Why I Like Baseball

As we walked up to George M. Steinbrenner Field tonight, corwin remarked that it looked very Disney-ish. GMS Field is surrounded by lovely landscaping, fountains with man-made ponds inhabited by turtles and geese, palm trees with lights climbing their trunks, but with the bright lights bouncing off the clouds, the humid evening air blowing in our faces, and the happy anticipation… it certainly felt like Disney.

Ah, Florida, which has been an exotic fantasyland in the minds of Northerners since the days of Henry B. Plant, the railroad magnate who convinced the cream of New York society to ride his rail system south to his Tampa Bay Hotel starting in 1891. But as with Disney, the magic in the Yankees isn’t in the frills, it’s somewhere in the heart. (more…)

As I get older, perhaps I am starting to see the appeal of Florida. This winter in New England was long, hard, bitter, and snow-filled. When I pulled my suitcase down the steps of my Victorian-era house in Cambridge, the solid ice berms on either side of the sidewalk were still two feet high. My car was plowed into a snow bank weeks ago and the side mirror torn off by the plow, after which its battery went dead in the cold. It’s still there on the curb.

I’m not. I’m in FLORIDA. And it is HOT and SUNNY here. This is GLORIOUS.

Yesterday I went with my parents (who are big baseball nuts, too) to George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa to take in a tilt between the Yankees and Phillies. Both of these teams have chips on their shoulders, having both been expecting to meet at the Big Dance last October/November, and both jilted by the machinations of the upstart Giants and Rangers.

It was a split squad day for the Yankees, meaning that — alas — Jeter, A-Rod, Teixeira, and Cano were all on a road trip to face the Orioles. The starters who remained behind in Tampa were Gardner, Granderson, Swisher, Posada, and Russell Martin (the new full-time catcher, now that Posada is the full-time DH). Okay, so those latter five are not chopped liver, but it still felt a bit like we got the second string. Especially when the Phillies had brought pretty much their A lineup: (more…)

Cano not in lineup today. He did extra hitting work with Kevin Long on back field. Hitting power to right field–a Yankee Stadium swing?

Cloudy and muggy here in Tampa today. Dad getting a sandwich for us to share. We have a half hour still until baseball. Mom teaching aqua.

Starting pitchers today. Sabathia for #Yankees, Charlie Morton for Pirates. Still looking for Pittsburgh’s lineup.
(more…)

Today’s game was one long round of “who is that player?”

This is a typical spring activity, but one would think that with modern information technology things would get easier.

One would be wrong.

I started out this morning trying to print out the rosters from MLB.com which was all well and good, but what about the non-roster players? Those are the guys you need to know the most. So I went next to SpringTraining.com and printed out lists of the non-roster players, too. But I couldn’t help but notice the Phillies hadn’t assigned numbers to them by the time they went to press… so the list could be of limited usefulness. (more…)

I think I burned my ear.

Hello and welcome to another Spring Training! I’m in Tampa all week, and with any luck I’ll also be stopping by Lakeland. I’m not working on any high-powered books or articles at the moment (the YANKEES ANNUAL just came out so that is all done!) so this week I get to be just a fan, and sit in the stands and eat all the hot dogs I want.

Well, actually, I’m on a diet, but you get the idea.

Today’s fun in the sun took place at George M. Steinbrenner stadium, the place formerly known as Legends Field and still called that by many locals. (more…)

Mariano threw only two balls in his outing. Struck out two looking, and had one comebacker to the mound. Corwin points out that maybe one reason Mo’s arm never breaks down is he doesn’t throw any breaking pitches at all. Hm.

Feels really good to see Jorge greet Mariano on the mound.

Igawa got out of the fifth without giving up a run but he didn’t look good. How much of that is our expectation, I don’t know but he threw a lot of balls.

Second inning of work Igawa’s bacon was saved by an amazing but ugly grab to start a DP by Edwardo Nunez. Nunez now leading off the sixth and got a nice hand. And then beat out an infield hit.

Today’s game is moving a lot slower than the previous two. Both pitchers have struggled with control. Apparently today I am struggling with typing. Must be the after effects of last night’s pilgrimage to Bern’s Steakhouse.

Lots and lots of Phillies fans here today.

Joba is still missing some of the time but he is still getting the guys out. Mid the second.

Well, the USA staved off elimination in the WBC so we still have no Jeter. The thing I miss most is watching him play long toss before every game.

