Baseball 2011 Season

Re: Baseball 2010 Season

I've been lurking around this thread for a while, and I figured I'd post since the All Star Game rosters are up.

I can't believe that Elvis Andrus isn't the starting shortstop for the AL. Of course, that might be because I'm a Rangers fan, but still he is amazing. It will be an interesting game though. I am very excited to see that Feliz is there to close hopefully.

Anyway... GO RANGERS!!!!!

Edit: There was a fan who fell from the Club Level Seats at the Ballpark in Arlington tonight during the game vs the Indians. He's stable, and in the ER he was responding to the doctors. Also, he could move his extremities. It was a thirty foot drop as he was trying to catch a foul ball. At least, he is stable. It's so scary when something like that happens.

 

Re: Baseball 2010 Season

Yeah it was the Tribe/Rangers game. According to reports from witnesses.

"A witness said the ball sailed above the fan in section 235. He reached out to catch it as it caromed back toward the field, went over the railing, tried to catch himself on the lower suite level and flipped backward onto the seats about 30 feet below."

Also there is an update: For the ASG, seem pitcher Clay Buchholz, BOS is out due to injury. Taking his place is Andy Pettitt, NYY

Jacquie if you could edit my all star post, and just pull Clay's name out of the AL pitchers and Put in Andy's name I would appreciate it.

 

Re: Baseball 2010 Season

I posted this in The Rest In Peace & Remembrance Thread NYY Official Site: George Steinbrenner dies from heart attack

^^^ This is a longer story, to read click the link provided.

This is from the NYY blog:

"It is with profound sadness that the family of George M. Steinbrenner III announces his passing. He passed away this morning in Tampa, Fla., at age 80.

"He was an incredible and charitable man. First and foremost he was devoted to his entire family - his beloved wife, Joan; his sisters, Susan Norpell and Judy Kamm, his children, Hank, Jennifer, Jessica and Hal; and all of his grandchildren.

"He was a visionary and a giant in the world of sports. He took a great but struggling franchise and turned it into a champion again."

Mr. Steinbrenner recently celebrated his 80th birthday on July 4.

Funeral arrangements will be private. There will be an additional public service with details to be announced at a later date.

 

Re: Baseball 2010 Season

Congrats to the National League, who won the All Star Game 3-1. This is the first time since 1996 that they won an AS Game. last time the NL won Clinton was president, Jeter was a rookie and Maurer was in little league. :lol: NL gets homefield advantage.

McCann comes up big, NL finally wins All-Star game

Before that CC Sabathia asked about the Cleveland Indians team of old said ""That wasn't our fault," "They traded us. That's on them." Well Indians beat writer took exception to that in his MLB blog Castro's turf:
"I know I said I wouldn't be blogging for a few days, but that was before I opened this morning's Cleveland Plain Dealer to find a 6-foot-7, 290-pound man sticking his size-15 foot in his mouth."
For More see link provided.

 

Re: Baseball 2010 Season

The Twins beat reigning Cy Young winner Zach Greinke and the KC Royals 19-0 last night!

ETA: Correction, it was 19-1. An ass whoopin' either way.

 

Re: Baseball 2010 Season

Indians vs Blue Jays:
7/30 @ 7:07 pm (Masterson vs Marcum)
7/31 @ 1:07 pm (Westbrook vs Cecil)
8/1 @ 1:07 pm (Tomlin vs Litsch)


BTW They had to use a position player to pitch the ninth against the Yankee's the victim, err player, 3B & 1B backup Andy Marte. So how did he fair? I would say he is a better pitcher lol then well yeah.. don't believe me? Check this out.

Gameday Marte vs Yankee's

Cano: Good Morning
Pitch 1: 84 mph (Ball)
Pitch 2: 81 (Ball)
Pitch 3: 82 (Ball)
Pitch 4: 83 (Called Strike)
Pitch 5: 86 (Foul)
Pitch 6: 86 (Ground out to Second)

Swisher: Good Evening
Pitch 1: 87 (Called Strike)
Pitch 2: 86 (Called Strike)
Pitch 3: 87 (Foul tip)

Thames: Goodnight
Pitch 1: 87 (Ball)
Pitch 2: 87 (Foul)
Pitch 3: 88 (Swinging Strike)
Pitch 4: 89 (Lined out to third)

Some Quotes: :lol:
Ironically, the lone pitcher to not yield a free pass was third baseman Andy Marte, who tossed a 1-2-3 ninth in the first pitching appearance of his Major League career -- not to mention his life.
"I just wanted to throw strikes," Marte said.

"I was happy," said Marte. "I made my debut pitching against the Yankees. I wish it would have been somebody else."

