I never thought I would say this or even think it, but I’m sorry that the Yankees are closing Yankee Stadium without George Steinbrenner. All right, I understand why the house that Ruth built is closing without Babe Ruth in the house. But the man who revived the house that Ruth built should be there and won’t be.

The Yankees owner the past 36 years, Steinbrenner is 78 years old, not sound physically and unable to get around easily. He has been at the stadium once or twice this season, and he has kept a profile that doesn’t even reach the level of low. He doesn’t talk to reporters any more on the phone either.

 

He has become virtually invisible.

 

When I was covering the Yankees in the 1970s and 80s and Steinbrenner was a most active owner, we regularly clashed.

 

“Save your nickel,” he once barked at me, meaning don’t waste telephone calls to him. In his very first year as owner, 1973, Steinbrenner wanted to keep me out of the Yankees clubhouse, but Bob Fishel, his gem of a public relations man, told him he couldn’t do that. He didn’t have to talk to me, Fishel told him, but I was an accredited reporter and had to have clubhouse access.

 

We went one entire season without talking to each other. In his active days, Steinbrenner was the man reporters had to talk to. Not having access to him was difficult. But that season I learned information about the Yankees from executives of other clubs, maybe learning more than I would have from Steinbrenner.

 

In other years I spent an inordinate amount of time waiting for return calls from Steinbrenner. Sometimes they came; often they didn’t. But for all of the antagonism, all of the animosity, I have come to miss Steinbrenner. I have tried to get him on the telephone in recent years, but he never agreed to a conversation.

 

Maybe the absence of encounters in person or by phone have dulled the memory of the negative aspects of our relationship. Maybe it’s been so long since I have had an encounter with the owner that I forget what it was like.

 

Whatever the case, when I think about Yankee Stadium memories, Steinbrenner dominates them. Not Don Mattingly, Dave Winfield, Thurman Munson, Ron Guidry, Ed Figueroa, Sparky Lyle, Rich Gossage, Lou Piniella, Bobby Murcer, Horace Clarke, Jerry Kenney or Celerino Sanchez. Steinbrenner.

 

If there was one person I would like to have seen there on closing night, it was Steinbrenner. If there was one person I would like to have talked to there on closing night, it was Steinbrenner.

 

Maybe I’m getting soft as I get older, but I don’t think I was ready to put Steinbrenner with Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio and Mantle and the other ghosts of Yankee Stadium.

Contacting The Ball

High batting averages and high strikeout totals don’t seem to be compatible. According to Elias Sports Bureau research, only two players have ever won a batting title and led his league in strikeouts the same season: Babe Ruth in 1924 and Jimmie Foxx in 1933. Other players have led the league in hitting and strikeouts but not in the same year.

This season players with high batting averages and high strikeout totals are in different ball parks. Of the 72 players who, entering the weekend, had struck out 100 or more times only six were hitting .300 or better: Milton Bradley, Lance Berkman, Kevin Youkilis, Alex Rodriguez, Josh Hamilton and Nick Markakis.

Of the seven players with the most strikeouts, the best hitter was hitting .264.

That player is Dan Uggla, whose 161 strikeouts were the fourth most in the majors. But what would Uggla’s average be if we subtracted his strikeouts from his times at bat? The Marlins’ second baseman would have what I will call a contact average of .390.

That’s not the highest contact average among the strikeout leaders (Ryan Ludwick’s .397 with St. Louis is), but it’s representative. Mark Reynolds of Arizona, whose 191 strikeouts led the majors, had a .387 contact average. Jack Cust of Oakland, with the third most strikeouts, 185, had a .386 contact average. Matt Kemp of Los Angeles, No. 8 on the strikeout list, was hitting .389 when he made contact.

Ryan Howard of Philadelphia, who last year set the major league record for strikeouts with 199, was nine away from that mark when the weekend began, and he was hitting .369 when bat made contact with ball.  Carlos Pena of Tampa Bay, sixth in strikeouts, was a point behind Howard.

Reynolds is one of three players whose penchant for swinging and missing says something about Arizona’s fall from an extended stay at the top of the National League West. The Diamondbacks were second in the league to Florida in strikeouts (1,204 to 1,295), and three of the seven most prolific strikeout victims are in their lineup.

As if the Diamondbacks didn’t see enough strikeouts from Reynolds and Chris Young (156), they traded for Adam Dunn, who had struck out 152 times. Young (.332) and Dunn (.343) are not among the best contact hitters either.

Kelly Shoppach of Cleveland is. He wasn’t among the top 10 in strikeouts – he was tied for 25th with 121 – but he had a .423 contact average, well above his .269 batting average.

The only .300 hitter with 100 strikeouts who has a better contact average is Bradley at .441. The other .300/100 hitters and their contact averages: Rodriguez .395, Berkman .394, Youkilis .385, Hamilton .379, Markakis .375.

Now what about Ruth and Foxx? Ruth, in 1924, batted .378 and had a contact average of .446, leading the American League with 81 strikeouts. Foxx, in 1933, batted .356 and had a .425 contact average with 93 strikeouts.

