LaCrosse This, Pal!

After a lousy day at work, I managed to get out and slug through traffic to get to the first rec game of my nephew’s season.  Last year, as the Rag readers know, was a great experience for the kids (and who’s kidding, for the parents and coaches too).  The team wasn’t loaded with 4th graders but the team jelled and ran through the playoffs and eked out a champeenship.  You never expect to do that again (and I don’t), but it’s nice to have as many of those people back this year.  I wish we had Z and his son A, but someone else scooped them up.  We also just missed out on the kid who gave the coaching staff the Dodger keychains.  I wanted to work with him this year because he has gobs of untapped potential and enough desire for two boys, but someone else has him.

The first big news of the year was losing one of our A players to flippin LaCrosse.  My goodness, that’s nonsense.  Don’t let the teams get drafted and then pull out!  Honor your commitments!  You want to dress up in the armor and whack kids with a stick?  Great.  But do it on your own time.  Oh well.

So I get to the game and I missed the 1st.  The other team has several good kids that I recognize–and they pitch them 1-2.  They basically shut us down.  My nephew smaked one pretty good but it was caught–a miracle for this early in the year at this level, but don’t you know it?  They caught 2 good outfield shots!  My nephew has a knack for that and it tends to affect his confidence.  I hope this one doesn’t.  He likes to hit the faster pitchers and really can’t do a thing with the slower ones–it’s comical almost.  We are going to bat him lefty in rec against the slow guys and should have tonight.

We missed a chance to plate a kid by the 3rd base coach vapor-locking.  I know how it can be.  I didn’t see it but he knew he messed up.  He felt bad and you do, you really do, when it’s you doing it.  I’ve been there.  The last thing you want to do is get a kid thrown out or cost the team a run–you feel you’re letting the kids down.  I did, anyway.  And what makes it so hard is that things that a grown up would do without thinking, some kids have to be TOLD to do.  And you just don’t expect it!  You have to learn NOT to anticiapte ANYthing.  And you can’t be shy–you have to yell to the boy who’s about to mess up; or they will–and in ways that you really can’t even dream of! haha.

So they get 1 and then 3 (the half inning limit) and then 1 more I think.  It’s 5 to 1 and we bat in the 6th.  The kids were pretty morose.  They weren’t making noise and were looking and acting beaten.  I started to stir them up.  I started to talk “comeback”, really just to fire them up and get them into the game some.  I figure if we get some men on or plate a few kids, the boys will really enjoy it and boy did they ever!  It was hilarious.  It was a contagious, which is just what I wanted.  Listen, I’m not claiming that I impacted the game but the kid throwing is only 25 feet away and he’s struggling to throw strikes and dont you think that he hears our kids going bonkers on the bench?  Nothing wrong with that.  You cheer your guys on and that’s what they did.  At one point, one kid said with the deepest drama, “…this is INSANE!…”  Hahaha!  That’s worth a million bucks seeing little boys go nuts like that.  And the kids are walking and hitting and the runs are plating and then we tie it and then we plate 2 more to pandemonium: 8.5 year old style.  The boys are loving every minute of it!  The coaches are smiling.  “This is more like it”, I think.

When the inning began, I told my nephew that he would bat that inning, and he did.  The daylight was fast draining away and I was beginning to worry it would be like the Yankees game last year, when we tied it with a 4-run 6th, and the Yankees’ coach got on the 14 year old kid umping to have it called, because that would revert the inning back and the 4 runs wouldn’t count.  It worked.  Bush tactic, but it worked.  That coach also had his kid throw 62 pitches (that we clicked off) and turned in a count of 48.  Great guy.

So when we had the two run lead and Max was closing it, I actually thought of telling him to swing and miss three straight times to get us out there and get the inning officia.  I’m glad I didn’t do it and you know what?  The kid was throwing so slow that Max couldn’t touch him!  It worked out.  He k’d pretty quick and got out there and closed them out.  The top of their order came up and he got them out, stranding first and third, I think it was.

He was determined.  I love that look when he gets it.  He is mad and focused and wants it bad.  Those are times I try to say as little as possible.  Not even an attaboy really, because he is locked in and you just sit back and enjoy it.

