Out of the Funk
I’ve been in a funk the last few months. The no-baseball funk. Sure, there was hot stove and silly season and spring training and exhibition games, but it all lacks the pure adrenaline of serious competition. Then, I came home tonight from San Diego, turned on the HD TV, and heard the soothing sound of Vin Scully’s voice.
He was calling the Dodgers-Red Sox game being played at the Coliseum here in downtown Los Angeles. I’ve spent plenty of time at the Coliseum, in the press box, doing AMA Supercross PR for Kawasaki back when they ran events here. But this was amazing: 115,300 fans in attendance. 115,300 fans to see a spring training game. 115,300 fans who came to Downtown — my town — to watch Joe Torre’s Dodgers battle the World Champion Red Sox.
Now, I’m out of the funk. Let the games begin.
The Clemens Interview
I don’t want to go through this again. On September 8, 1998, I was at The Abbey in Seal Beach to watch Mark McGwire’s record-breaking 62nd home run. The night was electric: TV news crews lined Main Street, and cameras pointed in the window of the baseball bar part-owned by the St. Louis slugger while I drank my beer in celebration. McGwire lived not far from me, and I’d see him in our local Starbucks in Huntington Harbour during the off-season. And then, in 2005, I watched in pain his testimony before the House Government Reform Committee. The hero of the homerun chase, who’d cared enough to bring the Maris family to Busch Stadium and who’d hugged arch-rival Sammy Sosa, melted before my eyes.
Now, it’s potential future Hall-of-Famer Roger Clemens in the glare of the interrogation lights, accused in the Mitchell Report of taking injections of steroids and human growth hormone. Soon, he too may face the daggers of Congress.
Unlike McGwire, in tonight’s "60 Minutes" interview, Clemens didn’t duck the questions or evade the answers. Then again, Mike Wallace can’t put you under oath.
Clemens asked for "an inch of respect." And he’s right to ask for the benefit of the doubt: there is nothing more than an unproven allegation. We live in a culture that loves our ready heroes, and loves also to tear them down. Being the top dog means the pack will turn against you someday.
I’m not at The Abbey tonight. I’m at home, in Los Angeles, where rainwater is washing down the streets and Dodger Stadium sits just a mile away, high upon a hill, waiting for baseball to return in April. This game is about boys, and men; and their strength and talent and strategy and desire. I want to believe that’s all Roger Clemens had with him on the mound.
Dodgers Nab Jones
Over burgers and fish and chips at Casey’s in Downtown L.A. this afternoon, I remarked to my friend Art that the Dodgers hadn’t made any significant moves so far. Tonight, the boys in blue made me a liar. The team’s Web site reports that they have made a deal to bring five-time All-Star Andruw Jones to Chavez Ravine.
Art and I were talking baseball (what else?) while the Dodgers and Jones were talking up a two-year $36 million deal. The 30-year-old outfielder, who had a sub-par year in ’07 for the Braves, will hopefully come back to form when he joins the silver-anniversary L.A. Dodgers next spring.
See you at Casey’s, Andruw.
Pitching in New York
The Yankees need pitching. Let me repeat that. The Yankees need pitching. The Yankees need pitching. The Yankees need pitching. There, I’ve said it.
Now that Andy Pettitte is set to return, they need one less pitcher. A 15-game winner last year with an ERA almost a run above his career average, 35-year-old Pettitte is nevertheless a known quantity and a veteran who can help bring along the plethora of young talent in the Bombers’ organization.
Yankees management appears unwilling to be played against the Red Sox for Cy Young winner Johan Santana. If Santana does make the move to Fenway, he’ll join an already formidable starting rotation that looks to make the Red Sox World champions at least into the next decade. The Yanks, meanwhile, are in rebuilding mode and are finally valuing their farm system. Can a rotation of Wang, Pettitte, Chamberlain and an aging Mussina get the pinstripers to the post-season? Can they keep them there?
Meanwhile, across the Whitestone Bridge, the Mets need pitching. Let me repeat that. The Mets need pitching. The Mets need pitching. The Mets need pitching. What they’ve got so far is catching.