Looking forward to Joba today! Although he just walked the first batter on 4 pitches, then struck out the next on 3… (cue ominous music).

1:26 PM
Joba is clearly working out some kinks.

He looks a little skinnier than last year.

Yes! Got Ryan Howard looking with a man on second.

1:45 PM
Today’s game is moving a lot slower than the previous two. Both pitchers have struggled with control. Apparently today I am struggling with typing. Must be the after effects of last night’s pilgrimage to Bern’s Steakhouse.

Lots and lots of Phillies fans here today.

Joba is still missing some of the time but he is still getting the guys out. Mid the second.

1:54 PM
Just wrote “failed pitch out” in my scorecard. Nunez stole second on a pitch out but the catcher had butterfingers.

Yesterday’s trivia quiz was tricky. Who was the first Yankee batter announced by Bob Sheppard? I will answer next inning…

They put the shift on Howard and got the ground ball but didn’t get him out because he hit it too softly.

2:24
The guys sitting behind us played high school baseball with Kevin Cash. So we hope he gets in the game. Lately we’ve seen Cervelli and Montero though.

Bruney pitching now.

Oh, and the first Yankee batter announced by Bob Sheppard was Jackie Jensen.

2:40
Cody Ransom looks really good today on both offense and defense. Now if he was 23 instead of 33 he would be a hot prospect.

Nick Swisher uses Jimi Hendrix as at bat music and Joba has AC/DC.

2:46
Oh no. Kei Igawa.

3:12
Igawa got out of the fifth without giving up a run but he didn’t look good. How much of that is our expectation, I don’t know but he threw a lot of balls.

Second inning of work Igawa’s bacon was saved by an amazing but ugly grab to start a DP by Edwardo Nunez. Nunez now leading off the sixth and got a nice hand. And then beat out an infield hit.

3:30
The Yankees broke it open in the 6th, sending 11 men to the plate. One of them was Kevin Cash, making our friends happy. Cash hit a pop foul on the first pitch that ended up just fair and ended up in the seats. RBI ground rule double.

With such a big lead, Igawa gets another inning.

4:03
Cash was on deck last inning so we grilled his pals over whether he was always a catcher, that is, did he always have those ham hocks for legs? Or as corwin put it, “catcher’s butt”?

Apparently he was a third baseman until after he went pro. “but he always walked funny, like he’s wearing high heels.” His pal also pointed out Cash might be the only guy who has won all three World Series, Little League, College (FSU), and MLB (Red Sox).

Cash is on again on another lucky pop! Flubbed by left fielder for two bases.

It is 11-0 Yankees.

Huge hand for Jorge. He has been DHing so it is not like he hasn’t played but still.

Wow, Jorge beat out an infield hit! And because they were holding that speed demon on, Damon’s grounder became a hit instead of a double play. And then he tagged and took third on a foul pop! Apparently while having his shoulder fixed, Posada got new legs.

[Blogging Live via the Steinbrenner Field Wifi]

The weather is perfect again today. 81 degrees, breezy, and we were just treated to a special forces parachute drop.

With any luck, we’re about to be treated to Jorge behind the plate and Pettitte on the mound.

[I've now consolidated all the live blog posts into a single post.]

1:09 PM
Amusingly, Posada is leading off.

1:29 PM
Huge hand for Jorge. He has been DHing so it is not like he hasn’t played but still.

Wow, Jorge beat out an infield hit! And because they were holding that speed demon on, Damon’s grounder became a hit instead of a double play. And then he tagged and took third on a foul pop! Apparently while having his shoulder fixed, Posada got new legs.

1:42 PM
The first outbreak of the Let’s Go Yankees chant came in the second inning after a nice two strike clap. Pettitte then ended the inning with a K.

2:03
What is it with pitchers getting hit here? Yesterday one of the Astros got hit in the hand with a line drive. Today Glen Perkins of the Twins just got hit with Matsui’s broken bat and fell right off the mound. It was the third out so they took him right out. It looked like it hurt.

2:11
Swisher just lived up to his name and struck out on 3 pitches.

2:22
This game is flying along. Like yesterday, which had no walks, this one is walk-free. We are halfway through and only one hour has passed.

Phil Coke did his part with two perfect innings. As we said in the Maple Street Press Yankees Annual, Coke would be wasted as a situational lefty. The annual is on sale now, FYI.