We had fun.  The kids thought it was the world series–the year is off to a flying start and it felt like we picked up just where we left off last season–all smiles.  I’m willing to bet that the kid who went to LaCrosse won’t have that much fun all year!  Go Brewers! Woo HOO!

Tommy attempts to recreate Yankee game

Where the Hale have these numbers been?

A very salient and well-researched comment from a past Yankee-rant post from Hale, a strong supporter of the Rag.  Have a look:

Yankee HR distances at NYS through 4/19

Posada 4/16 418 ft
Damon 4/17 347 ft
Teixeira 4/17 403 ft
Cabrera 4/17 385 ft
Cano 4/17 380 ft
Jeter 4/17 350 ft
Teixeira 4/18 352 ft
Cabrera 4/18 356 ft
POSADA 4/19 339 ft

Your eyes are not deceiving you. Half of the Yankee HR’s have been LESS THAN 360 FT which would have been fly ball outs in over 90% of Mlb parks. Old Old Yankee Stadium was 296 down the RF line and 344 to straight away center but was well over 400 ft in both power alleys. The new stadium in straight right field is probably very close in distance as Fenway is in left field with only an 8 foot fence.

***

Just saw Beltran jog out of the box until he realized Dukes was going to let his ball roll to the wall.  Keith Hernandez excused him on replay saying, “…Carlos thought it was going to be caught”.  Then Wright K’s and the Boo HIM, while Beltran is a big non-hustling hero…then Sheffield comes up and I turn the set off.  My goodness I hope they lose.

Monica Seles and Mom

I had a day off today to take my mom to a lunch for charity and the keynote speaker was Monica Seles.  It was a great function run at the Indian Trail Club–top shelf.  Seles was very nice and gave a decent talk.  Everybody got an autographed book and you could have her personalize it.  I bid on a new waffle iron (I’m pro-waffle) and Yankee tickets.  There were 4 tickets, and with 40 dollar face values they were probably in the upper.  No joy on the raffles.  A far cry from 1989 when I won $585 single dollar bills in a 50-50 at the Mahwah Tennis Classic where I saw Seles play.  She was awesome.  It was the first time I had seen pro tennis (only really) and it’s amazing how good they are.  It’s also amazing that with shorts and t-shirt, you have no place to hide, 585 single dollar bills, which, with rubber bands around them are about 6 inches high.  A block of money.  I think I bought a tee-shirt and wrapped the money up with it.  Fun night.  Sometimes, you do win stuff.  Not today.  But it was worthwhile.  I have a lot of respect for Seles–she’s a quality person, it is clear.

AM radio in NY: Al-Yankazeera

Click here to see amazing photos of Saturn from the Daily Mail online

Shrinking this photo does it no justice.  Breathtaking.

***
More on Max: Yesterday, after our workout, we got pizza and were again going over Sunday’s game in which Max threw an inning and two thirds to close the game out.  In the last inning, he struck out two batters on 2-strike, ahead-in-the-count, changeups that were textbook!  They were down at the knees out of his hand and both dropped and hit the plate.  In each case, it was identical; the kid committed to his swing out of his hand when it looked like a nice belt-high, or mid-thighs strike.

But the ball is much slower and breaks down due to its fair overspin.  The arm motion is the same as his fastball, so the batter doesn’t have any clue that it isn’t going to be a fastball.  Each kid was way out on his front foot, reaching for the ball and missing it.  Textbook.

Max told me that he thought that the manager (who is now, more and more a believer in this pitch) looked at him as he came off the field, kind of bugeyed! hahaha.  I know the look because it’s the same look on my face most of the time I catch him in the backyard and he has that nasty thing working!  haha.  Know it well.  And sure, he may have been exaggerating, but I’d like to think it went down that way.

Yesterday, he threw one particular rougue pitch that was twice as good as any changeup he’s ever thrown.  It came out of his hand very hard and just dove down 2 feet.  It was so odd because I know the normal movement on his change and this was 150% of that!  We tried to recreate it but could not.