Okay, they needed catching too after showing Paul LoDuca the door. The Milledge People are moving to a new stadium in Washington, D.C. while Bryan Schneider and outfielder Ryan Church move to Old Shea Stadium. They can watch the construction on Citi Field for a year.
Can Pedro come back? Will El Duque come back, and does it matter? Can 15-10 John Maine and 15-10 Oliver Perez carry the team into October? Who will replace Tom Glavine’s 13 wins and 200 innings pitched?
The Mets need pitching. There, I’ve said it.
“The Entitled” Entertains
When is a crime not a crime? That’s the very un-baseball topic of the new baseball novel from noted sportswriter Frank Deford.
"The Entitled" throws together a young superstar hitter, Jay Alcazar, and an aging baseball lifer in his first role as a major league manager. Although the manager, Howie Traveler, never made it big during his playing days, the pair find a genuine respect for each other. The relationship is thrown a curve when Traveler glimpses a young woman seeking to escape the superstar’s clutch and run from his hotel room. The manager does nothing – worried more about his career than the possible crime – and then compounds his own inaction by lying to the police when the woman, Patricia Murphy, later claims that she was assaulted.
Traveler’s guilt feelings are further exacerbated by the memory of his own daughter’s assault, revealed slowly through the narrative. The manager finally decides to go the police, but in a surprising twist, his daughter tries to talk him out of it.
This is a fast read, one I easily finished in two cross-country flights last week. Deford’s style is straightforward, devoid of detours and details. It is journalism-light, with dialog too heavy on colloquialisms and old-school language occasionally sprinkled with phrases straight from the Joe DiMaggio days of the 1950s. The set pieces are the seventh game of a league championship series between Alcazar’s team, the Cleveland Indians, and the obvious New York Yankees; along with Alcazar’s clandestine trip to Cuba to see his birth mother.
The story is entertaining, an easy read, and certainly of interest to any baseball fan. My English lit background would wish for more complexity and color, but "The Entitled" qualifies as pinch-hit entertainment.
Re-Rod
There are many good reasons behind the deal that brought Alex Rodriguez back to the Yankees, essentially for life. To begin with, there aren’t that many teams out there with pockets deep enough to seriously consider making an offer. Rodriguez is now established in New York, and as The New York Times reported, "has potentially lucrative business interests that will be more profitable in New York than anywhere else."
It’s also a marketing deal. Barring injuries, A-Rod will sometime in the life of this new contract blast past the asterisked 762 home runs of currently indicted HR king Barry Bonds, and the best place to do that is in New York. The city is still the country’s largest media market, and the Yankees have the largest draw of any team. Alex Rodriguez is as close as you can get to a squeaky-clean sports celebrity, making him highly marketable and highly bankable. The Yanks need A-Rod and A-Rod needs the Yanks. The only other town that could have made him more of a celeb than he already is would have been L.A.
In fact, I was up at Dodger Stadium this morning. For a brief time, I imaged A-Rod in Dodger Blue, but that was just a passing fantasy. Looking out over the field on this hazy morning, I was instead picturing number 6 ambling out of the dugout in a late inning to get the ball from a tired starter.
Can’t wait for April.
762 Asterisk
With the indictment of Barry Bonds on perjury and obstruction of justice charges, today goes down as a sad day for baseball, and for baseball fans. Even if acquitted, his career in baseball – if not his record – will always be written with an asterisk.
Yet a sadder day may be in the offing when the Mitchell report is released next month. We fans may find that all too many of our favorites were juiced, and the game may suffer a terrible blow. This is not the way it was to be when as a child I watched in awe as Tom Seaver threw off the mound at Shea nor even, in my twenties, when I saw Reggie swing for the fence at Yankee Stadium, and it is not the way it should be as my 13-year-old cousin Mike works toward the day he could pitch in the majors.
Nor was it the way I thought it would be on the night Mark McGwire broke the asterisked single-season home run record of Roger Maris. I raced home from work that night to join the crowd at The Abbey in Seal Beach. By then, I lived in Huntington Harbour, and McGwire was local — I’d see him at the Starbucks in the off-season. I will never forget that night, sitting among fellow fans, with television news trucks lined up along Main Street, and celebrating at the magic swing that made 62 — no asterisk.
