Pablo’s back, baby!
First pitch: 6:40 Central
Weather: National Weather Service still gutted, mostly sunny 58°
Opponent’s SB site is dead, Crashing the Pearly Gates is doing well
TV: Twins TV. Radio: Keeping you awake as you drive in circles dreading existential doom
First off, everyone’s best wishes go out to Tony Oliva and Kent Hrbek, both recovering from recent strokes. It’s something that’s affected our family deeply. Here’s hoping the best for both.
Kyle Hendricks had 10 good years for the Cubs, and a lousy one last season. He throws primarily an 87-ish sinker and changeup, mixing in a four-seamer and curve. He’s usually been a “pitch to contact” type of guy. His “Player’s Weekend” jersey name is “Hendo.” Which is boring. 2024 digits:
Anything up with MLB expansion talk, these days? Who knows? The whole Vegas A’s thing is still a mess, with a site that’s ready to go and funding that’s definitely not. And then there’s the Rays. And whoever else wants to threaten taxpayers for more public money. Presumably the Manfred Mann would prefer to see these things resolved before moving on expansion.
Certainly one expansion site that’s long been discussed is Portland, where I grew up. There’s a few problems with this. One is that Portland would be 24th in baseball in terms of market size. Although with local TV rights money dwindling daily, that may not be the priority it once was. And, as the Angels admitted several years ago, it doesn’t matter if you’re not selling many tickets, as long as all the ones you sell are expensive and go to the desired demographic — say, youngish rich people swimming in tech money. Portland has no shortage of those.
Another problem is where to put such a thing. The Portland Diamond Project, a group of connected business types headed by a former Nike exec (of course), has two sites shown on their front page. Both would cause massive traffic hassles. One isn’t quite in a fashionable neighborhood — teams make more money off real estate development than baseball now. (That’s a reason why some proposed suburban locations aren’t likely to fly, even if they make more traffic/public transportation sense — Gresham’s pretty, but it’s not rich. I worked down the street from a meth lab that blew up.) Oh, and the site that IS in a fashionable neighborhood would also need huge stabilization measures to avoid “soil liquefaction” during an earthquake.
Still, it looks like there’s some money up for grabs. Salt Lake City’s another frequently-mentioned expansion city, but some local officials are looking at proposed deals and wondering, “um, might we end up having to pay a lot more than we were told?” Not much noise out of Charlotte or Raleigh or Nashville lately.
But the Oregon government authorized $800 million in bonds for a new stadium! And it’s not like there will be any federal cuts to aid for states anytime soon, no sirree! So it’s not like Oregon should be focused on the well-being of its own residents or anything… not when a former Nike exec mentions “transformative opportunity”! Regular citizens over hot-air execs? No, no sirree! (At least the money doesn’t get spent until the city gets a team, so there’s still a chance it won’t be wasted on this stupid, wrong crap.)
In the fallout from another stadium deal, Harry Sidhu’s going to jail. The former mayor of Anaheim who had to resign in disgrace. It’s not a long term — only two months, plus a $55000 fine — but hey, it’s something.
What did he do? You can read the full story here. The short version is, Sidhu ran on a promise to “keep the Angels in Anaheim,” and then arranged a crooked deal where Angels owner Arte Moreno would get to buy prime Southern California real estate for a fraction of its worth. And Sidhu expected to get a million in illegal campaign contributions for this. (And he illegally claimed Arizona residence to avoid paying $16000 in sales tax on a helicopter.) Sidhu claimed he never asked for any campaign money, and didn’t receive any.
All of which begs the question… how friggin’ dumb is this guy? A) when you’re taking a bribe, you take the bribe upfront, you moron, and B) there’s a zillion different ways to get bribe money and keep it secret, especially when it’s “campaign contributions.” (There’s even ways to get out of paying that helicopter tax!)
Anyhoo, at least for now this means Angels games are still somewhat affordable. Manfred recently suggested that if Dodger fans don’t like the prices, they should become Angels fans instead. Um, Robbie, most people consider $400 for a family of four a little high? (That’s for the cheapest Dodgers tickets of the year, plus parking, four hot dogs, two beers, and two sodas.) But, sure, they can be Angels fans, why not? They’re only an hour away. And they are cheaper tickets; as Arte Moreno says, “if the demand exceeds the supply, prices go up” … “but for us, you have 45,000 seats.” I guarantee you he’ll want to change THAT in his shiny new building. Whenever/wherever he gets one.
In any case, we won’t end on stadium swindles. Or even on that time Twins owner Cal Griffith said stupid bigoted things at a country club, which led to Twins star Rod Carew ending up with the Angels, instead.
No, we’ll end on Today in Baseball History, for April 25th, 1970. With the Tigers against the Twins, at Met Stadium.
The Tigers were down by one run with two outs in the seventh, and Detroit pitcher Earl Wilson was batting. (For a pitcher, he wasn’t TERRIBLE at batting.) Jim Kaat got Wilson out on strikes… but catcher Paul Ratliff had trapped the ball in the dirt. That technically made it possible for Wilson to beat the throw to first. (Here’s MLB’s Anthony Castrovince on how THAT strange rule came to exist.) Blockquote time!
Although first-base umpire Marty Springstead signaled the correct call, only Tigers third-base coach Grover Resinger apparently noticed. “Resinger saw Springstead give the safe sign,” said third-base umpire Larry Napp. “He told Wilson to stay put and let the Twins get off the field. It was a smart play on his part.” Indeed, most of Minnesota’s players were already in their dugout when Resinger vociferously instructed Wilson to run. The 6-foot-3, 216-pound pitcher was already past first base and advancing to second before Twins left fielder Brant Alyea alertly realized what was happening. Located near first base on his way in from the outfield, Alyea took action. “I saw him going to second so I tried to scoop up the ball and head him off at third,” he said. “But when I went to scoop it up, I missed it.”
This miscue allowed Wilson to chug around third base and head for home at the urging of a frantic Resinger. By this time, however, Alyea was able to backtrack to the loose ball and throw it to shortstop Leo Cardenas, who had converged upon home plate along with a “reception party” of Twins players. Now caught in a pickle, the “exhausted, bewildered” Wilson attempted to retreat to third base but was tagged out by Alyea, who had taken the return throw from Cardenas. “There were a lot of people standing around home plate – I saw one Twin player there but I thought he was a coach,” said Wilson. “I was halfway home before I realized he wasn’t and by then I was trapped.” Once the dust settled on the play, an error was charged to Ratliff and an improbable K767 (dropped third strike with the putout from the left fielder to the shortstop to the left fielder) was recorded in the scorebooks.
(That’s from this SABR article by Chad Moody.)
If we see a K767 in today’s game, I will send you a cheeseburger. But it has to be the pitcher batting!
