t measure the game with numbers only. Harold was the kind of the guy who would stand there and turn the double play when he knew he was going to take a hit from guys like myself or Kirk Gibson or whoever was going to knock him into leftfield….Those are things that aren’t put in numbers.”

Kenny tried to get some shots in when Harrelson brought up bunting late in a game.

Kenny said, “What gives us the best chance to score a run? If you knew that the odds were better not bunting, wouldn’t you not bunt, or visa-versa? Wouldn’t you want to know those percentages?…

“One thing I don’t get is, ‘Wouldn’t you want as much information as possible as a manager?”

Harrelson replied: “The more numbers you bring to the game, the more instincts you take out of the game. We’re inundated with too much numbers and sometimes you get bogged down. This is a kids game. It always has and always will be.”

Then as I wrote yesterday, Kenny brought up Harrelson’s career year with Boston in 1968 when he hit .275 with 35 homers and an AL best 109 RBIs in the year of the pitcher. Kenny used sabermetrics to adjust the numbers to show what they would be if he was playing for the Colorado Rockies in 2000: 49 homers and 187 RBIs.

“You were playing in a dead ball era,” Kenny said. “Sabermetrics puts things in their proper context.”

The debate then veered into the value of wins for pitchers and whether sabermetrics can be used to evaluate defense.

“It’s not ready yet,” Harrelson said. “Until it gets ready, it’s TWTW.”

Kenny tried to get in a last word: “Offensive metrics are extremely accurate. It’s been here for awhile, Hawk. I think you’d enjoy it.”

Not a bad closing shot. However, when the segment was over, Kenny, who boxed as an amateur, had a dazed look. You see, Harrelson also was a boxer. He controlled this bout simply by throwing punches and never letting up.

Hopefully, Kenny and Harrelson aren’t done. It was an enjoyable debate. Definitely would like to see a rematch.

Good timing.

During a conversation with Brian Kenny today, I asked about Ken Harrelson’s recent comments about him and his view of sabermetrics.

“Well, it just so happens that Hawk is going to be on the show tomorrow,” Kenny said.

Indeed, the White Sox play-by-play voice is set to be a guest on MLB Now Thursday at 4 p.m. ET on MLB Network. It definitely will be a lively discussion between Harrelson, Kenny and the show’s co-host Harold Reynolds.

To review, Harrelson said during a Sox game:

“You know, sabermetrics in my opinion, in the last decade, the last ten years, has been the most overrated thing to come into baseball. And it’s got a lot of people fired because it didn’t work.”

Kenny, whose baseball work is firmly grounded in sabermetrics, gave a strong response on his show. He said Harrelson “missed the revolution.”

Kenny issued an invitation for Harrelson to appear as a guest. Harrelson, who said he likes Kenny’s work, took him up on it.

Wednesday, Kenny returned the praise for Harrelson, saying he enjoys him as a play-by-play man. However, his view of sabermetrics is another story.

“I’m puzzled as to why he says those things, and why so many other people his age in baseball say those things,” Kenny said.

Kenny sounded as if he might make his case by referring to Harrelson’s career year in 1968. Harrelson hit .275 with 35 homers and a league-leading 109 RBIs with Boston. The stats are even more impressive considering it was the year of the pitcher.

“He had a .356 on-base in 1968,” Kenny said. “That’s pretty good, but I bet you that’s way above the league average for that year. And he slugged .518. If you slug .518 in 1998 (during the power crazy steroid era), you’re not catching a whiff of the All-Star game. You slug .518 in 1968, you’re one of the top players in all of baseball, which he was. All of those things are sabermetric thinking and principles, and you go from there.

“There’s nothing overrated about it. It’s wanting to know more and putting things in proper context to where you can pinpoint a perfect year in his career. The more you know, the more you like him in 1968.”

The email from Keith Olbermann contains this line: “Haven’t had so much fun in years.”

Olbermann, a passionate student of baseball history, feels he added an extra layer today, the 66th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s first game with Brooklyn.

Writing on his Baseball Nerd site (no jokes, please), Olbermann gives a behind-the-scenes look to the famous Robinson photo:

You probably don’t know Eddie Dweck (smiling kid at left), but you’ve probably seen him before. Because of The Photograph he has a cameo role in history. But history is a defiant and elusive thing. It will tell you that The Photograph Eddie Dweck is ruminating on is one of the iconic images of Jackie Robinson just before he stepped out of that Ebbets Field dugout and into history 66 years ago today.

Except it wasn’t taken on April 15, 1947. And Mr. Dweck will also reveal to you that – albeit in the mildest sense of the word – the photograph was staged.

