California’s Donnie Moore on allowing Dave Henderson’s two-out, two-strike ninth inning home run that tied Game Five of the ‘86 ALCS:
“My job’s not an easy job. I gotta make the pitches. When you’re bad, you’re bad. I can handle bad. I’ve had a roller-coaster career. Things have never come easy for me. I can handle it.
“I got a tired arm now, but I can’t blame my arm. If my arm felt that bad, I wouldn’t have gone out there today. I was (horsebleep), no other excuses, I was ...
With their team in peril and their manager losing his authority, three Red Sox pitchers last month were uniquely positioned to prevent the greatest September collapse in major league history. All the Sox needed was Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, and John Lackey to apply the skills and commitment that previously made them World Series champions.
Instead, Boston’s three elite starters went soft, their pitching as anemic as their work ethic. The indifference of Beckett, Lester, and Lackey in a ...
Though Victor Martinez’s game-tying home run came at a price with a strained oblique that left him hobbling around the bases, it sparked an outburst of five unanswered runs for the Tigers in what shaped up as a must-win Game 3 in their American League Championship Series showdown with Texas. Doug Fister’s 7 1/3 quality innings took care of the rest for a 5-2 victory.
...
Detroit still trails in the series, two games to one, but looked like a different team than the club that dropped two close ...
It was a deeply dissatisfying year on the diamond for the World Champion San Francisco Giants, who seemingly gave up hits and runs for Lent and toppled right out of playoff contention. So it was eerily symbolic — if no less frustrating — when the team was actually barred from trademarking its ubiquitous script “San Francisco” logo.
The trademark instead went to Gogo Sports of Hayward, which creates the “San Francisco”-emblazoned jackets and fleeces snapped up by tourists who ...
Sounds a little unbelievable, right? Well, it wasn’t too far out there for White Sox general manager Ken Williams to briefly consider the idea of Konerko as a replacement for Ozzie Guillen.
“The report is not false,” said Williams with a wry smile, confirming a story originally coming from the New York Daily News on Konerko’s immediate managerial future. “It was considered long enough for me to realize that Paul is a very cerebral person, and he would probably drive himself nuts right now ...
Two baseball sources have confirmed that Theo Epstein is on the cusp of leaving his job as general manager of the Red Sox to accept a position with the Chicago Cubs that is believed to include powers greater than he has in Boston, with an announcement expected to be made “within the next 24 to 48 hours.”
The hangup in the negotiations has been twofold. One of them is that Red Sox ownership was still hoping to have Epstein remain with the team. The other is ...
The Orioles have assembled a list of six baseball executives as candidates to succeed Andy MacPhail as the team’s next general manager, sources told ESPN The Magazine senior baseball writer Buster Olney.
The candidates include current San Diego Padres vice president of baseball operations Josh Byrnes, who was formerly GM of the Arizona Diamondbacks, and former Houston Astros GM Gerry Hunsicker, who is currently the Tampa Bay Rays’ senior vice president of baseball ...
Terry Francona woke up on Tuesday morning to something rare in baseball broadcasting circles: Glowing reviews from critics and viewers. TERRY FRANCONA HAS STAR TV POTENTIAL, proclaimed Newsday. Suggested New York Times sports media reporter Richard Sandomir: “Idea: keep Francona in booth when [Tim] McCarver returns for Game 3. Rare to have a mgr and a catcher in booth. “Yahoo! baseball writer Jeff Passan injected history. “Is Terry Francona ...
After that, I think of the guys we saw in the playoffs. There’s nothing especially surprising left to say about Alex Rodriguez. He’s 36 years old, and he played a lot of innings at shortstop, and his body’s beat up, and there’s no compelling reason to believe he can ever play 150 games in a season, much less be a dominant player. And he has SIX YEARS left on that deal. The thing about sports it that when a player starts regressing, the way A-Rod did two or three years ago, people ...
Irving Picard is selling.....Megdal, with the Rakoff walk-off.
And as the appeal makes clear, this is a process that will be multiplied many times over, in the vast number of Picard cases currently pending. So getting direction from the Second Circuit will eliminate a ton of potential litigation.
But Rakoff seems to assign blame on Picard for the sheer volume of litigation arising out of this complicated matter. Never mind that in his role as trustee, Picard would actually be derelict in his ...
During a press conference this morning Rollins made it clear that he wants to re-sign with the Phillies and spend his entire career in Philadelphia, but “I’m looking to get five years … if it’s going to be shorter, there’d have to be a fifth-year option, my option.”
Four years with a fifth-year player option is basically just five years anyway.
If you didn’t catch this change don’t feel bad, nobody did. Nobody noticed. Maybe nobody cared…..
The major minor-changes involve:
the leading script into the ‘o’ of ‘Dodgers’, it’s there in 2010, it’s gone in 2012.
the ‘D’ in ‘Dodgers’ also had a slight change, specifically the curl in the 9-o’clock region of the logo, it’s much shorter in the 2012 edition.
the flight lines of the baseball have been corrected.
Tommy Lasorda must be rolling over in his baked ...
Wanna see something majestic? Try the Bukiet list…
The Major League Baseball Division Series is underway and NJIT math professor Bruce Bukiet has once again analyzed the probability of each team advancing to the World Series. “Now that the Texas Rangers have won the opening game against the Detroit Tigers, the probability of this team winning the American League Pennant has jumped from 64 to 76 percent,” he said. “In the National League, the Milwaukee Brewers have upped their chances of ...
SNL with another timely and hilarious parody….NOT!