"Me and Marte, we've both got the same ERA," Swisher joked. "I now have a new most embarrassing moment. He had some run on his stuff. I was sitting on the breaking ball, 0-2, and he gassed me upstairs. ... As soon as I swung, I knew it."
Said Marte: "It was a fastball. They were all fastballs."

To cap his shining moment, Marte got Marcus Thames to line out to third on an 89-mph fastball to end the inning.
Marte threw 13 pitches, nine for strikes. And on a night when Tribe pitchers walked a season-high 12 batters, this was major progress.
"It's a good example of what you can accomplish when you throw strikes," Acta said.


Lastly as announced Jhonny Peralta is no longer a cleveland Indians, he was traded to the Tigers (as a 3B and possible SS). Good Lucky to him and wife and children, may peace follow you, I thought you were a great guy no matter how many people bashed you, you never gave it back.

 

Re: Baseball 2010 Season

Sorry for the double post. Just an update.

Seems the Indians have decided not to be just the youngest club, they will now need pampers at this rate.

Gone are veterans:
Russell Branyan went to Mariners,
Jhonny Peralta to the tigers,
Austin Kearns to the Yankees.
(7-31) Jake Westbrook to the Cardinals.
(7-31) Kerry Wood to the Yankees.

Veterans Left:
Carmona,
Sizemore,
Hafner,
Raffie Perez.

If those four left, only three are on the 25 man and one on the 40 man. Sizemore is out for the season. :lol:

 

Re: Baseball 2010 Season

I am officially glad of two things, one I am not a Reds fan and two I don't like Phillips. But before I get to that let me share a well laugher now not so much then lol.

Big League Stew: Worst date ever: Boyfriend bails as foul ball hits girlfriend
Many women would do anything for a boyfriend who likes to dance.
But as one woman unfortunately learned on Monday, a man who decides to do the Texas two-step and electric slide away from your side as a foul ball screams toward you into the stands is far from a dream date.

In one of the funnier foul ball mishaps I've seen, a woman named Sarah was struck with a foul ball at the Houston Astros game after her male companion named Bo ducked out of the way.

Video of play/bail

As most of the blogosphere is noting this morning, chivalry is officially dead.

After all, if a man can't abide by the simplest rule of a baseball date — don't let your company get hit by a foul ball — what hope can women hold for things like flagging down the beer vendor or having their scorecard kept when they head to the ladies room?

On the bright side, Sarah's only injury was a bruise and Bo's strict interpretation of the term "dodgeball" earned the couple a lighthearted moment in the spotlight. Sarah later told the Astros television reporter that she, unlike her boyfriend, saw it coming:
"As soon as we got here and I saw where we were sitting, I said 'Baby, I'm going to get hit," Sarah said. "He said, 'No, you won't. I'll catch it if you do.' We just had this conversation and sure enough, the ball comes at me. He just bailed."

So what was Bo's excuse for his comedic act of temporary cowardice? Well, he claimed to have lost Chris Johnson's drive in the lights at Minute Maid Park.

Of course he lost it in the lights. Here's hoping that the couple stopped at a sporting goods store for some eyeblack. You know, just after their postgame trip to the florist.

Now on to the most...

Yahoo: Baker talks to Phillips about Cards comment

Yahoo: La Russa angry and wet after Phillips calls Cardinals a bad name

Yahoo: Phillips in middle of Cards, Reds brawl

MLB: Tempers flare early between Cards, Reds

Video Of Reds/Cards Bench Clearing

The problem with Phillips is, not only does he run his mouth to often but he actually believes what he says. He is getting as bad as Milton Bradley (course I haven't heard much since Bradley asked for help with his emotional problems) was at one point. Just in a different way. Sure Phillips is a good player, but the guy has way to much blame everyone else and don't take any for yourself illness. :shifty:

 

Re: Baseball 2010 Season

The Rangers just won in the 10th inning against the Yankees. Final score Rangers: 4 Yankees: 3.

 

Re: Baseball 2010 Season

I hope you don't mind if I post this in full. Back in '09' a little boy was a minor league game (indians team) and was hit in the head by a foul ball. This story tells the story from start to current, in what I call "The True Story Of A Little Hero". I do warn it's going to be long. But It's well written and inspiration and very well worth the read.

Indians.com: Fateful foul brings family, player together Lives altered after liner struck boy at Minor League game

NILES, Ohio -- Over the public-address speaker, the announcer rattled off the facts printed on Luke Holko's baseball card, which had been handed out to the fans who filed into Eastwood Field for a Class A game between Mahoning Valley and Aberdeen.

His favorite foods? Cheese, chicken wings, tacos, hot dogs and salad with ranch dressing.
Favorite movies? "Shrek," "Cars" and "Open Season."
Favorite hobbies? Baseball, wrestling, playing cards, Mario Kart and bike riding.

