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?

Chris Heisey

There's something about the feeling of hitting a home run that makes players jump out of the batting box with that little spring in their step. Sammy Sosa did it nicely before he was made a pariah for his inability to speak English - you know, back in the good old days when columnists wrote gushing praises like they were a 14-year old girl with her first boyfriend calling on the phone to tell her that he loves her. Now, the columnists, the sports anchors, the radio personalities, the bloggers, and the fans still gush... it's just not over "those guys" anymore. Instead, it's over the new home runs hitters - the ones who couldn't possibly be juiced (Jose Bautista, Ryan Howard, et al.).
We forgive the new sluggers their tresspasses (all those strikeouts and that cruddy batting averages that so many of them carry). We like when they go yard - especially in the Second Year of the Pitcher. However, what do we end up with for this sensation of getting the guys to play yard ball?
In follow up to his statement about striking out a lot more since hitting Triple A ball, Chris Heisey of the Reds stated, "When I'm aggressive, I do a lot better. I'd like to put the ball in pay more, use my speed."
In 128 at bats after today's game, Heisey is hitting .273 with 8 home runs. He hit 3 of them in the 2nd game against the Yankees and helped the Reds wake up their offense. It was a nice moment. Can he continue on this torrid pace, or will this moment of joy just cause him to get more free swinging that he already is (33 whiffs in those at bats). So if you take away home runs, he's 33 for 120 in all non one swing wonder at bats. Either way, that's more than 1 K per 4 at bats.
But he is a local boy from this area, and we do applaud when our sons and daughters achieve in the pros.
However there is something about facing reality. In 2 part time years, he has 4 stolen bases. So much for that speed (or is it just that he's waiting for a green light?). Last year, he had 8 home runs in 226 at bats. He has that many this year, too.
So if he never does anything again other than just hit 3 home runs in one game to beat the Yankees, then he did something to endear himself to us.
That said, we just wish he would try for more contact than clobbering the ball. That's how you get to have the 10-12 year career he was dreaming about in the same Lancaster Intelligencer article. Frankly, that would be a lot better. Then, he could be fawned over like Ryan Vogelsong who is actually doing some good things this year from the other side of the spectrum (7 innings, 1 earned run, 3 strikeouts to bring his totals to 1.86, 5-1, and 57 Ks for the season with the Giants after not playing since 2006). It's stories like that, which make us smile at The Great Things I See in Baseball.

Ken Caminiti

Providing the world doesn't end, you will be reading this - that you are means that it either:
A) hasn't happened yet.
or
B) isn't going to happen.
Nevertheless, the death of Randy "Macho Man" Savage did happen. While it seems sad, it seems that he's just another pro wrestler to die early from abuse to his body that years in the ring caused.
And while baseball has not seen death due to steroids since Ken Caminiti... let's be honest, even football hasn't seen much death (Lyle Alzado), it has witnessed lots of career death. From Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa to Barry Bonds to Roger Clemens, the stars of the past have been tainted. The stars of the present seem to be without a lot of the big guns steroids users with exception to Alex Rodriguez. It's a slippery and sad slope, but all the same, it's pretty much covered in its entirety at Baseball's Steroid Era (though they stopped writing last year).
At the time Ken Caminiti was famous for 2 things:
1) the 1996 NL MVP for the Padres.
and
2) doing a lot of steroids and not getting clean.
On October 10, 2004, he shuffled off this mortal coil, a victim of his demons. Prior to this, he never was able to go back to 1996 (neither was Brady Anderson), and while 1997 and 1998 were good, they will always be steroids tainted (as will his 239 home runs).
He finished his career where it started - Houston - and went noisily to his grave. In 2001, he was arrested, and it wasn't pretty - cocaine in Texas. He came clean to Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated in 2002 and admitted to how much better that steroids made him (Mark McGwire would disagree with this, but alas... as we've never used roids, we wouldn't know. We do know that they cut down the time between workouts, help with recovery, and make working out easy, so...).
Interestingly enough, in the discussions with Caminiti, he said that 50% of players are on steroids. Jose Canseco said that 85% of players were. Verducci thought Canseco was about shock treatment, but alas, history has vindicated him, but all the same, he's still a worthless piece of crap.
Today, Lance Armstrong faces the accusations of Tyler Hamilton, a cyclist who trained with Lance, and said that he also used EPO. Lance is famous for employing the Clemons defense (or vice versa): spend A LOT of money, tell the world that your accuser(s) is a lying piece of crap, and hope that you can outspend him / her / them.
It worked for Lance. He got the French book that trashed him from being published in America (either we love Lance, hate the French, or both), but it didn't work for Roger. Now, it seems that it's not working for Lance either, which is sad because his was a story that we needed to be real (cancer victim makes good and wins the Tour De France 7 times in a row, once again leaving the French to feel inferior.
Now, he looks to see his image and world destroyed as Hamilton has given up his Olympic medals, and just like Floyd Landis who took Armstrong to task, we see a sport so shattered with regard to PEDs. EPO is the undetectable drug of choice for the field as it's natural in the body - unless there is too much of it there, so players will measure their level and and inject more to get to the top of the spectrum for what they can have in there. The EPO allows for more oxygen to be absorbed by the body during breathing, and wahlah, the cyclist kicks butt in the mountains.
Until he's found out.
Then he's meat, and that's not good.
Many baseball players have walked the line that Mr. Armstrong looks to walk, and while they've come back from disaster in varying degrees, the yellow bracelets for Lance will be history very soon. It's a shame since it's talent at the end that wins the race, and Armstrong is talented, but some will say he's dirty, and perhaps that's true, but in the end, is a player cheating if he's just cheating to keep up with a sport full of cheaters?
And for this, we have to wonder if all sports will soon be seen as "sports entertainment" rather than natural competition. Wrestling survived when it admitted to being "fake." Will baseball and cycling when they admit to benefiting from better living through chemistry? Since they can't be like the NFL and just manage to avoid the fray despite their cast of 300 pound goons who run 4.0 40s, we can only wonder.

