The Baseball Zealot | The Baseball Zealot

Magglio selling his hair for a good cause

Want Magglio Ordonez’ chopped hair clippings? Me neither. But somebody does. Ordonez cut his hair and it’s being sold on Ebay for a good cause.

If you are itchin’ (poor choice of words, I know) to run your fingers through Mags’ locks, be prepared to pony up because the current bid is $5100.

Magglio post-haircut

The proceeds will go to Imerman Angels which is a foundation which in their words “connects a person fighting cancer today ("cancer fighter") with someone who has beaten the same type of cancer ("cancer survivor"). The relationship provides a fighter the opportunity to ask personal questions and receive encouragement from someone who is uniquely familiar with the situation.”

The auction winner also gets 18 tickets in his skybox for the September 15th game plus an autographed bat. Act now! The listing will only be up for 10 days.

Soto tested positive for pot at WBC games

So Geovany Soto has been found tested positive for marijuana earlier this year at the World Baseball Classic.

Great. I drafted a stoner with my first pick in my APBA league last year.

Of course, the media is handling the way they always do. They trot out their trite template they use for articles in these situations. Such articles include the apology from the player (“I fully understand the ramifications of my actions. I have and will accept any and all consequences”.. blah blah), how disappointed the team and league is in the player but they will support him and meaningless accolades in this inappropriate time (Asst GM Randy Bush: "I think he would never make excuses. That’s the kind of guy he is…").

Of course in this situation we can’t neglect the over-analyzation by countless journalists and bloggers of Soto. Jjust maybe this all might have to do with his year long slump, right??.

ESPN’s Nick Friedell seems to think so.

In all seriousness, though, this news is embarrassing for everyone involved, most notably Soto. The Cubs’ catcher is hitting just .228 on the year and looks like a shell of the player that was the NL Rookie of the Year last season. He doesn’t look nearly as powerful, or as fit, as he did when he clubbed 23 homers and 86 RBIs in 2008. In short, he’s been a disappointment, and now with this news being public plenty of fans will wonder if all the adulation got to his head.

A little over two years ago we had a similar situation when then White Sox pitcher Freddie Garcia was found to have been found to have tested positive for pot at the WBC. We all know what happened to Garcia’s effectiveness after that.

Maybe Friedell has a point.

MLB games come to Boxee

Good news for baseball fans who use Boxee. MLB games will be coming to Boxee, the streaming video service.

From the Boxee blog:

We are excited to announce a partnership with Major League Baseball (MLB.com) to offer MLB.TV Premium to boxee users.

MLB.TV Premium on boxee means you can now watch thousands of baseball games, live and on-demand in HD (where available). on top of that, MLB.TV Premium offers DVR functionality to pause and rewind a live game. MLB.com represents a big step for boxee as we hope this is the first of many different live sports offerings we can bring to you. We hope other sports follow MLB.com’s lead of giving fans a choice of how they enjoy watching their favorite teams….

I’ve never used Boxee but if anyone does, I’d love to hear how well this works once it gets up and running.

Tee Ball World Series, if you can believe it

Youth Sports Parents describes a dramatic comeback at the Tee Ball World Series.

T.J. McCants, 7, slugged a home run. This capped a nine-run rally. And in the championship game, Cantonment upended Northeast Pensacola Blue, 31-29. That’s right – 31-29.

My thoughts:

They have a Tee Ball World Series? They have winners and losers? They actually keep score?

That’s a different Tee Ball than the one my kids played.

Either case, congrats to Master McCants and his team. That homerun must have been a sight to see.

Should they walk Pujols with bases loaded?

For those who haven’t noticed, Albert Pujols has done amazingly well with the bases loaded this year. Here are his stats with three runners on.

At this point in the season, Pujols is five for five with 3 homeruns and 16 rbis. Yikes!

If you believe in such stats, some of his other clutch stats are not as juicy, though. Interestingly, he is only 1 for 13 with runners in scoring position with two outs.

Sammy Sosa, Steroids, and Anonymity

What is the biggest issue here? The fact that Sosa may have used PEDs? Or that the results from a federally administrated (and confidential) test which were contractually promised to remain anonymous were made public?

