Three words: Unassisted triple play!
Indians second baseman Asdrubal Cabrera turned the 14th unassisted triple play in major league history, accomplishing the feat Monday night in the second game of a doubleheader against Toronto.Cabrera made a diving catch on a line drive by Lyle Overbay, touched second base and then tagged out Marco Scutaro to quickly end the fifth inning.
Colorado shortstop Troy Tulowitzki made the last unassisted triple play in the majors, on April 29, 2007, against Atlanta. Oakland second baseman Randy Velarde last turned the trick in the AL, on May 29, 2000, against the Yankees.
This was the record third unassisted triple play by a Cleveland fielder.
Indians shortstop Neal Ball made the first one in history, in 1909. Cleveland second baseman Bill Wambsganss turned the only one in the World Series, in 1920 during a Game 5 win over Brooklyn.
The Indians also have been victimized three such times. The last player to pull an unassisted triple play against them -- Ron Hansen, in 1968 for Washington -- is now an advance scout for Philadelphia and was at Progressive Field to see Cabrera's feat.
"First one I've ever seen from the stands," Hansen said. "That kid is a real good fielder and has a great future.
"On a play like that, it's just reaction and he reacted right."
We have now officially reached the point at which I feel dirty for ever having paid any attention to the circus that is Roger Clemens and his Mitchell Report saga.
On a day when his attorney disputed allegations Roger Clemens had a lengthy affair with country music singer Mindy McCready, McCready offered no such denial."I cannot refute anything in the story," McCready told the New York Daily News on Monday from her home in Nashville, Tenn.
The newspaper described her as "tearful but resolute."
Rusty Hardin, who is representing Clemens in an ongoing steroid investigation as well as a defamation suit against the man who accused him of taking performance-enhancing drugs, said Clemens' relationship with the troubled McCready was friendly but never romantic.
"Mindy McCready is a longtime family friend of Roger Clemens and the Clemens family," Hardin said in a prepared statement. "At no time did Roger engage in any kind of inappropriate or improper relationship with her."
1. Being a known sleazeball didn't prevent Wade Boggs from being elected to the Hall of Fame. On the other hand, Margo Adams wasn't jailbait (admittedly, neither was McCready at the time when the relationship was alleged to have become intimate), and the sportwriters had more than a decade to forget about all that before Boggs appeared on a ballot. Still, something to keep in mind when some upright member of the BBWAA brings this up in 2012 or whenever.
2. I know I'm not the only person to say this, but you think maybe Clemens might have served himself better by making a tearful admission and plea for forgiveness, followed by a quiet settlement with Brian McNamee? Where's a reset button when you really need one?
Is there baseball in Sugar Land's future? Maybe.
"That was one of the ones that was really at the top of the list of things our community would like to see," said Sugar Land Mayor David Wallace.Wallace says it's too soon to say how big the stadium might be or how much it might cost. He did tell Eyewitness News that the city has already talked to several organizations interested in playing ball there.
"We have had ongoing discussions with a whole host of independents as well as other teams about perhaps coming to the city of Sugar Land," he said.
Because talks are in infancy, Wallace wouldn't' reveal who those teams are. But he does tell us that city leaders recently visited the facility of the Frisco Roughriders near Dallas, not to entice the team to relocate, but to look at their stadium and baseball product as a model to pattern any future Sugar Land team after. One thing he says the city will insist on from all venues built -- construction is not to increase the city's tax burden to citizens.
"We are not going to use general fund revenues to basically pay for something like this," he said. "It has to be self sufficient."
This does not strike me as being a good thing.
While rates on UCL surgery are not tracked nationally, some of the area's and country's top surgeons said they've seen a significant increase in the number of high-school-aged players having the procedure."I would say over the last five to seven years, (the rate) has doubled," said David Lintner, an orthopedic sports medicine specialist who is Eovaldi's doctor and also serves as the Astros' team medical director. "And it goes up steadily every year."
Dr. James Andrews, one of the nation's most respected orthopedic surgeons, has also seen a spike in the number of high school pitchers he has performed the procedure on.
In a three-year span from 1996-99, Andrews performed Tommy John surgery on 164 pitchers, 19 of whom were high school aged or younger. From 2004-07, that number had jumped to 588 pitchers, 146 of whom were high school or youth league players -- a seven-fold increase.
"Without a doubt, it's an issue," said Glenn Fleisig, the Smith and Nephew Chair of Research at the American Sports Medicine Institute, which was founded by Andrews. "The numbers are staggering in adolescents. More and more high-school-aged kids are having the surgery."
The big question: Why is a procedure once used mostly on college and professional players becoming more prevalent in kids who can't legally vote?
There are many factors, including how much a pitcher throws, what type of pitches he throws and whether he has good mechanics. But one factor stands out as the main culprit.
"Without a doubt, the No. 1 statistical cause (of UCL injuries) is overuse," Fleisig said. "In our studies, when a pitcher regularly threw with arm fatigue, he was 36 times more likely to be in the surgery group as opposed to the non-surgery group. That's the strongest statistical correlation in any study we've ever done."
This is actually pretty funny.
A construction worker's bid to curse the New York Yankees by planting a Boston Red Sox jersey in their new stadium was foiled Sunday when the home team removed the offending shirt from its burial spot.After locating the shirt in a service corridor behind what will be a restaurant in the new Yankee Stadium, construction workers jackhammered through the concrete Sunday and pulled it out.
The team said it learned that a Sox-rooting construction worker had buried a shirt in the new Bronx stadium, which will open next year across the street from the current ballpark, from a report in the New York Post on Friday.
Yankees President Randy Levine said team officials at first considered leaving the shirt where it was.
"The first thought was, you know, it's never a good thing to be buried in cement when you're in New York," Levine said. "But then we decided, why reward somebody who had really bad motives and was trying to do a really bad thing?"
On Saturday, construction workers who remembered the employee, Gino Castignoli, phoned in tips about the shirt's location.
"We had anonymous people come tell us where it was, and we were able to find it," said Frank Gramarossa, a project executive with Turner Construction, the general contractor on the site.
It took about five hours of drilling Saturday to locate the shirt under 2 feet of concrete.
[...]
Levine said the shirt would be cleaned up and sent to the Jimmy Fund, a charity affiliated with Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Along with that, New York will send a Yankees Universe T-shirt, which is sold to benefit Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
"Hopefully, the Jimmy Fund will auction it off, and we'll take the act that was a very, very bad act and turn it into something beautiful," Levine said.
What the Yankees should have done was leave the jersey right where it was and start talking Red Sox curse 2.0. David Ortiz ended the weekend hitting .070, not a typo, with one home run and three RBIs in 43 at-bats. He had a .231 on-base percentage and a .140 slugging percentage, not a typo and not a typo.That would have been a good time to blame Big Papi's slump on Hardhat Red Sox Boy. I mean, how could such a very, very bad act not bring down the wrath of the baseball gods on the very person whose jersey was underground? The Yankees could have made Castignoli's life miserable and given Red Sox fans a new curse to worry about, all with one wry smile and a few well-chosen words. Every time something went wrong with the Red Sox, they could have reminded everybody about the jersey.
Nice little Q&A with baseball stats legend Bill James. Here's a question he could have written a book about:
Q: Who are ten players in the Hall Of Fame that do not deserve to be there?A: Fred Lindstrom, Jesse Haines, Tommy McCarthy, Lloyd Waner, George Kelly, Ross Youngs, Roger Bresnahan, Earle Combs, Jim Bottomley, and Chick Hafey.
David Pinto brings the news.
Dale Petroskey stepped down as president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame after the museum's executive committee found his financial and business decisions weren't in the best interests of the organization.Petroskey had been at baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, since July 1999.
The Hall's board of directors accepted Petroskey's resignation because he "failed to exercise proper fiduciary responsibility,'' the executive committee said in a statement without elaborating.
Jeff Idelson will replace Petroskey as acting president after spending the past nine years as the Hall of Fame's vice president of communications and education.
Always good to hear from the granddaddy of modern sabermetrics. Possibly the most interesting thing he has to say is here:
If you were to be named commissioner of baseball tomorrow, what would be first change you make?Well, the commissioner can't really make changes. He can organize the process leading to change. That's a petty answer. To give you the real answer, I'd try to do something about the game dragging in the late innings. We need to make the games snap along a little better, particularly in the late innings. There are more than six times as many pitching changes in a game now than there were two generations ago. That's a huge change in the game. And it's not a change for the better, in my view. Maybe it's a change for the better in terms of trying to win. But in terms of its impact on the fans, how the fans enjoy the game, I don't see that as a change for the better. So I'd probably try to organize some kind of move to see if we couldn't get an agreement to limit the number of pitching changes in the late innings.
