11th and Washington

Halfway point on a 1969 Mets photo

2012-01-22T19:17:00.001-05:00

1969 Mets reunion 2.0

Nearly one year ago (Jan. 30, to be exact), I got the first autograph on this photo. This weekend, I added two more to reach the halfway point.

First, on Saturday, I drove up to White Plains for a show to get Jerry Koosman's signature. It was iffy, though -- the snow wasn't cooperating. So the ride took a little longer than usual, but I made it with no hassles. I parked -- for $5, which is lame (last time at this venue, the Westchester County Center, I accidentally parked in a small back lot, where there was no attendant) -- and went inside to buy my Koosman autograph ticket. There was no line, so I walked right up to get the signature, then browsed a few dealers for an Al Jackson card, because he was the free autograph with admission. I found a 1965 Topps card for a few bucks and got that signed, too.

Then today, it was out to Citi Field for a Mets 50th Anniversary show. Tom Seaver was scheduled to sign from noon to 2 p.m. I'd prepurchased my admission and Seaver ticket online a few weeks ago, so I picked them up right about noon. But this wasn't like usual MAB shows; other than a small section of Mets merchandise and the MAB table selling baseballs and photos for autographs, and one window selling hot dogs, soggy Nathan's fries (as per usual) and drinks, the Caesar's Club was just a bunch of mostly Mets fans waiting. (There was one instigator in Phillies garb -- a 2009 NL champs shirt, not even an '08 World Series champs shirt -- and I saw one Yankee cap, but the rest was blue and orange and some Giants red and blue.)

Despite the posted noon start time, the first Seaver tickets weren't called until 12:45. After 90 minutes, they'd only gotten to No. 30 (I had No. 75) when the announced that he'd be taking a break for the scheduled 2 p.m. Q&A with Jim Palmer. So annoying. But then, inexplicably, 15 minutes later, they resumed Seaver with tickets 1-50, so I guess they either realized the folly of putting him on hold for a Q&A, or enough people complained. Shortly after the resumption, they called 1-80, and I entered the area of signing tables.

A rope line wound around four times, with probably about 30 people in it, and it took 15-20 minutes to get to the front. Seaver -- who I'd heard could be cranky, or short, was pleasant enough, but I didn't try to engage him in conversation or anything. After being there for three hours, and with a long line still behind me, I got my autograph and left.

So now I'm down to Nolan Ryan, Jerry Grote and Duffy Dyer. I missed a chance at Dyer last March when I had a conflict, so I hope he and Grote come back to the NYC area soon. Ryan is less likely, of course, because of his job with the Rangers. I suspect that once I get the other two, I might take a trip to Texas and try to get him at the ballpark, or at a show if I see one advertised.

And so the project continues ...

Barry Larkin as an All-Star for the last time

2012-01-12T10:13:00.001-05:00

I suppose I'm a couple days late on the Barry Larkin post, but that's because I don't really have anything to add. I never had a strong feel either way for his candidacy, but I suppose I now see him as more a Hall of Famer than not. He was among the shortstops who "changed the position," as they like to say (not the shortstops themselves, saying that, but other people), and he was probably the National League equivalent of Cal Ripken Jr. -- only without the consecutive games played streak or the Q rating. Plus, now the 1990 Reds have a Hall of Famer.

But then I remembered I had this photo -- taken during his last season, when he was named to his last All-Star team. It's one of my favorite shots from that weekend, when I was in Houston to cover the celebrity softball game but got to stay for everything else -- and then fly back to Newark sitting next to one of Tom Gordon's sons before chatting with Harold Reynolds at baggage claim.

The other Larkin memory I have is how he rejected a trade to the Mets in 2000 because they wouldn't give him a three-year extension. I'm not sure Larkin would have been the difference in the 2000 World Series, so in hindsight it looks like a wise move by the Mets considering that Larkin only played more than 70 games once in those three seasons from 2001-03, and Jose Reyes debuted in June 2003.

Jim Qualls vs. Tom Seaver

2011-12-28T21:14:00.001-05:00

Part of my 2011 Christmas haul

I finally watched the recent episode of Studio 42 with Bob Costas in which he sat down with Tom Seaver up in Cooperstown to talk about Tom Terrific's career. There was some great stuff in there, particularly Seaver's opinion of the use of today's pitchers. But he also talked about his "imperfect game" in 1969. When asked about Jim Qualls, who got the lone hit -- who was the only baserunner -- in that game, Seaver said he'd never faced the guy before, and he wasn't sure if he'd ever faced him after that.

So of course I had to look it up. I went to Baseball Reference's Play Index and drew up all of Qualls' appearances against Hall of Fame pitchers:

	PA	AB	H	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
Tom Seaver	6	6	1	0	.167	.167	.167	.333
Don Sutton	6	6	2	0	.333	.333	.333	.667
Bob Gibson	4	4	0	0	.000	.000	.000	.000
Don Drysdale	2	2	0	0	.000	.000	.000	.000
Juan Marichal	2	2	0	1	.000	.000	.000	.000
Gaylord Perry	2	2	1	0	.500	.500	.500	1.000
Catfish Hunter	1	1	0	0	.000	.000	.000	.000
Phil Niekro	1	1	0	0	.000	.000	.000	.000

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 12/28/2011.

Not much there. The hit in the ninth against Seaver on July 9, 1969, was Qualls' only one against The Franchise, and he had only three other hits -- of 31 in his career -- off future Hall of Famers. Seaver wasn't sure if he'd faced Qualls outside of that game, but he did, the following week in Chicago. Seaver allowed five hits and a walk and lost, 1-0. Qualls went 0-for-3.

But back to 7/9/69 -- how unlikely was Qualls' hit against Seaver? Qualls' career was so brief (144 plate appearances in three seasons, spread over four years with three teams) that he has no comparables on Baseball Reference. And a search of other players with 130-150 career PA and an OPS under .600 (Qualls' was .540) mostly gives you pitchers. So a present-day comparison might be Argenis Reyes -- or any number of pitchers -- breaking up a Justin Verlander perfecto with two outs to go. Or, from the last perfect game in the Majors, Roy Halladay against the Marlins in May 2010, the equivalent might be Bryan Peterson getting the hit in the ninth to spoil perfection.

Perfection is not easy -- duh -- and though the Mets one day will pitch a no-hitter (they have to, right?), there's no telling if any of us will see a perfect game from the Amazin's anytime soon. If anyone was going to do it, it probably would've been Seaver against those Cubs in the summer of '69, just one week before Apollo 11 launched for the Moon.

Someone like Jose

2011-12-06T15:43:00.005-05:00

OK, so Jose Reyes' departure snapped me out of my (unintended) blogging hiatus. I found it in myself to read more posts on Reyes from some other blogs over the past two days. I always appreciate good writing, even when it's tough to stomach. Maybe even more in those cases ...

Well-written (psycho)analysis from Ted Berg

A true fan's view from Paul Hadsall (who I owe a belated thank you for acknowledging me in his Thanksgiving post). He also looks at what Marlins bloggers are saying.

Wonderful sarcasm from Mets Police

A pragmatic look from Brad Bortone

Vinny Cartiglia has fans' reactions on Twitter over at Metsblog.

And a collection from the folks at Amazin' Avenue ...

Matthew Callan knows it hurts

Eric Simon helps you decide who to blame

Chris McShane channels The Simpsons

And, finally, Amazin' Avenue's Applesauce presents a roundup of even more coverage. I've linked to the whole post because it gave me the idea for the (intentionally cheesy) photo presentation below.

Adios

2011-12-05T12:42:00.002-05:00

I wasn't sure I was going to write about Jose Reyes. I thought about just letting this day go by without weighing in, without dwelling on it, and just try to focus on other things -- fantasy football, bowl season, Christmas -- in the hopes that I might miss any press conferences or introductions in order to lessen the impact. Then, before I knew it, it would be Opening Day and, so what? It's like he wasn't even here.

But that, of course, is not possible. Reyes is arguably the most dynamic player the Mets have ever developed and he sure was fun to watch. He loves the game, he has fun, and his smile shows that. If he's on your team, you can't help but root for him. If he's on the other team, you really want to beat him. And that's what makes this new destination, in South Florida, all the more perplexing. A few years ago, when the Phillies and their fans complained about what they perceived as Reyes showboating, the Marlins also got in on that meme. (Ironically, if you google "Jose Reyes showboat," you find a lot of Phillies blogs slamming him, particularly in '08 -- as well as several advocating that the team sign him this offseason.) I always felt the Marlins had no ground to stand on with that complaint, because Hanley Ramirez has never been known to put his head down and run out a double. And now they've gone and signed the guy they think has a little too much fun out there.

I'm certainly torn between wishing Reyes well and hoping his contract becomes an albatross to the Marlins. I like the guy, and good for him for getting his payday. And the Mets, if Sandy Alderson is being truthful, made a competitive offer, which is all I could hope for out of this scenario. Well, yes, I hoped the Mets would re-sign the guy, but not at six guaranteed years and something north of $100 million. I think their alleged offer of five years in the $90 million range, with a sixth-year option to push it over $100 million, was a competitive offer. But Reyes clearly wanted the guaranteed money -- and potential to reach the playoffs. Yes, let's be honest here, the Mets are looking like the worst team in the NL East for 2012, despite what looks to be a wide-open division. It's too early to say who the favorite is, because a lot of player movement is still to come, but I can't envision the Mets being better than any of the other four clubs.

But does Reyes push the Marlins over the top? I'm not so sure. He's averaged just 98 games the past three years, and his addition means franchise player Hanley Ramirez will have to move to third base. Good luck smoothing that one over, Ozzie Guillen. The club's ace, Josh Johnson, didn't pitch after May 16 this past season, and despite all the Phillies' other holes, the front of their rotation is still solid, so the Marlins can't match that. I will say this, though: For once, the expectations of the Marlins' ownership may be justified, for the first time since about 2003. They've set the bar too high in recent years and run off a couple of good managers as a result of inflated hopes. But as I said, it's early. These Marlins are looking to spend like hedge-fund managers during the Bush years. They may add more important pieces, which would change the outlook. But building a team through free agency rarely works. Teams tend to have better track records with a successful core that is then supplemented by free-agent pieces to fill the holes. The Marlins' holes are more than a shortstop -- and not even that -- and a closer.

I could be wrong. Time will tell. These are just the initial thoughts and feelings not even 24 hours after a guy we've come to love watching out there left for a team only a mother could love.

Adios.

What I didn't know about the DH

2011-10-28T15:51:00.000-04:00

I know a lot about baseball. I'm not saying that to brag, just as a piece of background information. I'm not claiming to be all-knowing or a trivia savant (off the top of my head, I can't tell you who won the 1962 AL Cy Young Award or '63 World Series), but I do have a firm grasp of a lot of history, especially that which took place since I was born in 1976.

But this one stunned me: The designated hitter, introduced in '73, wasn't used in the World Series until 1976, and then only in alternating years -- regardless of ballpark -- through '85. I learned this from a Joe Posnanski post written nine days ago that I only read today. (Some of the numbers he has in there are interesting.) So yeah, even in '73, the first year of the DH, when the Mets opened the Series in Oakland, starter John Matlack took a turn at bat (and walked). And in '76, when Cincinnati hosted Games 1 and 2, Lou Piniella and Elliot Maddox of the Yankees and Dan Driessen of the Reds stood in at bat for the pitchers.

So the first National League park to experience the DH -- something that has been offered up as a way to spice up Interleague Play, by swapping the DH rule -- was Riverfront Stadium in '76, and Dodger Stadium ('78), Veterans Stadium ('80), Busch Stadium ('82) and Jack Murphy Stadium ('84) followed suit. The 1985 World Series was the last no-DH Fall Classic, and the Mets' win over the Red Sox was the first to use the current format, which uses the rules of the league of the home team.

This is fascinating to me. In 1973, when the American League -- back when the leagues were truly separate entities -- altered its rules to have a designated hitter for the pitcher, Major League Baseball decided (or refused?) that this affront to the game could not be used to decide that year's champion. It took four seasons before it was allowed. And then, when MLB decided to allow it in the Series, it chose to do so arbitrarily, alternating its use by year, just as it did with home-field advantage back then. However, it implemented the DH rule opposite the American League's home-field schedule. That is, it began use of the DH in the World Series in '76, a year in which the National League team would host Games 1, 2, 6 and 7. Why it was decided to use the DH throughout the Series or not at all for the first 10 years, instead of based on the home team in each game, is a curious choice, for sure -- and, as Posnanski touches on, perhaps had as much as an impact on the games as where it was played. For those who thought alternating home-field advantage each year was stupid and arbitrary, how about alternating DH use? Crazy.

There's always something to learn about this game. And there's always something to see. This has been an amazing World Series, a thrilling and exciting postseason, starting with the last day of the regular season. I've been watching it all and hope to take some time to write out some thoughts after it's over and I've had time to recover and digest it all.

One more game. Let's see what this season gives us for a finale.

Parting shot

2011-10-20T15:19:00.001-04:00

Until next year ...

Summer time has come and gone, and everybody's home again
Closing down for the season, I found the last of the souvenirs

-- Billy Joel, "Famous Last Words"

I took this shot after the final game of the season back on Sept. 28, but I've been busy and it took me a while to go through the photos and post them. The rest of the shots -- including Jose Reyes' bunt and bolt -- are here.

Carp-e diem! What you missed if you missed last night

2011-10-08T15:26:00.000-04:00

I can understand the view of the fan who, frustrated over another disappointed season by his team, finds no interest in the postseason. And I know what it's like to see your team, which seemed destined -- even a lock -- for the playoffs at the All-Star break, fall short on the final day of the season. But as much as I love college football, I can't let go of baseball. I love October weekends of football-full days and playoff baseball nights. And if you love the national pastime, it doesn't get much better than last night.

The Brewers' walk-off win over the Diamondbacks was remarkable in its own right, but the nightcap -- Cardinals at Phillies, Chris Carpenter vs. Roy Halladay -- was pretty close to perfection for a fan of the game. As a Mets fan, sure, I probably had a greater rooting interest for the Cardinals. But even in a series in which I bear little ill will against either team (the upcoming ALCS between the Tigers and Rangers falls into that category), I tend to develop an affinity for one team over the other during the course of the game or the series.

But anyway: last night. While Arizona and Milwaukee were in the 10th inning at Miller Park, Rafael Furcal stepped to the plate in Philadelphia to start Game 5 of that series and tripled to open the game. A triple is exciting whenever it happens, but the first batter against Halladay, when half the ballpark might be expecting him to flirt with a no-hitter in a must-win game? A thing of beauty, particularly when you realize that the leadoff runner on third doesn't necessarily mean a run against an ace like Halladay. Just look at Game 2, when Furcal led off with a triple and Cliff Lee stranded him there by retiring the next three Cardinals.

Halladay wouldn't be so lucky. The next batter, Skip Schumaker, battled Halladay in a 10-pitch at-bat, culminating in a double to the right-field corner to bring home Furcal. It had the makings of a big inning, but Halladay then bore down to get out of the inning with just the one run scoring. With an ace like Carpenter on the mound for St. Louis, one run might be enough. If you're a Cardinals fan, you hope so, but you want more, just to be safe. While the Phillies lineup might not be the efficient juggernaut it appears to be (it relies more on the three-run homer than manufacturing runs), at home at cozy Citizens Bank Park a home run can change the game in a hurry.

And that's what made this game so great: Every batter the rest of the way was a big one, an important one. Every out Carpenter recorded brought the Cardinals closer to the NLCS; every baserunner the Phillies got -- there were just five -- brought them closer to tying the game on a double or taking the lead on a homer. In a 1-0 game, every pitch matters to the team trailing.

So while I may not be able to watch my favorite team this postseason, after one week I've already been able to see three thrilling winner-take-all games that have had me creeping closer to the edge of my seat with every pitch in the late innings. There hasn't been a day without baseball yet this October, and tonight the ALCS begins with one of the few pitchers better than Halladay this year, Justin Verlander, putting his stuff up against the formidable Texas lineup in its own hitter-friendly home.

I'll be watching.

From ND to MLB: Billy Burke

2011-09-26T16:46:00.002-04:00

One hundred years ago today -- Tuesday, Sept. 26, 1911 -- the Boston Rustlers arrived at Chicago's West Side Grounds for a getaway day doubleheader against the Cubs. It would be the 11th and 12th games in the last nine days on the Rustlers' current road trip, one that would last another 12 games and 13 days through the end of the season.

It was the final pair of games scheduled between two also-rans in the National League. The Cubs (84-57) were in the last days of a pennant race, in second place behind the Giants, 7 1/2 games out with 12 to play. The Rustlers, on the other hand, were the worst team in baseball, 54 games out of first place with a 36-102 record and a .261 winning percentage -- well behind their pythagorian mark of .316 based on their 622 runs scored (12th out of 16 teams) and 948 allowed (last, 188 more than any other team had given up).

The home team sent a 28-year-old right-hander out of the University of Notre Dame, Ed Reulbach, to the mound in the first game. The visitors countered with a 22-year-old southpaw from the same school, Billy Burke. It is, I am pretty certain, the last time two former Irish hurlers squared off on a Major League mound.

And it was the last game of Burke's career. At least at the highest level -- he'd pitch two more years in the International League before giving up the game for good.

William Ignatius Burke was born on July 11, 1889, in Clinton, Mass., a town incorporated 39 years earlier and named (allegedly) for the DeWitt Clinton Hotel in New York for the simple reason that the town's founders were fond of the place. Situated near the Nashua River 13 miles northeast of Worcester, Clinton became an industrial mill town, which in turn attracted the railroads. The building of the Wachusett Dam from 1897-1905 formed the Wachusett Reservoir, which was filled by 1908 and displaced the residents of several towns in the valley that were now under water, including parts of Clinton. While some towns were relocated, Clinton's local ballfield remained in place. Now known as Fuller Field, it is recognized as the world's oldest baseball diamond still in use in its original location and orientation. It's possible that a young Billy Burke first picked up the game on these basepaths in Clinton.

From central Massachusetts, he made his way to St. Charles College and Seton Hall University before landing at Notre Dame in 1909. In one season on campus, he threw five shutouts and compiled a scoreless streak of more than 42 innings. But a year later, not yet 21 years old, Burke found himself vying for a spot with the National League's Boston Doves. It seems his collegiate career was cut short when the Notre Dame administration discovered that he had been playing semi-pro ball under an assumed name -- either "Connolly" or "Conway" -- for two summers in the New England League. Perhaps authorities as St. Charles and/or Seton Hall also made the same discoveries.

Inconsistencies in spelling -- not to mention Burke's attempts at disguise -- make it difficult to pin down a definitive timeline, but archives of Sporting Life show a Connely/Connolly pitching for New Bedford in July 1908 and Lynn on Aug. 4 of that year. Ten days later, a box score shows that Conway came on in relief for Lynn. Conway often came on in relief -- perhaps Burke went so far as to be known as Connolly when he started games and Conway when he didn't. Or maybe he found Conway put up better statistics and decided to stick with that name.

On Sept. 11, 1909, Sporting Life reported that Boston's National League team had drafted Conway from the Lynn club, along with Moran from Providence, Cooney from Haverhill and Wolfgang from Albany. The following month, the paper provided the briefest of scouting reports: "Cooney, the youngester secured from Haverhill, looks as if he had in him the makings of a mighty good player, and Conway, the Lynn kid, also looks good." "Cooney" looks to have been Bill Cooney -- playing under his own name in the New England League -- an outfielder, shortstop and sometimes pitcher from Boston who played at Princeton, but saw action in just 13 games with the Doves in 1909-10, encompassing his entire Major League career.

Manager Fred Lake's Doves were a young squad in 1910, averaging 26.5 years of age. Burke seemed to be among the promising prospects that offseason, according to contemporary newspaper reports. "Good things" were expected of the hurler "destined to become an artist" on the "slab roll," for he had "all the earmarks of a comer." He even handled the bat fairly well, going 3-for-3 in one exhibition game against the University of Tennessee ballclub, and he appears to have played one inning -- the bottom of the eighth -- in right field during a game in Brooklyn later in the season.

But when Lake's club broke camp in April, Burke was shipped off to Montreal in the International League. He wasn't there long, earning a recall to the Doves and making his debut on April 30, 1910, against Brooklyn. In all, he would appear in 19 games for the Boston Nationals that year, starting one of them and mopping up to complete 16 others. He earned one win against no losses, struck out 22 in 64 innings and allowed 68 hits and 29 walks. Twenty-nine earned runs resulted in a 4.08 ERA.

The Doves, though, were horrendous. A 53-100 record in 1910 prompted a change at the helm, and Fred Lake was replaced by Fred Tenney. Burke was reserved by the Boston club over the winter, and a Sporting Life account the following spring cited Tenney in saying that Burke was expected to help the club "a great deal" in 1911. Yet, after a one-inning appearance against Brooklyn in April, Burke was released to Fall River of the New England League and later found himself back in Montreal, where he teamed with fellow Domer Jean Debuc on a formidable staff. Both were chosen by one newspaper as among the best players in the Eastern League that year, and Burke finished with 16 wins. At the end of August, he was recalled to Boston.

Burke's Major League career lasted all of 21 games, just two of them starts. On Dec. 12, 1911, Burke was released again to Montreal, where he pitched in '12 and '13 before giving up the game at 24. Other than a few scattered photographs that have popped up -- whether on his Baseball-Reference profile or in some online archives of the Reach or Spaulding guides -- there is not much to represent Billy Burke's professional career. And so I thought I would piece it together for the record, presenting a game log of his 19 appearances for the Boston National League club.

Boston, Saturday, April 30, 1910. Brooklyn 10, Boston 3: Burke pitches an inning in relief, finishing the game but allowing two runs.

Boston, Sunday, May 15, 1910. Chicago 4, Boston 0: Burke goes four innings to finish off another game, allowing one hit and two walks, striking out two.

