Finger Food

Jul

Travels with Charlie

Categories: Charlie Kerfeld
Tags: fun, guys named Charlie (or Charley), Ruben Amaro Jr.

Charlie Kerfeld was a pretty decent pitcher in his day, so when general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. sent him to the Dominican Republic for a thorough scouting report on Pedro Martinez, he sent someone who knows his stuff.

Plus, who wouldn’t want a trip to the Dominican this time of year even if it was for work? Ol’ Charlie Kerfeld probably could have used an extra day to work on his tan, too.

Kerfeld, of course, is a special assistant for Amaro these days, but back when he was playing for the Astros in the 1980s, ol’ Charlie (or is it Charley?) looked like he knew how to have fun.

Take a look at Kerfeld after the Astros clinched the NL West in 1986… does that guy know how to party or what?

Here’s Charlie:

Oh, and how about that plumage growing out of the back of Charlie’s cap… it’s like a rare, exotic bird.

Jul

It ain’t about the numbers

By jrfinger 1 Comment

Categories: Shane Victorino
Tags: All-Star Game, Charlie, Chase Utley, Pablo Sandoval, Ryan Howard, St. Louis

I can’t help it. I know all about the objectivity of the job and all of that, but I really can’t help it.

I really hope Shane Victorino makes it to the All-Star Game next week in St. Louis.

There, I said it. In fact, I told Victorino as much before Monday night’s game against the Reds. Of course I told him this after I busted his stones about Pablo Sandoval having far superior statistics and that the Giants’ rookie really suffered an injustice when he wasn’t named to the National League squad.

“It ain’t about numbers anymore,” Victorino said. “It’s a popularity contest.”

He has that right, but then again it’s always been a popularity contest. But my motives for Victorino getting to St. Louis are completely selfish. Oh sure, Victorino is as worthy of an All-Star nod as anyone in the league. Though his numbers don’t pop off the page, they are above average and he has been a consistent cog for a team that has been wildly inconsistent.

But I told Vic that I hope he gets there even after he explained how he spent Monday afternoon going door-to-door along Oregon Avenue with Mayor Michael Nutter. Of course he had to endure more teasing about the mayor of Philadelphia taking time out of his busy day to help him get to the All-Star Game.

“What, are you going to go help him with his budget deficit after the game? You’re doing all of this just to spend three days in St. Louis?”

Victorino knew why guys like me want him in St. Louis. He understands the media-player dynamic and has seen how stodgy and scripted ballplayers are in press situations. It’s like they are coached to be as uninteresting as possible, which is no fun for anyone.

Nope, there is no altruism about wanting Victorino to get to the All-Star Game and he knew it.

“You just want me to do something bleeping stupid at the All-Star Game,” he said.

“Well, yeah…”

Oh, but it was much more than that. Certainly if Vic were to “do something bleeping stupid,” it would be very entertaining. In fact, it was a blast to see him in the World Baseball Classic and the madness he must have spewed into the notebooks of the scribes covering those games. However, if Victorino were to get to St. Louis there would actually be someone (gasp!) to talk to. That’s downright revolutionary in this age of verbosity.

Besides, the other Phillies in St. Louis won’t be free to cut loose like Victorino. Chase Utley doesn’t have much to say unless he’s dropping F-bombs before large crowds and Ryan Howard will be in his hometown and surely will have a limited amount of time to hang around and chat. Manager Charlie Manuel likely will only be able to offer official comments from a podium or to the right’s holders, though we’re pretty sure Chuck will offer up some nuggets to the hometown scribes.

Charlie is good like that.

Nevertheless, it’s Victorino who might be the go-to guy. Hey, the guy just can’t help himself. Here’s an example of that:

After Game 3 of the NLCS at Dodger Stadium last October, I waited out Victorino. Taking his time to emerge from the off-limits areas, Victorino knew media types wanted to ask him about the bench-clearing incident with Hiroki Kuroda. Word had been sent out that he wasn’t going to talk about it, but c’mon. We all knew how he was.

So when he walked over to his locker in that old visitors’ clubhouse in Los Angeles, I kind of held up my palms, shrugged my shoulders and said, “Yo Shane, what’s up?”

“What’s up with what?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Yeah.”

“Well…”

“I’m not talking about it.”

That’s when he talked about it for 15 minutes.

Hey, the guy just can’t help himself and bygolly, get this guy to the All-Star Game so we have someone to talk to.

And just to be sure, I won’t cast a vote for Victorino. I’ll root for him to get there, but won’t cross the line to actually cast a vote.

Besides, have you seen Sandoval’s numbers? How did he get left off the roster?

Oh yeah, has anyone seen the big No. 8 on the big Amtrak building next to 30^th Street Station? Obviously the city is rallying to try and get Victorino that trip to St. Louis, but what about the guys who actually made the team already? Charlie, Utley, Howard and Raul Ibanez are in… where’s their building?

Jul

‘27 Yankees meet the ‘09 Team Astana

By jrfinger Leave a Comment

Categories: Lance Armstrong
Tags: Alberto Contador, Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer, Team Astana, Tour de France

So last night I was up living the life and decompressing after the trip home from Atlanta that took me through Charlotte to Baltimore before finding my car intact at the BWI Marriott, and just skipping through the channels on ol’ tee-vee. That’s what I do late at night when everyone else is in bed and I’m knee-deep in baseball hours and too tired to read or write.

Anyway, the Versus channel had a show on called, Lance Armstrong: The Look Back, but when glanced at quickly on the scroll all it said was, “The Look.” That alone made it sound like a pretty good show. After all, Lance was known for flashing that Look in the peloton during his seven victories in the Tour de France, and the lead-in to the program showed that moment when he was riding toward his sixth victory when he turned all the way around in the saddle, stared right into the face of Jan Ullrich to challenge him before he rode off.

Actually, Lance did a little more than simply challenge Ullrich in the race. He just might have challenged his manhood, too.

Either way, it’s pretty clear what Versus is banking its coverage of the 2009 Tour de France on. Lance, indeed, is back and the cycling fans watching in the U.S. will get all of the details.

There’s certainly no surprise there. After three years away from the race – three of the worst years ever at the TdF (and they can only blame themselves) – the grand champ is back. Since his last victory he ran three marathons, hung out with Matthew McConaughey and one of the Olsen Twins, became a father again, had his shoulder put back together with more screws found in a three-bedroom apartment and got back into shape for the three grueling weeks of the most famous bike race on earth.

In a sense Lance retired from his retirement because it was way too busy. Why not just race a bike a couple thousand miles through the French Alps?

Nevertheless, there are reports that Lance is, indeed, the most intimidating and formidable rider in the ’09 race. No argument here. There’s The Look, the seven titles, the ability to endure ridiculous levels of pain, plus the dude is fit. Even at 37 Lance reportedly has been turning in the same type of workouts he did during the apex of his title run. In fact, he could be one of the best riders in the race…

That is if he didn’t ride for Astana.

Armstrong opened the 2009 Tour de France with a time trial in Monte Carlo that put him in fourth place… on Team Astana.

That sounds about right, too. Astana is loaded like the ’27 Yankees or an All-Star team. One stage in and the team already has four riders in the Top 10 and likely will move all four of those riders up even higher in the overall standings. A Top 4 sweep wouldn’t be far-fetched.

But for as strong as Astana is with Armstrong and American Levi Leipheimer and German Andreas Kloden, they are all just there to carve a path for Alberto Contador.

It’s Contador’s race and everyone else is just riding in it.

Contador finished second in the first time trial and that discipline isn’t even his top strength. The 26-year-old Spaniard is a climber with one TdF title under his belt from 2007 when Michael Rasmussen was booted out just days away from winning. Regardless, if Contador doesn’t win then something extraordinary must have gone wrong.

If Contador doesn’t win, Levi Leipheimer will instead.

Back to the Versus show…

The episode of The Look I caught was the epic Stage 17 of the 2004 Tour de France. That was the one where Floyd Landis and Lance Armstrong took on the world and won. It was where Lance stared down Ullrich, Floyd earned the nickname “Mofo of the Mountains,” and was famously had an in-race dialogue to go like this:

Lance: How bad do you want to win a stage in the Tour de France?

Floyd: Real bad.

Lance: How fast can you go downhill?

Floyd: I go downhill real fast. Can I do it?

Lance: Sure you can do it … ride like you stole something, Floyd.