This is the rule that I would adopt. I've thought about this for a long time, and I don't see why this doesn't work. One time per game, you get a free pitching change without restriction. Otherwise, when you put a pitcher on the mound to start an inning, he has to stay in the game until he's charged with a run allowed. In other words, you have a limit on how often you can put a pitcher out there, let him face one batter and "let's bring in somebody else."
I may never fully understand why exactly it is that some professional sportswriters have such a deep-seated, almost pathological revulsion towards their more statistically-inclined brethren and sistren. But I do enjoy it when someone in the latter group uses that loathing to expose a truly weak argument. Here's a fine example of such, leavened with a heaping dose of sarcasm. Enjoy!
Forget the Presidential race and the state of Harris County's partisan mix. This is the kind of polling people want.
As the question of whether Roger Clemens or Brian McNamee is telling the truth about Clemens' alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs inches closer to a potential court date, Harris County's court of public opinion rates the matter as a statistical dead heat.Of 604 respondents to a Houston Chronicle poll of Harris County voters conducted by Zogby International, 35.5 percent said they were more likely to believe McNamee, Clemens' former trainer, when he said he injected Clemens with anabolic steroids and human growth hormone. Clemens was supported by 32.8 percent, and 31.7 percent had no response.
57 percent of respondents to a recent national Gallup Poll said they believed Clemens was lying, while 31 percent said they believed he was telling the truth. Also, 79.3 percent of more than 94,000 respondents to an ESPN.com reader poll believed McNamee.In Boston, where Clemens began his career, only 8.2 percent of respondents to a survey by Boston.com said they believed the pitcher, and in New York, where Clemens played last season, 79 percent of respondents to a Daily News poll said they believed McNamee.
Given the previous numbers, Rusty Hardin, Clemens' attorney, said he was encouraged by the Harris County poll results.
"The fact that it's half and half, I believe, is great," Hardin said. "This side has endured the most frenetic, meanest assault on a public person that I've ever seen, and the fact that a third of the people are willing to believe him and a third haven't formed an opinion is tremendously encouraging."
As a lifelong Yankees fan, it breaks my heart to read this.
Four months ago, [Don] Mattingly was the presumed heir to one of the most prestigious jobs in sports - manager of the Yankees.Today, after a stunning fall from grace, Donnie Baseball finds himself on the outskirts of the game.
Consistently the recipient of the loudest ovations at Old Timer's Day at Yankee Stadium, Mattingly was long known as George Steinbrenner's favorite player. The former first baseman seemed certain to succeed Joe Torre last October.
The Boss and his sons, Hank and Hal, chose to hire Joe Girardi. Once the deal was done, Mattingly told the Yankees he had no interest in coming back as a coach.
He rebounded by landing the coveted position of hitting coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers on Nov. 8. He would, once again, be working for Torre, who had been named Dodgers manager three days earlier. Almost immediately baseball writers speculated that Mattingly could replace Torre after his three-year deal expired.
Then, it all fell apart.
Mattingly resigned his post last month to tend to his growing trouble at home. It may not have been the only time he walked away from the game he loves to protect his three children.
In 1995, just a month after he hit .417 in his first - and only - postseason series, Mattingly quit the game. The same year, his wife was arrested in Indiana for driving a car while intoxicated, court records show.
Though he publicly blamed his bad back for his retirement, Mattingly's friends said his decision was partially fueled by his wife's drinking.
"She drinks, and it's a problem," one friend told the Daily News, requesting anonymity because he remains close to Mattingly and his estranged wife. "Don was worried."
Mattingly alluded to as much earlier this month when he told The News: "This is not the first time we've all had to go through this."
I guess it depends on who you ask. Steve Campbell:
Clemens and his defenders can attack McNamee's credibility and motives all they want. But how can they explain away the damaging testimony of Pettitte?Clearly, Pettitte had no desire to speak evil about an old teammate, friend, workout partner and traveling buddy. Pettitte didn't want to have anything to do with discussing the Mitchell Report. He also didn't want to lie under oath in a congressional hearing.
Pettitte reluctantly implicated his friend. In a Feb. 4 deposition, Pettitte didn't merely tell of a 1999 conversation in which Clemens admitted to using HGH. Pettitte made embarrassing revelations about himself -- things no investigator could have uncovered. For instance, Pettitte told of using HGH furnished by his father again in 2004.
"I have to tell you all the truth," Pettitte said in his deposition. "I mean I told y'all the stuff about my dad because I have to live with myself. And one day I have to give an account to God and not to nobody else of what I've done in my life.
"And that's why I've said and shared the stuff with y'all that I've shared with y'all today that I wouldn't like to share with y'all."
Keep in mind, Pettitte could have claimed he didn't remember any conversations with Clemens about performance-enhancing drugs. Nobody could have proved otherwise.
"I believe Andy has mis-heard," Clemens said. "I think he mis-remembers."
To believe Clemens is to believe that Andy Pettitte is a liar.
A potential key to yesterday's proceedings was the inexplicable absence of Andy Pettitte. Several Congressmen, most notably Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), pointed to Andy Pettitte's testimony in sworn affidavits as the tipping point for their divinations. However, Pettitte's testimony is hardly the slam-dunk takedown of Clemens that it was made out to be. Pettitte, in many places, actually corroborates Clemens's version. Pettitte himself says that after discussing the use of PEDs with Clemens, he felt that "when Roger told me that he didn't take it [HGH] and I misunderstood him, I took it for that, that I misunderstood him" (Pettitte, p. 28). Pettitte barely recalls the initial conversation, but states that it was in passing--that Clemens "heard that it worked." At no point--no point--does Pettitte ever state, even in passing, that he knew or saw the use of any substance by Clemens. There are certainly elements of Pettitte's testimony that are problematic for Clemens, but I think as much as anything, the opportunity to hear Pettitte in person could have made or broken yesterday's hearings.[...]
What is interesting is that the differences between Pettitte's statement and Clemens' statement are so easily reconciled. It's not without problems, but it's hardly the diametrically-opposed case that was presented.
I'm ready for this to be over. I really don't see the point of all this. Tom, Steph, and Jay Jaffe have more.
When Roger Clemens goes before Congress today, he may be faced with eivdence that his buddy Andy Pettite has testified that Clemens has used HGH.
According to last week's sworn affidavit from Pettitte, Clemens told Pettitte in either 1999 or 2000 that he used human growth hormone, the Associated Press reported Tuesday, citing a person who spoke on the condition of anonymity.Clemens, who along with McNamee will testify in today's public hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in Washington, has denied using performance-enhancing drugs and has said he and Pettitte didn't talk about their own use of drugs.
According to the person familiar with the affidavit, who said it was signed Friday night, Pettitte also said Clemens backtracked when the subject of HGH came up again in conversation in 2005, before the same House committee held the first hearing on steroids in baseball.
Pettitte said in the affidavit that he asked Clemens in 2005 what he would do if asked by the media about HGH, given his admission years earlier. According to the account told to the AP, the affidavit said Clemens responded by saying Pettitte misunderstood the exchange from five or six years earlier and that, in fact, Clemens had been talking about HGH use by his wife in the original conversation.
Responding to the latest development, Clemens' attorney Rusty Hardin told the Chronicle: "Everybody needs to just relax and wait and see what the testimony shows (today). We do not know what Andy has said to the committee, and I am somewhat surprised that people continue to write stories about what he confidentially said, whatever that is.
"We don't know what he has said, and we're waiting to see. What Roger would testify to is, if Andy's memory is that somehow Roger ever suggested that he used steroids or human growth hormone, Andy's memory is mistaken.
"Andy is a good friend of Roger's. We're convinced he would never intentionally misstate anything. But if he believes Roger said that, he's mistaken."
Having said that, even if Pettite offers evidence to suggest Clemens has not been fully truthful, that doesn't necessarily mean McNamee has been telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, either. Unless Pettite directly corroborates McNamee, it's entirely possible that Clemens did use HGH, but did so without McNamee's assistance or intervention. Clemens picked up some defense against McNamee's claims from an unexpected quarter the other day.
Retired slugger Jose Canseco says Roger Clemens' former trainer, Brian McNamee, lied in the Mitchell Report and is lying when he says Clemens used steroids and human growth hormone."Absolutely, he's lying and he's a dirty liar," Canseco said in a phone interview Sunday.
Former senator George Mitchell's report on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball includes a passage in which McNamee describes a 1998 party Canseco hosted at his Miami home.
"McNamee stated that, during this luncheon, he observed Clemens, Canseco, and another person he did not know meeting inside Canseco's house, although McNamee did not personally attend that meeting," the Mitchell Report says.
McNamee says Clemens, who has denied using steroids or HGH, brought up steroids for the first time shortly after the trip to Florida, according to the Mitchell Report.
