175 replies to this topic

[Wilfrid]

(Well, the only general thread I could find was MLB 2008.)

The pieces are starting to fall into place. I hate Lackey going to the Red Sox, but their offensive line-up is steadily growing weaker. Giving up Lee for Halladay is quite a statement by the Phillies - they must think they're the Yankees suddenly. I hear the arguments about Halladay's numbers, especially against the big threats, being better than Lee's, but come the post-season one ace is not going to be enough. You don't have to win against Halladay (or Lee), just against the other guys. The Yankees only had three post-season pitchers, but opponents knew that if they didn't beat Sabathia they had to beat Pettitte and Burnett.

A bit puzzled by the current Yankees DH situation. I can understand letting Matsui go, although he's a treasure for anyone coming off the bench in a clutch situation, but I am going to be less happy if they don't succeed in keeping Damon. If Damon goes, a number two hitter will need to be found or manufactured (Cano?), but if the DH spot turns out to be free, I don't know there are much better DHs around than Matsui.

Right field remains an undiscussed mystery. And more starters will be needed for the regular season.

[Miguel Gierbolini]

Is Pete Rose still out of the Hall of Fame?

[hollywood]

Is Pete Rose still out of the Hall of Fame?

True.

[hollywood]

All these big player deals are confusing. Odd that while all the other trades are happening, whither the Dodgers? Haven't even heard anything about Le Divorce in a while.

eta: Apparently, the Dodgers are in a holding pattern. Not gonna do anything that costs money till the divorce is worked out, if then. Probably just gonna bump the ticket prices and raise the cost of beer by fifty cents or something.

[hollywood]

Things are complicated enough for the Dodgers. Now, Matt Kemp has hooked up with Rihanna. Look out world.

[Wilfrid]

I assume she's a cricket fan, so he will need to spend some time explaining to her how a pitch is not actually a full toss.

[Liza]

Xavier Nady to the Cubs

[Lex]

As hard as it will be to wean ourselves from the thrills of curling, Mets and Yankees spring training games are about to begin. They're being broadcast on SNY and YES.

The Mets will play today and tomorrow at 1:00 and on Thursday in prime time.

The Yankees' first game will be broadcast tomorrow at 1:00PM.

[Rich]

I think Woods' next apology is to A-Rod for recommending Gaeta.

[Wilfrid]

Now this is hardly the time to be making wisecracks like, I really should try to watch more Red Sox games, but I have to link to an article I read in the latest New York this evening, which we can safely assume was researched and largely written before the Red Sox problems deepened over the last few days. It describes cutting edge statistical techniques which generate exciting new evidence that our eyes deceive us; that apparently mediocre players are in fact excellent, while some of the game's stars make little contribution to their team's progress. (The version of this I recall from a year or so ago had Derek Jeter demonstrated to be the worst position player in baseball. This had me looking across the diamond at Jason Giambi with renewed admiration and respect).

The exciting thing is that the technique now described is alleged (though it cannot be proven) to be the basis on which the Red Sox confidently loaded up on Beltre, Cameron and others, apparently leaving their team weak on offense and a little long in the tooth. Not at all. This was, it seems a shrewd strategy, and all that is really needed is for the players to square up and do what the figures say they'll do.

[Lex]

I'm a week late with this one but it needs to be told.

I'm driving home a week ago Sunday on the Garden State Parkway with the Yankee game on. John Sterling is doing the play by play and Nick Swisher is at bat.

"Choate kicks and deals. Swisher hits a deep fly ball! It is high! It is far! It's outta here!"

"Nick is rounding the bases. (Long pause.) He's Swishilicious!"

This would be embarrassing enough if Sterling was calling games for the Toledo Mudhens or the Bridgeport Bluefish. For a Yankee announcer to be doing this is just awful. He is a hack of the first order.

[Anthony Bonner]

I'm a week late with this one but it needs to be told.

I'm driving home a week ago Sunday on the Garden State Parkway with the Yankee game on. John Sterling is doing the play by play and Nick Swisher is at bat.

"Choate kicks and deals. Swisher hits a deep fly ball! It is high! It is far! It's outta here!"

"Nick is rounding the bases. (Long pause.) He's Swishilicious!"

This would be embarrassing enough if Sterling was calling games for the Toledo Mudhens or the Bridgeport Bluefish. For a Yankee announcer to be doing this is just awful. He is a hack of the first order.

http://twitter.com/fakejsterling

[Wilfrid]

What about those Red Sox, though? Francona will surely have to bite the bullet and start benching Ortiz for Lowell more and more frequently. Ortiz is a deadloss DH right now, and Lowell can do nothing else except share knitting patterns with Jason Varitek.

[Lex]

What about those Red Sox, though? Francona will surely have to bite the bullet and start benching Ortiz for Lowell more and more frequently. Ortiz is a deadloss DH right now, and Lowell can do nothing else except share knitting patterns with Jason Varitek.

I think if I were you I'd wait until the all star break before I started gloating. Last year Ortiz didn't find his stroke until June.

Here's Bill Simmons on ESPN writing his obituary -

At first, we Sox fans thought we were just watching an early-season slump. Then three weeks passed and we started worrying. The guy couldn't hit the ball out of the infield. His bat was so slow he had to cheat on fastballs; even then, he couldn't catch up. One swing a night made him look like the drunkest batter in a beer league softball game. Look, I've seen slumps. This was different. This was the collapse of a career.

