Baseball. Blogging. Whenever.

Friday, December 05, 2008

Maddux to Retire


It's official. Or at least it will be on Monday.

Maddux is my favorite baseball player of all time. Despite this, I have only seen him pitch in person one time. This is a near-contemporaneous account of that one time I saw him, related in an email to my buddy Ethan in the still-drunk hours following the game:

From: Craig
To: Ethan
Date: Friday, August 4, 2006 at 12:31 AM
Re: Maddux

So we took all of our summer clerks down to Cincinnati tonight for the Reds-Dodgers game. We're on the way back in the big custom bus now. Fabulous night. Maddux gets traded to L.A. last weekend. Tonight is his first start for them. The stars align, and I get to see my favorite player tonight. I buy a Dodgers hat and wear it down just to support Maddux, and, I'll admit, to be a bit annoying to Reds fans.

Maddux has a huge fork in his back. He is done. Kinda hard to watch him the last year or two, but I still root. I expect little or nothing from him.

Game starts. He gives up an early walk and I think it will be a long night. Then he starts throwing bullets. One. Two. Three. Five innings of no-hit ball. It's 1994 all over again. Sixth inning starts. Long fly . . . caught. Another . . . caught. Lightening in a bottle. Third batter comes up and he mows him down too. I'm alone in a ballpark screaming at the top of my lungs. No-hitter in effect. I know it won't last. Even in his prime Maddux never threw a no hitter because he's around the plate too much. He can't not throw strikes, even when he doesn't have his best stuff. He gets hit. That's what he does. Still, I think how nice it would be to not see him give up a hit.

As the top of the seventh begins, the skies open up and a deluge falls on Great American Ballpark. Lightning. Thunder. The Dodgers bat, and the half inning ends just as the umps call for a delay and the tarp comes out. Forty minutes. I know that there is no chance that Maddux is coming out for the bottom of the 7th. He's 40. His arm will be tight. He's a Hall of Famer already. He doesn't need the no-no to make him happy. They got him for the stretch run and they need to save his arm. Still, part of me hopes.

The game resumes with some kid I've never heard of on the mound [note: it was Joe Beimel. I've since heard of him]. He gives up a hit to the first batter. Never send a boy to do a man's job.

Dodgers win 3-0. Maddux gets the win. I get to see him pitch like he was in his prime again, and got to see him leave before anyone remembered he didn't have it anymore.


I was almost too old for heroes when Maddux came up. I'm definitely too old for heroes now. He will be the last.

Thanks, Greg.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 5:15pm (23) Comments

The earflap caps are coming!


It's been over a month since I predicted that they'd be all the rage this winter, and now finally they're available:

Next weekend, fans will finally be able to buy Phillies ear-flap caps, like the one Jimmy Rollins wore during the victorious World Series homestand in late October. At first, however, they'll only be sold at the team's Majestic Clubhouse store at Citizens Bank Park . . . Other retailers won't get the caps until March, according to New Era, the exclusive provider of caps for Major-League Baseball.

Um, yeah. Because those things are gonna just fly off the shelves just as the weather starts to warm up. Still: most cool, in my opinion. I dig these hats.

Note: if they come in either Tigers or Braves (all-navy only, please) I wear a 7-3/4. Christmas is just around the corner, you know.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 3:15pm (9) Comments

Depression Porn


Forgive me for yet another non-baseball thing, but Virginia Postrel has an excellent post noting how journalists seem to be really getting off on "Depression Porn":

The Boston Globe's Drake Bennett asked a bunch of people, including me, what a 21st-century Depression might look like. The results sounded pretty damned good to some people--a sure sign of an affluent society, or at least affluent commentators.

The prospect of a Depression is already creating jobs for (a few) writers. Hodding Carter IV has gotten a book deal described by Publishers Weekly this way:

"After 10 years of profligate spending fueled by real estate flips, refinancing and credit card debt, the author will write about living on what he actually earns. In order to do so, he and his family of six will mine cost-saving techniques from the Great Depression and the first cookbook in America, and stay within their budget, whether that means growing their own food or bartering for things they need. Carter is writing a column based on his experiences for Gourmet."

If that last line doesn't bring a smile to your face, you really are depressed.

I'm glad I'm not imagining that a lot of folks seem almost excited about crappy economic times. It's almost as if surging unemployment, deflation, and allied nastiness is just another retro craze.

(link via Sullivan)
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 3:04pm (2) Comments

Following Up on John VanB


A couple of weeks ago I went on a bit about the Pirates releasing former first rounder John Van Benschoten. Today Van Benschoten has a new job:

Right-hander John Van Benschoten, who was taken by the Pirates with the eighth overall pick in the 2001 First-Year Player Draft, has signed a Minor League deal with the [White] Sox, sources told MLB.com on Friday. Van Benschoten reportedly will be invited to the Sox big league Spring Training camp in Glendale, Ariz.

Expectations of success: approaching nothin', but as I explained in the previous post, I've always felt like this kid was done a disservice by the Pirates, so I'll be rooting for him to make something out of his career.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 2:35pm (2) Comments

Wither* Tracy Ringolsby?


A local news station is reporting that the Rocky Mountain News is likely to shut down soon:

The Rocky, Colorado's oldest newspaper, was put up for sale on Thursday after owner E.W. Scripps Co. said it lost about $11 million on the operation in the first nine months of the year.

