Category Archives: Baseball

Baseball, The Worldwide Leader

Where Insight Goes to Die: Berman and Sutcliffe on ESPN

Why does ESPN hate baseball? I have no idea, but the depths of ESPN’s hatred suggests a deeply personal reason. Maybe baseball toyed with ESPN’s emotions. Or rebuffed a romantic advance. Or beat ESPN out for a big promotion.

Considering how many MLB games ESPN airs, you’d think they wouldn’t hate it so. But they must, if their broadcast crews are any indication.

The legendarily awful Sunday night crew of Jon Miller and Joe Morgan almost goes without saying. Although Joe doesn’t anger me quite the way he once did. Perhaps I’ve mellowed in my old age, but when Mr. Morgan sticks to generic comments on how to bat or field, he isn’t horrible. Jon Miller now gets most of my ire. He’s one of those announcers who never sounds comfortable unless he has an excuse to yell.

Then there’s the hair-helmeted Steve Phillips. Few former GMs are less qualified to provide color commentary, and most of them are dead. It doesn’t even matter who’s paired with him. His smarminess and total incompetence drown out whoever shares the booth.

But did you know there’s an even worse ESPN baseball announcing crew? Neither did I, until Wednesday night. It’s Rick Sutcliffe and Chris Berman. They called a Dodgers-Phillies game that fateful eve, and put together one of the absolute worst play-by-play jobs I’ve ever heard. And I’m including John Sterling and Fran Healey in this equation. It was that bad.

Continue reading Where Insight Goes to Die: Berman and Sutcliffe on ESPN →

1999 Project

1999 Project: Games 26-28

Click here for an intro/manifesto on The 1999 Project.

May 3, 1999: Mets 5, Astros 3

This was another highly anticipated series. For one thing, the Astros had playoff aspirations, which was reasonable, given they won 102 games the year before. For another, the two teams had some unresolved issues from the previous season.

In 1998, the Mets won three out of four at the Astrodome in a thrilling late September series, the last victory aided by a dramatic homer by Mike Piazza off of Houston closer/future Met Billy Wagner with two out in the ninth inning. The wins catapulted the Mets into the wild card lead (briefly, as it turned out), and also planted the seeds for some serious hostility.

In the only game the Astros won, (another future Met) Derek Bell admired a home run just a bit too long, drawing the ire of reliever Turk Wendell. This led to a few beanballs and chin music the rest of the series and carried over into the teams’ spring training meetings in 1999. Despite all of this, Wendell insisted all was well between the two teams (he and Wagner were real close, or so he said). Craig Biggio was not so sure.

I don’t want to comment on it…There’s been some stuff that’s happened here. Baseball usually takes care of itself. We just play.

In the 1999 series opener, Roger Cedeno subbed for Rickey Henderson in left and had a Henderson-esque day, swiping two bags, scoring two runs, and turning a single into a double. The Mets struck for four runs in the first inning against Chris Holt–although right fielder Mike Kinkade drove in a run by being struck with the ball with the bases loaded–and never looked back.

The Astros pulled close on a two-run homer by (yet another future Met) Richard Hidalgo, but Cedeno’s double and subsqeuent scoring plated a much needed insurance run. In his first start since coming off the disabled list, Rick Reed threw six solid innings, despite having nothing but his fastball to work with. John Franco set down Houston 1-2-3 in the ninth for his tenth save in as many chances.

May 4, 1999: Astros 6, Mets 1

hampton.jpgAl Leiter threw six good innings, limiting the Astros to just one run. Unfortunately, he continued to pitch after that.

In the seventh, after getting two quick outs, the lefty gave up a triple to opposing pitcher/still yet another future Met/school system critic Mike Hampton, who was not yet known as a good-hitting pitcher (at the time, his lifetime batting average was .192). This was followed immediately by an RBI double to Biggio and a two-run homer to Bell.

Despite a 4-1 deficit, Leiter had a reasonable pitch count and came out to start the eighth. But he gave up hits to the first three batters he faced and was promptly lifted.

