And That Happened

Rays 15, Marlins 3: ESPN.com's play-by-play account of games uses a green font for run-scoring plays, and a red font for pitching changes. After their ten-run explosion, the Rays' half of the fifth inning looks like a frog in a blender.

Red Sox 5, Diamondbacks 0: Tim Wakefield on the mound brought double-dividends. For one thing, he dominated (7 IP, 2 H, 0 ER). For another thing, his presence meant the absence of Jason Varitek and his .131/.185/.197 June bat. Well, actually Kevin Cash is worse than Varitek in June, but at least he hit a three run homer in this one.

Braves 4, Brewers 2: Where would the Braves be without Jorge Campillo? Tonight he goes seven, gives up only two runs on four hits and goes 2-3 with a couple of runs at the plate. Given how poorly they've played recently, it's hard to fathom that the Braves are only 4 games behind the Phillies right now. Not that it will last. Interleague play will be over soon, so I guess someone on the NL East will have to start winning games again.

Giants 4, Indians 1: Tomorrow night I'm going to see the Reds and Indians play. This looked like a much better matchup back when the schedule came out. I mean, when you only score one run off of Barry Zito, you need to take a long look in the mirror.

Yankees 10, Pirates 0: In two games, the Yankees have outscored the Pirates 15-12. If the Pirates win 2-0 or something tonight, this series truly will be a tribute to the 1960 World Series, at least as far as run differential goes. Joba (6.2 IP, 6 H, 0 ER, 7K) seems to be growing into his big boy pants quite nicely.

Nationals 5, Angels 4: Jesus Flores singles in the game winner in the ninth giving Jon Rauch -- who coughed up a lead in the eighth -- a nice little vulture win.

Mets 8, Mariners 2: Miguel Batista walked five guys and gave up eight runs in less than three innings. Given his artistic gifts, however, he will no doubt turn the experience into an epic cycle of poems meditating on love, loss, and mortality.

Reds 6, Blue Jays 5: This game was bad for the Jays for two reasons. First, because they lost in extra innings. Second because, after the game, Adam Dunn called J.P. Ricciardi and asked him if his refrigerator was running.

Royals 4, Rockies 2: The Royals playing the NL are like the old people Scatman Crothers turned young in the "Kick the Can" segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie. They're having so much fun right now, but soon they will realize that they have responsibilities in the real world. The old people had families and friends they would miss if they stayed young. The Royals have beatings to accept at the hands of the Red Sox and Angels and such.

Cubs 7, Orioles 4: Jim Edmonds in June: .346/.407/.712. I suppose I need to take back those cadaver jokes I was making a few weeks ago.

Rangers 3, Astros 2: There were more hits in the Astros clubhouse yesterday afternoon than there were during the game.

Twins 9, Padres 3: That little hint of a run San Diego teased us with a couple of weeks ago was clearly an illusion. Brendan Harris gets his second more or less game-winning home run in as many games.

Phillies 4, A's 0: Kyle Kendrick (8 IP, 4 H, 0 ER) clearly doesn't have that ninth inning mindset. Maybe they should have started J.C. Romero instead.

Dodgers 5, White Sox 0: Eric Stults, on the other hand clearly does (CG, 4 H, 0 ER).

Great Moments in Assault and Battery

Shawn Chacon was suspended by the Astros after getting into a heated and eventually violent exchange with General Manager Ed Wade.

Seems Wade and Cecil Cooper wanted to talk to him in the manager's office. Chacon didn't want to, telling him that he was in no mood to listen to what they had to say in private. Words were exchanged, and then this:

“He started yelling and cussing," Chacon said of Wade. "I’m sitting there and I said to him very calmly, ‘Ed, you need to stop yelling at me. Then I stood up and said 'you better stop yelling at me.' I stood up. He continued and was basically yelling and stuff and was like, ‘You need to (expletive) look in the mirror.’ So at that point I lost my cool and I grabbed him by the neck and threw him to the ground. I jumped on top of him because at that point I wanted to beat his (butt). Words were exchanged.”

