Just back from injury, Adam Lind didn't make too much of an impression in his first game. He was 0-3 with a strikeout, but that second game... sometimes, all it takes is a can of WD40 on the old rusty joints, and the body responds, and respond it did - 4 for 4 with a pair of home runs and 3 RBIs, and his batting average is up to .326. Nice production for a Toronto Blue Jays team that refuses to fold at 1 game over .500 (30 and 29).
Granted, the offensive charge is still being led by Jose Bautista (.348 with 20 jacks), but it's nice to have runners to knock in other than the solo shots that look good on highlights reels, but do little else (Bautista has 40 RBIs at this point). That said, Rajai Davis, Yunel Escobar, Juan Rivera, and Corey Patterson aren't exactly playoff bound guys, but they're trying - even if they're not always as good as can be expected (on that note, Patterson and Escobar are currently over-performing, so we have to give them credit for something).
The pitching staff... well, that's scary. We already talked about Jo Jo Reyes winning for the first time in years, but he won again. Kyle Drabek, a key part of the Roy Halladay deal isn't materializing yet, and the pitching staff is all about Ricky Romero, who is over-performing with a 3.16 ERA and a 5-5 record. You've gotta believe, especially when your closer is Marc Rzepczynski (spell that quickly, spelling bee champion wannabes - I know I can't - I went out on mackerel in the 6th grade (2 Es not 2 A's)).
And 1992 and 1993 are light years ago. The Joe Carter home run off of Mitch Williams, a first class idiot that we still have to deal with on MLBTV, is still a great memory - even if the 2 years north of the border by Roger Clemens have become steroids inflated mirages. And there hasn't been much that was good. Carlos Delgado and Shawn Green went packing to other teams as the great hope, but then they vanished, too. And somehow, every player that ever had upside left. The grass was always greener somewhere else. They could have stayed in Toronto and gotten on the all star team in obscurity, but they went for the big money and the big sag in production (Vernon Wells (4 home runs - .183), Alex Rios (4 home runs - .199)).
So if Adam Lind has a good game, we want to believe .305 in 2009 is real and not .237 in 2010 (roughly the same at bats per year - the strikeouts went up as the homers dropped from 35-23 as well).
We want to sing and extol the virtues of the Blue Jays and we want to know what the future can be for a team with a chance, but that said, in the division that they're in, it's going to take more than a few players having career years above their average status. Jose Bautista can't do it all on his own - even if he's so much better than I ever give him credit for (I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry).
Showing posts with label Steroids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steroids. Show all posts
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Joe Torre
When one does poorly, there is a certain demeaner that they should take - want to do better and not screw up so badly the next time. However, Manny Ramirez's remark that "he likes it" begs to differ with the philosophy, and all things considered, it is "Manny being Manny" - i.e. a complete idiot who needs his unconditional release for the purpose of waivers / psychiatric counseling. To be honest, he can live off his last couple contracts for a while. And since Bleacher Report is offering a list of the top 50 most over-rated people, what better way to start with than a guy who doesn't deserve a 5th chance (AT LEAST 2 from Boston, 1 from LA, 1 from Chicago, and now 1 from Tampa Bay), and to think that he does is saying A WHOLE HELL OF A LOT MORE ABOUT 1995 TO 2004 THAN THE REST OF HIS CAREER THAT ISN'T THE LAST 187 AT BATS OF 2008. Most of the list should be called 3 things - Yankees, Red Sox, and steroids users - oh my! On the list is some pretty standard fare on the bigger contract and "value" to the team than actual productivity: Hideo Nomo, Alfonso Soriano, Vernon Wells, and Barry Zito (minus his teddie bear). But there are some pretty confusing choices, too: Cliff Lee, Brooks Robinson, Lou Brock, Ozzie Smith, and Pete Rose, a man who played the game to win obsessively, but who is slighted for being ONLY a hitter in the same way that they call Nolan Ryan only a strikeout pitcher who threw a lot of walks. In this, we can only say one thing - "If Rose's stubborness to never give up and keep playing until he ran out of gas completely is wrong, then I don't want to be right. Didn't Cal Ripken never give up his streak until it was incredibly late in his career? The Orioles had been in the toilet and have been since he refused to make room for a new guy - because