Brooklyn, Monday, May 30, 1910. Brooklyn 3, Boston 1 (Game 2): Another one-inning outing to close the game, allowing a run on two hits.

Boston, Friday, June 3, 1910. Chicago 9, Boston 0: Burke goes two innings against the Cubs, yielding three runs on two hits with a walk and a strikeout.

Boston, Saturday, June 18, 1910. St. Louis 8, Boston 2 (Game 2): In the longest outing of his career to date, Burke mops up with seven innings of four-hit ball, allowing two runs, walking four and striking out one.

Boston, Monday, July 4, 1910. Philadelphia 6, Boston 5 (Game 2): Another long outing, this one covering 6 2/3, sees Burke allow four runs (though not all earned) on six hits and four walks, with three strikeouts.

St. Louis, Monday, July 11, 1910. Boston 9, St. Louis 6: It's unclear from the box score how many innings Burke pitches, but he allows one walk and a strikeout.

Chicago, Thursday, July 21, 1910. Chicago 3, Boston 0: Burke finishes the game with two hitless innings, allowing a walk.

New York, Monday, Aug. 1, 1910. New York 4, Boston 0: Another solid seven-inning outing in relief. The Giants manage six hits but just one run, drawing two walks and striking out once.

Boston, Saturday, Aug. 6, 1910. Pittsburgh 10, Boston 2: The Pirates collect a run on three hits, striking out once, as Burke pitches the ninth.

Boston, Monday, Aug. 15, 1910. Boston 8, St. Louis 1 (Game 2): In the second game of a doubleheader, Burke gets his first start -- and finishes it, too. The Cardinals manage seven hits but just a single run, walking twice and striking out four times. It is, by far, the best outing in Burke's career and prompts praise in Sporting Life from Boston correspondent J.C. Morse.

Chicago, Monday, Aug. 22, 1910. Chicago 7, Boston 0: Back to the bullpen, Burke pitches six innings in relief, allowing three runs on seven hits and a walk, striking out one.

St. Louis, Sunday, Aug. 28, 1910. St. Louis 6, Boston 5: Mastery of the Cards continues with a scoreless ninth inning, allowing one hit and a walk.

Boston, Friday, Sept. 2, 1919. Brooklyn 8, Boston 0 (Game 2): A rough four innings against the Superbas, yielding four runs on four hits and four walks. Burke records one strikeout.

New York, Saturday, Sept. 10, 1910. New York 6, Boston 1 (Game 1): Some redemption as Burke finishes off the game with four innings of three-hit, one-run ball, walking three and striking out none.

Boston, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 1910. Chicago 11, Boston 0 (Game 2): Burke throws a scoreless ninth, allowing a hit and a walk while recording a strikeout.

Boston, Thursday, Sept. 29, 1910. Chicago 8, Boston 3: Not only does this late-season outing represent the first time Burke pitches on consecutive days, but it's also the first time he faces the same opponent in back-to-back outings. This time, the Cubs touch him for three runs on five hits and two walks in three innings. He strikes out one.

Boston, Saturday, Oct. 1, 1910. New York 12, Boston 4: The Giants score a run on three hits in the ninth against Burke.

Boston, Tuesday, Oct. 4, 1910. New York 17, Boston 9: In his final appearance of the season (though not Boston's last game on the schedule), Burke comes on in the sixth to finish out the game with 3 2/3 innings, giving up four runs on nine hits and three walks, striking out two.

Boston, Thursday, April 13, 1911. Brooklyn 7, Boston 2: A new season and a new nickname bestowed upon the Boston club -- the Rustlers -- but the same results for Burke. He finishes the second game of the year with an inning on the mound, allowing two runs on three hits while walking one and striking out no one. After this, he is shipped out until the end of August.

Chicago, Tuesday, Sept. 26, 1911. Chicago 10, Boston 2 (Game 1): Burke makes just the second start of his career, facing off against a fellow Notre Dame man in Ed Reulbach, and is knocked around for five runs on five hits and four walks in just 2 1/3 innings. He strikes out one batter in what would prove to be his final Major League outing.

Boston went a combined 97-207 (.319) in the two years Burke appeared in a game for the club, so it's not too surprising that of his 21 career games, the team was 2-19 (.095) -- though the gap between the two winning percentages is much wider. But based on how Burke was used, it seems he was thought of as little more than a mop-up reliever in an era when relievers were nothing more than failed starters. Some newspaper reports may have spoken highly of Burke's potential, but either he never realized it, or his managers saw his ability differently.

Billy Burke died on Feb. 8, 1967, in Worcester, having worked for the city's traffic bureau, according to a brief obituary in The Sporting News. He is buried in St. John's Cemetery in Lancaster, Mass., near his hometown of Clinton.

With no tobacco cards made or photographs available to purchase for my collection, I went to visit Billy in Lancaster. My wife and I stopped off at the cemetery last month on our way up to Maine, finding Burke's name engraved on the base of an obelisk topped with a cross in a section near the treeline in the back. After spending some time there on a warm but breezy New England summer evening, we found a tavern in town for dinner. Pennants hanging from the ceiling, with Notre Dame among them, and we wondered the local boy working down in Worcester who once pitched for Boston had ever ducked in for a drink.

Next year's stamps, all together

2011-09-06T15:25:00.000-04:00

Don't these look beautiful? They'll be great to have -- one sheet to keep, others to use -- next summer*.

*Assuming the Post Office still exists.

From ND to MLB: John Axford

2011-08-27T17:53:00.001-04:00

Have you ever watched pitchers in the outfield during batting practice? Probably not, right? Why would you? Maybe there's one you're keeping tabs on hoping to get a ball tossed your way, or one of the guys is a target for an autograph on a card you've got in your binder. But generally, they stand around chatting with one another until a ball comes their way, when one of them breaks from the pack into a jog to catch it or toss his glove into the air in an attempt to knock it down.

And then there's John Axford. Before the first game of a three-game set at Yankee Stadium during the last week of June, he took his spot out in right field for batting practice. Like a lot of pitchers, he spent some time with his arms crossed, turning his head and watching as moon shots from the likes of Prince Fielder and Mat Gamel soared into the second deck and beyond. But as the Brewers worked through their groups, as the hitters changed, so did Axford's focus.

With fewer balls hit far over the short right-field fence came more opportunities to make a play, and that's what Axford did. He sprinted to his right into the gap and loped back and to his left onto the warning track to make catches. And for those balls that traveled only 319 or 320 feet? Axford positioned his 6-foot-5 frame at the base of the wall and jumped, reaching his glove over the top of the eight-foot fence and pulling back a batting practice home run off the bat of fellow Notre Dame alumnus Craig Counsell.

"I just jumped and put up my glove and somehow it went in it," Axford said the next day in the clubhouse. "And I just remember my arm going back and I was like, 'YES!' You gotta wait until Craig Counsell hits them, because he's putting them kind of close right over [the top of the wall], so that I can get close to robbing them. If it's Prince and Gamel, pffft, they're putting them everywhere I can't reach.

"It was Counsell's ball that I robbed. I told him about it after. 'Hey, did you catch me? I robbed your home run.' He still hit like eight home runs, though, so he was pretty excited about that."

John Axford is a visual guy. He's a self-described "mustache afficionado" who has carefully groomed his facial hair into a Rollie Fingers handlebar, a full soup-strainer with a soul patch and a devilish Fu Manchu (and used it all for a good cause). In college, he majored in film, television and theatre (that's how the major is spelled in South Bend), so it seems appropriate that one of the first things that drew him to Notre Dame was the mail.

"That bright gold 'ND' on the top of the envelope that I got with the recruiting letter. In all honesty, that thing just stood out more than anything," Axford said when asked about his college choice. "All the others came in letter size and I'm getting this big envelope with this huge 'ND' on there. I was like, 'Wow, this is amazing. This is one of the few schools I've ever heard of.' Being Canadian, you don't hear of many stateside schools, especially if you're not focused on going to school, which I wasn't at the time. I was thinking more pro."

But Notre Dame's interest changed that line of thought. Axford then attended a fall baseball camp on campus to get a look at the school and have the coaches get another look at him.

"I figured throwing in front of the staff would be the best way to do it," he said. "They saw me at the Chicago Area Code Games, which is where I think they initially saw me. But seeing me on their field up close and personal, I figured, would be the best way. Apparently they loved me immediately and offered me a scholarship on that day that I was throwing. I kept holding out, because it was expensive. My family, it wasn't something we were really able to afford, and luckily held out to get a little bit more of a scholarship."

The visual stimulation also played a part among the trees and tan (gold?) brick buildings beside St. Joseph's and St. Mary's lakes.

"But I knew right away, once I went there [for a visit], I wanted to go there," he said. "That was the school for me. The campus was absolutely beautiful, the ballpark was fantastic, beautiful ballpark. And the coaching staff was fantastic. I'm glad I did. Four straight years of Big East championships and the College World Series. Last a lifetime, that's for sure."

From the ND Baseball media guide

Axford arrived on campus in the fall of 2001 and, after considering majors in sociology ("I wanted to be a teacher ... but you had to take a lot of the teaching classes over at Saint Mary's, which I just wasn't going to be able to do with practice.") and psychology ("Took one class -- I was out pretty quick."), he looked into a course of study that drew on his past experiences.

"I did a lot of A.V. in high school," he said. "I did a lot of editing, actually, a lot of film editing, because all our announcements that we had were on TVs in class, so I would actually run promos, film promos, and edit those and run those and do some of the graphics for TV for the announcements in the morning. And I loved that, so I wanted to see what their film program was about, so I checked it out and I loved it. Just kept going with it. And then they built the beautiful Regis Philbin theater center there -- it was perfect for my senior year to hang out in and enjoy."

On the field, Axford endured an up-and-down career at Notre Dame. The Irish reached the College World Series in 2002, his freshman year, when he went 5-2 with a 3.95 ERA, striking out 64 in 70 2/3 innings. He pitched once in Omaha, 1 1/3 innings (no hits, two walks, one strikeout) in Notre Dame's season finale, a 5-3 loss to Stanford.

His sophomore year, in 2003, saw some improvements -- a 9-3 record, 69 strikeouts in 71 innings and a drop in walks from 59 to 50 -- but also an increase in wild pitches (from seven to 14) and a rise in ERA, to 4.13, the result of three more earned runs (34) despite allowing eight fewer overall (37). But 2004 was a lost year, literally, as he recovered from Tommy John surgery on his right elbow. He pitched just three innings in '05.

Thirteen players who appeared in Notre Dame's three games at Rosenblatt Stadium in '02 were eventually drafted, including Steve Stanley (second round) and Brian Stavisky (sixth round) by the A's that month. But Axford is the only one to reach the Majors -- yet, he didn't get there with any of the teams that drafted him, nor the one that signed him to his first professional contract. The Mariners selected Axford in the seventh round in 2001, when he was coming out of high school. He chose to go to college instead. In 2005, following his senior season at Notre Dame, the Reds drafted Axford in the 42nd round, but concerns about his control problems turned them off.

"The first one was the more difficult one, obviously, coming out of high school," he said. "Being in the seventh round, I was offered a little bit better than seventh-round money. But I knew education was important and that's what I wanted to do."

But the decision did not come easily.

"It wasn't my dream to play college baseball," Axford said. "It was my dream to play pro ball and play in the Major Leagues. And I remember that's what I was thinking: If I don't get this opportunity, am I going to regret it? But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it's not a guarantee I'm going to be playing in the Major Leagues. But this is a guanratee that I can go to a school with a pretty much 100 percent graduation rate. I can go here for four years, even three years, and maybe get drafted again. Eventually, I kind of came to my senses, with my parents' help, and realized that education is the important thing right now. It was something I was focused on, something I was passionate about too. I wouldn't be able to beat that education."

With a year of college eligibility remaining in 2006, Axford enrolled at Canisius College in Buffalo, not far from his home in Ontario, and continued to work his way back from the surgery. That August -- following a stint in the Western Major Baseball League in Canada -- Axford signed with the Yankees following a tryout on Staten Island and a "callback" in Tampa. He made his professional debut the next spring, pitching a combined 26 games at three levels of Class A ball (Staten Island, Charleston and Tampa) and getting a cameo at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. His combined statistics showed a 1-4 record, 3.29 ERA, 67 strikeouts, 45 walks and 14 wild pitches in 63 innings. He started five of the 27 games in which he appeared.

"When I was with the Yankees, they just had me bouncing around quite a bit," Axford said. "I played at four different levels. They had me spot-start a few games. I was doing the old piggy-back thing, backing up one of their younger high draft picks down in Staten Island. So I was throwing five innings at a time, so basically like a starter."

That younger high draft pick -- at least at times -- was Zach McAllister, who was the player to be named when the Yankees acquired Austin Kearns last August.

But that December, the Yankees cut Axford loose. Another tryout followed, leading to a contract with the Brewers in March 2008. This arrangement stuck, but it took some adjustments. Axford spent that entire summer pitching for Milwaukee's advanced Class A affiliate in Brevard County, Florida. He started 14 of his 26 games, walking 73 in 95 innings and throwing 12 wild pitches. He compiled a 5-10 record and 4.55 ERA, with 89 strikeouts. Those strikeouts -- and the high-90s radar-gun readings -- still tempted the Brewers, despite the wildness.

The first solution was to consider another role for Axford.

"My first year with the Brewers in '08, they were grooming me as a starter, but I started piggy-backing one of our prospects early," he said. "He was coming back from surgery, so he'd throw two or three [innings], then I'd pick up the rest of the game if I could. Then after he was moved up, I was starting myself. I think I ended up getting 14 starts that year, some good, some definitely not good. Walks were just the thing that were catching up with me. I remember some games where I would just cut it loose for the first three innings, and I had nothing left after that, so I would only last maybe another two or like one and a third or something, so I wouldn't get five innings in. And I think maybe they slowly realized that maybe we'll just try him in relief."

That transition happened in 2009, beginning in spring training. But there was still the issue of control. A high walk rate from a reliever is not something Major League teams will tolerate.

"In spring training [2009], I was playing with the Double-A squad," Axford said. "I don't know if they were making me a reliever or starter. I was just throwing some innings, and thing were not going well. I didn't even know if I was going to make a team. They sent me back down to A-ball. I was supposed to throw four innings on the A-ball side. I pitched one, and then I went out for the next, didn't get an out. ... I gave up like nine runs and walked like a ton of people and kept giving up home runs and doubles off the wall. I don't think I was throwing that hard because I was just trying to throw strikes. I was just laying the ball in there all the time. I was just so frustrated.

"So I didn't even know if I was going to make a team. Luckily, they held on with me long enough. They sent me back down to Brevard, to A-ball, try to get things together."

One day early in the 2009 season in Dunedin, where the Blue Jays train and their Florida State League team plays -- and where a certain Cy Young stud was once teetering on the edge of flameout as a struggling prospect -- Axford was pulled aside for a bullpen session by Brewers minor league pitching coordinator Lee Tunnell and Brevard pitching coach Fred Dabney.

"They said, 'We're going to try to do a couple things, hope you're open to it,'" Axford recalled. "'I'm open to anything,' is what I said. 'Whatever's happening right now isn't the way I want to pitch, because this isn't working.' I was doing OK down there, maybe a 3.00 ERA or two-something. But I knew there was still more in there, so that's what they tried to work with.

"The first thing they said to me was, 'Do you know Roy Halladay?' Yeah, yeah, of course. 'Just try to pitch like him right now,' that's all they said. I'm like, 'Alright, what do you mean?' They said, 'Just do, whatever you think he looks like, try and do that right now.' And I think that their intention -- obviously, because I don't look like him by any means -- their intention was to try to get me to load a little bit better, get my hip back, get my [arm] angle down. And I started doing that, started leaning back, getting a little more angle forward, my arm slot lowered just a little bit -- I'm still very high, but my arm slot lowered enough -- that I started keeping the ball down better and I started actually picking up velocity because I was becoming more athletic through my delivery.

"It was just night and day, it was unbelievable. In the matter of one bullpen session, I could tell that I was throwing harder."

And the results could be seen on the field. Now pitching exclusively in relief, Axford went 4-1 over 19 games with a 1.63 ERA and 1.08 WHIP, walking 16 and striking out 43 in 27 2/3 innings for the Manatees. Impressed with his progress, the Brewers promoted Axford to Double-A Huntsville. After four games -- essentially a quality start: three runs, seven hits, three walks and nine strikeouts in 7 2/3 innings -- and a save, he was on the move again, to Triple-A Nashville.

"That year, when they just kept me in relief, I think it was kind of like a light switch," Axford said. "'Alright, this is it!' I did have a couple three-inning outings here or there, but mostly it was one or two innings. They put me in some pressure situations pretty quick, setting up games, closing out games, coming in with the bases loaded, and I thrived in it. I really loved those situations and I loved being in those moments. I think that was it, that's what I needed. My mindset before, in the years when I was in college, was toward starting, and I think it was just a completely different atmosphere when it came to pro ball and my mentality kind of just changed, and I think this role is definitely suited and fitting for me right now."

In 22 games with the sounds, Axford was 5-0, finishing 11 contests and allowing 13 runs, 23 hits and 19 walks in 33 innings. He struck out 37 and posted a 1.27 WHIP. Then the next call came: to Milwaukee. In the course of one season, Axford went from a struggling reliever in spring training to advanced Class A to Double-A to Triple-A to the Majors.

"I only spent a couple of weeks in Double-A and then I was in Triple-A," he said. "Before I knew it, it was time for the All-Star break, and before I knew it after that, I was in the big leagues in September."

The Brewers brought Axford to the big leagues on Sept. 7, 2009, which was Labor Day and the start of a three-game series at Miller Park against the Cardinals (who would sweep the set). After an off-day, the Brewers flew to Arizona and swept the D-backs, but Axford watched from the bullpen each night. From Phoenix, it was back to the Midwest and Wrigley Field, where the Cubs won the series opener, 2-0, on Monday, Sept. 14. And still Axford, a uniform on his back, a Major League per diem in his wallet every day, had yet to pitch in a game.

His debut came the next night at Wrigley. In the bottom of the eighth, with the Cubs holding a 12-5 lead, manager Ken Macha called on Axford to pitch the last inning. The first batter, Bobby Scales, flied out to left on an 0-1 pitch. Then Jeff Baker singled to right (on a 1-2 count) and Ryan Theriot drew a walk.

Kosuke Fukudome came up next, and on a 1-0 count, Axford threw a wild pitch, allowing Baker and Theriot to move up to third and second, respectively. But Axford worked his way back to even the count at 2-2, then got Fukudome swinging for his first Major League strikeout. The wildness returned, with Derrek Lee and Micah Hoffpauir drawing walks -- Hoffpauir's scoring Baker -- before Geovany Soto flied out to left-center.

That account is easy to find in the game's play-by-play, but Axford remembers only select parts.

"I literally remember like three pitches -- no four," he said. "I remember my first pitch, because it was a strike. I remember my strikeout of Fukudome, it was a curveball in the dirt; I remember knocking Derrek Lee on his back on a fastball up and in, obviously unintentional, and I remember my very last out, because I thought it was a home run. Bases were loaded and the guy crushed the ball, it was kind of into the wind, maybe just got it off the end and it ended up being a flyout. Those were literally the only four pitches I remember out of probably almost 25 or 30 I threw on that day."

From a Notre Dame standpoint, there are two other key points to note from that game: Aaron Heilman earned the win in relief for Chicago, and Cubs manager Lou Piniella used Jeff Samardzija to mop up for the home team, meaning three Domers took the mound that night, with one throwing the final pitch for each side.

"It was awesome to have it at Wrigley Field," Axford said. "I had to wait around a little bit, wait about eight or nine days before I got my debut. ... It was a little tough waiting, but it was definitely worth it. It was nice to be able to sit there kind of take it all in, too, for just over a week and enjoy it."

Axford pitched in six more games that September, finishing five others and even saving one. After walking three, allowing a hit and striking out one in one inning in his debut, Axford walked two allowed four hits and two runs and struck out eight in his other 6 2/3 innings. In fact, if you remove a two-inning outing in Colorado on Oct. 1, when he allowed two runs on four hits and two walks, he allowed only one baserunner (on a walk) in five of his last six outings, covering 4 2/3 innings. And on Oct. 4, in the season finale in St. Louis, Macha brought Axford on to close out a 9-7 win in the 10th inning. He struck out two in a perfect frame, locking down the win for Trevor Hoffman, who had allowed a run in the ninth to blow the save.

That experience helped in 2010. Axford began the season back at Triple-A, then was recalled on May 15, appearing in that night's game against the Phillies and allowing a run. By the end of the month, he was closing games while Hoffman, who had struggled early in the season, worked out his issues in middle relief. Hoffman, stuck on 596 career saves, wouldn't record another one until August. He then became the first closer in history to net 600 saves when he held off the Cardinals on Sept. 7, 2010 -- one year to the day Axford first got the call to the Major Leagues. And Axford was right there in the middle of the celebration after Craig Counsell threw to Prince Fielder at first base for the final out.

"I couldn't have asked for a better teacher, and Trevor Hoffman, his work ethic is unbelievable," Axford said of his former mentor. "It's unparalled from what I saw day-in, day-out. And for him to be there, to help me at the same time, while he was going through some of his hardships that he went through a little bit last year at the beginning of the year, but still working as hard as he could to get to his goal and working to get back to what he was capable of. Along the way, he was still a friend and mentor. Really helped me a lot. I couldn't ask for anybody better, that's for sure."

Hoffman earned one more save last year, finishing with 601, and retired. Axford entered this year as the Brewers' closer, with no question marks or uncertainty in spring training. He's tied for second in the Majors -- alone in second in the NL -- in saves as of this posting, and his status at the head of Milwaukee's bullpen makes him one of the two most prominent Notre Dame alums active in the game today, along with the Phillies' Brad Lidge.

