First off: hell yeah, Kaz Matsui. I feel very good about the big hits that Kaz got in game two to sink the Phillies; it seems like fitting closure to the troubled Kaz-Mets relationship. It was nice that Kaz could help avenge the team that he utterly disappointed—and I think that the fact that he did it in a way that was not actually useful to the Mets at all (i.e., he could have hit a lot against the Phillies in the regular season and hurt their playoff chances) reflects nicely on the horrible treatment that Kaz got at Shea. I had these thoughts before it happened, and actually spent the morning of game two trying to visualize Kaz coming up big against the Phillies—I was picturing a game winner off of Bret Myers in the ninth, but I’ll still take credit for having predicted a brilliant Kaz performance.
Whenever I watch a relief pitcher in the playoffs, I hope he gets lit-up, resulting in a decrease in trade value, and making him more likely to end up on the Mets.
Earlier in this blog, I might have implied that Bob Feller is either a hypocrite or a moron. This is probably true, but I approve of his recent threat to show up at a Cleveland Cavaliers game wearing a Pistons hat. This was made in response to Cavaliers Superstar Lebron James attending the Indians-Yankees series wearing a Yankees hat. It was revealed, when King James was questioned re: hat, that he had grown up a Yankees fan, because he rooted for all the teams that consistently won championships in his youth, the Cowboys, Bulls and Yankees. While I am not very dogmatic about fandom, and feel that people should root for whoever they want to (unless it’s the Braves, Yankees or Phillies) I think that just rooting for frontrunners is a kind of voluntary admission of an utter lack of character—which in this case jives with my overall perception of Lebron James. James is about as good at basketball as you can possibly be, but, more than another heavily marketed sports figure, James projects an aura of pure success that is almost hostile to any ideological concerns. When former minor NBA player John Amaechi came out of the closet and wrote a book about it, James was quoted as saying that he would not feel comfortable hearing such an admission from a teammate, for the peculiar reason that keeping one’s sexual orientation secret would violate the level of trust necessary in a basketball locker-room. In essence, James would never want to hear about a teammate coming out because James feels that being in the closet in the first place is a violation of trust; James is hostile to admissions of homosexuality because he is too accepting. Fortunately, before people confused themselves trying to figure out what he meant, and if it could possibly be anything other than a very underhanded and gutless way of supporting the somewhat hateful status quo while claiming a moral high ground, Tim Hardway went and said that he hated gay people, which was a significantly easier sentiment to dissect. Anyway, I hope that Feller follows through with his threat; leading James to wonder for about a second and a half what that weird old man in a Pistons hat was doing at a Cavaliers-Heat game.
John Amaechi/politicol correctness footnote: After Amaechi came out, a gay friend of mine asked me what his career numbers had been like, since he knew that looking them up was the sort of thing that I would do. I told him that they had not been very good at all, and added “but it’s probably pretty hard to put up dominant numbers when you’re going to gay bars every night and getting fucked in the ass with a paper bag over your head.” My friend said, “you know, I really wasn’t cool with what you were saying until you got to the phrase ‘paper-bag.’”
Showing posts with label Kaz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kaz. Show all posts
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Monday, June 4, 2007
Injuries Shaping Both New York Baseball Teams:
This was initially intended as an audition for the yet-to-be-created job of sports writer at Timessquare.com, but they haven’t gotten back to me and it is getting less topical by the minute:
The baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint. This is one of those things that players, coaches, and sports writers like to say until they are blue in the face—but fans and the press persist in acting like the Yankees, at twelve games out of the lead in the AL East, are in significantly better position than they were at thirteen.
Due to the length of the season, the frequency of games, and the nature of the game itself injuries are a more integral part of the baseball season than they are for other sports. Particularly, baseball teams have to be able to weather injuries to multiple players— good GM’s build them that way.
At the same time, no team could be expected to weather the injuries that have faced the Yankees. Initially it was their pitching, as first Chien-Ming Wang and Mike Mussina went to the DL, followed shortly by Jeff Krastens, Phil Hughes, and Darrell Rastner. Even Karl Pavano bravely overcame his brief bout of health, and is now scheduled for Tommy John surgery, which should end his Yankee career. However, they eventually reached a point of equilibrium with their pitching when Wang and Mussina returned, and now Roger Clemmens is expected momentarily to provide even more help on that front, but only in time for the injury bug to transfer itself to the offense. Hideki Matsui, Jason Giambi, and Johnny Dammon have been dealing with nagging injuries, hampering their games. Now Giambi is out for the rest of the season, just in time to avoid being suspended for admitting to doing steroids. At this point their ability to score runs seems to come and go with the pain in Dammon’s calf.
