One of the most clear signs that the United States is an empire in decline is the ceaseless, unquenchable demand for more and more violence, not so much as participants but rather as spectators. That’s probably the reason that the hottest topic to arise from the major league baseball playoffs so far is Ruben Tejada‘s broken leg.Prior to that, it was probably the brouhaha surrounding the soft plunk on Jake Arrietta’s ass by Tony Watson, which led to bench clearing jaw jacking. We love “hits” and it is not limited to football, where killing the quarterback is the aim of the game.
Therefore, at the same time, anyone who advocates for safety over crushing blows is considered a wimp, whether or not people actually come right out and say it.The so called “Buster Posey Rule” that was enacted after his leg was broken by a career minor leaguer doing his best Peckerhead Rose imitation, is often ridiculed by current and former players as wimpy and against the way the game was played for decades and yadda yadda. Despite the fact that such manly men as Duane Kuiper and Pedro Martinez have spoken out in favor of a similar rule to protect middle infielders, cowardly varmints who are going to be called out still feel it is their duty to go after the person and not the bag.
The simple rule should be, but probably never will be, this: You slide. You do not barrel roll. You slide to the base, not to the fielder. It’s apt to be dangerous anyway. The fielder does not block the base or home plate without the ball being at or very near his possession. If the Utley type play occurs, the runner is out and, because of injury, the ball is dead. That’s it.Cut to Viagra ad.
While we are discussing loathsome individuals,how repulsive it is to tune to Fox for a baseball game and see Pete Rose doing the analyst thing along with respectable former players like Raul Ibanez and Frank Thomas. The same people that consider Charles Krauthammer and Oliver North as political commentators are at least consistent. On the other hand, National League games are more enjoyable because of the pertinent remarks of Cal Ripken and Ron Darling. Fox should stick to Nascar and kick boxing and leave real sports to ESPN and TBS.

In October of 1955, the first of several mysterious illnesses that began to plague me annually at about that time of the year found me at home rather than at school. The Brooklyn Dodgers were in the process of finally beating the hated New York Yankees in the World Series, and I was thrilled and mesmerized by the exploits of Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Sandy Amoros and, especially, Johnny Podres. The Yankees had famous stars as well but I couldn’t like them or root for them because, after all, as someone said, rooting for the Yanks was like rooting for General Motors, which was sort of the Google or Apple of the time. That’s how relentlessly successful New York had been in those Eisenhower years of American complacency.

At nine years of age I was living in a mostly working class neighborhood and our Irish and Slovak family liked the underdogs, except for Notre Dame. I was on the living room floor expressing my thoughts on this prejudice when my mother, who was paying just as much attention to the game as I was while doing some ironing, startled me by saying “yes, but I like Yogi.  I’ve always liked Yogi.”

Holy mackerel! That was equivalent to her saying that she was going to go to a Protestant church next Sunday.

The next season at World Series time, for some reason I was in school. However,our classrooms at St. Joseph’s all contained something new that year–televisions. Consequently, the principal, Sister Angelus, who was hotly rumored to have a brother who pitched for the Pirates and who regularly joined in with our lunch hour ball games, allowed the televisions to be turned on this day so that we could watch the fifth game of the 1956 World Series during lunch. Wow! Some prayers did get answered! St. Joe’s had a combined fifth and sixth grade room that year so my brother Jimmy, a sixth grader, and I were in the room together. The TV got turned off after three innings and he and I noted that at that point both the Dodgers and Yankees had no runs, no hits, and no errors.  It was Sal Maglie for the Dodgers against Don Larsen of the Yanks. The Dodgers, having won the Series in ’55, looked like repeaters after winning the first two games in Brooklyn, 6-3 behind Maglie and 13-8 as Larsen didn’t make it out of the second inning. Then, at Yankee Stadium, the Yanks tied the series by having Whitey Ford and Tom Sturdivant outpitch  Roger Craig and Carl Erskine. So the final game at Yankee Stadium was going to give the winner a 3-2 edge in games before they headed back to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.  So it was back to geography and all that other bullshit with no knowledge of what was happening in New York for the fifth and sixth graders at St. Joe’s.