Baltimore loved him that much. But alas... the point of lists is to debate, so I debate with two of their choices. The first question would be how Roger Maris is considered over-rated for two good seasons despite the folks at Bleacher Report forgetting his 1960 MVP Award. Perhaps, from their narrow minded judgements of remembering what parts of baseball history that they choose to see, they should remember how the New York media did their damnedest to destroy the man who failed to live up to being Babe Ruth. Now, we are Maris apologists here - because we realize what he was to the game: a hard working player who didn't have time for the cliches and short talk. He may not have been as charismatic and lovable as Mickey Mantle, but he brought a tremendous upside - even if he never did hit .300. And for that, he was very good. He wasn't great. We don't claim he was. I can't do that revisionist history thing, but at the end of the day, his season in 1961 will stand as the only home run season to eclipse Ruth's - without aid of PEDs. And then, there is Joe Torre. Now, I'm a Yankee hater, but I do love the books Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty by Buster Olney and The Yankee Years by Tom Verducci. Both of them accurately depict an era of time that I came to loathe as I grinded my teeth to the thought of the Yankees winning again and again (I wasn't vested in 96, but the Padres, the Mets, and the Braves all had to have something to beat the Yankees... and when they didn't... thank God for 2001 and the DBacks, which led into the Angels, the Marlins, and that miracle Red Sox run in 04 before the collapse that led to teams like Detroit and Cleveland beating the Yankees. I used to hate Torre. I used to hate his look as he sat in the dugout waiting for something good to happen or to pull the hook on Chin Mein Wang, someone who is TRULY over-rated (but not on the list), but after I read that book, everything changed. There was something about the way that guys like Jeter and Mussina rallied the troops for the coach, a guy who wasn't even wanted in New York due to the fact that he couldn't get his other teams to gel. But that's leadership. Sometimes, being in the right place for the right people is all that matters. Call it a facet of Gladwell's book Outliers, but could anyone else have had the right training, the right manner, the right respect from his young troops that he built confidence in with any of the same talent that Torre used to get it done? Was he the best manager ever? Probably not, but then again, Larussa and Francona are far more over-rated than Torre and they're on teams that I like. In the end, he was run out of town by the extended Steinbrenner family, but for what he did for that time, we all hope that we can get the troops to come together and win 4 of 5 and almost 2 more. That's dominance beyond the players he did and didn't have (since really, only Jeter and Rivera are hall of famers on that team). If that makes the list of Yankees that I loathed for the better part of my adult life over-rated, so be it, but I have to believe that a leader brings the best out of his players, and for him to do that, and for me to spend my life hating the Yankees... I don't fear what isn't real.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
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."
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."
Monday, January 31, 2011
Edinson Volquez
In 2008, Senor Volquez came across to the Queen City from the Texas Rangers to the Reds with the hope that he could make a difference. For the first half of the season, he did just that. Until July 20th, he was a man on fire (God, I love Baseball-Reference.Com). Save a 5-run shelling that he took on June 26th, he was sub 2.00 for his cumulative ERA. For a team that finished with 74 wins, he had 17 of them.
Prior to going to visit James the wonder surgeon, he was a man on fire, and then he was a man getting rebuilt with Tommy John Surgery. If it worked, he would come back unstoppable, but if it didn’t come back, he would be done from the sport. The risk and the rewards were there, but as a young talent with so much hype and hope, the opportunity had to be taken.
Apparently, Edinson decided that to get healthy again, he would take steroids and come back bigger and stronger than ever. Is this really a surprise in baseball? Unlike Mike Morse who admitted to using Deca Durabolin once and saying that his second bust was from the residual steroids, we tend to not be sympathetic for our athletes when they get busted. Take Manny Ramirez’s sexual performance enhancing excuse or Jose Theodore using a hair growth formula. Nobody believes Manny because HCG restarts the production of testosterone and hair growth formulas are masking agents.
