And we are BACK, with your all-purpose* guide to the weekend in MLB action.
*Single-purpose, really. It's super limited in function. You can only read it.
10. no. 2 UNC vs. no. 3 Virginia (Friday, 8 p.m. and Saturday, 2 p.m., ESPN3)
Whoa! Super controversial start! Who is this guy? He must think way outside the box to be including a college baseball game in a post specifically dedicated to MLB. What a challenging artistic choice! I imagine people will have split reactions, but it'll definitely get them talking!
OK, this is here because college baseball gets zero attention, and this is a great series. UNC is 46-7 and UVA is 44-8. Both teams have gaudy statistics; the lowest batting average among UNC's top nine hitters is .278, while the Cavs aren't far behind. But the real attraction here is Carolina's pitching staff, which boasts a 2.50 ERA. Benton Moss and Hobbs Johnson are the starters for the weekend, and we could see both in the bigs someday soon. Anyway, if you're ever going to watch a college baseball game before the College World Series, this is a good start. And I swear, the fact that I'll be at one or both games has nothing to do with why I included it here. (Lies.)
The baseball season is a long and lonely road. To preserve his sanity, Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter keeps a diary. These are excerpts from The Captain's private journal.
Thursday, May 9: at Colorado Rockies
When I'm in the starting lineup, which has been almost every day of the season since 1996, I think about nothing other than the game I'm playing, or the preparation for the next game. That probably goes without saying, but you have to say it, because otherwise people might form their own, mistaken impressions about how you spend your time. But when you're apart from the team for physical rehab, you have a little bit more time than you otherwise would to think about the big issues affecting the sport. Not much more time, because during the rehab itself you should be dedicating every spare thought to visualization exercises involving your triumphant, way-ahead-of-any-reasonable-schedule return to the field, the ensuing 15-game winning streak it will spark, and the unstoppable three-month march to the World Series made possible by the momentum-inspiring electricity of a Captain's return to a temporarily rudderless organization. That kind of mental focus is crucial to your recovery program.
The baseball season is a long and lonely road. To preserve his sanity, Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter keeps a diary. These are excerpts from The Captain's private journal.
Wednesday, May 1: vs. Houston Astros
When you take two of three from Houston, it's hard not say "We should've taken three of three from Houston" because they're basically a minor league team, but one of those minor league teams that doesn't have any legitimate prospects, and will occasionally sign a Jose Canseco or a duck that can run the bases to sell a few extra tickets. Yeah, it's funny to watch them waddle around and listen to the noises they make, but you're not really there for the baseball. You're there for a sideshow. Call me a traditionalist, but I think base-stealing ducks and aging Cansecos have no place on a ballfield. You have to respect the game and put a credible product out there.
Here we are, another Friday. Another week without accomplishing our dreams. Unless your dream is watching baseball games on May 3–5, 2013, in which case I am your guardian angel, lifting you by the underarms and carrying you to self-actualization. Here are the top 10 things happening this weekend in American stickball.
If Brian Kenny has a tell, it’s his eyebrows. Flip over to MLB Network — where Kenny is a studio host, talking head, and defender of sabermetricians — and you’ll see his eyebrows shoot up until they form twin quotation marks on his forehead. This means Kenny is about to blow his top. Like Fox News's Shep Smith or ex-CNNer Jack Cafferty, Kenny is a guy you can count on to get angry when the world stops making sense. Watching him stew is just about the most wonderful thing on sports TV.
The baseball season is a long and lonely road. To preserve his sanity, Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter keeps a diary. These are excerpts from The Captain's private journal.
Wednesday, April 24: at Tampa Bay Rays
I don't want to dwell on the game. It is what it is. Or was what it was. It didn't go our way. I wasn't there. That's not an excuse — I still take full responsibility. It's the Captain's job to be there for his team, and even when he can't be there physically, it's his job to provide leadership and inspiration remotely. All you can do is individually text every guy on the roster with words of encouragement, or words of mysterious depth, or words of subtle intimidation. You have to know what motivates each player and press his particular buttons. There's an art to it you learn over time. Not everybody's a positive reinforcement guy. Some guys like the fist bump, the friendly tap on the top of the helmet. But some guys you've got to reach other ways, like showing them a photo of an empty locker in the Scranton clubhouse with their name on it, or by refusing to talk to them for an entire month because they missed a cutoff man. One time somebody woke up bound and gagged inside an equipment bag on the Grand Concourse sidewalk.
You all know me as a teller of truths, and I won't let you down now: This is a weird weekend, and it was hard to find 10 truly compelling story lines. Instead, for this weekend only, I've picked out the top five story lines and mixed them in with five story lines of pure fiction. If you can pick out the real from the fake, then you are a true baseball fan. Get out your magnifying glasses and deerstalker hats, because things are about to get mysterious.
10. Central Affairs (PIT-STL)
With their strong starts, the Pirates and Cardinals are in a battle at the top of the NL Central. The Pirates will almost certainly fade, as they've done for the past 36 years (rough estimate), but it's always fun to read about the excitement in Pittsburgh when they're four games over .500 roughly 1/10th of the way into the season. Despite a 1-2 record, A.J. Burnett is having himself a year for the Bucs, with a 2.79 ERA and a really impressive 13.03 strikeouts-per-nine-innings rate. On Saturday he'll meet Jake Westbrook, who's off to his own impressive beginning, with a 1.25 ERA after three starts. What will likely happen here is that both players will walk 10 batters, strike out 11, and the game will end 7-6, Cardinals.
