Tuesday, July 15, 2008
So, Josh Hamilton, huh? I think he can maybe hit the baseball a little bit.
I have to admit that I had basically no expectations for the Home Run Derby. All Star festivities are generally just too much for me-- I get bored with the endless, pointless ceremony; the speeches given by people who, like Chris Berman, really have no business giving speeches; the treatment of the selections as a Srs Big Deal when they're really, REALLY not (see: Varitek, Jason); and so on. The Yankee Stadium lustfest that is this year's All Star Big Story doesn't help either. I'm sure I'd love it if I was a Yankee fan, but since I'm very much NOT, I am more annoyed by it than anything else. WE GET IT ALREADY.
Thing is, I know it's a historic stadium and historical shit happened there and like the entire Hall of Fame played there and what-the-fuck-ever. BUT IT'S NOT EVEN THAT OLD. It's not like this is Fenway or Wrigley. For cats' sake, THEY'RE KNOCKING DOWN TIGER STADIUM EVEN AS WE SPEAK and that gets MAYBE a mention and a couple seconds of video on Sportscenter. Yankee Stadium gets a bloody memorial service. I know that I'm biased, I know that full well, but I think that most everyone who is not a Yankee fan is getting sick of endless parade of wankery.
I mean, I've been to Yankee Stadium. It was kinda cool. It was interesting. It was (gasp!) historically significant and I appreciated that. HOWEVER, it was NOT a spectacularly beautiful park like Comerica or PNC, and it is NOT a perhaps-inconvenient-but-overwhelmingly-charming-due-to-its-age kinda park like Fenway or Wrigley. It originally opened in the '20s, sure, but it doesn't look like a ballpark from the '20s. It looks like a ballpark from the mid-70s, which is essentially what it is, after the remodel.
I'm not trying to hate on Yankee Stadium. Normally I am perfectly content to leave it for the (understandable!) enjoyment of Yankee fans. But this All Star crap is driving me crazy, because they're treating the place like a veritable Wonder of the World, and it just... isn't.
Anyways. Josh Hamilton!
Like I was saying before I got sidetracked into rant-mode, I had few expectations for the Home Run Derby. I had it on for the sake of having it on, but I was doing work on the computer at the same time and was only kind of watching it.
Now, I'm aware of the Josh Hamilton Story. Everyone, at this point, is aware of the Josh Hamilton Story. I know some people who derive immense amounts of joy from the Josh Hamilton Story. Personally speaking, it always skeeved me out a little bit. Of course it's awesome and great that he overcame alcoholism and heroin addiction to get back to where he is now, but I always felt wicked bad for the (Devil) Rays, who believed in him first and really got screwed over by the whole thing.
While it's good for him that finding God helped him to overcome his Issues, y'know, to each their own, it always makes me wince a little to hear another ballplayer thanking Jesus after he had a good game. Like, really? I'm with Jim Bouton on this one-- I'm waiting for the ballplayer who thanks evolution for helping him develop the hand-eye coordination he needed to hit a big homerun. And of course there's the whole race issue, which is not Josh Hamilton's own fault, of course, and many other people have already addressed it in many other places.
The point (there's a point?) is that I was pre-conditioned to be underwhelmed by the Derby, and that while I admit to the awesomeity of his story, I haven't exactly been wholeheartedly squeeing over Josh Hamilton this season.
Then he started hitting.
And you know what? It didn't matter. It didn't matter that this was a player with a somewhat controversial and probably heart warming story. It didn't matter that this was taking place during one of the most overblown 'events' of the season. It didn't matter that ESPN had like 12 guys announcing it and a single announcer would have sufficed.
I defy anyone-- ANYONE-- to watch Josh Hamilton hitting those homeruns and NOT enjoy it. It was impressive and spectacular and it was damn near impossible to keep from saying, "Wow," and, "Holy freaking cats," at the TV. It was awesome in the sense that it actually inspired awe. It was FUN. It was, probably, what the Home Run Derby SHOULD be.
Of course then there was the let-down of the second round, and the hilarious sadness of Justin Morneau actually winning in the end (getting both snubbed for the post-derby interview AND called 'Jason' by the guy giving him his check). But for that period of time when Hamilton was batting during the first round... that was what this crazy All Star crap should be all about.
