A Small Note to the Lemur's Coverage of the World Baseball Classic

Yes, it's amusing, shocking, amazing or all of the above when Team USA loses on the mercy rule to Puerto Rico. (And yes, kids, this officially puts me deep in the black of finding things to fill the bloghole with today.)

No, it doesn't mean that there is something wrong with us as a country that we're not giving this august experience the prestige and importance that it deserves. And the same goes for the Olympics, or the Little League World Series, or any other short-series experience that you can name.

What it means, really, is that Baseball Is A Funny Game, prone to all kinds of low sample size weirdness. If the worst team in baseball somehow found itself into the World Series against the best team, it would win a third of the time.

And that's just factual, really; it happens every year in MLB with top teams struggling against crud teams. Greatness is determined over time and at bats and innings and lots of them, and while jumping to conclusions is fun, it also leaves you looking real silly real fast. Consider the case of the mighty Cubans, who were being written up as clearly the best team in the WBC before today, when they went down meekly, 6-0, to the Japanese. I caught their act today, and it looked like they didn't have a single player who was at all interested in working a pitch count. (It also doesn't mean that Japan, with their 0.79 team ERA, is a clear next best pick; that's a lineup that's utterly devoid of power.)

Are the Americans prone to treating the WBC as Spring Training in different uniforms? Of course; they should. Will there ever be a truly meaningful international event in baseball, a la the soccer World Cup? Well, maybe, but if so, it won't be an annual event that happens in March; it'll be a lot more involved than that, because it will have a heckuva lot more countries involved.

And if you need to rail against a country and their culture for what happens in a short series sports event... well, that just says more about the writer than it does the event. It's not such a good thing, either.

Philly Parade?

Supposedly a top 10 search term on Google, and far be it for me to turn my nose up at free search traffic from jinx-hating idiots who want to set themselves up for Phresh Rage at an Uncaring God.

So welcome, you rain-causing morons. Please stare at the ads, and maybe order a T-Shirt. Papa needs a new pair of shoes, seeing as his last pair were ruined by rain and tears...

Parents Ruin Everything

A quick h/t to longtime friend of the blog CMJ Dad for this one... a story of Jericho Scott. That's him to the right. He's nine years old and throws too hard for Little League, so the league is going to fold his team, rather than let him pitch. No, seriously.

You see, facing some other kid's 40 mph heat when you are a beginning player is too scary for beginners. And yes, there's conspiracy theories afloat that he's being blackballed for not joining the league champions. This is a libertarian wet dream of a movie deal right here.

So the other teams, rather than, um, play and try to hit the kid, just quit. It's the safe thing to do, and much more accommodating to the long-term goal of having the kids enjoy themselves while playing ball.

The obvious knee-jerk response to this is to commence the face and head slapping (yours, then with more luck, theirs), but I'm going the other way on this. I played one year of Little League, stunk on ice, and was afraid that some kid was going to kill me pretty routinely.

The lessons that I learned from that experience were priceless, and those were that I sucked at baseball, and that it would be better for all concerned if I found something better to do with my time. (Namely, hockey, the sport for people who have no vertical leap, depth perception, or fondness for one's shins.)

Look, as a parent, I can understand the desire to shield your kids from crushing failure, but the parents for this place need to embrace the opportunity. By getting shamed and stoned at age nine, they stand to save years of Little League fees, and help to break little Chase and Aston of their unrealistic dreams early. Goodbye, private college. Hello, plumbing school. Scott's parents should farm him out as a service...

Chamberlain, Without Appeasement

I had the Yankees-Red Sox game on during the monthly poker game on Friday night, since some of my crew are Yankee fans, and I try to be a good host. So we caught the latest Joba Chamberlain throwing at Kevin Youkilis dustup, which made Yankee Fan in attendance happier than pocket aces.

The quick details, for those of you who missed this, not that I'm sure the Lemur allows you to... Chamberlain, in the midst of his best start in the majors, is pitching in the seventh with a 1-0 lead. On a 2-0 count to Youkilis, he comes up and in and nearly kills the guy. Tempers flare, Youkilis barks, and Chamberlain goes on to strike him out. All of which wouldn't be that big of a deal, if it weren't the fourth -- fourth! -- time that Chamberlain has gotten up and in on Youkilis.