2:40
Coke started to lose it in his third inning of work with two outs. He allowed three line drives on a row, then walked a guy. Dave Eiland made a visit, and he got a dribbler out of the next guy to end the inning. Nice job.

Posada out of the game.

Hideki Matsui just hit a comebacker that knocked pitcher Alberto Arias from the game. The Yankees couldn’t do anything with him as it was, as he struck out the side in the third.

Burnett has continued to impress. Four inings so far and not a single baserunner. The ‘stros are looking weak and foolish against him. This makes us feel good, to say the Least.

So, today is my first spring training game. Renaming Legends field to Steinbrenner Field, the Yankees also made some renovations.

There are new ribbon boards for video. And there is Wifi!

So I am sitting behind home plate and typing this on my iPhone.

Burnett looked really good in the first, punctuating his inning with a strikeout. His stuff DIVES. Change and slider?

Now Aaron Boone is at the plate for the Astros. He got a nice hand from the crowd when he came to the plate and a nicer one when he grounded to second.

More as it goes!

Winter is officially over, because I’m on the plane to Tampa as I type this. My words look calm, but the excitement is bubbling as I look around me and all of a sudden everything seems to be about baseball. We arrived at Logan Airport with enough time to grab a meal before boarding, and corwin and I ate at Jerry Remy’s bar/restaurant. (Yes, they have a hot dog on the menu which they call the Remdawg, though the food was actually quite good). While sitting at the bar, just ESPN, the Deuce, and NESN weren’t enough, so I showed him the MLB At Bat app I have on my iPhone and read him an amusing article about how Mike Mussina dropped by Yankees camp. Then we went to our gate and in the hallway to our gate was a photography exhibit, Red Sox Then & Now.

I didn’t have time to read the plaque, but some longtime fan of the Red Sox has been taking/collecting photos at Fenway Park for years and years. I would have lingered over them but we spent a little too long lingering in Remdawg’s, and as we walked up to our gate it turned out we were among the last stragglers to get onto our flight. (Of course, people were being so slow to put their things into overhead bins that as it was, we still stood on the jetway in the freezing cold, waiting to get into the plane anyway.)

Now we’re on the plane, and it is equipped with XM Satellite Radio, which means I am listening to the Yankees vs. Red Sox from Fort Myers! It’s currently 7-4 Sox, neither Chien Ming-Wang nor Tim Wakefield were good, and I slept through most of the third and fourth innings so now I’m not sure who is pitching.

We’re landing in Atlanta soon, and then carrying on to Tampa. If I can grab some Wifi there I’ll post this and post again later. We’ll be seeing four games in a row at George M. Steinbrenner Field (formerly Legends Field) and I’ll be reporting here at WHY I LIKE BASEBALL on all of them.

(Originally posted on February 20, 2000. Reposted to new site on December 19, 2008.)

I’ve said before how I “can’t wait” for the season to start. (Or even for Spring training to start!)

But now I know I have it bad. Well, not that I didn’t know before, but yesterday I went to new extremes for my baseball fix. I knew that Mariano Rivera, Yankees closer, had his arbitration hearing Thursday, and that the answer would be delayed until Saturday. Yesterday I diligently checked my usual spots, several times, The Sporting News online, majorleaguebaseball.com, etc… and still no posting of the story. Many of the stories that run on these sites come from the Associated Press. So I went straight to the AP site, and voila, not one but three articles about it…! Ahhhh, at last.

(In case you don’t know, Rivera lost, and as a result will only make $7.25 million dollars next year, be the highest paid closer in baseball, and has the highest salary ever awarded in arbitration, even though he lost. His agent wanted $9.25 million. Rivera’s was the last deal the Yankees needed to wrap up in core players–everything else from here on out is what non-roster and minor league guys will make the team during Spring Training. But that’s not important right now.)

Anyway, teams are working out on sunny fields across Florida and Arizona, and there’s snow on the ground in Boston. It’s fourteen days until I leave for Tampa!

