Tag Archives: baseball

Separated at Birth?

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For the last several months, I’ve been trying to figure out how I could contribute to this fine electronic publication. Today’s that day. Why today? Because today (er, yesterday) I violated my self-imposed avoidance of all things Red Sox that commenced approximately 3 minutes after the worst 3 minutes of my sporting life. Ok, second worst. Well, no, third worst. Anyways, I had planned on extending this to Spring Training, but with the news of a new manager, I was forced to check in a little bit.

While grabbing a beverage at the neighborhood watering hole last night, the surrounding TVs were all tuned into a muted Sportscenter and the Bobby Valentine story was in heavy rotation. From the headlines I gathered some elementary information about the signing (and boy was I peeved that Aaron f’ing Boone was the man on the scene). As Valentine’s smug grin repeatedly flashed on the screen, I kept thinking, “Man, he looks so similar to someone…” My first thought…an extra on Happy Days? No, that wasn’t it. I went to bed trying to figure it out. Then, suddenly, it came to me.

Bobby V and Nat from the Pitch Pit are totally twinzies! I was really hoping that as the new skipper, he’d emulate the fatherly Nat, minus the high drama. Alas, seems like things are already off to a rocky start. And with that, it’s back to my Red Sox foxhole I go… See you in Fawt Mayahs.

The Classical preview and Bill “Spaceman” Lee

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I’ve previously mentioned The Classical, the forthcoming sports writing blog currently in preview mode. Their plan is to get up and running in a month or so, and I hope to offer my thoughts on the new site shortly thereafter.

In the meantime, they’ve been posting a few articles and other bits to give readers a sense of what’s to come. Here’s Paul Flannery on Bill Lee:

Keep reading…

MLB Free Agency 2011

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I was hoping that this article would still be topical by the time I started writing it yesterday night, and lo and behold the only free agent of consequence to sign on November 3rd was Juan Rivera.  I have literally no idea who he is.  I watch at least a hundred Mariners games each year (MLB.tv FTW), plus a good number of Phillies games and even as much of a Tigers game as I can stomach now and then.  Between that and fantasy baseball, I feel like I have a pretty good handle on who’s who in the MLB and I had literally no idea who this guy was.*  So basically he wasn’t going to be on this list anyway.
 
Here is a list of ten of the top free agents and where I think they will sign:
 
Albert Pujols
2011 team: Cardinals
2012 team: Cardinals
Why: Everyone has been jawing all season long about Pujols testing the market, but I think a lot of that was ESPN puffing the subject up so they had something else to talk about during Sports Center besides whether Tom Brady having longer hair than Aaron Rodgers makes him a better QB.  When all is said and done, I think this is going to turn out like the Matt Holliday-STL deal where there weren’t a ton of other serious suitors for the money and the player didn’t want to leave St. Louis anyway.  Add in that two of the big free agent spenders, the Yankees and Red Sox already have top tier 1Bs and you don’t have anyone to seriously compete with the Cardinals at the price Pujols wants.  So in the end St. Louis will end up overpaying a bit, talking heads who said that Pujols would sign for 300 million will complain about how St. Louis overpaid, St. Louis fans will complain about how they overpaid, but inside everyone will be happy.
Outside shot: Real Madrid?  At that price, I don’t know.
Keep reading…

Understanding the Red Sox’s collapse

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How do you write the possessive of “Red Sox”? Anyway, after Boston’s major league baseball team ended the regular season with a collapse of historic proportions, commodawg expressed his disgust with the organization, particularly for the decision to part with Terry Francona, who, it must be said, did a good job as color commentator opposite Joe Buck for a couple postseason games on the AL side.

Today, though, we begin to understand more fully why the Red Sox fell apart. The Boston Globe reports:

Boston’s three elite starters went soft, their pitching as anemic as their work ethic. The indifference of Beckett, Lester, and Lackey in a time of crisis can be seen in what team sources say became their habit of drinking beer, eating fast-food fried chicken, and playing video games in the clubhouse during games while their teammates tried to salvage a once-promising season.
…
Sources said Beckett, Lester, and Lackey, who were joined at times by Buchholz, began the practice late in 2010. The pitchers not only continued the routine this year, sources said, but they joined a number of teammates in cutting back on their exercise regimens despite appeals from the team’s strength and conditioning coach Dave Page. 

The full article is here.

Sportsnight in the D: ALCS & MNF

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For the first time in ten years, Monday Night Football was in Detroit, and following a 24-13 victory over Chicago, the Lions are 5-0 for the first time since 1956. The home crowd affected the game, helping to cause the Bears’ nine false-start penalties, and officials only had to stop play once for a foreign object thrown onto the field, which I think is pretty good, all things considered. ESPN’s decision to replace now-banished Hank Jr.‘s traditional open with a Detroit-themed segment narrated by legend Barry Sanders was a nice touch too. All of this helped distract Motown sports fans from the painful, extra-inning demise of their baseball team that concluded moments before kickoff. Even if the Tigers were healthy, I’m not sure Texas still isn’t the better team, and the Tigers certainly aren’t healthy. Down 0-2, they return to Detroit for the third and fourth games of the series. Right now, coming home is about the only thing cutting in their favor in this series. If Calvin Johnson can swing a bat, now would be the time for him to speak up.

Tigers win Game 5, series against Yankees, 3-2

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Here's your Game 5 winner

The Detroit Tigers hung on to beat the New York Yankees in a decisive fifth game last night, advancing to the ALCS, which starts Saturday night in Arlington, TX.

