G-Fafif

Ian Kennedy, long-ago hot stuff in MFY system, retires as this season's sixth-oldest American Leaguer. Was part of the blockbuster that shuffled Grandy and Scherzer early in their careers. Takes home a ring as an inactive Ranger pitcher this fall.

Former Mets farmhand and no longer on-the-hook Rangers right fielder Nelson Cruz has announced his retirement.

The Verlander back page, with the under-renovation scoreboard in the background, earns points for evoking archival photos of Shea coming together 40 years earlier.

No Garcia tonight for the Rangers. Not good for them, not good for the Series. Word just in: both Garcia and Scherzer out for the rest of the Series.

Let's get him some options, send him down, bring him up, send him down, bring him up...

https://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2023/10/31/rob-gardner-had-game/Remembering The Rob Gardner Game and why it was destined to reside below the surface of widely known Met legend.

The more we talk about him, the more he's https://www.bdcwire.com/13-best-bill-brasky-quotes-from-saturday-night-live/Bill Brasky, who may have been inspired by Frank Howard.

First George Bamberger Spring Training's intrasquad game was the Jumbo Franks vs the Small Freys. Frank Howard's squad bowed to Jim Frey's, meaning Hondo's staff paid for a coaches' dinner prepared by player-coach Rusty Staub (who later acknowledged he never did much formal coaching the one year he carried the title).

Seems every year there's a reliever I'm vaguely certain should be getting more of a shot based on a competent outing or two, then doesn't. Vinny was this year's version.

Our manager for the pivotal final four months of the 1983 season has died at 87. https://www.mlb.com/news/frank-howard-dieshttps://www.mlb.com/news/frank-howard-dies

There's always a clip.

Avilán indeed had memorable (to me) walkup music. [media=youtube]k9IfHDi-2EA[/media]

Football players who've never been to a baseball game get great seats to the playoffs and have the good sense to appreciate what they're experiencing.

Lindor at Shea, Senga greeting the Youth of America and Vogelbach barreling into home is a grand way to say goodbye to the season.

Thank you for shepherding this close race across the finish line.

Stephanie Apstein of Sports Illustrated with a good explainer on the topic of on the record clubhouse reporting. Atlanta players, after being blown out in Game 3, contended that Arcia's taunt had been off the record. Many fans—and even some members of the media—have exhibited a similar misunderstanding of how “the record” works, so it seems like a good time for an explainer of this concept as it relates to the coverage of Major League Baseball. As a reporter, I am the record. When the clubhouse opens to media, as the collective bargaining agreement stipulates that it must before and after each regular-season game, and in the postseason only after games, every interaction I see, hear or take part in is on the record unless I have specifically come to an agreement otherwise with someone beforehand. Players and coaches are welcome to ask after the fact if they can take something they said or did off the record; at that point, the decision is mine. Most players understand this, which is why most players don't whine when we print what they say and do. https://www.si.com/mlb/2023/10/13/orlando-arcias-comments-about-bryce-harper-were-never-off-the-recordhttps://www.si.com/mlb/2023/10/13/orlando-arcias-comments-about-bryce-harper-were-never-off-the-record

=metirish post_id=139384 time=1697199421 user_id=72] What's the kerfuffle around Arcia about?

Adios Atlanta!

How ya gonna beat Paul Sewald with a postseason series on the line?

Max Scherzer seems happy.

