Tag Archives: Major League Baseball

The Giants cut two veterans, and the sobering reality of Major League Baseball

Posted on August 31, 2011 | Leave a comment

The San Francisco Giants shook up their roster today, jettisoning veterans Aaron Rowand and Miguel Tejada while calling up Brett Pill from the minors.

I’ve had days in my career like Rowand and Tejada are having, and I’ve also had a few call-up moments.

I congratulate Pill on his ascension to the big leagues, a move cheered by headline writers who won’t be able to resist plays on his name.

I feel badly for Rowand, who has had a lot of key hits for San Francisco in recent years and who helped the team get to the playoffs last year on the way to a world championship.

Tejada has done little for the Giants this season and hasn’t made much of an impression on me. I did pick him a couple of times for my fantasy baseball teams years ago, but that was just that: fantasy.

Today, the cold, harsh reality of competitive professional sports exacted its neverending vengeance on ballplayers past their prime. And it gave another kid a chance.

Cue the “Circle of Life.”

 

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Baseball All-Star Game caps? Not for me

Posted on June 20, 2011 | 2 Comments

Anyone reading my blog knows I’ll buy a baseball cap at, well, at the drop of a hat. But the All-Star game caps just don’t do it for me, this year or any year.

The design is actually not bad. But I just can’t get excited about a batting practice cap. It’s so manufactured, not authentic like a real MLB cap.

If I were at the game and all its sideshows, I might feel differently.

 

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The Ball Caps Blog 2011 National League All-Star ballot

Posted on June 15, 2011 | 3 Comments

The All-Star Game approaches, and it’s time to reveal my choices. Crazy, I know, but I believe the All-Star starters should be the best nine players from the league based on their present-year performance.

So here are my picks for the senior circuit:

Catcher – Brian McCann of the Atlanta Braves, a chest protector’s width ahead of Yadier Molina of the St.Louis Cardinals.

First base – Joey Votto of the Cincinnati Reds, edging Prince Fielder of the Milwaukee Brewers. I’m watching the words form here and still can’t believe I’m ranking Albert Pujols third.

Second Base – Rickie Weeks of Milwaukee, powering his way past Brandon Phillips of Cincinnati.

Third base – Placido Polanco of the Philadelphia Phillies, well out in front of the others.

Shortstop – Jose Reyes of the New York Mets. His year has been so awesome, I didn’t even bother to check the stats of anybody else.

Outfield – Matt Kemp of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Ryan Braun of the Brewers and Hunter Pence of the Houston Astros. I dare anyone to challenge the first two, and I give Pence the No. 3 slot based on his all-around play.

Starting pitchers: Roy Halladay of the Fightin’ Phils gets the start, with teammate Cole Hamels, Jair Jurgens  and Tommy Hanson of Atlanta and Jhoulys Chacin of the Colorado Rockies filling out a dream five-man rotation.

At closer, J.J. Putz of the Arizona Diamondbacks has the top stats, and Brian Wilson of the San Francisco Giants has been huge in so many close-game victories.

This is the ballot I’m submitting to the Baseball Bloggers Alliance for its annual All-Star team. My American League choices follow in another post soon.

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Remembering – fondly – Jim “Grand Slam” Northrup of the Detroit Tigers

Posted on June 8, 2011 | Leave a comment

Jim Northrup, a power-hitting outfielder with the Detroit Tigers for many years in the 1960s and early 70s, died today at age 71. I read the sad news on my wife’s iPad just before dinner.

As a kid growing up in Cleveland, I saw Northrup and the Tigers play many, many times, at Cleveland Municipal Stadium and on TV.  Northrup was seemingly always in the lineup, just one of several Tigers who had a lot of pop in his bat (Ray Oyler and Don Wert notwithstanding.)

Northrup bedeviled the Indians over the years, no time more so than when he belted two grand slams in one game against the Tribe in 1968. I remember it happening, and I remember listening to an Indians game a few nights later when Northrup hit another slam against the White Sox, giving him three in one week.

That was a magnificent year for the Tigers, and in a previous post I noted how vividly I remember Northrup swiping the microphone from one of the announcers in the Detroit locker room after the team had clinched the American League pennant.