Cincinnati-based Scripps said in a news release that if no acceptable offers emerge by mid-January, it will "examine its other options." It gave no details.

An internal Denver Post memo, authored by publisher Dean Singleton, read in part, "an announced sale is usually the first step leading to a failing newspaper's closure."

"Scripps notified MediaNews Group [the owner of the Post] on November 19 that it planned to close the Rocky Mountain News as soon as practical," the memo said.

It's rough out there for the newspapers.

*UPDATE: Eagle-eyed reader (and English grad student) Sara K points out that the correct spelling of the word in this instance is "whither." Unless, of course, I was intending to make a clever pun in which I used the idea of withering fruit or something to comment upon the shrinking newspaper industry and, perhaps, Tracy Ringolsby's age. Let's go with the pun thing because that makes me sound smarter. Yep, intended the pun the whole time!
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 1:25pm (2) Comments

At least it’s not funded with tax dollars


The MLB Network has built itself a stadium:

Dubbed Studio 42 — after Jackie Robinson's number — the MLB Network will convert what used to be MSNBC's main set in Secaucus, N.J., into a sort of ballpark. Its infield is only half regulation size. But, says Tony Petitti, president of the MLB Network, which launches New Year's Day, it will have a "portable pitching mound" so analysts such as ex-pitcher Al Leiter can fire full-strength fastballs. Assuming there'd be somebody to catch.

And, says Petitti, the set will have "real padding" in its outfield walls as well as "real bleachers" — so studio audiences, presumably, would feel comfortable taking off their shirts.

There's a pic in the article.

I guess that's kind of cool, but if they're going to use it like studio shows typically use field mockups, I hope they do something about the dress code for on-air talent. It's bad enough when a retired athlete tries to reenact the motions of active players for TV, but it's even worse when they do it wearing a suit jacket.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 10:56am (12) Comments

The Waiting Game


Jason at IIATMS lists a number of reasons why anxious Yankee watchers should just calm the heck down about the lack of progress on the Sabathia-to-New York front. Perhaps the best one:

The Yanks are not the destination they were in 2000, 2001, 2002, when they were making regular World Series appearances. The team is getting old. The beat writers are incessantly negative towards everyone but Mo and Jeter. Ownership is erratic, and that might be a very kind term to call Hank and Hal. And they play in the AL East, home of the reigning AL Champs and the 2007 World Series Champs. It's rough out there.

It's been a long time since the "the Yankees can just buy whatever they want" meme has held true. What's more, I think the Yankees know that. If they didn't, I don't think they come out of the gate with the offer they did.

CC may yet wind up with the Yankees, but the notion that it's a no-brainer is a mistaken one. For my part, I still would like to see him in San Francisco.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 9:55am (10) Comments

The Bonds Charges


The prosecutors in the Barry Bonds case have now officially dropped a handful of charges:

Federal prosecutors dropped four counts of lying to a grand jury against Barry Bonds, leaving him to face trial next year on 10 counts of making false statements plus an additional obstruction of justice charge.

Bonds faces the same potential sentence range—probation to roughly two years in prison—if convicted. His trial is scheduled to begin March 2.

Thursday’s indictment, the third against the home-run king, came in response to U.S. District Judge Susan Illston’s decision last week ordering prosecutors to again rewrite the technically faulty indictment.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, there is nothing really game-changing about this from a legal perspective. That said, there are still several questions and answers that form the basis of the perjury charges that I believe to be vague and ambiguous. I've seen juries acquit defendants on stronger records and convict them on weaker ones, so I can't really say with any certainty how this will all play out. If you put a gun to my head I'd say that Barry has a decent shot of getting off, but you know what they say about opinions.

For my hyper-detailed breakdown of the Bonds grand jury testimony at issue in the trial, go here. The charges have changed since I wrote that, but the underlying facts are still the same.

Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 9:15am (0) Comments

Pray for Josh Wilker


Writing about the Cardboard Gods is all fun and games . . . until you're threatened by Don Stanhouse!

(link via BTF)
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 6:11am (0) Comments

Today at THT


Things to chew on as you try to remember how much sleep you used to get before you had kids:

  • For you voyeurs out there, Roel Torres writes a diary of his life and baseball for the week of July 18th through July 24th. He's a Sox fan, so you get his recaps of Boston's six-game West Coast swing. You also get to read about Roel's lack of HD TV, the celebrities with whom he shares a birthday (Slash and Stephanie Seymour? I bet Axl felt left out!) and are treated to a cameo appearance from both Bill James and Roel's existential ennui.


  • If Roel's article is a Seinfeldian week about nothing, Richard Barbieri's Annotated Week in Baseball History is, by definition, the polar opposite. This week Barbieri profiles the largest trade -- in terms of bodies anyway -- in baseball history. Click for the Gus Triandos, stay for the non-critical use of a Joseph Stalin quote!


  • Over at Fantasy Focus, Derek Carty muses about what Edgar Renteria brings to the San Francisco Giants' table. Deep thought: Only in San Francisco could signing Renteria be considered evidence of a youth movement. Meanwhile, Chris Neault tries to project Carlos Quentin's 2009. I actually own Quentin in my AL keeper league. His injury last year hurt, but not as much as you might think: in my league we give points for irrational and stupid displays of rage.
    • Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 5:55am (0) Comments

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