Adam Dunn

It's 10 days or so until the All Star Game, which is usually reserved as the halfway point of baseball. However, the official halfway point is now gone, and where are we? What do we have to say about the baseball season that truly sums it up?
In the 10th year of his career, Adam Dunn was a high stakes big money free agent that was supposed to get 40 big swings despite the fact that his average wouldn't be "great" and he would strike out a lot.
What did Ozzie Guillen and the White Sox get? Ozzie got even more high blood pressure than normal, which definitely causes him to tell it like it is and to have baseball columnists wonder why he's still in management (though I have to say that I think he's awesome). The White Sox got a .171 hitter in 234 at bats (he's seriously challenging Dan Uggla for futile zero of the year).
For the 7 home runs that they bought with $12million (ok - $6million since it's the first half of the season), they got 100 strike outs. While that's good enough for 2nd place (Drew Stubbs is still in first place with 112 - there's no catching abject futility, is there), there's a sign around Mudville (located on the otherside of Wrigleyville) that Chicago isn't going to be represented in the post season and next year will be another rebuilding year for both the south and the north side.
So while a player that should be hitting in 4 at bats every game for the first 85ish games could be doing some damage, he's getting about 2/3 of the at bats he could be getting because he's a liability. When you look at the facts - 1732 punched outs in 1517 games for his career - you see danger to the playing and the rooting and the paying. It's clear as day, but now he's an albatross for the White Sox. He's got 4 years and $56million to go for Obama's team, so we have to wonder... when will Ozzie crack and start kicking Dunn's ass like it was a catcher's mask?
On the other side of the Second City, there's Carlos Pena, who pretty much sucked all year, but is at least a little better lately. He's got 76 whiffs in 251 at bats. He's carrying a .219 average (.171 for the last week, mind you). He does at least have 17 home runs in the homey capacity of Wrigley, with it's wind blowing out in these nice summer days (the kind of thing which helps our favorite steroids mirages transcend from attitude to baseball altitude until they're asked to answer questions on the witness stand, eh Sammy Sosa).
Texas, Detroit, Oakland, Boston, Tampa Bay... and the Cubs... they're all trying and have tried to figure out what to do with a problem like Carlos in the same way that the White Sox are joining the Reds, Diamondbacks, and the Nationals in dealing with a problem like Adam.
At some point, baseball is going to say that we can't all be Rob Deer. We can't flirt with the Mendoza Line all year and hope that it will get better... especially when the home runs aren't clearing the walls... especially when the player needs to ride the bench to figure it out or because he is a liability.
It's times like this that the defensive play of David Ortiz... you know... he who isn't a true player because he can't make Terry Francona bench Mike Cameron or Darnell McDonald in favor of moving Adrian Gonzalez to the outfield in order to get Big Sluggi's 4 at bats in (at .300 batting average, mind you) actually seems like it's an over rated thing. Mind you - the fact Francona wouldn't play him all of the inter-league games - that's scary because once you get past Jacoby Ellsbury in the outfield, Boston pretty much sucks. JD Drew is fortunately about to get his unconditional retirement for the purpose of never letting Philadelphia fans chuck D cell batteries at him from the 600 level of Veterans Stadium again (in retrospect, the anger should have been celebration - other than the first September he played in 1998, he was pretty much hype over hall of fame).
So this brings us to the question - what is a baseball player supposed to be?
While many players look to crack the leagues, some veterans hold down spots just because. Other players play half of the game, although they do that well, and make us wonder about the logic of inter-league or the DH (or Astroturf - oops, I've come unstuck in time again). And maybe we wonder about other things, too, like a home run derby that will be shockingly devoid of names and power because the big boppers only bop, so they won't make it and the big names will probably opt out because they'll be too afraid to hurt themselves in a meaningless "exhibition" game.
Which only makes us wonder... what's wrong with this game today?

