Yea, but back in January when they introduced this Schuerholz threw this out: "The decision to limit the number of challenges was based partly on pace-of-game concerns and partly on the conviction that one should be more than sufficient. "That's far more than enough based on the statistics we have on the number of impactful plays that are missed in a game," Schuerholz said" The teams will build their databases and game this to some degree. Some umps get challenged on some calls on others not, etc. etc. Number crunchers now have another tool to make themselves useful in the course of the game. Baseball: 21st Century v. 2.0
That story about how Puig was hassled for money at the Dodgers training complex by the guys who smuggled him into Mexico is unreal. Shows how truly dangerous it is for players to defect from Cuba.
Hey, great seats, huh, buddy! http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/sports/baseball/one-lousy-seat-a-fitting-tribute.html?src=dayp Who doesn’t have a Uecker imitation? Uecker, 79, hears them everywhere he goes as a Hall of Fame-honored broadcaster for the Brewers — “Juuuuust a bit outside,” from the movie “Major League,” and “I must be in the front row,” from a memorable Miller Lite commercial in the 1980s. Uecker, a Milwaukee native, played two major league seasons for the Milwaukee Braves and has called Brewers games on radio since 1971. Two years ago, the Brewers honored him with a statue outside Miller Park. This week, he gets another that is inside the stadium, but just barely. On Friday — Miller Lite Brewers cap night, naturally — the team will unveil a statue of Uecker in the last row of the upper deck, in Section 422, where home plate is little more than a rumor. The bronze statue, designed by Brian Maughan, will depict Uecker with his arm to the side, ideal for posing with fans.
Can't figure out why: he went out there w/o somebody saying something to him, like: "Dude, you gotta go more stealth with that stuff."
If everyone is doing it, and no one cares, then legalize it. I'm getting kinda sick of "we have rules, but everyone does it, so no one gets punished". If you have rules, enforce them every time, otherwise you have no rules. Baseball is turning into a big joke.
They could just put a pine tar rag out behind the mound when the umpires feel the weather warrants it. The pitcher can then dab his fingers on it. The umps could check it out beforehand to make sure it has an acceptable amount pine tar and isn't just some big gross glob. Problem solved.
Yea, they should just make it safe for the batters. Nobody wants to get konked by Pineda on a 50 deg nite with 25MPH gusts that probably put the wind chill somewhere south of North Dakota.
Michael Pineda Suspended 10 Games - ESPN http://espn.go.com/new-york/mlb/sto...l-pineda-new-york-yankees-banned-10-games-mlb
Oldest living player passes away. He was almost 39 when he reached the majors. http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/10828403/conrado-marrero-oldest-living-ex-mlb-player-dies-102
That's much better than any insult I could have come up with. I checked his posts. He looks like a spammer.
Somebody like that comes in here once or twice a year. Thinks he's being clever and original with "basebore." I half expect him to call me "Dr. Wanker" should he respond. The guy who owns the coffeeshop I go to most mornings is a Yankee fan, and he was really pissed at Pineda. Why? The guy had tickets to last nights Scranton/Buffalo AAA game. To replace Pineda in the rotation, the Yankees called up the guy who was scheduled to start that game about an hour and a half beforehand, which meant the Scranton YankRailriders didn't have a starter ready to go, so they basically had to do a "starter by committee" using four guys from the bullpen in order to, hopefully, get to a set up guy and closer who were reasonably well rested. All in all, they would've gotten a quality start by committee had the first guy not gotten shelled in the second inning. It made for a longer and colder night than it might've been otherwise. He blames Pineda.
A historic season from A.J. and Sox fans await more: "Meanwhile, the worst decision-making season happened last year; A.J. Pierzynski spent the season swinging. Pierzynski correctly swung at 76.7 percent of pitches inside the zone (the Major League Baseball average was 65.5 percent), but he was undone by his hacking of 49.6 percent of balls outside the strike zone — about 1.6 times the rate of the average hitter." The full-table:http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-most-disciplined-mlb-batters/ Any Brave's fans out there who want to tell me how Dan Uggla , who hit .179 in 448 AB's in 2013, looks to them as #7 on the "Best" active swingers list? Yikes.
Dan Struggla is absolutely awful, and a complete hole in that lineup. I know they're paying him a lot of money, but come on. They should go out and sign Stephen Drew and try to convert him into a second baseman.
Just when I thought I had a handle on the New Baseball realities: "The traditional sports movie spins a myth that’s deeply important to America’s self-image: that it is a nation of underdogs, of the scrappiest and hardest-working, built on equality of opportunity, out of teamwork built by competition. That’s why, year in and year out, the same story is told with minor variations. So what does it mean when even this tale starts to fray, when the movies stop even pretending that it’s the team that matters and instead celebrate the boss at its head? What happens when fans start to think like owners, to dream of firing baseball players rather than joining them on the field? Such dreams have consequences well outside the movie theater, and far beyond the nosebleeds." _Willie Osterwell/ Al Jazeera America http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/4/sports-managementmoviemilliondollararmmoneyball.html "Why the shift? One major function of the sports management movie is racial reappropriation. How do you give white people credit for the exploits of the mostly black and Latino athletes who fill today’s professional sports rosters? Celebrate the managers, of course." "Sports management films come down very clearly in the debate around athlete pay and exploitation: athletes work for the boss, period. At best they can be loyal and hardworking employees, at worst ungrateful divas. Sometimes, rather than employees, they are treated as commodities or chess pieces for the hero to play with. But they are always objects, not subjects, of their own destinies, even sometimes of their own games."
