This is why baseball is poetry

No sport played professionally in America bears the literary and poetic burden of baseball. You'll never see soft-focus movies about football, Brian's Song notwithstanding. The Natural wasn't a movie about Michael Jordan. No one will ever make a tennis movie called Court of Dreams. The right-wing may conjure up images of the 1950s in its longing for a return to the past, but their image is a false one. It doesn't take into account the desperate isolution of women in suburbia, the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, the drab and predictable lives of the men in the gray flannel suits. It's baseball that carries the mythology of America. Ken Burns created twelve hours of soft-focus reverence about the Greater Meanings of Baseball.

There have been endless musings about why this is, from the pastoral green field reminding us of our agrarian past to the great George Carlin's immortal comparison of baseball and football:



But damn it if baseball doesn't live up to all this burden of Norman Rockellian mythology.

This month saw the 25th anniversary of what is known among Mets fans as "Game Six." We don't need any further explanation about what "Game Six" means, though I, being the iconoclast that I am, have always preferred the grit and determination of game six of the NLCS that year, which went for sixteen grueling innings, the first eight scoreless for the Mets, who tied it in the ninth and again in the fourteenth, then finally won in grand style in the bottom of the sixteenth when Kevin Bass struck out. That will always be the most memorable game for me, right up there with the 19-Inning July 4 Marathon Of 1985, which saw Mr. Brilliant and I get home from watching the Macy's fireworks, watch a few innings, go to sleep around midnight, and wake up with the TV on a few hours later to Steve Zabriskie saying, "If you're just tuning in, write and tell us why"; and Tom Gorman giving up a fat one to Braves relief pitcher Rick Camp (lifetime batting average: 0.30) in the 18th before the Mets finally won in the 19th.

I thought on the anniversary that I really should write about this momentous anniversary, but frankly, with the Mets in the kind of disarray in which they find themselves now, the less I think about the Mets the better.

1986 is long gone; the Mets' glory days are long past. Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez are graying and thickening. Lenny Dykstra had a spectacular fall from the financial high life and this week pleaded no contest on car theft charges. But the family of Gary Carter, who is being treated for malgnant brain tumors, is reporting that his tumors have shrunk almost 75% since initial detection and 10% since his last scan and Bill Buckner and Mookie Wilson becoming the Bobby Thompson and Ralph Branca of the latter half of the 20th century, so it seems that perhaps it's time for another World Series to deliver a similar kind of drama.

When one's own team isn't participating, it's hard to get up much enthusiasm for the World Series. I might pay more attention if the Giants were playing, just because Tim Lincecum is cool. But my loathing for anything Texas not named "Molly Ivins" or "Ann Richards" is so complete that I had to toss my lot in with the Cardinals. I owed them that much after they defeated the hated Phillies in the NLDS. Then I stuck with them in the NLCS, if only because the Brewers were from Wisconsin, Scott Walker is governor of Wisconsin, and it just works that way.

This year the Cardinals were the wild card team, having edged out the hated Atlanta Braves in the last week of the season (giving Mets fans a scintilla of schadenfreude), and wild card teams are not supposed to make it this far. It isn't as if the Cardinals have made it look easy, especially after manager Tony LaRussa couldn't even get a call to the bullpen right in Game 5. But if you're a Mets fan, and an aficionado of the Goofy Game, you have to admire the work of art that the Cards put in last night, which forced a Game 7 tonight -- the first one since 2002. The Cardinals NOT being the Mets, however, it only took eleven innings to tie the game twice and win, not nineteen.

Go Cards.

What if pitchers and catchers reported to spring training -- and nobody cared?

Here in the New York metropolitan area, it's been a long and depressing winter. We here at Casa la Brilliant have had our share of tsuris, including a number of unexpected expenses, all punctuated by hot and cold running blizzards, and I'm not talking about the kind served up at the local Dairy Queen.

So with the Super Bowl safely over, and the Valentine's Day roses (for me) and cheesecake from Calandra's (for him) ensconced in their appropriate places, and the Project from Hell being finally released, and a brief tease of sixty-degree temperatures coming on Friday, it would ordinarily be time for a middle-aged woman's thoughts to turn to baseball.

Unless, of course, she is a Mets fan.

These are not exactly the best of times to be a Mets fan. We aren't like Yankee fans, who can never really enjoy their team unless they win every game and take home all the marbles every year. We're used to a certain amount of futility. But this year even the most masochistic baseball fan is going to have a hard time mustering any kind of enthusiasm for Fred 'n' Jeff Wilponzi's (™ Steve Somers) ragtag band of misfits and scrap heapers. When the best hope you can have for this year is that former Mets "Generation K" prospect Jason Isringhausen, now thirty-eight and coming off Tommy John surgery after a terrific career as a reliever, can manage to make the team and contribute, things are at a sorry pass indeed.

Carlos Beltran is insisting he can still play despite his reconstructed knee, Minaya's Folly Luis Castillo is still clogging up the bench, the ever-delusional Ollie Perez is still insisting he can contribute, and frankly, if you can get a team full of good prospects for José Reyes, I think you've got to trade him, at least until the ownership situation straightens out.

The best I'm hoping for this year is entertaining baseball played by a bunch of cast-offs and not-yets, kind of like the team was in 1982 and 1983, right before a small army of young pitchers came up from the minors and formed the nucleus of what would become a World Series-winning team. I'm hoping that the classy R.A. Dickey's fairy tale continues and that Angel Pagan continues to be -- yes, I'm going to say it -- the angel in the outfield. And I'm hoping that the Wilponzis finally realize that the game is over, the jig is up, and like Hosni Mubarak, their family legacy is not to be.

And that they don't sell the team to a famewhore like Donald Trump.

UPDATE: If nothing else, we can amuse ourselves by making "Hu's on Second" jokes, waxing nostalgic about how they just don't make baseball player names like they used to -- except for Boof Bonser, and when all else fails, we can make the obligatory Spicoli jokes about Tobi Stoner.

The Wilpons must be made to sell -- all of it

In case you're wondering why I haven't written about the situation in Egypt, it's because it's really difficult to work 15-hour days and have enough left of your brain at the end of the day (or in the morning, for that matter) to do cogent analysis of something that isn't my area of expertise. There are any number of people, some of them right here, who can do a far better job than I can of covering a complex situation that requires more analysis than I can do at a bleary-eyed 5 AM. If you're looking for a single source of information in Blogtopia (™ Skippy), you could do worse than checking out Juan Cole, for whom the Middle East IS his area of expertise.

