Good morning.
Giving The Finger
on baseball cards –
Some fans don’t approve of the NFL players kneeling down
during the National Anthem in protest, so what would they make of one of
baseball’s greatest pitchers who flipped the bird on not one, but two baseball
cards in successive years? Why, the scoundrel corrupted America’s youth.
A top sports auction house, Robert Edward Auctions (REA), is
selling a relatively rare 1887 Old Judge tobacco card featuring “Old Hoss” Charlie Radbourn giving his fans the finger. An
astonishing 22 bids have driven the "Obscene Gesture” card up to $2,000,
with 17 days still left.
Indians
feel the pain -
Josh Tomlin’s eyes welled with tears as he searched for words to explain
what had happened. None ever came.
October, the month when championships are seized or
squandered, was callous to Cleveland once more.
“I’m not really sure how you get over something like this,”
Tomlin said after the Indians were ousted from the postseason with a 5-2 loss
to the New York Yankees on Wednesday night in Game 5 of the AL Division Series.
“I’m not really sure I’m over last year, either. The only way to get over
something like this is to go out there and win, and that’s not what happened.”
Worse than this is a loss in one of those one
game playoff series. Play an entire season and have it all taken away in one
game. Thank God the Mets never had this happen to… oh… wait.
Bullpens
-
The most striking trend of the 2017 Major League Baseball
postseason was established minutes into the very first game. With three runs in
and only one out recorded in the first inning of the American League Wild Card
game, the Yankees manager Joe Girardi pulled ace
starting pitcher Luis Severino from the mound,
commencing a parade of relief pitchers. In the bottom of the third inning, the
Twins manager Paul Molitor followed suit,
lifting his best starter, Ervin Santana, in
favor of a cadre of bullpen arms.
New York wound up prevailing 8-4, largely because its
relievers combined for 8 2/3 innings, 13 strikeouts, and only one run allowed,
while their Twins counterparts ceded four runs on six hits. The game, like many
that have followed this month, was won by the team with the superior bullpen.
How many times have I write about to those
great St. Louis bullpens that would just punch out one 95+ MPH specialist after
another? How many?
Amending replay
-
The spirit of replay review wasn’t about microscopic
technicalities, it was about getting certain calls right: home run/not a home
run, fair/foul, safe/out (in other areas, obviously, given this argument).
Major League Baseball should greatly consider amending the rules to make it so
that a player simply returning to the bag is grounds to be called safe, ending
the pedantry of these types of reviews. Semi-related: a switch from
above-ground bases to flat bases would be a welcome change as well.
Matthew Pouliot made a great point on Twitter. What we’re asking of with
players, expecting them to stay on the bag at all times while sliding back, is
not realistic. Pouliot adds that an unintended consequence of these types of
reviews is seeing more players sliding head-first into bases and, as such,
suffering more hand injuries. Even if the “spirit of the rule” argument doesn’t
jibe, the player health angle should.
Look, I’m old school and I’d rather go with the
human factor here. Take away the whole replay thing and train better umpires
(younger ones with better eyesight would help).
If you stay with replay, you have to live with
the purity of it. If a runner comes off the bag, and is tagged by a player with
a ball in their glove, he’s out. Period.
tom seaver
got his arse out of California just in time –
Mets legend Tom Seaver escaped
a really tight spot – amid the California wildfires. “Tom Terrific” and his wife, Nancy, fled from
their Napa Valley home as flames bore down on their wine country property, The
Mercury News reported. The couple fled from Calistoga at 4 a.m. Wednesday and
reunited with relatives in South Lake Tahoe later in the day, along with their
six cats, five dogs and a parrot, his daughter Anne
Seaver said.
I never thought of Seaver as an ‘escape artist’.
Starters usually hang in there under fire. This real fire was obviously much
more serious than any he was facing on the pitching mound. God to see him and
his family are safe and sound.
4 comments:
"What we’re asking of with players, expecting them to stay on the bag at all times while sliding back, is not realistic. " ?? I don't get the comment.
On the other hand, if I could chuck re-play altogether in favor of an instantaneous electronic Ball/Strike detector, if would do so immediately.
Seaver found out what a real heater is like, sadly.
That card guy was showing his split finger - and now folks want to split from their $$ for it.
Mack, I am with you on HARD throwers in pen. Faster the better.
If you know anything about Hoss Radbourn's character, then you would probably conclude it wasn't the split-finger he was showing off. I heartily recommend one of the best baseball books ever, "Fifty-Nine in '84" by Edward Achorn about the state of baseball in its fledgling days and in particular about Hoss Radbourn.
https://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Nine-84-Edward-Achorn/dp/1511397934
A Hoss is a Hoss of course, of course...he likely never heard of the term "politically correct"
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