Bill James' latest book has been out for a couple of months. It's mostly data, with a healthy sprinkling of James' essays and mini-essays and tossed-off comments, all of which I read in a few hours. Including the following, from an article called "Atypical Seasons":
Two of the greatest home run under-producers of all time were teammates: Kirby Puckett and Gary Gaetti in 1984. Puckett hit no home runs (-16), Gaetti hit only 5 (-19). Suggesting the possibility that the Twins' two World Championships may have been aided by their team being among the first to discover ... well, I'd better not go there. Nor will I point out that Gaetti was bald and had acne and Puckett died young.
|
I probably stopped, read it again, then moved on. And I haven't thought of Puckett or Gaetti since. I haven't seen any mention of that passage anywhere else, either. Until yesterday, when
Bugs and Cranks let loose:
Maybe I've been on Mars, but I've never heard Puckett's name mentioned in the conversation about performance-enhancing drugs.
He's become an easy target after his death, especially in light of the unflattering revelations about his personal life, e.g., he was arrested for groping a woman in the ladies' room of a Minnesota restaurant, but was acquitted at trial. Puckett might have had his cheerful veneer pulled back after his playing days were over, but saying a guy died early because he was using PEDs? I mean, this isn't Ken Caminiti, who was an admitted steroid user. It's Kirby Puckett, a Hall of Famer. Who else does James think is in Cooperstown via the aid of performance-enhancing drugs? (Bolivian marching powder doesn't count, so Molitor gets a pass.)
It's one thing to have personal opinions which never see the light of day, but publishing these things about Gaetti and Puckett -- without concrete evidence, i.e., more than the citation of statistical anomalies -- is irresponsible, especially since Puckett can't rise to his own defense (unless he's hanging out with Ted Williams; in that case, he might be able to rise in about 50 years).
I've always enjoyed James's writing because he's willing to hazard guesses (usually about statistics, not causes of death) and he's man enough to admit when he's wrong -- as he does in every Bill James Handbook, when he revisits his projections from the previous year. But intimating -- nay, flat out saying -- that Kirby Puckett's stroke was the result of PED use, not the weight gain/hypertension cited by doctors after his death, is incendiary stuff.
Meanwhile, his jab at Gaetti is based on ... baldness and acne? Sure, Gaetti's home-run total in 1984 (5) was 19 below his lifetime average. But 1984 wasn't his rookie year (like it was for Puckett). Gaetti came up in 1982 and hit 25 home runs that year, followed by 21 in 1983. After his one-year power shortage in '84, he hit 20, 34, 32, 28, 19, 16, 18, 12, 14, 12, 35, 23, 17, 19, 9 and then 0. So what happened? Did Gaetti decide to stop doing 'roids for the '84 season, and then, unhappy with the results, decide to resume use in '85? Who knows, I'm not getting into that guessing game, and James shouldn't have either. If he was wise enough to not talk ad nauseum about Barry Bonds, he should have been wise enough to not throw out flimsy statements about Kirby Puckett, Gary Gaetti and the Twins' 1987 and 1991 World Championships. Baseless, prejudiced statements are my bag, Bill. You're better than that.
|
Does anyone else find it odd for a Web site called Bugs and Cranks to criticize someone for raking a little muck? For lobbing a medium-sized grenade at the end of a dense essay in the middle of a book full of obscure statistics? Especially considering the source. I enjoy Bugs and Cranks, but they do traffic in snark and I couldn't help noticing that this otherwise sober critique includes a joke about Paul Molitor's drug use and another about Ted Williams' current resting place.
Anyway, James' comment
is odd. I can't find the source at the moment, but I'm 99 percent sure that he's on the record saying he's not interested in engaging in "forensic statistics" as a method for identifying likely PED users ... and yet, this seems to be exactly what he's doing.
I've known Bill for a long time, but I'm not inside his head. I don't know what he was thinking when he wrote those words about Puckett and Gaetti, and let them be published. My
guess is that he noticed these few coincidences, and thought they might have makings of an amusing little joke. My guess is that he didn't figure anyone would give the joke more than a few seconds of thought. What he still doesn't realize, I'm guessing, is that these days we seem to have time to think about everything.
Rob Neyer
