Category: Sports

Stephen Strasburg of the Washington Nationals has a tear in his ulnar collateral ligament. The final word isn’t in yet, but he will probably need Tommy John surgery and be out next season.

Update from Deadspin: Strasmas Is Cancelled:

This is how it works in baseball. Power pitchers are delicate little roses, things of beauty only because their mortality is assured. We rarely get more than a few years of them at their peak, so to prolong our enjoyment, we fire up the hype machine. Strasburg was mythologized for years before he put on a major league jersey, and now it’ll be another couple years before he does it again.

The National League East leading Atlanta Braves were at Denver today to play the Colorado Rockies. I’m a Rockies fan so I turned on the game around 2 o’clock.

And it was 10-1 Atlanta in the 3rd. [If it was soccer they’d have sent the Rockies back to France by then.]

But I left the game on anyway. Ken Burns came along to talk up his new documentary and he was more interesting than usual. And the Rockies scored a few runs — one in the fourth, three in the fifth.

10-5 after five.

Three more in the sixth. 10-8.

But none in the seventh. Still 10-8.

Then, four runs in the eighth. Rockies ahead 12-10.

And, to end the game in the ninth an incredible sliding catch by Carlos Gonzalez. What a great, great ballgame.

Well not so much for Atlanta.

Some trivia and stuff along the way. Atlanta’s nine starters each had an extra base (in just the first four innings) — seven doubles, a triple and a home run. That’s happened just five times in 58 years. (And they lost.)

Burns and the broadcasters were, of course, talking about baseball being the only game without a clock; it’s never over until it’s over kind of stuff.

But Burns noted as well that baseball (and softball) are the only game where the defense has the ball. The only game where the player scores and not the ball. The only game where you only get to use your best offensive player just one-ninth of the time (no going to Kobe or LeBron or Adrian Peterson every important play).

Another wonderful essay from Joe Posnanski — this on the most memorable home runs in baseball history. Beautifully done, especially the liberal use of Vin Scully and Red Smith.

Joe Posnanski debates himself at length on whether Mariano Rivera or Derek Jeter has been the most important Yankee. Good stuff for baseball fans.

If you like baseball and like philosophy — and who that likes one of these can fail to like the other — you’ll enjoy A Perfect Game: The metaphysical meaning of baseball by David B. Hart. A sample:

I know there are those who will accuse me of exaggeration when I say this, but, until baseball appeared, humans were a sad and benighted lot, lost in the labyrinth of matter, dimly and achingly aware of something incandescently beautiful and unattainable, something infinitely desirable shining up above in the empyrean of the ideas; but, throughout most of the history of the race, no culture was able to produce more than a shadowy sketch of whatever glorious mystery prompted those nameless longings.

The coarsest and most common of these sketches—which has gone through numerous variations down the centuries without conspicuous improvement—is what I think of as “the oblong game,” a contest played out on a rectangle between two sides, each attempting to penetrate the other’s territory to deposit some small object in the other’s goal or end zone. All the sports built on this paradigm require considerable athletic prowess, admittedly, and each has its special tactics, of a limited and martial kind; but all of them are no more than crude, faltering lurches toward the archetype; entertaining, perhaps, but appealing more to the beast within us than to the angel.

Z

That’s what’s in a name in Major League Baseball. Z.

There are 1,200 ballplayers on major league rosters (40 per team — 25 are active at any given time). The most common surnames are Rodriguez and Hernandez with 15 each. There are 14 named Gonzalez and another 14 named Ramirez. 12 are named Perez, 11 Sanchez, 9 Lopez, 7 Martinez, and 5 each Chavez and Valdez. (That 107 out of 1200.)

There are 14 Johnsons, and 9 each Jones and Anderson. Currently there are just 8 Smiths, but it is the most common name in baseball history.

Some factoids.

Just 11 Spanish surnames account for one-quarter of all the people in the Western Hemisphere.

Approximately one-third of all major leaguers are from the Dominican Republic or Venezuela.

I can remember when Latino ballplayers first made it to the big leagues and announcers pronounced Martinez as Martin-ez.

