Softball with Leon and the Scheffleras - Part 2

Me in my Schefflera jersey

Bill James is an American baseball writer, historian, and statistician. He is the father of the saber-metrics revolution that subsequently took the baseball world by storm. He is well known for his Baseball Abstract books that he first published in 1977. He also served time as a senior advisor for the Boston Red Sox during the period when they finally broke “The Curse of the Bambino” and won 4 World Series Championships. He is a part of a whole sabermetric community that developed a new set of baseball statistics, commonly referred to as “analytics”, that old time baseball people and fans eschew and mock. I learned about Bill James in the early 80's and began faithfully reading his annual baseball abstracts. Today, every sports team in every sport uses analytical statistics to evaluate players. Some depend on it more than others and some do it better. However, most think of or blame the Oakland A's, and in particular their current Executive Vice President, Billy Beane, when it comes to analytics in the baseball world. Billy became the poster child for these advance statistics thanks to the book and movie “Moneyball”. However, it was actually Sandy Alderson who started the A's down that path in 1995. He became serious about it when the A's new ownership decided to slash the payroll. Sandy then introduced it to Billy upon hiring him. Billy fully embraced it when he became the clubs general manager in 1997.

Why do I bring this up? Well Leon, the organizer and coach of the Scheffleras softball team I played on in the 80's, kept stats and his focus was on two stats that are the early building blocks for what baseball analytics is built on. Those two are: How often does a player get on base, i.e. doesn't make an out which is a player's on-base percentage and how many bases does a player generate, which is slugging percentage. Leon focused on these to evaluate how we were doing. Along the way Leon noticed little trends like how many times you got on base due to an error. If this happened frequently it was likely due to one of two things, either he consistently hits the ball hard or he runs fast. Both put added pressure on the defense which would account for an increase in errors.

I do not hit the ball particularly hard and as such I don't look like much of a hitter but I do get on base at a fairly high clip and I'm pretty fast. The result is I'm more effective than I look. I can bat both left handed and right handed. Because I hit the ball harder right handed I tended to favor that side. Leon pointed out to me statistically I was actually more effective batting left handed, meaning I got on base more frequently hitting left handed. He encouraged me to just hit from the left side. Left handed I was just a “Punch and Judy” hitter but right handed I wasn't much more than that. I was largely a singles hitter. Right handed I would hit a few more doubles but not enough to matter. It was likely that Leon's stats helped convince him that I was, in fact, an asset to the team.

The Scheffleras turned into the best softball team I ever played on. I played on a pretty good team in Folsom for a year after I moved to the Sacramento area. They had some very good players, guys who played high level college ball and they were very talented. However, they did not play smart and that resulted in the team playing below its talent level. The Scheffleras were good and they played smart.

As I remember our first rival was a team who called themselves the Yankees. We were in a league with them for a few seasons and we were always battling each other for the league championship. I don't remember who won more often, but it feels like they did. What I mostly remember from that rivalry is a game we lost. We were up and it was our last at bat. We were down by a run but we had two runners on and with no outs. Our 3^rd baseman, Kelly, was up. He was one of our big hitters. Dale, another one of our really good players was on deck, and I was in the hole, to follow Dale. I remember thinking I may not even get a chance to bat before we win the game. Kelly ended up watching strike 3 go by for the first out. He put his head down and walked toward our dugout as I walked out to get into the on-deck circle. Instead of going into the dugout Kelly just walked right past me. He didn't look at me or say anything. He left the field, got into his car, and drove away. We didn't see Kelly for a week. Dale was now at the plate and he a hit bullet. Unfortunately it was right at someone who immediately doubled of one of our runners and just like that the game was over and we lost. Defeat was snatched right out from our “jaws of victory”. In my mind we had already won. I was left stunned.