Adrian Gonzalez

The good news is that all is right with the USS Pujols... 2 home runs in a Dodger crushing celebration last night means that the universe - at least the one that exists in the NL East and hits .300, 30, 100, and 100 is back on pace. He may only be up to .241 with 10 RBIs and 4 jacks, but he's hot again, and for that, life is good.
Ichiro was off to a little bit of a slump, but 2 more hits puts him at .276. Once again, life is good, and all is right with the highest paid (and most effective) singles machine in the history of baseball (though Pete Rose and Ty Cobb probably have something to say about that).
And while Baltimore losing is par for the course, Boston dropping to 2-10 with a loss against the Blue Jays is a crime against humanity.
So let's try to figure this out.
Carl Crawford's 0 for 5 drops him to .135. He's making $142 million over 7 years.
Jacoby Ellsbury's 1 for 4 raises him to .195. Coming back from injury, he was a question mark, but still... he's better than this. After all, he's batting .288 for a career.
Marco Scutaro goes 1 for 3 to raise his batting average to .188. Sure, he was the subject of a movie called Player to Be Named Later, and he did once hit a 3-run game winning home run against Mariano Rivera proving that the sun can shine on a sleeping dog's ass, but still... and he's making $11 million over 2 years AND HE SUCKS.
And Jarrod Saltalamacchia, the catching option that was supposed to be the good one since the other option, Jason Varitek, is headed for AARP, is hitting .154 this year. He hit .167 in 2 less at bats of an injured season last year, but Theo the wonder child and Francona the puppet boy thought that they could make something of the lad... but it didn't work. Sure, he's a bargain basement $750,000, but still... you think that he could at least make the Mendoza Line. Save 1 good 2 for 4 game against the Yankees, and this guy is outright ejected from the pros.
And just like we talked about rewarding pitchers who do nothing in Boston, now, the 0 for 4 night for Adrian Gonzalez (dropping him to .244 with 1 home run and 7RBIs) gets him $154 million over 7 years.
The message of rewarding greatness is understood, but if it's not happening this year, what does it really mean? Are we just trying to be the biggest payroll ever to miss the playoffs? Does it mean that Baltimore and the Blue Jays can quake at who finishes in third in AL East as the Red Sox look to move on without JD Drew and his 5 years $70 million after this year?
The free spending and day dreaming hopes of the Wonder Twins ensures that just as Zan and Jayna were the dumbest cartoon superheros ever, Terry and Theo are the most useless front office pair to ever steer a baseball ship. I know I said that I want my team to slump as low as they possibly can if it gets them fired, but I don't know how much more I can take of this disaster of a season. We're now officially 2 games behind Houston and Seattle who were both dead in the water before the season started. We're 7 games behind 2nd place Kansas City who was also marked for death. Even Pittsburgh who hasn't had a winning season since 1991 is 4 games better than us and their best players are looking for July trades as opposed to playoff dreams in western Pennsylvania.
What does it say? Worst baseball summer in Boston since 1960's 65 and 89? Even the futility of World War 2's player depletion in 1945 hasn't looked this bad - especially with a payroll of $160million.

