Killeverything's (New)NeverEndingBaseballThread

[UtahRatt]

Cespedes is a monster.

The announcers suck so fucking hard, Chris Berman was annoying decades ago now he's completely unbearable. Can't watch much more.......Off with the sound and up with the tunes.

[UtahRatt]

Had this on in the background while taking the garbage out (I know, despite my earlier statement) and I stopped and watched Cespedes. That was way cool, too bad he hasn't put together much of a season this year. Serious power. Looks effortless.

Now I'm gonna watch a movie, but I'm not mad I saw that shit.

Cespedes at bat was awesome, fucking animal. So far the only one with any excitement.

Bryce Harpers dad can't pitch for shit, funny to watch Bryce constantly tell his dad to put them over the plate like a bratty kid.

[MurrayFiend]

Yeah, MLB.com tells me he won the thing. Justice and whatnot.

[johnk5150]

Chris Berman used back back back back 104 times last night. Please go away Chris.

[Machado]

Chris Berman used back back back back 104 times last night. Please go away Chris.

Why is he on the air? Who are these ultra conservative mid-western
t.v. viewers who actually enjoy his commentary? His act is tired and old.
Did he really use an R&B reference when Wright hit the ball?
Did he really name drop Pepsi and refer to the ball as "guzzled"
WTF!!!

[Machado]

Bud Selig is scheduled to appear on Letterman tonight.

I hope Dave does not ask a bunch of "softball" questions during
the interview.

He's on to promote the ASG in New York. You can bet it won't be a challenging interview. Seems like a no-brainer.

I thought Letterman did a fine job of pressing the issue with Bud regarding
the PED scandal. Obviously Arod's name was brought up by Letterman
and Bud confirmed that he does have knowledge which players may or may not be suspended.
When asked how many players Bud refused to answer. When asked which players Bud refused to answer.

[Machado]

Michael Weiner has stated any impact from the expectied Biogenesis suspensions is likely to be felt next year, not this year.
Here is the story from AP:
The baseball players’ association says any suspensions resulting from the sport’s latest drug investigation likely won’t be served until next year if the discipline is challenged before an arbitrator.

Union head Michael Weiner expects Major League Baseball will notify the union of its plans for penalties in the next month, and the union will maintain any discipline should not be announced until after a grievance hearing and then only if arbitrator Fredric Horowitz upholds a ban.

“We’re going to have a discussion with them. That discussion will include whether or not names of suspended players will be announced publicly,” Weiner said Tuesday during a meeting with the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

Former MVPs Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun are among the more than a dozen players under investigation for ties to Biogenesis, a closed anti-aging clinic in Florida linked with the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs. MLB officials have been interviewing players, who have been represented by the union and their own lawyers.

A provision in baseball’s drug agreement says discipline can be announced before a hearing if the penalty results from an allegation that became public other than through MLB or a team. Miami New Times published allegations in January, but the union could argue that a penalty results from evidence baseball has gathered rather than the newspaper account.

After MLB and the union decide how to process grievances, hearings will be scheduled before Horowitz — but not before September and possibly later. Each player is entitled to a separate hearing, and Weiner said the union wants Horowitz to hear all cases.

“When all the interviews are done, we will meet with the commissioner’s office and we’ll try to work something out,” Weiner said. “Our players that deserve the suspensions, we’ll try to cope with their suspensions. Our players that don’t deserve suspensions, we will argue that they don’t deserve a suspension. And I hope we have success. We may not have success on every single player, but I hope we have a fair amount of success.”

Weiner spoke from a wheelchair and said symptoms have increased in the last month from a brain tumor he was diagnosed with last summer. He currently can’t move his right side or right arm and must use a wheelchair.

Weiner said the union will appoint a deputy executive director within a week or two.

Most of his talk was dominated by the drug investigation.

While most suspensions have been for positive tests since the joint drug agreement was reached in 2002, players also can be penalized for “just cause,” based on other evidence.

“In theory, they could be suspended for five games or 500 games,” Weiner said. “We could then choose to challenge or not, but the commissioner’s office is not bound by the 50-100-life scale.”

If multiple players are disciplined, management and union will have to decide the order of the grievance hearings.

“They’ve got to prove all those cases. I like Dan Halem, a lot, but he’s going to be running around like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off,” Weiner said, referring to an MLB senior vice president. “If that’s the circumstance, we’ll just have to schedule them and get them done as quickly as we reasonably can. And if we have the number that you suggest, it’s going to take a while.”