Then, without the intervention of the pope or even the parish priest, another miracle occurred.  Not only did we now have televisions, we also had a PA system so that the sound of God, via his agent Sister Angelus, could boom into every classroom at once.  About an hour after lunch, this voice announced that we should turn the televisions back on.  Sure enough, we were to witness the end of that fifth game! Angie, as she was called only far behind her back, was a real fan! Trust me, I wanted Dale Mitchell to reach base. He struck out, and Don Larsen had pitched a perfect game in the World Series. Yankees catcher Yogi Berra rushed out to the mound and leaped on Larsen like he was his daddy coming home from the war.  It was then that I, too, began to like Yogi.  It was then, also, that I was confirmed as a lifelong baseball addict.  And Angie, much to my surprise, was cool.

Yogi died at 90 years of age last week. He was an all star in 15 of his 19 seasons and won World Series money often (13 times) during an era when that money was meaningful. He was also a coach and a manager. People know him well for his crazy, wise sayings but I’ll not be redundant here; you’ve heard them all again this past week.  I’ll remember him for other things as well.  He was in left field when Bill Mazeroski hit my all time favorite home run. He managed the Yankees to a very difficult pennant in 1964 and got the sack when they lost the World Series to a better St. Louis Cardinals team, and the Yankees went twelve years without returning upon his exit. He managed the Mets in 1973, when they finished barely above .500 and then almost stole the World Championship from the vaunted Oakland A’s. He managed the Yanks again in between a couple of Billy Martin reigns and was gracelessly sacked by reptilian George Steinbrenner.  That was one of my favorite things about Yogi, the way he refused to have anything to do with Steinbrenner’s circus for many years until relenting. Hardly anyone was treating George like the asshole he was in those days. Between 1950 and 1956 he caught between 133 and 149 games every season and the Yankees were World Champs all but two of those seasons and in the Series all but one. His lifetime slugging percentage was .482, he had 358 career home runs, and he stuck out 414 times in his career despite his penchant for swinging at “bad” pitches. I am still a Yankees hater after all these years, but this guy is Mr. Berra to me.

As we progress along the road of life and the milestones begin to pass more and more rapidly, certain occurrences seem to tell us that we have perhaps gone as far as we are going to go and that, perhaps, we have now seen enough. One of these hit me in the face last week when I looked at the box score of a game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Colorado Rockies and observed that the two teams combined to use 24 pitchers in a single major league baseball game. I counted twice. Now, of course, it was a 16 inning game (the Rockies won, 5-4) and, of course, it is September with its expanded rosters and, of course, I ought to be better about adapting to change but still…have I lived too long? I know that my pitch for limits on pitchers on the roster in a previous piece was mostly wishful thinking and that the old days are never going to come back but the need for players on the bench who don’t require Tommy John surgery every year and a half but rather do things like pinch hit, pinch run, and sub for defense is obvious and severe. We have now a veritable plethora of five inning starting pitchers and, more appallingly, one inning relief pitchers. That’s a big waste of money, and there are more effective ways to keep managers’ waistlines from expanding to LaSorda dimensions than having them constantly hiking out to the mound and back.

On July 2, 1963, there was another 16 inning game. The Giants and Braves played a scoreless tie for fifteen and a half innings before Willie Mays ended it with a home run and Juan Marichal had a complete game victory while Warren Spahn, at 40 years of age, took a complete game loss. No bullpen. I don’t think that the physiology of athletes is so much different today that complete games and three inning relief jobs are beyond the imagination. I think that a certain psychology has developed that enables the athletes and their coaches to set endurance limits that lead to self fulfilling prophesies. The first time I heard about pitch count limits was when Billy Swift was returning from injury in 1993 and the medics decided he should be limited to 100 pitches. That has now become the threshold for all starting pitchers. If you tell me I’m tired after 100 pitches, eventually I will tend to agree with you, especially if I still get paid. No doubt, some guys are finished even before that. However, I have to believe that guys like Clayton Kershaw, Madison Bumgarner, and Gerrit Cole are strong enough and mean enough to go nine. If the bar got set a bit higher, more young guys would get that way too. Do you think Marichal or Spahn were throwing as hard as they could for sixteen innings? No, since they didn’t have to impress scouts or radar guns, they concentrated on getting batters out efficiently. And relievers like Elroy Face and Rollie Fingers, who could come in with the game on the line no matter what the inning (not the pansy Papelbon “closing situation”), could also still be developed if the will to do so was there.