So go ahead, tell me I'm fiddling while Rome burns, but YOU try having 100% accountability for a project with about 30% of the control and 0% of the authority and see if YOU can handle it and then come home and talk intelligently about the future of Egypt.

What I can talk about at this ungodly hour is baseball, particularly the giant flushing sound going on at $iti Field, where the involvement of the Wilpon family in the Bernie Madoff mess becomes uglier every day:

Elyse S. Goldweber, the widow of a former employee of Wilpon’s and Katz’s corporate holding company, Sterling Equities Associates, has charged in a federal lawsuit in New York that the company, Wilpon and two other officers breached their fiduciary duties by offering employees the chance to invest their 401(k) plan with Madoff. By the time Madoff’s scam had been uncovered, about 92 percent of the 401(k) plan had been invested with his fraudulent firm, all of it lost. Goldweber had $280,420 invested in her husband’s 401(k), and it was wiped out, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit says that Sterling officers, as overseers of the retirement plan, were required to use “care, skill, prudence and diligence” in administering it, and to diversify investments “to minimize the risk of large losses, unless under the circumstances it is clearly prudent not to do so.” But Goldweber’s lawsuit contends that the officers — two of whom, the suit noted, were certified public accountants — fell far short of honoring that obligation.

The lawsuit, which was filed last summer and covers about an eight-year period starting in 2000, cites example after example of instances in which other individuals and institutions over the years raised alarms about Madoff and his firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC.

Moreover, the Goldweber lawsuit noted that Madoff and his wife were investors in Wilpon’s and Katz’s real estate business at the same time Sterling Equities was offering his firm as an option in the retirement plan — something the suit says was never disclosed to employees.

“These reciprocal investments, and the close personal relationship between” the Madoffs “and the Wilpons created a conflict of interest so great that investing with Madoff should never have been an option for a 401(k) participant and likely caused defendants to purposely turn a blind eye to these red flags,” the lawsuit contends.

[snip]

The lawsuit contended that Sterling officers were not only negligent, but also conflicted. Madoff was an investor with Wilpon and Katz, as was his wife, Ruth. Over the years, Madoff and his wife have put millions of dollars into various Sterling entities. The lawsuit said that according to Picard, the trustee in the Madoff case, from the end of 2002 to the end of 2006, for example, funds from Madoff’s firm were used to invest more than $2.3 million in those entities for Ruth Madoff’s personal benefit.

Major League Baseball is a kind of screwy hybrid of private enterprise and public trust. MLB has approval rights over transfers of team ownership, about where and whether clubs can relocate, and a score of other rules. The MLB has essentially a monopoly over professional baseball at the major league level as a result of its antitrust exemption, but there's also this aura of poetry and heritage that always hovers over the sport, for all that other sports seem to have eclipsed it in the public's interest.

But Bud Selig had to have been thinking during his meeting with the Wilpons recently, about the impact on The Business for a franchise in the biggest media market in the country, even the also-ran franchise, to be in this kind of financial mess. Baseball hasn't even recovered yet from the steroid scandal, and now this.

I wrote earlier this week that Fred Wilpon is looking more every day like the Hosni Mubarak of baseball, in that he refuses to leave, he insists that the Mets be HIS family legacy and that the hapless scion Jeff, whose meddling brought the club to its currently appalling state, be the heir, and that Wilpon grandchildren inherit, lo unto millenia. That is why Wilpon, backed into a corner, is making an offer any smart investor would refuse: 25% of the team, none of the profitable SNY network, and absolutely NO say into how the club is run.

Now one could argue that with Sandy Alderson in the front office, the use of the Mets as a shiny toy by a spoiled rich boy is going to be less prevalent than it was during the Omar Minaya years. But there's some question as to whether Alderson was even aware of how bad things were when he took the job, and I have some questions about whether Alderson was sent in to be Bud Selig's Trojan Horse to try to get in there, look at the books, and see just how bad the situation is.

On paper at least, there are the glimmerings of at the very least a fun little ballclub brewing in Flushing. Anthony DiComa of Mets Cetera projects an opening day lineup that looks like this:

C - Josh Thole
1B - Ike Davis
2B - Brad Emaus
SS - Jose Reyes
3B - David Wright
OF - Jason Bay
OF - Carlos Beltran
OF - Angel Pagan
Bench - Chin-lung Hu
Bench - Daniel Murphy
Bench - Scott Hairston
Bench - Willie Harris
Bench - Mike Nickeas

SP - Mike Pelfrey
SP - R.A. Dickey
SP - Jon Niese
SP - Chris Young
SP - Chris Capuano
RP - Francisco Rodriguez
RP - Bobby Parnell
RP - D.J. Carrasco
RP - Taylor Tankersley
RP - Taylor Buchholz
RP - Manny Acosta
RP - Pedro Beato

The pitching is questionable at best -- a top three that can be either brilliant or appalling, depending on which Mike Pelfrey we see, whether R.A. Dickey can repeat his success of last year, and if Jon Niese is ready for the responsibilities of a #3 starter; and a bullpen consisting of maybes (Bobby Parnell), a head case (Francisco Rodriguez), and a bunch of warm bodies.

The team is saddled with Jason Bay for another few years, but if Carlos Beltran can be traded and there's someone in AAA who can move up, you're looking at a young team that at least is going to play hard and not just go through the motions. It's at BEST a third-place team, more likely a fourth, but I'll settle for Positive Signs over the wreckage of the last few years.

But when you have an organization that invested staffers' and players' 401(k) money with a scam artist like Bernie Madoff, and that apparently ignored all signals that something wasn't quite on the up-and-up about him, what kind of free agents are ever going to want to sign with this team? I'm not a fan of assembling a team full of overpaid guys on the down side of their careers anyway, but successful clubs are a mix of young talent and proven veterans who can mentor the kids along. That's what made the Mets of the 1980's successful (until they decided to trade everyone who didn't get along with Gregg Jefferies before realizing it was Jefferies who was the problem).

The Wilpon family may be the stuff of Shakespearean tragedy at this point -- a self-made man in the person of Fred Wilpon whose fatal flaw was trusting his old friend -- et tu Bruté indeed. But the fact of the matter is that the Wilpons will forever be wearing the Scarlet M of Madoff. And it is against the interests of Major League Baseball for them to continue to own a franchise. A 25% sale isn't enough. The entire organization must change hands.

A team you can feel OK rooting for

The department in which I work is largely populated with Yankee fans. This of course makes even our management look askance on those who dare to support other teams, particularly that dysfunctional mess in Flushing. People who support the finely-honed machine that operates out of the Bronx can't understand why anyone would stick with the Mets when one had such a stellar in-town alternative.

