Never cared for Bryant Gumbelā¦ now I have one more reason why. He implicitly accused Jeff Bagwell, Nomar Garciaparra and Ivan Rodriguez in an open letter to Mark McGwire that he read on his show, āReal Sportsā:
āIn closing, guys, please feel free to share this letter with Bagwell, Nomar, Pudge and all those others who went from hitting homers to power outages overnight. Tell ’em fans are ready to accept what happened. Tell ’em we’re ready to move on. Tell ’em that most of us get it…even if they, like you, still don’t."
Iām not prepared to say one way or another if these players did or didnāt. But a person in Gumbelās position should know better than to throw names around without proof.
Sanctimonious dolt.
***
Gary Bedingfield maintains a baseball blog with a special bent. His site, Baseball in Wartime focuses on the history of baseball during wartime and baseball players who served in the military. Itās a unique idea for a blog and Gary seems to have a lot of info on the topic.
***
Finally, those who follow Illinois Baseball Report know this already but we are less than one month away from regular season. If youāre talking about college baseball, that is. Usually, thatās not big news as normally teams from the north travel south to play colleges in the warmer climates.
The catch this year is that University of Illinois will be starting their season at home in chilly Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. They will be playing host to the Bradley Braves on February 20-21. Itās the first time I know about that Illinois has had a home season opener in February.
Now, if Mother Nature lets this series happen will be another thing.
The White Sox fired up the Hot Stove signing SS Omar Vizquel & Andruw Jones.Ā Vizquel has been the best defensive shortstop of his time and will tutor Sox shortstop Alexei Ramirez.Ā Omar might be headed for Cooperstown when he finally hangs them up, his numbers stack up with Ozzie Smith, and nobody flashed a better glove at short.Ā Speaking of excellent fielders, nobody did it better than Andruw Jones, but that was in his day.Ā Andruw isn’t all that old, but he got old in a hurry, with very old knees.Ā Jones will not embarrass himself in the outfield with the glove, although he won’t add to the team speed, but he was brought in here for his bat and to provide some outfield depth.