My Favorite Teams 30-24

Back in March and April of this year I was counting up my favorite baseball teams on Facebook in anticipation of The Real National Hot Dog Day. I thought that it might be a good idea to keep them here for posterity. Here are the first group of teams along with the FB introductions. 

 

30. 

It's that time of the year everyone! The Real National Hot Dog Day will be here in a month! Get your collective asses ready.

 

We are 30 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Casey Kasem style, my favorite baseball teams.

 

We begin at the bottom with a surprising entry at number 30, the Tampa Bay Rays. You might think that I hate (and this is sports hate people, not the real thing) another team even more, but you're wrong. I hate everything about the Rays.

 

I hate:

- Their players. If a team could have 25 middle relievers, the Rays would do so. Everyone (except Wander) is bland as hell.

- Their front office.

- Their front office's philosophy.

- That they made the shift "cool".

- That they made openers "cool".

- Their hats. Have you ever seen anyone wearing a Rays hat? Ever?

- Their boring-ass uniforms.

- Their stupid logo. It looks like it's for a Chili's rip off bar anchoring a dead-ass strip mall where you get watered-down margaritas and microwaved jalapeno poppers.

- That they were bullied by Christian fundamentalists to remove the word "Devil" from their name because it was "Satanic". (True story!)

- Their park. Every game here is like watching paint dry. Though my friend Ryan Foley said it "wasn't too bad", which is a five-star ringing endorsement for this shit hole.

- The weird rules of their park. And dude, I love weird baseball. But fuck this place.

- Their lack of fans. Most of them are Yankee fans, let's be honest.

- How all of their fans constantly cry about getting to the park on game day. Like going to any of the other 29 stadia on game days are a breeze.

- How they're not in Montreal.

 

29.

The Evil Empire? Not any more, amigo. They're just another team.

We are 29 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Casey Kasem style, my favorite baseball teams.

 

It's a bit of a shock that this team wasn't number 30, but guess what, here's another thing that this team hasn't won. Coming in at 29 is the New York Yankees.

 

Truthfully, if this countdown was done 20 years ago, they'd be number 30 with a bullet. But one World Series since 2001 will cool the fires of hate (the embers are always there), plus there isn't as many current Yankee bad guys as many. There's no Reggie or Thurman or Billy or Nettles or Goose or Posada or Giambi or Sheffield or Jeter or O'Neil or Pettitte or Kevin Brown or Steinbrenner or Zimmer to really focus your hatred on.

 

I mean are you going to hate Aaron Judge? Or Giancarlo Stanton? Gerrit Cole seems like a douche, but I mean, so what. He's not that detestable, at least not yet. Brett Gardner was always a shithead, but he'd probably be a fourth outfielder on a really good Yankee, he's sort of like hating Ricky Ledee.

 

The reality is that the Yankees became what I wanted them to become the most: just another team.

While the rivalry of the early 00s was a lot of fun, it was also exhausting to listen Boston sportswriters breathlessly inform us that the latest Yankee signing was going to destroy the Sox (it rarely did) or how the guys in the Bronx have a super prospect on the rise (most of the time no). Now they're one of 30 and no special attention is needed.

 

They'll find their way to the playoffs every year, probably win a round (especially if the Twins or the A's are involved) and then get blown out by the Astros or even the Sox (when they decide it's worth it to be in contention).

 

To be honest, I can live with this new reality. I think that we all can.  

 

28. 

The Diamondbacks are just fine. Only 28 more days until the Real National Hot Dog Day!

 

 

 

We are 28 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Casey Kasem style, my favorite baseball teams. 

 

I don't hate too many baseball teams and I don't love too many baseball teams, but I'm indifferent to a lot of them. It's a sliding scale where I might root for a team one spot above the other, but that doesn't mean I like that team much better.

 

Beginning the league of indifference is the Arizona Diamondbacks. I don't dislike the D'backs, but if any subsequent teams played them in a postseason game, chances are I'd root for them. However, that could change if the D'backs get a transcendent player or if they employ someone who it would be cool if they won the World Series (like the Astros last year).