Going to see games at Spring Training is something that, when I was a kid, I never thought I would get to do. We would see little news bits about it on tv, and for some reason I had it in my head that only a few really special people ever went to Spring Training. Now I realize it’s the special few who either live in Florida, or who can surf the Internet for tickets months in advance, take time off to fly down there, and, as the Nike commercial says, “Just Do It.” There are serious advantages to being an adult and not a kid anymore…

Here’s what I’m going to do over the next fourteen days:

1. Print Out Blank Scorecards (just in case)
2. Print Out Spring Training Previews on the Opposing Teams
3. Launder My Yankees Shirts (I own two, both Xmas gifts this year) & warm weather clothes
4. Visit Mapquest and get driving directions to all the ballfields
5. Fax Rick Cerone (Yankee Press Relations) re: freelance article I’m working on
6. Check for any last minute available Braves or Red Sox tickets
7. Load laptop with web connection software (so I can keep checking majorleaguebaseball.com while there, and add entries to this journal!)
8. Read Tampa area restaurant reviews (gotta eat sometime!)
9. Pay Cell Phone Bill
10. Find Cat-sitter
11. Confirm Reservations
12. Gloat to friends
13. Find sunglasses
14. Rub hands with glee

Oh, sure, before I go, I’m also going to put in about 140 hours at my desk, plus some 20-25 hours working at the tae kwon do school. And I’ll probably sleep about 100 hours, too. Nothing important, in the fanatics’ scheme of things.

The Yankees beat the Red Sox today. Yeah, sure, you can say it was only spring training and that the games don’t count and that if it were a real game, for example, Andy Pettitte probably would have pitched more than 3 1/3 innings. But it was the Red Sox, which always adds excitement, and it was St. Patrick’s Day, meaning that the crowd looked rather like it had sprouted moss overnight, in addition to looking somewhat rusted, thanks to all the red jerseys that appeared for the matchup. It felt even more like a real game than the day before.

The theme of today was pitching. Pettitte did not give up a hit until the third inning, while Boston’s starter, Bartolo Colon (yes, that Bartolo Colon) did not make it out of the first inning.

Colon looked very sharp against leadoff hitter Johnny Damon, but maybe Damon is suffering from the allergies that have hit over the past two days as the pollen count has spiked near 11 (on a scale that goes to 12). Colon simply could not locate his fastball for a strike, and after walking Wilson Betemit, the number 8 batter, was lifted having given up four runs.

Julian Tavares took over, got the final out, and then gave up three runs in the second on a two-run Abreu blast, which followed sweetly after Jeter had been hit by pitch, and a sharp Giambi double over Dustin Pedroia’s head and a Matsui single were all it took to make the score 7-0. After 9 Yankees had come to the plate in the first, eight batter in the second, meaning Pettitte had more than 20 minutes to sit, two innings in a row.

He was not as sharp in the third inning, having trouble finding the strike zone from time to time. And he wasn’t helped by Damon who lost a ball in the sun that went for a double. Andy gave up two runs in that rally, one on his own wildness as a pitch in the dirt scooted between Posada’s legs and allowed the runner on third to score, and in the fourth he gave a solo homer to Kevin Youkilis. Still, compared to both Colon and Tavares, he looked brilliant.

Heath Philips, one of the many lefty control pitchers to get an invite to camp, took over, and did not pitch well, giving up another run on four hits, while both outs he records were both line drives to second, snared by Cano.

Everyone else for the Yankees pitched great. Jonathan Albaladejo, Billy Traber, Brian Bruney, and Scott Strickland kept the Sox in check, limiting their offense to two hits over the final five innings and no more runs.

All in all, a very pleasant afternoon.

***

STICK SHTICK
Jeter has always had some interesting rituals associated with his game, like rubbing Don Zimmer’s head and having Joe Torre hold his bat in the dugout. (Which makes me wonder… who holds his bat now?) This year prior to every at bat he seems to have adopted a procedure by which he uses the tick of pine tar, and then throws it at Bobby Abreu, usually hitting him in the stomach.

SCHIZOID FANS
It being a Red Sox-Yankees matchup, there were plenty of “mixed marriages” in evidence, and the Yankees, perhaps in a diplomatic move, invited an acapella group from Yale University to sing the National Anthem. (Though the boys were all wearing Yankees’ caps, no doubt provided by the team). Sitting in front of us was a man and his full grown son, both wearing Red Sox hats. But when Jorge Posada came to the plate, the man called out “Hip Hip!” starting a rousing round of Hip-Hip-Jorge. His son turned around and tried to take the man’s hat away. “Now now!” he said, grabbing the hat back, “I’m from Rhode Island! I’m allowed to root for both teams if I want!”

