After watching the AL West play head to head during the first month of the season, it is clear to me that no team is going to run away and dominate this division.

The key to being successful in the long season is preserving your pitching staff. Overworking ones bull pen in April does not bode well for a stretch run in September.

Click below for more! [Read more →]

I know many of you may have seen this in Tuesday’s Chronicle Sporting Green, but longtime Bay Area Sportswriter Merv Harris passed away this week.

I first met Merv in 1985 or 86 when he covered Sacred Heart basketball for the old Examiner during my high school years. Over the years, I learned a great deal from Merv. He used to recall his days covering the Fabulous Lakers of the early 70’s and draw similarities with the games and athletes he covered in the ’80s and ’90s. Merv would manage to keep accurate statistics in his trusty little scorebook while sharing a tale or two about Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain, and other NBA giants of .the pre-SportsCenter era. If anyone ever heard a WCAL basketball PA announcer chuckle as they started to announce a foul, you can blame Merv for providing an ill-timed, but well-appreciated to a story about Bob Cousy or Nate Thurmond.

Please click below for a wonderful tribute to Merv Harris by George Devine, Jr. I knew Merv from my early days in radio when he was on “The Prep Sports Showcase,” one of my first shows on KECG 88.1 FM. A terrific man! Thanks George for this article. Marty Lurie [Read more →]

President Bush threw out the first pitch last
week at RFK Stadium, temporary home of
the Washington Nationals,once the Montreal
Expos and baseball fever is back in the
capital.

By Amaury Pi-González [Read more →]

Lew Wolff may be the grandfather-like owner A’s fans have sought since ownership of the team passed from the hands of Walter Haas and his family in 1995. Wolff, the new Managing Partner of the A’s has responded to the concerns of fans by making two items in his agenda as owner perfectly clear.

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THE OAKLAND A’s are a much different team this year, with an almost entirely new starting rotation, but there is one constant: We’re all still wondering when Eric Chavez will finally fulfill his potential.

Players who are able to make it to the big leagues before their 21st birthday, as Chavez did in September, 1998, are usually headed for the Baseball Hall of Fame. We’re talking players like Hank Aaron, Johnny Bench, Orlando Cepeda, Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, Ted Williams. Ken Griffey Jr. would be in the grouping, too, if it weren’t for his frequent injuries. [Read more →]

Marty; I was looking forward to spending a relaxing week, watch a few ball games and then reflect on the week’s developments. Yesterday I raised some concerns about the state of the Giants’ bullpen, additionally giving vent to the thought that managment should, sooner rather than later, consider the need to remove Rueter from a starting role. Little did I realize that within twenty-four hours what had been expressed as a portent of things to come would quickly reach calamitous proportions. [Read more →]

Marty; The season is now six games behind us. six games in a long marathon season. While these six games have undoubtedly not bequeathed additional insight to us, they may have reinforced thoughts which have been lurking since the start of spring training.

The Giants have won four of these six games, three of them coming at the expense of the hapless Rockies. In these games, not unexpectedly, the team has called on the bullpen in each of them. Leaving Benitez aside, he having performed as expected, the ”pen, in the 6th, 7th and 8th innings has failed, with dismal regularity, to get hitters out. [Read more →]

The deadline is quickly approaching to file one’s post-season prognostications. Across America, barroom banter is fully charged with patrons adjusting their visions of playoff participants and pennant champions. Now is the time to perfect their ballot, before injuries and dead arms take effect. [Read more →]

The country that once produced the first ever
Latino player in the US professional leagues,
Cuba, which was the first ever country to
be introduced to the game of baseball
by the United States in the 1860s and until
1961 had more players in the Major Leagues
than any other Latinamerican country,
has really downsize their baseball
program.

By Amaury Pi-González

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The real test for any young pitcher in the major leagues is facing a good fastball hitting team. The key to success is getting command of your off speed stuff, thus upsetting the timing of the aggressive hitters.

The Orioles, a team comprised of overly aggressive swing from your heels fastball hitters, provided a challenge for the A’s pitching staff.

Once Dan Haren got comfortable he followed the example set by Kirk Saarloos a night earlier, rarely giving the Birds a fastball over the center of the plate. Instead, the two youngsters showed some pitching chops by keeping Baltimore off balance while they were on the mound.

The real test will come when the A’s face Texas, Seattle, and Los Angeles three teams with big time smart hitters who can crush the fastball. [Read more →]