It turns out the photo was taken on April 11, 1947, an exhibition game between the Yankees and Dodgers at Ebbets Field. And there was something else about the photo.

Having clarified history’s erroneous conflation of Robinson’s first game in a major league uniform in a major league stadium (April 11, when the photo was taken, when Robinson went hitless but drove in three runs, one on a fielder’s choice and two on sacrifice flies) and his first official Major League Game (April 15), what was that part again about the photo – a photo which nearly all the rest of us look at as we might look at an image of Abraham Lincoln in a crowd or at least Babe Ruth – what was that about it being staged? 

“Staged,” he said again, and matter-of-factly. “We had maybe bleacher seats, the cheapest seats, and we trying to get to the Dodger dugout just like we tried to get to the Dodger dugout every game we went to. But there were a hundred photographers taking pictures of him. This was a momentous day. So they told the ushers ‘let these kids come down, and lean over like you’re trying to get his autograph.’ And that’s how we got down there. It was a matter of a few minutes, five minutes, ten minutes as I remember. Then we had to scatter.”

And here’s the connection between Olbermann and Dweck:

In some indirect way, it hurt him to the degree that until last month, he hadn’t owned a copy of The Photograph since that edition of The Brooklyn Eagle came out. That is even stranger when you consider what Eddie Dweck does for a living. Today he is the with-it, energetic co-proprietor of Studio 57 Fine Arts on West 57th Street in New York, and can use the photograph to prove to doubters that he wasn’t in diapers in 1947. The gallery features not just high end art and some of the metropolitan area’s avant-garde painters, but has also always offered a great supply of historical baseball photographs, many of which are at the level of sophistication and eccentricity of a shot of Babe Ruth pitching for the Yankees and a variety of shots of Dweck’s beloved Ebbets Field. More over, I’ve been one of his customers since 1997 and last January was the first time he ever mentioned that it was him in the Robinson/Fans photograph.

“Well,” Eddie Dweck says with a measure of contemplation that dissolves into a laugh. “You didn’t ask.”

 

It’s a fun story. Worth a read.

Wow. Who would have thought The New Yorker would provide bulletin board material for the Yankees? However, based on the players on their disabled list and what we saw yesterday, the magazine could be right. It could be a bleak summer in the Bronx.

I found spring (actually summer) in Palm Springs last week. However, I lost it again when I returned to Chicago. The temperature is supposed to be 38 degrees for the White Sox opener this afternoon.

Oh well, you can’t have everything. At least, we’ll have real baseball today.

I’m rested and ready to go, confident that warm breezes will be visiting my town at some point before June.

To put everyone in the mood for the start of the new season, here’s one of my all-time favorites: Oscar Gamble and his legendary hair.

Just catching up with this column posted a couple of weeks ago.

Hal McCoy has covered the Cincinnati Reds for 37 years. Now writing for FoxSportsOhio.com, he wants to continue to cover the Reds. However, since he is legally blind, precluding him from getting behind the wheel of a car, he needed a driver to take him to the games.

McCoy writes he had 473 volunteers:

My inbox filled, 437 offers after last count. Some were for weekend duty, some wanted to do it one time, some wanted to be part of a carpool.

There was an offer from a man in Dubai, who wrote, “If I can be your driver, I’ll return to the United States.”

There was an offer from a man in Florida, who wrote, “I have an RV here in Florida, but If you want me to drive I’ll bring the RV to Dayton and be your driver.”

Amazingly, offers came from all over — male, female, college students, senior citizens, budding journalists who wanted to pick my brain, firemen, policemen, lawyers, truck drivers, professors and the unemployed.

And here’s the new driver:

(Ray) Snedegar’s email jumped out at me. He said all the right things. He was the first I contacted and I invited him to lunch. Within five minutes, I knew: “This is the guy.”

He is retired from the Air Force, “Where I was a loadmaster for 31 years, four months and 21 days, but who’s counting?”

He lost his beloved wife, Barbara, on Nov. 19, 2011 and said to himself, “What now? I’d still get up at 6:30 in the morning, read the paper, drink my coffee and ask myself, ‘What now?’”

To keep busy Snedegar volunteers at the National Museum of the USAF at Wright Patterson Air Force Museum and he works part-time at Routsong Funeral Home in Centerville.

When he saw my blog, Snedegar sent his email, “Because it would give me a chance to mix and mingle with a lot of new people after losing my wife. I love baseball and I love Hal’s writing.”

Any time Pat Jordan writes, you must read.

This time, he writes about his memories of spring training as a young prospect for SB Nation Longform. Jordan was a bonus baby pitcher for the Milwaukee Braves. However, it never worked out for him, leading to his classic book, A False Spring, and a sensational career as a sportswriter.