"McNamee is a point-blank liar because Roger never showed up at my house," Canseco said. "It's up to Roger's people to find out why McNamee is saying these things. I think he was pressured by someone into saying them. ...
"I'm 1,000% sure Roger never showed up at the party. We didn't talk then."
[...]
Canseco said Clemens is a friend and he doesn't think Clemens took steroids. "If he had taken steroids," he said, "he would have gotten them from me, just like everyone else."
When Roger Clemens goes before Congress today, he may be faced with eivdence that his buddy Andy Pettite has testified that Clemens has used HGH.
According to last week's sworn affidavit from Pettitte, Clemens told Pettitte in either 1999 or 2000 that he used human growth hormone, the Associated Press reported Tuesday, citing a person who spoke on the condition of anonymity.Clemens, who along with McNamee will testify in today's public hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in Washington, has denied using performance-enhancing drugs and has said he and Pettitte didn't talk about their own use of drugs.
According to the person familiar with the affidavit, who said it was signed Friday night, Pettitte also said Clemens backtracked when the subject of HGH came up again in conversation in 2005, before the same House committee held the first hearing on steroids in baseball.
Pettitte said in the affidavit that he asked Clemens in 2005 what he would do if asked by the media about HGH, given his admission years earlier. According to the account told to the AP, the affidavit said Clemens responded by saying Pettitte misunderstood the exchange from five or six years earlier and that, in fact, Clemens had been talking about HGH use by his wife in the original conversation.
Responding to the latest development, Clemens' attorney Rusty Hardin told the Chronicle: "Everybody needs to just relax and wait and see what the testimony shows (today). We do not know what Andy has said to the committee, and I am somewhat surprised that people continue to write stories about what he confidentially said, whatever that is.
"We don't know what he has said, and we're waiting to see. What Roger would testify to is, if Andy's memory is that somehow Roger ever suggested that he used steroids or human growth hormone, Andy's memory is mistaken.
"Andy is a good friend of Roger's. We're convinced he would never intentionally misstate anything. But if he believes Roger said that, he's mistaken."
Having said that, even if Pettite offers evidence to suggest Clemens has not been fully truthful, that doesn't necessarily mean McNamee has been telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, either. Unless Pettite directly corroborates McNamee, it's entirely possible that Clemens did use HGH, but did so without McNamee's assistance or intervention. Clemens picked up some defense against McNamee's claims from an unexpected quarter the other day.
Retired slugger Jose Canseco says Roger Clemens' former trainer, Brian McNamee, lied in the Mitchell Report and is lying when he says Clemens used steroids and human growth hormone."Absolutely, he's lying and he's a dirty liar," Canseco said in a phone interview Sunday.
Former senator George Mitchell's report on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball includes a passage in which McNamee describes a 1998 party Canseco hosted at his Miami home.
"McNamee stated that, during this luncheon, he observed Clemens, Canseco, and another person he did not know meeting inside Canseco's house, although McNamee did not personally attend that meeting," the Mitchell Report says.
McNamee says Clemens, who has denied using steroids or HGH, brought up steroids for the first time shortly after the trip to Florida, according to the Mitchell Report.
"McNamee is a point-blank liar because Roger never showed up at my house," Canseco said. "It's up to Roger's people to find out why McNamee is saying these things. I think he was pressured by someone into saying them. ...
"I'm 1,000% sure Roger never showed up at the party. We didn't talk then."
[...]
Canseco said Clemens is a friend and he doesn't think Clemens took steroids. "If he had taken steroids," he said, "he would have gotten them from me, just like everyone else."
This was weird. This is truly bizarre.
Brian McNamee took aim at another member of Roger Clemens' family Friday, reportedly telling congressional investigators he injected the pitcher's wife with human growth hormone for a photo session five years ago.The New York Daily News, quoting an anonymous Washington source, reported that Clemens' former trainer testified Thursday on Capitol Hill that he injected Debbie Clemens at her husband's direction for a 2003 Sports Illustrated photo shoot.
McNamee, the former New York Yankees trainer who claims in the Mitchell Report that he injected Roger Clemens with steroids and the growth hormone, called HGH, gave a seven-hour deposition Thursday with lawyers from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.McNamee's lawyers presented two color photos of needles, vials of testosterone, gauze and other evidence they claim links Clemens to steroids shortly after the trainer's testimony.
Meanwhile, Clemens is counterattacking.
A lawyer for Roger Clemens said Saturday the pitcher can prove he didn't attend a June 1998 party at Jose Canseco's home described by Brian McNamee in the Mitchell Report.According to McNamee, Clemens first raised the subject of steroids not long after McNamee saw Canseco and Clemens meeting during the party.
Clemens' side has turned over evidence to congressional investigators, including an affidavit from Canseco, to support that the pitcher wasn't present at Canseco's home that day, the attorney, Rusty Hardin, said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press.
Hardin said video footage from telecasts of baseball games around the time of the party also were given to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In the telecasts, Hardin said, TV announcers can be heard discussing Canseco's party and noting that Clemens wasn't there.
The Roger Clemens/Brian McNamee saga has taken another weird turn.
The lawyers for trainer Brian McNamee dropped a bombshell Wednesday, claiming they gave federal prosecutors physical evidence that proves Roger Clemens used performance-enhancing drugs.The New York Daily News, citing an anonymous source close to McNamee, reported the evidence will include syringes McNamee says were used to inject Clemens with human growth hormone and steroids, in addition to empty bottles and gauze.
"I think this is a significant point in the case," said McNamee's lead lawyer, Earl Ward. "We believe that this is significant corroboration."
Clemens attorney Lanny Breuer attacked McNamee's credibility in a statement.
"Brian McNamee is obviously a troubled man who is obsessed with doing everything possible to destroy Roger Clemens," Breuer said.
[...]
Clemens could open himself up to prosecution if it's proved he lied under oath about using performance-enhancing drugs. Richard Emery, another of McNamee's lawyers, said the committee will be given a description of the evidence that was turned over to prosecutors.
"It does change the nature of the case from a 'he said, she said' to something about physical evidence," Emery said.
[...]
Emery said McNamee's legal team planned to hold a news conference after their client's deposition in Washington today and will discuss the evidence in greater detail then. Clemens' camp could contend the evidence was tampered with, considering it was alleged to have been collected seven years ago.
"(McNamee) has changed his story repeatedly on this matter," Breuer said. "He claims to love Roger Clemens. He says he modeled being a father on Roger Clemens. He said Roger treated him like family -- but he now claims he kept blood, gauze and needles from Roger Clemens for seven years. It defies all sensibility. It is just not credible. Who in their right mind does such a thing?"
One more thing, as noted by FanHouse: You may be able to tell what's in those syringes, but you can't say when it got there.
Scientific experts said there was no known method to date steroids or human growth hormone.The syringes, vials and gauze pads are said to date from 2000 and 2001, part of a four-year period in which McNamee contends he gave Clemens drug injections. But even if the physical evidence tests positive for Clemens's DNA and, say, steroids, Clemens's lawyers could argue that McNamee added steroid traces to the original evidence in a bid to incriminate Clemens, experts say.
"You can test to figure out what the substance is, but you cannot figure out how old it is," Dr. Don Catlin, the former director of the Olympic testing lab at U.C.L.A., said in a telephone interview.
There is no way to date blood either, Catlin said, which means there may not be a conclusive way to establish that the syringes, vials and pads were from 2000 and 2001.
Roger Clemens' situation in a nutshell: Damned if he talks, and damned if he doesn't.
Roger Clemens might be known for answering the call when it's his turn to pitch, but several legal experts believe he should invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to testify about steroid abuse before Congress today and next week. Otherwise, he risks the chance lawmakers could refer him to the Justice Department for criminal investigation."As a lawyer, I'd recommend he take the Fifth and be overcautious," said high-profile criminal defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, who also is a Harvard Law School professor. "When Clemens was pitching, he never took the cautious way. He's being consistent with his personality. Of course, his world isn't a legal world; it's the world of halls of fame and reputation."
Clemens, who was linked to steroid use in baseball's Mitchell Report but has maintained he never took performance-enhancing drugs, is scheduled to be privately deposed today by staffers for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He and other witnesses, including Brian McNamee, a former trainer for Clemens who said he injected the pitcher with steroids, are scheduled to testify in public to the full committee Feb. 13.
Dershowitz said Monday that even people who testify truthfully can be prosecuted if the government believes they are lying. If Clemens invokes his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, he could avoid a congressional referral for possible perjury or false-statement criminal charges, Dershowitz said.
Clemens' lawyer, Rusty Hardin, agreed that his client logically should invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege to protect himself.
"Dershowitz is right, and just about every attorney in the world will tell you he should take the Fifth because of the risks," Hardin said.
