Recently in Baseball Category

I'm writing this from a hotel in midtown, while I get stuff together and get ready to head over to Yankee Stadium for the final time.

My first time at Yankee Stadium was my first time at any big league game. My grade school librarian mentioned a field trip that she was organizing, something outside of school, church maybe? Dunno. I just know that we had these great seats under the netting on the field level. It was positively amazing. I must have been like ten years old, and I was convinced from that point forward that this was the team I was going to follow, and this was the stadium I wanted to come to time and time again.

I have a lot of memories of the Stadium.... from Opening Days with women who thought they were strippers getting liquored up and pole-dancing during the Seventh Inning Stretch, to the thrill of getting field level seats for the 2000 World Series, flying to New York from California just to watch Game One and Game Two.

It was bittersweet a few weeks ago, as I attended the last Boston game at the Stadium, which was to be my final day game here.

I'm sharing the day with a couple of great Yankees fans... Jay flew in last night on the red-eye straight from his sister's wedding reception. My seat-neighbor Stew is the consummate Yankees fan, who's been through a lot this year.

Jay asked me last night if I was going to make fun of him if he cried tonight. I think there's going to be a lot of grown men shedding tears this evening. He won't be the only one...

I'm a big fan of the guys over at Improv Everywhere, who always seem to have something really cool and fun up their sleeves. But their latest "mission" is my personal favorite.

They set out to surprise two Little League teams in Hermosa Beach, CA with the full-blown Major League Baseball experience. NBC Sports and the Goodyear Blimp add to the experience as two teams of ten years olds have their best baseball game ever....

My first memories of baseball, at all, are of watching Yankees games on WPIX channel 11 as a child, listening to Phil Rizzuto call the game. At that age, I was too young to really notice that he was skipping out at the end of the seventh inning each day to avoid the ballpark traffic, or anything like that. I just enjoyed the way he was so clearly happy to be on the air, talking about the Yankees. And if he would tell a few too many stories about his wife, Cora, or randomly call out happy anniversary greetings to his various friends and neighbors, so what? His genuine "happiness" exuded into every word he spoke on the air.

I look at the television and radio commentators for baseball today, and none of them hold a candle to the man who passed on today. As the article says:

Rizzuto once said on the air upon learning of the death of Pope Paul VI, "Well, that kind of puts a damper on even a Yankee win."

So does the passing of Phil Rizzuto.

You'll be missed, Scooter....

The Yankee Stadium parking page has this to say about construction related parking lot closures:

Ongoing construction of the New Yankee Stadium may cause street and/or parking lot closures in the area around the current stadium. Please budget ample time when planning your trip and be sure to consider using public transportation.

If I could re-write that, it would say something like this:

Our parking map shows a total of 17 different parking lots in the immediate surrounding vicinity of the stadium. Unfortunately four of them are closed. Worse still, these are the parking lots with some of the highest capacities of all of them. If you want a parking spot, plan on showing up about three hours in advance. If not you'll be parking along the side of the road about a mile away from the stadium. Oh yeah, seriously don't just "consider" public transportation -- swear by it.

But that's just me. I guess that wouldn't sound as official. Maybe that's why I'm not in PR.

I had originally set aside my tickets for today's game at the beginning of the season. Today, I reasoned, as the last game of the regular season, might be the last chance to see someone like Bernie Williams, or something like that. When the Yankees clinched a playoff berth, I let a friend of mine have the seats instead (he had had some promo tickets to a game with his daughter, but it was one of those "miserable, drizzly, we're-gonna-play-it-anyway" types of nights, so I figured I'd let him go to a game they'd enjoy instead). After all, I've got postseason games to watch now, no need to worry about "last game of the regular season"...

Except then I went to a business event a couple days ago and won, as a door prize, a pair of really choice Loge Championship seats for today's game. I told D "even though it's the weekend before the wedding, these seats are way too awesome to let them go to waste, we need to go to this," and she accepted that.

Now, I'm faced with the dilemma that it's raining like a mofo, with rain, showers, more rain, and then a reprieve of just thunderstorms, all day today. And even though I hadn't even thought about really going to this game until like a week ago, I feel kinda disappointed that I won't get to go. :-(

Item to check off: See the Cubs play a game at Wrigley Field.