All of which makes it a sight to see -- and a somewhat surprising one -- when the 6-foot-5 closer is exerting himself in right field at Yankee Stadium, chasing after fly balls with vigor. But then, after this season's over, he'll pack up his truck in Milwaukee and head south down I-94, around Chicago, then turn east below Lake Michigan on his way home to Ontario. But like many Domers, he'll make a quick detour on the way.

"I go back [to campus] every year when I drive back home," he said. "It's just a short little stop off the highway. Milwaukee back home is only about an eight-hour drive, so I just drive it. I always stop off at campus, see what's being built, what's new. There's always something new there, every single year. The law school looks absolutely amazing. Haven't been back to a game, I think, since 2007, but I just like going back to campus and walking around and checking it out."

Just like any other Irish alum, except this one throws 97 mph.

Pops!

2011-08-26T21:19:00.001-04:00

And here's the kick-ass Willie Stargell stamp that will be part of next summer's release. I love that they used both the yellow jersey and that intimidating stance (even if his face isn't so intimidating as depicted).

Larry Doby gets a stamp!

2011-08-26T17:11:00.001-04:00

This came out a week ago, but I've been quite busy and never got around to writing anything. And now that a hurricane is bearing down on us and I don't know when I'll have power and internet again after Sunday, I figured I don't have the luxury of composing a more elaborate post.

So here it is, the Larry Doby stamp that will be put into circulation next summer, along with three or four other prominent ballplayers (Joe DiMaggio and Willie Stargell have also been announced). I'm definitely getting these, and keeping one sheet for myself. They're quite sharp, I must say.

From ND to MLB: Craig Counsell

2011-08-11T14:12:00.003-04:00

The hit came just in time. Forty-five at-bats is a long time to go 0-fer -- especially when you're coming off the bench. For a starter, it's a bad week, maybe 10 days. For a backup, it can be a rough couple of months.

For Craig Counsell, it was 57 days, stretching from a three-hit game on June 10 until he singled in the ninth inning on Friday, an 0-for-45 slump. With that hit on Friday, Counsell was spared immortality by an at-bat -- or two.

The record for a single-season 0-fer is either 45 at-bats -- according to the Brewers, citing the Elias Sports Bureau -- or 46, according to research conducted by the Society for American Baseball Research and cited in an article in last Thursday's New York Times (also mentioned on The Colbert Report). Counsell's streak included one walk, a hit-by-pitch, two sacrifice bunts and a sacrifice fly, meaning he went hitless in 49 plate appearances, though he did reach base twice, drove in a run and twice gave away his at-bat in order to move the runners up on the bases. He also scored twice, and in seven of those 32 games in between, he did not come to the plate, serving instead as a defensive replacement or pinch-runner.

When I saw the Brewers play at Yankee Stadium on June 28, Counsell was hitless in his lone at-bat, extending the streak to 0-for-13. I didn't take notice of the 0-for-12 coming into the game, and wouldn't have thought anything of it if I did. And I certainly wouldn't have asked him about it. But I did ask about his role with the Brewers now, how he sees himself as a 40-year-old utility infielder on what was then a team in contention in the NL Central and now is the division leader and the club best poised to lock down the division over these final two months.

"I think your age makes people look at you because you've done this for a while," he said. "But of course, that's part of my job, to -- especially I think when you're not playing -- you try to help everybody and what everybody's doing and help if you can. I've always thought that the leadership thing is that everybody helps each other, so that's everybody's job."

Counsell debuted nearly 16 years ago, on Sept. 17, 1995, when his youngest current teammates -- Yovani Gallardo and Jonathan Lucroy -- were just 9 years old. He's one of 11 players 40 or older who have appeared in a game this season but one of only five hitters, and one of them -- Matt Stairs -- has since retired. The others are Omar Vizquel, Jason Giambi and Jim Thome, but only Thome sees regular starts these days. Vizquel, at 44, occassionally sets accomplishments for his age, and with 2,835 hits would probably need to play until he's 47 to have a shot at 3,000. Giambi hit three home runs for the first time in his career back in May and was mentioned in trade rumors leading up to last month's deadline, but is currently on the DL with a left quad strain. And Thome, of course, is two home runs away from 600 -- a feat that hasn't been celebrated as much as it perhaps should be.

Counsell, though, has more World Series rings than those other four combined. Stairs came to the Phillies for the final 16 games of the 2008 season and helped them win it all, but the other three are 0-for-3 in the Fall Classic. Thome and Vizquel were teammates on the 1997 Indians squad that lost when Counsell came home on Edgar Renteria's hit in the 11th inning of Game 7 in Miami and Giambi played for the 2003 Yankees team that fell to the Marlins.

Counsell's journey actually includes several overlapping routes, from South Bend to Wisconsin and back, from Phoenix to Milwaukee and back, and then back to the Cream City once again.

"I was actually born in South Bend," said Counsell, who played for Whitefish Bay High School in Wisconsin. "My dad coached there for a little while [1969-72] and used to play there, and I always kind of wanted to go to school there. I was just happy to get in. Playing baseball, Pat Murphy had just gotten there. He had been there one year. From what I understood, they'd come pretty close to dropping baseball the year before. We were kind of like starting over."

When Counsell arrived on campus in the fall of 1989, the Irish were coming off their first winning season since '82. Murphy guided them to a 39-22 record in his first year and quickly built a solid program. In Counsell's four years, beginning in 1989, Notre Dame went 48-19-1, 46-12, 45-16 and 48-15, reaching the NCAA Tournament in '89 and '92 -- the first time the Irish had played in the tournament since 1970.

2011 Notre Dame baseball media guide, p. 23

Craig not only followed his father, John ('64), to South Bend, but they are the only father-son pair to captain the baseball team. For his career, Craig batted. 306 with 18 home runs and 166 RBIs as a four-year starter, earning second-team all-MCC honors in '90 and '91 and first team in '92, when he was the Irish team MVP. The Rockies drafted him in the 11th round and he began his career in Bend, Ore., in the Northwest League.

"You're drafted, excited to have a chance to play professional baseball," Counsell said of starting his pro career. "You're not really exactly sure what to expect. It took me four, five years, I had a bunch of injuries, but I finally kind of made it and stuck. It took a while, but I made it."

He progressed each year through the Rockies' system, jumping from short-season Bend in '92 to Advanced Class A Central Valley in the California League in '93 to Double-A New Haven in the Eastern League in '94. In 1995, he reached Triple-A Colorado Springs and, that September, made his Major League debut, playing three games and going 0-for-1 with a walk. In spring training 1996, Counsell was under consideration for the Rockies' starting second base job (because regular starter Eric Young opened the season on the DL with a broken hand) and utility infielder role, but he spent the year at Colorado Springs -- playing just 25 games because of injuries.

In late June 1997, Counsell was hitting .332 with 45 RBIs in 60 games at Triple-A on a strong Colorado Springs club; he would finish with a .335 batting average, .409 on-base percentage, .489 slugging percentage, 77 runs, 31 doubles, six triples, five homers, 63 RBIs and 12 stolen bases in 96 games. Called up to the Rockies, he appeared as a pinch-runner against the Cubs on July 26. The next day, the Marlins acquired him for Australian right-hander Mark Hutton. Two days after the trade, Counsell started at second base, batting eighth, at Pro Player Stadium against the Reds. In his first at-bat, leading off the second inning against right-hander Mike Morgan, he lined a single to right field for his first Major League hit. Since then -- with the exception of 50 games at Triple-A Tuscon in 2000 and some rehab appearances in subsequent summers -- Counsell has been a Major Leaguer.

In 51 games (47 of them starts at second base) for Florida over the final two months of the '97 season, Counsell batted .299/.376/.396 with 20 runs, nine doubles, two triples and 16 RBIs. He struck out 17 times but walked 18. His lone home run -- the first of his career -- was a grand slam off Todd Stottlemyre of the Cardinals on Aug. 24 in a 7-1 Marlins victory.

But it was that October that Counsell really established himself. In seven plate appearances in Florida's three-game sweep of San Francisco in the NLDS, he had two hits (one a double), a walk, a sac bunt and an RBI. Then in the Marlins' 4-2 NLCS victory over the Braves, Counsell started four games at second base, batting .429 (6-for-14) with two RBIs, three walks (all intentional, to get to the pitcher) and three strikeouts. He assisted on the final out of the series when Kevin Brown induced a ground ball from Chipper Jones to second base. Counsell scooped it up and tossed it to Renteria, the shortstop, to clinch the pennant.

Counsell started every game of the seven-game World Series against the Indians, batting .182/.345/.227, going 4-for-22 with a double, four runs, two RBIs and a stolen base and drawing six walks -- none intentional -- against five strikeouts. He went 1-for-3 with a double and a run in Game 1, 2-for-5 with two runs and an RBI in Game 3 and 1-for-4 in Game 6. Though he was 0-for-3 in Game 7, he made perhaps his biggest contributions to the club that season late in the game.

In the bottom of the ninth with the Indians leading, 2-1, Jose Mesa came on to close out the game and the Tribe's first World Series championship since 1948. Moises Alou led off with a single, but then Mesa got Bobby Bonilla swinging. Charles Johnson followed with a single to right field that sent Alou to third. Up stepped Counsell, batting eighth in the order. Mesa just needed to retire Counsell and pinch-hitter Jim Eisenreich, who was on deck; that, or a double play from Counsell would do. On Mesa's third pitch, with the count even at 1-1, Counsell swung and drove a line drive deep down the right-field line. Manny Ramirez glided over to make the catch and Alou broke for home to score the tying run. Mesa then retired Eisenreich on a ground ball to second to end the inning and send Game 7 of the World Series to extra innings.

That fall, Counsell returned to Notre Dame during the final football weekend, Nov. 22, 1997, against West Virginia. He met with the baseball team in the clubhouse of Eck Stadium and I was sent to cover it for the South Bend Tribune, for which I was interning that semester. I dug up that article -- on a 3 1/2-inch floppy disk -- which included this unused comment at the top:

"I didn’t think about it too much," Counsell said of his ninth-inning at-bat. "You just think to get the job done. You know it’s the seventh game of the World Series, but you don’t htink about that. It was a long fly ball, [a home run] would have been a little too much to ask for."

The game, of course, wasn't over. Florida closer Robb Nen, who had come on to get the final two outs in the top of the ninth, pitched the 10th, allowing a one-out single to Tony Fernandez but otherwise struck out the side. In the bottom of the 10th, with Mesa still pitching, Renteria and Gary Sheffield hit one-out singles, but Mesa struck out John Cangelosi and Charles Nagy came out of the bullpen to get Alou to fly out to right.

Jay Powell came on to pitch the top of the 11th and walked Matt Williams to open the frame. Sandy Alomar tried to bunt him over, but Powell pounced on it and threw to second to force out Williams. Thome then grounded into a 4-6-3 double play. On to the bottom of the 11th.

Nagy, who had started and lost Game 3, returned to the mound. (I love elimination games in the postseason, when everyone but the previous night's starter is available to pitch.) Bonilla fell into an 0-2 hole but then singled up the middle. Gregg Zaun tried to lay down a sacrifice bunt, but popped an 0-2 pitch up to Nagy. Counsell then reached on an error by the second baseman, Fernandez, sending Bonilla to third. Eisenreich was intentionally walked to set up a forceout all around, and the plan worked when Devon White grounded to second and Bonilla was forced out at home. Counsell advanced to third base.

Up stepped Renteria, who was 2-for-4 with a walk and had entered the game batting .213/.304/.246 in the Series. He took the first pitch for a strike, but the second was sent back through the box and into center field, driving in Counsell with the winning run.

Counsell's cleats on display at the Hall of Fame"It was pure joy," Counsell told me in 1997. "That's the best way I can describe it. I've been telling people my life is all downhill from here. I don't know if I'll ever feel anything like that again. It's unbelievable."

I asked him what he planned to say to the Irish players he was about to address.

"I'm going to tell them there's no magic formula," he said. "I'm going to tell them my story, that it's not out of the realm of possibility for them. I was in these shoes five years ago, so it can certainly happen to one of them."

One of the players on that Irish team -- and I can't say for sure if he was in the room that morning until I talk to him -- was a junior pitcher who would be drafted in the first round by the Astros the next June: Brad Lidge, who would have his own World Series-clinching moment 11 years later.

Counsell's career, of course, didn't go downhill from there.* He returned to the Marlins in '98 and '99, when the Dodgers acquired him in June for a minor-league left-hander who topped out at Double-A, Ryan Moskau. Counsell finished the season in Los Angeles but was released during spring training the following year. Five days later, he signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks, where the Notre Dame connection played a role. Arizona GM Joe Garagiola Jr. had been coached by Counsell's father on the Notre Dame freshman team. (See the story from the July 3, 2000, issue of The Sporting News at left.)

*The fortunes of the Marlins did, however, when owner Wayne Huizenga put the team up for sale and slashed payroll, trading away most of the stars. "It's unfortunate," Counsell said then. "I think if everybody had the choice, we'd bring back the same team to go for it again. But we still have a solid core, and a lot of good young players. If we don't do it again next year, we will soon in the future." They did, of course, in 2003, though despite just the six-year gap, the only player on both teams was "Original Marlin" Jeff Conine, who had been traded away in December 1997 then reacquired for the '03 pennant drive.

From the May 28, 2001, Sporting News.
All three were teammates on the 1997 Marlins.

In 2000, Counsell played 67 games for Arizona at second, third and short, starting 33 of them. In '01, he earned a utility spot on the roster and started 113 of the 141 games in which he appeared. Over the course of the season, Counsell's stock rose. In May he was praised by manager Bob Brenly for his play while filling in at shortstop for Tony Womack, who missed a week following the death of his father. By late June, Counsell had taken over the leadoff spot from Womack and was starting at second base over Jay Bell because of his range (Bell was moved to third with Matt Williams sidelined). In late July, when Williams returned and speedy young second baseman Junior Spivey was in the mix, Counsell was still getting regular playing time as Brenly chose his matchups based on stats and history against the opposing starter, using the glut of infielders to give Williams, Bell and Womack a day off each week. At the end of August, the Diamondbacks notes in The Sporting News led with an item on Counsell supplanting Womack as the regular shortstop because of his consistency at bat and steadiness in the field.

In the postseason, Counsell's contributions were highlighted. In a Ken Rosenthal feature in the Oct. 29 edition of The Sporting News, Brenly called Counsell "the smartest player I've ever had the fortune to be around." Jim Leyland, the manager of the '97 Marlins, described him as "kind of a manager's dream, not a scout's dream." Those qualities would be on display again in the World Series.

Counsell batted just .188/.278/.375 in the five-game NLDS against the Cardinals, then came alive in the NLCS against the Braves, the team the Marlins beat in the '97 NLCS. He had two hits and scored twice in a Game 1 win, then after a Game 2 loss he put up back-to-back three-hit games in Atlanta in two Arizona victories. In Game 5, Counsell's squad was once again victorious on the Turner Field soil, eliminating the Braves and Tom Glavine (who also lost Game 6 in '97) with a 3-2 victory. Counsell was named NLCS MVP after batting .297/.333/.459 with three doubles, five runs and four RBIs in the five games.

In the World Series against the Yankees, he had just two hits. The first was a home run off Mike Mussina in the first inning of Game 1, a 9-1 Arizona victory. The second was a third-inning single in Game 7 off of Roger Clemens. But Counsell's bigger contribution came in the ninth, an inning all too familiar to Yankees fans -- and joyously recalled by fans of the D-backs, who are celebrating the 10th anniversary of that title this year and making a surprising run at the postseason to boot. With the Yankees leading, 2-1, Mark Grace led off with a single to center off Mariano Rivera. Damian Miller laid down a bunt to sacrifice pinch-runner David Dellucci to second, but Rivera's throw to second sailed into the outfield. Bell then tried another sacrifice, but Rivera's throw to third was true, forcing out Dellucci. Womack then doubled down the right-field line to score Midre Cummings (pinch-running for Miller) and send Bell to third. Counsell was up next with one out and runners on second and third; Rivera hit him with an 0-1 pitch, loading the bases for Luis Gonzalez. And then, well ...

When I asked Counsell, standing in the visitors clubhouse at Yankee Stadium in June, if any one moment stands out in his career, it was that championship that he recalled.

"I think the 2001 season, for sure," he said. "We were playing the World Series in New York six or eight weeks after 9/11. Actually, I haven't been here [the Bronx] for 10 years. Clubhouse guys here were saying, 'Hey, I haven't seen you in 10 years.' We spent a week in New York, lost three games basically in our last at-bat. Three incredible baseball games, with everything that was going on in the city. I'd say that week, even though we lost the baseball games, but it was pretty memorable that we came here for that. And then we came back to win it."

The Diamondbacks won the NL West again in 2002, but were swept in the NLDS by the Cardinals. They finished third (84-78) in '03, and after the season, Counsell was traded (along with Chris Capuano and Lyle Overbay, among others) to the Brewers in a nine-player blockbuster that sent Richie Sexson to Arizona. Counsell came home to Wisconsin -- for one season. In December 2004, he re-signed with Arizona and stayed for two more seasons.

A free agent again in the 2006-07 offseason, Counsell then made the decision to head home, signing a two-year deal with the Brewers. In '08, and each winter since, he's re-upped with his hometown club.

"I wanted to come back to Milwaukee because ... the franchise had struggled for quite a while and it was 2007 when I came back here," he said. "It was just kind of the right time. The young players were coming and I wanted to be part of the teams that kind of turned around baseball in Milwaukee again and made it important. It's a baseball town. We're going to draw 3 million people this year, and that's saying something. I think that was the reason why I really wanted to play here -- I wanted to be part of those teams that made baseball important in Milwaukee."

So far, so good. That 2007 team ended what had been a run of 14 non-winning seasons in Milwaukee, then the '08 club was the first to reach the playoffs since the 1982 AL championship squad. The Brewers slipped to third -- and under .500 -- in '09 and '10, but as of this posting, they are 17 games over .500 and five games up on the second-place Cardinals in the NL Central. Perhaps at least one more postseason is in store for Counsell, who will turn 41 on Aug. 21, a week from Sunday, when the Brewers will be in New York finishing a three-game series against the Mets. Back in June, he understandably wasn't yet ready to predict what may come following this year.

"We're a little too soon [to think about the next step]," he said. "We have a good team. Obviously, when you're 40 years old, it's not going to last forever. One of these years will be the last year. I'll stay in the game for sure, I don't know -- I couldn't tell you exactly what, but it will be in baseball for sure."

After spending half his life playing at a high level -- four years at Notre Dame followed by 20 in the professional ranks -- Counsell won't be able to walk away from the game so easily, even after an 0-for-45 slide.

"Everybody looks back on their life and maybe thinks there are some things they could do differently," he said. "But it goes how it goes. Two World Series is -- there's not many people out there who have done that. Still playing in the big leagues at age 40 ... I'd be kind of nitpicking if I was looking to change things."

Finding Frank Grant

2011-08-01T18:21:00.000-04:00

Every week I seem to come across another connection between New Jersey and baseball's past, sometimes a significant part of it or something that should be more well known than it is. The most recent find goes back to a Hall of Famer from the 19th Century -- and the game's segregated practices.

This spring, the Negro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project installed a stone on the previously unmarked resting place of Ulysses Franklin Grant, better known as Frank Grant -- perhaps the greatest black player of the 1800s. Born in Massachusetts, Grant died in New York City in 1937, but when pallbearers Sol White, Smokey Joe Williams and Nux James laid him to rest, it was at East Ridgelawn Cemetery in Clifton, N.J. The cemetery is not even 10 minutes from my house, so I took a drive over there.

Why Grant was buried in New Jersey is a mystery. He was poor, and so there was no headstone, but despite the lack of a marker, the location was preserved in cemetery records: Section 14, Block B, Row E, Number 6. And though articles written about Grant in 2006, when he was part of the Hall of Fame's largest induction class to date, said his grave would never be marked, that changed this year when Jeremy Krock and his group delivered the headstone. I don't know if it was a change of heart or a change in policy, but it's a welcome change. A player of Grant's historical signifigance should be honored and remembered with a headstone, at the very least.

From 1886-91, Grant played in integrated professional leagues in the Northeast. From Meriden, Ct., to Buffalo to Trenton to Harrisburg to Ansonia, Ct., Grant played (occassionally with Sol White as a teammate) in the Eastern League, International League (and later International Association), Middle States League, Eastern Interstate League, Atlantic Association and Connecticut State League. He was one of a handful of black players suiting up for white teams before segregation was more strictly practiced. In researching Grant's life, I found it interesting that once the International League forced Buffalo to cut ties with Grant, segregation became the norm, and when Jackie Robinson re-integrated what is referred to as Organized Baseball in 1946, he did so in the International League. In fact there may be a direct connection between Grant and Robinson from 1890, when Grant's Harrisburg Ponies may have come to Newark and Jersey City in Atlantic Association play, to 1946, when Robinson's Montreal Royals opened the season at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City. During the intervening 56 years, it may be that no black player suited up for an otherwise "white" team in a "white" or "Organized Baseball" league in New Jersey. (Grant, for one, did play in New Jersey often over the next two decades on all-black teams, either against other black clubs or in exhibition games against white teams.)

But that's just speculation. The full, detailed, day-by-day history of "outsider baseball," as writer and historian Scott Simkus refers to the players who weren't part of the Organized Baseball structure, may never be known because of the lack of records and contemporary coverage remaining today. But that doesn't mean we can't try, and Simkus and Gary Ashwell are among those doing noble work in digging up newspaper archives and other sources to put the pieces together. For a very detailed look at Grant's life, check out Brian McKenna's profile at SABR's Baseball Biography Project. Official MLB historian John Thorn also has two informative posts about Grant, one from 2006 and another from earlier this year. Each one goes into much more detail than I could hope to, at least not without several weeks of research or citing every sentence with a link back to their posts. (And for more on the Negro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project, here is a recent Chicago Tribune story and a New York Times article from last year that take a closer look at what Krock and his colleagues have done.)