Yeah, that's the story in Chacon's own words. Forgive me for being a lawyer, but when I read that I don't think "wow, this team is in turmoil." I think "wow, Wade's lawyer could win this one on summary judgment right now!"

Chacon has made around $13M in his career. If Wade wakes up with so much as a sore neck tomorrow, he could probably dip into some of that if he were so inclined.

Buy me some pizzelles and eierpfannkuchen! No me preocupo si alguna vez regreso!

The International Baseball Federation -- the folks behind the World Cup and Olympic baseball and everything -- have announced plans to launch a European league beginning in 2010. Walt Whitman was unavailable for comment at press time.

This sounds particularly dreadful:

Schiller also mentioned a rule change being considered in an effort to save time on games that go into extra innings.

"When the game enters the 10th inning, the next players on the roster are placed on first and second base and each team starts with one out,'' he said. "We feel that this proposal will help bring the game to an end in a timely manner.''

They can't be serious, can they? This has to be a sarcastic reaction to our implementation of countdown clocks, shootouts, and golden goals, right?

Damn Europeans and their typical disdain for tradition.

Predicting the Future

Science!

Here's the scene: Alex Rodriquez is in the batter's box and the pitcher fires a fastball over home plate. It takes only about a third of second for the ball, traveling at 100 miles per hour, to travel from the pitcher's mound to home plate. Yet somehow A-Rod manages to swing his bat around and blow the cover off the ball.

But there's a problem. The human brain doesn't work fast enough for even the "best player in baseball" to recognize that it's a fastball, crossing over the outside corner of the plate, in exactly 37 milliseconds. By the time he figures out where the ball is, it will be in the catcher's mitt.

"The batter can't actually react to what he sees, because [the ball] would be past him" by the time he reacts, said Richard A. Andersen, professor of neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology. The batter's brain may not be fast enough, but Andersen's research suggests it can make up for that by predicting the future.

The article tries to describe how technical and complicated all of this is -- there are paragraphs about monkeys with electrodes stuck in their brains and everything -- but doesn't this all pretty much boil down to "well, it was 3-1, so I was sitting fastball"?

I'm Sorry

I try to run a family-friendly outfit here, but sometimes you gotta go for the Dick Pole jokes.

Good Timing

Plate ump Brian O'Nora had to leave the Royals-Rockies game last night after getting hit in the head by the pieces of a shattered bat. This occurred mere hours after baseball's safety committee met to discuss the dangers posed by maple bats.

That sound you hear is the nation's sports columnists collectively running to their typewriters, overjoyed at having a column idea handed to them on silver platter.

Mind Games

The Brewers are concerned that pitchers don't learn how to pitch into the ninth inning as they're coming up through the system, so they have decided to do something about that. No, they're not going to shred arms by getting rid of pitch counts. They're going to do something else that is foolish:

Beginning this week at Class A Brevard County, relievers will start games before turning it over to the "starters" in the third or the fourth. By starting the starter later in games, the Brewers hope their young players develop a "nine-inning mindset" by the time they reach the Majors.

It strikes me that a better way to get your pitchers to go deeper into games is to teach them to be more economical with their pitches. To stay around the strike zone more. To have a plan of attack instead of trying to strike everybody out with the heat that got them drafted but that, if history holds for most prospects, will dissipate pretty quickly.

Another problem I have with this is the use of relievers to start games. If you're a reliever in low A, it's a pretty good bet that you're not one of the better pitchers on the team. Most guys who make the majors as relievers started as starters, meaning that the bullpen on an A team is likely full of cannon fodder. How will that "ninth inning mindset" develop if "starters" are brought into games that are already lost before they throw their first pitch?

It seems to me that the plan to develop that "ninth inning mindset" will come at the expense of a first, second, and third inning mindset. Unfortunately for the Brewers, all innings count.