There are many variables.  The grip is somewhat tricky–which is why I am always amazed that he mastered it in 10 minutes.  I know when I throw it myself that you can grip it too low and sacrifice too much speed for RPM’s.  There’s a butter-zone in there that you like.  If you are gripping and throwing it right, you are throwing it as hard as your fastball, minus maybe only 10%–undetectable to the batter.  The trick is keeping your wrist from turning at all, so it comes off with the nice overspin.  That, and the grip, takes a little feel.  That’s why I always like the boy to warm it up with 7 to 10 throws of it on the side.  Even if he’s not coming in immediately, if he’s chucked it within the last hour, he has a 75% greater chance of throwing it with confidence in a game situation.  So, hopefully, they do that with him–and that’s exactly what they did last week, so I think they will mostly.

After the game I saw the manager and complimented him on the game and his use of Max and I meant it.  I’ll be critical at times but I like to try to be FAIR.  If someone makes adjustments then that’s what it’s all about.  Eddie Murray said it best: “Baseball, should be called ‘adjustment ball’”.  Amen, Eddie.  This manager takes heat for a lot of nonsense mostly, but people don’t realize how much energy and care he does put into things and you like to see that he cares about his boys and wants them all in spots where they can succeed.  That’s the ticket.

Anyway, I just wanted to ping him on the changeup, because it was so obviously outrageous, like I’d been harping on in emails to him over the winter.  I figure, he’s seen the kid not throw it and get lit, and now he’s seen him use it and just shut down the hitters, so I asked him and we went back and forth and at one point, I said something like, “…it’s almost unfair when he has that thing working down at the knees…”

I was using “unfair” as a figure of speech–substitute that for “unhittable”, really.  He took it to mean that it might not be kosher for kids to throw a “trick” pitch, and he insisted that he thought it was fine and that he liked the fact that Max was using all his tools to get outs.  I agree with that.  It’s NOT a curveball–it’s a fingertip forkball.  The wrist HAS to stay perfectly straight, like throwing a football, or it will NOT WORK.  But if the kid keeps using it, I predict that some coach somewhere is going to beef to the ump that the kid is throwing a breaking ball.  That’s when we need to make sure we tell the ump what he is throwing and that it is NOT a curve.

I know in the Fall, one coach did that informally, just yelling it around during Max’s warmups, and Max was so intimidated that he didn’t throw any during the game and we lost.  He’s 9.  If he so much as hears a coach beefing, he’s going to get intimidated and the damage will be done–the changeup will run away and hide.  Well, hopefully, we will cross that bridge when we get to it.

***

Carlos Beltran is getting heat today for not sliding in the Cardinal game that the Mets lost last night.  No one, besides me it seems, saw the real reason he was out at the plate–when he did his popup slide into third, he relaxed.  He had his back to the infield and didn’t see for a whole beat-and-a-half, that the ball came off his shoe and he could score.  If he was more plugged into the play, he would have skipped home!  Forget the slide, he wasn’t hustling BEFORE that!  And the Mets do this all the time–they do the Robbie Cano, “Big league” deal, as if they are too cool to actually be seen CARING about the ballgame–a game they get paid millions to play!

Remember: Never feel bad for a big-leaguer; they never have to work a day in their lives again.

***

Strawberry: I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: why do the Mets continue to involve this loser in promotions?  He’s an unrepentant guy who’s now making money on revelling in his hard-partying days and I want to pay money to take my kids to go and see this jerk?  I’m supposed to teach my kids that this is a good guy?  A guy to be emulated?  It’s just Reason #99 why the Mets just don’t get it.

Gary Sheffield is reasons number 100, 101, 102 and 103.  Making deliberate errors in Milwaukee to be traded; steroids; racist comments; shaking down teams with claims of verbal promises not in the contract.

Didn’t Tampa Bay basically prove for once and for all that CHARACTER MATTERS!?!  I guess the Wilpons never got that memo.  They were out at Ebbet’s Field.

