Category Archives: Baseball

Jays, potholes, and a long journey ahead

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The first weekend of summer! And how do I celebrate it? By getting a sunburn, of course. I went with my dad to the Jays game on Saturday, and we sat down the third base line. The roof was open, since it was a glorious warm (but not hot) sunny day, and I forgot to put sunscreen on. Since I wore shorts, the tops of my legs got burnt, though the rest of me was fine. It was a great game — the Jays won 11-6, and Matt Stairs and Frank Thomas each had four hits including a home run. One of Thomas’ hits should have been a long single, but he tried to stretch it into a double and was thrown out at second by about five steps. The second baseman actually had to wait for Thomas to get there before tagging him.

After the game, we met up with my mother and sister and had dinner at a nice restaurant on King St. called N’Awlins, where I had alligator as an appetizer, followed by some amazing blackened catfish.

Sunday, we went to Rockwood Conservation Area east of Guelph for the Sybase company picnic, which was a lot of fun. There was a beach, paddleboats and canoes for rent, and of course a BBQ lunch was served, but we spent most of our time there hiking through the woods with the help of one of my friends on the doc team. She has been to the park many times before, and acted as our guide and photographer (since we both surprisingly forgot our camera). We visited the ruins of an old factory and some pretty cool caves and potholes carved out of the rock. In this context, a pothole, for those of you as geologically-challeged as myself, is basically a cylindrical vertical cave, as if someone had taken a 10-foot-wide drill and drilled straight down, anywhere from two to twenty feet. We were amazed at how smooth the edges of these potholes were, and almost perfectly round. All in all, we probably hiked for about 5 miles, so the kids were good and tired when it came to bedtime last night. Gail and I were pretty tuckered out as well — Gail fell asleep on the couch around 10:00, and I woke her up around 11:00 when I went to bed. She said she’d be up in a minute, but fell asleep again, and I don’t think she actually made her way upstairs until around 3:30.

This weekend, we’re going up north to visit Gail’s dad’s wife’s son Rolly (Gail’s stepbrother, I guess, though she never really uses that term for him). Rolly is a police officer up in Manitouwadge, which is a little town about half-way between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie. We’re driving up to Gail’s dad’s place on Thursday night (about 3 1/2 hours), then from there to the Sault on Friday (about 6-7 hours), and then up to Manitouwadge on Saturday (another 3-4 hours). According to Google Maps, it’s about a 1200 kilometre trip from home each way. Rolly is apparently lining up all kinds of things for us to do, including sailing and probably some canoeing (I know Rolly loves canoeing and has even built his own canoes in the past), and I’m sure there will be lots of hiking as well. I’m really looking forward to this trip — I’ve never been this far north in Ontario.

We’ll be up there for a week, returning home around the 8th of July, so blogging will likely be light (i.e. nonexistent) during that time. I’m sure, faithful readers, that you can find something productive to do during my absence.

Baseball season and the Rock thump the Wings

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Baseball season began yesterday! The Jays start their season today against the Tigers, and I’m pretty excited. The Jays had a pretty good season last year, finishing second in the AL East, and big things are expected this year as well. Well, hopefully, anyway. They added Frank Thomas and Matt Stairs to the lineup, increasing the offensive potency of an already-potent lineup. I think that having Vernon Wells sign a multi-year million billion gazillion dollar contract helped to convince them that the Jays were serious. Adding Royce Clayton at short won’t make a huge difference, but it certainly won’t hurt. I was kind of hoping that J.P. Ricciardi would add a stud arm to the pitching rotation during the off-season, or at least someone to replace Ted Lilly. He didn’t, but Josh Towers looked more in spring training like the pretty good Josh Towers from two years ago than the woefully sucky Josh Towers who went something like 2-10 last year, and free agents Victor Zambrano and Tomo Okha look like pretty good signings. Last year, A.J. Burnett occasionally looked unhittable, but sometimes was quite hittable, so if he has more outings in the former category and less in the latter, he’ll be fine, and if Gustavo Chacin can get over last year’s injuries (though he had a lousy spring), the pitching staff should be no worse than last year, and possibly better.