Speaking before Weiner in a separate session, baseball Commissioner Bud Selig repeated his call to toughen penalties in the drug agreement for 2014.

“We’ve heard from a lot of players that increased penalties are called for. We’ve heard from a lot of other players that don’t think increased penalties are called for,” Weiner said. “And I imagine we will work it out at or near in early December and then have a negotiation with them over that very subject.”

[Sheep_Mafia]

That's good info from Weiner. I didn't know the commissioner didn't have to stay within the penalty parameters--the 50-100 game deal as a general rule. We've been hearing about all these claims that MLB was going to try and say this accounts to multiple violations as justification to hammer Braun and ARod but sounds like they can just hammer them as they see fit. Surprising the union doesn't have that locked down. Will be interesting to see if they go over the 50 for example how much the arbitrator has the ability to change it, if at all. Based on the MLB & unions history I would be shocked if the arbitrator doesn't have a heavy hand in being able to throw out the penalty length if there's not a lot to support it.

[killeverything]

Fuck yes. What a wonderful send off to Rivera at the All Star game. Everyone there on their feet, both teams out of the dugouts in ovation. Complete and total respect to argueabley the most deserving player in the game.

[tin00can]

I hate the Yankees but it's impossible to hate Mo. Class act all the way. Baseball is losing one of its best ambassadors after this year.

[johnk5150]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/prince ... est,33137/

[Machado]

I hate the Yankees but it's impossible to hate Mo. Class act all the way. Baseball is losing one of its best ambassadors after this year.

Too bad Leyland is a coward and decided to have Mo enter the game
in the 8th, and not the 9th.

[Machado]

Curt Schilling @gehrig38
At the ending this season, the Rolaids award should be changed to the "Mariano Rivera Award"
#greatestcloserever


About time Schilling had an opinion worth repeating.
Great idea. Why didn't I think of this? Forget about fucking Rolaids
& do the right thing.

[MurrayFiend]

Jose Fernandez looked pretty legit there. And just 20, shit.

[johnk5150]

I hate the Yankees but it's impossible to hate Mo. Class act all the way. Baseball is losing one of its best ambassadors after this year.

Too bad Leyland is a coward and decided to have Mo enter the game
in the 8th, and not the 9th.

MVP votes due at the top of the ninth . It was the right move.

[Gibsonite]

I hate the Yankees but it's impossible to hate Mo. Class act all the way. Baseball is losing one of its best ambassadors after this year.

Too bad Leyland is a coward and decided to have Mo enter the game
in the 8th, and not the 9th.

He put him in there in the 8th because he wanted Mo to start an inning clean and not have to come in during an NL rally,or not get to pitch at all if they had grabbed the lead.

[Machado]

I hate the Yankees but it's impossible to hate Mo. Class act all the way. Baseball is losing one of its best ambassadors after this year.

Too bad Leyland is a coward and decided to have Mo enter the game
in the 8th, and not the 9th.

He put him in there in the 8th because he wanted Mo to start an inning clean and not have to come in during an NL rally,or not get to pitch at all if they had grabbed the lead.

I am fully aware of the reasons as they were told over the air by Joe Buck.
That being said, Leyland is a coward & was ultra conservative regarding Mo.
The game was set up perfectly for a 9th inning appearance. Mo could have
closed the game and the gift would have been wrapped up in a nice little bow.

[johnk5150]

I am fully aware of the reasons as they were told over the air by Joe Buck.
That being said, Leyland is a coward & was ultra conservative regarding Mo.
The game was set up perfectly for a 9th inning appearance. Mo could have
closed the game and the gift would have been wrapped up in a nice little bow.

He could not have been MVP pitching the 9th. And it's not like this is some kind of stain on the greatest closer of all time.

[Machado]

I am fully aware of the reasons as they were told over the air by Joe Buck.
That being said, Leyland is a coward & was ultra conservative regarding Mo.
The game was set up perfectly for a 9th inning appearance. Mo could have
closed the game and the gift would have been wrapped up in a nice little bow.

He could not have been MVP pitching the 9th. And it's not like this is some kind of stain on the greatest closer of all time.

Is that a legit rule? The MVP voting happens in the 8th and at the conclusion of the game? RIDICULOUS if true. Unreal! Who the fuck is making up these
rules?

The greatest closer in the game pitched the 8th and did not pitch the 9th in a save situation.
That's like asking Rickey Henderson, the greatest lead off hitter of all time to bat 4th in the all star game.

