In Baseball, Meek Shall Inherit First Place

I’m picking the Angels to win the AL West next year.

And the Indians to win the AL East.

And the Astros to win the NL West.

And the Expos to win the NL East.

I have developed a new sure-fire, fail-safe, fool-proof methodology which has absolutely nothing to do with Bill James, Bill Mazeroski, George Will, Will Clark, Street and Smith’s, Harry and Steve’s, the Elias Sports Bureau or Elias Sosa. All that is required is a newspaper with a sports section with the current baseball standings.

Step One: Turn the newspaper upside down.

Step Two: Write down the northern-most name in each of the four divisions.

Step Three: Congratulations. You have accurately predicted the 1992 major league divisional champions.

Baseball has always been the simplest of games, but never as simple as it is today. If not quite a religion, thematically, it now carries a Biblical resonance: And the last shall be first.

Right now, Minnesota is shifting into hyperspace in the AL West, blowing past Chicago and Oakland. Where were the Twins this time last year? Last.

In the NL West, Atlanta is starting to kick, running chest-to-chest with the rapidly flagging Dodgers. Where were the Braves this time last year? Last.

In the NL East, St. Louis has closed the gap behind Pittsburgh to a scant five games. Where were the Cardinals this time last year? Last.

Our lone aberration is the AL East, where the Yankees finished last in 1990 and might be there again if God hadn’t created the Cleveland Indians. But there atop the division, applying a third hand around the throat of the Toronto Blue Jays, are the Detroit Tigers, who placed third in 1990 but were the worst team in baseball in 1989, losers of 103 games that year.

Their time-release just needs a tuneup.

The Tigers make up for it, every time they step onto the field, by taking a century’s worth of baseball how-to advice and running it through the shredder.

They say you can’t win without pitching. The Tigers do.

They say you can’t win by subsisting solely on the home run. The Tigers do.

They say you can’t win by striking out nearly once per inning. The Tigers do.

If the Tigers don’t make the World Series, they should at least make the Smithsonian. They are last in the American League in hitting. They are last in the American League in pitching. They are on a pace to strike out 1,200 times this season--and 1,203 is the major league record. One of their outfielders, Rob Deer, has a chance to become the majors’ first full-time player who couldn’t hit his strikeout total. As of Sunday morning, Deer had a .176 batting average and 153 strikeouts.

As of this morning, the Tigers are tied for first place.

One of the greatest stories baseball ever told is developing right before us. The Tigers’ best hitter, Cecil Fielder, and best pitcher, Bill Gullickson, were both playing in Japan two years ago. Gullickson, 32, has an earned-run average of 4.13 and an opponents’ batting average of .302--and his record is 16-6. The next-best pitcher, Frank Tanana, is 38, having outlived his fastball by a good dozen years. Last season, Tanana had the worst home ERA in the league (6.00) and was barely registering in the 80s on the speed gun. Today, he is 11-8 with a 3.72 ERA and two shutouts.

Fielder is almost as fat as Bubba Paris, but he swings a bat like Roger Maris. In 1990, Fielder had 51 home runs and 132 RBIs and everybody said, yeah, well, let’s see him do it again. So how’s this, as of Sunday morning: 36 home runs, 111 RBIs and a .536 slugging percentage through 124 games.

Fielder has also struck out 114 times, but in Mow-Down-Town, he’s nothing more than a middleweight. Ahead of him are Deer and third baseman Travis Fryman (119 strikeouts), with catcher Mickey Tettleton (100) closing in. Too bad Pete Incaviglia has been reduced to a platoon role. In 69 games, Inky has struck out 70 times.

Sparky, get this man some at-bats.

You look at the social climbers in the other three divisions and you can at least comprehend their advances.

In Minnesota, Tom Kelly is a former world milking champion, having wrung out the 1987 World Series title with a two-man starting rotation.

In Atlanta, a precocious young talent base has been simmering for years.

In St. Louis, Joe Torre is reminding Atlanta what it should have learned in 1984--don’t fire this man--and is managing to do more with Bob McClure and Willie Fraser than the Angels ever did. No wonder Torre can hardly wait for October and Wally Joyner hunting season.

Detroit makes no sense whatsoever, other than Sparky Anderson’s reputation for spreading around the fertilizer and occasionally turning some of it into gold dust. The only thing the Tigers do by the book is show up for the first pitch. The thing they do best is reside in the AL East, where the Blue Jays still need name tags to identify their teammates and the Red Sox can’t decide whether their fans have been good (“Let’s give them September off”) or bad (“Sure we can win the World Series this year. Trust us.”)

So Bizarro ball continues to thrive in Detroit, where everything is so bad it’s good, where two wrongs make a right and where 25 wrongs make a playoff contender.

If it can happen there, what’s stopping it from happening in Anaheim? Not a thing. The standings have spoken to Angel fans, bunkered down wherever they may be:

Wait till next year.