WPCNR VIEW FROM THE UPPER DECK. By “Bull” Allen. May 23, 2009. It happened again. Last Sunday “Downtown Johnny” Damon, or “Downtown Damon” (sorry, John Sterling, you can’t use that!) the diminutive lead-off man with the Bronx Bombers, 36 years of age, homered for the tenth time in 37 games Sunday afternoon to win the Yankee game off the pathetic Minnesota Twins bullpen. Is this telling us something? Yankee Stadium II has 82 homers through its first 21 games — doubling the homer count from last year! The pace is set for the new ballyard to double it’s homer count over last season.
Yankee Stadium II. Photo by WPCNR Sports
Damon at age 36 has never hit more than 17 home runs in one season in his career, playing most of it in Fenway Park. He is now after 37 games, 7 away from his career high for a season. He is on a pace to hit 44 home runs in 2009.Babe Ruth at age 36in 1929, only hit 46. So Damon is matching the Babe at his age after 37 games.
After 50 years baseball are we seeing the second coming of Wally Moon who blooped 11 Moon Shots over the Los Angeles Coliseum 250 foot screen?
Damon is blasting them like mortars to the opposite field, to the power alleys, up up into the new right center field Yankee Stadium jet stream. He is tagging those taters, blasting to the bleachers. Duck, upper deckers! If he clears the line of the façade at Yankee Stadium II, the ball will carry to the Throgs Neck Bridge—and there is even a carry when there is no wind in the stadium. Is an investigation of the stadium called for?
Looking at the major league leaders, “Downtown Johnny” is not alone. As of the beginning of the week, the numbers leap out!
“Downtown Damon” is behind Carlos Pena of the Rays (13)who is clocking circuit clouts at a 55 homer a year pace. Antonio Gonzalez of the Padres has bombed 15 – a 64 homers pace. And it has not even begun to get hot yet. Albert Pujols of the Redbirds is on target for 58. Alphonso Soriano (man was thata bad Yankee trade!) of the Cubs has turned into Ernie Banks, looking at a 55 homer season. Dunn of the Nationals, 99 homers; Bruce of the Reds, 90 homers. Eight sluggers have 10 homers.
Instead of the athletes on steroids, the clueless hucksters of major league baseball have pumped that well known steroid into the 2009 baseball.
Is Horsehide Homer Mone Hormone Use Up?
Baseballs suck up the roids.
The baseball detectives, Universal Medical Systems of Solon, Ohio will soon give us the answer as to whether HHMH (Horsehide Homer Mone Hormone)content is up!
The feckless sportswriters have not noticed this?
Homeruns are wayyyyyy up in the major leagues. The ball launches off the bat whether it is hit off the end of the hickory or the fists, as if shot from a slingshot.
Part of the reason is the new maple bat that’s harder — and breaks more easily. It puts a charge into the ball according to Universal Medical Systems. Dan Zavagno, the bat and ball analyst of UMS says if you hit the ball with the sweet spot on the maple bat — it magnifies the monster mash.
The major league strike zone has shrunk to the size of a postage stamp: belt to knees and supposedly no corners. Pitchers have to throw batting practice pitches to get a strike! This makes it all the easier for the hitters. Jacked ball, pitchers condemned to pipe the ball to get a strike. It’s home run derby in the major leagues. Even the peerless Manuel Rivera is getting lit up. Of course there are the small ballparks, too. The steroid use, is another cause.
The baseball as hand grenade, the stingy strike zone aid the homerun derby edition of baseball has been aided and abetted by the worst pitching in baseball history.
Few teams have two good starters. Few pitchers on a staff can come in and put the ball where they want to. Too many try to slip the lamb chop past the wolf and BOOM! It’s gone.
But, who cares.
It’s all good, isn’t it?
The solution: I know what Don Drysdale and Warren Spahn and Sandy Koufax would do – hit more hitters, pitch high and tight. Of course baseball does not allow that any more. The pitchers get warnings and ejections. You have to let one pitch send a message. The time to send that message is when the game is on the line. Save the “Duster” for when the slugger is coming up with a chance to win it. But, short of escalating the violence level of the game, the pitchers have to get some illegal pitches.
The clandestine pitchers union has to comb the rest homes where the pitchers stay before they join that great rotation in the Heaven League. They have to learn the spitball, the emery ball, the Vaseline ball, where to nick the ball to get that extra dip, sharper drop. It is a case of survival. Or, even learn a legal pitch: the knuckleball.