Terry Francona

While I watched a little bit of the Giants vs. the Dodgers on Thursday, I hadn't really gotten to truly sit down and watch baseball until last night. Unfortunately, being a Boston fan, my worst fears were realized as the Red Sox pitching was taken to the woodshed like a red-headed stepchild on a Sunday afternoon. Wacky Lackey let up 9 runs in less than 4 innings to a Texas team that just slams the ball around with total disregard for whatever pre-season rank that the team that they are playing against is supposed to have. Sure, Nelson Cruz, Josh Hamilton, Ian Kinsler, Adrian Beltre, and Michael Young (not playing yesterday) can really drive the ball, but Elvis Andrus was even 3 for 5. Yorvit Torrealba had a home run, and before it was done, the game was 12-3, though Jacoby Ellsbury had his first long ball since 2009 (he was out all of 2010).
And in the end, the decisions of Terry Francona ALWAYS come back to haunt the team. In the 4th inning, he walked Hamilton to load the bases for Beltre, and WHAM! (an excellent expression of onomatopoeia if ever there was one), grand slam and the Ballpark at Arlington is screaming and it's a celebration that Kool and the Gang would be proud of (because they are celebrating good times in Texas - it's not like the days of 3 and done in the division series against the Yankees as Juan Gone and Pudge aren't enough against the Yankees in da Bronx and there are no Texas pitchers who can withstand whatever onslaught is brought out against them.
This Texas team is for real, and Boston, while only 2 games in, is suffering from what I knew they would - a better pitching staff on paper than in reality.
The night before, Jon Lester gave up 3 home runs for the first time in his career. Mike Napoli and Kinsler each had one, and Nelson Cruz hit the first of his two home runs, so he's off to another sick OPS early season - as long as he doesn't get hurt.
Today is Clay Bucholz, who does have an upside, but as the week progresses, we get to wonder which Josh Beckett we'll see. I don't know if I believe in him. I do know that I have from time to time, but I don't go into the game easy - it's not as bad as the Daisuke adventure experience that sees a pitcher able to throw 150 pitches a game - mainly because he throws so many damn outside pitches that do result in walks or near walks. It's also not the knuckle ball of Tim Wakefield that baffles some hitters and leaves others (Cruz) to deposit it far behind the outfield wall. It's a pitcher who has been figured out and injured and beaten. For all of the heroics, there are too many questions.
And for that, it's hard to have a leader who sits calm in the dugout doing what Theo tells him. A man who is still around because Curt Schilling wanted him there and he's still there because Boston happened to win it all in 2004 and 2007, much the same was as Ozzie Guillen is because he won for the first time since 1919 when he took his title in 2005.
Sure, it's nice to see Big Sluggi hit a home run in both his first and second game so we don't have to wait forever for him to get started offensively. Sure, he hit a home run last year on April 23rd, but he was sub Mendoza until May 10. The year before, his first home run came May 20th, but he didn't press so hard and he was over Mendoza for good on April 20th. A notoriously slow starter, David Ortiz has seen better days, and once again, he's someone whose personality exceeds his current abilities. But that said, people not named Terry Francona are wising up to it. he's also looking pathetic in striking out (twice already - it's not the league lead - 5 - but it's not a good sign when he can't see how over the plate his called whiffs are). Jay Z for one is not putting up with the Sluggster stealing his intellectual property.
And this is not to say that David Ortiz wasn't once the hero, but it is saying that he didn't deserve an All Star appearance last year - hell, he didn't deserve a thank you contract in 2011. He needs to retire to greener pastures and get on with phase 2 of his adult life.
But that would involve a certain manager who can't make his own decision benching him.
And if that manager can't keep big name pitchers who have seen better days not getting huge contracts and not getting new life blood into the Boston pitching staff, you can bet that it's going to be a long season.

