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12/28/11

Baseball – Steven Cohen, National Pastime, Game 162, Dale Murphy, Yorvit Torrealba

Steven Cohen, a billionaire eight times over, is bidding for the Dodgers in a process tilted toward the high bidder. However, the East Coast hedge-fund executive is not content to let his wealth speak for itself. He has engaged one of America's notable sports architecture firms to propose renovations to Dodger Stadium, allied himself with one of baseball's power brokers, secured the support of at least two prominent Angelenos and met with several major league owners. He was joined in those meetings by Arn Tellem, an influential sports agent who could run the Dodgers if Cohen were to buy the team. http://www.latimes.com/sports/baseball/mlb/la-sp-1228-dodgers-steve-cohen-20111228,0,2704097.story?track=rss&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=53322

McGwire's new home run record would not stand for long. In fact in 2001, Barry Bonds broke the single season record with 73 home runs. Bonds was amazing that year, simply crushing everything he hit. Not to mention, he also set the walks record that year with 177. From the early 90's until the Mitchell report surfaced in 2003 and steroids was a huge scandal in Major league baseball. Basically, steroids tainted the game of baseball and the game was just never the same. In conclusion, I regret to say that baseball our national pastime is long gone. Thanks to steroids, baseball attendance ratings have plummeted dramatically. However, sports fans have adapted and chosen a new pastime. It seems football came up in the ranks rather quickly and remains there until further notice, but for this sports fan baseball will always be in my heart http://www.streetarticles.com/baseball/baseball-is-it-still-our-national-pastime

Game 162 — all of them, unfolding simultaneously — was the greatest night of regular-season sports in my lifetime. But the best of it was that rain-soaked game between the collapsing Boston Red Sox and the less dramatically but more consistently miserable Baltimore Orioles. Tampa Bay's ridiculous 8-7 comeback win over the New York Yankees was awesome, too, but cynics could (rightly) argue that the Rays benefited from Joe Girardi's use of 37 different pitchers, including at least two janitors and a plumber. It was an impure spectacle. And the St. Louis Cardinals and the Atlanta Braves didn't matter as much, because neither of them was going to win the World Series anyway. (Wait. WHAT?) The Red Sox and the Orioles played an actual game, incredibly meaningful, strung out in its agonizing entirety, and with so many what-ifs and should-have-beens it risked keeping the insufferable Red Sox Nation gnashing its collective teeth forever, which did amazing things for my black, black heart. It was so good because it was so close and so terrible. Jonathan Papelbon is one pitch away, then back-to-back doubles, and then Robert Andino's flaming-arrow squib to left, Carl Crawford's sliding trap, and finally — bedlam - http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7380648/the-year-sports

I think Dale Murphy’s peak is Hall of Fame-worthy. From 1982 through 1987 — six years — he hit .289/.382/.531, won two MVPs and five Gold Gloves, led the league in home runs twice, RBIs twice, slugging twice, runs once and walks once. I’m not saying, by the way, that he DESERVED all those MVPs and Gold Gloves, but he was a great player and a good fielder, and over that time he might have been the second-best player in the National League. I do think Murphy was, at his best, a better player than Jim Rice and Andre Dawson, who were both elected to the Hall of Fame over the last few years. I don’t mean that as a knock on either one. I just think that Murphy had more great years than either of them. http://blogs.thescore.com/mlb/2011/12/28/three-cheers-for-reason

This isn't a failed drug test or a drunk and disorderly citation; two of the many things that I'm sure carry different weight in different leagues. This situation is a blatant disregard for one of the tenets of baseball, no matter what league you're playing in. Baseball at every level has dealt with cheaters and entitled attitudes, but one of the first lessons a little leaguer learns is that you have to respect the umpires. Sure, we grow up and develop tempers. We get emotionally invested in certain moments of certain games. We yell and point and carry on, and then we go to the dugout and punch a Gatorade cooler. It happens. What can't happen, though, is letting a player get away with assaulting an umpire without any punishment from the pre-eminent league in the world. I'd like to see Major League Baseball - or, more likely the Texas Rangers - suspend Yorvit Torrealba for 10-20 games. Not enough to cripple his season or career, but enough to make it known that the league won't stand for that kind of disrespect and reckless attitude on the diamond http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ycn-10756753

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