But it ended a little differently. From Wikipedia -

Ortiz struggled in the beginning of the 2009 season, hitting only .208 with no home runs and 30 strikeouts in his first 34 games. On May 20, Ortiz hit his first home run of the season off Brett Cecil of the Toronto Blue Jays, ending his career-high 149 homerless at-bat streak.[5] In June, Ortiz broke out of his slump by hitting 7 home runs with 18 RBI. On July 9, Ortiz hit his 300th career home run against Luke Hochevar of the Kansas City Royals at Fenway Park. Ortiz continued to recover from his slow start by clubbing 7 home runs with 24 RBI in July and hitting 7 more home runs in August. On September 15, Ortiz hit his 270th career home run as a DH off of Jose Arredondo of the Los Angeles Angels breaking the all time record held by Frank Thomas. Ortiz finished the season with 28 HR'S and 99 RBI.

Based on the way the Yankees are going and the way Boston is now built I'd say the Yanks will win the division. But Boston may still win the wild card.

[Lex]

By rights this belongs on the Goodbye thread but it's real place is here on the baseball thread. Ernie Harwell, the radio broadcaster of the Detroit Tigers for more than 40 years, died Tuesday. By every account he was a true gentleman besides being an outstanding broadcaster. I'd come to know his work through a series of TV documentaries. He was one of the greats.

Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press wrote a tribute from the heart.

Ernie Harwell: Gone now, but never forgotten

The Voice of Summer died in the spring, just before the Tigers’ first pitch of the evening. That was fitting. Ernie Harwell never wanted to interrupt the game.

Mr. “Looong Gone” is gone now. Like the home run that lands in the seats, like the final out of the ninth inning, like the thousands of games he closed with his signature sign-offs, his genteel voice telling us he’d see us tomorrow. Gone now. No more tomorrows. At 92, after a battle with bile duct cancer that stretched into extra innings, Ernie let go of this world and moved on to the higher place from which we were certain he was sent.

Gone now. We knew this was coming. Ernie, in his final grace, prepared us for it. He told us not to worry. We still worried. He told us not to cry. We cried anyhow. He told us he had led the life he’d wanted, that he was ready to say good-bye.

But we were not.

“I know into whose arms I’m gonna fall,” he told me in one of our last conversations, on a brightly lit stage in front of a sold-out Fox Theatre, a last, packed-house tribute to a man who became arguably the most popular figure in the history of our state simply by doing the same gentle thing over and over, calling baseball games, remaining consistent, pure, good and true, even as the world around him became anything but. Ernie stood out because he stood still. He was reliable as a rock. A soul in a void. A heart in an often heartless time.

As long as there was Ernie, there was still a piece of childhood, of summers gone by, of what baseball was supposed to be about, a pastime, a joyous diversion, youth — good, sweet, innocent youth. Even after Harwell stopped broadcasting nearly eight years ago, just knowing he was here, seeing him on occasion at the stadium, his hands dug in his back pockets, that wide grin beneath a funny beret, made us feel that things were still OK in baseball, because the Voice of Summer was still around, watching over the game.

Gone now.

A man we all knew so well

And so the time comes to write the piece you never want to write. The one you build for over a career and must punch out in a matter of hours. So unfair, it seems. But then, what can I tell you about William Earnest Harwell that you don’t already know? Normally, when a sports hero dies, those of us on the inside can share the unique perspective of “a person who knew him.” But everybody knew Ernie. If you heard him, you knew him. If you met him, you knew him. He was that rare thing, a man the same on the front side and the back.

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Like Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium, his wake was held at the Tiger's ballpark so the fans could say goodbye. Thousands came and stood in line.

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DETROIT — His voice was a unifying factor that often helped tie a fractured city together.

And, under blue skies and bracing winds Thursday, fans came by the thousands to pay final respects to the favorite son of Detroit Tigers baseball, the beloved broadcaster Ernie Harwell.

Harwell, 92, died Tuesday of inoperable cancer, first disclosed last fall. Since his death, Tigers fans here and across the country have talked of little else, posting memories on Web message boards, Twitter and Facebook, where one R.I.P. Ernie Harwell page accumulated more than 7,200 participants in two days.

Fans were already waiting before dawn, when Harwell’s coffin arrived at Comerica Park, just north of downtown. By noon, the line to see Harwell, who lay in repose just inside the front gates, had nearly encircled the building. Visitation was expected to run until midnight, before a private burial.

Urban and suburban, young and old, notable and ordinary, they came from all directions in the area. Some came wearing suits on their way to work. Others came in casual clothes, maneuvering wheelchairs or pushing strollers.

“It was just very important for me to be here; there was no one like him,” said Laura Loviska, 52, of suburban Westland, Mich. She stood in line with a bouquet of irises and lilacs, freshly cut from her garden.

“He was like family to us, to everybody here,” added Loviska, a freelance photographer.

Adam Purlinski, 17, said he was too young to remember the broadcasts by Harwell, who called his first Tigers game in 1960 and retired eight years ago.

“But my dad and all my aunts and uncles love baseball, and I love baseball, and they talked about him all the time,” he said.

The scene inside the ballpark was somber. With sacred music playing in the background, visitors approached the oak coffin with brass handles, which bore a folded American flag and the body of Harwell, who was dressed in a dark suit and one of his signature brimmed hats.

The coffin, set in front of a statue of Harwell, was flanked by several large bouquets and enlarged photos. Dozens of smaller bouquets were nearby.

Harwell planned the ceremony before his death, said Dave Dombrowski, the Tigers’ general manager.

It brought to mind a viewing for Rosa Parks, the civil rights pioneer who was also a Detroit fixture, that took place at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History after her death here in 2005.

“This is how he wanted it,” said Dombrowski, who stood near the coffin for hours, shaking visitors’ hands. “He talked about it.”

Upon approaching the coffin, many visitors doffed their caps; others wept openly. One man knelt. Some took photos.

“Ernie Harwell is what’s right about life,” Dombrowski said. “He was a jewel in everyone’s eyes.”

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