Steve Hamilton's Folly Floater

There once was a long and lanky left-hander who pitched for several teams from 1961 to 1972. Eight of those twelve years were with the New York Yankees. It seems every lefty is given the long and lanky moniker, but Hamilton earned it. He was six feet, six inches tall and he weighed only 190 pounds. His hair grayed early which made him seem ancient even when he wasn't. His name was Steve Hamilton and he is one of the treasures of my childhood.

Hamilton was never a star reliever. He was the mop up kind of guy who pitched in games that got out of hand. He came in when the starter left early. His only real pivotal season was 1968 when he saved eleven games and had a sparkling 2.13 ERA and a 0.937 WHIP. But even that didn't matter since the Yankees finished in the bottom of the standings. But when you are a kid, you latch on to guys like Steve Hamilton. Just like my favorite New York Knick was Phil Jackson. Jackson didn't get much playing time, but we lived for when he actually got in the game and used that big lefty hook of his. Hamilton was the Phil Jackson of baseball. He was the middling reliever.

But he wasn't just any middling reliever. He was pretty darn good at it. He pitched in 421 games and ended his career with a 3.05 ERA. He even started seventeen games along the way and completed three of them with one shutout. But mostly, he was a middling reliever. And he was a lefty. Hamilton was born and died in Kentucky (1935-1997) so not only was he an older looking gentleman, he was a southern gentleman.

But what made Steve Hamilton one of the true heroes of my childhood was the Folly Floater. What's that, you ask? That's what Hamilton called his slow ball. Others who threw them, like Satchel Paige, called it an Eepheus pitch. But Hamilton called his the Folly Floater. Now baseball has always been somewhat of a conservative game. Baseball frowns upon gimmicks. Baseball hated Bill Veeck's "midget." An infielder may get away with the hidden ball trick, but he will get knocked down the next time he gets to the plate. The slow ball is about as gimmicky as you can get away with in Major League Baseball. And to be sure, Hamilton probably wasn't very popular around the league for throwing it.

But what the heck. The Yankees were terrible during that period of time. They couldn't hit. They could pitch. They had starting pitchers that swapped wives. It was a really bad time for New York Yankee baseball. But that's the period I grew up and that's all there was. And we loved it. Actually, it was a great time to be a kid and a Yankee fan because it was dirt cheap to get into the bleachers and since the stands were so empty, we could get down by the dugout in the box seats after the fourth inning when the ushers left. So who cared much that Steve Hamilton would throw his slow ball and risk embarrassing the game when the Yankees would probably lose either way?

Fortunately, there is video evidence of one such at bat with Hamilton throwing his silly pitch. The batter in this case was Tony Horton, one of the roughest and toughest hombres in the game at that time. The year was 1970 and the game took place on June 24th at Yankee Stadium. The video shows the stadium and you might not even recognize it! Anyway, Horton was big and strong and batted right handed. That's just what you needed against Hamilton. But...wait...we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's set the game up first.

The Yankees were actually playing well in 1970. After some really dark years, on June 24, 1970 under Ralph Houk, they were in second place with a 40-27. Cleveland was in seventh place, one of their usual positions during those years. The Indians had a record of 30-34 and were managed by Al Dark. Both teams started their aces. The Yankees started Mel Stottlemyre and the Indians started Sudden Sam McDowell, one of the blazingest fastball pitchers of his era. Stottlemyre was 8-5 and McDowell was 10-4. The Yankee pitcher would go on to win 15 that season and McDowell would win 20 and come in third in Cy Young voting. He struck out 304 batters that season.

McDowell had his best stuff on June 24, 1970 but Stottlemyre didn't. The Yankee pitcher was knocked out by the fourth inning and McDowell went on to pitch a complete game. The only two runs McDowell gave up were homers to Curt Blefary and a young Bobby Murcer. The Indians had a third baseman by the name of Graig Nettles. But getting back to the game, Stottlemyre was lifted after four innings and was lifted for Mike Kekich, one of the guys in that wife-swapping thing mentioned earlier.

