Two years ago Umpbump interviewed Paul Hagen, who covers the Phillies for the Philadelphia Daily News and is a former president of the Baseball Writers Association of America. Now he’s back for more. I recently chatted with Hagen over email about the Phillies’ World Series victory, the team’s offseason moves and the Hall of Fame. Here’s what he had to say.

Coley Ward: OK then, let’s start with the Phillies. They won the World Series! As somebody who’s covered the team for a long time, what was it like watching them win a championship? Were you able to celebrate like a fan, or did you have to keep your journalist’s cap on?

Paul Hagen: Because the final “game” lasted only 2 1/2 innings, there was time between the first deadline and the final deadline to spend a little time downstairs. That made it different. And it was fun to see the way the fans reacted, how happy everybody was. But there was still the usual pressure to get something, get it done, do it well.
After that, honestly, I just felt kind of numb. It had been a long road in the postseason, working every day for three weeks or a month or whatever it was. Covering games and writing special section stuff and offday stories. And then, just like that, it was over. I remember walking out of the stadium. There was a postgame party in the tent. There were people in the streets. I thought about going to join one of the other, but I just felt kind of detached. So I drove home. I stopped at a little bar close to my house and had a couple beers. Then the bar closed and I went home and went to sleep. It wasn’t a matter of “being able” to celebrate. I really was very content just to go home and leave that to everybody else.

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So after all the speculation and theorizing about whether MurrayChass.com is a real site written by the real Murray Chass, who used to write for the real New York Times, Sarah finally had the brilliantly simple idea of just calling up the real Murray Chass and seeing what he would say.

Wisely mentioning that she writes for the Boston Metro and glossing over the fact that she also considers herself a blogger (preferring instead to refer to “websites,” which, after all, UmpBump is), Sarah said she had heard some internet chatter that the site was a clever hoax, that she’d been discussing it with some colleagues, and that in the end she figured she’d better go to the horse’s mouth.

Chass was very intrigued as to why people thought the site might be fake and peppered Sarah with questions about that, while not giving away any information. In the end, since Sarah works for a newspaper (”something that’s actually printed on paper,”) and since she actually called him (he did acknowledge receiving “some emails” asking the same question) he said he would confirm that it was really his site.

So in the end, UmpBump’s suspicions turned out to be untrue. But you know what they say in journalism: If your mother says she loves you, check it out.

I went to the Deadspin Super Bowl party last Thursday evening in Tempe. It was cold — and not just by Arizona standards. We’re talking in the 40s.

I met some bloggers I previously knew by name only, like Matt Ufford from With Leather, and the Mighty MJD. And I met a couple of Arizona Republic reporters. And I ate some onion rings.

I brought my video camera along to interview Will Leitch. You can see the edited version of that interview here. Below you’ll find the entire interview, unedited, just as God intended.

You can also see a pic of my autographed copy of “God Save the Fan” after the jump.

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Tomorrow, MLB will announce the winner of the National League MVP Award. Candidates include Chipper Jones, Jimmy Rollins, David Wright, Prince Fielder and Matt Holliday.

A while back Paul and I debated who should win the award and he ultimately convinced me that David Wright is the clear choice.

I emailed that post to Philadelphia Daily News baseball writer Paul Hagen, who is the former head of the Baseball Writers Association of America, and asked him what he thought of Wright’s candidacy. Here’s what he had to say:

Umpbump: Like most Phillies fans I’m hoping Jimmy Rollins will win the NL MVP, while I fully expect Matt Holliday will win. It wasn’t until recently, however, that I was convinced that David Wright should win. What do you think of David Wright for NL MVP?

PH: I think an argument can be made for David Wright. However, I have to say that in the years I vote, I put a lot of emphasis on the word “Valuable.” To me, that connotes intangibles. I think that’s what differentiates the MVP from, say, a “Player of the Year” award. And it would be hard for me to find that much value in a player who was part of one of the most epic collapses in baseball history.

Umpbump: See, that’s funny. We’ve been having a long debate about the value of intangibles in the comments section of our site this week. Sarah, who is a columnist for the Boston Metro, thinks intangibles are extremely important. Paul and Nick, who are sabermetrics guys, think intangibles can’t be measured and therefore we shouldn’t worry about them.

Here’s what Nick had to say about intangibles:

This is different from saying that “leadership” as a skill doesn’t exist. I think we all have some idea that these intangibles *do* exist and *are* worth something. But I suspect that what they are worth is far far less than what the media types who KNOW because they’ve BEEN IN THE LOCKER ROOM say it is. It’s probably like clutch hitting – maybe it makes like a 1 or 2 percent contribution to winning or something, the rest of which is comprised of actually getting it done on the actual field.