Class ended early today, around eleven in the morning. When I got back to my room I caught up on e-mail real fast and then started thinking about "how I would spend the rest of the day". It occurred to me that at the beginning of the week, I'd been thinking about catching a game, but had vetoed today for some reason. I couldn't remember if it was because it was a day game and I was expecting to still be in class, or if it was because the Cubs were on the road.

Turns out, they were playing the Mets, at home. Ticketmaster told me the game was sold out, but throwing caution to the wind, I ran down to the train station and hauled my ass up to Wrigley. Turns out, it wasn't completely sold out. When I asked the box office person what the "best he could do for me" was, he happily took my cash in exchange for a field-level box seat. And there I sat enjoying the game until shortly after the skies opened up and rain poured down. Wanting to get back to my hotel before the trains were crowded with both Cubs fans and commuters, I took that as a sign, and so I bailed mid-game (something I could easily do since I had very little "invested" in the game, emotionally).

Wrigley is, frankly, a beautiful field. It's not the Stadium, that's for sure, but as one of the oldest remaining baseball parks from the first days of the sport, it was easy to feel the energy and history that fill that place.

From IMDb News:

Hollywood star Michael Keaton has angered bosses of the Pittsburgh Pirates, his local baseball team, by telling them how to run the club. The Batman Returns star, who was a guest of the struggling team at their match on Monday, hit out at owners for not spending enough money on top class players. The Pirates' payroll is currently the fourth lowest in the majors, and has been reflected in a string of defeats, prompting a Keaton backlash. He says, "Look, I'd do it, too, if I were a businessman. But, at some point, you've got to win. I think fans have been gracious. And maybe not vocal enough. Maybe not vociferous enough with their displeasure. That's my opinion. I fear they (club owners) will take advantage of the good will of the people who continue to show up. For my money, that's disrespectful. At some point, you either have to write the check or do something and not assume, well, we're OK."

I dunno, Michael, maybe if people like yourself who could clearly afford tickets would stop scamming freebies by being "guest of the club", they'd have more money in the coffers to buy talent.

The most expensive ticket I could find for the Pirates is $210, for those "we kiss your ass" seats right behind home plate that are always on TV. Now, if Keaton can't afford $210, then he has seriously squandered that money he made. So maybe, just maybe, if he wasn't grubbing tickets off of them, they'd have just a little bit more money in the bank to spend on stuff.

I'm not saying that maybe $1000 worth of tickets (if he came in a party of four) is going to make or break the Pirates (at least it shouldn't) but I think it's pretty disingenuous to one hand talk about how money - and the spending thereof - is such a problem, but then demand freebies which take away money-making potential from the team in the first place.

We gave you everything you asked for, Roger.

You wanted to be respected. We respected you.
You wanted to be paid well. We gave you millions.
Most of all, you wanted a World Series ring. And we supplied.

You retired. We were happy for you, proud even. Where every other team you'd been on had given up on you, called you a washed-up has-been, we had once again proven that they didn't know shit, and that you were able to "go out on top" because of us, made us both proud of you and of ourselves for helping you get there.

Your "retirement" was short-lived, though, as you joined the Astros a few short months later, without even a call to Darth George asking -- as might be honorable -- if he'd like to make an offer to bring you out of retirement first.

Well, here's to you, big guy. You coulda gone out and retired "on top of the world". Instead, you're going to be just another guy who wore the 'stripes for a while.

Bug Selig told the Houston Astros tonight, "They must have their roof open."

Maybe I missed the memo where whether an individual stadium chooses to have a roof "open" or "closed" was of importance enough to become a matter for the friggin' commissioner of baseball to get involved in.

Two of Houston's historical "home field advantages" are the fact that the roof makes some fly balls harder to see (unless of course you play 81 games a season there and know what you're doing) and the fact that it makes a huge difference in how loud the stadium gets when the fans get loud.

"This is part of our home-field advantage and for major league baseball to try and change that is either a) ridiculous or b) they're American League fans," Astros catcher Brad Ausmus said.

Of course Selig wants the White Sox to win. They haven't had a winning World Series since before the Black Sox scandal! If he can rig it so that -- with Boston having won last year -- yet another "hasn't won in forever" team can win a Series, he'll do whatever it takes. Selig has consistently shown that "the integrity of the sport" is never his primary interest, but "what makes money" is.

I'd have loved to have seen Houston tell Selig to shove it up his ass. Too bad Selig probably would have ruled that "if you don't open the roof it's a forfeit" or something.

*sigh* I hate that man with all of my soul.

