A couple weeks ago, I posted a starting lineup of the most entertaining players in baseball, and Jonah Keri objected to my including only one pitcher, Yu Darvish. Of course, you can have only one pitcher in a starting lineup at a time. That’s how baseball works. But because I crave Jonah’s approval as if he were an aloof and uninterested father figure, I put together what would be the most entertaining pitching staff in baseball: Yu Darvish, plus …
Felix Hernandez, RHP, Seattle Mariners
Please, Hernandez’s elbow, don’t blow up. Just please don’t blow up. I’m a sucker for a good sinker. Back in the day, one of my favorite things about baseball was that, once a week, it gave me the opportunity to watch Brandon Webb dive-bomb hitters for seven or eight innings. After the tragic passing of Roy Halladay, King Felix might now be the archetypal no. 1 starter — an enormous dude with a strong fastball, great command, and a long and distinguished list of off-speed and breaking pitches. Not only does the archetypal no. 1 starter have to throw good innings, he has to throw lots of them, consistently. It’s hard to just go out there and carpet-bomb hitters start after start for 220 innings a year. At the moment, it might be down to Hernandez and the next guy.
Justin Verlander, RHP, Detroit Tigers
I’ve been writing about baseball for five seasons now. Whenever preseason prediction time comes around, I pick Justin Verlander to win the Cy Young every time. I have literally never picked another pitcher. I almost didn’t add him because his brilliance is really perfunctory at this point. On Sunday, Verlander took a no-hitter into the seventh inning and I even didn’t turn the game on because it seems like he does that twice a month. “Oh, did Verlander just throw eight innings, strike out 10, walk one, and give up four hits and one earned run? Fascinating. Let me do the Aubrey Plaza eye roll.”
We're back for 2013, and my only hope is that this is the year we finally have a quadruple play. It's been so long. And with that wish in our hearts, here are the top 10 stories/players/matchups heading into the weekend.
10. The Weird Constant Interleague Series (LAD-BAL)
Now that the Astros have betrayed and abandoned the National League and joined the AL Central (that's how it went down, right?), there are 15 teams in each league instead of the previous 16-14 split. That means on any given Friday, there will be seven NL games, seven AL games, and one crazy, weird, fun interleague series. This weekend, it's Dodgers-Orioles in what I'm calling "The Battle Between Yankees Envy Past and Yankees Envy Present." Kind of a long name, but you get the point. Both teams are off to mediocre starts and looking to string a few wins together.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Monday.
Matt Ryan threw his 100th career touchdown pass and the Falcons defense harassed Peyton Manning into three first-quarter interceptions in a 27-21 win over the Broncos. "Each turnover has its own story that no one really wants to hear," Manning said afterward. He then paused, looked in every reporter's eyes, and said, "Actually, let's do this. Turnover one was a lonely girl with big dreams who wanted to escape the drudgery of life in her tiny Nebraska town. Her father was an undertaker, but she longed for more, so she joined a traveling circus. She found joy and she married a carnie, but late one drunken night she died while riding the zipper and they sent her body back to her father. INTERCEPTION. Turnover two was a lot like the boy in Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer." Poor kid, ragged people, bleeding winter, dead from boxing. INTERCEPTION. Turnover three was just a bad pass. WRONG. TRICKED YOU. Each turnover has a story, never forget that. Turnover three was the look my father gave me one October morning, age 8, when I said I wanted to become an artist. "I hate football, Daddy. I love paints and oils." Old Archie threw me in the back of our pickup truck, drove me out to the woods, and left me with nothing but a football for six days. It worked. I fell in love with that football and named it Godfrey. My artistic dreams died with the midnight howling of the wolves. INTERCEPTION. COME BACK, GODFREY. But Godfrey's gone."
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
Roger Clemens, 50 years old and pitching for the first time in five years, threw 3.1 scoreless innings for the Sugar Land Skeeters of the Independent Athletic League. Afterward, when the Skeeters owner found Clemens in the locker room and tried to give him his check, Clemens just shook his head. "Forget the money," he said. "I just want 10 minutes alone in Sugar Land. No cameras, no security guards, no judgment. Just me and that sugar paradise for 10 glorious, weird minutes." The man tried to explain that Sugar Land was just a town name, but Clemens had already slipped into a drooling trance.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Tuesday.
With a silver medal in the 200-meter butterfly and a gold in the 4x200 freestyle relay, Michael Phelps now owns 19 Olympic medals, surpassing Soviet gymnast Larissa Latynina for the most medals of all time. When reached for comment via telephone, the 77-year-old Latynina couldn't be heard over my loud shouts of, "COLD WAR OVER! U-S-A! U-S-A!"