One thing about being a Mets fan is that you often have two choices after the regular season -- either forget baseball exists until next year (and this year, until you find out whether they're going to give Sandy Alderson the job or another lackey who's just going to be cover for Jeff Wilpon's ineptitude, Mr. Wilpon not having learned from George W. Bush that ownership of a team should not make the player decisions, see also: Sammy Sosa), or pick another team as short-term good guy. Office politics prevent me from doing this with anyone other than the Yankees, but now that the Yankees' aging on-field presence proved not enough for the younger, hungrier Texas Rangers, the choice is now clear. And as happy as I am that Jeff Francoeur, who was treated pretty shabbily by the Mets, is in the World Series, that's where it ends. Because what we now have is the delicious allegory of a San Francisco vs. Texas World Series, which in this election year, is further proof that baseball really IS a metaphor for life. New York may have not one but TWO pretty damn good football teams this year, one of them boasting a smokin' hot quarterback whose love of musical theatre makes me wonder if he'll show up in the doldrums of February on Glee. But if it's going to be seventy-five degrees on October 27, I want baseball.

None other than Joan Walsh takes a break from MSNBC appearances to wax rhapsodic about the Little Team That Could, led by its flaxen-haired pitching phenom:

So real Giants fans know the truth: It's possible to love the Giants of 2002 and 2010, to see the differences -- and some similarities, too. Leaving aside Bonds and the great Jeff Kent, that earlier team had guys who were (almost literally) left for dead; catcher Benito Santiago hadn't been expected to play baseball again after a devastating car accident in 1998; he was NLCS MVP. Career .257 hitter David Bell, who played for six teams, scored the series-winning run against the Cardinals; washed-up ex-Cub Shawon Dunston (now a Giants coach) hit a two-out single to set up that win. The postseason wasn't all about Barry.

Still, it's not giving into the cheesy media narrative to admit this is an extraordinary team that wasn't supposed to be here (don't believe anyone who said they picked these Giants to win back in the spring). First baseman Aubrey Huff had no offers when the Giants signed him; Pat Burrell had been flat-out released by Tampa Bay; NLCS MVP Cody Ross was claimed in August when the Florida Marlins put him on waivers. Center fielder Andres Torres, clutch in that wild AT&T outfield as well as at the plate, is 32 and never before played a full season in the majors.

It is possible that no Giants team in my years here has been embraced so thoroughly. I just know we've got swag that celebrates this funky team accordingly. You can buy hats with long Lincecum-like locks attached, as well as T-shirts saying, "Let Timmy smoke" (the Cy Young winner was arrested in the offseason for marijuana possession) and most recently, "Fuck Yeah!" commemorating the star pitcher's recent NSFW comments on national television.

You can buy panda hats to honor Pablo Sandoval. There are fake black beards everywhere, thanks to the increasingly strange (and dominating) Wilson. I've even seen a few rally thongs, made famous by Huff, who put on a red, rhinestone studded thong to bust a slump in August and claims to have worn it ever since. You can listen to fan-made musical tributes to Huff's rally thong (to the tune of Elton John's "Your Song" -- that's right, it's "Your Thong"), to clutch pinch-hitter Travis Ishikawa ("Ishikawa da vida, baby") and the entire team: A video using Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" has had more than a million views on YouTube. The outpouring of creative fan-made Giants tributes makes it seem as though these overachieving everymen have brought out the dreamer in everyone.

Tim Lincecum is easy to hate when he's shutting out your team, but in the abstract, when there's no loyalty-since-childhood to deal with (although my father WAS a Giants fan before they packed up and went to San Francisco, leaving him pining for a National League team until the Mets came along), his retro-hippie sensibility makes him exactly the kind of player that gives wingnuts (and Philadelphia fans) fits. Because if there's one thing they hate, it's a pot-smoking, long-haired pitcher who bears a striking facial resemblance to figure skater Johnny Weir, has the kind of weird delivery that makes him injury-prone but has this year developed a truly nasty slider to replace the lost velocity on his fastball, and isn't at all fazed by things like Philadelphia fans' boorish speculation on his sexual orientation simply because he has long hair.

Next year I hope to see a third-place Mets team dominated by a young group of hardworking players, with a front-office determined to take the time necessary to build a system, not patch together a bunch of has-beens. Next year, when Tim Lincecum comes to town, I will hate him again. But for now, as he goes against Cliff Lee the Terminator and Inevitable Future Yankee, it's all Timmeh! in this house.

Grumpy Old Men - and one classy one

The easiest thing to do in New York is to be a Yankees fan. I mean, here you have a team steeped in tradition, which for most of its history has offered up a product that when it wasn't excellent, was often colorful. That wasn't because of the baseball offered up on the field, which like most American League baseball, is devoid of the zaniness that seems to come naturally to National League teams. My father, a Giants-turned-Mets fan, used to say that watching the Yankees was like watching a bunch of guys from IBM in suits, white shirts, and briefcases play baseball. Of course you have to realize that this is a guy who used to take me to a 3/4 empty Shea Stadium during the Great Suck Years, when Jane Jarvis played the organ, Ed Kranepool played first base, and the usher chomping a cheap White Owl cigar would come up to you in the cheap seats and say "You don't want to sit there. You want to sit down here." He'd move you down to field box seats, wipe them off with a dirty rag in a bizarro foreshadowing of squeegee men, and Dad would tip him a buck.

For most of the time I can remember anything about the Yankees, they have always been about two things. Bob Sheppard and George Steinbrenner. Just as something will be lost to the Mets forever when the ancient-but-still-full-of-stories Ralph Kiner shuffles off this mortal coil, the Yankees have lost their voice with the death of Bob Sheppard. You know the voice, they called it the "Voice of God." As mannered as it was, it was always the voice of the Yankees. Now, Yankee fans are left with nothing but the repulsive John Sterling, who makes me want to kill myself every time I hear a game recap in which he does that "THUUUUUUHHHHH....YANKEES WIN!!!!!!!!!!" -- as if this was some kind of miracle like Jesus and the fishes. I mean seriously. Was there any doubt? This is a team that eats opponents like Pac-Man, and when they win, the appropriate response is to shrug and say, "What did you expect?"

There was a time when the Yankees were colorful too. It was the says when someone was always feuding with Steinbrenner. If it wasn't Billy Martin (and wasn't THAT one of the most dysfunctional relationships in baseball history) it was Reggie Jackson, or Dave Winfield, or even =tokke= Yogi Berra, who at one time vowed to never go to the Stadium again as long as Steinbrenner owned the team.