In the end, Floyd couldn’t fend off the best riders in the world until Lance showed up with a mad sprint to the line to win the stage.

Take a look:

Jul

Searching for an answer

By jrfinger Leave a Comment

Categories: Chase Utley

ATLANTA – The clubhouse workers had just packed up all of the laptops and loaded them on the truck bound for the airport. Meanwhile, the giant TV pushed just off the center of the room at Turner Field was snapped off so the only noise coming from the visitors’ room at Turner Field emanated from players packing up their gear and water trickling out of the showers.

But the important elements were that the laptops were packed away and the eerie silence that shrouds the room after a lost baseball game. Without those laptops, Chase Utley didn’t know what to do with himself. How could he study game video into the early hours of the morning without those laptops?

So still dressed in his post-game workout gear, Utley was forced to move from the folding table that held the bank of computers to the overstuffed couches arranged around the television in the middle of the room. It was there he sat quietly and stared straight ahead into nothing.

The TV was off.

No music played.

The shower was waiting and a bus ride to the airport quickly approaching but he still didn’t budge.

He just stared straight ahead.

Utley got a hit and barreled into catcher Brian McCann in order to score the Phillies’ first run on Thursday night in one of those plays that kind of personifies the way the All-Star second baseman plays the game. Arriving at the plate at the exact moment as the throw from the outfield, Utley chose to take home plate by force rather than finesse his way around the catcher with a hook slide of sorts. Focused on catching the ball, McCann was left wide open to Utley’s assault as he was forcefully separated from the ball.

Call it one the hard way.

Still, not even Utley’s forced grit could will the Phillies to a much-needed victory. Perhaps the 14^th loss in the last 18 games is the reason why Utley sat still and stared straight ahead.

Thinking.

Stewing.

Where are those damn laptops!?

“Times like this can build character for a team,” he said a good 45-minutes later as he dressed for the trip home. “That’s the way I look at it.”

If anyone knew how to solve the losing ways and malaise engulfing the baseball team it was Utley. Chances are he wasn’t merely sitting there like David Puddy from that Seinfeld episode where Elaine Benes’ boyfriend wiled away the time on a flight simply staring out into the middle distance.

Remember that one?

Elaine: Do you want something to read?

Puddy: No.

Elaine: Are you going to sleep?

Puddy: No.

Elaine: Are you just going to sit there and stare?

Puddy: Yeah, that’s right.

But Utley isn’t going to prod his teammates to follow his lead by calling them out to the press. Instead he’ll reinforce the positive with all the normal clichés, though privately – just like with manager Charlie Manuel – the pile of losses are killing him.

“I feel like we’re coming to the park prepared,” Utley said. “We obviously haven’t been playing that well, but we haven’t seen a change in our attitude for the negative. It’s obviously a rough stretch. We’re definitely not making any excuses, but we do need to start playing better in all parts of the ball: offensively, defensively. We need to pitch better. That’s the bottom line. How do you do that? You stay motivated. You stay positive.”

That’s what Utley does. He shows up early and stares at those laptops looking for any tiny bit of minutia or insight that the naked eye cannot catch. Then he’ll take batting practice until the calluses on his hands get calloused.

After the game he might take more batting practice or workout, but mostly he stares into those laptops watching the ballgame he just played until his eyes are ringed with bleary red tiredness. Maybe then he’ll go home and to do it all over again the next day.

“You have to come to the field every day to prepare and prepare to win,” he said.

Sometimes it isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Jul

Gone with the wind? Someone do something about the heat

By jrfinger Leave a Comment

Categories: Atlanta
Tags: 1996 Olympics, Bob Kennedy, Chief Noc-A-Homa, Fulton County Stadium, Haile Gebrselassie, Hank Aaron, Michael Johnson, Muhammad Ali, Prefontaine, trees, Usain Bolt

ATLANTA – The first thing one notices about Atlanta are the trees. They’re everywhere. In fact, from a certain vantage point the landscape is shrouded with green as far as the eye can see. They weave in and out of the office buildings, too, which is quite something. How many urban centers have this many trees?

And we aren’t just talking about the fact that every other road is called Peachtree. Apparently when the city was rebuilt after Sherman’s march to the sea, they planted tons and tons of trees and ran out of ideas for street names.

There are worse things one can say about a city, I suppose. I haven’t checked out the crime statistics or the murder rate or anything like that. However, it’s interesting to note that even though Georgia is a profoundly deep Red State, its biggest city’s most well known citizens in recent history are so-called “liberals.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., former president Jimmy Carter, Ted Turner and Andrew Young looked at things differently than the consensus in these parts, yet still have streets and buildings named after them.

Go figure.

A couple of those buildings (and streets) I will get to see during my visit here to catch the Phillies play the Braves. Strangely, the Phillies are in Atlanta for the first time this season even though the Braves have been to Philadelphia twice. That means the Phillies have two more trips here during a stage of the season where things really get tight, the games take on added significance and the weather is much more hotter than it is now.

It gets really freaking hot down here. Hotlanta? More like Humidapolis.

Anyway, at Turner Field yesterday the first thing I wanted to see was the configuration of the playing field. After all, the ballpark was originally built to be the Olympic Stadium for the centennial games back in 1996. All of the track and field games were held at what is now Turner Field as well as the finish for the marathons and the opening and closing ceremonies.

Turner Field is where Muhammad Ali, clad in white, dramatically and unforgettably appeared out of nowhere with an Olympic torch in his hands and lit the cauldron. Now I’m not one who gets all choked up or overly-sentimental at sporting events – that’s just not how I am, because it’s just a game – but imaging Ali atop that ramp that hot summer night still gives me chills.

Now I’m a track geek. More specifically, I am a distance running nerd. Between watching lots of baseball and distance running I’m a hoot at parties. Woo-hoo!

So it was with great interest that I attempted to see if there were any relics or pieces of the Olympics in ’96 still within the playing surface at Turner Field. For instance, the track was said to be notoriously hard, which led to blistering times in a bunch of the running events. Like, it was during those games where Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia beat Paul Tergat of Kenya in the 10,000-meter dream race where Geb solidified his legend with an Olympic record and a dramatic victory.

Standing in the visiting team’s dugout I looked out at the field and thought, “This is where Bob Kennedy tried to steal the 5,000-meter finals when he brazenly surged to the lead at the top of the curve of the last lap. It was a move that was so daring and unexpected that I shrieked (not smart since the race wasn’t aired until nearly midnight and woke up the entire house) and thought of what a bad-ass Kennedy was even though he faded to sixth place.

That was how Prefontaine must have done it, I thought.

The lasting image of those games, though (aside from Ali), was Michael Johnson coming off the curve in the 200-meter finals. Clad in those gold Nikes, Johnson was moving so fast that it seemed as if Johnson was going to burst onto flame or take off like a rocket ship into the soupy, humid air.

How can anyone forget the shock on Johnson’s face when he turned around to see the clock and saw that he had just moved faster than any human being on two feet? Remembering Johnson’s reaction as well as the reaction of everyone else in the stadium is part of the reason why Usain Bolt’s record-breaking 200-meters victory in last summer’s Beijing Games was so amazing. No one thought Johnson’s record would ever be broken, or no one thought it would ever been broken after just 12 years.

Regardless, if it were up to me, I’d have plaques placed on the spot where all of those memorable events occurred. Certainly the Braves have done a nice job preserving old Fulton County Stadium by keeping some of the outfield fence as a relic in the parking lot beyond the gates of the “new” place. It was in the so called “Launching Pad,” where Chief Noc-A-Homa stood guard and Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record in 1974.

Anyway, we’ll be back at Turner Field tonight to see how the Phillies respond to last night’s extra-inning loss. And for the record, the warning track that rings the playing surface is very hard… no plaques though.

Jun

Influencing the vote

By jrfinger Leave a Comment

Categories: All Stars
Tags: Charlie

Unless something spectacular occurs, like ballot-stuffing of Iranian proportions, Chase Utley and Raul Ibanez will start in the All-Star Game. And with Charlie Manuel serving as the manager for the National Leaguers, there’s a strong possibility that Ryan Howard will tag along. After all, Howard still is hitting homers and the game will be played in his hometown.

Then again, first base is a particularly strong position in the NL this season. Todd Helton, Adrian Gonzalez, Prince Fielder, and, of course, Albert Pujols are as worthy as anyone.