American swimmer Allison Schmitt won her third medal in London, and her first-ever gold, with a dominant, Olympic record performance in the 200-meter freestyle. She then enjoyed an awkward hot tub bath with a naked Kathy Bates. Hold on … am I thinking of Allison Schmitt, or the movie About Schmidt? It's definitely one or the other …
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Wednesday.
Clayton Kershaw and Cliff Lee each pitched eight strong innings, but Matt Kemp's walk-off home run in the 12th gave the Dodgers a 5-3 win over the Phillies. "If I had any less support, I'd be a well-endowed woman without a bra," said a downcast Cliff Lee, making this the eighth straight press conference where he's managed to compare his own pitching to a well-endowed woman. Luckily, his dejected mood made this instance far less graphic than usual.
1. Roy Halladay returned from a back strain last night to pitch five solid innings in a 3-2 Phillies win over the Dodgers. In only 80 pitches, he managed six strikeouts and seven swinging strikes. His fastball wasn't very lively (he threw the cutter and the two-seam a combined 52 times, producing zero whiffs and topping out below 92 mph), but since the injury wasn't to his arm, the velocity of the two-seam in particular should go up as he gains strength.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports since Tuesday.
Phoenix Sun? More like Phoenix done! Steve Nash is headed to the Lakers … the Los Angeles Lakers, that is. The Suns point guard worked out a sign-and-trade deal with Phoenix that will send him to L.A., where he'll chase an NBA title with a certain fellow superstar. Maybe you've heard of him: Kobe Bryant.
1. Matt Cain and Cliff Lee didn't just dominate in Wednesday night's 1-0, 11-inning battle. They blazed through batters with the kind of speed and efficiency that evoked an earlier era, completing the game in two hours and 27 minutes. That was the fastest 11-inning game since June 13, 1978, when Mike Flanagan pitched all 11 innings for the Orioles in their 3-2 home win over Seattle and starter Glenn Abbott, who went 9.2 innings. That game also lasted two hours and 27 minutes.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Wednesday.
Legendary Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt has stepped down after a long and brilliant career. "I'm just glad Pat and I can both call it quits after such a great and dignified lifetime in sports," said Arkansas football coach Bobby Petrino. "With eight national titles between us and the eternal love and respect of our peers." When he heard Petrino's statement, Saints coach Sean Payton said, "Hey, I'm with you guys."
Sources report that Texas catcher Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez will retire as a member of the Rangers on Monday. He'll attend the game with his wife, Elena "Fudge" Rodriguez, and his two sons, Manuel "Sludge" Rodriguez and Felipe "Fatty Cakes" Rodriguez.
Watching our favorite teams lose in the postseason can make us do silly things. Some of us weep. Others set fire to our own cities. And still others write indulgent, self-pitying blog posts. Regardless of how we mourn, on some level we expect the players wearing the nonreplica versions of the uniforms to mirror our own emotions — to sob and moan or, at the very least, clobber a defenseless water cooler until it bleeds bright-orange rivers of sugar water. What we don’t want in those highly charged moments are the very things we claim to admire in professional athletes the other 364 days of the year: professionalism and perspective.
Just ask Shane Victorino. The hyperactive Phillies center fielder joined Twitter earlier in the fall and was soon chattering merrily about mixed martial arts and dropping more “Bros” than an Entourage marathon. All was well: The Phillies were thundering toward the playoffs with the best record in baseball, and Victorino was one extended jag about “chompasauruses” from exactly living up (or down) to the enthusiastic man-child personality longtime "Phans" had dreamed up for him. In the days leading up the fateful Game 5 against the Cardinals, Victorino was his usual, guileless self — raving about Raul Ibañez’s swings in batting practice and shouting out “Chef Yung” at his favorite local eatery. After the brutal loss, Victorino was contrite, calling it “tough/frustrating” but hoping to wake up the next day and “understand the greater things in life.”
