The Refreshmaker

Matt Bruce

This week, because I lack any original observations, we will have a review session. If you ever went to one of these things in school, you know the drill. The instructor goes over all the old material, pauses to tell a long, pointless story from the past, and frowns at that earnest but lazy kid who asks whether it will be on the test. I have no exam for you, unless you want to stay after class, but sit back and enjoy a good old-fashioned rehashing anyway.

Two months ago, discussing the Trot Nixon phenomenon, I predicted that Trot would fade a lot, that Jay Buhner would fade a little, and that Albert Belle might heat up. Here is the original column to refresh your memory. And below, through the games of August 10, is the new tally of American League right fielders:

Player	Team	Age	Games	2B	HR	RBI	OBP	SLG	OPS
Ramirez, Manny	CLE	28	68	16	24	73	.430	.687	1.117
Ordonez, Magglio	CHI	26	106	26	25	91	.397	.588	.985
Salmon, Tim	ANA	31	111	26	26	70	.408	.566	.974
Buhner, Jay	SEA	36	88	16	22	73	.392	.566	.958
Dye, Jermaine	KC	26	109	26	26	82	.381	.574	.955
Lawton, Matt	MIN	28	113	31	7	68	.431	.463	.894
Nixon, Trot	BOS	26	78	19	8	42	.377	.482	.859
Mondesi, Raul	TOR	29	95	22	24	67	.330	.527	.857
Belle, Albert	BAL	33	113	31	21	87	.353	.501	.854
Gonzalez, Juan	DET	30	81	26	16	45	.328	.520	.848
Guillen, Jose	TAM	24	71	11	8	34	.340	.477	.817
O'Neill, Paul	NY	37	107	24	13	78	.360	.455	.815
Kapler, Gabe	TEX	24	77	22	10	38	.340	.466	.806
Stairs, Matt	OAK	32	101	17	17	56	.321	.413	.734

Since his late-May heroics, Nixon has been injured and ineffective enough to see his numbers slip to league average, fronting a close-knit pack that brings the overrated Raul Mondesi and Juan Gonzalez together with the still-underachieving Belle. Of the front-runners from last time, Jermaine Dye has slipped back to Earth while Jay Buhner has eased down to what is still a remarkable pace. Manny Ramirez remains by far the league's best outfielder -- when healthy.

The real story here is the explosion of Magglio Ordonez, for which I can claim only some prognostication credit. The best right-fielder in Chicago (according to the Chicago Tribune, which snubbed Sammy Sosa for the first time in five years) batted .404/.475/.737 in June, fueling his team's rise to first place. Last month he posted a .313/.384/.576 performance. In the two months combined, he drew 28 walks against just 14 strikeouts.

Tim Salmon also kept himself among the elite with a July run of .314/.427/.616. Is it any coincidence that the Angels took the wild-card lead right around this time? Meanwhile, Gabe Kapler has resurrected his season with a 23-game hitting streak (active as of August 11), not bad for a center fielder. Unfortunately, Rusty Greer has had an injury-plagued campaign, and the newly acquired Ricky Ledee has a season OPS of .699.

What I find most remarkable is the 100-point gap between Dye and Nixon, almost a caste system in place between the great and the mediocre. In the middle lies only Matt Lawton, the American League's answer to Mark Grace, except that Lawton has better wheels and less opportunity cost from the position he plays.

Speaking of wheels, Pacific Bell Park now has an old cable car in the right field concourse. Just as I remember from watching televised games from Candlestick Point, at the end of each inning the conductor rings the bell once for every run the Giants scored that inning. A wonderful routine, not to be confused with the chimes played at Yankee Stadium after every run-scoring play.

The Yankees' two recent weekday afternoon games exposed me to still more sights and sounds of the Bronx, not least of which is the opinionated audacity of radio broadcasters John Sterling and Michael Kay. Kay especially sounds like a guy I'd argue with back in Boston, the sort of blowhard that I could dislike and yet enjoy listening to.

In the stadium itself, my favorite sound effect (of those audible on the webcast) is the opening strains of Beethoven's Fifth, played whenever a Yankee draws a walk in a key situation. Bases on balls, the secret weapon behind the late-1990s Yankee offense, are exactly the sort of thing that should get a sinister sound effect. When the Yankees win, Frank Sinatra croons "New York, New York," though I prefer hearing Tony Bennett's "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" as I dawdle out of Pac Bell Park.

In the Thursday afternoon game, David Cone finally improved to 2-10. Heather Fennell, my favorite Yankee fan, points out that Cone takes the mound to the theme from "The Sopranos" and suggests that we can come up with our own punch line. Maybe "Sex in the City" would be much more fitting for Cone, not that we should give him much grief for things that happened ten years ago.

And now at least, the pointless story: The days of the week of August 2000 are exactly the days of the week from August 1989. I was 14 years old then, having the best summer of my life, and the Chicago Cubs were in a nationally televised pennant race. The only problem is that I didn't have access to WGN over the three weeks that mattered most, when the Cubbies went 23-8 to take first place.

In the last game I saw before a three-week sojourn to Duke University, the Cubs beat the Giants on a Thursday night, with an RBI double in the 10th inning from relief pitcher Les Lancaster. So began a hot streak in which the Cubs managed to stay 2-3 games back of the almost-as-torrid Expos, until pulling even with Montreal on August 4 and 5.

On Sunday, August 6, the Expos lost in 14 innings, with the game-winning hit from Met pinch-hitter Mark Carreon. The Cubs lost in 18 innings, when Scott Sanderson yielded a walkoff home run to Pittsburgh's Jeff King after eight scoreless frames of relief. Both teams flew to Chicago, tied for first place at 63-48, ready for a three-game showdown.

August 7-9, 1989, the Cubs swept the Expos to take the division lead for good. Both Mark Grace and Ryne Sandberg homered in all three games, with Grace's longballs producing the game-winning RBI each time. Between August 8 and 10, I got up an hour early each day to track down a USA Today for the previous day's box score. Thursday saw such torrential rain in Durham that I still associate the Skid Row song "I Remember You" with that day.

No, none of this will be on the test. Instead, you'll be expected to know that people who can get live updates on-line don't realize how spoiled they are. You'll only get partial credit for remembering that August 9 was Wrigley Field's first official night game -- August 9, 1988, that is. Full credit for catching on that I still consider 8/9/89 to the more important milestone, since it actually matters to me whether my favorite teams win. Extra credit if you can convince me that this is exactly why I should root for the White Sox. Hint: Magglio's pretty good.

about the author

Much has been made of the giant, three-fingered glove in the Pac Bell Park outfield, a work of art that was Matt Bruce's idea. Suggest a companion two-handled bat and a helmet with three earflaps at mb@strikethree.com.