A Giant Dump Deal

The Giants sent 2 young pitchers, Jerome Williams and Jeremy Accardo to the Cubs for harried and expensive reliever Latroy Hawkins yesterday. This is your prototype dump deal, with the Giants acquiring a short term value for future prospects.

In BABI, dump deals are more severe for the dumpers, though presumably supply and demand can change the ratio of today value in relation to tomorrow value. The typical ratio has been two today values for one good tomorrow value or two fair tomorrow values. Right now, there is only one dumper (Falkuhns), delayed temporarily owing to personal time required by Larry’s mother’s death. The word is no one else is ready to throw in the towel.

Do you think the Giants think Hawkins is ready to bust out as the intimidated set up guy that he was in the AL? Or have they just given up on Jerome? And it sure seemed they were high on Accardo a couple of weeks ago despite his not being quite ready for prime time. It was certainly a desperation move of a team that is playing for this year. I suspect that they felt they had the depth of pitching prospects in the minor leagues to afford to give these 2 guys up. This deal suggests we may see Matt Cain in the bigs this season.

To make room on the roster, they waived Matt Herges, who I saw Friday night in his last appearance as a Giant. The only thing Giant about his outing was the big 4 the Padres put up in the 5th inning against him, busting the game open. The just crushed the ball, even the guys who made outs. The guy has just stunk the past 2 years. Last year he gave up 90 hits in 65-1/3 innings. That’s .459. I heard Bruce Magowan say on KNBR that it was a sad day for Giants fans. Are you kidding me? Sad compared to seeing Felix go? Or Ledee? Get real, Big Bruce.

Jason Schmidt just struggled through the first, loading the bases, and then allowing an unearned run when Durham bobbled a grounder. Believe me, the Giants aren’t going anywhere unless this guy gets back to last season’s lights out level.

Meanwhile in BABI we have a new leader, the Lickers, who moved in front of us by a half point yesterday. And the Old Rips moved into 6th with 56.5 points, passing the Pounders and Any 9 this week. Lou and Mark are the leaders in the clubhouse in the race for BABI GM of the year. That deal between these two teams seems to be helping both teams, which suggests great foresight by both owners.

I see Barry’s Bats are running out of upside in hitting points, as they currently have 46 points. Derek Lee has been off the charts, challenging for a triple crown, and garnering stolen base number 9 today. Barry got some bad news about Prior yesterday, but he might have 2 closers for now with Wagner and Fuentes, and there’s a pretty good chance Gonzalez will be the man soon enough in Pittsburgh. Glavine pitched a good one today, but the Mets’ bullpen, worse than the Giants, gave up 5 to the Marlins in the 7th to blow it for him. Barry’s going to have to give up some of that hitting for pitching. There is a rumor that he’s sent out a Cartel-like email, offering “bargain” players for pitching. We didn’t get that email, so we can’t confirm it, but it was a subject of some derision at the poker game this week.

And this just in…the Dodgers have scored 3 in the first. Jayson Werth doubled one in, JD Drew walked and scored and Milton Bradley singled in another. Werth batting 2nd, Drew 3rd and Bradley 5th as originally advertised in spring training. It looks like a good capper game for the Pecklers today.

Why I Love Baseball

Warning: this is going to be a long one.

I’m told that when I was about 3 years old I would watch the then New York Giants (baseball) on TV with Bob Mantler, a close friend of my parents, and their only friend who was not a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. He had me constantly cheering for Willie Mays. I believe this, because I know Uncle Bobby was the kind of guy who would find it funny that he had taught my parents’ oldest son to root against their Dodgers, but I can’t remember any of it.

I started following professional sports for real when I was 8 years old. It was 1960 and the Yankees were the only baseball team in town. All of my friends were Yankee fans. And why not – they won all but 2 AL pennants from 1949-1964. Mickey, Whitey, Yogi, Roger…why would anyone root for anyone else. I remember vividly crying after that bastard Bill Mazeroski hit that homer in the bottom of the ninth in game 7. The following year was the great homerun chase, and until the Yankees got rid of Yogi after the 1964 season, why would any New York boy root for anyone else?

I started following the New York Giants (football) a couple of years later, and starting in 1962, went to the games in Yankee Stadium with my cousins Ken and Neil and my brother Noah. Like idiots, we gave up the season tickets after Ken graduated from high school in 1965, but I was hooked on football, and with the decline of the Yankees and the fetid odor of those stinky Mets of the early and mid-60’s, my interest in baseball faded.

A few years later I became hooked by those wonder Knick teams, and basketball became my passion. When I moved to San Francisco in 1974, the first thing I did was buy season tickets to the Warriors. Eighth row, foul line, $7 per seat. Low and behold, they won that miraculous championship that year, the greatest, most overlooked Cinderella story in professional sports history. I still have those tickets, though I don’t go anymore. I have friends who take the seats each season and I keep the seats for them. BTW, I have 7 games of 2 seats left for this coming season if anyone’s interested. They do cost a bit more than $7 per game. In fact, parking costs more than that now.

I started following baseball again in the mid-80’s, and by the time the Pecklers joined BABI, I was following it regularly. BABI has certainly heightened my interest, and Pac Bell (SBC) Park cemented it. Since the new park was built, I’ve increased the number of games I attend from around 4 or 5 per season to about 20. And when I retire, I expect that number will increase. I just love going to games in that park. And baseball is now again at the top of my sports passion list, just like when I was a little kid watching Mickey et.al.

I have a purpose in telling that story. Recently I realized what it is about baseball that I like so much. When you go to a baseball game, you can really spend quality time with the person or persons you are with. The game is always on, but it doesn’t demand your constant attention. It’s more in the background, allowing for your attention as necessary. It’s a slow, relaxed setting for spending time with a friend or friends, maybe the best setting I can think of.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine, Randy Cole, died of complications from brain cancer. He’s just a little older than me, leaving his wife and three teen age kids. Randy played tennis with the Doc and me at the Olympic Club regularly during the past few years. He was a wonderful friend and a great teammate, and his premature passing is a real tragedy.

The Doc and I share our tickets to the Giants, and by luck of the draw and disinterest by our seat partners, we ended up with both Opening Day and Opening Night tickets. We decided that Seth would take Randy to Opening Day, but a couple of days before, he went into the hospital. At the time, it turned out not to be too big a thing, and he was out of the hospital in time to go, but he decided it was just a little too soon. So I took him to Opening Night instead.

We got to spend 4 hours together. The game, against the Dodgers, went downhill quickly, but it became an amusing backdrop to a long, rambling conversation about sports and baseball and family and life and death and everything in between. It was the best quality time I had ever spent with Randy, and as it turned out, the last. I know he really enjoyed it, as did I, and I’ll remember that night whenever I think of him. In retrospect, I can’t think of a better setting for hanging out with him.

I am reminded of that because last night I hung out at the park with a new friend, Eugene Lesser, who wrote that piece I published here. We had never met before, but I’ve been reading his emails for a few years and we’ve been trading emails. Eugene used to write for the Examiner, wherein he published a column known as “Sportsbirthdays” which was just an excuse for Eugene to write about sports and life. Anyway, we shook hands for the first time under the clock in Willie Mays plaza, went over to check out the Juan Marichal statue (very cool), and then went inside to get to know each other. Like opening night, the game stunk, the Giants got bombed (I’m now 2-3 in person this season), and I had a great time. The Colonel was there too, having bought a ticket from our seat neighbors, and the three of us just chatted all night. So now I have a new friend.

I just can’t think of anything that creates a setting for hanging out with friends any better than baseball. That may be one of the appeals of golf. And certainly our poker games make for a great boys night out. But watching a baseball game at the park is just a great way to spend time with someone.

The national pastime.

Happy Anniversary

I have a few minutes before I head off for the long weekend, and so I should jot a few notes about Tyler Walker’s meltdown last night in the 9th. At least it wasn’t technically a blown save. He looked a lot more like the pre-closer Walker than the guy who’s been saving games the past week.

Unfortunately for his BABI owners, he was melting down in the background of a poker game attended by about half the guys in the league. So they all enjoyed poking fun at us, as if they were Dodger fans. There is an interesting balance in owning the closer of your local team where for a moment all forces are aligned. If he closes out the game, the Giants win, we get a save, and as Noel would say, “Life is good.”

Mr. Leaguer told me last night that if he hasn’t moved up in the standings by the All-Star break, he’ll consider beginning his dump. He’s got some serious dumpees, too. There is no way I’m going to deal with him and give him good keepers. If you guys want to set up his next dynasty, be my guests, but this is how he got Pujols, when Pujols was $3 in the first year of his contract. We’ll deal with him, but not in a total dump deal, unless he’s interested in Mohr-on. Him, he can have.

Speaking of last night’s poker game, our monthly poker party is the highlight of every month. We have been trying to schedule another “Poker-golf camp” up at Mark’s place in Sonoma, but getting everyone to agree on a weekend is a bitch. We had tentatively talked about the last weekend in June. I knew my wife had something planned for me during the day on that Saturday, but since most of us could make it, I called her and asked if I could go up for the weekend if I came back for her event.

She asked me when we were going up. I said probably Friday. She then announced, “but that’s our anniversary.” Uh-oh. So, knowing I was now in way deep, I said, “Oh, that’s right, forget about the weekend.” She said, not happy, “No, go ahead, go up there.”

And I said what had to be said. It’s a requirement. It’s not just the right thing to say, it’s the only thing to say: “No, I want to spend it with you.” Then she hung up on me.

The guys at the poker table were getting my half of this, so I filled them in on the pieces they missed. Guffaws all around. Noel said, “When I screw up bad, I’m going to use this story to get out of trouble.” So Poker-Golf camp is now scheduled for October, because camp without the Pooh Bah is just no fun.

Tonight I’ll be at the ball park with Eugene Lesser, who I posted a piece by last week. We’ve traded emails for several years, but we’ve never met. In fact, Wednesday night was the first time we ever spoke, on the phone to set the details. Eugene, I’m wearing my sort-of-orange aloha shirt. It should be interesting.

For What It's Werth

Let’s start today with the following item:

The Los Angeles Times reports that "Jayson Werth, whose 20-day rehab stint at Las Vegas ends today, was four for four with a homer and five RBIs on Tuesday."

