April 5th, 2007
You thought last year’s Mets series was crazy? Wait until Wednesday.
When my baseball game-watching career is over, I have no doubt that being present when Pedro returned to Boston in a Mets uniform will be one of the highlights (along with that ‘99 one hitter at Yankee Stadium. Oh, and the final 8 games of the 2004 season). But as crazy as Fenway was those nights last June — and as crazy as Opening Day in ‘05 was — I have a feeling Dice-K’s first start in Red Sox home whites is going to be full-scale, batshit insane.
Again, let’s remember: today’s game was only against the Royals. And, as we all know from Monday, it’s only one game. But, yeah, 7 IPs, 10Ks, 1BB, and a knee-buckling curve that starts off batters with a called strike…I can live with that. (It’s almost, dare I say it…Pedro-esque.) Shoot, even Mr. Covelli L. Crisp got into the action. Nice RBI, Coco!
April 5th, 2007
The Schilling files
I gots to run, and there’s been several full days of baseball to mull over with nary a peep out of me. There have been some nice developments: last night Beckett didn’t seem afraid to throw his curve, and while KC probably isn’t the best indicator of what the season’s going to be like, on a night when Mike Lowell seemingly wasn’t able to hold onto the ball, it was nice to see the rest of the Hanley Ramirez trade bait step up to the plate, as it were. Tek finally got a hit (although I’m increasingly less confident we’ll see a lot of those this year…to say nothing of ‘08). J.D. “Don’t call me Nancy” Drew is stroking the ball. And Youkilis is showing he’s ready to take Manny’s mantle as the premier slugger in the game.
But the real thing to wonder/worry/think about right now is Curt Schilling. Yes, it was only one start — one Schilling himself acknowledges was a sucky one (or, as Gordo puts it, dismal). But it was also exactly the type of start you’d expect Schilling to excel in — Opening Day (lifetime 3-1 record), pitching for a team that just went all-out to acquire the most heralded new pitcher in all of baseball. So what do we have here? A 40-year-old fastball pitcher who’s trying to learn a change-up and has said publicly that he wants to pitch to contact more (which he sure did on Monday).
The best piece I’ve read on this subject is Tony Mazz’s column in Tuesday’s Herald. Tony doesn’t recommend anyone line up, lemming like, at the nearest bridge, but he does make some excellent points. Such as:
* The only reason a potential Hall of Famer who has lived for upwards of 20 years off of his fastball decides to learn a new offspeed pitch is because he’s worried said fastball doesn’t have the zip it once did, and…
* “The truth? This really is not about one game, particularly in a 162-game season that undoubtedly will feature a succession of peaks and valleys. This is about Schilling wanting to pitch another season, about the Red Sox’ reluctance to give him a contract extension, about Schilling now being 2-5 with a 5.34 ERA in his last 10 starts dating back to last season.”
This will be an interesting story to follow. I’d never doubt Schilling — he’s shown time and time again that’s a loser’s bet. But right now, I don’t know how much I’d wager on him either.
April 5th, 2007
After all that, it looks like Mr. Manny Ortez helped out after all
Yup: all of us cable subscribers are going to get the privilege of spending $150 bucks to watch baseball after all. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t still hate Major League Baseball. (Apropos of that, here’s something worth checking out: a reader wrote in saying that he was able to listen to the ‘EEI feed of the game for free — and that it was much clearer and stronger than the MLB feed. I have to assume someone will wise up and start blacking that out soon, but in the meantime you might want to see if that still works.)
Here’s a question I have (and some cursory poking around on the Interweb didn’t provide the answer, although maybe when InDemand updates their MLB page to reflect the fact that they’ll now have Extra Innings, I’ll be able to find the info there): I currently am a Time Warner subscriber, but I’m moving to a Cablevision neighborhood at the end of May. Is InDemand going to transfer over my subscription? Or will I have another reason to get incensed? Anyone?
April 5th, 2007
It’ll all be decided today
The Feeding the Monster 2007 Pre-Season Contest, that is. A quick scan through the entries shows only two contestants who had Youks hitting the Sox’s first home run of the season in the second game — ric and maranara — and only maranara also had JDD picking up his first RBI in the same game.
Also: I realized the “three winners” thing was a bit unclear, as was the way I’d tabulate scores. The three winners will be the three entries with the highest total scores. And the scores will be computed as follows:
* Each of the three portions of the contest will count for a total of 6 points, divided up as follows:
* HR: The correct player is needed for any other portion of the entry to count here; contestants who get that right will get two points. The game and inning count for another two points each; however, if a contestant gets the game wrong, the inning is automatically counted as incorrect. In other words, someone who guessed Youkilis would hit one out in the 7th inning of the 1st game won’t get two points for the correct inning, but s/he will get the two points for guessing Youkilis.
