The New York Yankees tied a franchise record on the eve of August 1 by slugging 8 homeruns in a 16-3 route of the Chicago White Sox. The fireworks may have been set for Alex Rodriguez’s chase of 500 career homeruns, but for as many balls that left the park Tuesday night, none of them carried the 500 insignia. Bobby Abreu led off the homerun assault clubbing a three run shot in the first inning. Hideki Matsui continued his tear through the month of July with his 12th and 13th homeruns of the month and 20th and 21st of the season. Robinson Cano, Melky Cabrera, Jorge Posada, Johnny Damon and Shelley Duncan followed with blasts of their own to tie the record set back on June 28, 1939 against the Philadelphia Athletics. Duncan continued his best impression of Shane Spencer circa 1998 with his 4th homerun in 21 career at-bats, drawing the crowd to demand yet another curtain call from the new fan favorite.

It is hard not to love Rickey Henderson as a baseball player, but it is even harder not to laugh at our generation’s version of the great Yogi Berra with the much beloved Rickey-isms. I came across this compilation of Rickey Henderson moments via Sour Grapes weblog and felt the need to share.

Visit Source: http://pecklers.blogspot.com/2006/09/rickey-isms.html

Rickey-isms

There was a great piece by Lou Blasi in today’s Fantistics update. They have some pretty good writers at Fantistics, though they tend sometimes to be a little to into statistics for my tastes. But when Lou writes stuff like this (actually, he just quoted someone else, but at least he published it so I could see it), it makes finishing out of the money almost worthwhile. I quote:

The infamous Red Sox Nation appears ready to turn over the presidential responsibilities from interim president Jerry “Bawston” Remy to the likes of an elected fan. Wow, had I known Red Sox Nation was taken this seriously, I might have mobilized the Evil Empire to strike back. Then again, Theo “Anakin” Epstein is doing a good job to bleed John Henry’s pockets for average ballplayers in Evil Empire-like fashion (i.e. Julio Lugo - .209 AVG + .278 OBP = $9M / JD Drew - .260 AVG + 6 HR = $14M). Yea, it’s fun to see those red-haired, freckled faces of New England fans perk up at the chance to lead Red Sox Nation with abilities far inferior to that of our real government. The Nation’s First Fan will indulge their powers with privileges including: Red Sox tickets, use of a Fenway Park suite and an all-expenses trip to Spring Training. They will throw out the ceremonial first pitch of the 2008 home opener and log all of their actions into a club-provided blog. Although details of the fan appointed tenure remains unclear, it will be interesting to see if fans turn on their own in the eventual coup d’etat of Red Sox Nation’s early political development.

We all know that Gary Sheffield likes to speak his mind whenever a microphone and camera come within range of his big mouth, but is his recent racial crusade raising eyebrows over his slandering or an actual concern for his cause? Well if it was anything other than slandering, my guess would be that he might have raised these issues while in the clubhouse that employed him, oh wait, that’s right, Gary didn’t want to ruffle any feathers while he was getting paid $40M, that might have jeopardized his ability to perform for any other reason than money.

No, I’m not smiling because the Yankees put together consecutive wins for the first time since the middle of June, or the fact that Yankee bats erupted for 8 runs on 14 hits in Game 2 of their matchup with the Twins, or the fact that Chien-Ming Wang turned in a dominating four hit performance en route to the shutout, what I’m smiling about is Edwar Ramirez. Ramirez made his Major League debut in the ninth inning of an 8-0 shutout for the Yankees and in the spirit of Phil Rizzuto, Holy Cow he struck out the side! Wow, I haven’t seen a changeup that devastating in a while, and yes, with all our bullpen woes this season, Ramirez’s performance was definitely something to smile about.

Roger Clemens turned the page on another chapter of his storybook career Monday night earning victory number 350 behind 8 innings of a two hit, one run gem. The win marked the first time a Major league pitcher has reached the 350 win milestone since Warren Spahn last achieved it for the Milwaukee Braves on Sept. 29, 1963. On 97 pitches, Clemens snapped a personal three game losing streak retiring the final 15 batters before departing after the eighth inning. The 44 year old Clemens is now 12 wins away from sole possession of 7th place on the all-time wins list behind Kid Nichols. After snapping a streak of 200 straight starts with a strikeout in his last effort against Baltimore, Clemens returned to form with 4 strikeouts, reaching 4,630 in his career, now 14 more than Randy Johnson and good for 2nd behind Nolan Ryan on the all-time list.