Chet Lemon died the other day; he was a very good major league outfielder during my youth and young adulthood, and was the center fielder on the 1984 world champion Detroit Tigers team. I re-read what Bill James said about Lemon in his New Historical Baseball Abstract: a player with some valuable qualities, notably defense and the ability to get on base, along with some flaws. Chet was good enough to hold down a starting job in the American League for 14+ years. This makes him the 48th best center fielder of all time in Bill James's book.
An aside: A lot gets said and written about multi-championship sports dynasties, the Jordan-era Bulls or the Brady-era Patriots. Some of my favorite sports stories are of teams that hang around on the fringes of greatness for a number of years, and are only able to get it together for one season, break through and win a title. The '84 Tigers are a great example. They were a juggernaut for that one year; I think they started the season 35-5, and their winning the World Series became a default assumption which they made good on. That team had two (borderline) Hall of Fame players, Alan Trammell and Jack Morris. Around these two perennial stars were several other tenured members who were good but flawed: Lance Parrish, Willie Hernandez, Chet Lemon, Kirk Gibson. In 1984, everything went right; the strengths were accented, the flaws were obscured. The team cohered, everyone stayed healthy and sharp, and they steamrolled all comers. That is a more inspiring and relatable story than anything involving the Yankees. Here, incidentally, is a 1985 LA Times column about all the things that went wrong on the field for the Tigers that after-year. We learn that Chet Lemon inspired Lou Whitaker to join the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Anyway, the rabbit hole I followed started with the news about Chet Lemon, then my turning to Bill James to read about him. I then Googled "bill james new historical baseball abstract," I guess in hopes that the full text of it is available online. Answer: no, not for free. The links that popped up included some reviews of the Abstract, including one by Dan McLaughlin, aka The Baseball Crank, with whom I was vaguely familiar: he is a conservative pundit of the type I normally avoid.
So I investigated Mr. Crank a bit. I was reminded that nerds-writing-about-baseball is a niche populated by quite a few conservative pundits: some decent writers like George Will, some hacks like Rich Lowry and Michael Brendan Dougherty. A vaguely disturbing realization for this nerd-writing-about-baseball. Yet Dan McLaughlin writes clearly and sensibly on aspects of baseball that are right up my alley. I feel I need to bookmark this piece about baseball's winningest pitchers, counting games won in the minor leagues and Negro leagues as well as the AL and NL. I also ran across McLaughlin's recent comment on the newly-elected Pope, an even-handed plea to conservatives, Catholic and otherwise, to give Leo XIV a chance.
Why the conservative-baseball axis? Off the top: Baseball history is steeped in traditionalism and nostalgia and American exceptionalism. It is also a protected space for talking about race. In my brief survey of his work I find McLaughlin making admiring references to Jackie Robinson and Moses Fleetwood Walker, Satchel Paige and Don Newcombe. To say these men were worthy players who faced injustice are broadly uncontroversial positions, yet they are an implied rebuke to the anti-woke philistinism of the Trumpers. Moreover, baseball seems to be an approved lighter-side to break up the relentless culture war fighting and ideological boundary-policing that right-wing punditry requires. If anyone ever needed an afternoon off in the bleachers, it's guys like NRO writers.
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