Recently in Baseball Category

Glorious spring Sunday here at CrabAppleLane. Excuse the short one but I have to get back out in it. I offer one from the CrabAppleLane front yard and one from the CrabAppleLane backyard.

CrabAppleLane Redbud - March 2, 2008

CrabAppleLane Backyard - March 2, 2008

Quote of the Day

Oh, put me in, Coach - I'm ready to play today
Put me in, Coach - I'm ready to play today
Look at me, I can be centerfield.

John Fogerty, Centerfield

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "We won’t have Dish or phone service until Friday, but the payoff is high-speed internet so Huzzah! H is hella excited because high-speed internet = XBOXLIVEOMIGOD. We may never see him again."

This is a temporary url. CrabAppleLane Blog will be at http://www.crabapplelane.net/roblog as soon as I can make the transition.

About the 2007 World Series: I don’t think it matters who the American League serves up. I think the Rockies are just going to run over them, too. I’ve been watching baseball a long time and I have never seen anything like this. They’ve won 21 of their last 22 including 14 of the first 15, where every single one of those 14 were must win games. If they’d have lost any of those 14, they’re not in the playoffs at all. I think they’ve forgotten how to lose.

About Sunday's image: As I was looking at it, I kept seeing a white speck on the left side. At first, I thought I must have had something on the camera lens. I didn't. The speck is in the same spot relative to the rose in another image I took a minute later from a slightly different angle. I think I might have captured the planet, Jupiter. The camera was pointed high to the south south west at about noon CDT. Bright planets are visible in the daytime if you know where to look. I didn't until after the fact. It was luck.

Closeup - October 14, 2007

Quote of the Day

In the box score it’ll look like it rattled the wall.

Seth Smith, Colorado Rockies

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "Not rain, not snow, not sleet, not dark of night. Not aces or junkballers, not lineups of patient veteran sluggers, not lineups of impatient young sluggers. Not multiple off days, not non-black uniforms, not Trevor Hoffman or ninth or thirteenth inning deficits. Not at home, not on the road. Brandon Webb, but then not Brandon Webb. Not in the desert, not in the mountains or on either of the coasts."

This is a temporary url. CrabAppleLane Blog will be at http://www.crabapplelane.net/roblog as soon as I can make the transition.

So I was up at a ridiculous hour Monday night sweating out a close fantasy football victory even though I have an early day Tuesday. I'm not watching the game on TV, though. Patsy's asleep. I should be, too. I'm watching the stats on the internet. By the way, NFL.COM's new site for this sucks. Watch ESPN instead. Anyway, I'm watching this and decide to open another window to see who won the Rockies-Padres playoff elimination game. No one has. They're still playing in the 10th inning. So now I have two windows open. One is monitoring a rather dull football game that I don't much care about except for the stats generated by Carson Palmer, Kenny Watson, and the Patriots defense and the other is monitoring an exciting and intense baseball game for the ages. I couldn't turn it off. Damn the sleep. Playoff baseball is here and I love it. Watch the National League playoffs, folks. That's where the fun is this year. Those teams have been playing for their lives for a month now.

About today's QOTD: Hell yeah.

Quote of the Day

What Page 2 Wants to Happen
Five games to match Monday night's epic 9-8 Rockies win over the Padres -- regardless of which team wins them.

Jonah Keri, ESPN's Page Two

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "i've been highlighting a lot of dead body stills lately. what would freud say?"

This is a temporary url. CrabAppleLane Blog will be at http://www.crabapplelane.net/roblog as soon as I can make the transition.

With 5 days left in the regular season, three of the four playoff berths in the American League are clinched and the fourth is one game from being so. We pretty much know who the four will be. In the National League, NOTHING is decided yet and I don't think we'll know until the last weekend. National League fans are being treated to real pennant races. They'll be told that their teams are inferior to the ones in the junior league and will be shown stats (There are always stats in baseball) to prove their inferiority. The National League representative in the World Series will be a decided underdog. It means nothing. World Series history is rife with examples of underdog National Leaguers beating powerful American League teams. These are just some of the ones I remember:

The Mets take 4 of 5 from the Orioles in 1969.
The Phillies take 4 of 6 from the Royals in 1980.
The Dodgers take 4 of 6 from the Yankees in 1981.
The Dodgers take 4 of 5 from the A's in 1988.
The Reds swept the A's in 4 in 1990.
The Marlins take 4 of 6 from the Yankees in 2003.
The Cards take 4 of 5 from the Tigers last year.

