Baseball is a crazy game and when you think you have it all figured out it humbles you.
I run into some of the same people that predicted the Mariners would finish last this season yet they
are asking What’s wrong with the Mariners ?

By Amaury Pi-González [Read more →]

Marty: The story that is being played out today and, apparently, will continue to be played out for an unknown number of future days, is hard to believe. It has a scenario that has never been seen before, a drama, if one wishes to dignify it by such characterization, that pits one player’s self-interest against the club’s chances for a winning season.

We have a player, Bonds, at the tail end of a career, hurting and complaining, after the team has played thirty-nine games, during which he has been at bat only eighty-nine times, that he gets “tireder and tireder”. He no longer pretends to run out hits. He is a menace in the outfield, he doesn’t bother to back up the play taking place in front of him.

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Marty; The “big, powerful American League” is again proclaimng a built in excuse when interleague play shows that they aren’t quite as big and powerful as they insist. Now, the word apparently is that they play at a terrible disadvantage when playing in National League parks because thay are not allowed to play with ten men rather than with the nine the game was intended for.

In 1973, when the American League was being consistently outplayed by the National League, American League owners, plaintively decided that the rules by which the game had been played for seventy-five years or more, needed a change in the most basic character of the sport. Baseball had always been a game which emphasized that each player had to play both offense and defense. It was a game which demanded individual responsibility and multiple skills.

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THE GIANTS and A’s both spent big bucks for free agent pitchers in the offseason. In retrospect, they might wish they had invested in government bonds instead.

The A’s mistake, signing Esteban Loaiza, has been the most embarrassing to this point.

There were certainly some red flags in Loaiza’s background. He had had one great year, 2003, when he was 21-9 with a 2.90 ERA for the Chicago White Sox, finishing second in the Cy Young Award voting, but in a major league career which had started with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1995, he was only 112-99 with an ERA of 4.60. Moreover, the year after his best, he won only 10 games, though he did make the All-Star team, and was traded by the White Sox to the Yankees.

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Rick Kaplan
Staff Writer

(OAKLAND, May 12) – As the rookie among my esteemed colleagues at Loveofthegameproductions.com, I bring little ‘expertise’ to the lofty legal and historical questions that have recently been raised herein concerning one Barry Bonds and his home runs.

Having dropped out of NYU Law School after three months, I don’t know the law, at least much beyond the surface grit of parking tickets and living wills. And I know the game only as a fan and a sandlot player, having not so much as ever spoken to a major league ballplayer, unless you count shouting childish stupidities at the Yankee Stadium visiting bullpen in the ’60s.

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We are living in some very questionable times as far as baseball is concerned and the issue of steroids once it goes away might return baseball to it’s original mode of more fundamental style of play.

By Amaury Pi-González [Read more →]

Marty; The three most recent prescient articles written here were devoted to Bonds and the uncertainties inherent in predicting the future impact he has on the Giants’ fortunes. It is time to get beyond the Bonds situation and start talking baseball.

I took a look at what passed for prescience here, going back to words of wisdom passed along to unsuspecting readers as early as December. Much of the successful observations, to date, didn’t require a rocket scientist. Such cogent thoughts as “there remain uncertainties in the bullpen” or “Matt Cain has yet to prove himself” or that “Niekro will be given a chance to show he can hit both right and left-handed big league pitchers, (but) holding your breath would not be a good idea” may be repeated today, without much fear of contradiction.

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Marty: The season is thirty-two games old and Giant fans are wondering if this is going to be one long, unpleasant year. There are sufficient reasons to conclude just that. In last place, four losing games out of first. A bullpen with the worst ERA in the majors. A first baseman clearly overmatched by major league pitching, the dreary Bonds watch occupying much of the space in the press and on the tube.

Let’s deal with the Bonds story and leave the ball club’s woes for another day. In this past Sunday’s New York Times review of a book titled “Love Me, Hate Me; Barry Bonds and the Making of an Anti-hero” the reviewer comments that the author refers to Bonds as “baseball super-star, suspected drug cheat, possible perjuror and pariah”. The reviewer also mentions that a more appropriate title of the book would be “Hate Me, Hate Me”. To put the final nail in the coffin, the author of the book is quoted as concluding that “Bonds is a thoroughly miserable guy, the kind of person who throws sweat socks on the floor just to watch the clubhouse attendant stoop to pick them up.”

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Rick Kaplan
Staff Writer

(OAKLAND, May 5) – Once upon a time, home runs were exciting.

There was Bobby Thomson’s sublime shot in 1951. Kirk Gibson’s unforgettable one-legged victory lap in 1988. Joe Carter’s World Series winner in 1992.

But now it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. They’re a dime-a-dozen. Ho-Hum Home Runs.

Chris Shelton, whoever that is, hits 9 in the first 14 games of the 2006 season, and Albert Pujols rings up 15 dingers in the first 28 games. Kevin Mensch homers in seven straight games.

And it’s just early May.

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Rick Kaplan
Staff Writer

(OAKLAND May 2) – Jae Seo (0.64 ERA, 14 inn., 7 hits) and Chan Ho Park (0.00 ERA, 10 1/3 inn., 7 hits) were ‘lights out’ pitching for Korea in the WBC. However, they’ve both cooled off, and the change has been like night and day for them since the opening of MLB.

Seo has a 7.64 ERA and Park is at 4.62.

Esteban Loaiza of the A’s had some modest success in the WBC, having a good start against Canada, but got knocked out by Japan and finished the Classic with an ERA of 5.0. And somewhere between the WBC and Opening Day of the regular season he mysteriously lost nearly 10 miles an hour off his fastball, just yesterday going on the DL with an ERA over 8.

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