Nevertheless, the issue with Edinson is simply a 1/3 pay cut in a season he was sitting out anyway. It’s not really a big issue because he has signed another contract with his old team that still wants to take their chances on his arm - $1.625 for an arm capable of winning that much for a lame Reds team is worth up to 10 times it with a Reds team that can - if it works. Smart GMs know that wins can come at a discount if they turn a blind eye to the veterans that they blackball for doing the same thing at a greater cost and expectation. Didn't we learn that with Guillermo Mota? And while there's a feeling of Volquez being blacklisted, his suspension didn’t affect any actual games that Volquez could have played - he was injured and out for the count anyway, so they were served during his time on the disabled list. Jackpot!
So today, the Reds and the player win. Life is good.
The Reds get to keep rebuilding for 2011 with the improvements of Ardolis Chapman, Brandon Phillips, Joey Votto, Scott Rolen, and Jay Bruce - it's all good and the young team keeps ascending. Not that I want St. Louis to face serious in-division challenges, but it would be nice to see more great young players make it to the majors – without steroids.
We want to believe in the natural progression.
And if they can't, smart GMs will play the game of Ollie's Bargain Outlet distracting the fans with cheaper ticket prices and a better than average chance for a trip to the playoffs. In the end, a strikeout is still a strikeout and a home run is still a home run. Gotta love baseball 2011.
Prior to going to visit James the wonder surgeon, he was a man on fire, and then he was a man getting rebuilt with Tommy John Surgery. If it worked, he would come back unstoppable, but if it didn’t come back, he would be done from the sport. The risk and the rewards were there, but as a young talent with so much hype and hope, the opportunity had to be taken.
Apparently, Edinson decided that to get healthy again, he would take steroids and come back bigger and stronger than ever. Is this really a surprise in baseball? Unlike Mike Morse who admitted to using Deca Durabolin once and saying that his second bust was from the residual steroids, we tend to not be sympathetic for our athletes when they get busted. Take Manny Ramirez’s sexual performance enhancing excuse or Jose Theodore using a hair growth formula. Nobody believes Manny because HCG restarts the production of testosterone and hair growth formulas are masking agents.
Nevertheless, the issue with Edinson is simply a 1/3 pay cut in a season he was sitting out anyway. It’s not really a big issue because he has signed another contract with his old team that still wants to take their chances on his arm - $1.625 for an arm capable of winning that much for a lame Reds team is worth up to 10 times it with a Reds team that can - if it works. Smart GMs know that wins can come at a discount if they turn a blind eye to the veterans that they blackball for doing the same thing at a greater cost and expectation. Didn't we learn that with Guillermo Mota? And while there's a feeling of Volquez being blacklisted, his suspension didn’t affect any actual games that Volquez could have played - he was injured and out for the count anyway, so they were served during his time on the disabled list. Jackpot!
So today, the Reds and the player win. Life is good.
The Reds get to keep rebuilding for 2011 with the improvements of Ardolis Chapman, Brandon Phillips, Joey Votto, Scott Rolen, and Jay Bruce - it's all good and the young team keeps ascending. Not that I want St. Louis to face serious in-division challenges, but it would be nice to see more great young players make it to the majors – without steroids.
We want to believe in the natural progression.
And if they can't, smart GMs will play the game of Ollie's Bargain Outlet distracting the fans with cheaper ticket prices and a better than average chance for a trip to the playoffs. In the end, a strikeout is still a strikeout and a home run is still a home run. Gotta love baseball 2011.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Manny Ramirez
Ok, let's get this straight. Even Manny Ramirez gets a fourth chance.
In a sign that $2million a year for a formerly $20million a year player in free agency is a bargain, the Rays decided that giving Manny (who according to my wife didn't pay his child support when she went to a Cleveland Indians game way back when and heckled him for such) that money was nothing but upside.
If he screws up, it couldn't be worse than giving an outfielder with $2million value the money for 1 year (no incentives either!). If he's productive and healthy (because not being injured and cantankerous is pretty much everything), well then it's everything that Mannywood was supposed to be in Los Angeles except it's in the Tropicana and it's all comeback against the Red Sox who let him slip away.