The playoffs are just about set and it should be interesting. I have favored Kansas City from the beginning, but they might fall victim to the same sort of circumstances that I think hurt Washington last season. They more or less cakewalked to the division title with not a lot of stress and strain over the last few weeks, and we have seen that take away the edge sometimes. Plus, with the uncertainty about Johnny Cueto‘s effectiveness and the bullpen not being anything like it was a year ago, they don’t look like favorites now. Toronto seems to have the right magic at the right time. No team in the A.L. West looks that strong, but let’s give Texas and Houston big applause for fooling most of us most of the time.

In the Good League, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Chicago should just have a three way playoff among themselves and screw the rest. However, since we are sticklers for the rules, New York has an outside chance because of their five inning pitchers and the Dodgers have a chance if there are rainouts between all of the Greinke/Kershaw starts. Stay tuned, though, because I’m always wrong.

 

One of the best things to happen in major league baseball the last few years has been the emergence of the players from Cuba.  Several have become out and out stars and it looks as though there will be many more to come now that “normalization” of relations between Yanquis and Cubanos is finally upon us.  There were many Cuban players before the 60s and it seemed like most of them played, rather ironically, for the Washington Senators: Jose Valdivielso, Carlos Paula, Juan Delis, and Camilo Pascual, to name a few.  Then Fulgencio Batista got the sack and that pissed off the racketeers who got run out of town so JFK had to try to force out the new, supposedly Communist regime or else they might have to bump him off.  Wait a minute.

Anyway, the point here is not to talk about 55 years of political treachery, stupidity, and corruption but rather to celebrate the fact that a lot of good baseball players are getting the chance to shine on the big stage.  Two of these who are playing a big part in what remains of the 2015 pennant race are outfielders Yoenis Cespedes and Yasiel Puig.  Cespedes arrived in 2012 with the at that time rather successful Oakland Athletics.  In 129 games that season, Cespedes batted .292 with  23 home runs, 82 runs batted in and an OPS of .861.  His statistics offensively the following year were not as impressive as he batted .240 but with good power numbers, 26 homers and 80 RBI.  More importantly, his team won a lot of games.  Batting .300 when Oakland is your home field is never easy and fielding ability is less quantifiable (sabermetricians notwithstanding) but Cespedes also showed good range and hands in the outfield and a very good throwing arm.  He has since then joined Juan Uribe as one of the least appreciated major leaguers.  At the trading deadline in 2014, Billy Beane proved he was smarter than a cucumber by trading Cespedes to Boston for a much ballyhooed left handed pitcher who has never really done much.  In a season of 101 games with Oakland and 51 games for the Red Sox, Cespedes totaled a .260 batting average with 22 homers and 100 RBI.  The A’s were 66-41 at the time of the trade and 22-33 thereafter.  The left handed pitcher got beaten by Kansas City in the wild card game.  Then, in December, the Red Sox  showed that they could under appreciate as well, trading the Cubano to Detroit for Rick Porcello in a vain attempt to rebuild a pitching staff that they had disassembled for some reason.  There have been no reports that Cespedes has been some kind of problem child who causes problems for management but you never know.  So in 2015 Cespedes was batting .293 with 18 homers and 61 RBI on July 31 when the Tigers, fearing success, shipped him to New York to help the Mets.  He has batted .312 with 14 home runs and 36 RBI for the Mets in the 36 games he has played for them.  New York has won 25 and lost 11 during this time.  There are, of course, other factors to consider, such as tight sphincters in the nation’s capitol.  However, I think it is safe to say Yoenis Cespedes is a winner.  He is 29 years old, and, if the Mets are smart, they will make him an offer he can’t refuse.