“Baseball is a slow, sluggish game, with frequent and trivial interruptions, offering the spectator many opportunities to reflect at leisure upon the situation on the field: This is what a fan loves most about the game”

Edward Abbey

How about that sports fans? The Rangers catcher Bengie Molina hit for the cycle against Boston tonight. That’s a single, double, triple and home run in one game. His home run was a grand slam.

No opponent had gone the cycle in Fenway in 32 years.

I had this game on TV for a few minutes and the Boston announcers were talking about Molina and whether he’d get the cycle. The triple, the hardest, came his next time up. I missed it. Damn.

But say Karen, wasn’t Molina a Giant a few weeks ago?

UPDATE: Molina is only the eighth player since 1900 to hit for the cycle with a grand slam.

He’d had just six triples in 4,998 at bats.

As Robert Mays wrote, “Molina rounded second and made his way for third at the one speed he has.”

He’s a catcher for Pete’s sake, notoriously slow.

I can’t believe I was watching that game and didn’t wait for his next at bat. (The triple was in the eighth inning; the grand slam in the sixth.)

I think this also is a good illustration of sports ultimately as part of culture more than a game. A soccer aficionado might think it fun to see Molina lumbering into third, but only the baseball fan could appreciate how rare the cycle is, how unusual for a catcher to triple, etc. And I don’t mean that makes baseball better than soccer. The same could be true in reverse for the baseball fan watching soccer. I just think it explains why soccer just does not catch on in the U.S. to any long-lasting extent. We have enough sports traditions.

If you’re up for watching a little baseball on TV, MLB Extra Innings has a free week beginning today. I’ve been watching Rangers @ Boston. At 8 I can watch the Mariners @ Angels and/or Mets @ Giants. There are other games too.

Just something different to do for a few evenings; see the teams, hear the different broadcasters.

No guarantees for your cable/satellite system or if I’m right that it’s for a week. But that’s my understanding.

I’m watching on DirecTV. Fun to see the New England ads. They love their Dunkin’ Donuts.

(I’m feeling yucky — not up to a movie or a book.)

BTW GQ lists The Best (and Worst) from MLB’s Broadcast Booths. Top 5 and Bottom 5 from the TV side.

I was glad for the outcome, the National League winning 3-1, their first victory since 1996, but why exactly was Alex Rodriguez, the home run leader among active players, in the American League dugout and not at the plate in the bottom of the ninth?

And why do they need all those players (each team had 34)?

Bud Selig says he will retire as baseball commissioner for sure in 2012. There’s already been a couple of Brett Favreian reversals, so no one takes him seriously, but he says he means it this time. He’ll retire for certain unless baseball has some sort of emergency.

If there’s an emergency wouldn’t it likely be his doing in the first place?

“It’s all about making adjustments out there. You’ve gotta go out there and you’ve got to read the swings and the last few games they’ve been sitting on fastballs away and if they’re going to continue to do that, then they better get ready to back off the plate and they better get ready for some stuff up there to keep them off-balance.” 

Steven Strasburg

You think there’s a batter in the National League that won’t have some doubt the next time he faces that 100 mph Strasburg fastball?

Tuned in the Rockies game vs. the Cardinals last night. (In Albuquerque you get the Rockies on DirecTV. You get the lamentable Diamondbacks on Comcast.) The Rockies had come from being down 0-5 to tie the game with three runs in the 8th.

It was 7-7 in the bottom of the 9th when the Cardinals brought in Evan MacLane to pitch. It was MacLane’s major league debut (after 8 seasons in the minors).

I was torn. I wanted the Rockies to win, but — ahh! — it’s MacLane’s first appearance in the big leagues. His mom may be watching.

I hope not. Chris Iannetta hit MacLane’s sixth major league pitch 416 feet into the left field seats for a walk-off Rockies victory.

This isn’t Today’s Photo. That may or may not follow later. This is just a Rockies fan’s photo from Purple Row the Colorado Rockies blog.

Take that, Karen. 🙂