Month: August 2005

Suckah!

The gloy of the hidden ball trick was shewn forth again last night at the Marlins/Diamondbacks game. The simplicity of it was, as usual, its beauty: Mike Lowell took the throw from the outfield, then simply didn’t toss the ball to noted homophobe Todd Jones. Seconds later, he applied the tag to an unsuspecting Luis Terrero.

Harold Reynolds on Baseball Tonight broke it down nicely, pointing out the way Jones noticed what Lowell was up to and, instead of heading to the mound, casually circled it. One thing I learned from this is that, if the pitcher steps on the mound, the ball is dead; his presence on the mound suggests that he intends to pitch, and therefore being on the mound while the ball is elsewhere is, apparently, a no-no.

National goddam treasure Retrosheet.org has a list of all the known successful hidden ball tricks here. Ozzie Guillen, whom I believe Bill James pointed out as one of the dumbest baserunners ever, was caught three times. Fool Ozzie once . . .

Tales of baseball stupidity not involving Rafael Palmeiro

You know, I look at those nets over the stands behind home plate, and

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sometimes they don’t look like they can even hold more than one baseball at a time, much less a person.

Perjury

Well, we’ve found out what it takes to get Congressmen pissed off about being lied to under oath these days: .289/.371/.516, with 569 home runs, 1834 RBI, and 3018 hits. The chair of the House Committee on Government Reform, Tom Davis III, has asked for information from MLB about Rafael Palmeiro’s positive steroids test. The committee is expected, says Congressional Quarterly, “to pay close attention to the timeline in baseball records” to determine whether the juice might have been responsible for the convincing bristle in Palmeiro’s mustache as he denied ever having been juiced.

Us ordinary folk, we just have to settle for writing a letter to the editor when we’re outraged. Congress is special. They can do something! They can order Palmeiro to shave that mustache and let them test every hair if they get a mind to.

You close followers of Congress in the audience will note that this is the first time Congress has paid close attention to anything since their surprisingly close interest in Mary Carey’s gubernatorial campaign.

And it’s the first time Congress has been outraged over possible perjury since the good ol’ innocent days in the summer of 1998, when, so a reliable source tells me, the most-searched terms of the online posting of the Starr Report at a certain major daily newspaper were “Sosa” and “anal.”

Too bad Palmeiro can’t be impeached! Think of the lesson that would teach America’s children about the seriousness with which Congress takes their duty to . . . uh . . . do whatever it is they do. Has the White House issued marching orders on Palmeiro yet?

Then again, if it does turn out that Palmeiro lied brazenly to Congress, then surely Karl Rove won’t waste any time before hiring him. After all, lying smoothly under oath is a skill that could come in mighty handy at the White House as Patrick Fitzgerald’s Amazin’ Prosecutin’ Machine keeps rolling.

Devil or angel, please say you’ll be mine

(This “ticket” is a printout, courtesy of a season-ticket holder who didn’t want to see this classic battle of good vs. evil represented by the Angels and the Devil Rays, although I can’t imagine why someone would turn down the chance to see the Devil Rays!)

Let’s get this anecdote out of the way first: as I was walking through the concourse of Angel Stadium on my way to the concession stand, proudly wearing my Devil Rays cap and Rocco Baldelli T-shirt, an Angels fan pointed at me and yelled, “Holy crap! They do exist!” I said nothing; unfortunately, it wasn’t until much later that I realized my comeback should have been, “There are dozens of us! Dozens!” That has the advantage of being a reference to “Arrested Development.”

Yes, at my suggestion, Jason, Rachel, Chris, and I went to Angel Stadium because my beloved Devil Rays were in town.

We were early enough to see the tail end of batting practice…

And they were showing the White Sox-Mariners game live on the giant screen…

At Angel Stadium, you can sometimes spot cameramen in their natural mountain environment…

Exchanging lineup cards; Lou Piniella looked like he was in a good mood…

Angels starting pitcher Chris Bootcheck, which I believe is also the name of a Windows XP utility…

Carl Crawford at the plate…

Devil Rays starting pitcher Mark Hendrickson, who is 6’9″, but doesn’t look quite as intimidating as Randy Johnson from way up here in the “view” level…

Why, these “view” level seats are high enough up that we can see Arrowhead Pond, home of the Los Angeles Mighty Ducks of Anaheim…

On the scoreboard, Jose Molina has to be “J.Molina,” but Bengie Molina gets to be just plain “Molina”…

Say, here’s something stupid and distracting: cell phone text messages on the scoreboard…

While we’re at it, note that the Dodgers are “LAD” on the scoreboard here in Anaheim…

The Devil Rays somehow manage to light up Bootcheck, but as evening turns to night at Angel Stadium…

