He's OK

Rick Ankiel is OK.

He's out of the hospital, where he was taken after banging his head into the outfield wall against Philadelphia last night.

Rick Ankiel is OK on a whole other level, too.

He's a starter in the Cardinals outfield nearly a decade after breaking in with the team as a phenom pitcher, a nearly inconceivable transition in this era of sports specialization.

In 2000, Ankiel finished second in the National League Rookie of the Year voting and was a solid member of the St. Louis rotation heading into the playoffs.

He started against the Braves and future Hall of Famer Greg Maddux, who pitched uncharacteristically poorly and surrendered six runs in the first inning.

But Ankiel suddenly developed what's become known around baseball as "Steve Blass disease": He couldn't throw the ball over the plate. In the third inning, he recorded five wild pitches, something that hadn't happened in 110 years, let alone the postseason. Manager Tony La Russa was forced to relieve the rookie after 2 2/3 innings, during which he also walked six batters.

Despite Ankiel's problems, the Cardinals beat the Braves in the opening playoff series, advancing to face the Mets. La Russa opted to start Ankiel in the second game, but he walked twok threw a wild pitch and gave up two runs in just 2/3 of an inning.

La Russa used Ankiel again in mop-up duty as the Cardinals lost 7-0 to the Mets in the fifth and deciding game. According to Retrosheet, "Ankiel's last warm-up throw went to the backstop; during (Mike) Bordick's at bat the crowd chanted 'wild pitch' to Ankiel." The crowd was prophetic. Bordick walked, was sacrificed to second, and scored after two wild pitches. Ankiel then walked Edgardo Alfonzo and was relieved.

Ankiel won two more games in the majors, one each in 2001 and '04, but a series of injuries ended his pitching career. He announced he was going to switch to the outfield, but no one took that very seriously until he re-emerged in St. Louis in 2007.

Since then, he's hit 38 home runs in 666 at bats, not bad for a former hurler!

Here are some other players from way back when who made the switch from pitcher to batter:

• George Herman Ruth (as if you didn't know). Keep in mind that Ruth was regarded as the best left-handed pitcher in the American League when he made the switch. In 1916, he hurled nine complete-game shutouts, still the AL record for lefties, later tied by Ron Guidry. And don't forget the 29 2/3-inning scoreless streak in the World Series.


• George Sisler. The Hall of Fame first baseman always said his greatest thrill was, as a young pitcher, beating Walter Johnson twice. But Sisler's St. Louis Browns needed his bat more than his arm, and he compiled a lifetime record of 5-6 with a 2.35 ERA.


• Francis "Lefty" O'Doul. The future batting champion, who still co-holds the National League record for hits in a season, was a marginal major-league pitcher with the Yankees and Red Sox in the early '20s, compiling a 1-1 record in 34 relief appearances. In 1923, he set a 20th-century record by allowing 13 runs in a single inning.


• "Smokey Joe" Wood. Howard Ellsworth Wood was a pitcher of legendary prowess during the Dead Ball era, winning 81 games before he turned 23, including a 34-5 season for the Series-winning Red Sox in 1912. He hurt his arm the following spring, and despite leading the AL in earned run average in 1915, decided he was through pitching. He came back as an outfielder with Cleveland and played in the 1920 World Series.


• James "Cy" Seymour. In his first two full seasons with the New York Giants, 1897-98, Seymour was a 20-game winner. In 1898, he struck out 239 batters, an extremely high total for the era. He also walked 213, eclipsing any single-season mark of the 20th century, and his career totals show 655 bases on balls in 1,043 innings. By 1905, he was a full-time outfielder with the Cincinnati Reds and nearly won the Triple Crown, posting a .377 batting average with 121 RBI and finishing second with eight home runs. He also led the NL in slugging, hits, doubles, triples and total bases.

Celebrating the greatest

The greatest game ever pitched occurred May 26, 1959.

That's the contention of the Springfield/Clark County Baseball Hall of Fame, and it's difficult to argue the point.