Otherwise, the pickins are slim with the Phillies and potential All-Stars. Sure, Jimmy Rollins was the leading vote getter for shortstops for a while, but that does nothing more than lend credence to the argument that the fans probably shouldn’t have such a strong vote to select the team.

Anyway, I decided it would be a conflict of interest to actual take part in the voting for the All-Stars, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be an influence in other ways. So, if I were voting for All-Stars, here are the players the most worthy.

National League
C – Yadier Molina, Stl
1B – Albert Pujols, Stl
2B – Chase Utley, Phi
3B – Pablo Sandoval, SF
SS – Hanley Ramirez, Fla
OF – Raul Ibanez, Phi
OF – Brad Hawpe, Col
OF – Ryan Braun, Mil
P – Tim Lincecum, SF

American League
C – A.J. Pierzynski, ChiW
1B – Mark Teixeira, NYY
2B – Aaron Hill, Tor
3B – Evan Longoria, TB
SS – Derek Jeter, NYY
OF – Ichiro Suzuki, Sea
OF – Ben Zobrist, TB
OF – Torii Hunter, LAA
P – Zack Greinke, KC

Jun

Remembering ‘The King’ and the ‘Angel’

By jrfinger 1 Comment

Categories: Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson
Tags: Charlie's Angels, James Buchanan Elementary, MTV, Pete Townsend, the 1970s, the 1980s, Thriller

To this day, and after all these years, watching Michael Jackson do the Moonwalk at the Motown Anniversary in the early ‘80s was the most electrifying musical performance ever. We shrieked when he did it, my sister, mom and I, because (borrowing a word I heard used to describe Michael Jackson today) it was “unearthly.”

Never before and never again.

Once I snuck through a service door in an over-21 club to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers back in the late-1980s. That was a few weeks after I saw Fugazi do a show in a parking garage in West Philly. Another time I saw a group called The Nation of Ulysses play and I was convinced they were going to take hostages. I saw Richie Havens play in a public park – he was just hanging out playing – and snuck off to Madison Square Garden during my college orientation to see The Who. Pete Townsend windmilled like a dervish that night.

If only he did the moonwalk like Michael Jackson, who died Thursday at 50. For a lot of us children of the ’80s, that really was our Moon Walk. It was a where-were-you-when moment, almost like it was Thursday afternoon when the news first started to trickle out through the Internet.

And yet the end came like the beginning for Jackson – with lots of fans and lots of media jockeying for space. He was a star when he was just a child, and the attention never stopped. It was a gift and a curse. Especially over the past two decades during the creepy and not-so smooth criminal stage of his life.

So it’s hard not to think about that night we saw the moonwalk for the very first time. Granted, my sister and I were not even teenagers yet. I suppose I was in sixth grade at James Buchanan Elementary, but that simple dance step was a galvanizing force at school. We all practiced it and tried to nail it as perfectly as Michael did. In fact, we were in awe of the kids who could do it smoothly and somewhat effortless. Hell, sometimes those ’80s kids break it out just because.

As the years wore on Michael Jackson and his music/moves became part of the cultural wallpaper. Again, this was before the disturbing “Jesus juice” crap. Us Gen-Xers tend to move on quickly. We know the reality and can see the strings that control everything so we try to get lost in the innocence of the moment for a short time.

Nevertheless, the kids from the 1980s were too young to remember when Elvis died, and we never got to see the Beatles together. We were too young to understand the punk rock scene coming from London and New York and were shielded from the psychedelic sounds of our parents’ era.

Those were things we’d have to learn about on our own.

But in the 1980s, at the end of radio and the beginning of MTV, Michael Jackson was The King. He provided the soundtrack for kids from the city, the ‘burbs, and beyond. Even if we couldn’t agree on much, in 1982 and 1983, we all knew that “Thriller” was something unique. If you were of that time and missed it, you must have been sick or in a coma or sipping too much of that new Coke.

Of course massive fame does things to people. Even the most grounded and together person with the most stable upbringing and genuine family and friends would be affected by the zealotry of fandom that Michael Jackson dealt with even when he was a little kid. Unfortunately Michael Jackson didn’t seem to have that stability in his life. Instead of being a kid from Gary, Ind. that made it big with his brothers, Jackson’s life descended into a screaming tabloid headline and crass commercialism. Certainly his eccentricities did nothing to sway folks’ opinions of him, and the lawsuits and court cases further exasperated the headlines, but man, what a talent.

Look at these kids… too bad it could always be like that:

Was there anything better than watching Michael Jackson and his four brothers perform together on some grainy TV highlight from the early ‘70s?

Perhaps Dave Chappelle said it best in describing all the surgeries and changes in appearance that Michael Jackson underwent through the years:

Maybe he did that for you somehow. Somehow maybe he thought it would help him, “Maybe people will like me more…” But he did it for you…

Sure, it sounds funny, but in some odd sense it seems as if Michael Jackson did everything he did for his fans, and God knows he had a lot of them.

Hopefully, and this is not to belittle the serious crimes he allegedly committed, Michael Jackson is remembered as the “King of Pop” moonwalking across a stage or as that kid from Gary, Ind. belting out those great tunes with his brothers.

Apparently, Thursday was the day the icons died. Early in the day, Farrah Fawcett was claimed by cancer at 60. Certainly Farrah was not the international superstar that Jackson was, but for a few years in the 1970s she probably wasn’t too far off.

Unlike with Jackson, I missed Farrah Fawcett at the top of her stardom. However, I can remember seeing that poster of her in a one-piece bathing suit nearly everywhere. Some say she was the last link from pin-up model to super model, which makes sense. After all, Farrah came from a time where the models and bathing beauties actually had to have a skill or a talent. It couldn’t just be smiling at a camera like the latter day super models.

So Farrah did “Charlie’s Angels” and became part of the cultural wallpaper – literally. But as time wore on – after “The Cannonball Run” and a relatively quiet period, Fawcett seemed to be more famous for being famous.

That is until the remade “Charlie’s Angels” and those posters reappeared as part of the ‘70s kitsch. Still, make no doubt about it, a lot of models and actresses owe part of their success, or at least a flip of a Farrah ‘do to the last of the originals.

We’ll be back with some baseball stuff tomorrow night from Rehoboth Beach. Gotta get out of town with the kids before the grind of the second half of the season.show

Jun

Home on the road

By jrfinger Leave a Comment

Categories: Phillies
Tags: Appalachian Trail, Charlie, per diem. travel, Rickey Henderson, the Republican Governor of South Carolina

Doesn’t it drive you crazy when you go for a hike on the Appalachian Trail and wind up in Argentina with some woman that isn’t your wife? Isn’t that the way it always happens?

Nevertheless, make no mistake about it, sometimes it’s just good to get away. It doesn’t matter if it is to meander through rocky trails beneath a canopy of trees or to sit on the beach with the trade winds cooling down a sunny day. Whatever it is, no one wants to hang around the house all day.

So we travel. We take the act on the road to see how green that grass on the other side really is.

Why not? There’s something relaxing about being out there on the road. You don’t have to worry about the mail, cutting the grass or if the neighbors are too loud. If anything happens, like the basement gets flooded, there’s nothing that can be done about it hundreds of miles from home. Worry about it later.

It’s the same thing with a baseball team, too. On the road all the problems of home go away so all the ballplayers have to do is hang around all day and then show up to the park to play ball. Pretty good gig, huh? Better yet, it’s not even like the players have to schlep their own luggage through the terminal or wait for their row to be called in order to board the plane. Instead they get dropped off on the tarmac of a chartered plane so they can fly all over the country in order to play baseball.

There are other perks, too. For instance, before the trip the players are handed $81 in cash for each day they are on the road. For the current trip through Tampa Bay, Toronto and Atlanta, each player was handed a little envelope with $891 cash. That’s for the players to spend on meals, sundry items and any other incidentals that pop up from time to time.

But here’s the thing – even though the players are given $81 in cold, hard cash in which to purchase food, the visiting clubhouses in every ballpark offer catered meals before and after the game as well as all the gum one can chew and all the sunflower seeds a guy can spit.

And guess what? It’s all gratis.

So why should a guy go spending all that cash when he can eat at the park for free? Maybe he’ll want to buy a souvenir at some museum gift shop instead.