But that's not what Clemens will do, Hardin said Monday.
"Roger is saying (that) what the public thinks of him and his career are important," Hardin said. "And if he takes the Fifth, he lets the Mitchell committee do to him by omission what they've essentially done by commission."
This ought to provide some grist for a lot of mills.
A lawyer for Andy Pettitte's former personal trainer said Tuesday he believes the pitcher will tell Congress he discussed human growth hormone with Roger Clemens between the 2001 and 2002 seasons.The lawyer, Earl Ward, said Pettitte talked about HGH with trainer Brian McNamee following a conversation with Clemens, who has denied he used HGH or steroids. McNamee worked with both Clemens and Pettitte.
"We're hopeful based on Andy's reputation that he will corroborate Brian's statements with regard to Roger," Ward said in a telephone interview.
Pettitte's meeting with a congressional committee investigating drug use in baseball was postponed until Monday. He originally was slated to appear for a deposition or transcribed interview today, but the date was changed Tuesday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
[...]
Ward said the discussion he was referring to occurred at Clemens' house.
"Based on what we know, there was a situation where Andy was speaking to Roger in Brian's presence, then Andy came over to Brian and essentially said, 'Why didn't you tell me about this stuff?' He referred to HGH," Ward said. "Brian discouraged him, and then several months later, when he (Pettitte) got injured, he came back and asked Brian about it, and that's when Brian injected him. We believe that based on the fact that Andy came to Brian and asked him about HGH, it was Roger who told Andy about HGH, and that's why he asked Brian about it."
Richard Emery, another lawyer for McNamee, said his client and Pettitte also discussed steroid use by Clemens.
"Pettitte is certainly going to tell the truth, and if he tells the truth, everything will be fine," Emery said.
"There are a number of conversations where Pettitte and Brian talked about Clemens' use. I think there is everything to believe Pettitte is not a liar."
Jay Reisinger, Pettitte's lawyer, would not discuss what Pettitte would say.
"He hasn't testified yet, and I'm not going to comment on what he's going to testify about," Reisinger said.
Lanny Breuer, Clemens' new lawyer, said the seven-time Cy Young Award winner stood by his denials.
"Roger Clemens' remarkable success as a pitcher has everything to do with his extraordinary work ethic and his innate abilities, and nothing to do with HGH or steroids," Breuer said in a statement. "Let me be clear: Roger Clemens never took HGH and he never took steroids."
In related news, you may have heard that Team Clemens has released a report that attempts to debunk claims that his late-career surge is evidence of steroid/HGH use. (*) While statheads are not terribly impressed by this effort, it could certainly fool some of the more gullible members of the sportswriting public. And I think the point that Joe Sheehan made that "Clemens' career path isn't normal, but the career paths of the greatest players ever aren't normal" is one that should carry more weight than it does.
And finally, though it's crappily formatted, Steroids, Other "Drugs", and Baseball is challenging head on the notion that so-called PEDs have had any measurable effect on baseball players' performance and statistics. Be prepared to be frustrated with the layout, but check it out anyway.
I see that Chuck Knoblauch has been invited to talk to Congress.
Knoblauch, who played at Bellaire High School and Texas A&M, was asked to appear Thursday for the first of five depositions scheduled by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in advance of its Feb. 13 hearing."The committee has taken this step because Mr. Knoblauch failed to respond to the invitation to participate voluntarily in a deposition or transcribed interview and the Feb. 13 hearing," committee chairman Henry Waxman and ranking Republican Tom Davis said in a statement.
Brian McNamee, who accused [Roger] Clemens and [Andy] Pettitte of using performance-enhancing drugs in the Mitchell Report, is due to meet with committee staff Jan 31, with former New York Mets clubhouse employee Kirk Radomski asked to appear Feb. 1.[...]
Knoblauch, a four-time All-Star and 1991 American League Rookie of the Year with the Minnesota Twins, has kept a low-profile since his name appeared in the Mitchell Report on Dec. 13. In the report, McNamee alleges he acquired HGH from Radomski for Knoblauch in 2001.
Knoblauch also was among nine players accused of doping in a federal agent's affidavit citing former major league pitcher Jason Grimsley.
I think it's fair to say that the Astros franchise, and GM Ed Wade, have had better days than yesterday.
Disappointed baseball couldn't solve its steroids problem earlier, Drayton McLane and several Astros withheld judgment after the House Oversight Committee asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether shortstop Miguel Tejada lied to federal investigators in 2005.Although area players Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch aren't due to testify at a House Oversight Committee hearing until next month, the hearings with former Senator George Mitchell, commissioner Bud Selig and union chief Don Fehr quickly had Houston importance when Tejada was mentioned in the opening statement by Congressman Henry Waxman.
The Astros acquired Tejada from the Baltimore Orioles on Dec. 12, a day before he and former Astros Clemens and Pettitte were among the three highest-profile players implicated in the use of performance-enhancing drugs when Mitchell released his report for baseball.
"It's disappointing that we couldn't have solved the problem a long time ago," McLane said via phone from his office in Temple. "We were not allowed to have testing by the union. That was something that they didn't want to bargain about for many years and, I feel, would have struck over it if we had tried to enforce it.
"It's just disappointing that this has occurred because of the confusion that it brings to the public about our great sport."
[...]
During congressional hearings held on March 17, 2005, Rafael Palmeiro testified and vehemently denied ever using steroids. Later that year, while playing with Tejada on the Orioles Palmeiro tested positive for using steroids, prompting the Committee to investigate whether he committed perjury at the hearings.
I don't know how hot the soup is that Tejada has landed in. I walked in on Tiffany watching the 6 PM news on Channel 11 last night, and caught some bits of a legal expert talking about how lying to Congress isn't technically perjury because of the way the perjury statutes are written (two words: Oliver North). You''ll note that Raffy Palmeiro is still walking around unindicted, for instance. But things don't look so good for Tejada right now.
On a side note, Grits points out that unless the feds actually intend to pursue charges against Tejada, we really shouldn't be hearing about any of this right now. Something to ponder when and if more names and/or more revelations come out.
As for Clemens, there's this:
Pressed to weigh in on the credibility of accusations against star pitcher Roger Clemens, independent baseball watchdog George Mitchell came down strongly on the side of Clemens accuser Brian McNamee."Mr. McNamee had an overwhelming incentive to tell the truth," said Mitchell, a former Senate Majority Leader.
Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young Award winner as baseball's best pitcher and a former Astros all-star, has repeatedly and heatedly denied accusations that he used any banned substance.
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., asked Mitchell whether there was "too little corroboration" of McNamee's testimony.
"I carefully reviewed and considered all the information we received," Mitchell responded. He said he "tried to establish the truthfulness of the information before it was included in the report."
Mitchell said he gave Clemens an opportunity to respond "and he declined."
Mitchell pointed out that McNamee's agreement with federal prosecutors grants him immunity for truthful testimony but further sanctions for false statements. The former senator said he read the sections of his report to McNamee before they were released publicly and the witness said he was "completely comfortable" with them.
Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., followed up to make sure Mitchell believed his star witness.
"We feel that the statements provided to us were truthful," Mitchell responded.
Along those lines, Derek Jacques addresses the matter of McNamee's statement and its credibility:
Technically, the agreement likely does stipulate that he gives evidence against Clemens--the way these documents work, usually, is they have a copy of the witness's statement attached, and the agreement basically says, "You agree that you gave this statement of your own free will, that it's all true, and that, if we ask you to, you would testify to it in court. We will not use your statement to prosecute you for any crimes, but if you go back on your story, we can use it against you, as well as prosecute you for perjury and whatever else we can think of." The statement--which in McNamee's case would include the things he said about Clemens and Pettitte, as well as any details he might have given about his supplier, Kirk Radomski--is typically given before the agreement is put on paper. So the question isn't what the agreement says, it's whether or not the agents made it clear to McNamee that he had to put something in that statement about Clemens or he'd go to jail, thereby possibly pressuring him to lie.
I don't know who let Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., in. Ninety-one minutes into the hearing, he asked the first really good question. He cited a newspaper article about a study that found no improved performance by those players who had tested positive."I'm wondering," he asked Mitchell, "whether, in the course of your investigation, you felt that we really knew enough about what these substances really did. Because in terms of providing education for our kids, if in fact there is no performance [enhancement], maybe the kids would be less prone to use them if we really found out that there wasn't any quantitative difference in their performance."
Mitchell, to his credit, gave a nuanced answer. "I believe the subject is very complicated," he said, "and as often happens in life, a phrase has entered into the universal vocabulary of our society: Performance-enhancing substances. If you look at and talk to the players who use them, you find that the motives, while they ultimately involve performance, don't always do so in an immediate sense. A lot of it is recovery time, recovery from injury, recovery from strenuous workouts, the ability to work out more often."
