August 2013: To err is human, to forgive is divine, and root beer is the taste of summer. Sinners all, we look with a jaundiced gaze on the glorious spectacle that is Major League Baseball as the usual gang of cutthroats, pirates, heretics, and rogues parade their talents - warts and otherwise - on a national stage. As usual the hopes and dreams of a virginal spring are dashed on the rocks of the season, as age and unexpected injuries take their toll and once sound-looking predictions are shown to be the rantings of false prophets. The days become shorter once the seasonal equinox has passed, next month the leaves will begin to change color and drop from the trees, announcing the advent of the World Series. But for now we are bogged down in the dog days of August pennant races, and it is the happiest of places to be. Every game becomes crucial in the standings, every at-bat and out has the possibility of swinging a game, and momentum, either positive or negative, in the standings. For the Pirates, seemingly blessed by simple dint of owning the best record in baseball, no sin or heresy has been too great to overcome, but the Astros are doomed and abandoned by the gods, obviously cursed for sins committed in past lives to eternally playing in one of the circles of Hell: the possibility of another season of 90 losses. Meanwhile, over in the National League West the resurrection of the Dodgers, is a sight glorious to behold, as it has been accompanied by the trumpets of angels (*not* the Angels) and hosannas in the local press; of course owners spending the previous winter committing hundreds of millions of dollars to the team is one of the best sacrifices that can be offered to the gods of baseball, maybe not as effective as burnt offerings, but....And the apostate Ryan Braun has begun his tour of purgatory, who knows if he will ever be able to redeem his once stellar career. In this issue: dem Bums and all things Dodgers; news from The Damned Yankees Desk; a posting from a purgatory of a different sort: Seattle baseball; a rundown of the pennant races, which includes the useless prognostications of some lunatic prophet; all that plus the chronic cast of wreckless idiots, fumbling half-wits, and heroes with feet of clay. Pay attention as there will be a test following.
Da Bums: Not seen since those bygone halcyon days of "Mannywood", excitement and hope has returned to Chavez Ravine. Even after last night's (July 26) 5-2 loss to the Cincinnati Reds, the Dodgers are 23-6 since June 20, the second-best mark in MLB over that time. In just over a month, dem Bums have improved from 30-42 and 9.5 games back in the NL West to 53-48 and a half-game lead ahead of the D'Backs for the division lead. Bolstering that are the wild and wicked rumors of a trade with the Phillies that would send 2009 Cy Young winner Cliff Lee and All-Star 2nd baseman Chase Utley to the Dodgers. However inside word has it that the Phillies consider Utley not for sale, and apparently Utley doesnt want to leave either. Or it may be that the Phillies asking price of the Dodgers, Andre Ethier, is a far higher price than LA wants to pay. However! Baseball being, if nothing else, a truly bizaare game regarding trades, where the villians of the opposing team become your heroes when they land on your team. I am thinking of Sal Maglie, Juan Marichal and the Beard. Stranger things have been written, but I never thought I would see the day to write these: Former Giants closer Brian Wilson, the man who made the last out in the World Series just signed a remainder-of-the-year contract with the Dodgers. As the LA Times puts it "there is only upside to this deal" as Wilson, coming off of surgery, will be a stabilizing veteran presence in the bullpen. Nicely done Dodgers.
Still, as the Dodgers begin to pull away from the NL West with a 3.5 game lead (as of July 31) one might look ahead to the post-season....and be worried. Both the Braves and the Pirates, atop of their respective divisions have better records, as do the Cardinals who are locked in a dogfight with the Pirates for 1st, in probably the most exciting pennant race of the summer. But as I have often written, baseball is a very streaky game, especially so when you are playing a schedule that lasts from April 1st to October 30. In other words the post-season is often times won by whatever team is hot at the moment, as sometimes pure dumb luck in the form of the walk-off homer, or the lucky catch, or just striking out the side can make the difference between advancing to the Big Show or going home for the winter. The standings are indicative of both how a team plays over time and a rough gauge of its talent, nothing more; the Mariners won a record 116 games in 2001, beating the AL record, but still lost to the Yankees in the playoffs. But I will go on record here about one thing: Clayton Kershaw is a effin stud and is putting up Bob Gibson-like numbers, he's a shoo-in for the Cy Young.
From the Damned Yankees Desk: As usual the entertainment is never lacking here at the Damned Yankees Desk: If its not A-Rod feuding with the Yankee ownership over how injured he is then its A-Rod about to be suspended for taking steroids and lying about it. "While 50 games is the standard for a first offense, the stiffer penalties for some players are tied to other alleged violations, including not being truthful to MLB investigators....The Yankees expected him to be accused of recruiting other athletes for the clinic, attempting to obstruct MLB's investigation, and not being truthful with MLB in the past when he discussed his relationship with Dr. Anthony Galea, who pleaded guilty two years ago to a federal charge of bringing unapproved drugs into the United States from Canada." Wow. Sounds like A-Rod is about two steps away from a major-league bitch slap. Couldn't happen to a bigger loser either. Over the course of his...career....Alex Rodriguez has proved himself to be hugely talented, but also immature, selfish, self-centered, petulant, and a liar. He's pretty much alienated teammates, every baseball journalist and most of the baseball public. And lets not even get started on how many times he's choked at the plate in crucial situations for the Yanks, in both the Playoffs and the Series (why do I even care??). Its so bad for him that even the revelation that he was trying to recruit fellow ballplayers to the Biogenesis clinic is met with a cynical shrug of the shoulders and the thought "well, that's A-Rod, nothing new". He may be even more reviled than Barry Bonds. There is a circle of Hell warmly waiting for this man.
