The Real "Curse of the Bambino"? Horrible Opening Day

Oy vey.

In the 7th inning, the 1st official game at the new "Yankee Stadium" was still Yankees 1, Cleveland Indians 1. If you'd told me before the game that would be the case, knowing what I know about our hitting and Mariano Rivera, I would have gladly taken that.

As ESPN's Lee Corso would say, "Not so fast, my friend!" First, CC Sabathia, pitching against the team that gave him his start, throws 122 pitches and doesn't even get out of the 6th, and the bullpen lets us fall behind 1-0. Then Jorge Posada hits the 1st home run in the new place, and it's 1-1. But in the 7th, it all blew up on our faces. Final score: Yanks 10, Tribe 2.

This was even worse than the Mets' opener at Pity Field. U-G-L-Y, you ain't got no alibi, you ugly. (Cheerleaders' chant from the film Wildcats.)

This better not be what I think it is: The real "Curse of the Bambino," Babe Ruth being mad that King George moved the Yankees out of his house and using his "baseball god" powers on the current Pinstriped crew.

It took the Boston Celtics 13 years out of the Boston Garden to win a World Championship -- in fact, until 2008 they'd never even gotten to the Conference Finals. The Montreal Canadiens moved out of the Montreal Forum at the same time, and I think they've won exactly one Playoff series since, still stuck on 24 Stanley Cups. (Yeah, there's 29 other teams that would love to be "stuck" like that.) Are the Yankees headed for the same? They'd better not be.

But I hope George was in the house, so he could see just how little the new Stadium he wanted so much helped the team.

At least -- no, at most -- Jorge hit the 1st home run in the new Stadium. He deserves it.

But I am furious at this result. It is completely unacceptable, and I don't care what kind of talent the Indians have. Yes, they're better than last year and their start this year would indicate, but we cannot allow things like this to happen.

The Yanks fall to 5-5, and the only saving grace for this season thus far is that the Red Sox are even worse.

And -- I can't believe I'm typing either half of this statement -- thank you, Commissioner Bud Selig, for suspending that twat Josh Beckett 6 games for his punk-ass behavior the other day. True, it's 6 games, not 6 appearances, meaning he'll likely miss only 1 start. But it's, well, a start. It means that the Red Sox will no longer be able to get away with such nonsense. Thank you, Bud, for teaching that cunt a lesson.

(UPDATE: That turned out to be wishful thinking, as Selig continued to let the Sox get away with that stuff until his 2014 retirement.)

"Twat"? "Cunt"? I've been reading too many British soccer blogs.

Nice job by the Devils in last night's Playoff opener against Carolina. I'll have more to say about them as the Playoffs move on.

Baseball's Start Gets Worse: Farewell to Harry and The Bird

A bad start for baseball got much worse today. We lost Harry Kalas.

One of the great baseball announcers of all time, he called games for the Phillies from the Veterans Stadium opener in 1971, through the near-misses of the late 1970s, to the 1980 World Championship that brought the Phils to the top of the baseball world after 98 years.

He called Steve Carlton's 300th win and 3,000 strikeout, and all 548 of Mike Schmidt's home runs including his 500th. He called no-hitters by Rick Wise, Tommy Greene and Kevin Millwood. He called  the Phillies' 1983 and 1993 Pennants, the Vet finale, the opening of Citizens Bank Park, and the 2008 World Championship that ended a 25-year drought for the entire city, to the start of the defense of that title.

Harry also narrated most of the Phillies' promotional videos and DVD, including a recent tribute to former partner Richie Ashburn, and some NFL Films work.

Once, happiness was sitting on a bench on a boardwalk overlooking the Jersey Shore, with a slice of pizza in one hand and a bottle of Pepsi in the other, listening to John Sterling and Michael Kay broadcast the Yankees on 770 WABC, then Bob Murphy and Gary Cohen with the Mets on 660 WFAN, and then spinning to 1210 (by whatever call letters) to hear Harry Kalas and Whitey (as Ashburn was known), later Harry and Larry Anderson, call the Phils.

Unlike Ashburn, the Hall of Fame center fielder who died in a New York hotel between games of a Phils-Mets series in 1997, Harry was found where he was happiest, in the broadcast booth, preparing for tonight's game in Washington against the Nationals.