…the Angels have the bases loaded in the bottom of the 6th…

However, the Angels only put 3 runs across in the 6th, and so the Devil Rays are ahead 6-4 going into the bottom of the 9th with Danys Baez on the mound. After some anxious moments, Danys Baez has to call time because he’s broken his belt; he has to walk over to get a new one…

And then both the umpire and catcher Toby Hall get to watch him closely as he puts the new belt on…

The “broken belt” ploy works, and, holy crap, the Devil Rays win…

Happy Rays…

Happy Jim…

After the game, we wait in the parking lot for the traffic to clear. Rachel and Jason leaning on Jason’s car…

Chris and Jason…

Poor Angels, now tied with the A’s for the American League West lead…

Sponsorships

It appears that Bob’s suggestion has been taken up. The Carmi Times Sports Department is now sponsoring Bob Sykes’s page at Baseball-Reference.com.

I guess I’ll

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have to get on with sponsoring Mark Sweeney’s page.

10 innings

Acting as if I’m a real columnist having a lazy day, I present a “News and Notes” column!

1) Headline in the Sun-Times following the Palmeiro news: Caught ‘roid-handed. Another good headline this week, despite not being baseball-related, was the Trib’s headline announcing the appointment of a federal monitor to watch the city’s hiring practices: City gets a Hall monitor. I imagine the headline writers are all staying up late these days practicing their headlines in the hopes of Daley being indicted. Me, I’m just practicing my gleeful chortle. Maybe I’ll get to warm it up chortling over Rove.

2) Palmeiro and Sandberg are linked yet again, this time in Sandberg’s Fire Sermon in Cooperstown on Sunday being followed so closely by Palmeiro essentially giving back his “Redeem in five years” ticket to the Hall. Those of you up on Cubs gossip will know how they were linked before, but if you need a refresher, contact me in some way that enables me to tell you the story while not being sued for libel.

3) Albert Pujols has stolen 11 bases this season without being caught. Next up for Prince Albert: some work in the offseason on his change-up so he can pick up some innings out of the bullpen.

4) Speaking of running, poor Lenny Harris, in legging out a three-run double against the Cardinals the other night in Florida, catapulted himself to the top of my list of worst baserunners in the game. He’s been a slow runner for years, plagued by leg and weight problems, but these days, his build is Kruk-like and he runs as if he’s on two peglegs. If this were a backyard whiffleball game, everyone would agree on special slowness rules for his ghost runner.

5) TV Guide is changing its format to not have nearly so many listings. How will I ever know when Scooter’s going to grace my television? I guess I’ll have to go to Jeanniezelasko.com to find out. I wonder if Jim has any thought about the changes to TV Guide?

6) In a discussion at work the other day about how to encourage bloggers who have written about our products, the idea of just contacting them with a thank-you came up. Or maybe we should send them minor-league baseball tickets?

7) After the Sox/Tigers game I attended recently at Comiskey, I was walking out next to a girl who said to a friend, “There’s my bus, gotta go.” She looked up to the ballpark, blew a kiss, and said, “Love ya, Comiskey.”

8) After today, there’s a third of the season left, and Ken Griffey Jr. has still not visited the DL.

9) For a while a few weeks back, an image search for Johnny Damon brought up a certain pumpkin as the fourth response. It’s fallen back to ninth lately. Get to work, readers!

10) The Post-Dispatch reports today that the Cardinals are, after all, leaving KMOX and buying 550 AM KTRS. I think it’s a big mistake, as do many other Cards fans, and I’m sad to hear about it. KMOX was the Cardinals for me for my childhood. But this is really a topic that deserves its own post soon.

Mmm, pre-game chicken

I guess I should call attention to the fact that someone from my hometown (in fact, we’re both alumni of the same high school) was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this past weekend. The Tampa Tribune was apparently giving Wade Boggs saturation coverage all last week. And his plaque mentions the Devil Rays!

Levi (or Toby): any Carmi connections to the Hall of Fame?

Take off your rainbow shades

Jason and I are taking a weekend trip to Phoenix in September (actually, we’ll be staying in a motel in Tempe), and it’s going to include attendance at a Diamondbacks game…

I bought a pair of tickets on stubhub.com. Can you believe a season-ticket holder would want to see the D-Backs play the Rockies so little that they’d be selling these tickets for half-price? (Half the single-game price, that is; there’s a big season ticket discount that’s already reflected in the price printed on this ticket.)

After the baseball game, Jason and I will be heading for the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe to see the ASU Sun Devils play our beloved Northwestern Wildcats in a game that starts at 7:00, but that’s more of a topic of discussion for Football-Related Program Activities.