Of course that's not even the best news from the Damned Yankees Desk. The better news is that the Yanks are in 4th place in the AL East, 8.5 games out, and sinking fast. The late season addition of 37 year-old Alfonso Soriano, while adding some much needed right-handed punch, is still a case of far too little, too late. CC Sabithia looks to have finally blown out his arm, and the rest of the pitching staff is not exactly striking fear into the hearts of AL batters. Expect the Yanks to limp to a 3rd place finish, at best.
Speaking of Being Publicly Reviled: Poor Ryan Braun, the Hebrew Hammer, gone from being a widely admired, 2011 NL MVP winner, to being suspended for 50 games for steroids, the hits just keep on coming. Former teammate Zack Greinke publicly shames Braun, and runner-up 2011 MVP candidate Matt Kemp thinks Braun should be stripped of the award. What I find is most interesting is this trend, exemplified by Kemp and Greinke, to speak ill of another player in this fashion. For quite some time, even thru the Barry Bonds debacle, active ballplayers generally observed a code of silence when it came to the subject of fellow teammates abusing steroids; for retired ballplayers such a code was non-existent, yes I am looking at you Jose Canseco. It strikes me that nowadays most ballplayers, or at least a vocal minority, are as sick of this steroid scandal as the public is. I know I am. Sick of it. I am taking this new trend as a good thing, that hopefully more ballplayers will speak out on how corrosive to the game taking steroids is.
A Posting From Purgatory, aka Seattle: Well sure as hell its not LA (thank you Baby Jesus), and its sure as hell not NY either, and for that we can be thankful, as Seattle is a lovely town, but has a fairly craptastic history in regards to baseball. The first iteration of pro ball in Seattle was the Seattle Pilots, who played all of one (ONE) season in Seattle, 1969, before being relocated to Milwaukee to become the Brewers. Incidentally, that one Pilots season was forever immortalized by Jim Bouton in his hysterically funny memoir "Ball Four", and if you havent read this great book on baseball...well then you are dead to me. Pro ball was resurrected in Seattle in the form of the Mariners, who first took the field in 1977 and then proceeded to field losing teams for 13 years, until the hiring of Sweet Lou Pinella started turning things around in 1993. Sweet Lou righted the ship and piloted the M's to winning seasons, even going so far as to tie the record for most wins by a team in 2001. However Sweet Lou walked after the 2002 season, citing managerial lack of commitment to doing what it takes (Big Monie$) to field a consistently winning team. He wasn't wrong either, as the ownership has consistently stated that they will not participate in the yearly spending orgies that goes along with free-agency signings, preferring to keep costs down, profits up, and a "competitive" team on the field, and by "competitive" they mean a team that plays around .500, correctly judging that fans will still come out to see a team finishes 2nd or 3rd year after year after year, hoping that every once in awhile lightning will strike and the team will get hot and play above their level all the way into the playoffs. Unfortunately what this has translated into is a team that has never finished higher than 2nd since 2002 and has twice had seasons of 101 losses. The sole highlights of these sad sad years has been the supreme pleasure of watching Ichiro hit (and hit and hit and hit) and seeing King Felix Hernandez turn into the dominating pitcher his talent projected him to, capitalizing in winning the 2010 Cy Young (with a losing record!) and pitching a perfect game in 2012. This year its been more of the same old tired bullshit: management talks up the happy talk during Spring Training, of how this team will be different, winners all of them, finally a pack of hitters to strike terror into opposing pitchers.....and then the season starts. Meanwhile over in Oakland Bob Melvin (aka The Manager Who Got Away) is beating the pine tar out of the rest of the AL West, and doing it with Billy Beane's usual mix of low draft picks and cheap castoffs (Bartolo Colon, again?!?). Which has really got to stick in the craw of the Angel's management as they see less and less production from the $200 million dollar man Albert Pujols, who is out for the rest of the year with a bum foot. And pathetic as it is the only reason the M's are not in last place in the AL West is because there is one team that is even more wretched: The Houston Astros. Still there are glimmer of hopes, as the M's are pulling some very interesting prospects out of their farm system, and they do pitch well pretty consistently; the core of their problems is that they don't, and haven't for years, hit consistently for shit. Its frustrating as all bloody hell to be sitting in the stands or watching on TV and see Mariner hitter after hitter after hitter, come up to the plate with runners on, or against a obviously bush-league pitcher...or both...and immediately get two strikes on them. Which makes me think that the Mariners have, for years, had a committee of horses asses for hitting coaches. Surely M's manager Eric Wedge must think the same.
The upshot is that for the immediate future the prospects for a winning team in Seattle are slim to horseshit. Best case scenario for this year is that they finish with a .490 record and 3rd place. Next year more of the same. Frankly I have very little reason to pay any attention to this team any more, which is sad. Consistently losing coupled with ownership indifference will do that to a fan base. So the only real hope we have here in Seattle is that things get soooo bad that fans stay away in droves, forcing the ownership to drop some real coin on the team. How cynical and sad is that?
Ok, check the standings one more time: Hrmmm....ahhh...yes. Dodgers up 3.5 games ahead of the D'Backs. Ok, we can sleep now, everything is alright in the world. Until next time keep it between the lines and on the road.