On that evening in Milwaukee, Pirates pitcher Harvey Haddix (1925-94) retired the first 36 Braves he faced for 12 perfect innings, one of those records that is extremely likely to stand forever. Unfortunately, he ended up losing the game, 1-0, in the 13th.

The folks in his hometown of Springfield, Ohio, are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the accomplishment with an event at the Heritage Center of Clark County. Scheduled speakers include members of the Haddix family, along with former major leaguers Bill Virdon, Jim O'Toole, Rick White and Galen Cisco.

To find out more about the proceedings in Springfield, which is about 3 1/2 hours from Washington, PA, call 937-324-0657.

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Trivia #15: Whom did Harvey Haddix intentionally walk in the 13th inning on May 26, 1959? For the answer, scroll down and look to the right.

Enough with the pitch count!

So, Paul Maholm is the Pirates' "ace." But once he's thrown near a hundred pitches, he's done for the evening. Don't want his arm to fall off.

So it's time for the relief corps. Tyler Yates holds everything together for one batter, but John Grabow comes in and allows the game-tying run.

That's OK, because on an uncharacteristically good offensive night, Andy (not Adam) LaRoche cracks a home run to put the Pirates back on top, 4-3.

So one comes closer Matt Capps, who's been effective ... Whoa! Was that just a three-run bomb hit by Rickie Weeks?

Yet another loss to the Brewers, who once were compared to the Pirates as far as their market and their ability to win. All those comparisons obviously have gone by the wayside.

So "Ace" Maholm ends up with a no-decision, his arm intact to pitch another day, but at the cost of the loss that probably sends the Pirates below .500 for the record-setting 17th straight season.

Draw your own conclusions, Pirates fans. Just remember that the complete game used to be a routine part of Major League Baseball.

Here we go again ... again

Five games. Four losses, three of them by shutout. No home runs since April 26.

Everyone knew the Pirates' lineup was no murderers' row. But the bats have gone silent so quickly that we have to wonder if they'll ever wake up for any kind of sustained stretch.

The lineup that the Reds' Johnny Cueto (pictured in Associated Press photograph) mowed down on Sunday contained some names of note: Nyjer Morgan and Freddy Sanchez, both of whom still are hitting over .300; Nate McLouth, last year's token Pirates All-Star; and Adam LaRoche, who leads the team with five homers.

Then there was the lower half of the order: Brandon Moss, Andy LaRoche, Jason Jaramillo and Brian Bixler. Sounds like the core of a Triple-A roster.

Supposedly, Pirates manager John Russell has made comments to the effect that he's more impressed with the team's offensive output this season compared with last. That's because two legitimate big-league hitters, Jason Bay and Xavier Nady, were here then, and now they're not.

Injury has played a factor: catcher Ryan Doumit and shortstop Jack Wilson are on the disabled list. But even when they return, Pirates fans shouldn't expect a ton of runs to cross the plate.

Neither should they expect the Bucco pitching to keep up its impressive start. Even Pirates GM Neal Huntington admits that the staff's BABIP is very low and there might be some trouble once it starts to rise.

What's BABIP? That's batting average on balls in play, meaning that when a pitcher doesn't register a strikeout, he takes his chances with where the ball happens to land. In other words, a low BABIP means you're getting a lot of good luck, and the law of percentages tends to even those things out after a while.

And in other words, the Pirates' 11-7 start this year seems likely to have been an illusion. But the prospect of a 17th straight losing season is all too real.

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Trivia #14: Prior to Sunday, when was the last time the Pirates were shut out three times in the span of four games? For the answer, scroll down and look to the right.

The youngest of 'em all

He was 18 years, four months and 25 days old when he first pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates, a post-1900 record as the team's youngest player.

Members of the Forbes Field chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research were fortunate to hear him speak on Saturday about his experiences with some of the sport's immortals.

Who is he? Find out in my column in Wednesday's Observer-Reporter.