Grant now rests in a quiet corner at East Ridgelawn, an 80-acre cemetery bordered by busy roads and divided by lanes allowing visitors to drive through the grounds. A large oak tree towers over the east end of Section 14, not far from a fence running along Fenlon Blvd. I wondered if the neighbors across the street knew of the famous ballplayer here beneath the lawn. Based on the photo accompanying a local story, I set out looking for a flat marker decorated with American flags. It didn't take me long to spot them across the undulating grounds, waving in the breeze. Dried, yellow grass from a recent mowing covered half of the inscription, but otherwise the stone looked new, but not fresh -- like it had been there for a few years, not a few months. I brushed the crusty blades of grass from the surface and took some pictures.

Other plots in the vicinity have headstones, but nothing within a few feet of Grant's grave. Though he must have "next-door neighbors" there, they lie in still-unmarked graves. I stood there a while wondering what the area looked like in 1937 and how it came to be Grant's final resting place. What did Sol White -- who died in 1955 and is buried on Staten Island -- and Smokey Joe Williams think of bringing their former teammate (in White's case) and friend to the Garden State?

As I walked back to my car, I figured I'll check in on Grant every so often, just to make sure he's not forgotten anymore and that Krock's efforts to have Grant's gravesite recognized are appreciated.

Thanks, Carlos

2011-07-27T19:09:00.002-04:00

It was a pleasure watching you. Looking forward to another postseason tear.

What a merry band of of marauders, they

2011-07-12T15:59:00.003-04:00

It's Friday night in Pittsburgh and PNC Park is the place to be.

"Standing room only," says a fan at a ticket window, turning to his companions. They decide to take them, because they want to be a part of it.

A part of what? Well, nobody knows for sure, not just yet. But there is something developing here at the confluence of the Three Rivers. A rabid fanbase in the Steel City -- one that has fervently celebrated two Super Bowl victories and a Stanley Cup title in the past five and a half years -- is ready for some summertime sports success, and just being a few games above .500 for a team that hasn't sniffed a winning record in nearly two decades is close enough.

The Pirates are becoming a hit in Pittsburgh, while the rest of the country marvels -- at best -- and scoffs, waiting for the inevitable slide that will send them back down below decks to the sub-.500 quarters they've inhabited ever since Sid Bream made like Cool Papa Bell and slid home ahead of the throw from a five-tool left fielder in his prime named Bonds. But this is an enjoyable group of Buccos, filled more with youth and potential than the gray hairs and experience that have dominated Pirates rosters in recent years. Previous groups donning the black and gold have fallen somewhere between an Oceanic airbus full of castaways and
merely enough to fill the S.S. Minnow; this collection of Pirates won't be pushed around the NL Central.

Standing-room only in sports today is close enough to call it a sellout, so that's what Friday night at PNC Park was. Baseball's most beautiful ballpark was full, fuller than I've ever seen it in my five games there. Fans lined the spiral ramp in the left-field corner and stood along the concourse behind each section on the main level. Concession lines were long, though bathroom lines weren't -- either I picked the right times to go, or this town knows how to balance hydration and inebriation.

As usual, Federal St. to the east of the ballpark was closed as fans strolled across the Roberto Clemente Bridge from downtown. Duquesne Light, the company sponsoring the night's Jose Tabata T-Shirt giveaway -- had a big picnic area set up in the middle of the road as fans milled about and music filled the air. Sidewalk seating at the restaurants was packed. We dodged our way through the crowd to the nearby statues to gaze upon the largess of Willie Stargell's rear end and Clemente's shiny fingers, the result of so many fans reaching up to hold his hand.

After visiting Honus Wagner at the main entrance behind home plate, we retraced our steps to the left-field corner to pick up our tickets: Section 116, Row X. Sure, it's a few rows up, but it was dead-center behind home plate -- for $27. You don't get that kind of value in New York, and you certainly don't get the view. Casey and I dove into our half-bucket of Quaker Steak and Lube wings while her mom and friend went off to find other eats. By the time we settled into our seats, a humid, rainy afternoon had dried up and cooled off. We sat comfortably in our packed section as the game began James McDonald hit the mid-90s on the radar gun (who knew?) and we marveled at the fact that the pitch display at PNC also shows the vertical and horizontal movement of each pitch. The information we can get these days ...

The expected pockets of Cubs fans revealed themselves in the first inning, when Aramis Ramirez hit his 15th home run of the season to right-center field. The Pirates took the lead in the third when Neil Walker beat out an infield hit with two outs, scoring Alex Presley from third base and, impressively, Chase d'Arnaud from second. Off of Walker's bat, it looked like a clean single to center, but Cubs second baseman Darwin Barney ran it down and made an off-balance throw to first, nearly getting the out to end the inning without any runs scoring.

Chicago regained the lead with two in the sixth on Alfonso Soriano's double, only to have the Bucs tie it up again in the bottom half when Andrew McCutchen -- named to the NL All-Star team the next day -- homered over the Heinz bottle on the center-field wall. The Cubs scratched out another run in the eighth for a 4-3 lead ... and then it became a lot of fun. A walk, a flyout and a groundout left Walker on first base with two outs and Lyle Overbay coming to the plate to face Sean Marshall in a lefty-on-lefty matchup. Overbay didn't wait, lining a first-pitch fastball to left field for a single, moving Walker to second. Cubs manager Mike Quade called on his closer, Carlos Marmol, to get the final four outs.

He didn't get one. Well, he did, but by then, it was too late. Josh Harrison lined Marmol's first pitch into center field for an RBI single to tie the game. Up stepped rookie catcher Michael McKenry, who quickly fell behind, 0-2, on two fastballs, one called and the second fouled back. Four straight sliders resulted in four foul balls before another 93-mph four-seam fastball, also fouled off -- the sixth in a row. Marmol came back with another slider and McKenry connected for his first Major League home run, a go-ahead three-run shot to left field.

At that moment, Casey and I were walking back into the ballpark after stepping out to take pictures of the Bill Mazeroski statue just outside the right-field gate. As we crossed the Riverwalk to join her mom and Al behind the fence peeking out over the scoreboard in right field, the crowd erupted into the roar that accompanies a no-doubt-about-it home run. McKenry is the kind of guy Pittsburghers love, a third-string catcher (maybe lower) now getting frequent at-bats because of so many injuries to Buccos backstops. A working-class guy for a working-class city. And nerves of steel, apparently.

Xavier Paul grounded out on the next pitch from Marmol to end the inning, sending the game to the top of the ninth. We stayed in that spot above the right-field scoreboard -- embedded inside the Clemente Wall -- for the final three outs. With the crowd already amped coming off the home run from moments ago, this starts playing on the video board:

The fans were in a frenzy. Loud only got louder. Ramirez -- he who gave the Cubs that early lead in the first -- struck out, and Paul, the right fielder, raised a finger to the sky. Carlos Pena, meant to be the Cubs' powerful offseason acquisition, bounced one back to Hanrahan for the second out. Paul raised two fingers above his head. Up next, with two outs and nobody on base, was Geovany Soto, the 2008 NL Rookie of the Year. Hanrahan's first four offerings went called strike, ball, foul, ball for a 2-2 count. The first three pitches were 98-mph fastballs, followed by an 86-mph slider. The fifth pitch, another slider, fooled Soto. Strike three, swinging, Bucs win. Raise the Jolly Roger!

We turned and walked out to the Riverwalk and exchanged high-fives with a few 20-something guys who had taken full advantage of beer sales up through the seventh inning. "First place!" one of them yelled, clearly not aware that the Brewers hadn't yet lost to the Reds (and wouldn't). The Pirates didn't make it to first place that night, but they just may before this season ends.

Later, after we'd walked back across the Clemente Bridge and along the river to our hotel near the Heinz History Center, I noticed that a Pirates fan had retweeted my photo from our seats behind the plate early in the game. I posted a brief reply and he (or she) came back with, "I wish I was there. You got to witness the best Bucs game in over a decade."

I can't speak to that myself, but I suppose Steel City baseball fans might know from misery. But it sure feels like something exciting is happening along the Allegheny River.

Weiland makes MLB debut for Red Sox

2011-07-11T13:05:00.000-04:00

Kyle Weiland became the 78th former Fighting Irish player to reach the Major Leagues when he got the start for the Red Sox yesterday. Boston won the game, but Weiland wasn't part of the decision despite pitching into the fifth inning. The 24-year-old right-hander gave up six runs -- all in the second inning -- but that wasn't why he was pulled. After hitting Vladimir Guerrero in the fifth, Weiland was ejected -- just the third pitcher to be bounced from his first career start -- as some of the emotions from Friday carried over into the series finale.

"It is what it is, and it's a great experience," Weiland said after the game. "I got the first one under the belt. Obviously I would have liked for a few things to go different. I got a little ahead of myself, and things kind of snowballed on me in the second inning. But obviously having this lineup is a luxury."

Weiland's first pitch in a 1-2-3 first inning was a 93-mph ball to J.J. Hardy, who later grounded out on a 1-2 pitch. The next batter, Nick Markakis, became Weiland's first career strikeout, on a 94-mph four-seamer. Matt Wieters drew the first walk Weiland gave up, and then Derrek Lee recorded the first hit when he slugged a two-run homer to start the scoring in the six-run second.

It remains to be seen if Weiland will get another start coming out of the All-Star break, but with Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz still on the shelf with no timetable for their returns (and Lester isn't even eligible to return until next Friday, July 22), Weiland may very well get a chance to redeem himself.

He could throw that speedball by you

2011-07-10T12:03:00.000-04:00

Photo is mine; funky effects with the help of Piknik

Yesterday's New York Times had a splendid article about the old friend -- that "speedball" pitcher -- who appears in the opening of Bruce Springsteen's "Glory Days." It's exactly as it sounds -- Bruce was walking into a bar -- the Headliner in Neptune -- as the old teammate, Joe DePugh, was walking out. They recognized one another and headed inside to catch up over drinks. That the lyrics are so true to the story, that the old creed, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend," doesn't even apply; the legend is fact, no embellishment needed.

It's a great story dug up by Kevin Coyne, himself from Freehold at the same time as Springsteen -- and those connections and relationships are what allowed him to put the pieces together and talk to those who knew, particularly DePugh himself. I've always enjoyed Coyne's writing and ability to tell a story, but I'm a little biased -- he "embedded" himself in the student body at Notre Dame shortly before I went there, and the resulting book came out during my sophomore year. He's also written about black baseball in New Jersey in general and Atlantic City in particular, the still-in-limbo Bergen CliffHawks, veteran baseball reporter Ed Lucas, the lack of space for baseball in Jersey City and a brief essay on summer among his baseball -- and my favorite -- pieces. Add this one to the list.

I had a friend was a big baseball player
back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool boy
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar
I was walking in, he was walking out
We went back inside sat down had a few drinks
but all he kept talking about was

Glory days well they'll pass you by
Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye
Glory days, glory days

-- BruceSpringsteen.net

Baseball on the Fourth

2011-07-04T09:37:00.002-04:00

July 4 is a big day for Yankee baseball. It was George Steinbrenner's birthday and that top hat logo was just made for the holiday. (I do love the way the Scranton-Wilkes Barre Yankees incorporated it into their uniforms. If you have to use the parent club's nickname, the least you can do is mix up the uniform.)

And of course, July 4, 1939, was Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day, which made me realize that the Yankees have been home on the Fourth a lot in recent years (before this year's trip to Cleveland, they were in the Bronx the previous four years). And then I wondered how they've done on Independence Day since Gehrig Day.

And so here it is: Beginning with the 1939 doubleheader, when they honored Gehrig between games, the Yankees are 52-42-1 when playing on July 4. That stretch includes 26 doubleheaders (the last of which came in 1973, a sweep in the Bronx by the Red Sox) and three idle days -- two when the Yankees were rained out (1978 in Boston and 1941 at home -- more on that one a little later in this post) and the 1981 strike year. At Yankee Stadia, the Bronx Bombers are 32-23; on the road, they're 20-19-1, the tie coming in the second game of a twin bill in 1950. The first game went into extra innings and the second was called because of darkness. That amounts to 55 July 4 games at home and 40 on the road, before this year. Sixteen of the doubleheaders (17, counting the 1941 rainout) were scheduled for Yankee Stadium; 10 (11 counting the Fenway washout) were on the road. So the Yankees have been home on July 4 more often than not.

New York has outscored its opponents 437-391 on Independence Day. Those opponents, and the records (with the Senators in their various forms represented every which way):

Senators/Twins, 25 games (Yankees are 15-9-1)
Senators (both Washington clubs), 21 games (13-7-1)
Red Sox, 19 games (8-11)
Indians, 12 games (7-5)
Orioles, 7 games (4-3)
Athletics, 7 games (3-4)
Tigers, 6 games (4-2)
Senators/Rangers, 6 games (4-2)
Twins, 6 games (3-3)
White Sox, 6 games (3-3)
Rangers, 4 games (3-1)
Blue Jays, 3 games (2-1)
Brewers, 2 games (2-0)
Mets, 1 game (0-1)
Royals, 1 game (0-1)

Now looking at just 1973-2010, the years Steinbrenner owned the club before his death last July 13, the Yankees went 21-16 on the owner's birthday (they were rained out on the Fourth in 1978 and the strike kept them off the field in '81; in '73, they lost a doubleheader to the Red Sox), playing 22 games at home and 15 on the road and outscoring opponents by a hair, 163-160.

The 1941 rainout was the Yankees' first July 4 following Gehrig's death a month earlier, on June 2. They were scheduled to host the Senators in a doubleheader, at which they would honor their former captain with a formal memorial. As The New York Times wrote, the loss of the games was a big blow:

At the Stadium a crowd of 70,000 had been expected to see the Bronx Bombers battle the Senators in addition to attending the Lou Gehrig memorial ceremonies. ...

Rough estimates placed the loss of yesterday's washouts as close to $125,000 for the local clubs.

A PDF of the full article is here.

All of this came about as I was perusing various schedules to see if there was an Independence Day matinee I could take in before working tonight. July 4 just calls for a ballgame under the sun, followed by an evening barbecue in the backyard or taking a lawn chair or blanket down to the local park for the fireworks display. And while MLB has a full slate of 15 games today -- a pleasant sight, considering that Mondays are often off-days for some clubs -- seven (so, nearly half) have the first pitches scheduled for the afternoon. The rest are nighttime affairs -- including Yankees at Indians (sold out, in part because of a Bob Feller celebration and statuette giveaway) and Mets at Dodgers. Of those eight night games, only the Cardinals -- who have first pitch scheduled for 5:15 p.m. local time -- do not have postgame fireworks. The Cards' earlier start time must be designed to allow for fans to stay until the end of the ballgame, then catch the 9:15 fireworks at Fair St. Louis under the Gateway Arch. That sounds like a sweet deal to me.

As for the local minor league clubs at home today, all will play tonight. The Lakewood BlueClaws, Staten Island Yankees (who are hosting the Brooklyn Cyclones) and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees (hosting the Lehigh Valley IronPigs) will all set off fireworks after their ballgames. And who can blame them? Fireworks shows consistently draw huge crowds to minor league parks, no matter the date.

Obviously, combining an evening at the ballpark with a postgame fireworks show brings the two together. But I personally prefer a town park or waterfront setting for my ooohing and aaahing. To me, it's not quite the same watching from a fixed seat in Section 21 instead of amid the crowd on a park lawn or along the wharf.

<a href='http://video.msn.com?vid=0fa96021-6adc-46e0-aa8f-127121060bbc&mkt=en-us&src=FLPl:embed::uuids' target='_new' title='Gehrig's farewell' >Video: Gehrig's farewell</a>

My All-Star ballot

2011-06-30T19:53:00.000-04:00

I like to look at the All-Star Game as a yearly event, an annual summertime look at the best players in the game that year. I'm not into career achievements or voting for a guy each year just because he's a perennial starter at his position. Just because a guy like Alex Avila wasn't a starter before this year and wasn't known outside of Detroit and AL-only fantasy owners shouldn't be held against him in voting.

I also lean toward voting for players who have been on the field, guys who have stayed healthy all year. There have been times where a simple 15-day DL stint -- on, healed, and off; no setbacks or 20-day absences -- can be overlooked, particularly if it came earlier in the season (like April). But if it comes down to two players with similar numbers, or one guy might have the same stats as another if he had only stayed healthy, I'm voting for the guy who did stay healthy. Plus, if a guy's DL stint was more recent -- say June, even into July -- I'm probably not going to punch (or click) his name.

The reasons are simple: I want to see the best in the game right now, as in this year, this half-season, facing off on the second Tuesday in July. And if that means a guy at 80 percent not going to the game, I'm OK with that. I'd rather my vote go to a deserving guy who gets to play in the game than for a player named the starter who then backs out of the game because of an injury.

Over the past few years, I've tended to wait until the final days before filling out my maximum allotment of 25 ballots (per e-mail address) at MLB.com. As two friends and I were trading e-mails the other day discussing various decisions at certain positions, I wondered if we were treating this like a student leaving his term paper until the final weekend before it's due. Matt saw it another way, which I then realized was actually the truth: "As for doing this on the last week, I don't consider that being lazy, I consider it performing due diligence and not succumbing to the herd mentality that pervades at ESPN and other sports news outlets."

So having taken advantage of the technology and used a full 81 games (for most players) to consider their statistical -- and, in some cases, non-statistical, because there are some guys you just want to see play as often as you can -- output, here are the quick hits on those I vote for this year. (I'm not going to bother with filling out full team rosters. I may or may not post some thoughts on the actual squads when they're unveiled on Sunday and offer reserves then.)

A few final notes on the game, rosters, voting, etc.: 1.) I hate that the game counts, always have. It's an exhibition, and by definition shouldn't have any bearing on how the yearly champion is determined. 2.) I don't like being a fan of a game in which utility players are All-Stars. Nothing against Omar Infante as a man, but he's not an All-Star. The fact that Charlie Manuel felt a need to have a guy who could play so many positions on his team last year in the event it went extra innings pained me as a fan. 3.) I'm a National League guy and don't care for the designated hitter, but I'm glad they're using it in every All-Star Game now. If baseball were a DH-less sport, I'd be OK with watching pitchers hit in an exhibition. But really, who needs to see Justin Verlander stand there with a bat on his shoulder against Roy Halladay? Plus, the fact that they're now bending the rules to allow the DH in National League parks makes it more ridiculous that they're making this game count for anything. 4.) I'm only considering players on the actual ballot, which as we all know is so rigorously -- and somewhat insanely -- determined mostly by Opening Day lineups. There are exceptions made (see "Utley, C. - PHI" under National League second base), but not enough.

OK, the ballot (which remains open until 11:59 p.m. ET tonight):

AMERICAN LEAGUE

1B: Adrian Gonzalez. He's batting 100 points higher than Mark Teixeira, has scored more runs and driven in more. Plus, he can play right field! Now that's a utility All-Star.

2B: Robinson Cano. He's got the numbers across the board at the position. Solid all around, where other candidates lag behind Cano in one or two categories, sometimes significantly.

SS: Asdrubal Cabrera. This is where my beliefs on "career All-Stars" come in. Sorry, Jeter, not this year. A couple of weeks ago, Asdrubal was a slam-dunk runaway choice. Some arguments could be made for a few other candidates, Jhonny Peralta among them (but not Jeter), but Asdrubal's significant advantages in runs and stolen bases lift him over Peralta.

3B: Adrian Beltre. I debated this choice for a while, and I'm still not sure of it. I gave Beltre the edge over Alex Rodriguez because Beltre is a better fielder. Sure, he has a few more errors, but he gets to more balls, has more putouts and assists and has been a part of more double plays. Can't really go wrong with either, or Kevin Youkilis for that matter.

C: Alex Avila. Really, it's not even close. Better numbers at the plate, better numbers behind it. Avila's thrown out 38 percent of would-be base-stealers, catching 22 the last time I looked, second only to Kurt Suzuki's 23. And Avila got Jose Reyes today by a solid margin, only the sixth time Reyes has been nabbed this year.

DH: David Ortiz. In a landslide. Whatever, it's the DH.

OF: Jose Bautista, Curtis Granderson, Jacoby Ellsbury. Bautista and Granderson are no-brainers. Ellsbury was a more deliberated choice. Adam Jones would be worthy, too, especially when you consider his defense.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

1B: Prince Fielder. He's putting up the monster numbers in a contract year that everyone expected to see from Albert Pujols.

2B: Rickie Weeks. Looks like he's finally put it all together. It's fun to watch him play. One thing I didn't realize about him until I saw him up close at Yankee Stadium this week: his upper body is big, especially for a middle infielder. He wears a more tapered jersey than Fielder does, but their upper torsos are more alike than not. If it weren't Weeks, it'd be Brandon Phillips. And if it weren't Phillips? Probably Neil Walker. Other than the batting average, he's got some solid numbers at the position.

SS: Jose Reyes. Go ahead, just try to make a case for anyone else. No one compares to Reyes this year. I love Troy Tulowitzki, but he disappeared pretty much for the month of May. Reyes has 42 multihit games (out of 78 played) and, after the Mets played their 81st today, is on pace for 242 hits, 130 runs, 30 freaking triples and 60 stolen bases. Oh yeah, and he leads the Majors with a .353 batting average and is putting up a .397 OBP and .529 SLG, for a .926 OPS. He's 12th in baseball in OPS. Not bad for a leadoff hitter and shortstop. In fact, the 11 above him are all outfielders, first basemen or David Ortiz. I may have more on Reyes in another post soon, but I think he's now the one the Mets have to keep (and, sadly, maybe David Wright is the one who is allowed to go if both can't be career Mets). And Fred Wilpon had it backwards: Carl Crawford wouldn't get Jose Reyes money.