All the things that define 5-year-old Luke's personality. All the things nearly robbed from him by one fateful foul ball.

It has been nearly a year since Luke was struck in the back of the head at a Mahoning Valley game. On the night of Sept. 2, 2009, emergency workers rushed Luke from Eastwood Field to nearby St. Elizabeth Health Center, and doctors feared the little boy might not make it through the night. Even if Luke survived, loss of motor skills, loss of cognitive function, and, generally speaking, loss of personality were all legitimate possibilities.

Yet here was Luke on this splendid summer Sunday, accompanied by his parents, Chad and Nicole, as he threw out a ceremonial first pitch before the Scrappers, a Cleveland Indians affiliate, took the field against the IronBirds in what was dubbed "Luke Holko Night."

Luke's right leg wobbled as he walked, and a batting helmet hid the scar on the back of his head. But other than that, he appeared to be a normal little boy on a ballfield.
"Normal changes from day to day," Chad said. "We're not back to what normal was before, but we're accepting the new normal." And the Holkos aren't the only ones.

A life changed
A Bible sat on the chair in front of Ben Carlson's locker in the home clubhouse at Class A Lake County last week. The bats and gloves that surrounded his locker are the tools of his trade, yet that book is what now inspires Carlson, a newly converted Christian.

The 22-year-old Carlson, in his first full professional season after being drafted by the Indians in the sixth round last year, has been mired in a season-long slump. But he considers the year to be productive, from a personal standpoint.
"I was really struggling in baseball and life, in general," Carlson said. "Baseball can really be a blessing and, other times, it can really beat you up. If you let the adversity and failure get to you, it can really push you down into some places you don't want to be. One day, I just started praying. Ever since that day, miracles have happened in my life."

Ben said that prior to this summer, he spent his entire adult life caught up in himself and his accomplishments. Like many who play baseball for a living, he was always the best player on the team growing up, always the one seemingly on the fast track to the big leagues. - But things kept happening in Carlson's life that reminded him there is more at play. And nothing shook him like that hanging curveball he yanked into the stands at Eastwood Field last September, when he was a member of the Scrappers.

It was a screaming liner that struck Luke, who was seated on his father's lap in the seats just beyond the Mahoning Valley dugout, then dropped directly to the ground. Luke's head had absorbed the full impact.
"I hit the ball," Carlson said, "and the whole stands went quiet. It was the quietest moment I've ever heard with thousands of people there."

Ben watched as Chad held Luke in his arms and screamed for help. He watched as an EMT worker rushed to the Holkos' section, then guided the family into a tunnel leading to the main concourse. The shocked crowd and the players and coaches hung their heads and prayed, and the quiet was quickly broken up by the sound of an ambulance. After a few minutes, the umpire called for play to resume.

Ben struck out. "I just didn't even care at all about baseball," he said. "I didn't know their family or anything at the time. We were getting updates throughout the game on Luke's progress or where he was. There was an EMT guy there that was contacting some of the people at the hospital. Our manager, Travis Fryman, came in after the game and said they didn't know if Luke was going to make it.
"My family all called, my friends all called. There were so many people supporting me and trying to cheer me up. But it was almost useless."

A few days after the accident, with Mahoning Valley's season wrapped up, Fryman drove Carlson to the Akron Children's Hospital, where Luke had been transferred. Ben entered the room to find Luke in an induced coma, surrounded by stuffed animals and Indians paraphernalia. Nicole and Chad greeted Ben with a hug, and the three cried together.
"They never blamed me for anything," Ben said. "That's amazing, how they are, because it would have been easy to point fingers or place blame on me, even though I had no control over the situation."

Ben took that as a blessing. And he carried it with him throughout the winter. His mother, Kim, followed Nicole's online journal, which detailed Luke's recovery. In remarkable detail, as if writing to a friend, Nicole documented Luke's relearning how to swallow, relearning how to talk, relearning how to walk. Each morning, Ben would wake up at his parents' house in Topeka, Kan., and his mother would have Nicole's latest post printed out.
"We had a big folder of all her daily blogs in there," Ben said.

A life repaired
The news in those blog entries was good. Or, at least, as good as it could be for the boy who had tissue destroyed in his brain and cerebellum.
Luke spent a month at Akron Children's Hospital, then was transferred to a children's rehab center at the Cleveland Clinic. He went back to Akron for one more week of treatment before being released in early November. Three days a week, his mother would drive him the 40 miles from home to the Akron facility for rehabilitation.

Doctors never gave the Holkos a definitive long-term prognosis on Luke's recovery, because they simply didn't know how his brain and body would respond to the trauma. Yet two weeks before Christmas, Luke said his first word (he asked for "more" when being fed Cheerios). One month after that, he stopped using a wheelchair and progressed to a walker. And by the end of May, he was walking on his own.

