Three Finger Brown born 133 years ago today

Mordecai_Brown_Baseball_Hand Happy Birthday Three Finger Brown! 

Mordecai Peter Centennial Brown would have been 133 years old today. 

As a kid, I learned a little about baseball history from an old-timers bubble gum baseball cards I bought at the dime store.  Of course, Three Finger Brown was one of them.  As a Cub fan, I had an affinity for him. 

Some interesting (and perhaps lesser-known) facts about Brown.

  • Made his major league debut at age 26 in 1903.
  • Brown accumulated 239 wins in his career but also led the league in saves four years in a row (1908-1911, unrecognized at the time of course).
  • Known primarily as a Cub, Brown did get picked up by the Reds later in his career and even played in the Federal League.  In 1916, he was purchased by the Cubs for his last year where he pitched in 12 games.
  • Broke and held for many years, the record for number of chances handled by a pitcher without an error in 1908 with 108.

Here is his obituary that was in the New York Times when he passed in 1948

ALCS Beat: Yankees looking pretty and Angels losing ugly

The New York Yankees will hope to continue their 2009 playoff dominance today against the LA Angels.  They have yet to lose this year in the postseason.  It was close on Saturday… real close. 

Yankee fans can thank Alex Rodriguez for keeping the Bombers in Game 2.  In the bottom of the eleventh inning, he hit his third homerun of the postseason to keep the Yankees tied with the Angels.  Before 2009, ARod had one homer in his last 13 postseason games.  

Yanks fans can probably also extend a little gratitude towards Macier Izturis.  Thanks to his errant throw in the bottom of the 13th inning, ex-Cub Jerry Hairston Jr scored to break the 3-3 tie and brought the Yanks their second win of the ALCS.

Box Score

That’s five errors in two games for the Angels for those counting and a lot out there are.  LAA has come into the postseason with one of the best defensive teams in the majors yet it’s one of their facets that has let them down.

They wasted a great outing by Joe Saunders who allowed just 2 earned runs in seven innings and pretty decent work from the pen by Kevin Jepsen and Darren Oliver. 

One more interesting key stat from the boxscore:

Runners left in scoring position, 2 out: Guerrero 7

Yikes!

 

So right now, the Yankees are up by two (and already up 2-0 in the 4th inning of the 3rd game as of this writing).  It’s nice to say that anything can happen in baseball but not every team can pull off what the Red Sox did in 2004.  Is the writing on the wall for LAA?  It is unless they can pull away with a comeback today. 

Some umps on the DL

Interesting take on the quality of the umpiring lately…

From Fox Sports News:

While federal laws prohibit Major League Baseball from discussing injuries of employees, FOXsports.com has learned that the sidelined umpires include crew chiefs John Hirschbeck (testicular cancer), Charlie Reliford (back), Jerry Crawford (back), Tim Welke (concussion), Ed Montague (concussion and neck), Gary Darling (ankle and foot) and Rick Reed (stroke).

Other umpires who are sidelined by injuries include Kerwin Danley (concussion), Alfonso Marquez (back), Brian Runge (details unknown), Bill Hohn (back) and Ed Hickok (concussion).

Any umpire who makes the bigs is surely a quality product.  That said, these particular men in blue, especially Hirschbeck, Crawford, Montague, and Darling are the cream of the crop.  Ok, maybe Yankee fans might disagree with the Hirschbeck opinion

Not trying to excuse any of the mistakes and the whole angle of the story maybe just that, an angle dreamed up by the media.  But it IS an interesting take on the story.

Dell will design your laptop MLB-style and charge you just like MLB does

dellcubs

With the playoffs here, Dell is pandering to the baseball fan now.  For a mere $85, they’ll design your new laptop with your favorite team’s logo.   

Pretty cool, huh?

That or you could buy a big team sticker for few bucks and slap it on there.  But hey, why be practical?

MLBAM Live Streaming becoming more mainstream

Those fans who watch Major League Baseball via video streaming are increasing every day and the numbers for the playoff games are even higher. 

By now, Major League Baseball Advanced Media has the stats available for the Division Series.  On average, 350,000 live streams were served per game.  Even more interesting, 36,000 of those streamed were sent to mobile devices such as the iPhone. 

These video streams were all subscription or pay-for feeds.  MLBAM notes that these per game averages are higher than the 2009 All-Star Game video stream… which was free. 

One other point… the Postseason.TV package is blackout-free (yay!) but to avoid competition with other major networks, the video stream doesn’t give you in their words, “a complete game experience”. 

ALCS Beat: “C.C.’s the real deal, man”

Sloppy.

That’s the adjective I keep seeing repeated in the headlines regarding the Los Angeles Angels play last night in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series against the New York Yankees.  The Angels, who bested their error record during the regular season with only 85 miscues, made some pretty nasty and costly ones in Friday night’s game.  Like a botched routine popup that ended up to be an rbi single. 

I’ll admit I was rooting for Big John Lackey.  But it’s hard to give that kind of edge to the Yankees and expect to win because you know the Yanks will step in and seize the advantage.  With the way C.C. Sabathia was pitching last night, that was kiss of death.  True, Sabathia has had issues with the Angels during the regular season (0-2, 9 ER in 13 1/3 innings though he did strike out 11).  But that was all ancient history and as they say it’s a brand new season when it comes to the playoffs.  Sabathia went 8 innings last night against the Halos allowing only 4 hits and just one run (an rbi single by Kendry Morales).  Sabathia walked one and struck out seven. 