DANGER ROBINSON
Every inning in baseball is almost universally preceded by the first baseman tossing grounders to the other three infielders while the pitcher throws eight warmup pitches. After the final pitch, the catcher throws down to second as if catching a base stealer, and then the inning can begin. Well, at the start of the second inning, Robinson Cano was chatting away with Jeter all through the warmup tosses, and when Jorge was ready to throw through, Cano wasn’t in place. He waved his arms until Cano got in position and then threw down. Before the third inning, once again Cano missed his cue to cover second and Jorge, apparently fed up with waiting, just threw the ball into center field.

P.S. My interview with David Cone is up at Gotham Baseball magazine, here.

Today’s game at Legends Field (soon to be re-christened George M. Steinbrenner Field, but they haven’t had the official ceremony yet, though the local government already voted in the change) was almost like a Real Game! With Real Excitement!

It’s difficult for fans who live and die by the Yankees to grasp just how laid back Spring Training games can seem. Winning the game is not the goal. Each player has things that he is working on, like mastering a specific pitch, or testing the health of his knees, and so on. Getting in shape to play in April is the goal of playing in March.

This means that in crucial situations in a spring game, you might see the very effective starting pitcher lifted because he’d reached his pitch count and the game handed over to some no-name journeyman who is fighting for a spot on the roster, and who is likely not to succeed in either pitching well in the exhibition or making the team.

A good analogy is to think of these games like dress rehearsals. You’ll see a lot of the understudies instead of the stars, and just when you are getting into the swell of emotion of a really good song, they keep breaking in and changing things around. If you’re disappointed by watching the rehearsal because it wasn’t like the Real Thing, well, guess what, you need to buy a ticket to The Show for that.

But, today, the Yankees pulled off a pretty bang up rendition of an exciting cast with a big production number at the end.

Things started well, with Chien-Ming Wang on the mound with a nice 1-2-3 inning, which included strikeouts of Grady Sizemore and Travis Hafner. His second inning did not go as smoothly, as he gave up three runs, but still ended the inning with a strikeout to David Dellucci. He then sat down six of the next seven, the only hit being a pop fly into no man’s land that dropped for a hit. In the fifth he showed a little fatigue, perhaps, as Grady Sizemore, oopsie, got a hold of one and hit a long homer, and then after striking out Dellucci again, walked Hafner and was declared done for the day.

Scott Patterson (no, we hadn’t heard of him either) followed, getting them out of the jam with a 6-4-3 double play, and then pitching a 1-2-3 sixth. Darrell Rasner pitched the final three innings and, oopsie, gave up another homer to Sizemore, and they nicked him for one more in the ninth, giving the Indians a tally of 6 runs.

The Yankees were perpetually playing catch-up in the game. After Wang had given up the three in the second, Giambi led off the bottom of the inning with a walk, followed promptly by a Shelley Duncan dead-center blast that was absolutely crushed. Much earlier this spring, Joe Girardi had remarked that he didn’t understand why any pitcher would ever throw him a fastball ever. Apparently C. C. Sabathia had not gotten that memo, though and the shot made it 3-2 Indians.

In the fourth the Yankees tied the score, as Cano led off with a hit, stole second, and then came in on a Jose Molina double. Molina is one of the few catchers I’ve seen who does not look as though he is running perpetually uphill into the wind. He even tagged up and took third on a fly ball to right. Unfortunately, he was stranded there, and the Yankees were unable to take the lead. After Sizemore’s two homers it was 5-3 Cleveland, and the Yankees scratched back one more in the bottom of the eighth on a Greg Porter triple (yes, he plays for our side… we’re in the understudy territory now) andd a Bernie Castro RBI single. Castro nearly scored the tying run on the next hit, but ended up gunned down at the plate.

After the Indians got that insurance run off Rasner in the ninth, things were not looking good. 6-4 in Cleveland’s favor with Chad Moeller, Brett Gardner, and Justin Christian coming up for the Yankees.

But Moeller is no slouch, a former big league backstop who is currently jobless and looking to hook on with a team after the Nationals released him about a week ago. And Gardner is the guy my mother just loves. “This guy can run like crazy!” is her scouting report on him. Every time he’s come to bat this spring, my mom has said to me, “I hope he hits the ball so we can see him run.” The crowd, which had been sun-lulled all afternoon, came to life with a “Let’s Go Yankees” cheer.

