In The Air

“I love playing this game and every spring training feels like the first.”, said Rickey Henderson. ‘People who write about spring training not being necessary have never tried to throw a baseball.’ stated Sandy Koufax. Harry Carey, the great announcer for the Cardinals, the A’s, the White Sox and the Cubs gave us a fans perspective. ‘It’s the fans that need spring training. You gotta get ’em interested. Wake ’em up and let ’em know that their season is coming, the good times are gonna roll.’

Everyone has a different view of how spring training is part of the most wonderful times in our lives. Spring training is all about hope. Today, it is in the 70’s in Arizona and Florida. The air is beginning to warm up. No clouds in the high, blue sky.  With very little wind, it is a great spring day. For those in Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Cincinnati, its a different story. And it it that which makes spring training the first ray of hope of the coming year.

Down on the 101 in Scottsdale, the sound of bats hitting balls, balls slamming into gloves is loud and clear. At Camelback Ranch, the same sounds are beginning to be heard. Twenty miles apart, the Diamondbacks and the Dodgers begin their training ahead of all the others because they will be playing in the first regular season series of the year…down under in Australia at the end of March while the other big league teams are reaching their peak of spring training.

Steve Earle probably summed it up best when he rambled, ‘I love baseball. I’ll probably be one of this old farts going to spring training and drive from game to game all day.’ It’s that kind of wonderful dream many desire and dream about but few achieve. Chasing that dream to see our heroes in the cathedrals of spring is never ending.

But that is what spring training is all about. It is now the season of hope. Now we know this winter of misery will end. Baseball is back. Our worries are over.

Play Ball!

Home For The Aged

I have been a Yankee fan most of my life. They, along with the Oakland A’s, have been my favorite American League teams. To be sure, I am not a live-or-die fan like Big Red or Timmy. My allegiance always goes to the Brewers. But understand, if the Yanks are in a game against anyone except Milwaukee, I’m pulling for the team in Pinstripes.

This past Monday, I watched the New Yorker’s invade Chicago for the return of A-Rod. It was quite a scene. The YES Network pulled in big numbers. To the surprise of few knowledgeable fans, his first at bat of the season was a hit. That’s what big players do. To everyone’s surprise, he ran with ease. But he was stranded at third when his teammates showed their age.

Andy Pettitte (41) was visibly graying on the mound after each pitcch, giving up 7 runs in two and two-thirds innings. Teixeira (33) was out for the season at first, replaced by Wells (34). Cano (30), the baby of the team, was at second but not next to Jeter (39) at short because Derek was on the DL for the 3rd time this season. Soriano (37) was the DH with Granderson (32) in left, somebody in center and Ichiro (39) in right with another somebody at catcher. In essence, here was a team, with A-Rod (39) at third that got very old right before our eyes. There is a real probability that five or six of these players will not be with the team next year. They will be playing for the AARP nine.

This team has never looked worse since those dreadful days when the Pride of Beloit, Jerry Kenney, played for them and wore #2.

As mentioned, the game drew a season high on YES television with a 4.34 rating translating into a viewing audience of 393,000, a 71% boost over the season’s average on the local Yankee telecast.

The option was Betty White reruns in ‘Who’s Older?’.

But there is a silver lining behind the ‘Home For The Aged’. We hear that Depends is thinking of sponsoring the team next season and coming out with a ‘Pinstripe’ version.

Play Ball!

It Was A Season To Forget For 29 Others

The San Francisco Giants are champions of baseball, once again. Their sold out season at home was a testament to their power in the West and throughout all of the game. The center of attention come spring will be Scottsdale. That is where they will begin to defend their title this past season and second in the past three years. For other teams it was a season to forget.

In Miami, what should have been a season to remember, became a nightmare quicker than you can say Fidel Castro. Of course when Ozzie said those two words, the beginning of the end began. Ozzie is no longer the manager of the Miami Marlins. He’s out of the fish tank. Now he can spout off about the aged dictator in Cuba all he wants with his profanity laced vocabulary. Así que lo siento. Me encanta el béisbol.