Yasiel Puig’s story is equally mysterious.  He is just 24, but Los Angeles seems to be aging him quickly.  If he had come to a team like Houston or Seattle that had been struggling to find success in a smaller market with lower expectations, things might have been easier for Puig.  In 2013, he burst onto the scene for an underachieving team, batting .319 with 19 home runs and 42 RBI with an OPS of .925 in 104 games.  His talent, large but raw, was on display in Glittertown as he performed feats both wonderful and awful with youthful exuberance.  Last season, the Dodgers won their division crown  with Puig playing mostly right field while Matt Kemp, past his prime defensively, attempted to cover center field.  Puig’s arm became legendary, but not always for the right reasons.  He did not become a superstar as many had expected, batting  .296 with 16 homers and 69 RBI and an .863 OPS in 148 games.  Surely, 2015 would be the year that the big, strong, fast Cubano would mature into the elite outfielder we all had anticipated.  Nope.  He has battled injury while rookie Joc Pederson took over center field for the traded Kemp and Puig remained in right field.  He’s batting a respectable .256 with 11 homers and 38 RBI in 77 games this season, and he may be finished for the year with hamstring problems.  Worse, there are rumors floating that both teammates and management do not mind his absence. What next?  Well, he is still young and, if he can be  reached and communicated with minus a ton of pressure, perhaps he will eventually blossom.

How could I have been so wrong about both New York baseball teams this spring?  I wrote both of them off early and here it is September 10 and they could both win their division titles.  As for the Yankees, I have to admit that part of it was prejudice; I have been a Yankees hater since before I was born.  Also, however, I never dreamed that Alex Rodriguez would make any significant contribution this and let’s face it, neither did you.  Carlos Beltran looked like he was finished a year ago, as did Mark Teixeira.  The starting pitching was iffy.  But Brett Gardner, Jacoby Ellsbury and Chase Headley made a solid core, Brian McCann made a great comeback, and Didi Gregorious did not get booed out of town as I expected.  So there, I was wrong.  Yuck.  As for the Mets, I knew that strong young pitching makes up for a lot of things but David Wright was seriously hurt, Curtis Granderson was a bust as either a lead off man or a slugger and a candy armed outfielder to boot, plus who was catching?  Their current surge can be attributed to good trades around Black Friday, especially the aforementioned Cespedes but also the underrated Uribe, and the retreat from greatness by the Nationals.  Plus Terry Collins, like Sparky Anderson, might just be a lot smarter than he sounds.

There is little doubt now that there will be three playoff teams emerging from the National League Central division while the West division threatens to be relegated to the Pacific Coast League and the East division watches the Mets disappear from the pack like cash that went from DC to Baghdad when Jeb’s brother sat in the first chair.

Let’s have a fun look at the MLB standings since Black Friday July 31:

National League

East                                          Central                                  West

New York 15-6          Chicago 17-4                    San Diego 11-10

Philadelphia 10-11  Pittsburgh 15-6               Arizona 12-11

Atlanta  8-14             St. Louis  13-8                San Francisco 10-12

Miami  8-14              Milwaukee 9-12            Los Angeles 9-11

Washington 8-14    Cincinnati 6-16             Colorado 6-16

Substandard League

East                                          Central                               West

