The Baseball Zealot

Who exactly is doing the drug testing of the minor league players?

Major League Baseball has now implemented random drug testing for minor league baseball players. It’s all part of the plan… the Minor League Drug Prevention and Treatment Program to be specific.

Who will be doing the actual testing? A company called the National Center for Drug Free Sport.

For those interested in clicking deeper, you can find out the details on Drug Free Sport’s methods of specimen collecting (the SCAN method, Secure Collection Automated Network) and specimen analysis (they test for Anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs, drugs of abuse, and masking agents, urine manipulators, adulterants).

Drug Free Sport has a wide clientele indeed. They are being used by the NCAA, the PGA, MLB and the NBA.

Lou Piniella, lame duck

Some quick thoughts on Lou Piniella’s retirement and a few questions.

To start, Rob Neyer examines Lou’s HOF potential and thinks he comes out pretty well. More on that later.

Piniella came to the Cubs with the rep as hot-tempered, base-throwing skipper. What we got was a grandfather-type who usually didn’t sweat the details. Usually.

Many have lauded Piniella for what he’s done as a Cub manager. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve liked him just fine but much of his success came from a team that he inherited and he rode that wagon as long as he could. It seemed evident when he took over that this would be his “sunset” team considering his age and stage in his career.

My take on Piniella for the first part of his reign of the Cubs is this: His managing ability to get the Cubs to the postseason was fine. Once they got there, they stalled. Does Piniella share some of the responsibility of not inspiring his team when the going got tough? Maybe.

My questions…

Was his retirement a surprise?

Not to me. This is Lou’s last year of his contract. With grumblings already about his performance, I just didn’t see him re-upping.

Is Piniella really retiring?

Yeah probably. Piniella deserves some retirement and I mean that in a nice way. I just don’t see another team picking him in the future. Look to see him as an analyst behind an ESPN desk soon.

What’s next for the Cubs?

Fortunately, the Cubs have time to think about this. I’m not as pro-Sandberg as some might think. If I had my druthers, I’d like to see them pry Joe Giardi away from the Yankees (yeah, dream on) or give Alan Trammell a shot.

While we’re changing leadership, is Jim Hendry’s job safe?

Yes. There are a lot of fans calling for Hendry’s head at any given time. That said, for any bad move he’s made (and there have been some), he’s made some quiet deals that have kept the team afloat.

Piniella in the Hall of Fame? Really?

I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it. Between his above average performance as a player plus his seven postseason appearances as a manager, he has a shot. He ranks 14th all-time in wins which isn’t too shabby. I wouldn’t count it out.

Interesting addendum: Gene Mauch is the only non-active manager with more wins than Piniella who is not in the Hall of Fame. He has 1902 wins.

Perhaps the fact that Mauch has only two playoff appearances (and no World Series ring) in 26 years has something to with it. That and his losing record (.483).

Al Hrabosky the Mad Hungarian

Bruce Markusen has a very well-researched piece The Hardball Times all about a player I remember from one of my favorite era of baseball, the 70s- Al Hrabosky.

I remember the Mad Hungarian well. What I didn’t know was how he got his nickname:

The unusual routine prompted a nickname from the Cardinals’ front office. The team’s public relations director, Jerry Lovelace, began calling Hrabosky “The Mad Hungarian.” The name, which accurately reflected his heritage, caught on with writers, broadcasters and fans, giving Hrabosky one of the most identifiable alter egos of his time, or any other for that matter.

Just think, the club front office not only approved but capitalized on Hrabosky’s behavior.

No doubt I’ve said this before but I wonder if Al’s stomping around the mound and talking to the ball would be tolerated in today’s world. The 70s were a more colorful time (in more ways than one… you’ve seen the uniforms) and probably a little more tolerant of differences and eccentricities.

Sadly, if Hrabosky tried to pull what he did in 2010, someone would complain, there would be an investigation by an appointed MLB committee and a 50-page policy written up detailing what is acceptable and not acceptable.

Miss you. Al.

The GMS curse: The NL wins one

On the heels of the announcement of George Steinbrenner’s passing, the National League finally win an All-Star game… their first since I was in my early 30s.

It was a simple win with good pitching and a nice clutch hit by sub Brian McCann who was responsible for all three of the NL’s runs. Indeed, all of the NL’s offense came from the bottom of the order, much from the substitutes. The top four in the order were a combined 0-11.

Kudos goes to my Cub Marlon Byrd who was one those runs McCann drove in during the seventh inning. More importantly, Byrd gunned down David Ortiz at second for a 9-4 assist. Byrd can probably be thankful it wasn’t anyone else besides slow-footed Ortiz but nonetheless it was a ninth inning rally killer.

Final score NL 3 AL 1

And thought you have most likely have seen the box score already, check out the one done by Baseball Reference. It’s the most comprehensive and interactive out there.

New patches will be worn in memory of Yankee legends

In light of the recent deaths of Yankee legends Bob Sheppard and George Steinbrenner, the New York ballclub’s graphic designers have been busy coming up with a patch that will adorn the uniforms of the Yankee players.

Both are stark black and white to match the Yankee uniforms. The Steinbrenner patch includes his full name plus his initials “GMS”. At the bottom, it says The Boss”. Nice touch.