In Boston there was a tea party like only Beantown can deliver. They had fired the most successful manager in their history, who won not one but two World Series supposedly because he had lost control of his team. Guys were actually drinking beer in the clubhouse. Imagine that. Baseball players drinking beer in the clubhouse. After that horrible discovery was blabbed throughout New England on every fish wrap and sports talk mediums, there was a long debate between the candidates they would select as the next great Red Sox manager. Suffice to say the guy they should have taken grabbed the job with the Cubs before the Red Sox decided on Bobby Valentine. Yikes!

In Philadelphia and Milwaukee, great pre-season pitching staffs do not materialize to automatically put them into the playoffs. In Minneapolis, they found out that you can’t have a team built around one high-priced catcher. On the North side of Chicago, Dale Sveum is facing, like others who have taken over that franchise before him, another losing season which must be followed with a winning season or Sveum will have swum. On the South side of Chicago, they let a season of great leadership by one of their own disintegrate in September. St. Louis, Atlanta and Cincinnati had hopes crushed by the tidal wave known as the Giants. Arizona’s owner showed how he knows more about baseball than anybody because he has all the baseball cards Topps has ever printed. That makes him an authority. Unfortunately, Gibson can’t manage cardboard players. Houston was seen rushing over to the American League. They forgot to play ball in 2012.

Seattle had a season to remember. They gave up the greatest player in the game to the Yankees but had more great pitching performances at their stadium than anywhere on the planet ever. They are smiling in Seattle. Same with the fans in Washington, DC, where they were rewarded with a team that brought the city their first divisional championship. Quite an accomplishment for a City that had not seen a title winner since 1933.

Pittsburgh did it again. After a hot start, they faded badly. What do you expect from a team  that is managed by Clint Hurdle. Cleveland was never in the papers the entire season. Nor were the Padres. The New York Mets were non-factors this past season. Colorado disappeared in their own thin air plus their manager left after the season. Kansas City’s only claim to fame this season was hosting the All-Star game. The two ‘T-Towns’, Toronto and Tampa Bay had flashes of brilliance but not enough to put them in the big dance. On top of that, the Blue Jays lost their manager who became the head dude of the Boston Valentines.

Then there were the New York Yankees. The rapid loss of skills of A-Rod and the physical loss of The Captain, doomed the pinstripers this past season. In Dallas, the almost unexplainable coldness of Hamilton’s bat late in the season doomed the Rangers third attempt to win it all in three straight seasons. This franchise still hasn’t realized it needs pitching to win. Did you hear that Nolan Ryan? Remember what you did better than most? It wasn’t hitting. And what can you say about Detroit that hasn’t already been said?

That brings us to Baltimore. What a magical season Buck Showalter brought to baseball. 93 wins. Finally, Buck got his due. After rebuilding the Yankees and then getting fired; after building the Diamondback from scratch and setting all of the pieces together to win the World Series and got fired; after rebuilding the Rangers before he got fired; he took over a team that had won only 66 games the year before he got there and in two short years took them to the door of greatness.

Then there is Oakland and Billyball. The Athletics won the American League West title. And they played for the Championship of the American League. Go ahead. Name three players on the A’s besides Coco Crisp. They won an exciting 94 games. This was one of the most amazing stories in baseball. Billy Bean for President. He is the star of this franchise. Nobody understands the game better…on how to get the most out of talent like Mr. Bean.

On the other side of the equation is the Battle for LA. On one hand there is a billionaire who  bought a pig in a poke and thought he could win the American League pennant and finished third. On the other hand there are billionaires who not only  have to improve a team on the field but a stadium they play in and make it once again safe to go and see games. The Pujols Angels were only exciting because of one rookie. Their manager finally showed what he is made of. Arte has to take a look at his manager if he hopes to capture a title soon. As for the former LaLa Dodgers, they have gotten rid of all that has been bad over the past couple of years by taking out of the game the battling McCourts.

Which leads us to the Giants of San Francisco. Jack Elliot once said “Baseball is grown men getting paid to play a game.” In the City by the Bay, men enjoyed playing baseball this season like few before them. The had food fights before the games. One of their biggest boosters was an injured pitcher who played Ernie Kovacs routine of The Nairobi Trio in the dugout during the game. There were more than smiles. There was laughter and joy of being in a game they love to play. Pandemonium ruled. They put new gas into the gashouse gang. Think of them as the laughing gasers. They have all winter to smile the smile of victory.

Play Ball!

Get Up. You Can’t Be That Tired!

