Backroads and Ballplayers #4
Backroads and Ballplayers #4
Stories of the famous and not-so-famous men and women from the days when baseball was "Arkansas' Game." Always free and always short enough to finish in one cup of coffee.
Housekeeping, Ohtani, Babe Ruth, and Jimmy Zinn 4-30-2023
Some Questions Answered…
Since this is post number four of this column, it may be time to clarify some things that should have been explained in my first post.
I write a monthly column for Only in Arkansas, and I am about to publish my second book. Both of those projects are kinda formal. For example, my editors like me to put commas in the right place, maintain the same VOICE, for Pete’s sake, and avoid words like “kinda.” I noticed that my favorite sports writers often paused, changed “voice,” and shared what they think about what they are writing. I like that, so that is what you get here.
I chose to use the Substack platform simply because Joe Posnanski writes here. He is my favorite baseball writer. Substack’s “professional” writers ask for paid subscriptions. I do not and will not. I want to save as many stories of our Arkansas baseball legacy as I can in the time that I have. That is the “why” of this column and my primary motivation.
So, every weekend I plan to post a column about baseball, some thoughts on today’s game, and a story from the days when baseball was Arkansas’ game. I will send it to the subscribers first in their email, and a day or so later, I will post it on my Facebook page. As of last week, we had about 110 subscribers and 450 or so readers who found my column somewhere. I am blown away by those numbers. THANKS!
Ohtani Thoughts
In chronicling the amazing Shohei Ohtani (show·hay ow·taa·nee) story, it seems most writers have used the phrase, “We have never seen anything like Shohei Ohtani.” I do not buy that. Okay, it is a historic anomaly to find a big-league pitcher/hitter like this guy who has caught the imagination of even the casual baseball fan. He is an outstanding middle-of-the-lineup power hitter and the best pitcher on his team. Most Little League teams have one.
Remember when we were kids, the best pitchers on our baseball teams were also our best hitters? What happened to those guys? Some became outfielders, shortstops, and first basemen. They started attending hitting camps, taking lessons, and perfecting their swing. Others sold their bats at yard sales, learned to throw a slider, and never went near a batting cage after high school. There are not enough hours in the day to practice the skills necessary to succeed at both. Apparently, that is not the case in Ōshū, Iwate, Japan.
There have been “good-hitting pitchers” throughout the history of baseball. Madison Bumgarner in today’s game was often used as a pinch-hitter (yep, 0-3 and a 10+ ERA gets you released). Don Drysdale hit seven home runs and batted .300 in the same year that he won 23 games as a pitcher.
In the first quarter of the 20th century, there was this guy named George Ruth who was such a good-hitting pitcher that the Yankees stopped pitching him altogether. The thing that makes the Ohtani adventure different is that he is in the lineup on the days when he is not on the mound. That is not only unusual in today’s game, but it may only be possible if the player grew up halfway around the world where his advisors were not convinced the pitcher/position player combination was impossible at baseball’s highest level.
In his MVP year (2021), Ohtani hit 46 home runs, scored 103 runs, and collected 100 RBIs. In his spare time, he pitched 130 innings. He was 9-2 on the mound with a 3.18 ERA. No one, not even Babe Ruth, had come close to that combination of accomplishments in a single season. Until the next season when Ohtani did even better.
So, what about the oft-used comparison…“Shohei Ohtani is the next Babe Ruth.” Of course, that is a comparison taken from a context based on accomplishments of almost 100 years ago. He is not the next Babe Ruth, but he is certainly the first Shohei Ohtani.
At age 23 as a rookie, Ohtani hit 22 home runs, had 61 RBIs, and a .925 OPS in 104 games. He was 4—2 as a pitcher and posted a 3.31 ERA. During the season that Ruth was 23, he hit 11 homers (LED THE LEAGUE), with 61 RBIs and a .966 OPS. He was 13—7 as a pitcher with a 2.22 ERA. He pitched in only 20 games, but 18 of those were complete games. After his 23rd summer, Ruth had already won 80 pitching victories. He had a career ERA of 2.12 and had worked more than 1,000 innings on the mound. Not yet the “Sultan of Swat,” Ruth had hit 20 home runs before age 24, and Ohtani had hit 22 in the big league season he turned 24.
By the end of the 2022 season, Ohtani had become…“Ohtani.” He was an All-Star as both a hitter and a pitcher. Babe Ruth was an outstanding pitcher and the father of the home run, but five years deep in his career he had given up pitching to become the “Great Bambino.” What kind of numbers would Ruth have posted had he continued to pitch, we will never know, just as we cannot predict the future accomplishments of Shohei Ohtani. It promises to be fun watching his unprecedented career continue. Like Ruth in his day, Ohtani is great for the game.
Jimmy Zinn, Arkansas’ Hit and Pitch Man
In 1930, a 35-year-old pitcher played in 105 games in the Pacific Coast League, a minor league considered to be a small step below the majors. The veteran hurler’s name was James Edward Zinn. He was from Benton, Arkansas, and in that 1930 campaign, he pitched in 39 games and appeared in 66 games as a position player or pinch hitter. Jimmy Zinn led the PCL in pitching victories with 26, and he hit .326 in 193 at-bats. It was a typical Jimmy Zinn season in a career that spanned 23 years.