That's when Nicole knew she had her son back.
"The biggest thing for me was when he just, out of the blue, says 'I love you' and gives you a big hug," Nicole said. "For so many months, we didn't have that. Not because he didn't want to, but because he couldn't."

Luke still shows the lingering signs of his trauma. He is reports to Akron once a month for rehab, and he receives regular botox injections to address deficiencies in his right leg.
"He runs, he plays, he falls a lot," Chad said. "His speech is coming back. It's a little slow. The damage is done to his cerebellum, which controls motor skills, and speech is a motor skill. But he's doing great.
"Whatever minor deficit he has is minor. He's here

Two lives intertwined
Luke and Ben didn't formally meet until late June, when Lake County's season reached the All-Star break and Ben made the hour-long drive to the Holkos' home in North Bloomfield.
"At first, I walked in the house, and he was so scared he didn't say anything," Ben recalled. "Then they ordered pizza. We're eating pizza together, sitting next to each other and getting all messy with the pizza sauce, and all of a sudden we were best friends. By the end, he was crying to his mom because he didn't want me to leave."

Carlson and the Holkos have remained close. The family went to a Lake County game last month, so that Luke could see his new buddy in action. Afterward, Ben watched in amazement as Luke ran around in the parking lot, not a care in the world. Mere months earlier, Ben had worried that he had ended that little boy's life. Now, he saw a young child full of life and blissfully unaware of what he had experienced. -- Ben felt fulfilled.
"What happened with Luke, I couldn't see it at the time," Ben said. "I thought it was just a freak accident. The more I think about it, I realize it was God reaching out to me and his family. Bad things happen, and people don't know why they happen. I'm sure everybody questions why, but, quite honestly, I can say it was God's plan for us to meet."

The Holkos have viewed it as a sort of blessing in disguise, too.
"If you're going to get hit by a baseball," Nicole said, "you couldn't want it from anybody better than a guy like Ben. He has one day off this month, and he's going to spend it with Luke. They love each other."

But Luke's near-death has inspired a wide array of emotions from Nicole and Chad. They are forever thankful for the ballpark personnel and EMTs who rushed to their assistance that night and are forever fans of the sport, yet they are adamant that teams could and should do more to shield their fans from flying objects.
Chad, for one, wishes a stat could be tallied to demonstrate how many people get hit in a given year. He believes the number would be eye-opening enough to inspire changes.
"We feel there could be something more," he said. "It might not be as far as what we think. We've discussed nets [extending further down the line]. We don't know how feasible that is. But overall, we want to see more fans protected."

While Luke's story is certainly an inspiration, the Holkos have had to live with the reality of how one foul ball permanently altered their lives. Luke's recovery was and is miraculous, but the stress of hospital visits, insurance issues and media attention could wear on a weaker family.
"We've definitely been through the worst," Chad said. "I can't imagine it getting much worse than what we went through. But we stick together as a family, and you don't think twice about it."

The milestones, big and small, that Luke has reached on his path to that new definition of "normal" are what have guided the Holkos along the way. And the most public milestone occurred Sunday at Eastwood Field, when Luke returned to the scene of the accident, and, with one short toss across the plate, proved that he is very much alive and well.
"The biggest thing for him was just throwing out the first pitch," Nicole said. "He was just really excited for that."

About 300 miles away, Carlson and his Lake County teammates were playing a game in South Bend. But Ben would soon receive a text message with a photo of Luke in a Scrappers jersey, wearing Ben's old No. 11 and giving a thumbs up to the camera just after throwing that first pitch.
"To see him smile?" Ben said. "I can't even express it in words."

 

Re: Baseball 2010 Season

Yahoo! News: Famed home run hitter Bobby Thomson dead at 86

NEW YORK (AP)—Bobby Thomson, who hit the famed “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” that won the 1951 National League pennant for the New York Giants, has died. He was 86.

Thomson’s death was confirmed Tuesday by the funeral home in Savannah, Ga., that is handling the arrangements. He had been in failing health for several years and died at home nearby Monday night, funeral director Joe Wall said.

Thomson connected off Brooklyn ace Ralph Branca for a three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning at Polo Grounds in the decisive game of a best-of-three playoff.

The homer and broadcaster Russ Hodges’ ecstatic call of “The Giants win the pennant!” remain one of the signature moments in major league history.

A three-time All-Star as an infielder and outfielder, Thomson hit .270 with 264 career home runs and 1,026 RBIs from 1946-60 with several teams.

Wikipedia: Robert Brown Thomson

 

Re: Baseball 2010 Season

LMAO yeah and I was a babe in the woods when that ep aired. :lol:
The ep I believe you are referring to is #906 "A War for all seasons" which aired on December 29th, 1980. *chirp* *Blink* *chirp* *Blink*