Mitchell also talked about the possible placebo effect. But he didn't really answer the question. Whether the intention is to immediately improve performance or to do so indirectly by recovering from injury more quickly or being able to work out harder, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Getting the word out on that might be a very smart front to open in the War on Drugs.
I know, I know, that's crazy talk. Off with their heads! It's much easier, and so much more fun, that way.
Rich "Goose" Gossage became only the fifth relief pitcher elected to the Hall of Fame, earning baseball's highest honor Tuesday on his ninth try on the ballot.Known for his overpowering fastball, fiery temperament and bushy mustache, the Goose received 466 of 543 votes (85.8 percent) from 10-year members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
"It was very emotional, off the charts. I can't describe the feeling," Gossage said.
[...]
Gossage, who fell short by 21 votes last year, joins Hoyt Wilhelm (1985), Rollie Fingers (1992), Dennis Eckersley (2004) and Bruce Sutter (2006) in Cooperstown's bullpen.
Gossage was sitting in a recliner in his living room overlooking the Rocky Mountains when he received the call. He turned to reporters in the room and said, "Oh my God, I've been elected.''
"A shock wave went through my body like an anvil just fell on my head,'' Gossage said about his reaction. "I think having to wait makes it that much more special.''
His mother died in 2006, Gossage said with tears welling up in his eyes, and he had hoped she would live long enough to see him inducted.
Gossage was a nine-time All-Star who pitched for nine major league teams from 1972-94 and had 310 saves -- 52 of them when he got seven outs or more.
The first time he appeared on the Hall ballot in 2000, Gossage received only 33.3 percent of the vote.
That was the good news. Here's the bad news:
Former Boston Red Sox outfielder Jim Rice was on 72.2 percent of the ballots, just 16 votes shy of the 75 percent needed. He has one more year of eligibility left on the ballot.Former Montreal Expos and Chicago Cubs outfielder Andre Dawson was third in this year's voting, appearing on 358 ballots, or 65 percent. Pitcher Bert Blyleven was on 336 ballots, or 61.9 percent.
Dawson's teammate in Montreal, outfielder Tim Raines, was alone among 11 first-ballot candidates in qualifying to remain on the ballot, with 24.3 percent or 132 votes. Candidates must receive 5 percent to remain on the ballot for the next year.
Rice will appear on the writers' ballot for the 15th and final time next year, when career steals leader Rickey Henderson will be among the newcomers.
Mark McGwire, a casualty of the Steroids Era in some writers' minds, received just 128 votes -- the exact total he had last year. His percentage increased slightly to 23.6 percent, up from 23.5 percent last year when he was on the ballot for the first time.
And finally, may I just say, whatever joker voted for Shawon Dunston deserves to spend the rest of his professional career covering team handball. At least the vote for Jim Deshaies a few years back was done with a deliberate wink. What does this guy have to say for himself?
I'm still catching up on some of my websurfing from the holidays, so it's just now that I've seen this article from Will Carroll, who says that MLB's drug testing program is the best one out there, though you'd never know it from their own actions.
Bud Selig is right. The drug testing program in Major League Baseball is second to none. I'll include not only the other major American professional sports, but all sports. Pro or amateur, US or foreign, MLB has it right.What MLB doesn't have right is the public relations angle. It came too late to the party--far too late--and has gotten knocked around for the puritanical sin of making us believe. The cardinal sin in modern America is truly Baum's rule: never let us see behind the curtain. While the NFL talks about undersized 300 pounders and men the size of Frank Thomas playing quarterback, no one's questioning the lack of a prominent drug suspension since the rug-swept Winstrol-fed Pro Bowl season of Shawne Merriman.
Instead, it's easier to hit the guy who's easy to hit, and Bud Selig is easy pickings on the pro sports playground. NBA commissioner David Stern and former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue live to challenge the media, and have stared down Congress on several issues. Selig and his minions--aside from Rob Manfred, who was alone in standing up to Henry Waxman at the 2005 hearings--seem to have "hit me again" stamped on them. However, easily hit doesn't mean Selig's the right target, and on this issue Congress has been dead wrong. It's not just the U.S. Congress, to be sure--Florida funded a statewide high school testing program with the laughable sum of $100,000--but they've been good at grandstanding while doing little.
So when Selig, Senator Mitchell, and others sit in front of Congress this time, hearing calls for blood testing, independent testing programs, increasing the number of substances on the banned list, and an abandonment of due process, I hope Selig stands up and says "I'd be glad to improve my program once every other sport catches up to us, including the Olympics." Baseball's testing program has taken a problem not easily quantified and reduced it from nearly 100 in 2003 to 2 in 2007. I'll hold my breath waiting for the Beijing Olympics to have a similar reduction, but no one expects there to be anything other than similar numbers. The NFL has done nothing to its testing program despite having its faces rubbed in the hGH issue by the Super Bowl steroid scandal involving the Carolina Panthers. The NBA, NHL, even NASCAR and PGA have nothing compared to MLB.
If the problem is one of role models, as many say, then why is Myles Brand, the President of the NCAA, not called on the carpet? The NCAA's testing program is an underfunded joke, with the result that they haven't caught a single Division I football player this season. Why? "We weren't tested," I was told by a Division I player recently. "I never saw them come in once." I asked him when the last time he saw an NCAA tester. "I helped out at a swimming meet last spring and I saw them testing there." The NCAA's policy for most sports is to test the winners; silver medals are fine for cheaters, but not gold. Add in that the NCAA's banned list is significantly shorter than any professional list, and you have a twofold problem of efficacy on top of credibility. Call it cost if you will, but I don't see the Bowl Committees chipping in nearly as much for steroid testing as they do for flower arrangements, logos, or corporate skyboxes.
I'm glad to see this.
Roger Clemens, whose legacy as one of the major leagues' all-time greatest pitchers has come under recent scrutiny, has an invitation to speak at the Texas High School Baseball Coaches Association Convention on Jan. 12, according to association president and Brenham baseball coach Jim Long.After he was named in Major League Baseball's Mitchell Report as a user of performance-enhancing drugs, it was uncertain if Clemens, whose speech is titled "My Vigorous Workout, and How I Played So Long," would be kept on the itinerary.
Long said the association's six officers spoke and unanimously agreed to keep Clemens on the list of speakers.
"It's something we all decided together as a group, and we stand behind that decision together," Magnolia coach and association public relations secretary Dale Westmoreland said Monday.
Humble coach and group president-elect David Sitton said the officers thought they shouldn't presume Clemens, 45, is guilty.
"The biggest thing is that it's just an allegation," Sitton said. "We're not the judge or jury in this situation."
It's a pretty simple concept, one that's fundamental to our society, and yet there's a whole passel of sportswriters out there who are ready to cast him out based on nothing more than one person's say so. It's depressing, though sadly not surprising.
Now here's a question for you: Suppose we learn some day that so-called "performance enhancing drugs" really do no such thing - at best, they have no effect; at worst, they increase the odds of injury. Some evidence to this effect already exists. Does this change your mind at all? Is it really "cheating" if you don't actually gain an advantage, even if you thought you were? Discuss.
Richard Justice makes a point that, on its surface at least, is eminently sensible.
Here's the thing. If you had one view of [Barry] Bonds, you ought to have the same view of [Roger] Clemens because they're accused of doing the same thing.
Texas baseball great and seven-time Cy Young award winner Roger Clemens was the biggest star and most often mentioned player named besides home-run king Barry Bonds in the "Mitchell Report." Clemens' lawyer said the pitcher's name was included based on uncorroborated testimony from a "troubled" informant, who himself faced federal charges and was seeking leniency from federal prosecutors. The informant apparently is "Brian McNamee, a former undercover police officer who worked with Clemens while he was the Toronto Blue Jays strength and conditioning coach and later with the Yankees. McNamee allegedly injected "the Rocket" with steroids he said Clemens obtained from some unknown source in 1998.Having just looked through the massive 400+ page Mitchell Report (pdf) looking to ascertain McNamee's role, it really does seem as though his testimony is the only accusing voice against Roger Clemens. Unlike several other players named, the report provided no canceled checks or other documents linking Clemens. McNamee previously denied to the press and, at first, to investigators, that Clemens used steroids, then changed his story after he was repeatedly threatened with prison.
I saw no corroboration for McNamee's claims accusing Clemens in the report, just his testimony. Is that enough to destroy the pitcher's reputation, to taint a lifetime of athletic achievement? Can he now be dismissed as "just another cheat"? The allegations could be true, but repeatedly threatening a witness if he doesn't give investigators names makes me think his uncorroborated testimony shouldn't be enough to draw a firm conclusion. Certainly the witness has never faced cross-examination related to these claims.
