Archive for the ‘baseball’ Category

Forget the Cowbell More Yogi Berra please

Posted: August 10, 2009 by datechguy in baseball
Tags: ,

Via Baseball musings a collection of questions from fans and Yogi Berra’s answers. The most interesting in my opinion:

Randy asks: How you keep your legs in such good shape after all those years catching?

YB: “Well, I had a knee replacement seven or eight years ago. But I played a lot of soccer when I was a kid, a lot of running. We did anything. Our pitchers back in spring training, they did a lot of running. I talked to Tom Seaver at the Hall of Fame. Legs. Legs mean a lot. You don’t have to lift those weights. Soccer was real good.”

For me that’s the best endorsement of soccer I’ve ever read.

As a Boston person I really shouldn’t but you can’t help but love Yogi who is in my opinion the best catcher there has ever been. If you are building a team you want him on it period!

I just saw a clip of Terry’s press conference. I know his job is to manage the team as it is but don’t tell me something like this:

“There’s some people out there who need to have their integrity checked,” Terry Francona said.

He is talking about the guy who talked not about the cheating. Callahan is exactly right:

One of those people was inside the clubhouse with Francona. He stopped briefly to meet the media but said nothing. No courage on this day. David Ortiz [stats] was wearing dark glasses, but they didn’t help. The mask was off. The big lies exposed.

To steal Robert Stacy McCain’s favorite line via Clint.

Don’t piss on my back and tell me it’s raining.

Maybe John McGraw or Billy Martin would have gone along with it but I’m with Christy Mathewson and Hank Aaron on this:

But when it comes to Cooperstown, the site of Baseball’s National Hall of Fame, Aaron knows that there could be a division between players from his era, and those from the “steroid” era.

“I think that some way, something is going to be put on there. I hate to say it, but maybe an asterisk somewhere behind their name.”

No wonder there is talk about reinstating Pete Rose, justly banned though he is. He’s worth 5 of any of them. And if I was managing a team I’d want him on it, nobody I ever saw played harder. I’ll take him over any of the steroid boys. ANY of them.

…one of great experiences of my life was taking my sons to the Red Sox parade and watching it pass us 4 times from our location in front of the Museum of science.

This story kills it.

David Ortiz, the greatest single-season home run hitter in Red Sox history, yesterday acknowledged testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003 as he launched his golden era as one of the game’s premier power hitters.

The side stories don’t matter, the money doesn’t matter. It kills it.

I can’t tell my kids to cheer for Ortiz, nor celebrate 2004 or 2007, not if I want to stress the idea of playing by the rules.

I don’t care if the Yankees have steroids guys, they’re not my team, I don’t care who revealed it. I expect better. I demand better.

So please don’t sell me bullshit like this:

So cheer up, Red Sox fans. Don’t bury your faces in your 2004 caps. Don’t turn off the computer when rival fans start with the Tainted Title rap.

The Red Sox championships are every bit as legit as the Cardinals’ title in ’06 or the White Sox in ’05 or the Marlins in ’03 or that seventh degree black belt Elvis was awarded in ’73.

That’s crap from people who want me to keep spending my cash and emotional attachment to this game to support them.

The Sox and MLB don’t need or deserve my money or my attention. If they want to get it back they have to earn it. Until I can point to my local team and say it is on the level why the hell should I care?

Plenty more here.

Ortiz Slump officially over

Posted: June 25, 2009 by datechguy in baseball
Tags: , ,

So says David Pinto:

David Ortiz pretty much put any lingering doubts about the end of his slump to rest. He went two for three with a home run Wednesday night, and is now hitting .327 in June with six home runs and a .709 slugging percentage.

The thing that struck me the most about Ortiz’s slump is how much fans were cheering for him and hoping for him all through the slump. It was a rare thing to see him be booed. I’ve never seen a group of fans just pull for a guy without riding him in my life.

Red Sox fans have long memories:

And it still makes you smile years later,