What will be finished first—the World Series or that bag of Halloween treats? Here’s hoping for decent weather as we brace ourselves for the gusty chill of New York versus Kansas City in the  21st consecutive championship of major league baseball since the last cancellation.

These are two very interesting and good teams. I could feel like a cagey prognosticator for calling the Royals the best team in the American League back in April except for the fact that I was ready to abandon that assessment midway through September. Toronto was red hot and the Royals, while in comfortable possession of the lead in the Central Division, seemed to be leaking oil. What had made the Royals look so formidable in the Spring was their solid defense, great team speed and base running ability, adequate starting pitchers and those almost flawless relief pitchers. They had lost Nori Aoki but gained Alex Rios. They had lost Billy Butler but gained Kendrys Morales. Then, to make them appear complete, in mid season they accepted the gift of  Ben Zobrist from Billy Beane and the Athletics and the probable clincher, Johnny Cueto from Cincinnati. Omar Infante had seemed to lose a step both at bat and in the field at second base, so Zobrist solved that problem more than adequately while also providing backup relief for the outfielders, particularly the ailing Alex Gordon. Cueto would join Edinson Volquez to replace the departed James Shields as a reliable big game pitcher. It was all just about perfect, except that Cueto and Volquez were not being so reliable down the stretch and one of the feared relievers, Greg Holland, was lost for the season with injury. So how sharp were the Royals going to be come playoff time? Well, quite sharp enough as we have now seen.

The Blue Jays did not suddenly become losers, but the loss of lefty reliever Brett Cecil showed a relative lack of depth on their staff, David Price was human and, after Marcus Stroman, the hurlers were mediocre at best. Many good things were shown to the viewers of the ALCS, including the outstanding play of Ryan Goins at second base and the awesome power of Jose Bautista. This is a very good team that unfortunately plays in a bad yard that seems to make players prone to injury (ban artificial turf before it’s too late, along with maple bats!) and  is too easy to hit home runs in at the same time.

What about those damned Cubs ruining everything? First, they eliminate the Pirates, who had won 98 games, just because they had a pitcher who had apparently sold his soul to the devil just to win 22 games. Then they knock off the Cardinals, who had won 100 games, just because St. Louis, who had been shelled with machine gun fire and mortars all season long, finally succumbed after one of the most valiant efforts of all time. So the National League pennant has to go to the Central Division, right, even if it’s the team that finished THIRD in that division? Wrong! Why? Well, the Cubs were severely diminished by the loss to injury of brilliant shortstop Addison Russell, but the fact of the matter is that they ran into a team that got very hot at just the right time. That would be the Mets, a team that I definitely wrote off early in the season that really took off after acquiring Yoenis Cespedes from the suddenly inept Detroit Tigers. It was another player who must have sold his soul to the devil, Daniel Murphy, who was largely responsible for the NLCS success, however, but it certainly helps to bat in front of the powerful Cubano. I mean here is a career journeyman infielder who doesn’t field very well, hits pretty well but with only occasional power, and runs well and can steal a base. Suddenly, he was better than Carlos Beltran and Reggie Jackson in their youth. Baseball:that’s why we love it

MEDIA REPORT: The bad thing about the NLCS being over is that now we’re stuck with Fox. This is the empire that demonstrates equal opportunity in hiring to criminals, a perhaps admirable quality that now brings us Pete Rose and Alex Rodriguez at the same sad table. The coverage by TBS was far better, although everyone producing live sports now seems to feel like we’d rather hear players, coaches, and managers talk in trite bland terms (Joe Maddon the welcome exception) about the action than see the actual game. The post game who’s your daddy, cigar, and wine thing was embarrassing, though. Perhaps the lowlight of the ALCS was the interview of the young man who caught the reviewed homer by Moustakas. I will offer a free tofu sandwich to whoever can forward me a tape of Joe “ADD” Buck completing a coherent sentence.

With the first game of the National league Championship Series, winter ball began.Murdoch forbid that we should have a  day game with hope for some sun, that annoying thing that dominated so much of the Royals-Blue Jays game earlier that same day. Murdoch forbid that we should compete with the three or four dozen college football games being televised that Saturday.

When the base runners are blowing on their fingers, it ain’t really baseball weather. Also, when the game is scheduled so that the ninth inning is probably going to be played at near midnight Eastern time, it becomes an adults only affair even on a Saturday night.

Yes, it can still be a good, well played game, especially if it isn’t snowing or raining. But by limiting the number of people able to enjoy the so called national pastime on TV, and by arranging the schedule to please television executives and advertising reptiles who prefer football, baseball is hurting itself in the long run.  The people watching are more limited to those who have been following the teams involved all season and will put up with crappy playing conditions while curious, new potential viewers of all ages may end up wondering what all the fuss is about. As for those wealthy enough to attend the game in person, it can’t be entirely pleasant even if their team wins.

Ski masks on baseball players are much more acceptable in April than in post season when the games are so important.

There were 12 college football games being televised at noon eastern time alone. Why not play those games at night in bad weather the way football was meant to be played anyway? I know the answer. I just don’t like it.

How could a usually very good Texas Rangers infield make three errors in one inning? I don’t know, but they did. How could the New York Mets win three games versus Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke? I don’t know, but they did. How could an esteemed catcher like Russell Martin clang a throw back to his pitcher off the hitter’s bat? You kind of had to see these things to believe them, but the 2015 MLB postseason is off to a roaring start except for the Pittsburgh Pirates, who likely would have beaten anyone but Jake Arrietta, and the New York Yankees, who finally had to face reality in the form of the Houston Astros.
In a season chock full of devastating injuries that continue to this day, we are experiencing an exciting and already memorable set of playoff games. All four teams in the league championship series have to be full of confidence right now. The best strategy for those of us who are not followers of any of them is to just sit back, enjoy, and see what happens next. Make no predictions but I’ll make one:it’s going to be fun.

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.