Mark McGwire

While sitting with my teacher friend Dale, the subject of great baseball players is always bound to come. He’s in his early forties and I’m in my late thirties, so it wouldn’t be wrong to think that we would tend to reflect on the 1970s and 1980s as the glory days of baseball, but for the most part, you would be wrong since the greatest games for us were the ones that we weren’t even alive to see. In no small part, we owe a mega burst of gratitude to Ken Burns for his contributions to the history of baseball because it’s clear to see that Major League Baseball has no respect for the history of its game unless it’s for its fan to buy the latest current slab of what happened this year as a DVD at the end of the season.
If they had any foresight at all, they would instead be focusing on the ability to post lots of historic video of the past online for all generations to see. The fact that any time anything really cool happens, let’s say Jacoby Ellsbury stealing home off of Andy Pettite two years ago, it’s up for a day or so on Youtube and then the backwards thinking bastards that be choose to have it pulled down out of copy right protection concerns. Now, I’m not saying that it has to stay on Youtube, but couldn’t MLB start a pay per view library service so that any time I want to watch something great happen, say watching Albert Pujols jack a Brad Lidge pitch into the wall of Minute Maid Park to keep the Cardinals alive for one more game, I can salivate over the memories of the past?
However, this is impossible, and other than the history of baseball up until 1990, I can’t watch any of the real great players of history focused upon. Thus, to dream about Brooks Robinson throwing deep to first from deep in the corner, I have to go to the third greatest gift that my wife ever gave me, and watch the celluloid footage of that World Series game to see what the heroes of the past were truly like. What will the kids of today have to do in order to watch Dustin Pedroia and Matt Holliday star for the Red Sox and Cardinals? How will these youngsters know why Adrian Gonzalez is or isn’t worth mortgaging the future for in an offseason trade that is supposed to tip the balance of all things?
Simply, they won’t - at least until ESPN or MLBTV say it's so OVER and OVER and OVER again.
And for the same reason that MLB has no concern for its history, we won’t know how “great” the steroids era players were because it’s easy to say that the media was duped into reporting how great they were to make up for the fact that baseball went on strike and killed the World Series in 1994, and their apologies are word enough for the rest of the impressionable youngsters of today to throw away their parents’ baseball card collections, but to still retain hopes in the present - especially that somehow Whiff King Ryan Howard isn’t tainted, and even though Alex Rodriguez is slightly dented, his “apology” and “great play” in the 2009 World Series makes up for everything – unlike Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire who will forever wear their scarlet letters for eternity and then some.
However, for those people willing to look back on baseball history, they would see that Major League Baseball did memorialize Race for the Record on VHS, which is still available for $1.99 on E-bay. Nevertheless, I have my copy and have cherished it since the fall of 1998 when it first came out. I don’t make apologies for owning it. Mark McGwire was and still is my favorite player of all time. Steroids or not, the summer of 1998 was a magical moment that made me who I am. For that, it’s as important to a baseball story in 2011 as it was to a baseball story in that magical summer of a dozen years ago.
And while I liked other players from that time period when I was younger and more concerned about this sport than anything around me, I find the moments of that season to be almost (but not quite) as special as the moments of my marriage and courtship, which took place over the last few years. In that, there was a day that I would have went into a winter of depression having seen the Yankees win, but frankly, I didn’t feel more than a slight sting for what had transpired against Philadelphia’s weak pitching staff (sorry Cliff Lee and game 2 Pedro, you tried) and sorry ass strikeout king (sorry Chase Utley, at least you tried unlike your counterpart) because of the perspective that I have for where my life is with my beautiful wife besides me.
And it's great to have Tim Lincecum take down Cliff Lee, but it's not the same as spending vacations and time in general with my wife. Five years ago, that would have been something, but now there is adult and the memories of the great games of youth that still drive me back to the game for a well-placed second place in my life.
So before this gets all soppy, I should get back to baseball, and say that like Dale, I find it hard to find interest in players the same way that I did when I was younger. Maybe it’s being married and redoing a house and contemplating children and the Arizona / Utah border vacation that I want to get back to for some summer week that keeps me from thinking of some of these players in the way that I did when I was younger, but in part, I don’t find them as magical. Their interviews are generic. The plays were done better by other players in the past, and I’m not ready to believe in anyone new, other than Albert Pujols and Ichiro Suzuki in the way that I once believed in Ryne Sandberg, Paul Molitor, Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, and David Ortiz. The play of the past few years and the less than believability that is associated with Dominican birth certificates has come to take its toll on me. For that, this blog is an exercise to getting back to the great players of the past and comparing their deeds to those of the current crop of players that seems to be changing incredibly from what it was even five years ago. Will Tim Lincecum and Jon Lester become the next Walter Johnson, Cy Young, Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, or Bob Feller? One can only hope.
As the Ramones sang about their own existential void, probably not the one that wonders if Joe Mauer will ever be the next Josh Gibson and which anonymous rookie could be the next Roger Maris, Honus Wagner, Satchell Paige, or Ted Williams, but the wonder about another time where it feels as good as the magical moments of the past, “Nothing makes any sense, but I still try my hardest. Take my hand. Please help me man. 'Cause I'm looking for something to believe in.”
And for that, I leave you with the words from Eureka, Nevada, my unfinished first novel:

