Roger Clemens has been suspended for five games after his retaliatory role in Toronto on Tuesday night. That’s right, FIVE GAMES…let the outrage begin. Are you kidding me Bob Watson? Is it me or has the Major League Baseball vice president of on-field operations elevated his power beyond totalitarian control. Since taking over as Der Fuhrer Selig’s right hand, Watson has handed out more suspensions than baseball has seen in the preceding twenty-five years. What was once settled by baseball’s unwritten rules has since turned into an abuse of umpire authority and an over-policing by the Commissioner’s office.

Following a night-long beer-in-hand debate of Major League Baseball’s official rules, the age-old trivia question of how many ways to get to first base came up with varying results. After doing some sober research, the results put everyone in their place as I am sure it will for everyone that reads on…

The official ways to get to first base comes courtesy of Gary Belsky and Neil Fine’s book 23 Ways to Get to First Base. A great piece for every sports trivia buff’s collection, the book details out each and every way possible to reach base, and I quote:

I recently came across a classic F*BOSTON moment involving the great Ted Williams and an incident that occurred in a game at Fenway Park against the rival New York Yankees on August 7, 1956. After dropping an easy fly ball, Williams was booed heavily by the Boston fans. Upon his return to the dugout, Williams retaliated by spitting into the faces of Red Sox fans sitting over the dugout. Now that is pure class, what a reaction from Boston’s much beloved Splendid Splinter himself, Ted Williams. But if the act itself wasn’t classic enough, his comments to the Boston Herald may have been even better, “I’m not a bit sorry for what I did. I was right and I’d spit again at those booing bastards. Some of them are the worst in the world. Nobody’s going to stop me from spitting.” Preach on Ted Williams, I’ve never had so much respect for man with Red Sox.

Alex Rodriguez hit 500…finally! Rodriguez added another chapter to his season long assault of the record books clubbing his 500th career homerun to become the youngest Major Leaguer to achieve the feat. Becoming the 22nd member to join the exclusive 500 homerun club at age 32 years and 8 days, A-Rod passed the previous record holder, Jimmie Foxx, by accomplishing the feat some 330 days earlier.

Wild Card standings have been added to the home page to keep everyone updated for the second-half race down the stretch. Check out the Wild Card standings here!

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.