We deserved to get eliminated last night. Our "power hitters" were woefully lacking in anything resembling "power", and our defense was -- well, horrible.

Amusingly, the only thing we actually seemed to have done fairly well in during the post-season was our much-maligned pitching. Sure there were some hiccups with it, but certainly not at all on a par with the level of pain brought on by our defensive errors, and lost bats.

Although, last night's game was rough. It's hard enough to beat a team of nine when you're doing so badly, but a team of thirteen is even tougher. Especially when you hide those extra four players in the uniforms of MLB Umpires.

Last night's game had some of the most brain-dead calls I've seen in a while. There was an (admittedly) close play at first where the runner was clearly safe but was called out, and even stranger was Cano being called out on interference when he clearly didn't interfere at all, and if he had run where the umpire wanted him to run, he would have been interfering with the play.

Then you go back a few nights to the umpires calling a runner "safe" at second because a foot came off the bag a millisecond too early. Yes, technically, he's safe, but that's a play that happens -- in exactly that fashion -- all the time in baseball. The umpires have always shown leniency to fielders who -- having gotten the ball in plenty of time to score the out -- move their foot away quickly to avoid injury. That the only time that play was called in that fashion was against the Yankees is highly annoying.

But, I have to look at the bright spots... my upcoming weekend schedule was looking majorly hectic if they made it into the ALCS, between people coming to visit, having to run down to Newark and pick up my parents, and (if we'd made the ALCS) meeting up with White Sox fan, Brian, to go see an ALCS game. Now, my weekend schedule has only half the things it potentially had, which is sort of a relief.

Now I am cheering for "whomever plays Houston," because I don't want that traitorous pig Clemens to get another ring. Go St. Louis!

The only team with a baseball track record worse than the Yankees is the "1-and-8" Colorado Rockies which are giving whole new meanings to the words "sucking wind".

Seriously... what the fuck happened to these guys? Did I miss the memo from MLB that said "throw the first half of the season as a handicap to make the entire season fair" or something like that? Geezus.

There's a lot of talk about things that make the Yankees special, to their fans. Part of it is that the Yankees organization respects the fans, and isn't out to fuck their most loyal fans up the ass, unlike the Dodgers.

In October, I gave Boston my advice for how to proceed in 2005. One thing I said rings true given all the off-season announcements coming from the Boston side:

Now, if Boston is like every World Series winning team outside of New York City, the very next thing your team's management is going to do is sell off the entire staff. Again, this sounds stupid, but history shows that all the GMs seem to want to do it. If they do, you should kill them. Seriously.

How many of the '04 Sox's key players are actually left?

Attention Boston Fans...

Well, it's the eighth inning of Game Four, and it looks like you're going to win. So, from a fan of a team with 26 World Series Wins, to the fans of a team who hasn't had one since back before penicillin, let me offer you some helpful advice, since you don't necessarily have a lot of practice at this whole "winning" thing. Ready? Here we go....

• Don't riot and burn down your town and/or stadium ... yes I know this sounds basic, but just last week you guys were rioting so bad that some chick got shot in the head and killed. You won, you're supposed to celebrate, not burn the place down. If you burn the place down, you're going to have a hard time trying to repeat without a place to play ball....
• You only get to lord over the other teams for a year. Yup, you won, and we (and everyone else) will have to listen to you gloat about it for an entire season... but just remember that after the end of next season, it's just another part of your past, and if you try to throw it peoples faces, they may ask you to do things like "win 19 more so we can have a meeting of equals" or something. Just thinking out loud....
• Now, if Boston is like every World Series winning team outside of New York City, the very next thing your team's management is going to do is sell off the entire staff. Again, this sounds stupid, but history shows that all the GMs seem to want to do it. If they do, you should kill them. Seriously.
• Now that you've won, you've proven that you can do it. This means that your fans are going to expect you to do it again next year, and again, and again, and again. And, since you've proven you can do it, you can't call upon mystic forces and the cursed spirits of dead slugger greats to explain why you don't succeed. From this day forward, you'll have to accept responsibility at the end of the year, and say "We didn't make it because we flat-out sucked," and not try to pin the blame on some dead home-run hitter your team gave up once upon an eon ago.

Enjoy the gloating next year.

I watched the first three games of the ALCS with positive glee. We were stomping all over them, no team in the history of baseball had ever come back from as far back as we had put Boston. "1 out of the next 4 games? Absolutely. No doubt." It was assured.