It's hard to say everything about Manny that truly needs said. Something about using steroids and trying to blame it on sexual performance enhancers didn't have us believing. Hell, he's not on my short list of people who I would bat an eyelash over:
1. Cal Ripken Jr.
2. Derek Jeter
3. Ichiro Suzuki
4. Albert Pujols
5. Mariano Rivera
6. Curt Schilling
This is especially true when both he and Big Sluggi - the hitter formerly known as David "Big Papi" Ortiz, who is now just hanging around Boston for no good reason and past memories (but we do remember the good things and I've got your jersey to prove it) were nailed for the PEDs. I can literally remember being with my friend Dale sitting in the restaurant of an off track wagering place watching the news come up on a television screen. Oh... big sluggers nailed for steroids... hmm...
Hell, most things that Manny did had us wanting to ship him out as soon as possible. The Bill Simmons column on him explains everything in such vivid detail, you should just read that.
Two years in LA. Lots of money coming his way. The future is wide open, only it's not.
From 19 home runs in LA in 2009 to 9 home runs in LA and Chi-Town in all of 2010 in just over 270 at bats (those pesky injuries)... it's a curse... something like that. The year of the pitcher... or not. Not that 350 at bats the year before was much better. That's over $40million well spent.
So perhaps that's why Johnny Damon is getting more and the offer of incentives... potential upside (whereas Manny is all hope).
Manny turning it all around... it's a nice story. We want to write it. Really.
Scott Boras and Manny really want us to write it.
Will we?
Time will tell.
In a sign that $2million a year for a formerly $20million a year player in free agency is a bargain, the Rays decided that giving Manny (who according to my wife didn't pay his child support when she went to a Cleveland Indians game way back when and heckled him for such) that money was nothing but upside.
If he screws up, it couldn't be worse than giving an outfielder with $2million value the money for 1 year (no incentives either!). If he's productive and healthy (because not being injured and cantankerous is pretty much everything), well then it's everything that Mannywood was supposed to be in Los Angeles except it's in the Tropicana and it's all comeback against the Red Sox who let him slip away.
It's hard to say everything about Manny that truly needs said. Something about using steroids and trying to blame it on sexual performance enhancers didn't have us believing. Hell, he's not on my short list of people who I would bat an eyelash over:
1. Cal Ripken Jr.
2. Derek Jeter
3. Ichiro Suzuki
4. Albert Pujols
5. Mariano Rivera
6. Curt Schilling
This is especially true when both he and Big Sluggi - the hitter formerly known as David "Big Papi" Ortiz, who is now just hanging around Boston for no good reason and past memories (but we do remember the good things and I've got your jersey to prove it) were nailed for the PEDs. I can literally remember being with my friend Dale sitting in the restaurant of an off track wagering place watching the news come up on a television screen. Oh... big sluggers nailed for steroids... hmm...
Hell, most things that Manny did had us wanting to ship him out as soon as possible. The Bill Simmons column on him explains everything in such vivid detail, you should just read that.
Two years in LA. Lots of money coming his way. The future is wide open, only it's not.
From 19 home runs in LA in 2009 to 9 home runs in LA and Chi-Town in all of 2010 in just over 270 at bats (those pesky injuries)... it's a curse... something like that. The year of the pitcher... or not. Not that 350 at bats the year before was much better. That's over $40million well spent.
So perhaps that's why Johnny Damon is getting more and the offer of incentives... potential upside (whereas Manny is all hope).
Manny turning it all around... it's a nice story. We want to write it. Really.
Scott Boras and Manny really want us to write it.
Will we?
Time will tell.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Adrian Beltre
Today is a day for celebrations... not the kind like Alfredo Simon of the Baltimore Orioles has, complete with gun firing wildly in the air and giving decent gun-owning citizens a bad rap, but this is not mainstream America, and it seems that New Year Celebrations in the local parks of Dominican Republic are more like Kabul than Ephrata (the town I live that is smack dab in the middle of Amish country, the suburbs, the rural towns, the isolated housing developments, and the crime-ridden streets of Reading, PA. Yep... we've got it all, and I'm sure we've got our fair share of shooters to go with the street fireworks, but fortunately, this year, we didn't have anyone shoot their brother in law and his son.
Not knowing Newton can be deadly for those closest to us as we have to know that bullets will crash into the earth after they're fired into the air, but Simon seemed to miss that one, and when the bullets ended their flight... one dead and one wounded.