Toronto 16-4              Kansas City 15-7           Texas   14-7

Tampa Bay 11-9         Cleveland  10-12           Houston 11-11

Boston      11-10         Minnesota 10-12           Seattle     10-11

New York 11-11          Detroit     9-12                Oakland  10-12

Baltimore  10-12       Chicago    9-13              La Habra    8-14

Does this tell us anything significant?  Well, some.  Getting Ben Zobrist didn’t hurt the Royals, and maybe the Tigers were right to give up so soon, or maybe, since only now do they have Miguel Cabrera back, not.  Toronto apparently made some good acquisitions, even if Troy Tulowitzki is not hitting so well yet.  St. Louis would probably just keep winning even if the team bus blew a tire and half of the roster ended up hospitalized.  The Rangers have already clinched team comeback of the year honors while the Angels are flopping even though they were able to send Josh Hamilton to Texas, where he likes the DL a lot better.  The Cubs were looking mediocre there for a while but then Addison Russell became the shortstop and whoa, daddy!  There are other reasons but Joe Maddon’s team is always full of surprises.  It is probably time to admit I was wrong about the Orioles but Buck Showalter’s teams also have a way of not going away.  The Nationals appear to need to eat some hallucinogenic mushrooms and talk about it but they still have a pulse.  The Giants made a good move getting Mike Leake, but they seem to have the same injury problem as the Cardinals without the vast reservoir of talented replacements.

For the most part, though, life is slogging on for most teams.  The sleeper in the bunch seems to be Arizona, but only because the Giants and Dodgers have pitching problems that may equal the Diamondbacks’.  Stay tuned.  As for the Yankees, I’m glad you didn’t ask.

Saturday, August 22:  There are four games of the Little league World Series that will be televised today on ESPN and ABC.  I am sure that it will be a very exciting thing for the players, their friends and relatives  but I will add to my curmudgeon resume by stating that this is a very bad idea.  I’m not certain that there even should be such a thing as a Little League World Series, especially when it is taken as seriously as it is and has been, increasingly, over the years.  Sure, if you are twelve years old, what could be cooler than to be televised playing ball with the best of your age group?  I will not cite any psychological studies about trauma to adolescent  souls but I just know that it is wrong to make such a big deal about super competition at an age where the concentration ought to be on teaching and learning whatever game you are playing rather than going for the glory.  Also, it is bad enough to have so many nettlesome adults involved in the first place, but it tends to get out of hand when the honor of your town, your state, your region, your country is considered to be at stake.  It leads to that most American of pastimes, cheating, for one thing.  The other day the coach of one team protested that an opponent wasn’t trying to win a tournament game hard enough because they were trying to manipulate their way out of having to play a team that was feared to be stronger in the next game.  Were you paying attention to that, little Cody?  At the same time that those parents who can afford to are usually being over protective, so-called helicopter  guardians of young ones we have some being thrust into high pressure contests that mean too much.  Of course, for the vast majority of 8 to 12 year old boys and girls, the fact that you or your team wasn’t good enough to make it that far, where John Kruk might be describing your throwing arm, it might suggest that it is time to hang up those spikes you’ve been growing out of before next season.  It’s a bit sick, in my opinion.

You don’t hear much about “pace of play” or “speeding up the game” anymore, but, just in case the rulers of MLB were not kidding, here is an idea that would probably help the cause.  With 25 player roster limits, let’s limit the number of pitchers per roster to ten. Most teams carry 12 or even 13 pitchers nowadays.  This insures that we all get enough toilet and refrigerator breaks while a game is in progress as manager after manager deals with the stresses and bothersome physical ailments of middle age by walking out to the mound five or six times a day to change pitchers.  It’s great for the television ad sales because you can squeeze three or four quickies that we’ve all seen hundreds of times already into the time it takes the next mediocre hurler to replace the last one.  “Well, Jack, Bochy wants to use the lefty Lopez here to face Alvarez, who’s batting .142 against lefties, but it looks like Hurdle is going to send up Sean Rodriguez, who hits lefties well, instead.”  Yeah.  Look, it might be a better way to increase scoring, if that is our wish, than the made for slow pitch softball designated hitter rule.  Starters might have to stay in the game longer.  “You know, Curt, so far 29 per cent of the starting pitchers have thrown over 105 pitches this year and only one of them has been rushed to the emergency room…”  Additionally, righties might have to figure out how to get lefties out, but it’s been done before.  Best of all, we would no doubt have fewer 18 inning marathons because there would be such things as pinch hitters, pinch runners, and defensive replacements available to actually use.  The idea of four position players on the bench is ludicrous.