"I woke up and walked to the newspaper, looking at the Sunday sports headlines that said that Mark Mcgwire had been thrown out for disputing a called third strike the day before. The fans were irate and with good cause. The call was rotten and just like the media who were doing there best to put a damper on Big Mac’s quest for 62, the umpires weren’t cutting him any slack either.
Mcgwire’s angst was justifiable. He had been forced to endure the what he did, what he didn’t do and the will he break the record as he stood out as the sole highlight on a horrible St. Louis team. All the while, Sammy Sosa was hitting his homeruns, deferring the questions to Mcgwire and watching his Cubs fight for the division title.
I was tired of the drive. I was tired of the wait. I wanted to be in St. Louis, and that was where I was heading at the moment. I packed up and was off, though I found out that it was an evening game rather than a day game, so I would be driving in slower than I thought that I would be.

If only I was a little farther down the road, then life now would make more sense. At that moment it was all just a highway that took me to St. Louis, a game that would change my life, a perfect moment filled with more positive emotional content than an entire yearlong relationship would leave me. I was destined to be in St. Louis that evening, but first I was off to Mark Twain Lake and museum, which was somewhere in the empty middle of Missouri’s rolling forest land. I walked around, admired the sights, and thought of baseball. I was killing time.
A few hours later, I was at the game. I parked the car and ran up towards Busch Stadium and a sea of red shirts and signs.
“Go Mark Go.”
“Make it a great 1998.”
Even before I got to the game, there were signs such as the Billboard above Highway 70 that listed Mcgwire’s homerun total at the moment. St. Louis was alive with Mcgwire at the moment. The Braves, despite their perennial power in the East Divison of the National League were in town, but their fans were non-existent. This was St. Louis, home of the Cardinals and a special place that was filled with something that couldn’t be described, but rather could be felt in some special way, through some special sense. We were all a part of it and as I walked inside of the Mecca that was Busch Stadium, I knew I was in the presence of something.
Realizing the game was on ESPN that evening, I called my dad, begged him to tape it, and we talked about the trip, the Cardinals and what I was going to do after the game was over. It was a whirlwind of explanations, but only one mattered – get the game on video. I hung up, read my program and waited to watch the game.