3B: Aramis Ramirez. With David Wright and Ryan Zimmerman hurt for much of the first half, this is the weakest position of them all. There's no clear frontrunner (sorry, I just can't get behind Placido Polanco as the best third baseman in the NL this year) and the stats are anemic. Wright is still tied for third among NL third baseman with his six home runs, one behind Chipper Jones and three behind Ramirez.

C: Brian McCann. You could have a great debate about the second-best catcher in the Senior Circuit.

OF: Ryan Braun, Matt Kemp and Voter's Choice. The first two are as easy as McCann and Reyes. Kemp is 20-20 already, with 22 home runs and 22 stolen bases, and is batting .331. He's currently second in the NL in batting average, first in home runs and third in RBIs -- he's got a legitimate shot at the Triple Crown (if Reyes' batting average comes down a little). But the third guy? Take your pick from Carlos Beltran, Carlos Gonzalez, Chris Young, Andrew McCutchen, Lance Berkman, Justin Upton or Drew Stubbs. I can't decide how to separate them.

So there they are: the 17 players I'd like to see take the field in Phoenix a week from Tuesday. We'll find out who gets to go on Sunday.

American summer

2011-06-27T22:16:00.000-04:00

Is there anything that can tell more about an American summer than, say, the smell of the wooden bleachers in a small town baseball park, that resinous, sultry and exciting smell of old dry wood?

— Thomas Wolfe

Getting 3,000 in New York

2011-06-24T16:58:00.000-04:00

So now it looks like Derek Jeter's return to the Yankees lineup may be delayed, which would further delay his march to 3,000 hits and reduce the likelihood that he records the milestone hit against the Mets at Citi Field during their July 1-3 Interleague series.

And I think that's a shame.

No, really. I think it would have been a good thing to have happen not just at the Mets' home ballpark, but in New York in general. Not only has no Yankee ever reached the 3,000-hit threshold, but none of the 27 players who have already gotten there collected the milestone in New York.

If Jeter is able to be activated from the disabled list on Wednesday, the first day he's eligible to return, he'd have two games at home and three at Citi Field to collect the six hits he needs. Any delay in his activation obviously affects the timetable, increasing the chances that the lasting images of No. 3,000 will feature Jeter in the road grays and a respectful but half-hearted ovation from the home crowd. After Citi Field, the Yankees play three in Cleveland before finishing out the first half at home against the Rays. If he doesn't get it before the All-Star break, the Yankees open the second half with eight on the road -- four each at Toronto and Tampa Bay. Granted, Tropicana Field is a home away from home for the Yankees, but do we really want to be left with images of a base hit on bright green synthetic turf and a shadowy, artifically lit photo of Jeter doffing his helmet under a closed roof?

Getting the hit at Citi Field might be good for the Mets -- and their fans -- as well. Imagine Fred Wilpon watching that ovation from all the Yankee fans in the house, perhaps supported by a respectful cheer from the Mets partisans as well. Then, Wilpon might look over at Jose Reyes at shortstop or imagine David Wright healthy and standing at third base. If Jeter's getting such a rousing ovation for getting his 3,000th hit in the home of the Mets, imagine what the roar of the crowd would be if Reyes or Wright did the same sometime around 2022. Maybe Carl Crawford isn't worth Reyes money.

Entering this year, Reyes averaged 140 hits per season -- which takes into account his injury history -- which would mean he'd eclipse 3,000 sometime during his 22nd year in the big leagues. That's certainly a stretch, considering how important his speed is to his game and the demanding position he plays. But considering the tear he is on this season -- on pace for 231 hits entering tonight's game in Texas -- and his reduced strikeout rate, perhaps he's finally put it all together and, barring injuries, could average significantly more than 140 per year through the rest of his prime. Should he finish 2011 with 231 hits, he'd be at 1,350 and his yearly average would be 150 per season. At that rate, he'd get to 3,000 right at the end of his 20th year. Having just passed his 28th birthday this month, Reyes would be 39 at the end of his 20th season in the Majors. (Looking at Reyes' healthiest and most productive peak thus far, the four seasons from 2005-08, he averaged 159 games and 194 hits per year, so when he's not on the DL, he's much closer to a 190/200-hit-per-year pace than 140/150.)

While it's certainly unlikely, it's not unprecedented for a player known more for speed than power -- since World War II -- to last long enough in the game to get there. Lou Brock did it at 40 in his 19th and final season (he averaged 187 per year). And contact hitters Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, Pete Rose and Rod Carew all got there without being long-ball or stolen-base threats. Roberto Clemente could fit into that group as well; he never hit 30 home runs in a season and finished with 240, fewer than Robin Yount or Craig Biggio (and more than Rose, Brock, Gwynn, Boggs, Carew and several early-century guys). And Reyes' .290 career batting average bests Rafael Palmeiro (.288), Eddie Murray (.287), Carl Yastrzemski (.285), Yount (.285), Dave Winfield (.283), Biggio (.281), Rickey Henderson (.279) and Cal Ripken (.276).

Obviously, Reyes will have to make some tweaks and adapt his game as he gets older, but if this year is any indication, perhaps he can become continue his improvements and remain a solid contact hitter and on-base threat. And maybe a switch to first or second base or the outfield down the line will allow him to play long enough to get to 3,000 hits. I'm not saying it's probable, but I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility.

From ND to MLB: Chris Michalak

2011-06-13T11:18:00.004-04:00

It took 18 years with 13 organizations and 23 teams -- 19 of them in the bush leagues -- for Chris Michalak to get to this point. He stands at the center of the diamond on a sunny Jersey Shore afternoon and bobs his head to Hall and Oates coming out of the ballpark's public address system.

His job is pitching coach of the Hagerstown Suns, the South Atlantic League affiliate of the Washington Nationals, and his task at the moment is throwing batting practice to the Suns starters, including top prospect Bryce Harper. But Michalak just can't help himself. In between pitches, he bounces to the music and sings along with the "Ooh-oos" in the chorus:

What I want you've got
And it might be hard to handle
Like the flame that burns the candle
The candle feeds the flame -- yeah, yeah
What I've got's full stock
Of thoughts and dreams that scatter
Then you pull them all together
And how I can't explain
Oh, yeah
Well, well you
(Ooh-ho, hoo-ooh, ooh-oo)
You make my dreams come true
(You-hoo, you, you-hoo, hoo, you, hoo)
Well, well, well you
(You-hoo, hoo-hoo-ooh)
Oh, yeah
You make my dreams come true
(You make my dreams)
Come true
(You-hoo, you, you-hoo, hoo, you, hoo)

What's clear after all these years and teams and towns and cities is that baseball is still fun -- still a game -- to Michalak. It almost has to be, after so many bus trips and minor league towns and hotels. But as Michalak throws to players literally half his age, guys who were born when he was in high school or on scholarship at Notre Dame, he can't help but enjoy himself.

"I think I counted it up and I want to say that, out of the 50 states, I went to 36 of them, just from playing baseball," Michalak said during an interview before the Suns faced the BlueClaws at FirstEnergy Park in Lakewood, N.J., last month. "Besides the U.S., I've been to Canada, the Dominican, Venezuela and over to Europe playing for Team USA. It was crazy when I realized all the places that I would have never seen if I wasn't playing baseball."

Now 40, Michalak has been playing or coaching baseball at the highest levels for more than half his life. He attended Joliet Catholic High School outside Chicago, a school that often has students enroll in college 100 miles east on I-80, among them a diminutive football player who went by the name of Rudy. Though it would seem natural that a three-sport star like Michalak would have his eye on playing for the Fighting Irish, he didn't have Notre Dame in his sights, not at first.

"I had letters from Florida State, Stanford, Arizona State, [Texas] A&M," he said. "And I got the one from Notre Dame, I got it and I'm like, 'Wow, this is really neat,' but I didn't send it in. Coach [Pat] Murphy called me and he said, 'Chris, this is Coach Murphy, did you get our questionnaire?' I was like, 'Yeah Coach, I got your questionnaire.' I'd love to come there, but there's no way I could get in there academically.' He said, 'What are your grades?' I was in honors classes, I had a straight-A average. But I just didn't think, the prestige of Notre Dame, I can't get in there. There's no way I'm gonna get in there. I told him all my test scores and everything. And he goes, 'Fill out the questionnaire. You're not going to have a problem getting in here.'"

Michalak returned the questionnaire and, in the fall of '88, visited South Bend for a football game.

"They had a Saturday night game," he said. "They were opening up against Michigan. This was the year they won the national championship, so it was '88. I went up there for the Michigan game and Pat Pezavento took me around campus. He was a Joliet Catholic guy from my area. I was amazed at how beautiful everything was and just the buzz that was going around. We got to run out onto the field with the football team for the pregame. They're going their excercises and stuff. Was on the field when they got into the brawl in the tunnel with the guys from Michigan. Right then, I was like, this is the place I want to be."

If that football game gave Michalak the idea that Notre Dame was the place for him, a baseball exhibition later that fall drove it home.

"They played Miami in football [that season]. I was able to go up there on Thursday night and watch them play an exhibition game against the baseball team," Michalak recalled. "They played Thursday and Friday before the football game on Saturday. Alex Fernandez was at Miami. Miami was a national powerhouse at the time, and I watched Notre Dame just crush them, and it was awesome. Just awesome. I got an opportunity to go somewhere where I can get a great education and be part of a program that's up and coming and be a part of something special. So it was really a no-brainer.

"I never took a trip anywhere else. I said I didn't want to see anything else, this is the place for me. I ended up committing there and ended up going there. I never even took an official visit, because I had one set up and -- I'm sure the people at Notre Dame will find this hard to believe -- I was supposed to come up for a basketball weekend, and there was a blizzard, believe it or not. So the weather was bad and I never went up there."

That team that crushed Miami in an exhibition went on to go 48-19-1 in 1989 and reach the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1970. In Michalak's four years, the Irish went 46-12 in '90, 45-16 in '91, 48-15 in '92 and 46-16 in '93, reaching the NCAA field in the last two years. In four seasons, Michalak went 34-13 with a 3.21 ERA, 12 saves and 263 strikeouts in 372 2/3 innings. He's the first of three Irish pitchers, followed by Aaron Heilman and J.P. Gagne, to win 20 games and save 10 over the course of his college career.

Entering the 2011 season, Michalak's seven career shutouts still ranked first in school history, tied with Jean Dubuc (who pitched for the Irish from 1907-08) and Frank Scanlan (1907-09). Michalak was also third in wins (34), fifth in saves (12), fifth in strikeouts (263) and second in appearances (92) entering this spring. His strong junior season -- 10-5, three saves, 2.20 ERA, 118 2/3 innings, 64 strikeouts -- still ranks second in innings (and most by a junior) and first for most innings without throwing a wild pitch. He capped that season by winning the Midwest Collegiate Conference Tournament MVP and all-MCC Tournament honors, as well as first-team all-MCC accolades.

In '93, when he went 11-5 with three saves and 83 strikeouts in 117 1/3 innings, Michalak once again made the all-MCC first team and remains third in Notre Dame history in victories in a season, third in innings and third in complete games, with 10. He was also named to the NCAA East Regional all-regional team after the Irish went 3-2, losing in the final to Long Beach St. in Tallahassee, Fla.

The A's drafted Michalak in the 15th round in 1992 after his junior year, but he returned to school and Oakland took him in the 12th round in '93. He became one of four players drafted in that round to reach the Major Leagues; Todd Greene (Angels), Bryan Corey (Tigers) and Alex Cora (Twins) were the others.

Michalak began his professional career in the short-season Class A Northwest League with the Southern Oregon A's, a team that has since moved to Vancouver, Canada, and remains an Oakland affiliate today, as the Vancouver Canadiens. Michalak started 1994 with the West Michigan Whitecaps in the full-season Class A Midwest League and, after 15 starts, moved up to the Class A Advanced Modesto A's. His 1995 season began in Modesto and included seven games at Double-A Huntsville, and '96 was split evenly between Modesto and Huntsville (21 games each).

That's a lot of miles busing up and down the West Coast, around the Great Lakes and down South. And they weren't without incident.

"In the Cal League, one of my many years there, we were heading back to Modesto," Michalak said. "We were down in the southern part of the state, so it was a long bus ride back. We were in the middle of nowhere, it was the desert. The bus driver, she was pulling into the gas station. I'm not kidding you, from about here [in the third-base dugout] to first base [was the distance to get to the station], and it just dies. We're like, 'What's going on?' She's like, 'I ran out of gas.' Everybody got out and we pushed it into the gas station."

But a diesel bus can't just be topped off and get back on the road. The fuel lines have to be cleared out and primed before the tank can be refilled and the engine restarted. It would be at least an hour.

"We're like, 'You've got to be kidding,'" he said. "It's smokin' hot. The only thing that saved us -- we look across the street and there's an indian reservation, a casino. You saw 25 guys just walk straight across. There's no cell phones or anything. We're like, 'Just call us -- just come over and get us, come pick us up.' About an hour later, we hear the honk. Guys cashed in their chips. I made about 200 bucks, so I didn't care about the bus running out of gas."

After four seasons in the Oakland organization, Michalak still hadn't reached Triple-A, and the club released him after Spring Training in 1997 -- the first of 20 periods of free agency in his career. A week later, he signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks, a year before they would field a Major League team. Michalak spent the entire '97 season back in the California League, Advanced Class A, with the High Desert Mavericks. He began the '98 season in the Rangers' system, on loan from the Diamondbacks, pitching 10 games for Double-A Tulsa. In May, he was back in the Arizona organization at Triple-A Tucson -- the first time he'd be just a step away from the big leagues.

The call finally came in August 1998, when the Diamondbacks purchased the 27-year-old Michalak's contract from Tucson. They were on an East Coast road trip, having just wrapped a series in Philadelphia and headed to New York. On Aug. 22, 1998, at Shea Stadium, the call to the bullpen came.

"It was crazy just warming up in the bullpen," Michalak said. "Guys from Shea, the fans let me know how bad I was, how bad I was going to do. I went out there [to the mound], I threw my warmup pitches and I'm waiting for the ball to come in from the third baseman, and he runs in to me and hands me the ball and it's Matt Williams. And he's like, 'You ready, kid?' I'm like, 'Yeah, let's go.' 'Alright, here we go.' I'm like, 'God, that's Matt Williams. He just handed me the ball. This is it.'"

It was the seventh inning with the Diamondbacks trailing, 8-4. The Mets had Nos. 5-7 in the batting order coming up: Brian McRae, Todd Hundley and Carlos Baerga.

"I had a 1-2-3 inning," Michalak said. "I threw the first pitch, kinda on the outside corner where I wanted it, and the umpire called it a strike, and I was like, 'Alright.' Same thing I've been doing for a long time. It was awesome. It was incredible."

McRae struck out swinging on four pitches and Hundley went down looking after working the count full. Baerga flied out to right. Michalak stayed on for the eighth, giving up a leadoff double to Rey Ordonez, followed by two groundouts -- the second of which drove in Ordonez -- and a flyout. Two innings, seven batters, one hit, one run and two strikeouts: Michalak had his first line in a box score. He pitched in four more games that season, all Diamondbacks losses, though he didn't get a decision in any of them.

Released by Arizona in the offseason, Michalak signed with the Angels, beginning the 1999 season at Triple-A Edmonton. Released in June, he signed again with the Diamondbacks and finished out the season in Tucson. Granted free agency again at the end of the season, Michalak signed with the Devil Rays for the 2000 campaign but was released in May after six games at Triple-A Durham. The Dodgers were his next organization. After starting 35 games over his first two professional seasons, Michalak had made just 15 from 1995-99, and all of those had come in '98 and '99. The Dodgers put him back in the starting rotation and he won a career-high 11 games against three losses in 21 starts for Triple-A Albuquerque. That set him up for his best season as a pro.

"The season I had in 2000 with the Dodgers in Triple-A ... carried over into 2001," Michalak said. "I had a real good year in Albuquerque that year and then it just gave me the confidence. I always believed I could pitch at the big league level, but the success I had in 2000 gave me a lot of confidence. Then I went to winter ball and had a lot of success in the Dominican. I remember pitching that winter before the 2001 season, I was pitching in the Dominican, we were playing in the championship series. The lineup of the team we were playing against had Tony Batista at third, Miguel Tejada at short, Carlos Feebles at second, Raul Mondesi. I think Manny Ramirez was the DH. Juan Encarnacion and Luis Polonia in the lineup. And I beat them. And that just let me know that I could pitch at that level."

Now 30 years old, Michalak went to Spring Training with the Blue Jays in 2001 with a shot to win the job as the team's fifth starter to begin the season. Toronto had traded David Wells to the White Sox in the offseason, getting left-hander Mike Sirotka as part of the package and expecting the southpaw to be part of the rotation. But a torn labrum not only kept Sirotka out of Toronto's rotation in '01, he never pitched again. So there was an opening behind Esteban Loaiza, Steve Parris, Joey Hamilton and Chris Carpenter (the future NL Cy Young Award winner for the Cardinals). As the exhibition season went on, Michalak started to separate himself from his main competition.

"The funny thing is the guy I was competing against was Roy Halladay," Michalak said, grinning at the memory. "They kept giving me the ball and I kept getting the job done. At the time, Roy threw straight over the top and scuffled a little bit in Spring Training and they sent him all the way back down to extended spring and changed his arm angle, and I think that's turned out pretty good for him."

Michalak laughed. "He's winning Cy Youngs and throwing no-hitters and I'm in Hagerstown being the pitching coach."

By March 27, the Blue Jays had made their decision. First-year manager Buck Martinez sent pitching coach Mark Connor to get Michalak.

"He calls me in and he says, 'Hey we need to talk to you,'" Michalak recalled. "And as we're walking, he mumbles under his breath, he goes, 'Man, I hate this part. This stinks.' And I'm thinking, 'Oh my god. No way. This isn't going to happen to me again.' Everybody's telling me, 'Hey you're going to make the team.' I beat the Yankees, did all this stuff in Spring Training. So we go into Buck's office and they're both sitting there. Buck starts on this spiel. He goes, 'Chris you've had a great spring and we can't say enough about what you did. But I'm sure you've heard about the rumors that we've been trying to trade for another starter. That's how the game of baseball is, we're always trying to improve. We're trying to make that trade for that fifth starter.'

"And he goes, 'Unfortunately' -- and he paused -- 'Unfortunately, we haven't been able to get a fifth starter, so you're gonna have to start for us against the Yankees.'

"And I was like, 'Yeah!' I said a couple things you probably can't print, and everybody was laughing. It was the old, We're going to mess with you a little bit. I was like, 'You've got to be kidding me. Don't do that to me.' They were laughing. After that, I don't even know what happened. I couldn't remember. It was an awesome day."

The Blue Jays opened the season on Sunday, April 1, with a win against the Rangers in Puerto Rico. After taking Monday off, they played a three-game set at Tampa Bay, losing the first but taking the next two to open the season 3-1. Loaiza, Parris, Hamilton and Carpenter started the first four, but because of the off-day between Puerto Rico and Tampa Bay, Martinez elected to keep Loaiza on regular rest, handing him the ball for the fifth game, the series opener at Yankee Stadium. On the hill for New York was a young right-hander out of Notre Dame making his Major League debut: Christian Parker. Michalak got the start the next afternoon, missing a matchup of former Domers by a day.

Much like Irish football coach Brian Kelly would do nearly 10 years later, Michalak made sure to take in Yankee Stadium the day before he was scheduled to pitch, to get over any mystique and aura (as his former Diamondbacks teammate Curt Schilling might have put it) about the ballpark.

"The day before, Friday, the first night in, I went out and checked out the monuments and all that stuff," Michalak said. "I wanted to get all of that, the awe of being in Yankee Stadium, kind of out of my system. Just made myself comfortable with the surroundings and stuff."

Getting comfortable was the goal again the next afternoon.

"I tried to keep everything just as normal as I possibly could," he said. "I ended up taking the subway in, whatever train it is. I took that, dropped me off right at the park, walked in and went through all my pregame stuff and ended up watching 'Rudy' in the clubhouse that day before the game. It just happened to be there, and I put it on, and all the guys ended up watching it with me."

"Rudy" may have put Michalak in the right state of mind to go out and play the part of David to the Yankees' Goliath. The Bronx Bombers were coming off their third World Series title in four seasons and had a lineup of stars.

"Once I got into the bullpen -- same thing there -- the fans are hanging over watching you," Michalak said. "I just tried to make it as simple as possible. My biggest thing was, I was saying to myself, 'Alright, whatever you do, your first pitch, get it to the catcher. Don't bounce it, and don't throw it over his head.' I just tried to make it as simple as I could. I started out easy. I wasn't trying to light up the world. I was just trying to make it basic, and then I got into the rhythm of the bullpen. And then I kept the same thing when I went out for my warmup pitches: If I can just get it to the catcher, then we'll be OK. And I did that.

"And then the first hitter, I think I faced Knoblauch, Jeter and I think maybe O'Neill was batting third. And I had a 1-2-3 inning. And then after that, it was just like, 'OK. Here we go. Let's go and do it.' And Billy Koch got the save, and just running out on the field, I couldn't believe it. It made everything that I had gone through, all the miles all the sacrifices that my wife made for me at the time, it just made everything worthwhile."

Knoblauch popped out to second base and Jeter and O'Neill went down swinging. Michalak pitched 5 1/3 innings, allowing no runs on four hits with two walks and five strikeouts. Toronto scored three times off New York starter Orlando Hernandez, and that was enough. Michalak was 1-0 as a Major League starter.

On June 17 that season, the Blue Jays were in Montreal for an Interleague series against the Expos. Michalak laid down sacrifice bunts in his first two plate appearances, then came up in the seventh with two outs, nobody on base and the Blue Jays leading, 1-0. He fell into a 1-2 hole against Tony Armas Jr.

"He threw a slider right into my bat," Michalak said. "I hit it to right-center field and the center fielder dove, but it got by him and went to the wall. This was at old Olympic Stadium, and the funny thing was, when I rounded second, I had one foot on the dirt and one on the carpet, and my spike got caught. So from second almost all the way to third, it's like I'm running downhill. My arms are flailing and I'm trying not to fall down. I caught my balance and got to third and everyone's dying in the dugout because I looked like an idiot trying to get to third."