The Dodgers were hinting that they would keep Werth down in the minors for a while until he started to demonstrate some power. That may still happen, but it sure looks like he’ll be back sooner than later, maybe even this week. It’s about time.

Now that the Falkuhns have declared the dump season to be officially open, having starting $1 outfielders who are performing may prove quite valuable. Interestingly, we offered him all over last year with no one biting until his homers hit double digits. He even hit a homer against the Giants on TV while we were gathered for the ill-fated rules meeting last year at 21st Amendment, but no one believed it.

Werth could be available in the right deal, but the Pecklers will be wary of being the dumpee to an extreme. While we want to finish first, as I’ve described early in the blog’s history, it is important to find a good balance between this year and next year. We expect to make deals with everyone, including contenders where dumping is not an issue.

Tyler Walker got save #7 yesterday, and since being anointed, has not allowed a base runner. I suspect this won’t last long (I was at the game where he gave up his last hits and runs, and he was awful), but it is exciting to enjoy it while the going is good. I suspect Lou feels the same way about Ryan Dempster, who has a chance now to keep his closer job despite the reemergence of Joe Borowski in the Cubs’ bullpen. I don’t believe Dempster either, but he’s had an awfully good week.

Mark couldn’t wait to get any kind of value in trade for Dempster as well as Turnbow. I wonder how Mark feels about that trade now? On the other hand, the Rips are now in 7th place at 51.5 points, ahead of the Pounders and up from the low thirties and last place just a few weeks ago. It’s actually quite a phenomenal turnaround, considering the awful injuries (Benitez, Rolen) the team has endured.

Meanwhile, despite hardly hitting the Doc’s weight lately, we’ve held onto 1st place for a little while. There are 6 teams today over 59 points, and it should be wide open for the forseeable future. Plus The Leaguers are inching up. They are still in 9th with 44 points, but those pitching numbers don’t stink quite so badly. The 5 ERA is now 4.24 and lined up to move ahead of some teams. The 1.5+ WHIP is now at 1.415 and getting close to passing some teams as well. Gagne is back and ready to move the team up the saves list. We still have over 2/3 of the season to go, so don’t count this team out. They are looming…

The Lickers have 40 pitching points. That is amazing, given they kept 1 pitcher (Mesa), and took a lot of chances with starters. In the next week I hope to take a good look at this team to figure out if they are for real and if they can sustain the start.

As for our Gigantes (as their uniforms last weekend represented), Schmidt is back, and for once there is some good news. The team is back at an even .500, 4-1/2 games back of the first place Padres. The Dodgers are in for 3, with our Tomko going up against Wilson Alvarez, in what is his first start of the season.

I remember a great Alvarez moment from 2003. I was at SBC (maybe it was still Pac Bell then) for the last game of the season, with the Pecklers and the Falkuhns and the 4nak8ers battling for second place money. It came down to the ratio point between us and the Falkuhns, and they had Alvarez pitching against the Giants right in front of me. He had pitched lights out all season, but that day the Giants sent him packing in the second inning. They did it with little ball, singles and walks, and guys were spinning around the bases like a Waring blender. I was dancing and screaming knowing that I was watching the Falkuhns melting down before my eyes. It was one of those rare times when real baseball and fantasy baseball were perfectly aligned.

Ken H., I’m setting the over/under on Bonds regular season games played this season at 50. The usual bet. Pick which side you want at the poker game tomorrow night.

Save and a Haircut, 2 Bits

I was insulted by one of you the other day. I received an email from Ken Harootunian over the weekend thanking me for posting his comments. And then, he added, “sorry to rip Walker in my comments.”

Well, take your “sorry” and shove it. I don’t need your stinkin’ sorrys. Most of you have known me for years. Do I seem to be a thin skinned kind of guy? Do you think I can’t take it? I dish it out, and I can take it. I can even take it when you’ve been dead wrong.

Yesterday the Pecklers got our 3rd save from Tyler $32 Walker this week. I don’t know how long this is going to last, particularly with the Giants being so mediocre, but we’re happy to ride the hot hand. And yesterday’s save was special, because in that game we got both the win (Lowry, finally) and the save (Walker). We should have had two of those combos yesterday. Pedro left the game with a 3-1 lead, but the Mets’ pen, even more feeble than the Giants’, couldn’t hold it for Looper. No win, no save.

We don’t consciously try to pair up a starter and a closer, but a win and a save in the same game is definitely one of the cool things to see in the morning box scores. We’re hoping Tyler Walker finishes off a whole bunch of games for both Lowry and Tomko. Of course, with the Giants, we almost never have to wait until we read the paper the next day to get the news.

So the Giants took the last 2 from the A’s. It appears the Giants are just good enough to play slightly better than .500 against the mediocre teams. Barry’s not going to be back for another 75 games or so, though Schmidt is going to give it a whirl tonight. I saw Herges pitch on Saturday, and he was throwing some pretty nasty stuff up there. Let’s hope it wasn’t a mirage. It is starting to look like one hell of a managing job by Felipe if the Giants take the division.

We got a message from Larry.net beating me to the punch on something I was going to write today. Larry insists that interleague baseball has got to go, because it takes way too long to look at all those box scores in the morning. I could not agree more. American League stats should be published in a separate newspaper, not in the same box score.

The fact is, we’re all geeks, every one of us. But at least I don’t participate in an AL fantasy league and I absolutely refuse to look at the AL side of the page. Do you want to know who plays for the Tigers? I DON’T KNOW. And I don’t want to know. Give me a couple of weekly updates on what Ichiro is doing (he should be in the NL) and I’m good.

You guys, like the Doc and George and Mr. Leaguer, who are in AL fantasy leagues are all super-geeks. My wife keeps yelling at me, “Get a life.” Well, guys, get a life. Larry, your decision to get out of BARB was the first great step back toward a normal life. And today we start NL only games again. I can breathe again.

More On Mohr-on

Let’s start with the following bit of news on Pickled favorite, Dustan Mohr-on:

According to the Rocky Mountain News, "Dustan Mohr batted cleanup for only the second time this season, while Cory Sullivan batted second for the second time. Hurdle said he hopes to give a day off in Pittsburgh to Todd Helton, who has started every game at first base. Sullivan went 3-for-4 after entering the game with only one hit in his previous 13 at-bats."

What this report omitted is that Mr. Cleanup Hitter struck out all four times he came up. It’s getting pretty clear that the Giants did the right thing by getting rid of this knucklehead, and it’s looking like the Pecklers’ trade of Jim Edmonds for Chad Tracy and Mohr-on is questionable. Actually, Tracy at $5 has closer stats to Edmonds ($29) than you realize:

Tracy…… 6-22-0-.269
Edmonds 7-24-1-.290

I still think Tracy has a big upside, particularly at the price. He’s a no brainer keeper next year, possibly extendable to $10. Edmonds is also a no brainer keeper, but I doubt George would extend him to $34, particularly given his age and injury history. I’ll grant him this, though: he’s one hell of a baseball player.

Here is an item in our team notes at TQStats I found interesting:

After Tyler Walker earned his fourth save on Wednesday, Giants manager Felipe Alou had positive things to say about his de facto closer, according to the San Jose Mercury News. "He's the closest thing to a closer that I have used" (since Armando Benitez's injury), Alou said. "There's something about him.

Yeah, there certainly is something about him. He’s had 9 outs in a row, all fly balls and line drive outs. Not one ground ball in those 3 saves during the past week. Felipe, what I think you are sensing is that he may suck less than the rest of that feckless bullpen staff you’ve been overworking. (That's a lifetime first -- using "feckless" in a sentence.)

Brett Tomko had another decent outing with no run support. The Giants miss Barry in the worst way. I noticed that AJ Pierzynski has 7 homers already, which is pretty close to his total for last year. I also noticed his teammate on the Chisox, Scott Podsednik already has 24 steals. If you’ll remember, the Giants made a strong pitch to the Brewers for him in their search for a fleet footed centerfielder.

Thursday save for the D-Backs: Jose Valverde. Hmmmm….what happened to that Bruney idea? Speaking of saves, is anybody thinking of biting on Larry’s offer of Kolb? And now the Lickers are offering up their strange assortment of “closers”: Mesa (suddenly Mesa again), Dempster (semi-temporary and scary) and Turnbow (well, maybe they are not really offering him, but the other guys). We have absolutely no idea where Turnbow has found these stats. There is nothing in his background that suggests he’s this year’s Brad Lidge.

Finally, does anyone have any steals for trade. Heh, heh, heh. I’m starting to hold my breath right now….

Bombed

On Tuesday afternoon, I took a look at the MLB scores on Yahoo and I saw an ominous sign: 2nd inning, Phily ahead of St. Louis 7-2. This was ominous because Suppan hadn’t pitched in a while and I had a bad feeling that he was no longer pitching that day. Sure enough, drilling down to the box score, Suppan had started and was gone with a string of ugly numbers.

To make matters worse, Noah Lowry was getting ready to start in Colorado. Tuesday had the possibility of being one of those days that takes you weeks to overcome. Driving home, I flipped on the radio to hear the Giants game. I really recommend that if you have a pitcher starting in Colorado, don’t listen to the game. It cannot be good. As soon as I flipped on the game, Lowry gave up back to back jimmy jacks. The only good thing about that was that Dustan Mohr-on hit one of them. Sure enough, it was downhill from there for Noah, who got roughed up.

When I know it’s ugly, it takes a while for me to look at the BABI standings, and it’s even harder to log onto blogger to write here. I didn’t have much writing energy on Wednesday, particularly after I got a weird email from the Elder Barry. It was the BABI standings showing him in first, Cappers in second, Hobo in third, us in fourth and the Busch Leaguers in fifth. I could hardly look at it, because though it seemed a little strange, I had been expecting the worst after that horrible pitching day. What I missed completely was that it was dated 5/17/04. (In retrospect, I’m shocked that we were in 4th at any time last season).