This was the second time in a month that Leiter was left in to absorb more damage after a big inning, but the pitcher didn’t blame Bobby Valentine. “If anything, I’m more pissed off at myself,” Leiter said after the game.

May 5, 1999: Astros 5, Mets 4

This game wasn’t Armando Benitez’s first failure as a Met, but it was probably the one that began the Benitez Rumblings. The ones that lingered from his days in Baltimore, where it was said he was incapable of getting The Big Outs. (You know, those rumblings that turned out to be totally true.)

The Mets took a 4-3 lead into the eighth. Bobby Jones threw five decent innings and the bullpen held the Astros at bay until the eighth. Benitez came on and promptly walked thoroughly anemic batter Chris Spiers. He retired Biggio and Bell with little incident, but then gave up a two-run homer to Jeff Bagwell, thus giving the Astros the 5-4 lead they would never relinquish.

The Mets put threatened briefly in their half of the eighth, after a walk and a hit batter with two out. But then Wagner was called on for a four-out save, and the closer promptly struck out all four men he faced. It was a disappointing loss, as the Daily News pointed out:

there’s a big difference between a 7-2 home stand and 6-3 when you lose the last one. Or more specifically when you lose a game you figured you had won.

Baseball

Zen and the Art of Hating Chipper Jones

chipper2.jpgI cannot possibly express to you the depths of my hatred for Chipper Jones. I’m not even going to try. The English language doesn’t have the right words. Not even the German language does.

But I can provide some reasons for why he should go eat several bags of dicks. Like him bitching about the umpires in last night’s game:

Let’s just say the baseball gods owe us one… The game came down to one play, and the umpire got it wrong.  Why he got it wrong, I don’t know… I never had a guy slide into my glove and be safe… That’s the whole game… We played a perfect game and got it taken away from us… It was a well-played game on both sides… That was top-notch baseball, and it was decided by a blown call.

Odd that Chipper would invoke the baseball gods, since I also mentioned them in a pair of tweets last night. I mentioned them because the Mets got a bad call to their detriment in the bottom of the 8th, when Jose Reyes tried to stretch his 1-out 2-RBI double into a triple. The throw beat Reyes, but a replay showed that Chipper didn’t apply a tag in time.

It was the kind of bang-bang play that only instant replay could definitively resolve. But since baseball thinks easily fixable human error is charming, the incorrect ruling stood.

Chipper didn’t say anything about that play, even though he was the man who fielded the ball. The play Chipper chose to whine about, though it was a stolen base attempt instead of an extra base hit, involved an essentially identical set of circumstances: a very close play on a runner who represented the tying run trying to reach third with less than two out.

I don’t think it was the umps’ intent to give the Mets a break after screwing them earlier. In the absence of available replay, I doubt the umps knew they blew either call. But in essence, that’s what they did. I even said at the time, “That’s totally a make-up call for the last inning.” (The Wife will bear witness that I actually said this out loud in full Baseball Nerd mode.)

This year and last, the Mets seem to get an enormous amount of blown calls in their games–most of which go against them. I know that sounds like Total Homer-ism, but my totally unscientific mental survey will bear me out.

It’s hard to prove, since neither MLB nor Retrosheet keep Blown Calls as a stat. But I recall at least four homers hit by Mets that were ruled ground-rule doubles or fouls last year, and at least two balls hit against the Mets that should have been ruled doubles/fouls that were called home runs. My point is, I think the baseball gods owe the Mets some good karma. (I’m not referring to the collapses of the two previous seasons, which are almost entirely bad karma of their own design.)

Not to mention that historically, when the Mets play the Braves, they never get any kind of break whatsoever. Granted, that’s because for many years the Braves were just flat-out better. But there were plenty of games that turned on worse blown calls than the ones Chipper was involved in.

Chipper said the game was “decided by a blown call,” but it was actually decided by two blown calls. One took a runner that should have been on third and called him out. The other took a runner that should have been called out and put him on third. Both men represented the tying run. One was erased, another took his place. The run scored, even after a delay in his arrival

You wanted a balancing of accounts from the baseball gods, Chipper? You got it. Yin and yang. Go in peace, my son.

And as you go in peace, please fall into an open manhole.