Baseball. Blogging. Whenever.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Killer

David Wells to the Marlins

Where Rangers owners go to die

The Late Show

Don’t get your hopes up, Boston

The Sox’ contingent didn’t know what to expect in the 50-pitch side session, perhaps just a stream of straight balls and a subsequent physical examination. But, with his agents also looking on, Smoltz first threw a few 40-yard passes and then picked up a slew of worn baseballs he said “had a mind of their own”.

Finally came the first pitch.

“I’m standing back there ready to get this warm-up pitch,” Scherer remembered. “Then, all of a sudden, here comes this 92 mph fastball, low and away, that doesn’t touch my glove. I immediately thought, ‘I better get down now. He’s ready to go.’ . . .

. . . “He starts mixing in his slider, and I’m like, ‘All right, it has a nice late break and it’s hard,’” Scherer said. “But then he was like, ‘Now I’m going to throw a curveball’, and he breaks off this 12-to-6 that totally fools me. And then he starts saying we’re going to throw split-fingers, changeups, and a little of this and that. I’m like, ‘Good Lord Smoltzy, you’re ready to pitch, aren’t you?!’”

The case for Raines

So Raines was perhaps the best base stealer in the game's history, the second-best leadoff hitter, one of the best hitters at reaching base (the most important thing a hitter can do, after all) and a good defensive player. One common excuse for omitting Raines from Hall ballots is his admitted cocaine use in the 1980s, including his infamous confession to sliding headfirst to avoid breaking the vials of snow in his back pocket. Raines was clean for the majority of his career and became known both as someone who talked about his recovery from addiction and just generally a good character guy, yet voters are still bringing up the drug use from the first two or three years of his career.

Yet another candidate who reached the ballot with similar off-field indiscretions, Paul Molitor, sailed into the Hall on the first ballot with more than 85 percent of the vote and 299 more votes than Raines received in his first year. Molitor also played the first few years of his career with a serious cocaine problem. So why does Molitor get a free pass while Raines struggles to reach even a quarter of the vote? It's not about their playing careers; Raines was the better offensive player and played a thousand more games in the field than Molitor did. Molitor accumulated more bulk statistics at the plate, but his inability to play a position was a big part of extending his career. No, it might be about something far more insidious.

Not to get too political, but . . .

Doesn't it seem a little odd that when you have a ball player (Roger Clemens) who lies to Congress about steroid use in baseball, the U.S. Attorney for DC convenes a grand jury to consider a perjury indictment, but when an official of the Justice Department (Bradley Schlozman) lies to Congress about trying to politicize the civil service within DOJ, the U.S. Attorney fo DC passes on further investigation or prosecution? Which really seems like the more significant problem for the country?

Today at THT