And I will not forget the day I watched Mark McGwire squirm uncomfortably at the Congressional hearings, all but cementing the impression that he too had help in reaching the record books. So, I understand how the fans of Barry Bonds must feel tonight. The scourge of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs must be stopped, for the good of the game, for the health of the players, for the fans, and for my young cousin and all the other youngsters who dream of someday wearing the uniform, without an asterisk.
Mets Moves
There’s been nary a peep from the Mets organization since their season ended in a Minnesota bridge-collapse of rubble and ruin. Perhaps they are still in shock. The 2007 season will be remembered for cocky young players who got ahead of themselves and veteran players who were either absent or failed to perform. The Mets, like many ballclubs, need pitching. Desperately.
Tom Glavine, who appears poised to return to peachtree country, struggled to get his 300th win and recorded an uninspirting 4.45 ERA this year. The Mets don’t need his AARP card; they need more John Maines.
The Queens team, headed for its last season in venerable Shea Stadium — where I’ve watched many games — re-signed Marlon Anderson to a two-year deal. Damion Easley and Moises Alou will also return.
The New York media is abuzz with the possibility of Alex Rodriguez crossing the Triborough Bridge, but it’s not gonna happen. I expect to be watching A-Rod at either Chavez Ravine or Angels Stadium come April.
Roster Moves
With A-Rod taking flight — to the West Coast, I’m guessing — the Marlins willingness to deal All-Star third basemen Miguel Cabrera is a welcome opportunity. There’s a chance Boston’s World Series MVP Mike Lowell becomes available, but Cabrera put up similar numbers last year (although in a different league) and at 24 is nine years younger than Lowell. The Yankees need a youth movement in a major way.
The Red Sox signed veteran pitcher Curt Schilling to a one-year deal, and barring major player defections, the World Series champs look to be the team to beat in the AL East for the next five years. The Red Sox look like the late-Nineties Yankees; the Yankees looks like the 1980s Yankees. And that ain’t good.
It’s good news that the Bronxites picked up the option on outfielder Bobby Abreau for 2008. The left-hander played well this year with a .283 batting average while batting in 101 runs. This is going to be an interesting winter.
Everyone’s Coming to L.A.
From the window of my new apartment in Downtown Los Angeles — part of the magnificent renaissance of this great city — I can see Dodger Stadium sitting atop Elysian Park. This morning, if I’d had strong enough binoculars (and ones that could pierce the fog shrouding the stadium), I could have seen former Yankees manager Joe Torre conduct his first press conference in a Dodger uniform.
Wearing number 6, the number he wore to 12 straight post-season appearances in New York, Torre began a new chapter in his life and the Dodgers began a new era. Will Torre automatically bring a World Series win or even a pennant to the Dodgers? No, of course not, and he acknowledged that himself, saying, "The ability to win — you don’t always control that." But the move to Southern California is exciting to me as a New York baseball fan living in L.A., and it may just be the right move for everyone involved.
Twelve years at any job, with even the greatest level of success, can sometimes be too long. That may have even been in the back of Torre’s mind when he turned down Steinbrenner’s offer, and the change may reinvigorate him with new challenges and a new environment. It’s more than just the sun that’s different in California.
Born in Brooklyn, and an admitted fan of the Giants while growing up, Torre nevertheless has the calming, controlled demeanor that works in L.A. He looked right standing alongside Tommy Lasorda and Vin Scully this morning. He talked about "making players feel important" and treating "everybody like a man," a way of managing he attributed to Red Schoendienst. I think Joe will fit in just fine here, and I hope to run into him soon at the Eastside Market Deli.
Torre is also bringing Don Mattingly and Larry Bowa along, and his stature may well attract players to Dodger Blue that wouldn’t otherwise be attainable (A-Rod, are you listening?). The fog has just about cleared, and I can’t wait for April.
mlblogsnyerinla
Recent Comments