 

Otherwise they're an uninspiring team. They have a long ass name, so they have to put their nickname of their uniforms, which sorta bugs me for some reason. I should like their original colors of purple, teal and copper because it was a unique look but I don't. Having said that, I'm not wild about their red, black and tan colors either. Though their hat that has a snake shaped like a "D" is pretty inspired.

 

Aside from the 2001 World Series, they haven't been anything that really captured the sport's zeitgeist. Though to be fair, the 2001 Series was pretty god damn epic for a lot of reasons.

 

They just seem to exist in the desert and around to get their asses kicked by the western team du jour (mostly the Dodgers) and just play uninspired baseball. Back in the day, I'd write out an MLB season preview and I forgot to include Arizona one year. I think about that a bunch when I think of this team. 

 

The Diamondbacks are just there as ballast.

 

27. 

While you're waiting the 27 days until the Real National Hot Dog Day, why don't you check out what I have to say about the Rockies -- a team that may or may not exist. 

 

Also, if you don't follow The Real National Hot Dog Day, what are you doing with your life? Give it a follow and learn all about the bunny goodness that is TRNHDD. Your mouth will thank you for it!

 

 

We are 27 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Casey Kasem style, my favorite baseball teams. 

 

The past three times it has grown, baseball expanded in a pair of teams (which makes sense). Mariners and Blue Jays in 1977, Diamondbacks and Devil Rays in 1999 and wedged between those two expansions were the Marlins and Rockies in 1993.

 

What I felt that this meant is that you become a fan of either one of the other: I liked the M's, I eventually warmed up to the Jays. I thought a lot about liking the D-Backs, but as we saw with yesterday's post that didn't happen and I've always disliked the Rays.

 

I thought that I was really going to appreciate the Rockies, despite the fact that they ripped off the old Colorado NHL franchise's name. But there was a lot of history of baseball in the Mile High City, they were going to play in a place where a ton of homers were going to be hit and it was going to be fun.

It's been 30 years and aside from one World Series appearance against the Red Sox (where they were destroyed an ultimately lost on the exact day my eldest was born), the Rockies have been a pretty lame ass team.

 

The team's owner, Dick Monfort, sucks and consequently, the front office is pretty clueless. There always seems to be a rebuild going on, the team's philosophy changes on a whim and for such a beautiful ballpark (honestly, top five for me) there's not a lot of excitement there.

 

It's like their whole motto is, "We understand you need a team in Dever and we're that team!"

 

The Rox were fun in the 90s when they didn't have a humidor to squelch the number of homers hit in their park and they loaded the lineup with aging sluggers who mashed their way throughout the season. I guess they got sick of losing 11-10 every game, so they tried to find some pitchers, but that didn't work out but they also jettisoned their power threats and now they're just a team with some decent hitting and below average pitching.

 

I get that most GMs will say that "We want a balanced team mainly because we don't play all 162 games in Colorado." But is it entertaining? If you're a Rockie fan, wouldn't you much rather watch a bunch of steroid addled lumberjacks hit tape measure dingers and lose a little more than you win than watch what the Rockies have become now?

 

I know what I'd choose, but hey, the Rockies are my 27th favorite team and I don't really have a dog in this fight.

 

26.

A few words on the Texas Rangers.

 

 

We are 26 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Casey Kasem style, my favorite baseball teams. 

 

If Tuesday was a baseball team, it would be the Texas Rangers.

 

The Texas Rangers are just there. Even when they get superstars (and they've had their share over the years -- Ted Williams was the first Rangers manager ever), they never seem to grasp the spotlight.

Aside from Nolan Ryan, I suppose. But he retired 30 years ago. The Rangers have had some really good team chock full of really good players since then but they're somehow terrific and anonymous. I know that people say that teams like the Pirates or the Reds are baseball's version of Siberia, but it's Arlington, Texas.

 

If you're a Ranger, nothing you do seems to matter much.