Ruth struck out 15 percent of the time, Foxx 16 percent. Cust has struck out 41 percent of the time, Reynolds 37.5 percent, Howard and Pena 33 percent and Uggla 32 percent.

Now That’s Contact

Ryan Shealy is a 29-year-old first baseman who in four seasons with Colorado and Kansas City has collected barely more than two years of major league service. In the first three seasons he also collected 12 home runs in 465 at-bats. With one home run every 38.75 times at bat, Shealy was not much of a power threat.

But this season has been starkly different. A September callup with the Royals, Shealy hit a home run in his second at-bat, but that was only a hint of what was to come. In the space of five games and 20 at-bats, the right-handed slugger hit five home runs. Over-all in those five games, Shealy had 11 hits in 22 at-bats and drove in 10 runs.

The last-place Royals won all five games.

Pitching Promise

Scott Lewis, a left-handed college pitcher, was selected by Cleveland in the third round of the 2004 amateur draft, the 77^th player taken. James Parr, a right-handed high school pitcher, was a fourth-round pick of Atlanta in the same draft, the 131^st player taken..

This month Lewis and Parr made their major league debuts. Parr started against Washington Sept. 4 and pitched six shutout innings. Lewis started against Baltimore Sept. 10 and threw eight shutout innings.

Parr made his second start that day against Colorado and matched his six-shutout-innings performance. Five days later Lewis made his second start and held Minnesota scoreless for six innings. Parr’s scoreless streak ended in his third game as Philadelphia scored four runs in four and a third innings.

Lewis was scheduled to pitch his third game Sunday.

Rockies Roll in Low-Scoring Games

Colorado’s 1-0 victory over San Diego last week was the Rockies’ third 1-0 victory over a division rival this season. Arizona is the only National League West team the Rockies haven’t beaten 1-0. Joe Koshansky, a rookie first baseman, provided the run in the win over the Padres with a home run, marking the 10^th time in 35 games that a home run has decided a 1-0 game.

The Rockies, however, don’t have the most 1-0 victories among N.L. West teams. San Francisco has four, edging San Diego twice and Oakland and Washington once each. The Padres have lost five 1-0 games, two to the Giants and one each to Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Colorado.

Ike and MLB Blow Away Astros

Just when the Houston Astros thought they were leaping into the National League wild-card race, Ike knocked them out of it. That would be Hurricane Ike and what it did to the Houston area devastated the Astros, changing the course of their season.

It was bad enough that the Astros had to go on the road to play two games with the Cubs and leave their families to fend for themselves, but they had to play the Cubs in Milwaukee, a supposedly neutral site that was anything but neutral. The Astros batted last, meaning they were the home team, but the fans in the stands who easily made the 90-mile trip, made the Cubs the home team.

Chicago pitchers did more to the Astros batters than the fans. Carlos Zambrano pitched a no-hitter against them in the first game in Milwaukee, and the next day Ted Lilly allowed one hit in seven innings.

The Astros, who won six in a row and climbed to three games behind Milwaukee in the wild-card race before Ike made his unwelcomed visit, proceeded to lose three games to the Marlins. In those five games, they scored a total of five runs and had 16 hits. In the  five games before Ike they scored 32 runs and amassed 51 hits.

This is not the first time, though, that the Astros suffered an offensive shutdown. In the 2005 World Series against the White Sox they lost all four games, scoring 14 runs and totaling 29 hits.

Two Starts to Go, Two Games to Win

And then there were two.

Mike Mussina has kept alive his chances of winning 20 games for the first time in his 17-year career. All he has to do is win his last two starts. He will make those starts against Toronto and Boston. In previous starts this season, Mussina has a 1-1 record against the Blue Jays and a 1-2 record against the Red Sox.

MLB Becomes Free Spenders

Major League Baseball obviously believes in the old adage if you’ve got it flaunt it. They’ve got it, and they’re flaunting it. That would be money I’m talking about. Baseball is awash in money – more than $6 billion in revenue last year, an estimated $6.5 billion this year – so they have a lot to spend.

And spending it they are. The commissioner’s office sent an e-mail to reporters the other day advising them that the special media room rate for the general managers meeting at the St. Regis in Dana Point, Calif., Nov. 3-6 is $335. The e-mail didn’t say, but that rate is presumably for a night, not a week or a month or the entire meetings.

The clubs are paying the same rate for their executives who attend the meetings. Some clubs will have three or more representatives besides the general manager so a daily bill of $1,476 including tax will not be uncommon.

With newspapers bleeding gobs of money, few are unlikely to be willing to pay that kind of money for reporters to cover the meetings, which don’t produce trades anyway. The general managers most often discuss and try to lay the groundwork for trades at those meetings, but legitimate news seldom emerges from them.

On the other hand, general managers would be delighted to meet and talk trades without the scrutiny of reporters.

Once upon a time, less than a handful of reporters covered the meetings. But after Commissioner Bud Selig cancelled the winter meetings in 1994, believing agents had hijacked the meetings, more reporters began attending the general managers meetings, seeking news. The winter meetings returned, but reporters knew a good thing when they had it – several days in Arizona, California or Florida – and continued to cover the general managers.

The St. Regis rate could very well change that pattern.