Jim's nephew Christian followed him into the business and remembered him beautifully. Jim covered the Twins when I was a kid, and I thought his job sounded like just about the coolest damn thing in the world. When I was 16, he invited me to shadow him at a Mariners game, from the press box to the clubhouse. Let me tell you: there are few things that could have impressed 16-year-old me more than seeing Dave Freaking Niehaus greet my uncle like they were old pals. There was no ego, no gatekeeping. Those old writers who joke that the best advice for aspiring journalists is “don't do it” — Jim would never. He was thrilled that I admired him, and was never too busy to read whatever dogshit story I'd sent him to look over, never failing to offer encouragement in return. Before he filed a big story, Jim might email me two different versions of the lede, asking which I liked better. He was a night owl, and we'd sometimes exchange messages until 2 a.m., discussing the craft or simply exchanging jokes. I got to see him work up close in the summer of 2009, when I covered the Mariners as an intern for MLB.com. The job didn't pay that year, so Jim and Vicki invited me to stay at their house, rent free. I declined at first, not wanting to impose. Jim called me the next day. “I insist,” he said. The next three months were like a coming-of-age movie with no conflict. I drove my uncle's car to and from the ballpark, and would deconstruct the day's happenings when I arrived home, usually after midnight, Jim still typing away in his office. He'd make three different phone calls for three different stories one day, and catch a flight to St. Louis or Los Angeles or New York the next. Jim and Vicki included me in their social life, too, inviting me along to outdoor movies or to meet friends at a bar somewhere in Seattle. They were always on the go, always having fun, always in search of the next adventure. Late in my internship, Jim asked if I wanted to get lunch before a Mariners game. After we sat down, he said: “Hey, I just wanted to tell you what a great job you're doing. Just keep showing up.” A few years later, when I worked at The (Tacoma) News Tribune, I'd cover the occasional Mariners game so Bob Dutton, the beat writer, could take a day off. Sometimes, Jim would show up at the park, too, to interview a player or manager or simply work in the press box, just because he liked being at the game. We'd chat in the clubhouse and eat lunch together. Then I would go write, and he would go write, and it occurred to me only recently that these were some of my favorite days, my uncle and I showing up to the same place to do the same job, like it was the most normal thing in the world. A few years ago, Jim did some freelancing for The Athletic, overlapping with my time there. I took a screen-shot of the Seattle site's home page one day. Our bylines were right next to each other. https://www.onmontlake.com/p/remembering-jim-caplehttps://www.onmontlake.com/p/remembering-jim-caple

Jim Caple, longtime writer for ESPN.com, especially the highly literate Page 2 section, 61. He may have been the first online writer for a name outlet I exchanged emails with, shocking me that a writer of his stature would directly (and engagingly) respond to a reader. https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/38550277/jim-caple-former-espn-national-mlb-writer-dies-61https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/38550277/jim-caple-former-espn-national-mlb-writer-dies-61 Rushin on Caple, a great eulogizing a great. In the last couple of years, as Jim began slipping deeper into dementia, words and memories and identities began to abandon him, until he could no longer recognize his closest friends. And yet he could still unfailingly summon three names: “Willie Mays,” “Novak Djokovic” and “Sue Bird.” Why those three? What did they mean, this trio of GOATs? “Willie Mays?” Jim was a Giants fan growing up because they were the nearest team to Longview, Wash., before the Mariners arrived in Seattle, and he heard Mays described on KSFO radio out of Candlestick Park. Mays was an uppercase Giant until Jim was 10, and a lowercase giant ever after. To Jim, Mays was childhood and baseball, two of life's greatest gifts. He wore a Giants cap this summer while smiling on his deck, receiving dear friends—fellow baseball writers Jayson Stark and Jerry Crasnick—the week of the All-Star Game in Seattle. If Jim no longer recognized them, he enjoyed their company nonetheless. “Novak Djokovic?” Jim wasn't a tennis fan until Vicki patted the empty cushion next to hers on the couch, sat Jim down and implored him to watch this young Serbian who captivated her in one of his early Grand Slam appearances. As a kid in Clara City, Minn., Vicki watched “Breakfast at Wimbledon,” Bud Collins interviewing John McEnroe and Björn Borg and Chris Evert on NBC, and now she sold Jim on the charms of championship tennis. Soon after, and for years to come, Jim and Vicki were at the French Open or Australian Open or just watching on TV, and Jim was trying—with limited success, for an ESPN piece—to emulate Djokovic's fanatical diet. As for “Sue Bird,” the Seattle Storm point guard and Emerald City icon? Much as she'd done with tennis, Vicki had nudged Jim toward Minnesota Lynx games when they lived in Minnesota, and to Storm games after the couple moved to Seattle in 2000. Jim often covered the team at what is now Climate Pledge Arena and visited Vicki in the stands at halftime. The couple traveled to Moscow to have sushi with Bird and Diana Taurasi for the rollicking profile Jim wrote on the WNBA stars and college teammates playing professionally in the former Soviet Union. Like any of us in the sportswriting racket, Jim covered plenty of louts, but as Vicki said the other day: “Sue Bird was just so nice.” https://www.si.com/mlb/2023/10/10/love-sports-perfectly-intertwined-sportswriter-jim-caplehttps://www.si.com/mlb/2023/10/10/love-sports-perfectly-intertwined-sportswriter-jim-caple

Tim Bogar, Gary Disarcina and Eric Young Jr. among the coaches the Nats will not be bringing back.

Something that won't be a sweep!