Kekich must have been born under a dark cloud because he was terrible and June 24, 1970 was no different. But he also got no help from his fielders as the usually slick-fielding, Gene Michael, made two errors. But after Kekich pitched his two innings, the score was 6-2 and that was all McDowell needed. The rest of the game was just filler. So they thought.

The next Yankee pitcher was a guy I don't even remember. His name was Ron Klimkowski. It's no wonder I don't remember him as he only pitched 90 games of major league baseball. Klimkowski somehow ended his career with a 2.90 ERA despite a K/9 of only 3.8 and a walk rate of 3.4 per nine innings. In other words, Klimkowski didn't fool anyone. But he pitched two innings and gave up a run on two walks and a hit. His innings bring us to the top of the ninth and Steve Hamilton was asked to do what he did best: pitch a meaningless ninth inning. The Yankees had no chance of beating McDowell on this day and everyone knew it. It was just another meaningless inning for a middling reliever who had a twelve year career making these kinds of appearances.

But it wasn't meaningless for those of us glued to the television sets (black and white) and sipping our cokes in the old green bottles. Our guy was in the game! Steve Hamilton. The very first guy he faced was Tony Horton. Horton was only 25 and nobody knew it on June 24, 1970, but Horton would only be in the major leagues for two more months. For that story, click here. But on that day, nobody knew Horton's breakdown would happen and he was just another good-looking young stud of a ball player. Graig Nettles said that Horton was one of the best hitters he ever saw. But the game wasn't for Horton and he never played again after 1970. But Horton was the guy that Hamilton would face first in the ninth inning. The linked story seems to indicate that Horton and Hamilton had communicated and that Horton wanted Hamilton to throw his Folly Floater. When viewing the video, it certainly appears that Horton wanted Hamilton to throw it a second time.

But there is no use in describing what happened. That's best left to the video and to the immortal Phil Rizzuto that described the happenings. What happened between Hamilton and Horton is legendary to all of us that grew up watching baseball in those times. We'll never forget it. Take it away Uncle Phil:

The Flagrant Fan site turns ten years old

Heh. I can't even get an anniversary right. For weeks now, I have been planning a big birthday celebration as this site hits the ten year old mark. Going back to my very first posts here, I could have sworn the date was March 6, 2003. But I actually wrote my first post on March 5, 2003. So perhaps if I write this in the evening, both bases will be covered. Anyway, the main point here is that I've been plugging away here for a decade now.

When this site started, it took me months just to figure out how to put headings on the posts. So the first hundred or so went without headings. How's that for flying solo while sitting backwards in the pilot seat?

I also remember that I was pretty much doing things for myself with the hope that a few lost souls might find their way here. For years, a good month was a hundred page hits. But that was okay. A few cool people became early readers. Navin Vaswani was an early follower. That was cool.

That first year, I wrote something like 241 posts from March to December. Things got a bit sketchy for a few years after that. I don't remember why I put it up for a while. I wish I hadn't. But it is what it is. Perhaps it was because I had a wonderful job and was making big money. Who knows. But in 2008, that big job went away and I found myself unemployed for four years. My writing sort of became an obsession.

I wrote 639 posts in 2009, 761 in 2010 and 695 in 2011. I slacked off in 2012 to 499. And if you are at least a little familiar with the site, I do not write little ditties (about Jack and Diane). While I am not a Joe Posnanski, I tend to write longer posts. So that is a lot of writing.

I am employed again and writing has become a challenge. But when I write it, they will come. Where 100 page hits in a month was a good month, the site often reaches 100 hits in an hour. That is very gratifying. The commitment has somewhat paid off as I also write now for It's About the Money, Stupid, MLB Dirt and for the e-magazine, Big Leagues Magazine.

The commitment also led me to the Baseball Bloggers Association. I am honored and grateful to be the current president of the General Chapter of that organization. I am also up to 935 followers on Twitter. How the heck did that happen?

