Sports Writing

I’m typing this from the Detroit area Best Western thanks to being bumped off the plane back to Singapore (fortunately Northwestern gave me a nice travel voucher for my pains, although really couldn’t they come up with a better hotel?)… pity the season isn’t on, otherwise I might take the pains to see Comerica.

Pierce College rents out a baseball field for porn video: Spice spokesman Scott Barton described the video as “provocative, playful, sexy and fun.” “It was baseball-themed,” he said. “There were two teams - nine women and nine men - playing baseball, who were provocatively dressed.”

Man, I thought my fantasy team had dodged some bullets when Bonds was out, as were Prior and Wood (thanks to the Dusty Baker programme for abusing young pitchers, apparently) after they were drafted… then Reggie Sanders gets appendicitis. Ah, such is life. Here’s hoping J.D. Drew has his second healthy season in a row…

Johnny Damon poses for Sox wives and girlfriends after his Queer Eye makeover - so, they keep his hair and put him in pinstriped pants? Pinstripes?? That’s so 2000…

Watching the steroid hearings, one phrase comes to mind: witch hunt. Why only baseball players? If you wanted to eliminate performance enhancing drugs, why not also call up track and field players? So Canseco releases Juiced, and so suddenly Congress feels it needs to step in with oversight of baseball?

RIP Dick Radatz… among Boston’s greatest ever relievers.

Apologies for the lack of updates… was lounging away in Chicago, land of the dyed-green river. Happy St Patrick’s Day one and all! Also: not much time to write a full post, but the congressional hearings on steroids seem like grandstanding to me.

Great article on Nomar from Howard Bryant. I really don’t understand why the Boston media often feels it has to villify superstars who get traded away - perhaps he was sulky, perhaps he wasn’t - does that mean he was an utterly awful person? Here’s Nomar on the Boston fans:

Jayson Stark has a column on a point I made a while back: for all the complaints about the Yankees’ budget and so on, there really is parity in baseball right now.

News I missed while travelling: Rather than have him face the Fab Five from Bravo’s “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’’ all by his lonesome, Kevin Millar’s teammates have decided to help him out. Not only will Millar get a makeover, but Bill Mueller, Tim Wakefield, Doug Mirabelli, Varitek and yes, Damon will also participate. Carson Kressley, the most fabulous of the show’s five hosts, will don a special pink Red Sox jersey to help him focus on his duties. (Boston Herald, link via Empyreal Environs)

I’m temporarily in Indiana, for the next 10 days or so, so I apologise, the “Red Sox from half the world away” tag isn’t quite true at the moment. Meanwhile, good luck to Rick Ankiel, who wants to become an outfielder. I can’t forget his meltdown - so bizarre. Wouldn’t he have more value trying to be a Brooks Kieschnick / Dave McCarty two-way player though?

Random piece of trivia: the 2004 Red Sox are the 4th team that trains in Fort Myers to win the World Series, joining the 1960 Pirates, the 1985 Royals and the 1991 Twins… 3 underdogs (with the 60s Pirates perhaps the most unlikely winner ever) in 3 great World Series, and then the offensive juggernaut that was the 2004 Sox, who, while not underdogs, did have to come back from 0-3 down. Something in the air.

Since I’ve been talking about Hanley Ramirez, I should note that John Sickels has been rating the Sox prospects.

Over at Sons of Sam Horn, there’s a discussion going on as to whether Pedro Martinez is the greatest pitcher ever. Clearly in terms of career longevity, the case right now would be much stronger for Clemens, Lefty Grove, and Walter Johnson - a lot depends on how Pedro’s next 8 years or so go. But was his peak the greatest peak anyone’s ever seen?

Thanks to its afternoon timing, I only managed to catch an inning of this game, the 6th, but I suppose I got lucky in choosing the best possible inning to watch. Hanley Ramirez’s triple play was awesome, can’t remember the last one I saw. That’s the kind of play that makes people sit up and take notice of a prospect, although of course every Sox fan should already know about Hanley by now.

Just read a long article on Doubleswitch.com on how the 80s are being cruelly shafted in the Hall of Fame (thanks to Batter’s Box, a Blue Jays blog which pointed it out). The ignoring of the 80s is one of my favourite points to make about the Hall, second only to the Hall’s ritual blindness to 2Bs and 3Bs. The writer points out that he would vote for Alan Trammell and Bert Blyleven, both of whom are Hall of Famers in my book.

Joe Torre talks about the Sox-Yankees rivalry and how last year’s win changed the tenor of the rivalry, and then invokes the c-word: “I’m curious to see, every year the pressure seemed to mount because that 1918 was further back in time,” Torre said Friday before the Yankees played Pittsburgh. “Now that’s not an issue anymore, I’m curious because The Curse is not the motivating factor.” (Link)

Spring is here, and the games are starting… and I forgot to renew my MLB.tv subscription! So until I settle that, everything I’ll write about the Spring Training games will have to be based on reports. It’s good to hear that Kim’s throwing well. I always figured that while you don’t play someone just because you paid a lot for him - standard sunk costs - trading him at the nadir of his value isn’t much use either. Francona had these words to say:

Was it really necessary to cream the Northeastern team 17-0? Poor kids have probably never even seen a proper knuckler, and they throw in Wakefield and a no-hitter? And 17 runs? Boy, the Sox sure are hungry for it this year. And Dave McCarty continues to be a March beast. I liked that they used Ron Johnson, PawSox manager, at first base.

This is a really nice gesture. (Picture taken from the Army News Service)