Five Cuts from the first weekend of interleague play:
This weekend brings the start of interleague play, marking the 16th season of commissioner Bud Selig's experiment with having teams from the two leagues play each other during the regular season, something which had never happened prior to 1997. This season will also be the final one in which interleague play will follow its long-established format with most teams playing one interleague series in May, followed by five more in mid June. Next season, the Astros will move to the American League West, leaving both leagues with 15 teams, an odd number that will necessitate interleague play throughout the season. With that in mind, here are five thoughts on the past and future of interleague play.
While the NFL sells quarterbacks and NBA sells scorers, the appeal of baseball rests more on teams and regional allegiance. The individual player with national appeal -- the one who sells tickets on the road and who creates a bump in TV ratings outside his market -- has been a rarity in recent years. But the first two months of this season have created personalities that provide baseball with chances for just such appointment-viewing type players.
He's brash, bold and has the skills to back it up. 19-year-old phenom Bryce Harper is less than a month into his baseball career with the Washington Nationals, and he's already making his presence felt in the nation's capital. With high-profile magazine covers and international baseball experience already on his resume, the Nationals are looking to Harper to be one of their building blocks as they try to put Washington baseball on the map.
Sometimes it is easier for the highly skilled, purpose driven athlete to deal with injuries that happen in the blink of an eye. You crash into the wall; you take a bad step; you throw an awkward pitch. You break a bone; you snap a tendon; you tear a ligament. As painful and psychologically challenging as those injuries can be, at least what comes next is often clear cut. You get it fixed. You don't play for a month, or six months, or a year. Then, if all goes well, you do.
SAN FRANCISCO -- "Used to" isn't an encouraging way to describe an athlete who's 27, never had a major injury and was considered state-of-the art just 18 months ago.
On the same night Josh Hamilton smashed two home runs against the Angels he also dove headlong into first base just as many times. The game last Friday represented a good snapshot of why Hamilton is the most compelling player in baseball today: he takes your breath away, whether admiring his talent or fearing he can't hold up.
BALTIMORE -- The year 2012 has welcomed strange days that have nothing to do with any antiquated Mayan forecast and everything to with baseball at the extremes. The season has already seen a perfect game, a no-hitter and a cycle, three rare results that can't compete with what's happening with the Baltimore Orioles.
WASHINGTON -- Jonathan Papelbon may have left behind his native Nation but as he goes around his new city, he can't help but sense that its friendly people, laid-back feel and sidewalk cafes give it a European flavor.
John Smoltz and Dennis Eckersley discuss Angels pitcher Jered Weaver's remarkable no-hitter against the Minnesota Twins.
Baseball's new epidemic selects its victims carefully. It targets inhabitants of the same community, each of whom can be found residing on the pitcher's mound in the ninth inning of close games.
Gone are the franchise first baseman, the legendary manager, the master pitching coach and the shrewd draft architect. The top returning slugger has played just seven games. One co-ace is injured with an uncertain date of return; the other, fresh off a season-long absence, has just two quality starts in six tries.
This is the Code at its deepest and most ingrained levels. It is the confluence of ability and pride and hype and the concept that all men must earn their stripes. It is the old guard welcoming the new -- player and team alike -- with an unmistakable challenge: Welcome to the big time. Let's see if you can hack it.
Five Cuts on a weekend dominated by the two pitching-led franchises who make their homes on either side of the Capitol Beltway:
A Panama native nicknamed "Mo," who endeared himself to New Yorkers with a cut fastball that baffled baseball's finest sluggers, is faced with the prospect of an unceremonious end to his illustrious 18-year career.
Few scenarios in baseball are so unnerving as the lack of reliable late-inning relief, and few places are so inhospitable to that uncertainty as the back pages of the New York tabloids.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This column originally ran in September 2011 as Mariano Rivera closed in on the career saves record.
Another month, another no-hitter. In the fresh spike marks of Philip Humber, Jered Weaver of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim threw the second no-hitter of the season Wednesday night. It was the 10th no-hitter inside of two calendar years. Since Opening Day 2010, you are more likely to see a no-hitter (11 of them) than a cycle (seven) or a 130-pitch game (nine). And in these past three years no-hitters are occurring more than three times more often than they did in the previous decade.