And That Happened

Giants 3, Indians 2: I had kind of a rough day yesterday. Things just weren't working right. Computer trouble. Client trouble. Kid trouble. By around 9:15PM or so, I had pretty much had it with the world. Before slipping into a nice cozy glass of scotch, I decided to turn on the end of this game. Though they're on every night here, the Indians do nothing for me. The Giants -- at least the current incarnation --do even less. But then, in the top of the ninth, San Francisco gets Rich Aurilia over to third with Omar Vizquel at the plate. They put the squeeze on and, Casey Blake's bobble aside, it's a thing of beauty. Good timing. Good execution. Great camera work by the STO team. It was the kind of thing that can make a pretty crummy day brighter.

Mariners 11, Mets 0: Getting pounded by the worst team in the game is bad, but letting Richie Sexson go 2-3 with 3 RBI off of you is even worse. Of course doing those things while getting shutout by a knuckleballer missing a normally essential ligament in his arm takes things to a whole new level. For what it's worth, Tim Wakefield's career ERA against the Mets is 2.43; Charlie Hough: 2.67; Phil Niekro: 3.02; Steve Sparks: 9.00, but that was only two innings.

Blue Jays 14, Reds 1: On Sunday the Daily News ran a story about trade rumors allegedly swirling around Bronson Arroyo. I wasn't buying it on Sunday, and after pinching off a one inning, ten-run, 11-hit loaf against the Jays last night, I don't think anyone else is buying it either. He's 0-for-June and is sporting 6.52 ERA overall. He's going to make over $20M between 2009-10. No one trades for a guy like that. They call in Exorcists to rid themselves of his unholy presence.

Pirates 12, Yankees 5: Bill Mazeroski threw out the first pitch. Two innings later he suited up and hit a two-run double off of Darrell Rasner because, hey, everyone else was doing it.

Astros 4, Rangers 3: Josh Hamilton left the game early with a gimpy knee. He's hitting .285 over his last ten games. As slumps go that's pretty minor, but you have to think that the heat and the fact that he doesn't get rested much could be catching up with him. While we're talking about Hamilton, I wanted to reprint a comment an anonymous commenter recently made in that "to boo or not to boo Hamilton" thread from the other day:

At Spring Training in Surprise this year, the Giants blew off my kids, age 9 & 11 when they went autograph hunting on Easter Sunday after the Giants/Rangers played. Josh Hamilton watched it happen, then ran over to where my kids were, introduced himself and signed baseballs, caps, bats and tickets until everyone left in the park had an autograph. He asked kids what positions they played, acted interested when they answered and probably saved my vacation by connecting with the kids. When we see Josh on TV now, we cheer - and you should too.

No one's life is so simple and straightforward that we can tell whether they are good guys or bad guys based on a single observation, but as single observations go, this is a pretty big one in Hamilton's favor.

Brewers 4, Braves 3: The good news: Jeff Francoeur's contact lenses may be working, as he went 2-4. The bad news: He's still killing the Braves, this time with two errors in the first inning which led to two unearned runs. Not that anything was going to stop the Brewers last night anyway, as they've won eight of nine.

Rays 6, Marlins 4: The top of the eighth was a study in mutual futility. First up were the Marlins, who gave up three rinky dink hits to the first three batters to load the bases. Then it was the Rays turn. Bases loaded and nobody out and they hit into two consecutive fielders choices in which the lead runner was forced out at home. Then the anti-momentum swung back to the Marlins, as reliever Joe Nelson walked in two guys in a row to give the Rays the lead for good.

Angels 8, Nats 3: If you Google "woeful" and "Nationals" you get 681,000 hits. That's not as bad as the Reds' 751,000, but it's far worse than the Mariners' 130,000 and the Royals' 29,500. And if you think for a second that my saying this is not about me playing the Joker to Chris Needham's Batman in an effort to lure him back onto the cruel streets to start blogging about the Nats again, well, you're just not familiar with my work.

Cardinals 8, Tigers 4: Hey, it's the 1934, 1968, and 2006 World Series! Feel the excitement! Less exciting but probably more relevant was Gary Sheffield's return after a month or so away. He went 1-4 with a homer. In other news, the National Association of Smoke Producers and Mirror Manufacturers has announced historically-low inventories among its members by virtue of an unusually large order placed by a customer from the Greater St. Louis area.

Red Sox 5, Diamondbacks 4: According to the game story, David Ortiz may hit off a tee today. My boy might too if I can get home from work before it rains.