Now, as the man himself might say, Harry the K is... outta here. Rest in peace, old friend.

*

And if that wasn't bad enough, we lost The Bird, Mark Fidrych.

He took the American League by storm in 1976, and when he pitched, the Detroit Tigers, then an awful team in a suffering city, went from an average attendance of 14,000 at already-creaky Tiger Stadium to 40,000. His start on ABC's Monday Night Baseball on June 28 was a national phenomenon, and he beat the soon-to-be-Pennant-winning Yankees 5-1.

He was just 21 years old, from a small town an hour's drive west of Boston, and he was as amazed by it as anyone else. He went 19-9 that year, led the AL in earned run average, and started for it in the All-Star Game. But it wasn't just that he was talented. He was also a big character.

He tried to explain that he would talk to himself on the mound, saying things like, "Settle down, you're getting too nervous." But somehow, it got around that he was "talking to the ball," telling it where he wanted it to go. He would smooth out the mound. He would walk over to an infielder who'd made a great play and shake his hand.

You see, in baseball, which has so often been culturally behind the times -- the world's 1970s were baseball's "Sixties" -- this was considered weird. What's wrong with thanking your fielder for making a great play, or fixing the mound the way you want it?

In Spring Training the next season, Fidrych, known as "the Bird" because his curly blond hair reminded someone of the Sesame Street character Big Bird -- hurt his knee. Trying to favor it, he hurt his shoulder, tearing his rotator cuff.

The amazing thing is -- forgive me if this sounds like a Yogi Berra line -- when he could pitch, he could still pitch. He had a nine-strikeout, no-walk 2-1 win over the Yankees that season. But he couldn't pitch without pain often enough, and that was his last season of any productiveness. After 1980, he was done, a nobody at 21, a superstar at 22, a has-been at 24.

The amazing thing about Fidrych is that he didn't look at his career as tragic. Even though he got hurt and left baseball before salaries really took off, he had the attitude of, "So what? It's not the end of the world. I've got another life." And for about 30 years, he did have another life, running a farm and a gas station in his hometown of Northborough, Massachusetts, population 14,155. He thought it was a good life, and who are we to doubt him?

Still, he accepted that baseball fans liked him, and participated in old-timers' games, the Tiger Stadium finale in 1999, things like that. I know this is going to sound like another Yogi-ism -- so what, Yogi was a character, too, and still is -- but it was good that the good things that happened to him happened to him.

Fidrych at the Tiger Stadium finale in 1999.

But this morning, he was working on his farm, trying to fix his truck, and an accident with it brought his strange and amazing life to a painful close. He was 54 years old.

Things like this often happen in threes. If anyone knows Ken Harrelson, or Bill Lee, or Jimmy Piersall, or anybody who is (or was) an announcer or a colorful ex-player (or both), tell him to be careful!

So long, gentlemen. Harold Norbert Kalas, 1936-2009. Mark Steven Fidrych, 1954-2009.

UPDATE: Jimmy Piersall died on June 3, 2017. As of January 1, 2021, Ken Harrelson and Bill Lee are still alive.

Bad Start for Baseball

Never, ever again start a baseball season on a Sunday night, especially in a cold-weather city like Philadelphia.

Always start the season in Cincinnati, or Washington with the President throwing out the first ball, as tradition says.

The President wasn't even available this time, so it didn't even matter that the Washington Nationals started the season on the road.

The Yankees got bad opening starts by CC Sabathia and Chien-Ming Wang, before this afternoon's fine start by A.J. Burnett. At least the bats are working so far.

And now, three games into the season for most teams, an active player has died. Nick Adenhart, just hours after pitching six shutout innings for the Angels, was killed in a car crash. He was only 22 years old.

To make matters worse, I'd never heard of him before. I hate when that happens, on top of feeling awful upon hearing of someone's death. Rest in peace, 1986-2009.

And seeing "1986" as the date of birth for someone who's died was also pretty chilling.

*

Congratulations to the University of North Carolina for winning another National Championship of college basketball. Roy Williams is a class act.

My college basketball picks are usually awful, but of my Final Four picks, two didn't make it, but the other two met in the Final, and the one I wanted to win it all, Carolina, did, over Michigan State.

Didn't you wish that Michael Jordan would suit up for the Heels and Magic Johnson for the Spartans? Just for a few minutes? Just for fun?