Moeller doubled, and Gardner did not get to show off his speed–at least not right away–because he walked on four pitches. (That did not keep my mom from cheering “Way to go Speedy Dynamo!”) Justin Christian then tried to hit a ball in the big hole between short and third, but ended up lining to the left fielder. Damn.

So up came Kyle Anson in the DH slot. This is a guy who was a third base prospect but the Yankees converted him to catching because of the strength of his arm. I have no idea if he’s any relation to Cap Anson, the great 19th century baseball player. Anson doubled and Moeller scored. Now it was 6-5 Indians with one out and two men on… Gardner the Speedy Dynamo at third, and Anson at second.

Up came Nick Green, who at least most casual Yankees fans have heard of, even if they couldn’t pick him out of a police lineup. The sparse crowd was on its feet and he did not make them wait. He hit the first pitch for a single, bringing in the tying and winning runs with one sweet, walk-off stroke, and the strains of Frank Sinatra’s rendition of “New York, New York” filled the house.

Not bad for a dress rehearsal.

DUNCAN DONUTS
After all the sturm und drang of the previous two matchups between the Yankees and Rays (collision at the plate, catcher broken wrist, Duncan slid spikes high, bench-clearing brawl, suspensions levied, okay now you are caught up…), there was absolutely nothing to report about conflict or tension between the two teams at all.

Shelley Duncan, the player who landed at the center of the controversy after his slide into Rays 2B Akinori Iwamura, had the following to say after the game. “It was a normal baseball game. We could just play baseball.”

When asked if conversations at first base were any different than usual, he said no, there was just the usual “standard first base talk,” which led the writers to ask… so… what is standard first base talk?

“Oh, you know, I always say hi,” Duncan explained. “You know, if they walked, congratulations on your walk. That kind of stuff.”

And if the batter had been hit by pitch? “Where’d he get you? Was it a cutter? Does it hurt? Don’t rub it! Doooon’t rub it!”

BROADBAND JOEY G
Joe Girardi is different from Joe Torre. He rocks in his chair as he holds his daily postgame with the writers, and his office door is often closed… because he’s rarely in there. He is more likely to be sitting at a table in the coaches’ locker room, talking with them, than to be at his own desk. Where Joe Torre drank green tea, the Styrofoam cup on Girardi’s desk smells distinctly of sweet hazelnut. (I presume it’s coffee.) And this morning, as the writers were all leaving the clubhouse prior to batting practice, Joe called everyone into his office to show them something on his laptop. (If Joe Torre had a laptop, I don’t remember it.)

“Take a look at the weather forecast for Tuesday!” he enthused.

On the screen were the predictions for Blacksburg, VA, where the Yankees will play a game at Virginia Tech. “On like March 1st I said it would be 65 and sunny when we got there,” Girardi said, then pointed out one of the longtime writers. “You said it was going to be like thirty-nine.”

Another writer confirmed that both statements were true. The weather forecast is calling for 66 degrees and partly cloudy. “And that means partly sunny, right?”

Apparently I don’t even have to make one of those glass half-full analogies for Girardi’s outlook on success, because his sunny outlook is even better.

TOP OF THE HILL
Mike Mussina is no longer alone. He’s the eminence grise of a whole club of pitchers who do crossword puzzles, now. This morning Moose, Billy Traber, and Daniel Giese (both non-roster invitees) all worked on a puzzle together. Traber held the pen. Giese also did a sudoku.

Traber was described by Joe Girardi today as “a very intriguing guy for us.” The non-roster invitee was added to the 40 man roster today. He is one of a passel of control pitchers invited to camp to try to make the bullpen (including Giese and Heath Phillips). Girardi described his former experience as a starter as valuable because “he developed all his pitches and he can get lefties and righties out.”

When asked about his improved status, Traber was happy but kept his emotions in check. “Me being healthy and being able to pitch is exciting, too,” he said, when asked how he felt about the move. “I’m pleased that I’m getting an opportunity to pitch and get innings in. I don’t want to get too caught up in the contract [technicalities]. I just play.”

OLD HOME WEEK
Many of the Yankees’ staff members are still in touch with their cohort who went to the Dodgers with Joe Torre, including former bullpen catcher and BP pitcher Mike Borzello. Borzo is apparently on the current trip to China that the Dodgers are taking part in, the travel team being managed by Tommy Lasorda–and is coaching first base. In the first game they played, there was a close pickoff play at first, and Borzo got to witness firsthand a Lasorda Dodger-blue-in-the-face argument.

