Looking at the Game of Baseball from all ends of the Spectrum
James "Mickey" Vernon, the firstbaseman who played for over 20 years in the 40’s and the 50’s passed away Wednesday.
From all accounts, I always considered Vernon to be one the best players who isn’t in the Hall of Fame.
That may change though. Vernon has been selected to the final ballot of the Veterans Committee for the 2008 class. The results of the ballot will be announced on December 8th.
Vernon also managed the Washington Senators, the team he played the most, between 1961-1963.
The Chicago Cubs defeated the Mets in New York tonight 9-6.
With the score tied 6-6, Lou Piniella brought in Bobby Howry. I groaned audibly. When Daniel Murphy led off the inning with a triple, the groans turned to plain ol’ swearing. My wife even commented, "is that the pitcher you don’t like, honey?" Yeah, that about sums it up.
But wait! This story has a happy ending. With no outs, a runner on third, and no real option left in the bullpen, it was left to Howry to get the job done. He struck out David Wright. Lou called for two successive intentional walks to Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran. A short hop to Ronnie Cedeno by Ryan Church looked like DP-fodder but Ronnie took the sure out at home preventing the winning run from scoring. Finally, the coup-d-grace, Howry struck out Ramon Castro to get out of the inning.
The Cubs went on to score three runs in the top of the tenth on a Ryan Theriot single, a Derrek Lee double and a Aramis Ramirez homerun. Kerry Wood came on to pitch a scoreless tenth to get his 34th save.
All good things but nothing impressed me more than Howry and how he got out of his 9th inning jam.
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This coming weekend is our annual All-Star weekend for the Illowa APBA League. It’s one of the most fun weekends of the year for me as the ten managers in the league gather from 3 different states, play some APBA baseball. The climax of the weekend, of course, is the IAL All-Star Game. The league history dates back a while as this will be our 33rd All-Star Game.
Above you see my team’s entries for the West Division for this year. I’d like to say there are more but seeing that we are keeping the cellar warm in the Illowa League this year, we are only sending two. Albert Pujols will be a starter and for that I am glad.
I have a favorite story to tell that illustrates the fun we have at the All-Star weekends. It goes back a few years when we got my friend Brando into the league (a great find, in my opinion!). On our drive up to our destination, Brando expressed his confusion about his first All-Star Game. Why was everyone was getting so excited about watching two managers play an APBA baseball game? It didn’t occur to him that at least in our league, we roll for our own players when they are up to bat. That simple change in perception changed everything. The All-Star Game in the Illowa APBA League is a loud, raucous affair where every member is part of the game. Yes, rolling for their players but also voicing strategic suggestions to their manager, high-fiving on any success and even a little trash talking across the table.
The 34th annual IAL All-Star Game will take place this Saturday in Naperville, Illinois.
Let’s Go West Division! and Go Twin City Thunderchickens!
It’s the usual hijinks out of the San Diego Padre clubhouse. Specifically, we can attribute this particular joke on Trevor Hoffman. According to The Slanch Report, it was at Hoffmans’ request that the Padres rookies dress up in Hooters unis and parade around the field.
Get me an order of wings err. ma’am!
(via, Deadspin)
MLB says it’s trying to fight the steroid issue by going to where young athletes are finding out about it… the Internet.
With help from the Partnership for a Drug-free America, the project will essentially artificially raise the Google ranking of an article which is slated to be entitled "The Truth About Steroids" which will link to a website produced by the PDFA. In return for the high index ranking, Google will receive payment. The PDFA receives about $2 million in annual funding from major league baseball.
MLB may want to rethink that title name. As of this writing, someone else seems to have the domain name thetruthaboutsteroids.com and it definitely does NOT have the kind of message the MLB wants young athletes to see.
See for yourself while you can.
Looks like PDFA and/or MLB didn’t do their homework and didn’t Google their prospective title name. For their sake, maybe it’s not too late.
9/22 Update: News about MLB unveiling their anti-performance enhancing substance website.
Major League Baseball announced the tentative playing schedule for 2009. It looks like a rather late start compared to previous years starting on April 6th.
The Cubs begin with a three game series at Houston.
Stop me if you heard this one. Ron Santo was one of ten players selected to this year’s Veteran’s Committee Ballot. And once again, he will need a 75 percent to make it to the Hall of Fame. Results will be announced on December 8th.