In lacrosse news, the Rock have been playing downright lousy for most of this year, losing games to both New York and Edmonton, who are a combined 8-18. They are not only in danger of missing the playoffs for the first time in history (they missed the playoffs in their first season as the Ontario Raiders, but haven’t since they moved to Toronto in 1999), but are also in danger, at 6-7, of finishing below .500 for the first time in history (they were 8-8 last year). However, when they played Philadelphia last Friday night, you’d never have known any of that. They kept the Wings scoreless in the entire first half (unheard of in lacrosse), and went on to win 15-6. Watson was very good in the first half, and amazing in the second, the defense was solid, and the offense was clicking. Ryan Benesch scored four goals for the third straight game, and is starting to make people forget Colin Doyle, though it’s probably too early to say that. Doyle was not only a scoring machine, but he made the players he played with better as well — look at Josh Sanderson and Blaine Manning. Sanderson has been fine this year, but Manning has been remarkably average, and is on pace to end up with less points than last year, which was down from the previous year. I can’t imagine a player as good as he is (was?) has peaked at the age of 26, but he hasn’t been injured or anything, so I can’t explain it.

The Leafs are close to backing their way into the playoffs and I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, once they’re in the playoffs, who knows what could happen (see Edmonton last year), but on the other hand, reality hits — the Leafs are simply not going to win the Cup this year (not that I didn’t know that months ago). I remember thinking last year that if the Leafs don’t make the playoffs, that’ll send a message to management, who might make some serious changes to the team, rebuilding for the future. In that sense, not making the playoffs would be the best thing that could happen. They didn’t make the playoffs last year, but management didn’t do the necessary dump-and-rebuild, so we’re in the same boat this year. If they don’t make the playoffs this year, I have no confidence that the necessary changes will be made (i.e. trade all the big names, load up on draft picks and young kids, etc.), so we’ll be in the same boat again next year, and the year after that, and the year after that… Given that, may as well squeak into the playoffs this year and hope for the best.

Bonds and Beckham

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Barry Bonds says that
Mark McGwire (and Pete Rose) should be in the Hall of Fame. Well, of course
Bonds thinks that McGwire should be there — if McGwire isn’t there
because he used steroids, then there’s no way Bonds will get there. I posted
a
while ago about McGwire, and how I didn’t know whether he should
or should not be in the HOF. Well, I think I’ve made up my mind now — if I
had a vote, I would not vote for him.

It’s never been proven
beyond a reasonable doubt that McGwire took steroids, but this is not a court of
law, so there is no set “burden of proof”. And even if steroids were not
explicitly banned by MLB, the belief by the general public (thanks Ben Johnson)
was that those who used steroids were cheaters. McGwire had already retired, and
had broken no baseball rules by taking the drugs, so there were no repercussions
if he were to admit taking them, but he still stonewalled the US Congressional
inquiry and refused to answer any questions. Why? Because he knew that
what he had done was wrong. If he had ‘fessed up, I might have had a
little more compassion, but he cheated and then lied about it. No! No
Hall of Fame for you!

I posted before
on why Pete Rose should not be in the Hall, so I won’t go over that again. I
can’t think of two more deserving Hall of Famers than Cal Ripken and Tony
Gwynn, so congrats to them.

So the MLS is all about signing older, used-to-be-good-but-not-so-much-now players for insane amounts money now, is it? Then who better than MLSE to own a franchise in that league? They’ve been doing that with the Leafs for years.

No Lilly, no Meche, now what?

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What, exactly, is J.P. Ricciardi thinking? We all knew that the Jays’ biggest
problem last year was inconsistent pitching. We also knew that other needs were
a catcher (both Zaun and Molina are free agents), and help in the middle infield.
So what moves has he made? Two good ones (well, not horrible at least), and two
bad ones. He resigned Zaun (needed to be done, but we still need
a backup and Molina is too expensive) and signed shortstop Royce Clayton, so
we’re OK up the middle. But he also signed Frank Thomas and Matt Stairs. Great,
now our good-hitting lineup is even better, but wasn’t pitching the problem in
the first place? Is he hoping we will win lots of 9-7 games and just pound our
way into the playoffs? Memo to J.P.: you need pitching to win. End of story.

