Former White Sox pitcher Jack McDowell has never been afraid to speak his mind. He has been very outspoken about wanting a real electronic strike zone, analytics ruining the game, and vaccines among other things.
He also happens to be a talented musician. During his baseball career, McDowell played guitar in various rock groups in his spare time. He formed a band called V.I.E.W which was made up of some fellow ballplayers, Lee Plemel and Wayne Edwards. The group released two albums “Extendagenda” and “Replace The Mind.” They toured with “The Simitereens in 1992 before disbanding.
He joined a second band called Stickfigure and helped produced four more albums Just a Thought, Feedbag, Ape of the Kings, and Memento Mori. He was with Stickfigure until 2003.
Recently McDowell took to Facebook to release a new parody of the “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” which calls Rob Manfred and “metrics nerds who are ruining this game”
The lyrics of the song are as follows:
“Take them out of this ball game,
Throw them out in the crowd;
Bring us some true baseball knowledge back, they don’t want us to ever come back.
Root root root for real baseball, Metrics crap is so lame.
For it’s one, two, three hundred dorks who just ruined this game”
Take a listen for yourself:
McDowell has an opinion shared by many. Baseball analytics has been a hot topic in baseball for years now. In 2020 the Tampa Bay Rays lost Game 6 of the World Series after a series of head-scratching decisions while citing analytics. Ray’s starter Blake Snell was dominating the Dodgers through five innings. He struck out five of the first six batters he faced and was working on a shutout while the Rays nursed a 1-0 lead. He had only thrown 73 pitches.
That is when Rays manager Kevin Cash decided to pull Snell because the analytics said he shouldn’t go through the order a third time. Nick Anderson was brought into the game and promptly coughed up the lead. This is just one glaring example of why old-school guys like McDowell hate analytics. The man known as “Black Jack” pitched in a time when starters went deep into games.
McDowell pitched for the White Sox for seven seasons spanning from 1987-to 1994. He made three consecutive All-Star appearances in 1991, 1992, and 1993. He won the American League Cy Young in 1993. McDowell won a league-leading 22 games, tossed four complete-game shutouts, and posted a 3.37 ERA.
His best season arguably came in 1992 however when he had a career-best 3.18 ERA, and led the league with 13 complete games.
McDowell also spent two seasons with the Angels, two with the Indians and one with the New York Yankees.