In recent years, Steinbrenner wasn't seen much, as his health failed. Instead, it took TWO Steinbrenners to do what ONE did when George was in his prime. One son, Hal, does the quiet operation of the organization, leaving the day-to-day stuff in the capable hands of the smart baseball man known as Brian Cashman. The other one, Hank, has the job of being the Asshole Steinbrenner. But without the side that cares about quality baseball, all you have left is the asshole. George did both, and did it well:

Far away from the Glittering Dome of Yankee Stadium lies a city that despite the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has always exemplified futility. And that city is Cleveland, Ohio. And it is there that Harvey Pekar, a man who became famous for being a crank, died on Monday. But Pekar was no ordinary crank; he had a kind of zen wisdom as he observed his own life and the world around him, aided by cartoonists like R. Crumb, who put his thoughts into picture. But outside of the geekerati, Pekar is best known for being the subject of one of my favorite movies of recent years, American Splendor. Here, Paul Giamatti as Pekar asks, "What's in a name?"

As I observed when the film came out:

I am Harvey Pekar. And so are you, or you wouldn't be reading this. And because of movies like Crumb and Ghost World and now AMERICAN SPLENDOR, we are no longer misfits. We are now cool. Is this an improvement? Is this supposed to make us feel better?

Well, yes. Because Harvey Pekar was the patron saint of all of us who have always felt that we were put here by mistake, that our worldview is completely and utterly out of sync with the rest of the world. We observe the world around us and wonder why it seems to completely, utterly mad. The difference between those of us who blog, and Harvey Pekar, is that he was doing it long before we were. And he found a way to make a career of it, such as it was.

There's something intrinsically lonely about those of us who analyze everything, who see a world in which we never quite fit. Sometimes we luck out and find similarly iconoclastic friends. If we're very lucky, as I've been and as Pekar was, we find a life partner who by some strange karmic coincidence, lives on the same slightly off-kilter plane of reality that we do. But it doesn't change the fact that we struggle every day to live in this strange alien place.

Here, in another clip from the film, the real Harvey voices over an oddly appropriate clip of Giamatti, talking about loneliness:

Keep going, Harvey. Someone's bound to turn up.

Why do the Founding Fathers curse the Mets from beyond the grave?

As any longtime Mets fan (or Mets victim, if you prefer) knows, July 4 weekend is fraught with peril. Yesterday's game was no exception, and today's promised to be no better. Saturday's game saw the Mets facing the hapless Washington Nationals -- and Stephen Strasburg, the 6'4" hype-machine phenom.

I don't know what it is with the Mets and the Nationals. Even when the Mets are great (and this year they still only qualify as "pretty good at times"), the still can't seem to figure out one of the worst teams in baseball. They can take two out of three from the Yankees, and then lose two out of three to The Team Formerly Known As The Montreal Expos. I'd say it's a question of concentration, but yesterday saw one great infield play by David Wright, aggressive baserunning, an ability to lay off enough Stephen Strasburg fastballs to make the young phenom look like Nuke Laloosh after five innings, scratching out a few runs on almost no hits, a great outing by the crafty pickup-off-the-scrap-heap R.A. Dickey, and what should have been a satisfying 5-3 win.

Until Frankie Rodriguez came to the mound in the 9th.

I remember when there was such a thing as a closer. I remember when Jesse Orosco was good enough that if he came out, you could turn the game off and go get dinner. I remember when Randy Myers would come out and you could turn the game off and go to bed, confident that the game was in good hands. Those days are long gone. It all started with "Heart Attack Johnny" Franco, and it's been downhill ever since.

They call him "K-Rod", as if giving him a moniker similar to the third baseman in the Bronx will somehow turn him into a similar kind of machine. But with now five heartbreaking blown saves this year, one wonders how anyone could think he's a stopper, and where one can find the factory that produced Mariano Rivera -- the real stopper across town who at 40 shows no signs that he's ready to relinquish the role.

It must be something about 4th of July weekend. I can hardly bear to watch today.

But of course I have to, because today is the fourteenth anniversary of the greatest, looniest, craziest Mets game ever played. And remember, this is the team that took sixteen innings to take the pennant against the Houston Astros and Bob Knepper in 1986 and went on to take the World Series the day after Bill Buckner entered the same Hall Of No Fame as Ralph Branca. It was The Infamous July 4 Game Against Atlanta.

Mr. Brilliant and I had gone into the city for the Macy's fireworks, and then to get something to eat with friends. We came home, watched a few extra innings, and fell asleep, only to wake up around 3 AM to hear broadcaster Steve Zabriskie say, "If you're just tuning in now, write in and tell us why." Of course we stayed up to watch the rest of it, and sure enough, there were fireworks after the game ended. At 4:00 AM.

But what I remember most about that game is this, described brilliantly last year by Chris Jaffe, who called that game "MLB's greatest game ever":

In the 17th inning, home plate umpire Terry Tata ejected Met star Darryl Strawberry and manager Davey Johnson for arguing a called third strike. When asked about it after the game, Tata responded with the words later engraved at the Tomb of the Unknown Umpire: "At three o'clock in the morning, there are no bad calls."

Next inning, a light appeared at the end of the tunnel. The Mets capitalized on Brave reliever Rick Camp's throwing a would-be double play ball into the outfield, and scored the go-ahead run for an 11-10 lead.

Atlanta had the bottom of their order due up. The hitters looked as weary as they must have felt. In a handful of pitches, the first two batters each feebly grounded out. At 3:30 a.m, the Braves were down to their last man; not only was it the pitcher's slot in the order, but they had no more position players left to pinch hit.

Thus Rick Camp strode to the plate, representing Atlanta's last and least hope. Even for a pitcher, he was never much of a hitter in his decade-long career. A few years earlier he'd gone 1-for-41 on the season. Now a reliever, he rarely even hit. This would be his eighth plate appearance on the year, and he hadn't had a hit all season. As he faced Tom Gormon at 3:30 a.m. on what was now July 5, 1985, his lifetime batting average was .060.

Gorman, now in his sixth inning of work, saw no need to mess around with Camp. He quickly got two quick strikes on the hapless "hitter." Brave fans still in attendance—and one truly had to be a fan to stay in attendance this late through all that rain and time—could at least console themselves that it had been a hard fought battle, even if Atlanta was doomed before the better team.

Ah, but here is where the game became something for the ages. Part of the appeal of sports is that you never know what will happen next. What has just happened and what ought to happen merely serve as indicators for what could and should happen, not what will. The next moment was so ridiculous, that it defied all logic and a damn good chunk of all illogic. An ape on a typewriter would have a better chance typing out the complete works of William Shakespeare by sheer happenstance than a repetition of this at-bat.

