Dan Gould

I saw a commercial for some concert in south Florida. Can't even remember who the headliner is but Elvis Costello and The Attractions are opening.

I wish I could remember the name of the best pitcher I ever faced but I do recall that he threw 76 mph on a little league field, and if I remember the "conversions" that ESPN displayed at the Little League World Series, that was like 95+ on a regulation size diamond. I think I fouled a pitch or two off. Once.

I've heard this reasoning before, and here's my issue with it. In the 60's and 70's, most of the game was shown from one camera, located in left-centerfield. Now we have 35 cameras on the plate (including friggin' infrared or so it would seem). I don't think the strike zone has changed so much as has the way we watch a game. Live games don't strike me as having that different a strike zone from the one I saw as a kid. That pitch "a foot outside" is being shown in super slow motion from a camera directly above the plate. If there were a way to see that few on pitches from Don Sutton, Burt Hooton, Catfish and a host of other pitchers from the 70s, you'd find that they were getting those same calls. Good, proven pitchers get those calls (unless they're facing better, more proven hitters). The point that was being made, I believe, is that in the sixties, the top of the strike zone was still the letters, or the bottom of the armpits, and those strikes got called. That is no longer the case, and hasn't been for a long time. For a period of time, the strike zone was wider but with the use of Ques-Tec (iirc, that's the name of the system), umpires are being trained, and pretty effectively, to call pitches on the corners correctly. And let's remember too that the most egregious use of the "foot outside is a strike" zone was Eric Gregg, who was in the group of umpires who submitted their resignations as a negotiating ploy. A large number of those umpires were ultimately rehired, but Gregg never got that call (and died last year, I believe) because he was such a poor home plate umpire.

Of course I shouldn't have implied that Smooth Jazz stations play only instrumental music. But I would argue that the instrumental music that makes up their playlists have more in common with pop music forms than with jazz, specifically in the rhythms used and the prevalence of modern R&B style licks (by which I mean, R&B from say the 80s on, after rhythm eclipsed blues in "R&B").

And another way to look at his record is to ask a pitcher if he thinks he could lose 20 games this season. Then tell him he'd need to do that 15 more times to match Cy Young's record number of losses. We should also remember that wins aren't the best way to judge a pitcher because there are too many factors beyond his control that go into whether a win or loss is recorded. Scanning his baseball-reference page, his ERA+ and WHIP numbers are almost exactly the same as Greg Maddux. And for what its worth, in 1894, Young had a real problem with the long ball: he gave up 19 of them! And was in double figures the year before and the year after. He was a bum!

I don't think there's any line at all. What is marketed as "smooth jazz" is in fact instrumental pop. Dunno. Tell me, was Gerald Allbright's "Live at Birdland West" marketed as Smooth Jazz or as Jazz? That sure as hell isn't instrumental pop and not by a very long chalk. MG I have no idea how it was marketed and never said that smooth jazz artists have to only record smooth jazz. If it was something other than smooth jazz, it wasn't played by smooth jazz stations. I only said that smooth jazz (what smooth jazz stations play) is indistinguishable from instrumental pop.

I don't think there's any line at all. What is marketed as "smooth jazz" is in fact instrumental pop.

If you load in some Phil Schaap pause tracks, you can extend a 44 second introduction to 3 or 4 minutes or so. But what if Orrin is running the stopwatch?

I'll say this to the day I die: I want to hear the Gene Harris/Grant Green session, even though Gene was on organ instead of piano. If there were other Gene Harris - Ike Quebec tracks from the session that saw a tune on the Lost Sessions CD, I'd like to hear those, too.

No, but I saw Boney James get huge applause for winning at some music award show broadcast on BET.

I commented about this in my own poll about how I should use last weekend's Borders coupon, but I might as well post here, too: This CD belongs in every hard bop lover's collection! And Louis Smith is a serious mo-fo!! It would be great if some listen to this recording and decide to check out his late-career Steeplechase recordings.

