Posted: July 29th, 2010 | Filed under: Cleveland | 98 Comments »
CLEVELAND — Angry? You have no idea. Let’s just put it this way. When I checked into my Cleveland hotel near the aptly named boulevard of Chagrin, the manager gave me a little gift bag (with water and such) and a letter. When you travel a lot, the managers always give you nondescript letters with multiple exclamation points, letters that look a little something like this:
Dear Valued Customer!
Thank you so much for your business! If there is anything we can do to help you enjoy your stay, please do not hesitate to Dial 0 and ask! We here at the hotel take great pride in our customer service! Please put us to the test! And thank you again for your business! We know there are many options for a busy traveler like you! Thank you!
Sincerely!
The Hotel Staff!
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Posted: July 28th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 158 Comments »
One fairly useless (but enjoyable) thing to play is the “If THIS guy in the Hall of Fame then THIS guy should be in the Hall of Fame” game. You know how it goes:
– If Bruce Sutter is in the Hall of Fame then Dan Quisenberry should be too.
– If Jim Rice is in the Hall of Fame then Dick Allen and Dwight Evans should be too.
– If Andre Dawson is in the Hall of Fame then Dale Murphy should be too.
– If Tom Yawkey is the Hall of Fame then every rich person who ever bought a premium baseball suite should be too.
– If George Kell is in the Hall of Fame then Ron Santo should be too (and if Ron Santo goes then maybe Ken Boyer should be too).
– If Ryne Sandberg is in the Hall of Fame then Lou Whitaker should be too.
– If Catfish Hunter is in the Hall of Fame then Luis Tiant should be too.
– If Ozzie Smith is in the Hall of Fame then Omar Vizquel should be too … more on this in a few minutes.
And so on and so on and so on.
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Posted: July 27th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 30 Comments »
It’s unbecoming to just re-run an old blog post … but really I cannot add much to this. You may have heard (but probably not) that Kansas City Royals starter Gil Meche will have shoulder surgery and is out for the season.
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Posted: July 27th, 2010 | Filed under: Media | 34 Comments »
Lots of pieces in the works including something on Hall of Fame weekend, the aftermath in Cleveland and one of the great American sports heroes of the last half century. In the meantime, though, I thought you might enjoy a look at this week’s special edition of Sports Illustrated … with my story on Stan The Man Musial.
Posted: July 25th, 2010 | Filed under: Essays | 118 Comments »
This is kind of insider sportswriting talk and so it almost certainly is of no interest to you. But, for personal reasons, I thought it would put it out there anyway.
In the last week or so, some people I respect and admire have taken some hard shots at Detroit sports columnist and best-selling author Mitch Albom. I thought those columns and posts were fair, as far as that goes, and entertaining without reservation. But I’m probably not the best person to judge. Albom has been awfully cold to me personally. I’ve heard horror story after horror story about the way he has treated people. And, like most of my journalism friends, I’ve had an issue with some of the things he has done as a sportswriter.
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Posted: July 23rd, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 108 Comments »
There was no 600 homer club. No. The “club,” everybody knew, was for 500 homers, and it was exclusive. As of 1990, there were only 14 players in the 500 Homer Club… and everyone could more or less name the guys in it.
It really was exclusive. Only two players — Mike Schmidt and Reggie Jackson — had joined the 500 club in the 1980s. And at the end of the 1990, there was no active player anywhere near 500 homers. Eddie Murray had 379 and was still young enough that it was thought that he MIGHT have a chance at 500. Andre Dawson had 346 homers, and the feeling was that maybe if his knees held up, maybe, he might pull it off (but probably not). The other big power stars of the decade — Dale Murphy, Dwight Evans, Jack Clark and so on — well, it was apparent that they were not going to get to 500. Heck, they might not even reach 400.
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Posted: July 21st, 2010 | Filed under: Essays | 104 Comments »
You probably have seen that there has been quite a lot of hype about the I Write Like site. The site, supposedly, “analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them with those of the famous writers.” More than a million snippets of text have been analyzed so far, which means that hundreds of thousands of people have found that they write an awful lot like H.P. Lovecraft.
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Posted: July 20th, 2010 | Filed under: Other Sports | 63 Comments »
Good days. Some years ago, I went to a North Carolina basketball game with a buddy who despised Dean Smith. Well, that’s not exactly right — he had nothing against the man. He despised the IDEA of Dean Smith. He honestly believed that Smith wasn’t really a great coach. He thought that Smith’s remarkable coaching record was the result of exceptional recruiting and his willingness to choke the life out of games. Also a bit of luck. He didn’t see North Carolina’s famous Four Corners offense as an innovation as much as a cowardly manipulation of the rules. He liked to make the point that both of North Carolina’s national championships under Dean Smith were haunted by spectacular last second gaffes by an opponent.
North Carolina was playing at Georgia Tech that day — this was another one of coach Bobby Cremins’ preposterously talented Georgia Tech teams. And my friend went to cheer for Georgia Tech and against Carolina. When I was in high school in North Carolina, they used to call these sorts of fans ABC fans — Anyone But Carolina. Maybe they still do.
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Posted: July 19th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 72 Comments »
You may or may not know this but the Kansas City Royals lead all of baseball in hitting. Anyway, that’s how the expression goes. When you lead the league in batting average, people will say you lead the league in hitting. It doesn’t make much sense, really, since the goal of hitting — the offensive goal in baseball — is certainly not to get more hits per at-bat than other teams. But “leading the league in hitting” is what people have called it since the dawn of time.
The Royals are hitting .281 as a team, which is three points better than the Texas Rangers, and it’s 22 points better than the major league average of .259. A couple of guys in the lineup — David DeJesus (.320) and Billy Butler (.317) — are among the Top 10 in hitting and others like Scott Podsednik (.302) and Mike Aviles (.300) are right around .300.
So … with all that … why is it that the Royals are a pretty lousy offensive baseball team?
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Posted: July 18th, 2010 | Filed under: Other Sports | 63 Comments »
My great good friend Michael Rosenberg wrote something last week that struck me wrong, and I could not quite figure out why. He was writing about Tiger Woods, and it began with how sick he is of reporters asking Tiger about his personal life. I agree entirely with that. But then Michael wrote this:
I have no idea how Woods will play this week. But I do believe two things:
1. The people who write him off are dead wrong.
2. Those people are doing him a favor.
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