Frayed Knot

Marquis de Sad tonight. It's now a battle of the lefty 47's. Let's let the Eyre out of this guy!

Saw the highlights of that Philly/Brewers game; and as much as Cordero deserves the horns for all those walks and HBPs in the 9th, the tying "hit" should have been handled by the young (hitting) phenom Braun at 3rd. Then, in the 11th, the same Braun was robbed of a HR by Rowland and then the Brews made the last out on a bases-loaded line-out. Damn that had to be one frustrating game for the Beermakers!

We're getting a coupla breaks here: - I think Milledge was going to be out if Pagan handles that Glavine single - Soriano likely would have been safe at 3rd (although 'twas a nice throw by Milledge as it turned out) - and then the replacement chain that went into effect after the Soriano injury put an infielder in RF and got Green his double. ... but we're also taking advantage of them (which is never a given) and forcing the issue in a couple of cases with agressive baserunning (Milledge's steal, Castillo's tag) so yay for us.

and it winds up stealing a run !!

Nice tag by little Luis ... caught Pagan napping there.

"LoDuca - C" Willie's a Liar!!! Players dictating lineups to the manager!!! Cats and dogs living together!!! Apocolypse NOW!!!! Or not.

Geeez, the Brews were up 6-0 for much of the game and even 6-1 heading for the 9th. The, after Wise - that guy who couldn't throw a strike against us last week - makes an error and serves up a HR, they bring in the closer Francisco Cordero who's had more disasters this season than Wagner has in almost two here. And he even starts by getting the first two outs!!!! - Coste popped out to second baseman Counsell. - C.Ruiz lined out to right fielder Mench. But then ... - Rollins walked on four pitches. - On defensive indifference, Rollins to second. - Iguchi infield single to short, Rollins to third. - Burrell walked ... bases loaded - R.Howard was hit by a pitch ... 6-4, still loaded - Rowand singled to left ... 2 score, game tied, 1st & 2nd - Helms flied out to left fielder Jenkins Then the Phils put up 2 in the 11th against that Parra guy who looked so good the other day and the Brews blow a(nother) biggie while the phils steal one.

GamesIPERHBBKWHiPERA1st 1618.216255161.617.71Next 1216.23103120.781.61 Those 1st 16 games are from his return to the roster up to and including his July 4th disaster in Colorado (2/3 IP, 6 ER. 6 H, 2 HRs). The next 12 are everything since. The K-rate remained about the same but everything else is obviously way better. Also worth noting that 5 of those 12 appearances are for a full 2 innings. And, yes, the above does NOT include the inherited run he allowed in the last Glavine game and maybe some others as well, but I'm not doing a game by game search here.

This morning's Newsday put a slightly different spin on the old HRs by the letter list: A: Allowed: Robin Roberts - 505 B. Brothers: Hank (755) and Tommie (13) Aaron C. Catcher: Mike Piazza - 396 D. Different Ballparks: Sammy Sosa - 44 E. Extra Innings: Willie Mays - 22 F. Father-Son combination: Bobby (332) & Barry (755) Bonds G. Grand Slams: Lou Gehrig - 23 H. Hawaiian: Mike Lum - 90 I. Inside the Park: Sam Crawford - 51 J. Japanese: Hidecki Matsui - 100 K. Kew Gardens Roomates for one season: Maris (61), Mantle (54) and Bob Cerv (6) L. Long Islander: Carl Yastrzemski - 452 M. Mets: Darryl Strawberry - 252 (career); Todd Hundley & Carlos Beltran - 41 (season) N. NYC-Born: Alex Rodriguez - 500 O. Opening Day: Frank Robinson - 8 P. Pitcher: Wes Farrell - 37 Q. Queens: Total Regular Season at Shea (including NYY '74-'75 home games) - 5,559 R. Rookie: Mark McGwire - 49 S. Shortstop: Cal Ripken - 345 (ARod = 344) T. Twins: Jose (462) & Ozzie (0) Canseco U. Umpire (future): Sherry Magee - 83 V. Vermonter: Carlton Fisk - 376 W. World Series: Micky Mantle - 18 X. in his name: Jimmie Foxx - 534 Y. Yankees: Babe Ruth (career) 659; and Roger Maris (season) 61 Z. Todd Zeile - 253