It was the first time in Major League history that a pitcher had tripled in his first official at-bat, and the first triple by a Toronto Blue Jays hurler. But then leadoff hitter Shannon Stewart came to the plate unaware of his responsibility to help Michalak catch his breath by taking a few pitches. Stewart flied out on the first offering.

"I was still winded and I had to go back out there, so of course I go out and give up a run," Michalak said. On the second pitch of the inning, Milton Bradley tripled. After a walk to Rob Ducey, Mike Mordecai lifted a sacrifice fly to center to score Bradley. Michalak got out of the inning by getting Jose Vidro to ground into a double play. "The guys were upset with Shannon, saying, 'He's got to give you time to catch your breath.'"

After winning his first three starts and five of his first eight decisions through May, Michalak went more than a month -- from May 26 to July 8 -- between victories. After losing three of his four starts from June 28-July 15, he was moved to the bullpen. Six appearances and 11 runs later, the Rangers claimed him off waivers. In 11 appearances with Texas, Michalak went 2-2 and picked up his only career save.

The 2001 season turned out to be the only one of Michalak's 18 summers spent entirely in the Major Leagues. He began 2002 with Texas, pitching in 13 games for the Rangers and one for their Triple-A affilliate in Oklahoma City before being released at the end of May. He signed on with the Red Sox, pitching for Triple-A Pawtucket to finish out the '02 campaign. From 2003-05, he bounced from Louisville to Colorado Springs to Indianapolis to Albuquerque to Tucson, the Triple-A farm clubs of the Reds, Rockies, Brewers and Marlins.

In February 2006, Michalak signed again with the Reds just as Spring Training began. After going 9-5 with a 2.99 ERA over 22 starts with Louisville, he returned to the Majors at the age of 35. On Aug. 12, he came on in relief in the second inning at Philadelphia after Elizardo Ramirez allowed five runs. Michalak went 6 1/3, allowing one run on three hits to earn the victory. He pitched in seven more games, starting six of them. He went just 1-4, getting through five innings only once.

All of 2007 was spent at Triple-A Columbus in the Nationals' system, and 2008 saw return engagements with the Reds (signed Jan. 4, released March 28), Rangers (signed March 30, released May 25), Marlins (signed May 30, released July 29) and A's (signed Aug. 1, not re-signed after the season).

Thirty-eight years old when Spring Training began in 2009, Michalak was still looking to pitch, but no one was looking at him for even a role as a situational left-hander out of the bullpen -- no "LOOGYing" for him.

"I was having trouble getting a job pitching, and the Blue Jays called me and said, 'Hey we know you still want to pitch and everything, but we need a Gulf Coast League pitching coach here at extended [spring training]," Michalak said. "He had to go home because of an illness in the famly. They said you can come out here, keep pitching, we'll let you pitch, but you still have to do some of the pitching coach's duties."

Michalak signed a minor league deal with the understanding that if another organization called looking to bring him on as a full-time pitcher, Toronto would let him out of his contract. When the season started, Michalak appeared in two games for Triple-A Las Vegas as an emergency fill-in, then returned to Dunedin, Fla., where the Blue Jays' training camp is located, along with their Class A Advanced affiliate in the Florida State League. After a couple of appearances for Dunedin, Michalak was shifted over to extended spring training to work with the most raw of Toronto prospects.

After the draft in early June, the Blue Jays asked for a decision.

"The Blue Jays said, 'Hey we need to know, if you want to keep pitching, you're going to have to go do it on your own, or you can take over the pitching coach job,'" Michalak said. "At the time, it was a no-brainer. I got two kids and a wife to think about. I'm like, 'I'll be the pitching coach.' I was very fortunate. I was very fortunate to have that opportunity and I enjoyed doing it."

After the 2009 season, the Blue Jays made the same offer of a pitching coach position in the organization, but if Michalak wanted to keep pitching, he'd have to do it on his own with another franchise.

"I had called the Nationals and asked them if they needed [a pitcher]," Michalak said. "I still wanted to pitch. And they said, 'No, but we have some openings as a pitching coach.' I was getting a lot more calls for a pitching coach than I was for being a pitcher, so I kind of saw the writing on the wall."

He took the job with the Nationals, who slotted him with their Class A affiliate in Hagerstown, Md.

"It just seemed like this was a better fit for me at this time," he said. "So I was excited to be here, I had known a lot of people in the organization from the time that I played here. It just seemed like they were going -- nothing against the Blue Jays or anything like that -- that this was going in the right direction and I wanted to be a part of it, and it's been fun."

And that's where Michalak is today, transitioning from a pitcher to a pitching coach as seamlessly as he did from Joliet Catholic to Notre Dame and Notre Dame to the A's organization. Including summer collegiate leagues like the Cape Cod League, where Michalak pitched for Chatham in 1991, it's been 20 years or more since there wasn't a ballpark to go to and a uniform to put on.

"There's teams I played for that aren't even around anymore," Michalak marveled. "Southern Oregon doesn't have a team anymore. For a while, Tucson didn't have a team. I played for 13 different organizations. In my attic, I've got a pro shop. I could open up my own store. The Diamondbacks don't even have the same colors, and when I was with the Devil Rays, they're the Rays now. I'm getting pretty old."

He laughed, then continued.

"I have my jerseys, the ones that I was fortunate enough to get to the big leagues with, I've got all the jerseys and they're actually hanging in my son's room. I've been very fortunate. Seen a lot of stuff."

And he continues to see it, in Hagerstown and Lakewood and Rome, Ga., and Asheville, N.C., and Charleston -- both in South Carolina and West Virginia -- and points in between.

"Every town that I go to, I enjoy, because I'll meet somebody," he said. "A lot of times I go somewhere, I'll meet somebody from Notre Dame, and that's cool. I made a lot of great friends through Notre Dame that I still keep in touch with that have supported me and helped me along the way."

And Michalak has no doubt helped countless players during his long journey, both his teammates and his charges, whether it's watching that night's starting pitcher warm up in the bullpen down the third-base line or firing fastballs to the hitters in between choruses of "Hoo-oohs" and "You-hoos" with Hall and Oates.

On a night when bad dreams become a screamer
When they're messin' with the dreamer
I can laugh it in the face
Twist and shout my way out
And wrap yourself around me
'Cos I ain't the way you found me
And I'll never be the same
Oh, yeah
Well, 'cos you
(Ooh-ho, hoo-ooh, ooh-oo)
You make my dreams come true
(You-hoo, you, you-hoo, hoo, you, hoo)
Well, well, well you
(You-hoo, hoo-hoo-ooh)
You make my dreams come true
(You make my dreams)
Come true
(You-hoo, you, you-hoo, hoo, you, hoo)

The Gooden billboard!

2011-06-04T20:22:00.001-04:00

I knew someone had to have a shot of it. That someone is a guy by the name of Matt Weber, and the photo was posted on a blog called peripherybaseball. Many thanks. This brings back a lot of memories.

Visiting the Cape Cod Baseball League Hall of Fame

2011-05-31T16:28:00.003-04:00

HYANNIS, Mass.

On Main St. in this town, between the post office and the library, John F. Kennedy still walks barefoot through the sand. A bronze statue of the 35th President, in khakis and a polo shirt with the logo of the Hyannisport Club, stands outside the entrance to the JFK Museum in the hamlet that might be more of a hometown to the Kennedy clan than Boston.

The modest museum features about four rooms dedicated to JFK and his family's group of summer homes a few miles away. Their story is told mostly in photographs, with a few videos playing on a loop in one room and a case of campaign ephemera marking the 1960 election -- which Kennedy monitored from his Hyannisport home before accepting the nomination at the Hyannis Armory. Two sections of the museum are dedicated to Ted Kennedy and JFK Jr., who, one display explains, would visit the museum unannounced and stroll through his family's history.

After our visit to Camelot, my wife and I stepped into the elevator and descended to the basement. The doors opened on a bright-green Astroturf carpet, white baselines stretching out in front of us and to the right. Down here, much like many sports fans' basements, is a collection of artifacts, memorabilia and stories marking the long history of baseball on Cape Cod. It's the Cape Cod Baseball League Hall of Fame, something that I didn't know existed until a few months ago. (And an idea that has only been around for the last decade.)

To me, it's the perfect layout. The Cape League is simple and classic. It's baseball played by college kids -- the best college kids each year -- using wood bats and living with host families in a summer paradise. I found it fitting that its Hall of Fame resides in a refurbished, well-lit basement, a basic location that was set up well. Each of the league's 10 current teams are represented, as are towns and clubs that used to play organized games on the Cape, whether or not they were part of what's now known as the Cape Cod Baseball League.

There's not much more to be said, so I'll just get to the photos.

These two early photos show teams from Orleans. The first features several different uniform styles; the second one appears to have just two -- but note the two guys in jackets with Red Sox logos on them. It seems Orleans wasn't always home to Cardinals. Both appear to be photos of Orleans Athletic Club teams, based on the "A.C." on several jersey sleeves. (If there's one complaint I had about the displays is that quite a lot of artifacts -- particularly photos like these -- were not dated, or even labeled. A simple marker saying "circa 1930s" or "date unknown" would've at least told us that the date has been lost to history and not left it up to us to guess.)

Here's a 1963 Cotuit team that went 39-5 in winning the league championship.

Once again, foiled by the lack of a year. My best guess is that this is a 1990s East All-Star team. They really should think about including a year with the banner.

This one is easy -- the 1992 East All-Star team. Note Billy Wagner's signature in the top right. He's No. 36, third from the right in the second row. He was named the East MVP after striking out the side in his one inning. The West won, 3-1.

As best I can tell, these are the 2005 East All-Stars -- so long as that's Daniel Bard's signature along the top. The interesting thing about the autograph's place on this photo is that Bard, playing for the Wareham Gatemen, would have been on the West All-Star squad.

A Harwich championship ring. I'm guessing it's from 2008 -- the Mariners have only won it in '08, 1997 and '83.

Some highlights of the Hyannis Mets display. I like the lack of black (naturally) in all but the one hybrid cap. I think the No. 28 jersey might be Jeromy Burnitz's, because his baseball card is set on top of it. And the photo of Varitek on the 2000 Hyannis program might be from his 1993 stint, because he signed my stat sheet in '91 with "#45" after his name (though that may have indicated his college jersey number).

Some old and unlabeled photos. Not sure which team the player in the first one represented. The second is obviously of a pair of Wareham guys hamming it up. And the third is a postcard -- and perhaps my favorite photo in the entire museum, the Kennedys included. I visited Highland Light for the first time back in January and love its history. It's perched on a bluff overlooking the Atlantic and had to be moved a few hundred yards from the edge in 1996 because erosion endangered it. Also, my dad used to run down the dunes near Highland Light with his brother when they were kids visiting their uncle.

I'm not sure if this old scorebook is the 1867 one mentioned in the press release, but it's still beautiful.

Time for old uniforms! The first is, obviously, an umpire's cap, jacket and brush. I love the inset C's on the cap. We then have an old Falmouth jersey. Next is a 1947 Cotuit Kettleers jersey worn by Joe Souza in Cotuit's first year in the CCBL, followed by spikes worn by "A. Brennan" in the '40s. Finally, my second favorite thing in the entire museum, a very old jersey from the town of Sandwich. Seriously, who wouldn't want a jersey with "SANDWICH" emblazoned across the front? (Also hilarious: The police cars in the town say, naturally, "Sandwich Police" on the doors. I like to think they give out tickets for too much mayo.)

This mural flanks the corner of a movie room featuring old seats from Fenway Park and many of the Hall of Fame classes. The case in the foreground features more modern CCBL pennants and memorabilia on the near side; the opposite side holds hundreds of baseball cards of Cape Cod baseball alumni.

And, finally, a few of the Hall of Famers' plaques that jumped out at me.

I liked Jeff Innis as a Met. He had that funky sidearm/submarine delivery, and he wanted to become an FBI agent after his playing days.

Mo Vaughn, still a favorite.

Ha! Look at this! New Jersey Devils GM Lou Lamoriello is a Cape Cod Baseball League Hall of Famer! Who knew?

Another personal favorite. I always liked Robin Ventura, both before and after his days with the Mets. His induction in 2001 is the likely reason for his depiction with the Mets rather than the White Sox, with whom he spent most of his career.

And, lastly, the plaque for the only player in both the Cape Cod and National Baseball Halls of Fame, with a letter from Bud Selig acknowledging that distinction.

Cape Cod baseball memories

2011-05-31T09:07:00.000-04:00

Starting 30 years ago, my family joined others -- those of my mom's four best college friends -- for a Memorial Day weekend getaway in Hyannisport, Mass., that quickly became an annual tradition. As a result, all through high school and college, I never knew what it was like to be home for Memorial Day weekend, had never seen a Memorial Day parade (still haven't, but that's because I'm usually either working or, in some recent years, on a different vacation), and always associated the final Monday in May with beating the traffic off Cape Cod and hoping that there would be no accidents on I-95. Daytime baseball on the radio during the holiday was always a great way to pass the time -- especially in traffic.

But because our trips were always at the end of May, I missed out on the joy of the Cape Cod Baseball League. Except for one year, 1991, when my parents added a summer week on the Cape to our usual journey up to Maine to visit family. We stayed in Chatham and went to games there and in Orleans. I enjoyed the small fields and close access, which allowed me to hunt for autographs and make my first attempts at close-to-the-action sports photography. I loved the small-town baseball, the proximity to the field and access to the players. Among the autographs I got were those of Hyannis Mets Jason Varitek and Rich Aurilia and Chatham Athletic Chris Michalak. I don't remember talking with Varitek, but by sheer chance, it turns out he was the only one to sign one of the stat sheets I received at the game between Hyannis and Chatham.

After the game, if I remember correctly, fans were allowed onto the field to meet the players, and that's where I told Aurilia we had the same birthday (Sept. 2) and mentioned to Michalak that my dad also went to Notre Dame. He asked me my dad's dorm, and I had no idea, so he shifted from writing out his uniform number to giving me the name of his dorm -- Flanner Hall -- and the inscription, "GO IRISH." Three years later, both would become very familiar to me when I learned that my freshman dorm, Grace Hall, was the twin to another 10-story housing unit for male students: Flanner Hall.

Amazingly, I kept the program and stat sheets with the autographs in pretty good condition all these years, allowing me to scan and post them. The one autograph that may be lost to history is the Cape Cod Times sports section that featured coverage of a no-hitter thrown by Hyannis' Richard King. I wasn't at the game, but I had him sign the paper when the Mets came to Chatham a night or two later.

At Chatham's field, I remember my sister and I setting up blankets on the bleachers behind home plate, then walking around before the game started and spending much -- if not all -- of the contest in that spot. A night or two later, when we saw the A's on the road against the Orleans Cardinals, I remember walking around the field during the game. The bleachers were smaller, but the entire first-base/right-field line runs along a tiered berm that is perfectly suited to laying out blankets or unfolding lawn chairs to take in the game. Beach by day and this setting for a ballgame at night? That is heaven.

Though Varitek, Aurilia, the Domer Michalak and Don Wengert, a pitcher for Hyannis that summer, all reached the Majors, the name I remembered most was that of Doug Newstrom. (However, often through the years, I confused Wengert with King, thinking that the guy who had been good enough to pitch a no-hitter on the Cape also reached the Majors with the A's and five other teams.) Newstrom was a two-way talent from Arizona State who, at the time I saw Chatham play, was 5-1 with a 2.33 ERA and batting .287 with a team-leading six homers and 30 RBIs. He was the starting pitcher the night we saw the A's at Orleans and might have served as his own DH. But after an eight-year minor league career that included two summers with New Haven of the Eastern League (thereby bringing him through Trenton) and finally reaching Triple-A with Tucson in the Diamondbacks' organization, his career ended in 2000.

Unfortunately, those remain the only Cape League games I've attended. Many is the summer I've thought of a return trip, but I've yet to make it happen.

LATER TODAY: Visiting the Cape Cod Baseball League Hall of Fame, something I didn't know existed until last week.

Bryce Harper's road is just beginning

2011-05-21T09:49:00.003-04:00

LAKEWOOD, N.J.

I can't get a read on Bryce Harper. He's both one of the top two prospects in baseball and an 18-year-old kid. He's an accomplished and talented phenom, but also a raw and developing minor leaguer. He could be ready for the big leagues now, or he might need a full year in the bushes first. He may be a soft-spoken, humble talent, or he just may be a cocky, arrogant superstar-in-the-making. And though those two descriptions may be on opposite sides of the spectrum, they're not necessarily good vs. bad. When you're as good as Harper is, you've got to have a level of cockiness and arrogance.

But it's hard to tell at this point. On the one hand, the guy said in Spring Training that his goal was to break camp with the Nationals, something he had about as much of a chance of doing as you or I did. On the other, when I saw him last weekend in Lakewood, he talked more than once about playing the "right way," not being disrespectful to the game, opponents or the media, and treating the game "like you're a 10-year-old kid in Cooperstown."

I spent two days -- Friday (along with SportsAngle) and Saturday -- arriving at FirstEnergy Park in Lakewood hours before first pitch. I watched Harper take batting practice, hearing the fans calling for autographs by the third-base dugout. For the first few innings of each game, I shot photos from the ends of the dugouts before taking in the rest of the ballgame from the press box. And after each contest -- both wins by Harper and the Hagerstown Suns -- I waited in the press box for Bryan Holland, the Suns' broadcaster and media relations guy, to wrap up his broadcast so he could lead the media throng down to the clubhouse for Harper's postgame interview.

OK, so that's a little different -- an 18-year-old Class A outfielder has his postgame press conferences regulated, with help from the team's media coordinator. But that's not on Harper; it's the Washington Nationals who are trying their best to script Harper's development in the minor leagues, balancing his on-field progression with the media's desire for access. In some ways, I think they're being a little overprotective -- pre- and postgame interviews are part of baseball, and the earlier he gets used to that, the more comfortable he'll be with it. But maybe they'll ease up on the restrictions as he progresses through the organization. He is, after all, only six weeks into his first professional season. His childhood friends and middle school classmates are currently -- as nearly every story on Harper mentions -- getting ready for their senior proms and high school graduations. There will be plenty of time for interviews.

But we still had access to Harper after each game, despite being told he'd only be available if he played a part in the outcome. That definition was stretched on Friday night, when his infield dribbler served to extend his hitting streak to 17 games -- but was followed by Harper getting picked off first base on a steal attempt. Hagerstown won, 4-3, but Harper's contributions added up to zero runs created. And though asked to keep our questions limited to what happened in the game, we were able to expand into more general queries without reprimand. In the end, it certainly wasn't your usual postgame in the South Atlantic League.

I arrived in Lakewood around 3 p.m. on Friday, four hours before the scheduled first pitch, because I had arranged to sit down with Hagerstown pitching coach and Notre Dame alumnus Chris Michalak (I still have to transcribe the interview before composing that post). Around 5:15, as Lakewood general manager Geoff Brown and I chatted on the field, Hagerstown began batting practice. "We're opening the gates 30 minutes early this weekend," Brown said, mentioning the plan to open the park to fans at 5:30 on this night, instead of the customary 6 p.m. "I just hope he's not in the first group [to take batting practice.]"

We both looked over and spotted the black jersey with No. 34 on the back at the same time. Sporting orange-and-black UnderArmour cleats, Harper had a helmet on and bat in hand. "Aaaand he is," Brown said. "I'm going to go see how many [staff] we have at the gates." With that, Brown bounded up the steps to the concourse. A few minutes later, the fans started streaming down the steps to either side of the Hagerstown dugout -- the gates had opened 10 minutes earlier than originally planned, all because of the 18-year-old in the batting cage.

Following BP, the Hagerstown players went out to their positions for fielding drills before returning to the dugout -- where the calls for Harper to sign grew louder. He obliged, entering the dugout via the ramp beyond third base and making his way along the outstretched hands holding baseballs, photos, posters, pens and Sharpies. He couldn't accommodate everyone, but he got to many, even backtracking when a father called out that a young girl had been missed.

"There’s always going to be the autograph seekers, and kids and everything like that," Harper said. "I love taking care of the kids. I love them being out there, and asking for my autograph, and if they weren’t asking for your autograph, you wouldn’t be anybody, so ..."

About half an hour before first pitch, the Suns began returning to the dugout. They'd changed from their black-and-orange batting practice attire into their red-and-blue alternate uniforms. Harper emerged from the tunnel with his pants cuffs pulled down to his shoetops, a change from the "high-sock" look he sported during BP, and without the orange-and-black shoes. Instead, he wore blue-and-white kicks that matched the uniform. A fan who had been first to the end of the dugout nearest the tunnel and bat rack held out a supersized print of Harper's Sports Illustrated cover. "Bryce!" he called out. "I've been here for four hours. Please sign!" Harper obliged before heading out to the field for more stretching, loosening and throwing.

There was one more task to come before first pitch. In high school and his one year of college ball, Harper was recognized for using his eye black as war paint. On the day they drafted him, however, the Nationals were quick to make clear that such liberal application of eye black would not be permitted. I hadn't noticed that Harper had gone through BP and warmups without any eye black on, so that was still to come. Down in the dugout, he had a teammate hold up a pair of sunglasses while Harper applied the eye black to his cheeks, checking his progress in the sunglasses' reflective lenses. (Be sure to check out SportsAngle's video of this ritual.) Once he had the bulk of it applied, a trainer touched it up, ensuring that it was even -- and nice and thick.

Batting third in the order, Harper strode to the plate with two outs in the first inning, announced as the IHOP Strikeout Player of the Game -- just one whiff on the night would win each fan in attendance a coupon for 20 percent off their next visit to the IHOP in Brick (down on the dark side of Route 88). BlueClaws starter Jesse Biddle obliged, getting Harper looking.

