Category: MLB General

The baseball off-season is a time for rebuilding, revitalizing, and reenergizing your ball club. By the end of the first half of play in baseball most clubs have an idea of where their teams’ are headed. The 2004 baseball season has been anything but anticlimactic consisting of comeback stories, rising superstars, battles through injury, and underachieving, overpaid loudmouths. Some clubs have performed much to the expectation of critics, and others have not performed as expected.  I’ll examine which off-season deals were helpful and which were devastating to the clubs during the first half of play.

As America’s pastime begins its home stretch, it’s now time to look at what’s about to happen. Since I’ve got a few leftover tea leaves, let’s take a look:

Ah, summer time rolls around again and the 2004 baseball All-Star game from Minute Maid Park has concluded. Another year of the greatest accumulation of players who have put up fantastic numbers in the first half of the season. You got I-Rod catching; he leads the majors in average. You got the Hall of Fame outfield for the NL (until Griffey got injured), Clemens making the start for the NL team, and good old Jason Giambi making the start at first for the AL. All is well, or is it?

A player seemingly blessed with unlimited potential has struggled and persevered through his entire career. Battling the injury bug he climbed his way to the top list of baseball’s elite smacking his 500th home run of his lustrous career with the Cincinnati Reds. A journey through pain, suffering, losing, and winning has brought him this far, and he thought it was finally over. Not yet.

We were treated to quite a show on Monday night during the Home Run Derby. Miguel Tejada, the smallest guy in the competition, blew everyone out of the water. In the second round, Tejada had 15 home runs. This mark set the all-time record for most home runs ever in a single round. This record seems to be broken almost every year. In an era where it is becoming increasingly easier to hit a home run, records tumble every season. It’s only a matter of time before Bonds passes Hank Aaron’s all-time mark. 80 home runs? 200 RBIs? It may not be long before these seemingly unattainable numbers are achieved during a single season.

In the long tradition of ripping off the Sports Guy, I present to you my 2004 All-Star Game running notebook.  

8:07 PM.  We’re live from Fanta Grape Field… er, Minute Maid Park, here on the Planet Houston.  (I take no responsibility for anyone who doesn’t get that reference; such a person is already cursed for not appreciating the phrase, “Son of Jor-El: kneel before Zod!”)  I am taking advantage of my parents’ HDTV, watching the game with my younger brother, Patrick, and my mom, who had surgery earlier in the day on a broken finger and is all drugged up.  Dad is out of town, so the occasional semicoherent comments from Mom will have to suffice for humor tonight.  Kevin Kennedy and Jeannie Zalasko are both wearing yellow roses on their lapels.  When did the All-Star Game become the Enchantment Under the Sea dance?

Eric Gagne’s 84 consecutive game save streak could be considered one of the best in baseball of all time. With the dramatic conclusion of this amazing streak, can Gagne puts his name on the top of the list of the greatest closers of all time? Not yet.

On Sunday afternoon, wandering around East 153rd St. outside Yankee Stadium with the lovely Better Half, Jennifer, my eyes were drawn to one particular t-shirt for sale outside one of the myriad Yankee souvenir stores that dot that litter-infested slum.  The shirt, in full obnoxious Yankee-blue splendor, proclaimed triumphantly, “GOT TWENTY-SIX?”

With the Mid-Summer Classic upon us, the unofficial halfway point of the season is here.  Some great stories have arisen in the first half of the season, from the Texas Rangers to the Milwaukee Brewers to Lew Ford to the stomach parasite that has wreaked havoc throughout Kevin Brown, Jason Giambi and the Yankees.  With the season half-over, here are my awards for the first-half and predictions for the rest of the way.

I found myself in the most American of settings this past Fourth of July, the bleachers of a major league baseball game.  Here are some of my random observations as I enjoyed the country’s favorite pastime on the birthday of our nation.