Royals 7, Rockies 3: Until Alex Gordon's homer in the 7th, the Royals' runs all came on four singles and a fielder's choice. Not the most intimidating display of power the world has ever seen, but it was made up for quite nicely by Zach Greinke's ten strikeouts in six innings.

Orioles 7, Cubs 5: Chicago used 19 players in a game that was 7-1 at the seventh inning stretch. Yeah, it got a little closer after that, but from the box score it doesn't exactly look like the kind of game that would inspire someone to go all La Russa on us and empty the benches with double switches and all of that nonsense. Anybody see this? What was the deal? Did Piniella put in a bunch of bench warmers thinking the game was out of hand in the seventh?

A's 5, Phillies 2: Two big blasts -- by Emil Brown and Jack Cust -- put this one out of reach. Is it just me or does it seem like Emil Brown has had an inordinate number of huge, game-changing hits this year for a guy hitting .246/.288/.375? Maybe it is just me, but I feel like I've written some variation of "big hit from Emil Brown!" quite a few times this year.

Twins 3, Padres 1: Hells Bells! Hoffman gives up back-to-back homers to Brendan Harris and Brian Buscher in the ninth inning. If it makes him feel better, it wasn't a blown save because the game was tied. Probably doesn't make Jake Peavy (6 IP, 1 ER) and the rest of the Padres feel any better, though.

White Sox 6, Dodgers 1: Mark Buehrle (8 IP, 6 H, 1 ER) makes quick work ( 2:05) of the punchless Dodgers. Of course, he makes quick work out of just about anyone.

How Blogs Die

Someone let me know if I start to exhibit the warning signs.

Frenchy's Cheaters

Jeff Francoeur is having a hell of a time at the plate, and the Braves think they have a solution:

Searching for answers to his extended slump, Braves right fielder Jeff Francoeur was fitted Monday for a single contact lens for his right eye.

His vision in the eye has deteriorated since Francoeur was struck in the face by a pitch while squaring to bunt in a 2004 minor league game, and he thinks it might be a cause for the wide gap between his offensive statistics in day and night games.

“It’s been tough, but I try to stay positive,” he said. “There’s so much of the season left. We can really take off. They need me to do what I’ve done the last two seasons.”

Yes, Francoeur has some pretty big day-night splits -- for his career he's about .100 points of OPS better during the day -- but the 26 day games this season notwithstanding, the difference is almost all in the slugging percentage, not the OBP. That suggests to me that he can swing harder and the ball can carry farther during the day, but that he's not much better at recognizing a good pitch from a bad one when it's light than when it's dark. Maybe the contacts will work -- they did for Matt Diaz for a while -- maybe they won't.

I think Francoeur's biggest problem is not his eyesight but his utter lack of a plan when he comes to bat. He's been up for four seasons now -- nearly 2000 plate appearances -- yet he still swings at everything regardless of context or game situation. He still chases awful pitches. He still sits dead red and swings for the fences. If I were forced at gunpoint to bet my children on a single baseball outcome, "Francoeur hits into a first-pitch 4-6-3 with one out and the bases loaded and his team down by two" would be my horse.

Francoeur's numbers show a tremendous regression in their own right, but you can get a better indication of just how lost he is by simply watching him hit. At least when he came up -- before people realized they didn't have to throw him strikes -- he looked confident and balanced. Now he's all over the place.

I hope it's just eye trouble, but I fear that he's just a victim of arrested development, a discipline deficiency, poor coaching, and too much success too soon.

(thanks to themarksmith for the heads up)

Santo May Finally Make It

I don't follow this sort of thing very closely so this may be old news for a lot of you, but apparently the Veterans' Committee voting has changed in such a way that, for the first time in seven years, they may elect someone to the Hall of Fame. And that someone may very well be Ron Santo:

In recent years, the veterans committee -- essentially the living Hall of Famers -- selected from a filtered ballot of 20 to 25 players, listing as many as 10 on their individual ballots. A player was required to be listed on 75 percent to gain induction.