All this is because of two things. First, baseball has been (along with the Beatles), one of the underpinning story lines of my life. Through the good times and the bad times, there has always been baseball. Secondly, God blessed me with the ability to write and I enjoy it. Perhaps using that God-given gift to write about something trivial like baseball is a frittering away of that gift. It might seem that way.

But writing transcends baseball when done so regularly. Even baseball writers touch on common life themes and can make a difference in people's lives. I am a high road kind of guy. I believe in forgiveness and in treating people well. Reaching a wide audience regularly with those beliefs girding the writing perhaps rubs off here and there. If so, great. If not, as long as you enjoy the baseball stuff, it's all good.

So much has changed in ten years! Consider that when this blog was born:

• Derek Jeter had accumulated 1,200 hits.
• Jim Thome had 334 homers.
• Roy Halladay had a record of 37-24 in his big league career.
• Barry Bonds had accumulated 613 homers.
• C.C. Sabathia had not yet made an All Star team and had only accumulated 5.7 rWAR.
• The Tampa team was still the Devil Rays and they were three months away from picking Delmon Young with the first pick of the 2003 draft. 
• It has just been nine months before that the Pirates thought that Bryan Bullington was a better pick than Zack Greinke and drafted Bullington first in the 2002 draft.
• The Red Sox had yet to win a World Series since 1918.
• Albert Pujols had 71 homers for his career and no MVP Awards.
• Mariano Rivera had 243 saves.
• Jamie Moyer was still a Seattle Mariner and was only 39 years old. He would go on to win 105 more games!
• Ichiro Suzuki only had 450 hits.
• Alfonso Soriano had yet to play for any team but the Yankees and the word, "albatross," was not attached to his name.
• Jake Peavy had just completed his rookie season for the Padres and had been terrible.
• Alex Rodriguez was still a shortstop.
• Chipper Jones was a left fielder
• Carlos Beltran was still a Kansas City Royal.
• The Twins still played at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome and were division champs. A.J. Pierzynski was still their catcher.
• Eddie Murray, Gary Carter, Paul Molitor, Wade Boggs, Dennis Eckersley and Ryne Sandberg were not yet members of the Hall of Fame.

It was a different world then. Twitter would not be invented for three more years (in March of 2006), and Facebook was a year away from its initial launch. Steroids were just starting to be a story. And the iPhone was four years away.

Here are some of my favorite posts over the years:

• Steve Hamilton's Folly Floater
• The day Willie Mays played shortstop
• Rick Ankiel can throw a little bit
• The seven worst starting pitchers ever
• The sixteen best seasons ever by a catcher

It's been a lot of fun. And the most rewarding part has been you, the readers. Thank you for reading all these years. And just for you, to help celebrate this event, here is a little contest. Name the four players who have played all nine positions in the same game. The hint is that you can find the answer by searching this blog because I have written about it. DO NOT PUT THE ANSWER IN THE COMMENTS. If you do, that ruins the contest and makes it null and void. Instead, send me an e-mail with your answer. The fifth correct answer will receive a 1987 Topps (#150) Wade Boggs baseball card. Which reminds me of another favorite post. It is a crime that the Red Sox have not retired Wade Boggs' number.

Thank you again. I am not done. Not by a long shot.

On Being a Fan

[[switching to first person]] It seemed odd to me upon reflection that the name of this site is the "Flagrant Fan" and yet I hardly ever talk about being a fan. To be sure, the shear volume of words here emote a deepness in that fan experience and yet it's never really talked about here. This is in stark contrast to sites like Sporta and the City and Sliding into Home which are much more open in the daily ups and downs, head rushes and disappointments that go along with being a fan. I guess that in the FanDome, things are more intrinsic which probably reflects the author. Perhaps discussing being a fan here has not occurred because it is such a broad part of my life that it cannot be covered in five to six paragraphs. But at the risk of boring you to death, let me discuss being a fan for just a little while and I'll make it as brief as possible.

