Happy Birthday, Uncle Sam!
My Dad used to say that the summer was "half shot" on the 4th of July. I never could figure that out -- we had only been out of school a month and had two months of summer vacation left. I notice, though, that the Twins have played 81 games. Maybe that's what he was talking about.
As I have documented several times before, I went to my first professional baseball game on July 4, 1973. It was a glorious night with 49,000 people crammed into the ballpark and fireworks afterward. Do you remember your first game?
A pair of ex-Twins are included on the Independence Day birthday list:
United States of America (1776)
Mickey Welch (1859)
George Mullin (1880)
Chuck Tanner (1929)
Bill Tuttle (1929)
Hal Lanier (1942)
Jose Oquendo (1963)
Vinny Castilla (1967)
Jay Canizaro (1973)
Ok, you got me. Canizaro and...??
Bill Tuttle, Twins outfielder from 1961-63. He was acquired from Kansas City with a player to be named later for Reno Bertoia, Paul Giel, and another player to be named later. The player sent to Kansas City turned out to be cash, not Norm or Dave, but actual dollars. The player sent to Minnesota turned out to be Paul Giel, so that he was essentially traded for himself. Tuttle played in 239 games for the Twins, batting .236 with six home runs and 51 runs batted in. His years with Minnesota were the last of a twelve-year career.
If I remember right, Bill Tuttle lost a good chunk of his face to cancer from chewing tobacco, and was a big part of the campaign to get ballplayers to quit. Yep, wiki-confirmed.
Slowey to the DL, Potsy McSmokesalot called up
from a line drive last september???!!! that sounds a little fishy.
then again, after last night, they probably need another pitcher for a few days.
oooh. I just now noticed that baseball-ref now gives career splits by franchise in the player stats. Sooo cool.
I don't know, he's been bad enough the last couple of starts that I wouldn't be surprised if he had a legit injury and he has pitched well enough overall that I don't think they would fake an injury to put him on the DL.
It's interesting that the Twins are the only team to have 11 pitchers on the roster right now. (I take it that 12 is the new standard.) Not very long ago, carrying 11 pitchers instead of 10 was a somewhat controversial move.
this was the first game I ever went to:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIN/MIN200004160.shtml
yep, that really happened.
Give up 5 runs before recording the second out. Then retire 23 of the next 26. Not too shabby... should have had Guardado start the game and Mays pitch the final 8 innings.
Oh, you mean what Ponson did.
Went to the Snappers game last night, and consumed many Gray's Bully Porters ($4.50 for a 20 oz. Nice.) They got up early 4-0 on the strength of Aaron Hicks and a Ramon Santana two-run shot, of which I got a pretty awesome picture at the point of contact that was sadly blurry. Sadly, they ended up losing 5-4. The catcher for the Kernels had a pretty rough game, getting bowled over by James Beresford on a Hicks double and later on catching a foul ball in the grapefruits.
I did get an awesome picture that you won't see anywhere but low-Single A ball:
Oh, and I got a pretty good shot of the play at the plate.
The Star-Spangled Banner as you've never heard it before.
The Star Spangled Banner, like you've never heard itThat columnist that everybody else seems to think is so great produced another gem.
Yeah... Read that this morning and just groaned through the entire thing. Should've stopped here:
Sigh.
So the headline is, "Twins' failure to rip off Rays alters Central," but then pretty much the whole piece is Reusse mocking a "citizen journalist" (i.e. blogger) for apparently misjudging the futures of two players involved in a Tigers-Rays trade last winter. He never does get around to discussing Bill Smith's deal with Tampa Bay.
He only touches on the headline when he writes in conclusion, "A key reason the Tigers are the team being chased is they did what tradition dictated when making a trade with the Rays: robbed 'em." Ah, so TRADITION is the key, you say?!! So, tell me again, does that reflect badly on the Twins... or that pathetic blogger?
And did Reusse always know that the Tigers were robbing the Rays there? Did the traditional stats tell him something that the stupid blogger missed? (Jackson last year was 14-11 with a 4.42 ERA, 101 ERA+, and 1.51 WHIP in 183 IP, at age 24, his best season in the majors to that point.) I'm pathetically confused.
I think you may have missed the jump to the second page of the article. Reusse spends some time pontificating about other horrible trades the Rays have made in the past (most or all of which were made under different management teams than their current one). Stuff like Bobby Abreu for Kevin Stocker, for instance, although he also mentions the Victor Zambrano for Scott Kazmir trade which everyone knew at the time was a winner for the Rays.
My problem with the article is he seems to think the Jackson for Joyce trade was somehow a huge fleecing of the Rays, which I don't think it was. Joyce looks like he's going to be a good corner outfielder soon enough; the Rays just haven't needed him in the big leagues up to this point since they have the two Gabes in RF. They also didn't need Jackson any more (they also traded another starter to Colorado before the season, and still didn't start the year with David Price in the rotation). Jackson's turn around this year has been great for the Tigers, but it didn't look like he was ever going to get this good before this year.
You're right, I missed the jump. Still, that's really burying the lede. Nearly the whole first page is dedicated to a gratuitous shot at a blogger who means nothing to Reusse or the ostensible theme of the story. Can the Strib still afford to keep editors on the payroll, or what?
I'd also agree that it seems soon to make a definitive judgment on Joyce. He's 24, has a solid minor league batting record, and I assume he has good speed and arm since he plays all the OF positions in AAA.
Reusse has a huge blind spot when he starts attacking bloggers. When he actually sits down and writes about baseball, though, he's as good as anyone in the mainstream media.
I agree he's pretty good when he's writing about talking to players about playing the game. But this column is not that kind of column, and I think his analysis in the whole piece is bunk, beyond just the part about attacking bloggers. When he writes any kind of piece like this, I think he stretches past the limits of what he's able to write about effectively.
Steve McNair dead along with an unidentified woman.
Sunday's birthday list:
Jack Farrell (1857)
Doc Amole (1878)
Bump Hadley (1904)
Curt Blefary (1943)
Gary Matthews (1950)
Rich Gossage (1951)
Dave Eiland (1966)
Tim Worrell (1967)
Jesse Crain (1981)
I have never heard of Doc Amole, but he must have been pretty good to have an avocado-based condiment named after him.