When Gorman threw his third pitch, Camp went for broke on the 0-2, two-out offering and took a mighty swing. Crack! He made contact, and the ball floated out past the infield, into the outfield, beyond the wall and to the stunned horror of the Mets, landed in the bullpen for a game-tying home run. The Met outfielder in pursuit was so shocked he fell to his knees and grabbed his head with his hands. The fans were ecstatic, as well they should be, for if any fans deserved to see something great, it was the small band still in the stadium. Suffice it to say, it was not just Camp's biggest career home run, but it was his only one. The game went on, tied 11-11.

You know the Braves were in trouble when Camp left the dugout to pitch the 19th inning. Fresh from his first and last homer, he had an unstoppably huge grin on his face. Upshot: he was not in the best frame of mind to pitch. In the space of three singles, a double, and two intentional walks, the Mets had a 16-11 lead, putting the game away.

Or was it out of reach? As difficult as it might be to top a five-run lead in the 19th inning, that would be nothing compared to what happened in Atlanta's previous turn at the bat. The Mets weren't leaving anything to chance, putting in star starter Ron Darling to pitch.

By all rights, it should've been an easy 1-2-3 inning. Two of the first three batters made simple outs. The inning stayed alive because Keith Hernandez, normally a superlative fielder, made an error to put a man on. With two outs, Atlanta went into its surreal clutch mode: two straight walks loaded the bases, and a single scored two runs. 16-13.

Not only that, but incredibly the tying run came to the plate. Again. Surely enough—you could not script it any better—the batter was the very last man on planet Earth the Mets would want to see represent the tying run with two outs in this Twilight Zone of a game. That's right, up there stood the god himself: the man, the myth, the legend, Rick Camp, only now he stood tall with a whopping .065 career batting average. Though the rain had long since stopped, I like to think a dramatic thunderclap occurred when he stood in the batter's box and faced Darling.

Just like last time, Camp fell behind quickly, and he stared down the barrel of a 1-2 count. At 3:55 a.m., Camp was in a perfect position to certify his position as the all-time grand master of the fourth hour of the morning, game-tying homer.

Darling threw his pitch and Camp swung. Somehow, someway, the ball miraculously sneaked past the uber-fearsome batter. Strike three. Game over. Camp, the most disappointed hitter since Mudville cut Casey, slammed down his bat on the plate in frustration. One can only assume in his previous 168 at-bats he had never been nearly so upset by any of the 83 earlier times he'd fanned.

The fans weren't disappointed. How could they be after witnessing a game like that? Even the players in the Brave dugout stood and applauded as the game ended.

However, many others would soon be very upset. You see, like all games scheduled for the Fourth of July, this one advertised a fireworks display. And sure, even though the sky was beginning to lighten, the Braves began exploding their picturesque bombs promptly at 4:01 a.m. The noise woke up many in the neighborhood, causing many frightened souls to call the police, claiming Libya was bombing Atlanta!

In his book "If at First", Keith Hernandez described how the next day, Tom Gorman (I wrote about this in 2006 and erroneously said it was Terry Leach) received a call in his hotel room from a caller who simply said, "Rick Camp? You gotta be shitting me!" -- and promptly hung up. And the player Jaffe refers to was Danny Heep, who last time I saw him at the closing of Shea Stadium looked like he could still play.

July 4. Hot dogs. Baseball. Everything that makes America great. Except that these days, it doesn't feel so great. And watching the Mets reminds us that no matter how well you think you're doing, utter futility is just around the corner.

Shimes explains it all for you

My old buddy Shimes from my movie reviewing days was a voice sorely lacking for a few years while he attended taxidermy (law) school. But recently he's back, and not just talking about movies, either. You see, Shimes has the singular misfortune of being a Kansas City Royals fan, so he's in a unique position to examine the video of The Blown Call Heard Round the World as if it were the Zapruder film.

While you're over at Movie Day at the Court, bookmark it. Because when he really gets souced, Shimes writes like, well, James Joyce. No, the OTHER one.

Oh. Spring training has started? Really?

For nearly two decades, "pitchers and catchers" was a far more vivid harbinger of spring than Groundhog Day, or the first snowdrops trying to peek through the ground, or the fact that on the rare occasions when I actually leave the office at 5 PM (I never seem to actually leave "work", since most nights I'm working after dinner until bedtime) it's still light out.

This year, for us Mets fans, "pitchers and catchers" is mostly a time to sigh at what used to be and realize that it's become yet another "so what?" in our lives. If I'd had any stirrings at all about the approach of yet another season of Mets futility, the organization gave me a reminder this week when they demoted the longtime journeyman Omir Santos, who did nothing other than play his heart out, hitting .260 in 281 at bats with 7 home runs including one grand slam, on a team that was dropping like flies from injuries or showing appalling ineptitude, to AAA.

The Mets, who in recent weeks have been signing what looks like anyone still standing at the corner bar before last call, have brought no fewer than six catchers to spring training. The leading candidate for the starting job, and what passes for a Big Signing™ is Rod Barajas, a 35-year-old journeyman (Santos is six years younger) whose highest average was .254 in 2006 with the Texas Rangers, and who hit a sizzling .226 last year. As Bill Madden notes, 2010 is starting to look an awful lot like 1962. If the Wilpons want us to believe they didn't really lose $700 million to Bernie Madoff, they sure aren't doing a good job of it.

So, if you find American League baseball boring, and you simply feel that spending 2-1/2 hours or more every weekend on an organization that's so shitty it's enough to make one remember Marge Schott's Cincinnati Reds fondly, the only pleasure to be had from baseball this year is the writings of another former journeyman, Doug Glanville, who's been writing gorgeous prose about the sport he loves for the New York Times for over a year. If you, like me, just can't bear another season of craptacular baseball in Flushing, you could do worse than to just read.

And as we tell the 2009 Mets "Don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya"...

...along comes Rachel Maddow with a baseball story to let us long-suffering Mets fans, many of us going through a crisis of confidence as to whether we should at long last join the Dark Side of the Force which inhabits the Bronx, something basebally to smile about:

(h/t)

On the other hand, there are THESE Americans

Somehow I get the feeling that not one of the people who are screeching about "death panels" and "taking our country back" were involved in achieving this:

Hearts and minds, baby!

CeleBloggers

Unless you're enough of a geek to pay attention to the sidebars, which are only marginally less cluttered than my abode, you've probably missed a new blogroll category, CeleBloggers. Ordinarily I'm not one to link to blogs written by Famous People unless there's a good reason to do so, or unless their names are Sam Seder and Marc Maron, whose work we have adored lo these last five years.