One of my favorite memories was of an early game. I had had a very late night and was feeling the after effects. I was pitching and at one point the other team had a runner on 2^nd. Leon was manning 1^st and he came over to remind me it was my job to back up our catcher, Jim, if a ball is hit to the outfield and that he'd would be the cut off. I told him I got it. The batter then proceeded to hit my next pitch into the outfield. Our outfielder threw home and the ball got by Jim. One big problem, I was still standing on the pitcher's mound. The run scored and the batter went to 2^nd on the throw. Leon came over and once again reminded me to back up Jim on a ball hit to the outfield. Of course the batter hit my very next pitch into the outfield and once again I was acting like a statue standing still on the pitcher's mound. So Leon came to talk with me one more time. He stopped and took a good hard look at me. After a second he said “Dave, I am going to back up Jim if a ball is hit into the outfield.” All I could do was laugh, in fact, I still laugh when I think about it. Probably not so funny to Leon. Makes realize how important it was for Doc Ellis to throw that no-hitter when he was supposedly on LSD. With no hits he never had to back up anyone. Guess I should have thrown a no-hitter...

Leon would do little things every once in a while attempting to give us an edge. He would sometimes bat me 4^th if were playing a team for the 1^st time knowing that because of where I was in the batting order the outfielders would play deep affording me more room to dink in a hit between them and the infielders.

Leon: I stole this pic from his Facebook page - (Don't tell him)

For one of our games Leon had us all meet at another nearby field. We then waited until the last possible moment to head over to the diamond where we were scheduled to play. The other team by that time thought they were going to win by forfeit. They had mentally relaxed and sort of lost their edge. We won the game.

Another time we stayed after winning our game to watch a game against two teams who were playing for the privilege to play us the following week. We didn't care for some of the guys on one team so we started loudly cheering for the other one. We even started doing the wave. There were only four or five of us but the team we were cheering against got pissed. I think we decided it was probably best to to leave prior to the end of game.

My favorite memory was the Central San Jose Spring Sunday “CC” slow pitch playoffs. We had finished in second place, actually we were tied for second with a team named “Ball Busters”. This particular season we were playing under the name “South Bay Athletics”. (Don't remember why we weren't playing as The Scheffleras.) My friend Steve H (not Steve W who I considered the best player on our team) was now on our team and playing shortstop. We first played the Ball Busters for the right to play the first place team, Almaden Miners, for the championship. The Ball Busters jumped ahead with a 4 run third and going into the 6^th they held a 7-2 lead. The bottom of the 6^th we scored 4 runs, 3 of them on a homer by Kelly. In the bottom of inning 7, softball games are 7 innings long, we managed to score one to tie. Actually, we had a great opportunity to win the game right there. We had the bases loaded with only one out. Steve W. was up and I was on deck. Steve hit a shot but right at the pitcher for an out and of course in my big moment I hit a one hopper right to the pitcher to end the inning. So we went to extra innings. We held them scoreless. We then scored as Leon came racing home on a 2 out single by Tim that put us into the championship game against the 1^st place Almaden Miners. I had 2 hits in the game but I didn't come through in the big moment. Still, it was fun being in that position. Isn't that what we all dreamed about when we were kids? Of course then I always came through.

Next up, the Almaden Miners. Once again the other team had a big inning and they were up 6 to 2 heading into inning 6. We scored one in the 6^th and then 3 in the 7^th to tie. So we headed into extra innings for the second game in a row. Neither team scored in the 8^th, but in the 9^th, Leon once again scored the winning run. This time it was on a hit by Steve W. That sent us to victory and the league championship! That's two extra inning games and two comebacks. Total fun and it's the only time I have experienced two games like that back to back and they were both playoff games.

Now how do I remember all this? Well I have a copy of the league's write-up of the two games. There aren't any box scores but it does have a short synopsis of the game with the innings scoreboard and a list of hits by player. For instance our team had a total of 35 hits, counting both games. For all you “old-school” folks Dale led us with 4 hits in the first game Tom led us with 4 in the second. Tom led our team overall with 6 total hits while Dale and I each had 5. There was no mention of walks. Leon totaled 3 hits but he got on base when it mattered most and managed to score the game winning run in both games.

Leon was a smart ballplayer and was always thinking but unlike Bill James, he has yet to be asked to advise a professional team. Based on my experience, it's been their loss.