The Jays were not able to re-sign Ted Lilly, and Spier is gone, so the
pitching staff is weaker than before, and we’ve spent something like $9 million
on Thomas (Stairs and Clayton were cheap). We were willing to go up to near
$10 million for Lilly ($10 million for Ted Lilly? Yeesh), so now we
have that money available. They were looking at Gil Meche, but he’s said no.
Even if they did sign him, they’d have been at best no better than last
year. Does J.P.’s plan for getting to the World Series this year really
include “Hope that Chacin bounces back, and that Towers, Taubenheim, Janssen,
and McGowan suddenly find a way to win 12 games each”?

Couldn’t the Lilly money plus the Thomas money have been better used on
someone like Barry Zito, or even Andy Pettitte? Maybe he’s looking at trading
Vernon Wells for a front-line pitcher, but a stud pitcher is worth more than a
stud outfielder, so we’d have to throw in prospects as well, and we just ain’t
got any. In general, I like what Ricciardi has done with the Jays, but these
moves have me shaking my head. Then again, the offseason isn’t over yet, so
maybe it’s too early to judge, but so far, next year’s team is not looking any
better than last year’s.

Update: Read in the paper this morning: What’s the difference between J.P. Ricciardi and Lindsay Lohan at a bar? Lindsay Lohan can buy pitchers.

Musings on McGwire

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Mark McGwire is on the ballot for the baseball Hall of Fame. A lot of people
are saying he should not get in because of steroid use. Now, I’m a strong
believer that steroid use in pro sports is cheating. I think it goes against the
principles of sport in general; athletes are supposed to compete against each
other physically, and in many cases mentally, but not chemically. Also,
it teaches our young athletes that becoming the best you can be is not good
enough on your own, you need drugs as well. Not only does this damage their
self-esteem, but it puts them at risk because steroids can be dangerous, even
deadly. So on that basis, I think McGwire should not be in the Hall.

On the other hand, it has never been proven that McGwire took
steroids, nor has he ever admitted to it. Also, steroids were perfectly legal in
baseball until after McGwire retired, so even if he did take them, technically,
he never did anything wrong. His stats are
unquestionably worthy, and his home-run race with Sammy Sosa in the late 90’s
gave baseball a much-needed boost in interest (only a few years after the
interest-killing strike), so maybe he should be in the Hall.

On the other hand, the criteria for being in the Hall includes your conduct
off the field, and McGwire has repeatedly refused to answer any
questions regarding steroids, including questions in front of a Congressional
inquiry. This refusal could be seen as an admission of guilt, or at least
qualifies as detrimental behaviour, so maybe he shouldn’t be in the Hall.

On the other hand, baseball has far worse people in the Hall of Fame. Ty Cobb
was a racist who once fought with an umpire (after a game), and stabbed a man
to death during another fight. Kirby Puckett was arrested for groping a woman and
was accused of other “lewd acts” (according to Wikipedia). Those are just
two examples, but given that, does taking legal (at the time) “supplements”
qualify as detrimental enough? Maybe he should be in the Hall.

Should McGwire be in the Hall of Fame? I dunno. I’ll let the baseball
writers decide. I’m happy sitting here on the fence.

