Cole Hamels starts tonight for the Phillies. This is what he looks like in a white suit, and also frolicking in bed with strange children, and also carrying his dog in a bag.
Just a friendly reminder
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Category Archives: Baseball
Hey look, it’s some stuff I wrote
Louis asked me to write the inaugural piece for the I Was There When series, so I did. Speaking of, I’ve got a chapter in Alex Belth’s forthcoming book about lasting Yankee Stadium memories which you should check out.
Previewing Mets-Phillies with Pat Gallen
Pat writes for PhilliesNation.com.
Someone other than Oliver Perez going to be cut to make room for Pat Misch
Lefty Pat Misch, who has had a stellar season for the Mets’ Triple-A team, likely will start Saturday’s game against Roy Halladay and the Phillies.
If Misch is called up, the Mets would have to make a roster move, with reliever Manny Acosta the leading candidate to be sent down.
First of all, I know Acosta blew a game he shouldn’t have been in on Wednesday, but really? Him? Acosta has actually been decent for the Mets outside of that one awful outing and appears a better bet to be good moving forward than Elmer Dessens, who has completely disappeared.
After pitching in basically every other game from the All-Star Break until the end of July, Dessens hasn’t pitched since a 2 2/3 inning outing in the Mets 14-1 loss to the D-backs on Aug. 1. That was actually the last time Ollie Perez pitched, too.
The Mets are carrying two guys in their bullpen who don’t pitch at all. But hey, that’s cool, it’s not about winning games anymore. It’s about… wait, what is it about?
Is this the end of Larry Jones?
Chipper Jones may have played his last game in the major leagues after tearing up his left knee while fielding a ground ball.
The Atlanta Braves said Thursday that the 38-year-old third baseman tore his anterior cruciate ligament and will need surgery. The estimated recovery time is six months, short enough to be ready for the next opening day – if Jones decides to return in 2011.
– Paul Newberry, Associated Press.
Well — and I say this without irony — that’s a shame. There were many different embarrassing and hilarious ways I fantasized about Chipper’s career ending, so this one seems anti-climactic. If he’s really done, I hate that he won’t be around for one last trip through Flushing and one last “Lar-ry,” chant.
Chipper Jones was an all-time great player and, to Mets fans, an all-time great villain. He deserves better and we deserve better than for it to end like this. So now I’m left actually rooting for Chipper Jones to recover from his injury so he can return in 2011 only to be humiliated in some grand fashion.
Also — and this is the most f@#$-up part — the injury makes the Braves’ road to October baseball a bit bumpier, and that’s actually a bad thing. The Phillies are somehow more loathsome, and the Mets appear so far out of it that a blow to the Braves might only open the door for the stupid Phillies to take the division. Oh lord, what has it come to?
Nice player, nice hat, nice catch
I actually have that hat. I used to wear it with my most realistic fake mustache for shows with my old band — I thought it made for a great bass-player look. For some reason it really freaked out my girlfriend (now wife).
Johan Santana never really had much time for the one-inning closer thing anyway
The Mets didn’t have or need a closer today.
Apparently Johan Santana spoke to Jerry Manuel before the game and said, “Don’t come out there today. Leave me alone.”
And so — against all odds, really — he did.
Santana whiffed 10 and walked two in a 115-pitch shutout. He also singled and scored a run, because Johan Santana likes to thoroughly dominate his opponents.
A billion reporters and columnists were on hand because K-Rod beat up his father-in-law last night. It’s going to be fascinating to see how many writers try to spin this single win into something more, even though every player stressed that it wasn’t, and that they try to win every day, and that they don’t know too much about the situation but they support their teammate 100 percent.
Carlos Beltran went 3-for-3 with a double and a sacrifice fly. The two singles weren’t exactly scalded and the double came from the right side of the plate, but a three-hit night is a three-hit night and Beltran said it would give him confidence, even if he still felt a bit uncomfortable. Plus he made a nice running catch in center field. It was almost like old times again.
What a nice little afternoon baseball game.
Baseball Show interview with the Giambino
Not the most interesting interview I’ve ever done, but the big Easter egg comes when I start asking the Papelbon question, then realize how stupid it’s going to sound to ask him if it felt good to hit a walk-off home run, then try to rephrase it and end up making it sound even dumber. Sheer panic:
Melvin Mora: Not on Team Melvin
I don’t want to scoop the video interview I just did with Melvin Mora since it’ll come out sometime early next week and you can watch it then, but know that Melvin Mora is totally awesome and cool.
I’m probably biased because Mora was always one of my favorite Mets in his brief tenure with the team. I thought it was awesome when he randomly became one of the best hitters in the American League for a couple of years, and even kind of awesome when he hit that grand slam last night.
Anyway, Mora told me he cried when he found out the Mets traded him to the Orioles. And he talked about Edgardo Alfonzo’s role in getting him on the Mets’ roster, which was cool. Real good interview, I think — one of my favorites this year.
Also, while this was happening, Ubaldo Jimenez was signing autographs for some fans. Some reporters were in the dugout to interview him so he gave the “one sec” sign to the crowd.
While he was answering the reporters’ questions, he grabbed a bunch of brand-new, official Major League baseballs out of a bag and signed them. I figured he was autographing them for the interviewer or something (even though that’s a big-time media no-no around here), but after he finished the interview he went back to where he was standing and tossed all the balls out to the crowd.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a player do something like that before, and it’s particularly awesome that it should be a player who’s, well, particularly awesome. So that’s cool.
And furthermore, the Rockies were pumping Madonna in the clubhouse before the game, and I mean that in the most innocent sense of the term. First “La Isla Bonita,” then “Like a Prayer.” Pretty weird.
Apparently that happened
It was not immediately clear what sparked the fight between the 28-year-old relief pitcher and his 53-year-old father-in-law, police said.
Moments before the explosion with his family, Rodriguez snapped at reporters who asked why he was not summoned to pitch in a bases loaded situation in the eighth inning.
“Did I f—–g pitch tonight?” Rodriguez snarled when asked if he was upset that manager Jerry Manuel did not ask him to protect a one-run lead. “Why do I have to talk to you f—–g guys?”
– Kristie Ackert and Jonathan Lemire, N.Y. Daily News.
Oh lord. So looks like the 2010 Mets season finally turned to full-blown absurdity last night, prompted perhaps by Jerry Manuel’s downright surreal bullpen management.
Obviously I don’t know what happened in the family room, so I’m not here to making sweeping moral statements about K-Rod beating up his father-in-law. I’ll leave “appalling” and “abominable” to the Daily News, though I’ll admit that it’s pretty hard to come up with a good reason for a 28-year-old professional athlete to be fighting a guy 30 years his senior.
I imagine we’re going to hear a whole, whole lot more about this, so I’ll reserve judgment until some more of the details come out.
The only thing I’m certain of is that Manny Acosta shouldn’t have been in that game last night. If you’re so desperate to have a set “eighth-inning guy” that you need to take a decent starter out of the rotation to anoint him the eighth-inning guy, then holy lord, let him pitch the eighth inning. You’ve got to give him some margin for error. Takahashi allowed two baserunners, yes, but it wasn’t like they both crushed the ball. And if he’s the elusive eighth-inning guy you’ve been searching for all season, he should be good enough to pitch out of a jam. Maybe guys are relinquishing that role so quickly because they know they’ll be yanked from it as soon as they fail the first time and are pitching tentatively.
Anyway, the small upside to the K-Rod thing is that probably no one will say the Mets are too nice anymore.
Tedquarters 