From Circling the Bases:

The greater wrong in my mind is the fact of the leaks themselves. I’m a lawyer by trade, and it shocks me that fellow officers of the court are divulging this sort of information to the media. This is evidence that was seized in an ongoing criminal case that is subject to court order putatively preventing its release. The act of leaking this stuff is, at the very least, a violation of that court order and a violation of legal ethics. Depending on the exact language of the order, it could be a criminal act. I don’t know about you, but that causes me far more concern than whether Sammy Sosa took steroids six years ago.

I know, I know, now that the truth is known, no one cares. No one is going to cry a river for poor Sammy Sosa. I don’t have any sympathy for him myself. But the issue of anonymity during these tests are crucial. I still think it’s a slippery slope we’re sliding down.

These “anonymous” tests are going to mean jack squat after a while and its use as a tool will lose its effectiveness.

Singing at sports events

I enjoyed Chicago Tribune’s Steve Johnson’ somewhat tongue-in-cheek piece on those singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at Cub games and what they could do to present a more melodious experience. Johnson humorously lambasted Denise Richards whose performance left something to be desired:

The syllables — we won’t call them "notes" — lurched out of the stadium, stopping old ladies and scaring small children. An ambulance siren was shocked into silence at hearing a noise more annoying than itself.

A passing legislator vowed to restore full funding to public-school music education.

But after reading the article, I was reminded of a similar subject that troubles me when I attend local sporting events.

Other fans don’t like it when I sing the words to the Star Spangled Banner before a game.

Ok, some of my friends who know me well might be a bit surprised but unlike most fans, I DO find it important to sing our national anthem for my personal reasons.

I know I don’t sing well so I don’t sing especially loud. But judging by the looks of the fans sitting ahead of me at a women’s basketball game earlier this year, you would have thought I was invading their personal space. Other times, I just get weird looks.

Maybe it’s a Midwestern thing. Or a small town thing. Sometimes I get lucky and I’m sitting next to an grizzled old veteran who has no problem belting out the song that represents our country in his raspy voice. I just try to keep up.

To me, the Star Spangled Banner should not be a song that is performed for the crowd, it should be sung and the meaning should be savored.

So the next time you attend a ballgame, consider singing the National Anthem and I won’t feel alone.

Wrigley fuss

Lots of hatin’ on Wrigley Field (and its fans) going on lately…

Why Your Stadium Sucks: Wrigley Field

Wrigley Field Bleacher fans are a bunch of slobs

[Oh, and I can’t leave this one out]

Wrigley Field makes Ozzie Guillen puke

Ozzie does have a flair for the dramatic.

This weekend, I’m going to see the Cubs first hand for the first time this year so I guess I’ll judge for myself.

Andre Dawson: Best free agent money could buy?

Askmen.com presents their top ten list of All-time Baseball Free-Agent Bargains.

I’m glad to see their memory is intact and they remember Andre Dawson at #3. In the collusion market after the 1986 season, Dawson was picked up by the Cubs for $500,000 (plus incentives which eventually came out to around $700,000). Even back then, that was a pitiful amount.

The rest, as they say, is history. Dawson had his famous 49-homer, 137 rbi season for the last place Cubs. Both figures led the NL that year and were enough to garner him the NL MVP.

Fortunately, the Cubs saw value in their new outfielder and gave him a raise. They signed him at $1.85 million the next year.

Dawson played six 20+ HR years for Chicago.

just how good could Albert be?

Offensively, Albert Pujols pretty much single-handedly won the game for the Cardinals today against the Indians. They had some good pitching from Brad Thompson and their committee of relievers they trotted out there who kept Cleveland to just one run.

But Pujols went 3 for 4 with a double and two homeruns. That gives him 22 for the year. If you take the trouble to pro-rate that out for 2009, he would have somewhere around 57 homeruns at this pace. That would eclipse his current career record by eight.

I was playing APBA baseball against my buddy Mike, who is a Cardinal fan while watching today’s game. We talked a bit about Pujols’ future and even hypothetically wondered to ourselves, “still in his 20s, would Albert get in the Hall if he retired today?”

Putting aside the 10 year requirement, you really could have a case. With 341 homers, 1304 rbis, 997 runs and a .334 batting average, those numbers put him up there. His rbi numbers are already above the average HOFer though admittedly Evers, Maranville and company do adjust the curve a bit.

But Pujols won’t retire and at age 29, he does have the potential to break some serious records.

Food for thought.

Disclaimer: don’t get the wrong idea… the author is a Cub fan