But over the weekend I posted links to blogs by Roger Ebert and Lost's Jorge Garcia (Hurley). Ebert was a no-brainer. I wrote movie reviews for seven years and then took up blogging; Ebert has been writing movie reviews since seemingly the dawn of time, and then took up blogging -- and already he's better at it than I ever will be. Garcia was a whimsy pick, his blog being, well, Hurley-esque. And there's something just weird about a guy who plays a character who was marooned on an island -- twice -- in plane crashes (one seemingly deliberate) being pulled aside at the airport for additional security screening.

But tonight we add another CeleBlogger. I was considering reviving the "Brilliant at Baseball" box for the New York Mets, but after Mike Pelfrey fell off the mound for no reason last night, the Mets crawled back into a tie, Pedro Feliciano balked in what turned out to be the winning run and two ex-Mets, pitching far better for San Diego than they did for the Mets, proceeded to shut the Mets down for three innings, I just don't have the heart to do it. And that's not even mentioning the cat. So for now, we will just tuck Baseball Nerd, a.k.a. Mr. Keith Olbermann, away to knock back a few with Rog 'n' "Hurley". Call me a fair weather Mets fan if you must, but there's only so many times you can go through this.

A Spring Story.

I'm usually not one for inspirational, uplifting stories about the triumph over adversity. For one thing, they tend to be made into movies starring Robin Williams at his teary smarmiest. For another thing, they tend to paint a picture of a world where good people can triumph over anything, which is, of course, not the world we live in. But every now and then, a story cuts through even my cynicism and gives even me the warm fuzzies.

So since it's Easter Sunday, and there's bright sunshine here in New Jersey, I'd like you to meet Bryan Sullivan:

All Sullivan wanted was the chance to take the mound and play the game he watched on television, and he was willing to do whatever it took to live out his childhood dream.

He was 6-years old and a long way from becoming the winning pitcher for Paramus High School on opening day, which he was 11 days ago.

He never gave any thought to how daunting the realization of that dream was going to be.

“I watched two games and I fell in love with the game,” said Sullivan, a senior. “I was going to be a pitcher; I remember asking my dad, ‘Can I learn how to play baseball?’Ÿ”

The only promise his father, Steve, made was that they were going to try.

There were going to be challenges, considering Bryan was born with cerebral palsy and suffers from hemiparesis, or slight paralysis or weakness that affects the right side of his body.

He would be forced to learn how to catch and throw with only his left hand.

The Sullivans hoped for the day all Bryan would have to worry about was earning playing time, keeping his ERA down and adding a few miles per hour to his fastball, but they knew his quest would involve so much more.

“His determination was there from the very beginning,” said his mother, Donna. “He always believed that, with hard work, he could achieve anything.”

Bryan certainly has achieved something special, and not only with what he has done, but how he’s gone about doing it.

Today, the 18-year-old is a pitcher and a remarkable one at that, one of the greatest examples of what perseverance and dedication can produce, yet not without talent and an uncanny ability to master technique despite obvious physical limitations.

Bryan was not given the ball as Paramus’ starter April 1 against Kennedy – he earned it.

[snip]

To think this whole baseball thing started when Bryan was inspired by former Yankees one-handed pitcher Jim Abbott, whose presence on the mound – and his television screen — struck an emotional chord.

“I saw him pitch twice and it was like, ‘Maybe I can do that,’Ÿ” Bryan said.

The Sullivans started playing catch in their back yard with a Wiffle ball before moving onto a tennis ball, with Bryan attempting the glove transfer from his right to his left hand after throwing.

It took two years before Steve felt comfortable enough to move onto an official baseball.

Once they did, it was time to bring in outside help, and the list of coaches who have helped in the process is extensive. From Mike Rooney, the pitching coach at Rockland County College, to the Gilligan brothers, Lar and Dan, at the Academy of Pro Players, Bryan is grateful for the tremendous support he has received along the way.

“Nowadays every parent thinks they’ve got the next Babe Ruth, but Bryan never had that kind of pressure put on him,” his father said. “For him it’s always been about trying to be successful, and you don’t get to be successful without hard work and dedication, whatever challenge you might face. No one has worked harder.”

So you can imagine the pride Bryan felt against Kennedy when everything came together. He threw 59 pitches, 44 for strikes, and gave up one base hit in five innings en route to the Spartans’ 15-0 victory by mercy rule.

“It was exciting, but I wasn’t nervous,” he said. “I was having fun, doing what I always wanted to do.”

And make no mistake: this was not a one-time thing.

Bryan will pitch again for the Spartans, and he is expected to make an impact as Paramus continues its pursuit of league supremacy and County and State tournament berths.

His career on the diamond won’t end with high school graduation, either.

Rutgers-Newark coach Mark Rizzi was so impressed with what he saw from Bryan, he offered him something he’s always wanted: an opportunity to pitch, this time in college, and he was thrilled to accept a spot within the Division III program.

The World Series may yet represent the world in the next few years

With the new Mets ballpark being named by a Saudi-owned bank using our money, and these recent signings by the Pittsburgh Pirates, it may be time to start rooting for the team that plays at the confluence of the Allegheny, the Monongehela, and the Ohio rivers. Because this is pretty cool:

On Monday, the Pirates signed two young Indian pitchers, 20-year-old right-hander Dinesh Patel and 19-year-old southpaw Rinku Singh, as non-drafted free agents. Both will participate in the team's Minor League Spring Training next year.

"The Pirates are committed to creatively adding talent to our organization," general manager Neal Huntington said in a statement. "By adding these two young men, we are pleased to not only add two prospects to our system but also hope to open a pathway to an untapped market.

"We are intrigued by Patel's arm strength and Singh's frame and potential," he continued. "These young men have improved a tremendous amount in their six-month exposure to baseball, and we look forward to helping them continue to fulfill their potential."

The story of Patel and Singh is one that is made for the movies. Both were discovered while participating in India's Million Dollar Arm challenge that began last December. The event was designed to find the country's most powerful and accurate arm and had more than 30,000 participants.

The contest was the idea of JB Bernstein, a marketing agent best known for representing Barry Bonds. The contest was simple: The winner would be the person who could throw 85 mph or higher and consistently for strikes.

In addition to handing out a $100,000 cash prize to the winner of the contest, organizers also promised the winner training in the United States to prepare him to be scouted by Major League clubs.