But as the optimistic outfielder went about his offseason — enjoying his kids and global cuisine, making jokes about Tony Romo, shouting out an up-and-coming “Christian reggae” artist (!) — the fan base wasn’t ready to move on with him. The quick implosion of World Series dreams was devastating to a city conditioned for failure yet recently deceived into expecting success. And so, to some, Victorino’s tweets seemed somehow inappropriate. As he joshed with Vance Worley about vintage kicks, compared travel plans with Brandon Phillips, or big-upped Tommy Bahama for donating polo shirts to his charity golf game (OK, that one is a pretty unforgivable), an unbrotherly fury swelled in the same streets Bruce Springsteen once serenaded. How dare Victorino consort with rival players! Or eat sushi! Or continue to watch organized sports! Phillies nation demanded blood or, at the very least, sacrifice. Cliff Lee, for example, would never be having so much … fun. (This video perfectly sums up what most denizens of Ashburn Alley expected of the vanquished players. It also wouldn’t surprise me if it were true.) A beef was simmering, one not even the estimable Chef Yung could tenderize.
It got so bad last week that Victorino had to take a break from his semi-official duties tweeting about the World Series for MLB.com to formally apologize to the entire city of Philadelphia. It was another example of Twitter messily melting the barriers that have sustained our relationship with athletes for decades; think of poor Arian Foster infuriating a legion of fantasy football loons when he publicly put concern for his real-life body ahead of their quest for made-up points. But this baseball business was worse — if only for practical reasons. Let’s be clear: We don’t really want Shane Victorino to be as crazy as we are. Just like we wouldn’t want Jimmy Rollins to be racked with self-doubt and self-loathing, or Cole Hamels to scream obscenities and punch the clubhouse wall with reckless machismo after every bad play. (OK, maybe we do want that.)
Baseball players are a funny breed: They have to fail well more than 50 percent of the time just to be considered a success. They play 162 games — and sometimes more — over the course of six grueling months. They experience unbelievable highs and unspeakable lows. They have to play in Miami. No matter what, major leaguers have to be able to shut out the noise and negativity that surrounds them daily (Marlins players don’t have to worry about the noise) and focus instead on a crazy, internal confidence that past performance does not guarantee future results.
Take Albert Pujols over the weekend. Do you think the slugger was able to rebound from an 0-4 performance and a national debate over clubhouse access with one of the best offensive games in history because he spent the night listening to talk radio and berating himself? No! He did it because he’s a 45-year-old man with illegal horse blood coursing through his veins! He did it because he is a baseball player, and the only thing that matters to him is the present.
When Shane Victorino comes to the plate with a game on the line, all Phillies fans should be grateful the Flying Hawaiian’s mind will be untroubled by last season’s failure or the rising price of Wawa hoagies or the relative merits of Greek austerity measures. We want him to change the engrained hopelessness of Philadelphia sports fandom, not embody it. If listening to terrible Christian reggae can keep him hitting triples after doing things like this, then all we should do is shrug our shoulders and say “mahalo.” We may not want our favorite players to be Ed Hardy-wearing, perpetually positive goofballs. But we just might need them to be.
I can't verify this for a fact, but there's an excellent chance that the first big word I ever learned was "referendum." When I was five years old, Quebec's Parti Quebecois government called a referendum to determine whether or not the province should secede from the rest of Canada. Had that effort succeeded, I might have grown up in a different country, with different currency, different status within the global community, and a whole new set of elected officials for Major League Baseball to threaten and blackmail before stealing the Expos away.
In baseball, referendums happen far more frequently, often over the same basic idea: How do we determine the value of a player? Can a pitcher be a league's most valuable player? Can a player on a non-contending team be the most valuable player? Just what exactly does valuable mean, anyway? It's the same with pitchers. Should we focus on wins? ERA? Advanced stats? Can movies starring Brad Pitt and Royce Clayton help us better understand all of this? Forget the future of an entire nation. These are the questions that matter.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Wednesday.
Jacoby Ellsbury's sixth-inning home run helped the Red Sox even up their series against the Yankees with a 9-5 win. Ellsbury's opposite-field shot went over the Green Monster, which marks the 34,245th straight day where the supposed "monster" just sat there and did nothing while people hit things at it.
Here’s your Thursday baseball news long toss to get you warmed up for the weekend.
It’s been a season to forget for the Chicago Cubs. Well, it’s been a season to take out in the yard, bury in the ground, and solemnly read Ecclesiastes 3:1 over, all while an absent-minded Starlin Castro stares off into the yard next door. But for whatever problems the Cubs have had on the field, they appear to still be an attractive destination for some of the biggest names and brightest minds in front-office management. Ever since firing Jim Hendry, marquee names such as Brian Cashman, Pat Gillick, Theo Epstein, and Andrew Friedman have been mentioned as possible replacements. And now there's speculation that Bay Area walks fetishist Billy Beane might be in the mix, as well. Reports suggest that Beane’s future in Oakland is directly tied to whether the A’s get a new park in San Jose.