Or, maybe he’ll just save all that cash the way Rickey Henderson used to. According to the legend, the newly elected Hall of Famer and all-time stolen base king used to collect those envelopes he was handed before road trips and stash them away in a big shoe box that he kept in the closet of his bedroom at home. As the story goes, whenever Rickey’s kids came home from school with a good report card, he told them to go into the closet and bring out the shoe box stuffed with per diem envelopes for a quick game of “Pick It.”

Rickey held the shoe box open and the kid with the good report card got to dip a hand in and pull out an envelope. Needless to say, the kids were all hoping to yank out one of those 11-day road trip stashes buried in the box.

Still, there is an advantage for a ballclub to play at home and that mainly has to do with the rules of the game. The home team gets to bat last, which puts most of the pressure on the visiting team. Other than that there really isn’t much of an advantage to playing at home. Sure, the home town fans can help intimidate the visiting club, but they also can give a lot of grief to the guys in the home laundry.

But that still doesn’t explain why the Phillies went into Wednesday night’s action with a 24-9 record away from Philadelphia and a 13-22 mark in Citizens Bank Park. That’s the best road record and worst home mark in the league. Explain that

Maybe nothing does because the dichotomy of the records defies explanation. In fact, when the local media asked the manager and players about it last week, the frustration mounted. It was as if Charlie Manuel and Ryan Howard went to the movies with some annoying friend who asked questions about the plot the whole way through the picture.

Talk about annoying. No wonder they were frustrated and losing so many games at home.

Regardless, there has to be a remedy for the losses at home. Like, maybe the Phillies can pretend they are playing on the road even when they are in Philadelphia. Maybe they can wear their road grays and shack up in the Holiday Inn across the parking lot from the ballpark.

Better yet, maybe the Phillies can get their road trip envelopes at home instead. Or, barring that, maybe Charlie Manuel can get out the big shoe box and let the team play “Pick It” if they win a game at home.

There’s nothing like that shoe box to motivate a team.

Jun

… and the (dead)beat goes on

By jrfinger Leave a Comment

Categories: Lenny Dykstra
Tags: HBO, The New Yorker

Yes, Lenny Dykstra is back out there in the press after HBO updated its fawning “Real Sports” profile from a couple of years ago. Apparently they added racist and deadbeat into the vernacular along with stock investor.

However, neither Bernie Goldberg nor The New Yorker admitted to being duped by Lenny’s supposed largesse. But it is worth noting that Lenny also appears to be the subject of an equally fawning documentary from No Regrets Entertainment.

There’s an especially deep quotation at the top, too. Take a look:

So who looks worse these days, Jim Cramer after the Jon Stewart stuff or Lenny?

Jun

Total recall

By jrfinger Leave a Comment

Categories: Roger Clemens
Tags: books, drugs, Eric Davis, Las Vegas

During the winter meetings in Las Vegas last December, I had the pleasure to be introduced to Eric Davis, the ex-ballplayer who very well might have had a Hall-of-Fame career nicked up by injuries and a bout with colon cancer. Nevertheless, as a high school kid I remember when Davis put together a hot start to the 1989 season where he mashed a career-high 34 homers.

It was during the late ‘80s where Davis was billed as the second-coming of Willie Mays

The next season Davis helped the Reds win the World Series, which he was famously remembered for diving to make a catch in the clinching Game 4 only to be carried off the field with a lacerated kidney. That injury kind of explains the tough luck Davis had during his career. One minute he’s an All-Star and helping his team win the World Series and the next he’s being left in Oakland with a lacerated kidney, having surgery AND THEN being diagnosed with cancer a handful of years later.

Anyway, Davis was at the winter meetings with the Reds where he serves as a special assistant to general manager Walt Jocketty. It was at the Bellagio one evening when we were introduced and I immediately started in on the guy.

“I remember a game when you were with the Tigers in Baltimore where you hit a ball so hard that it was on the way up when it hit the batters’ eye,” I told Davis while shaking his hand. “You really smacked the bleep out of that one.”

Davis barely paused and said, “Arthur Rhodes. It was a slider. Two-two pitch.”

Honestly, he was like the Rainman. I looked it up and he was exactly correct on the pitcher and the count, though there was no way to prove that it was a slider that Rhodes served up that September night in 1993. Either way, it was an impressive display from Davis, who based on that meeting proved to be a worthy winner of the Roberto Clemente Award during his playing days.

Now here’s the point – ballplayers remember. Oh sure, there are some details that get lost in the thousands of games that they play, but it’s hard to forget the really cool things. Hell, there aren’t too many moments of my little league, high school or wiffle ball career that I can’t retell in intricate detail. Sometimes I can remember exactly the way the grass felt or the air smelled on a day I might have gone deep at May Field or Bernhardt’s backyard.

Based on the conversations with Davis (oh, we were like a pair of savants talking about old ballgames from an era-and-a-half ago) I’m pretty sure ballplayers are able to recall all sorts of intricate details of old games. Actually, in some way that’s kind of the job of a ballplayer. The good ones like Davis – who had the quick, whip-like swing where he kept his hands way down low and seemed to wait almost until the pitch was in the catcher’s glove before he sprayed line drives all over the place – have to remember everything. It’s like poker in that a hitter has to be aware of a pitchers’ patterns, tells and repertoire. It works the other way around, too, with pitchers.

The reason I got to thinking about Davis and that trip to Las Vegas was because I read an interview with Roger Clemens where he says he’s considering whether to write a book. Clemens, of course, testified before House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that several of his alleged compatriots in illicit performance-enhancing drug use.

According to Clemens’ testimony, his buddy Andy Pettitte “misremembered” a bunch of stuff. Hell, when asked Clemens didn’t even know what a vegan was and proved further vapidity by being unaware that his own wife had been injected with HGH by his own personal trainer.

Seriously, if the dude (a ballplayer at that) can’t remember that his wife was juicing, how can we trust him with a book? Besides, Clemens was a good pitcher known for his intricate preparation and fine attention to detail. Yet when Congressional committees come calling and grand juries convene, things get “misremembered.”

And this is a guy “thinking” about writing a book? What’s going to be in it…

Misrememories?

Jun

Say it ain’t Sosa… no really, say it

By jrfinger 2 Comments

Categories: Phillies
Tags: Artie Lange, Charlie, drugs, Gomer Pyle, Joe Buck, Sammy Sosa, Senator Barbara Boxer, Sports Illustrated

My friend Mike was working on some formulas and quantum physics things that could, if the math is right, add more hours to the day. The month of February might be a casualty in all of this, but the other months will be symmetrical and we very well could end up with some extra time.

It should be noted that Mike is working on this in his free time, which kind of shoots his theory in the ass a bit, but otherwise, this is groundbreaking stuff. If anything it will give the baseball writer-types the much-needed time to watch things like the Joe Buck Live so we can ponder the host’s second favorite web site.

After the five minutes passes that it takes to understand the significance of the sports announcer’s show and the unnatural disaster named Artie Lange[1], we can take a nap with the report on Sammy Sosa and his alleged positive test acting as an organic Ambien.

I almost read the report in The New York Times about Sammy Sosa’s alleged positive test from 2003. I should say that I actually dialed it up on the Internets, looked at the picture of Sammy and Big Mark McGwire smiling together during that summer of 1998, and tried to get through the lede graf.

But then I couldn’t stop yawning. Not enough oxygen to my head, I guess. But the yawns came so frequently that it seemed like a good idea to get up and walk around a bit. Maybe grab a drink with a little caffeine to shake loose the cob webs. Then I could go back and sit down and get through the story.

Only when I tried again I dozed off. The weird thing about this was that I was sitting in the press box at the Phillies-Jays game. There were more than 45,000 people hovering about and there I was drooling on the keys of my laptop. I may have even sprayed Gonzo or Crasnick who usually sit next to me at the ballgames.

What are you going to do? If a Sammy Sosa getting popped for PEDs can’t hold one’s attention, what chance do innocent bystanders have?

Yet refreshed and rested, I forged on. Only instead of reading up on Sammy, I learned that Senator Barbara Boxer from California really has “a thing” about highly decorated military men calling her, “senator” as opposed to “ma’am,” or even, “Babs.”