Santo led all vote-getters in the most recent round of the every-other-year voting but fell five votes short of induction.

This time around, that 20-to-25-man list is used in a preliminary ballot to narrow the final ballot to 10 names. Committee members then vote again, this time selecting up to four from the 10-player list, with the 75 percent criterion in effect.

Obviously Santo belongs in the Hall. If you disagree, post your argument in the comments. I have yet to see a cogent case against the man, but I'm open to anything.

Also please note from the article that Joe Morgan is perhaps Santo's biggest supporter. It's easy to lob grenades at the guy -- he makes such a big target sometimes -- but I'd be willing to sit through any amount of his color commentary in exchange for a Santo plaque on the wall of the Hall.

Whiteyball

The Wall Street Journal has noticed something:

It's hard to watch the college-baseball World Series, under way now in Omaha, Neb., without noticing how different the college game is from the major-league version. Not in the caliber of play or the funny ping of the aluminum bats, but in the way the players look.

College players in the three main divisions are 86% white, according to the most-recent NCAA figures. That's a big difference from Major League Baseball, where one study puts the number at less than 60%. The most striking difference is in the number of Latinos on the field: They made up about 29% of all major leaguers in 2007 but only 5% of players in college.

Because it's the Wall Street Journal there's a lot of good stuff in the article about the economics of all of this including how, for example, college baseball's farkakte scholarship rules affect minority recruitment.

I think one of the reasons I can't take a shine to college baseball -- apart from the obvious pings -- is that so many of the teams seem to be stacked with Tylers and Austins and not enough Joses and Juans. It's not some overt flaw that violates some squishy equality requirement on my part. I don't look at the TV and yell about the lack of diversity on the screen. But the relative lack of Latin players is kind of disconcerting on some level, in the same way that weird lighting or the lack of crowd noise would be disconcerting. Something is missing from the game that we have come to expect -- something just wrong -- that makes you feel like you're watching something less than baseball.

World Series Flashbacks

In anticipation of the Yankees-Pirates series, the New York Times runs a remembrance of the 1960 World Series. We all know how that ended so I'll spare you, but how about this:

Since interleague games began in 1997, there have been many of these series reminding fans of World Series games contested decades before.

Two weekends ago, the Pirates visited Baltimore for the first time since they won the 1979 — “We Are Family” — World Series against the Orioles. That same weekend, the Red Sox played the Reds in Cincinnati for the first time since the Reds won the 1975 — “Carlton Fisk Foul Pole Home Run” — World Series against the Sox.

I have no idea if it's a person or a computer making the interleague matchups, but it seems like World Series rematches have been a conscious calculation this time around. I've read a lot of articles like these that force me to reflect on the past, but nostalgia can be a double edged sword. While the "historic" matchups like these are supposed to inspire fond remembrances, nothing diminishes the 1975 World Series more than seeing Norris Hopper in left field when I'm thinking about Pete Rose. Or seeing Darrell on the mound when I'm reminded of Whitey Ford.

And That Happened

If elected, I promise to pass legislation mandating a full slate of 15 games each and every weeknight between April and October. If that creates a hardship, we will re-institute the WPA, focusing on the development of innings-eating pitchers. The business of this country is baseball, and I promise that once I'm in charge, there will be no slow, sad, pathetic nights in which only a third of the teams play.

Brewers 4, Braves 1: Ben Sheets (CG, 4 H, 1 ER, 7K, 0 BB) put the Braves down quickly, quietly, and humanely. They didn't suffer. We'll tell the kids that they went to go live on a farm upstate. They'll be happier there, we'll tell them. Really, it was for the best.

Mariners 5, Mets 2: King Felix hits a grand slam off of Johan Santana. It was the first salami by an AL pitcher since before I was born, and it wouldn't have happened if David Wright hadn't made an error with two out in the second. Hernandez later had to leave the game with a sprained ankle suffered while covering home. The lesson here: sometimes it really is better to half-ass your job.

Diamondbacks 2, Red Sox 1: Danny Haren (7 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, ugly neckbeard) outpaces Josh Beckett (8 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, ugly necklace). Overheard during broadcast: Steve Phillips, describing baseball's state of parity by explaining that there are two or three really good teams but the rest aren't very good at all. That, actually, would be the opposite of parity.

