Sports Writing

Aww… Ortiz sends his wife Mother’s Day greetings: Tiffany, I think you’re a great mom. I feel so happy and safe knowing that when I’m not around, our kids are safe with their mom. You have a great personality. I don’t think anybody can take care of kids better than you do. Love, David. (Link)

Since I’ve been talking about quirky baseball ideas like the intentional balk, I should mention that one of my favourite ideas ever is the switch pitcher, perhaps because I had to learn to be ambidextrous at one point in my life. Here’s a piece on Greg Harris, the last man to pitch from both sides.

In lieu of the rained out game, here’s the Ron Mexico name generator. I’m Giorgio United Kingdom, by the way.

Great pitching performance by Clement - good command… for once I wasn’t dangling on the edge of my seat because of free passes. As I’ve noted before, I find it hard to believe Clement is already 30 - I guess it’s almost as though he has “young pitcher’s skills”, insofar as lack of command, reliance on the innate quality of his stuff, and the fact that he’s still learning how hitters respond to some of his pitches go…

Much to my detriment, I haven’t really been keeping up with Choi Hoon, the great Korean MLB cartoonist. Looking at his site, I see he did a funny 2005 MLB preview, including the above comic of the FA market. Lord knows what they’re saying, but I think it’s funny the way Clemens is just depicted as a tub next to the posing sluggers… of course, Clemens’ great season thus far is far outstripping Beltran, Beltre, and Delgado…

A thread on Baseball Think Factory alerted me to Bob Wickman’s intentional balk against the Twins. Man (Michael Cuddyer) on second, he thought the man was stealing signs, balked him to third. As Tangotiger sums it up:

Okay, the A-Rod and Matsui faux livejournal things were funny (especially when “Matsui” wrote them in haiku: “Chinese pitcher starts / I wish he were Japanese / Cannot trust Chinese”), but the level of detail of the whole enterprise is quite scary… who goes to all the trouble to create blogs by Jay Gibbons, Brett Tomko, Nick Swisher, Michael Tucker, and Kyle Farnsworth?

Everybody, Wang stunk tonight! Even A-Rod says so in “his” blog! Not ONLY can we not win a GOD DAMN GAME (Thanks, WANG. You SUCK. Your mom SUCKS. Your dad SUCKS.), but fucking Bitchson almost goes and pitches a no-no.

In lieu of saying what a good job Arroyo did today (well, not till I go to the video… he was great for the 1st three innings that I watched, definitely, but I was really worried that the Sox wouldn’t give him any run support - a no-hitter through 6 is amazing stuff), here’s Arroyo’s 2004 stats and his rank among AL pitchers:

Dagnabit, Renteria’s hand looks hurt. What’s with anyone playing SS for the Sox? Renteria possibly hurt. Nomar out. Pokey on the DL. Lou Merloni to have season-ending surgery. If I were Orlando Carbrera, I’d be very, very worried.

Sadly, it looks like Curt Schilling may have come back too soon from his ankle problems… can’t decide what that means for the Bobble Ankle doll (a link pointed out by the good folks at BSMW) - it’s still for a good cause, but baseball makes me a superstitious man. Maybe owning it will be like a Dorian Gray thing… if the doll is hurt, Curt isn’t.

Yes, I couldn’t bear to watch, and I was really afraid of jinxing the team again, but I couldn’t bear not to watch. Plus, heck, I didn’t pay for MLB.tv so as not to watch the Sox games. So, questions - how hard is it to watch Foulke in the 9th inning these days? Even when everything’s going well, as it did today (the only single was a weak hit), I still had to switch between the Sox game and the glorious schadenfreude of watching the Yankees lose badly to the Devil Rays… the wait between batters is too nervewracking sometimes. Foulke is locating his pitches better, it seems, so hopefully April was just a little bit of a slump.

Ortiz speaks out about the steroid policy, noting how Latin players have been the ones who’re getting caught: Ortiz was inclined to think [Juan] Rincon simply didn’t understand or was unclear about what he was taking, a problem Ortiz believes is widespread among Latin players because of the language barrier.

So Tom Werner flew into New York to make passionate pre-show love to Katie Couric give the World Series rings to Pedro and Mientkiewicz, posing in that pic like Doiby Dickles and the Green Lantern:

Yeah, Nixon was out (nicely timing his suspension to match a pair of left-handed opposing starters), but Ortiz was available, and it was an interesting move to put in Mirabelli at DH… the grand slam made Francona look like a genius. I’ve always felt bad for Mike Maroth since that awful 2003 season, but you can’t keep walking people or letting people put the ball in play and then expect to get out unscathed.

I can’t decide if the whole reshuffle was a good move for the 2nd-to-last-place Yankees: Hideki Matsui is moving to center field for an ailing Bernie Williams. Tony Womack is headed to left, and Robinson Cano is coming up from the minors to play second base every day. Cano will probably outdo Womack, and Matsui has CF experience from his Japan days, but can Womack’s Tommy John-ed arm handle left field?

John Marzano has a blog: Hey everyone. I wanted to start off my first “Marz Unplugged” blog post off with a bang. Just for some background info, I’m a former MLB catcher (Red Sox, Mariners, Rangers) who runs a Baseball Academy in Philly. I also do the Phillies post game show on Comcast SportsNet. Feel free to ask questions about Baseball, or anything else that’s on your mind.

Red Sox Nation and other places not on your map. Or, how you can be part of a nation when in a completely different country.

Somehow this post never got posted - ugh, Blogger. Anyway, good to see the Globe run an obit for Earl Wilson that covers the racism that he faced: The subtext of the Red Sox scouting report on Mr. Wilson when he was signed was an indication of the bias in the organization at the time and what Mr. Wilson had to overcome to make it to the major leagues.

So: I tune in to watch Jeremi Gonzalez turn in a decent effort, and then next inning up, I watch Carlos Pena launch one against the immortal Blaine Neal. Which leads me to conclude: I am not going to watch the Sox games as I get ready for work. At least for now. Seems to jinx things.