Yeah, right, as Jordan suggested in his Hall of Fame acceptance speech, for him, "fun" is all about fueling his competitive juices. Maybe his post-playing reputation hasn't taken the hit of, say, Pete Rose's, but his halo is tarnished.

I'm going to the Devils' regular-season finale on Saturday. After winning 22 of 27, they've now dropped 8 of 10. Not encouraging for the upcoming Playoffs, but at least they'll go in as Atlantic Division Champions and get a good seed.

Have the Nets given up on Brooklyn yet? The Devils and Seton Hall would love to have the Nets join them on Mulberry Street.

Do the Jets have a quarterback yet, or is the drive to clone Namath on yet?

Warning, explicit lyrics, after all this post is about the Rangers

Derek Jeter batting leadoff, with Johnny Damon batting second? I'm OK with it.

Brett Gardner starting in center field, not Melky Cabrera? I'm OK with it, especially if it leads to Melky waking up and playing like he did in 2006 and '07.

Now, if we can just get someone at 3rd base on whom we can rely... both before and after A-Roid comes back.

Tonight is a Devils-Rangers game, so I'm going to be like Colin Firth in the original, good-guys-won, soccer version of Fever Pitch:

"Jesus, Paul, you need medical help! You've got some sort of disease that turns people into miserable bastards!"

I... hate... the... fucking... Rangers.

There, I actually said it, instead of "freaking" or "f---ing." I hate the fucking Rangers.

No, I really shouldn't say that. Here's what I should say:

I hate the stupid cheating miserable dirty rotten low-down no-good fascist goddamned motherfucking Rangers!

And that would be true regardless of whether Sean (Not Man Enough to Even Qualify As a Punk) Avery were back with them.

Shut 'em down, Marty. Smack 'em around, boys. Light the lamp, Jamie, Patrik, Zach and Travis.

Hate the Rangers. Loathe them. Despise them. With a flaming scarlet-and-black passion.

Kick their sorry blue asses!

Mike Piazza Used Steroids: And Met Fans Know It!

This is what happens when I don't post in this blog for a month and a half: Big things happen, or are revealed.

Mike Piazza used steroids.

Murray Chass, former New York Times columnist and one of the great sportswriters of all time, blogged about it. If Chass writes it, chances are, it's right.

Mike Piazza was the symbol of the New York Mets from his 1998 arrival until he was pushed out in 2005... a story which has still never been truly explained. He is the most accomplished offensive player they've ever had, and ranks 2nd only to Tom Seaver among the franchise's playing legends.

And he used steroids.

So who's "the 2000 World Champions" now, Met fans? Because your boy is every bit as guilty as Roger Clemens!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, "We need proof." That's what we said when the Clemens allegations hit the media. And, right now, there's exactly the same amount of publicly-revealed proof on Clemens as there is on Piazza -- zilch. (Which is still less than we have on Alex Rodriguez, where we have an actual confession.)

This means that in the 2000 World Series, your juiced players weren't good enough to beat our players, juiced or not. It also explains why Piazza flipped out when Clemens threw that bat across the foul line, far enough away from Piazza to get a separate ZIP Code.

And I don't ever again want to hear "Mike Piazza is the greatest-hitting catcher of all time." No, he wasn't. Mickey Cochrane, Gabby Hartnett, Ernie Lombardi, Roy Campanella, Johnny Bench... oh yeah, and Bill Dickey and Yogi Berra. They were all better.

Jose Canseco once said that the difference between him (462 career home runs) and his "identical" twin brother Ozzie (462 less than Jose) was that Jose used steroids and Ozzie didn't.

Then again, Ozzie may have had Jim Bouton's problem with amphetamines: "In my case, greenies probably improved my performance about 5 percent. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough." After all, most of those suspended for steroid use thus far have been marginal players, as Ozzie Canseco was, and as Bouton became after his 1965 elbow injury that turned him from a kooky kid that the Yankees tolerated because he won 39 games in 2 years (1963-64, 41 if you count World Series games) into an injured has-been whose jokes weren't funny anymore... to them, anyway. (The Yankees' intolerance for nonconformists and controversy predates George Steinbrenner by decades.)

So... despite a rather pungent odor coming from the Prudential Center last night (the Devils blew a 1-0 lead to Carolina with 8 minutes left and lost 2-1), I'm going to spend most of this day chuckling and smirking.