Ryne Sandberg

I was watching The Wizard of Oz last night. I can't remember ever having watched it before, but then again, I give myself no credit for anything that I've done before turning 18. Simply put, I remember very little of it, and some is for good reason - being a teenager is an awkward time that I'd rather forget about (and a pre-pubescent, and a kid, and...), but alas... I know that I've seen bits and pieces of it, and I get its populist message that lurks underneath the childhood story, but more than anything (and somewhere beyond Dorothy's annoying moans - man, how do people appreciate Judy Garland when her 2 most important offspring - being Judy and Liza frickin' Minelli - just grate all that we are, but nevertheless, before I start getting hate mail, let me just say, I was laying in bed thinking about how there really is no place like home. 15 years ago, I was living in England, and it was rapidly coming to the point that I was heading home. I had no desire to go home at that point. England was my adopted home, and I was clinging to it with a fierce tenacity that wouldn't give way to the fact that the relationship I was in had to dissolve so that the both of us could go on to happiness (we've both since married and are doing reasonably well with our lives), and I had no concept of what America or life was meant to be - just that I was going to soon go back home and live with my parents while I went to school and got my life together (on July 8, 1996, that reality finally happened). It took a while. The first year was hard. I still had a lot of England left in me - not least of all the idea that I would go back and be with my ex-gal friend (when you're older than high school, you can't really be a girl), but alas, that didn't happen, and it was a long dark winter that was finally punctuated with a few trips to California to see another friend. For the first trip, I bought a baseball preview guide with Derek Jeter on the cover. I didn't know who he was or hate the Yankees at the time (that was in 1998 with the story of Roger Maris and accentuated with the pickup of Roger Clemens), but it was that which brought baseball back. Sure, there were moments like watching the Braves dominate in 1996 while working at an Air Force sports bar in England, or watching the Phillies lose in 1993 when the Blue Jays smacked them around (thank you Paul Molitor), but through it all, there was nothing other than the memory of Ryne Sandberg... a guy who played for the Reading Phillies, but was later traded to the Chicago Cubs where he went on to have Hall of Fame stats. And he was right there waiting for me when I returned home, and for that, I am eternally grateful. His career wasn't like it was in the 1980s, and while I still have his rookie card, it isn't the value that I'd like it to be. Then again, neither are the cards that my wife bought me the other night that sit smack dab in the middle of this era (1990ish). It was a great gift for a player, and there's something about looking through cards - even of players we don't necessarily know. There are still favorites from my childhood, guys left over to adulthood, and marquee players that will always be known. In the end, there were a few cards that stood out. Curt Schilling 1990 Topps - not THE rookie, but a first Topps card. Sammy Sosa 1990 Topps - if only it was 1998... I'd be sitting pretty. While not the Upper Deck Griffey Jr., there was the regular set Topps marked rookie of Ken Griffey Jr. Most of these are now selling for $1. Juan Gonzalez? Joey (Albert) Belle? Names of once great, but fallen stars. Jose Canseco? You can't even give his rookie away, but there was a 1990 Canseco - when he still sort of kind of mattered. But there were the guys from this era... the ones that were still left... the Ryne Sandbergs... the million dollar contract trail blazers who used to name names and define the era... And they're largely forgotten in modern baseball history, but they're still a part of my childhood history, which I see myself going back to more and more (also, the Disney Pixar movies and brainless comedies)... and I know that's not such a bad thing. It's made me the man that I am, and it's made my American home (in the middle of Amish Paradise) such a great place to be and to sit on the backyard furniture while watching my firepit and looking over my wife's garden and just being. That's really what home is all about. That sense of mellow Americana and nostalgia for a time past in a time now... Even if that time never really was.

