Let’s say the Mets and the Brewers both win — or lose — today, and there’s one final regular season game tomorrow. The game goes into extras, as it should. In the top of the 11th, one in the endless stream of ineffective Mets relievers plunks Corey Hart to give the Brewers a man on first, no outs. Rickie Weeks proceeds to dump a bloop single into right field; with a hit-and-run on, it’s first-and-third, no outs, and nothing but the Mets bullpen to keep the Milwaukee from being three outs away from the playoffs. Except…Hart is sent home. And he’s thrown out at the plate. And the Mets win on a Reyes walk-off.
Sound crazy? Only for those folks out there who didn’t watch then-Red Sox third base coach and current improbable Brewers manager Dale Sveum lead three Red Sox to getting gunned down at the plate by the Rays’ Rocco Baldelli in the course of one week in 2004 — including two in successive at-bats.
(For the record: I always thought Dale got a bad rap. Which doesn’t mean the above scenario wouldn’t be a fitting end to the ‘08 regular season.)
Today’s do (and possibly only delay death by a day) or die Mets game makes me, once again, mourn for the great Pedro Martinez of yesteryear. I know Johan was gangsta and all that–but it was Pedro circa 99-00 who was the real assassin. I’m not talking about the whole “use your head” imbroglio or even the throw-down
with Zimmer. I’m talking about days like days like September 10, 1999, when, save for a right-field porch Chili Davis shot and a first-batter Chuck Knoblauch HBP, Pedro was perfect, piling up 17Ks on route to one-hitting the eventual Series champs. It was the height of Dominican fervor, and fans up in the nosebleeds above left were posting Ks in the Bronx, mind you; afterward, there were chants of “Pedro-Sosa” throughout the streets surrounding the Stadium. It was the most beautiful game I’ve ever seen pitched. (And yes, I was there: with four comrades from Newton North. Things got ugly there towards the end of the night. At one point, I appealed to a cop for help. His response? “What do you want me to do?”)
Yup: yesterday’s ill-considered offer to pay out $20 to anyone who didn’t laugh out loud at The Great Schlep has put me in the hole. I can’t even blame a bunch of bozos, either: Baseball Musings’ Dave Pinto and ESPN’s Keith Law both took, and won, my challenge. (Check out Keith’s September 9 piece on Papelbon and his pitch selection; it goes well with my recent post on Pap and closer fatigue.) Anyway. I’ll know better than to lead with my chin — at least where comedic taste and money is concerned — in the future.
I’m a week late linking to my own review of John Darnton’s Black and White and Dead All Over. Don’t get bogged down in the seeming solipsism of the whole thing — I’m an author who has written a book about the Times writing in the Times about a book by a former Times reporter that’s about a set of murders that takes place in a fictional New York newspaper modeled after the Times — it’s a great book. And a pretty well-written review, if I don’t say so myself.
Seriously: try to watch this without spitting up your Cheerios. And I don’t care which side of the political spectrum you’re on. (Be warned: I haven’t lost thus far.)
A fascinating new study on steroid use found that…
…even years after steroid withdrawal—and with little or no current strength training—muscle fiber density and increased number of cell nuclei were comparable to drug-free athletes currently doing high-intensity strength-training. The additional cell nuclei could give a big advantage to former dopers—more nuclei means more protein synthesis, which means more muscle. So steroid use can still offer a competitive advantage years later. Which means that a clean ballplayer can still hit a dirty home run.
The implications of this are profound. There’s already very little incentive for an on-the-cusp player not to use: either he goes natural and doesn’t have an MLB career, juices and gets caught and doesn’t have a MLB career, or juices and doesn’t get caught and gets some time in the bigs. Now it looks like a worst case scenario for someone who decides to ‘roid up is getting caught, serving a suspension…and still benefiting for years to come.