I also don’t think Gooden should write on someone else’s walls with a sharpie.  Take some rubbing alcohol and wipe that **** off!  Write on your own da*n walls, Dwight!  If fans are so weepy about some sharpie scrawls, they can put a place for that somewhere but I was raised that you don’t write on someone else’s walls.  And the Mets should NOT be apologetic for their correct and reasonable stance on this.  Don’t bow to the Yankee-centric writers and mikers in this town who simpley HATE the Mets because they are little, runny-nosed, Yankee fans disguised as professionals.  Read: Any writer at the NY Post and Francesa and Kay.

I listened to Francesa’s show on the ride home and it only took him about 20 seconds into his show to rip the Mets about a dozen times!!

My question is this:  WHY would ANY Mets fan listen to this guy?

Beyond that: WHY would the Wilpons air their product on a radio station that features a Mets-basher who talks for 5 hours a day!?!  Total nonsense.  I wouldn’t care if I took a hit in the wallet, I would pull my broadcast from WFAN if I were the Mets.  I would have done it years ago.  You wanna be Yankee-central with Francesa?  You want Francesa just ripping the Mets?  Condescension and derision just DRIPPING off of every word?  Dam*ing with faint praise?  Calling attention to every conceivable negative he can dredge up?  Day after day?  The Willie Randolph nonsense?  Heck, even the song the closer warms up to?  This what the Wilpons want?

Change the culture, Wilpons!  Start with this guy!

***

Lost in the story about the stupid, phantom wind currents at Yankee Stadium are two salient facts:

(1) The average homer distance-traveled in the bigs this year has JUMPED.  There’s only one explanation: Juiced ball.  They wound it tighter to combat the recession.  Don’t believe me?  Ok, wait.  Watch ALL the HR numbers jump this year–not just at bandbox Yankee stadium, where a really well-pitched game can be ruined by a fluke 316′ fly ball out that goes for a home run in row one of Right Field: can’t you just hear Michael Kay yelling, screaming?  With that phony, put-on, breathless tone that he takes ANY time a Yankee doesn anything?  Does he yell like that in his living room every winter when the payroll crests 200 million? hahaha.

On that note, I have dropped XM (they ruined the baseball channel and fired Mark Patrick, the best funny-baseball-mike-man in the USA), so on the commute, I’ve been forced to listen to more of AM radio (read: Yankee-radio).  Anyway, there is a girl on Kay’s show, I think she does traffic.  She’s from Texas and anyway, Kay tries to engage her in witty banter and her responses to this creep are just hilarious!  Dripping off of her every word is her total disgust with this guy!  Hahaha.  You can tell from just one exchange that she doesn’t dig him AT ALL.  She finds his “New York” view of the world to be totally insulting (his schtick is to put down Texas or really anywhere “red” state.)  She sees him coming up 6th avenue and just hammers him as only a woman can.  It saves the show for me.

(2) The second thing is that the Yankees have hit just a ton of 315 to 320′ fly balls that have gone for homers.  Just a fluke.  So if it seems like badly hit flies are reaching the seats, that’s what you wanted when you moved the fences in 4 to 8 feet from the already-ridiculous dimensions laid out in 1923 to take advantage of Babe Ruth hitting balls down the line.  MLB should NEVER have allowed them to build a new park with a travesterial 314′ fence.  With today’s rabbit balls and muscled up hitters, that’s not baseball–that’s a waste of my time.  And it’s not good for Michael Kay’s pipes, either.  He’s going horse over there with his boy-scout act.

[Full Disclosure: Years ago, I was in Mickey Mantle's restaurant with my mom, on business, because they were displaying my life-sized statue of Joe DiMaggio and I saw Michael Kay at one of the tables in the back.  He had been a writer for the Daily News with a little head shot at the top of his column, so I knew the face, and yet I couldn't remember how; I thought I might have recognized him from somewhere, but I just couldn't place it.  I was some distance away and I must have looked at him a bit too long, trying to recall where I had seen him--it wasn't menacing or anything, just a dopey kid from Jersey in the big city trying to determine if I was looking at "a celebrity", well, of sorts.

So Kay realizes that I'm looking at him and turns to me and gives me the dirtiest, just-sucked-on-a-lemon look that he can muster.  I felt dopey.  By now, I know, of course, that he's just that way--nasty.]