I finally gathered the strength to look at the standings today and there we were, still atop the list. Yeah, the ERA was pretty beat up, and the ratio was no longer sub 1.2, but it wasn’t quite as bad as I thought. And we had save #1 from the $32 man, the Giants semi-official closer of the moment, Sky Walker. Ken, you’ve been out of town. He’s the closer for now. It’s not a committee thing until he fails (ok, that’s pretty likely). But until this past week, it was still a complete mystery because no one including Felipe wanted to consider Herges, Brower has sucked the big one, and everyone else is a joke. That probably includes Walker, but come on, he’s official for now. You might bet that he’ll fail, but he’s being given the chance.

Many of you know Connie, my office manager, and a member of the fabled Nut Crunchers of PEFA. She’s been sitting around with nothing to do lately, so she caught up on my blog. She told me that she cried when she read Ken’s story. Now it’s pretty easy to make Connie cry. You just have to apply enough schmaltz. But frankly, I couldn’t blame her. Every time I think about keeping my wallet next to my balls, I choke up. Nice story, Ken.

So as I get ready to post this, our other Giant pitcher, Brett Tomko is pitching in Colorado. I refuse to listen. Connie just came in to report that he wiggled out of the first after loading the bases. Hopefully he hit 3 batters. I can’t wait for the Giants to get out of that town.

From the Late Mr. Harootunian

OK, I’m finally back home from Philly, after 3 weeks of deep immersion at the Wharton School of Business at the UPenn. For those of you who don’t know, I started a new job, representing Wharton here in SF. Great job, great school, and an awesome brick office—the old Folger’s Coffee Factory on Howard and Main—stumbling distance to our Downtown Ballyard. As Noel says: “Life is Good!”

Spending 3 weeks in Philly can do strange things to a person. I have accordingly stockpiled as many Phillie hitter as I can find (4!) on my roster, including a rejuvinated Endy Chavez with a new lease (or is it leash) on life, and am ready to dive back into the world of BABI!
Fortunately, I was away for the bulk of the Giants no-closer-by-committee melodrama. $32 for Tyler Sky Walker....no comment.

I dumped Christensen back into the waiver pool this morning, as 3 games in Colorado this week is just too scary...especially after running through the Colorado bullpen earlier this year, like I did last year with the woeful AZ bullpen, chasing that phantom called “Closer” and blowing up my ERA and Ratio along the way. Witasick might just be the guy in CO, as Fuentes is mere a lefty, and being a lefty myself, if your name ain’t Wagner, it just ain’t happening in the 9th against all those right handed biffers. But, remember, you can’t spell Witasick with out the last four letters...so Fuentes is probably good for a stretch of away games for a while.

OK, per Pooba’s request, my first baseball game.

I grew up in No. NJ, and Dad was a Giants fan with stories of Ott and Hubbell from his childhood still fresh in my mind. In fact, he remembers Hubbell walking past his store in NY one day in the early 1960’s, with his left arm a good hand longer than his right arm. Dad presumed it was from all those screw-jies he threw in his regular 131+ pitch outings, every 4th day, over his 15-20 years in the Bigs.

S0 my first game was a Giants game at Shea. Back before expansion and interleague play, there was two 3-game series per visiting team per year, and I could always count on the Giants coming to town around the 4th week of May, and the second week of August. In fact, through the Mitchell/Clark/Williams years in the late 80’s, those dates still stuck in my mind each year, so you didn’t schedule anything else, ‘cause there were only 6 times a year to see the Giants, and as a rabid fan, I would not consider missing any of the 6 each year.

Why was I a Giants fan? Well, the easy answer is that Dad was. But, there was one other BIG reason for it. At my first baseball game ever, on May 22, 1969, as a 9 year old, I got to sit near first base and watched #44 practice his craft. He was tall, and I was tall (for my age); he was left handed, and I was left handed. He played first base (I first referred to him as Scoop—not Stretch, by the way he played), and I played first base in Tiny Tim. That’s where the similarities ended, but 3 out of 5 ain’t bad... .

So, it wasn’t hard to identify with the player with the name “McCovey” on his back. His last name alone was almost as cool as his confident demeanor and the way he fielded his position.
But, of course, he could swing the stick, too. On 5/22/69, he hit a mamouth home run that was so high up near the right field foul pole, and so far, that it certainly must have left the ballyard, and headed to the only thing bigger than the man himself—the huge metal globe from the nearby World’s Fair grounds.

I don’t remember who actually won the game, and while my Dad kept telling me to watch Mays in Center, #24’s best days were behind him, and he certainly was not as impressive as #44 on that day, . McCovey was a true “Giant” in the literal sense of the word, especially to an aspiring 9 year old.

But what I do remember quite clearly is our trip to the game, as it was not just Dad and me in the car, but 5 of my best buddies coming with us, because 5/22 was my birthday, and in our neighborhood, Dads took the kids to the ballyard on birthdays, and everyone had a good time (and in my case, I was fortunate, because I could tell that even Dad was having a good time with all of us, despite the hassles of trying to keep us in line for 9 innings).

Of course, Dad, being a Bronx native, had to impart a lot of advice for us 9-year olds, about the dangers of the City (by the way, there’s only one “City” for you native San Franciscans). As we were driving into the game, he was imploring us to use the buddy system (without calling it that, of course), and also told us to stick close together, and keep him in sight at all times. All perfectly reasonable to us—nothing we hadn’t heard before on a field trip to the Museum of Natural History.

Then, he couldn’t leave well enough alone and had to offer one additional piece of advice to us all. He said: “Boys there are pickpockets out there, and they will try to steal your wallets out of your back pockets. So put your wallets in your front pockets and keep you money by your balls.” There was a 1.5 second lag and dead silence, and then all of my friends, in unison, burst out in laughter, saying: “Keep you money by your balls”—Mr. Harootunian said ‘Balls”!!). Pretty racy stuff for 9 year olds to hear, especially from an adult...especially from a DAD!

I’m sure Dad got some “feedback” from some of my friends’ parents the next day, as none of us could ever forget the “balls” reference. I certainly can’t.

Dad still lives in the same house in No. NJ. He’ll be 80 next year, and still roots for the Giants. He came out to SF for Opening Day of the Ballyard in 2000, and we had a great time together—a major highlight of my adult years. I’m really lucky to have had such a good friend for these 45 years. Thanks Dad, for the great memories, then and now.

Simply FAABulous

The Pecklers finally spent some of our FAAB budget, shelling out $32 for the Giants’ Closer du Jour, Tyler Walker. Like every move we’ve ever made, the Doc and I analyzed it inside and out all week.

I’ve had a long standing rule that when I see a player excel with my own eyes, it gets special weight over seeing something in a box score. I remember two years ago seeing Brian Fuentes strike out Barry Bonds with 3 hellacious pitches, and the sirens in my head went off saying that this guy is going to be a closer some day. I saw Walker pitch at SBC on Wednesday, and frankly, he stunk. At that moment I complained (again) that I could not believe the Giants kept him and sent down Foppert.

But there he was, on TV the next night, closing it out against the Astros. And again on Friday. Two clean innings in two days and two saves. The clincher was on Sunday, with the Giants being blown out, and everyone in the bullpen except Walker pitched. Felipe has been hinting he’s his guy. Clearly in a league in which the saves category is so tight, if you can get a guy who will get even 15 saves without giving up a player, you’ve got to take a chance. So the question was not if, but how much?

It’s early in the season, so a track record on values is not clear. The most interesting previous bid was when we did not get Todd Jones, the Marlins closer for 3 weeks, despite bidding $21. The Rips bid $24 and Hobo also bid $21. This was for a temporary guy. Walker could be THE guy. All of the other bids on Giant closers were purely speculative. Felipe has been really closed mouthed on the subject, though in today’s paper there a note that Walker is the guy for now. With his horrible numbers, I still don’t know why Felipe has chosen him, but it does appear he has. Will he fail? Maybe. But with a sub-1.2 ratio, we can afford a few ugly innings as long as he gets a few saves.

So we started in the mid 20’s, and simply kept raising our number until we were happy that if someone else got him, we could live with it. We picked 32 because we thought someone might bid 31 (a buck over the round number) and since we lose all ties, we threw in an extra buck. We figured the league would not be happy with us getting him (hey, you might not like our team, but we’re in first and we still had the full FAAB to spend), so that might cause teams to bid extra. I would not have been shocked if someone bid $60 on him, and it was exciting to check and see if we got him. First I checked the successful bids and there we were.

Then I checked the unsuccessful bids. How much did we waste? Among the losing bids was the Pounders 25 bid. Not bad, not bad at all, and a good team to keep him away from. Of course the Cartel had a bid of 17, as did the Old Rips (10) and Any 9 (9). I’m surprised there were only 5 bids. He’s local and he’s semi-annointed. Everyone in the league saw him. Of course, maybe I wasn’t the only one to see him last Wednesday afternoon.

Duaner Sanchez, best name in the NL, is now gone from our roster. I’m not a fan of lefty middle-relievers no matter how good their stuff is. They don’t get to close. If anyone is interested in a $1 Ray King, though we’re not going to waive him, he could be very available. And the clincher on Duaner – the Doc saw a note that the Dodgers might have him start. Ouch. No thanks. We thank him for his efforts while with the team and wish him well for the future.

Meanwhile, don't we all wish the Giants simply signed Dustin Hermanson (8 saves, 0.00 ERA) for this year? We sure do: we had him with a $2-06 contract. Coulda saved $32 in FAAB money.

Lesser Charges

I've been on the email list of Eugene Lesser for several years. Eugene is a wonderful, funny, emotional writer who likes to speak his mind about sports (mostly local) and politics (mostly national) and whatever the hell else is on his mind. He reminds me of...well, that would be me.

Last week Eugene circulated his thinking about Jason Schmidt's injury. I think he's on the same track as Larry relating to the causes, but I really liked his commentary and asked if I could repost it here.

I'm going to help Eugene set up a blog soon so his stuff can be available to all. In the meantime, anyone interested in getting on his email list, which I recommend, can email him at sportsbirthdays@sbcglobal.net.

Lesser Charges
May 10, 2005

I’m reading about a classic game played yesterday, Santa Clara beating USF, 2-1, on a two-out, two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning. It was only the fifth game ever played at Santa Clara’s spanking new Steve Schott stadium. Bit of an ego trip by Steve but hey.