After the game, Harper was asked about the designation.

"I hope I get a voucher, too," he said with a chuckle. Sure enough, before Saturday's game, a BlueClaws staffer waited by the dugout as Harper applied his eye black for the evening, then handed him a bright orange coupon, good for 20 percent off -- and the Suns had two more games to play in Lakewood before heading home. They return June 12-15, but there's no telling if Harper will be with them.

From that point, Friday was a relatively quiet night. Other than the aforementioned dribbler that extended the hitting streak, Harper made four putouts in right field and played three base hits.

After the game, he stood before about 10 reporters in his black undershirt and black Suns BP cap and answered questions for about seven minutes. His varied responses made him at times sound like the mature-beyond-his-years rookie described by his coaches, at others like the green teenager he still is.

One reason he comes across so maturely is that, other than his salary, playing day after day after day and the various Sally League ballparks he's appearing in, not much is new to Harper. In his year at the College of Southern Nevada, he endured long bus rides similar to what he's facing when Hagerstown heads up to Lakewood (a short trip) or down to Rome, Ga. (considerably longer). After the first game in Lakewood, where 8,217 people turned out for Harper (OK, and Fireworks Night), I asked him about playing in front of such a big crowd.

"Yeah, this year, it’s the biggest crowd I’ve played in front of," he said. "But you know, playing USA ball, playing in the JUCO World Series, everything like that, it’s just another crowd. Not that big, not that entertaining. So yeah, just trying to go out there and get going, and having some fun, and it’s always fun to play in front of a big crowd like that."

I arrived at the park a little later on Saturday and went down to the Suns' clubhouse to talk to Michalak a little more. The tarp was on the field and rain fell intermittently, forcing BP indoors. Michalak had just made himself a cup of soup when I arrived and Harper stepped away from the food table and around the wall where the lockers are. Later, as I descended the stairs from the suite level to head down to the field before the game, Harper was a few steps ahead of me, walking alone, bats and glove in hand. I saw what he saw as his metal spikes clacked on the concrete on his walk toward the dugout. Beyond the doors, fans leaned over the railing, hoping that the footsteps they heard were Harper's. Had I held my camera in my hand, it would've made for a dramatic photo -- the dark tunnel, the light at the end, the fans leaning over, the No. 34 on Harper's back in shadow. When he emerged into the dugout, the fans burst forth with their cries. "Bryce! I've been here for five hours!" one yelled. Perhaps it was the four-hour guy from Friday, hoping an extra hour might result in another autograph.

The pregame routine was much the same on this day -- stretching, jogging, throwing, signing. Only the eye-black application was slightly different, with an assistant applying it from the start, instead of Harper handling the initial application. And the uniform was different -- Hagerstown wore its traditional road grays, orange lettering with black outlines, and black caps. Harper wore his pants high, exposing the black socks, and once again sporting the noticable orange-and-black shoes he had donned in BP on Friday.

Shortly after receiving his voucher for IHOP and stashing it in the cubby hole that housed his helmet, Harper strode to the plate as the Casino Pier Strikeout Player of the Game -- and immediately went down swinging. He did the same in his second at-bat before coming up to lead off the top of the seventh in a 0-0 game. This time, he connected on the first pitch and sent a line drive over the fence in left field onto the grassy berm. His sprint around the bases -- this was no trot -- took all of 17 or 18 seconds (I'm no Tater Trot Tracker). A single in the ninth made for a 2-for-4 afternoon, and Harper capped the game by catching the final out on a fly ball off the bat of Stephen Batts.

Saturday's postgame interview came after a longer wait, and this time Harper appeared after his shower, wearing a striped light blue golf shirt and mesh ballcap (on backwards). Again, some answers showed both a young player still finding his footing, while others made you wonder how much time he had for his schoolwork considering how much he knows about the game.

To wit: When one poorly phrased question threw Harper for a loop, he responded politely, "Excuse me? I don't understand the question." When the follow-up didn't really clarify it, he sheepishly dismissed it and moved on, saying, "I guess. It's not really a question I can answer."

Then later, when asked about his sprint around the bases, he happily explained, "I learned never to disrespect the game or the pitcher. I'm not gonna disrespect it. He could get me the next two times, and I get him once. I think you need to run around the bases. Pete Rose ran around the bases every single time. He never trotted or anything like that. I'm an old-school guy, so that's what I'm gonna do."
I have to say, even I wouldn't have been able to tell you how Pete Rose circled the bases on a home run. I mean, I know he was Charlie Hustle and ran out everything, and now that his name has come up, I can picture him running out a home run, but he wouldn't have been the player on my mind when talking about hustling home run trots.

Despite all that -- getting as much access as anyone, asking the same questions of Harper, Daubach and Anderson and hearing the answers as they did -- I didn't come away from the weekend with a feeling for Harper beyond the ballplayer. That's unusual for me; I tend to have some first impression that goes beyond what I've come up with going in after watching a guy on TV and reading about him in other outlets. That may be because I didn't have nearly as much background on Harper as I would for a more established player. Or it may be that he gave off different vibes with different answers and actions. At times, he sounded a lot like the 19-to-21-year-olds who come through the South Atlantic League. At others, he sounded like the uber-talented phenom that he knows he is.

But, hey, that's to be expected, right? Didn't you know the guy should be getting ready for his prom instead of crushing the Sally League? If I came away with anything, it's that the Bryce Harper who we all expect to take the National League by storm in 2012 (I'm among those who doesn't think it will happen this year under any circumstances) isn't there yet on that Hagerstown bus or buttoning up that No. 34. But he's emerging.

I think I would've liked the man they called 'Killer'

2011-05-18T02:56:00.000-04:00

My exposure to Harmon Killebrew was minimal. His final game came a year before I was born, and I can't recall him ever appearing at card shows when I attended those events growing up. As an avid collector with an insatiable appetite for baseball trivia as a seventh/eighth grader, if you'd asked me to name the 500 home run club (which, in the late '80s, consisted of just 14 men), I'd probably get 12 or 13 pretty easily, and then have to think longer to remember Killebrew. That's no fault of Killer's. I grew up in New Jersey; the Mets were my team. Baseball was long gone from Washington and the Twins were known for Kent Hrbek, Kirby Puckett, Dan Gladden and Frank Viola.

But I think Harmon Killebrew would've been the kind of player I really liked, an underdog of sorts among the game's greatest sluggers. He may have been listed at six feet tall, but it seems he was probably an inch or so shorter. If some photos I've seen today are dated correctly, he was bald before he was 30. And in recent years, while some of the living members of the 500 Home Run Club still look like they could give the ball a ride, he looked as much like your middle-school principal, your barber or your pharmacist as he did the 10th player to reach that long ball milestone.

My one encounter with Killebrew came before the 2004 All-Star Game, when MLB brought the living members of the 500 Home Run Club to Houston for the Home Run Derby. It was amazing being in the same room with all of those sluggers, not to mention the Commissioner of baseball and the top sportswriters in America. As I mentioned in that blog post, I considered asking some questions of a few of the legends, but with no assignment or specific questions in mind, I decided I'd rather get photos of each of the guys. I'm happy that I did, but looking back, it's unfortunate that 2004 was still the beginning of the digital age -- I was still working with a film SLR and had no way to know how my shots turned out until getting the prints back from the lab. My shot of Killebrew is OK, but the flash bounced off a few sportswriters in front of me, putting Killer in the shadows when he deserved the spotlight alongside his peers in that room.

Picture this: Saturday night Dodgers-Mets

2011-05-13T13:08:00.000-04:00

Yay! Blogger's back.

So, before we get too much further from last Saturday, here are some shots from batting practice and the game against the Dodgers. I won tickets and field access for batting practice in a contest via the team's Twitter account. The trivia question? Which players wore No. 20 in the Mets' two world championship seasons. The winner had to be the 20th correct response, and I got lucky.

Herewith, some shots (the full collection is here).

Carlos Beltran

Watching Ike

Turner's helmet

Skipper's advice

Ike Davis

On a break

Pridie stretches

Edgardo Alfonzo on the mic

Andre Ethier catches up with Jason Pridie

Pridie signs

That night's hero

Set aside

Hairston's kicks

Turner signs

Kevin Elster and Marty Noble

A Manny Mota moment

Reyes on the run

Wright at the plate

Ike and Murph

The night the streak ended

Kemp connects

David Wright's double

Bay connects

From ND to MLB: Ron Reed

2011-05-10T14:36:00.000-04:00

I've already profiled a couple of two-sport stars to come out of Notre Dame and make it to the Major Leagues, but Johnny Mohardt's second sport was football and Shaun Fitzmaurice's was track and field. (On this blog, baseball is always No. 1.)

For Ron Reed, the other sport was basketball. In fact, basketball was the first sport, with baseball as the No. 2, which isn't surprising for a guy who stands 6-foot-6.

"I went to Notre Dame on a basketball scholarship, and only played baseball my senior year," Reed told me in an e-mail. "Growing up in LaPorte, Ind., about 30 miles from campus, getting a full scholarship to N.D., even if it was for basketball, was a dream come true. Basketball was always my first love."

In three years (1962-65) with the Irish cagers*, back when freshmen couldn't play on the varsity, Reed scored 1,153 points and pulled down 872 rebounds. He still holds the single-season Irish rebounding average: 17.7 boards per game in 1963-64. His 18.9 points per game rank eighth all-time, his 872 rebounds remain 10th on the list and his 14.3 rebounds per game still stand as the third-highest mark in Irish history. As a senior in '64-65, he was named to the NABC All-Star Game and the Division I All-District Third Team and received an honorable mention on The Sporting News' All-America team, which featured Bill Bradley on the first team and Rick Barry and Jerry Sloan on the second team.

*Basketball players are never referred to as "cagers" anymore, but they were then. Turns out, the term has New Jersey roots -- the first cage around a basketball court was built in Trenton.

My dad arrived at Notre Dame the year after Reed did, so I asked him if he remembered the two-sport talent. "Yeah, he was a tall guy," Dad said. "Very good basketball player, but he was a fireballer, too." (It was 48 years ago; I wasn't expecting a full scouting report.)

Two-sport pro

The Detroit Pistons chose Reed in the third round of the 1965 NBA draft, taking him 20th overall, but he also signed with the Milwaukee Braves as a free agent.

"My first baseball contract was signed in June of 1965, just after I got out of N.D.," Reed recalled, "for $500 a month and a plane ticket to West Palm Beach, Fla., to pitch for the Milwaukee Braves' Class A team in the Florida State League."

Reed compiled a 3-2 record and 1.47 ERA in seven games (five starts) at West Palm, earning that first victory on Aug. 25 in a 1-0 win over the Miami Marlins. The one run was a rout, relatively speaking; Reed had lost his two previous starts by 1-0 and 4-0 scores.

That fall, he reported to the Pistons for his rookie season in the NBA. He played 57 games for coach Dave DeBusschere -- who, in 1962 and '63, pitched in the Majors and played professional basketball himself -- averaging 7.5 points and 5.9 rebounds.

In 1966, Reed opened the season with the Kinston Eagles in the Carolina League, going 5-2 with a 1.76 ERA before a promotion to Austin in the Texas League to take the place of Bob Daniel, who left the team for his two weeks of Army duty. Reed won his debut with the Austin Braves in the second game of a doubleheader against El Paso on June 9. The first game of that twin bill was noteworthy for what Reed and his teammates wore for that one and only game: Red shorts cut from pants the club had worn in previous years. I sent that clip from The Sporting News over to Paul at Uni Watch when I came across it last week, then checked in with Reed again to see what he remembered.

"The shorts were worn in that first game as a trial to see if they would be appropriate for the Atlanta Braves players," Reed told me. "Summers in Georgia are rather hot so some genius figured shorts might be better for the players rather than the wool uniforms they wore at that time. After a couple of our Austin players came back to the dugout with giant 'strawberries' on their knees and thighs from sliding into second, third, and home plate during that first game, the shorts idea was abandoned, thank God. Obviously there is no protection at all when bare skin meets the dirt around all of the bases when sliding."

A month after his Austin debut, Reed picked up his third victory after two weeks away from the team for his own military duty. He defeated the Dallas-Ft. Worth Spurs, 3-1. Mike Lum, who was "married shortly before game-time," according to The Sporting News, opened the game with a 345-foot home run.

That's all the Braves needed to see from Reed at that level. After going 3-1 with a 1.20 ERA in just four starts with Austin, Reed was moved up again, to Triple-A Richmond in the International League, just one step away from Atlanta. In 14 games (11 starts), he went 5-2 with a 3.52 ERA.

With the Braves in the Governor's Cup finals for the International League championship, Reed pitched two noteworthy games over three days in September. On Sept. 12, he was a hard-luck loser in a 2-0 defeat at Toronto, a game in which the R-Braves were held to one hit by the Maple Leafs' Ed Rakow. With Atlanta pitching coach Whitlow Wyatt on hand specifically to see Reed pitch, the 23-year-old right-hander struck out 10 and yielded eight hits. Then on Sept. 15, with just two days' rest and the Braves facing elimination, Reed went the distance to defeat Toronto, 4-1, back in Richmond. He scattered four hits, walked one and struck out five. The lone run allowed was unearned. Reed contributed on both ends, delivering an RBI single that scored Tommie Aaron in the Braves' four-run fifth inning. Alas, the Maple Leafs won the title the next night, four games to one, when Tony Horton's two-run homer in the ninth gave Toronto a 6-5 victory and its second straight Governor's Cup.

Making the Majors

Overall in 1966, Reed went 13-5 with a 2.57 ERA in 26 games (21 starts) across the three levels. Though no one knew it as such in '66, he posted a 1.08 WHIP and, in 168 innings, he struck out 129. (Baseball-Reference's strikeout totals for that year are missing his Kinston total, but through June 3, 1966, according to The Sporting News on June 18, he was among the Carolina League leaders with a 1.76 ERA, 5-2 record and 39 strikeouts in 51 innings -- his total for the year at Kinston before his promotion. Consider that blank filled.) His performance in the bushes earned him a callup to the parent club in September. Reed made his Major League debut on Sept. 26, 1966.

"My Major League debut was as a starting pitcher for the Atlanta Braves against Hall of Fame pitcher Juan Marichal and the San Fransisco Giants," Reed wrote to me. "The third batter that I faced that game was the great Willie Mays. Yes, I got him out. The fourth batter that I faced was the geat Willie McCovey. No, I did not get him out -- he hit a home run over the center-field fence in Atlanta Fulton County Stadium. It was a long time ago, but the memory of that night is still with me."

The Giants won that game, 8-2, with Marichal going the distance and striking out 11 Braves. Reed lasted just 2 1/3 innings and took the loss, but only allowed those two runs on four hits and two walks. He struck out two.

He got a second start in the season finale on Oct. 2 at Cincinnati. According to a story in The Sporting News, "Reed trying to mix hill, cage efforts," on Oct. 22, 1966, Braves manager Billy Hitchcock decided to use the last game of the season to evaluate a slew of minor league prospects. The Braves finished fifth that season, 10 games behind the Dodgers. Reed allowed just three hits and walked two in six shutout innings to earn the win.

"I was really nervous that first time I pitched," Reed told The Sporting News. "But not the last time [in Cincinnati]. I guess it was because I looked behind me before the first pitch and saw all those guys from Richmond. After that, it was just like pitching at Richmond against Buffalo."

Both Hitchcock and Wyatt, the pitching coach, praised Reed's potential -- "For a youngster," Wyatt said, "he really knows how to pitch. He's a real prospect." -- and the Braves hoped Reed would give up basketball to focus on his pitching. But Reed wasn't ready to do that.

"Basketball is a tough game," Reed said in the story, "and it will take me at least two weeks to get in shape. But it's something I want to do. I don't think it will affect my baseball."

Reed signed with the Pistons for another season, but decided that this would be his final year playing both sports (The Sporting News, Dec. 31, 1966, right). He said he'd make a choice of which sport to pursue full-time following the 1966-67 NBA season. In 62 games that winter, Reed averaged 8.5 points and 6.8 rebounds, but it was mostly as a backup. The Braves, meanwhile, told Reed they considered him a starting pitcher -- this back in the days when relievers were mostly pitchers who weren't good enough to start. After a meeting in Atlanta with Braves vice president Paul Richards in early February 1967, Reed made the decision to quit the Pistons in time to join the Braves in West Palm Beach for spring training.

But the basketball gods made one final pitch. As described in The Sporting News story from March 4, 1967 (click the article for a larger view), Reed had decided that he'd tell DeBusschere, Detroit's player-coach, of his decision after the Pistons' Feb. 15 game against the 76ers. The Braves were to open camp in Florida the next day. But DeBusschere was sick and pulled himself from the game, inserting Reed in his place. Reed played 36 minutes and scored 22 points in the 127-121 loss, and it was almost enough to make him reconsider.

"It's games like this that make you think about it," Reed is quoted as saying. "Then there are the others when you sit on the bench."

DeBusschere, of course, could understand where Reed was coming from, having made his own decision to quit baseball back in 1965 to play and coach the Pistons. But while maybe DeBusschere the player could sympathize, DeBusschere the coach wasn't happy to be losing 8.5 points and 6.8 rebounds a game.

"My only contention was Reed was to be with us till the end of the season," DeBusschere told The Sporting News. "We needed him fighting for the playoffs and he had signed a contract."

The Pistons finished 30-51 that season, but DeBusschere's comment about the playoffs wasn't just coach-speak. Back then eight out of 10 teams made the postseason in the NBA. Detroit, unfortunately, was one of the two that didn't, finishing three games behind the Chicago Bulls in the Western Division.

Full-time hurler

Reed had an auspicious debut in Florida. Now referred to as "ex-pro basketball player Ron Reed" in The Sporting News, he threw three shutout innings in Atlanta's first intra-squad game. But he didn't do enough that spring to stick with the big club to start the season. (In one box score I found, from March 18 when Reed gave up three runs -- two earned -- on four hits in four innings, fellow Domer Dick Rusteck pitched in relief for the Mets.) In fact, he spent nearly all of '67 in Richmond as Atlanta went with Denny Lemaster, Ken Johnson, Pat Jarvis, Tony Cloninger and Phil Niekro in the rotation. (Niekro started just 20 of his 46 games that year and finished with an interesting stat line that included 207 innings, 20 starts, 20 games finished, 10 complete games and nine saves.)

After starting out 1-4 with Richmond -- again with some feeble run support, yielding just four runs on 12 hits over a three-game span -- Reed began to turn his season around. He two-hit Jacksonville, 3-0, on May 29, and followed that up with a five-hitter, an unearned run and seven strikeouts to beat Rochester, 12-1, on June 3. On June 8, he struck out 10 in a complete-game, 2-1 victory at Syracuse. After a seven-hit shutout of Toronto on June 13, Reed's record stood at 5-4. Two more wins later -- that's six in a row -- he was 7-4 with a 1.91 ERA that stood second in the International League to Tug McGraw's 1.87 at Jacksonville.

Reed finished that season 14-10 with a 2.51 ERA and 172 strikeouts in 222 innings. He ranked seventh in ERA and, as best I can tell (because you can't sort columns in PDFs of microfilm scans), he was second only to Jerry Koosman's 183 strikeouts for Jacksonville. Reed completed 17 of his 27 starts, with five shutouts, and posted a 1.05 WHIP. The R-Braves won the International League pennant, but fell in the first round of the Governor's Cup playoffs.

The scan of the team photo below is of terrible quality, but you can still make out Reed in the top row, second from right.

Following the season, Reed was one of three pitchers who earned honors as the best pitching prospects in the International League, based on a vote of the circuit's managers. Syracuse's Stan Bahnsen and Rochester's Mike Adamson were the others, and Reed was tabbed the pitcher most ready for the Majors.

As he was in '66, Reed was called up to Atlanta to finish out the regular season, again going 1-1. In three starts, he compiled a 2.95 ERA over 21 1/3 innings. The Braves finished seventh in the NL that year, 24 1/2 games behind the Cardinals, prompting Hank Aaron to express his frustrations about the heart and desire of some of his teammates. But Aaron was optimistic, according to The Sporting News:

Despite what Aaron called the Braves' lowest morale in years, he sees better times ahead for the club because of youngsters like second baseman Felix Millan and pitchers Ron Reed and Jim Britton.

It seems Reed had caught the eye of more than the Braves' brass.

After the season, Richards, the Braves' vice president, decided to take a page from the book of the third-place Cubs, who finished 87-74 on the strength of four starters under the age of 26: Fergie Jenkins (24), Rich Nye (22), Joe Niekro (22) and Ray Culp (25). Richards laid out a plan to fortify the Braves' lineup and dip into the farm system for pitchers, citing Reed, Jim Britton and George Stone. Atlanta didn't go quite so young in its rotation, but under new manager Lum Harris, and with Reed going 11-10 in 35 games (28 of them starts), the Braves improved to 81-81, good for fifth place. Britton and Stone combined to go 11-10, making 19 starts between them (among 51 appearances).

From then on, Reed was a big leaguer for good and the Braves took another step forward in '69, winning the new NL West division with a 93-69 record. Reed got the start in Game 2 of the NLCS, opposite Koosman and the Mets, but was tagged for four runs on five hits and three walks in 1 2/3 innings. He struck out three but took the loss as the Mets went on to sweep the series before winning the World Series over the Orioles.

A broken collarbone sustained in spring training in 1970 robbed Reed of the first two months of the season, but it could have been worse.

The 6-7 pitcher was going all out, running from home to first, when he got his size 14-AAs tangled and tripped over the bag.

The Braves' skipper was advised that Reed, 18-10 last season and 9-2 down the important stretch, will be out from three to four months.

"But it probably means the season," said [manager Lum] Harris. "Although knowing Ron, if anybody can overcome it, he would be the one."

--The Sporting News, March 28, 1970

Overcome it, he did, returning to the Braves on June 19 and going 7-10 that season.