Angels 3, Nationals 2: Sure, the save is a somewhat overrated and often misinterpreted statistic, but K-Rod does have 31 of them through 77 games, and that's unprecedented. He plays by the same rules as every other closer, so no matter what you think of the save, you gotta give the fellow a hand.

Royals 8, Rockies 4: Brian Bannister started. He threw 113 pitches, but only 66 of them were strikes and he walked six guys. In other words, it was very un-Bannylike. The immediate implication: probably about 46 Posterisks in today's Banny Log as Joe P. vamps, trying desperately to figure out how to get out of writing 17 or 18 more of them this year.

Character Counts

Neyer posted a link to it this morning, and Sara pointed it out to me because I was too busy watching myself get yelled at, but here's a neat passage from the recap of Bill James' and Rob's presentation at the Boston Museum of Science:

[James] prefers to talk about elements of the game that he has not yet been able to measure.

For example, there is what he calls “The Dick Allen Problem.”

Dick Allen was a talented baseball player for the Phillies in the 1960s who had trouble getting along with management and many of his fellow players. Many believe Allen was a clubhouse cancer whose antics (he fought with teammates on a few different occasions and once missed a double-header because he was stuck in traffic) cost the Phillies wins.

The problem for James is how to measure the impact of a player’s personality on the team’s wins and losses. He has no idea how to go about doing that, but thinks it will have to involve practices from other scientific disciplines, such as organizational psychology. He sharply disputes the idea that off-field behavior doesn’t matter.

“There are some people who seem to think the things that happen off the field have no effect on teams whatsoever. That strikes me as idiotic,” he says.

When Sara forwarded that to me, she said "Bill James is working on scientifically measuring the "human element"? Good lord, what would the Old Guard say about that?"

I think the Old Guard will say something like "Finally that geek James has given up his cyberball and figured out what we've been saying all along! Character counts and chemistry matters!" Of course when they say that, the old guard will be ignoring that:

(a) James has never said that character doesn't count, and his comments here reaffirm a lot of what he has said in the past;

(b) Even if he did, looking at chemistry/character and looking at stats are not mutually-exclusive exercises; and

(c) Even though the Old Guard may claim that they were right all along in talking about chemistry, that talk has been much like their appreciation of stats: shallow, lazy, and resting on old canards and cliches as opposed to any objective observation.

I don't get the sense that James is actually looking at "the human element" as opposed to merely talking about it, but I'll bet that if he decides to do so he'll beat the old guard at that old game just as much as he beat them at the "new" game over twenty years ago.

The Backlash Against the Backlash

One of the central dynamics in baseball fandom over the past four years has been the backlash against Red Sox Nation. People were yelling for Sox fans -- who, pre-2004 World Series results notwithstanding, had been pretty fortunate all things considered -- to shut up with the lovable losers stuff.

While the misery of Red Sox Nation has been overplayed, Splice Today's Russ Smith -- a Sox fan living in Baltimore -- believes that the backlash has jumped the shark as well:

Winning ballgames is a balm for fans, and maybe that’s why people in Baltimore just shrug now when the bandwagon jumpers and pink-hatted ladies who comprise “Red Sox Nation” come to town. (It also helps that attendance, suddenly, is surging.) So what’s the excuse for the spate of baseball columnists—exacerbated during inter-league play—who are apparently just realizing that the Sox, finally shorn of the “lovable chokers” label that the New England intelligentsia reveled in romanticizing for so many years, are, at least temporarily, a draw in whatever city they play? A week ago, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Bob Ford ranted about the interlopers who came to see the Sox play the Phillies in a three-game series at Citizens Bank Park, lamenting that the “casual fans who [want] to glom on the gravy train” were wreaking havoc in his city . . .