Singh emerged as the winner of the country-wide contest despite having no previous baseball experience before entering the competition. However, a Major League scout was also intrigued with Patel, who threw harder but with less accuracy. As a result, Patel was offered the chance to come to the U.S. to train as well.

After the competition ended, Singh and Patel came to the U.S. to train with University of Southern California pitching coach Tom House. All that work built up to a Nov. 12 tryout, when both players threw in front of approximately 20 Major League baseball scouts with the hope of earning a Spring Training invitation. The two pitchers both reportedly threw in the low-90s at the tryout.

"They still have to learn how to play the game," House told MLB.com after the tryout. "Their talent is the upside, but it's going to take them a while to learn how to play. It's not going to take much to get them to sign, either. If you're looking at it as an organization, you can really develop these kids.

"I know they can pitch, but we have to teach them how to play the game. It's well worth the risk."

Singh and Patel were javelin throwers in high school. They have begun to learn English by watching Baseball Tonight since arriving in the U.S. They are also taking online courses to continue their studies of the language.

When it comes to the scouting reports, the 6-foot-2 Singh throws 89-90 mph and has a split-finger changeup pitch. The 5-foot-11 Patel throws a circle change and can reach 91-92 mph with his heater.

Monday's signings mark the Pirates' third international signing this offseason. Pittsburgh inked South African switch-hitting shortstop prospect Mpho Ngoepe, 18, earlier this fall. Ngoepe is expected to begin playing in the team's Gulf Coast rookie league next season.

In terms of language, what they really need to focus on learning is their clichés:

Even Doug Sisk was never booed like this

Preznit "I'll Drop Nukes On Iran If I Have To In Order To Show I'm Still Relevant" was the target of boo-birds last night at the Nationals/Braves opener at the new Nationals Park. When you consider how Carlos Delgado was booed for going back into the clubhouse instead of coming out for the National Anthem in the early years of the Iraq War, this is an astounding change of fortunes for this sniveling little man (who looks even smaller and more sniveling in the caverns of a baseball stadium:

As difficult as it is watching Lastings Milledge introduced in a Nationals uniform, it was worth it to see booing this loud. After all, they can't throw half the fans out of the stadium. The announcer tried to put lipstick on this pig by admiring the throw, but there's no getting around it: Americans simply detest this guy. And, Mr. Bush, THAT is going to be your legacy.

Smokin' Aces

Mets. Cardinals. At Port St. Lucie. 1 PM. Today. On SNY.

(h/t and photo: Metsgrrl)

Well, now we know why the Mets didn't re-sign Paul LoDuca

Just a few days ago, Mr. Brilliant and I were talking about what possible logic there could be in refusing to resign a sparkplug of a catcher who even in a slump year hit .272 and instead essentially trading Lastings Milledge for a .232-hitting catcher?

I guess now we know....which brings up the question: Did the Mets know?

I'm sure I wasn't the only one who looked at the roster of the all-steroid baseball team yesterday hoping to not to find too many Mets players. It's sort of like the time Reagan was shot and all I could think of was "Please don't let the guy who shot him be Jewish." For that matter, I'm sure every baseball fan approached the list hoping that his/her team wasn't too terribly tainted. That Lenny Dykstra was on steroids was no secret to anyone; between his pumped-up physique after the 1986 season and his myriad injuries late in his career, it was impossible to ignore. That Roger Clemens was still throwing hard well into his 40's, combined with his size, made him not a surprise either. Neither was the preponderance of Yankees on the list, given the organization's "Win at any price" philosophy.

What WAS a surprise was how many third-tier players there were on the list -- guys like Chris Donnells and Josias Manzanillo, whose careers were nasty, brutish, and short. We forget how many aspiring ball players scrape by on minor-league pay hoping against hope that they'll get to the big leagues. Even if their careers are short, an inexpensive by today's standards $5 million, three year deal can give a guy with few other options a chance at a relatively decent post-baseball life, if he's smart about his money during that short career. Without that edge that steroids gave them, guys like this were the baseball equivalent of Lana Clarkson, the still-aspiring actress whose time was running out at age 40 and ended up dead in Phil Spector's house -- just so much offal spat out of the giant sports-o-tainment maw.

I can't even say I have a problem with George Mitchell's judgment that it accomplishes nothing to administer retroactive punishment to these guys, especially when there was no banned substance policy in place when steroids were rampant in baseball and the choice was do what everyone else was doing or find yourself back in Springfield, USA delivering beer or working at Wal-Mart. And even for those star players, a disproportionate number of them passing through the Yankees organization, how can you hold it against them that they did what their employer expected them to do? When your organization wants a World Series win every year, and the back page of the Daily News and the Post; and the callers into the Mike and the Mad Dog show, like Vinnie from Queens and Jerome, will treat your failures as if they are somehow the end of the world?

What these guys did was the baseball equivalent of the 80-hour week -- whatever had to be done to get out a "quality product". The owners wanted the press. The fans wanted big, towering home runs. The players wanted to stay in the show. Everyone got what he wanted. So where's the problem?

The problem, of course, is that we still romanticize this game. The problem is that the Annie Savoy character in Bull Durham was right; that there IS a kind of poetry to baseball. It's the sport that best defines not "America" (that's football), but "Americana" -- that Charles Wysocki vision of what we want to think America is. It's what James Earl Jones as Terrence Mann says in Field of Dreams:

"The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and what could be again."

Just as we want to believe that our leaders can't possibly be as evil as George Bush and Dick Cheney appear to be because gosh darn it, we're America and we don't DO that sort of thing; we want to believe that our baseball players are pure, and that the sweet swing, the 95-mph fastball, the no-hitter, the 450-foot home run to win the game in the bottom of the ninth, are a result of that karmic magic that's baseball, not from an injection into the buttock before the game. It's the constant. It's what links us back to our fathers and grandfathers and a rural heritage many of us don't even have.

But just because we want to believe it doesn't make it true. And just as we must now face a world with the inescapable knowledge that we have allowed fear to control us to the extent that we are willing to tolerate torture practices for which we could condemn anyone else, we must now face a world where "sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains." Because that's the way the universe works. America isn't always right. And baseball players aren't always heroes.

Deal with it. And learn how to appreciate the bunt single.

I hereby declare this "National Holy Shit Day"

Here are the stories that made me say "Holy shit!" today:

1. Barroid has been indicted:
   
   

   Major League Baseball's all-time home run king Barry Bonds was indicted Thursday on perjury and obstruction justice charges, according to KTVU reporter Rita Williams.
   
   The five-count indictment -- four counts of perjury and one of obstruction of justice -- could put baseball's home run king in prison for up to 30 years.
   