 

This might be my own biases talking, but childhood is where you start putting stuff together and it leaves a mark that lasts a long time. Whenever I'd get a Texas Ranger in a pack of baseball cards, he always looked the same: longish hair under a washed out blue hat with a white "T", droopy mustache, kinda looked like a cowboy--but one that had been dragged by a horse for a few miles. The pics always showed a man that appeared to be hot and uncomfortable--no matter where the picture was taken--like he had been running sprints in the Texas heat for an hour before the photographer nabbed his shot.

 

And when I watched the Sox play games there it was always sunny, but it was that unbearable sunshine: too bright, too hot, it made you feel sluggish; like the last thing you wanted to do was hit a ball or throw it. Boston always wilted there, which might be the cause of my dislike, but by August, the Rangers would inevitably get worn down too. But by then it was football season and no one cared about the Rangers.

The idea that Rangers getting to back-to-back World Series will never not shock me. For my entire life, they were also rans, a group of players who were assembled to play pretty well in the spring, break down in the summer and limp off to obscurity in the fall.

 

I don't hate the Rangers, but even with their success, I kinda think that they're just nothing. 

 

25.

Know a Marlins fan? Neither do I.

 

Know a Real National Hot Dog Day fan? I'm sure you do. As we count down to TRNHDD, peruse this essay on baseball, fun and the elimination of fun told through the prism of the Miami Marlins.

  

We are 25 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Shadoe Stevens style, my favorite baseball teams. 

 

Every time the Miami Marlins do something interesting, they get cold feet and reverse course. Baseball is an exciting game, but unlike hockey or hoops, it's not a constantly exciting game. There's a lot of down time and during those periods, people at the stadium need to be entertained.

 

This is not a new, "stupid kids and their Tik Toks!", thing. The Lords of Baseball have known this since Cracker was introduced to Jack. It's why there are beer vendors in the stands and seventh inning stretches and exploding scoreboards and fly overs and kiss cams and grounds crews doing the YMCA. You are not less of a baseball fan if you want a little entertainment outside of the game.

 

When the Marlins put one over on the city and county that they play in and got them to pay for their new park, they added this loud, ostentatious statue that would move when one of the Marlins hit a home run. It was bright and colorful and reflected the most vibrant city in MLB--it was quintessential Miami--and it was beautiful.

 

So when the Marlins named the most boring milquetoast superstar to ever lace up his cleats as their team President, one of Derek Jeter's first actions was to take the statue down. Why? I'm sure he mumbled something about unwritten rules, playing the game the right way, this is a Major League franchise and about 100 other cliches. The bottom line is the statue was gone and now the stadium is as dull as the last 20 Marlins team.

 

Good work, Captain Jeter, the team is now as soulless and mundane as you.

 

In 1996 former owner Wayne Huizenga (and Blockbuster maven) was getting ready to sell the team but he wanted to go out a winner. He signed and traded for every really good baseball player, won the World Series and immediately had it dismantled. He sold the team to John Henry who baby sat the franchise for a few years until selling it to Jeffrey Loria--it was more complicated than this.

 

Loria won the World Series in 2003 and then also started to dismantle the team. And they've stayed dismantled since then. The one interesting thing about this malaise is that the Marlins were the only team to ever win the World Series every time they made the playoffs. What a weird stat, right?

 

Of course, a former Yankee had to help ruin that. In the Covid shortened season of 2020, just about everyone made the playoffs and that included Don Mattingly's Miami squad! They weren't very good and were bounced in the first round, so that's another weird wrinkle ironed out by a former New Yorker.

 

I guess this is just a long winded way of saying, the Marlins can be fun, but they're not going to be fun for too long. So whether it's a dope ass statue, a weird playoff streak, using teal as your primary color or your favorite Marlin, don't get used to it. It's probably on its way out the door very soon.

 

24.

Remember the Barbie Twins from the 90s? This post isn't about them.

#24 on the countdown: The Minnesota (not the Barbie) Twins.

 

   

We are 24 days away from the The Real National Hot Dog Day and to celebrate, we're counting up, Shadoe Stevens style, my favorite baseball teams. 