I offer a couple of images from City Park.

City Park Lagoon in New Orleans - September 26, 2007
Just sunnin'

City Park in New Orleans - September 26, 2007

Quote of the Day

This ball will be branded with an asterisk.

Marc Ecko

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "Next up for the UAW is either Ford Motor Company or Chrysler LLC. It has yet to decide which of the remaining domestics it will negotiate with next, but we're anxious to see if one contract already in place will make the next two go smoother."

Though football is looming large, baseball still has center stage. Michael Rando (12) had a moment that every kid who ever wore a glove thinks about. He made the play of the day (Watch the video). That it was shown on the big screen at Fenway Park is just cool beyond words. When the stories in professional sports are guaranteed money, referees on the take, steroids, dogfighting, gambling, and the like, I find something like this joyous and refreshing. Big tip of the cap to Michael and to ESPN for reminding us of what sports should be.

19 days until football season ...

Quote of the Day

I don't think I'll ever let go of this ball

Michael Rando, Walpole

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "A funny thing happened on the way to the Little League World Series for the Chandler, AZ team....apparently no one told their parents that it is not an all-expense paid vacation to Pennsylvania....they actually have to pay if they want to go watch!"

Barry Bonds has 745 home runs after last night and is on the verge of breaking Hank Aaron’s home run record. From my seat in the bleachers, it looks like the baseball world is divided into three camps. The Aghast camp that thinks he cheated to get here and that he should have more respect for them and the game, the Cheering camp that is rather small and quiet as of this writing but I suspect will get a little larger and louder in the coming weeks, and the Ho Hum camp that is the largest at the moment and should concern baseball.

There’s really not much to say to the Ho Hum camp. I belong to this camp now and I wish I could get more excited by this.

To the Cheering camp, I understand your hesitation. Bonds is not easy to cheer for. He has a black cloud hanging over him not entirely of his own making. He’s curt, arrogant, and a jacka$$. Those lovely traits ARE entirely of his own making but not everyone can be Cal Ripken or Mickey Mantle.

To the Aghast camp, just go away. The man is jerking them out of the park now as well as he ever did and I don’t think anyone suspects he’s using steroids now. If the endless investigations don’t produce clear and concrete proof such as a test result or an admission and they’re not likely to, his records will stand. Get used to it. As for respecting you and the game, look where that got Roger Maris. What should have been the greatest year of his life was the worst year of his life ... because of you.

Quote of the Day

The 42-year-old Bonds homered on May 8 for the first time in his career, leaving Aug. 5 and Sept. 30 as the only days in the regular season he has yet to hit one out.

ESPN.com

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "They found piles of dead bats and bat shit all over. Luckily the attic floorboards held, or they would have had bat shit raining inside their house."

R.I.P., Pat Dobson. I will always associate him with the Orioles. I had no idea he played for so many teams. His Orioles lost to the Pirates in 1971 in a great World Series. The Orioles had four 20-game winners that year. I don’t think the entire major leagues had a single 20-game winner this past season. New technology and constant rule-tweaking has kept football in a permanent state of change. Baseball evolves much more naturally. I like both.

Oh, and one other thing for my friend, Lisa:

Quote of the Day

He's one of four that everybody will remember. He had a great year for us.

Earl Weaver, Former Baltimore Orioles Manager

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "In 1971, Dobson went 20-8 for the AL champion Orioles, as the oft-forgotten fourth man on that club's 20-win rotation (Palmer, Cuellar and McNally were the other three, of course)."

One last thing on baseball for 2006: From George Will in the Washington Post (October 15 - Registration may be required):

Great Yankee teams have been good for baseball. In the 1930s one of every four tickets sold to an American League game was for a game involving the Yankees. And this year, when the Yankees were drawing 4,200,518 fans to Yankee Stadium, they also played in front of 3,080,290 on the road. But improved competitive balance is one reason why, for the third consecutive year, MLB set an attendance record (76,043,902) and why today is MLB's golden age, even west of the Hudson River.