A part of history

Reed spent 10 seasons in Atlanta, and not only was he there for Hank Aaron's record-breaking 715th home run on April 8, 1974, he was the starting and winning pitcher. Aaron's two-run homer -- this never seems to get mentioned -- tied the game at 3 in the fourth inning. Al Downing faced two more batters, walking them both, before being replaced, and Atlanta scored two more runs to take the lead for good. Reed allowed four runs on seven hits in six innings, but that was enough in a 7-4 Braves win. It's one of Reed's personal top two career highlights. The other would come six years later.

Reed's tenure with the Braves ended in May 1975 when they traded him to the Cardinals for Ray Sadecki and Elias Sosa. Following the '75 season, Reed was dealt to the Phillies, who made him a reliever, in exchange for Mike Anderson. Reed would make only nine more starts in his career, but he also appeared in the postseason six times in an eight-year span from 1976-83, including two World Series (winning in '80 and losing in '83). He also had his seventh and final 10-win season out of the Philadelphia bullpen in 1979.

Between the personal highs of winning the game in which Aaron hit No. 715 and winning the 1980 World Series (his other top personal highlight), Reed cited the '76 postseason as the lowest moment of his career.

"We had a two-run lead in the third game of the playoffs [the NLCS] going into the bottom of the ninth, and I gave up back-to-back home runs to George Foster and Johnny Bench to tie the game," he said. "We lost in extra innings and lost the playoffs."

That would be the game the Reds needed to sweep the series after winning the first two contests in Philadelphia. In what is likely more coincidence than an indication of how Reed performed, his first nine postseason appearances came in games his team lost. From Game 2 of the 1969 NLCS through Game 2 of the 1980 NLCS against the Astros, the Braves and Phillies dropped each one. But then Reed appeared in four straight winners for those '80 Phillies: Games 4 and 5 (the clincher) of the NLCS and Games 2 (which he saved) and 5 of the World Series. Tug McGraw was the Phillies' closer in '80, finishing 48 games and saving 20, but Reed was second in both categories, finishing 29 and saving nine.

Reed stayed with the Phillies through the 1983 season -- a total of eight summers in Philadelphia -- before he was traded to the White Sox that December for a player to be named later. In February 1984, the player sent back to Philly was the former Met Koosman. The White Sox had plucked Tom Seaver from the Mets on Jan. 20, but traded Koosman on Feb. 15, meaning the one-time teammates were just that once again for a little more than three weeks.

Reed was 0-6 but had a solid 3.08 ERA and a team-leading 12 saves in 51 relief appearances for the '84 White Sox. It would be his final season. Chicago released him on April 5, 1985.

After 19 years ...

Among Domers who reached the Majors, Reed's 19 seasons rank third overall and are the most of any pitcher. Outfielder Cy Williams also played 19 seasons, and Hall of Famers Carl Yastrzemski (23) and Cap Anson (27) are the only Domers who played more. Reed is also among the many players between 1947 and '97 who wore No. 42, a number he can now see on the wall at just about every ballpark.

Reed still lives in Atlanta, where he works for an event management company called Marketing Event Partners.

"We put on various types of events, mostly golf tournaments, for organizations that raise money for various charities," he said.

And the Irish are still very much on his radar.

"I 'BLEED' blue and gold," he wrote in his e-mail. "I follow as many of Notre Dame sports that I can, but especially football, basketball and baseball. I've met [football] coach [Brian] Kelly and I have been good friends with [basketbal] coach [Mike] Brey since his arrival on campus. Coach [Dave] Schrage is still a good friend even after his dismissal as baseball coach at N.D."

Because he had such a long career that began in the '60s and ended in the '80s, there is no shortage of Ron Reed baseball cards, photos and autographs, particularly on eBay. So I chose his rookie card, 1968 Topps No. 76, featuring Reed and Jim Britton.

"I was really young then, and had very little Major League experience at that time," Reed told me when asked about it. "No real thoughts concerning this particular card."

As for why I chose the rookie card over all others, I suppose it represents the transition from Notre Dame through the minors to the Majors, the final step (but not the completion) of the journey. It shows the player as a Major Leaguer, but also as close to his Notre Dame years as possible. I could've gone with a later card, a 1984 Topps perhaps, showing Reed in that bright blue Phillies road uniform. That card would represent the longevity of his career and overlap with my own card-collecting past (just barely). But I like the image of a fresh-faced young prospect not far removed from college on the cusp of a career that would last nearly 20 years and include a World Series championship and one of the game's greatest historic moments.

Looking good for 99

2011-04-20T13:42:00.002-04:00

Monteleone takes in the game

Happy Birthday, Fenway!

This photo was taken in 1991 and remains one of my favorite photos I've taken, particularly from those early years.

Stealing home on a '56 Topps card

2011-04-17T11:01:00.001-04:00

Did a little Jackie Robinson research this morning, prompted by the 1956 Topps card shown above. I was curious as to when the slide into home may have occurred, presuming the scene depicted was based on a photograph of an actual occurrence. It was the number of the batter, really, that piqued my interest -- who is that? Through good deduction, dumb luck or whatever, it only took a few clicks to come up with the answer.

First, I suspected that it was a steal of home, because of the position of the batter so close to the plate, with his bat on his shoulder, gave me the impression that he had just stepped back. If Robinson was scoring on a hit, the batter would probably be further away from the plate, perhaps giving direction on whether -- and where -- to slide. Second, I figured that the opposing team was the Cardinals, based on the catcher's stirrups.

So I simply went to Baseball-Reference's Play Index (before I came across that list of Robinson's steals of home) and got the list of games in which Robinson stole a base against the Cardinals, then started clicking through box scores. Neither of his stolen bases in the two-steal game were of the plate, but the second one on the list -- August 29, 1955, was, and the play-by-play confirms that it was when starting pitcher Johnny Podres -- No. 45 in your '55 Dodgers scorecard -- was batting. Furthermore, Cardinals catcher Bill Sarni wore No. 15 in '55, and that certainly looks like a 5 on the back of the catcher; even if it's a 6, Sarni wore 16 in previous years with St. Louis.

Perhaps even more noteworthy: It was a triple steal to boot! That event didn't warrant much mention, however. In the New York Times story the following day, it had one paragraph dedicated to it, 10 grafs into the story. Podres' plunking of Stan Musial in a back-and-forth brushback spat grabbed the headlines and the photo. Musial was hit in the hand in the fourth inning but wasn't replaced until a double-switch in the seventh. (X-rays were negative, and he was in the lineup in Pittsburgh the next day.)

Compare that to the last triple steal, which wasn't even a straight steal of home (it involved a rundown), but did warrant its own headlines. It's so rare to even see a straight steal of home these days -- such an exciting play -- that the likelihood of a triple steal ever happening again has to be remote.

A different Opening Day

2011-04-13T14:40:00.002-04:00

Ready to go

This one had a different feel to it.

At previous Mets openers (I know it wasn't Opening Day, Opening Day, but it's still the return of Mets baseball to its home ballpark, so I like to refer to it as Opening Day) in recent years, there's been that sense of optimism and excitement, anticipation of a promising season to come. Even last year, when there were more doubts than this year (more on that in a moment), I think I had a more positive feeling overall.

But last week, for the first time in several years, I just didn't feel that same sense of positive energy about the season to come. Last Friday, the feeling was more of hope -- desperate hope, not anticipatory hope. More, Oh please don't let this team finish in last place, and less, Let's shoot for the division and see if we can't fall back into the wild card.

But this year's Mets team, I think, is more of a mystery than last year's (hence the greater sense of doubt in 2010 than in 2011). Going into 2010, the thinking (here, at least), was that 2009 was so sabatoged by injuries that if the stars could just stay healthy and if David Wright could get comfortable in Citi Field, the team had to be good for at least 85-88 wins, which would put it in contention in September. But the doubts were still there that they could be healthy (and it didn't help that Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran started the season on the disabled list, that Jennry Mejia was in the bullpen when everyone felt he should be in the minors developing as a starte and that Mike Jacobs and Gary Matthews Jr. were on the team, period).

In 2011, though, I sense more of a feeling of curiosity. Nevermind the roster, the changes in the front office, the manager's office and the owners' bank accounts have us wondering more about what the future holds than what the past has brought. Sure, there were very few changes in on-field personnel besides the long-desired shedding of two particular contracts, and that should give us very little hope, but I think the installation of a new philosophy brought on by Sandy Alderson and Terry Collins has us wondering -- perhaps expecting -- this team to overachieve a little after so many recent years of underachievement. Instead of the "ifs" centering on the negative like last year -- "if Wright can't hit at home... "if Beltran's knee can't hold up ..." -- it seems to be more of a positive spin -- "if Dickey can repeat his breakout year ..." "if Beltran's knees can hold up ..." And maybe some of that comes from the fact that everyone seems to be picking the Mets last in the NL East, or at least no better than fourth. (Personally, I couldn't see them finishing last ... until this past weekend. But even that is just one series, one that showed a bullpen with some holes and perhaps one that wasn't yet in sync, and changes have already been made.)

Anyway, you can't predict a season based on 10 games, or even four (remember how good things looked after game four?), or even two weeks' worth. If the Mets are well back in last place come May 1, then I'll be severely disappointed, but until then, I'm just going to have to look at it as this group getting its footing. It's all I can do. I can't be one of those cranky, bitching, complaining, booing Mets fans. There's no enjoyment in that for me. I like to be happy, and sometimes it seems like those fans just can't be.

A look back: Mets openers

2011-04-08T10:08:00.016-04:00

Soon, Casey and I will be riding the rails out to Flushing for another Mets opener (and a Mr. Met bobblehead!). In celebration of baseball coming back to Queens for the season, I've pulled some photos from past openers. I don't have photos from each of the past 12 openers I've been to, but here's a sampling of what I do have.

My first opener, 1991

Look at the price!

Coming off the train, 2004

Introductions, 2004

Groundskeeper Bill Butler's skyline, 2005

Mr. Met coming off the 7, 2006

On the 7 for Shea's last, 2008

Presenting the good luck wreath, 2008

Citi's debut, from the video board, 2009

After Citi's unveiling, 2009

A bigger flag, 2010

David Wright's home run, 2010

By the numbers: Mets home openers

2011-04-07T14:44:00.002-04:00

Proof

We all know the success the Mets have had on Opening Day since losing eight of their first nine.

But with my 12th consecutive and 13th overall opener coming up tomorrow (the Mets are 9-3 when I've been there), I wondered how they've done in their first home game over the years. So I crunched the numbers ...

In the 49 openers leading up to this year, they've gone 31-18 (.633), edging opponents by a cumulative score of 201-189 (an average of 4.1-3.9 per game). A total of 1,907,740 fans have attended the games, averaging 38,933 per game. The contests have averaged 2 hours, 47 minutes, though nine of the last 10 have gone longer than three hours.

One of the more interesting openers to me was in 1997, when the Mets (and Yankees) opened with doubleheaders because of rain in New York (amazing that both the Mets and Yankees were scheduled to open at home on the same day, too). This twin bill was news to me because, as a junior in college in Indiana in the spring of '97, I guess I didn't follow the day-to-day ins and outs of the season as closely as I do now.

Tomorrow will be the Mets' first Friday home opener since 1995. They're 4-4 opening up their home schedule on a Friday, though they've won four of their last five. The full day-by-day breakdown:

Sunday, 0-1
Monday, 13-6
Tuesday, 9-7
Wednesday, 3-0
Thursday, 1-0
Friday, 4-4
Saturday, 1-0

Then there are the opponents. The Cardinals and Expos/Nationals have been the most frequent denizens of the opposite dugout, nine times each, so the Nats will claim the top spot with their 10th appearance tomorrow. In all, 12 different teams have appeared:

Atlanta, 2-1 (Mets' record)
Chicago Cubs, 1-2
Colorado, 1-0
FLorida, 2-0
Houston, 1-0
Los Angeles, 0-1
Montreal/Washington, 5-4
Philadelphia, 7-1
Pittsburgh, 3-5
San Diego, 1-1
San Francisco, 1-1
St. Louis, 7-2

The only clubs who haven't been here for the home opener are the Diamondbacks, Brewers and Reds, none of which is all that surprising: Arizona has only been around since '98, the Brewers only in the National League since then, and the Reds always open the season in Cincinnati, so they've never been an option in the 25 years when the Mets are home on Opening Day.

Six of the home openers have gone to extra innings (three wins, three losses), and in home openers that weren't on the season's Opening Day, the Mets are 13-11 -- leaving them at 18-7 on Opening Day in New York.

And for individual achievements, the Mets' winningest pitcher in home openers is the man who holds the Major League record for most Opening Day starts: Tom Seaver, who was 6-0 at Shea with the April bunting. Following him are Jerry Koosman (3-0) and Dwight Gooden (3-2). Al Leiter (2-0) is the only other pitcher -- Met or opponent -- with more than a single victory.

Three visiting pitchers have lost more than one opener (Gooden is the only Met to have done so). Steve Rogers lost with the Expos in 1976 and '78 and Livan Hernandez dropped decisions with the Marlins in '99 and the Nationals in '06. The losingest pitcher? That would be Hall of Famer Steve Carlton, all with the Phillies: '72, '75, '82 and '83. Seaver got the wins in '72 and '75 and was the starter in '83, but the win went to Doug Sisk after Seaver was pulled and the Mets scored twice in the seventh in a 2-0 victory.

Here's hoping for more good numbers tomorrow, when R.A. Dickey gets the start in his first Mets opener against Jordan Zimmermann in his first, and the Nats franchise's 10th.

Minor League Opening Day!

2011-04-07T12:37:00.000-04:00

It's going to be a week or more before I get to a game in the great Garden State, but it's still wonderful to know that, across the country dozens teams are taking the field. And MiLB.com has a great new feature on its schedule page: Rather than sifting through the long list of every game across the country, you can click on the logos at the top of the page to filter out just the leagues in your area or see who all the affiliates of a certain organization are facing. Good stuff.

Most obnoxious fans in the NL East?

2011-04-04T20:49:00.000-04:00

Interesting how Shane Victorino answers that question. This graphic appears in ESPN The Magazine's baseball preview package (an issue I'm just getting to now after finishing SI's). As it explains, there's one for each division asking players to answer only with cities within their divisions. It'd be interesting to see what Victorino would've answered if he was asked about all NL cities, considering the beer shower he took in 2009. Also, as an outfielder, he's closer to the cheap seats (at least the ones closest to the field vs. the upper deck) in whatever ballpark he visits, so I'm sure he hears it from the fans in every stop along the way.

I think it's funny how he says he "feels bad." To me, using that phrase indicates how truly ruthless they can be.

Missing out on New Jersey's openers

2011-04-04T12:42:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to make it to the Trenton Thunder home opener on the 14th.

But Kei Igawa will. (Thanks to Paul for the heads-up.)

It turns out that Brian Cashman's biggest bust -- and the all-time wins leader (32) at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, which earned him the cover spot on their record book last year -- has been pushed even further from New York. Looks like the Thunder will have a $4 million long reliever and fifth starter.

What a way to spend $46 million, huh?

Here's hoping Tony Franklin doesn't overwork Igawa.

And a change in my schedule will keep me from Thursday's BlueClaws opener as well. They'll raise their 2010 South Atlantic League championship banner that night. Up through 2005, I'd attended every BlueClaws opener and had made a couple since then, too. But it's just as well, considering their history of cold, damp opening nights.

The Claws released their roster over the weekend and it features 2010 first-round pick Jesse Biddle and, among the returning players, second baseman Jeremy Barnes, who played at Notre Dame. Biddle ranks eighth among Philly prospects in Baseball America's rankings and Lakewood outfielders Domingo Santana and Aaron Altherr rank ninth and 10th, respectively.

For the heck of it, here's a list of important dates for New Jersey minor league teams in 2011:

April 5
Thunder FanFest, 3 p.m.
BlueClaws vs. Monmouth, 6:05 p.m.

April 7
Lakewood BlueClaws home opener, 6:35 p.m.

April 14
Trenton Thunder home opener, 7:05 p.m.

May 3
Camden Riversharks home opener, 7:05 p.m.

May 6
Somerset Patriots home opener, 7:05 p.m.

May 13-16
Bryce Harper and Hagerstown at Lakewood (he is one of the top prospects in all of baseball)

May 26
Newark Bears home opener, 11 a.m.

May 31
New Jersey Jackals home opener, 7:05 p.m.

June 21
South Atlantic League All-Star Game, Delmarva

July 13
Eastern League All-Star Game, New Hampshire
Atlantic League All-Star Game, York

Aug. 30
BlueClaws home finale, 7:05 p.m.

Sept. 1
Thunder home finale, 7:05 p.m.
Jackals home finale, 7:05 p.m.

Sept. 3
Bears home finale, 6:35 p.m.

Sept. 15
Patriots home finale, 6:05 p.m.

Sports Illustrated baseball preview history: The 2011 update

2011-04-02T15:22:00.000-04:00

It's really not a surprise, is it? The Phillies go out and land Cliff Lee, giving them -- on paper -- the best starting rotation since the 1993 Braves, and it lands the starting five on the cover of Sports Illustrated's baseball preview issue.

The only reason I balked and wondered if they'd go with Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford in Boston is because this Phillies cover is unprecedented. (Plus, a Boston cover wouldn't have been a stretch; the magazine does pick the Red Sox to beat the Giants in the World Series.) A team has been represented as the main cover image in consecutive years -- the Yankees in 2002-03, with the entire starting rotation on that '03 cover -- but never before has one player appeared in the cover's main image in back-to-back springs. Until now, until Roy Halladay. He had the cover to himself last year, and this week he's off to the side as the other four stand behind Lee, but the placement doesn't matter. In becoming just the fifth player to appear on the cover's centerpiece twice (joining Willie Mays, Steve Garvey, Mark McGwire and Derek Jeter), Halladay is the first to do it two years in a row.

I won't rehash the full breakdown from last year, but I will update the relevant statistics.

Team appearances:
Red Sox, 7
Yankees, 6
Phillies, 5
Cardinals, 5
Dodgers, 5
Orioles, 3
Giants, 3
Reds, 3
Mariners, 2
Indians, 2
Royals, 2
Twins, 2
Mets, 2
Pirates, 2
Tigers, 2
Brewers, 1
D-backs, 1
Rockies, 1
Cubs, 1
Rangers, 1
Padres, 1
A's, 1
Expos, 1
Angels, 1
Nationals, 1

That's a total of 61 teams on the covers (accounting for two or more players sharing the spotlight in some years). Through last season, 22 of those 60 teams (before this year's Phillies) made the playoffs, with the results as follows:

Won World Series, 6
Lost World Series, 5
Lost ALCS, 2
Lost NLCS, 1
Lost ALDS, 6
Lost NLDS, 2

The Phillies last year became the first featured club to fall in the NLCS. When it comes to regular-season standings, the editors have hit on top-two teams more than the other positions combined:

1st, 20
2nd, 13
3rd, 15
4th, 6
5th, 2
6th, 2
7th, 2

Here are a few more team-related numbers:

Won 100, 6
Lost 100, 2
Player with a new team, 12
Defending champs, 13

As for individual accolades, Halladay became the third player whose cover appearance foretold a Cy Young season, the third to win 20 games, the 36th to have an All-Star season and the 10th to lead the league in at least one major category:

Hall of Famers, 16
Retired, 2
MVP, 2
Cy Young, 3
All-Star, 36
Broke record, 2
20-game winner, 3
Led league, 11

And finally, by putting the Philly five on the cover, SI has widened the gap between starting pitchers and any other position (each player counts once, not as a group, meaning the starters went from 20 to 25):

C, 4
1B, 10
2B, 1
3B, 6
SS, 5
OF, 19
SP, 25
Manager, 2
Owner, 1

Moving forward, we have regional inset images to consider. They began in 2009 with Carl Crawford, Justin Morneau, Dustin Pedroia, Manny Ramirez, David Wright and Carlos Zambrano. Last year, they included Matt Kemp, John Lackey, Brian McCann, Albert Pujols, CC Sabathia and Troy Tulowitzki. This year, we have Robinson Cano and, presumably, others, but they're not online yet. I'll update when they appear.

Baseball is ...

2011-03-31T03:25:00.001-04:00

Thanks, Ernie...

Ballpark landscapes

2011-03-24T10:16:00.007-04:00

While looking through my baseball photos on Flickr the other night, it hit me just how many times I've been fortunate to see a brilliant sunset while at the ballpark. So, hey, the natural thing is a post about it, right!?

Of course.

YOGI BERRA STADIUM

This was the first one, in 1999 -- and will likely remain the best. It will be hard to top. We ran it in the newspaper, too, when my column about Yogi Berra Stadium ran.

SHEA STADIUM

I stepped off the subway on a sweltering July night in 2005 for Merengue Night at Shea Stadium and before entering the ballpark was nearly blinded by the setting sun over the top of the stands.

FIRSTENERGY PARK

I've spent many a night at Lakewood's FirstEnergy Park, more than at any Minor League field -- though as a reporter, I didn't usually have my camera with me, so who knows how many sunsets I missed. The first was taken from the dugout in 2006, the second from the berm beyond right-center field last August.

CITI FIELD

The first great sunset came on the first -- not-great -- night. Opening night, spectacular colors on the clouds. The second was one of many nights spent in Danny Meyer Land; this particular one was in September 2009.

FENWAY PARK

It was a wonderful Memorial Day weekend in 2009 -- the Mets were at Fenway on the weekend we make our annual trip to Cape Cod, so we delayed our arrival in Hyannis to Saturday morning so that we could watch Johan Santana vs. Daisuke Matsuzaka. Before a Mets win, we got this sky show.

RIPKEN STADIUM

Last August, just a few weeks before the Sod Squad shot in Lakewood, I stopped at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen, Md., on my way back from Baltimore and the sky turned orange for the former Oriole.

Wow. Now this has me eager to get back to a ballpark. Just a few more weeks!