Fortunately, he surrendered and is looking at 3 months in the pokey according to one report, which is nice because that means he can come back and give the Orioles a new look. I'm sure Buck Showalter will be proud.
Yes... today is a day of celebrations for Roberto Alomar, and though I'm sure that his friendship with John Hirschbeck, the umpire he spit on, is truly best friends forever in only the way that an altercation can make two guys buddies, there is something that said... "is this in the best interest of baseball that this guy is in the Hall of Fame?"
I'm glad that Hirschbeck's son hung out with Robbie in the same way I'm glad that Juan Marichal delivered the eulogy for John Roseboro. Making amends is a part of life. We need to move on and come to an understanding of one another.
And when it all comes down to it, what is the crime for which baseball numbers don't add up to the Hall of Fame? Using a spitball? Refusing to play with African Americans? Being a drunken womanizer? Working for a casino? Swinging a bat at a catcher who threw by your ear? Racially instigated attacks on players and / or fans? Betting on games? Being involved in gambling? Cocaine usage? Amphetamines usage? Steroids usage?
As was by Ross Newham, formerly of the LA Times:
“Somebody said we are not the morality police, but yet I think we are. If we aren’t, who is? Part of our job is that we are custodians of the game’s history. I do look at the larger picture, and Palmeiro had a lot of good years, but that brings back to my feeling that otherwise he would be worthy of the Hall of Fame.”
And so the writers pick and choose who gets subjected to the rules of entry into immortality, we start to see a pattern of peripheral baseball writers and commentators like Bob Costas who cry themselves silly talking about how they could have missed the huge biceps of stars while they celebrated their achievements in the nineties and early 2000s. And Ken Burns gives him the video time to do so (while neglecting Albert Pujols from Inning 10, but that's another story). Now, they're going to make up for it... out goes McGwire, Gonzalez, and Palmeiro (so far).
But baseball didn't rush to judge Palmeiro when he went from the wild ride of the baseball steroids hearings (March 17, 2005) to his 3,000th hit (July 15, 2005) to his steroids suspension (August 2, 2005).
And 5+ years later, we still want to believe him... well, sort of, not really.
At least he wants us to believe him.
But baseball never bats their eyes when it sends him to his grave. They use him for celebration and not even three weeks later he is guilty and punished for using steroids. Of course, the fans hated him more and he never recovered, eventually vanishing into the same obscurity his career began in.
"I have never used steroids. Period."
And then there is the 2011 version...
However, he was never sexy and stylin' in the way of some baseball players, and for that, let's celebrate with Adrian Beltre today since he'll be getting as much as $96 million for 6 years of service with the Texas Rangers.
And isn't that what it's all about?
Never mind that he has a career average of .275, which would be much lower if not for the 2 contract years where he played exceptionally (48 home runs and .334 in 2004 AND 28 home runs and .321 last year). So if it's another inflated total for a player that the fans can root for and wear his jersey... yep.
That said, next year's celebration won't be about sexy image - it will be about having to elect someone, but we'll hold off until the first week of 2012 to discuss that.
In the meantime, we'll wonder about all of those players from the glory years and the black and white pictures who seemed to exist before the media scrutiny and the chance to screw up big time, like Willie Wilson who in referring to his cocaine bust said,
"People think the game is glamorous, but I never wanted the attention—good or bad. I felt a lot of pressure trying to satisfy the club, the public, my parents. People wanted me to be a role model; even the judge said so when he sentenced me. I always felt your parents should be your role models. But I never blamed anyone else for what I did. The Royals have done a lot for me, and I don't want them to think about me now. I just want them to have a good season. I'll be staying by myself more when I return. I'm not going to yell or scream anymore, just do my job. I wish that's all there was to baseball."
And maybe that's true, and maybe it's not, but for guys like Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe who should be in the Hall of Fame, it's not time to celebrate yet. And for many of the players who never made peanuts in their careers, it's not time to celebrate.
But such is the sadness of the great game of baseball. Some achieve and shine while others are left on the fringes for those of us who truly love the history.
Not knowing Newton can be deadly for those closest to us as we have to know that bullets will crash into the earth after they're fired into the air, but Simon seemed to miss that one, and when the bullets ended their flight... one dead and one wounded.