First, being a fan (I will not beat you over the head with the device of capitalizing "Fan" for once) means dying inside at least sixty times a year even if your favorite team is one of the best teams in the league. Within those sixty deaths, most of them happen quickly as the game quickly determines its outcome. The worst ones though are when a sure victory turns into a loss or when your team struggles mightily to catch up only to fall at the end. Those are the worst. I can only imagine the pain felt by fans of teams who are struggling at the closer position when there may be ten or more of those events a year. These losses hurt the deepest. And no matter how I try to be a grown up about them, they still come close to ruining my day and my mood.

Within all of the 162 games of a schedule there are thousands of individual misfortunes when your favorite players on your favorite team fail to produce. Despite the fact that the brain knows that a batter will fail 60 to 70 percent of the time, the heart hurts during each single at bat that doesn't go the way you hoped. The worst of those times are when your favorite player comes up with the bases loaded when your team is behind and either hits into a double play to end the inning or strikes out (grounds out, flies out) to end the inning. Those really suck the wind right out of me.

My favorite pitchers will fail 40% of the time if they are a starter when they are really good. Relievers, no matter how good they are, will break your heart occasionally too. But moving away from that for a moment, let me paint a little story to talk about one of the worst kinds of heart-rending times.

When I first moved to northern Maine, I lived on a old farm that had about 100 acres of cleared land and 200 acres of woods. It was a beautiful place and the house was built in 1879 and still contains the original family. I had married into that family and my children still call that place home. One of the neat features of that place when I first moved there was a preheating tank for the hot water tank. This ingenious invention of a shrewd farmer's common sense was an old tank painted black and placed outside where the most amount of sun would hit it. The tank was encased by a box frame made of two by fours that framed glass that would sharpen the suns rays to hit the black tank and warm the water, which was then fed to the main hot water tank to aid in keeping the oil bill down. Smart right?

The frame around the tank had its open sides covered with wire mesh so that animals wouldn't get in there. Once day, as I was tending to my flower gardens, I noticed a blackbird had gotten trapped inside the frame after crawling through a small hole in the wire mesh. Being the softy that I am, I tried for a good twenty minutes to coax that poor bird in its frightened state to the opening and to freedom. In the bird's panic, it couldn't quite get the idea that I was trying to help it. But finally after much patience and soft words, the bird finally made it to the opening and flew out. I was thrilled and exhilarated by its freedom and shouted and cheered. Unbeknownst to me and to the blackbird, a marsh hawk must have found this entire enterprise highly entertaining while it watched in a nearby perch. After the blackbird had risen no more than ten feet into the air, the hawk buzzed by my head and caught the blackbird in mid-flight. My exultation quickly went to horror and then awe. I don't think I've experienced anything like it.

And yet I have. Say my favorite team is down a run in a very important game and it's getting late in the game. My favorite player comes up with a couple of runners on base and the crux of the game is right here and right now. My favorite player hits a shot that from years of watching and hearing the crack of the bat, surely means something good has just happened. The announcer is shouting, "That ball is hit DEEP to right field..." and the picture shows the outfielder moving back to the wall. The rush of good feelings are starting to build and then the fielder jumps up, reaches over the fence and snatches the ball. The hawk just got the blackbird.

So far, I have dwelt on only the negatives of being a fan. If your favorite team is a good one, then roughly 90 to 100 times in the year, the feeling will be one of satisfaction. 160 to 200 times a year, your favorite players will succeed on the field and it's always a thrill. Those are great times. And if your favorite team happens to do the impossible and win a World Series? There is no better feeling on earth for a fan.

But what if you are a fan and your favorite team is terrible most years? I think your expectations are lowered a bit. The wins are great. The losses expected and it becomes more about the players. I know because I've been there. Then it becomes all about rooting for your favorite players and for the young kids who will inevitably be given a shot because what the team has been putting on the field regularly isn't working anyway. Those are great times.