Of course the vast majority of pitching coaches in the bigs today never pitched well enough in their own careers to learn the craft of the knuckleball and screwball, perish the thought of using the tactical nuclear weapons of pitching: the “doctored” ball.
These pitches of course are only to be used in big spots when you have the hitter in a key spot and the tobacco juice is dripping off the hairy-backed bomber’s bicuspids anticipating a fastball inside or down or curve away. That’s when Gaylord Perry, Burleigh Grimes, and the masters of the spitter, or the dripper would throw it, confounding the hitter. It is good to throw it on the last pitch of the At Bat because it can be immediately rolled out to the pitcher’s mound obscuring “the evidence.”
The mediocre pitcher, the journeyman pitcher, the rookie rushed to the desperate rotations of today has no shot because of the hitters’ casino baseball has turned into.
The pitcher coming up today has to take destiny into his own hands. He’s not getting much advice other than having his arm strength diluted by pitch count madness (which counts for pitching coaching today). The knuckler, the knuckle curve, a change-up are not being mastered—and they are legal.
As Warren Spahn, the greatest lefthander of them all told Roger Kahn in the book The Head Game, after winning his 300th game in 1961: “I ignore the upper half of the strike zone. These days I throw only below the waist. Of course if a batter has a profound weakness – say he can’t hit a high, inside fastball—I’ll still throw to that spot. But a batter with a profound weakness doesn’t last in the major leagues.”
On analyzing hitters, Spahnie confided to Kahn, on pitching to batters he had never seen before, “A man who drops the front shoulder when he cocks the bat is a high ball hitter. If he drops the back one, he’s a low-ball hitter. After he takes one swing you know whether he has quick wrists. All this is important but pretty elementary. When you’ve pitched against a batter a hundred ties, you know all about him, but you have to remember, he knows all about you, too. Then the fun starts. It’s cat and mouse.”
Stan “The Man” Musial, the greatest Cardinal of them all – a Spahn nemesis told Kahn in the same book that pitchers have to adjust, like Spahnie did: “Spahnie knew everything about his profession, and he was smart enough to change before he had to. In the early years he had the good high fast ball, a nice change, terrific control inside the strike zone, but only a fair curve. A lot of pitchers would have stayed where they were. Not Spahn. He began tinkering with a screwball, and as the fast ball began to go, he’d come at you with the screwjie (Editor’s note: screw ball, breaking down and in to lefthanded batters, and down and outside to right hand hitters, mastered by Carl Hubbell).
“He’d thrown it low and away from righthanders, but down and in to left-hand hitters, an unusual pitch. Lots of left-hand hitters like’em low and inside. Spahnie got away with it. Then came the slider.”
Today’s pitchers need to adjust better, pitch smarter, and work on their control. How would Spahnie adjust to the livelier ball? You know he would, because he did. The ball of the 40s when he first came up was not as lively as the ball of the 1960s when he finished up and was still winning twenty games.
Good luck, hurlers!
…and another thing–
Today Major League Baseball and Fox Sports said they are moving up World Series Games by a half-hour, so kids and see more of the Series night games. But, in reality the reason is the ratings hit rock bottom last fall, due to two small market, no-glamour market teams in the Series. (MLB is desperate to get Los Angeles,New York, Boston, Chicago into the World Series this year.)
Come on.. the ratings are down because the games last 4 hours and end way too late when started at 8 PM. The problem is Major League Baseball is sleeping with the networks and does anything they say to the detriment of their own sport.
The networks do not want to lose any of their pro football revenues and audience, so they for years demand baseball play the series at night.
If baseball had a real commissioner who loved the game, that commissioner would play the games during the day, say 6 to 9 PM like the Super Bowl does — and that would work, the games would end on the East Coast at 10 P.M. But, Nooooooooooooooo — FOX, CBS, NBC want baseball after the NFL doubleheaders are over — and at night for prime time during the week — regardless of weather or location.
That’s not right and never has been — another Bud (Selig) legacy. But, Bud is not entirely to blame. When Bowie Kuhn sat in 20 degree weather in his suit coat decades ago, it showed you who ran baseball telecasts — the networks. And, that’s got to stop.
Baseball should recapture its network rights and put all their big games on their own Major League Baseball network at the times they want, and open up the advertising audience.