[WhiteHouseSubsAC]

I am fully aware of the reasons as they were told over the air by Joe Buck.
That being said, Leyland is a coward & was ultra conservative regarding Mo.
The game was set up perfectly for a 9th inning appearance. Mo could have
closed the game and the gift would have been wrapped up in a nice little bow.

He could not have been MVP pitching the 9th. And it's not like this is some kind of stain on the greatest closer of all time.

Machado's indignance at minutae is a spectacular thing to see.

[Sheep_Mafia]

The thing with the Rivera celebration the other night is how it symbolizes who he is. All that emotion, the incredible spotlight of the moment, all the buildup to his coming into the game and he manages to instantly compose himself and make pitches and get guys out. I respect him more than any other athlete, hell-any public figure. Just an amazing story that his career has been.

From a fishing boat in Panama, to a try out that no other team attended while pitching with his toe coming through his worn shoe, getting a $3,000 bonus and nearly being traded a couple of times to where he is today. Never without dignity and grace. The wins and even the losses--all a part of a legend like we have never seen.

It's going to be a tough road with this seasons team, but imagine if he could once again, for one final time, be the last man standing when it all ends....

[killeverything]

The thing with the Rivera celebration the other night is how it symbolizes who he is. All that emotion, the incredible spotlight of the moment, all the buildup to his coming into the game and he manages to instantly compose himself and make pitches and get guys out. I respect him more than any other athlete, hell-any public figure. Just an amazing story that his career has been.

From a fishing boat in Panama, to a try out that no other team attended while pitching with his toe coming through his worn shoe, getting a $3,000 bonus and nearly being traded a couple of times to where he is today. Never without dignity and grace. The wins and even the losses--all a part of a legend like we have never seen.

It's going to be a tough road with this seasons team, but imagine if he could once again, for one final time, be the last man standing when it all ends....

Well said.

[killeverything]

I am fully aware of the reasons as they were told over the air by Joe Buck.
That being said, Leyland is a coward & was ultra conservative regarding Mo.
The game was set up perfectly for a 9th inning appearance. Mo could have
closed the game and the gift would have been wrapped up in a nice little bow.

He could not have been MVP pitching the 9th. And it's not like this is some kind of stain on the greatest closer of all time.

Machado's indignance at minutae is a spectacular thing to see.

Fucking remarkable ain't it?

[TawnyVonJagger]

I hate the Yankees but it's impossible to hate Mo. Class act all the way. Baseball is losing one of its best ambassadors after this year.

This, this, and THIS. Love Mo.

Jose Fernandez looked pretty legit there. And just 20, shit.

I LOVE watching this kid do work. He has a great story, google it. Escaping from Cuba (after several failed attempts), his mom fell overboard en route and he saved her, and his adjustments to life in America. Great, great kid. Future Cy Young winner, no doubt.

[TawnyVonJagger]

Great story by Dan Le Batard about Jose Fernandez. Story is a little long, but it's worth checking out.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/16/3 ... n-for.html

Dan Le Batard: Stars align for Miami Marlins’ Jose Fernandez

By Dan Le Batard
[email protected]

Every game, abuela climbs into that sky in Cuba. It is about as close as she ever gets to feeling the freedom her grandson fled to find. Miami Marlins pitcher José Fernández has sent her so many American treasures while trying to bridge the heartbreaking gap now between them. Plasma TVs. Cellphones. A new mattress. He even managed to have air conditioning installed in grandma’s house from afar. But you know what Olga Fernández values most? That radio.

If only for nine innings at a time, it allows her to cross that ocean and feel like she is right next to the All-Star she raised. The island of Fernández’s youth rots a little more by the day, and it is stuck in the Dark Ages in many ways, including the televising of baseball. So, because reception isn’t great downstairs, up into that sky this 68-year-old lady in Santa Clara climbs with that radio on the nights her All-Star grandson pitches, up there closer to the stars, an old Cuban woman praying that there is no rain while listening to Marlins games alone on her roof.

“I get so emotional,” she said in Spanish from her home. “I cry and everything. He takes me with him. It is like I can see the United States through his eyes.”

José calls his grandmother “the love of my life ...She’s my everything,” he said. “There’s nothing more important than her.” So he enjoys getting the scouting reports from her in their near-daily phone calls.