Now, I'm not going to defend the actions of the pitcher or the hitter. I've owned both of these guys in my roto leagues, but don't now, and so, I'm not terribly interested in defending either. Nor am I very interested in choosing sides in the Coke vs. Pepsi war. But what did interest me is the reaction of Yankee Fan, who couldn't love Chamberlain more now, and probably never will appreciate the player more than they do today.

Here's the thing about Joba that Yankee Fan loves -- he's young. Too young to know better about rivalries being mostly for the amusement of fans. Too young to care that a suspension could come, or that he'll be ostracized at the All-Star Game or in the off-season and off-time bars where players from other teams are hanging out. Too young to notice that the older veterans on the team, particularly the ones with hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank and off-field worries (Mr. Rodriguez, your alimony lawyer is on line two), don't really appreciate it when the young pitchers on both teams start ramping up the Hatfield-McCoy stuff.

So when the Sawx's Craig Hansen hits A-Rod in the midst of what wound up as a 10-3 pants-wetting panic loss for Boston Fan yesterday, bringing the Yankees even in the loss column and the latest in their 8-game post All-Star winning streak, the Yankees didn't rush the field, or glower at the young pitcher, or provide anything but measured responses in the clubhouse afterward. They won't, because with the handful of exceptions, they are old enough to know better, and haven't been together for long enough (especially, say, in the minor leagues) to have that kind of team dynamic.

Yankee Fan, like all fans, hates that. Yankee Fan, like most fans, would rather be watching football, and anytime baseball is more like football, they're liking it a little bit more, even if it does come at the cost of having a stray baserunner or two. It's also a reason (albeit a small one) why Yankee Fan is frequently an angry fan, despite the success and the Stadium and the limitless resources; when you have no attachment to the players, because they've all been bought and all know better, you are, well... spoiled brats, bullies, and apologists for the same. But I still like you lots more than I do Sox Fan, because at least you aren't expecting me to be happy for you after your team rapes mine.

Today, it's John Lester for the Sox, and Fat Sidney Ponson for the Yanks, in the required by law Sunday Night Game on the Lemur. If Ponson wants to extend his unlikely popularity in the Bronx, he'll hit a guy. If he wants to actually remain employed, he'll pitch well. And that is the difference between fans and management, young and old, and guys who sell jerseys and guys that do not.

The Most Exciting Player In Baseball

Today in Shea, Jose Reyes continued his very special weekend (yesterday's getting picked off second base being also very special) by nonchalantly throwing wide to first base with two outs in the seventh. Carlos Delgado didn't make a play that he probably could have, and as Melky Cabrera rounded first and made it second on the error, Reyes threw his glove to the ground like, oh, a spoiled Little League player.

He executed it with a full turn, which let the sunglasses and glove both fall in different directions. Fairly artistic, especially in the slow-motion HD that you'll be seeing it in, oh, the 2,000+ replays that the Lemur will probably be favoring you with.

Oliver Perez then continued his inexplicable mastery of the Yankees by getting Jose Molina to fly out to center, ending the inning. The YES cameras then spent the rest of the game looking inside the Mets' clubhouse to see if Delgado was going to take Reyes' head off. In the ninth, Billy Wagner gave up a leadoff hit to Derek Jeter, then wild pitched him to second, but kept A-Rod in the park on a fly ball to right. After a Posada groundout, Wagner froze Wilson Betemit with a called third strike, and the Mets won 3-1 to get to .500, and salvaged a split in their 4-game Subway Series.

(Oh, and nice Pravda Moment from the SNY postgame, which failed to show the hissy fit. Way to cover your assets, gentlemen.)

The Reyes Incident, of course, led the telecast team to spend the rest of the game talking about Reyes' immaturity, and whether or not Willie Randolph misses having a job, and all of the usual points that you'd make, including a snide jab as to how no one was comparing the Mets' left side of the infield to the Yankees' left side now. But as always, I'd like to see some numbers.

First off, the number 25. That's how old Reyes is, on the off chance that you want to just chalk this up to Oh, That Impetuous Youth. Secondly, the number 675 -- which is the number of games that Reyes has played in the major leagues. I'm thinking that this is the Jose Reyes that's the real guy, folks. Immaturity be damned.