A counter balance to ego, however, was provided by the game’s hero, one Eric Newton, who said he was sitting on a fastball, got one from USF pitcher Scott Cousins, and hit it over the left field wall. Interviewed after the dramatic finish, Newton, setting a modern record for humility, said, “It just happened to be me.” Now that’s a team player. Cousins, who was one pitch away from a complete game, a shutout and a win, instead took the heartbreaking loss. He started the ninth with a 1-0 lead (the Dons scored a cheap run early in the game that looked like it was going to hold up) and got the leadoff batter to fly out. It was the first ball Santa Clara had hit out of the infield. Then, when any base runner represented a major threat, Cousins walked the next batter. That’s when we unfurl the big red flag.

Let’s freeze the action for a pitch count. According to my highly accurate pitch-count-o-meter, when Newton stepped into the box to face Cousins, I estimate that Cousins had thrown a minimum of 135 pitches. I accounted for outs (26), strikeouts (10) and hits (5) but only the one walk in the ninth inning because there was no further information about the game. If Cousins had walked, say, three batters, which is very good for nine innings (actually 8 2/3), it would add 15 pitches to the 138, raising the pitch-count from high to unconscionable.

When Cousins walked that guy in the ninth he definitely had to leave—to a standing ovation, I would think. He had thrown a gem. That he couldn’t quite finish it is no deal at all. It gives the closer a chance to come in and participate in this great win. Remember, this is not professional ball; participation is important. But coach Nino Giarratano was determined to ride the back of his ace like it was Game Seven in the World Series and all the money was on the table and Cousins had the whole off-season to rehab whatever arm problems he might pick up from overthrowing.

But it ain’t professional ball, where it’s understood that no one gives a shit about your arm. It’s college ball, where most of the players are hoping for a future in baseball. After the game, Giarratano said, “You can’t walk guys in the ninth inning or bad things will happen to you. And they did.” He neglected to add that they did because he blew the one and only move he had to make during the whole game. 90% of a manager’s job is to make pitching changes. (Making out the lineup is 8.5% of the job and calling bunt, steal, etc is the remaining 1.5%., if you really must know.) If you can’t take your starting pitcher, who has thrown a lot of pitches, out of a 1-0 game in the ninth inning after he walks somebody, well, you won’t be on my short list of managerial candidates for the new expansion team I’ve recently purchased.

I’m certain that Giarratano has a theory that throwing a lot of pitches doesn’t mean much, that it’s all about how the guy is throwing or how often he throws or what kind of arm he has, you know, genetically, or several other mitigating factors. There’s a great chasm on this debate. Actually, there is no debate on this subject, which I’m trying to rectify here. Giarratano managed poorly not because he let Cousins throw a lot of pitches (though that was bad), but because he couldn’t see what was happening in front of him. He didn’t understand that Cousins’ walking that batter showed that he had lost his stuff, was tired, whatever, and was no longer effective enough at such a critical point in the game. A fresh arm was called for and, because USF is one of the elite college baseball teams on the west coast, I’m sure they had several talented arms in their pen. Newton was hitless in three previous trips to the plate, including two strikeouts. But, see, in the ninth inning he saw that same once-dominant pitcher for the fourth time.

The quotable Giarratano also said after the game, “…We’ve got to be able to close those games out if we want to win a championship.” Sounds like the manager is blaming the starting pitcher? If so, he’d be the first to admit it in public. But what else could he mean by that statement? What else, short of bringing in a relief pitcher, could have happened to prevent “closing” that game? Answer: Nothing! Before the pitch, USF was ahead. After that pitch, USF was behind and the game was over. So yeah, he’s blaming his starting pitcher for giving up the home run, for not going all the way, for not “closing” the game. You know, like a reliever, except that he’s a starter.

So here’s a coach who made a horrible decision to leave in his fading starter, then blames the starter for losing the game. That’s what pisses me off more than the pitch count. Giarratano is not unusual; little leagues are riddled with them. Is there still any question as to why so many arms burn out before they even reach the majors or shortly after, or why there is an alarming dearth of outstanding big league pitchers?

Again, it took one of the ballplayers to rise to the occasion by showing great character. After the game, Cousins said, “We have to come out of here with our heads high. Just one mistake by me cost us the game.” There was only one mistake in that game, and it was made by the manager. Cousins taking the fall for the coach is poignant. He and Eric Newton make me realize that it’s young people who are going to have to show the way. Capitalism, the big deal about winning, about having a big dick, a big car, about having more money, better stuff, better-looking girlfriends hasn’t quite corrupted everyone and everything. Not yet.

As though to prove my thesis that no one in professional ball gives a shit about your arm (although every single person in professional ball would say that they do!), when Jason Schmidt (now on the DL) threw 131 pitches on April 26th, no one blinked. C’mon Felipe, that sucked. As in politics, the local yokel thinks those in charge know more than he does. Wrong! I, Johnny Layman, know for instance that you don’t let your pitcher, let alone your ace, your one and only trump card, throw 131 pitches in April. If you violate this law, “bad things will happen to you.” In re: Jason Schmidt and his "dead arm," bad things are happening to the Giants right now so perhaps it’s time to re-assess some old canards about what’s good for arms and what bad for arms, and for once try to err on the side of caution. Blockheads!

The Nick Giarratano Method is the prevailing orthodoxy, but signs of heresy are always popping up. On the very same day as the USF fiasco, the Cleveland Indians manager (I don’t feel like looking it up, okay?) took Kevin Millwood out after eight full innings, a 3-0 lead and 99 pitches. That’s pretty cool. Hadn’t even given up a single walk. Bobby Cox did that routinely with Greg Maddux, even after seven innings, 75 pitches and a 2-0 lead. Terry Francona is similar and that’s about the only ones I can think of. It’s hard to say who the biggest culprits are--little league coaches, high school coaches or college coaches. Whether mad-dog types or nice guys, the damage they do is frightening.

Noel's First Game

I was having lunch with Mark and Josh last week when Josh started talking about the first time he went to a ballgame. Josh saw the Yanks, and Mark went to the Giants. I sat there and listened – embarrassed. No Giants or Yanks for me. I grew up in upstate New York, Rochester to be exact. That is about as Upstate as you can get. The North Pole was closer than any Professional sports team. Technically we had the Buffalo Bills in Football and the Braves in Basketball. The Braves are now the Clippers, and the Bills were drafting O.J. with the first pick in the 1969 draft. These were not good teams.

Rochester did have a AAA minor league team, the Red Wings. Their parent club was the Orioles. My first game was 1970 (about 9 years old) at Silver Stadium. We had box seats. My father took us. I was with two of my older brothers. The Wings had great teams. Doug Decinces, Al Bumbry, Don Baylor, Bobby Grich, Johnny Oats, Richie Coggins, Enos Cabel, (we called him Enos StirngBenos) and the manager, for all you Giants fans, was Joe Altobelli. Man, the Orioles used to stock those teams. We were always in first or second every year.

Silver Stadium might have held 5,000 people – not a bad seat in the house. The box seats had painted name plates on them. I thought that was the coolest thing. My Pops worked for Cutler Mail Chute. I thought he was very important. A couple of things that I can remember like yesterday: getting Italian Sausages that were cooked on huge barbeques. We ate so many of those greasy, nasty, bad boys – and they were great. The other thing that I will never forget was my father giving each of us a sip of Genesee Beer, with the obligatory “don’t tell your mother”. Man, was that beer good. I felt like I was 13.

I don’t remember much of the game that day. It was more the peripheral things. Fans chanting “We want a hit”, foul balls, arguing with my brothers about how to keep score, peanuts, Pops telling us about Mickey Mantle. What a day. Much like Josh and Seth my father also passed away when I was young. I love taking my daughters to the see the Giants.

Josh, thanks for reminding me of that. Life is good!

You Ignorant Sluts

We’re still hanging around in first place, thanks to a homer binge during the last couple of weeks. Last night both Cliff Floyd and Milton Bradley hit numbers 9 and 10, to move us into the home run lead. I can't remember in 12 years in BABI ever having the home run lead.

More interesting, I looked at the projected ending standings in Toys, and they are now projecting us to finish first. I’ve never thought much of their projections, but I guess I could be wrong. The Busch Leaguers are now projected to finish third, with a big jump in their points. For the moment, though, their starting pitching has them languishing in 9th, up 5.5 points this week to 43.5. The most interesting stat: 9 wins. Dontrelle has 7. Chris Hammond has 4.

There are 7 teams over 56 points. The trading season hasn’t really begun, as we have yet to see our first dump deal. Having lots of teams in the hunt is the best cure for dump deals as there is more competition for fewer players. So the dumpers should be careful to get maximum value in their trades, which means they must make a point of taking their time and shopping at all of the stores, particularly when they are selling steals and saves.

Early in the life of this blog I wrote about the great pitching staff of the Bums, which has really soured. This season they have a grand total of 7 pitching points. Schmidt and Wood are on the DL, Penny just got back, so nothing is new in that regard for the Bums. Jake Peavy is still lights out.

But Vicente Padilla? I was most stunned at the auction when Willy Taveras went for $19, though now that I’ve seen him the past two days I realize what a bargain that is. I thought the most outrageous purchase, though, was Vicente Padilla at $10. He was on the DL, possibly never to pitch again. Unfortunately for the Bums, he has. ERA: 9.74. We didn’t want him at any price, but a buck, maybe two – I get it, particularly with the early FAAB allowing us to fix mistakes. But when the Bums said $8, someone actually said $9? And were they disappointed when Doug said $10? Or were they just playing a nuclear version of chicken? Whoever said $9 on Padilla, stand up and explain yourself!

And sorry, Doug, to keep blasting you, but why would anyone want Paul Wilson, a mediocre inning eater in one of the hittingest parks in baseball? When someone bailed you out by saying $3, my computer flashed the message “Danger, Will Robinson”, but you said $4 anyway. Let me wrap this thought up by complimenting you on the best starting pitching staff I’ve ever seen in BABI – last year.

The Old Rips were languishing for a while in last place, but have suddenly recovered to 47 points despite the injuries to Benitez and now Scott Rolen. Mark is leading the league handily in transactions, and has already spent $103 of his FAAB budget. I really like early FAAB, because at least he’s trying to improve his team. And I just noticed…he’s got Ray Sadler, and so he got that homer Sadler hit off Lowry. Good for him.