Because, look, if “team chemistry” is as valuable as you columnists all say it is, then how do we account for all the teams that won World Series but totally hated each other? How do we account for all the teams that loved each other and loved their manager, but never won? How do we account for the fact that, even in the middle of the hottest hot streak, or the coldest cold streak, a player’s chance of getting a hit in his next at bat is pretty much *exactly* equal to his career batting average?

You can read the rest of Sarah and Nick’s thoughts in the comments section of this post.

As for Wright and his team’s collapse, I used to feel the same way. In fact, I wrote:

Believe me, if the MLB had an award for sabermetric achievement, I would support David Wright’s candidacy wholeheartedly. But how valuable can you be when you’re team implodes spectacularly when the games matter most?

But, as Umpbump Paul points out, you can’t blame Wright for the Mets’ failures. He was dominant down the stretch:

You simply can’t hold it against David Wright that the Mets fell apart. Did you know that he had a .360 AVG, .429 OBP, .602 SLG, 1.034 OPS in the month of September even though the team’s season was going down the tubes? Didn’t he perform “when it counted”?

I gotta say, I think Umpbump Paul is correct. As much as I’d like to see Rollins win, if I’m being honest I vote for Wright.

PH: That’s what makes it such a great debate. I still kind of hold to the idea that you can’t be that valuable, no matter what your individual contributions, if your team is falling apart around you. But I certainly understand the other argument.

Umpbump: I’m not sure that a total lack of consensus about the meaning of “valuable” makes it a great debate. I think we can have a great debate about the value of the save, or the merits of “small ball”. But arguing about who is the most valuable when nobody can agree what “valuable” means reminds me of when I used to talk to a friend of mine who was color blind. We’d be talking about the same thing, but seeing it differently.

I’d be happy to see MLB get rid of the MVP award and give out a Player of the Year Award, instead.

PH: When I was president of the Baseball Writers Association, I proposed that we add a Player of the Year Award. My thought was that it wouldbe the position player’s equivalent of the Cy Young, could honor a player who has a great year for a bad team and would also open up the MVP more for pitchers. It got no support.

As for doing away with the MVP, I disagree. I also think that if you can enjoy a debate about the value of a save or the value of small ball, you can certainly debate who was the most valuable player. But that’s just me.

Umpbump: Fair enough. We’ll agree to disagree. One last question: do you read blogs? And if so, which ones?

PH: As for blogs, I frankly don’t make a point of finding them. If I run across one or somebody brings one to my attention, of course I’ll read it.

UPDATE

Umpbump: Jimmy Rollins won the NL MVP. Who did you vote for?

PH: My top four, as I recall, were Rollins, Holliday, Fielder, Chipper Jones.

Umpbump: No David Wright?

PH: David Wright was not in the upper half. If it had been the Player of the Year Award, he wold have been.

A couple of weeks ago here on Umpbump, I wrote about a new opera called “The Summer King“. Written by a composer named Daniel Sonenberg, it tells the story of Josh Gibson, perhaps the most prolific hitter to have ever played in the Negro Leagues. And I’m not going to beat around the bush here. I was a total jerk for what I wrote. Without catching a glimpse, without hearing one note, I passed immediate judgment, which is obviously very unfair. But I didn’t for a second think that my post could possibly do any harm.

And then it happened.

Somehow, Daniel himself found the post. And read it. And commented it on it (check out the original post linked above to read it)…

Suddenly, I felt smaller than Eddie Gaedel (does this joke PROVE I’m a jerk? Very possibly). But after an e-mail discussion among us Umpbump writers, I was given a chance to repent. I was to ask Daniel for an interview. This was my quest. This was my journey. It was a task as arduous as Frodo Baggins’ trip to Mount Doom – if Frodo had access to e-mail and could just attach the Ring and send it to FiresofMtDm@aol.com.

So I e-mailed him, and he was very kind enough to not only respond accepting my interview request, but he took the time to answer each and every question I had in a very thoughtful manner. We talked about his love of both baseball and opera and his rationale for writing an opera about Josh Gibson. I hope you all enjoy it. And to Daniel, thank you for your participation and for not giving me a brutal beating.

What’s your earliest memory as a baseball fan? Your favorite?

When I was eight years old a business partner of my dad’s took me to see a World Series game between the Yankees and the Dodgers. But to be honest, I don’t remember it too well. I like to think that I remember watching Bucky Dent’s homer against the Red Sox in the one game playoff in 1978, but I may have just absorbed it over the years. What I do remember is walking out of Yankee stadium amidst funereal silence after the Royals swept the Yankees in the 1980 playoffs. That was the year George Brett creamed my idol, and still favorite player of all time, Goose Gossage. When I was 11, shortly after my father died, I had the opportunity to visit the Boston Red Sox clubhouse thanks to an old friend of my dad’s who was athletic director at MIT. I got a few autographs, but most memorably had the opportunity to chat briefly, one on one, with Carl Yastrzemski. He offered some consoling words, and I’ll never forget it, even though I didn’t realize to whom I was talking until someone deciphered the autograph for me later that day!

