November 20, 2008
Shipping Soon The 2009 Hardball Times Annual will be in the mail next week. Make sure you order it directly from ACTA today. 
Rich Barbieri John Barten Sal Baxamusa John Beamer Brian Borawski John Brattain Craig Brown Matthew Carruth Derek Carty Alex Eisenberg Mike Fast David Gassko
Brandon Isleib
Chris Jaffe Josh Kalk Chris Neault Dave Studeman Steve Treder Bryan Tsao Tuck! John Walsh Geoff Young And here's the full roster.
Or you can search by:
THT's ToolboxStubHub is where fans buy and sell Yankees Tickets, Red Sox Tickets, White Sox Tickets, Mets Tickets and all other baseball tickets. If you are looking for World Series Tickets, ALCS Tickets or NLCS Tickets, you can find them at StubHub! More hot selling tickets include: Cubs Tickets, Astros Tickets, Dodgers Tickets, Angels Tickets and Detroit Tigers Tickets. Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets. 
All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a
Creative Commons
License.
|
The Pujols Awards: Week 19 and 20eby John BrattainMay 23, 2008 Wow … nominations have become few and far between of late. I wasn’t going to do The Pujols Awards this week either but there are a couple I can use plus a lot has happened over the last few days that I’d like to deal with and I can use this forum to do so. And, best of all, I can drop things into all four categories this week. The AlbertsSkip Caray (Submitted by Pat Senechal) For doing something no one else in the media is doing: defending Barry Bonds. Albert Pujols (Submitted by Mike Cade) I'd like to nominate Albert for an Albert (again). His reaction to hitting Padres pitcher Chris Young in the face shows someone who not only truly cares for other people, but does not mind publicly showing it, while not making a circus of it. Jamie Moyer (Submitted by The Progenitor of Severe Gluteal Discomfort) Why? Well to paraphrase a post I made on my blog at BDD, Moyer could not even find a job in 1992 and he looked like he may be done as a big leaguer. To that point, he was 34-54, with a 4.56 ERA (when a 4.56 ERA was nasty and not league average). He was signed by the Orioles in 1993 at age 30. Wednesday night’s win gives Moyer 200 wins since the year he turned 30. Do you have any idea how rare that is? It has been done 13 other times in major league history. Of note, Greg Maddux’s 350th win was also his 200th since the year he turned 30 years old. Here’s the complete list… AGE >= 30 WINS W 1 Cy Young 316 2 Phil Niekro 287 3 Warren Spahn 277 4 Gaylord Perry 238 5 Early Wynn 217 T6 Randy Johnson 216 T6 Eddie Plank 216 T8 Grover C Alexander 213 T8 Lefty Grove 213 10 Jack Quinn 203 T11 Nolan Ryan 202 T11 Roger Clemens 202 T13 Greg Maddux 200 T13 Jamie Moyer 200 (Courtesy of Lee Sinins’ always awesome Complete Baseball Encyclopedia) We’ll likely see Maddux and Moyer reach the top 10 in this category before the season is out. Other than Quinn (and possibly Clemens due to alleged PED use—although he certainly belongs) all are, or will be, in the Hall of Fame. Moyer is fifth all-time in wins in this category among southpaws. It gives you an idea of how awesome Moyer has been since the Orioles picked him up for 1993. Since he turned 30 he has won 15 or more games in a season four times, twice over 20 (in 2001 and 2003), and between age 33-40 went 126-56 with a 3.77 ERA (league average ERA 4.67). Moyer was sixth in MLB in wins over that span and averaged more than 200 innings. Well done, Mr. Moyer! Sports Illustrated (Submitted by The Progenitor of Severe Gluteal Discomfort) It might just be me but I found this cover to be totally wicked and absolutely Albert-worthy. If the Blue Jays cannot turn their season around (and amazingly I am still optimistic that they will) I’ll be rooting for the Rays to reach the postseason. Their fans certainly deserve a chance to be loud and proud. The LuisMajor League Baseball (Submitted by The Progenitor of Severe Gluteal Discomfort) Okay, you’ve exorcised the adipocreal melon of Barry Bonds from the sport and are content in your own bizarre little universe that PED have been purged from the game. Logic would dictate that celebrating somebody’s drug-free achievement would be the way to go. Well, Ken Griffey Jr. is going to be the first player untainted with even the suspicion of possible steroid use since the days of Willie Mays and Hank Aaron to hit 600 bombs. I don’t buy for one moment the bullselig that 600 is the new 500, since prior to Bonds and Sammy Sosa only three men had reached the milestone, whereas before MLB instituted home run derby in 1998 12 players reached the 500-homer level. Six hundred bombs are amazing, period, and should be celebrated for the rare feat that it is. It might