One final thought from the calcified noggin of an old school baseball fan:  Dodger Stadium and Wrigley Field as we knew them are gone.  Okay, the advertising signs all over the place at least have a bit of a tradition going back to the days of the first outfield fence.  However, the extremely loud public address systems that have made so many other places unpleasant to be around are now present in these two old and once dignified ball yards.  At least, fans should be offered a civilized alternative, such as a headset that only plays Vin Scully.

Is the new commissioner of major league baseball really serious about his stated desire to speed up the pace of games?  If he is, doesn’t it seem strange that we were able to count four minutes of commercial breaks between each half inning of the recent All Star game?  Why not just admit that this is a non-issue and that this is how all of the large bills get paid and then quit pretending?  All of those young fans he says he aims to please can just continue to use the time to Instagram each other photos of the snacks they are enjoying during the pause, pop another cold one, and use the toilet without rushing to get back to Fox announcers interviewing some participant rather than describing the action.

Why is Buster Posey batting over .400 in the last month or so?  Could it be because he finally has Hunter Pence batting behind him?  The Giants are 29-11 with Pence in the lineup and 30-38 without him.

Which team has surprised us the most with their consistent winning ways, the Cardinals or the Yankees?  The Cardinals were always expected to contend, but did you think they would without key figures such as Adam Wainwright, Matt Adams, or Matt Holliday for much of the time?  Mark Reynolds, are you kidding me?  Quite remarkable.  As for the Yankees, I have to stand up straight and face the world and say it: they are much better than I ever thought they would be this season and, not only is it not a fluke but also it has to be said that one of the big reasons for their success is the contribution by Alex Rodriguez, who has proven himself to be an exceptional 40-year old athlete.  Now excuse me while I go barf.

Okay, I’m back.  Couldn’t the Tigers have replaced Dave Dombrowski before he rid them of David Price and Yoenis Cespedes?  Perhaps there is more to that story than I’m seeing but the Avila in the front office had better outperform the Avila behind the plate or Detroit fans will not be amused.

Is it possible that the Los Angeles Dodgers have improved themselves, at least on paper, over last year’s division winning team without improving their chances of repeating?  They cling to the lead for now but several players are underperforming,as the management types say, particularly the enigmatic Yasiel Puig.  Could there still be troubles in the clubhouse?  Will Kershaw and Greinke remain enough to make it not matter?

These and other important questions will be with us in the weeks to come.  Don’t step out of the batters’ box; you might get quick pitched.

The most amusing thing to me during the major league baseball  version of Black Friday was that, during all of the frantic wheeling and dealing and speculating and analyzing, the hottest team playing ball was the Philadelphia Phillies, possessors of the lowest winning percentage of them all.  Back when Nixon was vice president, these kinds of shenanigans did not exist.  In those days, the Yankees would figure out where they needed some help and then simply raid other teams’ cookie jars for a relief pitcher or pinch hitter and then go on to win another pennant.  I’m glad those dark days are long gone, but one has to admit that things have gotten a bit silly with regard to player transactions before The Trade Deadline.

The media frenzy over the supposed presidential ambitions of real estate white shark Donald Trump has been equal parts amusing and terrifying as well, but one thing that  Trump’s Folly has done that is good is the unambiguous presentation to all who care or don’t care that  it’s all about money and everything else is bullshit.  The politicians can talk about freedom, human rights, the constitution, whatever—-wealth is power and real power doesn’t even need lawyers.Therefore, Trump can do the baseball world a big favor if his presidential bid falters by offering to become the commissioner of baseball.  Then, baseball fans would be know beyond a shadow of doubt that the same rule applies to sports.  This might be disillusioning to many of us but bear in mind that at least half of the speculating and analyzing leading up to Black Friday had to do with contracts, potential free agency, big market, small market, blah blah blah.  I truly wish that this side of sports was confined to the business pages but I am in the distinct minority here,apparently: everybody wants to play GM, not baseball.  A former GM was one of the leading analysts for Black Friday on the ESPN telecasts.  Teams used to talk about five year plans and developing players to fit their ballparks et cetera but now we have half year plans, many of which are quite confusing.