Northrup never compiled the stats to be considered for the Baseball Hall of Fame, but he was a good player for many years. May he rest in peace.

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Is this another “Year of the Pitcher” in Major League Baseball?

Posted on May 9, 2011 | 3 Comments

In the past few days we’ve had two no-hitters in baseball, and one has to wonder whether we’re in for another outbreak of no-no’s as we had last year. Pitchers seem to have gained the upper hand again as the Steroids Era that produced the astronomical power numbers of just a few years back fades into history.

Major league batters this year are hitting an anemic .249 in the aggregate, and pitchers are hurling at a neat and tidy earned-run average of just 3.82.

Compare that with 2001, the year Barry Bonds slugged 73 home runs: The batting average for both leagues was .267 and the ERA was 4.47.

Over the hundreds of games played each year, the difference in the numbers in seasons with nine years intervening is substantial.

But are we nearing the pitching dominance of 1968, the “Year of the Pitcher” that drove baseball’s leaders to lower the pitcher’s mound to 10 inches from 15?

We’ve got a ways to go. The batting average that year across both leagues was just .237, and the ERA was an astonishingly low 2.98.

Back in 1968 a lot of people wigged out over the relative lack of scoring and the dominance of the pitching. As I remember, it was one exciting season capped off by a terrific World Series pitting “Better Than Any” Denny McLain and his 31 victories for the Tigers against Bob Gibson and his microscopic 1.12 ERA and the St. Louis Cardinals.

Detroit won in seven games in a series that had no shortage of thrills.

I could handle another season like that.

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What’s the best time zone for baseball fans?

Posted on May 6, 2011 | 2 Comments

Road trips are rough on major league teams, particularly when making the big leap from Eastern time to Pacific time or vice versa. It’s also an issue for us baseball fans, who have to show nimble ingenuity to catch the broadcasts of our favorite teams.

This week it’s been a trade-off for me: the San Francisco Giants were at Citi Field in New York for a series with the Mets. I didn’t catch a single pitch of yesterday’s day game, which came smack in the middle of a busy work day for me out here in California.

The Cleveland Indians, however, were in Oakland for a series with the Athletics, and I managed to catch a few innings of one of the games on TV the other night. It was nice to see the Tribe live.

I spent most of the 80s in Central time in Illinois, Wisconsin and Nebraska. I have to say on balance it was easier to follow the Cubs’, Brewers’ and Royals’ road trips from there than it is to keep up with East Coast or West Coast teams from each respective time zone.

In my native Eastern time, I could gorge myself on all the Eastern and Central teams but the teams out west were a bit of a mystery.

The narrowest perspective came when I lived in New Jersey and worked in New York City. There was one team at the center of the universe, the Yankees, with occasional acknowledgment of the Boston Red Sox. (I can’t recall clearly, but I believe there was a National League team in the New York metro area.)

While the Internet has made baseball a full immersion experience around the clock, there’s still an advantage in living out West. The results come in from across the map as I watch or listen to an evening game. And newspaper coverage is more complete than it is in the east, because so many games finish after East Coast deadlines.

If I had to pick purely for baseball reasons, I think I’d keep my TV and transistor radio right here in Pacific time.

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Walk-off grand slam lifts Cleveland Indians to best April record ever

Posted on April 30, 2011 | 6 Comments

Of all the surprises in this first full month of the 2011 Major League Baseball season, the most stunning has to be the improbable success of the Cleveland Indians. Winning 9-5 on a walk-off grand slam last night by Carlos Santana, the Tribe improved to 17-8, the most April victories in franchise history.

The Indians will try for No. 18 tonight. It would be their 12th straight home win.

Even at a distance of 2,500 miles from my hometown, I can feel the excitement.

As a lifelong Tribe fan, I know this streak likely won’t last. But I’ll enjoy it for all it’s worth.

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After the first full week of play, some startling names atop the baseball standings

Posted on April 10, 2011 | 3 Comments

As I write this post, the Yankees and Red Sox (again!) are playing on the Sunday night telecast. If the Yankees win, they’ll manage a tie in first place of the American League East not with the Sox but with the Baltimore Orioles.

Whoa.