“She tells me, ‘The Phillies are good, but you are better,’ ” José said. “She says, ‘Here’s the game plan: We’re going to go at them hard and away, and low. Stay down in the zone. Breaking balls in the dirt, but not too many because those are bad for the arm.’ I told her the other day that they have me throwing 95 to 100 pitches a game, and she screamed, ‘What?!’ I don’t think she knows I’m 6-3, 230 pounds now. She still sees me as 15 years old.”

That’s not true, actually. She last saw José at that age, before he defected, and didn’t even see a new photo of him again until January, when she stared in disbelief at a neighbor’s computer.

“My little boy, my love, he is a man now,” she said. “He’ll always be little to me, but I couldn’t even get my arms around him to hug him now, he’s so big. He looks so ...”

And the next word she uses tells you a little bit about that gap between our countries.

“Nourished.”

A fearful place

What was worse, José?

What scared you more?

The two months you spent in a dirty Cuban prison after being caught again trying to defect?

Or the first two months with freedom in America?

“Being here,” Fernández said.

How can that be?

“At least in jail I could defend myself,” he said. “But here I felt so helpless. Overwhelmed. I’ve never felt anything worse than my first few months here. Jail felt better than that, and I was in with a guy who killed seven people.”

The difficulty of this transition is hard to explain to people who don’t understand, though besieged Cuban phenom Yasiel Puig of the Dodgers might try if he had any grasp of English while trying to ward off the build-them-up-tear-them-down-rinse-repeat cycle. Cubans often get here and can’t find commonality anywhere but the diamond, where so many of them happen to be fluent. Fernández didn’t know the language, the customs, the technology, the people when he arrived here at 15, and he missed his grandmother terribly.

Everything confused him, right down to the smallest things. Like the bathroom faucet at the airport, for example. How were all those people getting water from it? What did they know that he didn’t? He stared at the faucet, banging on it, backing away from it, watching others use it successfully. He finally left frustrated, without washing his hands. What did he know about sensors? Censors, he could tell you about. But sensors?

“In Cuba, nobody washes their hands,” he said. “There’s not even soap.”

He got reprimanded for throwing a gum wrapper in the street; he was used to just throwing litter wherever he wanted back home. He didn’t know how to turn on a computer. He wrote down phone numbers in a book, not knowing he could program them into his new phone. And high school kids laughed at him for all this, laughed so much that he didn’t know when they were laughing at him and when they weren’t, all of the laughter sounding the same. So he threw a kid against a fence for calling him Cubanito, not needing to hear anything else.

Fernández’s father, Ramón Jiménez — a jokester — told him at the restaurant that he could go up at the buffet and take as much as he wanted. Get out of here, José said, I’m not a sucker. I’m not falling for your tricks, Dad, and getting in trouble. He didn’t believe that there was any such thing as all you can eat, not when he came from nothing to eat. No, no, he told the waitress. I did not ask for that, and I will not pay for that. He didn’t know anything about free refills.

He could only afford to call his grandmother for three or four minutes at a time. He would skip class, where he didn’t understand a word, to go and cry in the woods. He spent nine hours one day sitting in his car by the beach, distraught after learning that his grandmother had again been denied a visa (she has been denied four times).

‘A LOT OF CRYING’

“I did a lot of crying that I didn’t show people,” he said. “I asked myself a lot, ‘What am I doing here?’ I didn’t feel like I belonged.”

Said his grandmother of those phone calls: “Don’t remind me of that please. That made me crazy. I didn’t know what was happening with him, and I didn’t know how to help him. We’d talk for just a few minutes, and he was not well. I don’t want to talk about that time please.”

Possible connectors with other students that could have crossed the language barrier: Fernández had no idea what video games even were, never mind how to play them.

“You know how I played in the streets in Cuba? Throwing rocks,” he said. “I spent my days picking tomatoes and onions and selling them door to door. I would make a lot of money. Four dollars. That’s a lot of money over there. I was really, really poor. But compared to others? Not so poor. I’d walk the 30 minutes to and from the stadium on the street in my cleats because I had only one other pair of shoes, and I didn’t want to ruin my going-out shoes.”

He sat in a high school class and took the FCAT. Or tried. And failed. He didn’t know any of the words, going through a dictionary one by one. Imagine taking a test that way.

“I didn’t even know where to write my name,” he said. “I put my name in the wrong place.”

He asked a fellow student in Spanish for an eraser. The teacher reprimanded him for talking during a test. He knew so few English words, and only the bad ones, so he called her a bitch and got kicked out.