 

I definitely don't hate the Minnesota Twins. In fact, when they were one of the two teams that were going to be folded back in the early 00s (and how fucked up was that, seriously?), I was really bummed out that a team that had been around since 1901 was going to go away due to owner greed (it's always owner greed, forever and ever).

 

But at the same time, I don't think that I actually like the Twins. Back in the day, I was a big Kirby Puckett fan, like Kent Hrbek, Gary Gaetti, Jeff Reardon, Frank Viola, Bert Blylven. In subsequent years I liked watching Joe Mauer play, Johan Santana pitch, Torii Hunter and Byron Buxton (what an awesome first name) make amazing plays.

 

Even the idea of Minnesota having a baseball team way up in the northern part of the country is appealing to me. I am looking forward to visiting Target Field one day.

 

Having said all that, I don't think that I've ever actively rooted for Minnesota. In the 1987 World Series, I wanted the Cards to win. In the 1991 World Series, I wanted the Braves to win. I wasn't devastated that the Twins won, but I would have preferred it if the other walked off the field with the trophy*.

 

* Especially in 1991. I'm a big Hall of Fame guy, but I was never aboard the Jack Morris for the Hall of Fame train. I thought that Morris was fine and never really dominant. If Lonnie Smith didn't get deked out and scores, maybe the Braves win and Morris' Game 7 performance doesn't go down in history. IDK. All I know is that Morris owes a percentage of any revenue he gets from being a Hall of Famer to Smith, second baseman Chuck Knoblauch (for doing the faking) and Puckett for single-handedly getting Minnesota to Game 7 in the first place.

 

The only time that I really have rooted for the Twins (fun fact, since 1987 the Twins have had an underscore line on all of their home shirts so that it reads tWINs, also the logo [Minny and Paul] with this post rocks though, I love it) is when they play the Yankees. This is an absolutely Sisyphian chore as since 2002, the Twins are 39-111 (.243) against the Bombers.

 

That's insane to me. How bad is that? It's comical at this point. Why bother scheduling the Yankees at all?

 

Another thing that leads to my Minnesota malaise, the Twins also share Ft. Myers so the Red Sox play them a ton in Spring Training -- so much so that there is a Mayor's Cup where the winner of the Spring series gets to show off that they're the best in Ft. Myers. I have no idea who is leading, but it's a lot of Twins games in March.

Boston Red Sox Leaders 1989 Topps

 

Sometime in the last two or three months, I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

 

 

 

 

Back in the day baseball cards were just pieces of cardboard that had pictures of your favorite baseball players on them. They weren’t worth much more than the paper that they were printed on. I mean you wanted some players more than you wanted others, I’d take a Willie Mays over a Walt Droppo any day, but aside from the playground, no one over ten gave a shit about cards.

 

In the 70s and especially the 80s, that changed. Boomers aged and as this generation is wont to do, began fantasizing and fetishizing their childhood*. They’d do anything to bring them back to that garden, even for a fraction of a second. They thought that their key back were their old baseball cards. 

 

* I understand the irony of me calling out one generation’s nostalgia while spilling an ocean of ink on my own.

 

Thousands of Boomer boys made their way back to their homes to find out that Mom (it was ALWAYS Mom, low-key misogyny) threw away their precious cards when they were shipped to Vietnam or when they went to college or when they skipped off to Canada until the mid 70s. Anyway once they found out that their garden keys were thrown away, they had to what any group of people with access to disposable income would do: they bought it back. At any cost.

 

Suddenly a lot of people over ten-years-old started to give a very big shit about baseball cards. Man children were spending small fortunes trying to rebuild their collections, which got the few baseball card dealers in the country crazy rich. “Oh? This 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie? It’s $10,000. Yup. Very valuable. Can't possibly ever find another one like this one!” And those whose Mom didn’t chuck their collection sold whatever they could and bought an ugly-ass Porsche and a small mountain of cocaine—it was the 80s after all.