Angels ace Jered Weaver threw the 274th no-hitter in major league history Wednesday night. It was the second no-hit game of this young season, and the 11th since the start of the 2010 season (12th if you include Armando Galarraga's 28-out perfect game). Here are five thoughts on the accomplishment.
Magic Johnson teared up about owning a team that broke the color barrier.
The Los Angeles Dodgers, one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball, ushered in a new era of ownership Wednesday while ending a dismal chapter of ownership under Frank McCourt, who baseball's commissioner described as "looting" the club of $190 million to fund an extravagant lifestyle.
Did you see the guy in the Batman underpants who leapt from the bleachers at Camden Yards on Opening Day and spent 63 seconds eluding justice on the outfield grass, his cape flouncing in the breeze, before a pile of policemen -- presumably in defiance of Commissioner Gordon -- finally tackled him in left-centerfield?
WASHINGTON -- Justin Upton was walking by the pool of a resort in the Bahamas, an offseason respite after leading the Diamondbacks to a division title, when he saw someone familiar.
On April 7, 1984, a 19-year-old phenom named Dwight Gooden walked to the mound at the Astrodome in Houston for his big league debut with the New York Mets while a 22-year-old named Darryl Strawberry took his place in rightfield for career game number 126 and Davey Johnson, a manager in his first full season with the team, watched from the dugout. Gooden would win the game, Strawberry would hit a home run and the balance of power in the National League reached a tipping point. Over the next seven seasons no team won more games, no team delighted and annoyed more fans and no team drew more attention than the New York Mets.
With the arrival of outfielders Bryce Harper and Mike Trout this week, five of Baseball America's six pre-season prospects are in the majors (only Atlanta's Julio Teheran, who debuted last year but is currently pitching at Triple-A, is still in the minors).
If you told me eight years ago I'd end up writing an article extolling the virtues of Los Angeles, I would have laughed.
At least one person is killed and many injured when a tent at a St. Louis sports bar collapses during severe weather.
One person was killed and 16 others hospitalized Saturday afternoon when a sports bar tent collapsed during a storm that swept through the St. Louis area, fire officials said.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Bryce Harper's first day in the major leagues came with all the hype one would expect for the player dubbed "Baseball's Chosen One" when he was only 16 years old.
On Sunday in Chicago, Cincinnati's Aroldis Chapman threw an unhittable pitch. It wasn't a 100 mph fastball behind the ear flap, or a slider a time zone off the plate. It was a strike. A 99 mile-an-hour pitch on the inside corner and at the knees of Cubs third baseman Ian Stewart. Stewart couldn't have hit it with God's bat.
The Red Sox organization lives on the cutting edge of statistical analysis. It has reams of information available for the field staff and is not shy about making hair-splitting suggestions about how to deploy it. It employs stats guru Bill James. And yet manager Bobby Valentine posted a lineup in the clubhouse Wednesday thinking righthanded Twins starter Liam Hendriks was lefthanded. He checked his cell phone and got it wrong.
Billy Beane knew what he had in Gio Gonzalez: a young, durable, lefthanded strikeout artist. If Beane, the Oakland A's general manager, was going to deal him last winter -- even in the midst of a fire sale in which virtually every player on the A's roster, save second baseman Jemile Weeks, was available -- it would be for a return of the sort that would decimate most trading partners' farm systems.
Just three weeks into the season, a journeyman castoff has pitched a perfect game and a two-time Cy Young winner has an 8.20 ERA. Those might be two of the biggest surprises from the first three weeks of the season but they are far from the only ones. Here are five good, five bad and one very curious unexpected development so far.
When his team plays at home, the Red Sox manager holds press conferences in front of a red brick wall that lends an unintentional air of comedy or tragedy to his every utterance, the brick-wall backdrop being synonymous with stand-up comedy and firing squads and official announcements from the Boston Red Sox, for whom April has alternated between farce and doom.
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
|