Walk on

Liverpool has drawn 4-4 at Anfield with Arsenal.  The Champ’s League went last match.  The League goes out with this one.  Season is over.  Max was very bummed about it and I told him that Gerrard missed the last two key games.  I also told him that Gerrard was less than 100% for most of the year and missed time as well as Torres missing Sept-Oct.  I think with those two characters in the side, we would have come up with 4 more points, not to mention the two points stolen by lousy reffing at Stoke (the early goal called back when the linesman had one explaination and the ref a different one).
All in all, I told him that since I have followed circa 1993, they have not gotten this close to the EPL championship and the Champ’s League?  Well, to win that is just walking on water and 2005 happens once in a generation, if that.  I am proud of the team and of Rafa.  Gerrard played hurt again and again and showed me plenty.  It was a season to remember and hardware doesn’t mean everything.  This last run of matches — the last 10 really, has been as good as it ever gets and has probably made a lifelong fan out of the Maxster.  In fact, I had forgotten about the Tue start and was at the batting cages when he called ME to tell me the score.  He was funny, he asked me if I knew the score and he sounded so bummed out that I just automatically assumed that they were on the short end of it.  He told me 2-1 and I said, “…buddy, you fooled me–you sounded so down…”, and he said, “…yea, I got you!”  We kept calling each other as I made my way over to catch him.  2-1. 2-2. 2-3. 3-3. 4-3. 4-4.  Amazing.

As the crowd at Anfield gives the team a “You’ll Never Walk Alone” at the end of a match, if they deserve it, I give Liverpool a psychic YNWA (Except Robbie Keane.  Buh-bye pal, if you could have made ANY of those easy chances you kept missing, we might sit top).

Good stuff?  Well, discovering that Benayoun is quality and can play with either Torres or Gerrard.  Bonus.  I don’t expect Babbel will hang around but I don’t know the business situation.  He could start just about anywhere.  I kind of wish that we saw more of Babbel and less of Riera.  Signings?  Well, a midfielder perhaps.  Or a top back.  Carragher isn’t getting any younger.  And I don’t want to see Lucas out there in big matches.  Take care of midfield, I say.  It is the engine room of football.  Ngog and El-Zhair can backfill Torres with Benayoun and Kuyt up front, no?  Pleas no more Robbie Keane’s or worse–the troll, Bellamy.  If you must hire a striker, go off shore at least.  Great season.  YNWA.

How will CNN cover this?

A Set Up: Michael Kay and Yankee Stadium

The new Yankee Stadium is ridiculous.  I never want to invest 3 hours watching a game, only to see it end, when a pitcher MAKES HIS PITCH, and some skinny infielder sticks his arse out one way and flips his wrists the other and hits a 316′ “home run” into the first row of that travesty in right field at Yankee Stadium.  Not to mention that I don’t want some yahoos reaching over, as they did AGAIN today, to turn an out, into a homer for Posada–was that call overturned?  I didn’t stick around.  That’s when the game went off.  I’m sure the Yankee fans (Read: people who like watching beat-downs) got all lathered up about Posada’s 316′ fly ball.

I would never have let the Yankees rebuild the original dimensions, but of course, they did.  Not only that but the new wall is actually CLOSER by 3 to 10 feet along the right field line.  Check the blue line in the diagram.  So MLB made something that was bad, worse.  Great.

Is it me?  Or have more than half of the Yankees’ home, HR’s this short season been the cheap variety?  Seems like every one so far scrapes the back of the wall by that 314′ right field corner.  Is that the way you want to win?  On a ball that would be an out at any other park in the country?  That float your boat?  I don’t want to see that–that’s dopey.  If the pitcher makes a good pitch, he shouldn’t be penalized with a homer.

Beyond that, there is already mounting evidence this season that MLB has livened the ball and that we are in for a big homer-year.  Yup.  The current theory is that with the economy, they figured,” why not?”.

***

There have been, oooh, I don’t know, about 1000 major league managers fired in the history of baseball, but there’s still one firing, that Michael Kay is holding a candlelight vigil for: Willie Randolph.  Here’s the deal:

Willie Randolph is a nice guy.  He played for both the Mets and Yankees and he was hired to manage the NY Mets, without so much as a DAY of managing experience.  None.  And he was well paid.  He was paid more than many veteran managers with over ten years of experience!  He was handed the team that had the HIGHEST National League payroll, for ALL 4 YEARS that he managed them!