Next, 840 -- which is the Reyes OPS for the year, with a little more slugging than his career norms. The on-base is at .355 -- still not great for a leadoff hitter, but more or less what he's done in the past three years, and with his steals and extra-base power, he gets himself into position to score a lot of runs. Delgado's .725 OPS is the lowest of his life as a regular baseball player. So on the grand scale of things, perhaps you give your talented young player a little leeway, especially on a hot day.

But there's also this. Delgado had 9 RBIs in the first of Friday's doubleheader, and the go-ahead home run in today's game. He's also the closest thing this Mets team has to a veteran leader, especially with Moises Alou more or less done; no one is expecting this kind of thing from, say, Carlos Beltran. The first baseman can more or less kill a shortstop if he's really got a mind to, not that I'm really expecting Delgado to spend his time exacting a grudge; right now, he's doing everything he can to just stay in the majors.

And finally, um, he does know that he plays in New York, right? How badly did he want to be on the back page of the tabloids, looking like this?

In A World... Where Moonlight Graham Wants To Kill You...

New movie slogan: If you build it, HE WILL KILL YOU.

Hat tip, Sons of Sam Malone.

A Prayer For Jesus's Buttocks

From the Washington Post -- (Washington Nationals) reliever Jesus Colome remained in a hopsital yesterday with an infection on his right buttocks, though GM Jim Bowden said he would get out today. The Nationals don't know when Colome, 4-0 with a 2.76 ERA in 40 appearances, will be able to pitch. "It's a serious situation," Bowden said. "We pray for his buttocks and his family."

This reliever, who art stricken
Wounded be thine ass
Thy Buttocks hurt, and
Thy Ass be done,
For 15 days, perhaps retroactive.
Give us this day a better ass
And forgive us our blasphemes
As we forgive those that blaspheme agains us.
And lead us not into titillation,
But deliver us from an image search.
For thine has the problem,
the power, and the infamy.
For ever and ever.
Sucks to be you.
Amen.

Top 10 Signs of Mike Hargrove's Fading Passion

Ed. Note: Mariner manager Mike Hargrove resigned on Sunday, despite winning 25 out of their last 37 games and being in the thick of the AL West and wild card race. Hargrove, a 22-year coaching veteran, said he was quitting because of a fading passion for the game.

10) Kept calling Ichiro Suzuki "Kenny Lofton" and Raul Ibanez "Manny Ramirez"

9) Doesn't giggle anymore when saying the name "JJ Putz"

8) Hasn't realized, in the last 1.5 years, that his catcher doesn't speak English

7) When asked by the Safeco Field grounds crew whether the roof should be open or closed, would just say, "Whatever"

6) Kept referring to starting pitchers as "Gil", even though Gil Meche hasn't been there for six months

5) Hasn't laughed at a "Mariner Moose" routine in, like, years

4) Spent 90 minutes sobbing over the Ray Allen trade

3) Hey, if Adrian Beltre can't summon passion while being paid over $12 million a year to hit .260, what do you expect from his manager?

2) None of his starters, despite being in a pitcher's park, is under 4 on the ERA... so perhaps "fading passion" can be translated as "getting out while the getting is good"

1) Even while winning the last eight games in a row, still needed Levitra and nipple clamps to put the Pike in its Place

I Guess There is Crying in Baseball

Who knew? As reported by ESPN, Carlos Zambrano and Michael Barrett shared a few tears after their little skirmish last week:

"He came to me the next day, and he apologized and I apologized to him and we cried," a teary-eyed Zambrano said after he beat the Milwaukee Brewers on Wednesday. "I still love him."

I'm sure an old-school manager like Lou Piniella is down with the sharing of these kind of feelings. What better way to end a slump in your season than to tell your fellow teammate that you love them.

Here are a few other phrases that you can probably hear most any day at Wrigley:

1. "My therapist thinks having me sacrifice bunt revives feelings of rejection and angst. OK if I just hack away Lou?"

2. "I'm going to pass on extra BP. Oprah is revealing her book of the month club selection right now."

3. "We still get juice boxes and fruit after the game even if we don't win, right?"

4. "Off day tomorrow - who wants to get facials?"

5. "Man, Lou is really uptight. He could use an Appletini or two."

6. "Queer Eye's On!!!"

7. "Listen rook, all these day games will wreak havoc on your skin. Finding the right exfoliant is an important part of your daily routine."

8. "Your fastball isn't moving and your curve has no movement tonight. Need a hug?"

You had me at hello, Carlos. You had me at hello.

Here's some more from our extensive footage collection.