How NOT to coach

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On the drive home tonight, Bob McCown (my favourite sportscaster) was talking
about an article by Rick Reilly (my favourite sports writer) in this week’s
Sports Illustrated (which I haven’t received yet). (Here
is a link – not sure if you need to be a subscriber or not to read it) It talks
about the championship
game in a kids’ league (9- and 10-year-olds) in Utah. The home team
is down by one, batting in the bottom of the ninth, with two outs and the tying
run on third. Their best hitter comes to the plate, and is intentionally
walked to get to the next batter, Romney, who is the worst hitter on the
team. He strikes out to end the game. The kicker (well, one of them) is that
Romney happens to be a cancer survivor who has to take human growth hormone and
has a shunt in his brain. The coach of the winning team defended his decision,
saying that it’s “just good baseball strategy”. Well, sure it is, and I initially
agreed with him. Cancer survivor or no, if he can’t play at the level expected
in the league, then he shouldn’t be playing.

That’s when I heard the second
kicker — in this league, everyone gets to bat, there’s a four-run
limit per inning, and there’s no stealing until the ball crosses the plate. Given
those rules, it’s obvious (or should be) that this isn’t a rep league —
the primary focus of this league is fun. There is no “level
expected in the league”. Because it’s not a
rep league, things like intentional walks shouldn’t happen, and pitching to the
slugger was the right thing to do. Walking him to get to the kid who could barely
swing the bat made it all about winning. Obviously the winning coach never
heard the old saying “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the
game”.

You can never have too much pitching

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We went to the Blue Jays game on Saturday – part of a group deal with the Waterdown Minor Baseball Association, where Ryan plays. It was Nicholas’ first ever baseball game, Ryan’s third, and Gail’s first in about 6 years. I’ve gone to a couple of games with my dad since the kids were born – before that, Gail and I would go to at least 7 or 8 games a year, sometimes more, and usually including the home opener. Ah, how times change.

Anyway, Nicholas had no interest in the game whatsoever. He was interested in his grilled cheese sandwich, ketchup flavoured chips (“they spice my tongue!”), popcorn, and the books we brought, but mainly he was interested in the flip-down chairs. Ryan watched a bit of the game here and there, but was fascinated by the Jumbotron. Later in the game, he also found the books we brought and was so enthralled by one of them that when Troy Glaus hit a home run, Ryan didn’t even look up. Gail watched the game but didn’t really pay attention to it; she was focussed on making sure the boys kept themselves occupied. I actually watched the game, which the Jays lost 5-3. Ted Lilly, who I’ve never been a big fan of, pitched a great game. He only allowed three hits in 8 2/3 innings, and struck out 12. Two of those three hits, however, were home runs – the first with 2 walks aboard, and the second right after a Shea Hillenbrand error, so it was 5-0 after 4 innings. Lyle Overbay and Troy Glaus both homered to make it close, but the Jays offence just couldn’t get anything going. I think Vernon Wells and Alex Rios each grounded to third base three or four times.

The Jays are doing pretty well this year – I read today that they are leading the league in batting average, slugging percentage, and on-base percentage, and are one of only two teams since 1969 to have a team batting average over .300 more than 60 games into the season. They’re only a couple of games out of first in the East, but they’ve had an amazing nine opportunities this year to sweep a series, and have yet to do so. They could really use one of those 10 or 12 game winning streaks to boost their confidence.

You wouldn’t have thought this going into the season, but I guess pitching is their weakness this year. Their starting pitching has been decent, but not great. Lilly has been fine, but not the all-star he was a couple of years ago. Chacin and Towers are all performing below where they were last year; Towers has been just dreadful for all but one start, and the mighty expensive A.J. Burnett has pitched all of a game and a half. On the upside, Roy Halladay has been his usual amazing self, and rookie Casey Janssen has been a welcome addition – an ERA of just over 3.00 and 5 wins in 9 starts. The bullpen has been… well, let’s just say that calling them “spotty” is being kind. B.J. Ryan, who was also expensive, has been worth every penny so far (15 saves in 16 opportunities, an ERA of 0.61, and a WHIP of 0.67), but looking down the rest of the pitching stats, Justin Speier is the only reliever with an ERA under 5.00. That’s nasty.

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Killing time

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I have some time to kill before I play baseball at 9:30 (!) tonight. Since I live so far from work (~70 km one way), there’s no point in my going home and then coming back — best case, that’s an hour and a half of driving — so I’m hanging out at work. What better way to spend that time than blogging?