He couldn’t get past the Cardinals in a playoff series that most feel, other managers would have.

He presided over the biggest “collapse” since the 1964 Phillies.

And the Mets asked him to come back!  And they paid him 4 million dollars that year, when only Torre, I believe, got more.  Most managers were lucky to make 2 million.

That’s 4 million that he didn’t deserve.  That’s 4 million that he didn’t have to give back one dime of, even though he was canned during the season.

Little boy Yankee-fans like Michael Kay and Mike Francesa, decided to rip the Mets up one side and down the other because they fired Willie at the wrong time of day.  It was a night on the East Coast–when the Mets were playing in LA.  My goodness!  The horror!

They actually complained that the mean Mets made Willie fly coast-to-coast, when they KNEW they were going to fire him!  The horror.

And the other day, a year after it happened, I heard Michael Kay making sure to go way out of his unprofessional, angry, fanlike way, to bash the Mets all over again.

Hey Mike: What are you smoking?  The Mets GIFTED Randolph an extra 4 million when just about any other people in the world would have let him go at the end of the 2006 season!  My goodness, Randolph was GIFTED 4 million dollars! And you want to complain bitterly that the Mets did something wrong?  Randolph should have held a press conference and publicly thanked the Wilpons for being stupid enough to overpay him and bring him back after the botch job he did with the Mets–the highest paid outfit in the NL.  He had to take a FLIGHT?  What assinine nonsense!

The moral of this for the slow-learning Wilpons is simple: because the media is so heavily and obviously Yankee-centric, and you have angry fans like Kay and Francesa with so much wattage at their disposal and absolutely no qualms about using it to bash you: YOU NEVER HIRE A PERSON WITH ANY “YANKEE” STINK EVER AGAIN!

Because with guys like Francesa and Kay, there would have been no pleasing them.  If you fire a beloved Yankee, they will rip you.  If it wasn’t the time of day rip-job, it would have been something else–it’s first semester, first grade.  It’s like CNN covering George Bush or Sarah Palin: If they walked on water today, the headline on CNN tomorrow would be: “Bush can’t swim!”

And doing things like this is why the Wilpons just don’t get it.  Leave the Yankees ALONE!  Hire other people.  Nobody was running out to Shea because you had a nice guy as manager–they wanted to win the bloody 2006 world series and just about any other manager would have!

And Mr. Kay, I heard you the other day trying to foist the idea on your listeners that you are harder on the Yankees than the Mets~ I nearly drove off the dam* road when I heard that.  That’s stupid, even for you!  Dude, listeners aren’t dumb–we know when you are blowing smoke up our bippys.  Why don’t you take it back and blow it up yours?  My goodness.

***

My nephew got a chance to redeem himself in travel baseball today.  He pitched and didn’t walk a man in an inning and two thirds.  He retired evey man except an error by the shortstop I think.  He had poise.  He had his fastball for strikes and then his changeup down for the put-away!  It was great to see him with the confidence in it and I applaud the manager, who has gone out of his way to make the boy feel comfortable both using the changeup and pitching after a bad outing.  That’s managing!  Nice.

And the little boy called me after the game to get my opinion on it and he and I had fun going over the things in the game and how he did.  I made sure to compliment him and tell him that above all, his manager likes his poise and loves the fact that he doesn’t hurt himself with walks.  I made sure to tell him that his manager told me he was happy to see Max pitching and thinking out there.  And he does.  He makes use of his brain as much as his arm.  He watches the batter’s hacks and makes adjustments and for 10U stuff, that’s ahead of the curve.  I really enjoyed seeing my little buddy do what I know he can.  Nice.

They lie; you pay

I spell fear: “Waxman”

Click here to read one of the scariest things you will read in years

Not only is it a new form of taxation, it will be very, very destructive to the USA.  These people are maniacs!  They do not care about you.  They are zealots.  We know better than this and yet we are standing around watching them steal our future and what we have worked for.