Saturday Night Live isn’t always on the cutting edge of comedy and “baseball = steroids” isn’t the most creative joke, but I couldn’t help but enjoy this Moneyball parody from Saturday’s show. It features exaggerated muscle suits, Jay Pharoah eating a baseball and a wistful young daughter so wistful she can’t help but Wist when she hears the A’s are cheating. The only real downside is Ben Stiller still thinking “nervous, ...
As consistently excellent as Braun and Fielder have been since joining the Brewers, this was probably their best year as a duo. Braun hit .332/.397/.597, leading the NL in slugging while setting a career high in walks (58) and a career low in strikeouts (93). He even stole 33 bases to go along with his 33 homers, becoming just the second 30/30 player in Brewers history. Fielder hit .299/.415/.566 with 38 homers without missing a single game. (In addition to their ...
Wally Backman, a candidate for the Mets’ managerial opening last offseason, could soon leave the organization, according to a team source.
The fiery Backman, 52, is considering the possibility of joining Davey Johnson’s coaching staff with the Nationals—likely as the third-base coach. The Nationals have not yet officially announced Johnson will return next season, but that is considered a formality.
The source said 68-year-old Johnson may look to groom Backman for the managerial job, much in ...
Thomas and Lapp of the Athletics must find some way to stop such fast men as Devore, Doyle, Murray, Merkle, Snodgrass and Herzog, who have stolen 50 or more bases each, against the strongest catchers in the National league.
...
I am unable to say what Thomas and others on Mack’s team can do, as they have never faced such a fast baserunning team as we have.
In contrast, consider Ron Hunt. A second baseman during the expansion era, Hunt made a couple All Star games but otherwise made little dent in baseball history, except in being hit by pitches. Ron Hunt was hit 50 times in 1971, which destroyed the previous record by a whopping 19. That number is made more interesting to me by Hunt’s 58 walks and his 41 strikeouts. He was hit more often than he struck out! That’s an incredibly rare, if not, unprecedented achievement over a full season. ...
The nation’s obsession with Brian Wilson is something I will never understand. He’s funny, he’s weird, and he’s quirky, but people act like he’s the first dude in sports to ever wear a beard. It’s simply not true. I have hard evidence saying that he’s the second. Anyway, he stars in a Taco Bell ad that has been playing quite a bit lately.
I don’t really understand the ad, and apparently I’m not the only one who’s unimpressed. Astros pitcher Bud ...
Speaking publicly for the first time since dismissing his GM in the first of a handful of moves that promise to reshape the front office, Angels owner Arte Moreno said “it’s not a purge” or a knee-jerk reaction to a second consecutive year of missing out on the playoffs and losing money.
“I just felt we weren’t going in the direction we needed to go in and we needed a change,” Moreno said, emphasizing that he had come to that realization “over a period of ...
He pulled his office out of the stadium. He talked to his rookie manager twice this season. He stopped sitting in his field box adjacent to the dugout, no doubt hearing a thing or two from the fans — the truth hurting.
But you know what? Donald Sterling sits at center court, almost everyone in the building sitting behind him with the chance to tell him what they think.
Sterling’s record as owner is abysmal, and although he should top the list of owners in hiding, he puts his picture in the ...
Albert Pujols led an all-out assault on Shaun Marcum and a parade of relievers as the Cards handed Milwaukee its worst home loss of 2011, throttling the Brewers by a 12-3 score Monday night in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series. The game was over for all practical purposes in the middle of the seventh following the Cards’ fourth multi-run inning.
...
Pujols hammered a two-run homer to left in the first, a two-run double to center in the third and an RBI double to right-center in ...
Postseason expansion is most likely going to baseball, but not as soon as next season, or at leas that’s the impression commissioner Bud Selig gave when he spoke to reporters before Game 2 of the National League Championship Series.
“I don’t know yet,” Selig said when asked if an expanded postseason could come in 2012. “I think that might be a little optimistic, but I don’t know yet.”
As for the idea of two more wild card teams, hearing Selig ...
Nelson Cruz, batting with no outs, hit a grand slam in the bottom of the 11th inning to give the Rangers a dramatic 7-3 victory over the Tigers in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series. It was the first walk-off grand slam in postseason history.
The victory, before 51,227 at the Ballpark in Arlington on Monday, put the Rangers up 2-0 in the ALCS with Game 3 scheduled for Tuesday night at Comerica Park in Detroit.
...
Mike Adams was the winning pitcher as five Rangers relievers ...
...unless Milt Pappas has a grandson or something.
Walt Jocketty angrily denied a report by ESPN’s Buster Olney that the Reds are listening to trade offers on Joey Votto.
“I’m tired of talking about it,” he said. “We’re not shopping him. We’re not entertaining offers. It’s frustrating. He’s one of the best players in the game. Why would we trade him? I wish people would stop writing about it.”
Votto name comes up in media speculation — yours truly is guilty — because ...
RG: The fact of Doc was that he wanted to go somewhere else and…
PB: Doc wanted to go. Doc made it quite clear that that he was not signing here at the end of the 2010 season.
RG: So to believe that if you had Halladay and Marcum and Romero and those guys that’s not based on reality.
PB: That’s not based on reality. Doc made it quite clear that he wasn’t going to be around at the end of the 2010 season so he would not have been here. Certainly we ...
Harrumph…might as well send them to the dead letter e-mail office.
Tampa Bay Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg clarified in a letter e-mailed to season-ticket holders that his recent comments about the “precarious” future of the franchise were not a complaint nor meant to sound ungrateful about the support they do have, but the reality of their situation. Also, he provided assurance that the organization remains committed to finding a solution to the region-wide issue.
