Major League Baseball is seriously thinking of retiring Roberto Clemente’s #21 uniform
and installing the number in all 30 MLB parks
(just like Jackie Robinson’s #42).
The idea is good and this is why I think it will happen.

By Amaury Pi-González [Read more →]

Rick Kaplan
Staff Writer

OAKLAND (May 25) – If you want to get a sense of what the crowds will look like at the proposed new mallpark in Fremont, take in an Angels’ game in Anaheim, or even go right over to the Giants’ Phone Bill Park . . . But bring your sunglasses, because the white-out is more intense than in the middle of a blizzard in the High Sierra.

The Oakland Coliseum, on the other hand, hosts crowds that are among the most integrated, and least gentrified, in all of baseball . . . On May 15, The Oakland Tribune gave front page space to a sleazy voice known as asbaseballofremont.com which claims there is concern in the burbs about “the A’s bringing crime with them to Fremont” . . . Considering that many A’s fans from the Coliseum – presumably the souce of “crime” this website refers to – won’t be able to afford the tickets and the gas to get to Fremont, imaginary crime from Oakland is one thing the I-880 Athletics won’t have to worry about . . . Unless they happen to be referring to some bases getting stolen, which is even less likely at an A’s game now, since Jason Kendall suddenly seems to be able to reach second base regularly and the A’s offense has no speed to speak of . . .

Rather than calculating how to cater to the suburban paranoia, the A’s owners could identify their urban market and do a lot more to fill the Coliseum with these loyal fans . . . And don’t think that the A’s are running some kind of charity operation in Oakland.

Click below for more of Rick’s article. [Read more →]

May 23, 2006

BARRY BONDS’ problems with the media – or, vice versa – began early in his Giants career.

Early in the 1993 season, Sports Illustrated assigned a writer to do a cover story on Bonds. SI writers are accustomed to being treated like royalty when they come to town. Athletes who are uncooperative with the local writers will talk effusively to the magazine writers, because they know it will be a national story.

Not this time. Bonds kept the SI writer waiting for six days before he was willing to be interviewed.

The result: The magazine the next week featured a picture of Bonds on the cover with the headline, “I’m Barry Bonds and you’re not.”

Click below for more of Glenn’s excellent perspective on Barry Bonds..Marty [Read more →]

Rattle the Lumber with “the Captain” Ken Korach Interview May 21, 2006

Listen to the call of #714 and Sunday’s Rattle the Lumber With the A’s broadcaster. [Read more →]

Inside Baseball with Marty Lurie and Shooty Babitt – Bonds hitting 714: Is he coming to the A’s next year?, The division races: at the quarter pole, Baseball Brawls and Inter-league games.

Segment one: Marty, Shooty, Vince Cotroneo and Mr. C (from Heaven).
Segment two: Marty, Shooty, Vince Cotroneo and Mr. C.
Segment three: Marty, Robert Buan, Rich Lieberman, Vince Cotroneo and Mr. C.
Segment four: Marty, Robert Buan, Rich Lieberman, and Vince Cotroneo.

[Read more →]

It’s not just the specter of using steroids that has turned public opinion against Barry Bonds.

It’s not simply the idea that Bonds will pass the home run total of one of the great icons of American sports, the legendary Babe Ruth.

The real reason for the negative feelings is what Barry Bonds represents.

Click below for more!

[Read more →]

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.

Click below for more from Ed.
[Read more →]

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.

Click below for more from Ed.
[Read more →]

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.

Click below for more from Glenn! [Read more →]