Smoltzy a Johnny come lately?

I’m not sure how John Smoltz is viewed on the national baseball scene. I’ve always considered him a very good pitcher, not necessarily a great one. I’ve changed my mind.

The Atlanta Braves ace right handed hurler recently became the first pitcher in major league history to notch 100 saves, and 3,000 strikeouts. There’s a difficult feat for you, baseball fans. He was the Braves’ closer for four full seasons, limiting his strikeout opportunities, and racking up over 100 saves during the relatively brief time he was slamming the door on opponents, is exceptional.

And, lest we forget, he has over 200 wins and a career ERA in the 3.25 range. 

I saw Smoltzy pitch in maybe the best baseball game I’ve ever seen - Game 7 of the 1991 World Series against the Twins. Jack Morris pitched ten innings of shutout ball to beat the Braves. Smoltz pitched the other half of the masterpiece, but fell one step behind Blackjack.

John Smoltz will be a Hall of Famer.  

Cable disabled . . . fantasy unable

I moved my home last week and as a result of  poor service from Comcast, found myself without cable TV and Internet service for a few days. Fantasy baseball life is not the same without the convenience of technology – but I survive.

In fact, I thrived. I listened to the Twins on the radio, one of my favorite pastimes, even when TV is available. (Dan Gladden, by the way, is a great analyst – if you know what it is he’s tying to say. Grammar and baseball don’t by necessity belong together.) And, I reunited myself with morning-after newspaper boxscores.

The glory days of boxscores in our local rag are likely behind us. Heck, you can get boxscores on-line during games, updated instantaneously. Anticipation of results for your favorite fantasy studs and duds has gone by the wayside.  Why wait.

Well, waiting was fun. I went to bed a few nights not knowing much of my daily fantasy fate. I couldn’t wait to get to a store and buy a newspaper the next morning. I poured over the boxscores like a little kid in a candy store; opening a handful of bubble-gum filled baseball card packs.

The tech world is great, and makes the fantasy sports world go ’round. A pause in the need-to-know habit was refreshing, and reminded me how OK life will be if I miss an evening or two of instant information.

 

Steroid Suspensions Bouncing

A couple of days ago, I read about Jay Gibbons and Jose Guillen having their fifteen-game steroid use suspensions dropped by MLB. I didn’t realize until today that those droppings were only the beginning of a larger pile of debris being plopped on baseball fans.

MLB and the MLBPA have agreed to a new drug policy and the agreement includes amnesty for all players named as performance enhancing drug users in the Mitchell Report; all eighty-nine of them. The players will not be punished for abusing the law and breaking baseball’s rules.

Fans, on the other hand, are left holding the bag of droppings. We’re left with years – maybe twenty – of player performance that included cheating, and produced fraudulent individual and team results. By not penalizing  players, MLB is saying “let’s forget the whole thing,” and expects their paying customers to follow suit.

We will. Baseball is in our blood and without it life simply wouldn’t be as cool a place for many of us baseball crazies. We’re not going to protest by avoiding the ballparks; I’m not going to miss the Twins v. Royals on TV tonight.  

No . . . there’s nothing we can do about the plopped droppings settled at our feet by a business that holds us hostage; captives of our own love for a game they manage for themselves.

 

Pitching! Pitching! Pitching! . . . Oops!

My newly designed fantasy strategy of employing the best starting pitchers in baseball at outrageously high salaries, took a beating during the first week of the season. Verlander, Sabathia and Oswalt got rocked. Adding insult to injury, two of my relievers tanked in their first outings of the season; Kerry Wood and Manny Corpas.

The saving grace, of course, is baseball’s season is long, and there’s plenty of time to re-coop the losses. My “cheap” hitters, the one’s allowing me to pay penthouse prices for the pitchers, are doing great, at least with their batting averages. If they keep it up, and the old reliables come through, I’ll have a chance to be competitive – if the pitchers pitch up to expectations.

Evryone on Earth is predicting a huge season for Johan Santana, and he’s living up to the hype. Yes, I miss believing the Twins will win every fifth game, but Carlos Gomez is a blast, even if nearly half his hits have been bunt singles. He’s in my fantasy lineup now; Go-Go Gomez!