We’ll start with 24, which Gail and I have been addicted to for the last 5 seasons. The season finale was this past Monday, and it did a pretty good job of wrapping up what was actually a rather boring season, by 24’s standards. Oh sure, several main characters died (Michelle, Tony, Edgar), so that was exciting, but the whole gas cannister plot went on too long, and I didn’t like the way the writers handled the traitorous President — I think it would have been better if he was a strong man acting indecisive and weak, rather than actually having him be indecisive and weak and manipulated by some bald guy (who they never explained, now that I think of it). The only thing that we know about him is that his name is Graham. (I’m just assuming that it’s spelled that way, not Graeme. Call me pessimistic.) Maybe they’re keeping him as next year’s villain, though one thing on this show that you can never do is figure out who the real bad guy is — as soon as you think you do, they bring out another guy who’s giving the first guy orders. They also kind of abandoned the whole “real-time” thing at the end, where Jack is is knocked unconscious and abducted (in LA) by the Chinese, and five minutes later wakes up in the middle of the Pacific on (quite literally) a slow boat to China.

Let’s move on to baseball now. Barry Bonds hit home run number 714 in his career the other night, tying Babe Ruth for 2nd on the all-time list. Big freakin’ deal. Well, I suppose it is, but I just can’t get too excited about it, firstly because it’s not a record anymore (Hank Aaron surpassed it over 30 years ago), and secondly because we all know that a good number of those home runs (at least all the ones hit in the last 5 years) were done while Bonds was juiced up on steroids. The evidence is painfully clear. Bonds played 14 seasons with the Pirates and Giants, and averaged 32 homers a year in that time — he hit over 45 home runs only once. He also averaged 33 steals per season. Then 2000 rolls around — the year Bonds turned 36, and for the next 5 seasons, he averages 52 homers (over 45 every year, maxing out at a major league record 73) and only 9 steals per season. His batting average over those 5 years was .339, while his career average before that was only .288. Then MLB announces that they will begin steroid testing in 2005, and lo and behold, Bonds sits out almost the entire season with an injury. But he’s not on steroids. Rrrrrrriiiiiiight.

On an unrelated baseball note, the Jays finally demoted Josh Towers to AAA Syracuse yesterday after yet another dismal outing. He didn’t lose the game because the Jays came back to tie it (and then lost it later), but he didn’t even last 2 innings. It’s about damn time. I have nothing against Towers — he pitched really well last year — but he’s 1-and-freakin’-8. For a second-year player, that’s at least 2 losses too many. It’s not like he was going 7 innings and losing 3-2 games either — he was getting shelled almost every time out. His one win was very impressive though – he went 8 innings in that one, so maybe John Gibbons figured he’d found his groove or something. Obviously he hadn’t, so they’ve sent him down to try and pick things up there. In 2001, Roy Halladay was sent down all the way to single-A ball to “re-build his delivery” — essentially learning how to pitch again. By the end of that year he was back in the majors, and look how that turned out — a Cy Young award in 2003, and he might have won another one last year if he hadn’t broken his leg in July and missed the rest of the season. I don’t know if single-A ball is the answer for Towers (heard someone on the radio this morning refer to him as “Fawlty” Towers), but staying in the majors isn’t working for him at this point, and it’s certainly not helping the Jays out either.

Well, I think that’s all I have to say for now, and I still have an hour before my
game. Well, since I’m at work, maybe I should, oh I don’t know, do some work.

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What a drag it is getting old

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Our second baseball game of the season was last night, and I’m feeling it today. My throwing arm isn’t as sore as I expected, in fact it feels pretty good. My legs are killing me though. Getting out of the car after the hour drive into work was a bit of a chore – since my job involves a fair amount of sitting, I plan on forcing myself to get up every hour or so and just walking around the building to try and keep my leg muscles from tightening up completely. I’m going to have to hit the treadmill a lot more in the future.