Cheers for Matt Kemp. This story probably gets buried around here on the radio, so I wont be able to track it. I think it's news and, uplifting news at that. Sterling is a dinosaur and it would figure that he has somehow managed to majorly detract from the Clippers success of the past few seasons. Weird guy...and not news to anyone around LA. Now MLB joins NBA is Damage Control...haha....sports are about people. On a side note: what free online news sites are people reading? LA Times was the standard bearer for me but, they went to PPV and same for Washington Post. I seem to remember the Boston Globe went PPV a few years back but it was not a great site for my tastes. Der Spiegel, Al Jazeera and Bloomberg seem to be getting my hits - as long as they remain free. http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/mlb/...s-finds-tied-alleged-donald-sterling-comments "As Johnson did Saturday, Kemp went on to denounce Sterling's comments about not wanting people he associates with to associate with black people. "Racism is kinda old. For real," said Kemp, who is friends with Clippers guard Chris Paul and forward Blake Griffin. "Honestly, I just feel sorry for him that he feels that way about African-American people. I feel sorry for my boys on that team that have to play for a guy like that. "That's just not acceptable." Kemp also said he could never play for an owner like Sterling and that if he were under contract in an organization run by him, he would "figure out a way not to be in that situation anymore."
Wrong on this one. AM Clipper station and Santa Monica NPR stations working overtime on this. Elgin Baylor wont comment until his lawyers "review the tape" etc. Sterling's history is so cracked it's hard to remember when he was ever thought decent by players & staff. Baylor sued him for his "Plantation" attitude towards blacks (later dropped) and in 2009 the NAACP gave Sterling an award for giving out a lot of tickets. Go figure.
Meanwhile in DodgerTown: http://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...s-gift-20140425,0,6966864.story#ixzz30NFSpqX1 DirectTV and TWC had been running stories out about "ongoing" negotiations which, it turns out, is a joke. TWC is going after DirectTV subscribers now. It's full-on business war and still no Dodger games for most of us. Tommy's still awake, must be <5th inning: Listened to both games of Dodger-Twins day-nite doubleheader yesterday. Rare treat - weekday twofer. Dodgers are starting to roll. They're loaded - it's going to be a good year in the Ravine.
The upcoming film “Million Dollar Arm,”which looks to be “Slumdog Millionaire”meets “Bull Durham,” promises to make many of these racialized undercurrents explicit. In the film, a failing sports agent played by Jon Hamm goes to India to recruit cricket bowlers and bring them back to America as Major League Baseball pitchers. In the process, he begins to think of these Indian prospects as his sons, and learns a valuable lesson (at the expense of their lives being totally uprooted) about family. The film’s on-the-sleeve racism, which it can’t even resist displaying in the trailer — we watch one of these Indian professional athletes wave his hand in wonder at the automatic sensors in an elevator door — shows exactly how lionizing sports businessmen can be used to downplay, even mock, the achievements of nonwhite athletes. I was in a movie theater on Saturday and saw a trailer for Million Dollar Arm on a monitor near the concession stand. My first thought was, Hmmm. if it's a musical, it could be Lagaan meets Bull Durham. But even without sound... yeah, it's a bit troubling on the race front.
I know this is not baseball. But is there anyone left alive besides my self who saw The King and His Court play soft ball when Eddie Feigner was running them?
The Marlins are a damn fun team to watch. Shame that everyone hates Loria so much that they refuse to go to the stadium. Here's the thing, though, Loria is going to make money anyway whether you show or not. If you're a Marlins fan, you should be down at that stadium watching this young and fun team. Fernandez is going to be one of the best pitchers in the game. See him live before he goes to the Yankees or Dodgers. Stanton is incredible. See him before he departs, too. Maybe, just maybe, if the fans can fill up that stadium on an everyday basis, then players like Stanton and Fernandez won't go anywhere. Sure, it's a pipe dream, but it's better than watching the Mets.
Yes. Saw him in Reading PA before a Reading Phillies game in the early 90s. The guy he pitched to from center field did not strike out as they typically did, but rather fouled a pitch off his own face and had to be taken to a hospital. Kind of a buzzkill. He was stitched up and he returned to the stadium in the 2nd inning of the Phillies game and was announced to the crowd as being okay. When he came out of the dugout to wave to the crowd there was a loud gasp: he was still wearing his bloody shirt, and his face was visibly discolored. Also, no more than 10% of the crowd had been at the King's exhibit, so they had no idea WTF was going on: they just saw a bloodied, bruised, and somewhat disfigured guy waving at the crowd.