Once again, the Flushing Heathen have nothing to say. And the Curse of Kevin Mitchell lives.

Presidential Baseball

A cartoon about the 1860 Presidential election,

showing the 4 major candidates as baseball players:

John Bell, Stephen A. Douglas, John C. Breckenridge,

and a still-beardless Abraham Lincoln.

February 12, 1809, 200 years ago today: Abraham Lincoln is born in Hodgenville, Kentucky.

Also on this day: Charles Robert Darwin is born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England.

Abe Lincoln and Charles Darwin seem to have no other connection, although Lincoln did bring about some serious evolution in America.

If we were to make a baseball team of all Presidents, who would be on it? Granted, no President has ever played professional ball -- and quite a few were around before the game itself. But let's speculate.

Surely, Lincoln would have to be on the team. He was tall and thin, but known for splitting rails, so maybe he could hit. With his long legs, he might be a good, fast, rangy center fielder. So we'll put him in center and bat him leadoff.

George Washington would have to be included. He was big and strong, and supposedly threw a silver dollar across Virginia's Rappahannock River in his youth. But a pitcher? I'm not sure. He seems to have had a nasty temper, not good for a pitcher. But he was very cool under pressure. Possibly a good choice for "the hot corner," 3rd base, where his good arm would be put to good use. So let's put him there, and in the middle of the lineup, somewhere between 3rd and 6th.

Along with Washington and Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt is considered one of the 3 greatest Presidents. But his polio makes him a bad choice to play. So I'll make him the manager.

Theodore Roosevelt? Not a pitcher. He liked to say, "Speak softly and carry a big stick, you will go far." Definitely a hitter. He was a bit of a control freak. Make him the catcher, have him call the signals. Actually, his successor, William Howard Taft, was a catcher, playing for Yale University. But I'll take the 225-pound TR over the 325-pound Will. "The Colonel" will bat cleanup, although his status as the first real "environmental President" has little to do with that.

The elder George Bush, like Taft, played baseball at Yale. He was a member of the Bulldog team that made the 1st 2 College World Series finals, in 1947 and '48 -- but lost both. But he's probably still the best baseball-playing President, even if the first ball he through to open Baltimore's Oriole Park at Camden Yards in 1992 fell short of the plate -- and boy, was that recession-plagued President booed for it! He played 1st base, and he does here as well, though at or near the bottom of the lineup.

Now, 2nd base requires quick thinking and quick movement, and is not conducive to large men. Tall men, maybe; large men, no. Andrew Jackson is my choice, and I'm guessing he would have liked hitting.

Shortstops need to be versatile. Aside from TR, no President had as varied a set of interests as Thomas Jefferson. Tall, not heavy but fairly strong, he'd match the model of shortstops set by Robin Yount and Alan Trammell in the late 1970s, followed by Cal Ripken in the 1980s and Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra and A-Roid in the 1990s. I'll bat him 3rd, and not just because he was the 3rd President.

That leaves left field and right field. I'll avoid the political definitions of "left" and "right." John F. Kennedy would probably get hurt too much, and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon would probably both complain about their place in the batting order. So they're all out.

Barack Obama is a lefthander, and the left fielder could be lefthanded, logistically speaking. We know he's a baseball fan (the White Sox), and he's showed some pretty good range so far. Hitting? He certainly hit Hillary Clinton and John McCain hard in the campaign. Put him 2nd in the order.

James Monroe is the only man to be both Secretary of State and Secretary of War (the post now called Secretary of Defense) at the same time. He was with Washington in the boat crossing the Delaware River on Christmas night, 1776. And he (along with his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams) created the Monroe Doctrine. Not sure what kind of hitter he'd be, but his defense would be good. Right field.

Both John Adamses, James Madison, Martin Van Buren, James Buchanan, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison? These men would be too short. The elder Adams, Ben Harrison, William McKinley, the aforementioned Will Taft, too fat. William Henry Harrison, James Polk, Chester Arthur, too sick. Franklin Pierce and Andrew Johnson, too drunk. Warren Harding and George W. Bush, too dumb. Calvin Coolidge, hated baseball. Herbert Hoover, would drop the ball. Jimmy Carter, would probably hold out for 444 days.