I questioned Jim Leyland’s personnel decisions before and during the game, but they turned out to be exactly the right moves. Keep reading…

Jim Leyland’s ALDS Game 5 lineup

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When a reader told me he’d seen Tigers’ manager Jim Leyland wearing a suit on TBS last night, I knew something was awry. Earlier in the day, ESPN Insider, Vanderbilt graduate, and Vermonster Buster Olney reported that Justin Verlander would not start Game 5 against the Yankees in New York, and that Don Kelly would start at third, with Magglio Ordonez in right field.

I’ve only ever seen Leyland in a baseball uniform, includng hat, or some other Belichickian attire like a windbreaker pullover or hooded sweatshirt, so to see him dressed as pictured above somewhat shocks my brain.

Less shocking, but still surprising, were Leyland’s starting lineup choices. That Verlander would not start was expected. In the playoffs, you have to be able to count on your number two starter in a must-win game, and Doug Fister is more than competent to handle that task. I’m still scratching my head over the Kelly/Ordonez decision, though, and I’m trying to figure out which came first. Both mostly play right field. Ordonez has been an offensive power in the past, but he generally has cooled off in the last year or two. Kelly usually is described as a defensive replacement, meaning that he does not hit especially well, although he has been making good contact in this series.

Leyland had been working a similar pairing at third base with the recently acquired Wilson Betemit and longtime Tiger Brandon Inge. Like the Kelly/Ordonez pairing, one (Betemit) is the better hitter and the other (Inge) the defensive replacement. Also like Kelly/Ordonez, Betemit’s bat has cooled off in this series, while Inge’s has heated up.

In a vacuum, Leyland’s decision to start Kelly and Ordonez is not necessarily strange, but when examined together with the consequence of that decision– both Betemit and Inge on the bench– I have a hard time understanding it. Which is why I, unlike Leyland, wear a suit most of the time and don’t manage a baseball team. Still, I hope the Tigers aren’t getting away from what got them to this point.

Another winning Monday

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It’s First Monday over at the Supreme Court, and this Monday feels like a pretty good one here in ALDLAND too. Of course, half the teams that played this weekend lost, but, fortunately, the teams I was tracking were not in that half of the teams.

More on the Little Brown Jug schellacking I witnessed later. In Columbus, Michigan State gutted out (aka failed to choke away) an ugly win, and their sister Southern school, Clemson, dominated Virginia Technological Institute. Illinois had an exciting win at home against would-be in-state rival Northwestern, and Wisconsin welcomed Nebraska to the Big Ten by beating them by a lot of points while keeping them from scoring many in Camp Randall.

In baseball, the ALDS between the Yankees and Tigers got off to an awkward start due to wet Gotham weather. Detroit comes home today with a split in the Bronx and the aces back on the mound tonight. The rain suspension on Friday night means Verlander and Sabathia effectively will appear only once in this best-of-five series. It also means that A.J. Burnett probably will have to go for the Yankees, and he is not very good these days.

Back to football, the Lions overcame a 20+ point deficit on the road for the second straight week, an NFL first, handing Dallas their worst ever come-from-ahead defeat. (The twenty-four-point third-quarter deficit made it the largest road comeback in NFL history.)  Two pick-sixes and a third interception by the Detroit defense spurred Matthew Stafford, Calvin Johnson, and the Lions offense into action. The undefeated Lions meet the 2-2 Bears next week on Monday night.

Why I’m not going to see Moneyball

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If you’ve set eyes upon an operating television, magazine, or newspaper in the last month, you probably are aware that the big-screen adaptation of Michael Lewis’ 2003 book Moneyball is coming out tonight, and I won’t be there to see it.

More than anything, I’m surprised this movie was a) even made, and b) made as a major picture featuring a star of the notoriety of Brad Pitt. The book, a work of nonfiction, is eight years old. It describes a way of thinking that has become uncontroversial, if not widely accepted, and that, as applied in the story told in the book, did not come to lasting fruition (i.e., Oakland is bad).

The celebrated nerd motif can work as general interest film for grownups if it adds an element of widely recognized and desired glamour. For example, 21 worked because it put the nerds in Vegas. Vegas unquestionably represents glamour, allure, desire, risk, and danger to all Americans, even those who’ve never been and never want to go, for whom it’s the forbidden other. Vegas attracts your attention, even if not your urge for physical presence, and seeing it through the eyes of sheltered nerds taking on the Vegas establishment allows the audience to feel the thrills and chills of the story. You didn’t need to understand specifically how they were cheating (or whatever), you just needed to understand that they were cheating, and you were along for the ride. Kevin Spacey and a major-marketed release were justified.

Baseball can’t carry nerd protagonists the way Las Vegas can, not even Major League Baseball, and especially not a team without household-name superstars, and really especially not a team without household-name superstars doing something like juicing or gambling. The players aren’t even the focus– it’s the administrative folks, and they aren’t Jerry Jones or Al Davis. Heck, even Marge Schott would make this more compelling. It isn’t a comedy baseball movie, and it isn’t a heartfelt tale of athletic achievement. It’s Titanic without the love story: great new idea gets carried out, and, albeit less dramatically, the boat sinks. And you know all of this before setting foot inside the theater.

It isn’t that I don’t like going to the movies– I’m looking forward to a few upcoming ones in particular (The Rum Diary, the Coen brothers’ Dave Van Ronk project, and J. Edgar)– but even thinking about sitting through a screening of Moneyball makes me tired. (Although if they promised to reveal the history of the Athletics’ elephant logo, I might change my tune.)