Fortunately, he surrendered and is looking at 3 months in the pokey according to one report, which is nice because that means he can come back and give the Orioles a new look. I'm sure Buck Showalter will be proud.
Yes... today is a day of celebrations for Roberto Alomar, and though I'm sure that his friendship with John Hirschbeck, the umpire he spit on, is truly best friends forever in only the way that an altercation can make two guys buddies, there is something that said... "is this in the best interest of baseball that this guy is in the Hall of Fame?"
I'm glad that Hirschbeck's son hung out with Robbie in the same way I'm glad that Juan Marichal delivered the eulogy for John Roseboro. Making amends is a part of life. We need to move on and come to an understanding of one another.
And when it all comes down to it, what is the crime for which baseball numbers don't add up to the Hall of Fame? Using a spitball? Refusing to play with African Americans? Being a drunken womanizer? Working for a casino? Swinging a bat at a catcher who threw by your ear? Racially instigated attacks on players and / or fans? Betting on games? Being involved in gambling? Cocaine usage? Amphetamines usage? Steroids usage?
As was by Ross Newham, formerly of the LA Times:
“Somebody said we are not the morality police, but yet I think we are. If we aren’t, who is? Part of our job is that we are custodians of the game’s history. I do look at the larger picture, and Palmeiro had a lot of good years, but that brings back to my feeling that otherwise he would be worthy of the Hall of Fame.”
And so the writers pick and choose who gets subjected to the rules of entry into immortality, we start to see a pattern of peripheral baseball writers and commentators like Bob Costas who cry themselves silly talking about how they could have missed the huge biceps of stars while they celebrated their achievements in the nineties and early 2000s. And Ken Burns gives him the video time to do so (while neglecting Albert Pujols from Inning 10, but that's another story). Now, they're going to make up for it... out goes McGwire, Gonzalez, and Palmeiro (so far).
But baseball didn't rush to judge Palmeiro when he went from the wild ride of the baseball steroids hearings (March 17, 2005) to his 3,000th hit (July 15, 2005) to his steroids suspension (August 2, 2005).
And 5+ years later, we still want to believe him... well, sort of, not really.
At least he wants us to believe him.
But baseball never bats their eyes when it sends him to his grave. They use him for celebration and not even three weeks later he is guilty and punished for using steroids. Of course, the fans hated him more and he never recovered, eventually vanishing into the same obscurity his career began in.
"I have never used steroids. Period."
And then there is the 2011 version...
But is Blyleven really in that same category? He had some good ERAs, he won 2 World Series rings (one in each league), and he played for 21 years.
However, he was never sexy and stylin' in the way of some baseball players, and for that, let's celebrate with Adrian Beltre today since he'll be getting as much as $96 million for 6 years of service with the Texas Rangers.
And isn't that what it's all about?
Never mind that he has a career average of .275, which would be much lower if not for the 2 contract years where he played exceptionally (48 home runs and .334 in 2004 AND 28 home runs and .321 last year). So if it's another inflated total for a player that the fans can root for and wear his jersey... yep.
That said, next year's celebration won't be about sexy image - it will be about having to elect someone, but we'll hold off until the first week of 2012 to discuss that.
In the meantime, we'll wonder about all of those players from the glory years and the black and white pictures who seemed to exist before the media scrutiny and the chance to screw up big time, like Willie Wilson who in referring to his cocaine bust said,
"People think the game is glamorous, but I never wanted the attention—good or bad. I felt a lot of pressure trying to satisfy the club, the public, my parents. People wanted me to be a role model; even the judge said so when he sentenced me. I always felt your parents should be your role models. But I never blamed anyone else for what I did. The Royals have done a lot for me, and I don't want them to think about me now. I just want them to have a good season. I'll be staying by myself more when I return. I'm not going to yell or scream anymore, just do my job. I wish that's all there was to baseball."
And maybe that's true, and maybe it's not, but for guys like Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe who should be in the Hall of Fame, it's not time to celebrate yet. And for many of the players who never made peanuts in their careers, it's not time to celebrate.
But such is the sadness of the great game of baseball. Some achieve and shine while others are left on the fringes for those of us who truly love the history.
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