Matt Holliday

Congratulations, Matt Holliday... you're joining the list of players on the disabled list.
You didn't take a line drive like Roy Oswalt and make Phillies fans wonder if they were really going to have the best pitching lineup ever - at least this year (and let's be honest, when the Phillies couldn't pull yesterday out until the end of the game, I'm sure the Phillies might have been wondering that as well - thank you injuries to Chase Utley and Brad Lidge).
You weren't abused by the Mets like Pedro Feliciano before the Yankees picked him up and saw him end up on the DL, too. In this, at least you didn't have Brian Cashman firing harsh invectives across the 5 boroughs at your old team to fan the dying embers of a crosstown rivalry that isn't anymore (not that it ever really was, but still).
You didn't just cut a cuticle and end up with a cruddy start to your 2011 season like Ubaldo Jimenez and make people wonder how much of a fluke the beginning of 2010 really was when he won 15 games by July and couldn't get 5 more by October 1.
You didn't end up mysteriously brain damaged (and still entertaining) like Ozzie Guillen, who always finds a way to bitch and complain about the world and his luck in it (being forced to play in the snow storms of Cleveland), but who still stays successful and employed in the Second City when his team bashes out 15 runs against an Indians team that came out stomping with 10 runs of their own.
You're not a Giants fan in critical condition after getting the tar kicked out of you by Dodgers fans in the parking lot after your team crapped the bed for Tim Lincecum in the first game back in defense of your World Series victory - the first victory since your team played in New York.
You're not Mat Latos, starting the season on the DL after you kept your team in contention all 2010 - despite the fact that most critics wrote your team off in the middle of 2009.
You're not 2/5 of the A's supposedly impressive starting rotation who are sitting out the beginning of the 2011 seasons with a variety of injuries as the team still is forced to play out what will inevitably amount to a lot of losses - like the one last night to King Felix.
No, you're just joining a lot of other players on the DL due to an appendectomy, which beats a lot of other injuries since it's very real and not like Sammy Sosa sleeping on his arm wrong before the 1998 All Star Game.
In this, we wish you well and hope that you get back to the game soon.

Ken Burns

I've always hated Keith Olbermann. As an ESPN analyst, I always found him to be a smug piece of crap, and that was only listening to him and Dan Patrick, another smug and annoying piece of crap. I was glad when he left the radio because I hated to be in the car for drive time and to have to hear those two spazzes tell me about sports news. Maybe it was the self righteous approach to the steroids era where all of a sudden all of these analysts who had formerly swooned over Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were cursing their souls to hell - kind of like Bob Costas on the 10th Inning of Ken Burns baseball.
The 10th Inning was meant to be so many things, but in the end, it was what it wasn't. I saw Albert Pujols, the greatest player of the generation for a few seconds, but I never heard his name mentioned. Hell, I saw Chris Rock more than I saw Phat Albert. Sure, there were some good parts, but in the end to reduce every single World Series victory (after the Sox in 2004) to a closer throwing a final pitch after sitting through the long version of the Bobby Bonds story in a transition into Barry Bonds... yeah. That was worth the wait.
So today when Keith Olbermann, who pretty much spent more time in the documentary on the history of the last 15-20 years of baseball than Larry Walker, Albert Pujols, and the curse breaking teams from Philadelphia into 2008 and from Chicago in 2005 COMBINED, was dropped from his show, I had to give a little bit of a smug self-righteous piece of crap smile to think that somewhere between pathetic ratings on MSNBC and good ol' Bill O' Reilly beating the man from Countdown, who had the "Worst Person in the World" on every night is now gone from his spot on cable news. If he could take Rachel Maddow with him, life would be complete, but this is about sports and those who tell the story of them, and for that, we turn back to Ken Burns and ask him to give us the fan version of Baseball, the way it was meant to be... sans Keith Olbermann. It could be like those fan edited versions of The Phantom Menace where fans cut Jar Jar Binks from the footage and leave the film all the more entertaining for it (I'd cut out the kiddie narrated scenes from the pod racing as well and just stick to the racing and not the announcer as well, but that's just me).
Give me the section on Pujols... a little more talking about those victories and some discussion on those two World Series wins, if only for the history in them. Please note Mr. Burns that I'm not asking for that much more on Mark McGwire... even though he deserves more footage than your self-appointed savior of the Latino race that is Sammy Sosa, but I'll accept that as a discussion on the Latino culture's inclusion in modern baseball and your catering to Cubs fans as opposed to anything dastardly like the exclusion of the other sections was.
Nobody will mind. It's clear to see that the last hope for Olbermann was his angry political rant show on ultra liberal cable news network MSNBC, and now that it's over... you can re-edit your 10th Inning for true baseball fans like myself.
I'm sure that Doris Kearns Goodwin won't mind.