 

Seemingly overnight baseball cards turned into a very profitable way to make money. The next generation of kids (like me) who loved baseball not only bought cards because we wanted to know more about our heroes, but we were fixing to get rich like our uncles and Dads. It wasn't just card collectors that got the bug, the whole hobby caught on and the major card manufacturers (Topps, Fleer, Donruss and Score) flooded the market due to the demand. 

 

And rookie cards were the crème de la crème.Those are the ones that you needed.

 

But kids aren’t economists and didn’t understand simple economics: the more of a supply, the less of a demand. So your 1986 Donruss Jose Canseco Rated Rookie? Junk. Your 1985 Topps Roger Clemens? Nada. How about your 1983 Fleer Tony Gwynn? Maybe $10. if you found the right person. There was just too many cards and everyone was holding on to them. Bart Simpson had it right when he said that Generation X needed “another Vietnam to thin out their ranks”, at least in terms of baseball cards because maybe some Moms would chuck all the cards in the trash.

 

No, our cards never turned into gold. I’m not selling my 1987 Topps Ruben Sierra rookie to send my kid to college. My 1985 Topps Cory Synder Olympic card was used as a down payment for my house. And I never turned my 1987 Mark McGwire Rated Rookie into a Porsche. They’re just cardboard pictures of dudes that were once really fucking great at baseball. 

 

* The only 1980s card that this hasn't happened is the 1989 Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Deck rookie. I mean, if you have one it's not going to push you to a higher tax bracket, but if you sold it, I bet you could take a family of four to McDonald's no problem.

 

What does this have to do with the card above? It shows Jody Reed about to swing at a ball at the Oakland Alameda Country Colosseum with A’s catcher Terry Steinbach behind the dish. Are either of these guys rookies? Nope. And that's sorta the point. 

 

The Leader Cards were originally some of my favorite cards when I first started out collecting. It was a great opportunity to get another photo of your hero* and not only that but it will tell you who was good on that team. 

 

* The 1986 Boston Red Sox Leaders card had a cool shot of Dwight Evans and that year, the person on front of the cards were "Deans of the Team" meaning that those guys were on the team the longest. I thought that was cool as hell for some reason. 

 

The ”leader” part of the Leaders card meant that Topps would list the players who lead the team in about 15 different pitching and hitting categories. So if you weren’t familiar with the Mariners, you could look on the back of the Seattle Leaders card and see that Alvin Davis lead the team in batting average, hits and doubles. And Mark Langston lead the squad in wins and strikeouts. Maybe these are two guys that you should pay attention to when you get them in packs. Maybe they’re both actually pretty good.

 

Once I started really getting into baseball, the Leader cards were kind of superfluous. I knew who lead the Mariners in batting average last year. I know who lead Seattle in wins and guess what, he might have been good for that dogshit Mariners team but in context, he sucked. I was mad that a Leader card took the place of a rookie card. We could have gotten 26 more rookies instead of those stupid cards. That’s 26 more chances to strike it rich!

 

So that’s where I stood in 1990 when I stopped collecting cards: Leader cards were dumb and cost me money. I think that most of the hobby felt the same way because Leader cards eventually disappeared without industry protest. This is the part of the blog where I write about how we may have lost a little something when Topps—they were the only company that printed Leader cards—discontinued these pieces of cardboard. Like maybe we gave up a little bit of the love of the game in pursuit of the almighty dollar in searching for the next rookie.

 

But I’m not sure that’s 100% correct. Leader cards were fine for what they were, they were useful training wheels when it came to understanding baseball and finding out about some decent players. All of that stuff is, and was, available pretty readily. It was a nice little gimmick, but it’s okay that it was put out to pasture.

 

Just because you really enjoyed and needed something when you were younger doesn’t mean that you need it the same way now.Thank you Leader cards for helping me understand baseball a bit better, but your service is no longer needed.