How did you come upon opera, which is an art form that, despite its successes in the English language, literally seems foreign to most young Americans? What are some of the misconceptions that people have regarding it?

It’s a great question. My background is in rock and popular music, and for years I was a singer songwriter. I did not grow up an opera fan. I think it was in college, when a girlfriend of mine convinced me of opera’s potential to offer an all-encompassing dramatic/ emotional experience. It still took me a while to be convinced, and more often than not I don’t have that all-encompassing experience at the opera. But when I do, nothing compares. I think most people’s trouble with opera is the style of trained singing, which we call “bel canto.” It’s so full of artifice, and so different from the more naturalistic sounds of folk and popular music. Yet – as Pavarotti demonstrated so well, it still can be rather thrilling, and appeal to a pretty large public. Many modern operas are written for different kinds of voices, and incorporate less foreign styles. My own opera is conceived, to be fair, in the traditional, grand opera tradition. But it incorporates elements of jazz (such as drum set and saxophone in the ensemble) and other contemporary sounds that I hope would be intriguing to music fans across genres. I think also the fact that many older operas deal with subject matter that is so far removed from every day life (kingdoms and mythology) make it feel completely irrelevant. I don’t think my opera has that problem.

What is it about Josh Gibson that convinced you that he would make a great subject for an opera?

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Here is the English text for that interview I had with the Braves’ shortstop.

Courtesy Revista Elite Magazine

You’re back in the National League after a rough year in Boston. How does it feel to come back to the NL?

I’m excited to return. I’m far more comfortable with this league. I’m also looking forward to the season since I had a good spring training and because everyone has been very welcoming here.

So you take the National over the American league?

Yeah, I feel at home here, with the team and with my teammates. They do a good job of giving you whatever you need to get ready to start the season on the right foot.

So is it true that whenever a hitter switches between leagues it’ll affect his approach?

Yea, that is true. When you switch leagues you have no clue as to what’s going on over there. I went through that; I was a National League hitter, and last year it was evident. But now that I’m with the Braves I think I’ll be at the level I was at before I went to Boston.

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A week ago, before the Braves took on the White Sox in a two-game exhibition series at the Ted, I  had a chance to interviewe Edgar Rentería for a local Spanish-language magazine I edit on the side.

Here’s a preview; I’ll post a translation as soon as I’m done with some work I gotta take care of.

(Text and image courtesy Revista Elite Magazine)

Regreso a la nacional

Por Alejandro Leal

Aunque en términos generales, el pelotero colombiano Edgar Rentería tuvo un desempeño aceptable en la temporada del 2005, no fue una fiel representación de las estadísticas que ha postulado en años anteriores. (Ver recuadro)

El año pasado fue un año de adaptación, habiendo jugado toda su carrera en la Liga Nacional, donde el estilo de juego es más hacia las “cosas pequeñas” – los “bunts”, el toque y corre, los sacrificios y todas las características que representan el antítesis del juego del “long ball” es decir, el juego del homre run – Rentería se encontró con un reto mayúsculo al firmar con los campeones del 2004, los Medias Rojas de Boston de la Liga Americana.

El experimento no funcionó. Boston tomó la decisión de cambiarlo a tan sólo un año de haber firmado un contrato millonario, pero ahora, de regreso en la Liga Nacional con los Bravos de Atlanta, Rentería está seguro de que tienen un buen equipo para llegar a los “playoffs” como campeones de la Liga Nacional Este por décimo-quinta oportunidad.

La tarde del 31 de Marzo, antes de enfrentar a los actuales campeones, Los Chicago White Sox, Rentería tomó un breve descanso de su práctica de bateo para conversar con nosotros.

Obviamente es tu regreso a la Liga Nacional, estuviste un año en Boston y digamos que fue un año “más o menos”, ¿Cómo te sientes de regresar a esta liga?

Me siento bien ya que esta liga es una liga que conozco más, es una liga en la que me siento bastante cómodo y feliz de haber tenido un buen “spring training” y de estar con los compañeros “ready” a participar.

¿Te sientes más a gusto en la Nacional?

Si, si, me siento bastante a gusto, me siento chévere con los compañeros, con el equipo. Pues la verdad es que le dan todas las atenciones a uno para estar bien al comienzo de la temporada.

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