There is a rumor that Larry has moved Kolb to Hobo, though I’ve seen no notice of a trade posted. When I was logged onto Larry.Net last Tuesday, the first call came at 10:57 to “sort of” pitch Kolb to us. Hey, we’re interested. But how can you call a guy for a trade at 10:57, and then throw out names like Floyd and Bradley? I’m just teasing Larry, because I think he expected to do that deal with Hobo last week, and was surprised when at the last second before the week’s deadline it didn’t happen. I did enjoy hearing from him, though, because Larry is one of the funniest guys in the Universe, even if he’s a little wishy-washy in his political opinions. Those of you not privy to the war between Larry and the Colonel are missing a debate reminiscent of the ones on Saturday Night Live in which Dan Ackroyd would start out “Jane, you ignorant slut.”

We have 4 pitchers starting today, and it could get ugly. Tomko goes up against Clemens. Pedro goes up against Mulder. Hampton goes up against Odalis Perez. And Webb pitches in Colorado. It's like sitting on a razor blade.

Treading Water

It’s time to catch up on our Giants. They lost the last two games at home this week to a truly mediocre Pirates team followed by a couple of wins in Houston.

I got to see the Wednesday afternoon game, which was a real disappointment. Our young Mr. Lowry gave up just one hit in the first 6 innings, a homer to Adam Sandler’s brother. He was in total control. He got in trouble in the 7th, but appeared to stem the tide when Moises made a diving catch for the 2nd out. Then a 2 out single followed by a Ty Wigginton jimmy jack into the centerfield bleachers made it 4-2 for the bad guys. Noah finished the 7th, having only given up 4 hits. It was another excellent outing marred by one bad inning. My record at SBC: 2-2.

In Houston they’ve gotten a couple of pretty good pitching performances the past two days from Brad Hennessey (likely up for a while with Schmidt on the DL) and Kirk Reuter, who has been improving with every outing. Just in time, too, because with just 4 bonafide starters, it appears the bullpen is headed for a lot of innings over the next month. The Giants are threatening to use Fassero et. al. again, possibly on a regular basis.

They are not giving into the desire to bring up Matt Cain so we can see what he’s really got. His current Fresno stats are indicative of a pitcher with monster stuff who is not quite ready for prime time. 3-1, 40 IP, 24 H, 24 BB, 47 K, 3.79 ERA. BTW, scanning the team stats, I see Todd Linden hitting .306/.435/.629 with 10 homers and 10 doubles in 124 AB’s. This kid can hit. What are the Giants waiting for? I also see Jerome sporting a 10+ ERA, having given up 29 hits in 15 innings. Let’s remember that the Pounders paid about $150 for this kid last season (the Nomar fiasco).

So the Giants are in 4th, a game over .500, going nowhere fast. Milton Bradley still looks like a potential MVP, driving in 5 more last night with 2 homers. You’ve got to hand it to DePodesta…that Dodger team is way better than it appeared at the beginning of the season. And don’t forget, they are missing Penny and Gagne, and J.D. Drew hasn’t really started to hit yet.

Last night I got to see the premier of Bob Costas’ new HBO show, Costas Now. Excellent. Particularly good was the tragic story about Tony Conigliaro. But the highlight of the show was a roundtable discussion with John McEnroe, Chris Collinsworth and Charles Barkley (who also did a segment last night on Bill Maher’s show). It was absolutely vintage Sir Charles, who said Lance Armstrong wasn’t a great athlete because he’s “just ridin’.”

He also discussed playing in the NBA finals against Chicago and realizing after game 2 that there was another player on earth who really was better than him. I once saw Barkley put up 56 in a playoff game against the Webber-led Warriors in a game that both teams were over 100 at the end of 3 quarters. Mullin finished in the 40’s, but Barkley was flat out unstoppable. In fact, it occurs to me that this was the last playoff game that the Warriors have played. Game 3 against Phoenix, which Phoenix won for a sweep. I wonder if he would say that was the best game he ever played. I’ve been going to NBA games since the late ‘60’s, and I have to say I consider him to be among the top players I’ve ever seen, arguably the best small forward ever.

Pickled Pecklers, Meat League Version

The Meat League is a different animal. There are nine teams. All players in both leagues are available to be drafted. Each team takes 1 player at each hitting position, plus a DH (any hitter), plus 3 starting pitchers (identified as first, second and third pitcher) and a relief pitcher. That’s it. It is, essentially, an all-star league.

Stats are not combined. Each position is evaluated against each other and ranked. So the catchers are ranked in each hitting category and earn points based on how they did against the other catchers. Each first pitcher (the first one drafted by each team) is ranked against only each first pitcher. And so on. So the highest draft picks are not necessarily the best players, but the players with the biggest margin at their position against the other players.

One more thing: there is limited ability to fix your team. At the all-star break you can make 3 changes, which are retroactive to the beginning of the year. If you have 4 injured players, you are screwed. So you have to be careful drafting players with histories of being injured a lot.

Here is the Pickled Pecklers for 2005:

C – Jason Varitek
1B – Mike Sweeney
2B – Craig Biggio
3B – Edgardo Alfonso
SS – Miguel Tejada
1st OF – Manny Ramirez
2nd OF – Jose Guillen
3rd OF – Milton Bradley
DH – David Ortiz
1st P – Rich Harden
2nd P – AJ Beckett
3rd P – Mark Prior
RP – Jason Isringhausen

We picked 4th, and we took Tejada over A-Rod (who went 5th) because we thought he was way better than the other shortstops in a category that was not deep. We think A-Rod is a better hitter, but there are more 3rd basemen available.

We took Varitek with our 3rd pick because we thought there was a big drop off after I-Rod and Lopez and Varitek. We did like Ramon Hernandez as a sleeper, and when he went undrafted we were sorry we took Varitek there because we could have gotten a better 1st pitcher at that point. We also could have taken Brian Roberts here, but we just didn’t quite believe.

We threw away 1st pitcher, taking Harden when we preferred Burnett. Randy Johnson and Clemens had just been taken, and we decided to take Burnett in the next round as a 2nd pitcher, because no matter who we took, he would be no good as 1st pitcher. Harden has a couple of categories he’s good in, so he’ll get some points, but that may be a position we fix at the all-star break.

We got Mark Prior as the 26th pitcher (out of 27 taken) very late in the draft. It’s an incredible bargain, particularly if Dusty doesn’t burn out his arm. And we’re very happy with the wackiest outfield in history – Ramirez, Guillen and Bradley. That’s going to be some clubhouse atmosphere.

With the first accounting out, we’re in first place. No special stars, but good numbers across the board. We probably should have taken A-Rod.

A Classic Blog Entry

(Note: I wrote this yesterday, but Blogger went down for repairs and I could not post until today.)

This entry is sort of blog-like.

Most blogs are a compendium of links to various web sites that interest the blogger, who will create a link and make some kind of comment on the item of interest. What makes the medium so current is that the software allows you to open your blog, link to what you want, make a comment and post it on the web instantly and easily. So if you look at most blogs out there, they tend to be lots of short bursts of information, generally provided by someone else.

This has never interested me. I want to be an original content provider. This blog tends to be a series of longer items, more like newspaper columns than blog entries. But once in a while I’m going to see something out there that speaks mostly for itself. Here is one of those items.

I got this information from Larry.Net. You can’t find Larry.Net on the web anywhere. Some of us are lucky to be connected to Larry.Net. Larry.Net is the boss of the Falkuhns updating us on the state of our and his world via telephone. It’s damned entertaining, because Larry’s one of the funniest guys in the universe. It’s a little less entertaining for Mark and me during the first couple of weeks of April, but for the most part we enjoy our lifetime subscriptions to Larry.Net.

Today I logged on to Larry.Net. We shared a couple of phone calls and I got a couple of messages from him. The focus was the way Felipe Alou overpitched Jason Schmidt. He had a problem arm in the off-season, but he started off the season well while being restricted to about 100 pitches per outing. Until a couple of weeks ago, when Felipe let him throw 131 pitches. He hasn’t been the same since.

And today, according to Larry.Net and apparently now the rest of the web, Jason Schmidt was put on the DL.

Maybe we need to look a little deeper into how tight those baseballs are being wound this year. This is the current conspiracy theory being advanced on Larry.Net as you read this.

Mark's First Baseball Bet

This isn’t about my first baseball game, but it was my first significant bet that I made that quasi-involved baseball. I don’t remember the exact time frame, but I think I was in the 5th or 6th grade, so I was maybe 10-11 years old.

I was at the ‘Stick with a buddy of mine (who actually ended up being a fairly well-known author) for a Sunday doubleheader (back in the days when they actually scheduled these things). We were always pretty competitive at everything we did, so the idea hit us. . . .let’s make a bet on who could eat the most hot dogs during the course of the day. Pretty reasonable bet for 2 dumbass kids. Ground rules were that each person had to get a hot dog at the beginning of each inning and had to finish it before the start of the next inning. The one who could not finish by the end of the inning was the loser and had to reimburse the other person for the cost of his hot dogs.

Now keep in mind that we were talking about Candlestick hot dogs here. If you don’t remember them, these are the ones that the walking vendors had sitting in the heated toxic goo in those metal cases that they carried around. When you ordered one, they’d pick up their tongs, open up the top and you’d get a whiff of that heated liquid that had quite an indescribable smell, and fish one out and plop in on a steam-soaked watery bun, slap a little Gulden’s, and you were off to the races. I’m not totally sure that these actually qualified as food, however they may have been in the same group as that Drumstick that we’ve been cultivating in Seth’s freezer.

Well, I am somewhat proud to say that I took this guy down in the 6th inning of the second game as I wolfed down my 14th dog of the day and my opposition was not able to answer the bell. The payoff was $2.00 times 14 dogs = $28 which was quite a handsome sum for a 10-11 year old at that time. More importantly, though, I learned from this experience was that it really wasn’t about the amount of money that you win, but rather the joy in being able to lord your victory over the other guy that made betting so cool.