As I begin to write this, it is the 9th inning of Game 7, and things look pretty bleak. Cashman looks positively ill, probably trying to figure out exactly which extremity The Boss is going to chew off later this evening if things don't recover fairly quickly.

It's clear where we failed... if the Yankees had one failing this post-season, it was our pitching. To say that it was "substandard" would be to be kind and generous. It stunk worse than the Marist campus in the summer heat, and that's saying something.

I want to be angry at Boston. I want to despise their very souls, but the reality is simply that "Who's Your Daddy?" is better directed at us, with the answer being "Ortiz". If anyone owned anyone this past week, Ortiz owned us.

Put simply, they played baseball way better than we did this week, and that's that.

I'm torn in my wishes for the Series... part of me, the age-old Yankee fan, is now cheering for "whomever the NL sends up to beat their asses, and please let it be Clemens, for the poetic justice of it". Another part of me, though, wants Boston to win, mainly so they'll shut the fuck up about how we're always keeping them down, preventing them from winning, "the curse", blah, blah, blah, blah, BLAH!

It used to feel weird to "not make it to the Series" but after the past few years of disappointment, it's becoming normal, and that's not right!

Yes, I'm a Yankee fan. I believe it is our American League Birthright to be in the Fall Classic each and every year. Deal with it.

But this year, we didn't earn it, and if you forsake your own birthright, that's just a terrible thing.

Game over. I'm going to bed.

I put the pictures online that I took at the Yankee game. There's also a couple other pictures in that "roll", including a couple pictures Pete took of a really cool looking moon one night, and the shots I took when George and I went to the Empire State Building (on Labor Day when the Devil Rays screwed us).

You can find the pics here.

Ya know, I've been thinking about this for a while...

Bob Costas should be the next commissioner of baseball.

He doesn't have any vested financial interests in any particular team, nor do any of his family members. He's got great ideas for how to reform the "business" to make it more about "the game". I read Fair Ball a couple years ago, and it still holds true.

I don't know what it would take to make him be considered for the gig, or even if he'd want it, but as a fan of the game, I'd love to see him in the role.

There's been a lot of talk on various news agencies and baseball blogs about "why doesn't the MLB have random drug testing", and people tend to make disparaging remarks about the MLBPA (MLB Players Association, the players' union) about how they're ruining baseball, etc., etc., by not following the lead of the NFL, which does require random drug testing.

Sorry, this will be one of those times when I actually side with the union. Random drug-testing is wrong. It's saying "prove your innocence, even though we have absolutely no suspicion that you've done anything wrong", or even worse, "You're all under suspicion, all the time, of doing something wrong."

Having to prove one's innocence on a random basis is, put simply, evil. If you've got a suspicion that Barry Bonds (or whomever) is dipping into the pharmaceutical products, then you stand up, make your case and present your evidence, and then he can be tested. Otherwise, back the hell off.

I woke up early this morning, and am watching the NY Yankees vs. Yomiuri Giants exhibition game, live from Tokyo, Japan.

It's amazing how far technology has come, if you think about it. The game is about 5000 miles away or more, and there wasn't even any doubt in my mind that it'd be on TV, live, here in the states. It was just taken for granted that it'd be on.

If you consider that worldwide televised coverage of the Olympics only began in 1960, we've come a long way in a fairly short period of time.

Like a drug addict getting a fix after four months of the shakes, I am finally able to get my baseball fix again.

Yes, it's spring training games, but it's baseball, dammit!!

Life is good.

Just for the record... I've had 13 on the back of my Yankees jerseys for five years now. I picked that number because 13 has always been my lucky number, and because (probably due to superstitious baseball players) it almost never got issued to anyone "big".

I am not an A-Rod FanBoy. He's a great player and all, but that's not why his number is on my jersey.

That is all.

It's what everyone who even has a passing interest in baseball has been talking. Alex Rodriguez, as of tomorrow morning, will be wearing the pinstripes.

Now, I wouldn't be a Yankee fan if I didn't point out to my brethren further up the coast that A-Rod is probably one of the greatest players the sport has ever seen, and they -- once again -- completely blew their chance to have him play for them. And that's as much as I'll say about that. Watching him in pinstripes is enough penance for them, I suspect.