   The White House quickly weighed in on the indictment. President Bush is a former owner of the Texas Rangers.
   
   "The president is very disappointed to hear this," Bush spokesman Tony Fratto said. "As this case is now in the criminal justice system, we will refrain from any further specific comments about it. But clearly this is a sad day for baseball."
   

   
   Yeah. And they "do not comment on an ongoing investigation", yada yada.


2. Leora McConnell, the dominatrix who allegedly taught George W. Bush all he knows about torture in the 1980's and who ran for governor of Nevada last year, is missing. (h/t: Jurassicpork)
   
3. David Bernstein, that wonderfully savvy radio guy hired by Mark Green to put "less substance" on the radio, who banished Sam Seder to three hours on Sunday (only one if you manage to get the New York affiiate) and decided that the ghastly "Lionel" was somehow a better choice, has had his job "eliminated". Where I come from, we call it "shitcanned." Note to Mark Green: Time to make nice with Marc Maron, arrange to give him the money the previous owners owed him after his divorce is final, and give the man the show he's deserved for the last two years, ever since Danny Goldberg decided to cancel Morning Sedition. And while you're at it, since Lionel probably has some iron-clad contract for some ungodly number of years, move Sam back to that 8-10 slot.
   

Fox Broadcasting's nightmare

I can almost taste the sweetness already. In mid-September, the baseball playoff picture looked as if it could contain another Boston/Yankees grudge match, a Subway Series, a bicoastal matchup of the Angels and Mets or Angels and Phillies; or Boston and the Diamondbacks, or any other combination a lot more exciting than what it looks like they're going to get: Cleveland vs. Colorado.

I can't say I'd be unhappy about this World Series matchup, which is one Cleveland win away from becoming reality after last night's 7-3 win over Boston. There's something to be said for the scrappy little teams ("little" being a relative term in baseball these days) beating out the Big Contract Juggernauts. Imagine a World Series without Alex Rodriguez, whose Big Brass Agent Scott Boras has the nerve to be demanding a 12-year, $400 million contract for a 32-year-old infielder. A World Series in which Lefty McDreamy's $126 million deal didn't even figure. A World Series in which Daisuke Matsuzaka isn't the pitching staff savior that the Red Sox thought they were getting when they paid $52 million for him.

As if this most magical postseason for the Colorado Rockies, golden-hued as it is with the "Win one for the Gipper" factor of potential World Series cash going to the pregnant widow of one of their minor league coaches who was killed by a line drive this season, didn't have enough movie-ready poignancy, there's also this:

At the top of the Rockies' lineup card, manager Clint Hurdle discreetly scrawls a tiny "64," circles the magic number and carries it near his heart night after miraculous night, as his team plays winning baseball that defies history and logic.

How to explain why the mysterious 64 means everything to a team doing what Babe Ruth or Sandy Koufax never dreamed?

It's a tale of wonder that must begin with a brave, dead boy.

"His name is Kyle," said Hurdle, elbows propped on the dugout railing, his face so heavy with emotion it pushes the manager's stare to the floor. "He's a hero to me."

Kyle Blakeman was a 15-year-old sophomore from ThunderRidge High School, a suburban kid who loved baseball and mac 'n' cheese. Late in summer, when the Rockies had swung big yet appeared on the verge of missing the playoffs for a 12th straight season, Blakeman died from a puzzling, rare cancer at 7:45 on the final Tuesday evening of August.

[snip]

"This is a story of a kid you want the world to hear," said Joanna Blakeman, whose late son proves it's possible to find a hero on any street in America.

[snip]

Faith can touch you anywhere, even the grocery store, where a tap on the shoulder by a stranger introduced Hurdle to a sick teenager two years ago. Genuine friendship blossomed.

Which is why Hurdle and Blakeman found themselves staring at each other across a hospital

bed on Aug. 24, knowing it could be the last of at least 20 conversations between two baseball lovers. "Give me something here to take the team some luck. You got a little?" Hurdle recalled asking Blakeman, after a loss to Pittsburgh had incited an ugly press conference with badgering questions about the debilitating loss.

"Luck? Oh, yeah," Blakeman told the manager. The kid possessed quiet courage and unbreakable toughness to the nth degree. A hospice bed, however, seemed a weird place for a slumping 66-64 ballclub with fading postseason dreams to search for good fortune.

"He looked at me like I was full of it," Hurdle recalled.

Blakeman, ever game, played along when the manager asked: "Got a favorite number?"

The kid said he had always worn No. 64 on the football field.

Perfect.

So Hurdle scribbled "64" on the top of the lineup card he filled out for the very next game at Coors Field, against Washington.

And no Hollywood screenwriter could dream what happened. In the bottom of the ninth inning, with the Rockies trailing by four runs, slugger Matt Holliday smacked a home run to spark a rally. Colorado won 6-5.

"I walked back in the hospital that night with this look on my face, and the nurses and family members are laughing at me, saying: 'What? You didn't think it would work?"' said Hurdle, who arrived past 11 p.m. to deliver the lineup card to his young buddy.

Within five days, the boy succumbed to renal medullary carcinoma, which attacks the kidneys first. Never heard of the disease? Only 100 cases have been confirmed worldwide. Doctors don't understand much about this cancer, except it strikes victims born with the sickle cell trait and usually kills within weeks.

And that is why baseball is more than a sport....it's a kind of bucolic magic in an urbanized world.

Of course there's still another game for Cleveland to win, but the Rockies have eight days till they have to play again. Of course a hot team can cool off a lot in eight days, but the way the Rockies have been going, you could probably ask them what our way out of Iraq is and they'd come up with the answer.

Somewhere in the Great Beyond, Steve Gilliard is laughing

(New York Daily News)

A good Christian boy like Andy Pettite must have thought it was one of the seven plagues of Revelation, as a swarm of gnats took over the infield out at Jacobs Field in Cleveland. It wasn't locusts, but it might as well have been, as the swarms tormented the Yankees' much-touted rookie reliever Joba Chamberlain. No matter how much I would love to see the Yankees get swept in four games, I had to feel badly for Chamberlin. My neck was itching just watching all those gnats alight on his neck. I just hope the fans don't give him too much shit in game 3 about looking more like Nuke Laloosh out there than the Heir Apparent to Mariano's Throne.

This was the wildest eighth and ninth innings I've ever seen not played by guys in blue-and-orange hats. And in the end, Luis Vizcaino gave up the winning run to Cleveland in the 11th.

Eff the effing Yankees.

Phillies and Yankers both come home down two games to none in their division series. Sweet. I'm rooting for a Rockies/Indians World Series, myself.