The world is a funny and small place.  On December 1, 2008, in just his 9^th post, friend of the blog Lar at Wezenball.com wrote about a funny article he discovered in his recently arrived Sporting News 1981 Baseball Yearbook (the mail came a couple decades late at Lar's house).  A little over a year later,I was at the Metrodome, digging through a large pile of magazines, when I saw the exact same thing.  What will baseball look like in 2000?  So like the recently vanquished Conan O’Brien, The Common Man prepared to look into the future (the future, TCM?), all the way to the year 2000.  By this time, I had forgotten about Lar’s terrific article, and was giddy at the prospect of learning and sharing what baseball was going to be like ten years ago.  Fifty cents later, I had slipped it into my goody bag of souvenirs and trifles and moved on to the next booth of baseball cards and memorabilia.

Well, it wouldn’t do much good to recap the whole article for you, would it?  After all, Lar captures the tone and the content well.  That said, Lar leaves out The Common Man’s favorite contributor to this fortune telling venture.  Joseph Durso appropriately shows deference when he introduces the predictions of MLB labor leader Marvin Miller, “who caused more changes in baseball in this century than anybody as the executive director of the Players’ Association and the leader of the revolution.”  As you would expect from someone so sharp, Miller comes across as remarkably reasonable and prescient. Miller explains, "Basically, I'm optimistic.  The growth by the players in the 15 years I've been here has been upward, and is continuing."  Like others quoted in the article, Miller predicts exansion, the rise of cable television, and higher player salaries driven by inflation and richer TV contracts.  All of this, of course has come to pass.

Miller's insight, however, is particularly astute when he talks about the evolution of the labor front, "I think it's a fairly safe prediction that there will be more harmony than polarization in the year 2000.  Why?  Self-interest.  The owners will understand that it's in their interest not to try to get by, skinning a player here and there."  Indeed, following the contentious labor problems of 1981 and 1994-1995, and the owners' collusion against players in the mid-Eighties, the past 15 years has been notable for its labor peace.  While individual teams (like the Marlins) are still in the crosshairs of the MLB Players' Association, the steady influx of money has kept both players and owners happy.  While player salaries have slowed their rise in the last two offseasons, there is relatively little talk about collusion and disturbing the labor peace.  Perhaps the incentives for peace that Miller predicted have indeed been put into place.  It's an instructive lesson on avoiding conflict using reasonable incentives and emphasizing long-term collective and individual goals in place of short-term individual profits.  It also, presumably, helps that relatively few owners make their primary livings from their teams, like Charlie Finley, Tom Yawkey, and Bill Veeck did.  As such, the pressure to maintain a certain lifestyle through the team's fortunes is presumably less (though the desire for actual solvency is presumably no less strong).

Peter Gammons picks the top rookies of 1981.  Gammons' article demonstrates how difficult it was to gauge prospects in 1981, when journalists usually had just a team's scouting reports and stats to work with.  You cannot necessarily tell whether a player is ready for the major leagues.  So while many of the players Gammons discusses had excellent careers, only two contributed more than 1.5 WAR in 1981 (Tim Raines, 4.0, and Fernando Valenzuela, 5.4).  The group as a whole totaled just 14.2 between them that year.  Of the other ten, Paul Householder ("the key to Cincinnati's season") and Onix Concepcion ("Royals officials think he is the best infielder the organization ever produced") ended up with negative WAR for their careers.  Dave Engle, Tim Leary and Marty Bystrom barely broke even.  While they contributed little in their initial seasons, however, Gammons is right on about prospects Cal Ripken, Tim Wallach, Lee Smith, Tom Brunansky, and Tony Pena, each of whom had tremendous success in the majors.  On the strength of Ripken and Raines, the group's average WAR is 25.4 for their careers, and their median is 19.45.  Not bad, given the limited data at hand.

An article on the appreciating value of baseball cards by Bill Madden.  Madden repeats the cliched lament of young fans who return home from college to discover their mom has thrown out their 1952 Mickey Mantle.  The title of the article, "Memorie$: They're in the Card$ is hilarious enough, but the highlight is "This 1910 'Sweet Caporal' Honus Wagner card is the ultimate in trading cards, valued at more than $4,000. [emphasis mine]."  Meanwhile, in 2007, the Wagner card sold at auction for $2.8 million.  More than $4,000 indeed.  Now that's appreciation.

A collection of statistical flotsam compiled by (Canadian) Hall of Fame statistician Alan Roth, who cut his teeth under Branch Rickey as the first team-employed statistician in baseball.  As I said, Roth's article is mostly fluff and his work has been surpassed by today's analysis.  But his work was cutting edge and anti-establishment at the time.  He makes no explicit arguments from the data, allowing his figures to speak for themselves.  Examples: 

• Roth looks extensively at WHIP, marveling at the prowess of J.R. Richard in his last season (65 hits and 40 walks in 114 innings).
  
• He focuses on the rise of steals, comparing Pittsburg's Omar Moreno and Chicago's Ron LeFlore.  "In the last three seasons, [they] have topped the majors in seals with totals of 244 and 243....However, LeFlore was caught stealing only 49 times, an .832 percentage, better than Moreno's .763....In the last two seasons, Kansas City's Willie Wilson's stolen base percentage has been .880 (best in the majors).
• Roth is bullish on Rickey Henderson, but not just for his steals, "At the age of 21, [he] became only the fourth active player to get on base at least 300 times in a season on hits-walks-hit by pitches.
• He also looks at pitchers' homerun rates, citing Ed Whitson (7 HR in 212 IP), Dick Ruthven (9 in 223), and Greg Minton as particularly impressive.  About Minton, he writes, "In 1979, Minton aloowed no homers in 80 innings, and has allowed only four homers...in his 244 innings in the N.L.
• Finally, Roth is also aware of the home-road differentials in evaluating a player's power.  "Atlanta's Bob Horner has hit 91 home runs in 1,273 at bats in his three N.L. seasons, the best career rate among active major leaguers....Horner has been more than twice as effective as a slugger at home than on the road, hitting one homer every 10.05 at-bats, but managing only one every 22.86 in away games.