Baseball must be an easy sport to play. Most of the time the players are just casually milling about on the field waiting for the next pitch. You play catch before the inning starts. Nothing too strenuous. There is an eight-in-nine chance that you will not be involved in the next play. You get to sit down when it is your team’s time to bat. The game lasts only a couple of hours a day, far less than playing a round of golf on even the busiest courses. Sure, you have to grab a bat and walk up to the on deck circle after coming from your comfy position in the dugout. You take a couple of swings. And when it is your turn to hit, you walk up to the batter’s box, take your position with a couple of practice swings and zero in on the pitcher…particularly the throwing hand of the pitcher. From that moment the game either speeds up enormously or slows down incredibly depending upon your comfort zone at that time as the stars line up with the movement of the earth and your familiarity with the pitcher. As Yogi said, “Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.”

Every player on the field is an exceptional athlete. They are one of only 800 people on the planet to be able to play in ‘The Show’ at one time. For the record, that is one of eight hundred out of 7.013 billion people on the planet.

The mind races faster. On Friday night for five hours and four minutes, the struggling Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago Cubs (both entered the game with identical 13 wins and 18 losses) held one of their ‘big rival’ marathons. The Brewers used 22 players out of 25 men on their roster. They even used one of their starting pitcher to pinch hit, Zack Greinke. Only Vonnie Gallardo, Shaun Marcum (who starts on Saturday) and Marco Estrada (who pitched the game before) were not used. If further pinch hitters had to be used, there is no doubt that Gallardo and Marcum could have been used as both are also good hitting pitchers.

There were a lot of Brewers in the ballpark on this night as the Cubs manager, Dale Sveum, along with former Brewer pitcher and now Cubs pitching coach, Chris Bosio, former Brewer rookie of the year, Cubs third base coach Pat Listach and former Brewer infielder and now Cubs bench coach, Jamie Quirk. Add to this, former Brewer manager, Del Crandall at 81 years of age was there as he was honored in the stadium as he was inducted as a member of the The Milwaukee Braves Hall of Fame earlier in day.

The Cubs used 21 of their players including all of the position players.The two clubs had only pitchers that were not used. This game, more than most, gave new meaning to Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on first, What’s on second. I don’t know’s on third. Why’s in left. Because is in center. Certainly is the catcher. I don’t give a darn is at short. Tomorrow is the pitcher.”

Cory Hart for the Brewers had 7 at bats, the last gave every one of the 40,097 a chance to go home as it was a single in the bottom of the 13th inning which gave the home team a victory with the bases loaded. Mark Concannon, the Brewers television field announcer interviewed the winning team’s hero for the night, Hart, with “Good morning.” It was after midnight.

Saturday’s game was scheduled to start at 12:05P (CST) to accommodate the FOX Game of the Week schedule.

The game was over. Players rushed through the clubhouse, showered and left to travel home and grab some sleep. Milwaukee’s not tough to get around at 1A in the morning. They were all capable of being home at 1:30A. Say it took a little while to get to sleep at about 2A. Many get to the ballpark four hours before game time. That means they had to get up at 7A and in the clubhouse at 8A. Routine time is at hand followed by batting practice for the home team. Gates open two hours before the game so it is time to go back to the clubhouse and begin the preparation for tendencies of the opposing pitcher and hitters. Interviews for local radio and FOX television along with welcome back home hugs and hand shakes for Darren Sutton, the former Brewer television announcer and now the television voice of the Arizona Diamondbacks, will be covering the national telecast. Visit to the training room is scheduled. Stretching comes next. The pains and bruises from the night before are nagging, especially for Rickie Weeks and Ryan Braun, both of whom were hit by pitcher Lendy Castillo in the bottom of the 13th. Week’s had x-rays earlier in the morning on his wrist which proved negative. There were no broken bones. That could have added him to the sideline along with two others in the infield. Only Ramirez stands alone as the only infielder not to be on the DL for the season for the heroes of the Cream City nine.

There is a chance of rain for Saturday with a high of 60 degrees. The roof is open and the crowd has gathered. The heroes have been on the field warming up. It’s time for that leisurely athletic endeavor for another day. Jogging onto the field to take their positions, Marcum takes the rubber and the game begins all over again, 0-0. A clean slate. All is right with the world. Batter comes to the plate. And the umpire yells,

“Play Ball”.