Roger Maris

Waking up yesterday morning to a story in the New York Times about how the U.S. and Israel worked together to release a worm into the Iranian nuclear program so that it couldn't get up and running has me contemplating exactly what is the point of the media. On one hand, I have to ask myself if this is something above "no duh." I mean really. Why on Earth WOULD WE NOT try to take out a hostile country's nuclear program that could hurt us or our friends? On the other hand, I have to ask myself if this is about some kind of attack on the U.S. as a whole. I mean, if this is top secret, and we'll assume that it is, what business does this have playing out in the media?
But alas, this is a baseball site, not a political outlet, and I use media attacks to lead into Roger Maris and the transition from the media loving players to attacking them viciously. Sure, there was Ted Williams before him, but was there ever an attack as concentrated and individually damaging as that, which was perpetrated against Roger for being "boring" (at least compared to Babe Ruth) and unable to stomach stupid questions (considering many NASCAR guys give the same kind of F U response as Roger and Cee Lo Green) and just unwilling to provide a day in day out story while pursuing the home run record that he was deemed unworthy of.
Currently, I am reading Roger Maris: Baseball's Reluctant Hero, and overall, it's pretty good. You can skip the first few chapters about how his grandparents moved to America from Europe and how his parents relationship started out in dysfunction (it ends in divorce - so it goes) and start about 30 pages into the book at chapter 4.
I've always been a Roger Maris fan since I first heard his story in 1998 as Mark McGwire pursued his record. It was sad to hear about the asterisk and the total devastation of what should have been a joyous race between Maris and Mantle (who had been hated in many circles for not being Joe DiMaggio - at least until Roger came along). Maybe the media made up for this with the race between McGwire and Sosa (and maybe the Curse of Not Being Babe Ruth made the media feel inclined to destroy them and everyone else who got close to Babe Ruth in a way that wasn't worthy - steroids be just a cover story).
But in the end, Roger took a pitch deep on the final day of the season and was branded forever with the asterisk that was there despite it's never been typed into the official record books and for 37 years he suffered in pain despite a momentary stay with the St. Louis Cardinals in 67 and 68. He then retired and died in 1985, a tragic end to a great human being. I wish I would have known his story sooner, but the fact that I do is a story I will continue to tell throughout the course of this blog.
I would recommend this book to anyone who likes Maris or baseball. I've been reading it nightly in sight of a teddy bear that belongs to my wife. More than anything else, that bear reminds me of her, and when I think about it and her, I think about how wonderful she is to me. For our wedding, she knew that gifts are given between husband and wife (I didn't, so if you're reading, take note), and she gave me the Roger Maris PSA8 rookie that I always joked she would buy me if she truly loved me. When I took it out of the box, I was shaking, and I had no idea what to say. I felt like such a fool for not knowing that I had to get her a gift as well (we ended up putting a lot of money towards the things that she wanted for our home that we bought a few months later). I ran all over Toledo looking for something worthy of her and feeling totally freaked out on the night before our wedding.
Even now, I don't know if I feel worthy of such a great gift. I'll occasionally open the locked box and pull Roger out of his protective cloth bag - not all the way mind you - and look on his visage and think of all that his family went through in 98, all that he went through from 1961 until he left baseball a completely broken man, and how his wife came through for him above and beyond the call of duty (something completely left out of Tom Clavin and Danny Peary's aforementioned book).
Maybe Roger was the best way to give me a physical gift that came through to me, but to be honest, nowhere am I happier in the gift I was given than the "I do." And perhaps that's hokey, but alas... it is what makes me happy in life.
And that thought and her presence is what keeps me from feeling the news of the world in a way that makes me sad as I wait for spring and new life and no more snow - just warmth and good times.