The Futility Infielder

Not that I wish to keep the mood around here so melancholy, but having spent most of the last couple days away from my computer, I wanted to pass along a few more links on Doug Pappas -- both from people who knew him personally and those who only knew his work -- before I get back to the business of whatever the heck it I that I do...

• A letter from Evelyn Begley, president of my local SABR chapter had, among other things, some grateful words from Doug's mother Carolyn and the report that there's a movement afoot to compile his work into a book which would be one of the next SABR publications. For his work to reach beyond the Internet -- and as great as the medium is, we have hundreds of years of human history which tell us that the book is an enduring format -- would be a fitting triumph.

• ESPN.com reported Pappas' passing both as a news story and via a unique tribute from Rob Neyer, who ran down a sample of the stories which Pappas brought to light in his blog -- doctors paying teams for the right to treat them, a Minnesota columnist blaming the state legislature for the loss of some expensive but ultimately replaceable players, some bullSelig about advertising on uniforms, more bullSelig about the length of his term as commissioner, etc. -- and then wrote:

Doug Pappas might be the best thing that ever happened to the Internet. If you're not familiar with Pappas' work, you probably think I'm exaggerating. I'm not.

Without Doug Pappas, neither I nor many thousands of other interested parties would know anything about those stories listed above, because it was Doug who brought them to us in his blog, where he posted new entries almost every day.

...With his intelligence, his energy, his talent, and especially his b.s. detector (always set on HIGH), Doug established a standard that few among us can hope to even approach.

• Salon's King Kaufman took Pappas' story into the mainstream as well:

You may not have heard of Pappas, but if you're a thinking baseball fan you've no doubt felt his influence. He was a Manhattan lawyer by trade, but his passion was writing about the business of baseball. No one I've ever read has a more thorough understanding of how baseball economics work, and no one, anywhere, was a more fierce enemy of commissioner Bud Selig.

...Pappas was an ace at showing how Selig & Co.'s various arguments about competitive balance, revenue sharing, contraction, the need for a salary cap and new publicly financed stadiums, and other issues were either a pack of lies or the result of a complete misunderstanding of economics. (Draw your own conclusions.)

...I would argue that if you haven't read Pappas' eight-part series "The Numbers," written from December 2001 through April 2002 as the last labor negotiation began to heat up, then you have no business discussing the business of baseball. You're simply uninformed.

Those of us who love baseball had a watchdog in Pappas, someone to let us know about the damage being done to the game by those running it. I hope someone with anything like his smarts, insight and writing ability can take over that role, but that's asking a lot. He'll be sorely missed.

• Baseball Prospectus' Joe Sheehan hit home with his eloquent tribute:

[O]f all the people I have worked with, I am most proud to have been able to work with Doug Pappas. His efforts to get at the truth of baseball's economic, labor and public policy issues were ceaseless, their impact lasting. That we were able to get Doug to write for Baseball Prospectus, that I was able to call him a colleague, is one of the most rewarding elements of my career.

It wasn't just the caliber of his work, which of course was high. It was that he had the courage to stand up and say, "They're lying. This is the truth," and back it up with so much evidence that he could not be ignored. Doug had a permanent effect on the way baseball's off-field issues are covered. He made it right -- no, he made it mandatory -- to question the claims of baseball's authorities, and he did it in the face of opposition from some powerful people. When called on the carpet by Bud Selig, Doug calmly presented the facts and refused to be intimidated.

Those who knew Doug remain in mourning, stunned at the loss of a friend at such a young age. A glance around the baseball community on the Web reveals the breadth of his impact, and the loss felt by so many people who perhaps only knew Doug through his writing.

We're going to have to get past that, and when we do, we have to do the only thing we can do for Doug: carry on his work. Instead of one strong voice braying the truth about the business of baseball, let there be dozens. Instead of one Web site, let there be hundreds. Let's let the high example Doug Pappas set be the minimum standard we set for our work, so that skepticism about the game's business side isn't just warranted, but expected. Let's make it so that Doug's legacy isn't just the work he did, but the work yet to be done by the people who read him and learned from him.

• BP's Steven Goldman, with whom just I spent an enjoyable 24-hour roadtrip to Cooperstown (more on that next time) in which his name came up many a time:

Baseball, by which I mean baseball, lowercase b, has lost a penetrating mind of great discernment, a gadfly who would not be dissuaded from his job as he saw it even when the Commissioner himself phoned to tell him to cut it out. His muckraking will be missed. He will be missed. Peace be with him.

• Steve Treder's posting on Baseball Primer summed up why Pappas was so necessary:

I fault the press for being willfully blind and/or silent on the subject. They have no excuse. If the sportswriters get a pass -- they don't have the training or background to knowledgably cover economic issues, or that isn't what sports section readers want to read about -- then business page editors, and/or straight news editors get no pass at all. When taxpayers foot the bill for a pro sports stadium, it's business news and it's straight news. When MLB testifies to Congress about their supposed need for an anti-trust exemption, it's business news and it's straight news.

Bravo to Forbes magazine for putting the lie to MLB's financial claims. Boo to just about everyone else in the media for blatantly ignoring the issue.

• Tim Marchman at the New Partisan:

He wasn't the first to point out that the owners were liars, but he was the first writer to expose their falsehoods in clinical detail and in real time. Using their own numbers, he showed lies about specific details, like the percentage of the game's revenue going to players,and about large ideas, like the supposed inability of small-market teams to compete.

Pappas detailed the reasons why stadiums are foolish investments for cities, and showed how teams use such tricks as paper tax losses and the sale of their broadcasting rights to parent media companies to systematically understate profits in their attempts to get on the public dole. Parsing the language of the last collective bargaining agreement,he made clear how its luxury tax and revenue-sharing schemes were meant not to help struggling teams but to restrain the Yankees and drive down the high end of player salaries.

...Pappas provided a moral context for journalists to follow, and was not shy about holding them to it. What he understood was that if baseball is really the American game, the way in which it is run and the way in which it is covered tell us a great deal about our national character.

Amen to all of the above.