For instance, the Oakland Athletics.  In the times when the Yankees were supreme, the then Philadelphia or Kansas City A’s were sneeringly referred to as the Yankees’ farm team, an easy source of future stars for New York in exchange for much needed cash or players the Yanks no longer wanted.  Today’s A’s are the farm team for any number of contenders.  The trade of Scott Kazmir to the Houston Astros helped facilitate the sudden reversal of roles for the two teams as Oakland plummets to the bottom (while still making big money) and Houston soars to the top.  The whole Moneyball thing has been a gigantic fraud and Billy Beane should have been played in the movie by someone more like James Mason than Brad Pitt. This followed helping the Toronto Blue Jays move into contention by sending them Josh Donaldson in the winter.  Where have you gone, Yoenis Cespedes, Jon Lester, and so many others?  Off to win games , my dear.  And what is up with Detroit?  Still in contention while Miguel Cabrera is disabled, with a very solid team that would contend next year for sure even if they didn’t make the playoffs this year, the Tigers gave up, sending David Price to the grateful Blue Jays only twelve months after acquiring him from Tampa Bay.  Toronto had a great week, also relieving Colorado of its when’s he going to get hurt angst about Troy Tulowitzki and adding Ben Revere to lead off for good measure.  Kansas City added to Beane’s reputation as a philanthropist by taking Ben Zobrist off his hands just as Zobrist was getting healthy and productive.

Baltimore made what may be the best addition of them all, obtaining Gerardo Parra from the Brewers.  They won’t be missing Nelson Cruz so much now.  The Mets almost became a real team by adding Carlos Gomez as the Brewers, not really that bad a team now that Jonathan Lucroy is back, showed a mysterious lack of patience.  The Mets still need a legitimate lead off batter but they can be taken more seriously now that they have Cespedes and Juan Uribe.  It is strange that both the Dodgers and the Braves have dealt Uribe.  Maybe it’s because he looks older than he is.  Uribe is a good third baseman with a strong arm and a dangerous hitter who will let Mets fans feel better about the apparent loss of David Wright.

With David Murphy, David DeJesus, and Shane Victorino all now in their clubhouse, the El Monte Angels have depth in the outfield.  Their disappointing starting pitching has me ready to abandon my prediction of an A.L. West title, especially with the improvement of the Astros, but their lineup looks good without Josh Hamilton.

As for Jonathan Papelbon going to Washington, that would have been fine except for his insistence on being The Closer.  No team needs that kind of egotistical crap.

Cole Hamels to Texas is puzzling to ponder both because one would have thought that the Dodgers, Yankees, or Giants would have outbid the Rangers and that Hamels himself would know better than to go where flyball pitchers do not fare so well.  The Giants made a good, modest addition with Mike Leake.

So the dog days are here and everything is still mostly unpredictable.  Let’s all go count our money.

We would, and it was almost always spontaneous, go up to The Field, which later was given a name but to us was always the field, with a bat or two and a ball.  We almost never had a new ball.  The baseball would be used, a bit worn, with grass stains and probably a loose stitch or two, sometimes more, so that it had be taped up.  Maybe it was a bit lopsided but, as long as you could throw it, hit it, try to field it, it was fun.  We might have to share gloves.  A catcher’s mitt was a rarity.  I had two brothers who were catchers, George and Tommy.  They were real ballplayers, not pretenders like us, and I remember that Tommy had a real catcher’s mitt that was hidden away in what was called a cupboard but wasn’t really a cupboard.  It was a cabinet two steps down the stairs to the cellar where several forbidden items were held.  There was a clean baseball in its pocket and a belt wrapped around it to keep it from losing its pocket.

The same cabinet also contained a totally off limits BB gun, a rifle that I took out and played with if I thought no one could see me.  The same cabinet also once held a 7-Up bottle that one day made me curious enough in my thirst and love for the taste of 7-Up to uncork and sample only to realize with a shock that it  actually contained some white lightning that my father had stashed.