The Elder Barry's First Game

The first baseball game I ever attended was with my dad at Seals Stadium to see my heroes the San Francisco Seals. I was six or seven years old so I remember nothing about the game itself; my only recollection is the green grass. I remember standing there transfixed by the color.

Many years later I read an essay by George Will who related nearly the same story. He explained by saying that until then the only games he'd ever seen were on Television and in those days the games were shown in black and white ... For both he and I the thing that stood out about that first game was the color, and the vividness of that green grass will be forever etched in my memory ...

Kevin's First Game

It was 1968. I was 9. This was the first of what would become many annual pilgrimages to Busch Stadium to see the Cardinals from our small Iowa town, population 6,600.

My allegiance was inherited from my Dad, who began listening to Cardinal broadcasts as a kid while bedridden with ricketts. In 1968, although the country swirled with racial ferment and war protest, my world was rosy. The Cardinals were the best team in baseball, led by Gibby, Brock, Cepeda and Flood.

Our family of six piled into our Chevy Malibu on a Saturday morning in June and headed for St. Louis, a six-hour drive. About 100 miles out, somewhere east of Columbia, Mo., we picked up KMOX. Even at 2 p.m., with the game still several hours away, the radio was abuzz with Cardinals talk. Harry Carey and Jack Buck took turns hosting pregame pregame shows. Always a great baseball town, St. Louis is all about the Cardinals when the team is winning. And despite the cynicism that surrounded most of society in those tumultuous days, this foursquare Midwestern city wasn't too jaded to go head over heels for its hometown team.

We got to our hotel, a mom and pop roadside joint called The Ivy. We checked in at about 3 p.m, took a short break, and drove downtown. My brother Kent and I were sitting in the back, leaning through the space in the front seats (in those days, hardly anybody wore seat belts) looking in awe as the St. Louis skyline came into view. (This seems quaint in retrospect, after years of visits to most major cities of the world, but at the time the closest thing to a city I had seen was Des Moines.)

And then we saw it--the arches of the facade peeking through the downtown buildings. "There it is!" Busch Stadium. Home of our heroes.

We arrived a little after 4 o'clock, three hours before game time, and the scene outside the stadium was already busy. Clusters of people wandered in the plaza; vendors hawked souvenirs; kids and Dads posed for pictures next to the Stan Musial statue. For my brother and I, weaned on scratchy late-night broadcasts, this was the sun in our universe. We were too excited to even talk.

We spent the next hour people watching, absorbing the atmosphere, and then went in and found our seats. I've heard many guys describe the feeling they had when they first viewed the interior of their particular baseball cathedral. It was the same for me. As we walked on the concourse toward our section, wedges of green were visible through the entryways. There's the pitcher's mound! The dugout!

We got to our seats. We were in rightfield, high up, a long way from home plate but who cared? We were in.

The Cardinals were playing the Giants. Gibson versus Mike McCormick, a lefthander who seemed to always give the Cards fits. Funny thing, I don't remember much about the game at all. Willie Mays made a great catch and the Giants scored a couple of runs. Then the rain came. It was the fourth inning or so.

The umpired suspended play and we settled in for a long delay. Although it was pouring, we were dry, seated under an overhang. My mom left us to get a snack and at the last minute I decided to follow her. I ran down the stairs and through the tunnel, into a maelstrom of adults milling around the restrooms and concession stands. I didn't see Mom but she had to be close by. I looked and looked. No Mom. Okay, back to our seat.

Wait, which tunnel was it? They all looked alike. I didn't have a ticket stub and couldn't remember the numbers on it. I picked a tunnel and ran through. This doesn't look familiar. Tried another. All the sections looked the same. I ran back out into the concession area, hoping I'd bump into Mom. I was lost.

For the next 30 minutes I wandered in and out of outfield sections trying to find my way back. Now I was really scared. Holding my transistor radio to my ear as I walked, I listened to Harry Carey doing interviews to pass time. I was crying.

An hour passed. Finally, the game was called. I had circled the stadium at least a couple times, not knowing exactly where to go or what to do. Now people were pouring toward the exits. I stood next to a doorway, holding on to the grated gates, bawling. Adults passed me looking concerned, but nobody stopped. And then, a miracle. A family from my hometown who happened to be at the game spotted me on their way out. All these years later, I'm still thunderstruck by this coincidence. In a stadium with more than four dozen exits, among 45,000 people, 300 miles from home, I was found by a family friend who didn't even know we were at the game.

I was reunited with my parents, who were understandably terrified. They hadn't seen me for more than 2 hours. Even though this was before the days of kids on milk cartons, I can't imagine the nightmare this must have been for them.

We spent the evening eating pizza, and I never once let my parents out of my sight. The next day, we went home. The Sunday game had been rained out.

But I went back the following summer, and the summer after that. The episode never tainted my desire to be at Busch or my love of the Cardinals. Last October, I was there, in standing room only, watching the World Series. And this fall, the stadium will come down to make way for a new, allegedly improved ballpark. A little piece of my childhood will go with it.

A Giant Quickie

I watched a little of the Giants game early, but then got distracted. The Doc was there, though not without a problem: I gave him the tickets for Tuesday, not Monday, but he was able to talk his way in after leaving 3 totally bleepable messages on our home phone, my work phone and my wife’s cell phone.

At 9 PM I sat down with Sue to watch 24, a family ritual, during which we do not answer the phone. At 9:05 the phone rang, and we ignored a call from my mother. A minute later, it rang again. At the first commercial, I checked the messages, and the second was from the Doc. I called him back, and it turns out he was in his car, driving home from the game which had already ended. Our boy Brett Tomko mowed them down (give some credit to Mark Redman, too), and the game was wire-to-wire in 1 hour, 49 minutes.

Now that’s baseball. Gary Radnich asked his audience today if the people at the game felt cheated. What in the hell is he talking about? A 2-1 pitchers’ duel in less than 2 hours? It doesn’t get better than that. As if the 13 inning game in the rain on Sunday that ended with 4,000 people in the stands is some kind of bargain.

So the bullpen is now rested for “Bullpen Night” tonight, starting with 42 year old Jeff Fassero. Jeff Busch couldn’t waive him fast enough after that was announced. Fassero is 10 months younger than Bullpen Coach Mark Gardner. Now that’s a game fans should feel cheated paying for.

We’ve held onto 1st place for another day. We had another big power day, with 4 more homers. That makes 16 homers and 49 RBI’s for the week, which led BABI. Jose Cruz is back, and Werth is only a week away, which means we are that much closer to more regular 50 AB days. At bats – the single most important batting statistic in rotisserie.

Larry called today. He says it has to be Bonds. If you’re trying to make the connection (when he said it, it took me a minute to figure it out), that was yesterday’s question about what player has the most games with both a homer and a steal. It’s logical, but I still think it may be Rickey. Anyway, it’s nice that Larry finally looked at this blog, though I doubt he’ll ever think of himself as a “fan”. BTW, he insists Schmidt’s arm trouble started when Felipe made him pitch 131 pitches in one of the early games after an off-season with rehab. And Larry also insists that the baseballs have been dejuicified, resulting in lower homers, lower doubles and lower ERA’s. Man, Larry’s an insistin’ kind of guy. Glad you’re checking it out here, pal.

Mark and Lou made an interesting deal yesterday. Mark’s betting he traded Turnbow at the top of his value. No doubt, this moment could be just that. It also might be the premature trade of Gagne, who Mark traded to the Busch Leaguers. At least this time he got some value. Klesko hit #8 yesterday, Morris is looking way better than anticipated, Reuter might lead the Giants in wins this season and Burroughs, well, he’s young and doesn’t suck. All cheap. He got rid of the overrated Dave Roberts, the phony baloney Rick Dempster (looked good yesterday as the Cubs closer, didn’t he?) and the washed up Jeff Cirillo. If Klesko continues to hit and Morris’ arm holds up, this deal is a small win for Mark even if Turnbow turns out to be the real thing. But not to knock Lou, he went out and got steals and saves, which are almost impossible and quite expensive to trade for right now. He’s workin’ it.

I got responses about first/early games from Mark, Kevin and the Elder Barry which I will post later this week. Thanks for the contributions and keep them coming.

And one last thing you can’t say often enough: thanks to Hank and Noel for taking care of the league accounting. You guys are doing a great job. As I always said last year, I enjoyed doing it, and offered to do it again this year. It keeps me closer to the league and in touch with you all, and it makes BABI more fun. That said, it can be a royal pain in the arse.

A Beautiful Monday Morning

That was quite a day the 1st place Pickled Pecklers had on Sunday. It seems impossible for a team to jump 10 points in one day, from 63 to 73 points, although it never seems impossible to fall that many. One thing it means is that we’re barely ahead of some teams in a variety of categories, and in all likelihood the volatility will continue for a while.

That said, on this Monday morning, it feels good. It was a lot easier to look at box scores this morning when our team had 3 homers (including 2 slams), 3 steals (2 by Lawton), 14 RBI’s, a cool .500 BA, and that 2 hit CG shutout by $3 Mike Hampton.

Matt Lawton had the kind of game we were hoping for when we topped Mr. Leaguer’s $27 bid at the auction. A slam and 2 steals makes for more than a pretty box score, it makes for a crawler notice on ESPN. And it exhibits one of my favorite all time statistics: a homer and a steal in the same game. I have long wondered who has the career record in that arcane category. Is it a fleet slugger like Barry or Willie? Is it a super-stealer with some power like Rickey? Or is it someone in between? I always thought if he hadn’t failed physically that Bo Jackson would have a shot at that kind of record.

I don’t think there is an answer to this trivia question out there, but I’d put my money on Rickey Henderson, who is just short of 300 homers, and who holds one of the unbreakable records (except, maybe by him) of 1406 career SB’s. That is some number. That’s 20 years of 70 steals, and change. Cy Young’s 511 wins was named by some “List” show last week as the ultimate unbreakable record, but this one has to rank up there. You also need to throw in Nolan Ryan’s 5,714 strikeouts. That’s 19 years of 300 strikeouts and change. I read this week that Pedro Martinez passed 2700 strikeouts, only the third pitcher of 33 years of age or less that had done that. But Pedro is only half way there, and he’s only had 2 years with more than 300 K’s. Randy Johnson is 41 and is still over 1500 short. These are ridiculous records.