The Mets got beat the first time that they played with their entire opening day outfield injured, but all-star third basemen David Wright was joining them on the bench due to back-spasms. In fact, the Met’s starting second basemen, Jose Valentin, has been on the DL since April, and they played almost all of May without their number two starting pitcher, Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, and half of it without Moises Alou. The club is still waiting for Alou’s return; although Shawn Greene and Carlos Beltran, the other two outfielders, should be out for significantly less time.
But the injuries have not slowed the Mets down much, largely because, outside of El Duque (who is at best “pre-injured,” rather than healthy), they have been lucky enough avoid injuries to pitching. The Spring Training line-up that barely lost to Brandon Webb, might have beaten a less dominant pitcher. Indeed, many of the changes that the Mets have gone through as an organization are seen in their personnel at second base. In 2005 they had poor old Kaz Matsui— the most laughable and doomed of the Mets efforts to emulate the Yankees. In 2006, injuries to Anderson Hernandez and the continued awfulness of Kaz, forced them to experiment with Jose Valentin, a veteran form whom they had hoped for little more than the occasional pinch-hit. Valentin, however, played the position admirably, won the job of every-day second basemen, and became a valuable member of the ’06 Mets. He had continued to contribute for them into 2007, until he went down with injury—but he was replaced by Damion Easley who has also stepped up, fielding well and hitting seven home runs. Ruben Gotay has been filling in as Easely’s back-up, and he hasn’t been awful either.
To those of us out of the loop, it is impossible to tell weather the fact that the Mets have been regularly able to come up with a completely decent back-up option for second base and most other temporary needs is a result of managerial brilliance or dumb luck—but it is a huge part of why the Mets are holding onto a (admittedly not very impressive) lead in their division and the Yankees are hoping that a magnificent run of dominance and luck will have them in the Wild Card race sometime in August.
The baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint. This is one of those things that players, coaches, and sports writers like to say until they are blue in the face—but fans and the press persist in acting like the Yankees, at twelve games out of the lead in the AL East, are in significantly better position than they were at thirteen.
Due to the length of the season, the frequency of games, and the nature of the game itself injuries are a more integral part of the baseball season than they are for other sports. Particularly, baseball teams have to be able to weather injuries to multiple players— good GM’s build them that way.
At the same time, no team could be expected to weather the injuries that have faced the Yankees. Initially it was their pitching, as first Chien-Ming Wang and Mike Mussina went to the DL, followed shortly by Jeff Krastens, Phil Hughes, and Darrell Rastner. Even Karl Pavano bravely overcame his brief bout of health, and is now scheduled for Tommy John surgery, which should end his Yankee career. However, they eventually reached a point of equilibrium with their pitching when Wang and Mussina returned, and now Roger Clemmens is expected momentarily to provide even more help on that front, but only in time for the injury bug to transfer itself to the offense. Hideki Matsui, Jason Giambi, and Johnny Dammon have been dealing with nagging injuries, hampering their games. Now Giambi is out for the rest of the season, just in time to avoid being suspended for admitting to doing steroids. At this point their ability to score runs seems to come and go with the pain in Dammon’s calf.
The Mets got beat the first time that they played with their entire opening day outfield injured, but all-star third basemen David Wright was joining them on the bench due to back-spasms. In fact, the Met’s starting second basemen, Jose Valentin, has been on the DL since April, and they played almost all of May without their number two starting pitcher, Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, and half of it without Moises Alou. The club is still waiting for Alou’s return; although Shawn Greene and Carlos Beltran, the other two outfielders, should be out for significantly less time.
But the injuries have not slowed the Mets down much, largely because, outside of El Duque (who is at best “pre-injured,” rather than healthy), they have been lucky enough avoid injuries to pitching. The Spring Training line-up that barely lost to Brandon Webb, might have beaten a less dominant pitcher. Indeed, many of the changes that the Mets have gone through as an organization are seen in their personnel at second base. In 2005 they had poor old Kaz Matsui— the most laughable and doomed of the Mets efforts to emulate the Yankees. In 2006, injuries to Anderson Hernandez and the continued awfulness of Kaz, forced them to experiment with Jose Valentin, a veteran form whom they had hoped for little more than the occasional pinch-hit. Valentin, however, played the position admirably, won the job of every-day second basemen, and became a valuable member of the ’06 Mets. He had continued to contribute for them into 2007, until he went down with injury—but he was replaced by Damion Easley who has also stepped up, fielding well and hitting seven home runs. Ruben Gotay has been filling in as Easely’s back-up, and he hasn’t been awful either.
To those of us out of the loop, it is impossible to tell weather the fact that the Mets have been regularly able to come up with a completely decent back-up option for second base and most other temporary needs is a result of managerial brilliance or dumb luck—but it is a huge part of why the Mets are holding onto a (admittedly not very impressive) lead in their division and the Yankees are hoping that a magnificent run of dominance and luck will have them in the Wild Card race sometime in August.
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