It would be me and my brother Jimmy and probably two or three Fulkersons, Dicky and Patty and Bobby.  If you had enough guys, you played a game.  Maybe you only had 16 guys, so right field would be closed.  Maybe you only had 14 guys, so the backstop would be the catcher.  You didn’t have a mitt anyway.  The backstop was frequently in need of repair, so there were a lot of passed balls.  The batter would be throwing the ball back to the pitcher, so if he wasn’t liking the pitches very much he could find a way to let the pitcher know that.  Maybe the same guy would pitch to both teams, ’cause he could get it over.

This was ball as I knew it.  Maybe you only had a half dozen guys, so you played 21, or work up.  Catch a ball in the air, 7 points.  One hopper on the bounce, 5 points.  Stop a grounder, 3 points.  Miss one and you go in the hole, same points.  You could be out there all fuckin’ day.

Everybody played catch to warm up.  But hitting the ball, that was the thing.  Anybody that says that they don’t like swinging a stick at a moving rock and trying to hit it from here to Spain has never tried it.

Sometimes we arrived at the field to find a game already in progress being played by the big guys.  The big guys were older, better players already in their teens who looked upon us with disdain for the most part.  So we couldn’t play until they were finished, perhaps having to go and deliver their newspaper routes or some other task or maybe just being tired after three or four games and wanting to smoke cigarettes.  If they found themselves short a player or two they might condescend to put one of us in the game.  Usually Jimmy would be the first chosen because they knew he was the best of us but Patty and I would normally just watch since we were both a year younger than Jimmy and not nearly as skilled.  Watching did not hold our attention for long but it enabled us to learn some of the lingo that was so important, like how to taunt the batter while you were in the field and how to coax your pitcher to get them out, and possibly some new swear words.

Much of our time was spent searching for lost balls, poking in the weeds.  It was nice that whoever owned the last house on the block of Winslow Avenue would not yell at us for using the spigot at the side of the house for water breaks.  In fact, the lack of  cranky adults trying to spoil our fun was one of the best things about the field.  The time would come, however,  when the city recreation department  would decide to turn The Field into an adult influenced playground with things like swings and monkey bars and picnic tables and a slide and, worst of all, a “teacher” with arts and crafts.  We were aghast, but we had a counter plan.  And that will be a subject for another day.

Sixteen acknowledged followers of the Seattle Mariners baseball club were charged with misdemeanor negligence after it was discovered that they had failed to watch the home run derby contest on Monday July13th.  Four of the sixteen fans  pled not guilty and were seeking legal advice while the rest of the accused refused to contest the charges and were quickly sentenced to 60 days of watching replays of the Mariners’ first 89 games.

Those of us so advanced in years that we still use turn signals when driving our cars may recall the old television program Home Run Derby that was filmed at Los Angeles’ Wrigley Field about 55 years ago.  Except for the fact that it featured star sluggers of the time such as Eddie Mathews and Harmon Killebrew, including fascinating 30 second interviews, the show was a bore.  I believe it was cancelled after a couple of years when it was defeated in the ratings by another half hour filmed program Watching Paint Dry with Burt Parks or some such thing.

ESPN’s promotion of this year’s home run contest has been relentless but I am sure that it will be equally boring.  At least the old show was an opportunity for the participants to make a few extra dollars, which was meaningful in those days.  No one needs the dough for today’s showing but you can bet Chris Berman will be there trying extra hard to sound excited.  I’d rather watch Chris Christie play miniature golf.

Erratum: In my  all star selections post a while back, I got so excited over picking the DH that I forgot to include my pick for American League catcher position.  It was Salvador Perez of the Royals, although Stephen Vogt of Oakland certainly is a worthy candidate as well.

As for the All Star Game itself, sure, I’ll be watching that, although I’ll be averting my eyes when Fox inevitably shows their new analyst, Pete Rose, crashing Ray Fosse in the 1970 game.  And it will be hard to swallow  also when they keep reminding us that the outcome determines home field advantage in the next World Series.  Wait. I’ve got it!  The team that the home run derby winner plays for gets an automatic berth in the wild card playoff!  And, if they qualify anyway, they get home field!  Yes!