The baseball season is a long and lonely road. To preserve his sanity, Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter keeps a diary. These are excerpts from The Captain's private journal.
Wednesday, April 17: vs. Arizona Diamondbacks
I'm not gonna lie. I'm disappointed that the medical staff has decided to scale back my rehab. But you just have to trust that they know best about some things. Not everything, but some things. They have their MRIs and their CAT scans and their X-rays, and as far as you know, the machines are telling the truth, they're not programmed by the Red Sox or Orioles to slow down your recovery. Still, you always think you know yourself better than anybody else. When you're a professional athlete, you have to be in perfect tune with your body, to listen to whatever it's trying to tell you. Sometimes you're going through your warm-up, and your hammies might whisper, "We're a little tight today." Or your ribs say, "That last swing wasn't great, might want to be careful." Or maybe your ankle, the one that cost you and the team the postseason, the one that's keeping you from rejoining the guys as fast as possible, goes Hey, slow it down a little. Things aren't optimal down here. Better safe than sorry.
The baseball season is a long and lonely road. To preserve his sanity, Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter keeps a diary. These are excerpts from The Captain's private journal.
Wednesday, April 10: at Cleveland Indians (Rainout)
When you're on the DL, every day feels like a rainout. You try not to dwell on what a depressing thought that is because no one's rehabilitation was ever sped up by negative thinking, but sometimes it's hard not to let the inky storm clouds of despair roll over you and wash away all hope that you'll ever play another big league game. Yeah, I know that was a very dark thought. But my journaling coach tells me that it's OK to embrace the darkness every once in a while, that's it good to get those thoughts on paper. They have to go somewhere. Better into your diary than into your life. Words on a page are so much easier to deal with than emotions in the real world. This is a safe place. No one's going to read them but you. You can say whatever you want here.
The baseball season is a long and lonely road. To preserve his sanity, Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter keeps a diary. These are excerpts from The Captain's private journal.
Monday, April 1: vs. Red Sox, Opening Day
Opening Day. At the Stadium. Versus the Red Sox.
CC on the mound. Pettitte in the dugout. Mo in the bullpen.
When a manager employs a bullpen-by-committee — let's junk that term forever and call it what it is, a bullpen-by-matchup — he usually does so because he lacks the kind of archetypal, fire-breathing closer who takes decisions out of his hands. When you've got Mariano Rivera or Aroldis Chapman standing by, you can shut off your brain, play your rockin' closer intro, and that's that. If you're going to use a bullpen-by-matchup, you'll likely need to leverage a group of capable but flawed pitchers: lefties and righties with big platoon splits, maybe a combination of ground-ball and fly-ball pitchers, too. That takes prep work, nuance, and foresight.
Jim Leyland showed none of these things on Wednesday.
A stunning blonde approaches the table where Pete Rose is signing autographs. Rose is seated at a desk in Las Vegas's Mandalay Place, one eye on his iPad watching horse races, the other on the statuesque lady with the green top, four-inch heels, and big smile.
“Pete Rose! Oh, my god, this is so exciting! It's not every day you get to meet Pete Rose!”
“Nice to meet you,” says Pete, smiling. “It's not every day I get to meet someone … so tall.”
Pete is as friendly and inviting to drunken frat boys as he is to 6-foot blondes. He takes several minutes to chat with every visitor — “Where are you from? Montana? There's this great burger joint in Helena … you know the one?” — shaking hands vigorously, signing every autograph meticulously, even folding jerseys himself. He does all this while keeping the thread of a reporter's questions and keeping tabs on the ponies. He makes somewhere around $1.5 million a year for his Pete Meet and Greets here in Vegas, with a contract that runs through 2017. As documented by our friends at ESPN Films, he is uncommonly good at his job.
In addition to being an immensely talented baseball player, Roberto Clemente was also a poet, a chiropractor, and an insomniac. He also bore the unusual nickname "Momen" because he was always telling people he'd be with them in a momen’.
The unthinkable has happened: Jason Giambi has become a grand old man of baseball. There was a time when Cleveland's designated hitter seemed like he’d remain frozen in the early 2000s, the relic of a goofier, more exuberant time. Giambi was an OBP warrior (praised in Moneyball), a confessed steroids user (unmasked in Juiced), and the recipient of a $120 million free-agent deal back when the Yankees were still passing them out.
But here is Giambi standing at his locker at age 42. He is graying. He uses “tutelage” as a verb to describe his role as a mentor. After a close call in Colorado last season, he's intent on becoming a manager. Herewith, Giambi talks about becoming old and respectable.
"He’s a guy who likes to communicate,” Nolan Ryan once said of C.J. Wilson. That's reason no. 1 why Wilson, the Angels lefty, is my favorite working baseball player. Reason no. 2 is even more important. C.J. Wilson is a guy who likes to think.
Wilson and I met two years ago at spring training. I told him I'd like to talk to him about writing (Wilson had a well-known writing interest) and a day later we spent an hour and a half at a Starbucks, talking about novels and screenplays and magazine articles and how they came together. I felt inspired. I really did. It was like attending Robert McKee’s Story Seminar with Jim Bouton.
I got ahold of Wilson after he'd made his first exhibition start. We said our hellos. And then, with the utmost sincerity, he asked, “So, what do you want to talk about?”
