Bud Selig believes that baseball is in the midst of a great renaissance. Lou Piniella thinks the Devil Rays need a kick in the pants to get them going. Josh Beckett wasn’t too pleased to hear that Junior Griffey had stared him down following a home run. Kenny Williams admits that he might do something stupid to win this year. Gary Sheffield can’t explain his season-long slump. And Bob Brenly doesn’t care that his team is finally making its way home. All this and many more quips from around the league in your Tuesday edition of The Week In Quotes.
I kicked off a mostly lazy Memorial Day weekend by catching the Dodgers and
Diamondbacks Friday night at Dodger Stadium.
Normally, I’d throw together a game report, but it was more a social event
than a working night for me. Sophia and I were there with our friends Shelly
and E.J., and unfortunately, the vagaries of L.A. traffic kept everyone from
getting in before the bottom of the second. Without a scorecard, and with a
lot of conversation about an adorable one-year-old (not ours), an impending
move to Arizona (also not ours), and a retirement (no, again), I don’t have
nearly the remembrance of detail to provide a good report. Randy
Johnson was dominant for five innings, Cesar Izturis
made a great grab to start a double play, and Bob Brenly pulled some
head-scratching moves with his relievers.
While at the game I did pick up, and fill out, an All-Star ballot. Like reading box
scores, the practice of punching out chads while sitting in Row J has
fallen victim to the Internet Age. Now, you can log on at MLB.com and ballot-stuff to
your heart’s content. For some reason, Internet ballots are capped at 25 per
person, while any season-ticket holder with an awl and some free time can pop
out a couple thousand during the balloting period. I’m not advocating either,
but I don’t think some guy with a man crush on Raul Ibanez
does any more damage to the process than the entire nation of Japan getting
second-tier outfielders into the AL’s starting lineup.
Hi. My name is Jim Baker and what follows is what I
will be doing at Baseball Prospectus. Twice a week,
I’ll select four games based on some very rigid
criteria and write about them or the teams involved.
Every Tuesday and Friday, you’ll see a Best Matchup, a
Worst Matchup, a Biggest Mismatchup and a Closest
Matchup. How do I know these games actually fit their
billing? Simple, I use the won-loss records of the teams
involved.
Is that scientific? Hell no!
But it gives me a platform to state a case about any
number of things both germane and tangential (not to
be confused with the Vaudeville act of the same name)
to the match-up at hand. I could make it more
scientific by only using the Pythagorean records of
the teams involved, but the key to enjoying this column
is not to get too caught up in the billing–or the
methodology of how the billings were conceived.
What are my credentials? For one thing, I am related
by blood to every single current member of Baseball
Prospectus, so my arrival here owes something to
nepotism. Apart from that, I was once Bill James’
assistant and contributed to the first edition of the
Historical Baseball Abstract. I’ve spent the past two
years writing for ESPN.com, primarily on the MLB
Insider page.
Enjoy.