Unbreakable

Carl Crawford's six stolen bases on Sunday drew a lot of attention, seeing as how he's only the fourth player to do so since 1900. He still needs to do it again to tie Hall of Famer Eddie Collins, who did it twice. Still, with the comparative scarcity of stolen bases in this era, Crawford deserves a round of applause. His fantasy owners will sit up all night doing so ...

Crawford's performance prompted Alex Remington to post a blog entry on Yahoo!'s Big League Stew called "Baseball's most untouchable career record? Close, but not quite," in which he postulates that the career record for triples (variously cited at 309 and 312) set by Hall of Famer "Wahoo" Sam Crawford (no relation to Carl) is safer than Rickey Henderson's 1,406 steals.

I'm not sure that either of those records is remotely approachable, but I do know Remington's post set off a long series of comments that shows people, indeed, still know and care about the storied history of baseball.

I've always contended that the unbreakable Major League Baseball record was set by John Taylor, who pitched 1,727 consecutive innings without being relieved, a streak that was broken in 1906. Today, that's about 1,720 more innings than the typical starting pitcher would go without relief.

But pitching has evolved to the point where many records like that have absolutely no chance of being broken: Cy Young's 511 wins and 750 complete games, Walter Johnson's 110 shutouts and "Iron Man" Joe McGinnity's three complete-game doubleheader victories (that's two per day) in the same month come to mind.

As for batters, Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak usually is cited as the ultimate in unbreakable records. OK, they used to say that about Lou Gehrig's 2,130 consecutive games played, but ... at any rate, the conventional wisdom is that the pressure on a hitter nowadays to get within, say, 20 games of DiMaggio comes to be unbearable.

Just off the top of my head, here are a bunch more hitting records that should stand forever:

- Ty Cobb's .366 (or .367, by some calculations) lifetime batting average

- J. Owen Wilson's 36 triples in one season (no one else in the 20th century hit more than 26)

- Earl Webb's 67 doubles in one season

- Ted Williams' reaching base in 16 consecutive plate appearances

- Hack Wilson's 191 RBI (especially since that extra one was added half a century after his death)

- Rogers Hornsby's .424 batting average (unless you count the sources that had Nap Lajoie hitting .426 in 1901, when foul balls weren't counted as strikes)

- Tommy Holmes leading the league in home runs while striking out fewer than 10 times (28 home runs, 9 strikeouts), which might be the most impressive on this list

- Babe Ruth's career .690 slugging percentage

- Babe Ruth's career 1.164 OPS

- Babe Ruth out-homering every other team in the league (1927)

- Babe Ruth hitting 35 more home runs than the league runner-up

- Babe Ruth tying for the league lead in home runs while winning 13 games as a pitcher

- B. Lamar Bonds' 73 home runs (think about it), not to mention his career 500-plus homers / 500-plus stolen bases

All right, now that we're veering into Bonds territory, enough is enough. But it's good to see that baseball records still spark a lively debate.

By the way, Charles "Ol' Hoss" Radbourne once won 60 games in a season, plus three more in the first World's Series. But that was way back in 1884 ... so can we be sure it really happened?

(There's way too much trivia in this post to ask a trivia question!)

The savior struggles

When the Pirates managed to sign Pedro Alvarez last year after contentious negotiations with agent Scott Boras, most thought he would spend a little time in the minors and then be called when the rosters expanded in September.

Well, the savior is not off to such a hot start in Class A Lynchburg. In 21 games, he is hitting .219 with four home runs and a league-best 20 RBI. The latter number is a bit deceiving in that he drove in five runs on either sacrifice flies or groundouts. He's also made seven errors at third base.

This doesn't mean he's going to be a bust. Most players need a period of adjustment in the minors, and Alvarez is too talented not to thrive. What it does mean is that missing all that time last season while his agent played games with the Pirates (ignoring offers, not returning phone calls) delayed the process. Alvarez is 22 and has played three years of college ball at Vanderbilt. But he hasn't been in a competitive baseball game since last spring. The layoff after the draft has obviously affected him.