Tagged: brawls

Condoleeza To Throw Out First Pitch…in Israel!

It makes perfect sense.  Peace in the Middle East may be within sight.  A US Ambassador to Israel retires to become Israel’s Baseball Commissioner!  First task :  Raise funds for a Palestinian Baseball League.  Be fruitful and multiply, right?  That’s what I would do.  Diplomacy, manners, the significance of small symbolic gestures — these constitute the language of the game.

However, I’d feel more confident about the survival of Israeli baseball – and any peace our great sport can broker – if Dan Kurtzner hadn’t been Ambassador during the second Bush administration.  Not exactly the peace that passeth understanding.  Then again, maybe he kept it from getting much, much worse.

 

World Series?  Feh.  How about the 7-Day War?  And it will be played every year, so there’s no "winner."  There’s some revisionist history for you.  Hey, that’s even better than Yankees vs. Red Sox.  (Hmm, Varitek vs. A-Rod, Pedro vs. Zimmer.  That’s hard to beat.)

I shouldn’t make light of 2 unwanted peoples’ fight for safe borders.  Seriously, if any sport can bring people together in a temporary symbolic oasis in the desert, it is baseball.  Maybe Mr. Kurtzner can make this more than a field of dreams.

Here a couple tips for you, Commish:   National League rules – we can’t have pitchers throwing at batters’ heads with impunity. (Look how many brawls Pedro and Clemens avoided with the Mets and Astros.)  And NO MLB UMPIRES!

At Least It’s the Right Sox Tonight

Wow. What a Weekend. Well, at least it’s the Right Sox tonight. A breather, even if they do win, which is how it’s looking right now. Roger the Rocket looked pretty fat at Pinstripes on the Park last Thursday. Hate to but I must tell you that the audience — just like at the Stadium the Saturday prior — was definitely not swayed by his charms or promise. His promises, on the other hand, were inspiring. He said we’d take the Series this weekend, and we did. We could use a cheerleader from Texas. One who’s on OUR payroll.

I hear from Floraine Kay that we might take Runyldys Hernandez off the hands of the Red Sox. We might have saved some money and the risk of a double agent (ala Ramiro Mendoza working for us in in their clubhouse in 2003 — and then back with us in the minors last year — where is he now?) had someone LISTENED TO ME and bought him straight from Kansas City. It’s hardly a secret that I have a soft spot for oversized lefties like David Wells (San Diego — HELLO, anybody LISTENING?), CC Sabathia (Cleveland), and, yes, Runyldys, who definitely needed some guidance while he was with the Royals. It will be interesting to see where he is.

So we need a fielder who doesn’t have to hit, eh? Um, anybody look at our bench? MIGUEL CAIRO? And, does anyone remember that he makes things happen? Why hasn’t he been working? He worked in April during some shortages, then NOTHING. Even a DH needs SOME time on the field, and he is a good fielder when he gets a chance to play.

Besides Miggy, there’s Super Joe McEwing, former Met, beloved by fans in Kansas City, and now somewhere else, I will have to check. I loved watching him field. Like David Dellucci as a Yankee, Super Joe was everywhere before you knew where to look. Then, there’s Jeff Keppinger, another former Met, though he may have found a home, as I know Ty Wigginton has as a Devil Ray. Wiggington is a bat more than a fielder, anyway. I’ll always remember the story Floraine told me about how, when he was playing 3rd base for the Mets, knowing he was prone to errors, he wrote E-5 on the inside of his visor.

More on umpires, especially regarding this last weekend, to come.

Youkilis Charged the Mound and Didn’t Get Thrown Out?

You are pitching with a 9-3 lead in the bottom of the 9th.  You just got 2 outs in a row.  You are 2-2.  If you get this out, your team wins.

  • DO YOU HIT THE BATTER?   I DON’T THINK SO!

  • Pitchers weren’t warned despite 4 previous hit batsmen (3 hit by Red Sox, of course) and yet Yankee Scott Proctor — who has every reason to avoid another suspension — is thrown out of the game?  Was he more likely to be guilty because he has a "record"?  Even Joe Torre, who took an unusual position earlier in the game and got himself thrown out on behalf of a bad call against Bobby Abreu, would not back up Scott Proctor, who swears he didn’t mean to hit Youkilis.  I believe him, and Joe’s job is to believe what his players say, at least publically.  Instead his position is that he understands why Proctor was thrown out, because the ball could so easily have hit the head of Youkilis.  In my opinion, that is all the more reason to believe Proctor, who would not want to take a risk like that.  He’s no Roger Clemens, who didn’t get  punished for those Mike Piazza incidents, by the way.  And remember Pedro as a Red Sock?  No umpire dared throw him out, despite his history, which always went unpunished.  Clearly his hit batters were purposeful — he stopped hitting batters when he switched leagues and started batting, for the Mets.  By the way, John Sterling and Susan Waldman were critical of Proctor, too.  I am disappointed, especially because earlier in the game, they sounded as if they were finally speaking out straightforwardly about the bad calls that the Yankees have been receiving these last weeks.  Susan even said she was going to start keeping a list.  Yet, they made no comment on how Youkilis – screaming – came at the mound. 

  • Youkilis — the hit batter — came at Proctor screaming.  I think that’s why the benches cleared for a brawl.  WHY DOESN’T YOUKILIS GET THROWN OUT?
    • OK, it turns out Youkilis was scared.  Weee Weee Weee.  (Kudos to Posada for calming him down.)  Regardless, a big guy is charging the Yankees’ pitcher Proctor, who — several pitches into the at-bat, at 2-outs in the 8th with a score of 9-3– hits him up and inside.  It just doesn’t sound like an intentional hit.
    • Shame on the umpire, Torre, and Sterling/Waldman for not backing Proctor, or at least  supporting the possibility that he did not hit Youkilis on purpose, especially after he went straight to Torre’s office to say so.