In a stirring show of solidarity, Captain Red Ass is joined by Tom Glavine and David Wright, while running a gauntlet of newfangled digital recording devices at Shea Stadium this afternoon (photo swiped from Adam Rubin’s Daily News blog). On the far left, Jay Horowitz looks on, perhaps nostalgic for the days when the club’s catchers merely denied doing it with men.
Joe Benigno Gazingo’s heart-to-heart with Disco Paul can be heard here (windows media player required).
“There is never schtick involved when a guy has purchased a one-way ticket to Insaneville,” writes the Daily News’ Bob Raissman of Michael Kay’s recent radio implosion. Though I’m tempted to use the same jpg of Kay that I’ve employed on countless other occasions, David Schied suggests this alternative.
Catfish Stew’s Ken Arneson builds a monumental, in word-form, to the stellar glove work of Eric Chavez.
Though I thought Seth Mnookin’s evisceration of Matthew Sussman was kind of like dropping a neutron bomb on an anthill, I’m not nearly so troubled by Mnooking dropping a neutron bomb on the New York Times’ Murray Chass. It’s Chad Finn, however, who wins this week’s Proper Use Of The Bullshit Detector Award, by asking “Why is Josh Beckett on the cover of ESPN Magazine this week?”
Because their in-depth feature on gritty, gutty Matt Clement fell through? Seriously, the timing of this is more than a little curious – does that rag publish three months in advance or something?
You’d think after giving up 31 homers – one more than Manny has hit, for perspective – and watching his ERA teeter around the 5.00 mark, Beckett would have been open to adjustments long ago. Yet there he was, serving up straight 96 mph fastball after straight 96 mph fastball in his sixth-inning meltdown against Cleveland the other night, and I know I’m not the only one who noticed that neither Terry Francona nor Nipper visited the mound until the Indians had strung together seven straight hits. I almost wondered if he was left out there to learn a lesson. Then again, he doesn’t seem to have learned any so far. The reasons for his bizarre, practically bipolar pitching performances remain a mystery.
Regardless of which highlight program you tune in for, make an effort to hang around long enough to see Vlad Guerrero’s 2nd inning HR off Cleveland’s Jeremy Sowers. As soon as Guerrero stops clobbering nearly impossible pitches out of the park, I’ll stop calling him the best Bad Ball Hitter of his generation.