It was a remarkable career that almost ended in his first year in the minors. In Zinn’s first season of pro baseball, he was assigned to the Fort Smith Twins of the Western Association where he got off to a promising start. By midseason, Zinn’s record stood at 12—3. He had worked 190 innings in 20 games, an average of 9.5 innings per outing. Although the innings-pitched total seems to be an error, it is likely accurate. It was a time in baseball history when complete games were expected. In one extreme example, on May 27, 1915, Zinn pitched all 19 innings of a 1—1 tie.
On July 3 of that initial season, on a joy ride in a friend’s stripped-down jalopy, Zinn was thrown from the vehicle and landed on his pitching shoulder. He declined surgery and was forced to invent a sidearm pitching style to compensate for a deformed healing process.
In 1919, four years after his life-changing accident, he reached the major leagues. In his 23 years in pro baseball, he would eventually pitch in 66 big league games over parts of five seasons. His forgettable major league career pitching record of 13—16 and a 4.30 ERA, is not the Jimmy Zinn story.
Zinn is second among Arkansans in career professional (minor league + major league) pitching victories (308) to the great Rube Robinson (329). I will save Rube’s story for a later date. Over his 21 minor league seasons, 600+ games, and 4,300 innings pitched on some of the best minor league teams in baseball history, Zinn was among the greatest minor league performers of all time. He not only excelled on the mound. He hit well enough to play regularly on the days he did not pitch.
Unlike the pitchers who had good hitting seasons a time or two in their careers, winning 20 games and batting .300 were expectations for Jimmy Zinn. He won 20 games or more five times, 18 in three other seasons, and he batted better than .300 ten times.
In hindsight, one of Zinn’s most significant games may have gone virtually unnoticed. On August 5, 1921, in his first big league season, he pitched six innings of relief and was the winning pitcher in the first major league game broadcast live on the radio. Over the next 30 years, radio would bring major league baseball to millions of Americans in every corner of the United States and provide a much-needed diversion from the challenging times of the early 20th century.
Researcher Caleb Hardwick, the editor of the Arkansas Baseball Encyclopedia, concluded that Zinn holds another unique distinction. In his games at all pro levels, he is credited with 308 professional pitching victories and a cumulative batting average of .301 over all his major league and minor league appearances. Perhaps Jimmy Zinn is the only pitcher in baseball history with 300+ professional pitching wins and a .300 lifetime batting average in more than 1,000 at-bats.
Jimmy Zinn retired quietly to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he worked for the Arkansas Highway Department and did volunteer work at the Conway, Arkansas, Human Development Center. He died in Memphis on February 26, 1991, at age 96.
Ohtani Revisited: Thursday, April 27
There are probably thousands of amazing things about Ohtani. I cannot write as fast as this guy does something that has never been done before. Therefore, I felt compelled to review his last pitching start before I move on.
Ohtani entered last Thursday’s game (April 27) having allowed only two runs in his first 28 innings of the 2023 season. Opposing hitters were batting .092 against him. Right on script, he retired the first nine hitters in order, striking out five of them.
Almost unbelievably, with a 5—0 lead in the fourth inning, he completely blew up! He threw 36 pitches, gave up two homers, hit a couple batters, and allowed five runs. So, Ohtani watchers could go mow the lawn. Not so fast. He also gets to bat, remember?
He legged out an infield dribbler for a single in the first inning and doubled in the left-field gap in the third. After letting the worst team in baseball back in the game in a disastrous fourth inning, he watched his teammates bail him out with two runs in the fifth inning. In the sixth inning, after hitting a triple off the wall, Ohtani scored to make the score 8—5.
On a day when baseball’s most-watched two-way star had his worst pitching inning in years, his team had regained the lead and yes, he had a single, double, and a triple! He would get another chance in the bottom of the eighth to complete what is known in baseball as the “perfect cycle,” a single, double, triple, and home run in order. Of course, in the “Never Before Ohtani World,” according to the Elias Sports Bureau guys, that feat had never been accomplished by a pitcher. So much for a dull and disappointing outing for the man called “Show Time.”
According to Ohtani, “I hit it off the end,” but his long drive to center field in the bottom of the 8th inning had the look of a historic homer. It turned out to be a long out. The Elias folks declared that he was the first pitcher to hit a single, double, and triple in a game since 1923 (Dave Danforth, St. Louis Browns, Aug. 25, 1923).
How many saw it in person? It was a beautiful day in Southern California, but the Angels drew only about 22,000 to see what historic things Ohtani might do. The Angels’ won-loss record is about .500 and they are tenth in home attendance as of April 30. Respected baseball commentator Jeff Passan surmised this week, that if the Angels do not become a contender soon, Shohei Ohtani is apparently not going to be wearing an Angels’ uniform very long.
He will be a free agent at the end of the season, and he is relatively underpaid. His salary of 30,000,000 ranks 15th in the top player contracts. His next salary will be somewhere near the value of the state of Mississippi. Perhaps more, if the $600, 000, 000 over twelve years I hear now is correct. I predict Dodger Blue.
“It doesn’t matter how much you say about Ohtani . . . it isn’t enough. What he is doing now is not humanly possible. - Joe Posnanski
As always, a great article !!! Keep 'em coming !!!