Back to the BABI standings, the Lickers are now in 3rd place, though there is only 1.5 points separating 5 teams. Just behind them are last week’s leaders, Hobo, who have dropped 18 points this week. And I see the Falkuhns have risen like a Phoenix, up to 47 points despite only 6 hitting points. Of course, that’s 50% more hitting points than they had just a few days ago.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Busch Leaguers have dropped to a season low 35 points, only ½ point above the Cartel at the bottom of the standings. Gagne had a great rehab outing yesterday (nothing but strikeouts), but all that’s going to do is give Jeff another trading chip. If Gagne never allows a base runner, it’s not going to help his ERA and WHIP all that much. The fall of the Busch Leaguers is certainly the greatest shock of the season, even more amazing than the success of the Lickers. We look forward to chronicle Jeff’s attempts to fix his pitching, something the Pecklers, for themselves, consider impossible.

Having so many teams with good prospects for the season is a great thing for BABI. As the trading season heats up, and it’s not all about dump deals, it should bet mighty interesting. And we’re all looking for the same stuff: steals and saves. Maybe Larry really will get a whole bunch for Kolb. He says the sweepstakes have begun.

Your First Game

I'd be interested in your memories of the first game you attended. Email me and I'll compile and post them.

A Giant Headache

The unraveling of the Giants continues unabated. This was the first season in ages before which there wasn’t constant chatter about the weakness of the starting pitching. It was looking so good at the end of last season that no one questioned whether it was a mirage.

With Schmidt looking more hittable with each outing, Kirk Reuter looks like the staff stopper rather than the weak link. Schmidt did not make it out of the 4th yesterday, and now has an ERA of 4.71 and a WHIP of 1.571. Last year’s Cy Young Award contender is downright mediocre. It’s a reminder that you can never count on starting pitching, particularly from season to season.

With Tomko enduring his usual early season volatility, Lowry looking Little League hittable in one inning during every outing, and Jerome apparently completely lost down in Fresno, we can start to expect the revolving door to begin spinning for the prospects on the farm. Is there any question that we will see Matt Cain sooner than later? Certainly we’ll get Hennessey again, and presumably Foppert if he gets over his blister problems. It’s just stunning how the starting pitching, in fact all of the pitching, has just turned to crap. Meanwhile, the Giants are leading the league in runs without Mr. IBB. Now that’s the way I like my irony buttered.

Yesterday's Closer du Jour was Jeremy Accardo, up this past week from AA, and his first shot at a save was not auspicious. He opened with a 4 ball walk to Jeffrey Hammonds who shockingly has found a job in the majors. One wild pitch later he was in scoring position, and soon enough he was sitting in the Nats’ dugout as the tying run. And then the wheels came off.

There is no doubt, since Mr. Leaguer now has him, that Matt Herges is going to get his chance. There is talk that the Giants may give a shot to Brett Tomko, who can throw 95. That would certainly be good for the Pickled Ones, who have him with a 6X contract at only $5. That’s the best idea I’ve heard yet short of actually going out there and trading for a better answer. The answer is not in the bullpen now, and does not appear to be in the minors either, where we probably can expect to see Mr. Accardo any minute.

There was an interesting letter to the Sporting Green today making the point that Armando Benitez got injured because he was out of shape. He did look like his body had taken on a Beck-like profile. Do you think he works out his legs and stretches them before coming in? I couldn’t agree with the letter-writer more. That was one great contract drive he put on last year with the Marlins.

And yet, in the NL West, they can keep hanging around. And we’ll just keep waiting for Barry, which feels more like waiting for Godot. But, like the Busch Leaguers languishing in 11th place, it’s not the hitting. Ain’t predicting pitching a bitch?

Streaming in the Rain

This piece will appear to be a stream of consciousness that somehow will wend its way back to baseball. I know this because I encountered this stream this morning, and am, as they say, just reporting the facts, mam.

I was about to head out for some tennis this morning when the rains began. Even with clay courts at the OC, tennis was immediately history. So I flipped on the tube, and ended up watching on HBO a 1993 Peter Bagdonovich movie “The Thing Called Love” starring River Phoenix and Samantha Mathis. IMDB describes the plot: “a group of newcomers to the country music business seek love and stardom.”

I’m not much of a country music nut, though over the past couple of years I’ve started to dip my toe, having actually purched a couple of Lyle Lovett and Chris Issac CD’s. I did enjoy the movie, and I very much liked the music in it, particularly a song called “Blame it on Your Heart” with the following tag line: “Hey blame it on your lying, cheating, cold, deadbeating, two-timing, double dealing, mean, mistreating, loving heart.” Now them’s some lyrics.

Anyway, when the movie was over I hit the showers and started thinking of country music and movies, and ultimately thought of a wonderful season in my personal favorite baseball movie, Billy Crystal’s 61*. There is a quiet scene in the movie where Roger Maris is in his bedroom, alternately sitting quietly and doing exercises like pull-ups on the door jam. In the background is the Lyle Lovett song “Nobody Knows Me.” That’s the song that got me curious about Lovett.

I love that movie because as a 9 year old Yankee fan in New York in 1961, I followed Mickey and Roger and the Babe all summer. I gave out dvd copies of the movie to the poker boys a couple of years ago. The first time I saw the movie, I was stopped dead because there is actually a scene in the movie which features the first baseball game I ever attended. Everyone’s first game is one of the greatest, but mine really was an incredible game.

It was Michael Ellner’s 9th birthday, and his dad and my dad (dead 14 months later at 35 of a heart attack) took Michael and my brother Noah and me to Yankee Stadium on the Friday night before Labor Day. On the way in we passed a couple of nuns collecting for their church, one of which came up to my father, held out her can, and said “It’s Mickey Mantle! Mickey can you give a little?” I don’t remember if he gave her anything, but I do remember I was stunned that she thought my father was Mickey Mantle.

We had seats on the first base side out in right field, a little closer to home plate than Ken’s seats at SBC. Going to your first game at Yankee Stadium is incredibly dramatic at a night game with the lights spot-lighting the green outfield expanse. The game was the first of a 4 game showdown with the Tigers, with the Yanks ahead by about ½ game and the pennant on the line. Whitey was pitching that night, in a season that he finished something like 25-4.

He was up against Don Mossi, who went 15-7 for the Tigers that year with a 2.96 ERA. He was the ugliest man ever to play major league baseball, but he was clearly the star of the night, with a 2 hit shutout going into the bottom of the ninth. Whitey went out with an injury in around the 5th, but the Yankee bullpen kept the Tigers shut out through the top of the 9th. Roger and then Mickey came up to start the 9th for the Yanks. Mossi struck them both out. Then Elston Howard and Yogi Berra both singled. Moose Skowron singled into right field, in our direction, between the 1st and 2nd basemen to win the game 1-0 with 2 out in the 9th. Pretty good first game, eh?

The Yanks went on to sweep the series and blew out the Tigers and the AL in September, and beat the Reds 4-1 in the Series. Roger of course topped the Babe on the last day of the season. I saw that one, on TV live. 4th inning, he lasered it into the right field seats with only about 20,000 at the game, most of whom were in those right field stands. I still get chills when I see the replay. By the way, the final score of that game was 1-0, a bit of trivia few remember. Crystal’s movie is a faithful reenactment of a magical season. Highly recommended.

So I told you I’d get around to baseball.

Mr. Leaguer

I was home last night, and I just happened to be at my computer with my remote email open when an email came in from "down below", from Jeff with the subject "Trade Offer". I opened the email and it was empty.

So I immediately replied, "No message. Or are you just offering us nothing for nothing, which we'll do, but you've got to pay our transaction fee."

I then printed out his team roster and called the Doc. I told him I got that message from Jeff, and that after looking at his roster, he was contacting us to offer us Gagne for a starter, since we had advertised on the blog for a closer. At least that was my theory. Seth thought about it and agreed that was logical. So we were chatting about Gagne when the follow up email from Jeff came in, which said:

After perusing the blog for the first time, I was testing the statement:

"Guys, we’re email guys. I respond quickly to every email."

You passed.

I CAN fix my pitching staff, but it will take Pedro Martinez to do it. Maybe at a
later date....

So remember, we're email guys. You might also remember that the Pecklers are practicing transparency this season. We're not hiding much. But it works both ways.

The Meat League

Tonight the Pickled Pecklers head out to the Forrest Club to participate in another fantasy baseball league. We’ve been in that league for 4 years and have won it twice, and finished third once. It’s a mixed league, no keepers, no free agents, strange rules, pure draft. We participate in it because we know some of the guys, principally through the neighborhood butcher shop that we patronize, which is why we call it the Guerra Meat League even though it has no official name.

No, we’re not bringing a computer. Seth sent me his usual ridiculous number of excel files to review, but I don’t have the energy. First of all, I don’t know half of the names because they are players in the American League. Three years ago Doc and I chose ONLY National League players at the draft and came in 3rd. But the Doc also plays in BARB, so he actually knows these guys (I know a few Yankees, plus a few A’s, plus most of the players who have passed through the NL, like, uh….Sosa and Johnson. Oh, Johnson is a Yankee, so maybe I already counted him. So let’s say Kotsay. Oh, he’s an A, so I already counted him. I guess you see what I mean.

Let’s put it this way: I’m vaguely familiar with that Santana guy, though if you made me guess what team he plays for, I’d would, indeed, have to guess. I simply do not look at AL box scores, except occasionally to see how Ichiro did, and sometimes now to check out Sosa, who I have a major financial investment in his baseball cards. Speaking of which, does anyone out there need about 10,000 Jay Buhner rookie cards?

I hate interleague play because I have to look at twice as many box scores to get my BABI information each day. In fact, it takes me a hell of a lot longer to read the sports section during those weeks. I just do not pay attention to that “other” league. I always say it’s the designated hitter, but I just think there are too many teams to follow, particularly if you are following virtually everyone in that league. Those double leagues like BARB are just way too much work. We don’t appreciate it, but we BABIarians are kind of ultimate geeks (even Lou, over 60 points today!) to care that So Tagucci got his 10th RBI of the season yesterday. Go So!