The distinguished senator from California claims she worked hard for her title, which means she raised a helluva lot of money. In fact, Babs raised so much money that the great state of California has tax rates that make even ballplayers complain. Oh sure, those guys complain about anything dealing with taxes and money and government. It’s like one of those minutemen brigades or something, only the fortified bunkers are loaded with therapeutic tubs and pools, a training staff and all the maple bats a guy could ever want. In the case of the Phillies, sometimes the common area of the bunker (aka, The Clubhouse) has an actual team of ballplayers in it after games, but most of the time the jocks are out-numbered by PR staff members by a rate of 5-to-1.

Anyway, take a look at ol’ Babs giving Gomer Pyle the business:

Oh, but there was one thing that had me rapt for approximately 10 whole minutes. In fact, I was actually excited to lounge on the couch and read the Sports Illustrated send-up on Charlie Manuel.

Sure, there weren’t too many new stories in the piece, and, in fact, I recall hearing one of them a few weeks ago. In the story Charlie even points out that he told the story a few days prior. Well, he told them to us in the dugout during the early afternoon meet-and-greet he does with the local writing press. The truth is, the guy loves to tell stories about Billy Martin and Japan, and frankly, we like to hear them as many times as he wants to tell them.

Charlie has a few other doozies that likely won’t see print any time soon and haven’t made it into the Sports Illustrated or HBO features. Actually, that raises a pretty interesting premise and that is Charlie likes to talk to the big-time national press.

Bryant Gumble, Frank DeFord and HBO? Sure, send ‘em over. Sports Illustrated? No problem – where is the fitting for the tux? A speaking gig warming up for Colin Powell, Rudy Giuliani and Donovan McNabb? No problem, just get ready for the folksy charm.

So here’s the issue… is Charlie spreading himself too thin? Are the Phillies playing so poorly at home because of all the demands on their time from winning the World Series? Undoubtedly, Charlie and the rest of the Phillies will answer with a resounding, “No!” But think about it – how many national TV commercial ads were Phillies players starring in before they won the World Series? Before Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard and Cole Hamels became pitchmen, was there anyone else other than Mike Schmidt an Pete Rose?

It’s a wonderful thing winning the World Series, but damn if it ain’t time consuming.

[1] Just gonna say it: would anyone give a flying fig about the Joe Buck Live if Artie Lange had not been on it? If the answer is anything other than, “No,” you don’t get it.

Jun

School’s out for ever?

By jrfinger 2 Comments

Categories: Phillies
Tags: baseball, school

OK, I’m back. I had planned on writing a whole bunch of new stuff yesterday until I fell asleep around 2 p.m. and didn’t wake up until 11 a.m. this morning. I guess I’m sleepy or completely entrenched into baseball hours.

Need to find those organic greenies.

Anyway, one of the topics that piqued my interest this weekend was the decision by Bryce Harper to forego his final two years of high school to enter community college. Of course he’s going to get his GED first, which will make him eligible for the 2010 Major League draft.

Cool, huh?

Well, a lot of people don’t think so. But let’s back up for a second and explain who Bryce Harper is since most of us appeared to learn from Tom Verducci and Sports Illustrated last week.

Bryce Harper just finished his sophomore year at Las Vegas High. He’s described as the first LeBron/Kevin Garnet type prodigy in baseball. In fact, scouts suggest that had he been eligible for the baseball draft this year, he would have been selected no worse than third overall.

So rather than sit around in high school where he might have reached his apex as a ballplayer, Harper is going to drop out of school, get his GED and go to community college for a year just so he can be eligible to play pro ball. The rules of Major League baseball state that a player must finish his high school eligibility in order to be in the draft.

High school and a citizen of the United States.

In other words, players from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Japan, etc. are free agents from the time they are allowed to sign a contract. So had Harper not been a U.S. citizen or U.S. high school player, he wouldn’t have to get a GED or even attend community college. Instead, he would have been available to the highest bidder.

But since Harper is from Las Vegas and plays baseball, he is forced to go to school even at an age where he can drop out and get a job anywhere that would hire him.

Apparently education – at least high school education – is important in order to be drafted to Major League Baseball, where, according to estimates from The Wall Street Journal, only 26 players and managers have a college degree.

No, that’s not 26 percent. It’s 26 total. Like one more than 25 or .03 percent of the current 25 man rosters in the big leagues. So yes, you can see how important education is to MLB.

Look, I’m not denigrating higher learning or the level of education of most baseball players. Far from it. The truth is there are more opportunities for kids Harper’s age by going to school for as long as possible than not. In fact, there was a story in The New York Times last year about how there are many more opportunities for kids to get scholarships, grants and aid through academics than through athletics. This is despite the notion that in order to get a scholarship or money for school one has to be a top athlete.

Actually, the opposite is true – one has to be a good student no matter what. That’s the key.

But if Bryce Harper is as good as everyone says he is, why does he have to go to school? Sure, there are the ancillary benefits to being around kids his own age as far as socialization and mental health, etc., but where were these people making the same argument about child actors or even ballplayers from other countries?

Matt Stairs did not graduate from high school and as the statistics show, most Major Leaguers didn’t even bother with college and those that did didn’t finish. These days a lot of kids drafted out of high school have money allocated for education written into their contracts. Kelly Dugan got one from the Phillies when he signed last week, but then again most guys make enough money to send their entire families to school for generations.

Besides, for every stereotype about the dumb jock, there are plenty of guys who set those clichés on its head. Stairs, for instance, is pretty sharp. Scott Rolen, the son and brother of teachers, turned down scholarships to play baseball or basketball at big schools because “it wasn’t the dream.” If he wants to go to school now, however, he can. According to Baseball-Reference, Rolen has made more than $83 million in salary from playing ball.

Then there is Randy Wolf, who spent three years at Pepperdine before being drafted by the Phillies. When that happened he never went back… or looked back. The same goes for Lance Berkman who says he majored in “eligibility” at Rice.

Certainly the odds are pretty fat for most sophomores in high school to even be drafted let alone actually make it to the big leagues. 99.9 percent of kids that play ball need something to fall back on. So too do the same amount of kids who take drama lessons or pick up a guitar.

And no really seems to care about whether or not their favorite actor or musician went to school when they were 16 or not. Sure, we like it if they did, but there are lots of different ways to get an education.

Perhaps most importantly, we don’t really need anyone telling Bryce Harper’s parents what’s best for their kid. It’s easy to tell someone that their kid he’s a dumb jock just as it is to tell them the kid spends too much time studying and not having fun.

Jun

Ibanez takes the high road

By jrfinger Leave a Comment

Categories: Raul Ibanez

NEW YORK – Raul Ibanez was a quote machine after Thursday night’s victory over the Mets at Citi Field. That’s a good thing. Always engaging and humble, Ibanez was quick to point out how his game-winning home run was just the icing on the cake. The credit, he said, belonged to Shane Victorino and Chase Utley for getting on base to start off the 10^th inning.

Needless to say, Ibanez’s humility is as high as his slugging percentage.

But has there ever been a player new to town to ingratiate himself so fully to the team so quickly as Ibanez? It really feels like he has been here for years the way he fit right in with the Phillies. Charlie Manuel says Ibanez has “a lot of Utley in him,” only, ahem, more engaging. “Laughable,” the manager put it. That’s not to say Utley isn’t engaging, he just goes out of his way to be as boring as possible.

There has been very little boring about Ibanez this year. Though he had four rough plate appearances before his 10^th inning homer, including a pair of strikeouts (his 10^th multi-strikeout game of the year), one had to have the feeling that the mini-swoon would not last. Pity the poor Mets who walked into a swarm of bees in that fifth at-bat.

Here’s the thing that was so interesting – Ibanez knew something good was going to happen. No, Ibanez wasn’t saying he knew he was going to win the game for the Phillies, but he and his teammates had a strong feeling they were going to win the game.

“There always a confidence. You can always feel it in the dugout,” he explained. “It’s not an arrogance, it’s a confidence. It’s a tough team. Everybody puts together good at-bats. Every time somebody goes up there, it’s like that person is going to be the guy and that’s really neat to be a part of.”

Cool quote.

But when asked about the off-the-field controversy sparked in his name, but not really actually involving him, Ibanez lowered his head, narrowed his eyes and glowered. It wasn’t an act of intimidation to the questioner, but it seemed as if he was trying to keep his emotions in check a bit. He seems hurt about the behavior of certain elements of the media. Yes, Ibanez gave it a big shrug off with his comments, but put yourself in his shoes for a second … he didn’t do anything he hasn’t done before and he’s being questioned for it.

