Baseball State of Mind: All-Timers

Once I make it through Dec. 21, or whenver the first day of winter arrives, it's only a matter of hanging on through Christmas...then making it through the New Year holiday. From there, I can see baseball season and figure I'll make to my own personal springtime celebration of a new year.

I'm buoyed this holiday grind by finding that North Coast all-time baseball squad I pieced together a decade or more back for the Times-Standard. I enjoyed re-reading it and recalling how hard it was to make sure the team reflected the entire North Coast and not just my feelings. I've equally enjoyed considering the names of players some folks have suggested where overlooked or, maybe, would merit consideration if their more recent accomplishments were taken into account.

Hey...it's Dec. 26...I ate something at Christmas dinner that gave me diarrhea overnight. There can't be a better time to think about baseball -- to take my mind off real life. (Ted Note: You know you're completely on your own when you get sick...make a mess...and have to clean up the mess yourself.)

Somebody mentioned Barry Scarpellino as a guy who deserved to be on the all-time list. First, he didn't go to high school on the North Coast and that was the first criteria for choosing players. Second, nobody I talked to about all-time, all-timers mentioned him. I knew his game...his power, his strong arm. Looking at that list from the 1990s, I don't see an outfielder clearly inferior to Barry.

There's a level of gravitas, of depth and importance, to the guys on that all-time list I did for the T/S. There are some outstanding players I just couldn't rank next to the Iorg brothers, Buster Pidgeon, Mark Lucich, Greg Kane, Randy Niemann, etc. And, to hear the old-timers talk about guys like Ed Oliveira and, naturally, Lou Bonomini -- I became quite quickly aware that the guys on the list had to have real meaning and have made a real impact across the board and through generations.

There were a few players of more modern vintage I thought absolutely belonged on the list. I followed Dave Stone's career from Midget League forward. Naturally, he was on my personal all-time list ... but, I had to make room for guys like Oliveira, Reco Pastori, Wally Scott and the guys who were stars when my mom was running wild in Arcata in the 1940s.

There's probably a lesson here for people who automatically assume everything I wrote at the T/S was a direct reflection of my personal feelings. The truth is that the all-time teams, the all-county teams -- they required that the entire North Coast be represented when at all possible. But, people didn't understand that...or just didn't want to believe that the teams that appeared under the T/S banner did really reflect what coaches said off the record. It's easier to think I'm out to give a deserving guy that shaft than to say, "Well, I guess Sillanpaa had to balance out players from different eras...different schools." It's easy to think, "Sillanpaa's an ass! That guy's doesn't deserve to be on that all-county team the newspaper picked! He's being unfair!" It's harder to admit, "Well...if guys who coached against the guy said he belongs on the newspaper's team...OK. I guess South Fork has one player that could start for Eureka's football team. I get it."

The Ted Sillanpaa All-Time Baseball Team has never appeared anywhere. That list I posted...that's the Times-Standard all-time team, circa 1994 or so. Same with other sports...there wasn't the Ted Sillanpaa all-H-DNL football team, there were teams that were chosen by talking to coaches, talking to players, etc.

Unlike today, I didn't poll other members of the media to select the T/S teams. Who knows more -- coaches who'll talk off the record with honesty or a small-time radio guy or young sports writer who needs to keep sources of news open? I never really mastered the art of brown-nosing and puffing up sources. Heck, we argued things out within the T/S staff on players on various teams. Ultimately, readers will never know how much weight was given to respected college or prep coaches who told me who the best players were, why they were good and why there was no point in wasting my time selecting newspaper all-star teams if all I was going to do was reflect the coach' all-county picks, stats and team's records.

(Ted note: Best coach...all-time...for giving the straight scoop in selecting T/S all-league basketball teams...the late Bill Treglown. We weren't pals or anything, but he was media savvy and understood that it was my job to make each year's best players out to be mythical figures...he made it his job to point out that H-DNL history is filled with slow, 5-foot-10 guards...6-foot-4 centers who couldn't make an inner-city school's roster, etc. He never...never ever...led me astray. He did argue that it's not my fault if School A doesn't have a decent basketball player on its roster...and...never mind...there were guys you'd never guess giving me insight, background and sometimes fodder for stories that caught me all kinds of hell.)

More modern-day players who could be added to the all-time squad have been mentioned. (Check the comments on the all-time team post.)

Go back to the gravitas, the depth of the legend the player created...and how he represented the area. That has to count for a great deal, don't you think?

Garth Iorg was not, by a longshot, among the greatest pure talents to play baseball in the H-DNL. He was a gifted athlete who understood the game and learned the minute he got drafted that there's a world filled with guys as good as he was. So, Iorg went out making himself one of the most noted players in North Coast history. He got all the way to the big leagues and, honest, coaches I talked to didn't expect he would. That's an achievement.

Conversely, and sadly, there are great talents who ... fizzled out ... who didn't play as long as they should or gotten as far as they apparently could have. Randy Niemann wasn't near the talent Del Norte High lefthander David Brous was -- in high school or in summer ball. Brous threw harder and had better breaking pitches. Plus, Brous could hit and, having played against Niemann, I'm sure Randy was a very, very, very average H-DNL hitter. When the old Humboldt Beacon newspaper did a story about the best H-DNL pitchers of 1998...featuring Eureka's Jeff Noga, St. Bernard all-stater David Sharp, my son Tyren and David Brous -- lots and lots and lots of people heard me say that Brous was, by far, the best of the bunch at that point. I wrote it...in the newspaper. He had stuff that set him apart. (Oddly, no one seems to remember that.)

Brous got drafted by the San Francisco Giants and signed for a nice amount of cash. Niemann signed after two years at College of the Redwoods. Niemann worked his way through the minor leagues and into a big league career that lasted the bulk of the 1980s. Sadly, I lost track of David Brous. I hope he's doing well. Niemann's a coach in the New York Mets organization.

That leads to a point people forget. There are always great high school players who seem on the road to great college careers...or professional careers. There are kids every season who start on the road to greatness -- it's staying on the road that gets you on an all-time team, I guess.