I tend to agree with parts of this. To reiterate some of what I said a few days ago: Major League Baseball is on the rise. There are no strikes in sight. They have a fabulous product with a plethora of young and exciting players. They have lots of shiny new stadiums that look great on television. On the downside, partly because of great management but also partly because of their financial and competitive advantages, the Yankees have won nine straight division titles. Improved competitive balance? How so? I wouldn’t say great Yankee teams have been good for baseball. I’m not even sure it would be unfair to put them in the category of gambling, steroids, strikes, corked bats, and pine tar on a pitching hand. Don’t blame this on the Yankees, though. They want to win and will do whatever they can to ensure it. Improved competitive balance is the key but it will not have been achieved until the Yankees lose 100 games every now and then like Detroit and Kansas City have.

If you look at the NFL’s timeline over the last 30 years or so, you can see where the commissioners, owners, and players association steered their game, learning from their mistakes along the way, into their place atop the sports world. You have just one strike, expanded playoffs, expansion, and record TV contracts. If you look at MLB’s timeline over the same period, you see just the opposite. You see many strikes, many scandals, collusion, etc. It is a testament to the greatness of the game of baseball that Major League Baseball’s many, many wrong turns haven’t killed the sport off entirely. They seem to be on a pleasant road now. A little tweaking is in order but the main thing they need to do is just stay out of the ditch.

Quote of the Day

Dr. Dean Richardson said Wednesday night that Barbaro has been walking so well lately, that "we're probably going to be removing the cast next week."

USA Today

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "have i ever had a better sandwich!!!"

Not a link to go to if you're hungry. -Rob

Friends with Money is one of those maddening movies that film critics typically love because it’s all about dialogue and flawed characters. From what I’ve read after seeing it, I am somewhat surprised that it only received lukewarm reviews. That’s about what it deserves. In a nutshell, the film depicts that life is unfair, life is imperfect, and life doesn’t always turn out the way you hoped ... you know, basically everything you might go to a movie to get away from. I suppose that’s very unfair of me because some movies get this right (See American Beauty or Ordinary People). I guess films of that caliber are the only ones that can get this kind of movie right. At least, that’s what I think. Friends with Money has moments but it just runs in too many directions, exploring some aspects briefly and others way too long. It’s worth seeing but not worth a rental or Pay-Per-View. Wait for HBO/Showtime/Cinemax.

The 2006 World Series

Detroit Tigers: I think the layoff hurt the Tigers but I think their youth and inexperience hurt them even more. And those nerves. Where did they come from? This team waxed the Yankees and A's. What happened to their confidence? On the bright side, they still have youth and they now have experience.

World Champion St Louis Cardinals: In spite of a boatload of critics and naysayers, the Cards played good enough to beat the teams they had to play on their journey to the World Championship and NO ONE ELSE did. They are a worthy champion and as Mel Allen would say, “How about that?”

It would be easy to say and a lot of people are saying that the Tigers have the nucleus of a powerful team for the foreseeable future but that’s just nonsense. In the era we’re in now, injuries, free agency, and the nature of team sports takes a toll on team chemistry and all teams pay that toll. Sports dynasties are pretty much a thing of the past and I find that refreshing. In fact, good riddance. I like that almost any team can win any year. I like that you don’t have to spend almost twice what anyone else spends on players to win although I am concerned that doing so puts you in a position to win every year. I like seeing championships going to places like Detroit, St Louis, Tampa, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Miami, and Arizona as often as they go to New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago. Too bad if the networks don’t.

Quote of the Day

And if you feel that you can't go on
And your will's sinkin' low
Just believe and you can't go wrong
In the light you will find the road
You will find the road

Led Zeppelin, In The Light

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "I guess I’m not quite ready to stop blogging. I just need fresh."

Word to St Louis Cardinal hitters: Hit the ball to the Tiger pitchers. Or the outfield. Just put it in play. I surely didn’t expect the Tigers to play like this. It aint over till it’s over but I think you should close the deal tonight, guys.

Quote of the Day

Us little guys, we don't care how hard they throw. We're going to take a nice little swing and put our bats on it.

Aaron Miles, St Louis Cardinals

Blog of the day here.

Quote from said blog: "Friend and Cardinal fan Chris and his son Casey went down to Game 4 of the World Series tonight. Unfortunately, the game was called after two hours because of the constant drizzle."