Check out these stats researched by Joe Posnanski:

The reason: When Raul Ibanez is hot, he’s HOT. There’s aren’t many people in baseball like him.

Look: Through 55 games, Ibanez was hitting .329/.386/.676 with 19 homers.

OK, let’s start in 2002. That year, Ibanez had a 50-game streak — June 7 to August 2 — when he hit .328/.385/.704 with 15 doubles, 5 triples, 15 homers. He drove in 54 runs. Few noticed because the Royals were abysmal that year, and it was in the middle of the season. But that stretch, you will note, is about as good as the stretch he’s on now. In some ways, it’s even better.

In 2003, he had a 55-game stretch where he hit .326/.360/.514 … not as good, but pretty damned good.

In 2004, he hit .365 over a 54-game stretch. In 2005, he got off to a dreadful start and then hit .330/.400/.524 over his next 55 games. In 2006, he hit 18 homers and drove in 57 RBIs in a 52-game stretch.

The last 52 games of the 2007 season, Ibanez hit .363/.425/.652 with 15 homers.

Last year, for 55 games, July 12 to Sept. 14, he hit .374/.435/.648 with 17 doubles, 2 triples, 13 homers. And that, you might remember, was in Seattle and a lousy hitters’ ballpark.

This is a man who, when he gets hot, absolutely tears up pitchers. I’ve seen it up close. He has had a 50-to-60 game hot streak EVERY SINGLE YEAR since 2002. Now, true, this time around, his hot streak started with Game 1. And why not? He was in a new league, in a new ballpark, facing pitchers who had not seen him as much. He’s in more of a fastball/slider/change-up league, which is in his comfort zone (rather than curveballs and split fingered fastballs which, generally, have eaten him up).

Point is: Raul Ibanez got hot, and this is how he hits when he’s hot. There’s nothing out of the ordinary here, nothing at all. Now, if he goes on to do this all year, if he goes on to hit 55 home runs, then yes, that would be out of the ordinary, that would be an outlier year like the years of Roger Maris, Davey Johnson, Andre Dawson, Luis Gonzalez, Brady Anderson and everyone else who had a wild and out of character year.

But for now, Raul Ibanez is just continuing what he’s done year after year. It’s just that people are noticing.

So Ibanez should be pissed that his name gets thrown into some ugly gumbo. Worse, the whole accusatory nature of the media and sports isn’t just wrong, it damn right immoral. And no, I’m not just talking about bloggers, either. Mainstream press people do it, too, and it sucks. Accusing an athlete playing well because he is using illicit substances without justification is the same thing as assuming an African-American wearing certain type of clothing is a criminal. It’s a stereotype in its nastiest and ugliest form.

Calling an athlete a juicer because he’s hitting home runs “at that age” is the very worst of human behavior. Even worse, we’re all guilty (well, most of us are).

And what’s with the age question stuff anyway? Haven’t we wised up to the affects of exercise, physiology and the aging process yet? Why shouldn’t Ibanez be just as effective now as he was in his 20s? Hell, when I was Ibanez’s age, I ran a 2:40 marathon and routinely ran 120-miles per week, and guess what – there were (and are) people older than me kicking my ass.

“I’m not really sure about the off-the-field stuff,” Ibanez said. “There is no off-the-field stuff. I go out there and do my job and that’s all I do. I play baseball.”

Reading between the lines there, I’m guessing that’s Ibanez’s way of telling everyone to grow up.

Jun

Stick to the script

By jrfinger 1 Comment

Categories: media
Tags: Charlie, Chase Utley, Joe Piscopo, Mike Pelfrey, New York Mets, Phillies, Shane Victorino

NEW YORK – One gets to learn a lot about the media, drama and hype on a trip to New York City. Here in the big city they really have a knack for mythmaking whereas the writing press from Philadelphia are pretty good at seeing something for what it is and leaving it at that.

This time we’re not talking about Raul Ibanez and the inanity of the lathered up media reaction from the made up controversy. Though I will admit I kind of liked Joe Posnanski’s take on it.

No, this time we’re talking about Chase Utley and Mike Pelfrey and the apparent exchange of words the pair had during an at-bat in the sixth inning of Wednesday night’s game. As Pelfrey explained it, he was upset about Utley stepping out of the box just as he was about to deliver a pitch. As such, Pelfrey barked at Utley, who returned with ignorant surprise.

“I was about to step into the box and it seemed like he was ready to pitch,” Utley said after taking a second to figure out what the hell was being talked about. “I wasn’t trying to make him frustrated. I was trying to put a good at-bat together.”

After the game, both Pelfrey and Utley were asked about it. Utley said Pelfrey said something to him but wasn’t sure what it was about. Pelfrey explained that he was peeved at Utley stepped out, told him and that was it. Everything ended right there.

“I got upset and told him to get in the box,” Pelfrey explained. “I don’t even know the guy. It was too much adrenaline, I guess.”

When asked, manager Charlie Manuel thought Pelfrey was upset with Shane Victorino. Why not? Isn’t someone always upset with Victorino? He certainly drives Charlie nuts sometimes.

So there it is. All over, right?

Wrong.

During the Mets’ post-game show on SNY, they showed the footage of Pelfrey shouting toward Utley over and over again with in-depth analysis of some sort of fabricated rift between the two archrival teams. While this was going on, New York-based reporters combed the Phillies’ clubhouse to pose questions to the team members about their little fantasy fight. Was something going to happen next time? Why do these teams hate each other so?

Who wins in a fight between Utley and Pelfrey?

Apparently, the fact that it was all a heaping pile of bullbleep really didn’t matter. There was going to be a story, dammit, just like there was going to be a story with Ibanez and some unknown dude in the Midwest somewhere.

To paraphrase a quote from Joe Piscopo in the movie Johnny Dangerously, “I’m embarrassed to be a media member these days. The other day someone asked me what I do for a living, and I told them I was a male nurse.”

(Thanks Deitch).

Anyway, there is a pretty good rivalry between the Phillies and the Mets but it’s likely that the New Yorkers are pushing it harder than needs to be. After all the Yankees have the Red Sox and the Mets are second fiddle in town. Frankly, they might be afraid to admit that the Phillies and the Dodgers is a much better and more interesting rivalry.

But that one doesn’t fit into the manufactured scripts up here.

Jun

What’s eating Raul?

By jrfinger Leave a Comment

Categories: Raul Ibanez
Tags: blogs, drugs, Phillies

NEW YORK – The word came from the Phillies public relations staff that Raul Ibanez wanted to know if any of the regular scribes covering the team were interested in chatting with the slugging outfielder regarding the speculation of his performance-enhancing drug use. It was a curious thing considering Ibanez is always affable and willing to talk about nearly any topic.

That is, of course, if one can locate Ibanez. A tireless worker, Ibanez is always in the middle of doing something baseball-related, be it studying film, taking extra batting practice, stretching or getting a chiropractic adjustment. So to hear that one of baseball’s truly good guys offered, pre-emptively, to discuss something that was never an issue until a relatively anonymous blog post from a blogger with no access or credibility suggested that Ibanez’s hot start to the 2009 season could be chemically enhanced, was noteworthy.

But there were no takers. No, it wasn’t because no one wanted to talk to Ibanez. It was because no one wanted to talk to Ibanez about something that was never a story in the first place. Had folks in Philadelphia treated something called, “Midwestern Sports Fans” like they always did (you know… as if it never existed), perhaps Ibanez wouldn’t have offered to alter his pre-game preparations to talk about something that no one was even thinking about.

Yet since ESPN picked it up on Ibanez’s comments to the Philadelphia Inquirer on Wednesday, there was a low murmur around Citi Field about the “issue.”

“To be honest, I don’t want to talk about it,” manager Charlie Manuel said.

But even Manuel couldn’t resist.

“It upsets me,” he said. “I think if you’re going to put that out there he ought to have proof.”

Shane Victorino was less diplomatic, jokingly (maybe?) attacking the Internet and the advances in technology. The Phils’ outfielder pointed out that there are at least a dozen accounts on Facebook and Twitter in his name, but, “I never started one of them.”

That can lead to confusion, Victorino says, when family and friends see his name in places and want to connect with him. However, the biggest issue is the lack of accountability with some blogs. Because the blogger at the “Midwestern Sports Fans,” going by the handle, “JRod” never actually has to face any of his subjects nor ever sees how athletes like Ibanez go about their work, he has very little understanding of what damage his words can cause.