not hurt for the grand poobahs of the game to ignore what they read in the papers and learn a little history. The Toronto Blue Jays (Submitted by The Progenitor of Severe Gluteal Discomfort) Let’s see … Frank Thomas is sent packing after 60 at-bats. Adam Lind is sent down after 19 at-bats. Brad Wilkerson is hitting .167/.255/.238 after 48 at-bats AND HE’S STILL THE JAYS' FREAKIN’ LEADOFF HITTER???? Listen, if you’re bent (and if you’re not, I strongly suggest that you do so) and determined to give at-bats to guys who cannot hit or treats outs like women treat public restrooms and make sure they take somebody with them, then why not bring back Lind and tell him he’s there to stay even if he hits like the love child of the late Brad Wilkerson and Shannon Stewart. (They’re not dead? Well they’re killing me!) No wonder the offense is totally clueless. Those guys take their cues from the folks above. The Toronto Blue Jays (Submitted by The Progenitor of Severe Gluteal Discomfort) Let’s see … Frank Thomas is sent packing after 60 at-bats. Adam Lind is sent down after 19 at-bats. Brad Wilkerson is hitting .167/.255/.238 after 48 at-bats AND HE’S STILL THE JAYS' FREAKIN’ LEADOFF HITTER???? Listen, if you’re bent (and if you’re not, I strongly suggest that you do so) and determined to give at-bats to guys who cannot hit or treats outs like women treat public restrooms and make sure they take somebody with them, then why not bring back Lind and tell him he’s there to stay even if he hits like the love child of the late Brad Wilkerson and Shannon Stewart. (They’re not dead? Well they’re killing me!) No wonder the offense is totally clueless. Those guys take their cues from the folks above. (Oh my God, they‘re contagious!) Manny being MannyManny Ramirez (Submitted by Ryan Buck) As you know, Manny Ramirez high-fived a fan before finishing a double—just another day of Manny being Manny. The SamsonsThe Washington Nationals (Submitted by The Progenitor of Severe Gluteal Discomfort) Unbelievable. The bloated, engorged leeches that make up the major league cartel are “demanding that the city cough up $100,000 a day in damages because, according to the Nationals, the stadium was not completed in time for Opening Night in March.”
These are definitely the god-children of Bud Selig—a bunch of nymphomaniac fiscal succubi if there ever were one. The whole lot of them should be rounded up, stuffed into a time machine set to 1789 Paris where they knew how to deal with people like them. As a parting shot we could say “Let ‘em eat (bleep)!” To give you a hand in understanding what your new hosts are telling you, we’ll send along some baseball fans from Quebec to help you adjust. For short-sightedness, small thinking, diminutive moral standing, undersized intellectual capacity, stunted mental and emotional development and having stooping so low that they got their nose hairs caught in their own fly and imprinted YKK on the skin between their nostrils. I award Nationals ownership “The Samson.” One of our friendly representatives has been dispatched wearing steel-toed boots to give you your just reward. To confirm its receipt he’ll be imprinting YKK on the steel toe. If you have a nomination for the “The Pujols Award,” let us know! who deserves to be honored this week. If you wish to have your blog credited with the submission, we’ll post the link along with your candidate. Let us know why you feel he deserves an Albert, Luis, "Manny Being Manny" or "The Samson." Tune in every Wednesday at 4:40 PM EST on ESPN 1450's The Mike Gill Show and Fridays at 5:40 PM on “The Locker Room with Kevin Williams” on Fox Sports Radio 1310AM and 1160 WOBM-AM where I'm a weekly guest. For a distinctive Canadian flavour you can read my coverage of the Toronto Blue Jays (as well as other baseball matters) at Sympatico/MSN Sports. Also be sure to check out baseball’s hottest blog as mentioned by the voices inside my head: The Progenitor of Severe Gluteal Discomfort. Please forward all flames, complaints, whining, accusations about my mother, inferences of habouring an Oedipus complex, demands to engage in coprophagy before shuffling off this mortal coil, and anatomically impossible suggestions here. Do you have a general question or comment for one of THT's writers? Send it in to our weekly mailbag We also welcome unsolicited op-ed pieces of approximately 500 words for consideration. We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity and consistency of style. Please include your whole name and location to be considered. If you have a comment about this specific article, please email the writer. Next Article: THT Awards, Week 7>> <<Previous Article: THT Daily: Braves sweep Mets | |