And check the AL Central standings. The Indians, who (be honest) most people on the planet expected to have a wretched year even by Cleveland standards, are on top.

No surprise in the AL West, where the Rangers have revived themselves and have raced to an 8-1 start.

Over in the National League, it’s not a big surprise that Philadelphia is leading the East. But Atlanta in the cellar? That’s a surprise. And so, frankly, is the Pirates’ .500 record in the NL Central.

Out west, the Rockies are out front and the defending champion Giants are in last place. Neither surprises me much, especially with San Francisco missing Cody Ross, who propelled their playoff offense last fall, and closer Brian Wilson off his game.

I’m glad some of the divisions are mixed up and confounding the experts. Wouldn’t it be great to see the Orioles take the AL East?

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In baseball broadcasts, there’s comfort in the home team

Posted on April 5, 2011 | 3 Comments

Major League Baseball is again offering a free preview of its TV package during April. While I never have the time to watch so much TV that I’d spring for the season-long package, I take advantage of the preview to sample games and see teams from around the American and National leagues.

Last night I caught a couple innings on cable TV of the Pirates-Cardinals game, and MLB carried the TV feed from the St. Louis broadcast team. It was a bit jarring.

While I’m sure the Cardinal announcers are comfortable and familiar to the fans in St. Louis, to a Giants fan like me I found watching the game a bit unsettling, almost as if I were peeking over the fence at a party in which I knew no one.

The Cards team did a fine job (even if they did seem to find too much fault in Pirates pitcher Charlie Morton was mowing down the Cardinals hitters.) But I’m not familiar with these broadcasters, so the game experience wasn’t as intimate and comfortable as it is when I catch a Giants broadcast with its familiar voices of Jon Miller, Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow (and Dave Fleming on radio).

The experience got me to thinking about how important the broadcasters are in our enjoyment of the game. During the Giants’ brilliant post-season run to the world championship last fall, we were forced to watch a lot of network broadcasts. That fundamentally changed the way we experience the games, and many fans griped about it.

I catch many more games on the radio than I do on TV, and the same goes there with announcers. I sample games from other markets on the MLB At Bat app on my iPhone, and some of the “homer” announcers whose style and schtick I don’t get chase me away.

On baseball broadcasts, there’s no place like home.

 

 

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Memorable opening days in Major League Baseball

Posted on March 31, 2011 | 1 Comment

The two most memorable opening days in my memory are marking significant anniversaries this year.

Forty years ago, on April 8, 1971, an unheralded rookie named Gomer Hodge drove in the winning run in the Cleveland Indians’ home opener. Somewhere in a scrapbook I have clippings from that game, the exciting finish of which I caught on the radio.

Thirty years ago, on April 16, 1981, a Thursday, I had the day off from new job at The Associated Press bureau in Milwaukee. Knowing that it was the day of the home opener for the Brewers, my wife suggested we go to the game. It was sold out, but we thought, what the heck? Let’s check the want ads.

This was long before StubHub. So we picked up that morning’s Milwaukee Sentinel and called a guy who lived not too far away on the South Side who had a pair of tickets. I don’t recall what we paid or even how we picked the tickets up, but when the game started, we were somewhere in the lower deck behind home plate at County Stadium.

We were bundled up as the temperature likely was in the low 40s, and the Brewers lost to the Indians 1-0 in a good pitching matchup between Wayne Garland of the Tribe and Mike “Mr. Warmth” Caldwell” of the Brew Crew.

I remember little of the game other than it was cold, that we wore buttons given to the fans by Pabst Blue Ribbon (they’re somewhere in the house; I’ll add the photo when I find them) and that we had  a grand time.

My wife was six month pregnant with our first child, and our best memory is of leaving at the end of the game. One of the fans exiting with us jokingly accused  my wife of trying to steal seat cushions by hiding them under her coat.

Those weren’t seat cushions. It was our daughter, who I’m proud to say inherited the baseball gene from her father.

Happy baseball season, everyone!

p.s. I cannot recall specifically it was opening day, but early one season in the mid-90s a group of us had a bratwurst and beer tailgate party at the Oakland Coliseum before an Athletics game. I’ll have to check with my suspects, er, sources.

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