“It can ruin a guy’s life,” Victorino claimed.

It won’t get that far with Ibanez. Yes, he and the Philadelphia media understand how suspicion has invaded baseball. That’s the reality. But it also seems as if Ibanez was thinking about what some guy named “JRod” wrote before Wednesday’s game at Citi Field when he should have been thinking about facing the Mets.

Jun

Big time in the big city

By jrfinger Leave a Comment

Categories: Phillies
Tags: Brad Lidge, Charlie, Francisco Rodriguez, Jimmy Rollins, New York Mets, players strike, playoffs, Showdown

As far as divisional series in June goes, the Phillies’ three-game stand in New York City against the Mets is pretty big. The Phillies, of course, have a three-game lead in the NL East while the Mets are doing what they can to hang on in the wake.

With all the injuries and typical drama that plagues the New York teams, the Mets aren’t doing all that badly. After all, it wasn’t too long ago that the Phillies overcame a six-game lead in late September of 2007 to win the division by a game.

Besides, the Mets don’t flop until the end of the season.

Nevertheless, despite the key injuries to reliever J.J. Putz and overrated shortstop Jose Reyes, things aren’t all that bad for the Mets. Sure, Chipper Jones claimed that third baseman David Wright was complaining about the pitching-friendly dimensions at Citi Field, it could be worse for the Mets. The funny thing about that is Charlie Manuel says back in his day, every stadium was the size of Citi Field.

Hey, it can always be worse.

What the Mets have going for them (of course) is Johan Santana. He’s been as good as the Mets had hoped and has already stuck it to the Phillies once already this season.

Still, if the Phillies can get Brad Lidge and Jimmy Rollins squared away, this race could be over quickly. Oh, they might not say Rollins’ and Lidge’s slumps are concerning, but that can’t be totally accurate… right?

Maybe. After all, despite his 6-for-36 (.167) in his last eight games and demotion out of the leadoff spot for Sunday’s victory in Los Angeles, the Phillies’ offense appears to be potent enough to withstand an extended jag by Jimmy Rollins. That doesn’t mean Charlie Manuel doesn’t need Rollins to start hitting, because he does. The numbers bear that out. When Rollins gets on base and scores, the Phillies win. It’s as simple as that.

Not so simple is the slide by the closer Lidge. Apparently he is making up for lost time on the blown saves front after going a perfect 48-for-48 last season. This year the stats don’t look too great after he blew back-to-back saves last weekend and is 13-for-19 in save opportunities with a 7.27 ERA.

However, Lidge spoiled the Phillies last year because blown saves are inevitable. Just look at Mets’ closer Francisco Rodriguez, who set the Major League record with 62 saves last season. To get those 62, Rodriguez needed 69 chances. In fact, the so-called K-Rod has never blown fewer than four chances a season during his career and though he’s a perfect 15-for-15 this year, his save percentage is just 87 percent. That’s slightly better than Lidge’s career mark, though it is worth noting that K-Rod saved eight games last year in which he didn’t go a full inning.

Moreover, the last time Rodriguez went more than one inning to get a save was July 1, 2007.

Goose Gossage he is not.

Regardless, it should be a pretty interesting showdown in the fancy, new Citi Field (new Yankee Stadium it is not).

Matchups:

Tonight: LHP J.A. Happ (4-0, 2.48) vs. LHP Johan Santana (7-3, 2.00)

Tomorrow: LHP Cole Hamels (4-2, 4.40) vs. RHP Mike Pelfrey (4-2, 4.85)

Thursday: LHP Jamie Moyer (4-5, 6.27) vs. RHP Tim Redding (0-2, 6.97)

Working on the weekend

The popular sentiment during the weekend was that the Dodgers-Phillies matchup was a preview of this year’s NLCS… sure, sounds right to me.

Nevertheless, if the season were to end today (it doesn’t) the playoff matchups would have the Dodgers hosting the Mets and the Phillies in a rematch against the Brewers in the NLDS.

In the American League the matchups would pit the Yankees against the Tigers and the Red Sox vs. Rangers.

Why mention this? Well, 28 years ago tomorrow playoff spots actually were decided on June 10. Yep, on this date in 1981, the players went on a two-month strike that did not end until July 31. As a result, the owners decided to split the 1981 season into two halves, with the first-place teams from each half in each division (or a wild card team if the same club won both halves) meeting in a best-of-five divisional playoff series.

It was a terribly flawed system because the Cincinnati Reds finished with the best record but didn’t make the playoffs. Meanwhile, the Kansas City Royals snuck in with a 50-53 record.

The Phillies also got in thanks to being in first place when the players walked out on June 10. Eventually, they lost in an entertaining five game NLDS series to the Montreal Expos even though the St. Louis Cardinals finished the season with the best record in the NL East.

Weird, wild stuff.

Jun

Ryan Howard and The White House Garden

By jrfinger Leave a Comment

Categories: Ryan Howard
Tags: Jared, Subway, The White House, veggies

As we all know by now, Ryan Howard trimmed down and got into top shape during the off-season. To do so he didn’t hang out as much with Jared in those Subway commercials and really took it up a notch with diet and exercise.

In fact, Howard’s prowess in eating healthy matched some of his long-distance home runs — something acknowledged during the Phillies’ visit to The White House last month.

Here’s Howard in a suit checking out some of the veggies in The White House garden that was planted by the Obamas earlier this year:

Did Ryan Howard drop a, “Oh… snap, son!” on The White House chef?

Jun

Big Unit in big club

By jrfinger Leave a Comment

Categories: Randy Johnson
Tags: 300 wins, Cole Hamels, Jamie Moyer

How about this? Randy Johnson is underrated. Yep, he has those 300 wins and 4,845 career strikeouts in a little less than 4,100 innings. Numbers like that tend to stand out. However, amongst all of the 300-game winners in the modern era, Johnson got to the milestone in the fewest games.

The odd part about that is Johnson is 45.

The so-called “Big Unit” got his first win at age 25, had just 68 wins by the time he turned 30, missed a large portion of the 1996, 2003 and 2007 seasons, won 20 games in a season just three times. Never appeared in more than 35 games in any season, and he still got to 300.

And he got there in fewer games than anyone else.

So the popular notion that Johnson could be the last 300-game winner for a long, long time just doesn’t make sense. No, there isn’t anyone on the horizon closing in unless one counts Jamie Moyer, who, generously, needs at least 10 more wins this season and 40 more in the next three years to have a shot. But 300 wins isn’t as farfetched as the baseball punditry would leave one to believe.

First of all, Johnson had 68 career wins by the time he turned 30. 68! That means he averaged nearly 16 wins over the last 15 years, which includes the parts three seasons lost to injury and the shortened 1994 and 1995 seasons because of the players strike.

But here’s where Johnson is underrated amongst his brethren in the 300-win club:

Second most career strikeouts behind Nolan Ryan.

Best strikeout rate per nine innings with 10.64.

Second in fewest hits allowed per nine innings (7.26).

Fourth-best winning percentage with .647.

Underrated? Yeah, no doubt. But the last guy to win 300 games? No, no doubt.

See, what the experts miss is that the 300-game winner is an anomaly and there is no way to gauge who can get there. First, longevity plays the biggest factor, but even that’s deceiving. From 1988 to 2007, Tom Glavine rarely missed a start. But Johnson missed plenty of starts and had several injuries. In fact, this doesn’t make Johnson all that different from many of the other 300-game winners.

Roger Clemens certainly had his share of injuries and ineffectiveness and Warren Spahn didn’t get his first win until he was 25. The same goes for Lefty Grove and Phil Niekro. Actually, Niekro – the oldest to win 300 – had just 31 wins by the time he turned 30.

Hell, Don Sutton had just one 20-win season and he got there.

If there is one common denominator in all 300-game winners it seems to be dedication, and fitness. Exercise and training techniques have come a long way in just the last five years with advances coming every year. Baseball, of course, is the slowest to embrace change when it comes to physiology, but new things are introduced every day.

In fact, Cole Hamels and Raul Ibanez of the Phillies use some of the training techniques common amongst marathon runners, which should lead to long term health and fitness.

Of course it doesn’t hurt to have good stuff either.

Still, every pitcher in that exclusive group is unique and each took a different path to 300. So to say Johnson is the last to get 300 is pretty silly.

