MLB
The hot stove has reached boiling point. Transactions are in the process of fervent dissection; dollars are flying around Disney land, the Immortal Gil Meche just signed with the Royals… for 45 million????
Indeed, the hot stove is burning a five alarm blaze impossible to contain. Here are two storylines that have specifically attracted my attention.
On Monday in Orlando, baseball’s high rollers will begin the four days of rabid negotiations that largely decide rosters. Free agents will be signed, and some major trades could go down, possibly not the ones you are expecting. Here is a preview of the excitement.
It must be that time of the year again. Hall-of-Fame ballots are out, and he gets brought up again. You know him, he wrote a book about his controversy, sold baseballs on E-Bay, and did just about everything but publicly apologize about betting on baseball. Of course I’m talking about Pete Rose. Every year, about this time, the debate begins.
I was thumbing through a recent addition to my baseball library — The Baseball Anthology: 125 Years, edited by Joseph Wallace — and came across a couple of pages devoted to the tragic death of Ray Chapman in 1920. A common misconception is that Chapman was killed right there on the field of play. David Nemec and Peter Palmer in 1001 Fascinating Baseball Facts claim he was “the only on-field fatality in major league history.” According to at least one eyewitness, though, he died not on the field but in a hospital several hours after the event. And I can think of several ballplayers who died in similar fashion. James Creighton, the 19th-century pitching phenom, comes immediately to mind.
He’s a walking contradiction, half hero half villain, glaring like a samurai behind ice-cold eyes. He’s a warrior and a whiner, heart and talent, attitude and arrogance. He defends his teammates with righteous zeal. He belittles them with distant apathy.
He hits and he hits.
He is Gary Sheffield.
Who is Gary Sheffield?
Anyone who followed baseball this year knows the story of Jeffrey Charles Weaver. After going 3-10 with a 6.29 E.R.A. with the Los Angeles/Orange County Angels of Anaheim/Pasadena/Tustin/Southern California region, and being replaced in the rotation by his little brother Jered, he was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cards’ struggling, injury-depleted pitching staff needed help, and while acquiring Weaver seemed like it would help less than having A-Rod on your postseason roster, it was better than nothing.
Maybe a little change of scenery would do Weaver good. Maybe being traded to a contender would give him a little fire on the mound; a little more motivation. After his fourth start as a Cardinal, the hope for a turnaround was dwindling along with the Cardinals’ playoff hopes. His line after that loss to the Atlanta Braves read as follows: 4 IP, 8 H, 6 ER, 2 HR, 2 BB, 1 K.
Sure it looked bleak for a while, but who doubts Weaver now?
The Yankees shocking expulsion from Baseball’s October proceedings left their devoted legion of fans falling perilously into negativity, trapped in feelings ranging from disillusionment to anger.
People react to disappointment in different ways, their methods of coping best reflecting their personalities. Some people disavow their devotion, while others find their loyalty reinforced in defeat. Some people react calmly, while others write a nonsensical stream of conscience sports column named after a Carlos Santana jam. Whatever the survival method, we all eventually get led back to a mutual point of origin:
Hope for the future, appreciation for the past, and a constant yearning to continually move forward.
How exactly should the Yankees correct the error of their ways?
At the dawning of yet another cold winter catharsis, here are one fan’s humble suggestions.
Before Drayton McLane bought the Houston Astros in 1992, he was already one of the United States’ wealthiest individuals, having made a fortune in the grocery business. He had always been a baseball fan, ever since he was a child and the statistical nature helped him learn how to “multiply and divide.” But his presence, along with that of Houston Rockets’ owner Leslie Alexander, at a Jones Business School forum on sports management Monday at Rice University would never have attracted such an audience if he didn’t own the Astros.
“I remember several years ago, we were going to create a grocery distribution center in Phoenix,” McLane said, “and there were two reporters there and they were bored to tears. Then when we announced that we were buying the Astros, we called a press conference and there were 200 reporters packed in.”
By C. Eric Lincoln
Two months ago I sat down to write much of the following column about Bill Buckner after a conversation with Tim Teufel, an old Met and an old friend. We had talked about anything and everything, and then our chat turned to Game Six— that Game Six— 20 years ago on October 25, Mets versus Red Sox. I asked Tim Teufel about Bill Buckner and Tim said he felt “terrible” for the guy “since it wasn’t his fault anyway.”
Bill Buckner is a good and decent man who was caught standing in the way of history which threw him under its oncoming, intractable path. History has somehow blamed Bill Buckner for the Red Sox loss of that World Series, and for one of the biggest blunders in Series history. So 20 years later, crawl back in time with me once more, and examine the images of that moment. The truth is out there. There may be goats and villains. But Bill Buckner isn’t one of them.
I don’t know what was on Kenny Roger’s hand and neither does anyone else. It’s impossible to know. Was it pine tar? Was it dirt? Is there a problem with the pigment in the skin of his left hand? Honestly, I don’t really care, to me this all ties into the dirt that is on the hands of Major League Baseball.