* J.D.’s first RBI: This will be divided into two components — game and inning — each worth three points; as above, the wrong game but the correct inning won’t get you any points.
* Dice K’s pitching line: Every component — innings pitched, hits, walks, strike outs, runs, and earned runs — will count for 1 point.
Currently, Maranara has 7 points, followed by sox5452 with 5 and ric with 4…but anyone with at least two points still has a chance at winning. And barring a freak hailstorm in KC tonight, we should know all the winners later tonight…
April 4th, 2007
God damn do I hate Major League Baseball.
Enough people have complained about the complete stupidity of Major League Baseball’s decision to take it’s Extra Innings package away from the millions of cable subscribers that have, in the past, willingly shelled out more than $150 a year to watch their home team play its games even if they no longer live in the city of their team of choice.
Not surprisingly, the Times’s Joe Nocera highlights just how stupid MLB truly is in a an article on the whole messy imbroglio. “Let’s face it,” Nocera writes, “the men who run baseball have a history of not making the smart play.” Truer words have never been spoken. After going through all the not-so-exciting details, Nocera sums up the issue nicely:
“So let’s think about what baseball has done here. In the interest of seeing to it that its baseball channel gets a running start on DirecTV, it has infuriated the cable industry, which is now unlikely to ever give it the time of day. It has turned down the opportunity to be guaranteed an astounding 30 million subscribers on Day 1 because it wants to squeeze the cable industry for more. … Plus, it has alienated 200,000 of its most passionate customers — the ones willing to pay $165 a year to see baseball games every night — taking away from them a fruit they had already tasted. Plus, it has forced those same fans to go to the baseball Web site to see those games — which, however good the site is, still entails scrunching over a screen and looking at a picture that doesn’t compare to say, a flat-screen plasma TV. Plus, it has reminded the world yet again how much sports is just another greedy business — exactly what its customers don’t want to be reminded of. Plus, it’s gotten Congress up in arms.* …
“Nice going, fellas. The N.F.L. would never do anything this dumb. Of course, that’s one of the big differences between pro football and pro baseball. The football guys actually know how to run their business with some intelligence.”
Color me spoiled — or color me stubborn — but I’m one of those passionate customers who absolutely refuses to pay for the honor of watching Sox games on my MacBook. (I spend enough damn time sitting at my desk as it is.) So tonight, I grudgingly shelled out $14.95 for the MLB Gameday Audio package (and no, dammit, I won’t put in a link)…and was greeted with the following message:
“Server busy. Please try back again soon.”
This went on for a full half-hour. Then I finally patched in. And then I got knocked off in the third with Beckett pitching out of a Mike Lowell-induced jam. Now I’m back on…but it sounds like I’m listening through snowstorm of feedback.
Awesome.
* Yeah, I’m glad John Kerry made some noise about the whole issue, too. But think about this: cable subscribers around the country are relying on a man who referred to the two best hitters on his own team with the Frankensteinian moniker “Manny Ortez.”
April 4th, 2007
Dover, here I come!
The beginning of the baseball season means more than just frustrating Opening Day losses and tendentious handwringing about Schilling’s start. It also means that…I’ll be in a town near you* talking about Feeding the Monster and the 2007 campaign. That’s right: next Monday, I’ll be at the Dover Public Library at 56 Dedham Street in Dover; the wonderful men and women there have even provided easy-to-follow directions from virtually anywhere (in the greater Boston area). If you didn’t get a chance to heckle, badger, or berate+# me last summer, here’s your chance. Don’t let it pass you by.
* So long as you live near Dover, MA.
+ Or praise.
# This is also your chance to get me to actually sign your book. Of course, if you can’t make it, free, personalized bookplates are still available to put into the copy of FTM you’re about to purchase from Amazon for only $17.16 (cheap!).
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April 2nd, 2007
Spring is in the air and the world is full of the promise of fresh possibilities…
There’s an hour and a half left in the 2007 Opening Day contest. And surely you can top the 55 people who’ve already put down their guesses…
Oh, and speaking of Opening Day, what could be a better matchup that Schilling versus…Gil Meche? I mean, I guess they make about the same about of money. But really, that’s a matchup?* I don’t know about you all, but the two games I’m most looking forward to are this Thursday’s rubber match of the KC series, in which our very own $100 million man takes the mound for the Sox for the very first time, and next Wednesday’s contest, when Dice-K takes the Fenway mound for the first time. Time for everyone to bone up on their Japanese…
Oh, and, of course: Happy Passover.
* Folks will actually be able to see today’s game, which is being broadcast on ESPN. Take advantage of that, folks. Unless you have DirectTV, that’ll be one of the few away, non-Yankees games you’ll be able to see.