Let's think more about this "tag" ... Was the music instrumental (mostly)? Yes. Does the music have some improvisational content, even it mostly consists of simple R&B licks or little curly-cues on top of the overly-pretty melody? Yes. Sounds like what it is - warmed over pseudo-jazz. I mean, what were they going to call it? Smooth Widgets?

I think some excellent points have been made about differences in strike zones. There's no doubt that Koufax and Gibson (and others) were amazing pitchers, but how much were they helped by the larger strike zone and the taller mound? To me its what makes Pedro's accomplishments more impressive - the strike zone got much smaller (though pre-Ques-tec, it was wider, too), the mound had been lowered, the hitters got bigger, the parks smaller, and he pitched (mostly) against a DH lineup. If there was only a way (I'll bet there is, actually) to control for all these factors and come up with "normalized" stats. But since its really a question of perception, we'll all have our own judgments. The more I think about it the more I would vote for Gibson, regardless of the advantages he had. Filthy stuff and a competitive streak that wasn't just off the charts, it obliterated them! If you go with a definition of "who do you want on the mound for a must-win game?" it's Gibby. But Maddux gets the award for thinking-man's-pitcher or less charitably "got the most out of his less than devastating 'stuff'". I've always loved the story (paraphrasing here) about Maddux getting into a jam, Cox coming out to talk to him, and he told him exactly how he would get the next guy out. "I'm gonna throw a ____ there, he'll foul it off to right. I'm going to come back with a ___ here, he'll lay off of it and then I'm going to get him to pop to second base with a ___ there." And that's exactly how it went!

The Phils finished with 59 wins that year. Carlton had 27 of them! As for the claim Quincy makes about Pedro "never being the big innings horse". From his last two seasons with Montreal to his first three with Boston, Pedro never pitched fewer than 213 innings per season. He missed a good portion of the next year with his arm injury, just missed 200 (199.3), had a 186 IP season and then his last year in Boston and first year in NY pitched 217 innings each. Its hard to say that he wasn't a big innings horse. He's not going to match the 250+ IP that other guys attained in another era (four men rotations, pitch-til-you-drop management) but in his era, he still seemed to me to be a pretty strong "horse" for a little guy (six top ten finishes in complete games, for example).

I'm a big fan of Ralph's music and was very disappointed when he left for the greener pastures of the Tonight Show Orchestra. Since its been quite a while since he recorded, you'd have to search Amazon Marketplace or Half.com to find much, but in addition to the recordings mentioned above, I'd add: Eastern Rebellion, Mosaic and Simple Pleasures He had two strong recordings with Landmark that 32 Jazz put out as The Complete Landmark Recordings Who It Is You Are is also very nice, with a cover reminiscent of another more famous recording: He was part of a one-off for Mons Records called West Coast Jazz Summit, along with Eric Reed, Jeff Hamilton and Robert Hurst. This page has some sound links. I got that recording from Cadence, I have no idea if they are still stocking it, but the Mons website seems to indicate its still in print. I've long had the feeling that Chuck, and perhaps to a lesser extent Jim have less than warm feelings for Ralph, so maybe they'd like to share them?

I think every single one of us would agree that there is very little or absolutely no "jazz" in "smooth jazz". Let's not lose sight of that. However, the idea that it was created by a bunch of radio consultants is ludicrous on its face. Did they tell George Benson to start playing crap in the mid-70s, don't worry, in about 15 years we'll have a radio format for ya. As Alex points out, the Rippingtons, Yellowjackets, and other bands came out of the fusion era. But an even better example is what was once a linchpin of the "smooth jazz" format: Spyro Gyra. Founded in 1974! If we're talking chicken and egg here, which came first? This supposed meeting of radio programmers or Spryo Gyra?

Ray Brown Trio with Gene Harris and Jeff Hamilton, summer 1989 at the Blue Note in NYC. Gene brought the house down several times and what had been great affection became complete and undying love. Still the GHF.

