Sports Writing

Pic from yesterday: Terry Francona and Ed Wade, GM of the Phillies - aka the man who fired him as manager of the Phillies.

Meanwhile, Pedro continues to win his paternity suit. Admittedly, he didn’t look as dominating as he had in other games, and as usual Beltran homered to help him get the win, but 8 innings and 2 earned runs ain’t nothing to be ashamed about. Probably the toughest part of his night was getting lost in the Boogie Down Bronx on the way:

Wakefield brings it! Woo. That knuckleball was floating all crazy: it was one of those nights you knew that the one of the people to get a hit would be the opposing pitcher. And my fears about the Sox facing Lieber prove unfounded.

Skip Bayless had this conspiracy theory bit about last year’s ALCS: There were suspicions during October’s Yankees-Red Sox American League Championship Series that Major League Baseball was using some crude sort of replay system. League officials denied this, but baseball insiders believed the umpires’ crew chief could be alerted, perhaps by buzzer, when TV replays quickly showed a call had been blown.

Given that there wasn’t a Sox game yesterday, I present you with a picture of the birthday boy, Coconut, the cutest little dog in the world: That’s the birthday pup at about 7 weeks… he just turned 1, and it’s kind of hard to believe how big he grew. So - happy birthday to my boy!

By the way, maybe that Manny baserunning blunder the other day was a sign of a good thing. I prefer seeing the “lollygagging” greatest righthanded hitter in the league to the “tries hard, but isn’t reaching his potential” Manny that we got earlier this season.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la même chose: David Ortiz is a monster, Manny Ramirez is back, Bronson took charge, and I think the Dalai Lama, in his deceased state, could still pitch better than John Halama. So an ordinary, expected win. Manny could always rake at the Jake, of course. What do these ballplayers do when they go back to towns they were once idolised in? Where do they hang out?

After all that hoo-ha about Brendan Donnelly using pine tar on pitches, here’s the tale of a Korean pitcher, Park Myung-Hwan, who was “caught” with cabbage leaves in his cap:

In other sports news, signs that Singapore is where the IOC is going to make its decision on where to host the 2012 Games are slowly creeping up around town. After a meeting last week, I passed by 2 bus-stop billboards extolling the virtues of Madrid as a potential host city. On the same day (I think) the Straits Times, the local paper, had a long pullout section on Moscow, filled with more ads about Russia than they normally sell in a couple of years. And I picked up a couple of free “London 2012” postcards, featuring a marathon runner running by Tower Bridge. The postcard had the full number of pubs in London featured at the back. Apparently a criterion of a good Olympics host city is the ability to get quality ale.

In a contest of perhaps the two largest starting pitchers around, Wells was passable while C.C. had no BBs but was otherwise pathetic. In not so stunning news, Timlin was great; Embree atrocious; Foulke teetering but ultimately steady. Deja vu all over again. I’ve heard of defined roles in the bullpen, I just never figured there’d be defined emotional roles.

I expected Matt Clement to be good. I thought he would outperform Carl Pavano. I just never expected him to be this good. Or this interesting to watch. Whenever I saw Clement on the Cubs, his pitches seem to take forever. A bit of a yawnfest, truth be told. But today, that slider had bite.

Just as for Mother’s Day, MLB.com has tributes for Father’s Day. (Thanks to Sam’s blog for the reminder.) For the Sox, Kevin Millar, proud new father of Kashten and Kylie, gave his comments on fatherhood. That’s odd, for the Sox, on Mother’s Day Ortiz thanked his wife and for Father’s Day Millar just talked about being a father. Both are nice to read about, but aren’t you supposed to, like, thank your actual parents?

Man, I always figured Dodgers fans as the laidback sort… apparently that’s not entirely true. Funny that they issue a Fan Code of Conduct - I certainly don’t remember getting one of those in Fenway.

On a more cheerful note, Joe Buck really got in his jabs at Tim McCarver’s inordinate amount of Jeter-worship in the Yankees-Cubs game. Grunherz54 over at Sons of Sam Horn had a transcript (which saved me a hell of a lot of work - thanks Doug!):

Bleah. And there I was all happy that the Pirates rejigged their rotation so that Oliver Perez and Mark Redman faced the Yankees. So naturally, Dave “Generic Name” Williams comes in and pitches a decent game. Hardly a gem - 5 hits and 4 walks in 6 innings, but good enough.

Chris Lynch complains about the naming of the Fisk Pole, citing among his reasons the idea that Fisk doesn’t need to be honoured twice given that his number is already retired, and the idea that “Fisk Pole” really doesn’t trip off the tongue. I’m agnostic on the naming, but I agree about the way it sounds - putting a hard consonant next to a sibilant one (or between two sibilant ones, if you’re calling it “Fisk’s Pole”) tends to create that hard-to-pronounce effect. So why not call it “Pudge’s Pole”? (Besides the fact that another of the top 10 catchers of all time came along later with the same nickname as Fisk.) Much easier to pronounce.

Speaking of Foulke, there was some furore over Foulke’s comments to the Hartford Courant - here’s a sample quote: Asked if he likes to close as opposed to starting, Foulke said, ‘‘I like to pitch. Honestly, what I like about closing, I love the first and 15th day [of the month]. That’s payday." (Link)

Now that’s the kind of thing Foulke deserves the win for. Awesome Bellhorn homer, too, early in the game - down 3-1 the 3-run homer brought the Sox right back into the game. Bellhorn and Foulke have come under some of the most criticism this season, along with fellows like Millar, but perhaps one thing I like about Bellhorn and Foulke is that they don’t seem too perturbed by criticism.

I really thought the usual Sox habit of leaving people on base was going to continue: it was incredibly frustrating to see Harang nearing 100 pitches in only the 5th inning with only one Sox run on the board… fortunately the 5th had a whole different vibe, and the Sox busted loose. Funniest moment for me was when Harang struggling and the NESN camera panned to the Cincinnati bullpen, and manager Dave Miley (at least, I think it was Miley, was glancing at the screen at the moment) gave a sign that looked like those “devil’s horns” signs you see at rock concerts. I can see it now:

Incidentally, the vote on where the 2012 Olympics will be is being held here in Singapore on July 6. Woohoo! A chance for a first-hand sporting news report. I thought the Village Voice had a nice piece on the ridiculousness of the project to build a stadium on the West Side. As a good urban economist, I have to question the wisdom of a $2 billion project. Particularly for a football stadium, which gets crowds once weekly as opposed to the more regular flow of a baseball ballpark.