Was McNamee telling the truth before prosecutors threatened him with prison, or after? One just can't tell from the report.
I've written before that under Mosaic Law, no one could be accused without testimony from two or three witnesses. By that standard, the allegations against Clemens would not withstand scrutiny, and I'll be quite surprised if it's enough to convince an MLB arbitrator that Clemens is definitively guilty.
Much like the impending arrival of the Iowa Caucuses, I'm kind of glad that the Mitchell Report is finally being released, on the grounds that with it no longer looming over us, we can begin to get past the hysteria and move on to more substantive things. My reaction at this point is basically a shrug. It's not that I don't think performance enhancing drugs are bad, it's that I don't think they're The End Of The World As We Know It. I'll leave the puffing outrage to the professional shriekmeisters and just ride it out from here.
The Veterans Committee has enshrined a half dozen executives and managers, and their list contains a surprise.
At last, Bowie Kuhn beat Marvin Miller at something.The late commissioner was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on Monday while Miller was rejected by a revamped Veterans Committee stacked with those he regularly opposed -- and beat -- in arbitration and bargaining sessions that altered the history of the game.
"Bowie was a close friend and a respected leader who served as commissioner during an important period in history, amid a time of change," commissioner Bud Selig said, adding: "I was surprised that Marvin Miller did not receive the required support given his important impact on the game."
Former Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley, managers Dick Williams and Billy Southworth and ex-Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss also were elected.
Manager Whitey Herzog and umpire Doug Harvey each missed induction by a single vote.
Dreyfuss helped bring peace between the American and National Leagues by arranging the first World Series in 1903. O'Malley united the East and West Coasts under baseball's flag when he moved the Dodgers to Los Angeles after the 1957 season. Southworth and Williams won World Series titles.
Kuhn presided over the introduction of night games to the World Series and baseball's first, tentative steps into national marketing. But the game also changed in ways he fiercely resisted: Free agency, salary arbitration and dozens of other benefits that Miller won for the players as the head of their union.
Despite his frequent, albeit forced, accomodations of player demands, Kuhn was perceived as a tool of the owners and as overmatched by the head of the Players Association, Marvin Miller. Kuhn regularly chided the players for their demands, called them overpaid, and preached of the potential evils of free agency, all stances pleasing to his employers, the owners. But Kuhn's officious, pompous manner gained him enemies beyond the ranks of the players. His handling of an investigation of Cubs manager Leo Durocher ended in personal, although largely private, embarrassment. Writer Red Smith excoriated Kuhn in many columns, producing such bon mots during the 1981 strike as "this strike wouldn't have happened if Bowie Kuhn were alive today" and "an empty car pulled up and Bowie Kuhn got out." Kuhn also feuded with A's owner Charlie Finley, who referred to Kuhn as a "village idiot" and then apologized for the offense to village idiots. Kuhn vetoed some of Finley's innovations, and in 1973 he prevented Finley from vindictively placing second baseman Mike Andrews on the DL during the World Series following a costly error. Their biggest clash came when Kuhn voided the sales, and lopsided trades involving cash, of A's stars Vida Blue, Joe Rudi, and others. The players were going to leave Oakland as free agents to escape Finley's tyrannical ownership, and Finley was trying to get some value for them. Many owners in the past had sold off their stars; Connie Mack, who had guided the A's for a half-century, was famous for breaking up his great teams. But Kuhn ruled that Finley's deals were not "in the best interests of baseball." Kuhn also suspended Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for a year after he was convicted of perjury and making illegal contributions to the election campaign of Richard Nixon, and suspended Braves owner Ted Turner for tampering.Kuhn may ultimately be remembered for the spectacular growth of baseball in the 1970s and 1980s, a period that began with expansion in 1969, the same year Kuhn became Commissioner. Attendance in 1980 was more than triple what it had been in 1968, and television revenue was up more than $ 10 million dollars in the same period. But the eagerness of baseball to bow to the demands of network TV resulted in concessions criticized by purists. The most notable of these concessions was night baseball during the World Series. The first such game, in 1971, found Kuhn attending bareheaded and coatless despite the cold weather, with cameras frequently focusing on him in an attempt to deny the effects of the temperature.
The veterans panel has been changed twice since 2001, when charges of cronyism followed the election of glove man Bill Mazeroski. The original 15-member panel was expanded to include every living member of the Hall, but that group failed to elect anyone in three tries.It was replaced by three separate panels -- one for players, one for managers and umpires and one for executives and pioneers, leaving Miller's fortunes largely in the hands of the same group he once fought in collective bargaining and the courts.
He did not come close, receiving only three of 12 possible votes. Under the previous system, Miller received 63 percent of the votes earlier this year while Kuhn got 17 percent .
Here are your Hall of Fame hopefuls for 2008.
Tim Raines and David Justice head 11 first-time candidates on the baseball writers' 2008 Hall of Fame ballot, joining Mark McGwire, Rich Gossage, Jim Rice and 11 other holdovers.McGwire, his candidacy hurt by suspicions of steroids use, was selected on just 23.5 percent of ballots when he was eligible for the first time in 2007.
When Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn were elected in January, Gossage fell 21 votes shy of the necessary 75 percent and Rice was 63 votes short.Rice is on the ballot for the 14th time and Gossage for the ninth. Players can be on the Baseball Writers' Association of America ballot for up to 15 years.
Gossage's percentage increased from 64.6 in 2006 to 71.2 in 2007, while Rice's declined from 64.6 to 63.5. The highest percentage for a player who wasn't elected in a later year was 63.4 by Gil Hodges in 1983, his final time on the ballot.
Raines was a seven-time All-Star who played 23 seasons and batted .294 with 2,605 hits and 808 steals, fifth on the career list. He was the 1986 NL batting champion.Justice was the 1990 NL Rookie of the Year and a three-time All-Star. He had a .279 average, 305 homers and 1,017 RBIs in 14 seasons.
Brady Anderson, Rod Beck, Shawon Dunston, Chuck Finley, Travis Fryman, Chuck Knoblauch, Robb Nen, Jose Rijo and Todd Stottlemyre also are first-time candidates. The five-year waiting rule was waived for Beck, who died June 23.
Other holdovers (with their 2007 vote percentages) include Andre Dawson (56.7), Bert Blyleven (47.7), Lee Smith (39.8), Jack Morris (37.1), Tommy John (22.9), Dave Concepcion (13.6), Alan Trammell (13.4), Dave Parker (11.4), Don Mattingly (9.9), Dale Murphy (9.2) and Harold Baines (5.3).
Rijo retired after the 1995 season and appeared on the 2001 Hall ballot, when he received one vote. He then returned to the major leagues and pitched for Cincinnati in 2001 and 2002, making him eligible to go back on the ballot.
So imagine there's a guy who played right field for a total of 12 seasons, only seven of which saw him appear in as many as 120 games, and who was out of baseball by the time he was 34. He had a career 260/345/476 AVG/OBP/SLG line, had 275 career home runs, scored 826 runs (one season of 100 or more), and 851 RBI (three seasons of 100 or more). Does this player sound like a Hall of Famer to you?
Well, his name is Roger Maris, and he sounds like a Hall of Famer to Rudy Giuliani.
At campaign stop this week in Fargo, where Maris grew up, Giuliani recalled that he was a college freshman in 1961 when Maris set the single-season home run record of 61 while playing for the New York Yankees."I was there when he hit his 61st home run. I was in my first year of college and I went to many of those games in 1961," Giuliani said.
"It is a particular source of just great contentment for me, an honor to be in Roger Maris' hometown," Giuliani added.
Giuliani said the Yankees retired Maris' jersey No. 9, "and if it's good enough for the Yankees to retire No. 9, it's good enough to put him in the Hall of Fame."
I like Roger Maris as much as any Yankee fan, and I respect his accomplishment tremendously. But the Hall of Fame exists to honor careers, not single seasons. The guidelines for induction were clear on that from the beginning. I can't find a citation online right now, but go read Bill James' "The Politics of Glory" for the full background on that. People have been arguing for Maris' inclusion for as long as I can remember based on his longtime ownership of the single-season home run record, but that won't do. His career doesn't measure up. It's not really close, even. There's no shame in that - Maris was a good ballplayer, and he appears to be in no danger of being forgotten. But calls for him to be a Hall of Famer are at best ignorant, and in this case utterly shameful.
Not that Rudy has any shame, of course. You Red Sox fans, you can have him.
Barry Bonds was indicted Thursday for perjury and obstruction of justice, charged with lying when he told a federal grand jury that he did not knowingly use performance-enhancing drugs.If convicted on all five counts, baseball's home run king could go to prison for up to 30 years.
"During the criminal investigation, evidence was obtained including positive tests for the presence of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing substances for Bonds and other athletes," the indictment read.
