Crappy beer night
The fan who caught Barry Bonds' 715th circuit clout was waiting in line to buy beer. A few commentators have predictably played up this fact to make a point about the fans' indifference to Bonds' pursuit of the home run record, but what kind of idiot pays $30 or $40 a pop for a Sunday afternoon ballgame in San Francisco and goes to the concession stand when Bonds is due to bat?---
Twins owner Carl Pohlad's long wait for a publicly-financed, open-air stadium in Minnesota came to a happy end last week. Thanks to a 34-32 vote in the state senate, taxpayers in one of America's most enlightened locales, Hennepin County, MN, are now on the hook for $522 million in new sales taxes.
Let me say that I'll miss the Metrodome less than anyone on the planet. When the plunger is pushed on its destruction, the ceremony should include a bill-signing by the commissioner in which every game ever played there is retroactively forfeited by the home team. But this political deal is disgusting. Reason number one, Pohlad is one of America's 30 richest men. And number two, voters in Hennepin County, who have repeatedly rejected public financing, are denied further say in the matter-- giving way to a situation in the legislature in which representatives from outside the county can overrule the objections of Hennepin's delegation. (Read the battle's entire lurid history here.)
One of the bill's supporters thought the vote tally fitting because the 34 yeas matched Kirby Puckett's retired uniform number, but the only apt comparison is that the late Twins slugger suffered from severe glaucoma and the chamber was blind to fairness.
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Michael Barrett deserved each one of his ten suspended games for taking a swing at the White Sox's A.J. Pierzynski, but there are probably very few people around the game who didn't enjoy watching the Cubs' catcher pop the snake-like Pierzynski. A couple A.J. anecdotes from today's Chicago Sun-Times:
- After being struck in the groin during a spring training game in 2004, Giants trainer Stan Conte came onto the field and asked how he felt. "Like this," Pierzynski said, as he kneed Conte in a similar spot.
- In May 2004, he turned down Giants teammate (and former Cardinal) Brett Tomko's request for a pregame meeting to discuss Braves hitters, preferring instead to play cards in the clubhouse.
''He's the cancer in here,'' Tomko told the Oakland Tribune, at first anonymously, before later acknowledging the quotes were his.
''The pitchers aren't happy with him. If they can trade him, that would be fine with me. I've never seen a catcher who didn't watch video before games. He doesn't watch hitters -- other than the Twins (his former team) when they're on TV.''
A year later, Pierzynski offered any White Sox teammate $100 for hitting a home run off Tomko, and paid up when outfielder Joe Borchard did it.
''Once an ass, always an ass,'' Tomko told a San Francisco reporter.
posted by CM @ 7:43 PM
5 Comments:
10 games is ridiculous. He only got 10 because he landed such a clean punch - if he had taken a feeble swing and just grazed his head, the penalty would have been lighter. He wasn't just punished for the act of fighting, he was given a little extra because he was good at fighting.
The typical penalty for a pitcher intentionally throwing at a hitter is 4-5 games. But I contend that a baseball can do a lot more damage than a fist. Look at Sosa's numbers after he got hit in head by Salomon Torres. JD Drew was out 8 weeks with a broken wrist from a pitch.
Nolan Ryan didn't even get ejected from the game after pummeling Robin Ventura. So, 10 games for a guy who threw the first and best punch but clearly did not start the aggression (I call bullshit on the "going to get my helmet" story) is out of line.
While I agree pitchers get off too easy when throwing at hitters, 10 games is not ridiculous. If ever a brawl was deserving of a (pretty standard and predictable) 10 game suspension, this one was.
Every baseball person acknowledges it was a totally clean hit by Pierzynski, which only set off the already frustrated Cubs because of their lengthy losing streak and the fact that they've now been established historically as an even more embarrassing and pathetic franchise than the White Sox. Barrett should suck it up and consider himself lucky he's not going to prison.
The only reason he got in such a clean shot was because it was such an unexpected sucker punch. I'm no Pierzynski fan, but that was the definition of a cheap shot.
And Sosa's numbers probably dropped off after his beaning because a shot to the noggin made him forget where he put his corked bats and steroids.
Hey, let's get it straight - Sosa found his corked bat after the beaning incident.
I also agree that the collision was a clean and smart baseball play. But I don't think the punch was really a cheap shot. AJ had come back and put a shoulder into Barrett again and he just wasn't expecting that forceful of a retaliatory strike.
The Cubs are not so much a pathetic organization as they are an apathetic organization. Greg Maddux needs to take his bat up against some players heads rather than water coolers. But, players can't call out others because the manager is his cool California way might say - "Hey man, just relax."
Sorry. I've had some hostility toward the Cubs the last couple days.
It'll pass.
Some interesting stats, though, and they may apply to my new 5/31 posting about the more colorful "olden" days of the game:
Suspensions for bad on-field behavior decreased from 36 to 20 between 2003 to 2005, and there have been only two fights on the field during the first two months of the season despite a record pace of hit batsman.
I hope that this trend is due to the fact that umpires and the league are giving the inside part of the plate back to the pitcher, to whom it belongs, and not because of a threat of more severe suspensions, or as the new Village Voice suggests, a reduction in the league's overall level of "'roid rage."
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