Baseball’s loss, journalism’s gain.

Now 72, Jordan writes of spring training:

Its hope was always false, but still, for 54 years, the first three as a pitcher in the Milwaukee Braves’ organization, and the last 51 as a sportswriter, I still returned to spring training each year, more out of habit than expectation, for as I grew older I no longer believed in miracles. Spring training for me became just a pleasant two weeks in the sun, or maybe not so pleasant as I chased some obnoxious multi-millionaire baseball player across practice fields, waving my notebook, shouting, “JUST ONE MORE QUESTION!” until I caught him, or at my age, didn’t.

This is well worth your time.

This is from Wednesday when Joe Garagiola wrapped up a legendary career.

Unless you live in Arizona, you probably thought Joe Garagiola retired during the 1980s. So imagine my surprise when after purchasing the Major League Baseball Extra Innings package a few years ago, I heard a familiar voice when I tuned into a Diamondbacks game.

“Is that Joe Garagiola?” I thought.

Sure enough, it was, and he sounded pretty good. It turns out Garagiola has been working on select Arizona games since 1998. Now 87, he decided to call it a career Wednesday.

It’s been quite a run, dating back to 1955 when he started out working on Cardinals games in St. Louis. His partners were Harry Caray and Jack Buck. Now there’s an all-time booth.

Talk about being on hand for baseball history. The clip above features Garagiola doing the open for Game 5 of the 1961 World Series between the Yankees and Reds.

A tradition could be ending in Chicago. Cubs games, which have aired on WGN since 1948, likely will be on the move after the 2014 season.

The Cubs confirmed yesterday that the negotiation window now is open for the 70 or so games that air on WGN. Like the Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Angels, Houston Astros and others, owner Tom Ricketts wants to cash in on the massive money grab for local TV rights.

From Paul Sullivan in the Chicago Tribune:

Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts is always looking to increase the team’s revenue sources, and now it appears likely the team will wave goodbye to their longtime TV home when its contract ends after the 2014 season.

Ricketts declined to address their plans on Sunday, except to say a discussion on rights fees will begin in 2013.

“Obviously local media rights have been increasing in value,” he said. “Hopefully at some point we will be able to get more value for our media rights. It’s just something that’s playing out over time.”

According to Robert Channick in the Chicago Tribune, WGN pays the Cubs $20 million per year, an average of $400,000 per game. That’s more than a few ticks off the $1.8 million per game the Dodgers will average with their new deal with Time Warner in Los Angeles.

All told, the Cubs make about $60 million per year between their deals with WGN and Comcast Sports Net Chicago. Again, that’s below market value compared to the new TV deals signed by other teams. Yes, Mr. Ricketts has noticed.

It’s hard to see WGN making a big-money offer to keep the Cubs since the station is in flux with Tribune Co. only recently emerging from bankruptcy. Larry Wert, who was just brought in to run Tribune broadcasting, has a big decision to make there.

Regardless, the key for the Cubs will be establishing leverage for the games. It could happen in a couple of ways.

1. The Cubs simply move a majority or all of those WGN 70 games to its cable outlet, Comcast SportsNet Chicago. The Cubs are part owners in the network. Cable provides the multiple revenue stream of advertising and subscriber fees, which translates into more money.

2. The Cubs bring in Fox to help them launch their own network. The team’s deal with CSN runs through 2019, meaning it won’t be until 2020 at the earliest before Chicago could see the Cubs version of the Yankees’ YES Network.

However, Fox could lay the foundation by acquiring the 70 WGN games and placing them on WPWR-Ch. 50, a local station it owns in Chicago. Fox and the Cubs then bide their time and plan for the new network in 2020.

Fox has demonstrated a healthy appetite to buy local sports cable outlets. The network probably got a bit hungrier after losing out for the Dodgers deal in Los Angeles. It could turn its attention to Chicago and tap into the potential of the Cubs.

Indeed, it isn’t the greatest time for the Cubs to throw their games open for bid. While (crazy?) Cubs fans still bought nearly 2.9 million tickets in 2012, mostly to attend the shrine that is Wrigley Field, a 101-loss season produced a massive tune out on the TV side. The team’s local average rating dipped below a 2, the lowest in recent memory. You only can watch so much bad baseball.

Yet if Theo Epstein can work his magic and build the Cubs into a contender, those ratings will soar in Chicago. The faithful will come out of hibernation and park in front of their TVs. The Cubs definitely have a passionate fan base to sustain a team-owned network.

The key for the Cubs in maximizing TV revenue could be whether Fox becomes a player in Chicago. Given what the network has done elsewhere, it seems to be a strong possibility.