David Pinto reports the following:
The general managers voted 25-5 to use instant replays to decide boundary calls:
The recommendation, by a 25-5 vote, was limited to boundary calls - whether potential home runs are fair or foul, whether balls go over fences or hit the top and bounce back, and whether fans have interfered with a possible homer.
That seems to be a reasonable recommendation. Fans of the 1996 Orioles would approve, I'm sure.
In a vote more symbolic than substantive at the annual general managers' meetings, the GMs voted 25-5 in favor of recommending the use of replay. It's doubtful replay could be approved for next season.Commissioner Bud Selig, who has been against the use of replay in the past, will study the matter further. Even if he approves it, the 30 owners and the players' and umpires' unions would have to give their OK.
About an hour after baseball executive vice president Jimmie Lee Solomon announced the vote, baseball president Bob DuPuy put the matter in perspective.
"GMs make recommendations," DuPuy said. "They don't have rule-making authority."
Allow me to take a moment to wholeheartedly endorse what Joe Posnanski says about the terribly offensive mascot of the Cleveland Indians, Chief Wahoo:
[I]t is not just time to get rid of Wahoo, it is way, way past time. I don't think this is the biggest problem facing the world, or even the 54,993,287th biggest problem facing the world. I don't care about political correctness either. No. It's just wrong. Very wrong. Get rid of it. The fewer wrong things in the world, better.And it brings me all the way back to this ... why can't we just go back to calling the team the Spiders. That's a great name, and it's not taken by anybody in major sports. There's history there. It actually fits Cleveland (believe me, there are more spiders in Cleveland than Native Americans -- especially those creepy Daddy Long Legs that are like walking paperclips). And there are a million incredible logo and mascot possibilities.
Even if they don't get rid of the Indians nickname (I think you might as well go all the way) it's definitely time to bury Wahoo. This would be a good year to make it happen. The Indians are a game away from the World Series. There is some real joy happening. There is some real exciement. The Indians have a real chance to end the longest citywide sports drought in American sports. There are a lot of good feelings in the Cleveland air. It would be a good time to bury a logo that should never have been born to begin with.
Cecil Cooper will be back as manager of the Astros next year.
Astros owner Drayton McLane has been so impressed with the leadership abilities displayed by Cecil Cooper during his monthlong stint as interim manager that he decided to make things a little more permanent.Cooper had the interim tag removed Friday when he was named the club's 16th manager.
One week after hiring Ed Wade as general manager, the Astros signed Cooper to a two-year deal with a club option for 2010.
"It's a great thrill for me, and it's an honor to stand here and say I'm the new manager of the Houston Astros," Cooper said. "It's a good feeling. I really appreciate Drayton, (president of baseball operations) Tal (Smith) and Ed for showing a lot of confidence in me and giving me this opportunity."
Cooper is the first black manager in Astros history and the 14th in the history of the major leagues.
"I'm pleased that that is the case, but I still can't focus on that," Cooper said. "I have a job to do, and whether I'm blue, green or black, I'm going to do it."
Fifty years ago today, the Dodgers played their last game in Brooklyn.
When former Dodgers pitcher Danny McDevitt threw a ceremonial first pitch to ex-batterymate Joe Pignatano at a Brooklyn Cyclones minor league game in June, more than 7,900 fans cheered the re-enactment of the final pitch at Ebbets Field.It's a fitting footnote that the crowd was larger than the attendance at the actual event -- only 6,702 showed up 50 years ago tonight for the Dodgers' last game in the historic ballpark in Flatbush.
A half century after the club's move to Los Angeles, the legend of the Brooklyn Dodgers remains as magical as one of Duke Snider's home runs onto Bedford Avenue.
Other relocated teams, such as the Boston Braves, Philadelphia Athletics and even the New York Giants are almost forgotten, but the "Bums" live on in a series of books, DVDs, television shows, apparel and autograph signings that tap into the nostalgia of a bygone era in the borough.
"There's a mystique there that will probably never be caught again," says John Miley, the Evansville, Ind., collector/vendor of original radio broadcasts whose inventory includes about a dozen Brooklyn games from the 1950s.
[...]
The Cyclones, a New York Mets Class A affiliate, heralded the return of professional baseball to Brooklyn in 2001 when they opened KeySpan Park in Coney Island, about 71/2 miles from where Ebbets Field stood. The New York-Penn League team, which has led all short-season teams (mid-June to early September) in attendance every year, plays strongly to the Dodgers connection with promotions tying into the tradition. This year's giveaway: an Ebbets Field model.
"Every year we've had a former Dodger come back and do something at the ballpark," says general manager Steve Cohen, 40, a Brooklyn native. In addition to McDevitt and Pignatano, Don Newcombe returned and was honored this year.
Cohen says most of the former Brooklyn players still living have visited, as well as the widow of first baseman Gil Hodges, Joan, who still lives in Brooklyn, and Rachel Robinson, Jackie's widow.
[...]
As the 50th anniversary clicks by and boomers who can remember going to the iconic park in Flatbush age, the connection becomes one or two generations removed and might fade.
"I can't get a public school named after Pee Wee Reese," an exasperated Marty Adler, 70, founder of the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame, says of the late Baseball Hall of Fame shortstop. "They don't remember baseball. People ask, 'Pee Wee, how short was he? Was he a pitcher?' There's no base any more."
Pignatano says youngsters in Brooklyn talk about the Dodgers but, "Are they interested? I don't know. All the kids I talk to about the Dodgers are Mets and Yankees fans ... They don't even know who I am."
Cohen notes a significant segment of Brooklyn's population wasn't in the country when the Dodgers played here.
The Cyclones are doing their part to preserve the legacy with the Brooklyn Baseball Gallery at their park. Adler has contributed many Dodger artifacts. The most historic are the spikes from Erskine's 1956 no-hitter and the catcher's mitt from Mickey Owen's legendary passed ball in the 1941 World Series.
About 3,000 school children visit the small museum each offseason, watching a film on the Dodgers and often hearing Adler speak. "It's like educating an entire generation," he says.
So let me welcome (or really, welcome back) Ed Wade to Houston as the Astros' new GM. My very fuzzy recollection of his tenure in Philadelphia was that he was reasonably solid, and did do a good job of finding young talent, which Lord knows the Stros desperately need, but was eventually done in by personality conflicts. Given Drayton McLane's history with GMs (*cough* *cough* Gerry Hunsicker *cough* *cough*), that perhaps doesn't bode so well for Wade, but that ain't my problem. Wade at least is unlikely to run into another Scott Rolen situation, where the best player on the team is being run out of town on a rail by the fans. How everyone reacts when he tells them that Brad Ausmus needs to go, that will be the test. Good luck to you, sir.
I don't actually disagree with anything Joe Sheehan says here about the Yankees' sudden proximity to the Red Sox in the standings and how basically meaningless it is given their now almost assured spot in the playoffs as a wild card, but my evil little pinstripe-adorned heart can't help itself.
It's hard to close even a 2 ½-game gap on a good team with 12 days left in the season. Even if it was necessary to do so, it would be a difficult task. In this case, it's not; whatever benefits--home-field advantage, schedule choice, comfort--are gained by winning the division versus being the Wild Card aren't generous enough to warrant playing the last week and change as if it mattered. Look at how Terry Francona has managed his squad all month, in the knowledge that his team is going to October. He's been resting players all around the roster, diddling with his rotation, and trying experiments like "let's see how many batters Eric Gagne can walk in one inning."It would behoove Joe Torre to start doing this as well. The Yankees are up five games in the loss column on the Tigers, with a magic number of seven for the wild card. If form holds through the weekend and the Yankees' magic number reaches three or so, Torre needs to worry less about seeding and more about making sure his aging team is ready to go on October 2. Alex Rodriguez has missed two games all year, and none since August 8. Robinson Cano hasn't missed a game since May 6. Jorge Posada has played his usual 130-odd games behind the plate; a couple of extra days off next week couldn't hurt. I can't quantify the effects of rest on a player's performance, but I can say that the cost of doing so--possibly ending up as the wild card versus winning the division--is essentially zero.
The difference between winning the division and advancing as the Wild Card doesn't mean a thing. It's all just playoff seeding, and if you're looking for some evidence--I mean, other than the 1996 NL West race or the 2001 NL Central race--let's go all the way back to...last October. The Tigers closed the season 19-31, blowing a huge lead over the Twins, and were swept...in the last series of the year--at home--by the Royals to lose the division title on the last day.
Not two weeks later, they were the AL pennant winners, and no one cared how they got there. There was no hangover, no leftover impact on the team for having blown a division title in such a ridiculous fashion, no repercussions. They simply started a new season that Tuesday, one in which their pitching staff was utterly dominant for a week. The Twins? They played exactly three more games, the bare minimum allowed by the rules. Which set of fans came away happier last year?