(Josh Hamilton photo from a Red Sox/Rangers game in mid-April of this season.)Labels: All Star Game, baseball, Home Run Derby, Josh Hamilton, MLB, Yankee Stadium
4:56 PM
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
As soon as Papi got knocked out of the race, I started rooting for Ryan Howard to win. Not because I have any particular attachment to Ryan Howard, or because I have some burning hidden dislike for David Wright or Miguel Cabrera, but instead because I actually have photos of Ryan Howard and I've never seen the other guys in person. And c'mon, when else am I gonna have a chance to use any of these damn Ryan Howard photos?
Yeah. I love viewing baseball through a teleconversion lens. This is because I am wholly insane.
And in any event, there's no shame in Papi not winning the whole thing, despite the fact that I think Joe Morgan might have urinated in his own pants if such an event had occurred. I honestly don't know how, after that 19 freakin' inning game we just had, Ortiz was still standing upright, let alone launching a single ball into the river. The fact that he hit as many homeruns as he did is a testament to his stamina, his greatness, his general Papiness, and all that is good with the world. Most things pertaining to David Ortiz come around to that in the end.
My favorite part of the Home Run Derby isn't the home run hitting part anyhow, although it was fun this year to see the kayakers hurl themselves into the Allegheny in search of a ball. I do hope that water was clean. I mean, I probably wouldn't hurl myself headlong into the Charles these days, and they've done a lot to improve the Charles*.
No, the best part of the Derby by far is getting to watch all the ballplayers sit around on the sidelines and goof around with their kids and with each other. You get to see the old hands at this sort of thing kicking back and relaxing (Pudge schmoozing with everyone), and you get to see the guys who are clearly painfully excited to be there, usually with video cameras in tow (Brian McCann was adorably filming everything he possibly could, and Mark Loretta broke his camera out for Ortiz's at-bats).
The best bit is watching Ryan Howard offer his bat to his son for a kiss on the wooden barrel before going up to the plate, and watching David Ortiz let his littlest curly-haired offspring play with one of his batting gloves to keep it busy. You wonder how much of this the baby Pierzynski (wearing, I might add, an entirely hideous headband thing) is going to remember when she's older, and you can clearly see how much the kids who are old enough to appreciate it, do.
It was funny watching Paul LoDuca pitch to David Wright, especially because the dynamic between them, as pitcher and batter, was hilarious. And every time Wright (or anyone else) swore after making an "out", the entire sound feed would go dead for a second. That's what you get for miking up players when they're batting, ESPN. I suppose they must've had the whole thing on a delay of a second or two, or else the whole country would've been hearing David Wright yell, "Shit!" as he hit a big arching flyball out.
Jon(athan) Papelbon telling the TV guys that he had $100,000 on Ortiz to win it all was priceless, especially because you had no idea if he was joking, a little bit joking, or entirely serious. And he had some deranged giant-lensed video camera that he was shooting with at points too, which, combined with his backwards hat, made him look like an immensely loveable dork.
All in all I think that turned out to be a pretty painless Home Run Derby. Nobody blew out their oblique swinging for the fences, the Bermanisms were diluted by the fact that there were so many other people announcing this year. Miguel Tejada seemed to have a snotload of fun, as he does every year. The only Yankee in evidence was Robison Cano, snuggling up to Papi and his brood (where were ARod and Jeter? tsk tsk).
I won't talk about the aesthetic nightmare that is the jerseys until after the actual All Star Game.
*I remember when I was in elementary school, I think 5th grade, we had a poster-making contest where we designed these childish little posters intended to tug at the heartstrings of some lawmaker or other, begging them to clean up the Charles/Boston Harbor. This was back when one whiff of the water from the shore would be enough to mutate small amphibians. I mean it was really bad, back then. Sometimes the surface of the water would be all sorts of interesting colors, and I don't mean shades of blue or green. And the stuff you would see floating in there... urgh.
In 1988, Boston Harbor was the dirtiest harbor in America. And the Charles was just as bad.
There was a massive cleaning campaign, I think in 1995, which would just about jibe with my memory of us doing our pathetic little elementary school part in 5th grade. Things are a lot better now. The Harbor especially is thriving (a few nights ago I was down on the HarborWalk with Amy, and we saw tons and tons of jellyfish floating around in the night-darkened water. It was wicked pretty. So was the view.), and if you dip a foot into the Charles from the back of your MIT sailboat or something, you probably won't get cancer anymore.
But I still wouldn't go diving in it.
This pointless footnote brought to you by: environmentalism!Labels: All Star Game, baseball, David Ortiz, Home Run Derby, MLB, Ryan Howard
2:21 PM
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