]apparently there's a big deal being made on richard neer's program that "arod is selling a commemorative 500th homer bat" for $129.99 + $20.00 S&H the big deal is that he's pimping his name for this overpriced product, apparently, sullying his good name. He did that once before, in the early days in his NYY career following a 3-HR game against Bartolo Colon and the Angels. When a furor arose over that Alex came out the next day saying that it was done without his authorization and that he was immediately cutting ties with the promotion agency that handled it. Now we have this situation here which certainly sounds like much the same thing.

Don't all those people with the flash cameras realize that their flashes are useless at the kind of distances from which they're using them?

I don't think there's a "message" any more complicated than one that says they don't want to play him while he's not 100% healthy (or as close to 100% as a catcher can get in August). What could be interesting to watch is how the playing time gets split after LoDuca does get the OK to return. I (as well as others here) was calling for a closer-to-equitable division of labor from the very beginning of last season - although a better than expected year from LoDuca and Castro's injury made it a lost season for Ramon. Now may finally be the right time for that kind of mix.

Willie got pretty emotional while talking about Robinson during his little pre-game radio stint.

It's not the first time LaGenius has done this. He was doing it for a while in the McGwire era based on the theory that he wanted Big Mac hitting 3rd in order to get him up in the 1st inning, but then also wanted better odds of having runners on base for him in the subsequent times around the lineup. So he figured that hitting the pitcher 8th would put an extra hitter between him and the big redhead. If minor adjustments like that make a difference of more than a couple runs per year (in either direction) I'd be surprised. Then, once you add in the whole circus it creates about whether you're dissing the guy you slot 9th etc., I can't possibly think it would be worth all the trouble.

Alou - 2.5 Sele - 1.5 Sosa - 0.5 Schoeneweis - 0.5

Big innings agin us suck, 'specially when there were only 2 hard-hit balls mixed in.

One more from the 'Overdoing it' file: The Yankees - that would be the Staten Island Yankees - are retiring Robinson Cano's number, His time spent on that team? -- 22 games.

Edgy DC wrote: How sadly soviet. I was thinking the same thing. In the old days if the General Seretary was described as having the sniffles it was probably the flu, a chest cold was probably pnuemonia, and if they admitted he actually had pnuemonia it probably meant he had already been dead for at least a week.

5 0 0 Got it out of the way early, hitting the first pitch he saw today into the LF seats. I came home and turned on the TV exactly as the ball was landing.

What this article does do is provide the first public 1st-person account & description (and from a legit journalist via a George friend no less) that confirms - and even surpasses - many of the whispers of the last year or more. Be interesting to see how vigorously the NYY brass continues the company line about how they talk to George "10 times a day"; about how he's still sharp as ever, still working out daily, and still connected to, and in charge of, the day-to-day activities of the team.

One thing that's happening with this Bonds "chase" is that ESPN2 feels obligated to carry all his games - something I suspect is so that when it does happen they'll have their announcers on the call which they can then re-play more often than the Russ Hodges/Bobby Thompson call (to the exclusion of any local calls of course) and therefore feel as though they can claim to "own" that moment. I'm almost shocked that Chris Berman isn't being air-lifted in since we all know that any moment he is part of automatically becomes that much bigger. The good thing about it all is that it's more late-night baseball available. The bad is that they're treating it exactly as you'd expect they would: as the Bonds record chase being interrupted by a silly baseball game. At several points during the game they're filling non-Bonds ABs with split-screen, talking head statements by various folks about Bonds -- with talking head inset much larger than picture of on-going game of course.

OHernandez - 4.0 Delgado - 2.0 Castro - 1.3 Wright - 0.6 Green - 0.5 Gotay - 0.6 Mota - 0.6 Wagner - 0.4

Jeeeez, Jason Kendall?

I was just about to add that, although having Marlon on the team has been nice and all, I'd really rather see Alou up in those spots. But he comes through w/men on in his 3rd try today. David Newhan: Rally Starter

If that article is real it's idiotic, if it's sarcasm it failed.