Daryl Irvine 1992 Fleer

Sometime in the last two or three months, I received this card from the Baseball Card Bandit (BCB):

 

 

 

I don’t recall anything about Daryl Irvine’s days in Boston. According to the back of this card, Daryl was “one of the top closers in the minor leagues [and] will try to graduate to the big leagues in 1992.” He played three years in the Bigs (1990, 1991 and 1992) and was the exact opposite of what you want in a closer.

 

In 63.1 career innings, Irvine gave up 71 hits, 33 walks and only struck out 27 batters. Not surprisingly, his ERA was astronomical: 5.68; so not only did he put runners on base, but he let them score too. No matter how good he was in the minors—not good, actually he pretty much had the same kind of issues down there—he wasn’t going to close for anyone unless he missed some bats.

 

When I wrote about Dana Kiecker a few weeks back, we talked about that 1990 team and Irvine was a part of that team, he pitched in 11 games. But the other two years he pitched, the Red Sox weren’t great. They had their moments in 1991, but in 92 the Red Sox were so bad. Tom Brunansky led the team with 15 home runs. Bob Zupcic led the team in batting average: .276, over Wade Boggs who managed to hit .259!

 

The team finished with 73 wins, but if you look at their roster, they should have been able to put something together: Boggs, Mo Vaughn, JodyReed, Tony Pena, John Valentin, Ellis Burks, Mike Greenwell (the latter two were apparently hurt) plus Brunansky. Add in older dudes like Billy Hatcher, Jack Clark plus young kids like Phil Plantier, Scott Cooper and Tim Naehring and I mean, they could have been league average or better, if they hit.

 

The pitching was kind of a mess with solid years from RogerClemens and Frank Viola heading the rotation and Jeff Reardon closing, but everything after that was a complete disaster. Plus they had Butch Hobson managing, who was clearly way, way over his head.

 

Fun fact: 1992 was the only year since 1986 that I haven’t seen a game live at Fenway. I’m not sure why, but I decided to sit this year out; which is odd because I’ve seen some really shitty Red Sox teams play baseball. I wish that I saw the Sox play at least one game that season because it’s easier to say, “I’ve been to Fenway for 37 straight years” instead of “I’ve been to Fenway for 37 straight years, except for 1992. So I guess I’ve only been to the park for 30 straight years.”

 

That’s right, if I had a time machine, I wouldn’t go back and kill baby Hitler; I’d go back and watch the 1992 Red Sox in Fenway Park so that uninteresting personal anecdotes would be easier for me to relay.

 

Anyway Boston was apparently unimpressed with righthander and Irvine was sent to the Pittsburgh Pirates after the 1992 season. This was year one of the Pirates annual depths-of-the-division league tour that they’ve been perpetually on since Barry Bonds took his talents to San Francisco. Andy Van Slyke was still there, as was Jay Bell and Jeff King but other than future Red Sox Tim Wakefield and Stan Belinda, the staff was a complete and total disaster. Irvine should have been used to the chaos.

 

Ultimately it didn’t matter as Irvine was never able to put his chaotic team experience to good use as he never got a call up to Pittsburgh. Through the very perfunctory research that I’ve done, I can’t tell when he retired, but I bet it was pretty soon after that. According to Wikipedia, he lives in Harrisonburg, VA.

 

What does Daryl Irvine do all day? I’m not sure, but the way that his baseball career went, I’d be surprised if he thought about his days in the Major Leagues. I prefer to think about how he was drafted by the Red Sox three times over a couple of drafts—I guess the Sox liked him very much at one point. He probably thinks of his dominance in high school and college and how at one point everyone he knew wanted to be Daryl Irvine.

 

I think that’s what I’d think about as I’m relaxing on my porch in Harrisonburg, VA. I wouldn’t be thinking about the boring-ass drive from Pawtucket to Boston, sitting around in a cramped, sweaty bullpen waiting to get my brains beat in. That’s for god damn sure.

 

Maybe I’d show some neighborhood kids my baseball card if they asked, but I’d say, “that was a long time ago” and dramatically stare off into the distance. That wistful drama is almost cooler than having a lot of success at the Major League level. 

 

Almost.