America’s favorite pastime
Ah, spring! Todd Snider with a song about Dock Ellis’s no-hitter on LSD:
Archive | The American Game
Marlins
I think they’ll find that the building of the stadium as a quasi-public work had more to do with who got the bond and insurance deals:
For two decades now, Major League Baseball has funded its rise from corporate slacker to gilded cash cow on the backs of taxpayers bullied into building new stadiums. It’s a marvel the government took so long to sniff out the rot that emanates from these deals, though not much of a surprise that the Miami Marlins were the target when they did.
The Security and Exchange Commission on Thursday launched guided warheads at the Marlins, requesting the team’s financial records, communications with MLB officials including commissioner Bud Selig, minutes of meetings with local government leaders and political campaign-contribution information, according to a report in the Miami Herald.
While the subpoenas issued by the SEC do not explicitly detail the purpose of the investigation, the feds’ motives are evident: They want to understand how, exactly, a group of county commissioners agreed to fund 80 percent of the Marlins new stadium, which cost more than $600 million, without ever seeing the team’s financial records – and whether bribes had anything to do with it.
We love you, Joe Pa
Here we are again, wondering where to draw the line between fans and fanatics, admirers and cultists, loyalty and blind obedience to the great leader. More here.
Argghh
I was moaning to Amato this afternoon that I just knew Ryan Howard would lose tonight’s game for us, I just knew it. He said nah, you got Halladay, the Phillies will be fine.
But as a lifelong Philadelphian, I have a finely-calibrated nose for the stench of collapse. Oh well!
Holding my breath
If this baseball season produces nothing else of note, the fans shouldn’t be too disappointed. Wednesday night’s incomparably thrilling down-to-the-wire four-city wild-card rumpus will be hard to top.
But the 2011 postseason, which starts Friday, does have the potential to create another anomalous spectacle worth staying up late for: the best pitching matchup in World Series history.
Should the American League’s Detroit Tigers and the National League’s Philadelphia Phillies advance to the Fall Classic with their current rosters intact, the first game between them would likely pit Philadelphia ace Roy Halladay, who has 19 wins, 220 strikeouts and a 2.35 earned-run average, against Detroit’s Justin Verlander, who has 24 wins, a 2.40 ERA and 250 strikeouts.
By the numbers, these are the two best pitchers in baseball this season. But they’re also two of the best pitchers to climb a mound in the last 10 years. Together, they’d be better than the pairing of Sandy Koufax and Whitey Ford in 1963, better than the duo of Koufax and Jim Kaat two years later and better than the famous 1948 showdown between Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians and Johnny Sain of the Boston Braves.
If Halladay and Verlander met in the World Series, they’d be one of the six highest-rated pairings ever and, of that elite group, the most evenly matched. Ricky Bottalico, a former pitcher who’s a baseball analyst for Comcast SportsNet in Philadelphia, calls the possible matchup a tantalizing one. “Those two guys are so far beyond anyone else,” he says.
Choked
Red Sox and the Braves. Fans, I feel your deep, primal pain, having been there far too many times myself.
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