Sheppard’s patch is a nicely done graphic of an old time PA mike within a baseball diamond and simply says, “Bob Sheppard The Voice of Yankee Stadium”.

The GMS patch will be worn above the NY on the left breast on the home jerseys and above the YORK on away jerseys.

You’ll find the Sheppard patch on the Yankees’ left sleeves.

Steinbrenner changed baseball (for better or worse)

Truly a rough week for the Yankee faithful. In the last three days, two iconic figures who represented the Bronx Bombers in two very different ways, passed away

On Sunday, PA announcer Bob Sheppard passed on at the ripe age of 99. His time with the Yankees goes back to the days of DiMaggio and Mantle. His voice was long lived. It could be heard as late as 2007.

Then today the Boss was finally dragged kicking and screaming from this dimension into the next life. George Steinbrenner, the shipbuilder turned baseball team owner who swore he would not get involved in his team’s business died at the age of 80.

Steinbrenner was controversial, aggressive, intrusive and yes, sometimes mean. But he won, too. Under his ownership, the Yankees won eleven championships and seven World Series.

A friend posed this question to a few of us over email: “Which had more effect on player salaries, George Steinbrenner or Curt Flood’s free agency case?”

Truly an academic question which has no real answer. But it does give one pause to think. Other owners were skeptical of free agency, not wanting to shell out the big bucks for players. Meanwhile, Steinbrenner, who inherited a sub-par Yankee team in the early 70s, wasn’t afraid to adapt his business model to include the concept of Flood’s idea of free agency. With the acquisition of Catfish Hunter and so many others, Steinbrenner changed the way, for better or for worse, how baseball owners approach acquiring on-the-field personnel.

The results,in Steinbrenner’s case, speak for themselves.

Latino expert Burgos interviewed by UI press

Author, University of Illinois history professor, and local Latino baseball expert, Adrian Burgos was interviewed by the U of I News Bureau on the immigration issue. The topic of SB1070 as well as documentation issues came up in relation to baseball.

Burgos is the author of Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line.

Are sports’ officiators losing their hold of the game?

At the risk of sounding like old man played by Dana Carvey on SNL it didn’t used be like this. We watched our sports and took it like a man.

Bill Klem, a Hall of Fame umpire who worked the game for 37 years, was known for saying, It ain’t nothin’ till I call it”. Not anymore. Everything is held in the court of public opinion and if the public is lucky, that will sway the sports’ organizations decisions.

Just in the past month, we’ve had some close calls. Baseball fans are going mental calling for the reversal of Jim Joyce’s last call of Armando Galaraga’s near perfect game. (I don’t agree with Bud very often but I’ve come around to his thinking on this. Can you imagine the precedent this would set?)

Earlier this month, umps at the Women’s Softball College World Series were called into question a couple of times… enough that it was brought up in the media.

And now during the 2010 World Cup (after USA’s unfortunate departure), FIFA is coming under fire for their officiating. Guess what? They’re now considering high-tech solutions to solve their problems.

So either a) officiators are somehow getting worse, b) the fans are getting more picky about their officiating, or c) the media doesn’t have anything better to cover.

My guess is that it’s a combination of b and c.

Quite simply, what’s happening now is that the men in blue are stuck in an era where there have been some high profile missed calls. As a result, the spotlight is on them where is shouldn’t be. You know an umpire is doing a good job when you don’t remember him and can’t recall his name. THEN he’s doing his job.

Now however, this issue is stuck in neutral and everyone is looking for the umpire to make a mistake. And when he does, here come the typical articles in press/blogosphere… “SEE SEE!! We need to institute/expand instant replay!!”.

As I feel with most things in life, baseball should not make snap decisions based on high profile mistakes or media-driven policy.

To me, it ain’t nothin till an ump calls it.

Number crunching Jamie Moyer’s homers

RBI Magazine brings us Ten Things About Jamie Moyer’s 505 Home Runs…

…and one more reason to not like George W. Bush:

221
For his career, Jamie Moyer has given up a home run during five different presidential administrations…the most being 221 during the 2001-2008 run of George W. Bush. The other presidents that occupied the White House while Moyer toed the rubber…Ronald Reagan (58 home runs), George Bush (21), Bill Clinton (164) and, of course, Barack Obama (41 and counting).

Effective use of closers

Lee Panas of Tiger Tales makes a good case for better use of MLB’s premier relievers. He uses his Tigers’ Jose Valverde as a case study but it goes for all closers of high talent.

This is the basic crux of his argument:

Instead of having Valverde enter a dozen or more games in very low impact situation just to get work, wouldn’t it be better if Leyland picked his spots using him only when the game was on the line? I’d rather see him enter a tie game in the eighth inning or with the bases loaded in the seventh than see him get a three out save with nobody on base and three run lead.

I’ve pleaded similar arguments to my baseball friends to no avail. There’s something simple about the “save” rule and there’s no getting around managers desire to saving their best guy for the ninth inning regardless of the actual impact the closer will have.

I know Lee isn’t the only one exploring this issue. Is the Save a dying stat? Perhaps not. But once we stop relying on it as the sole value of a closer, maybe they will be used in a more effective manner.