“She later fell in love with José,” assistant principal Frank Diaz says now. “Everyone does, you know?”

Baseball was the bridge. Fernández told the coaches he was pretty good in Cuba. Yeah, right, they sniffed; all the new kids say that. They put him in the least-impressive group to try out. He was insulted by that. But then he picked up a baseball ... and so much of the confusion evaporated on the spot.

His coach’s reaction?

“Wow,” Landy Faedo says now.

Everything changed then. “Before that, no one wanted to talk to me,” Fernández said. “Then they saw me playing and everyone wanted to talk to me ... and tried to speak Spanish. ...Girls would come up to me. I don’t like popular. I like low-key, humble. But popular is a lot better than lost.”

Next thing you know, at lunch, 20 and 30 kids were gathered around Fernández’s table, having learned how to play dominoes. Fernández helped Tampa Alonso High School win two state championships.

“He was throwing 94 in the championship game as a sophomore,” Faedo said. “That was up from 84-86.”

The explanation for the increased velocity?

“He had more food here than there,” the coach said. “And he put on weight because he wasn’t going everywhere by foot.”

Fernández’s is a uniquely Miami story, from rags to pitches, with an arm strong enough to pull back in even a scarred and betrayed fan base that keeps getting reasons to pull away. Humble and charismatic, with a child’s enthusiasm for joy, he is the only Marlins representative at the All-Star Game tonight, talking through a smile in the kind of accent that surrounds his home ballpark in Little Havana, and with a similar immigrant story.

“He sends me a lot of gifts, but I don’t live like a queen here,” abuela said from Cuba. “I’d live like a queen if I lived there with him. Every day, I pray to be there. It is harder than difficult.”

He is a first-round pick, and the owner of a $2 million bonus, and somehow already an All-Star even though he is not yet 21.

Only one thing missing from completing this American dream.

Only one.

You can bet she will be listening Tuesday night in the darkness, up on her roof, searching for a connection 90 and a million miles away.

[Facedown]

Jeter back to the DL.

[Machado]

Jeter back to the DL.

Read the Grade 1 strain would put any player on the DL.

In other news, ARod hit a HR for the 2nd consecutive rehab game. That is good news. He is scheduled to make his 2013 debut Monday in Texas vs
Yu Darvish

[wickedsensation]

According to foxsports.com, Matt Garza will soon be a Texas Ranger.

If this does happen, I sure as hell hope the Cubs get Mike Olt...

[Sheep_Mafia]

Jeter back to the DL.

Read the Grade 1 strain would put any player on the DL.

In other news, ARod hit a HR for the 2nd consecutive rehab game. That is good news. He is scheduled to make his 2013 debut Monday in Texas vs
Yu Darvish

Barring his upcoming suspension/ban or whatever it may be, its going to be interesting to see what he has left. Presumably without peds (though who knows with this fuck), the surgeries, age and his mental state with all going on, I just can't imagine he will contribute much if anything.

Looking a bit better the last couple of games but prior he was in his postseason form with only getting 2 balls out of the infield in his first 20 or so at bats.

Tough deal for Jeter. Aside from the Yankees needing him, its rough to see him not get the opportunity to play with where the hourglass is on his career.

Summing the two up--most Yankee fans can't wait for Jeter to get back and most Yankee fans can't wait for ARod to be suspended...

[Machado]

Jeter back to the DL.

Read the Grade 1 strain would put any player on the DL.

In other news, ARod hit a HR for the 2nd consecutive rehab game. That is good news. He is scheduled to make his 2013 debut Monday in Texas vs
Yu Darvish

Barring his upcoming suspension/ban or whatever it may be, its going to be interesting to see what he has left. Presumably without peds (though who knows with this fuck), the surgeries, age and his mental state with all going on, I just can't imagine he will contribute much if anything.

Looking a bit better the last couple of games but prior he was in his postseason form with only getting 2 balls out of the infield in his first 20 or so at bats.

Tough deal for Jeter. Aside from the Yankees needing him, its rough to see him not get the opportunity to play with where the hourglass is on his career.

Summing the two up--most Yankee fans can't wait for Jeter to get back and most Yankee fans can't wait for ARod to be suspended...

IMO, this is a spring training for ARod. Who can expect any results in the first 20 at bats. Typical for a regular to not be very concerned with the first 20 at bats during ST. A lot of the times the hitter might be tracking pitches or working on several things.
This weekend is when ARod should be looking for results and getting his
timing improved.