It ocurred to me yesterday that although I was one of the younger people in the Stelco league, I’m probably one of the oldest on my team this year. I really need to join a volleyball league or something during the winter to keep in shape so that the first few baseball games of the spring aren’t like this. Working out in the basement is great, but there’s just no substitute for actually playing a sport.

What else is going on? The Rock fired coach Terry Sanderson the other day. I’m not sure why – he was there for 2 full seasons and most of a third, and here’s what he did:

  • 2004: Take over a team that was 2-4 and lead them to the playoffs
  • 2005: Won championship
  • 2006: Start 0-4 and still get them into the playoffs

Sure, one championship win in 3 seasons is a lower average than his predecessor, the late Les Bartley, who won 4 in 5 seasons, but Les is widely regarded as one of the best box lacrosse coaches ever, so you can’t honestly expect every coach to have that kind of record. Personally, I don’t quite understand the move.

Update: Former Toronto Rock defender Glenn Clark, who played last year with the Philadelphia Wings, was announced this morning as the new Rock head coach. Clark is an experienced player, who was apparently an unofficial assistant coach with the Rock a couple of years ago while he was injured for half a season. He obviously knows the game very well, but other than his unofficial stint with the Rock, I don’t think he has any high-level coaching experience. We’ll see how that works out…

It’s baseball season again!

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All winter I look forward to baseball season, but never as much as this past winter. I’ve played in a Stelco league in Hamilton for the past 10 or 12 years, but this year, I’m playing in a hi-tech league in Waterloo, as a member of the iAnywhere Mobilizers. We played our first game tonight. We had fun, even though we got slaughtered. The other team singled and doubled us to death (with a couple of homers in there for good measure), while we couldn’t get much going offensively. I had a couple of singles, one ground out to second, and one line out to second. Actually, my two singles were just to the right of second base as well, so I hit the ball 4 times to exactly the same place. I played OK in right field – blew my first play in the first inning when the ball took a weird bounce right in front of me and skipped by my glove, and I overthrew the shortstop once. Not much was hit to me though, so I just ran around a lot.

This league is a little different from the Stelco league:

  • The field is completely fenced in, and not in a public park. No more delaying the game because some old lady decides to walk across our field as a shortcut home from the grocery store.
  • You’re allowed to slide into 2nd and 3rd. Doubt I ever will though.
  • There are five outfielders, though there were still times where it would have been nice to have another one.
  • The field has lights! No more playing the last couple of innings quickly so we can beat the darkness, or losing the ball because it’s too dark to see it.

One slight drawback of this league is that there are a lot more teams and therefore players, and you don’t always know people on the other teams, so there ends up being less camaraderie between teams. In the Stelco league, most players have been playing for years, so everyone knows everyone on all the teams. Not too big a deal though – the people on my team are nice. I already knew most of the team, but there were a couple of co-ops I didn’t know, and the twin sister (Teesha) of one of the team captains (Caryn) is on the team as well. I don’t know Caryn all that well, so telling them apart will be a challenge, but they’re both very friendly, and made me feel very welcome on the team – Caryn actually said that they were glad that I came out for the team. Now, she said that before I blew the play in the outfield, not after… but then again, I think everyone blew at least one play, so I was in good company.

One other difference between this league and the Stelco one is that in the Stelco league, all games were 6:00 on Wednesday. In this league, games start anywhere from 5:30 to 9:30, and any day from Monday to Thursday – some weeks there are two games, other weeks we don’t play at all. That throws a wrench into our weekly schedule somewhat, since a lot of our games are Thursday nights, and so I may have to move my guitar lessons to Friday afternoons. Not a big deal though. This league is also much better organized than the Stelco one (it even has its own web site), so that is a major plus. I’ve officially dumped the stelcoball.com site I was running for the Stelco league – very few people went to the site, and the commissioner wasn’t interested in sending me results, so the standings and game results were always out of date. I’ve even cancelled the domain name – I believe I still own it until August sometime, after which it vanishes.

My arm is going to hurt tomorrow…