I think it almost always is, when an item gets a lot of notoriety.

I hope I'm reading you wrong- but the best that I have seen is Seaver. That's my judgement. No one can answer the best of all time. A more appropriate question is who do you believe is the best in your lifetime. I was not implying that anyone whose oldest memory of a great pitcher is Seaver then you aren't qualified to make that judgment. I was saying that as someone whose oldest memory of a great pitcher is Seaver, I am not qualified to make that call. Your mileage may vary, as the saying goes. Sorry for the confusion, I can see how my statement wasn't clearly specific to my own view.

Glad to see you are uninformed in all aspects of baseball, not just the use of performance enhancing drugs. Don Sutton barely belongs in the Hall of Fame. His ERA over the course of his career was exactly 8% better than the LEAGUE AVERAGE. He never sniffed a Cy Young (best finish, 4th). He led his league in ERA exactly one time. He reached 300 wins, so he got into the Hall. And you think he deserves an honorable mention in this discussion?

Radio can't create a format in the absence of music that fits the format. What did they do in these focus groups? Describe the music they wanted to play? No, they played instrumental pop music by artists like the G-ster, Sanborn and I imagine George Winston. All of those guys had some claim to a "jazz" background of one sort or another.

Sure he did. He pitched in the NL for quite some time before he went to the dreaded Red Sux. The difference to me though is that Maddux didn't have to throw at hitters to keep them off the plate like Pedro did. Maddux had superb control, better than any other pitcher I can think of. But Pedro's period of dominance was in Boston. When he left Montreal, he'd had exactly one extraordinary dominating season to his credit, one season with an ERA+ of 200 (he'd have four more in Boston), one season with a sub-1.00 WHIP (four in a row in Boston). As far as control goes, Maddux does have a career mark of 1.81 Walks per 9 IP. But Pedro's isn't so bad either, at 2.38. Career WHIP favors Pedro (1.030 to 1.141) and career WHIP+ favors Pedro even more (161 to 134). So, Pedro dominated the DH league even more than Maddux dominated the easier league to pitch against.

Well, the good thing is that MLB had the power to unilaterally institute more stringent testing + penalties in the minors. At this point I'd be surprised if there are a lot of people who are doing as you say you would do - juicing to get that final push to make it to the Show. But before 2003 or whenever the league instituted the policy, I'm sure that steroids were even more prevalent in the minors. As far as Lopez and Boone - there's just no way to know. Its possible they used but by getting it from a source that didn't get caught up in the Mitchell investigation, they avoided being in the report. Of course, there were a lot of Orioles who had connections to Radomski, so maybe Javy was clean since he was in that clubhouse but didn't end up in the report. To me, cheating is to be expected, and at some point people will come to grips with the era and how it should be regarded. My biggest problem is with the cheats who aren't man enough to 'fess up when they are caught. Bonds and Clemens have been coddled since they were little boys, and they both developed gargantuan egos that prevent them from ever admitting wrongdoing. Then there are people like LoDuca, who is only slightly above them in their contempt for the fans and the press. I mean, LoDuca gave the Giambi "I apologize but I won't say what for so don't ask" apology. Then when someone did ask why he's apologizing, he said, "c'mon bro. Next question." That ain't no apology and he's still beneath contempt. (He was like that as a ballplayer, too, but that's neither here nor there.)

I don't deny Greg Maddux as an all-time great but I can't understand why he gets all the love and Pedro Martinez doesn't. There's simply no comparison over their respective periods of dominance, and unlike Steve Carlton, Pedro did it in an era of much greater offense, and unlike Maddux, he didn't have weak hitting middle infielders + pitchers to ease his path through a lineup. Make no mistake, I admire Maddux as much as any pitcher but when you put it all together, the only advantage he has over Martinez is longevity and sustained good health. As for the question of greatest of all-time, I don't think its possible for someone whose oldest memory of watching a great pitcher is Tom Seaver to make that judgment.