***

Maybe even Cole Hamels can get there? With 42 wins at age 25, it’s not unreasonable to think the Phillies’ lefty could do it, especially when one considers how focused on career longevity he is. How about Johan Santana? At age 30 he has 116 wins and hasn’t had major injuries.

Hey, someone will do it… maybe Moyer will stick around long enough to get those 50 wins he needs.

Jun

Here comes Floyd

By jrfinger 3 Comments

Categories: Floyd Landis
Tags: beer, Brett Myers, J.C. Romero, Manayunk

This weekend is the big, TD Bank Philadelphia International Cycling Classic, the classic race that skirts through the Art Museum area, Fairmont Park and, of course, Manayunk. In some sections of town the race is a pretty good excuse to hang out and drink beer…

Not that there is ever a bad excuse.

Nevertheless, ever since the race was saved by a last-minute sponsor with a fresh injection of cash (hey, now), the comings-and-goings of the big race have kind of flown beneath the radar. Makes sense, of course, since most Philadelphians are more worried about ankle surgery for Brian Westbrook a full 12 weeks before the football season rather than some unknown bike racers tearing through town.

That would be the case, of course, if they were all unknown. But they aren’t. Floyd Landis is going to be there.

We all remember Floyd, of course. His story has been told and re-told thousands of times since he won the Tour de France in 2006 only to have it stripped away after two years of arbitration hearings and appeals through the kangaroo courts conducted by USADA and the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Since then Floyd has racked up $2 million in legal bills, according to reports. He moved at of his home in Murrietta, Calif. to shack up and train in a cabin in Idyllwild, a small town located in the San Jacinto Mountains south of Los Angeles.

He has a mortgage, had hip-replacement surgery, served a two-year suspension and gotten divorced. Now, he has been named in an international arrest warrant for hacking into the computer at France’s Chatenay-Malabry anti-doping lab. That’s the same lab that produced more than 200 procedural and protocol errors when testing his urine sample following the now infamous Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour de France. Floyd’s doctor Arnie Baker is named in the warrant as well.

And yet there he is riding in races against competitors that weren’t close to his level a little more than three years ago. Back then, he said, he was “in the best shape of” his life. These days he trains and races simply because he likes to ride his bike.

As he told VeloNews in January:

“I don’t feel in any way I am coming back to race to prove anything to anyone, or to myself for that matter. I enjoy racing for the same reason the majority of people race their bikes, whether it’s on a professional level or any other level. I think the sport deserves to have the best riders in the best races. For that reason I think this year is going to be better than it has been in a long time.”

Dime-store psychology aside, riding the bike might be the only thing that makes sense in Floyd’s life these days. In fact, before the racing season began there was talk of Floyd joining a major team and racing in the 2010 Tour de France.

But as the season developed, Floyd hasn’t won any races. He’s had some crashes and strong attacks, but hasn’t been a major threat in the final standings. Hey, racing is hard and chances are he’ll be a threat soon, but in the meantime he’s coming to Philly because he likes to ride his bike…

Kind of like the folks out in Manayunk who like to drink beer.

***

Speaking of Floyd, Brett Myers had hip surgery today in New York City with hot-shot surgeon Dr. Bryan Kelly administering.

Incidentally, after he decided to have surgery Myers told me he saw pictures of his pitching before and after the injury. In one, his right leg was as high as his right shoulder in his follow through, but in the post-injury photo, his range of motion was noticeably shorter.

The surgery should be good for Myers to regain his flexibility and with it, his velocity.

***

Speaking of Floyd, J.C. Romero returned last night for the first time after serving a 50-game suspension for testing positive for a banned substance.

Interesting: in MLB, 50 games for a positive test.

In cycling, two years for a positive test.

Jun

The Magnificient Bastardo

By jrfinger 1 Comment

Categories: Antonio Bastardo
Tags: Bobby Abreu, Brett Myers, Carlton Loewer, Charlie, Jamie Moyer, Jose Mesa, Major League debuts

The other day we were told that Antonio Bastardo doesn’t speak very much English. In fact, in order for him to communicate with the scribes a translator would need to be found before the rookie lefty got on the bus for the trip to the airport.

At least that’s what we were told.

Now my grasp of Spanish is probably only as good as Bastardo’s English, I reasoned. As it related to baseball, I once caught Jose Mesa and Bobby Abreu making fun of me in Spanish in an elevator in Baltimore. When I laughed out loud at the jokey insults, Jose and Bobby clammed up quick.

Hey, McCaskey kids know all the Spanish curse words.

But imagine my surprise when I saw the kid speaking a language I knew reasonably well on my web site. You can hear it, too, when you go over to CSNPhilly.com along with one where Raul Ibanez translates for the winning pitcher.

Is there anything Raul can’t do?

Plus, the TV cameras showed the rookie talking about his first outing with Jamie Moyer in the dugout during the seventh inning after he had been lifted. Who knew Moyer’s Spanish was so good?

Nevertheless, it must have been an interesting conversation between the 46-year-old, 23-season veteran and the 23-year-old lefty after his first game.

Tangents aside, it was a very impressive debut for the 23-year-old prospect recently compared to Johan Santana – that is if Santana threw 95 and had no need for a changeup. Frankly, Bastardo didn’t need that changeup either – or any other pitch – thanks to the big lead the offense spotted him. It has to be easier facing a flu-ridden Jake Peavy in a big-league debut after a first-inning four-spot.

No sense jerking around with a big lead – just rear back and throw the gas. Even the rookie knew that.

Beaming after the victory in San Diego, manager Charlie Manuel (yep, the video is on the CSNPhilly.com) was impressed that the kid got by with just one pitch.

“He was on a rush and you couldn’t slow him down if you had to,” the skipper said. “He did one thing real good and that was to be aggressive and he wasn’t afraid to throw the ball. He has a good changeup and a breaking ball, but he was gripping the ball and trying to throw it, so there wasn’t much action. But he did a super job, but he did it with one pitch.”

He’ll need more than the gas on Sunday when he pitches at Dodger Stadium, but in the meantime it’s a pretty gutty start.

As far as recent debuts for the Phillies’ prospects go, however, Bastardo fits in pretty well. Not quite as good as Brett Myers or Carlton Loewer, but pretty good nonetheless (links to box scores):

Antonio Bastardo at Padres on June 2, 2009: 6 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 5 K for win

Kyle Kendrick vs. White Sox on June 13, 2007: 6 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 2 BB, 4 K for a ND

Scott Mathieson vs. Devil Rays on June 17, 2006: 6 IP, 8 H, 4 R, 2 BB, 5 K for Loss

Cole Hamels vs. Reds on May 12, 2006: 5 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 5 BB, 7 K for ND

Gavin Floyd vs. Mets on Sept. 3, 2004: 7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 4 BB, 5 K for Win

Brett Myers at Cubs on July 24, 2002: 8 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 5 K for Win

Brandon Duckworth vs. Padres on Aug., 7, 2001: 6 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 4 BB, 4 K for Win

David Coggin at Expos on June 23, 2000: 6 IP, 8 H, 6 R, 1 BB, 4 K for Win

Randy Wolf vs. Blue Jays on June 11, 1999: 5.2 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 3 BB, 6 K for Win

Carlton Loewer vs. Cubs on June 14, 1998: 9 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 0 BB, 8 K for Win

Meanwhile, prospect Kyle Drabek pitches in Reading tonight in the former first-round picks’ first outing above Single-A. Perhaps a dubious weather forecast for Thursday pushed up the outing by a day?

Jun

Glorious Bastardo

By jrfinger Leave a Comment

Categories: Antonio Bastardo
Tags: Jake Peavy, Major League debuts, trades

We love big-league debuts. Better yet, we really love comparing the debuts of Phillies pitchers over the recent past. So with Antonio Francisco Bastardo (how fun is it to say that name?) set to make his big-league debut tonight in San Diego against Jake Peavy, what better excuse to dig up the digits from some of the more notable opening nights for some Phillies starting pitchers.

More interestingly, it’s kind of ironic that Bastardo, the 23-year-old lefty, is facing Peavy in his debut – what with all the trade talk and all. Who knows, maybe the pitchers of tonight’s game will be traded for one another.

Crazier things have happened, right?

Nevertheless, here are a few of the more notable debuts of Phillies draft picks: