Mack's Apples - 10-26 - Top SS in 2011 Draft, Brett Warren, Nicaragua, Ron Gardenhire, Baseball vs. Cricket

Good morning. 

I went back on Mack’s Mets to a post I had in 2011 featuring ‘my’ top 35 shortstops in the draft that year –

          

  1. Francisco Linder 5-11 170 Montverde Academy (Fl.)

2. Jason Esposito 6-1 195 Vanderbilt - junior

3. Phillip Evans 5-10 185 LaCosta Canyon High School (Ca.)

4. Christian Lopes 6-0 180 Edison High School (Ca.)

5. B A Vollmuth 6-4 210 Southern Miss. - sophomore

6. Tyler Greene 6-2 185 Roswell High School (Ga.)

7. Javier Baez 5-10 170 Arlington Country Day High School (Fl.)

8. Julius Gaines 5-10 154 Luella High School (Ga.)

9. Brad Miller 6-0 180 Clemson - sophomore

10. Joe Panik 6-1 180 St. John’s - junior

13. Deven Marrero 6-1 172 Arizona State - sophomore

28. Johnny Eierman 6-1 195 Warsaw High School (Mo.)

Honorable Mention: - Austin Nola, Addison Russell, Corey Oswalt

Brent Warren -

At 17, Brent Warren, thought he had his fture well in hand. He was a star baseball player with a 90-plus mph fastball and a keen batting eye at Xavier High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. There were scholarship offers from just about every major collegiate program in the country. College coaches and Major League scouts routinely dropped him letters and swung by his house to chat.

In his early teens, Warren began noticing his heart would occasionally skip multiple beats. His blood pressure was always exceptionally elevated. And there were times when he would pass clean out. There were always ready explanations. But one afternoon, as he lay on a couch, a Gatorade bottle resting on his chest, Warren watched as the bottle jumped with each pounding beat of his heart. He had a physical coming soon and he resolved to ask his doctor, who scheduled an electrocardiogram.

The test results were staggering.

            Don’t worry… this story ends well.

Nicaragua has unveiled its long-awaited baseball stadium in Managua, replacing the former baseball field built in 1948. The new structure will hold up to 15,670 people and is the country’s first stadium constructed to Major League Baseball, MLB, standards and codes.

The stadium took almost two years and US$36 million to build. The facility can hold 1,000 cars, large screens to view games, advanced technology and a security system that enables game-goers to evacuate within 10 minutes.

And trust me… you don’t want to go to a packed stadium in Nicaragua unless you have a plan to get out of it in less than 10 minutes.

Ron Gardenhire -

Not long ago, there was a great divide in baseball between the traditionalists and the stat geeks over how to build and run a baseball team. That time is over. Sabermetrics won in a rout.

More evidence was on display on Friday during new Detroit Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire's introductory press conference. Both Gardenhire and his boss, general manager Al Avila, took great pains to assure everyone that Gardy wasn't blind to the evolution in baseball that was just getting started when he became a manager for the first time in 2002.

"Everybody changes," said Gardenhire, who then realized he was quoting a movie line. "I feel like Rocky."

Mack’s Mets writer, David Rubin, wanted Gardenhire oh so bad as the next Mets manager. David is right. He would have  made a good pick.

 Baseball vs. Cricket -

IN EARLY SUMMER 1859, ST. George’s Cricket Club found itself at an existential crossroads. Established in 1838, the Manhattan-based organization had for decades worked assiduously to, in the words of an 1859 club pamphlet, “see Cricket more generally established, better understood, and more regularly practiced” in America. In this quest, the club had initially benefited from its sport’s old-world cachet. Cricket offered American sportsmen a uniform and replicable product. Conversely, its chief competitor—“Base Ball”—had until recently remained provincial and largely underdeveloped.

And who would have believed that the old song could have been 

    “and it’s one, two, three corridors of uncertainty of FOW in the old ballgame”.