The kicker is that this is Santo’s last chance. If he doesn’t get in this year, he will have no chance to be selected to next year’s ballot.
I won’t bother reciting Santo’s stats. Anyone who’s followed the issue, is familiar with them. Or belabor the point that he was playing in a pitcher’s era. Or go on and on about his defensive prowess. You all know about that.
All that doesn’t even take in consideration his work with the Cubs as a broadcaster and all-around ambassador for the game.
If you’re looking for a good bio, please read Al Yellon’s piece on Bleed Cubbie Blue when he chose Santo as the #7 Cub of all time. It’s one of most detailed articles you’ll find on him.
The esteemed Joe Sheehan says that the "omission of Ron Santo is the most egregious mistake ever made by the Baseball Writers Association of America" and calls for the Veterans Committee to rectify that mistake. On a personal level, I know a lot of baseball people and almost every I know support Ron Santo for the Hall. Yes, that includes White Sox fans.
So Veterans Committee, get it right and get it done. Vote for Ron Santo.
After enjoying two days as the host team in another ballpark, some Cubs players are fanaticizing about a new park in Chicago especially one with state-of-the-art locker facilities. Zambrano was the most blunt about his comparison between the two parks:
"(Miller Park) is a beautiful ballpark. Gosh, I wish we could have a new ballpark."
Though Jason Marquis also enjoyed his Miller Park stay, he had more appreciation for the fan’s love of Wrigley and had a creative idea:
"You never want to see a landmark taken down, a place with so much history," Marquis said. "The fans love it. That being said, the game is changing, stadiums are getting updated. There are better facilities, not only for the players, but for the fans—better food concessions, comfortable seats, better views. …
"If I had a personal choice, I think they should knock Wrigley down and build a replica in the exact same spot to give it that same feel. The same colored seats, same ivy, same wall, and throw up a Jumbotron, but have it look like a replica of the scoreboard that’s up there now, try to give it the same feel, in the same spot. I wouldn’t be opposed to that."
I suggest to the Cubs that before they get too concerned about grandiose ideas like new parks and locker facilities that they realize that they have a division to clinch and playoffs to be more concerned about. They’ve come this far with the Friendly Confines as their home base. Their two-day stay in Milwaukee was awesome and in some ways, historic. But let’s not lose sight of why it was important to win those games.
Hint: it wasn’t for "The Locker Rooms that Zambrano Built.
Does anyone think the firing of Ned Yost as manager of the Milwaukee Brewers is a wise move?
I actually had predicted before the season that Yost would be the first NL manager fired in 2008. I wasn’t correct of course. And now that he has been fired, I think it’s a bad move.
The Brewers are eight games back in the NL Central with little chance to catch the Cubs. They ARE tied for the lead in the Wild Card race with the Philadelphia Phillies. They are right in the midst of the playoff race and by firing their manager, the Brewers have introduced an element of extreme chaos.
If they had a manager-in-waiting with extreme skill and smarts like a Jim Leyland type or perhaps a uber-charismatic-type, maybe I’d understand. But they’re bringing in Dale Sveum as an interim manager who will in fact finish the season. Sveum has no managerial experince and boy, he has his work cut out for him.
General Manager Doug Melvin didn’t seem to sure of his decision either:
"I’m not sure I have all the answers, and I’m not sure this is the right one, either," general manager Doug Melvin said. "But I’m going to turn the managerial position over to Dale Sveum at this time and hope that we can kick-start a ballclub that we feel has a lot of talent."
But who knows? Sveum may surprise us. He has already saying things like, "it’s not for two weeks, it’s for six weeks", referring to his interim tenure.
Melvin’s decision seems to have befuddled the baseball pundits but a cursory look at a couple Brewers blogs seem to indicate that many fans of the team welcome the move though they admit it is a bit late in the season.
A couple other notes worth mentioning: Bench coach Ted Simmons will be re-assigned. In his place, Sveum named Robin Yount.
Zealot friend Adrian Burgos, author of Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line, was the topic of a feature article on Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf.
Burgos is back teaching at the University of Illinois after a sabbatical. During his sabbatical, he was working on his second book, a biography of Alejandro Pompez who was the owner of the New York Cubans and later the director of international scouting for the Giants.