(Does this count as weauxfing? I sure hope not.)
I agree with Fred: This is the greatest hidden ball trick ever, and is now on my short list for best baseball stories ever.
On Aug. 31, 1987, Dave Bresnahan was the Michelangelo of potato sculpting. He sacrificed five fine tubers to the spud gods - death via peel - before settling on the correct shape. He drew red lines on the winner to simulate seams, only to see them erased by the potato's weeping. He wielded that peeler like a true artiste.Because in order to pull off the greatest prank in baseball history, Bresnahan needed to shape a potato like a baseball.
"I went to Williamsport (Pa.) this past weekend to celebrate the anniversary," Bresnahan says today from his Arizona home, 20 years after he ended his career as a catcher for the Double-A Williamsport Bills by feigning to pick off an opponent at third base by chucking a potato into left field, then using the real baseball to tag the runner when he scurried home - a hidden-ball trick to end all hidden-ball tricks.
"They gave away bobbleheads. I'm holding a potato. There's one on eBay right now. A couple sold for over a hundred bucks this week. For kicks and giggles, I looked up what Barry Bonds' was selling for, and I'm crushing him.
"I really don't understand."
Since the general consensus around Houston seems to be that the Tim Purpura firing was justified, I thought it might be a good idea to present an alternate view, that of Joe Sheehan from the Baseball Prospectus.
Firing Purpura, as McLane did yesterday, is an act of incompetence. Not only was it Purpura's work--he ran the Astros' player-development operations for seven years prior to becoming GM--that built the pennant winner, but with the expensive problems he inherited and the meddling of McLane, it was impossible for him to move the Astros in the direction they needed to go. He was essentially a caretaker, needing to preside over a rebuilding process and never being allowed to do so, and he's now out of a job largely because his employer has returned to being completely irrational about what his team is.Purpura's performance as a GM was a mixed bag. He made his share of missteps, such as the [Willy] Taveras trade and the Woody Williams contract. However, he showed a terrific ability for making the smaller moves that add value at very little cost. In three seasons, Purpura made something-for-nothing pickups such as Mike Lamb, Aubrey Huff, and Mark Loretta. The player-development program he built continues to generate contributors such as Luke Scott, Wandy Rodriguez (check out his peripherals this year), Chad Qualls, and Troy Patton. If left to his own devices, I have no doubt that Purpura would have limited the Astros' rebuilding process to a few short seasons, and come out on the other side with a team prepared for a long run of success.
Instead, he's out of a job. Tim Purpura isn't to blame for the Astros' disappointing 2007 season, and that he's being fired for it is ridiculous. Drayton McLane set these events in motion by abandoning what had worked for close to a decade--staying out of the baseball staff's way--and instead making his own bad decisions about what the Astros needed. McLane wanted a year-long coronation of Craig Biggio, and he got it. He couldn't have that and a contending baseball team, however, and his refusal to see that--and his subsequent dismissal of Purpura and Phil Garner as scapegoats for his own mistakes--ranks as one of the game's great embarrassments of 2007.
UPDATE: And Sheehan's colleague Nate Silver makes the case against Purpura.
I think we can break the general manager's job into three broad compartments, those being (i) scouting and development; (ii) transactionally-based talent evaluation and analysis, and (iii) interpersonal and intraorganizational skills. And I think Purpura comes up short in each of those departments.In the scouting realm, the Astros ranked 22nd of 30 teams in PECOTA's analysis of minor league talent, 28th in Kevin Goldstein's ranking of the same, and dead last in PECOTA's rankings of the overall 25-and-under talent stock. The Astros have had a handful of player development successes, but their system is poor enough to be past that tipping point where the option of a quick-turnaround rebuilding effort is largely off the table.
In the talent evaluation realm, Purpura's highest-stakes transactions - the nine-figure signing of Carlos Lee, and the Jason Jennings deal - grade out badly (indeed, this is not merely perfect hindsight; they were viewed skeptically at the time). The Astros can also be blamed for their inaction in a number of areas, whether it's failing to offer Roger Clemens arbitration, or allowing run vacuum Brad Ausmus to retain his hold on the catching position.
The intrapersonal skills category is the hardest to evaluate without inside knowledge, and the one where Purpura deserves the most sympathy. Meddling owners like Drayton McLane are almost always counterproductive. It isn't uncommon to see owners block trades, or to be willing to open up the purse strings for some free agents but not for others, but it's extremely unusual to see the owner essentially jump two levels down and interfere with the job of the field manager, as McLane looks to have done by mandating that Craig Biggio play every day until he reached 3,000 hits. This is terrible from an organizational culture standpoint; Purpura's ability to manage Phil Garner was undermined by McLane's insistence on doing the same.
At the same time, the general manager's job is not just about managing one's subordinates, but also managing one's superiors. If we make the favorable assumption toward Purpura, which is that he was not on board with the decision to play Craig Biggio every day, we also have to assume that he was unable to persuade McLane of his case. Certainly, we cannot know how many general managers would have fared differently, but we nevertheless have to regard this as sort of a "tough love" indictment of Purpura. I happen to think that the battle might have been unwinnable, but the war was not: if Purpura had been able to articulate (literally and figuratively) a better long-term vision for the franchise, then the downside to playing Biggio would have seemed more tangible.
No shock here, that's for sure. I might have thought they'd have waited till the end of the season, and doing a twofer is slightly more unexpected than just giving the manager the heave-ho, but surely there's no one in Houston who's actually surprised that Astros GM Tim Purpura and manager Phil Garner are now unemployed.
I have no strong feelings about this. Garner is what he's always been, a retread who had some decent people skills, and didn't screw up the magic in '04 and '05. Purpura was a bit unlucky, but more than a bit unimpressive. It's a shame for him that he didn't get more of a chance, but I won't go so far as to defend him.
I will, however, note that whatever ails the franchise today, it hasn't been swept away with the two ex-employees. New/interim manager Cecil Cooper shows part of the problem here:
Cooper, 57, is in his third year as bench coach and has experience a minor league manager and major league bench coach following a stellar 17-year playing career with the Boston Red Sox and Milwaukee Brewers."We have the talent," Cooper said. "It's just a matter of us going out and playing like we're supposed to, and believe me we will."
Now, I don't expect Cecil Cooper to step in and slag the roster as part of his first press conference. Never mind his future job prospects, that's just bad people management. But if he gets a contract to stick around, and he doesn't have a frank talk with the new GM about what the talent here is really like, then he'll be where Garner is soon enough.
Then there's Richard Justice, whiffing on an evaluation of Purpura's roster construction skills.
Somewhere along the way, the Astros lost sight of the things that made them so successful over the years.We might not be having this discussion if Woody Williams and [Jason] Jennings had been what they were supposed to be, but the lack of major league prospects at the upper level of the minor leagues was going to take a toll on the big league record at some point.
Williams is not a good choice for the front half of a rotation--he`s fragile, and he needs a big park and/or a great lineup to succeed. Signed to a two-year, $12.5-million deal by the Astros, he`s a fly ball pitcher going to the Non-Carbonated Fruit Beverage House of Pain for Pitchers, and, outside of PETCO, hitters pasted him at a .295/.341/.476 clip. Still, he wanted to pitch at home, and, let`s face it, the guy`s a former 28th-round pick who didn`t become a rotation regular until he was 30, he`s 40 now, and he has 120 career wins--it isn`t like he just threw away his shot at the Hall of Fame by heading to Texas. What he might cost the Astros is a different story.
So I'd say we've now officially closed the books on the 2005 pennant winners. Time to hope that the next one comes quicker than that. My best wishes to the new crew in achieving that.
When was the last time a 110-year-old record was broken in major league baseball?
The Texas Rangers rounded the bases at a dizzying pace and became the first team in 110 years to score 30 runs in a game, setting an American League record Wednesday in a 30-3 rout of the Baltimore Orioles."This is something freaky. You won't see anything like this again for a long, long time. I am glad I was on this end of it," said Marlon Byrd, who hit one of two Texas grand slams.
Trailing 3-0 in the opener of a doubleheader, Texas couldn't be stopped. At last, the last-place Rangers did something right.
"We set a record for something on the good side of baseball," manager Ron Washington said.
It was the ninth time a major league team scored 30 runs, the first since the Chicago Colts set the major league mark in a 36-7 rout of Louisville in a National League game on June 29, 1897, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
Best tidbit about the score:
Anyone got the Ravens' number?: The Baltimore Ravens, who play across the parking lot from the Orioles, haven't allowed 30 points since Week 12 in 2005.
For more mindless fun about this, see the Top 100 beatdowns list. Now I need to figure out what other realistically reachable 19th century records still stand.