Torii Hunter had begrudging praise for Sabathia (in reference to the mid-40s temperature):

"CC was the cold weather.  He was pitching his butt off. CC’s the real deal, man."

Box Score

 

Other ALCS Bits:

 

  • Speaking of mid-40 degree weather, yes, it was that cold.  And we’re only in the beginning of the League Championship Series.  The MLB Postseason schedule is set till November 5 (assuming all games are played).  It’s going to get a whole lot colder unless the Angels and Dodgers pull it off. 

    Jim Caple of ESPN has a tongue in cheek article about how HE feels about the postseason schedule.

     

  • Apparently, singer Ronan Tynan was a late scratch for singing God Bless America in last night’s game for making an anti-Semitic remark.

     

  • Anyone care what Nick Swisher has to say?  If so, check out MLB.com’s Q&A with him posted today.

Ron Gardenhire, the umpires and a red flag

I’ve never been a proponent of instant replay in baseball.  I’ve always felt that deep down, we should stick with the human element.  Like umpire Bill Klem once said, “It ain’t nothin’ till I call it”. 

But dang, some calls the umps are making recently are making it difficult to maintain my case.  There was the incident last Tuesday with Randy Marsh making a questionable call of Bobby Keppel’s pitch.  Did it hit Brandon Inge’s uni or not?  Marsh said no. 

270px-Ron-Gardenhire Now, Minnesota Twins skipper Ron Gardenhire is floating the idea of a “red flag” now in response to an incorrect call of a Joe Mauer ground rule double on Friday night (it’s not the first time he’s brought this idea up.  He suggested it after a bad call in July). 

Gardenhire’s summary of the red flag proposal:

"I’ve said all along that I want a red flag," Gardenhire said in the Star-Tribune after the Cuddyer play. "If you use it and you’re wrong, you don’t get to use it the rest of the game. If you use it and you’re right, you get your red flag back and that would save a lot of money (for ejections)."

The red flag?  Bad idea.  But worse, it’s a only a natural extension of the current implementation of instant replay and one of the reasons I was against it in the first place. We’re just headed down that road now and there’s not a lot to stop us.

I don’t blame Gardenhire.  He’s gotta be pretty pissed.  But there’s one tenet I’ve always held to.  Whether it’s baseball, business, politcs or whatever, you never make policy decisions based on one particular incident.  It might look good now in the heat of the postseason and with the emotionally charged atmosphere of an admitted bad call but it needs to hold up to the test of time.

To his credit, Gardenhire did leave himself an out:

“(the) great thing about baseball is the human element, and we always want to keep it that way. We made enough mistakes ourselves and we missed opportunities to win the game. It just goes that way."

Maybe this red flag idea will just go away. 

TSN names Pittsburgh as top sports city

pitttsn

The Sporting News named Pittsburgh as "The Best Sports City”.  TSN has a pretty good case:

The world champion Steelers were kicking off their title defense against the Titans. The world champion Penguins were down in D.C., Stanley Cup in tow, to meet the president. Native son Dave Wannstedt was at practice on the South Side, preparing his unbeaten Pitt football team for the weekend’s win at Buffalo.

…oh yeah, the Pirates, too

Looking at the local scene, Chicago (who was lumped in with Evanston) came in fourth.  My locale, Champaign-Urbana, ended up #84 solely on the basis of University of Illinois sports (we don’t have much else after that), 

Here is TSN’s full list of 399 cities.

Howard HR ball back in hands of owner

After being bribed with cotton candy, the kid finally gets her due. 

That’s how the story goes.  Jennifer Valdivia, a 12 year-old girl who caught Ryan Howard’s historic 200th homerun ball was ushered to the Phillies’ clubhouse to exchange it for another autographed one, given some cotton candy then sent on her way. 

With help of attorney Norm Kent, she’s got the ball back now

"The Philadelphia Phillies’ team representative, knowing not only the historic value of that baseball, but its financial value, sent a team representative to Marlin security to retrieve young Jennifer from the stands," Kent said. "And she was there, 12-year-old Jennifer, with her 15-year-old brother, neither of the age of majority, offered her some cotton candy and a baseball worth 100 bucks in exchange for one that was worth thousands."

Kent knows marketing too.  He put this You Tube video up surreptitiously to talk about the resolution of the case of the 12 year old girl.  But let’s face it, it’s good PR for his law firm too.

 

 

But good on the girl, though.  She’s got her ball back. 

Geremi Gonzalez’ body to be exhumed

A very odd story is coming out of Venezuela in which former MLB pitcher Geremi Gonzalez’ body will be exhumed as part of an investigation.  Prosecutors are trying to determine if he was struck by lightning as originally thought or if he was a victim of a fatal robbery.

Authorities determined that Gonzalez, 33, died instantly when he was hit by lightning at a beach in May 2008. Investigators ruled out homicide after an autopsy blamed "an electric shock produced by natural causes."

Doubts surfaced, however, after a friend notified the family that some of Gonzalez’s belongings were being offered for sale, including a gold chain he was wearing when he died, federal police commissioner Cesar Gomez told Diario Panorama.

Nice detective work by the family friend. 

Gonzalez debuted with the Cubs in 1997 with a 11-9 record.  He came in ninth in the Rookie of the Year voting that year.  For his career, he was 30-35 with a 4.93 ERA.