I can remember being a kid watching basketball and keeping score of the games. There was no 3-point line back then (yes, I am old). So a field goal was a two (2) and a free throw was a one (1). So you could easily add up the points and know how many points the players scored and how many of those points were field goals or free throws. The very best of times were blowouts when your favorite scrubs would get to play. I remember vividly being thrilled when Phil Jackson would get in such a game and put three of his left-handed sky hooks into the basket.

Poor teams also come with the side shows that really aren't permitted on competitive teams. There was Steve Hamilton and his Folly Floater (a really slow humpback pitch) or Oil Can Boyd and all his comical antics on the field. Those kinds of things eased the pain of the daily losing and that didn't hurt as bad. In reflection, it's almost easier to be a fan of a bad team than it is to be one of a good team.

The strangest thing about being a fan has been the evolution of the media. When I was a kid, all we had to go by were baseball cards, the Sporting News and whatever body language you could pick up by watching players. We didn't know the personal demons or foibles of our players. We knew that Mickey Mantle had a charming smile on television with his aw shucks speaking the few times you got to hear it. I took to liking Mike Shannon of the Cardinals because his picture was eminently appealing on his baseball card. He was later a star of my strat-o-matic games.

There were players you grew not to like because they glowered on the field like Eddie Murray or Roy White. Murray holds the major league record for sacrifice flies. Did you know that? Sad to say, but we liked or disliked players based on how they looked, how they smiled, if they laughed and so on. I think my eternal dislike for Randy Johnson was a double dip of his ugliness (sorry) and his demeanor on the field. He never had a chance with me. But if a guy like that was on your own favorite team, you turned that around to be positive attributes like being a tough son-of-a-gun and a competitor.

It gets really confusing now because we know a lot more about the players than ever before. They have Twitter pages and Facebook pages and pregame interviews and post game interviews. There are news stories about the player's private lives, magazine tours and cable shows about their glamorous homes. We know about their charity work or their lack of it. Often times what we learn from the media seems to contradict the body language we see during the game. I hope Swisher is as fun off the field as he seems to be on it.

Baseball is much easier than other sports on fans. If your favorite football team loses, you have to wait a full seven days to see if they can redeem themselves. But in baseball, there's always tomorrow. In football, the preseason is a total drag and the regular players hardly ever play. In Spring Training, your favorites are good for at least several innings every week. That means the wait for the real deal is a lot shorter.

Fortunately for me, wherever I've lived in my life, those I was closest to rooted for the same teams as me. My brother and my day-to-day best friend in my childhood had the same favorite teams and we lived and died with them together. My first wife liked the same teams as me as does my current wife. It's not uncommon for my wife and I to high five when something good happens. It's not uncommon for both of us to be yelling at the television when things aren't going right. My son loves the same teams I do. That has led to a closeness all of his life based on those threads alone. But it's okay that my daughter could really care less. She's much more interested in the latest song on iTunes.

There is nothing rational about being a fan. There is no logical reason to care so much about something that matters so little in the grand scheme of things. But there is no way to turn it off. I tried that once. When baseball went on strike, I tried valiantly to give up the game. "Screw them!" I shouted. But I think that was the worst summer ever. And after it was over,  I tried to forget about it and move on to other passions. But being a fan is too large a part of my life. Being attached to my teams take up too much history and so much energy has been given there that it would be like losing an arm.

My favorite team is in the hunt for the playoffs. That's wonderful and it's also horrible. The stress is so great that I have trouble even watching the games. My emotions can't seem to handle it anymore. I'm like a kid during a horror movie running out of the room during every scary part. I have no idea if my team is going to go very far in the post season. If they do, it will be thrilling and satisfying. If they don't, it will be heartbreaking and no, knowing they had a good season will not mollify the feelings any. But no matter how they do in the post season, once again, my stomach will be churning until all the favorite players are signed back into the fold for next year. They are family and I'm a fan. I can't help myself.