As for the deal itself. What's not to like? We take a hole at 2nd instead of at 3rd to get A-Rod on the team? I think it's quite possible that within a year A-Rod will be back at shortstop. Then it all depends on whether the offseason has done wonders for his range. (I suspect most of his range-related issues stemmed from his shoulder injury in the beginning of the season). If his arm is doing good, he ends up at 3B, if it's not, he takes the hole at 2B. Jeter's the captain, and only George is going to tell him to stand aside for his buddy A-Rod, but I don't think they'll have to. Jete's the kind of player who will concede "Alex is better than I am" and step aside for the team, moving to 2B/3B on his own.

Further, this is good for Jeter. With Alex at his side, I can see the two of them -- being as good of friends as they are -- there being a playful competition between the two of them, good-natured jibes about "shoulda had that" types of things which will push Jeter (both of them actually) to do better than ever.

Like any fan, it's easy for me to say "I love this deal".

I wish Rocket all the best with his newfound friends in the Astros. I even hope he leads them to the World Series....

... so the Yankees can pimpslap him around and send him home losing the Series!

Seriously, Rocket, you retired from a team that treated you well, got you World Series rings aplenty, and who basically worshipped you. We're not that team further up the coast that treated you like a second-class citizen while denying you October baseball. You wanted to retire. We wished you well. We gave you a big fat Hummer, and all sorts of other kudos and well-wishes.

If you were going to come out of retirement, the least you could have done was give the Yankees right of first refusal.

So, screw ya. Good riddance, ya fuck.

My editorial from Pinstripe News...

I've often commented that every four years, Major League Baseball should take two or three weeks off, and let the "baseball dream team" go represent the US in the Olympics. Every other country in the world who participates thinks nothing of sending their best and brightest, why can't we?

Of course, the owners' issue with that, of course, is "who takes responsibility for injuries"... if a star player is injured in the Olympics he may be on his team's DL for some time afterwards. This is a valid concern and would have to be somehow addressed.

However, something needs to be done when the United States can't even field a team that can qualify for the Olympics. We invented the sport. It's home, both physically and spiritually, is here. Why can't we field a team worthy of beating someone like Mexico? Because all Tommy Lasorda had to work with were a bunch of minor-leaguers, those who were considered "expendable" essentially, by their clubs' management.

This is disgraceful. We need to radically rethink how we field an Olympic baseball team so we can compete on a global playing field. Why do we continue to insist on trying to send people to the Olympics who -- literally -- aren't even second or third string players?

The gods of baseball do not look kindly upon ego, and they look even less kindly upon presumptiveness. The gods of baseball are cruel gods, and often settle up in the eighth and ninth innings of games, to remind the mortals that their fate rests always with the gods.

And the gods of baseball looked down upon Fenway Park, while Boston was struggling to actually win the ALCS, and saw the presumptive grounds crew painting the World Series 2003 logo upon the field.

Baseball players can be pretty superstitious... one has to wonder why they would have allowed the crew to tempt fate like that, guaranteeing them that there was no chance they'd be permitted to actually use that logo.

It's late, I'm ready for bed, but I just have to say it... the Yankees won, and they won because of Pedro's ego, insisting he could stay in when he had like 120 pitches under his belt. And right after that, he left slip way more runs than should have been permitted, letting us tie up the game. They lost because they had the cojones to start painting the World Series 2003 logo on the field at Fenway.

Aaron Boone hit a great walk-off home-run... color me impressed at Fox commentator Bret Boone for his ability to not show how excited and happy he must be for his little brother being the ALCS hero. Either that or they turned off all the mics in the booth while he went fucking nuts.

Get yourselves good tee-times tomorrow, Sox, cuz we're going to go get ourselves some fried fish.

With Cleveland in town, they'll be up against the one and only Coco Crisp, Center Fielder for the Indians.

What a dumb fucking name.

So I was reading Dan's juvenile comment to my rejoicing at the start of the baseball season.

And it occurred to me that this type of thing happens a lot. Why is that so many baseball "fans", when faced with a player or team they don't like, immediately resort to the lowest-common-denominator of retorts. Talk about how crappy someone plays? Nope. Rag on "that error they made last night"? Nope. Hell, even make (wrongheaded) comments about how the team's ownership buys a good team each year? Nope.

No, the first reaction of the typical sports fan is to, in the scope of one sentence, make fun of a player's potentially career-threatening injury, and do it while making some toilet-humor joke out of the player's name.

Seriously, what is it about sports that brings out the retard in people? And what does it say about us that it seems to be tolerated enough (that it's survived this long).

Game 1 out of 162 has begun.

Summer is here, and none too soon.