From the stadium, you could see the St. Louis skyline. Several hotels and the great Arch line the Mississippi river, which lies off in the distance from Left Field. I took several photos, watched batting practice, and then the Star Spangled Banner played as 44,000 fans took to their feet in a mix of patriotism and a feeling that everything was right again with the national pastime after a horrible strike took out the 1994 season and World Series.
Today, the Cardinals were taking on Kevin Millwood, a hot young pitcher who was bolstered by a strong Atlanta offense that saw 2 homeruns by Andres Galarraga bring their team out to an early lead. I was dejected and angry, but still I watched, un-swayed by the lead that had arisen, and crossed my fingers and prayed to the Baseball God that everything would be made right in the universe.
On Mcgwire’s first at bat, he walked. The second at bat was a single, keeping his day perfect, and then came a double in the third plate appearance. Big Mac was 2 for 2.
When Mark Mcgwire stepped to the plate in the 7th inning, the sky was dark and the flashbulbs exploded as the crowd got to their feet to signal that now was the time. There were 2 men on and the cards were down 7-5. Millwood had been removed, and Dennis Martinez, one of the most dominant Latino pitchers of the time stepped to the mound knowing that he had never let up a hit to the man. His fate was sealed with that announcement on the Busch scoreboard.
After this, the at bat is a haze. I don’t remember what happened prior to it, but Martinez threw, Mcgwire swung and took the ball deep. I was on my feet as was everyone else and we were willing it to go. I didn’t want to believe it would go because it was hit long, since I wasn’t one of those people who ooh at every single long fly ball to centerfield. I was silent in that all of my energy was in my stomach, bottled down, unable to come up, I was breathless and I was focused on that moment, when the ball cleared the fence and I was still silent as I stopped to gather in the fact that my boy had launched a 501-foot blast off of Dennis Martinez to straight away centerfield. This 3 run shot, number 55 on his quest to 70 for the year, a mark that would shatter Roger Maris’ 37 year old record, left ever single one of the 44,051 fans on their feet.
Everything came out and I was screaming in complete jubilation at the moment. For lack of a better word though my mom would understand, it felt orgasmic. It felt like an eternity that the fans cheered and screamed, jumped up and down, gave high fives to each other and hugged. And there I was, hugging and cheering and high fiving strangers as I stood in the magic of a moment that was meant to last for an eternity, but vanished beneath a cloud of sorrow as even this mighty record was forced to give way to another. Yet at that moment, Barry Bonds didn’t matter, since every time I think of that laser beam, I think of my goose bumps and how I wasn’t sure if it was gone, but it was. It was a culmination of a summer spent rooting for heroes, questing for gold and finding it just as Mark did. The tragedies of Roger Maris and my later years wouldn’t and didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except being there in the middle of section 240 and the post-game fireworks as all of the fans scuttled down to the parking lot and drove out, knowing full well that we would be unable to sleep. This was one of those moments in time, and for me, it was so much more.
It was and is the greatest moment of my life, a culmination of a summer, a trip across America in search of all that was and could be, and it was America to me on that late August night."

Josh Beckett

Winter does strange things to people. In Upper Darby, about an hour and a half from where I live, it seems that a pizza shop owner decided to engage in food terrorism against his competitor when he (Nickolas Galiatsatos) decided that to truly make Nina's Bella Pizzeria stand out against its competitors was to make sure they had mice in their bathroom. While they weren't dead, the little furry rodents could have been a problem, but alas, it was found out RIGHT AWAY, so he was arrested.
Fortunately, baseball has no live rodents today, but it seems that teams are finding ways to sabotage themselves. And so the injuries from a winter of too much rest (for example, the heft of Miguel Cabrera's 240 pound frame as he prepares to dress up as CC Sabathia for Halloween) keep on coming.
Yesterday, Josh Beckett took a shot to the head while attempting to catch a ball in the outfield. As a result, it wasn't even a standard straight off the bat intense straight away hit back. Nevertheless, the Red Sox continue to play it safe with their front of the rotation pitcher.
This only makes sense since Beckett has struggled a lot with injuries. Since 2001, he has had exactly 3 30 game seasons (add 1 29 game season to that if you're feeling generous).
He was dominant in the playoffs in 2003 and 2007, but since then... He's been to one all star game, and he currently makes $68million through 2014.
He does strike out a fair bit of guys, but his ERA is only above average. Nevertheless, his wins come from playing for an offensively stacked team that usually gets it done at the back end of the bullpen (save last year).
OK, so he's a part of the team and he made 2007 happen, and he did set the Yankees down in Yankee Stadium for Game 6 of 2003, but at some point, history is history.
If the Sox are going to win this year, we can't have stupid accidents like this. We can't pay for guys like Mike Cameron, who is never healthy anyway. We need Jacoby Ellsbury in the lineup. We can't have aging stars manning the corners because nobody else will take their contracts. We need guys like Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis to be healthy.
And if news seems bad for the Red Sox, how about the Cardinals losing Chris Carpenter to a hamstring injury?
So my 2 favorite teams that are made up of some seriously fragile individuals seem to find that spring training can really suck for your entire outlook - unless you remember it's a 162-game schedule.