I am now, from that phrase, reminded of the best thing on TV, a scene in Deadwood a couple of weeks ago. The whole camp turns out to watch a guy ride this whacky looking bike down the street with a big bet on the line. As he passes Al Swearengen, Al cheers him on by shouting “Go on, my boy!” OK, maybe you had to be there. I now use that phrase to cheer on my dog Max running down the hall after his ball.

One thing that kills in this other league: no pickups. At the all-star break, you can replace up to 2 players. That’s it. One shot. We had Sexson and Kevin Brown (former NL’er and a Yankee, so I know him) last year. We were dead, because we also had a couple of guys that stunk. So who knows when all-world Cliff Floyd will be drafted, given his history.

It’s the only other league I participate in. None of the guys would appreciate how much harder it is in BABI. That’s why I don’t worry about studying for it…you guys have us honed to a fine edge. That said, despite his 2nd save in 2 days, I don’t think the name Looper will come out of my mouth tonight.

Lifting My Back Leg

Lots of things to address today.

I had a tennis match last night, but while we were celebrating our victory, I got to see the ugly end of the Giants – Dbacks game. The Giants’ bullpen (Herges and Eyre last night) did it again, blowing a fine outing by Woody. I say it again, I haven’t seen the answer on the Giants’ roster yet to the closer situation. I’m curious to see if the overuse of Brower last season affects his pitching (which has stunk) this season.

Meanwhile, I got my first look at a real closer last night: Brandon Lyon. That boy was firing in the 9th last night, consistently at 95, and at some nasty places in the strike zone. Great purchase by the Cappers (I’m too lazy to look it up, but I think it’s the Cappers). How did we miss this guy? He never showed this kind of ability before, though he has been hurt. I wonder if it would have been obvious had I been at spring training and seen him pitch. I only needed to see 5 pitches to know he’s exactly what the Giants (and the Pickled Pecklers) need.

Let’s give it up for the D-Backs, who were a minor league team last season after Sexson and Gonzalez went down. They have some real hitters, some real pitchers (some young ones), a closer…in the NL West, they can contend, particularly with the news about…

Barry Lamar Bonds, 3rd surgery on his right knee this year. Ouch. Maybe not such a good pick here by the Cappers at $31 (again, too lazy to look it up, but I think that’s right). Maybe August now? I think we can assume he’s not going to get another MVP award this year. It’s not a bad team without Barry, but without a closer too, they just can’t afford to lose games like last night.

BTW, here’s a link to Barry’s latest journal update: http://barrybonds.mlb.com/players/bonds_barry/journal/latest.html

Closer to home, it appears we’ve got a little problem with one of our new rules which allows claims and reserving of players during the week. Jeff Busch has demonstrated the problem another great man tried to identify a couple of months ago: no time stamp on moves. I won’t say I told you so, but…

My God, I’m turning into Herb Caen…

Here is a classic fantasy baseball moment: I’m watching something on ESPN last night, and I see a flash about the Braves losing 11-6. Then “L – M. Hampton goes across the crawler. Ouch, that’s going to be ugly. When I finally got brave enough to look at the box score, it wasn’t quite so bad, 6 IP, 5 ER, 9 H+BB. Not a great outing by any means, but not a Jim Bullinger type line: 1 IP, 8 ER, 8 H, 4 BB. It still cost us an ERA point to George, though.

Meanwhile, Lou is now in 4th Place. I’ve got to tell you, that is unbelievable. The man threw back virtually his entire team. If he can keep this up, it will be the greatest managing job in the history of this league.

Meanwhile the Leaguers continue to flounder with 41 points, although their ERA has improved to now be under 5. Starting pitching can kill.

And the Falkuhns still have exactly 4 hitting points. Impressive. I do want to say again, the Wagner for Guillen trade was very reasonable.

Is anyone else noticing this amazing season so far by Cliff Floyd? Top 5 in the triple- crown categories, plus 3 steals. We’re waiting for his traditional sword of Damocles to drop at any instant, but it reminds us of what an incredible talent and prospect this guy was.

Save Me

There was widespread if not terribly high bidding today on potential closers on a variety of teams, particularly the Giants. We’re desperate for saves, but we couldn’t overdo it, and we were 2nd on two obvious guys: Todd Jones, the temporary closer in Florida for Mota and Matt Herges one of the many legions of potential guys in SF. As they say, close is only good in horseshoes and sex.

Three Giants were picked up: Eyre on waivers by the Rips, and both Herges (8) and Fassero (5) by the Busch Leaguers. The Rips also paid 24 for Jones. The Pounders paid 7 for Flores, Any 9 picked up Witasick for 6 (a stretch) and the Cartel picked up Bernero for 6.

We bid 21 on Jones and 8 on Herges. Jones is two weeks likely at best, so you can't overdo it on a guy with a WHIP equal to his ERA. As for Herges, I saw the Giants game last night, and despite Felipe’s comments after the game, it’s not going to be Brower. His blown save was absolutely Herges-like. I don’t see the Giants’ answer on their current roster. I do suspect, as apparently does Jeff, that Herges is going to get another opportunity, at least for a little while. My best guess is there will be a deal done to bring someone in, or possibly bring someone up from the minors. Foppert? Cain? Correia (Fresno closer right now)? Urbina? Who knows? What I do know is if the Giants are serious about this season, they’re going to have to do something substantial to fix this. It makes me long for the Hermanson days.

Somehow the Giants have won 6 straight, though it helped to play three against the woeful Pirates. They do need Barry back, but they won’t be for real until they fix this bullpen situation. Schmidt looked pretty hittable last night, which is an ominous sign. Noah Lowry looks lost about half the time. Thankfully Tomko looks in post-All Star Game form.

Larry sent Wagner to the Bums, who finally have a closer. He got a good player in Guillen, but despite that he’s called a couple of times, and that we are the most obvious candidate to buy a closer from someone, he never suggested any deal. Guys, we’re email guys. I respond quickly to every email. If you want to make a deal with us, I suggest sending an email. We can finalize it by phone, but my email is always open. And if you haven’t figured it out yet, we can use some steals and some saves.

Finally, it’s nice to see someone finally admit that maybe So doesn’t totally suck. Five bucks for So to the Falkuhns. Just say So!

Mother, May I

It may actually be a fade by our hitters this long weekend that kept me from wanting to write here. We’ve had some pretty ugly stat days, but the pitching has held up well (tough loss by Suppan yesterday).

George’s Cappers have really done well given that he hasn’t had any help from $50 of hitting (Bonds and Cameron). If Bonds does come back with a strong half season, the Cappers are going to be tough.

Meanwhile, there is a new leader in the clubhouse, and that clubhouse is suddenly pretty far away from ours. Hobo has 76 points, strong in every category. All this with Todd Helton and his $39 salary helping not a whit. I’m not a huge fan of the starting pitching, but this team is going to be a contender, as I’ve always said, baring major injuries.

Meanwhile, Busch Leaguers, 10th place, 41 points, with a grand total of 9 points in pitching. This is not just Gagne. Starting pitching can KILL you. The Leaguers’ starting pitching is killing them. Wolf, Perez, Harang, the bad R. Ortiz (and the good one isn’t all that good!) I don’t think Jeff can fix it. You heard it here.

I don’t actually believe what I just wrote, but I enjoyed writing it. I hope you enjoyed reading it.

A Bigger Trade

Last week there was another trade of more significance between the Rips and the Pounders. The Rips sent:

Mulder
Hollandsworth (1)
Niekro/Cordero

to the Pounders for

Snow (8)
Az. Luis Gonzalez (22)
Floyd

I guess prices go up a couple of bucks. I like the play by Kevin for Mulder, who is desperate for pitching. He’ll be tradable later if he decides to go the other way. Mark got 2 decent old hitters and an open slot. Gonzo started out really fast, but is not showing any power since that first week. Kevin has a lot of hitting, and he didn’t give up one of his prime hitters for Mulder. This is a very reasonable deal.

I like the way Mark is still fighting despite a weak keeper list led by the $30 Armando Benitez and his torn hamstring. The Rips are not going to fix themselves completely, but open FAAB gives them some chance to keep fighting. Derrick Turnbow looks like an awfully good $2 pick. Let’s just pray that he doesn’t somehow end up on the Busch Leaguers.

My Fan

Funny thing about weekends: I’ve got more free time, but less time, it seems, to write here. I’m off today, and I’ve got some time now to make up for my absence.

Today began with an email announcing a trade by the Cartel to the Busch Leaguers of Luis Ayala for Chad Fox. On the surface, this is pretty ugly, and I was going to write that until I got an email from Mr. Cartel himself. He said he had just caught up on reading the blog and thanked me for keeping it up. I happened to have my email open, and immediately responded that I appreciated the compliment but that he might not like what I was going to write today about the trade.

We started one of those telephone conversations via email (we’ve all done that on occasion) in which he explained he just needed the open slot, and the Fox slot was the only one reasonably available. At any moment there are usually not too many slots open, despite that the Bums pitching staff is no longer frozen in its entirety. Greg wants to activate Borowski and keep Brower, and was willing to sacrifice Ayala to do so. I get that. Of course, Borowski is coming along slowly, but with the Giants closer situation in a total mess, he has to protect Brower.

Unfortunately, the beneficiary is Mr. Leaguer. We had a deal like that with Jeff last year. He needed an open spot, and we had Tankersley in the minors, so he offered Col. Luis Gonzalez. We said ok. Jeff actually reserved Tankersley, who he never activated again – 10 bucks down the drain. Well, $6, since he got back about $4 by winning the league.

It does make me think that it’s a little stupid to need an open spot. Why not just let Greg keep Brower and waive Ayala. Of course, since he’s in 10th right now, Jeff might have gotten him anyway. I’m sure we’ll be discussing ties at some future rules meeting.

Anyway, I’m writing this partly to say I do appreciate that a few of you are reading this stuff. I’m reminded of a great movie that many people have never seen: “That Thing You Do.” This was Tom Hanks’ first movie as writer and director. It’s a gem, and it’s been playing lately on HBO. Early in the movie as the local rock band is starting to get some notice in Erie, PA, one of the band members refers to one college guy as “our fan”. In the same way, I now think of Mr. Cartel as “my fan”.