FROM THE CLUBHOUSE TODAY

Overheard: “Okay, your job is to go into the gift shop, find this guy’s parents, bring them to the front desk and make sure they get passes and all taken care of for today’s game. Oh, and make sure they get 50% off in the gift shop.”

***

It’s hard not to notice that Jason Giambi’s beard stubble is quite gray. Especially since he still dresses like he’s 19.

***

Pitcher Darrell Rasner smelled something amiss. Very amiss. “Do you smell dog poo?” he asked a gaggle of writers standing nearby. Writers all checked their shoes… nothing. Rasner checked his locker… nothing. Someone was probably pranking someone but by the end of the day the joke had not come out. Later, Chien-Ming Wang and Kei Igawa, who locker right near Rasner, also expressed displeasure with the odor. Sadly, Igawa really stunk up the joint once he got on the mound.

***

More to come tomorrow and Monday, when we’ll see the Red Sox… or at least who of the Sox make the trip to Tampa and aren’t already packed to go to Japan.

It is raining, freezing and cold here in the North, but I am heartened as I spend this Saturday afternoon listening to Spring Training broadcasts from Florida. As it turns out, it’s chilly and rainy in Florida, too, which is not really what I want to hear, but, well, there are many things about the reports from Florida that one must accept.

I want to hear, of course, that Mike Mussina is sharp, that he’s looking like the pitcher with the glare in his eye who nearly pitched a perfect game at Fenway Park in 2001. I want the news to be sunny, in other words. But although Mussina’s outing is encouraging (2 2/3 inning, one run on a solo homer, two hits, five strikeouts but two walks), it is riddled with missed calls and/or missed pitches.

This has been an ongoing theme for Mussina in recent years, ever since he lost the edge off his fastball and started to rely more on deception. He’s always had a variety of breaking pitches including a big yakker, the knuckle curve, and every other possible pitch you’ve heard of, but he didn’t need to rely on them until late in his career.

It was at a game at Yankee Stadium last year when I was talking with a colleague of mine who is now a top writer for ESPN. We were in a rain delay and sitting in the press box amusing ourselves by talking baseball. I asked him what he thought about Mussina and the umpires. “His pitches are so good, it’s not only the batters who are fooled,” he said.

So how does a man get past the fact that his pitches are so deceptive that he cannot get them called for strikes? The result of all the called balls is more men on base, longer innings, more pitches thrown per batter, shorter outings, an inflated ERA… the list goes on and on. And if he throws more obvious strikes? Well, you have what we’ve seen, which is Moose giving up more home runs.

The one he gave up today was a windblown flyball that the weather ended up carrying over the wall. Overall, Mussina showed the shtuff that will keep him in the rotation, eating up inning at the back end. He’s no longer an elite pitcher, and you won’t see him turning to a syringe to try to chase induction to the Hall of Fame.

In contrast, we have Kyle Farnsworth. Where Mussina is considered hyperintelligent and a respected eminence griese in the clubhouse who throws with finesse, Farnsworth has been viewed as a troublesome fireballer who is at best something of a blockhead and at worst is a total head case. The truth, of course, is not necessarily what is in the papers, but Farnsworth’s awful stats cannot be denied.

Joe Girardi has a history with Farnsworth, though, as he was a catcher with the Chicago Cubs back when Farnsworth was “good.” Wrigley Field is not exactly a pitchers park, either. Girardi’s first task as new Yankees manager (and upon seeing that the only bullpen help he would be getting this offseason was a new mop-up man in LaTroy Hawkins) was to build up Farnsworth’s confidence. The “I believe in you” message has supposedly been drilled into Farnsworth all spring.

And who is to say that is more or less important than the fact that pitching coach Dave Eiland also rebuilt Farnsworth’s mechanics? Eiland identified a hitch in his delivery that supposedly was the reason his ball was up. Indeed, although Farnsworth’s first pitch of the spring went over the wall for a home run, since then the majority of his pitches have been at the knees, right where they should be.

So, maybe some of the news is sunny after all.

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By the way, I head to Tampa on Tuesday for my annual trip and will be reporting daily from there. Tune in to Why I Like Baseball for all the news!