. . . Enough, fellas. Although personally I’d like nothing better than for the Sox to build a dynasty to rival that of the Yanks in the 50s or late-90s—and what fan of any team wouldn’t?—it’s not likely. Odds are that Red Sox Nation will have another couple of years as a sports economic powerhouse and then another team will capture the public’s imagination. And when that happens, I’m looking forward to when the likes of Ford and Miklasz whine about the Orioles’ juggernaut called “Birdland” from coast to coast.

Not too sure about that impending Orioles dynasty, but the notion that Red Sox fandom is going to transform over time is likely correct. And I think that's true even if they keep winning (and given the organization that Theo and his buddies have built, I think that's a safe assumption). Manny and Papi will be gone one day, and the team will be full of a lot of guys with loads of talent but none of the charisma (who can match theirs?) and certainly no claim to those pre-2004 years. The fan base will still remain strong, but the novelty will have worn off for many, and you'll start to see the most marginal Sox fans drop out or at least back.

Thankfully for the rest of us, it's those marginal fans ("I spent two years of grad school in Boston, so I'm a total Sawx fan!") who are the most annoying.

Bob Feller is an Incredible Ass

The NYT's Jack Curry sits down for interviews with Lonny Frey and Bob Feller, the only two remaining players from the 1939 All-Star Game.

Frey, who is 98 and obviously not in the best of health, comes off like a humble, aw-shucks kind of player who was just happy to be there (and here). Feller, who at 89 is still incredibly sharp and active, comes off like a pompous ass:

Gehrig, another legendary Yankee, was the honorary captain for the A.L. that day, having ended his streak of 2,130 consecutive games played two months earlier. A week before the All-Star Game, the Yankees retired Gehrig’s No. 4 during an appreciation day. It was the first number retired in baseball. That day, Gehrig, who was dying from a neurological disease, called himself “the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”

Frey said he remembered Gehrig’s powerful words and felt sympathy for a fellow player. Feller said Gehrig’s speech grew more powerful as the years passed. Regarding Gehrig saying he was the “luckiest man,” Feller bluntly said: “He’s wrong. I am. I’m still alive.”

Wow. I have always been keenly aware of the profound irony surrounding Gehrig's death from a disease that robbed him of the very thing -- motor skills and muscle control -- that made him so formidable. The only cause of death which would inspire a comparable sense of irony with respect to Feller would be a fatal case of lockjaw.

Curry has a post at Bats this morning as well, providing some sidebar material to the Feller portion of the interview. Not surprisingly, it doesn't do much to make him seem any more humble of a fellow.

Mulder Returns

Mark Mulder's return to action is tentatively scheduled for next weekend's series against the Royals. That is assuming he does OK in what the team is describing as a "light" outing tonight with Class AAA Memphis.

I wish the Royals hadn't scored 52 runs in their last ten games, because if they hadn't I'd have my pick of "light outing" zingers.

The Disappearing Organist

There's no logical reason for organ music to be played at ballgames anymore. It's not the cheapest option for between-innings entertainment. It's not the most elegant. It certainly doesn't connect with modern fans in any important way other than nostalgia.

But I love it, and I'll miss when it's gone.

Geroge Carlin 1937-2008

I am incredibly sad about this.

The following is one of the best bits he ever did. You can watch it on YouTube if you'd like. It's funny. In pure text, however, it reads like a good, compelling argument.

Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.
Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park. The baseball park!

Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying.

In football you wear a helmet.
In baseball you wear a cap.

Football is concerned with downs - what down is it?
Baseball is concerned with ups - who's up?

In football you receive a penalty.
In baseball you make an error.

In football the specialist comes in to kick.
In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve somebody.

Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting and unnecessary roughness.
Baseball has the sacrifice.

Football is played in any kind of weather: rain, snow, sleet, hail, fog...
In baseball, if it rains, we don't go out to play.

Baseball has the seventh inning stretch.
Football has the two minute warning.

Baseball has no time limit: we don't know when it's gonna end - might have extra innings.
Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we've got to go to sudden death.

In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there's kind of a picnic feeling; emotions may run high or low, but there's not too much unpleasantness.
In football, during the game in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you're capable of taking the life of a fellow human being.

And finally, the objectives of the two games are completely different:

In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.

In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! - I hope I'll be safe at home!