The pitching rotation could be: Ronald Reagan, who played Hall-of-Famer Grover Cleveland Alexander in the film The Winning Team; Bill Clinton, a strong, innings-eating lefthander who might know a trick pitch or two, given his nickname of Slick Willie; Gerald Ford, who was an All-American lineman at the University of Michigan and probably could play a little baseball; and Dwight D. Eisenhower, a calm, cool, corner-painting righthander, who with Reagan would balance out the rotation with lefties Bill and Jerry.

Grover Cleveland, rather chunky but a hard worker, could be a 5th starter or a long reliever, much like Alexander, who was named for him. Woodrow Wilson, who chose to "make the world safe for democracy," could be the closer, except he didn't do what he said he would do. So let's make him the setup man out of the bullpen. No, the closer has to be the cagey lefthander who put the finishing touches on World War II, Harry Truman.

So here's the lineup, with their sequential numbers being their "uniform numbers":

1. 16 CF Abraham Lincoln
2. 44 LF Barack Obama
3. 3 SS Thomas Jefferson
4. 26 C Theodore Roosevelt
5. 1 3B George Washington
6. 7 2B Andrew Jackson
7. 5 RF James Monroe
8. 41 1B George H.W. Bush
9. 40 P Ronald Reagan

Four Democrats (Obama, Jefferson, Jackson and Monroe), four Republicans (Lincoln, TR, Daddy Bush and Reagan), and the non-partisan Washington. Fair and balanced.

Bring on the other team.

"Leading off, the center fielder, Number 3, George 'the King' Hanover."

George III? In center field? That's crazy!

Play ball!

Cut Alex Rodriguez. Do It. Now.

How many chances is Alex Rodriguez supposed to get?

One thing is for damn sure: Anybody who now calls him "the best player in baseball" or "the man who should be playing shortstop for the Yankees" is a freaking fool. (Note: This was before I began regularly using profanity in this blog.)

Alex Rodriguez -- A-Roid -- should not be playing baseball for the New York Yankees. Or for any other team. He is a disgrace.

He has embarrassed everybody. His teammates. His manager and coaches. His team's management. His team's fans. The game itself. The fans of said game. His wife.

This, on top of his performance, which has often been glorious from April through September, but hopeless in October.

Yesterday, I was at Nevada Smith's, the New York bar that shows soccer games from around the world on multiple big screens, and bills itself as "Where Football Is Religion."

They showed Arsenal against their nearby North London arch-rivals, Tottenham Hotspur. Spurs recently got former (and again) captain Robbie Keane back from Liverpool, where he was awful. And they paid more for Keane than they got from selling him to Liverpool. And whenever he was on the screen, the Arsenal fans chanted, "What a waste of money! What a waste of money! What a waste of money!"

Not more than A-Roid. The Yankees have invested so much in him, money as well as public relations, and what has he done for them? Made a little money back.

The New York Yankees are about winning World Series first and making money second.

Note: The following was written before A-Rod's great, and by all evidence clean, 2009 World Championship season -- but also before he got suspended for steroid use for the entire 2014 season.

Alex Rodriguez is about Alex Rodriguez first, second, third, fourth, etc.

This after Derek Jeter -- who was probably thinking, in the words of that great New Yorker Herman Melville, "I would prefer not to" -- publicly stood up for him following the controversy over former manager Joe Torre saying in his book that A-Rod was nicknamed "A-Fraud" by his teammates.

They were right. And the whole damn world knows it.

It is time to cut Rodriguez loose. And if the Players' Association (the ballplayers' union) objects, tough. I don't care what it costs the Yankees to get rid of A-Rod: If he stays with them, he will cost them far more than money.

Hank Steinbrenner, Hal Steinbrenner, Randy Levine, Lonn Trost, Brian Cashman... Gentlemen, you have to do it.

Cut Alex Rodriguez.

Do it.

Now.

*

A great shock in Mike Lupica's column in yesterday's Daily News: He finally admitted that his Mets have the biggest payroll in the National League.

Tonight, Devils vs. Rangers at the Prudential Center. The Devils better win this one, because after this new A-Fraud mess, that disgusting display at Black-and-White Hart Lane (I call it that because Spurs haven't won the League since 1961 and that wasn't on color film), and Rutgers' basketball team operating with all the efficiency of a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest, I could use a win over the Blueshirted Scum.